12 December 2014, 9 am
At Lancaster Gate tube station, my eye is caught by a
poster. It begins with the words: “If
three-quarters of your gin and tonic is tonic,…”.
Excuse me? If three-quarters of your gin and tonic is
tonic, you are doing it wrong.
12 December 2014, 11 am
Today it is the CIPA Christmas lunch. Apparently these used to be most dignified
events, which culminated in such a spirit of festive goodwill that everyone was
back at the office by 2 pm to continue working.
Since Mr Davies came on board, however, there has been a relentless
decline and now the CIPA staff do absolutely no work the entire day, just like
in every other office the length and breadth of the country.
But before I do the Christmas lunch, I must do a meeting
about the patent administrators’ course.
We are going to update and upgrade the course, which is all very
exciting and part of the Strategic Grand Plan to make CIPA so incredibly good
at everything it does that even the Not-so-Secret Diary will not be able to
damage its reputation.
I am not sure why I have ended up chairing this
meeting. I think it is because they
needed somebody with more optimism than common sense.
I stand beside one of the CIPA flip charts to make me feel more optimistic, and from this position of vantage I tell the meeting that I am not
going to stand for any nonsense about anything being too difficult or not
having worked in the past or being unlikely to work in the future, and nor am I
going to stand for any nonsense like details and stuff; we are just going to
write some optimistic and woolly things on the flip chart and then Mr Davies is
going to turn them into some other kind of chart which apparently is a posh project
plan and then we can all get away in time for lunch. I am pleased to say there seems to be consensus
over this approach.
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