Author: philjackman

About six weeks before Christmas, ask your children for a list of things they may want as a gift. Wait a month for the list not to arrive. Then spend a lot of money on fuel driving to the shops and back. And spend hours of your life driving round to find a suitable parking … Continue reading The Christmas recycle

Man’s best friend is set to become even more useful as scientists have made a major breakthrough in helping them to drive vehicles through the development and introduction of the new ScentNavTM. “Getting dogs to drive has always been difficult.” said Doctor Bob Whyman, Head of Canine Automotive Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.  “Apart from … Continue reading Dogs will soon be driving

I am alive.  I am a hydrocarbon life form filled with atoms and compounds forged in the catastrophic explosions of supernovae millions and millions of miles away in space and time.  I have been around for billions of years now, slowly changing and transforming through repeated replication and reproduction.  I am filled with the ooze … Continue reading I am alive

This morning I attended one of the regular Institute of Customer Service  forum events which are always something to look forward to.  This time it was at Gentoo, the social housing and so much more not for profit organisation, based in Sunderland. The subject was ‘The Business Impact of Complaints’ and lead to discussions on … Continue reading A complaints procedure

Close your eyes and think of a Lego brick, any brick.  What colour is it?  What size and shape is it?  For me it is a red four by two, not a green one or a yellow one or a blue one, not a three by two, or a two by two or an eight … Continue reading Think of a Lego brick

It is not a journey that I would normally take at five miles an hour, a jogging pace but that is what happened to me on my way home this Wednesday, the first day of any real snow this winter. On an ordinary day my commute might have taken me between fifty minutes and an … Continue reading UK Snow

This is the year that we were going to buy a new tree, something to replace the one we have had for years and which sheds its fake leaves every time we put it up and take it down but here I am slotting the branches into the coloured slots on the tinsel covered trunk.  … Continue reading Time for the decorations

It would come and go but today he could feel it, a dull ache that started in his lower back and crept through to his groin.  It was a pain that he’d known for a long time.  It was like a colleague at work that he’d passed by many times in the corridor without getting … Continue reading Pain

You need to look after your heart, that piece of muscle that keeps the life force coursing through your arteries and veins and capillaries.  Without that comforting thump in your chest, without that pulse in your wrist or that green blip on the electrocardiograph you are not going to last long at all, perhaps just … Continue reading Look after your heart

When Hugh Sykes speaks to me I am usually in my car, driving home after a day at work and listening to the radio.   He brings his reports from far off and exotic sounding places, usually across the Middle East and when he speaks to me I am transported there.  I am taken to places … Continue reading When Hugh Sykes speaks