Life and pondering the merits of a NO REFUND CULTURE
Crumptales
Crumptales: What the Dickins
May 12th
I met a friend Holly for lunch today, lovely food, great company and a good catch-up. Holly had been at the National Portrait Gallery and gave me a lovely postcard with a picture of Charles Dickens on the front (see below). I thought nothing more of it and returned to the office for a fun filled afternoon.
On my way home and not 10 metres from my office door a suddenly say this sign in my peripheral vision…
How weird is that – I’ve walked passed that sign hundreds of times and never noticed it. Then today my little overloaded brain which filters out so much information suddenly locked into seeing the words ‘Charles Dickens’ – crazy stuff.
Crumptales: Cutting through with a powerful message?
Apr 24th
Is it just me or do other people get excited when a parcel comes through the post?
I regularly have parcels of online purchased goodies arrive at our work home in Bayham Street, Camden, and like a small child on their birthday I get almost as excited about other people’s cardboard wrapped surprises as ones addressed to me.
So imagine my delight a few weeks ago when a package arrived with my name on it, the anticipation was heightened because the only thing I was expecting to arrive was a cool lap top sleeve from Tropical Howie. Now this was going to be a bigger parcel and would be identifiable with Australian post marks. This magic parcel was from the UK, it was small, it was book-sized and was in that wrap around cardboard that books can be sent in.
I ripped open the parcel with gusto to discover that, joy of joys, it was indeed a book – wow someone had sent me a free paperback with a red and blue cover. However on reading the title ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about direct mail: complete and unabridged’, I felt suddenly crestfallen. This topic (which I have studied!) doesn’t really float my boat but hey it was a free book and for a micro-second I resigned myself to the fact that I would HAVE to read it, I mean someone had been kind enough to send it to me after all.
So feeling rather daunted by this tome of foreboding, I gulp and opened the look to see how small the font was (ergo how long it was going to take to read), but to my surprise the pages where cut out in the centre to create a hollow so I could directly read the inside back cover. It read: ‘We’ve cut out the hardwork for you – visit www.mmc.co.uk today’. ‘Phew’, was my gut reaction, triple heaps of joy: ‘I don’t have to read this boring book after all’.
Having gone through this five second rollercoaster of emotions I turned my attention to the accompanying letter that was inviting me to an all-day seminar on direct marketing. In an instant I made a firm decision that I wouldn’t be going to the seminar – my adrenal gland just couldn’t cope. Thankfully no-one emailed or called to follow-up on the mailing.
More sensible analysis continues on my business blog.
Crumptales: Beware the power of the soundbite…
Oct 25th
In my previous post I mentioned my passport which reminded me that just after my birthday in 2001 I had a passport-related nightmare which could have affected the way my fellow Londoners experience Tube travel…
I was due to go on holiday (to the Maldives) a couple of days later and while gathering up stuff for my suitcase I got my passport out of the filing cabinet and did the obligatory check of the photo page. As I looked at it I thought ‘hell I look young’ and then I noticed with horror that it had expired months beforehand – which is why I looked ten years younger!
It was a Saturday morning (and in the days that I would even have considered having Internet access at home) so I dashed down to the post office in the centre of Bath (where I lived at the time) to find out what to do and get my photo taken in one of those booths. I paid three times to get a set that I liked. This in the was pre-digital days when you got the picture of yourself when the flash went (there was no option to ‘try again’) and it used to take five minutes for the photo to spit out (and then you had to be careful not to smudge it).
I picked up the leaflet on ‘getting you passport really quickly’ and read up on how I was going to get a passport by Tuesday at 6 am when I had to be at the airport. I discovered that the only way this was going to happen was to visit a passport office. I worked in London (I was daft and did a three hour commute each way in those days) and therefore at the time the main passport office in London was on a street called Petty France.
So first thing on Monday I went to the passport office, with my preferred photo in hand, and got in the queue. Annoyingly my preferred photo didn’t end up in my passport as the lady said that it didn’t look sufficiently like me! So I had to have another photo taken in the passport office official booth. Anyway, two hours later I left with my shiny new maroon official document and while delighted that I was ‘job done’ on the passport front (and was actually going to be going on holiday after all) was feeling a bit stressed as I had lost a big chunk of my ‘day of work before you go on a two week holiday’ day.
So I dashed to the Tube to get to the office and as I walked into the station I registered that there was an unfamiliar yet not unpleasant smell in the air. I was then accosted by the very lovely Jane Elliot, BBC Online reporter, who was doing a piece on how London Underground were piloting the fragrancing of platforms (supposedly to sooth commuter stress). So I answered her questions, let her take a photo of me, went on my hot under the collared way and thought no more of it.
Anyhow I went on my holiday, which was amazing – The Maldives totally rock (I spent nearly all the time scuba diving and snorkeling) and on my return to the office there was an email from Dad in my inbox. He had forwarded on an email from a friend of his which was along the lines of ‘I think there is a comment from your son in this article’. Dad had just written: ‘Typical :+)’ with a link to the article.
So here is the link to my ‘debut’ on the BBC (quote and photo towards the end of the piece) with my ‘insightful’ soundbite being: ‘It smells like flowers or pollen, but I think the best idea to get rid of the smells is to deodorize the people instead’.
Oh bless me and yes rather as father had denoted: ’Typical :+)’.
Now I am obsessed with the way things smell – I love the latest innovation in air fragrance technology. I am the person that buys these heavily advertised advances in smell loveliness (Chad hates them). I am the air freshener marketers dream – I’ve been on the whole journey from gels, to sprays, to three-in-one, through mini fans and infra red, blar, blar, blar – you name it, I’ve bought it. Currently I am obsessed with the over-priced sticks in the glass jar of perfume ‘home fragrance solution’. So I have to feel a bit guilty..
The Tube still smells revolting (the pilot clearly remained just that) and I cannot help but wonder if I had been a bit more positive, rather than facetious, in my soundbite then maybe my own nose, and the millions of other Londoners noses, wouldn’t be so assaulted on our ventures into the underground world.
Crumptales: The ying and yang of motherly love (feline style)
Sep 26th
While we were on holiday a friend came and cat sat for our beloved moggies. Unfortunately poor old Tiggy died while we were away – she didn’t come in for her dinner and the next morning Ed found her under her favourie bush in the garden.
A huge thank you to Ed for sorting this out and taking her up to the vets. We aren’t sure why she died but the odvious thing was that she was a bit of a fatty and one of her organs was under too much pressure and failed as a result. We had tried to get her weight down since we got her a year or so ago from the rescue centre – she was on diet food – but she never lost any weight (the vet thinks that she was ‘popping’ into other houses and helping herself to their cat’s food).
It is really sad that she died – she was adorable and Chad and I are missing her loads.
The interesting thing is the personality change in Sophie, our remaining cat. The loss of her mother has totally changed her personality. Whereas before she was shy and retiring, now she is highly vocal, affectionate and sits on our laps for attention (this NEVER happened even once before). I have done some googling on this and it is probably simply that she was being submissive and was under oppressive mother rule.
So there we go – we have a much happier cat on her hands. Motherly love not always good love it appears.
Modern living: Going to Uni the modern way. Jealous? Moi? – Oh yes…
Aug 23rd
It’s that time of year again – exam results are out and thousands of young folk are either jumping for joy or have had tears of disappointment and are then furiously trying to work out what to do next. I only know one lucky stick who is about to start the journey to University – so congratulations to Ms Sophie Briggs (who we saw at the weekend) who will be going off to her chosen University. Sophie’s experience of the exam results / ‘have I got into my chosen Uni?’ day(s) was very different to mine…
- She logged into a website (UCAS) and was able to see if she had got into her chosen university:
- Answer ‘yes’
- She then trundled off to her (now former) educational establishment to get her grades (which were by the by as she was already in to chosen establishment)
- She was able to send a multiple recipient text / twitter / instant message to her posse to let them know
- People got to hug and kiss / hug and cry / hug and get away from the annoying successful ones as quickly as possible
- Get down the pub via a co-ordinated mobile phone around
- Deal with the hangover
How the world has changed…
When I got the results of those per-Uni exams (circa 1990) we had to:
- Dash off to our educational establishment to get our grades
- Get through the nightmare of people hugging and kissing / hugging and crying / hugging and then trying to get away from the annoying successful ones as quickly as possible by…
- Get down the pub
- Then overcome the fretting if our grades didn’t quite match-up to your preferred university’s requirements (mine fell a bit short) while continuing to avoid the folk that met the mark
- We then had to…
- Deal with the hangover
- Spend two days waiting before calling our preferred University to see if we had got on (I did – University of Bath said ‘yes’ – thank goodness otherwise Hena, Charlotte, Rhian-Mari (RM), and Ed would not be my Uni friends and now permanent fixtures in my life – the thought of life without them makes me shudder)
- You then spent days on the family home phone calling all your friend’s mums (your friends were out) and leaving messages that ‘all good – I got into Bath’
So… the Internet has made that little window in our lives more streamlined and efficient. There is still the drama though (and the hangover) which is fabulous.
Now very few of my friends (I don’t think anyone did but my memory isn’t what it was!!!) had to go through the ‘clearing’ process which is the mad panic to secure your place. Now according to those that know these things this year is a difficult one. Demand here in the UK is much higher than usual – five people for every spare place rather than the usual average of two.
Now I am not sure of the 2009 approach to clearing – but on face value it seems to be the same as circa 1990. The lists of spare places are published in the weekend newspapers in supplements and those who need to get on the old fashioned blower.
This post was prompted by both catching up with Sophie and also flicking through The Independent on Sunday UCAS university clearing supplement. There seem to be a load of great courses up for grabs and I am sure the phone lines that people have to call are burning hot.
I haven’t looked at university courses since pre-circa 1990 so I was amused, amazed and at points jealous of the type of courses that the young folk of the UK might get to study – times have changed my friends (A LOT). Now I studied good old fashioned Biology (and I absolutely LOVED IT) and my Chad studied French and Italian. My core gang also studied French and Italian plus RM – Physics, Hena – Business. The graduates of 2012 / 2013 here in the UK will be leaving with the solid degrees of the past, but their comrades will also be leaving with degrees of the ‘now’. Here are the, from the Crump perspective, modern, crazy, and fabulous list of degree courses that just wouldn’t have existed (or at least small town Neil Crump would have had no ideas or interest in) when I was a fresh faced young thing pre my coming of age in the early 90s:
- Acupuncture
- Adventure
- Auctioning (circa 90s an auction was for posh people – eBay what?
- Bioinformatics
- Casino operations
- Computer Games
- Cosmetics (This would have been a good one for me!)
- Crime Scene Investigation (Rhian-Mari would have loved to do this one)
- Cybernetics
- Databases
- Disaster Studies (I would love this one based on my pre-Chad relationship experience)
- Digital Media
- E-Marketing
- E-Science
- East European Studies (no-one cared in circa 1990 – now we have fabulous holidays there)
- Editing
- Energy Science
- Ethics (This was probably around, however in the 1990s the syllabus would have been pretty thin!!!)
- Football (where there is money there is a quality degree course!)
- Folklore Studies (it probably existed but no one would have cared pre 90s – we do now)
- Games Design (again where there is a multi-billion dollar industry there will be a degree)
- Globalisation
- History of Ideas (I want to do this one – BRILLIANT)
- Independent Studies (no idea [!] what this would be but I am gonna look into it for you, but you can do this in Suffolk and Sunderland)
- Information Security
- Innovation (hells bells – I wanna study this one as well – you can study this all over the bloomin’ place)
- Internet (in the early 90s this was not even a word I had even heard of!!!)
- Lighting (pre-energy efficiency bulbs, pre-LED in my day – this is definitely one for me)
- Multimedia (in the 90s there were about three different types – getting multi would have been very easy – any old juggler could have done it)
- Security / Defence Studies (this did probably exist but never before has this felt so [I wish un-] necessary)
- Sustainability
- Wine Studies (why in hells name hadn’t I seen this / realised this course existed when I was a lad!)
- Wireless
- WWW
Well there is my skim list through the list of fascinating degrees up for grabs. The world has changed, a lot lot lot, but do you know what… Sophie and the class of the University of Life 2009 are going to have the same experience of nearly 20 years ago. It’s the most amazing time of your life (whatever you study) you change (I think for the better) meet and make friends with amazing people, wow wee I am so jealous (in a good way). So Ms Sophie – go for it… have fun, look after yourself (please, please, please), let us come up to Keele and spoil you for a couple of weekends and above all remember it all..
Trust me 20 years on you will be able to relive it all with a smile on your face :+)
(Very edited [;+)] comment from Bath posse are required [ ;+)])
Modern living: Being ‘yes and…’
Aug 15th
…rather than ‘no but…’.
I am back from my holiday in Cornwall, where we visited the most westerly point of England (Lands End – which is a tacky tourist hell hole) as well as the most southerly point (The Lizard – which is lovely and the cafe there does a great lunch). I stayed at my sister’s house (while she was away in France on a family holiday – thanks Elaine x).
Now the danger of a holiday in the UK is the weather not being up to scratch. I appreciate this is a very British topic but there is a good reason for this – our weather changes a lot in a season / a month / a day / an hour. This summer we have had days when we have literally had beating hot sun, torrential rain, followed by hail stones. Well our week in Cornwall was no exception – on days two and three water teamed from the sky solidly, which was all the more annoying as day one of hols was a sunny stunner.
I stated in my pre-holiday post on 29 July that ‘It will be great if the weather improves but ho hum if it doesn’t…’ however by the morning of day three I can tell you that I had lost the ‘ho hum’ spring in my step. I was feeling very annoyed that the weather was so rubbish. I was in a total ‘no but’ zone – every time Chad suggested something we could do I was being a grump and starting my responses with ‘no but…’ and guess what it got us absolutely nowhere.
I managed to snap myself out of the zone with a conscious effort to be ‘yes and…’. This is a tip that I have been taught to facilitate creativity at work. I often use this technique with clients prior to a meeting where I need people into a good zone where they can think outside of their normal constraints. The best way to explain this is to try out the following exercise with someone…
OK - you are going to plan a picnic with the other person. One of you is going to suggest something about the picnic, say for example where the pair of you could go for this special occasion. The other person needs to start their response ‘No but…’ and explain why. Try this for a couple of minutes going back and forth.
Now try the picnic planning with a ‘Yes and…’ approach, where you suggest something and the other persons response is ‘yes and…’, try this back and forth.
See the point? See which experience is exciting and uplifting, full of energy and vigour? The other being an emotional drain where you want the other person to just shut up. When you need to get progress and get somewhere you need to not over analyse – you need to build on other people’s ideas, add to them and you end up in a much better place. With this approach you get much better material and you just need to spend some time editing afterwards.
So I had to practice what I preach and get into a ‘yes and…’ mindset as the rain fell in bucketsful. On day three we ended up having a fun day and thankfully the rest of the week the sun came out to play.
We had a great break – lots of whizzing around in the car (with the hood down), we consumed a decent amount of booze (we visited a great vineyard in Camel Valley), ate great food (including lunch at Jamie Oliver’s place) and visited a seal sanctuary that I last went to on a Crump family holiday when I was about eight years old.
Sometimes when we are feeling grey we just need to apply ‘Yes anding’ to our lives. We can be so sceptical and throw up walls and excuses. Sometimes you just gotta dive on in there, yes and, swim to the bottom, yes and, find that treasure chest, yes and…
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).
Crumptales: Hammer Cottage of Horror
Jun 22nd
The weekend in Shropshire was a source of inspiration for the old blog. Here is the third and final installment…
We stayed in a quaint little cottage which was on the Walcot Hall estate. It is called the Dipping Shed on account of the fact that they once dunked woolly beings in chemicals to keep them tick and flea free. It is suitably cottage like – just want us Londoners need from our weekends away.
However there was something very strange about this place…
Here is the cottage…
Here is the lovely view…
However, the interior was like the set of a b-movie horror film…
Then it got a whole lot worse…
Crumptales: Taking flight
May 25th
I have lost count of the number of flights that I taken in my life. For the last ten years I have spent loads of time on planes travelling all over the place for work – I have been to some amazing places as a result.
I was actually quite late to taking flight. The first time I went on a plane I was about ten on a family holiday to Greece (up until then we had always been on holiday to France in the car – three children in the back of a BMW – you can imagine the bickering that went on. Poor Mum and Dad!)
There are two great stories from that first flight…
STORY ONE: My sister Elaine (about nine years old at the time) and I boarded the flight with huge excitement and settled into our seats. We were fascinated by all the magazines, safety information card and I remember wanting to keep the sick bag as a memento. As the plane was at the start of the runway about to take off, Elaine turns to me and said really loudly “I thought airhostesses were meant to be pretty”.
A second later there was a loud cough from behind us. We both turn to look through the gap between the seats to see an airhostess in the jump seat glaring back at us! We then look at Mum who is across the aisle and giving us the famous death stare. Oh Lordy.
As if that wasn’t enough…
STORY TWO: Involves just little ten year old me. Half way through the flight I need to go to the loo. I had been watching everyone intently during the flight to try and work out the queuing protocol. So I had this sussed and I asked Mum for permission and she said “off you go then”. I waited for my turn in line.
On entering the cubicle I was totally fascinated by all the little compartments for the tissues, loo roll, bin etc. I even had a squirt of the hand cream. While settling down on the loo seat I spied this long red cord, that looked like a bathroom light pull. I was looking at it thinking “I wonder what that does?” So as any curious self-respecting ten year old sat on the loo would do I gave the cord a good hard yank. Disappointingly nothing happened for at least 15 seconds, but then all hell broke loose.
There was a pounding hand on the toilet door and cries of “are you OK in there?” I was frozen solid unable to move or speak. About five seconds later the door was flung open and there stood before me was none other than the ‘ugly’ airhostess, with about five passengers standing behind her all trying to get a view of the ‘emergency’ taking place. I still couldn’t speak at this point and the airhostess kindly closed the door with a sneer on her face.
I think I stayed in the loo for only a minute or so more – it felt like hours though. I finally plucked up the courage and exited the cubicle (having had another squirt of hand cream for good measure). It was the walk of shame back to my seat – everyone was looking at me and sniggering – I was so mortified. Elaine thought that the whole thing was hilarious and spent the rest of the flight carping at me – making that tuneful “wah, wah, wah, warrrrrrhhhh!” noise.
Anyway, I wasn’t put off flying and as a university student I actually worked at Gatwick airport during my ‘holidays’ as a passenger service agent or a PSA as were known (EVERYTHING to do with airports has a three letter acronym). So while flying is not always as eventful as that first flight, I do find the whole thing interesting having experienced airports from both sides of the fence.
This post has made me remember loads of hilarious working at the airport stories. I’m gonna write these up in the future. My prompts for these future posts are:
- Stage fright / first plane boarding announcement
- Two Americans / four tickets
- Waving in a flight
- The sweaty lady / foundation issue
- Italians / boarding by seat row number (or not!)
- The Adams Family goes on holiday to Bulgaria
- The Rastafarian and the hat
- Friend / carbon copy tickets / rude word / dismissal
- Old Indian lady / her patient six hour wait
- Family on the wrong coach with the England cricket team
PS: The ugly airhostess actually wasn’t that ugly – she just had really bad pink, blue AND orange eye shadow caked on her lids
PPS: Let’s not discuss my carbon footprint on the flying front – that would be too terrifying to consider
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