Pull up and chair and let me tell you about my life.

Growing up in the country, I vowed never to work in a big, dirty city. That attitude might sound at odds to the nature of new media (then) and digital (now) but the aggressive, amorphous feel of London never appealed. I wanted to learn my trade and learn about the web at a more considered, well rounded pace.

I mean that quite genuinely. If you look at where the more ludicrous digital ideas come from (some might call them ‘ambitious’) most originate from agencies in the capital. I am not against ambitious digital ideas, but they need a solid grounding in reality and, most importantly, value for the end user. I do feel that, in the claustrophobic push and shove of London, where agencies directly compete to outdo each other, sanity and commonsense gets pushed out the door in favour of effect.

And when effect and digital collide, inevitably the results are a mess.

I have been extremely fortuitous in my career. In the nineties I worked for IBM in Winchester (where I learned more about the web and usability than anywhere else), and then for a small web agency, also in Winchester. The pace was conducive to well rounded and valuable digital plans.

At the start of 2002 I started enotions and made a point of basing it in the countryside - deep in the countryside. Our views from the office stretch across the fields to the church in the distance. Around the office house martins swoop and swerve, their chatter the only sound apart from the odd moo from a local cow.

No one comes to visit or disturb, except the farmer dropping off a brace of pheasant.

Roasted pheasant or Pheasant pie for dinner tonight?

The surroundings promote sanity and, I hope, this sanity enters our working practices and the solutions we create for our clients.