Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, China, Colenso, Culture, Dad, Daddyhood, Emotion, Empathy, England, Family, Friendship, Happiness, Home, Jill, London, Loyalty, Mum, Mum & Dad, New Zealand, Nottingham, Nottingham Forest, Otis, Parents
I was born in 1970 in Nottingham.
For 25 years, I lived there, worked there, socialised there.
Sure, I also worked in London … but I always came home to NG2.
Every. Bloody. Night.
But in 1995, I left.
I went to Australia and started an adventure all over the place. And while I back to the UK after 24 years – I never went back to living in Nottingham.
And yet, despite having now spent more time away from Nottingham than living in it, it’s still what I regard as ‘home’.
Sure it’s where my formative years were spent.
Sure it’s where my parents ashes have been spread.
Sure it’s where my beloved Paul still lives.
Sure it’s where my football team resides.
Sure it’s where I spent the longest period of my life in.
But still …
What is also interesting is that when I go back, while I feel a sense of familiarity, I also feel disconnected. Of course, that’s to be expected when you’ve been away for so long … but it means when I think – or am in – Nottingham, I feel displaced and comforted at the same time.
It’s a weird feeling, caught between 2 emotional poles …
A stranger in where you believe you come from.
Of course, I go through similar feelings when I visit previous places I once lived – especially Shanghai, which is the place I probably felt the most connected to – but Nottingham is where I have roots [or where I used to have them] and so while I am far away, I am increasingly surrounding myself with stuff that reminds me of the place.
But I don’t want to go back.
It is my past rather than my future.
And that’s where it all gets complicated because I want Otis to have a place where he can build roots like I did with Nottingham, but I don’t know if that’s possible or where that is.
He’s 8 and lived in 4 countries already.
More than that, at some point we’ll be leaving here.
Don’t get me wrong, we love NZ.
We adore our home.
But we feel our life still has other places to go.
It won’t happen in the short term …
We are happy here, Otis absolutely adores it, we want him to be in a place longer than the 2 year periods he’s experienced so far in his life and I haven’t yet repaid the generosity the country has shown us … but it will eventually happen and so I wonder what Otis will regard as his ‘identity’.
If you ask him now, he’ll say, “China”.
I love that, but it’s also more because of where he was born rather than where he was raised.
So we shall see.
Of course we could just stay here and remove the issue … and while there’s a big part of us that would like to do that, we also would like to be closer to the people who matter most to us.
At some point.
This may all sound like a reason to never move country and if that’s how it comes across then that would be wrong.
It’s dead easy to think about what you will miss by moving away but you need to think about what you will gain. And in my case, apart from Paul and Shelly in Nottingham … every single thing in my life is because I took that leap.
Everything.
My wife.
My son.
My cat.
My home.
My career.
My life.
So while identity is increasingly important to me, I’m not going to devalue the utter privilege of the adventure we’ve had – and will hopefully keep having. Especially given nationalism is increasingly acting as a barrier towards the understanding and acceptance of others… rather than a way for people to identify, share and grow.
Filed under: Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, Colenso, Colleagues, Health, Meetings
So I was supposed to be back from my trip to Melbourne.
But I’m not.
Because this trip can best be described as a shit show.
It started on the flight over where we had some bad turbulence and then the people next to – and behind – me started vomiting like human fountains.
Then when I went through immigration, I was stopped as they said I didn’t have a visa to enter the country. This, despite the fact I own property here, pay tax here, my wife is Australian, my son has an Australian passport and – oh yes – I have been a permanent resident of Australia for 20+ years.
After they realised they’d made a mistake on their computer, I was allowed to go and met up with my colleagues who were wondering where the fuck I was.
Surely that was the end of the drama?
Well yes … until at 2am, where I woke up in utter agony.
The only way I can describe the level of pain I was in is that I chose to go to hospital.
No making excuses. Or popping some paracetamol and going back to sleep.
I got in a taxi and went straight to A&E.
And thank god I did as I had picked up a bad infection in my kidney’s and appendix.
Apparently it had been developing for weeks – and when I look back on some days over the previous fortnight, I realised I’d done the classic excuses and popping paracetamol – but the time had come for it to make its presence known, and boy did it do that.
To be honest, as bad as I felt, I felt even worse that I had just burdened my colleagues with my work. They already had enough to do and here I was, at the last minute, giving them more.
And they not only took it on and executed it better than I … they stayed concerned about me.
That’s proper colleagues.
Mates even.
And I’m so grateful to them, the clients – who also were worried about me – and the amazing Doctors and Nurses at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne who were compassionate, concerned and efficient.
I’m on the mend and allowed to fly home today, but till then, I’m going to chill and remind myself that your body wants you to be well, so when it hurts or gurgles or aches … it’s trying to make you deal with it before it ends up seeing you in a foreign hospital desperate for help.
So while this trip was a shitshow, it was a shitshow that shined a light on all the good.
Fight for your health service. It’s a gift.
See you Monday.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Colenso, New Zealand, R/GA
Come on, you didn’t think I was not going to come back, did you?
I’m the cockroach of blogs. And advertising. And music. And good taste.
Besides, I really would love this blog to hit 21 before I blow it up.
Whether it will make it that long is anyone’s guess.
Whether I will make it that long is anyone’s guess.
But I’m going to give it a go because I’m annoying and pathetic like that … which means you still have 4 years to go.
I bet that feels so long away doesn’t it?
Probably as long as its feels you were enjoying the festive holiday season … but I do hope you had a good one.
I know I did.
Not just because in NZ we get a long time off.
Nor that in NZ people genuinely leave you alone.
But because I got to spend quality time with the family and that makes me enormously happy.
[I also got plenty of time to play video games, but that might ruin the ‘good husband/father/cat slave’ image I’ve tried to build up in this post]
That said, I’m back, feel fully rested and am raring to go.
I’ve also come back to 2 new/old brilliant planners in my team.
I say new/old, because they’re new to Colenso but old to me.
Martin and Meg were with me at R/GA in London and they’ve now come to be with me in NZ.
I say ‘with me’, but we all know the real reason they came was because they wanted to escape the madness of the UK. But that aside, I’m absolutely thrilled and – slightly overwhelmed/shocked – that they trusted me enough to come and deal with my bullshit all over again. What wonderful fools. So with them – and Shelly, who joined from the UK in December – the team is even more of a gang of talented misfits and that makes me happy and very, very excited for the mayhem we can cause.
I appreciate this is a massively indulgent post, but it is my blog and as I’ve still kept the comments off, I’ll assume you’re OK with it. Even though I’m pretty sure this will ignite the daily abuse of emails to start again from Andy, John, Dave and Baz [but sadly not you Lee or George], all telling me I’m only fooling myself.
Unfortunately for them, as far as I’m concerned that’s the only way to live.
See you tomorrow, with a killer of a post. And by killer, I mean you’ll want to kill yourself. Or me. OK, definitely me.
Ta-ra.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Anniversary, Attitude & Aptitude, Birthday, Colenso, Colleagues, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Daddyhood, Emotion, Empathy, England, Family, Happiness, Health, Home, Hope, Jill, Love, Loyalty, Martin Weigel, Mercedes, Mum, Mum & Dad, Otis, Parents, Paul, Queen, Relationships, Resonance, Rosie, Shelly
So this is it, the last post of 2022.
Again, I want to say a big thank you to everyone and anyone who has read or commented on my ranting rubbish.
I have to say, I miss the comments.
I know it was my choice to stop them, but I do miss them – so maybe I’ll have to bring them back, even though I’ve become waaaaaaay more productive since they’ve been turned off as I don’t have to spend vast amounts of my time checking what insults have been written to me and about me, hahaha.
But lack of comments aside, it’s been a big year … mainly because it has been the first year in a couple of years without any lock-down. And yet I still find it bizarre seeing people not wearing masks and being able to get on a plane again.
To think of the isolation, suffering and pain so many people suffered, the speed of the bounce-back has taken my breath away. Of course there are still people enduring tough times … but given the horror of the pandemic has seemingly been replaced by the threat of nuclear war and economic collapse, maybe COVID wasn’t so bad after all.
That said, I’m so grateful for the ability to travel again as it meant I was able to go on a trip that I’ll never, ever forget.
A trip where I got to see my beloved Martin getting married in Portugal.
A trip where I got to see my beloved Nottingham Forest getting promoted at Wembley.
A trip where I got to see my beloved Queen in concert with a ticket I bought 2 years earlier.
A trip where I got to see my beloved Paul, after the longest time we’ve been apart in 52 years.
It was, without exaggeration, one of the most special times in my life … with stuff I thought I may never see – or see again – so you will understand why I still feel so grateful to be able to have experienced it.
But beyond that, there were many other things that made this year memorable.
We did some fun work including Beyond Binary, Rick and Morty, Phone It In and Give Up On Humans. Our agency Christmas gift was interesting too. I say interesting, but I mean ridiculous, especially compared to last years more sophisticated Restraining Order, haha.
I wrote a pretty decent April Fools post that conned a few people.
And then, more seriously, I wrote some posts about my dalliance with depression, fulfilment, prejudice and respect that seemed to mean something to people, which made me feel happy it helped in some way.
I worked with Metallica, Miley Cyrus, Muse and Journey, to different degrees of success and enjoyment, hahaha.
We produced Dream Small … which I’m not only very proud of, but has led to conversations and change I never imagined we could have.
The way Otis – and his school – dealt with his dysgraphia diagnosis.
I celebrated my Mum’s 90th.
I got to see the wonderful Maya and Bree again, after years.
I was somehow featured in a book.
My Bohemian Catsody office mural … featuring Rosie amongst others.
I laughed myself stupid about Gi’s shit explosion while also being proud as punch of my wonderful team with our WARC/Cannes Global Grand Prix for effectiveness … followed up with us winning the same achievement at the NZ Effies … followed up by us winning the Global Grand Effie a few weeks later.
Renovating the old Colenso table to give it – and the irrepressible, unmistakeable Kate Maitland – the respect and recognition they deserve.
Lizzie and Amy’s news.
And Paula’s wonderful ray of sunshine.
Then finding the brilliant Briar and Shelly … with Martin and Meg arriving in Jan. [Which in Meg’s case, is almost 2 years in the waiting]
And last – but certainly not least – seeing Boris get pushed out quickly [literally and figuratively] by Liz Truss, even though the evil Tories somehow remain in power.
Of course there was some sad and disappointing stuff.
The loss of the irreplaceable and wonderful Dan Wieden.
Queenie … which hit me far more than I ever imagined it would.
Ben. Who left us too soon.
Mike’s motorcycle accident.
Henry, Liam and Robin left the team.
My first dalliance with COVID. And Jill too.
The bullshit that Simon P was forced to deal with and face.
Not to mention the horrible situation one of our clients was exposed to by the worst of society.
And then too many terrible global events, with the situations in Ukraine and Iran being possibly the worst of them all. What makes these last two even more disturbing is how the media only pay lip service to them. As if they don’t deem the horrors ‘relevant’ enough for their viewers and readers so they hide it on pages 5 and 6 … behind articles on energy bills, political scandal and sports scores.
I know it’s Christmas, but instead of having that one extra drink or buying that one shitty pressie, donating that money to organisations who offer support and help would be amazing. Two of them are this for Ukraine and this for Iran.
2022 has reminded me how privileged and comfortable my life is.
While compared to many, I have only experienced that sort of life, there have been times that have challenged me.
1999 was horrid.
As was 2015.
And last December was arguably, the worst month I’ve ever faced.
But this year, from a purely personal perspective, has generally been pretty special for me and one of the biggest reasons for that is my family.
I know we’re all supposed to say that, but it’s true.
Not just for who they are, but because for some reason, I feel we got even closer.
Emotionally.
Supportively.
Connectively.
To be honest, I thought we were already as close as you can be, but I discovered there’s actually no limit to the level of connection you can feel with loved ones and that has left me feeling a bit overwhelmed.
Maybe it’s because NZ is so far from everyone, we feel closer to each other. Maybe it’s because we don’t see the people we love so often, we have become more reliant on each other. Maybe it’s because we just have gone through some stuff that it reinforced how special we are to each other. Maybe it’s for reasons I’ve not wanted to admit before because it challenges the priorities I’ve lived by before.
Who knows, but what I can say is I love my ramshackle collection of Campbell’s.
Including Rosie, of course.
They’re not perfect.
They can drive me nuts.
But they’re mine and I adore every bit of them.
Which is why I want to sign off by saying to them – and to the rest of you – that whatever you do over this period, I hope it gives you all you want and all you need. I am grateful for everything every one of you put in my life and I hope 2023 – as scary as many are suggesting it will be – will surprise us all with its happiness and fulfilment.
Just as long as mine is happier and more fulfilling than yours.
Hey, I may be getting more tolerant in my old age, but I’m still as only-child demanding as ever.
Have a great one. Back Feb 1. I hope to see you in 2023.
Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Childhood, Colenso, Comment, Family, New Zealand
This is a photo of my home. Obviously taken at night.
I love this place.
It’s probably my favourite place of all the places I’ve ever lived.
Of course, being able to have any home is a total privilege … so having one you really love is bordering on obscene. I get that.
And it’s obscene how much I love this place.
The fact it’s built into the trees.
That it’s surrounded by nature.
That it has outside decks on multiple floors.
That it’s close to work and yet feels a million miles away.
And then there’s the fact we bought it without having seen it – or even being in the country – which just makes it feel like we won the lottery. Except we paid a shitload for the ticket, haha.
So knowing one day we’ll leave it makes it all the more difficult.
Of course we don’t know when, but it will happen.
And while we’ve talked about trying to build an exect replica wherever we end up next … we know even if it was identical, it wouldn’t be the same.
Because a home is more than those walls.
It’s the environment. The surrounding area. The community. The moment in time.
Which is why I especially love the top pic.
Because while it doesn’t show much, it shows just enough.
A big steel door that holds a warm, inviting shelter.
A place where my family could blossom again after the challenges of covid.
A building where my son, wife and cat could connect to the privilege of living in New Zealand.
In many ways, it’s the most ‘family’ home we’ve had.
I don’t mean that in terms of size, but in our connection to it … which given we’ve lived in other places for far longer is testimony to what it means to us.
What New Zealand has done for us.
What Colenso made happen for us.
Leaving it will be terribly, terribly hard.
And while people reading this may rightfully say, “stop wishing your life away” … the reality is it means we’re not taking anything for granted. We notice and embrace every detail. We remain thankful for what we have. And in my book, that’s an act of love … which may be the most mature thing I’ve ever said, let alone done, in my life.