Elvin forgets he's due to go on holiday

Mon 31st July

When you wake up on a Saturday morning and ask your wife, “What´s the time?”, and she says, “Half past seven”, and you say, “What have I got to do today?”, and she says, “You´re going on holiday” and you say, “have I got time?” Warning! You are entering meltdown! You are sliding into work overload, big time! And that´s the nether region I found myself in on Saturday morning.

The sudden realisation that I was due out of the house at 10:00am (I could have sworn we were leaving on the Sunday!), just a couple of hours or so after waking up, to make my way with the family to Stansted Airport for two weeks of well earned rest & recuperation, caused panic and confusion! I still had loads to do and time was running out. My Saturday morning was like a scene from the John Cleese film ´Clockwise´.

By 09:55am I thought I had it clinched. I´d rushed off invoices, finished off two documents and made three phone calls. All around packing a suitcase, having a shower and very nearly dressing; I was stood in my Boxer shorts, just the obligatory white T-Shirt and Levi´s to put on and I was there!

10:00am, on the dot, the ´Family Box´are on route to Stansted and all is well. It remained that way until I boarded the Ryan Air flight bound for Murcia. As I opened my copy of ´The Guardian´ to read what´s going on in the world, my memory suddenly clicks in.

Where´s the Wedding Anniversary card and present for my long suffering wife? That´s why we are heading for Spain at this time, so we can celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary with the family on Tuesday. Ah, yes, the card and pressie are still in my wardrobe. Damn! I flick over another page of the newspaper and read an article on the Spanish Civil War. And then another thought occurs. I didn´t pack the material I had on Spain and Innovation, that I was going to prepare for a Blog on when I return from Spain. Damn and blast! And then I remember that I didn´t email my latest Blog to Phil. Damn, blast and bugger!

I´d written all about the CIOB´s Construction Manager of the Year Award tour, with myself and the other adjudicators dashing around London, Kent and Devon. Plus a trip to Cardiff for Constructing Excellence, and of course Ron Haldane and his excellent talk on the work he is doing at Amec´s Product Development and Training Centre, not to mention the stirring ´Innovation Circle´ I facilitated at on ´Managing Migrant Labour´. And there was the stuff on working with the army down in Salisbury and of course meeting Mark Darby and talking about his new book on Partnering. Still, it will all be there waiting for me when I get home.

Yeah, so, they say it is estimated that every human makes five large mistakes and 17 small ones each day. Well, I knocked out three pretty hefty ones there, so god knows what the others I made, but didn´t recall, were like!

Be in touch again soon with an update of things here in Spain, but before signing off, a nice line on ´Remembering´ from Film Director, Sir Richard Eyre. When asked “How would you like to be remembered?”, his reply was, “Just to be remembered would be fine!”