Mechanical problems, projectors and squeezing

Our automobile had acquired an unfortunate knocking note upon starting and in motion, suggestive of a serious malfunction by the engine exhaust. This naturally on a day the vehicle was required!

I cautiously navigated around the pot-hole riven roads to the nearest reliable specialist exhaust centre, envisioning a costly repair. In my luggage was a projector, required for todays Huntingdonshire Business Network Seminar, in the vain hope that repairs could be effected in time to permit a timely delivery.

The mechanical engineer in charge at ATS bore a remarkable resemblance to the actor Mr Ray Winstone, engendering the surreal image of Henry VIII in a boiler suit. An avuncular wag, he put my mind at ease after the vehicle inspection, the repair merely required three new rubber rings to hold the exhaust. My supposition of a rapid escape was however dashed as these rings had to be ordered.

If you have no steed, at least you can hire one. My modern equivalent to Mr Hobson and his choice duly picked me up and provided an automobile at short notice. I arrived for the seminar with minutes to spare and the relieved speaker had the projector for his slide show.

Mr Wiid gave an illuminating presentation on effective communication through the medium of electronic mail for businesses. The audience was not only captivated by his delivery but also inveigled into a group exercise on finding offers that might attract and retain potential customers. A key tool in this endeavor was to generate squeeze pages which, I hasten to reassure the concerned reader, does not refer to generating literature of an titillating nature. Rather, a squeeze page is a focused text aimed at persuading the reader to provide contact details, in order to obtain further useful information from the page's author.

The sad news of the day was the attack on the United Nations Compound in Afghanistan, by a mob incited to rage by the burning of a copy of the Koran in The United States of America by the cleric of a minority radical Christian group last month. Twelve UN workers and their Nepalese guards were murdered. A dark day.