Today I turned 32. I’m told (by my boss about two hours ago) that 32 is “a good one”. It’s like 27 apparently. I’ll keep you posted on that. Anyway, last year I posted my list of 31 Things I’ve Learned, so it only seems appropriate to fashion that into a set of principles going forward for this year. Simple things that I’m going to try and do better. There is an honourable mention for this list: the blog. Yes, this blog. It deserves more love than it has got, so I am going to

I'm currently sat in Nice Cote d'Azur Airport having just completed my second Cannes show. The Cannes event is my industry's biggest of the year and it generally leaves a few people rather broken. From the moment the opening cocktail party starts on Sunday, until the show closes on Friday afternoon, it is a rollercoaster of meetings, exhibitions, presentations, cocktail parties and some very late nights. In general you expect to spend about 19 hours of the day awake and most

So, it has been a while. Sorry. Sometimes life drifts along and sometimes it come in droves – and it has been flying lately. I’m not complaining; it has been a maelstrom of deadlines, work trips and holidays. But it hasn’t given me much time to speak to you guys, so apologies. As an example, I am writing this sat in Heathrow Terminal 4, waiting for a flight to Moscow for 24 hours, before returning to the UK for four days and then jetting out to Cannes for a week. As an aside,

Facebook’s Timehop can be a terrible thing. It is a vortex of photos of long-forgotten nights out and terrible haircuts all popping up just to dampen your mood first thing in the morning. But it is also a scary reminder of how much time has flown. I got onto Facebook during my first year at uni, which means that sometimes it blesses me with Fresher’s night out photos such as this gem. But it also means it is a handy reminder of a number of landmarks which have passed since I

With weather like we are having it seems a crime to rush away to foreign climes. S and I love a good globe-trotting jaunt just as much as the next person, but as the madness of the last few weeks faded away we decided to escape for some R&R in the countryside. S knew of The Water Tower from a previous trip and had always wanted to go back. A converted water tower nestled on a farm just off the South Downs, what could be better? Check them out here. We jumped in the motor, fee

Social media is a strange beast. It has been a second nature part of my life for quite a few years, but it still manages to throw up a few surprises. I spend a large amount of my time – both personal and professional – on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For the first two of those I am fairly confident with what will work and what won’t. But Twitter is a strange beast and that is what I really love about it. Twitter is, to those who live and work on social media, a bit like h

Tonight S and I donned our best masks and finery and headed off to The Great Masked Ball. This Swan Lake-themed immersive theatre and dining experience was one S stumbled across via those kind folks at Design My Night. In the vein of so many of these sort of events, we received instructions and invitations in-keeping with the theme. Letters were sent out from “The Queen” inviting us to a masked ball where her son Prince Siegfried would choose a bride. The overarching story is

First off, apologies for the long silence. It has been a crazy couple of weeks and one side effect of writing for a living is that blogging can seem like a busman's holiday when things get hectic at this end. I'm not sure why. I'm probably not doing it right, but there you go. Either way, yesterday S and I decided to escape the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day (and there has been a fair amount of hustle and bustle recently) and get out into the sun. In proper summer holida

This post was supposed to be titled "Nerd Prom" and be celebrating S and I enjoying a night out for her work - but I forgot to take enough photos of us to merit that. Luckily, Mother Nature came to my rescue. Last night S and I got all dressed up and headed up to Epsom Downs for a school ball. It was a lovely evening. We pitched up for champagne on the balcony as the evening set in, before dinner and speeches took over. Half way through the food there was a lull in proceeding

I read something the other day which made me think. Like many other bloggers out there I have blogs which I have followed for ages. They are created by writers who I used as inspiration or a how-to guide when I started out and whose work I still follow and try to learn from. A big one of these for me has been The Londoner. Written by a truly brilliant blogger called Rosie, this is something of a benchmark for personal, lifestyle blogging in my eyes. Recently she wrote a post

I know Las Vegas is traditionally called the "bright light city" but I am going to put in a vote for Singapore to be, at the least, a very close second. Every year my whole industry descends on Singapore for its second biggest annual event. So last week I packed up my case with two suits and a couple of items of eveningwear and headed for the East. This time, though, S was coming along for the ride too. In my head this meant she would get to see that I do actually do some wor

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" At the weekend S and I made a quick overnight trip to the home of the Bard, Stratford-upon-Avon. This mini weekend away idea has become quite a success of ours recently. Our working timetables mean we don't always get strings of days off together, so we make the most of when we do. I met S after work at 4pm on Saturday and by 6.30 we were in our hotel in Stratford. That gave us a day and night for moseying about, relaxing and generall

I travel for work. I know that sounds very exciting and glamorous - and it is, sort of. But there are a few moments when plane-hopping round the world delivers the sort of head-shaking, face-palming experience that you get in any other work place. Whether it is a 5am flight out of a back-of-beyond airport (to save costs), a red-eye flight straight into an office meeting or pre-arranged travel plans falling apart as you are half way through a city where you know neither people

Spring is trying to, well, spring. The snow, which plunged us into a deep freeze last week, shifted as the weekend hit and that meant that S and I could indulge in a countryside day out we have been planning for a while. We woke up surrounded by fields, with cool sunshine overhead and barely an ounce of snow in sight. After the Sunday morning breakfast of champions - avocado on bagels - it was on with the boots and coats, and out into the cool spring/winter air. The last vest

I recently started keeping a journal again. I say "again", I am not really sure if I ever properly kept a journal before. I've had notebooks that I've written bits down in and I once kept a diary for a whole year of my life to see if anything exciting happened - it did. But I am not sure I've ever has a receptacle for thoughts, experiences, creativity and random musings. A journal is, I suppose, a little bit like a paper blog. But slightly more private. Depending on your read