It's literally been going on too long

One of the things I do far too often is think about things too much. Well, that and I always try and find a humourous situation in stuff.

Being a Ray Mears fan and being the owner of a Sky+ box puts me in the great position of being able to watch the great man approximately 23.5 hours a day... obviously the 30 minutes left is for bathroom breaks and to stock up on fake fishy things and chocolate flavoured Collons.

Without going into too much detail, Ray Mears once said something in one episode that has stuck with me ever since and that I refer to every day. Honestly.

During an episode when he was constructing a kayak without modern tools he made the comment: "The thing with these old tools is that thay're not very ergonomic. I woke up in the middle of the night with terrible pain in my hands and this morning my hands are literally on fire."

Yep - poor old Ray's hands were literally on fire. Except they obviously weren't. So now every time someone misuses the word literally I take notice, as do my friends. And on top of that I now regularly make ludicrous statements that include the word literally.

Some examples I've overheard:
Commentary for football: "That goal has literally knocked the stuffing out of them."
In a news report: "Korea is literally the tip of the iceberg."

Some examples of ludicrous things I've said:
"I've literally been there 53 trillion times."
On the post here about being wired.
"My typos literally have a life of their own."
"I literally didn't stop, yesterday."
"I've literally just bought a ton of food to cheer me up."

The problem now is I'm finding it difficult to stop using the word 'literally' and when I hear others use it in a serious sense I can't stop chuckling and thinking of poor Ray's scorched hands. But I don't know whether I want to. I like having a smile on my face when someone says something. Even if it is a serious documentary about politics or something - the word 'literally' with still induce a smile.

Give it a go - go 'literally' spotting with me.

Hairy men are great

Last night I attended a great little talk thing at the ICA all about facial hair.

It was cool - me and Charlie bumped into Dan. My feeble attempt of a few days growth was overshadowed by both of them and some others in the room. I felt like a child with a bad haircut... although there's nothing new there to be honest.

As well as a live demonstration where a professional barber shaved a member of the audience, we had a panel talking about facial hair: how it has progressed and regressed over the years, how it's still a big taboo for women and Billy Childish telling us about some run-ins with the locals in Chatham due to his facial hair.

Of course all of this encouraged us to swap tales of first razors and ever decreasing sideburns (to the point of having the sides of our heads virtually bald - or maybe that was just me)...

Afterwards I had personally arrived at the conclusion that any successful facial hair needs massive sideburns a la Amos from Emmerdale Farm or Neil Young.

A good night.

Interlude #2

Following on from the monumentally successful Interlude #1 here, I thought I'd add some more little links.


For this one I told the recipients:

That some people need a hit;
Some people are in a God damn hurry;
Everyone loves Berries;
You need to make your consumers feel like putty in your hands;
Without [the product], life has no joy, no hope, no nowt;
We brainstormed a lot;
We worked very quickly indeed;
... but we never mixed our drinks.


I love doing this. It allows me to try and make my addled mind into something that has elements of logic attached to it.

A presentation what I wrote

I know it takes a while for blogs to take off - especially in this world where it seems every creative has one - so to my literally myriad* readers - here's a treat. It's a presentation that I co-wrote with Charlie and Rory (my partner for Fairbrand) and presented to the quite large Nike last week.

The purpose of it wasn't to answer the massive 'good/ green' debate but to cause some discussion and give some perspectives. From that point of view I think it was very successful.

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* In this case 'myriad' means literally 1 or 2.

A touch of glass

On Saturday I undertook the most British of pastimes. I watched a game of football.

This isn't a rare occurrence for me. I watch quite a lot of football... actually being a Newcastle United fan I should write "I watch quite a lot of football being played by the opposition" but we won't go into the quality on show by the team I support. That really would bore you to tears...

Anyway, Saturday was like any other away day. I met a friend, we visited a couple of bars, had a chat and then wandered to the game. We watched our team give glimpses of quality play (that led is into yet another false sense of optimism) and we walked our 3-0 losers. We then walked back to a bar, had a few more drinks and then went our separate ways. All very very normal to a football fan... and the result very very normal for a Newcastle United fan.

After leaving my friend I went and met another friend for a couple of drinks to wind down the day out. Only after raising a glass with him did I realise that it was nearly 8pm, I'd been out for nearly 8 hours and that was the first time I'd had a glass in my hand. Everywhere else had given us plastic drinking vessels. Even when we bought bottles they were decanted into a plastic. (Not enjoying entry-level drinks like Carling and Fosters leads to the issue of having a bottle of Beck's decanted into a pint pot. This obviously means you buy 2 bottles and get them poured into the same plastic which in turn means you pay £6 for a pint.)

The ticket for the game was £32, we spent roughly the same on beer each, the pies and hotdogs were £3 each and we had a padded seat. A highly middle class, expensive and sensible day out. Yet, it seems that we're not trusted with glass. Of course it only takes one incident to occur to set the wheels in motion, but where we were has a lot of 'Home Only' bars (particularly popular in London) - and as far as i could tell - they had glasses. So - is it only us uncouth heathens from the north that aren't trusted? Maybe the locals think that because we're from the north we're used to drinking from cow horns or something?

The power of a good presentation

This morning I had to give a presentation to my PGCERT class at St. Martins.
As Russell mentions here, planners do a lot of presentations. They sort of become second nature and you sort of know that you're ok at them.

But just once in a while you nail one. And you feel great for it.

Earlier in the week we (me and some friends/ colleagues) presented to a room full of big bods from a big-arse company. That went well too. I'll post that at a later date, but today I just wanted to put up the slides from the presentation today.

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And to add to it - I'm not going to put up any narration. There are only images and 2 slides with text. This isn't for any vainglorious attempt to show off my presenting skills (it only took me 15 minutes to sort out) - but probably to hightlight the fact that any successful presentation needs considered, accurate narration. Oh, and Flickr and access to a digital camera are essential.

If anyone is the least bit interested - get in touch and I'll talk you through it.

Optimate graphs

Yesterday I bought a gizmo for my scooter battery. My scooter is a good few years old and thus isn't in the best condition it could be. As soon as the temperature hits sub-continental (i.e. if it's not really sunny), the battery dies.

So I bought an Optimate. I'd had them recommended to me.

This image was on the back and it gave me a great sense that this gizmo knows exactly what it's doing. I can tell by these two graphs that I've got a quality product. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what they mean, but that sort of doesn't matter. They've gone to the trouble to put them on the packaging so it's good enough for me.

I'm just glad the instructions said "Plug it in and connect and the Optimate does all the work for you."

The power of music

What can I say. This blog post may be even more cliche than some of the others but I simply can't not write about it.

I'm wired this morning. I'm literally on fire. I have a presentation this afternoon that I'm working on, I have several other things to do and I didn't sleep last night because of it so have ended up on the black coffee. All of that means I'm wired. Very wired.

So I'm working away thinking about big words and marketing speak when all of a sudden I hear 4 twangs on a guitar. I stop typing. I hear it again. It's the same 4 twangs Russell says here is his favourite guitar sound.

Shine on you crazy diamond is being played a few desks away.

It's not very loud and as I type I can only hear little snippets of it. That matters not because I can fill in the gaps mentally. I know the song very well, but not as a product, as an experience. An experience that it takes me on every time I listen to it.

So now I'm wired - but in a really nice way. I'm remembering Live 8, Earls Court and the first time I heard the song and sat down and realised I'd found 'my' band. My sound. An extension of me created by others.

Marketing Nonsense

I'm not going to write too much about this because I don't really want to add any undue publicity to something this crap.




This email has just landed in my Inbox:


Ignore the pompous knob and the terrible graphics and focus on the line above. For those that can't read it it says: "theTrainline. Here's something we thought might interest you..."

Now forgive me if I'm missing something but if I use public transport do I want emails about Ultimate Trading Secrets? To me this type of marketing is exactly the type of stuff that should be culled from existence. There simply is no connection between the 1st party and the 3rd party - certainly not in the eyes of the consumer. It's junkmail pure and simple.

I thought Amazon contacting me 6 months after I'd bought a travel guide to Lisbon telling me that a travel guide to Lisbon was getting good reviews was silly (considering I'd been there a fortnight after buying the book as most people would?) - a but a travel company sending me information about Ultimate Trading Secrets? Maybe they're taking tips from George Agdgdgwngo?

Pasties and pies

Whilst at St. Martins yesterday I was discussing pies with a group of students. We've all got pies somewhere on our radar when it comes to food preferences. For me, they're about mid way up (or down) on that list. For others they're closer to the top, and for some they're very close to the bottom. As I'm from the North I sort of grew up with them. Not in a literal sense of course - I have no experience of sharing emotional memories of childhood with a crustcovered meat product.

Anyway - enough of that.

When I was discussing the humble pie with the students (who were all from foreign shores) it made me think how much we take for granted in normal day to day humdrum stuff.

The project I set them involved them visiting a pie house. This was for a few reasons but mostly because I thought they would learn something from it. You see, as far as I knew, the students had never tried a pie before. So for students from Taiwan, Korea, USA and France (to name a few), the experience of going into a pie room was completely new to them.

They embraced the experience. They bought a pint of bitter from the bar downstairs, had a pie, and ordered some Spotted Dick. They didn't even have a clue what Spotted Dick consisted of, but they ordered it and liked it... although they'd also never heard of the term 'pudding' instead of 'dessert.' (And were positvely confused when I told them I called it 'afters.')

So why do I write this? Well, for many reasons but firstly because pies and pasties are products that have been refined over years and really are a perfect type of product. The students were enthralled when I told them why pasties had a large crust, and that there are many different types of pies. Of course it goes both ways - now when people buy their branded pasty at the train station after a few pints - they don't want a crust. The experience has followed a new reality. Working down the mine has been replaced by eating on the train, so people want a product that they can eat quickly, quietly, that doesn't smell much and that won't drop too much on their workshirt.

Is that evolution? Is that progress? I don't know - but I'll tell you one thing - chatting to people who aren't used to your customs is so interesting. It's something I've never really thought of. I had to explain aspects of a foodstuff that I'd taken for granted all my life, and it made me analyse it in a way I'd never looked at it.

So maybe there should be a course called "Talk about normal stuff to people who don't know what your normal is." I'd sign up to it.

Geezers, beasts and commies

Christmas seems like such a long time ago. The office has been mental, as has stuff going on at St. Martins.

OK, enough of the excuses. I want to post some photographs from my Christmas break, and I wanted to justify why it's taken me about a month.

This is a present my brother-in-law had bought for him. It has a Magic Hair Wand. How ironic! A Christmas gift that someone bought for him based on communism! You couldn't make it up... (obviously said in a mock cockney accent.)

Geezers Palace - spotted in Hunstanton on the Norfolk coast. I actually made Mrs. Hadfield do a detour when I saw this in the distance. Rather strangely for a faux Egyptian menswear shop, it had loads of pairs of Crocs in the window.

Just along the road is the aptly named Rock 'n' Puff. It sells rock and cigarettes. When I retire I'm going to cut out pieces of paper that have products written on them and put them all into a hat. I'm going to get my wife to pull 2 out and I'm going to open a shop selling those two items. I've always fancied myself owning a shop that sells mackerel and moleskins.

A few miles away in the Isle of Wight this caught my eye. I would love to know what constitutes an amazing beast. Being brought up the North East, I immediately start thinking of various bars on a Saturday night... but we won't go into that.

And lastly (for now), on the way back from the Isle of Wight I had a sudden attack of jealousy. Fred Dibnah was a legend. I love watching his programs but I never got to meet the man. These people did. I was half inclined to put on my fake commie beard and stuff Crocs in their exhaust.

Chopsticks for kids

I spent new year with Mrs. Hadfield and a friend, his wife and their son.

Whilst me and my friend are uncouth heathens from the wasteland that is the North East of England, he actually met his wife in South Korea. One of the benefits of this (from my very selfish point of view) is that whenever we meet up we're always treated to a superb spread of Korean food.

This suits me down to the ground because I love the stuff. The majority of it is very healthy, satisfying and about as spicy as I like things to get. Personal favourites are kimchi (unmistakable, very very good for you, nice and spicy) and the red bean paste that accompanies so much of their food. Stick whatever you want in a lettuce leaf, add some red bean paste and shove it in your mouth. Magic!

What interested me just as much as the food where the kids chopsticks that their son was using. We've all seen the kiddies knives and forks - with kinks in them so the kids can get (at least some of) the food into their mouths. Well, I was asking how you can teach children to use chopsticks and my friends pulled out these amazing little things with finger holes in them. Their son loves using them! I must confess I had a go myself.

I mean look at these - how cool are they!

Buying some CDs

--Cliche blog post alert--

Yesterday I did something I haven't done for an embarrassingly long time. I physically went into a shop and handed over payment in return for a tangible item that has sound encoded onto it.

And it was great!

I know that some of my friends don't download music, and I know they don't do it for various reasons. I download nearly all my music. It's convenient, quick and cheaper than buying tangible versions. Plus, there's less packaging.

However, yesterday I popped into Sister Ray on Berwick Street and I sort of found it difficult to leave. There just seemed to be so much there that I wanted to buy. I wanted to buy loads of CDs of bands I hadn't even heard of... and I wanted to buy them purely because their CD was in front of me. Their names had feeling, and a story - they weren't simply a line of text with no identity. I picked up the CDs and had a look at the track listings... written in different fonts, in different colours and in different sizes. I didn't have to worry about what bitrate the songs were encoded with - I simply picked up the CD I wanted and took it to the counter. Then, faster than I could download it - it belonged to me.

A while ago I really got into Neil Young. The man is a legend pure and simple. I went online and downloaded his full back catalogue in a couple of hours. It's great. I now think I've missed a big opportunity. You see, when I was a young lad I used to only be able to afford a CD a week or so. It's probably not that different now, but now I can have the main content of the CD for free quite easily. But easy isn't always best. I used to sit and listen to the CD for the first time in a room alone from start to finish. And I'd look through the booklet and take in the full sensory experience. When I was in Sister Ray I realised I didn't even know what the album covers looked like for Neil Young albums that I love. That's a very bad thing.

Now I'm not saying that I'm a re-convert (is that even a word?) - merely that I see buying a CD as a form of entertainment. It used to be a chore - now I really enjoy it. And it's sort of an exciting risk to buy stuff I've never heard of but like the look of. I may ask Charlie if there are any good CD swap sites... you know - one where I buy a CD purely from gut feeling, don't like it, and then swap it with someone online.

So, You! Do your duty! Buy CDs.
(Well, at least from small independent labels, anyway... major label are a whole new blog post in themselves...)

Posters in Times New Roman

Today is a momentous occasion and a day that shall forever be remembered in the history books.

Yes, today is a day to celebrate posters that use the Times New Roman typeface.

This is one I snapped in Brighton a couple of weeks ago.

We need to document the use of this influential design style for future generations. The default Word typeface is a thing of beauty that all aspiring creatives use and we should celebrate it.

So, with this in mind, please get snapping and add them to my Flickr group that is here.

Interlude #1

There now follows an interlude. This may become a regular occurrence. It may be a one off.

What I like to do here at work is to have fun. Apparently it's good for you to laugh... well, until some big-pharma sponsored quack comes out and tells us it's not.

Once in a while I send out an email to a client that has a few links in it... nothing intellectual - but something to give them a big hearty gut laugh.

Now whilst I can't divulge who they go to for the obvious reasons, I can put the links up here. Without the narration it'll have to be a list of links... think of it as a Pandora's Box of inspiration. That's the way I see it.

Today's email had these links in:
Turn off the TV.
Some very good, nutritious food.
... but not as good as Masterchef.
Ask how much the fish is.
The best Chinglish I've seen.
Don't follow others - initiate.
I've worked one harder than last week.
I'm a catch by anyone's standards.
It's possible to get inspiration from anything.
I like serious TV.
Meetings are critical.
and lastly... I like letters.

The Postprandial Dip

As the people who know me can testify - I'm not a particularly rotund kind of gentleman. However, it has to be said that I like my food and would gladly eat at any given opportunity if it wasn't so bad for me.

When I'm working I tend to eat very sensible things and do the stuff that you should do: drink lots of water, get up and walk about every so often, sit with a good posture and all the other things...

But there's a point to this post, and that point is called the Postprandial Dip.

Even when I eat a small amount of food I feel like I could quite happily curl up into a ball and have a sleep. Now, this is worrying especially when - like Northern Planner - you have trillions of things to do, you're not sleeping properly and you've just moved into a new office. But this got me thinking - are most people like this? What about people in places of public responsibility? Would the storyline from Airplane! have been improved if it wasn't the fish that had made the pilots unable to fly but the Postprandial Dip?

I want to work. I've got some really interesting stuff on the go. I want to work hard so I can sleep better. But every time I eat I want to go to sleep. The WCs here are a decent size, but even I'd be pushed to curl up into a ball in there... the floor is too cold.

Inspiring the next generation

As part of my progress as a professional and to try and understand humanity a little better, I do some tutoring at St. Martins College on an MA course. As part of this I'm currently studying again, too. I'm working toward a Postgraduate Certificate for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Sounds all impressive but it's not really.

Since the Dearing Report in 1997 it's now compulsory for all teachers to partake of this certificate. What this means is that the PGCERT is attended both by people who have been teaching for 20-30 years and have been forced to study the certificate, and by young(ish) forward thinking, relatively inexperienced teachers like me. The PGCERT is the Higher Educational equivalent of the PGCE - for those that are interested in that kind of stuff.

Anyway - in my lesson on Friday we were discussing the fundamentals of Action Research and Pedagogical Theory... this was the pseudo-architectural response by some of the more experienced members who aren't really there by choice.

Well, here we are then

So here we are. The first post on a new blog. Always a momentous occasion.

OK, to those that don't know me I'll tell you a bit about me.

I'm in the wrong end of my 20s, I'm married, live in an undesirable part of London and support Newcastle United. For four days a week I work in a marketing company in soho as a planner. The other 3 days are spent tutoring at St. Martins College, studying a bit at St. Martins College and running a consultancy called Fairbrand with a partner. Oh and I sometimes get to spend some time with said wife.

This blog is going to be about all of that stuff.

It may sometimes contain posts where I'm trying to be intellectual.
It may sometimes contain posts where I'm trying to rationalise someone else who is intellectual.
It may sometimes contain posts where I'm trying to explain something interesting.
It may sometimes contain posts where I'm trying to understand the circus that is NUFC.
It may sometimes contain posts where I'm trying... simply trying.

So there you go - a bit of everything. Hopefully some of it will be interesting to you.
What I do post is independent of any companies/ clients I work for. Every planner seems to write that line and to be honest I was sort of excited about writing it.