One sunny afternoonm, while we were out in the Valle, Rob wandered out on to the patio, looked over at me hunched over my laptop and said, quite matter of factly: “I never realised before – you actually work quite hard.”

I think he meant it as a compliment, but he does highlight a real problem: that people basically think I fuck around all day. This despite the fact that – as this picture from Paul Walsh clearly shows – I spent half my day yesterday in an office…

I draw your attention to the classic accoutrements of the professional: Blackberry, takeout coffee, computer monitor, desk. You’ll notice also that my white headphones aren’t plugged into my iPod – rather they’re plugged in to my laptop – I’m making notes on a video interview. For work. 

Perhaps it’s because I don’t tend to talk about work here – preferring instead to blog about hijacking MySpace buses and to post videos of me wearing a monkey on my head. Yeah. That’s probably it. 

And so in the interests of redressing the life-work balance on here, I’ve decided to write an entire post about what I’m working on now. My review of last night’s Open Soho and after-party fashion show / gig thing will have to wait. 

Annoyingly, the biggest thing I’m working on right now has to remain secret for at least another week or so. Not entirely my choice, but it’s only sensible. So you’ll just have to make something up. But make sure it’s awesome because this thing is.

Luckily, though, there are lots of other things going that I can mention…

Potentially most exciting of all, apart from the biggest secret thing, is the fact that I’m going to be writing a regular column for the Guardian again. I’ll try not to get them sued this time. It’ll be out every Thursday and, as a tribute to Giles Coren, I’m aiming to end each one with a little jingle to take the reader into the day-before-the-weekend.

What else? Oh yes – bizarrely, someone has hired me. Even more bizarrely they’ve done so after reading my book about why no one should ever employ me to do anything. The company is Mission Media – a PR agency based outta Covent Garden and I’m spending a few hours a week helping them shape their digital / social media strategy.

The most bizarre thing of all is that I don’t do consultacy – certainly not for PR companies. Nicola Stevenson who runs the agency tricked me into having lunch with her a few weeks ago and waited until I was well into my main course before springing the question on me. My first instinct was to run a mile, but Nicola is very, very impressive. She’s read almost everything there is to know about social media and seemed to know exactly why bloggers and social media types in general hate PR agencies. There are almost too many to list, but Sarah 2.0 does a pretty good job here.

Nicola’s dilemma was how to change that relationship – the confusion PRs have about how to engage with ‘citizen journalists’ (yuck) as well as the role of things like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and the rest; and most bloggers’ hatred of PR cunts. The answer to the latter is not to be cunts, of course, and when I (still slightly reluctantly) met the Mission folks, they did a pretty decent job of convincing me that they weren’t. The solution to everything else is what I’m going to be working with them on in the coming months.

Actually, PR people do get a bad rap – all things considered. When I was at The Friday Project, we employed Midas to pimp our books and Margot, Charlie and the team were all kinds of awesome. Which is not to say that I don’t have quite a bit of twitchyness about the whole thing – it’s a fine line between offering advice and going native, so as part of the deal, I made it clear that I’d be blogging every aspect of the process – good and bad.

I also made clear that, when I’m not on Mission’s dime, I won’t be shilling for their clients, or avoiding writing bad things about them. Which is lucky, because I’ve just got my Visa bill and I hate those bastards. I can live quite happily with Krug and Nokia though.  

It’s an interesting project as I’ve been bitching for years about how PRs don’t get the web. It’s nice to have the opportunity to actually help fix that. One of the most satisfying things about the old Guardian column was when the CEO of some company or other (Lycos springs to mind) called me up and said they were adjusting their strategy on the back of something I’d written. So, yeah, watch this space.

From ongoing project to one-off events – next week sees two interesting live things. On Tuesday and Wednesday, myself, James Aylett and Sarah Bee are doing a Big Excting Election Thing, in association with The Register. It’s in ’stealth mode’ until the day itself, but you can sign up to be the first to know at http://www.24hoursinamerica.com . There’s a fair amount of preparation going on behind the scenes and I confidently predict it’s going to be 103% awesome (margin of error +/- 3%). 

Then on Friday, Sarah 2.0 is in town and Robert and I are interviewing her on stage (tickets may be sold out by the time you read this). One of the most impressive things about Sarah is the fact that she has become probably the most knowledgable journalist covering the notoriously male Silicon Valley, despite being very un-male. Getting people to see past your gender and take you seriously as a reporter isn’t easy in the tech industry, and so where better to host an interview with Sarah than in a former strip club. Epic venue win, Rob and Walshy. 

Speaking of epic wins – I have CNN on in the background in my hotel room and Sarah Palin has dressed Trig, her baby with Downs Syndrome, as Dumbo. Seriously. Dumbo. I mean – that’s just not right, is it?

 Happy Halloween.