By Jove!

At the same that the Somnambulistic hordes were leaving a locust-like trail of consumption and carbon around exotically-named villages in Southern England, our largest planetary neighbour was arcing it's way majestically across the heavens. At the beginning of the week, from Flushing in Cornwall, it occasionally appeared as a bright, fuzzy star between ominous rain clouds (or it could have been between pints of Doom Bar). By the week's end, on a clear night over Curling-Tye-Green in Essex, with a pair of mini-binoculars, it could be made out as a solid object.

Jupiter wasn't the only thing coming into focus. In a similar vein, last week's road trip was a valuable exercise in developing the Project Dennis concept pitch. Having to explain the game plan to numerous complete strangers (well, people I haven't seen for a very long time), plus the occasional interested party, helped a great deal in starting to bring the spiel into a more concise resolution.

Admittedly, we still have a bit of wood to chop here. All the start-up help guides seem unanimous on one thing: if you can't explain the very essence of your idea in 10 seconds you may as well give up and go back to selling second-hand video recorders.

I would say that we are probably down to about 30 minutes. It seems to me that if I have someone's undivided attention for about half an hour, I have a convert. Anything less than that and I invariably have a confusion.

We have a final concept workshop planned for the end of next week, and, By Jove!, see if we don't have a full-colour, 63-mooned, red-storm-sporting gas giant of a pitch by the end of it.

(I'll still need more than 10 seconds though!)