HOW ABOUT BEING FRUGAL?

Recently I was sent an article from the New York Times which suggested Britain had been virtually destroyed by eight years of austerity. Examples were drawn from some blighted parts of the North West highlighting some specific examples of human misery that Dickens in his pomp could not have bettered. It concluded:

“Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty”

You can look at virtually anything through either end of a telescope and you can guess through which end the gloomy chap who wrote this was looking. I see things differently. The cities of Britain are flourishing - not just London, which few would question is the greatest city in the world. The others like Manchester, described by the cantankerous Jeremy Clarkson as the Berlin of Britain, Birmingham , Newcastle, Leeds, Glasgow, Belfast – all of them are  shining examples of renovation and new hope.

Am I a cockeyed optimist? Well maybe but the dystopian vision of the New York Times is wildly removed from my perception. Except in one respect. ‘Austerity’ has a bitter price to pay. The word that is. The attitude it conveys. Since 2008 that word has preyed heavily on the needy, hopeless and vulnerable. It gets the blame for everything wrong in our lives.

Yet the reality of 2008 and the years after is we were living beyond our means. The correction that was needed at every level was to adjust that. ‘Austerity’ however is  a humourless, Victorian workhouse term to describe a necessary process. ‘Austerity’ doesn’t  laugh or listen. ‘Austerity’ is the implacable bank manager. ‘Austerity’ is cruel.

There’s a better word and a better strategy.’ Austerity’ derives from the Greek word meaning “severity”. Frugality derives from the Latin ‘frux’ or fruit  which seems a whole lot better to me.

Frugality is about simplifying, moderating and decluttering. To that end the data protection nonsense (death to entrepreneurial businesses by the way if not for me, the consumer) means I’m being unsubscribed from all that bother left, right and centre. Frugality in action means less of everything, books, papers, appointments, clothes … STUFF!

Being frugal is about being good humouredly ruthless. Like Richard Madeley interviewing hapless Gavin William Secretary of State for Defence.

After avoiding  answering a question several times about whether he now regretted saying “Shut up and go away“ to the Russian State after the Salisbury drama, Gavin was taken aback to be told “All right you won’t answer -  so interview terminated”.

Frugal may be the way forward for all of us. Frugality has a more obvious impact on the rich than the poor whose lives are pretty frugal already. But frugal connotes a more natural and fruitful process.

First we had Google taking over our lives but now we have Frugal as the new and much more controllable zeitgeist. I may sound like a Brexiteer but being frugal means getting back control.

DECK THE HALLS WITH BOUGHS OF HOLLY

Yes, even now Christmas is being hijacked by people like me. And it’s this marketing exercise that especially fascinates me.

The marketing started in 300AD when in the Rome of the Emperor Constantine (recently converted to Christianity) the celebration of Christ’s birth was made to coincide with Saturnalia. The feel- good of a great blow-out got the Christian bandwagon rolling along nicely.

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This coincidence of celebrating Christ’s birth and roll-out-the barrel party time continued happily until typically the mean old sod, Mr Austerity Cromwell banned Christmas. Back to normal and a lot more when Charles 11 returned to England.

Enter the four great apostles of Christmas early in the 19th century, first Washington Irving in America and his “Old Christmas” and the virtual invention of the Christmas that we know.

Then Clement Moore - a Theology Professor whose “The Night before Christmas” was written for his children, then was picked up by the New Yorker and has become a defining Christmas idea.
Dickens and Cruikshank, his illustrator, followed in 1836 and 1843 with Pickwick Papers and a Christmas Carol.

Around the same time Prince Albert, gluhwein king and Victoria’s husband brought us German Christmas - snow, sleigh bells, decorated trees and Victorian Christmas was born.

The bandwagon accelerated with Coca Cola’s Christmas advertising and the resounding “ho, ho, ho”s amplified as the toy business burgeoned and Christmas feel-good films filled our media.

Christmas became big business - lasting until January 6th in most of Eastern Europe and Russia but it’s the way marketers have shaped the event to such smiley and profitable effect that’s most striking. Washington Irving put it like this in his efforts to create a ‘marketing’ campaign (he wouldn’t have called it that) to quell social violence and appeal to everyone’s good nature:-

In the depth of winter, when nature lies despoiled of every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted snow, we turn for our gratifications to moral sources. The dreariness and desolation of the landscape, the short gloomy days and darksome nights, while they circumscribe our wanderings, shut in our feelings also from rambling abroad, and make us more keenly disposed for the pleasures of the social circle. Our thoughts are more concentrated; our friendly sympathies more aroused. We feel more sensibly the charm of each other's society, and are brought more closely together by dependence upon each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness, which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms; and which, when resorted to, furnish forth the pure element of domestic felicity.

It has something else which enthrals me. It evokes and sustains such great stories and the felicitous layering of Christian, pagan, commercial and romantic stories and myths from  different geographies. Christmas stories are like Christmas cake, mixed and rich.

The pageantry and the atmosphere of this time never fail to astonish even hardened cynics and make those two words “bah! humbug” sound wonderfully festive too.

Happy Christmas.

BRING ME SUNSHINE

The wettest year since records began. The sound of a coalition splintering. America heading towards the edge of that fiscal cliff. Syrian cataclysm. Youth unemployment. Austerity. Woe. A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year.

When TS Eliot wrote the Journey of the Magi from which I quote in that last sentence he was feeling depressed. Yet when I read it I am uplifted and excited.

As I am about 2013.

Dawn French whose appetite for life is irrepressible said on Desert Island Discs that her positivism was begotten of saying “I am the sort of person who…” Try it. It has an amazing effect on your psyche – better than Obama’s “yes we can”.

So I am the sort of person who believes nothing is impossible and that as Stevie Wonder put it:-

“It isn’t about talent it’s about what you do with it.”

And it’s about how you make your audience feel.

When we won all those gold medals at the Olympics not least Andy Murray’s brilliant display at Wimbledon. Or when Ian Poulter transformed himself from good to great to Superman in the Ryder Cup. Or when we won the series against India thanks to the example of Alistair Cook. Or when Mr Wiggins won the Tour de France, I believed anything was possible. It was a year in which we all celebrated winning and I was inspired.

We may think we have too little inspiration in today’s world but 2012 was the exception.

It was more than sport. We had the Man Booker prize going deservedly to a breath taking novel, Hilary Mantel’s “Bring Up The Bodies” and we had Boris. Even those who hate him have to confess to his indomitable spirit and brilliant clownishness. 

Karl Lagerfeld, the fashion designer (Chanel and Fendi et al) enthusing about luxury brands said

“It’s about people buying things they don’t really need because they really want them”

The smell of expensive fragrance, the touch of fine fabric, packaging so brilliantly made that the top hisses as you pull it off the box, the taste of a brilliant culinary creation or the sight of people smiling help define our times.

Time to enjoy, to believe in ourselves and have some fun. Work hard for sure but stop being so gloomy about this wonderful world. 

Morecambe and Wise were brought out of the archives to do just that this Christmas.

“Bring me sunshine in your smile

Bring me laughter all the while

In this world where we live

There should be more happiness “

It’s not a bad anthem.

And remember – you are the sort of person who can do whatever you set your mind to.

Happy New Year.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

ISN'T IT TYPICAL?

From time to time I sound off about negative thinking and that idiotically masochistic desire for failure. Austerity Britain’s icy fingers beckon us towards the lost decade of misery. At least that’s what the media says. Great headline – “Lost Decade”….

But it was a friend who’d been so ill she’d spent a week in bed to make me realise Radio 4 has to go or just has to be sorted out (Chris Patten are you listening?) She said she had to switch to the cheerfulness of Radio 3 to escape the sneers and sardonic pessimism of the Today programme. And it’s contagious. I listened to the Archers the other day. They’re all candidates for Dignitas.

Yet the rest of us are fine.

The News of the World’s used to claim “all human life is here”. Apparently not, nor in the Sun, Mirror, Mail, Express and the rest (all being daily spanked in the Leveson enquiry with worse to follow for them) because the office for National Statistics have just published “life satisfaction” figures for April-October 2011 of 7.3 out of 10 (with a slightly higher score for a sense of “what I do (overall) being worthwhile”) and for “satisfaction with personal relationships” being a quite storming A* 8.3.

Either these figures are being cooked, which I doubt, or a tranche of would-be opinion formers are doing what they do best “whingeing”. And to borrow from Jeremy Clarkson what we should do is shoot them because such doom-mongers are dangerous.

But as they whinge we are all pretty cheerful. And here’s how to get even better.

Swear.

Not a lot (too much swearing is self-neutralising) but do it with emphatic rage when you do. Research at Keele University proves swearing (in moderation) is a “stress-induced analgaesic” – so every time you say the “f” word equates to taking a Nurofen.

Another reason to be cheerful, I’m told, is the long overdue reduction in University applications – down in England by 15% - but also down in Scotland where it’s still free - by 16%. So it might not just be a fee related decline then whingers ? Prod, prod!

It’s time to stop the complainers confusing us with their misery and time to enjoy our personal relationships and the joy of reflecting on how to simplify our lives, spend a bit less and a bit better.

AUSTERITY AND HILARITY

I was wondering why I was in such an extremely good mood. It’s not the news - a mining disaster in New Zealand, the catastrophe of Haiti and the humiliation of the Irish (as the Times put it.)

At first I put it down to the impending ho, ho, ho of Christmas – the first time in years I’ve felt that surge of goodwill (is it flu? No it’s goodwill – an acute case of it.) It could be the effect of young grandchildren and great nieces but there’s more to it than children’s sense of wonder.

I genuinely believe if we set our minds to it we can be a lot more cheerful, productive and effective. Being in a good mood is as much up to us as it is to outside events. As Jack Welch put it (former head of GE) “determine your own destiny or someone else will.”

Which takes us back to the Irish for whom I feel a genuine affection and sympathy – they’ve been stuffed by the speculators as so many of us have been in the past. Do not confuse speculation with entrepreneurialism. The latter is about making calculated adventurous moves – like a new product launch – the former about betting the house and all your neighbour’s houses on red.

There’s only one way out – a dose of austerity which I’m afraid will taste like a powerful Bloody Mary – and a decision to laugh in the face of the doom mongers. As the recently spanked Lord Young said “honestly, you’ve never had it so good” Naughty Lord! The truth is that the way we really feel is in the mind not in the wallet.

And right now I’m feeling great. Positive, on song and up for it.

And they say it might even snow later this week.

Happy Christmas.