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.]

The Hollow Man

Day 23 (Friday 23rd December 2016)

23 shipwrecks, dating from from 1,000BC to 19^th centuryAD, heretofore 

undiscovered, were found and explored off the Fourni archipelago in Greece 

in June/July 2016. The team were co-directed by a University of Southampton 

archaeologist and a member of the Hellenistic Ministry of Culture and Sports. 

Many of the ships were carrying amphoras and the find illustrates importance

of easter Mediterranean trade networks passing by Fourni across the ages,

connecting the Black Sea and Aegean to Cyprus, the Levant and Egypt. 

Some wrecks carried goods from North Africa, Spain and Italy.

We have reached the end of the week leading up to Christmas and I am sure you will agree with me that the blogs so far have been stunning, today's is no exception. It is written by Niall Gavin. Niall lives near Worthing on the south coast of England. You can find him on Twitter (his handle is @niallgavinuk). Niall writes a charming blog: A Little About a Lot. He has suffered considerable ill health over the past couple of years (he had a coronary bypass last year) and hence it was so good to see him in more robust health when we met at a CIPD event a little earlier this year. Niall has had an amazingly varied career; he has been an actor, a fruit-picker, and a postman, to mention but a few of his roles, but then he found his metier: helping others to learn and grow. I have learned much from talking with him and reading his blog.

After many years of public and corporate work, culminating in being responsible for FirstGroup's Learning Technology team, where he developed, facilitated and delivered Technology assisted learning solutions, Niall has branched out on his own as an Independent L&D and Learning Technology Consultant. Neil is a very decent, down to earth fellow. He is a loving husband and father and a delightful friend. he is very popular with people on social media, partially due to his willingness to support others and collaborate - witness his involvement in #LDinsight every Friday morning on Twitter. When enjoying some peaceful time for himself, Niall is a keen walker and also an "armchair astronomer". I'm sure you will enjoy his post below. 

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The Hollow Man

When I first thought about contributing again to Kate's wonderful annual Advent Blog series, this year's theme, "Heights, Hearts & Hollows", initially had me ruminating on last year's cardiac bypass, my recovery, redundancy and further reflections thereon. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I had kind of done that to death, in a series of blogs, tweets and Facebook posts. I'm on a continuing journey here, one that I'm being supported on by friends, family, my personal and professional networks and, critically, paid for - and revelatory - professional counselling. So that's 'Heights and Hearts' taken care of. I'm not going to revisit that stuff here.

Instead, I've let the Universe slowly draw me towards the "Hollows" element of the theme. It's niggled away at me for a few days. I don't really know why. Maybe it's the onomatopoeic quality of the word. It conjours up dark, empty, echoing places for me, and not necessarily in a bad way either. There's a weird attraction in it. Something to explore.

And a particular phrase kept popping into my brain; an evocative, elusive, seductive whisper - 'The Hollow Man'.

I've been sitting with him for a few days now, not knowing who or what he is, or why he should be so insistent on being seen. I've conjoured images of scarecrows, robots (Westworld?), the Wizard of Oz (Scarecrow again, "If I only had a brain", 

and Tin Man, "If I only had a heart"). I remembered the 2000 film with Kevin Bacon, an alternative and darker modern take on HG Wells's "The Invisible Man".

Now, these are all fairly empty manifestations of The Hollow Man, suggesting something missing, something not whole. Something sad. So why was (am) I so taken with the name? I even Googled 'The Hollow Man' to see if I was digging up some long-forgotten or buried memory that would explain his presence. I wasn't.

But then, up popped TS Eliot's poem, "The Hollow Men".

I'm not good with poetry. Never really got it. Still don't, to be honest. Funny that, for someone who claims to love words and takes pride in good use of vocabulary, grammar, spelling, tries to write well and reads a lot. I kinda get Burns and Shakespeare, but most other poetry tends to leave me cold.

So imagine my surprise when, in the first few lines of Eliot's poem, I was presented with a vivid scarecrow image again, in the voice of one of his Hollow Men...

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellar

There's more and, to be honest, it's not the most uplifting read. I had to search further to get some academic insights into the background and some suggestions as to the themes and meanings of the work. But slowly I've started to understand why "the Hollow Man" has been clamouring for my attention - a) there's a lot of them about and b) I don't want to be one myself!

Men - OK, people, but for the most part, it is men - with a hole where their heart should be. With little or no compassion, no respect or feeling for 'other', no capacity to empathise, afraid to see or hear a different colour or opinion. Bigots, trolls, abusers, cowards - psychopaths, even. And then there's the passive, purposeless, complacent people, happy to go with the flow, devoid of ambition or desire to learn and experience new things. Heads full of straw. Stuck. Sad.

We've seen - and, in some cases, been - both types of Hollow Man this year. And next year we will have to live with the consequences. My challenge for 2017 is to not 'wallow in the hollow', but to be braver, to stand up and speak up, to challenge divisive, lazy, anti-intellectual intolerance, both professionally and personally. I posted a tweet in a recent #LDInsight tweetchat - "On this journey, have realised I could have been braver, am still carrying anger, am impatient & now I can do anything".

I shall try.

Speak-out by Marcel Witte

A penny saved is a penny earned

Day 19 (Monday 19th December 2016)

19 August 2016 - the day that London Underground (the world's

Oldest subway system) commenced keeping some of its busiest

tube lines running all night at the weekends. It is estimated that 

these Night Tubes will reduce journey times by 20 minutes, on 

average, for the anticipated 200,000 users.

Mark Husband, the Managing Director of Cogence Search and Head of the Commercial Litigation and International Arbitration practice (with a flair for lateral partner moves), is the author of today's post. Mark is a former lawyer (a successful litigator) and hence he has a genuine understanding of the people in and the area in which specialises. 

Mark is based in London but has operations overseas. He is a great guy to sit and have a chat with - not just about the Law, but about the world in general (as perhaps you can tell from his post below). By his own admission, he "loves a good rant"; I like his wry cynicism and down-to-earth attitude. Mark first contributed to the Advent Blog series in 2015 and it is delightful to have him with us for a second year. You can chat with Mark in person on Twitter (his handle is @MarkHusband). As you will surmise from his post, Mark cares about people and society - a responsible and concerned citizen with a sense of humour.

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A penny saved is a penny earned

Well…maybe.

In this festive period we are encouraged to think of others. So, I thought I would write a note for Kate’s excellent Advent blog on the consequences of taking the title concept too far.

Height of umbrage

There was a small feature on the news this morning that mentioned that many of us will experience problems with parcel delivery services this month. Having just had my own issues with UPS claiming to have attempted delivery on a number of occasions when they had made no such attempt; falsifying tracking data to record the fake attempt; and recording the reason for failure as “problems with recipient”, I recognised the issue. After a number of strongly worded emails the item was eventually delivered.

I felt justified in expressing my dissatisfaction with the service and probably was in many respects, but my problems with this service and those many of us will experience in the next few weeks start with the iffy aphorism at the top!

The company from which I ordered this present (not Amazon in this instance) will have taken up a tender from the lowest bidding delivery company. Built into the tender will have been an SLA (Service Level Agreement) that both parties understood would be more honoured in its breach than observance, but would be available to wave around if required in the event of adverse press attention.

That delivery company in turn will employ drivers on terms which contain KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which are factually impossible to adhere to forcing drivers to take short cuts or, as the excerpt clipped from the BBC website below suggests, risks:

“A BBC investigation has revealed some agency drivers delivering for Amazon drive dangerously because of pressure to finish their rounds on time. An undercover reporter worked long hours for one of the many agencies supplying Amazon with drivers and earned an amount equivalent to less than the minimum wage.”

Heart’s not in it….

I am as responsible for the state of affairs I describe as the organisations concerned - and so are you! We all want bargains. We are participants in market competition that forces companies to trade at margins that do not permit levels of service we or they would consider adequate. We are electing to pay for a poor service that inconveniences us and costs us time, energy and money to remedy. We do this because we think we are saving money!

We use and order things from websites and coffee companies that we know do not pay UK taxes. We know this – we logically know that if these companies do not pay their tax we will have to make up the shortfall out of our own pockets, but it does not stop us!

Hollow words

Admission time: almost all of my presents for friends and family this year were ordered from Amazon. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. What am I thinking? The shops I did not attend did not receive my money to pay the staff who did not serve me; and neither UK corporate tax nor income taxes were generated by my shopping.

In 1st 6 months of 2015 14 shops closed per day in the UK

Ultimately my habits and yours’ mean that people are not employed or are under-employed and rely on tax-funded benefits to survive. We work astronomically hard in the UK, mostly to earn enough after tax to live a decent life. Our individual tax burden is huge – there is almost no such thing as after tax because nearly everything we spend our net income on is taxed further.

Why do we cheerfully volunteer to subsidise the profits of Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc. by paying their taxes for them? 

Clearly we believe we are saving ourselves some money. These little self-deceptions we allow ourselves are not little they are vast, they affect us; our families; our neighbours; and our society. 

I am not about to don a red beret and join the march against globalisation, but having allowed myself to be a part of the problem for a very long time I resolve to think harder about where I spend my money and worry less about whether I am saving a penny and more about the effect of my spending on others.

Source: Office for National Statistics

Now, off to Starbucks….