This evening I had dinner with EESC member Bryan Cassidy (Employers’ Group) and his wife, Gillian, at a wonderful fresh fish taverna. The address was a good tip – a table was booked for later the same evening for the referees in the Cyprus-Norway World Cup qualifying match that was under way in Nicosia as we ate. We had delicious grilled fresh squid and sea bass and a lovely conversation. I have known Bryan since the mid-1980s when, as a Member of the European Parliament, he served on the Parliamentary Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industrial Policy. At that time I was in the Secretariat General of the European Commission following the Parliament and the ‘EMAC’ Committee (as it was known) was my responsibility. Bryan did his national service on another Mediterranean island, Malta, and it was through a Maltese connection back home that he met Gillian. The two have been married for an extraordinary 52 years. They reminisced and I drank it all in. It was just a lovely evening.