One of the challenges I set myself is that, whenever something interesting or unusual happens to me, I have to find a ‘business lesson’ to use in my blog. Hopefully makes the ebb and flow of comms a tad more engaging for all concerned.

However, when I ended up in a French hospital with second degree burns this summer, I’ll admit the challenge seemed tougher than usual.

So I dug deep. And here’s what I came up with…

You see, Mr Day and I are keen rock and music fans – we travel far and wide to see the biggies – Coldplay, Dave Gilmour, Ed Sheeran to name a few in the last 12 months – and Robert Plant much looked forward to in December.

Which is why we were delighted to get hold of tickets to see the U2 Joshua Tree 30th Anniversary Tour in Paris in July. It was in the middle of our holiday and we were already in France and so we booked the new posh TGV from Bordeaux to Paris (2 hours nonstop can you believe?!).

We’d bought first class tickets – well, we were on holiday! – and were directed to a First Class lounge on platform one. After much prodding and poking at the natty complimentary French coffee machine in the corner, I managed to get our coffees sorted.

Hard to know what happened next – one minute my coffee was under the hot water tap … and the next it was all over me. I’ll refer you back to the title for a clue as to where the scalding water landed.

Thankfully we had changes of clothes to hand – and there was a loo close to hand where I could clean up the mess and access cold water. And it’s where I realised just how bad the burn was.

However, my attempts at summoning first aid from the lounge reception team were met with the offer of two paper tissues (I think they hoped we’d clear up the coffee from the floor!); plenty of French shrugging; and muttering about a pharmacy being 10 minutes away. So we looked elsewhere and the station’s client services seemed a reasonable bet. But, once again, we were met with more shrugging, saying that they hoped someone might be able to be there to help within the next 2 hours!

I have made a note never to have a heart attack at Bordeaux Station!

Not knowing what to next for the best – and not wanting to miss the show – we improvised dressings from what we could get hold of, dug out some Ibuprofen, jumped on the train and headed to Paris. We made tracks to the first pharmacy we could find and went on to French A&E the next day where, I have to say, the support we got was outstanding. All is now well and I’m 100% recovered you’ll be pleased to know. And the show was simply amazing! Not sure about Noel Gallagher as support, however. VERY loud.

So, back to my business message dilemma. And here is what I came up with …

Sh*t does happen in business. Things will go wrong. Systems failures. Money issues. Staff that let you down. A flood.

You’ve probably been led to believe that there are systems and people that will step in and help you out in times of crisis. And sometimes you’ll discover that the help amounts to nothing remotely useful at all and that you’re on your own.

Which takes us back to page one of the original business owner’s lesson: the person you can rely on the most  .. is YOU. Anyone else’s help is probably a bonus. Be self-reliant. Take the initiative. And own the responsibility for the solution – because no-one is ever going to take your problem as seriously as you do.