This restless festive season - Day 30

Sunday 30th December 2018

30 teeth can be found in an adult cat's mouth. Cats have 4 canine teeth. The canine teeth, used for
catching and killing prey, sit in beds of sensitive tissue that let the cat feel what it is
gripping. Kittens develop 26 needle-sharp milk teeth which are replaced by adult teeth at 6 months.

I hope you are enjoying a peaceful and relaxing weekend - the last one of 2018. Things are calm at my end - despite a few heated discussions about the seating plan for my son's 21st party. I must confess, not counting the current debate about the party, much of this year has been challenging. We have achieved a lot at work and I have a wonderful and award winning team, but family matters have been tough. I won't miss 2018 - it has had some scarring and serious low points/complications and I dread the early months of 2019, as the dust has yet to settle. Perhaps that is what inspired be to this year's theme for the Advent Blogs - Heartache, Hopes and High-fives. Roll on the high-fives...

Our contributor today is Paula Aamli, a highly intelligent and inspirational lady who has already done much to make the world a better place. She deserves a high-five just for being who she is. She has a First Class Degree from Oxford in Modern History under her belt and a Masters with Distinction from Hult Ashridge, in Sustainability and now she is a doctoral candidate on the Executive Doctorate in Organisational Change, at Hult Ashridge, where Steve Marshall is her supervisor. Her topic of interest is around organisational change to support more sustainable business and personal lives and she is very interested in creative methods (hence the photography and the poetic writing below - NB all the photos are Paula's own work, except for one taken which was taken by her partner). Given Paula's background one perhaps should not be surprised at her area of academic study...she has worked within the Not for Profit arena as an Appeal Manager for Christian Aid and then the Development Director for The Brightside Trust when the charity was just establishing itself, before moving into Financial Services.  She has championed accountability and ethical conduct at HSBC for many years as well as helping people within the bank to develop and grow. Since June she has been the Head of Governance and Control for the UK Private Bank, working directly with the CEO and the top team. Paula is described by those who know her as dynamic, energetic and possessing a ruthless attention to detail. I am sure that you will enjoy her post. Paula is on Twitter - her handle is @paulettya.

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Photo credit S. Rosbottom

The shape of this year’s holiday break

For the second year in a row, I’m spending nearly full two weeks over the Christmas break tucked amongst the creaky drafts of an old house that stands braced on a hillside overlooking Carmarthen Bay.

I have hungered for this retreat from city crowds and work deadlines, but now that it is here, I resist the slowing that this place calls for in me, with its large horizons and small settlements, the subtle beauty of its muted colour palette, the grey-greens and grey-blues and grey-browns that offer unblinking contrast from the neon brights of Regent Street, where my everyday commute-path so recently took me.

I – did not – expect – this.

I expected to transition effortlessly, gracefully, into unscheduled expansiveness.

It was, after all, whilst hidden here last year that I started really paying attention to how it felt to take time away from my blue-light screens and nerve-end-twitchiness of constant deadlines and to drift, aimlessly purposeful, through that large, cold, damp sand-landscape. Reader, it felt great.

I found a dawning conviction that spending deep, unhurried time in nature changes something in humans (in me!) that desperately needs shifting if we are to move away from lifestyles based on casual, unthinking gouging of the environment that we depend upon and which sustains us. 

As a wanna-be organisational change practitioner, I also had a conviction-that-looks-a-lot-like-a-hope that this change can (and does and will) lead to better decision making, better outcomes and better quality of experiences as individuals and networks and communities and organisations.

So I was looking forward to resuming last year’s cozy communing, but with the benefit of the work and wondering and wandering that I have lived in the meantime.  Apparently it doesn’t work like that; seems that you can’t start where you were, that you have to start where you are.

Where I am, this year, is finding that I unexpectedly miss the un-picturesque little loops of paths, tracks, parks and pavements that I have strolled and traipsed and marched through in my corner of East London in the last twelve months. And thus it came to pass that over Christmas 2018, I have called upon my most precious, efficacious super-power, gifted to me by my Irish great-grandmother by way of my Welsh mother: the gift of bloody-mindedness.

Reader, it has been less of a joy and more of a grind, but I have walked, faithfully, every day, anyway. In the spirit of “eat-your-veg/do-your-homework”, I’m betting on persistence paying off in the long run.

Beach-side high fives

Every day, then, as the sea-water creeps back from the land, revealing the wide expanse of the low-tide beach, I have donned wool socks and plastic shoes, a rucksack or shopping bag, and of course, my faithful iphone to tick off the footsteps (if my app doesn’t track a walk, did it even happen?) and set out. Sometimes I walk alone and sometimes S comes with me. Our front door to St Katherine’s Island and back is a solid 4 miles but can only be completed when the tides permit.

It has become an informal family tradition that we pick up plastic litter from the shoreline as we walk. Every time, I marvel at how an apparently pristine beach yields up so much rubbish once you start tuning in to looking for it. I also bless our fortune, with every footstep, that being situated on a tucked-away corner of the planet that is not opposite the sloppy sprawl of some great city, we are chasing the detritus left by tourists and trawlers but do not have to contend with the plastic avalanche of so many consuming bodies. [But the ghost of the Sea Empress oil spill whispers in the air as I type this.]

Every day has been a walk just for the sake of walking; every day except one. Christmas Eve was my dash-of-shame into town, alone, for some last-minute Christmas presents, but the miles still called me.

I shrugged the loaded rucksack onto my shoulders, clinking with Christmas gin. A large shopping bag in each hand, I set off for the western edge of the beach, one and a half (ish) miles away. I trudged across damp sand, bags flapping when the wind occasionally caught them. Tenby “mist” settled on my face and on the shopping bags as the lowering cloud stooped down to touch the beach – but the bags weren’t heavy and the presents seemed to be coping ok with the gentle overlay of rain.

It’s a long and, relatively speaking, featureless expanse of beach that serves as part of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, after walkers drop down from the clifftop path on Giltar Point. People travelling in opposite directions can see each other approaching across the full length of the beach, slowly expanding from small dark distant specks to fill out human stature as we finally draw towards passing each other.

An older couple were walking towards me, well-kitted-out for the weather conditions. Mindful of the season, I made eye contact as we reached a passing point; then, to my reserved, British astonishment, the lady started towards me, smiling. “I just wanted to say”, she said – “what a surprising, lovely sight you make. A lady who has done her Christmas shopping and is carrying it home along the beach, looking for all the world as though she is heading off into the middle of nowhere. Well done, you.”  A smile and a brief exchange of Christmas greetings and she is gone. “High five!” she didn’t add – but I can see how, in another context, that would have been the obvious sentiment.

It was a memorable moment for me, not just given the shock of experiencing two British strangers finding it in themselves to chat, unprovoked, to each other, in public, but also because I was genuinely taken aback to be seen as doing anything out-of-the-ordinary. Just me, just walking home. Just carrying my hasty last-minute shopping because I’d been too disorganised to do it sooner and bring it down by car. Of course, I had the advantage of knowing that there’s a village just beyond the sand dunes at the non-town end of the beach (assuming that the lady I was speaking to isn’t a Pembrokeshire local).

Hope and heartache mingling on the sea edge

I suppose the other thing of note here is that – chore or otherwise – I don’t really experience the beach as empty or ‘other’. This beach seems full – teeming with sea-life, sure, but also full of hints and vestiges of the long life-story of the earth that has created it.

I look at the sand of the beach and I remember the long ages that ground rocks to make it – and the longer ages before that where the rocks themselves were formed from the ancient life of the more ancient seas. I see generations of living things cycling through millennia to this moment, and cycling away from now into a vast, remote final future.

I find myself to be tiny and brief in context of this tremendously enduring earth history, which is immensely humbling of course, but also strangely comforting, somehow, that after all that has happened – that human consciousness exists at all, that I, specifically I, have arrived into my moment in the story, along with my friends and family, community and nation, and the wider nations that surround us.

Our problems are significant, but the earth will endure (until, in the very far distant future, it doesn’t). Maybe there are ways I can’t see yet that will enable humans to endure and continue along with it.

The edge of the world (January 2015)

I went down to the edge of the world to watch the passing of this age.

The sun spills amber liquid on the wet cleg underfoot.

I feel the hug of the ground.

I hear the soothing shrieks of feathered sentinels overhead.

I see the end of days written on the rock teeth that still seek to consume,

Clutching at Caldey in the maw of the sea.

I see a time where the stars burn up and the clouds sigh into nothing,

For there is no more rain, and the pale blue atmosphere has boiled into the black.

I see how vast my now-beach is, and how tiny,

wrapped around with waves, and cliffs, and birds, and stones, and shells.

It contains the tiniest moment

And yet the whole big universe is here with me, also

Waiting on the beach for night to fall.

All together, we wait – witnessing.

[As stated above, all the photos are Paula's unless otherwise indicated.]

Voices in my head

Day 39 (Sunday 8th January 2017)

39 - the number of years since Carrie Fisher appeared in the first Star Wars film.
She played the role of Princess Leia with a combinations of grit and wit - much
in the way that she approached her wider life. In addition to being an actress
she was a writer, producer and humorous commentator, as well as a candid voice on
what it is like to be an addict and a sufferer of various mental health issues.
Carrie Fisher died on December 27th 2016, 4 days after experiencing a medical emergency on
a cross-Atlantic flight. Her mother, the actress and film star Debbie Reynolds, died the following day.

It's a whole week since those New Year's celebrations - how are your resolutions holding? 

Today's post comes to us from Switzerland. It is written by the lovely Sara Wyke who lives in Geneva with her family and is able to take a boat to work across the lake to Lausanne every day (I am very jealous). She is a Learning and Development specialist for Frontiers, the open-access academic publisher specialising in scientific peer and post publication reviews, established by scientists, in 2007, as a spin-off from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

Sara, who is British, is married to a wonderful Belgian fellow and they have two daughters, whom she refers to as Tiny and Bean. Sara studied Environmental Studies and Psychology at university in the UK. She remains interested in others and the world. She is active on social media and can be found on Twitter under a simple "Sara", her handle is @TeenyTinyBean.

I have added a couple of illustrations, but all of the photographs have been supplied by Sara.

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Voices in my head

I like a challenge. It really helps me focus, and I love the feeling of achievement when I accomplish something.

This year, I was looking for a challenge, something to take my focus off a job that had become more draining than enjoyable. Over the last few years I have taken to cycling around the lake as my yearly challenge with my friend Andrew. It's a big stretch for me to cycle 170km in a single day, especially considering that I don't do that much training to be in peak shape. This year I wanted something different, I wanted some space for myself. I don't like to think of myself as selfish, but this year I really wanted to focus on me.

I had loved reading and watching Wild byCheryl Strayed, and played by Reese Witherspoon. Like many people who enjoyed the story, I pictured myself doing a similar  adventure, but could not imagine being away from my family for so long, let alone the financial cost, since I am the main breadwinner. So I turned to more books for inspiration, next came the Hairy Hikers trek from the Atlanticto the Mediterranean along the Pyrenees. I thoroughly enjoyed David Le Vay's easy prose, and klutzy travel story. I noted with joy, that he had done a second book and quickly bought and devoured that story.

This was my challenge, I had found it, the Tour du Mont Blanc hiking around Mont Blanc.

It was a big enough challenge, hell it was a huge challenge for me. I dabbled in some hiking, having been dragged along with my parents through my teenage years. But this was for me, all of this was for me. I was going to hike alone, and the wrong way round just to ensure that I was alone rather than falling into step with other hikers.

Why the huge desire to go it alone? well I think I have always been a people pleaser, and it is exhausting. At work I rarely said no, I don't think I knew what limits were. I never understood people who said something was out of their scope... I get it now. So at work I was exhausted from always being switched "on", constantly trying to put my best face on, even in tough times. Then at home with Tiny & Bean I would always try to keep them happy, doing whatever I thought was the "right" thing. You see, the thing is, I've had some tough times in the last 2 years. Now I don't want this to be a sob story, but to be frank I had a burn out in the summer of 2015, and 2016 was looking like it could head the same way if I didn't do something about it.

So the hike was my time to be alone, focus on me, and not have to please anyone else.

I loved the planning stage of this challenge, I think I listened to the hairy hikers about 15 times in a few months, David Le Vay's soothing voice filling my ears as I drove to work. Sometimes It was the only thing I looked forward to about going to work, and, looking back, that should have been a huge warning. I started telling people about my idea in May, but it wasn't until June that I really started to believe this would happen. I booked the time off work, and gosh was that needed. My Fab hubby would take Tiny & Bean up to Belgium for the week I was away, but asked "could you be back on Monday?". This didn't seem to faze me, perhaps it should have done since it meant me doing the hike in 9 days instead of the usual 12 recommended in the guide books.

I booked my accommodation each night, I planned my route in detail, gathered my equipment and looked forward with a fluttering tummy. I decided to raise money for Mind with the hike, but I honestly didn’t put much effort into fundraising (We are Mind). When the day arrived, I sat in the car at the starting point about 2 hours' drive from home and asked myself if I was really going to do this? "Hell yes!" came back the answer loud and clear so out I got, loaded up my rucksack, and hit the trail.

I walked. In low cloud on the first day, then in shining sun and blistering wind. I crossed streams, rock fields and snow (once on hands and knees, but that's a whole other story!). I did meet people, lovely people, either crossing paths or at the refuges in the evening. I was slow, often being the last person to arrive at the shelter at night. I injured my knee early on and this made the walking both slow and painful, especially downhill, but it didn't stop me.  One particular night I arrived where I had planned to sleep, only to be told the hostel had closed down and the next place was another hour away. It was already nearly 9pm and dusk was falling. I cried, the only tears of the trip. But then I asked myself "What are you going to do? Sleep in the open?" and again the answer was loud and clear "Get Walking now!"; I hiked as fast as I could that evening. Arriving at the refuge in Bionnassay at 9.15pm and laughed with pure relief. The beer that night was the best.

The last day was the longest day ever. It was the world cup final and I wanted to arrive in time to watch and relax. I hadn't counted on the double mountain pass, as well as the injured knee, slowing me down. I hiked. I hiked. I hiked. Evening was closing in, I was back in Switzerland now, and the final stretch. Except the snow had been late this year, and so, even though it was July, the snow melt was swelling all the streams that cascade down the mountains. My path was covered in streams that should have been dry by now. Instead they were torrents that I needed to cover, hopping from rock to rock. The sunlight fading, my knee in agony, fatigue filling my body. There were no villages that I could stop in and add an extra night. A dreaded the thought of me slipping in one of these streams, gashing my leg, breaking a bone or 2. What would happen to me then? All alone? My voice came back louder this time, "KEEP GOING, You can do this". So I kept going, it was long, it felt like the longest day of my life.

I arrived back at the start point at 10.30pm and slept in my car that night, after watching the second half of the football. It was the most comfortable bed of the adventure.

It is now December, and I have a new challenge ahead, an exciting new job building the L&D and HR function in a fast growing start-up, ready for the next stage of growth. Looking back I realise that during my long hike, for all my efforts to be alone, I was not. I had a strong, determined, resourceful woman with me the whole way, all I had to do was listen to my own voice.

9 days

172km

376,010 steps

A Slice of Good

Day 28 (Wednesday 28th December 2016)

28 years since the English wine estate, Nyetimber, was established.

In June 2016 Nyetimber was deemed better than Champagne in a 

blind tasting in Paris - 9 out of 14 judges (all leading oenophiles) 

preferred a £40 bottle of English Nyetimber to a £65 French Champagne.

Gosh, those 4 days went swiftly. For those of you returning to work today, I hope you have a productive and peaceful time; and for those not going back to work - may the festivities continue... You could try today's post to get you in a celebratory mood (or at least one that makes you reflect on how we react to celebration, success and failure).

I always love welcoming new voices to the series and today I am pleased to introduce you to Johnny Parks. Johnny lives in Belfast - he has just bought a wonderful old bank with planning permission to turn it into a dwelling - which will happen in 2017 - I've seen some of the plans and it will be stunning. Transforming a traditional building and giving it a new future in some ways symbolises Johnny and his work. He is a top psychologist and specialises in helping individuals and organisations understand themselves and hence manage their way towards a desired better future, through necessary and successful change. 

Johnny was a rebellious child and has had an unconventional route to becoming the founder and Director of the highly respected business consultancy, Toward. He started his career in a lowly role at Kentucky Fried Chicken, in Bangor, whilst at the same time doing youth work. His potential was spotted by the community development and regeneration specialist Maggie Andrews, who persuaded him to apply to university - resulting in his attaining a BSc in Community Youth Work at the University of Ulster (he also has a Masters in Managing Voluntary Organisations and a degree in Child Development Psychology). After working with disenfranchised and disillusioned youth, and doing some amazing work to help heal society in Northern Ireland, Johnny turned his sights on business. He could see the need for leaders to enhance their skills and grow as individuals. He founded the consultancy, Toward, in 2006 and the business is now active in the UK, the Philippines, India, Europe, Silicon Valley and Ireland. Johnny is naturally passionate about organisational development, based on workplace psychology, and great, but challenging (in a good way), to work with.

Johnny is an amazing man on so many levels: a devoted husband to Cathy and a father (with a fabulous relationship with his sons); a keen sportsman (both playing and watching); a loving Christian; and an excellent musician. He composes, sings and plays a mean guitar (and occasional harmonica). Johnny is naturally creative and a congenial connector - he is well-known in both the artistic and business communities in Belfast, and beyond. You can connect with him on Twitter (his handle is @johnny_parks). 

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A Slice of Good

November 2013. Aviva Stadium, Dublin. Tension.

Bloody, damned tension.

Why, oh why, can’t it just be joy and a bit of fiddly-dee? Nope, here we go again…tension.

90 seconds to go. Buttocks clenched, breathing ceased, eyes on stalks. Gripping the hands of my 2 eldest boys. Wrestling for a defeat as if preordained.

Only seconds before, gleefully, I had said to the boys, “Gather your stuff…we’re invading the pitch!” “Isn’t that against the law Dad?” came the response. “Yes, but it’ll be worth it lads! A night in jail to see Ireland make history against the All Blacks! It’ll be worth it!”

Then, they did what they always do. They bloody well beat us. Again. In the dying seconds.

If ever there was a FFS required, this was the time. FFS! They beat us again.

We went home on the train, with hundreds of other supporters. Hardly a cheep…just a humdrum murmuring, possibly the influence of the liquid sedative.

I’m not exaggerating by saying that it took me and my boys months to recover. I know that’s being a bit dramatic, but we are a rugby family and we’re immensely respectful and proud of the gladiators who choose to battle for a small and relatively insignificant slice of glory. They’re not arresting Fascism, but it still means something. We. Were. Gutted.

As a proud rugby nation, that embarrassing and persistent little monkey had lived on our backs for too long. But, fortunately, if you pressed fast-forward for 3 years you’d see that it was firmly & finally chucked into the mincer.

6^th November 2016 and we were gathered around the TV at my in-laws. The match was being played in Soldier’s Field, Chicago, otherwise we’d have been at the Aviva, Dublin in person. It’s really hard to explain the emotion we were feeling before the match. There was a deep, fragile and extremely private hope. Although, it felt like you couldn’t whisper anything remotely hopeful for fear that you alone would jinx the whole affair. We were shtum. We knew we had a good team but we knew that they had an awesome team. And, what was worse, we knew that they knew that they had an awesome team. FFS! Why couldn't they just be a little bit crap?

Anyway, you may or may not know but on that glorious and unforgettable day, we, the Irish nation, beat the All Blacks (the best sporting team in history, ever) for the first time. *Sigh* 106 years of defeat and shame put to bed. It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. When the whistle went, we leapt up, embraced each other, spilt drinks, yelled, high-fived, danced and, I’m delighted to say, cried. I think someone even started singing ‘One’.

For days we talked about it, watched every interview & read every article. I’ve never listened to as many podcasts in my life! Podcasts! My and my boys grinned. Even when they had to get up with the birds the following Monday for school, they grinned. It was remarkable!

For some, sport is an annoying pop-up. For our family, it’s part of our identity. We follow certain teams, people & events. We love the drama of it all but we worship those who relentlessly pursue excellence and glory. It's primal, evolutionary and deeply sophisticated. It's the combination of art, intelligence, team and sacrifice that is so compelling for us. We’re hooked.

When Robbie Henshaw (Ireland’s no. 12) scored that try in the dying minutes, we knew we’d won. And, for some weird reason, it meant something. It was just so bloody beautiful…just for a few minutes. Minutes I'll never forget.

Yes, this year has been all kinds of weird but there’s been some good stuff too and I just wanted to share a slice of the good we’ve had with you.

40-29 to Ireland. Thank the Lord.

Ireland’s Jonathan Sexton converts their first try [©INPHO/Dan Sheridan]