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Look! My mum. My dad. And BILL CLINTON!! With his arms around them!

The story starts a long time ago, in 1998, when my cousin, Paul McElearney, proprietor and president of Wide Plank International Flooring, laid the president’s floor in his and Hilary’s home in the Hamptons. Since then, apparently, they’ve been good friends.

Then last week my parents got a call form Paul saying he’d arranged for them to meet Bill Clinton while he was over in London, giving a speech for a private business conference at the Ritz Hotel, Picadilly.

Mum and Dad went along, got schmoozed and boozed by the Ritz waiting staff, and met Bill. They report back that he is warm, friendly and still possesses the legendary charisma we have heard so much about. Then he went and gave a 45 minute speech, without notes, and quoting innumerable facts and figures, regarding big business’s duties and responsibilities towards the planet.

I saw them the next day and they were rather starstruck!

Read more about my cousin, wide planks, Bill Clinton and Bono here:
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2002/06/16/story521535628.asp

At the weekend I was reading The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher. It’s ostensibly a graphic design book, a “guide to visual awareness”, but it’s also so much more than that. It’s full of incredible and inspiring ideas information, making it perfect for those times when, like Carole King, you feel so uninspired. It’s also the size of a large encyclopaedia and weighs a ton.

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