It’s easy to fall into cliché when you visit places like Prague, full as they are of spectacular buildings steeped in history, bridges with swathes of swans, streets where famous people lived, castles on the hilltop, and a river running through it all. Or something like that.
The view from the top at Mount Washington by Jonathan Jacobsen
In January 2015 I learnt to ski. Or rather, I learnt to stay upright long enough in order to stop when necessary to avoid a crisis (internal or external) and turn when necessary to keep from plunging off the edge of the run. And apparently that is called skiing. It took 4,5 days, 3 instructors in 3 different resorts, and some serious deep digging to keep going – especially after the first two hour class which had too many people and too little patience for my slow learning curve. At that point I was fully ready to say “it’s been fab, have your ski’s and stupid boots and you’ll find me in the pub”. But partly because the very tall baby brother (and obsessive snowboarder) and the barefoot husband (and ski devotee) were so keen for me to learn that I didn’t want to let them down, and partly because my ego wouldn’t let me give up, I gritted my teeth and stuck with it.
A 17th century cathedral is not the kind of place you normally expect to learn things about branding, but as in many spheres, what we think is really modern and cutting edge is often just a re-hash of something that was de rigeuer ages ago already.
In the midst of an evening full of laughter, wine, cheese and quotable quotes that included the iconic “Exclamation marks are like erections, you can only have one per story” (by one gifted, sassy novelist), I got the best piece of criticism I’ve ever been given.
“Pole-dancing?”, my barefoot husband raised his eyebrows at me. “Really?” he asked, “it just makes me laugh! So odd….”. Ah well, can’t please everyone.
It sounds really out-there, I know, but what I discovered doing a trial class a few weeks ago in a stunning new industrial pole-dancing studio called “The Pole Project”, is that it’s damn hard work to look that odd! And when you watch the teachers and the advanced classes, it really doesn’t look odd to me at all – it’s just very impressive.