The Corporate Plan

I have been offering web consultancy to a new client who has set up her own business recently.

She has been to the usual business startup sessions and networking events and was concerned that she didn't have a 'corporate plan.' I set up my own business in January 2010 and, though I had various aims and ideas at the time, my own corporate plan was very simple:

a) To provide security and a good standard of living for my family;
b) To put some monetary reserves away for an uncertain future;
c) To have fun through meeting new people and taking on new challenges

I imagine there is a management rule book for all of this which runs way beyond these three simple aspirations, but they guide me each and every day.

Welcome to Norfolk, or not

Michelle and I had a day out in North Norfolk today, enjoying sun, sand and sea. At about 2.35 we found a lovely pub - the Nelson Head near Horsey Windpump - but lunch 'finished' at 2.30. However the owner took pity on us and served delicious prawn baguettes and salads and couldn't have been more welcoming. Later in the afternoon - at 5.05 - we stopped at The Bridge Inn at Acle for afternoon tea. Despite signs saying 'food served all day' we were ordered to leave the bar area and order from a different bar. The same miserable woman followed us through and then told us we were too late as they didn't 'mess about with scones and stuff after 5.00', despite there only being three other customers there. We were gasping for cups of tea but she wouldn' t serve those either as we didn't have a table number and so her staff wouldn't be able to find us in the empty spaces. We left immediately and noticed on our way out that none of the tables had numbers - but we have their's. Do not go there if you wish to be welcomed to Norfolk.
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Mark Byford: live in Leeds

I was reading a piece in the Guardian last week about Mark Byford leaving the BBC after 32 years' service.

I knew Mark from my time at Leeds University. My first year was spent in Devonshire Hall in Headingley, and Mark was President at the time. It was an interesting introduction to college life for one who had known only a small Cambridgeshire village and its comprehensive school. 'Students' floated about in gowns on Sundays (I imagined they must have collected so many tokens from the Sunday papers in order to obtain these) and spouted Latin phrases.

Mark seemed to revel in all of this, even the food which was truly disgusting. (A Muslim friend of mine told the cook that he didn't eat meat and so was presented with a slab of Cheddar cheese, swimming in a pool of fatty, beef gravy). The pseudo grandeur of Devonshire Hall masked a number of other insecurities in that it wasn't Oxbridge or Durham; it was somehow second-best and wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

I got to know Mark quite well as he moved into our part of the Hall - a converted house at the bottom of Cumberland Road - where we shared a devotion to football and Leeds United. Mark was studying football fans' behaviour at the time and their proclivity for violence, though he himself nver appeared to get angry about anything.

And so, 32 years on he left the BBC having almost made it but, like Devonshire Hall, only coming second-best. Perhaps for the people who remain there, they may dress up in their finest and say all of the right things at all of the right times but are they really cheese or are they just the gravy?