Charlie's Thoughts on August... and September

Let me begin with an apology to my faithful blog readers, I am fully aware it is mid September and I haven’t even blogged August yet. Well I’ve been busy ok... it’s tough being a Labrador in a busy working environment, sometimes you just have to prioritise... and I had a bone that I needed to work on.

My word of the month(s) is ‘hectic’, seems like nothing ever stops in this place... well, I say that but I did manage a holiday to the kennels in August, Rob and Sue went to Pisa and Lyndsey is literally packing her bags as a I type as she jets off for a holiday in Crete this week, that’s why I thought it was time to blog again, I go a bit quiet when she’s not around.

We started August with Rob’s birthday, best not say how old he was but he’s still not as old as I am. Nine and a half times seven makes me sixty six and a half. I should be getting my bus pass by now. He got a very interesting book about caravans, they look like really big kennels to me, and maybe I shall get myself one when I retire.

Cath Ford came to see me, she said it was to discuss plans for all the Creative Partnerships stuff she’d be doing in the new term but I knew it was really so she could tickle my ears while I fell asleep on her foot.

A nice man from the East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce came to see Rob and Sue. It all sounds very grand, I think it’s a big palace where people talk about shopping, Rob and Sue said that they are joining so maybe I’ll get to visit. What with Chambers of Commerce, Rob’s Lunar Group and Sue’s DINNER Club, me and Lyndsey are starting to feel a bit left out. Maybe we’ll start a club... perhaps the Association for Anyone who Regularly Goes Holidaying (AARGH), I think everyone needs a bit of AARGH in their lives.

Yet another acronym thingy-bob keeps getting mentioned in the office and this one is really cruel. Rob has started a LEAD course, now I’m sure we’d all agree that talking about leads is not kind when one has no intention of walking one’s Labrador... people should be more careful when they invent these names! Anyway, he’s got some funding from Business Link so he can go on his ‘LEAD’ course. And Sue has just come back from ‘The Claw’, she says it’s a Clore short course about change management but I think that Clore sounds like the baddie from a Marvel comic, and really, what is change management? Is it where you count all the money in your pocket?

So, as the guard dog of the office I’ve spent a lot of time meeting and greeting the many visitors we’ve had, Louise the Business Angel has been back to make Rob and Sue think about their core values, I was a bit upset that ‘Labrador’ wasn’t one of the key words on the list. Julian from Action Factory came to see Rob and they decided who was going to design the new mailout website – it’s really exciting because we’re not going to be doing a paper version of the magazine anymore, nope, it’s all going electronic. So, Source Creative are going to build us a fantastic website so that we can upload articles and people all over the world can read and contribute.

Sue has been all over, she’s still working on something for Preston Guild and she’s busy sorting out a big meeting in Manchester about routes to employment for young people. In amongst all that she went to Edinburgh Fringe for a week and spotted some new talent for the next Spot On season, and she’s nearly finished building the menu for the Spot On Promoters to select their shows for Spring 2011. Sue is always busy looking into the future and she does it all without a crystal ball, we’re just about to start the Autumn 2010 season and she’s already planning Autumn 2011!

This week Sue flies to Canada, (she says it’s not a holiday) she’s going to see lots of artists who want to work in the UK, maybe they’ll be in the next Spot On brochure? I just hope she brings me back a moose... or a bear... or even some maple syrup.

Lyndsey is off on a well deserved holiday to Crete this week, maybe she’ll bring me some feta cheese and some olives? She’s already been to Edinburgh and spent three days rushing from one show to another, again I have to question whether it really was work, but she says she did enjoy going up there and being part of the Fringe. When she came back all the publicity for the Spot On season was ready to be parcelled up and sent out, some most of the time I’ve just listened to Lyndsey parcelling up packages with the scary brown tape dispenser. At least she has a nice man called Tom who comes and collects the parcels; he’s our Spot On courier.

Everyone keeps taking about cuts and I don’t think they mean cuts of meat or other interesting things to eat. It’s all a bit worrying as I’m told that my food is paid for with arts pounds.  There’s a big campaign called ‘I Value the Arts’.  Sue has started tweeting about where arts pounds end up.  Some of them in my food bowl.

Everyone has been so busy in the office and we all realised that the mailout stuff we’re doing is going to make us even busier so we all decided to advertise for another member of staff. So we’re looking for an Information Assistant to help us out in the office, you can find the job description on our website.

And finally, yesterday I went for a day out with Rob and Sue, we were followed all the way back home by a mysterious cube. Rob says it’s his new project, Sue says it’s a new meeting space, and I think it’s my new kennel. Hmmmm!

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Charlie’s thoughts on April

Another month down and what do we at Robinson Howell Partnership have to show for it?

Well, we had a bit of a chat this afternoon in the office and we realised that we haven’t been out much this month and Rob says it’s because of the ‘newt axe year’. I think that’s what he said, I’m not sure what he means though, I mean, do the newts have axes or are we hitting them with axes? I don’t think I like the sound of it either way!

Sue says the word of the month is ‘reporting’. It is apparently year end (I think she has confused December and April again) and that means she has to make up ... I mean ... calculate lots of facts and figures and put them into pretty spreadsheets with coloured headers and complicated maths that Rob has to help with.

So it has been a staying inside kind of a month, which has not been fun for me.

Lyndsey and Sue are planning the Spot On Autumn season, Sue is keeping lots of information inside her head and then in a few weeks it will all spill out into a Word document and become the Spot On menu. Lyndsey has finally finished all the Spot On parcels – she did a little dance for joy in the office and then celebrated by tidying out the stationery cupboard (it never moves... get it! Sorry, bad joke). So now we have lots more room for all the new boxes and bags and sticky tape for next season!

There has been the occasional outing to see a Spot On show. Sue, Lyndsey and Rob have all been out to see things, and Lyndsey is still writing up all of her adventures in her blog. She has even roped in a friend now and he has been taking some really great pictures for the Spot On gallery. If you haven’t seen a show yet you better hurry, our last show is in early July and then there’s a little break before the autumn season starts, and those parcels start all over again!

It feels like April has been a month of getting ready for things, while the Spot On Team have been getting ready for the next season, mailout has been getting ready for another issue. Rob has been asking lots of people in arts organisations to write about all the amazing things they have achieved, so we’re getting lots of letters to put in the magazine. Speaking of post... is anyone else sick of the election? All we seem to get now is leaflets about voting for people... what about dogs, I say. Where is the Chocolate Labrador Party? I’d vote for them every time. They could use my manifesto about more bones for working dogs, equal rights for canine employees, implementation of wee-mail as a valid message service and of course regular walking for all staff members (preferably with me as supervisor).

I’m on a roll with an election campaign all of my own. I think I might go type up my manifesto right now.

Well, February didn’t last long did it? Seems to be getting shorter and shorter between blog times, or maybe that’s because I’m having longer nap times.

Everyone seems to have a blog now. I’m a trend setter you know. Lyndsey is now writing up her adventures with Spot On – she gets to go out on trips to see all the shows and then she writes them up in her blog on the Spot On website. What’s even stranger is because she doesn’t have a car, she’s doing it all with public transport to see if she can get there and to encourage people to think more environmentally about the way they visit different parts of Lancashire. I think she’s mad. And we’ll soon see her change her tune when it starts to rain and she has to wait an hour for a bus in the cold, then again, apparently that happens to her a lot on the bus journey between Blackburn and Preston so maybe she likes it!

Ruth from Mailout has started a blog because the e-mailout website is being rebuilt. So anyone who wants to find information about the magazine we edit will just have to look on the blog, or facebook, or twitter, or they could just email Ruth as well. Whatever happened to just writing someone a letter eh? Not that I could do that either.

You might have picked up on the fact that I’m a bit fed up this month. It seems everyone has been out doing things and enjoying themselves and they’ve been leaving me here more and more. Worst of all, my chosen word for February is ‘Love’. Now I know it’s not an unusual word for February, Valentine’s Day and all that, but I reckon I’ve had just about enough of it all... Can you tell who didn’t get a card this year?

Valentines Day came and went. Rob, Sue and Lyndsey went out on Valentine’s night to see the first Spot On show of the season. It was called How to Build a Rocket, by Farnham Maltings. They went all the way to Whittington Village Hall – didn’t see Lyndsey offering to travel there on public transport! But I suppose three people sharing the car was a bit greener than it just being for one person. They all said how much they enjoyed it – Lyndsey and Sue won raffle prizes (apparently Lyndsey must be some sort of lucky charm because Sue doesn’t normally win). There’s a review and some pictures of it on the new Spot On website, so have a look. If you go and see anything from the season you can tag your photos with ‘spot on lancashire’ and add them on Flickr to the Spot On Lancashire group. It all sounds a bit complicated to me, but I suppose Lyndsey would help you if you got stuck.

The new Spot On website was launched and it looks really good, it’s all bright and colourful and it seems to be full of information that is constantly being updated. Check it out and let us know what you think. New things will be added all the time as we upload photos to the gallery and Lyndsey adds to her blog, so it’s not the sort of website you visit once and never again.

The other Lindsey got married this month. For those of you who don’t know there have been a few Lindsey/Lyndsey(s) in my life. Lindsey Gregory, now Lindsey West, used to be based at Robinson Howell Partnership. Apparently it was a lovely wedding, lots of happy people, food, dancing, cake .... sniff, I wasn’t invited so I don’t know for sure. But I’d like to congratulate her and her husband anyway.

I’ve been working hard to tell Lyndsey how I feel about her. I can’t greet her any more enthusiastically than I do already every morning. Much to my embarrassment really, I’m moulting you see, and most of my winter coat is shed down Lyndsey when she comes to work each day. I think I’m just going to have to leave it as a platonic relationship – I mean she is a work colleague after all.

Rob is still working on the Plugged In project, now they’re planning a mini conference that will happen at the end of March. They’re trying to get lots of people to meet the groups they’ve been working with so they can all talk about providing more opportunities for young people in their local area.

He’s off to Wigan again soon to evaluate those dancers with children in schools, more super power related conversations to follow I expect.

Sue has been out and about talking to more people about Spot On and how they could put more shows on across Lancashire. She’s got some funding for the International Village of Culture (IVOC) project, I think it means more shows and more chances to commission work from international artists. I’ll keep you informed with that one because it sounds really interesting. But she’s going to be on the radio on the 6th March, maybe she’ll talk about IVOC a bit more then.

They’ve all been working hard on mailout here, every couple of months it just creeps up and then suddenly the office is full of people reading the proof and checking for spelling mistakes and stuff I can’t help with. I do my bit by distracting them.

This edition is about Politics and the Arts; they made mailout rosettes in the office. I helped with the glue. We’re thinking of forming a mailout party and going for the election – my manifesto will increase the rights of dogs working in the arts, more bones in the workplace and compulsory nap times during office hours. What would be in your manifesto? Let me know.

Charlie's Thoughts on November

Is it me or is it just too dark outside?

Much has been happening at Robinson Howell during November, Sue and Rob have been out and about around the North West. Sue is busy going to see lots of performances that are happening through Spot On, she’s just started programming the new season and she seems very focussed on lots of pieces of paper which are spread all over the office. I have been helping her by making sure she gets plenty of fresh air every day.

Rob is out Creative Partnershipping a lot, although I suspect he is driving to Blackpool to eat ice cream on the sea front without sharing it with a certain Labrador. He’s been all the way to London without me too, he said he had a meeting, but I think he took in a show – he even went first class! He’s also been working with Paul Hartley on a project called Plugged In which is about young people doing five hours of culture or something like that. Paul has a dog too called Monty. He’s little and he goes to work with Paul’s partner Joe. She’s an artist and he’s very skilled at sitting on his bed in the studio so he doesn’t get any paint on him. We working dogs should stick together. Is there a canine union anywhere? Anyway, Monty said that if anyone wants to look at what Joe paints in her studio you can check out her website here

Lyndsey has well and truly settled in to the office, she has been reading a lot and Rob and Sue keep giving her folders of work to look at. She seemed to enjoy the editing of mailout, apparently she had to write a review about a Girls’ Guide to Rocking, but I’ve been watching her very closely in the office and she hasn’t rocked from side to side once! Even Lyndsey went out to visit the people who design our websites, and again I was left to man... errr... dog the office. She is learning to tweet and is spending a lot of time on Facebook – she says it’s for work but maybe you should check out what she’s been up to. She says on Facebook you have to search for Robinson Howell Partnership, and on Twitter you can go to it here, You can even be my friend on Facebook now, just look for Charlie Brown – there are a lot of us, so you can make it easier to find me by filtering the results and typing in my workplace which is, of course, Robinson Howell Partnership.

Speaking of new friends, I got an email this week from two dogs in Cumbria who’ve been reading my blog. They sent me a picture of themselves and they look like really friendly canines, perhaps they would join the canine union with me and Monty. I’m not sure if they have jobs like me but they certainly have someone to type their emails like I do.

We’re all looking forward to Christmas; the advent calendar has been dusted off and is ready to go up on the wall.

In the post this morning came a big letter addressed to Charlie Brown, Office Dog – that’s me. Sue helped me open it and it was an advent calendar for dogs – wow – I’m not sharing it. To be honest I don’t really know why I have to wait and just have one bit each day. It would be far more efficient for me to have it all at once.