Tag: Englishman abroad

An Englishman Abroad When The Queen Dies

Being an ocean away when Queen Elizabeth II died was a reminder that some of the English certainties are well in the past.  In days gone by Thursday night would definitely have meant a trip to the pub to reflect on all things monarchical and to toast Her Majesty for a lifetime of service and putting up with her own children.  Whatever the general apathy or distaste for the Royal Family in the UK it was unusual for individuals to suggest she personally deserved less than respect for fulfilling a demanding role that was foisted upon her.

As it is, the response of the football authorities has been to deny the opportunity for fans to meet at the weekend – a time that people come together to share loyalties, build memories and reflect on their world.  The most heartening moment of Thursday was the spontaneous rendition of God Save the Queen by West Ham fans gathered for a European league match.  People should have the chance to celebrate and sing with friends for those who have lived a fulfilled and fulfilling life.

Cancelling the Last Night of the Proms was even more foolish because this is a moment where the British sense of tradition, eccentricity and ability to let loose in harmless patriotic fun is most evident.  Pomp and Circumstance March No1, Jerusalem and Rule Britannia are as much national anthems as the official version and the Queen was a believer in maintaining tradition.  The Royal Albert Hall, named out of love and enduring devotion to Queen Victoria’s husband, would have been a perfect venue to say goodbye while celebrating continuity.    

I am personally three strikes down on opportunities to meet a member of the Firm but this is the first one that I definitely won’t get back.  It’s always seemed slightly odd to me that people want to stand in a line to shake hands with someone they don’t know, have nothing in common with and who might not even stop to talk.  Planning the choreography of the event, walking around with security details to review escape routes and sniffer dogs to check bathrooms for explosive devices, is a lot more interesting than two seconds holding a gloved hand.

It is also fair to say that I am not a monarchist, although I have a regard for someone who so unflinchingly worked in a role that has meant being polite to some terrible Prime Ministers and appalling world leaders.  A long time ago I reconciled myself to the economic modelling suggesting that the monarchy was a net benefit to the country and that politically it was less likely to be problematic than, say, an elected President.  But I had no desire to meet – despite twenty years with a trio of close calls     

As we set up the first ASDA Festival of Food and Farming in Hyde Park in 1989 one of the privileges of being the headline sponsor was to have our tent visited by the Queen.  As lead organizer for the retailer, I was on the list to have my hand shaken but declined because I wasn’t really sure what the point was.  I wandered around with one of the ladies in waiting who was totally charming and didn’t really feel I’d missed much.

My next near encounter was in 2001 when Princess Anne opened the Sportspark at the University of East Anglia.  Like many people of my generation I considered the Princess Royal a favourite because she genuinely seemed to like rugby and didn’t have any of the somewhat whining tendencies of her brothers.  Another regal handshaking opportunity beckoned but I swiftly inserted my son into the running order to hand over a bouquet.

Probably my final opportunity was when the then heir apparent, Prince Charles, visited the University of East Anglia in early 2010 to give a pep talk in the wake of Climategate.  His visit was delayed by several hours due to an accident on what was, at the time, only a single carriageway as the main road into Norfolk.  As dozens of security-cleared and locked down colleagues sweltered in the Council Chamber I had the right badge to go backwards and forwards which enabled me to be in the wrong place (had I wanted to shake hands) at just the right moment.   

I’m not counting here the dismal It’s a Royal Knockout in 1987 where Andrew, Fergie and Edward made total idiots of themselves in the pouring rain and ushered in an era where dignity continued to fall away almost yearly.  Princess Anne was the fourth team captain but she looked on with disdain throughout, while strategizing her way to leading her team, including Emlyn Hughes and Tom Jones, to victory.  ASDA was one of the sponsors but we were, thankfully, kept miles away drinking champagne while watching on TV screens from a tent in a rain sodden field.

All this is a reminder that a lot of years have passed for the “new Elizabethans”, a term which did not stick.  From a time when Winston Churchill was still Prime Minister and the monarch was Queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, to a time when the Union is under pressure and the UK is seeking a new way in the world.  Her passing is probably the best reminder to those of us born in the decade of her coronation that the baton has firmly passed to new generations.

In that respect it would have been interesting to see Charles – a product of the 1940s – step aside and help usher in a new generation through Prince William, a 1980s child.  It is not a question of whether King Charles can do the job because I suspect he will be more interested in stability than turbulence.  It is really whether the moment is ripe for a step change in ambition akin to that of John F. Kennedy, the youngest ever US President (by election) at the age of 43, whose New Frontier speech still resonates in stating “not a set of promises – it is a set of challenges.”

Prince William is slightly younger than Kennedy was at that time but he has a young family that would make his appreciation of the long term future a matter of fundamental personal importance.  It also seems time for the generation born during and in the shadow of the second world war to hand over to those who will hopefully avoid a third.  After that they need only steer a route through climate change, global pandemics, economic poverty, water and food crises while watching the sky for a stray meteor.

Despite all that, the best of luck to Charles and Camilla.  The country needs some good news and compassionate leadership.  They might just be the best thing about the next few years.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay 

An Englishman Abroad Votes for Democracy

Unpicking the result of the past US election and predicting the result of the next has been a favourite pastime even since I have been living here.  That’s three years of unrelenting, partisan turmoil played out very publicly and with increasing levels of vitriol on both sides.  In a strictly non-partisan way, I’ve been trying to work out what advice I’d give to the UK to preserve democracy, common sense and some decorum.  My first would, of course, be not to put any changes to a referendum….

STICK TO ONE MAIN ELECTION FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

There is a non-stop merry go round of elections in the US.  While the Presidential election comes round once every four years, a third of the Senate seats and all 435 House of Representative voting seats are up for grabs every two years.  It makes for a pretty bumpy ride where control of the House or the Senate can change and make the President more or less effective. 

Three equal branches of Government may sound like a neat balance but like all balances the system lurches if distribution of ‘weight’ changes by an ounce.  Too many elections leads to too much politics with too much campaigning and too many reasons for people to be negative about each other.  There is little time for holding out a hand of reconciliation because the scars of the last battle aren’t healed before the next one comes along.

MOVING OUT TODAY

Watching the ex-Prime Minister of the UK driving in an official car to Buckingham Palace to resign, then leaving Downing Street in a second-hand Mini Metro the day after the polls close is one of the great levellers in human life.  When the people speak they should be heeded and it does not need Oliver Cromwell pointing at the defeated PM saying, “In the name of God, go” to confirm that time is up.  Once the vote is in the loser departs, and the winner takes up their own temporary occupancy.

It seems risky to have a disgruntled, disillusioned leader with nothing at stake roaming the corridors of power with a nuclear football to hand and a bunch of executive orders looking for scores to settle.  Leaving it like that for two months is like letting a friend of a friend crash on your couch for the night as a favour, only to find them using your toothbrush eight weeks later.  Elections are meant to have consequences and these should include a swift relocation and a period in the wilderness.

KEEP IT TO PARTIES

Having an elected President places sweeping authority in the hands of one individual.  Being the most powerful person in the world sounds like fun but everyone should take a lesson from the film Bruce Almighty.  Even when a relatively benign individual gets almost unlimited power it doesn’t end well and as Lord Acton wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 

The primus/prima inter pares role of UK Prime Minister has had some pretty despicable people holding the role but they simply don’t have the ability to act without constraint in the way of an elected President.  Of course, the more supine and feckless the rest of the party has been the more amplified the role of the Prime Minister.  But even the autocratic Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, was brought down and forced to resign just three years after a landslide Conservative victory at the polls. 

MAKE THE MEDIA MEDIATE

The moral for UK should not forsake the BBC or allow any other broadcast channel to become a loud hailer for party politics.  Partisan channels, on either side, become echo chambers that stifle political discourse and open debate about ideas.  The BBC makes mistakes from time to time but in 2019 a new high of 426m people a week tuned into it and in 2017 it was placed as the 20th most reputable CSR brand in the world.

It would also be good if the media could also stop using words and phrases in a way that looks macho while masking reality.  My least liked is “doubling down” – it sounds tough but usually means (and should be replaced by) “reckless gamble”.  Next is “breaking news” which sounds urgent but is often a rolling news misnomer for “old news but new pundits commenting” or “stuff our pundits just said that we can pretend is urgent”. 

Most recently “bully pulpit” has been used to suggest righteous browbeating of the opposition when it really should be replaced with “angry, spiteful, aggression by people who have no respect for their office.”  The phrase was used by President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s but it is suggested the term bully was more commonly used in that era to mean “superb” or “wonderful”.  Being President is a good platform but is probably better suited to Roosevelt’s dictum “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

TURN OFF TWITTER

According to a 2019 analysis by Pew Research Center, 22 percent of adults in the U.S. use Twitter, but just 10 percent of those adults are responsible for 80 percent of tweets.  There is evidence that “..the routinization of Twitter into news production affects news judgment”.  It is not hard to believe that Twitter is a partial, selective and distorting way of the media communicating or getting information.

Anything a political figure tweets or re-tweets should be considered their official position because the public is paying them to do the job.  As it is, we have a totally unfettered, no cost, manipulable channel that has become the driving force for the news agenda.  Even worse is the way that it makes the media act like a hyperactive puppy distracted by the next shiny bauble that appears in front of it.      

DON’T LET MONEY TALK LOUDEST

It’s eye opening to see the amounts that are raised, with the 2020 US campaign estimated to have seen nearly $11bn spent.  By comparison in the UK 2017 general election, 75 parties and 18 campaign groups reported spending about £42m between them.  It’s not a direct comparison but the magnitude suggests that there is a material difference in the way elections are conducted.

There’s some dispute about whether there is a direct cause, rather than correlation, between money spent and successful candidates but it seems a reasonable indicator.  If the money doesn’t help win the election it’s difficult to see why so much is being spent and even US voters would sooner there was more constraint.  It seemed particularly absurd during a pandemic to be pouring money into politics.

DO NOT GET COURTS IN THE ACT UNNECESSARILY

Illegality should, of course, be prosecuted and with significant consequences if democracy is being undermined.  But it is not a good look for an election to be determined by the courts.  Over fifty court cases have been lodged after the 2020 US Presidential election with a significant majority “dismissed or dropped due to lack of evidence”. 

Since 2000 the UK has had four cases and two petitions withdrawn before trial.  In 2010, one of the four cases resulted in a void election because Phil Woolas breached the Representation of the People Act 1983.  Quite charmingly by today’s standards Woolas was ousted because he made a “false statements of fact” about an opposing candidate – just imagine, a politician losing their seat for lying… 

KEEP POLITICS OUT OF BOUNDARY DECISIONS

I had learnt the word gerrymandering while studying the politics of Northern Ireland but had never got quite so far as to understand that it is an American term first used in Boston, Massachusetts in 1812.  The Gerry in question was Governor Elbridge Gerry who redistricted Massachusetts for the benefit of the Democratic-Republican Party.  One of the contorted districts was said to resemble a mythological salamander and so the portmanteau word was born.

Redistricting of electoral boundaries within states falls to whichever legislature and court happens to be in power at the time.  For anyone used to the non-partisan Boundary Commissions of the UK this seems a bit like giving a dominant football team a home draw for all of its FA Cup matches.  Constituency boundaries are messy and nobody is ever completely happy but this shouldn’t be compounded by overt political distortion.

None of this should suggest that I don’t despair at the handling and outcome of some of the UK elections and I am sure there is no perfect system.  It also seems a long time since I sat screaming at the radio at three am in the morning while sitting on my bedsit floor after voting for the first time.  But at least in a democracy you get to have your say, can be an activist and can blame others for the consequences if you don’t win. 

Churchill was right to quote past wisdom when telling the House of Commons in 1947 that, “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”  He was, of course, ousted in the 1945 General Election despite his enormous personal popularity following service as the war-time coalition leader but he continued to respect the process.  His doctor Lord Moran commiserated with him on the “ingratitude” of the British public, but Churchill replied: “I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time”.      

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD DOES COLD TURKEY ON BLUE MONDAY IN DRY JANUARY

Having spent an early career in public relations I know a public relations scam when I see one.  Most anniversaries, memes, and movements are little more than the creation of a fertile, scheming brain working out how to promote a cause.  It’s helped me avoid all sorts of tomfoolery, faddishness and showing off disguised as charitable good deeds. 

I’ve avoided Movember because my efforts at growing facial hair are reminiscent of breeding mole rats on my upper lip.  Armpits For August and Fannuary have felt very worthy but a bit exclusive.  And Ginuary and Septembeer are just figments of my imagination that I offer (for an exorbitant fee) to any global drinks behemoth looking for one of the aforementioned PR scams.

But having failed to toast the start the 2020s with a glass of champagne I went cold turkey on alcohol in a dry January that makes Death Valley look like an oasis.  Just two weeks into the month I realized that I was also facing Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year, with all the cheer of the aforementioned chilly piece of poultry.  And that’s as much a downer as listening to a synth-pop and alternative dance song, composed on a prototype-level homebrew “step-time” sequencer in binary code.

The famous New Order song, Blue Monday, is about judgement, control and abuse apparently and has been ranked as the 38th most acclaimed song of all time.  Evidence, if it were ever needed that for most people that the only thing better than a 7-inch single with four minutes of misery is a 12-inch remix with seven minutes of anguish.  I much prefer Fats Domino’s idea of ‘Blue Monday’ with the comforting thought that ‘Sunday mornin’ my head is bad, but it’s worth it for the time that I had’.

I do have a certain affection for the Blue Monday concept because it is a masterpiece in meme development by my good friend, PR genius and East-End boy about town, Andy Green.  In 2005 he adopted the idea of the most depressing day of the year from Porter Novelli and turned it into a multi-year media hit.  It’s always struck me that as a lifelong West Ham fan Andy has probably had more Blue Saturdays than most so giving the tag to a Monday was extraordinarily selfless.

And all of this with the gloomiest month of the year yet to come because in the northern hemisphere February is the dead zone between the carousing of Christmas and the sunlight of Spring.  Little surprise that FebFast, the Australian movement urging a break from alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and digital overload, never made it over the equator.  Also, pretty cunning of the Aussies to keep their abstinence to the shortest month of the year.     

Strictly speaking I’m not admitting to ‘doing’ dry January because that would interfere with my bid to secure a 28th Amendment that safeguards the freedom for anyone to have an alcoholic beverage whenever they want.  My case is based on the premise that one of the most scarring moments of my life was pitching a tent on a rainy Sunday evening in Wales and then finding that I was in a county which still banned the sale of alcohol on the Sabbath.  And I can assure you that in rural Wales at the time ‘bootlegs’ were just a local form of pernicious and extensive trench foot and speakeasies were a reference to the loquaciousness of Cymru’s favourite sons.

For the record the Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881 banned the sale of alcohol in Welsh pubs on the Sabbath and was not repealed until 1961.  Local referendums followed and it wasn’t until 1996 that Dwyfor – now part of Gwynedd – became the last district in Wales to drop the ban.  A commentator even argued, “Without the coffee shop, would Dylan Thomas have been the same writer?”, when the mighty Welsh poetic giant, my personal favourite, seemed no stranger to a whiskey or seven.

As I’m in a country where Prohibition is still within living memory, I think I have a right to be nervous on this score.   This January is the 100th anniversary of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution coming into effect.  It was ratified in 1919, and was not repealed until December 1933 with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment.  It wasn’t illegal, under Federal law, to drink per se but for those without a home distillery the ban on transportation and sale probably meant 14 years without a legal drink.

As it happens and as one of the world’s inveterate ‘joiner inners’ I have always respected the cultures of countries where alcohol is generally unavailable.  On trips to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan I did not go the easy route of completing the form in the hotel saying that I required drink for ‘medical purposes’.  It felt uneasily like signing up as dependent and sitting in a hotel room with miniatures has never appealed to me.

The question on the mind of anybody who has made it this far in the blog should be – how do I actually feel after not drinking for 24 days, 5 hours and 35 minutes.  The dull truth is that it’s been easy but tedious.  There have been times of day (early evenings) when a glass of wine would have been welcome, occasions (watching football) when a beer is missed and social moments (the Whistlestop on a Friday evening) that have just not been the same.    

On the positive side my running times have been excellent and for anyone with sufficient vanity I can confirm that after several weeks it helps reduce any midriff bulges.  But I am not sleeping any better and I have not noticed a healthy glow to my skin.  All the research and evidence would suggest that my liver and other internal organs are in better shape and that I will live a little longer.

But it has reminded me of the saying that ‘nobody remembers the nights they went to bed early and got plenty of sleep’.  That’s not an argument for returning to the frequency of wilder days with their plethora of amusing, sad, and startling memories with people who will be grateful not to be named in public.  But tequila shots in the early morning at the THE Awards and Education Investor nights at the Italian bar opposite Ronnie Scott’s were the only possible preparation for the endurance test known as the Global Recruitment Conference. 

It’s difficult to say if I’ll keep going to the end of January and I already have a slightly subversive view that it’s a cruel and unusual month of fasting that ends on a Friday night.  Maybe that’s the point where a small toast to the good times, the future and the ability to make choices is appropriate.  Cheers everyone.   

Image by Annalise Batista from Pixabay     

An Englishman Abroad Rolls With The Royals

Watching the Rolling Stones in the Pasadena Rose Bowl was the closest I’m ever likely to get to seeing the Royal Family reinstated in the land of the free.  Over 90,000 people gathered in a shrine to American Football to celebrate English icons.  And the best bit was that for the first time in several years I think I brought down the average age of attendees.

The Rose Bowl is a grand old stadium that is celebrated as a National Historical Landmark and will be 100 years old in 2022.  That means it is just 15 years older than Stones founding member Bill Wyman who turns 82 this year.  It’s extraordinary to think that Bill left the band more than 25 years ago but even more so to learn that Darryl Jones stepped in immediately and has been the bass player ever since. Who knew?

From Street Fighting Man to Jumping Jack Flash the concert was a reminder of the immeasurable contribution made to modern music by English bands.  The lineage from the Stones, through Led Zeppelin, to the Clash and onwards to Oasis is distinct from the impact of the Celtic nations.  At a parochial level it was a great pleasure to be an Englishman in an arena where 90,000+ Americans were idolising and pouring adulation on my countrymen.

Anyone who wants to see the power of the Stones and their hold over the American psyche should watch the launch of Windows 95 video. It is also the ultimate solace to anyone who has ever been accused of Dad dancing. Watching Gates, Allen et al dancing to Start Me Up as if they having a shared session of electro-convulsion therapy is both joyous and deeply troubling.

But as you listen you realise that the most famous songs have lyrics that are about everywhere and nowhere.  Shakespeare has universal appeal because he wrote about the human condition.  The Stones may have universal appeal because they mainly write about a world which is, at one and the same time, human but beyond reach.

We may be able to just about relate to the notion that ‘sleepy London town is just no place for a street fighting man’ but ‘Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields’ and ‘gin soaked bar room queen in Memphis’ are from a different world.  It may be that ‘we can’t get no satisfaction’ but I doubt many were ‘born in a crossfire hurricane’.  Which may be why the song which sits calmly at the centre of the chaos, darkness and sleaze is the plaintive recognition that ‘you can’t always get what you want’.

The lyrics seem a strange paradox because there is something quintessentially English about the Stones.  For all their international presence, global sales and foreign homes they are recognisably wannabees from the Home County suburbs near London.  Hillingdon, Kingsbury and Dartford are close enough to the bright lights to feel part of the city but far enough away to be desperate for recognition.

A difference between the Stones and the Beatles is that the latter seemed much more parochial in writing about Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields and range of saccharine love songs. Even when they used the American ‘meter maid’ to sing about Lovely Rita it was only because traffic warden didn’t scan. The schism between little Englanders and global citizens was played out again in the 1970s between The Clash and The Jam and, in my view, there was only ever going to be one winner.

But when they gathered round to do an acoustic set interlude of Sweet Virginia it was just possible to imagine them in any country pub in the South of England.  Particularly one where the landlord didn’t want the amplifiers up too loud or any of that aggressive rock nonsense.  No matter, because they posed and postured, preened and performed with total self-assurance.

There were, however, plenty of differences to an English pub setting and $16 dollars for a very average Mexican lager makes sure that nobody gets too drunk.  But that didn’t stop the guy in the seat next to me parting company with his nachos half-way through Sympathy for the Devil.  It may have been linked to do with the overpoweringly sweet smell of legal but increasingly strong weed.

When you see the Stones you are reminded of the power of story-telling and myth.  They are characters that you think you know and about who you form opinions which may be totally at odds with their real personalities.  But they are as venerable and venerated as those on the Civil List and it struck me that comparisons were reasonable.

Charlie Watts reminds me of the slightly dotty uncle who talks to vegetables and frets about deteriorating architectural standards so he must be the Prince Charles of the group.  He looks vaguely embarrassed to still be behind the drums at his age and as if he would much prefer to be home with a cup of cocoa and his slippers on.  Difficult to reconcile that with the story that he once punched Jagger in the face for daring to demand, “where is MY drummer?”

A relative latecomer, although in the band since 1975, Ronnie Woods’ spiritual home has always been the Stones.  The passing resemblance to Keith Richards has faded with time (and Keith’s receding hairline) but Woods epitomises the younger brother who is full of energy and mischief.  Ronnie doesn’t carry the burden of being the monarch or next in line for the crown so, like Prince Harry, he wants to appear useful but is subsidiary to the real power in the Firm.

If there was no Keith Richards there would be no Brown Sugar, Satisfaction, Honky Tonk Woman or Angie and the Stones would be a footnote in history.  Keith may no longer ‘eat iron and piss rust’ but he has always set the musical tone for the band while being content to work with guitarists of greater technical flair and flamboyance.  As the spiritual leader Keith is akin to the Queen because his influence pervades the stage and the mood of the band without needing to do more than embody its history. And, from time to time, he asserts himself like an absolute monarch with an immortal riff or a rude, swampy lick from his spiritual home in the Mississippi delta.

And that leaves Sir Michael Jagger – his Satanic majesty and the model for every starstruck lead singer of a rock n roll band since the early 1960s.  A complete package of manufactured south London accent, snake hips, amphetamine energy, crazy good voice and nearly sixty years of stagecraft.  He is totally mesmerising and delivers the message of the band while rarely standing still, let alone alongside them.  I doubt any modern royal has carried themselves with such a sense of omnipotence and my metaphor rather fades. 

But, in having sympathy for the old devil, I am reminded of Prince Philip being hospitalised at the age of 95, after standing in the rain for three hours during 2012’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.  He paid the price for delivering, almost recklessly, what his position demanded, out of a sense of duty and pride.  Mick Jagger’s recent heart surgery is a similar reminder of inevitable human frailty and what will be lost eventually, but his performance was a joyous and inspirational celebration of what it means to be forever young.

Image by Arthur Halucha from Pixabay

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD THINKS IT’S ALL IN THE NAME

It’s taken a while but I have finally worked out the major difference between US and UK politics.  In a field where presentation is everything there is a fundamental issue about personal branding.  And in this particular department America leads the way by some distance.

The current leadership of the United Kingdom has the main offices of State in the hands of a May, a Hammond and a Hunt.  Far too many imponderables, uncertainties and voiceless glottal fricatives. It’s no wonder the country is struggling to decide which way to go and so many people wish the Government would drop their ‘H”s.

Over in the USA the team is lead by a Trump, a Pompeo and a Mnuchin.  It’s no contest in terms of impact, plosives and a family whose history in the United States began with a Russian-born Jewish diamond dealer who emigrated there from Belgium in 1916. The names sound like characters in a blockbuster film and sometimes have histories to match.

I could also offer Huckabee-Sanders and Lighthizer as examples of the memorable and media friendly names that dominate.  But the big, bold, power-names also leave just enough space for the occasional subtler, headline-friendly option like ex-White House Communications Director, Hope Hicks.  Perhaps the next British Prime Minister’s spokesperson should be considering a deed poll change to become Aspiration, Austerity or Panic. 

There is such a wealth of brand-worthy names available that the President has even been able to dispense with strong contenders.  He got rid of a McMaster, who may have sounded too challenging, and a Priebus, who, perhaps, sounded too much like a foreign car in an era where the focus is on US first.  Most memorably he even forsook a Scaramucci because he featured too strongly in the operatic section of Bohemian Rhapsody to survive more than 10 days as White House spokesperson.

And where the name itself falls short there are some brilliant nicknames even if they have also fallen by the wayside.  Mattis may not have risen to the status of celebrity surname but being called ‘Mad Dog’ was always likely to draw attention.  And returning to Mr Scaramucci I can only be in thrall to someone who not only has a name worthy of Hollywood but glories in the nickname ‘The Mooch’.

Part of the brilliance of the best names lies in not being too over the top – teaming plain old Donald, Mike and Steve with a striking surname is part of the trick.  Just imagine having Theresa Trump, Jeremy Pompeo and Philip Mnuchin powering through Cabinet meetings.  They’d make pretty short work of a Rees-Mogg whose hyphenated Welsh-English surname owes more to channeling Daffodil-Rose than Dragon-Lion.      

All of this helps explain why the British media have latched onto the dishevelled, accident-prone figure of Boris Johnson as a potential leader.  He has become the one name diva of the current political generation with a unique line in hair.  While it’s difficult to credit there is no doubt that he is the Tory party’s equivalent to Beyonce, Pink and Madonna.    

The brilliance of Boris is that he has even been able to appropriate the nickname of a US multi-Olympic medal winner and a Golden Globe nominated singer-actress.  Sadly, Florence Griffith Joyner passed away in 1998 so there is no chance of the three ever teaming up.  BoJo, FloJo and J-Lo might sound like a slightly outre vaudeville act but I suspect that together they could have equalled anything that Groucho, Harpo and Chico managed.    

Of course, Boris’s given name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, which incorporates a distinctly Germanic-surname containing more consonants than necessary.  In that respect he joins Nigel Farage who has had a little help from the continent with a family name of French Huegenot extraction.  The forename-surname rule comes into play here as well because I suspect that Boris Farage would be too exotic and Nigel Johnson too prosaic for public support.

So there you have it.  In a world where attention spans get shorter and shorter the route to political success and media approbation lies in having the right name and demonstrating real affinity with popular culture.  The era of Tony, John, Gordon, Margaret and David is over and we are looking towards the day, depending on who wins the Premier League, when Pep.U.Up or JuergenaImojiMe2?  have a realistic shot at leading the country as it seeks re-entry to the China-European Union Alliance in 2050.

Credit: Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

An Englishman Abroad Struggles With Sporting Conventions

It’s play-off and championship season in the National Football League and I am riveted by the mass of information on the TV screen.  There’s the score, the time, which quarter the game’s in, the number of yards needed and which down it is.  It’s a lot to take in but I remain baffled as to why the home team’s name comes second on the screen.

A lifetime in the UK has been based upon the immutable law that when a match is promoted and shown the home team’s name is first.  It makes sense because the game is at their stadium and it’s a reminder of home advantage.  It is very disorienting to have this turned on its head for no good reason.

The argument from American friends is that it is to reinforce the spoken version.  So it’s “the Steelers at the Patriots” and they seem equally bemused by my concern.  It’s common to American sports from basketball to baseball to hockey but it is as strange to a resident alien as some of the spelling. 

It might help if the American sports had proper knock-out cup competitions because it seems inconceivable that you would draw the away team out of the hat first.  But there was incredulity when I described a competition where pure chance might pit the might of Premier League Champions against the humblest of pub teams.  There is no equivalent here to the televisual genius of watching faded, mumbling players of yesteryear plucking swirling numbered balls blindly from a rotating device that has been borrowed from the local Bingo hall.

The ‘oooing’ and ‘aaaing’ and sharp intakes of breath as particularly juicy ties are drawn is a staple of being a fan of English football.  It’s matched by the camera in the clubhouse of some non-league upstarts looking to make an impression on the shins of an overpaid, over-tattooed and overrated Premier League star.  They may themselves be overweight, overworked and, er, over-tattooed but this is their moment in the sun.    

Everything about the FA Cup speaks to the principles of a working class game that has spawned decades of clichés. It’s eleven against eleven, a game of two halves and a pitch recently cleared of cow pats is a great leveller.   Nobody wants to play against Clogger United on a frosty, January night but it’s a reminder of the days when players caught the local bus to the stadium and drank a pint or four with the fans after the game (and sometimes before).     

It seems to me that the lack of decent cup competition is against the very spirit of the United States and I’d venture, without any genuine understanding, that it is likely to be unconstitutional.  This is supposed to be the land of opportunity where every child has the chance to become President and where Supreme Court Justices vehemently declare their love of beer.  Surely there has to be a space for the town of Gonzales, Louisiana, the ‘jambalaya capital of the world’, to form a team called the Gophers and take homefield advantage to give Bill Belichick’s all conquering New England Patriots a bloody nose.

When I raised the possibility it was suggested that the entire Gophers squad would be hospitalised in the first quarter by the superior physical qualities of the visiting supermen.  But anybody who saw Division 2 Sunderland beat the mighty Leeds United in the FA Cup Final, or savoured Southern League Herford’s win against the, then high-flying, Newcastle United, knows that dreams never die.  A ruptured spleen and complex fractures of every limb seem a small price to pay for a shot at glory.

It’s always good to have a theme so if I’m obliged to start a campaign my intention would be to invoke the spirit of the Rocky’s – Balboa and Marciano – and the formidable peak peaks of the Rockies – Elbert and Massive.  Warming to the task I’d eat Rocky Road ice cream (invented in California in 1929), wear Rocky boots (from Ohio since 1932) and sing Rocky Mountain Way by Joe Walsh (born in Kansas 1947) as my closer.

I put the whole fear of being beaten by part-timers down to another unfathomable thing about American sports – there is no promotion or relegation.  For a land which consistently harps on about winners being first and losers being nowhere this rather softens the blow of not being good enough.  No chance of going down or up, or facing ‘Nutter’ Smith in the backfield during a tricky cup match, means that the players can coast indefinitely.

The weakness of some of the groupings in the NFL’s structure of eight, four-team divisions grouped in two conferences has been recognised.  An example is the NFC East where the New England Patriots have topped the table 16 times in the last 18 years.  The advantage is that you get a week of rest and then homefield advantage against a ‘wild card’ team.

Talking of the Patriots reminds me of another strange thing about American football.  Each team gets to use their own balls when they are on offense (or attack in English parlance).  This led to the famous ‘deflategate’ scandal where the Patriots were accused of under-inflating their balls.  It was January 2015 and they were playing the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game.

The referees seemed not to notice at the time which is not surprising because their ‘ruling on the field’ is overruled by video review with astonishing regularity. It may also be because they are dressed in replica Newcastle United shirts and throw yellow dusters around when they spot an infringement. It’s like watching the Toon Army take up Morris Dancing with Molly Maid Home Cleaning Services.

It’s difficult for me to get excited about the scandal because the thought of teams being able to change the ball just because they are in possession is bizarre.  But I do laugh at the thought of running a rugby game in the same way.  Imagine stopping some lumpen Welsh flanker with cauliflower ears and a broken nose, who has just turned over a ruck-ball by stomping all over the head of an English fly-half. 

Referee: “Sorry, old chap, but it’s your turn to attack now so you need to stop for a moment and play with your own ball.” Flanker: Makes unintelligible, sub-human noises due to fractured septum, mud up the nostrils, multiple concussions and an ill fitting gum-shield over teeth already needing complete reconstructive surgery. Referee: “Good man, tha……” before the rest of the conversation is lost as the unfortunate official being trampled by what the late Bill McLaren might have called, ‘twenty stone of the finest, Welsh livestock on the hoof’.

And with that I am immediately looking forward to the first day of the new six-nations championship on 1 February and the opportunity to indoctrinate friends here about the virtues of rugby.  Dark-arts in the scrum, pace and power set against speed and strength, and the ultimate in physical confrontations without padding.  There is nothing quite like it and I am hoping that the screen will show the home team first – just like it should be.   

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD IN CHRISTMAS PRESENT (AND A BIT OF PAST)

Being in a city where the sun hardly ever sleeps makes Christmas a physical and mental challenge.  No icy streets to avoid slipping on, no blanket of sodden, fallen leaves to trudge through and none of the relentless street corner carolling from chuggers and latchkey kids on the make.  Just the sunshine, clear blue skies and refined, acoustic covers of Christmas hits in local gift shops.

Many of the traditions in the run up to Christmas are missing.  This includes the yearly favourite, inspired by betting company PR departments, around the growing chances of a white Christmas.  For a few weeks weather forecasters play along with reasonable degrees of humour before offering us reassurance that no snowflakes will fall on the big day.

There’s good news for betting people in that the old test used to be a snowflake falling on the Met Office building in London.  But the developing sophistication of the bookies means that some of them offer different odds for different parts of the country.  Paddy Power makes Aberdeen this year’s favourite – which may be the first time since Alex Ferguson’s tenure that they have been favourites for anything.

There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in the US.  Some parts of the country seem to be fatalistically awaiting or have had several weeks thigh-deep snowdrifts, while others are blithely deciding which pair of shorts to wear.  It’s another reminder that the UK could fit, in terms of land mass, into each of the ten largest states in the US.

The other sign of changing times is the diminishing need to leave the house to shop.  On too many occasion my Christmas Eve was spent dashing around an overheated department store buying overly expensive gifts. The cost was usually proportionate to my desperation and sense of guilt about lack of planning.

The efficiency of online retailing has made the last minute dash a thing of the past. I cannot be alone in my astonishment that orders seem to arrive almost before they are made.  Perhaps the next step is that Alexa simply chooses for you what gifts are to be purchased without you even having to think about it.

My problem with that would be that Alexa has a habit of misunderstanding me.  I think it’s an accent thing and I have lost many games of Jeopardy or Pop Quiz due to answers being rejected because I have not  develop a trans-Atlantic twang.  The specific failing is that years of reminding the children ‘there’s a ‘t’ in that word’ means I don’t geddit that I should say paddio rather than patio.

Music has also become a bone of contention with the sunshine creating a slightly perverse demand amongst locals for full on Christmas cheer.  My post-ironical play-list containing the more profound but less joyful classics, ‘Christmas in February’ and ‘Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis’, has been roundly rejected.  There is a real tension between attitudes in a sunny, warm climate and those bred in the harsh reality of an English winter.

My belief in gritty realism is that I’ve always taken the view that the celebration is grounded in very difficult circumstances.  It’s about an impoverished family, bullied by a venal government, taking temporary shelter in conditions suitable only for cattle.  It seems well established that social services failed them terribly and that cutbacks to the emergency services meant they couldn’t get there in time for the birth.

In a classic Government cover up the Government of the day decided to move the news cycle on by launching a campaign to persecute infant boys.  Twitter resistance was launched under #notustoo but nobody was ever successfully prosecuted.  Over time all of the events were glossed over or denied and secret payments were made to ensure the silence of those involved.

Editor’s Note: None of the above should be taken to reflect any events or people past or present. It’s inconceivable that any of these things could happen in a well-ordered democracy where the rule of law prevails.

Looking back I was reminded that in the early 1990s I spent all night in the run-up to one Christmas in the ASDA Clapham store.  We had managed to take advantage of the changes in UK legislation to become the first major store to be open for 24-hours.  It seems so common nowadays that it feels like a different world to remember that all big stores used to shut by 10pm.

Christmas in the aisles was punctuated by the PR specials we had imported to enliven proceedings.  The man on the bed of nails certainly made an incongruous addition to the non-food aisles as was the sight of the company’s CEO carrying out bag-packing duties at 3am in the morning.  The next day’s coverage was spectacular and the face of late-night shopping in the UK was changed forever.

This will also my second year without a traditional works Christmas party.  High kicking to ‘New York New York’ has happened, inappropriate behaviour that has brewed all year between colleagues has occurred, and the trousers of a board director have fallen down. A lot of alcohol has been taken and hangover breakfasts consumed.

The partner of a work-mate has phoned at 4am to say the boyfriend isn’t home and that Find Friends is locating his phone in the middle of Albert Dock.  People have cried, shouted, argued and cried some more.  There has been a lot of laughter and high jinks that have made Christmas Day feel like the last mile in a marathon of celebration.   

No such dramas this year.  The tree is up and decorated, the dogs have their Christmas sweaters and there will be beef and Yorkshire puddings as we pull the crackers for lunch on the 25th.  And I will have the best excuse to continue my personal tradition of never watching the Queen’s (God Bless Her) speech.

Thanks to all those who have read any of my musings during 2018. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a joyous New Year.  All the best for 2019.

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD GOES BACK TO BLIGHTY

Visiting England after more than a year away is like putting shoes on after a year in flip-flops. In fact it really did mean putting on proper, all encasing shoes after months of fearlessly baring my toes to the world. I guess it’s how a four-year old feels when they are fitted with their first pair of school shoes.

I’d expected to be a somewhat changed person on my return but as the wonderful Rupert Brooke wrote, ‘If I should die, think only this of me That there’s some corner of a foreign field, that is forever England’. However far you stray from your beginnings some things are too deeply embedded to change. And at this time of year his words carry an even greater poignancy.

Travelling near Remembrance Sunday, I found myself buying a poppy a day – they seem to break with startling regularity – and being sorry to miss being in England to commemorate the 100th year of the Armistice. The two World Wars are written large in the heart of every child who grew up with parents in the Forces and I have stood quietly and respectfully on many sombre early November Sunday mornings. With age I have stood with increasing thanks – it remains the greatest gift and good fortune to have grown up in a period of relative peace and economic stability.

I have always been able to survive the first verse and refrain of the Last Post but there is something that happens after that which is too heart-breaking to endure. And Bunyan’s magnificent verse is a memorial to everyone I have known and loved – ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them. Permission to lose control of stiff upper lip, sir.

The trip was six whirlwind days with three cities, five hotels and multiple modes of travel. My arrival at Heathrow was marked by a cool, overcast English day – it was absolutely perfect. Keats’ ‘seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness’ are missing from California but the English late autumn was a reminder that seasons are built into my blood.

Needless to say the trains were terrible. How it is possible to take longer and to have more changes to get from Liverpool Street to Norwich than to go via Cambridge is a warping of the time-space continuum. Hawkwind’s long neglected song ‘Quark, Strangeness and Charm’ gets close to the experience with the line ‘All that, doesn’t not anti-matter now, we’ve found ourselves a black hole out in space.’

My own theory is that the London to Norwich line is part of a black-arts operation by CERN where the stranger particles from the Large Hadron Collider are diverted for investigation. Passengers are used as substitutes for Schrodinger’s Cat and so whether they existence or are comfortable is unknown (and certainly not cared about). Scientists run the railways as a cosmic experiment and while Einstein wanted trains travelling at the speed of light he is losing out to Lord Kelvin’s views that they should terminate like the heat death of the universe.

To make matters worse Planck’s Constant has been replaced by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to build the timetable. Higg’s Bosun is a grumpy ex-naval man who was the lucky mascot of the Irish Rover, the Flying Dutchman and the Titanic before deciding that he preferred to drive a train. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg summed it up when he used quantum mechanics as a metaphor for the railway system in saying, “There is now, in my opinion, no entirely satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics.”

Enough about the trains though because it is the people that make the difference. Some very amusing evenings of drinking and snooker and late-night burgers and Indian meals. And most of all conversations that would only make half-sense to an outsider because they are framed in the context of shared experiences, disagreements and understanding of each other’s values and views. It was great fun and I was humbled that so many people made an effort to meet up during their busy lives.

I also caught up with my older sister for the first time in eight years. It’s a good reminder that when your parents are no longer around there is usually nobody but family who remembers your earliest years. In our case it was a peripatetic first ten years full of different schools, a father disappearing to trouble spots at short notice and a reliance on a very small family unit.

It was a delight to be able to talk about our family, about the misunderstandings we have had with each other and reflect upon all the ways in which life might have been different. But as importantly to share the good things that happened in the period when connections were lost. People say that you can never make up for lost time but we had a pretty good go at it.

I’ve noticed that throughout this blog I have talked about England and when asked that is where I say I am from. For me the United Kingdom has always been a ‘community’ where the squabbles of Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England have been largely suborned to a belief that there is strength in unity. Respecting and believing in each other’s right to a national identity within that house is as important as respecting and regarding a person’s individuality.

In that context the potential for a botched exit from the European Union to drive an irreversible wedge and create four countries is depressing. It would be a strange future if the territorial certainties, secure since the effective partition of the Republic of Ireland with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, were to change. But I guess that previous generations probably felt the same as the Empire disappeared in a flurry of declarations of independence.

It confirms that change is the only constant of the human condition and Remembrance Sunday was a timely reminder that there is much to be grateful for. After a week back in San Diego I particularly realise that I am fortunate to have roots and friends on both sides of the Atlantic. It is certainly something to think about as Thanksgiving approaches.

An Englishman Abroad In Cactus Alley

Tending your own patch of land is as much part of the English psyche as talking about the weather, queuing in an orderly fashion and having fifty ways of saying ‘sorry’. Ever since encountering the overgrown wilderness behind my first house I have been a keen gardener. Four distinct seasons provided the setting for a year of planning, tilling, planting and reaping.

The country’s love-affair with its gardens drove the song, English Country Garden, to number five the charts in 1962. It was based on an English-folk song, Country Gardens, which married the whimsy of Morris-dancing to the pagan, earth revering influence of the druids and spawned many parodies. It is from that background that I came to tend the semi-arid, almost season-less, badlands of San Diego.

Americans don’t really even have ‘gardens’ because they have yards. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon “geard” (pronounced YAY-ard) and is a good reminder why prisons have yards while country houses have gardens. One word is Proto-Germanic with overtones of efficiency and sparseness while the other comes from the Gallo-Romance language of Picardy and Flanders.

In the new environment everything has to be placed and considered in the context of hours of sun or shade, lack of moisture and relative danger to humans and animals. Rocks, dirt and pebbles are home to relatively slow growing plants that have evolved to be as tough as their setting. It’s a harsh, alien, unforgiving and strangers need to beware.

I’d never been allergic to a plant until I tangled with the toxic sap of the Euphorbia tiruccalli, which goes by the common name of Fire Sticks. Waking up with a face that looked like I had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson was an early sign that I’d always need to wear gloves in the garden. But that was only a precursor to my duel with the Cactaceae.

Euphorbia tiruccalli

It is no mistake that the family group name for the cactus has echoes of a Mediterranean-based crime family. They are tough, aggressive, impassive plants that never tell, never forgive and always take revenge. The biblical warning “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9.5 and Acts 26:14 of the King James Version of the Bible) could have been written to remind us of the challenge they bring.

Engaging with a cactus and not taking appropriate precautions is like inviting Hannibal Lecter to dinner in a private room. One of you enjoys the potential of sharp objects to inflict pain and misery while the other will end up on the receiving end of a miserable evening. Even the slightest brush against one of these beasts can bring several dozen tiny shards of agony.

But through the allergic reactions and hours of picking cactus spines from my arms the year has seen a pleasing sense of order emerge. The reshaping of the garden has allowed for Cactus Alley and Succulent Corner to become landmarks while individual plants have been able to thrive after being moved to better locations. And I have learnt lessons in caution after indiscriminate digging cut through carefully buried irrigation lines which led the arid earth to resemble the Somme for several days.

Cactus Alley – Jeffe, Bobby, The Succulent with No Name and  Sneaky Pete

Because I am unfamiliar with the names of the plants many of them have emerged with personal nicknames. We have the barrel cactuses Billy, Bobby and Betsy as well as the handsome and rapidly growing Jeffe. Sneaky Pete is aptly named as the prickly pear has tiny, needle-sharp bristles that embed themselves with just a touch. Gomez is as sharp, squat and evil-looking as any bandit from a spaghetti western.

In the open ground Fellaini is the bargain bin asparagus fern with a habit to match the Manchester Uniter and Belgium footballer or his alter-ego from The Simpson’s, Sideshow Bob. Alongside him Spike, the yucca, has moved to luxuriant growth in full sun after being a weedy and ailing specimen in the shade. These are plants with individual characters that are forged by their resilience and robustness.

I’ve introduced some flowering plants but have learnt to paint pictures in the garden with the varying pinks, greys and subtle variegations which seem the natural palette of the desert. From similar climes we have Australian visitor ‘kangaroo paws’ (Anigozanthos), Asteriscus maritimus from the Mediterranean, and Didiereaceae from Madagascar. It is a global garden that is united by the challenging combination of glaring sun and water and soil poverty.

As a United Nations of plants it co-exists in a climate that is under increasing stress and facing enormous challenges from progressively worsening climate conditions. Disproportionate application of resources allows traditional Western plants to grow but plants used to living more frugally demand their rights and can thrive without pampering. It’s a little like the economic lessons of the real world.

After living with the land for a year I have begun to understand the raw materials. The variation of temperature, daylight and precipitation are more subtle than the English seasons. The growth patterns of the plants move to a rhythm which is less easy to understand but which can result in moments of extraordinary flowering and unexpected beauty.

While I have dabbled with herbs, tomatoes and peppers this year I am hankering after developing a vegetable patch. There is little more satisfying than pulling a broad bean or a new potato from the earth and eating it a few minutes later. But the planning involves thinking about ways of conserving even more water over the winter season to support this ambition.

It’s been a steep learning curve but whether semi-desert or temperate the garden offers similar lessons and insights. Patience and perseverance, the determination of living things to survive and the belief in planting today however uncertain the future might be. It is captured nicely by American author, journalist, activist Michael Pollan who writes, “The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ” (The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD SPEAKS IN TONGUES

When the Spanish Armada sailed in May 1588 the intention was to clear the way for an invasion of England and allow direct rule by King Philip II* of Spain. Had that happened I probably would not be investing in Spanish language lessons at the Culture and Language Centre in San Diego**. Sir Francis Drake, the Dutch and the capricious winds off the English coast defeated the Armada and have a lot to answer for.

Learning a language later in life is a powerful reminder of the painful step from blissful ignorance to conscious incompetence. Whether I will ever graduate to conscious competency is difficult to say but the experience has been both humbling and energising. It is also a stark reminder of the extraordinary intelligence, desire and courage of international students.

Every year thousands of young people travel around the world to study at degree level. They endure homesickness, different foods, strange customs and, sometimes, outright hostility while trying to communicate and study in a language where they have limited ability. My weekly evisceration of the Spanish language in a safe and supportive classroom just ten minutes from home pales by comparison.

Maybe every university should ensure that anybody engaging with international students has to do a course where they learn an unfamiliar language. This would give due regard to those academics and administrators who are genuine polyglots and should build empathy for students. I can even see marketing advantages in publicising that the institution recognises the interplay between language acquisition and academic achievement.

My rationale for learning Spanish at this point in my life is that I live ten miles from the Mexican border and wanting to start coaching football in a region with many bilingual youngsters. But the greater reality is that after years of posturing I ran out of excuses not to learn a second language. Time, funds and opportunity are the ultimate cure for fear, indolence and procrastination.

The fear is real because I was terrible at languages at school. Three years of compulsory German did little more than enable me to name two of Santa’s reindeers, seek attention or demand that people move quickly***. Forced to choose a language to study at O-level (for younger readers these were the pre-antiquity form of GCSEs) I plumped for French.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t even proficient enough for that level of study and ended up in the CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) class led by the dynamic and ever-kind Mrs Bell. Her hug of affection and delight when I secured a level 2 at CSE remains one of the most perplexing of school moments. I had merely turned up and guessed at the answer to every question compared to those who had not bothered to do either.

One class-mate was so disinterested in his exams that he even refused to write his name at the top of the answer paper. He had heard that you were automatically given two marks for this form of self-identification and was anxious to secure a big fat zero. Having sat for the obligatory twenty minutes at the start of the exam he gave a cheery wave as he was escorted out by a rather grumpy invigilator.

The real downside of learning languages at my secondary school was that language laboratory sessions were always straight after swimming. Sopping wet hair and water-filled ears in an English winter do not go well with headphones in a dank, claustrophobic, sound-proofed booth. The danger of your teacher perforating your eardrum by screeching down the headset was only exceeded by not being able to hear the class bully sneaking up to smack you round the head.

These painful memories explain my surprise that several decades later I keep inserting French words into Spanish sentences. Their relentless pursuit of space in my brain reminds me of both the posse in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Schwarzenegger’s definitive Terminator. I say “Who are those guys?” and they say “I’ll be back” – but where have they been hiding all these years?

More interesting than that game of ‘cherchez la femme’ is my growing understanding of adult language learning and an interesting parallel to management development. Research into adult learners of second languages suggests that the two languages show little separation in triggering activity in Wernicke’s area (the part of the brain largely responsible for language comprehension). This may also explain why my mind finds a French word when it is seeking the Spanish one.

But in Broca’s area, which manages the motor activity of the mouth when speaking a language, the triggers for activity are more substantially separated. This means that speaking the second language, particularly if some sounds do not cross from one to the other, is more challenging. Those who have grown up bilingual do not show the same separation.

It seems reasonable to think that management theory learnt later in life and demanding new behaviours may also be more difficult to implement because understanding and action are not wholly aligned in the brain. The good news with languages is that focused exercise in speaking can go a long way to overcoming the deficit between comprehension and fluency of speaking. I would venture that the same is true of understanding the benefits of new ways of behaving and working on operationalising that learning.

As a relatively inexperienced but desperately keen manager I read that taking time to regularly interact informally and supportively with colleagues was important. I was very poor at remembering to do this, so for several years I wrote time into my working week to engage ‘informally’ with individuals in my team. Looking back this mechanistic approach seems forced and artificial but it was a way of turning theory into reality for someone finding their way as a leader.

Making progress in developing my second-language capability remains a struggle but has brought a new perspective on the links between knowledge, understanding and action. It demonstrates that learning is a journey with plenty of stopping off points to admire the view and smell the flowers.
Muchas gracias por leer mis amigos!

Notes

* El Rey Felipe II
** https://www.cultureandlanguagecenter.com/
*** Donner und Blitzen, achtung, schnell