undermanager

Looking down on a desktop with a watch, a cup of tea, a track list written on a card and a tiny printer with the text 'just making a tea'

Now featuring a tiny printer

(From about 10 minutes in)

An old mobile phone with the word 'Hello' on the case

Hello subscribers

This is my blog. It sits on a platform called Ghost and, in my head, you're all reading it via RSS, in your newsreaders, and it's the early 2010s. This, of course, is wrong. In fact many of you are reading it via email, especially since

Headline that says 'So you've got to do some marketing'

Three tips to get you going

I was asked for some tips on how to start a marketing/advertising project. Here are three: Don't say brand The first problem you'll find is that marketing is full of impenetrable jargon. That's not a bad thing in itself, jargon can be a

An early morning mix with Poem/1

Notes and links - May 31st 2026

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: Posh Grandpa is fashion’s new main characterThe latest character dressing trend may be a little silly but there’s an off-kilter pleasure in its mellow, vintage vibeThe GuardianJess Cartner-Morley

Tides of Sound

Fantastic 30 mins from Radio 3 "At the crest of Japan's economic bubble, in the spring of 1991, a radio station unlike any other began broadcasting from satellite into homes across the country. St.GIGA carried no news, no commercials, no DJs. Instead, it offered an unbroken

A hand holding a label saying 'constraints make you interesting'

Constraints make things interesting

This is a saying stolen and adapted from the splendid Paynter people. I talk about it in the Do Interesting book. And I've been thinking of it because I've been reading Inside The Box by David Epstein. It's about the fact that freedom doesn&

A kitchen counter with a frying pan and a radio and the word 'Earlies' superimposed

Plausibly meditative

I've started waking up unaccountably early. 5am most days. Not deliberately, I just wake up. And it's not a bad thing, I enjoy the mornings so I get up. But then I find myself at a loose end. It doesn't feel like reading time,

A projection of a computer screen with a hand appearing to hold the cursor and the word 'Presenting' superimposed on it

Public speaker

I miss doing presentations. Standing up and presenting stuff to people I don't know. Pre-COVID I did them a lot and I used to really enjoy it. It was an opportunity to think about things, to craft an argument and to see how it landed with real

The prophet speaks

I spend a lot of time on YouTube watching old Modern Jazz Quartet concerts, as a quartet and as individuals. This is one of my favourites. Milt Jackson, just a few months before he died at 76.

"I think I deserve a long holiday"

Because of the cafe book and blog I get a lot of emails, journalists etc wanting me to comment on or decry the closure of a cafe by rapacious landlords. This, from London Centric, is almost always the story of what's really happened. "We do a lot

On the connection with an audience

From Stephen Colbert

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