Douglas Adams’s book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is about that remarkable book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The latter describes all the places worth visiting in the known Galaxy and the best way to get there as a hitchhiker.
As Adams explains, the Galaxy’s pretty big so the Guide has to be careful about how much information it gives on each interesting place it covers. The entry on Earth, in particular, went through successive stages of editing until it was pared down to the laconic ‘Mostly Harmless’.
Clearly, it must have been longer when first penned by the hitchhiker who visited us. I find it interesting to speculate about that visit and just what might have happened between us if his path had crossed mine.
Actually, it probably isn’t that interesting but it’s as good a way as any other of passing the time on a long railway journey.
Let’s suppose that, picking a historical period at random, the visit had happened in early October 2008. He got here by accepting a lift with a group of sociologists in a battered second-hand ship with a lot too many light years on the clock. They were carrying out a study into primitive races in isolated backwaters of the Galaxy and were going to be spending six months here gathering information. They dropped him at Stafford which, unbeknown to its inhabitants, is a major refuelling station for ships with proton-powered engines. This explains why they try so hard to keep the temperature in the place below 15°, with constant water cooling from low-lying clouds.
He spent the early evening with me, after which he took a lift in a freighter heading for Arcturus. It wasn’t really the direction he wanted to go but with so little passing traffic, a hitchhiker can’t afford to be picky.
Here’s the original report he wrote on his lightning visit to our planet.
Notes on a visit to Earth
Be careful if you get a lift to Earth: getting out again can be real hell as the traffic is ridiculously light. It’s not really on the way to anywhere else.
I was in a place called ‘Staff’d’ although my contact on-planet said it was written ‘Stafford’. When I asked what had happened to the ‘O’ and the ‘R’ he told me that this was the way the local tribe, the ‘English’, spelled it. ‘Illiterate, are they?’ I asked. ‘It’s complicated,’ he replied.
He took me out to dinner. We went for what he called a ‘curry’. It was surprisingly tasty considering how drab the surroundings were.
‘The local cooking is good, anyway,’ I told him.
‘Erm… it’s not actually local. It’s from India, which is rather a long way away. Another part of the planet which the English used to own and run.’
‘Why did you run another part of the planet? Couldn’t they run themselves?’
‘Oh no, it wasn’t like that at all. They ran themselves for quite a long time. And they’ve been running themselves again for some time now. We were just there for a while. I think we wanted to be there because it contributed quite a lot to our wealth.’
‘I see. They had more food than they needed so they fed you. And now they’re still feeding you.’
‘Well, no. They actually had less food than we did. And they’re not really feeding us. Most of the Indians over here are English now anyway. And the cooking they do is different from back in India.’
‘So it is local cooking.’
‘It’s complicated.’
Over dinner a lot of the conversation was about a crisis that was taking place at the time. I didn’t completely understand the details.
‘So it’s a really serious crisis is it?’ I asked.
‘Yes, the worst since 1929. Nearly eighty years ago. Not many people alive now were alive then.’
‘Well, that’s not bad. A whole lifetime with only one bad moment. I know places where bad things happen practically every day.’
‘Er, actually, that happens here too. And there have been some other pretty awful moments since 1929: a world war, lots of other wars, various attempts to wipe out entire races of people, hunger, disaster, and so on.’
‘But today it’s worse?’
‘Well, it’s different. It’s an economic crisis. It’s about money. About wealth.’
‘What’s happened to the wealth?’ I looked around. Everyone I could see had a fairly well-fed air. They all seemed to be living quite well.
‘It’s still there. But to keep goods moving so that every one gets the things they need, we have to have a really efficient system of exchange. We had banks taking care of that for us and now they’re in trouble themselves. When the banks get into trouble, we all get into trouble.’
‘So you’re having trouble moving goods round the system?’
‘Yes, that’s about it.’
‘Look, you need to speak to some guys I know in the Crab Nebula. They have these proton drive ships that you wouldn’t believe. Can carry any amount of payload and you can hardly hear them running. And the on-board music system is to die for. You need to get a few of those. You’ll soon have goods moving again.’
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’
The whole thing was apparently being intensified by the fact that another tribe, the Americans, were about to change chief.
‘So why’s that important to you?’
‘Basically the Americans are the most powerful nation on Earth and the wealthiest. What they do impacts pretty heavily on what we do.’
‘So it’s like you and India. They’re from somewhere else but they run you.’
‘No, it’s not like that. We’re friends. We talk everything over with them, to work out what we should do about different things.’
‘And end up agreeing what to do?’
‘No, we end up doing what they decide. That’s why it’s important to work out who’s going to be President.’
‘And who are you going to vote for?’
‘I don’t have a vote.’
‘So they run your life but you can’t vote? Strange kind of democracy.’
‘It’s complicated. And this time,’ he hurried on, ‘it’s particularly interesting because it looks like a black man may get elected.’
‘A black man? What’s a black man?’
‘Someone who has black blood. Well, not black blood. His blood is red like anyone else’s. What he has is a black face. Well, no, actually, not black, more of a dark brown. Although in Barack Obama’s case he’s not that dark. But Black all the same, you know. From Africa, you know.’
I didn’t know and couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
‘Let’s get this right. You’re in England which is being run by America which may be run by Africa.’
‘Not really. He’s actually American, he just looks African.’
‘If he is American he must look American. After all, how else does an American look?’
‘Well, there are white Americans and black Americans. He’s of mixed race. His father was black so he’s black.’
‘Because he has a black parent he’s black? What was the other parent?’
‘White.’
‘So doesn’t having a white parent make you white?’
‘It’s complicated.’
The Arcturan freighter driver came in just then to say he’d finished refuelling and wiping down his ship. He wanted to get going before the cooling system got everything wet again.
Earth seems a bit of a strange place. The locals are convinced that lots of bad things are happening, but to me it seemed mostly harmless.
If pretty complicated.
Friday, 3 October 2008
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Say no to the nay-sayers
According to Thomas Paine, ‘That government is best which governs least’. Paine was no fool. He knew a thing or two.
Sabina Buzzanti’s pretty smart too. She’s an Italian comedian who recently told the Guardian, ‘in a democracy, there’s no right not to be offended.’ She said that because the authorities in Berlusconiland had tried to prosecute her for a tasteless joke she had made about the pope.
That’s feels like a bit too much government.
I get fed up with being over-governed. I get fed up with being told what I can do and I get particularly fed up being told what I can’t do.
That doesn’t mean the sensible things. Why should I drive at speed past a school? Why should I blow smoke in my neighbour’s face? Why should I watch a pirated copy of a film? Well, actually, I might be inclined to reply ‘why not?’ to the last one, but you get the general point.
It’s the senseless, meaningless restrictions that grate on me.
Take Maggie. People used to call her the ‘iron lady’. I used to think of her as the ‘iron lady with the wooden head’. She decided that I shouldn’t read Peter Wright’s book Spycatcher. It was freely available in every country except Britain. I went to inordinate lengths to find a copy of it. My friend Alasdhair got me one in the States and posted it to me. It was one of the most turgid books I’ve ever read and I can’t remember a word of it. Honestly. It was worse than Proust. Worse than The Bostonians. Why, it was worse than Dan Brown. It took me for ever to finish but I struggled on, partly because Alasdhair had taken so much trouble, partly just to spite Maggie. I like to think that I really got under her skin.
And it didn't stop with Maggie. Now we have an Italian comedian ‘guilty’ of mocking the Pope. Hey, this Pope used to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in a previous incarnation used to be called the Holy Office of the Inquisition. He was the inquisitor in chief. And he gets offended by some off-colour remarks?
Of course, the remarks really were off colour. It’s just like the Danish cartoons of the prophet. Why did they publish them at all? What useful point did they make? Who on earth needed them? Being gratuitously offensive is just bad manners and it isn’t funny. To say Bush is stupid is just rude. To say that he’s a shining illustration of just how far a C grade student from Yale can get, is funny because it dresses up the same insult as an apparent compliment and has the advantage of being incontrovertibly true.
It’s also directed against a powerful target. The cartoons were directed against a minority already the butt of worse than humour. It’s like kicking a man who’s down: not attractive, not funny.
On the other hand, I deeply resent anyone preventing me seeing the cartoons. I mean, apart from myself. I was perfectly happy not to read them, I just didn’t want anyone telling me I couldn’t and I get sick of the people who try to. You don’t like the cartoons? Take another paper. You don’t like Buzzanti’s mockery of the Pope? Don’t go to the left wing rallies she addresses. You don’t like Spycatcher? I respect your literary taste. Write a blistering review of the book.
But let the rest of us make up our own minds.
Sabina Buzzanti’s pretty smart too. She’s an Italian comedian who recently told the Guardian, ‘in a democracy, there’s no right not to be offended.’ She said that because the authorities in Berlusconiland had tried to prosecute her for a tasteless joke she had made about the pope.
That’s feels like a bit too much government.
I get fed up with being over-governed. I get fed up with being told what I can do and I get particularly fed up being told what I can’t do.
That doesn’t mean the sensible things. Why should I drive at speed past a school? Why should I blow smoke in my neighbour’s face? Why should I watch a pirated copy of a film? Well, actually, I might be inclined to reply ‘why not?’ to the last one, but you get the general point.
It’s the senseless, meaningless restrictions that grate on me.
Take Maggie. People used to call her the ‘iron lady’. I used to think of her as the ‘iron lady with the wooden head’. She decided that I shouldn’t read Peter Wright’s book Spycatcher. It was freely available in every country except Britain. I went to inordinate lengths to find a copy of it. My friend Alasdhair got me one in the States and posted it to me. It was one of the most turgid books I’ve ever read and I can’t remember a word of it. Honestly. It was worse than Proust. Worse than The Bostonians. Why, it was worse than Dan Brown. It took me for ever to finish but I struggled on, partly because Alasdhair had taken so much trouble, partly just to spite Maggie. I like to think that I really got under her skin.
And it didn't stop with Maggie. Now we have an Italian comedian ‘guilty’ of mocking the Pope. Hey, this Pope used to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in a previous incarnation used to be called the Holy Office of the Inquisition. He was the inquisitor in chief. And he gets offended by some off-colour remarks?
Of course, the remarks really were off colour. It’s just like the Danish cartoons of the prophet. Why did they publish them at all? What useful point did they make? Who on earth needed them? Being gratuitously offensive is just bad manners and it isn’t funny. To say Bush is stupid is just rude. To say that he’s a shining illustration of just how far a C grade student from Yale can get, is funny because it dresses up the same insult as an apparent compliment and has the advantage of being incontrovertibly true.
It’s also directed against a powerful target. The cartoons were directed against a minority already the butt of worse than humour. It’s like kicking a man who’s down: not attractive, not funny.
On the other hand, I deeply resent anyone preventing me seeing the cartoons. I mean, apart from myself. I was perfectly happy not to read them, I just didn’t want anyone telling me I couldn’t and I get sick of the people who try to. You don’t like the cartoons? Take another paper. You don’t like Buzzanti’s mockery of the Pope? Don’t go to the left wing rallies she addresses. You don’t like Spycatcher? I respect your literary taste. Write a blistering review of the book.
But let the rest of us make up our own minds.
Saturday, 27 September 2008
Idling away the time to Paris
Flying is pretty boring, so it was good to be shaken out of my dullness by the sight I saw on the Edinburgh terminal bus as I waited for a Paris plane the other day.
At the back was a man in his thirties wearing – get this – a tweed suit with plus four trousers. You know, the kind Tintin wore, ending just below the knee. It was a good quality suit, a solid green herringbone wool with a subtle yellow stripe. Underneath he had a shirt and tie: clearly a man for whom ‘casual’ wasn’t to be taken too literally. From the knees down he was wearing woollen socks in a pleasing chocolate brown – and here’s the bit that was odd – no shoes.
The only other thing he had was a slightly battered wicker basket. The kind you might buy for your picnic from Harrods, if you were to stoop so low, or maybe from Fortnum and Mason. Although judging by his upper class brogue – he was talking on the phone, to a friend called ‘Sandy’, and saying ‘I’m safely on the bus. It’s all gone smoothly so far’ – I imagine he’d shop at the Edinburgh equivalent of Fortnum and Mason, assuming, that is, that Edinburgh has a shop that good.
It probably does, on balance. I expect.
Can you imagine the picture? Plus fours? Who wears them these days? And a friend called ‘Sandy’? It’s a name for a character in a John Buchan book. If you don’t know John Buchan, don’t bother, unless you like your swash buckled with a fair dose of snobbery and a seasoning of anti-Semitism. Just think ripping yarns about wonderful white men who’ve been keeping the Empire safe from the dastardly Boche and like to do a spot of hunting and fishing in the Highlands, unless they’re keeping the Kaffirs in their place with their Afrikaner friends in the Transvaal.
He was obviously called Algy. I mean, I don’t know that for sure, but it’s the only name that really fits the character, isn’t it? Algy and Sandy. Shouldering the white man’s burden. I suppose ‘Collum’ would probably do but I prefer Algy.
But why was he travelling to Paris without any shoes?
A narrative began to emerge in my mind.
He and Sandy had been fishing for salmon somewhere on the Tay or the Earn or some other less pronounceable Scottish river. Not just fishing: poaching. On the lands of the Marquis of Gleninverloch, the ancestral enemies of their clan. Algy had his great yew rod in his hands, the very rod with which his grandfather had landed a hundred pound fish a century earlier. It was said of that rod, an heirloom in his family, that no fish hooked by a line it held, had ever been lost.
Today, however, he had nearly met his match. The great beast he had hooked showed no sign of giving up the fight. Struggling to hold his footing in his waders, with the water streaming round his knees, he fought the beast. Sandy was holding him by main force to stop him being swept off his feet.
In the end they outwitted the salmon, driving him into shallows where they caught him, gaffed him and dragged him ashore.
But no sooner had they begun to celebrate than they became aware, oh perfidious fortune, that coming down the bank towards them in their velveteens (what are velveteens? I’ve never known but in those old books gamekeepers always seem to wear them) were none others than Gleninverloch’s men, come to put an end to their poaching.
Men of courage though they were, Sandy and Algy had no choice. Pausing only to discard their waders, and to grab the wicker basket in which were concealed the remains of their salmon paste sandwiches, made to a recipe passed down from generation to generation from time immemorial and ever kept secret from the men of Gleninverloch. Never would Algy be the one to reveal to them this ancient and close-guarded secret.
By dint of hitching, taking buses and catching trains, they shook off the pursuit. Finally, Algy arrived breathless and shoeless but his heart alive with the excitement of the chase, at Ingliston and Edinburgh airport. He knew nowhere in the kingdom could give him refuge from his ruthless foes. He decided to make for his uncle’s chateau on the Loire, attracted not just by the prospect of protection that it gave him but also by the opportunity it would provide to renew his acquaintance with his lovely cousin Liselotte there. It was a matter of minutes to purchase a ticket and make for the gate.
No wonder he was telling Sandy that everything had gone smoothly and he was ‘safely on the bus’. I marvelled at the calm with which he spoke, the self-confident smile on his lips.
What a curious, twisted path had brought him onto the same bus as I! Like Wilde in Reading Gaol, I knew what hunted thought quickened his pace and why// he stared upon the garish day with such a wistful eye. As the bus sat by the gate, the engine idling peacefully, I shared his trepidation and his excitement. Would we get away? Would even at this late stage his enemies catch up with him? As we moved towards the aircraft, I shared his growing relief. As the plane rose into the air and set course for the liberty that was Paris, I felt an elation which I knew was a pale echo of his joy.
At Paris airport, he was at the urinal next to mine. On his feet he had expensive, leather walking boots. Just the kind for a bit of a hike in Highlands. And they looked new. New enough to give you blisters if you hadn’t previously broken them in. Just the kind of blisters that make you want to take your boots off at the slightest opportunity.
Better to have dreamed and lost than never to dream at all, but what a shock shattered illusions are.
Still, my disappointment wasn’t total. As well as the boots on his feet, he’d also put a cream-coloured flat cap on his head. A real toff’s cap. The type that screams out to every observer ‘I know I look like a wally, but I’m a wally who can afford to spend more on clothes than you.’
It made up for a lot. He may not have been a swashbuckling hero from a Buchan yarn, a Richard Hannay or a John McNab. But at least he was Bertie Wooster. The upper class drone with more dress sense than common sense. Maybe not a figure of adventure, but at least a figure of fun.
And a nice interruption to the monotony of air travel.
At the back was a man in his thirties wearing – get this – a tweed suit with plus four trousers. You know, the kind Tintin wore, ending just below the knee. It was a good quality suit, a solid green herringbone wool with a subtle yellow stripe. Underneath he had a shirt and tie: clearly a man for whom ‘casual’ wasn’t to be taken too literally. From the knees down he was wearing woollen socks in a pleasing chocolate brown – and here’s the bit that was odd – no shoes.
The only other thing he had was a slightly battered wicker basket. The kind you might buy for your picnic from Harrods, if you were to stoop so low, or maybe from Fortnum and Mason. Although judging by his upper class brogue – he was talking on the phone, to a friend called ‘Sandy’, and saying ‘I’m safely on the bus. It’s all gone smoothly so far’ – I imagine he’d shop at the Edinburgh equivalent of Fortnum and Mason, assuming, that is, that Edinburgh has a shop that good.
It probably does, on balance. I expect.
Can you imagine the picture? Plus fours? Who wears them these days? And a friend called ‘Sandy’? It’s a name for a character in a John Buchan book. If you don’t know John Buchan, don’t bother, unless you like your swash buckled with a fair dose of snobbery and a seasoning of anti-Semitism. Just think ripping yarns about wonderful white men who’ve been keeping the Empire safe from the dastardly Boche and like to do a spot of hunting and fishing in the Highlands, unless they’re keeping the Kaffirs in their place with their Afrikaner friends in the Transvaal.
He was obviously called Algy. I mean, I don’t know that for sure, but it’s the only name that really fits the character, isn’t it? Algy and Sandy. Shouldering the white man’s burden. I suppose ‘Collum’ would probably do but I prefer Algy.
But why was he travelling to Paris without any shoes?
A narrative began to emerge in my mind.
He and Sandy had been fishing for salmon somewhere on the Tay or the Earn or some other less pronounceable Scottish river. Not just fishing: poaching. On the lands of the Marquis of Gleninverloch, the ancestral enemies of their clan. Algy had his great yew rod in his hands, the very rod with which his grandfather had landed a hundred pound fish a century earlier. It was said of that rod, an heirloom in his family, that no fish hooked by a line it held, had ever been lost.
Today, however, he had nearly met his match. The great beast he had hooked showed no sign of giving up the fight. Struggling to hold his footing in his waders, with the water streaming round his knees, he fought the beast. Sandy was holding him by main force to stop him being swept off his feet.
In the end they outwitted the salmon, driving him into shallows where they caught him, gaffed him and dragged him ashore.
But no sooner had they begun to celebrate than they became aware, oh perfidious fortune, that coming down the bank towards them in their velveteens (what are velveteens? I’ve never known but in those old books gamekeepers always seem to wear them) were none others than Gleninverloch’s men, come to put an end to their poaching.
Men of courage though they were, Sandy and Algy had no choice. Pausing only to discard their waders, and to grab the wicker basket in which were concealed the remains of their salmon paste sandwiches, made to a recipe passed down from generation to generation from time immemorial and ever kept secret from the men of Gleninverloch. Never would Algy be the one to reveal to them this ancient and close-guarded secret.
By dint of hitching, taking buses and catching trains, they shook off the pursuit. Finally, Algy arrived breathless and shoeless but his heart alive with the excitement of the chase, at Ingliston and Edinburgh airport. He knew nowhere in the kingdom could give him refuge from his ruthless foes. He decided to make for his uncle’s chateau on the Loire, attracted not just by the prospect of protection that it gave him but also by the opportunity it would provide to renew his acquaintance with his lovely cousin Liselotte there. It was a matter of minutes to purchase a ticket and make for the gate.
No wonder he was telling Sandy that everything had gone smoothly and he was ‘safely on the bus’. I marvelled at the calm with which he spoke, the self-confident smile on his lips.
What a curious, twisted path had brought him onto the same bus as I! Like Wilde in Reading Gaol, I knew what hunted thought quickened his pace and why// he stared upon the garish day with such a wistful eye. As the bus sat by the gate, the engine idling peacefully, I shared his trepidation and his excitement. Would we get away? Would even at this late stage his enemies catch up with him? As we moved towards the aircraft, I shared his growing relief. As the plane rose into the air and set course for the liberty that was Paris, I felt an elation which I knew was a pale echo of his joy.
At Paris airport, he was at the urinal next to mine. On his feet he had expensive, leather walking boots. Just the kind for a bit of a hike in Highlands. And they looked new. New enough to give you blisters if you hadn’t previously broken them in. Just the kind of blisters that make you want to take your boots off at the slightest opportunity.
Better to have dreamed and lost than never to dream at all, but what a shock shattered illusions are.
Still, my disappointment wasn’t total. As well as the boots on his feet, he’d also put a cream-coloured flat cap on his head. A real toff’s cap. The type that screams out to every observer ‘I know I look like a wally, but I’m a wally who can afford to spend more on clothes than you.’
It made up for a lot. He may not have been a swashbuckling hero from a Buchan yarn, a Richard Hannay or a John McNab. But at least he was Bertie Wooster. The upper class drone with more dress sense than common sense. Maybe not a figure of adventure, but at least a figure of fun.
And a nice interruption to the monotony of air travel.
Time flies when you’re having fun
I hadn't noticed till today that on 3 January of this year I completed a quarter century in business. It may have taken a while to remember, but hey, at least I got the year right. It reminds me of when I went to Dublin in 1988 with my family. It was the time of the city’s millennium celebration and we went to several events associated with the celebrations. Everywhere there was talk of things that had happened in the tenth century, but at no point did I see anything about the year 988 specifically. So eventually I asked:
‘If it’s the millennium this year, what was it that happened in 988 that’s so special?’
‘Nothing,’ I was told. ‘We just didn’t think of celebrating the first thousand years of the city until Cork celebrated its eighth centennial. That was such a success we thought we’d better have our own party. We promise not to be late for the next one.’
So late or not it’s time to celebrate my silver anniversary in business. Or perhaps not exactly celebrate. I had, after all, spent most of the previous 25 years determined that whatever else I became, I would not go into business. Probably the best way of marking the moment, in keeping with the public spirit that has led to my publishing much invaluable advice on a wide range of subjects in these posts, is to share the distilled wisdom of my twenty-five years in business. Don’t worry, it won’t take long. It can all be summarised in five useful principles and three telling jokes, as well as one expression which is pretty useless but I include it here because I like it.
If your back’s against the wall, you can’t see the writing on it. That’s probably not true. Most companies in trouble know it very well, but who cares: it’s a great line. It’s like the old one about ‘last year we stood on the edge of a precipice, but since then we’ve taken a great step forward.’
Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission. Your partner, or the police, may find this one a little difficult to go along with. Apply it judiciously. I find it an invaluable justification for doing those things that you know are right (or which you believe are right, which to you is exactly the same thing) and which you don’t actually have the authority to do. If you don’t get fired, they’ll finally give you the authority to do it, just because they get tired of telling you not to. Remember to be ready to say ‘Oh, I’m really sorry to have done that. Again.’
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. It’s a real bore to have to make up for a bad first meeting (as I know from personal experience: just because I’m familiar with the principle doesn’t mean I always live by it). A related notion is that nothing matters more than preparation – and that’s true all the way down the line, for the tenth meeting as much as for the first.
A little learning is a bloody useful thing. What was Alexander Pope thinking of when he described it as dangerous? With only half an hour to present, a real expert can only give you a taste of how much he or she knows. So basically you only need half an hour’s knowledge to sound like an expert. You just have to hope you don’t get asked to keep talking for forty minutes.
A similar principle underlies the following story:
An American businessman was on holiday in the woods with his Japanese friend and colleague. While out walking, they were surprised by a bear who started to lumber after them. As they ran back past their tents, the American was amazed to see the Japanese stopping to put on his running shoes.
‘You’ll never outrun the bear, you know,’ he pointed out.
‘I don’t need to outrun the bear,’ replied the Japanese, ‘I just need to outrun you.’
You don’t need to be the best, just better than your immediate competitor, or just better than you’re expected to be.
You probably know the next one but it’s still worth repeating because the underlying truth highlights one of the most common business problems.
A man walking through the woods suddenly heard someone swearing profusely. He walked through to a clearing where he saw another man sitting on a tree trunk which he was trying to saw, while turning the air around him blue with his curses.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked the first man.
‘It’s this damn saw,’ replied the second, ‘it’s blunt.’
‘So why don’t you sharpen it?’
‘I don’t have time.’
It never ceases to amaze me how often my colleagues waste hours and make exhausting efforts doing work the wrong way, where just taking a little time out at the beginning would allow them to do it much more effectively and much more quickly. To be honest, I’m amazed how often I do that myself, but I tend to draw attention to that a bit less.
The next one highlights a point that’s as common as the blunt saw problem.
A tourist stopped a passer-by in a village in Ireland and asked whether he was going the right way for Dublin.
‘Oh,’ he was told, ‘if I was going to Dublin, I wouldn’t start from here.’
How often do people say 'We have to do this but can't with the team we have/the resources we have/the company we have'. That’s just a way of saying that we need to get to Dublin but we can’t do it from where we are.
And here’s my useless expression, drawn from the time when the guru-followers were all saying we should never talk about problems – there were only opportunities. A speaker at a conference I attended mentioned the concept of the ‘insurmountable opportunity’ which I thought was a great antidote to happy-clappy thinking.
I suppose the final principle is never to underestimate the importance of salesman. They may sometimes be arrogant, even deeply obnoxious, though some – particularly any who happen to read this – can be thoroughly charming. They’re also absolutely essential. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, without an effective sales force you’re heading for the scrapheap. But a lot of good companies have gone to the wall because they’ve preferred to have outstanding engineers, building great products, than to put up with the necessary – the essential – evil of salesmen.
And that’s about it. That’s all it takes to achieve success in business. As they used to say at Lehman Brothers.
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
The things we say
Do you want evidence that the human mind works in tortuous ways? Do you need evidence of it? Either way, look no further than the structures of that most human of activities, language.
Take the sentence ‘it was cold’. It’s something I’ve had plenty of call to say since our move back to England, along with ‘it is cold’, ‘ it will probably be cold tomorrow’ and the variants with ‘wet’.
In English, I just say ‘it was’ (simple past) and ‘cold’ (simple adjective).
In Japanese, however, you have to say ‘it is’ (present) ‘cold-in-the-past’.
Who on Earth dreamed that up? Or who dreams that up-in-the-past?
Take the sentence ‘it was cold’. It’s something I’ve had plenty of call to say since our move back to England, along with ‘it is cold’, ‘ it will probably be cold tomorrow’ and the variants with ‘wet’.
In English, I just say ‘it was’ (simple past) and ‘cold’ (simple adjective).
In Japanese, however, you have to say ‘it is’ (present) ‘cold-in-the-past’.
Who on Earth dreamed that up? Or who dreams that up-in-the-past?
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Funny how things work out: Leeson and poetic justice
I'm delighted with the way things have worked out for Nick Leeson (so far).
He’s chief executive of Galway United Football Club.
What do you mean you’ve never heard of them? They were runners up in the Irish League in 1985-1986.
But in 1995, Leeson’s name was known around the world. He had displayed a certain carelessness with money that had cost his employer, Baring’s Bank, £827 million and then its existence. Baring’s, the biggest investment bank in Britain, had lasted nearly two and half centuries. It took Leeson little more than two and a half years to finish it off.
He did spend some time inside, and not just anywhere: he was in Changi gaol in Singapore, once made notorious for the mistreatment of Commonwealth prisoners of war interned there by the Japanese.
It’s easy to imagine the dreariness and thanklessness of his existence. Even so, it must be preferable to his time in prison.
According to tradition, Attila the Hun died of what would have to be called the mother of all nose bleeds: a massive internal haemorrhage. The man who had drowned nations in blood ultimately drowned in his own. Many delighted in the scourge of God being struck down by God, or perhaps by the gods, depending on theological preference.
Attila was a bloodthirsty warrior and Leeson was a derivatives trader. Attila wiped people out, Leeson wiped out their probably ill-gotten gains. Attila’s weapon was the sword, violent, simple, chillingly comprehensible. Leeson’s was a series of financial instruments, where even the word ‘instrument’ is pretty obscure (I like to think of him as a financial sousaphone player) and certainly they caused no-one’s death (or at least not directly).
Attila drowned in blood. Leeson vegetates in Galway. There are times when there seems to be measure and justice in the universe after all.
He’s chief executive of Galway United Football Club.
What do you mean you’ve never heard of them? They were runners up in the Irish League in 1985-1986.
But in 1995, Leeson’s name was known around the world. He had displayed a certain carelessness with money that had cost his employer, Baring’s Bank, £827 million and then its existence. Baring’s, the biggest investment bank in Britain, had lasted nearly two and half centuries. It took Leeson little more than two and a half years to finish it off.
He did spend some time inside, and not just anywhere: he was in Changi gaol in Singapore, once made notorious for the mistreatment of Commonwealth prisoners of war interned there by the Japanese.
It’s easy to imagine the dreariness and thanklessness of his existence. Even so, it must be preferable to his time in prison.
According to tradition, Attila the Hun died of what would have to be called the mother of all nose bleeds: a massive internal haemorrhage. The man who had drowned nations in blood ultimately drowned in his own. Many delighted in the scourge of God being struck down by God, or perhaps by the gods, depending on theological preference.
Attila was a bloodthirsty warrior and Leeson was a derivatives trader. Attila wiped people out, Leeson wiped out their probably ill-gotten gains. Attila’s weapon was the sword, violent, simple, chillingly comprehensible. Leeson’s was a series of financial instruments, where even the word ‘instrument’ is pretty obscure (I like to think of him as a financial sousaphone player) and certainly they caused no-one’s death (or at least not directly).
Attila drowned in blood. Leeson vegetates in Galway. There are times when there seems to be measure and justice in the universe after all.
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Learning to dive with Bill
Sport does you the world of good. However, you have to treat it with the proper respect and minimise the risks: after all you want it to improve your health, not undermine it by causing you injury.
Scuba diving in particular is a high-risk sport. Properly organised schools ensure that you learn about them in a controlled environment and train you in the skills required to avoid the inherent dangers.
For instance, it is extremely dangerous to remove your mask while submerged. It may lead to your lungs filling with water and most experts agree that this can be career-limiting. Similarly, if you surface too quickly from depth without taking the proper precautions, you may bang your head against the bottom of the dive boat. As well as being painful, this may, if the damage to the hull is substantial, involve you in significant expenses for which you have not allowed.
So it makes sense to get properly trained first.
Most dive schools start their training in a swimming pool. This has got to be a good idea since it provides a completely controlled environment. Unfortunately, I have to admit to my shame that it doesn’t really do it for me. ‘Controlled’ is the only good thing I can find to say about that environment.
One of the two main things I loathe about swimming pools is the noise. Do architects have to take special acoustic qualifications to be allowed to design swimming pools? Have you noticed how they invariably design them in such a way that they just ring with noise, an echoing, reverberating, dinning noise which moves beyond simple sound to become pure discomfort?
The other thing is of course the smell of chlorine. Who on earth wants to spend time in those conditions? It’s a vile stench. How on earth can that be conducive to health?
But I could overcome my dislike of swimming pools if it weren’t for the actual content of the training. Often they start you off, in full kit, lying on the floor, next to the pool, not in the water at all. Well, I know safety and health are important, that life is nothing without them and all that, but frankly dignity too is not without its value. What dignity is there in flailing about on the particularly unpleasant surface they always seem to lay alongside swimming pools, with a tank on your back and a wet suit on your body? Honestly. The expression ‘a fish out of water’ to indicate inappropriateness and unsuitability wasn’t invented by chance, you know.
Then they get you in the pool itself and you swim up and down in there. Great. When did you last see any old wrecks in a swimming pool? Actually, I have to admit I was invited once to the house of a friend of mine – an acquaintance, really – with more money than taste and watching him reclining in his inflatable water armchair would certainly fit the description ‘an old wreck in a swimming pool’. But I have to say I wouldn’t go diving to see such a sight.
All this swimming pool stuff seems a bit over the top.
Fortunately, it isn’t absolutely necessary. You can learn to dive the Bill way.
Bill was an American in his 70s living in Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. He had a superbly athletic body, tanned to perfection, with a shock of white hair. He could have stepped straight out of a Hemingway novel: you could imagine him battling for twenty-four hours with a marlin.
He used to drive bunches of tourists out to the reefs in a battered old motor boat. Once we were at the diving spot, he brought out two crates of Coke bottles which he deftly uncapped, tipping part of the contents of each bottle overboard. Then he brought out a plastic jerry can of industrial-strength rum with which he topped up the bottles again. He offered these basic Cuba Libres to us all. Of course, safety comes first so there was a strict limit on how much we could drink before we went diving – I think it was a maximum of two each although I suspect that we would probably have lost count after two anyway.
He then gave us the safety briefing and basic instruction. He told us to keep breathing, though not too fast. If we ran out of air in the tanks, we should head for the surface. The surface was upwards, in the same direction as the sunlight.
Then we went over the side and had a glorious initiation to the joys of diving. No swimming pool racket, no smell of chlorine. Just a reef, flamboyant water plants and fish you could feed with pieces of urchin. The sense of freedom that movement in three dimensions gives, like flying over an enchanted landscape, was indescribable. A moment in paradise, in other words.
Who could want for more? And though his teaching methods were unconventional, casualty numbers were low. Our losses were minimal.
That’s what I call sport that generates real well-being.
Scuba diving in particular is a high-risk sport. Properly organised schools ensure that you learn about them in a controlled environment and train you in the skills required to avoid the inherent dangers.
For instance, it is extremely dangerous to remove your mask while submerged. It may lead to your lungs filling with water and most experts agree that this can be career-limiting. Similarly, if you surface too quickly from depth without taking the proper precautions, you may bang your head against the bottom of the dive boat. As well as being painful, this may, if the damage to the hull is substantial, involve you in significant expenses for which you have not allowed.
So it makes sense to get properly trained first.
Most dive schools start their training in a swimming pool. This has got to be a good idea since it provides a completely controlled environment. Unfortunately, I have to admit to my shame that it doesn’t really do it for me. ‘Controlled’ is the only good thing I can find to say about that environment.
One of the two main things I loathe about swimming pools is the noise. Do architects have to take special acoustic qualifications to be allowed to design swimming pools? Have you noticed how they invariably design them in such a way that they just ring with noise, an echoing, reverberating, dinning noise which moves beyond simple sound to become pure discomfort?
The other thing is of course the smell of chlorine. Who on earth wants to spend time in those conditions? It’s a vile stench. How on earth can that be conducive to health?
But I could overcome my dislike of swimming pools if it weren’t for the actual content of the training. Often they start you off, in full kit, lying on the floor, next to the pool, not in the water at all. Well, I know safety and health are important, that life is nothing without them and all that, but frankly dignity too is not without its value. What dignity is there in flailing about on the particularly unpleasant surface they always seem to lay alongside swimming pools, with a tank on your back and a wet suit on your body? Honestly. The expression ‘a fish out of water’ to indicate inappropriateness and unsuitability wasn’t invented by chance, you know.
Then they get you in the pool itself and you swim up and down in there. Great. When did you last see any old wrecks in a swimming pool? Actually, I have to admit I was invited once to the house of a friend of mine – an acquaintance, really – with more money than taste and watching him reclining in his inflatable water armchair would certainly fit the description ‘an old wreck in a swimming pool’. But I have to say I wouldn’t go diving to see such a sight.
All this swimming pool stuff seems a bit over the top.
Fortunately, it isn’t absolutely necessary. You can learn to dive the Bill way.
Bill was an American in his 70s living in Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. He had a superbly athletic body, tanned to perfection, with a shock of white hair. He could have stepped straight out of a Hemingway novel: you could imagine him battling for twenty-four hours with a marlin.
He used to drive bunches of tourists out to the reefs in a battered old motor boat. Once we were at the diving spot, he brought out two crates of Coke bottles which he deftly uncapped, tipping part of the contents of each bottle overboard. Then he brought out a plastic jerry can of industrial-strength rum with which he topped up the bottles again. He offered these basic Cuba Libres to us all. Of course, safety comes first so there was a strict limit on how much we could drink before we went diving – I think it was a maximum of two each although I suspect that we would probably have lost count after two anyway.
He then gave us the safety briefing and basic instruction. He told us to keep breathing, though not too fast. If we ran out of air in the tanks, we should head for the surface. The surface was upwards, in the same direction as the sunlight.
Then we went over the side and had a glorious initiation to the joys of diving. No swimming pool racket, no smell of chlorine. Just a reef, flamboyant water plants and fish you could feed with pieces of urchin. The sense of freedom that movement in three dimensions gives, like flying over an enchanted landscape, was indescribable. A moment in paradise, in other words.
Who could want for more? And though his teaching methods were unconventional, casualty numbers were low. Our losses were minimal.
That’s what I call sport that generates real well-being.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
