As things tend to in this office, it all began with a discussion about music. Both Adam and I play guitar. Him brilliantly. Me, less brilliantly (a lot less).  But it’s a passion, which means Rachel often has to endure one of us twanging away in the background, while she tries to get on with something more grown up.

“I’ve always wanted a banjo,” one of us said. Conversation ensued about the generally unsung nature of the banjo in these modern times. If you want to hear some real nice plucking and some damn fine country singing, let me recommend Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys’ album: Man of Constant Sorrow.  Guaranteed to put the “yeeha!” back into your day.

“We should buy a beautiful world banjo.” The other one of us said.

In the thoughtful silence that followed a rather nice idea was born.

“Let’s buy one as soon as we raise a million pounds for one of our clients.”

“The million pound banjo!”

Now, that was a thought worth holding onto. And we did. I’m not saying that the incentive of a banjo was the only thing that spurred Adam on to work his recent data analysis magic, but, gosh-darn-it, it must’ve helped. The appeal in question turned out to be a record breaker for our client, and a banjo earner for us. We’ve called our new instrument “Lucky”, though Adam insists there was no luck involved.

Now, it turns out that a banjo tunes differently from a guitar (tricky).  And plays quite differently (even trickier).  So there’s a lot of practice needed (poor Rachel!). The other problem is, we only have one banjo between two of us.

Guess we’ll just have to earn another million for another client. Any takers?