Tell me why I don’t like Mondays?

Biblical rain, boyfriend lost my hat yesterday, hair is now curly, man-made boots are sodden, buses are shafted, monthly travel card ten quid more expensive than last month and I see no improvement to the service, trod in a pulped pile of Metro newspapers outside Old Street station, right foot now saturated more than left, giant spider hanging on stairwell ceiling at work made me shriek, upgrading my phone took 40 minutes (how many more times do I have to tell people that ‘s.i.o.b.h.a.n’ says ‘shivorn’?), new phone can’t be delivered to my office because it’s a band 6 (WTF?), customer service leaving a note for the delivery driver to deliver it to my house after 7pm, but they can’t be certain delivery driver will read the note, I have been given two numbers to call in case I don’t receive my shiny new Nexus.

Shit happens I guess.

It’s only 11.05am.

‘Real Time’ Branded Content

Now I’m not usually one to mix business with pleasure but a recent campaign The Dubs has produced is really worth a look.

In essence, The Dubs has launched a branded conversation campaign for Tony Ferguson Weightloss Programme which sees two ‘buddies’ share their weight loss stories in real time via Facebook:

The Buddies were chosen from a global recruitment drive across the Tony Ferguson Facebook channel – they are 100% real people with an eight week period in which to reach their respective weight loss goals and they will be sharing their daily experiences, no matter what occurs…

The content driven campaign sees daily micro-content from The Buddies appearing on the Tony Ferguson Facebook wall and a weekly round-up video which brings together their experiences from the last seven days.

Importantly, The Buddies’ stories run alongside everyone else’s experiences, they simply represent one of the many extraordinary stories within the bigger picture of the global Tony Ferguson community and hope to inspire and be inspired by others throughout their journey.

Each week is unpredictable – The Buddies are real people after all, they have holidays planned, children on half term and plans involving house guests bearing alcoholic and carb ridden gifts. How will they manage their weight loss programme in the face of such distractions? We simply don’t know at this stage, which is what makes their stories so compelling.

At the time of writing this, The Buddies have just made it through week two and are debating whether week three will be an uphill struggle or a walk in the park…

Follow their stories via Facebook.

‘The Day The Media Died’ and other stuff…

This tickled me today.

Two other things have also tickled me so far today – and it’s only lunch time:

1) The fat cat that jumped onto my fence, broke it and fell off, fence landing on said cat.  (Cat OK, just a little embarrassed and now crudely aware of its weight problem)

2) Whilst walking back from Pret just now, I started to daydream about what it would be like if you applied the ethics of a busy kitchen to a regular office. By this, I mean Marco Pierre White’s approach to delivery as seen via Hell’s Kitchen (yes chef!).

What would be higher: Productivity or walk out rate?

I propose a documentary to find out.

Perhaps more entertaining; a creative agency run by an Army Sergeant?

I can just see it now… “take those headphones off you sliiiimey worm!”

Nice.

It’s snowtime!

I for one wasn’t hugely disrupted today, in fact, I found it quite a jolly experience walking the extra miles in order to get to and from work.

Glad I have wellies in London. I felt sorry for those who didn’t…

Today was also mildly amusing in that I think I figured out where the yoof of today is going wrong in the romance stakes… imagine the scene; 6 hoodies in a park, one yells to me ‘happy Valentines Day‘ whilst another lobs a snowball at me – hitting me between the boobs.

All in all, an interesting day and I conclude that despite crippling public transport issues for many, most people within zone 2 seemed really chilled out, just mooching at a slow pace – fully accepting that there were no buses to take them to work and just enjoying the familiar yet not so frequent feeling we all get when the snow starts to lay in London town.

Here is a snapshot of my day:

My London day.

Pics of the day….

Crouch Hill train tracks

My Garden

Finsbury Park

My Wordle’d CV – January 2009

Dear Diary…

Doh, it’s a blog and it’s in the public domain – not under my bed with one of those tiny locks, which were always so pickable anyway.

So this morning I started wondering about the school run: I am neither a parent nor do I in fact own a car… I did go to school though.

I am astounded that during term time, it takes me twice as long to do my bus route to work and I see so many individual little people in BIG cars – is it fair to say that the car-share never really took off or are we just a bit shit at sharing and befriending (trusting?) our neighbours?

I remember when my parents used to share the school run with another set of parents – I actually hated their children, especially the boy and used to practically sprint from the car to the school door so I didn’t have to hang with him or even worse, be seen with him!

Now before you judge, I am talking about a very disturbed young boy who thought nothing of flashing his bits in class and laughing like a hyena whilst having a good tug – I believe in his adult life he went on to get arrested for making obscene phone calls. Who’d have known eh?

Whilst I have dubious memories of  the rents making me share a ride to school with the local ‘drop em like it’s hot‘ boy, surely there is something that can be done to get all of the erroneous traffic off the roads, (whilst saving the planet?) and indeed encouraging  social interaction amongst families and kids in the community?

Could this be a way of building positive relationships from an early age perhaps? (Hmm maybe I should pitch this to C4…)

I am not for one moment suggesting that kids make their own way to school via any skates/bikes/horse  (even I am not brave enough for that yet) but there was a fascinating tale which springs to mind of a young mum who walked her kids to school every morning – AFTER they had been for a swim that is.

OK, so she was some kind of sports trainer anyway which makes it easier to comprehend I guess… either way, it was really inspiring.

I guess what I’m saying is – is there something in creating fun ‘routes or trails’ from local residential hubs to and from a school?

These could be supervised and run every day by CRB checked individuals/historians/volunteers/out of work actors for example – hired through some crazy XFactor style audition by the local community/council  (c’mon I’m attempting to appeal to masses here!). Hmm, ladies and gents, meet the ‘DON’T BE IDOL, IDOL!’

I spotted the ‘Clerkenwell trail’ the other day – no idea where it goes after that one lamppost but I’m going to look and see if I can get to work by following it.

It’s amazing that such constructive thinking can stem from an early morning thought, which admittedly went a bit like this :

“Effing school run – let the little blighters walk you morons, why’d you need such a big effing car anyway? If I don’t get to Kings X for 9am, I can’t get toast and a latte before my 9.30 meeting and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry…’