Wild swimming on the Brecons

It was the day before father’s day.  We were having a week’s family holiday in the Brecon Beacons. My daughter came up to me and said ‘Look Dad, I have decided not to give you a present tomorrow, but what I really want to give you is a day of my time.  What would you like to do?’ I decided that, more than anything,  I’d love to go for a long walk with her. The following morning she prepared a delicious packed lunch, I dusted down my small Trangia stove and we set off to climb Pen-Y-Fan and Corn Ddu.  It was a glorious day and despite being buffeted by a force seven mist on the summit, we really enjoyed each others company and talked about geography, her first year at university,  friendships and her plans for Guatemala (where she was going to be spending the whole summer learning Spanish).

Later that day we borrowed a copy of Daniel Start’s fantastic book on Wild Swimming. ‘Walk uphill for a quarter of a mile, turn right at the large ash tree, drop down to the valley floor and then walk upstream for 400 metres to find a small magical pool hidden away under a canopy of rowan trees’.   We swam, shrieked and laughed in the cold crystal-clear water just beneath the waterfall.  As we walked back to our holiday cottage, glowing from the exertions of the day with warm packets of  fish and chips under our arms, I thought when did I offer a day of my time, unconditionally, to anyone?

Sheppy's Award Winning Ciders

Twenty years ago we made a short film for Sheppy’s Cider in Bradford-on-Tone – A year in the life of a cider farmer. I rang Louisa Sheppy on the off-chance to see if they had managed to keep back an old copy. To my delight she said that they were still showing the original film in their farm museum and had worn out four VHS players and were now on their second DVD player. Filmed in the days when we hired Betacam SP cameras at £350 per day, lit the interiors with banks of Redheads (800W) and Blondes (2KW) lights, off-lined on Low Band U-Matic tape and edited on three machine edit suites in London. It looks a bit dated now, but there are a few shots I doubt I could improve on. Now I need to encourage them to put it on their website!

John F Kennedy speaking at Berlin in 1961

Fantastic evening at the Tacchi Morris Theatre in Taunton where Connecting Somerset hosted ‘Technology – a 21st Century Approach to Business’, using drama and multi-media. Over 100 delegates attended. Star speaker of the evening was Andy Dean from IBM who introduced us to a raft of new and emerging technologies, including this very nifty flickr database. Lots of Somerset suppliers there too – it’s great to be part of such a creative community.

The evening concluded with an onscreen conversation with David Price of Cosyfeet who explained what it meant to be a post-technology company. He paraphrased John F Kennedy and challenged the audience with ‘Ask not what technology can do for your business. Ask what technology can do for your customers’. He is absolutely right of course. David is really worth listening to. Nine years ago he had a one-page website and now his group of online businesses turn over £15million annually. Thanks to Matt Ballard of Connecting Somerset for making it all happen.