Another day, another meeting.

When I worked in advertising, I used to enjoy meetings.

As a "creative", you don't go to many. And the ones you do attend tend to break up the monotony of staring at a layout pad or computer screen, pouring your energy into coming up with original and inspiring ways to sell largely uninspiring products to people who would generally be happier to live without them.

In those meetings, you learn that the other (often intelligent and articulate) people you work with have an even less fulfilling time of it than you. Which is why, I guess, most people I know in the business spend most of their spare time getting completely shitfaced. It's a coping mechanism. (And a digression.)

Today, we had a meeting with two intelligent, articulate and, I think, sober people in which we learned:
o The department of agriculture did not see our land before saying they did not like our project and could therefore be won around.
o The people of water could be won over with a little more information from us and a case study of other reed beds systems in use today in France.
o The mayor is unlikely to be won over and we'd best wait until the new one comes along. In March.
o There's a good chance that we won't be opening for business in April. Or indeed, 2008.

But that wasn't the first meeting of the day. Oh no. We'd come fresh from seeing our friend Claude, who we paid for putting a rollbar on the tractor and booked to bring his JCB along tomorrow morning.

Work starts at 10.