Chairman’s Blog – Meeting Thursday 5th April 2012
28 members and 2 guests. Claire Greenslade for a second visit and Victoria Mason from the Employability and Skills Unit of Essex County Council.
I am pleased to be able to confirm that Claire made an application which was approved by the Committee at a hastily formed meeting and Victoria Mason will be returning soon to give a slightly longer 10 minute presentation.
What a great meeting! The winner of the Performance League was Kim Douglas with a massive 449 point total. Lagging some way behind were myself and Paul Booth. Well done Kim – a great effort.
Added to this was the confirmation from Scott that in excess of £98,000.00 recorded business was shown for the month of March. A great advertisement for our effectiveness as a group.
The tone was set for the meeting by Alan Shaw’s Education Slot – all about bricks in systems and urine in these times of drought. We all waited for the profound connection with EBF and networking, but I didn’t spot it – did you? This essentially surreal performance set the tone for the rest of the meeting.
The 60 second round had us all putting our hands up in to the air and taking them down again with a level of regularity that almost become monotonous. It all started with John Bird who wanted to know if any of us didn’t know Landlords. When he found out that we all did he assumed that this related to rental property and asked us to provide him with referrals. The Landlords of the pubs that I visit wouldn’t be interested. There followed similar demands for the raised hands by Howard Bullock and Steve Carmichael-Brown. It was all getting slightly energetic until we were all gradually chilled out by Terry Maylin talking about freezing assets, Joan calming us down the first letter of the alphabet and the term “awareness”. I assume it will be “B” next week. Perhaps we should all write down what we think “B” will be in time for next week. It was Anita’s bubble wrap, however, that caused real excitement. She did talk about people renovating houses, but the bubble wrap kept coming back to haunt her. I wouldn’t be in her shoes next week if she brought back more bubble wrap – not for all the Tina in China! I am only glad Brian Painter is still away on holiday, heaven knows what he would have made of it.
We all uttered a collective sigh of relief when learnt that Richard Smith’s boiler has now been mended. Of course Joan won the Oscar if for no other reason than her mesmeric delivery and our slightly Sesame Street like anticipation of the letter “B”.
Standing in for David Plumley, Howard Bullock not only introduced the Ed Slot, but also introduced our 10 minute special – Colin Beckett and Sarada Chaudhuri’s very useful and helpful delivery of their own areas of specialisation. They ably demonstrated that they can be at the centre of the groups promotional endeavours this year. Colin sent us away asking ourselves 4 questions. The goal that I wrote down was to finish the meeting by 8.30 a.m. I am not certain what wouldn’t have happened if it didn’t finish at 8.30 a.m. I am open to suggestions, please join in and blog me back to let me know or reveal your own innermost negative aspirations of what wouldn’t happen if something didn’t happen – it’s all rather confusing!
The referrals round was a good one and Nick Cooke was the star of the referrals show – well done Nick.
I will sign off until next week with the EBF urging “may all your mornings be Thursday mornings”.