I was invited to my first poker night on Friday. I’ve sat in on some before when the boys have been round; watched, been confused, provided snacks – but this was a proper invitation from one of my clients. I arrived late with my £10 for the pot, a box of chocolates (some missing – oops) and a handwritten list of the order of good hands.
It was such fun! I learned as I played and managed to keep (I think) quite a good poker face. A lesson with Ben shortly before I headed out had ended with the advice to wear a scarf wrapped around my face. Yet, even without that suggested attractive fashion accessory, I won a few rounds (or is it hands?). I also messed up on a couple, but I finished fourth out of eight which wasn’t too shabby for my first go.
I won’t name the client as some of their clients might not be impressed with the staff running a gambling den on a Friday night. (It wasn’t really that, it was a few members of the team playing a game and having a lot of fun.) Well done to Marissa for winning the pot, and thanks to Joe for inviting me to join them.
It’s always good to do something fun at the end of the week. Although I have to say, my work week was particularly enjoyable. I always love one-to-one training sessions, and this week I had three. The first was in Canary Wharf, helping the owner of a small business to use social media proficiently – especially LinkedIn as he is targeting a professional audience. He runs a company that encourages organisations to improve team performance. Not sure if that includes poker nights, but any team activity that makes people laugh and bond has to be good, right?
I spent the whole day on Thursday at London Bridge – I’m quite familiar with that area now, with three clients based within a ten minute walk of Borough Market. One session was a Plain English training follow-up, and the other was a soundbite workshop for effective communication. I covered some neuro-linguistic programming techniques in that one too, which always goes down well.
That client caters beautifully and I greedily helped myself to two delicious passion fruit meringue tarts ten minutes before the session ended. It would have been acceptable apart from the fact that I was due to wander off to meet my friend in a cake shop. We ended up having real food (beef stew), but stayed in the restaurant until I’d worked my way through an oversized chocolate and pear cake. Enough said.
I’m going to pack now for my week’s retreat in the cottage by the sea. As Kenny says, “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em; know when to walk away, know when to run…” Well I won’t be running along the beach at sunrise, that’s for sure. It’s more likely I’ll be in an old-fashioned tea shop with a large toasted teacake, butter melting and jam dripping onto my laptop. Mmmmmmm. I’ll be out of wifi for most of the time, but you can still find here, as always: @WeekendWitch.
Leave a Reply