Your Tory name is made up of the following:

• Your grandfather’s first name
• The name of a street you have lived on
• The surname of your school headmaster or headmistress

The fun thing is that based on these rules there is a bit of flexibility (two grandfathers, more than one street and at least two head of school surnames), so you get to play a bit…

My Tory name is Frank Langley-Weaver, although I prefer Alec Trinity-Wilkinson.

Great people of Britain make sure you cast your vote.

So why the absence?

Well I had to make a conscious decision over the Christmas holiday to take enforced leave from social media engagement (especially about getting my pants in too tight a virtual bunch about the state of a restaurant’s loo).  It was all getting a bit too all-consuming (I was spending up to four hours a day on it) and what with home and work it all got overwhelming.  So I decided to take a break.

As I forced my brain to avoid laptop-based words I rediscovered reading fiction – you know, the old type, in books (including the Stieg Larsson ‘Millennium Trilogy’ which is very addictive).  So by fitting in book reading my lack of free time was even further exacerbated by access to less waking hours in my day…

Since the start of the year I’ve become sleepier than I have ever been before.  I just cannot wake up in the morning and this isn’t vintage Crump behaviour… for at least the last decade I have been someone who wakes up before the alarm clock, between 5 and 6 am, seven days a week.  Now I can sleep until midday and am really struggling to get out of bed every morning. So why the change?

My friends it’s all down to (lack of) nicotine.  Yes, I am delighted to report is that I have managed to stop smoking (since the second week in January). After 18 years of smoking I’ve stopped and it really is brilliant.  I feel so much better (despite having gained 5 kgs – the appetite is back!).  I used to (embarrassingly) smoke between three to five fags (plus a couple of glasses of diet coke) for breakfast. So the fact is that my body isn’t craving nicotine (oh and awaiting a jolt of caffeine) and forcing it to wake up to get its fix.

So lack of nicotine stimulation means that I get up to three more hours sleep a night (a morning!) creating a big squeeze on my time to surf, blog, keep on top of my google reader and generally engage.

But guess what, I’ve missed my tapping away on my laptop, my google reader, and my tweetdeck.  I need to formalise a plan for managing it all but its back on my ‘to do’ list.

So the things I’ve learnt in the last three months:

• Being smoke free is genuinely liberating
• A few extra kgs (with a plan for removal with a bout of cycling) is not all that bad
• Getting more sleep is ace (and I hate the alarm clock with a passion)
• Reading words which aren’t backlit (on paper) is fab
• You need to plan to do stuff that you enjoy (i.e. wittering away right here)

:+) x

My gmail is neilphilipcrump@gmail.com – so add me to your contacts and invite me to a wave – desperate to try it out with lots of people on it at the same time – the video demos make it look brilliant.

I hate that question because the trouble is that I never know what I want (I basically don’t need anything).

Anyhow over the weekend my brother wanged on about a website called Firebox and so I have set up a ‘wishlist’ of fun junk that it would be nice to have – please view here :+)

The other night while at dinner with some friends she outed me as an ’iBore’, she wants it in the dictionary, she thinks it borders on being a destructive addiction.

This pronouncement occurred as I attempted to show my friend some photos of another friend’s newborn baby – it was totally innocent – there was no attempt at app talk or anything (honest!).  As the iBore situation was acknowledged all three chaps at the table produced their iPhones and we got into a big discussion about the power usage of our black shiny boxes and strategies to keep it charged…  oh lordy… what bores!

I am making a commitment to conceal my addiction at work (or at least in front of Claire) ;+)

• LinkedIn profile and some were actively engaging in group discussion
• Facebook profile (no one admitted to playing one of those annoying farming games!)
• Twitter account and were actively tweeting and retweeting
• Google reader and actively followed blogs

Nearly all of them had an element of social media strategy in their communication programmes.  Most had an avatar and a couple had a personal blog.

The interesting thing is that if I had asked this question two or more years ago virtually none of the above would be the case.  The popularity of social media and therefore its influence is growing massively.  Check out this amazing video from Socialnomics - have your sound on for a bit of uplifting Fatboy Slim…

Crazy stats or what!

So a quick question for you to answer by leaving a comment…

How many hours so you think that you spend engaging in social media in a typical week?

A few of my friends have had an iPhones for ages (Ed and Jon were early adopters – Jon is an original Apple disciple) and I didn’t get what all the fuss was about:

• Yes the turning screen thing was interesting
• Yes the Zippo app was fun (if you were at a concert)
• Yes the flicking through photos was cool

But my BlackBerry Curve took photos, had a browser, could locate me on a map, let me read my emails and, oh yes, I could even make and receive telephone calls.  So I pottered along in blissful ignorance and even engaged in some low energy debates with some friends on the topic which went along the lines of…

• iPhone advocate friend: ‘But the iPhone does X’
• Me: ‘My BlackBerry does X as well’
• Friend: But the iPhone does Y’
• …you get the picture

As a result I got increasingly sceptical about the iPhone and more entrenched in my belief that these poor iPeople had been brainwashed by powerful and subliminal Apple marketing.

So on the Monday after my pronouncement of ‘I want one’ I ordered an iPhone3GS.  It arrived (in stunning packaging) a few days later and within a week I was up and running on it – I had a few problems with the SIM card and set up (02 inaccurate customer service advice to blame – although lady on call number three knew her stuff and got me all sorted).

It has been a life changer and I cannot believe that I resisted the shift from BlackBerry for so long.

Now I appreciate that stating that a gadget has ‘changed my life’ might seen a little over the top.  I acknowledge that by nature I am prone to being 100 percent for or against something (I like to think that I am a Ying ‘n Yanger – balance gets in there somehow!) but this beautifully designed bit of black plastic is genuinely amazing.  Why?

• I have all my music on my phone (which has meant that I have listened to tracks I haven’t heard in ages which is ace)
• I get to listen to my favourite BBC radio 4 showsas podcasts (this was the bit that I missed the most about dropping my car journey to work)
• I now have a really easy to use way to update this blog, my company blog, run TweetDeck, manage my work email , plus my personal Google Mail (this is both convenient but also means that I don’t have to burn my legs with laptop resting on them all the time)
• Whizzing around London just got easy: with one click I can check my train times (brilliant TrainLine app) and find a tube station with one click (Nearest Tube app).  If I get lost (as I did yesterday in the maze of roads in the West End) my phone tells we where I am in seconds and as it has compass so lets me know which way to walk
• It can even save me time: on recommendation I downloaded a brilliant app which lets you take a photo of a business card and it scans and puts it in your contacts in 10 seconds

Basically, all these simple little things all come together in the palm of your hand – and it does it really fast – a sea change to the painful lurch of my BlackBerry.

So here is my analogy comparing the two phones…

BlackBerry: Is like a sweet old building porter, he is efficient and always gets the job done, but he’s really slow and does things in an old fashioned way.  He does know how to use the internet but if he needed to find you a decorator he would prefer to look it up in a paper telephone directory.

iPhone: Is a really good looking personal assistant, who is just on it and they just nail it every time.  They work effortlessly – no fuss – no huffing and puffing.  They get just get the job done and you get a buzz out of working with them, experiencing their energy.

Now things are not perfect in the world of iPhone:

• It has crashed on me once already (I was playing music, downloading a webpage and trying to take a photo at the same time)
• Keyboard typing is a bit tricky (especially if you have sausage fingers like me) – but if you turn the phone in a landscape orientation the keyboard gets wider and minimises the errors
• …but hey, even a super PA has an off moment – it’s all easily forgiven

So if you are in the running for a phone change I would encourage you to take the plunge into the iPhone world – it’s really great (and strangely spiritual) here.

Amen :+)

Now I recognise that spending this level of money on a cat is a strange thing.  I openly admit that the money we spend on looking after our cat outstrips the money that we give to looking after humans outside of our sphere of direct contact.

I feel uncomfortable at the realisation of this fact.  With so much poverty in the world – my cat health investment could make a real change to the lives of PEOPLE.

It is a strange thing…

We care so much about Sophie – she had nearly all her teeth extracted today (explanation: cat’s teeth decay quickly, she is a rescue cat and the people that had her before didn’t look after her properly, she is heading into her mature years).

She is currently eating loads but has no interest in hanging out with us and is embedded under our bed.

I have been worried sick all day about her and on getting home from work tonight spent 15 minutes lying on the floor (she was under the bed) doing ‘baby talk’ to her as she looked sceptically at me.  She was thinking: don’t come anywhere near me… my mouth hurts and you let this happen to me.

OK, OK, she wasn’t ‘thinking’ anything – shock horror – cats do not think like humans.  She just felt rubbish and didn’t want any attention.  This human projection thing is totally uncontrollable (especially if you are British and heightened by being me).

Fifi has antibiotics for the next two days and liquid aspirin at the ready should she start wailing and be in pain.  Hells bells – when you face up to this it is crazy – our furry bundle of joy is cared for and has better access to medicines than millions of people.

I am not alone though, I read a survey yesterday that showed that 29 percent of Americans have engaged in social media in relation to animal welfare – with only 14 percent doing the same in relation to human disasters.

Not sure how to resolve my musings on this topic…

I probably need to conclude that it is just the way it is.  I was fortunate to be born in a rich society where we have opportunities and options to live our lives the way we choose to.

It is my choice , it is a luxury… and I do love my Fifi.

I like to travel all over the world for pleasure (Australia for three weeks next year) and  I have to travel all over the world for work (Hong Kong in a week or so – very exciting).  However these airplane based activities are really terrible for my dirty black (carbon) footprint.

It’s such a difficult thing to sort out in my head.

If I recycle all our household waste (which we do) but I then take one return flight to Paris then that flight totally outstrips my recycling for probably more than a year (I haven’t done the exact sums by the way).  So you could think – what’s the point then?  I have to admit that five years ago I did think like this. Thankfully Chad is a lot wiser (and younger) than me on this, and he has re-educated me on the need to do our little bit and put in some effort.

My little olive roll up bag (the fabulous envirosax) has become a permanent feature in my life – it lives in my man-bag and I reckon I have, in the last nine months, used it nearly every day (often a couple of times a day).  I estimate that I have used 400 fewer plastic carrier bags that would by now be attempting to rot down for the next couple of hundred years in a land fill somewhere in this green and pleasant land.
Overall I think that it is just really important to think about what we are doing

• Is there an alternative?
• Could we reduce waste?
• Could we be less wasteful in our actions?

Some recent examples in the world of Crump:

• Can I travel to Paris from London on a train rather than fly – yes – CHECK (and the Eurostar is so much more civilised than Heathrow / BA hell)
• Could I cycle to work rather than take my car – yes – CHECK (although when it’s raining the spirit wavers)
• Could I turn off lights in a room that I’m not in – yes – CHECKISH (I’m in high performance training on this one)

So every little helps – we cannot be ostriches on this one – it’s too important.

Now where is my passport.  D’oh…  See what I mean!

Have lots of draft posts that I need to get updated asap.