The Ladybird Book of the Meeting (Ladybirds for Grown-Ups)

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Ryan has decided this is not fair for a reason that will become no clearer over the next six days of his going on and on about it. So the next guide we need is one on how to dodge boring meetings without being noticed. Funny and entertaining as usual. It’s a practical text, using various scenarios to illustrate each point. These insights can’t be learned in a classroom. They’re the culmination of extensive experience in real world environments over many years. The authors begin by informing us that 'People at work spend a lot of the day in meetings', which can be true on occasions but I often found that meetings went on far too long as idle chit chat wasted so much time. And an interesting comment is that the refreshments provided can tell a lot about a meeting; fruit, for instance, can mean 'the meeting is very serious' [I must confess I have never been to a meeting where fruit was provided - sorry I have just remembered that is not quite true, I once went to a meeting at The Dorchester Hotel in Wimbledon fortnight and the organisers provided strawberries and cream - I think they wanted some concessions from HM Treasury!] while biscuits suggests 'it is a happy meeting'. I must confess when I chaired meetings in my office I never provided refreshments (other than carafes of water), it generally kept the meeting short. While still fundamentally good-natured and good-humored, these little mini-observations and pronouncements, which are teamed up especially well with the vintage drawings, strike a chord more often than not. Because each and every word is chosen with care, and because timing and tone is superb, this is one volume that particularly lends itself to rereading. A very nice effort.

Wills & Hepworth produced the very first Ladybird book titles during the First World War, including Tiny Tots Travels and Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales There will be some who eschew the advice given in the book, who see the challenges presented as an opportunity to develop new, prophetic solutions, and they will be blind to the true nature of the socio-economic driving forces that led to the current challenge orientated workplace. Coldplay's singer Chris Martin has spent weeks working with an important stylist. They have come up with an exciting look for the band's new tour.

The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. A small random road test would seem to bear out his optimism. Polly, an artist and former primary teacher, had given Hazeley and Morris’s How It Works: The Wife to her daughter for Christmas, while her partner received The Ladybird Book of the Meeting from a friend. She recalls using Ladybird books in her London classroom. “We were still buying On Volcanos in the 1990s: it was about finding books for kids who wanted to learn – often boys – which could act as a stepping stone to other books.”

I am glad it was all natural,' shouts Jasmine over the hissing and beeping and clanking and the hum of the lights.Kelly has had to come to terms with the idea that though they spent half their lives together, Gareth was not really paying attention for most of it.' With the 1980s, Ladybird broke away from now established tradition to produce many different formats. The Charles and Diana wedding book in 1981 - produced in five days and first on the streets - sold one and a half million copies The Climate Change book has a rather different purpose, to campaign for change in a politically treacherous area. “It is the result,” according to co-author Prince Charles, “of a conversation I had with a friend following my return from having spoken at the opening session of the Paris Climate Change Summit that took place in December 2015.” With a comic pomposity that could pass for a spoof itself, Climate Change not only has three authors but declares itself to have been peer-reviewed by eight learned meteorologists. Look out of the window. Can you recognise simple shapes or colours? Is there a moon or a sun in the sky? What sort of a name might you have? Where might there be bacon?'

To make this eccentric behaviour seem less like a cry for help or the beginnings of a substantial personal crisis, the do-gooder does it for charity. Of course some work meetings are vital and crucial for business, others are an utter waste of time.The Ladybird Book of The Meeting, by J.A. Hazeley and J.P. Morris, is one in a series of Ladybird books for grown-ups written to help them cope with the world around them. My daughter gave it to my husband on Fathers’ Day and it is the only book he has successfully finished reading this year. This probably says something about shortening attention spans in our modern world, or maybe just about him. For what it's worth, the books in this series are published in the U.K. as "Ladybirds for Grown-Ups". The "Fireside Grown-Up Guides" are now starting to be published in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster, and are fairly faithful adaptations. Either way you can find them, as Ladybirds or as Fireside Grown-Up Guides, these books are a hoot. Then there are examples of people making early morning arrangements to attend meetings [I once attended a so-called 'breakfast' meeting so I mischievously took in cereals and bowls] and then the meeting-speak is explored with all sorts of buzz words and phrases being used, many of which often were unknown to the participants but in my experience only rarely did anyone speak up and ask what things meant. Members of one meeting in the book delighted in using some of the new words and could not resist keep reusing such as 'upskilling'. So much so that another member of the said meeting commented, 'Jethro is really upcheesing me.' Elia created her own retro pictures, but Hazeley and Morris had the entire Ladybird archive to riffle through. The once cutting-edge illustrations had become a gift for pastiche. In The Ladybird Book of the Meeting – which has sold 165,000 copies – five middle-aged white men sit in earnest discussion around a table. The caption reads: “These important people are discussing work-place diversity.” The fun of the series lies in the relationship of mid-20th-century iconography aimed at children to 21st-century comedy for adults. And you sit there trying not to sleep, thinking about all the things you could have been doing with your time.