Here’s an essential reminder for these strange times (courtesy of the Adam Smith Institute):
No one at all is looking at UK government policy and deciding that oooooh, no, we don’t like that, we’ll punish them into not doing it. … There are no vigilantes, just people trying to decide what your promises will do to the value of money and thus home in on the price at which you can have some of their money.”
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash
Only slightly mixed feelings last Friday as I said farewell to five of my guitars.
I haven’t played properly in a few years and, for most of those years, I had been telling myself, “You’re a writer. You could weave the most compelling story for each and sell them on eBay or Reverb.” Instead, they hung or lounged around my office collecting dust and muttering at me with their dead and unplayed strings.
Then, three things happened. I tidied and redecorated my office, resulting in the instruments huddling all together in one corner, looking at me ever more balefully. They deserved to be played. They deserved a better home.
Then, my old guitar tutor popped up on email. We hadn’t spoken in years and, in the course of the exchange he said “you only need two guitars: an electric and an acoustic.”
Now, in my dreams, once I had started to play again and reached some level of passable competence, I have (not had) always promised myself a 1964 Fender Stratocaster. Not investment grade, a well-loved “player’s” guitar would do as long as it’s original in the important places. So I regularly receive emails from No.Tom Guitars, a vintage specialist on London’s Denmark Street (and, in fact, the shop that features in the TV detective series Strike).
This time, their monthly mail of delicious objects had a footnote: “We want your old guitars.”
The upshot is that I sold five to the very nice Mr No Tom, and kept two; my 1981 Tokai Springy Sound ST-80 (if you know, you know – it’s a dream of a guitar with all the classic Strat bark and jangle) and my Yamaha APX electro-acoustic. What’s more, because I didn’t want to be embarrassed on collection day, I braved the ouchy fingers and managed to pull together a half-passable Sweet Home Alabama, just in case.
And I have new strings.
I feel lighter in every way (except my bank account).
And, if you feel you missed out, four of the guitars are here:
1980 Tokai Springy Sound ST-60
2007 Fender Classic Players 60s Stratocaster
What is it about “old school”? It sounds like it should be an insult, but it almost never is. Old School is professional, it’s standards, it’s a lot of things we’ve been told before (as children?) but somehow most of us have forgotten.
I’ve just finished Nicholas Bate’s latest Compact Guide, Old School: Future-proof yourself, and it is excellent. An easy, fast, first-read but a guide you’ll come back to time and time again.
Of course (because it chimes so readily with “old school”), there are plenty of Stoic principles within, but there’s lots more, too.
Now, I wish I’d purchased the full series.
Check it (or them) out on Amazon, here.
Posting for no other reason than that I’m irrationally happy with the result.
The books are in complete chaos – the Library Project has become more urgent, but no nearer resolution – and the walls you can’t see remain a mess, but tangible progress has been made.
Fascinating. I’ve just finished Execupundit Michael Wade’s new novel, Pilate’s Magician.
Julian Fabius is a prominent Roman lawyer living in self-imposed exile from the Emperor Tiberius. The novel explores the dilemma he faces when summoned to support the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. How do you make sense of an unlikely local tale? And, how do you tell the powerful prefect an unpalatable truth? A lawyerly mind strips away the impossible to arrive at an unlikely truth.
I suspect the book draws as heavily on Michael’s experience as an adviser on sensitive issues as it does on his extensive research. A fresh and entertaining perspective on a familiar tale.
Over on LinkedIn, a friend and former Microsoft colleague, Jamie Rawlings, hosted an interesting discussion on the “uncomfortable by design” life stage of middlescence – a time for “grace and space”. Along with fellow, former Softie Charbel Fakhoury he talks about the stage of life when thoughts turn from “What do I do?” to “Who am I, now?” with all the accompanying restlessness and sense of dissatisfaction. It’s a fascinating, 45-minute chat which, hopefully, you can view, here.
Jamie now has the delightful title of The Liminal Coach. You may find him wandering along shorelines, the edges of dark forests, or indeed on the marches of middlescence.
I’ve always loved the concept of liminal space – “between or belonging to two different places, states, etc.” as the Cambridge Dictionary has it – standing on the threshold of a different place. It can be the ocean shoreline or the edge of a dark forest. In literature there’s often a boundary – The Wall in Game of Thrones or in Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. The Hedge in The Fellowship of the Ring (at the beginning of chapter 6) sticks in my mind. Despite the small strangenesses already encountered by the hobbits, it is the hedge, and the old forest beyond, that really marks the transition to a different world beyond the cosy Shire. Maybe Platform 9 3/4, King’s Cross Station is a liminal space. In China Miéville’s strange novel The City & The City, everywhere feels liminal.
Sometimes, liminal is between two states – land and sea, life and death, familiar and strange – and sometimes it’s between points in time.
Photos: Andrew Munro
“Nothing in war,” Moshe Dayan said, “happens in a straight line.”
… You and I must teach ourselves to be comfortable working in darkness and in crooked lines.
Sage words from Steven Pressfield’s Writing Wednesdays.
Photo by gokhan polat on Unsplash
This is the way the world ends, not with a whim but a banker.
Paul Desmond (1924-1977), quoted in Steven Pinker’s When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…
Not inspirational, for a change, but simply delicious word-play. To quote the passage in Pinker’s fascinating book, it is “the musician Paul Desmond’s comment on women who marry for money rather than romance.”
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If you want peace, prepare for war.
Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De Re Militari (4th or 5th century AD)
Obviously, this is a horribly pertinent hindsight for the UK and western Europe right now, but it’s also very relevant for we sovereign professionals. If you want a peaceful life and career, you need to make preparation for hard times and adversity: savings, of course, but also mental resilience, tenacity, a warm network of contacts, alternative – if less lucrative – sources of income.
Para bellum.
Photo by British Library on Unsplash
