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May 28, 2003
Phew (part one)
Well, that's all the data brought in. Just the look and feel to sort out now.
Um, did anyone actually like the last one?
Posted by Tom Dolan at 11:47 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 22, 2003
Smelly
I can't help feeling that my life hasn't been complete without CHEESE.COM - particularly its service allowing you to subscribe to "Get Cheese News By Email".
Sadly the site, while it explains that the charcoal in morbier seperates the morning milking from the evening milking, fails to explain why morbier is THE SMELLIEST CHEESE IN THE WORLD.
A word of advice - if anyone offers you morbier, it's okay to eat, but under *no* circumstances should you touch it. You'll be smelling it on your fingers for *weeks*. Really.
Posted by Tom Dolan at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Necessity is the mother of invention
You have to admire the innovative solution the BBC comedy site came up with to not having a cleared picture of this artist in the library.
You know who you are. Well done.
Posted by Tom Dolan at 11:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 21, 2003
Over the next two nights...
Take a look at the image at the top of this page and imagine me, too, staring openmouthed at Peter Gabriel playing live.
One of the benefits of the internet is that the touts have managed to get hold of far too many of the tickets, and so prices have now plummetted. We got a set of four for Thurs (Me, the missus, and fab music loving friends Des and Shaz) off ebay at little more than face value. Well, Des did.
But tonight, just for the fun of it, Des and I are going up to Wembley to see if we can get tickets for about 20 quid.
It's possibly the last time he's going to tour like this, possibly at all, so I'm not missing it for anything.
Posted by Tom Dolan at 01:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 15, 2003
Is it all worth it?
So after all the effort, struggling and politics over the last few years, I then get to see that one of my contemporaries from the early days of BBC Online has gone completely her own way and is now running a fab and beautiful guest house in Cornwall and sounds really really happy.
She doesn't sound like she's got broadband though, so there is some justice!
Posted by Tom Dolan at 03:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
commercial vs public service
Several people have asked me about the difference between working in a public/fixed funding body and the commercial sector. And it's an odd one, because really I have to answer 'I don't know yet'. I thought I knew, but I'm coming across more contradictions as time goes on.
I saw Danny O'Brien back in Sept 01, and he had a way of describing the US which is kind of similar to how I feel.
If you go from Britain to Europe, you start off with everything feeling very alien, but over time you realise that actually you're very similar.
If you go to the US, everything feels incredibly familiar, but over time you realise they're utterly different
At first glimpse, the inner workings of my current 'safe' employer seems very similar to the BBC. How the departments interrelate, certain bits of policy etc. But the longer I spend here, the more I realise that the reasons behind all those workings are utterly different. And I've nearly come unstuck a few times from believing they were the same.
But the wierdest thing of all is just how often you bump into other ex-BBC people!
Posted by Tom Dolan at 09:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 07, 2003
Yeah right - dream on.
Now this really *is* blatant optimism:
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Posted by Tom Dolan at 09:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Excitement
I never had any cred in the first place, so it's with great, great joy that I realise that in a fortnight's time I'll probably be bunking off work early to see Peter Gabriel play live.
The 'Secret World' gigs were one of the greatest theatrical and musical experiences of my life - and the accompanying live album is my Desert Island Disc.
I'm expecting another beautiful, moving, witty and powerful experience. If he can beat the moment at Wembley in '94 when 20,000 heads turned to follow a bright light suddenly realised that he was singing to a woman on the other stage - and that she was Sinead O'Connor in a wedding dress, then I'll be a very happy man.
Posted by Tom Dolan at 03:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 06, 2003
Time - sequentially arranged pain.
I have to admit that it wasn't until I saw the three photo galleries of people at ETCON that I realised two things.
1) How jealous I am of them, and how cross I am that I'm no longer in a job where I would have been there.
2) How much time has passed since I first thought 'It won't matter I'll be employed by then and someone else can pay"
These people are my peers (even if I don't actually know some of them that well - at least not while sober) and while I'm happy to see what a great time they were having, I can't help but think
"It should have been me"
And I have to question not just whether/how far I've "fallen" but also the privelege that I was used to back at the BBC which makes me think of these conferences as a god-given right.
Posted by Tom Dolan at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
[refrain]
And it gives me great joy that this evening, for the first time in ages, I can actually have the night off. There is no monster hanging over me - a million things I should have done. It's just me. And the telly, or the piano, or the garden, or a book.
(contented sigh)
Posted by Tom Dolan at 05:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
[pause]
I've not updated this blog for ages. And as a result have had my very first 'hoy, update your blog' email - something of a watershed. Hurrah. For all the wrong reasons.
The reason that not a lot has been said on here is that there's not been a lot to say. There's been a lot of thinking, but everything's been utterly paralysed. I got myself into a right state, to the point where I couldn't do anything, and was in real danger of letting down some people and projects I care a lot about.
I had severely underestimated just how much impact
a) redundancy
b) six months of not working or talking to anyone other than the cats
c) suddenly forcing myself into a sales role and realising I didn't know that much about raw sales
d) taking on another job as a way of forcing myself out of my lethargy
would have on me.
Thankfully, today I broke through that. With huge help from the other half.
Things are now going well, I'm making the phonecalls I need to make, and it's all looking back on track. Someone close to me put it rather well:
"The old Tom is back".
I am.
Posted by Tom Dolan at 04:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
