A circle of people and events through time

A very interesting sequence of web pages sparked off by my early morning reading of the BBC News web site on my phone. It starts from an important and intriguing news item and goes via some topical Islamic stuff to a very personal history of the chairman of the independent review of the NHS - read and enjoy!

The original BBC news item that started it was about Argentina, The Malvinas/Falklands and in it the President of Argentina has some uncomplimentary things to say about David Cameron.

That was on my mobile so I looked for pictures of de Kirchner, I do like to see what the people talking to me look like, and found a very unusual blog praising the virtues of both the hijab and the skirt!

It is written by

three journalists, Sasa Milosevic (Serbia), Tarek Mounir (Egypt) and Asmaa Fathy (Egypt) [who] created the project Hijabskirt Info in order to overcome rooted prejudices about women in the hijab as well as women in skirts.

I wandered round that site a bit and found a short and moving biographical essay on Benhazir Bhutto and her time as a student at Oxford. It is written by Stephen Bubb, CEO of ACEVO and has photos.

Who is he? And what does he do now? Google tells me in a flash! He has a blog of his own and interestingly, more-or-less wherever he goes and whatever he does he takes photos and lets us know what is happening. Here for example is a post about a confab at Number 10 with David Cameron and others.

To me at least it is very refreshing to find that important people have human lives and pasts. And that they are happy to acknowledge them. Well done Stephen Bubb!

Wisbech Grammar School - Speech Day 1942

I always knew my Dad was bright and that he had won a scholarship to enable him to go to university in 1942 but on Monday I got a real surprise. Working on my Mother's will and papers I came across a Speech Day programme for his old grammar school. Wisbech Grammar is now an independent school but then it was just one of the local state schools. Indeed I went there for two terms.

Here it is, his final speech day at the age of 17 - click on a picture to get a larger version.

The interesting pages are 2 -

Norfolk Senior Scholarship: Hite, W P P

State Bursaries in Science: Hite, W P P

Holmes' Scholarships: Hite, W P P (Honorary)

and 3

Magdalene Prize for Science Hite, W P P

and lastly on page 3, the one I am proudest of:

Prize for Esprit de Corps (presented by H Lawrence White, Esq, MA):

Hite, W P P, Captain of the School 1941-1942

It was winning a scholarship that enabled Dad to go to Cambridge to read Physics in 1942. Rather than living it high on the four scholarships and bursaries he returned all the ones that he didn't need so that others could benefit.

He was even more generous than that: I was a rather "troublesome engine" in my teenage years, very much the black sheep of the family and absolutely not the prize winner - though I did get one or two in the 1st and 2nd forms at March Grammar. Even though he taught there Dad never wielded his own academic and school achievements to try and drive me on. In fact he never mentioned them at all - either then or now. Thanks Dad.

Later, on reading this my brother Peter wrote:

"Dad always said he never wanted to do physics or science at university, but was forced into it as part of the war effort - and he did, indeed, do his bit at Farnborough. Decades later I was spun in the human centrifuge he helped design. He much preferred literature - and that's why he later took up writing (until stopped) and is still happiest surrounded by piles of books."

Planning the future?

Planning for a future event does not mean that one expects to be able to control the future.

I once worked on a project with a voluntary group and drew up plans for an event to take place in a week or so. Being who I am I tried to carefully articulate what shape and form the event should be and who we wanted to attend. And then I advertised and promoted in various ways to work towards those goals.

In debates about the promotion activities some said to me "You can't control who is going to come", "You can't control the weather so you don't know how many will actually turn up". Or when I try and aim for equal numbers of men and women - "But you can't control that".

"I know" I say "but I can control how I promote it and if we have a desire that there should be equal numbers of men and women we can design our promotion to encourage that. And if we find as we monitor results that it isn't working then we can change how we promote."

It is a truism of course - no one can control anything about the future.

All that we can control, if at all, is our present action.

The comments must have come from a widely held misunderstanding of the planning process.

What is planning then?

1) We decide what we would like to happen at some future date.

2) We work out what we have to do today, and subsequent days, to enable that to happen.

So a plan enables us to direct and use the control which we have of our actions in the present moment (the only thing that we can control, if that!) to give us anticipated consequences. It is not that we know for certain that any result will happen - just that we have agreed that this is the best course of action to get what we want.

Simple enough but some important points have to be noted.

Deciding what we want to happen: this has to be described well enough to enable all participants to share "the vision". Everyone needs enough to be able to think through the consequences of the goal. Consequences is in a sense the wrong word - taking the passage of time into consideration we are really thinking of the pre-conditions, the things that are needed today to make tomorrow have the right shape. Everyone needs to think about what she has to do in her particular role in the organisation to achieve the goal. They cannot do that without the goal being properly described.

It is a big mistake to think that because the goal is well articulated that this in some sense mandates that it should happen.

Having the the time and the skills to develop the vision of the goal and the ability to communicate by painting the picture with enthusiasm is an essential role for the planner and leader. Just because the picture is painted well does not mean that the painter has any kind of erroneous belief that he is somehow fixing the future. No, he does it to cause people to take action today, the right action, that will, all going to plan, lead everyone to the goal.

And that leads on to the worse mistake that I have experienced.

An enthusiastic picture and plan does not mean that the painter has a vested interest in the particular goal so fulsomly described: just as a portrait painter tries to find the character of the sitter and depict it faithfully without becoming emotionally attached to the sitter so a planner does his best to portray the goal and to develop from that all the necessary steps needed to deliver it. The emotional attachment a planner has, if anything is to the completeness of the process - "you want to be there on Day 4 starting from here so you have to do this on day 1, this on day2 and that on day 3." His job satisfaction comes from making sure there are no loose ends and everyone is singing from the same sheet.

So the description of the goal is an attempt to give enough detail so that present activities can be ordered and arranged to achieve that future goal. It may even be that having described the goal and worked out the pre-conditions, who has to do what and when, it is not practical. So the goal has to be changed or further pre-conditions listed to overcome the hurdles.

Of course, the effect of something we do today cannot necessarily be fully predicted. Some things are very reliable, others not so. If I pay a shopkeeper £5 to display an advert, for certain my project funds reduce by £5. What is less certain, much less in this case, is how much of a response the advert will get.

And of course, if I spend ten hours today working on a plan to achieve some worthwhile goal those ten hours are very well spent - even though I have not an iota of control of any aspect of the future.

An Irish interlude - the travelling

My wife's mother is not very well so we decided to leave our car in Ireland for a few months while she went back and forth to visit. It was a cunning plan to save the ghastly expense of either hiring cars every two weeks or ferrying the car over each trip.

On her last visit she left the car parked by the roadside outside Knock airport.

But eight weeks later she had not been back to visit - her mother was now very comfortable in a home and chatted to almost daily on the phone.

I decided I had to go and rescue the car - would it still be there? in one piece? would it start? would the tires be flat? would the wheels still turn? would it be up to its axles or worse in the bog?

Andrew offered to come with me for his first visit to Ireland and I jumped at the offer so after a number of last minute bookings and shenanigans off we went.

Oh dear, oh dear!

First with Ryan Air - I had planned to do online check-in - there I sat at midnight on Friday and lo and behold - you have to have passport details to check-in online. The web site hadn't warned me when booking, nor in the confirmation email and I didn't have Andrew's details and at midnight, very sensibly he was in bed and asleep, unlike me, so he wasn't answering his phone. I abandoned the attempt.

Now at Liverpool John Lennon airport - after queuing at the check-in desk we are sent off to queue at the ticket desk. There I discover that I at least, in possession of my own passport, could have checked in online on Friday night. That wasn't mentioned at all on the check-in pages. "We cannot take complaints here about Ryan Air - we don't work for them" the cashier says sitting in a booth clearly labelled "Ryan Air". There must be a way in which one can play that in reverse, i.e. to my advantage. Any ideas? how to label something or someone one way and yet be another thing when you get jobsworths like that. After stumping up two times £8 we go back to check-in and get our boarding cards.

Next step - security: Ha!

Here I got off lightly though I cannot say as much for my Suunto watch with built in electronic compass. The security metal detector didn't do that a lot of good. And I didn't empty any of my pockets out so I walked through the thing with all bells ringing.

"Stand here sir (and let me give you a very undignified patting down). What's this? didn't he ask you to empty your pockets, tut, tut...". So we empty them all out, not a trivial task as there are seven pockets in my walking trousers alone, and contents go into another plastic tray handed up to the other end of the conveyor. Mercifully I still had my belt on.

So now I have three items coming through the conveyor - carry-on bag, coat and walking boots in a tray and another tray with wallet, purse, smart phone etc trailing way behind. As we all know, this is a nerve racking time, watching out for the wallet and phone to get through the scanner in case someone else walks off with them. When they are significantly separated from your other possessions this is a real problem.

I managed it all right - with particular relief that the man with x-ray vision had decided that my collection of tin-whistles in my carry-on bag were not dangerous weapons!

But where was Andrew? The toothpaste police had got him! Off with his head! But he fought on to have his deodorant retained - and won that one. Not a liquid you see, but solid crystal!

Birthday thanks

Thanks very much for the birthday greetings or card or present (you know who you are!).

I went to stay with Dad for my birthday. I had wanted to go walking in Scotland but the weather was forecasted to be awful (and indeed it was). Anyway I discovered some lovely walks around Wimblington in the fens. One day I saw a kingfisher for the second time ever, the first was in Glasgow city centre in 1998 around about my 50th birthday, will there be another one for my 70th? they are such a beautiful shiny turquoise colour.

And that set the tone for the whole holiday: big open blue skies, lots of sun, water, stubble fields, clamps of onions and sugar beet, fluffy clouds, sunbathing on the banks of Vermuden's Drain (picture above, click on a picture to see it properly), enormous haystacks (there one is! look, down below, holding this post up!) and playing and practising the whistle as I walked along. It all made for a perfect five days. The only downside was my mother – she doesn’t know who I am and hardly knows who Dad is. He is getting old too - and it is probably unsafe for him to drive any more.

Ruth got me a special American Parks "Every Whistle" for my birthday – it has a volume control and works very well with quite a pleasant tone. So now my early morning practise sessions don’t involve a walk up to the Beacon. That may not be such a good thing - I really need the exercise.

Earlier, in September, I went over to Ireland for a weekend to help Ceppy. While there Ceppy’s expert jam making sister Eithne took me to the Strokestown Show where she was the “Jam, Marmalade, Honey, Eggs and Butter judge”. She introduced me as a jam connoisseur from England there to help her – what fun tasting 32 odd pots of jam and marmalade! On that sweet note I shall end.

All the green is an illusion

Gabby sent me an email with this cunning optical illusion. Click on the picture to see it animated in a window of its own. Then, without blinking or moving your eye, stare intently at the cross-hairs for as long as you can. If you are like most of us after a few seconds you will start to see a ghostly green-dot moving around the circle. After much longer you should start to see the pink-dots begin to fade away - eventually melting into the grey background. If you let your eyes drift away from the cross-hairs for even an instant then that illusion will be lost!

If you don't stare at the dot but instead follow it around with your eyes it stays pink all the time.

There are no green dots at all in the animation - all the green is an illusion.

Don't be cruel and send the picture to your friends with a covering note such as "Beware! someone has modified your computer so it can tell where you are looking. The dots change colour when they see you are not paying attention!" OK? You don't have any friends that would fall for that? Right.

An explanation, and a few more cunning illusions will follow in a week or so...

And did you follow the dot around with your eyes? Ha! Caught you. There is no moving dot. The animation just blanks out the pink ones in turn. You can see that if you make it stop. With Internet Explorer you just press the Esc key while you are watching the dots and it will freeze. Start it again by pressing F5.

And... did you notice, as I just did, if you stop the animation with the Esc key and just stare at the cross hairs the pink dots fade away. The fading has nothing to do with the movement.

Regency Rejigged at Southport

Do you like set dancing? contra, English country, folk dancing or whatever you call it? I do, and one particular style, Playford, from the 17th century is very enjoyable to watch. The dancers seem to move in and out like waves in water. It's good to watch and even better to perform - a sort of rythmically "springy" walking.

Some friends joined a group called Regency Rejigged last year and set out to do it properly with period dress. Here is their first public outing in Southport on Sunday 27th.

Clare tells me that authentic dresses were pastel coloured for the young ladies and dark colours for the older (or was it married?) ones.

The second part of their exhibition was on the plaza outside the Arts Centre on Lord Street. Here's half a minute or so dancing "Hyde Park":

Denise is playing the recorder. I'm standing there holding an umbrella over her because of the rain - I wish I could play well enough to join in.

Here's another short piece dancing "Sellenger's Round":

this time Denise is playing the accordion - as she does at the Aughton Folk Dance Club that she and Norman run. I'm still umbrella man - that accounts for the shaky one handed camera work. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

One wonderful thing about Playford dancing, or even modern Playford style dances, is the ravishing music. In my limited experience of dancing Playford as a beginner there is a strong risk of drifting off on it and losing one's place! Read about and listen to some recordings with samples at Country Dance Society. One of Sunday's dances was Lady William's Delight

On Friday its off to Lemmings Reprieve I go - for some social English country dancing of my own. Does that make sense? I mean dancing as opposed to watching dancing.