I've not worked as an advertising copywriter since June 2013. I'm rather relieved about this. A recent Twitter post about difficult clients reminded me why, so I dredged this out of my 'drafts' folder. It's a piece I wrote in March 2008 to try and illustrate why the traditional client/agency relationship in advertising was (and... Continue Reading →
241 years ago today, John Harrison, one of Britain's finest clockmakers died. He left behind designs for a clock that makes the accuracy of that quartz watch on your wrist look pretty average. Chances are, your quartz will be be reasonably sharp. Probably just +/- 15 seconds a month. Not shabby, given the low price of a... Continue Reading →
Today will pass in most people's diaries with never a thought for the man behind so many elements of the watch on their wrist. Abraham Louis Breguet was born 270 years ago today in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Automatic winding, tourbillons, gong-repeaters, more accurate escapements, better hairsprings, shock-absorbing escapements, lubrication-free escapements... Breguet was responsible for either inventing or... Continue Reading →
How a rare, early Heuer 2447S turned up in a regional UK electrical goods auction.
There weren't many better places to enjoy clear, blue sky and things with engines than Brooklands last Saturday. It must have been a study for the English country idyll in 1906 when Hugh Locke King (the chap who owned most of Weybridge) decided to build the world's first motor racing track on his fields and woods. All the... Continue Reading →
Fancy owning a little piece of horological history? Well, you could head over to Geneva’s Patek Philippe Museum museum with your jemmy, a striped shirt and a ‘swag’ bag and quietly remove their Rieussec Seconds Chronograph. Feeling even braver? How about the earliest chronograph yet discovered? The Louis Moinet, in St. Blaise in Switzerland? Sadly,... Continue Reading →
December 18th. Nick Whitelock sat at his desk by the window and looked out as the cold, winter rain tracked its way down the pane. “Sleet, more like.” he thought to himself. He was, as usual, the last one in the office. The rest of them would be in the Arms by now, backs to... Continue Reading →
In need of bacon, as one often is on a Sunday morning, I nipped into the Bampton shop just before the village remembrance parade. A young lad, about thirteen I'd guess, walked in and moved, a little hesitantly, towards a spot just in front of me in the queue. The usual uniform. Trainers. Trackie bottoms. Hoodie.... Continue Reading →
Most councils use conflict-based ‘traffic calming’ schemes as speed reduction measures and to discourage drivers from using certain roads. They call roads like these - the roads people use to get to work, to go shopping and home to their families - ‘rat runs’. In my own village in West Oxfordshire we have had ‘calming’ imposed on each... Continue Reading →
There's been a lot of fuss in Oxford lately about Oxfordshire County Council taking £4m in bus gate fines. Even the RAC has waded in to suggest that the system of fining drivers is 'broken'. The fines are an issue, but the bigger issue is the ideology that drives so much transport policy. "After all,"... Continue Reading →
MMC Musings 