ANOTHER CHRSTMAS CAROL

Christmas is remorselessly creeping up on us like an expensively dressed mugger. There’s plenty of conspicuous consumption going on. The amount of sugar in the stollen, panettone and mince pies that I’ve casually scoffed over the past week would have made the government spokespeople on obesity writhe in horror.  (Have you noticed the way people say “All good….anyway it’s Christmas” as they dive into a Yule-Hyper-Calorie-Log.) And I haven’t been too clever on the alcohol front either. A weekly unit or whatever abstemiousness (given half a chance) they’d mandate is beyond my weakening will.

But it’s the music at Christmas that makes my skin tingle. So of full of joy and great lyrics.  I want to shout aloud:

“Let the organ thunder
While the choir with peals of glee
Doth rend the air asunder”
(Unto Us a Boy is born – Mediaeval possibly 12th Century)

Isn’t a peal of glee just wonderful?  Not enough glee around, not nearly enough. I’m told I have a loud voice so I’m rather more familiar with rending the air asunder.
Christmas is, if nothing else, cheerful and a relaxing time when we should heed these words

“Let nothing you dismay”
( God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – 16th century)

After the past few weeks of the dismaying Brexit debate that’s a tough call. But maybe the spirit contained in it can be taken to heart. They can sing it in the Commons in 2019. When they aren’t snoozing of course.

In the aftermath of Christmas we can address the curse of today. Bigger even than Brexit. Yes it’s insomnia. 36% of the population have it and another third don’t sleep too well or nearly long enough. Every time I hear “O Little Town of Bethlehem” these four words resonate:-

“a deep and dreamless sleep” 
(Philip Brooks 1868)

The idea of hibernating after Christmas, healing my battered brain by cuddling my wife (and Orpheus) and hiding from the bleak midwinter that they say is coming soon makes me feel wonderful.

After the parties, the feasting, the drinking of Armagnac, Green Chartreuse and Tequila (only at Christmas does anyone drink stuff like that) we have opportunity to replenish our  souls and reboot our minds. Rest is a good thing and we don’t do enough. The real curse of today’s world is unproductive rushing around and nagging anxiety about almost everything. Take the advice of that wonderful, too seldom performed carol, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree:

“I’m weary with my former toil
Here will I sit and rest awhile”
(Richard Hutchins? – 1761)

The resting starts on Wednesday; before that we can afford to let our hair down, tell silly jokes, pull crackers, drink mulled wine and try to be as nice a person as we always should be. Because if it doesn’t work its magic what can? A very happy Christmas.

“Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither….”
(Good King Wenceslas – John Mason Neale 1853 based on 10th century Bohemian story)

IS WARREN BUFFETT A FITNESS ADDICT?

No he isn’t.

But the other morning as I emerged from the shower I saw this blancmange of a person in the mirror. It was me. I reflected I needed to do something about my weight. Christmas indulgence had been going on far too long for Mr Blobby.

I started to get dressed pulling on a pair of freshly laundered black jeans I hadn’t worn for a while. They seem a bit tight I thought grimly; no it was worse - they were as tight as a tourniquet. Unbelievably they were several inches too small to fit round my waist. I had ballooned overnight.

Then I discovered, as I miserably considered my obesity, that I’d been trying to put on my sylph-like wife’s jeans - she’s size eight. I was a bit fat yes, but not that fat.

In the Times the same day - gloomy Tuesday - I read a piece entitled “How to get fit enough to be the CEO.” It was about a couple - Tim Bean and Anne Laing - whose mission in life is to put executives on the kind of gruelling regimens that are required to survive in today’s rat race. Here’s their mantra:
“The business world is relentlessly tougher, faster and more stressful….the stakes are high and the cost of failure inconceivable. You have to be on your game physically for your business brain to operate at peak performance.”

How depressing to see the number of CEOs doing marathons has doubled which is a “personal branding tactic” says a Professor from Cass Business School ….oh my, pass me a glass of Cote du Rhone and a doughnut.

So are these alpha-fit, Olympian cyborgs going to run our world? Harriet Green - remember her at Thomas Cook? She’s now at IBM still getting up at 4am every day and pumping iron. She is part of a clique who believe your muscles must match your mind.

I don’t buy it.

Roy Jenkins one of the cleverest and most successful senior politicians of recent times didn’t run except when he heard the cork being extracted from a bottle of claret.  Nor was Churchill a great advertisement for working out. Some of the most stupid people I know are the fittest. Intellectual stamina and physical stamina are not necessarily linked.

Whilst I’m not advocating the benefits of what existed in advertising years ago - “The Fat Boys’ Breakfast Club” - or the brilliant Peter Mead, co-founder of the agency Abbott Mead Vickers who would sit down at lunch at the Connaught and order “20 Marlborough please”, this unhealthy obsession with pecs and running times runs counter to the need to think and converse over a glass of wine.

When you hire superman or superwoman don’t expect their athleticism to translate into business results. Some of the most lamentable stories about company super-leaders have been like this one:

“I took my top team up Kilimanjaro - do you know some just couldn’t make it.”