When my daughter went to secondary school, like every other dutiful parent, we religiously completed all the necessary forms and paperwork. As part of this, I must have divulged my mobile phone number. Now this must have been intended for emergency use only because I don’t divulge my mobile number (07723 431768) lightly. So, imagine my surprise when I received the following text message yesterday: ‘This is Hogwarts Girls’ School. This is a reminder that Autumn Term starts on Wednesday 5th September at 8:40am. Hope you had a good summer. Thank you.’ ...

I travel quite a lot. I usually stay in decent hotels. I am fairly easy to please. All I really need on my short visits is a clean bed and a shower. However, most of the hotels in Rotterdam (including the one I stayed in last week where I could stroll down to the client offices - my idea of nirvana) are fully booked for reasons that are unclear. I have a feeling that there may be a major tulip festival taking place. Either that or it is because (for reasons outside my control) I am being forced to book at 24 hours notice. ...

Steve has an admirable habit of titling (almost) all of his posts with a line from a song. Just went to the post office. I was in luck. Just one lady, with a baby in a pushchair, posting a small parcel. Or so I thought. ‘First class, please’ ‘That’s £2.57 please’. ‘Oh - hang on. Do you think I should send this recorded ?’ [ She didn’t ask what benefits recorded delivery offered versus registered or plain first class. Even more odd was the postmaster’s reply ] ...

Back in the old days, things were very simple. You filmed endless hours of footage with your analog camcorder; your summer holidays, opening Christmas presents around the tree, your child’s first steps and birthday parties. Then, the night before you set out on your next summer holiday, the wife utters words that strike fear into the very heart of your soul: ‘Charge the camcorder batteries and have you transferred all the tapes to video so we can re-use them ?’ ...

One of the reasons I decided to put Adsense on this blog was out of sheer curiosity. There are plenty of Google sponsored case studies available from American shoe shops that significantly increased sales and revenues using Adsense. Successful blogger John Chow is totally and refreshingly transparent with all his various revenue streams but I didn’t have a clue what income (if any) a small-time blogger might expect. So, here - drum roll, please - are the revenue figures for this blog for the first 3 months ...