I wrote about catching up with my old mate S the other day. Well I don’t know if there’s something in the water or LinkedIn’s suddenly started working properly or people have heard about my medical stuff but I’ve had a wave of contacts from some really old friends/colleagues recently from the days when Cellnet had a logo that looked like the one above. I mean friends from way back when, rather than they’re wrinkly and aged (a property I’ve got the patent on).
Now have you ever met any members of the Royal family? Regular readers will be aware that I’m not exactly the most ardent fan yet somehow I’ve ended up meeting a few of the ones in this balcony scene over the years and the experience has always been, well, joyless. They are a bloody miserable bunch.
Well David Beckham’s gone and announced his retirement now but surely the biggest news item in this week was the publication of yet another of my postings in the fabulous high50 site. Alright David might have stolen the front page headlines but it was big news in this household I can tell you and I’m sure old Clarkson must be quaking in his Sunday Times boots at such an amusing new columnist. Long-standing readers may remember this posting about one of my early public appearance successes heading up the marketing function at mobile network Cellnet. I still blush today at the memory but you’re welcome to enjoy my indignity:
Time to move on eh. One of the few bright moments in a very dark couple of weeks was a little e-message I got from the editor of a great online magazine called High 50, confirming that I’d won an amusing story competition (using an old blog posting) and would have the entry published. Well you could have knocked me over with a quill. After nearly 700 postings and well over half a million words I’d finally managed to get a piece of writing recognised. Continue reading
I’m sure they must run classes to teach kids all these annoying short-hand codes for their texting. I guess the need to compress messages within the limit of 160 characters had a lot to do with it. I have to admit that I tend to use some text shorthand too but different from this gr8 stuff. More of that in a second. But here’s a little fact for you to show you what a man of foresight I really am. One of the guys who developed the SMS standard was a guy from Cellnet called Kevin Holley and back when I was Head of Marketing there, I was shown this new and additional way of communicating by mobile phone. Despite being a lot cheaper than a voice message I still found it unlikely to believe that anyone, other than our engineers, would choose to resort to typing a message when they could just simply call and speak to someone. Didn’t they know that mail was dead? Spanner-heads – pah! Within 15 years 4 trillion SMS messages were being sent each year. A multi-£billion business in its own right. Er oops…
Speaking of really funny guys have you nerticed how many so-called comedians and comic actors are just not that funny? I’m not talking about those sad old gits still crucifying the comedy arts like Bruce frigging Forsyth, Ronnie ‘the tapper’ Corbett, Little and Large, Cannon and Ball and Lenny Henry. Nor am I talking about those giants of the US comedy scene like Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin who became totally sterile of humour the moment somebody in La La land told them they were accomplished film actors rather than great stand-ups.
It was a little poignant to watch my humble home town team Blackpool take on the mighty moneybags of Chelsea at the Bridge last Saturday. They strived noblely but came away a little embarrassed by the outcome. A bit like the match I watched between the sides at Bloomfield Rd when the Seasiders coasting 3-0 at half time somehow managed to concede 4 goals in the second half to the Blues. It also made me recall some of my own interesting moments I had at Chelsea in the very early days of the mobile phone business.
Well I’m delighted to say the weather’s turned beautiful here in Italy (now that the Easter holiday’s over of course – just like home) but there’s still some snow on them thar hills just half an hour away. Looking at them this morning made me realise we’d never been up to the mountains during winter to do some alpine activity. The reality is however, I’ve never undertaken any skiing or the like. And this is the kid who in the snow-bound winter of 1963 spent almost every hour of every day away from school shooting down what passed for local hills on his sledge. I just loved the snow then so what happened? It set me thinking of some of the other things I’ve never done in my life.
Pasta Paulie 