When you're sitting in a hospital being ministered to by people who obviously Know Something Useful - from how to put that tube in your arm to whether you're going to live or die and what drugs to prescribe to prevent the dying part - and are Doing Good Things - like treating a teenage girl's black eye or sorting out a schoolboy's elbow after it got whacked because he was fooling around, let alone Operating On Someone With Sharp Knives - it is easy to feel like you maybe chose the wrong career and are not the worthiest person on the planet.
The ward nurse for most of the afternoon was an attractive woman called Heather. She had come on at seven thirty and was going off at twenty-thirty - that would be a thirteen hour day - and had not had time to eat much, except some of the chocolates that my visitors brought. As she pumped the second dose of industrial-strength antibiotics into me, I found out that she visited Sierra Leone to do charitable work there every year, had also had a facial infection that made her look like a scary monster, had graduated the LSE with an M.Phil in Medical Policy, found Jesus, belonged to a local organisation that organised charitable work overseas, and a few years ago would have made me feel like a whinging useless twerp.
Except I don't feel like that now. I have no idea what she feels inside: you do good works to do good works, not to feel better about your life. Heather wore her religion lightly - you would have had to have listened fast to hear her talk of Jesus as "the absolute truth". We all have to do what we can - I have never had the memory for medicine or the organic sciences - and trust that at least a few times in our lives what we do matters in some way. The salesman who lands the big contract and the pricing manager who ensured that it was profitable kept a whole bunch of people employed and let them take their kids on holiday - that sounds like Good Work to me. Exactly how much reward is there in dealing with someone with Parkinson's who is going further and further into quarrelsome dementia? I'm guessing that's not the favourite part of anyone's job.
I find being ill gives me much more of a break than a holiday. On holiday I still have to fake it, when I'm ill all I have to do is just shut down, cope and wait to get better. I can still obsess about work on holiday, but not when I have a fever or am in reduced consciousness mode in hospital. That's the real rest. All I had to do that Friday was get breakfast and take the train home: nothing else. I didn't have to enjoy myself, put the washing on or think about work. Lunch. I had to get lunch. That was it.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Monday, 8 March 2010
A Trip to the Countess of Chester Hospital: Part One
For much of this year so far, Thursday has been Chester day. Up at 05:30 to be sure of catching the 08:10 from Euston on which I have a cheap Advance reservation in First Class so I can get breakfast. At lunchtime we usually go to the Harkers Arms by the Shropshire Union canal. The Harkers has a menu running from a quality burger to an excellent suet pudding with red cabbage - I have to stop myself having apple pie and ice cream every time I go there.
Except last week, when I was sitting in A&E in the Countess of Chester Hospital, about to have a hefty dose of penicillin and flucloxacillin administered intravenously. The Registrar who saw me suggested that was the best course of action: I could carry on with the 500mg flucloxacillin prescribed for me the previous day at the Soho Walk-In Centre for what I thought was a nasty infected spot on my hairline that was spreading a little. Well, it did spread, right down to the fleshy bits around my eyes, which had blown up so that I looked like the Weird Guy in a 1960's spy movie. I first noticed it on the train up, found it more irritating as the morning went on, and then asked a colleague to take me to the A&E.
Where I had barely sat down after having my details taken before I was seen. Where the triage nurse had barely parked me in a curtain-icle when the Registrar saw me. After which I had my first treatment within about half an hour. I'm used to south-west London hospitals where it takes three hours before an actual doctor able to diagnose and prescribe appears. On one visit to Kingston Hospital, the nurses told my then partner with some perverse pride that there was only one doctor available and if he had to go into an operation, that was it: no-one in A&E would be treated for the rest of the day. At the Countess of Chester there were Consultants and Senior Doctors actually walking around, visible, amongst, well, the Common People! Some nurses in London hospitals have never in their whole careers seen a living Consultant.
I spent the day and a chunk of the evening in the "Five-Bedded Area" - because it has five beds - and had a shot at six in the evening. The plan was to review me at eight in the evening to see if the infection had stabilised and if it hadn't I was to stay in overnight with shots at midnight and six the next morning. The idea that anyone who walked into an A&E in London would get a bed, let alone overnight? In London, if you walk in, you are by definition well enough to be thrown out just as soon as the last train has gone, so you have to get a cab. I had however decided that I would rather not spend the night not sleeping in the A&E if possible, but felt pretty sure I needed another shot.
It was at this point that my Higher Power intervened. This is something we drunks have that you civilians don't. I'm not sure how it works, but it's about trusting that whatever happens is what you need to happen. I think it affects the way you interact with people: you do so in a manner that makes them want to help you rather than treat you as a pain-in-the-butt or a naughty patient who won't do as they are told. I was sent a nurse who knew how to play the system and understood that I didn't want to spend the night there if possible. She asked a consultant (in London, nurses can only talk to consultants when spoken to and certainly may not approach them) to review my case, because a consultant can over-rule any previous plan. I was seen by a pleasant, energetic middle-aged lady who looked at me, asked the usual questions and decide I could get a last shot at ten that evening and then be discharged with some really powerful specific antibiotics. All I had to do was find an hotel to stay in, which I did even though there was a Conference and all the usual ones were full. So I got a decent night's sleep, a cooked breakfast, and caught the first off-peak train back to London.
It only occurred to me just how scared I had been on Saturday morning.
Except last week, when I was sitting in A&E in the Countess of Chester Hospital, about to have a hefty dose of penicillin and flucloxacillin administered intravenously. The Registrar who saw me suggested that was the best course of action: I could carry on with the 500mg flucloxacillin prescribed for me the previous day at the Soho Walk-In Centre for what I thought was a nasty infected spot on my hairline that was spreading a little. Well, it did spread, right down to the fleshy bits around my eyes, which had blown up so that I looked like the Weird Guy in a 1960's spy movie. I first noticed it on the train up, found it more irritating as the morning went on, and then asked a colleague to take me to the A&E.
Where I had barely sat down after having my details taken before I was seen. Where the triage nurse had barely parked me in a curtain-icle when the Registrar saw me. After which I had my first treatment within about half an hour. I'm used to south-west London hospitals where it takes three hours before an actual doctor able to diagnose and prescribe appears. On one visit to Kingston Hospital, the nurses told my then partner with some perverse pride that there was only one doctor available and if he had to go into an operation, that was it: no-one in A&E would be treated for the rest of the day. At the Countess of Chester there were Consultants and Senior Doctors actually walking around, visible, amongst, well, the Common People! Some nurses in London hospitals have never in their whole careers seen a living Consultant.
I spent the day and a chunk of the evening in the "Five-Bedded Area" - because it has five beds - and had a shot at six in the evening. The plan was to review me at eight in the evening to see if the infection had stabilised and if it hadn't I was to stay in overnight with shots at midnight and six the next morning. The idea that anyone who walked into an A&E in London would get a bed, let alone overnight? In London, if you walk in, you are by definition well enough to be thrown out just as soon as the last train has gone, so you have to get a cab. I had however decided that I would rather not spend the night not sleeping in the A&E if possible, but felt pretty sure I needed another shot.
It was at this point that my Higher Power intervened. This is something we drunks have that you civilians don't. I'm not sure how it works, but it's about trusting that whatever happens is what you need to happen. I think it affects the way you interact with people: you do so in a manner that makes them want to help you rather than treat you as a pain-in-the-butt or a naughty patient who won't do as they are told. I was sent a nurse who knew how to play the system and understood that I didn't want to spend the night there if possible. She asked a consultant (in London, nurses can only talk to consultants when spoken to and certainly may not approach them) to review my case, because a consultant can over-rule any previous plan. I was seen by a pleasant, energetic middle-aged lady who looked at me, asked the usual questions and decide I could get a last shot at ten that evening and then be discharged with some really powerful specific antibiotics. All I had to do was find an hotel to stay in, which I did even though there was a Conference and all the usual ones were full. So I got a decent night's sleep, a cooked breakfast, and caught the first off-peak train back to London.
It only occurred to me just how scared I had been on Saturday morning.
Friday, 5 March 2010
Erik Verlinde's (Not Quite) Explanation of Gravity
Erik Verlinde is a String Theorist who recently proposed a theory of gravitation as an emergent entropic force, the entropy being a function of the information stored on holographic screens in higher-dimensional space-time. For the moment, just nod along. A lot of people don't think it makes much sense. According to Verlinde, gravity isn't a fourth fundamental force, it's a consequence of something else. The catch is that his something else is an extended metaphor rather than physics. To see why, we have to have a swift tour of some technical philosophy.
There's distinction between a physical property and a defined property. A physical property is one that exists even if there is no-one or nothing there to measure it: size, weight, mass, electric charge, velocity, being an oxygen atom. A defined property is one that someone needed to think up and define a way of measuring: temperature, decibels, lumens, colour, information, entropy. Many of our physical theories are there to link defined properties with physical ones. We have a theory of temperature as the movement of atoms and molecules, which causes our feelings of hot or cold and makes, amongst other things, thermometers work they way they do. Defined properties don't happen in the world if there are no measurers or definers. If there is no-one to feel the heat, is the kitchen hot? No, but it is full of molecules whizzing all over the place. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no-one there, does it make a sound? No, but it does create a pressure wave in the air (which would be a sound if there was someone there who wasn't deaf). Hold this distinction in mind for a moment.
There are laws of physics, nice-to-have-regularites, models and theorems with empirical content. A nice-to-have-regularity is the one about the speed of sound at sea level on a normal day, or how much effort it takes to cut a wire with a good set of pliers. It's what makes our world predictable and manageable - because you can have a chaotic world that obeys the laws of nature (the atmospheres of Jupiter or Venus, the surface of the Sun). Chemical reactions are nice-to-have regularities. A model is, for instance, Euler's equation for the bending of a beam (the only known instance of a useful fourth-degree differential equation). It starts with assumptions, draws a conclusion and when you measure everything, it works out. A theorem with empirical content is, for instance, information theory and thermodynamics: the terms are defined into existence, and methods of measuring them created to make sure the theorems are true: what you can't guarantee is that the results are useful and interesting. This leaves the laws of physics: these hold all the time, everywhere about everything, and for that reason, they are local and position-indifferent: most laws of physics are equivalent to an instance of the principle of least action.
The laws of physics have to be about physical properties - because they describe how the universe behaves everywhere and all the time, before anyone arrived to define sound, colour or entropy. Models, regularities and theorems with content can be about physical and / or defined properties. Nature doesn't give a hoot about defined properties - we do, cats do, but the dumb stuff that make up us and cats doesn't. Nature works on physical properties.
Verlinde is suggesting that gravity is not a fundamental force, but a consequence of other physical processes: like water pressure, which is a consequence of the mass and velocity of a large number of water molecules. Except his explanation doesn't involve any actual physical properties. Because information, entropy and holographic screens are not physical properties and processes.
Start with "information". As used in these contexts, this is -log(p(x)), where p(x) is the the probability of the event x. The lower the probability, the more information we have when it happens. Probability here is defined in the frequentist sense, as the long-run proportion of the event x happening. Here's where we hit a subtle point: frequencies are "objective" because the counts are a matter of fact, but they are not a physical property of any system, rather, they are the result of the physical properties of that system. The 50% chance of getting heads flipping a fair coin is not a physical property of the coin (and the flipper), it's a consequence of the fact that the centre of gravity of the coin is right in the middle (and of the fact that the flipper picks a random point to apply the force). Taking a mathematical function of a defined property just creates another defined property, so "information" is a defined property.
Entropy is as defined a property as you can get. Whereas the physical explanation of temperature is about the movement and vibration of molecules (physical properties), the physical explanation of entropy is as the proportion of permutations of the particles in a system that leaves certain properties (for instance, its energy and temperature) unchanged: the higher the proportion, the lower the entropy of that state.
The idea of an "entropic force" is that if we subject a system to a slight perturbation, there is a higher probability that it will return to a lower-entropy state than remain in a higher-entropy state. On the outside, this looks like a force - but it isn't. Because the system will remain in the new configuration unless an actual force dislodges it - and that force isn't Nature saying to herself "gee, there are more probable configurations than this one, so I'd better change to one of them". The force is something that, ultimately, will resolve down to lots of quantum mechanics and electromagnetism.
This doesn't mean you can't write down a bunch of equations to define an entropic force and then get gravity out of them - Verlinde does and there's nothing wrong with his maths - though you may find his assumption of some abstruse Black-Hole theory physics less than "first principles". It does mean that those equations might not describe actual physical properties and hence don't describe what happens in Nature. It's the difference between, say, Quantum Mechanics, which tells you not only what the properties of a system are but also why your measuring instruments work for that system, and thermodynamics, which describes the relationships between measurable properties of a system but does not describe what's going on in that system to cause those measurements.
That's what's wrong with Verlinde's paper: there's a lot of mathematics but no actual physics. You can't say "gravity is not a fundamental force, and to prove it I'm going to give you an explanation of it in terms of other things that aren't fundamental forces either". The cutest moment is when he cites the AdS/CFT correspondence and Black Hole theory as "evidence". Last time I looked, speculative physics was neither empirical nor true and so could not be "evidence".
There's distinction between a physical property and a defined property. A physical property is one that exists even if there is no-one or nothing there to measure it: size, weight, mass, electric charge, velocity, being an oxygen atom. A defined property is one that someone needed to think up and define a way of measuring: temperature, decibels, lumens, colour, information, entropy. Many of our physical theories are there to link defined properties with physical ones. We have a theory of temperature as the movement of atoms and molecules, which causes our feelings of hot or cold and makes, amongst other things, thermometers work they way they do. Defined properties don't happen in the world if there are no measurers or definers. If there is no-one to feel the heat, is the kitchen hot? No, but it is full of molecules whizzing all over the place. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no-one there, does it make a sound? No, but it does create a pressure wave in the air (which would be a sound if there was someone there who wasn't deaf). Hold this distinction in mind for a moment.
There are laws of physics, nice-to-have-regularites, models and theorems with empirical content. A nice-to-have-regularity is the one about the speed of sound at sea level on a normal day, or how much effort it takes to cut a wire with a good set of pliers. It's what makes our world predictable and manageable - because you can have a chaotic world that obeys the laws of nature (the atmospheres of Jupiter or Venus, the surface of the Sun). Chemical reactions are nice-to-have regularities. A model is, for instance, Euler's equation for the bending of a beam (the only known instance of a useful fourth-degree differential equation). It starts with assumptions, draws a conclusion and when you measure everything, it works out. A theorem with empirical content is, for instance, information theory and thermodynamics: the terms are defined into existence, and methods of measuring them created to make sure the theorems are true: what you can't guarantee is that the results are useful and interesting. This leaves the laws of physics: these hold all the time, everywhere about everything, and for that reason, they are local and position-indifferent: most laws of physics are equivalent to an instance of the principle of least action.
The laws of physics have to be about physical properties - because they describe how the universe behaves everywhere and all the time, before anyone arrived to define sound, colour or entropy. Models, regularities and theorems with content can be about physical and / or defined properties. Nature doesn't give a hoot about defined properties - we do, cats do, but the dumb stuff that make up us and cats doesn't. Nature works on physical properties.
Verlinde is suggesting that gravity is not a fundamental force, but a consequence of other physical processes: like water pressure, which is a consequence of the mass and velocity of a large number of water molecules. Except his explanation doesn't involve any actual physical properties. Because information, entropy and holographic screens are not physical properties and processes.
Start with "information". As used in these contexts, this is -log(p(x)), where p(x) is the the probability of the event x. The lower the probability, the more information we have when it happens. Probability here is defined in the frequentist sense, as the long-run proportion of the event x happening. Here's where we hit a subtle point: frequencies are "objective" because the counts are a matter of fact, but they are not a physical property of any system, rather, they are the result of the physical properties of that system. The 50% chance of getting heads flipping a fair coin is not a physical property of the coin (and the flipper), it's a consequence of the fact that the centre of gravity of the coin is right in the middle (and of the fact that the flipper picks a random point to apply the force). Taking a mathematical function of a defined property just creates another defined property, so "information" is a defined property.
Entropy is as defined a property as you can get. Whereas the physical explanation of temperature is about the movement and vibration of molecules (physical properties), the physical explanation of entropy is as the proportion of permutations of the particles in a system that leaves certain properties (for instance, its energy and temperature) unchanged: the higher the proportion, the lower the entropy of that state.
The idea of an "entropic force" is that if we subject a system to a slight perturbation, there is a higher probability that it will return to a lower-entropy state than remain in a higher-entropy state. On the outside, this looks like a force - but it isn't. Because the system will remain in the new configuration unless an actual force dislodges it - and that force isn't Nature saying to herself "gee, there are more probable configurations than this one, so I'd better change to one of them". The force is something that, ultimately, will resolve down to lots of quantum mechanics and electromagnetism.
This doesn't mean you can't write down a bunch of equations to define an entropic force and then get gravity out of them - Verlinde does and there's nothing wrong with his maths - though you may find his assumption of some abstruse Black-Hole theory physics less than "first principles". It does mean that those equations might not describe actual physical properties and hence don't describe what happens in Nature. It's the difference between, say, Quantum Mechanics, which tells you not only what the properties of a system are but also why your measuring instruments work for that system, and thermodynamics, which describes the relationships between measurable properties of a system but does not describe what's going on in that system to cause those measurements.
That's what's wrong with Verlinde's paper: there's a lot of mathematics but no actual physics. You can't say "gravity is not a fundamental force, and to prove it I'm going to give you an explanation of it in terms of other things that aren't fundamental forces either". The cutest moment is when he cites the AdS/CFT correspondence and Black Hole theory as "evidence". Last time I looked, speculative physics was neither empirical nor true and so could not be "evidence".
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
I'm Just A Person On My Own
Would I ever think my life would be better with a drink? No. Do I feel better since I got sober? Yes. Do I feel even better since my blood sugar levels fell back below about six mmol / litre? Oh god yes. Do I feel randomly depressed, sad, unhappy, lonely and despairing like I used to? No. Do I feel happy, fulfilled, content, at peace, at one with the world around me and otherwise accepting of my fate and place in the world? Are you freaking kidding?
Actually, I don't actually feel anything, much. Aside from irritation at the incompetence, crassness and incivility of the world. This is partly because I have grey hair and less testosterone coursing through my system than I used to. It's also because I mind less about all the stuff I don't have, never did and won't be able to do. That isn't acceptance, it's just numbness.
Once upon a time I had a hole, a cavity, in my soul. Actually it felt like it was inside my torso. Some while ago, it stopped hurting and for a couple of years I thought it might have been filled, or at least that whatever it was that kept it empty had stopped. Then I began to suspect that what I feel can't be happiness, or contentment or anything else all the therapists say the normals feel, because if this is all there is, it's as real as white sliced bread.
That cavity in my soul is still there. It hasn't been filled up, though it isn't getting any larger. It's just been cauterised, so it doesn't bleed any more. It's covered in scar tissue and doesn't feel pain like it used to. It's still there. If it wasn't this song wouldn't make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and fill me with a kind of weird peace...
... and I would be able to sing the third verse "Sober now, I'm cold, alone / I'm just a person on my own / Nothing means a thing to me / No, nothing means at thing to me" with quite so much relaxed force. Those word express exactly how I really feel when I'm not faking it to make it.
Actually, I don't actually feel anything, much. Aside from irritation at the incompetence, crassness and incivility of the world. This is partly because I have grey hair and less testosterone coursing through my system than I used to. It's also because I mind less about all the stuff I don't have, never did and won't be able to do. That isn't acceptance, it's just numbness.
Once upon a time I had a hole, a cavity, in my soul. Actually it felt like it was inside my torso. Some while ago, it stopped hurting and for a couple of years I thought it might have been filled, or at least that whatever it was that kept it empty had stopped. Then I began to suspect that what I feel can't be happiness, or contentment or anything else all the therapists say the normals feel, because if this is all there is, it's as real as white sliced bread.
That cavity in my soul is still there. It hasn't been filled up, though it isn't getting any larger. It's just been cauterised, so it doesn't bleed any more. It's covered in scar tissue and doesn't feel pain like it used to. It's still there. If it wasn't this song wouldn't make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and fill me with a kind of weird peace...
... and I would be able to sing the third verse "Sober now, I'm cold, alone / I'm just a person on my own / Nothing means a thing to me / No, nothing means at thing to me" with quite so much relaxed force. Those word express exactly how I really feel when I'm not faking it to make it.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Samantha Morton's The Unloved
Samantha Morton is best known for her performance as the psychic in Minority Report and puts in a remarkable performance in one of my must-see films, Morvern Caller. The Unloved is her first film as a director: it's about a ten-year old girl (Molly) who is put into the care system after her father (Robert Carlyle in a powerful performance) beats her for losing his cigarette money. Molly shares a room with a sixteen year-old (Lauren) who is being sexually used by one of the care workers, tries to persuade her mother to take her in, gets taken in by the Police when Lauren is caught shoplifting, spends nights out of the home and at the end of the movie isn't even back in school yet. The film is cold and accurate without being bleak - a balancing act Morton and her photographer pull off throughout - and for me captures the way isolated moments - cleaning your teeth in the momentary privacy of the bathroom, gazing at a spider's web, looking at the town from a park hill - can provide brief moments of relief from being somewhere you don't want to be. The images contrast cold skies, sun and clouds with the tatty, industrial town that is Nottingham - a town that for many years was the violent / drug crime capital of the country.
The scene that says it all is the case meeting: Molly surrounded by her social worker, a care worker from the home, and a "senior social worker". The care worker has been seen feeding Molly toast and tea after she came back from running away, taking her shopping for clothes and trainers and generally being a kind young aunt. The meeting reduces her to inarticulate babbling, which is taken as normal speech by the social workers: their professional vocabulary simply doesn't allow them to say the things that we the viewers would say instinctively. Because, of course, Molly's vulnerability has nothing to do with Molly and everything to do with care system run by adults mostly seen doing paperwork.
The film was shown in May 2009 on Channel Four to an audience of two million viewers. I saw this at the ICA at 6:30 on a Friday. There were maybe fifteen people there. I don't know what it looked like on television, but it looked ten times better in the cinema.
The tone of the film walks another fine line, between isn't-it-dreadful sentimentality (which would have required Juliet Stevenson somewhere) and the fake street-life style of Kidulthood. It helps that Molly is not a broken soul - as shoplifting, trick-turning, gas-taking Lauren clearly is. Morton clearly decided to make the film as an aesthetic and dramatic experience rather than a polemical one (as Cathy Come Home was). A polemic would have been difficult, because the fault with the care system isn't that it's heartless and staffed by abusers, but that it is smothered in denial.
The scene that says it all is the case meeting: Molly surrounded by her social worker, a care worker from the home, and a "senior social worker". The care worker has been seen feeding Molly toast and tea after she came back from running away, taking her shopping for clothes and trainers and generally being a kind young aunt. The meeting reduces her to inarticulate babbling, which is taken as normal speech by the social workers: their professional vocabulary simply doesn't allow them to say the things that we the viewers would say instinctively. Because, of course, Molly's vulnerability has nothing to do with Molly and everything to do with care system run by adults mostly seen doing paperwork.
The film was shown in May 2009 on Channel Four to an audience of two million viewers. I saw this at the ICA at 6:30 on a Friday. There were maybe fifteen people there. I don't know what it looked like on television, but it looked ten times better in the cinema.
Friday, 26 February 2010
Flamenco - Maria Pages
I search in vain for reviews of the current flamenco season at Sadlers Wells - other than Clement Crisp being his usual self in the FT. There are reviews of minor plays that will be forgotten before they even close, but nothing of Eva Yerbabuena's Lluvia or Maria Pages' Autoretrato. What stops the critics seeing it? Is it the frocks? Can't they take the singing? Maybe the audience is the wrong kind of people (the kind who go to Spain for their holidays, not Tuscany)? Is it because they would lose credibility across the dining tables of north London if they said "frankly what these flamenco gals are doing is much more fun and interesting than the latest Arts Council darling"? I suspect the answer is a big YES to that one. If anyone suggests that it is because flamenco is flagrantly heterosexual and modern dance and classical ballet is, well, for those of a more delicate disposition, they would probably get into trouble with the thought police.
Flamenco is a genre with its conventions, and yet it is strong enough to absorb influences ranging from Keith Jarrett (channelled by the pianist with Rafaella Carrasco) to modern dance (Eva Yerbabuena) to John Mclaughlin (via his work with Paco de Lucia) and the Cuban music scene. Plus these guys have to make a living at it without funds from the National Lottery.
Anyway, in the end, do I care? The fans loved Maria Pages on Wednesday and so did I. Her castanet playing was awesome, the footwork fancy, the rapping fun and the whole show a delight. Given the choice between that and Swan bloody Lake, I know which I would take - even if it does mean the 341 bus to Waterloo afterwards.
Flamenco is a genre with its conventions, and yet it is strong enough to absorb influences ranging from Keith Jarrett (channelled by the pianist with Rafaella Carrasco) to modern dance (Eva Yerbabuena) to John Mclaughlin (via his work with Paco de Lucia) and the Cuban music scene. Plus these guys have to make a living at it without funds from the National Lottery.
Anyway, in the end, do I care? The fans loved Maria Pages on Wednesday and so did I. Her castanet playing was awesome, the footwork fancy, the rapping fun and the whole show a delight. Given the choice between that and Swan bloody Lake, I know which I would take - even if it does mean the 341 bus to Waterloo afterwards.
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
I Get A "Recognition"
I have been trying not to write about work recently, mainly because it would turn into one long rant about the utter idiocy of our IT department and its outsourced support. This is a major, major bank which does not officially provide or support Oracle, Business Objects and SAS. About which I have spoken.
Our section had an Awayday recently, in the Seven Dials club in Covent Garden (they don't seem to have a website.) It was the usual mixture of "here's how the numbers are" and "bonding by fun" which usually has me reaching for the phone to call in suddenly ill, but this time was actually reasonably bearable. I got to meet a number of the new guys on the team who are due to start soon, and scarily young and bright they are too. As well they should be.
Modesty forbids me to describe the spontaneous round of applause that greeted my presentation on business-as-usual activities in the management information team, but then I did tell a good story vividly.
At the end of the day there were some "recognition" for people who had done above and beyond the call of nine-to-five, and for once I found myself agreeing with the choices: all went to people who were good soldiers, as such things should. Except one. Which went to me, for finally getting all that software to work on the Bank's machines. Which I did not do as a good soldier, but bitching and moaning all the way (which come to think of it, is how good soldiers behave, if Generation Kill is as accurate as they say).
Given that I was in the doghouse a year ago, this isn't bad. My appraisal for last year was "Met Expectations" which is better than it has been for a while. The thing is this: I'm still the same old me. I'm doing pretty much what I always do. It's the managers that have changed. Now they are giving me stuff that can be done, instead of the mission-impossibles that the previous guys came up with.
Here's the take-away: if you set your people up for success, they will probably succeed; if you set them up for failure, they will surely fail.
Our section had an Awayday recently, in the Seven Dials club in Covent Garden (they don't seem to have a website.) It was the usual mixture of "here's how the numbers are" and "bonding by fun" which usually has me reaching for the phone to call in suddenly ill, but this time was actually reasonably bearable. I got to meet a number of the new guys on the team who are due to start soon, and scarily young and bright they are too. As well they should be.
Modesty forbids me to describe the spontaneous round of applause that greeted my presentation on business-as-usual activities in the management information team, but then I did tell a good story vividly.
At the end of the day there were some "recognition" for people who had done above and beyond the call of nine-to-five, and for once I found myself agreeing with the choices: all went to people who were good soldiers, as such things should. Except one. Which went to me, for finally getting all that software to work on the Bank's machines. Which I did not do as a good soldier, but bitching and moaning all the way (which come to think of it, is how good soldiers behave, if Generation Kill is as accurate as they say).
Given that I was in the doghouse a year ago, this isn't bad. My appraisal for last year was "Met Expectations" which is better than it has been for a while. The thing is this: I'm still the same old me. I'm doing pretty much what I always do. It's the managers that have changed. Now they are giving me stuff that can be done, instead of the mission-impossibles that the previous guys came up with.
Here's the take-away: if you set your people up for success, they will probably succeed; if you set them up for failure, they will surely fail.
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