Work

Reflective

| Richard

Work’s been quite hectic of late, as has my social life (which is no bad thing, of course).

Friday and I was off up to Soho and the Jazz After Dark to catch up with a mate, the excellent James Gillespie, who was over in the UK from Fuerteventura to play a few gigs on a whirlwind visit. Really good to catch up with him and his partner Jess plus a few other people I’d met at the Rock Island Bar as well as a few of James’ family members. Lots of drinks as always – ciders, spirits and shots! It was a great night out and even being grabbed in the bits by a friendly transvestite on my way home didn’t faze me!

Saturday and I was up bright and early to go and look at a house in the next block from mine in the same Crescent: a fair sized house for me with an even nicer garage which has the potential to double as a photographic studio due to its size and the high ceiling height for backdrops, lighting rigs, etc. We’ll see.

The it was off to see GT for lunch and an afternoon watching three hours of “Django Unchained” – spaghetti westerns reinvented for the 21st Century. Then it was off for another excellent curry at Cinnamon Spice.

A nice lay-in on Sunday before heading to Covent Garden for more retail therapy at Dr Martens with GT before I made my way home to pack and change to get to Paris by Eurostar and my hideously expensive but comfortable hotel.

A long day Monday in meetings and giving presentations to the MD of one of our larger Clients, made more difficult by a streaming cold {sigh}. Drinks in the Eurostar Business Lounge obviously help you care less.

Finally back home; my cabbie is also riding down to the Pyrenees this summer, apparently…

Working from home today so that I didn’t spread the sniffles; I took the opportunity to cancel a couple of remaining credit cards having cleared all the balances over the past few months. There’s something cathartic about doing this and cutting up the old ones. They were a safety blanket for me at times over the past years but with the potential to bite back, so it was good to cut them up and cut off more past times. More ties with the past severed for good.

If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be…

| Richard

So after spending a great few days on Corralejo chilling out in my hotel and spending the evenings drinking and listening to live acoustic rock music with friends in the Rock Island Bar, it was back to normality with work for a couple of days before I headed up to Cleethorpes on the Sunday.

The view from my balcony
The view from my balcony
Coffee time
Coffee time

The plan had been to head up to Cleethorpes to drop off some old Court papers and some crap the ex-girlfriend had sent me with her parents but the ex found out about my plans – she reads my Tweets and this blog to stalk keep up to date with what I’m doing – and threatened to stop them from seeing the one remaining daughter she hasn’t thrown out if they saw me. Nice, eh? Mind you, as it turned out, that was just as well because an accident on the A17 delayed my getting there until later and I had plans to meet up with some old friends for a lovely meal out in town as their treat. Great to catch up with them and to have a load of laughs about Stuff.

Monday saw an impromptu diversion to Covent Garden on my way home for more Christmas Shopping for GT and my daughter (some killer heels for GT that were a leeetle more expensive than I thought but hey, she’s worth it) and then home.

The Tuesday night found GT and I going to KOKO Camden to watch Fear Factory‘s gig. Sadly this was disappointing. They mentioned they were 7 weeks into their tour and it had clearly taken its toll on the lead singer’s vocal chords as he was unable to sing in tune or make much noise for higher notes.

KOKO London
KOKO London
Fear Factory at KOKO Camden
Fear Factory at KOKO Camden

Wednesday and it was another gig: this time it was the Prodigy at the O2 Brixton Academy. We hadn’t realised when we booked the tickets that this was a late show, with the Prodigy not coming on until after midnight and finishing at 1.30am! On a school night! Oops! So GT and I had a meal and a mooch around and then went in to watch the support artists around 11.30pm and then waited for the Prodigy to come on and do a blinding set. They can still definitely do their thing.

We left shortly after and I got home around 3.00am which was just as well as a taxi was booked to collect me at 6.45am to take me to St. Pancras International for a trip over to Paris to see a Client. Back that evening, arriving around 8.45pm which was just as well as I needed to be nearby at our works Christmas do at a Comedy Club. Lots of laughs – why do I always get picked on by the headliners? Same as the Burlesque Shows – and they’d saved me my dinner which was nice.  We got thrown out around 1.30am and we grabbed some taxis to get us home.

Friday and it was time for dinner in Epsom with GT and some friends and to see Indian Elvis in action!

Indian Elvis
Indian Elvis

The food at the Cinnamon Spice is really excellent and we enjoyed a couple of bottles of wine with a great meal before heading home.

More shopping over the weekend and a lovely lunch out in Kingston at Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant. Recommended.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day saw drinks with friends at their pub and a lovely meal cooked by GT – part carnivorous for me and part vegetarian (and delicious) – with some of the contents of the Fortnum & Mason hamper I’d been given.

Boxing Day and I was off to Norfolk to see my kids and to watch Norwich City (mainly in the rain and doing OK against a strong Chelsea team).

Today was mainly spent driving: back from Norfolk via Diss to buy Amy a replacement Ka after hers got written off; then on to my Mum’s for lunch and presents; then to Egham to get Amy home and off to work.

Phew!

Paris in the Spring

| Richard

Time for another update, I think.

September ended with the French Client I’d gone to do seminars for deciding to make a request for me to join them for the next three months … based 100% in Paris. This I wasn’t prepared to do, so we managed to suggest a colleague every bit as capable as me to do this instead. The best laid plans…

The first week in October found me heading for a day visit to two French Clients again in Paris, to have a strategy meeting with the first (and to introduce my colleague) and to be put forward for the a key role with the second. The second suggested I would be 50/50 in Paris and London but later changed their mind so that didn’t go ahead, which is just as well as my colleague is going back on a placement with another Client with whom he has a lengthy track record. So now I’m going to split my time between the UK and Paris up until the end of the year … at least.

Back in London, I did another breakfast seminar which the company wanted to video to add to our showreel. Tricky, as I was quoting from a court case which quotes the witnesses complete with swearing…

In other news, I’ve been to the cinema quite a lot recently as well: “Taken 2“, “Sinister“, “Killing Them Softly” and “Looper“. Enjoyed all of them!

And finally, I’m really looking forward to next week…

Paris In The Spring

| Richard

…or the summer, as it turns out.

Well my travelling continues. This time to Paris by Eurostar for what turns out was some well-received training for a French Client about the contract on a project they’re bidding on. So late afternoon on Monday, I wandered off in the rain to Euston and a couple of hours later I arrived in sunny and warm Paris, heading to my hotel for the evening, the Hilton Paris La Défense which looked a bit like something from Austin Powers!

Eat your heart out, Austin Powers!
Plenty of room

An early breakfast and a wander past La Défense itself to grab a coffee in a café with a colleague before spending the day with the Clients, who were all really attentive and friendly which helps.

 

 

And then on to the Gare Du Nord to catch my train back. As I had plenty of time and it was warm, I decided it must be beer o’clock…

Gare Du Nord
Beer O’Clock
Meant To Be!

Back home around 10.30pm; long day!

Oh and I get to do it all again next month 🙂

Who Am I? Where Am I?

| Richard

Well life’s a tad hectic just now. Let’s have a quick recap on the last week or so, shall we?

Wednesday 27th.

After work, I headed to the Southbank to meet up with GT for House of Burlesque’s show at the Priceless London Wonderground. We had front row tickets as usual, and, also as usual, I got dragged up on stage for one of the acts. Enough said…

Once I’d escorted GT to Waterloo, I headed back to the car – passing people being overheard saying “Wasn’t that Richard?” from the show – and drove off to Slough. Tricky when the M4 is closed. So a late arrival at the Holiday Inn then.

Thursday 28th

Up bright and early for a day spent training a group of project managers at a Client’s office. Good fun, but hard work. Then a rush to Heathrow for my flight to Vienna, getting in quite late by the time I’d grabbed a cab to the Hotel de France.

Friday 29th

After breakfast, it was off to the University to listen to a talk on Chinese Law from a Beijing-based lawyer, who then sat patiently whilst I delivered a talk on the use of visualisations to explain claims, prefaced by my saying that this was the history module as I incorporated Charles Minard’s “Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813” into it…

It was low 30s and the lecture room had no air conditioning so a tad uncomfortable. Then back to the hotel to work until midnight on something for a Client.

Saturday 30th

After breakfast it was back to the University for a whole morning lecturing.

I’d checked out of my hotel, but couldn’t fly home, so after lunch I headed on to check into my favourite hotel in Vienna, the Steigenberger Hotel Herrenhof: a really luxurious hotel whose staff can’t do enough to help you. GT then flew out from Gatwick to meet me for an afternoon’s exploration and meal, as well as guided tour of Vienna in a horse-drawn open cart.

Hofburg Palace
Orson Carte

Sunday 1st

After a leisurely breakfast, it was time for more shopping, sightseeing and a bit of culture: the Albertina where they had some expressionist work plus a great photographic exhibition of work by Joel Sternfeld which really put me in the mood for the Route 66 trip later this month. After lunch, we headed off to the airport and tea in the lounge there before boarding our evening flights to Gatwick and Heathrow.  Due to a change of plan as I was flying out on the Thursday, I then headed straight up to Manchester and the Holiday Inn MediaCityUK.  Just in time to catch the last half hour of the Euro2012 final with a club sandwich and cider! Slightly embarrassing, though, as they’d checked me into a room that was already occupied by a couple … who were fortunately not there when I walked on in!

Monday 2nd

I drove to my home-from-home in Manchester, the Mercure Manchester Piccadilly where they take very good care of me. A long day at our Manchester office followed but a nice meal was the pay-off later.

Tuesday 3rd

A very long day at the office, finishing at 7.30pm before heading back down to London, popping into the office at midnight to drop off my laptop and some papers.

Wednesday 4th

A day off, so I headed over to GT’s to pick her up en route to Everyman Racing in Leicestershire for a few soggy laps at the wheel of a Ferrari and an Ariel Atom before driving back home.

 

Thursday 5th

A day in the office, and confirmation that I’ll be going to Paris in July and August to train some more clients on their contractual obligations and how to best cover themselves. Finished quite late and changed at the office, because I was meeting GT at the O2 Brixton Academy for the Lacuna Coil/Marilyn Manson gig which was superb! Good to see future-wife Cristina Scabbia rocking it. 🙂

Phew!

Happiness

| Richard

A beautiful, sunny day today! I left Manchester this morning and drove through the Peak District to do a presentation at an immensely impressive off-site fabrication park near to Worksop. Due to the amount of traffic, my speed was forced lower which meant I could actually sight-see as I was driving along and made my journey so much more enjoyable.

The middle of the afternoon found me heading back down to London and I chose my preferred route, via the A1 and M11. What this meant was that I ended up driving back down the route I used to travel twice a week when I was living in Cleethorpes and hence was very familiar. As it was still hot and sunny and with the music playing loudly, my mood was its usual positive one, genuinely happy. I did find myself reminiscing about the times I’d done this same journey as I passed Grantham, my former turn-off onto the A46.

I thought about the good times I’d had as a result of those journeys and how ignorance had been bliss; ignorance of my being conned, betrayed, deceived and then blatantly lied to before I left forever. And then I was reminded about how much I’m enjoying life these days without all of that baggage and how I’m at peace with what happened. I’ve already forgiven but not forgotten. It appears that what doesn’t kill you does indeed make you stronger: in my case it taught me that I could still be generous whilst suffering fools and con-artists graciously and to value family and friends more. And it meant that I could have true happiness without hassle and heartache. And that’s got to be good.

It's better to have loved and lost than to live with a psycho for the rest of your life
This was on my Facebook Newsfeed recently!

So I’m back in London tonight but heading back up to Manchester in the morning, this time by train so I can have a leisurely breakfast and a snooze in First Class. Work hard, play hard, love lots and live life to the full: looking forward to seeing more stunning European Cities (like Vienna, again in June) and then my Big Trip in the summer.

Bank Holiday Weekend

| Richard

Well that was a busy one!

After a somewhat heavy session on Friday night at Abacus with colleagues – damn you Happy Hour! – Saturday found me packing for the weekend and heading over to GT for Saturday, including seeing “The Avengers”/”Avengers Assemble” (which I can recommend as a good, fun film) and a nice meal out afterwards.

Sunday morning and GT was running a half-marathon so I left at a reasonable time and headed off to Manchester with a stay at the comfortable Radisson Edwardian and an evening out at the Comedy Store‘s “King Gong” stand-up show with some very good (and some really awful) stand-up comics.

Monday was a day shopping at various stores in Manchester including a 20+ minute wait at Starbuck’s in the Arndale Centre for a coffee. I was somewhat disturbed though by this that I saw whilst walking through Top Shop:

I'm sorry? "Formal"? Jogger?

Then another night at the Radisson Edwardian that ended with me watching Homeland’s disappointing end (well, for the first series anyway): why do the US networks insist on keeping these series running on and on rather than actually developing a story with a start, a middle and an end? I won’t now bother with the second series.

Tuesday saw me mainly sitting in traffic jams on my way to Birmingham for a meeting and then back down to London. Somehow, despite excellent driving conditions, people had variously managed a series of crashes on the M6 and one on the A406 North Circular that closed it leading to really long tailbacks. How do people manage to crash in such excellent conditions?

Goodnight Vienna

| Richard

Well that was a busy week! The Friday before last, I was heading back in the rain from a meeting with a Client when my phone rang and a colleague asked if I’d be available to go to Vienna for a day the following week to do some training for another Client.  The answer, as always, was yes. When I got back to the office, it all started going pear-shaped…

It transpired it was two days’ training: join mid-morning with a German lawyer’s last session and then repeat on the Friday before an evening flight home; my colleague would be staying at the comfy Hotel de France. But there were problems: firstly, I couldn’t guarantee arriving on time if I travelled on Thursday morning, so I had to make arrangements to fly out on the Wednesday evening (which meant cancelling another meeting) and I couldn’t fly back on the Friday because all the flights back were fully booked, so I now needed to stay another night and fly home on Saturday which meant cancelling all my plans up in Norfolk.

By Tuesday, more changes were afoot: half the delegates were calling in sick, so the venue (which had been a lovely hotel in central Vienna) had been cancelled and we would be doing it at the Client’s offices 15km outside the city. This meant cancelling the hotels I had managed to find and instead I was put up in what was thankfully a four star guest house 5km from the offices, the Landhaus Tschipan. They had also asked us to condense two days’ of training into one, the Thursday and I still couldn’t get a flight back!

Wednesday was horribly wet in London but landing in Vienna that evening, I was greeted by a lovely warm evening and I went for some beers with the German lawyer to run through the slides and edit them down.

Thursday went very well indeed and when we had finished we realised all the HR staff had gone home and there was no-one to take us back or even arrange a taxi … so we walked the 5km back in full suits and carrying laptops in high 20s temperatures! We then changed and grabbed a taxi into central Vienna to meet up with my other two colleagues for beers and a meal before heading back.  Vienna is a beautiful city by night!

Friday morning I checked out of the Tschipan and headed to my hotel for Friday: the five star Steigenberger Hotel Herrenhof in the historic part of Vienna. A bit more work until lunchtime and then I headed out for a sightseeing wander around the shopping areas and the Naschtmarkt: some 10km in the sun and high 20s temperatures: no wonder I got sunburnt!

Back to the hotel to change before I met up with my colleagues at the University of Vienna where they’d been delivering a course for the post-graduate MSc Law course. Lovely ribs and beers before heading off to St Stephen’s Square for more café culture and beer and a wander down to the Danube itself. I finally stumbled into bed at 2.30am!

A light breakfast – or two – before heading back to the airport for a flight home … to the same cold and wet London I’d left behind. Ah well!

 

“It Just Works”

| Richard

Yesterday, I was reminded about just how good technology can be when it all works together. This can, of course, be a rare thing and nothing is more frustrating than kit that doesn’t work as it should.

But two things – OK, three – reminded me of how lucky we are these days.

It started with iTunes Match: I updated the iTunes software on my work laptop and then enabled iTunes Match and watched as it increased the number of songs from simply those I’d previously purchased from the iTunes Store (available since a previous release of iTunes) to all of my music collection currently stored on my iMac back at home but now backed up to iCloud.

I was then able to download a track I wanted on my laptop from my music store back home.

I’m working away from home at the moment and saw that there was nothing much worth watching on the telly. So I fired up my iPad, tethered it to my iPhone – thanks to 3’s All You Can Eat data plan – and did a bit of social networking before starting up Sky Go.

I then watched a couple of films from Sky’s Anytime+ feature: new or classic films that are available to you, depending upon your Sky TV package. Streamed over 3’s network at no additional cost to me.

“It Just Works”…