Asking other people's opinions is a funny old business.
Regular readers/sufferers will know that I have been agonising over what to do with my fleet for an age.
So, when I popped across to Zurich for a meeting last week, I decided to put my dilemma – and a potential resolution that was being dangled in front of me in the form of an offer for my Elan – to the team as a secret ballot.
I genuinely don't know whether I did this primarily because I have simply lost the will to work it out for myself, whether I was desperately hoping that someone would come up with a simple solution that I had somehow overlooked, or if I was soliciting their opinions solely because they might bring my own into focus. Ignore what they say, or agree with them, it wouldn't matter because the process itself would sharpen my own reasoning to the point that I would know what I really wanted.
So it was that when the team came in on Tuesday last week, they were confronted with a voting paper and a ballot box and encouraged to do their worst.
When I was back in on Wednesday, I was expecting they would have had some fun, but was disappointed by the lack of Double Decker wrappers and pictures of sheep genitalia.
Instead, I excitedly opened my box to find the following:
Four completed ballot papers ranging from straightforward numbered preferences to essays of the "see attached sheet" nature.
One plastic spoon.
One bottle of barely used Jaguar aftershave (we did a test squirt and the office still stinks of it).
One tiny tube of travel toothpaste.
One five pence piece.
12 working elastic bands
