Another week flies by – a week in the life of Gill Steel

 In Gill's Blog

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I can’t believe Gill Steelhow quickly time flies. But it seems particularly true at this time of year when there is plenty going on. Take last week……

It started with my usual monthly visit to Blake Morgan LLP’s Portsmouth office for a round of meetings with colleagues on some of the projects I am helping with and a chance to connect with key people over issues on Wills, trusts, risk and compliance. It is always a full day. Me working on projects for them gets technical developments done which busy partner fee earners would not get to and helps me provide relevant training for the team too….(Hmm, I wonder how many of you out there might find that sort of service of interest?).

Tuesday started with a sound check as usual for my LiPs legal webinar that day on Trusts Update. Fortunately, all was loud and clear – no neighbour’s hedge cutter interfering with reception (the joys of having my office in the countryside!) I usually refresh my memory thereafter until show time at 1pm. What a lot of compliance issues! You can still access the recording at http://www.lipslegal.com/?event=trusts-update-2.

As soon as I had finished the webcast I packed my suitcase and jumped in the car for a drive through the autumn scenery down to Neath where the Melly family kindly put me up before I undertook a day’s training for Jennifer Melly Law on Trusts the very next day. I thoroughly enjoy in-house gigs as you get to see real people with real queries and hopefully can help them without any need for embarrassment or worries about breaches of confidentiality. I got some great feedback – thanks folks.

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Swiftly after a full day I fired up the Mini Countryman for a three-hour journey home. I called into a service area to collect an easy supper from Marks & Spencer somewhere on the M4 and enjoyed peace and quiet back in Sparsholt for a night in front of the TV (my husband was ‘Up North’ taking his dear old Dad to visit his sister).

There is no rest for the wicked, so Thursday saw a check-up at the Dentist and time for some much needed desk work before getting into my glad rags to catch the train to Waterloo to join the bash for the Law Society Excellence Awards. It was good to meet up with Julia Aubrey of Withers, my co-judge for the Private Client award and several others. Many congratulations to all the shortlisted firms. An especial ‘shout out’ for the winner in this category: Thomson Snell & Passmore, who undertook an innovative project on pricing and ‘Very well done’ to the highly commended entry from Hugh Jones, a recent start up specialising in vulnerable and elderly clients. Why not start planning your application for next year?

A quick dash back to Waterloo after a splendid dinner and into bed rather late. Before I knew it, it was time to rise to go for my deep tissue massage on my legs (too much standing and not enough exercise or something!) Then back to the office for a morning of computer problems and interruptions while I tried to prepare for the new LiPs webinar on 1 November on LPAs for Business Owners. Is anyone else finding that Windows 10 is causing problems. So far it seems to have done for my HP laptop of less than a year in age; and we struggle to get proper logon for Westlaw and SAGE. Everything is very, very, very slow too. I am hoping that an upgrade to Superfast Broadband will help now that the village has access to it, but who knows?

At this stage I must confess to being knackered so I snoozed my way down to a break in Cornwall to attend a friend’s birthday party – my poor husband was driving for hours and hours in the horrendous half-term traffic. We looked forward to our stay in Carlyon Bay Hotel but were rather disappointed. Many years ago I did lectures there for CLT. Whilst it was a lovely Poirot 1930’s style building the central heating did not appear to be working and we missed breakfast on Saturday morning – obviously we are not early risers compared to the golfers who come to stay!

The party was fun – who would have thought a theatre set designer and a vicar could provide such a funny double act speech about their Dad, whose birthday it was. Good for them!

On the way back we stopped off locally for lunch – or at least we hoped we could enjoy a meal at the Three Cups in Stockbridge but our order clearly got lost in the system and after 1 hour 15 minutes wait we decided to give in and come home ready for the next week.

All in all a very satisfying 7 days but thankfully this week is a little less manic so I’ll be able to get some quality time at my desk to advance LawSkills’ plans for 2017 amongst other things.

 

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