Letters from a Perfect Imperfectionist

So we sit down for a spot of lunch at The Doubletree Hilton in Luxembourg and the lovely waitress gives us each a tablet computer and instructions on how to scroll through the menu and choose our meal, then she wanders off to do other more important things.

Is it me – isn’t the art of customer service, conversation and relationships at its height when we sit down to dine?

If I wanted to interact with a computer I would go to a dispensing machine and grab a sandwich.

What’s missing from this stupid bit of software is a button that allows me to send a Facebook message to Annie on the other side of the table to ask “what are you having?”.

Presumably the next step will be a chute that opens from the wall and the plate of grub just drops down in front of us.

FFS Hilton – what are you thinking?

Almost, but not quite, as bad as the ridiculous system that Flybe have now adopted, which requires me to check myself in, print my own boarding pass, put my own case on the belt, print my own baggage labels and tape them to my own case before I press a button and send it down the conveyor.

The last few times I have done this, in Manchester, Belfast and Southampton, a long-suffering and clearly bored Flybe staff member has had to endlessly teach the passengers how to work their way through this procedure, irrespective of age and dexterity.

I remember our first ever trip to Mwanza in Tanzania and my hilarity at the baggage collection point when a lorry pulled up outside and a plane-load of cases were unceremoniously dumped through a hole in that wall.

It seems we are heading in the same direction but without the natural helpfulness and humour of the East Africans. 

There are times when automation is what I’m looking for – a restaurant that wants to charge me 27 euros for weiner schnitzel is not one of them. Neither is checking in for a flight.

Christ – don’t tell Ryanair – they will have us flying the plane ourselves.

Back in the 1960’s, it cost the USA $25 billion for the Apollo space programme, the pinnacle of which was the first manned landing on 20 July 1969.

6 hours later Armstrong stepped on to the surface.

Most of us who were alive at the time can remember when we were doing.

I was a 15-year old and staying over at my grandparent’s house in Ashton-Under-Lyne, Manchester. We had stayed up all evening watching the BBC coverage and my folks had gone to bed. I was asleep on the sofa in their modest “2 up, 2 down” terraced house and keeping an eye on the small black & white TV in the corner. I remember waking just as Armstrong stepped off the ladder and uttered his famous words.

For a moment, humanity was united in celebration and wonder.

Last night we witnessed the culmination of a 10-year journey, at a cost of almost $3 billion, to send a satellite to orbit and (hopefully) land on a comet travelling at 34,000 mph around the sun.

The science is mind blowing – and yet I’ll bet nobody in 45 years from now will remember the event, let alone what they were doing at the time.

The news of this amazing human achievement is squeezed in between speculation on how David and Boris will get along and what the Palestinians and Israelis are going to do to each other next.

Homo Sapiens is, indeed, a “wise ape” but we do seem to show up on the wise or the ape scale on a regular basis.

It remains to be seen which of those two characteristics will dominate.

Sunbank Wood is a very ancient woodland just a few miles from home, adjacent to The River Bollin valley and close to Manchester Airport (much in the news today).

This morning I enjoyed running through at about 07:00 and captured this iPhonographic moment.

Very close by, during the construction of the second runway at Manchester, settlements were discovered that have been dated back to 4500BC.

My running track passes one of those early villages – all that remains is a circle of raised ground where the occupants constructed mud and thatched huts and fences for animals.

The area has been in continuous use ever since for agriculture and livestock.

The people who discovered this beautiful river valley and settled there did so possibly 4,000 years after the agricultural revolution had taken place – their ancestors’ lifestyle a long-forgotten memory.

Every day, thousands leave the airport on business and pleasure and, as they lift-off, glance down to see the river valley wind below and underneath the runways, seldom imagining the centuries before, in which the sun,the moon and the seasons were the only measures of passing time.

On nearby Alderley Edge, Druids celebrated the equinox and offered the lives of captives as tributes to their gods (Lindow Man, unearthed from the pit bogs of Wilmslow, was a sacrificial victim some 2,000 years ago).

The tick and tock of that ancient clock were slow indeed by human standards and yet now the airport hustles and bustles to the nano-second timescales of transport and commerce.

Could local inhabitants of two millennia ago have even begun to imagine the present day scene?

Not even close.

So when we imagine what this area might look like two further millennia from now – we know that we’re unlikely to get close.

Sadly, the future of Sunbank Wood has a much shorter time horizon, as HS2 is planned to carve a swathe through this area over the next 15-20 years, so that passengers from Manchester Airport to London Euston can arrive in 59 minutes.

That sounds amazing – but doesn’t give me much time to catch up on emails.

I’d rather take the slower (1 hour 40 minutes) train from Wilmslow and get some work done.

Save the taxpayer £80 billion and keep this beautiful piece of Old England intact.

Progress? It seems the sacrifices we make now are more permanent and yet just as senseless.

August in Cheshire and the farmers are busy bringing in the crops.

In his famous book “The 7 habits of highly effective people”, Stephen Covey talks about “harvest time” – when you drop everything to complete a project because it’s important, urgent and must be done in order to move you to your next level in life.

Right now its harvest time in my life – I’m working flat out on projects, both personal and professional, that will set the scene for the next 5/10 years.

I’ve written already about some dark clouds that lay ahead on that journey but I’ve seldom been so wired in my life and so focused on a bigger future.

2 weeks now until Annie and I take some time out to visit Tanzania, first to spend some quality time together and then to visit with dear friends.

I’m counting the days – we all do when it’s that close – but also conscious that the adventure of life has its ups and downs – and that when you are in the zone, it is good to take a moment to enjoy the journey.

I’ve just finished 3 hours in The Bunker, organising my personal finances and domestic mail, entering the Barcelona Marathon next March 2015 and taking a look at the next 6 months.

That process will continue tomorrow when I take my annual planning day to look at my calendar for 2015, book free time first, Bunker Days second and delivery days last. I’ll also be reviewing my personal cash flows for 2015 and looking at what I need to sell, to earn, to invest in my future.

We are all masters of our own destiny.

Planning time is there to allow us to think and plan.

Harvest time is there to allow us to gather, sustain and store for the future all the resources we will need on the journey.

P.S. in a world of imperfection, having a plan and getting 80% of it complete is better than having no plan.

Spotted at the south end of Park Lane this morning.

It occurs to me that there is nothing clever about this.

We all spend far too much of our time trying to balance the “elephants in the room” in the fruitless attempt to maintain a quiet life.

The elephants are the things, situations and people whose performance and behaviour we tolerate.

I am paid to spend countless hours listening to clients tell me ALL the stories that prove conclusively that the elephant  (thing, situation or person that they are tolerating) is wrong:

“and then this happened”

“and then he said this”

“and then it got worse”

My response is always the same.

If the elephant is a thing – fix it or replace it.

If the elephant is a situation – make a decision.

If the elephant is a person?

If they are on the bus – compassion, care, help, assistance, training, coaching, mentoring.

If they are off the bus – get rid.

Nobody ever said that balancing elephants was of any use – except that the elephant and the audience love it.

You just get knackered and look a lot daft.

The gift of the true creative is to imagine a work from that which is not yet there and then to leave the interpretation of the piece to the observer.

In this case, two blocks of wood are transformed into a story that can be told a billion, billion times, each in a different way.

The creative doesn’t seek ownership but gives it away, without payment or the need for feedback, allowing the audience to love or be indifferent.

From a single moment – a dot in time – in my case an early morning jog through Regents Park – flows an eternity of thought and emotion.

Ok so here’s the deal.

20 days starting at midnight tonight and ending on Saturday 16th August.

De-Tox.

No to:

• tea and coffee
• alcohol
• sugar
• dairy products
• pasta
• bread
• potato
• rice

Yes to:

• meat, fish, fowl, eggs
• fruit, nuts (no peanuts), vegetables
• water in abundance
• herbal teas

Regular aerobic exercise.

Why?

Current weight 74 kgs.

Current level of fitness – poor by my standards.

Current level of toxins in body – high.

Currents levels of tiredness – high.

Oh – and The Perfect Imperfectionist will be taking a day off on Saturday 9th August to attend a birthday party.

If you fancy joining me then tag along. I’ll be reporting on my progress – prepare for some grumpy days ahead…

Its been a long time since I visited our village post office in Hale, Cheshire.

I’d forgotten that, to post a large letter, you will have to queue behind a line of elderly people struggling to battler their way through the complexities of the modern postal system in this country.

Envelope sizes, weight, distance, contents and speed are all issues in our modern world.

Finally arriving at the counter, I handed my envelope to the lady on the other side of the glass screen.

“First class letter post please.” I asked.

She looked at me with an expression that said “you’ve not been here for a while have you sonny?”

her actual words…..

“Do you want that guaranteed next day delivery?”

Now this confused me – I thought that first class WAS guaranteed next day delivery?

It was when I was a lad.

No longer apparently.

So “first class” seems now to mean: “we are going to do our level best to get it there as quickly as we can but, you know, shit happens and so we can’t be sure.”

Which begs the question – what does “second class” mean?