Some days just don’t go to plan. However much organising and planning you do things just change and the day goes along a different path. But as the great 19 40/50s American baseball star Yogi Berra said “When you get to a fork in the road, take it. “


He also said “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is “ and when asked by the waitress if he wanted his pizza cut into four or eight slices he replied “Four, I’ll never eat eight”. I am not sure what any of that has to do with today’s Blog except that yesterday our road seemed to ‘fork’ somewhere about lunchtime.


The morning started quite normally although I did see Christine looking at the project folder I had produced for Christmas shopping with the baking and cooking schedules. It was pleasing to see that she was using the lists produced with the help of the Black Book although she hadn’t admitted she was using them. I decided not to introduce the Critical Path print out I had done on Microsoft Project to take into account the timeline for shopping and baking, I though at this point that may be a step to far, perhaps next week....


But never-the-less there she was crossing off items:-
Gammon joint – tick

Christmas crackers – tick
Champagne – tick

Wall paper paste – tick
Sausages, Burgers, Meatballs for the kids – all ticks

New car – tick


New Car! How did that get on the list. And that’s were the fork in the road came, yesterday we bought a new car. Now anyone that knows me knows I don’t make impulse purchases in fact when I was at work and came to the time to change my company car, Christine tells me I drove everyone mad.


The procedure was that I would get a listing of somewhere about 200 different cars that all fell within my bracket. I would then pick up to perhaps a dozen and get brochures on them. Having got the brochures I would them discard some and get the number down to maybe eight cars to look at. That was when I would drag Christine and Alex, if she was at home, round the showrooms looking at them, I could never understand why they got fed up of traipsing round all the different showrooms I quite enjoyed it.


Having looked at the cars I would then get out the computer and produce a spreadsheet with the specifications down the side and the car makes across the top and work through the manuals to see which cars ticked which boxes. When the spreadsheet was entered I could then make my comparisons and decide which car to have. The whole process could take anything from four to six weeks. And the point is it wasn’t even my money I was spending and here we are having just bought a car in an afternoon and it is my money.





Like all good project managers there must be someway I can shift the responsibility of this decision on to Christine just in case it goes wrong in the future. It is essential to have some one to carry the can so that it doesn't reflaect badly on you.


Anyway it wasn’t totally out of the blue as we had discussed changing Christine’s Clio for a bigger car now we only had the one car and the call from Renault just seemed to come at the right time so yesterday lunchtime we changed our plans and visited the car show room and hey presto a new Grande Scenic is on it’s way.


Last night I notice Christine actually looking in the Black Book itself, she is sat in the breakfast room, glass of wine in hand turning page after page of the Black Book with a puzzled look on her face. I ask her what she’s looking for “the page where it says we buy a new car” she replies “I just want to make sure it say’s Buy Christine a New Car because the Clio was mine you know”.


I never doubted for one minute that the new car would be Christine’s and I would get to use it only when she didn’t need it. Life never cahnges, I think I need a beer.