I may not know exactly what you do, but I'm pretty sure you're offside!

Do you know exactly what your friends and family do for a living? I have a vague idea how most of mine spend their day but generally it doesn’t extend much beyond knowing the industry in which they work. My good friend T, for example, I can say with absolute certainty that she is in banking. What sort banking? Well, she works for Deutsche Bank, so that would be German banking! But beyond that, I’m a bit sketchy! And as for K, well she is in Accounting. I think!

It’s not that I’m not interested. It’s just that I haven't managed to keep abreast of their various progressions and promotions. And I’m afraid that this isn’t a new thing for me. I absolutely never got to grips with what my Dad did for a living, which is quite ungrateful when you consider that whatever it was effectively kept me clothed and fed. Still, he’s retired now so that’s a weight off my mind! The thing is that it goes past the point when you can ask for clarification.

It puts me in mind of when I bought my first flat and introduced myself to the chap downstairs. When next I saw him he was munching a bacon sandwich but shouted out what sounded like a cheery “Morning Anna.” And to borrow from the Ting Tings – that’s not my name! But he had been eating a sandwich. Maybe I’d misheard. The next time I saw him he was just rushing off to work but as the door slammed behind him I definitely heard “Hi Anna!” Never mind, I’d correct him next time. Except I didn’t see him until he dropped off Anna’s Christmas card and a bottle of wine to apologise for a noisy party he’d hosted. At which point it seemed a bit churlish to put him right. Plus I might not have got to keep Anna’s wine!

Anyway, I digress. The purpose of this is that I was making this rather long and rambling point to a new friend who pointed out that perhaps my friends and family found my chosen profession – PR – to be an equally closed book. I mean it’s a term we’re all very used to hearing. It’s bandied about in the media all the time. A bit like the phrase ‘offside’ in football. But, as with offside, just because we hear a phrase a lot, it doesn’t necessarily mean we know what it is!

So, for the uninitiated, PR is the management of communications between an organisation and its publics. It can be used to build rapport with customers, potential customers, employees, investors or the general public. And generally speaking, PR uses methods and tools that don’t require direct payment. Such as working with the press, speaking at conferences or employee and customer communications.

It would have been fitting to sum up by juxtaposing the above with a neat definition of the offside rule - but despite consulting numerous sources, I’m still not 100 percent clear!"

When rodents attack!

So, I’m in Kelsey Park with Suzanne, my personal trainer (get me!) and I’m telling her how, last time we visited, my youngest was trying to encourage squirrels to come to him by pretending he had a peanut. He explained to his Dad how you have to make a particular noise with your mouth to call them and nagged Daddy to have a go.

The husband tried to show willing by half heartedly kissing his lips, only for the fattest squirrel I have ever seen to take this as an invitation to leap the three feet that separated them and land halfway up the husband’s leg. For a brief moment the three of us (four if you count the squirrel) were frozen in a tableau of shock and surprise. The husband recovered first and began, to the huge amusement of the little ‘un and me, to hop around like, well a man with a rodent on his leg! Funny enough in itself! But he accompanied this frenzied activity with what can only be described very girly shrieking!

Anyway, fast forward to today and Suzanne and I had a good laugh about the squirrely incident and then got down to the serious business of my training session. After some preliminary torture, she paced out a (very long) stretch of path and explained how we would be walking the length of it and then sprinting back to our starting point. Joy. I have developed the ability to run for quite a long time at a reasonable-ish pace but I really hate going fast. Particularly with Suzanne, who can spend all day doing training sessions and then still sprint faster than your average mugger with a handag under his arm.

So, we do the walk-sprint thing twice. I thought I was holding up quite well, i.e I didn’t pass out, throw up or fall down. Suzanne hadn’t even broken a sweat so when she suggested we did some stretches before our next sprint I think it was mainly to enable me to recover without losing face! So, side by side, we sank (gratefully in my case) into hamstring stretches. For those of you unfamiliar with exercise (my husband for example!) this involves stretching one leg out in front of you and then bending forward over it to stretch the back of your thigh. Sounds uncomfortable I know but, believe me, it’s bliss in comparison to sprinting next to the bionic woman!

Anyway, we’ve been stretching for mere seconds when Suzanne lets out a blood curdling yell and springs from a bending stretch to a sort of six-feet-off-the-ground star jump in one move. Blimey, I think, preparing to follow suit. Until I spot the rather fat squirrel in the middle of her back! Apparently, it had taken advantage of her stretching manoeuvres to launch an assault from behind – running up her leg and onto her back!

As you would expect from a woman of her suppleness and agility she was soon able to shake off the chubby little interloper and, I might add, with a minimum of shrieking! But we were aghast at his brazen behaviour. I mean, as Suzanne, pointed out “It’s not like I’ve even got any nuts!”