WINTER IS COMING

Officially winter starts on December 21st. Yet first thing on Friday it was really chilly with a frost. I recalled a poem First Frost by Edwin Curran an American poet born at the end of the 19th century:

The flowers grow in the garden pied
Velvet, imperial, laughing-eyed,
While on them all hovers a breath,
The whistling frost of silver death.

I’d been feeling pretty mouldy for several weeks so I empathised with phrases like “silver death” but more to the point the blue sky, the bright sun and that familiar ‘Brrr!’… feeling as I wound my scarf more tightly round my neck, made me feel so much more alive than I’d recently felt. I love seasons. Autumn, like claret, is my thing but I also recall the thrill of bleak midwinters as imagined by Christina Rossetti.

I was up early as we were taking our 7-year-old granddaughter to school. The children all “laughing eyed” were waiting patiently at the gate looking eager, happy and expectant. The tired dismay I’d been feeling earlier, based on a mess of dismal news about institutional racism, sleaze and sheer stupidity, together with unexpected Republican victories in America, ebbed away. These children were the future, and it was lovely to see. No prejudice, no-isms  just a joy in life and the present. There was also a sense of humour that was rich in wicked fun:- 

“So what did you do in school yesterday?”

“Oh, fighting and cutting up butterflies.”

Fall is yet to happen. The leaves are still withering but green on the trees. Winter is waiting. As are our fuel bills. Ours I’m told will be over £5,000. Eyewatering but it’s my wine cellar that will take the hit to accommodate that.

I’ve decided to stop grumbling about the racism, sleaze and sheer stupidity journalists are slavering over.

 

Instead I’m thinking about reading a good book – currently Sarah Dunant’s “Blood and Beauty” about the Borgias, sipping a chilled Pinot Grigio – tiny ones to savour - and listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.  His music has such a sense of fluent certainty about it.  He makes it sound easy.

The story of our times is not that complex; it’s happened before; it’s a perennial story. Old v New; Past v Present; Continuity v Change. As people get older they’ll often lament “why do they keep changing things?” The answer is because old naturally has to renew; because humanity is creative and keeps on trying to improve things and the sheer economic logic of change which creates work, money and jobs.

The biggest difficulty in life is people. Understanding them, hearing them and speaking to them. Persuading billions of people to be poorer more uncomfortable and colder is difficult. We are wealthier, healthier world than we were a century ago because we’ve worked harder, more creatively but also created more pollution.

But things are changing. In India a 15 year old has invented a solar powered ironing cart to replace thousands of previously coal powered ironing carts. Enterprise and determination win again.

In the Dominican Republic a start-up business is working successfully on cultivating coral on land, making it more resilient to changes in temperature and acidity and then transplanting it to the ocean. Great story. 

Finally read Jeremy Paxman’s Black Gold.  It tells the story of coal and how it transformed us in the Industrial Revolution and then propelled us globally to where we are today. But we have changed. Coal is of yesterday as the horse is a mode of transport. And we can change further because, remember… winter is coming.

 

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR

My favourite painter is Tintoretto. Others may have finer brushwork. Others may be more inventive, perhaps, but none can match his speed of execution and his ability to take a Bible story and give it life, earthy reality and power. So what did he really make of Christmas and the events leading up to and succeeding it? First the Annunciation, where it all started, with the angel Gabriel, for all the world like a hairy biker astride a Harley Davidson surrounded by uncontrollable cherubs. He’s crashing through and into the wreck of a squat where Mary sits and giving her the shocking news straight: that the divine bun is in the virgin oven.

Second a detail of the Adoration of the Shepherds. In this, the shepherds reaching upwards towards mother and baby and the placid solidity of the animals emitting normal smelly farmyard smells in what was clearly as an abnormal event  – the ability of Tintoretto the storyteller shines out. Unlike so many artists he’s in it for the news angle, for the headline story and it’s this and the immediacy of breaking news that strikes a chord. Tintoretto is king of the hashtag way ahead of his time. Here he is trending Christmas.

And finally in yet another version of the last supper (Tintoretto painted six of them that we know about) where his take on the story varied from “Board Meeting” to “Booze-Up” to, in this one, “Brawl” with Christ as referee  - ”back to your corners boys and come out fighting”.

In 2014 may you all share just a little of that verve for storytelling and seeing new ways of telling an old, old story so as to grab your audience and have them asking for more.

Become that presenter with the appetite to do what ad man Ed McCabe once described as the truth about innovation:

“There’s nothing new under the sun but there’s always a better way.”

Enjoy a happy Christmas, a wonderful New Year and a better way forward.

DO YOU FEEL THE WAY YOU SHOULD ABOUT THINGS?

There were three events this week leading to the opposite sensation to the one I’d expected.

Firstly the weather.
Phew what a scorcher and all that. I heard a series of misgivings related to global warming and the impending drought but the vast majority were mildly in favour of it until schadenfreude kicked in and mildly in favour became euphoric as we realised it was raining in Alicante, 10 degrees colder in Athens and distinctly chilly in Istanbul. They say it isn’t enough to win. The other guys have to lose. And they were, losers that is, as they grimly set off to Gatwick.

Secondly the weather (again).
As we basked in the summery sun and the birds excitedly copulated and the trees burst proudly into plume all I heard was “well that’s it…our bloody summer…won’t last…never bloody does.” What is wrong with these perverse pessimists? Enjoy it while it lasts and my firm conviction is this is just the hors d’oeuvre before a scintillating summer which, regardless of weather, I intend it to be. And anyway I expect a lot of sun accompanied by “bloody typical…peeling skin…this weather of ours I ask you.”

And thirdly self-esteem and motivation. Both of mine took a knock when we went to buy sanitary ware – curious descriptor – and were offered a 25% discount only running till “tomorrow”. Well, probably not only till then but as the deal seemed OK we went back the next day but they wouldn’t let us buy saying a new deal was kicking in and we now stood to save…wait for it (lots of tapping on the computer) an extra £150…”isn’t that great?” No. It’s bizarre. I felt an idiot being happy with price one and then being offered, without asking, price two. I hadn’t even had the pleasure of negotiating.

And the story of Handlesbanken the Swedish Bank which does not pay its senior people bonuses because, they say, long term confidence does not sit alongside short term rewards and that people’s self-esteem and motivation should come from a rewarding job not large sums of money. "Blimey! That won’t work" they said in Canary Wharf.  Last year Handelsbanken grew by 8%, made an operating profit of £1.5 billion and has quietly built 100 UK branches.

Bet they only came here for this bloody weather of ours.