And a happy new year

Is it possible, please, for 2010 to be a little more relaxing and less stressful than 2009? Please? Pretty please?
To start as I mean to go on, here are some of today's stress-free images, intended to calm all those who survey the loveliness: the gorgeous peacock butterfly; the ewes with Humphrey the llama; and the grass trying desperately to breathe through the ice.
I don't know if the latter is a metaphor for life, or just a handy one for the dying year, but either way, here's wishing everyone a blossoming 2010 with soft fluffy moments, sharp insights and 50% smile factor.

Happy Christmas

Duck in bucket

Brass in pocket, chicken in a basket, now duck in bucket. I look out of my office window to see stuck duck. A stuck duck surrounded by a sea of ice and gloom. A waterlogged duck that cannot extract itself. No danger of becoming a dead duck - far too large and vigorous to drown - but in need of a good samaritan who is prepared to tip up the bucket and get a whoosh of shitty, muddy water in the face for services rendered.
Happy Christmas.

Staying with the turkey theme...

...it being Christmas and all that, I've just had a laugh, a splutter and an irritated from Tunbridge Wells moment reading this.
In my professional life I deal with strategies - it's kind of important to know where you want to be in order to have some vague chance of possibly getting there. But the idea of store managers having conference calls to agree strategies for selling turkeys at Christmas seems to me as barking as outlining a strategy for taking a bath when you're grubby, having a snooze when you're tired, or making a sandwich when the old tum is rumbling.
It's like this, store managers, turkey buyers and the rest... It's Christmas. The majority of meat eaters eat turkey for Christmas. Make sure you stock up on them, so that there are enough fresh, freerange, organic and frozen to meet the demand. Stick 'em in your shops with a price label on them. Wait for customers to have that light bulb "ooh, it's Christmas, I must get some mince pies, a plum pudding, some chipolatas and a turkey" moment. Bob's your uncle.
Perhaps I should charge for this little bit of insight? Nope. The idea of becoming Head Turkey Consultant would just make me a laughing stock.