If you read my blog yesterday you will know that I Wednesday was the day of my giving a speech to an invited audience in London. And they were paying between £45 and £95 to hear me! Well not just me as I had a chap from a company where I used to work give a talk as well.
But I did do some tweaking with the script on Wednesday morning. Now I do hate "powerpoint" presentations so mine was going to be a bit different. Just six images that I talked to and that include the first one which was a picture of me and who I was!
The title of my speech was "5 slides and a roller coaster". :-)
As I said picture 1 was a picture of me standing by a wall...
Picture 2: A golden white sand and blue sky beach scene...
Picture 3: A picture of a queue of people...
Picture 4: A picture of a building next to a lake...
Picture 5: A picture of Winnie the Pooh with a pot of honey...
Picture 6: A picture of an old wooden roller coaster in Finland...
I will give a prize to anyone who guesses what I was talking about!
So, I saved my presentation onto a memory stick and drove off to the station to catch the train into London. I was going early so that I could do a bit of window shopping and also I just hate rushing these days.
The West End of London was busy and there was even Christmas lights on everywhere and the smell of roasting chestnuts. And to complete the festive scene it was bloody cold and raining! But I was enjoying myself. To the masses of people out there I was just one of the crowd. Nobody knew that I had cancer, nobody looked the other way, nobody gave me "that look". I was just another shopper walking down Oxford Street. Normal in fact!
I had a late lunch as I knew we would only have nibbles at the event and then I just sat in a coffee shop reading a book whilst passing away the time before I had to find the offices and get set up for the evening seminar.
Getting in out of the rain and into a posh West End office block was good and I soon found myself being whisked up to the 8th floor an into a even posher conference room so that I could load up my stuff on their computer ready for the show.
Drinks and nibbles were offered as the guests arrived and the chat was mostly about business but there were a few Tabatha's and Nigel's who just had to tell everyone where they were going skiing next week! But overall they were a good fun crowd even if they were a bit of the boring grey suit brigade. Me, I had jeans, a bright purple floral Ted Baker shirt and my smile. See, i can dress the part when required.
I was last to speak at the seminar and I could tell there was a bit of "death by powerpoint" in the room so I was a tad controversial with my little talk. but hey, it was fun and almost everyone came up and chatted to me in the drinks session afterwards. I had two chaps from my office also in the crowd and they were busy giving and receiving business cards all evening - let's hope we get a fun sexy job out of my efforts! The best bit... Only a few people knew about my cancer bombshell and surgery over the last few months so I was treated completely as normal. :-)
And then the long journey home on a crowded train chugging away into the night. Home at just before 11pm then way too much chatting with T and finally got to bed and turned out the light at about 1am.
Hey, it's nearly Christmas!!!
Andrew xx
