It’s one of those typical mid-September days with the sun shining and the temperature promising to push the low-20s by the afternoon. And I’ve got the day off.
We seem to have had a whirlwind summer that was gone before it was over, punctuated by two wondrous weeks in Italy and a weekend in Devon. And just as it was drawing to a close I found myself, for Reasons, booked into the European Society for Cardiology annual congress, which this year was held at the Excel in London, the weekend after the Bank Holiday. For work purposes, of course.
One of our clients has a drug for a certain cardiac condition, and it’s launching next Spring. So a couple of colleagues and myself had to work the Congress, catching up on all the latest data and checking out the competition. It was fun—ESC is my favourite congress, and I haven’t worked in the area for 4 years, so it was like coming home.
The funny thing was that many of the people I met were clients (and clinicians) who I’d last seen in the pre-pandemic days. Several of them told me they’d seen my name on an email, or heard it mentioned in conversation, and were happily surprised at the prospect of working with me again: “Richard? Richard Grant? He’s coming to ESC?”. I even got to talk to one of the big names, who was presenting trial results in a ‘Hotline’ session—he recognized me straight away (in front of a client) and I asked him a question about the study that he said nobody else had thought to ask, and we had a nice chat.
So that was gratifying, too.
I did have to work over the weekend (and stay in a hotel in Canary Wharf because of the trains from here not always being reliable or early enough), which is why I have a couple of random days off.
The work looks like it’s going to take off: in the run-up to launching a new drug there is a surprising amount to do, and especially in this ‘speciality cardiology’ (we’re not allowed to say ‘rare’ anymore, because it’s not) area. And, again for Reasons, I find myself having to build up my small team and be very involved in the day-to-day doing and running of the account, which isn’t quite the level I was hired at but is great fun and people seem to like what I’m doing.
In all, I’ve ended up being quite grateful for what happened in February.
And happily, Rhea has started laying eggs again. She essentially had the entire summer off, and got back on the job just after we got back from Devon and before I went to ESC. She’s our best girl.
