Frozen

I'm back. No, my blog's not frozen. But my body is. I've caught a cold while away on a conference at a draughty hotel near the Dutch coast. It was a magnificent place - just like a castle - and the fire in the magnificent fireplace of the oak-panelled lobby was hot enough. But my room up in the attic was icy. I didn't figure out the heating till today. And the modern subterranean conference centre was just plain freezing. In fairness, I'd already had tickle in my throat since the weekend before when we sat around sipping red wine in a friend's windmill art studio. Well, now I have a full blown cold. A real corker. Need some of that Lemsip or Thermo-whatsit from the US.

BUG, you have just two days to live, are you listening? I want you OUT before we set off for the heat on Friday.

So now I've bored you with my medical condition, I'll say that the conference was quite a success. Always nice to meet colleagues you've been e-mailing for years. I listened, however, with dismay to the news that we're going all out for a High Performance Culture, will be rated according to how we've done compared to each other, given bonuses for excelling and getting booted out for anything less than wonderful. Not that I'm against excellence. Just the thought of all that sucking up to the boss you'll have to do to get the right rating. For, kid yourself not, there's nothing objective about the annual appraisal...

I felt tired listening to all this talk about jumping through yet more hoops. Wouldn't mind, but they keep rearranging the bloody hoops once you've jumped through them, for goodness sake. It's like a game you can never win. I'm beginning to feel like the 'you' in that e-mail joke: "You know you're living in the 21st century when you've sat at the same desk for three years and worked for four different companies..."

So while I nodded approvingly at talk of streamlining internal comms, I found myself idly thinking of helping Bud realise one of his wildcat dreams - opening a palm tree plantation - and spending my days patting soil into plant pots and trundling around with a wheelbarrow. It probably wouldn't be idyllic but it would be, well, down-to-earth, simple and a damn sight warmer than being in this frigging conference centre...

Must go. Dream time coming.