According to "Design Patterns" (Gamma/Helm/Johnson/Vlissides), what you describe is a Singleton, as is your implementation of it.
This is the OO "correct" (whatever that means ;) way of ensuring a class has only one instance, and of providing a global point of access to it.
I usually call the get_handle() method get_instance() when I do this, so I know what it is when I come back to it later.