I’m writing this on Thursday evening from a lovely hotel room. No, I haven’t become an ‘it’s complicated’ and moved into the Travelodge – I gave a motivational talk today at a large annual conference being held this year in beautiful Stratford upon Avon. For my global followers, this is the town where William Shakespeare was born, and it retains a great deal of its Tudor charm. Not that I saw much of that, busy as I was before and after my 50 minute presentation, sunbathing with my book in the glorious gardens, then being wined and dined and danced amidst the opulent glamour of a historic mansion. There’s nothing like a bit of hard work…
My talk was about beating the Monday morning blues, and I kept it lively with a stream of photos and personal stories. Not wanting to bore any friends with tales of old, but the incident on a Monday morning with 12 important men and my skirt falling shamelessly to the floor certainly broke the ice. Yes, it did happen – and it was no rubbish skirt either. Donna Karan finest silk I’ll have you know… All the better to whoosh down before I even
had time to yelp out (thus attracting the attention of those people who hadn’t actually witnessed it in action)! This was several years ago, and the reason I always wear dresses when I’m training now. But it’s well remembered. Geoff and Simon have both mentioned it recently, in fact, probably scarred for life by the trauma!! All I can say is thank heavens nothing like that happened today, as the whole thing was filmed and will be available at some point on YouTube for the whole world to see.
Naturally I talked about Brenda Ann Spencer, the infamous inspiration for the Boomtown Rats’ “I don’t like Mondays.” A relevant song, obviously, but also because it gave me an opportunity to display on large screen the photo of me with Bob Geldof, the time I dressed up as a schoolgirl to escort him around Olympia. I can’t claim to call him a friend (unless I lie…) but I would like to mention that when I see him at parties he does kiss me. That was a good day’s work. I can never say life is boring… and thankfully I don’t get the Monday blues. This might be partly because Monday’s my blog day – as you’re reading this I’m probably sitting cross legged on the sofa with Stevie Wonder or the Thompson Twins playing in the background, just sipping my peppermint tea and watching my web stats rise.
The feedback from my presentation was great! People found the content valuable and loved the interactivity; well I do work hard to make my sessions fun. Today I interspersed the important stuff with a little quiz – it broke up the time and gave them a break from listening to me rambling on. One of the questions in the music round that seemed to cause a lot of discussion and confused faces was about who sang this…. Do you know the answer? (Gillian and Deedub better get it right!) “Monday morning you sure look fine, Friday I got travelling on my mind.” If I’m travelling, I hope you’re following – wherever I go and whatever I’m doing… find me here: @WeekendWitch
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