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.