No Sticky Back Plastic Required

When I'm not working I like to busy myself with little projects. The last time this happened I ended up with a fully authentic Tracy Island that Anthea Turner would be more than proud of. This wonderful piece of artwork has made a welcome feature in three different homes now...I've moved around quite a bit in the last few years.

When I moved into my current flat I was faced with the problem of having a couple of recycling bins outside but nowhere to store my recyclable goods in the flat before braving the great outdoors. I then decided to make my own recycling box using a box that I had lying about after moving so many times. I thought I would keep the theme and use the Blue Peter ship* because I like to be a bit different from the norm and I didn't want to use the bog standard recycling logo because everyone's got a recycling box with the little arrow triangle thingy right? Plus I never sent off anything to get a green Blue Peter badge as a child so I like to think I'm making up for it now. This is the finished result and you can have a look at my Instructables tutorial for a step-by-step guide should you so wish to make your own.

*I would like to point out that I'm not actually scarily obsessed with Blue Peter contrary to all the evidence stacked against this statement. Yes I may have two badges, a Tracy Island, a hand knitted jumper with the ship on, a tattoo, and now a recycling box using the logo but I honestly just like the show because it represents British Children's programming at it's finest and most iconic. I'm also a great fan of good television branding which is why my flat is also covered in test card related things and tardises (or is the plural of tardis, tardi?)

Blue Peter's Big Olympic Tour

Last week I was on a bit of a downer after The Children's Media Conference. For a month and a half leading up to it I've had back to back work lined up but nothing set in my diary for afterwards so it got to Thursday and after sending masses and masses of emails all week to people chasing up potential work with no results I was feeling slightly sorry for myself. I watched the lunchtime showing of Neighbours and jumped into the shower before sitting down in front of the laptop once more to pour over all the jobs websites again when two exciting things happened...my phone rang and I got offered a two day job at the end of this week working on Heston Blumenthal's upcoming series then an hour later my phone rang for a second time, this time from a lady at BBC Learning practically begging me to work on Blue Peter's Big Olympic Tour at the weekend which would involve me hopping on a coach with the rest of the BBC Learning crew the very next morning to make our way down to Bournemouth for the big event on Saturday.

I was meant to be going down to see my dad at the weekend in Gloucestershire but obviously you don't turn down such offers (even if they're not paying you for your services) so after doing a bit of grovelling to my dear papa and conveniently forgetting to mention that I was doing this as a labour of love I was officially added to the call sheet which consequently has the Blue Peter ship on the bottom of every page which I got a slightly excited about. Just to put my excitement into context, Blue Peter and Newsround are the two programmes that made me decide that I wanted a career in television in the first place. I was a classic CBBC child growing up and my ultimate goal has always been to one day work on either of those two flagship programmes so it's kind of a big deal for me.

On Friday morning I shoved a few things in a bag and made my way to Manchester Piccadilly Station which is where the coach was departing from, I introduced myself briefly to the few people I had spoken to on the phone the night before and we all set off on a six hour coach trip down to the south coast. As luck would have it, the girl who I met first and sat next to on the coach was put into the same hotel room as me so when we arrived we dumped our stuff and instantly headed towards the beach.

After seeing some rather exciting looking beach huts, paying a grand total of 60 pence for the privilege of walking along the pier (a season ticket cost a whole pound) and watching Twist and Pulse prancing around a stage as the warm up act before the Olympic Torch got there, we decided to get back to our hotel room before heading out to meet the rest of the BBC Learning gang for a lovely meal at Ask where we got to meet the rest of the team properly. Much food and a complimentary glass of wine later, one of the team announced that it was 11.30 already and that maybe we should all go to bed soon seeing as we had a taxi coming to pick us up at 6:50 the next morning to take us to location.

For those of you who don't watch Blue Peter and have never heard of the Big Olympic Tour (shame on you)  I shall fill you in on what goes on during the day...The Blue Peter team go to a different location every week following the Olympic Torch around the country, there's a live outside broadcast that happens at 9am which gets shown on the CBBC Channel and BBC2. Then for the rest of the day there are various events dotted around a field that tie in with the Olympics which is where I came in. I was located in a tent called the My Sports Report tent, which was set up as a little mock studio and aimed to teach the general public about chroma key technology (more commonly known as green screen). The kiddies could try their hand at operating one of the cameras or the vision mixer or they could get on stage and dress up as an Olympian or be a co-presenter. We had some rather interesting kids on stage during the course of the day, one of the co-presenters was the most adorable three year old who as soon as she sat down grabbed the mic and started rambling on about being a ballerina. The biggest challenge was getting the children to form a nice orderly queue and trying to persuade them that being behind the camera or on the vision mixer was just as fun and important in the television making process as being the guest star.

Half way through the day, I accidentally exposed my Blue Peter ship tramp stamp tattoo to the rest of my little team and they were trying to persuade me that it would be a good idea to march over to Barney Harwood (he's one of the presenters) and expose my back to him. I was highly reluctant despite everybody reassuring me that he wouldn't think I'm a crazy mad woman but fortunately for him, the opportunity didn't arise. Besides which I was too excited about wearing my totally beautiful high viz jacket and didn't want to have to pull it up  for no good reason.

All too soon it was time to hop back on the bus and make our way back up to Salford. It was a great honour to work on a Blue Peter event and with the BBC Learning team and I had a lot of fun doing it but my story doesn't end just yet which is where we skip forward to the following Monday. 

My friend has come up for the week and my flatmate has taken some time off work as well. They are both highly nerdy boys and on the bus back to Salford on Saturday I caught wind of the Batmobile making an appearance on the Piazza at MediaCity. With all three of us free to do whatever we like for a week, I dragged them both over there yesterday morning to marvel at it but I wasn't counting on Blue Peter recording a little piece for this week's show. Barney was standing around in the rain right next to this wondrous piece of machinery and I thought I would take the opportunity to do the thing that I was too chicken to do at the weekend. I walked up to him, apologised for interrupting and launched into an abbreviated version of the story  you've just read...then I turned around quickly and flashed my back at him. I'm guessing he was slightly in awe because he asked to take a picture of it which later appeared on twitter. What a result!

Barney's reaction after taking a photo of the best tattoo he's ever likely to see.

nb. I apologise for all the photos that are featured with my back turned to the camera....I'm not a very photogenic person so it's probably for the best.

Interviews, Coffee and Networking

I promised myself some time off when I got back from the Championsheeps and despite my temping agency trying desperately to get me to work odd weeks here and there I've stuck to my word and turned down the irrelevant job offers. Now before you start thinking this is a really stupid idea (I am still in two minds about agreeing with you) I should add that I have had a flurry of interviews and networking things to attend.

Last week I had an interview to work in the art department on a very exciting sounding feature film. That was  on the Tuesday and seeing as I am very new to working in the art department and have only worked on the Hollyoaks promo before as a set dresser I suddenly had to dash around Manchester trying to put together a portfolio the day before the interview with only two decent photos to add to it. Plus it was the first portfolio I've constructed since I did A Level Art so the man who was interviewing me probably was thinking "what a bloody joke"...I know I certainly was! So that was last Tuesday and I still haven't had an answer about that job despite a few texts and phone calls trying to chase up an answer. 

On Thursday there was a networking doo at one of the buildings in MediaCity. It's called the Greenhouse and it's where a nice assortment of small indie production companies and other small businesses live. On my way there I went via the Blue Peter Garden and was delighted to discover that someone has erected a little cage type dome thing that goes over the pond and there are real live fish happily swimming around in there now. Getting back to the reason I was there (well apart from all the cupcakes, ice cream and macaroons I was promised) the networking event was very well put together. They had the advantage of all their tenants being in their own offices so it was easy to navigate and target the companies that you actually wanted to introduce yourself to. I came away from it feeling that I made some very useful contacts.

Last Saturday there was a cider festival happening in the centre of Manchester. This had been in my diary for months as I have been moaning rather regularly about the lack of decent cider that's been missing from my life whilst going out and about since I moved here. I come from a little village in the depths of Gloucestershire and down there they feed it to us before we progress onto solids so cider is something that is very dear to my heart. Originally it was going to be just my flatmate and I attending but two days before this most wondrous and hallowed event I tweeted about it and then all of a sudden somehow it became a mini networking afternoon/evening for people who I've worked with in the industry and people who I'd like to work with in the future...the power of Twitter hey!

On Monday I had a big scary but mega exciting interview at the BBC for a job in the indie acquisitions team in the Children's department and for the first time ever at a BBC interview my brain didn't turn to mush and I was giving coherent answers to questions that in the past I have just fallen flat on my face with before I've even had a chance to get any words out of my mouth. Obviously my plan that I came up with in November actually worked, which was to move as close to MediaCity as possible so that I could change my perception of the BBC from the mystical fantasy palace where all my dreams and wishes would magically come true yet when invited to an interview would not feel I am worthy of working in such an awesome place - to - a nice company that I'd quite like to work for. I'm not sure if I have the job yet or not but the interviewers said as we were wrapping up that I gave a very strong interview (I was waiting for the but...) so I guess that's a result in itself. They promised to let me know by the end of the week so they have roughly a day and an hour and half to keep that promise. 

I had a coffee date on Tuesday with a little chum of mine who I work with on Dickinson's Real Deal and then yesterday morning I went for an interview at an indie company who specialise in commercials who are looking for freelance art department people, production assistants and runners (I took my newly made portfolio and flashed my two photos from the Hollyoaks promo at them) and then another coffee date in the afternoon with a relatively newly formed indie company that I've built up a nice little relationship up with on Twitter. It was a way of introducing ourselves to each other and putting a face to the tweets but we ended up have a good natter for about an hour! Next week I'm off to Sheffield to volunteer at the Children's Media Conference and then I get back on Friday and volunteer over the weekend down at the BBC for Give an Hour. 

So my plan to take some time off hasn't really been any less manic than if I had been working, and much more so than if I had agreed to sit on a reception with no way of furthering my career or stimulating my brain cells. 

A Wander Around the Garden of Dreams

I like wandering around MediaCity, I figure it's good for the soul and since I live only a 15 minute walk away from the place, I haven't come up with a good excuse not to. Today was one of those days when I just wanted to go and stretch my legs but today I also had a very specific reason to take a trip to this most hallowed and wondrous place. On Thursday 23rd February (only four days ago), Princess Anne went to a very special function within the MediaCity complex. This wasn't just any function, this was the grand opening of the new Blue Peter Garden.

The Italian sunken garden complete with fish pond, sundial and the
hand, foot and pawprints of past presenters and pets

Unfortunately I was unable to get there on the day due to work commitments but I knew I couldn't put it off for long so today I trundled off with my camera to take some cheeky snaps of the northern incarnation of the garden of dreams. For those of you who don't know, the Blue Peter Garden had been set to move up to MediaCity along with the rest of BBC Children's ever since the BBC made the announcement that they were moving a whole load of departments to Salford. However, the logistics of how exactly they were going to relocate the garden obviously proved to be a bit of a challenge. At one point they were considering having a rooftop garden situated on top of The Studios building but it wasn't until a couple of weeks ago when the press release confirming that the garden was going to be in the Piazza, which is completely open to the public, was issued. Features from the original garden at Television Centre in London were transported to MediaCity including the Italian sunken garden, the statue of Petra (the first Blue Peter dog), the sundial, and the hand and footprints of past presenters - Lesley Judd, John Noakes and Simon Groom along with pawprints of past pets - Shep, Goldie, Jack and Jill and Fred the tortoise (although I'm not too sure if tortoises have paws as such).

As the garden is in a completely open space, obviously the question of how they are going to deter people from trashing the place was at the forefront of my mind but rest assured dear readers, there was a security guard watching over it when I got there, which was handy because I roped him into being my photographer's assistant) and he promised me that there will always be someone on duty standing next to it at all hours. Below are some photos I took to preserve the memory of the first time I visited my own personal Mecca. I'm sure there will be other occasions and I apologise for the lack of sunshine but hey, that's Manchester for you!

Potted plants surrounding the fish pond

Myself with Petra. Coincidentally I finished knitting the jumper at the
weekend and couldn't resist dressing up for the occasion

View of the garden which is situated right next to the MediaCity tram station

Current presenters Helen Skelton and Barney Harwood had their hand and
footprints set in concrete to mark the opening of the new garden 

Who needs security! Petra looks like she's handling things just fine