The world is my lobster! I have complete control! I’ll let my fingers do the talking, creative juices flow…….and yet my mind is blank! What sort of image will this be portraying to any friends, clients or just general readers…..Ben Collison, director of Pure Design International, and he’s gone blank!!!

A good friend of mine, and an exceptional web designer recommended I ‘do a blog’!!! I’ve always put the word ‘blog’ in the same category as ‘chav’ and ‘bling’ and….urm…..there you have it, my mind has gone blank once again!!!

I dislike the word ‘blog’!

But I’m taking the advice and at 21h03 on this Monday night here I go.

My name is Ben. I’m 30 years old. I live in the south of France with my wife Alice. I run an advertising agency here – Pure Design International – and work from home. Life is pretty good to be honest! I am 15 minutes from the beach and 45 minutes from the ski slopes. Sometimes I just sit here in my shorts and work, other times I am meeting clients in Cannes over a ‘working lunch’. Like I say, life is pretty good and a million miles away from my memories of England……

…..I worked in a gray office or ‘studio’ as they liked to call it. The carpets had flees, there were bars on the windows, I worked silly hours and had to share an office with a guy who I felt could and one day would do me some harm with the scalpel he carried around. My wife had just finished her degree in french and spanish and one wet, wednesday morning I’d had enough….

‘MOVE to France, as in live?’ was Alice’s response…..it took some persuasion, and promises of ‘yeh, just for 6 months’…..we packed our car full of pots, pans, duvets and an old Apple Mac, ready for me to take the French design field by storm and set off without a job, accommodation, £1000 in our pockets and my dad shouting after us ‘see you in 6 weeks, silly kids!!!’

4 years on and the business is flying. Website design, graphic design, corporate identity, advertsing….the enquiries are coming through daily, its hard to keep on top of things and its important I keep focused on whats important – my wife, my 9 week old unborn baby, my family back in the UK, and my chili farm….

Thats me really, whether this is what ‘blogs’ are all about I don’t know, but its been kind of fun!

Thanks to Andy for his blog inspiration http://www.creativecaravan.co.uk/