A metaphor on my blog for the millionth time.
It was Alison's birthday the other week, so I put some time aside to spend time with her in the middle of the day, maybe go for lunch, that sort of thing that normal people do.
When we woke up in the morning and talked about her plans, she decided it would be much better fun for her to go and ride the horses (which she does every single day), so I was left with space in the middle of the day.
Luckily, I had a backup plan, and I had tentatively arranged to meet the bank manager because I know my wife well, and our system works very well. I found myself in the middle of Alison's birthday, face-to-face with Ian, my business bank manager, at one of my favourite places, having lunch.
We questioned for a while whether this was actually work; meeting someone that you get on quite well with just having lunch together and chatting about stuff doesn't really feel like hard work.
It is kind of a necessary thing, though; at least I have to convince myself of that, and we have to make arrangements for actually quite big decisions, but that's not what we talked about.
Ian is a great guy who I've known for six years; previously, he was a brilliant ultramarathon runner who, sadly, only recently, as he told me, has had to give up most of his running due to arthritis in his left knee (sounds very familiar to me).
He's looked after me through some of the darkest times of building the practice and what happened there, but we were supposed to be talking about finance in the market and what's happening in the future of the business.
But he asked me what I'd been up to recently, and I told them I'd been to some for a few days before. We then started to exchange stories about live music.
Ian is 57, and he and his wife love live music; they travel all over the place to capture it and know every venue in Nottingham.
I recently visited a fairly new venue in Nottingham called the Metronome. He's already been three times. His knowledge of music, musicians, and venues surpassed anything I knew. I never knew that about him, I don't know why.
And so, we exchanged thoughts on all of this stuff, laughed, talked about stuff from our past and in our youth things that we'd followed books that we'd read about musicians, and then all of a sudden, it was time to go. He said, "Oh, we need to just organise the refinance for the practice next year because the three-year term is up", and I said, "Yeah, just send the paperwork through, we'll sort it".
That is the most beautiful thing, isn't it? Where the relationship is more important than the small print.
I'd like it always to be like that, and if it isn't, I don't really want to do it anymore.
Blog Post Number - 4023