Moving

So: after almost twenty months, more Estate Agents than I ever hope to encounter again in the rest of my life, an architect, a team of builders and a deep immersion in the auction houses of London, I am moving into my new house this weekend.

The children have already seen it and given it their unconditional approval, which is heartening, as I chose it largely with them in mind – as you would, of course. When I saw it, I wasn’t completely convinced – in fact, I was quite anti: but the endorsements of Sister, Parents, Old Friend at Work and Best Friend all brought me round and now I am enamoured with it. This is probably due, in no small part, to the fact that it no longer has mahogany floorboards, a black quartz kitchen floor and blue and white tiles in the bathrooms (one of the reasons I have spent so long not living in a house that I have owned for six months is that I decided to bite the bullet, do ALL the work – and spend ALL the money, rather than do it in drips and drabs, which would be disruptive – and I think everyone’s had enough disruption to be getting on with…), and is now exactly as I would want it.

It’s also the first time that I’ve lived in a house of this style: very modern and open-plan, rather than old and self-contained rooms. Again, I am now delighted with this way of living, and it’s also quite therapeutic to be living a new life in a new kind of space, rather than in a version of the houses that I shared with Ex Wife.

So: good times ahead. The children are excited, and I’m excited. If I can put up with the navy blue front door until the Spring, when I shall re-paint it (and there’s more than enough woodwork to be painting in the meantime), then all shall be rosy in the garden. Assuming some cunt hasn’t planted bamboo in there…

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The Wrong Sort of Energy

Who is to say what the factors are that will guarantee the creation of a positive environment, fizzing with positivity, “can do” spirit, determination to “go the extra mile” and other assorted marketing-speak calumnies?

Well, I think I do – and as such, I have, of late, been devoting my energies to creating exactly that kind of environment in which great things can happen. This has meant a focus on the basics, the foundations, on which the palace of creativity can rest certain and sure, reaching to the skies. My focus has been on project naming.

One of my clients is pleased to call the projects in their marketing plan by code names that correspond to contemporary pop musicians. Thus we have bent our collective minds around Project Lennox, Project Shania and Project Velvet, to name but a few – and it was with an eye on the next one, a series of launches, that I had decided to concentrate most of/all of my working day. I had decided, dear reader, that I should know no happiness unless the next global marketing project was named after that Titan of the modern music scene, Justin Bieber. I wanted to see “Project Bieber” all over spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides, presented with a straight face by an assortment of earnest marketers. To me, “How is Bieber looking for LatAm?” and “Are we going to have funds for Bieber in India in Q3?” was more important a thing to make happen than almost anything else I could imagine, and so I set about (with the happy, bright-eyed collaboration of the entire agency team) of making a damn good case as to why the future was bright, the future was Bieber. “Most Googled individual”, “Responsible for waves of hyper-enthusiastic response among a young demographic” (that’s right – I refer to “Bieber Fever”) and many other soundbites were submitted in defence of why we should all be talking Bieber in 2012.

And what happened?

Project Adele it is. I see no reason to continue: where is the humour in that? I am (we all are) gutted.

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