Where did yesterday go?
Up before dawn as I've got to attend a "development workshop" at the other end of the country, presented by a Famous Former Olympian (FFO). It'll be well worth it, thinks I, to hear a sportsman and a sports psychologist tell me how to be a better member of the business community.
In fairness you tend to get a fairly good class of anecdote on these occasions (if you ever have the chance to hear Martin Bayfield speak, take it. He is a very funny man*), but I don't know if the protracted drive through darkness and dawn's early light is a price worth paying. Oh well, I can catch up with some of the latest hot tunes recommended by Master Trebian and loaded onto the iPod.
Of course, to make it worse the workshop isn't first thing in the morning. However I have to time my drive to get where I'm going so that I get there early enough to get a parking space. Because of this I fill the morning with meetings and other events to make it worth while. There's only so much time you can justify reading the paper as "market research" in any given day. However the meetings only really do what could have been done by a couple of phone calls. Plus the mania for ensuring meetings are short and to the point means that we inevitably run out of time before everything has been explained properly and several people run off, firmly clutching the stick marked "wrong" in their hot, sweaty, hand. That'll take a week to unravel the damage.
And then I get lost driving to the conference centre. Those simplified maps on the back of leaflets are rubbish as a way of finding places, and I forgot my satnav. That's what comes of gedtting up before you're really awake.
Drive up farm road & through building site (asking tractor driver for directions on the way) and get to the event just as it has started. I get the last seat in a hall of 70 of my peers. Everyone turns to look as the speaker pauses. Well done. That made me look well organised and prepared.
The event meanders about with various business psycho-babble woven round the FFO's personal journey that ends with a video of his Gold Medal Winning Race having overcome various hurdles and so on.
We finish on time, turning us all out at 5pm to brave the drive across country during rush hour. Nice sunset tho'. Shame I'm driving straight into it.
Then I remember that we have a pub quiz (aka "team-building exercise") for the department this evening and I'm supposed to be helping organise it. I turn up there just in time to catch the buffet (good, - I'm starving) & to be told that they need my card behind the bar as security for the evening's drinks. This is a definition of "helping to organise" that hadn't been shared with me before hand.
So I spend the evening marking answer sheets and toting up scores whilst the quiz master mispronounces his own questions.
Finally finish just before closing time.
And that's why the yellow hatching on my Highlander's Kilts hasn't been done yet.
Real Life eh?
* Plus he's Hagrid in the longshots in the Harry Potter films. Not a lot of people know that.
Up before dawn as I've got to attend a "development workshop" at the other end of the country, presented by a Famous Former Olympian (FFO). It'll be well worth it, thinks I, to hear a sportsman and a sports psychologist tell me how to be a better member of the business community.
In fairness you tend to get a fairly good class of anecdote on these occasions (if you ever have the chance to hear Martin Bayfield speak, take it. He is a very funny man*), but I don't know if the protracted drive through darkness and dawn's early light is a price worth paying. Oh well, I can catch up with some of the latest hot tunes recommended by Master Trebian and loaded onto the iPod.
Of course, to make it worse the workshop isn't first thing in the morning. However I have to time my drive to get where I'm going so that I get there early enough to get a parking space. Because of this I fill the morning with meetings and other events to make it worth while. There's only so much time you can justify reading the paper as "market research" in any given day. However the meetings only really do what could have been done by a couple of phone calls. Plus the mania for ensuring meetings are short and to the point means that we inevitably run out of time before everything has been explained properly and several people run off, firmly clutching the stick marked "wrong" in their hot, sweaty, hand. That'll take a week to unravel the damage.
And then I get lost driving to the conference centre. Those simplified maps on the back of leaflets are rubbish as a way of finding places, and I forgot my satnav. That's what comes of gedtting up before you're really awake.
Drive up farm road & through building site (asking tractor driver for directions on the way) and get to the event just as it has started. I get the last seat in a hall of 70 of my peers. Everyone turns to look as the speaker pauses. Well done. That made me look well organised and prepared.
The event meanders about with various business psycho-babble woven round the FFO's personal journey that ends with a video of his Gold Medal Winning Race having overcome various hurdles and so on.
We finish on time, turning us all out at 5pm to brave the drive across country during rush hour. Nice sunset tho'. Shame I'm driving straight into it.
Then I remember that we have a pub quiz (aka "team-building exercise") for the department this evening and I'm supposed to be helping organise it. I turn up there just in time to catch the buffet (good, - I'm starving) & to be told that they need my card behind the bar as security for the evening's drinks. This is a definition of "helping to organise" that hadn't been shared with me before hand.
So I spend the evening marking answer sheets and toting up scores whilst the quiz master mispronounces his own questions.
Finally finish just before closing time.
And that's why the yellow hatching on my Highlander's Kilts hasn't been done yet.
Real Life eh?
* Plus he's Hagrid in the longshots in the Harry Potter films. Not a lot of people know that.
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