LETTING OFF STEAM

I keep on hearing people talking about their ‘mental health’ as though it were a badly behaved pet puppy or, perhaps, a  bit like the daemons in Philip Pullman’s novels. To be sure we have probably all found the lockdown and the past year rather stressful but a bit of stiff upper lip and pulling ourselves together might not go amiss, as the Edwardians would have said. 

But there is another way. 

Swearing.

Emma Byrne has written a book called “Swearing is Good for You – The Amazing Science of Bad Language”. The book says not only that some form of swearing has existed since the earliest humans got irritated, but it states that swearing can reduce pain, help stroke victims learn how to speak again, and, even, encourage teamwork. 

The book cites historical case studies and claims to have conducted cutting-edge research. Emma writes about chimpanzees creating their own swearwords; about a man who lost half his brain in a mining accident experiencing a new-found compulsion to swear (well I’m not surprised at that). In short Dr Emma Byrne describes the fascinating science behind swearing and how it affects us physically and emotionally. More importantly she asserts that it’s beneficial to our mental health. 

What a load of old bollocks I thought.

But in my own experience swearing can indeed be a way of emphasising a fact or an intensity of feeling. An old friend who is a magically passionate presenter uses the f*** word liberally. It’s his own eccentric form of punctuation. You become immune to it after a while so when he stops using it your ears prick up and you double your concentration.

Another person I know seldom swears very seldom but when she does the effect is nuclear.

One of our grandsons when he was about 3 showed some precocious talent at invective when his mother was irritated by someone’s driving shouting “dirty nappy-man!” at the offender. 

But the vocabulary for swearing is generally rather limited and there’s a need to create some more exotic terms with which to sprinkle our vocabulary. I enjoyed a few Michael Spicer’s used. He called Donald Trump ‘a massive fart’ and a ‘puffin’ (not bad), Priti Patel a ‘brainless wasp’ and as a simple expletive ‘Jeremy H. F***ing Hunt’.

Here were a few new ones I quite liked:

- Gnashgab – someone who constantly complains

- Klazomaniac – someone who speaks very and irritatingly loudly

- Muck-Spout – what this blog is all about – someone who constantly swears

- Windf***er – archaic term of abuse but which describes someone vague and useless

But we can be more inventive and the impact can be explosive – calling someone ‘a useless smear of slime’ can be as disorientating as calling them a ‘useless turd’ (as opposed to a useful turd??)

In the Times recently the results of a three-month study into the frequency of use of swearing in different professions appeared.

The league table surprised me:

1. Banking – ‘f***’ - 960 times a week observed in their offices – extraordinary. 

2. Law – ‘bullshit’ – well that’s self-awareness at least

3. Hospitality (thanks to Gordon Ramsay I imagine) 

4. Sales – naturally

5. Media – ‘bollocks’ – which, of course, it is

What disappointed me deeply was my previous profession, “advertising,” came a miserable 9th. How times have changed. In my day we were the kings of abuse. We were so politically incorrect it makes me cringe to remember. The air around us was not blue it was technicolour with vivid, excoriating abuse.

So if you feel the need to swear just let rip. You’ll feel a lot better. It’s official.

TECHNOLOGY HASN'T CHANGED OUR LIVES

New technology hasn’t fundamentally changed golf, cricket or football. Although in football, VAR (video-assistant-referees) has been so contentious we may go back to old on-the-field referees’ judgement. 

But there are very few who’d agree with me on this luddite thinking. 

On Friday I was working in my office whilst my wife was taking exercise – I avoided it as I usually do. I waved affectionately at her as she walked round our large communal garden and opened the window to bellow good natured encouragement. And then it happened. I leant forward and my mobile phone spun out of my grasp, out of the window and landed with a loud thwunk on a roof below.

Getting to it was going to be complex and a crawling-over roofs job. At my age, un-exercised, it was going to be lunacy. No Spiderman me. So I started to think.

I wondered if this accident had been divine intervention. Freedom from those countless, irritating phone-calls. Release from e-mails and texts when I was out of the house and freedom from that behaviour trait of imitating those around you and studying your screen as though it holds the secrets of the universe. First one person does it then we all do – like yawning. 

I realised that I yearn for pen and ink. I yearn for the absence of intrusion. I yearn for never again seeing a text saying “Halifax is holding a payment of several thousand pounds – send your bank details so they can  pay it into your account.”  No, you defrauding Nigerian, Russian, Ukrainian or whoever. No. No. No. 

I yearn for a world devoid of Apps and social media. Not being anchored to your phone is being on holiday.

But then I thought about contacting people. All the phone numbers are on my phone. Not having my mobile was going to be like the onset of a kind of dementia. Basically, just out of it.

Take away my PC and I can still write but with a degree of greater difficulty especially as my seldom-used handwriting now resembles that of drunken doctor - unintelligible. But without my phone I’m inaudible, invisible and forgotten.

Perhaps it’s time we should reject the “paperless society”. Perhaps assuming everyone is online is rash, ageist and classist. I shudder for the prospects of poor children living in a household without a laptop whose ability to share online learning and homework is non-existent. 

We all need to learn how to use useful, basic technology and make sure it’s available to everyone as a utility not a luxury good and that we’re trained to use it well. The overly sophisticated stuff is a waste of time as is much social media. The good side of social media is closed community groups and business tools like LinkedIn but much of the rest is, as I see it, time consuming and navel gazing. 

And as for Siri or Alexa.

They’re rather silly toys for petulant teenagers. To be ignored.

The good stuff is that the days of deliveries being left on the doorstep are over and being able to track deliveries and have accurate delivery times is usual. 

So I’ve made three resolutions:

i)   To create an up-to-date paper address book in pencil (so I can rub out changes.) 

ii)  To become proficient at using the few digital tools that are helpful and time saving.

iii) To stop leaning out of windows with anything in my hand – good heavens – it could have been a glass of wine on Friday. Imagine that.

BEING CRAZY CAN HELP

Ricardo is a name I’m often called by friends and the name I use in Venice (Venetians find Richard Hall – ‘Risher Hore’ – an unpalatable  mouthful). 

Ricardo is a good name. I like it. So does Ricardo Semler – founder of Semco the Brazilian conglomerate – who was on TED Talks recently  and was once again a source of great inspiration. He’s 61 now and has been “running” the company since he was 21. He took over from his father when Semco was mainly a failing shipbuilding business. Ricardo who constantly rowed with his autocratic father prior to taking over was given the reins and his father retired to avoid having Ricardo storm out. His father’s move, as it transpires, was very shrewd.

Unlike his father Ricardo wanted to diversify and break the company into self- governing satellites. He also wanted to liberalise the management style. But first the executioner. In his first week he fired 60 % of the top management. This is what others have called the “permafrost” in an atrophied business. 

He then worked like crazy nearly killing himself. His moment of epiphany, his “why do we exist?” moment came as he lay on a hospital bed. This led him to create an organization culture which exhibits a unique form of participative management. There are no set timings of work, employees decide their productivity targets, they decide on who their boss will be, they decide on what they should be paid, holidays can be taken at will and so on. By any MBA standards utterly crazy. 

Today the company spans environmental consultancy, facilities management, real estate brokerage and inventory support. It’s products include rocket fuel, cooling towers and a world famous teak sealer. It’s very diverse. By any MBA standards utterly crazy.

Ricardo’s come-to-Jesus-moment was as he lay on that hospital bed 36 years ago but his feelings about taking a new look at life and work is intensifying. A small example was him saying: 

“Working through a weekend to get a task completed is one thing but the real sign of growing up is going to the cinema on Monday afternoon.”

The people you should want to hire and work with need all the classic characteristics – energy, enthusiasm and expertise – but they also need to be cool, thoughtful and balanced. But most of all they need to be a little crazy sometimes. If we believe creativity matters and makes a difference we shan’t find that in people who are bored and boring, people who relish crisis above taking a break to replenish the mind. 

Our biggest problem today is the pace at which everything happens, is reported and which, apparently, requires action to be taken. This leads to bad decisions being taken without enough data or thought. 

The most striking thing about Ricardo is his sheer joy in life and his relaxed  view of life. His management style and view of leadership as he himself concedes in his 1988 book “Maverick”  is out of the ordinary and somewhat eccentric. His 2003 book “The Seven Day Weekend” goes further. But his philosophy is intensely human and as such intensely appealing.

As I listened to him I recognised in his words a burning sense of a strategist. Whilst most people in business are focused on the next quarters earnings or today's crisis (and if there isn’t one looming creating one) he’s taking a long view of what will be a short career – most of us only have jobs for only 40 or so years.

So why do we exist? We exist to enjoy life, to help others enjoy it, to make the world a better place (often in just in a small way) and to celebrate the magic and majesty of existence.

Crazy stuff existence. Make the most of it.

"I'M OUT!"

Dragon’s Den and The Bidding Room are TV programmes where these words are heard.  People who displease their peers are “ghosted” or “cancelled”. Rejection is sadly part of our culture now.

Still, it was a surprise when a friend who’s always been engaged in events and current thinking sent an e-mail saying he’d had enough … so no more USA, land of lost souls and close to Civil War (again) – no more Guardian (the paper which just tells you what’s wrong with the world) - no more FT (the paper that always knows best) – no more Boris and “the schoolboys round him” – no more Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook – no more Nigel Farage (oh no, not him again surely?). In short, he’s “out”. Like Leslie Bricusse’s and Anthony Newley’s musical he’s declared “Stop the world – I want to get off.”

I sympathise even empathise but I won’t accept that things are so awful that they cannot be lived with any more. 

The biggest threat to the UK economy is this retirement malaise leading to a collective sense of unproductive despair. The continued furlough makes things worse because many people can afford (just) to carry on not working. After a year of being in semi-retirement getting the car out of the garage and expecting it to start first time (let alone start at all) may be rather harder than the government hopes for. 

My suspicion has always been (and this has intensified) that the opportunities now are enormous. Opportunities to restructure radically, to relaunch, to be enterprising and free from the shackles of a treadmill clinging on to withering businesses, to break away from terrible management practices (private equity, hang your heads in shame), look for growth potential  and, finally, put your foot on the optimism accelerator and floor it.

I’m in. Otherwise I might as well be dead.

But not yet. Not yet. 

We need to give our politicians a kicking – all of them – because their lack of resolution and constant looking over their shoulder at what the Mail, Express or Guardian is going to write the next day or what trends on social media leads to sloppy thinking and bad decisions or no decisions at all.

We need to start planning for a new future not a back-to-normal. It’s winter and gardeners throughout the world are pruning, removing old plants, replenishing the soil and planning for the future. They are thinking, researching and are full of hope. Let’s think like gardeners not like MBAs.

And we need to think of new strategies. The Financial Times asked the right question of what a post Brexit Britain might look like. Professor Ian Angell wrote in his prophetic book, ‘The New Barbarian Manifesto’, 20 years ago, about a new kind of Britain which broke free of the Union and became a Singapore solely within the M25, in GDP per capita, a world beating entity. The Financial Times considered this concept more recently.  Venice even after they lost their unique benefit of being the only gateway to Asia when the Portuguese discovered a sea-route there, continued with a population of under 200, 000 creating wealth and success for two centuries until they became addicts of hedonism and went potty. 

We need to keep our brightest and best on side playing their best game. At worst our politicians and governments last only a few years. We, who believe in ourselves and our potential last much longer than they do.

Be in. And if I hear anymore of this “out” nonsense I’ll get cross.

PLAYING DARTS IN THE DARK

I’ve been hearing a Beatles refrain in my head – slightly revised:-

Here comes the lockdown, woo ah woo ah
Here comes some gloom, and I say
It's all right
Little lockdown, it's been a long cold lonely autumn
Little lockdown, it feels like years since you’ve been here …

No surprise of course. A bit like being in denial about an unpleasant prospect which suddenly becomes a reality. “But what about Christmas?” people wail. The most important day of the year seems about to hit the dust. The child in us is sobbing quietly and muttering “it just isn’t fair.”

I remember when I was very young Christmas was special for me. When the Eagle Annual was my best present. When seeing my family happy and slightly boisterous and singing

“I’ll sing you one oh, green grow the rushes-oh, one is one and all alone and ever more shall be so”…

But it was only one day full of out-of-character exuberance.

We’ve had the Rule of Six. Now it’s going to be the Rule of One. Stay in bed, avoid human contact, do not smile because it increases the risk of infection, avoid tasty food and definitely avoid alcohol. The Rule of One; and ever more shall be so.

I spent last week in vigorous Skype and Zoom debate on the subject of leadership. The first week of November will put leadership, management and execution of plans into sharp focus. The Presidential election. The succession of troubles and discord within Europe and in disunited Britain the ideological contest between those espousing free choice and protection of the economy and the defenders of the NHS and the apostles of control.

Leadership depends on three things – the ability to inspire, a firm sense of purpose and a determination to win. Viscount Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who stood for appeasement (or in today’s terms, lockdown) allegedly said after Churchill won over a sceptical House of Commons with some splendid uplifting oratory, telling them to hang on in there and carry on fighting: “He has mobilised the English language and sent it to war.”

We don’t use and delight in words anymore. We do emojis and tweets. For someone who aspired to be a Churchill Johnson’s oratory has been lacklustre and shamelessly bombastic. No mind changing leadership there then.

Nor elsewhere in the cabinet. Nor on the opposition benches either. What a grim disappointing bunch they all are.  Neither leaders nor managers nor deliverers of results.

I teased a friend in Scotland about Scotland having more tiers than us in England and suggesting that we might have “tier envy”. His response was sharp “Just don’t get me started.” He’s frustrated that Nicola Sturgeon’s strategy (is that the right word? More aptly, perhaps, her stumble forwards) ignores the harsh, economic realities of life.

The late poet Derek Mahon’s words are fitting:

“There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.” 

This is war and whatever is done there’ll be dying. Best to hold things together, protect the vulnerable as best we can and lead us through and out of this mess. We, all of us in the West, seem as Matthew Parris put it, to be playing darts in the dark.

The most cheering story of the past week was the performance of a few focused specialists from the Special Boat Service defusing a potential crisis on board the oil tanker Nave Andromeda in the Solent and in a classic manoeuvre disabling seven hostile stowaways in nine minutes. How we needed that. How we need some action and some certainty. How we need heroes. How we need a bit of Diehard.

Leaders do stuff. Leaders inspire. And those who’re inspired execute plans. A reluctant, tardy and uninspiring lockdown may be needed but it be a two-edged sword. They always cause as many problems as they seek to solve.

Darts anyone?