MANY TENSIONS

I feel a bit like I'm being pulled apart by different forces at the moment. That sounds painful, but I don't really mean it in a painful way. After all (and I've said this before) yoghurt pot telephones, guitar strings and suspension bridges only work when there's tension. Sometimes opposing forces can create something beautiful.

Tiredness pulls me one way, faithfulness pulls the other. I want to stay and help, I want to work late, I want to be at the mission but my body is telling me to recharge itself or the choice will be taken away from me. What is the wise thing to do then? Rely on a kind of Isaiah-40 super-energy or go home and go to sleep? Don't judge me but I chose sleep tonight.

Fear pulls me one way, devotion the other. Fear shouldn't win but often it does. What's the wise thing to do? Fight or flight? Well, that was yesterday's thought, I suppose, while I considered myself more of a spectator than a bungee jumper. Fear can be overcome.

Pride pulls me one way, honour pulls me the other. I want me to be brilliant and for everyone to tell me that, but I also really want the opposite of that altogether. I want to be invisible, actually. And yet also noticed. But stll invisible.

Loneliness pulls me one way, hope pulls me the other. I can't see a way of breaking the cycle, feeling connected to a someone and being significant, yet I hope that something miraculous happens to me or by me, somehow. I appreciate that that is a little confusing but I didn't order this tension; it just happened. 

As if all that weren't tense enough, work pulls me one way, home pulls me another, family pulls me another and church yet another. It's like being in the middle of a cats cradle.

Sometimes figuring out wisdom isn't all that easy. I'm going to need some courage to say no to things that are awesome. I'm going to need some strength to overcome my deepest fears, some boldness to be a let-down to people who expect me to be at things I ought to be at, and a lot of clever ways to slow down the treadmill.

I matter, you see. And what I can do, is, has always been, and will always be, way less important than who I am.

A SERIES OF FLASHBACKS

I'm remembering this morning in flashbacks: the bright, patterned curtains and the tinkling alarm; the gushing tap; the bootlaces; the blustering green trees against the grey sky; the drizzle against the windscreen and the commuters filing out of the station like lemmings.

I feel like I'm still dreaming. You're supposed to come back from a bank holiday weekend feeling refreshed aren't you? I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open. Friday, strolling down the warm High Street, swinging a bottle of Prosecco, seems like a long time ago.

No, it wasn't like that; I won it at the department quiz for knowing where African countries are.

It seems like an odd reward, now that I think about it. That's often the way with quizzes though, isn't it? Knowing who won Wimbledon in 1991 is somehow worth several hundred pounds on TV, despite it being an essentially worthless piece of trivia.

Maybe I am still asleep and I've constructed all this as some sort of crazy dream? It wouldn't be the first time. After all, I keep getting rung up by people who are adamant I've been in a car accident within the last two years.

"Is it possible that it gave me amnesia?" I asked the last lady on the phone, "Because I simply don't remember it."

She didn't find that funny. I suppose it's possible that call-centre engineers have to go through some sort of humour-vacuum before they're allowed on the phones. We're just two steps away from having conversations with robots, I reckon.

I doubt I'm still dreaming. I don't usually have flashbacks inside a dream - I have a feeling my brain is too simple for that kind of thing. It might know where African countries are, and it might sometimes be stretchy enough to come up with a funny song or two, but mostly it just reprocesses old memories at night-time like a silent cinema of snapshots from the past. Clearly what's happened today is that I've woken up before my brain has.

COURAGE AT THE EDGE OF THE SAFE ZONE

I think that sometimes you should definitely do something that scares you. If you want to feel alive, that is. On one side of that boundary is the safe zone, where everything rumbles on as it always has, and on the other is the thrill of the unknown, where literally anything could happen. The question for the Settlers is: could you live your life on the safe side of the fence, never knowing what lies beyond?

We're on a mission week at church. That's where we (with the help of some excitable Americans) actively look for people and give them the opportunity to become Christians. This morning we found ourselves in small groups in the town centre, talking to people about Jesus. If it sounds terrifying, that's because for a lot of us, it is - even in pairs with a script. It's the uncontrollable tumbling out of a plane, the pulsating nerve-jangle of being vulnerable in front of strangers, and the death-defying leap into a subject that frankly, most people don't want to talk about. The adrenaline was pumping.

Whether you're a believer or not, you've got to admit that there's a lot of difference between the disciples who ran away from the cross, and the disciples who stood up and preached in front of the men who had arrested and crucified Jesus just two months before. What had happened to those men to make them so fearless? What was different? I'll leave you to think about that.

Whatever it was, they showed a boldness and a bravery that is awe-inspiring, especially for a Settler like me. I like the status quo, the norm, the safe zone - I like to know where things are, how to plan to get where you need to be and some reassurance that what I'm about to do won't kill me. I don't like the idea of falling out of a plane, or jumping off a bridge with a rope round my feet. It looks exciting, but mostly, I'd like to hold the camera or wait with the coats. From the ground.

"Hey Matt, you're a natural!" said one of the excitable Americans on the way back. I said I was probably just good with words, but I admitted it had been a lot more fun than I was expecting. I thought back to a conversation I'd had with the pastor a few weeks ago when I had said that I didn't want to feel bored. He had smiled, knowingly.

Perhaps I'm more of a Pioneer than I give myself credit, I thought to myself in the car. Or at least I can be, when I have the courage to jump out of the safe zone.

BACKWARDS COOL

Right. Don't judge me but I'm in McDonald's. I've hobbled out for a tea and a muffin and an eavesdrop. So far the tea's predictable, the muffin is uneaten and the eavesdrop is uninteresting.

Hobbled, yes. I walked to work today. About ten minutes in I realised that my left sock was wearing thin. Soon my heel was rubbing against the inside of my shoe and a blister was forming. I got to work by wrapping my ankle in a glove at a bus stop. I've never felt classier.

At work of course, I was free to kick off my boots and let my feet breathe the fine free air under my desk.

The journey home was a bit trickier. It's mostly uphill.

There are two McDonald's 'crew' sharing a post-shift romantic McFlurry. Their co-workers are teasing them about the newness (and presumably the strangeness) of the relationship.

"D'you wanna cup cake with a candle in it?" joked one as he sidled by.

"Ha ha!" said the girl, bashfully.

"Break her heart and I'll break your legs," warned a lady mopping the floor. She had massive arms, I'm not sure it was an idle threat, that.

I found that it was easier to walk downhill - something about the way the foot slid into the boot. Uphill was awful though. Going over the footbridge by the new IKEA was agony for the first half, then blessed relief for the second.

By the time I got to the end of my road (about an hour later) I had pretty much figured out what to do, and so for the final uphill stretch to my house, I decided I would simply walk backwards.

Now there's only so far you can walk backwards without pretending you're admiring the view or waiting for a friend to catch you up. That didn't occur to me though. Just when my feet were thanking me for being such a genius, I found myself sort of moonwalking past my neighbour (whom I hadn't seen) and noticed her giving me a look I could only classify as confounded bemusement. I quickly decided to give her a cheery wave, did a kind of Michael Jackson style spin and hobbled the rest of the way to my front door.

I am so cool.

AND TOAST IS A MORNING THING

And as if eating cake in the mornings wasn't weird enough, this afternoon the office is permeated with the smell of burning toast.

"This has to be the only place I go where people stuff their faces with cake in the morning and then cook toast in the afternoon," I said, raising my eyebrows.

Now in fairness, I'm less fussy about when you can eat toast. To be honest, I don't get to set these rules - that's up to the Queen. And she doesn't get involved in politics.

Anyway, in my world, toast is a morning thing or a very late at night thing. In fact, so late at night that it's a morning. Which still makes it a morning thing in my book.

I haven't written a book, I'm just saying, if it were up to me... which it isn't... and I don't know how I'd enforce it. Anyway, like I say, the Queen's not going to get involved. And I don't have a toaster.

In any case, I think she likes a digestive biscuit.

CAKE IS AN AFTERNOON THING

Another week, another birthday, I noted, waiting for my porridge in the microwave. Not my birthday; one of my statistically likely colleagues. He set a puzzle in his 'cakes in the kitchen' email:

"Twas my birthday on Saturday, for the puzzle fans, my age now matches the short form of my birthyear."

I came within a whisker of wishing him a very happy 108th birthday but I don't know him well enough for that kind of mathematical humour. And anyway, it doesn't quite work does it?

Surprisingly, the selection of chocolate cakes he brought in has disappeared... within an hour.

One hour on a Monday morning! Who's eating great wedges of sticky chocolate cake first thing on a Monday morning? Does nobody have breakfast any more?

Having said that, it's not exactly a grizzly morning. The sun is beaming through the translucent green leaves and the sky is the pearly blue of early summer. In fact, my heart was singing as I drove through the leafy tree tunnel at the top of Sulham Hill this morning. The dappled shade flicked across the road as the liquid sunlight poured through the leaves.

If you ask me, cake is, and has always been, an afternoon thing. It follows sandwiches and it precedes a cup of tea.

Call me old-fashioned if you like but it just seems odd to scoff it in the morning. The taste, the texture, the thick, sticky consistency, it's not for the morning.

I wedged a spoon upright into my porridge and carried it back to my desk.

THE NIBLINGS TURN TO JOKES AND POETRY

I went to see the Intrepids today. They've just got back from yet another trip, adventuring round the coast of South Wales. I arrived at the same time as my sister and three of the seven Niblings.* 

Ben was upset because he couldn't play Donkey Kong as his tablet was out of charge. He was wailing, mostly for attention, so the rest of us took the only course of action prescribed for attention-seekers and ignored him completely. It worked a treat. He ran out of energy and brightened up like a spring afternoon.

I thought it would be fun to make up jokes that made no sense. So we did that. Here are my favourites:

"What did the kangaroo say to the thief?"

"Oi. This is my house." (Sam, aged 6)

"What do vampires do at Christmas?"

*mimed a flapping action and pursed his lips* (Ben, aged 8) I fell about laughing.

"Why did the dog cross the road?"

"Nobody knows." (Sam)

Then I thought I'd set them a challenge. Could they make a poem with only two lines in it? It was an exercise I'd been thinking about myself for a while, and I'd got as far as: it would be an awful folly, poking tigers with a brolly. That took me ages, and considerably more effort than the Niblings needed. Within seconds Ben came up with:

Never put your toes

Up your nose

Which could be the best short poem I have ever heard. And brilliant advice, don't you think? Inspired, Sam had a go at the format and rhymed the first two words he could think of:

Don't pour gravy

On a baby

I think these boys might be geniuses.

*I suppose I should point out to newish readers that the Niblings are my nieces and nephews, of whom there are seven, aged between 6 months and (incredibly) 22 years.

CHANGING THE SHEETS

I've got the itchy sheet on again. It's like trying to go to sleep on a scouring pad. It's fine as long as I don't move, but then my toes roll across the rough bobbled plains and I start debating whether I should put my socks back on.

This whole changing of the bedclothes thing is a trauma from start to finish, to be honest.

First of all, I don't know how to fold a fitted sheet on my own so it always comes out of the drawer looking like a crumpled mess. I stretch it from corner to corner of the bed, wedging it under the mattress, hoping that tension will smooth it out.

It pops off after the second or third corner so I have to go round again, using Herculean strength to lift up the mattress each time - especially the one by the bedside table. It thuds back into place when I let it drop, at least until the sheet pops off again. I end up chasing around the bed like Muhammad Ali.

Once that's done though, I slip the pillows into the new pillowcases and hurl them onto the bed. I've turned that bit into an Olympic event, that. But the old pillow-hurling, while of course an ancient and noble sport, is clearly the easy bit in the bed-making pentathlon. For it's followed with some degree of athletic trepidation, by the duvet.

I did wonder, tonight, what I must have looked like, wandering around the flat wearing a duvet cover inside-out over my head like a ghost costume. I'd forgotten where the duvet was and I was fumbling around trying to find the corners. My Mum has always taught me you see, that if I could match up the inside corners of the cover with the corners of the duvet, all I had to do was shake it inside-out, holding onto the corners, and it would all be fine.

I pulled the cover over my head and found the corners, then grabbed the corners of the duvet from inside the cover, ready to shake. I have no idea what anyone in the park would have seen had they looked up and into my bedroom. Presumably I looked a bit like a moomin. 

Of course, It turned out I had hold of the wrong corners and I was trying to shuffle the duvet sideways into the duvet cover!

So I started again, pulled the empty cover over my head and grabbed the corners. Success this time! I dragged it to the top of the stairs (for extra drop), pulled the cover from over my head and started shaking.

It was about then that I noticed that the whole thing was still somehow inside-out. Round again then, a miserable looking spectre pulling a duvet behind him like a kind of forlorn trick-or-treater with his security blanket. My arms were aching.

This time I cracked it though! The duvet was the right way round in the cover and the cover was very much not inside-out. So I pulled it and flapped it onto the bed. Then I grabbed a corner and flapped it some more to even it out, knocking a glass of water from the bedside table into my sunrise lamp.

Once smoothed flat and looking like a proper duvet instead of a marshmallow moonscape, I went to the foot of the bed and did the poppers up. Then I did them again because I'd missed one out, and then I unpopped them all again, and finally I got it right.

Of course, by this time my hair looked like it had been pulled apart by magpies and I was so tired I was just about ready to collapse into the dishevelled arrangement I'd completed.

I rubbed my eyes tiredly with my fists and yawned. A moment later I stood there looking puzzled. Where are my glasses? I asked myself. I'm sure I had them on just now...

I can't be bothered putting socks on. I'm just going to have to lie still and hope I drop off to sleep extremely quickly. I guess that shouldn't be too difficult.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 6

6:50. There's definitely someone in my flat. Whoever it is woke me up with the loudest sneeze I have ever heard. I get up, heart pounding, and I very nervously open all the doors and check all the cupboards. Nobody. Weird, must have been one of the neighbours.

7:20. I'm unusually weepy over breakfast. I try to remember whether there's anything I'm really all that sad about. All I can think of is Old Jamaica Fruit Punch going up from 35p to 40p a can in Sainsbury's.

7:30. I play some arpeggios on the piano and try to sing along. My voice goes croaky and I miss most of the notes.

8:00. I get in the car. My phone tells me it'll take sixteen minutes to get to work. I still feel a bit weepy. Plus, for the umpteenth time, I marvel at how Siri seems to know exactly where I'm going whenever I go anywhere.

8:30. I arrive at work wondering whether I went the way Siri thought I was going. I feel smug about getting one-up on my phone. Then I suddenly remember the other day when Sammy told me I was 'very competitive'.

9.00. My nose feels itchy. I twizzle it. My phone buzzes and the Clarityn app tells me that the pollen count today is HIGH. I immediately sneeze and blow a hole in my desk. Well, it felt like it; it's the loudest sneeze I've ever... heard.

Oh, I think to myself, realising exactly how I'd woken up.

It begins then.

RAGGED WEDNESDAY

I'm feeling pretty ragged today. As I walked into the office, my head was already spinning. I think it's a Wednesday thing.

No walking today; just as well, it's raining. The leaves are the full green of early summer and the rain drips pleasantly from their curly, green cups. The travellers' ponies are sheltering beneath the electricity pylons and the grass is a rich minefield of little piles of dung.

Ragged. There is much to do. I've been wondering how my life keeps getting so full of stuff. Every time I try to bail it out, more things seem to flood in. Is it my fault? Why is the world so busy?

I know this is a theme I often ponder. Somehow, in some curious way, I don't feel permitted to have a life. And yet, I know more than anyone that this is unacceptable. So how is there still so much to do?

That sort of hopeless scooping-up of work at the bottom of a heavy vessel, is the definition of a Wednesday for me, at the moment. It is the middle of the week, the lowest point of the parabola, the nadir of the slowly swooping sides of the valley that lead back to the dizzy heights of the weekend.

It shouldn't be like this though, should it? I should be so planned and unflappably focused that even a dreary-looking Wednesday skips by with no more than a short sprint to the next rest night, or the nearest holiday.

Ragged, I am. Anyway, this isn't supposed to be Whingefest16. I guess for now, I'd better get on with it.

THE TRAVELLERS AND I

I volunteered to take a walking group round the lake today. It's the latest thing from HR. I think it's supposed to be a nice way to do some lunchtime mingling with colleagues you wouldn't normally speak to, while also moving and breathing some fresh air for half an hour.

Well, fresh-ish: the local travellers had left a dead dog in one of the bushes and were attempting to wash a ropey looking horse in the lake. Even the ducks looked outraged.

Anyway, the idea of a nice walk is a good thing. Quite why we need a tour guide is a bit beyond me but I thought I'd give it a go anyway. After all, I am all for things that bring people together.

So I waited in the lobby. I checked the time, whistled cheerily and then realised that nobody was coming.

So I set out for a good old figure-of-eight march around the lake on my own.

It has struck me that in order for people to come together you do really need a thing that draws them - and it has to be more than just because it's a nice thing to do. I don't know whether an activity that any one of us could easily do anyway will really cut the mustard. Anyway, maybe it will take off a bit better next week and prove me wrong.

I'd have liked the travellers to have proven me wrong too, you know. I've felt sorry for the prejudice that they encounter, the astonishing assumption everybody has that they are perpetual criminals, and the lowly status which is thrust upon them by this nimbyistic society.

I feel that sense of alienation in every email from the business park asking us to be 'watchful' and promising us 'resolution' as though this band of nomads were some sort of infestation. I find myself remembering what happens when you start dehumanising people by labelling them like this, and I feel scared about how easy it is to do.

And then, I wander around the corner and I'm greeted by the stench of horse-poo and the rotting corpse of a threadbare dog, wafting between some dirty caravans. I think that they could do a lot to help themselves really.

Then again, couldn't we all? I got back to the office and slid into my chair, ready to tap away at the afternoon.

PORRIDGE WINDOW UPDATE

Sarah told me I should try Oats So Simple. My porridge consistency woes would be over.

After all, what could be easier than adding oats to a bowl, using the packet to measure the correct amount of milk, and then blasting it in the microwave for 2 minutes?

I gave it a go at work. Attempt number one resulted in me fetching a mop and cleaning spilled milk out from under the kitchen cupboards. Oats so simple indeed! I started to wonder whether it was a devious plot invented by the Quakers to undermine our dependence on modern technology. Anyway, someone came in, swinging an empty coffee cup and whistling. He took one look at me, chuckled and then said:

"Well it's no use crying..."

I really despise kitchen-banter sometimes.

Attempts number two and three (put the packet in an empty cup before pouring the milk into it) resulted in (1) milky fingers and (2) a bowl of porridge that was hotter than the sun.

What's more, having stirred it and left it, it's still gone rubbery. Plus it's supposed to be strawberry jam flavour, but it tastes like it only just about remembers what a strawberry is. I'm always a little bit dubious about anything you can't really eat without adding other stuff to to make it taste nicer. I'm thinking of you, Weetabix.

It's tricky to wash up too, without the aid of some industrial scouring pads. Forget the gym - for real biceps, try cleaning out porridge bowls every morning. You could even throw in some day-old scrambled egg pans, you know, for the full Schwarzenegger.

So, I think I just need to add in a little more milk than the packet suggests - and then maybe scoop in some actual jam or honey or something. Or maybe just stick with toast.

TOO MANY NOTES, NOT ENOUGH DANCING

Still squishy. Everything is spinning into a blur and I can barely remember anything. It's like being on a merry-go-round that doesn't care how dizzy you are.

Behind the cheery tune of a busy life though, is the annoying voice that tells me it's all my fault. Washing-up stacked into the sink like the Leaning Tower of Saucepans? My fault. Too tired to pair up this week's collection of socks? Me again. Busy every single waking hour from 10am Saturday to 6pm on Wednesday evening? Over here.

I was at Winchester's Tent On The Green event today. It's twenty four hours of solid worship-music outside the cathedral, led by different bands in ninety minute slots. Typically, Tom (who is always in on these things) wanted a massive fusion of good musicians and a small army of drummers to help him fill his hour and a half.

What he got was a noisy collaboration of 11 drummers, 200 hand percussionists (the crowd), an awesome sax player, an equally incredible guitarist, and me, fumbling about playing the wrong chords to Watermelon Man on a Nord Stage 2. It was loud and chaotic but a lot of fun.

I learned a lot about rhythm. It's amazing how it can get you moving even without melody, harmony or tone. There was something primordial about dancing along to the cross-patterned samba beats of hundreds of djembes, shakers and cowbells. It made me realise that sometimes we do too many notes and not enough dancing.

Which brings me right back to my squishy, spinning, merry-go-round world. Where is the room for dancing? Where is the joy and the freedom to just let loose and get moving? I have over-complicated everything so much that my diary, my brain and my emotions are a clever-looking mess and I am exhausted trying to sort it out every day.

Time to figure out how to get dancing I reckon.

PIONEERS AND SETTLERS: PART 3

If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, here's a short explanation:

I'm working on a project where the team is comprised of Pioneers and Settlers. The Pioneers want to rush ahead to the big exciting thing that they can see over the horizon while the Settlers are contenting themselves with their surroundings.

Last time I explained the two myths of Pioneers and Settlers: respectively that the good is the enemy of the best and that good is good enough. You can see the tension already.

I was thinking about how either personality type could explode the myth believed by the other, so that Pioneers value the importance of patiently building something without racing off, and Settlers are encouraged to dream about what might be possible.

The next thing to do is to start building some railroads of trust. This is really important because we're about to set the Pioneers off at doing what they do best, and we're about to release the Settlers to start building things behind them. While they're busy, the only thing that will link them is the railroad. And you've got to build it.

Building a Railroad

There are three things you need. You need to:

1. Know where you're going

2. Lay some tracks

3. Keep the train moving

Or alternatively, you need to plan, build and communicate.

Planning is really important, and it's probably the hardest part of managing the tension between Settlers and Pioneers. However, you have got to figure out and agree where you're going. The Pioneers will be natural at the where and the why, the Settlers are awesome at asking how and when. Between you you've got everything you need but you all need to agree it. One thing that helps is asking what success looks like? How will you test it? What's the objective and how do you know you've reached it? If you can figure out what 'done' looks like and you've written it down and agreed it, the Settlers will be empowered to do what they've signed up for and the Pioneers will be ready to head out west. But you've got to know where you're going to lay your tracks.

In some ways, laying the tracks is the easy part. All you have to do is make sure that they're straight and that the train won't topple off them when it steams along. This is all about building good links between where you are and where you're going. How will you communicate? What meetings do you need to happen where and when to make sure you're still heading in the agreed direction? Have things changed since you planned? It's always worth reviewing where you've come from (Settlers excel at this) and reviewing where you're headed (Pioneers, at this).

Once the tracks are laid, all you've got to do is keep the train moving. That's all about good communication. When the infrastructure is there, communication can't be too frequent. It's a whole subject all on its own, that. Communication is a pain point for most of us. However, Settlers need good communication to figure out how to support the Pioneers. Pioneers need good communication to figure out what they can contribute to the building of community.

These three things help you build the railroad of trust between Pioneers and Settlers. Everyone knows the plan, everyone builds the tracks and everyone keeps the train moving between them.

So, all of that was where my lunchtime walk took me the other day. As the sky grew heavy with rain and the summer breeze rustled the full green leaves, I was thinking about how the West was won, how all of us can work together and how we can manage that natural tension between Pioneers and Settlers.

There's no doubt that I'm a Settler. Sometimes though, I wish I were more of a Pioneer, saddling up and getting ready to ride off into the sunset. However, I'm quite confident that even if I did that, I wouldn't want to do it alone.

And really, that's what this kind of teamwork has always been about.

SUPERSONIC

This is going to have to be quick: everything is moving supersonically today and my mind is squishy.

That is what it feels like - faster than sound. The waves of emails and texts and concerns and worries and meetings and tasks and check boxes and to-do lists are all rushing by so quickly that they're condensing together into one long, noisy, sonic boom.

The question is: am I moving too fast through them, or are they moving too fast for me?

THANKFUL IN TRAFFIC

It took two hours to get to work this morning. A lorry driver had crashed into the central reservation barrier, closing the motorway and causing the entire town to snarl up in trails of snaking brake lights.

I was halfway down Sulham Hill, my own brakes creaking as the rain dripped from the leafy canopy above. The radio was going on about Europe and West Ham and the Prime Minister and The Queen, stopping only to pause for the weather and the traffic. It occurred to me that that's pretty much all the radio ever talks about.

I was relaxed. Everywhere would be busy, no-one would be getting to work on time. There was nothing I could do anyway, and therefore no reason for stress at all. In fact, it was more like a really slow, early-morning tour of the countryside.

So I rolled down the window and breathed in some of the damp morning air. It reminded me of being on holiday - the green arches of the trees above their dark trunks, twisting and turning through the leaves; it reminded me of car journeys through the New Forest or the Lake District. The very British rain and the sound of passing traffic, swooshing up the hill was like memories of old.

The only difference was that at the end of the road was the office and not the beach. Neither lakes nor mountains were about to glisten through the trees.


A little while later, the radio presenter asked an old Japanese lady on the telephone to explain what she saw aged 13, when she emerged from the Hiroshima blast. She told him...

"We would like to apologise," said the presenter, "for any distress caused to listeners who might be sensitive to that level of graphic detail."

I had my hand over my mouth. People on their way to work, arriving at school and going about their daily lives that day in 1945, had to experience that dreadful event. Nothing would ever be the same again after that devastating moment when their city was destroyed by an American nuclear bomb.

I looked around at the dripping trees, the grey rolling sky and the red brake lights in front of me. Beyond the hill, the English countryside stretched calmly into the misty rain, and the hills of South Oxfordshire rolled in the distance.

Late for work perhaps I was, but always I'm grateful, and I've got a lot to be thankful for.

PIONEERS AND SETTLERS: PART 2

So, first a recap.

I'm working on a project where some of the loudest voices in the team are simply not listening to each other. Yesterday, I came up with a way to describe those voices and it led me to this idea that most of us are either Pioneers (people who are constantly launching into the next big thing over the horizon) or Settlers (maintainers and fixers, builders and repairers).

I speculated that real success requires both types of people, but that often they find it difficult to listen to each other because their eyes are on different objectives.

I asked the question: How do you manage the tension between Settlers and Pioneers?

So today, as the saloon doors swing shut and the rusty piano fills the smoky air once again, it's high time for me to show you my cards and do a little explaining.

I am a Settler. I make home and I fix, I build and grow while others go off into the West. I like the stories they bring back and I'm thrilled by the idea of pioneering and adventuring. But at the end of the day, I'd rather sleep in a bed than under the stars.

Now us Settlers we have a saying, and I think we believe it. We say things like, 'Well it's good enough' and 'That'll do'. And sometimes we're entirely wrong. Often it isn't, and it won't.

We settle for good while Pioneers explore for the best.

But Pioneers also have a saying. They tell us that 'the good is the enemy of the best'. And I think they might be wrong as well.

So the first thing we need to do for each other is explode these myths. And if you're either a Pioneer or a Settler you might have already realised that we need each other to do it because it's not obvious.

Exploding the Myths

Settlers: Why is good not good enough? We need the Pioneers to help us out here. If they can help us agree a definition of what we all want to achieve we'll have something to measure our progress against. But we can only do that if they blow up our idea of what is acceptable and expand our thinking to what might be better. They've seen things and dreamed things over that horizon and we need to listen to them carefully about what might be possible. Absorb their excitement, dare to dream a little and listen to their stories.

Pioneers: Why is the best not necessarily the enemy of the good? Load up your dynamite, Settlers.

Sometimes you have to go through the good to get to the best, and only the good can show you the difference. You can't bypass it - it's a stepping stone on the way. You might actually have to do a bit of settling before you get where you want to be. You aren't going to like it, but if you don't get it, your horse is going to die in the desert.

You need to listen to the Settlers. It takes great patience. Plus, if the best turns out not to be the best, you're going to want to come back from the horizon and roll into town where there are comfy beds. You need a base, a family, a community and a home, and the Settlers are brilliant at building them.

Kerboom.

Once we've exploded the myths, we're much closer to understanding each other. The Pioneers start recognising that they can't achieve the dream without some practical ideas of how to get there - they figure out that there might be steps in between here and there and that the Settlers can build safety behind them as they go.

Meanwhile, the Settlers realise that without the Pioneers, they really won't get anywhere at all and they'll miss the mark by sitting way inside their comfort zone.

We desperately need each other. And that's where listening is really important. In fact, listening is the first key to building the railroads between us. And however big the project, railroads link Settlers and Pioneers together don't they? So how do you build them? How do you connect up your Settlers and your Pioneers?

Well, more about that in Part 3.

TIPTOES

I've been tiptoeing around today because the other day my neighbour (underneath) let slip that she knew which room was which, just from the sounds.

So, she can hear me muttering to myself in the kitchen then. Presumably she chuckles every time I stub my toe on the ironing board and I hop around wailing like the world is at an end.

She knew exactly where the piano is too. She's never seen it. Thankfully she said she enjoyed my playing. I told her to tell me if it ever gets a bit much.

It gets a bit much for me sometimes, playing that piano. I slump into lazy jazz and slumbering blues because I don't know what else to do. It is so depressing when you've got nothing left to play but the blues.

Anyway, it seems someone else might be listening now. And not just to me walking up the scale like a fed-up Fats Domino - to me scattering rice all over the kitchen floor, to me prancing about with a towel and to me making up songs about the microwave and then laughing uncontrollably at how silly a thing it is to serenade your kitchen appliances. I wouldn't want anybody to know about that.

However, I can't tiptoe around forever. Thankfully, her lounge is underneath my bedroom and mine is above hers. So hopefully she doesn't hear the windows rattling to the sound of my snoring.

Speaking of which, it's probably time to get on with it. Earplugs at the ready, lady.

PIONEERS AND SETTLERS: PART 1

I don't know why I started thinking about it. It was probably just where my mind took me as I walked back to work after lunch.

The sky was hot and heavy, compressing the air under its cloudy blanket. I was walking quickly, to avoid getting caught in the rain, and I was thinking about people.

There are lots of ways to categorise people, each of them imperfect and clunky. A year ago I was speculating on Ketchuppers and Gogetters - those who sit back and wait, wishing upon the stars... and those rocket-builders out there, adventuring through the cosmos until they get to where they dreamed of.

Today, I was thinking about a new distinction - Pioneers and Settlers.

Wait a mo. Isn't that the same thing, repackaged?

Perhaps. Let me explain:

A project I'm working on requires a lot of joined-up thinking. At the moment, the loud voices in the team seem unable to listen to each other, and it fascinates me as to why that is, and what the impact is upon the project. For example, I got handed a set of notes from a meeting I was at and the notes didn't remind me of the meeting at all! All the information was there, but there was something about it that convinced me that the person taking the minutes had zoned out of it, or had perceived what was going on through the prism of their own ideas... or had been at a completely different meeting.

It did occur to me (as I'm sure it just did to you) that I might have a prism of my own and that the writer was actually presenting a neutral view that I couldn't see. But even if that were the case, the point would still be the same - my perception, frame of reference and memory of the meeting did not match the documented history of the event.

In thinking about why it would be that people in the same discussion could emerge with different memories of it, I realised that something had gone wrong with our ability to communicate, and specifically, to listen.

This is where the Pioneers and Settlers come in.

Pioneers are awesome people. They see the horizon and the thought of it is exhilarating. Almost as quickly as a dream arrives, a sketchy plan follows - they'll saddle their horse, grab whatever tools they have and head out before sunset. Their eyes are always over the horizon.

Not everyone is a Pioneer though. Some of us are Settlers, and we are wonderful. We like to make a home and build a family. We like community and safety and places with running water and stories that come back from the frontier. We build and we fix and we create space for people to flourish. Our eyes are always on our surroundings.

Now, you can probably see already what happens when you've got a team of people: some will be Settlers and some will be Pioneers. Some will be pushing forward at a hundred miles an hour; others will be dreaming up braking systems.

How do you manage the tension between them?

That was the question I had, walking back to the office. How do you manage the tension in a team of Pioneers and Settlers?

I think I have a small part of the answer. I think you have to get them to realise that they need each other by thinking about the relationship between two things: (1) the 'good' and (2) the 'best'. And I'll explain more about that in Part 2.

BUTTERCUPS AND MEMORY WAVES

I went for a walk in the park this afternoon. The green grass was sprinkled with bright yellow buttercups, like a carpet of sunshine. I slumped down cross-legged and breathed in the warm Spring air. It was a good moment to reflect.

I think I've let myself get worn-down again. This morning I felt like my head was a balloon that had been slightly over-inflated. My skin was tight and my mouth and eyes and ears felt like they were too far apart. Deep inside, I could hear the sound of a distant drummer, wrapped in cotton wool at the centre of my brain.

No. I was not hungover. In fact, last night I very soberly drove home from the latest barn dance gig and collapsed into bed before the keys had stopped jangling in the doorlock. No alcohol was involved.

Well, unless you count the Bishops Waltham Twinning Association Members Committee rolling pound coins across the floor toward a whisky bottle in the interval. I'd not seen this before, but apparently it's a thing - you roll pound coins across the floor toward a bottle of whisky and whoever is closest gets to take it home. It occurred to me that it might be a thinly veiled metaphor for something.

So not a hangover then - just pure exhaustion working its way through my system. The buttercups agreed as they waved in the sunshine. They were silent and undemanding. Do you remember how we used to hold them under our chins to determine whether or not we liked butter? It never once occurred to me that the sunny reflection might be down to greasier skin. I thought it was magic back then. There was no-one to test me with buttercups today. In any case, I don't think it works if you have a beard.

A cascade of memories came flooding back to me: Sham Castle, behind the golf course on Claverton Down; Roundhill Mount where I'd sit for hours watching the sun sparkle from different spires and rooftops; Prospect Park, just outside the Mansion House, even the little alcove where I'd sit and dream in the sunshine.

What if memories are waves? I thought to myself. What if, each significant event creates ripples in time that stretch across the continuum? Just like stones in ponds. The memory travels through time in all directions until some day, for no apparent reason, it simply catches up with us in the present, washes over us with all its original emotion and then fades again? What if I'm moving faster than my memories can catch me, creating and diffracting new memories all the time? What if one day they all bunch up and overwhelm me, all at once?

What if memory waves interfere? What if the patterns overlap and merge and form new patterns and the memory you have, mixes in with the memory I have, to create something new?

The drummer in my head started to pound again. I need to give him a break I think. 

 

HIGH

Well, what's new?

Seems like the next big work night out is on the cards. They're planning a trip to one of those all-you-can-eat-from-all-over-the-world buffet places. I wished them luck and the very best of health.

They must think me antisocial. After all, I turned down the beer festival the other week, not to mention the upcoming fishing trip. Now this! Refusing to stuff his face with processed mush that was defrosted in a grotty kitchen and left to gently warm in an illuminated cabinet of noodles. What's wrong with him? Doesn't he want to be with us while we scoop up platefuls of red Thai jelly and soggy chips? Too posh, I reckon. Too snooty. Now he's saying he doesn't want to queue up with a grubby plate and drink lukewarm beer in a room which has all the charm of eating in an airport terminal? Loser.

Meanwhile, as the developers probably think I'm hiding away from social interaction, the boss overheard me on a phone call to Southern Electric and somehow picked up the impression that I might be on drugs.

Brilliant.

"Did I hear you right, Matt? Did you say you were high?"

"WHAT?" I asked, eyes popping out on stalks.

"On the phone just now?"

I chuckled, out of relief more than anything.

"No, just my electricity bill," I said.

I've never been high in my life, by the way. Though I can imagine that that state of mind might just be the only thing that gets me along to the all-you-can-eat-from-all-over-the-world buffet place.

TEA CHANGE

"I've gone off tea," said my Mum, casually. I missed it at first; the sound of a local news reporter going on about bluebells was overwhelming the living room.

"What?" I said, eventually.

"I've gone off tea," she repeated, "unless it's that really posh stuff you left behind."

"Expensive taste!" I proclaimed, "That's your trouble." It suddenly occurred to me that it might be all down to me leaving home.

It does leave me with a dilemma though. Do I leave the tea here so that it's here when I am, or do I take it home, now that it might not get brewed here in my Mum's tea-free zone. It's a first-world problem for sure.

"You know your mother's gone off tea?" asked my Dad, wandering in with a cup of instant coffee he'd just made for himself.

It's all change round here then.

LUNCH BY THE LAKE

I'm by the lake this lunchtime. The sun is warm and the breeze is cold. The fountain is arching into the blue-green lake and the ducks are happily diving and bobbing on the water.

The last few days have felt frustrating. You know the kind of thing where everywhere you want to go is blocked by somebody who moves right when you move left, who blocks you when you shimmy the other way and then tells you not to be so grumpy about it.

That hasn't happened, by the way, I'm not talking about a person particularly. It's just how it has felt.

Today though, the sunshine is helping me relax a little.

There's a group of women on a power walk round the lake. They've circled me twice now. On the first circuit they were taking about building sand castles on the beach. The second time, one of them said:

'It's funny how you have to sort of massage his ego to the get best out of him.'

I thought that was funny (I think it applies to all of us) so I chuckled as they passed me by. They went silent the third time round. That amused me even further.

It is nice out here. It's getting warmer too. Soon there will be days when going back into the office is really tough, especially as it feels like you're being cooked from the inside out. However, this lunchtime is very pleasant.

RICHARD BRANSON

I got an email today with an intriguing subject:

"Matt, Richard Branson is looking for your advice."

I rubbed my hands together gleefully. Oh I've been waiting for this day. I always knew, in the end, that the billionaires would come rushing to a part-time musician and technical author for some sound advice and practical wisdom. It was only a matter of time.

In fact I'm quite certain that Richard Branson (sipping a pina colada on his Caribbean island, dreaming about transatlantic balloon flights, airliners and building a space rocket) must have tilted back his expensive sunglasses and thought to himself, You know what I need...

And I don't suppose he'll be the last either. Oh word will get round the one-percenters, it always does - soon Bill Gates will be on the phone from his glassy mansion, asking me for that bit of wisdom that only a man with a tiny kitchen (and unreachable windows) can provide.

Then there'll be Abramovich, a couple of those sheikhs from Dubai and that orange fella who's running for President - they'll all be round won't they, lining up outside my creaky front door, asking me for my legendary input into their impossibly luxuriant lives and ornately complicated business ventures.

Zuckerberg will want in. I'd tell him to change his t-shirt. Then I'd tell him what I think of flunkbook and he, clearly respecting the opinion of a man who got 40% in a programming course in 1998, would immediately retreat inconsolably, vowing to change his ways.

And what about Murdoch? I could give old Rupert loads of advice. Surely, having heard the stellar wisdom I sent Richard Branson's way, he'd be telegramming me immediately to find out how he could be a better citizen of this great planet. After all, I did once shake hands with TV's Mr Motivator.

Anyway, there's no call from Branson yet, following up the email he politely sent me via the advertising pixies at LinkedIn. Perhaps he's off discovering more buried treasure, or building a moon-base or something.

Anyway, I'm right by the phone when you're ready, Richard. Right by the phone.

THE BANK HOLIDAY DISCONNECT

I'm not sure about bank holidays. Did they start off being for banks and then everyone else joined in because they couldn't do any business? Now we're all off, all at the same time, cramming into DIY stores, supermarkets and traffic jams.

I'm round at the Intrepids'. We're going on a walk in a bit so I'm just waiting, watching some terrible telly. As you know, I don't have a TV and I don't want one. I want to be disconnected from this murky, manipulative world.

So, here I am wondering what's happened to adverts. I've just seen a man trying to sell insurance by dancing around in high heels, adults talking with children's voices, and some women empowering themselves around a breakfast cereal. Call me old-fashioned but I just don't understand.

Actually, I think advertisers gather round polished tables and conclude that if you can make thousands of people laugh like titillated idiots you can sell them your stuff at twice what it cost you to make it. How offensive.

Anyway, bank holidays. We're off for a trek. If these eight annual, enforced national holidays are for anything, then surely they're for disconnecting from adverts and trash TV and work and stress, and remembering how awesome a thing it is to be together.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Evening. I think next door are having a party. There's a muffled thud that sounds like someone playing a kick drum in a blanket, plus the sound of distant chatter reverberating through the walls. I don't mind; most of the time this street is pretty silent and there's something vaguely relaxing about the sound of other people's fun. Though if it's still this loud in an hour's time, I might get up and play some jazz piano or the chords to All You Need is Love on a loop.

All You Need is Love. What were The Beatles thinking? This is my latest arrangement for choir, and to keep it simple I've recorded the parts straight into my phone. 

I keep saying to myself, 'Not true is it? Load of old nonsense,' because clearly you need a lot more than just love. Apparently though, John Lennon was intent on creating art out of slogans and this free-forming idea slipped straight out of the atmosphere of 1967 and onto the disc. Perhaps sacrilegiously, I've pushed it into 4/4 instead of the complicated timing of the original. I don't think anyone will notice.

I need friendship, decent food and a good night's sleep. I also need a better sense of humour, the ability to think several steps ahead, and a nice wooden coat stand. I need to exercise more, to get my oven cleaned (so that I can use it again) and I need to stop writing emails late at night. I need patience, kindness and wisdom, and I need to stop telling people I'm depressed whenever they ask me how I am. I do need love, yes, my Liverpudlian friends, but it is certainly not the complete mathematical set of all my requirements.

Meanwhile, in a surprising conversation, a friend of mine told me he'd like to go hunting in North America someday. I recoiled in horror. I couldn't imagine lying in the undergrowth like a sniper, ready to murder a defenceless animal. I couldn't pull the trigger, I just know it. There are some things I don't need and a hunting trophy is absolutely one of them - even if it's a trendy thing for the pastors of a certain Californian church to do.

They're still going next door. Mcha mcha mcha mcha tsk tsk tsk tsk... It sounds like the whole house has a heartbeat. I can hear somebody rapping. It's not Cosi Fan Tutti, that's for sure. I wait the day when I'm kept awake by Mozart instead of Eminem. I guess I'd even prefer the whining of the Beatles singing their sunshine-laden slogans into the future. Or maybe all I need is a decent set of earplugs.