One of my least favourite things about jobs involving a bit of travel (apart from not being able to read Alice’s bedtime stories, of course) is nasty Travelodges.

M’colleague Neill and I have seen some prize ones, and they’re all identical squishy-floored Hotels of Doom. Neill’s got a few of these pics of me in Travelodges, looking like I’m in The Shining hotel.

However, my favourite thing about my job is that I experience a big range of stuff, which I wouldn’t in an office.

I wouldn’t have been in Westminster meetings - or seen the derelict BBC theatre in Alexandra Palace, found out how you train horses to fall over and butterflies to hit marks, learned more than I asked about model railways, or heard one of the UK’s nonagenarian computer pioneers enthuse about early vacuum tube computers - in my old internet job. And I’ve by no means done exotic shoots, on the scale of things.

In fact, it’s most often the corporate jobs, which a lot of film people moan about as a mortgage-paying necessity, which teach me something genuinely interesting.

In recent corporate jobs, I’ve learned quite a bit about how the UK’s education policy is influenced - or not - by experts. I’ve learned how filling little plastic recycling boxes with separate materials is much better for the environment (and the local govt. budget) than having one mixed recycling bin at home. And I’ve recorded some very affecting stories of recovering alcohol & drug users that made the job quite an eye-opener (and I wouldn’t describe my previous state as naive).

In fact, there have been lots of work days where some new stuff sneaked into my brain that I wouldn’t voluntary research. Finding out from a fire crew what their daily routine of waiting and risk is like is just as interesting as meeting the odd famous actor, ‘cos both have lives very unlike mine (which is fine by me in both cases, having heard what it’s like!)

So I’m just reminding myself that the seemingly prosaic corporate jobs are frequently a fascinating free education, which makes my calendar look much more exciting for the next couple of weeks :)

Unless you’re a sound recordist, it’s possible that you don’t realise how extremely, rivetingly interesting the pictured item is.

You may not care about hiding miniature microphones on actors at all, in fact. In this case, you should break the speakers on your telly and never watch a film with the sound on again, to teach you a lesson about how important this is.

You may also not know the barely-dull fact that a drac clip is so called because of its two needly teeth, which are for sticking into actors. Clothing. Actors’ clothing. Yes.

The Tram is a lovely mic with a drac clip that makes it great for pinning under actors’ T-shirts etc. But let’s be honest, it’s tubby, and the croc clip for in-vision mounting is rubbish. The COS11 is much easier to hide, and is great in-vision ‘cos if its clever and discreet croc clip.

But it doesn’t have a drac clip for stabbing actors and hiding mics easily and quickly... until now! Yes, stifle your yawns, you philistine, the COS11 drac clip has actually made my life easier. And you can get it from top chap Martyn at Soundkit.

I’m currently working with a Cambridge artist on assets for the effects shots in Last B&B. I’m hoping to get temp effects created with the art assets (meaning textured drawings of buildings etc) so that I can give FX artists a clear idea of each shot’s requirements.

Anyway, even though we’re only looking at still images at this early stage, it’s really exciting to see some frames of the film with a bit of fairy tale apocalypse in the background...

So you might notice that this picture is not of a film set. This does kind of relate to work, though, in that my daughter’s moved out of her cot, and into her big girl’s bed. And then out of it again every five minutes.

Consequently, this first post to my new blog is typed through a bit of a haze, frankly.

BTW, I say “new blog” cos I kept quite a regular blog from April 2003 to October 2005, at which point I was working in an internet job, and had time for that kind of thing.

That’s one of those problems with the internet, isn’t it? As soon as you’re actually doing something interesting enough to blog about, you don’t have time, or aren’t really allowed.

A good exception is Stephen Fry’s twittering, of course. Not got into Twitter hugely, myself, as I’m a bit too loquacious for a 140-character summary of what I’m thinking, and I don’t currently have a good way of posting from the field, as it were, so I’ve always stopped doing things by the time I’m in front of the computer. But interesting reading.

Anyway...