Manchester bound

Monday, September 14, 2009 ~ 7 comments so far

All of a sudden, from being weeks, nay months!, away my trip to Manchester to see Elbow finish out their live performances of The Seldom Seen Kid is almost upon me. Friday I travel down to sunny Manc land, go for a wander (must remember my camera), head to the gig, and then back to the hotel. Another wander before jumping on the train back to Glasgow.

I’m getting quite excited about the thought. I’ve only been in Manchester once, many many years ago for a family wedding and even then it was on the outskirts. No idea what I’m gonna do whilst I’m there but I’m sure I’ll manage to fill the time.

And, of course, the Elbow gig that evening which should be, as it usually is, a belter. I’m hoping as it is in their home town that there will be a lower number of tossers there but I’m not holding out much hope to be honest (seriously, why pay all that money to stand and have a conversation with your mates? The man HAS THE VOICE OF AN ANGEL, so shut up and LISTEN, already!).

I’m also quite looking forward to catching the support act, the Fiery Furnaces. I’ve given their album another listen and think it could transfer quite well to a live setting but time will tell.

Regardless, I know I’ll fill up listening to “… Tower Crane Driver” because it’s such a wonderfully sad ballad, I’ll have a lump in my throat during Station Approach for reasons I don’t fully understand (it’s the line “coming home I feel like I, designed these buildings I walk by”) and when Mirrorball starts I’ll likely close my eyes and bathe in the sumptuous melody and smile with each line of the song.

Yup, it’s fair to say I can’t wait.

Is it Friday yet??

Strange season

Sunday, September 13, 2009 ~ Comments Off

Walking through Glasgow yesterday, my eye was drawn to a few window boxes. Dashes of scarlet red and vibrant yellow were glowing in the early morning sun, people were walking about in short sleeves, sunglasses hiding their eyes.

As I walked on, a burnt orange leaf helter skeltered towards the ground then, as the chilled breeze picked up, more and more leaves fell to the ground. So summer is over, and autumn is already knocking on the door.

But, is it just me or do the seasons seem to be overlapping more and more?

Flowers are still in bloom whilst the trees take on their autumn rust.

The only reason I ask is that autumn is my favourite season, especially these days as we no longer really get a summer, so I’m always on the lookout for that change in the seasons.

Which means this weird merging of the seasons is really throwing me out of whack. Is it still summer? Or is it autumn? How do I know?

Please don’t lie

Thursday, September 10, 2009 ~ 5 comments so far

This post is prompted entirely by my recent interactions with Royal Mail, but the hold true for many organisations.

Life, as we all know, has times when it just seems to be ganging up on you. Nothing seems to go right, nothing happens the way you expect and you are left in an uncomfortable place and without enough, or some times any, knowledge or information you quickly become frustrated as you are not sure what to do next.

So when, as a customer, I reach that place the last thing I want to hear are lies. They may be lies offered in good faith, but they are blatant and completely without excuse.

The most common lie I’ve heard is the lie of affirmation. Being told that I matter, or that the organisation is very keen to improve their service and help solve my problem, and other such positive affirmation is not useful and likely to only irk me further.

Apologise by all means but please mean it, and please make sure it is immediately followed up with an offer of help.

And when you have really stuffed up and I, the customer, point this out, have the good grace to agree, rather than look for excuses that I, the customer, have no control over. I’m sure that crucial system was down for a short while and that is the root of all evil in the world, but hey, it’s not my problem.

Lastly, and this is sometimes the worst of all, please please PLEASE do not send me out a questionnaire after the event. Remember, I’ve been angry and frustrated, lost in the midst of YOUR processes and systems and most likely I’ve been the one trying to peace together information from email A, website B and phonecalls C, D and E as, for no good reason (trust me, my company builds this stuff, there is no reason why you can’t have all your systems talking to each other).

That questionnaire is usually a stock affair with a nice welcoming “ohhh we are good people and not only that we are trying to be better!” waffle at the start, and is constructed in such a way as to make REAL feedback almost impossible.

People like me really don’t want to write letters of complaint, and you know what, when things go bad that’s ok. Just don’t lie to us. Tells us you know something has gone wrong, share the information with us, talk to us and be human. We don’t expect everything to work all the time, but the way you handle things when they go wrong makes far more of a difference than you seem to realise.

Music Futures

Wednesday, September 9, 2009 ~ 5 comments so far

Prompted by some questions about Spotify on Twitter, questions which sparked a heated debate that is still raging*, I thought I’d revisit my own music purchasing and usage habits and see where I sit in the consumer spectrum.

First things first then, I do purchase music mostly, these days, through iTunes. Mostly because it’s handy and I’m a total Apple fanboy (yeah, Windows SUCK!!). That last bit is a lie, of course, as my home PC runs Windows and I’m really enjoying using Windows 7 (something else I’ll be purchasing soon).

I digress.

I spent a long time digitally converting my CDs, and as they now reside in boxes in the loft I don’t see the need to purchase anything on physical media. I have bought a couple in the past few months, mainly band specific special releases though, so they aren’t available through iTunes. I’m sure there are other ways I could purchase music but for what I listen my system works for me.

Do I miss the act of going into a music shop, flipping through the stacks? Yes I do, but not so much that I’m losing sleep over it, although it’s easy to say that since my current office is miles from anywhere, whereas working in the city centre made access to places like Fopp an always entertaining lunchtime visit.

As for listening to music, well that mostly happens either at work (when time/task allow) or at home when I’m sitting at the PC or just generally faffing about upstairs. More recently I have started taking my iPod Shuffle to the gym.

So where does Spotify fit in all this? Well it should fit perfectly, at home at least (I’ve not tried but guessing company firewall restrictions would rule it out there). I do have it, I have an account yet, for some reason, I don’t use it. To be honest I’ve only used it a couple of times, and I do like the idea of sharing playlists with others but what about all that music that I have?

I LIKE all the music I have, well most of it**, except when it’s on shuffle of course, and whilst I am open to hearing new artists I only tend to use work as a backdrop so I’m not usually actively listening. With that in mind, it largely doesn’t matter where the music comes from, but I’m far more likely to put on something I know so I don’t HAVE to listen to it.

You know what I mean, right?

Perhaps I just need to give Spotify more of a try, perhaps I’m missing something fundamental but I really don’t see it as a game changer. Yet.

But then I said that about blogging, and Twitter so hey, what do I know?

* or perhaps just one or two polite replies, poetic license, innit
** the joys of a shared library of music and Last.fm listing tracks from Louise’s iPod, for the record I did not listen to Girls Aloud AT ALL that week

Small differences

Saturday, September 5, 2009 ~ 1 comment so far

Tomorrow morning I’ll be at Glasgow Green to cheer on Louise’s cousin Sharon as she completes the 10K that is organised as part of the Great Scottish Run.

I don’t care how heavy the rain is, nor how hard the wind may blow because I owe her a few cheers.

Roll back the clock to June 2007 and having hauled myself round 9K of the 10K course I enter the final kilometre, I’m going slower than I had hoped and I’m a bit disheartened, yet determined to finish. That last kilometre was dominated by those two thoughts, disappointment and determination.

For those of you who haven’t gone jogging, it’s a very good way to focus the mind, I used to do some of my best thinking when I was out for a run.

I remember glancing at my watch just as it ticked over the hour mark, and another huge surge of disappointment washes over me. I’d hoped to finish in under an hour (I know now that I underestimated the effect of the large hill at the start of the race) but that was gone now. Then the 500m marker rolled into view and I realised that, if nothing else, I was gonna finish it!

The last 100m or so and, like everyone else, the adrenalin kicked in, I picked up the pace and tried to fight off that nagging feeling of disappointment. Then, as I turned the final corner and the finishing line was ahead of me I suddenly heard my name being shouted.

I glanced up to see Sharon and her sister AnnMarie, hanging over the balcony and cheering me on and suddenly all those nagging feelings disappeared. No matter what the time was, or the position I came in the race, I felt like a million bucks. I was a winner! People were cheering my name!

So, tomorrow I get to pay her back. I’m preparing to shout myself hoarse.

On blog comments

Friday, September 4, 2009 ~ 9 comments so far

I always get excited when I see an email in my inbox with a subject line that starts “WordPress:…” as it means someone has commented on one of my blogs. Such a simple delight I know but hey, you take pleasure in the little things I guess.

Sometimes that delight is instantly crushed when I realise it’s a spambot that is trying to add a comment containing a link to either some ‘enhancing’ pharamceutical, a flirty comment from a hot chick, or just complete nonsense accompanied by a phishing URL.

However there seems to be a rise in the number of “real” spam comments these days, and that is hugely disheartening. These comments are left by, it seems, real people who have taken a fraction of a second to search, for example, for “Olympics” found my blog post from a couple of years back and added in a perfectly unoffensive comment, with a link to their specialist Olympic Boxing in 2012 website.

And in a weird way that, to me, is worse than any automated spambot. The fact that there is (again, it certainly seems that there is) a real person that has left the comment makes the whole thing feel tainted and dirty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hugely precious about this blog but really, this new development in comment spam is just ugly. But then it’s always the few that spoil it for the many.

Observed

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 ~ Comments Off

Despite having had a small fortune spent on it recently, the car needed to go back into the garage this morning. I decided that I’d drop the car off, walk to the barber and get my haircut then walk home. Rain permitting.

Which it did.

All in it’s a couple of miles, mostly uphill and as the day wasn’t too warm, nor too cold, and the clouds were slowly dispersing I thought, why the hell not.

I’ve always liked walking, more so in cities where there is so much to observe, but even a wander through a suburban town like Hamilton has moments that make it worthwhile, be they sad, happy, odd or even mundane.

A middle aged woman sitting on dining chair at her front door, still in her dressing gown, cigarette in one hand, a handkerchief in the other. She didn’t even look up as I passed, her blank gaze focussed on the ground in front of her. Smoke drifted untouched out of the door and spiralled up to the heavens.

A young baby in a pushchair, kicking his legs and giggling in that infectious way that only babies can. His Mum laughing along unashamedly, who looked up at me as I passed and happily acknowledged the smile that I couldn’t help but form, a hint of joy shared.

An old man and his companion, both hobbling along at their own pace. No hurry or rush, just another day to be gotten through. The newspaper under his arm suggests it’s all part of the routine, the old dog following him is stiff and sore but faithfully following. No lead required, he knows the way.