It’s raining – that sort of misty, damp rain. Not real rain at all. But you would get wet all the same. A half-hour plane ride from a place we sat out in the garden in the warm sun.

I am here, sheltering from the rain because I had to have a cigarette and in this god-forsaken country there is no smoking in the airport. A little like the UK or, for that matter, Italy.

I decide to have another one. It will be another 3 hours before I’m back in Italy and able to smoke.

But that’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is the way people are. Why is it that in one situation they say one thing and in another they say almost the opposite. Luckily, as they say in Italy, I know my chickens.

Let’s be honest. The guy I am with is fantastic in front of customers. He has the ‘gift of the gab’. He can tell amusing anecdotes; he keeps the customer entertained; he can explain a technical thing in a way that even I can understand but, above all, he says the things that the customer wants to hear and the truth – but only when actually in front of them!

At work, when something is questioned or proposed he blusters and pouts and screams that it will never be possible. In front of the customer everything is fine – there is always a solution. Quite often the two sides of him differ so much that something that, internally, was impossible or would cause problem x becomes easy or will certainly not cause problem x.

And so, as a result of an internal meeting, I wrote a letter that said we could do something but that these would be the problems and we thought it wouldn’t work. As I suspected (which is why I took him with me and is one of the reasons I’m good at my job) all the problems became ‘not problems’ and the wouldn’t work things suddenly would be fine.

However, it can be a little frustrating as I can’t have the customer here, in front of him all the time.

Ah, well, such is life.

And I got home last night about 11.30 p.m. and went to bed about midnight. And then, even though I was so very tired could not sleep until about 2 a.m. The dogs kindly woke me about 6 a.m. and now I just want sleeeeeeeeeeeep!