London Snapshots Part 224

This is underneath the tangle of roads and paths by Blackfriars bridge on the north side...

... while this is one of those monuments to over-managed transport policy on Temple Avenue.

Looking onto the South Bank: Sea Containers House on the left with the National Magazine Company tower behind it, the OXO Tower and Wharf, the Thames Television building, Shell Building and London Eye.

Never Apologise, Never Explain... Except

No-one knows where this comes from. In England it's supposed to be a working principle of the Royal Family. So what's wrong with apologising or explaining? You're late for a meeting because the public transport broke down - where's the harm? There isn't. Unless you have a boss who says things like "Why didn't you take an earlier train? You knew this was important." If your regular train journey has a little slack time in it, the guy's a jerk. If you're regularly making it with seconds to spare, he may have a point.  Now you get home and your partner gives you the "you always do this" speech about something you did that morning. Maybe you left the toilet seat up - who knows and it may not matter. "Why do you do it?" is an essential part of it. She doesn't want to know, of course, and she could care less about the reason. You know that, right?

Have you ever been asked why you did something right? (Except as a prelude to having that right action contrasted to several wrong ones?) When someone asks you to explain why you do something, it is because they think you should not be doing it, that they will be the judge of what you should and should not do and they will set the rules about what is and is not an acceptable excuse. That is why you cannot win an argument with an angry woman. She doesn't want to understand why you did it, she wants to be mad at you. Nothing you can say will make any difference, because she's not interested in anything except her own feelings.

The same thing applies to campaigners for any cause. They are not interested in arguing facts, interpretations, alternatives and policy, they want you to feel like a bad person and stop doing it (whatever it is). They already know what is right and wrong, they know what you must do and they really don't care about your opinions. Why do you eat meat? What justification do you have for that foreign holiday? Why haven't you given away ten per cent of your salary to a charity?

And then there are times when explaining does not help. Like why the surgeon couldn't save your husband. What she says may be true, but what does it matter? Indeed, if they aren't careful they could come across as blaming you for not getting the poor guy into hospital faster ("He was too far along"). And their legal department are not going to let them say they screwed up, even if they did. A simple expression of sympathy ("I'm sorry for your loss") is all that's needed and appropriate.

Apologising puts the other person in the position of forgiving you ("that's okay") or being seen as not  forgiving you and thus being a grudge-meister. So they pretend to say it's okay and resent you for putting them in that position. Explaining just lets them know you weren't deliberately jerking them around, and anyway you should have called when you knew were going to be late.

Never apologise and never explain, except in business when you're calling ahead to explain why you can't keep you promise of whatever it is. That's just courteous. And if someone keeps on at you for reasons and apologies, consider that one or other or both of you may be a jerk. And take action as needed.

Happiness Is Not Enough (Vodafone Caring Dad / Sobbing Daughter Advert)

There's a Vodafone ad in the cinemas now in which daughter calls father who drops his company social ("let's hear from our new Director") and takes a very expensive cab ride to some suburban high street where daughter is crying in her car. "He" has left her. She has no idea why. She "just wanted us to be happy. That's not asking too much is it?"

My reaction? It's not asking too much, it's not asking enough. Because when anyone say "I just want you to be happy" it means one of several things. At worst it means "I want you to stop upsetting me by being so restless and unhappy". At its most mediocre it means "I want us to be content". ..... What it does not mean is "I want you to be happy".

To be happy, in the immortal words of the very English philosopher Gilbert Ryle, is to be doing what you want to be doing and not wanting to be doing anything else. Happiness requires a huge chunk of self-knowledge, so that you know what you want to be doing, and a huge amount of luck, so you can do it and not have to do a day job where you can earn money. There is no guarantee that "following your bliss" will earn you any money at all. Happiness is just not a realistic option for most of us working folk.

You know that the daughter did not mean this kind of happiness because she says "just". In that context, it's a diminutive. She just wanted them to be happy, as if you could be happy somehow independently of what you did with your life. What she wanted was for him to be content being with her.

That's not enough. It might be enough for her, now, but it won't be in a few years. I'd love to be happy, but it's never going to happen: I have a day job I happen to be good at but it's not why I get out of bed. That would be fear makes me do that. Plus at my age I can't turn over and go back to sleep after I've woken up. Contentment is the anti-depressant of the emotions: you don't feel bad, but that's because you don't feel much at all.

The point is that happiness, like profit, is not something you can aim for. It's a by-product of doing something else well. You can't "just" be happy. It's way more difficult than that.

And I don't get the ad. If I use Vodafone, my relationship will break up? My daughter's relationship will break up? Vodafone is the Bad News Network? I know they want you to think it's the Network For Caring Fathers, but there are other more positive events they could have used. And if I let my staff use Vodafone, they will walk out on meetings the moment their dysfunctional but grown-up children call them for a shoulder to cry on? I bet it sounded great in the pitch, but it doesn't hold up.

Eighteen Things Your MI Analysts Would Like You To Know

Everyone can't be top of our priority list. This means you.

Ever wondered how you can do us a favour?

Here's how we set our priorities: 1. your position in the pecking order, 2. the fulsomeness of your last thank-you to our boss, 3. how quickly we can do it, 4. task / project coolness, 5. how important it is to you. Sometimes we don't care about 5.

Your inability to describe what you want is not our failure to understand you.

If it's so urgent, why did you leave it in your inbox for three days?

Don't tell us it should be easy, if it was, you would have done it yourself

Because you're in a panic, we should be as well?

Remember that when they designed the database, they had no idea you would want to know that

Setting delivery dates is not a unilateral exercise

"Challenging" is what knights on horseback do. Colleagues co-operate.

You wouldn't send us an unclear request by e-mail, go on holiday and expect the information in your inbox when you get back. Would you?

The company only provides us with hammers and pliers - that's why all your problems are treated as nails

We have better computers and software at home

If you really want our time and attention, give us some of yours

We are simple people with clever minds that burn sugar: we are not kidding when we tell you to bring chocolate

If in doubt, tell us what you want to prove, who to and why. You would be amazed at how that clarifies your thinking for you.

If it's too secret to tell us about, don't ask us to do it. Find someone you trust. Or decide to trust us.

We work much harder for people we like. Try to be one of those people.

Men Don't Feel Bad When They See This, They Just Stop Buying.

I've tried twice to compose this entry and each time stopped. This is for the simple reason that anyone reading will take one look at a photograph of a male model and think "Oh, I don't know seven dials was gay". Well, I'm not. But you won't be able to stop yourself thinking it when you page down.

And that's why no-one has ever written anything about the subject of male models. Female models they can hardly stop themselves withering on about. If it isn't about how fabulous the girl is, it's about how she's making every other woman in the country feel fat and less-than. Now, how a grown woman could suppose than she's supposed to look like the cutie above, I have no idea.

Because I don't think I'm supposed to look like these guys. If you told me I was, I'd give you the number of the Tavistock Institute and suggest you sign up for some group therapy. I have no idea if they are straight or gay, but I know what fantasy the stylist and photographer are asking them to project.

I don't know how it works for you, but an ad works for me if I can identify in a good way with the people and the message. I see Chris Cox at easyandelegantlife or Guiseppe at An Affordable Wardrobe wearing or discussing something and I pay attention. This is because they are closer to my age and general bodyshape so what works for them might work for me. I see the ad below and I'd like to be able to pay more attention but that just is never going to be my life again. One reason I pay attention is because he has a slight Orlando Bloom thing going and Orlando is the kind of guy I'd've liked to look like when I was his age.

So who are they selling to? I've always had the suspicion that all those high-end editorial pieces in Vogue and Harpers are aimed at the mistresses of rich men. Here's some more stuff for your sugar daddy to buy for you. Is someone telling me that i-D is aiming at the, ahhh, same-market-different-gender? I would at this point put in a photograph from GQ to prove that other magazines use the same sharp-faced, high-cheekboned look on their boy models, except I won't go near GQ now until they stop using those kinds of models. I'd like to wear some of those clothes, but the idea that someone would think I identified with those models is just plain off-putting.

Here's the thing. I don't feel bad because I see implausible-looking boys in fashion spreads. I just stop buying the magazine. (Unless, like i-D, it has more pictures of implausibly-pretty girls in it.) Are we sure that women don't feel the same way and do the same thing? And that all the fuss about how bad the average female feels on seeing an Abby Lee pictorial is, well, just more self-promotion for the fashion business?

Michelle Braun and the Fringe Benefit of Glamour Photos

There was a long article in the May issue of Vanity Fair about Tiger Woods' sex life. Which seems to have been pretty much semi-sham marriage, rich young athelete, lots of girls. Seems he didn't spend much money on them though. Michelle Braun, who's already caught your eye, was the madam who set him up with a lot of dates towards the end. (I know she doesn't look this good in real life, but when guys over the age of, oh, thirty-five, are thinking about sex, this is what we're thinking about.)

What's interesting is the description of her rosta of girls. Loredana Ferriolo, who finally got Tiger spending money, was a Hawaiian Tropic model. Who was being run, or represented, by Ms Braun. It seems that girls good looking enough to model for suntan lotion ads don't go home to a Cup-of-Soup and re-runs of Friends in the evening. They go out for £5,000 or more the time. It's not surprising that porn stars make money as escorts and maybe it's not that surprising that some models do as well. But here's the thought: maybe the real money is in escorting and the porn and the glamour photography (Page Three, miscellaneous men's magazines) is really just, well, advertising. Not for all of the girls, but for far more of them than you might want to believe. Call it a "fringe benefit" if you like.

I'm Seven Dials and I'm an ACoA

I have a drinking problem. For me, one drink is too many and a hundred are too few. I have definite addictive behaviours and tastes - but this is a family show so we're not going to discuss those. Am I an alcoholic? No. I'm an ACoA with a drinking problem. My recovery was / is about gaining self-respect for the first time and a sense of my proper right to advance myself in the world, not about the restraint of a runaway ego that characterises a classic AA recovery. The ACoA "Laundry List" is a better description of me, or at least the earlier me, than any characterisation of the alcoholic in the Big Book. It was reading Beattie's Codependent No More that made me think "Yes! This is me!", not reading the Big Book. I always felt the Big Book should apply to me, but I've heard hundred of people say they felt that it did, right from the start.

I've mooted this idea before, but there's a difference between considering an idea and adopting it. When you adopt an idea you need, amongst other things and in contradiction to Walt Do-I-Contradict-Myself Whitman, to remove those current ideas you have that are inconsistent with the new one. This way change lies, otherwise the result is stagnation (no new ideas) or craziness (rampant inconsistency). You don't do this in one grand gesture but slowly. I know I'm better off for going to at least one meeting a week, but I need to re-think what it is I want to get out of it. I still have the drinking problem, and if I pick up a drink because I think it will make my life better, the next time you see me, it will be in a coffin.

I have a problem with alcohol, but alcohol is not my problem. (AA's love that sort of phrasing - it's probably some rhetorical device with one of those are-you-kidding dog-Latin names.) My problem was / is the ideas about myself and the world and other people I picked up at an early age. My problem was / is finding an accommodation between what I want from people and what they are prepared to give in return for what I can afford in time, money and attention. My problem is that I have an addict's body chemistry (those people who say "I have an addictive personality" don't understand Fact One about addiction, which is that addiction is physical). It gets triggered by booze, chocolate and sex amongst other things.

It's not enough for me to stay clean and sober. Even The Steps aren't quite enough - though both sobriety and Steps are essential. The final part is keeping the dysfunctional, defeatist thoughts at bay - in a realistic manner. None of that New Age affirmations crap for me thank you.

And I'm 56 yesterday. Shit. I am going to be SO poor when I can't earn any more.