Brentwoods Business Networking Blog 11th Feb

Chairman’s Business Networking Blog, Thursday 11th February 2016.

It was a morning for metallic monkeys to speak with high pitched voices.

We all, no doubt,  had to scrape the ice of the windscreens of our cars.

19 hardy souls braved the elements for a visit to Mary Green Manor.  The bravest of them all was Howard Bullock who was resplendent in shorts and red checked shirt.  He demonstrated what the aforementioned monkeys would have lost in the freezing weather.  For the second time in the last few weeks we were put in the small room behind the restaurant.  Its benefit is also its detriment.  The room itself does not lend itself to pre-meeting networking.  To walk the length of the room beside the area set out for the breakfast was an intimate  act for all concerned.  By contrast however  the meeting itself, when everyone was seated made a virtue out of intimacy and we had a thoroughly enjoyable meeting.

It was also slightly incongruous that 4 of the 6 apologies for absence were from people who were on holiday.  Who says the referral system is not working… for some people…

With Mr Bullock back, the Naughty Corner had its leaders return to celebrate and all members thereof promptly rallied round.  Messrs  Smallcombe  and Caldon were there with Alan Moller swelling their ranks.

By contract the School of Whimsy had only one representative, Alan Shaw.  Temporarily deserted by his buddies he used his 60 second contribution to complain about the expectations clients have of the time scale involved in the early stages of designing and getting planning permission for a building.

What of the other contributions to the 60 second round.

Michael Adelizzi revealed that his father at one stage sold ice creams.  It seemed that he used the name Suprema for this particular venture as well. Had he not ultimately gone for the tiles Michael might be selling “Suprema Icecreama ” .

Donna Evans revealed that amongst  other guises she is also a blind lady but the disability didn’t show.

If you have a good story you should always milk it and Peter Hood managed to squeeze as much value as he could out of the “rat in the cistern”.  He brought his photographs of the rodent and was able to confirm that the tank that contained the dead rat had been used for drinking as well as washing.  The message…”check your lids”

Far more interesting was Lewis Hackney’s permeable paving.  He illustrated with statistics how effectively permeable paving can disperse water with the suggestion that it was capable of resolving all of the problems with the floods they had up in Carlisle this year. There are lies, dammed lies and statistics.

This week Richard Reed gave us a choice of venue for him to tell us about, and the general consensus was Vegas.  What particularly caught my eye…or rather ear…was that one particular package that included a visit to a venue that sported the wayward talent of “Steve Winn’s show stoppers”.  If that doesn’t get them there Richard, nothing will.

There was a time in the Victorian era when mothers advised their daughters, when sitting, to keep their knees together.  Jo Jones suggested that mothers should now be warning their daughters to keep their hips higher than their knees when sitting.  To those in the Naughty Corner, who I could see were trying to think this through, the alternative of having your hips below your knees is unthinkable…particularly if you have not kept your knees together as originally advocated by Victorian mothers.

Scott Griffiths had a novel approach to his 60 seconds.  He spent it pouring himself out a cup of tea from the breakfast table and bringing it back to his seat, the adding of milk and sugar brought the journey time to exactly 60 seconds.

We were spared a demonstration as to how he could deliver 60 seconds whilst drinking a cup of tea.  As we all know, Scott has just passed his 40th birthday and he clearly is not going to grow old gracefully.

It is with Pride that I can announce that I was the winner of this weeks Oscar.  It was my ability to deliver said 60 seconds “a la mode de” Barry White that inched it.  Somewhat under the weather my deep rich resonance unfortunately stretched into the 10 minute slot but everybody listened very patiently and it was only Paul Booth, right at  the end of the presentation who broke ranks and wanted me to declare “…my first, my last, my everything!!!!”.

Perhaps the only other thing of note to report in this Blog were the numbers. There were by the end of the meeting 24 referrals which beats the average.

Don’t forget that next week is a revised and foreshortened meeting to take in an Education Presentation.  I hope we can continue to have good turnouts.