Back to blog school

It seems that blogs could be seasonal.  A bit like soup.  It gets a little darker, the need for stodgy food reappears on the shopping list…and for words, that familiar comfort, to make an appearance.

Or maybe they’re seasonal creatures, like birds.  Come the spring, blog words need to go to warmer climes (warmer than Scotland anyway), and desert me.  Maybe they lie on beaches and actually go quiet.  Maybe they take a vow of silence and sit in a secluded monastery for a few months.

At any rate, words, ideas for the blog have been clustering about me again.  It’s the inverse of that quote I’m sure I’ve used before – words vs digging ditches.  In the spring, I did actually dig some ditches for a change – or at least, put seed into pots, and attempted some gardening.

Now the writer says to hell with digging ditches (too wet, too cold) and longs to write words.  And perhaps you, who are her friends, write back…

And now from our reporter in…

Haven’t been able to file a report from abroad before.  I’m sure it ought to be very exciting, full of drama and tension.

Except I’m in Bonn, the town where it was said, by one of the diplomats in residence at the time, that ‘every day was a little like Sunday’.

It’s certainly felt like it – although I’m told that this is more so because students are still currently on holiday.  But this is still a small town, and even though it was the capital for several decades, you could argue it has settled back into its Sunday feel fairly happily.

I have connections with Bonn, so I try not to judge it too harshly.  My grandparents were here for several years when it was still the capital, and my last visit here included looking up the house where they’d lived - which I’d also visited as a toddler.  Needless to say, it wasn’t recognisable to me, although other family members were able to comment on what had changed.

Not to worry.  Bonn’s other main claim to fame – being the home of Haribo sweeties – is secure.  And these days, it’s still about the economy, eh?

Revisiting childhood haunts

Same again folks.  Back to the Isle of Jura.  For all that it’s good to see new places, it’s also great to have ones that stay in your mind – and that you are part of.

We had been away three years.  I couldn’t quite believe it was that long, but we added it up.  However, Jura has been ‘abandoned’ by me before – but there’s always the opportunity to pick up again.

Jura is now one of two places that I have known and returned to since early childhood.  The other is my granny’s house in Edinburgh.  As people and places move on, and as I do too, being somewhere that is so familiar can be a great relief.  Going there on holiday is continuity – not just with my past, but with my family.

We have family connections with Jura going back several generations.  Although it’s about 4 generations back that direct family actually lived there, I become part of the subsequent story – the families who retained the link, who went there in their holiday time, and so on.

When I was a child, there was a lot of effort involved in going there – driving up from whichever part of England or Scotland we were in, breaking the journey with our aunts in Greenock who own the cottage.  From there on, every part of the journey is mapped – enough of the excitement is in passing the places along the route that also have their own connections, or maybe just attraction.

As a child, driving up a hill called the Rest and Be Thankful had a huge impact on the imagination.  Passing Inverary, where we had had separate visits – and where I could see the remains of a little tower on the hill that Dad had climbed up to.

Driving alongside the Crinan Canal, sometimes seeing sailing ships passing along, above the height of the car.  Coming into the painted enclosure of the harbour at Tarbert – and remembering the one overnight drive to Jura, where we woke up in Tarbert, and had sandwiches for breakfast, overlooking the pier.

For a child mostly living fairly far inland, access to a beach was a big attraction.  But also to ferries – the big one and the small one.  To seals.  To red deer.  To a coastline where each little part had its own name – and a story that, if it didn’t belong to me, belonged to another family member.

There is a point on the big ferry, heading out from Kennacraig, where you pass the opening of the headland, and come out to run alongside the Mull of Kintyre.  Behind you is green, fairly flat – and ahead of you, an island – your island!  With its distinctive three main hills, the Paps, it is a key moment.

Why take so long to tell all this?  Normally I would get to that view and cry.  This year, for the first time, it didn’t happen.  I had returned to Jura more as an adult – somehow thinking more about others’ responses to the island than my own recollections.

Going on holiday allows you to keep an idealised view of a place.  Not everyone gets to go to an island on holiday – even with Britain as it is – and to a cottage that ‘belongs’ to them.

This time I saw the life on Jura perhaps more as it really is – hard work at times for the locals, what with rough seas cutting off ferries, pot holes that the council seems to avoid filling, new attempts to fill the main additional ‘shop’ with a business venture that will last.

And in this era of being seen to be holidaying in Britain, spending to support the (local) economy, and so on, returning to Jura feels not just a logical choice, but one that contributes to more people’s future than my own.

Travel in the real world

About time I put another post out there, keen to extol blogging as I am yet not doing much of it just now…

Blame spring cleaning, early summer cleaning, oh there’s another cold snap, cleaning and general furniture shifting.  But, for a change, blame holiday…where we deliberately kept off-line.

Actually, this gets easier if you go somewhere which doesn’t have internet access.  Scottish island, family cottage owned by great aunt (who is also a great-aunt) who isn’t online but keeps very busy in other ways, thankyou.  Even though the island has a public access internet point, we managed to keep away.

This isn’t so hard: holidays are about doing things you don’t get time to do (or don’t get round to): watching films, reading books, eating porridge.  Even playing Scrabble and drinking tea from pots (not directly, you understand, mugs were still involved).

It’s also about doing things that you don’t get access to at home: watching red deer from the back window of the cottage, watching storms (and strong moonlight) from the front.

Going to the beach when it isn’t really spring yet, and having the place to yourself.  Leaning out of the front door (which is conveniently a stable door that you open the top half of), surveying the morning’s activities – of other people.

There was even drama surrounding getting home yesterday – a call before 8am to say that we would need to make a 10.30 ferry if we wanted to get off the island that day.  A wait to see if the second ferry would divert to the other side of island 2 because of rough seas, as it had the previous day – which would have meant quick moves to a bus across to the other port. Harder to achieve when you’re foot passengers, and the bus doesn’t go that often.

Thankfully going home by coach, though time-consuming, also meant we avoided having to drive in slushy conditions.  Say what you want about Scottish summers, these factors are not part of our more usual visits to this island home from home.

Yes, we missed out on a genuine opportunity to be stranded away from work.  It was quite tempting, actually.  But we gained a story to tell, and some further kindness from those based on islands, who understand how easily plans, including travel plans, may have to change if the weather does.

This time next week, I’ll be preparing for travel with work.  But for now, I’m holding on to the sophistications of cooking my breakfast, looking out of the window…and rejoining our book collection at home.

Club, cafe, train

On a recent business trip to London I had the chance to sample lots of ways of working and meeting.  Not all of them great, but all interesting.  I thought I’d share my experiences here.  I’m tempted to mark them out of ten, but some of the people involved may read this and think I’m judging their choice of location (or mine).

The fashionable restaurant
One meeting was in a funky Thai restaurant in Soho – all tropical hardwoods, benches and attentive service.  On arrival at 1215 there were three other people there.  While my back was turned it got noisier and noisier and when I turned around to get up and leave an hour later, there must have been a hundred or so people.  There was no space to get the MacBook out to share ideas with the client, but then the meeting was for ‘face time’, not work.

The comfy apartment
The next meeting was in a client’s home.  Big chairs, roaring fire, good coffee and chocolate hobnobs.  It was good job this was comfortable as we talked about their project for four hours.  A huge amount of work was done, but it was also great to get to know them better, particularly having only talked to them on the phone.  I left feeling confident of the business relationship that had been established and enthusiastic to get on with the work.

The home office
This was more of a training session – showing someone how to update their website in their own office in their home.  It was very relaxed.  Classic FM was on in the background and I knew that my presence was appreciated.

The dining room table
Same house, different client.  Laptop on the table, set up email, play with big fluffy dogs, discuss blogs (including this one and the prolific blogger) and a bit of inspiring consultancy (two way).  More intense this time, mainly due to intellectual curiosity and looking at how it might be to consult at a higher level than I thought possible.  Watch this space.

The allegedly wifi-enabled swish cafe
If the chorizo soup and pear juice hadn’t been so good Apostrophe on Lower Regent Street would have been a real let down.  Long high beech tables up front and comfy suede chairs at the back should have made working during a lunch a pleasure.  Buying lunch in a wifi cafe so that I could get access to emails would have been useful, but it didn’t work.

The Institute of Directors, Pall Mall
Well, talk about seeing how the other half work.  I’d never been in a ‘gentleman’s club’ and some would say that I still haven’t.  The IOD on Pall Mall has a dress code and I had broken two of them (jeans and trainers) by joining a client for a meeting.  Fortunately I was her guest and my offenses weren’t too obvious.  The laptop rucksack was perhaps more of an issue, but it was only the reception staff that looked down their noses at me, everyone else was too busy making money.

It wasn’t the most conducive place for a bit of blog training and web discussion and the pot of tea for two cost my client £6.50, but it was impressive.  I’m thinking of joining the Scottish Malt Whiskey Society in Edinburgh so that I can use The Vaults in Leith as an escape from the office, but the IOD is a proper business club.  Scary.  Was I taken there instead of Starbucks to be intimidated?  Probably.

Benugo, St Pancras International
It wasn’t the plan to go to Benugo, but the food looked so fresh, the staff slightly manic but friendly and everything so spotless and contemporary that it was obviously the place to be.  We could have gone to the longest champagne bar in Europe (where’s the longest in the world then?), but we struck lucky with Benugo.  Meeting a friend who happens to be a client is a bit different, but this was a special time.  We ranged in discussion from world politics to charities and from theology to how cool a MacBook is.  I’ll go back.  It was special (oh, I said that already).

National Express First Class, Edinburgh to London return
I don’t want to appear snobbish (well, perhaps a bit), but I have to recommend First Class on National Express to you.  They’ve taken over the GNER East Coast Mainline franchise and I have to say that they’re fabulous.  Not just fab, but fabulous.  The whole experience was great.  I managed to work all the way down and all the way back, and not just a hassled, baby puke and rowdy football supporters type work-on-the-train, but a sophisticated I-got-lots-done type work.  I’m not going to travel standard for work to London again.  Forget easyJet.  This is the real deal.

So to sum up. Keep the IOD, I want First Class travel to friendly, inspiring meetings with clients in their homes, drink nice coffee and play with their dog / cat / MacBook.