Golden sands

My week began by attending a conference in Blackpool hosted by one of my clients. It was a good opportunity to meet the members and better understand the challenges facing their industry.

I’m not normally keen on these things, but I was aided and abetted by the presence of another colleague who knew Jerry (recently deceased colleague) better than I and we exchanged stories about him and raised a brew (it was early) to him. From conversations with them, it is obvious that other colleagues are still reeling from the loss.

We broke for lunch, at which point the sun was out, so I took the opportunity to cross the road and tram tracks to get down onto the golden Blackpool sands (please don’t even start on my trouser length – it’s a shocker and apparently I have shrunk) and soak up the sun for a little while.

My colleague left a little earlier than I, but having come this far I thought I would stay to the end and was really glad I did as a selection of young traders were brought out to speak about their experience of the organisation. One of the youngsters, who was clearly very nervous about standing up and speaking to a room full of much older people, had a very pronounced stutter and at the outset put up a slide requesting our patience. 

I think the room felt her frustration as her ability to communicate her obvious passion and enthusiasm for the subject was hampered by her stutter. She was simply trying to say “fork” (yes, fork) at one point, but it was taking so long that she abandoned the attempt and simply said “that’s not going to happen” and with a rather sad smile she moved on to her next slide.

It didn’t matter anyway as by the end of her segment, she’d got the heart of her message over and she rightly received a rousing round of applause at the end of her presentation for a gutsy performance. 

I left a now cold, wet and windy Blackpool feeling rather inspired.