OF MARMALADE, HAIRDRESSERS AND AN END TO GIVING IN

Let’s start with the “Mar...” word. Marmite and marmalade both evoke mixed reactions. For years sales of marmalade have been in decline despite some daft strategists in advertising who floated the idea of renaming the product “orange jam”.

Now there’s a worldwide competition attracting 3000 entries from 30 countries at Penrith in Cumbria. Marmalade is on the map again with especial interest coming from Japan. Along with British jams, tea and biscuits marmalade has been described as being at the heart of Britain’s desperate post Brexit trade negotiations.

The word in the corridors of marmalade-power is the trend is towards eating it with savoury food. Try it mixed 60:40 with English mustard. It’s a unique taste sensation.

The hairdressing industry meanwhile is growing and is seen as one of the key sectors for entrepreneurs. This £6.5 billion market sees salons increasing at 10% + year-on-year and employing 35,000+ people (about the same as in energy or agriculture).

Hairdressers are amongst the most trusted people in society according to recent surveys and throughout the UK new salons with bizarre names keep on emerging. Here are some of the most adventurous

• Barber Streisand
• Curl up and Dye
• The God Barber
• The Second Combing
• Barber Black Sheep
• Ben Hair
• Shylocks
• Streaks Ahead
• Hair-vens Above
• Hair Port

As we drive around Britain it’s the lamentable taste of barbers that dominates our impression of the high street. How great to see names like Robert Dyas and Rymans … names that suggest seriousness. (I think I shall open one called “Whoops… Sorry!”)

And so to the stricken expression of a friend recently, one that Sisyphus might have had as the rock he was pushing careered down the hill yet again. It had been provoked by my saying his working life - he’d just retired - was actually only half over or put another way he had to do the same all over again.

This was inspired by Hokusai the Japanese artist whose woodcut “The Wave” is so famous. Here’s his take on age:-

“At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their meaning…”

At the time you retire recognise the best is still to come if you work at it. That’s great advice.

The election continues to frustrate me.  “Strong and stable” is a joke. The rhetoric is impoverished and mean.   But salute Andy Burnham the new Manchester Mayor, transformed from being yet another Westminster politician into an impressive political voice. He gave me hope again following the Manchester outrage.

We need more like him - kind, thoughtful and putting the outrage into perspective:
“…the man who committed this atrocity no more represents the Muslim community than the individual who murdered my friend Jo Cox represents the white, Christian community.”

WHERE DO WE LIVE?

What interests me is how we feel; where our true north is. Where we live, live in our head as opposed to where we physically sleep or where we work are different things. I know people who think nothing of commuting a thousand miles a week, or who camp near their place of work before driving home.

After the wall came down in East Germany someone hailed a cab to go home. He said to the Taxi Diver:-
“Can you take me to …”
“No need to ask,” replied the Cabbie “I know where you live.”

Apparently most of the Stasi became taxi drivers when their security role ended. But where they lived had changed in their heads.

I was talking about football to my grandson when he said there was a boy at his school who was exceptionally gifted at it.  In talking about this success he said that this boy came from a different country.

“Oh where does he come from?” I asked. To which he replied without missing a beat.
“Manchester”.

Yes, Manchester a different country,  all on its own, full of great footballers - nothing to do with the rest of us.

It was Christopher Marlowe in the Jew of Malta who said “The past is another country”.  And you realise the truth of this in listening to UKIP. This other country is one of nostalgia, when summers were always sunny, when steam engines drove our trains, when cricketers wore white flannel, when business lunches were fuelled with claret and cigar smoke.

I simply don’t do nostalgia. I think the future is a different country and, if we choose to make it so, a better one.

I am currently doing work across Europe. Sweden, Poland Germany, Greece, Italy, France, Britain, Ireland are all terrific, bright, different but united (in the English language and in in an attitude to doing business). These people are not defined by where they come from but by where they live in their heads.

Unashamedly I’m pro EU albeit anti-Euro bureaucracy. My philosophy of life is the same as one-time US President Lyndon Johnson’s (cynical as it may sound). He was talking about an obstreperous colleague who was thinking of resigning:

“It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”

That’s how I feel about Europe - the biggest economy and most civilised in the world. The more I work in Europe the more I think of it as one country.

The most changed country is America whose view of the world swung eight years ago. They gave up on old Europe and swung their attention west to the Asian powerhouse. I don’t blame America - that’s probably right for them.

But it leaves an opportunity for us. We can and should be the key portal for the rest of the world into Europe…it’s something we do really well - because it’s where most of us working really live and do business intellectually.

Colourful Thinkers