Monthly Archives: October 2011

Mixed messages

The day has gone quite well and I felt rather good about things.  I spent the morning getting ready for tomorrow afternoon’s governors’ meeting – I know, a whole day in advance! – and did other work in the afternoon, feeling quite cheerful and ready to reward myself with a glass of wine before 6 o’clock.  It was just as well that the Sage arrived home just then, as he had pushed the cork back into the bottle last night with such energy that I couldn’t get it out.  Even he found it quite a struggle. I secured it myself tonight so that I can manage tomorrow.  I’ll be late drinking tomorrow, mind you, I’ve got three meetings, one after another, from noon until nearly 6, and then I’m going to the blood donors.

The 23 report forms that I combined into a single PDF yesterday has thrown up a peculiarity.  One chairman wrote rather huffily to say that I’d altered what he had written.  He didn’t suggest I’d done it on purpose, but evidently thought I’d been careless.  I explained that I’d not done anything to it, just added it to all the others, and on my copy it was exactly as he had sent it to me.  Bemusingly, it had altered in the sending or receiving.  I’ve now send out his individual form to everyone, asking if they will compare it with the combined version, and so far I’ve had one reply saying that it is not the same.  Fortunately, it won’t be up to me to solve the problem.  If I’m really lucky, they will decide to abandon Nuance in favour of something that works on a Mac.

That reminds me, I’ve got to alter an address book and send another email, welcoming a new chairman.  All this damn politeness.  So not me.  As you know, darlings, I am a grumpy and surly old bat by nature, and my cheery outward persona is all for show.

Toodle-pip.  Have a lovely evening.

Makes you spit

The picture at the top of the page is an 18th Century Lowestoft cuspidor, otherwise known as a spittoon.  It is there to show Tim and will go in a day or so.  Slightly lowers the tone, don’t you think?

I spent all afternoon on the Sage’s laptop.  In a using sense, not a squatting one.  It was fine, if dispiriting.  I had about 25 documents to download, several to type, then I had to combine the eventual 23 into a PDF with a rewriter – which is the reason I couldn’t use my computer, the programme isn’t compatible with Macs.  Every time I downloaded a file, I had to resave it to the desktop, because I couldn’t find it.  Where on earth do they go?  I looked all over.  In recent documents, in downloads, I conducted searches – I daresay it’s absolutely straightforward once you know, but I don’t know and I couldn’t find out.  Still, the job has been done and sent out and I’m ready for my meeting on Friday.  I’m not yet ready for Wednesday, but there’s still a day in hand.

I downloaded an app that means you can handwrite directly on to the iPad, using your finger or a stylus.  Using my finger works, but can anyone tell me what to use as a stylus?  My finger handwriting is dreadful!  It’s very convenient in other respects, but I really do need a tool to write with.  A leadless pencil doesn’t work, nor does a chopstick.  Mind you, one of the things I bought it for was to be able to write musical notation, and that’s fine.  Nothing complicated, it’s simply that a clarinet is pitched in B flat, so to play with instruments pitched in C you have to go up a tone.  And, every time I write it out, I use it and then lose the paper between then and needing it again, several months later.  So having it on the iPad will be a Boon and a Blessing.

Big Pinkie decided to leave the meadow again this morning.  We had a phone call from Jonny, saying that another farmer had seen her.  So we went and searched, but we couldn’t find her, so concluded that she’d moved on to another field with lots of cows instead of her friend 109.  However, the farmer has since moved the rest of the cows and left her.  “Could you lead her back?” asked Jonny this evening.  Well, only trouble there is that she will follow but not be led.  So one would have to walk half a mile with nothing but a bag of tempting apples to stop her turning into someone’s garden or getting spooked by a dog or something.  The Sage has not been able to find out where she got out, but I suspect her of having opposable thumbed hooves.  I have not forgotten the time, several years ago, when she let herself out of her field, into my kitchen garden, ate all my sweet corn and went back to the field again.  We never did know how she did it.

I think I mentioned a while ago that Jonny has started to sell unpasteurised milk from the farm gate, and very good stuff it is too.  His mother makes clotted cream, and sells 10 tubs of it a day.  Clotted cream is not hard to do, but needs care, as it’s quite a waste if you go off and forget it.  Hers is delicious, I’m restricting myself to tiny quantities but still feel that I will gain a whole lot of weight if I indulge more than occasionally.

Number 9

Scroll down, if you would be so kind.

Because that is absolutely my experience, and I know it from the other side.  It has been my misfortune, some years ago, to have to work with a couple of people who were B players at best.  I liked them personally, but was incapable of working with them, in the end.  Not working for them, I’m speaking as a volunteer, although in one situation I was, ludicrously, seen as a threat.

The person in charge cannot personally oversee everything and has to delegate.  However, the more you delegate, the more you lose control.  Therefore, the people you delegate to are vital.  If you have inferior people below you, that may be all right as long as you are not so busy that you can’t monitor what is going on, but in the long run you cannot do it all and still keep looking ahead.

It’s easy for me, so let’s get me out of the way, because it’s not about me.  I’ve been a chairman a few times and what seems to me to be the most important thing is to do the job to the best of my ability (passing on as many tasks as I possibly can, because I’m bone idle and expert at nothing), to keep an eye open for someone to take over, to help them get going (either before or after I’d stood down) and, then, to let go and move on and not be missed.  If it fell apart without me, that would be my bad management.  Ideally, not only would I not be missed, but people would say “we thought Z was pretty good, but actually now it’s better, so she can’t have been all that.”  And, even if I was secretly a bit downcast at that, it would be a good thing – and true anyway.

But I’m a volunteer anyway, and a determined amateur.  I am referring to people who are paid to do their jobs.  And, now I think of it, I’m actually thinking about three people, one of whom was very good, but ideally an excellent second in command, and two who were not quite up to it and afraid of being bettered by those beneath them.

The first coped by being extremely hands-on.  Capable, liked and respected, he nevertheless didn’t take steps to build a really strong team and he didn’t have a clear and ambitious vision.  He could keep things going, and build on what was there, but there were never going to be great improvements or innovations because he wasn’t able to step back far enough to see the horizon and what it could hold.  However, he knew both his strengths and his limitations and was absolutely big enough to acknowledge them, and the time came when he stepped aside, having done a good job.

The other two were different cases entirely.  In each situation, they portrayed themselves as strong leaders … but actually, the only way they knew how to lead was to have no competition.  The trouble is, the previous leaders had been A players who had built up a strong team, so the incomer needed to destroy that to seem the strongest person.  In one case, that meant that he became a bully – and, if he hadn’t been removed, all his staff would have left within a couple of years, instead of just a few of them – and in the other, he refused to delegate, insisting that everything be taken to him, that he attend and chair every single meeting, however minor, and that he would do all but those jobs he considered menial.  In fact, he didn’t have either the time or the capability and it wasn’t long before things started to decline quite badly.  If a few people, still enthusiastic, got together to come up with a new idea (and took it to him as a suggestion), he said that they were creating a ‘splinter group’ behind his back.

Neither of these people were personally disliked, certainly not by me, it’s just that they had neither the strength nor the confidence to let someone else shine.  And when there was a success, they claimed the credit, even if it was little or nothing to do with them.

Back in the nest

This morning we went to the local theatre, where a friend and recently retired local journalist was holding a doo to launch his latest book.  I bought a couple of extra copies for friends and chatted to various people for an hour or so.  Well, I nipped out for twenty minutes to do the weekend food shopping at the butcher and greengrocer and then came back to find the Sage still chatting.

Glancing at the theatre programme, I found that this evening’s performance involved the songs of Tom Lehrer and the monologues of Bob Newhart.  Always ready for a chuckle, I bought a ticket, and I’ve just got home, having been well entertained.

The most important news of the day, however, is that Al, Dilly and the children are home and really enjoyed their holiday.  They came through for a cup of tea and we gave them their post, which we’d been holding for them.  There was a parcel from Amazon which Dilly opened; it contained a cup for Hadrian – I’ll see if I can find it in a minute, it was quite amusing – and puzzle books for the older two.  Pugsley’s was mazes and Squiffany was crossword puzzles, quite simple ones for a child.  She asked me to show her what to do, and half an hour later she had more than half-filled the book and was asking if the next book could be a lot bigger!

This is the cup.  Hay took it and immediately put it to his lips, so we’ll see what will happen when it actually has liquid in it.

Tomorrow, as I said before, it’s Harvest Festival.  I’ve got an easy ride, not having been put down to do anything at the mid-morning service.  I am sidesman and lesson-reader at the early service, however, so I’ve set the alarm on my phone as well as the bedside radio, to be quite sure of waking up.

Z tastes wine

The Sage and I went to a wine tasting this evening.  It was a lovely evening in fact, at the Yacht Club in Lowestoft.  I’ve been a member *forever*, the Sage since he moved to Lowestoft in 1968 (in fact, my membership in the book dates from the date I turned 18, but I was a junior member from small childhood).    They can’t have made a lot of money from it, they were pouring reasonably expensive wines (from £11.50 to £19.00 a bottle) in generous half-glassfuls (unless you stopped them), and there were eight of them, and plates of substantial and beautifully cooked tapas came along, a different plateful, each with two different items on, per wine, and we paid £18 each.

I did drive home.  And yes, I was perfectly fit to.  I limited myself to three sips (not gulps) of each wine and I doubt I drank a standard glassful in the whole evening.  I, the Sage and our friend were, I suspect, the most sober persons in the room.  We were certainly the most sober people at our table.

I learned my lesson a very long time ago, when I went to a wine tasting with cheese.  I can drink, or eat high fat food, I can’t do both with impunity.  I also learned that, when you’re drinking a part-glass of several different wines, you can’t keep track of the total.  So, even if I hadn’t been driving, I’d not have had much more than I did.

Earlier in the day, I did a large flower arrangement to help decorate the church for Harvest Festival, then helped serve teas after a funeral (my friend Brenda did most of the work, I just lent a hand) and then took boxes of fruit and vegetables and arranged them around the church.  Some churches, I know, discourage gifts of fresh produce and prefer tins and packets of food to be given.  I find that dispiriting.  I take potatoes, carrots, apples, pears, tomatoes and so on.  Proper harvested food.  The village schoolchildren will take them round to elderly people in the village after the weekend, each with a bunch of flowers.

(No title)

I’ve always been willing to take advice.  Indeed, I ask for it.  When choosing a new appliance, it’s very useful to go to someone who has done the research already, chosen a product and can recommend it – or not – and tell you why.  Several times, I’ve asked for advice on this blog, for my present dishwasher for example.  My vacuum cleaner, which I’ve had for well over 20 years, was chosen simply because my sister happened to mention that her daughter-in-law had one she was pleased with.  I asked, it had some features I particularly wanted, so I went into Bonds (now John Lewis) in Norwich and bought it.  Didn’t look at another.

In about 1989 or 1990, I decided I needed a computer.  Not because I was interested in computers, just as a working tool.  I had no idea how to go about choosing one, and I asked my friend Alan, who was a busy man with his own business, was impatient, fun to be with and generous.  He said that he’d bought an Apple Mackintosh a few months previously.  He had, a year before, bought a PC, but he couldn’t get to grips with it at all, so had cut his losses, started again, and never looked back.  It was, he said, easy for a busy person with no expertise or interest in computing to use.  It just worked.  I went to Jarrolds, and all I had to do was decide how much to spend.   I love not having too much choice when I haven’t the experience to base my choice on.  I bought my first Mac and a printer (the one suggested by the assistant), brought them home, plugged them in and worked out, with remarkably little difficulty, how to get them going.

Now, we take for granted that a computer should be good-looking and easy to use.  It wasn’t always the case.  Similarly, mobile phones were often full of gadgets one didn’t need, whilst the ones one did use needed a manual to learn.  In fact, I still have trouble finding my way round the Sage’s htc and really regret not having sprung the extra for an iPhone for him.  Even the techno-clueless Sage can use my iPhone effortlessly.   There’s never the problem that I don’t know how to do something, I can simply work it out.  There is, however, sometimes the sudden joy of discovering some new little trick, which is fun.

Simply, I don’t care in the least if you have vowed never to buy into Apple, not even if it’s “just because” and not for clear reasons.  I’m not going to say Macs are better than PCs, I daresay they aren’t, although anyone who hasn’t used both extensively doesn’t really have the experience to say.  But the reason that all computers look attractive, are compact and are pretty intuitive to get to grips with is that Steve Jobs led and the rest had to follow suit.  Without him, they wouldn’t have had an incentive.

Z worries that duplication isn’t enough

I realised yesterday that I have a slight problem about letting go.  I have a reputation for being the one to come to for information, because I hang on to it, both in fact and in my memory.  For example, when the village school was advertising for a new headteacher earlier in the year and Al was given the task of writing part of the information pack, I looked out the previous pack from eight years before which I still had, although I hadn’t been a governor there for nearly five years.  Last year, I was asked for some details of the constitution of the governing body and I was able to provide the reason for the changes that had been made a decade or so previously – someone on the Parish Council had asked why it no longer had a governor representative, and it seems that I was the only one who knew.

Nothing particularly unusual here of course, and many people have careful files going back decades.  Mine are mainly in stacks of box files, in my memory or on the computer and not very organised at all.  Yesterday, however, I decided that there are far too many duplicate photographs on the computer, so I spent a while eliminating those, but then I realised that all the photos themselves are in iPhotos so, apart from the ones I use for my desktop background, which changes every 15 minutes, and the files I have from past sales (because the photos of china haven’t been labelled with the lot numbers in iPhotos), there was no need to keep them at all.  I started putting files in the trash folder.

And then the time came to go to “empty trash.”  And I couldn’t.  What if iPhotos was down when I wanted to look at a holiday snap that wasn’t in my desktop photos file?  I’m not sure what I mean by iPhotos being down, but I found I couldn’t risk it.  I recognise this is absurd.  I will do it again and complete the task next time.  But I was startled by the feeling of panic that I felt at the thought of throwing away those files.

Living in a village

Today, mostly meetings.  Fortunately, the last of these was at the pub, so I had a pint of John’s excellent home-brew.  Indeed, I pedalled off there early so that I’d be sure of getting a drink before the meeting.

When one is quite unreasonable, does admitting it make it okay?  Today, I was talking to the Head about him having extra meetings every night this week, and searchingly asked when he’d take a break.  At the weekend, he said, except of course for the report he has to write for the governors’ meeting next week.  I tutted and fussed a bit (whilst acknowledging that, of course, I realised that all the work needs to be done and that’s that) … and then asked him to do something else for me, which is-school related, but not actually quite reasonable for me to ask.  And he kindly agreed, and then I mentioned that it made more work, against all I’d been saying – it isn’t what you say, of course, but what you do, and I really was stretching a point there.  I was interceding at the wish of a parent who is a personal friend, and for a very specific reason which, all the same, is beyond anything I’d normally do – and I wasn’t asking for a decision to be changed, in fact, just for a personal intervention that will motivate a pupil, I hope.  So, it’s okay, but borderline, and you have to know that someone won’t take it amiss to do that.  I do feel rather guilty, actually – and I did apologise, but even as I said sorry (an apology, not expressing sympathy) I said that it’s all very well saying sorry when you’ve got your own way.  He laughed.  Ahem.

I never, in all the years when I was a governor and Ro was a pupil, intervened one bit on his behalf, you know.  It’s quite wrong to do that, I think.  I never went into a lesson where he was a student, kept a low profile, never used any inside knowledge.  I trust that no one would have thought I was wanting any extra attention, but I went the other way if anything.  Still, being self-reliant is good for people.  Make him fight his own battles, I say.  Anyway, if I was wrong, it’s too late now.  Next summer, it’ll be ten years since he left school.  Gosh.

There have been a few changes in the village.  One old lady just died, days before her hundredth birthday.  She was sent here as a refugee from London, back in wartime, with her two little boys.  The Sage, as a small boy, rushed in to his mother.  “I’ve got a new little baby brother or sister, who’s in a pram on the lawn!”  Ma had to explain that she was babysitting for Mrs M., sadly it was not the Sage’s baby brother at all.  Mrs M. liked it here and her husband, in due course, joined her and they lived here all their lives.  And Gordon and Jill have just moved away, they retired here and have joined in lots of village events and societies, and we’ll really miss them.  Friends have just sold their house and haven’t found another yet, it seems that they will have to move out of the village.  After our meeting this evening, a few of us were scheming for them to be put in touch with the family of another old friend who has died, maybe they might like his bungalow?

TweedleSage and TweedleZed

I was awake again for a couple of hours in the night, but we rather dismally overslept this morning.  Fortunately, it didn’t matter.

Regarding *friends for a particular reason*, it seems to be a man thing – or is that unfair, and it’s actually a Sage thing?  I shall explain what I mean, but please don’t take this as a complaint, I love the Sage and all his interests dearly, and I don’t mind … but once in a while, it’d be nice if he shared some of my interests as I do his.

If you asked me to list mine, for example, books and music would come high on the list.  Neither would feature anywhere on his.  But pretty well everything that he would itemise is something that I am prepared to take an interest in, and this isn’t reciprocated at all.  I could do a long list, but it wouldn’t really help matters- the point is not what they are but that I obligingly take an interest because he does, and it wouldn’t occur to him to do the same thing.

I did have a bit of a go, a year or two ago – “you hardly ever encourage me,” I said.  “I don’t discourage you,” he defended himself.  Um.  A silence fell.  The truth is, he assumes I will engage in his enthusiasms – and I do, I don’t want to leave the impression that we go our separate ways entirely – while he is just indulgent towards mine without thinking that they should involve him.

We have agreed to differ for more than 38 years, there is no likelihood that things will ever change.  Fortunately, we both like our own space and shy away from the notion of doing everything together.  I’m not sure how this makes us look here, probably not a very attractive couple, but I know I’m not explaining it well at all. In particular, I don’t want to make him sound unsupportive – it’s just that he’s more single-minded than I am (single isn’t right either, he has a range of interests) – it’s the difference between a specialist and a Jack of all trades.  He masters, I dabble.  He supports my enthusiasms, if he doesn’t share them.

Except, I will say, for the friends I’ve made through blogging.  There, he has been absolutely delightful.  He hasn’t felt excluded, but has somehow understood how engaged I’ve become with people I had never met.  It helped, of course, that my very first blog-meet included him, and that it was with the delightful charming but picky Blue Witch, with whom I felt such an instant rapport  whose lovely husband is similarly warm towards this unusual sort of friendship.  That he liked them so much gave him confidence that internet friendships are not odd.  Necessarily.  And, darling man, he was entirely warm and welcoming when we had our party to celebrate the building of the wall back in May.  I suppose we suit reasonably well after all.

DoZy

I just remembered I didn’t feed the children’s goldfish.  They feed them just before they themselves go to get ready for bed, about 7 pm, which isn’t a time when I’m likely to be thinking about goldfish, being ready to start thinking about feeding me.  I went through, gave them their pinch of dried food, switched the light from the day bulb to the night bulb (they spoil those goldfish) and picked my way back, in the dark, down their garden path and across to my porch door.

It’s been a quiet day.  The Sage was out for most of it.  To be fair, he did suggest I might go with him, but he was first planning to check out a bric-a-brac sale, which I would frankly not enjoy – we’ve got enough muck’n’tat around this house without adding to it or looking at other people’s cast-outs, and then call on friends who, while very charming are a bit … one topic, shall we say.  It’s a topic that the Sage is more interested in than I am and a couple of hours of disguising boredom and wishing I could be home reading the Sunday papers – I could see where this would lead, so I cut out the wishing and stayed at home, in the sunshine for a while, indoors in the cool for a while longer.

I’d have loved to go to sleep, and drank a hopeful glass of wine at lunchtime, but it didn’t make me drowsy.  I’m just plain tired, not having slept enough for the last couple of weeks.  I’m just drifting off at night when the Sage thwacks himself cheerily into bed and starts chatting.  Delightful as this is, it wakes me up again and I can only catnap for the next few hours, having missed the chance to get into a deep sleep.

Still, a few meetings to come this week.  If I can’t have a little doze through one or two of them it’ll be a poor do.

But on to another matter.  I said sympathetically to a friend last week, “oh, I am sorry.”  “No, it’s not your fault,” she replied.  Well no, I wasn’t trying to take the blame for her car needing two new tyres and some work on the brakes, I was sorry for her rather than apologetic.  But…surely she realised that?  Does one have to say “I’m so sorry to hear that,” or similar, for it not to be heard as an apology?  Hmm.