Given this state of affairs, I am slightly segregated from my client. I am not “one of them”, which has its benefits and its drawbacks. But given what I’m doing, all in all I think it’s a good thing. Doubtless the benefits of me being able to work out of hours more than outweigh the inconveniences that the segregation brings about.

A member of the client organisation recently commented that I could never be an employee there. When I asked as to why, she said that I was way too informal in my email communication.

I disagreed.

For me, just as with face-to-face communication, there is time for formality and time for informality. And that is not purely dependent on the audience. Just as with talking to people, there are times when you’ll be formal with your friends; and less formal with your colleagues.

The key is to gear your communication style to your audience and subject matter. And to be a bit bold in pushing against formality.

I recently presented to 20-or-so people, the majority of whom I’d never met. I gave an overview of a system, and talked of it “squirting out documents at the other end”. The lady mentioned above was horrified when she saw the deck. But the audience liked the informality. I was talking about an IT system in words that a child might use, stripping away any sense of complexity, focusing purely on the business need that these people had.

If I’d said “printing” or “producing”, the level of engagement in the session might have been less. And if one or two of the audience remembered the use of the word “squirting” half an hour after the session had ended, then it served its purpose.

And I do the same in email. When asked by email today whether something was ready to go live, my response: “You betcha. ” Formalists will argue that this isn’t sufficiently legally binding to sign off upon a requirement, nor is it appropriate for the working environment. I say “tosh”. If any member of your staff tries to argue that the above statement isn’t a ringing endorsement for go-live suitability, then you’re probably best getting rid of them.

You see, one of the reasons few people read their emails is that in the main they’re dull. My hope is that by adding some lightheartedness to otherwise mundane emails, I might at best get someone to read something they otherwise wouldn’t; and at worst I might have brightened someone’s day a smidgeon.

But in reality, I simply hope that people enjoy reading my emails.

I bet that my client organisation hasn’t written any guidelines dictating the manner in which emails should be written. Yes, they will have guidelines about whether email should be used for personal reasons. But I expect there will be nothing about the manner in which “formal” communications are written. Yet people settle into a routine. They follow the lead of their colleagues when they join the organisation.

I hope that by adding some spice, some zest, the odd smiley and a sprinkle of cheeky words, I add a little fun and enjoyment to the workplace.

Over the previous seven months, my car usage had become sufficient to suggest that Streetcar, or Zipcar as it recently became, was no longerthe most economically valuable solution. My four-times weekly 35-mile each way commute was arguably viable when the 500-mile fair use mileage was in place under Streetcar. But when this was lowered to 200 miles under Zipcar’s charging model, the financials changed.

And tax rules mean that once you’ve commuted to the same location for a certain length of time, it is no longer allowed for that travel to be put through the company. That time limit was hit in October.

These factors meant that car ownership was the most sensible option. So I started the search.

I wanted to spend four figures. My wife is more comfortable with an automatic. The car needed to be sufficiently sizeable to cater for the family of three. And it needed to be relatively fuel efficient, both for the environment and for my wallet.

The default choice was the second-hand market. And the default choice therein was Auto Trader. (I didn’t even consider going directly to a dealer.)

I did my research. I looked for cars that interested me, and refined the options over the course of a few weeks. At first, I was looking at bigger cars: the Nissan Qashqai and the Kia Cee’d SW. But then I realised that apart from legroom, we don’t have huge space requirements. So the options moved to the dull yet solid Ford Focus, the Citroën C3, the Fiat Grande Punto and the pricier Audi A3. A late entrant on the list was the Mazda 3.

Most of my research was done online. Although I also took some advice from friends old and new, including Pete Chivers, an old friend from school.

Having done the research and identified some options, and after a thoroughly enjoyable game of golf last Friday, I popped in to see a semi-private dealer near Croydon about a Mazda 3. It ticked all of the boxes and seemed a good deal. I didn’t have time for a test drive, but my initial viewing of the car was positive. I caught the train down to Purley the following day and after a short test-drive, I drove away with having bought the car.

And so far so good.

First, the dealer: On Four Wheels. Not a dealer in the traditional negative sense. A truly positive experience. Not pushy, just seemingly genuine. I wouldn’t hesitate in advising people to go straight to him if you’re looking for a user car.

And the car itself? It’s great. It’s not going to pull away from you at speed when the lights change. But it’s safe, solid, roomy and pleasant to drive. And it’s ours. And my daughter’s happy because it’s purple (more blue than purple, but she’s convinced) and she has a new car seat furnishing the back seat.

As for the financial comparison with Zipcar, time will tell. But I’m estimating that once all of the ad hoc costs of a car are factored in (petrol included), I’ll be saving a sliver over £100 per week against their increased pricing model, not taking into account the cost of the car itself.

But for most skills that I don’t possess, I comprehend them. My brother, for example, has spent a good few hours more than I have carelessly sketching in notepads, and his artistic skills reflect this. He is a fabulous artist. My wife is a phenomenal influencer, and can use her interpersonal skills to secure the right outcome in the workplace.

I know coders that can put together sublime websites in a heartbeat; and technicians that can support those websites without you knowing they’re there. (They’re the best types, btw.)

These skills I get. I understand that practice makes perfect, and that you can hone these skills over time.

But there are some skills that I just don’t get. One in particular is photography.

Anyone can take photographs. Here’s my daughter’s first Flickr set, for example. But few can take phenomenal photographs. Even fewer can do this consistently. And yet fewer can do this even when faced with what might seem like mundane subject matter.

Paul Clarke is one of those people. Over and over, he brings subject matters to life, complements a photo’s subject with a violent sky or a beautifully-lit street. And I have no idea how.

Sometimes, naively, I think that maybe he’s blessed with skies and lighting that are unavailable to the likes of me. At other times, I think that he reels off furlongs of proverbial film to get to the shot of choice.

While point two no doubt has an element of truth, the primary reasons for the skill are training and experience—just as is the case with the vast majority of skills.

But the immediacy of photography to me makes the skill stand out far more than other skills. Modesty aside for one second, I can rock a spreadsheet. And give me a document to proofread and I’ll guarantee that the result will be stellar. But both of those activities allow me to play, review, delete, undo, redo before giving you the output. Photography doesn’t appear to allow that luxury. And that is perhaps what I admire the most.

Here are just a few of my favourites.

I will be the first to admit that I didn’t make a particularly good consultant. I’m not talking medical consultant. I’m talking management consultant.

You see, while most large consultancies will likely have a “value” that focuses on the client, successful delivery, exceeding client expectations or some similar strapline that sits nicely on a poster, they also have other “values”. Now these other values may not be well advertised, or even publicised, but they’re there. And they are all about bringing the knowledge that you’ve garnered at the client site back to the proverbial mother ship—thought leadership, if you will. And maximising the value of each assignment—cross-selling, if you will.

And I was rubbish at these aspects. As a consultant, I focused relentlessly on making a project successful, delivering the scope, delivering beyond the scope, and generally trying to make the client happy. But I was rubbish at the thought leadership. I had little time for the consultancy-only team meetings. And I was the worst cross-seller in the business. (As someone once said of me, I’d be rubbish as a salesman—I’m too honest.)

Why? Because these aspects of the job got in the way of the client-focused delivery. If you are 100% committed to the success of a project, then arguably having targets to sell more of your own people into the project doesn’t align with this commitment. And taking a few hours a week to feed everything back to the consultancy is time that might be better spent in project delivery mode.

Consultancies have their place. They’re just not for me, that’s all.

For those that don’t know what it is, or would prefer not to watch, it’s two minutes and 26 seconds of a woman’s tirade against foreigners in my Britain, on “my tram”. (Likely most of the targets were as British as the woman, albeit a much greater asset to the country.) The footage is made up of wall-to-wall expletives and racist abuse, throughout which a small child sits on her lap. The child doesn’t flinch at the tirade, suggesting that perhaps he’s used to both the tone and the content of the woman’s rant. (That, to me, is the most troubling aspect of the video.)

Racism is rife in the UK. Whether or not John Terry racially abused Anton Ferdinand on 23 October remains to be seen. (For what it’s worth having seen the footage, my view is that he didn’t.) But the subsequent chants of hordes of Chelsea fans were undoubtedly filled with racial hatred.

Some time ago, a colleague of my dad’s, while I joined them for a beer, was less vociferous yet similarly derogatory about Korean people in Croydon. I gave my apologies and left; my dad followed suit.

Usually the racism is confined to situations in which there are no people of ethnic background to offend. After all, racism amongst a bunch of white people can cause no offence, right? But on occasions, likely more frequent than many would like to admit, overt racial abuse is aimed at the targets themselves, as was the case in the video.

With a mixed-race daughter, I am probably more conscious than the average person about racial prejudice. I will always be making sure that she is aware of and proud of her heritage. And I will always strive to pick up on prejudice and either avoid it or stop it.

She will suffer racism in her life, without a doubt. But my role is to ensure that she knows that any such behaviour, abusive, active or passive, is not a reflection on her, but a reflection on the person dishing it out. She needs to be fully aware of racism, while at the same time I need to strive to protect her from it. That is my job.

The woman on the tram has merely served to increase further my awareness of just how close we are to such vociferous and toxic views.

There are few challenges that cannot be surmounted with the aid of a dark chocolate Hob Nob.

I corrected him, suggesting that HobNob was one word, camel case. My source: Wikipedia. (Topical.) Discussion ensued, and I think it was settled that that the current standard is actually Hobnob—one word, no camel-casing.

The reason for the confusion was that the McVitie’s branding is inconsistent. It seems that it’s changed over the years, switching from HobNob to Hobnob. The current standard is certainly Hobnob.

As such, I’ve spent part of my Friday evening updating the Hobnob Wikipedia page to reflect the revised branding.

FML.

If you’re unsure whether to use affect or effect (or indeed effect), then it’s easy to find out on the internet. Is it yours or your’s? (Ouch, that hurt.) Again, the internet is your friend. Google will tell you.

But the issue is twofold. People don’t know what needs checking. And even if they did, many wouldn’t have the wherewithal to check it.

One day, proofreading will become a true commodity. Upload a document and download it in perfect English. (If the document itself is a crock of shit, this attribute will remain.) In the meantime, you know where I am.

In early November 2011, my friend Jimmy embarked on the same trek. Day 2 blessed him with better weather than I experienced. And here is the photo he took.

All very lovely. What amazes me is something that probably shouldn’t be overly amazing. Take a look immediately to my left in the photo. There is a big rock, with a chamfered top, with a smooth plane on the top right, a dark area to its left, possibly because of shadow, possibly because of different colouring of the rock.

Now look at Jimmy’s picture. You can see that very same rock close to the left edge of his photo. Every aspect of that rock is identical.

Let’s take a closer look. Here’s me with the rock, followed by Jimmy’s rock.

First of all, it’s important that you get past my devastatingly handsome, windswept look. While my crude copy of Jimmy’s picture is grainy, the detail behind the comparison astounds me. Every aspect of the rock is identical, down to the vein traversing the front, right plane.

I expect that the rock weighs a tonne and more. That the rock has stood there for eleven years, untouched and hardly weathered shouldn’t be a surprise. (The same is true of the stones and marble that make up the facade of the Bank of England, for example.) Yet surprise me it does. Since my photo was taken, I’ve lived over a quarter of my life. Our daughter has lived her entire life to date.

I guess its seeming lack of order, seemingly randomly strewn in a bed of similar rocks on a gradient, suggests that it is subject to movement. Yet move it hasn’t. It remains firmly in place, defiant against gravity and the harsh weather. (There’s a similarly distinctive rock with a right-angled shadow towards the fore of the photo, with four spots of colour, all of which also remain in place.)

I wonder how long it’s been there. And I wonder how long it will be before it topples. Maybe I’ll take my daughter to visit it when she’s older, another eleven years from now. Just to see how it’s getting on.

Its par is a meagre 31 (five par threes; four par fours), but it’s good to get out there and if you walk directly from tee to flag, it constitutes a 4,3km walk. I suspect I always walk somewhat further than the advertised yardage.

And I’m glad I chose that course of action for the day. The ground was beautifully damp, and despite it being mid-November, it was somewhere between t-shirt and jumper weather. The air was loaded with moisture but not a drop fell.

The first round started in unspectacular fashion. A bogey on the par three opener, followed by two double bogeys and two triples on the four par fours. But I crowned the first half off with three bogeys and a solitary par on the four consecutive par threes.

So out in 45. Fine indeed.

Back to the first and off we go again. Another bogey on one followed by a triple bogey. But then things improved. The four par fours were made up of a five, two sixes and a seven. But again, the closing par threes were my saviour. This time, two pars and two bogeys. Home in a miraculous 42.

Eighty-seven for the round. And although par is only 62, this is from a player that has never cracked 100.

Based on a handicap of 28, it constituted a heady Stableford score of 39.

Happy days indeed.

Since #Streetcar became #Zipcar, we haven’t spoken once. Not for lack of trying on my part. Time to buy a car, I think.

Today I received a call from Zipcar asking about my happiness, specifically in light of my tweet. Here’s my beef.

Since the switch, the crux of which was in early October, I’ve called Zipcar three times. Once to report some damage and to notify the team that the damage log book was missing from the car. Another time I reported that the previous occupant had left a rolled-up sleeping bag in the boot. And the third, I asked how much it would cost to extend my five-weekday booking over the weekend.

Each time, as directed, I left a message rather than speaking to a person. Each time, I asked for a reciprocal call, either to confirm receipt of the information or to provide me with further essential information. And each time, no call was forthcoming.

I understand that during the switch-over, Zipcar’s phones will have been busy. Yet the above tweet yielded a response within 24 hours. And a similar negative tweet from a few weeks ago yielded an emailed response within a similar time.

And not wanting to elevate my own sense of importance, I expect that my individual investment in Zipcar is comfortably within the top 1% of its customers.

The callback today was useful. As well as receiving an answer to my questions, I found out—only at my asking—that Zipcar had mistakenly overcharged me by £129 a few weeks ago, charging me the upgrade price for both car and fuel when the upgrade had been forced upon me.

The customer communication didn’t work. But once the grievance had become public, it gained some traction. While this might be a good advert for social media, it certainly isn’t a good advert for solid customer service.

The cost of my using Zipcar has increased recently. To the extent that it may be time to invest in a car. But for the time being, I continue to use Zipcar, and I only hope that their level of customer service increases.