Monday blues

Today's been one of those exhausting days in which you feel you've got nothing done, however you seem to have worked your arse off all day.

One of the main reasons for this is that I've been trying to frantically make sure the team has enough ammo to go on + is well enough stocked, whilst at the same time trying to get my everyday tasks done. This is extremely unrewarding work + even more so when people you try to help don't appreciate what your doing for them, or even worse actively p*ss off and take their work and knowledge with them. Hey ho. This has been especially annoying with my aMap (argument visualisation) project.

To move away from dwelling on bad sh*t, in good news is:
* another good week of sock sales
* 4 new tomatoes in my mini-garden in our Soho office
* a nice weekend with Catherine in Oxford, for Louise's baby-naming ceremony (see photo above!), and London, for some retail therapy (I bought an awesome Mac by some Belgian designer in Liberty - which will come in handy for the rainy season)

Jazzarama

Last weekend was super funno. Saturday morning was spent playing tennis against Mr Amos, and losing in true Henman style - a really grueling 1 and a half hour 1 setter! Ho hum.

In the evening I met up with Catherine for my surprise birthday evening - which was a real treat. It started with a few drinks in a bar near Kings Cross, followed by an amazing dinner at a place called Acorn House - which describes itself as "London's first truly eco-friendly training restaurant" - a description that misses out the fact that they serve delicious food!

Following dinner we all went off to the Jazz Cafe in Camden to watch some supremely skilled jazz dancers - pictured above + then off to more dancing (of a sort) at Faye's house til 5 in the morning!

Sunday was an early start - off to play cricket against Fernhurst in Sussex for the Laggers CC. Unfortunately due to the late night of dancing my cricket wasn't really up to much - and after a big build up I was out for a golden duck! Catherine wasn't massively pleased - as she was just getting her camera out of her bag to take photos when I was bowled. Hey ho.

Good week good week

This week's been a pretty good week - apart from being taken to court (of which I can't really say very much) - more will be revealed once it's all over.

On Wednesday I was down in Bristol again helping get our new VCN mini-venture off the ground. VCN is a super exciting development for us + we've got a great group working on it - they're the guys in the photo above.

The week ended with some great sales from the Rubber Republic team + also a nice dinner out with Tommy A in the Lighthouse in Battersea, where we bumped into Louisa and Harry which was fun!

B-day weekend!

This weekend was my b-day weekend - hurroooo! - which I spent up in Yorkshire with Catherine and my father.
It was all a bit You, Me and Dupree - with Dupree being my father, who is a bit like Owen Wilson - though with a lot less hair . . .

It was a bit of an action packed weekend involving a nice shiny red MG, a round of crazy golf, a trip to Betty's Tea Room in Harrogate (where the pianist sung me Happy Birthday thanks to Catherine), a flight in my Dad's plane around Yorkshire (with a good view of the floods over Hull!), a visit to my Gran (who I hadn't seen in 15 years or so), a victory in the local village pub quiz and a trip to Newby Hall and skelton (where I used to live).

All super funno + made hugely fun by Catherine and my father who both bought me super lovely prezzies.

Roll on 30 . . .

New socks arrive!

Finally our new stock of socks have arrived from Pantherella HQ. We've been looking at expanding our range of stock, and now have lemon, salmon pink, baby blue and red. We're trialling these at the mo with friends and family to see how they go down.

Also, we've been pursuing our interest in getting a stall at Spitalfields market - which (crossed fingers) will happen in the next month or so!

Bristol day

For the last couple of days I've been down in our Bristol office - spending some time with the team and trying to steer the company onwards and upwards.

Undoubtedly TeamRubber do a lot of stuff. And a lot of great stuff. The difficult thing is making sure the whole team is moving in the right direction and can see what the Directors at the top see.

Often as an entrepreneur the vision does change and move, and the key thing is to make sure the team understand that is the case, and you get buy in from all involved.

Over the last few months our team has changed a great deal, with many of our early staff leaving for pastures green - interesting mainly to take time out and go traveling - which is fair enough. However it is clear that these early employees have also partly lost focus of where the companies are moving, and perhaps wanting to do something new and escape the inevitable every day slog of making a company a success.

So for the next couple of months I'm keen to re-instate some vigour and vision within the team - so we can carry on moving things forward as rapidly and excitingly as possible.

Oh, and I also took our sales team out for dinner at Goldbrick House as a thank you for all their hard work + also to catch up. I had steak and chips (or course)!

Uncle Chris!

I don't thing I've mentioned this before on my blog, but I'm an uncle! All very exciting . . . The weeeee little whipper snapper's called India - and is at home curled up in a little ball with my sister in Luxembourg.

To celebrate the time, and to honour the little mitre, me and Catherine decided to write a children's book for her (as you do). The book is about a naughty Giraffe and his friends . . . That's all I can reveal for the moment. Most excitingly we've just finished the book, and are now planning a series - to honour the children of each of our friends and family, who all seem to be popping out sprogs left right and centre!

I'll be posting more about this in the coming months - but as I've literally just finished laying the first one up I thought I'd share the joy!

The return of the cravat!

Last Christmas Catherine bought me a super-lovely and cool cravat - paisley of course! Well, summers finally popping its head above the cloud and so the cravat is coming out in full force for evening wear.

The great thing about a cravat is that it both warms (not too much) and sooths at the same time. Oh hail the cravat!