Interesting sights of Dorking #3

How about this? An APC/Tank being gradually stripped to pieces by the guys at L J C Autospares on Ranmore Allotments road...It was running when they brought it in...seems a bit of a shame to break it up...

Say Hello to Mittens...

...the tiny kitten, who arrived just before Thomas' birthday as an early surprise...just in the last couple of days she has started to come and curl up for a cuddle with me (instead of basically just trying to eat my hands) although there is still a certain amount of that involved... ;)

Now, if we can only get Annabelle to stop picking her up by her tail (and/or throat) we might have a peaceful house! ;)

Anyone lost a bike? #Dorking

Spotted in the underpass at Dorking West Station...

Interesting sights of Dorking #2...

...is without doubt - the Gilliangladrag FLUFF-A-TORIUM
- presumably some of the resident rogue knitters are responsible for flagrant acts of vandalism and defacement around Dorking such as this(!) no prosecutions have (as yet) taken place -

- but what a charming, totally unique place this makes Dorking to exist in...thank you Gillian...and your army of New Model Knitters... ;)

Why is anyone doing programmatic advertising?

Yes...Programmatic...

From a publishers point of view - it is a necessary evil - you get terrible ads - usually you are flooded with either the same ones you have a properly paid for campaign running (prompting shouts from the sales floor) or just odd ones diminishing the brand (think Poundland on The Times) - or terrible plus - fraudulent ads ("this person discovered a clever trick, dentists/dermatologists/zoologists hate them!) or absolute worst case - competitors appearing all over the place - and then you reap only a tiny amount of revenue for the pleasure (in the pence) in exchange for somebody's entire life being devoted to blocking all that horror (while being shouted at by Editorial and Sales).

This situation occurs either because the publisher's sales team is unable to properly monetise the ad impressions or the content is not worth advertising around (or the prices are too high).  From a brand point of view it would be better to just switch the ads off, or go for a sponsorship model, to do anything else is just to announce to the world "This programmatic model is what our content is now worth - basically nothing". House ads, properly used, can bring a great deal more value (upselling subscriptions, Wine club memberships etc.) but is so often undervalued or simply not factored in to the bottom line - it's someone else's target - let's just ignore the big picture.

From the (legitimate) advertisers point of view, although it is very cheap - you always find yourself plopped into this vague "woolly world" of ill-defined segments to target, with no idea where or when your ads are going to appear and asked to make a guess about how much this is worth to you, bidding against other fumbling fools, lost in the murk, calling out for help - and there will never be any, because that is just where the publishers want you.  Why has my boss just had an email saying our ads are running on (insert ludicrously inappropriate site here)...?  No idea, no control, no validation - you may as well throw your expensively crafted ads up the chimney (after you have torn them up).

I've worked on both sides of this puzzle (publisher and advertiser) for well over a decade and here are four undeniable truths -

1 - Apart from on those few sites where there is a subscription model that requires age/job/location/salary (etc.) before one can register (and require subsequent logon) - ALL publishers just make their segments up by guesswork - when you try your very best to do it correctly (and I have) the resultant numbers are usually just too low to work in practice.  All the "segments" you see that have a meaningful amount of impressions are fudged (or basically run of site)...Hey - Can we up the number of impressions on the football segment, the client wants an upsell?  Sure - Urm - only option - add in all of "Sport" and "News" oh and "Celebs", almost there..this is exactly what is taking place every day. Fact.

2 - The advertisers (whether or not they are being fraudulent) don't give a monkeys what the segments say as long as they get the clicks/conversions. Fact.  They don't care about the fraudulently defined audience as long as it works.

3 - Despite all this chatter around cross device attribution - A lot of the time (not all the time, but a lot of the time) more than one person picks up and uses those devices (maybe Mum grabs the ipad/laptop in the morning to massage their facebook friends, then the kids hog it for cbeebies/slime making tutorials on Youtube between 3-6pm, maybe Dad sneaks a little bit of a cheeky Reddit time later on in the evening) - that cross device profile?  It's nonsense.  Mummy, can I play on your iphone? Daddy, can I use your Pixel?  This happens - and it happens frequently.  Fact.

4 - Those numbers you are going to be expected to justify, including the ones that start with pound and dollar signs?  In every single case they will never, *EVER* match up...

The whole idea of this area of online advertising/marketing was to carefully match up audiences with relevant content and relevant ads and make a better world for everyone (yes, both Editorial and the consumer were both in there somewhere originally - and not just with the ever present Google re-targeting).

Unfortunately, the reality of the current programmatic situation is "I want clicks" plus "I want to sell impressions" = Not the right audience - everyone is being selfish to the point of distraction - "what is this shit on my beautiful site?" + "We need to hit target" + "I don't care where my ads run as long as they work"  - these attitudes leave pretty much everyone unhappy.

In the face of the decline of print media, heads of digital sales are consoled by targets being partially met - but, as you can clearly see  - this is to the detriment of all.

No debate - It's broken - programmatic is slowly and quietly grinding more holes into the already leaking hull of the traditional online advertising model.  The only winners are the programmatic companies and the fraudulent, who (surfing the chaos) are laughing (all the way to the bank)...

Update - this just came in today from the FT - Evidence of programmatic fraud

Yay! New 'Fridge...!

Delivered on Monday (just gone) by two fellows in a van (one of our neighbours parked out the back, blocking the back gate, so they had to try and squeeze it through the front door - it only just fitted - after they had removed the 'fridge doors)...! But here it is at last - the 'fridge of my dreams...!
It has an ice dispenser built in (hurrah!) - a mysterious "Wifi" button - not read the manual yet, but it looks like it has a load of sensors (like 11) built in and syncs up with an Android app so you can tell it to "boost ice production" in emergencies and other such things (probably largely pointless, another little cog in the internet of things) -

- oh and a really clever "door-in-door" design whereby you can pop condiments, cheddar blocks, olives, gallons of milk, the little yoghurt drinks that Annabelle drinks by the dozen (anything you are always going in and out of the 'fridge for basically) in this part of the door leaving the rest of the interior (with all your chops, chickens, salad and veggies) largely undisturbed...used properly it's supposed to save ~40% on energy consumption! Clever stuff...

The most clever bit about it though (and well done to Flyingpops for managing to arrange it like this), is that the entire new kitchen is being installed while we are away on holiday, so we should come back to everything (pretty much) done after our two week break!

Balloon, Rave and Canister, Canister-Rave-B'loon...Dorking

Here we go, didn't take me long to pass one, first thing Monday morning (although I found numerous other examples during my 6 minute walk).

It was dropped on the pavement in Station Road outside the old folks home.  In case you aren't aware - this is evidence of the use of so-called "Hippy crack" or plain old Nitrous Oxide (to you or I)...there are a *lot* of these kicking around the place in Dorking, so next time you see someone walking along the road (it is clearly done in plain sight based on the location I spotted this one in) and happen to see a group of people clutching (or appearing to be blowing up) balloons (and then falling over), it is just possible that they may very well *not* be on their way to a kids birthday party...

Interestingly, Derek Jones, the CEO of Kuoni Travel reported that their new (currently unoccupied) office located at the entrance to Dorking Office Park -
- (the one that grew up over the top of Old Char Wharf) was blessed with the pleasure of hosting an illegal rave on the site last weekend (probably thanking his lucky stars that they haven't actually taken up occupancy as a company yet)...There are a few pictures here from before the police arrived, broke up the "Conga" that was going on and seized the sound system, at which point the majority of the participants ran across Meadowbank park, presumably to their rich parents' houses to hide in the loo.

I'm not sure Dorking really knows how to have a proper rave... ;)

Rather a lot of rain...

...just lately, I am dismayed to say that the vast majority of it has been coming (in an almost constant procession for about the last 2 months) from the South West, where we are about to head for our family summer holiday.  We haven't had a lot of luck with the weather for the last couple of holidays (it even managed to rain so badly when we were in Spain that the hotel started to flood and the whole of the Costa Del Sol suffered power cuts), so it would be good if the rain could just take 2 weeks off so we can spend most of our time on the beach on this occasion... Pretty please?

Something is wrong with the trees...

There is something terribly wrong with (pretty much) all the horse chestnut trees in Royal Earlswood, I'm thinking a severe case of leaf blotch, but apart from the awful discolouration of the leaves they are also producing (and shedding) copious amounts of tiny conkers -

-this is something they don't normally do until September-time.  It's probably a bit too late to pull off the affected leaves (not that I could reach them all anyway)...

Interesting Sights of Dorking #1

If you wander right to the end of Dorking towards the eastern limits of town, visible if you were heading into Dorking from Westcott/Guildford way, you will find this (now slightly faded) but still impressive vintage mural (I can't decide if it was intended to be 20s or 40s as it contains common elements of both decades), painted onto the side of the Old House (formerly "The Old House at Home" pub on South Street, just a stones throw from my (now not so) new office... ;)

My amusing college job...

Well, here is it - the back of "Ron Tozer's Fish and Chips" in Redhill (it's been under new ownership for many years now, the current people that run it smile and give you extra chips if you say "Xièxiè")...

This is where I spent some of my time working my way through college, earning pennies and coming away with countless hot fish suppers that hadn't sold by closing time.

The crew (if I remember correctly) was Ron (boss and head chef), Graham (urm, the hired muscle?) and Warren, the bosses son - during the day he was a photographer for the Surrey Mirror, helping out in the shop at night. There was a young lady who waited tables in the restaurant area out the back, and a wiry guy who did prep (peeling spuds and skinning/trimming fish fillets) but I don't recall their names as I had little call to interact with them.

The introduction to working there was simple - Arrive - Collect keys from top flat (up all those stairs), open up back door, put on whites, turn on friers and glass fronted warmers. Heat up a few pies in the microwave (both chicken and mince varieties) - taking the foil off carefully first - put saveloy sausages into pre-existing milky tepid water "never EVER eat those, I know what went into them", turn on gravy and mushy peas ("we don't do curry sauce, that's for Northern poofs") stir the cracked skin into oblivion. Use chip paper and non-brewed condiment (chip shop vinegar) to clean down all surfaces (glass and metal) - "never bother with window cleaner lad, it's a waste of money - that stuff is the business" (and it was) - pop a great big block of what looked like lard "it's nut oil lad" (hrm) into the frier if it was looking a bit low - count the contents of the till and write the total on a bit of chip paper and pop it under the tray the £20 notes go into so we can do the maths later. Sometimes there was a knock on the back door, if so go and collect all the frozen fish (in stupidly slippery cardboard boxes) from a big refrigerated van and pop it into the freezers. At some point during all of this (usually towards the end) Ron would appear, already in his whites, and ask me to do all the things I had already done.

Prep chef out the back would then appear, in checks and a natty hat, throw a bag of spuds into what basically amounted to a washing machine lined with sandpaper and then smoke a cigarette while the potatoes peeled themselves, throw them through an industrial chipper and then wheel the resultant huge great plastic trough of raw chips up to the front and park it just out of sight of the customers view, with a pale blue mop bucket on the top for us to shovel them into the hot oil.  Next the fish and batter would appear in stainless steel containers and without any further ado the cooking would begin with a great big hiss and cloud of steam which always fogged up the front window regardless of the weather.  Constant time checks were done, and at the appointed moment (although not until I was signalled) it would be my job to flip the open/closed sign and unlock the front door.  Just occasionally I needed to welcome the members of a little queue already waiting for their food outside...

Fried food is cooked when it is floating, if Ron was busy, I would lift the cooked bits carefully up to the warmer, trying not to drip boiling oil onto any part of my body, tradition was that you knocked any long bits of crisp batter into the chip tray - some people ordering chips asked for some "extra crispy bits" - not something I was familiar with - but this was what they were after.

From there it was typically a blur of "Two cod and chips" (etc.), the occasional chicken quarter (they come frozen and pre-cooked btw) until closing time when I would be sent away with my salary in cash in my pocket, my pay slip in biro on a greasy bit of chip paper (if at all), pie and (miscellaneous) fish and heaps of heavily salted and vinegar-ed chips under my arm, steaming up the bus windows on the way home - occasionally some of  the food made it back home to be shared.

Of course there were notable moments - yes, we did get *one* Northerner come in asking for curry sauce, he was told to go away by an angry Ron (who then bravely went and hid out the back leaving me to face the insulted customer) - awkward smile :S. An old lady would come in occasionally and pay for cod and chips with numerous bags of one pence pieces, I was sent into the restaurant to count them all while she waited - it was correct each time, but I still had to count. One time a frozen cod arrived with it's guts still attached and the chef out the back thought it would be clever to eat them raw - no idea how he kept them down - he definitely regretted it when the contents spewed out down his chin.

Then there was the time Ron was on the balcony and decided to throw the keys down to me to open up, one of the keys (it was a bunch larger than my clenched fist now) went straight through my hand, blood everywhere, but Ron just put a load of chip paper (the answer to everything) and quadruple wrapped blue kitchen sticking plaster round it and I worked the shift (feeling slightly faint) - I still have nerves catching things thrown at me to this day - apologies to anyone with anything extra dripped onto their dinner that night. Oh and how could I forget the night there was a fight outside the McDonalds opposite, a hoodie kid got quite badly beaten by a gang, when they ran off he got up and kicked straight through the window of the Estate Agents next door, picked up what I can only describe as a sword of glass and made chase after them (Ron didn't shut the shop of course) - I don't imagine that ended well...

A few years after I stopped working there I read in the local paper that Warren and Graham had been on a fishing trip in the Algarve and (allegedly) thrown a German tourist off a 12 foot high sea wall (luckily(?) he was only paralysed rather than killed) - last thing I heard Warren was on the run somewhere in Australia and an EU arrest warrant was out for Graham.

Fun times...

Dorking West Station

Opened in 1849 as "Dorking" station (later "Dorking Town), and historically the home of a large goods yard (it's now an industrial estate), this sleepy station is one of the quietest in the country.

Interestingly the road that leads into the old goods yard is called "Old Char Wharf", hinting that both the goods yard had something to do with fire/charcoal and also that Pipp Brook (a tributary of the Thames that runs right through the area) used to be a little more substantial than it is today.

Believe it or not official figures show only ~16 regular passengers per year.  At normal commuter time in the morning there is only one really viable train for the 9-5 crowd that stops here - and from that me and three or sometimes four other people disembark. At home time it's the same sort of thing, just the one train and on that it's me and 5 other people who regularly get on - so if anything 16 seems like a bit of a stretch of the imagination...just compare that to the 53.8 million annually entering and exiting at London Bridge (which was my previous regular destination).  Makes you wonder why they continue to run services here actually...


Still, overheads are low, there isn't even a ticket machine, the only listed facility for the station is a bike rack, and as far as I can see I'm the only person that ever uses it - to sit on while I wait - looking at the back of "International Rescue" who are slowly taking over all the units backing onto platform 2 and filling them with dry suits, RIBs, fire engines and ex-special forces personnel.

There is obviously a vibrant night-life at the station, as the tunnel (partially pictured) is regularly strewn with miniature gas bottles & deflated balloons, empty kebab/fish and chip wrappers, NHS sourced shooting paraphernalia, signs of small fires -

- copious amounts of used wet wipes and hundreds of partially crushed cans of "Relentless" (and occasionally traces of unimaginative spray painting).

Once a week a very tired looking Peter Griffin look-a-like waddles between the platforms in an endless quest to keep the place looking respectable (and does a good job to be fair)...honestly, I think more people come to Dorking West to pick blackberries than do to actually catch a train - but I would rather be here than anywhere in London.

Nature reclaims the Pilgrim

So the Pilgrim pub in Dorking is on my walk to and from the station (morning and evening), it closed it's doors for the last time back in August 2015 - long before I started actually working in Dorking again. Last year I was witness to it being boarded up (they actually use sheet metal now) after plans to redevelop and re-open it (presumably) fell through.

 Now, day by day, I am watching the slow reclamation process taking place by plants and wildlife, along with the odd bit of vandalism - the brick BBQ was smashed to bits the other week and rough sleeping (mostly in the roof of the barn out the back), it appears they gained access by stacking a number of old beer barrels into a makeshift set of stairs...and just recently most of the old garden tables were pushed together and connected with a ramp - I assume for skateboarding purposes - it's nice to have my own personal bit of derelict urbanity within which to do exploration (right on the doorstep too), I find it amusing that the place is seeing so much activity after it has (as far as most people are concerned) permanently ceased to function.

Meadowbank Dorking in the Summer

One of the more pleasant morning commutes I have had - pictured is "Willow Walk"...(during the summer at least, in winter time the path becomes  "Willow death slide", threatening watery doom with every hesitant slippery step)...

Only Rain Down the Drain - Dorking

Spotted these popping up all around town, there is even one by the little bridge over Pipp Brook in Station Road, which I don't think qualifies as a drain at all!  Not entirely sure why there is a picture of a fish though, it kind of implies there is resident wildlife we should be looking after -
- (which I suppose isn't entirely out of the question) although the deathly stench after recent flash floods (during summer downpours) when the drains vigorously overflow would seem to indicate otherwise...