Author: James Aylett

* eating salmon paste sandwiches (which reminds me of my father)
* wishing I was in Norfolk
* avoiding working on puppets
* listening to Dain Bramage Internet radio
* chewing on my pen lid
* happy that Population 3 are going to Edinburgh again this summer

When the sun is in the right place, there are parts of Hertfordshire that look almost exactly like the Windows XP backdrop. Although nothing coming out of Microsoft is likely to be nestling next to an electricity pylon. Mind you, no self-respecting Home Counties hillock is owned by Bill Gates.

Anyway: the point is that it’s staggeringly beautiful, and last night, for the first time in quite a while, I actually enjoyed the train ride home. The south of England is remarkably beautiful when it bothers, and I was filled with warmth and joy.

Then we pulled into Cambridge, where it was pissing it down. If I didn’t know otherwise, I might think that God wants me to move to Stevenage.

“We’re here to memorise some guy” said James Bachman, towards the end of Footlights’ final tribute to its longest-serving, and probably most important, member, Dr Harry Porter. And we were, and we did.

James Casey has written up his impressions of the night, and there’s not much more I want to add (not least because James, I suspect, managed to get more sleep than I did – even though I by no means stayed until the end). I had been thinking, sometime in the afternoon, that I might skip it, or at least not stick around afterwards – feeling a bit ill, feeling a bit tired. But I didn’t, because talking to lots of nice people is curiously addictive (it probably releases natural opiates into the brain, as all good things do), and because it’s much easier to stay and talk than face a half hour walk back in the cold. And so much more enjoyable.

My comment (quoted in James’ entry) that David Mitchell’s unexpected pyrotechnics were “the only particularly notable thing” to happen misses the point that it was all the unnotable things that were such fun. Daniel Morgenstern’s quiet joy at the ADC cocktail named after him; Jon Taylor relating tour show tales; nobody quite understanding why the ADC bothered to put out brochures asking for money when almost everyone there was an impoverished actor. Just enjoying good company, really.

As it happens, I didn’t actually see David on fire; he was remarkably quiet until he’d recovered. He seemed fine when I left, thankfully.

So: thank you to everyone involved, to everyone I talked to, to everyone who made it a good night. And to Harry, for being who he was, and bringing all those people together.

Over the last week or so, work has been somewhat hectic, for a variety of reasons. We’re gearing up to enter new markets, announce new products – all the sorts of thing that keeps Tangozebra in the news as the next big thing (apparently).

Anyway, we’ve been identifying new roles that need filling, whether internally or by hiring new people. As part of this process, I’ve made a list of administrative things I need to do. It’s about a page long which, in my experience, is about the largest it ever gets. Or at least the largest it ever gets before I forget things.

Which brings me to my point, which is that up to about two hours ago I was carrying this list around in my head. There are other lists, including development ideas for current products, and thoughts and ideas about new ones that will be starting soon. And lists of things nothing to do with work, like “sort out auditions for the new UD show”, and “buy some new boots that don’t leak”. Where does it all go?

Assuming each list is at most a page long, and that I have perhaps twenty lists at most, we have maybe ten sheets of A4, written on both sides, living in my head. Of course, they won’t fit just like that – they’ll have to be folded. Some crude measurements suggest that we need to fold them twice, at which point they’re about the same size as the horizontal cross section of my head. Leaving space for eyes, ears, and all the stuff around my mouth, I reckon there’s a good three inches of space of that size at the top. A rough estimate shows that ten sheets of A4, folded twice, will take up about half an inch – so I have two and a half inches of space, or a little over half an inch of full-sized A4 for all my non-list thoughts. That’s about the size of, say, Extreme Programming Refactored, or slightly smaller than Government and Politics of The United States, to compare with two volumes that are to hand. Which is presumably where the notion that everyone has a book inside them comes from – that’s what you can fit into your head.

Of course, if the pieces of paper are scrunched up, there won’t be any other space at all. If this is the case, where do my thoughts go?

One of the entries on my administrative list is ‘tidy my desk’. I suspect, when I get round to this, that I’ll find yet more things to do. I can’t win.

Having spent some time on reception yesterday, as our normal receptionist is on holiday, and having cadged small amounts of time throughout today, we now have a shinier layout for the diaries. It looks like the rest of the site!

Honestly, I’m far too excited about this …

On Saturday, there was a steam engine in Cambridge. Now I’m going to have to visit a steam railway to satisfy a sudden craving for coal-driven locomotion.

Today, I cycled over a nail and punctured my back tyre. Now I’m going to have to negotiate the hell of getting it to a cycle repair shop that is both open and non-crap.

Coincidence?

Having had a successful improjam earlier, I’m in full Uncertainty Division mode, and am trying to tidy up the website a little. So far I have:

• Doodled something to do with company information
• Found a photo of Andrew P that I quite like
• Got the web pages to validate

This is not, when it comes down to it, terribly productive. And I really should be doing some writing. Hmm.

Busy writing an awful lot of dull things I won’t bore you with (much use of restraint to avoid describing competitors as “febrile”). And nursing a sore shoulder, which either came about due to holding a camera on my shoulder on Sunday or – less likely – due to my lovely new scarf, which I maybe tied a little too enthusiastically round my neck this morning.

It really is very lovely. Cashmere, and everything.

Today, words beginning with the letter ‘F’. Try to get them into conversation. Try to get them into a Valentine’s message. Here they are:

Fey

This is a fantastic word, because it means so many things. Doomed, according to the Scots. To clean out, if you believe Tusser (whoever he is). Slightly mad, which is of course one of the best meanings. Suggestive of an elf, which is certainly how I’ve always taken it (with an undertone of effete). And finally, Chaucer thought it meant faith – but then he was, well, fey.

Funicular

Related to a cord or cable – most useful as in “I say, is that a funicular railway adorning the horizon? What larks!”, which can only really be carried off by a young bounder in Austria. Who is probably a bit fey.

Febrile

Feverish. I also use it to mean childish, in a slightly metaphorical, slightly wrong, fashion.

Happing effing!

Noticed two adverts on the tube this morning. The first is by Refuge, showing a group of twenty-somethings at a dinner party, all laughing away merrily and not looking while one of the men smacks his partner to the floor. The caption is something like “Domestic violence: don’t look away”. Pretty powerful, I think.

Adverts that tell you something, not sell you something, tend to be more worth looking at, in my opinion. There was an online advert for Customs & Excise when they were cracking down on illegal cigarette importing – one of our designers created half a dozen fake “get your ciggies from Spain” websites (which were truly vile, and indistinguishable from the real thing), and when you clicked on an offer, a big menacing face popped out and told you off for being naughty. Although I’ll admit most of the enjoyment we got was in figuring out how utterly naff the designs needed to be to be convincing.

The other advert I noticed this morning was for the last series of Friends. It’s frankly awful – actually a series of adverts, each with a large picture of something associated with the series (a pair of reclining chairs, a duck and a chicken, a crowd of people asleep) and some slogan I forgot pretty much immediately. Although I’m not really the target market, so who cares? And it’s certainly better than showing photos of the cast.

I’m wondering if perhaps informational adverts are just easier to make well than ones that sell – selling things gets caught up with psychology, while conveying information is something people have done for thousands of years. Or maybe it’s just that Refuge have more money than … Channel 4?