"DO YOU THINK I'VE GOT TOURETTES?" He shouted angrily

A friend of nine asked me this after confessing to an irrepressible desire to shout abuse at the complacent Michael Gove on TV decrying the value of experts. I told him that at our age we get everything. If I forget something it’s an early sign of dementia, a cough is lung cancer, breathlessness a heart attack. We are doomed. We are all going to die…sooner or later.

“Happy Christmas to you too” I hear you mutter.

But relax I’m as optimistic about the glorious comedy of life as I’ve ever been. The stuff that happens enthrals me. Like my increasing habit of self-debate walking down the street having an argument with my own stupidity. Don’t worry they think I’m on my mobile talking to someone rather nasty.

And recently the madness intensified. I was explaining to my wife as we drove in Brighton in that rather loud, patronising voice I adopt when talking about current affairs. I said Southern Rail management had an agenda in the current dispute vis a vis the RMT and Aslef which was to kill the Unions.

“Why - what have they got to do with this?” she asked
I was a bit irritated and said “well it’s mostly their fault”.
“What exactly have the Indians done wrong?”
“Indians … what Indians?”

Perhaps I had said “Indians” not “Unions”- perhaps I was going mad. But let’s face it being a man I was likely to get much more ill than my wife. Recent research proves man-flu is really serious and that viruses seek out men rather than women.

As I drink another glass of claret and metaphorically smoke a Cuban cigar I reflect on a misspent life of calories and carcinogenic substances and the rather depressing comment made by a friend:- “nowadays I spend most of my life crossing out those who’ve died in my address book.”

Come on. We’re living longer and healthier than ever. And this is going to get better as medical science develops faster and as new generations of young people drink less (not just less but massively less), scarcely smoke at all, or use drugs (it’s older people who are mumbling “peace” and falling into flower beds). Mind you there’s less sex going on too. People are too busy for nonsense like that.

Yet in this youthful world the “old” still own the “hot-seats.” In the USA 40% of Trump’s cabinet are at or over retirement age and 60% are over 60. They are also, with one exception, white which is really strange given the country they serve.

Tourettes? Well it may be our only defence in a breath-taking world where the latest gor-blimey has been Trump’s refusal to accept evidence of Russian hacking. Post-truth has now developed into post-evidence.

I was recently watching“Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium” on TV. Dustin Hoffman said this:
“Life’s an occasion - make sure you live up to it.”

I’ll try Dustin but it isn’t easy.

SO WHAT'S NEXT?

The answer is no one has any idea. What’s worse no one even has a plan. It’s tempting to look into the future and write an Aldous Huxley dystopian vision of the world to come. It’s equally tempting to look at the centenary anniversary of the Somme and say “here we go again” or to say “this summer is like Britain wet and useless” like the England football team - “we are just a bunch of losers.”

There are certain realities, however, in our lives:

• Life will go on. The shock and dismay will end.
• Human resourcefulness always get us to good places…the EU is not the only answer.
• The time for analysis and philosophising is over.
• We live in a very fast moving world so making things happen fast is critical. Remember that line from the 1981 TV series Hill Street Blues? “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us”
• Or what ex-boss of GE Jack said:-

James Ashford, a Jack-the-lad online guru, described his son’s school sports day. An Intimidating experience for a six year old especially having to do the “Egg and Spoon Race”.

Watching previous races he realised all the kids spent a lot of time looking left and right to see how their friends were getting on…chaos…collaborative mediocrity. So James told his son…”Ignore the others look at me on the finishing line and run towards me.” It worked.

Great advice… stop worrying about what the world or anyone else thinks (by the way a lot of them think we are barmy, to be pitied or on the verge of crisis) decide what you want to achieve and go for it.  The greatest opportunity of our lives may lie in the fact that all around people are looking at each other wondering what to do next. This is a time when MBAs, PHDs and cleverness is a positive disadvantage.  Eat a plate of steak tartare, have a big Jack Daniels, light a cheroot, play the theme music of the “Magnificent Seven” or “The Great Escape” very, very loudly and go and kick ass.

Well you get the idea anyway.

This is a period as interesting as the 1980s when after the first shock of Thatcherism some realised it might be working; when the “Big-Bang” financial deregulation in 1983 turned gentlemen stockbrokers into pirates.  We may be entering a heady period of “lawlessness” where we behave as though those imaginary (mostly imaginary) shackles of EU bureaucracy are removed and we start to push the boundaries back and vigorously compete.

We can behave like that or, of course, we can mourn the passing of the most civilised half decade in the history of the world.

Well, we have no choice as enterprising people … do we?

And the final thing that’s clear is we must treat the politicians as contemptuously as they’ve treated us.

Ignore them and get on with it. You take control - not them - because they don’t get it.

THE COACH OF MARGINAL IMPROVEMENTS

I was told they’d appointed one of these for the British Olympic cyclists. It seems to have worked. A carrot here; an extra half hour in bed there; training till your toes bleed.

Excellent.

 I’m against the exam ethic, this absurd media frenzy about GCSE and A levels. Dumbing down or getting brighter? Well how about both?

A friend who’s very clever and now a lawyer worked out how to “game” GCSE so she came top in the UK in two subjects which she promptly dropped. “It was about working out their vision of the model answers with the right words and in the right order. Like a crossword in a sense”. Now she’s very clever.

But the girl I mentioned in a blog a few weeks back who was told by her school she was a “dunce” was obviously not. Schools with their wide experience can spot obviously “dunces”, people with no talent, people incapable of progressing. She was told she was likely to end up in hairdressing or childcare (being a dunce qualifies you to look after children at their most impressionable learning age? Good heavens). Well she was predicted 2 Fs, 3 Es, 3 Ds and 2 Cs which I have to admit was a bit disappointing.

Her enterprising Godmother picked her up and with her husband over just six months did a bit of intensive 121 coaching on a little girl who started to discover she was actually quite bright (whilst, curiously, the school – and I use this word in the loosest sense - stubbornly stuck to their original assessment). In the event she got 4 ‘A’s, 2 ‘B’s, 3 ‘C’s and an A* in a subject they’d predicted she’d get an F. What are we to make of this?

Primarily I want to focus on an educational system that is self-obsessed and seems to have forgotten how to spot talent and then teach inspiringly and produce not marginal but phenomenal improvements. This was simply a case of neglect. It was incompetence from professionals who’d be fired in any other walk of life. It was luck that two smart people rescued the young lady. Where there is talent however deep it is buried, we need to fan the flames and make is burn brightly. From dunce to super confident girl (“I’m going to get three ‘A’s at A level “– and she will) in six months of loving teaching and encouragement. How many kids with GCSE ‘D’s and ‘E’s out there today could have done the same?

It’s not often I get this angry. Michael Gove, can you hear me? Sort it out.

www.colourfulthinkers.com