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Two brands. Both alike in dignity.

September 11, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

Or not, as the case may be.

It’s been a while since I blogged last; I’ve been settling in to the new house, enjoying having more to do since I took a part-time job, and growing a small, but very demanding human being.

I’m nearly 28 weeks now, so the third trimester is just round the corner (Sunday, to be exact). I finally have a bit of a bump, so have passed the stage where I just look like I’ve been over-indulging my pie habit, and have been searching for any maternity trousers whose gussets can be trusted not to descend uncomfortably to knee-level with the slightest physical activity. It’s not easy…

Anyway, I was flicking through a maternity catalogue the other day, and found an advertHot Milk Lingerie for “Hot Milk” lingerie (see image aside) who design and sell underwear for pregnant ladies such as myself.

Or perhaps not exactly like myself, but pregnant ladies nonetheless.

Let me make it clear at this stage, I am in no way dissing their product – in fact I saw some of their line in Edinburgh’s finest West End mum-to-be outlet Vanilla Bloom yesterday and can honestly say it’s lovely – very pretty, very cleverly made, and a million miles from the utilitarian passion-killers that I’ve been forced to invest in so far.

I just don’t know what their brand manager thinks they’re up to with this Little Red Riding Hood advert?

Firstly, yes I can accept that it’s generally considered sexy to position a nubile young lady as a little girl – that’s not really much of a surprise given the success of kiddie-fiddler-fodder like St Trinian’s et al. But introducing pregnancy into that field? Is that not just the teeniest bit, erm, disturbing?

Surely pregnancy is something to be considered womanly, not girly? While our bodies are changing at a rate unprecedented in the average woman’s experience, should we not be allowed to retain our claim to womanly sexiness, rather than being forced into the same media-led rat race for youth and immaturity as non-pregnant females?

It’s just a contradiction in every way. Yes, we know that the Western ideal of female beauty tends towards the juvenile rather than the mature, but positioning pregnant women as little girls in order to make them sexy? Clearly the creative behind the Hot Milk ad thought there was a nice juxtaposition there, but to me it’s just plain mean. How can we possibly live up to that expectation?

The fundamental mistake (in my humble opinion) is that the marketers involved have assumed that pregnant women are, or want to be, sexy – in the same way as non-pregnant women. Now I’m not for a minute suggesting that pregnancy precludes sexiness for anybody – but I do feel strongly that it’s a totally different kind from the generic, androgynous (apart from massive hair extensions, naturally) waif-like attractiveness of the ideal. Stand up Girls Aloud, your time is up…

Pregnancy sexiness comes from roundness, curves, glowing skin, sparkling eyes, fruitfulness, contentment and the occasional ill-concealed cheeky burp. It’s being comfortable with who you are and what your body is doing, excitement for the future, and the wisdom that comes with knowing that whatever weirdo and uncomfortable thing your body is doing today, it’s worth it – because it’s helping to create a little miracle.

Anyway, apart from anything else, the Hot Milk advert lost all credibility when I realised that they’d crimped Little Red Riding Hood’s hair. So now we have an inappropriately fetishist contradiction in femininity with a (shriek) nasty 80s ‘do.

Not cool, guys. Not cool at all.  

Having said all that, I do have to in principle applaud what they’re trying to do – i.e. give pregnant women a decent choice in pretty undies, and encourage them to remember they’re still sexy.  Have a look at their website – the product is seriously good. http://www.hotmilklingerie.co.nz

I’ve done a bit of rambling now – this was meant to be a well-structured comparison of how two brands got it horribly wrong. But I’ve gone all feminist again and run out of room (and I suspect, reader patience) so I’ll make the second brand assassination a quick one.

My Mum and Dad joined a gym in Inverness recently. You know what it’s called?

Fit 4 Less.

Yes, that’s right – if you join this gym, you’ll be fit for less.

I’m waiting with bated breath for the inevitable free membership deal, surely to be entitled “Fit 4 Nothing”.

It’s genius I tell you, flipping genius!

Posted in Brand/marketing commentary, Ranting | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Shopping fun for mums-to-be

July 16, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

I bought my first maternity clothes this week. There was a great sale on at Mamas & Papas, so I decided to go mad withsmiling the old point and click internet shopping.

On receipt, I tried the stuff on and (I don’t know why I was surprised at this) had to package 75% of it back up to be sent back. Apparently maternity gear is no less stupidly misrepresented online than any other garment.

I chuckled to myself as I read the return codes” on the form used to send it all back. “AB/01″ was for “Wrong size” and “AB/02″ was for “Garment not as I expected”. It occurred to me that there should have been a more specific and truthful set of return codes for this particular delivery:

  • HA/HA – Garment correct size, but makes recipient look utterly ridiculous.
  • HU/UH – Garment labelled as correct size, but clearly manufactured during fabric shortage.
  • BE/EP – Garment resembles supermarket checkout uniform, circa 1997.
  • TE/NT – Garment completely shapeless in manner of marquee with excess material.
  • WH/AT – You don’t seriously expect me to wear this, do you? It’s got shoulders like the strapping on an american football player!

It’s just a thought. I’m quite sure I’d find the process of internet clothes shopping far less stressful if it was acknowledged upfront that at least half the garments would be making their way back immediately.

Posted in Appearance & Grooming | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Born again housewife

July 8, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

This is very weird for me.surprised

At the age of 29 and a half, I seem randomly to have become houseproud. This, after approximately 24 years (I’m estimating that I started being responsible for my own bedroom at about 5) of being a bona fide slob, washing re-user and piles-of-dishes-ignorer.

Gus and I moved into our new house a week past last Friday. We’re settled already – although by “settled” I don’t actually mean “unpacked” or “organised” or anything like that, just that this old place feels like home. And for some reason, living at “home” (as opposed to in a microflat or a money pit) makes me want to keep my accommodation clean and tidy.

This might come as some surprise to anybody who’s ever lived with me (or in fact visited me)  in the past. Flashbacks to student accommodation at Sciennes remind me uncomfortably that the posh boys who lived upstairs kept their flat far cleaner than I ever did, give or take a slice of courgette that remained stuck to their wall for the length of the year.

Even moving from scummy studentsville to a proper grown-up flat with my then best friend didn’t encourage me to pull my inside-out-for-one-last-wear socks up.

But now – how times have changed. I caught myself last week mentally creating a daily plan of which room I would be cleaning once everything was unpacked. 7 days in a week, and 7 rooms in the house (if you count the hall/stair as one room) work out nicely, giving me something to polish and primp every day.

I spent my Saturday morning this week cleaning the kitchen, organising my assorted herbs and spices into attractive uniform jars from IKEA, and wiping down the microwave and kitchen units. Today was spent scrubbing fake tan tidemarks off the bath, and washing the sponge I’d used afterwards. I’m even having wild thoughts about perhaps mowing the lawn, should it stay dry for another hour or so.

This is so unlike me, that it’s actually freaking me out a bit. I mean, I guess I always knew on some level that my slovenly ways would have to come to an end some day – it’s not like you can bring up a child amongst piles of crumpled clothes and discarded mail. But the drama of the change is something that’s taken me completely by surprise.

Is this another crazy hormonal thing that I can attribute to the pregnancy? Am I perhaps “nesting”?

Certainly, I have a bit of a horror of being as bored again as I was during the first trimester, when I was too tired to move anywhere, and feeling too sick to do anything if I’d been able to move. My part time job shifts work out in such a way that I have 6 days off on the trot every two weeks, and the thought of spending them lying fitfully on the couch,  exercising my remote-control muscles does make me feel the urge to get up and clean something.

Well, whatever is causing it, I’m just going to go with my new found housepride and embrace my apparent destiny as a born-again housewife. If I can manage to do so without morphing into some sort of dreadful 1950s stereotype, that is.

Bugger! It looks like it’s going to rain. Now what can I do instead of mowing the lawn…?

Posted in Personal development | Tagged , , | 5 Comments »

Another broadband rant.

June 16, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

Yes it’s that time of the month again. No, not that time of the month, but “ranting about broadband” time. tired

After a promising phone call a few weeks ago from 3 Mobile Broadband’s Executive Office (in response to my previous post noting general dissatisfaction with my mobile broadband service – or lack thereof) I was looking forward to some progress being made, some problems getting resolved, and in the event that that wasn’t possible  – the cancellation of my contract.

I spoke to a very pleasant gentleman named Charles, who agreed that asking me to pay £15 every month for a broadband connection that didn’t connect was a bit on the unreasonable side. He advised that he was going off to get his techie guys to look into our problems, find out what the story was, and in the event that our issues couldn’t be resolved satisfactorily, he would arrange for our contract to migrate on to “pay as you go” without breakage fees – hurrah!

Unfortunately, I missed Charles’s call when he phoned me with an update a week past Friday. He did leave a message to say that he’d call back the following Monday (8th June) but so far I’ve heard zippo. Worried that my missing of the callback might be interpreted as my now being happy with my contract, I tried to call Charles back on the number he rang me on.

Of course it went through to the automated service that would ultimately connect me to my friends abroad whose computers have a habit of saying no.

Ever resourceful, I googled “3 executive office, Glasgow” and managed to get hold of a few phone numbers which would take me through to the switchboard.

And the response…?

Switchboard are “not authorised” to put me through to anybody unless I can give them either a call reference or a mobile number for my broadband account. Doesn’t matter that I have the name of who I need to speak to, or that I have been expecting his call for over a week now. Nope, the computer says no again. I will have to rake through paperwork at the microflat tonight to see if I can find either piece of information – although I suspect that as soon as I hand it over they will refuse to connect me on the basis that the account is held in my husband’s name.

Honestly, when did common sense become such a yawning vacuum in corporate customer service? Yes, I agree that we have to have processes and procedures, but surely we should also be able to sensibly assess situations and provide reasonable human responses accordingly?

So, the purpose of this rant is really to say – Charles, if you’re out there – please call me back and help me get this situation resolved. I’m tired of not being able to access the internet, I’m tired of not being able to update my blog (I’m making this entry on a friend’s network) because 3 doesn’t do WordPress admin, and I’m really really tired of going round in circles with call centres and switchboards.  

It’s just not cricket!

Posted in Ranting | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Here comes the sun!

May 31, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

Can there be anything more glorious than a properly hot and sunny day in Scotland?smile

I’m sitting outside in my Mum’s beautiful garden, surrounded by cute, furry bumblebees and the scent of lavender, cooking myself gently (through an umbrella and a coating of factor 30) in the most fabulous sunshine I’ve seen for about three years!

There’s something about living through 9 months of freezing cold, dismal and wet weather that makes rejoicing in the first proper appearance of summer each year even sweeter. I’m sure that as a Scot (and originally a very Northern one at that) I’m more sensitive to the joy of the sun than your average warm-climate dweller.

Anyway, it’s my last day up in Inverness before returning to Edinburgh and the microflat later this afternoon (post barbeque, if all goes to plan and the sky stays clear). I can’t say I’m looking forward to it much; I know there are only another 4 weeks until Gus and I get the keys to our lovely new house, but we’ve been saying “It’s not long now” for the last 8 weeks, and my reserves of patience – never impressive at the best of times – are wearing thinner with each repetition of “Build me up Buttercup” from upstairs!

We’ve just spent a week travelling the Northern Highlands – a much more activity-packed holiday than I had anticipated, given my recent 1st trimester shunnage of all physical exertion. On Tuesday we hiked to Sandwood Bay, a phenomenal white sandy beach on the Atlantic coast north of Kinlochbervie – along with Applecross on the Western coast, one of my favourite places in the world. It’s reasonably hard work getting there (4.5 miles of rough, undulating track – then you have to get home!) but extremely worth the effort.

After Sandwood, Gus and I realised we were sunburnt – not something we had really anticipated, given the random rain and hailstones we’d walked through on the way, but that’s Scottish weather for you. It doesn’t seem to matter how often we go up North and encounter sunshine, we never think to pack sunscreen – as if the sun in Scotland “doesn’t count” for some reason. Anyway I am now paying for being remiss, as the unaccustomed sun on my face, plus an odd pregnancy-related condition called “chloasma”, mean that I have developed random dark patches of skin on my face.

They’re not too noticeable yet, for which I am profoundly grateful, but I’ve learned my lesson now and am smothering myself in factor 30 every 5 minutes. It’s not just a case of being vain (although as I start to lose my figure I have noticed I’m spending more and more time on my eyebrows…), it’s just that the patches – really quite small and inoffensive in another location – have cunningly chosen to materialise on either side of the dent between my nose and my top lip. Should they get darker and grow, something I understand could easily happen, and is more likely to if I expose myself to the sun willynilly,  they could join up in the middle - in which case I’d be left sporting a fetching Hitler ‘tache!

I’m now wondering if it’s safe to use moustache bleach during pregnancy – I thought that maybe dyeing my upper lip fluff might lighten the whole area and deflect attention from the offending patches. However, then I worry that the whole unnaturally light hair/unnaturally dark skin combo might all be a bit Atomic Kitten for my usual natural image, and highlighting the area could turn out to be an ill-considered publicity stunt. Oh, decisions decisions…

So, despite its coy shyness the sun in Scotland definitely does “count” (even when it’s randomly splitting hailstone-dispensing clouds) and henceforth I am taking up arms ‘gainst a sea of troubles and sticking like glue to my bottle of sunscreen.

Not that I’m complaining, of course – a burgeoning dictator ‘tache is a fairly small price to pay for the joy of being able to sit outside with your morning coffee. I do love summer, it’s great!

Posted in Appearance & Grooming | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

Updates, musings and plans…

May 21, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

This week it’s all about catching up on blogging. There’s been so much going thinkingon for the last few months, yet I haven’t been able to post any of it due to my stupidly ineffective mobile broadband contract. 

By the way, I spoke to Gus last night (he’s been away travelling on business, hence my decampment to Inverness) and he reckons the 3 dongle works perfectly from a Holiday Inn near Halifax. It remains to be seen if this is a local pocket of high performance, or if things will improve when we move house at the end of June (we wonder if ancient stone-walled tenement might be having an adverse effect). Perhaps it’s worth delaying my angry letter onslaught until we find out… 

But back to what’s been going on lately, and why I’ve been doing practically nothing for the last 3 months. 

After the shocking, depressing write-off that was the second half of 2008, we were sincerely hoping for a bit more luck in 2009. Promisingly enough, we got an offer on the yawning money-pit we used to call “home” (that’s before we started calling it “that place where everything breaks”) and I started to feel a bit better about the whole baby-making business after our horrible miscarriage in August 08. 

I’m sure you can imagine how flummoxed we were then, when the house sale turned into the most ridiculous and drawn-out, nit-picky, over-demanding, “let’s make the vendors pay for another survey because we suspect there might be a sneezing pixie that will cause the house to fall down” type processes I’ve ever been through in my life. 

Honestly, if I ever see their surveyor again, I will shoot him on sight – you seriously have to question the intelligence of a man who will demand to see the builder’s warrant for a sinple bathroom refit, and the electrical compliance certificate for a shower that runs off the combi boiler!! You may laugh, but we had to pay £65 plus VAT for a letter of comfort from a highly confused bathroom surveyor to confirm that neither piece of documentation was remotely necessary. 

Anyhow, between that and the sad loss of our second baby at the end of February (right at the height of house nonsense) we were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves again by the beginning of Spring. What was this? 2008 was following us into the next year, bringing all its bloody nonsense with it! Surely that’s against all the rules… 

But Spring is a great time of year (it’s always been my favourite season) and things with the flat sorted themselves out eventually. We’re now going to be moving to a cutesy wee house in the West of Edinburgh – in fact about 300 yards from where we used to live. It’s got a South-facing back garden, with patio doors from the living room and decking for the many, many barbeques we’ll be having this summer – come rain or shine. The nightmarish sale is well and truly behind us now, and we’re just looking forward to getting our keys and moving in. 

Also, I ended up pregnant again on my first cycle after the second baby we lost and am now 11 weeks, 3 days and counting… A few early scans have confirmed all is progressing well, and despite some truly demoralising morning sickness (serious misnomer if you ask me – I felt vomitous all the bloody time!) and tiredness, I’m doing really well. I think I’m starting to come to the end of the icky part now, which is nice. I’m feeling a lot more energetic, and have even been able to contemplate whole days without a nap in the middle. 

So it’s back to work for me now! I’ve had a lot of time out to think through what exactly I’m going to be doing with my life, and have come to a few conclusions about Top Cat Copy as a business. 

Firstly, I’ve started to question why I’m restricting myself to copywriting, when (a) my skills extend much further than that, (b) nobody wants to pay for business writers during a recession, and (c) sitting in a wee room by myself writing gives me much less of a kick than getting out into businesses and solving problems for them. 

I’ve recently been doing a bit of consultancy work with an Edinburgh business called Anthyllis – see www.anthyllis.co.uk – helping them to rationalise and improve their website, and giving them advice on how to take advantage of the various online marketing opportunities open to them. Apart from the fact that I just LOVE their business and products (gorgeous organic, natural skin/bodycare by Dr Haushcka and Spiezia), I’ve also really enjoyed sticking my nose right into their business and using my problem-solving and marketing skills to come up with ideas for them to manage their brand and raise their profile. 

Yes, copywriting will form a part of the service I’m providing, but it won’t be the main product. I keep forgetting that I’ve actually unusually technology and web-savvy for the average small business owner. I’ve caught myself assuming that my copywriting clients know how to structure a website sensibly, how many pages their sites should have, how they should be optimised for search engines, and how they can be backed up with less traditional marketing tools such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, link exchanges…. the list goes on. 

In fact, one of my clients didn’t know any of this at all. More importantly, neither did the client’s web designer – which made me think that there’s a bit of a gap somewhere in between the small business owner who wants a website, and the web designer who knows how to write the code. There’s a need for someone tech and web-savvy on one hand, but creative on the other, who knows how to take business requirements from the technophobes, and translate it into functional specification for the build bods. 

Think about it, how how often must losses in translation between end-users and techies contribute to websites that just aren’t fit for purpose? It must happen all the time! 

Anyway, these are my musings thus far. Hopefully the aforementioned gap will prove to be Elaine-shaped, and I’ll finally have found my niche. In the meantime, I’m going to continue musing and pick as many brains as I can until musing turns into an actual plan.

I’ve just got to hope that this will all happen a bit more readily now that I’m not constantly fighting the urge to be sick on myself and fall asleep. God bless pregnancy; babies are wonderful, but growing them doesn’t half take it out of you! 

By the way, one decision I’ve definitely taken is that  in light of the above-mentioned diversification, my company name will shortly be changing to Top Cat Communications. 

Now how’s that for progress?

Posted in Personal development, Starting a business | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Technology? Pah!

May 20, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

Well firstly I should explain why it’s been nearly two months since my last tiredblog… 

I haven’t disappeared entirely, and I still think about blogging quite a lot; but sadly I have had the great misfortune to change my internet service provider (ISP) and for some reason the new network says an emphatic “no” to WordPress admin. 

Therefore, my first back-online blog is going to be (yes, you guessed it) a rant about rubbish service in the technology sector. 

I’m currently connected through AOL at my Dad’s house. Gus and I moved into a very small flat at the end of March when we finally rid ourselves of “house of the thousand collapsed ceilings” and settled in for the long wait for the keys to our new place, which we expect to move into at the end of June. 

At the time we moved, Gus thought it would be a good idea to switch our ISP to 3 so we could get their mobile broadband package, enabling us (or so we naively thought…) to sit outside in the sunshine and enjoy speedy internet access wherever might take our fancy. 

Oh dear; as my happily AOL-powered Dad might write in a satisfactorily and timeously delivered email “Ye’re no often right, but ye’re wrang again!” 

Take this from someone who’s spent the last 7 weeks in a microflat, with nothing to do but look silly stuff up on the internet (business activities have been somewhat suspended lately – but more about that in a future post) – 3 Mobile Broadband is PANTS. 

In fact it may not even be effective enough to be called PANTS, because at least PANTS have a function beyond causing their owners to spend inordinate and unreasonable amounts of time on the phone to call centres where staff have clearly been specifically trained to empathise with angry callers, because that’s the only type of call they ever receive. 

I lose connection to the internet at least 2-3 times every day. This can sometimes be addressed by rebooting the router 12-15 times, but more often it results in an expensive and frustrating call to 3 technical support, only to be told that there’s no indication of any reason for the fault, and therefore no way to have it fixed. 

However, at the same time as being incandescent with rage during said phone calls, I can’t help but be reluctantly impressed with the fabulous textbook examples of active listening and “mirrored empathy” I receive from the call centre telephonists:

 

Caller: I’ve lost internet connection again. That’s the third time today. I’ve tried rebooting my router and restarting my laptop, but it’s not helping. I’m really getting fed up with this now. 

Telephonist: Thank you for your comments. I understand your frustration Mrs Gunn. Your internet connection isn’t working for the third time today, you’ve tried rebooting and it is still not working. I can appreciate that you’re not happy. 

Caller: (Patiently) Well, is there anything you can do? I work from home, so I need a reliable internet connection, which this clearly isn’t. 

Telephonist: I understand your frustration Mrs Gunn. Your internet connection isn’t reliable for you at the moment, and you need this because you work from home. 

Caller: (Extra patiently) I can see that you understand the problem. Can you tell me if there’s anything you can do to have it fixed? 

Telephonist: So, your internet connection has gone down, is that correct? 

Caller: (Extra, extra patiently, with a hint of tiredness) Yes, that is correct. 

Telephonist: Did you know that the majority of connection problems with 3 Mobile Broadband can be addressed by restarting the router and switching your laptop off then back on?   

Caller emits an inarticulate sound as if suddenly strangled. 

Telephonist: I’m sorry Mrs Gunn, I did not understand you. Did you know that the majority of connection problems with…. 

Telephonist hears the sound of a window being opened. The line is filled with the rushing of air and the rapidly diminishing sound of screamed obscenities.  

A thud and some brief sounds of splintering plastic. Then silence. 

 

So despite their evidently comprehensive training in how to sympathetically and considerately assist upset, internet-less clients, 3 Mobile Broadband’s technical support are in fact about as much use as an inflatable dartboard. I’m still no further forward with my connectivity issues, and beyond a paltry £5 credit to our account (which I have no doubt has been swallowed up by mobile phone bills for calls routed via the Middle East) I’ve had nothing except a sympathetic verbal repetition of my problems. 

Of course, when raising the question of whether I should in all fairness be held to a contract for a service that doesn’t serve, I received the inevitable notification of enormous disconnection fees should I terminate early. I did ask to speak to a manager, but was told I’d receive a callback within 24 hours, which of course I’m still waiting for two and a half weeks later. 

Not being one to shrink at a challenge though, I will shortly be embarking on a campaign of irate and over-articulate letters to 3 customer care. If I can’t have a reliable internet connection, then I can at least have the satisfaction of wasting their time as well as mine until they agree to cancel the contract without penalty. 

So a stern warning for anybody looking for a new ISP; do not under any circumstances consider using 3 Mobile Broadband, unless you plan to sign up and then immediately cancel the contract under the 14 day cooling-off period, just to make an administratively inconvenient point about the unfairness of consumers having to pay for rubbish service and repeated viewings of “Internet Explorer cannot display the web page” error screens. 

Technology? Pah!

Posted in Ranting | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

15 things I realised recently

March 27, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

smile1. Double-clicking is becoming obsolete. Quick-launch icons and internet browsing have become its deathwatch beetle. Unless you’re the kind of technophobe who thinks you have to double click on internet links to open them, but that’s just silly.

2. My digital radio not only has an alarm clock and a sleep function, but the digital display is light-sensitive – so it turns out the light when you do; saving you from nasty LED glare in the middle of the night. How jolly clever!

3. You don’t need to buy an expensive vegetable steamer if you have a pot and a sieve.

4. Using greasy body lotion before going to sleep in an extremely cold room is a mistake.

5. Any timescales quoted by your solicitor as being reasonable for completion of a property deal should be at least tripled before you’re even close.

6. I will never learn how to play the piano properly.

7. Dishwashers need to have some kind of special salt added to them regularly, or your dishes will eventually start to come out more clarty than they were when they went in.

8. Adding salt after realisation number 7 will not bring your wine glasses back from cloudy hideousness.

9. Enid Blyton was a bit more risqué than I had previously supposed. Uncle Dick and Aunt Fanny anybody?

10. Nobody wants to spend money on business writers during a recession. They think they can do it themselves. Sigh.

11. My feet go blue with alarming regularity.

12. I don’t suit my natural hair colour. Turns out there was a reason I started dyeing it 15 years ago.

13. It’s actually pretty easy to get a part in a movie – if you really want to, and you don’t mind that it’s unpaid and directed by a student. Hey, everybody starts somewhere…

14. A squeegee is far better than a towel for wiping down your wet room after showering. Oh if only we’d known, perhaps our downstairs neighbour wouldn’t have lost her ceiling.

15. If you’re feeling in any way blue, down or sad, visit www.comparethemeerkat.com for instant chuckles. Either that or watch the sneezing panda on You Tube.

Posted in Social commentary | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

In plain English…

March 21, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

smilingI had a good chuckle to myself this morning on reading an article brought to my attention by somebody on Twitter.

Apparently local authorities are trying to standardise their written output, avoiding jargon and buzzwords to optimise communicability of message. In other words, they have decided that it’s time everybody started writing in good old plain English so that people will have half a clue what they’re talking about.

Among the joyously silly nuggets of nonsense they have decided to ban are “Coterminosity” – I presume this to have something to do with double meanings, “Democratic legitimacy” – haven’t a clue, and the wonderful (completely unintelligible) “Predictors of Beaconicity”. I am particularly impressed with how Beaconicity appears to merit its own capital letter; is it a proper noun? Perhaps Beaconicity is a religion or festival that we have been previously unaware of. It sounds like fun anyway…

I am no stranger to corporate jargon, having spent time working in project management for a bank in previous years. I’m pretty familiar with the concept of “deliverables” and “silo approaches” now, but when I started I was clueless. Being a bit of a fan (theoretically anyway) of the school of thought whereby the quality of writing increases in direct proportion to the number of things you can keep out of it, I found the mind-boggling project-speak a bit hard to get on board with. I remember once having to stop a programme manager in the middle of a conference call because I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. I don’t think he was best pleased, but I thought he’d have been even less pleased when I failed to “outline project deliverables” within acceptable timescales; due to having absolutely no idea what they were, or where I could find them.  

Luckily, my boss at the time was a very sensible woman, and shared my opinion that if project managers were to concentrate on actually doing things rather than sitting about talking about them in four syllable words, then there would be a lot less “slippage” out there to be reported on. She and I used to play mute bullshit bingo in meetings, preparing lists of common terms in advance and ticking each slice of verbal nonsense off as it was uttered by another self-important programme manager. To this day I have fantasies of going back in time to leap up, shrieking “Bingo” during one of those meetings; unfortunately I didn’t have quite enough of a career death wish at the time to make that sort of behaviour feasible.  

Anyway, before I fall on my own sword by making this article too wordy, I’ll leave you here with a link to the 200 jargon terms officially banned by local authorities – I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Posted in Social commentary | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Post midnight madness

February 18, 2009 by Elaine Gunn

tiredI have arrived late at my desk today, sporting a fetching tiredness tic which is causing my right eye to twitch randomly and annoyingly in the manner of an even-creepier-than-normal Anne Robinson. I am lacking motivation, and haven’t been able to bring myself to do anything on today’s to-do list beyond the unofficial entries: “make coffee for self” and “check tomatoes on facebook farm.”

All this from a distressing altercation with a smoke alarm last night.

The thing ran out of batteries yesterday afternoon and started cheeping at regular intervals of about 23.5 seconds as I was (belatedly) reconciling my January income and expenses. Not much fun under the best of circumstances, never mind whilst having your ears periodically assaulted by a tiny electronic sadist.

For some reason my usual “do it now” ethos deserted me entirely and it didn’t occur to me to investigate or do anything about the noise before leaving the house to go for a haircut with follicular genius Neil Barton.  

Of course I paid for my remissness later on, as arriving home on the wrong side of midnight and a few Tigerlily mojitos, I realised that the pesky device was still set on tormenting me, and had evilly increased its hideous cheep-to-silence ratio considerably since the afternoon.

I spent the best part of an hour perched on one of the dining room chairs, digging away at the device with a pair of (now mangled) tweezers, trying vainly and with much profanity to stop it from going off. I knew that it was trying to tell me that it was low on go-juice, but I just couldn’t understand how it would be possible to change the batteries if I couldn’t get the frickin’ cover off!

“What do you want from me??”  I found myself shrieking at the ceiling in desperation.  

Eventually I gave up in disgust, and tried two different bedrooms to see if I had any chance of dropping off and managing to sleep through the noise.

No joy of course; the thing about smoke alarms is that they’re deliberately built to be loud enough to be heard clearly in any part of your house – a laudable and essential design feature I’m sure, given the hazardous nature of chip pans and scented candles, as we all know – but absolutely impossible to ignore when it’s going off for no good reason and you’re trying to get some kip.

Finally I dragged myself back upstairs to poke hopelessly and stare blearily at my tormentor, and noticed a tiny sticker placed discreetly (some might suspect it was in fact hidden, although not for me such paranoia…) in between the plastic cover and the base unit – visible only when the cover was half prised off with my poor tweezers.

“WARNING – battery not replaceable, see instruction leaflet.”

Several moments of exhausted and half cut confusion followed as I tried to digest this information and figure out what it meant for my immediate and ongoing sleep requirements. Surely it wasn’t possible for the smoke alarm to be cheeping due to low batteries if the batteries couldn’t be replaced? This must mean that the system was mains powered with a battery backup, which would in turn mean that it was technically impossible for it to be cheeping due to low power.  

The horrible prospect of an insoluble electronic malfunction crossed my mind briefly, before finally inspiration struck and I looked further along the ceiling to see a second, older and long- forgotten smoke alarm screwed unobtrusively a few feet to the left of the one I’d been fruitlessly hacking at for the last hour and a half.

Emitting something between a shriek of frustration and a moan of gratitude, I leaped back on to the dining room chair, flipped the lid of the second alarm and snatched out the Duracell Procell 9V battery (which I have just discovered has “MAR 2007″ stamped helpfully on the side).

Revelling blissfully in the adorable silence, I vowed solemnly never again to ignore a repetitive noise and hope it would go away.

The moral of my story is clear; if there’s something you’re putting off, do it now – or you’ll find yourself alone at midnight, half crazed with lack of sleep, and exercising your mojito-diminished problem solving skills on a small yet terrible plastic adversary.

You heard it here first, and you have been warned…

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