Slowly down the Ganges

Slowly down the Ganges

Last night I scattered my father’s ashes on the waters of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holy city to which Hindus come to die and end the cycle of death and rebirth. India had exerted an ancestral pull on my dad his whole life but he’d never managed to...

A dog’s breakfast

“Oh Dad! You promised!”, my son shouted through the Travelodge lobby at an hour that will not have gone down well for those with Boxing Day hangovers. He was not happy. He’d just discovered that there was no all-you-can-eat full English at the Epsom branch, just a...
The clashing of email cultures

The clashing of email cultures

We don’t usually see delegates bursting with frustration in our GTD seminars but in one of my former lives it was a sign that a workshop was hitting the mark. That life involved readying business-people for international assignments and the card game ‘Barnga’ was a...
Chocks away

Chocks away

Given the electoral earthquake across the pond this week, the decision to develop a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport somehow feels like it all happened ages ago. It was actually only a fortnight, but its origins do indeed go back years. The UK government’s...
The art of stillness

The art of stillness

In ‘The Land of the Rising Sun’ during the 1990s, the madogiwazoku – which is Japanese for ‘the window tribe’ – were ageing employees who were no longer seen as useful to the organisation. However, since there was a reluctance in Japan’s corporate culture...
Distracted by the Duke

Distracted by the Duke

As he lay dying by the railway tracks the local MP for Liverpool, the Right Honourable William Huskisson, must have thought… “Dash it all… I didn’t see that coming!” On this very day in 1830, a train service was launched connecting Manchester, the greatest...
A penny for your thoughts

A penny for your thoughts

It’s a sun-filled summer afternoon and you’re strolling happily down the street when a flash of light catches your eye from pavement ahead. You instinctively tell yourself it’s probably just shiny litter but your eyes linger, widen and then sparkle with delight. Yes,...
Satnav your life

Satnav your life

My knuckles tightened spasmodically on the steering wheel as I sat in traffic watching the minutes tick by on the dashboard clock. I had 30 minutes to make my meeting in a hotel across town and I was stuck in a rush hour jam on the Manchester inner ring road, in a...