So what do you think of our new livery? In the magazine world redesigns do not happen casually. They require careful planning, attention to detail, hard work by lots of people and, finally, delivery of the longed-for event.

And it’s not just magazine redesigns that need all this. So as I went away recently on a two-week business trip, I spent days explaining to everyone that while I was absent, Cost Centres #2 and #3 had to be sent off to camps (yes, different ones, and in different parts of the country) for a week. Lists were made of clothes and kit required. CC#2, going to Devon, had to be deposited at a motorway service station to meet a coach coming from London. CC#3 then had to be driven to his camp in Dorset. Between the nanny, my mother, Mr M and the CCs themselves, surely this was possible.

I was in Dubai on business, but in June Mr M is going there to meet his mother for a couple of days and play golf with a reader of this column. This gentleman made the mistake of copying me in on an e-mail he had sent to the FT on the subject of golf, and, noticing his location, I wrote and asked if he would host Mr M for a round while he was in Dubai. To my delight, he agreed. So now Mr M is going to play golf with a total stranger in June.

I thought I should check him out on my visit just in case he turned out to be an axe murderer.

Not a bit of it. He is Australian, grew up in Melbourne, has worked at the same bank for 28 years and has Mr M’s approach to the whole sport-life balance. He and his wife kindly invited me to dinner and so I sat watching the sun set over the Arabian Gulf with a glass of champagne in my hand. My host confessed to a golf handicap of five, and an in-depth knowledge of golf websites. He also had houseguests, he told me, a New Zealand couple. Five minutes later Jeff Crowe appeared and promptly got busy with the barbecue.

Former New Zealand Test cricketers cooking dinner at the house of an Australian who plays golf off five? The wrong Moneypenny was at this dinner party. I called Mr M (interrupting the packing) so that he could participate at a distance. ”Jeff Crowe’s there?” said Mr M, before rattling off Crowe’s career statistics and then reminding me that he had played against Crowe at some schoolboy tournament in 1975. 1975? I handed the phone over.

The two of them discussed that tournament as if it were yesterday.

The day of the departure for the CCs’ camp arrived. So, in the UK, did several inches of snow. The nanny had done the packing and, in what she no doubt regarded as a sweet touch for two brothers about to be parted for a week, gave them matching cases.

Mr M drove the 4WD through deep snow to the service station, handed over CC#2, and set off for deepest Dorset. On arrival he went to get CC#3’s coat out of his case... and realised that he had the wrong one. By the time he had driven across to north Devon and back to Dorset and then back to Oxfordshire, all CCs had the right clothes and he had spent seven hours on the road during the worst day for driving so far this year.

He called when he got home.

It was early the next day for me and I was on the next leg of my trip, watching the sun rise across the Tasman Sea. I tried to sound sympathetic. But the truth is that there is no substitute for careful planning, attention to detail and hard work by lots of people if you want to ensure successful delivery. What do you think?