Category: Weeknotes

Short weeknotes this week, in which June felt like January, essays were being finalised and plans for a busy summer of research and new clients were coming together.

A few things continue to get to me this week and I’m still pondering what to do about them:

• Observing the unfolding leadership contest of the Conservative party is like watching a dreadful Etonion Inbetweeners movie

• It’s not news when Trump tweets some faux-pinion (like last night, when he again called Sadiq Khan a ‘disaster’, citing Katie Hopkins as his evidence base. Predictably, this briefly topped the BBC News website. But this cannot be news. I wish the mainstream media would grow an flippin’ pancreas and not let their blood sugar spike based on any old regurgi-twaddle that comes out of that man’s mouth.

In more prosaic news, I switched to Todoist to manage my daily tasks about a month ago and now I can’t live without it. The raspberry bushes started fruiting in spite of the gloomy skies, and I’m squirrelling away the fruit that doesn’t end up in my mouth into the freezer for turning into ice cream.

The Pink Singers performed incredibly on Saturday night as usual, accompanied by the elegant Omphalos Voices from Perugia. I would love groups like these to be able to use their musical prowess to reach larger audiences and help tackle some of the awful polarisation in our society (which have led, it was reported this week, to a huge surge in homophobic hate crimes). Understanding the complex underlying reasons behind this rise is key to making sure all our flourishing LGBTQ organisations can effectively act to counter this kind of behaviour.

The week began with running a workshop that was regularly interrupted by the din of Trump’s helicoptercade (is that a word?). Three giant choppers streaking across the sky without regard. I suppose it’s easy to misinterpret the protesters as supporters from that high up, far away from the signs. A reminder to the more sane of us to get up close and personal with our critics (and friends) whenever we can.

A lot of self-directed work besides: re-reading about management research methodology, ethics, and planning to recruit some critical friends for my final MBA project, writing up some progress reports for live work.

Went to see Jonny Woo’s all-star Brexit cabaret which was pretty clever and featured music written by the lovely Richard Thomas. Turns out that making consistently laugh-out-loud comedy out of the Brexit situation is quite a challenge, though – the best response an artist can hope for is bittersweet puzzlement, I think, given the complex set of emotions this particular topic arouses. A short-lived belly-laugh, stifled by the suffocating horror of the reality of the political situation unfolding here in the UK.

This made me reflect on a song I adapted for the Barberfellas in April – a barbershop reworking of Erasure’s Love To Hate You featuring Theresa May dancing, Juncker, face masks – the whole bit. The audience response was earnest but a bit flat. We decided we’re going to shelve the song. A shame, given the work we put into it, but it was hard to get the complexity of Brexit across in just a few minutes through the lyrics I put together. Richard Thomas did, of course, a far better job than I in Woo’s cabaret, but nonetheless: suffered a similar audience fate I think.

Of course, art is not just for cheap laughs, though – and it’s testament to its quality that Woo & Thomas’ work has stayed with me all week and reignited the flame of ‘What am I doing to deepen the nuance of conversation on Brexit and improve political discourse in the UK?’. The answers to date are, pitifully, ‘I wrote this song!’ and ‘I signed that revoke petition’. This isn’t enough.

Perhaps we just need to continue sing the song, accept that nearly all art is political, and get the conversation started.

Also had the privilege to see Armistead Maupin at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern answering Q&A to coincide with the new Netflix series of Tales of the City. The stories in Tales are, of course, ridiculous, but the life Maupin breathes into his characters and the worlds he evokes are incredibly rich – I close my eyes and I’m in 70s or 80s (or beyond) San Francisco.  

On the roof garden: there is precisely one strawberry, the raspberries and blackberries are starting to gain some colour, the (late) tomatoes are growing, and rocket is starting to emerge. Bees have discovered the lavender and there are more birds starting to hang about.

Just dribbled tea on my t-shirt, which must mean it’s time for another.

This week was spent mostly in Trondheim, Norway with my barbershop group the Barberfellas. We were invited to perform with Kor Hen, Trondheim’s queer choir and they were the most gracious hosts, organising hikes, city tours, social events and so on. I also led a workshop on barbershop singing and surprised myself by how much I enjoyed doing that. Our joint gig was packed to the rafters with an incredibly warm audience of around 150 people.

Kor Hen’s leader is Gunnhild Hasunds, an accomplished musician and singer of impressive vocal range – a chilled Sunday morning listening to her SoundCloud is time well spent.

One of the highlights of Trondheim was a 12-mile walk around Bymarka, where the locals go for a quick weekend ski in winter. We stopped off for hot dogs sitting by a roaring fire (it was about 4°C) in one of the cabins. The views of the lakes, trees and fjords were very soothing. We also briefly visited Hell, but there wasn’t very much there aside from a train station and it was chillier than we’d expected.

Not too much work this week, but a little prep for what will be a busy one coming up. In study world, met up with my MBA buddies and chatted in the sunshine about our next assignment which is due in a little over two weeks.

A back-burner project finally came to fruition after over a year of conversations about rights & royalties: the Pink Singers album that I was project lead on is now available via streaming services like Spotify, Deezer etc.

For the choir, this initiative was mostly to help new people discover the group, as we don’t expect to make any money from it. On a personal level, I learned a bit from this work about how to release music in the age of streaming, about the differences between mechanical and performance rights, and about contracts with session musicians. And that patience works in the end.

My favourite songs on the album are our cover of Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell (arranged by Chris Chambers) and Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush (which I arranged). Both incredibly reflective songs – I hope we do them justice as a choir.

I’ve been doing weeknotes for myself for a couple of years now – for me, because reflection is the best way to learn and adapt. I also suggest to many of my clients that they try them out.

So, I’m experimenting with going public to practice what I preach. Let’s see how we go.

Work

A relatively busy one this week with a series of coaching sessions (and the consequent write-ups, research and reflections); running the second in a series of innovation workshops with client Mozart; and dealing with a couple of new leads for Triple Sharp coming in – some via some very long-lost colleagues.

Another blast from the past: Little Printer being resurrected by Nord projects. This news stirred up all kinds of memories from working on this back in 2011-12 at BERG: the talent, culture, tenacity and yes, stress, involved in rapidly developing a physical product and its ecosystem. I learned so much working on Little Printer about supply chain, logistics, the challenges of designing physical products, about finance and pricing and much more besides. The whole project provided concrete experience on which to reflect whilst studying for my MBA that really helped cement my learning.

(incidentally BERG was the first place I made public weeknotes too – one of the many things I learned from the mighty Matt, Matt, Jack, Nick, Denise & the crew)

Study

Having finished the final residential school of my MBA, I have two assignments remaining – the final-level bosses – so the end is in sight. My next tasks are assembling a set of critical friends for my final project and iteratively designing my research. Unhelpfully I have started browsing other degrees I might start next. Perhaps I should focus on finishing this one first.

The non-work

We also had Harry, Anya and Mike to stay and I enjoyed peeking into their lives and labours. I caught up with Matt for a natter and to hear the latest news from FutureLearn, where a new investor has just been announced, valuing the organisation at £100m. Not bad for a company that started with about 9 of us in a windowless basement getting high on whiteboard pen whiff.

On Friday night I caught Kings Cross Remix, a performance by Tom Marshman at the Camden Peoples Theatre. It was a really immersing show evoking queer Kings Cross in the 1980s and 90s, culminating in a boogie to 80s tunes with fellow theatre-goers evoking the atmosphere of The Bell.

Other stuff this week: I added band parts to the disco anthem I’ve arranged for the upcoming Pink Singers concert. I also purchased, assembled and filled a VegTrug for our little balcony to grow some salad / all our food for the impending political meltdown. It’s expensive for some bits of wood, but I’m not handy that way and it was easy enough to put together. I’m looking forward to learning how to grow a bunch of different stuff. I’m finding gardening to be a very soothing break from all the political turmoil of the world (predictable late-30s statement).

Also managed to watch some of Special (jury’s still out) and Years and Years (extremely bad for my blood pressure).