Ann: Changes to Perenti Group Executive Committee, page-39

thanks for your feedback on being a fantasist - I'm actually in a really good place right now. I don't mean metaphorically, I mean I've got an outside table at il lido, and a gentle sea breeze is blowing and the gigli and neri wine were a perfect pairing*

You remind me of an old colleague Dave and his feedback for Carl**. Dave used to say "Carl, you're stupid and acting badly, and I'm giving you feedback."
"No," he'd say, "I've thought about this, and I'm on a higher plane than you and I'm giving you this gift of feedback. Feedback is a gift, Carl."
"Yes," he'd continue, "it's a gift and you're not open to accepting it."
"Feedback is a gift, Carl. Feedback is a gift. I'm giving you a gift. Feedback is a gift."

So, my existence seems real, but there are many elements of it, like the pool at Hubertus, or cycling up the Stelvio in sunshine in the second week of October, that seem like a fantasy. So is it real or a fantasy? Companies are an agreed legal fiction, so that's a bit like a fantasy, but I really do have shares in them; and just occasionally (ie once) those shares become worth 50,000 times what I paid for them. I'll keep asking if it's real or fantasy.

Yes, I'm an idiot. I think we all are, we just don't know what it is that's making us an idiot. The Russian novelists knew this and wrote a book to explore it, it's called "The Idiot".

*Note: this isn't my gag, I got it from the Bell Tower Times but they were referring to a seat in the window at Vans.

**Note: these are their real names. Carl's responses are omitted because they're not important here, because Dave wasn't listening, he was trying too hard to "give" Carl feedback.