We spent the weekend doing very little. Lisa’s not up to much – feeling a bit rubbish, so we stayed in. I thought I’d make toad in the hole for Sunday tea, and made the batter before going out for a run.
I was a bit longer than I expected – mainly because a shooting had meant the police closed off some of the roads, and I had to take a detour. When I got back, Lisa told me she’d been helpful and put the batter on the sausages. She’d only realised a few moments later that she’d taken the wrong jug and accidentally covered them in banana smoothie….
Anyway….
George is still making a fuss when he doesn’t get his way, but we’re working on it – generally by ignoring him when he does it. Most of the time, he’s still a joy, though, and he continues to eat just about everything we present him with. He seems to love olives – rather strangely for a 15 month old baby, but still…. At least he doesn’t ask for them to be relaxing on a bed of rocket.
He’s starting to put things together – blocks, puzzles, ideas. He’s piling things up instead of knocking them down and he’s pretending too – feeding his toys with his milk bottle, and making the noises he associates with different animals. He’s using his own words for lions, snakes and elephants – by imitating the sounds they make… very cute.
Yesterday was pancake day – so we had a few people round bringing their own fillings and making pancakes. Actually Nathan made half of them and Sam made the other half so all we had to do was eat them.
We also got a chance to try out our Christmas present from Andrew – a chocolate fountain. Which was a real hit. Unfortunately, it takes a kilo of chocolate just to get it working, so you need to be able to eat a fair bit of chocolate coated fruit to make it worthwhile.
It’s not so easy to clean though, and does tend to coat most of the room and everyone in it in chocolate. Still, you have to make sacrifices.
I read this week that the average person in Switzerland gets through 500g of chocolate a day. That sounds like a hell of a lot… My suspicion is that this is how much is sold per day and that most of it goes to British people on holiday there, staggering back home with suitcases full of the stuff for their relatives….
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
fossil hunting in vegas
Ok – back from the frantic whirl of Vegas to what I’d like to call the real world.
I left London in the biggest snowstorm in 18 years. The snow made the whole of the South East grind to a halt, but for me, the worst problem was the post. Two deliveries I was expecting before I left didn’t arrive – one (a wireless microphone) I could do without, but the other, spare batteries for my new camcorder were essential.
I ended up with a practical, but annoying solution. I had to buy a new camera at the airport just to use as a charger and spare battery. Hopefully I should be able to re-sell it on ebay once I get the new batteries, and not loose to much money.
George is walking
When I got back to London, after a 10 hour flight, Lisa, Sam and George were there to greet me at the airport. George walked over to greet me.
Some time in the last week, he’s made the transition from staggering two steps and then falling over to being able to walk confidently wherever he wants. He’s now fairly steady on his feet and getting steadier every day.
It’s great to see him tottering about…
He’s also getting grumpy – more specifically, he’s crying instantly if he thinks you’re not paying him enough attention. He’s going to need to get over that pretty quickly!
The trip
I’ve spent the last week in America following a group of fossil hunters round and making a documentary about their visit to the world’s biggest fossil show and their attempts to dig up a rare species of trilobite…
How did it go? Well….
Vegas
We arrived in Vegas late, and the place really is larger than life. Everything’s bigger – even the queue for the check in desk at Caesar’s Palace for which we had to stand and wait for an hour and a half before being told they’d “lost” two floors of accommodation.
This seemed a bit careless to me, but still, if there’s one thing that really works in America I’ve found, it’s the ability to make up for it when things go wrong. They instantly offered Lisa and Sam accommodation in another hotel, an upgrade, and free beauty treatments…. I, of course, am working, so stayed only for one night before jetting off on my desert adventure.
There was really just time for dinner and bed as I had to fly out at 6 the following morning.
Pheonix
Met up with Enrico and Luc, two of my fossil hunting companions and documentary stars at Vegas airport for the hour long trip to Pheonix where we immediately got in a car and headed for the fossil show in nearby Tucson (I say nearby – nearby in American terms, so a 3 hour drive. Nearby like Birmingham is Nearby to London).
Tucson
The Tucson Fossil show is a strange event. All the rooms in several of the town’s hotels have been taken over by fossil sellers – each with their own stall or shop marketing everything from pieces of meteorite to shark’s teeth to dinosaur fossils smuggled illegally out of China or Brazil.
There’s an ambiguity about fossil collecting – in that lots of academics and museums don’t like private collectors and accuse them of removing and damaging important finds. Also, most countries have strange and complex rules about what can and can’t be collected.
However, at the same time, academics and museums don’t have the time or resources to collect much, and a fossil left in the ground once exposed by the weather will quickly erode and be destroyed. In addition, if you took away all the finds made by private collectors from museums, there would be very little left at all…
For this reason, filming is a little dicey. Some stallholders (in fact most) are delighted to be interviewed and to show off their wares. Some are secretive and suspicious. Looking pretty amateur with a small camcorder and mic, and promising not to use anything I didn’t get a release form signed for seemed to placate most of them, but some of the most beautiful collections were pretty much off limits for me and my camera.
The group, Carlo (the collector) Jason and Jake (the diggers), Dave (the fossil preparer) and Enrico and Luc (the scientists) make a good team, and everyone there is enthusiastic. But there’s often confusion about what’s going to happen next, so it’s very difficult for me to plan my shooting. We change our minds two or three times about which day we’re leaving the show.
I’ve taken the decision that this is a rollercoaster. And you ride a rollercoaster, you don’t try to steer it. Instead of coming up with a set of things I plan to shoot to make the story I want to make, I decide to film everything I can, and hope it fits together into something that makes sense.
It’s a documentary and I’m documenting. It means I have to think on my feet and make sure I get the covering shots that will make any potential story I end up wanting to tell work. It’s quite scary in one way, but freeing in another. I have to work for the moment – thinking of ways to combine shots into sequences over which narration can be played before I know what the narration is going to be. I have to constantly ask myself what is happening right now and how can I make it into a sequence of shots without pre-judging what’s going to happen next.
Carlo is rushing from stall to stall, and constantly calling for me to catch up – but I have to get outside shots, and wide shots, and have people sign release forms….
I discover the microphone is making a strange ticking sound, but it’s too late to do anything about it. I’ll have to rely on being able to remove the noise in editing. I also find I’ve lost the screw which attaches my tiny hand held camera to the flycam – a weighted device for steadying my shots. I have to gaffer tape it in place and tear it off each time I need to change the battery or memory card.
Vegas (again)
Eventually we leave Tucson (coincidentally just when we’d originally planned to) and head back to Vegas. I’ve got a plane ticket, but I go by car instead – taking the opportunity to film as we travel.
After 5 hours on the road, we arrive at Stacy and Jake’s home in Vegas, and Lisa and Sam come over for dinner. This trip is filled with late nights and early mornings, and Carlo asks me to meet them at Caeser’s Palace (where Lisa, Sam and I are staying for tonight) at 6 am. They turn up at 7:30, giving me a chance to take a look around the Strip.
Time here doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference - whether it’s 6am or 6pm on the Las Vegas Strip, the lights still flash, the music still plays everywhere, and the streets and casinos are still full. It’s as though the whole city is dedicated to stopping you from thinking or acting for yourself. “do this now!” screams everything.
I can’t escape the feeling that Vegas is taking up valuable space which could more productively used as desert.
California – the marble mountains
We’ve received information that our original dig site – a town famous for polygamy just outside Vegas is under snow, and so we can’t dig there, so we set off early for California where a more sparsely populated fossil bed allows us the opportunity to search for one of the world’s rarest trilobites.
We reach there around lunch time, and it’s not snowing. But it is raining… something it continues to do on and off for the next two days.
During that time, we find very little, but eat a lot of cold beefburgers and get very wet.
We stay in a couple of really expensive hotels (expensive mainly because we turn up late to book in and have to take whatever’s going) and eventually get rained off the mountain.
That said, I think we’ve done well. We do find one of the rarest trilobites in the world, and there’s a lot of material shot for the documentary. I think I’m beginning to see a story forming in all this….
Vegas (again)
Back to Vegas again, in time for dinner at New York New York – which Carlo is paying for because he didn’t find the “big find” of the day. Several of the team accidentally order the wrong meal in the chaos and end up with a huge steak and a massive lobster each….
It’s Sam and Lisa’s last night so they’re off doing touristy things and don’t join us. Plans change about four times during the evening and I end up leaving to go and stay with Lisa at about 10:30 leaving Jake on the roulette tables. I hear later that he left about 5 minutes after us anyway….
Somewhere outside Vegas
Our last day is spent two hours outside vegas – in the place we’d originally planned to dig. The snow’s gone. It’s a sunny day and the digging is easy – plus, we’re eating slightly better since the remaining steak and lobster form last night are packed away for lunch. There are lots of fossils in this mountain and soon most of the team (including me) have made finds.
It’s a great day to be out in the mountains, but from a filming point of view, it’s not so good. The fossils here are common ones and there’s not the tension of the previous digs. Jake and Jason, the professional diggers see this as an amateur dig site – lots of fun things to find, but nothing really special like the $10,000 trilobite they found yesterday.
It’s clear to me that the climax of the documentary was yesterday, and I’ve got to find a way to put today’s dig before it in the film – without explicitly saying that it happened in that order. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to make the ending a damp squib.
Hmm….
Home
At the end of the day, it’s agreed we’ve had a good trip. I think I’ve got everything I need – at least I better had!
Over dinner, Carlo starts talking about wanting to dig up a Triceratops. A triceratops is a whole different ball game from a trilobite – for a start, it’s the size of a truck – and for another thing, virtually everywhere you’re likely to find one is filled with men with guns.
Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was serious.
I left London in the biggest snowstorm in 18 years. The snow made the whole of the South East grind to a halt, but for me, the worst problem was the post. Two deliveries I was expecting before I left didn’t arrive – one (a wireless microphone) I could do without, but the other, spare batteries for my new camcorder were essential.
I ended up with a practical, but annoying solution. I had to buy a new camera at the airport just to use as a charger and spare battery. Hopefully I should be able to re-sell it on ebay once I get the new batteries, and not loose to much money.
George is walking
When I got back to London, after a 10 hour flight, Lisa, Sam and George were there to greet me at the airport. George walked over to greet me.
Some time in the last week, he’s made the transition from staggering two steps and then falling over to being able to walk confidently wherever he wants. He’s now fairly steady on his feet and getting steadier every day.
It’s great to see him tottering about…
He’s also getting grumpy – more specifically, he’s crying instantly if he thinks you’re not paying him enough attention. He’s going to need to get over that pretty quickly!
The trip
I’ve spent the last week in America following a group of fossil hunters round and making a documentary about their visit to the world’s biggest fossil show and their attempts to dig up a rare species of trilobite…
How did it go? Well….
Vegas
We arrived in Vegas late, and the place really is larger than life. Everything’s bigger – even the queue for the check in desk at Caesar’s Palace for which we had to stand and wait for an hour and a half before being told they’d “lost” two floors of accommodation.
This seemed a bit careless to me, but still, if there’s one thing that really works in America I’ve found, it’s the ability to make up for it when things go wrong. They instantly offered Lisa and Sam accommodation in another hotel, an upgrade, and free beauty treatments…. I, of course, am working, so stayed only for one night before jetting off on my desert adventure.
There was really just time for dinner and bed as I had to fly out at 6 the following morning.
Pheonix
Met up with Enrico and Luc, two of my fossil hunting companions and documentary stars at Vegas airport for the hour long trip to Pheonix where we immediately got in a car and headed for the fossil show in nearby Tucson (I say nearby – nearby in American terms, so a 3 hour drive. Nearby like Birmingham is Nearby to London).
Tucson
The Tucson Fossil show is a strange event. All the rooms in several of the town’s hotels have been taken over by fossil sellers – each with their own stall or shop marketing everything from pieces of meteorite to shark’s teeth to dinosaur fossils smuggled illegally out of China or Brazil.
There’s an ambiguity about fossil collecting – in that lots of academics and museums don’t like private collectors and accuse them of removing and damaging important finds. Also, most countries have strange and complex rules about what can and can’t be collected.
However, at the same time, academics and museums don’t have the time or resources to collect much, and a fossil left in the ground once exposed by the weather will quickly erode and be destroyed. In addition, if you took away all the finds made by private collectors from museums, there would be very little left at all…
For this reason, filming is a little dicey. Some stallholders (in fact most) are delighted to be interviewed and to show off their wares. Some are secretive and suspicious. Looking pretty amateur with a small camcorder and mic, and promising not to use anything I didn’t get a release form signed for seemed to placate most of them, but some of the most beautiful collections were pretty much off limits for me and my camera.
The group, Carlo (the collector) Jason and Jake (the diggers), Dave (the fossil preparer) and Enrico and Luc (the scientists) make a good team, and everyone there is enthusiastic. But there’s often confusion about what’s going to happen next, so it’s very difficult for me to plan my shooting. We change our minds two or three times about which day we’re leaving the show.
I’ve taken the decision that this is a rollercoaster. And you ride a rollercoaster, you don’t try to steer it. Instead of coming up with a set of things I plan to shoot to make the story I want to make, I decide to film everything I can, and hope it fits together into something that makes sense.
It’s a documentary and I’m documenting. It means I have to think on my feet and make sure I get the covering shots that will make any potential story I end up wanting to tell work. It’s quite scary in one way, but freeing in another. I have to work for the moment – thinking of ways to combine shots into sequences over which narration can be played before I know what the narration is going to be. I have to constantly ask myself what is happening right now and how can I make it into a sequence of shots without pre-judging what’s going to happen next.
Carlo is rushing from stall to stall, and constantly calling for me to catch up – but I have to get outside shots, and wide shots, and have people sign release forms….
I discover the microphone is making a strange ticking sound, but it’s too late to do anything about it. I’ll have to rely on being able to remove the noise in editing. I also find I’ve lost the screw which attaches my tiny hand held camera to the flycam – a weighted device for steadying my shots. I have to gaffer tape it in place and tear it off each time I need to change the battery or memory card.
Vegas (again)
Eventually we leave Tucson (coincidentally just when we’d originally planned to) and head back to Vegas. I’ve got a plane ticket, but I go by car instead – taking the opportunity to film as we travel.
After 5 hours on the road, we arrive at Stacy and Jake’s home in Vegas, and Lisa and Sam come over for dinner. This trip is filled with late nights and early mornings, and Carlo asks me to meet them at Caeser’s Palace (where Lisa, Sam and I are staying for tonight) at 6 am. They turn up at 7:30, giving me a chance to take a look around the Strip.
Time here doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference - whether it’s 6am or 6pm on the Las Vegas Strip, the lights still flash, the music still plays everywhere, and the streets and casinos are still full. It’s as though the whole city is dedicated to stopping you from thinking or acting for yourself. “do this now!” screams everything.
I can’t escape the feeling that Vegas is taking up valuable space which could more productively used as desert.
California – the marble mountains
We’ve received information that our original dig site – a town famous for polygamy just outside Vegas is under snow, and so we can’t dig there, so we set off early for California where a more sparsely populated fossil bed allows us the opportunity to search for one of the world’s rarest trilobites.
We reach there around lunch time, and it’s not snowing. But it is raining… something it continues to do on and off for the next two days.
During that time, we find very little, but eat a lot of cold beefburgers and get very wet.
We stay in a couple of really expensive hotels (expensive mainly because we turn up late to book in and have to take whatever’s going) and eventually get rained off the mountain.
That said, I think we’ve done well. We do find one of the rarest trilobites in the world, and there’s a lot of material shot for the documentary. I think I’m beginning to see a story forming in all this….
Vegas (again)
Back to Vegas again, in time for dinner at New York New York – which Carlo is paying for because he didn’t find the “big find” of the day. Several of the team accidentally order the wrong meal in the chaos and end up with a huge steak and a massive lobster each….
It’s Sam and Lisa’s last night so they’re off doing touristy things and don’t join us. Plans change about four times during the evening and I end up leaving to go and stay with Lisa at about 10:30 leaving Jake on the roulette tables. I hear later that he left about 5 minutes after us anyway….
Somewhere outside Vegas
Our last day is spent two hours outside vegas – in the place we’d originally planned to dig. The snow’s gone. It’s a sunny day and the digging is easy – plus, we’re eating slightly better since the remaining steak and lobster form last night are packed away for lunch. There are lots of fossils in this mountain and soon most of the team (including me) have made finds.
It’s a great day to be out in the mountains, but from a filming point of view, it’s not so good. The fossils here are common ones and there’s not the tension of the previous digs. Jake and Jason, the professional diggers see this as an amateur dig site – lots of fun things to find, but nothing really special like the $10,000 trilobite they found yesterday.
It’s clear to me that the climax of the documentary was yesterday, and I’ve got to find a way to put today’s dig before it in the film – without explicitly saying that it happened in that order. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to make the ending a damp squib.
Hmm….
Home
At the end of the day, it’s agreed we’ve had a good trip. I think I’ve got everything I need – at least I better had!
Over dinner, Carlo starts talking about wanting to dig up a Triceratops. A triceratops is a whole different ball game from a trilobite – for a start, it’s the size of a truck – and for another thing, virtually everywhere you’re likely to find one is filled with men with guns.
Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was serious.
Friday, January 30, 2009
George seems to have given up on the idea of walking. He was about ready to do it on his first birthday. Now he’s happy to wander round holding onto things, and can walk happily holding one of our hands, but he doesn’t seem interested in taking it any further.
He’s had an ear infection in the last couple of weeks, which gave him and us a couple of sleepless nights, but he’s over that now, and back to his happy self.
George fell over
George, our neighbour from across the road fell over the other night. We were just getting into bed, and I heard a crash and went out to find him lying in his driveway. His wife had phoned an ambulance while he lit up a fag. I offered to help him up, but he said he’d rather wait for the ambulance…
George was outside late at night because he always is. Every time you enter or leave the house, he’s there, watching the world go by, and stopping anyone from parking anywhere they shouldn’t.
Late at night he comes out to feed the foxes, who have learnt to cluster round his gate waiting for him.
It’s tempting to say that at his age, he shouldn’t be being so silly. But, why? We don’t criticise young people for doing risky things (like skiing or parachuting) we think that’s somehow Ok, whereas when someone older does something that, for them, is just as dangerous, like going out in the rain, we think it’s irresponsible..
Doesn’t make much sense to me. He’s old enough to know what he wants to do and make his own mind up.
Housing benefit
My tenant in Manchester has, by the sounds of it, got another job – which is good news as he hasn’t been able to pay his rent for the last few months. Hopefully, the housing benefit he’s applied for will come through to pay the arreas eventually.
It’s a major, and completely inexcusable problem with local authorities that they can’t process benefit claims for months on end.
I had the same problem when I had to claim benefit years ago – it took Lewisham council 6 months to pay my benefit. By which time if it hadn’t been for my parents, I’d have been on the streets.
I can’t think how councils are allowed to get away with this level of negligence.
However, all I can do (unless I want to evict my tenant, which I’m sure many landlords do in this situation) is wait for however long it takes, and hope I can cover the mortgage myself – which luckily, I can.
Vegas
Next week we’re off to Vegas to film the new documentary – I’ve ordered lots of new equipment, but I can’t help feeling I haven’t done enough planning. The trouble is I don’t know how to plan this shoot – the people I’m following will do whatever they’re going to do, and I just have to follow them and hope I can make a film out of it when I come back.
I’ve got a vague plan of how to do that, but I’m really going to be winging it.
Lisa and Sam meanwhile are going to be living it up in Caesar’s palace while George is looked after by their long suffering parents. Hmm…
Work
Ok – it turns out my documentary is available in WHSmiths, un-edited and packaged with a book in a very neat looking bundle and as part of a series of videos on all kinds of subjects –whether these are done without copyright, I’ve no idea.
It’s still looking very much as though whoever released them has done so without the permission of Electric Sky, my distributors, and I’ve posted off a copy to them so they can take action….
What they can do about it, since the company publishing the DVD has now gone into receivership, I don’t know…
New year, new website
I’ve now got my new website set up – due to a very helpful company http://www.agdesignpro.com/ who I found on Elance – as part of my new year resolution to do more outsourcing.
He’s had an ear infection in the last couple of weeks, which gave him and us a couple of sleepless nights, but he’s over that now, and back to his happy self.
George fell over
George, our neighbour from across the road fell over the other night. We were just getting into bed, and I heard a crash and went out to find him lying in his driveway. His wife had phoned an ambulance while he lit up a fag. I offered to help him up, but he said he’d rather wait for the ambulance…
George was outside late at night because he always is. Every time you enter or leave the house, he’s there, watching the world go by, and stopping anyone from parking anywhere they shouldn’t.
Late at night he comes out to feed the foxes, who have learnt to cluster round his gate waiting for him.
It’s tempting to say that at his age, he shouldn’t be being so silly. But, why? We don’t criticise young people for doing risky things (like skiing or parachuting) we think that’s somehow Ok, whereas when someone older does something that, for them, is just as dangerous, like going out in the rain, we think it’s irresponsible..
Doesn’t make much sense to me. He’s old enough to know what he wants to do and make his own mind up.
Housing benefit
My tenant in Manchester has, by the sounds of it, got another job – which is good news as he hasn’t been able to pay his rent for the last few months. Hopefully, the housing benefit he’s applied for will come through to pay the arreas eventually.
It’s a major, and completely inexcusable problem with local authorities that they can’t process benefit claims for months on end.
I had the same problem when I had to claim benefit years ago – it took Lewisham council 6 months to pay my benefit. By which time if it hadn’t been for my parents, I’d have been on the streets.
I can’t think how councils are allowed to get away with this level of negligence.
However, all I can do (unless I want to evict my tenant, which I’m sure many landlords do in this situation) is wait for however long it takes, and hope I can cover the mortgage myself – which luckily, I can.
Vegas
Next week we’re off to Vegas to film the new documentary – I’ve ordered lots of new equipment, but I can’t help feeling I haven’t done enough planning. The trouble is I don’t know how to plan this shoot – the people I’m following will do whatever they’re going to do, and I just have to follow them and hope I can make a film out of it when I come back.
I’ve got a vague plan of how to do that, but I’m really going to be winging it.
Lisa and Sam meanwhile are going to be living it up in Caesar’s palace while George is looked after by their long suffering parents. Hmm…
Work
Ok – it turns out my documentary is available in WHSmiths, un-edited and packaged with a book in a very neat looking bundle and as part of a series of videos on all kinds of subjects –whether these are done without copyright, I’ve no idea.
It’s still looking very much as though whoever released them has done so without the permission of Electric Sky, my distributors, and I’ve posted off a copy to them so they can take action….
What they can do about it, since the company publishing the DVD has now gone into receivership, I don’t know…
New year, new website
I’ve now got my new website set up – due to a very helpful company http://www.agdesignpro.com/ who I found on Elance – as part of my new year resolution to do more outsourcing.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Have now been back at work for a couple of weeks – and only just getting time to write up my blog – so here’s a quick roundup….
Christmas Day was fun – without being stressful. We asked Sam, Claudia, Adrian, Jane and Nathan round and everyone had to bring some food – with the result that we didn’t have to cook it all, and could concentrate on drinking Christmas pudding flavoured martinis and unwrapping George’s huge pile of presents.
Boxing day was, as usual, full of intentions. We intended to go out for a nice long walk, but it never seemed to happen.
I managed to pick up some kind of bug – maybe it was the flu that almost everybody appears to have contracted over Christmas – but I had a sore throat and my neck swelled up…. Nice.
Over the last year, it seems that every time I’ve stopped work for more than 3 days on the trot, I’ve got ill. It’s tempting to put that down to overwork, but the last six weeks have hardly been frantic. With both the yacht video and the museum animation out of the way I’ve been working on a couple of less difficult projects and generally mopping up administrative jobs. Nothing stressful.
It’s more likely that it’s a combination of working pretty hard – Even when I’m not on tough deadlines, I do fill my work time pretty comprehensively – and having George. George isn’t a difficult child by any stretch, and he’s a joy, but he does mean neither of us are ever really off duty.
Of course, that’s set to remain the case for a good few years – in fact the rest of our lives if I’m honest, so I’ll have to be able to cope with it without getting ill all the time…
We managed a visit to Lisa’s sister and nephews in Worthing – lisa’s parents were away in Italy for Livia’s Christening.
By new year’s eve, we hadn’t done very much and didn’t feel much like doing much. We spent the evening in with Sam. I went to bed around 10:30 because of my sore throat, but couldn’t sleep, so I was up again in time to watch the London fireworks from the loft.
So, then: new year’s resolutions:
1) outsource: I’ve decided to instead of doing all the work myself, hire people in so that my work can expand without me having to do everything. This is quite a big change and I’m a bit scared because it means trusting other people with some of my creative work, spending money, and leaving my advertising going so I’m generating work even when I’ve got enough to keep me busy!
2) Get fit – no change there then – it’s a bit cold for running right now, so maybe I should be going swimming one day per week…
3) Make a charity offer – offer my clients the option of paying 5% more on their bill and offer to match it so I can pay 10% to a charity. Hopefully I can set this up once I find a way to make it make sense, and find a charity to work with…
Lisa’s is to not buy food with packaging – so she’s trying to buy veg and fish loose rather than pre-packed. She’s been going into Somerfield unpacking vegetables and leaving the wrapping at the counter when she buys if she can’t find loose veg – letting the supermarket dispose of the waste….
New year’s day didn’t amount to much either, with both me and Sam not up to much – me because of the sore throat – Sam for other reasons… and by now, lisa was desperate to get out of the house.
Still, Friday and Saturday we went to my parents’ for another Christmas – My Mum’s hip seems to be getting a bit more mobile and even though the doctor’s not letting her leap about, she still managed to have a lunch for some of her friends. George was happy and popular throughout and even Dad seemed very cheerful.
Andrew has now recovered sufficiently from his back injury to go back to work, and is hoping the company, who are laying off drivers left right and centre keep him on.
Vegas
It looks like the trip to Vegas at the end of the month is on – I’m going to be shooting a documentary in the desert, meanwhile, Lisa’s Mum is looking after George and Lisa and Sam will be staying in Vegas and having fun.
We’re booked and planning the trip….
Documentary in the shops – but shouldn’t be
In the meantime, I’ve just been told today that my last documentary is now available in WH Smiths. Which would be great – if it wasn’t for the fact that my distributors haven’t given anyone the right to make it into a DVD, so somebody somewhere is distributing it illegally.
More on that story as it comes in….
Anyway, what other news?
We made a bungled attempt to set up two of Lisa’s friends with a Sunday dinner at the weekend. Bungled because all but one of the guests were ill (everyone seems to be this Christmas). Still, it was a nice dinner
Lisa and I went out for a nice meal on Tuesday (to the OXO tower restaurant). Very good food – and rather poncy – crab salad with sweetcorn icecream – along with mashed potato that appeared to be mostly butter and had to be served in a cup!
It’s a great place to eat, and they had a wine water. I can barely keep a straight face talking to wine waiters. I mean, really, it’s very nice, but it’s only a drink. You don’t have a pea waiter, do you, or a mash waiter…
This one had a French accent which always helps and always somehow seems as though it’s being put on when it comes from a wine waiter.
We got back to find George had been sick in his cot… he’s still running a bit of a temperature, but seems OK, and happy enough.
Oh, and Russ has been made a Lord… well, he’s got an MBE for running DEFRA’s Civil Service’s gay society. A great surprise to him, but he’s delighted and we’ll never hear the end of it!
Christmas Day was fun – without being stressful. We asked Sam, Claudia, Adrian, Jane and Nathan round and everyone had to bring some food – with the result that we didn’t have to cook it all, and could concentrate on drinking Christmas pudding flavoured martinis and unwrapping George’s huge pile of presents.
Boxing day was, as usual, full of intentions. We intended to go out for a nice long walk, but it never seemed to happen.
I managed to pick up some kind of bug – maybe it was the flu that almost everybody appears to have contracted over Christmas – but I had a sore throat and my neck swelled up…. Nice.
Over the last year, it seems that every time I’ve stopped work for more than 3 days on the trot, I’ve got ill. It’s tempting to put that down to overwork, but the last six weeks have hardly been frantic. With both the yacht video and the museum animation out of the way I’ve been working on a couple of less difficult projects and generally mopping up administrative jobs. Nothing stressful.
It’s more likely that it’s a combination of working pretty hard – Even when I’m not on tough deadlines, I do fill my work time pretty comprehensively – and having George. George isn’t a difficult child by any stretch, and he’s a joy, but he does mean neither of us are ever really off duty.
Of course, that’s set to remain the case for a good few years – in fact the rest of our lives if I’m honest, so I’ll have to be able to cope with it without getting ill all the time…
We managed a visit to Lisa’s sister and nephews in Worthing – lisa’s parents were away in Italy for Livia’s Christening.
By new year’s eve, we hadn’t done very much and didn’t feel much like doing much. We spent the evening in with Sam. I went to bed around 10:30 because of my sore throat, but couldn’t sleep, so I was up again in time to watch the London fireworks from the loft.
So, then: new year’s resolutions:
1) outsource: I’ve decided to instead of doing all the work myself, hire people in so that my work can expand without me having to do everything. This is quite a big change and I’m a bit scared because it means trusting other people with some of my creative work, spending money, and leaving my advertising going so I’m generating work even when I’ve got enough to keep me busy!
2) Get fit – no change there then – it’s a bit cold for running right now, so maybe I should be going swimming one day per week…
3) Make a charity offer – offer my clients the option of paying 5% more on their bill and offer to match it so I can pay 10% to a charity. Hopefully I can set this up once I find a way to make it make sense, and find a charity to work with…
Lisa’s is to not buy food with packaging – so she’s trying to buy veg and fish loose rather than pre-packed. She’s been going into Somerfield unpacking vegetables and leaving the wrapping at the counter when she buys if she can’t find loose veg – letting the supermarket dispose of the waste….
New year’s day didn’t amount to much either, with both me and Sam not up to much – me because of the sore throat – Sam for other reasons… and by now, lisa was desperate to get out of the house.
Still, Friday and Saturday we went to my parents’ for another Christmas – My Mum’s hip seems to be getting a bit more mobile and even though the doctor’s not letting her leap about, she still managed to have a lunch for some of her friends. George was happy and popular throughout and even Dad seemed very cheerful.
Andrew has now recovered sufficiently from his back injury to go back to work, and is hoping the company, who are laying off drivers left right and centre keep him on.
Vegas
It looks like the trip to Vegas at the end of the month is on – I’m going to be shooting a documentary in the desert, meanwhile, Lisa’s Mum is looking after George and Lisa and Sam will be staying in Vegas and having fun.
We’re booked and planning the trip….
Documentary in the shops – but shouldn’t be
In the meantime, I’ve just been told today that my last documentary is now available in WH Smiths. Which would be great – if it wasn’t for the fact that my distributors haven’t given anyone the right to make it into a DVD, so somebody somewhere is distributing it illegally.
More on that story as it comes in….
Anyway, what other news?
We made a bungled attempt to set up two of Lisa’s friends with a Sunday dinner at the weekend. Bungled because all but one of the guests were ill (everyone seems to be this Christmas). Still, it was a nice dinner
Lisa and I went out for a nice meal on Tuesday (to the OXO tower restaurant). Very good food – and rather poncy – crab salad with sweetcorn icecream – along with mashed potato that appeared to be mostly butter and had to be served in a cup!
It’s a great place to eat, and they had a wine water. I can barely keep a straight face talking to wine waiters. I mean, really, it’s very nice, but it’s only a drink. You don’t have a pea waiter, do you, or a mash waiter…
This one had a French accent which always helps and always somehow seems as though it’s being put on when it comes from a wine waiter.
We got back to find George had been sick in his cot… he’s still running a bit of a temperature, but seems OK, and happy enough.
Oh, and Russ has been made a Lord… well, he’s got an MBE for running DEFRA’s Civil Service’s gay society. A great surprise to him, but he’s delighted and we’ll never hear the end of it!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
On Sunday – after a trip to the Rothco exhibition at Tate Modern (how many different ways can you draw a brown square?) We had our annual mulled wine and mince pies do – with the mincemeat made to my mum’s recipe, the pastry made to Sam’s and the mulled wine to Jamie Oliver’s. We didn’t have any cake baking tins so we cut the pastry into squares and made mince pie pasties – nobody seemed to notice.
It was a really good do – with lots of people having a really good time – and some surprising good news from Russ… which I can’t reveal until next year… Stay tuned.
After the party we watched A Wonderful Life and all cried!
Lisa’s parents were up for the weekend as Lisa’s Mum had to go and work for her brother today – she went over to his flat in Docklands late last night only to find he was in, but wasn’t answering the door – so she had to come all the way back alone at midnight.
He phoned this morning at about 8:30 am to ask where she was – but I told him he could wait until she got up. He’s not in anyone’s good books right now.
It was a really good do – with lots of people having a really good time – and some surprising good news from Russ… which I can’t reveal until next year… Stay tuned.
After the party we watched A Wonderful Life and all cried!
Lisa’s parents were up for the weekend as Lisa’s Mum had to go and work for her brother today – she went over to his flat in Docklands late last night only to find he was in, but wasn’t answering the door – so she had to come all the way back alone at midnight.
He phoned this morning at about 8:30 am to ask where she was – but I told him he could wait until she got up. He’s not in anyone’s good books right now.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Nothing if not adventurous, we spent Friday night at a salsa class followed by a music-hall-hip-hop fusion review. The salsa class run by a mad couple in lurid green spandex took us through a few basic moves which I totally failed to master – or at least I managed to clomp through the steps by the end of the class in a John Sergent sort of way. When the class ended, we went on to the revue – a Christmas show by an Australian who took on the character of an elderly woman blending the likes of “doing the lamberth walk” with hardcore rap – actually quite successfully as it happens.
Sunday was the Mark and Debs’ Christmas mulled wine do. George made a lot of friends – mainly because Mark and Debs have daughters who all wanted to play with him. As a father, Mark is amazing to watch – he always manages to find time to give the children attention without seeming to be constantly distracted by them. It’s quite a skill.
Gearing up for Christmas, I took George to the nursery Christmas party while Lisa was at her work’s do. The party was basically a few of the mothers of the nursery’s children along with about a dozen babies. Actually, it was less stressful than it sounds. The babies were all well behaved, and played happily while we sat on the floor and ate ice-cream. George had his MMR vaccine this morning, along with an extra bonus pneumonia injection - but it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down.
Earlier in the day I had wanted to get a bit of last minute shopping done, but failed totally because I couldn’t get George’s pram into any of the trendy, gifty overpriced shops I Lordship Lane. Not because they were full of people – they weren’t – but because they’d all ordered in extra quantities of pointless gifty nonsense which nobody was buying, so it was all crowding the shelves and isles, making the shops inaccessible.
Funny thing, this recession. I think retailers – or at least advertisers have got the wrong end of the stick over it. Just because the statistics are showing that spending overall is going down, there are lots of sales on – fair enough – but I don’t think that’s how it works. If overall spending goes down 5% that doesn’t mean anyone’s spending 5% less – it means most people have still got their jobs so they’ve got exactly the same amount to spend as they had before, but some people have lost their jobs and have no disposable income at all.
A sale means the first group buy the things they were going to buy anyway, but cheaper, and the second group couldn’t buy them if they weren’t on sale, and can’t buy them when they are. – so it may be counterintuitive (as the Americans say) but I’m not sure sales actually help the economy. Except, of course, if the shop down the road is having a sale, then you’ve got to have one too.
Another case of the free market shooting itself in the foot – which it seems to do more often than the political mood of recent times would like to admit.
Sunday was the Mark and Debs’ Christmas mulled wine do. George made a lot of friends – mainly because Mark and Debs have daughters who all wanted to play with him. As a father, Mark is amazing to watch – he always manages to find time to give the children attention without seeming to be constantly distracted by them. It’s quite a skill.
Gearing up for Christmas, I took George to the nursery Christmas party while Lisa was at her work’s do. The party was basically a few of the mothers of the nursery’s children along with about a dozen babies. Actually, it was less stressful than it sounds. The babies were all well behaved, and played happily while we sat on the floor and ate ice-cream. George had his MMR vaccine this morning, along with an extra bonus pneumonia injection - but it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down.
Earlier in the day I had wanted to get a bit of last minute shopping done, but failed totally because I couldn’t get George’s pram into any of the trendy, gifty overpriced shops I Lordship Lane. Not because they were full of people – they weren’t – but because they’d all ordered in extra quantities of pointless gifty nonsense which nobody was buying, so it was all crowding the shelves and isles, making the shops inaccessible.
Funny thing, this recession. I think retailers – or at least advertisers have got the wrong end of the stick over it. Just because the statistics are showing that spending overall is going down, there are lots of sales on – fair enough – but I don’t think that’s how it works. If overall spending goes down 5% that doesn’t mean anyone’s spending 5% less – it means most people have still got their jobs so they’ve got exactly the same amount to spend as they had before, but some people have lost their jobs and have no disposable income at all.
A sale means the first group buy the things they were going to buy anyway, but cheaper, and the second group couldn’t buy them if they weren’t on sale, and can’t buy them when they are. – so it may be counterintuitive (as the Americans say) but I’m not sure sales actually help the economy. Except, of course, if the shop down the road is having a sale, then you’ve got to have one too.
Another case of the free market shooting itself in the foot – which it seems to do more often than the political mood of recent times would like to admit.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Crushed by the wheels of Industry
At the weekend, we went to a concert in Brighton featuring 3 of the best electronic bands of the 80’s: Heaven 17, ABC and the Human League (who I’ve seen before – just after sitting my A-levels 22 years ago!).
I never liked ABC much, but the other two had great music which sounded new and different then and now.
This kind of retro concert is a real winner. Want to see Britney spears, but don’t want to sit in a 50,000 seat stadium? – simply wait 20 years, and she’ll be playing on the same bill as Eminem and the cast of High School Musical. Believe it.
Plus you’ll be able to get to the front because there won’t be a massive crowd – and those that are there will be too mature and middle class to push.
We’d hoped to be able to meet up with Grace and Igor on the way home from Worthing, but both of us have very slight colds, so we thought it best not to risk it. We don’t want to pass anything on to them.
George is on his feet
George is now walking – well, tottering – well, standing for a few seconds and then pitching forwards. Every day he manages to stay on his feet for a second or so longer before tipping over, and he’s now quite controlled about how he does fall.
He’s very very close to being able to balance, and he’s happy going up stairs and increasingly confident going down. He’s also fast – very fast – at crawling.
He’s getting noisier too – constantly burbling to himself or to anyone who will listen. Not words yet, but a wide variety of sounds which he seems to have some control over.
I never liked ABC much, but the other two had great music which sounded new and different then and now.
This kind of retro concert is a real winner. Want to see Britney spears, but don’t want to sit in a 50,000 seat stadium? – simply wait 20 years, and she’ll be playing on the same bill as Eminem and the cast of High School Musical. Believe it.
Plus you’ll be able to get to the front because there won’t be a massive crowd – and those that are there will be too mature and middle class to push.
We’d hoped to be able to meet up with Grace and Igor on the way home from Worthing, but both of us have very slight colds, so we thought it best not to risk it. We don’t want to pass anything on to them.
George is on his feet
George is now walking – well, tottering – well, standing for a few seconds and then pitching forwards. Every day he manages to stay on his feet for a second or so longer before tipping over, and he’s now quite controlled about how he does fall.
He’s very very close to being able to balance, and he’s happy going up stairs and increasingly confident going down. He’s also fast – very fast – at crawling.
He’s getting noisier too – constantly burbling to himself or to anyone who will listen. Not words yet, but a wide variety of sounds which he seems to have some control over.
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