200 Posts In

Actually, this makes it 203, but who’s counting?

I’ve reached a 200-post milestone that didn’t even exist when I started putting this Digital Garden, or personal wiki, together. I had no idea how many posts I would end up creating, but here we are, so I thought I’d write this little retrospective.

When I started, I thought I might find the whole process difficult. Thinking of things to write about, turning those thoughts into something readable, then finding the confidence to publish them. Instead, the freedom of having a Digital Garden has made it surprisingly easy.

Ideas for posts and notes come from all over the place. It might be bringing together research I already had about my great-grandfather, Herbert Henry Scaife, or looking into a long-gone brewery near where I now live.

Sometimes it’s about the strange sayings and television quotes that have worked their way into our everyday lives, such as The Lines That Stuck. Sometimes it’s documenting a journey, whether that’s our possible move to Spain or keeping a record of my Pinter brewing times.

Then there are the silly little notes about things I don’t want to forget.

The content has come from lots of different places, and I love the variety of things that pass through our minds every day. I’m just happy that I’ve now got somewhere to capture some of them.

I used to keep many of my notes in Google Keep, but putting them here feels much more liberating. They’re no longer hidden away in a private list that I’ll probably never look at again. They’ve become part of something bigger, connected to other thoughts and memories, and the act of writing them down properly has possibly helped me remember them a little better too.

The garden has also slowly taught me that not everything has to be perfect.

In my professional life, I don’t publish anything until I’m 110% happy with it. Every word, fact and detail has to be checked, tweaked and checked again. That approach has its place, particularly at work, but it can also stop you from putting anything out at all.

This Digital Garden has reminded me that sometimes it’s better to just put something live. A small idea can begin as a seed, develop into a sprout, then eventually become a flower: a fully formed post that probably doesn’t need much more tweaking.

Or perhaps it never grows beyond being a seed. That’s fine too.

I also think this Digital Garden could become one of the most important things I leave behind. My children aren’t particularly interested in it right now, and I don’t blame them, but perhaps one day, when I’m long gone, they’ll start wondering what I did, what I cared about and what went through my head.

Well, kids, it’s all here.

I think that idea of leaving something behind has become one of the main reasons I want to keep writing. So, 203 posts in, there’s plenty more still to come.

Why I’ve Fallen in Love With Data

At work, I’ve fallen in love with data.

That might sound strange because I’ve dealt with data throughout my marketing career. I’ve been responsible for collecting it, managing it, presenting it and using it, so why the sudden love-in?

I think there are a couple of reasons. Firstly, over the past few years I’ve come to realise just how important accurate product data is to us, our customers and the construction industry as a whole.

Years ago, I attended a marketing summit where a small part of the discussion covered compliance. One thought from that session has always stayed with me: when people don’t know exactly what products they’re specifying, buying or using, the consequences can be far more serious than an incorrect description on a website.

I think I now fully embrace that idea. I want the way we describe, represent and present our products to be as accurate as possible. I question things, challenge information and sometimes examine the smallest details with what might be described as slightly irritating persistence.

That tenacity has helped stop us launching a couple of products that could potentially have been dangerous, though, so I can live with occasionally annoying my colleagues.

It also means that every product requiring a Safety Data Sheet should have one that is accurate, up to date and written to current, and where possible future, standards. Virtually every product should also have a Technical Data Sheet explaining clearly how it should be used safely and correctly.

So yes, right now I’m having a deep and unapologetic love affair with data.

Watching the Lionesses Grow

My wife and I are both fairly big football fans. She supports Leeds United, and I support Manchester United, which keeps things interesting in our house.

As well as following the men’s game, we’ve been watching women’s football for about years or so. Like a lot of women’s football fans, we mainly started by following England, and we’ve been lucky enough to see the Lionesses play a couple of times.

The game has come on massively since those earlier days. Back then, players like Karen Carney, Jill Scott, Faye White, Ellen White, Rachel Yankey and others were helping to build something that has grown into the game we see today.

At the time, it often seemed to be a game built around long passes, looking to exploit space between the lines, and shots taken from inside the penalty area. There was also, at least to my eyes, a noticeable difference in fitness levels compared with the modern game.

Then came 2012, which felt like a watershed moment for women’s football in England. The game began to develop quickly. More investment came in, standards rose, and for more players it became a full-time job rather than something they had to fit around the rest of their lives.

Today, it feels like a very different sport. There is far more tactical control, aggressive pressing, and a much greater emphasis on possession. The players are more athletic, the movement is more fluid, and the game feels quicker, sharper, more creative, and more powerful. You now see players striking the ball from much further out with real confidence.

It’s been brilliant to watch that growth over the years, and even better to feel that women’s football is no longer tucked away in the background. It is properly part of the football conversation now, and rightly so.

Come on Lionesses.

Noisy Eaters

Noisy eating brings out, what I think, is a very reasonable response. When someone is sat there chewing with their mouth open, talking through food, and making every mouthful sound like a plumbing emergency, I can feel my patience leaving my body.

I’m talking about people who eat with their mouth open, talk with food in their mouth, take bites that are clearly far too big to chew properly, noises that seem to fill the whole room. Once I’ve noticed it, that’s it. I can’t unhear it, I can’t ignore it, and I certainly can’t enjoy sitting at the same table pretending everything is fine.

To me, it’s not just a harmless habit. It’s rude. Really rude. Eating with other people should come with a few very basic rules, and "keep your mouth closed while chewing" feels like it should be somewhere near the top of the list. It’s not advanced etiquette. It’s not silver service. It’s just the bare minimum of not making everyone else experience your food at the same time as you.

Talking with food in your mouth is just as bad. I don’t need to see what you’re eating while you’re explaining something to me, or see your food sprayed all over the table. Finish the mouthful, then speak. The conversation will survive the three-second delay. In fact, it might even improve if part of your lunch isn’t trying to join in.

I know this probably makes me sound grumpy, but I genuinely find it difficult to share a table with people who eat like that. It completely ignores basic table manners, and more than that, it ignores the other people sat around you. I think that’s the bit that bothers me most. It’s not just noise, it’s a lack of awareness.

And yes, I know people have different habits, different upbringings, and different levels of tolerance for this sort of thing. I’m sure there are things I do that annoy other people too. But eating with your mouth open, smacking your lips, slurping and talking through a half-chewed sandwich shouldn’t be defended as personal expression. It’s not quirky. It’s not relaxed. It’s just rude.

I don’t want formal dining rules. I don’t care which fork someone uses, and I’m not expecting anyone to dab politely at the corner of their mouth with a linen napkin (but seeing people wipe their mouth or the back of there hand isn’t nice to see, and don't get me started on people that lick their knife). I just want people to chew quietly, keep their mouth closed, and not make the rest of us feel like unwilling witnesses to the entire digestive process.

Surely that’s not too much to ask.

Linkbaiting That Actually Worked

Linkbaiting is basically the art (or sometimes dark art) of creating something that makes people want to click, share, link, or react. At its worst, it’s cheap headlines engineered purely to drag people in, usually with loaded words like “secret”, “urgent”, “shocking”, or a suspiciously neat number in the title.

At its best, though, linkbaiting is just a good hook. Something useful, interesting, funny, controversial, or timely enough to make someone stop what they’re doing and pay attention.

Years ago, I admit it, I turned very slightly to the dark side and did a little bit of baiting myself. In my defence, it was only an experiment. Also in my defence... it worked.

This was back when I worked for a small independent software vendor, and we wanted to get more database administrators onto the website. We had something relevant for them, a short free guide, and the business sold ODBC and JDBC drivers, so it wasn’t a random audience we were chasing. These were exactly the sort of people who might one day need what we offered.

I could have gone into forums and started pushing links around, but that would have felt clumsy. I had no relationship with those people, and if some stranger had dropped into a discussion with a salesy link, most of them would probably have ignored it. Fair enough too.

Instead, I used LinkedIn.

The 1st step was the bait. I slightly amended my LinkedIn profile so it clearly mentioned that I worked with a business developing ODBC and JDBC drivers. Nothing too heavy, just enough that if the right person landed on my profile, they would understand what we did. In truth, that’s still a useful tip today: your LinkedIn profile shouldn’t just say what your job title is, it should give the right people a reason to be curious.

We also made sure the free guide for database administrators was easy to find on the company website. That bit mattered. There’s no point drawing people in if they land on a page that gives them nothing useful.

Then came the simple bit. I searched LinkedIn for database administrators and visited their profiles, one by one.

LinkedIn, being LinkedIn, would then show some of those people that I had viewed their profile. Some would ignore it, of course, but others would naturally click back to see who I was. When they did, they saw the short mention of ODBC and JDBC drivers, and from there a small number clicked through to the company page or website.

That was the whole tactic.

It wasn’t clever in a “look at me, I’ve cracked the internet” sort of way. It was just curiosity, relevance, and timing. The people I viewed were people with a genuine professional connection to the thing we offered, and the thing we offered them was at least potentially useful.

Would I describe it as pure linkbait? Probably. Would I describe it as spam? Not really, because the targeting was relevant and there was something useful at the other end. That distinction is important.

Good linkbait shouldn’t trick people. It should catch their attention, then reward that attention with something worthwhile. A free guide, a useful article, a proper answer to a common problem, or even just a genuinely interesting point of view.

The lesson from that little experiment is still true. You don’t always need a huge campaign to get attention online. Sometimes you just need to understand where your audience already spends time, give them a small reason to notice you, and make sure there’s something useful waiting when they do.

That’s the bit too many people miss. The bait gets the click, but the value is what makes the visit matter.

Know Your Rights and Use Them

I’ve written up a consumer dispute over on my Contract Clangers site involving a mobility scooter purchase, unfair contract terms, and a trader who really didn’t seem keen on recognising basic cancellation rights under UK consumer law.

The business was Rental Scooters Strathclyde Ltd, and they appear to have also traded as Mobility Scooters Direct and Scooters Scotland on eBay.

The short version is that we challenged them, specifically Lloyd Jamieson, the owner, over what we believed was a failure to recognise the 14-day cancellation period under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, often loosely referred to as distance selling rules. After approaching Mr Jamieson and having our legal rights rejected, we took the matter through the Scottish Courts and won.

We were also able to check the strength of our case before going ahead, and we were reassured that our documentation was in good order and that the process we followed was sound. That mattered, because when you’re dealing with a business that simply refuses to accept your position, you need more than frustration. You need records, dates, evidence, and the patience to see it through properly.

The bigger point with this piece is really this: don’t assume a company is right just because they sound confident. If something feels off, check your rights, keep proper records, use Citizens Advice if you need to, and be prepared to follow it through calmly.

My own experience of dealing with Mr Jamieson left me with no trust at all in any business he was involved with. That’s only my opinion, based on what happened to us, but it’s an opinion I’m very comfortable standing by.

Sometimes the win isn’t just getting your money back. Sometimes it’s refusing to be brushed off.

And as you can see from my little site, Contract Clangers, if I know I’m right, then I’ll fight to protect my rights. I will not allow small-minded businesses to undermine my legal rights, and nor should you.

What Football Should Steal From the NFL

I love football, or soccer if anyone from the USA ever reads this, and I love the NFL too. They’re very different sports, obviously. One is fluid, messy, emotional and often allergic to common sense. The other stops every 11 seconds so a committee of enormous men can discuss angles, coverage and whether someone’s knee brushed the turf.

But there are still a few things football could borrow from the NFL, and I don’t just mean cheerleaders, fireworks and calling every half-decent tackle a “defensive statement”. Some of the NFL’s systems are genuinely better than ours, especially around player safety, referee communication and competitive balance.

The big question is which ideas football should actually test, and which ones are lovely in theory but would have the Premier League’s lawyers quietly hiding under the table.

1. Independent concussion authority

This is the obvious one. Football has improved slightly with permanent concussion substitutes, but the on-pitch assessment still feels flawed. The player wants to stay on. The manager wants their best players available. The crowd wants the game moving. Even the team doctor, however professional they are, is still operating inside that club environment.

The NFL has independent neurotrauma consultants and spotters who can intervene. That’s the important bit. Someone outside the team has the authority to say, “No, this player needs assessing properly.” Football should copy that principle as closely as possible.

For me, this should be tested first. It’s not about entertainment, tradition, money or competitive advantage. It’s about basic duty of care. If a player has taken a heavy blow to the head, they shouldn’t be the one effectively deciding whether they’re fine to carry on. That decision should be removed from the player, the manager and the match situation completely.

2. Proper live referee explanations

This is another easy win. In the NFL, when a decision is reviewed or a penalty is called, the referee switches on a microphone and explains the ruling to the stadium and TV audience. It isn’t perfect, but at least everyone knows what has happened.

Football, by comparison, still has far too much awkward silence. Fans stand there staring at a big screen while VAR checks something for three minutes, with no clear idea what specific contact, handball, offside line, shirt pull or toenail is being examined.

The Premier League has started moving towards more communication, but it still needs to go further. We don’t need a full courtroom judgement from the referee, just a simple explanation: what was checked, what the decision is, and why. That alone would make VAR feel less like a mysterious bunker making football worse from a secret location.

3. A stronger set-piece foul rule

This is where I think football could borrow from the NFL’s “eyes on the ball” idea, although not in a direct copy-and-paste way because it simply wouldn't work.

In the NFL, defenders can get into trouble if they’re not playing the ball and are simply interfering with the receiver. Football has a similar problem at corners and free kicks. Too many defenders are not even pretending to look at the ball. They’re often facing the opposing player, grabbing shirts, pinning arms, blocking runs and wrestling them like they’re trying to win a pub car park fight.

Football doesn’t need to become completely non-contact (my missus will always tell you "it's a contact sport!"), because that would be dreadful. But it could enforce one simple idea more clearly: if a defender makes no genuine attempt to play the ball, they are looking directly into the opponents face and is clearly holding, dragging or blocking an opponent, it’s a foul.

The key word is consistency. Enforce it properly for the first six weeks of a season and players would adapt. They always do once they realise the referee is actually going to give it.

4. The “uncatchable ball” idea

This one is trickier, but I still think there’s something in it.

In the NFL, pass interference can’t be called if the ball is clearly uncatchable. Football could use a similar principle for some penalty decisions. Right now, you can get situations where an attacker is slightly tripped in the box, but the ball is flying miles over their head or heading harmlessly away from goal, or heading over the line with no chance of getting to it; technically it might be a foul, but it hasn’t really affected the play.

I’m not saying dangerous tackles should be ignored just because the ball has gone. That would be ridiculous. But for those soft penalties where there’s minimal contact and the player had no realistic chance of reaching the ball anyway, football needs a bit more common sense.

The problem is wording it. “Uncatchable” works in American football because the pass has a specific intended receiver and a clear flight path. In football, the ball is looser, messier and a little more chaotic. You’d need something like a “material impact” test, where the foul has to meaningfully affect the player’s ability to challenge for the ball.

It would need a trial first, probably in a cup competition or youth tournament, because otherwise VAR would find a way to turn it into another bloody weekly argument.

5. A hard spending cap

This is the one that sounds brilliant until you remember football is not a closed American league.

The NFL has a hard salary cap, meaning every team has the same maximum amount to spend on players. In theory, that creates a more level playing field. The Premier League’s current direction, with squad cost rules linked to club revenue, still favours the richest clubs. A club making £700m can spend much more than a club making £150m. That isn’t really equality, it’s just a tidier version of the same imbalance.

A hard cap in English football would be fascinating. Suddenly scouting, coaching and tactical intelligence would matter more than who has the deepest pockets. It would also stop the biggest clubs hoovering up talent simply because they can.

But the problems are huge. Promotion and relegation make it complicated. European competition makes it even harder. Then you’ve got Saudi Arabia, Spain, Germany, Italy and the wider global market. Unless UEFA or FIFA introduced something broader, the Premier League doing it alone could end up weakening itself.

So while I like the idea, I don’t think it’s the 1st thing football should test. It’s morally attractive, but structurally brutal.

6. A shared merchandise pot

This is probably the idea I like most emotionally, even if I know it’s one of the least likely to happen.

The NFL’s national revenue model is one of the reasons a team like Green Bay can still compete with teams from much bigger markets. Green Bay, Wisconsin has a population of around 100,000, yet the Packers remain one of the NFL’s great teams. That sort of thing is part of the NFL’s charm.

In the Premier League, broadcast money is split relatively evenly, but commercial revenue is still very much a free-for-all. Shirt sales, sponsorships, global partnerships, official noodle partners, official tyre partners, official mattress partners... the big clubs can turn their global reach into an enormous financial advantage.

A shared merchandise pot would change that. It would force the biggest clubs to subsidise the rest of the league and help close the gap. The romantic part of me loves that. The league is only interesting because all 20 clubs exist, so all 20 clubs should share more of the upside.

But let’s be honest, the Big Six would absolutely hate it. They’d probably try to copy the Dallas Cowboys model and carve themselves out of the collective agreement. Or they’d find some wonderfully slippery workaround where Manchester United’s third kit pyjamas, Liverpool dog beds, Arsenal golf towels and Chelsea-branded air fryers somehow don’t count as club merchandise.

You can almost hear the statement now:

“We fully support collective growth, but our international lifestyle and heritage apparel partnerships sit outside the domestic football merchandise framework.”

Which is a very expensive way of saying, “No, you can’t have our money.”

A more realistic version might be a central commercial levy. Clubs could keep most of their own merchandise income, but a small percentage of certain commercial categories could go into a fund for academy football, women’s teams, lower-league support or away ticket subsidies. It wouldn’t be as dramatic as a fully shared pot, but it might actually stand a chance.

So which ideas should football actually test?

If I had to rank them, I’d go like this:

1. Independent concussion authority – this should happen as soon as possible.
2. Live referee explanations – simple, sensible and long overdue.
3. Stricter set-piece holding rules – stop the wrestling and make defenders actually defend.
4. A material-impact penalty rule – worth testing, but it needs careful wording.
5. A hard spending cap – great in theory, very difficult in reality.
6. A shared merchandise pot – lovely football socialism, but the Big Six would barricade the doors.

The health of players and the enjoyment of the game have to come first. That sounds obvious, but football has a long history of treating obvious things as if they need 14 committees, three pilot schemes and a leaked report before anyone can act.

Independent concussion checks and better referee communication don’t require football to rip up its entire financial structure. They just require the people running the game to admit that the NFL, for all its flaws, has got a few things right.

The money stuff is harder. I’d love a Premier League where smaller clubs had more of a fighting chance, and where the richest teams couldn’t simply outspend everyone forever. But the realistic starting point is not a full NFL-style revolution. It’s player safety, clearer decisions, and a version of the game that doesn’t leave match-going fans completely in the dark.

Start there. Then we can come back for the Manchester United pyjamas and Chelsea air fryers.

David Beckham’s £19 Million World Cup Ad Takeover

I read a piece in iNews about David Beckham’s World Cup advertising takeover, and honestly, the whole thing feels absolutely absurd.

If you’re watching the World Cup in the UK, you get a fairly dignified broadcast. A bit of studio chat, some sensible punditry, the usual adverts, and then back to the football. But if you’re watching in North America, it sounds like you’re trapped inside a David Beckham simulator. Or fantasy. Or nightmare. I’m still not sure which.

Thanks to the American networks aggressively commercialising the tournament, especially around things like hydration breaks, Beckham is everywhere. Not just popping up now and again, either. Properly everywhere. According to the reports, he’s been involved in a string of World Cup campaigns worth around £19 million, fronting or appearing in ads for brands ranging from crisps and burgers to banks, beer, DIY stores and telecoms giants.

At some point, that stops being clever marketing and starts becoming genuinely absurd.

The crowning achievement has to be the Home Depot campaign, “Build It Like Beckham”, which appears to ask viewers to believe that a multi-millionaire global superstar, former England captain and co-owner of an MLS franchise spends his weekends wandering down a retail aisle looking for a five-gallon bucket of paint and a circular saw. Immediately after that, he can apparently reappear for Bank of America, giving off the calm, reliable energy of a man who definitely wants to talk to you about retail banking.

Nobody buys it, do they?

That’s the strange thing about this level of advertising. Beckham has become so recognisable, so safe, and so commercially polished that he almost doesn’t need to have any connection to the product at all. He doesn’t have to convince you he loves the burger, uses the phone network, banks with the bank, shops for power tools, or chooses his crisps based on deep personal conviction. He just has to appear, smile, nod at something, raise a glass, or look vaguely amused by whatever scripted nonsense is happening around him.

And to be fair, from a brand point of view, you can see the attraction. Active players carry risk. If Jude Bellingham, Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal or any other current star has a bad tournament, gets injured, misses a penalty, or watches their team crash out early, the shine comes off them almost instantly. Beckham is completely insulated from the actual football. He doesn’t have to win a match. He doesn’t have to stay fit. He doesn’t even have to do punditry.

He just exists, beautifully lit, endlessly bankable, and permanently available.

That’s probably why advertisers love him. He’s football-adjacent without being vulnerable to football. He gives brands the World Cup glow without the inconvenience of results, form, tactics, injuries, VAR decisions or England doing England things. He’s not there to represent the tournament as much as float above it, smiling down from the corporate hospitality suite.

Still, seven campaigns around one tournament is wild. Lay’s had him playing with the idea of fans jumping on World Cup bandwagons. Adidas put him in a glossy football dreamscape alongside Messi, Bellingham, Lamine Yamal and Timothée Chalamet. McDonald’s had him in another big, highly visible campaign. Stella Artois used him for the ritual of fans gathering in bars. Home Depot leaned into the American backyard World Cup idea. Verizon and Vodafone covered the telecoms angle, depending where you were watching. Bank of America rounded it all off, because apparently even football needs a sensible current account.

None of this is a criticism of Beckham personally, really. He’s been doing this for decades, and he’s clearly very, very good at being David Beckham. In some ways, this is the natural end point of his post-football career. He was never just a footballer, even when he was playing. He was a brand before most footballers realised they were allowed to be brands.

But there’s something very funny about the 2026 World Cup being sold back to viewers through one man’s face, over and over again, until the actual football almost feels like the bit between the Beckham adverts.

Maybe that’s the modern World Cup now. Less a football tournament, more a global marketing platform with a ball occasionally rolling through it.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, David Beckham is smiling, probably holding a crisp, standing near a barbecue, thinking about banking, while pretending he’s just popped into Home Depot for a bit of timber.

From £1 to £1m in 21 Steps

Ok, this started as a much smaller experiment.

The original idea was simple enough ... could I start with £5, buy a few small items, sell them on eBay, reinvest the money, and eventually turn that tiny pot into £1,000? 

That was the plan, and it is very doable, I have done it before, but I just wanted to document it this time.

But then I remembered an idea I’d heard years ago from someone talking about online selling. It was one of those ideas that sounds almost too simple to be useful, until you actually write the numbers down.

Start with £1. Double it. Then double it again. Keep doing that, one step at a time, and by the 21st step you have £1,048,576.

The maths is easy. The doing it bit is where it gets kinda interesting, and way more difficult.

So I’m changing the experiment. The original £5 to £1,000 challenge is now becoming something slightly bigger, slightly dafter, hopefully much more fun and rewarding, and probably much more interesting to follow.

This is now The 21 Step Challenge.

The challenge is not to pretend that making £1m on eBay is simple. It isn’t. The internet is already full of business "gurus" making business sound easier than it is, usually just before they try to sell you a course, a formula, or a ready made business.

This is different. I want to see how far the doubling idea can go in the real world, starting with tiny amounts of money, using eBay, clearance stock, old products I already have, low-cost buys, and whatever lessons appear along the way.

It might work for a while and then slow down badly. It might fall apart when the easy stock runs out. It might get stuck when the pot gets big enough that I need better sourcing, more storage, or more time than I’m willing to give it.

That’s part of the point.

The interesting bit is not just whether the money grows. It is what has to change at each step.

Quick note: before you copy any of this, please check your own tax position. If you are buying things with the intention of selling them for a profit, that can have tax implications. 

The 21 Step Ladder

Here is the ladder that makes the whole thing feel slightly ridiculous.

Starting with £1, each step simply doubles the previous amount. By the 11th step, you are past £1,000. By the 21st step, you are past £1m.

Current position: I started with £5 (9th June 2026), and the current value (as of 3rd Jul 26) of the challenge is now £78, that's step 7 of 21 already!

Starting pot £5.00

Current value £78.00

Step completed 7th

Next target £128.00

1st Step £1

Completed

2nd Step £2

Completed

3rd Step £4

Completed

4th Step £8

Completed

5th Step £16

Completed

6th Step £32

Completed

7th Step £64

Completed

8th Step £128

Current

9th Step £256

Future

10th Step £512

Future

11th Step £1,024

£1,000 milestone

12th Step £2,048

Future

13th Step £4,096

Future

14th Step £8,192

Future

15th Step £16,384

Future

16th Step £32,768

Future

17th Step £65,536

Future

18th Step £131,072

Future

19th Step £262,144

Future

20th Step £524,288

Future

21st Step £1,048,576

The big one

How I’ll Measure Progress

The easy mistake with this sort of challenge is to talk about sales as if sales are profit.

If I buy something for £8 and sell it for £13, I haven’t made £13 or even £5. I still need to account for postage, packaging, promoted listing fees (if I use them), and any other costs attached to that sale.

So the number I’ll track is not turnover. It is the current value of the pot.

Current value = profit made so far + cost of stock

That is deliberately cautious. It does not value unsold stock at what I hope it might sell for. If I have stock left, I count it at what it cost me. If it cost me nothing because it was already sitting in the shed, I record it as £0.00.

How I Moved Up The First Steps

I won’t list every tiny sale in this post because that would quickly become dull. The proper detail lives in my spreadsheet. What I’ll show here is the movement between steps: what I bought, what I sold, what worked, and what I learned.

Step update: 1st to 6th step

From a tiny starting pot to the 6th step of the ladder.

Current Value (25th June 2026) £55.28

Started with: £5.00 Step completed: 6th Next target: £64.00

What moved the pot: The first bit of movement came from small, useful, easy-to-post products. I started with hosepipe connectors bought from Tesco, then used the money from early sales to buy more small clearance items.

One of the better early results came from Oral B brush heads bought from the Tesco clearance aisle. They were bought for £8 and sold for £13, and one pack sold the day I listed it. That is the sort of product that makes sense in the early stages: small, known brand, easy to post, and not too hard for a buyer to understand.

I also added a few old bits from the shed, including drill bits and small unused ratchet straps. These were effectively free stock because they were already paid for and not being used. That makes the profit calculation slightly strange, but it is still real cash if they sell.

Lesson: at this stage, small and boring can be beautiful. The best early products are light, useful, non-breakable, easy to describe, and cheap enough that the buyer does not need to think too hard.

Next step: 7th step

The next target is to get the pot to £64.

Target £64.00

Status: Completed Current value: £55.28 Still needed: £8.72

The 7th step feels very reachable. One or two decent sales could get me there, especially if I can shift more of the small stock I already have.

The bigger question is what happens after that. Getting from £55.28 to £64 is not the hard part. The harder part is working out whether the same approach still works when the pot needs to reach £128, £256, and £512.

Next decision: do I keep looking for one-off bargains and old stock, or do I start looking for repeatable products I can buy again?

25th June 2026: I've had a bit of an epiphany this morning, so I got on like and ordered £9.20 worth of stock in shoe cleaning stuff, foam and wipes to be specific, I think it could be a good product test.

3rd July 2026: I had a couple of excellent sales this morning from basically old straps and ratchets that I had in my shed that are brand new, and it took me up to £78, and on to the next step.

Status: In progress Current value: £78.00/span> Still needed: £50.00

Actually wasn't as difficult as I thought to reach this step. I probably had 5-6 days when I didn't get any sales at all, and it does make you wonder if you're ever going to sell anything again, but I held my nerve and BOOM! today a couple of good orders landed (almost £30 worth).

At the moment I am carrying on as I am doing, as if today I need £50 to get to the next step, but after todays sales, it seems very doable. I have the shoe clening stuff arriving from AiExpress in the next day or two. I've just listed a couple of products that were on sale in Tescos (bike shampoo stuff!), I spent £10.80, but expect to virtually double my money on them, the Tesco sale ends next week, so they will hopefully sell shortly after that, in fact I may buy a few more this weekend.

The Bigger Question

The early steps are almost a scavenger hunt. Find something cheap. Find something free. Find something in the garage. Find something in a clearance aisle. List it properly, price it sensibly, post it quickly, and keep the money moving.

That is useful, but it probably only gets you so far.

Like I said, at some point, if this keeps going, the challenge changes. It stops being about whether I can sell odd bits and starts becoming about whether I can find repeatable stock.

That could mean buying small quantities from UK suppliers. It could mean bigger retail arbitrage (buying discounted or clearance products and selling online for a profit). It could mean buying job lots. Much later, it might mean sourcing from overseas, creating an own-brand product, or using a fulfilment house.

But there is a trap there.

A bigger business is not automatically a better life. If the challenge ever reached serious money, I would not want to spend every evening surrounded by boxes, tape, labels, and mild regret. The point of building something is not to lose every spare hour to it.

So this challenge has two questions running side by side.

Can I keep doubling the money?

And just as importantly:

Can I do it without making life worse?

What I’ll Track As The Challenge Grows

As the ladder gets higher, I’ll track more than just the money.

I’ll keep notes on what I bought, what sold, how quickly it sold, how much postage cost, how much time it took, and whether I would buy the same product again.

I’ll also track the bigger turning points. Things like when it makes sense to print labels at home, when it makes sense to move from single items to small batches, when postage collection becomes worth it, and when storage starts becoming a real issue.

Those are the bits I think will be most useful. Anyone can say “buy low, sell high”. The real learning is in the messy details.

Early Lessons

Small, light, useful, non-breakable, easy-to-post items still feel like the best place to start.

Postage matters more than almost anything else. A product can look profitable until you realise it is awkward to pack, too thick for the cheapest service, or likely to cause delivery headaches.

Titles matter too. eBay search is not the same as website SEO, but keywords still matter. A title like “Universal Adjustable Garden Hose Tap Connector Mixer Adaptor 15-19mm No Thread” is not pretty writing, but it is probably much better than something vague and tidy.

Descriptions do not need to be essays, but they do need to remove doubt. If something only fits taps from 15mm to 19mm, say that clearly. If a product is not suitable for lifting, say that clearly. If something is out of its original packaging, say that clearly too.

I also need to avoid panicking if something does not sell in the first day or two. If the price is fair, the listing is clear, and the product has demand, sometimes the best thing to do is leave it alone.

21 Step Challenge FAQ

On this page:

• General challenge questions
• Tracking the money
• Buying and selling
• Scaling the challenge
• Real-life stuff

General challenge questions

What is the 21 Step Challenge?

The 21 Step Challenge is based on a simple doubling idea. Start with £1, double it to £2, then double it again to £4, and keep going until the 21st step, which is £1,048,576.

I’m using it as a live eBay selling experiment to see how far a tiny starting pot can grow by buying carefully, selling clearly, and reinvesting the money.

Why start with £1 if I actually started with £5?

The ladder starts at £1 because that is the cleanest way to show the doubling idea.

My own experiment started with £5, so technically I began part way up the ladder. That is fine. The point is not to be mathematically pure. The point is to use the ladder as a simple way to track progress.

Is this really about making £1m?

Not really. Or at least, not in the shiny internet sense.

The £1m number is what makes the maths interesting, but the real challenge is seeing how far the idea works in practice. The early steps are about eBay, small products, postage, and reinvesting. The later steps would involve much bigger decisions about stock, storage, sourcing, fulfilment, tax, and time.

What counts as completing a step?

A step is completed when the current value of the challenge reaches or passes that step’s target.

For example, the 6th step is £32. Once the pot passed £32, that step was completed. The next target is the 7th step at £64.

Tracking the money

What does current value mean?

For this challenge, current value means net profit made so far plus stock still held at cost.

That keeps the number grounded. I am not counting hoped-for sales or imaginary future profit. If stock is still unsold, I count it at what it cost me.

Do free products count?

Yes, but I record the cost as £0.00.

If I already own a product and sell it, the cash generated still helps the challenge. But I do not want to pretend I paid for stock that was already sitting in the shed.

Do I include stock that has not sold yet?

Yes, but only at cost.

If I bought something for £10 and it has not sold yet, I count it as £10 of stock held. I do not count it as £18 just because I hope to sell it for £18 later.

Do I include postage and packaging costs?

Yes. Postage and packaging can make or break small eBay products, so they need to be included.

If I sell something for £10 but it costs £3 to post and 30p to pack, that has to come off the profit. Free postage is not really free. It is just hidden inside the selling price.

How am I tracking profit?

I’m using a spreadsheet with an inventory tab, a sales log, an expenses tab, and a monthly summary.

The inventory tab helps me track stock. The sales log keeps the actual sales record. The monthly summary tells me whether the pot is genuinely growing or whether postage, packaging, fees, and slow-moving stock are eating away at it.

Buying and selling

What sort of products am I starting with?

I’m starting with small, useful, easy-to-post products.

So far, that has included hosepipe connectors, clearance aisle buys, Oral B brush heads, drill bits, cam buckle straps, and other small trade or household products.

Am I only selling on eBay?

For now, yes.

eBay is the easiest place to restart because I already have an account, even though it had been dormant for years. Later, if the challenge grows, other channels might make sense, but I do not want to overcomplicate it too early.

Will I list every product I buy and sell?

Not in the main post.

I’ll keep the proper records behind the scenes, but on this page I’ll summarise the products and lessons that moved the challenge forward; I will share ideas of products that I am buying because I know that when faced with thousands of options, we sometimes have no idea what to buy!

What makes a good early product?

For me, a good early product is small, light, useful, non-breakable, easy to describe, and easy to post.

It also helps if it is a known brand or a product someone is likely to search for when they need it. Boring products can be very good products.

What has worked so far?

Small clearance items and old stock have worked better than expected.

The hosepipe connectors sold well enough to get things moving. The Oral B brush heads sold quickly. Old shed stock such as drill bits and straps helped because the cost was effectively zero, which makes even small sales useful.

Scaling the challenge

When does retail arbitrage stop being enough?

I suspect it starts getting harder somewhere around the middle of the ladder.

Retail arbitrage can work well when the pot is small, but it is time-heavy and unreliable. You have to keep finding bargains. At some point, the challenge probably needs repeatable products, not just lucky finds.

When would I buy stock in larger quantities?

Only when I have evidence that a product sells, the margin works, and the postage is predictable.

Buying 2 or 3 of something is very different from buying 50. The bigger the buy, the more careful I need to be.

Would I source from UK suppliers?

Possibly. If the challenge reaches the point where I need repeatable stock, UK suppliers would probably be the first place to look.

That would keep things simpler than importing, especially around delivery times, minimum order quantities, compliance, and quality control.

Would I import from China?

Maybe one day, but not early on.

Importing can open up better margins and own-brand possibilities, but it also brings bigger risks: minimum order quantities, product quality, shipping, duty, compliance, cash tied up in stock, and the possibility of buying a lot of something that nobody wants.

When would I consider own-brand products?

Only if I found a product type that clearly worked and could be improved, bundled, branded, or presented better than the existing options.

Own-brand sounds exciting, but it is also a bigger commitment. At that point, the challenge starts looking less like casual eBay selling and more like a proper business.

When does fulfilment become worth it?

Fulfilment becomes worth considering when packing orders starts taking too much time or limiting growth.

But fulfilment also costs money, reduces margin, and adds another layer of complexity. I would only consider it if the product was repeatable, the volume was steady, and the margin could cope with someone else doing the packing.

Real-life stuff

What about tax?

This is one of the reasons I’m tracking everything properly.

Selling personal items you no longer want is one thing. Buying products with the intention of selling them for profit is different. I’m not giving tax advice here, but if you try something similar, check the rules and keep records from the start.

What about storage?

Storage is one of the hidden problems with this kind of challenge.

Small products are fine. A few plastic boxes are fine. But if the challenge grows, stock can quickly take over a room, a garage, or in my case, possibly a corner of the bar and brewing area.

How much time does it take?

At the start, not too much. Listing a few small items, packing orders, and dropping parcels off is manageable.

But as sales grow, time becomes part of the calculation. A product that makes £2 profit but takes ages to pack, label, and post may not be as good as it looks.

When does this stop being fun?

Probably when the admin, packing, storage, and customer service become bigger than the enjoyment of the challenge.

That is something I want to watch carefully. Making money is nice, but building a tiny cardboard prison in the house is not the dream.

What happens if it takes years?

Then it takes years.

I’ll put dates against the steps because that makes the challenge honest. If it takes 2 years to reach a certain point, that is useful information. A slow, real experiment is more interesting than a fast, fake one.

What if I fail?

Then that becomes part of the story.

The challenge might stall. I might buy bad stock. eBay limits might slow things down. Postage costs might kill the margin. The point is not to pretend the whole thing is guaranteed. The point is to see what actually happens.

Final note: I’ll keep updating this post as the challenge moves forward. Each step will show the target, the current value, what moved the pot, and the lesson learned along the way. The maths says 21 steps gets you to £1,048,576. Real life may have other ideas.

My Big DuckDuckGo Question

It was one of those boring meetings where your body is technically in the room, but your brain has already gone wandering. This happens to me A LOT.

I had my phone in my hand and, for no useful reason at all, wondered what the traffic on my digital garden looked like over the past week. I haven't posted in a while, so curiosity got the better of me.

What struck me most was the amount of traffic coming from DuckDuckGo.

According to Umami, I had 324 visitors in the past 7 days, and 37 of them had arrived from DuckDuckGo. That was around 11% of my traffic, which genuinely surprised me as I only had 1 visitor from Google. I knew people used DuckDuckGo, of course, but I didn't realise it was sending that much traffic my way.

Then I started wondering about the people, and therefore the reason, behind those numbers.

Are DuckDuckGo users the indie, slightly boho searchers of the internet? The people who still bookmark odd little websites, read personal blogs, avoid the algorithmic sludge, and prefer the quieter corners of the web?

For a brief moment, I really liked that idea, I often think of myself in those ways, so it felt like I was talking to my people.

A digital garden isn’t really a standard corporate website. It isn’t a polished marketing blog either. It’s a scruffier thing than that, well mine is anyway. A personal corner of the web. Half notebook, half archive, half “I’ll come back and tidy this later”, which admittedly is three halves, but that sum feels about right for my digital garden.

And maybe the people who seek out these spaces are also the kind of people who choose alternative search engines. People who are a bit more intentional about their digital footprint. People who don’t just default to Google because it’s there. People who are still curious enough to look beyond the usual platforms.

That was my first theory ... then, with curiosity still surging inside of me, 10 minutes later I dug a bit deeper into the stats and slightly ruined my own romantic idea.

It turns out that around 92% of the DuckDuckGo traffic was landing on one page: my Pinter brewing times page.

Out of curiosity, I searched for “pinter brewing times” myself. On DuckDuckGo, my page was showing in positions 3 and 6. On Bing, it was also sitting around position 3. On Google, it was nowhere to be seen.

That made the whole thing even more interesting.

Most of the other results on DuckDuckGo and Bing were from the official Pinter site. So my scruffy little garden page, written from actual batches and real experience, was sitting among the official results as one of the few non-brand answers to the question.

Someone searching for “Pinter brewing times” probably doesn’t just want the official answer. They can get that easily enough. What they really want is the unofficial answer. The lived-in answer. The “I’ve brewed this myself and here’s what actually worked” answer.

That’s where personal websites like mine still have a place, they can answer the awkward little questions brands don’t always answer properly. They can add the human bit. The experiment. The note in the margin. The small practical detail that only appears once someone has actually used the thing in their own kitchen.

Because someone searching for real Pinter brewing times probably isn’t just drifting around the indie web looking for quirky little blogs. They probably already own a Pinter. They probably have a brew fermenting somewhere in the house. They probably want to know whether the official brewing times are enough, whether other people are leaving it longer, and whether their beer is about to turn into something drinkable or something they’ll quietly pour down the sink.

In other words, they’re not browsing. They’re trying to solve a problem.

And that might explain the DuckDuckGo thing better than my original “boho indie web” theory.

If you’re searching for something like Pinter brewing times, Google can feel a bit noisy. You get adverts, shopping results, official pages, old forum posts, and content that may or may not have been written by someone who has ever actually brewed the thing. But a person searching on DuckDuckGo might be looking for something a bit more direct. Less polished. Less commercial. More “has a real person tried this, and what happened?”

That’s exactly what my Pinter page is.

It isn’t a sales page. It isn’t a polished guide written to shift units. It’s just me, my own batches, my own brewing times, and my own attempts to work out what makes the beer better.

There may also be a crossover between the kind of person who homebrews with a Pinter and the kind of person who uses DuckDuckGo. Gadget-loving hobbyists. Tech-minded professionals. DIY types. People who like tinkering with things at home and finding their own way through a problem rather than simply accepting the official version.

Which, now I think about it, is basically me.

I like gadgets. I like brewing beer at home. I like fiddling with things until they work better. I also decided to build my digital garden on Blogger, which is not exactly the obvious choice in 2026, so perhaps I’m not in the strongest position to accuse anyone else of avoiding the conventional route.

There’s a search engine quirk in there too. DuckDuckGo has its own crawler and uses a number of sources, but its regular web results are largely sourced from Bing. When I looked a little closer at my Umami dashboard, Bing was performing fairly well too, with around 6.5% of all traffic.

So perhaps my little garden, or at least that Pinter page, has found a comfortable home in that particular part of the search world, while Google continues to stand outside, peering through the hedge, deciding whether anything here is worth indexing properly.

I quite like that. For me, Google can keep looking and wondering.

The DuckDuckGo traffic doesn’t necessarily mean my garden is being discovered by wandering citizens of the indie web. Not entirely, anyway. It might simply mean that practical people, searching with slightly different tools, are finding a practical page that gives them something useful.

And honestly, that might be better, because the more I think about it, the more a digital garden should work like that. It shouldn’t just be a place for grand thoughts and half-finished essays. It should also be a place where one oddly specific note, written from real experience, helps someone else at exactly the right moment.

Maybe that’s the real point here ... not that DuckDuckGo users are all indie web romantics. Not that my garden has suddenly become a destination for privacy-conscious digital wanderers. But that a page about brewing times, written by someone who has actually brewed the beer, can still cut through.

Even if it does so via DuckDuckGo and not Google!

And honestly, I’ll take that any day for my tiny little digital garden.

How I Learned to Love a Cheap Lidl Beer

When I first tried Steam Brew’s The Spark’s, I really didn’t like it.

The 7.8% ABV Imperial IPA had a harsh alcoholic edge that seemed to overpower everything else. I reviewed it in May 2025, scored it 6 out of 10 (and I think I may have overscored it a tad originally), and I expected that to be the end of it, and move on to the next beer.

But I found a week later I bought it again.

Part of that was the price. At around £1.49 for a 500ml can, it felt worth another try. It also helped that Lidl is our closest supermarket, so Lidl’s The Spark was always easy to pick up.

There were things I liked about it from the start. It had citrus, stone fruit, sweet malt and a gentle herbal bitterness. The problem was that the alcohol stood out too much.

Then, after a few more cans, something changed. The harshness didn’t bother me as much. The citrus seemed brighter, juicier, the sweetness made a little more sense, and the alcohol warmth started to feel like part of the beer rather than something fighting against it.

I don’t think the beer changed. More likely, my palate adjusted and I became more familiar with what it was trying to do.

My score eventually moved from 6 out of 10 to 7.5. It went from a beer I tolerated to one I regularly looked forward to drinking on a weekend.

There’s a wider lesson in all this for me. You shouldn’t force yourself to keep trying something you hate, but when there are a few positives hiding underneath that first reaction, it can be worth going back.

Tastes change. Palates adjust. Sometimes a beer you dislike at first can become one you genuinely enjoy; it's probably the same as things in life generally!

The Building Blocks of Better SEO

A short, practical guide to the layers that help product pages rank better in Google.

I was recently asked to look at SEO for a couple of product ranges for our New Zealand business. Nothing unusual there. Product SEO is one of those jobs that sounds simple at first, then quickly turns into a pile of small, connected jobs.

You can’t just add a keyword to a title, write a quick paragraph, and expect Google to suddenly fall in love with the page. Sometimes that helps, but proper SEO is built in layers. Some layers have a bigger ranking impact than others, but they all support each other.

The image below is a simple way of thinking about it.

1. Helpful, high-quality content

This is usually the biggest piece. A product page needs to be useful to the person landing on it. That means clear product details, practical descriptions, specifications, FAQs, and anything that helps the buyer make a decision.

For construction and trade products, this might include sizes, materials, use cases, compatibility, pack quantities, safety information, installation notes, and the type of customer or job the product is best suited for.

Google’s own guidance talks about creating helpful, reliable, people-first content, rather than content written mainly to manipulate rankings. That’s a useful test for product pages. Would this page genuinely help a buyer, or is it just a thin page with a few search terms sprinkled in?

2. Authority and trust signals

Good content works better when the wider web gives Google reasons to trust the site. Relevant links, trade mentions, customer references, reviews, supplier relationships, and brand mentions can all help build confidence around a business.

For a B2B construction product range, this doesn’t have to mean chasing hundreds of random backlinks. A link or mention from a relevant merchant, trade customer, industry partner, buying group, case study, supplier page, or local business profile may be far more useful than a pile of weak directory links.

Google also says links help it discover pages and understand relevance, so internal and external linking still matter when they’re natural, crawlable, and useful. 

3. Site architecture and internal linking

Even strong product pages can struggle if they’re buried too deep or disconnected from the rest of the site.

A sensible structure helps both users and search engines understand what the business sells. Categories, subcategories, product ranges, and supporting guides should link together in a way that feels obvious.

For example, a temporary fencing page might naturally link to construction barriers, pedestrian barriers, road cones, safety signage, and relevant support articles. This isn’t just an SEO trick. It helps customers move around the site and find related products.

4. Keyword research and search intent

Keyword research isn’t about stuffing pages with phrases. It’s about understanding how customers search.

In the New Zealand market, people may use different language from UK customers. They may search by product name, use case, category, regulation, or problem. That matters. A page targeting “temporary fencing” may need different wording from one targeting “site fencing”, “construction fencing”, or “crowd control barriers”.

The aim is to map each page to the right search intent. Product pages should target buying or specification searches. Guides and FAQs can target research searches. Category pages can sit between the two.

5. Technical foundations

The technical side doesn’t always feel glamorous, but it can quietly hold everything else back.

Pages need to be crawlable, indexable, fast enough, mobile-friendly, secure, and easy for Google to understand. Titles, headings, meta descriptions, image alt text, clean URLs, canonical tags, redirects, and structured data all play their part.

Google’s Search Essentials highlight the need for crawlable links, indexable content, and words that people would use when searching for your content. In plain English: Google needs to access the page, understand the page, and see that it matches what people are looking for.

Supporting signals

There are also smaller supporting signals that can help strengthen the overall picture.

Social mentions probably won’t transform rankings on their own, but they can increase visibility and lead to trade mentions, customer links, and brand searches. Schema markup can help search engines understand page content. Image optimisation can bring traffic through image search and improve page performance. Analytics helps show what is working. Regular updates keep pages accurate and useful.

None of these should replace the bigger layers, but they’re worth doing properly.

A simple SEO process for product ranges

For a product range, I’d keep the process fairly straightforward:

1. Check whether the page can be crawled and indexed.
2. Review the current title, H1, headings, meta description, and URL.
3. Research how customers in that market actually search for the product.
4. Map one main keyword theme to each page.
5. Improve the product content so it answers real buyer questions.
6. Add useful internal links from related categories, products, and guides.
7. Look for genuine trade, supplier, customer, or partner mentions.
8. Add or improve images, alt text, FAQs, and schema where useful.
9. Track rankings, impressions, clicks, and enquiries over time.
10. Review and update the page when the product, market, or Google guidance changes.

The main point

SEO works best when all the layers are in place. A technically sound page with thin content won’t do much. A brilliant guide that nobody links to or can easily find may also struggle. A page packed with keywords but written for nobody in particular is unlikely to build trust.

For product SEO, the best starting point is still simple: make the page genuinely useful, make sure Google can understand it, and connect it properly to the rest of the site.

That won’t guarantee rankings overnight, but it gives the page a much better chance.

Should Age Checks Start With the Phone?

There’s been a lot written in the popular press about children accessing social media platforms and pornography, and about the need for these platforms to carry out some form of age verification.

There’s also the wider question of whether underage children should have certain features throttled back on their smartphones, or whether they should be allowed to use these devices in exactly the same way as adults.

I do agree that social media platforms and websites have a responsibility to be more vigilant when it comes to protecting children. That feels obvious enough.

But I do wonder if we’re missing a trick with the devices themselves.

Surely it can’t be too difficult for age verification to happen on the phone itself, tied to the device and the person using it. The phone could then carry that age status with it and decide which sites, apps, and platforms it is allowed to connect to, or which features should be restricted.

That wouldn’t mean social media companies, adult sites, app stores, or messaging platforms get to wash their hands of the issue. They still have a role to play in keeping children safe.

But device-level age verification could add another layer of protection around the content children see, the messages they receive, and the platforms they can access.

I’m sure there are privacy, security, and practical issues I haven’t thought through yet. There probably always are with this kind of thing.

But as a seed of an idea, I think it’s worth looking into.

We;; this turned into a very timely post, within about four hours of me putting this post live, the BBC News reported that "Starmer tells Apple and Google to ban nude images on children's phones".

The article was a little bit interesting, as before I read it (and not being a fan of Apple products), I didn't realised that Apple has already age-verified its UK users and even offers a blocking service for several of its own apps including iMessage; so the technology is out there, we do just need the tech companies to step up to the plate and help protect the youngest in society.

We Basically Invented Google (kinda)

In the mid-1990s, I worked in the Marketing Department at BT in Leeds.

We were based at Butts Court at the time, and one of my mates there was Jason, better known as “Caratacus”.

For some reason, the two of us had got into the habit of thinking up questions during the morning. Not useful questions, necessarily, just odd little things we suddenly wanted answers to.

Who was that actor in that film? Where did a certain phrase come from? Who sang a particular song? What was the capital of somewhere obscure? The sort of thing that would now be settled in about four seconds on your phone, before anyone had even finished arguing about it.

But this was the mid-90s. The internet existed, technically, but not in any useful way for two lads sat in an office in Leeds trying to settle a lunchtime curiosity.

So we had our own system.

At lunchtime, we’d nip round the corner to Waterstones and start looking through the books until we found the answer.

Reference books, film books, dictionaries, atlases, encyclopaedias, whatever looked like it might do the job. We didn’t buy them, obviously. We just used Waterstones as a sort of analogue search engine with nice carpets.

And the thing is, it worked.

Ask a question. Search the available information. Find the most likely source. Check the answer. Report back with entirely unearned confidence.

Basically, Jason “Caratacus” and myself invented Google a couple of years before Google officially existed.

Admittedly, our version involved walking around the corner, manually browsing shelves, and trying not to look like we were treating a bookshop as a free research department.

But the core concept was there.

So yes, I’m not saying Larry Page and Sergey Brin stole our idea.

I’m just saying that if they’d been in Waterstones in Leeds in about 1996, they might have seen the future.

The Palms of Ocracoke (Mild Horror)

This story started while I was on holiday in Spain, staring at the palm trees opposite the Bali beds we had by the pool.

Right at the top, where the fan-shaped leaves meet the trunk, the crowns looked strangely dark. For a second I thought I saw movement up there. It was probably a bird. Probably.

But then I started wondering ...  what if something lived up there? Something humanoid, but not quite human. A spirit, maybe. Someone lost. Something waiting.

That tiny thought became The Palms of Ocracoke.

Nobody on Ocracoke liked being near the palm grove after dark.

The strange thing was that even on still evenings, when the sea air had completely died away, the fronds at the very tops of the trees still seemed to move.

The villagers had plenty of explanations for it. None of them good.

Some said a demon lived among the crowns of the trees. Others claimed to have seen something small and human-shaped moving through the darkness above them.

Whatever the truth, most people gave the grove a wide berth.

Maeve never paid much attention to the stories.

Fear had lost most of its meaning 15 years ago.

During a violent autumn storm, a sudden flood had torn through the island’s low gullies. Her 7-year-old son, a bright, spirited boy with a shock of red hair, had vanished in the deluge.

His body was never found.

The village assumed the current had swept him out to sea. Maeve had spent the years since waiting for a knock on the door that would never come.

On the 15th anniversary of the storm, Maeve walked into the palm grove for the first time.

The mud sucked at her boots. The air was thick with damp earth, salt, and rotting vegetation. Above her, the palm crowns shifted in the dark, even though the air was still.

She kept walking.

At the end of a narrow gully, the trees seemed to gather closer together. Their trunks leaned inward, as though they were listening.

Then something moved above her.

Maeve looked up.

In the crowded crown of the nearest palm, the shadows twisted. A small figure stepped out from behind the trunk and stared down at her.

Maeve didn’t scream. She didn’t run.

She looked at the figure and felt a strange, sudden ache in her chest.

“Please,” she whispered into the dark. “Don’t be afraid.”

The figure froze.

Then a sudden rush of wind swept down from the fronds.

It struck Maeve.

There was no violence in it. Instead, a flood of memory, fear, and grief burst through her mind.

The spirit entered her and was instantly overwhelmed by the weight of her sorrow. For 15 years, he had been a lost and lonely thing in the dark, acting out only because he wanted to be seen. Now, through her, he understood the hole he had left behind.

He felt her sleepless nights. Her refusal to leave the island. Her fierce, stubborn love that had never faded.

And Maeve felt him.

She saw his final moments on the day of the storm. The roar of floodwater tearing through the gully. His small hands gripping the slick bark of a palm tree as the water rose around him. The awful snap of wood. The suffocating rush of mud and debris that buried him before he could cry out for her.

He hadn’t been washed out to sea.

He had been here all along.

Trapped between worlds. Terrified. Homesick.

Maeve wrapped her arms tightly around herself, holding the spirit within her as though she were holding him as a child again.

Tears streamed down her face, but she smiled through them.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t your fault, my sweet boy. It was just the storm. You can rest now. Momma’s here.”

She gave him everything she had left. Every ounce of love, forgiveness, and peace she had carried through all those years.

And at last, the boy stopped fighting the pull of the afterlife.

The cold fear that had gripped his soul for over a decade began to thaw.

He let go.

By morning, the fog had lifted from the grove.

The villagers found Maeve on her knees in the mud at the end of the gully, calm and tear-streaked, staring at the earth between her hands.

There, pushing through the damp soil, was a tiny palm sapling.

It was unlike any other tree in the grove.

While the rest of the palms were deep green, the very top of this young plant, where the fan leaves were just beginning to form, carried a bright, unmistakable shock of crimson.

Maeve gently touched the red frond.

“He’s home,” she whispered to the quiet forest. “He’s finally home.”

The village never feared the palm grove again.

In the years that followed, the old stories changed. People no longer spoke of demons in the crowns of the trees. Instead, they spoke of the boy who was lost, the mother who found him, and the strange little red-crowned palm that grew in the place where love had finally reached through the dark.

The People of the Airport Baggage Carousel

Got to love an airport baggage carousel, everyone stands there pretending to be relaxed, while quietly scanning a conveyor belt with the intensity of a police stakeout. I’ve started naming the different groups of people you always seem to find there, mainly for my own entertainment.

The Gatekeepers
They stake out their claim at the start of the conveyor belt like guards. For them, the holiday hasn’t properly started, or ended, until they are the very first person to touch a handle.

The Commando
He turns a routine task into a mission. Sharp elbows, intense eye contact, and absolutely no regard for the social contract of personal space, and definately no manners as he (yeah it's usually a 'he') pushes he way to the front and takes you out as he manhandles his luggae from the belt.

The Over Packers
Sweet, over-packed, and physically outmatched by their own belongings. They are usually a frail older couple who rely entirely on the unspoken airport rule that someone stronger will eventually step in to do the heavy lifting for you.

The Second-Guessers
They suffer from temporary luggage amnesia. Every ruddy suitcase that rolls past sparks a full marital debate about whether they bought a new bag before departure. Come on, you only said goodbye to it in Manchester a couple of hours ago, surely you can remember what it looked like!

The Snipers
They hang back perfectly calm. They don’t move until they spot the target, then they step in, execute a clean retrieval, and vanish towards the exit before anyone else has even noticed them.

I think I’m probably a Sniper. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

I'm sad about dying

I don't think I'm afraid of dying.

My personal belief system tells me that life doesn't simply end, and I believe I'll be reborn in some form, somewhere.

But I do sometimes feel sad at the thought of my final days.

I honestly believe that I'll know the very last time I see the people I love; my beautiful wife and my amazing daughters. When my mind wanders in that direction, I find it very sad and painful. Even just writing this brings a ruddy tear to my eye!

I think, particularly as a parent, these thoughts hit harder than the very thought of death itself.

Not because I'll be gone. Not because I know they'll carry on without me. Simply because I'll know that I'll never see them again.

I think it's strange that I can make peace with my own ending far more easily than I can make peace with leaving the people I love behind.

I am always hopeful that:

1. I am a long way from my final days.

2. I'll learn to come to terms with the end, and not find it quite as sad as I do now.

Developing my Digital Garden

I have to say that I’m pretty happy with this digital garden as it stands right now.

It does what I want it to do. It gives me a place to write, think, and put ideas out into the world without overthinking them. [What is a Digital Garden]

But… I keep getting ideas.

Not big, grand plans. Just little things that I might add, change, or experiment with over time. Some of these will happen soon, some later, and some probably never.

That’s the point, I think. This isn’t a finished thing. So with that in mind, here’s a running list of where this might go next.

Things I’m Thinking About

"Post" Order
At the moment the main page is in Chronological order of when the post was created, I really want to change this at sometime to ensure that they are in modified (tended) order, that would just help anyone that comes along see where my thinking is currently at. It's one of the top things I need to do, just not a priority for me right now.

Newsletter
Some people might want updates when new posts go live. I’ve been looking at Buttondown, and it feels like it would fit nicely without turning this into a “marketing” thing, and allow people (if they wanted), to catch my updates.

RSS feed
This is an easy win. I just need to stop putting it off and actually switch it on properly.

Planted and tended dates 
I like the idea of exposing the date any post is created (Planted) and modified (Tended), it would just give the reader and idea of the age of the piece and nothing else. Now Live. Not going to lie, it took a lot of time to get the Tendered date sorted, which was actually my error as it seemed to be giving spurious dates, but I forgot that I changed some labels around 😂 

Comments
Was in two minds about this. This space is mainly for me getting ideas out of my head, but I know some people will want to respond. Digital gardens don’t always lean that way, and I don't really care what people think anyway about my posts if I'm being honest, so this will stay off. 

Analytics
I don’t want to get obsessed with numbers, but I do want a rough idea of what people find useful. If something connects, I’d like to build on it rather than ignore it. Live

Bidirectional links
This is a big part of the digital garden idea. If a post links to another post, or something links back in, I’d like to show that connection. It helps ideas feel joined up rather than scattered. I still have no idea how I am going to achieve this.

A “Now” page
A simple page that shows what I’m doing or thinking about right now. No polish, just a snapshot. Now Live

Best of the Garden
A small, changing list of posts that are worth a read. Not everything, just the ones I think have something about them. Live - they are on the homepage as "Pinned" and "Best Of".

Topic pages
Turning some labels into proper pages, so related posts live together in a more intentional way.

Updating old posts
Going back and adding notes to older posts when my thinking changes. Less “publish and forget”, more “publish and grow”.

I might also move towards a simple structure where posts are tagged as #seed (a quick idea), #sprout (something taking shape but not quite there yet), and #flower (something I’m happy to call finished).

It feels like a natural fit for a digital garden, and it would give me an easy way to find posts that need a bit more work.

Short notes
Not everything needs to be a full post. Quick thoughts, ideas, or links with a bit of commentary. Live in sense that I have started writing shorter posts ... germs of ideas (or indeed seeds)

A proper search page
Blogger already has search, but giving it its own page would make it feel more like part of the site. Now Live and part of the core navbar.

Blogroll / interesting people
A page of sites and people I rate. Feels like a nice nod to the wider web.

Changelog
A simple log of changes to the site. Small tweaks, experiments, things that worked and things that didn’t.

This isn’t a roadmap. It’s just a list of things that feel interesting right now.

If you’re reading this in the future, you’ll be able to see which ones actually made it.

 

 

Van Halen Were Basically a Novelty Act

I love rock music and metal, but I’ve always carried around what feels like a slightly controversial opinion about Van Halen.

To me, they often felt like a novelty act.

Not in the sense that they lacked talent, because that would be (partly) ridiculous, but in the way they presented themselves. The spandex. The songs designed solely to show off Eddie Van Halen's guitar skills. The massive hair. The goofy onstage antics. David Lee Roth bouncing around like some chaotic circus ringmaster. At times they felt less like a dangerous rock band and more like a cartoon version of one.

They definitely has the style over substance thing down to a fine art.

Sometimes they only seemed a couple of steps removed from Bad News.

And yet I do understand what Van Halen brought to the genre.

Eddie Van Halen changed rock guitar forever, and it wasn't just technically. The tapping, the tone, the production ideas, the sheer energy in his playing. Rock guitar after Eddie sounded different because of Eddie.

Then there’s the fact that I realise that novelty acts tend not to dominate arenas for over a decade. They don’t release multiple huge albums. And they definitely don’t survive replacing an iconic frontman with somebody completely different (or at least I'm struggling for an example of when they do).

Van Halen somehow pulled off one of the hardest tricks in rock history when Sammy Hagar replaced David Lee Roth (Iron Maiden did it and just about got away with it IMHO).

Van Halen changed style massively, became more polished, more melodic, and arguably more consistent. I’d even say they became a better band under Sammy Hagar, although I know that opens up another argument entirely.

So maybe the truth is that Van Halen were both things at once.

They looked ridiculous. They acted ridiculous. Their songs are just ridiculous, and parts of the whole thing were pure theatre.

But underneath all of that was one of the most important rock bands ever assembled.

And maybe that’s why they worked so well, even though I don't like them!