As it was meant to be heard...

Tomorrow James Last gives his final performance at the Albert Hall.

It's going to be almost impossible to refer to his final performance without using a terrible or brilliant pun on the word Last but I'm going to try.

But why should I?

I didn't like his music.

A lot of people hated him. 

He was a clown.

His were the albums that were always mixed up with the other albums. 

Either side of top of the Pops 1979 and 1975, you might easily find half a dozen James Last albums.

And he didn't even play. He was a conductor. Prancing around like a flocking moron in sequins

And prolific isn't the word.

He was producing around two albums every month. MONTH

He probably deserved much of the criticism he got.

But it is gently interesting to look on the penultimate day of his career in the news and see an audience of happy people. Selected by the edit of course, but you don't play the Albert Hall if you are only going to fill the front row.

Can there in history ever have been someone in the world of entertainment that delivered something so purely crassly commercial?

Usually I like commercial. It is honest and I'm cheap. Low rent. And I certainly don't begrudge it in others.

But the thing that occurs to me, is that he has left no harm. (Joking aside, no serious harm). So his column of negatives is so slight, that his positives shine.

We should all go through life with the aim of cashing out at a similar level.

(Of course cashing out is what has been accused of... but again, you find me in forgiving mood).

He made people happy. There's simply nothing wrong with that. But it is a little more than that.

Becauss there's nothing wrong with it. And everything right with it. It's a double word score.

There's nothing wrong with giving the people what they want (generally)

There's nothing wrong with Bread and Circuses as long as it doesn't do any harm.

The Romans of course had a few nasty habits. And not the modern nasty habits that they've developed like stiffing you on the amount of pepperoni. No, the old ones where they fed you to the big cats.

So James Lasts's concept was what? Can we call it Classical Pops and all agree not to throw up? 

His concept got poshed up of course.

John Williams playing Toccata .....yes that one, the one in D minor by Bach...Jese.... How many toccatas do you know...are you messing with me? .... his Toccata made it to number one. For quite a period of time I seem to remember. 

We all loved it. All of us. Without exception.  

The people who love what he did love him. Love what he did. Love what he tortured his orchestra with (ahh, maybe he did a bit of harm there.. musicians are not the most stable of people are they?)

It didn't bother the rest of us that he was doing it.

If you'd told me he died 30 years ago I wouldn't have been shocked. He hasn't been on my radar since I discovered Eurovision.

Life is a tally. Because of what he chose, his tally appears well stacked.

He is having the Last laugh after all.

Oh bugger!

Hard (The) Times

I just went out to buy a newspaper but only seven copies of my newspaper had completed their journey to the vendor and they had all sold out. 

Just as I was pulling the newsagent over the counter and laying into him with a rolled up copy of Melons Monthly, I noticed there was a stack of my newspaper's supplement that they had delivered.

Now I only buy it for the supplement.

"You can take a free supplement, we don't get charged for those"  said the newsagent.

"Okay, thanks".

Stage 2 of "pulling my belt in" was complete.

Go to newsagent. Blag a free TV Guide. 

Tick.

Stage 1 was last night meeting a friend for a drink when he decided to buy all the beers. (I have recently fallen on hard times). He might have been taking the piss but at least he was delivering it.

Now it's down to the butcher for some offal. It's liver and onions for tea.

I'm just putting on my fingerless gloves, then I'm going to head straight over as soon he is open. 

I will just flick the heating off while I'm waiting.

Hold Your Breath

How do you learn a language?
I'm pretty sure if you think about the answer that question it won't
be long before somebody says... "You have to go and live in that
country"

I've never agreed with that but what you're referring to there is Immersion.

But immersion isn't a location. It is a process.
If you go to university to study a subject, you are effectively immersed.
It is just a question of dedicating enough hours, months or years to
the task in hand.

You can immerse in anything you choose.
Why not perfect a perfect magic trick? How long will you give it? An
hour. A month. Six months? Ten years?
Or immerse in music to perfect an instrument.
Or your chosen specialised subject to perfect your chosen specialised subject.

And I don't mean 'perfect' as in 'being perfect' but rather to achieve
a level of artistry and craftsmanship.

In entertainment that might be of skill and showmanship, or talent
plus energy. The energy is the drive that makes the opportunities that
may if the stars align showcase the talent to the nation. For talent I
would always prefer the term skill. Speaking as somebody who has no
talent, it makes possibilities so much easier to embrace.
But in order to get there you are going to need immersion.
We might just call it dedication instead. But dedication XL.

But entertainment is an easy subject to think of in this way.
A subject such as medicine isn't.

You certainly need immersion, or rather you don't nowadays. You can
get replaced by someone who's just been on a course, protected by a
new company designed to make profit, with no interest whatsoever
in mastery of the medic/patient interface. But I digress.

In fact mastery is a good way to think about what you're aiming for.
It's a suite of skills - knowledge base, personal communication, and a
whole number of other things I am not going to go into.

The point is that whatever you want to do will take some degree of immersion.
And you can't run too many parallel tracks. You can't live in Spain at
the same time as you are living in France.
You probably can immerse in more than one thing at the same time. But
you are limited. You have to choose and it's up to you what to go for.

For most people it's nothing at all. Which is fine.
Immersion takes a long time. And there's football to watch.
It's up to you.

It's up to you to flick the immersion on.

Quoteable Me - 14.

In primary care, medicine isn't magic.

Good magic is about the trick. Not the method.

Good general practice is about the method. Not the trick.

Wait, who are you? .......A friend.

Yesterday I did a little blog and for some reason my email recommended
to me play the John Williams Superman theme. Coincidence? Not for me
to say.
So, not needing much encouragement I tuned into YouTube and watched a
montage of Superman clips to the classic theme.
4 minutes well spent.

Now let's bring this down a little bit. That is one great movie.
I can't tell you how much I admire Christopher Reeve, how sad it is
that he's not here any more and how inspiring he was.
But that his wife died 18 months after him at the age of 44 of lung
cancer never having smoking a cigarette in her life... well If you
ever have the idea that life should be fair then forget it so hard
that you never need to forget it again.

As Superman, Christopher Reeve was electric.
You believed a man could fly.
There wasn't even a doubt.
He showed you, and went on showing you in more ways than anyone should
be asked to show.
It strikes a chord because sometimes as a man you have to jump off a
tall building, change on the way down and land as Superman.
It's impossible for a woman to know that, but it is true.

My favourite bits were all the little vignettes where he'd quickly
save somebody, almost in passing, on his way to his next job as it
were.
Just because that's what you do.
And of course in the montage was the helicopter scene.
Lois Lane falls from a helicopter that has collided with a building.
And Superman gets there just in time.
It's a classic.
I know you've seen it.
But can you remember the line?
I can.
I even think you can.

On this montage the sound was off because the theme tune was playing
but my brain has been able to fill in that part of the script since
1978. (Admittedly, I think it was on the original trailer).

Superman grabs her, certain death prevented, and says "I've got you".
As a boy it would make me cheer. Now it is as likely to make me make a
tear with my cheer. It is utterly joyous.

Then...
Lois: "You've got me? Who's got you?"
(Little smile from Supes).

It's a good question though, isn't it?
Who's got you?


And then of course, on the way back up, he catches the helicopter as well.

Developing Negatives

The adage goes that you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
But... at least you take the horse to water. That's a pretty good start.

It's about creating a change in somebody else.
And yet in population terms, we seem to be really terrible at it.
There is an entire mental health industry propping up people who never
seem to adopt change. The simple truth of an old proverb is a pretty
good place to find out why. We usually find them to hold singular
truths.

I might argue that I might choose to take somebody to water and at
least strongly encourage him to drink. Let's leave aside the concept
of 'forcing a drink' for a minute, even though I'm a great fan of such
a strong visual image.
I might, for example, make the other options appear sufficiently
unpalatable that drinking at that point seems the best thing to do.
That's change.

There is a magical term for one of those highly entertaining pieces of
showbusiness where the lady changes her costume in a split second.
It's called a quick change act. And sometimes that's all we need to
be. A quick change act.

We know from turning on the news every day for years that there are
problems with mental health, but too rarely do we hold the current
solutionists to account.
Counselling is failing.
Cognitive behavioural therapy has failed, in the way it has been
mass-marketed and rolled out in the UK.

The problem is getting worse, and it's been watched by a latent, lazy
or unskilled army of mental health practitioners who cherry pick easy
people who like a chat, and document in their copious notes
'unwillingness to change' in the rest.
And the government's answer? Bring in more of the same people with the
same answer. Of course the mental health practitioners will be
delighted. Their job will become even softer. Perhaps they can buy a
few more rubber plants for their consultation rooms.
That's what doing harm is. If they want to buy rubber they should line
their consultation room walls with it to protect the patients who are
bouncing with installations of new change.
Naive? Whether you think I am or I'm not, you will make yourself
right. I can't change that. You can, though.

We have already all the mental health geniuses in place that we need,
but they are not sufficiently flexible to bring solutions to people.
Some people will need to be brought to water and made to drink.
But we've got an army of counsellors who say they don't do 'advice'.
That might be a blessing. Who needs their opinion? It is there
supposed skill that is being solicited. But that skill is
unsupervised, unmonitored, unproven, unappraised and behind its closed
doors, it answers to know one. I would offer the general additional
comment that they vary from the nervous and insecure anxious
depressives who think they 'should be' counsellors to the arrogant
defensives who don't know where the water is themselves. In common,
they share a spectacular level of sick leave, which appears to bother
their consciences little.

Many of these practitioners won't even take the 'horse' to the 'water'
in the first place.
They might move the patient around a bit in an unfocused way and if
they happen to bump into some water ....great. But if they don't, so
what. It's the patient's fault. They're not ready for change, are
they?
The fact that you guided them into a few trip hazards that set them
back, well.. that's just bad luck, isn't it?

Sometimes you have to show people what change looks like.
In doing that sometimes you have to be change yourself.
A seminar is more useful if you see a live demo.
But even at live medical seminars nowadays that demo tends to be rather
lazily performed by a YouTube grab (that invariably causes all sorts
of technical issues).

And the live 'stuff' is frequently thrown at the audience in what they
like to call role-play. Leaving the element of control and bullying aside, how lazy is that? The teacher that doesn't demonstrate but tells you to demonstrate so that they can comment. Shocking really.
Why do they so rarely show you how it's done themselves? Well, of course they are scared. Your performer has performance anxiety. And ego. Both those babies should have been left home alone.
Who wants advice on surgery from a surgeon who has never operated?
But more than that, we have to understand how similar we are. We must
walk the walk. As well as talk the talk. And if we have adopted that
particular paid role we should be confident to demonstrate that we
can.

We must draw on any and all methods we can and have the skill and
flexibility to reframe it as a tool that can bring an individual
(perhaps one that you may not stumble across until years from now)
back from the brink.
The right type of oil for a dirty job.
The right fluid added to develop the right negative.

You have to be a flexible artist.
They don't cover that on the Teesside Polytechnic psychology course.
And that, as Yoda said, is why you fail.
Only they are failing on somebody else's behalf. Which is a hundred
times worse than normal failure.

You have to have the confidence to lead somebody to water. That's the
least you owe them.
Leading them in dance towards the water is a skill.
Leading them in a merry dance around the desert is a crime.

Or find another way to make them make the good chemicals. See, I am
using the concept of 'forcing them now' but I probably managed to slip
that past you without you noticing. That's quick change.
Find a way.
Because Bayer and Napp and Pfizer will all too happily sell you an
easy answer that might bridge your skill gap, soothe your conscience
and change nothing.

Remember... the problem is getting worse. We are failing.
It takes a new approach.
We have all the resources we need.
We have a chemical factory ready. Stunned often, sedated frequently,
unexercised invariably, but a rich untapped mine nevertheless.

Do you think you're going to retrain that chemical factory on top of
your shoulders with a visit to your painful past or by sprinkling
sertraline over it?
Unless the moment of regular contact is efficiently used to deliver, in addition,
the 'true' treatment, in the shortest possible time, it's not likely.

Coaches and other practitioners need to give people the resilience and
strength they going to need to cope with the future.
Progressing beyond failure starts with an admission. In this case it is one of failure of an allied profession.
Notice the failure. Embrace it.
Choose my solution.
Or find another.

And do it yesterday.

We have adage for it, of course.
Do NO harm.

If you can, do even less than that.

Birdlife

Some feathers are not merely totally useless for flying, they are
actually an impediment to it.

Purely decorative, their only purpose to attract a mate.

From a certain angle you can't even see the line between decoration
and practicality.

But unless you are watching for entertainment alone, you might need to
see beyond the feathers. It might help you to notice where the line
is, to think about what else is being hidden or misrepresented.
It might save your life.

At least the animal kingdom have to grow their feathers from their own
genetic code. There is an honesty there.

But humanity can buy ours. We can put our purchases from Versace and
D&G on credit cards to preen and prettify.

We can even dress character flaws. By dress, of course, I mean cover
up. Bird don't do that. Bees don't do that. But educated fleas do.
And so do educated fellas.
Scumbags can make a charity donation.
Billionaires can give half of it away and not suffer a jot. I thought
Bill Gates did that but he is still the world's richest man - how does
that work? Is he Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions? Is he Gregory
Peck in the Million Dollar Note?
Is he delaying curing malaria too quickly in case he dips to Number 2
on the Forbes Rich List?


I don't mind a little honest vanity. It can be fun, and colourful. It
allows a little play which might alleviate the melancholy of the human
condition. It needn't be dishonest and you can do it to music.

But dressing up character hides a lot of lies. And they always surface
in the end. The cracks always show when the foundations are weak.
This is a dressing that comes in all shapes and sizes from tips picked
up at management seminars to bribing your way out of a corruption
charge or letting your wife collects your points or calling someone a
pleb and denying it or opening the Hillsborough gates and choosing to
lie to the people you serve.

These lines are important.
Look for them. But only if you don't already.
If you do and you have slipped up then stop. It doesn't come easily,
so stop looking for a while. You are not tuned in. You will probably
invent them when they are not there and that's worse than giving
someone the benefit of the doubt.

Me?

I'm all feathers.
Don't ask me to put up a shelf.

Craze Crazy

I attend a conference venue to hear about update in musculoskeletal
problems recently.

They noted that as a result of popular exercise products such as the
Insanity programme, they have a lot of people complaining about sore
buttocks.

I'm glad to hear it.
I thought it was just their seats.

Da-Kyrie - a liaison

I'm grabbing onto your cocktails.

No..it's coat tails isn't it?
Coat.
Tails.

Damn.
Someone get me a mojito.

Shush...

I've been hearing about the Crufts' dog who seems to have been poisoned.

'Poisoning' seems vague so I'm guessing the toxicology has not come back yet. But apparently there are enough suspicious circumstances for this doggy death to be diagnosed as canine-icide.

And so of course they have been wheeling out the dog psychologists.

Now, and this is my point..... they usually called the sort of Charlie's "whisperers", don't they?

Given that the poorly distinguished history of human psychology in the past hundred years, the idea that we have animal psychologists at all is pushing it, to put it at its most polite. But whisperers!

It implies an arrogance that they have a real Dr Dolittle type- connection manifest through their "whispering".

It's not a big leap from that to psychic.

But they're keeping it sexy and slightly legit though very few dogs litigate. They are sprinkling the pixie dust and keeping it magical, keeping it spiritual, a little bit supernatural - without being absolutely totally barmy.

It's cheeky and very profitable.

And what are they whispering about anyway. What is this whispering?

What part of it isn't vanity?

And where are the human whisperers?

Counsellors brag about never giving advice and only listening. They don't even counsel.

So they're not even coming up with anything at any volume at all. Either at a pitch that registers with human or animal ears.

I suppose the animal "whisperers" cannot claim just to be "great listeners" so they have a problem they need to acquit. "Whispering" is their solution.

It's like an admission that they need to do something, but of course communicating at a normal volume would be to use the Barbara Woodhouse approach. And we are just so much more subtle nowadays.

A little healthy whispering never hurt anybody. And who can criticise. They can't hear what you're whispering. That's why it's called whispering. It's secret.

What would we call a human whisperer anyway ...a guru? A coach. Yes that's it, isn't it? Lifestyle coaches. Life coaches.

So we've established that the whisperers don't whisper.

And the talkers don't talk.

It's no wonder psychology is in the state it's in.

I say stop your whispering.

Stop your new supernatural nonsense.

And start shouting change.

Screaming it. 

Yelling it before you invoice it. 

Start yelping it and yapping it.

In short...deliver it. 

In your own time, of course.

The Real Victims

I was five minutes late for my haircut yesterday.

Which didn't go down well. It gets busy at my hairdressers and they need the full half hour for my blue rinse and set.

But with all these highly questionable 20 mph zones, weekend roadworks and sleeping policemen, these things can happen.

It's true what the papers say about grooming and trafficking.

We're all suffering.

Spooked

I have just seen an ad for ghost tours in the local listings.

Actually the Ghost Tours

'Beyond the Wall presents: The Ghost Tours'

It's a band  - a bloody band!

Talk about misadvertising.

That is like a Psychic evening calling itself 'The Coldplay Experience' or a paranormal night claiming to be the The Stranglers with support' 

You can't call yourself anything you know, fellas!

I have had to put my poltergeist detector back in the loft.

It won't do, it really won't.

The Danger Line

Let's do two minutes on thresholds.

I put it to you that there is a spectrum of thought, intent and deed.

A little wavy line bubbles along your life. It peaks at 'deeds' - decisions that you actually turned into reality. The things you do.

I have just been listening to people talk about this morality on the radio. One so-called expert claimed that an immoral thought was immoral  "in and of" itself (as they put it).

When you get your head around what they mean by "in and of" (it's very sniffy Radio 4), you realise that they are talking about thought crime. So if you have ever thought of pushing somebody over a cliff or suchlike then as far as this chap is concerned you should be in jail for the rest of your life.

Many of the rest of us would argue that such a thought merely involves looking at your options and, in that example, usually declining them on either moral grounds, or grounds of the potential for future inconvenience to yourself (being banged up). To push or not to push?...... Not to push.

Then somebody mention videogames (don't they always?)

Do the shootemups make people into murderers? (Usually somebody mentions Tom and Jerry at this point but we had enough of that nonsense in the seventies).

My understanding is yes. That's why American soldiers play them and continue to play the soundtracks in their head as they go into battle. The visual sense is a very powerful rehearsal machine. If that game is portrayed fairly realistically and you see yourself shoot a gun and somebody who looks like a 'person' appear to die then you are becoming desensitised to it if or when it happens again. After all, it's not the first time you have seen it.

So will this exposure make us all into killers? No.

Will exposure make some of us into killers? Yes.

Would it make me into a killer? No. But even I am willing to accept that if I had 1% ability to kill, it might increase it to say 2% but I would still be 98 % short so I think I would be safe from its consequences.

But if somebody, who would otherwise stay this side of the law forever, is already at 99%, that extra 1% will push them over into being a killer. (I'd also argue that what would cause a 1% increase in me perhaps might cause a 30 percent increase in somebody more susceptible).

So, it's about thresholds.

So do videogames make people murder? Yes, susceptible people. We might even call them vulnerable people. 

So how much do we target our society towards vulnerable people?

Sometimes it seems to be quite a bit.

Sometimes not at all.

There is a spectrum of possibility in each of us that is grey, that flows and rolls and rocks and sways as background noise.

It is only converted into an act, into a one or zero, when it reaches the threshold.

That's probably the last word on whether X causes Y in human behaviour, even though it will continue to be debated.

But there's more to it than that.

Thresholds just aren't reached. They are breached. And when they are breached, they can't be repaired. 

It's not quite a one-way valve. The committed murderer does do things other than murder. 

It's quite likely he watches Jeremy Kyle. But he might also play baccarat. Or knit.

Maybe he's mastered his valve, and can drop in and out at will. Or at insanity, depending on the fees of his eventual defence lawyer. 

Those who have control over their threshold - their danger line - are the bogeymen. The monsters. The ones that really scare us.

Those who have less control over their danger line are a bit easier to spot. Perhaps a lower social class. Known to the authorities. Hundreds of arrests. An addiction or three.
Those with control over their valve might be high functioning sociopaths. The story might be one of charity donations, and a wife who was rarely seen in public without covering her face. They might be a well-loved person in the community. A doctor even. A successful business or career hiding the serial killer before inevitable capture.

You can continue smoking for the rest of your life, until you find something (perhaps external props but usually internal resources) that delivers you to the threshold and asks you to smash through it so that you never smoke again.

You can be afraid of heights or spiders or snakes, but push through that threshold and you might look back on it as a silly irrelevance.

Things change forever at thresholds. 

You can only smash plate glass once.

Change begats change begats change.

A threshold is just where it lives.

Not apposite

How can spendthrift be the opposite of thrift?

That's not the way we do opposites.

Coke Ain't It

A slurp and a slip.

Ecoutez et Repetez

I have always loved Groundhog Day. I have it on VHS to prove it. Not that it does.

It's one of those films that I can't turn off, no matter how often it is on.

But why? 

It is about a day that happens over and over again but what is it really about? 

The hope that it will be better next time?

Closer to perfection? But perfection is wrong... right? 

People hate perfection. Believe me, I know! 

It's a concept that turns only to criticism rather than praise. They dislike people who inadvertently search towards it because "they" are people who don't realise that perfection is a direction rather than a destination. 

Is Groundhog Day about second chances? Trial and error? Shooting for the sun and hitting the moon, then hitting the sun on the rebound?

Or is it just Bill Murray?... No, it is more primal than that.

But in the last 2 days on 2  nights I have watched 2 films. I have seen them both before and I wasn't intending to watch TV but they were on and I couldn't resist.

Deja Vu (Denzel Washington - exploding boat - 500 dead) - he gets to replay the day. Great film.

and....

Next (Nicolas Cage - nuclear weapon - probably lots of people dead)  - he gets to replay the day. I was saving Next - it might have been another 5 years before I watched it again, but it reeled me in.

And 3 seconds after I started preparing the Groundhog Day blog-subject in my head while reading the paper, I read Barry Cryers' Q&A quiz, which mentioned the same film, (but that is a coincidence and we are not doing coincidences today). 

He was asked  "What is the film you can watch over and over again? 

'Groundhog Day' is his reply. And he gives a reason. "You'd think it would get boring but it doesn't".

There's an idea. It is the very predictability that makes it unboring.

That is it, isn't it?

Familiary plus twist. That's the formula to all sorts of success. Not just the movies but any sort of story. Or fashion and not just textiles, but also cars or any other type of engineering such as the minor variations in iPhone that the marketeers persuade you that you need.

A tweak. 

An inflection. 

A slight adaptation to the format.

A wink.

That is what makes business possible and life interesting. 

There is something primal there but the chance of seeing the same day done better is irresistible because we think we kind of know the story. We must know it. We have just seen it .

We know how it ends.

And then, all of a sudden, we don't.

The rug is pulled from us.

And if the bulk of the journey is enjoyable or entertaining, affirming or reassuring, then the rug disappearing is exciting and challenging, threatening and dangerous.

That ratio works well. That level of peak and trough.

That's why a vortex of change is constantly uncomfortable, whether related to health, wealth, mind or domesticity. Whereas a few twists and turns along an otherwise pleasurable ride are exciting. Only you will know how many you need, and what you will risk for them.

You can roll with some punches and have them make you stronger. But some will knock you out and you may not know which ones to avoid.

Your judgement may not be good. You will think it is of course. Ask yourself how you came to that conclusion and make your answer a convincing one. 

The periodicity of surprise allows improvisation, which is fun. 

And the possibility that what is set and known can actually change is irresistible. What has happened can be corrected. 

How big do you want to go with me in this concept? 

How big can you take?

You can change the world. 

Your world.  Or THE world. 

Stop me when you don't believe me. 

I'm also rather fond of Edge of Tomorrow  (Tom Cruise – Alien invasion). Subtitled 'Live. Die. Repeat', you can probably guess on the theme. Revisiting what has already happened and doing better.

So what have we learned today, kids?

Little changes come from paying attention to detail and feeling each other's hearts beat?

Entertain little (or big ) changes in format as you plan your life?

You don't need nuclear weapons to make nuclear change?

Life is format. Base.

With added inflection. Moments.

You need the base. 

But it's the moments you recall

I also like hustle movies.