Northern Ireland

Seasoned observers of Northern Ireland politics scarcely believe it to be true. Fire and brimstone preacher Ian Paisley in the same room and talking with Gerry Adams who says that Ian Paisley was the reason he became a republican and terrorism endorser in the first place. In an environment where there have been many false dawns this could actually be the moment when Northern Ireland becomes sane. When I saw terrorist Gerry (‘jelly’) Kelly being interviewed with Ian Paisley Jnr on Newsnight later you began to realise that this might actually be for real. Then interviewer Gavin Essler recalled that the first time he had interviewed Kelly had been in a prison in Holland and you realised how much both sides have had to swallow to get to this point.

One thing that has not changed much in the last thirty years is the cast of characters. I suppose the upside of this is that if you cannot win over the most intransigent then nothing is for real. On the other side of the coin, Ulster politics will need to move on rapidly and it will be interesting to see what the next generation of politicians will do. I think one point that needs underlining is the weakness in Sinn Fein’s position. I personally feel that many south of the border are not really interested in taking on the burden of the Ulster economy with 30% unemployment, a massive state benefit burden and poor infrastructure. Ireland itself (minus the 6 or 9 counties) is an economic success story but is not so powerful that it could absorb Ulster easily. Look at what happened to the German economy after 1989. What is happening is that the Dublin Government is investing in Ulster (the Dublin-Derry motorway for example) and perhaps we might see a gradual absorption over the next fifty years. The tipping point may occur when Catholics form the majority population in Ulster.

I have an emotional interest in all of this because I lived in Portrush, Northern Ireland for three years when I was a student. I remember going, as an observer, to Coleraine to witness a Unionist demonstration against the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. I have never felt so terrified in my life. I don’t suppose I will ever feel again the tension among the 20,000 crowd as Unionist politicians led the ‘no, no, no’ chanting that exploded from everywhere. I spoke not a word so as not reveal my English accent (the irony of being English in a crowd of UK ‘loyalists’) and got away as soon as I could.

Good luck to Northern Ireland.

Music of the day: I played some Davy Spillane (ex of Moving Hearts) in Irish tribute. The ‘Out in the Air’ album which I have not listened to for 10 years.

As a footnote; the thoughts occurs to me that sometimes ‘life’ tells us something. My last two blogs have related to Kosovo and Northern Ireland and my involvement in those places. I am not a destiny type (as anyone who has read my books will know) but perhaps I was always meant to be close to ‘trouble spots’. I wonder if readers notice similar patterns in their own lives?

Me, Me, Me

Why was I so averse to the work I am currently doing with the legal profession that I alluded to in previous blogs? Who knows? I am thoroughly enjoying it. 3 hours per day which frees up valuable thinking time but I am actually enjoying the company of those in ‘the professions’ after several years of working mainly in the not for profit sector. My client is not quite magic circle but just gets into the top ten legal practices in the UK and the top 100 in the world. And today they have asked me about doing other work for them in the future. However the opportunity I am currently working through with Mark Brown may change everything for me and could mean that I will soon have to turn down work. The question is – which would I choose not to do? The lowest paid is often the most rewarding and I do want to see my Kosovo work (see blogs passim) through to completion. Ahtisaari – the UN special envoy to Kosovo - has today suggested that Kosovo will indeed gain independence and as I have been working there for nearly five years I feel that I have been in my own small way helping to make a difference. I have trained a huge number of workers from the both the UN and OSCE there and I like to think I have played a part in the change. The Kosovo work will be the last to go if (and the ‘if’ is looking more like ‘when’) the opportunity flowers. And I will be back there at the end of April for nearly two weeks.

My parents are separating after 41 years of marriage. My mother has found a partner who lives in Yorkshire and it seems she has more or less moved in with him. He is sixty and wealthy and will no doubt look after her. It all seems strange that only a few weeks ago she was chasing Poles (double entendre intended) around Europe. And now she has left my father. My dad turned up in South London last weekend and we went off to watch some rugby. He has a ‘lady friend’ himself – my father’s ability to bounce back is superb – but I feel that his extreme haste in telling me this suggests it is a reaction thing to maintain his own self-esteem. A good thing too I suppose as long as he doesn’t attach too much to it. My sister and I are both fairly cool about the whole thing – there is so little time and it is so sad if we spend too much of that time unhappy. In fact I think we both agree that this should have happened years ago. Never hang on unless there are children involved.

Music of the day: Ein Deutches Requiem – Brahms (Rattle)

TV's Ulrika

TV (as in television not transvestite) nights can be healthy. A complete tv night is rare for me but enjoyable when I do it. So the other night it was a programme on Ulrika’s sex addiction followed by Marbella Belles.

I enjoyed one and found the other appalling and it may surprise readers to hear that I thought the Ulrika programme the poor one. It began apparently as a programme in which Ulrika would investigate the idea of sex addiction in others and how it can be overcome but quickly became a moderately titillating expose of Ulrika’s sexual past with all the juicy bits left out. It felt like the viewer was being manipulated and that the modest Ulrika expose was always in the mix. We got to hear about Ulrika’s need for love and attention and nobody made the observation that her doing this on television was actually fuelling this need explicitly. She had the option not to but chose to do so and so fed the Ulrika attention industry further. She can only blame herself.

In Marbella Belles we were treated to an apparently superficial group of people living in a world of spray on tan, ‘shampoo’ at lunchtime, vulgar jewellery and ‘drinks’. One of them freely admitted the vacuity of it all but amidst the froth were single mothers who had come here without a penny and had set up million pound businesses and others with a general ‘haveago’ attitude. Their values were certainly not my values in some respects but I admired the energy. The lady however who delegated all of her child caring responsibilities to the Asian maid and whose main occupation seemed to be smoking in a horizontal position was appalling. As she said herself she drops her kids at school has a couple of fags and then does nothing for the rest of the day. She was shady about where her husband’s money had come from (this may have been revealed in an earlier programme) and I was reminded of the quote about Brits abroad – those who live in France vote Tory, those who live in Italy vote Labour and those who live in Spain have recently held up a Post Office. Allegedly.

Music of the day: Catch-a –fire – Bob Marley

The Legal Profession

I find myself working with the legal profession on two fronts at the moment. The first is professional and the work I return to the UK for on Sunday. The professions believe they are unique and like nobody else but when it comes down to it they have the same souls, hearts, brains and bladders as all of us. But in one way they are different - service. I am just selling my house and it seems that the world of email has not quite reached the legal profession yet. The solicitors of my buyer have raised a number of fairly minor points about my house with my solicitors. The logical thing to do would have been to phone me up or send me an email outlining those points. I could then reply to them right away. Instead it seems that this all has to be done by post. A letter to me which will take about a week to draft no doubt and then another week for them to reply to the buyer's solicitors. In the meantime I continue to pay for a house I am not living in and the buyer continues to rent a house they don't want to live in. The solicitor gets their cash either way. Am I sounding bitter? Probably not. Just frustrated.

This has been a non-week I am ashamed to say. Preparing for some work I really do not want to do, waiting for approval for a book idea which sadly seems unlikely to happen and also waiting to hear about work in Kosovo, Rome and Nepal. I have not mastered the art of 'waiting' for anything and sadly impatience is probably the thing that damages my well-being more than any other. I seem unable to do anything slowly. I either don't do it at all or my pace is frenetic. I love that latin phrase 'Festina Lente' (make haste slowly). The old motto of the Fabians. But I have to learn to apply it to my life.

I realise the 'down' tone of this and recognise that a number of you read my blog for the positive angle. Today, I guess is just one of those days and even positive thinkers are allowed the odd one! I suspect my return to London will fire me as it usually does. I am a city animal.

Today's music; Free Form - Joe Harriott

Remember me

I enjoy it when I know that people have thought of me and make the effort to do something to show their appreciation for work done. Such was the case today when one of my participants (Laura) at the workshops I ran in Germany recently got in touch to email me some photographs of the fun times over the two days and to ask about buying my books in Germany. She was not the person who recruited me so had no need to create a professional veneer but had done so out of kindness and because she had enjoyed herself. This simple pleasure will probably mean nothing to readers but is what makes my job worthwhile. As a consultant you do your job and then go home and it can be frustrating not knowing how much impact you have had. I have found my forte working with large rather than small groups as I hope recent work in Macedonia and Germany attest and I really must pursue this. To know you made a difference is I think the primary motivator for most of the employed and self-employed. It is such a shame that so few managers tell their staff this when to do so would raise the motivational levels so much. And it costs no more more than kindness.

A quick change of subject. I got back to France for a week with my little ones. I am away a lot but when I am there I am very 'there'. Much more so than say the working parent who leaves the house at 7.00am and does not re-appear until 7 or 8 in the evening. The joy of seeing my children was added to by the success of the england rugby team against the french. I asked Lily my eldest who she wanted to win. She said France because she was french now. I wonder what she will feel when she is 20 or 25? With huge numbers of young french moving to London for work and other stimulation my suspicion is that she will continue her education in the UK.

Song of the day: I believe in Miracles - The Jackson Sisters

Soul Damage

When I was in Germany recently one of the members of the team working with the Kyoto Protocol came up to me and said ‘I’ve just realised that you are living the life I want to live. Writing books and consultancy’. I was surprised by this and as I reflect I probably am living the life I think I would have felt ideal five years ago. But isn’t it strange that the enjoyment of it is likely to come more in the reflection than the actual doing. There is so little time to reflect when doing that the pleasure, even though I admit I am vaguely conscious of it, is hard to pin down. I suspect that this is a crucial part of being a human being. If we all got satisfied in our twenties there would be little to drive our race on. And that is the reason that we are wired up to enjoy the hindsight rather than the present. We would stop too soon otherwise.

I am ashamed to say that I am just about to conduct an experiment on myself. I have accepted a contract to do some work that I am bitterly regretting taking on. I got too deep into discussions about some work that I thought I might like to do that I cannot extricate myself from. The experiment is to see if I can motivate myself to do something I have no interest in, or desire to do. Of course I shall be a professional but I suspect I will internalise some frustration and will have to make sure that I have a way of letting it out. I am also figuring out that the client is unlikely to be reading this!

In my blog at the beginning of the year I said I suspect that I would be travelling and writing a lot. I have been asked about the possibility of going to Nepal. I am shaking at the possibility.

And still the opportunity of a lifetime barks very loudly at me. Would it give or save ‘soul damage’? My soul is already damaged and I must not damage it more. The possibility of successful repair is likely to come only by risking the chance that the damage could be increased. But is my motivation based too much in the financial possibilities rather than the intellectual nourishment?

Music of the Day: I am generally not one to re-tread my youth but I really enjoyed Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ this evening.

Liz Smith

Every Monday I try to listen to Robert Elm’s listed Londoner on his BBC London show. This week he featured Liz Smith, star of The Royle Family and a number of Mike Leigh films as well Peter Greenaway’s ‘The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’. Hackneyed phrases like ‘National Treasure’ would have come to mind before this show but I will remember her interview for one comment she made in deadly seriousness amid all the jocular banter she and RE developed during the interview. Early in the interview she outlined the early part of her life. Her mum died in child-birth when she was two. At the age of 7 her dad (whom she adored) met her at the school gates and said he was going away for a while. She never saw or heard of him again. Her grandparents took her in and within a year her grandfather died. She created happiness in her life by entertaining and making people laugh and thus gave birth to the talent that would serve her so well later in life. She married young, had children and then her husband left her. As she said herself, her life up to that point had been one of loss. They went on to talk about her success as an actress which happened after the age of 50 (with her children now in their twenties) when a very young Mike Leigh cast her in ‘Bleak Moments’.

After the talk of success RE asked her if she was tempted to stick two fingers up to those who had abandoned her (and particularly her father). She was honest and said yes. But then said ‘…but I think these things are done so much better in deeds rather than words’. And the second half of her life has been an inspiring testimony to one who could have been bitter but who chose instead to live the possibilities in her life to the full. What a remarkable spirit. I will remember the way she described winning a BAFTA and getting her pensioner’s bus pass on the same day. At the end a clearly emotional RE came to realise that Liz Smith had been served vegetables at his mum and dad’s fruit and veg stall at the top of Portobello Road in 1946. My eyes moistened.

On Saturday I did very well not to succumb to temptation. Either age is reducing the desire for a good time (I hope not and think not) or age is telling me not to risk the long-term for the pursuit of the instant. What would my speech to 250 willing participants at The One Life exhibition at Kensington Olympia have been like had I done so? I suspect the answer actually has less to do with age and more to do with the dreadful cold I seem to have caught. I hope it doesn’t last four weeks like the last one. My resistance is low and it screams to me that I should be exercising more.

I am missing my daughters like crazy. Little Izzy spoke to me on the phone and kept saying ‘airplane’ to me. This is how she knows that daddy gets to France and it is her code for saying ‘daddy, when are you coming home?’ Soon, my darling, soon…

I must find out more about Oli Barratt whom I met through my good friend Adam last Thursday. He seems to be a networking entrepreneur extraordinaire and I would like to know more about he has become successful. I think he and his connections could be very useful in my new book. But I hope I have something to offer him? Bad networkers do it it for personal gain. Good ones do it for mutual benefit – although the motivation for doing so should always be through a genuine interest in the lives of others first.

Music of the Day: - The new Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam single.