Bromyard - a sense of place

I have just walked down Bromyard High Street to go to the dentist.

There is a fantastic 'ghost town' feel to Bromyard. A few antique and bric a brac stores line each side of the road but never seem to be open. Posters in the window of pub shield a 'rustic' couple having a late lunch. The chap who was in rough working clothes was picking the final few chips from his plate, standing next to which a half drunk pint of bitter, the foam of the head clinging to the sides of the glass.

Further along the street there is a wine bar, trying to be the centre of Bromyard night life, the posters in the window appear to be trying to say the right thing but a peek through the window and the sight of what appears to be tables and chairs from a country pub stops the attempt dead in its tracks.

Good solid boots and shoes and hardy clothes are order of the day for residents of the town and a sense of being self-reliant. Honest folk living there lives an honest way. There is a real sense of life working at a different speed; I know that there is still early closing one afternoon, something I last saw in Pontypool in the mid 80's but for the life of me I found it difficult to work out if today was the day.

I get the same feeling from Bromyard as I do when I have been on holiday and deeply buried in the French countryside - a sense of place that is miles and miles from glitz shops stuffed with gadgets, 'the city', WAG's, MP's and their expenses...you get the picture.

If anyone wants a sense of rural middle England, Bromyard will give you a true picture - enjoy.

Did I ever get 523 letters in one week?

First day back at work after a week off, well a week and a day actually but let's not split hairs. What did I find.....523 emails waiting for me, and that didn't even count the 200+ already filtered out. So in days of old would I have received so many letters? No I didn't, several things used to happen back in the day. The most notable of which were 1) People either walked across the office or picked up the phone and actually spoke to people 2) For a lot of the time for a lot of things we were ignorant of what was going on.

The most over used tool in an email is the dreaded 'cc' function. Young'uns seem to forget the 'cc' stands for 'Courtsey Copy'. Let me tell you after 523 emails 'courtsey' is running a bit thin.


Would I change things? Probably not, the truth of the matter is that we all have become 24/7/365 information junkies. Cut me off and I would wonder what was going on.

Must close now, running out of battery life on my BlackBerry....

August is a funny month

Particularly if you take your holiday early. There you are rested, relaxed and eager to go at it again with fresh vigour and what happens? Half your colleagues, suppliers and clients are not there, leaving you having to park all those ideas whilst you sort out who was supposed to do what by when and who might be around to do anything at all.

August is a funny month.

The list

A few years ago I was given a book of lists, if you like that kind of thing it was quite interesting, although having being forced out into the open about writing down the names of Eddie Stobbart lorries in earlier times recently by my wife to my children I am a little more circumspect about my appreciation of 'lists'.

In my defense I will say that I refrained from looking at the list of the Top 20 lists of all time, although it was tempting.


Most people have all sorts of lists, shopping lists, birthday present lists, holiday packing lists etc. I have a secret list (ok not any longer). It is not a list of the Top 10 women I would like to engage in deep and meaniful conversation, nor is it my first XI for either England for the Villa, or even the 10 things I should do before I am 50 - mainly as I only have about 6 weeks to go. No this list has professional ramifications. As far and as wide as I have travelled there are place I would dearly live to see and experience that regretablly I have not seen. So despite the bravardo at industry encounters about knowledge of the world the simple fact is that it is dammed near impossible to have visited everywhere - so there is a list, my personal list of places I would like to see and experience.


The list has to remain private as it could be seen to influence several quite selfish attitudes/approaches/decisions. As a professional buyer I am lucky enough to be invited by destinations try to sell their wares. Such invitations are of course measured against 'The List'. The professional assessment and of course integrity is how such invitations measure up against the standard of the ability of being able to sell the destination to clients.


Thus far I am happy invitations accepted have been for the correct professional reasons......but the list remains and the sands of time keep falling.


P

Hobby horses at a gallop

I have this hobby horse that I get on every so often and go for a little trot. It's nice little hobby horse, normally quite friendly and when I ride her I tend to get in the zone and give all my attention to my little hobby horse.

Her name is actually quite long, she is called 'Shorted sighted penny pinching management who let their staff and customers down who will eventually be found out by the market'. But I call her 'Agnes' for short. I give my portable hard drives names as well - there is Doris, Flo and Gwen and of course 'Big Max' who is 1/2 a Terabite in size.

I also have a Polar Bear called Peter who travels with me around the world - but that is another story, let's get back to Agnes and taking for her for a bit of a gallop. When faced with the result of shocking management decisions that result in me suffering an inferior experience I tend to try and go directly to source. So the conversation with front line staff for a fairly low level encounter tends to be along the lines of 'I am going to throw my dollies out the pram...I can do it with you or your boss, which do you prefer' to be fair the better people will try and fall on the corporate sword which is fine but Agnes doesn't like it. For more serious gallops the conversation can have several variations - such as 'What is the name of your boss's boss? What is their position and who do they work for?. Going to Defcon 5 normally means Agnes looking at the corporate web site or Companies House to find a suitable Board Director to launch Agnes at. Over the years Agnes and I have learned to pick job functions that appreciate the wider implications, so PR, Marketing and Sales Directors are good - the trick is to write in a way that reflects the portfolio they hold. Customer Service and Managing Directors don't tend to work so well - they receive a lot of stuff and you tend to get a formulaic response that Agnes doesn't like.

So whilst having a passable holiday at Center Parcs this week, Agnes and I will be going for a bit of a gallop with their management next week when I get back to a PC and find who maybe the best person to launch a broadside at. There is so much here for Agnes to get her teeth into, she is going to enjoy it.


P

When management fail

Two posts in one day is the sign of a few things, access to a smart phone, access to free wireless and above all free time.

I am sat in a bar area, behind me I can the hollow sound made by pin balls when hit, in front of me kids struggle to get cues high enough to reach the pool tables and in mid distance I can hear club music mixed with the zap of a Zombie shoot them up game. The hen parties of the weekend have gone and now we are left with Brits and their kids going through a nightly ritual of wanting to enjoy themselves.

Anyway to the point of this post. Center Parcs, the current holiday home of the family Jackson no doubt spend a reasonable chunk of cash on customer service training for their frontline staff, so why do they then proceed to throw it all away with sloppy mangement and a penny pinching approach that puts overworked staff under pressure and set them up to fail?

On Saturday I attended a show, there were several things wrong with it, a venue with concrete floor that looked a school gym, a poor sound syste and very average food. But the real corker was staff walking through the audience carrying armfuls of newly scrapped plates during the show, instead of investing a few more secondsto go around the outside. When both the restaurant manager and the site duty manager considered this not only company but also industry standard, well....it stopped me in my tracks, I didn't realise I had been expecting so much from my supplier partners.....then again perhaps not and management here are failing their staff and customers.

As a footnote I have emailed the GM, when I get an answer I will let you know, although it has been two working days and no reply.......

Chicago -really my kind of town

Whilst it has been over a week since my from the Windy City - very lax blogging - I still think it worthwhile to note my views of the city.

For once a US city surprised me. The city was clean, neat and in places even manicured with flower beds along some of the roads. The green heart of connecting gardens in front of the lake shore was refreshing, pushing back the urban urgency of the concrete and glass towers of modern America.

The attitude to culture was highlighted by the short tour of an art gallery we was treated to, our host was both knowledgeable, subtle and very keen to show us some of the treasures they hold.

Notwithstanding this was summer and the harsh approaching winter a distant prospect, I have to say that Chicago is my kinda (ok, qualified to US) of town

Please tell Boris

.....To tell the emergency services that sirens at each and every hour throughout the night just isn't needed. I was in an equally grid locked New York a few months ago and noticed the lack of sirens. There a quick one or two wip wops and that would suffice. In London it would appear the boys in blue appear to only satisfied if they are completing an end run, at full tilt with two tones going all thwe way. So Boris having got very little sleep last night....please sort it out!

Waving cheerio, hugging hellos

This morning was a bit of a strange experience, standing at the entrance to airport security instead of walking through it. Saying goodbye to Tom and Hellen was actually quite tough, another milestone passed as they grow up and become their own self reliant person. Unlike the film Love Actually (it may be sad that I know it - but three women live in my house) I wont be there to reap the joy of a re-union when they come home in 10 days time as I will be travelling again.

East Midlands this morning unlike I guess airports like Heathrow where separations can be longer if not more permanent was a happy place, as most of the people passing through were, so it appeared, starting their holidays. Straw hats, shorts and very loud shirts was very much order of the day.....a warning to Faro, Malaga and other points south seemed appropriate but probably already too late as many thousands of rampaging Brits will already have passed through this summer.

Travelling is a wonderful opportunity to see, taste, hear and experience many new things and I still get a wonderful sense of wonder from visiting new places and espically meeting new people, however as you fight your way through the sign waving taxi drivers and people hugging their hellos in the arrivals hall it is sometimes a little lonely...(ahhhhh).

Where did the ABC go?

I am sat in a McDonalds at the bottom of Bristol Road at it's junction with the middle ring road in Birmingham. As a sixteen to twenty something year old I used to catch the 41 or 47 Corporation bus into town which turned right at this junction en route to town. As the bus went past I would always check what consecutive week Emmanuelle had been playing, I seem to remember it had got well past 100+ weeks. It's a bit of a challenge to work out who was still going to see it. Then again perhaps not.

Whilst ABC and it's revolutionary 3 screens have long gone, together with the Odeon Queensway just up the road - the cinema scene is going strong. I am waiting here to kill some time (the thought of killing or being killed I will come back to in a minute) before going up to what used to be the Children's Hospital which is now an entertainment complex that includes......a 12 screen cinema

It is some 24 years since I lived in Birmingham. The absence of this urban existance from my day to day life has scarred my view of the city. Whilst the roads remain familiar and I am very happy to zip through side streets to plot a route from one place to another,my comfort with some of its inhabitants has become very very wary.

Coming to this fast food outlet my senses have been heightened in a similar way as when I wander around streets in cities such as New Orleans, New York and Cape Town. bosterious lads, wearing street clothes of baggy t shirts, reversed base ball caps, low slung jeans and bling, bling, bling pose a threat - if not in their minds - certainly in mine.

Are they a danger? I am not sure, one part of me wants to say it's me. I am conditioned by the media, popular culture (movies again) and my own white anglo saxon background. So I keep my phone in my pocket, stand quietly and try not to catch anyone's eye at the same time successfully convincing myself that it is me and the 'problems' are in my mind.

It is at this point a lad who must be 6'4+ comes rolling in, walks through the queue I am standing in and before getting to the next queue takes a position at the counter, taps a pound coin on the counter and says to some rapidly stressed counter staff 'Hey man someone serve me, I wanna to get a drink'. Oh bloody hell, am I going to get dragged into this? Is my car safe? If I get attacked will I be able to tell someone to collect my daughter - that's the reason why I am in Birmingham in the first place - Hellen is at a concert with her friend at a small venue called 'The Flapper' which is at the back of the NIA. It's all a flood of different emotions as the small girl who clearly looks like she is about to chuck it all in and walk out asks me for my order. Her training takes over has she enquires whether or not I wish milk and sugar with my coffee and am I eating in. My potential nemesis has persuaded a compatriot already in the queue to add a drink to his order and the matter is sorted.

I can't help thinking that if the difference between inner city urban Britain and the pleasant mainly white, mainly middle class rural Britian is such that if it means that a short fat middle aged white guy is concerned/scarred to go into a McDonalds in the centre of a big city at 8 o clock in the evening by the demons in his own mind then Houston we have a problem (too much stuff about NASA on TV at the moment).

These young....now that is a thought, I want to say black but is that 'acceptable'? Anyway the important thing is that these guys are as English as I am and we need to work at ensuring that the worlds in which we live remain in touch with each other. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that everyone has the chance to build a successful life for themselves, irrespective of their start point. Sorry - I will get off the hobby horse. Actually one last thought on the subject. If the BNP's position is that everyone should go 'home', do they believe white people should leave South Africa?

So my Miami Melt is done, chips scoffed and coffee drunk. Whilst ABC Bristol Road and Emmanuelle has finally gone past their sell by date, the AMC cinemaplex does await....so time to go

It's hot here....

....and I am sat in a barn conversion of an office in glourious Gloucestershire.

One week of relatively warm weather doesn't make a summer, nor does it confirm the impact of climate change, however it does get you thinking about the designs of where we live and work. We have friends who live on the Atlantic coast of Spain, a little way from Seville. Their house is in a narrow street that doesn't let in much light, angled so the sun does not directly shine on the front windows for most of the day and has a verandah where the family sits for most evenings until the early hours. Our houses have fitted carpet, poor ventilation - we call it blocking out the draughts and through the benefit of government aid and lots of B&Q adverts insulated to the hilt to keep all the heat in!

One of the guys in the office wore shorts, good for him, however like most other people I did do a double take. Which is an interesting point about how expectation of acceptable standards is impacted by circumstance. Shorts in an office might be a little stange, but OK for strolling down the down the High Street on a Saturday lunchtime. I am always slightly amused by people's attitude to topless sun bathers - some people are able to a filter out the obvious talking points and others become transfixed by the matter.....both of them.

But's it's still ruddy hot. In an office space the IT revolution doesn't help, with PC's, Laptops, screens and printers all chucking out heat all over the place. I am sat in my little corner of the office with 2 fans going.

There are some ladies and gentlement of my acquaintance who have probably got it about right. They are the regulars who sit outside the front door of an drinking establishment known as the Camp Inn, Grimley. These hardy souls are content in each others company and the joys of the liquid refreshment served by the bar staff, one of whom happens to be my son. The liquid refreshment concerned is probably a significant contributor to their contented state in that most of them drink Scrumpy. Which given the heat, the bloody heat I think is an extremely good idea....so bye for now.

Not travelling

There is an addictive aspect to travelling, having finally returning home on Sunday I find myself looking towards my next trips, the most significant of which is a two night trip to Chicago next month with a one night raid on Dublin in couple of weeks.

Reflections on my boat trip around the Med. It was ok, peering into almost obscene wealth for a little while is quite entertaining as long as you manage perspective - which normally means taking the rip out them (rich people), with a bit of luck to their face without them noticing. It is really at times like this when my more socialist tendencies come to the fore, not because people are rich, but because some people are complete prats about it. Heard a great sketch on radio last night.(abridged)...Pixie Geldof soundalike to Bob soundalike 'Dad will you do a charity record for me'...'Sure baby what is the charity?' 'Me, everyone is going to Bali and i have maxed out my credit cards and i simply must go, it's life and death, i must , i must.....

Ok it was better on the radio.

I am lucky enough to meet some really great people in the travel and hospitality industry who work really hard over many hours to deliver, you have to respect what they do and how they do it. A couple of years ago i was stood in the reception of the Madinat in Dubai with some people and overheard someone laying into a hotel person way beyond the people I and the people I was with considered to be accepetable - it just seemed that all this guy wanted to do was make the hotel lady break down in tears, a complete jerk. One of the people I was with was a 'security consultant' for a client and he was ready to explain in a fairly forthright manner where this guy had erred - which would have been both just and entertaining but ultimately a distraction.

I have this notion that it would be possible to create a community for people in our industry, and particularly the niche that is C&I and if you can create a discernable community there will be a value to someone somewhere to talk to them.......apart from not really knowing how to slice and dice such a community and who would want to spend talking to them it is a great idea - perhaps i need to spend more time waiting at airports to think about it.

P

Sensational St Tropez

Sun, Sensational Seascapes and Sexy people, welcome to St Tropez.
I am sat on the rear deck of Club Med 2, microwaving my ghostly white
body - should I have a browning dish?

Nevermind, went into the port earlier, it was as I remembered it
from my last visit 20+ years ago, beautiful people posing in front
of expensive shops inter mingled what is let's say people who
are somewhat challenged in the beauty stakes - ok dammed ugly.

St Tropez is probably as french as you can get - ladies of 'senior' years
turned out in casual high fashion carrying dogs panting for air ine
the sun. Street artists selling their wares with total distain
for the people who are buying.

Is it real? As a bloke from Devon, probably not, but for a bunch
of people - espcially those are the criminally large yachts I guess
it is their reality.

It is now 3pm, very hot and a long (and late) night awaits, time
for a nap in an air conditioned room I think.......

Portofino Perfection

So here I am, having 'jumped ship' from Club Med 2 to come into the small but beautiful town of Portofino.

And taken the opportunity to come and see the elegant Hotel Splendido which is owned by
Orient Express. OE used to a have a splendid (excuse the pun) Relationship Manager
called Patrick Flemming who always said this was his favourite hotel in their portfolio
, looking at it I can see why. Fantastic location above the town , elegant buildings and how come any
Italian under the age of 30 look like they have just stepped off of a catwalk?

The town is very stylish, but not entirly untouched by the monster
that is the mass tourist market with one or two shops selling tourist tat.
Rooney got married here and you can see why it appeals to both 'old money' and the
new rich.

There is a waiter here singing little snippets of songs - to the ladies - this is
Italy after all.


I am here in Portofino courtsey of Club Med, whose 5 mast, 180+ cabin yacht is sitting outside of the harbour.
At a press conference this morning they explained how they were moving
a portion of their business what they describe as 'up scale'. The product I have seen has yet
to reach the same levels as One & Only, Fairmont or Four Seasons - although
they are trying.

Anyway in about 5 minutes I am going to be shown around the hotel
by a very attractive young lady....so I had better spend a few minutes to
compose myself.

Ciao

Sitting at the kitchen table

So here I am sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Lilly,
who far from being a wayward daughter - they are tucked up in
bed unlike their brother who is 'out and about' clubbing.
Anyway Lilly is one of our cats and the reason why I am sat
here waiting for her is that her 2 week old kittens are in need
of some motherly love. The only mildly interesting thing is that I
am writing this on my BlackBerry connected wirelessly to my home hub.

Ah......mum returns.....and so it's goodnight from her and it's from me.
Good night

Making a start

This is a start of my blog but not a start of my travels. This year I have some great trips including New York, Cairo, Sharm and Fes. I am looking forward to sailing around the Med next week on a 5 mast boat (or is that a ship) and a possible trip to the Windy city in July.

The funny thing about travelling - whilst it is a great adventure - new food, new people - places to see - things to do - boxes to tick etc, it may be very old hat - but coming home is always better than leaving.............