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More work.  A client has just rung to say they’ve won the work we pitched on a couple of weeks ago and when can we deliver.  Hoorah!  I love winning new work.  It is one of the high’s.  Champagne all round we’ve won another project.  I firmly believe that you should celebrate each time you win an order and each time you successfully deliver an order.  They are significant milestones in the journey and if you celebrate them it helps to keep you motivated.

Delivering the work is another matter and we’ll look at production shortly but for the moment let’s celebrate that we’ve won another order.  Let’s also not forget that at the moment I’ve been too busy too focus on networking and selling so the only person whoose doing the selling for us is God.

Thank you

It all sounds very posh and very unlike us.  English Afternoon Tea.  All you need is to be sitting on the veranda in Kenya watching the sun set.  All very romantic but for us it English Tea Rainham style or in otherwords we had friends over that we hadn’t seen for ages.

Luke and Claire came over with their 2 children.  Luke is Rose’s Godfather and we see almost ever week and I am very close to and whilst I see Claire less often I’m probably as close to.  They’re just like us, ordinary down to earth people without any pretensions (well at least I hope that’s what I am!) and maybe that’s why we get on so well.

So we spent Sunday afternoon laughing whilst we ate sandwhiches with the crusts cut off and cake.

Malden away, groan!  That’s all I need.  Spend an hour in the car , arrive 10 mins before kick off, get ready and run onto the pitch for a hard fought contest which given current form  we’ll probably loose.  Not the most confidence inspiring I know but that’s the apparent reality.

How wrong can you be, well almost.  Yes we left late and arrived 10 mins before kickoff, started with 14 as Bully got delayed on route and had to play a hard fought contest in the mud.  However we scored in the first 10 mins and played a blinder. 

The thing with current form is that you can always change it if you make the effort.  I’d been to training for the last couple of weeks and done some fitness work and had tried not to stuff up with chocolate or beer before the game and played reasonably well.  Even if I do say so myself.

Final score 6 tries to us, none to them and a very enjoyable game that was probably as good to watch from the sidelines as to play in

As you know I run my own design company.  Working for yourself is always a challenge and it has it high’s and its low’s.  The high’s are normally massive and the low’s deep.  The biggest low has got to be not getting paid for work that you’ve done. 

For the last few weeks we’ve been sweating over a payment for a small job that the client decided to complain about after we’d delivered.  Unfortunately years of working in the print industry has taught me that this is a classic tactic of reducing the bill.  Not everytime but most of the time.  With every complaint I ask a number of people to look at the work we’ve done, the clients complaint, timing and circumstances and then give me their opinion.  I also go back through the paper trail (I dont delete email by the way) and the job sheets (yes almost every job has a job sheet with time tracking) and the clients instructions (again email, in writing).  It’s not that I dont trust my near photographic memory more that I like to get everything in perspective and make sure I’ve covered all teh basis.

In this instance the client had told us the sie was great and good to go and then raised complaints when it came to paying.  So here we are having issued the pay in seven days email, sweating on wether they do or not and praying that the money arrives.

Fortunately it does.  A big thank you for the answered prayers.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than being cannon fodder at Thursday Night training.  So this week was a real treat when they said we were told that the cannon fodder could fight back.  Happy Days.

Seriously though, training is not training unless you put your all into it and play as you would do on match day. So to be given the opportunity to dig back at the club’s “elite” was a nice treat.  Although it does need to be contained into short bursts as after a while there were claims of fists being used.  Surely not!