John-Paul Flintoff

I'm a journalist, film maker and author. * NEW BOOK * How To Change The World is published around the world from May 2012. My previous book, Sew Your Own, was variously described (by other people) as wonderful, amazing, funny, warm, inspiring, moving and utterly brilliant. This is my blog. Home Bookshop Contact

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#creature made with #sanpelegrino bottle, #coathanger, #cardboard, old corduroy, #packingtape

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Thanks @craftivists for putting me up to this at Salon event yday. Had good chance to think quietly while finishing it today (Taken with Instagram)

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Woman teaching #knitting to man who lost use of one arm, at his request, @theschooloflife tonight (Taken with Instagram)

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You earn how much?!!!

What happens when people reveal their earnings?

“Discussing money is the last taboo,” says Karl Plunkett ruefully. “We are happy to discuss sex, or death, but not – shock, horror – how much we earn. It’s just not something we do.”

Plunkett knows how painful it can be, having taken part in an open – and televised – discussion of wages at the company where he works. In a remarkable experiment, the multimillionaire owner of Pimlico Plumbers, Charlie Mullins, asked his entire workforce to reveal exactly how much they are paid. One by one, they pinned their salaries on a notice board for workmates to see – provoking a tidal wave of shock, guilt and resentment.

“If this happened at my company,” said one viewer on Twitter, echoing what thousands of others may have been thinking, “there would be war.”

Read the full story here.

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what is growing in this doormat? (Taken with Instagram)

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Anyone know an iPhone app for sharing scent of my jasmine? (Taken with Instagram)

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At last my thornless bramble cuttings make roots. (About six weeks or more in jar) (Taken with instagram)

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Please join my guerilla marketing campaign!!!

Today, officially, my new book is published: hurrah! About How To Change The World We all want to live in a better world, but sometimes it feels that we lack the ability or influence to make a difference. John-Paul Flintoff offers a powerful reminder that through the generations, society has been transformed by the actions of individuals who understood that if they didn’t like something, they could change it. Combining fresh new insights from history, politics and modern culture, this book will give you a sense of what might just be possible, as well as the inspiration and the courage you need to go about improving and changing the world we live in. How To Change The World is part of a new series of guides to everyday living from The School of Life, and edited by Alain de Botton.

You can find out more about the book here. Buy it from Amazon, or your local bookstore. (Or get it from the library.) Read an extract from Chapter 1. The School of Life series is being launched with events around the UK and beyond. My request I would be hugely grateful if you could take a moment now to let your friends and the wider world know about the book - I'm really hoping to generate a big wave of interest in it today. So you could tweet it to your followers. Suggested tweet: Want to make the world a better place? Try @jpflintoff's new @theschooloflife book How To Change The World http://www.flintoff.org/how-to-change-the-world And also please post it on Facebook, blog about it and email the details to friends who have recently been complaining about the way things are - or who have ideas to make it better but haven't put them into practice! Thanks so much if you can help - or have done so already. I really hope you enjoy the book.

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Ten smiles an hour zone

Some time ago, I came across some fascinating academic research suggesting that people reported higher levels of happiness in an area where somebody had put up signs reading: “10 smiles an hour zone”.

I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, and decided to put up similar signs near where I live. Not wanting to make a dreadful mess, I put them on signs where I thought they more or less looked official. (Not that any official would ever put up something quite so wonky.)

I drew them on art-quality paper, and backed it with gelatine to give it an organic and compostable stickiness. Then I put them up.

What I didn’t get round to doing, alas, was any kind of scientific study as to the happiness levels of my neighbours. One of them, or possibly a traffic warden, appears to have had a go at removing the sticker in this picture.

PS. After I wrote this, I was contacted by @ThePlantLondon who kindly knocked up a much more official-looking sign. Thank you!

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Hurrah, just found this i/v on Woman's Hour, from when Sew Your Own was first published. (Audio a bit wobbly at first.)

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Well, what a creative and kind chap Mike Ivey is. Mike just rustled up this masterful image to help promote my forthcoming book. Hurrah for him!

(In case you didn't hear already, HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD is out next week.)

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Join my guerilla marketing campaign!!!

My new book HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD is out on May 10.

On that day, I'll be posting a message about the book and I would be *very* grateful if you could share it on Facebook, tweet it, mention it on blogs, and generally spread the word.

The book is based on insights from throughout history, and around the world. It's full of examples of so-called ordinary people transforming the world, one step at a time. But I should add that there's a lot less about my own exploits than in Sew Your Own. Hardly any, in fact. (Sighs of relief all round.)

Thank you very much for helping - if you can. If you can't, or would rather not, that's fine too!

I'll be in touch again on May 10!

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To mark the happy occasion of my becoming a blogger with Mumsnet, I've performed a poem for my wife (a mum). She'll be appalled!

But do feel free to share it. It's from the heart, after all.

Poetry fiends may be interested to note that it was going to be a sonnet, with 14 lines, but I added another one as I was going on (the one about Harriet Red). The rhyme scheme was never going to be conventional sonnet form (abba, bccb, cddc ee or whatever) but something of my own invention (more like abcdefghijklmno). (Recorded at my desk, but happy to do it elsewhere if you are looking for a performance poet.)

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Easter holiday latest: N has been drawing action pictures of Bananas.

(Bananas is her glove puppet, acquired as Xmas present after spotting him in foyer of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith after that excellent theatre’s pantomime.)

She drew them in my latest home-made notebook on some of the lovely Khadi paper (made in India using mostly cotton rags), which I bought last year.

Bananas was animated for the occasion of N’s observational-drawing exercise by my right hand (not pictured). He also disappeared at one point up my jumper (pictured, centre right, though N has captioned it as a T-shirt).

In the name of full disclosure I should note that the pictures were finished off, in water-colours, by me, while N wandered around Wagamama’s new Hampstead branch with Bananas, leaping about.

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I make all my own bread, and thanks to Annalisa Barbieri I make sourdough.

Hearing that I made a lot of bread she gave my wife, her colleague, a jar full of starter for me, about a year ago. My daughter quickly recognised the living yeasts as the closest thing we have to a pet animal, and named it Squidgy. Each week, and often more than once a week, Squidgy goes into making a new loaf, and a chunk goes back into Squidgy’s jar.

(If not fed in this way Squidgy might go off. That is why my brother in law looked so pained after I asked him to look after our pet during the two weeks of summer holidays. ‘I didn’t realise what I was taking on,’ he said.)

Usually I congratulate myself that the latest loaf is the best ever, though not always. Here is today’s - a classic. I used about half organic white flour, and the rest was a mix of wholewheat spelt and rye.

Thanks Annalisa!