My Dad's built a canoe. Has yours? Didn't think so.

Impressive, eh?

Sadly, the DIY gene seems to have skipped my generation. In fact, if you ask me, it’s skipped the entire writing profession.

You see, we writers are fragile creatures. Our delicate hands aren't meant for lashing things together with twine or cutting polyboard with a scalpel.

I’ve written before about how art directors tend to have better dress sense than writers. I think the same is true of them being more practical. They’re always fitting a new bathroom, or building an extension onto their house. Or cave.

Yet, have you ever known a writer who can hammer a nail?

Apart from my dad of course, who can write copy AND make stuff.

And he could take your dad with one bicep tied behind his back.

Happy Father’s Day Dad!

P.S. I deliberately posted this early to remind you morons to GO OUT AND BUY A CARD NOW!

How do they do this? Witchcraft?

Those were the best days of my life

It was the spring of ‘06.

I’d just left a job I hated. (I knew it was time to leave when I had a bad dream about my boss and woke up screaming. Although in retrospect it probably wasn’t helpful to mention this to him when I resigned.)

My art director and I pitched up at cmw and there followed the happiest few months of my working life.

I’m not talking about doing great work. Of course not. I’m talking about coworker japes. Office banter. Workplace high jinx.

That poky little office could barely contain all those big characters. Ricky Big Face. Gobby Sarah. Special Trevor. Hygienic Doug.

We were young and crazy and foolish and had our whole lives ahead of us.

Ah, good times.

Sadly, as Adams so powerfully wails in those faux-gravelly tones, ‘I guess nothin' can last forever’.

Whether it's redundancies or career moves or restraining orders, things change, groups fragment, people move on.

Nowadays, Ricky Big Face is back home in Manchester. Will and Liz and Lloyd are in Sydney – the three of them are now married with a little boy. And Special Trevor has returned to the Cape of Good Hope.

I’m thinking of them now because there's a reunion of sorts on Saturday. Only I won’t be there. I’m away and will miss it. And that makes me do a big sad face emoticon. ONLY IN REAL LIFE.

Sometimes I dream about setting up an agency with those guys. If any clients out there would like to sink your advertising budget into getting us back together just to see what happens, please get in touch in the comments section.

Or maybe you’re thinking of the happiest time in YOUR miserable working life and want to share? Go on, tell us about it. How did it end? Or maybe it’s still going on?

By the way, if you’ve worked with me in the past and are crying because I didn’t say that it was my happiest time, please don’t. It’s not your fault. I just liked those other people more, see?