This Thursday sees the most glittering evening in the umbrella sector calendar - the annual Canopy Awards, held appropriately enough under a great big canopy in Battersea Park. Granted, it's a bloody great piss up and the food is always good. Plus the opportunities for networking and namedropping are superb. But I really don't know if I can be arsed.
If I have to sit there one more year while some supposed sector notable scoops the outstanding achievement award that I should be getting then I will scream. The gritting my teeth received after Hubert Carrington of NCVO won it a few years ago set me back thousands in dental work. Sure, people like last year's winner Patrick Pond at the Umbrella Commission are worthy of recognition but come on guys, surely my turn is overdue.
If I do go it gives me chance to once again don the old white tux, which is home to one of the finest collections of red wine stains in the world. Look closely and you can see such vintage spillages as a '74 Rioja from an Oxford reunion dinner, a very rare '63 Chateauneuf du Tim Pape from one of my European jaunts and a '09 Echo Falls Cabernet Merlot from a wedding I crashed in Blacbury earlier this year. Oh and some ribena as well.
Ultimately I think my decision about attending will hinge on whether the new umbrella minister Veronica Gubbins Squif (or VGS as I will now style her) is going and whether I can blag a seat next to her. Being new to the sector I am sure she would much appreciate having her ear bent to the point of fracture about the need for an umbrella bank and VAT refunds.
Dont you normally get there early to shuffle the place cards to your advantage?
ReplyDeleteshhhhh, don't tell everyone. Anyway, it isn't easy to do sometimes as there can be up to 23 senior sector figures in the room doing the same thing.
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