Andy's Blog

Baby bear goes downstairs, sits in his small chair at the table. He looks into his small bowl. It is empty. 'Who's been eating my porridge?' he squeaks. 

Daddy Bear arrives at the big table and sits in his big chair. He looks into his big bowl and it is also empty. 'Who's been eating my porridge?!?' he roars.

We’ve coined the term ‘mood hoover’ to describe someone who’s stuck in a rut of negativity. I’m not talking about depression. I’m talking about people whose default way of thinking is ‘can’t do’. You know the sort... lots of tutting and rolling of eyes. You ask them how they are and you get ‘not too bad, considering.’ Or, ‘I’ll be all right at 5 o’clock.’  Oh, and mood hoovers are characterised by plenty of heavy sighing.  I describe their outlook as ‘every silver lining has a cloud!’

Let me be clear. They are not horrible people. Far from it...

I read the following paragraph, written by an esteemed author. ‘Each and every one of us harbours the illusion that the whole enterprise would go straight to hell without our individual daily contributions. In fact no one is indispensable. Every worker is replaced and forgotten as swiftly as the anonymous slaves who hauled blocks for the pyramids.’

And I thought, how far off the mark can you be?

TCD is ‘Time Constraint Disorder’... the inability to meet deadlines. Invented by Michael Foley as a joke.

But then he found out that a professor at DePaul University wants procrastination recognised as a clinical disorder. Check out some of the disorders that have already made it into the tome that is ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’...

I’ve just read a professional journal aimed at personnel managers. And my attention was drawn to an article where they were asking eminent thinkers what they thought the future of leadership would be. Cool. That’s right up my street, so I read with interest what the top people in the field of leadership had to say.

And, oh deary me...

I was working in one of the local authorities. It is a vast place of green corridors, security doors and secret passages before you eventually end up in the council chamber. This is a sombre-looking place where lots of sombre-looking people get together to make sombre decisions. A portrait of her Majesty bears down on proceedings. For some reason she has a Mona Lisa non-smile and I always think, come on Liz, cheer up, we need our head of state to be a 2%er!

My mate Mick is unlucky. Or so he says. Mick says that nothing ever works out for him. He’s recently divorced and his job is under threat. And the job he does have doesn’t pay particularly well. And recently his car engine packed up and it cost him a lot of money. Oh, and he nearly always loses at cards and snooker.

Maybe he’s got a point?

I recently got into a conversation about a lady named Julie. It turns out there were two Julies in the same office so the person asked me which one I was talking about. ‘Smiling Julie’, I answered. And they knew instantly which one I meant.

Here’s an interesting dilemma for you. Put yourself in my shoes and decide how you’d play it...

I arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Heathrow T5. Nice! Went through the check-in procedure, then the security checks.  Forced down my 2-litre Evian rather than chuck it away. Nearly drowned! Took off my shoes, removed my belt, watch and loose change but still got beeped. Enjoyed the frisk. Wandered through the shops. Sprayed myself with something expensive. Visited the loo as a matter of urgency. Went to WHSmith to choose something to scoff. Wondered why a bag of wine gums costs £3.50 so opted for a small packed of McVities digestives. Loo again. Then found a seat and sat down with my laptop on my knee and did some work to kill an hour. So far so good.

Hopefully not! If you do find a few then my advice is to have a good scratch and, if that doesn’t work, change your underwear (reminds me of a mate of mine who bragged about how many pairs of pants he owned. Twelve! Imagine! We were amazed that a bloke needed that many pairs. Until he explained, one pair for January, one for February, etc (I digress...sorry).

This blog isn’t about ants in your pants. It’s about ANTs in your head...

You have to be of a certain age to remember ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, a slightly creepy programme where an ageing DJ in a white shellsuit had loads of kids sitting on his knee, while puffing on a fat Havanna cigar. And Jim specialised in making their dreams come true. Mmmm. Not sure that’s going to work in the modern era?

Anyway, the point was that Jim would organise for things to happen. He’d read out a letter and, hey presto, some child’s ambition would happen. Sometimes it was big stuff that only Jim could organise, like a ride in an F1 car, or to take part in a West End show. Or to have Showaddywaddy playing in your school assembly. Fair doos. That’s proper telly. And Jim always fixed it for you and you and you-oo-oooo.

Cast your mind back to the olden days (ie, 5 years ago). If ‘change’ was a dog it would have been a Labrador, all friendly and comfortable and licky. Sure, it had teeth but it wouldn’t dream of sinking them into you! You could throw ‘change’ a ball and it’d come back and drop it at your feet in a beautifully predictable and well-trained way.

If, like me, you’re of a certain age, the likelihood is that your grandparents had a ‘job for life’. It’s also quite likely that this applied to your grandpa but your grandma didn’t work (not in the paid sense at least).

Skip a generation and, typically, your parents probably both worked. They might have had one career change along the way.

Fast-forward to today. You’ve probably had several jobs with a career trajectory that has been slightly upward but often sideways or downwards. All a bit ‘snakes and ladders’. And, in the current climate, there are too many adders and not enough ladders!

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