Any Point

In the middle of the night last night, I had a power outage. I overslept because my alarm clock is electric. I got out of bed swearing because it was so bloody cold, the gas central heating needs electric to start it. I couldn’t warm the kids bottles because the microwave wouldn’t work, the hob is electric. Try explaining ‘no electricity’ to a 10 month old hungry boy.

I tried to phone the electricity company, but my house phone is wireless, requires electricity for the base station. My mobile works, but I don’t know who to call. My bills are sent to me digitally, of course. My laptop turns on, because it has a battery, but the wireless router is electric. What next?

I am British, so I decide to make a cup of tea, that always gets me thinking. Bugger. Can’t do that.

I had better wake the wife up.

I ask her who our electric is with, as there is none, and she says ‘Oh, I think it is Eastern Electric. Or Western. No, no, actually, it’s East Western Electric. Or EDF. I’m not being very helpful am I?’ She gets out of bed, and finds a bit of paper in the bottom of some draw somewhere which tells us that we are with Northern Electric. She was close. I call them up at 7.15am, and they are shut, but if we have an emergency, or no power, we need to contact our network supplier, which is clearly stated on the front of the utility bill. Oh, for the love of God.

The 3 year old is trying to turn the telly on for cartoons.

The 10 month old is screaming for warm milk, won’t have the cold stuff out of the rapidly defrosting fridge.

The wife is bleary eyed tying to make a cup of tea. Switching the kettle on and off.

Very rarely do I end up in a situation, where I haven’t got any answers. This morning I was scuppered, because I had no digital connections. So I got on my bike, which doesn’t need electricity, and went to work, where there is electricity, and turned on the laptop, which had power, and got the internet, which was connected, and found all the answers right there, in 2mins flat, and made all the phone calls from work, 61/2 miles away from my house.

It made me realize how helpless and pathetic I am without digital connections.
How the hell did our parents survive, and even bring us up, without digital connections?
What will our kids be asking, when they have the technology they have in 20years time, and look back at us poor troglodytes living in the dark ages?

I need a cup of tea.

Not dead, but still massively slack at updating this blog. I do however microblog, my Twitter is updated fairly regularly to give me that feeling of warm connectiveness. Check out who else Twitters - The UN Secretary General, how nice of him. I would love to believe he does it himself, sends a text to twitter at the beginning of all his meetings.

Lately I have been working on a few things, one has illustrations in the style of a personal favourite, Miroslav Sasek and another that uses extensive 3D modeling and Motion Control cameras and green screen. That one was torture.

Some people have been giving me grief about not doing any blog posts. I didn’t even realise anyone read it. So to prove I am not dead, here is one.

It’s Christmas. Personally I am not a fan of bringing an outside tree inside and sticking lights on it, I think in makes us all look like bloody idiots. And all that sending folded up bits of cardboard to everyone we know, what’s all that about? But I do applaud London for doing a good job with the old decorations this year. Lets forget Oxford Street, which has done the same old crap of sticking up some twinkly Disney movie promotion.

Regent Street has gone for this techno, interactive globules, which are supposed to change colour depending on the movement of people and temperature etc. I’ll believe that when I see it, it just seems to flicker a bit if a bus goes by, and that could be down to dodgy wiring, but it is a good effort none the less.

Carnaby Street always do a good job, and they haven’t disappointed this year again, with huge paper chain. (top pic)

My favourite, however, is Covent Garden, which is truly enchanted, and not the Disney kind of ‘Enchanted’ either. With the smell of roasted chestnuts and the classical music busker’s, it is a place I would like to take my Old Dear to for some mulled wine and a mince pie. There is also some great big art, of which I am always a sucker for, in the form of huge baubles. They didn’t used to be in a cage to begin with, but I suspect drunkards have been frolicking with them too much.

And here is the Brixton entry. Nil Points.

I am going to be leaving my job at Dare, which is quite sad for me, as it has been a cracking job, hopefully I can feel the same about the next one. Look out Agency.com.

I started clearing out my desk, as it is full of 18 months worth of crap, and I came across this in my notebook. It is from my very first day at Dare, I was asked to help out on a pitch for the Talk To Frank website. You can just see in the top left hand corner where I wrote down the names of the people who were in the meeting with me, so I didn’t embarrass myself by forgetting their names - Yasmin, Mark, Phil, Flo and Jane. Mark being Mark Collier and Flo being Flo Heiss, who both part own Dare. I have used this peice of paper to help me remember their names ever since.

The bottom right crappy looking scamp is where the idea for the home page started to take shape, and ended up looking like this. I think you will agree, that the scamp is an uncanny likeness to the final site.

This ran in the papers on Sunday after our valiant loss at the Rugby World Cup. This of course is not quite as satisfying to see as the Wilkinson ad last week.

England 14 - France 9.

Always good to have a topical ad on standby as this ad proves when it ran in The Observer yesterday. Heh heh.

I went to the new Wembley for the first time at the weekend, and we decided that we would take the long way round to our seats and approach from the Olympic Way, as we wanted the full effect, I was expecting to be in awe.

All five of us who went were left feeling a bit cold, I found the place fairly unimaginative, huge and stark. The arch was great, but that is where it ended for me. Inside was just concrete, the underside of the roof looked like the inside of some cow shed, grey and bland. There didn’t seem to be any details considered. The outside was a lot of glass, but there was no colour or character underneath it, you look straight through on to grey concrete again. I have heard that if it were at night, it would be illuminated the participating teams colours, which would have certainly helped the otherwise grey canvas.

It also seemed to be situated in emptiness, all around there was just flattened rubble, which I assume will be developed to give the area more stature, but nothing seems to be happening as yet?

Maybe it is a place that you will learn to love, but for me, for now, the stadium is way overpriced at £800m. The Emirates is a nicer gaff (I hate to say that being a Utd. supported) That looks much nicer on the approach, and in close up, more considered, on time and on budget.

Here is something I have been doing at Dare. We have decided that the best way to mark the launch of the Woolworth’s Big Red Book across the UK, is to try and launch Big Red Books across the UK, using a 25ft catapult.

Prizes to be won, and funny sheep puppets to watch if you go here www.bigredbooklaunch.com

I remember seeing the Kia-Ora Orange cordial ad, must have been way back in the mid 80’s. I thought it was so great that I recorded it on Mum and Dad’s VHS video recording system. I sat there flicking through the channels, actually, there was only one channel at the time with adverts on, ITV. So I was sat there waiting for the adverts on ITV, with my fingers hovering over the record and play button on the VHS remote control (that was attached to the video by a long wire , how cool?) Eventually I got it.

Well, now there is a SKY ad on telly, and I am sure the writers were thinking of the Kia Ora ad when they came up with this. This ad made me smile, probably only because I was thinking of the crows. I am always wary of corporates advertising about how green they are, it’s usually a load of bollocks.

The original, however, is still the best ad ever in the history of telly.

A pet hate of mine is people who litter, people who can’t be bothered to walk across the road to a dustbin to rid of their rubbish, just as they would walk across their living room if they happened to be in the opposite corner to the bin at the time when they had rubbish in their hands. They wouldn’t just do that lame, ‘if I let it fall out of the back of my hand as I am walking, people will forgive me as they will think it is accidental’ in there own home, so why do it in their own cities?

Another thing that goes hand in hand with that is the chewing gum people spit out on the floor, no matter how clean a street is, it always looks grubby because of all that gum on the floor. Now boffins have developed a gum that does not stick, and degrades in rain water. Genius. Let’s just hope it doesn’t taste like crap, and authorities make it compulsory for confectioners to use the technology.