Hi, I’m John Bowen. This is the blog in which much of what I write will be ideas, thoughts on life plus some silly stuff, just for fun and so on, although there may be a more serious note here and there and sometimes I will get political here. You can find my latest posts through the menu on the right.

My weekly column on business and leadership issues is over at ThatConsultantBloke (see link on this page) and that’s where you’ll find my efforts every Monday morning in Monday Musings. I hope that you find the posts on both blogs interesting, amusing or outrageous. Please do comment if you have something to say, and send links to your friends, tweet about them or whatever. Even if you don’t agree, I’d rather that you say so than just ignore the issue.

This blog was once called John’s Jottings, but it occurred to me that because of my size I am almost always put in the back row in group photos and so I changed the title of the blog to reflect that. It also perhaps reflects the way that I feel about so many issues where the extremists, both left and right, rant on about their preferred dogma and leave the silent majority cold. Here I might be a minority; I have no idea, but whilst I can accept that it is sometimes necessary to take extreme action, I believe that taking an extremest stance per se is a waste and just serves to push an opposite extreme.

Aside from several blogs I have contributed articles to a number of specialist magazines, have written several books and guides and am co-author of the 3rd edition of The Principles of Warehouse Design publish by the CILT in March 2010. My books can be bought here.

Occasionally in these blogs I make reference to the Berkshire Belle, the Wonder of Wokingham or the Hottie from Hastings. These are all the same lady, the love of my life, my companion since 1989 and my wife since 1991. She prefers to remain anonymous in my varied writings hence the selection of pseudonyms. She was born in Wokingham, a town in Berkshire, and spent her later schooldays in Hastings just to clarify. I claim no credit for using such terms for my partner; I stole the idea from Dan Ruth, an American columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner. I do not necessarily share his politics, but do enjoy his use of words.