May 2014

What a double-glazing salesman can teach you about marketing. Yes, really.

StormDo you remember the big storm in the UK last Christmas? I’ll never forget it, because the whole front of my house leaked.

I was working in my home office, when I heard the dreaded drip-drip-drip. Pushed by gale-force winds, the rain was seeping under the windowsill and landing on the power adapter for my iMac. Then I checked the front bedroom next door. Oh no! That windowsill was leaking too. I went downstairs to watch TV. Argh!!! So much rain was coming in that water was running down the walls from upstairs.

Clearly, the windows needed replacing.

I soon discovered that everything I’d heard about double-glazing salesmen is true.

(more…)

By Jackie Barrie, ago

The day my finger bled green

CoralI was scuba diving in the Maldives. We finned down to look over a coral overhang to see if we could spot any sharks.

Note that you don’t want to touch coral if you can help it, because you can easily kill it. However, there are a lot of currents in the Maldives, especially when the depth changes abruptly from shallow to deep. So – to avoid floating away – I swam to the edge and held gently on to a piece of coral with my thumb and fingertip. Trouble is, I held on to a surprisingly sharp bit, and cut my finger on it. Either that, or an unseen creature was living under the bit of coral I held, and it nipped me.

(more…)

By Jackie Barrie, ago
Skip to content