As you may or may not have noticed, my ‘daily self-isolating blog’ was absent over the weekend. So, not very daily really but it was the weekend and I now realise, I need to pace myself in this relatively new lifestyle. Today, and partly inspired by the wonderful words written by Allison Pearson about her sadness at not being able to see her Mum on Mothers’ Day, I thought I would dedicate today’s blog to my Read more…
Today, I spoke with a client who told me for the past week or so, between 30-40% of his communications with anyone has been driven by Coronavirus. No surprise there of course but when you think about how most people operating at a fairly senior level tend to be pretty busy most of the time, that is a huge proportion of their time. For “professional plate-spinners” – as I often think of them – this Read more…
All around the world, beautiful stories are emerging of human beings killing coronavirus with kindness. One of my favourites was of the President of Israel reading a story to children and their parents via his Facebook page for all those who are having to self-isolate. I bet that is a first for any world leader. In Italy, where almost an entire generation is being threatened with extinction due to the large proportion of elderly in the Read more…
Last night – not long after I had posted the previous blog – I decided to do something I haven’t done for about ten years, maybe more. My wife had been saying to me, “Well if there’s a time for doing crazy things, now’s as good a time as any…” In fact, she almost issued it a as a quarantine challenge! Why not have some fun? One of the reasons that I hadn’t done it Read more…
Day 1 – Tuesday 17th March, 2020 Up until approximately 2.00am this morning, I was convinced I had this Coronavirus thing beaten. You see, I never get sick. At least it happens extremely rarely indeed. I am one of those annoying people who can be surrounded by all kinds of typical sicknesses and simply not receive them. Many years ago, I decided that whenever I felt even a twinge of a headache knocking on the Read more…
One of the things I was thinking of writing about this week was the seemingly relentless rain and how much I am getting fed up with it. Then I thought about it a bit more and soon dismissed the idea – given that where I live, the roads are a little like shallow ponds or very large, deep puddles – depending on how dramatic you want to imagine them. What they are not is at Read more…
If you’re anything like me, you may be repelled by the seemingly relentless advances being made by robots. Not that ‘they’ are the ones making the advances of course. I’m not too worried about a potential real-life horror story along the lines of the Terminator films – whereby the human race effectively hands over all control of the planet to robots, who in turn destroy the earth as we know it and seek to terminate Read more…
Apologies for the slight delay in delivering this post to you today. The truth is, I felt a bit bereft of ideas so I decided there was only one thing for it… A morning walk up on to the South Downs, despite the frost and freezing temperatures. I’m so glad I did it, even though there was a point, on a long, drawn out steep incline, where I began huffing and puffing a bit – Read more…
On the first day in Tirana, Albania this week, I decided to walk back to my hotel for lunch. Partly because I wanted the exercise of a brisk walk through the city and also because I love the challenge of remembering a route. I was staying in a new hotel for the first time and so was unfamiliar with the short drive to the office in the morning. I therefore paid much closer attention than Read more…
One morning, when I woke up, I couldn’t see. I called out to my Mum (I was only about eight years old at the time!) who came in to see what the matter was. It turned out, I had conjunctivitis. The nasty pus that comes with it had effectively congealed over my eye-lashes and therefore, I could not open my eyes in the normal way. Imagine for a second, if you woke up one morning Read more…