In my job, I am often summoned into very important, high powered meetings at short notice. It doesn’t matter what I am doing, who I am doing it with or where I am, I simply have to make my apologies and leave. Last week, a client took this approach to conducting business to extremes. I was standing at the urinals, fondly remembering previous posts on manners and officious, distracting and confusing corporate directives. ...
On Friday, Norman Junior III and myself loaded up our picnic hamper, packed the cool box with brightly coloured Bacardi Breezers and set off for SW19. We had been lucky enough to get tickets for Wimbledon tennis in the public ballot last year but, thanks to the English weather, we only saw grey skies and 63 minutes of play. It was scant consolation that we saw Maria Sharapova in the flesh. OK, I’ll admit it - that was a massive consolation ! ...
Two weeks ago, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Surbiton Trophy where I enjoyed a day in the sun watching an excellent Men’s Final between Frank Dancevic and Kevin Anderson. Norman Junior III also plays tennis at Surbiton albeit not to such a high standard. In the lull between the main event and the Men’s Doubles Final, Norman Junior III and the juniors came on to entertain a handful of spectators on the two main courts, performing some standard drills with their coaches. ...
Met up with some friends last night in a very busy Freemasons Arms in Covent Garden. Les Battersby (some bloke from Coronation Street apparently) was drinking in there. Les kindly and repeatedly passed our rounds of ‘6 Spitfire and 2 Guinness’ into our little alcove as we enjoyed Liverpool versus Arsenal. ‘So, you’re in Coronation Street then ?’ ‘Yeah’ ‘Red or blue ?’ ‘Blue.’ ‘Oh.’
There is a memorial plaque on the northbound M40 motorway in Oxfordshire. Out of morbid curiosity, I pulled over this morning to pay my respects and read the inscription: Do not stand at my grave and weep Bring a picnic here instead Just be careful opening the driver’s door Because that’s what I did and now I’m dead
Saddened to read that Miles Kington died recently at just 66. I used to really enjoy Kington’s columns in The Independent. There aren’t many writers capable of making laugh out loud. Kington was one of them. Another of my favourite journalists is Giles Smith of The Times. Last week, he wrote a brilliant article about the appointment of Dennis Wise as ‘Executive Director (football)’. Similarly, Smith’s piece in today’s edition is about the proposed changes to the Premiership: ...
Since accumulating 9 penalty points, Norma has been very worried about the possible consequences of my irresponsible actions and dangerous driving. A driving ban would have severe, wide reaching consequences for my glamorous job in IT consultancy, affect our busy social life not to mention the logistics of ferrying the kids to all their hobbies. After lodging an appeal with Surrey Traffic Police, I gleefully accepted a place on a half-day ‘Speed Awareness Workshop’. Attendance at the workshop cost £95 but was in lieu of the proposed 3 point penalty so was well worth the money. Plus the instructor was an attractive lady. After registration, coffee and friendly introductions, we all swapped amusing anecdotes of our various speeding offences, recounted hard luck stories and were tested on stopping distances in the rain. ...
Last Thursday, 152 people (16 crew and 136 passengers), in addition to a significant number of people living in Hounslow, narrowly escaped death when a British Airways flight from Beijing (BA038) was forced into an emergency landing at Heathrow airport. Several things struck me about this incident and the aftermath: After a phone call to update me on all the domestic news and gossip, my wife somehow negated to impart this tidbit of useful and relevant information. I hung up and turned on the TV news to be staggered by images of the wrecked fuselage of a British Airways jumbo jet lying of the fringes of the runway, 15 miles from my house, surrounded by foam, slides deployed with 18 fire appliances surrounding the scene. As I was flying from Belfast into Heathrow the following day, I consulted the BMI website which curiously maintained flights would be subject to delays and cancellation following, in a slight understatement, the ‘incident at Heathrow’. Funnily, enough, the AAIB agrees with me and defines an accident as ‘an occurrence during the period of operation of an aircraft where the aircraft incurs damage’. A man from Oxford who walked away with his life would have quite liked British Airways to provide him with a cup of tea followed by some counselling. Another couple thought they had just had ‘a bumpy landing’ and therefore didn’t require any tea and biscuits. In fact, these Aussie backpackers were just delighted to get their baggage back without queuing at the carousel and to receive a complimentary return ticket for the Heathrow Express. A surreal moment boarding the flight at Belfast, picking up a newspaper with the stricken 777 plastered all over the front page. British Airways’ decision to parade the pilot, co-pilot and Julie, your cabin service director, before the world’s press. The BA crew all looked shell-shocked and distinctly uncomfortable. Mind you, so would I, if I was slowly starting to assimilate the events and trying to recover from a near death experience (without a cup of tea). This implied to me that BA were either very keen to get the media off their backs and leave them alone and/or BA are already absolutely certain of the circumstances of the accident and knew for a fact, pilot error was not a possible contributory factor. Finally, I must confess that I know absolutely nothing about airplanes, fly by wire or wind shear. I am also totally ignorant of the size of the pigeon population of South West London and possible deficiencies in the quality of Chinese aircraft fuel. ...
I am jet-lagged because a customer asked me to fly, at short notice, from Newcastle to Belfast at 07:05 on Wednesday morning. I had a suspicion this was important because when I told the client that my flights between London and Newcastle were non-refundable he replied ‘I don’t care about that. Just get on a plane to Belfast.’ Initially, I was harbouring hopes of watching Newcastle play Stoke City in a Cup Replay on Wednesday evening and I was about to politely enquire about the possibility of departing early on Thursday morning when the project manager added: ‘Oh and take anything you might need to install Siebel and clone our existing environment on to brand new, standalone infrastructure.’ ...
Reading: ‘Thunderbolt Kid’ by Bill Bryson. Growing up in the States in the 1950’s. This opening (recursive) quote sets the tone beautifully The State Senate of Illinois yesterday disbanded its Committee on Efficiency and Economy ‘for reasons of efficiency and economy’ - Des Moines Tribune, 6 February 1955 Watching: This is England. Growing up in England in the 1980’s. A superb film.