Memories are all that are left now of Christmas just past, and today is the feast of Epiphany, 12th night, when all the decorations must be taken down. It is the end of our festivities.
Forget eating the traditional Epiphany “Galette de Rois,” we have two Tunnock’s tea cakes left to celebrate and then that’s it until next Christmas.
If you’ve just had your first day back at work and you need a moment of zen, click on December’s postcard or this link for a final look at Christmas past.
To everyone, Christmas greetings and many thanks for all the helpful comments on The Trial blogs. Wherever you are, here’s hoping that you have a peaceful and happy New Year, and you keep reading my blog.
The coming Chinese New Year – 5th February – is auspicious. It celebrates the year of the pig. And reader, the pigs could be flying in 2019 as there are plans to publish The Trial in the summer.
Then it’s the launch party and off to Hollywood.
As a loyal member of the readers’ panel, you can claim your complimentary copy of the first edition.
The last five blogs have introduced you to the murky world of London in the late 19th century when the trial took place.
We have had a glimpse of the powerful and aspiring professions – lawyers, administrators, doctors – institutional life and formed public opinion.
We have seen the beginnings of a malevolent force swirling around a great London Teaching Hospital to blunt the formation of a new profession, nursing.
This London Teaching Hospital became the crucible of the black art of organisational politics where gender, class and religious tensions fuelled the inter and intra-professional disputes that culminated in a nurse being tried for manslaughter.
This 19th century story resonates to this very day.
Want to know more about the intricacies of medical and nursing politics?
Summer Greetings to all, and welcome to my new readers – old friends and training alumni.My retirement plans are stepping up a gear and to help me on my way, 2017 is the year of reunions. I’ve been to two this month and there are another four pencilled in over the summer and autumn.
It’s been great fun seeing people you trained and worked with over the last 40 years. Much has changed in society, of course, but we are, at our heart, still the same people we were when we were younger. 
Meditating on an exhausting working life that has now passed is punctuated with walks along the beach and cliff tops, dozing in the hammock, and working in the garden. It’s a soothing poultice but I am still haunted by the people I have encountered in the course of my work.
As a serial course attendee, a habit of a lifetime, I’ve been on a course about publishing, finding a literary agent, and all things complicated and new about making a book. “What is your book’s genre?” has been the opening question at each workshop and I have found myself a bit stuck. “Oh, it’s early days; I’m still finding my way,” I stutter in reply. Perhaps you can help me?
I could write an academic tome about dysfunctional organisations and people. Chapter 1 “About the Author” meditates on this approach and rejects it as it will be very dry and will probably gather dust on some library shelf, unloved and unread, for years before it’s put in the skip.
I’ve been trying to explain my work through a more light-hearted case study approach set in the mythical St. Angela’s University Teaching Hospital – a viper’s nest of political behaviours; see Chapters 2, 3, 4. I’ve had positive feedback but I’m at a moment of choice:
Should this book be more of a fact-based fiction, or should it be something with a feel of a thriller? Please let me know what you think.
I’m off to plan the veggies for this summer’s table and to prepare the next instalment of Chapter 5 – dealing with Prima Donnas. Then, it’s down to the beach for a stroll and a lemon curd ice cream.
After 40 years hard work, I’m resting by the sea and reflecting on times gone by. I’ve been a traveller you see in the topsy turvey world of changing organisations. I’ve laboured, I’ve taught, I’ve researched, I’ve advised, and I’ve been roundly biffed, as you have, in many reorganisations.
As a retiring academic, I’m supposed to write The Book — a well-researched and referenced tome — drawing together theory and practice in organisational power and politics. Well, having thought about it, I can tell you no-one will read it. It will just gather dust on a few shelves before it is consigned to the bin of history. So, after much thought, I’m going to draw on my rich experiences and write novels — much more fun.
So, come and join me, here by the sea, and hear my stories of the dynamics of power and biffo politics as we journey first to the dark heart of St. Angela’s University Teaching Hospital and all its goings on, then to the Western Theatre to meet its sweet and highly emotional people, and finally, to the mother of all mismatched mergers and its enduring warring tribes.
The posts come once a month but I’ll send beach and weather reports now and then on twitter @AGbythesea
It just gets harder to make new friends as you get older so I’m grateful that so many of my old friends and colleagues going back over the last 40 years are still in touch. Well, at last, I’ve almost retired. I’ve finished teaching, and I’ve got a few bits and pieces to complete and then it’s time for my novels. I’ve been promising myself for many years that I would take up novel writing as well as reading. The book walls litter my house so it’s time to make a dent in them.
I have been so fortunate that my job has allowed me to jump into many established networks. And, thank you to those who have awarded me lifetime achievement medals. Such recognition brings a warm glow. I hope you will enjoy the gobbets, and even recognise some of them as shared experiences of horrifying behaviours that we have had to sort out. I think we made, on the whole, quite a good fist of it. It has been a pleasure working with you.
And to all my fellow conference attenders, welcome. It has been great fun getting to know you and how you have coped with your difficult organisational problems. I have learnt much from our discussions, and, as a retiree, I hope I can still join you in the future as a conference junkee. I hope you enjoy the gobbets, and, when you have time, let me know your vignettes and I’ll weave them in.
After all these years of teaching on Monday mornings, I’ve stopped. Yes, I’ve retired. I still can’t believe that I can now sleep in late after the weekend, and that I don’t have to fight my way onto the packed train to get to my teaching room on time. I don’t have to line up for coffee, and I don’t have to search for the AV technician to load up my slides.
And, dear students, I don’t have to mark all those essays and exam scripts that you carefully put together for me. Most were very good to read and nothing pleases a teacher more than to be presented with a well-researched and written essay. I do miss you all and it is a delight when I get news of your progress. I know you will all do well.
As you know, it is very hard to teach organisational politics without it becoming as dry as dust, so, I’ve taken some of my case work to illustrate the dynamics of power and the genesis of dysfunctionality, and set them out for you in gobbets taken from my forthcoming novel. I hope you enjoy them.
The Angry Seas
The winter storms have arrived and the steel grey sea is being whipped into a mass of white frothy foam before it crashes in pounding waves on the rocks. The leaden sky is streaked now and then with a shaft of light from a weak winter sun which gives the sea a strange silvery illumination. It can be quite spooky.
You really feel nature’s force here as the jet-stream fuelled winds barrel over the ocean to batter this exposed coastline and discharge its watery load. Winter has arrived.
Hole in the Wall
A couple of years ago, one particular storm was so powerful, the sea reached in and greedily gathered the boulders on the shoreline, dragged them out to the deep, and then rushed back in a fury and threw the stones at the shore, and our little harbour wall. It was a clean bowl and the resulting hole in the wall was quite sculptural, but devastating to witness.
Calm After the Storm
Once the storm has blown itself out, and moved on, calm does return. The damage done is there for all to see, and to remind us of who is really in charge. Such storms give you time to reflect as you shelter inside.
The Brawn
After a marvellous summer of travelling, I’m here back at my beach house again and all is calm before the winter storms arrive. The Brawn, a local landmark, is still there standing defiant against the waves.
Paddle Boarders
The paddle-boarders are out, enjoying the last of the warm summer sea, which is so crystal clear that you can see the rock formations similar to those in the Dingle. And the sheltered landing for the local hobbyist fishermen has been repaired so they can stand on the rock fishing for sea bass in the evening to their heart’s content.
Sheltered Landing Bay
Rich memories of this summer include the ubiquitous lobster and sea food in Boston, the instantly refreshing Aperol and Prosecco spritzers in Trani, and the ‘A’ level cheese experience in the Dingle.
Boston’s Finest Seafood
Dingle’s Finest Cheeses
And my first attempt at growing vegetables has been successful. I’ve had a bumper crop and there are generous provisions of vegetable soup in the freezer for the coming winter.
Bumper Crop
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. Continue reading
Trani. So laid back, fiercely hot in the southern Italian sun, languid and confident in its place in history. Its working harbour is like San Tropez’s front on tranqs, no flash cars, no posers.
Trani, Apulia
Trani Harbour
It’s very pleasant to relax by the sea in this small Apulian harbour after a day’s sight-seeing the lovely medieval churches and hospital that formed the base for the early crusaders as they travelled back and forth to the Levant. All is so well preserved in the intense summer heat.
St. Nicholas the Pilgrim
Started in 1099, it was completed by about 1200. It is made of the local soft pink stone which gives the Cathedral its warm hue in the evening light. The bell tower is the show-stopper. It stands on an arched platform which looks incapable of carrying that tremendous weight. It is a testament to its makers that this beautiful fragile building has stood the test of time.
I wonder if the builders had to cope with the plethora of organisational folk that we have in the modern age: project managers, progress chasers and monitors, prince methodologists. I wonder if they had to cope with the endless stultifying meetings and byzantine decision-making processes that constipate organisational life and kill creativity.
Bell Tower
I wonder if those medieval workers left their discreet marks somewhere on the stonework to show their defiance, as we do in the modern age, against the tirade of abuse that can reign down on you from pumped-up kick-ass higher-ups.
I’m not sure what all this misplaced energy achieves but at least for me, it’s in the past. I’m taking in the view, sipping my coffee and dozing a bit as time passes, just watching the world go by and working out what to be as a grown up.
It will soon be time to go home to my place by the sea and catch up on my veggie boxes, and the café on the beach. I wonder what’s been going on since I started my travels, and whether I can summon up the energy to start the book.
Old Lady by the Sea 