All in the best possible taste...

More wonderful stuff from that yardstick of all that is British and tasteful (the BBC) - an entire Radio 4 program dedicated to the historical origins of the concept of Good Taste.

It would seem it emerged in the 18th century. The British were getting very very wealthy as a nation, but suddenly had something of an anxiety attack about what the impact would be. The concern was that pleasure, in the shape of myriad forms of extravagent indulgence, might subvert virtue. Sumptuary laws had previously been used, in Britain as in other countries across the world, to curb consumption. But in the 18th century the Brits discovered Good Taste. This had the advantage that you could leave it to moralising prigs to administer, instead of having to go to the trouble of passing legislation. Good taste is thus much cheaper and quicker. It's also a fantastic way to have your cake (by enjoying an expensively luxurious lifestyle) and eat it (by occupying the moral high ground of good taste).

It's fantastic what people come up with, isn't it?

Suffering, creativity, and Transcendental Meditation

I heard yesterday that David Lynch and Donovan have teamed up and are doing the rounds here in Britain. They're flying the flag for Transcendental Meditation. This seems like an excellent idea in itself - a bit of peace and being present is a great thing to add to anyone's day. I did get a bit worried though when a certain issue emerged - to wit, can you create films/music/writings/art about suffering if you're not experiencing it? It is a bit of an eternal question of course, and one that's unlikely to reach a definitive final resolution in the next day or two.

I declare myself on the side that says you can't communicate what you don't experience. However, maybe it goes a bit deeper than that. An opera singer belting out an aria in a death-bed scene these days doesn't know what it is to be close to dying from tuberculosis, yet can still deliver a very moving performance. It could be that she communicates something very moving - just something other than her own imminent demise. Or does she perhaps position herself with the audience, and express their grief for the character? Does this all amount to faking it? If so, are we only allowed to be moved by true stories?

Stop right there. I'm back with David Lynch. I don't even wish to BEGIN contemplating a future in which reality TV is considered the only legitimate form of being emotionally touched and moved.

Back again!

Well, I'm back after some time away on a couple of courses run by Landmark Education, which have opened up a whole bunch of things for me, particularly about relationships with other people and how I see other people. Landmark run a number of fantastic courses, several of which I've done. What I've got out of their courses is the means to create the life I want for myself, rather than the life that seems to get dumped on my plate. It's let me really choose what my life is made up of, and I heartily recommend their work.

So what have I learned about relationships? Well, there was a lot about seeing other people simply as who they are - which naturally involves getting a whole bunch of crap out of the way. At the heart of the course, for me, was a quotation from Desmond Tutu: "A person is someone who sees others as 'person' ." I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when I really let people be themselves, rather than a set of my own assumptions.

Out of the mouths of babes again...

Our friends Kev and Charlene told us a lovely thing the other day. Last week their 13 year old daughter Robyn was having a conversation with her friend, who was telling her all about what a smashing house she had. Big. Well appointed. A TV in every room - eight, I believe the total TV count was. Robyn's family have a lot less tellies than that. "But your house is just a house," she said, plainly unimpressed by the high gadget stats. "Mine's a home. It's full of love."

I confidently expect her to be a very well adjusted teenager. Lesson for us all there I think.

How to dress for a Dragon

Being quite a fan of entrepreneurial investment reality TV show The Dragons' Den, I was chuffed to see that they were showing back-to-back episodes on cable TV last weekend. (In case you're not familiar with it, the idea is that budding entrepreneurs pitch to a panel of 5 successful business folk - the "Dragons" - and try to persuade them to invest in their idea or business.) Seeing so many together, I picked up on something I'd not really noticed before. Peter Jones, one of the Dragons, is really picky about appearances.

You can see his point of view. Complete strangers come before him to say, "Here's my idea, I'd like you to trust me with £150,000 of your money to turn it into a lucrative business." He's going to want to get the impression that they know what they're talking about and are committed to doing whatever's necessary to make it a success. And presentation's part of that. The ones who turn up in jeans and a shirt, unless they have a really brilliant idea, often get a roasting from him on that very point.

Most people take it in pretty good part, and chalk it up as a lesson learnt. There was one guy though who got incedibly prickly and defensive about it. Actually he sounded rather like a teenager pouting and insisting he had a right to dress how he liked. The Dragons were being utter brutes. He really felt he DESERVED their money, and virtually had a tantrum when he didn't get it. It was almost "The only reason you won't give me your money is you don't understand me."

Unfortunately he didn't get that the thing about business is that it's not personal. If it has rules and conventions you're expected to follow, that's not an attack on your individuality.

Sunshine after the pain

My friend Jeanne can always be relied on to bring a family-sized ray of sunshine to things. She recently got very ill while away in Kyrgyzstan. It was all very scary, but she made a speedy recovery and is now back home and on very good form. What has she to say about it? "Well, I've forgotten the pain. What I remember is how wonderful everyone was." Now there's a brilliant way of looking at things.

Thanks for that Jeanne. Note to self: when experiencing / recalling pain, have a stab at noticing how wonderful everyone is / was being.

Trail story or fauxtation?

Mountain bikers - well, male ones - are fond of saying "Chicks dig scars," with varying degrees of irony. Of course the truth is pretty much the opposite. Women find scars unsightly and icky. In fact, it's men that dig scars. We see them as trophies of our manly achievements. The more pointless the better, of course.

However, there's always exceptions. Last week I was out biking with some folk from the MTBing egroup I subscribe to. One of them told the rest of us about the time he came a cropper on his bike and ended up with some nice juicy scabs on the side of his face. For the next week or so, while they healed, the dinner lady at the work canteen came over all maternal and piled on extra helpings onto his plate. It seems dinnerladies dig scars.

I'm not sure if "Dinnerladies dig scars" qualifies as a fauxtation. I'd love to think it does.

Take the Fame! part 2

More thoughts about acknowledgment.

"Blow your own trumpet. Otherwise no-one will hear your music."

One trap you can fall into about recognising how great you are is that by accepting that you're good at stuff, you're implicitly saying other people aren't. In other words, it's a competition, and by acknowledging yourself you push other people off the podium. Well, that would just be so bitchy of you, wouldn't it?

But it isn't a competition. Everyone has their own talents and greatnesses. And spending your whole life pretending you're not that good at stuff in case you hurt anyone's feelings makes no sense. Not only do you hobble your own happiness by doing that - you deprive the world of the fruits of your talents. Think of how your life is enriched by talented people - your favourite singers, artists, writers, film makers, sportspeople, whoever. Don't forget the people around you - their talents enrich your life too. Don't they?

So, check out your greatnesses and embrace them. The more you can say to yourself "Yes, I'm talented / funny / creative," the more you can share your talents with others.

Self and selfishness

"I've got to stop being so selfish. It just doesn't get me what I want."

A king amongst fauxtations there, from the mouth of a work colleague of a friend of mine.

This guy is apparently so selfish that he was allegedly unaware of the irony of his remark. We did laugh when my chum shared it with me afterwards in the pub. It does point to an interesting paradox though. It's often true that being selfish doesn't get you what you want. So is the reverse true? Is being unselfish ultimately self-interested?

Q: Why would I be unselfish?
A: To be thoughtful to others.
Q: What for?
A: So they like me, or think well of me, or do me a favour in return some day, or so I bank a bit of good karma.

One thing I do know about being selfish is that it's BAD. So can an act only be good if I don't get anything out of it? So if people like me or help me out or whatever I've done a bad thing? I put it to you, ladeez and gennelmen, that this is pretty screwy logic. The flaw here is thinking that there can only be one winner. It's important to look after yourself. If you don't, you'll be in no condition to do anything for anyone else anyway. If you don't have fun, you won't be much fun to be with. (Ooo, two fauxtations in one post. Got to be a record.)

Maybe there's another angle. Selfishness is thinking only of yourself, right? What if being unselfish is purely and simply allowing yourself to connect with others? Rather than something that's measured in terms of whether or not you take the last biscuit from the plate.

I wonder if that's what this guy was thinking?

Hurray for the smoking ban!

So I heard today that after 18 months of smoking being banned from pubs in Scotland, heart attacks are down by a wonderful 17%. I thought it was a good idea, but that's a brilliant result.

Naturally, quality of air in these same establishments has dramatically improved too. Although it wasn't always so. I remember going into my esteemed local, the Cask and Barrel, on the first night of the smoking ban. As expected, there was no trace of smokey smells. In its place however, was a rather more embarassing and pungent scent - punters. It really, really stank. I've not encountered body odour like it since - well, ever.

There's a happy ending though. Only a week later I returned, though not without a certain degree of trepidation. (Well, it is a very good pub. I wasn't going to give up on it that easily.) And hey presto - no smell. It would seem that the regulars had caught on very rapidly, and all rushed out in the intervening week and invested in deodorant.

So all the scare stories about takings in pubs nose-diving can be happily offset by the boom in personal hygiene. Another benefit of the jolly old smoking ban. Hurrah!

Take the Fame! part 1

"You can't be who you are until you acknowledge who you are."

There we are, a fauxtation from my own pen.

It sounds simple and self evident - you need to recognise your strengths and your talents before you can use them. If you think you're crap, it's pretty hard to be anything else. But acknowledging yourself can be a real struggle. There's all sorts of barriers we can have about it. Modesty's so drummed into us - mustn't blow your own trumpet, don't want to end up being arrogant, etc etc etc. You have to shed the modesty though before you can take a good honest look at who you are and share it with other people.

The first thing to get is that you can't be talented and modest. It doesn't work. Either you completely suppress your talent and keep it a secret, or you use and express your talents and pretend to be modest. Which gets very hard to distinguish from the arrogance we're so afraid of.

Being who you are is simply self expression. It's authenticity, it's honesty, it's being real. Modesty, just as much as arrogance, is a pretence, an egotistical lie which seeks to manipulate. Horrible, isn't it? Well, it's not that awful really. Modesty and arrogance are concepts we learn pretty early, basic building blocks from when we're first getting to grips with social relations as children. Nobody wants their kids to get picked on because they're big-headed.

As adults, we can trust ourselves to be more subtle. We just need to remember to move on.

"I believe that children are our future..."

So the song goes - it's the opening line of The Greatest Love of All, by Stevie Wonder I think (consider me at home and open to correction on this one, though I'm already aware that Whitney Houston covered it). Social anthropologists tell us that in times of rapid change, people look to the younger generations. That's an interesting thought. What ways do we actually do that, given that our world is certainly a rapidly changing one?

Well, there's the obvious stuff, such as when parents get their kids to show them how to use the computer. Then there's the next layer - when adults eagerly pick up on stuff the kids use as being the next great thing. I'm thinking of Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and all that. Once they were glorified chat rooms, now any self-respecting web marketing consultant will urge you to establish your presence on them. The same could apply to anything. Pop music, for example. What started off as the music of the devil is now an essential component of the national economy. So the methods and substance of business become increasingly shaped by the young.

I find myself wondering what my point is here. I suppose it's that maybe this has something to do with how those of us who aren't quite as youthful any more find the young at large more unsettling, while also generally seeking to have closer relationships with our kids than we felt our own parents did with us. (Generalisation index set to maximum here, but maybe you get the picture.)

What do you reckon?

Attachment and celebrity

Great program last night about the history of India. There's been a lot of these lately as you may have noticed, and this one was presented by historian and Alexander the Great enthusiast Michael Wood. He dealt with the period of and immediately following the Buddha - 500BC onwards. It put a few things in a new perspective for me about the Buddha and Buddhism. For one, I hadn't really considered what was so revolutionary about his deceptively simple core message: life is suffering, and suffering is caused by being attached to things. Even if it seems tough to put into practice, we can all at least understand that. We're all aware of the suffering of wanting what you can't have, or can't have yet, and that if we weren't quite so materialistic life would be more relaxing.

Of course, India already had a long tradition of ascetics who renounced the material world - the Buddha himself started out as one. The really challenging part is that this extends to gods - you can be attached to gods and what they promise, just as much as to possessions. Given that India is a country of 33 million gods, it becomes plain that the Buddha was the daddy of all iconoclasts.

I also hadn't considered quite how modern buddhism feels. It almost appears odd to me that it originated in the Iron Age. It seems strange that a time so far before industrialisation and the modern world could have had anything like our need for buddhism's message of detachment. In particular perhaps, detachment from the cult of celebrity and fame that Princess Diana's memorial service is such a symbol of.

Maybe it could be said that we live in a time of 33 million celebrities.

Homecoming

Here's something that struck me as an interesting take on being part of your community. My friend Jeanne is doing a PhD at the moment, and has been spending months away in Kyrgysztan. She recently came back, and described coming back as a kind of culture shock. The big thing, she said, seemed to be not having an opinion on things. Things like Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister happened in her absence. It's not something that's difficult to get your head round as such - indeed, when she went away it would have certainly been in the pipeline.

So it's not a question of knowledge, or even understanding. The thing that seemed to act as a measure of engagement with community for her was how able you feel to take a view on what's happening.

Thinking about that leads a few interesting places.

Graduation

I recall the first time I went through the process of applying for university. I was mildly shocked to discover they wanted me to say what degree I wanted to apply for. "Can't I just choose where I want to go, and decide what to do when I get there?" No, it seemed, I couldn't. I followed the advice of the careers teacher (and the instructions of my Grandpa) and chose electronic engineering. At which I turned out to be a spectacular failure, averaging something like 28% in my 1st year exams. There, er, wasn't a second year...

One thing I seem to have kept hearing in recent months is that a great many kids these days have only one ambition - to be famous. Not famous for being a popstar, or an inventor, or a writer, or a footballer - just "famous". It's easy to slip into decrying the inexorable slide into the lowest-common-denominational mire and rampant social disconnection. However, it occurs to me that there's something else to be noticed here, and it's this: even planting a kid in front of the TV for hour after hour doesn't defeat their spirit. They still have that urge to progress - to graduate into something beyond their childhood experience.

They might not be reaching much further than the end of their nose. That's what my teachers and my Grandpa did - I was good at maths and sciences, so engineering of some sort was the obvious choice. That didn't work out, just as not everyone's shot at fame will work out. But even if things do happen which restrict, misdirect or even stall it, forward movement is our natural state.

That's really cool, because it means the battle isn't really about finding the wherewithal to make progress, it's about finding where you want to aim at. It might involve looking beyond where you're used to looking - or even within where you're used to looking - and that could be the hard part. But the point is that when you find it, you can ride your natural forward impulse.

(I eventually did find the degree for me - history. A subject I gave up at school when I was 13. It fitted me like a glove, and I had a fabulous time doing it.)

Explanation, explanation, explanation

Relaxing in a cafe in Edinburgh today, I noticed the Times "Body and Soul" section and decided to take a look. I was a bit disappointed, I have to say. There seemed to be a big preponderance of seeking explanations. The thing is, explanations are all very interesting, but in terms of personal growth, they're not much help.

Take the whole women-like-pink-and-men-like-blue thing. I gathered from an article in the aforementioned supplement that there's just been a study published that puts forward a theory, based on evolutionary psychology, which explains this. Prehistoric women, it seems, evolved to be drawn towards the pinkish tones of things they foraged for, while men were drawn towards stuff like blue skies.

Leaving aside any discussion of how abjectly absurd and contrived this might sound in itself, let's suppose it's true. So bloody what? How in the name of anything does this knowledge help anything?

Showing off!

A marvellously Scottish fauxtation, I think, for us today. It comes from my friend Lesley McDonald:

"You can get away with murder, but you can't get away with showing off."

Lovely. For me that's an excellent reminder that it's not so much the big, dramatic, yet less frequent things that impact our daily lives. The smaller, everyday things do too. The ways we behave towards others, for example. They can be insidious since their familiarity makes them easy to overlook. But they always come back to bite you in the bum.

Being fastidious and thorough is a very Scottish trait. The devil's in the detail, and Scots do detail very well. That's probably had something to do with the great engineers, economists, imperial administrators and so on that came out of Scotland in the past.

Such a culture is not as ready as certain others to accept boundaries being constantly expanded for the sake of nothing but boundary expansion. Purpose is required. Scotland's certainly got its problems - we consume too much in the way of drink and sweeties. But fundamentally it's a very principled country. It was the Moderator of the Church of Scotland who responded to Margaret Thatcher's remark that "There's no such thing as society," by saying "You see, Prime Minister, for us there's nothing BUT society."

The little things matter. They're here with us every day. So you need to keep an eye on them if you want to keep a handle on your principles.

Apologi-comics

It's the Edinburgh Festival, and a couple of days ago we went to see some free comedy. It was mainly a couple of American comedians, each with his own act but joining forces to put on this mini-show. So we had a taster of each of their acts. While they were both very different, and from different backgrounds and places, they had something in common - they were very apologetic about their President.

It seemed to me that there was something familiar about this. Then I got it. It's like when we had Margaret Thatcher at the helm. Suddenly comedy wasn't all about clumsy racism/sexism/genderism and smutty double entendres any more. Comedians sought to give voice to frustrations that weren't about discrimination against some generic group of people, but about the specific acts and decisions of specific individuals.

It might be said that Ben Elton, wearing his trademark sparkly suit and in mid "Little bit of politics, little bit of politics" rant, was hardly apologetic. There was perhaps something a little desperate in these two American comics. But then, I can remember how it felt in Scotland in the Thatcher years - totally disenfranchised. As a country we felt completely politically irrelevant to those who governed us.

So, in the wake of George Bush's speech in which he cites America's Vietnam War experience as an argument in FAVOUR of keeping US forces in Iraq, I can sympathise with these two comedians from across the water.

Lice and selfishness

On the way to school today, Fred said to me "You know Dad, there's advantages of being bald." (So delightfully straightforward).
"Yes, I suppose you're right," says I. "What ones can you think of?"
"Well, you don't get head lice." So we talked about head lice for a bit. The subject of how they lay eggs in your hair came up.
"That's very selfish of them," says Fred.
"Well, they're just doing what comes naturally," I replied

Selfishness is something I think about quite a bit. It's something that often has a lot of guilt attached to it, but is it actually a constructive way of looking at things? I always come back to the example of aeroplane safety drills, where they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before trying to help others. If you don't, you're just another body thrashing around for breath. You're part of the problem until you've looked after yourself.

So what head lice reminded me of this morning is that we need to care for ourselves - and it's 100% natural. You could even see them as nature's reminder to wash your hair on a regular basis. (Had to get that in for Fred's benefit, just in case he looks in. Plainly not for mine.)

Choc-opoeia

I've just noticed that chocolate is an onomatopoeia.

Imagine. You're standing next to a vat, on a level with its top. It's maybe ten feet by ten feet, and nine or ten feet deep. It's full of warm, molten chocolate. This is all very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I know, but try to take out all the Roald Dahl-ian junior gothic horror elements and under-currents. It's lovely and quiet and peaceful next to the vat. Then, oh-so-calmly, you slowly dive gently into the vat. What sound do you make as you break the surface and glide in until you're fully immersed? "Choc-o-late." Then, after a moment, you surface, and everything's quiet and all's right with the world. Mmmmmmmm.

Now, go forth and have a lovely day.

Getting down about the kids

Bonnie Greer on Any Questions on Radio 4 today moved me very much when she spoke about youth crime. She spoke of schemes in her native Chicago, which focus on the fact that the great majority of gang members aren't what we might call villains. They harness the skills and energy those young people have, redirecting them into positive outlets. I was wondering why we don't do this already, when almost psychically she hit the nail on the head: "We hate our young people," she said. We - that's to say adults - fear them, mistrust them, and expect the worst from them. Berating young people is a national pastime. And we wonder that they feel excluded and misunderstood?

But hang on. Obviously not all kids are gang members or hoodies, so perhaps we might say it's hoodies specifically that we hate. They're the ones that cause the trouble after all. As a society, surely we're much nicer to better behaved kids? The higher achievers? The ones that don't bunk off school to go shoplifting from the age of 11?

Well, I'm not so sure. I noticed too that on the same program, there was the A-level results issue. Every year results get better; every year the cry goes up that A-levels are too easy, standards are slipping etc etc. That's not exactly expecting the best from those kids either, is it?

Getting down with the kids

I watched a reality TV program last night which made me sit up and say "Why haven't I been watching this whole series?" Its catchy title is Sex With Mum And Dad, and in it, adolescents and their families meet with a sexologist. The object is to try to open up channels of communication, not necessarily just about sex. It was fascinating stuff, I needn't tell you. One of the two girls who featured in last night's program wasn't allowed a bedroom door.

Through most of the program I got the feeling that neither of the families featured were making any progress at all. They did a couple of the tasks they were set as homework, for example putting condoms on bananas en famille. But when it got to things like asking questions like "Are orgasms important?" in a multi-generational situation, nobody was up for it.

Imagine my surprise when, in their final meetings with the sexologist, the members of each family all agreed they felt much more open and relaxed with each other. Better yet, the dad of the girl with no door installed one at the end of the show as an unexpectedly heart-warming surprise. This, after she had finally admitted she wasn't a virgin. She'd been petrified her dad would really hit the roof about that one, and frankly so had I, from what I'd seen of him and their relationship.

So it's amazing what a bit of sharing and engaging can do. The parents didn't suddenly start positively encouraging their kids to attend orgies, or buying them sex toys for Christmas. But they did get a lot closer in more general ways, which is possibly more useful on a day-to-day basis.

The thing perhaps was that the agenda was set by the kids; and both they and their parents discovered that despite what they'd believed, they had concerns in common. Some, at least; and where they didn't wholly agree, they found they could talk and the sky would stay up.

All in all, rather like when I got off my high horse about video games and played a few rounds of Wii baseball. Well, a bit.

On trying. Or perhaps, On doing.

Here's a great fauxtation from Sheila Stewart:

"Do what you can, and then stop."

As she would say, I like that. It has that so-simple-it's-obvious quality, yet also has such serenity and peace. It somehow really grants you permission just to be who you are. To express your personal greatness, rather than struggle for perfection.

I think I'll stop now. Yes.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

In response to a query from one of our regular viewers - yes, I've done it. I've joined in with Fred on the Wii. I'm working up to the wands and other Harry Potter stuff, so we stuck to your basic classic games - bowling and baseball. (Golf just wasn't going to happen, let's be clear about that. But that's nothing to do with the Wii.) How was it? Absolutely brilliant! Under instruction from Fred I learned that actually you go through motions which are remarkably similar to the real thing. No running, sure, but quite an upper-body workout, by my standards at least. I certainly worked up a sweat.

It's another sort of new swords, I guess.

New Swords!

It's fauxtation time again!

"Guitars are the new swords."

So speaks Jenni Brooks, writer, poet and chum. And I think she makes a lot of sense. You can do a lot of the things guys used to do with swords with a guitar instead. Swagger, impress women, attract attention, hide your inadequacies, make a reputation, ruin or make a party. You can make films and write books about the people who wield them and their exploits. And the hardware can be iconic objects of great beauty made with extreme love and expertise, symbols defining the time and culture in which they originate.

One might spend many a happy hour speculating which sword equates with what guitar. If the Fender Stratocaster is the guitar equivalent of the Samurai's sword, for example, does the Highland Claymore correspond to the Les Paul? Perhaps the ukelele could be said to parallel the skein dhu that every self-respecting Scot sticks into the socks he wears with his kilt.

Of course, she might have been talking about phallic symbols. I wouldn't know.

Kids/life balance

We've got a very schizophrenic attitude to parenthood and work. All parents are supposed to be at work, even if they're single parents. Work has many faces. It's the great emancipator, liberating the poor from poverty and women from male oppression. It's a status symbol (a friend of mine recently told me of how certain people faintly sneer when she tells them she's a housewife, and thus lacks this badge).

Work can also be a source of great satisfaction and an income, so let's not diss it completely. We do all have to eat, and our kids need to be kept in video games. But as a culture, we do have an attitude problem here. Work-life balance is a big issue these days, and the more I coach people around this area the more it seems to me that it's the parenting/work dilemma that's usually at the heart of it. There's a whole spectrum of ways in which that occurs - you don't even need to have kids for it to have an impact on you.

We've built a world that's constructed around work, and we've reached a point where we're not sure where kids and parenting fit into it. For some people it's a simple question of finding themselves in a straight choice between attending vital meeting and picking up a suddenly-vomiting child from school. For others it's despair at how to juggle conflicting expectations and pressures on themselves as a parent - these come from partners, TV, their kids, their family, other kids, horrible fast-food chains, wherever.

It's a mistake to moan about our world though - it's just there. Better to find productive ways of dealing with it. My suggestion is that a good start would be to get a clear idea of what work means to us, and what raising children means to us. All of us.

If Chandler was from Aberystwyth...

That's Raymond Chandler, creator of Marlowe the archetypal wise-cracking private detective, not Chandler the archetypal slightly gay flat-mate. Just to get that clear from the outset. If he was from the aforementioned Welsh seaside town he might have come up instead with Louie Knight, noir comic spy creation of Malcolm Pryce, author of the book I'm reading at the moment - Last Tango In Aberystwyth. (This is the second book in the series - Aberystwyth Mon Amour precedes it, and the third is The Unbearable Lightness Of Being In Aberystwyth. I've just discovered that there is now a fourth - Don't Cry For Me Aberystwyth. Had to happen). Here's a pretty decent official website where you can learn more, and there's an entry here in Wikipedia.

If you haven't yet, I urge you to make a bee-line for the nearest copy of one of these books. The idea of transposing Marlowe to a surreal version of Aberystwyth, a world of ice-cream cones, druids and "girls who come to make it big in the 'What The Butler Saw' industry" could so easily be a terrible failure. But this is a triumph. Louie Knight has Marlowe's deadpan-ness, but more. He clearly wants on some subliminal level to be detecting in the stomping ground of Marlowe himself, the world of the real gumshoe; yet equally plainly, he is fiercely rooted in Aberystwyth. The writing is immaculate - where else could you come across lines such as "This was also the time when the Chief of Police had to confiscate a lot of large-print pornography" and "When you work as a private eye in Aberystwyth you learn not to worry too much where your hunches come from"?

What are you waiting for? Go read!

Crime and individuality II: The Kids Aren't Alright

That Radio 4 program on crime was on again today, this time focussing on the 90s. It certainly has my attention, I think primarily as a parent. Michael Howard, interviewed on this program, related that when he became Home Secretary some civil servants came along and explained to him that crime had been going up at a steady rate of 5% per year for decades "and there's nothing you can do about it." The only question for politicians becomes how do you clear up the mess - punishment vs. rehabilitation. Either way, the figures keep soaring. We now apparently lock up about four times as many of our young people as the French do.

It's just this sort of thing, that feels at once so potentially damaging to your child and so completely out of your control, that strikes at the heart of parental paranoia. I get to thinking about the African proverb - it takes two people to have a child and a community to raise one. I fret about how we don't have community any more in this country. I worry about the full extent of most kids' ambition these days being to be famous - not even for something specific apparently, just being famous.

Such resignation! It's ridiculous, because I'm also one of those who believes that parents have a lot to do with raising kids. Specifically, I think we're a little too ready to offload responsibility for that onto schools. Interesting, isn't it? Schools get us used to the idea of leading an ordered life and being productive in a structured way. Then we end up relying on them to care for and raise our kids while we go to work. But we don't need to be swallowed up by that. Parenting is a constant, multi-dimensional balancing act. Balance needs control, and that requires taking responsibility.

It's tempting to pass the buck to the community in the shape of schools. However, the most important members of the community that raises a child are his or her parents.

Scottish? Moi?

My chum Charlie sent me this tool for discerning how Scottish your name is. Hmm. Despite it being a little gizmo on a marketing company's website, and despite that site being positively plastered with my least favourite word, "solutions", I gave it a go. 100 being average, I score 14, apparently. Given that I profess to being a proud ex-patriate son of the Godly Republic of Yorkshire, why do I feel just a teeny bit non-plussed by this? I thought mine was a nature completely unsoiled by competitiveness. I guess I was wrong.

Still, I can console myself with the fact that Fred only gets a 9, even though he was actually born here.

Beautiful...

According to the words of the Carole King song, "You're beautiful as you feel." Here's proof, as witnessed by the camera of Carol Faculjak (whose mostly non-gardening-related blog is Charming Gardener) when I was a little hungover on Kat's birthday. I do believe I look like Homer Simpson here.

Solitaire: The only game in town?

My mobile phone has a solitaire game on it. Fatal. Fatal for conversation, that is. It's bad enough having it on your computer - any moment you get stuck with something, there's a nice handy game right there for some instant distraction from your work. But having it on a phone, well, that's asking for total social breakdown. Phones are with you everywhere. Even where a laptop is unlikely to go.

I've recently become way over-keen on taking every opportunity to zoom in on the two-inch screen and flick virtual cards pointlessly about. I'm also starting to notice that it's one of the ways I avoid conversation, and that I'm constantly banging on at Fred not to get sucked into his exactly equivalent video games. It is, you might say, becoming rather an issue.

I don't think these things should be banned, or even avoided. What's going to be far more constructive is to take a look. What do I get out of it? What keeps me coming back to this alluring yet totally unsatisfying puzzle? One thing I do see is that it has the feel of the bus queue about it - it's something to do to fill in time while the bus is coming. What about when I'm not waiting for a bus though?

What, in other words, am I waiting for? And do I really want to wait in solitary mode?

Zeitgeist! That's a big word!

Well, it seems to be a word I'm hearing a lot these days anyway. In particular, in connection with media people. As a blogger, I have to wonder - does that include me? Media people that I've heard seem to like hosting a debate as to whether or not they themselves create and propagate the spirit of the age, some notional communal world view. So by doing this blog, am I bending - or perhaps simultaneously bending and reflecting - reality? That would be cool!

Out of the mouths of babes...

One of our local schools, Leith Academy, has a very good website, including this page of fabulous wisdom. It's a selection of tips from existing pupils to prospective ones. I particularly like:

"Be yourself, dont do what other people say just to fit in."

"Don't be scared, and if you are speak to somebody"

"Try as hard as you can toget on with teachers no matter how boring they may be!!!"

"Work hard and be yoursef, Never let other people get you down!! As you grow, people will care less about your clothes and the way you look and lots lots more about you."

Something there for all of us, I feel.

A jumped up country boy who never knew his place...

That's me - I grew up in the country, and have lived almost all my adult life in the city, feeling faintly lost. I never really spotted that until a few days ago. I've certainly been aware of my various complaints about people here: they don't have time for each other, they look alarmed when I say "Hello!" as I cycle cheerily past, you don't get everyone all congregating in the same pub. (Actually there was one time when I greeted someone as I was cycling along the canal and he was so startled he almost fell in.) But so far I've just seen that as everyone else's shortcomings.

What I've just realised is that I've actually resented all my fellow city dwellers for not being identical to the inhabitants of the village I grew up in. It seems very silly, but then that's how it is with those things that sit in the background of our lives. Of course, now that I'm plucking up the courage actually to speak to the people in my neighborhood, it turns out they're very willing to chat. Not so different after all then.

Another thing that on reflection seems pretty daft is that I'm surprised.

Fred's birthday present: who am I kidding?

So we saved up and got Fred a Nintendo Wii for his birthday. I've noticed that what I've been going around telling everyone about this is "It's good, because the different sort of controller'll keep him much more active than the traditional sort." How's that for lame-assed self-justification?! It's like pleading that because he eats lots of tomato ketchup we can be confident he's getting his daily 5 portions of fruit and veg.

Still, looked at from a different perspective, it does seem like a bloody good present. End of.

There is only grunt and not grunt Pt II

The flip side of "effort = success" is that if something didn't take much effort, it must be wrong. I remember when I first started to learn calculus in maths. The teacher spent a great deal of time stressing to us first of all that CALCULUS IS VERY HARD. Then he got down to explaining it. It didn't actually seem that difficult to me - and that was really confusing. Where's the catch? I must have missed something. I didn't get it. Three years later in university, I was doing an electronic engineering degree. Which depended heavily on guess what? Calculus. Sorry, no, it was THREE DIMENSIONAL calculus. My average exam mark at the end of the year was around 30% - nuff said, I think.

Years later I did a history degree at Edinburgh University. It was just the best fun, and I really loved writing my essays and finding out stuff. I'd thought about choosing a more vocational degree that fed me into a career, but I realised I'd probably just repeat what happened before. I decided to do a good job of what I wanted to do rather than a bad job of something sensible. Sure enough, not only did I finally succeed in getting a degree, I got a 2:1.

Sometimes, if something's easy, it's because you're talented.

Spam? Me?

I've been locked out for a couple of days - blogger apparently thought I was spamming my own blog, or Father Of The Man is itself spam, or something. Don't know how that works.

Anyway, apologies for the untoward interruption - normal service now resumed.

sheep and goats

Here's a little wisdom the great Oliver Postgate spoke on his Desert Island Discs appearance. Talking about his experience of school, he suggested that children - or perhaps people - are divided into sheep and goats; and that as a goat, he didn't take too well to being told what to do. Fred's clearly a goat - he likes to be the one giving the orders. The thing is, I'm not sure which I am.

Thinking about it, maybe I'm a bit of both. I love being a father, but I don't like handing down the law. I love running my own business; but it would be very nice if I had someone to feed me a steady stream of clients. Someone to say "Here, coach these people," so I could focus on the coaching.

Perhaps we're all a bit of both. There's a good inquiry for this week - where am I a sheep, and where am I a goat?

The inspiring voice of Nog

I heard a wonderful voice from the past today on Desert Island Discs - Oliver Postgate, the animator and voice behind Bagpuss and Noggin the Nog. Another example of how, for me, it's sound and not smell that really activate my memory. Bagpuss seems to be what he's most remembered for, but I was SUCH a fan of Noggin the Nog - check out this site for more about him and his world. Partly I suppose it was the flavour of viking sagas and mythology that it conveyed, coupled with his amazing voice - that combination just made for perfect storytelling. His is a voice of gentle peace and wisdom. In fact I've just realised that when I do a visualisation or something with a client, it's his voice that I unconsciously emulate. Wow.

Having your cake and eating it

My fellow coach Annie Wigman recently started a fantastic discussion on a website for co-active coaches I frequent. The topic is essentially - if you get yourself a great life, what's the impact on others? Should we feel guilty? What's the moral implication of seeking to create a life that's about you, that suits you, that is the way you want it?

In this discussion "you can't have your cake and eat it" has been considered quite a bit. It strikes me that the idea that is SUCH a load of crap. The big fallacy here is that there's a limited amount of joy available - if you get a bit more, someone has to get a bit less. Bollocks. If you're happier, people around you are happier. You create joy for others through creating it for yourself. It's like in the safety drill on planes - they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others. Why? Because until you do, you're just another body gasping for breath.

There's something I recently got very clear about - sharing makes me happy. Whatever that looks like - making dinner for friends, buying someone a drink, having a conversation letting people know about something great I've discovered. Think of anything you like doing - don't you enjoy it more if you do it with someone else? You don't need to be told to share - you love it. Look after yourself, and you can look after others. Stock up on joy (including joy in who you are), share it around, notice how your joy replenishes as you do this.

The trick is truly to know what gives you joy and happiness. Annie cites the dilemma of wanting nice clothes versus knowing that so many companies exploit sweat shop labour in the developing world to produce them cheaply. What's clear is that what makes Annie happy is having nice clothes AND paying people properly for their labour.

Crime and individuality

Radio 4 had an interesting program today about Britain's transition from a low crime society to having the highest crime rates in Europe. It covered the period from the end of World War II to the early 60s, and spoke of juvenile delinquency, Teddy Boys, and the rise of the celebrity villain. What struck me about this last was how socially accepted the well-dressed career criminal of the early 60s was, when only a generation before the same figure would have been reviled.

Ideas that were being discussed included the demise of deference and the rise of the "individualist". The seminal TV show Dixon of Dock Green also came up a lot - policeman Dixon representing community in the shape of the fatherly bobby on the beat, versus the selfish individualism of the hooligan and criminal elements. It seems this is a dilemma for our times - how do we juggle individualism and community?

Dixon's message was that these criminal and delinquent outsiders sought to undermine society. Crime is equated with being individual. The trouble is, as their camel coats and snappy dressing showed, the villains had exactly the same aspirations as other members of society. Today's bling culture is essentially exactly the same phenomenon. By the 60s crime had become simply a career option; by now, lifestyle choice is probably the expression we'd be more likely to use.

I reckon it would be smart to notice how similar the villains are to the rest of us. We all want to shop and be individuals, and criminals are just consumers by another means. This means is seen to be individual, successful and exciting, in all the ways we were ever taught to aspire to. Is it any wonder that criminals become heroes?

Getting down in the street

I'm liking this connecting with the neighbourhood thing.Yesterday I bumped into a guy from the local wine shop. He said "What's new?" and instead of doing the usual politely dismissive "Oh you know, not much, how about you?" thing, we had a conversation. Ooer! I said a bit about what I mentioned the other day, particularly about what it used to be like when I lived in the country. Guess what? It turned out it was exactly the same for him. He mentioned how different the dynamic of city life is, and how it's a bit of a culture shock coming to it from growing up in the country.

It seems strange to say, but I really don't think I've looked at it like that before. I've done plenty of complaining about how people here and now aren't like where and when I grew up, but in a funny way I guess I've overlooked two simple facts: firstly, I'm in a different time and place, and secondly, if I want to chat to everyone like I used to, it is actually allowed.

There is only grunt and not grunt. There is no try.

A friend was telling me today about an occasion when she was working with a class of special educational needs kids. They were making pictures with pieces of coloured paper, and one particular boy wasn't really engaging with this. So he was told all he needed to do was try. His response was to make big straining grunty noises as he stuck down the bits of paper, and otherwise continue as he had been doing.

It struck me that most of us do what amounts to the same thing - trying, or appearing to try, and not getting anywhere. The trouble with telling our kids to try is that the effort itself becomes the goal, not the objective. Struggle and strain become equated with success. So when do kids suddenly unlearn this? Well, actually they don't usually. When we get stuck, most of us automatically snap into the "must try harder" mode we learned at school and beat our heads harder and harder against it. If effort doesn't produce success there's a contradiction, and we get confused, frustrated, angry or panicky (I tend to favour confused and panicky myself). And then carry on doing more of the same.

Unfortunately the results tend to look like someone trying to rev their way out of being stuck in the mud, and just creating an ever deeper rut. So, what to do? Well, like the man said, stop digging. Or revving, or head-beating - whatever you keep doing that isn't working. Until you do that, you stand no chance of coming up with an alternative solution. Stopping digging is very often soooo tough - the urge to try can be so overwhelming, even in the face of knowing what you're doing is counterproductive.

Maybe remembering that "trying" is just making big straining grunty noises will help.

Getting down in the hood

For many years I've had something of a tendency to hang around at the edge of things, and especially people. Naturally in my eyes it's never actually been anything to do with me - other people are distant, modern culture cuts people off from each other, etc etc etc.

Then last night I was walking home from the bus stop, and as got near to my street, something occured to me. The people behind all those windows are my neighbours. They're MINE. I'm THEIRS. I used to feel that when I still lived at home before my mum died. Just for a brief time, I lived as an adult in the neighbourhood where I grew up in the country. I went to the local pub, got drunk with people from all walks of local life, and stopped to chat with anyone and everyone I came across if I was out for a walk. I knew everyone, they knew me.

In short, I was part of a community. I've been missing that, and I suddenly noticed that it's right here on my doorstep, absolutely literally. It looks different - I'm in a 21st century city now, not a 20th century village. But that doesn't make a difference. I do. There's no reason at all why I can't stop and chat with people in my street or my pub like I used to - or if I don't, there's no reason to complain about society preventing me doing so.

Limiting beliefs

At the Life Club this week we looked at something that come up a lot in coaching situations - Limiting Beliefs (beliefs you hold which limit what you think of as being possible for yourself). A crucial part of dealing with these little beggars is of course being aware that they're there in the first place. One of the participants raised a very good question - how do you spot them? A few tips came to mind. But I kept thinking about it, because I felt I hadn't quite got to the nub. And I think the nub is this: you don't. In the normal course of events, that is. In the usual, within-the-comfort-zone routine, you don't see them because you don't even go near them. You have to be in the process of going beyond that comfort zone before you come up against limiting beliefs, as they try to push you back into comfort.

What you can't do is eliminate your limiting beliefs before you set out on some new enterprise. You just have to get out there, machete in hand, and hack your way through them while you're on the hoof. But then, isn't that part of the excitement? What's the point of doing something new if it feels exactly like what you already do? Why go to France and eat cheddar? (Another Fauxtation there, methinks...)

Why oh why oh why?

Fred’s 11 today. He's at an inquisitive stage. The other day, for example, he asked me if zebras are white with black stripes or black with white stripes. I remember when I was going through that phase. If Dad didn't know the answer, he'd say "Ask your Uncle Nigel." I never did ask Uncle Nigel - I found him rather scary - but grew up thinking he must be the font of all wisdom, the man who knew the stuff even Dad didn't know.

So Fred's also doing that irritating game where he says "Why?" and I answer and he says "Why?" and so on ad intinitum. I got bored of this, so I decided to use it as an inquiry, and just think about actually coming up with answers. I mean, I'm supposed to be so keen on discovering stuff and not shying away from asking questions after all.

He soon smelled a rat though, and quickly changed the subject to something less educational. Oh well, we soldier on.

Ties and choosing

I heard a great item on Radio 4's Today program yesterday. Wayne Hemingway, of Red Or Dead fame, and some other worthy were discussing tie wearing. Wayne - always given to the outre and unconventional when it comes to getting dressed, as any fule kno - is plainly vehemently tie-averse, while the other chap was quite relaxed about the whole issue. The latter ventured the opinion that, since his school never required ties, or indeed any uniform, to be worn, the whole thing was a complete non-issue for him and he was just as happy in a tie as out.

This all made me think about choice, particularly since the debate, while never acrimonious, did get pretty heated. Passions clearly abounded about school and neckwear. The thing is, doing the opposite of what you're told is just as narrow as doing exactly what you're told. Choice isn't about having to wear a tie at school and therefore refusing to do so for the rest of your life, just because you don't have to any more. If that's how it is, you still haven't left school. Choice is freedom - including the freedom to wear a tie, even though it's what someone else wants you to do.

I should mention, by the way, that I have a LEGENDARY collection of ties, many of which ended up in my wardrobe as a result of being banned from that of their former owners by some nameless third party.

bikes and space

The Tour de France is on! And I've figured out what's truly great about it: you need to take nearly a whole day to watch it. Then? Repeat daily for three weeks. While it's on, the GDP of France sinks, because the French are so universally keen that they abandon everything else for the duration. And herein lies the key you can't beat the Tour for giving you space. It is truly relaxing and satisfying to watch, because you have to give yourself permission to do nothing else. There may be a crash or a breakaway any minute - it's just that there's a lot of minutes. Around three or four hundred of them each day. It's like cricket, in that nothing much might happen for a very long time, and yet you're on the edge of your seat in a very mild way pretty much all the time. Just in case it does.

You could quite happily watch the highlights and get the drift and the exciting bits - and lose all the point. That would make it sensible, contained within a practical span of time that doesn't clash with work. Forget football. There's nothing relaxing about its sweaty shoutiness and crappy histrionics, and it lasts a paltry 90 minutes or so. (So I hear - I'm no expert on this.) And it's on at the weekend. That's just bread and circuses. No more than low-grade cathartic release of a week's boredom and frustration. The Tour simply bids au revoir to work altogether for the best part of a month.

Now that, for all the lycra and skinny tyres, is anarchy.

Solitaire as self-development aid shocker!

I was playing a game of Solitaire on my phone just now. Kat's noticed that I play a very cautious game, trying to control when I get cards out and not to get important ones trapped somewhere I can't get them. That's all very strategically effective, but Kat usually seems to score better than me. Even though she plays, oh I dunno, one game for every ten of mine. I actually caught myself looking at the backs of cards yet to be turned over, trying to figure out a system for prioritising which row to turn over first. (I mean, really...)

Then I thought "Just make the bold move. You're no more likely to fail." Followed rapidly by "Oooo, that sounds wise!" The thing is, it really is true. You don't KNOW the outcome either way, so you might as well have fun with it. There's nothing wrong with using your head either. You don't have to go apeshit at the drop of a hat just to prove you're being spontaneous. It's all about finding your own balance - not according to whether you'll stand or fall, but according to how you feel like living. It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it, that type of thing.

By the way, "Just make the bold move. You're no more likely to fail," is technically a fauxtation. That's to say, it kind of sounds like it might be a quotation, but isn't.

Hoorah for Live Earth!

On the radio this morning I heard the normally redoubtable Michael Parkinson and guest slagging off Live Earth because of performers getting there by means other than bike. Pish and tush, says I.

It's such a playground reaction. "You smell!" "No, YOU smell!" equals "You've got a big carbon footprint!" "No, YOU'VE got a big carbon footprint!"

People, this isn't something to get defensive about and belittle the messengers. Yes, pop stars use more aeroplane fuel than your average Joe or Joanna on the street. But the message of Live Earth isn't Madonna's or whoever's personal hectoring of everyone else. Their getting up on a stage to support a message that the world needs to stop polluting doesn't mean they're pretending they don't need to do their bit too. Eddie Izzard was one of the presenters, and said exactly that.

I think it's also worth remembering why popstars jet off all over the earth too - we want them to. It's not just up to them. Concerts and public appearances in a multiplicity of locations happen because we the public want to see these people. If we want celebrities to stop using so much aviation fuel, instead of grumbling, we could all stop subscribing to celebrity culture. Or we could ask our celebrities to use the train. To pervert an old hippy slogan, suppose they held a world tour and nobody came? (I guess that would be a fauxtation).

Al Gore either has a point or he doesn't, and as it happens, he does. WE ALL NEED TO USE LESS POWER IN AS MANY WAYS POSSIBLE, DIRECT OR INDIRECT. PERIOD. Moaning about how much people espousing this message consume is nothing less than an excuse to justify doing nothing yourself, and it's disgusting.

Regeneration and patriarchy: the sequels!

I've finished reading Pat Barker's Regeneration, and gone straight out and bought The Eye In The Door and The Ghost Road, which complete the trilogy. I can't wait to read them. I love it when I get this excited by a book. Naturally it's all the better when there are subsequent volumes to be read.

It's often the ideas that the author explores in a book that grab me. Pat Barker has a lot of great ideas about World War I as a pivotal point in how we think about that triangular relationship between men, women, and those who govern us. It was a time when people were eager for change, and this was showing up in all sorts of areas. Barker connects several of these very neatly.

In Regeneration, World War I represents several breaking points. Battle-traumatised officers, in particular war poet Siegfried Sassoon, come to the conclusion that their political masters could no longer demand such systematic sacrifice from the men it governed. Female munitions workers, including suffragettes on temporary political cease-fire, attain new earning power and freedom. Each exemplify a group that reaches towards a new relationship with politics.

This is of course also the time when psychiatry was a new science. It's brought in alongside the other new technologies of war in the shape of Dr Rivers. His job is to cure the traumatised and get them back to the front. However, Rivers can't help feeling that the outwardly bizzare behaviours of his patients are in their own way perfectly reasonable reactions to industrialised mass warfare. Preventive medicine is the best cure - peace.

So poet and psychologist are united in their challenge to an archaic, partiarchal political culture. I like that.

Lego digging

There's a sound I've been hearing a lot lately, and it's a very evocative one: the sound of eleven-year-old hands digging around in a large box of Lego pieces in search of exactly the right component for the latest construction project. People often say how smells trigger powerful memories and instantly transport them back to childhood. I don't really get that with smells - it's sound that does it for me. And for me, the sound of Lego digging takes me back to when the eleven-year-old hands were my own.

I recall the moments of triumph as I found the essential part - the part I was 98% certain was there, yet whose crucial importance lent a marvellous thrill to my search. After all, it's in the nature of Lego that it gets lost. There's natural wastage. The hoover, the sofa, and the bottom of the garden all claim their portion, and you can never be quite sure the piece you require is in the box until it's in your hand. That's all part of the fun. It's what Lego has over Meccano. Somehow, you always keep Meccano sorted into boxes and compartments. You just have to. It doesn't lend itself to all being slung chaotically into one big box. Meccano is in many ways superior to Lego, but you can't deny that Lego's got anarchy.

Faffing hangover

I’ve been very grumpy about sharing myself with people lately. It’s the school holidays and Fred’s staying with me, and suddenly it seems like everyone wants a piece of me and I can’t cope. Actually of course it’s me that wants to spend time with them, and the real issue is time management. I faff. I waste time, I hover around trying to figure out what to do next. I read spam emails and do Sudoku. Cut the faffing, and there’d be loads more time for everyone. Not that much of a biggie really.

Last weekend Kat and I had a pretty big evening at our friend Dan's birthday party, complete with run-in with a weird drunk old man on the way home and dancing to Shakira till 4am. Suffice it to say the next day provided fulsome reminders of the fact that hangovers can include grumpiness.

So I guess you could say I've had a faffing hangover. Where drinking too much dehydrates you, overindulgence in faffing robs you of not water but time. Either way, you can end up being like a bear with a sore head. Not much fun to be with.

Ladies and gentlemen, for the sake of those you love, please faff responsibly.

What, no Tycoon?

I confess - I'm one of those addicted to programs such as The Apprentice and The Dragons' Den. It follows inevitably that I avidly lap up Tycoon, a blatant hybrid of the two. This was brought home with a bang this evening when I found it doesn't seem to be on this week.

There's quite a few other shows that pick up on the entrepreneur theme in a similar way, and I'm intrigued that we're so fascinated by this particular sort of reality TV. They say we all have at least one novel inside us - perhaps we've all got a business in there too. Maybe that's where the attraction lies.

After all, in its own way, running your own business is just as much about self-expression as writing a novel.

If you liked school...

Fred HATES school. Why? Ask him - he'll say, "Because they're always bossing me around." He rarely paints anything but a completely bleak picture of his school day. Oh, except for in the last week of term, when they get to do fun stuff instead of being ordered around. He was really looking forward to going in then (his actual words). He actually likes school, except for the being told what to do part. I find it hard not to sympathise.

Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, has recently brought out a new book, I learned today. It's called "If You Liked School, You'll Love Work!" Wow, I thought, that's a fantastic title. Plainly a man who shares my view of school: it's basically a preparation for a life of obedience. It's like your most important lesson is doing as you're told.

I disagree. I don't trust obedience. Being something of an anarchist, that goes rather against my grain. That doesn't mean I advocate burning down all the schools and offices. It's just that when we're trusted to use our own initiative and judgement in life, we get a lot more out of it and we've got a lot more to offer. Companies are starting to want it from their employees too.

It also doesn't mean I advocate letting kids whatever the hell they like. That road leads to a need for therapy, for parents and children alike.

There's a need for ownership - kids feeling they own their education, adults feeling they own their jobs. Obedience is the opposite - it's about compulsion rather than choice.

As it says at the opening of the film of Irvine Welsh's most famous novel, "Choose life..."

Maybe that's what we're all trying to do, did we but know it.

Skiing and selfishness

Well, sure enough, skiing was a great adventure. I had my tyrannical moments of course - like when Fred wanted to call it a day after one hour on the slopes so he could go back to the hotel and listen to CDs - but by and large, I made it a holiday about him.

A couple of months before, I'd decided I couldn't afford for Fred and I to go skiing this year. Then my dear friend Neil invited me to go skiing with him. When Fred's mum said to me 'That's rather selfish, isn't it? To go yourself but not with Fred?' I confess a nerve was touched. So I ended up finding the money and the sufficently cheap holidays to go on.

What I ended up with was a lot of freedom to do purely what Fred wanted to do on holiday, since I could do my own thing with Neil, and guess what? I enjoyed skiing with Fred way more than either of the previous times I've been skiing with him.

The thing is, all that was different was that I wasn't carrying around the idea that Fred was a chore or a restriction. I wasn't wearing responsibility as a burden, but as an adventure in itself. One which we were on together. It was that togetherness that really made it special, for both of us.

It seems looking after Number One has benefits for the other numbers too.

Chaos at the Airport! Hooray!

Something intriguing happened when Fred and I were on our way to France for our skiing holiday back in February. First of all, we were sitting around at the airport, along with all the other people for our flight - mostly families, so there were lots of kids. All having good behaviour - ie. quiet behaviour - expected of them. They were pretty much all complying too.

Then the delay started to mount up. Then an hour or two's delay turned into the plane being deemed unfit to fly, which meant we'd have to wait some more hours for a replacement. And by this time, our original airport was shut for the night so we had to be re-routed. What happened? The kids all started playing. Running around the departure lounge, using big plastic bottles as footballs, chasing, squealing with delight. Some of the grown-ups were joining in too.

What I began to wonder was this - why wasn't this happening before? Why did it take such a melt-down of transport provision before all these (presumably quite excited) kids could start messing about with each other, enjoying themselves and burning off some energy? And what was it that changed? It struck me that maybe that was something to do with the grown ups. It was as if they suddenly stopped enforcing discipline once it became clear what a fiasco the tour company was making. As if any uproar had in an instant become the responsibility of the people who'd caused us to remain hanging around the airport for hours.

Going back to my roots

Visiting Harrogate, where I grew up, is something I've found quite challenging for quite a few years. When I left over 20 years ago there was a lot of friction in my family, and with hindsight I can see that moving away didn't help matters at all. So it came to be something of a place of ghosts for me. 4 years ago I started talking to my Dad and stepmother again after 13 years of almost total silence (that's another story); that was a great breakthrough for me, but things between us are still not massively cosy. No animosity or anything - just curiously quiet. (I think part of the reason I started this blog was to chart me reconnecting with my Dad. I notice there's only been one post about him though, last November. Ahem.)

So it was fantastic when, a couple of months ago, I went there with Kat and Fred. Kat had a trade fair to attend with her fabulous Harris Tweed handbags and manbags, and she was very keen to meet the parents. I'm ashamed to say that so was Fred; ashamed, because he's not seen them since he was 18 months old. We met up with them - in Bettys Tea Room, possibly Harrogate's most famous feature - and had a marvellous time. Fred caused a stunned silence when he tried to amuse us all by saying "Why did you have to have to choose THIS guy to adopt?" This is a delicate subject for the parents, though I noticed Kat come very close to wetting herself silently in the corner. Otherwise everyone got on famously, and Kat said afterwards what a lovely man my Dad was.

This was also the occasion on which I finally explained to Fred about all my parents. He's known for some time that I was adopted at birth. I've been reunited with my birth parents - they're lovely folk - and Fred's met them several times. But I've skated over parts of the whole picture before; now, I've finally laid it all out for him. He knows now who brought me into this world, and who the man who raised me is. He also now knows the woman my Dad married when my Mum died.

That feels very good.

Mottos

Gordon Brown's first speech as Prime Minister yesterday climaxed with the words:
"On this day I remember words that have stayed with me since my childhood and which matter a great deal to me today. My school motto: I will try my utmost. This is my promise to all of the people of Britain."

Radio 4's Today program this morning picked up on the theme of mottos. Someone commented that he preferred mottos to mission statements. Mission statements have their place of course, but what's so great about mottos is that they're directed inwards; they're reminders to ourselves of who we want to be, rather than what we tell our clients we are. They can thus be more candid and cautionary. That's what I think of as the best sort of motto. My favourite is that of Oliver Cromwell, which Paddy Ashdown also adopted:

"Know what ye stand for, love what ye know."

Mottos can also of course be a pile of crap. I'm thinking of the sort that's stuffed with bluster and vainglory, like another one that featured on the Today program this morning. After the piece on mottos, there was an interview with Alistair Darling, who everyone's assuming will be Chancellor of the Exchequer. They couldn't help raising the old school mottos issue of course, and he recited his:

"Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna" (You have inherited Sparta, be worthy of it)

Well I mean. It's all glorifying cold showers, wearing shorts in the Scottish midwinter, no heating and wide open windows in the aforementioned seasonal conditions, rugby on frozen pitches, no girls, no telly, no sweets and watery porridge. Isn't it? (The answer is yes. I went to the same school. Can you guess?)

Imagine if Alistair Darling takes over from Gordon Brown. "You have inherited Sparta. Be worthy of it. This is my promise to all of the people of Britain."

ARRGH! To my horror, I've just realised that my old school motto exhorts me and all my schoolfellows past and present (including Alistair Darling) to ape a warrior society that engaged in a brutal war with the Persians (who we now call Iranians) to defend democracy. Uh oh.

The school's Victorian founder can't have had the War on Terror and the Axis of Evil in mind, surely? Maybe not. But then again, I've never really noticed before how ingeniously and completely it combines the twin doctrines of personal hardiness and 19th century imperialism. Gosh, there's some food for thought.

Lazerquest!

It was Fred's birthday party last week, so off we went to LAZERQUEST! What a fantastic laugh that was. I've done it once before, when Fred and I last visited my sister Helen in the USA 3 years ago. What with all that sprinting around, I pulled a muscle. So this time, I was kind of glad to hear during the preliminary briefing the words 'No running!' I admit to being shocked at this, and also to thinking 'Oh God! How British!'

But actually it added a sort of finesse to my game. I ducked, I dived, I peered cunningly around corners, I darted barely perceptibly. I shouted, I sweated, I got over-enthusiastic. And when I nipped unknowingly into a dead end and crashed into the 'scenery', it wasn't as sore as it might have been. I certainly had plenty of exercise and fun, even at walking pace.

Possibly, not charging around like a bull at a gate even contributed to my enjoyment. Now there's a thought...

Anarchy, Punk and Coaching

A few days ago I realised that for me, coaching's about anarchy - self-government for the individual. Being yourself, taking control of your life. John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, is after 30 years still one of my greatest heroes, because that was his message too. That's what I want to get out of coaching, and that's what I want to give to my clients.

So yesterday evening it was slightly spooky that an excellent film about the history of punk, its roots and its legacy was on the TV. It was fascinating - really thorough, and featuring many bands I'd only been dimly aware of, and who I'll definitely be tracking down at the record shops - Suicide, The MC5, and James Chance and the Contortions for a start.

The film identified the punk attitude in the ways people challenged all sorts of orthodoxies in the 60s - and of course the roots of coaching and self-development are to be found in exactly the same cultural context.

So that grabbed my attention - suddenly the idea of being a punk coach starts to make sense...

Friends are for...

Here's a brilliant quotation from Regeneration:

'What are friends for if not letting you off the hook?'

Life Club!

I'm running a weekly workshop in Edinburgh called a Life Club. It's a great idea, the brainchild of author and journalist Nina Grunfeld - a relaxed space for yourself where you can take time out each week to take stock. You check in with where you are and where you want to get to, and get a bunch of help and support with that. In addition to that, each week there's a theme for part of the group work. I never fail to get something out of it for myself, so I figure it's worth sharing about what's coming up each week.

Life Clubs are held across the UK. If you'd like to come to the Edinburgh one, it's every Tuesday evening at the Cumberland Bar, Cumberland St, from 6.45pm. There's more info at the official site, including where other Clubs are held if you're not in Edinburgh.

So, this week the theme's how you put yourself across. Not just in interviews and marketing and so on, but in every interaction we have with other people every day. What this immediately brings to my mind is how shy I've realised I can be - I'm a past master of hiding myself away. I've not even noticed how good I am at it, which is probably why I've let myself get away with it for so long.

In putting yourself across, there's three areas to get clear about - who are you, who are you talking with, and what outcome do you want. I could generally do better at all of those, but for me the biggie is who the other person is. All too often, I imagine them to be in some way scary or angry with me, so I clam up. Or maybe I don't talk to them at all. So I'm really looking forward to what comes up for me in this week's exercise, which, suffice it to say, involves role playing situations.

Or perhaps I'm not.

Fortunately, that's usually a sign I'm about to learn something.

rediscovering Scott

I've long admired Scott Walker. It's partly his amazing voice, but also his extraordinary abilities as a writer of utterly jaw-dropping songs. Brian Eno, another hero of mine, describes his lyrics as 'peerless'. The music itself is by turns lush, challenging, and bordering on sound sculture. Overall what I love about Scott's music is its incredible intensity. I was very intense about music as a young man - art over entertainment any time. I remember my friend Dominic remarking to my Dad at some teenage youth club disco that 'You can't dance to the music we're into.'

Anyway, somehow I never got round to buying much of Scott's work, despite its briliance. I only had Scott, his first solo album. So when I recently started to undergo something of a musical rebirth - I've also been strumming my guitar and singing along - one of my first acts was to remedy this. I bought Scott 2, Scott 3, Scott 4, and his two more recent albums Tilt and The Drift. It's been like opening a bottle of vintage champagne I'd been saving for a special occasion for 15 years. No, make that a case of champagne - I'm still listening my way through them, one by one.

So this morning Scott 3 was in the CD player, and 30th Century Man was playing. Imagine my pride when Fred walked in and said 'Hey Dad, this sounds really like you!'

Regeneration and patriarchy

I'm currently reading Regeneration by Pat Barker, which has some intriguing things to say about patriarchy and manhood. One particular one comes at a moment in a church. In the stained glass windows there is the scene of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac. In the window, Abraham doesn't seem at all bothered by this, while Isaac looks positively eager. Barker calls it

the 'bloody bargain... on which all patriarchal societies are founded. If you, who are young and strong, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and be able to exact the same obedience from your sons.'

So if patriarchal societies oppress women, they also oppress men. They make fools of us all, since, as my fellow coach Jon Willis likes to quote, 'The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise man grows it under his feet.' (Check out Jon's blog SELF Happiness) And what could be a better example of deferring happiness for the future than consenting to fight the battles of your elders for them, to the death?

This kicks up some interesting questions. What's the alternative? Who, in fact, are the patriarchs? How far have we come in changing this? What remains to be done? What does it say that the author of the book that makes this point is a woman?

I'm back

I've succumbed to a bad case of Blogger's Pitfall - that is to say, not posting. That's over now.

I notice it's like when you haven't called someone for a while - the longer you leave it to get back in touch, the harder it gets. Like they're going to be pissed off to hear from you.

As if.

So I'm back.

There's even some posts I'd written but didn't post up - things left unsaid. How daft is that? I'm beginning to realise how shy and retiring I can be. So I'll put some of those up over the next few days, if there's still any relevance to them.

It's good to be back.

Adventure? Moi?

It's a bit of a cliche that being a parent is an adventure. It's unpredictible, it's exciting, it's scary. It involves the total You. You might catch some horrible disease. It's big, and requires commitment - you can't just turn it off like a boring TV program. It could all so easily go pear-shaped. You have to not mind when stuff gets broken.

And yet, how much of the time do we treat parenthood as an adventure? I mean, really choose to approach it as an opportunity to have an adventure?

Well, what exactly is an adventure? The Oxford English Dictionary says what you might expect - ''an unusual and exciting experience; a daring enterprise; a hazardous activity." So far, so useful for articles in FHM on fatherhood as the new white-water rafting. We all have our own ideas of adventure though. Personally I reckon an important element of adventure is discovery and exploration - for yourself, or helping others discover. Usually both.

Adventures can happen anywhere - you can have incredible adventures in a library, for example. I remember trembling with excitement when I read a 400-year old book while researching a history essay at university a few years ago - seeing, touching, smelling, feeling an actual book from Jacobean times, printed when Shakespeare was still churning them out, when Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot were as fresh as Osama bin Laden and 9/11 are for us now.

Exciting, certainly; also hazardous and daring to take on responsibility for something so fragile, important and priceless, to open up this window into another time. More parallels with parenting there. But I take issue with "unusual". Adventures shouldn't be unusual. Reserving the excitement of adventure for rare occasions confines us terribly and makes us boring. I know, because I've taken plenty of boring options over the years. I've spent a lot of time on the metaphorical sofa watching metaphorical reruns on metaphorical cable TV. (A goodly proportion of that hasn't even been metaphorical.) Much better to get out and engage with the adventurous spirit, the me that loves mountain biking and skiing and experiencing culture I've not experienced before. The me that likes to take risks, find out what happens when I do this or look at that.

Which of course brings us back to that magnificent adventure, being a dad. It's funny that many of the things I most love to get adventurous with involve playfulness, and they all involve curiosity. I say funny because these are qualities we more readily associate with children than with adults. As adults we can often be more concerned with being serious and knowing than being playful and curious. We feel more secure saying "I know the answer!" than "What's the answer?" Play is the opposite of work, and therefore unproductive, even vain.

I've often tended to shut the playfulness and the curiosity away, especially around my son. It's as if I've wanted to "put away my childish things" and show him a shining, upright example of stiff-backed, no-nonsense adult manhood. I've resolved to give that up and have adventures, both with Fred, my friends, and my self. Fred loves to ski - we've been twice to the Alps. I was recently thinking, in a very responsible sort of way, that this year I couldn't really afford it. Once I'd paid all the extras especially.

Well, I've changed my mind. We're going skiing! We're going to have adventures in the snow! All the more so because I'm not going to put him in ski school this year, we'll just go out and have fun on skis and see what happens. And when we're back, let's see how well I do at continuing to treat parenting - and maybe some other things too - as an adventure.

Tyrants, intentions and parents

I went to see 'The Last King Of Scotland' yesterday, a very powerful and moving film. I found it provoking thoughts about all sorts of things, and also connecting a lot of lines of thought.

One thing that really surprised me was that in a curious way I found myself feeling a certain sympathy with the character of Idi Amin. Let's be clear, the film version of Amin is a brutal man, and the assumptions I brought into the cinema with me about the real-life man were ranged entirely against him. He and his atrocities were a prominent topic when I first became aware of news and current affairs as I grew up, so for me he's always been one of the first people I think of when dictators, oppressive regimes and human rights abuses come up in conversation.

Nevertheless, watching the film I found I could believe there was a possibility that the film's Amin had at least begun with good intentions; that he had not come to power with the sole intent of brutalising his country and his countrymen. At one point he describes himself as the father of his people, and this opens up an interesting parallel: the tyrant as father, the father as tyrant.

Amin's experience of leadership was of constantly being on the verge of completely losing control, with possibly catastrophic results. His repeated excesses were panicky, knee-jerk reactions. He went too far in the hope that a heavy hand would stamp out the threat to his control; his response to this policy's lack of success was to make the hand heavier. These words could easily be used to describe a great many people's experience of parenting, at least in some measure.

Most, maybe all, parents are capable of being tyrannical as a knee-jerk reaction - I know I am. I've had my moments where I've snapped into a sort of automatic response mode in which I just want to make Fred do what I say. I notice it happens in moments when something inside me panics and says 'I don't know how to do this! I'm trapped!' and it's as if by raising my voice I can fight/flight my way out of it. There was a boy at my school who, when tormented, would lash out randomly, flailing his arms and yelling and growling: in a way, it's a bit like that. Responding to the danger of losing control by letting go of control.

What goes completely out of the window when this happens is the purpose, direction or intention that's behind being a parent. Unless that intention is to raise a child - no, a person - who lives, thinks and behaves entirely according to parental prescription, regardless of inconsistency, abitrariness, or hypocrisy, and does so out of fear. I don't think any of us have that intention at all. The trick would appear to be to stay in touch with the intention, and not get sucked into battling for control.

Fussy logic

I had an interesting conversation with Fred yesterday. He's a fussy kid about certain things - eating, trying new stuff. He gets very stubborn, very insistent that he doesn't or won't like something when he doesn't know that. It's not exactly unique - plenty of kids are 'stubborn', or 'awkward', or 'fussy', or 'controlling'. It struck me though that a better word one could use is that he gets defensive, like he feels he has to defend his world. I put this to him, and it seemed to ring a bell for him. So I asked him what he felt he needed to defend his world from. 'Being controlled by someone else,' he replied.

So it was with some interest that today I read a report about academic attempts to define the family. Sounds a little dry perhaps, but I found it quite the opposite and will be digging deeper into it shortly. One thing that caught my eye was the notion that the concept of the family is a social construct based on ideological and power relationships.

The notion was a feminist notion and the power and ideology were patriarchal. Now, I don't accept that relationships are inevitably about power and trouser-wearing (I used to, but that's another story). For that matter, I don't accept that men are the binary opposite of women and children. However, if you view the family as a power struggle, that'll be your experience of it. And that's where I was reminded of my conversation with Fred.

Fred's been told often enough that I, his mum and his teachers have no interest in bossing him around for its own sake. That actually, the entertainment value of telling him what to do is pretty limited. He's heard that before, but hasn't taken it in. (Pretty common complaint, right?) So he's not really, truly, deeply listening. My automatic reaction of course is to repeat ad nauseam, hoping that one day he finally will listen. But he won't; chances are, he'll figure it out for himself quicker than hear me going on like a stuck record. So what on earth else can I do? It occurs to me that maybe here's a chance to shut up. I could try doing what I want him to do - listen. There's often a lot of mileage in doing what you want others to do.

Shut up and listen!

I'm looking for a new coach at the moment, and had an excellent sample session with one today. One thing I got from it was a clearer idea of exactly what I want to say - to the world, and also therefore myself. That message is -

Shut up and listen!

So for the next few days I'm seeing where shutting up and listening takes me. So far, for example, I've shut up and listened to Fred messing about like the ten year old boy he is, which led to a bunch of laughter where there might normally have been stern reproval on my part. I often make a lot of internal noise about how Fred ought to be; sometimes this is appropriate, but very often it's just habit. That's the 'shut up' part - setting aside the internal noise. Doing so makes it a lot easier to listen to the real-life boy who's actually in front of me, rather than the meek, quiet, seen-and-not-heard child part of me wants him to turn into sometimes. He's not like that, and I don't want him to be like that; so letting him be who he is and listening to that works out great for both of us. Cool!

We don't learn when we talk, only when we listen. That includes internal talk - judgements, expectations, assumptions and so on. I'm going to be looking for other ways I can shut up, and can't wait to see what I get to hear.