Date Tuesday 7 February Time 10.10pm
My thoughts and reflections:
This Easter Discover book is making my job bloody hard.
I’d been putting it off and getting on with the other projects, but Cara just emailed, chasing, so I couldn’t delay any longer.
I spent a couple of hours this morning looking through the back issues of the Discover series – standout titles included Discover Needlework for Girls and Discover Maths for Boys – and then made the mistake of looking up JJ on the internet.
Honestly, I still feel slightly nauseated and sullied from the combination.
Add Easter into the mix and it was enough to make me consider voluntary redundancy.
However, that may well involve moving back into Mum and Dad’s which would in turn involve being closer (location-wise) to Arrie.
I’ve just received another text from her saying how the twins are desperate to see their Aunty Alice soon (bullshit) and suggesting I come and see the puppies whilst they’re tiny.
If those puppies are anything like their mother, then I don’t like them.
But they do look pretty cute in all the photos she sent.
So I steeled myself and got on with thinking creatively, and finally sent the following to Cara:
From: [email protected]
Re: Discover Hunting and Baby Animals Easter version
Hi Cara,
Firstly, apologies for the delay on this.
Have given this a lot of thought, and the only way I can think of to make an Easter version is to get Design to border the pages and hide eggs on every page.
There is not a huge amount we can take from Discover Hunting – some generic farm and countryside pursuits – unless we are going full-on Blood of Christ?
A title would really help to move this forward IMO.
Baby Animals has more usable content. We would, however, definitely need to generate new puppy images to replace those that are unusable (lots with JJ and also a surprising number of pit bull puppies – now banned).
We could add a Q and A, word search and a link to an online game – if Design and Digital can turn around in time? Could potentially look at an interview with a dog breeder and a farmer to make marginally more informative.
We do need to move the ‘which dog are you’ quiz which contains several racist references, and all photos of JJ as well as his commentary – I’m surprised they got through the first time – even in the Eighties.
Please let me know where you want me to go from here,
Ax
But then Yaz and Lazy Veronica from Production paused by my desk on their way out and oohed and aahed over the photos of Arrie’s puppies which gave me another idea.
From: [email protected]
Re: Discover Hunting and Baby Animals Easter version – thought
Cara,
Just had a thought… my sister is a dog breeder. Puppies born last week (attached images). If Harry is agreeable to some new content, she’d let us shoot for a donation to her dog charity.
Hope you have a good evening and thanks again for the Charlotte Tilbury cream – it is AMAZING!
A x
My intention is:
To repay Cara (at some point) for her kindness.