Life and pondering the merits of a NO REFUND CULTURE
Archive for July, 2009
Loved stuff: Being horizontal
Jul 29th
OK – I know I am meant to be in off-line mode (see today’s other post below) but as I wean myself off the laptop (this was a hybrid day after all) a ‘happy holiday’ tweet from @jonmoss inspired this post as I waxed lyrical about the fact I had been horizontal for most of the day. So hear is the post…
There are times when you cannot beat being horizontal – in this bodily orientation I get to do some of my favourite things:
- Sleep
- Lying on the couch listen to music / watching a movie on TV
- Sunbathing with a book (normally under an umbrella)
- Floating on a lilo in a pool
- Lounging on the grass after a picnic
The best horizontal moment of the day is when you first get in bed (especially if the sheets are brand new), you get in position, nuzzle with the pillow and feel the day drain away as you drift into unconsciousness – perfect.
Thankfully for me sleep arrives very quickly and unless I have something pressing on my mind normally I go to sleep in under 60 seconds (normally less than 30). My definition of insomnia is sleep that takes more than 2 minutes to come – if this happens there is something huge in mind and its best to get vertical again and get out of bed (horizontal and over processing a problem in bed is the only time that horizontal is not good).
I just thought that being dead involves a lot of being horizontal – so that is actually probably the worst type of horizontal and is generally best avoided.
There are lots of great things about being vertical – but being horizontal is definitely my favourite.
PS: I actually wrote this post while laying on the couch!
Off-line holiday
Jul 29th
I am terribly excited – today is the start of my holiday – 14 consecutive days off, although today is a hybrid work / day off day – but heck it is midday and I am still in my dressing gown – RESULT.
Chad and I are doing a bit of a staycation, hanging out together along with visiting a few folk in the UK and I cannot wait. The only downside is that the cats have to spend time in a cattery (which we hate doing) but I am sure that they will be OK.
I am also going to break my blogging / google reader / twitter addiction for the next 14 days. I am also going to disable the email on my Blackberry to help facilitate the brain rest. The Crump is officially off-line.
I’ve got two great creative / business books to read (my favourite genre which Claire my business partner bought me for my birthday) plus a load of trash thriller novels (my second favourite genre). So I am going to be paper-based for the next couple of weeks which is all very exciting.
It will be great if the weather improves but ho hum if it doesn’t – I am going to sleep until 9 every morning and it is going to be bliss.
So my friends be good and ‘have fun’.
Crumptales: Two wheeled love rediscovered…
Jul 25th
This week I became something that I haven’t been for 13 years… a cyclist.
Having totally failed at my recent gym visiting attempt (stats: three visits / seven months / £640 = £213 per visit [ouch]) I was inspired by a cyclist colleague in the office to get on a bike. With the prompting of inspirational colleague my business has joined the government cycle scheme (you get to deduct the tax) and three of us have now bought bikes and have the all the paraphernalia that goes with it (and cost as much as the bike!).
Now as some of you may know I am a car lover and have been lucky enough to have to avoided the dreaded Tube to get to work for years now by driving. I have been in my silver Merc bubble for a long time and get to indulge my other love of listening to BBC Radio 4 (especially Today in the morning and the comedy shows at 18:30). This week I have been got in my car a total of zero times.
I have cycled to and from work through sunshine, wind and rain (we have been having a typical London summer). I have huffed and puffed my way to and fro. I have arrived at work with a weird pale and blotchy purple pallor, as well as slightly damp looking hair… I have absolutely loved it.
It takes exactly the same length of time to cycle the four and a half miles as it does to drive, and I think that with time as my sluggish (to non-existent) fitness improves I will be able to do it quicker.
Now cycling is dangerous and the cyclist is an unloved road user (check out this excellent post from willc.me), but given a bit of care and planning the risks and level of interaction with other traffic can be minimised. Chad prompted me to look up a route on the Transport for London Journey Planner – you put in that you want to cycle from X to Y and hey presto a route is recommended. I now have a lovely cycle to and from work through the quiet and very gentrified (totally untouched by the credit crunch) streets of St John’s Wood.
The Chad prompt was stimulated by the fact that on my trip back from the bike shop to home with my sparkly new bike and zero fitness I went via Swiss Cottage Roundabout. Now if you know this delightful road intersection I appreciate that you will have just gasped at my stupidity. If you don’t know the roundabout then think Arc de Triomphe in Paris (three /four lanes of fast crisscrossing vehicles) and you aren’t far off.
As I approached the roundabout I thought ‘this is a bad idea’ and guess what, it so totally was. I pulled into the traffic as fast as I could and then started squealing as I attempted to cross two lanes with a car almost touching my back wheel with horn blaring. Anyway, I lived to tell the tale and will not, under any circumstances, be doing that again.
So the bike looks like it is going to work out and hurrah and hurray I might have found a way to get exercise back in my life. Cyclists might be despised (especially by mean arse bus drivers) but the liberation that you feel on a bike is fantastic and is why so many people are revisiting life before they were seventeen and got their driving licence: when your bike was your escape pod to adventure.
Sensible(ish) post: Flu past and present
Jul 22nd
Swine flu is upon us and now that the media panic of the last few months has died down the reality is setting in. Most folk will be fine but for a small number, with underlying illness, the consequences could be fatal.
I wrote a piece on my work blog on the topic. The post is called ‘Flu on your doorstep‘…
…let’s look out for our neighbours (especially our lovely elderly ones).
No Refund Culture: Not so Proud door policy (see 100% redemption update at end of post)
Jul 17th
It’s Friday night and a few of the office gang decided to pop out for a wrap-up the week drink. We decided to go to Proud – oh the irony.
Now Proud is a bit of a Camden institution and has shifted to another part of the market. It is now in a fantastic venue – with a huge dance floor / stage area and a great bar area in the old stables – all terribly cool. It is the last time I am going to pop in.
My colleague and I popped in at 7:27, while two others hung back and put in calls to get ‘passes’ for a few drinks from their respective partner. I had a look around and was really impressed by the decor and general ambience – the place was virtually empty this early in the evening so it was quick and easy to survey the general coolness. At 7:31 the other two hadn’t come in. So I dashed back to the door to find them haggling to get in without having to pay.
Apparently they charge to get in after 7:30, and despite the fact that the door dolly acknowledged that she saw them hanging out on the phone, and saw the advanced party go in she was insistent that they needed to pay (and was really rude in the process).
Guess what, no refund culture rules. Having asked her politely to reconsider and her saying no, I smiled and lead the gang away to another totally great bar – with no dopey door dolly. We spent at least £40 on a couple of rounds of drinks and then all went off on our merry way home.
I’m not going back to Proud – they won’t miss me, they don’t care. It might be cool, it might be a destination, but you know what they have competition. They have staff allowed to act stupidly and damage their business. You reap what you sow.
UPDATE (two days later): Over the weekend I got two emails from Alex at Proud Camden (plus see his comment below). Guess what PROUD DOES CARE. Basically a promoter pays £3,000 to hire the venue (and she is probably the lady on the door) and after 7:30 pm she is able to charge and earn back the large sum of money that she has invested. It was irritating to be on the end of this door policy but you can see the sense in it (we are in a major recession and this lady is being an entrepreneur and will need to make her money back). Thank you Alex at Proud for explaining this. Proud is clearly a venue that does care (a lot). Next time on a Friday after work drink we will need to get there earlier!
Crump learning:
I need to explain the ‘No Refund Culture” thing much more – it confused the hell out of Alex (I can see why). One good learning from this post is that given the opportunity to explain my Grump they did explain themselves and as a result I hold them in much higher regard than I did before – I will now make an effort to go to Proud – I loved the venue – the management clearly DO care – just got to see if they pour a good pint now ;+)
Loved stuff: Cecilia Magdelena Sandrini
Jul 16th
Some friends and I went to a do yesterday – the lovely Wenche’s PhD graduation dinner – it was a fabulous evening and Dr Wenche Torrissen (who looked like a beautful angel) was, as always, amazing.
The dinner was on Portobello Road (home of the world famous street market) in Notting Hill at a great restaurant called The Muse at 269. They always have an artist in residence (who quite literally lives above the the restaurant while they work). The works of the artist Cecilia Magdelena Sandrini were exhibited and I just love her work…
This one was called ‘Routine’…
This is ‘Smile’…
This one is the ‘Economic Prayer’…
The prayer reads:
Dear Lord, please in this time of financial woe, do not worry about those who have no property, job or savings, we shall carry on the same as before. Look after those such as Kate Moss and Elton John, whose homes have lost over a million in value. They have truly known loss in the economic downturn. Amen.
Brilliant work and what an ace name. Beats Neil Crump.
No Refund Culture: Saying thank you…
Jul 11th
We live in a world where these two words are underused. They are so important. A bit of appreciation of a person’s actions propagates more goodwill and little by little make the world a better place.
This post has been prompted by this post entitled: ‘Is WordPress a Thankless Community’ by Jeff Chandler. The post was sat in the dashboard of my blog (for non-WordPressers this is the overview of the management system behind the blog you all see). Jeff points out that people rarely donate or say thank you to the amazing people who have created the platform that allows me to have this blog for FREE. I get to download plugins and make my blog better and more like what I want it to be.
I recently moved to WordPress from a Blogger account – the shift couldn’t have been easier and I am really enjoying the experience of running my blog from this platform. Guess what – I hadn’t said thank you to all the developers who made this possible. So having been prompted I am going to make sure that I do from now on.
The ‘thank you’ is often forgotten in this fast moving world – especially in the social media community – where we often forget that people had to invest lots of time and energy into the things that we all play with. This is especially true when things are free – we take them for granted. We shouldn’t.
A small observation on social media: I have noticed that the new people that I follow on Twitter who have large followings are also people that direct message with a ‘thank you’ for following me’. You didn’t know they were going to do that – but guess what they go in a ‘decent people’ column in my TweetDeck. I end of reading their tweets more, retweet them, and hey presto their following grows as a result.
If you write a blog you know the thrill of getting a comment – someone you didn’t (or you do) know contributes to your post – it’s a brilliant feeling. I recently got an email from a blogger who I have been following for a long time, I love her blog - she said how much she enjoyed reading my blog – I was chuffed to bits to get that email.
Thank yous and positivity go a long way – it just shows you that we need to act online as most of us do face-to-face. Being a polite human being with good social skills needs to pour out of our typing fingers as it does from our chattering mouths.
PS: I love the lines from ‘Hello Dolly’ – so thank you to the person that created that WordPress plugin.
Loved stuff: I want one of these
Jul 8th
At the Goodwood Festival of Speed while wondering around the exhibitors area, and burning my nose in the sun, we stumbled upon this beauty…
One day this will be a suprise birthday present from Chad
This is a Porsche Speedster and is the cutest and most lovely shaped car I have ever seen – I really want one.
Loved stuff: Dancing on the ceiling…
Jul 6th
Oh what a feeling, when your dancing on the ceiling…
This is a great song from Lionel Ritchie (my friend Rhian-Mari’s most favourite of favourite song and singer).
The ad agencies of Germany must have been playing this when they came up with these two brilliant concepts that are executed in Frankfurt airport…
First of all the Fiat 500 that is on the ceiling of the airport – it caught my eye and as I pointed my phone’s camera to take a snap, it sent out a Bluetooth signal to my phone to connect with me. Brilliant technology, only attempting to connect when had the phone pointing at it. I know this because, the geek that I am, I tested it by walking under and around the car (I wasn’t in a rush to get to the gate – this time!!!).
Fiat car on the ceiling that connects with your mobile
Second discovery occurred as I waited to check in my bag at the Lufthansa fast bag drop desks. I felt this weird sensation – you know, the one when you sense that someone is staring at you. Well I looked around and no starers, then out of the corner of my eye was a pair of men’s shoes about 10 feet above my head – I did a mini duck of my head (thank fully I didn’t throw myself to the ground). Here was what the shoes were attached to…
Full sized men reading their favourite magazine on the ceiling
This is ad for a German-language business magazine (cannot remember the name – I cannot speak German so not the target market). Great fun though.
No Refund Culture – Neil’s blog has moved
Jul 5th
No Refund Culture
Hi there – I have now moved my blog to the following address:
It’s still very much ‘You’ve Been Crumped’ but with the added element of ‘No Refund Culture’. An explanation of what this is all about can be read on the new blog by clicking here.
I have moved it to a new place so that it is easier to use (and hopefully looks a bit better) – let me know what you think of the new look. The new theme on the blog is fun as in the top right hand corner as the reader you can change the colours depending on your mood.
If you follow me please change the RSS feed or the address in your reader.
If you have kindly linked to me in your blogroll then it would be great if you could change the web address.
Thanks, Neil
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