Day 215 - Biarritz 2016

I had been due to play in the Eric Williams medal this morning but the combination of fatigue and the need to prepare for a meeting up in London led to me having withdrawn myself from the competition the day before. Fortunately, I had been able to supply a substitute (thanks, John!) - something which all match managers and competition organisers will appreciate.

So up to Town for a meeting: as ever, I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't have to do the journey every day any more.  Good chat though: we'll see if it goes anywhere in a month or so's time.

Back to Cobham for supper and then off to our golf tour's HQ: the Plough in Stoke d'Abernon.  We had a good turnout though one of our members was unable to join in and had offered to make contact via Skype.  This proved not to be a good decision as the whole network appeared to be down for the day. Fortunately, Apple's FaceTime came to the rescue and we had Rolf on the laptop screen from Spain in our midst for the whole evening.

I am not sure how much he was able to follow: I can remember when living in Argentina deciding on one occasion not to return to London for a monthly Downstream Executive meeting and instead choosing to do it by video-conference. Wrong decision. In larger meetings, it is still very difficult to follow what is really going on as well as to retain focus for the 8 hour session.  In my case, it proved a very important misjudgement as decisions ended up being taken that I was unable to influence from afar. I never made the same mistake again!

That being said, our discussion last night was on a much more interesting topic: where to go in 2016?

Colin, who had been charged with taking the lead on this, had just returned from a recce to Biarritz and returned very enthusiastic about the opportunities presented: some good golf (3 courses in top 100 in Continental Europe), a fine hotel sorted and lost of restaurants on offer. 

Dates are now fixed for May next year: can't wait!