5 posts tagged “cannes”
I probably used that title last year and yep it's come around again. The lack of lottery/premium bond win during the last 12 months means I'm still working for a living and in the same job visiting the same trade fair for the fourth time.
I don't mind really, there are worse places to go for work certainly. And while I'll spend 70% of my time trying to eek something half interesting out of some generally dull people to justify the expense of me going it does give me a bit of a buzz dashing around Cannes from a meeting on a yacht to another in a marquee on the beach to a lunch on balcony overlooking the seafront. Beats having a meeting in Swansea that's for sure.
It is a shameless show of extravagance, one-up-manship and general lack of taste in the name of generating business and sadly much of what I'll be 'enjoying' will be at the British tax-payers expense. (I'll make sure I eat up every morsel offered and drink every drink to ensure good value)
Am trusting my suitcase and myself to the train once again. Fingers crossed there are no disasters like last year journey home. The storm that has been raging for the last 12 hours seems to be heading up north to spread headlines and news copy up there so I'm hoping the line through Kent will stay tree-free between now and 9 o'clock tomorrow morning when should be safely on French tracks.
My taxi is booked for 5-oh-joy in the morning so I'd better try and get some sleep because there is going to be scant little of that for the rest of the week.
So the Cannes carnival of indulgence and shameless display of wealth and one-up-manship is over for another year.
It was great fun but bloody hard work. I think it is going to take me a week for my liver to recover and to catch up on sleep, thank criminy I've got Monday off work.
Highlights:
Getting the train
Beautiful sunny, hot weather
Chocolate souffle
Hotel room
Chauffeur driven boat ride across the marina
Guitarist in band at Brum do - see picture collection ;0)
French policemen helping people cross the road
Lowlights:
Sleep deprivation
Pissed up, pot-bellied, sweaty, middle-aged men invading my personal space and generally being slimey dick heads
The restaurants of Cannes ability to completely redefine the concept of slow service
Getting the train
And then there were the more bizarre ways companies chose to entertain and draw attention to themselves:
My dream train journey to and from Cannes is rapidly turning into a nightmare.
Got to Lilles to pick up the Eurostar for the homeward leg through the tunnel only to find out the service has been suspended for 24 hours due to a trackside fire....in London!
Am currently on a train heading (hopefully) to Calais where the plan is to try and catch a ferry to Dover. Failing that will have to stay overnight in Calais and get a ferry in the morning.
Having just had one of the most sleep deprived working weeks of my life I'm feeling surprisingly calm and chipper not sure how long it will last.
Tomorrow is D-Day, I'm heading off to the south of France for the annual trade fair for the industry I write about. Some 20,000 people attend and more champagne is drunk during this week than during the Cannes film festival.
I'm not sure what the primary purpose of the event is except to be seen and to drink and eat as much free stuff as possible. Except the food is never that good because there are 20,000 people needing to be fed and it's not exactly like they have somewhere else to go.
People launch stuff, the private sector blow their marketing budgets and local governments from all over Europe spend tax-payers money to be there and wine, dine and entertain people in the hope of attracting investment and press coverage.
One British city is flying out its 'best' Indian chefs to cook at a beach side restaurant, another has, according to a good source of a colleague, booked ELO to play. Last year they had Squeeze, the year before the Stranglers.
Now the private sector can spend all they want but I can't help but wonder if it the best use of tax payers money. I'll do my best to enjoy myself, for their constituents sakes if nothing else.
I'm getting the train down this year for the first time which I'm quite excited about as I've never been on such a long train journey. Managed to wrangle myself some cheap first class tickets otherwise I'd be straight on the ozone killers of the sky.
I've also lucked in on my hotel and been allocated one that is both central and not a shit hole, although I believe it when I'm safe in my room. Normally some of Cannes worst rooms are reserved just for the journalists and some are in a town up the coast half an hours cab ride away.
It all sounds very glam and it is I suppose but the pay off is that I will inevitably end up doing three 18-hour days. Still at least the weather is forecast to be good.
The industry I write about has this thing, I suppose you could call it a trade fair, down in Cannes every year. 20-odd thousand people mainly from the UK and Europe but also from around the world head there to network for four days ie go from breakfast meeting (bucks fizz) to presentation (champagne) to lunch meeting (wine) to afternoon meeting (beer) to evening drinks (cocktails) to dinner (more wine) to after dinner propping up some extortionately over priced, hotel bar where they are too drunk to care that three drinks cost 40 quid and you can't claim it back on expenses without a receipt.
As an esteemed member of the press, once you have registered, your name goes on a list which then entitles anybody and everybody to invite you to meet up with them so they can tell you how wonderful their company/city/country is.
Fortunately, and I'm being polite here, there are far more invites than there are hours in the day so you can be selective about which you attend. But you do get a bunch like the following which are quite amusing and a little bit educational and absolutely genuine:
Dear Mr M*******
Nowadays Kazan - the capital of the Republic of Tartastan - is preparing its participation in the ***** 2007.
I'm honoured to invite you to participate in the Kazan city exposition opening ceremony (details of where and when) and to take a look at the most promising of our investment projects (I'm more interested in the unpromising, personally).
The City Council municipality of Kazan highly appreciates your activity as a journalism professional and is interested in establishing a long-term partnership with you.
I am looking forward to meeting you there.
Kind regards etc etc
A week prior to the event when I'm settling down to work out which of these invites I'm actually going to accept, I normally dismiss all those which come from countries I've never heard of or which have more than one K, Y or Z in their name. Tartarstan would, I'm afraid, fall into that category. But this year I decided that I should at least look up where Tartastan actually is and you'll be pleased to note that it is east of Moscow and borders Mordvinia, Mari El and Udmurtia.
