We talked a lot - the past week at work

Above: the purple buddlia, growing wild, is evocative of the hot London streets of late summer.

Monday

Although I am travelling to and from the same building, the new emphasis upon arriving exactly on time in the mornings is proving to be exhausting (“downstairs” I could often slip in at ten and no-one would say anything). Also, it is impossible to leave on time in the evenings - seven o’clock is usually when I manage to get away. That is why I have become very sang-froid about this new job - I know I am not going to keep this up more than a few months (unless I move closer to London).

Claire was away on Monday, so the only person I had to talk to was Creative Director Marc Baxter. He is clever and very well-read (on his desk, among the heaps of paper, is Spenser’s Pathology of the Brain, a novel by Jean Genet, and a full-colour book on the artist Guido Reni). We talked a lot, in a getting-to-know-you kind of way, but actually we don’t have a great deal in common (he asked who my favourite poet was, and when I told him Tennyson he looked disgusted).

I finished some copywriting left over from Friday. Then I wrote another assignment very quickly. Lynn came in and briefed me on copy for a brochure.

Marc Baxter didn’t seem to do a lot of work. Much of his day consisted of leafing through campaigns that have won awards (winning awards is an obsession for him). He gave me some feedback from the client I wrote the radio commercial for (“They really loved it, they think it works really well”).

“Upstairs” they don’t have a studio but only use freelances. I recommended Joey to Marc Baxter and he called him in. He arrived at 2pm in a red England shirt, jeans and white trainers (which apparently he cleans every day). Joey and Marc seemed to get on really well and they talked about running - eight-mile runs, mile-runs in under five minutes, sprints around a south London reservoir (and the knowledge that they have probably passed each other there). Marc gave him a small job to do, as a trial. Graphic artists work at a hot desk in a windowless glass cupboard just behind Marc’s desk.

On the way home the trains were disrupted.

Tuesday

I produced three themes on a car-related ad. These were for Alex, who works on Val’s team (“I just do the donkey work”). Alex told me that Andrea, the new Account Executive, was not very popular.

Claire was back today and at lunchtime we went to her favourite café. This turned out to be a very dingy place where the food seemed unimaginative and a bit stale. It is surprising that in central London, where property prices are stratospheric, you come across run-down little places that must be barely scraping a living.

In the afternoon Aled, one of the directors, came in to talk to Marc. Aled is aged about 35, smooth manner of talking (veering a little to smarmy on occasion). They held a whispered conversation, parts of which I could hear:

“Terry thinks dark clouds are gathering” said Aled.

“He wouldn’t know a dark cloud if it pissed on him” said Marc.

Late afternoon lots of very basic ads came in. I just churned them out, one after the other. A lot of the billings is made up of advertising, which is unusual considering we are supposed to be PR specialists. Generally the PR work gets us in to see a client, and once we are working for them we try to take over any advertising they run (Terry likes to do this as it pushes the agency billings up).

In the evening I looked at my finances - I must try not to be so extravagant.

Wednesday

“The human imagination is the stage on which our advertising is acted out” said Marc Baxter, in one of his pompous moods.

A briefing in the morning for website copy for an American company based in London. Then Doug briefed me on some work that I wrote out immediately (500 words). Then copy for an electronics company, an auction house, a home improvements company.

Kim Blacha came to office at 5.30 to wait for me - I could see her sitting in Reception while I raced through the last assignment.

Thursday

I felt exhausted when I woke up, which is not a good sign (I thought back to my early 20s, when I could get by on only a few hours sleep per night).

I did some more work for Doug, and when it was finished I took it out to him rather than just e-mailing it. I sat by his desk and talked it through (I wanted to make sure he understood the angle). At his desk in the centre of the floor the agency seemed completely different, noisy and bustling - you had to raise your voice just to get heard.

Back to the seclusion of the writers’ room.

I helped Marc Baxter with some conceptual ideas and we worked together quite well. I had a rush of ideas (which sometimes happens to me) and solved lots of problems he had been struggling with. No need to go out at lunchtime as lots of food was left over from a client visit (there is a suspicion that Aine over-caters especially so that there will be left-overs to share out).

When I got home in the evening I fell asleep and didn’t wake until 2pm. It is horrible when this happens. You have to wake up completely to go to bed properly.

Friday

Claire seemed very down - “I’ve had lots of copy chopped about this week”.

The economic situation has affected many of the agency’s clients. The account teams seem uneasy about the future and you often see little groups whispering. Unlike “downstairs” people are more cautious about expressing their opinions.

In the afternoon not a great deal of work got done. The Olympic opening ceremony was playing on the television in the Board Room and people wandered in and out to watch bits of it. In a way it made the mood more upbeat.

The Economist

Interesting article in The Economist recently saying that piracy is not necessarily bad, and can sometimes lead to brands establishing market share (which companies can then exploit with legitimate products).



The Economist is the most worthwhile news magazine you can buy. It will tell you what is really happening in the world. The style is understated, and unsensational.

The magazine was founded in 1843. Ownership of the publication is complex (half is owned by Pearson). Editor of The Economist is John Micklethwaite.

The Bagehot column is always worth reading. The book reviews are exceptional. The obituary (one per issue) is often a superlative mini-biography.



The magazine is based in St James’s. The architecture of the building is brutalist-modernist, and has been criticised in a recent article in the Guardian as out-of-place for its surroundings. Half the magazine’s circulation (1.3 million) goes to Canada and the USA.



Unlike many weekly publications The Economist is doing very well. Profits are up and readership is expanding. If you want to know what’s happening read the Financial Times, if you want to know what’s really happening read The Economist.

An age as remote as Byzantium

After a series of false starts and wrong turnings, Kim Blacha’s 1980s project has finally got going.

On Wednesday evening we went in search of the Crypto-Amnesia Club.

Needless to say, we didn’t really find it.



Above: The Crypto-Amnesia Club is a novel by Michael Brace well (archetypal 1980s author) published in 1988 (and only ever published in paperback, which seems to have been a 1980s innovation).

The book is a self-aware narrative by the manager of one of London’s most fashionable nightclubs. The style is droll, faux-cynical (the narrator feigns cynicism as a mask for his romanticism) and extremely fashion-conscious. Nothing really happens in the book - “being” is more important than “doing” (which is one of the themes of the 1980s as a decade).

Trying to track down the model for a fictional 1980s nightclub is not easy. The larger clubs (Dingwalls, Camden Palace, Blitz) are fairly well documented, but Bracewell’s text indicates the Crypto-Amnesia was a smaller and more exclusive place (the narrator is disdainful of open-house establishments with their clienteles of “mostly video film assistants”). Given the nature of nightclubs (opening one year, closing the next) actually locating the Crypto-Amnesia prototype seemed impossible.

One clue, however, came from an interview Kim Blacha did with the mother of a college classmate (London College of Fashion). She has done about thirty interviews, the earlier ones fairly loose, the later ones more structured and using a template I wrote for her. The interviewee was aged twenty-two in 1984 and described a club called Blast R101:

“I remember it was lovely inside, more like a house than a nightclub. There were bars and a restaurant and an area where you could watch videos, which was the in-thing then. There was even a little library, although I don’t think anyone used it. What I really liked doing was just sitting on the sofas and watching the world go by. People were more interesting then. There wasn’t this obsession about celebrities. Ordinary people were celebrities - they made themselves interesting. Downstairs there was a dance-floor and I remember dancing to More Than This by Roxy Music. More than this there is nothing the words go, and it really seemed that you couldn’t ask for more…”

The interviewee couldn’t remember the nightclub’s address. A Google search for Blast R101 produced nothing apart from an enigmatic reference to “Music responsive light sculptures shown at Diorama and Blast R101” (see url below). Eventually Kim found an address in a 1989 ’phone directory from the BT historic archive.



Above: 6 Ormonds Yard, SW1. Formerly the Blast R101 nightclub, now the Abracadabra Restaurant. It was absolutely deserted when we went there. Inside the restaurant was a series of booths around an open central area (where the sofas would have been?). We sat in one of the booths, which was decorated with Donna Summer souvenirs. We ordered drinks (I tried to think of something typically 1980s, but nothing came to mind) and when they were brought to us I asked the waiter about the history of the building - all he could tell us was that it used to be a Turkish bath.



Above: in the basement the dance-floor was still in place. Bracewell’s Crypto-Amnesia Club was “quilted in scarlet plastic” and had “floor level strip lighting” so this room looked the part. Is this where the interviewee danced to Roxy Music?



Above: Roxy Music’s Avalon LP (which includes More Than This). Brian Ferry’s Roxy Music was a key musical influence on the 1980s. Avalon was released in 1982 (and was the band’s last LP).

Michael Bracewell has written extensively about Roxy Music.

It seemed strange to hold the Roxy Music LP (a technology that is effectively obsolete, although attempts have been made to revive the format). The 1980s is only one generation away, and yet to recover that decade is almost unfeasible. It is an age as remote as Byzantium.

The only Google reference to Blast R101: http://www.mimetics.com/vur/wkexamp

London Labour and the London Poor (1)

One of books that changed my life is Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor. It is a fascinating ethnographic examination of the working class and underclass in Victorian London. It makes me think about “the working poor” in London today.

I hope this photo essay will be the first in a series.

Obviously these are candid photographs, taken from “real life”, so if anyone objects let me know and I will take the image down.



Above: construction workers have uncertain job security. Employment is often on a casual basis. Henry Mayhew wrote “The first contractor, who does the least of all, gets the most of all; while the poor wretch of a working man, who positively executes the job, is obliged to slave away every hour…”



Above: street cleaners. Usually today they will be employed directly by borough councils and receive proper payment, including pensions. In Henry Mayhew’s day things were more casual and he write of the classes of street cleaners as being “scavengers, nightmen, flushermen, chimney-sweeps, dustmen, crossing-sweepers, “street-orderlies,” labourers to sweeping-machines and to watering-carts”.



Above: drainage workers. There is nothing glamorous about this job, but it is absolutely essential. Henry Mayhew helped expose the scandal of poor housing in Bermondsey without adequate drainage “any one who has ventured a visit to the last-named of these places in particular, will not wonder at the ravages of the pestilence in this malarious quarter, for it is bounded on the north and east by filth and fever, and on the south and west by want, squalor, rags and pestilence.”



Above: lighting engineer (Mayhew writes of the gas lamp lighters of Victorian London).



Above: Mayhew writes extensively about “barrow boys” and their unique culture.



Above: kitchen workers. Again a precarious occupation, now as in Mayhew’s time (the shouting and bullying of Gordon Ramsay would shock Henry Mayhew). Mayhew recorded the experience of kitchen and domestic servants into unemployment, destitution and thus into far worse means of existence.



Above: I am sure this is actually a highly-paid surveyor, but there was something about the way he went along the pavement daubing paint on cracks and potholes that seemed Dickensian.



Above: casual labourer eating a makeshift lunch (probably brought from home) while laying on the grass of a London square. These labourers have no rights and can be dismissed on a whim. In one of the richest cities in the world they subsist on a pittance.



Above: sandwich-board men. It must be humiliating to wear this advertising paraphernalia. Mayhew records “the Street-Advertisers viz. billstickers, bill-deliverers, boardmen, men to advertising vans, and wall and pavement sticklers”.



Above: the “shirking classes”. Whenever the sun becomes hot you suddenly see people in the middle of the working day, in urban areas, dressed as if they were on holiday. I don’t mean to judge these people, nor do I think they should be “forced” into working if they don’t want to - if they can get by on benefits good luck to them (but young idlers were around in Mayhew’s time and he writes: “without judicious treatment, the restraint may be entirely thrown off by the youth, and the labour be discarded by him, before any steadiness of application has been produced by constancy of practice”).

More on Henry Mayhew: http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/25

Orientalism

Above: the exhibition Lure of the East is on at the Tate Gallery until the end of August.

The big exhibition at the Tate Gallery at the moment is Lure of the East - mainly nineteenth-century works that portray the middle east through the eyes (and imagination) of British artists.

These paintings are important for several reasons - before the advent of colour photography these images were the main medium through which the “Arab” world could be seen in the west; the meticulous creation of these images represents the artifice of the creator in selecting and omitting significant elements; these images demonstrate how nineteenth-century British imperial intellectual thought coped with “the other” (by romanticising but at the same time belittling it, so that it was reduced to the category of “the picturesque”).

I went to the Tate with Mrs V (who talks and talks and talks).

The first room was filled with portraits of significant “Orientalists”. These were influential enthusiasts for the middle east and Arab culture (their influence lingering in the Foreign Office even until the early 1990s). Sir Robert Shirley in a dishevelled turban and richly chintz robe (“that’s exactly how I want my sofa upholstered!”). Byron looking suitably byronesque. Firm-jawed TE Lawrence. William Holman Hunt whose kind eyes understood so much.

Next into a room of beautifully-crafted stereotypes. Naked Circassian female slaves, luxuriant long hair tumbling down to preserve their modesty. Schools and shops in Constantinople. Encampments in the Sinai desert. Jewish figures placed in an oriental context. The Carpet Bazaar in Cairo (the artist Muller capturing an incredible sense of serenity).

Genre views: mosque interiors; Lewis’s Chapel of the Burning Bush (possibly my favourite in the exhibition - watercolour and pencil so subtle it left your mind room to imagine); Lewis’s Commentator on the Koran (another favourite).

Great monuments of antiquity: the entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; the ruins at Baalbec; the ruins at Karnack.



Above: as usual the postcards were disappointing. You can never get the ones you want. Does anyone collect postcards these days, or has it all been superseded by Google Images?

The exhibition made me think about the ways in which nineteenth-century Orientalism continues to influence our imagination. Obviously Hollywood uses these images (the sets of Intolerance in the 1920s, the character of the fez-wearing Joel Cairo, Antony and Cleopatra, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Sheltering Sky, The Mummy Returns). Also literature (the work of Lawrence Durrell, Barry Unsworth’s Rage of the Vulture, the graphic novel by G. Willow Wilson).



Above: Aziyade by Pierre Loti is one of the best novels I have read. Obviously the author is French, but as it has been translated it also counts as an English work. It’s a stylistic masterpiece.



Above: Orientalist influence on architecture can be seen at Leighton House in west London. Home of the Victorian artist Frederic Leighton, the severe exterior conceals a lavish “Moorish” interior. Crammed with paintings (Leighton is the greatest painter of the colour orange).



Above: more postcards (why do I buy them? they only become clutter). The postcard on the left shows the Moorish hall at Leighton House. This room has featured in music videos by Spandau Ballet and The Stranglers, as well as a recent drama by Stephen Poliakoff.

The 1980s seems to have been a golden age for music videos influenced by Orientalism:

Golden Brown by The Stranglers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIHBUGvAUMo
Dominion by Sisters of Mercy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWvOHT0zfXY
Rock the Casbah by The Clash (including caricatures of Arabs and Hasidic Jews): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAkfHShATKY
Walk like an Egyptian by The Bangles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MimmTdn9314 (see also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkhJpr2zR8s).
Gold by Spandau Ballet (more Andalusian than middle eastern but al Andalus was “mudehar” - part Arab part Spanish part Jewish): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSq8ZBdSxNU
Im Nin’Alu by Ofra Haza: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSMl8SpT6p0



Above: I am looking forward to reading this book, which is a biography of the Jewish Lev Nussimbaum who “became” the Arab Kurban Said.

Tyler Shields

A typical Tyler Shields’ blog post can be found at http://www.tylershields.com/2008/08/03/aaron-paul-7/#more-1161

I picked this one because I thought the combination of Tyler Shields imagery and Radiohead music was interesting.

Tyler Shields produces still shots and videos. His work is a mixture of commercial, artistic and experimental. Almost all his work is figurative.

His style is unique. He has a vision that could be described as Californian-surrealist-noir. He photographs shadows rather than light.

For instance, his portrait of Taryn Manning (http://www.tylershields.com/images/taryn-manning/taryn-manning.jpg) shows the actress’s visage chopped into abstract shadow shapes. The stillness of the gaze, combined with the windswept hair, is amazing. It reminds me of the Reynolds portrait of Jane Halliday at Waddesdon (which you have to see first-hand - reproductions just make the painting look dead).

His best work tends to be set in interiors or at night. He is able to suggest moods and emotions. Most of his images have a strong sense of the unspoken narrative.

Radiohead are an “alternative” rock band from Oxfordshire. Lead vocalist is Thom Yorke. They have managed to encapsulate an “alienated” sound which is much imitated by wannabes.

Radiohead “changed the world forever” by choosing to distribute their album In Rainbows on a pay-us-what-you-think-it’s-worth basis.

More on Radiohead: http://www.myspace.com/radiohead

Afterlife by Michael Frayn, National Theatre

Thursday evening H and I went to the theatre - first time for ages. We arranged to meet at the Westbury Hotel. She was a little late, so when she finally arrived we decided to take a taxi.

The traffic was slow and we seemed to be travelling a convoluted route. Eventually we arrived at the National Theatre complex and the taxi driver took us through a barrier (hand operated by a surly attendant who didn’t appear pleased at having to get up) and right round to the main entrance of the Lyttelton Theatre. I had no idea you could drive right up like that.

We had missed the start of the play and had to wait about five minutes until the first scene change (this allowed us to drink some water at the bar - the evening was extremely hot). Every time I have been to the National Theatre I have been late and have had to tiptoe in after everyone has sat down. These oblique arrivals in semi-darkness have become part of the National Theatre experience.

The play was Afterlife by Michael Frayn. We had very good seats in the stalls. Everything about the production was perfect (acting, lighting, scenery).

Michael Frayn is one of our greatest writers. His style is superficially amusing, but his subjects deal with intensely serious (and sometimes very dark) concepts. In many ways he is the heir to Aldous Huxley.

Afterlife is a stylised biography of the impresario Max Reinhardt. Max Reinhardt is played (superbly) by Roger Allam. The play was directed by Michael Blakemore.



Above: photo I took of the stage during the interval.

The National Theatre is one of the most influential mediums in the United Kingdom. The audience is almost entirely As and Bs (a very difficult demographic to reach when they are relaxed and susceptible to messages). A good play at the National Theatre could make or destroy any political reputation, boost or retard any social trend, bring about changes in national opinion (for good or ill).

The director of the National Theatre is Nicholas Hytner.

More about Afterlife: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/afterlife
Also: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/arts/2008/06/07/btmax107.xml

And yet more copywriting - the past week at work

Above: Claire and I went to Pizza Express

Monday

My “new” job. Because I wanted to make a good impression I caught an earlier train and had to stand all the way to London. I arrived at the agency and walked up the stairs past the old floor and into my new office.

Although I had worked “upstairs” before, and half-coveted a permanent place there, now the transition had actually happened I was (as usual) filled with doubts. Dithering and inadequate Ian may have been, but he was not a hard boss. Terry, on the other hand “runs a tight ship”.

My arrival was encouraging. People seemed to be expecting me. After a brief welcome by Terry I was taken to the back area (screened off by a wall of glass) where I have been allocated a desk opposite Creative Director Marc Baxter.

My new role is to be one and a half days as a copywriter, three and a half days helping on Val’s account team. However, because there is a backlog of copywriting I spent the entire week working with Marc and junior copywriter Claire. Almost immediately Account Director Nicola was briefing me on some work.

Tuesday

More copywriting. In my new job there is much less interaction with the clients, and I miss getting out of the office (often I would invent reasons to go and see someone, just to break up the day). I soon became aware that boredom is likely to be a big factor in my new role.

Lunchtime Claire and I went to Pizza Express for a pizza, some ice-cream and a cup of coffee. It was a hot day, and the air-conditioning in Pizza Express wasn’t working so the atmosphere was sweltering. We also had to watch the time - “upstairs” you get exactly one hour for lunch, with no extensions.

Claire has been a copywriter at the agency for about nine months. It is her first job after leaving university (where she did English). She talked about how difficult Marc Baxter can be, often making her rewrite things - once she had to rewrite an ad seven times before he was happy.

Wednesday

Yet more copywriting. Although I know everyone on this floor slightly, it is surprising how much I don’t know about them (if that doesn’t sound contradictory). The only people I know really well are Rachel and Doug - and they are on the other side of the office well out of the way.

Because as writers we are supposed to need peace and quiet no-one comes into our area to chat. We are trapped behind a big glass wall, able to see the rest of the office being sociable and interacting with each other. Things are worse when Marc Baxter is in the screened-off area as he likes things to be absolutely silent.

I tend to favour long copy rather than short copy. This is not always popular with the Account Executives but because I am quite experienced as a copywriter I am able to sell my work to them. Generally I don’t rewrite things - this is not creative arrogance or egomania but a practical technique to preserve my sanity. I know from other writing jobs I have had that if you give in to rewrites there is no end to it. I tell the Account Executives that I have done my best, and can’t improve on it, but if they want to make any changes they should go ahead make them (very seldom do they do this). I realise that this may lead to a clash with the senior account directors, but I am ready for this (and will “move on” if necessary).

Something must have been said already to Marc Baxter as out of the blue this afternoon he asked to see everything I was working on. He spent about an hour reading through it all, then gave it back to me saying “This is faultless”. He said this in a toneless voice, not at all friendly or complimentary.

Account director Trevor gave me a very late brief so I had to work until 6.30 to get it done.

Thursday

And yet more copywriting so that I was becoming thoroughly fed-up with it all.

Kate rang me up from downstairs ostensibly to ask me about some of the projects I had been working on, but mainly we just talked. Her new business role has gone, and she is back account handling (all the accounts I had taken over from her originally nearly a year ago). She said Ian wanted to move the agency out of the building and they were looking at new offices near Kings Cross.

In the evening I went to the theatre with H.

Friday

Because I had been out so late I took the morning as a half-day holiday (prearranged) and slept until 10am. When I got up I had a shower, a very late breakfast, then went to work. The train journey was very comfortable, and I was able to get a table seat where I read the Guardian and the Times and drank some coffee.

In the office Marc Baxter asked me to write a radio commercial. When I gave it to him he said (grudgingly): “You can certainly throw words down on a page.” He left early at 4 o’clock.

When Marc Baxter had gone Rachel came into the screened-off area and we talked. She said that Terry had appointed me to the writing job without Marc Baxter’s knowledge. The directors of the agency had been angry with the continual back-log of copywriting, and felt Marc Baxter needed some help.

This explains why Marc Baxter has been so unenthusiastic about my arrival. He had just been told by Terry that he was to have an assistant. So this is yet another poisoned chalice to be handed to me.

Canteen culture

The Feathers pub in Broadway. I went there yesterday lunchtime with an old college friend who is now in the police. Not surprisingly it is popular with police who work at New Scotland Yard (“A big group of police got involved in a fight at the Feathers with some squaddies from around the corner - the landlord was yelling I’ll call the police and they told him We ARE the police!”).

Afterwards we went into New Scotland Yard for a cup of coffee in the canteen. I was surprised at how little security there seemed to be - no-one searched me or asked me what I was doing there. The canteen was a big room several floors up, almost entirely empty.

“Canteen culture” is an important determinant of police attitudes to the outside world. Almost uniquely among British institutions, everyone at the top of the police has started at the bottom. The canteen culture now prevalent will decide police policy ten or fifteen or twenty years from now.

Rubbish

Above: bag of rubbish dumped (ironically?) in front of a sign prohibiting the dumping of rubbish. Not even the order of the Clerk to the Drainage Board can stem this tide of rubbish. Despite the grim name, Black Sluice is a local beauty spot.

Although I live in a remote part of the county, down a lane few cars drive along, even here we have experienced fly-tipping. In recent weeks we have seen: a plastic bag of rubbish dumped on the verge; a baby’s mattress and old toys thrown on the side of a ditch; an abandoned freezer just left half-on the road. If you ring the local council they usually come out and remove the stuff the same day, but so prevalent is the fly-tipping becoming that you can see this service becoming overwhelmed.

It’s easy to blame ignorant and selfish townies, dumping in the countryside the detritus of their urban culture.

The real fault must lie with the manufacturers, retailers and marketers. Most packaging is ridiculously over-engineered and wasteful. Most designers (of both products and packaging) do not give any thought as to how the products they are designing should ultimately be disposed of.

The fault also lies with the government, which has shamelessly pushed responsibility for recycling and disposal onto the end-user (with the result that a growing number of anti-social end-users simply dump their rubbish in open areas).

The government needs to push responsibility back onto manufacturers, retailers and marketers.

Designers of consumer products should be required by law to include on packaging accurate details of how and where that packaging and the product inside it should be recycled or disposed of. The average cost of recycling and disposal should be included in the cost of the product (thus making these facilities free for end-users). The general principle should be: if you cannot demonstrate how your product and its packaging can be easily recycled or disposed of, then you cannot sell your product in the United Kingdom (and by “easily” I mean weekly household collection, not the German farce where you have to take the packaging off in the supermarket where you have just made the purchase).

The advertising, marketing and design industries in the United Kingdom are the most creative and efficient in the world. If such a legal requirement were to be made they would respond quickly, easily and with a high standard of innovation. The subsequent boom in product innovation would make British products attractive internationally, since all countries will eventually have to address the issue of consumer waste.

And those products that cannot be recycled or ethically disposed of? I doubt whether anyone would really miss them. The advertising profession will soon find something else for you to buy.



Above: another view of Black Sluice drain, with the waterfowl enjoying their afternoon swim.

Betrayal

Above: extremely blurred photograph I took at Port Sunlight of the William Holman Hunt painting The Scapegoat (the museum didn’t allow you to use a flash, and the only angle I could see the whole painting was from the gallery).

Plotting against Gordon Brown by his own parliamentary colleagues is reported as feverish, although the press has yet to use the word “febrile” (an adjective seemingly reserved for mass hysteria in the House of Commons).

Newsnight yesterday led on the plotting, denials of plotting and incipient betrayal. Pictures in The Times and The Guardian show “Gordon” on holiday in Southwold, looking ill-at-ease in a casual jacket while attempting to converse with normal people, all the time aware of what is being said behind his back. If “Gordon” can be loaded with all the ills of the government (the thinking goes) and then “despatched”, the anger of the people will be assuaged.



Above: Andrew Porter writing in the Daily Telegraph about Gordon Brown’s predicament. He is a very perceptive political writer. Also able to express himself in down to earth concepts.

Sir James Frazer has written in The Golden Bough about the role of the scapegoat in primitive societies, especially those individuals marked as human scapegoats (“…so few sands in the hour glass, slipping so fast away, sufficed for one who had wasted so many precious years”). It is impossible not to feel pity for Gordon Brown, about to be betrayed by his friends. And as a cultural device the idea of the scapegoat is still with us - how many people in our post-industrial, ultra-sophisticated, intelligence-economy environments have not been made scapegoats ourselves, carrying the mistakes of others?

Betrayal is a complex phenomenon. Few people who practice it remain unmarked. A further complication is that Gordon Brown is (so far as we are allowed to see) a genuinely good person trying to do his best - only a paragon will be able to knife him and carry on unscathed.



Above: The V&A had a recent exhibition of theatre set designs - they were fascinating. This one is of Harold Pinter’s 1978 play Betrayal. On the subject of Harold Pinter, his wife Lady Antonia Fraser was featured on Desert Island Discs last week and demonstrated why she is regarded as one of our greatest historians and intellectuals.

More on the Pinter play: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayal_(play)

"Gordon" looking very uncomfortable on holiday: http://www.hellomagazine.com/photo-galleries.html?imagen=/royalty/2008/07/28/cameron-brown-hols/imgs/cameron-brown-hol2-a.jpg

The Sunday Times 27th July 2008

Normally on a Sunday I buy two newspapers, almost always the Sunday Telegraph and the Weekend FT, but sometimes the Sunday Telegraph and the Observer. Yesterday however, when I went to the shop, the only serious newspaper they had left was the Sunday Times. Rather than drive five miles into the town I decided to give the Sunday Times another go.

I say another go as I have tried with the Sunday Times in the past. I have tried and tried and tried. And it always seems to end with me hurling it away, exhausted at the tedium and disgusted with the shallow content.

Anyway, this time I decided I would work out why I don’t like the Sunday Times. Is it me or is it them? Or is it just an ingrained dislike of (the idea of) Rupert Murdoch that is preventing me from seeing the publication objectively?



On page two of the Sunday Times, below the Contents, the newspaper flags up its USP: “The Best Writers.” Also on the panel is an out-of-date tagline - the Sunday Times is your Sunday Papers. It’s a confident assertion of quality by one of the leading newspaper brands in the country (in the world in fact).

But is it true?

The five “best writers” listed are: India Knight, Rod Liddle, Rosie Millard, AA Gill, and Minette Marrin.



India Knight was educated at Wycombe Abbey (which has a high reputation for English). Her article on Mick Jagger contained clichés (“howls of derision” “adding to the nation’s gaiety” “lords of misrule”), sweeping generalisations (what is her justification for saying “Jagger’s baby-boomer generation has completely reinvented old age”?), and an odd condemnation of elderly demographics who are “wearing cardigans and waiting for death” (India Knight’s by-line photo showing her wearing a cardigan and the sort of floral print dress favoured by my late grandmother). This article didn’t tell me anything.

Rod Liddle was formerly editor of the Radio 4 Today programme (one of the most erudite of news programmes). He shared a page with socialite Tara Palmer-Tompkinson. In his half-page he poked fun at dwarves (done before, most memorably by Ricky Gervais), recycled the disappearing canoeist (done to death as a news item), told us about yet another loony council with bullying petty officials, recycled the (cheaply titillating) Max Mosley item, and produced a corner paragraph that had the sub-text: I hate Labour leaders (without telling us why, which might have been interesting).

Rosie Millard was formerly a BBC arts correspondent. Her article was an interview with the “gay bishop” Gene Robinson. Mildly sneering in choice of language (“holy beanfeast” “goad the boycotting bishops” “he’s even got Jesus backing him”). Mildly racist (African bishops are homophobic). Mildly funny camp portrayal of men in purple frocks getting in a tiswas. Such lazily stereotypical journalism you half-expected the Vicar from Dad’s Army to make an appearance in the article, saying Oh you silly man!

AA Gill is the author of a thinly-disguised autobiography The Angry Island. His self-hatred is externalised by a superficially brilliant (luminous, dazzling, shining) prose style that is ultimately depressing because he hasn’t got anything good to say about anyone or anything. Even when he appears to be saying something nice (for instance, a review of The Wire) if you read the piece again you see he is being nasty in an ironic way.

Minette Marrin is a popular journalist (shortlisted for Columnist of the Year at the 2004 Press Awards). Her article was a polemic advocating disestablishmentarianism masquerading as an attack upon Islamo-fascism. She used a mishmash of statistics (“only a tiny minority” “a startlingly large proportion” “four out of 10 Muslim students in Britain” “almost a third” “40% said they felt” “nearly a quarter do not think” “a quarter of Muslim students” “57% said they should and a further 25% said they were not sure” “more than half” “a third don’t think or don’t know” “a third said they were” “more than half” “these are large minorities” “one can hardly doubt the findings of the YouGov survey” “fully 42% said they weren’t sure” “one in five wasn’t sure” “one in six” “while three in 10”).



The Sunday Times is edited by John Witherow with weekly interventions by Rupert Murdoch (and presumably James Murdoch).



“You MUST read…” - I suppose this sums up what I feel about the Sunday Times. It is a publication that is continually telling you what to do and what to think. Without explaining any reasons why.

The most anxious part is the waiting around just as you are about to go on

After lunch (roast lamb, Yorkshire pudding, Maris Piper roast potatos grown in the county, spinach grown in the county, carrots from Norfolk, some boiled kale) I went to a livestock show. Because of all the precautions that have to be taken (against bluetongue, foot and mouth, other endemic diseases) many livestock shows have struggled to survive. This one was much smaller than previous years and mainly had sheep on show - with a few cattle.



Above: I watched the show jumping.



Above: The cattle had already been judged and, feted by rosettes, the winners were relaxing in their pens.



Above: I watched the sheep being judged (lots of serious conferring).



Above: Greyface Dartmoors. Descended from ancient breeds of Dartmoor sheep, they have very strong constitutions (able to withstand the Dartmoor winters). Traditionally the lustre wool was used for blankets, serge and carpets.



Above: Leicester Longwools. Direct descendents of Robert Bakewell’s Dishley Leicesters, but developed to fatten more easily. The high-quality wool is mainly used for spinning.



Above: Lincoln Longwools. One of the classic nineteenth-century breeds (but has ancient origins). Not only the biggest breed of sheep, but also carries the greatest weight of wool.



Above: Ryelands. Small traditional breed of docile sheep - very easy to manage (which makes them suitable for smallholders). They prefer grass feeding (without the need for additional feed), and so are popular among organic farmers.



Above: Wiltshire Horn. Has little wool, and is naturally self-shedding, so there are low shepherding costs. Probably introduced by the Romans, the sheep are traditionally associated with Salisbury Plain.



Above: Hampshire Downs (the characteristic black face is just visible through the straw). My favourites. The blood of the Southdowns was merged with the Knots of Berkshire and Wiltshire to produce this superior breed. Developed by the local farmers rather than wealthy breeders. Praised by Sir Joseph Banks when he was President of the Royal Society. One writer in 1861 said: “The Hampshire -Downs are the glory of the county as respects live stock.” Large head with a Roman face. Long neck. Unusually well set shoulders.



Above: Probably the most anxious part is the waiting around just as you are about to go on.



Above: At the end of the show the hunt brought the dogs into the main ring. Everyone clapped and cheered. The children rushed into the ring to see the dogs.

In the office there was a strange atmosphere - the past week at work

Monday

It was a busy morning. A surprising amount of new work seems to be coming in, considering we are supposed to be experiencing a downturn in the economy. All I seem to be doing is opening job bags.

Mid-morning I got a call from an offshoot branch of BQW telling me that the media campaign I had put together for them had been accepted. This is worth 250k in billings, 25k being pure profit (I had done all the buying myself). I made sure everyone in the office knew about this good news.

Most of the afternoon was taken up by a sales meeting. It really did seem a waste of time as nothing concrete came out of it. Afterwards Kate and I discussed the meeting and we were both perplexed at how gloomy Ian and Alan (two directors) were being, since we have loads of work on at good margins.

Tuesday

In the morning I was summoned to Rocket in Holland Park for another frantic briefing. They waste a lot of money by not planning their work and doing everything at the last minute (with rush charges). This small client probably represents twenty per cent of my work.

The new brochure for my Entertainments client has been printed and I looked at a few copies the printer had sent me. The covers of the brochure had been cracked in the folding stage and looked horrible. I rang the printer and said the job would have to be redone - he didn’t argue.

Joey (freelance graphic designer) turned up looking almost unrecognisable in a suit. He had been asked to appear in a photoshoot for one of our clients (virtually the whole office has appeared in this way at one time or another - Angela’s hands are very popular). Joey could only be photographed from the left as he had a black eye on his right side (yet another boxing injury - he hadn’t worn any headgear).

In the afternoon the heat became unbearable, with no hint of a breeze despite all the windows being open. Kate went off to see a potential new client at Ampthill in Bedfordshire. I mentioned Pilgrim’s Progress and the House Beautiful but she didn’t really know what I was talking about.

Wednesday

In the morning I took some visuals to Rocket. Joey had worked on them overnight and although it had been a rush job they looked excellent. Rocket thought otherwise however, and rejected them (even though they were absolutely on brief).

Ben (Ian’s son and a photographer in our photographic company) has stopped playing football with “the lads” in the little mews at the back. Probably he doesn’t want any contact with Pete (office junior) who is having an affair (or should I say relationship?) with Sarah our Receptionist, who was Ben’s partner. I went down to the photographic studio, which is on the ground floor, to give them some more work (Rocket stuff).

The photographic studio is a big square windowless room, the brick walls painted black. Half the space is taken up by an infinity curve. Ben was on his own. He looked very sad and vulnerable, even though he almost certainly better off without Sarah. In the background he was playing a Sophie Ellis Bexter CD. The song Love is here couldn’t have been more inappropriate.

In the afternoon a meeting with my Entertainments client in west London discussing their marketing strategy. They specially invited me to attend, and will pay for my time at my hourly rate. After the meeting I left work for the day (arranged with Sheila).

Thursday

Another emergency meeting at Rocket. Rosina (my contact there) was becoming distraught at all the changes her boss was making on the eve of their big conference. Leaving their air-conditioned offices, I was almost crushed by the heat of the day on Holland Park Road.

In the office there was a strange atmosphere. Angela (junior Account Exec and also Ian’s PA) was in an extremely sulky mood, sarcastic to everyone who spoke to her. The heat made it difficult to concentrate.

In the afternoon I went back to Rocket with some cartoon illustrations quickly drawn by Paul (graphic designer in our studio, and quite a good illustrator). The cartoons are to be incorporated into one of the conference presentations. I had to show Rosina how to work her scanner.

Friday

In the morning everyone on our floor was split into three groups and taken off into different meeting rooms with one of the directors (Ian, Alan and Sheila). I was in Ian’s group, along with Kate, Ben and Stuart. Ian told us that our division was splitting off from the PR agency upstairs and would become a separate company owned by Ian, Alan and Sheila. This had been the case a few years ago, so the agency was really going back to that structure. Pete, Sarah and Tony W were being made redundant, and had already been told this and had left the company. All the remaining staff would go through a TUPE process.

After the meeting Ian asked me to stay behind. He explained that there wouldn’t be room for me in the new agency, but that there was a vacancy upstairs I could take if I wanted it (Terry had already agreed this). As the alternative was redundancy I took the job upstairs.

Love is here by Sophie Ellis Bexter (I had never heard it before, but immediately I liked it):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=918JzL3GZLs&feature=related or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrFxsZZtMJE

"Stone the bloody crows, don’t move your bloody knees…”

Above: the new putting green on our (very scenic) golf course.

Friday evening, late, I went putting with some friends from the village.

Although I can play golf I don’t enjoy the game. Mainly I play it because so many people I know have started playing it (good exercise and less physical wear than playing football). I took a course of lessons at Whaddon Golf Centre near Cambridge, then took another course (I was determined not to be shown up), so I know how to stand, how to hold the club, what the swing should look like. But somehow it never really comes together on the course. I have never beaten anyone at a game of golf. I can get round a course competently and can keep up with most people I know, but somehow I lack the killer instinct.

I suppose the real underlying reason (which I would never tell anyone as they would be too offended) is that I find golf boring.

Anyway, half the battle is to get your putting right. “Most people never take putting seriously, which is why their score is so bad” (said to me reproachfully). Which is how I ended up on the putting green at the dog end of a hot day bored out of my mind.

“You’re not standing properly, put your weight on your toes, not on your heels…lock your grip on the putter…don’t move your knees…look! you just moved your knees…I said DON’T move your knees…stone the bloody crows don’t move your bloody knees…”

The heat of the day showed no sign of dissipating. Every part of me seemed covered in perspiration. Never has two hours seemed so long.

“Don’t hit the ball, you only have to stroke it…you want the ball to accelerate so it stays straight…you still have to finish properly, even when you are putting…”