Late yesterday afternoon I received a communication from our potential investors. They had had their own meeting with Mr Dell, the broker of agents, and reported the same confidence in him as we had. Now they require a "cash flow model" from me to move along. These are not words that are ever going to leaven my heart but one of my oldest friends has offered to help once I have all the "raw data". I was instructed to factor in salaries for Mark and myself. I looked that word up in the dictionary and have to say I am rather taken with it. I rolled it round my brain for a while and then it knocked on the inside of my skull to beg the question of who is employing who. And so I was minded to double check that the original proposal for the structure of the company, which we had found untenable, had been revised. I am being a little circumspect here but I am sure you can appreciate why that would be so.
Meanwhile, Mark's little boy is excitedly awaiting the arrival of some Pokémon cards I have sent him. The lady in Hamleys assured me that they were the very newest set and if they are new to her, I am trusting they have not yet reached the playground half way up a mountain in Provence. Mark told me he is trying to explain to his son that he will be holding a high value hand. Because he is so little, he doesn't understand what they are worth and so trades at a disadvantage with the bigger boys.
Rolling with the theme of ownership I registered earlofbedlam.com via Google, thinking that if you do that via them it might speed up "recognition" by their search engines. Later I was reliably informed that it makes no bloody difference. Anyway, Google actually divert you to Go Daddy. So as they were a little cheaper when you go to them directly I decided to grab up the rest on their site and got thoroughly swept along registering .co.uk; .org; .net; .info and adding on all sorts of gadgets to instill confidence in us as the latest residents of Cyber Street. I went nuts protecting this, privatizing that and certifying the other. I was looking for Go Daddy to "park" the site for us temporarily, until we build a proper one - just a page with a logo and contact details so that you have enough presence for people to confirm you exist - but all I could see were packages for full-on hosting. I didn't know what I was doing. Then I saw the total in my "cart" and emptied the lot in terror. There is something to be said for relinquishing ownership and having someone else pick up all the bills. Lord knows there will be plenty of others.
Blessed our we with our mates, for we have our own web wiz on hand. I found Howard on his hands free, driving home after a long day at work dealing with grotty people who are too stupid to figure out their own domain problems (ooops). He stayed on the line, talked me through registering earofbedlam.co.uk with his favourite one.com and said we could worry about all the other permutations later down the line. He cautioned me not to fall for "up-selling". I certainly nearly did Ollie. So thanks to Big H, I spent around twenty quid, instead of two hundred, securing a small webspace for twelve months. Twenty quid is coincidentally the amount Mark was try to convince his dad to invest in getting the internet connected at their house in France. "TWENTY QUID?!" he exploded (allegedly),"A MONTH??!! I'd rather have a shed."
I also spent some time trying to secure a small living space - shed's considered - as we need somewhere of our own in London. My saintly godmama had guests arriving from Romania and I have vacated our frosted glass refuge. I am quite exhausted from moving around, grateful as I am to those angels who accommodated us. There is a new tower at the Elephant and Castle. I never thought I'd want to live in a tower that wasn't in the middle of a forest and bound about with ivy but this one has had me fascinated - its top looks like an owl with three eyes and little pointy feather ears. It is a sign of great unsophistication to need to anthropomorphize things I understand. I hope to view an apartment there in the morning.
Every now and again I applied myself to the gathering of "raw data" and asked two friend for quotes for photographic shoots. Marj's work is supremely feminine. Sometimes the mood is soft and misty, the models like nymphs, Naiades, Dryades and Oreiades - beautiful spirits of the rivers, woods and mountains; in other shoots the girls are glossy goddesses, sophisticated sybarites. She won the Best Fashion Photo prize as judged by Karl Lagerfeld a few years ago and is excitedly preparing her new studio in Paris. Because Mark's work is strongly male, I can imagine it might work, the yin and yang, and she has started doing menswear as well. Take a look: www.marjolijndegroot.com
Another candidate is my godbrother Piers' project, more commercially orientated:
Other business:
We have had a couple of complaints. One from our readership in Los Angeles (hello Cynthia!) and one from the Control Centre at the V&A that the white print on black is killing their eyes. So you may expect sweeping changes tomorrow. For yes, the rumours are true - it gives me huge pleasure (HUGE) to now confirm the appointment of David Miliband, no less, as our reader care interface executive. It will be his job to implement any reasonable suggestions that you care to put forward. I'm sure you join me in welcoming David.
Pip pip for now.
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