I spent most of this week in sunny Italy, attending the wedding of a dear friend, and taking a few days out to explore Perugia and Florence.

I adore weddings, especially now they’re comparatively rare among my friends. And this one was special. The bride, my pal Christina, has had a tough few years battling breast cancer. She’s out the other side now and was determined to have a blowout bash to celebrate love and life. And delivered that in spades.

The warm sun casting a golden glow over the Umbrian hills, the scent of fresh flowers in the air, the sounds of a string quartet and laughter filling the stunning rustic villa. It was just perfect.

I started blubbing the moment I saw her. It was a beautiful emotional day. This was not just a wedding; it was a messy and glorious fusion of love, tradition, joy and the enchanting spirit of Italy.

The next day we headed to Florence to do the tourist thing, but found ourselves getting annoyed by tourists (I know, I know) so flipped to exploring the city’s odder sights. Like tracking down Galileo’s preserved middle finger, stored in a glass case in a museum, forever flipping the bird at the establishment that condemned him as a heretic.

Some things I did this week

However, working for myself and not being very good at taking time out I did end up doing some work things.

• More work on how we structure content across both internal and external sites. This finally feels like it’s making sense now.
• Ran a focus group, which is pretty much the final hurdle on an intranet and internal comms discovery we’ve been doing. This gave us the chance to dig a little deeper on some of the issues that our survey and interviews flagged up, and helped to explain some of the trends we were seeing.

Saw Bob Log III play at a lovely outdoor free festival in Florence. Midway through this gig I got an email confirming we’ve won yet another new project and new client. We’ve been talking to them for a while, got the sense they liked our approach, and felt like this was one which would land in the end. And it did. It’s an interesting client and project and we’re really excited to start working with them.

Bob Log invited me to drink prosecco out of an inflatable duck while making toast and throwing it into the audience. This seemed as good a way to celebrate as any.

In fact, I might make Drinking Prosecco Out Of A Duck my standard New Client Win celebration.

Connections

In theory I was having a week off, but as the beautiful bride is a former colleague from my Houses of Parliament days it was a good chance to say hello and catch up on the gossip. We managed to avoid talking shop, fortunately.

What I’m reading

I finished reading the Keir Starmer biography. The second half of the book covers his career. Leaving university, becoming a barrister, defending the pair in the McLibel trial, representing mineworkers who’d been injured at work, and his time at the DPP.

And finally on to his move into politics, the Corbyn years, winning the party leadership and the inside story on the battle to transform the party and get it ready to lead again. Starmer was (is) often accused of being boring. I liked his reply to this – there’s nothing more boring than opposition.

Given the news this week it’s been a timely and reassuring read. I’m so excited for politics to be boring again.

Hotels

It was another two hotel week. The first, in Perugia, had colour-adjustable lighting in the bathroom. Why? What is this for? In the bathroom one needs sufficient bright lighting to shave, pluck and apply make-up. There are no circumstances in which making the lights green, blue or pink enhance the bathroom experience.

Despite this I think I did a reasonable job on wedding make-up and hair.

In a sign that I spend far too much time in hotels, on Friday night I woke up at about 3am, and thought “I can’t remember where the bathroom is here”. I turned on the torch on my phone to find it, and realised I was in my own bed at home.