I remember a former chairman of mine, Jeff Carter, telling me that, no matter how important an appointment or deadline was, it could always be delayed if one had to attend a funeral. As I get older, I now find myself attending more funerals and Jeff's words are so true. I have also been told so often that no one ever got to the end of his/her life saying, "I wish I'd put in more time at the office." I nodded but never really took it in.

A week ago today, I received an e-mail, apparently from a good friend, Ron Grant. When I opened the mail it turned out to be from his niece to tell me that Ron had died the day before. I spoke to Ron's wife, Alex, later that day and she told me that he had suffered a massive heart attack after gardening.

Ron was one of the greatest men I ever met but no one will buld a statue to him or write his biography. He trained me as a trainer many years ago and we became firm friends. I considered myself honoured that Ron chose me to be his friend. At his funeral on Friday it was clear how many peoples' lives he had touched, all positively, and how much he was loved. I just wish I'd spent more time with him.

Recently someone sent me the following:

Name the 5 richest people in the world.
Name the last 5 Miss Universe winners.
Name the last 10 Nobel Prize winners.
Name the last 10 winners of the Best Actor Oscar.

Difficult isn't it? Applause dies away; trophies gather dust; winners are soon forgotten.

Now name 3 teachers who contributed to your education.
Name 3 friends who helped you in your hour of need.
Think of a few people who make you feel special.
Name the people you like to spend time with.

I'll bet that was easier.

I hope that if any good comes out of Ron's passing it will be that I will finally accept that, while I enjoy my work and like running my business, family and friends are much more important and I'm going to devote more time to them. I suspect that my business will benefit too.

BACK TO WORK

I came back from holiday on Saturday evening and started working again this morning. The first thing I had to do was go through more than 600 e-mails, mostly spam. I wonder what these people think I am. I look at the sender and the subject then delete. I have no idea what they are offering or what they expect from me. It must take them some time to set up these mailing lists and to send their junk and I wonder what they get from it. Surely most Internet users are like me and just ignore the junk!

We spent a few days in France before moving on to northern Spain and, once again, I was absolutely bowled over by the welcome we received. I have a bit of French but very little Spanish, although my wife speaks better Spanish than she thinks. However, we have found that, as long as we make some attempt to speak the local language, shop, garage and restaurant staff will go out of their way to help us. It's also embarassing at local markets to find that everyone can tell us in English the cost of whatever we want to buy, even little kids! I wonder how many British market traders can count in any language other than English.

We had a conversation with an Irish family whom we met this year for the second time and we all agreed that somehow the locals spotted us as Brits as soon as they saw us. Much to my delight I gave the lie to that the day we left. I was walking back to my car when a driver pulled up and asked me for directions. He thought I was Spanish! I thought they would have to operate to remove the smile from my face.