Vive le velo!

We spent last weekend in Biarritz. I also stayed there at the start of this week. That was nice because the sun was glorious (does a blue sky make one feel better or worse when doing emails inside the house?), but the downside was that we weren’t in Pau when the Tour de France was passing through. The disappointment was doubled when Sandie rang last night to tell me that the Belgian TV programme Vive le Velo had turned up to do 3 days of filming from the stud farm in Gelos! She said it was an impressive affair with big trucks all over the place. They came with a staff of 54 people including 2 full time chefs! I didn’t even have time to think that Sandie was trying to tell me fibs to get me to come back to Pau before one of my Belgian friends who loves his cycling was on email exclaiming that he’d seen the stud farm on TV and that it looked wonderful in the sun! A small world indeed, and yet another opportunity to kick-start my TV career missed….

The music of the future

When I am in Zurich I always stay in the same hotel (http://www.zuerichberg.ch/en/home.asp). It is tucked away in the outskirts of the city by the zoo. It’s nice to feel a bit cut off from everything – the proximity of a huge forest and not having English TV channels such as the BBC or any real internet connection only adds to that feeling. As a consequence I typically watch MTV when I’m getting ready in the morning before work. When I was watching MTV on Friday it was clear to me that we’re at the start of the summer because there are currently lots of catchy tunes such as Flo Rida’s Whistle or Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe being played. On Friday I was reminded of this time of year when I was 18 and went to Majorca with a group of school friends after we had finished our A Level exams. The equivalent song at that time which has always stayed with me is Born Slippy from the film Trainspotting. What I like about this genre of music is the optimism which it instills in me. I hear a series of tunes like that and I hanker for being 18 again – or at least at an age, or a phase of life, where you feel like the world is your oyster, that all avenues are still open, that your future isn’t completely defined and mapped out for you, that there is still everything out there to do, achieve and play for. That’s a precious feeling. Although it may not be my reality at 34 with three small children, I’m always keen to go to my hotel in Zurich at this time of year to be reminded of that feeling.

Rain rain go away

I got my taxi at 6.15AM on Thursday morning to go to the airport en route to Zurich. As I stepped out into the darkness I felt a cold drizzle on my face. My spirits dropped as I realized pretty quickly that rain would mean the cancellation of Maxime’s school picnic in the mountains on the penultimate day of his first year at school. He had been looking forward to it for a number of weeks and I was sorry for him especially because when I got to Zurich it was glorious weather with a bright blue sky. As I headed into the office I couldn’t help but think that the sun was in the wrong place. It’s now Saturday and the good news is that, as is often the case at the age of three, the disappointment didn’t last for long especially thanks to a promise of a rearranged trip in September. His attention has now turned to our upcoming family holiday in Gran Canaria in 5 weeks time – he’s already worked out that this should theoretically be a good excuse to buy new “Cars” flip flops, a new “Barbarpapa” bag and new “Spiderman” T-Shirts and the like. He didn’t get any of what he whined for, but he’s not daft that one.

A nation of hedgehogs

So finally it is confirmed that the Germans do have feelings. I do have to say that I do love their attitude... http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18635834 It's very unfashionable to like the Germans and Germany, but I was never really that fashionable at the best of times....Hats off to them and I will look forward to seeing them again in the world cup in two years time...

Moneyball Plus

It's been a busy week - Paris on Tuesday, Brussels briefly on Wednesday, and then back to Paris for Thursday. In the past the diary had been full of pre-arranged meetings. Clearly we've moved into a different phase of my new role - no longer do I put anything formal into the diary, but that doesn't prevent me from being called into various conversations starting at 8AM and finishing late in the evening. I now need to think about how I can carve out time to do some proper thinking to keep up the momentum that we've gathered thus far. Despite everything that is going on (it is the last week in the quarter of course for those of you who don't live in the wonderful world of publicly quoted companies and stock markets!), one of the articles that stuck out for me this week was the following http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670059/moneyball-20-how-missile-tracking-cameras-are-remaking-the-nba particularly interesting because at work we struggle to tell easy to understand stories about "big data"....

Bilbao and Bacon Butties

I went back to Newcastle this weekend for a get together with 30 or so of my schoolboy friends. It did me a lot of good. On Saturday morning as the train made the final approach over the River Tyne it felt good to be “home”. When I stepped off the train at Central Station a few minutes later, the next thing I thought was, bloody hell it’s cold here….and to think we used to play football with an orange ball in the snow not so many years ago. Over the last couple of years I have started to wonder whether or not the only reason you spend time with certain friends in the evenings and weekends is because they happen to have children of a similar age. This weekend reminded me that life and conversation is all the easier with the friends who you grew up and shared so much with for so long – it’s all so natural, even if we hadn’t seen each other sometimes for 2 or 3 years. What was even better was being back in the traditional North East environment – I stayed at an old friend’s house and the thing that finally woke me this morning was the waft of his wife’s homemade grilled bacon sandwiches. Even better was when I asked for the iron to sort out a t-shirt for the journey home, his wife just told me to give it to her without even batting an eyelid – no negotiations or conversation required! I just laughed as I got out of the shower and found it hanging perfectly on a coat hanger outside my room. Now that’s all wonderfully relaxing, if only we hadn’t got to bed at 3.30AM.

The other big benefit of a trip to the UK and Newcastle was that I could actually go into a travel agent and book our family holiday for August. Sandie and I made a forlorn attempt to do it together earlier in the week but we quickly realized that it was quickly becoming a certain cause for divorce, so I offered to do it myself at the weekend (obviously Sandie gave me a long list of strict criteria to which I had to adhere – everything from suitable flight times and interconnecting rooms to baby crèches and airport transfer times). Thankfully I stumbled across a very patient young girl in Thomson’s holidays on Saturday afternoon, and 90 minutes later we’d cracked it with Ryanair flights from Bilbao to Gran Cranaria, a Tuesday to Tuesday check in, and a guaranteed sea view. Sandie received the information, was allowed to lodge any key objections before a 12 hour cooling off period for overnight cogitation. Then this morning the deed was done! Finally, a family holiday for a week in August in a Spanish speaking country. Now let’s just pray for warmth and sunshine!

The fox and the hedgehog

An interesting read... http://www.ianbell.com/2009/05/19/the-fox-and-the-hedgehog-which-one-are-you/