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.

Old Memories I Don’t Want to Lose

This is a loose collection of memories, some big, some tiny, and some that probably don’t mean much to anyone except me, and no-one e;se will really care about. I’m trying to get them down before they disappear completely.

Take all dates with a pinch of salt. Unless I have firm evidence, they may be out by a year or two, but they’re close enough for me.

1975 - The Day I Built a Bomb - not quite as alarming as it sounds, but probably still one of those things best explained properly.

1977 - "The Great Milk Escape" - I’m guessing I was about 10, and my sister Andrea was approaching nine, when we were asked to nip to the shop for a pint of milk. For younger readers, I should probably explain that milk bottles back then were made of glass, with a little foil cap on top.

Andrea had the milk bottle in the bottom of a plastic carrier bag and started swinging it around like a windmill. The full pint gave it a decent bit of weight, so she got a proper swing going, until the foil cap must have come loose and some of the milk escaped.

My dad, quite reasonably in hindsight, thought we’d just drunk some of it and didn’t believe we could have lost milk by swinging it round in a carrier bag. I’m fairly sure we got into trouble for that.

1982 - "A Drop Out of the Ordinary" - I remember a mate of mine, Chris, drawing this for a school art project; a splash of water, with one tiny droplet picked out in a different colour.

2005 - "A Tiger in the House" - I guess Rebecca was about six or so when she came running from the conservatory, or the “it-ree” as they used to call it, saying there was a tiger in there. Being the fun dad I was, I followed her in. She pointed to the corner where the tiger was and said, “There!”

I looked over and could only see the rocking horse that their grandma Pam had bought them. “Is that it?” I asked, playfully. “No, Dad!” Rebecca replied, in her sternest six-year-old voice. “That’s a horse.”

It proper put me in my place.

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 of the challenge is now £55.28, that's step 6 of 21 already!

Starting pot £5.00

Current value £55.28

Step completed 6th

Next target £64.00

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

In progress

8th Step £128

Future

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 Needed: £8.72

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: In progress 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.

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. Otherwise the page would quickly turn into a receipt drawer.

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.

What Will Happen To My Garden

I was just wondering what will happen to my garden when I am no longer here.

I dare say that, initially, no one will give two hoots. Life moves on, people are busy, and I’m not sure anyone will be rushing to read through years of my ramblings the moment I’m gone.

But as the years go by, I do wonder whether my children, or even my grandchildren, or great grand children, might become interested in some of the drivel I’ve written here. Not because it is especially important, or beautifully crafted, but because it is mine. It is a little record of how I thought, what I noticed, what made me laugh, what wound me up, and what mattered to me at different points in my life.

I’d hate for it all to simply disappear and never see the light of day again.

Speaking (or perhaps more accurately typing) out loud, I wonder if I could develop some sort of PANIC button that instantly converts all the posts to PDFs and saves them somewhere else. I’m sure there will be a more subtle solution than that, and I probably need to find it, but the thought has definitely lodged itself in my head.

All my normal social media stuff can rot, for all I care. Most of that is disposable by nature anyway. But this garden feels different. This is the bit I’d quite like to be around in some format, even if it is only tucked away somewhere for someone to stumble across years from now.

Nowt To Do With Me, Springs and Hinges

I said something to a work colleague today that took me straight back more than thirty years, and I thought I’d better get the story down before it disappears forever.

I started working for BT, or British Telecom, or British Telecommunications plc depending on how you remember it, back in the days before everything had been smoothed out by the internet. I was there until 1997, when I moved to GPT, (GEC Plessey Telecommunications). That’s a whole other story.

Back in the 80s and 90s, BT still had those old red telephone boxes dotted all over the place. They’re remembered now as lovely bits of British street furniture, very iconic back in the day, but anyone who actually used them will remember a slightly different reality.

They usually smelt of wee. You also felt like you might catch something just by standing in one for too long. And, if you did manage to survive the smell, you then had to battle your way back out through a door held shut by springs so strong you practically needed to be Geoff Capes to open it (anyone under 50 may need to look him up). It was just as difficult sometimes to open these things, and the silly little handles didn't really give you any purchase!

Every so often, our BT office in Leeds would get calls from customers complaining that people were struggling to open the phone box doors, and they wanted someone to do something about it.

One of the departments we had back then was Directories. They managed Directory Enquiries, where operators gave out telephone numbers, and Directory Production, which involved producing those enormous paper phone books that used to land on everyone’s doorstep. Pre-internet life must look almost prehistoric now.

Anyway, the chap who headed up the Directories team in Leeds used to get loads of these “phone box door” calls transferred through to him from the switchboard. I’ve no idea why, other than every phone box had a paper directory in it, so someone must have decided it was vaguely connected.

It wasn’t.

Every now and again, you’d hear him answer one of these calls with something along the lines of:

“Nowt to do with me. Springs and hinges.”

I may have paraphrased that slightly, but that was the gist of it.

The funny thing is, we actually had an engineering team that looked after the springs and hinges in phone boxes. That was a real thing. Somewhere inside BT, there were people whose job included making sure the doors on red telephone boxes opened and closed properly.

So now, every so often, when someone asks me something that has absolutely nothing to do with me, I still find myself saying, “Nowt to do with me. Springs and hinges.”, which I did this morning, and remembering this story brought a smile to my face.

No big reason for this story, really. But that’s what a digital garden is for, isn’t it? A little bit of history, a little bit of nonsense, and something small that made me chuckle today.

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!

Representation Has Gone Too Far

I’m pissed off with the way TV programmes keep matching presenters and reporters to the subject they’re covering.

A story about disability apparently needs a disabled reporter. An interview with the Scottish football team at the 2026 World Cup apparently needs a Scottish presenter. It’s bloody ridiculous.

I’m not sure “positive discrimination” is quite the right term. It feels more like forced representation or identity matching. Either way, surely the best person for the job should be the person who gets it.