Could you just say a few words please?

Thanking family and friends for coming to a birthday celebration, giving a FOTB (father-of-the-bride) speech, entertaining after dinner, introducing an honoured guest … the list of occasions when just saying a few words is not just appropriate but downright essential goes on. Those are just the some of ones I’ve had to do within the last couple of years.

Now the mechanics of human behaviour and psychology make it a most precarious business. Staring someone straight in the eyes with a blank expression and making no sound is received as a threat gesture – if you don’t believe me, try it on someone - preferably someone you know, a stranger may be a martial arts expert and react as if being threatened!

“Come on – gather round”, so now you’ve got a whole group advancing on you, looking you in the eye, without smiling. Underneath the intelligent, thinking, organising brain, there’s a basic animal survival one that takes over when you’re in danger and, let me tell you, if you have three, never mind thirty odd people coming towards you displaying apparent threat behaviour that basic part of the brain decides you’re in serious danger and whips into over-drive, getting you ready to “fight or flee”. Adrenaline is pumped, heart rate goes up, breathing gets deeper, and thinking is pushed aside to make way for instinct. So just at the moment you wanted all your wits about you to deliver a really good little fireside-chat/speech/monologue you’re in the grip of that which was developed to help the frog escape the hungry snake.

How to cope? Be ready for the body’s violent response and prepare the words, the gestures, the tone of voice and everything else in advance. I actually write down every word of a speech before giving it, even the “Hello and good day to you all.” That way I can play with the structure, the words, and the oratorical tricks in rehearsal mode, having them all polished and ready for when adrenalin takes control. After the greeting, trying something witty or funny, no matter whether it’s plagiarised, is a great idea, as many of those faces confronting you may well break into a smile, and that is a “welcome” signal – so you tell the joke to make the audience smile in order to make yourself feel better! Don’t forget to smile back.

Research has shown that people tend to remember what was said during a talk in the first forty and the last thirty seconds; sometimes there’s about twenty seconds in the middle where messages get through too. So, if you must speak for more than a minute and a half, (but please try not to) those are the places to get the key ideas in. Look at Bernard Montgomery’s inspirational “here I am” speech to the Eighth Army for an outstanding example of clarity in a few words if you don’t believe you can get over what you want to say in that tlme, the humour was there too, even if of the “gallows” variety.

“Could you just say a few words please?” The answer’s yes, but make them few and concentrate on saying them well.

So that’s it then, I’m officially old.

I’ve finally achieved the age at which Her Majesty’s Government give me a pension. They’ve renamed it “The State Pension” but it’s still called the “Old-Age Pension”, most notably by relatives and friends who want to irritate me, which, thanks to vanity, they succeed in doing. But Old-Age Pension used to be its official title.

Now how do I come to terms with this - the hour glass having been turned enough times (569,784 and yes, I had to do that) - to clock up sixty-five years? Have a party to share the moment? Yes, ok, done that. Eat and drink more sensibly? I don’t think so. Go out, to buy a pipe and a pair of slippers? Errr, you want me to start smoking again and sit around a lot, no thanks. I know, let me do something outside the box and get a job. Since the whole idea of getting a pension is supposedly to stop working, that would seem to be an appropriately contrarian thing to do.

So I have. And it’s not stacking shelves in the local supermarket for a couple of hours a day either, it’s a full time, full on, engage brain and keep your wits about you job; but more about that another time, this is about dancing with the years.

The next thing is to realize that there is not a d****d thing I can do about it – the physical clocks run on and everything is forced to keep pace with them, there is no escape and no such thing as a time machine. Yet.

Finally, for today, there is the realization that I don’t feel different. Different from what? Well, umm, err, how I used to feel, I think, as far as I can remember. But I do feel different from how my grandparents felt at this age. Both grandfathers had shuffled off, grannie had become a catalogue of aches and pains, albeit an energetic one and I don’t recall grandma in any other pose but seated. As an over-active child, I can recall urging grannie to “do it just once more” whatever "it" may have been, and when wanting to know why the answer was in the negative, getting the response “you’ll know when you get old!” Which led me to ponder how I would know when I had crossed the magic line and become old myself. And then I spotted it. Old people climbed stairs one at a time. In my eight-year-old eyes, there probably wasn’t much difference between being an adult and being old, but I was convinced that the holy grail of age measurement had been found. I had discovered an acid test – when I started climbing stairs in singles, that would be it, no going back, youth would have flown and given way to … what exactly … well another piece of eight-year-old inspiration arrived … oldth.

This is Lebanon, and there are regular power cuts. When I returned from a short errand a few days ago there was no lift, so nothing for it but the stairs. So powerful was that distant revelation that off I set up seven flights, still two at a time!

There hasn’t been a power cut today. Yet.

Listening to the Australian Open

Hopes riding on Andy Murray, the early part of today was scheduled for savouring or agonising over each point played in the Melbourne tennis tournament final – otherwise known as the Australian open

Mr. Murray didn’t have a good day. His third tennis grand slam final and third loss. Not much consolation, but that makes him by far the best male tennis player Britain has produced in three generations. And he’s only twenty-three.

Now there were various options for my vicarious participation. The BBC has a web-page where each game is summarised by a paragraph, but there is a delay of about four or five minutes, so although good, it’s hardly live ball by ball commentary. BBC 5 do a live broadcast of many sporting events, but instead of broadcasts of the main tent items of tennis' big four, there’s a recorded message that says “due to contractual reasons, you are not allowed to receive this program in your area”. Eurosport with Arabic commentary is one of the channels my cable provider offers, so that gave me a visual. And then I had an idea …

Google Australian Open, go to web-site, find AO radio button and lo! and behold, real-time live commentary. That’s it then, EuroSport picture and AO commentary. Except that the AO delay over the internet was just long enough that the voice over was pretty well always for the previous point to the one I was watching. Not too bad as I could then play a game with myself to see if I could spot what the commentators were going to say. Sadly I could – "Murray’s not playing at his best". Weeeell maybe not, but Kolya wasn't letting him either.

While things still seemed pretty equal, the Aussie commentator read out an email from someone in, I think, Macedonia and mused about the number of countries that must be listening. I couldn’t resist it, off goes an email from me “Thanks guys, keep talking, I’m sitting here in Lebanon, able to visualize the match between a Serb and a Scot in Australia – great commentary” or some such. A good hour later when the writing was well and truly on the wall in day-glow paint and hopes gone so far South that penguins were sighted round them, the commentator read out my email “Hey here’s another country to add to the list, Graham in Lebanon says [my email] … pity he can’t visualize Murray turning this round.”

There’s the (probably apocryphal) story of another famous Scot, Robert the Bruce, watching a spider re-build her web and vowing to learn from her determination and come back from a reversal. He learned the lesson so well, he became Scotland’s King.

I hope Mr. Murray knows his Scottish folk lore as, ever hopeful, I’m looking forward to Roland Garros – the French tennis open – and another chance for Britain’s number one men’s player.

Let's tax again

Finished it at last!

At something of a crossroads in life over twenty years ago, I did a bit of soul searching. I realized that being rich was not an ambition, just having enough money to enable me to spend time doing those things I enjoyed. So, I stopped trying (not having bothered that much anyway). In hindsight, the logic was pretty stupid, I’ve NEVER had enough cash to do all the things I enjoy. I suppose what I really meant was that I didn’t and don’t get a kick out of reading bank statements with lots of noughts all written in black. Put more succinctly, I make money to spend not to keep and count.

Partly as a result of that wayward thinking, my financial affairs are not that complicated. Nevertheless, once a year, I have to report them to the taxman.

It isn’t all just numbers, wading through the differences between “resident but not ordinarily resident”, “non-resident but domiciled” and “domiciled, ordinarily resident but a non-resident landlord” is necessary before the full stop symbol is allowed to become a decimal point. That last one describes me, by the way, (non-resident landlord not a decimal point!) in Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) speak.

Talking of HMRC, HM Customs had, and may still have for that matter, powers so Draconian that those of the notorious Nazi SS were modeled on them. Under the name of Customs and Excise, they had the right of entry to search any premises, private or business, at any time, under their own authority and without having to give a reason. It’s best not to mess with them then.

With that last thought in mind, out came the full armoury of bank statements, spreadsheets and receipts, all marshalled under the leadership of MicroSoft Money before the well-checked numbers were fed into another piece software, TaxCalc which in turn talks to Mother, otherwise known as HMRCs master computer for receiving on-line tax returns.

When Mother speaks you listen and obey. This year she was kind, announcing that I had overpaid tax. Would I perchance like to leave it with her, or gave it to charity, or (be sure about this) would I like it back? Such is the power of HMRC that I actually gave the question a few milliseconds thought before plumping for having it back and by electronic transfer immediately please not a cheque in the post. No, Mother, please do not misinterpret what I said before as a dislike of money - oh no, not at all.

It used to take my father a week, with not just the dining room table but the floor of that room being littered with papers and a menacing buff form before his Eureka moment of … "It's done for this year!"

So what I've finished is the tax return and not all my cash yet.

Burns' night in Lebanon

Who was the greatest Scot of all time?

William Wallace, subject of Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart”, Alexander Graham Bell, scientist and inventor, David Livingstone, explorer and … there’s a pretty long list of candidates from the worlds of science, politics, literature and entertainment.

He who got the vote in a recent Scottish TeleVision survey was a chap known to Scots to this day simply as the Bard, Robert (“Rabbie”) Burns by name. Like Mozart, he lived only until his thirties, often pursued by a whiff of poverty, was much taken by the ladies (thirteen known offspring by five women according to some sources) and, in spite of all that, he managed to leave behind a large body of work, full of insight into his fellow man and woman. We all know some, at the least a ragged struggle through Auld Lang Syne’s chorus each New Year.

His most abiding achievement though was to inspire an annual worldwide party in his honour, still going strong over two-hundred and twenty odd years after his death. Yesterday was the day, and Scots all over the world, celebrate with a “Burns’ Supper” on the night of each 25th January. They generously extend the fun, the food, the whisky, the speeches, the poems and the dancing to other nationalities (yes even the English!).

Never mind wit, charm, ability and a devotion to hard work, such a celebrated memory takes a really serious dose of charisma. Absolutely no sign of an annual Shakespeare’s breakfast, a Newton’s lunch or even a Churchill’s dinner.

HM Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, is an ex-pat Scot, an attentive hostess and an apparently indefatigable Scottish country dancer and she’d invited us to join her gathering for the evening. So there we were, my wife and I, fuelled on Cock a Leekie soup, haggis (yes haggis! heaven only knows how) and of course the Scottish national tipple, out on her floor, frantically trying to follow the twists and turns of the “Dashing White Sergeant”.

And it was really good fun as well as being a splendid antidote to the rather tense situation on the streets in the last few days.

Would Burns get my vote for the greatest Brit, should anyone ask me? Well, anyone who can engender that much entertainment and bonhomie for more than a couple of hundred years has to be in the running.

I should be on a flight

... to Saudi Arabia. Right now. I’m not supposed to be here at all.

So what happened? It was announced yesterday that Lebanon had a new Prime Minister in waiting, the cabinet of the previous one having fallen apart a couple of weeks ago, as described in “Collapse of a Coalition”. There must have been some horse trading behind the scenes, as one of the groups supporting the downed executive announced a change of allegiance. This isn’t the first time that group has changed sides. I’m reminded of the Churchill quote, after he’d crossed the floor of House of Commons for the second time - “Anyone can rat but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat!”

In looking for the precise words of that quote, I came across another of his many recorded utterances “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.”

But that is precisely what people here are most afraid of and the first omen of the morning was not propitious. A text message arrived warning that the supporters of the previous government were being exhorted to “take to the streets”.

In anticipation of something like that happening and it getting out of hand, three of us who were going to a business meeting had decided during yesterday evening to postpone it rather than risk getting stuck outside, separated from family, duties and responsibilities here. It was probably the right thing to do, as even if all the fuss blows over and nothing happens, the ability to focus to perform at one’s best is stretched and distorted by worrying about possibilities over which we have no control.

And that’s why I’m here, tapping at my keyboard seven floors above a strangely quiet street that should be bustling at this time in the morning rather than almost empty. Let’s hope that the present can part amicably from the past in the very near future.

I’ve never been to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but have resolved it’s merely a postponement and not a cancellation.

Elfin Safety, sir, it's more than my Jobsworth

It’s a bit narcissistic, but I’ve been reading past entries in this, my very own blog.

I think it’s a turn of the year thing, looking back at achievements or lack of them in 2010. One conclusion stands out, I have some pet likes and pet hates. The hates seem to include being told what to do rather than persuaded: see the improved and upgraded services pieces if you want to know more. Another is the close cousin of the instructing petty dictators, the “jobsworths”. And then there are the Health and Safety Act (usually pronounced Elfin Safety) industry workers.

Maybe a bit of defining is needed here; you’ve all heard the expression, “it’s more than my than job’s worth to do that, sir!” Translation - “of course I know how to do that, and could if I wanted to, but I’m not. So nah-nah-na-nah-na to you.” Well a perpetrator of that approach is a jobsworth.

“Could you send someone to clean the outside of my windows please?” This for a flat in central London. “Well we’d need scaffolding, which will need an erection permit, and a parking suspension permit to deliver the scaffolding and there’s insurance against injury to passers by and then another permit to get the scaffolding down.” “But it’s on the first floor! How do the top floor people get on? Whatever happened to the friendly local window cleaner with ladders, a bucket and a well worn piece of chamois leather? Can’t you just send some-one to wash them.” “The ‘Elfin Safety’ act requires it, sir. It’s more than my job’s worth even to ask one of our men to take a look.”

And then there’s the approach in Lebanon. I watched in horror as a maid of all work climbed onto the balcony guard rail of the appartment opposite, without any kind of safety harness, hung precariously onto the top of the hinged windows and cleaned away at the outside of each in turn. Perhaps I should say that our flat is seven floors up. I got pins and needles in the soles of my feet just watching her ersatz high wire act.

So which is the right way to go about things? Is it the strangulation at source of any kind of personal risk or the attitude of the circus performer who does away with the safety net?

Some years ago I tripped over a sawn-off tree trunk stub; no more than six inches tall (15 cms), it was sitting there in the middle of a pavement, silently minding its own business. I was sober, honestly, but it was night time and there’d been a power cut so no street lighting. My left foot caught it while striding at full throttle. Next I’m doing a Harry-Potter-on-a-broomstick impression, but, as I was without a broomstick things ended quickly and painfully when I did a three point crash landing; the three points were right elbow, left knee and a glasses case in an inside pocket. The pained obscenities drew the assistance of a couple of policemen who helped me wheezing to my feet, the glasses case had cracked a couple of ribs.

“Who can I sue for this?” I asked a lawyer friend the next day. She’d practiced in the UK and here in Lebanon. First there was a confused silence and then gentle laughter. “There’s no Elfin Safety Act here, and it’s more than my job’s worth to try to sue anyone in local government.”