FEEL BETTER (JUST LIKE THAT)

Three things really irritated me last week.

First, the sudden, unwanted e-mails lauding various brands of Bitcoin which apart from being a contributor to global warming is, as far as I can see,  the South Sea Bubble of the 21st century. Then, HSBC which is not my bank, constantly texting me to say there’s a problem on my account. When I complained to them they told me “just ignore it”. Finally both my wife and I have both been called to say “this is the HMRC; you have been named in a tax fraud; unless you return this call you will be instantly arrested.” We just ignore that too. The plan to stay off social media for a few days that celebs have advocated to protest about online racial abuse seems entirely sensible. But I have a better plan.

Change your phone as I’ve done. Everyone who has a Motorola thinks it’s wonderful. I’m an exception. I haven’t come to terms with it at all. It doesn’t seem to like me either. So it sulks in my pocket whilst I sulk outside. Now the consequence is I’m using it less and less and avoiding the stress of emails and texts I don’t want or need.

But four things pleased me last week. 

1. The continuation of Spring albeit with a nasty sneaky chill but there’s the joy of seeing brave, confident plants plumping up and thriving and this makes every morning joyful. As do the birds. I saw a goldfinch and that was magic as are the magnolia and the sound of woodpeckers.

2. A Spring dish that was a triumph. Risotto Primavera. We use orzo pasta which has something of a risotto appearance cooked in white wine and chicken stock with peas, asparagus, baby leaks and chopped broccoli heads. With a glass or two of ice cold Picpoul. Wonderful.

3. The discovery that I can actually meditate and let my mind empty of energy-sapping thoughts. I’ve spent too many years speculating about things that might happen. Now I calmly and pleasantly look at the grass, trees and horizon and lose myself like a fluffy cloud gently moving across a blue sky. 

4. Finally, we’ve been told our future lies in cyber-technology and AI. I’m rather sceptical about this. Because the art of the specialist, practical engineer is far from dead.  We have a veranda with three metal poles allegedly supporting the canopy and they were rusting at the bottom. Various people inspected them, sucked their teeth, muttered “oh dear – job for a specialist” and left. This had gone on and on with me increasingly anticipating a veranda collapse. 

Enter Dale. He arrives two days after I’d called, takes a look, suggests a pragmatic solution, sends a quote for half what I’d feared it might be and then arrives with a young man who cuts off the rusty pieces at the bottom of the poles, welds on galvanised pipe with base- plates to replace where the rusty pipe was. He then screws the base plate into the concrete veranda floor. Whoosh. All done and swept clean in less than two hours. The company has staff and a boss with refreshing can-do attitudes. If they’re an important part of our future rather than just apps and nice-to-have cyber-labour-savers, we’ll be fine.

And it’s not just climate change that’s a problem. Human beings are overheating too. We huff-puff, get querulous, quarrelsome and peevish. No need. Just watch a specialist at work or a blackbird building a nest. They really know what they’re doing and that’s so comforting.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS

We have never experienced anything like this. We have slowed down and become more thoughtful but I am detecting underlying schisms in our world  that are emerging with opposing sides are hardening in their thinking.

But first the good news. It’s nature. Spring is always wonderful but this year’s has been spectacular. We’ve spent time this week trying to fill our courtyard “cottagey” garden with as many plants as we can lay our hands on – spurge, Witney primrose, lupin, geum, mesembryanthemum, salvia, teasel, mallow, phlox and lots more. There are  extraordinary petunias like ‘black satin’ and of course a profusion of pansies and geraniums. Meanwhile our jasmine and rose arch has burst into exotic splendour. I wander out at 7:30 am every day muttering encouragement and dispensing water like a Friar dispensing alms … “bless you my son.”

Best of all it has been the week just past that the first white stork chicks since the 15th century in England, have hatched at Knepp, the source of that great “Wilding” story. In the same week Carol Midgely of the Times and Monty Don of Gardeners’ World both tearfully lost their beloved dogs. But nature joyfully moves on.

Nature is winning and the dramatic fall in carbon emissions already this year suggest the climate changers have an unstoppable momentum for their cause. We hear the indignant demands of the UK airline industry which is a large employer for a return to normal. Will many people want to check in 4 hours before take-off for a short flight? Is the whole idea of travel made cheap and painless history? Perhaps an adventurous trek across France to Italy might be more fun. Can we afford to let the industry revive? Should relics like Boeing survive?

People have become kinder, cheerier and more considerate. Alternatively people have become ruder, cruder and crueller. Yes, both of those at the same time. Worse behaviour and stories of heroic neighbourliness. Human beings are complex and not always in a good way. There’s a current story about a Premier League footballer who with friends flew to Paris for a sex party – those were the days I thought but as a flouting of lockdown in two countries it’s breathtaking. I bet he scored though.

The divide between old and young is widening and each is becoming more of a self-parody. The “peace” party versus the “party” party. The landline and letter party versus the social media party. (And can I declare my increasing dismay about the inflammatory power of most social media?  Great jokes go viral - good news; people snarl and froth and create group rage - bad news.)

We talk about ‘getting back’ when we should be talking about ‘moving forward’ – to a better, sustainable world. It’ll  be both good and bad – inevitably. But let’s hope nature comes first. A world where we try to earn money not just to consume more but to create a society that works for everyone – fairer, cleaner and happier.

SPRING IS SPRUNG, THE GRASS IS RIZ....

The current lockdown is creating problems. Government, and through them the police, have powers not seen since the Second World War. Sometimes this goes awry as when a police constable, surely not destined for early promotion, was recorded in York rebuking people for sitting in their own front garden and when park benches have been taped up.

My own recent experience in our private, communal garden has thrown up two, differing views. Most stridently, the need to rigorously enforce government guidance, limit the time people can spend outside and restrict the extent of children playing.

Less stridently but just as insistently the need to apply common sense, respect for one another and to enjoy the weather and the beauty of Spring. Freedom first. Control second.

Everyone I know has applied social distancing, social isolation and caution. What’s impressed me most  is the speed with which a large number of retailers have adapted their businesses to home delivery services.
Points of view from Mark Ritson, a former professor of marketing and a writer for Marketing  Week, are usually insightful and useful. He consistently and punishingly puts social media in its place. He praises well-thought-through brand strategy. His weakness is he swears so much. Saying fuck a lot isn’t very professorial.

He’s written recently to say nothing will f**** ** change after coronavirus ends. We shall revert  – as ever –  “back to normal.” This is not an academic reflection it’s a self- opinionated thinker swotting a fly. Mark is the Nigel Farage of business thinking. Sometimes right, often wrong, always abrasive. But things will change – not for everyone, obviously -  but enough to create a seismic trend to society. Here are a few possibilities:
- The economy – the worst recession since 1930. Some say a “scale disaster.”
- Our attitude to the environment. A big bonus.
- Our shopping habits.
- Commuting behaviour and attitudes to working from home.

- A boom in start-up businesses (partly because of unemployment increases.)
- More businesses thinking the unthinkable and pivoting.
- Less marketing or as it’s now described “colouring in” (sorry again Mark).

I was recently asked if I thought the surprising surge in the FTSE might be caused by markets anticipating a postponement or cancellation of Brexit.

I said that I thought Brexit was irrelevant but, more importantly, so increasingly  was the EU. Rich and relatively Covid-free Germany is proving intransigent to the pleas from Italy, Spain and – increasingly – France to help their neighbours. As a one-time ‘remainer’ and Europhile I’m sad to see this. Unless the rich can help their struggling partners and act like part of  a  ‘Union’ the EU seems rather pointless.

Do I sound grumpy?

Tom Stoppard noted that social distancing legitimised the way he always wanted to live. Part of me agrees with that. But it’s been such a gorgeous Spring I’ve forgotten how awful it must be living in a city.

And isn’t Spring amazing?

It’s dem birdies.

WHAT'S NEXT?

I constantly hear people saying “when things get back to normal…” but normal is history now, there is going to be a new-normal not an old one.

Coronavirus is forcing us to re-appraise our relationships, our behaviour and our attitudes. And as we do this there’s one thing that deeply worries me. Most people are not going to die prematurely, especially if they’re young and healthy. The sun is shining and we’re on holiday…an enforced one for sure but think about it as a holiday.

My concern is the mix of terror, depression and hopelessness not least when experts say this could last months or even years.

Let’s see what could follow in the aftermath in our brave, new world.

Working from home. Tell me the commuters from Britain are going to accept back-to-normal commuting. Big office blocks will be redundant. Crowded city centres are going to  be less appealing. As London – the world’s number one city – is destroyed as we knew it – are all those shops going to re-open fast or ever? Levelling up the UK economy will be done in a way that few people had expected. Everyone who can will work at home.

The economy. A new economic economy. Fewer flights. Smaller airports  (doesn’t a third Heathrow runway sound ridiculous today?) Anyone for a cruise? Don’t be silly. A sabbatical year travelling. Nope. A year working in a hospital instead. An economy of less and better. Am economy designed to crush poverty by awarding everyone a basic living wage. Will people stop working if given this – of course not. They’ll work because they want to. Work won’t just be for money.

Ageing. For years we’ve applauded the increasing length of people’s lives. Deaths from coronavirus are relatively small and are unlikely to exceed 20,000 in the UK which is horrible but still only 3.6% of the normal annual mortality rate. I loved the view of an old person I met who said smoking and drinking  heavily was the way forward for the aged.

Shopping. There’s been too much buying of “stuff”. We all know that. Hearing about a man being violently mugged in Haywards Heath for the kitchen rolls he was carrying is comic (unless you were the bruised and bleeding victim). Supermarkets and especially those out-of-town hypermarkets seem like dinosaurs. Markets and corner shops, your time is now if you can rise to the challenge.

Going out. Cineworld, that cinema-multiscreen complex has of course closed but was closing for business anyway in normal times. Small comfortable cinemas yes, big ones no. Big is going to become an old-world word. Big companies; big targets; big shops; big salaries; big offices; big houses. John Lewis closed all their stores last week. How many will ever reopen? Going out is more likely to be into the country or to the seaside not to towns.

Education. Will we see any more GCSEs or SATS being held? Will we (maybe) start to educate children rather than constantly test them? Will using Skype or Zoom become the most important teaching aid? We can now think more about how we can revive arts teaching and discover how to, as that genius educational expert Sir Ken Robinson begged for, liberate rather the crush creativity in the young.

Health. It’s been a really tough time for germs. 60,000,000 people in the UK are washing their hands constantly. The nation’s health (coronavirus apart) has never looked more promising. Ditto air quality. (Go back to school, Greta, when it opens. Your work is done)

Home. Everyone I know is tidying up and throwing away all those things  they’ve squirrelled away for ages. They’re also redecorating and investing in new things they’d meant to replace ages ago. Good news for anything to do with cooking, relaxing sleeping. We can anticipate a run on beds soon. We’re all going to get to know our homes rather well and feel how important they are and not just a staging post. People won’t want to sell and the value of houses will plummet.

Holidays. No. Not for a while. Except at home.

Entertainment. Netflix, Amazon and the best of BBC,  ITV, Channel 4 and others. Take-home food will be increasingly appealing. Get merry at home. Pity the poor taxi drivers though.

Our town/village/street. Local community will trump everything. We now have Sussex Peasant, the Sussex farm produce on sale around Sussex from renovated horseboxes. 

Milk and More allows the home delivery of milk to revive. Local pubs will be the ones that open that look nice and  have great local beer (there are 70 odd local breweries in Sussex – who needs the Anheuser-Busch InBev, SABMiller, Heineken International, and Carlsberg Group? Blimey – doesn’t that name tell you everything that’s wrong with this stupid global fiasco of a world we’ve created?)

Think small. Think local. Buy from those closest – but they must be good enough – there are no excuses any more for local and bad.

The pieces are here but we are not yet recovering from this chaos.

We should surely now that there has never been a better and more important time for “Start Ups” – read the Sunday Times Business Section for their view. Enterprise, resourcefulness and resilience are part of the recipe. Do not try to restore the Global Economy as it was. It’s over.

We can do better.

Above all restore our good spirits . We can’t build a Camelot on gloom.

HOW ABOUT SOME MAGIC?

I recently noticed a book called “Factfulness” by the late Hans Rosling, that great Swedish presenter of statistics. From beyond the grave he continues to preach the message that things are better than you think.

Yet the name of book struck me and not in an altogether agreeable way. It had a touch of the ghastly Gradgrind about it, compounded by the publisher’s by-line – “10 reasons we’re wrong about the world”. Like influenza the tendency to reduce everything to ten ways or reasons is catching – to lose weight, to be a better leader, to avoid stress and so on.

By reducing everything to facts and “must-do’s” we’re missing the magic of life. Magic doesn’t always lie in the most obvious places. Dorling Kindersley’s books help you “do” a city but on hearing this they’ll create series called “The Top Ten Secrets of Venice– places to go your friends will miss”. It’ll be a boon to tourist-one-upmanship.

So what is magic? It’s when creation plays a trick on you, arm wrestling your imagination into delighted  and surprised submission. It happens every Spring. It happens watching a brook bubbling as you stand on a bridge, it happens when you read a gripping book and forget where or who you are. Magic transports you. Magic simply delights.  And it requires two sides for it to happen. So moving on to “Quantum Theory”:  if a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it does it make a sound? Or is sound something magical that exists in our heads?

The problem with concepts like “factfulness” are that they thrive in a world of totalitarian left-brain thinking. No one who advocates the been-there-done-that style of living would believe it to be productive sitting and looking at that tree for an hour or more letting one’s mind drift and one’s ears hear the sound of breeze and leaves and of birdsong. Productive is a derogatory word because does our world actually have to be increasingly productive?

Isabella Tree has written a book called “Wilding”.  It makes one question what progress really means. It’s about Knepp Castle and its 3,500 acre estate just south of Horsham in West Sussex. It has been in family ownership  for 500 years and as a farm  had become increasingly loss-making. She and her husband in despair were driven to cut costs to the bone and see how nature farmed instead. Over the past decade it’s been left on its own apart from the introduction of some classic, old, wild breeds of cattle, pigs, deer, horses and so on. Nature keeps on hitting the back of the net.  Whilst  in the modern vast tracks of arable land birds and bees are in plummeting decline, at Knepp they are breeding,  thriving and diversifying.

Magic is happening in front of their eyes. It could happen in front of ours too if we looked patiently at the wonder of nature rather than just creating action plans.

WHY I FEEL CHEERFUL (most of the time)

“Bounce, skip and hop”… synonyms for “spring” and this Spring, which has been especially colourful, has given me feelings of joie de vivre.

This was heightened as I went to Lords on Friday to see Middlesex play Essex. For those not versed in cricket let me explain it’s an English pastime that’s a cross between baseball, ballet and chess that can last four or five days. Like steam trains it was on its way out commercially but as the recent relaunch of the Flying Scotsman steam engine showed the past can be recreated and a fan base re-inspired.

I recently saw an advertisement for Jack Daniels. Here’s the bit of copy that stuck in my mind. It observed:
“That simpler things are probably better. That when something works you stick with it till it doesn’t. And that change is fine so long as there’s a good reason for it.”

It seemed an appropriate philosophy as I walked around the “Home of Cricket” (as its marketers style it.) Only one word can describe the architectural perfection, summer green grass and ambience here - “gorgeous”. But no longer is this place, as it were driven by steam, it’s been transformed from a noisome old boys’ club to a world-class entertainment arena with brilliantly modern and fragrant loos, excellent food, comfortable places to sit and always that smell of Spring and the sense of a hot, lazy summer waiting in the wings.

The game has changed and is now a 21st century contest with the 3 hour versions (20:20 Big Bashes as they are styled); these are the real money makers through TV rights. Think baseball on speed and you’ll get the idea.

In the Sports Shop I looked at the “new” equipment. To fully equip oneself, as I’d have done when I played 20 years ago, would cost around £2000 (you could pay less but I liked the best). Everything is lighter, better, more powerful or more protective. This is not a men’s game anymore. It’s an athlete’s game. And that’s a big difference.

So Lord’s and cricket itself have managed brilliant transformations.

But my bucking, seasonal good humour was dampened a little by two stories I noticed last week.  The first about Joanna Coles, chief content officer at Hearst Media (no me neither) who has a treadmill in her office on which she walks in high heels whilst phoning or emailing and, to save time, watches all her TV on double-speed. Why not? Elon Musk has a diary broken into 5 minute slots. I’m going to try that (not).

The second is about Sir George Buckley, Chairman of Stanley Black & Decker and the Smiths Group who gloomily says: “Every company in the world is dying, the trick is knowing what to do next.”

Hell, we are all dying. The real trick is to leave a memorable legacy and  wait for the next Spring. Nature has a great way of renewing itself.

WHY I LIKE SPRING AND EASTER SO MUCH

I have spent the past week feeling refreshed.

Originally the word “Easter” comes from the Saxon ‘Eostre’, the pagan Goddess of Spring which in turn came from the Germanic ‘Austro’ - the Goddess of Dawn. From its outset Easter was always magical. The Christian story of the risen Christ made it much more so.

Something magical still happens every year. Welcome to spring flowers; to plucky battalions of daffodils; to some experimental bursts of sunshine and lambs gambolling.  In April we put on walking shoes to go on pilgrimage like Chaucer.

Change is in the air and, of course, more sunlight makes life easier. This and a degree of gastronomic restraint as opposed to the mandatory, bloated excess of Christmas means this season of celebration leaves us feeling ready to get going.

So, yes, I feel terrific and my good humour even extends to the bunch of jokers who’d been making me rather grumpy recently.

What do this lot have in common? Trump; Putin; Farage; Johnson.

And of course you’re right.

Extravagant egos; wrong people to run anything; irresolute yet dictatorial; will do/say anything to get their own way. They make Kevin Spacey acting the part of Frank Underwood in “House of Cards” look very electable.  They have all pandered or are currently pandering to a vision of the present and future forged entirely out of a nostalgic image of former glory. But to be fair they have the capacity to entertain us as well as baffle.

Hence my good humour. I suddenly realised I was taking what they said much too seriously. The best way to debunk is to deflate with laughter. And anyway the premise of an argument solely based on rationality will inevitably fail. As that supple brained Ad Man Rory Sutherland recently noted, on issues like the EU or the America Presidency or which house to buy or whom to marry, emotion rightly plays a large part.

When I turn on the news or I read the paper I often find I’m reduced to frothing rage.
But then when I see a front cover of Private Eye like this one….

….or I see the cartoon of Paul Daniels’ funeral at which someone is sawing his coffin in half saying “it was how he’d have wanted it” , I feel much better.

So a diet of roast lamb, minted potatoes and Cote de Beaune plus walking in bluebell woods (soon) plus a lot of good old fashioned, squirm provoking and sharp satire plus a resolution to be much nicer to people will do me well enough.

We live in uncertain times said billionaire Warren Buffett. Well yes, but what fun that uncertainty creates. Every day is a cliff-hanger. And the great thing about spring is it signifies the end of a winter of discontent

So I’ve resolved to start listening more and laughing a lot more.

Join me - a very happy spring and Easter to everyone.