effing budding talent Tweet

Chris: Do you know the business account sort code?
Me, laughing: What do you mean? It's on your fucking card.
Chris, annoyed: No, it's not!
Me, pulling out my card: What IS this?! Fuck me!
Chris, as I look up electronic records: You give Malcolm Tucker a run for the money. Did you hear what you said?
Me, sort code dictated and fucking memorised: What did I say?

counting sheep in his sleep Tweet

Chris: Three thousand. Fourteen hundred. Ninety nine.
Me: You mean four thousand, four hundred...?
Chris: Hmm! You KNOW what I mean!

Twist the knife, damn it: I NEVER do.

where my olympic journey ends... Tweet

...at least in its official track, as a volunteer, in equally official gear. This hot piece of euphemistic passive aggressive communication has just landed in my inbox:

[...] Unfortunately, your application has not been successful. While we cannot commit the time to answer individual queries, we can confirm the most typical reason for not being shortlisted was limited availability. We thank you very much for your interest and enthusiasm in support of London 2012 Ceremonies and hope that you will support London 2012 in other ways. [...]

If you don't know what the fuss is all about, find out where my Olympic journey started, and where it stumbled severely. And to my 3 year younger self: HAHAHA!

save for never: episode 1 Tweet

This idea has consumed me for at least a week. I live in a world of ideas, and no resource to make most happen, so nothing really consumes me for a whole week. Ideas are cheap. Fleeting. Done before. Shifted. Etc. Seeing this one won't go away, however, or morph into something completely different, here goes.

Bookmarks are dead, we all know it. But we all still do it, to some degree, and for some reason that may be about status, if not self-esteem. Regardless. Who ever goes through the bookmarks again? Though my life is different from yours, none of us has time. Except for those things that still get us.

Save for never is an attempt to chronicle what got me, and was gotten by me, without the need to save it for later. I'll keep it short.

1. "I'm not fucking happy—who's happy? I don't even know what that is." >> David Chang, chef (cameo), Treme

2. The sound of the last day of summer. It has been with me since the last perceivable day of summer, and will stay for years to come. I don't even own this yet. I don't need to. I like how it comes at me serendipitously, from here, there and nowhere.



3. Marc Jacobs AW12. Yes, fashion! The best of it. Mad as a nut. Even the fashion people can't get shit about it. They will ponder whether it was serious or a joke until the end of their lives. How delightful! That doesn't happen often. Truly, and gorgeously disruptive. Plus I kinda have one of them mad hats, the trendsetter I am.

my london 2012 olympics will run under @fru's logo Tweet

When I saw this beautiful logo for the London 2012 Olympics made by Frulwinn Collick I had one more reason to cry over the rivers of spilt milk around these games. The logo in use, as it stands, conveys no joy, no unity, no movement (citius, altius, fortius as of 1924), no recognisable image of London—not even as seen by the eyes of its millions of residents, nevermind the world population. The logo in use could've shown, among others, just how strong the UK is at "creative industries" (apparently its intended leading spear, should one remove financial services). Perhaps the official logo has, in fact, succeeded too well in reflecting how London, and the country at large feel: broken, fragmented, moving at once in all directions—thus none, lacking ambition, searching for an identity.

@gorgeoux i made an alternative olympic logo for fun yesterday. do you like it? any feedback is welcomed :) twitter.com/Fru/status/174…

— Fru (@Fru) February 28, 2012

By contrast, Fru's logo is something that made me smile instantly, that anyone anywhere could read in a blink, memorise, recognise and identify with. It would also stand the test of time, and convey London in its informal, playful nature of nowadays, while simultaneously nodding towards its history. I love its joy, simplicity and power so much that I'll print it on a white t-shirt and wear it religiously during the Olympics. I know it'll catch the eye of many, make them happy on the spot, and be an awesome conversation starter as amazing athletes from hundreds of nations save the day and help us forget how the organisers broke some part or other again*. Why not print your own t-shirt with @fru's logo?


* OK, they'll probably get the fireworks & lighting the flame right

it's spring alright! Tweet

Without doubt, it is spring on our terrace in the heart of London. And while I know that a city like this can easily get 3-5 degrees warmer than its surroundings, note I'm not announcing spring just as the first flower buds were spotted, but when everything is in bloom. This is one of two daffodils that hurried to open this morning, as the sun shone bright and the temperature steadily rose to the 15 degrees I experienced just before noon.



Swinging the terrace door open and being able to leave it as such was, of course, an added benefit, and for the whole five minutes I basked in the sun between moving work from home to the office, I snapped away happily at all the splendour. The crocuses, in particular, as they are nearly gone, and quite hidden under the rosemary that finally manned up last year, once I gave it a new pot in 2010 and kept it away from the cleaner than nearly watered it to death in 2009.



I expect that as it grows and bushes up, the woody branches at the bottom will lose their foliage, and my crocuses will shine in the sun in all their purple glory as of next year. And speaking of sun, I loved catching an early glimpse of this gazania, as it has so much more colour than the blanched flowers of summer. It didn't die over the winter, which is why there's such an early bloom, both facts recommending it as a year-round flowering plant in London.



The hyacinths, however, only coming round once a year, are quite happily hidden away from the sun among some greenery. That makes it a tad hard to spot them before they're fully open, but then again, I'd rather they last longer. Even if it means I have to bend a little for a photo and a sniff. This is not the only hyacinth (two more are go), and not the first either—as the snow flattened the gazania pile, the hyacinth behind it had quite a bit of sun quite quickly, and recently passed away.



Our silver wattle, meanwhile, or mimosa for others (acacia dealbata, to be clear) is approaching its climax. The flowers are already too high for me to smell without a ladder, but guess what I'll be doing this weekend? Oh, yeah! We bought this tree in the late winter of 2010, in a deplorable state. It has grown incredibly fast, the bush creature it is, and I feel incredibly successful to have it bloom already, and proudly receive compliments from the neighbours who're used to seeing it in the South of France.



There's a lot more going on in the garden, and I'll be trying harder to report on it. Last year I photographed every bit of interestingness dutifully, but failed to tell the stories timely. There was a lot of actual gardening involved, for at least a full day every weekend, and I hope that it all pays off in the years to come, when hopefully it's a lot more about maintenance and sitting back to enjoy the lush green paradise that is manmade miracle in the city centre.

some peace and hush Tweet

Nothing prepares you fully for running your own show. Not even having run a radio or TV show. The areas where you could make a difference are infinite, but your resources aren't. Not if you need to be sharp, focused, hard-working, fun, motivating and inspiring, and thinking on your feet non-stop, day and night, whether it's about not buying the same cake each time there's a meeting or writing and submitting six proposals in the space of a few hours. It is paramount, then, to look well after yourself, and quickly assess just how much sleep deprivation is scalable and for how long, and which comforts you cannot do without. Coffee first thing in the morning comes to mind.



We could get it at the office, or on the way to a meeting, but by that point you must be bullet fast already, and coffee takes some thirty minutes to kick in. So coffee, often before you can walk or string sentences together, is a rather clever idea. If it also happens to come in an equally sturdy and elegant mug of the mellow spectrum, the better. And if you can have at least a couple of sips while still in bed, or sitting on your favourite armchair, that, my friend, is pure bliss. You wake up to a world of peace, and beauty, and for a few precious minutes you can atune yourself to the universe at a pleasant pace and focus on the flowers rather than your pressing business.



And as you take the mug to a more functional corner, it helps if the eye can travel smoothly from one area of beauty to another, from one pouch of peace to the next, as the hands slowly pull wardrobe doors and drawers, and feel for the textures that suit the weather, the day. The light will always tell you, with the curtains partly gathered, even before your mobile gets all impatient and important, what the day is like. Sunny and crisp, or rainy and balmy, windy and fiery, or grey and quiet. If you just jump out of bed ignoring this fleeting but ever so gratifying while of peace and hush, you know you'll miss all the energy kicks, and all the reassuring cues.



I think we reached a point of balance. It means we're ready for another leap.