A little bit of family history was made today. This afternoon Moselele (the ukulele band I play in) performed a gig as part of a sensory weekend for the kids at Acorns Children’s Hospice in Selly Oak.

There were four or five young people with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties listening in, along with carers and volunteers. Music is one of the things that stimulates the children with PMLD and as we ran through our set, some were smiling or waving their arms response to the music. It was a lovely sight.

But it was a particularly poignant day for me because my mum was Ann Cullinan, the founder of the Acorns Children’s Hospice Shops. Here she is standing in front of the first charity shop in Cotteridge in 1987 – before the hospice even had a name.

When I got home from the gig, I went up into the attic to find a certain box containing a certain chapter of Acorns history.

Mum started fundraising for Acorns aged 60 when she retired from Cadbury’s. As she said in this newspaper clip:

“I used to work 16 hours a week – now I’m working 12 hours a day.”

I remember that time vividly. I was 18 and living at home, and life consisted of endless trips in the old Ford Escort to collect donations. We had a front room filled to ceiling height with black bags full of toys and clothes. And Mum was always on the phone organising events and interviews with the press to get publicity to help raise funds to build the first hospice. (I wonder if all that PR work partly fuelled my move into journalism?)

Whatever Mum asked for, she got. Acorns was the biggest charity cause in the Midlands at that time and people gave generously. Vans, shops, sponsorship. Once she even got an offer of all the conference carpet from the NEC. She took it – and turned it into cash, somehow.

The rise of the Acorns shops seemed meteoric. The clipping above in Mum’s scrapbook album shows the Cotteridge shop had been open 54 days and had already raised £21,000, in the main thanks to Mum’s drive with help from the shop volunteers, who became known as ‘Ann’s Army’. At its peak, I remember the shop raising £4,000 a week.

More shops opened, first in Stirchley then in Kings Heath (I think there are more than 40 now). Within two years, the shops had raised £350,000.

It felt like a triumphant achievement by the whole city when, on 14 December 1988, Acorns was opened by Princess Diana. Of course, we got a classic Di shot for the family album.

Mum gave up her work with Acorns in the early 1990s when her health became an issue. But she never stopped her charity work, turning her final months into a highly organised preparation for her own fundraising funeral to raise money for Huntington’s Disease.

Here is the letter she wrote – which she made me type – that appeared in her remembrance booklet. You can see she was very proud of all that Ann’s Army achieved with Acorns.

Mum died in 2001. I remember ‘doing the PR’ for her fundraising funeral and the Evening Mail’s headline ‘Pennies from heaven’.

It was a terribly sad time. But now I remember my mother as she was in these photos: happy, smiling and unfailing in her efforts to help others.

So that is why today was a special day. Much of my teen life was wrapped up in fundraising for Acorns and yet today was the first time I went inside the unit and saw the amazing work that they do.

After Moselele did their set, I asked Pauline, the activities coordinator, how long she had been working at Acorns.

“Too long – 22 years!” she said. “But I never get tired of working with the children. And they’ve really enjoyed today.”

“I don’t suppose you remember but my mum used to work for Acorns – she set up the hospice shops.”

“Ann?!”

Coming full circle by doing something for the Acorns kids, remembering my mum (I can’t believe it has been 10 years since she died) and see the fruits of all that fundraising labour was fantastic.

But someone from Acorns remembering – that was the thing that really made my day.

Some personal memories of Davy Jones, who passed away this week aged 66…

I became a Davy Jones addict aged 12-13 when the BBC started playing re-runs of The Monkees on a Saturday morning. They were like a human version of the Banana Splits. Davy was so… well, beautiful is probably the word, that I used to sit close to the TV screen and not blink so as not to miss a minute. After the show was over, I was gutted to have to wait another seven days to see Davy again. Puberty had arrived.

Episode 1: I realise our love can never be…

My other main love at that time was my dog, a Welsh border collie called Lucky. I took her for long walks along the River Rea – in the bit we used to call The Jungle before the council created a ‘nature trail’ – and I’d tell her my woes. My main problem was that Davy was now fortysomething; our love was doomed.

Episode 2: Jim doesn’t fix it…

Then the worst thing happened. The BBC took the show off the air. I got out my notepaper and envelope gift set and wrote a stern letter. I pleaded and begged for them to put it back on. They didn’t. I also tried Jim’ll Fix It, asking to appear in a show or meet the band, but there was no joy there either

Episode 3: I see Davy in real life…

The Monkees were then forgotten until 1986 when I found myself unexpectedly going solo on a road trip across the US at the age of 18. I got off the bus in San Diego, California, and checked into the downtown YWCA. I was all alone, probably for the first time in my life.

Then I saw it – my comforter. It was an advert for The Monkees reunion concert at the San Diego Padres baseball stadium. I dented my backpacker fund bigtime to pay for a ticket, went to my first baseball game and then watched as Davy, Mickey and Peter drove across the grass in toy cars to get to the stage. Of course, it wasn’t the same – they were older and tubbier – but hey it WAS The Monkees. And I got to see them. IRL.

Episode 4: A tribute song…

Fast forward to 1996, living in a joke flat in south London with an Aussie work colleague nicknamed Badlady. She turned out to be an even bigger fan of The Monkees and so naturally we spent our evenings playing obscure tracks and even going so far as to record our own version of ‘She’, called ‘He’.

Episode 5: The balm of YouTube…

Last week, Davy Jones suffered a heart attack in Florida. His sudden death seems to have hit quite hard, perhaps because he was immortalised on TV as forever young. Many friends posted their favourite tracks to Facebook as a sort of networked tribute.

Although Valleri – see opening video – was my favourite Davy song of the time, I found myself going from video to video this week, reliving all those album tracks that were chiselled from the TV show.

And thanks to socially networked grief, two other songs have stuck in my head, both from Badlady.

Beware, the first one is an earworm: Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow).

The second one is from The Monkees’ concept film Head, which we watched again tonight. The best song/video in it is the wonderful Daddy’s Song, written by Harry Nilsson and performed by Davy Jones together with a cameo from Toni ‘Hey Mickey’ Basil.

“Davy Jones’ greatest moment,” said Badlady. I think this shows what a consummate entertainer Davy Jones was and why he was the band’s frontman. It is an amazing video in itself but it also gave me the title line of this post.

R.I.P. Davy Jones.

It’s a disco but it’s on wheels. It’s roller disco! Back from the 70s/80s and currently going strong in 2012 at the old-school neon pink glitz of the Tower Ballroom by Edgbaston Reservoir in Birmingham. Tonight featured a very mixed crowd (from 18 to 70+), a punter being stretchered off to hospital by paramedics, the Cupid Shuffle line dance on skates, slamming into the bar, skating back from the bar with pint in hand, and lots of wibbly-wobbly laps. 10 out of 10. Go. Meanwhile here is some lo-fi vid featuring power ballads and Whitney-pop to whet the appetite…

Just found this much better vid of Birmingham Roller Disco:

One day…

Also here is Pete’s top summary of our fine night out (I’d forgotten it was my birthday request): Disco in Boots that Roll

This is obviously the Year of the School. Firstly, there’s my moveable cake-fuelled feast of learning, the Friday School, while over on the other office sofa, Pete has just launched Matt and Pete’s Photo School.

Photo School is a monthly ‘photo club’, that’s also designed to combine learning with fun. It is based in Birmingham and the idea is to learn more about your camera, the art of photography and how to improve your picture-taking skills both in and out of the classroom. It is all but sold out for the launch session this Sunday but there is more to come in March so book ahead to reserve your spot – here’s the flyer:

Busy Pete has been busy – he has also set up Social Media Group Therapy, which is a great format for sharing and solving problems. I’ll be assisting at the first two-hour therapy session, which will take place at Moseley Exchange on 6 March.

Also on the learning theme, both of us will be taking part on a panel at the University of Wolverhamption this week. Now that everyone is a publisher, we’ll be discussing the new world of publishing and social media jobs with students on the Creative and Professional Writing degree. Author and lecturer Candi Miller will be moderating.

UPDATE: I’ve blogged a fuller version of this as a guest post on Firehead.net if you want to know more: How I teach myself digital skills using cake!

I have a reputation for getting stuff done. This is probably because I’m a lists person. At this point I want to recommend Workflowy as a ‘lists with benefits’ free app. Not only can you create lists and endless sublists, but you can tag the tasks by priority or date (using hashtags) and assign the work using the @name function. Best of all, you can share and collaborate on a list and export it for use with other programmes.

But enough of the glowing review. Above is my personal training list for January. This is part of my idea to set up my own personal Friday School.

Every Friday, for half a day, I take myself off to a café with wifi, treat myself to brunch, lunch or coffee and cake, and sit down to learn.

My list of stuff to learn for my work is long but here is the overview.

Clicking onto any of these titles then displays a breakdown of chapter titles, video presentations to watch, links to read, tutorials to view, etc. I estimate there is about a school year’s worth of work here.

To help cope with that and not give up at the first instance, I’ve tagged about four Fridays worth of work with the hashtag #january. Clicking on this brings up a much more manageable list and, as you can see, I’m nearly done. Anything that’s left over, I’ll just retag to #february so I don’t stress about not getting it all done to a deadline. I am trying to make my learning fun and not a pressure.

So what did I learn in January 2012?

• The best part of the Google SEO guide. No snake oil just straightforward ways to make sure content is findable by readers.
• How much corporate blogging overlaps with journalism skills.
• Digital video content tricks to take my video efforts to the next level.
• Storytelling techniques from Hollywood.
• And today I did my first bit of coding using Ruby, using a free ebook in progress called the Bastards Book of Ruby – an amazing free resource, written by a hack not a hacker, so very easy to follow.

Here is my first bit of coding – I has a proud, as you can see:

Uploaded with Skitch!

So, enough. Roll on #february – I finally have some web analytics training lined up, which I’ve been trying to get around to for 18 months now.

How do you learn your chops?

Being in the Cotswolds at the start of the new year has been lovely and surprisingly mild and sunny. Today we happened on the North Cotswold Hunt – no longer of foxes but of a scented trail laid down just ahead of the hunt by a set of runners on all-terrain quad bikes. I caught the start on video, setting out from the Lygon Arms in Chipping Campden and we were lucky enough to bump into them again on a cross-country walk to Blockley. In a rather working class, urban way, I stared agog at it all: the hound pack, beautiful horses, clopping of hooves and the vivid scarlet jackets. I’m afraid I was quite impressed.

Looking back at 2011, I can’t seem to recall much of what happened; a symptom of getting older perhaps? But I think it was a fairly positive one. According to my work diary and various blogs, these were some of the highlights:

January: Hired for Content Strategy Applied conference as a social reporter. Producing social and multimedia content for some of the world’s leading content experts was slightly scary. Not quite as challenging as joining a hula hoop club in the same month, though. Also, delivered my first content strategy report for a client. Only 30 pages long…

February: The opera I’d had a bit part in was screened on BBC2. Was so excited I ringed all my appearances and blogged them.

March: Put in an offer on a house. Over five months later, I finally got the keys. Took up djembe, which was taking place in the next room over from hula hooping.

April: Desperate for a holiday but busy with work so ended up on three weekend breaks to: the Cotswolds, Liverpool and Ironbridge.

May: Represented Moldova at a Eurovision party. This involved wearing a giant pointy hat and bumping into doorways a lot. In other musical news, I got to rehearse with the ukenauts of Moselele at Highbury Recording Studio, where Duran Duran recorded a demo. On the work front, I had a eureka moment of realising what it is that I do.

June: Celebrated two years blog-editing for Grant Thornton UK and one year blogging for Firehead. These are the people who keep me in tea and biscuits. See Blogs for more info on work goings-on.

July: Annual holiday, this time down to Llangollen in Wales for a barge break followed by a beachy, family week on the Isle of Purbeck in sunny Dorzet.

August: Went to my first Hacks and Hackers meet in central Birmingham and learned to scrape data and create dataviz. Here are my first attempts. Also, went to my first Brighton Mod Weekender; tried/failed to do the funny northern soul dance.

September: Photographed many events, such as the Moseley Folk Festival and the long-closed-down Stirchley Swimming Baths where I learnt to swim. The big news was having my 25-year fear of flying cured in just two sessions of hypnotherapy, ready for…

October: … a learn-to-scuba dive press trip in Grenada. Awesome!

November: Bought tickets to a sporting event for the first time: the World Tumbling and Trampolining Championships. Which was cool but hard to photograph. But that was only the start of quite a random weekend…

December: Tried hard not to be ill for the third Christmas running – and failed. Being laid up with the sniffles has led to redoing this website and planning some exciting work changes in 2012.

Until then I wish you all a very

Happy New Year!

I don’t often write diary posts but sometimes a weekend is so full on, it’s a way to offload stuff and think about them later. So here’s the rather strange collection of activities and oddities that Birmingham presented this weekend.

FRIDAY: Trampolines and New Romantics

1. The 28th Trampoline and Tumbling World Championship, NIA
I’ve never paid to go to a sporting event before but I was fascinated to see what the world’s best offered in terms of sports that basically involved jumping, bouncing and general boinging.

I’d completed a 12-week beginners trampoline course last year in which someone was stretchered off by paramedics in week 1 so I knew it would be nerve-wracking. It was also a challenge on the photographic front with fast-moving athletes against the busy background of a crowd. Suffice it to say, the athletes were incredible, the vibe slightly strange – more on that in Pete’s post – and my snaps quite blurry. Here are a couple of the ones that worked and also some lo-fi phone video of two trampoline routines. Just look at how high they jump!

2. Only After Dark, Air
I go to nightclubs about as often as I go to sporting events. Amusingly, as the trampoline event above finished as 9pm, I had to go to the NIA dressed up (something like this lot) ready to go straight on to ‘ONLY AFTER DARK – a monthly club at Air Nightclub, Birmingham night based on the Bowie nights of the late 70s/early 80s’. The DJ line-up featured Rusty Egan from the famous Blitz Club in London, and DJ Dick from the Rum Runner, where Duran Duran first kicked into life. I was happy because my chum came up from London and because they played four hours of music I recognised and wanted to dance to – including my favourite B-side: Hard Times by The Human League. Spot the DJ in this phone snap…

And here I am courtesy of birthday girl Bev Hislop:

SATURDAY: Vampires and glitches

3. Breaking Dawn Part 2, The Electric Cinema
The final (sort of) movie instalment of the Twilight series, described by various friends as romantic crack for teenage girls up to middle-aged woman. The films are becoming more fun to watch as they take themselves less seriously and deliver the lines with more camp. How else can you deal with a love triangle between a schoolgirl, vampire and werewolf? This one featured rather grim scenes – pregnant women are advised to avoid. Being able to drink wine at The Electric, our lovely indie cinema in central Brum, helped.

4. GLI.TC/H 20111, Vivid
Popped in to a festival celebrating something I’m not sure I can articulate. But then that’s what Wikipedia is for:

“A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system. It is often used to describe a transient fault that corrects itself, and is therefore difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, and in circuit bending, as well as among players of video games, although it is applied to all types of systems including human organizations and nature.”

I have friends who do this stuff and make art/sound/visuals out of it. I do not pretend to understand but I do enjoy, and was amused when a Brazilian glitch artist at the festival told his audience how his film was switched off by the projectionist after a minute because he thought it was just that – a glitch.

SUNDAY: Opera and doom tuba

5. Birmingham Opera Company open day, AE Harris factory
Having joined the amazing Birmingham Opera Co’s last two productions (and blogged about the experience: Othello and The Wedding), I was interested to see what their next brand new opera production was all about. Life Is A Dream begins rehearsing in January for performance in March. It’s a newly commissioned opera by Jonathan Dove to celebrate artistic director Graham Vick’s 25 years of working with the company in Birmingham. It’ll be performed back in the industrial warehouse where Othello was performed (see below) and will apparently feature a dream-like maze for the audience to walk about in. Expect the extraordinary.

6. The Sound of Birmingham, Ikon Gallery
I’m not going to make this (after a loooong weekend) but at the Ikon Gallery tonight will be the sound of Birmingham’s industrial metal heritage – in the form of Lash Frenzy, Ore and SoundKitchen. Lash Frenzy blew me away last time I saw them – featuring a 40-minute sonic storm and lightshow assault akin to standing in front of a jet engine and during which I had the emotion wrung from me in the form of tears. This time they will perform a work based around the first three notes only of the song ‘Black Sabbath’. Ore, meanwhile, feature a friend Sam Underwood who took up the tuba earlier this year for the first time to play in a ‘drone doom tuba group’. Doomba? It’s noise as an artform. Here’s a taster. See how long you last…

Coda: Sam, together with Ms Hypnotique, also provided the soundtrack for Hackybeanpouffe – a rather fun game Pete and I invented for those bored people with a floor cushion and no dust allergies.

Back in March, I visited the ‘largest secondhand book shop in the Midlands‘ – a converted farm somewhere in the middle of the Warwickshire countryside – and came back with a bumper crop of books. Today Pete and I went for a top-up trip. I spent £2 on four books from the Ten Bob Barn section:

1. Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez
‘One of the most celebrated novels to come out of Latin America in decades.’ And ‘an insane journey into the condemned soul of a sexual deviant’. I was obviously looking for saucy reads because I also bought a copy of…

2. The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl: What Belle Did Next
I haven’t read the first Belle de Jour book, or her blog, but I’m imagining the content is much the same.

3. Bliss In Bali by J Chegaray
Any books on Bali are ‘a goer’ in my world. This one is a travelogue from 1955, when access was not easily granted, and where the writer discovers an island of taboos.

4. Odd Jobs: Portraits of Unusual Occupations by Nancy Rica Shiff
A photo-essay book featuring the kind of jobs careers advisors don’t tell you about, including – to continue the saucy theme – condom tester, breast measurer, artificial inseminator, foot model, semen collector, cross-dressing headmistress and colonics therapist.

That’s my reading sorted for summer then.

Oh and book number five was a gift from Pete: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – “a transatlantic epic”. Apparently I’ll enjoy it. Hmm.

Having different blogs for different subject areas means that I am a slave to them all. So if it’s quiet here on my central hub then it’s probably because I’m over on one of my other workday or spare-time blogs. As a quick roundup, here’s what I’ve been posting elsewhere of late:

31 Destinations in Time – because it’s not just about the place but the era in which you visit it. I’ve just posted number 11 in the series on Dumaguete City, capital of Negros Island, in the Philippines in 2007. The series also includes Bali, Iceland, Venice, Jordan, Slovenia, Paris, Gili Trawangan, Austin, Texas and San Francisco.

Subs’ Standards – lately in my sub-editing blog I’ve been picking up on a few funnies that have made it through to publication. I also published my first guest post – from multimedia journalist Andy Bull on the subs-friendly art of curation and live-blogging. I’m now thinking of asking other sub-editors to write about their experiences of digital subbing.

Debauched Teddies – rounding up bad teddy bears from around the world. There are LOTS.

Katchooo Mix – a scrapbook of stuff that is relevant to my interests.

Flickr news – fresh up are holiday pics from Llangollen canal and the Isle of Purbeck, plus shots from Mostly Jazz Festival weekender who kindly gave me a photo pass.

Grant Thornton Thinking blogs – I help write and edit four blog channels for Grant Thornton UK on/about: business leaders and entrepreneurs, the high net worth community, international markets and boardroom issues. Recently I’ve researched online business networks in China, live-curated the UK Budget and set up a Scoop.It for female finance directors. I’m lucky in that the firm’s online channels are open to exploring new ideas for business and financial content.

The Firehead blog – I’m also blog manager for this European content and comms recruitment company. They let me post LOLcats among the more serious business content. This makes me happy.