The Elite Blog

I wanna contact the living!

14 July 2010

By Paul White

Operating under new "guidelines" from Conway Beale, Editor of the Elite Chapter Blog, I now have a list of mandatory items to cover, before I can go off into my realms of fantasy, like I usually do, so here goes!

Stephanie Lunn of Lunn HR finished the meeting on time: tick.
David Marks of VKA Business Development stated that he always enjoys coming to visit this Chapter: tick. (Not to be confused with the other David Marks of the Holborn Chapter.)
Sue Terpilowski of Imageline gave a 60 second speech with full relevance to the (summery) theme of the day : tick.
Irwin Mitchell (nice pens!): tick.
Number of Referrals passed: twelve. tick.
New and existing members need to attend Training Courses to help our Chapter's Traffic Light status: tick.
Next Vistor's Day is 28th July 2010: tick.

So far, so formulaic. Now onto the entertaining stuff.

Southpaw Mel Kenny, Chartered Financial Planner of Radliffe & Newlands, educated us all in the qualities of a model BNI member. Epithets, such as "reliable" were ventured during the course of Mel's energetic and interactive four-minute Education Slot, wonderfully delegated by Linky Trott of Edwin Coe Solicitors (quality of pens: unknown.) I was thinking in terms of volunteering the idea of "patient", but it turns out that Stephanie Lunn had already considered this and urged everyone to devote more attention to the procuring of Referrals to Elizabeth Hicks of Irwin Mitchell Solicitors (nice pens!) and to me.

Now, I'm not one to complain, but the pen which Elizabeth dished out to Linky and me this morning was not of the usual high standard. Firstly, it does not seem to write as well as the others and secondly, the end of it has been chewed a bit. When I get back home, I will replace one in the Display Cabinet with the "new" one, placing the dodgy end facing the wall. Who knows, the chewed one may one day be the most valuable for selling on eBay!

 Elizabeth may be one of Life's winners, but please do not use that as an excuse for forgetting to send her wheelbarrow-loads of referral slips for Family Law cases.

I attended another Networking Meeting in Snorbans last week, to find the same cast of characters there as at BNI. Much as the inhabitants of Rugged Island's parochial house closely mirror the characteristics of those of Craggy Island in "Father Ted", I was amazed when the Accountant in the group announced his tagline "It's not what you earn, it's what you keep!" This is a clear case of plagiarism from the original work of Alan Patient of Alan Patient & Co. Chartered Accountants, who should obtain an injunction for that firm "to cease and desist" using that catchphrase. Amusingly, their Architect forgot his, which led me to think that "If you can't remember it, what chance do we have?"

It is a truth universally accepted that two characters out riding horses in any drama will conclude that scene with the challenge: "race you back to the house!" There are other universal truths as well. Every evening when I return home, there shall be a Mandatory Crisp Packet (MCP) in the flowerbed, feloniously dropped by a pupil, sorry, student of The Marlborough School, Snorb. My Hectic Viewing & Listening Schedule (HV&LS) shall be disrupted by the intrusion of Commerce, necessitating the videotaping of my fave TV programmes.

Yesterday evening, I was forced to programme the ingredients of my very own "televisual feast" into the VCR, using the system of VideoPlus. This is a series of digits, published in newspapers, to avoid the need to input the day, time, channel, start and end time. I have noticed a correlation between the intellectual content of the programme and the complexity of its code. Grab a copy of today's newspaper and see what I mean. I'll wait for you.

 

 

 

(Please note, Richard O'Brien of Ross Gower Insurance Brokers, that these details do not appear in this week's Guest Publication,"Ancient Rome Today!")

 

 

 The cute inhabitants of "Penguin Island" get the short code of "627", while the specialist  "Lost Evidence" on Channel 5, detailing the tactics employed to win the Battle of Britain during WWII gets the snappy "1811882", as compared to "Dragons' Den", which gets a middlebrow "6085". QED.

As you know, I never watch "Coronation Street" (795), but a recent plotline involved slippery Carla of Lingerie Factory "Underworld" undercutting her rival, Nick, on a clothing order, despite the fact that her factory has burnt down and all the staff have left, demonstrating to me what a lousy Boss she is for not having a Disaster Recovery Plan. I was making the point that every business should also have a Business Succession Plan, id est, a Will. Dexter Coles of SP Litho recognises his responsibility towards his eight Employees, for which he should be applauded. So everyone should gather round and provide him with lots of referrals for next week.

Linky, amazingly, spoke up in praise of Corrie's Carla, which did not help my cause, nor did Darryl "The Fixer" Buchanan aid me with his "That's where you going with this!" when my logic was revealed to the assembled Company. A substantial contingent happened be be clustered around the Coffee Dispenser at the time, but I'm sure that they were listening closely.

One of Graham W Price's strategies for life is the (scary) decision to take 100% responsibility for any interaction with someone else. I therefore look to myself, as to why my 60 seconds resembled the 0859 street scene outside any Starbuck's up and down the land.

Any married man will find that their spouse has, inadvertantly, been following Graham's advice for years.

This week's meeting saw a profusion of "Chartered" this-and-that, so I was going to put everyone's qualifications after their name. Unfortunately, the BNI Elite Chapter are a modest bunch, so not everyone has included theirs on their business card.

Lord Barry Neil of Wellsworth, DIC, BSc Hons, C Eng, MBCS drew our attention to a telephone scam, where crooks posing as BT Employees (careful!), use the mute button to demonstrate that they have the ability to cut people off, whereupon a fraudulent fee is demanded.

Daniel J Fealy, RTE, of OP Drywalling is currently applying for Membership of the Chartered Institute of Plasterers and we wish him well with the exams.

Vivat, Crescat, Floreat!

 

 

Permalink: http://www.bni-elite.co.uk/BNIMeetingPreStSwithinsDay (copy'n'paste)

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