Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Some loom largest in the prose they right, the souls they reach. Others in the movements the inspire, the change they bring about. And sometimes they come 6ft 8inches tall and about 20 stone, like Simon Shaw.
Simon Shaw - England rugby player, a player always seen as never quite having fulfilled the potential and talent many believed he possessed. In 2009 he was coming to the end of his playing career, and was picked to go on the British Lions tour of South Africa, the pinnacle of any British rugby player's career (the Lions only tour every 4years). He'd played for the Lions before 16 times, but had never been capped in a full test match.
However, aged almost 36 he was picked for the second test against the South Africans. The talented Lions team had narrowly lost a great first game and got off to a flying start in the second, led by Shaw. Some say it was the greatest performance by a British player in his position ever. Shaw played like a man realizing that these days would not visit him many more times in the future, and therefore must be gripped and wrung for all their worth, he took the Lions jersey somewhere new that day.
But despite a great performance by the team, and this legendary performance by Shaw, the Lions were beaten with the final kick of the game, and therefore lost the entire series. The South Africans erupted with joy (and relief), and Simon Shaw was awarded the man of the match.
Directly following the game Shaw was interviewed on Sky. The interview, especially the second half, feels like it's from a bygone era. A time when our sporting heroes cared most about the higher ideals they played for - for country, for team. A time when the idea of media training would seem ridiculous. Shaw had just given the performance that all other players who ever pull that shirt on will be judged by, and yet he would have given it all up to have won. To have just won a test in the shirt, and kept that series alive.
But as he said, with tears in his eyes, "that's the way it goes", what a fucking hero.
It's easy to think that life is hard, that that stiff wind in your face is stopping you getting anywhere. That the cards are not stacked in your favour, that maybe you're the wrong side of the middle. Of course we all know there are people who are in a worse position. For whom life is tougher still. You only have to turn on a television, or walk down a street in London at night, to see people truly struggling to get by, taking it one day at a time. But the sad thing is you get used to that. The stories become familiar. Repetitive. Boring even.
Tonight a man called Clive shook me out of that boredom. He rang my doorbell at 7.35pm and then apologised for doing so. After showing me some identification he explained that he'd been released from prison a week ago after serving 6 years. That he'd spent the day calling door-to-door selling cloths, dusters, and other cleaning products. He said he knew I probably didn't want anything he was selling. That he was very sorry to bother me. But that it had been a hard day, with just one sale.
Then he explained that he had wanted to stop banging on doors about an hour earlier, throw everything in the bin, and go home. But that he couldn't, because this was his last chance to make a life for himself. And that no matter how hard it was, no matter how many people slammed the door in his face, he was determined not to give up. All he was asking from me was one minute of my time. One minute to show me what he had. One minute to convince me I really did need a leather window cleaner. One minute to perhaps persuade me that it was worth investing in Clive.
We chatted for a while. He shared some of the bad decisions he'd made in life. Where things had gone wrong, and how he was focused on not repeating those mistakes again. I bought some stuff I didn't need (he was a good salesman). Then he told me he had to get on, that he wanted to get around as many doors as possible before it got too late.
I'm glad he didn't give up knocking on doors. That he knocked on mine. I think I may have needed that minute of his time more than he needed that minute of mine.
Fact is people, if you get a pointer it is going to point.
You maybe in a rush or perhaps would prefer the hound did something else, like give a paw. But the pointer is not really fussed about that, not if there's something to point at. It's breeding. Good pointer breeding. The same thing that makes their ears so soft.
See that there, going off into the distance, that's the bus I thought I'd be on, but I missed it. Something in my plans went wrong and I was 10 seconds too late, close, but not close enough. And here's the thing - I could have really done with being on that bus, I was running a little late and there were loads of seats free.
Of course I could have caught the bus if I'd run for it. But I never run for buses. Or any other public transport for that matter. Never ever. I never let them think I need them so badly, that they're in charge so absolutely, that I'd abandon my diginity so readily as to chase after them begging them to wait for me. Instead I just read my book and waited for the next one, it came soon enough.
For the first time in about 33 years I didn't have to work today. So I lay in the garden. In the shade. With Das Minsk. And dozed. I also read a book and thought about psychopaths. Oh, and I occasionally looked towards the heavens.
Ben says no one is reading blogs anymore, and he's right. Once bustling little communities are now like ghost towns. Ben reckons that this is good, that it'll be like it used to be, when people blogged with the freedom that came with no audience, from not knowing how to do it properly, from making it up as we went along. Maybe he's right. I hope he's right. But I don't think he is. Because we do know how to do it now. We do know what 'proper blogging' is. You can't unknow that stuff, because we have been there and we have done that. It's sad, but true. That time has passed.
That's one view. My glum view. But there's only one way to find out if that's really right, and that's to test it. So, for a week or so I'm going to blog like no one's reading.
Here goes...
I got up this morning, aged 37, took a wander in the park, and took a little stock of my life. Asking myself the big questions. Like, how did I get so fucking old? Where did all that time go? Did I really want to be here? Doing this?
And despite feeling a desire to wallow in a time not long gone, when I ached less in the morning, when I could stay up later, and when more seemed possible, I found I couldn't.
Because things are not too bad. I was up with the birds, slightly ahead of the day. Breathing in a sunny day. A gloriously sunny September day. I was out with my hound. My trusted hound. Who was belting around hunting down the squirrel population with no success whatsoever. And Sophie was back at our house sleeping. Sleeping in our bedroom. In our house. In our bedroom with the green carpet that we both deeply regret stylistically, but love for being our choice, in our house. This all left me feeling a deep contentment.
Sometimes I feel it's easy to moan about getting older. To desire the things that have gone too much. But I feel like I'm also learning to appreciate the distance experience gives you. The perspective it gives you on things, on people, and on life.
I don't know if I always feel this way, who knows. But for now, aged 37 (just), it's how I feel, and it feels pretty good, pretty darn good.
Today is Jemima's birthday, she is one year old. We're on holiday so she'll be spending the day with Bobby. He walks her while we're at work and she billets with him when we're out of Town, or indeed out on the Town. She'll be having fun there with the other dogs, but of course we're sad not to be with her.
But one good thing about being apart from her is it gives us the space to reflect, to think about the difference she's made to our lives. Now sure, there have been some tedious bits. You know, the getting used to having to plan ahead, the cleaning up of her 'designated area' in the garden, and the occasional and inexplicable barking at strangers in the park. But it's far outweighed by the good stuff. Far, far outweighed. There's too much to really write down, but here's a start...
If you want something in the world that is always happy to see you, no matter how you've behaved, that greets you with a wag of the tail and an excited growl 'hello', get a dog.
If you want to see more of the day, the sun come up, the sun go down, the frost on the grass, and the rain fall from the clouds, get a dog.
If you want to really explore where you live, the paths, and the parks, the canals, and the marshes, get a dog.
If you want to excercise with abandon, without a watch, without a predetermined route, with nothing more than excited enthusiasm, get a dog.
If you want the occasional nod in the park from joggers, a passing 'how's it going' from other owners, or a minute or two chewing of the fat with just about anyone, get a dog.
If you want something that is so dependent on you that it makes you a more reliable person, so much more reliable that without you noticing that dependency changes to the deepest trust, get a dog.
And finally, if you want something to sit down excitedly when you tell it to, get a dog (and possibly some liver treats).
I've been wondering for a long time how I was going to give 24,266,880 people in the United Kingdom aged over 18 the chance to discover this blog for themselves. A chance to luxuriate in its insight and intelligence. To read about what I've been up to, and perhaps say 'good morning' to me, and both of you, in the comments section.
Today I was delighted to discover that the popular website Facebook offers just such a service, see...
This is great, obviously. But to do it I'll need some advertising (there's no such thing as a free lunch). Now luckily Facebook offer just such a service, plus I'm one of the world's best advertising people. So I've put together an ad.
It's a pretty simple ad, a bit like those VW ones from ages ago, but I think it will bring millions of people to this blog pretty easily. That's my plan. Millions. Then I'm going to tell those millions of people about what I've been up to.
Anyway, to do this Facebook want to charge me $500 (that's United States dollars). I don't have this since I paid the builder thousands of pounds to destroy my house. So I'm turning to you lot, and the lot connected to you lot. We just need 500 people to donate $1 (US dollar), or 1 person to donate $500 (US dollars). That shouldn't take too long. To help ease the giving Graeme Douglas suggested I set up a Chipin page, which I've done.
All that remains is for you lot to give money. For me to finesse my advert, and to prepare for the arrival of millions of people.
God bless you all.
(UPDATE: if this goes well then I'm going to do a Superbowl telly ad next year.)
Oh, hi, there. I'm back from skiing. It was nice - we filled our lungs with mountain air, our tummies with french food, and we even met up with some colleagues for a little ski.
We had a nice time, but it was good to get back home and to say "SIT!" to Jemima. Of course she sat, and look bloody eager to please.
We missed her while we were away, so it's nice to be home.
The good thing about skiing is that it gets you fit - it stretches the lungs and tears at the muscles. In the 2 days that I've been back I've tried to continue with some fitness stuff, going running in the mornings. It's pretty dark out there, but I'm managing to outrun any trouble, just.
And of course it's back to work, where it's mostly been about trying to work out exactly what all the girls body langague is really communicating.
You should all understand this - I'm off skiing. I have a team of 56 people based in Dublin who will be taking over blogging duties, be nice to them and cut them some slack.
6.39am: got up with the plan of going running. But I couldn't find my running shoes, my shorts, or the dog's lead. So instead I sat by the fire with the dog, put the radio on, and had a cup of tea.
7.47am: arrived at work. Checked emails, which were mostly about what meetings were happening that day, and why. I did this while listening to the morning show on Classic FM, and drinking more tea.
8am: read client brief in preparation for conference call about the brief later on. I had to do this twice as at first the brief seemed too clear. Second time round proved that yes, it is clear, the client knows what they're talking about. I take a moment for this to sink in.
9-9.30am: is spent in an internal status meeting for one of our biggest clients. Everyone seems to know what to do - time is short and there's lots of global issues to consider. My job seems to be to get the team to realise their convinctions are right, and they should push on with them.
10am: Client conference call. I congratulate the client on knowing what they're talking about, and ask one question about focus. We have one week to crack it. Simple brief: they have a new product and want to tell people about it. Everyone seems confident we can do it. Time will tell.
10.30am: The Lurpak team meet to talk about 'The Hungry One', part of this new campaign...
Roo and Dan Hon have been managing 'The Hungry One'. We all test each others points of view about how far the idea could go, and then run out of time.
11am: at this time on a Monday is agency work flow, where all the agency's live projects are discussed from a resource point of view. I walk into the meeting, and then leave almost immediately. No one seems to notice the absence of the planning department, so I make more tea.
11.31am: I realise I've been taking no pictures, and therefore start snapping. Starting with one in the new business meeting that I have to attend, it's about a potential pitch we might do.
In attendance are Tony & Kim our head creatives, Neil our MD and chief blogger, Penny who is head of account management, Bella who looks after PR, and Tony who looks after the allocation of creative resource across all accounts. We row and bicker for about 30mins. Trying to work out what the right thing to do is not that easy when it comes to new business. We stop bickering when we run out of time.
11.57am: I call the kitchen people about our work surface at home. We talk about stone, and other manly type stuff. It's a good call.
12pm: Skype interview with someone overseas. It's an interesting chat and we agree to keep talking. We're desperate for good planning talent at the moment so it's nice to talk to someone genuinely interesting.
1-2pm: I chat to colleagues while doing emails in the hot desking area. There are 69 new emails in my inbox since this morning, which is actually quite low. I ignore most, and worry about a few. I also eat sushi and repeately make jokes about 'working out', no one laughs. I notice that beside me Gav, from I.T, sits in a dodgem car pretending that is a perfectly normal thing to be doing. It is not, and deep down Gav knows that.
2pm: I meet Fern, from account management, to talk about a new brief. She brings a massive, and I mean massive, fork to the meeting.
3pm: And once again we're talking 'The Hungry One'. We talk analytics, strategy, and implementation. There's some clever people in the meeting, I say some stuff about objectives, people sort of nod politely.
4pm: I go home and walk the dog. This is the only real time all day I get to think. I talk into a dictaphone app and make some progress on things I need to resolve. I scream a list of pressing issues into the machine, things that get too easily ignored in the sea of meetings that make up my day. They're mostly about long term plans for the agency and people development in the planning department. The sun goes down so the dog and I head home.
5pm: I decide to stay at home and work, making the most of the quiet. I sit in the kitchen. Classic FM is back on, and once again I'm answering emails. But I also get a chance to produce some work. I write a presentation for a meeting tomorrow, and think about some ideas I have for a project I'm advising on for Platform.
7.51pm: I stop working and start unpacking boxes, I can't decide if I'd rather be working again, but it's good to get the books out and on the shelves.
9.30pm: Eat a salad and some bread, talk to Sophie, and play with the dog.
11pm: Start writing this blog post.
In about 3mins: start working again until; I get tired, it gets light, I start repeating myself, or Nic Owen distracts me on Facebook.
So, that was yesterday, recorded. Not sure there was any point in doing that.
I've never really thought about this blog as a diary. Of course it's more about my life than my opionions on important things like; the state of the economy, the price of coffee, or transmedia storytelling. But it's not a strict record of what I've been up to, more just a collection of bits of rubbish related to my life. But Roo Reynolds, our Head of Emerging Platforms at work, has been keeping a record of what he's been doing since he joined us, and it's interesting. A real record of people spoken to, stuff that's stimulated him, and things he wants to get around to doing.
So I'm going to give it a try, but be even more strict than Roo. I'm going to record hour by hour what I do with my days. Who I speak to. What I achieve. What frustrates. What surprises. What I eat. And maybe some other stuff. And then I'm going to publish it all on this blog for both of you to read, and maybe comment on, and say 'good morning' to. How exciting is that!
First the good news, he's over in Australia, being a Dad, and having a good life, which is splendid stuff.
The not so good news is that in the 4 years (it could be more, it could be less) since he left, he's done nothing but spend all his free time persuing his dream of realising his 'answer dancer' concept. Which is essentially nothing more than a vehicle for him to dance on the internet.
You ask it a question, and The Answer Dancer (who is just Simon in a nice jumper) dances you a response.
Click here to try it for yourself, it's quite entertaining.
Even though he's worked on nothing else for 4 years it's still a bit temperamental, but do persist, it's worth it, I think it's going to be bigger than Quora.
In fact I'm going to ask it that question right now.
If most days end up squarely in the middle, neither here nor there, there are the occassional ones that slide towards the top, they're somewhat special and memorable days, they average out the bad ones.
On Saturday I had one of these days. Because on Saturday I ate the finest meal I've ever had, at the sublime Gidleigh Park (it was a little birthday treat for Sophie). Every single mouthful was something to try and remember forever. A little gift from the food Gods.
I then got really pissed and asked the waiter if I could hug the chef, hold him close and whisper 'thank you' over and over in his ear. This was somehow interpreted as me wanting a tour of the kitchen.
Hug. Tour. Whatever. I took the tour.
This is the kitchen. It had lots of plates and cook type people in it. It also contained this white board, which looks really boring but is actually really important, apparently.
Without it chaos reigns, and diners don't get their dinner when they should.
It was a special evening. A bar to hoist high in the hope that maybe one day another meal comes somewhere close, thank you Gidleigh Park.
The next morning I felt so exuberant that I dressed as a young farmer and asked my dog to sit in front of me outside the hotel. Without quite knowing why, she did, I love her for that.
I'm supposed to be running the Loch Ness Marathon on the 2nd October, but I've not really been training. I've run a little here and there, but no proper long runs. In truth I'd started doubting whether I'm actually up to it, it's not far away now. So I decided to test my preparedness with a long run this weekend. I managed to crank out a slow 20 miles. Which in a way was quite motivating - I'm fitter than I thought. But in another way quite demotivating - it took me ages and hurt more than I can say.
Still it was worth it for the homecoming I got from Jemima. I was so battered I collapsed as I walked in the door and got a face full of dog.
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