Jonathan Myers | Personal Scribblings

We had the family here at the weekend, always fun, always leaves you knackered.

Among various walks and trips to the pub I also took my nephew down the road to a place called Insitu, it’s an architectural antiques come junk shop kinda place in Manchester’s Castlefield Locks area.

I would love to buy a whole load of old stuff form places like this, but Mrs G is less keen. This time around though I think there are a few things I might just be able to slip in under the radar. There’s a huge sun burst mirror that’ll look great in our living room in Chorlton, and there’s a few sweet old children’s chairs, although I have no idea where they might go.

If I’m feeling brave I might just sneak down there one day this week and snap up the mirror. I also saw a couple of stained glass panels with bold red griffins in them that would suit the house of a couple of friends out in north Wales. They loved the photo I sent them and they’re threatening to come and see them later this week.

The trouble with these places is that they often charge just as much as the bloody things would cost you new. You just find yourself getting carried away by the atmosphere. You also need to be sure that the thing you’re so excited by will actually look any good in your own surroundings as opposed to in a shop with myriad wonderful objects. A hard consideration.

When I was a kid I could stay up all night, drink like there was no tomorrow (and no hangover), go to work, sleep in the car at lunchtime, and then go do it all again the next night. While I say I could do it, I do actually remember feeling like death for a whole year and a half, but now I wouldn’t even contemplate two nights in a row of properly hitting the sauce.

We used to drink Jamiesons Whiskey to finish any night off. We smoked like idiots back then too, even set the flat on fire one night when a mate fell asleep with a fag in his hand.

I had a Morris 1000 which is a small car for a six foot two fella, but I used to love that little car. I’d curl up on the front seats at lunch time with a tape on and the noise of the tape flipping over at the end would be enough to wake me up. C90 tape, 45 minutes a side.

It was one of those nights last night. I’d used City Visitor again to find a printer in Birmingham and when it turned out we knew each other he insisted on coming north to take the brief from me. We talked business for an hour, then went into town ending up in the Black Dog Ballroom shooting pool.

Now I feel like I’m a hundred. And sixty.

And what sympathy do I get? For doing my work as I keep trying to point out…!

I usually work from home, occasionally going out to meetings or to run workshops for clients.

The great side of that is that I can walk the dog, and come straight in and sit at the desk and start thinking, working or whatever. The down side of that is that I often sit in my dog walking clothes all day long. While that’s definitely slovenly it too has its obvious advantage in that I’m already dressed for the next dog walk which comes just before dark (because she doesn’t like the dark much, but is better if it becomes dark while we’re out, rather than venturing out into the dark). And truly I guess it doesn’t matter, but given that I used to be oh so smart at work, it’s a bit of a come down.

Today though I have an important and scary telephone meeting where I’m pitching to do some consultancy for a small Swiss bank. Small they may be, but they are big enough as a business to get involved in Formula One sponsorship.

I started writing my notes early this morning, then at 7.30 I took the dog out for an hour. I came in, showered, tidied my beard (if i said I had a shave people would expect to see me clean shaven rather than just a bit neater), quick squirt of perfume (Penhaligons Castile) and then dressed in an ironed shirt and great trousers, I even put shoes on.

And it has worked. I feel ready to take on the call. In fact I’m really looking forward to it. But I am scared as hell. It has been years since I did something like this. I’ll be reporting back. 20 minutes to go.

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but we caught the Richard Wilson rant against automated call services last night and although teh programme and the man got on my nerves I do find the whole topic interesting.

I have a lot of sympathy for the topic and while I find the systems clever, I also find them utterly infuriating. Where I lost patience a little was when he took his rant to the parking machines. In my experience it’s a choice whether you pay by phone or coin. Is that not the case everywhere? If there are areas where you can’t but pay by phone I think that is a huge imposition, especially on the older folk, many of whom don’t have mobiles, and those who do are often sort of scared of using them.

Just writing this reminded me of the need to change the registration details of my car with Ringo who run a lot of the mobile call meters. It was easy. Really easy. I actually like the meters you can pay on the phone as I rarely have enough cash on my. The slight down side for me is the fact that I usually pay for more time than I would if I did have the cash on me, just because it doesn’t seem like real money.

So back to Grumpy old man Wilson. Yep, got the point. Should have been 30 minutes not an hour. And it scares me how many people will be losing their jobs as a consequence of such systems. And so so cheap!

There’s a huge amount that I like about working from home.

If you get up late, so be it.

If you look like shit, so be it.

You want a coffee. Guess what? You have a coffee.

You play with the dog.

You call a mate, or your mum (must do that after this little blog).

But then there’s the downside.

The biggest of which is that all the above is possible, which means that you don’t work as much as you could most days.

Then comes the fact that your other half always treats you as if you’re just at home watching TV and asks you to do everything under the sun.

Like last night the talk moved somehow to getting a new shower enclosure. Do we need a new shower enclosure? Well, it’s only in the second bedroom’s en-suite, and it isn’t like we have people staying very often. Nonetheless I actually like using that one if I get up early for some reason as it means I can pretty much sneak out of teh house without waking the sleeping beauty of my wife.

So yet another day has been lost. This morning I was at the dentist. Pain and expense! Then this afternoon I’ve been scheming how to get a pump put on the shower at the same time and actually make the job worthwhile.

See? Last night it was a waste of time so far as I was concerned. Today I’m doubling the price!

Finally the Euro has started to weaken.

Sounds good at first, but of course that’ll make our products more expensive making our recovery more difficult.

Does anyone know what the hell is really going on?

The Germans often sound like they are piling in billions, but fact is, they have most to loose if the currency goes belly up, so come on Angela baby, get digging deeper.

Business has ground to a halt for a coupe of weeks as all my clients seem to be out on the lash every night, and some of the old school are even out most lunch times too.

I went present shopping to John Lewis and Marks and Spencer – bloody hell, that makes me sound as old as my mum (slight technical issue there, but don’t worry). John Lewis just gets better (and M&S has gone to the dogs) and is actually leading fashion in many areas. I love it. And our local one at Cheadle has just put a cool expresso bar in too.

I’m probably happier buying stuff for other people than I am buying for myself. No sense there, but it’s certainly true. Mother – yep, I wanted her present, sis, need to think of a couple of other bits for her, Mrs G, yep, hers are good too.

JMG. Doing his bit for Britain!

Actually that’s not true. I’ve long since practically closed the Glass wallet. It comes out under duress, and even then hopes for its cards to be rejected.

Christmas. Markets in Chorlton tonight. So stop typing and get out there. Fish and Chips for tea.

There’s plenty of noise being thrown around parliament about the cuts to the solar subsidies this week. And what a difficult topic it is.

If we’re to help to get the population truly thinking about their energy consumption rather than just seeing it as an annoying bill every month then pretty drastic action is required. Every time the bills go up there’s an outcry about how many old dears are living in fuel poverty, and indeed it’s a valid consideration, my mother is one of them. But the fact is that for most of us electricity is so cheap we don’t really have to think about turning stuff off. And with the massive expansion in energy consumption across the BRICs is it even worth worrying about?

Nonetheless to suddenly slash renewable energy subsidies at very short notice does feel crazy at this time. Not because of the tiny amount of energy usage we’ll save. No. Because of the size of the industry which has quickly built up to serve the demand. A demand that will vanish overnight, as of one day next week. The businesses manufacturing the equipment and those installing it will see their order books dry up. They’ll have to lay off their staff and many will have to close their doors. For what gain?

I freely admit that Labour set the feed in tariffs too high – you could have your solar installation pay back in just a few years – I reckon pay back should have been worked on 15 years to be realistic.

I hope there’s a last minute rethink – not least because the Glasses haven’t leapt on the band wagon yet!

Mr Jon Myers Glass is not a stupid man.

I admit I do some stupid stuff. Make stupid decisions now and then. Mrs G might suggest I’m more stupid than I like to think. But truly, this is all silliness.

So how come after months of listening to the gradual unravelling of the great European plan do I understand so little?

If someone came back from a year’s work in central Africa, where they had no news whatsoever, and said to me “Hey Jonny G, what the hell is going on?” I’d find it truly difficult to understand.

But as an exercise I’m going to try to tell it as a story and hope to make it make sense.

It seems that Italy is currently the biggest poo pile, so I’ll pretend to be Italy.

A few years ago I bought a house, a bloody big house and I deck it out with the most lavish taste anyone can imagine. I lied a bit when I borrowed a fortune to pay for it, but then, don’t we all?

Unfortunately business hasn’t been quite as good as it was and I have to borrow from somewhere else to maintain the repayments on the mortgage, but I’m sure it’ll only be for a few months before things get straight again.

The bank finds out about this and gets a bit worried and it increases my interest rate because it sees me as a greater risk than it did in the first place. Because I’ve borrowed so much, that rate increase puts a massive amount onto my monthly payments, and business hasn’t picked up yet so I have to borrow even more to pay the bank. Then the guy I’m borrowing the extra from says I can’t have any more.

So I’m fooked – as is Italy.

But because my massive mortgage was nearly 10% of the total money the bank had lent out that means that the bank is fooked too.

And because the whole of Europe has turned to poo the house isn’t worth half what I paid for it and so the bank’s security isn’t worth anything either.

And so when i go down the whole system goes down.

I’ll think of an analogy for Germany’s position and come back with it tomorrow if it’s good enough.

Last night was a hoot.

And now I feel like shit!

But so what, it was great fun and hopefully some work will come of it before too long. The fellow I met works at a rather large computing business in the area and needs some help on an internal brand programme. The business knows it desperately needs to work out where it’s going and what it stands for, but it  hasn’t got a clue where to start. My man was happy for me to write about it on the basis that one of his line reports knows me and apparently reads this blog, but I’ll not name them until we’re started. I’m chuffed to hear that, but please, if you do, don’t attach too much importance to what I say! This is just an outlet for my random thoughts and rants.

As for the job? Fantastic. Just the sort of work I love best.

I got a much later train than expected, so I still don’t have an opinion on the Baltic – but I remembered yesterday’s promise to write on “Knowing what I like”. I can almost hear the dreadful accent as the person says it!

You do not know what you like! Period.

If we did there would be no change.

With no change there would be no progress.

Take that back as far as you want to, crap cars? No cars? No power? Still living in caves?

I actually use this as an argument against traditional research too. People do not know what they like. They only know what they have liked so far.

Henry Ford is credited as saying on the subject “If I asked people what they wanted they would have said “A faster horse”". That sums up the issue in one simple succinct sentence.

Go back ten years and offer someone an i-phone. They’d have been scared, might even have petitioned and protested against its potential dangers to life as we know it.

That goes for art.

For music.

For fashion – imagine ten years ago telling teenagers that they’d have to wear their jeans with the arse down around their knees!

For life.

Without the crazy ones who dare to go and a make a difference we’d be nowhere. I love and embrace the crazy ones, even if they scare me too at times.

Anyway. There you have JMG’s thoughts on knowing what we like. If I wasn’t so bloody hung over I’d rant on for hours. I might even pick up the topic later…

I was talking someone through a few thoughts on the banking industry last night. Hardly sounds like a riveting conversation – but we’ve both been in the industry at different stages in our work life and the topic kept us going for hours.

I had previously been reading about the history of money, and it all started when I talked about the first printed bank notes from the bank of England. They were semi printed, in that the issuer filled in the amount the note was worth. Some were for random amounts, but the values ranged from £25 to £1000 – and that was in the middle 1700′s. I guess that’s like a hundred thousand pound note now.

We moved on to modern banking and how so much of it is near impenetrable. We barely understand pensions even though we have both worked in the business and have our own. We have a vague understanding on hedge funds – but wouldn’t want to try to explain them to someone else. We are baffled at how foreign exchange, or forex (there’s a bit about the business on a blog this links to, I’ve been reading it as I might have some business coming from the industry soon) as it seems to be called these days, went from being about nipping down to the travel agent to get some French Francs for our school exchange trip to some crazy trillion dollar a day industry where millions are made and lost.

Terry and I met donkey’s years ago when we both did a work placement at what was then called CitiCorp at the end of The Strand and we worked on the trading floor as runners. Neither of us are in banking now, but we wondered just how much money we might have made had we stayed in investments. Well, we might have got rich, but then again we might not have been bright, or ruthless enough.