Friday, 27 June 2008

Today was another precious day free of meetings so I could try and catch up on correspondence and all those little jobs that are still cluttering up my focus. I organised the upgrade to MS Office 2007, helped Maria with come accounting queries, sorted out our IT licences, made plans for next week’s CRM training, did some more testing on our developing web services, sorted out the speakers to invite to our next networking lunch, discussed arrangements for other meetings, advised a local group looking for accommodation, sent out a programme of future events for the Watford One World forum, and sent out invitations re: the new Watford Community Fund. Not a bad day’s work, but I still feel as if I am barely making any impact on the backlog of work here: I still have 119 items in Outlook bearing little red flags and I have one more week before I go on leave.

Reading

This evening I finished reading The Big Show by Pierre Closterman – a member of the Free French Air Force who flew for the RAF from the surrender of France until the surrender of Germany. He had 33 confirmed "air victories" and was only just 24 when the war ended. The final paragraph of his book is very appropriately for Veterans Day:

The Circus is over. The public was satisfied. The menu was rich and not so bad, except that the lions have torn apart the tamer. We'll remember them again later and even when all will be forgotten, the music, the fireworks and their nice costumes, at the centre of the square the trace of the big tent will remain, until the following rain shall erase it for ever. My friends that survived the Big Circus have, luckily, not realised it - me neither for that matter- and that will be our final reward.