An Englishman Abroad – Page 4 – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD AND THE MUSIC OF THE 1970s

The arrival of my vinyl records in San Diego after several years in storage reminded me that the 1970s has a good claim to be the most dynamic, diverse and distinctive periods in music history. It’s difficult to explain to Americans what the UK was like in the era of the three-day week, mass industrial pickets, two elections in a year and a bail out from the IMF. For teenagers it was a time of entertainment poverty with just three TV channels, pocket money running to one single a fortnight and the Odeon cinema chain offering lumpy seats and tacky floors.

The great British music wave of the 1960s had sold out with the Beatles and the Stones leading the pursuit of the mighty dollar, then Led Zeppelin and the Who following in hot pursuit. Eric Clapton, once the blues guitar ‘God’ of Islington graffiti legend, was pursuing heroin, alcohol and Patti Boyd. And the dubious home-grown ‘folk rock’ was as derivative and limp as any movement spearheaded by a band called Fairport Convention could be.

The US musical response to Vietnam and Watergate was Album Oriented Rock (AOR), with noted DJ “Kid Leo” Travagliante confirming in 1975, ‘the emphasis is shifting back to entertainment instead of being ‘relevant”. But the intersection of social circumstances, lack of commercial radio and the need to re-find a musical identity made the UK more fertile territory for invention. Gender identity, feminism, anti-racism and social justice became the battlegrounds with music providing the soundtrack.

In the early 1970s ‘glam rock’ may have looked like an effort to put tinsel on the increasingly sputtering and stalling UK economy. But its glimpse of gender fluidity and theatrics opened a door which could never be closed. The Sweet, Slade, Marc Bolan didn’t make it across the Atlantic but without them there might have been no global behemoths like Bowie, Queen or Elton John.

With a starting output of seven albums David Bowie bestrode the decade like a colussus. He started 1971 wearing a dress on the Marlene Dietrich influenced cover of Hunky Dory, occupied, the bodies of Ziggy Stardust and Alladin Sane, then became the Thin White Duke. And he still had time to complete his Berlin trilogy and offer us Sound and Vision, Heroes and Boys Keep Swinging.

Bowie voguing for the cover of Hunky Dory

Queen was formed in 1970 with their first top ten single Seven Seas of Rye hitting the top ten in 1974. Surely, one of the greatest places in music history must have been Montreux in 1981 as Bowie and Mercury collaborated and competed to produce Under Pressure. Bowie’s judgement, and status as the coolest person on the planet, was re-confirmed when Coldplay sent him their best effort and suggested collaboration – he declined with the line ‘it’s not a very good song, is it’.

The 1970s was the musical decade where women moved decisively, both individually and collectively, from lead singers to leaders of the gang. Fictional, all-female rock band, The Carrie Nations, had to be created for the 1970 film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and Suzie Quatro, despite her long-term garage band pedigree, was an oddity at the start of the decade. But by 1979 Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sue and Chrissie Hynde reflected the changed circumstances

And in terms of feminist anthems and icons it is hard to get beyond Poly Styrene of X-Ray Specs. Mixed race (Somali and Scottish), dental-braces and bipolar might have seemed unpromising material when she started her own punk band at the age of 18. But Oh Bondage Up Yours was a primal response to the challenge that ‘some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard’.

Poly Styrene was given the space to perform by the musical equivalent of Martin Luther hammering his 95 theses to the castle door in Wittenberg. Punk was born in 1976, a year when inflation hit 24%, Britain went cap in hand for a bail out from the International Monetary Fund, and youth unemployment was rampant. The musical opposition was the nurdling, self-indulgent prog-rock of ELP, Yes, Genesis and Jethro Tull and the attitude was reminiscent of Marlon Brando’s response, in the Wild Ones (1953) to the question “What are you rebelling against?” – “whadda you got?”.

Punk may have borrowed from the riffs and attitudes of the Ramones, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop but, perhaps because the UK is a small island, its musical and social influence was electrifying. It defined the schism between the baby boomers and Generation-X, injected energy into a moribund music industry and opened the door for individuality. It’s inclusivity included the ska revival, reggae’s rise and opened the door for everybody to sing Glad to Be Gay in pubs, on marches and at parties.

But everything that has ever been written about punk can be ignored. Just find an old-fashionedrecord player, turn it to maximum volume and play Pretty Vacant, followed by White Riot and Oh Bondage Up Yours. Look at contemporary pictures of skinheads, right wing thugs and teddy boys trying to beat the crap out of bondage-trousered, spike haired, spotty kids.

That is the sound and vision of the new order replacing the old sensibilities. It’s also the look ofyoung people standing up against racism and social injustice while being scorned by their Government and frowned on by their parents. The disempowerment of what had become known as the blank generation was converted into a belief that chutzpah and energywere enough to make a difference.

Even as I spin the vinyl I realise that music alone never makes a difference and that youth movements are rapidly appropriated bycorporate interests. But for a brief period the youth of the UK took control, in a way that encouraged and celebrated diversity, valued integrity and effort above virtuosity, and changed the direction of travel. Order was eventually restored but only after new icons and values had crept through the gaps.

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD GOES BACK TO BLIGHTY

Visiting England after more than a year away is like putting shoes on after a year in flip-flops. In fact it really did mean putting on proper, all encasing shoes after months of fearlessly baring my toes to the world. I guess it’s how a four-year old feels when they are fitted with their first pair of school shoes.

I’d expected to be a somewhat changed person on my return but as the wonderful Rupert Brooke wrote, ‘If I should die, think only this of me That there’s some corner of a foreign field, that is forever England’. However far you stray from your beginnings some things are too deeply embedded to change. And at this time of year his words carry an even greater poignancy.

Travelling near Remembrance Sunday, I found myself buying a poppy a day – they seem to break with startling regularity – and being sorry to miss being in England to commemorate the 100th year of the Armistice. The two World Wars are written large in the heart of every child who grew up with parents in the Forces and I have stood quietly and respectfully on many sombre early November Sunday mornings. With age I have stood with increasing thanks – it remains the greatest gift and good fortune to have grown up in a period of relative peace and economic stability.

I have always been able to survive the first verse and refrain of the Last Post but there is something that happens after that which is too heart-breaking to endure. And Bunyan’s magnificent verse is a memorial to everyone I have known and loved – ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them. Permission to lose control of stiff upper lip, sir.

The trip was six whirlwind days with three cities, five hotels and multiple modes of travel. My arrival at Heathrow was marked by a cool, overcast English day – it was absolutely perfect. Keats’ ‘seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness’ are missing from California but the English late autumn was a reminder that seasons are built into my blood.

Needless to say the trains were terrible. How it is possible to take longer and to have more changes to get from Liverpool Street to Norwich than to go via Cambridge is a warping of the time-space continuum. Hawkwind’s long neglected song ‘Quark, Strangeness and Charm’ gets close to the experience with the line ‘All that, doesn’t not anti-matter now, we’ve found ourselves a black hole out in space.’

My own theory is that the London to Norwich line is part of a black-arts operation by CERN where the stranger particles from the Large Hadron Collider are diverted for investigation. Passengers are used as substitutes for Schrodinger’s Cat and so whether they existence or are comfortable is unknown (and certainly not cared about). Scientists run the railways as a cosmic experiment and while Einstein wanted trains travelling at the speed of light he is losing out to Lord Kelvin’s views that they should terminate like the heat death of the universe.

To make matters worse Planck’s Constant has been replaced by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to build the timetable. Higg’s Bosun is a grumpy ex-naval man who was the lucky mascot of the Irish Rover, the Flying Dutchman and the Titanic before deciding that he preferred to drive a train. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg summed it up when he used quantum mechanics as a metaphor for the railway system in saying, “There is now, in my opinion, no entirely satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics.”

Enough about the trains though because it is the people that make the difference. Some very amusing evenings of drinking and snooker and late-night burgers and Indian meals. And most of all conversations that would only make half-sense to an outsider because they are framed in the context of shared experiences, disagreements and understanding of each other’s values and views. It was great fun and I was humbled that so many people made an effort to meet up during their busy lives.

I also caught up with my older sister for the first time in eight years. It’s a good reminder that when your parents are no longer around there is usually nobody but family who remembers your earliest years. In our case it was a peripatetic first ten years full of different schools, a father disappearing to trouble spots at short notice and a reliance on a very small family unit.

It was a delight to be able to talk about our family, about the misunderstandings we have had with each other and reflect upon all the ways in which life might have been different. But as importantly to share the good things that happened in the period when connections were lost. People say that you can never make up for lost time but we had a pretty good go at it.

I’ve noticed that throughout this blog I have talked about England and when asked that is where I say I am from. For me the United Kingdom has always been a ‘community’ where the squabbles of Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England have been largely suborned to a belief that there is strength in unity. Respecting and believing in each other’s right to a national identity within that house is as important as respecting and regarding a person’s individuality.

In that context the potential for a botched exit from the European Union to drive an irreversible wedge and create four countries is depressing. It would be a strange future if the territorial certainties, secure since the effective partition of the Republic of Ireland with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, were to change. But I guess that previous generations probably felt the same as the Empire disappeared in a flurry of declarations of independence.

It confirms that change is the only constant of the human condition and Remembrance Sunday was a timely reminder that there is much to be grateful for. After a week back in San Diego I particularly realise that I am fortunate to have roots and friends on both sides of the Atlantic. It is certainly something to think about as Thanksgiving approaches.

An Englishman Abroad In Cactus Alley

Tending your own patch of land is as much part of the English psyche as talking about the weather, queuing in an orderly fashion and having fifty ways of saying ‘sorry’. Ever since encountering the overgrown wilderness behind my first house I have been a keen gardener. Four distinct seasons provided the setting for a year of planning, tilling, planting and reaping.

The country’s love-affair with its gardens drove the song, English Country Garden, to number five the charts in 1962. It was based on an English-folk song, Country Gardens, which married the whimsy of Morris-dancing to the pagan, earth revering influence of the druids and spawned many parodies. It is from that background that I came to tend the semi-arid, almost season-less, badlands of San Diego.

Americans don’t really even have ‘gardens’ because they have yards. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon “geard” (pronounced YAY-ard) and is a good reminder why prisons have yards while country houses have gardens. One word is Proto-Germanic with overtones of efficiency and sparseness while the other comes from the Gallo-Romance language of Picardy and Flanders.

In the new environment everything has to be placed and considered in the context of hours of sun or shade, lack of moisture and relative danger to humans and animals. Rocks, dirt and pebbles are home to relatively slow growing plants that have evolved to be as tough as their setting. It’s a harsh, alien, unforgiving and strangers need to beware.

I’d never been allergic to a plant until I tangled with the toxic sap of the Euphorbia tiruccalli, which goes by the common name of Fire Sticks. Waking up with a face that looked like I had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson was an early sign that I’d always need to wear gloves in the garden. But that was only a precursor to my duel with the Cactaceae.

Euphorbia tiruccalli

It is no mistake that the family group name for the cactus has echoes of a Mediterranean-based crime family. They are tough, aggressive, impassive plants that never tell, never forgive and always take revenge. The biblical warning “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9.5 and Acts 26:14 of the King James Version of the Bible) could have been written to remind us of the challenge they bring.

Engaging with a cactus and not taking appropriate precautions is like inviting Hannibal Lecter to dinner in a private room. One of you enjoys the potential of sharp objects to inflict pain and misery while the other will end up on the receiving end of a miserable evening. Even the slightest brush against one of these beasts can bring several dozen tiny shards of agony.

But through the allergic reactions and hours of picking cactus spines from my arms the year has seen a pleasing sense of order emerge. The reshaping of the garden has allowed for Cactus Alley and Succulent Corner to become landmarks while individual plants have been able to thrive after being moved to better locations. And I have learnt lessons in caution after indiscriminate digging cut through carefully buried irrigation lines which led the arid earth to resemble the Somme for several days.

Cactus Alley – Jeffe, Bobby, The Succulent with No Name and Sneaky Pete

Because I am unfamiliar with the names of the plants many of them have emerged with personal nicknames. We have the barrel cactuses Billy, Bobby and Betsy as well as the handsome and rapidly growing Jeffe. Sneaky Pete is aptly named as the prickly pear has tiny, needle-sharp bristles that embed themselves with just a touch. Gomez is as sharp, squat and evil-looking as any bandit from a spaghetti western.

In the open ground Fellaini is the bargain bin asparagus fern with a habit to match the Manchester Uniter and Belgium footballer or his alter-ego from The Simpson’s, Sideshow Bob. Alongside him Spike, the yucca, has moved to luxuriant growth in full sun after being a weedy and ailing specimen in the shade. These are plants with individual characters that are forged by their resilience and robustness.

I’ve introduced some flowering plants but have learnt to paint pictures in the garden with the varying pinks, greys and subtle variegations which seem the natural palette of the desert. From similar climes we have Australian visitor ‘kangaroo paws’ (Anigozanthos), Asteriscus maritimus from the Mediterranean, and Didiereaceae from Madagascar. It is a global garden that is united by the challenging combination of glaring sun and water and soil poverty.

As a United Nations of plants it co-exists in a climate that is under increasing stress and facing enormous challenges from progressively worsening climate conditions. Disproportionate application of resources allows traditional Western plants to grow but plants used to living more frugally demand their rights and can thrive without pampering. It’s a little like the economic lessons of the real world.

After living with the land for a year I have begun to understand the raw materials. The variation of temperature, daylight and precipitation are more subtle than the English seasons. The growth patterns of the plants move to a rhythm which is less easy to understand but which can result in moments of extraordinary flowering and unexpected beauty.

While I have dabbled with herbs, tomatoes and peppers this year I am hankering after developing a vegetable patch. There is little more satisfying than pulling a broad bean or a new potato from the earth and eating it a few minutes later. But the planning involves thinking about ways of conserving even more water over the winter season to support this ambition.

It’s been a steep learning curve but whether semi-desert or temperate the garden offers similar lessons and insights. Patience and perseverance, the determination of living things to survive and the belief in planting today however uncertain the future might be. It is captured nicely by American author, journalist, activist Michael Pollan who writes, “The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ” (The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD SPEAKS IN TONGUES

When the Spanish Armada sailed in May 1588 the intention was to clear the way for an invasion of England and allow direct rule by King Philip II* of Spain. Had that happened I probably would not be investing in Spanish language lessons at the Culture and Language Centre in San Diego**. Sir Francis Drake, the Dutch and the capricious winds off the English coast defeated the Armada and have a lot to answer for.

Learning a language later in life is a powerful reminder of the painful step from blissful ignorance to conscious incompetence. Whether I will ever graduate to conscious competency is difficult to say but the experience has been both humbling and energising. It is also a stark reminder of the extraordinary intelligence, desire and courage of international students.

Every year thousands of young people travel around the world to study at degree level. They endure homesickness, different foods, strange customs and, sometimes, outright hostility while trying to communicate and study in a language where they have limited ability. My weekly evisceration of the Spanish language in a safe and supportive classroom just ten minutes from home pales by comparison.

Maybe every university should ensure that anybody engaging with international students has to do a course where they learn an unfamiliar language. This would give due regard to those academics and administrators who are genuine polyglots and should build empathy for students. I can even see marketing advantages in publicising that the institution recognises the interplay between language acquisition and academic achievement.

My rationale for learning Spanish at this point in my life is that I live ten miles from the Mexican border and wanting to start coaching football in a region with many bilingual youngsters. But the greater reality is that after years of posturing I ran out of excuses not to learn a second language. Time, funds and opportunity are the ultimate cure for fear, indolence and procrastination.

The fear is real because I was terrible at languages at school. Three years of compulsory German did little more than enable me to name two of Santa’s reindeers, seek attention or demand that people move quickly***. Forced to choose a language to study at O-level (for younger readers these were the pre-antiquity form of GCSEs) I plumped for French.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t even proficient enough for that level of study and ended up in the CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) class led by the dynamic and ever-kind Mrs Bell. Her hug of affection and delight when I secured a level 2 at CSE remains one of the most perplexing of school moments. I had merely turned up and guessed at the answer to every question compared to those who had not bothered to do either.

One class-mate was so disinterested in his exams that he even refused to write his name at the top of the answer paper. He had heard that you were automatically given two marks for this form of self-identification and was anxious to secure a big fat zero. Having sat for the obligatory twenty minutes at the start of the exam he gave a cheery wave as he was escorted out by a rather grumpy invigilator.

The real downside of learning languages at my secondary school was that language laboratory sessions were always straight after swimming. Sopping wet hair and water-filled ears in an English winter do not go well with headphones in a dank, claustrophobic, sound-proofed booth. The danger of your teacher perforating your eardrum by screeching down the headset was only exceeded by not being able to hear the class bully sneaking up to smack you round the head.

These painful memories explain my surprise that several decades later I keep inserting French words into Spanish sentences. Their relentless pursuit of space in my brain reminds me of both the posse in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Schwarzenegger’s definitive Terminator. I say “Who are those guys?” and they say “I’ll be back” – but where have they been hiding all these years?

More interesting than that game of ‘cherchez la femme’ is my growing understanding of adult language learning and an interesting parallel to management development. Research into adult learners of second languages suggests that the two languages show little separation in triggering activity in Wernicke’s area (the part of the brain largely responsible for language comprehension). This may also explain why my mind finds a French word when it is seeking the Spanish one.

But in Broca’s area, which manages the motor activity of the mouth when speaking a language, the triggers for activity are more substantially separated. This means that speaking the second language, particularly if some sounds do not cross from one to the other, is more challenging. Those who have grown up bilingual do not show the same separation.

It seems reasonable to think that management theory learnt later in life and demanding new behaviours may also be more difficult to implement because understanding and action are not wholly aligned in the brain. The good news with languages is that focused exercise in speaking can go a long way to overcoming the deficit between comprehension and fluency of speaking. I would venture that the same is true of understanding the benefits of new ways of behaving and working on operationalising that learning.

As a relatively inexperienced but desperately keen manager I read that taking time to regularly interact informally and supportively with colleagues was important. I was very poor at remembering to do this, so for several years I wrote time into my working week to engage ‘informally’ with individuals in my team. Looking back this mechanistic approach seems forced and artificial but it was a way of turning theory into reality for someone finding their way as a leader.

Making progress in developing my second-language capability remains a struggle but has brought a new perspective on the links between knowledge, understanding and action. It demonstrates that learning is a journey with plenty of stopping off points to admire the view and smell the flowers.
Muchas gracias por leer mis amigos!

Notes

* El Rey Felipe II
** https://www.cultureandlanguagecenter.com/
*** Donner und Blitzen, achtung, schnell

WORLD CUP WAR OF WORDS FOR AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD

There was something of a relief in not being in the UK during the build up to the World Cup. Every four years since 1966 I have been part of a ritual that involves unreasonable hope followed by crushing disappointment. At least I started this tournament with bragging rights for my country having qualified which is more than the US team managed.

Having the opportunity to watch three games a day before the pace slows for the round of sixteen is one of the great binge-watching experiences. The fashion for a high press, excellent coaching and high levels of fitness have already made it an enthralling competition. Sadly, the commentators are not performing to the same levels and their plodding search for new similes, metaphors and descriptive words is plumbing unparalleled depths.

I am not averse to new words entering the sport’s vocabulary but it always seems better if it has the flourish of another language. We have learnt the ‘gegenpress’ in recent years, just as we learnt ‘catenaccio’ and ‘libero’ in years gone by. And if English is involved it needs to be associated with era-defining players – the Maradona-spin, the Cruyff-turn, Rivelino’s ‘flip-flap’ – who invented new ways of thrilling us.

But far too much from the commentators is average, unhelpful and annoyingly nonsensical. My first warning came with the phrase ‘double combination’ which I am still scratching my head about. It was used three times in different circumstances but appeared to mean two consecutive passes between team-mates.

The problem with the phrase is that it opens up the possibility of ‘triple combination’ and ‘quadruple combination’. With possession football the norm I wonder if we end up with ‘combination to the power twelve.’ ‘Double combination’ probably has a place in commentating on competitive drinking – a sport I think deserves a place in the Olympics – but it is not needed in football.

More ubiquitous and even more annoying is talking about play at the ‘top of the box’. It’s totally unacceptable after I spent decades organising defensive lines on the ‘edge of the box’ and reason is on my side. There’s a line that defines the penalty area – the ‘box’ in question – and it does not have a top or bottom.

I would accept the notion of an incident at ‘the top of the D’ although its curvature makes its ‘top’ a problematic concept. Trivia point, for those who have ever wondered, is that the arc of the D adjoining the penalty box ensures no player encroaches closer than ten yards at a penalty kick. I am reasonably sure Euclid was a Sunday league referee in ancient Greece who was inspired to write his mathematical treatise ‘Elements’ to show how ‘a closed segment of a differentiable curve’ could support the laws of the game.

Next point of contention was an analyst banging on about passing to players ‘in the seam’. Tailoring metaphors have their place in the game and we can all accept the long history of a ‘pin-point’ pass or ‘threading the ball through’. But the demise of hand-stitched clothing and the common acceptance of ‘in the channel’ means that a further clothes-making reference is superfluous to requirements.

We have to call a halt because there is something very wrong about a ragged defensive line being called a ‘dropped hem’. A skilful but less than whole hearted player who is more ornament than use to the team should not be known as ‘gimp’ – a narrow ornamental trim used in sewing or embroidery. And the mind would truly boggle if a substitution to strengthen the defence became known as ‘introducing a gusset’

My annoyance at the butchering of the language came to boiling point in the game where, in quick succession, the goal was called ‘the frame’, the crossbar was on defined as ‘the upper post’ and the shorter of the four lines enclosing the pitch was called the ‘end line’. No, no and thrice no. I quote from the 17 Laws of Soccer recognised by the International Football Association ‘At each end of the field is an eight-yard-wide goal centred along the goal line’.

A ‘frame’ is, generally speaking, what you use to enhance a favoured picture and does not do justify to the 192 sq ft ‘goal’ of every attacking move. A ball crossed to the near post or far post is common but ‘Upper Post’ is a lake in Wisconsin and even if the striker leaps like a salmon the term will never replace the staunchly prosaic ‘crossbar’. And while the ‘end line’ exists in American Football, it is at the end of the ‘end zone’ which should be an end to its use.

I have read that Fox, who hold comprehensive screening rights in the US, chose not to invest in the very best commentators when it became clear that the US team would not feature. One consequence is having Warren Barton, a journeyman midfielder/defender in his day, suggesting how Uruguay’s world-class strikers Cavani and Suarez can improve their attacking prowess. Such a shame because the rich vernacular of the game has developed over many years and the finest exponents of commentating bring real texture and insight to a match.

Exclude from all the above is the wonderful Jorge Perez-Navarro whose breathless enthusiasm defies all cynicism and, on some occasions, all understanding. He never uses one word when three will do – a recent game was ‘nil-nil, zero-zero, scoreless’ – and his magnificent prelude to a free-kick attempt on goal – ‘ready, aim, fire’ – is the work of a real fan. But it is his lung-bursting exclamation of any ‘Goooooooaaaaaalllll’ that captures the sheer happiness and exuberance of being a fan as well as a commentator.

FURTHER NOTES (AND TRIVIA)

I am reminded that the D on the edge of the penalty box is an arc of a full circle of 10 yards diameter centred on the penalty spot. In that sense the D is a segment of the circle. A full circle of ten yards diameter is also centred on the centre spot to ensure players are 10 yards distant when a kick-off is taken. A football pitch is a thing of symettrical beauty which plays host to all the tensions and truths of both mathematics and human nature. I am grateful to the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (1700BCE), Plato’s Seventh Letter (353BCE) and Book 3 of Euclid’s Elements (300BCE) for their seminal work on circles. Also, thanks to Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann for his proof that π (pi) is a transcendental number.

An Englishman Abroad Does Improv(isation)

There is always something new to learn and we should all try to be the best that we can become. So with a little time to spare in San Diego I decided to try my hand at Improvisation classes. Sounds simple enough but, as always, it’s what you learn about yourself that counts.

As it happens I may be the only person in the world who calls them Improvisation classes. Everyone else says Improv but that sounds to me like a new-age health drink full of strange bacteria. I can imagine an advert where some lean and glowing couple extol the virtues of the product before signing off with the tag-line – ‘Improv – for those in search of enlightenment and regularity’.

My motivations for taking the class were not entirely pure in terms of personal development. I’ve always fancied the notion that this type of performance is just messing about and making stuff up. And like many men I have built a reasonable amount of my life around those behaviours while characterising myself as lovably spontaneous rather than hopelessly disorganised.

It’s not that men can’t be professional, cultured and focused – just look at George Clooney. Neither do we find it impossible to listen, empathise and respond sensitively – consider Roger Federer. But for most of us their urbanity is as hard to emulate consistently just as their talent and looks are impossible to replicate even once.

I put it down to the wiring of the cerebral cortex over hundreds of years of pre-history when men were left to their own devices on hunting trips. After a night of enjoying fermented fruit picked up from the forest floor they would daub themselves in mud then sit around telling tall tales. Some of the more creative might try their hand at graffiti on the cave wall until everyone all dozed off and woke with a cracking hangover.

When their partners discovered the trip had not resulted in any food for the table and asked why the bearskin cape was shedding mud on the freshly swept hearth men had to think on their feet. So they would just make stuff up and talk about how close they had come to bagging a mastodon. If necessary there would be play acting, animal noises and, at a push, tears.

It’s not too different to going on a quick trip to the supermarket for some bread, meeting some mates and ending up in the pub. Arriving home several hours later without bread but carrying some wilted daffodils picked randomly from the neighbours’ front garden brings some questions. It’s difficult to link a brush with mortal danger to a missing loaf of bread, the smell of alcohol, and stolen flowers, but most men will give it a go.

So, all in all, it was a bit of a shock when my wife chose to take Improvisation classes. There seemed to be games, fun and mental agility but more worryingly there was structure, skill and technique. Having spent my life as a minimally talented amateur in the martial art of extemporisation I felt like the Incas must have done when the Conquistadores pitted cavalry, steel swords, crossbows and harquebus against wooden clubs, bows, arrows and slingshot.

At the heart of my rising disquiet were questions that no man ever wants to ask himself. What if this became yet another thing my wife does better than me and would she use her growing powers for evil rather than good? I began to have dreams that mirrored the story about the Emperor’s new clothes – and I was the one parading around in my birthday suit – so I signed up for class.

The first thing I found was that everybody is overwhelmingly positive. Don’t get me wrong – I am a firm believer in enthusiasm and energy. But I grew up with an Englishman’s ingrained belief that upper lips were made to be stiff, backbones were made to be straight and the only response to ‘how are you?’ was to say ‘how are you’.

So it took me a bit of time to get used to greeting any errors in the games with a virtual group hug and a shared chant that sounded suspiciously like ‘arugula’. I also realised that when people are looking at you it becomes very difficult to do a physical movement that does not look and feel totally weird. This means I may never dance again which has already given my children cause to worship the Gods of improvisation forever.

One of the first ice-breakers was to take your name, preface it with a noun or adjective of the same initial and make a physical movement to go with the description. I am now immortalised as Antlers Alan whose persona is partly defined by putting my thumbs on my temple and waggling my fingers. What was interesting is that after we had run through the group’s various monikers and movements a few times I could remember every one of the thirteen names.

After years leading carefully structured meetings I found that there is no bullet point agenda to follow when the audience wants you to act as an interviewee who is the world leading expert on waffles. Neither is it possible to try to direct the conversation when you are one of three people playing ‘Dr Know It All’. The game involves the audience asking a question then each of the three sequentially saying one word until an answer has emerged.

As the evening progressed my brain kept taking me back to things I could have said if I had been smarter and faster. That’s common enough for most of us but the good lesson here was that regrets were just clutter that prevented me being responsive to the next scenario. One of my favourite mantras has been ‘what matters is what you do next’ and this was a place that confronted my ability to live that belief.

I am sure that many enlightened leaders and companies use techniques from improvisation classes as a way to build and develop their teams but if they don’t it’s worth considering. I’d strongly recommend it as an investment for any individual who wants a sense check of their ability to listen actively, support sympathetically and respond relevantly. It’s exhausting but great fun.

I suspect that I am going to keep on grasping for briefings, talking points, purposes and outcomes for most of the lessons and exercises. Those are the tools that I have used throughout my working life and they are deeply ingrained. But hopefully I am going to better understand the way that empathetic selflessness – my summary of what the highly talented and personable class leader said it was about – can lead to magical moments.

NOTE: The course is one of many run by the National Comedy Theatre in San Diego http://NationalComedy.com

LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT…BUT IT’S NOT WHAT DRIVES ME TO DISTRACTION

Seven months into the San Diego adventure and I am beginning to get comfortable with driving on the other side of the road. I refuse to be drawn into the right is wrong or left is right spiral – the jokes are very old and I simply look on the mental gymnastics involved as being like rubbing your head and patting your tummy at the same time. Obviously not something I would recommend while driving – unless it is a Bangkok or Beijing rush hour where the word ‘rush’ is a joke at the expense of the motorist.

I have driven for a long time and spent over thirty years in the UK doing thousands of miles and accumulating an undistinguished, and long expired, six points for two minor speeding offences. Both were on a Sunday before 9am with nothing on the road except me and the forces of the law. And 36mph on a 30mph dual-carriageway stretch was hardly either drag-racing or a challenge to the world land-speed record.

The officers involved were leather clad, motorcycle cops and used radar guns. Their stance, machismo and dark glasses suggested that it was a noon shoot out with a desperado in some lawless town rather than an overcast weekend morning with a slightly harassed middle-aged man in a provincial English town. But nobody is, or should be, above the law, so I paid my dues and took my three points (which is, at least, more than Arsenal have done in most matches this season).

My right hand/left hand sensibility has only let me down twice in San Diego and both times were in the first two weeks. Once as I was turning out of the drive onto the road and the second before 6am in the morning en-route to the airport. On both occasions the voice from the passenger seat said, “We drive on the right in my country, Englishman.” The tone of disbelief, scorn and reprimand was a reminder that, even after nearly 242 years, the time of coercion under the yoke of monarchical tyranny still rankles with some citizens.

What really paralyses me with fear is the rule here that allows you to turn right at a red light if there is no traffic coming along the road. It goes so far against the teaching of decades in the UK that I tentatively edge forward, pause, edge, pause, edge, until the honk of the queuing traffic behind forces me into action. I swing the wheel hastily and screech the tires while offering an apologetic wave to nobody in particular.

After turning I feel all the sensations that accompany an English person who is walking through ‘Nothing to Declare’ at customs and wondering if they accidentally packed three kilos of cocaine and a dead goat in their suitcase. I should confirm that I owe that description to an internet meme – it is so accurate as to be equally perfect for the feeling of having driven through a red light. I doubt I will ever get over my anxiety on this one.

What is even more troubling is that when the red light goes green the pedestrian crossing to the right goes green to signal that pedestrians can walk. It is totally counter-intuitive because just as you get the green light to go the pedestrians have the right of way on the road you want to take. And given the number of walking/texting Darwin award contestants you are never sure if they are about to walk or telling Aunt Lucy what they want for dinner.

Again, I edge forward, stop, try to catch the eye of the texting/dawdling pedestrian. Edge forward a little more, wave my hand at them to elicit a response, but all to no avail. And then the inevitable tooting and honking from behind as my indecision arouses the worst instincts in fellow drivers. It’s all pretty trying.

And for any Englishman of a certain age the four-way stop is an invention wholly intended to challenge our sense of fairness, civility, and goodwill to all people. This is a country where cities are largely built on a grid-system so there are lots of what people in the old country call ‘crossroads’. But there also seems to be a prohibition on traffic lights so each of the four roads has a single white line with the word ‘Stop’ on it – and people are meant to take their turn.

But it’s like the mind-games faced in a busy barbers’ shop without a booking system – was the guy with the AC-DC t-shirt here before you? And will he beat you up if you take his turn? Did the old geezer with the whippet sneak in without you seeing? Is it fair to go in front of someone who looks like they only have enough hair for a ‘pensioner’s special price’? And is the bloke with the youngster reserving space for both of them? Is that reasonable and will they want to go concurrently or consecutively?

Heaven help you if you feel that someone has taken your place in the queue because there is only so much loud tutting you can do before people wonder if you have dentures that are slipping. I have always thought that barber’s should adopt a ticket system akin to those at the delicatessen counters of busy supermarkets. Even better might be the opportunity to buy your cheese and ham at the same place as you have a hair cut – could be a world-beater for the ASDA/Sainsbury merger if my old work-mate and Sainsbury CEO Mike Coupe really wants to ‘be in the money’.

All that having been said, my engagement with every four-way stop is a little like a gentleman’s excuse me at a grand ball where I have misplaced my dance card. Imagine that my turn to go is the lady I want to dance with. I sit with a look of longing at her beauty but few expectations about it being my turn as others assert their option to have a quick rumba, waltz or, more appropriately, American Smooth.

First is the big, bearded guy (and it IS always a man) with his cap on backwards who drives a truck the size of Texas and takes his turn, whether it’s his turn or not, at the intersection. Then comes the young buck with music blaring out of the open windows, who is on the phone and has the sense of right that only the young, rich or with military-grade hardware in the boot (or trunk to US readers) are entitled too. After that is the grey-haired, short-sighted older person who has decided that stopping is a recipe for disaster because of the state of the car’s brakes and the possibility it may never start up again.

Surely, it’s my turn next? But then there are Mom and Pop and a people-carrier full of young sprogs on their way to the Zoo and by the time they are through it’s a battle for supremacy between the Uber/Lyft (I believe they all work for both companies) driver in a hurry and the harassed US Postal Service van on an Amazon-inspired mission to deliver 56 packages over a 100-mile radius in the next half-hour.

I wave them all through and smile that peculiar English smile that reflects decades of inhibition, fortitude and, most especially, guilt for things that happened years before we were born. It’s definitely my turn next because there are no more cars. But then I face the other certainty of a drive in the sunshine in San Diego – people on foot.

A dog-walker with seven assorted dogs – some of highest pedigree, some rescue mutts of dubious extraction – all very hairy and quite literally barking mad. Then a jogger whose best 5km time is long-gone and who manages to slow down to cross the road secure in the knowledge that no California driver will assail their pedestrian rights. And, of course, a cute group of school-children with peaked caps and rucksacks who only pause for several minutes mid-crossing to apply more sun-cream and have a drink to rehydrate.

Just as the two and four legged have passed and my foot is coming off the brake I face the final, and relatively new road-challenge. Whizzing through the four-way, with the sense of entitlement known throughout the world come the cyclists on the dayglo coloured, rent by the hour bikes and close behind the motorised Bird scooters. It is like the chase scene in Mad Max Beyond Pleasure Dome but a lot slower and with no death, destruction or mutants and the certainty that no fossil fuel was harmed in making the wheels go round.

When all is said and done it’s an adventure but with music in the car, air-conditioning and time on my hands I can think of worse ways to spend time. And I quite like being polite and cautious on the road after years of hustling around the country for work and time-tight school pick-ups. As Charlie Tebbutt used to say as he drove us to new business pitches during my time running the PR division of Charles Walls, “Better to be fifteen minutes late in this world than fifty years early in the next.”

An Englishman Abroad Meets the Blacktree Barberia

A few months into my San Diego life I faced the inevitable. It was time to get a haircut and I was not about to travel 5,000 miles back to the UK for it. It was with a heavy heart that I realised I would have to find a new barber.

I remember my first ‘man’s’ haircut with mixed emotions – misery and shock. My father took me to the airforce barber in Germany and I was seduced by the term ‘crew-cut’. Back at the house there were tears – both mine and my mother’s. I spent the next few weeks being called ‘bog-brush’ at school as it grew back in an erratic and spiky mess.

But the experience taught me two things. Don’t cry in the barber’s chair – no matter how bad it looks at the time – it is not manly and you might end up with only half the head done. And also that my hair always grows back. I thank my paternal grandfather for the head of healthy, thickness that keeps my scalp warm and has never failed to sprout like a desert after the rain.

Since I was able to select my own barber I always chose one where there were no appointments and where conversation was kept to a minimum. English men of a certain age do not use the word hairdresser for someone whose skills with scissors, razor and comb are bought by the half hour. We pay for a formal ‘good morning’, a brief confirmation that ‘two up the back and sides and a short scissor cut on top’ is required and then absolute silence until the ordeal is over. Nobody said it was meant to be fun.

And once I find a barber who suits there is a shared bond of loyalty which is almost tribal. Fifteen years to the same shop in Leeds. Then several to my first in Norfolk until he had the nerve to retire at the age of 78 because he couldn’t stand up all day any more. My second in Norwich, opened at 6.30am on a Saturday for the market stall traders. I got to know him so well that I was in by 7am, out by 7.20am and would say as I left the shop ‘have a good day’.

I searched hard for a barber who matched up to these peerless standards. It’s always a bit of trial and error but I was pretty fazed by the Mexican lady who chatted away in Spanish throughout the process and said at the end, “You look so handsome”. I will be the judge of that Madam, were the words that formed in my head, but as I don’t speak Spanish I simply did what any English person would do and said ‘sorry’.

Yelp kept pointing me towards Thee Inglorious Blacktree Barberia. Five stars on all reviews to date but reviewers kept using words like ‘cool’ and saying that they were ‘stoked’. And then there was the name – I have always been slightly skittish about anything not called ‘Gentleman’s Barber Shop’. The fads for names like ‘Curl Up and Dye’, ‘Da Do, Do, Do’, and ‘Scissor Sisters’ – the last two might be song lyrics or groups for all I know – have passed me by.

I walked past the Barberia seven times and could not bring myself to cross the threshold. I was quite taken with the sign outside which read ‘If we can’t make you look good…..you’re ugly’. But it all looked so alien to me that I did not feel I had permission to enter.

Finally, I did the unthinkable and phoned to book an appointment. It was with great relief that I ended the call after three rings when nobody answered. But then my phone buzzed with a message – they had the audacity to want to know if I wanted an appointment. I had never spoken more than ten words at a time to a barber for the last forty years and here was one engaging with me electronically.

With my hair down over my collar I had little choice. Partly because one of my father’s favourite jokes when I was a teenager and grew my hair long was to stand next to me and, in his best parade ground voice, say, “Am I hurting you son?”. After a brief pause for hilarious, comic effect, he would continue, “I should be. I’m standing on your hair. GET IT CUT.”

Barberia is unlike any place I have ever had my hair cut before. When I walk in they ask me if I want a beer, a shot or a water. Even more startling is that they cut your hair with the chair facing away from the mirror. It’s feels strangely dangerous and exciting. Not that I would have ever stopped a barber mid-cut, even if he was scalping me. It’s just that I have become very used to seeing myself shorn whilst avoiding all eye contact with the person doing the shearing.

Instead we all watch a TV that is tuned to some free to air channel. This tends to mean cheap, repetitive programming. First time round I saw a programme about the San Diego state prison with no uplifting endings. And I found myself exchanging social commentary about the differences between the UK and the US with the ensemble of barbers and clients. Last time it was a programme about sharks with sub-titles.

And the sub-titles were necessary because from the start to the last the sound system played AC/DC so loud that my ears might have bled. All the while my barber was trying to persuade me to have my nose and ears waxed. I suspect he was trying to tell me that after a certain age that was necessary to become handsome. And he had a way of talking that cut through Angus Young, Brian Johnson, Bon Scott et al doing their very best to bring on premature deafness.

Eventually you do get turned around to face the mirror and see what has been done. It is a magnificent bit of theatre which is done with panache and pride. And I have to say that on every occasion so far it has been the best haircut I have ever had. So much so that I have even taken the advice to have ‘a little product’ in my hair. Another first for me as I adjust to the new world.

COUNTRIES SEPARATED BY A COMMON PINT?

Moving to San Diego seemed to be one of the easier calls in life. Trading in the English winter for Californian sun was no hardship. And I had successfully managed a move from Essex to Yorkshire, arguably the greatest cultural distance in England, when I was 23. But we are creatures of our environment and subtle changes are worthy of reflection.

San Diego is one of the great craft beer cities in the world and I have been converted from my standard lager to the local product. A lifelong love affair with Stella has become a series of one-night flings with Sticky Henderson, Perky Blonde and Deftones Phantom Bride. These are courtesy of the brewers Resident, Belching Beaver and Thorn Street – just three from the 100+ in San Diego County . But to my great shame I was so distracted by the weather and wearing flip-flops (of which more in a moment) that it took me three months to realise that a pint is not a pint. It’s not even close. People from the country of my birth know that this is one area where size is everything and will be glad to read that history and actuality are both on our side.

Since 1824 the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth have broadly standardised on the Imperial (feel your heart swell with pride at a word which gets less play by the day) pint equivalent to 568ml. In America the standard pint is 473ml – the uncharitable might even call it the ‘Puny’ pint. That’s because the Imperial (had to use that word again) pint is about 20% larger.

The downside is that what I had begun to consider an increasingly heroic drinking capacity was rather less impressive than I thought. However, craft beer often weighs in at a pretty hefty 6%+abv compared to Stella’s 5.2%. Like the shots to goals ratio of an erratic centre forward I have not quite worked out the right balance between volume and potency but look forward to continuing my education.

An offshoot of this discovery is the mild satisfaction of realising that US gallons are smaller than British gallons. So the price of petrol (or gas as I call it when I am trying to fit in) is not quite so extraordinarily low as we have all thought for years. But I am also told that California gas is expensive compared to Pennsylvania so visitors should choose their destination and filling stations wisely.

My second discovery has been that wearing flip-flops is not the work of the devil. Like most English boys from my era my feet have been encased safely in socks and shoe leather from my first pair of Start-Rite’s to my latest black lace-ups. The notion of bare feet in public anywhere but on holiday in some far-away place where the neighbours would never see has been largely unthinkable.

But there is something about constant sunshine and getting very hot feet that lured me into reversing years of tradition, training and toe-trapping. Shopping the Zappos app has become a little like finding Tinder for shoes as I swipe right for OluKai and Chaco and left for Loake’s. Inevitably, the increased exposure of my feet has led me even further down the path towards behaviour my father would have considered slightly troubling. I had a pedicure.

In my defence I was driven by a sense of anthropological enquiry after being told that the ratio of men to women made mani-pedi salons a dating hot spot. I had, after all, been responsible for the PR team that invented ‘love in the aisles’ to suggest that ASDA’s frozen food aisle was Cupid’s home. For those interested I can report that nail salons are as unlikely to light the fires of love as frozen cod fillets. But if baby soft, good-looking feet are a sign of evolutionary success it’s an hour well spent.

This probably gives the impression that my early months have been spent strolling around the neighbourhood visiting bars and obsessing about my toes. I write that as if it would be a bad thing, but it really isn’t given the quality and quantity of local beers and brew-houses. My current recommendations to visitors are The Bluefoot Bar in North Park (for a dive/sports bar), the Queenstown in Little Italy (Sunday brunch/people watching), and 10 Barrel Brewing in East Village (great balcony).

Sadly, the Bluefoot is a place of pilgrimage for Arsenal fans. Matters appeared to come to a head last week when there was a seven-hour stand-off as SWAT teams thought they had a homicide suspect holed up across the road from the bar. I know that the Carabao Cup result was distressing for the Gooner faithful but that seemed a bit extreme…

My third discovery came when crossing the road the other day. Firstly, I managed to look to my left first to check for traffic which is quite something after so many years of Tufty Fluffytail and the Green Cross Code adverts reminding me to look right. It always struck me as one of the stranger journeys for David Prowse to go from child-safety icon, the Green Cross Man, to progeny-maiming dark lord, Darth Vader. But it’s nice to have some perspective by learning that Prowse’s west-country lilt led to the rest of the cast nicknaming him Darth Farmer.

More important though was that I headed for the pavement (sidewalk!) that was IN THE SHADE. Sensibilities built up over years of vitamin D sapping winter weather and overcast summer days dictate that when there is sunshine an English person walks in it. There are days when crowds of people zig-zag their way down city streets to maximise exposure and worship the glowing, unfathomable orb in the sky – it’s like line dancing but from a cult that also invented Morris dancing.

We do it because we know that the sun might disappear any moment – behind a cloud or a building. More worryingly we know that its reappearance is not certain. Certainly not for days or even months. So we act like lizards, soaking up the warmth and the rays to see us through the lengthy periods of dark, cold and precipitation we know are heading our way.

Sunshine or shade. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the distance between the innocent, carefree time of the Green Cross man and the stygian depths of Darth Vader as he embraced the dark side. But that’s for another blog and a different time…in a galaxy far, far away.