Learning....it's an age thing.

A client explained to me this week, that people think that the older you get that you don’t have anything more to learn, but indeed you do still have more to learn, you just keep on learning all the time, it never stops.

When I got home one night this week my husband told me that my mother had started painting. I visualised my mother sitting in the garden with an easel and watercolours – that was quite an amazing vision!

It transpired it wasn’t watercolours that she had taken up, it was emulsion! She has for the first time this week, in her 78 years, held a paint brush in her hand and emulsioned the conservatory, and whilst I realise there are more windows than walls in that room it is still pretty amazing. No remarkable actually.

My mother had learnt how to paint a wall, when I recalled I had never, ever seen her do that before.

What have you learnt this week?

April.....and who is the fool?

On Monday I travelled to Edinburgh to deliver an in house presentation skills programme, it should have happened in December but the organisation is going through major restructure and reorganisation and so it was delayed. On the eve of the programme I found out that a lot of the delegates who had been due to attend were involved in assessment centres as people were reapplying for their roles. I did reflect on this and felt how disorganised and foolish it was of this organisation to rearrange for this date.

Despite these reservations the programme went incredibly well and the delegates all personally thanked me for their time and reiterated how useful they had found it.

I left Edinburgh by train and settled down to do some work, at Berwick on Tweed we were informed that a plastic bag had attached itself to the trains electric connection and we would have to wait for an engineer to arrive to remove it – deep joy!

After 50 minutes we were advised that a cross country Virgin train due in 5 minutes could take us as far as Newcastle. I pondered what to do, and decided to get off and go on this one. Yet a National Express train pulled in and delight of delight the destinations on the side of the train included Peterborough.

There was nearly a riot on the platform when the train failed to open its doors and simply went on its way – it was the hour later train travelling out of Edinburgh.

So I got back on the original train to wait it out, only to hear that the Virgin train would be coming and that an engineer was coming from Morpeth hence the long delay. At that moment the Virgin train pulled in to the next platform so I grabbed my things and ran.

It was only when I went to put my suitcase into the storage area that I realised I had left the case in the storage area on the original train. I squealed in panic and ran to the doors to get out – only to find that they had already shut. Frantically pressing the open doors button did nothing.

So who was disorganised and foolish now?

What happened? Lady luck was looking down on me….I got off the train at Newcastle, crossed platforms, waited another 15 minutes and was reunited with my suitcase, I was back on my original delayed train.

What day was it? 1st of April!