Day 14,845 – Of Cabbages and Things

Sometimes writing is a total chore. Like tidying your bedroom when you’re a kid. Or eating cabbage just to make sure you get enough iron and vitamin whatever. Today was a day of eating a lot of cabbage.

But I got there. Almost.

I have very nearly finished Day 2’s chapter for Dream on a Red Sofa. It’s been a real struggle; not in terms of remembering the details of May 7 2008 but to turn the notes I made at the time into a compelling story that fits in with the style of the later chapters.

This inevitably means chopping a heck of a lot of material out to keep the word count down to about 3,500. This is pretty painful because it means some elegant and very descriptive phrases were jettisoned in the quest for pace and brevity.

Day 2 covers my trip from London to Brussels. The last chapter of my book is called ‘Day 415 – The Infinity of Next.’ No, there are not that many chapters – there are ‘only’ forty – but I still have a long way to go, both geographically and writing-ly. But some of the later chapters are complete.

All I need to do now is fill in the gaps. Something tells me that subsequent chapters will fly off my finger tips. But if I am still whining about Dream on a Red Sofa in a year’s – or even six months’ time – feel free to pelt me with cabbages.

Day 14,846 – Odds On and Off

I know a guy who runs a shop in Cardiff. I went to see him on Friday to talk about stocking my photographs. When I walked in, he was glued to his laptop and listening to a horse race at Cheltenham. He’d had a bet, his horse was priced at 7 to 2 and his face told me that I should come back later. I did. The horse came nowhere but he was shoulder-shruggingly philosophical about it.

I have only known Andrew for a short time but it’s clear that he’s a committed gambler. I don’t know if he has a problem but he certainly knows how to gamble. He told me about a trip to Ascot a few years ago.

‘I put fifty quid on a horse in the first race. It lost. I put fifty quid on a horse in the second and that lost, too…’

I’ve heard countless stories like this over the years and I guessed what was coming next. And sure enough, Andrew got a winner but the magnitude of his profits nearly knocked me off my feet.

‘So I bet another 50 quid on the third race but my friends said I was mad….’

‘Well, yes. I think I would’ve gone home by that stage,’ I said.

‘They said I was mad because I bet on an outsider, it was priced at 50 to 1.’

‘And it won?’

‘Yes, I made two and a half grand. And...,’ he said building up to the aftershock, ‘I also had it in a forecast (a bet in which you try to choose the first and second place horses) and won another three grand.’

All gamblers have war stories but 99% are about winning. They rarely talk about losses unless, like Andrew’s, they precede a great coup. I too have tales of magnificent victories but they are anaemic when compared to Andrew’s.

I’ve never won more than 500 quid in one hit, either in poker or on the horses. But there again, I never make big bets. If I play poker, I limit my ‘investment’ to an absolute maximum of 50 quid, and I will only go this far if the other players are a bunch of innumerate, drunken, macho losers.

I think the most I’ve ever bet on one horse is a tenner. I prefer combination bets, in which you choose three, four or more races and try to predict the winner in each. This is very difficult to do but the rewards can be immense.

On only two occasions in the past 15 years, I’ve managed to pick four out of four winners. I won around 300 – 400 quid: not much when compared to Andrew but there again, I only stood to lose a couple of pounds.

Then of course, there are the ones that got away. About 12 years ago, I worked in a pub in Marlborough, a quaint market town in Wiltshire. On Sunday nights, a group of young blokes from the local racehorse stables would come for a few drinks and they would invariably give me a ‘dead cert’ tip with a wink.

These were the stable lads who worked with the horses every day and prepared them for the races. They lived, breathed, ate and slept horses, so I followed their tips for the first couple of weeks. I bet modestly, of course, but none of them won.

The next Sunday, a lad gave me another tip. ‘He’s gonna walk it,’ he said. ‘And best of all it’s gonna be a massive price. Put every penny you can find on it.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘You said that last week, and the week before…’

‘But this time, it can’t lose.’

‘Hmmm.’

One week later, the stable lads arrived in the pub earlier than usual and were ordering whiskies and vodkas with their pints.

‘Did you back that horse, like I told you?’ said the stable lad.

I shook my head and knew bad news was imminent.

‘Aw, man. You shoulda. It stormed home!’

‘And the price?’

‘Twenty-five to one! One of the lads had £500 quid on the nose. He made twelve and a half grand, he’s quitting his job and going back to Ireland.’

So there you have it. Unlike most gamblers, I am perfectly happy to confess to my mistakes. Well, some of them anyway.

Day 14,847– The True Colours of Horseshit

Today (note to Evelyn and Donald, this is Thursday’s entry), I stumbled across a website called Red Cube Marketing, a consultancy that specialises in social media. I guess I am a user of ‘social media’ but I feel that I’ve never really got to grips with the concept. Nor have I appreciated why it’s increasingly seen as such a great opportunity for big business.

I wondered if this was a sign of age; rather like my mum never ‘understood’ the music that I played in my teenage bedroom. So I decided to investigate and flicked through the slides a recent Power Point presentation given by the personification of Red Cube, Gemma Watts.

There were 125 slides in the presentation. Gemma doesn’t say how long the show lasted but I can’t imagine it was any more than an hour (it was a ‘breakfast briefing’ after all.)

On this basis, that would be two slides a minute. Gemma tells us not to worry because most slides are just single words. That’s true; but even so, watching the arty-photo visuals while listening to Gemma’s – undoubtedly enthusiastic - narrative must have been an experience akin to a religious awakening.

Photo – words – photo – words – blink. Damn! I missed one. Don’t worry, here’s some more. Photo – words – photo – etc.

It was all pretty innocuous and obvious at first. Well, marketing can hardly ever be anything other than common sense. But soon my skin started to crawl. The first time was when she said getting people to engage with ‘your brand’ through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other elements of the social networking world, could become a ‘karmic’ experience.

I am all for creativity with language, sounds and images but there are times when it makes me very uncomfortable. Like when I first heard Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze - a song inspired by The Great Man’s use of LSD – as a backing track for an advert for geriatric vitamin tablets, my soul objected to the bastardised use of a beautiful Buddhist concept in the pursuit of market share and profit.

Is nothing sacred, I wondered. Of course not, this is business! And then maybe on slide 60 (I don’t know, I lost count), I started to smell horseshit. At one point, she says ‘don’t sell’ when engaged in social marketing.

Hang on a second. This is marketing. She was advising share-holder owned companies. Their raison d’etre is to generate revenue. And companies spend millions on marketing to help maximise sales. Damn right they’re going to sell!

Maybe this is a question of semantics. Maybe what Gemma meant is you don’t thrust the product, its benefits and its price under the noses of potential customers and then beg for a sale.

Social marketing requires tact, and patience and gentle encouragement. But ultimately, social marketing is not providing a public service. Social marketing – just like every other breed of marketing – is all about getting people to part with as much of their cash, as often as possible, in your company’s direction.

The premise of Gemma’s pitch was that the way people communicate has irrevocably changed. This is absolutely true: with email, text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, people can cut out the middle man. So much communication these days is peer-to-peer; it goes across the hierarchy, rather than up and down. Consequently, those at the top of the tree – namely politicians and big companies – are in danger of losing their influence and power.

The top-down approach to communication is dead, and unless the internet and other recent technology strides become un-invented, it will never return. Hence, companies have no choice but to join (and if possible, dominate) the party. And the only way they can do this is to drop the expectation of deference and infiltrate ‘the street.’

The early stages of this ‘commercialisation of cool’ were documented by Naomi Klein in No Logo. This seminal book was written nine years ago and at the time, many people – myself included – were shocked by Klein’s analysis.

These days, hijacking popular culture for profit has become so normalised that companies shamelessly adopt the language, imagery and customs of ‘the street.’ Most of us don’t even notice, let alone give a shit.

So what, GJM? What’s wrong with this? Companies are just moving with the times. If they used the marketing techniques of the past, they would be out of business.

Maybe some companies will suffer from not getting involved with social media. But is this why humanity exists? To keep shareholders, CEOs and well paid marketing people in the BMWs to which they’ve become accustomed?

Humanity exists to reproduce itself. After all, we are mere animals. But we are also social beings and it’s by mixing and empathising with other humans that we distance ourselves from robotic, heartless money-making machines, AKA share-holder companies.

And this is what really offends me about marketing, in this case, social marketing. One of Gemma’s slides contained the following words. “Be authentic – people connect with people so let your brand personality shine through.”

This is just too surreal. I wonder if Gemma and other people in marketing really understand the gravity of their words.

I’ve got three issues here. Firstly, as she wrote in an earlier slide, ‘don’t sell.’ This is hardly authentic: selling is the name of the game. Marketing can never be authentic: it survives on its ability to create an image. Note the use of the word 'an': it is one image of many.

Secondly, no matter what your definition, brands are NOT people. Maybe they do have names, shapes, images, sounds, even smells and tastes. But they do not have personalities, nor hearts, spirits, souls or anything that even comes close to being human.

The other thing that bugs me about that sentence is the use of the word ‘so.’ I’ve read it about twenty times and I still can’t see how the second clause follows on from the first.

If marketing people really were authentic, 99% of them would be out of work. There would be one text book, four pages long and it would contain nothing more than a title page, an index, a dedication page and one paragraph of advice that can be used as a template for any product or service.

This would simply say:

‘Here’s our product. This is what it does. It costs this much. You are an intelligent person who knows what you like and what you want, so we won’t patronise you by pretending that the product is a person or suggesting that you will become more sexually attractive or popular as a result of buying it.’

Maybe I take words so seriously. Maybe that’s why I curtailed my career in PR and marketing; after four years of forced smiles, I just couldn’t cope with the daily deceptions and the hourly abuse of language. I earned a lot of cash but I couldn’t sleep, not even in the day-time. Yes, it messed my head up that much.

As always this is not an ad hominem attack. I am sure Gemma believes in what she does and I’m sure she’s very good at it. I’m sure she’s a caring, sharing, compassionate human being.

I just hope that she – and other marketing folk - can draw a line between what they preach at work and their lives as people. If so, then I admire and respect them. But having met far too many in the past, I somehow doubt it.

It goes with the territory: repeat something enough times with infinite energy, smiles and passion, and eventually you yourself will start to believe that inanimate objects (aka products) are as important as people.

And that’s not marketing, social or otherwise. That’s insanity.

Day 14,848 – A Day in the Diff

Wednesday.

Finished – and despatched – the next chapter of Dream on a Red Sofa to the US agent. She scratched a line through a couple of hundred words, chopped out a few unnecessary adverbs and asked for the next chapter ASAP.

Two boxes of promotional cards for fishdragon arrived today. I had no conception of what 5,000 6 x 4 inch cards would look like. But it’s a hell of a lot. The quality is pretty good and I still can’t believe the value for money. Tomorrow, I’ll start the marketing blitz.

The highlight of the day was meeting Karin for lunch. We used to be colleagues at the university and we are still good friends. How can I say this when she lives less than half a mile away and I haven’t seen her for six months? Well, we are good friends because we genuinely give a damn about each other’s happiness, and lives in general.

Karin had a really shitty year in 2008. But this year, it seems that positiveness is being dispensed in her direction. Her two year old son is becoming more wonderful by the minute, she has romance in her life and her academic career is blooming.

If I’d done my PhD at Cardiff, she would’ve been my supervisor, which is one of the main reasons I went to Goldsmiths. Friendship and ass-kicking are incongruous partners.

Karin is an authoritative voice in journalism academia so I asked her for some advice on my literature review. She pointed me in the right direction and raised some valid critiques about my PhD masterplan in the process. It was a pity that she had to get back to school and I had to dash elsewhere. We are long overdue a pint or two.

Day 14,849 – Poppies, Progress, Profit and Perspective

Two days ago, politicians, royalty, servicemen and women and members of the public stood in solemn silence on Whitehall and remembered those killed in wartime.

Remembrance Sunday is commemorated all over the country, and it has happened every year since the 1920s. But this year, it had extra poignancy.

The heightened emotion came from the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan. Britain has been there since day one of Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ began in 2001, and eight years on, public opinion is falling by the second.

There are several reasons – cost to the taxpayer; the apparent lack of clear objectives; the incompetence of the Ministry of ‘Defence’ in supplying the correct equipment; etc- but it’s the increasing death toll that’s really hitting home.

During the last few weeks, front page photos of young soldiers have been more frequent than ever in the country’s newspapers. On Tuesday the BBC gave the fatalities some perspective.

“So far, 94 UK service personnel have been killed in 2009 (to November 8) - the highest toll in a single year since the Falklands campaign 27 years ago.”

It’s all very sad. The deaths are indeed tragic and totally unnecessary. Britain should never have joined Bush’s kneejerk ‘crusade’ and I personally found the image of a black-clad and sombre Tony Blair, standing behind the current party leaders at the Cenotaph, stomach-churning.

I just cannot get my head around how Blair: a) can ever reconcile his Christian beliefs with supporting Bush in the first place; and b) has the brass neck to pay tribute to the people he sent to their deaths. Why did he not crumble into a pile of miserable repentance? If there were a God, then surely Blair would have been struck by divine lightning.

I also think that – with the exception of the Mirror and, possibly, the Independent – British newspapers editors should hang their heads in collective shame. Virtually all of the British press supported – or at least, didn’t oppose – the ‘War on Terror’. And now they are ‘sharing the nation’s pain’ without a hint of contrition.

Imagine this leader: ‘This newspaper supported the war but it has become apparent that it is a total disaster… maybe we took the government line a little too easily… from now on, we guarantee the Great British Public that this newspaper will vigorously debate the pros and cons of future conflict before we take an editorial stance.’

It would have been heartening to read something similar in the British press over the last few days. But I didn’t.

I did, however, see lots and adverts and articles in British newspapers about a new video game. As the BBC reported:

‘The widely-anticipated video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been tipped to be the biggest selling video game in history… Retailer HMV has predicted more than 1 million UK sales in the first week.’

The game is the latest in a series, and this time players join a: ‘combat team travelling to Russia, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Brazil and into orbit, in an attempt to thwart the terrorists.’

One reason that the game has been given so much publicity is that it’s even more gruesome than usual.

The BBC told us: ‘The game has drawn criticism because one section, prefaced by a warning screen, involves a player joining a massacre of civilians at an airport. Labour MP Keith Vaz condemned the game saying he was "absolutely shocked" by its violence.’

Call of Duty – and the accompanying publicity – hit the UK on Tuesday 10th November, two days after people bowed their heads at war memorials all over the country.

Do you think that the marketing folk at Activision, the game’s producer, knew this when choosing a launch date? I mean, it’s one of those special dates – like Valentine's Day, Easter Sunday and Bank Holidays – that diary manufacturers print on the pages so that we don’t forget.

Activision might argue that they launched the game now so that it’s in the shops in time for Christmas. Ok, that’s ‘good business.’ But surely someone at a meeting said: ‘Wouldn’t it be a little insensitive to release the game near to Remembrance Day? Especially with the ‘war on terror’ being so unpopular?’

If no one raised this point, then they are all corporate whores of the highest order. If someone did, but was then dismissed by a ‘superior’, then I admire them for having the balls. And I despise the superior for having lower ethics than pond-life.

As you can tell, I am pretty fucked off with politicians, newspaper editors, PR people and marketing wankers. They have no shame. Nothing is sacred. Power and money take total precedence over human dignity and life itself.

The only hint of light is in the numbers. Every single one of the British deaths in Afghanistan was avoidable and infinitely heartbreaking.

But when compared to previous wars, the 94 killed in eight years is a mere bloody nose. Less than a century ago, for example, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 19,240 British soldiers were killed.

That’s 94 killed in eight years, compared to nearly 20,000 killed on one day.

Maybe Britain and its politicians, and the world at large, have become a little more civilised since World War One. But it still took another two years of mindless slaughter after the Somme, and another war twenty years later, to convince the ruling elite that there has to be another way to fight.

And although the media have whined about Call of Duty, maybe we should be grateful that the young British men of today are merely wasting the best years of their lives in front of a screen rather than wasting another young man in a muddy trench.

Day 14,850 – Uncle Wrinkle to the Rescue

I went to London today for the Monday class. It was, without doubt, the most painful two hours of my life. We had a different teacher this week and the subject was, apparently, ‘using documents for academic research.’

You’d think it would be pretty straightforward to construct a class around this title. Maybe start with some definitions. Then onto some techniques, throw in some theory, add a little debate, a sprinkling of references, a few handfuls of radical ideas, any questions? And there’s your class.

Instead, our teacher today gave us an unstructured two hour ramble. She went up a hill, down a valley, along a corridor, round a corner, through a ploughed field and then finally collapsed into a dribbling river of vacuity.

The class began badly. She stayed seated and didn’t introduce herself. Then she kinda babbled through a smile for twenty minutes or so. There was no substance and I soon realised that I was destined to learn nothing.

After half an hour, I started to do surreal, post-cubist doodles on my note pad. This is always a bad sign. It means my mind has escaped. It came back for a moment when the teacher finally said something that struck a chord.

‘Think about the power of a few words,’ she said. ‘When a newspaper describes a woman as ‘a mother of four on welfare,’ what image comes to mind?’ The students – those who were still engaged – nodded sagely. But something inside me snapped. I was back at high school.

'Sounds like the Queen…,' I said.

Stunned silence, apart from one muted ‘huh?’

‘Well she’s a mother of four and she’s lived off state handouts since she was born.’

The woman from Kosovo and the Turkish bloke and Paolo all laughed. The teacher giggled, although I’m not sure she understood why it was funny. In fact, I’m not sure if she understood the subject she was supposed to be teaching.

To deal with the tedium, I started to write a log. These are some of my notes…

1747 – Where IS this class going? Still no sign of structure. Just babbling… 75 minutes to go and she’s just talking, talking, droning

1801 – More than half way there. It’s all wine and roses from here on. She’s just asked – with hope in her voice – if anyone has any questions. I have several, like: ‘why am I here?’

1811 – She used a quote at a conference without telling the audience who wrote it. She asked if people agreed with the quote, they did and then told them it was from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Made me wince.

1818 – Don’t think anyone’s listening now. Am hungry as well as bored. Not a good combination.

1828 – She said ‘we will look at this again when I see you again in two weeks.’ FFS. I thought she was only gonna teach one class.

1839 – She’s starting to fizzle out. ‘This is pretty much all I have to say,’ she said. And then she finds another tangent.

1845 – Even the Chinese students have cracked. They are usually infinitely focused. The girl is checking her text messages under the table. The lad is flicking through his diary.

1850 – Facking hell. Zero value. No future. Leave. Me. Alone

1855 – One last grenade. She talks about the ‘audit culture’ in the UK… obsession with league tables, exam results, etc… I said: ‘Given enough bananas, you could teach a monkey to get a BA degree in the UK.’ Think I offended half the class but fuck ‘em. It’s true.

At the end, teacher said: ‘Do you have anything to add? I don’t want to prolong the agony…’ Thankfully, no one did. In fact, the students’ mute and shuffled exit from the room made me cringe. I really felt for her in the end. That silence and lack of eye contact was worse than getting booed off stage.

Dinner was taken at a Chinese takeaway. It is one of several places to eat near the college and I was drawn in just because of its name: Uncle Wrinkle. I had chicken with cashews in yellow bean sauce with egg fried rice, and jasmine tea. I sat at one of the tables and ate as the grey-haired owner showed his worker how to cook.

The new worker seemed to have no common sense whatsoever. She was a bone-thin, young Chinese woman and the owner had to tell her when to stir, when to turn the gas on and off, and even where the fridge was situated. It seemed like she’d never been in a kitchen before.

Credit to the boss, however. He was extremely patient and spoke quietly all the time, in English (which surprised me because she had a very heavy Chinese accent.)

I had to ask the owner why he chose the name Uncle Wrinkle. He said he didn’t want a typical name for his restaurant like ‘Bamboo Garden, Jade Palace, Great Wall’ so he uses a nickname given to him seventeen years ago.

‘We were having dinner, laughing and joking and my five year old niece pointed at my face and called me Uncle Wrinkle.’

When I paid – a very reasonable £6.50 – I told the boss the meal was excellent and I said I’ll be back. I used the Cantonese word for 'thank you' when I received the change. The boss was impressed.

‘I only know the words for ‘hello’ and ‘thank you,’’ I said.

‘That’s all you need in my shop,’ said Uncle Wrinkle with a smile.

Day 14,851 – The Bird Had a Gun and The Cat Saw The Light

Went to the farmer’s market for the first time in months. The bloke on the wild boar stall did me a heck of a deal on burgers and sausages. Five 400g freezer packs for a tenner. An incredible bargain for such good quality, local meat.

Spent the rest of the day on the sofa, working on Dream on a Red Sofa. Will send the next chapter to the US agent on Tuesday. Deciding to rewrite the whole thing from the beginning was a stroke of genius.