I twittered the following last night: 

Miramanga: Life is not who fucked up vs who DIDNT fuck up, but our boiler is broken = no hot water or heating and that is fucked up :( 

This morning British Gas responded - they must have been scanning for "boiler"

BritishGasFix: Hi there, if you're having problems with your boiler. Maybe we can help? Please give us a call on 0800 5244860 

Ever so impressed I Tweeted back

Miramanga: wow, what smart marketing! Love it! Someone is calling you now about our boiler, lets hope we can afford you! x 

And they replied,

BritishGasFix: Why thank you, we're glad we could be of help.

This was such an enjoyable experience of being marketed to - entirely novel, a lovely approach and a personal touch through Twitter. 10/10 British Gas!

People Who Work In Record Stores Think That They Are Better Than You

Is it wrong that I get so upset at silly thoughtless customer service complaints? Do I expect too much?

On queueing to pay at a record store I was picking up some additional purchases and looked up to hear a girl at the cash register bellow "WHO'S NEXT PLEASE?". The tone of her summons could only be described as aggressive and annoyed as if by wanting to spend cash with them I'd ruined her life....

On moving over to her till I did comment to the her that it seemed a funny, over the top way to address customers, but she didn't apologise and went on with putting my items through the till.

I was offended at the rudeness shown when I was spending a fair wedge with them - and I wondered what (if any) customer service training the staff had been given. They all looked fairly young. The thing is though - it is exactly this type of boorish service that helps give Retail Staff a bad name. Also, I'm afraid to say that it propagates the myth "Record Store Staff think that they are Better Than You."

How will this staff member cope at Christmas when the tills are three times as busy if she was this rattled on a Thursday afternoon and it was a queue of not more than 5 or 6 people?

Perhaps in times gone by, it behoved record emporiums to hire music specialists as they could advise on the music as consumers didn't have the wonderful resource of the Internet & needed someone standing by in store assisting with info. This is in the past however - the world looks very different now.

Surely in 2009 with all your competition closing down and the Internet aggressively eating at your market share it's time to start looking after customers and engaging their loyalty and appreciating them?

I was very disappointed that I made the decision to shop in store when I could have shopped on t'internet but instead opted to receive grudging and disrespectful treatment. Sales assistants have the power to make our days brighter or grimmer, and my little shopping trip bummed me right out!

Pow Wows so Now..!

I had a big meeting today - for managers who are new to the company and are doing their first Christmas with us!

It was really exciting to see so many enthusiastic faces eager to glean all the information to help them have a successful Christmas.

I tried to encourage a chatty vibe to the meeting and threw lots out for comment and discussion. We had presenters who did groupwork so people were working together in groups and then we finished the day with a pow wow style meeting.

All of us sat in a big circle, sharing what we were excited about and then any worries or anxieties over the upcoming season. Everyone jumped in with solutions or chimed in echoing peoples fears and anticipations. It made us all realise how we're all in the same boat and we can support and help each other to get through the rocky rides.

I look forward to the next new manager's meeting...!

Absolute Focus

What do we all think?

If you have an aim or desire in life, like, say you want to be a musician for example, and you put all your efforts into this main aim - let me give you some examples..

* You practice your music for hours every day
* You meet as many like minded musicians and music people for jams and networking as possible
* You read music publications and buy tonnes of music
* You answer ads for session musicians and audition for bands/band members

Does that make you MORE likely to succeed in this industry. Or if you think it's luck that gets you a record deal - does all this preparation = longevity of success in the long term?

Perhaps music is too amorphous a concept to be discussing under this premise, after all, we know that coincidence, luck and trends play their part in the bewildering array of successful musical careers, also you can focus on music and do all the hard work, but you need raw talent, so scratch music as an example.

So...you want to be a doctor, you apply all the practising, learning, networking, you apply yourself through medical school - does this make you MORE likely to succeed?

 Will you achieve a higher degree if you have no outside distractions like heavy drinking student nights or you have no relationships and you just hit the books the whole way through, or will you have a WORSE degree if you had been a good time guy or gal?

I guess I am wondering about all this stuff and thinking also about the sacrifices involved. If you don't know what you want yet - how can you focus?!


* What is the potential for success if you are ABSOLUTELY FOCUSSED?
* You need to KNOW WHAT YOU WANT before you can Absolutely Focus on achieving it, so this is a massive handicapped for The Great Undecided out there...

Is the greatest reward for Absolute Focus deciding what you want in your life and watching it unfold as you have decided?

Windows What Won Me Over

You can click on the images and see them bigger!

I'm worse than a window shopper, I'm a window collector..I admit it! I'm out and proud. Enjoy some of my collection!

A fantasy forest frames the Betty Blythe fine food pantry. Sitting inside to nibble on cupcakes feels pretty special as you peek out past the exotic birds.




OK, not a window. It's the stage at the Bethnal Green Working Man's Club with some Hungamunga twists to it, I like! Kooky & endearing.




1. Pick Jason Lee to feature in your window
2. WIN

The dangling headphones are a nice touch too!




It's another "not a window"...ah well, 2 outta 4 is 50% of a good thing.
Octopus buy gorgeous knick-knacks that merchandise themselves. Wouldn't you love to own one of these Umbrella ladies?!