What would you do on a sunny Sunday afternoon?

I bet you wouldn't do what I'm up to. That is: printing out samples and organising a portfolio in preparation for a series of interviews in the coming week.

At least the printer isn't failing this time and I'm not up against the clock to get it done. I have the rest of the day and tomorrow evening to prepare it all. I hope it gets the desired reaction.

The further we get into 2005, the better this 'book' becomes. The work I am doing now is a million miles away from what I was doing three years ago. I've covered most markets now; financial, cars, consumer electronics, television companies, sportswear companies, gaming, etc.

Having such a broad scope of work certainly helps when it comes to moving between agencies. Apart from non-food goods I think I've got everything covered.

And, even though some people that read this blog think that my job involves coercing people into parting with their money for nefarious reasons, that's not true. People will spend their money anyway, I'm just trying to get them to spend it with certain companies.

I don't do environmentally-sensitive companies, such as Shell, Esso, etc; I don't do sweatshop companies, such as Nike or GAP or IBM. I try to help local companies as much as possible and have worked for free for someone who had a product that I believed in or was a not-for-profit company. I give my time freely and my money more so.

However, I do need to pay the mortgage, eat, cloth myself. I know there are people out there that can't do this, that never get to know what it's like to own their own property, etc. But, giving something (time or money for example) is a way of putting something back.

I can't pretend that my actions impact on others' lives, sometimes to detrimental effect. What I can do is minimise this or, as in many cases I do, pay the social cost. So, where possible I buy fair trade and organic food and products. I use this impressive service in London called Organic Delivery. I highly recommend them. You can choose what you want, have it all delivered and order something different the following week. Food, household, whatever, they sell almost anything.

I would also like to point you to People Tree, which is a company that sells fair trade clothing.

That's me done for today. Back next week.

purplesimon out...