When you’re 13 years old a games room is the most magical place in the world. Monday was the best day to go there because if there’d been rugby or cricket on TV on Sunday then there would still be cigarettes in the ashtrays and a decent whiff of beer about the place. We would then lounge around practicing our swearing.

There was one Monday when we found a can of beer lodged in one of the pockets of the pool table. Four boys stood and stared at that can for about 15 minutes. To everyone’s relief Mark pointed out that we couldn’t open it because it wasn’t cold and that you could only drink cold beer because drinking warm beer would be a bit poofy.

That was almost as good as the time we found some ‘dad literature’ under the couch in the games room. Four boys stood and stared at that for quite a bit longer than fifteen minutes.

Anyway, I swore that when I was grown up and had some money and could spend it on anything I wanted I would have a pool table.

Then when I got my first job, at Ogilvy & Mather Wellington, there was a pool table in the middle of the office…..that you could play whenever you wanted! That was the most advertising thing I’d ever seen. It was the perfect Friday night prop.  Clients loved it and would ask for meetings to be at our office so that they could stay on for a few frames.  (Obviously they just referred to it as a ‘game’. I called it ‘a few frames’ because I was a dick.)

I spent a lot of time at that table. To no one’s surprise I had my own pool cue and committed a solid two months to learning how to play a Masse shot (because I was a dick).

Again I swore that if I ever had my own agency, or could make decisions about spending other people’s money on stuff to put in an agency, I would have a pool table.

Which gives me the sense that my entire life has just been building to this point. This is a pool table designed by James Perse.   It’s magnificent.  It’s exactly what my 13 year-old self would buy and what every self-respecting agency needs.

Now you may be able to help.  Because apparently the key when you’re looking for a change is to spend as much time as possible doing the things you’re good at. There’s some theory of inter-connectedness that has it that by focussing on doing specific things you create the opportunity to do more of those things (which I know sounds uncomfortably like a theory Deepak Chopra might espouse, but then someone I follow did retweet something of his the other day and that new-age stuff is virulent).

I find this all rather difficult, because to do lots of what you’re good at, you have to be comfortable claiming to be good at something. And I’m very uncomfortable claiming to be good at anything. Not just mildly uncomfortable, either. I find it properly, kidney-punchingly, uncomfortable, like the time I bumped into my client as he exited the ‘adult’ section of the video store. (True story. Hi, Hugh.)

So with a deep breath and an apology for being so hideously conceited, I am good at a couple of things and I’m hoping you might be able to help me do more of them.

I’m good at public speaking.  Apparently being called on to speak in public is most people’s greatest fear.  They fear it more than spiders, more than flying, more than heights. More than dying, even. But not me. I love public speaking. In fact I’m never happier than when speaking to a group of people, ideally in a very high place on the subject of spiders. Because I know no fear.

(That’s not true. I fear the Lace Monitor lizard, pictured below.  I once encountered one when running in Noosa National Park. I rounded a corner and it was standing in the middle of the track, languidly masticating.  Locals tried to tell me that Monitor Lizards are vegetarian.  Bollocks they are. They look vegetarian like Demi Moore looks 48.)

So, if you find yourself in need of someone to speak publicly, I’m your guy. I can talk about pretty much anything.  Marketing and advertising stuff, obviously, and spiders. But I’ll give any subject a go. (As evidence, I once gave a speech on what Carlos Spencer can teach us about effective corporate culture.)

I’m also good at writing. That said, I only have one way of writing. I always sound like me – a middle-class, slightly-pretentious, faux-intellectual, anglophile with a fondness for parentheses. That generally doesn’t work too badly for advertising and marketing stuff because, let’s be honest, a decent chunk of that audience is middle-class, slightly-pretentious, faux-intellectual anglophiles. So if you want something written in that voice, I’m your man.

On that subject, I have massive admiration for people who can write in different voices. I have a friend who used to write the letters that American Express sent to its high value customers as well as the replies to the little girls who wrote to tell Barbie that they hated their brothers and wanted to swap them for puppies. (True story. Hi, Andy.)

So there you have it. If you need something written, or you need something spoken, I’m your guy.  Just let me know.

The prevailing view is that the IRB favours the larger unions that deliver the revenue, while undermining the smaller unions that require the investment.

I’m not sure I agree that this is true, and I also think there’s a more alarming conclusion that can be drawn. Perhaps the real issue is that the IRB has more concern for the rules of the event than it does for the rules of the game.

Think about it.  Two of the IRB’s biggest calls in relation to this event have been to fine a player for wearing an incorrect mouthguard and to insist that a group of commentators be referred to by their first names, not by their nicknames. Remember that?  That was when the IRB insisted that TJ, Nisbo, Kamo and Coops must only be referred to as Tony, Grant, Ian and Matthew while commentating during the Rugby World Cup.

This is simply the IRB playing to its strengths.  Because it certainly appears from the outside that the key strength of the IRB is officious administration.

I imagine the IRB has a very large (and very happy) team of people responsible for developing and communicating guidelines to which all participating RWC teams must adhere.  (For the 2003 event this document ran to 199 pages, and it’s difficult to imagine it’s had much of an edit.)

You can bet that the detailed rules governing approved mouthguards were covered in these guidelines and that Samoa received them.  So from the IRB’s perspective the rules of the event were communicated and it’s clear a player broke them. So that’ll be $10,000.

But contrast that with the two England coaching staff who were caught illegally changing the ball prior to conversion attempts in the game against Romania.  There’s equally no question that rules were broken.  The RFU admitted this as part of their investigation of the incident that it shared with the IRB.  But England’s punishment for breaking the rules?  The two coaches were banned from the touchline for their pool match against Scotland. No fine. No points docked. No meaningful censure at all.

So the simple conclusion is that the IRB has one rule for rich, potential tournament winner England and another for struggling, probable early loser Samoa.

But I think that’s the wrong comparison. This isn’t about rich vs poor, Six Nations vs Pacific Nations, potential winner vs honest trier. All it shows is that the IRB is more concerned with the rules of its event than it is with the rules of the game.

England wasn’t fined because it didn’t break the IRB’s rules. Samoa was fined because it did. And unfortunately in the eyes of the IRB, that’s a far greater infraction.

The blue-screen of death is perhaps the most popular form of computer death. The red screen of death will be familiar to those with gaming devices. The black screen of death never goes out of fashion. And the purple screen of death sounds like more fun than I imagine it actually is.

But my MacBook Pro has died and presented me with this – the pin-striped screen of death.

My theory is that this is simply Apple’s famed ‘intuitive design’ taken to its natural conclusion. I want to believe that while you traverse the web, your MacBook is taking note, quietly building a visual abstract of your online life. And that when the time comes for it to log off for the last time, you will be presented with an entirely non-judgemental summation of your browsing life.

Hence, having spent far too much time in the company of Most Exerent, Crane Brothers and Patrick Johnson, I’m captured in the image of a 12 oz, pearl pin-striped flannel. How do you think you might be remembered?

I also love stationery. I’m particularly partial to a notebook. It’s where I imagine writing all the piercingly insightful observations I would make were I the type of person who actually read Monocle.

So this, a stationery range from Monocle, is pretty exciting. It’s the kind of notebook in which Jessica Hische would doodle, or in which Marisha Pessl would record her idle thoughts.

Via Nick Sullivan

A few weeks back a friend was describing a visit to a repairer.  He’d been despatched by his wife to have the zip on one of her (implausible number of) handbags repaired.  The zip kept jamming at the same point, adjacent to where the two sides of the zip couple.  He was hoping the zip could be replaced. (She was quietly hoping that it couldn’t.)

He handed the bag to a man in a leather apron who inspected it closely, surveyed it from a few angles, peered closely at the recalcitrant zip, examined the underside of the strap then stated, without any fear of contradiction, “she usually carries it on her right shoulder”.

He wandered away, returning with a peanut slab-sized block of metal and a small hammer. He tapped the zip half a dozen times, gently, like a woman on a first-date hatching a crème brulee. Then he ran the now free-flowing zip up and down a few times, smiled with a warranted sense of professional pride, and said “I’ve seen this a few times. Women carry their bag on the same shoulder, all the heavy stuff slides to one end, the whole bag stretches and the teeth of the zip get out of alignment”.

“That’s brilliant”, said my friend, “how much do I owe you?”

“Don’t worry about it” replied the craftsman, “it only took a couple of minutes”.

But it didn’t. It took about twenty years.  Experience, practice, a trained eye and a skilled hand, all built up over twenty years.  Which is what he should have charged for.

This was nicely paralleled in a meeting I was in a couple of years ago.  A client was presenting a brief to an agency. He asked if there were any questions. A copywriter, who had spent the majority of the meeting doodling in his moleskine, said “wouldn’t it make sense just to …. [do something very simple that I can’t really explain here]“. Everyone in the room agreed that it would indeed make sense just to …. [do something very simple that I can’t really explain here], and that, not only did it make sense, it was a fantastically good idea.  The client was most delighted of all, particularly with himself, when he announced “that’s a great idea, and what’s even better is I won’t have to pay for it because it only took a couple of minutes to come up with”.

Absolutely. A couple of minutes, two dozen moleskine and twenty year’s experience.