{"id":3895,"date":"2026-02-25T13:57:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/?p=3895"},"modified":"2026-04-21T16:09:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T15:09:21","slug":"fake-businessman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/fake-businessman\/","title":{"rendered":"Task 3: A Fake businessman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

 Profound thought for the Task<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside, it is deep within you, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.
– Eckhart Tolle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The Task<\/strong><\/em>: Dress-up as a businessman and go to the local pub pretending to work<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s been a few years since I was a businessman (maybe 18 !), and so my businessman outfits are no longer in my wardrobe. I’ve got a suit but that is light grey for weddings and also two sizes too big for me now. For the last wedding I bought a darkish jacket to accompany a white T shirt, denims and trainers Very trendy (probably not) at the time but not very businessman-y. Anyway I do have a pair of black chinos so I thought I could wear these with the blackish jacket that I also have, and a shirt that is unfashionable but can be hidden under the jacket. I don’t think businessmen wear ties anymore so I didn’t have to go through that hell, but I found some old cufflinks which fitted the brief I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I waxed my hair and pushed it back to make it look more greasy than an estate agent. I found my funeral shoes – dusted them off and they looked good as new. I decided not to wear glasses as I had imagined that I’d had my eyes lasered, but I did wear sunglasses even though it was a cloudy day. My old briefcase would have worked nicely for a 1990’s businessman but reckon today’s lot use man bags and trendy man-bags instead. So I got my small rucksack and put my laptop in and I found a nice belt for my chinos, tucked a proper pen inside my jacket, and found a watch to wear (which wasn’t an Apple-watch but who’d know from a distance!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It felt strange being adorned like that. I was a bit nervous walking down the street in case anyone spotted me. I decided to walk to the Rose and Crown pub, which is a decidedly non businessman pub as these days it prefers the footy and Reform <\/a>crowd. But it was only 3:30 so I thought I could go in there and sit anonymously while pretending to do important work on my laptop. At first I thought everyone was staring at me perhaps because they thought I’d walked into the wrong bar or perhaps because my jacket didn’t quite match my trousers. I toyed with the idea of buying a drink that a businessman would have (a large gin&tonic ?), but when I was a businessman I used to drink beer. Let’s have a good old pint of Harvey’s<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there I sat in the bar dressed to impress – laptop open and doing business. Actually I had real computer work to do so it was quite a useful hour or so. Nobody said anything – nobody commented and I didn’t get any strange looks. I noticed at one point another older bloke wandered up to the bar and ordered. His suit looked a bit out of place as well, and I wondered whether his wife had set him a similar challenge. We could start a club!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end I felt kind of comfortable being a businessman in the pub once more. I walked home with my head held high and proud of doing my challenge. It’s nice to get back in the jeans and T shirt though!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Your Local is a state of Being. Your Local is not outside, it is deep within you, and you cannot leave it. It is not dependent on how you dress, or some external businessman.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 Profound thought for the Task Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside, it is deep within you, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.– Eckhart Tolle The Task: Dress-up as a businessman and go to the local pub pretending to work It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eggbox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3895"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4323,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions\/4323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}