Discovered that Mike Harrison has got his website act together - some interesting reading matter there. And it lead me on to They Fight Crime… which was nice.
Archive for November, 2001
I had a wonderful brand experience today(!) Real cluetrain stuff.
Just happened to get my home insurance renewal from Royal Sun Alliance (or More Th>n as they’re now known) at the same time as a piece of junk mail from the Prudential. I noticed that RSA we’re still charging me for rebuilding costs of £275k on my buildings insurance, rather than the £210k that it should be, and the resulting cost made up most of the nearly 600 quid they wanted to charge me. So I rang the Pru.
The guy I spoke to was wonderful - very friendly, chatty, obviously not sticking to a script, and explained to me like an intelligent human being how it could be that their insurance differed from RSA’s, and which bits of their offering could prove a problem or not be as good. He even apologised profusely when I had to go and fetch Lolly, who had just woken up in the cot near me, and… well, was just human generally. Thumbs up to the Pru.
Oh, and I saved 200 quid.
Having a revelationary mental states day. Erm… something like that. Been trying to adapt to being at home and looking after the kids, and getting to know Lolly better, but it’s been hard. Then today I took Lolly out for most of the day - carried her around in my arms rather than taking the pushchair. It was great - got to talk to her and look at each other and interact, all things I couldn’t do with her facing the other way in the pushchair. And now I feel like my mental state has clicked properly from London/Sheffield/work/blah mode into family mode. Then this evening, trying to work on stuff, and wondering why it’s taking me so long to make any kind of progress, I realised that I have slid over the past couple of years from programmer/production mindset into manager/troubleshooter mindset, and I flit from one job to the next applying my touch but don’t just let myself immerse myself for hours, days, weeks in one project and keep it all in my mind so I can chip away at it. So next I need to work on getting back some of that tenacity.
Spent far too long on this. High score, 14.8 seconds.
Had a great weekend with Lola.
David, whose flat I borrow when in London, was back in the UK for 1 week before returning to Canada with his new wife Andrea. We were going to miss their wedding party, due to lack of babysitters, but wanted to catch up with them anyway. Then Gill got ill and decided to stay in Sheffield, and Rowan opted for the easy life and decided to stay with her (in the end they both went to see Harry Potter. Without me. Grrr).
So Lolly and I drove down to London (in car minus stereo, as it was nicked last week - made for a slightly dull journey, but I managed to sing a few songs to Lolly). We turned up at David’s flat (which, for most of the last 2 years, has been my flat) just before he had to go and negotiate with the housing association - they had decided he wasn’t around often enough, and needed to spend a bit more time in his flat if he didn’t want to lose it. The meeting didn’t go well - they asked for 6 weeks notice before David left again (hard to arrange as his return flight was already booked for Tuesday) so, somewhat sadly, David decided to move out for good on Tuesday. It was a strange moment for both of us - he was losing his home of 10 years, and I was losing my London hideaway.
To cheer ourselves up we went for luch at The Spitz, Spitalfields. David and I had roasted cod on mashed potato with fennel & red wine jus (or something like that), which was very pleasant but not completely filling. So we had to cadge Spitz chips off Andrea and Andy (another friend who was up from Glastonbury for the party). The chips were phenomenal - hard to believe that they could find a potato big enough to make a chip that large.
Afterwards we wondered over to Brick Lane and visited the clothes warehouse on Cheshire Street.The place was piled high with naff kitsch clothes, apparently shipped over in containers from Canada (I asked David why he didn’t just buy them in Canadian thrift stores, but apparently they’re cheaper here). I couldn’t resist picking up a few dressing-up clothes for Rowan, including a superb Michael-Jackson-style 1980s red leather jacket.
We returned to David’s flat and started to divvy out the possessions, as there was far too much for David and Andrea to take back on the aeroplane, even with Air Canada’s generous baggage allowances. I bagged a tuner (something my stereo system’s needed for a long time), some books and comics, and David’s Kilt (memorabilia from my first Bone Turtle performance).
Next stop was Steve and Sue’s, to say a quick hello and visit 10-day-old baby Jade. Then back West to my parents’ house for rest and recuperation.
Lolly woke me at 7am demanding breakfast. As nobody I know in London was likely to be up before midday on a Sunday, I decided to make and early start and head back for Sheffield. As we got onto the M25 I thought “I can’t be bothered to drive right around to the M1 - I’ll take the M40 instead”. Once on the M40, this thought was supplemented by “it should be getting on for lunchtime by the time I hit Birmingham, and Lolly will probably be awake again by then. We might as well check out the city, as I haven’t been there in 10 years”. This we did, driving around for an hour in a fruitless search for nappies before parking up and finding somewhere to eat. We passed the rear of a restaurant (Bank), quick swish-looking but with several families dining, so I thought we’d give it a try. Turned out to be a little more upmarket than I thought - we were asked whether we had a reservation and my name taken by the Maitre’D before being shown to our table. Still, the staff were very friendly and Lolly enjoyed herself.
After the restaurant we visited the National Sea-Life Centre next door. Lots of fish and other water creatures, and I think Lolly enjoyed herself almost as much as I did.
Then time for more thinking. “We’re halfway across the country already, and right next to the M6, why not pay a visit to Hannah and John in Liverpool?” which is what we did. Much of their house still looked in the same state as last time we visited, but the bits that had been worked on looked absolutely flawless. Hannah knocked us up some baked avocado and a cup of tea, we chatted for a bit and then set off across the Snake Pass back to Sheffield, and were home in time for Lolly to go to bed.
And I took my camera with me, so we ended up with another Life entry.
Not quite sure what’s going on here but it looks kinda fun
Had some skunk last night. Not something I normally enjoy all that much… bit of a last resort really (and, hey, still a class A drug despite recent relaxation on Cannabis laws). But… d’you know what? It was actually quite an enlightening experience. Apart from the stoned walk back through Pitsmoor (dodgiest part of Sheffield) at 11pm with £3 grand+ of electronic equipment on my back, I felt quite relaxed and, once I got to bed, my mind was, what’s the word?… fertile! Had loads of useful Flash thoughts for various incipient Flash projects (I lay for half-an-hour, listening to the wind whistling around the house and disturbing the wind-chimes even though we tried to hide them from the wind as best as possible, and thought "I hope it’s this windy tomorrow night - I’m gonna record all this for background sounds for Mount Fuji [the Hirogishe woodblock print which is to become Bradonpace’s website). Then I managed to structure Liv4now’s branding proposition in my head, had some thoughts on personal websites… loadsa stuff really.
Shame not much of it stuck in there until morning, but even with what did remain I’ve got plenty to be getting on with….
Aren’t train journeys wonderful things? Used mine as an opportunity to update my life photo albums - added pages of photos from Terry’s birthday dinner, my latest visit to London, trips to the local parks with Rowan and Lola and Guy Fawkes night fireworks (like below only moreso).
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