These are the secret mobile shots so forgive the blurriness…!

Look at all the posh olds! This was where our meeting was.

Toilets with Molton Brown soap. When you used a towel you simply threw it in the bin.

Orchids in every cubicle.

The back of the Goring

Phew! It has been a busy week. Thursday was a crazy day. Pink Sky had to go to London for an evening meeting with our Spanish client. Last time Mark went, he met the client in the City of London Club, which was a ridiculously posh venue where suits must be worn, waiters are on wheels (they make no sound as they glide around the building) and everyone drinks whisky and smokes cigars at 11am. This time round, we agreed to meet in the West End, so assumed that the venue would be somewhere more sublime, like Starbucks for example.

With this in mind, I put on a flowery dress and some trainers to cultivate a Lily Allen/arty/designer-y look. mark was wearing jeans with a shirt, jacket and some Converse style pumps. More about this later.

We got to London for about midday and parked in Duke Street. We lost no time in exploring Selfridges, Heal’s, the world’s biggest Paperchase, China Town and Soho. A huge fascination for me was an exhibition that is all around London at the moment in aid of saving elephants. There are large resin elephants positioned in the streets, in parks, everywhere. They are all decorated by famous people/designers and being sold at Sotherby’s in aid of elephants. There was a shop where you could buy small ones but I could only afford a £5 unpainted mini one, so I shall have to think carefully about what I put on it. I had great fun ‘spotting’ them though and took lots of photos.

We ate a Lebanese lunch (mine was a chapatti with olives and haloumi cheese – yum!) and then the phone rang. It was our client, suggesting we meet at the Goring Hotel near Victoria. I didn’t think much of this as I had never heard of the Goring. We carried on browsing.

At 3:30, we thought we ought to perhaps locate this hotel, so I looked on my iPhone at google maps. “Oh, it appears to be near Buckingham Palace?” I said. Mark replied “Oh he said it was by Victoria….? Ah. Yes, they are fairly close together….” As it turned out, the Goring was more than a little posh. It was very near to Buckingham Palace indeed and was massive.

I walked through the door trying not to look intimidated by the doorman in a bowler hat and stood still in the hallway gaping at the chandeliers, marble floor, sweeping staircases and the sheer size of the place. We walked into a very posh bar with leather chairs, sofas and lots of very posh looking people in suits. I felt a little bit conscious of my Rocket Dog trainers and Mark whispered in my ear “Just look like we belong here”. So he said to the lady at the door “I am just looking for a *insert name of client*”. “Ah yes sir, help yourself”. We found him on the back terrace, engaged in another meeting which was running late, so we decided to have a walk around the garden and prepare our notes.

When we finally sat down inside for the meeting (although it was a warm day, the man had come from Spain and was feeling cold!), we were bombarded with a constant stream of amuse-bouche ranging from cheese straws, to olives, to quails eggs, to asparagus quiche!

The meeting went well. The client liked the designs and the fact that we had got into Design Week with it. He said that an art expert friend had said that it was very Mondrian which was a relief, as I had been influenced by De Stijl, which was hugely influenced by Mondrian.

He then mentioned that he had a few other people approaching him with different propositions and would we be interested? We seem to have become part design, part Spanish food importers but at least you can say we are diverse!!

Next Roberto arrived, a Spanish deli meat manufacturer. Whilst his English was excellent, he didn’t quite understand the technicalities of what we were asking him. Our other client was able to translate luckily and all was well. However, the meeting went on for an almighty three hours! I had taken a tranquiliser in the morning (which I have been prescribed for potentially stressful situations) the side effects of which are ‘drowsiness’. Having walked for several miles around London already, by 8:30pm (with the meeting still not over) I was wiped out.

We finally got home around midnight and then had to go straight back to work the next day for two more meetings and the University degree show, which was excellent. I am a little tired……………..

elephant

Paul Smith style elephant but not by Paul Smith

Thought this one was cute

Chinatown!

I have arrived!

Doobedooobedooo

Phhhaarrrrrrp!

The garden of the Goring Hotel

The back of the Goring

Mark enjoying the Goring

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Back terrace

amuse-bouche

Proverbs 17:22

A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.

There are some Bible verses you read that are really hard to understand and you can spend ages mulling them over and questioning them. This one however, I totally understand.

When you wake up with this verse in mind, it makes a tremendous difference to your day. As an example, at the beginning of last week, things were not going too well. A lot of people owed me money at work whilst I didn’t even have enough to buy a pint of milk (literally). A good friend of mine took too many tablets and had to go to hospital (she is fine, thankfully). The worry and stress of all of this was making little things big. I fought with JT before he went to work because he was too busy to make me a cheese roll as well as making one for himself. Someone stole our wing mirror glass and bashed our other mirror in. People said things and I took them the wrong way. I was spending large periods of the day staring at my screen and not knowing where to start. Clients were being really petty and messing me around.

Then we had a sunny day. I always feel more upbeat when the sun shines and I realised that I had been focussing on all the negatives. I made a decision there and then to do whatever I had to do for the rest of the week (where possible) with a cheerful heart. It is amazing what a difference it makes. You start to notice all the good stuff. A lovely friend called at the office with ice-creams. One of our favourite clients made one of those encouraging comments that you will probably never forget as long as you do business. We got paid! (Hooray!) Two close friends got offered jobs. I laughed a lot more. We got into Design Week. Luke bought us a curry and came over to eat it with us. The list goes on…………

A cheerful heart makes you feel healthier in body. It even makes the mundane tasks (like housework) more do-able. Would love to know if you have experienced this too.

I was absolutely flabbergasted by the request to ban the wearing of England football shirts in pubs during the world cup screenings. Apparently it is in an effort to reduce yob-like behaviour and minimise the risk of offending other cultures.

I’m sorry. Has the world FINALLY gone mad?!

Let’s address issue number one. Yob culture. This is not influenced by the wearing of a shirt. If you go into town on a weekday morning you will experience violent behaviour outside the pubs, let alone in the evenings. This is because landlords are more concerned about making money than social responsibility. I am constantly aware of how many drunk people are sold alcohol in bars, shops and restaurants. I don’t just mean tipsy, but completely beyond the pale. We actively encourage drinking at all hours to increase the ‘social scene’ (read ‘profit margins’) and then we wonder why there is so much violence and vandalism.

I fully acknowledge that the competitive nature of sport can lead to violence (particularly in the crowds) but again, this is usually related to alcohol, not shirts. What happened to the time when sport was acknowledged as healthy? The very idea of ‘sportsmanship’ portrays looking out for your fellow man, working as a team, losing graciously and being healthily competitive.

Sport brings countries and cultures together with the passion of playing or watching their game as the commonality between them. If we bring violence into it, we are not acknowledging the point of sport. Whilst this is an issue, I do not believe that banning the wearing of shirts in pubs will help. The supporters will still watch the game and the violence will still occur.

As for not offending other cultures, this is a subject that I could really get on my soap box about, but I will take care, so as not to offend other cultures(!) I have a lot of time for people seeking asylum from countries or individuals that put their lives in danger. The Bible instructs us to welcome strangers into our homes because some of them are angels in disguise. It also says that when you serve the least of God’s people, you serve Jesus. Therefore I think it is really important to offer refuge and asylum to those who need it.

Therein lies the problem. Those who NEED it. If you have come over here just to earn more money, then there are plenty of bigger countries without an overpopulation crisis who can take you. The Labour party promised to create 2 million jobs. 98% of them went to European immigrants. Well done government.Not only that, but the thousands of European immigrants who haven’t found jobs are happily living off our wonderful benefits scheme with no intention of ever having to look for work again.

Also, we are terrified of offending other cultures. Why? If you went to Afghanistan you would be expected, as a woman, to honour their culture and cover yourself up. If you went to China, you would not expect to be able to celebrate Christmas and have a fish on the back of your car. Now we, as a Christian country (supposedly!) are eroding all of our moral values, cultural traditions and any sense of patriotism (although quite what we still have to feel patriotic about anymore is questionable!) in an attempt to appease potentially offended parties. Instead, we are coming full circle and trashing our own people by denying them any sense of identity, pride or purpose.

Why should you not support your country in team sports when you can send a British army to the very same cultures you hope not to offend in a fight against terrorism? The biggest joke is that the other cultures are very rarely offended by our cultures and traditions. They would not live here if they were. The biggest perpetrators are jobsworth individuals who are given a morsel too much power and who totally abuse it at the expense of an entire nation.

So, enjoy the world cup people and (without wishing to sound like a member of the national front because I am certainly not!) COME ON ENGLAND!!!!

Today I bought some totally AWESOME trainers…  £25 (reduced) in MyShu.  They are a nice summery mix by Rocket Dog.

Why is public transport so expensive and so rubbish? We all want to be green. We all want to do our bit but as I say time and time again, if you want to encourage people to be green then you have to make it REALLY easy for them, or they just won’t do it.

Public transport really winds me up. So many people commute to London every day and therefore a train would be a perfect solution. However, to buy a ticket from Cheltenham to Paddington on the day (7am commuter train) can cost £145. Why would you do it? If you drive it will probably cost you about £30 in petrol there and back if you have a small car. If you have 2 or 3 people in the car it is a bargain. Yes you can be organised and buy tickets in advance, but they are still not cheap. Why not make these tickets cheaper? Add a few more carriages on to the train. Run a few more trains.

Another perfect example is the humble bus. My colleague gets a bus in from Winchcombe every day. It costs him £2.30 each way. That is getting on for £5 a day in bus tickets. Not only that, but the buses run at ridiculous times. He can’t get in until 9:30 and they run about every hour, but sometimes only every 2 hours. If he doesn’t have childcare for example and needs to get home for 3pm, he has to leave at 12!! This is ridiculous when you have got to work at 9:30. In a car he can leave at 2:30.

There is no real excuse for this. Instead of the government investing billions in hair-brained schemes to improve the environment, why do they not subsidise and reform public transport so that we can actually use it? I appreciate that I am taking a very simplistic approach, but it strikes me as odd that the Japanese and other cultures can get it so right and we can fail so miserably.

Don’t you just hate ‘lingo’? Those phrases that people use too much (including me, although I try not to), especially in business speak.

1.  Ticks all the boxes
2.  Put your own stamp on it
3.  Let’s touch base
4.  It’s your call
5.  At this juncture
6.  Above board
7.  Give me a rough ball-park
8.  What do you feel you can bring to the table?
9.  Carte blanche
10.  Core competencies
11.  Critical Mass
12.  Cut the mustard
13.  Deliver the goods
14.  Disincentivise
15.  Drill down
16.  Due dilligence
17.  Eleventh hour
18.  Fall guy
19.  What’s the gameplan?
20.  Impactful
21.  Kudos
22.  Lie of the land
23.  Lick and a promise
24.  One-man show
25.  Out of the box
26.  Take ownership
27.  Put a few feelers out
28.  Triangulate
29.  Upshot
30.  What’s your take on…?

You may have noticed that my blog now sits at www.naomiturner.co.uk – if you have found me, welcome!  I am going to be creating a new theme for my blog soon as well.  In transit, I had a few issues with my blogroll so if you were on it but are now not then I do apologise! I shall seek to rectify this when I change it all over.
PS I seem to have lost my pictures! Please bear with me and I will get them back later…