It started out like any normal day.
By that, I mean up and out of bed at 5am after CIA-inspired levels of sleep deprivation and white noise pumped directly into my brain throughout the night.
All I had to do now was tip-toe through the mountain of scattered toys and get through breakfast without decorating my suit with toast, felt pen, glue, child’s vomit or milky, unwanted cereal.
“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him,” Charles Darwin 1871.
Change. Adapt. Evolve. That’s been the mantra for the past few years – certainly since the financial markets shook everything in 2008 – and that was the key message I took from the CIPR’s state of the profession survey. Continue reading
So, you’ve had some snow recently? There’s been so much written about it in the last week that the only remaining headline is a reference to robot-based 1980’s comedy movie Short Circuit.
But while you were kicking through a light dusting of white powder, I hope you spared a thought for us in the most Northern English County. Redesdale in Northumberland was the snowiest place in England with 33cm in a single day. On top of that we had 12 foot snow drifts and a 3,500 mile road network to worry about. Continue reading
A guest post this week from Rachel Williamson who works in our Morpeth Tourist Informaton Centre (TIC). Rachel is one of our most enthusiastic employees, she’s passionate about Northumberand, is only 21 (just) and loves cheesecake. You’ve seen her in a previous post on the front of our magazine. She tweets here: @r3w
Northumberland is a County filled with sensational scenery, captivating castles and beautiful beaches, all of which us residents occasionally forget about or even take for granted. Aside from the obvious big attractions we have so many hidden gems, so many towns and villages that are steeped with history just waiting to be uncovered.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 7 years to get that many views.
“I never make predictions………and I never will” – One of the most famous utterances of footballer Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne which has passed into commentary legend, but actually makes more sense than we all think.
If experience teaches us anything (and it doesn’t) predicting anything is utter folly. To stay with the North East footballing analogy, last season Newcastle United were flying high in the league and ended up qualifying for Europe.
The darlings of TV and regular scorer of inspiring goals (Chelsea away) the owner rewarded the manager with an unprecedented 8 year contract. Last night they conceded seven goals and dropped to within three points of the relegation zone.
Fate and time make a mockery of all predictions so instead I thought I’d look back over the last year – only to find that makes a mockery of expectations too.
It felt a bit like that moment in the TV show Mad Men when Sterling Cooper loses the Lucky Strike account.
Something that’s had blood, sweat, tears and the unrelenting efforts of a whole team invested in it was about to evaporate. Continue reading
Here’s a post I did for the brilliant comms2point0 website a while back. This week we had our final meeting of 2012 which reminded me I hadn’t posted this here yet:
This post was written for the #weeklyblogclub, a collection of writers and blogs that publish work on a range of different topics each week. Each week there is a suggested topic which I always manage to ignore but for the 50th week I promised to stick to the script and write about “Landmarks”.
What can you say about landmarks? By the time you reach adulthood you don’t really know you’re approaching one until it hits you and then it’s too late.
Another guest blog this time from our event support officer Sue Campbell. Earlier in the year I spoke about the importance of filming here but it’s far better coming straight from the source:
a day without OJ - A comms, digital & PR blog by Ross Wigham 