I am not good at being ill

It makes me very grumpy.  I feel like my body is failing me and that if it tried harder it would be fine.

Unfortunately after having severe difficulty physically getting out of bed this morning (and not for the usual reasons) I rang NHS Direct.

A nurse, who rang back to ask a lot of questions, tells me that it sounds like I have twinged my sciatic nerve.  I make it at least three times this morning.

The result is burning pain in the lower back and tops of legs, leading to a collapse onto the floor and writhing (if writhing is possible in a ginger manner) to try and find a position that eases the pain.  Then 5 minutes of trying to work out how to get up without incurring another spasm.

I am now ensconced in a sensible upright chair at the table where I intend to stay forever.  I’m even too scared to stand up and go into the kitchen to make breakfast in case it hastens another ‘attaque’.

Nursey says not to trouble the GP as there’s nothing they can do and to self medicate with rest paracetemol and ibuprofen.  She also says I should feel much better tomorrow.

I’m even grumpier because this is the second week of my new job.  (And sadly working from here is not an option because there is no remote access unless you have a specially installed additional phone line.)

I am never doubting my grandma’s need to carry a stick again (she carries one in case of sciatica but practically needs it).

Stiletto Sprint & Odd Shoes

With thanks first of all to Gemma for this:

Stiletto Sprint

Watch the video on the BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7593509.stm

In other news, I wish I had worn matching shoes to work today.  I didn’t notice until I was on the train.  How did I manage to walk to the station?

Internal Marketing Myth

Frustration Board Game

I am raising the profile of something that was buried in a comment on another post because it’s topical again…  at least for me…

And also because I am looking to be challenged.  Come on, stretch my thinking…

Chris May asked:

Anyway, I was curious about this:

“Since arriving at my current institution I’ve noticed a queue of people coming to me for internal ‘marketing’ advice. They of course mean, and need, nothing of the sort – but it takes a while to persuade them of that.”

Do they all mean (and need) the same kind of thing? If so, what is it? And what causes them to come (mistakenly) to you looking for it?

I replied:

Of course not everybody means exactly the same thing, but the pattern is broadly that:

individuals or teams who provide a service to the rest of, or other members of, the organisation, want help in getting more take-up of their service individuals or teams with a bad reputation want to be thought better of within the institution

They are not mistaken in coming to talk to me – because a lot of the time I can help them achieve their objectives through advising them on how to communicate in a targetted and effective way.

But they are mistaken in thinking that having an internal logo or creating 10,000 posters to spread all over campus is going to be the solution to their problems.

When people arrive requesting support with “marketing” I know two things: firstly, they haven’t thought through precisely what they want to achieve, and secondly, they have not thought about who to target their communications at or what the best way to reach these people is.

And I’m not pretending that the processes that I go through with them are clever, but they do make them stop and think, and what we come up with is more likely to achieve their ends than a mass broadcast or advert-style communication.

Rather, they usually make them stop an think….

But there will always be some people who think that the way to get people to attend their idiosyncratic training course for researchers in particle physics is to send all-staff emails out every week for four weeks with their seminar logo attached!

Bearing in mind the strength of my feelings on the topic I am rather proud of the restraint shown in today’s carefully crafted email:

Sorry, I don’t know of anyone of specialises in the marketing of INSERT INTERNAL FUNCTION – I’m not really aware of it as a discipline, but, as my background is in internal communications in various organisations, I have worked with internally facing functions such as HR and IT.  In my experience such functions often have a hard time getting their messages across to internal audiences – but it is vitally important to work through what you want to achieve and then work out the best way to do it.  Otherwise it can be wasted money and effort (not to mention the air-traffic control point that I mentioned last time we emailed about this).

Can I suggest that we take a step back and get together to work through what you want to achieve?

In fact, it might be an idea to run a couple of hours of workshop – perhaps with all of HRD?  I have a number of tools that we could work through including this: http://www.smartchart.org/

What do you think?

SmartChart, by the way, is a work of genius – and thanks to Laura Dewis for pointing it out.

As Your Fellow Passenger…

As your fellow passenger, I encourage you to — from time to time and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic. If you’re unconvinced by my particular train and bus rules, tell me so. But allow me to convince you. And I will promise you, right here and now, no activity will ever be taboo… except that just observed. The price you pay for talking too loudly, either to someone else or on the phone, or playing loud music or films, with or without headphones, is, I collect your fucking head. Just like this fucker here. Now if any of you sonsabitches got anything else to say, now’s the fucking time.

In my fantasies I travel with a Hattori Hanzō samurai sword so that I can pad deftly down the train carriage and summarily behead people who are annoying me.

There is an unwritten rule amongst long-term regular train commuters – silence is observed.

January Commuting (Or Lack Of)

Writing about: http://nationalrail.co.uk/service_bulletins/2fbb279e0a04000200df9a4c7e1c3e28.html

As a non-driver, today I am effectively stranded at home for the second day this week. Yesterday I worked from home and spent the day ridden with guilt at my self-perceived lack of productivity. Clearly going to have to work on that…

Today I have taken ther easier option and am taking the day off and trying hard to resist the urge to check my work email. Easier said than done especially now I’m online – I should go and work on reducing the post-xmas laundry pile instead.

The other option is hitchhiking in the snow (which admittedly has not yet started but is due to start within 2 hours).

National Rail are promising that everything will be back to normal by 05:00 tomorrow, we’ll see!

I remember the lovely Peter Wagstaff teaching us all about Paris being the transport hub of l’Hexagone and thinking how ridiculous it was to route everything through one single spot. Little did I know that we in the UK had made Rugby of all places our Achilles’ Heel.

Which reminds me, apparently there is a Bath reunion afoot. I’m feeling very wary and am unwilling to commit.

Steep Learning Curve

Writing about What it Feels Like to be Deaf

I will never learn.

I even did my ear candles on Sunday.  And they improved things.

And then I made it all worse again.

I’m hoping that a second bout of candles may clear the blockage – it’s making me disorientated and edgy.

Here, stolen from Wikipedia,  is the more appropriate Forgetting Curve:

where R is memory retention, S is the relative strength of memory, and t is time.  (more)

It also seems related to your risk aversion – i.e. if you’ve made yourself deaf fairly recently then you are cautious with your ears, if it’s a while since you last made yourself deaf then you take a more devil may care approach to aural hygiene.

…like jabbing yourself in the ear in an attempt to clear wax build up.

Stupid.

The Rifles at the SU Tonight

Follow-up to People Who Put CDs Back from Casey’s Blog

Very exciting!

The Rifles are playing the Union tonight.

When we saw them at the Colly they rocked. I would encourage you to go.

Unfortunately Himself doesn’t fancy it tonight….

Happiness is…

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/icast/

… not scenery chewing and misemphasising Hamlet.

Keep your eyes peeled for my debut online acting in next week’s edition of Warwick iCast.

I volunteered to help having been told that I would be reading excerpts from Hamlet – not attempting to act them…

Not for nothing was I, in order, in school productions:

• A sheep in the Nativity Story
• A star in Follow the Star
• Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol
• An orphan in Annie
• A pigeon (yes pigeon!) in Animal Farm: The Musical

A long and distinguished career of being hidden in the back row of the Chorus.

My natural place.

^{The picture, by the way, is the revered Sarah Bernhardt playing Hamlet at the turn of the century.}

Editing Warps Your Mind

Writing about web page http://www.langmaker.com/furbish.htm

You know that you’ve been editing copy for too long without a break when your brain thinks this:

when you read the word:

Refurbished

LMB Marketing Direct

Writing about web page http://forums.ntlhell.co.uk/lofiversion/index.php/t64212.html

LMB Marketing Direct are, if this link is to be believed, a bunch of pain in the arse cowboys.

This number (0800 064 0060) has been ringing me for days. And ever time I answer there is nothing but silence.

It is nuisance calling. And grossly unprofessional.

I would council no company to use them unless they want to be associated with such annoying and unprofessional antics.

Telephone based business generation activity

This
takes cold calling to a new level when they target you by auto-dialler
and then don’t even bother to speak to you to try and sell anything.