I spend a lot of my life worrying about people.  The reason for this is because I really hate hardship of any kind.  I hate the thought that people walk around with heavy hearts.  There is a quote by Shakespeare from Troilus and Cressida which says:

Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what dischord follows…

How very profound.  One minute, life is going swimmingly.  The next, it seems to lie in tatters.  We seem to live a lot in the limbo phase, which is where we know that everything is due to come together, but at the moment it seems to lie in pieces.  We know that ultimately it will all come right, but we feel a little nervous about the timing and precision of it all.  It is funny how many everyday occ urrences directly reflect biblical principles.  On a greater scale we live in the limbo phase between Jesus arriving for the first and second time and in the meantime, things can go a bit skew-whiff.

Coming back to the point…  I have these little square notebooks that I carry around with me everywhere.  It has to be a particular type of notebook which can currently be purchased from Dodwell’s Stationers on the Bath Road.  Woe and betide the day that they stop stocking it.  In this notebook I carry most of my life.  Thoughts, telephone messages, doodles, design ideas, pictures out of magazines, fabric swatches, product tags that look nice, anything inspiring etc.

On the front of my last notebook, I had one of my favourite cartoons - no idea who did it.  It says, “I can always make you smile”.  If I had one wish in life, then this would be it.  I wish that I could always make people smile.  Every day.  When things are hard and when things are good.  Life is meant to be a big adventure, not a pit of sadness.  Life is a gift, not a burden.

James May is going to build a two storey house out of lego... I wanna play!

The awesome Emma has just introduced me to Pimp that snack!!!!  It is awesome!! It tells you how to make giant versions of Percy pigs, bourbons, party rings etc.  Check out this French Fancy!!

The other day the outside of the office was varnished….. The site should be going live on 1st August!  Watch this space!

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings - Malachi 4:2

I was reflecting the other day on what it means to be a Christian.  Technically speaking, you don’t have to do an awful lot to get to heaven.  You just have to admit that you get stuff wrong and believe that Jesus died for you in order to solve this.  I sometimes think about this and wonder why we should therefore go to so much effort to be good, to be nice, to serve God, to try hard and to battle with things all the time.

Recently I have been working on a branding project.  The initial brief was to re-package some fairy ordinary products.  This would have been sufficient for the requirements of the client, but I was  able to ask questions such as “who are these being marketed to?”, “How much are they selling for?” “How are these being sold?” in order to ascertain the potential success of the product range.  The fact was, that by applying what was just a new package, the product would maintain a low level of success and have little or no room for expansion.  It was a business model, but a limited one, that would drift on and off the shelves.

My solution was to create an identity or effectively, a whole brand for the product, in order to create a USP.  By giving the product a brand, it has given it the potential to expand way beyond just the initial range of products.  It will create avenues to sell it in shops rather than just wholesale, it could go on TV, online, in educational establishments etc.  The route to market is stronger because of its perception and positioning and therefore although the effort and investment is much greater, the profits will be tenfold, all being well.

I was thinking about this in relation to the biblical parable where a master gives his servants money whilst he goes away.  The lazy servant buries the money so that he can just give back what he owes upon the master’s return.  The wiser servants invest and make more money by making decisions etc.  The meaning of this story is simple.  Jesus has given us a gift (forgiveness for our sins, eternal life).  We can either take this gift and bury it, so that upon his return, we just have the initial sum (ourselves) to give back.  This would be cowardly and lazy, but nonetheless ‘ok’.  OR, we can invest the gift by sharing it with others.  When the master returns, we can give back the sum (ourselves) with others added to it.

Challenging.

Now for the latest on Jellify…  The site is almost ready to ROCK!  I will let you know when it is live.  In the meantime, here are some more pics:

a chocolate cake from next door!

accompanied by this card!

we now have window graphics that work!  Haha.

our business cards…  A few may have been eaten!

Everybody raves about John Mayer and I have never quite seen the appeal.  That is, until today, whilst I sit in Trinity offices and have flicked on iTunes and found the album of his entitled “Where the light is”.  The first track, NEON, is brilliant! Check it out…. It is always annoying when people can sing and play brilliantly and make it look effortless. Look at him, he is just so cool.

I am quite convinced that banks employ monkeys.  Or, perhaps the bank is one big monkey that is full of nuts!  At the beginning of last month, I had an awful lot of money leaving my account and very little going in.  The reason for this was that I had left uni and was starting work and was taking on an office at the same time.

For this reason, cash flow was difficult and I incurred bank charges, because a cheque left my account that someone had paid in quite late and a transfer between two accounts with the same bank was not stopped.  For these two mistakes, can you believe that I was charged £100???

I phoned the bank to plead my case and they were having none of it.  I argued for 45 minutes, asking why an internal transfer was not stopped (”we don’t have the facilities to do that” - yes you do, you just don’t want to).  I asked why I had been charged an additional £28 admin fee for what is an automated process (a charge is given by default email/letter and no admin is involved).  They replied that it was not an admin fee (they used to call it this before the law deemed it an unreasonable cost for 2 minutes worth of work) but they could not explain what it was.  I asked why their system was out of date and they claimed that it wasn’t.  I pointed out that on my statement my money went in before the chargeable transaction came out and they argued that their charges are generated between 3 and 4am and that they did not know I would put in money.

I then argued that with banks going under in the recession (they themselves have been bought out) they should be bending over backwards to help people.  They said that they should not and that when I opened my account, I had signed the terms and conditions.  I protested violently here, because the terms and conditions that I signed offered a 24 hour grace period for you to realise that you are overdrawn and transfer some money.  These terms have changed countless times without my signature.

Anyway, to cut a short story long (hehe), I later discovered, after losing my bank card, that for SIX MONTHS, the very same cretins have been sending all my credit card bills, statements and letters with my account number, sort code and roll number on (and my name) to my old address, despite the fact that I’d changed them over straight away!!  This could have been very serious indeed, had the people living in my old house (or the dustmen) fancied a bit of identity theft.

Mark, (who I work with), was an absolute hero and marched me down to the bank and demanded to see a manager.  I get very nervous in these situations so he spoke on my behalf and pointed out that they were very quick to charge me for my mistake, but had, themselves,  made a serious error.   He asked them what they were going to do financially to resolve the matter.  Without a blink, the charges were removed.  I think she realised how serious the complaint could have been!!

To add insult to injury, I opened my Pink Sky bank account the other week with another bank.  I received all my cheque books and paying in books with the correct details on, then a debit card with “SKY PINK” on it.  Idiots.  Now I have to wait for a new one!!