I had a mini-Twitter West Ham rant way, way, back when Newcastle duffed us up with the ease of Giant Haystacks taking candy from a sleeping baby. I’m not sure, in light of humiliating capitulations at the hands of Bolton, Birmingham in that second leg disaster, and Aston Villa, if that was perhaps our most embarrassingly naive set of tactics. Stoke in the Cup comes close, when having done everything right in the league, somebody chose to throw those notes away and spin the big wheel of tactics.

Let’s skip back to that last sentence and ‘someone’, and tie it in with that mini-Twitter rant from earlier in the season. Grant famously, or infamously, is said to do very little coaching, and I have never seen him scouting the opposition. Ever. At Chelsea or Portsmouth or with us. By the same token, cameras have never settled on Paul Groves, Wally Downes or Kevin Keen at any game featuring upcoming opposition. Granted (pun not intended) they’re hardly stellar faces to pick out from a crowd for the braying Sky TV halfwits to talk about, or for the masses to recognise instantly.

We very rarely seem to have prepared for the game we’re playing. I can count on the fingers of one finger instances where we seem to be set up right, both in formation and mentally, for the team we happen to be playing at the time. We MUST scout the opposition, mustn’t we? Another chap wrote a far superior blog about our tactical naivety via the East London Advertiser (sorry, I failed to bookmark it) and questioned our scouting set up. But, here I am, just a wondering if anyone has ever seen West Ham coaching staff scouting future opposition?

“Bloody Greta Garbo, stark naked save for a shortie nightie, hanging on to the window sill, and I could see her knuckles all white, saying “Peter, Peter”. You know how those bloody Swedes go on.”

One of my favourite walks is out onto the causeway on Lake Champlain. Perfect views of the White Mountains and New York, and the best walk there is for clearing your head. Unfortunately, the marshlands are all under a further 5ft of water, and vast chunks of the causeway have been washed away in the worst flooding in recent memory. Booo.

Stowe, Vermont, in Spring, just before the ski runs had finally melted. Trying to tone down my obsession to detail. Dunno whether it’s working. Whatever. Innit.

Been a rumbly and crackly old night in Vermont. Apologies for the grain and composition…I was trying to cook the dinner at the same time. Multi-tasking and forgetting to take off a shed load of filters…and whacking it on ISO 1600 and hoping for the best!

Repeat to self: “It’s not brass monkeys out, it’s a warm late summer evening…your nipples won’t shatter, you lips won’t freeze to your teeth, it’s all fine…it’s lovely out…honest”.

With the temperature set to dip to minus 28 degrees c tomorrow, not forgetting the wind chill which will probably push it more towards minus 35, I decided tonight was the night to start editing the photos from the late summer/early fall trip to Acadia ME…Gawd I miss sunshine, and gentle warming breezes right now…

One of the main reasons I wanted to go freelance after nearly a decade in the design business was that I wanted to stop being the man who delivered the news “Yeah, there’s been a delay on the print job” or “They promised me it’d be ready today, and I don’t know what the problem is”. I set my business up so that I made it clear that I’d handle print and third party services if required, but ideally I’d complete the design, provide all the files and that would be my involvement over. Finding honest, reliable suppliers who delivered on all their promises was a rare achievement during my agency years. They do exist, and by God cherish those people when you get onboard with them.

I like to think I’m conscientious with my work, and will (albeit with a heavy heart and echoing wallet) turn down work that I don’t believe I can provide a satisfactory level of service on. If I feel I don’t have the resources or knowledge to complete sections of a brief, or indeed the whole project, I’ll turn down the work, and be sure to make the potential client aware of why I’m doing such. No-one has complained yet, which is in stark contrast to buying print and outsourcing services. If I had a Dollar, or a shiny Pound for every time I’ve been told “Yeah we can do that, to that standard, on budget and on schedule” only to be let down on every count, well, forgive the cliche, but I wouldn’t be a designer right now. It’s the nature of business that people will bite off your hand for work, and then worry about how they’ll complete it to match their quote and promises of quality. In some cases they don’t even do the ‘worry’ bit.

Why so perturbed today? Today is the 6th, maybe even the 7th month of trying to get a web design and hosting company to correctly implement the material I supplied for the most basic of websites. I originally turned down the opportunity to work on the website portion of this particular project, citing the fact that I ceased trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades a while back, preferring to try and be good at one thing, rather than rubbish at lots of stuff. Honestly, I just can’t find enough hours in the day to keep up to date with advances in the web as a product, and the design applications associated with it. Basic stuff, fine no problem. When we get into the realms of backside administration, SEO and secure e-commerce, well, that’s when I hold my hands up and say “I’m not your guy” and suggest going to the experts.

Here I am, having provided idiot-proof instructions, reference files, actual files and anything else that could possibly expedite the creation of a website, 6, possibly 7 months on, staring at a site that only barely resembles what had been promised. Throughout the long painful journey there has been an awe-inspiring lack of quality control, client updates, customer care and just plain old common sense. Here I am trying to act as a middle man between the most patient, understanding client of mine, and a web company delivering the absolute least at a ridiculous price. This is not why I went freelance, and it’s certainly not how business should be done. You don’t get to pick and choose who you provide good service to, you provide the same level to everyone, big and small, regardless. My patience expires very quickly when the first signs of “we’re not really that bothered about your work because, after all, you’re not our biggest client, and we’re the experts and can spin any old crap out about what the problem is, safe in the knowledge that your client won’t understand the technicalities” rear their head.

Rear their head they have done too. Here I am, not the expert, picking up a web company on their sloppy HTML, their sloppy proofing, and their outrageous deadlines. So, so much for freelancing, it’s not a boss telling me to deliver crap news that I have no control over, it’s me telling me to deliver the news. I don’t mind doing the deed, but I do very much resent the reasons behind having to deliver such news.

Cherish good suppliers and good people when you find them. You’ll be rewarded a hundred-fold in the long run.

One of my commercial illustration commissions, a 1970s Doctor Who paperback pastiche, celebrating the Jon Pertwee era.