2020 and all that - some ramblings

The year began perfectly normally - on 10th January after watching Quins beat Bath in Bath with a few friends and 12,056 other people, I got a photo in the pub with Gwen from Gavin & Stacey (she was lovely). A few days later I was driving 418 miles in a day to Grimsby from London to see a client. Standard. At the weekend I went to Quins with my boy to see them play Clermont and the following week went to the brilliant Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi gallery with an old friend, followed by a fantastic evening out - my favourite day of this year no question. Mid Feb I took my daughter to see Upstart Crow at the theatre, late Feb both kids to the Museum of London and also to the Tate. The 1st March I flew to New York, then onto Chicago after several client meetings and met up with some old friends for dinner and drinks. The 7th March was England Wales at Twickenham with 3 of my best mates, another good friend's 40th birthday lunch the day after in a full pub. 

Somehow on the 12th March we at Watch Me Think managed to still put on our annual event, this one on Innovation, with 12 awesome presenters. I will always remember the kindness of speakers like @tomgoodwin, @markearls and @samconniff stepping in with 48hrs to go after late pull outs from international speakers who were no longer permitted to fly. In the same 48hr period we had over 100 people pull out, but 150 still turned up and a great day was had by all. 

4 days later lockdown was announced.

Until then my year had been live sport, exhibitions, theatre, hugging people, client meetings, travel, old friends. All that stopped. I didn’t realise how long for. A boys weekend trip to Sitges was cancelled, a family holiday cancelled, a trip to Dear Evan Hansen with my daughter - cancelled - and that was just April. 

It wasn’t just trips that were postponed, some client projects were too. What was going to happen next? No one knew. The uncertainty made us nervous. We looked at what we could do to help others, what we could offer. We opened up our platform so it could be used by independent researchers for free, to help them finish projects. We launched the IsolaTED talks for our clients, recycling talks given at previous events we had run, due to the generosity of previous speakers. The team went into overdrive - people were used to working from home, not quite as much maybe, but we were set up to be remote. Clients replaced postponed projects with those wanting to know what the public were thinking, to see their emotions about the situation, so we started doing a lot of work to capture that, globally. Some of those films were devastating to watch. Business became surprisingly strong. We were lucky - we had the right methodology for the times we found ourselves in. 

I failed at homeschooling, as did one of the two schools my children go to. The daughter did Google Classroom from day 1, the boy got things to print out each week and didn’t speak to a teacher at all for the whole of the first lockdown. Two different approaches. One worked. The other didn’t. Turns out I can’t do Year 3 maths or english. The amount of time spent at the kitchen table ‘teaching’ fell from 3hrs to 2 to whatever I could get him to do. I felt like a complete failure, that I was letting down my boy. I had to work as well, I couldn’t get the balance right no matter how hard I tried. Schoolwork often became home economics (helping with the cooking) or PE (football or cycling or walking). 

Zoom became too familiar. I disliked it immensely. But it was the only route to seeing friends, some who I hadn’t spoken to since University, old housemates reunited, not necessarily with everything in common anymore. Quizzes allowed us to reminisce about the past. I wanted to be in the pub with them, not displayed on a page that looked like a game of Guess Who. If they were 10,000 miles away then fine, but some of these guys were less than 10 miles away. I could never get as excited about Zoom as some people - it was just rubbing in the fact I couldn’t see them properly, couldn’t hug them, give them a kiss, shake their hand, share a drink together. Lockdown made me miss those friends further away, so I sent postcards to friends, friends parents & family during May - just saying hello. Some replied, none required a reply. Someone’s thinking of you, that’s all. 

I’ve always loved the outside, doing long walks, getting fresh air. It’s good for the soul. It was needed more than ever. Box Hill, Windsor Park, North Downs, Cliveden were all visited multiple times. With the boy, or with the parents, or both. I walked a lot. Clearing the mind, trying to forget what was happening for a bit.

There was also time to sort out stuff - two skips later and the house was clearer and there was one less shed in the garden. I’d sorted out my badges I used to collect as a young boy and took a photo of them all. I did puzzles. I built a treehouse. I planted tomato plants, and pots with flowers, grew a herb garden. I re-laced my entire trainer collection. On those walks I had collected sticks that looked like stickmen, I chose the best 6 and stuck them up on the wall. They all look like they’re going somewhere. I look at them often. 

I was having a bad day so decided I was going to make it a productive day, get stuff done. So I picked up the boy from school and decided to run some errands. First stop, the rubbish dump - ‘have you got a booking?’ they asked as I looked in on an empty car park. ‘No’. ‘Then you can’t come in’. So we headed to the charity shop for a separate drop off - ‘Not taking donations’. So we went to the supermarket to get some leeks, which they didn’t have. So we went to the library to drop off the old overdue books we’d found when clearing out, but the letterbox was sealed over. So we went home, car still full. I sat on the sofa for a bit. Quietly. 

Normal work projects resumed in greater numbers than before around June. Innovation projects, prototype testing, they all started flowing in. And it didn’t stop. We didn’t furlough anyone, we employed four more people, and no-one stopped working. The team were incredible - everyone looking out for one another, everyone doing anything they could to help a colleague. Two went down with Covid (one very badly), others stepped up. We sent the team fantastic hampers sourced from another friend's small business to say thanks - you look out for each other. Our profit share scheme for all staff paid out in August. Another thank you. How they worked, how they reacted, showed me what an amazing team we have - total rockstars, and I know how lucky we are to have every single one of them. They’re a team like no other. Smashing it out the park on a daily basis. I am so thankful to them. It’s their work ethnic, their performances, that have led to us having the biggest quarter we’ve ever had. As an ad-hoc agency, who knows what’s next, but right now, today, we’re good. Tomorrow, who knows. 

When lockdown eased over summer, I tried to restore some normality - I went to the Warhol exhibition, the Masculinities exhibition, the Amongst the Trees exhibition, and a few reclamation yards, all with my daughter. I took the boy to Bath to see my friend - no rugby this time - then to the New Forest for a few days to meet a friend and his kids - we went mountain biking and then sea fishing. I saw my Aunt who I hadn’t seen for years, who always wrote in cards how 'we must meet up this year' - she had just become a granny for the first time. It was lovely. We all went to Bracklesham Bay for a day at the beach and some fish and chips. We saw someone kite surfing and I thought, one day, maybe. We went away for a week - I read 9 books, watched nothing, and walked and swam and ate fish. I realised how lucky I was. 

Retail wise, my habits didn’t vary much from before. I kept going to the supermarket every week (online grocery shopping is not for me and quite frankly I enjoyed getting out of the house). I went to my local butcher, cheese shop, wine shop and bakery, but I had always done that anyway. It was good to see them busy. I haven’t bought any clothes or shoes (only laces). I have bought and read a lot of books and watched a lot of films and TV in the evenings. Succession remains the best thing I’ve watched (so I watched it twice). I stopped watching the news around July. I kept going to get the papers, get the papers.  

Pretty regularly I had beers outside with my mate as soon as we were allowed - the same format, the same pub, something to look forward to, something stable. They were great as we held onto long evenings, then became more colder as the evenings drew in. We watched the 6 Nations at an outdoor table, hats on, a tablet propped up using my hotspot. It was great, even though we should have been at that game. The last one we managed was mid December (this time with a meal), the cold almost beating us. The regular beers have been a lifesaver. 

At the beginning of October four of us walked half the South Downs Way. You will remember that weekend as you would have been inside protecting yourself from Storm Alex. We walked, we talked, we ate, we drank, we got very wet, we didn’t care, it was the best time. Blisters/holes in ankles didn’t matter - it was four mates together and laughing and talking, making plans. We needed that. We didn’t know we were 3 weeks from Lockdown 2. When the second lockdown came, I stopped drinking for 6 weeks. I have no idea why, as most people said, surely it’s a reason to drink, but I lost ? of a stone as a result. 

I’ve admired a lot this year - the team here at Watch Me Think have been nothing short of incredible. Spread out far and wide around the world, experiencing different things at different times, dependent on location. People from Italy, Melbourne, Manchester and London having challenges at different times to those in Brisbane, Basingstoke, Delhi and Chicago. 

One of my friends continued his openness around his own mental health - his honesty around his own story is nothing short of amazing. I can’t begin to explain how much I admire and look up to him. Witnessing mental health issues rise closer to home, seeing friends suffer whose children are having their own very serious struggles, having my own challenges, but ignoring them, hoping they’ll go away.

Another friend's dad died of cancer. 4 of us went to see him a week before he died, to say hello again, and goodbye. I raised a Guinness in his honour, I wanted to be at the funeral but, well, you know. He is missed. He is not forgotten.  

When you’re a small independent company (30 people) there are different challenges. I always said the biggest task when we first set up was how we'd paid our own mortgages, the second far bigger challenge was how we paid other people’s. This period has highlighted that the majority of clients do have amazing empathy for the smaller business. It has also shown up the few that don’t - no we don’t have any in-house lawyers. To both groups, I wish them a very Happy Christmas. 

I’ve been so proud of the team here at Watch Me Think this year. Of course the numbers have been way beyond our expectations, but mainly the attitude of everyone, with all the associated challenges that there have been. Not seeing each other as often as we would has been odd, but that will change. We’ve done some really cool stuff this year - we had the Head of Innovation for NATO talk, Fran got an A in her mini MBA with Mark Ritson (everyone here is super proud of her), we’ve done Behavioural Economics training, we’ve done leadership training, we put on an event for 150 people, we ran the IsolaTED talks for 6 months, we had the storytelling legend Robert McKee talk to our clients, we sent out 26 versions of The100. We’ve delivered great work, we’ve worked like crazy for our clients, and we’ve lived our culture document to the max. Everyone is in it for everyone else. No question. 

I have a lot of hope for 2021 combined with no expectations at all. Here in Tier 4, not seeing my parents and other family on Christmas Day is awful, but I know others have it a lot worse so I refuse to complain. Next year I know I will see and hug friends more, book things into the diary to look forward to, go to live sporting events, to the theatre, exhibitions etc.  And I can’t wait. 

Wishing you all the very best for now and 2021.