Dingle Peninsula

Time for another holiday by the sea in my summer of transition. I first came across the Dingle many years ago in the David Lean movie Ryan’s Daughter. Its memorable scenes shot on the sandy beaches and isolated rugged coast of West Ireland have always stayed with me.

Dingle Beach

Here, facing the full force of the Atlantic ocean, the wind is bracing, the sea is rough, and it’s cold, despite a full late summer sun and a near cloudless sky. The precipitous cliffs drop away dramatically to the sea and there is much evidence of the power of the elements to cut into the rock creating deep fissures in the cliff face.

Cliff Face

Dingle Gin Ice Cream

In the little town of Dingle, I came across a marvellous invention. Murphy’s Dingle Gin ice cream. The subtle flavour of the juniper berries emerge as the ice cream melts in your mouth and the alcoholic kick follows as a rather pleasant aftershock. Murphy’s also does Dingle Salt ice cream which, despite first impressions from the name, is very good too – the salt seems to bring out the flavour of the vanilla and cream within which it sits, and, being big dairy country, this place is home to what can only be described as an ‘A’ level cheese shopping experience.

Basalt Rock Beach

The Dingle, and its neighbour Kerry, so remind me of my own place by the sea with its strange rock formations revealed at low tide. You can’t help being reflective in this lovely isolated place and the question of what shall I do now keeps coming into my thoughts. I want to do something but not too much.

Skellig Michael

Looking out at the ocean, the sea craggs form a dramatic skyline, and a good home for the many puffins, terns, and cormorants, and other birds, who colonise those rocks.

Skellig Michael and Little Skellig

I think sequences of Star Wars – The Force Awakens were filmed here, and Skellig Michael’s Monastery, founded in the sixth century, was active until the twelfth or thirteenth century. The monks must have been very stoical and hardy.

Who is Us?

All this is a million miles away, and a relief, from my fading working life which just gets more crackers every time I return to it. Currently, there is a planned move to a new building so the all important space allocation committee is up and running. There is much concern for fairness which has resulted in a factor plan incorporating a minimum (and maximum) measure of space allowed, the presence, or absence, of a shaft of natural light, and even a window, and the vexatious issue of the number of people sharing the space and light. Of course, there isn’t enough space so the higher-ups want some of us to work from home; the question is who is ‘us’, and how have they been chosen? I’ve given up worrying for me as I don’t count anymore but I do worry for the younger lecturers and researchers, especially the girls. They are put upon, and their goodwill is often abused. Are they the “us”?

The “Book”

On “the book”, an editor has approached me to write a text book – the commission is very clear: 200 pages, or so, fully researched and referenced, and based on my post-graduate teaching plans on organisational behaviour which have been well-received over the years. I’ve mentioned that much of the theory doesn’t seem to match my extensive consulting experience but they don’t want to know. I’m very dispirited.

An alternative text book on organisational b******* seems to be of no interest. I’m thinking about a project for my first winter of being a nothing so maybe I’ll serialise some of my cases in future blogs; maybe I’ll write novels based on them; maybe I’ll do both, what do you think? I think I’ll be one of the “us’s”.

At least working at home for me is by the sea with much natural light and space. But don’t tell the space allocation committee or the higher-ups, or I might end up like the “dead bishop” – Great Blasket island off the Dingle Peninsula:

Great Blasket Island