A lot can happen in a week, finds David Philpott, as he runs us through his highs and lows.
If you watch the tear-jerking Jimmy Stewart movie again this Christmas, you will be reminded of why it is good to count your blessings as you are reminded once again, that for most of us, it is indeed a wonderful life.
The high points in my week are usually the one’s I was not anticipating, like last Thursday, when safely ensconced on an aeroplane leaving Belfast and bound for Gatwick, the passenger in the window seat next to me introduced herself as someone who worked for George Osborne. She was you see, London-bound for the annual office Christmas party. I meet many interesting people in my daily sorties, but rarely do I get so breathe the same air as someone so close to the Chancellor of the Exchequer – especially when the misnamed ‘autumn’ statement has only just been delivered in the House.
If that was the high point, then surely the slaughter of the innocents in Connecticut was the low point – a President weeping at a news conference, evidence if ever it was needed – that as a race, we humans can still be shocked by any suffering visited upon children. In this case it was not a latter-day Herod but yet another mentally unstable American youth, and in the aftermath, that great nation will divide again between those whose sacraments include the right to bear arms and those who want gun control. For us Brits of course, it is a no-brainer, but for our cousins across the pond, it is far more complicated than that - as anyone who has ever lived there for any length of time will testify. Never before was the phrase ‘two great nations divided by a common language’ ever had such poignancy.
In between these surreal high and low points were all the things that went on in what Miranda Hart might call ‘my so-called life.’ On balance, I have to say, last week was not a bad week at all. Sitting next to the Finance Director of Working Wardrobe at a charity dinner was particularly inspiring. It turns out that at least one in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetime and between one in eight and one in ten women experience it annually. The Working Wardrobe project runs for six weeks and the weekly workshops are aimed at helping women regain their confidence and self-esteem. This enables them to look to a brighter, positive future and take the next steps by making new friends. I was particularly interested to learn that this amazing charity also offers an ‘interview appropriate’ outfit when the women are going for a job – an experience which must, quite frankly, be traumatic.
Commissioning web designers Giant Peach (and yes the owner is called James) and orchestrating presentations on £10m air ambulance helicopter tenders might - you would think - have stolen more of my limited attention span this past week, but these were the ordinary in what has become my extraordinary, wonderful life.
So what inside information, I hear you asking yourself, did I manage to get from the attractive professional lady who worked for the Chancellor of the Exchequer? What insight elevated this chance encounter to the top of my pops for the week just gone? If truth be told, absolutely nothing. It was the fact that the entire flight had almost passed before she fessed up. She did work for the Right Honourable Gentleman but it was not as some sort of economic advisor as I had assumed - in Number 11 Downing Street or the treasury perhaps - but as a Sales Rep for Osborne and Little, the bespoke fabric and wallpaper makers of fashionable Chelsea. She had played me good and proper.
As I descended the rear steps from the aeroplane, I suspected that there was a thing or two that she could tell her boss about the state of the economy. She also reminded me of an old lesson that I need to keep re-learning. If you make assumptions, it is easy to see how 2 + 2 = 5. And as every child seems to know, to assume makes an ass out of you and me.
