The One Upman Shop.

You did sort of imagine this would be how you’d work every day. You know, in that bright future you forsaw would have you legitimately, professionally based at home – sunshine on the keys, wood pigeons coo-rooing, breeze rooshing the trees.

Yes.

>BREATHES IN DEEPLY THROUGH THE NOSE WITH FLINTY CONVICTION<

..Ruddy hot, bright and noisy out here, isn’t it?

The weefee’s only conviction this far from the house is that it exists somewhere. Somewhere much nearer the house, evidently. I can see it’s there, but I could probably draw the BBC News homepage in felt tip pens quicker than it loads. Including the scrolling live feeds.

So I’m doing this on Blogspot’s load page but will have to go back upstairs to actually publish the discovery, mooted on Twitter just now, that perhaps I can’t in fact finally enjoy the psychological one-upmanship of working in the garden over lunch.

But really, why did I think I should? I can’t see the keys, builders are machine-gunning concrete all the way to the centre of the earth somewhere in the street, and a sunbathing neighbour is trying to have a comfortingly banal private conversation on the phone mere feet from me beyond the sound-reinforced security boundary of a slat fence.

Just think how easily I could live broadcast this to the entire world, and that fence would mean she’d never even know I’d made her private revelations global. If anyone at all actually read my blog, of course.

I’ve got money spiders climbing around the flush keyboard, my hair’s having a particularly whispy day in this irritatingly balmy breeze, and I’ve only just realised half of what I’ve typed is demented. What, for example, is a ‘one-upmanshop’? Somewhere I’d like to open an account, I think.

Oh this blasted gorgeous sunny day without the gloomy pressures of an office!

I’m going in.

Leaving the neighbour to her own home-based profesionalism. Film reviews and gossip columning, apparently. Same as every other creative freelancer.

—

Now, from in here – relocated to the lounge bay, avoiding the studio as part of this mobile social media experiement – perhaps I could imagine that the vouchers from The One Upman Shop have been cashed in after all.

I can see it’s sunny and beautiful out there. But I can also see what the beggary I’m typing. I can, as well as this, listen to Jobim, to help nature create a more convincing summer atmosphere. Plus, I don’t need to wear my sunnies, so I can use them as a pretty fetching alice band to keep foppish whispy flops out of my eyes during very important social media comment blogging work.

All that and the kettle is much much nearer. Although I’m putting off caving in to casual caffeine today, as I think encroaching middle age – still so very far off, I’d like you to bear in mind – is telling my body to go to bed at sensible hours and not just say yes every time someone offers it a glass of something made from very heavy Shiraz grapes.

—

I bazzed up to the capital on Saturday tea time to see Ben and Marnie for the first time since we completed Sophie in the souk. Wrap party at producer Jennifer’s. Except, it was only by late evening I began to slowly come into focus on the whole wrap party status of the soiré, due largely to the absence of anyone even vaguely connected to the production of the programme.

“Ah” I think a distant secondary internal voice must have mumbled eventually, as someone poured me another little top up of heavily fermented Shiraz grape juice drink, “this is just a party.”

Adding a few minutes later: “Huh.”

But, hey. Meeting people is meeting people – old gags become new gags, however the new audience got invited. I was happy to meet them, happy to shoot my entire bolt of impressive sounding interest in world affairs, and happy to not have to demonstrate how little I could back up this heavily implied but heavily vague clever knowledge at a second social get together. Plus, I wouldn’t want the nice Persian Brit I lectured about the Iranian elections to have to nod politely for another evening.

—

It was good to see Benny boy. Seems everyone likes the show. Kids in particular, I hear. They get the hidden subtexts, obviously.

Ben’s created a real editorial integrity to the production. A clear bit of brand work, really. We’ll have to see what the Travel Channel really makes of it.

But in some delightfully north London dinner party lines that I seemed to slip into effortlessly that night – but which were undoubtedly bought from the Basics range at The One Upman Shop – the subject of the show did allow me to say things like: “Oh I’ve always found Moroccans to be charming people. You really must go.” And: “So I asked myself what the defining character of truly Moroccan music was, as opposed to other North African and pan-oriental influences…”

Nob. Got a few laughs though.

—

Also, of course, I made sure I used the belt up and down the M3 to audition new edits of the album. Car journeys are useful cocoons for this kind of creative analysis.

And after all, The golden age of exploration is, I should say, just two weeks from its studio deadline now.

Breakthrough moment before I left was getting the first final running order of it all crammed onto an eighty-minute CD. This was basically momentous, as it was the first time I could hear how it would work. ..Or rather, IF it would work.

And?

..How the f*** should I know? I’m writing this tripe – I love it. Never been right before though, have I?

It works, I should say. That is, it seems to fit together, on its own terms. And with a couple of sessions and some additional editing tweeks, it’ll be done. Actually done. Spot of singing, couple of cello parts to record, few more horn spots. And done.

..Then what the sweet arsing fate I’m supposed to actually DO with it, I don’t know.

Try and get it listed at The One Upman Shop, obviously.

On the job.

In the words of Adrian Chiles, next spring seems like an awful long wait.

Not for Yasmina, of course – she’s arrived. She has a new job and a whole new identity.

But for the rest of us? Somehow, I’m sure we as a proud nation will push on and pull together and muddle through until the next series of The apprentice is aired. I’m going to miss Srallan, though – he’ll be Lawdallen by next year.

One thing that lastnight’s finale demonstrated along the way was borne out by the boss himself on the after-show – brand is what people buy. Yasmina’s Coco Electric was basically cute; the chocolates themselves you can get right with an extra couple of days. But who’d know Kate’s Choc D’amour were extra scrummy from their pregnancy test type box?

I think Coco Electric should be a club night too, by the way.

The idea of something – the instinctive, emotional response, however small – is what we all reach for on the shelf. That’s a brand; what people feel about a product, or a thing. Or you.

And so I can’t help feeling, where might this be more relevant to this morning’s news than in the jolly world of politics?

—

The world IS politics, of course. How people interact with eachother, how they get along, work together around differences, work around competing outlooks. Everything is politics – how we navigate eachother determines how ‘successful’ we are. Which I put in quotes there to let you decide what the word means.

So personal ‘brand’ is pretty vital, huh?

Right. In response, however, I’m personally just thinking of printing up more Momo tees – they’re cute. Do yourself a favour – do yourself a logo, I say. Though I’m now thinking of adding a pink lightning spark to mine.

The professional party politician can’t do that, however.

..No, I mean they can’t – have you seen the design of their leaflets? Shocking.

Which is interesting. The very people who usually feel drawn to step up to public office are usually not creatives. Yet the subtle nuances of expression and emotional awareness are everything to a politician’s success.

Ah.

—

BNP.

Thoughts?

‘New suit, same old Nazis’ was one amusing ad headline for them this week. They say we’ve got them wrong – they’re not racists, they’re standing against the systemic racism of the The Liberal Elite, directed against the Indiginous White Population Of Britain.

Which might just be a plea to keep things simple; the English are already German-Nordic-French with a twist of Italian. Invading bastards. We should really give the country back to the Welsh and the Cornish, of course. But we certainly can’t incorporate any more ethnic identity into our great collective mongrel brand any more.

Last thing we want to do, for example, is become a massively sea-faring and trading nation, extending our influence and enlarging our outlook to a truly global scale, bringing back prosperity and people alike to our meagre shores and… ah.

I, ah.

But here’s the thing to remember with your brand, if you just joined the class – it ain’t yours. It’s almost like art – you make the marks and the perciever of your work makes the connections. It’s in their head. So they can make whatever connections they damn-well please.

So what should be done when people percieve their country to be against them? When their connection with Britain feels increasingly like a disconnection?

It comes down, as I think everything on the political news does today, to leadership. Right now, people are percieving no proper leadership in the UK.

Uh-oh.

—

Well, I say ‘uh-oh’ to create a dramatic pause, but it’s all part of the natural ups and downs of professional political life. Things go stale and we want something fresh.

But, like a teacher in an unruly classroom, the minute the little tykes can smell fear – you’re dead.

Once kids – or let’s call us voters – get it into their heads that you don’t know your arse from your elbow when it comes to authority or direction, your brand is a bad one. You’ve got to do something to correct their impression of your authority.

Rolling tanks into the shires and squares of this fair isle would be a way to look tough, of course.

It’s the I’ll Bloody Show You Who’s Strong, Yeah tactic of choice for many world leaders. And these guys have often been great with creating brand – cute posters, nice uniforms, consistent brand collateral. Beatings for deviating from the brand book. My kind of marketing department.

We don’t kind of do that here. Not really the UK’s style. We fawn and bitch, depending on the weather. Which might make the UK sound a bit, well, gay. But I’m all for it – the catfights can sound pretty nasty and will involve a lot of meladrama, but no-one’s blood will actually get spilt on the chiffon/leather/ermin and it will be mere moments before someone says: ‘BORED. WHO TURNED OFF THE DISCO?’ and we’re all cheering and fugging again.

I realise this reduction of a particular sexual identity to a kind of colourful character part in the story of our community is not helpful. But’s let’s face it, the colourful ones are always our favourite ones in the film. The white/straight/thin heroes we cast in the central roles are so dull. And England can, after all, be pretty gay. I blame our butch Viking heritage. In fact, I thank it.

England: Putting the pink spark back into British politics.

—

My distracted point, pulling it back, is that leadership is the most vital brand we create – and Gordon’s lost it.

Doesn’t matter that we still think he’s a massive politico-financial brain – he seems like a man driven by blind vanity, rather than simple dedication. If he’d been content to serve his country in Number 11, instead of CONSTANTLY pushing to be Tony Blair, we might be remembering him as an economic titan and hero of all our prosperity. Instead, his free markets became rather too free and unregulated as he turned is piercing eye on the house further up the road in Downing Street.

People didn’t turn in droves to the BNP last week. The European elections showed that much of the continent mis-trusts the idea of lefty bananacrats, same as us. And here in the UK, people are fed up with the culture of Westminster, giving it up as a lost cause, I think – 33% turn-out, or something? People just didn’t vote.

It’s not just that, though. People still haven’t a strong enough idea of what the hell the European parliament does, for one thing. Where has been the ad campaigns and information on that? Nationally, internationally or locally? We went into our booths at the top of our road and more or less closed our eyes and stuck the pencil in.

But also, it’s the fact that Brown is the opposite of Tony Blair, who was a gifted communicator. His skills and his words are always lost behind his gruff personality. Which would have been endearing and respectably honest, had he not insisted so forcefully on being the voice of the UK.

As PM, Brown is in the wrong job. He’s creating the wrong brand for Labour and for the UK. He’s just not up to the particular job of articulating the fundamentals of leadership – where we’re going, how we’ll get there and who we are.

And crucially, our idea of who we are is perhaps the most potent force in politics.

Orders from the frontier.

Back. Back in Bomo.

And after a couple of days in the verdant bends and bumps of Cornwall, back in the sunshine; I think I have as much colour from various people’s back gardens over this last weekend, as I do from the sunbaked Middle East.

Summer is evidently here. I can feel it with the studio window open. The question is, as I go through my emails and post and phone messages, what will the summer bring?

—

We’ve managed to see some of the gang since getting back, with afternoon teas and barbecues and the like. Melly and Bobs were down and I made him go through my photos from the Ricoh and tell me how to use it better. But, uncharacteristically, I also suggested we do some work in our own garden, and set-to yesterday, clearing the front driveway of brambles.

I must have sunstroke.

Interestingly though, back from hols and evidently raring to go, I’m wondering where to put all that rare stuff.

After wrapping up so many things before leaving, I’ve returned to an unusually blank canvas for Momo. Various projects on the go, of course – and I have yet to discover whether there are various disasters on the go, hidden from view – but my agenda is open. Perhaps more open than it’s been in years.

Still, it’s not nine in the morning, yet.

The main thing on Momo’s agenda is, of course, the bleedin’ album. And knocking on a few doors on the back of Sophie. The point is, I guess, I may have something I’ve been hankering for for a long time: some space to direct the business. Chase some work I actually want to do.

But the frontier is a weird place. You have to have a pretty sure idea of your direction when carving roads into virgin land; it’s much easier to be told where to go.

I may yet be, before the day’s out.