Last Thursday and Friday saw our group (DPE - that's Developer & Platform Evangelism) get together for a couple of days which we do quite infrequently. I think the Americans would call it a "retreat", but my take on fellow DPE friends is that it's more of an "attack". But then, I'm a paid up member of the 'late night drinking club' so I have my own perspective on things. (Actually, the LNDC is going through something of a Groundhog Day experience so this is a brief reminder to remember to fix that next time.) Anyway, my part in this is to make an idiot of myself in some kind of management revue exercise. I exceeded this time I think, and I won't go into detail on what it was.

But the meat of this particular story is that we had two of the best speakers I've heard from in one day. The first was Giles Long, a would-be Olympian turned exceptionally successful Paralympian when he suffered from cancer as a child. The second was Terry Waite, probably best known for his work in attempting to free hostages in Lebanon as the Archbishop of Canterbury's Special Envoy, and then who was subsequently taken hostage himself for a number of years.

I was struck by the symmetry of the stories. On the one hand, Giles had numerous struggles: the cancer of course, but possibly more profoundly the struggle to motivate himself to be the best - again - at a subsequent Paralympics at one point losing the faith and trust of those who supported him. On the other hand, Terry spent around 4 years in total solitary confinement, sometimes being tortured -physically and mentally - and his struggle was simply one of survival, with survival of the mind and spirit almost more important than the physical survival. That both sets of ordeals were of similar length but quite different spins my mind: one seeking to move from being normal to being extraordinary, the other seeking to move from a horrific set of circumstances to normality. Both told their stories with exceptional wit, acceptance and insight.

After we'd heard from these two heroes, someone said "What did you make of that?". It's a funny question because I just don't know. I couldn't, and still can't, think of similarity between their stories and experiences and mine. I once went to Darlington, and I know Giles did too but I think that's about it.

I think perhaps that sometimes you just know that it was better to have heard someone say something than it was not to. And I'll leave my reflection at that. For a different reflection, James tells the story of a photo - and it was a cracker.