Ooo give me

a nice hierarchical business structure any day.... Bleeding matrices, there's no flipping clarity, and even less chance of someone saying JFDI (just f*ing do it).... My life nowadays revolves around 'influencing stakeholders' and making sure I have considered all of the 'touchpoints'... It's unbelievably time-consuming and hence progress is soooo slow. It clearly does my head in as during a meeting with the HR 'Change Manager' earlier today she said, "I sense your frustration"...you don't say...

She's lucky she didn't get a worse reaction than me rolling my eyes!!!

I am now a festival vetran

in all senses having spent a day exposed to the great unwashed and overflowing loos, and the delights of the 'mosh pit'. The girlies and I absolutely fab day yesterday despite the downpours, pottering down to Reading via a sumptuous lunch at Amanda Darling's. The festival was really well organised with a a free water taxi down the Thames to the site, and free 'she-wees' for the ladies urinals (WTH !?!?). We caught sets by 'Dog is Dead', 'the Vaccines', 'Florence & the Machine' were great, but unquestionably 'Kasabian' were outstanding!

I think I want to audition as one of Sergio's groupies even if I am a few years outside the upper age limit.

Ms. Sensible

is not called that for nothing. On delivering various items to Pony Club Camp early in the morning she was discovered grooming her horse in her PJs! Apparently the justification was that they worn to protect the pristine cream jodhpurs she was competing in later in the day. To be fair, you can't argue with the logic but...

This year's horse was Keilem and the pairing came second overall in the Eventing.

Am I past my 'sell-by' date?

As an avid fan of Kasabian I have been desperate to see the in concert. Both Miss Sensible and the Strident Student are also heavily into them so when we saw they were headlining at Reading this coming weekend we bought tickets without a further thought.

Much as it's great that the girls are cool at going with mum, having seen all myriad of Reading go-ers (so to speak) on my journey home last night I feel whatever I wear I will be over-dressed having not acquired some ridiculously short shorts and skimpy tops to wear with my Hunter wellies.... Given I am suitably tanned from my hols, do my Blog readers believe I should rush out and purchase said items? ;o)

I asked the Middle Eastern Correspondent who replied, “oh dear, old people at Reading!”

To which I retorted, “I'm sure there'll be worse than me there... anyway, I've got a few years less on the clock than you and am in better condition”

That said, I am beginning to wonder if I should have paid good money to undergo the psychological damage of being the oldest swinger in town (in a manner of speaking), the trauma of festival toilets, never mind the potential mud bath as rain is forecast!!!

So about this jelly

I'm trying to nail to the tree... I am now starting to think it's not even as solid as jelly...

and the tree is protected by an invisible force-field of subtle politics...

The cancelled meeting was to plan mobilisation issues so we were ahead of the game.... but a roll of the dice (well a successful bid process actually) means we've now won another 2 programmes which need a bus-load of bods... How long before they start screaming for me to come and sort things out...the clock is ticking....

Then there's the miriad of low level practical challenges...

I asked someone to advertise two vacancies:

1 in Aberdeen (not posted for a couple of days as there are not enough HR bods to get this done even though this was a priority last week),

the 2nd a role in Qatar, which has been advertised but no one put the location so it doesn't show up in any of the job opportunity searches...not particularly helpful when you're trying to fill it...

Temporary intermission

whilst batteries were re-charged

Pah!

I was supposed to be flying to the Middle East this weekend to meet the management team in Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and to start to compile resource plans and a delivery strategy etc. However the plug has just been pulled on the basis that there is concern in certain quarters that I am being parachuted in with some political agenda, as opposed to simply trying to do my job.

Instead there is now talk about having a flipping workshop to get some 'thought leadership' and position 'outcomes'.... Pah!!!!

So other than a couple of presentations and a paper, everything I've done is purely tactical, twiddly around the edges and adding diddly squat value to anyone. Trying to get things moving via spreadsheets and phone calls just does not work.....I'm starting to fret I don't justify my existence :o/

On the upside I now have a weekend I wasn't expecting I guess... Along with a wallet of Riyals and Dirhams I can't spend in John Lewis...