Well my old heart skipped a beat or two today when I learned that Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had taken images showing that Beagle 2 had landed safely on Mars some 11 years ago, and had failed to function only because one of the solar-power petals had failed to deploy. Somewhere up there, there’s the soul of Britain’s most famous rocket scientist looking down and smiling today.
Well I’ve finished all the work for my current batch of clients and need to find some new ones for my writing service It’s Write For You. So if anyone out there needs some words producing either for personal reasons – like a new CV, LinkedIn profile or important speech – or for business purposes – like a key presentation, press release, some fresh website copy, sales material etc – then check out my website at http://www.itswriteforyou.co.uk, e-mail me at wordsfrompaul@gmail.com or get in touch via the numbers in the website. My best qualities – great with women, great with words and utterly modest. Ha! What’s not to like?
If I don’t get swamped with approaches this week I’m going to have to write that synopsis for a new sitcom with my good mate C.
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Thursday was an interesting day. I had my 3 month review with my lovely oncologist following the end of my chemotherapy treatment. Apart from the drugs causing me to lose sensitivity in my fingers and toes (which causes them to feel cold all the time), I’ve been feeling great for a while now but I still went to the consultation feeling slightly apprehensive of course. Anyway the outcome of all the recent tests I’ve undertaken is that there’s no significant sign of the cancer having returned. Woo hoo. So I’ve been given a 3 month pass before I start the round of tests and consultation again. My wife C and I were very happy to tell our daughters the news this time as you can imagine.
I had a bit of a surprise this week. No it wasn’t seeing Rob Brydon canter over the zebra crossing with his kid right in front of me this morning. Nor was it the guilty verdict handed down to that dirty old git Max Clifford, a man who made a fortune exposing the perverted little peccadillos of many a sleazy celebrity. Isn’t life ironic eh? It will be sweet justice for his victims I guess to see him banged up for a long stretch knowing the lads who will make Max Mad will be lining up in the shower block. No the real surprise was a telephone call from an old colleague, A, from Cellnet days who I hadn’t heard from in almost 25 years. It was an early morning call and he asked about my health and the family, which was decent, but it quickly became apparent that his main purpose in calling was because he had an issue with what I’d written in this blog posting back in 2007:
Do you wonder what some corporate brand/marketing teams do when they get tasked with delivering a powerful new company strapline? Call the advertising agency usually comes top of the list. Some teams will try and work it out for themselves employing their expert knowledge of company culture and ethos. I’m never sure whether the objective external view is better than the more informed but subjective internal perspective but how often can you point to a great contemporary tagline, end-line or sign-off? Increasingly unlikely in my view.
Well it’s an interesting number, 750. It’d be one hell of an innings at cricket and almost a world record total at scrabble. It’s the weight in tons of a giant A380 aircraft and the awesome age of the oldest sequoia trees. It’s a big amount in anybody’s language. And It just happens to be the number of postings I’ve written on Pasta Paulie with this one. In terms of total wordage it’s about 250,000 more than in War and Peace. Blimey, that’s a lot of uninformed opinion. Perhaps I should have called the blog Wordsa Paulie.
I think my last few postings have gotten a little earnest and a bit self-regarding. My normally caustic rants are beginning to read like a bitter Daily Mail columnist and who really wants to hear about my medical condition for heaven’s sake? So I’m going to try and write with a little more bite and irreverence and hopefully a bit more fun. First up it’s a feature on a rather popular networking platform.
Well, I’m currently reading ‘When Giants Walked the Earth’, the biography of Led Zeppelin by Mick Wall, bought for me by E and S as a present for my fiftyumptieth birthday. It’s everything you’d expect about the greatest live band during that period from around 1969-74 – which I realise must sound like back in the Middle Ages to many readers of this blog. And before you ask, yes I did see them perform, unlikely as it may seem, at Aberystwyth in 1972 – see posting of 13 September 2007 (which also makes me realise that I’ve been doing this blogging lark for a long time now. And I’m still waiting for Rupert Murdoch to spot my writing talent and buy me out for a mountain of Euros. Bloody media mogols). Anyway a third of the way through and two things have struck me about the book so far a) the number of references to Jeff Beck; somebody clearly has an obsessional hang-up about a guitarist whose sole claim to fame is ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’. Get over it Jimmy. And b) the hugely influential role played by their manager Peter Grant, a big fat lump of a bloke with more hair on the back of his fingers than on the top of his head. He kind of reminds me of someone …..
Pasta Paulie 