Monday, 26 July 2010
I-priorites
Got a new I-phone the other day. Ace – now can’t live with out it. I spent a night filling in my contacts and making it the portable all-singing-all-dancing wonder bit of kit that it is. Then as I went to text my daughter in my Contact Favourites I realised a scary thing – I had placed my Contacts there in probable order of priority – and guess what was first? Work. Husband came a mere 5th, kids at 2 and 3. I don’t know who I feel sorriest for – the poor sods at my office with me on the phone all the time or my poor husband who is a mere 5th in my list of priorities.
Ladies that louche
Louche
Definition: of questionable taste or morality, decadent
Word of the month – use it with care. Roll it round you mouth and apply when possible. Came up when the the JDC girls and me went out for supper the other night and I have decided it’s a word we need to use more. Think Oscar Wilde, think Moulin Rouge.
Now where did I put that corset?
Definition: of questionable taste or morality, decadent
Word of the month – use it with care. Roll it round you mouth and apply when possible. Came up when the the JDC girls and me went out for supper the other night and I have decided it’s a word we need to use more. Think Oscar Wilde, think Moulin Rouge.
Now where did I put that corset?
Monday – ‘I love you just the way you are’
Rows: Nil
Coffee: 2 but decaf (saintly)
Wine: Monday – need I say more?
Decibels: 20 (with small peak when reached check out – so much for this months shopping ban)
I went to Marks and Spencer’s today and bought myself a few ‘essentials’. Now I am sure we all know M and S is a little enormous in it’s sizing so I downsized from my normal twelve to a ten. When I tried my first top it was like trying to fight your way out of a parachute. Enormous. I then had the task of trying to gain the attention of an assistant whilst half clad, managing to give a seventy year old in the food hall a coronary as he inadvertently got a glimpse of my cellulited form.
‘Can you get me an eight please?’ I asked ‘These sem to be coming up very big'. You’ve got to love ‘flattery sizing’.
‘But madam is very slim’ she replied. ‘Madam’? Had I accidentally dropped into the set of Grace Brothers? That’s Surrey for you. And slim? Not a commonly use adjective in our house. However, she duly sourced the size eight. I tugged it over my now sweating brow and it fits as it should. Size eight? Woo hoo! No need to cut that label out then.
But the reality is I am no size eight. I am exactly the same size I was when I was seventeen and I am pretty sure that was a size twelve. I wasn’t deemed large then – but certainly not tiny, curvaceous even. But a distinctly average sized twelve. The reality is I have stayed exactly the same – its just the world around me has changed and so I have gone from being a very average seventeen year old to a thirty eight year old now deemed svelte, compared to today’s average of size sixteen.
Similarly, I have been in business now for eighteen years. My budgeting, financing and expansion has always been cautious, particularly as my primary business has been the sole income for my family. I guess you could say I was risk adverse. I have never borrowed exponentially or been anything other than steady. Steady growth, steady income. Boring even. For this reason I hadn’t been on the ‘tout for business’ radar. Banks were only interested if you owed them millions or indeed had million in deposit, lawyers weren’t interested in odds and sods of work – they wanted the big deals. And for this reason I have been of little interest. Until now.
Since the recession hit, my boring little core business - which is still doing deals, and still functioning in credit - is deemed the bee’s knees. I am not just a courier company I’m a solvent courier company. I have never been so entertained by my bank, so courted by the local business community, so on the radar. The social invites are positively flooding in. My business and its contribution to the local community are suddenly as popular as Noemie Lenoir. Staid, boring companies are now deemed good. And I have done nothing different – I have remained exactly the same – it’s just the world around me has changed
The moral of this story is – sometimes by staying exactly the same, you become exactly what you wanted to be. I’m no Elle McPherson or Alan Sugar (although my physical resemblance to the latter increases daily) but I am doing ok. I have no doubt that the economy will take off, and times and attitudes will change again but for now I might as well just enjoy.
Coffee: 2 but decaf (saintly)
Wine: Monday – need I say more?
Decibels: 20 (with small peak when reached check out – so much for this months shopping ban)
I went to Marks and Spencer’s today and bought myself a few ‘essentials’. Now I am sure we all know M and S is a little enormous in it’s sizing so I downsized from my normal twelve to a ten. When I tried my first top it was like trying to fight your way out of a parachute. Enormous. I then had the task of trying to gain the attention of an assistant whilst half clad, managing to give a seventy year old in the food hall a coronary as he inadvertently got a glimpse of my cellulited form.
‘Can you get me an eight please?’ I asked ‘These sem to be coming up very big'. You’ve got to love ‘flattery sizing’.
‘But madam is very slim’ she replied. ‘Madam’? Had I accidentally dropped into the set of Grace Brothers? That’s Surrey for you. And slim? Not a commonly use adjective in our house. However, she duly sourced the size eight. I tugged it over my now sweating brow and it fits as it should. Size eight? Woo hoo! No need to cut that label out then.
But the reality is I am no size eight. I am exactly the same size I was when I was seventeen and I am pretty sure that was a size twelve. I wasn’t deemed large then – but certainly not tiny, curvaceous even. But a distinctly average sized twelve. The reality is I have stayed exactly the same – its just the world around me has changed and so I have gone from being a very average seventeen year old to a thirty eight year old now deemed svelte, compared to today’s average of size sixteen.
Similarly, I have been in business now for eighteen years. My budgeting, financing and expansion has always been cautious, particularly as my primary business has been the sole income for my family. I guess you could say I was risk adverse. I have never borrowed exponentially or been anything other than steady. Steady growth, steady income. Boring even. For this reason I hadn’t been on the ‘tout for business’ radar. Banks were only interested if you owed them millions or indeed had million in deposit, lawyers weren’t interested in odds and sods of work – they wanted the big deals. And for this reason I have been of little interest. Until now.
Since the recession hit, my boring little core business - which is still doing deals, and still functioning in credit - is deemed the bee’s knees. I am not just a courier company I’m a solvent courier company. I have never been so entertained by my bank, so courted by the local business community, so on the radar. The social invites are positively flooding in. My business and its contribution to the local community are suddenly as popular as Noemie Lenoir. Staid, boring companies are now deemed good. And I have done nothing different – I have remained exactly the same – it’s just the world around me has changed
The moral of this story is – sometimes by staying exactly the same, you become exactly what you wanted to be. I’m no Elle McPherson or Alan Sugar (although my physical resemblance to the latter increases daily) but I am doing ok. I have no doubt that the economy will take off, and times and attitudes will change again but for now I might as well just enjoy.
Friday, 23 July 2010
Voice of Authority
I know, I know, I know - many weeks, no blog - but life has got kind of busy. Apologies. But thank you to those who asked for the next instalment! Glad to know you are out there.
Random thought – what voice did you choose for your Sat Nav? It struck me the other day that this choice tells a very interesting story. Actually my Sat Nav did physically strike me as I tried – mid travel, of course, running late for a meeting - to retrieve Sat Nav from glove compartment and stick it to windscreen bypassing the essential ‘lick’ bit of the ‘lick, stick, suction’ process. This ensured it dropped down hard on my knee at the next hard right hand corner. Nice. I finally conceded, pulled in to a lay-by and positioned it correctly and sent my man ‘Ken’ off to find details of how to get to my next appointment.
Now ‘Ken’, my in car logistics assistant, is a rather authoritarian Australian. I choose this out of 20 potential voices as I deemed it to be the one that I would actually listen to. Yes, it’s true. I am so pedantic I would negate the information of a Sat Nav whose voice didn’t have sufficient gravitas. So I chose the voice that most closely resembles……my father! Scary stuff although he (Dad not Ken) will be pleased. It’s taken 38 years and I am finally listening to him…..or a replica at least.
That got me to thinking – for what reason do other people choose theirs? One of my drivers has an Irish lady (reminds him of a softly spoken school teacher he had a crush on), other’s have quite a harsh Welsh lady – which apparently has had a real uptake since the appearance of the Vanessa character on 'Gavin and Stacey'. You can imagine it can’t you, ‘At the end of the day, when all said and done, that’s a right you need to be taking. Lush’.
Funnily enough I have a dominatrix friend who had a brainwave about recording a voice over for a Sat Nav but I had to tell her I thought it would be a bit counterproductive – any man who fancied a bit of that would be purposefully going off course to get the bollocking. My Ken’s calm, ‘Turn around when possible’ would be replaced by ‘I said RIGHT you simpering little idiot, TURN AROUND’. They could be getting lost on purpose for ages!
So what have you got as your voice on your Sat Nav and why? I am intrigued….
Random thought – what voice did you choose for your Sat Nav? It struck me the other day that this choice tells a very interesting story. Actually my Sat Nav did physically strike me as I tried – mid travel, of course, running late for a meeting - to retrieve Sat Nav from glove compartment and stick it to windscreen bypassing the essential ‘lick’ bit of the ‘lick, stick, suction’ process. This ensured it dropped down hard on my knee at the next hard right hand corner. Nice. I finally conceded, pulled in to a lay-by and positioned it correctly and sent my man ‘Ken’ off to find details of how to get to my next appointment.
Now ‘Ken’, my in car logistics assistant, is a rather authoritarian Australian. I choose this out of 20 potential voices as I deemed it to be the one that I would actually listen to. Yes, it’s true. I am so pedantic I would negate the information of a Sat Nav whose voice didn’t have sufficient gravitas. So I chose the voice that most closely resembles……my father! Scary stuff although he (Dad not Ken) will be pleased. It’s taken 38 years and I am finally listening to him…..or a replica at least.
That got me to thinking – for what reason do other people choose theirs? One of my drivers has an Irish lady (reminds him of a softly spoken school teacher he had a crush on), other’s have quite a harsh Welsh lady – which apparently has had a real uptake since the appearance of the Vanessa character on 'Gavin and Stacey'. You can imagine it can’t you, ‘At the end of the day, when all said and done, that’s a right you need to be taking. Lush’.
Funnily enough I have a dominatrix friend who had a brainwave about recording a voice over for a Sat Nav but I had to tell her I thought it would be a bit counterproductive – any man who fancied a bit of that would be purposefully going off course to get the bollocking. My Ken’s calm, ‘Turn around when possible’ would be replaced by ‘I said RIGHT you simpering little idiot, TURN AROUND’. They could be getting lost on purpose for ages!
So what have you got as your voice on your Sat Nav and why? I am intrigued….
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