Annual London trip

This week, I had my annual trip to London for the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit. The last few years have seen a decline in the budget available to me for this trip so this time I was staying at the Kensington Close Hotel, in a single room that you couldn't have swung a cat in. Gone are the days of the Park Plaza (where the conference is held, just across Westminster Bridge) or even the Washington Mayfair, with the fine walk across Green Park and St. James's Park, past Westminster. I keep wondering if each year will be the last one I attend.

I didn't do much sightseeing. The weather was poor, so apart from a stroll along the South Bank on Tuesday lunchtime I stuck to the commute between High St. Kensington and Westminster, attending the conference and eating in Kensington Whole Foods. I watched Arsenal relegate Wigan in a pub (on TV) and that was about it. At the conference I did a video interview which was novel. I didn't have sight of the questions beforehand so was having to think of soundbite answers on the spot, which was a challenge. Will I end up on the cutting room floor or did I advertise Gartner's services sufficiently well to make the final cut? Who knows? The conference itself was fairly dull, with little to advance my thinking. The opportunities for networking weren't great either, as the show floor is quite narrow with vendors hemming you in on each side. Plus there are a lot of continental Europeans and Scandinavians in attendance so finding someone from a relevant, UK organisation to talk to becomes a bit of a lottery.

Marie and Michael left this morning, after Marie had made her fourth batch of "curny buns". Sean had asked them to be made while he was reading in bed because he likes the smell of them baking. It is a smell that is very reminiscent of Ardilaun.

December downs

Angus hasn't been very well the last few days, barking his way through the night on Saturday as a bad chest cold took hold. Sharon kept him off pre-school yesterday and today, with the result that he missed his Christmas party and carol concert, which was a shame. He also had a nose bleed today, possibly as a result of all his coughing, and that freaked him out a bit, not being used to the sight of his own blood! Angus has fairly been singing recently, in the car and the house, and it has been lovely to hear. Little Donkey, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I'm a Little Snowman and the Christmas nursery staple, When Santa Got Stuck Up The Chimney, have all been wheeled out again and again.

Sean learned a life lesson yesterday. He was taking part in a class bake-off with two of his classmates and had made a Yule log. I left him into school in the morning, really excited, sure he had a great chance of winning. When Sharon picked him up at home time he was utterly crestfallen. In a blind tasting he had only received two votes and was stung by some of the negative comments such as "sickly" and "I couldn't eat any more". Sean has a competitive streak, which is good, but doesn't take defeat well and struggles to take positives from criticism or feedback. There were some positive remarks such as "well presented" but Sean can't see past the brickbats. I had a chat with him on the drive back from gymnastics and reminded him he had to think why he did baking. Was it to be competitive or was it for the fun of picking a recipe, finding ingredients, learning the technique, eating the results and sharing them with his family? And to learn how to take on feedback. Not to react right away but to think about it and to consider later whether there was anything he could improve on. In 20 months' time Sean will be starting high school. It's important we arm him with the tools he needs to cope with life and make sure he feels he can talk to us. As someone said, if you want your children to talk to you about the big things when they grow up, make time for the small things when they're small, because to them they are big things.