Theresa May famously once said “if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere — you don’t understand what citizenship means.”

Maybe I don’t know what citizenship means. Or maybe I just don’t share her definition of citizenship. This week I’ve been in four cities in three countries and felt at home, and felt like a person with rights and responsibilities, in all of them.

I like being a citizen of nowhere – or a citizen of Europe. As I’ve been flitting across the continent I’ve been watching the return of Farage back in the UK and hoping this is the last gasp of a dying band of obsessive, self-defeating Euroscepticism, before sanity prevails again in my (other) home country.

(And, as my Twitter feed makes all too clear, I am very much enjoying not having a politically restricted job this time around).

Some things I did this week

With one client, we’re working to develop more structure for the team and programmes, to help everyone move forward with confidence and clarity on goals, roles and responsibilities. And that, it’s quickly becoming clear, is absolutely essential. Without greater clarity on what, where and who, we’ll have paralysis. We spent a lot of time this week wrangling with the detail of RACI matrices and decision-making processes. And it feels like we’re making huge progress with the programme overall, unblocking barriers to getting things done.

But with another, the search for clarity has only created paralysis. After two weeks trying to pin down deliverables in the context where so little else is clear, it’s actually meant we just can’t start anything. So – in an admirably pragmatic move – the client’s suggested we just sign for a Time and Materials contract and crack on iteratively. Just get the initial work done then see what to tackle next, with confidence we have enough flexibility to roll with it.

Both approaches are right, in their own circumstances. As a supplier I guess we have to learn to work with both. It makes juggling resources on our side a little more complex though.

We also agreed next steps for a content development programme we’ve been involved with for a while. And got further into the weeds on a complex site’s information architecture. Lots more to do on that one, but making good progress.

And spoke to a potential client about a possible project that had gone quiet for so long we assumed it was gone. It isn’t, and looking like it’ll turn into something more concrete in the months ahead.

Spent a couple of days with one of my oldest friends in Berlin. Ate schnitzel. Drank beer. Walked along the remains of the Berlin Wall and talked about how weird it was that it went up in our parents’ lifetimes and came down in our own living memory. 

Watched Green Day in the pouring rain at the Waldbühne, a stunning if chaotic amphitheatre next to the old Berlin Olympic Stadium. It was the 30th anniversary tour for Dookie, which has remained in my top 10 favourite albums for the whole of those three decades. 

The journey back from the venue was a nightmare of cancelled trains, buses too full to stop and no Ubers to be found anywhere, so I saw in my birthday on a packed-beyond-capacity S Bahn, under someone’s armpit, soaked to the skin.

My 44th will not go down as one of my more memorable birthdays. I spent most of it on a train from Berlin to Amsterdam that left an hour late then moved considerably slower than anticipated across Germany. I did at least make it home on time to go out for a rijsttafel dinner with my husband.

More cheerfully, on Wednesday I saw Atarashii Gakko at the Melkweg. J-pop at its finest, with a costume change per track, some impressively tight dance moves and stunning stage graphics.

Ay the end of the week I spent a couple of days in Rotterdam with good friends. Bad weather, mad architecture, spicy margaritas, a spin class and a lot of laughter. It was good for the soul.

Connections

The trip to Berlin gave me an opportunity to catch up with two people who are set to join the Lithos associate network in the coming weeks to support on new projects. Exciting.

What I’m reading

I’m halfway through Tom Baldwin’s biography of our presumed soon-to-be PM Kier Starmer. I’m enjoying it hugely. In part because I’m finally allowing myself to be excited about the prospect of a Labour government (disclaimer: I have been a member of the Labour Party since I was a teenager).

But also it’s been an interesting reflection on class politics. Kier’s dad -was a toolmaker (he may have mentioned this 😉), and he was the first of his family to go to university. My siblings and I were the first in our family to go to university, and I recognise the same internal conflict about clearly being middle class now, but not fully being able to explain when (or even if) you ever stop being what you grew up as.

Hotels

I bookended the week in two different chains which claim to have rethunk the hotel experience – Moxy (Berlin) and Citizen M (Rotterdam). I’ve stayed in several of both many times before.

The good: everything just works. Check-in, bedside power provision, shower pressure, decent hairdryer… they trick all the boxes. Nothing more, nothing less.

The bad: Because the chains are designed to be the same everywhere, down to the finest detail, there’s the disconcerting feeling of waking up and taking a few minutes to remember where I am today. I woke up on Friday and genuinely thought this could be Rotterdam… or anywhere?

The ugly: I do not – ever – want to select lighting to match my mood.