A VISIT HERE

SOFT SOAP

As an ex Unilever marketing man, I'm pretty hard headed about emotional advertising. But just occasionally, there's an exception which really provokes a response. Glad the old Firm is still cutting it.

COLD CALLER

It's a lazy wind, they sometimes say. It goes right through you.
This isn't.
Since Easter, the time of easterly winds, we have a had a huge contrary blow. It started as a westerly and has gone southwesterly and southerly, as the days have gone on, trying out its different angles on us.
It isn't lazy.
It is hard working wind. Persistent. Diligent, even. It uses its best endeavours on its way. It leaves no stone unturned, no opportunity missed.It's the kind of wind that is on commission, blowing your door forcefully open, in a timeshare selling gale of patter. It's a sharp suited, spiv wind from the south. It's a villainous wind (a word invented by country folk to describe those quick talkers from the City). It's the sort of intense, NLP educated salesman I have never wanted to be. It does all the talking, and none of the listening, constantly, continuously. It wears you down, till resistance is eroded. It asks you questions only because it already knows the objection busting answers.Though not of itself a cold airflow, you can't trust the genuineness of its warmth. You know it's put on. Its force is chilling. It's a cold calling.

Last night, all night, it was doing its work, creating a howling in the rafters, a deep hum which was an experience against which to fall asleep. The Missus couldn't, troubled by its high pressure technique. A pitch inescapable to her, though, thankfully didn't trouble my slumber. Hand grenades wouldn't.  Mine is the sleep of the just, I tell people.

Around 0515, at dawn, it eased off its rant and chatter, though only temporarily, as though it had gone to fetch a few more back up copies of the timeshare brochures, which would be needed later.

Blackbird broadcast his resistance song - and, was it just me, or was the song different from usual? Down, up up, down rather than the normal fluting crescendos. As though this was his gloomy weather forecast.

"Morning neighbours, Blackbird FM. Depressing news, feathered friends. Not spring yet, so don't get excited. No. Just another weather warning. It's that southerly again, knockin' down your door. Another day of staying put and putting up with it. Only going out if you're heading north! Take off to south east, and turn left sharpish. Ensure you're clear to leeward, 'cos it's a blow! Oh, and goggles on. It's dusty out there"

This morning the wind's results were to be seen in the brown haze covering the Vale - topsoil blown from off the fields. A haboob, in rural England. Going the few miles north, where Foggathorpe clay gives way to lighter loam and even less resistant sand, towards Bielby and Hayton, drifts have formed against hedges and across lanes, giving a drive to Pocklington the frisson of excitement of going to the seaside, cued by these false dunes.

False promise. That's what it all is. The wind's direction promises a spring yet to come. It's intensity blows away that promise by overselling it, leaving you thinking:
."..... those promised benefits, that idyll, those rather too good to be true returns...... mmm. Maybe discretion is the better part of valour? Did he mention that the value of your investment can fall as well as rise? I didn't actually sign, did I?"

MEA CULPA

THEM: "You've pissed me off, and you've pissed him off. I think you should apologise."

ME: "Mmm. Can I ask you a question first?"

THEM: "Er....... ok."

ME:  "Do you feel that my behaviour was out of character, or normal?"

THEM: "Er... well, out of character, I'd say."

ME: "Then, knowing it to be an aberration, you can forgive it."

THEM: "And what if I'd said it was normal?"

ME:  "Then you'd be foolish to expect anything else."

AN EASTER

The etymology of Easter is, apparently, obscure.
Based on the last month or so's experience, let me hazard my own guess.
Easter. (n.) The time of easterly winds.
There's a lot behind that.
First, it has been the season of log fires. Needed, because, even with the heating going full blast in a leaky old house like ours, we've still had to thaw the marrow beside a blaze of our own ash logs. Outside has needed true valour for any sustained venture. And a bonfire, to keep warm. The winds have blown unstopped by any natural barrier from the Urals, or perhaps even further east, and unhindered by any nod of decency to the calendar, which long ago suggested they resume their westerly prevailing heading, rather then freezing us all to death with their current unbroken easterly trend. In desperation at one point, and much to the chagrin of Missus major and Missus minor, I lit the woodburner with the leaky chimney. I now have stage four lung cancer. Still, it warmed us through the dense blue cloud of woodsmoke. A family that coughs together, stays together. It's an ill wind.
Next, the calendar has taunted us as would-be gardeners. Despite all planting predictions, the vegetable garden lies still barren. Shirley, my oracle on matters horticultural, advises even now, "give it another week". Unable to resist, I've planted out first early spuds. Whether they will survive is questionable. But it's mid April for God's sake. That's global warming for you.
Animal behaviour has been retarded by approximately a month. Only in the last week have the hares started boxing. That was meant to happen in mad March remember? Only in this time have pigeons started pairing up, the cocks sidling up to the hens to proposition them, to be met in the main by a pecking rebuff. Only in the last few days have the horse chestnut buds turned sticky. Only very much of late have the hedgerows been singing with birds flirting and chattering in their pre homemaking phases.
I have made a couple of last desperate acts in the hope of seeing some sort of spring. The first is tree buying. You should, the old adage goes, only plant when there is an R in the month. That gives me only a couple more weeks to go for it. A year without a tree planted is a year wasted. Yesterday I purchased for the orchard another of my favourite greengages, and a red Williams pear. We have two old pear trees, but they are hard old culinary varieties. They crop well, but short of buying a press and making perry, I don't know what to do with them. You can only eat so many Pear Belle Helenes. A pear you can actually eat will be a very welcome addition to our five a day. I salivate at the thought of the many delicious uses the greengages will have. And by rights, since last year was so unspeakably poor, it should be a right old year for stone fruit, which has the habit of year on, year off.
I've also bought a fluted old birdbath as a centrepiece for the vegetable garden. "Revolting," was the Missus' verdict. She has a point. But it'll be useful filled with a soil / compost mix, for growing nasturtiums. I visualise them trailing attractively over the sides. They are a cheap trick to turn you, in the eyes of guests, from humble cook, to chef extraordinaire. Bung in a few of their flowers into a salad and Bob's your Uncle, and Michel Roux's your Aunty Who Can Cook.
I've realised that my gardening has a simple, though noble and single minded aim. If you can't eat it, it pretty much isn't worth growing in my book. And that does bring me to the consolations of the persistent, draught-finding winds which have chilled us. Such adverse conditions require, of course, an increase in calories. Say, a thousand or so a day? It perhaps explains my current addiction to walnuts and Brazil nuts, both of which probably have, in addition to their substantial calorie count, some vitamin or mineral or other just especially right for withstanding the current Siberian conditions.

SAW THIS, THOUGHT OF YOU

HEALING HANDS

Morning. I awoke with  a start. Something was wrong. No. Nothing was wrong. That was it. Nothing hurt. The sensation lasted a few moments. No longer. Then, at a low level, the pain which has been with me since November returned. With it came a string of memories, clarifying the action I needed to take.
It was about 2 o'clock in the morning and we were on a course NNW across the Celtic sea. The wind was high, a gale, but fair. and we ran on a starboard tack, reasonably well reefed down for a racing boat, on a broad reach. Perhaps it was that our course was far enough off the wind to allay fears, perhaps it was just a piece of incautious seamanship, but no preventer had been rigged. The helmsman was an old salt who'd been around boats most of his life. But something jolted his attention. Perhaps it was an especially large following wave, and as the stern came through the wind, the boom crashed terrifyingly across the boat. I was on the port side of the cockpit and with my head mercifully low when the gybe happened and I heard the scream straight away. The crew on the starboard side, a Scottish girl whom I'd christened Hiberni-Ann had her hand on  the track. The mainsheet itself grazed her face, but the real problem was her hand, now trapped beneath the mainsheet block. I reached forward and grabbed the mainsheet tackle to free her hand. As I did so, with mayhem on deck now, the startled helmsman managed to gybe the boat back again. Again. fortunately my head was low, but this time the mainsheet block snapped over on top of my thumb. The skipper and mate appeared, and took the injured lady below. I pulled out my thumb to realise that it was now the size of between a golf and a tennis ball. Thus it stayed for two or three more days, until we hit shore. Then I went off to stay with some friends, one of whom was a reiki practitioner.
"Shall I give your thumb some?" she asked.
"Why not?"
She held it in her hands with an unusual intensity of care. And so continued for perhaps two hours.
Reiki. Schmeeki. That would be my prejudice. But the swelling subsided, and the thumb never again hurt.
Mumbo jumbo?
What do I know?
But there's the evidence of the thumb.
And so it was I realised what I needed to do with my currently painful shoulder.
"Dear shoulder", I said. "I am so sorry. I realise now how hard I have been on you, blaming you rather than me for your pain when its me who has caused it falling on you like that - a clumsy oaf. I see now that all this time I've been saying its your fault when its mine. I am sorry. I now understand dear shoulder, what a remarkable bit of machinery you are, how beautiful in all your movements, how irreplaceable, how sublime a design. And I see now that I have been trying to shirk the blame and shove it off on you, when all you want to do is join in again the fantastic party going on in the rest of my body - your body, dear shoulder. Here. Have some care."
And I held my shoulder gently, with love. With, in fact, all of the love and high regard I can muster. With real compassion. And I admit to a tear or two realising how horribly I had treated my poor joint.
And my shoulder is better.

GURU

I am not big on kissing the feet of gurus.

But the thoughts and work of this man changed my life.

DECIDING

When facilitating, experience has taught me that it is around the decision making process that groups often get stuck. This isn't because they are decision making. On the contrary, it is because they are not doing that.
I therefore advocte keeping decision making as simple as possible, using an extremely simple TIME, COST/BENEFIT, FIT, RISK matrix.

Decision making is, if you think about it, relatively instant.
"Shall we spend $xM on this project?"
"Yes".
Takes no time at all.

"There are four options here, and option four has three sub options.Which shall we pursue?"
"One, and three."
Instant.

But the problem comes because, when they are supposed to be making decisions, groups aren't. They're doing other things, like questioning, opining, seeking and giving information, even generating ideas.

Now, you can make the argument that these are all valid things to do before making a decision. Correct. But they aren't making the decision itself.

This then raises questions about what you are there to do as a facilitator - how you add value and even who is your client.  I see adding value as to facilitate (the word coming from "make easy"), and since I know that it is the stuff around decision making, rather than decision making itself, which gets sticky and eats up time (paid for by somebody), I try to position the decision to be made in as simple terms as possible and focus the group down to actually making decisions, which takes hardly any time at all. In this I am trying to bring my experience to bear to save time and money, by manging the process - in this case, managing it away from deviating behaviours, and focusing it towards productive behaviour (ie. decision making).

In fact, the simplicity of my model was originally derived from facilitating hundreds of groups where, without providing it, but asking people ahead of the workshop, this was, unprompted, in fact the criteria on which they almost always based their decisions anyway.

I think there is one more thing to say about the sticky business of group decision making (or, as it turns out, behaviours AROUND rather than actually, decision making) and it is this. Critical, in my view, to good group decision making, is clarity of the options. This finds me as a facilitator doing several things:

Firstly, managing idea generation and recording it in such a way that ideas generated can easily be absorbed and understood by a group selecting from them.

Secondly, ensuring clear display of these (or otherwise generated options) for decision making purposes.

Thirdly, providing simple tools to establish the group's choice (decision) - for example simple voting mechanisms.

Fourthly, keeping the group doing what they should be doing - the simple, speedy act of deciding.

TO KNOW ME IS TO LOVE ME

I believe that it is a sacred moment, as yesterday, when someone takes you into their confidence and shows you their artistic work. It takes balls. It is a reaching out to you, and an acceptance of you in itself. It demands respect.
For me, it is a moment which shows a wonderful acceptance of me and my views, and an expectation that my responses will be honest to me and can be trusted to be without hurt to the artist. So I think my first duty is to be as ruthlessly honest as I can be in my responses. This requires concentration.
By ruthlessly honest, I do not mean giving the work a slating. I mean making the effort to understand it and to appreciate its qualities. I mean rising above personal taste to look at qualities as they stand, and as they stand in relation to the artist's intention.
I find it a similar process to that which I try and promote within teams, and between people. That is, to appreciate the qualities, their genesis and place within a unique creation. In an artistic setting, that's the art. In a team setting, it's the person. I look to promote appreciation, not in a schmolzy, untrue way, but wth a concentration which is born of a genuine desire to understand the other and their qualities. By that, inter personal problems in teams often fall away, replaced with an understanding which makes small irritations lovable, and greater differences tolerable.
It is a way of peace, of love even.
And it repays with a reciprocal inner peace.
As you realise that if you were that artist, you would have produced that art, with those exact qualities, so you also realise that, if you were that person, with their upbringing, awareness and experiences, so you too would walk, talk, behave exactly as they do. You experience a deep compassion towards that person which calms you. You realise that you and he, or she, are interchangeable, separated only by your different experiences.
Promoting such exchanges has become, through serendipitous evolution, my job. But anyone can practice it anywhere - crowded streets, shopping centres, parks and anywhere else where your fellow man congregates. All you need to do is fix each passer by in your eyes and thought, and know "if I had grown as you, I would do as you do."
You need say nothing. Perhaps, in the calm of that thought, radiating through your body, it will transmit to the passer by. I believe it does. And that person will pass on their way the better, the happier for it.
Try it out for yourself.
Let me know how it goes.

HEDGE FUND

It has been a battle, but the hedge is cut down to size. It was getting twenty feet or more tall, so it has required a good deal more than a hedge trimmer. Machete, loppers, high loppers, pruning saw and even a tungsten hardened saw have all been in evidence. It has hurt to do it. It was an unwise decision with an injured shoulder, but there we are. Not the first, and not, I am sure, the last.
The hedge is made up of three woods: elder, ash and blackthorn.
As a wood, elder is useless. It gets old and broke in a season. It snaps if you whisper at it. It has no value as a wood to use, no strength and it even stinks when you put it on a fire, banishing it to bonfires only. Its only value is its yield of elderflowers, from which we make a very palatable cordial, and its fruit, which is a buttery, very slightly acidic addition to a fruit crumble.
Ash, on the other hand, is spectacularly hard wood, and yet with a spring to it. It is the ultimate firewood, with optimal calories, and it burns even when wet. Its dense white grain (it is so dense it almost has no visible grain) makes it enormously difficult to cut. It is very strong. When you saw through it, it will remain intact, even when all but a few millimetres of the bough are cut.
Blackthorn is satanic. Hiding behind its innocent-looking and beauteous blossom is the most utterly evil of plants. Go anywhere near the territory of blackthorn, and it will punish you again and again. Try and curtail its growth and it will defend its territory with lethal force. To attack a blackthorn, you need steel gloves, protective goggles, and a suit of armour. Wrong. You need a tank. Even in a Challenger, its evil thorns will probably come through one of the air vents and spike you in the eyes or the liver. Although it burns modestly, and thus can be used as kindling, its terrible thorns need as careful a handling as if you were trying to put a lion on your fire. Every single grasp has to be thought out with a battle plan. Even then, the tree does unexpected things, like when you fell it and it contrives to crash down on you, impaling your brain with its massive spikes. Conqueirng it has been like conquering a medieval castle. We have taken terrible losses. But we have prevailed.

WOODY

 

 

Jed was acting in York last night (Miss Saigon, Joseph Rowntree Theatre - highly recommended) and stayed over last night, meaning we had the opportunity to go the Woody (The Woodside Cafe, just off the motorway at Goole) this morning.

This local institution is determinedly basic in its approach to catering. You can have one of four breakfasts, simply called, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4. No.1 has sausage, bacon, egg, tomatoes, potatoes and fried bread. No. 2 has all above without sausage. No. 3, the same only no bacon but sausage. No. 4 is for maverick's - spam as the protein of choice. Tea coffee and bread and butter are all provided in any of the choices.

When Jed ordered "a No. 3; no tomatoes," the lady behind the counter shouted to the cook, "one No 3 with beans."

Jed corrected her, "no beans either, thanks." She looked at him as though he had come from Mars. You've got to have your veg. Still, she obliged.

The Woody has no carpet. It has no napkins. It has no extras. It has no tablecloths. It has pretty much no anything, except it does have a fine pinball machine, the only one for miles around.

It fetishizes the basics. But it does get them very right.

Two groaning breakfasts later, I emerged £7.40 lighter.

My kinda place.