RELAX. HERE COMES THE SUN.

 Relax. Here comes the sun.

Last week having talked about age I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to receive, out of the blue, a letter from “Pure Cremation…the fuss-free alternative to the traditional funeral.” That’s probably preferable to and cheaper than the black-horse-drawn hearse that I saw recently.

But enough about death (as Vladimir Putin certainly didn’t say.) It’s hard to remain in good spirits given those horrors in the Ukraine, the drip of mendacity and unpleasantness in the House of Commons and the rise in inflation leaving crumbling wrecks of businesses in its wake.

2022 isn’t looking like being a vintage year. But there must be some good news.

1. Gardens. 

The balmy spring weather has brought wonderful colours and smells. For smells try to beat Wallflowers.

For colours the blaze and abundance of Ranunculi (I hadn’t realised it’s called Persian Buttercup) and for sheer cockiness wildflowers like Mallow and Campion. 

We have a wren building a discreet nest in an ivy hedge and the bad-boy magpies are cruising around – four of them together like a team of bikers – glaring and snarling “who you looking at loser? Back off.”  An avian orchestra of sound, an ice cold glass of Pinot Grigio, summer and sunshine to come. Bliss.

 2. Sounds to snooze to.

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The author Philip Pullman is suffering from the extended after-effects of Covid, needing to fall asleep, suffering arthritic pains all over.  That’s me without the Covid so far. And I’ve discovered a radio station called “Smooth Chill” that claims to play the world's most chilled, relaxing, trip-hop music. I turn it on and doze off to its rippling sound.

3. Cricket. (Not for everyone but think of sunshine and a picturesque ground). 

There’s something about the smell of freshly mown, curated grass, the lazy elegance of a cover drive and the scorecards that capture the summer-to-be that I’ve always known. 

It has a timelessness and serenity that nothing else has. It’s a world of cucumber sandwiches, Pimm’s, Victoria sponge and beautiful equipment – the best Dukes cricket ball costs over £40; cricket bats over £500 like the Kookaburra Beast Pro that will, they claim, “strike terror into your opponents”. Modern cricketers, if they wear and use the best, are fully-clad spending well over £1000 for starters but no-one has just one bat or just one pair of gloves. Cricket has become more expensive than golf but it’s more graceful and more unpredictable.

4. Economising. 

We all need to do this in the current economy. I’m going through my monthly bank statements cancelling all those items I once thought were nice to have but either don’t use or need . Magazines, Apps, variants of Netflix I never watch, storage of items I’d forgotten I owned, hundreds of books I didn’t know I had and had I known wished I’d never bought. The sheer sense of virtue in clearing up and cleaning out is refreshing. 

5.  Fresh vegetables.

I used to believe a roast haunch of meat was what  I needed most – a haunch for lunch – heaven! Now I’m beginning to appreciate a melange of fresh vegetables but a word of caution about organic vegetables which need extensive washing and peeling according to research in Spain which showed 52 types of bacteria in samples tested over the past two years caused possibly by their using (presumably organic) sewage slurry. Cauliflower Cheese for lunch nonetheless.

So cheer up. We’re on the brink of Summer. Smell the flowers, snooze in the sun, listen to the sound of cricket and, for a while forget about parties, Covid, lies, overdrafts and bombs. 

THE POWER OF AGE

Recently there’s been a lot written about old age and what older people should be called.

Crinklies, Saga Louts, Oldies, Seniors, Golden-Agers, Boomers and so on.

The world seems to be turning against the elderly. Against their assumed wealth, their old fashioned views, their belief that they are right, their increasing longevity, their bed blocking in hospitals, their politics - more likely to be Tory or if Russian, pro-Putin. 

To some they seem somehow tarnished by having lived in an age of capital and corporal punishment, of misogyny, of racism and every other -ism you can think of, of casting couches and magazines like Playboy, of comedians like Les Dawson and Frankie Howard. 

So the charge sheet against crinklies is long and concerning. But, hold on, is this in any sense fair?

The period 1960 to the current day has seen us crinklies oversee and inspire the biggest changes to any society in so short a period of history ever. Quietly and radically our world has been transformed. The changes in the UK have been particularly startling.

As I watch my contemporaries I see an increasing ability to change minds, modify behaviour and be good role models to children and grandchildren. I’ll go with Golden-Ager rather than more derogatory descriptions as being the more apt because we’ve accelerated the pace of good change.

Society today is fairer, kinder, healthier and wealthier than it was in 1960. In 1960 life expectancy was on average 71. Today it’s 81 although the increase has slowed down. 

 In America research suggests that people start to feel “old” when they’re 47. That seems depressingly young. For me it started last Wednesday when I ricked my back and have ever since been pathetic. But the trouble is, as someone once said about age,  getting old is like being young but not feeling very well and that describes the difference between young and old quite neatly.

How can we conquer “ageism” and be of greatest use to the world in our remaining years? How can we stop being embarrassed that house prices have risen thereby inflating our notional wealth? How can we find a voice?

Well let’s stop saying sorry.

And let’s start being stronger in calling out bad behaviour.

Boris has done us a huge favour. He’s exposed the shortcomings of our current politicians in vivid technicolour. Many of them are shameless. And it’s the responsibility of the elder citizens to sit them down and tell them it won’t do with one stern, concerted voice. 

It’s time to stop pretending we’ve retired and don’t want to get involved anymore. We’ve stopped working but that doesn’t mean we haven’t got a job to do  because there’s a lot still to be done. Not least in trying to cheer people up.

Byron Wien the 89 year old Vice Chair of the Investment company Blackstone was vocal about what older citizens should do.

1. Find a “big idea” and focus on that.

2. Network. Meet new people.

3. Look for the best in people.

4. Read avidly.

5.Sleep more. 9 hours a day including a one hour nap.

6. Be willing to change. 

7. Travel. (Covid scuppered that.)

8. Underplay your achievements.

9. Thank people for doing well. There isn’t enough gratitude in the world.

10. A handwritten note has much more impact than an e-mail.

I’m trying to do most of those. But I need to appreciate even more the best sides of the many friends I have. It’s our best sides that we need to develop and help others to develop theirs.

That’s enough.

I USED TO WORK IN ADVERTISING

Recently the Times produced a supplement “The Future of Advertising”. I barely understood a word. Here’s that last sentence of mine translated into Scottish Gaelic: Leugh mi e agus cha mhòr gun do thuig mi facal

Yes. It was about as incomprehensible as that.


It talked about data partnerships and connectivity. There wasn’t a word about creativity, empathy, shifting perceptions, image or feelings.

It was about mathematics in what had once been a world of poetry. No mention of storytelling or dazzling insights.

Today, however, I heard an eminent voice of correction. Sir John Hegarty, founder of the advertising agency BBH, said to advertisers:

“Stop stalking. Start inspiring."



Thank you John. Great marketing was about capturing attention, changing minds, and altering behaviour - not pestering and harassing people. You can try getting noticed with a digital chisel and algorithm or with a paintbrush and a pocketful of creative inspiration. You can try to reach the parts that data management cannot reach, or you can bore consumers into submission using a cudgel.

Alternatively you can seduce them.

Here’s what the legendary Bill Bernbach, co-founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach, said:

“However much we would like advertising to be a science -- because life would be simpler that way -- the fact is that it is not. It is a subtle, ever-changing art, defying formularization, flowering on freshness and withering on imitation; where what was effective one day, for that very reason, will not be effective the next, because it has lost the maximum impact of originality.”

However, this isn’t going be a nostalgic piece about the golden age of advertising.



It's more about people wanting to get back to their comfort zone when that cushion of comfort has long been punctured.

We may pretend or hope for it but “normal” has gone as recession approaches, as companies behave with increasing disregard for employees, as war looms on the horizon, as we squabble on social media over gender issues, and energy sources, as we work from home and we wait for the next government U-turn or cock-up. Normal has been dying for some time.



Normal died in Wuhan, China, in November 2019. Normal died in the first lockdown . Normal died with first missile strike in the Ukraine. Normal died with Boris. Normal died when the pandemic became just a mild cold. A victim I spoke to recently, whose energy tank has been emptied by Covid, doesn’t feel normal. Normal died when Priti Patel said we’d be checking immigrant credentials when we moved them to an immigration centre we’d be setting up in, of all places, Rwanda. It was then that normal became nausea.

We can’t change the world. The world is changing us. Nothing is as it was. Rather than lamenting the death of creative advertising, of freedom of movement and of good manners it’s time to be resolute in being as kind, thoughtful and sensible as possible. Be cheerful because all is not doom but, as the song goes, you can’t always get what you want. Like normal.

A poem by Louis MacNeice called “Bagpipe Music” came into my mind. Written in 1938, widespread horror at the darkening of the political sky then must have affected his thinking. Here are the last two lines about the irremediable decline in the barometer of life:

“The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather”.

Read the poem. It might make you think. But it might also make you laugh too.

HAVE WE FORGOTTEN EXCELLENCE?

Forty years ago Tom Peters, a renowned management consultant, writer and speaker, co-authored a book called “In Search of Excellence.” It caused something of a stir as Peters assumed the pioneer role of excellence-discoverer.

The book suggested that excellent businesses had specific attributes: 

…”flat anti-hierarchical structures; innovation and entrepreneurship; small numbers of corporate and middle management; staff reward systems based on contribution rather than position or length of service; brain power rather than muscle”. 

It sold 4 million copies and was described as the best management book of all time. Sadly 40 years on we seem to have learnt nothing. We haven’t forgotten excellence we just never seem to have known precisely what it is or how to get it.

John Neil, the CEO of Unipart, the multinational logistics, supply chain, manufacturing and consultancy company, once said to me

“the trouble with British Industry is it doesn’t know what good is.”

Forget excellence, he seemed to suggest, being good would be a marked improvement.

Instead of excellence we learnt about being the “lowest cost producer”, of moving production to wherever to get goods made cheaply and cut labour costs. MBAs talked about “exits”(not physical ways out but monetary ways out) or, to be blunt, selling businesses for as much money as possible to regardless of whom they are. That’s why the most excellent of restaurants – the Wolseley Group – majority owned in Thailand by Minor Hotels having put it into administration have ousted that King of Customer Service. Jeremy King, its founder. 

No, I’m not xenophobic but it’s wasteful to build an excellent business and then sell it to corporations (mainly overseas) whose interests are purely about money, burnishing their image or whose cultural values are so strongly at variance with their acquisition. That’s why in-shoring has become a new vogue  (it means bringing production back home), that’s why Waterstones (currently Russian owned but left well alone by him) run by the excellent James Daunt of Daunt Books, does so well. Under the previous management, I was told they talked about skus (stock keeping units) not books, and it drove staff in the stores crazy.

When so many companies in the UK are parcelled off to foreign business or private equity, firms whose raison d’être is lots of money, it’s unsurprising that the focus has shifted from rock solid, immutable values about product excellence and customer service.

One place where this hasn’t happened in Richer Sounds. Founded in 1978 the business was 100% owned by Julian Richer, the founder and managing director of the company, who in 2019 sold 60% of its shares to an employee ownership trust. It’s feted for its customer service and standards of management.

Seeking to become just another big ‘cheese’ is also relatively absent in the food business where founders are obsessed with quality. The TV chef James Martin is particularly appealing in his appetite for excellence and singles out the French:

“What I love about Lyon is they don’t care what people think about what they do or if they even like it, they know, they just know themselves that it’s brilliant”

On a TV programme he wandered around “Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse - Lyon Indoor Food  Market” talking to camera, ecstatic about the supreme excellence of the food there.

The French care jealously about Comté cheese and the right Cassoulet recipe. The Italians are similarly fussy about Spaghetti Carbonara.

Their ROI is in heaven. Their being excellent matters more than being rich.

How ironic that Julian Richer in denial of his name, like so many chefs, could be much richer but instead leads an excellent UK business. 

FORGET GEOPOLITICS. LISTEN TO THE FUTURE

Imagine a world without Coca Cola, McDonalds, PepsiCo, Nike or Adidas. Imagine a world without your “favourite” social media. Imagine a world without Adele. Imagine a world hurtling backwards to the 1970s.



Sounds like where you’d prefer to be? Not if you’re under 50 and have learnt to enjoy the new and the good things in life. There are 60 million Russians aged 15-50 and right now the lifestyle they’ve got used to and expect is being destroyed by a war they didn’t sign up to.

A friend of mine, a fluent Russian speaker and Russophile went over there recently to deliver a lecture (in Russian) about Chekhov. He hadn’t been there for many years but was struck strongly by the sense of plenitude and almost western relaxation, by the streetlife and cafes in St. Petersburg full of bright young people. It felt like Britain in the 1980s.



For my part about eight years ago a Russian Director of Innovation for a major American company was sent to me to see if I could help her present better and more clearly in meetings. She was certainly very bright, late 20s and refreshingly light on theory but strong on pragmatism and team management. The assignment was a success. We enjoyed talking – I did anyway. She was reticent about politics except to note she was well paid but her highly qualified parents – her mother was a doctor – earned between them less than £15,000 a year. She was going to be promoted and moved to the UK but she got pregnant instead.

Surely old-Russia Putin has miscalculated his young people. Does he think they buy into his story about Ukraine? They are as sceptical, I’d guess, as our young people are about politics. In fact, shoot all the oldies on both sides and they’d be no war. It would all be like Woodstock all over again. Remember these lines:

And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation



Already stories from the Ukrainian front suggest youthful unrest. Allegedly a Russian Commander was not only disobeyed by his troops but was then run over by his own tank. The young Russian army is being routed by the homeless young Ukrainians – this feels like a civil war with increasingly the combatants on the same side, culturally.

I look at Old Putin as a hangover from the Berlin Wall past.



I look at old Biden who became a Senator when Richard Nixon was President and Vietnam was going wrong for the USA. And then I look at Vlydimir Zelynsky .44 years old – a rock star – who gets youth, is youth but most of all, youth get him. There is only one real world – it’s the future – not the world of old has-beens like Erdogan, Lukashenko, Biden and Putin – and Kim Yong-Un (born an old man). It’s a world of music, technology and companionship. It’s also a highly fluid word of hand- luggage travel across the world, sharing ideas. Get in a plane go to Berlin meet some guys. Talk, discover, eat and fly back.

As an old-has-been I have resolved to die young looking forwards as opposed to reminiscing. I want to encourage the abundant young talent throughout the world and learn from them.

I’ve heard this is the end of globalization. No. It’s the end of old thinking. The world is still mostly open and welcoming.

Think young. Embrace change. Think peace.

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

ARE WE REALLY THAT BAD?

I heard the story of David Cameron talking to Vladimir Putin at one of those G7 parties when parties were normal things, pre-pandemic. Allegedly Putin sidled up to Cameron and smilingly said:

“David, I know that you think I consider you’re degenerate, decadent, and weak and that I loathe democracy. You know something. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong in thinking that.”

I’m not sure I believe that story because the idea of Putin smiling isn’t credible.

But it got me thinking.

Are we decadent, degenerate, and weak? And is democracy all it’s cracked up to be? The past two years have changed a lot of things not least the spontaneity that made a last-minute invitation to go out and be a bit naughty, irresistible (“go on… it’s Friday…we’ll go to Burnt Orange and take it from there… ooh la la…this is Brighton after all.”)  It was what all those Russian oligarchs thought and until a few weeks ago we trailed weakly in their wake wishing our rowing boat could be a Super Yacht.

Our decadence was pretty limited. We ate out more often. We went on interesting holidays to the Maldives or Caribbean. We bought nice handbags. (No, not me.) We bought stuff that sometimes we didn’t need. We supported start-up businesses. We were the pioneers of online shopping and weekends in Airbnb country cottages. Not decadent, no. Just having a good time. A better time than we’d had before. Self-indulgent? Maybe. But hardly decadent.

Degenerate? Now that’s a more serious accusation. It’s about showing signs of decline. If you get old, you degenerate a bit, but you don’t become a degenerate. Is Britain degenerating? Well, yes. Exiting from the company of the EU was a conscious decision of the electorate to be smaller and rather less important. A bit like resigning from the Board of a big company to start your own small exciting business. Good to do but your voice is a smaller one than it was.  Anyway, it's time for all the western world to acknowledge we are in decline. Europe and the USA are not quite what they were, but we are still mighty just not “mightier yet.”

Weak? Yes maybe. Certainly, a bit lazy and happy to settle for a quiet life.  Unobservant. Crossing our fingers. Who needs a defense budget? Armed conflict is so yesterday. Who could imagine a war we thought? Putin was tough and strong we said but he’s not aggressive and he’s fair minded.  We need to be with him we protested, let’s not be antagonistic or awkward or old-fashioned. We need his oil and gas. Let’s be friends – we said. Let’s be friends.

We weren’t weak so much as  too trusting. After Salisbury, Aleppo, Crimea and a litany of violence perhaps naïve is a better word.

The wake-up has been abrupt. Nearly all commentators seem to feel this has been much needed. Our upper lips have been well and truly stiffened.

Since 1980 our world’s improved. We have more choice and in every way life is better. We’re, nearly all of us, wealthier, healthier and happier. Democracy had won or so we thought. Russia’s people were poorer apart from a few oligarchs and Putin whom some believe is the world’s richest man. The Ukraine War is ideological. Is Ukraine part of our world, as they’d come to believe, or another darker, poorer world? Starkly … do we want South or North Korea?

Putin may loathe democracy but it works better than communism or autocracy.

You get to vote and that’s how Zelensky is President of Ukraine.

WELCOME TO HANGDOG HALL

Last week I became rather melancholic. I don’t like it. I can normally find a bright side to almost anything. Some say it’s infuriating and inappropriate to keep on smiling. But my Mr Loud and Mr Laughter became Mr Lugubrious (and what a glorious word that is – a cross between lubricating and moody.) That was me last week, full of moody glue. I felt stuck.

There were a series of reasons. The Ukraine horror show overwhelmingly so. But blanket Russophobia whereby if it’s Russian it’s bad upsets me. 

Vodka, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Potatoes (Russians like potatoes a lot), Beetroot (Ditto), Ballet, Tolstoy, Pasternak, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, Beef Stroganov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, Yul Brynner (he’s dead – yes but he was Russian), Fabergé, White Russian Cocktail and Tea (tea? Yes they love it hence their samovars.)

All the above are Russian so we must hate them and avoid them – including tea? Yes, especially tea.

Already Russian Oligarchs are rightly being sanctioned with their bank accounts frozen and their yachts impounded. We’re hitting Putin and his friends in their wallets. But I’m not sure where it stops. Valery Gergiev, rated the world’s greatest conductor has been removed from the Presidency of the Edinburgh Festival and any further involvement musically in Britain. Russian driver Nikita Mazepin's F1 contract has been terminated by the Haas team and the Bolshoi Ballet have been cancelled by the Royal Opera House.

Being Russian now is evidently  a very bad thing to be. Being “Poo Tin” as Matt Chorley  in the Times now calls him is obviously much worse but if you have any Russian blood in you, you’re (by definition) a wrong ‘un.

All this has made me increasingly maudlin. It’s racist and silly. So I’ll scoop up my caviar, have a shot of Jewel of Russia Ultra Black Label and reflect on the distinction between leaders and people. Between, for instance,  Putin and those nice Russians I’ve met. Between Johnson and the rest of us whose image he has imbedded in all our reputations. Is that fair?   

But hang on. It appears Alexander Boris may have Russian blood himself. An ancient ethnic group (the Circassian community) from the region around Sochi has claimed Boris Johnson as one of their own. People there are famous for their blond hair and blue eyes. So that explains everything. Boris the Impaler. Boris the Bad. At this moment of discovery my mood slightly lightened.

We live in strange times when the big things are too big; it’s little things that cheer us up. How about this?  Scientists are concerned about the lack of testing for Covid and therefore it being impossible to actually know what infection levels really are now. So they came up with a way of getting a 100% sample to test with this novel idea. Everyone goes to the lavatory so measure the Covid levels detected in sewage at various sewage plants. The results are interesting with much higher levels of infection than previously expected. 

We are living in the midst of tragedy and probably prolonged horror. But we owe it to ourselves and especially those around us to stay level headed and kind. We need more cartoons and jokes. We need to read more books and less papers and social media. Scratching the scab only makes things worse. I doubt if Vladimir Putin laughs much - just look at the misery.

There are lots of nice people around and some of them will be Russian. Humanity prevails when we embrace rather than fight or hate each other  

So, no more Hangdog Hall.