Of Mediation/Reflection

You might say this is a week of mediation. This evening I'm facilitating a discussion group formed to discuss the road ahead for mediation in NI. Tomorrow, I'm in Dublin talking to Northside Community Law Centre about their highly successful mediation project. On Thursday I'm chairing a breakfast seminar for lawyers all about how to bring mediation into the workplace. The mediation audience in Northern Ireland is a disparate lot with a few conflicts of interest bubbling around. But hey if anyone can move forward without falling out it should be mediators. Shouldn't it?

Of BMs MGs and a Whole Lot of Class

Yey! I have the MG back on the road and she's purring like a gooden. It did require quite an operation and the assistance of a German vehicle to make it happen. I parked them side-by-side and transferred power from one to the other with the aid of very long jump leads and the neighbour's son. He was in the BMW giving the accelerator some wellie when I shouted that it was time to kick off.

She holds the road beautifully and I can't wait for the next sunny weekend to shoot off to Donegal with the picnic basket asunder. They say you can't buy happiness and they are probably right. But two grand can buy you a grand old lady. Put this together with sunny weather in Donegal and you've got you're own little Xanadu.

Of Marvelous Messy and Beautiful Barcelona

Last night the beautiful game returned to being well, the beautiful game. It was almost a pleasure to see a team you're supporting "get beat" by a bunch of footballers who are at the top of their game and oh so very good. There were few fouls even fewer bookings and an awful lot of great football. When a team can tame a side like Manchester United and make them look very ordinary you know your watching greatness. And greatness wherever it appears be it in the arts, in politics or in sport is a welcome friend.

Of Dark Reflections

Well it's Saturday morning just a week from my birthday and a few days off in London later in the week. Yey! Can't wait.

I've loads to do before I go however incluing Chair a breakfast seminar on 2 June and sign off a good number of events before then too.

Yesterday Northern Ireland ground to a halt in many areas as a result of 14 bomb scares. I wonder if any other part of the world can boast as many. Is that another dubious record? Whilst stuck in the mayhem I went through the dark things this place is known for.
They include :

* The most famous ship in the world which sank on its maiden voyage
* One of the greatest footballers in the world who was also an alcoholic and wife beater
* A unique film star of a car that crashed after two years in production
* A Belfast hotel - once known for being the most bombed hotel in the world having suffered some 28 attacks.

I think we need to do better somehow. The crazy thing is that actually Northern Ireland is not a bad place to live.

Of Business Cards and Business Boxes

We're rolling out a new networking device today. It's a joint effort between our marketing and egg production teams and I rather like it.It works like this.

The person we are going to meet gets a box of four green eggs produced by the Legal-Island hens. There's advice inside the box on how to check that an egg is still edible and it goes like this :

Place an egg in a bowl of water :

* If it sinks it's fresh;
* If it stands up it's still ok
* If it floats its bad

On the top of the box there's a rinky dinky label which says "Nest Egg - Investing in our Relationship" along with the Legal-Island logo and the logo of the company we're networking with.
Beats a business card any day don't you think?

Of Getting Through the Books and the Music

The books are stacking up at the moment. I'm just 40 pages into War and Peace with another 900+ to go. There's Atlast Shrugged at 1199 pages in the queue behind. I also threw on the reading list yesterday Ulysses by James Joyce after listening to my friend Paul Joyce (no relation I'm guessing) over dinner last night tell me what a great book it is. It's set in just one day of the life of a few characters as it makes its way around the streets of Dublin.
Like me Paul is a huge Kate Bush fan. A poster of her adorned his bedroom wall as a teenager just as it did mine. Yesterday we bought her latest album and like teenagers all over again excitedly inspected the CD to see what was on it and how it appeared. The great thing about Kate Bush is her unpredictably. You never know which way she's going to go next with her music. Sometimes, it a bit cranky, occasionaly a bit average but sometimes too (like her debut single "Wuthering Heights") just magical, original,brilliant and very daring.

Of Having Inspiration in Your Step

Very occasionally you meet people in life that really inspire you. Years ago I met a senior counsel barrister in Dublin from a very well-to-do family who you'd expect to walk around with a degree of pomp and superiority in his step. But not this man. He would go to a law centre every month in a very rough area of Dublin and give his time free of charge to anyone who needed it. Not only was he great with clients but everyone he worked with taking a genuine interest in them and what made them tick. I used to watch him with co-workers and try to learn from his skills. I saw little except understated brilliance all the time.
Yesterday I saw him deliver a presentation at the Law Society in Belfast. He was witty, amusing, erudite, informative and very compelling.
Turlough you're the boy...