As first time visitors to the Isle of Mull, we took one of the tourist trips out to Staffa to see Fingal’s Cave, and to Lunga, one of the Treshnish Isles, to take part in some puffin therapy (highly recommended!).
Fingal’s cave (but, sadly, Fingal was not at home)
On Lunga there were hundreds of puffins and, if you sat quietly near their burrows, they would happily ignore you as they went about plucking grass to line their nesting chambers.
The stage was set for some serious puffin therapy!
We spent two entrancing hours on Lunga and then it was time to rejoin the boat along with our touristic confreres that included an overly loud family comprising Grandma, Grandad, Dad and two youngsters; a little brat and his older brother.
Badly behaved kids at a puffin colony? Auk-ward!
The two kids, particularly the youngest, were not really aware of any behavioural boundaries, and it was clear to see why. Their dad, you see, was inept. No other word suffices. It didn’t help that ‘Grandma’ constantly shrieked at the youngsters, so folk standing many yards away bore witness to two generations of adults with nugatory parenting skills.
Still, their performance inspired this:
You’d have thought he was trying to spoof us When he named his kids Torven and Rufus And they both misbehaved ‘Cos the pillock displayed The parenting skills of a doofus!
Another busy week means another last minute limerick and one that rather lacks guile.
We’ve taken Priscilla the campervan to the Isle of Mull for a few nights and managed to book on to a new site for which we are paying for an electric hook-up. Just one problem, the idiot that loaded the van (me) forgot the hook-up lead!
A camper once thought he’d be able To have power, but wasn’t quite able To make use of the hook-up (One almighty f**k-up) When he discovered he’d forgotten his cable!
The view from our van at the Pennygown campsite on the Isle of Mull.
(Actually, we were saved by a neighbouring camper who, fortuitously, always travelled with a spare hook-up cable. There aren’t half some helpful folk around.)
I’ve been on a busy narrowboat trip all week and with all the locks to work and time spent at the tiller (and pub), I’ve had little time to develop this week’s ALAW, so here is all I can offer this week:
A fellow once ran out of time To produce his once-a-week rhyme So he put it on hold And will let it unfold Next week (or the future sometime) .
The world has held great Heroes, As history books have showed; But never a name to go down to fame Compared with that of Toad!
(Kenneth Graham)
Last year we attempted to raise tadpoles in a large plastic trug (aka a big bucket). We succeeded up to a point, the point being where the tadpoles had developed legs and lay in the shallows. Unfortunately, despite some netting over the trug, the birds got ’em when, due to heavy rain, the water level rose to the level of the net.
Our tadpoles were from a local stream and were shoaling when we found them which means they were from toad spawn and not frog spawn. NB our trug is an isolated ‘pond’ so unless any toadlets had been liberated there would have been no risk of disease transmission from one natural site to another. Moreover, had any of the toadlets survived, they would in any case have been released at the same place at which the tadpoles had been collected.
So, lesson learned and this year we have an ACME anti-predator ‘cage’ around the trug and all we need now are the tadpoles. Naturally, we revisited our local ‘toad hall’ to look for them, but there was none for the simple reason that we were too early to find them. Instead we were faced with a positive orgy of toad procreation.
Two pairs of toads doing what pairs of toads do. We saw many pairs ‘in action’ as well as some lonely males. The dark weed-like strands are ribbons of spawn.
Interestingly, they were in a fairly discrete area (although none too discreet in their behaviour!) and there was no sign of any other amphibian bacchanalia either upstream or downstream.
Anyway, although there were no tadpoles and the puddock debauchery was still in full swing, there was some spawn of which we gathered a small quantity and we’ll try to hatch our own tadpoles this year.
Ribbons rather than clumps mean the spawn is from a toad and not a frog.
So, without further ado, here is a down-market limerick about our tadpole hunt…
We went with the intention of bagging Some tadpoles, and our search was unflagging, But we set out too soon (How inopportune!) And found that the toads were still sha**ing!
I have two favourite jokes. The longest standing one is:
… and now to the football results. Real Madrid: 1, Surreal Madrid: Fish!
It’s no coincidence that it involves word play as that’s the kind of thing that I really like. My other favourite is one that I heard for the first time about 10 years ago. It, too, involves word play, but is also non-PC and ‘blonde-ist’; however I can’t help finding it funny, so please indulge me:
A blonde went in to a bar and asked for a double entendre…
… so the barman gave her one!
Okay, so you didn’t laugh or you’ve heard them before, but there is a reason for introducing them, the second one at least. That is to show the inspiration behind the last in my series of limericks inspired by Vision and Mission statements. This was my final entry to a senior colleague’s request that we provide a Vision or Mission statement in the form of a limerick. It leans heavily on the tradition of Britain’s Carry On film franchise of the 1960s and 70s, and is also the on that got me disqualified from the competition…
The ‘Carry On’ One
My boss is the facilitator (Or should it be ‘originator’) Of a Mission to define A Visionary rhyme So I’ll ponder and give her one later
Postscript: It’s Good Friday and I was amused by Tom Gauld’s view of one of the modern-day Easter traditions. Unlike his realisation of Werner Herzog, below, I did manage to return home eggless (for the simple reason that I’m still on a weight loss campaign and I know only too well that if I got one I’d scoff the lot – including the sweeties in the middle).
Four years before I was able to retire, I genuinely believed that I was going to be successful in gaining voluntary early severance from my job. Unfortunately for me my application fell at a newly created final hurdle. That was disheartening because, several years earlier, the senior management ethos of the organisation had shifted from a collaborative one to one that was autocratic and authoritarian; something that was contrary to my modus operandi and that of most of my colleagues.
Being denied early severance was a blow that even a shift to part-time working never fully allayed and one result of it was that my performance dropped from ‘going the extra mile’ to being ‘just good enough’. But I shouldn’t have worried, because ‘just good enough’ was all our Director of the time wanted (see ALAW #132), so win-win for her!
True when I started, but not so by the time I finished!
Anyway, continuing on my recent theme of Vision and Mission statements in the style of a limerick, here is the third entry that I made to the competition organised by a senior colleague and one that is related to my endeavours to leave the organisation prematurely:
The Personal One
My Vision’s a life full of leisure That’s something I really would treasure. So the Mission for me Is how to break free And enhance my lump sum for good measure!
Postscript: Despite my failure to get time off for good behaviour, I do know how fortunate I was in being able to retire recently at the age of 60 on a pension based on my final salary. That is something that is less and less common in an era when too little attention is focused on the wreckers from both our major political parties who contributed to the downfall of final salary schemes over the last 30 years. Coupled to a neoliberal doctrine that fails to support anything other than poorly paid jobs for many and obscene salaries, bonuses, dividends and pensions for the few, I know just how lucky I was to be able to finish when I did!
Did you know that, today, the 9th of April, is National Unicorn Day? No? Neither did I until last week.
I struggled to believe that such a ‘day’ existed, so I Googled it and, yup, there it is – April 9, National Unicorn Day. How bizarre! I have but just the one question. Why? (Apparently, it’s to give children a fun day to celebrate and nothing at all to do with a cynical marketing ploy by toy manufacturers.)
My Google search also highlighted an old Change.org petition that sought to move the ‘celebratory’ day from 9 April to 6 June. Who does this kind of thing? Or is it me that’s the idiot and not the petitioners (don’t answer that!)?
Anyway, just to show that coincidences happen all the time, I had, purely by chance, just written a unicorn limerick for my ice-cream buddy.
She’d asked for a copy of one of my B&W film photography exhibition prints, a print of some street art in Aberdeen that shows a girl holding a unicorn, so I wrote a dedication in limerick fashion and pasted it to the back of the picture frame.
NuArt, Correction Wynd, Aberdeen.
So here, on the one and only occasion that I will recognise National Unicorn Day, is a unicorn limerick:
An idea that some can’t resist, Is that unicorns really exist. But they’re hard to espy And that explains why You don’t see them unless you’re half-pissed!
Following last week’s treatise on vision and mission statements, this week’s limerick continues the theme in more salutary fashion. Just like the previous one (The Sort-of-Serious One) this week’s ALAW outlines the difference between a vision and a mission, but it also usefully reminds you that you need staff buy-in as well, otherwise it’s entirely pointless; much like the corporate bol**cks to which the narrative for ALAW #132 refers.
So here is the second of my ‘Vision and Mission’ competition entries of yesteryear (for readers south of the border, pish is used here in the Scottish colloquial sense and not as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary!):
The Salutary One
A Vision’s an overall wish That a Mission seeks to accomplish, But if they fail to enthuse They are bugger-all use And amount to a whole load of pish.
On art, limericks and the dead-hand of corporate bol**cks…
Some years ago, many of the artworks on the lecture theatre walls in the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen, were removed and replaced with posters of supposedly corporate relevance and interest. At about the same time, its then Director demanded that we should aim for our science “to be just good enough”. Hey, guys, let’s forget about creating a vibrant place to work! Who needs the sort of workplace to which bright young scientists could be attracted or one in which we can help them to develop a fulfilling career in science? And let’s forget about organisational reputation too!
No wonder the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist laughed out loud when we told her that was our Director’s ‘vision’!
Oh, and by the way, f**k art!
I was recently reminded of all this when reading an article in the Graun entitled Is your boss a bit daft?. In my opinion, that would be a ‘yes’ when considering the senior leadership teams under which I worked in my later years, but fortunately for them the Graun also tells me that it’s possibly not their fault because:
organisations that emphasise image and symbolic manipulation can often reward smart people for not using their intelligence, creating a culture of “functional stupidity”. [the Graun’s article links to this amusingly-titled paper: Alvesson and Spicer, 2012, A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations]
‘Functional stupidity’! I wish I’d invented the phrase as it describes perfectly some of the tripe that at times seeped down on us from on high. I think the removal of artworks and their replacement by corporate statements to ’emphasise image and symbolic manipulation’ is a lesser example, but an example all the same.
So I was amused when a former colleague recently derided the art-less-ness of the place:
I often wish we hadn’t got rid of the art that used to hang in the lab … I suspect philistine elements of a recent regime were responsible for that.
I agreed wholeheartedly:
Getting rid of the artworks in a science-orientated institute in favour of vision statements and corporate branding always seemed rather vulgar to me. I can just imagine the Medici’s telling da Vinci to stop his work on the Mona Lisa or The Last Supper in order to focus more on bringing his inventions ‘to market’ whilst simultaneously advising him that his gizmos were to be ‘just good enough’!
Anyway, this all brought to mind an occasion some years ago when the Laboratory’s then Head of Science decided to ask staff to vote on their preferred ‘mission statement’ from a list of candidate drafts (and in doing so he failed IMHO to distinguish between a mission statement and a ‘vision’, as I believe his alternatives were clearly the latter and not the former!).
Now, I know I wasn’t the only person to view this development with quiet despair, because a more senior colleague suggested that we should try and see who could develop the best mission statement via the medium of a limerick.
The prize was a Kit Kat and was ultimately won by the only competitor that actually used the word ‘science’ in their entry! I submitted several and was doing quite well until the judge read the last one and disqualified me from the competition (of which more in a future post).
So, as inspiration is currently lacking for any new limericks, I’ve decided to present a series of older, unpublished limericks over the next few weeks that are drawn from my ‘Vision and Mission’ competition entries of yesteryear. Here’s the first:
The Sort-of-Serious One
M Luther King said: “I have a dream!” That’s a Vision, if you know what I mean, But how we pursue What we wish to be true Is the Mission for all in our Team.
Several years ago I read an article about rugby’s Sir Ian McGeechan. The author introduced it by writing that, as he’d grown older, he appreciated more and more the decency of a person above their achievements. McGeechan, he went on to say, was not only one of the most fundamentally decent of people, but also one who had achieved remarkable things.
I mentioned this later to a work colleague on whom I reported in performance appraisals and his reply was mischievous; did it matter if he didn’t achieve anything during the course of a year providing that he showed, instead, what a thoroughly decent chap he was? Er, that would be a ‘No’!
McGeechan was, by chance, one of the TV studio summarisers last weekend during Scotland’s epic draw with England in the final Six Nations rugby game of the season. I wonder if he’d watched the earlier game that day, when Wales demolished the Irish team to claim the tournament’s Triple Crown, Championship and Grand Slam? If he had, then he would have seen a kind act courtesy of the Welsh captain.
As reported on the WalesOnline web site, the Welsh and Irish teams were both uber-pysched and totally focused prior to the kick-off, seeking to get the pre-match preliminaries out of the way before tearing into each other. The rain was falling heavily, so it was cold and wet and the lad selected as the Welsh mascot was shivering badly as he stood in front of Alun Wyn Jones, the Welsh lock forward and captain.
Despite the formalities and his focus on the game ahead, Jones noticed this and took time-out to take off his jacket and wrap it around the youngster before laying into the Welsh anthem with only a slightly less savage demeanour than that which later put the Irish to the sword. Apparently no-one who knows him was in the least surprised by Jones’ thoughtfulness. And what a win in the game itself! Great achievement underwritten by sheer decency. I like that.
When la vita turns out non è bella In the rain without an umbrella, Wyn Jones is the guy Who’ll help you stay dry ‘Cos the bloke’s just a real decent fella!
(‘Yes’, I do know that in his case Wyn is part of a double first name and not part of his surname, but, please, grant me some poetic licence!)
Postscript: Technically, I was a reasonably good rugby player in my day, but a bit too soft and small even by the less-than-gargantuan average size of players back then.
I played hooker and modelled myself on the Irish stalwart Ken Kennedy who had developed the role of hooker from one of a fat violent plodder who only scrummaged to that of a mobile player who could pass, kick, tackle and run with the ball.
(I was stunned a couple of years ago – in a good way – to be told by a former school-days teammate who now follows Saracens RFC, that their hooker, the South African international Schalk Brits, played much the same way that I did. Wow! It might be factual b******s, but as compliments go, it doesn’t get much better!)
Actually, I was a county player at schoolboy level and good enough later to get picked to play for Scottish Universities and a couple of invitation teams before giving up in my early 20s due to my dislike of psychopaths and rugger-b*****s. (Oh, and there was also that occasion when I couldn’t sit my exams because I’d spent all term training, playing and touring!)
The Scottish Universities XV, 1981, pictured on the lawn by King’s College, Aberdeen. Yours truly is second right on the back row.
The Scottish Universities’ shirt design, above, was in the style of a rugby league jersey. It was, for those days, a none-too-subtle, two-fingered salute to the Scottish Rugby Union as it had refused to support the team financially because the coach, Mal Reid (suited and booted in the pic), was a former rugby league professional.
(There is an interesting-if-old article about Mal here. The former Glasgow player referred to in the piece, Walter Malcolm, is pictured, above, in his younger days immediately to my right.)
I’ll allow myself a couple more anecdotes from those days:
I had a false start to my tertiary educational experience which is why, although I am a graduate of The University of Dundee, my academic not-quite-alma-mater was in London. And it just happens that as a callow 18-year-old, I travelled from the big city to Dublin to attend a girlfriend’s 21st birthday party.
Her dad, Bobby, was a past-President of Wanderers rugby club, a team that shared the old Landsdowne Road rugby ground with the Landsdowne club itself. So, it was no surprise that I found myself cheering Wanderers in a game that Saturday and was bought beers in their clubhouse after the match by Bobby (who knew everyone and more on the south side of Dublin). We hadn’t been there long when he said “Come on Phil, I’ll introduce you to Robbie”.
Now, I recognised ‘Robbie’ before I’d been told his surname, it was Robbie McGrath, the then Irish international scrum-half. “Phil”, said Bobby, “this is Robbie McGrath. Robbie, this is Phil. Phil plays rugby too”. “Great” was the reply “and who do you play for?”. If only I’d thought to lie, but I told him the truth: “Er, North East London Polytechnic second team”. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. If McGrath had thought to laugh out loud, then he hid it well and was a generous and encouraging soul. A terrific player and a decent bloke too!
I dropped out from the polytechnic at the end of my first term before enrolling at Dundee for the following autumn and, after a year or so, I was picked for the university’s first team.
In those days, penalties around the defenders 25m line were often ‘run’ by the attacking team and not kicked for goal (muddy grounds and no kicking tee made it harder to slot home any kicks).
When penalties were ‘run’, the opposing scrum-half would tap the ball and pass it to the so-called pivot whose back was turned to the opposition. The scrum-half would then run around the pivot whilst the attacking forwards would charge en masse towards it. The point of it all was that defenders didn’t know to whom the pivot would pass the ball – the scrum-half on his run-around who would then open out play to his backs, or to one of his forwards charging at full tilt to smash into the defenders, closely followed by the rest of his pack.
Now, the pivot was always the hooker and it was the defending hooker’s job to sprint towards his ‘oppo’ as soon as their scrum-half had tapped the ball; the intention being to ‘smash’ the pivot just as he received his scrum-half’s pass.
Usually you never made it before the pivot switched the ball to his scrum-half or to one of his rampaging forwards, which is how, when sprinting at full speed, I once managed to crash-tackle Iain Angus McLeod Paxton who was also sprinting flat-out, towards me. Paxton had just been picked as the Scottish international Number 8 and that season (1981) was when he won the first of his 40 Scottish and 4 British Lions caps. We both stood up after the collision (and I was delighted that I’d stopped him so abruptly), but to this day I wonder whether he, like me, felt that every bone in his body had been dislocated? I somehow doubt it – and there’s the difference!
