…at lunchtime I found Harry and asked him to show us the cool games. He did this with poker-straight appraisal, skittish enthusiasm, all encompassing sarcasm, and a withering disrespect for his father. Max noticed something else ”you and your son, you keep touching each other, we don’t do that in Finland”.

I sometimes think I live an extraordinary life and then realise of course I don’t really. I take two steps back and my trail is indistinguishable in the skein of a million others looping from Brighton to London and back again. Nothing that happens to me or because of me raises a blip on the radar of our species. Yesterday none of my children were terrified and starved and shot dead at their school. And yet there are times every day when my life feels charged and out of the ordinary.

Wednesday evening I tightened up as it hit me: this is my first trade show as a freelancer, since I left corporate life, and I have a client all day. I nearly canceled Harry but I have a body of experience on dates with my children. I know that I never regret these times whatever my fearful impulses. And so the next morning I alight from the Light Railway to stand in front of the white edifice that is Excel. It’s must be a mile in length and it stands stupefied, at its own size and at the utter blankness of the dock before it. I wear a sharp blue suit, a white shirt, a light tan and a 14 year old. At Costa Coffee two girls, both ex-colleagues, cooed ” Harry has got so good looking”. I agreed and added I was well too. ”Except he doesn’t have a job” said Harry. I didn’t explode or drop through a hole in the floor but felt weirdly proud of how my son had just come out with it. I tried to rehearse Harry to reply when questioned: Daddy is doing well, Daddy is doing well. But he is a poor parrot and pretty soon the video games had fired up and his attention was elsewhere.

Harry and I went our separate ways. I took up my position on the pocket stand of my client in the shadow of the acreage of my former employer. I had arrived at the moment I had anticipated one Friday lunchtime. Nick had told of switching aisles in a supermarket to avoid a shaming encounter with a well to do relative. I had wondered aloud how I would do when representing a tiny Finnish business with cool technology and absolutely no clout, I turned a show aisle and caught the large swinging dick of a vice president at a top three publisher. Well I was there. It was showtime!

Max is the CEO of the Finnish business and at lunchtime I found Harry and asked him to show us the cool games. He did this with poker-straight appraisal, skittish enthusiasm, an encompassing sarcasm, and a withering disrespect for his father. Max noticed something else ”you and your son, you keep touching each other, we don’t do that in Finland”.

The next day Max walked Julie back to the show and said he felt good about what I brought for my large fees. Max told her the clincher: ”if I had any doubts about Julian they disappeared after I spent time with him and his son.” I saw so much at these two shows. I saw how this year has brought about a shocking realignment in my relationships to money and work. And it is not stopping there. I kept work and family separate. I compartmentalized my life and it shrunk. Now I am about union and all kinds of things are going off.

Max is the CEO brought in from Nokia. Sam is the entrepreneur who founded the company. The week before in Finland Sam had thrown me the keys to his Lexus and said, you drive. I was impressed at this gesture because he loves his car as only a young man, who is a nerd and a millionaire can do. There are three Lexus coupes in Finland and Sam likes getting noticed in this way.

Sam talked and I drove and I listened to what he wanted to say. His last holiday with his wife was in Scotland and it was the best in this life. It was before they were married and after she got pregnant. But he has since left her. He sees his father’s drinking habits appearing in his own. His folly with women, the late nights, his doting over his son, his mind is not on his business. I identified, mostly silently, and marveled. This was my first client at my new higher rate. I had come for analysis and strategising but this afternoon I was listening to a man’s doubts and bewilderment. I was getting another case history for Meetings with Unremarkable Men (and I was getting paid for it).

At the airport I took my case from Sam and we stood for a moment. I put the case down and shook his hand. I very nearly gave him a hug although this would have scared the bejasus out of him. But I know it was what he wanted because it’s what we all want. And next time he is likely to get it from me. Life is just too damn short.

I don’t usually buy a paper on Saturdays but it came back with the shopping and I read hypnotised of Beslan but kept reading it as Belsen. Through the day I kept starting and stopping things and would occasionally lie down, on a park bench, on a bed. It may have been the pace of the week before but I was also having difficulty with this new information. My brain was mashing and heaving and there was insufficient bandwidth for other tasks. I got to this realisation as I get to most things, in my meeting that evening. Babs was in the chair and although she has been around a while she went on too long. I quickly tired and began to think she really should know better but I remembered I had caught her flustered in Waitrose car park earlier that week. It was raining and she was in a tizz. I had offered to carry her bags but she said no it’s OK and hurried on. I thought: tonight I can carry the bags for a bit. I can listen (and see what I get from it).

If we pause to take it all in it’s hardly a wonder we cannot think properly. But if I quietly attend to the stupefaction of others I can unravel my own, just a little. I can consture sense from no sense which is really rather strange, and also quite wonderful.