Adventures On The Road To Organisedness

We’ve been thinking about ‘organisation’, or more accurately, ‘getting organised’: it seems to us that there are several levels of organisedness, and that as one travels from being less, to being more organised, the journey lurches between ‘benign’ and ‘malignant’, in as much as the changes it precipitates within the traveler.

Which is a hell of a sentence, for starters.

So let’s put it another way and, for the sake of argument, focus upon the journey to organisedness of our own R-Y. Just now, we wish he was back to being so disorganized as to be virtually ‘random’, as per a couple of years ago. Back then, if he turned up at a meeting appropriately dressed and equipped with the necessary notebook, it was miraculous. (A previous blog recounts the tale of The African Jacket, for instance). Back in the office, he was known often to enquire ‘what day is this?’ or ‘when will it be Friday?’

Downside? Ensuring our wondrous clients weren’t aware of what appeared to be the early(ish) onset of senility in the bloke doing their PR. Upside? We knew where we stood. We knew implicitly, for instance, when to call R-Y at home, (he was plain old ‘R’ back then), first thing in the morning, to implore him to put on a shirt that has buttons and the black shoes, with the proper socks, rather than the dirty trainers with the miss-matched laces.

And then, with his marriage the delectable Yvonne, (which will, dear reader, reach its first anniversary on 4 June), he changed. Some changes were tangible: the knackered old car he insisted on driving, for instance (which couldn’t get above 50 without overheating, meaning that a simple trip down the M6 was deemed to require the Holy Intervention of the Blessed Virgin herself, if R-Y was to make it wherever and back in one piece and on the same day he’d started out), was the first to go.

So, new car, new haircut, new beard, no beard, another beard… Ironed shirts; trousers that no longer hang from his arse like the soggy sales of a salvaged ship…

(No beard…)

We’ve now reached the point at which Mr. and Mrs. R-Y book their holidays in advance. Months, and months and months in advance, in fact. Which is a good thing, we hear you say. However, in this case, it isn’t; and that’s because the R-Ys will be on the teeny-weeny Greek island of Paxos while the rest of us – not to mention our esteemed clients – will all be one corn pad short of crippled, thanks to 2 days and a night on our toes at the vending industry’s biennial exhibition, Avex.

So, we reckon that ‘disorganised’ is good. Whoever is around the disorganised person can compensate for such a weakness and progress can, however haltingly, be made. Likewise, ‘organised’ is bad – at least at this point in R-Y’s journey, because under the previous regime, he’d have been, by default, at Avex, with the rest of us (where he should be – ed) and the concept of ‘holiday’ wouldn’t even occur to him until, maybe, October.

There’s good news though: as the journey progresses, R-Y will doubtless get even better organised. It’s rumoured that the date for Vendex North is even now in his diary, and that June 2013 has already been flagged as ‘toxic’ on his i-cal.

As for us what remains, Avex will be ‘business as usual’. We’ve designed the stand for N&W, the world’s biggest manufacturer of vending machines, and we’ve organised a fundraiser for them with the aim of handing over £2k to Macmillan Cancer Relief.

Incidentally, if you fancy drinking a cup of s**t coffee for a good cause, get to Avex at the NEC, 15-16 June and visit N&W on stand B 50. (You can’t miss the stand, actually. It’s superbly designed, y’see).

It’s true: we’re offering people the chance to sample Kopi Luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee, which is collected, by hand, from the excrement of a particular species of jungle civet. (That’s a cat, btw.) Apparently, there are gastric reactions going on during the bean’s progress through the animal’s digestive tract that are said to imbue the coffee with its, er – slightly earthy taste…

Kopi Luwak will be on offer for a fiver a cup, and whatever we raise, N&W will ‘match it for Macmillan’, the cancer charity.

So, coffee made from beans that have been shat, by a cat. For a fiver. Do you dare miss it?

But, to call upon the spirit of that long-dead Scouse red injun, ‘Hangonamo’, we’ve just been wondering, have we been ‘had’? Is R-Y actually further along on the journey to organisedness than we’ve just given him credit for? Than he’d have us believe? Hmmm.

PS: That Kopi Luwak coffee. It is stunning and to get a cup for a fiver is a bargain. You might pay £50 in a posh coffee shop for the same thing…

And you thought only C***a punters were paying a fortune for crap coffee!

Indionesian coffee worker with a s**t job to do

Not quite the Ides of March, but auguries just the same, as we beware The Boss’s Boys…

It was as if the man upstairs was rewarding us for being good little girls and boys last week-end. We’ve all been basking in warm sunshine, for starters; but that’s not even the half of it.

We were on tenterhooks this Monday morning. You see, The Boss had a date with destiny yesterday (Sunday 10th) and we were afraid for our well being if he’d been stood up…

Right from the beginning, the auguries were good. R-Y, first in at 8:10, was delighted and relieved to discover that the milk had not gone off over the week-end. This put an end to a series of poor results, when ‘turned’ milk had to be thrown and R-Y was obliged to eschew his morning Nescafe until Mrs. Doyle could be dispatched for fresh supplies. He told us later, ‘it was then that I knew this would be a good day, a good week, a good…’ (He went on a bit). It was a sign.

Next in was Ricky Rock Star. ‘What’s the news?” he asked, his voice little more than a whimper, a scintilla of foreboding in his throat.
‘Don’t know yet.’
‘Hmmm.’ (Silence). ‘Won forty quid on the National’.
‘Bloody hell.’ (It was another sign).
Mrs. Doyle was next, her week off to a great start, as her habitual trip to the newsagents for milk was deemed unnecessary. ‘What’s the news?’ she asked, her features a study of abject pessimism.
‘Don’t know yet.’

Mrs Doyle and John O'Shea

‘Hmmm.’ (Silence). ‘Got a free ticket to see United against Fulham.’ (Her uncle is something to do the FAI and John O’Shea had provided 40 odd tickets so a group from Dublin could experience The Theatre of Dreams). ‘Got to meet John O’Shea’, said Mrs. Doyle. ‘Bloody brilliant.’
‘Bloody hell’, said R-Y and Ricky Rock Star in unison. (It was yet another sign)

What could go wrong? So much good fortune had befallen us on just the one weekend; but was our world about to be shattered upon the entrance of a broken Boss? The tension was palpable as the studio clock ticked inexorably on and the appearance that would inform our whole day / week / careers edged ever closer…

So, what of his date with destiny? Well, The Boss, as most of you will know, is a Rugby Union coach. Not only does he do development work with school kids on behalf of Lancashire RFU, but he also coaches Sedgley Tigers’ U14s. The boys had made it to the final of The Lancashire Plate and his charges had been fighting it out against their oppos from posh Fylde RFC at Southport. If the match had gone well, we were looking at a week of beer and skittles. If it’d all gone a bit Pete Tongue, we’d be on bread and water (and any laughter in the office for the foreseeable would have been regarded as disloyalty, punishable by death or dismissal). To make matters still more (potentially) explosive, Son of Boss, (that’s Young Greg), is the team’s hooker…

At last, from the narrow staircase that joins our exclusive eyrie to the cheap seats below, came the unmistakable sound of The Boss’s plates of meat as he took the steep steps at a gallop. It was another positive augury. R-Y barely had time to raise a thumbs-up before the door burst open to reveal the Boss, in his Tigers’ shirt (and if you want to know what that means, click here), and a smile on his face that couldn’t have been broader had it been fashioned by a well-aimed Stanley knife.

We knew then.

There was no ‘good morning’, no small talk – in fact, no words at all. The Boss, much to the amusement of Mrs. Doyle, began to dance a delirious jig whilst waving his index fingers aloft and singing, quietly at first but with increasing gusto, ‘we are the champions, we are the champions.’

Sedgley Tigers, Lancashire Under 14's Plate Winners

And did we join in the celebrations? You bet we did. In fact, we did the company conga. A happy morning was had by all, watching video footage (shot by Mrs. Boss) of Our Gallant Boys collecting The Cup and a whole heap of stills, one of which shows Young Greg streaking, ball in hand, down the wing, with his dad, the combative coach, running outside him, (touch-judge’s flag in hand), for all the world looking ready to take a pass and aim for glory himself.

Happy days!

So now we can focus on next Monday, the day after the FA Cup semi-final, which pits the Reds against the Blues at Wem-ber-ley. Whatever happens then, we can be sure there’ll be at least one miserable bugger to contend with…

`All mouth and no trousers’, but R-Y gets away with it, thanks to Mrs. Doyle…

There’s a spring in our collective step this morning as we welcome a new client into our heaving bosom. Our latest patron is in the plumbing business and the studio has taken on the feel of a classroom, as we all settle in for our ‘Plumbing as a Foreign Language’ course.

R-Y has assumed the role of teacher: ‘repeat after me; ‘delayed action float valve’.
‘Delayed action float valve’, we chime in unison.
‘Very good’, says R-Y. ‘Now, ‘raised float valve chambers’. And so it goes. For at least twenty minutes, we carefully enunciate foreign phrases such as ‘up and over discharge arrangement’, ‘pump hunting and water hammer’; ‘compensating rotating ceramic discs’, ‘non-adjustable operating differential,’ ‘compliance of Air Gap requirements.’

The phrases lie awkwardly and strange upon our tongues but R-Y seems satisfied that we’re fit, ready and even enthusiastic about the mammoth task that lies ahead.

However, the fearless Mrs. Doyle shatters his air of smug satisfaction. Either she is the epitome of courage and indefatigability or she’s not been around for long enough to understand that R-Y is combustible when challenged. As she speaks, though, she crystallizes all of our thoughts. ‘Ah well then’, she says, an edge of menace to her voice, ‘but what does it all mean?”

She may as well have said ‘the king is in the altogether and he’s altogether as naked as the day that he was born.’ There ensued a corporate intake of breath and a pregnant silence as we awaited R-Y’s response.

‘It’s all to do with plumbing, Mrs. Doyle’, he says.
‘Ah well I know that’, she replies, adding, ‘but what does it mean?’
‘It means something to plumbers’, says R-Y icily. There is a collective rolling of the eyes and a wringing of the hands and an implicit urging that Mrs. Doyle desists in this particular line of questioning.

But Mrs. Doyle, it turns out, is bi-lingual, with the English and the Irish at her effortless command. ‘Sure, that’s no answer at all’, she insists. ‘Now if I was to say to you, ‘niall fhios agat cad ata tu ag caint faoi’ , and you asked me what it meant, would it be enough for me to say to you ‘it means something to the Irish’? Would that explain it to you or would you still be all mouth and no trousers?’

‘Mrs Doyle, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

And just as we were thinking ‘Holy Mary Mother of God’, Mrs. Doyle surprised us all. ‘Ah fer f-f-f Jaysus’ sake, yer man’s a genius right enough’ she said. The rest of us sat around open-mouthed and even R-Y had no idea why he’d been allowed to slip so painlessly off the hook.

‘Will I make you a cup of tea, Mr. R-Y?’ says herself, her face a study of admiration.
‘Not just now thank-you’, he replies sheepishly, in a state of confusion such as that felt by a prisoner, blindfolded and handcuffed before the firing squad, who is inexplicably released even as the bullets are fidgeting in the gun barrels.
‘And are you sure, now?”
‘I am sure.’
‘Ah go on, go on, go on’ says she in her patented style.
‘Oh alright then’ says R-Y irritably. ‘And the rest of you, get back to work.’

And so our journey into the unknown begins and we face the future with optimism and our glass is half full. This time next week, we’ll all be up to speed, and just as Mrs. Doyle is fluent in English, so we will all be effluent in plumbing.

Life! Don’t you just love it?

Explanatory note: ‘niall fhios agat cad ata tu ag caint faoi’ apparently means ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ in Irish. What are the odds on that?! And so, it is thanks entirely to a misunderstanding that Armageddon has been postponed for at least another week…

Too young to understand the bit about ‘the king is in the altogether’?
Then you’ll love this…

R-Y leads the plumbing language workshop in the gardens of Bowers' Towers

‘Ah go on, go on, go on, go on.’

It’s A Big Fish and Irish coffees all round at Bowers’ Towers

As we admitted last week, there has been something of a hiatus, but only where the blog is concerned. On every other front, the wheels of Appleby Bowers have been a turnin’ with a purpose. So, let’s get you up to speed.

Sadly, we have to report that Mrs Mohring is gone from the warm and heaving bosom of our organisation and is now engaged in the, er, plant hire business. Y’see, Mr. Mohring works at the Vauxhall factory in Ellesmere Port and they’ve decided en famille that his daily schlep from Stockport to Liverpool is unsustainable. In any way you care to mention, it was costing too much of the green stuff. So, off they’ve trotted and, alas, our former Senior Designer is now working on web sites in Warrington. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember her. Well, we will now and then.

In her place we have an Owdham Roughyead with a name like a fifties rock and roll star. For the uninitiated, ‘Roughyead’ is term applied to those born and brought up in the frontier town of Oldham, which, if it isn’t twinned with Dodge City, KS or Tombstone, AZ, it should be. From this crucible of fomenting lawlessness has emerged one Richard Wilde.

It is by an accident of birth that he has become a graphic designer. Had he been born in, say, 1940, surely he would have been right up there with Cliff and Duane and Eddy and Buddy… Ricky Wilde, ladies and gentlemen. But he was born considerably later than that. Indeed, he was still in short pants when The Boss was scrumming down in First Class rugby and R-Y was tilting at his own rock and roll windmills…

Ricky Rock Star

We had a lovely girl from Armagh via Australia amongst us for a short while, but Bronac has returned to the Emerald Isle. In fact, if it’s a female voice you hear when you phone the studio, it’ll be Amanda’s. She’s from Dublin via Australia and she’s around to experience what it is to work in a bustling design studio. And what it is to make coffee on demand for a grouchy group of grumps. And answer cheerfully to the name ‘Mrs. Doyle’.

Mrs. Doyle

Quite what it is with The Boss and the female Oirish lilt is a matter of some speculation… (But not in this blog – Ed. And what about the Aussie connection?)

Add to all the above the fact that we’ve moved from our former lair on the second floor of Bowers’ Towers into the penthouse eyrie and you’ll have to agree that we’ve hardly been letting the grass grow under our skylights. We’ve been doing lots of interesting work, too: design wise, we were chosen by GVS Assist to design a brand-new corporate identity…

GVS Assist provides a one-stop, quality solution for servicing an organisation’s food and drink equipment. From espresso machines, drinks coolers and vending machines, to multi-site hot snack facilities, for clients of all sizes and sectors, GVS Assist provides service in any location throughout the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Although it became an independent company in 1995, GVS can trace its UK service heritage right back to the 1920’s. It’s A Big Fish.

We came up with ‘a series of divisional identities that identified each separate strand of the organisation whilst clearly belonging to the same corporate family in terms of typography and graphics’, it says here.

There was more to the job than that, though, as The Boss explained: ‘we were also asked to come up with names for the group and its divisions’, he said. ‘We presented a range of potential solutions but we were delighted that the client went ahead with GVS Assist, allowing us to create the separate but linked identities of Vend Assist, Cool Assist and Café Assist, and with the recent acquisition of Coffeetech we’ve been able to add Coffeetech Assist to the ‘family’.

R-Y’s been busy too, but more of that next week.

Meanwhile, it must be time for another Irish potato, er… coffee? No? Ah, go on, go on, go on, go on…’ But hang on: if The Boss is Father Ted, and Ricky Rock Star is Dougal, does that make R-Y Father Jack? You ask him if you dare…

But you’ll see how we’re thinking if you click here.

A Hiatus Brief

It’s, er, been a while.
Sorry, there have been extenuating circumstances; but we’re back on blogging track now, so let’s kick start the recovery by considering, appropriately enough, the word ‘hiatus’.
(Pause for thought).
Could this word be applied to our current situation vis a vis the company blog? Let’s see what Encarta has to say: ‘an opening or aperture in an organ; for example the opening in the diaphragm for the eusophagus’. Isn’t that too medical? It’s true: the reason ‘it’s been a while’ is sort of medical, but it has involved no opening of the diaphragm, thank-you very much.
But wait, there’s another definition. ‘A break in pronunciation between two vowels that are next to each other in consecutive syllables without an intervening consonant, as in ‘re-examine’.’
We like the literary overtones here that might suggest our blog would be a worthy subject for academic observation; but like the man used to say: ‘it’s good but it’s not right.’
There’s a third option: ‘a gap where something is missing, particularly in manuscripts’. Close, but no cigar.
Then there’s the one that sounds painful: Hiatus hernia. Apparently, the most common version of this malady, presenting in 95% of cases, is the sliding hiatus hernia, where the gastroesophageal junction moves above the diaphragm together with some of the stomach. The second kind is rolling (or araesophageal) hiatus hernia, when a part of the stomach herniates through the esophageal hiatus and lies beside the esophagus, without movement of the gastroesophageal junction. A third kind is also sometimes described, and is a combination of the first and second kinds, but you knew that already…
Not our kind of hiatus, though, painful as that may be.
But how about this? ‘Hiatus: a break in something where there should be continuity.’
Ah, at last, the perfect charge, to which we have no option other than to plead guilty.
In mitigation… Well, actually there is no mitigation.
But you can be sure that future Mondays will be lit up, as once they religiously were, by a new edition of the blog that counts. OK, counted. And will count again. Maybe. And not a hiatus in sight.
So that’s good then.
It’s great to be back.

It’s all gone a bit Humpty Dumpty…

We came in this morning to find extra baggage within the office. We had been gift-wrapped the son of a client for a couple of weeks of ‘work experience’.

Knowing nothing about our new, if temporary appendage – and with The Boss off go-karting for the day with the AVA – questions quickly ensued. The new man, let’s call him Jack, (since that’s his name), left the UK for Switzerland and then Germany at the age of ten, and R-Y, himself the father of a daughter who has just returned to the UK after 20 years growing up in Norway, was anxious to know how it felt to be back in the old country.

Jack said ‘England doesn’t feel like home’ and ‘I’m English but feel like a foreigner in my own country’. R-Y nodded sagely. (He’s just moved to semi-rural Tottington and he feels the same way). All of which got us thinking: ‘what does it mean to be British?’

Take modern industry for example: Head Office is in one country, but many of a company’s peripheral departments are often splattered across the globe like a dropped egg. That’s how quintessentially British marques such as Aston Martin and Mini have become multi-national omelettes.

Staying on the subject of cars, our petrol – headed newcomer suggested that the modern Mini can hardly be described as Mini anymore, despite BMW’s attempts to keep the historic look of the car. ‘The Mini was named such because it was, mini. Now it is one of the larger vehicles in its class’, he said, to a tacit chorus of nods from us all.

Let’s face it: it’s all gone a bit Humpty Dumpty. There’s a clue in the fact that an egg is, well, pear-shaped.

The revival of the Mini Clubman, the object of much genuflection in motoring circles, is a case in point. This iconic 5-door version of the Mini, with its strange door layout, (a 2-door boot, single door on the driver’s side, and 2 doors on the passenger side) has been corrupted. Purchasing one for the school run is perfect if you’re in Berlin, Basle or Bertchesgarden. The two doors on the right-hand side so that children can be easily and safely hoiked from auto to seitenstrasse, but despite their reputation for rigorous efficiency and perfectionism über alles, the Geschäftsführer at BMW has decided, in its wisdom, to retain this door layout in the UK, where we drive on the right, that is the correct side of the road. Which means that we have the two doors on the drivers side; ergo, should the kids get out the back door, they disembark into the middle of the road. Brilliant. The British Mini has thus become the German Mini.

‘Are we becoming the victim of one of our favourite techniques, assimilation? we ought to ask ourselves’, said Jack philosophically. Warming to the unusual presence of an intellect to match his own (opinion of himself) R-Y gathered himself and held forth.

‘Throughout history we, the British, have done this to others’ he orated, pacing the room whilst holding his lapel with Churchillian steel. ‘We stole tea from India, and yet we regard tea as being quintessentially British.’

‘And curry, too’, said Gareth, pleased to be able to contribute.

‘Our so-called heritage is now being assimilated by other countries, most notably our previously proud car industry. Do you know’, said R-Y ominously, ‘that in the 50s there were over 100 different car marques in the UK. Today less than 20 remain, most of which are owned by Johnny Foreigner. The few marques that are entirely of Blighty are built in garden sheds by sheep farmers. With builders bottom. Called Steve. In Cornwall. Using only elbow grease and old, rusty bikes…’

It used to be that if you wanted the best, you bought British. Now, however, German goods will have been better produced, American gear will be bigger, Chinese stuff will be cheaper, and exports from The Land of the Rising Sun will never break. We’ve been overtaken in almost every facet of industry and even the once derided Euro is catching up to the Pound.

All of which might have left our Jack wishing he’d stayed in bed. Or in Fallowfield. Or even in Hamburg.

So let’s sum-up. Our appendage, Jack, was born here in the UK. However, he was hastily exported. Now, after being moulded and honed by the Swiss and the Germans, he has returned to his natural home. Despite his insistence that he really is British, we can see through the façade. He’s just like our once beloved Mini: a foreign interior masquerading as British by adopting a more familiar exterior. That red hair is fooling nobody…

‘But he’s ever such a nice lad’ said R-Y. Or maybe we should make that schöne typ. What’s the world coming to, we want to know…

Join us and you’ll never be roonied…

We’ve come up with a new word this week and we hope it makes it all the way to the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s a verb, to ‘rooney’, meaning to jeopardize one’s entire world in pursuit of some ephemeral and ultimately worthless ‘high’. We reckon that we’ll soon be referring to sleazebags, cads and lounge-lizards as ‘doing a rooney’, and to cuckolded partners as having been ‘roonied.’

Those snatching divorce from the gaping jaws of ‘til death us do part’ will, from this day forward, will be referred to as a ‘proper rooney’.

Stories published in the press over the weekend dwelt on the combined fortune of Wayne and his recently roonied wife Colleen. We didn’t realise what a phenomenon Brand Rooney has become. Man and wife are both 24 years old and already they have amassed a fortune of £33m. And have you seen that gaff in Cheshire? (If not, check this out). And then there’s his million a year from Nike, £600k from Coca Cola and the small matter of £5m per annum from Man U.

She’s contributed a few quid too, what with her telly work and her books and magazine column. If she were at AB, why, she’d be close to being our top earner! But, notwithstanding all of this, the way things are looking today, W&C could end up in the toilet.

We’ve been canvassing opinion on the matter here at Bower’s Towers and drawing one or two comparisons. First, there’s The Boss. He’s a genuine family man, a one-woman-bloke who dotes on his kids and would cut off his arm before he’d do anything to demolish what it has taken him 30 years to build. Then there’s Vick, and she’s got form: a former boyfriend was once summarily dismissed without so much as a backwards glance when he transgressed; so no prizes for guessing what she thinks Colleen should do.

As for R-Y, we reckon that he’s been a bit of a rooney in his time and we’ll leave it at that. Houses, cars, wives, children; he’s had them and lost them all on one turn of pitch and toss, as the Kipling who doesn’t bake cakes once wrote. But even his track record didn’t prevent him from referring to Wayne as ‘unutterable scum’.

‘A bit harsh’, as they say on Talk Sport.

It did make us think about our business, though. As one of the country’s leading agencies when it comes to vending, catering and all things associated therewith, there have been times when companies competing with our clients have perpetrated the corporate equivalent of flashing a bit of thigh, or undoing a blouse button too many, in an attempt to get us into bed with them. Naturally, their idea is that our life partners (clients who have been with us through thick and thin since we opened the doors 18 years ago and shouted ‘ready!’), could be left in the dark whilst we enjoy fleeting, illicit liaisons beyond the ‘marital bed’.

Yes, there are companies out there that don’t care if we play away and will give us a very nice time, thank you very much. Discretion assured and expected…

Thankfully for AB, it’s The Boss, with his in-bred love of family, hearth and home, who is in the pilot’s seat. This is A Good Thing. If, God forbid, R-Y was in the chair, we’d be in trouble. Rumour has it that he can resist anything except temptation. Having said that, he’s recently revamped, re-branded, remarried and removed, so we’ll wait and see. Maybe a rooney can change? Unless his name is Wayne…

So, think on if you’re considering doing business with us. We’re in the market for an LTR, not a one-night stand with good-lookers who turn out to be ‘all fur coat and no knickers.’ There may be occasions when we don’t excite each other quite as much as we once did, and there may be times when one partner or the other looks longingly at the verdant pastures of the other side… but once we’re together, we won’t be doing a rooney on you. Whatever happens, you can be sure of that…

The Adventures of the Dork Knight (or more likely the Fanboy Wonder)

The other week I told you all about our Pandora; she who spouts her insightful nuggets of wisdom via Facebook, getting all of us here in the office thinking about the philosophical implications of her musings and even the price of taramasalata.

However, it is a little known fact that the office tea and coffee machine (known to residual friends and allies as Gareth) has his own little nuggets of inspiration too; albeit they’re more cardboard box than Pandora’s.

Y’see dear reader, our Gaz is a tad keen on his movies. Actually, scrap that. To say ‘Gareth enjoys his films’ would be like saying that ‘Chelsea scored a few goals against Wigan the other weekend’.

Gareth’s ‘McNuggets’ often come in the form of quotes lifted directly from the silver screen that, for some reason or other, he insists on sharing with the rest of us, apparently at random. Usually, these eruptions are met with a chorus of resigned groans from somewhere behind the pot plants in the general direction of The Boss and a ‘Keep it to yourself’ for good measure. On the odd occasion an office stapler has been seen heading in his general direction.

It was just the other day in fact when, given the task of writing up a case study from R-Y’s illegibly scrawled notes, Gareth graced us with this gem:

‘You can’t be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can you?’ *

Greeted with a sea of blank faces and a flying hole-punch, our very own James King quietly went back to deciphering R-Y’s hieroglyphics.

The Dork Knight’s obsession doesn’t start and end with his ‘topical’ quotes… unfortunately. Given half a chance he’ll bend the ear of anyone within shouting distance with snippets of trivia about films he’s seen recently. He is of the misguided opinion that these bon mots make him look like the all-knowing tree of movie knowledge, rather than just a know-it-all.

Our hero’s latest visit to the IMAX cinema (in Manchester’s ‘Printworks’) last week provided him with a double-barrel of movie trivia firepower with which to pepper us first thing on Tuesday morning. We’re not sure if it was the coffee or just his wide-eyed enthusiasm, but, in the space of ten minutes, he managed to reel off a whole seminar on the subject, in his words, of ‘How Awesome IMAX Is’, (Ed – felt like 2 hours though!)

Due to Gareth being our resident Junior Copywriter here in Bowers Towers, and given his enthusiasm for the 70 mm world, it’s doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to deduce that, during his free time, you’d be likely to catch him hunched over his laptop, fingers a la Dervish on the keyboard drumming up a rhythm with the kind of hypnotic precision that would make Dave Grohl blush, all the while creating his next critical review ready for posting on any one of a plethora of film websites. We’re pretty confident that if things don’t work out in the world of copywriting for our Gareth, ‘enthusiastic film critic wannabe’ would be right at the top of his jobseeker’s allowance form.

Come to think about it, hasn’t a Jonathan Ross shaped hole opened up at the BBC recently? One of these days. We’ll be able to say ‘we knew him when he had nowt, tha knows.’

*If you’re really interested, Gareth later told me the quote was from the film ‘Quills’. I know, I’ve never heard of it either but apparently it stars Kate Winslet and quite a few ‘interesting’ costumes – Ed

Pandora’s box opens and a whole new chapter is added to the lexicon of cat-skinning

Our Head of Design is our own corporate Pandora – assuming you remember the tale of that mythological Greek bird?

(Look her up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora)

Pandora. Not ours, though...

The name ‘Pandora’ translates, apparently, as ‘all endowed’ and ‘giver of all’. Now, this is not a reference to Mrs. Mohring’s physical appearance or personal proclivities, perish the thought: rather think of our Pandora as the only person in the office who can run the place when The Boss is elsewhere. If this was ‘Dodge City’ she’d be wearing – albeit reluctantly – a badge marked ‘Deputy’.

Be that as it may, Pandora tends to keep her thoughts to herself. She’s one of those ‘you’ve-got-two-ears-and-one-mouth-and-you-should-use-them-in-that-proportion’ types. When she says something, though, she says what she thinks and, quite often, what she thinks makes the rest of us think. I think. (Therefore, I…)

Anyway, the best of these nuggets of wisdom are rarely delivered orally. In fact, Pandora avails herself of Facebook to publish her Sporadic Moments of Great Insight.

Take this as an example. ‘Vicky Mohring can’t understand why her car insurance has gone up when she’s not made any claims and her car is worth even less than it was 12 months ago?’

Have you ever given that fact of modern life any thought? How can it possibly be that something that is worth less than it was worth a year ago costs more that it did a year ago to insure against the remote possibility of it having to be replaced? And while we’re on about it, how can the annual cost of insurance exceed the value of the car?

Answer me!

More was to come. Get this: ‘Vicky Mohring loves getting the train so she can have a good nosey in to people’s back gardens!’

Show me somebody who doesn’t look into people’s back gardens from the safe vantage point of a train and I’ll show you a liar! Somebody We Know once saw a timber ‘summer house’ from his seat on the 7.45 from Mumps Bridge to Manchester Victoria. Inspired, upon his return home that very evening he drew up plans and embarked immediately upon a project that culminated in the Champagne-smashing launch of an ersatz des-res at the bottom of his garden, where the compost heap had once reigned in silent stoicism.

It was just two months after the opening, and in the height of summer, that this Somebody We Know returned from work early one evening only to encounter his wife in flagrante delecto with a tattooed and pot-bellied Geordie, who’d come to trim the hawthorns. A sad, sad story: it ended up with SWK encountering a carnivorous divorce lawyer and ending up in Sholver, a location rejected by ‘Shameless’ on account of it being too down market. And all because he was having his car serviced and thought, ‘sod it, I’ll take the train’.

Funny how those concise tweets and Facebook updates can make you think, isn’t it?

Social media. That’s the real Pandora’s box. Companies are learning, like the rest of us: people are inspired by triggers. Think of them as catalysts, if you will. Anything that triggers inspiration is fair game for corporate communicators.

Look here to see how one hotel we know is using Facebook. They don’t rabbit on about how good their food is, or preen about how beautiful their rooms are. Instead, they provide ‘triggers’ to remind the 230 odd ex guests (that have clicked the ‘like’ icon and thus signed up to receive notifications of new posts) about their wonderful stay at the hotel. The triggers? A note about a roosting buzzard and a reference to a TV show. Best of all is that they have created a forum in which compliments can be gratefully accepted. Easy-peasy?

Some businesses have understood the extent of The New Opportunities, others haven’t yet and sadly, others again never will. But Pandora’s box is open now. Suddenly, there is a whole new chapter to add to the lexicon of cat skinning.

How Much Has The Boss Gone Down In Your Estimation?

Some of you have been thinking it, we’ve been pretending it isn’t happening, but it’s a fact of life. The Boss is going down in people’s estimation.

He’s not the bloke he was.

It all began when Brother Robert took members of the Holy Bowers family, including Brother John and Brother Bernard, to a, well… ‘wellness centre’. (Let’s leave it at that, he’ll never go for ‘fat camp’. Ed). In the US of A, don’t you know…

No any old wellness centre though, oh no siree. This here wellness facilinasium is reputatedly a former haunt of Bush clan members. The Hilton Head Wellness Centre is on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, y’all. Posh people? Stars? Celebrities? It’s had more than The One Show. On an earlier recce, Brother Bob met Gladys Knight! Apparently, they sat around the hot tub all night discussing her Pips. Whatever the details of their encounter, the nett result is that Brother Bob now has Triple A access to places ordinary concert tickets don’t get you. J

Be that as it may: let’s be truthful: The Boss was looking forward to it almost as much as he’d look forward to root canal work; almost as much as he’d enjoy being strapped into a chair and forced to watch an entire DVD library of our Glorious Reds trouncing, year after happy year, the Bitter Blues,* sucking all the while on a succession of sugarless lemons. However, any misgivings he might have had were set aside, both to preserve fraternal relationships and to conduct vital commercial research.

(For it shall come to pass that Brother Robert, together with other senior figures of the Bowers order, shall launch their ‘Academy 4 Wellbeing’ in lovely Staffordshire, some time soon – watch this space).

Nevertheless, it was with neither a spring in his step nor a gleam in his eye that The Boss left for the sunny states, weighing in at 244 pounds. That’s 17 stones 6 in old money,

We didn’t have a book running back in Bowers’ Towers, but there was, we admit, some idle speculation as to the capacity of The Boss to live, for the duration of the trip, on a regime of food and exercise that afforded him less calories than would, in the normal course of events, be considered cruelly inadequate for a primary school child.

It should have come as no surprise to any of us that The Boss stuck the course. He can be one determined chappy when he wants, after all: no, the surprise was how much weight he had managed to loose…

Even then there were those of us who doubted The Incredible Shrinking Man’s ability to keep off that which had had dropped off. That’s why, when his story was mooted as an option for a previous issue of this very blog, we thought… ‘not yet’. In fact, the mood in the office was ‘leave it!’ We were all 100% sure that, given a month or so, the regular (‘do you want to go ‘large’?’) Boss would return.

Dear reader, it hasn’t happened. He has proved us wrong. The Boss has morphed into a Born Again ‘My Body Is A Temple’ guru. No longer, the non-stop stream of tea. Water is all he’ll drink. Cakes and sundry tasty morsels banished, every one.

He’s eating like a hamster with stomach staples; like a sparrow that isn’t actually very hungry at all. More than this, and equally alarming, he is – whisper it – über exercising. He walks to work and back twice a day from his home (as he’s always done, to be fair). But now he’s doing three bicycle circuits of Heaton Park every evening. Three. And coaching kids to play rugby.

(We ought to mention that fact that The Boss has roped in his eldest son, Greg, as his bicycling buddy. We are minded to tip off Bury Social Services).

The bottom line (and very trim it’s looking, too) is that The Boss now barely so much as tips the scales at a mere… Well, what do you think? How much has Bernie gone down in your estimation? Put a figure to it. His gut, your reaction! His baggy trousers, your bicycle clips. (What? Ed)

Clients know that The Boss is like a dog with a bone when he’s managing a project, be it design and print, corporate identity, HTML e-mails or making sure old R-Y knows when it’s toilet time. He can, inadvertently of course, be quite an unpleasant bunny when he’s making sure jobs are delivered on time and on budget, but that’s the reason we’re still in business almost 20 years after we started. But this latest and most tangible example of single-mindedness is something else altogether. Hat’s off.

We could join up with a traveling fair and charge people a fiver to see him: the new, improved version of The Boss is as amazing as the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China; The Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Bearded Lady put together.

The rest of us are now looking at our waistlines and wondering…

It gets you that way.

*Manchester City are, and will ever be, ‘The Bitter Blues’ or, colloquially, ‘The Bitters’. Just so’s you know.