I usually know better than to drink coffee.  My stomach doesn’t like it and lets me know, I feel like a squirrel on crack and I can get a tad anxious as well.

Today, I didn’t know better and I had 2 (can’t always make it through the day on less than 6 hours sleep).  So for a while there was a party in my head*.  Until my stomach crashed it.

*Perfect soundtrack to a coffee high turns out to be Trainspotting, which is on rotation in my car, CD slot 3.  I get overly precise on a caffeine high.

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One of the hard things about living so far from where I grew up is the lack of familiar surroundings and objects*.  Sometimes I just want to immerse myself back in particular periods of my life, with the help of props (old possessions, and most of all photo albums).  I have a handful of photos here with me, but they feel like a disorganised jumble that tells an incomplete story.

Still, when I’m hit with a bad kick of homesickness mixed with nostalgia (a killer combination to be sure) I still pull them out and look – like I did today.

Behold: my grandmother with a gigantic bow and a doll.  My mother riding a funny tricycle/horsey thing.  And me, too short to have my head completely in the frame at a photo booth.  I did warn you my collection had severe gaps in it.

*For those of you who think me heartless for not mentioning it, of course I miss my family and seeing their faces.  I’m glad we cleared that up.

For my 30th, I had a Mad Men themed party. It’s possibly my favourite show ever, which is a big call, but there hasn’t been a show that before that I’ve really obsessed so much over. Sure, I’ve enjoyed many shows in the past but not like this one.

I based my look on Don and had actually ordered a suit from TopMan about two weeks before the party, thinking that would be plenty of time for it to arrive. On the Friday, the day before the party,  the suit had yet to arrive. I started to get worried that I’d have nothing to wear at my own party, so I ventured out to Roger David to see what they might be able to offer. I bought a black suit that I had to have altered as the pants were too long. On the Saturday, shortly after picking the tailored pants, a white courier van pulled up out the front. ‘No way!’ I thought, but surely enough, my TopMan suit arrived. I’m pretty glad that it did, it’s a great suit and definitely fitted in more with the Mad Men vibe than the Roger David suit.

More pictures after the jump…

My girlfriend pretty much organised everything,  it was such a great night. I’m pretty sure she has a future career in party planning.

Jane and Betty

Thanks to everyone who came!

I wish I hadn’t realised La Redoute could now ship to me in Australia, for a very reasonable price (and tax free!).
And that they stock Bensimon sneakers for cheap, cheap.

Darn tooth surgery.

Who does not think about writing a corporate blog these days? It’s one of the latest trends in Marketing and others (including your competitors) are successful doing it. Setting up a blog is easy and can be done in a matter of days. So it does not take a lot of time to decide to go for it, to get your key executives on board to start contributing to this amazing new marketing tool that will fuel a lot of leads for your sales team.

Blogging for credibility not leads

Well the first mistake is to think that blogging will bring leads. Of course, anything that increases traffic on to your web site will indirectly generate more leads but this is not what a blog is about. Blogging is there is help you communicate your vision and your point of view on the marketplace: to inform and share your thoughts about topics that will be of interest to your customers/readers. In my opinion, the primary goal of a blog is to increase the credibility of your organization, to show that you do understand the problems facing your customers, that your vision is aligned with their needs.

Knowing what you want to talk about

Contributors need to understand exactly what is expected from them. What are the kinds of topics you want to cover? Do you want to simply inform or educate? Are you more interested in tackling more sensitive subjects – even being hardcore about what you believe? Do you prefer to engage in deep technical discussion about new trends in technology? Whatever you decide, you need to create a theme for each blog area. Nothing worse than a blog that has a different style and set of topics each time something new is posted.

Create multiple sections

If you have different areas you want to talk about, take the time to create categories or sections. This way your readers will know what they want to follow. This way you can have a blog for your executive taking to other executives, industry specialist taking about customer problems and engineers talking about emerging technologies.

The key to success is discipline

The common failure of a blog is to write the first post and then stop writing for weeks or months. How can you expect people to want to follow you and find interest in what you write when you post irregularly? Think of blogging as you would as a publisher. Build yourself an editorial calendar of some of the topics you want to cover in the future. Have a series of post ready to be published so you never have a gap.  The hardest part is to get into the rhythm of writing regularly. Once you get the hang of it, it actually gets easier over time.

And if you are not sure you can carry this more than a few blog posts, don’t even start one. A blog without post is as bad a web site not being regularly updated. People will stop coming to see you …

To buy Little Brown Pen’s Paris perpetual calendar.  Want to hear them?

I love beautiful things, and it’s beautiful.

I don’t buy calendars because I never find any I like, and I don’t like throwing them out when the year has finished.  Too existential in a mundane way (time gone by, trash).  This one is reusable forever.

I lived in Paris for three and a bit years and I miss it very much.  It contains 49 little pieces of Paris.

I love the number 17 (which is my birthday coincidentally), and this one has the 7 penned the way it should be: with a bar across it.  So it satisfies one of my little manias (while stomping across it for ‘7′ and ‘27′, but you can’t have it all).

I want it and I have picked out a wall for it.  It’s already got its own reserved spot.

In the spirit of prioritising hair over tooth, do I now prioritise Paris calendar over further tooth surgery?

Here is a funny thing about me: I am a clean neat-freak.  I love bleach, pine disinfectant, eucalyptus spray (kills 99.9% of germs!).  But show me an abandoned building, a derelict house, architectural neglect and ‘It-a makes-a my heart-a go boom-a ticky boom’ (the Italian captain from ‘Allo allo‘, yes?).

I start to jump up and down, my mind busy with the pictures I could take and thoughts of what could possibly be in there.  Except:

• These types of places can be dangerous (asbestos, structural weaknesses and collapsing floors).
• These types of places are patrolled, or very clearly marked as private property.  Did someone say ‘breaking and entering’?  I like my blank criminal record too much.

On occasion I have asked for access – and gotten it (the legal way, yay!), but mostly I have a mental inventory of places around Melbourne and around the world I would kill to have a look at, and probably never will.

Being the chicken that I am, pictures of others’ daring forbidden urban explorations are as close as I will get to certain places, and are often enough to give me a thrilling fix.  I don’t know the name of this person, but I am really grateful he risked his life by walking on (in use!) Parisian métro tracks to the abandoned St Martin stop, closed for the last 40 or 50 years.  Just knowing it exists (not exactly sure where it is though) and that these gorgeous painted ads are still intact makes my day.

Boom-a ticky boom.

(St Martin article originally via Frogsmoke).

A few years back I was having a conversation with a gallery owner and a photographer.  The photographer asked me a question (what it was I can’t remember) and it lead to telling him I was French.  Pause – then:

‘I wouldn’t have guessed you were French.  You don’t look like a typical French person.’

Gallery owner jumps in: ‘Were you expecting someone from ‘Allo Allo‘ instead?’

Photographer admits: ‘Yes.’

Really?  English actors doing their best exaggerated French accents, dressed in bérets and trench coats with ankle socks and little shoes?  Is that what people really imagine the French look (and sound) like?

By the way, Allo Allo is now one of my favourite shows.  And to think someone has it as a mental reference for my people – hilarious.

(Image is from here).