Tag: Life

Turn the clock back

Daily writing prompt
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
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Innovation is much of a byword. Climate crisis, feeding the world, ending wars, curing disease, creating endless energy, conquering space – they can all be done if someone, somewhere, just invents something smart right now. We are greater believers in the power of “invention” than we have ever been. Doesn’t matter if sitting on the right or left of politics.

Invention and discovery are not the same. Discovery is to uncover something we had not known or understood before. However, that something was always there waiting to be discovered.

Invention is for makers and dreamers. A contraption, a connection, a way of doing business, a machine or a crazy idea. Invention has a huge spectrum. I’ve never been to the Heath Robinson Museum[1]. Now, I mean to go.

To un-invent presupposes that it can be done. It has been done in the past. The classical world benefited from inventions that were lost in the dark ages. Later to be rediscovered.

Genuinely to uninvent is hard. Human imagination, with so many people on the planet, mitigates against it. Uninventing may be a short-lived move.

My view is that it would be best to try to un-invent a damaging idea or process. For example, let’s uninvent slavery or subjugation.

[1] https://www.heathrobinsonmuseum.org/

Just Culture

My thought is that we’ve forgotten the discussion of more than a decade ago. There was a time when the thoughtful reflections on responsibility and accountability were much discussed.

Without focusing on specific examples, there are plenty to choose from, there’s the propensity of our institutions and politicians to reach for “blame” as a first response. When situations go bad the instinctive inclination to hunt out someone to blame. This is an all too prevalent habit.

Naturally, in cases, there’s the strong need to identify who is accountable for bad decisions. Society does not like it when the powerful protect, cocoon themselves and grab for immunity. Certainly, some people and organisations are genuinely blameworthy. However, if we scrutinise and point the finger of blame, it doesn’t help if that finger is pointed at a person’s honest errors. There isn’t a human on this planet who hasn’t made an error.

The finger of blame is easily pointed. Judgment so often falls after an event. The time when more is known, and hindsight comes into play. This tips the balance. It’s so much easier to say: why on Earth did you do that? I would never have done that.

For people to come forward and be fairly heard in an open and fair inquiry or investigation they need to have the confidence that they are not stepping into a public blame-fest. Without trust between those on all sides of it’s less likely that the truth will come out.

“Just Culture” is a concept written into aviation legislation and followed by others. The overriding aim is to learn from mistakes. It’s the surest way of not repeating the same mistakes time and time again. It’s beneficial to have that long-term learning objective. Why suffer the pain of a bad event when the means to avoid it are known and understood?

Now, I’m going back 20-years. I remember being part of an international working group[1] called GAIN. The group compiled guidance about organisational culture. At the time, the group was considering the subject in the context of the air traffic profession. Guidance like the one referenced, emphasise that a Just Culture is not simply a no-blame culture. It’s not, and never has been a way of circumventing accountability.

Determining culpability can be complex. There’s often a test to consider the wilfulness of the participants in a bad event. In other words, did they carelessly, intentionally, maliciously or negligently make decisions that resulted in the bad event? In these cases, the “they” could be an individual or an organisation.

Gross negligence, wilful abuses and destructive acts should be addressed by the enforcement of laws. If we say the criminalisation of honest people involved in bad events has a negative impact. That is not to negate the need for enforcement. Regulators in all sorts of walks of life have a duty to apply enforcement where and when it’s appropriate. Maybe we ought to have applied that to the UK water industry.

My plea here is to first consider the nature of the events in question. Was there an element of genuine honest human error? Is the right balance being struck between the need to learn and the need to ensure accountability?

NOTE: Just Culture is defined in EU law as “A culture in which operational staff or others are not held accountable for actions, acts, omissions or decisions commensurate with their experience and training, but gross negligence, intentional violations and destructive actions are not tolerated” EC 376/2014 Art. 2 Para. 12.

[1] A Roadmap to a Just Culture https://flightsafety.org/files/just_culture.pdf

Mojo

There are days when I walk down the street, and everything is peaches and cream. I smile. People smile back. And there are days when I walk down the street, and everything is gloomy and downcast. I frown. People frown back. Like a coin has been flipped.

It’s true there are one or two tiggers to these phenomena. One is so British it’s often taken for granted. The marked difference between a warm, sunny summer day and a chilly, grey overcast winter one can be massive. Fresh green leaves, flowering plants and dry footpaths are on one side of the coin. Bare trees, barren hedge rows and cold puddles underfoot are on the other.

Those are the environmental factors that play with us poor humans as if we were puppets. It’s so much easier to feel optimistic and upbeat when the weather treats us kindly. Air, light, and heat cast a magical spell over all of us. We spend our savings, and we jump on aeroplanes to seek out these influences.

My thoughts stray into the realms of the unknown. I can be analytical and scientific about what sets feelings or moods for a day. What I see and hear can defy simple explanation. Dig deep enough and logic can prevail but not always. Not on every occasion.

I walk down the street perfectly cheerful about the world and its ways, at a time when the world kicks back. Equally, I walk down the street gloomy and pessimistic with the world and its ways, at a time when the world beams happily. What’s going on? Is it me?

An unexplainable factor is interfering. It’s as if I’ve flipped from a good mojo to a bad mojo. There it is. A word that wraps up an intangible feeling. A mysterious material hanging in the ether. My mojo. Or the mojo of those around me. The term is in common usage, so it must be meaningful in some useful sense. We certainly sprinkle the word into conversations when it’s clear that something magical has been lost or is drifting away.

My conclusion is that its one of those phenomena that just must be accepted. It’s written into nature. It’s an example of random chance in everyday life. It’s a probability that can’t be calculated. Even the most sophisticated computation isn’t going to tell that my lottery ticket numbers are winners on any one day, or not.

Today, my mojo and me are happy. But I can’t say much about what might happen tomorrow.

Chat

Yesterday afternoon, at the till in a major supermarket and the man in front of me was getting stressed. I was standing in line waiting without a care in the world. In front of the man, in front of me, the till assistant, or checkout operator, dependent on how you see it, and a customer were locked in day-to-day conversation. Just being sociable. From what I could hear that customer may have once worked in that supermarket at some time.

The man in front of me was getting grumpy. He turned back and muttered his disdain for the shop’s staff because they were holding him up. Their everyday conversation was an afront to him. They were wasting his valuable time. Not overly aggressive but he had an agitation that often comes from a degree of unwelcome stress. He was in a hurry or at least heavily felt the pressure of time.

When I got to the till the assistant asked: What did he say? I quickly paraphrased what was said. Conscious that I had no desire to inflame the situation that had now passed by. Reactions can be unpredictable. We live in an era of polarisation.

The gentleman working at the till was into small talk. He clearly loved to chat to customers. Then for me he put that in context. He said that when it gets to about ten, in the evening, people are more than happy to talk as they pack their shopping. With some people it’s the only conversation they have in a day. He was proud that staff were encouraged to be warm and friendly.

Now, there’s a contrast. The life of Mr busy, busy, busy verses the life of the forgotten. That division is at the heart of one of society’s biggest troubles. A tribe that is over-employed, anxious, and living on the edge and a tribe that is lost, lonely and forgotten.

One prone to exasperation and being impatient. The other desperate for social contact and empathy. How on earth did we construct a society that tries to work on that level? Not only that but supermarket managers are desperately trying to automate everything[1]. Already there’s three types of automation in that you can do your own till check in a couple of different ways.

The milk of human kindness shouldn’t be sneered at. Wow. You see how quickly I reverted to Shakespeare without even knowing it. That simple phrase has its origins in the play Macbeth. The play that I was forced to read at school. The play that did nothing much to lift my appallingly bad grades at English. To Lady Macbeth, the “milk of human kindness” was objectionable. To her real men had no need of it. We all know where that led. Don’t go there.

So, next time you are standing in a short que, stomping your feet, imagining the clock spinning around, give it a rest. If you find yourself thinking this is too much, I can’t deal with it anymore, do a double take. Relax. Breath slowly. Dig deep and discover some small talk. It might be more meaningful than you first think.

On another subject. I agree with Graham Nash[2]. A day in the life[3] is a truly great song. It’s life as a musical tapestry. The song wanders around the mind using hardly any words but painting a picture all the way up to the sky. I’ll not heaping yet more praise on The Beatles, they’ve enough for several centuries. That said, May 1967 was a magical moment. Even if I did only know it with toy cars and in short trousers. It’s not the daily news but I’ll bet there’s probably now more holes in Britain’s roads than ever.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170619-how-long-will-it-take-for-your-job-to-be-automated

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Nash

[3] https://genius.com/The-beatles-a-day-in-the-life-lyrics

1974

Inflation. A sign of our times. What in days gone by could be bought for a penny, now you need at least 50 pence. Coins exist for a few more years but their fate is sealed. This week, my 50p got me a 7-inch single from 1973. A flash of memory. Top of the Pops with Alvin Stardust[1] appeared like magic. It was in an unregarded box in the corner of a high street charity shop. What a delight to pick up such an important historic artifact for only 50p. A relic from my past.

With a typically glam pop music title, “My Coo Ca Choo” gave Alvin Stardust a Christmas hit in the 70s. On TV, he dressed in black leather like an imaginary Gene Vincent. Mind you, most of us kids of 1973 had no idea about 1950s rocker Gene Vincent. So, Stardust carried it off, acting out a rock-a-billy character to the delight Christmas audiences. He’ not remembered the way that Slade are remembered. To me there a connection that unique.

These threads. These recollections centre around brief and happy moments. The formidable farmhouse of my youth had more rooms than we ever used. Downstairs at the front of the house were the two square living rooms. Both with tall sash windows looking out to the South. On the one side was our everyday living room. On the other was a room that was kept for special occasions. High days and holidays. Oddly that room was called by us “New Room”.

We all decamped into the New Room for Christmas. That’s where the Christmas tree sat. That’s where the decorations went up. It took a while to get the room into a comfortable, liveable state. Most of the year it was relatively neglected. After the fireplace had been stoked up, bringing warmth, and drying out the damp outside walls, the room became the centre of our Christmas days. The “nice” sofa was pulled up to get the most warmth from the compact fireplace. Still there was plenty of space to litter the room with games, toys and torn wrapping paper.

It was the Philips company that introduced the first compact cassette recorder[2]. Until I looked it up, I didn’t know that it was as early as 1963 that the cassette first appeared. Cassettes dropped in a world dominated by vinyl records. So, the ability to record sound, without spending a pile on a reel-to-reel tape machine, was a great novelty and a lot of fun.

At first, I thought this Christmas memory was from 1973 but it couldn’t have been. It must have been 1974. That’s me at 14. Already at that age, I had a strong interest in electronic bits and pieces. My hobby was finding out how things worked. Often testing them to destruction. Living on a working farm there was plenty of opportunity to get to know about mechanics, hydraulics, and electrics. A little of chemistry too. However, for me circuits, valves and transistors had a particular fascination.

Christmas present in 1974? Well, it was a classic Philips compact cassette recorder and a K-tel compilation cassette called “Dynamite”. I must have had some blank cassette tapes too. What a compilation tape that was! Mud, Wizzard, Suzi Quatro, Mungo Jerry, Nazareth, Steeleye Span, Alice Cooper and, you guessed it, Alvin Stardust. 70s glam pop at its hight.

My flash of memory was sitting on the carpet to the left of the tiled fireplace engrossed in 1974’s Christmas present. I still have K-Tel’s Dynamite in a box somewhere. From yesterday, I have at least got a 7-inch single, in good condition from that distant era.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/23/alvin-stardust

[2] https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co465542/philips-portable-tape-recorder-tape-recorder

1982

In 40 years, much has changed but not everything. For me, a good part of 1982 was spent in Buckhorn Weston[1]. A small village on the edge of the 3 English countries, Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire.

It was the year, I graduated from Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry (The Lanch). Having been a student apprentice, I returned to the employer who had sponsored my engineering education. That company and its name have disappeared from the lexicon of British manufactures. The Plessey company[2] was divided and swallowed up by others. The work that it did, at that time, continues but as part of a large European multinational organisation[3].

As a young design engineer, I found myself developing low noise preamplifiers. Yes, at that time analogue electronics played the major part in our lives. Digital systems were starting to break through as the recipe of choice for new designs. Each engineer had their own hardback orange catalogue of Texas transistor–transistor logic (TTL) chips[4]. It was the new frontier. Speculation was rife about growing miniaturisation.

It was a year of change. However, the pivotal moment of mine didn’t come until the end of the year. I was a fresh 22-year-old graduate with ambition and a rosy outlook as to what the world had to offer. Economically, the UK had been through some depressing years but in late 1982 the job market was good for a graduate of electronic engineering.

Living in the Dorset village of Buckhorn Weston had its eccentric moments. There were more than a few evenings spent at The Stapleton Arms[5]. On the opposite side of the road to the pub was a Post Office and a telephone box. When I moved to the village, I had little idea how that vivid red telephone box would shape my life for decades.

The daily routine started to have a rhythm to it, as there was a great deal to do at work. There wasn’t a moment when my diary wasn’t full. The summer had opened wonderful opportunities to cruise around the West Country lanes in my bright yellow MG Midget. My family being near by meant that family occasions didn’t go amiss either.

Then a Christmas party in Bristol had unexpected repercussions. It was early December. A good friend from The Lanch had got a job in Bristol working for a wine merchant. I had no hesitation in saying “yes” to an invitation to a party in the city. It wasn’t far to travel.

Now, 40-years on, Sue and I enjoy a life in the southeast. At that Bristol party we met for the first time. That’s when the cold nights standing in a village telephone box started. So, red Post Office telephone boxes will always have a special place in my heart.

In this mobile phone orientated era, a line from Monty Python comes to mind: “And you try and tell the young people of today that … they won’t believe you”[6]

[1] https://bwandkmpc.org/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessey

[3] https://www.thales.com/

[4] This remains with us in a different form https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/scyd013b/scyd013b.pdf

[5] https://www.stapletonarms.co.uk/

[6] https://genius.com/Monty-python-four-yorkshiremen-live-annotated