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When I Am Old

April 9, 2014 //
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There is a rather pleasing poem by Jenny Joseph called ‘When I Am Old’. You can read it here in Paul Coelho’s blog, who I gather is quite famous, with marginally more followers than me.

It’s a well observed series of things that you do when you start to attain the status known as ‘old’.  Here are the first half dozen lines to whet your appetite:

WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN I SHALL WEAR PURPLE


With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves


And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.


I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired


And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

I had one of those when I am old moments the other day. I was born with great eyesight, but as you get older your reading focal point gradually extends beyond your arms with the result that you can’t reach your laptop or your book and you need reading glasses.

I needed to paint our utility room after having some major work done in there. I couldn’t paint the skirting boards without using my reading glasses. It kind of takes the productivity and creativity out of an endeavour when you can’t see what you’re doing and you have to plonk the old ‘pince nez’ on. OK, strictly speaking my specs aren’t a pince nez, but I couldn’t resist throwing a French tag in there.

WHEN I AM  OLD I SHALL EAT MEALS WITH MY READING GLASSES ON

And look at you over them like a crusty college professor …

 

 

 

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Categories Communication, General

Why I Blog

April 7, 2014 //
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Why do people blog? There must be a myriad reasons. When someone likes a post of mine I check out their profile, and a lot of them are travelling the world and chasing the dream, using their blog as a way of communicating with peple, recording their activities, or even raising money for their lifestyle by advertising their lifestyle. Blog your way around the world! Make money blogging to fund your travel ! That kind of thing.

Here are four reasons why I blog:

– I enjoy writing

– It gives me the discipline of having to create content regularly and to deadlines

– I like the format and the 2-way, web 2.0 nature of the medium. Everyone needs a little dialogue in their life

– It gives me the platform from which to put my slant on the world as I see it, how I think it works, and how I think it could be improved

I hope you get something out of it. If you don’t, then I guess you won’t tune in. Quite right too. Your time is precious.

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Categories Communication, General

An Alternative Top 10 Film List

March 31, 2014 //
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I was chatting with an old mate of mine the other day. By old, I mean both his age and the length of time he’s been a mate, which as I write this is into its fourth decade. We got talking about films and he shared with me his all-time top 5. Describing it as an alternative top 5 film list is doing it a disservice. It’s not even iconoclastic, it’s just plain, well, odd. Maverick let’s say.

We’re both huge fans of the path less trodden in life, and this list certainly epitomises that path. I asked Baz – for that is his name – to expand his list to 10 and send it to me. I should stress at this point the genuineness of this list. Baz added: “I’d like to emphasise that these really are my favourite 10 films. Not for me the temptation to fill the list with ‘film noir’ and French language piffle I’ve never actually watched.”

Here for you, dear reader, is that list in descending order of favour, complete with helpful annotations. Brace yourself…

“1) This Is Spinal Tap (nuff said – Plato’s Form of a flawless film)
2) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (still have nightmares about the Childcatcher)
3) ABBA: the Movie (a thing of wonder, and I’m not just talking about Agnetha’s derriere)
4) Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (everything’s so wrong about this, it’s right!)
5) Murder on the Orient Express (I’m actually word perfect on this one)
6) Brimstone & Treacle (best soundtrack ever and Sting’s actually good!)
7) The Da Vinci Code (the perfect nonsense romp – who cares about the plot holes?)
8) The Wicker Man (the original, not the dreadful remake – plus Ingrid Pitt in a state of undress!)
9) Sink the Bismarck! (I won’t tell you how it ends…)
10) And Soon the Darkness (original 1970 version and the reason I sold my bike)

Citizen Kane was an unlucky four hundred and fifty seventh.”

Now that’s a list. You should acquaint yourself with its contents. I know I plan to, I’ve only half of it done.

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Categories General

The Global Phenomenon That Is Paddy’s Day

March 28, 2014 //
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I can’t explain it either, but it’s fascinating.

Why is St Patrick’s Day celebrated in such style and with such fervour in so many places around the world? Ireland boasts a diaspora of 70 million people, but that can’t be anywhere near the largest. Only the Chinese New Year comes close, and we’re talking about a national powerhouse of 1.4bn souls, fully 350 times Ireland’s population.

Paddy’s Day – and that’s not a pejorative term by the way, not is it ever St Patty’s Day, my American friends – doesn’t even occur on the weekend most of the time, yet still hundreds of thousands of Americans take a holiday to celebrate it and their Irish ancestry.

Ireland – and I’m talking about the Republic here; I’m mildly embarrassed to admit I don’t know much about Northern Ireland, except that it has great tourism advertising – seems to have cultivated the art of charming the pants off you while taking ever so small liberties. For example:

– a corporate tax rate that is the envy of most countries except the ‘offshore’ ones and the bane of the EU’s life

– peaceful nation status with a peace-keeping force, for the best of both worlds

– a genuinely warm welcome unless you’re English (an 800-year reversal of fortunes, let’s not go there) and then if you are it’s a genuinely warm welcome until they know you better

– the high wire act of leveraging a world renowned stout without getting bogged down by unhelpful links to alcohol and its abuse

– genuinely friendly and talkative while also using swear words like definite articles

– cutting edge in areas of business like IT, and antediluvian in its tolerance and memory of shady business and political practices

– great on innovation and entrepreneurship, less so on infrastructure and healthcare

– lovely scenery, without ever being out-of-this-world lovely as boasted by other countries 

For all these reasons Ireland is the most transportable of brands and punches way above its weight in cultural and touristic terms. How this translates into the global transplanting of Paddy’s Day once a year – beats me. I do love living here though…

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Categories General, Language, Marketing, Technology

Why the BBC Rocks

March 21, 2014 //
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Even though I live in the Republic of Ireland, my browser home page is always set to the BBC. It really is a very good website indeed. The broadcasting institution has undergone quite a few changes of late, but if you’re British it’s an inescapable and vital part of your life.

Here are 7 reasons why the BBC rocks:

– No ads.  Even though I’m in marketing, I love watching television on the BBC because you’re guaranteed uninterrupted coverage and no falsely imposed breaks of flow or thought.  You get ads on the BBC website if you view it from overseas, but who cares? That’s routine behaviour on the web

– Great value for money with the license fee. The quality of programming is still peerless. In Ireland you pay a similar license fee – and you still get ads. With Sky you pay a monthly subscription – quite a high one – and amazingly you still get ads, which I would find infuriating and a bit of a con

– Accessible to people in Ireland under a range of subscription arrangements, so us expats don’t have to go without

– Fantastic music montages. No-one caps off a televised event with a montage as good as the BBC’s

– Still the best documentaries around.  History, music, you name it

– Superb natural history content. OK, so I’m biased here and my brother does work in this area, but it’s still superb

– Flawless sports coverage and camera work. Think 6 Nations, the British Open, Wimbers…

They’re not perfect, but my they’re pretty close to it.

I do have a gripe that on the website you can’t see certain sporting footage because of licensing arrangements and you get the ‘UK viewers only’ message, but it’s a small gripe.

The phrase ‘thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded’ is sometimes used as a stick to beat the Beeb with. Not by me. We don’t know how lucky we are.

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Categories Communication, General

The Kindness of Strangers In Small Places

March 19, 2014 //
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One of the several things that I really like about where I live is that people say hello to you in the street. People you don’t know. Strangers.

I live in a small town – it would be considered a village in my native country – in the west of Ireland. It’s quite normal to say hello, smile, nod or exchange a view on the weather with people you don’t know a few times during a walk through the town. I really like it.

People are familiar with the friendly welcome of the Irish – cead mile failte, or a hundred thousand welcomes and all that – but I suspect you get this level of friendliness in all small places.

You don’t get this in a big city, at least in not a single one I’ve ever been to, and I’ve probably only been to a couple hundred in my life. People don’t make eye contact, their body language is self-protecting, they avoid making any kind of acknowledgement of your presence. Maybe this is because it feels like everything is transient, unsafe, or unfamiliar in a seething population, but to me it’s a pity. We’re social animals after all, and interaction with fellow humans improves our mood, most of the time.

Next time you’re out and about in a city, try saying hello to a couple of passers-by. Better still, when you’re in a city with an underground system, strike up a conversation with someone across from you, across the central walkway I call ‘the well of souls’. The looks you get can be hilarious:

‘What are you doing, talking to me? You’re breaking the code!”

‘What code?’

‘The unwritten code of the city. No talking to anyone you don’t know. Loser!’

Give me the kindness of strangers in small places any time.

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Categories Communication, General

The One Criteria That Gives You Away

March 7, 2014 //
6

Singulars and plurals: they’re usually really easy to differentiate, but sometimes they make you look like you’re not in command of your native language.

The most common one I hear in a business context is ‘criteria’. It catches folk out all the time. You see, criteria is a plural, and it’s not the kind of plural you can use in a singular context, like ‘data’ for example. You often hear criteria coupled with ‘success’, a popular entry in bullsh*t bingo.

So you have one criterion, from the Latin criterium and before that the old Greek kriterion, and you have multiple criteria from the Latin – you guessed it – criteria. Data has the same latin origins, but it’s so much part of our everyday language that it’s morphed into a collective singular noun and it’s quite acceptable to say ‘the data is awful’ for example.

Not so with criteria. You’ll hear even senior people in an organisation saying ‘which particular success criteria is the most important?’, which gives them away. Of course, mine’s the stiffer upper lip British diagnosis of the word. In other English-speaking territories, they’ve taken a slightly more lenient view. Then again you’ll sometimes hear people talk about the many criterias you can select from, yikes…

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Categories Communication, General, Language

The Business Joy of the Hand-Written Note

February 26, 2014 //
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I got a hand-written card today! From an organisation! I was so excited. The oblong hole in the front door is not just for bills after all.

Somebody had written me a personal thank you note and a different hand had written my name and address on the envelope too. This wasn’t from a friend or family; this was from a large organisation.

Yes, the good people – I always suspected they were good but now I know it – at Movember wrote to me personally to thank me for the huge sacrifice of growing a moustache for 31 days. Now there are thousands of people a year that raise money for this prostate cancer charity, and I bet we all got a hand-written thank you letter. Mine was from Sara and she signed it ‘Sara x’. Who cares if it wasn’t actually Sara, it’s the thought, and the perception, that counts.

I shall definitely grow a moustache for November 2014; they have me for another year, and another few hundred quid, with one thoughtful gesture.

Attention people who have customers – or people who want to stay on the right side of someone else: show you care by taking three minutes out of your day to write a card and envelope and why you appreciate them. You’ll need a stamp too of course, but if there is a better return for such a small investment, I don’t know what it is.

Incidentally, even if you’re not in marketing – or even business – you should dip into the daily genius that is Seth Godin’s blog. Here’s one of his best ever pithy-but-explosively-useful posts containing the handwritten thank you note.

Anyway, back to emails, the web and calls…

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales

What is it About Inanimate Objects?

February 12, 2014 //
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Inanimate objects are frequently the bane of my life. They just don’t behave themselves. Does anyone else feel this way?

I almost never lose my temper with people. It’s so rarely productive to blow up in a situation with other people.

Inanimate objects, though, are a different kettle of fish, to coin an animate phrase. I can be in a great frame of mind, and then catch a loop of something on a door handle, or have to untangle a set of wires, and I’m furious within a heartbeat.

Nowhere is this short fuse – going from happy to apoplectic in the space of a few seconds – more evident than when dealing with coat hangers, especially when they hunt in packs. They are the devil’s work and if I was ever invited on Room 101 they would be gone; gone I tell you.

It is, of course, completely irrational that I should get so worked up by something that can’t help itself or answer back. It’s not the mark of an intelligent man. I like to think it’s the mark of a slightly paranoid individual who thinks there might be something to conspiracy theories and plain bad luck after all.

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Categories Communication, General

The Importance of the Black Sheep

February 10, 2014 //
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Black Sheep

Black Sheep – No More Stigma

The old phrase ‘the black sheep of the family’ was never complimentary. The black sheep was the child that didn’t conform, perhaps underperformed, and was even shunned by their family and the wider community. There was a huge stigma attached to the term.

This was in the days – and to some people these still are the days – when standing out was not good. We should submit to the collective good and pull our weight for the team – or so the prevailing thinking went.

And submit we did: we did as we were told, we kept our heads down, and we made sure the peg went into the hole.

Except, we wouldn’t be any where near as far progressed as a race if it weren’t for the black sheep, those who dared to be different, or who simply were different. If there’s a recurring theme among the people who changed the world we live in, politically, musically, technologically, it is that they took the alternative, less trodden path and weren’t afraid to see where it ended.

While walking with family friends in Connemara on Ireland’s rugged west coast to survey the devastation after some particularly bad storms a few days ago, I came across the scene at the top of this post. A black sheep among white sheep, facing away from me and the only one unmoved by my proximity. A good picture, I thought, to support my view that far from there being a stigma attached to being the black sheep, it’s something to be celebrated for the difference, value and variety it brings to us all.

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Categories General
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