Christmas comes but once a year

The decorations are packed away, the tree has been stuffed into the green bin, the Wii has had its annual outing, and the poinsettia is gamely hanging on in spite of nobody watering it for the past 2 weeks.

This year the ‘run up to Christmas’ was coloured by a stinking rotten cold I contracted in the first week of December . By the 25^th I was still suffering from catarrh and C’s Contagion Containment Policy was in its third week (i.e. 2m exclusion zone around face, especially mouth). Thus there was no point in purchasing mistletoe this year since any kind of snog-related activity was verboten. (Oddly the CCP does not seem to apply to runny-nosed grandchildren.)

On the 26^th I got another cold.

But the original project objectives were more or less met, so the project to deliver Christmas must be judged a success.

However in the interests of becoming a learning organisation it is important to use the principles of knowledge management to capture events and issues so that similar projects in the future can avoid the known pitfalls.

These can be simply summed up in the following ditty, to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. For brevity, only the final verse is recorded here. You need to sing it, though ideally  in your head.

(In the interests of truth the numbers have not been exaggerated, tempting though it was.)

On the twelfth day of Christmas, dear Santa gave to me

...one twisted ankle

..one smashed side mirror

...one burnt finger

...one frozen hip joint

...one telling off

...two mouth ulcers

...two broken baubles

Another sodding cold...

 ...one maxed-out card

...one leaking bath

...a rather bad haircut

And a congested nasal cavity

HAPPY NEW YEAR!