He ain't fat, but he ain't thin

My long-lost friend, Martin, is 50 today. Well done, Martin, you made it. And, as with most things, except fatherhood, you made it before me (including getting married – you still haven’t paid me yet for that bet I won!). For those of you who don’t know Martin, he runs a business from Cork, Ireland which operates both here and there. The aim of Smart Tactics is to help business leaders within large companies who are united by one desire - they want more from their business. And he responds to some of these blogs with incisive insight and not a little insider knowledge. Martin and I grew up 17 Staffordshire miles from one another without meeting until we were 18, at Bradford University, on Thursday 6th October, 1977, introduced by one Daska Barnett, optometry student, now pursuing a career as an optician in Hammersmith, London. Unknowingly, we’d even attended one rock concert at Birmingham Odeon a year earlier, on 27 October, 1976. Not uncommon. But when I was waiting in the dental surgery yesterday, I heard that song by Peter Frampton that recalled the gig – Show Me The Way. I still have that concert ticket on my toilet wall. Alongside the tickets from the three consecutive nights Martin and I saw David Bowie play the cow shed of Stafford Bingley Hall on 24/25/26 June, 1978. He liked The Stooges and Marvin Gaye. I liked The Ramones and David Sylvian. We both shared an absolute love of reggae and dub. But we never had cocaine running around our brain. I had a yen for dates. He had a head for figs. Strange fruits. We were different. We were similar. Look where we both ended up – working with and advising businesses on how best to promote themselves. Those late night conversations in Room C26 of Revis Barber Hall, surrounded by the paraphernalia of punk and other new friends new to it all, were where it all started. We’ve been talking about the mechanics and messaging of brands for over 30 years. On this day 30 years ago, Martin’s 20th, we saw Iggy Pop live at Leeds University together. Now, I haven’t seen or even talked to Martin since Sunday, 12th March, 2000. But he’s often been in my thoughts. He’s tried phoning – but I have to say that, when you’re wearing the suit of armour I am, it’s very difficult to pick up a telephone receiver. He’s invited me to Cork, but that would be taking the Michael O’Leary. My long-lost friend, Dean (another exile – and the first person I met at Bradford University, on top of a wall we were both scaling), writes from France to describe Martin in the following electrically engineered words: intelligent, unsure, live, persistent, changing, family, contradictory, ‘contestateur’. Back in our careworn London days, some of us had a little rhyme which called Martin to mind: Martin Finn, he’s a grin, he ain’t fat, but he ain’t thin. And, I reckon that’s still probably the case. Me, I’m struggling to find the exact words to describe Martin. I know he shares a birthday with everyone from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Tony Hancock, Alan Ball to Ian Dury. And let’s not forget Burt Bacharach, with whom he probably wouldn’t mind linking up with. And I have a strange feeling that we’ll actually get around to having our first conversation in the best part of a decade in the week beginning 8th June 2009. Until then, Happy 50th, Martin!

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

All that glitters...

Is it really my duty to announce to the world that today, May 8th 2009, Gary Glitter officially becomes an old age pensioner? I really don’t think so. But, you see, as much as I hated and hate gangs, and despite what we now know, I still love the guy’s music. Through that, he had an influence on the person I am. So, I have no choice but to admit him to the pantheon of artists whose work I admire but whose lives I deplore. (Sorry, I’ll let you know who the others are on this list when I’ve invented it.) In the meantime, Gary, you can’t have your passport, but here’s your bus pass. How else will I mark this day? A quarter of a century ago I was (barely) living in London. I couldn’t afford to travel anywhere due to the expensive public transport policy of Ken Livingstone’s good old GLC. Back in those days, the big money was not spent on Wembley, but on the construction of the Thames Barrier. Officially opened this day 25 years ago, the barrier has been raised well over 100 times against flood possibilities. It cost the current equivalent of £1.5 billion, or two Wembleys. And, unlike Wembley, it works. Now, we just need this kind of approach to be applied to the rest of the island we call home. Houses are still built on flood plains. People whose homes were flooded two years ago are still living in pre-fab huts. But not in London. As the Spring sun glints on the protective and reassuring bastions of the Thames Barrier on its quarter century birthday, much of Western England waits in eternal trepidation for the next flood warnings. While politicians haggle today over a few pennies’ worth of expenses or how many Gurkhas should be allowed to settle in this country, more time and money are lost that could be directed towards averting a regular disaster for so many people outside London. Unfortunately, I'm sounding like the ridiculous UK Independence Party and that unhinged party political broadcast they put out last night. But, while another unnoticed anniversary of significance such as that of the Thames Barrier passes most of us by, new weather patterns are forming. Are we ready? London is. May the sun shine fair this summer.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Pictures on my wall

Today, I’m starting big. What would life be like if women, the least emotional of the genders, had more power to change the way we live our lives? I doubt if we’d have atrocities at weddings in Turkey, or the UK’s ‘least-wanted’ list, newly published today (99% male, naturally). Or people running over police officers in cars. Or nuclear power. Wishful conjecture, I know. But, when you help organisations who work in the sphere of social and environmental change, as I do, it’s hard to avoid the certainty that the issues we are facing in this world are all caused by one sport and death-obsessed gender. Progress is slow. And we all have to get used to the likelihood that, although we can work towards it, we will not see the change we crave in our own lifetimes. When it comes to the human race, I cannot be an optimist. But I will walk stoically on, supporting the efforts of the more reasonable of the genders. Women have been trying to make a difference for centuries, largely by joining this man-made world of unforgiving, hard-line religions and unrelenting, hard-nosed business. 200 years ago today, one Mary Kies became the first US woman to be issued with a patent. In doing so, she broke a pattern whereby women could not own property independently of their husbands in the land of the free. This was a strike for womankind, but just a perpetuation of a system created by men. And so it continues. To generalise big time, in the developed world, women are becoming more like men and less like themselves. And even Margaret Thatcher (the model for this) knew that this was a pretty poor aspiration. Although I doubt she was alluding to this, human rights has to be the highest aspiration of humankind. And so, today, we celebrate the 60th birthday of the Council of Europe, an organisation that most UK citizens will not have heard of, despite having 47 member states and covering over 800 million citizens. An organisation whose best achievement was the European Convention on Human Rights, enforced by the European Court of Human Rights. While studying for my Masters degree in 1990, I was lucky enough to spend six weeks working at the Council in Strasbourg. I think this was the beginning of my own journey. A journey accompanied by lots of music – the crowning achievement of the male gender. Barely a day goes by without me referring to some musical milestone. Today, 5th May 2009, I honour the achievement of Ian McCulloch, founder of Echo and the Bunnymen, who has reached 50. One question still remains unanswered in my head: were Echo and the Bunnymen actually as good as their reputation suggests? On this day in 1977, when Ian McCulloch was celebrating his 18th birthday, he met fellow musical dreamers Julian Cope and Pete Wylie at a Clash gig in Liverpool. Together and apart, these three set the post-punk musical scene in Liverpool. I would argue that the music of Teardrop Explodes and Wah! reached higher pitches of intensity and brilliance than Echo and the Bunnymen, whose first downbeat single, Pictures On My Wall, was released 30 years ago today, too. While I’m marking the moment, I doubt if I’ll be giving it a spin. Today, I’m ending small.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Gordon The Garden Gnome

Everybody knows that the whole point of the month of May is to act as host for the Chelsea Flower Show. Unlikely members of the Royal Horticultural Society, Debbie and I will be making our annual pilgrimage to Chelsea on 19th May. All gardeners are aware that one Alan Titchmarsh has been hosting Chelsea for the BBC for over a quarter of a century. Among the many achievements of this mild-mannered but extremely prolific and ambitious man is the voiceover for Gordon The Garden Gnome on the C-Beebies channel. It’s a moniker that seems to fit this insider of all insiders. Now, I’m one for outsiders, but Alan Titchmarsh has always fascinated me, not least for winning a Bad Sex in Fiction Award. And he gets a namecheck here because it’s his 60th birthday tomorrow. Nobody does bland middle-of-the-road conformity to such perfection as Alan Titchmarsh. Barely a year goes by without him getting an award for it. Yet he’s been at the centre of the love of all things green and growing that Debbie and I have developed as our passion in common over these last fifteen years. Gardening. My Damascene conversion. My third university. My relief, release and antidote. My ephemeral and eternal delight. My perennial ‘this must be it, longed-for bliss’ moment. As I look up from my computer onto our 80-metre garden of green evanescence, there is something important about life that I just know.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

The world wide web is 16

Today may well be the 150th anniversary of the first serialisation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities, but I’m talking about a tale of two technologies. Thankfully, the child of the internet, www, is no longer jailbait. It’s legal. It can get married and die for its country. But it can’t yet drink. God help us in two years’ time! We’ll be collecting its vomit-flecked and bleary-eyed face from a gutter in the ripped backside of the other end of town. Back in 1993, April 30th was the day when CERN, where the world wide web internet application was developed, announced that it would be free for anyone to use – allowing the two technologies of the internet and world wide web to take off unimpeded by competitors. Since which time information technology has totally taken over our lives. Has it freed us up or tied us down? Or both, at once, in 3D? Can you remember when you first started using the web? The first time I went on, there were only three websites. God. Coca Cola. And one featuring fundamentalist advice on how to bomb America. Whatever, I like the comment from the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams: “The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.”

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

One chord wonders

Now, somebody somewhere will be remembering that Marvin Gaye died 25 years ago this very day, shot by his own father. Marvin went at 45. Fewer still will be remembering David Bowie’s guitarist, Mick Ronson, who went today in 1993 at 46. Neither reached 50. As I approach my 50th, the brands and people of my life are walking out to centre-stage, demanding attention, reminding me who they are, telling me what they represent. Some I’m glad to see, others not. Alongside the heady euphoria of recollection, there’s the sadness of involuntary reconnection. It’s as if I’ve performed some rite of time, conjuring forth visions and mantras that would have stayed buried until the final film strip of my last days on Earth. One of the most welcome of these brands is punk music. First encountered at the age of 17 in November 1976, with the issue of the UK’s first punk single, New Rose, by The Damned, punk has set the tone for the rest of my life. Now that, in hindsight, all the major names are known and have their place in history, what is not recognised is just how few records had emerged by this time in 1977. In fact, thanks to a media-fuelled backlash, by 29th April 1977, most punk acts worthy of the name had been banned from performing live in towns and cities throughout the country. Ironically, it was from this point on that they began producing killer 45s. Up until this time, there had been a couple of offerings from The Ramones and Blondie, but the British bands were slow to get into vinyl. We’d had one from The Sex Pistols and The Clash and The Buzzcocks, two from The Damned. Even before its vanguard had died a death, punk was quickly metamorphosing into new wave, with already emergent bands such as The Jam and Stranglers, riding this energetic movement. But there were lots of smaller bands, many not mentioned today, who managed no more than a handful of vinyl singles. One such was The Adverts. And, on this day in 1977, as The Jam made their debut with In The City, so did The Adverts with One Chord Wonders, on Stiff Records. Now, there are many ways to cut a list. But, in my list of personally favourite punk singles, this is top.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Did yer like that?

In my Mr Memory Man vision bank: a flat-capped, forty-something bloke running for all his might from the path of a falling industrial chimney, honking a clown’s horn on the end of a rope around his neck, shouting, ‘Bloody hell, it’s goin’, it’s goin!’ And narrowly getting away with his life once again. Then, when the dust has settled, grinning ‘That were good, wan’it? Did yer like that?’ Bolton’s Fred Dibnah was born middle-aged. One of those blokes who was never young. At the time Fred first began appearing on TV, I’d still have been a student at Bradford University, in a city still mourning the loss of its proud Victorian industrial power. Many a dark, drunken night we walked home past abandoned, brokendown factory hulks housing the ghosts of fob-watched philanthropists, looking down from orange-lit warehouses shrouded by coughing chimneys. All tombstone-quiet by then, just waiting for the handy work of Fred Dibnah, chimney feller fellah. He never set out in life to knock down disused chimneys. It’s just how he ended up, TV-famous, like, you know. On April 28th 1938, the day Fred was actually born, King Zog of Albania married Countess Geraldine of Hungary. Fred’s was a different world. One that had disappeared before he was born (and he knew it). A world of steam, machine tools, crankshafts, mill wheels and a windswept, working–class, sepia-tinted philosophy of a lost golden industrial age honed atop many a redundant factory chimney. A white world of empire where everyone knew their place. Well, Fred fell from his chimney of life back in 2004. He’d have been 71 today. Strangely, although I was never part of his world, he is very much part of mine.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk