WELL, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

There are many ways of making decisions. There’s the go-on-the-front-foot, “Action Man” approach. There’s reducing everything into a predictable routine. Then there’s the “busk-it” approach and there’s the “rely on experts” way, delegating responsibility for results on the clever who, blamed when things go wrong (as they often do), are dumfounded.

Action Man:

Last week at 4am our house alarm went off. Still more than half asleep I was up deactivating the alarm and running downstairs to see the front door swinging half open, shadows from the streetlights flickering through the darkened hallway.

At this point, out of character and still half asleep I started growling:

“... alright show yourself you disease weakened weasel...come on you pox raddled moron...I’m ready, I’m armed and can’t wait to mash you to pulp...stop hiding...come out, come to Johnny”

In my dozy half-awakeness I saw myself as Jack Nicholson in The Shining.... I had no fear, just a strong desire to thrash the intruder who’d woken me up. But there was no intruder. Just a strong wind and defective door catch.

The Routinists

The unexpected has become more commonly part of our life than it was. Back in the day, life had an inevitable and unchanging routine. The Scaffold in their 1966 record “2Days Monday” described a ritual week of clocking in and mining monotony.

2Days Monday – 

Monday’s Washing Day Tuesday’s Soup Wednesday’s Roast Beef Thursday’s Shepherds’ Pie Friday’s Fish Saturday’s Pay-Day Sunday’s Church..........

.........And so on forever and ever. 

When we hear about levelling-up our country, this sort of routine is what we’re trying to eliminate. The litany ends “Is everybody happy? You bet your life we are” ... but of course the Scaffold weren’t really happy. Life in 1966 was hard for most people. And for many still is.

The Busker

I hope this story is true but even if it isn’t wholly accurate it captures a sense of the man, his methods and our times. Roll back the clock forty years. Boris Johnson was at school. A very clever boy with allegedly a strong sense of entitlement which exceeded even his considerable gifts. One of those gifts was acting, He sought and fought for the best parts. So far so good. The trouble was that he never bothered to learn his part properly. This meant he relied heavily on the prompter. The plays – tragedy, melodrama or farce all became a spirited dialogue between Boris and the prompter like that between a Dummy and his ventriloquist. The result was hilarious and – can this be true? – the prompter took a bow at curtain call

Spare us your vote …..

The Expert

In my experience there are two kinds of expert. Those who describe complex problems as “fantastically straightforward” and speak very fast and incomprehensibly about them. And there are those who listen, ponder and then start dissecting the problem and outline a series of possible solutions.

They can’t make my decisions – only I can do that – they’re experts not decision-makers.

Increasingly when looking at global problems I find myself thinking “You know I can’t engage with this anymore.” I sympathise with readers of The Guardian, the writing in which is so elegant but often bleakly depressing.

What we should do is focus on those issues over which we can potentially exert control (like my mythical intruder), ensure we don’t get locked in monotony and learn our parts properly (or don’t take part). 

And we all need to think.

When every day’s a thinking day will most of us be happier? You bet your life we will.

THE SECRETS TO SUCCESS

 Well, I guessed that might capture your attention. The trouble is success is relative. Would you rather be Jacob Rees-Mogg – rich, with a beautiful house and Rolls Royce or a League Two footballer for Exeter City (9th in the table) and dreaming of promotion. I know which I’d prefer.

But success can’t have ever come in such abundance as it has for Richard Osman the gameshow host, TV producer and writer.

As a writer he’s breaking all publishing records. So far “The Thursday Murder Club” is only the 2nd work of fiction this century to sell over a million copies. His second book “The Man who Died Twice” sold 114,202 in the first week, one of the fastest opening-week sales of a book ever. The film rights for the first book have been secured by Stephen Spielberg. Richard is the Lionel Messi, or the Beatles, of fiction. If he wrote a book called “The Ditchling Sieved Lettuce Incident” it would sell another million.

Why? 

That’s the question the late Richard Rowe who was Head of A&R (Singles) at Decca Records from the 1950s to the 1970s and who rejected the Beatles would be still asking if he were still alive. 

Because the point is this - as Ann Treneman witheringly wrote in the Times last week -  “The Thursday Murder Club” is not a very easy or rewarding read. Not so says great novelist Ian Rankin it’s 'so smart and funny. Deplorably good’. Kate Atkinson is equally vociferous in her praise. But the point is I agree with Ann Treneman. I’ve read the book and found it rather weak and lacking in focus, and characterisation. My 98-year-old mother-in-law, still a keen reader of writers like Sarah Dunant, was more damning – “disappointing” she sniffed.

So why?

Three things:

1. Brilliant marketing

2. Richard is a carefully created modest and clever TV star we all know and love. He’s a good guy. An intellectual George Clooney.

3. He has settled into, and now owns a piece of unoccupied territory in literature. Old people as heroes. Forget that “love island” Sally Rooney and others compete in writing about. The 3 million over-60s are not so much an island as a continent with more millions of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who love them. How many Grandparents will get several copies of both books this Christmas? 

So well done Richard Osman. Several million pounds richer says you are right and that I am wrong in finding your first book a bit Enid Blytonish - “The Retirement Home Of Adventure.” It hasn’t certainly been a “pointless exercise”.

But how I want to write the Texas Chainsaw Massacre version of his books with mad Sister Martha, a series of gruesome murderers, poisoned food and the uncovering of a drug smuggling operation…” that may explain the huge number of visitors in fast cars” mused Inspector Dim. “We’re dealing with Geriatric Lines – it’s worse than County Lines.” 

Richard Osman has done for the world of literature what Richard Curtis has done with Love Actually and what films like Marigold Hotel and then, Mama Mia did for extrovert audiences. I may not like Richard’s books, but I love the effect they’re having. Whatever else they are nice books which seek to spread joy (and yes Enid Blyton in her day did just that too.)

Richard has sneaked into the role of National Treasure alongside Jamie Oliver, Stephen Fry, Judie Dench, Adele and others. It was about time we had someone like him spreading good.

I’m just so sorry I didn’t enjoy that first book more. 

WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH

All over Brighton the bins are full and the streets are overflowing with rotting rubbish. It’s been like this for two weeks. The latest news about the strike is it could last until mid-November given talks between the GMB union and council have broken down. The GMB called action over changes of duties, drivers being removed from long-standing rounds and pay. Pessimists are predicting a six month stand-off.

 

The irony is the Council is led by the Green Party. A similar strike happened before -  nationwide in 1978-79 leading to Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power over the bones of the Labour administration in the “winter of discontent”.

 

 

I’ve been surprised just how relaxed everyone seems to be about this hygiene catastrophe, exhibiting mild grumbles rather than outrage. A group of valiant lads proposed commandeering a lorry and clearing their area but were told by the council it would be illegal to intervene and dispose of this illegal rubbish in the tip.

 

What a load of rubbish. 

 

We might start burning it – not very green but we wouldn’t have a plague of rats. My frustration is that no one is seeking a solution to this urgent problem. Politicians, Waste Management Experts, Journalists, Union Officials are talking about it but not creating a solution…unlike the Pied Piper of Hamelin’s musical solution.

 

Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor, who has had something of a rubbish week himself given the findings of the Health and Social Care Committee’s report on the handling of the Covid pandemic, said he believed we needed more engineers and engineering systems. 

 

Engineering, unlike Patrick, had a great week. The front page of the Times carried a story about the need to rename engineers. Professor Elena Rodriguez-Flacon thinks engineers should be called 'ingeniators' – ingenious innovators. 

 

Well, I think that’s rubbish. We need to celebrate engineers not rebrand them. I like the dictionary definition of the verb “to engineer” – “to skilfully arrange for (something) to occur”. Engineers are not just TV repairmen or radiator installers. Think Brunel, think Stephenson, think Archimedes, think Tesla (the engineer not the car!), think Leonardo. All engineers.

 

 

Given the current global fragility of critical systems a few smart engineers would seem to be exactly what we need. Engineers not MBAs, engineers not politicians. If politicians had engineered the Channel Tunnel it would have ended up in Antwerp and then flooded.

 

Three stories that have cheered me up in the midst of the garbage mountain outside our house.  

 

1. I had an x-ray recently at the Hove Polyclinic. Spotlessly clean. Plenty of parking. Charming people – It’s a no-appointment place;  I was in and out in 15 minutes. The radiology manager was Sid. Remember the Gas Privatisation advertising in 1986. The NHS can be amazing  when there are “Sids” to make it happen. 
2. A friend of mine is running an incubator seeking new ways to convert waste (yes, rubbish) into useful and valuable material by employing the inventive skills of Chemical Engineers. It’s flying.
3. Restaurants are open. Wild Flor in Brighton is back, delivering a splendid experience. They ‘engineer’ a perfect conjunction of relaxation, taste and pleasure.

 

What I’ve realised this past week is that good intentions, optimism and unbridled hope are not enough. We can eliminate grumpiness but never the need to question and work out how to engineer solutions and systems that work, are robust and adaptable. 

 

What’s happening in our rubbish strike is an absence on all sides of common sense, compassion, compromise and community. Brighton’s not a nice place to live in right now.

IT'LL BE THE DEATH OF ME

Last week I went to a funeral…another funeral. My life seems to have comprised a succession of funerals. They are nearly always stimulating, thoughtful and important. A pause at a moment in time; a chance to remember; a positive moment when we recall the best of a person.

 Life is a film which, when it ends, is edited with all the dull moments hitting the cutting room floor. Most of us hope to end up like Hugh Grant in “Love Actually”. As a  hero, kind, a high-achiever, funny but clever…exceptionally talented. A star.

It was the absence of proper funerals during lockdown that was especially sad for many. Death became a furtive transaction with a crematorium rather than a celebration of a life well-lived.

Joe Orton, genius playwright, wrote “Funeral Games” for the BBC in 1968. I recall a line in it “We set off for the funeral in high spirits” which I always loved. Those high spirits were dampened when the car bearing the coffin ran out on control down the hill spilling all inside. Orton could always see the funny side of things with immortal lines like these:

Truscott: Why aren't you both at the funeral? I thought you were mourners. 

Fay: We decided not to go. We were afraid we might break down. 

Truscott: That's a selfish attitude to take. The dead can't bury themselves; you know. “

or this about privilege:

Hal: That's typical of your upbringing …. Every luxury was lavished on you - atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision. I had to make my own way.

Like Death itself Orton’s writing constantly takes you by surprise, but I think he’d have liked this story last week:

“Increases in the size and weight of Dutch people are forcing the country’s funeral industry to introduce bigger coffins, more pallbearers, wider crematoria ovens and longer cremation times. A study by the NRC Handelsblad newspaper has found that the Dutch funeral is changing as people in the Netherlands get fatter.”

 

Poor cat. Blame their Gouda 

 

Moving north but remaining morbid, the Swedes believe in something called “döstädning” which means “death cleaning.” It originated in the urge to remove the misery of clearing up after someone dies, all those old letters, birthday cards, books, photographs. An artist, Margareta Magnusson, who had to clear up after her parents and her husband has written a book, no doubt, with a sense of frustration “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family From a Lifetime of Clutter”.

I’ve been thinking about this and am planning to do the following:

• Reduce the huge number of books – I’m obsessed by the need to have a “library” but what I need are paper books that inform and need referring to – history books, biographies, books on philosophy, art, politics and poetry. I reckon about 200 is enough. Nearly all the works of fiction can go on my Kindle which I’m going to upgrade.
• Photographs – reduce to the emotional few. How many pictures of the Zattere can anyone want?
• Clothes – I’m Dutch-like tubby following the lockdown so a lot of my clothes don’t fit me (sorry, I don’t fit my clothes). So they’re going to the Salvation Army.
• Stuff one keeps because it’s perfectly OK – like clocks, scissors, old spectacles, cufflinks, shoes, biros, pencils – but are redundant. “sorry shoes, I’m  downsizing so I’m afraid we’ll have to let you go.” 

It sounds so easy on paper. I think it might be quite hard to do: In fact, it could be the death of me.

TO HELL IN A HANDCART?

Is that where Britain’s going? You’d  think so based on schadenfreude articles in Germany on our “post-Brexit-plight” to e-mails from friends in France entitled “Doom and Gloom” to articles in our own press about the collapse of the economy.

There are issues, to be sure, but to predict as the Times did  that “This could ruin Christmas”  is foolish. Taking a calmer view we can understand why these local difficulties have happened and how we can cope with them.

The shortage of HGV drivers. Better pay and conditions will solve this.

Blame Eddie Stobart. Rescued from collapse by private equity in 2014 the name that once dominated our motorways is seldom seen now. Instead we see the word “logistics” meaning “the organization and implementation of a complex operation.” When Eddie was king of the road life just seemed more straightforward than that.

Being a lorry diver used to be tough - long hours and poor pay. Now there are allegedly salaries of over £50,000 a year being offered plus a signing-on bonus of thousands more. But if you want a cushier life operating nearer to home Amazon are offering van drivers up to £17 an hour (that’s around £40k a year.) The good news is some school leavers are seriously considering training to become HGV drivers.

The fuel shortage will be a blip - such things always are. In 2000 we had a fuel crisis. At the time Archie Norman was Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. I met him at a cocktail party – those were the days – and was surprised to hear him saying “I fear this country may be becoming ungovernable”. When I suggested this was nonsense he stormed off. But then as in 2005 and 2007 a fuel crisis is an easy thing to start. Just hint a shortage of something important to people and expect a surge in demand.

Lavatory paper, gin, fuel, eggs, bread, chocolate. Those’ll do for starters.

The gas price boom. The large number of virtual gas suppliers selling on price was always going to be unsustainable as Russian and Norwegian supplies eased. Any market where price becomes the primary driver is a minefield for small, inexperienced players. Again a blip that will stabilise.

Food shortages. Some of this is to do with a poor summer in the UK leading to poor harvests but not just in the UK. The durum wheat harvest in Italy was a bad one too. But the shelves remain quite full, just a few gaps, not empty.

There are other disturbing  issues like the virtual nationalisation of a major section of the rail network, massive “logistical” fissures appearing in the NHS and the very culture of the Police Force being under scrutiny following the ghastly murder of Sarah Everard by a policeman. We always focus on hellish thoughts when that’s what the media tells us.

Let me lift your spirits a little.

Less driving will do us no harm.

The low-wage culture is rightly changing; maybe the minimum wage should be £15 an hour rather than £10.

After nearly two years of Covid, depression is understandable. Amazingly most of us are OK and beginning to be sociable again. 

Low price, low margin, low quality are on their way out. 

As a high wage, high quality, highly skilled economy we’ll be happier.

It’s always been easy to grumble. Our society will be fine. How fine is up to us.

To hell in a handcart? Nonsense. Just relax.

And Christmas won’t be ruined without pigs in blankets. Ho! Ho!  Ho!

  

A STORY OF EXCESSES, RAGES AND A BAD APPOINTMENT

This weekend following the British Museum exhibition “Beckett: Murder and the Making of a Saint”, we are going to a conference which is about Thomas in Canterbury.

It’s the 12th century. England has been ravaged by 14 years of civil war between Stephen and Matilda. The country is in chaos. In 1153 Henry 1’s grandson, at 21, becomes King.

What’s he like? He has hyper-energy, eats standing up, is always on the move, he’s petulant and impetuous. But in his short reign this man-of-action restores order. The barons submit to him; castles built without permission are torn down. The mercenaries who’d been hired in the Civil War have a few days to leave England or be executed. They decamp in a hurry. He sets up trial by jury and assizes (old French for “sittings”) where judges hear cases. Prisons are built and villages and towns are repurposed with proper market days. The country becomes less mediaeval, more civilised and calm; much of this owing to Henry’s decisiveness. 

Yet he only speaks French and Latin and lives 2/3 of his life in Anjou. A key to his success is Thomas Becket, who is recommended to him by his Archbishop, Theobald. They get on tremendously well, so well that Henry makes him Lord High Chancellor. Thomas is smart, charming, a fixer and a man who makes things happen. He’s the King’s right hand but also his best friend.

He’s a show-off, dandy and poseur. He keeps monkeys and wolves. He has a vast array of silk garments. When he goes to France to negotiate the marriage of the King’s daughter he does so in fabulous luxury with a huge entourage. He behaves as if he were King. He loves bling.

Then something awful happens. When Archbishop Theobald dies Henry has a brainwave. Why not make Becket Archbishop as well as Chancellor?  Henry has been irked for some time by something called “benefit of clergy” which simply means whatever a member of the clergy does they’re immune to civil law. So, if they commit murder, say, a Bishop’s Court might defrock them or exact a penance. That’s all. But there’s a bigger game to play. The church represents a sixth of the population and is very wealthy. Henry wants to clip its wings. Thomas is the man to do that job. He’s proved this before.

 Huge mistake.

Becket’s transformation from super-rich courtier to Man-of-God takes two days. One day Thomas next day the Reverent Thomas, next day Archbishop Thomas, answerable to the Pope as well as the King. 

But he won’t do what an increasingly bemused and enraged Henry wants. He becomes as saintly now as he’d been epicurean before. For 8 years he’s an absentee Archbishop in France. From brilliant Chancellor and best friend  to intransigent churchman and obstructive foe (as Henry sees it). Thomas cannot be judged a success in his new role. He has constant rows with Henry causing great distress to the people who’d seen this previous effective partnership  collapse and create national disharmony..

Henry’s increasing frustration and rage is interpreted by four loyal but not too bright knights as a wish that Thomas be silenced. So, they come over from France and butcher him in Canterbury Cathedral.

It’s the most infamous murder ever. For the last 19 years of his life Henry bitterly regrets it, lamenting the loss of a friend, his own rashness and poor judgement, the tarnishing forever of his previously brilliant reign and becoming just a footnote in history.

We instead have the most famous Saint. 

Lesson for today: Be very careful about senior appointments. Especially if it’s a friend.

 

WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY SEEING AND FEELING?

When I first went into marketing I was fascinated by Ernest Dichter, the American psychologist, described as the “father of motivational research”. His analyses of why people did what they did and his books like “The Strategy of Desire” seemed more interesting than the quantitative beasts like Gallup and Nielsen, research firms that just counted stuff and produced voluminous documents.

He described his process as:

"I observe hidden clues; I listen with the third ear; I interpret. I see where others are too blind because they are too close to the trees. I find the solution….. I have acted as a discoverer, as a general on the battlefield of free enterprise."

A general on the battlefield, “yes” I said to myself, “that’s what I want to be.”

Now we live in more numerate times when the data is supposedly what drives our decision making. Over the past two years the media has contained a lot of data. Covid’s been defined by numbers…. (I hope you hear a “but” coming.) 

We in Brighton get a lot of Covid data - weekly rates of infection, hospital admissions, deaths and so on BUT I’m not sure what this means. Not really. My own experience is revealing. In the last year’s first wave of Covid I only knew few people who caught it. Currently I know at least 16 people who’ve caught it or are suffering from it. They are not hospital cases but are very unwell.

And at this point Government data contradicts my feeling that something is very much amiss. In just the same way, however loudly the Bank of England explains the absence of inflation, my own wallet says otherwise. And my own wallet is beginning to seem more reliable than the unflappable Governor of the Bank, Andrew Bailey. 

Here’s what the Office of National statistics said of the August inflation numbers:

“The increase ….is the largest increase ever recorded in the CPIH National Statistic 12-month inflation rate series, which began in January 2006; however, this is likely to be a temporary change.”

“Is likely to be?” We shall see. September is already looking like +3% with +4% on the cards.

In these transparent times great masses of data serve the same purpose as lying. They can contradict and confuse. Politicians and commentators have become skilled at choosing whatever data best serves to support their argument.

As things stand I sense (how I like that word: it’s a Dichter word) I sense like an animal smells something about to happen that the Covid spread is about to intensify through schools and universities and to us. Our mask-free, back-to-normal-society is in for a rude shock in its health and – if I’m right about inflation – its wealth. 

Meanwhile in the past week in politics the pantomime continues. “Behind you Gavin!” Commentators have described this reshuffle as a “strategic political distraction.” But the way ministers are moved around to positions they know nothing about has always baffled me. Imagine my alarm if, as I’d forged (or tried to forge) my way to being a Marketing General in the business battlefield, I’d been told: “Congratulations you’re the Finance Director now.”  

I loved this from James Poniewozik, the New York Times journalist:

“Politics has always been a mud fight – better that citizens jump in the trough than lose interest.”

No chance of that. Most people love mud fights and I sense this is going to a long winter of mud fights. Me? I'm putting on my uniform, polishing my medals and I’m off to the battlefield to join in.