WHO ATE ALL THE PIES?

I am I admit a little smug. Smug is a wretched word describing a condition of self-satisfied, self-restrained righteousness that is most unattractive. I’m smug because I’ve lost 10 kilos since Christmas. I look like Gary Lineker. “Well fit” as they say in my gym (I made the gym bit up, sorry, there has to be a limit).

And then I saw that picture of our leader on holiday in Cornwall.

 

He looks a bit pie-addicted, a bit… how shall I put it?... well tummied. The sort of Tory who hunts and is  “no stanger to the Melton Mowbray.” As Caitlin Moran said he looks like a ham. I’m afraid he does.

David belongs to a particular breed of politician – I refer to well known porkers like the remarkable Alex Salmond seen here describing the size of the haggis he has his eye on for a light snack between bills.

So am I just being fattist in the same way Julius Caesar was thinnist (hating Cassius’ “lean and hungry look”)?

On balance I prefer life affirming enthusiasts who eat and laugh and party. Bill Clinton, naughty in so many ways, was kept in shape by a chef who doctored his food with highly flavoured low calorie stuff. (“No Bill that wan’t a pie it was a calorie free soya and, lentil crispie.”) 

It’s the larger than life bit that worries me. It suggests they may lack the restraint that we seem to need in a crazy world. 

In a book called the Peter Principle written by  Laurence J Peter in 1969, a study of why things always go wrong in business, he has this to say about leaders:

“(Many) simply follow precedents, obey regulations and move at the head of the crowd. Such people lead only in the sense that a carved wooden figurehead leads the ship.”

If we want our figureheads to be slim, fit and attractive we have poor pickings amongst our current front benches. But maybe the zeitgeist has shifted anyway as America suggests looking at future presidential candidates, from Mr cool, sleek Obama to a new breed of figurehead like the hotly tipped Republican Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie.  

I’m tempted to get off the slimming wagon. After all, scrawny suddenly seems so yesterday. But even as I feel like partying I look at the photo of the Cornwall Corpulent again.

 

Diet Coke anyone? 

www.colourfulthinkers.com

THE FIERCE INTENSITY OF NOW

This wonderful line came from Martin Luther King’s lips. He was talking about that tipping point when it’s suddenly exactly the right time to go for it, what Shakespeare in Julius Caesar described as high tide:

“There in a tide in the affairs of men                                                                                                           which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”

Poetic it may be and none the worse for that because poetry manages to dramatise, synthesise and distil all at once. A friend once called me “a marketing poet” which alternately upset and, then, pleased me. I think (I hope) he was referring to my EQ and the fact that I passionately believe that marketing is only about people and how they make up their minds about things and how we marketers manipulate that.

The intensity to which Martin Luther King refers seems especially apt in our fast moving-ball-game of life. We live in a high-drama-present – from the Olympics to the US Open to the Ryder Cup we are in a constant state of breathlessness. In a world so full of speed, making any business decisions has to be done fast relying on intuition not on “give me two weeks to think about that.

Nicolas Colsaerts playing one of the best Ryder Cup rounds ever seen on Friday afternoon at the Medina Club, Chicago.

We are living in the present and that is the only place to live.

In Britain we used to live in the memories of the past. No more.

The Americans have always lived for “now”. An American I knew would say “Richard I’m starting a fantastic briefcase business”. A year later I’d see him and with a flourish he’d produce spectacles from his pocket saying “Fashion spectacles, the next big thing. I’m going into this in a big way”. When I asked about briefcases he’d look puzzled as though trying to remember and would say:- ”Briefcases. No. That was a terrible idea. I got out of that ages back.”

Gurus, meanwhile, try to live in the future, where nobody has any idea what’s going to happen, so they are pretty well bomb proof.

William Sieghart, the founder of National Poetry Day, tried something at a recent literary event. He set up a poetry pharmacy. People would come up and see “I feel depressed” and he’d prescribe a dose of Keats. Or it would be lassitude - “try a spoonful of Milton”. Or for someone who’s lost all hope – “two Emilies twice daily” and it worked apparently.

Well poetry (hopefully) does work.

Especially when poets are trying to manipulate their girlfriends – “Come live with me and be my love” and other such - but I think we know what they’re after – a bit of “fierce intensity of now”.

www.colourfulthinkers.com