And what could be more mundane than Post-It Notes?
Did you know Post-It Notes are officially 30 years old this year? Actually, they're a little bit older than that, because the men who developed them started in the mid-70s.
Last week, at the third meeting of Stationery Club, we got to talk to one of those very men, Geoff Nicholson, via the medium of Skype. He told us a few funny anecdotes, like the one about his colleague who was trying to stick airplane wings together, but created a "useless kind of glue" that didn't really stick to anything. Or the one about how they schlepped up and down the street trying to sell them even though they all had jobs as industrial designers. But what he most wanted to talk about was how much he liked the fish and chips at some place in west London that burned down last year.
This particular meeting of Stationery Club had a different feel to the previous two. It was in a different pub, which was more expensive and less friendly than the other one, and it was sponsored by some newmedia company (who booked the pub, brought along the tech gear and arranged the interview). Sponsorship meant that when we arrived there were cameras being shoved in our faces without warning (or permission), and there were posters all over the room which had our photos on (taken from the Stationery Club Facebook group, but again without permission).
On the other hand, corporate sponsorship meant freebies from Post-It, although they mostly got utilised in rather silly ways.
Funnier still was that it ended up in the local paper. You'd think it would be easy to come up with a short silly message to put on a Post-It for a photo, but there was much discussion and rearranging of said Post-Its before the photographer finally settled on something he was satisfied with. I guess that's what makes him a professional, even if the article is full of errors.
Even funnier than that, though, is the fact that we ended up as an item in the News of the Screws on Sunday. We went out to celebrate on bank holiday Monday, where it all got rather messy, and for some reason rather full of MORBID DETH again, as there were protracted and intense discussions of peoples' favourite serial killers (because apparently people actually choose favourites); what longpig tastes like ("it's very gamey, far more like venison than pork"); and then someone took us to a dingy overpriced bar in Soho and tried to persuade us to eat off a coffin. But we sent some postcards to Adam Ant and there was much love to be shared.
Stationery Club co-founder @iamjamesward with @biltawulf
Stationery Club co-founder @wowser with @biltawulf
(And in between both Stationery Club events there was Comica social club and the MCM Expo but they get blogposts to themselves.) More drunky pics from Stationery Club 2b (i) here.
Incidentally, if you want to make your own Post-It Notes peel-off-paper notepads, here's a crafty how-to on Knotty Yarn.
