Snow joke

I’m not very good at analogies.

Or metaphors. Or similes. Or, as I discovered over Christmas, yo-yos (I haven’t yet mastered ‘the sleeping dog’, which is the core move behind most tricks, according to a You Tube yo-yo master).

Anyway: analogies. I can’t do them. Unlike Jeremy Clarkson, whose writing is usually more laden with analogies than a... a... well, there you go.

But the incredible blanket of snow that stretches out before me at the moment feels, for all the world, like a metaphor for this fresh, new, unblemished year that’s stretching out before us. 

I really think it’s going to be an exciting year for anyone in fundraising – there’s just so much clever stuff going on right now, to reach audiences that are simultaneously growing both larger and more sophisticated.

And at Tangible, we’re in the middle of two big pitches, which is definitely very exciting.

There’s nothing like the adrenalin rush of a big pitch to keep you warm on a cold winter’s day. And working on not one but two... well, that’ll keep you warmer than the too-tight Christmas jumper your nan knitted you (sorry, another poor analogy).

Especially as, in this case, both pitches are for very switched-on clients who really know their stuff and have ambitious goals for 2010. So, fingers crossed.  

However. My fondness for snow came to an abrupt end this weekend.

 

When my girlfriend skidded on ice and crashed into an oncoming police car. You can probably find it on You Tube – lots of people with camera phones found the idea of smashing into a police car pretty entertaining.

I should say, no-one was hurt – just my no-claims discount. While the car is now languishing in the intensive care wing of the nearest auto repair garage.

But it does mean I’ve gone from walking through the snow as a novelty to walking through at as a necessity.

In theory, the footsteps are the same. Yet now, it doesn’t feel like I’m crunching through powdery white fairy dust in Narnia. It feels like I’m pulling my snow-laden boots through a scene from ‘Alive’. That film where they crash in the Andes and eat each other.

Anyway. Here’s to a happy new year in fundraising, with charities coming through the recession like the first snowdrops pushing through this long-lasting snow.

Oh look. Another poor analogy.