Designer Stephen Hitchins considers the associated miseries of making presentations, dealing with bloody clients and losing out on pitches

And when we finish here… how will you spend your day? It was the features editor of The Times asking the question very early one morning at a hostelry in the Strand in London. So I thought: Well, I’ve been a golf caddy, a road sweeper, a postman, a factory worker constructing telephone systems, a lecturer in art history, a shop assistant wiring cheese and patting butter, worked in the theatre, edited books – what’s changed? Not a lot really, I thought. Today I shall be looking for more work.

Life is a pretty random experience, and mine has been more random than many. But today, as on most days, I shall be preparing a presentation, giving a presentation, or working towards getting the opportunity to give a presentation: looking for work. The only recipe for a overcoming a lack of success is some very hard work, so I’d better get started.

It is said of Oscar Wilde that in a Greek oral examination he quickly satisfied the examiners with the quality of his translation, but was most reluctant to stop. ‘I want to see how it ends,’ he said. Don’t we all! Getting decisions out of clients is frequently difficult. Some sit on the fence for so long you would think the iron had entered their soul. Presentations, presentations, presentations… and so the days go.

Later. Clients! Don’t you just love ’em? I have just been rejected. Not, God knows, for the first time. It’s said to be character building but, in all honesty, I think my character’s built. Despite myriad flaws and obvious cracks in the masonry, the topping out ceremony of my personal build has finally been celebrated and the freehold is now (once again) mine. The structure will certainly not stand any extensions, conservatories or lofts (certainly not with my back); it’s too old, and I’m afraid that my reply to any building designers who suggest improvements is ‘what you see is what you get’.

A rejection. There will now be a period of silence while we feel sorry for ourselves. Arrghh! When will he be able to sit up and take criticism? At this point I usually adopt a suitably lugubrious countenance, one that does not actually require much practice – old golf caddies always look as though they have the burdens of the world on one shoulder, to counterbalance the enormous bag on the other.

I remember an early rejection. What the client clearly wanted was the language of the special offer and the typography of a cornflakes packet. We had given them Evelyn Waugh and Switzerland. Somebody goofed. You still find this; because at some point you failed to ask the right questions to get the right answers, you get it wrong. You learn when to cling to your convictions and when to let go…

I screamed deeply and inwardly. Acceptance of this rejection and the manner of it was in character. In this job you need calm. You can only survive the many downs by cultivating calm. Kurt Vonnegut, who seemed to have the measure of mankind (and I paraphrase here) would say there are two reactions to the drama of life, tears and laughter – and he confesses to settling invariably for the latter, as there’s less mess to clear up afterwards.

There’s always a lot to clear up after the presentation. Generally if you have not been careful you find you have tried to contain Niagara Falls in a coffee cup. The words, the phrases, the jokes, the epigrams that pour forth from you in such inexhaustible abundance, leaving the client gasping not only in admiration but for breath, leave you mentally and physically drained.

But there are in truth few things more enjoyable, for a man who is approaching middle age with the velocity of a Tiger Woods drive, than the enthusiasm conjured up by a big presentation.

Usually on the way back from Clientville I am subject to bouts of gastronomic nostalgia: the ice-cream-in-the-desert phenomenon that always comes on when I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. Oh, Normandy, oh for tarte tatin! To eat n a train or at a station buffet is to experience a chewable definition of the word ‘mediocre’, and sadly it is always at the end of a long day presenting ‘away from home’ when I am faced with this opportunity.

Why I find work so compelling is that I don’t know what lies around the next corner. It is one of the enduring charms of this design business. Every day there is a flutter of expectation. What may be required of me today? And goodness, there have been some weird requests in recent times. Nevertheless, if you get results you can walk on water. If you can’t, they’ll drown you in it. Was it ever thus.

‘Life’, as a friend once reminded Anna Ford, ‘is divided into drains and radiators. There are those who fill you with warmth and leave you happier than you were before… and then there are the others.’ It dawned on me recently that companies can be divided in the same way.

Some have people who answer the phone with a smile in their voice and a genuine wish to be helpful. (These firms are mostly overseas.) Others, surely because they know they’re going to be blamed, connect you to a person of no use at all who’s on voicemail, are guaranteed to raise your blood pressure instantly.

I’m about to go out to look for more work, so don’t call and listen to my voicemail, just email me.