Calendaric clarity

Lately my mind has been occupied on many fronts. In fact given the many balls I seem to have on the go, I should really learn to juggle.

Recently I’ve found myself looking at the wall planner on my office wall, sensing my eyes scanning over the weeks and months. Whilst the coloured dots and stickers that cover specific dates create a  kaleidoscope of business objectives, my mind wanders to personal dates that seem to be permanently etched into my mind. Three weeks to a now cancelled break, eight weeks to an important point in the year.

As I usually do, when I have a lot on my mind I do two things – work harder and over analyse my thoughts continually. Someone recently pointed out to me that I seem to have a shield that I deploy that keeps people away and only lets them in on my terms, the shield has been up quite a bit lately. There are some times when my introverted thought process gives me some clarity and focus, and certainly today I felt like I had an epiphany of sorts as the deep analysis reached its conclusion.

In other news, I await each day a letter from the local court services giving me the date of my Decree Nisi. I’ve seldom spoken much, if any, about the breakdown of my marriage on this or my previous blog. I do not regret for one moment ever getting married. I was a much different person at 24 than I am now and the formative years of my marriage played a large part in making me who I am today. The end game we find ourselves playing at the moment is both amicable and fair. On one hand I am sorry it took us both this long to get here, but on the other we both needed to get here in our own way. We make much better friends than we did husband and wife that much is true, yet I couldn’t help the strange feeling of disappointment when I posted the paperwork to the court. Not through regret or thoughts of changing my mind, but through sorrow that a promise made so many years ago fell so short and didn’t last the distance.

We have struggled greatly to prep one of our race cars to a competitive standard. In fact after two very frustrating days testing, I pulled the car from racing for the race it was planned to run in. Whereas this came as a shock to the guys who have been preparing it, I felt that with the limited time we had left we just weren’t going to get it anywhere near right. Whilst some may say this was a defeatist attitude, when you have drivers paying you their hard earned money to race, sometimes you have to make a judgement call as to whether you can deliver value for money. The drive home from the circuit that night was a very long and lonely one indeed. So the car sits in the workshop gathering dust and is looking likely that it will get sold along with two others whilst I push the team in a difference direction for 2010 and beyond. Speaking with one of the drivers as we wound that last test session down, we spoke about the good results we’d had the year before and how we achieved those. It may well be time to go back to basics and race Porsches again.

So, life continues at a pace. Such a pace that it sadly seems there is no time for a holiday this year. So I shall while away my days looking at the wall planner and watching dates draw nearer, marking them off one by one, day by day.

Meltdown

“I’m going to ring those fcuking tosspots up and tell them exactly where they can shove their poxy 3G card, especially after that bill they just sent.” Muttered by yours truly mid afternoon today after realising that my 3G card wasn’t working, whilst urgently needing to get online to solve a major issue a customer was having. (Why do these issues occur when I’m having lunch and so not near the safety of my office network?)

I unplugged the 3G card, plugged it back in and nothing happened. Nada. Zip. Not even the merest hint of a signal. I may as well have been in sub Saharan Africa for all the connectivity I had.

As I contemplated throwing the quite useless dongle into the half empty rice bowl in front of me. I thought back to the £2,600 bill we’d just received for our mobile phone costs in the past month (for eight handsets is all) and was ready to have a good old fashioned strop.

For some reason I decided that before I did that, I’d just check the dongle again. I took it apart to find that the SIM card wasn’t in there, so no wonder I couldn’t get a signal!

The SIM card was still in my bag, for some unknown reason the last time I used the dongle, I must have taken the SIM card out afterwards and had clearly forgotten that a) I’d done so and b) to put it back properly.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t be so worried, but seeing as I am now rolling out technical solutions out across Europe for that business, I may need to write a process to save any future dongle embarrassment.

Powersliding

The other week I was given the opportunity to test drive a car that I’d aspired to drive for a long time.

For petrolheads, there are a selection of cars they’ve always hoped to drive and in my case, been trepidatious to do so. I remember the first time I drove a Porsche 911 race car, as I climbed in over the roll cage I was shaking. The first time I has race tuition I stalled the Caterham five times in a row as my foot kept sliding off the pedals! When I first drove the Aston Martin N24 I got in without my helmet on.

So, when presented with the chance to get behind the wheel of a Maserati Quattroporte it took about half a second to think about it. I’ve always had more than a passing interest in the marque, but been wary of multiple reports from various owners of huge depreciation in the blink of an eye as well as impossibly high maintenance costs.

(I did not have my camera with me, as this was an unexpected test drive)

So I sat in the drivers seat, flipped the flappy paddle gearbox into neutral and fired up the engine. The rumble from the 4.2l V8 engine sounded reassuring and seemed to fit the eloquence of the cabin. The inside of the car was well finished, it didn’t look cheap or tacky and although it wasn’t too plush it was finished in a way that you’d imagine a £94k car would be.

As I edged the car out onto the street, I waited for a suitable gap in traffic and then when the moment arrived, planted my right foot on the accelerator. I watched as the rev counter climbed as a cacophony of engine and exhaust noise rose and then as the revs just started to nudge into the red, I pulled the right paddle and repeated the process again, and again and then possibly again. The semi automatic gearbox is okay, nothing special and sadly not as good as I’d hoped it would be. I always find myself disappointed when a flappy paddle gearbox isn’t as responsive as you hope, especially when compared to a traditional manual one.

I think this car has two sides to it. The first where in urban driving it handles well, despite feeling as wide as a bus. At these speeds the car feels planted on the road and reasonably responsive whilst making quite an aural and visual statement to those nearby. However at higher speeds the car transforms itself. I’m used to feeling a car on the road through the steering wheel, at higher speeds the car felt like it was wallowing through corners. Whilst ordinarily I’d be happy to drive a car round a corner using the distribution of the weight of the car and the power from the engine to keep things smooth yet quick, I found myself backing off from doing so and being alarmed at just how much the front of the car rolled around.

This car has noticeable road presence, a combination of its sleek looks and sound mean that people stop and stare at you when you are driving it, especially when you use a bit too much right foot when exiting a petrol station and leave almost sideways.

However I got out having driven it for about 60 minutes feeling both distinctively underwhelmed, disappointed as well as quite glad to be done. That itch has been scratched, I doubt it will itch again.

Into the Ocean

After an unintended break due to real life getting in the way of virtual life, I am back. Hanging my head in shame that my blogging output collapsed to not even a post per month over the past few months. This drop in output wasn’t for the lack of trying, I have many many half written posts that I have just been unable to finish because I cannot find the words to do so.

My weight loss continues, I am almost at three stone lost since Christmas. The last half stone has been a struggle, interrupted by a weekend of drinking and eating mainly bad things (including a tequila worm) on the continent last weekend. I cannot describe just how much better I feel though, combined with the dog walking I really do feel fitter, happier and much more content with myself. I am close to my target weight now, although rather than go for what the BMI index states I should weigh, I have gone for a weight that I feel better suits me and will leave me looking less like a skeleton that the BMI would prefer. The really pleasing aspect is that my knees, which so often have been the bane of my life over the past few years are much improved.

The house decorating is really coming along at a pace. Whilst I am tired of painting now, the transformation of the house back into a home is really visible now. The plumber that I recently had resident for over five weeks has done a stunning job in transforming both the bathroom and my ensuite. Gone are the tired looking bathrooms that had started to show their age and in their place are two modern yet simple rooms that work very well indeed. The ensuite was stripped back to a bare shell, in place of a tiny single shower is a double shower with a shower head so big it is like standing under a waterfall. A smaller sink and toilet, along with clean white tiles with inlaid mirrors on the walls along with undertile heating on the floor and a chrome towel radiator with accessories have made what was previously a very small room feel much bigger. The main bathroom has been updated with all new furnishings, tiling and accessories. They both look stunning. I was lucky enough to find a plumber who took such great pride in his work and who I was prepared to wait for until he had time to do the work.

With the windows and front door replaced a few months ago, I have just a couple of rooms upstairs left to paint, then I can order the new carpets for the stairs and bedrooms. The last major job towards the end of the year will be to replace the wooden floor downstairs and to remove the patio door and put french windows in instead. It’s been a tall order and quite challenging to get everything done. The old man came down for a few days to help me do downstairs and I am hoping that he can be persuaded to give me a hand over another weekend in the future, two people work a lot better than one.

Work is and has been absolutely manic, the two main businesses could keep me busy 24hrs a day if I wasn’t careful. Luckily I have some fantastic people who work for me who are able to handle the majority of the day to day things without me even needing to get involved. It has taken a long time to find people who I explicitly trust to be able to do this, yet is was an essential part of being able to grow the businesses and make them into something substantial. Earlier in the year I bought my business partner out of the main business, so ultimately the responsibility lies squarely upon my shoulders now. I did not realise just how much that would increase my workload by.

We are currently rebuilding our 2009 endurance race car in the aim to see it on track testing in June & July before it starts to race in August. Our main 2010 car which we plan to race in 24 hour races has already been started. We will be taking our time with this car, namely because it is an expensive process and secondly because it needs a lot of driver input to make sure it is built correctly. Building an endurance race car is a lot different to building a sprint race car. In one single 24hr race, we cover more miles and racing time than an entire season for Formula 1 and as such the car is built to be able to go lap after lap at a certain pace, rather than flat out all the time.

This year is turning into the year of gigs and concerts, a by product of working with a large ticketing organisation I guess. On Friday this week it is Jean Michel Jarre, in July Crosby, Stills & Nash, August is Pearl Jam and then in October Nerina Pallot. It is quite good to have these things to look forward to over the rest of the year, especially gven the pace of life at present.

Just for Men

As I stood in the lounge this morning, inhaling fresh, strong coffee to kick start my sleep fuddled brain (I fell asleep for an hour on the sofa at a party on Saturday night), I caught myself glancing into the mirror that I recently hung to finish one of the walls off.

My attention was not drawn to my somewhat stubbly face but rather to my hair. Now my hair and I have a simple arrangement. I go and get a hair cut and then for a few weeks it looks tidy, neat and smart. Then overnight I turn into a mountain man, which is the trigger for me going to get another £7.50 special at my local barbers.

However this morning my focus was not my mountain man like status, but the distinct and I daresay pronounced streaks of grey hair that I saw. I blinked carefully in case my eyes were playing tricks on me, alas they were not.

At the age of 32, I am going grey. I once complained to my father a couple of years ago that my receeding hairline was genetically his fault, I shall now add premature greying to that list.