To those of you (read: everyone) I’ve been boring about the renovation of our new house in Camberwell, here’s a picture of (what will be..) the kitchen / diner.

And no, we didn’t imagine it would need this much work. And yes it does put me in mind of that seminal house rennovation Hanks vehicle, The Money Pit

So on December 27th 2007 I was skiing in beautiful Les Houches when - trying out a new ski / boot combo - I stupidly fell.. and the saga with AXA Travel Insurance (via Lloyds TSB ‘Premier’ service) began.

Whilst the problems with my knee continue (ACL broken, but re-attached to PCL, if you’re interested) the AXA travel insurance claim should have been straightforward. I’d called the overseas number the same day and made them aware of an upcoming claim. I’d religiously asked for, kept and copied every receipt and hospital report. On return to the UK, I filled in their from (that can’t be done online for “procedural reasons” - excuse me but WTF? Why not?) and then waited. And waited some more. And then some more.

When I called, they then noticed that whosoever had entered my details has reduced my address to (I exaggerate, but not much) Paul Harrison, London. So we put that right. And I waited some more. I called up again. Again - ha ha, how silly we are! - Axa realised they hadn’t in fact updated my address when I was on the phone with them. So they may have sent me stuff but - weirdly - the postal service couldn’t deliver these crucial documents without a house number, street or postcode.

To cut a long story short, finally the papers arrived. And they were the one’s I’d already completed. But now everyone was happy at least and the claim could proceed - it had only taken 5 months.

Then in May - nothing

June - nothing

July - still a whole lot nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero.

Just got off the phone to them. My claim is being ‘presented to the payment department tomorrow’ ( yeah, right ) and they’ll call me back if any more problems. Well let’s see. Whilst I wait, lets see if we can get to the top of Google before they pay me. But what phrases should we aim for? Something a bored ted top headline writer might come up with:

“So I married an AXA Murderer”
“AXA a stupid question?”
“ThAXA for nothing”

but I feel like settling on something more prosaic:

AXA Travel Insurance, terrible customer service
AXA Travel Insurance, difficulty making a claim
AXA Travel Insurance, long wait for claim payout

and, indeed from the heart

AXA you *****, pay me my money now

Lets see how we get on.

AXA, if you’re unable to set up an online form for claims, I doubt you track your brand in the blogosphere, but a bonus point to you if you read this and comment below (two bonus points if you can come up with a dumb AXA related headline)

Rant over.

This came through on email today and is quite interesting.

Depending on what side of the brain you use, the lady spins either clockwise or anti-clockwise.

What does it all mean? According to Almira, most people will see this dancer moving counter-clockwise because they use more of the left side of their brain and tend to be more logical and practical.

People who see the dancer moving clockwise are right brain dominant and tend to be more risk taking and imaginative.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
Uses feeling
big picture oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can ‘get it’ (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

People often wonder why you might use an external organisation to help with your marketing, PR or design. I mean, you have to spend a lot of time briefing them on your business, all the while hoping that the people you’ve retained will come up with something that - hopefully - you’ll love.

We’ve just been retained by leading London IT support company, the internet group - welcome guys! - to help them define and articulate their brand, so I thought it might be instructive to describe how we arrived at ours.

Even though (we like to think) we’re experts in brand development, trying to do something like this in-house can be really difficult. As well as the battle of wills that can sometimes negatively influence the process (sales vs. marketing vs. senior management, etc) it’s tough to step back and take an objective view of your organisation and your marketplace.

And we believe that objectivity - a sense of disassociation if you like - is critical to the development of a brand it in its purest form: the DNA of an organisation, which differentiates and engages with every interaction.

So, when it came to developing our own DNA, rather than sit around navel gazing, we commissioned our great friend Simon Lee to do it for us. Simon recently had an interview with a top Australian advertising agency: this is the way we described how Simon helped us…

Development of the Carve Consulting brand

When we originally approached Simon about creating a distinctive look and feel for our advertising and PR agency, we weren’t able to provide him with a company name, let alone anything that could be described as a brief. At that time, the company mostly existed only in our heads; it is not an exaggeration therefore to stay that the agency Carve has become is in no small part thanks to the name, logo and visual identity that Simon created for us.

Our agency is a one-stop shop marketing services company; we are retained to manage “joined up communication strategies” and create impact / “leave an indelible mark” on our clients’ behalf.

It is with these concepts in mind that Simon came up with the name of Carve, and it’s precisely that idea of joined up marketing solutions that Simon has managed to convey with the typographical logo he created for us which you can you see below.

We loved the name immediately, and from there Simon worked with us from the bottom upward to design our entire visual output including our stationary, business cards, document templates and our website, www.carveconsulting.com

Carve is an engagement agency based in central London, with clients including Hemscott, the Olympic Delivery Authority, and the Evening Standard. Whilst there are a huge number of factors that go to making a successful business, that people are always commenting on our business cards convinces me of the value of Simon’s contribution to ours.

Paul Harrison | Managing Partner | +44 207 324 1504

So, thank you Simon!

The PS to all this is that Simon has actually forgone a glamorous career in advertising to work in the wine trade in Melbourne. The French woman sitting next to me thinks you made the right decision

Thanks to all of you who sponsored and supported me on the recent trip to climb Mont-Blanc.

Unfortunately, as most of you know by now, the weather closed in on the day we were going to do the climb, so the summit will have to wait for another year. After the training we had done - and the great weather we’d had for most of the week - it’s a frustrating end. However, we had a fantastic week - I can’t wait to go back.

Day 1 - Le Tour, Refuge Albert 1er

The team - Olivier, Jerome, Christophe, Agnes, Octavio our Argentinean guide and I - took the lift up to the top of the Tour and then walked for about 4 hours to Refuge Albert 1er. In the afternoon we practised ice skills including using crampons (like 4×4 for your feet) climbing ice walls with ice axe (piolet) and abseiling (rappel).

Albert 1er (despite sharing the same name as Chamonix’s top hotel, where Adelaide and I spent our wedding night) is the least attractive of all the refuges we stayed in. Plus the whole dormitory sleeping really takes some getting used to. I consider myself a pretty heavy sleeper, but I found it really hard to sleep in a dorm with 18 people - especially when you are meant to go to bed at 8pm in order to get up early. I am definitely taking earplugs next time.

The team: Octavio, Jerome, me, Agnes, Christophe, plus Olivier who took the picture.

Practising Ice skills on the glacier with ice axe and crampons

A typical refuge dormitory: don’t bother trying to sleep.

Day 2 Refuge Cabane du Trient

Whilst we all took plenty of photos, they can never really convey just how beautiful it is up there. It is amazing, like a dream.

Glacier du Tour which we crossed on day 2 on our way toward Cabane du Trient in Switzerland.

Abseiling onto Plateau du Trient - and into Switzerland

Apart from the walking itself - linked by ropes in case someone falls into a crevasse - one of the best things about the week was the actual rock climbing. I have pretty much zero climbing experience, but really enjoyed the challenge.

At the top of La Petite Fourche following our first proper climb

Day 3 - Back to the chalet in Les Houches

We arrived home in the early afternoon for a much needed bath. Peps and Benja came for dinner and put on a massive BBQ for us. This - unfortunately - is where my troubles began. I had a massive meat blowout… and then promptly was really ill. Having not really slept much for the previous two nights, I then spent all night puking. Not great preparation for day 4…

Day 4 - Les cosmiques

So, I got up at 5.30am having had around 3 hours sleep - and possibly not more than 12 in total for the last 4 days. Today was the real technical climbing day: the cable car to L’Aiguille du Midi, a roped walk down the spur, then les cosmiques. This is long-ish relatively tough climb (for a novice) back up to the station.

The rest of the team (but without Agnes, who - having climbed Mont-Blanc before - decided to stay at home) said this was the best experience of the trip: challenging, often vertical rock climbing with crampons.

L’Aiguille du Midi from the air.

As for me, it was a bit like a dream, or rather, a nightmare. You know when you’re so tired that, when you close your eyes just for a second, you start to hallucinate? That was me that day. I hadn’t managed to hold anything down since the previous night and was just completely drained, so perhaps it’s not that surprising that I fell asleep - despite the precariousness of most of the belays - pretty much every time we stopped. I am pretty proud to have got to the top (mind you, once you start there’s not much I guess they can do save winching you off with a helicopter) but looking back at some of the pictures (like below), I am not quite sure how I did it. Certainly I couldn’t have done it without Olivier and Octavio.

Climbing with crampons…and some ugly style

Olivier offers some advice from below.

Asleep - again - on the way to the top of L’Aiguille du Midi.

So, thanks to those two, I made it to the top, which was definitely the highlight: as well as it meaning that I didn’t have to climb any more, you’re viewed like some kind of action hero by the tourists above as you swing onto the viewing platform from the vertical drop beneath. Plus I could lie down and sleep - again.

Day 5: Summit day one

Have you ever seen the film Malabar Princesse? If you haven’t, don’t bother. It’s a ridiculous tale of a child who loses his parents to a ridiculous aeroplane-filled-with-gold-stuck-in-a-high-mountain-glacier climbing tragedy: like the Poseidon Adventure On Ice. Anyway, he returns to live with his Grandfather, who is the train driver of le tramway du mont-blanc, the high-mountain train that the swiss originally wanted to push all the way to the top of MB. Anyway, it all paints a pretty bucolic sun-drenched picture of life in the mountains: pretty much the exact polar opposite of the day we took the train…

Le Tramway du Mont-Blanc: the weather has turned

Our plan that day was to take the train to the “eagles nest” and then walk to Refuge du Gouter. From there, we would have made our ascent that morning, leaving in lamplight at around 2am to allow us to make the journey to the summit and back - a 12 hour round trip. However, having feared the worst on the train, after just a couple of hours of walking, the weather really started to deteriorate.

Climbing to Tete Rousse - visibility is next to nothing, and we hear it’s snowing above

I shot this video just after Octavio had made us turn back toward Tete Rousse. As you can see, the weather really closed in on us: you can hear thunder in the background, and the hail and snow really started coming down hard.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksdn1JW_4EE

This is the moment when I guess we realised we weren’t going to be able to summit. I am talking in French, basically explaining the risk of being on top of a mountain with crampons and an ice axe in a storm, and expressing the hope that the weather would improve. It didn’t.

Having skirted past Tete Rousse on our way up, we returned there to spend the night. Whilst it was I think the nicest refuge we stayed in - and I learnt to play Tarot (which I love) - it was pretty frustrating to be here. As we played cards and watched the snow continue to fall, I guess we all knew that we weren’t going to make it.

Le Refuge du Tete Rousse

However, we went to bed early, and the team spent several sleepless hours hoping that the weather would break and that we could make the ascent. Despite waking at 2am and 4am to assess the situation, our guides decided that - with the snowfall - the risk of avalanche was just hign, making an ascent too dangerous.

Day 6: Back down the mountain

I shot this on the way down, pretty frustrated that we hadn’t even had the chance to properly try. But now a week or so has passed, I know there was no other choice.

Looking on the positive side, it was an amazing experience and - perhaps when I return - it will be with some of you., my family and friends. Being up there is the kind of transcendental experience that I recommend everyone share with someone they love. Also, thanks to your sponsorship we raised over �300 to http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/

Our guide Octavio and me. Octavio was brilliant - if you’re going to Mont-Blanc, I would highly recommend his services. Plus, when we went we could share the pain of an early world cup exit - he’s Argentinean (You can contact him on Guia.defazio@ifrance.com )

POST SCRIPT

So now a couple of weeks have passed. Amazing news - and sad news - to report.

When you’re up there - feeling pretty indestructible - it’s easy to forget how dangerous and unpredictable the mountain environment can be. We were shocked and of course saddened to hear that a Welsh guy who had moved to Chamonix to be a guide had been killed on the mountain the day we climbed to Tete Rouse.

I was delighted last weekend though to get a text message from Olivier, Jerome and Octavio who had returned to Mont-Blanc: and made it to the top. Obviously I was disappointed not to make it with my father in law Olivier, with whom we’d planned the trip. But absolutely delighted that he has done it. Christophe and I plan to return next year.

Olivier, Jerome and Octavio make it to the top

Olivier flies the Carve Consulting ‘flag’ at the summit

I’m very excited as on Sun 30th im off to see Madonna in concert in the Millenuim Stadium in Cardiff! The show is supposed to be amazing so i can’t wait! Its pot luck im going as my friend bought the tickets for her and a friend and the friend now can’t go! Jammy!! Will write about it next week…

Mont-Blanc overshadows the belle ville of Chamonix, where I met and married Adelaide.

Despite being Europe’s tallest peak (EU expansion notwithstanding), it’s more of a risky steep walk than a fully fledged Everest-esque ascent, but I’m promised crampons and - much more excitingly - an ice axe: I can’t wait.

I will be attempting raise to some money for Cancer Research along the way.

You can donate at www.justgiving.com/Mont-Blanc:chunky donations will rewarded by a photo of your company’s flag planted at the summit!

Keep track of progress: here

It will be like Army on Everest - but with less shouting and khaki…

Three pairs in one month - loving Dune at the moment! Not sure my feet are though…