Thank you, who ever you are

Over the summer, I attended the Arts Marketing Association's conference where I caught up with some old friends and clients. I've been going to AMA conferences for nearly 15 years now, back to the days when marketing was called publicity, and there were probably no more than 100 people there. So it was with a mix of pride and frankly feeling very old indeed that I surveyed the 600-odd other arts marketers gathered for our annual bash, held this year in Newcastle.

One of the speakers was a futurologist, who posed some very interesting thoughts about life for cultural organisations, and society in general, in the years to come. However, almost straight after that session I saw two friends who both, in different ways, showed me that it's hard to predict the future.

One told me that the husband of a mutual friend had been made redundant earlier that week, something that came out of the blue to him as he was a high flyer in his company's HR department and had assumed, therefore, that he would always have some advance notice of any cuts to be made. With one small child and another on the way, this wasn't in their life plans.

And then I caught up with my other friend, who I hadn't seen for about a year, our last contact being just before her wedding last autumn. Four weeks later her new husband died from a blood clot, completely out of the blue. What do you say to a woman widowed at 30?