Extra Salt & Sauce

The Agency is the sort of place where anything can happen.

Last week for instance, Mr. Rowley rushed out of his office, binoculars in hand, imploring the entire third floor to look out of the window. "An Otter! An Otter!" he excitedly cried. Sure enough, across the Water of Leith, a sleekit beastie was swimming alongside and exploring the nooks and crannies of the opposite quayside.

The combined wildlife expertise of the floor was put to the test and found wanting.

I've seen otters in the Highlands and thought it might be one, although it would have been a fantastically rare spot, in the middle of a city. Matthew from Finance thought it might be a humongously large rat. Despite pointing a Nikon 300mm lens at it, while hanging out the windows, we couldn't tell what it was definitively.

So Mr. Rowley and Chris, the owner of the aforementioned Nikon, donned coats and ran downstairs to get a closer look. This was the fastest any of us have seen either of them move.

The otter was not phased by being pursued and photographed by two fast walking gents. It even poked its head out of its hiding hole as if to ask, "What are you two up to? Do you want to make something of it?" Mr. Rowley later confessed he had been ready to turn on his heels just in case of an otter attack.

Chris managed to get off a few good snaps and here's the inquisitive fellow querying his pursuers' right to exist.

© Chris Hamilton

A quick photo comparison on the web ruled out the intial otter theory.

Our identification attempts then veered wildly from stoats to weasels to an outside bet on a pine martin. This was proved to be fanciful as Gerry Farrell our resident wildlife expert looked in on the excitement and then at the pic, nonchalantly pronouncing, "That's a mink. Hard bastards mink - they'll fight anything."

So what we saw was a "Leith Otter."

We haven't posted yet in 2007, which is shameful.

So I took a camera with me to Manchester yesterday on a trip with David Amers (Planning Director) and Paul Stallard (Head of Leithal Thinking). It's complete trivia but at least we're off and running for this year.

This as David and Paul cutting a dash in matching spectacles and faux-collegiate stripy scarves. Obviously the de rigeur planning look for 2007.

Here's Dave in full(ish) flow, presenting a debrief. I say "ish" because he's sitting not standing and he hasn't got his sleeves rolled up. The rolled-up sleeves are a signature piece of presentation body language for Mr Amers, as are his Blairesque, emphatic hand gestures. I tried to capture one of these for posterity but, alas, pressed the shutter a fraction of a second too late. So what you see here are the hands in repose, post-emphatic-gesture. Or pre-next-emphatic-gesture.

At the airport, Dave leaves our table at Costa Coffee to make a call that he obviously doesn't want Paul or I to overhear. It's a rubbish picture because the flash didn't reach the inordinate distance that David had put between himself and us. That's him furtively lurking in the background.

We had what was probably our last meeting at IRN-BRU's Parkhead head office the other day. They're moving to their state of the art bottling plant in Cumbernauld.

We recorded the event for posterity.

We couldn't get into the usual meeting room because of preparations for the move, so we found ourselves in this subterranean room off the loading bay. It was the A G Barr version of Churchill's War Rooms with various sales area maps all over the walls.

It was also clearly the secret Overhead Projector Graveyard (you can see one of them in the background). This was where all the OHP's came to die. No-one saw them go but they made their way somehow, like elephants, to this ancestoral burial ground.

Seeing all these OHP's reminded me of an idea I had a while back for a piece of software to plug into Powerpoint. This software would recreate on Powerpoint slides all the endearing quirks of working with OHP acetates.

So, as you make your presentation, random hairs and fingerprint smudges appear on your slides.

As you click between charts they sometimes appear to float and slide, coming to rest at an odd angle, the way that acetates used to once the OHP bulb got hot.

Every now again (on the Russian Roulette setting) a slide will start to turn brown and appear to melt. The content of your chart is irrevocably lost as various melt holes get bigger and join up.

The software also gives you an additional option for building bullet point charts. Instead of just appearing they are revealed one by one by a feature that mimics the effect of a piece of paper being pulled away. This feature comes with a further "nervous shaking hand effect" option. This recreates the way that OHP's would magnify the slightest nervous shake to an extent that was impossible not to notice. A nervous reveal also ran the risk of dragging the acetate out of position as the paper was moved downwards - and this can also happen to your Powerpoint slide on this setting.

This software would be great for presentations to people over the age of 35. Whereas I realise that there are people in the agency who won't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about.

We've had a bit of an office reshuffle recently which resulted in me having to clear out an old filing cabinet. It was like several geological layers being exposed in a cliff face. Here are some of the "fossils" that I dug out.

This is a "classic" Tennent's Lager ice block font, circa God knows how long ago. Nice!

And from roughly the same period a set of four Tennent's Lager cans featuring the Lager Lovelies. Someone told me that these can fetch up to £800 each on ebay, but they're technically the property of the agency.

From 1993, the year that I left the agency, BBH's first International Advertising handbook. Those were the days when global advertising was a brave new world for BBH. There is some great 1993 stuff about how computers and ISDN lines might revolutionise the way these accounts are run - for instance one page opens with the rhetorical question "But we've got telephones and faxes, so why on earth do we need to complicate things by using computers?"

The 12 inch EP version of Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Don't ask.

A pair of rose-tinted spectacles.

The box set of CDP's greatest hits, print and TV. A fantastic pick-me-up whenever you question the wisdom of working in an industry like ours.

And finally a cardboard cut-out of Simon Cowell stuck to a pencil. We occasionally use these in workshops and brainstorm sessions. You hide behind the Cowell persona if you've got something brutally honest to say. It works! You hear things that need to be heard but which might have otherwise been left unsaid.

Our Christmas tree still hasn't been put away, although it is back in its box now.

This is partly because we're very busy, but probably also because we so-called communication experts have spectacularly failed to communicate. Dozens of people see this tree every day and assume that someone else will mention it to the right person to get it moved. It's a symptom of the same disease that makes agencies rubbish at their own marketing.

I was in Amsterdam on Friday and it was freezing. Much colder than it has been here of late. I lost the feeling in my right hand having taken my glove off to answer the phone.

By contrast I enjoyed very warm welcomes at both of my meetings. We're in the process of developing a proper international new business strategy, and I was visiting 180 and Strawberry Frog to pick their brains. This was very generous of them given that they were effectively helping out a competitor. So thanks to Guy at 180 and to Mark and Alessandro at Strawberry Frog. The warmth and generosity felt very "Edinburgh" and we owe you.

As I was in the area I met up with Lee Hempstock for lunch. Lee is one half of a creative team that used to work here at Leith. He's now at 180 working on adidas and global Sony pitches. This is him pretending to do some work.

Pete Burns (MD of Blonde) and I had a Top Gear style race between the Leith and Blonde offices yesterday. Over what Multimap says is a 2 mile (3.2km) course my push-bike beat his Lexus by a good three minutes, even allowing for the time taken to lock the bike to railings outside Blonde.

Late on at the Marketing Excellence Awards in Glasgow I was confronted by a somewhat worse for wear person from another agency (who shall remain nameless) who clearly had things that he or she wanted to get off their chest.

Amongst various beefs was their view that this blog is shit.

The main reason behind this view was that no-one had posted for ages. That's actually a good point. In fact we posted nothing for the whole of April. So I'm putting a few up this morning.

It would be good if a few other Leithers got into the blogging habit. It's not like there's nothing going on.

At last Friday's Marketing Excellence Awards we won the award for Marketing Services Agency of the Year for 2007.

That's the second time in three years which, as the title of this post suggests, ain't bad.

On the way we also picked up the Media Excellence award for Grolsch Green Light District and the Advertising Excellence award for the Scottish Executive smoking ban work. We also had three other nominations - two for IRN-BRU 32 and another one for the smoking ban.

There was the usual descent into mayhem later on and the pictures I really wanted to illustrate this post with would all have come from the bus trip back to Edinburgh. Unfortunately no-one had a camera.

There was David Amers asleep and slack-jawed on Claire Wood's shoulder (he claims he was pretending). And there was Sarah Gilmore belting out a fantastic rendition of American Pie.

A good night and a very good event.

As the person tasked to manage the blog from behind the scenes, while setting up Mr. Brooke with rights to post his entry on the Irish pub, I was horrified to see that there were over 2,900 comments to be checked for publication.

99.8233% recurring, were from spammers not content simply to fill the mail boxes of innocent members of staff with rubbish, they wanted to hi-jack our blog as well. Some of the more repeatable offers still boggle the mind; female viagra, Sony turntables, lubricants, horse blankets (!) and of course lashings of porn catering to every possible niche perversion.

Gentle reader, we have spared you from this torrent of filth, as comments have to be approved before they appear. So if you are a real person and wish to pass comment, please bear with us as it takes us a short while to sift the gems from the dross.

Here's an extended edit of the IRN-BRU Goth Holiday ad, with loads of extra footage of the Goths trying to drink IRN-BRU on the Revolution. It's a case of extreme G-Forces 1, Goths nil.

The actors in the commercial, one of whom is a genuine Goth, have been really good sports and we've given them extra bits and pieces to show their friends and post on their Myspace pages. One of them had posted their casting session on YouTube. Here it is.

Here's our new TV commercial for Strathmore Spring.

Strathmore is an A G Barr brand, and this is clearly very different to anything we've done for IRN-BRU.

The ad was written by Mark Davies and Mikey Kinlan and directed by Martin Wedderburn of MTP. Post production was done by Smoke & Mirrors.

We shot the ad in a disused warehouse in Govan, Glasgow and it features the ace Belgian double dutch crew DDF. Here is a bit more of DDF in competitive action .

The music for the ad is by Scottish musicians Martyn Bennett. and Martin Low. The track is called Spree and is used with the kind permission of Martyn Bennett's wife (Martyn died in 2005).

There's another ad in this campaign which should be completed in the next couple of weeks. Watch this space.

Who are Red Bee Media?

The reason I ask is that yet again they finish 2nd to us in a league table of the most highly rated agencies in the UK. 6 months ago they were snapping at our heels and they're still there buzzing around.

The league table is compiled by davidreviews.com - "the UK's most foremost adwatch site"* and is based on the quality of ads produced by agencies across the UK (we're in Edinburgh, not London)

So I dug around and discovered that they're the in-house agency at the BBC (Red Bee, geddit) and do all those groovy idents - including that great Radio 2 ad featuring a host of musical legends.

It feels good to know that an agency like ours can share a podium with the vast creative and production muscle of the beeb.


*Campaign (mag read by ad folk)

Lovely Hamish has just spent a month with the planning department and penned this before he left for the South of France. (I didn't pay him to do it, honest!)

It’s been 40 years since Jimi Hendrix posed this question to us students. These days, we’re warned, it’s the favourite enquiry of graduate employers. That’s why almost everyone I know approaching their last years at uni, spends each summer desperately seeking out work experience placements, and that’s why students these days spend the summer months in firms across the country putting files in order, data into spreadsheets and the kettle on.

Not so at The Leith Agency, where I’ve just finished a month’s paid placement. From the moment I was introduced to the planning department I knew that here, things would be different. Maybe it was Clare Falconer’s ready smile, the firmness of Paul’s handshake, or the friendly efficiency of Lizzie and Brie’s greetings. Perhaps it was the warmth of Claire Wood’s hello or the glint in Alan Ainsley’s eye – but it was immediately clear that this was a department that worked hard and played hard.

I’d drunk ten cups of coffee before I made one, and I needed them. I was put to work from the off, making clumsy but welcomed contributions to various projects across the IRN-BRU, Grolsch, Sol and Scottish Executive accounts. I can only assume the agency’s filing system is in perfect order, because no-one asked me to alphabetise anything.

Everyone in the department made time to explain their role to me in detail, and I even got an audience with David ‘the master’ Amers in my final week. By the time Sarah returned from her honeymoon, I was snowed under with work and hell-bent on meeting deadlines. By the time Kenny arrived, I could almost work the printer.

And that taste in my mouth? That, I think, was a genuine taste of what it was like to be a Leith Agency planner, although it could have just been IRN-BRU.

So it seems I really got what I asked for when I enquired about work experience at Leith. Many thanks to everyone for having me, and especially to Ed for taking me on.
Best wishes, Hamish.

The night that John McCarthy was freed in Beirut, Les, Gerry and Guy Gumm (the grand masters of Leith) found themselves in a pocket-sized restaurant in Bath. The proprietor shared the news with them.

They promptly ordered a couple of bottles of Chateau Musar. According to Mr Farrell, the best Lebanese red in the world (and better yet, only a fiver a bottle at the time). The owner and his missis plonked themselves down with them and they toasted John McCarthy`s release. Until four in the morning.

Waking up this morning to hear that Alan Johnston had at last been given his get-out-of-jail card, Gerry drove with purpose to Sainsburys and bought handfuls of Celebrations for the agency. Almost as good as a few bottles of Chateau Musar.

He proceeded to scatter them throughout the building with little notes on the boxes entreating passers-by to liberate a chocolate. A lovely and honourable intention.

Thwarted only by the fact that he didn't sign any of the notes so visitors to reception spent the day thanking the glamourous Shayne for her gift.

Tragedy struck yesterday in the planning department. In fact, it began to strike when I was down in the Lakes with AG Barr on Wednesday.

Sir Alan, our design guru, received a gift of goldfish a couple of months ago. In gratitude for another brilliant piece of brand identity creation. Having tried to palm them off on his son (who turned his rather fetching nose up at them), he brought them back into the office in the passenger seat of his car a few weeks later.

So they've been living on our coffee table in happy harmony since. Until Wednesday when the thinner of the two fish started flailing around the bowl looking distinctly unhealthy. Sarah ran out on an emergency mission to buy medicine from the pet shop. But I fear she was too late.

I trotted back into the department yesterday morning to find the thin fish doing that telltale belly-up float in the top of the bowl. So we scooped out the thin fish leaving the fat fish to rule the roost.

But he didn't take to it very comfortably and in fact seemed to keep tapping on the side of the bowl in distress, eager for us to go and play with him in the absence of his skinny companion. So gettyimages to the rescue, I found him a picture of some fishy companions and we've placed it behind the bowl to fool him into thinking he still has friends.

Do say hello if you're up here. I don't think the picture's done much to console him.

With the Forth Rail Bridge closed for maintenance work, I travelled into work by Hovercraft this morning. Fifteen minutes from Kirkcaldy to Portobello and £18 for the week. That makes it significantly cheaper and faster than the train. Here's hoping that Stagecoach keep the service running after its two week trial. If the sun keeps shining like this morning I could get used to this New York style commute. Even if the Leith skyline isn't quite Manhattan...

Wednesday this week saw Sir Alan bouncing into the office suggesting a department trip to the Richard Long exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. So off we skipped at lunchtime, hearts full of eager anticipation at the cultural stimulation ahead.

Unfortunately it was all downhill from the sweeping entrance to the gallery. Of course appreciation of art is a very personal thing. But as far as I could tell, Richard Long has made his fortune from clustering sticks and stones into circles in various far-flung locations.

For a little variety, he had thrown buckets of muddy water at the gallery walls. In room 7, he made a little effort - as he'd used his hand to spread the muddy water into a giant arc. But in room 5, he let gravity work its magic, restricting himself to simply chucking the bucket and leaving the water to make its own art as it trickled down the wall.

In fairness, there was a giant slate cross in the garden area that was pretty impressive. And Sir Alan - who knows what he's talking about - said that Mr Long's best pieces had been left out of the exhibition altogether. Lizzie and I were rather more taken by the cakes in the restaurant. Rude not to buy souvenirs, after all.

Sir Alan was down in London recently and snapped a few photos of our Sol work looking sunny and sultry in the underground.

Weather that we apparently can only dream of up here in Scotland.

Mariapia and I are having a cake sale today to raise money for orphans.

The 4th floor meeting room is currently full to the brim of cakes.

So if you happen to be passing the Shore today, do pop in for a muffin, delicious cookie or various assorted chocolate, apple, coca cola, carrot cakes.

But be quick. I've never seen so many guzzling gannets in one meeting room.

So today was the day of the great cake bake. And I haven't seen such excitement in the 4th floor meeting room for a long time.

More or less as the clock struck 11am - the allotted eating time - people began streaming onto our floor. And even the thinnest of girls seemed to manage to put away a very considerable amount of cakes. Many sugar induced headaches were filling the corridors by lunchtime.

Matthew wisely observed that the married were able to eat so many cakes as they no longer needed to care about their weight. Unlike the spinsters amongst us who limited their intake to a simple piece of Paul's apple cake, of Sarah's coca-cola chocolate cake and one of Mark's beetroot (organic veg obviously being an integral part of any cake bake). Matthew was even more restrained, sticking to the delicious biscuit-coated marshmallows.

We'd raised about £100 by lunchtime. Haven't counted all the loose change yet. And have just delivered the remainder of the wealth of cakes to the homeless of Leith.

I think we should save the orphans more often.

£154.85 was gathered from the sale of cakes. Good work, bakers of Leith!

One of my clients, the EDI Group, have offices above Hunter Square in Edinburgh. For those that don't know the location, it's set slightly back from the Royal Mile which of course is currently awash with fringe performers of varying degrees of competence. And in fact, the precinct area directly in front of their offices becomes an inpromptu performing space.

Wednesday's monthly meeting began as a bunch of (peaceful) fan dancers took to this spontaneous stage so the studious atmosphere of the meeting was only disturbed when the throngs of people who had collected to watch decided to applaud them at the end of their routine. We weren't so lucky with the next act - some kind of children's Japanese choir. And as one of the clients bravely struggled through explaining a 3 page epic colour-coded spreadsheet to the accompaniment of energetic caterwauling, it all eventually proved too much for poor Becky and after several exasperated looks, Jim leapt up and shut the window, shutting out the lively festival soundtrack.

I feel sure that this variety and energy should be inspiring but of course in certain circumstances - as anyone who's ever tried to walk up the Royal Mile during these 3 weeks of August in a hurry will surely testify - it is only mildly irritating. Sour puss rant of the day over.

Alongside fetching my morning coffee from The Clock, once a week I like to fankle around in the 4th floor kitchen cleaning out Tiger, the planning fish.

Today was one such morning. A nice bit of variety on the to do list. But do tell Sir Alan if you see him, that a fish is for life and not just for Christmas...

Agency summer party yesterday. Brilliantly recreating the IRN-BRU summer ad, a pack of Leith Agency Goths took to the beach with a session in the amusement arcades closely followed by bouts of sumo wrestling, lashings of lager and copious quantities of black eyeliner.

The beachside frolics concluded with a gothic game of volleyball as the sun sunk behind the sea.

And then the Goths retired to more lively drinking establishments in the city centre.

Huge thanks to Terry and Alison for their exceptionally kind hospitality (and exceptionally delicious buffet) at the Dalriada on the seafront in Joppa. And to the patient owner of Revolution who fed us vodka for the remainder of the night.

Hard to know whether the smudgy black eyes drifting round the agency today are the result of left-over eye make-up or too much vodka and too little sleep.

Prize of the night should go to Richard Thomson for a rather fabulous effort.

With the very lovely Katie Connelly as a close second.

But in fact, small medals are probably deserving all round for tremendous costumed enthusiasm. Hats off to you all for making it a truly Gothic summer holiday.

We're running a series of workshops at the moment for one of our clients, taking them through the process of developing an ad campaign from start to finish. So kicking off with developing a brand positioning, conducting mini focus groups to validate that positioning, establishing business and communications objectives, writing a creative brief and so forth.

The whole process is proving to be really interesting. Another of those moments when you realise that now and again, there is a bit of a skill to what we do. And I think I'm learning as much from the workshopees as I hope they're getting back from us.

Most recent session saw them - shock horror - writing an ad campaign against their creative briefs. Gerry had thoughtfully supplied them all with poster paints so we got some really impressive - and really colourful - scamps at the end of it. I was about to upload one of them for all of the world to see but the file is apparently too large.

So if you'd like to come see, the genius is lying on my desk as we speak. We should auction them off on ebay. Pop art.

Since writing in July about the campaign for establishing a Leith Museum I've heard from MP Mark Lazarowicz who sent me this letter with news of the campaign's progress.

Please click on the letter to zoom in.

The poster, put together by the brilliant Mikey, is kind of self-explanatory. But for those that can't get beyond the charming visual, the beautiful Lizzie, currently living in Tanzania and teaching arts and crafts to disabled children, is trying to raise money to buy a toilet for the school that she's working at.

Lizzie freelanced here for a few months over the summer. She's a rather superb designer but not satisfied with crafting artful and intelligent brand identities, she's set off to save the world.

Cakes available from 11am plus any visit to the toilet today will be accompanied by a collecting tin. Spend a penny for a toilet..??

Hot from the pen of the lovely Mariapia, an update on our latest cake fest:

All the lovely people of Leith helped raise a whopping £530 For Help Lizzie Buy a Bog Day. That’s nearly three Bogs! However, Lizzie is helping to build a hospital as well as teaching the disabled kids arts and crafts, so any extra money will help sustain the project.

Please click here to see for yourselves what Lizzie is up to in Tanzania.

In preparation for the spring, we're having a bit of an office reshuffle to accommodate our ever expanding number of staff.

From our vantage point on the fourth floor, we've been watching the box packing from afar for the past few weeks. But this weekend, we had a more of an up close and personal encounter with the removal men. As they came to take the beautiful Stripettes away and install them (in custom-made quarters, no less) on the fourth floor.

From a completely selfish point of view, I am mildy relieved that they are gone. They are always perfectly manicured and impeccably turned out to a woman. Conrad, the gentleman of the team, is equally tailored but in more of a male way. I have felt ashamed of my own sloppy garb at numerous points over these past months as they tip-tapped to the photocopier in another pair of vertiginous shoes.

Haute couture aside, we shall miss them up here. Tiger is a faithful friend but not quite such perky company.

Last Thursday saw us all on a bus out to Musselburgh for the agency Christmas party. We went to a very fine restaurant called The Glasshouse, selected on the basis of rave reviews from various journalists over the past year since its opening.

We dressed finely in our finery and drank copiously and drunkenly. A tried and trusted recipe for festive frolics.

I can't really say much about how wonderful a night it was as I was on the organising committee and god forbid that I do anything in the way of personal trumpet blowing. But I can say especial thanks to Brie for tremendous organisational efforts.

A few sore heads in the office the next day. Interestingly, everyone blamed the fizz for subsequent sickness - rather than the quantities drunk.

People are starting to drift out of the office now, festive bound. Alan has just set sail for Barcelona, Sophie's heading back home to Belgium, Clare's off home to pack before flying to Spain at the weekend, Kenny's off to try and snatch a last minute Wii and then another batch of people finish up tomorrow, all thoughtlessly abandoning Brie for her birthday lunch on Friday.

I'm finishing up tonight for some panic shopping and a couple of spins on the big wheel. Not back until the new year which feels very self-indulgent.

Check out our advent calendar for the final festive countdown.

And have a very merry Christmas.

Now and again in idle un-relative-filled moments over Christmas, I pondered a Nick Hornby style top ten ads of 2007 post on the blog to commemorate the new year.

Prompted by Gerry observing that the Cadbury Gorilla was his favourite ad of 2007.

I got as far as the Skoda ad and the VW Night Driving ad. Defiantly I refused myself the inclusion of the Gorilla.

But my inspiration was snatched from beneath me when I returned to the office today to discover the terrible news that in my heartless and lengthy absence over the Christmas and New Year period, my beloved (well, he was really Sir Alan's but I think the pet becomes the property of the one that cleans him out most) golden fish, Tiger is dead Dead DEAD!

I had an almost teary moment and then remembered that I was a grown adult and feigned almost indifference. But 2008 could be a difficult and inspiration-less year.

Groups last night in Aberdeen. The trip was enlivened by the closing of the Tay Bridge which meant a two and a half hour journey stretched to five hours via Glasgow. One poor chap who was clearly doing the same tortuous journey as me, did the whole thing with a giant wrapped Christmas present clasped in his arms. So it could have been worse.

I wound up the second group - 18-24 year old men - with a couple of charts they had to fill out. One chap filled his out super-efficiently, filling the tick boxes with random numbers fuelled by the three pints he'd poured down his throat during the hour and a half session. So he decided to make small talk.

First he turned his attention to The English and launched into a tirade about how useless they were. Various uncomplimentary descriptions of the English were shared with the table of Aberdonians - who focused ever harder on their worksheets. He then crowed about their unsuccessful football performance. "Even we got more points than they did." I nodded politely.

He turned to me. "What about you? Do you have to do these things down there (England) as well?" I smiled pleasantly: "yes, we cover the whole of the UK". "And how do they take to you? Is it a nightmare?" "Well I don't find it's too difficult, being English myself." He looked astonished and spluttered insincere apologies. The rest of the table chortled furtively.

I have rarely been mistaken for a Scot. Maybe never in fact. I am surprised that the one to mistake me spoke in almost the broadest Aberdonian accent that you could ever hope to find.

Still, the master ended up a train to Inverness yesterday opposite a woman who was (self-confessedly) being courted with encoded messages by a man who used to be a dragon.

As the master observed, "it's all part of a week in the life of a qualitative researcher".

Well, this was a proper back-to-work week. Last week felt (for me at any rate) like a bit of gentle re-introduction into the world of five day weeks. This week was rather more lively.

More groups. Though no dragon-courting women and no cases of mistaken nationalities.But we did christen our new barge. Mary of Guise, tethered along the shore from us with a very impressive though slightly rickety drawbridge connecting her to sturdy land. I shall try and procure a picture of her so you can share the pleasure.

A Wednesday workshop passed uneventfully. But then the rains came. A Thursday meeting saw a wet-bottomed client. Today's meeting saw a drip plopping onto our poor IRN-BRU client's be-shirted arm. It is undoubtedly inconsiderate of the seeping damp to seek out our clients rather than we ourselves who probably deserve to be dripped on.

Raindrops aside, it is a very cool addition to the Leith property portfolio. Ed is wildly talking about white leather armchairs sitting atop the roof in summer. Suppose that'll stop the rain getting in.

Further to Claire’s earlier entry, here is a couple of pictures of our lovely barge for you to admire…..

You know you've had a good night when you end up playing your song of the moment and your favourite ever Youtube clip (courtesy of a Gerry email a couple of years ago, as it happens) to your clients at 5am. The sort of behaviour that should really be reserved only for your dearest and closest friends in weakly drunken moments.

We started out in a relatively civilised way. Drinks at Harvey Nics followed by dinner At Stac Polly in honour of the lovely Joady who is leaving one portfolio for another at AG Barr. She shall be missed by her carbonated collegues here.

But the Star Bar led to favourite haunt Fingers which was haunted last night by a peculiarly weird group of people. Those of our Barr team who hadn't been initiated into the mystery of Fingers yet were, I think, rather appalled.

And then the words which I imagine will soon become an all too regular refrain: "let's go back to the barge". So we did. We can blame our managing director for this one, I think.

Those with homes to go sensibly drifted away after the novelty of Richard Marsham's ipod had worn off, leaving a hardcore four. Adrian and Martin from AG Barr and the sultry Gail (would you really compare her to a Skoda as happened in one of various drinking games? I think not). I seem to remember making them sit through Europe's "Final Countdown" and a particularly fine Pet Shop Boys video in which Neil Tennant attempts a few faltering dance steps. A teenage favourite of mine.

It was only when we tried to stagger home sometime after a rainy 7am that we discovered that the keys to lock up the barge were gone. Let's not finger point. But we weren't pleased. So the barge was christened with a couple of cat-napping girls as we waited for our rescuers.

Back on the barge today for the first time since the Night of Nights.

I'm sure it was just psychological - my most recent memories being eating cold mashed potato at the boardroom table and then napping on the leather couches on the landing - but I did feel slightly nauseous.

Clearly haven't got my sea legs sorted yet.