30/10/2008 by Andrew Smith.

I’m taking a trip to Berlin next week for a conference. I had entertained the romantic (and eco-friendly) notion of taking a night train from London via Brussels to Berlin. My task for this morning was to tie up all the travel and accomodation for the trip, and I hit a snag. While the trip out was actually cheaper for the train than for flying plus a hotel, the flight back was so much more expensive, particularly including the journey home from the airport, that it didn’t make sense So, no night train and “no frills” flights all round… but at least I get to spend to two nights in Berlin, not far from the site of the wall, near the Sonnenallee checkpoint.

Hopefully it will be a great conference, and also give a little time for site-seeing

Posted in work | Print | No Comments »

16/02/2008 by Andrew Smith.

Preparing for my next bit of conference blogging @ the DIA EuroMeeting next month, I’m trying some new software called Wavelog for my N95, which should be much easier and cheaper that using the Wordpress web interface. It all seems good so far, and only cost £5. The next step is to try it with my Nokia keyboard; if it works well I can go to Barcelona unencumbered by a laptop!

Posted in work | Print | No Comments »

14/09/2007 by Andrew Smith.

Our elder son, Thomas, is a few months past his fourth birthday, when we gave him a bicycle. He loves his bike and almost every evening when I get home, he asks whether we can go for a ride. When there’s a suitable gap between my walking through the door and his bedtime (maybe half the time), I say yes and we got out for anything between 15 minutes and half an hour. We talk about what he’s done at school, which of his friends he played with that day, what we might do at the weekend, and sometimes I ask him to be really still and silent so we can listen to the birds that are just starting to roost for the night.

When we started doing this, we usually went to the same place (one of the two local playgrounds) but recently I’ve started taking him off on different routes around our neighbourhood. We always start off in a particular direction, playing a game of Pooh-sticks at the bridge over the stream that runs alongside the cycle-track, but I try to go in a circle rather than reach a point where we have to turn round and retrace our steps. At first this was just for some variety for me, but I realised how important it will become for him, over the next few years, as he starts going out around the local streets on his own and playing unsupervised with his friends. He can be the boy who knows all the short-cuts, and feel the confidence of knowing how familiar the area is to him.

Of course, it’s also hugely important to me; particularly since his baby brother George came along, I’ve tried to make special times to spend time just with Thomas. We’ve gone to the beach, to the zoo, camping and, our favourite, to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Thomas particularly likes to see the dinosaurs (of course) but I’m trying to introduce him to the assorted mammals, birds, insects, minerals and comprise the rest of the museum; we’ve even gone round the corner to the Science Museum on one occasion, although he could do with being a year or two older to really appreciate that.

So, “Daddy, can we go for a bike ride?” have become eight of my favourite words. If anyone asks you the same question, make sure you answer “Yes”.

Posted in work, family | Print | No Comments »

25/02/2007 by Andrew Smith.

This has been a bit of a manic week, finishing off everything on the March issue of CRfocus so we can go away on holiday to Center Parcs near Thetford.

Things got off to a bit of a flying start when the Office of Fair Trading issued a report on revising the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS); this caused me to bump the editorial column I’d already written (on the possibility and desirability of a universal standard for research ethics… more interesting than it sounds, honest!) and write a new piece. We managed to put all the final pages together in time, and it’s safely printing this weekend.

The other fun work thing (not a contradiction, I promise) was the PharmaTimes Clinical Researcher of the Year dinner: a black tie do up at an hotel on Park Lane. We had a great time (although I was taking notes for my report next month, so I didn’t paint the town red. We stayed in a hotel in the old County Hall building, which is right next to the London Eye. It looked so beautiful that, when we got back to the hotel at half past midnight, I wandered up and down the embankment half an hour or so, taking photos before going to bed.

Having finished the working week, Jess and I went to see an evening of Noel Coward plays starring loads of our friends. Having started a few months ago as a two-hander revue for Tanya and Rebekah (who I’ve taken to calling Rachel!), it expanded into two one-act plays involving a total of eight performers. Still Life is the play that became a classic of British cinema as “Brief Encounter”, but this staged performance was excellent: the acting was full of character (Rebekah stole the show) but served to accentuate, rather than obscure, the wonderful construction of the script. Everything was in its place, taut, emotive (a cipher for his own hidden sexuality, a la Oscar?) with the occasional laugh to leaven the mix. Red Peppers is more of a comedy, taking a slice of the life of a husband and wife musical hall act sliding down from the peak of their career. The performances were superb, with Tanya hiding her discomfort at performing in her underwear and switching from stage personae to arguments to post-romantic tenderness and back to an hilarious finale trying to tap-dance to a pianist who is trying to floor them with changes of tempo. After the success of this short run (3 nights) and a well-deserved rest, I hope Tanya and Rebekah will come back with something else to please us next year…

Finally, I must share my latest musical discovery: a Nashville-based singer/songwriter(/pianist) called Kira Small. I played some snippets to Jessica yesterday, and we agreed that she had a wonderful voice; I bought her album via iTunes and the songwriting and arranging is also excellent: Nashville cool with soul and jazz intimacy. I found her via a circuitous route (her boyfriend is Bryan Beller, excellent bass player - check out his solo album, View - and regular with my absolute fave musician of the moment, Mike Keneally whose album Guitar Therapy Live is on my regular playlist).

So that’s the week - tomorrow morning, we’re off to Center Parcs for five days of relaxing. Next weekend it’s back to busy-ness: I’m depping on clarinet for a production of Carousel (just the band call… although quite why they hired a musician for a week who couldn’t attend the band call!) followed immediately by a first rehearsal for a showcase evening for RedRoofs theatre school - reuniting me with and Tim Bastock, Mike Wells, along with Scott Burgess who I haven’t played with for since the early days of the Machiel Roets band a couple of years ago. We’re doing a wide range of material ranging from contemporary covers to classics (Loving you, Stuck in the middle with you, Rocking all over the world and… the whole of Bohemian Rhapsody!!)

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it…

Posted in friends, performance, work, family | Print | No Comments »

18/02/2007 by Andrew Smith.

How could I have been so naive… all those weeks ago!? Did I really think I’d manage to keep blogging through the last month of hectic activity?

Since the last time I posted here, I’ve played two weeks in the band for a village hall pantomime, spent 3 days in Brussels (being a tourist, but mostly attending a conference on diversity in systems for ethics review of clinical research across the EU… more interesting than it might sound!), performed for a week in an amateur production of “The Boy Friend” and somehow amongst all of that managed to keep up with the regular stuff like family (re-finding the bliss of sorting the recycling and preparing the evening meal) and work (second magazine of the year nearly under my belt…). See my Flickr page for loads of pics of Brussels and The Boy Friend.
(Pauses for breath…)

The one thing that’s fallen between the cracks a bit has been keeping up all those emails back to old friends. I’m consoling myself that some of the might be reading this (… yeah, right!) and that once I’ve fully recovered (ie later this weekend) I might actually be able to spend some time making amends. If any of you are reading this… sorry, and please bear with me just a bit longer.

I’ve also discovered business podcasts, the accessible face of the Harvard Business Review has introduced me to the joys of “Harry Potter Marketing”, ie, building and adapting your brand to follow a particular cohort of customers through their different life-stages, rather than segmenting by age to define customers for “young”, “mature” and “older” products. Not a bad idea, particularly if you have a successful product for which the age segment is just about to “drop off the end”…

Posted in friends, performance, work | Print | No Comments »

05/01/2007 by Andrew Smith.

If you talk to almost any novellist they will tell you about the discipline of being a writer. Some make themselves write for a set period each day; others set a number of words as a target.

As in most aspects of life, the mark of a successful writer is someone who can grind out something halfway respectable even on the days when inspiration refuses to strike. This sounds rather a desperate situation, but it does get easier; as with most skills it needs to be practiced, and this practice moves the lower functions (spelling, grammar, typing proficiently) into muscle-memory and onto “auto-pilot”, enabling the brain to occupy itself with style, form and simply getting an interesting message across.

In my work, there are a few items that I write every month. I know that on a certain day in my magazine’s production cycle I can close my office door, start with a blank screen and come up with 600 words of editorial (whether inspired or “ground out”) in half a day.

I suppose blogging is much the same; my previous efforts to keep up a blog have always fallen away through lack of practice, whether because of the interface or simply not finding an appropriate time to write. Maybe it’s rampant New Year’s enthusiasm, but I’m going to try to become a more disciplined blogger. Hopefully I’ll even learn to “grind out” something personal when inspiration expires.

Posted in friends, work | Print | No Comments »