Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Authenticity, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Communication Strategy, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Family, Happiness, Internet, Marketing, Parents, Research, Technology
When I was younger, I discovered the ‘Argos’ catalogue.
It was at my Grandparents house and it was a bloody revelation.
For those who don’t know what Argos is, imagine Amazon.com before Amazon.
A place where you can buy a huge array of products, all of which were featured in an annual catalogue which you could take home and peruse at your leisure.
[It’s also famous for little pens – now pencils – that you would have to use to fill in the forms to get the products when you went into the store. Pens/pencils that I would say everyone in England has ended up keeping at some point in their lives]
But for me, it only had 2 uses …
1. To get a glimpse at the future of technology.
2. To choose what I really, really wanted for my birthday/christmas.
Every time I visited my grandparents, I would run to where they kept the Argos catalogue and spend hours going through all the pages, gazing lovingly at digital watches, calculators, the emergence of hand held ‘electronic’ games and – eventually – computers.
Every year the catalogue came out, I would be see the advances of tech in front of my eyes.
But more than that, for the right money – I could have it.
Of course I – nor my parents – had the right money except maybe at Christmas, but a boy could dream … and boy did I.
I still remember the excitement the first time I saw Astro Wars … a handheld version of the video game Galaxian
It was like the impossible dream.
A full sized video game shrunk into a small box.
What sort of weird wizardry was this???
I still remember how a bunch of us at school saw it at the same time and we all knew it was the ‘must have’ present for the year.
I was incredibly lucky to get it that year … and while it was a bit crap, I still utterly loved it because to me, that was cutting edge tech.
[As an aside, I just discovered it cost £28 in 1980 – the equivalent of £100 today, so I am utterly gobsmacked I got it given my parents would have had to have saved up for months to afford that. So thank you Mum and Dad, I never realized it was that pricey]
Anyway, the reason I say all this is that Argos have recently digitized all their old catalogues.
And while you may ask yourself, “why?” and “why would anyone care?” you’d be wrong … because if you’re a person of a certain age, the Argos catalogue was not a book of products available for purchase, it was a place of imagination and possibilities and while the stuff inside the late 70’s/early 80’s catalogues are full of the sort of tat even a ‘Everything for £1’ store, would turn their noses up at, looking through them all again, I can honestly say it ignited the excitement I had back then.
Truly.
And yes, that means I really have spent hours trawling through them all.
Again.
And what’s more, I don’t care how sad that makes me.
It was a magical journey down nostalgia lane.
More specifically, nostalgia that was specific to my life, not just everyone else’s.
America may have had Disneyland.
But us kids in Britain had the Argos catalogue.
You can explore the history of 40+ English imaginations, here and you can see why I think the Argos Christmas campaign – which links to the nostalgia theme of the old catalogues – is already the winner of 2019, below.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Anniversary, Attitude & Aptitude, Birthday, Childhood, Comment, Dad, Daddyhood, Emotion, Empathy, Family, Home, Jill, Love, Mum, Otis, Parents
Yesterday would have been my Mum’s birthday.
My Mum’s 87th birthday.
That means she has been gone 4 years and frankly, that seems incredible.
So much has happened in that time …
From moving countries twice.
To changing jobs twice.
To selling our family home to buy a new one.
And while I am in a much better place than I was after the tragic days that she died, I still am prone to being hit by moments where her loss is almost overwhelming for me.
I wish she could have met Otis for real.
I still remember her words when I called her minutes after he was born.
I was incredibly emotional and she was so tender towards me.
Making sure I was OK, Jill was OK and Otis.
Asking if the baby crying in the background was her grandson.
Telling me how happy she was and how happy she was for us.
How she loved the name Otis.
And while she was alone in her home in Nottingham – wishing madly that she was with us – she still told me to go and be with Jill and my son because she was the most compassionate, thoughtful person I have ever known.
While Mum saw Otis on video chat, sent me countless emails/SMS’s about him and – for a brief while – was in the same room together [though sadly it was after she had passed away] … the fact is they never were together in the flesh and I would have loved to have seen that happen.
To see her face as he called her Nona.
To watch her smile he wrapped his arms around you and gave her a big hug and kiss.
To look at my Mum reading her first grandchild a story or walking him through the gardens and explaining the flowers or just watching him run around like a tsunami and then look at me with that look in her eye that tells me everything.
How he’s perfect.
How she loves him so much.
How she is so proud of me and Jill.
How happy she is right at that very moment.
That would be the best present for her – not to mention for me – and while none of those things will be able to happen for real, I will think about them tonight when I’m home and giving Otis a big hug and kiss, because while there are many things I can do a whole lot better at, my Mum [and Dad] taught me one thing I am very good at.
How to love.
Happy birthday Mum, I miss you so much.
Hope you and Dad are laughing and holding hands.
Rx
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Culture, Dad, Daddyhood, Emotion, Empathy, Family, Home, Jill, Love, Mum, Mum & Dad, My Fatherhood, Nottingham, Otis, Paul, Resonance
So the time has come to close the door on the house I grew up in for one final time.
I’ve written the reasons for why this is happening in the past – as I have the reasons why the house was, and always will be, be so important to me – but it is the beginning of a new chapter for my family and my Mum and Dad would be so happy.
Anyway, we went to visit her one final time.
While the garden remained pretty much as my parents left it – thanks to us having a gardener visit every fortnight for the past 4 years [and we’ve taken a couple of things from there to plant in our new home so we will forever be connected] – going into the actual house was a very different feeling.
Part of it was because there was nothing in it.
No furniture.
No people.
No noise.
And so the overall effect was the house felt smaller … more fragile … and yet, as I walked through each room, there were so many emotions going through me.
As I watched my son run through the place holding his toys, I could see me – probably at his age – doing the same.
I saw where my Raleigh Grifter was waiting for me in 1989, on Christmas day.
I could see where my Dad – and then Mum – would sit in the lounge, on their rocking chair.
I could hear my Dad shouting ‘it’s ready’ from the kitchen our Saturday Beefburger was ready for scoffing down.
I could see my old clock radio when I was in the ‘small bedroom’ and my big stereo when I got ‘upgraded’ to the bigger room.
I could see the bed Mum and Dad slept in … where I would sit by them and chat throughout my time in the house.
Mum and Dad’s bedroom was especially poignant to me.
Regardless what happens in the future, it will always be ‘their room’ as they used for the entire time they were alive [and I was around].
Below is a photo of their empty bedroom that I took.
I’ve superimposed another photo of Otis that I took on the day after Mum died.
He’d just flown with his Mum overnight from Shanghai and he’s lying on the side Mum used to sleep on, looking at a painting of a mother and her child that hung above her bed.
He never got to meet her in person – he was supposed to a couple of weeks later when she recovered from her operation.
Alas it didn’t work out that way which is why this photo is so precious to me and why I feel, in a weird way, they did get to be together – hugging each other tight – if only for a second.
Another thing that got me, was when I went to the garage.
When we were having the house refurbished because we wanted to help a family live in a good area, we wrote a message on the wall about how much that house meant to us.
Well, when we checked at the weekend, we saw the tenants had left their own note and I have to say – it got to me because while my life is moving on, it was built in those 4 walls and I hope it does the same for anyone and everyone who lives there.
Thank you Mum.
Thank you Dad.
Thank you house … you will always be treasured.
Thank you for everything. Every single thing.
All that happened in your 4 walls will always be remembered and treasured.
May everyone feel the love you let me feel.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Family, Jill, Otis
A few weeks ago, we were driving to Nottingham very early.
We’d only been on the road about 30 minutes and the atmosphere in the car was toxic.
Everyone was snappy with each other.
Everyone was whining.
Everyone wanted to be somewhere else.
Anyway, like some contrived ad – I saw a McDonalds enter into view over the hill and decided to pull in.
I was making the assumption that we were either tired or hungry and even if it was neither, I was confident that putting a McMuffin of any description in our mouths would at least stop us being assholes to each other.
As it happened, we were hungry because within a few bites of food, the mood lightened dramatically … but not nearly as much as when Jill got her McBaconMuffin thing.
Why?
Because it looked like this.
I don’t know what made the people behind the counter put so much bacon in it, but for all their generosity, the fact it looked like the food equivalent of someone at the beach who hadn’t “groomed” ensured it wasn’t eaten but it was replaced by laughs.
So whoever made this porn food delight, thank you for making the rest of our journey a whole lot less eventful.