Saturday finds me working in the office. Or more appropriately having fixed one urgent job experiencing a severe motivation bypass. Yesterday we had our Creative Conference and all the creatives were allowed to have a day of most stimulating activities. We carved clay to make a mould of our faces. We listened to a variety of talks.
One from a man who looks after wolves but who avoided eye-contact with people, and another from a brace of young fashion designers. There was an interesting talk from Professor David Canter styled "the leading pioneer of criminal psychological profiling". He described the geographical patterns that burglars, murderers, rapists etc. make in their crimes, and from this pattern it is possible to infer the likely area they live in: usually somewhere in the middle. I can't say that my hair was blown backwards as if in a wind tunnel by this revelation but it was nevertheless interesting how extremely practical this was. There was no talk about whether the man liked red, or hated his father. What you got was a likely address, which has to be handier in the long run for the Old Bill. He showed some film of an ex-burglar describing his modus operandi. He was drawing a map of his activities and his route was as entirely predictable as that of a postman. My pal Pat made a good point in that the burglar was motivated by fear -- that he had to be near to base and there was an easy escape route for him.
The other speaker of note was Chris Moon who was a former army officer, who survived being kidnapped by the Khmer Rouge and was later blown up while working in Mozambique in mine clearance, losing part of an arm and leg. Subsequently he has run marathons and generally bounced back in an amazing way. He made a good motivational speaker talking about never behaving like a victim, and always being positive and so on. Afterwards I chatted to him briefly wondering if he knew about a pal of mine who had worked in mine clearance too.
This was all interesting. Otherwise I am buried under work, am taking an increasingly hard line with my solicitors but all house moves and so on in cold storage. Having to rely on the good nature of my mum and her husband, which makes me feel like a chump at 45.
One from a man who looks after wolves but who avoided eye-contact with people, and another from a brace of young fashion designers. There was an interesting talk from Professor David Canter styled "the leading pioneer of criminal psychological profiling". He described the geographical patterns that burglars, murderers, rapists etc. make in their crimes, and from this pattern it is possible to infer the likely area they live in: usually somewhere in the middle. I can't say that my hair was blown backwards as if in a wind tunnel by this revelation but it was nevertheless interesting how extremely practical this was. There was no talk about whether the man liked red, or hated his father. What you got was a likely address, which has to be handier in the long run for the Old Bill. He showed some film of an ex-burglar describing his modus operandi. He was drawing a map of his activities and his route was as entirely predictable as that of a postman. My pal Pat made a good point in that the burglar was motivated by fear -- that he had to be near to base and there was an easy escape route for him.
The other speaker of note was Chris Moon who was a former army officer, who survived being kidnapped by the Khmer Rouge and was later blown up while working in Mozambique in mine clearance, losing part of an arm and leg. Subsequently he has run marathons and generally bounced back in an amazing way. He made a good motivational speaker talking about never behaving like a victim, and always being positive and so on. Afterwards I chatted to him briefly wondering if he knew about a pal of mine who had worked in mine clearance too.
This was all interesting. Otherwise I am buried under work, am taking an increasingly hard line with my solicitors but all house moves and so on in cold storage. Having to rely on the good nature of my mum and her husband, which makes me feel like a chump at 45.
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