Tag: Life

Events, my dear boy

It’s strange that with all the bumps, bruises and grazes that I’ve had so far, that I’ve never broken a bone. I’ve fallen off motorcycles, had bales of hay dropped on my head, almost drowned in rivers, damaged cars and had a couple of workshop accidents. I guess I am extremely fortunate, let’s say lucky, when I think on a couple of past accidents.

Of all the events that I can recount only a couple have left their mark. That indelible mark that’s a sign of life’s travels and travails. One finger wouldn’t be graded ten out of ten in a finger competition. My forehead has a small mark, could call it a dent, hardly noticeable by anyone other than me. That’s the list. Thankfully a tiny list.

I’m not counting a botch job of a hospital scare that a boyhood appendicitis left me. Images of that time don’t stack up to a big pile but one of rolling in agony on a living room sofa, I’ll never forget. A colourful children’s ward and unendingly cheerful nurses stick too. And a clown.

There are those near misses that leave no physical signs. Rich selection of memories. An acute compression in time. The electrical shocks I’ve had have no legacy other than my great respect of high voltages. Vivid recollections too.

Yes, if it wasn’t for a wide-awake race marshal at a grass track meeting[1], I’d probably have been run over you a Laverda sidecar outfit. Thankfully someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me to safety behind the straw bales that made up the ring. This was the 1970s in a bowl-shaped field outside a small town called Mere. Perfect for that crazy kind of bike racing.

At the time a mate of mine was a keen amateur photographer. He’d get a pass to photograph the action. We’d go to grass track and road race Auto-Cycle Union (ACU) meetings around the West Country. It was always interesting to read the disclaimer on our marshalling race tickets. Anything bad happens – not our fault.

My finger damage is much more recent. It’s the dumb stuff that caught me out. Moving plant pots around doesn’t usually result in any great consequence. Most of them don’t weigh a lot. In this case a large square fiberglass pot needed moving. I had tried pushing it. That didn’t move it far as it scraped slowly along the patio. Next tactic was to pull it. Getting some momentum going it seemed to move more easily as I pulled it. What I didn’t count on was the fragility of the material of the pot. It had aged. I pulled hard and surprise, surprise, it broke. I went flying across the patio at speed. Naturally, I put my hand out to save me tumbling down a flight of stairs. Sadly, my finger took the first impact. That was painful.

Life without one or two bumps, bruises and grazes is unimaginable. Maybe, I’ve got a little bit more risk averse with age. However, like the back garden plant pot incident there’s always an opportunity to be foolish. Having a story to tell about my father falling off a ladder while fixing a gutter, I’m particularly careful around those potential death traps.

I’m happy to admit that I haven’t got nine lives. Or at last I’ve used up a few.

[1] Example: https://youtu.be/ZqC2Hc43a3w

Guilt: Double-Edged

Guilty as charged. At the end of a crime drama that’s what I want to hear. There’s been a resolution. Justice has been done. The baddies have been locked up and the aggrieved are vindicated. Oh, for the simplicity of the simple story. I guess that’s why they are liked so much.

What I want to spin a couple of lines about here is that whole subject of guilt. In reality, that multi-layered feeling is more complex than the two sides of the coin of my crime drama example. A world of purely nothing but good and bad does not exist.

There cannot be a single modern human who has never experienced a form of guilt. Even those who are on the edge of sanity or living as a total hermit will at one moment or another experience remorse, regret, or shame. A lingering uneasiness about what has happened, what’s happening or what might happen.

It’s built into our brains in a fundamental way. Because we can reflect on thoughts and events and learn from them, so we can analysis, even at a superficial level, poor decisions, failures, mistakes or tragedies.

Then comes the internalising thought that – I should do better or have done better. Surely, I should have seen that coming. How did that happen to me? Why me? What did I do? In the answer to those questions a feeling responsible permeates. For past events this can be compounded by knowledge that comes from hindsight.

These emotions can be entirely illogical. For example, feeling guilty about a random event that I have absolutely no responsibility for. An occurrence where, whatever I did, it would still have happened in one shape or form.

On the positive side, a feeling of responsible born of guilt can be a powerful motivator. Moments that tip people from a bad course of action to a good one. A true moment of learning.

On the negative side, guilty feelings can be destructive. They create resentment and even suffering. Especially when associated with any kind of injustice, intolerance or manipulation.

That gets to the point that I had in mind. It’s when people use of guilt as part of the general management toolbox. I’ve experienced that one often enough at work and elsewhere. Putting in those extra unpaid hours because if I didn’t the outcome will reflect badly on me. Doing that job, that I didn’t want to do, because someone was insistent that my saying “no” would result in failure. Not competing would let the side down.

My point. Don’t do it. For anyone who has authority over another, moral or actual, this is a foolish way to get things done. It can work in the short term. The problem is that such emotional blackmail has a lingering tail. That tail can kick-back and so it should.

What’s in a box?

I didn’t have a jack-in-the-box as a toy. Springing into life at the flick of a catch. For the larger part frightening the living daylights out of a young child. Or is it play, and thus basic training that surprising events can be scary and fun? Early days of leaning to handle risks.

In this case my boxes are square. Although they don’t need to be square. They are square or rectangular on a ballot paper (usually). These boxes are a boundary within which a mark is put to say “yes” this applies or “no” this is does not apply. Naturally, that can be the other way around too. For that matter they can indicate all sorts of conditions or views.

Here’s my beef. Back in March, this year, me and the Sun developed our relationship. There’s the giveaway – year. My number of years on Earth clocked up to sixty-five. At the time, I didn’t think of this as any more significant than past birthdays as a man of mature years. Then I got to completing numerous questionaries. Yes, I have moved the subject to more stuff to do with data and its use. Collecting data has never been so popular.

Never in the whole of human history have we, you and me, been faced with so many questionnaires. Almost every time I buy a coffee, and use a card of App to collect points, next day my in-box has an e-mail with a survey. Most of these I just ignore. Now and then, I fill one in with the ridiculous idea that the insignificant draw prize they offer could come my way.

Please offer your feedback in this short survey. The number of minutes they say that are needed are never right. Then they, the collectors of my data, get greedy. Asking for “as much detail as possible”. At this point I want to say – get real. What’s even worse is clicking on the “Next” button and then an error message comes up saying “This is required”. What audacity. Checky. Pushing my good will to its limits. If there were questionnaires about questionnaires, when it asked: “please tell us how your experience was on this occasion” they would get more than 100 creative words.

All this said, my real beef is to do with the collection of personal data. There’s no obligation to provide such data, when it comes to marketing surveys. This is when the incentivising possibility of a prize comes in. Afterall this data is valuable to the collectors with little incentive for a respondent to offer it. Surveys with prizes must have published terms and conditions. I wonder if anyone ever reads these legal niceties.

To the point. One question that often gets asked is – tick the box appropriate to my age. What I’ve noticed is that several of these unsolicited surveys have a box marked sixty-five and over. It’s like a whole section of the population is piled into one big bucket. Like we all fall off the end of the bell curve. Over 11 million people in England and Wales are like one.

I’m part of a growing cohort. That maybe good or bad but it is the case. It’s the case too that my cohort spends. Again, for good or bad, we are the beneficiaries of some good fortune. However, marketing surveys continue to sit in the stone age. At both ends of the demographic bell curve, toddlers and more mature folk, we are viewed as the same, one big bucket. I imagine data collectors and the designers of surveys have wrestled with this one. Whatever, the results don’t sit well with me.

The Power of Numbers

If I was to give advice to a politician in power, it would go like this: numbers matter but don’t let them dictate the right course of action. Of course that’s fully loaded advice. The right course of action is subjective. That can mean expert or non-expert judgement of such a great wide range of felicity that it doesn’t bear thinking about.

For a long time, there was a mantra that organisational policy should be data driven. There’s quite a bit of wisdom in this statement as an alternative to arbitrary opinion and volatile reactivity. There’s no doubt an organisation is better off if it has a few able number crunchers.

I can recollect times when I’ve been advised to look favourably upon one way of presenting information as opposed to another way. Not that either was in error but that one way would reflect better on the management of an organisation. This is a perfect example of Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics[1]. Which is often nothing to do with lies but rather the presentation of information. Some would say manipulation.

Sacking a head of a Bureau of Statistics because the numbers their technical people produce are not favourable, well that’s one way to go. It’s the sort of action that’s take in devoutly authoritarian countries. Better not be embarrassing the higher ups at any cost.

Suddenly, I’m taken back to my “O” level history lessons. Our enthusiastic secondary school teacher who wanted us to love the Russian revolution as much as she did. It’s a fascinating but brutal period for Europe. Here I’m thinking of Stalin’s Five-Year Plans. A Russian official, in the late 1920s, would have been very unwise indeed to produce anything other than favourable statistics. However, for all the cruelty and suffering Russia did archive a rapid industrialisation.

Numbers matter. My dictum. If they are wildly inaccurate or manipulate numbers, they are worthless. Even presentational they are worthless because few will believe. Credibility is key but that’s often the issue. Who do you trust?

My domain has been aviation safety numbers. The analysis of these numbers can be of significant consequence. Going back to that data driven philosophy, if the numbers are wrong the direction of travel will be wrong. When policy making has an objective basis then it’s much easier to justify to a wide audience. There are advantages in having trustworthy numbers.

In the ideal world, a degree of independence is essential. This is so that the producers of statistics and associate information can endeavour to be accurate and unbiased. Doing this without fear or favour to any interested party can take some resolve. It’s only possible in an environment that is both inquisitive and respectful.

I say “degree of” as an observation. Just as investigators often follow the money trail, it’s as well to consider who is paying the bills. The analyst’s salaries must come from somewhere. Again, in an idea cultural environment where integrity and trust are valued, it’s not those who are funding the number crunching work that should determine (dictate) the results. Let the numbers speak.

The ideal world doesn’t exist but it’s clearly unwise to swerve away from it at speed.

[1] https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/lies.htm

Our Bubbles

I’ll coin a way of thinking about the world that’s more empirical than the result of any in-depth study. Maybe it’s not even original. The idea came to my mind because of something someone said this week. It was part of seeing a wider world rather than their everyday experience.

As an aside, and not surprising given that I was 6 years old in 1966, my football team was West Ham United. Not because I lived anywhere near West Ham, or had any concept of what London was like, but that team had the best players. Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst.

Be patient, there’s a link. “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles[1]” is so tightly associated with West Ham it’s as important as those years after the 1966 England World Cup win. The club anthem of West Ham is a strange song for a long-standing English sports team. Especially when the club’s origins are more to do with the river Thames, its industry and docks.

Now, I know. It’s impressive and it’s akin to the so-called butterfly effect. A small event happens but it sets off a chain of events that become much larger, and unrelated to the original event. The song has endured, I suspect, because it sums up sporting success and failure. Hard to grasp, continually bursting but enduring because there’s always another opportunity to win.

If I’m going to discuss bubbles then that’s the first thought that comes to my head. Those ephemeral objects that float through the air. Perfectly self-contained only hanging together by tiny molecular bonds. Pretty bubble floating through the air.

Here’s what was said: “We live in a bubble”. Meaning those commonplace, often tedious, daily concerns and troubles that enclose our place and time. Bubbles can only be seen if an observer steps outside their boundaries and looks at the innumerable other bubbles.

I wander around with ahead full of thoughts and notions. They are often repetitious and going around in circles. That annoying job I’ve put off. Those awkward words that I now regret. That wondering how I’m going to tell someone that I’m not going to do what they want done. The list goes on and on. There’re good thoughts too. How much I appreciate my partners tolerance. How fortunate I am when compared with those mentioned in the morning News. Remembering a past success and a nice cup of coffee.

“We live in a bubble”. It’s so easy to take a point of view based on nothing more or less than the contents of our minds in own bubble world. Mental bubbles overlap. Several people may have bubbles that are more or less the same. In politics, I could say there’s a liberal bubble, a conservative bubble, socialist bubble, a fascist bubble. There’re all out there somewhere in bubble world.

Being an early riser, my first conscious act is to hit the “on” button on my radio. This week, I caught a prayer for the day by Steve Taylor[2]. He was making the point that it’s often our sense of separateness that is the cause of a lot of suffering. I interpret this as people being stuck in a bubble without comprehension of all the other bubbles in existence.

When we transcend our separate mental bubbles there’s a chance of better understanding. I’m not brave enough to say that this act would sort the conflicts in the world, but it would be a good start.

[1] https://youtu.be/H62SuMpMhc0

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002g4mn

Turn the clock back

Daily writing prompt
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
View all responses

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