Back to the 1970s

While my dad’s in hospital I do some business appointments for him, along with the italian boss of the company we’re selling shoes for. I picked him up at the airport yesterday morning and after paying a little hospital visit we set out to drive to the client. Thankfully he has no problem driving my dad’s big Audi…if I had to do that in german traffic I’d die…or cry. German people are mean when they’re driving and they have no patience for someone trying to figure out a vehicle three times as big as the one they’re used to and so crammed with shoe cases that you can’t see a thing behind you. And automatic…I’ve never even driven automatic before.
We got to the client’s office and it was a big villa. Once we stepped inside we were literally taken back to the 70’s. Dark wood paneled walls, brown plush armchairs, brown stained glass coffee tables and on the walls pictures from the client’s shops as they were in the late 70s/early 80s. It was all in good condition but I could totally picture my dad starting out business as a young guy in these very rooms 30 years earlier. It was quite fascinating.

Heck, even the coffee cups and milk trays were totally still stuck in the 70s!

It’s actually a bunch of really important clients who do this appointment together and there were about 10 of them. I’d previously thought they would just cram around the shoes on the shelves and poke them and discuss them.
But no, they filed into the room quietly, made a big circle around the first group of shelves, looked at me expectantly and said “You may start”. Gulp. I’ve presented a collection before, but usually that is a one-on-one interaction with one client. Also this collection is brand new and I am not really familiar with it yet. Still, I dove in and made an impromptu presentation of the whole collection and I think it went pretty well. Phew.
To leave you with another picture, this was our way back at dusk in awful weather and bad traffic…so glad I wasn’t driving 🙂

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some barn pics

Nothing spectacular today, I just shot these the other day at the barn and liked them. I wish I had taken my camera with me last thursday. The road to the barn was completely icy and I had to park a way off in the middle of nowhere and walk down (on wednesday I made the mistake of driving down and went in full panic mode when I couldn’t brake driving down the slope. I had to ask a friend to drive my car up again later, because I was too scared). Anyway, it was -5°C and the wind was blowing the snow from the fields across the road, creating snow dunes all along the way. Quite a sight really.



It has snowed over night yet again and so it’s going to be a fun ride out to the barn today…not.