Dan Germain

how gerry adams stopped me blogging for most of the summer

I should blog more, and I should have a good excuse for not doing so, and I'd like to say I've been busy, but then everyone's busy. Maybe I just took the summer off, but then I know some people who blogged while they were on holiday, about the quality of the towels in the hotel they stayed in.

Putting my finger on the reason for not blogging more is tough. Maybe I had to take some time out to reconsider my whole situation when an Australian woman said I looked a bit like Gerry Adams.

Or is it just because I am now a proper parent with other responsibilities, such as parenting, tidying, scolding and toilet monitoring. Maybe it's because I have a job and a house that are quite far apart. Maybe it's because I am a lazy good for nothing who was never gonna amount to much.

Or maybe it's because blogging sometimes gets a bit boring, like anything you do a lot (washing up, teaching English as a foreign language, growing tomatoes).

So I had a rest. And now maybe things will get more interesting.

good people to meet

I would like to link to some people who have good blogs.

First, Dan Heaver.

Dan is a good man. I hope he doesn't mind me using this photo of him that I found on his blog. Sure he won't. He occasionally writes innocent labels for beer money and spends most of his time doing things with film for people. Grows veg, makes chutney, fashions catapults out of squirrel bones (maybe). You should get to know him.

Then there's James. His blog is called Seen By Sigmund, or maybe it's Pushes Emotional Buttons. Anyway, it's a good blog, even though I have no photo of James playing a guitar.

f*ck you penguin

F*ck You Penguin is my favourite blog of the year so far. They're on twitter too, so you need never miss them being very, very rude to cute animals.

A further note: Paul Colman has advised me to stress how funny the above blog is. He doesn't think I have said enough to really force that fact home. So, please, have a read, it's very funny.

ben harris

 

I met Ben Harris a while ago. He is a great writer, a funny man and a proper gentleman. He's just refashioned his blog, entitled I Don't Know Do I? and I think it will turn out to be one of my favourites. Please pop over to Ben's for a quick how-do-you-do and some tips from Mr Vonnegut.

trent beret

Have a look at this blog post. It's about the new tube station in Shepherds Bush. It's a good thing that this station has finally opened, because I was getting bored of having to walk to Holland Park.

Anyway, take a look at the post. The title in particular. Notice anything?

First person who gets it wins a prize.

Disclaimer – Ben and Russell are barred from entering (the competition, not the tube station)

paul came back

Paul Colman is one of the world's finest bloggers, even if he is rubbish at cricket. It is a great pleasure to see that he is blogging again after a bit of gardening leave, whatever that is.

picture stolen from Ben – the usual stuff doesn't apply

Welcome back Paul. Maybe I should start posting a bit more stuff too.

wilf and luke have a question for you

Please visit Wilf and Luke's blog. They are young creatives who like to make eye contact on public transport, and they have a question for you:

"What does it feel like when inspiration strikes?"

Leave your answer as a comment on this post and make two young men very happy.

boring times

Things are quiet. I don't watch enough TV to come across great adverts, so I have nothing of interest to say about advertising at the moment. I don't have time to read books, because I'm heavily involved in the full contact sport of child rearing whenever I'm not doing business things. I am working on a couple of things that I can't talk about, so no dice there either. And I'm trying to finish writing a book, which has been a right old slog, but not particularly newsworthy.

In short, I have turned into a blogging bore. I hope that something exciting happens soon, so that I can share. But this summer has been a quiet one so far.

this is the most exciting thing I have seen for some time

on holiday

I'm on holiday in Devon. So far I have eaten crab, whitebait and some Cheerios. My knees are a bit sunburned too.

I won't be posting properly for a couple of weeks. Back on 30th June.

on blogging

Very sad that Marcus has left the world of blogs. He has done it before, but his final post makes it sounds pretty final. He says he's going to get on with real life.

Marcus's blog was one of the ones that kept me going. I like all of the planner-type blogs, but I don't think I look at the world the same way they do, and sometimes the intensity of their rigorous thought about brands and ads and communications does my head in.

To be honest, I prefer stuff and nonsense, and trees and odd things that you see stuck to the pavement. They're the things that make me think differently about the world.

With Marcus's stuff, you got a bit of everything - business, proper ad stuff, and then the personal and the slightly odd. The same sort of thing that you got from Paul's Life In The Middle blog, before he shut that down.

I don't know what the future of blogging holds. If the good/smart people are bailing out, maybe it is just a bit of excitement that'll soon be over. Maybe they'll gradually disappear, like Filofaxes (help me out here - I'm struggling to think of modern communication tools that have died out. CB radio?).

But I think I will keep blogging. I only ever started doing this so I'd have somewhere to write things down, before they were forgotten. And I wanted to see if anyone else was interested in the same things. So expect less rigorous thought about popular ads/brands/strategies of our time (not that you ever got that anyway), and more of the same old rubbish. Just like it says at the top.

See you later Marcus.