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.