LET'S ALL CHEER UP

I was thinking that we’ve all become a bit querulous. I blame the referendum. Rage is in the air. Chris Patten and I, as well as being Europhile, are at one on this. Here’s what he said:

"I think referendums are awful... Julian Critchley used to say that—not very surprisingly—they were the favourite form of plebiscitary democracy of Mussolini and Hitler.”

I trudged (uncharacteristically for me) to the station on Friday - have you noticed by the way trudging and lumbering have become the default mode for walking in 2016 - whatever happened to sauntering? I got on the grubby train. I read the gloomy paper. I thought I’d have a grumpy snooze. And then (oh no not a busker!) an African with a guitar walked into the carriage and started singing an African song (think African Cat Stevens) and it was fabulous. He did another. We all applauded and everyone, yes everyone in the carriage gave him some money.

The sun had come out.

And it came out again when 71 year old Phyllida Barlow was appointed to represent Britain at the 2017 Venice Biennale. I loved her enthusiastic response to the news:

"I am astonished, thrilled and hugely excited …I cannot imagine a more invigorating and wonderful challenge… a unique and stimulating creative opportunity beyond my wildest dreams."

Adele singing “Hello” and scooping the Brits was another recent OK moment especially as she has a house in Brighton. Smart girl that Adele.

Am I just a cockeyed optimist? Am I mindlessly cheerful and unfair about the tight-lipped discontent I see?
I’ve reading Raymond Tallis’ “Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur” which as you might guess from its title is slightly heavy going. “Flaneur” means a man who saunters around looking at society. It originated as a term in 19th century Paris and defined the man of leisure who observed and thought about the city and how it and its people related to each other. “Flaneur” and “Dilettante” are lunch companions. At an alumni dinner I was once asked what I did. I was surrounded by eminent judges, senior civil servants, investment bankers, bishops and CEOs. I told them I was a “dilettante” and to a person they replied “wow! I should love to be a dilettante”. Yes. It is great.

As a blogger I am certainly a flaneur. And I do saunter; I do not lumber or trudge. I also passionately believe in the power of conversation and of “entente”. The more we talk and the more we listen the less likely we are to become bellicose and prickly.  Vladimir, can you hear me?

Here’s part of a poem by William Blake that Penny Hunt, a friend of mine, recalled -  “A Poison Tree”
“I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow”.
   
Tweet this to those Brexit chaps. It’s really why the EU works.

WHAT I HAVE IN COMMON WITH GEORGE CLOONEY

George is in the new film “The Monuments Men”. It’s about a team of curators, museum directors and art historians who are sent into Germany near the end of the Second World War to save Nazi plundered art from destruction as the Germans realise their game is finally up. As Clooney puts it in the film:  "We’re fighting for our culture and our way of life. If you destroy your enemy’s achievements, it’s as if they never existed. That’s what Hitler wants."

Clooney, a recent convert to the arts, because of the film I guess, has become a lover of Greece and wants us to return the Elgin Marbles to the Pantheon (sic) – it’s the Parthenon, George. He has a point. We should do anything we can to help Greece.

I was there last week helping at a multinational conference. It was at the Hilton in Athens, acres of marble, thirteen floors of luxury, two terrific restaurants and a fantastic conference. As George might have said “what’s not to like?”

It gets better.

Outside it was hot and sunny with those deep, blue Aegean skies. The Greeks it appears didn’t have a word for “blue” but they liked the colour a lot hence Homer’s description of “wine dark seas.” I have a new expression “deep-eyed skies”. Every time I see one of those Greek skies I think it’s like looking into a beautiful girl’s blue eyes. George and I have so much in common.

As I stood on the terrace in one of those conference lulls wondering why I hadn’t packed the factor 30 I realise how I’d missed real sunshine over the recent bleak months and how my mood was lifting. There’s something indescribably sublime about this country. I had a Greek salad in which the tomatoes tasted of sunshine, a fish meal in which the parrot fish tasted of fresh morning waves whilst the waiters argued that the olive oil was not just good but super-premium. And their story about the red wine lasted a solemn five minutes and was about the Xinomavro grapes in it. The word means “acid black” and the grapes, rich in tannin, age beautifully. It’s so smooth they intoned. It was …. and so strong too.

And the economy? Petros Christodoulou of the National Bank of Greece is sounding upbeat as were the Troika on a recent visit. Being a young Greek and out of work – which you probably are – is pretty awful but GDP growth of just under 3% is forecast for 2015, deficit reduction is ahead of plan and  tax receipts are up.

As the sun shone and the strains of last year’s Greek Eurovision Song entry by Kosa Mostra “Alcohol is Free” – it came 6th by the way – filtered into the Athenian air I felt the yearning to spend more time in this amazing country. The service in the hotel and restaurants and elsewhere were of a new, more focused and more attentive style than I recall. So…..welcome back my Greek friends.

“Καλώς ήρθατε και πάλι τους Έλληνες φίλους.”

SHOPPING WITH HITLER

It was my wife who said this to me after a particularly large shopping trip at Waitrose where we’d divided the list into two halves. Needless to say I finished first, in a frenzy of item-snatching that brought back to memory those “a much as you can get in your trolley in two minutes” competitions supermarkets used to run.

She, meanwhile, was thoughtfully assessing the ripeness of avocadoes and the quality of the plaice fillets  in fact she’d struck up a real rapport with the fishmonger with whom my relationship had not advanced beyond those “two of those now please”) . It was the smell of my victory plus years of working in fast moving consumer goods marketing that made me so assertive and objectionable I guess.

I thought nothing much of it until I started watching husbands shopping with their wives, the men resembling either failed summer puddings, soft and oozing with self-contempt and self-pity (“Ooh I wish I wasn’t here…what on earth do I have to do for sex and supper?”) or trying to be super productive “try this – no that one makes you look very fat – not white nor any colour in that shape – turn round – blimey! No nothing but ‘there she blows’ – sorry, sorry! -  – how about a hat? – oh, come on, you’ve got enough shoes – I put my foot down on shoes… foot down on shoes… heh! heh!”

Yet the boards of retailers are full of men playing boy’s games and re-enacting the Third Reich. A girl I heard about who was reputedly a tough nut, joined Tesco and after two weeks of sexism and extreme alpha male behaviour resigned and joined, as she put it, somewhere sane like the Royal Bank of Scotland.
I reflected on this when I heard about t Tesco’s AGM  last week at which Sir Terry Leahy’s predecessor, Lord MacLaurin, filleted, fried and despatched the erstwhile businessman of the year Sir Terry:-

“When you judge the performance of a Chief Executive you must not only judge the performance of the day-to-day business but also his legacy.  I think we are all very sad in this hall to see the legacy Terry Leahy left …. I think he lost the plot.”

RIP Tel ….join the other ex-heroes of the boardroom John Browne, Fred Goodwin and James Crosbie … all of them dictators who had things their own way.

It’s not that power corrupts it’s that their familiarity with the problems and mechanics of a business and the heady smell of success make virtually all leaders want to go out on a high on their terms.

For my part I’ve decided to be a more collegiate and empowering shopper in future – I’m staying at home… and sticking to the plot. My wife knows best when it comes to shopping.

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