Clutch came over this afternoon for a couple of whiskies and to play musical join the dots - a game in which I play a song from my collection, then he plays another from his that is connected in some way (the rules are a bit vague). Bobbie was upstairs with the laptop watching something and generally keeping out of the whole thing.

I only had two drinks over a five hour period, and we ate rather a lot of pizza, so I was absolutely fine to drive him home afterwards, which I did.

Like a ninja
I came back inside, threw my keys on the kitchen bench, and sat down at the computer downstairs, where I browsed and emailed for about an hour. My phone buzzed with a missed call from home, and I figured it was playing up again.

A minute later, Bobbie came down the stairs and said “Oh my God - when did you get home?!” I told her I’d been here for about an hour.

“I didn’t hear you come in - I’ve been really worried. I called Clutch to ask where you were. You’d better call him back and let him know you’re okay.

No relation
Clutch is on my phone by his real name - Anthony Cowie. So I quickly typed C-O-W into my phone and hit the dial button.

ANDREW Cowie was in the bath. It was not the first time I’d called him by mistake. Always lovely to talk to him, but it wasn’t who I’d intended to dial. We chatted briefly, and he asked how my pizza had been and whether I was enjoying my couple of days of relaxation (he had clearly been checking Facebook recently).

I left him to it, and then called the other Cowie in my phone. There were sounds of High Street traffic in the background when Clutch answered.

“I’m home - have been for some time,” I said.

“I’m wandering the streets of Kings Heath looking for a smoking wreck. Glad you’re okay.”

The reason I’d dropped him home, of course, was because it’s so freaking cold out there. I didn’t want him wandering around when I could get him home safe and warm. And now he was out there in it, looking for whatever was left to be found of me. Nice one.

All points bulletin
I returned to my email, and it wasn’t long before I received a text from Clutch. His wife Collette is a nurse - and she was about to ring around all of her Admissions friends at the various Birmingham Hospitals to see if I’d been brought in.

So - apologies all around for my inadvertent stealth (and my communications failures)… but it’s nice to know that friends are looking out for me - or if they’re not aware of any potential peril, they are at least aware of my junk food intake and happy to interrupt their relaxing baths to discuss my wellbeing.

Sorry to cause worry.

If you’ve ever had anything to do with me at all, you’ll know that I have a number of websites and projects in various stages of development.

Some of those projects are taking up more of my attention because they’re more immediately successful, and others need more energy and attention than I have to spare.

I’m looking for a bright and enthusiastic individual who will work with me to develop a portfolio of projects into strong brands and viable business ventures.

Because they are currently only pet projects, and not yet going concerns as businesses, I am currently unable to offer payment for this work - but what I can offer the right new member of ‘Team Dubber’ is a range of experience across a variety of projects, connections with interesting people, reference opportunities and the chance to help develop some interesting new media enterprises.

In other words - this is developmental work - and the success of that development will largely dictate the nature and size of the financial reward for the person involved. Ideally, that person will be based in Birmingham, though this is not an absolute essential.

It’s home working, working with me, working via Skype… full time, but largely unsupervised and with flexible hours. Targets and tasks, rather than hours and schedules.

The gig offers experience, connections, references and some really interesting work. The intention is that it develops over time into a paid position, and this would be contingent on the success of the individual projects that the intern is working on.

The demands are pretty high: exceptional written and spoken English will be a must, good computer skills, an entrepreneurial streak and an ambition to develop a portfolio of strong online media brands. A knowledge of the education sector, the music industry, the radio business and online culture would be welcomed, but not essential.

I have an administrator and I have technical support. These are not what I’m looking for. This is more about day to day project management.

I’m particularly looking for a recent graduate - preferably from the marketing, business or public relations fields, but the right person is simply someone friendly and efficient who I can work with personally and who is, above all, committed, reliable and interested enough to make this work.

If it sounds like your kind of thing (or you know someone who fits the bill), send a CV as a PDF file and a short (300 word) expression of interest to this email address.

Contacting me about it in some other way or in some other form will serve as evidence of an inability to follow instructions - and that won’t help.

I blogged here a couple of days ago that I’ve started a blog for the book I’m writing. I chose the name ‘Now We Are Different’ and added it to the list of blogs I’m running at Wordpress.com.

These are not the blogs that I host myself, just those scrap-booky ones where I throw stuff for temporary projects or things that just have no budget attached to them whatsoever.

But I wasn’t delighted at having the overly long domain http://nowwearedifferent.wordpress.com - which is what you end up with when you have a free account.

But there’s a new thing: domain mapping.

For the about £5 (the cost of the domain again) you can set up domain mapping on a Wordpress.com blog (once you have that name registered of course). So now, without the usual expense of getting hosting sorted out, I can have http://nowwearedifferent.com. And I do.

Quite pleased with that. Now I just need a decent banner - and some content.

Phase two of the I So Wish website is now complete. I had the idea and Stef made the site in a day (as he explains here). Then I wrote an e-book in a day and we put it up for sale on the site.

Writing the e-book was an interesting process. It’s the fastest writing exercise I’ve ever been engaged in: over 10,000 words in a single day - and my criteria was pretty tough: I decided that it had to be something that I was happy to put my name to - rather than some cynical ‘put your faith in the universe’ kind of mystical rubbish. That approach would have been easier, though probably would have descended quite quickly into merciless parody.

The book is equal parts your standard goal-setting workshop and project management - but applied to personal rather than business management ends. The blurb on the landing page explains it pretty well.

Obviously, all my wishes haven’t come true. I’m not wealthy and nor do I have a comprehensive classic jazz vinyl collection or an amazing array of rare single malts. But I have lots of other good stuff in my life, and I’m working on those last few. They seem like they might be achievable things to attain over the course of my life.

And, of course, setting up the website, writing a book and making it available for sale is one of the strategies towards making those wishes come true. Simple, practical steps. I could close my eyes and cross my fingers, but that doesn’t seem like it’ll be quite as effective.

Go have a look at what we did - I think it’s kind of cool that it’s come together so quickly.

Here’s the wishing site… and here’s the ebook.