Onegav

Today was a day of travel and business. Myself and the team were Essex bound for a business review meeting with the heads of group.

All very business like I know, but these things do happen you know and they do help to make the world go round.

My schedule was pretty straight forward, drive to our site in Deeside, collect some stuff for the meeting and head off down south – hopefully arriving in good time for the meeting start of 2pm.

Aside from the M56 slowing proceedings down, the journey was pretty straight forward.

The meeting was a little delayed in starting, and over ran somewhat at the end, however once done we were invited to a meal to finish off what had already turned into a long day.

By now time was ticking on, and we had ten minutes to change and get ready for the evening.

The venue for the meal, was frankly breath taking! It was a real genuine old country house, and I was surprised to see we were the only guests.

Upon entering the house, everyone was sat around a large open fire, and the scene was the epitome of calm, after what had been a very testing day – as reviewing a business’s performance absolutely should be.

When the moment arose, as everyone was deep into conversation, I took the opportunity to sneak off and have a look around the building for some photographic opportunities.

It won’t surprise you that I found a lake out back, with a nicely lit tree line around it.

What struck me so much more than the super impressive building, and the frankly sublime food though, was the host. A truly larger than life character that seemed to hit the tone absolutely on the head every time with his quick witted comments.

He was both polite, yet comical with everybody – not an easy feat given the day most of his audience had just been through.

After the meal, our joyous host said something that really struck a chord with me, he said:

“I hope you have all enjoyed the food, and when your ready I’d like to give you all a gift, on the house. I’m going to arrange some whiskeys about the fire, and I would like you to enjoy them, please”.

Aside from his gracious etiquette, the words “arrange some whiskeys about the fire” was just so cool!

Now, I am not a whiskey fan at all, but that’s not what I liked. Of course I liked the sentiment of the gift offering, but more over the images and emotions the words conjoined up, “arrange about the fire”.

Just magic, isn’t it, it’s like poetry.

Learnings – words can paint pictures too, and the host today was unlike anyone I’ve ever met before. Such a top draw character, he made my day.

Also, my day turned into a pretty hectic one, and the time slot I had planned to use for taking today’s picture very quickly got swallowed up. So, in-future I’m going to have a backup plan.

(P.S. apologies to those who got this via email, or read it straight away and only got half of the narrative that went out before midnight – however, please understand I am determined to never miss a day during this challenge!)