A few words from your author ✍️
So here we are, Edition Number 8 of the Vagazette. And, perhaps more significantly, this might be the last edition that I write and edit entirely on my own.
Don’t panic. The Vagazette is not being sold to Elon Musk, taken over by AI or merged with the Irish Farmers Journal. At least not yet.
Figure 1- Maybe Tim's last VaGazette as sole editor
My hope is that when it returns in the spring for the pre-season edition, it will become a little more of a joint effort with 2 editors. More voices, more stories and more contributions from around the office and from the guides out on the road. Maybe it can become a little more inclusive again and represent the whole strange and wonderful Vagabond tribe.
But for this edition, you are stuck with me. So please bear with me while I indulge in a few of my own opinions, observations, memories and a healthy dose of what can only really be described as nonscience.
There is however a theme to all this nonsense: our Vagabond Core Values.
Professionalism. Excellence. Humility. Empathy. Fun. Resilience. Initiative. Passion.
The famous nine core values.
Yes, I know some of you have just counted them.
This is the Vagazette, not the Department of Accuracy. Move on.
How Did I End Up Here Anyway? 🧐
Like all respectable careers, mine began when I left (ran away from) school at 16 to pursue a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll. By the age of 17, I was working on a goat farm in the Appalachian Mountains in America.
Not quite what I had envisaged.
There was certainly plenty of rock. There may have been a roll. The goats were thankfully not involved in the rest of it.
Figure 2 - How my life could have been different, if I stayed loyal to the goats
But that goat farm did introduce me to mountains, outdoor living and eventually the world of teaching, instructing and guiding people in the outdoors. For roughly the next 25 years I stayed fairly true to that active lifestyle, although every now and again I wandered off down some quirky musical side street.
There was sound engineering college in London, making mandolins and guitars in Galway and various adventures around the music business. I even reached the dizzy heights of becoming a roadie for Michael Jackson.
In truth, it wasn't actually that different from the goat farm. Lots of strange noises, unpredictable behaviour and occasionally having to clean up after somebody else.
By 2014, however, things had changed. I had a wife, a one year old daughter and responsibilities. It was time, I thought, to finally get a sensible job.
And then along came Rob and Vagabond. Sensibility went straight back out the window.
Vagabond, The Early Years 🚐 ☘️
Joking aside, Vagabond actually became my first proper experience of what I considered a sensible job. There was a rota, a monthly pay cheque and, most importantly, a T-shirt and a fleece that gave me id. Suddenly I belonged to a tribe.
Figure 3 - Joining Vagabond was to become a life changing decision
There aren't too many of us left from those days. Russ was still out guiding on the road. Gillian was operating some extraordinary new piece of technology called a handheld calculator. And Aidan was there too, somehow demonstrating then, as he still does today, that it is entirely possible to combine carefree chaos with remarkably organised guiding.
Vagabond was a different place then. Not better, not worse, just different. Ireland was different too and tourism was only beginning its climb towards the industry it has now become across our little island. The company was smaller, the systems were simpler and there were probably considerably fewer passwords.
Today, of course, Vagabond is much more than a gang of guides heading around Ireland in Land Rovers. Behind every tour is a fairly extraordinary collection of people trying to make the whole thing work, brilliantly.
Operations keeps the wheels turning and regularly attempts to control things that are probably uncontrollable. The Department of Accuracy makes sure Tuesday has not somehow become Thursday. HR keeps us supported, legal and occasionally reminds us that certain thoughts are probably best kept out of the company WhatsApp groups. Tech builds the systems that are supposed to make our lives easier and then patiently explains to some of us how to log into them.
Sales gets the guests through the door. Marketing tells the world who we are. Our social media gurus somehow manage to make Ireland look permanently sunny and make the rest of us appear considerably cooler than we really are. Then there are the Heads, Managers, General Managers and Directors, who attend meetings so that the rest of us don't have to. Apparently important things happen in there.
What I have come to appreciate more and more is that while the guide is often the person standing in front of the guest, behind that guide is a long chain of people who sold the tour, answered the questions, checked the information, booked the hotels and activities, built the systems, paid the bills, marketed the experience and solved whatever unexpected disaster appeared that morning.
A successful Vagabond tour is very much a team effort.
The Birth of the Core Values 👶
It was actually at an end-of-year review back in 2017, in Kinsale, that Rob got the guides and wider team together and asked us to think about what qualities really mattered when working for Vagabond.
Figure 4 - Rob chose his team carefully, to who would design and develop the Core Values of Vagabond
What made a good Vagabond person? What did we believe in? What sort of attitudes and behaviours did we want the company to represent?
And from that gathering came the foundations of what we now call our Core Values.
Which is quite impressive when you consider that this wisdom was apparently extracted from a room containing the likes of a probably very hungover Header Henry, Strange Sean, Mania Mia and, of course, Dizzy Dee.
Somehow, from that gathering of great philosophical minds, something genuinely useful emerged.
The wording has changed a little over the years. New staff have arrived, new ideas have come in and Vagabond itself has grown considerably. But the values have remained central to what we try to be. They are now built into how we work, how we deal with our guests, how guides and the office work together and, very importantly for me these days, how we recruit new people.
Can You Recruit Someone's Values? 🫂
Before Vagabond officially wrote them down, I like to think I already had most of these values buried somewhere deep inside me. I believe my months working on the Michael Jackson tour gave me a particularly sturdy platform of personal values.
Very little weird shit went on back then.
Back in 2014, recruitment was slightly different. Rob appeared to possess a strange ability to work out whether somebody was suitable for Vagabond over a cup of coffee.
Figure 5 - How I impressed Rob at my interview
I remember sitting in Costa in Greystones for my interview, completely out of my depth with some fancy coffee in my hand, trying desperately to just be myself rather than becoming whatever I thought Rob wanted me to be.
I was also very conscious not to stare at Rob’s Crocs. In 2013 they were still to become acceptable and trendy. Did they ever, I hear you say!
Looking back, I think that was probably part of the test.
These days our recruitment process is considerably more structured. There is the CV, cover letter, questionnaire and interview, followed by the two-day assessment trip. But underneath all of that, I think we are still looking for much the same thing Rob was looking for across that cup of coffee.
Who are you when nobody gives you the script?
We can teach somebody a route. We can teach a system. We can teach them where the toilets are in Dingle. But values are a little harder to teach.
So, according to the highly respected Institute of Vagazette Nonscience, what do our values actually mean?
The Core Values, According to Me…and Russ! 😎
Figure 6 - The VagaGuide Interview Team
Professionalism is about doing the task properly, being dependable and caring about the standard of what you do. For a guide, it might mean being organised, prepared and remembering that although this may be your fortieth trip around Ireland, it could be the guest's one and only visit. In the office, it can be as simple as doing what you said you would do and being someone others can rely upon. For me, professionalism has sometimes involved looking completely calm in a hotel lobby while internally thinking, "I have absolutely no idea what is going on, who I am or why it is"
Excellence does not mean perfection. If we waited for perfection, no Vagabond tour would ever leave Dublin. It is about continually trying to make things that little bit better. A better guest experience, a better system, a better sales conversation, a better itinerary or a better way of doing something we have done the same way for years. In my own case, excellence can apparently involve spending three hours moving a box around a PowerPoint slide until nobody can remember what the presentation was actually about.
Humility is remembering that none of us knows everything. It is being able to say, "I got that wrong", "I don't know" or, in extreme circumstances, "You were right." It also means recognising that the person in the office may know something the guide doesn't, and the guide standing in a car park in Kerry with 13 guests may know something the office doesn't. Listening occasionally works surprisingly well.
Empathy is perhaps one of the most important values for me. It is simply trying to understand what the world looks like from someone else's position. The guest, the guide, Operations, Sales, HR, the person staring at the spreadsheet or the person staring through the windscreen. We don't always have to agree with one another, but trying to understand why someone feels the way they do can change an awful lot.
Fun is surely one of the reasons many of us ended up in Vagabond in the first place. It is laughter in the van, nonsense in the office, terrible jokes, sing-songs, occasional bad behaviour and the ability not to take ourselves too seriously. If Fun ever disappears from our core values, we may as well shut the gates and all go and work in insurance. Personally, I feel I have made a significant contribution to this particular value.
Resilience is needed because things occasionally go spectacularly wrong. Weather changes, roads close, guests lose things, bookings change, systems break and plans that looked excellent at 9am are in tatters by lunchtime. Resilience isn't pretending everything is fine. It is being able to take the hit, adjust and find a way through. Anyone who has watched me reverse a trailer while surrounded by 12 Vagabond guides offering advice will know that I have personally studied this subject in depth.
Initiative is the ability to look at something that has gone completely wrong and think, "Right, what can I do now?" Guides do it constantly on the road, but so does the office. Operations changes plans, Sales finds answers, Tech repairs things the rest of us have broken, and people across the company regularly solve problems before most of us even know they existed. Initiative is what happens when people feel trusted enough to make good decisions.
Passion is probably the easiest value to recognise because you can see it in people. The guide who lights up talking about Irish history. The Sales person who genuinely wants the guest on the right tour. The Operations person who refuses to accept that a problem cannot be solved. The Marketing team obsessing over the right image. The social media gurus trying to capture the perfect moment. The Tech person becoming strangely excited about an integration that nobody else understands. Passion is simply caring about the outcome, and I think there is plenty of that around Vagabond.
And What Has All This Got To Do With Me? 🤷♂️
When I look back over my years with Vagabond, I realise that these values have slowly leaked out of work and into the rest of my life. Or perhaps they were there already and Vagabond simply gave them names.
I try to be professional in the things I commit to and to do things well. I try, not always successfully, to remain humble. I increasingly believe empathy is one of the greatest qualities a human being can have. I think fun is hugely underrated. I know resilience is essential because life has a habit of occasionally kicking the legs out from underneath us. Initiative gives us the ability to actually do something rather than simply wait for life to happen. And passion? Without something that excites you, interests you or makes you want to get out of bed in the morning, life can become very grey indeed.
Figure 7 - Vagabond have shaped me into what I am...
Maybe that is why I still believe so strongly in these values. They aren't particularly revolutionary. You won't find them carved onto a stone tablet on the Croagh Patrick. They are just pretty decent building blocks for being a good colleague, a good guide and, actually, a reasonably decent human being.
What Have I Done For Vagabond, And What Has Vagabond Done For Me? 🤝
So as I bring my final solo edition of the Vagazette towards a close, I find myself wondering what I have done for Vagabond and, perhaps more importantly, what Vagabond has done for me.
There is undoubtedly some sort of symbiotic relationship going on. I thrive on the work Vagabond gives me and in return Vagabond gets a shitload of commitment.
Seems a reasonably fair deal.
Of course, I occasionally wonder about doing something completely different or returning to some version of my old life. If I were younger and fitter, perhaps I would be back guiding groups somewhere in the Himalayas. If I still had the right connections, maybe I would be fixing a guitar for Christ Moore. And if Michael Jackson was still alive, perhaps by now I would have risen through the ranks to become his Best Boy, collecting the prescriptions.
But I'm not. I'm here. And actually, I'm pretty happy about that.
Because underneath the planners, HubSpot tickets, emails, WhatsApp groups, spreadsheets, websites, sales targets, training days, guest feedback, management meetings and all the other machinery required to keep Vagabond moving, there remains something I genuinely believe in.
The values.
Not because they are written on a wall or appear in a PowerPoint presentation, but because when we are at our best, you can actually see them in the people around us.
You see them in the guide who goes that little bit further for a guest, in Operations calmly sorting out the problem, in Sales finding the right experience, in Accuracy catching the detail, in HR quietly supporting somebody behind the scenes, in Tech keeping the whole machine running, in Marketing and Social Media telling our story, and in the Heads, Managers, General Managers and Directors trying to steer the whole lot towards whatever comes next.
None of us creates a Vagabond tour on our own. Some of us are simply more visible at different points along the way.
We are where we are and we do what we do.
Change is always somewhere on the horizon. People arrive, people leave, companies grow, jobs change, Ireland changes and we change.
And although the world appears to contain patterns, perhaps those patterns are far too beautiful and complicated for us ever to fully understand.
Maybe all we can really do is decide how we want to behave while we travel through them.
And actually, our Vagabond Core Values aren't a bad place to start.
Thanks for reading my eight editions of nonsense.
Figure 8 - Tim to be put out to pasture
See you in the spring, when, with any luck, some of you will be helping me write the bloody thing...
STOP PRESS ✋🗞️
What to Expect in the New, Improved Vagazette ✨
Although this may be my final solo run, I am going to dare to look into the crystal ball and predict what we might have to look forward to in the new, improved future editions of the Vagazette.
As always, none of the following has been checked by the Department of Accuracy.
1. HR Recruitment Policy Update 🖊️
In a bold new move, the Vagabond HR Department is rumoured to be updating the recruitment process for new staff.
Alongside the usual questions around experience, qualifications and suitability for the role, candidates may now be asked whether they were breastfed as babies. HR has declined to explain exactly what this information will be used for, but apparently it will sit somewhere between "cultural fit" and "other relevant experience".
2. Winter Training Gets Serious ❄️
Following requests from guides for more practical winter training opportunities, Vagabond is believed to be exploring an educational trip to the Mercedes factory in Stuttgart.
The proposed training programme will focus specifically on how to reattach all the cheap plastic shite that keeps falling off the buses.
Successful participants will receive a Mercedes certificate, a roll of duct tape and their own personalised tube of superglue.
3. RSA Announces New Caffeine Regulations ☕️
The RSA is expected to introduce tough new caffeine regulations for professional bus drivers, reducing the permitted intake while driving to what officials are describing as "just a sniff".
Vagabond is therefore investigating alternative methods of caffeine delivery.
Early trials of caffeine suppositories are said to have been very successful.
Naked Dave, believed to be the first guide to test the new system, described the experience simply as:
"Very refreshing."
Operations have requested that no further details be shared.
4. Trump Invited to Newtownmountkennedy 🍊
In the spirit of international diplomacy, Vagabond has reportedly extended the hand of friendship to President Trump and invited him to spend a long weekend in Newtownmountkennedy.
If the invitation is accepted, the office team has promised to encourage the local population to get the feck out of town for the weekend.
They will then be replaced by Vagabond staff lining Main Street waving Stars and Stripes flags while chanting "USA! USA! USA!"
Marketing is already working on the campaign.
"Make Newtownmountkennedy Great Again" hats are apparently at prototype stage.
5. Open-Top Vagabond Buses for 2027 🚌
After the incredible spell of weather we have enjoyed this summer, Russ has shown exceptional initiative and reportedly ordered next year's fleet as open-top buses.
Unfortunately, a late discovery in Road Traffic Act P-1402 means all passengers travelling in an open-top commercial tour vehicle will be required to wear full leather motorcycle suits and full-face helmets.
Sales has been instructed to describe this as an "enhanced adventure experience that could be a bit shite in the wrong weather".
Love you all,
Peace out,
Timmy 😊
⚠️ Please note that this publication is an internal Vagabond staff document and should not be shared with anyone outside of the company. ⚠️
