NORTHERN PLANNER

..and Koln (Cologne). Since it was a stag do, pictures of individuals have been left out for obvious reasons.

Lost in translation….

..no explanation necessary.

Koln cathedral.

Handmade hat shop. Possibly where JamesB gets his jaunty headgear.

Koln cuisine. Roasted ham shank with sauerkraut.

Didn’t last long.

Christmas market. The smell of Gluewhein and fried cake was everywhere.

This was on the floor of the train station it’s hard to see it here, but it’s a moving image projected from the ceiling. I think a country’s advertising says a lot about it’s collective identity. Most of the posters were informational, but quite a few were humorous. Unlike the arch humour and subtle irony of much of British advertising, there was a straightforward honesty that I liked.

I love Germany, espescially the people. We had a look at the main drinking spots in Dusseldorf, you can tell a lot about a culture from the way they drink. People were very, very drunk (including us to be honest), they like their beer. Unlike my homeland, no one got aggressive, we never felt any need to avoid making eye contact or anything like that, they just seemed to get jollier. We were allowed to drink outside and mill around, which you’d never see in my country – the police and the doormen would all over you quicker than you can say ‘split lip’.

As I’ve been thinking about the behaviour or the pack recently, it’s no coincidence that I like the new Carling ad tapping into the tribal feeling of going out on the town- or safety in numbers.

I remember New years Eve in Hamburg, at the mercy of the sheer number of people in the town centre, and the amazing excitement at the countdown to midnight. I’m old enough to have watched Leeds United matches standing up, being buffeted by the ripple from one person three rows down gesticulating at a missed penalty, the tribal power of the endless chants. It’s raw, primal, primitive and instinctive. The couples in the corners of a nightclub all over each other, the queer silence of the masses doing a marathon, or the hot breath of a queue at the bar ten deep – the need to watch sport in a bar with mates instead of on your own at home.

We may think we’re individuals, but we’re all part some group somehow, it’s in our nature, it’s what’s kept Homo Sapiens alive and allowed them to evolve- it’s the inescapable march of humanity.

The swimming quest is going quite well. Apart from getting faster and stronger, I’m rediscovering the joy of doing something really well.

Years ago, I got to stay with a girlfriend who was working on a kids’ holiday camp in France. It was free in exchange for food and board.  There was one boy who wanted to do a proper overarm tennis serve, but try as he might it wouldn’t come. It wasn’t until the last day that he hit a pretty good delivery into the ad court and positively beamed with joy.

I’ve seen that look elsewhere. It’s on Ronaldinho at his best, a creative team doing a late one, Federer hitting a sublime passing shot, Mrs Hovells creating her signature lasagne or my nephew whipping me at ‘Backwords’. It’s on countless toddlers faces taking there first steps. When your good at something, there doesn’t have to be a point to it, just the exquisite pleasure of making something great.

According to The Guardian

JamesB reckons I’ve been a bit quiet lately. It’s partly do with final pitch on Wednesday, but mostly to do with organising the stag do in Dusselforf I’ve just returned from. I do not feel too clever.

More on that later. By the way, it seems that good cars go to heaven..

I heard a debate on Radio 4 this morning about altruism V selfishness. The question they wanted to answer was; if you acccept Darwinism as the survival of the fittest (I like Tennyson’s description of nature as, "Red in tooth and claw") that should also mean that only the selfish survive. So how can you account for the natural levels of sympathy/empathy we all have within ourselves? In other words, humans are too nice for Darwinism.

One train of thought suggests that we only got kind once we didn’t have to worry about surviving – you only care about other people once you stop having to worry about yourself. I think there is some merit in that, a kind of ‘Lord of the Flies’ in reverse. The weakness of this for me is that emotions are inate in all of us, we all have the capacity for empathy, so biologically where did it come from? Enter Richard Dawkins.

He suggests that altruism is just a more (you guessed it) evoloved  form of selfishness -survival of the fittest groups. By helping each other, you make sure that your tribe, your group, your culture survives over another. If you consider emotions as a genetic mutation that just happened at some point in our evolution, groups that could work together others that were at war from within –  too emotionally stunted to be able to work together. And so it goes, altruism has lasted as a biological part of us because it helps us survive.

The need to belong is as much a part of us as the ability to walk upright……. doesn’t this explain a lot about our need for social badges that make us feel part of something?

While were on the subject, they now think that human genes are more diverse than we thought – more than other species. Maybe the reason we have evolved so quickly is our diversity. Interesting in the context of organisations that insist on conformity.

It explains a lot about our need to belong, and the role for brands as a badge for a tribe.

..hope he’s not trying to tell me something.

As part of my pledges on Let’s See What Happens, organised by the irrepressible Mr Paul Colman, I’m in training to swim 100 meters in 1 minute, something I haven’t done since I was fourteen. Not easy as this picture after training shows….

To make it less ego driven and self serving, I’ve decided to try and raise some sponsorship money for ChildLine.

Martin and Simon at work have been kind enough to do this poster for me to put around companies we know:

I’m also writing this blog about how it’s going. I won’t lie, fitting in the training, work and general life is very tiring. Since it’s making me more absent minded than usual, I thought I’d blog about that. There’s only one post so far, but that’s going to change as of tomorrow. Since I’m struggling to fit in everything, another blog seems like a lapse of judgment but there you go…

If anyone fancies sponsoring me, you can pledge in the comments on the blog. If you’d rather just laugh at me, that’s fine too.

I’m supposed to be curbing putting things off, yet I found myself in Durham sorting an emergency passport. With four hours to kill while they processed it I wandered around the shops.

I stopped in M&S to try on some Autograph for Men clothes. The ads say Bryan Ferry wears them (he doesn’t, his clothes are handmade by supermodels wearing Agent Provocateur),so maybe some of his cool would rub off on me? No way, like all M&S clothes, they made me look like my Dad. The womens’s stuff looked better (I didn’t try them on incidentally), but the store still has that sterile feel I remember from childhood, with bored men waiting for women  to try on clothes they’ll take back anyway.

Next up was Woolworths, were I found this crime against my childhood. Some things should be left as they are, Star Wars is one of them.

Then it was Waitrose (bear mind they haven’t many stores up North and I haven’t been in one for years)…Wow! Imagine a grubby little Northern urchin, chimney soot on his cheeks,  let loose in a sweet shop and that will give you a good idea of my visit. The packaging! The layout! The presentation!

Retail will be about experience more and more in future. Waitrsose shows how far packaging and presentation can go to create this. Imagine being so confident in your food that the packging gets out of it’s way. Imagine making the palatte flip flop with the way you write the name. Thank God they’re not in Leeds, I’d be bankrupt within a month.