Is a classic 1965 song by Tony Hatch sung by Petula Clark. Baby Spice – I'm sorry, Emma Bunton - did a version in 2006. (That's over forty years later: those songs were a darn sight stronger than we all thought at the time. Quick: name a song written in 1925 that was in the charts in 1965. No? Thought so.) It's about how you will shake off the blues so much better if you go to the heart of the Big City – even when I first heard it, I assumed it was about Manhattan, not London – and seek out entertainment there. One reason it's strong is that it has an six-line verse, a five-line verse and a chorus. The third three-line verse is:
And you may find somebody kind to help and understand you
Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to
Guide them along...
So, maybe I'll see you there
We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares and go
Okay. Now, who is Petula singing as and to whom? Sometimes girls sing boys' songs just because that's how it worked out in the A&R meeting. Well, she must be singing as a woman to a man – right? In which case, she's waiting for you downtown, and in 1965 there weren't that many professional women drowning their sorrows after work. Of course, she could be a professional with an older profession.
The key words are: “Someone who is just like you”. Just like you (a boy) how? She's a girl in 1965 and back then girls weren't like men like they are now, in 1965 women were different. And if she was a girl meeting your boy, why would you need a "gentle hand to guide [you] along"? You're a boy, she's a girl, and back then boys and girls who were out late knew what they were out late for. It was a damn sight less coy than it became later. But if you're a boy and she's not a girl, but a boy, and it's 1965, well, then everyone needs a gentle hand to, err, guide them along.
Damn. Another great song that's actually about the gay life. Listen to it on You Tube anyway.
Monday, 31 August 2009
Friday, 28 August 2009
Brief Holiday
On Wednesday and Thursday I took a couple of days in north Somerset, where I stayed overnight in Dunster, walked on the sands of Blue Anchor and Dunster beaches, up to Dunkery Beacon and along the Quantocks. I broke the drive down to have lunch at Glencot House...
...and then took a walk on the Quantocks which started in an obscuring mist that cleared enough to see the reactor houses at Hinckley Point. (Click on the photos for a little more details)
The north Somerset area, between Bridgewater and the Devon border, is a time-warp: I've been going there since the late 80's and it hasn't changed in any way. If anything the fields and forests are lusher than they were twenty years ago: the hedges are certainly higher.
It's a very marked contrast to north Devon - for reasons that turned out to be bad, I thought it might be an idea to look at Ilfracombe, and was reminded of why I never go to English seaside resorts.
On the next visit I will work out some way of breaking up the drive back. Two and a half hours of on the A358 / A303 leaves me feeling a little hyped at the end. The trick is to avoid the M25 during the rush hour, which means you have to pass it before about four in the afternoon or after about eight in the evening, so you leave either just after an early lunch or have a very long day. I will also remember to stay for some time in one place on the return day – perhaps sit on the beach for a couple of hours – so that I don't spend the whole day driving. I will also remember to take the camera along when I'm on the beach.
I'm very bad at taking going-away-somewhere-holidays and this was the first this year. I thought that if I kept it short and simple, it would give me some encouragement to take a longer, foreign, jaunt later on.
...and then took a walk on the Quantocks which started in an obscuring mist that cleared enough to see the reactor houses at Hinckley Point. (Click on the photos for a little more details)
The north Somerset area, between Bridgewater and the Devon border, is a time-warp: I've been going there since the late 80's and it hasn't changed in any way. If anything the fields and forests are lusher than they were twenty years ago: the hedges are certainly higher.
It's a very marked contrast to north Devon - for reasons that turned out to be bad, I thought it might be an idea to look at Ilfracombe, and was reminded of why I never go to English seaside resorts.
On the next visit I will work out some way of breaking up the drive back. Two and a half hours of on the A358 / A303 leaves me feeling a little hyped at the end. The trick is to avoid the M25 during the rush hour, which means you have to pass it before about four in the afternoon or after about eight in the evening, so you leave either just after an early lunch or have a very long day. I will also remember to stay for some time in one place on the return day – perhaps sit on the beach for a couple of hours – so that I don't spend the whole day driving. I will also remember to take the camera along when I'm on the beach.
I'm very bad at taking going-away-somewhere-holidays and this was the first this year. I thought that if I kept it short and simple, it would give me some encouragement to take a longer, foreign, jaunt later on.
Monday, 24 August 2009
Am I A Nerd?
I'm never really sure if I qualify as a techie person. I don't have a zillion computer manuals at home, I have a Mac but haven't been drawn to the rocks of the Unix command line (oh goody, I can practice my awk!) nor started to learn Ruby. On the other hand, my recent reading has included Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, Ashley Kahn's The House That Trane Built and I'm currently three-quarters through William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, plus I'm still working my way through Hartshorne's Algebraic Geometry and I check in with Daily Dose of Excel every day. I think that makes up for not getting down and dirty with Xcode yet. There's more to being a nerd than programming.
Anyway, there are two wonderful essays about techie types. Peter Seebach's Care and Feeding of Your Hacker and Michael Lopp's (aka Rands) The Nerd Handbook. Both are well worth a read. Rands has a terrific line about the Nerd's “annoyingly efficient relevancy engine”: “your nerd’s insatiable quest for information and The High has tweaked his brain in an interesting way. For any given piece of incoming information, your nerd is making a lightning fast assessment: relevant or not relevant? Relevance means that the incoming information fits into the system of things your nerd currently cares about. Expect active involvement from your nerd when you trip the relevance flag. If you trip the irrelevance flag, look for verbal punctuation announcing his judgment of irrelevance. It’s the word your nerd says when he’s not listening and it’s always the same. My word is “Cool”, and when you hear “Cool”, I’m not listening.”
Of course, you understand, that's not me. I do not sit in meetings doodling over a problem while monitoring the blah-blah (excuse me, I mean, insightful discussion) for anything remotely connected with me or my job. I do not scan the conversations around me in cafes for anything cute, silly, interesting or memorably pretentious. I don't have problems keeping focussed on what someone is saying if I'm not interested – of course not. Nor do I take one look at a woman and decide a) what it is about her I find sexy and attractive, b) if I would sleep with her if I had the chance, c) if I have a remote chance, and if the answer to a) is “Nothing” or to b) or c) “No” then she vanishes from my world like a passing bus. I'm not that shallow. I'm looking for People Like Me (aren't we all looking for People Like Us?) and given how specific a description that is, my relevancy engine has a default setting of “Off”.
By the way, if you think this is a bad habit of nerds, you haven't been brushed off by a really top-notch networker at an industry event: those guys can be halfway to their next target before they've stopped shaking your hand because they realised you are way too low on the corporate tree to be useful to them. Watch Four Weddings and a Funeral and see the way Corin Redgrave seems to shake Hugh Grant's hand affably while utterly ignoring him (it's in wedding two).
What's interesting to me right now about this is the identity: am I really a Nerd? And if I am, how do I get to be a better Nerd? Because I've spent a lot of my life avoiding certain nerdhood things. For instance, Star Trek and general Trekiness no, Battlestar Galactica yes; tee-shirts with words on them, no, shirts from Jermyn St, yes. There is room here for the idea of a “gentleman nerd” and I'm going to elbow me some out.
Anyway, there are two wonderful essays about techie types. Peter Seebach's Care and Feeding of Your Hacker and Michael Lopp's (aka Rands) The Nerd Handbook. Both are well worth a read. Rands has a terrific line about the Nerd's “annoyingly efficient relevancy engine”: “your nerd’s insatiable quest for information and The High has tweaked his brain in an interesting way. For any given piece of incoming information, your nerd is making a lightning fast assessment: relevant or not relevant? Relevance means that the incoming information fits into the system of things your nerd currently cares about. Expect active involvement from your nerd when you trip the relevance flag. If you trip the irrelevance flag, look for verbal punctuation announcing his judgment of irrelevance. It’s the word your nerd says when he’s not listening and it’s always the same. My word is “Cool”, and when you hear “Cool”, I’m not listening.”
Of course, you understand, that's not me. I do not sit in meetings doodling over a problem while monitoring the blah-blah (excuse me, I mean, insightful discussion) for anything remotely connected with me or my job. I do not scan the conversations around me in cafes for anything cute, silly, interesting or memorably pretentious. I don't have problems keeping focussed on what someone is saying if I'm not interested – of course not. Nor do I take one look at a woman and decide a) what it is about her I find sexy and attractive, b) if I would sleep with her if I had the chance, c) if I have a remote chance, and if the answer to a) is “Nothing” or to b) or c) “No” then she vanishes from my world like a passing bus. I'm not that shallow. I'm looking for People Like Me (aren't we all looking for People Like Us?) and given how specific a description that is, my relevancy engine has a default setting of “Off”.
By the way, if you think this is a bad habit of nerds, you haven't been brushed off by a really top-notch networker at an industry event: those guys can be halfway to their next target before they've stopped shaking your hand because they realised you are way too low on the corporate tree to be useful to them. Watch Four Weddings and a Funeral and see the way Corin Redgrave seems to shake Hugh Grant's hand affably while utterly ignoring him (it's in wedding two).
What's interesting to me right now about this is the identity: am I really a Nerd? And if I am, how do I get to be a better Nerd? Because I've spent a lot of my life avoiding certain nerdhood things. For instance, Star Trek and general Trekiness no, Battlestar Galactica yes; tee-shirts with words on them, no, shirts from Jermyn St, yes. There is room here for the idea of a “gentleman nerd” and I'm going to elbow me some out.
Friday, 21 August 2009
Make sure the staff toilets work before you ask for excellence
"How dare you ask for excellence when the staff toilets are filthy!". This is in a Tom Peters book – Liberation Management, I think. Before he went new age on us in the late 90’s, Tom was more of a Good Guy in the same spirit as Robert (Up The Organisation) Townsend than all that big-company ass-kissing in Pursuit of Excellence suggested.
I have worked for a company (an FTSE-100 household name) that asked for excellence from its staff and gave them a building where the toilets backed up regularly. I saw the cisterns once when the maintenance door was open – you and I have better equipment at home.
How can the company ask for excellence from you and me and let the landlord get away with toilets that don’t work? Well, if they think they really are providing an environment where you and I can be excellent, then they are a) self-satisfied or b) not very well travelled. If they know they are not providing that environment, then they are either c) going through some PR motions or d) just trying it on, e) so dumb they don’t know what "excellent" means. How dare they be a) complaisant, b) provincial, c) devious, d) taking the Mickey or e) dumb and then ask you to be self-critical, experienced, honest, straightforward and smart?
That’s why the toilets have to work before you can ask your people for excellence.
I have worked for a company (an FTSE-100 household name) that asked for excellence from its staff and gave them a building where the toilets backed up regularly. I saw the cisterns once when the maintenance door was open – you and I have better equipment at home.
How can the company ask for excellence from you and me and let the landlord get away with toilets that don’t work? Well, if they think they really are providing an environment where you and I can be excellent, then they are a) self-satisfied or b) not very well travelled. If they know they are not providing that environment, then they are either c) going through some PR motions or d) just trying it on, e) so dumb they don’t know what "excellent" means. How dare they be a) complaisant, b) provincial, c) devious, d) taking the Mickey or e) dumb and then ask you to be self-critical, experienced, honest, straightforward and smart?
That’s why the toilets have to work before you can ask your people for excellence.
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Steal, Don’t Plagiarise
Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said that "second-rate artists plagiarise, first-rate artists steal". Plagiarising is passing off other peoples’ work as your own: it’s intellectual theft, it’s misrepresentation, it’s dishonest and you will never be allowed in the playpen again once you have been caught at it.
What Wilde meant by stealing is different: he meant that great artists take from the work of others. They take a character, a plot, or idea, a trick, a phrase, a colour, a shape, a technique, any damn thing they can get their hands on that helps them solve a problem in their own work. Visual artists and designers of all stripes sometimes call it "inspiration", but what they mean is that they took someone else’s idea and used it to develop their own ideas. Mathematicians and scientists put this at the core of their practice: they use other people’s results and techniques and give out credits in a footnote or the name of the theorem or algorithm.
Steal, don’t plagiarise. Look at the work of other people and take whatever techniques and ideas from them that you need to get your own work done.
What Wilde meant by stealing is different: he meant that great artists take from the work of others. They take a character, a plot, or idea, a trick, a phrase, a colour, a shape, a technique, any damn thing they can get their hands on that helps them solve a problem in their own work. Visual artists and designers of all stripes sometimes call it "inspiration", but what they mean is that they took someone else’s idea and used it to develop their own ideas. Mathematicians and scientists put this at the core of their practice: they use other people’s results and techniques and give out credits in a footnote or the name of the theorem or algorithm.
Steal, don’t plagiarise. Look at the work of other people and take whatever techniques and ideas from them that you need to get your own work done.
Monday, 17 August 2009
Know what you’re going to do when it doesn’t work
Confidence is not believing that your plans will work out or that the worst won’t happen: that’s optimism. Confidence is knowing that you can recover when things go wrong. The military have a saying about plans: "no plan survives its first contact with the enemy". Contingency planning is essential: working out what might go wrong and how you are going to cope with it.
This is why you read the manual, hire good people and train the rest: good people will have the knowledge to fix it when it goes wrong. To put the same thing another way: you don’t hire a professional builder to chase in a water pipe, you hire them because they know what to do when the bricks fall out of your wall. (This actually happened during some work I had done on my bathroom.)
Some things aren’t supposed to have another door: marriage, children, joining the Mafia, ageing and taxes. Which is why people invented divorce, adoption and the Netherlands Antilles, and continue to look for something to slow or reverse ageing. (You can’t get out of the Mafia.)
"Never enter a room with only one door" should be a Russian proverb if it isn’t already. Always have a way out, a Plan B. That way you don’t have to worry about what happens if something goes wrong.
This is why you read the manual, hire good people and train the rest: good people will have the knowledge to fix it when it goes wrong. To put the same thing another way: you don’t hire a professional builder to chase in a water pipe, you hire them because they know what to do when the bricks fall out of your wall. (This actually happened during some work I had done on my bathroom.)
Some things aren’t supposed to have another door: marriage, children, joining the Mafia, ageing and taxes. Which is why people invented divorce, adoption and the Netherlands Antilles, and continue to look for something to slow or reverse ageing. (You can’t get out of the Mafia.)
"Never enter a room with only one door" should be a Russian proverb if it isn’t already. Always have a way out, a Plan B. That way you don’t have to worry about what happens if something goes wrong.
Friday, 14 August 2009
The Twelve Promises
If you want to see how well your recovery is doing, the Twelve Promises make a good check. I thought it was time I did this.
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. I'm not sure about “half-way through”, but I'm amazed now.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. Not so much. I've definitely lost the old misery, but I'm not sure I really do happiness. There's always something else I want to be doing and somewhere else I'd like to be – I just don't get upset or sad about it anymore.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. Okay. Signed up to this one.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. Yes. I'm still a fidgit, I can't keep mentally still either and I have no idea if this is what you mean by “serenity”, but compared to what I used to feel like, this will do.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. Now I have a thing with this. I'm not sure my experience is of any benefit to anyone else. Or maybe I don't know how to share it so it is. I hardly ever share, unless it's round-robin, because I can never think of anything I need to say.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. Okay. Signed up to this one as well.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Not so much on this one. I used to be interested in other people in an unhealthy co-dependent way and I've stopped that. I'm not sure I know how to relate to people in a healthy way. And I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with people when I've got them. Well, I am, but I'm quite happy going to the movies or on holiday or out for a meal on my own. I always feel I have to “deal” with people when I'm with them socially.
Self-seeking will slip away. Okay. Signed up to this one.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Not so much on this one. I'm outwardly more upbeat and socially-skilled, but inwardly nothing has changed much.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. For a long time I misunderstood this one: I thought it said “economic insecurity will leave us”. It doesn't. It says the fear of it will leave us. It has. I always forget that fear of people is supposed to leave me. I don't think I ever was afraid of people – see previous comments.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. Yes, I handle things a lot better these days. But if someone kicks in the emotional dynamic of my father, I'm off the rails.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. I'm going to pass on this one. God is a metaphor for me, and this promise needs him/her/it to be real.
It's not all supposed to happen at once anyway. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
Amen.
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. I'm not sure about “half-way through”, but I'm amazed now.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. Not so much. I've definitely lost the old misery, but I'm not sure I really do happiness. There's always something else I want to be doing and somewhere else I'd like to be – I just don't get upset or sad about it anymore.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. Okay. Signed up to this one.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. Yes. I'm still a fidgit, I can't keep mentally still either and I have no idea if this is what you mean by “serenity”, but compared to what I used to feel like, this will do.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. Now I have a thing with this. I'm not sure my experience is of any benefit to anyone else. Or maybe I don't know how to share it so it is. I hardly ever share, unless it's round-robin, because I can never think of anything I need to say.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. Okay. Signed up to this one as well.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Not so much on this one. I used to be interested in other people in an unhealthy co-dependent way and I've stopped that. I'm not sure I know how to relate to people in a healthy way. And I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with people when I've got them. Well, I am, but I'm quite happy going to the movies or on holiday or out for a meal on my own. I always feel I have to “deal” with people when I'm with them socially.
Self-seeking will slip away. Okay. Signed up to this one.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Not so much on this one. I'm outwardly more upbeat and socially-skilled, but inwardly nothing has changed much.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. For a long time I misunderstood this one: I thought it said “economic insecurity will leave us”. It doesn't. It says the fear of it will leave us. It has. I always forget that fear of people is supposed to leave me. I don't think I ever was afraid of people – see previous comments.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. Yes, I handle things a lot better these days. But if someone kicks in the emotional dynamic of my father, I'm off the rails.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. I'm going to pass on this one. God is a metaphor for me, and this promise needs him/her/it to be real.
It's not all supposed to happen at once anyway. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
Amen.
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