Here’s something that has absolutely nothing to do with PR in Barnet, being an award winning Marketing and PR Agency in Barnet or being a Barnet-based PR and marketing consultancy. Suffice to say, if you need PR or marketing in or around Barnet, Herts, or even about Barnet, you’ve come to the right Barnet-based place.

We literally live and breath Barnet – gateway to the North and highest point between London and York. Home to Barnet Football Club (not strictly true, but they’re not strictly a football club either).

Anyway. With Veganism on the rise I’ve been thinking about an incident from my past and the importance of clear diction in public places:

A friend of mine, called Alan, used to work in Waterstones, the booksellers.

At the time his sister, Lucy, had become a strict vegetarian and Alan too was trying to follow suit.

Anyway.  One evening Alan and Lucy were invited out to a restaurant with a group of Lucy’s old college friends, many of whom were also ordering from the vegetarian menu that evening.

Alan was sat down next to one of them, a very pleasant girl who had been Lucy’s flat mate in her last year of college. Alan was pleased to have been seated with such an easy going and friendly dining partner and they were getting on very well.

He was single at the time and, basically, he thought he’d pulled.

Until that is, the conversation turned to what they both did for a living.

Why working in a Book Shop should be so offensive Alan didn’t know but as soon as he revealed that this was what he did,

the girl turned away and literally ignored him completely for the rest of the evening.

It was only some days later that he heard from his that, in the noise of the restaurant, what the unfortunate lady had actually heard in the noise of the restaurant  was something rather different:

“My work?” said Alan proudly. “Oh, I work in a butchers. I really LOVE IT actually!”

Suffice to say, they both saw the funny side and reader…

He married her (and neither of them is now vegetarian).

There, nothing to do with Barnet, PR, marketing and any number of any relevant marketing buzzwords but hey, life’s too short.