If Dante Alighieri had been born towards the end of the last century he would have added another circle of hell to his Inferno if he had ever descended into a British theme park.
I had the displeasure of doing so this week when my wife and I took our nine-year-old to Legoland. I can report there were no Beatrices in sight for Dante to write home about, only the corpulent flesh of overweight automatons, Boudiccan tattoos and the ghost of temporarily sober John Barleycorns. Continue reading
This time last Friday I was having a beer breakfast in Berlin awaiting a taxi to take me two hours south to the iconic MLOVE conference near Leipzig… I had just arrived from Warsaw where I’d seen Italy beat Germany 2-1 at the Euros.
Suffice to say the taxi finally arrived and we drove along the spine of Germany to arrive at a castle for the final afternoon of the conference. As the car wended along what used to be the West/East German border my mind drifted back to my previous visit to Berlin almost 30 years ago. Continue reading
I’m sitting in Berlin airport waiting for a driver to take me to the iconic MLOVE festival/conference in a castle two hours from here.
It’s 9am and I’ve just arrived from Warsaw with on a plane filled with German football fans all looking worn-out and hungover after last night’s surprise defeat by Italy in the Euros… some are still drinking. Continue reading
I’d never been to the Le Web conference before, I’d planned to go to Paris last year, but was waylaid by something MUCH MORE IMPORTANT, er, I mean a job for a client.
So the conference’s debut in London this week piqued my interest and off I toodled to the People’s Hall in Westminister, a venue I imagine was not chosen for its egalitarian description of men and women, but for its proximity to the more privileged shadow of Parliament.
Entrepreneurs, naturally, are selfish bastards, a description that most would believe a compliment. I, too, have designs in that area so I strode past the LA-nightclub-style security into a two-day show that costs around £1,500 to attend. Continue reading
Yesterday I went to Paris to meet Maria Sharapova but it rained and rained so I stayed in the Orange hospitality tent and drank lots of champagne.
By the time I entrained the Eurorail back to Ashford (International is a joke btw) she had just started her match so she didn’t have the pleasure of meeting me. Shame, it could have been the highlight of her career.
Paris is a nice city, but as the taxi wended its way to Gare du Nord I noticed there wasn’t much bunting around… and there was certainly no Olympics signage around. Funny that. Continue reading