Much of what my company is involved in currently is out of the box thinking, they are attempting aspirational integrations with customer expectations by taking a number of ideas and flying them up the flag pole. A lot of this bouncing around of ideas has been enabled by focus groups which are working to step outside their comfort zones and push the boundaries of ways in which we can make sure that everyone is on the core message.
This buzz word strategising has given raise to buzz word bingo – how many unnecessary and meaningless phrases can you slip under the mat before they come up on the radar of the people at the think tank, and are recognised as extraction devises for waste fluids?
Some would of course argue that buzz word bingo should only be played as a team activity, individualism within this "everyone is valued" web of words is of course not encouraged, there is, after all, no I in team.
A little game to play here. Try this there is no “I” game yourself. For example if someone calls a meeting, remind them there is no “U” in meeting. Asked about whether you have work that is needed for a deadline, point out meangfully that there is no Q in work.
Like me you will discover that while this is fun, it gets dull fast. There are however ways to “notch it up a level” to what I like to refer to as “gold standard letter removal”. Comment on letters that are in words – telling people they are not. For example, if some one says “Sorry, can't help you with that” reply in a meaningful way “there is no R in sorry”. If they challenge this reply, say "yes, of course there is a literal R but metaphorically the R is absent” and walk away shaking your head.
Yours, in the locked box under the stairs
The Broken Man
Friday, 23 January 2009
Thursday, 22 January 2009
On Study
At a tutorial a few days ago I was told of a priest who had been studying Aquinas. When posted to a parish he placed all the volumes of Aquinas he owned under his bed and got on with serving his parish, not returning to them again until he retired.
I look around at my books, I read snippets of this theologian, and segments of another. I skim-read works I would like immerse myself and wonder whether, if it is deemed that I should be a parish priest, the volumes will go unread. I am an arrogant man, I believe that I am capable of being a great theologian. If I have the time to read, to study, to really think, it is my hope that other time I will be able to develop such grand sounding papers as “an integrated theology of providence and intervention in post genesis Christianity”. I would like to write things which would actually make a difference to the shape of theology, to the way church is done, to the way people think of God. A lofty and arrogant ambition indeed, and one ultimatly self-serving. Is my desire that God be known, or that I be knowing?
I find it unlikely that I will be offered a position as theologian-in-residence somewhere, with my task being predominately one of thinking with the odd lecture thrown in for good luck. My life in ministry is likely to be far more about conducting marriages and funerals, than it is about reading the works of great theologians. Maybe though, just maybe, this is a better road. Maybe it is only after 35 years of ministry that I will even begin to have a right to write on theology, and by then – I probably won't want to.
I know there has to be a balance between theory and practice. That often silence is better than speech, that its more important to learn to listen than learn to speak – and oh it’s a lesson I am in need of. I am far to much a fan of the sound of my own voice – or rather ideas (I dislike the sound of my own voice rather intensely).
So…enough rambling…I am going to go and be silent for a while
Yours as ever
The Broken Man
I look around at my books, I read snippets of this theologian, and segments of another. I skim-read works I would like immerse myself and wonder whether, if it is deemed that I should be a parish priest, the volumes will go unread. I am an arrogant man, I believe that I am capable of being a great theologian. If I have the time to read, to study, to really think, it is my hope that other time I will be able to develop such grand sounding papers as “an integrated theology of providence and intervention in post genesis Christianity”. I would like to write things which would actually make a difference to the shape of theology, to the way church is done, to the way people think of God. A lofty and arrogant ambition indeed, and one ultimatly self-serving. Is my desire that God be known, or that I be knowing?
I find it unlikely that I will be offered a position as theologian-in-residence somewhere, with my task being predominately one of thinking with the odd lecture thrown in for good luck. My life in ministry is likely to be far more about conducting marriages and funerals, than it is about reading the works of great theologians. Maybe though, just maybe, this is a better road. Maybe it is only after 35 years of ministry that I will even begin to have a right to write on theology, and by then – I probably won't want to.
I know there has to be a balance between theory and practice. That often silence is better than speech, that its more important to learn to listen than learn to speak – and oh it’s a lesson I am in need of. I am far to much a fan of the sound of my own voice – or rather ideas (I dislike the sound of my own voice rather intensely).
So…enough rambling…I am going to go and be silent for a while
Yours as ever
The Broken Man
Thursday, 15 January 2009
How it is....
The alarm goes of at 6.45am and I don’t want to get up. I sleep for another 15mins before dragging myself out of bed. Breakfast and off to work. Work pressure is high but I try to study in my lunch break. I make it home for 6.30pm and take Grace while the long suffering wife cooks. All being well by 7.30pm we have eaten. I then need to work on boxing up the flat and taking things over to my mother's. We are moving in under 14 days.
I have cancelled all the direct debits, cancelled the mortgague payment, cancelled all the bills – the letters will soon rain down on me, the final demands – but I haven’t got the money to pay the bills. Paperwork needs looking at but I haven’t the will or the time to do it. At 1am I crawl into bed, at 3am grace wakes to feed. At 6.45am the alarm goes of and I don’t want to get up. I sleep for another 15mins before dragging myself…and so it goes on.
It is the long suffering wife's birthday on the 27th. Grace’s dedication on the 1st. So much to do and right now all I want to do is sleep.
Last night the wife asked me how much I think her stomach will recover. If how it is now is how it is. She is doing the exercises from the physio – we are a long way off from where things will be but I see her struggling and there is no easy comfort I can offer. The long suffering wife was always going to struggle with a post birth body – she is a recovering annorexic on the wagon for some 10 years now. The tear of her stomach muscles though has made things so much harder, so much worse than they would have been otherwise. She has never had a positive body image and now I see her walking on a thin wire high above the world trying so hard not to fall, trying to cling on.
In a brief moment between feeds, between changed nappys, between packing boxes, between Grace with wind, I catch glimpse of my wife and daughter's eyes, brief moments, the merest hint of a smile and for a moment I lose myself in it and everything seems okay – and then I remember that there are things I need to be doing and so I drag myself out of my chair and continue the battle for survival.
Today I am struggling.
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man.
I have cancelled all the direct debits, cancelled the mortgague payment, cancelled all the bills – the letters will soon rain down on me, the final demands – but I haven’t got the money to pay the bills. Paperwork needs looking at but I haven’t the will or the time to do it. At 1am I crawl into bed, at 3am grace wakes to feed. At 6.45am the alarm goes of and I don’t want to get up. I sleep for another 15mins before dragging myself…and so it goes on.
It is the long suffering wife's birthday on the 27th. Grace’s dedication on the 1st. So much to do and right now all I want to do is sleep.
Last night the wife asked me how much I think her stomach will recover. If how it is now is how it is. She is doing the exercises from the physio – we are a long way off from where things will be but I see her struggling and there is no easy comfort I can offer. The long suffering wife was always going to struggle with a post birth body – she is a recovering annorexic on the wagon for some 10 years now. The tear of her stomach muscles though has made things so much harder, so much worse than they would have been otherwise. She has never had a positive body image and now I see her walking on a thin wire high above the world trying so hard not to fall, trying to cling on.
In a brief moment between feeds, between changed nappys, between packing boxes, between Grace with wind, I catch glimpse of my wife and daughter's eyes, brief moments, the merest hint of a smile and for a moment I lose myself in it and everything seems okay – and then I remember that there are things I need to be doing and so I drag myself out of my chair and continue the battle for survival.
Today I am struggling.
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man.
Monday, 12 January 2009
Tears after Bedtime
It seems that Grace has yet to learn how to vomit on demand. While this is a skill which most of us take in our stride, it seems that at 3 ½ weeks old there are occasions when Grace knows she wishes to be sick, but seems a little uncertain of how to go about it.
Instead of sitting down and drawing up a number of possible ways of carrying out this operation she tends to opt for screaming while sticking her tongue out intermitantly. As she screws up her eyes while doing so they look rather puffy and inclined to explode. It is not an attractive look, and as such my vocal daughter tries to avoid this model of behaviour when in company.
For visitors she sleeps, or stares wide eyed and bemused at some unidentifiable point in the room. When accompanied by the occasional smile visitors assure us that Grace is indeed very good, very lovely etc etc. They cuddle her and tell us how relaxing they find her. However, a certain time comes in the evening when the visitors have left and the vocal daughter feels she is able to drop the act.
If you can't be yourself with your family, who can you be straight with? As such she has developed a workable routine. First she pees and screams for a change. We change her. She then pees again. We affix nappy two. She then poos. We affix nappy three. She then requests food (failing to use “please”). After a short feed she indicates that she is bored and sleeps for three mins. This my wife mistakenly takes as an indication that she can stand up. Clearly this results in requests for more feeding.
Having finished feeding its time for the loo again. Discovering that this has not made her feel more comftable the vocal daughter informs us she has wind, this she does cunningly with a slightly different pitched scream while trying to knee herself repeatedly in the stomach.
10 mins or so of winding follows. Normally with nappy change. At this point the vocal daughter has a difficult choice..is it time to feed…or time to vomit? Sometimes unsure which to go for she will attempt a feed and give up to return to crying while sticking out her tongue. A state which she feels able to maintain for some considerable time before returning to the start of the procedure.
Yesterday I came in from a meeting to find the long suffering wife sitting on the sofa having been able to do little other than hold our vocal daughter as she expressed her discomfort. As the long suffering wife was unable to find a method for relieving the distress of Grace, she opted for holding her, while rocking slightly and crying herself, on the principle that, if you can't beat them, join them.
Fortunately for me the vocal daughter decided that she would indeed now vomit (just after I picked her up), and as such would return to a temporary state of calm. An extra pair of hands providing the exciting opportunity for the long suffering wife of having some extended leisure time (10 mins in the shower followed by a cup of tea).
I have of course explained at length to the vocal daughter that having informed me of her discomfort due to winding, cuddling, feeding or nappy changing, she does not need to continue to inform me of it. One short screech for each requirement is sufficient, after which a pause of at least five mins in which the need she has identified is addressed, would to my mind prove to be a far better system.
Despite careful explanations, and even on occasion’s diagrams and a pie chart, the vocal daughter has yet to grasp the finer points of my proposal. I suspect that I need to provide a flow chart for her to ensure that she fully gets to grips with my proposal.
Yours as ever
The Broken Man
Instead of sitting down and drawing up a number of possible ways of carrying out this operation she tends to opt for screaming while sticking her tongue out intermitantly. As she screws up her eyes while doing so they look rather puffy and inclined to explode. It is not an attractive look, and as such my vocal daughter tries to avoid this model of behaviour when in company.
For visitors she sleeps, or stares wide eyed and bemused at some unidentifiable point in the room. When accompanied by the occasional smile visitors assure us that Grace is indeed very good, very lovely etc etc. They cuddle her and tell us how relaxing they find her. However, a certain time comes in the evening when the visitors have left and the vocal daughter feels she is able to drop the act.
If you can't be yourself with your family, who can you be straight with? As such she has developed a workable routine. First she pees and screams for a change. We change her. She then pees again. We affix nappy two. She then poos. We affix nappy three. She then requests food (failing to use “please”). After a short feed she indicates that she is bored and sleeps for three mins. This my wife mistakenly takes as an indication that she can stand up. Clearly this results in requests for more feeding.
Having finished feeding its time for the loo again. Discovering that this has not made her feel more comftable the vocal daughter informs us she has wind, this she does cunningly with a slightly different pitched scream while trying to knee herself repeatedly in the stomach.
10 mins or so of winding follows. Normally with nappy change. At this point the vocal daughter has a difficult choice..is it time to feed…or time to vomit? Sometimes unsure which to go for she will attempt a feed and give up to return to crying while sticking out her tongue. A state which she feels able to maintain for some considerable time before returning to the start of the procedure.
Yesterday I came in from a meeting to find the long suffering wife sitting on the sofa having been able to do little other than hold our vocal daughter as she expressed her discomfort. As the long suffering wife was unable to find a method for relieving the distress of Grace, she opted for holding her, while rocking slightly and crying herself, on the principle that, if you can't beat them, join them.
Fortunately for me the vocal daughter decided that she would indeed now vomit (just after I picked her up), and as such would return to a temporary state of calm. An extra pair of hands providing the exciting opportunity for the long suffering wife of having some extended leisure time (10 mins in the shower followed by a cup of tea).
I have of course explained at length to the vocal daughter that having informed me of her discomfort due to winding, cuddling, feeding or nappy changing, she does not need to continue to inform me of it. One short screech for each requirement is sufficient, after which a pause of at least five mins in which the need she has identified is addressed, would to my mind prove to be a far better system.
Despite careful explanations, and even on occasion’s diagrams and a pie chart, the vocal daughter has yet to grasp the finer points of my proposal. I suspect that I need to provide a flow chart for her to ensure that she fully gets to grips with my proposal.
Yours as ever
The Broken Man
Monday, 5 January 2009
Back to Work
Back to work today and back to some kind of routine, at least for me.
So two weeks on, and what lessons have we learnt?
We have learnt that babies should not drink bath water. That thrashing around in the bath is not a baby's way of saying it is having fun but rather an indication that it is choking and would like to have a bit of a back rub and to spit up the bath water it has drunk.
I have also learnt that Grace is the third most popular baby name in 2008 (In England). This has, of course, left me feeling a little depressed that it’s the name we settled on - I have only ever known one person called Grace and so thought it was a safe bet.
Before the birth of my daughter, people informed me in a knowing way that you can't understand how it will change your life until you have a baby. That it will change the way you see everything and think about everything. That may happen. It may just be a delayed reaction on my part, but parenthood is as I anticipated. We do all the same things, go to the same places, we just have a baby with us when we do so. Admittedly, Grace seems to make herself the centre of attention, and serves as an invitation to strangers to say "hello" – for some reason particually in supermarkets.
While I am not a great fan of people, I have found myself prepared to listen to people telling me how beautiful she is, and I do feel rather splendid wandering around with her in a sling. I am always a little confused when people say “well done” on seeing her. Having a baby doesn’t seem like an achievement I can claim any great credit for. If she turns out to be a wonderful young lady, then I will be able to claim some credit in having brought her up well, but having merely succeded in fathering her, I feel no particualar claim to credit. People seem obsessed with telling me that she either looks like me or her mother, although I suspect that mostly, she looks like a baby.
There also seems to be a bit of a gender obsession. We do not dress her in great swathes of pink and bows. Instead she wears baby grows – mostly those from her aunt and an American friend as they are of a far higher quality than those we have got as hand-me-downs. As such, looking at her with a baby grow on, it is impossible to distinguish her gender. Yet people who refer to her as a "he" seem terribly embarssed when they ask her name and we reveal that she is indeed a she not a he. It does not create any offence on our part at all. If it bothered us we would dress her in pink as that seems to be the cue that makes the gender link for people.
As time goes on we may discover that Grace is a girly girl who likes nothing better than party frocks. Or she might prefer jeans. The choice is hers, and I have no particular desire to impose it on her from such an early age. Such outfits have far to many buttons for my liking anyway. Baby grows are a far easier option.
Ahhh.. I have just thought of one thing that came as a surprise..the number of nappies she gets through. Her record is currently at 16 in one day. We are using reusable washable nappies – which, also to our surprise, take 2-3 days to dry. This is creating a bit of a battle in trying to have enough nappies to get through each day..I did momentarily flirt with a disposable nappy when she ran out – it was a free sample – I put it on her...and, well, it was plastic and nasty in every way, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her in it, and so it was out with the safety pins and a bit of cloth for an old style nappy as opposed to the Velcro pre shapped reusables.
Well that’s it for now.
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man
So two weeks on, and what lessons have we learnt?
We have learnt that babies should not drink bath water. That thrashing around in the bath is not a baby's way of saying it is having fun but rather an indication that it is choking and would like to have a bit of a back rub and to spit up the bath water it has drunk.
I have also learnt that Grace is the third most popular baby name in 2008 (In England). This has, of course, left me feeling a little depressed that it’s the name we settled on - I have only ever known one person called Grace and so thought it was a safe bet.
Before the birth of my daughter, people informed me in a knowing way that you can't understand how it will change your life until you have a baby. That it will change the way you see everything and think about everything. That may happen. It may just be a delayed reaction on my part, but parenthood is as I anticipated. We do all the same things, go to the same places, we just have a baby with us when we do so. Admittedly, Grace seems to make herself the centre of attention, and serves as an invitation to strangers to say "hello" – for some reason particually in supermarkets.
While I am not a great fan of people, I have found myself prepared to listen to people telling me how beautiful she is, and I do feel rather splendid wandering around with her in a sling. I am always a little confused when people say “well done” on seeing her. Having a baby doesn’t seem like an achievement I can claim any great credit for. If she turns out to be a wonderful young lady, then I will be able to claim some credit in having brought her up well, but having merely succeded in fathering her, I feel no particualar claim to credit. People seem obsessed with telling me that she either looks like me or her mother, although I suspect that mostly, she looks like a baby.
There also seems to be a bit of a gender obsession. We do not dress her in great swathes of pink and bows. Instead she wears baby grows – mostly those from her aunt and an American friend as they are of a far higher quality than those we have got as hand-me-downs. As such, looking at her with a baby grow on, it is impossible to distinguish her gender. Yet people who refer to her as a "he" seem terribly embarssed when they ask her name and we reveal that she is indeed a she not a he. It does not create any offence on our part at all. If it bothered us we would dress her in pink as that seems to be the cue that makes the gender link for people.
As time goes on we may discover that Grace is a girly girl who likes nothing better than party frocks. Or she might prefer jeans. The choice is hers, and I have no particular desire to impose it on her from such an early age. Such outfits have far to many buttons for my liking anyway. Baby grows are a far easier option.
Ahhh.. I have just thought of one thing that came as a surprise..the number of nappies she gets through. Her record is currently at 16 in one day. We are using reusable washable nappies – which, also to our surprise, take 2-3 days to dry. This is creating a bit of a battle in trying to have enough nappies to get through each day..I did momentarily flirt with a disposable nappy when she ran out – it was a free sample – I put it on her...and, well, it was plastic and nasty in every way, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her in it, and so it was out with the safety pins and a bit of cloth for an old style nappy as opposed to the Velcro pre shapped reusables.
Well that’s it for now.
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man
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