Licensing Blog

Welcome to our Licensing Blog, which takes a light hearted look at our mysterious world.

March madness!(Posted: 01-04-2011)

Now that March is over it’s time to catch up on the activities of the last month.

At the beginning of March we went to Budapest for Advanstar’s Brand Licensing Central & Eastern Europe. Once again a well run, compact event which attracted decent visitors. I avoided getting stuck into the local drink (the Palinka) mainly because of the absence of the two people who usually lead me astray (one is pregnant – not by me! – and the other left his job suddenly in mysterious circumstances).

I did seem to eat a lot (but you’ll be pleased to know that anything that goes on soon comes off, and I’m still at my target weight after losing 3 stone). One restaurant had some strange offerings such as “Risotto mixed with spinach and chicken giblets”, “Roast pork and bacon gypsy way” and “Kurd balls” – Turkish or Iraqi Kurds do you think?

Settling down with a beer to watch the second leg of Arsenal v Barcelona with an esteemed LIMA official, I was educated as to how to make chocolate vodka. Bizarre. Having thought I was probably too old and untrendy for a drink like that I promptly made it the next weekend. It didn’t go quite according to plan, and I ended up with a solid concoction that, with the glass broken away, would have made a perfect chocolate vodka lolly. Having realised my temperature error, I now have a bottle of liquid Cadburys with a large kick.

Unfortunately we were unable to help mount a defence of our title at the Northern Light Fund quiz in Manchester. Can you believe we were actually working?

So the month closed with the Bologna Licensing Trade Fair. A flight to Venice, a hire car and a 2 hour drive and there we were. The only problem was a 7.30am flight, which meant getting up at 4am, which was really 3am as the clocks went forward that night. This show had grown considerably from its first incarnation last year, and had all the major Italian agents on show, and the advantage of extra visitors drifting in from the well-established children’s book fair.

I made a dreadful school-boy error on the second morning! Parked the car, put things on the roof, jacket on and walked off. Realised about 5 minutes later I’d left my sat nav on the roof. Rushed back – gone. Bugger. Many visits to the organisers and calls to the on-site police station yielded nothing. But lo and behold, got back to the car at 6.30pm to find a note in Italian slipped in the door telling us where it was. It’s almost enough to restore your faith in people. That saved us from almost certainly getting lost finding the hotel.

On Wednesday I found two Indian publishers in the book fair who were trying to look as though they were working while they were in fact following the India v Pakistan cricket world cup semi-final online. They have my empathy. Instead of watching the final tomorrow I’m driving to Norwich to an afternoon golden wedding party. You can’t chose your family…

I didn’t ask to sit in the Lamborghini that was on display, as I don’t think I’d have able to get out of it unassisted!

The sun of Italy was soon swapped for very limited visibility due to fog on the drive home from Gatwick at 1am Thursday morning. Our brakes were severely tested by a few deer who thought they had the right to cross the road on Ashdown Forest without lights!

I went into Morrisons supermarket yesterday to check out the Easter eggs and got some funny looks at the checkout when I bought 24! (to give to the boys at the last session of my winter cricket coaching course next week). I didn’t buy the licensed eggs – they were too expensive…