Page 263 - James Caan - The Real Deal

26 · What Now?

and she recognised that it would take me time to figure out what
to do next. I really didn’t know what I wanted, so I told myself I
was going to take a ‘gap year’ and give myself a chance to figure
it all out. But unlike most gap years that are undertaken on a
shoestring, this would be a five-star year doing all the things I
hadn’t had the time to do while I was building the businesses.
While I’d been considering whether or not to sell my stake in the
company, I’d had an office built in the basement of the house, and on
the first Monday of my new life I went into my new office. The first
surprise was that the computer wasn’t on. I hadn’t realised it before,
butJan hadalwaysturnedmycomputeronfor me, logged on to the
system and opened up my e-mail for me. I had no idea how to do
these things for myself. It was a little bit like being back in the broom
cupboard in Pall Mall: no colleagues, no clients, no atmosphere.
I turned on the TV and watched Bloomberg. At least I felt like
I was still connected to the world of business with reports on the
markets, companies and share prices. Having it on in the
background probably kept me sane, but it was clear I couldn’t
watch TV for the rest of my life.
I called a recruitment agency – not one I had any involvement
in – and asked for a temp to come and show me how a computer
worked. A girl called Sam turned up and I had to start by asking
her how to turn the thing on.
‘How do I set a password?’
Then we moved on to e-mail.
‘What’s my e-mail address?’
‘What do you want it to be?’
So she set me up with an e-mail account.
‘So how do I forward an e-mail?’
She burst out laughing. ‘Are you really the same bloke who built
a global business? How come you don’t know any of this?’
Then she taught me about the internet. Strange as it seems, I had
never actually surfed the net before. People had come in and said

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