The Art of Management

Watched The Damned United today, without really intending to. A bit of background: the film is about Brian Clough's ill-fated 44 days as manager of Leeds United. I first heard of it (and how good it is) in December when in England. To my gratified astonishment I picked up an iffy DVD of it in Medan last week having seen neither hide nor hair of it in Singapore. I popped it on today just before finishing marking, ostensibly to check whether it played okay. It did, and I was hooked and so watched the whole thing. The marking had to wait.

I suppose part of my being hooked is that I have very strong recall of the actual events - being delighted at Leeds imploding. I was also a huge admirer of Cloughie - the promoted Derby County of 1969 played great, great football, better, I think, than his later Forest outfits, but you could always admire them also for really playing the game. Being given the 'inside story' as it were, was fascinating, especially when Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall recreate the Clough/Taylor axis so convincingly.

The scenes in which Clough insults Peter Taylor just before joining Leeds and apologises to him after the fiasco are superb, managing to be both intelligent and moving. At least part of the genius of Clough lay in his understanding of his flaws and his understanding that Taylor was fundamental to his success. What works wonderfully well in the movie is how we see Cloughie coming to understand that and not just accept it but embrace it.

And what also works brilliantly is the recreation of a genuinely charismatic character. You start to understand just how it (the great management) all worked, something you couldn't legislate for. It would be interesting to screen The Damned United on management/leadership courses. People would be usefully appalled.

Taking Note

A day on which I get to play seven CDs can't be seen as a wasted one, even if it has also involved a whole bunch of marking.

Here's what what made the playlist today: Dylan's Another side of Bob Dylan; Richard Hawley's Coles Corner (for a bit of Sheffield); Badly Drawn Boy's One Plus One Is One (for a bit of Manchester); Sufjan Stevens's Seven Swans (for a bit of spirituality); Manic Street Preachers's Journal For Plague Lovers (for a bit, well a lot really, of angst); and Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One and I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass - the last being my favourite title (as title) of all.

I must say, I'm quite pleased that the list sounds whilst not terribly current not terribly old-fashioned either. Now listening to Fafa tapping out what sounds like a bit of Bach on the keyboard next door, as a practice piece. And you can't get more current than that.

Being Bad

I'm not a bad man, but I acted badly - thus some American ex-sportsman, on a murder charge, apologising. Fascinating. When does acting badly become being bad?

I once told someone I knew well that I couldn't accept the idea of a deeper self, one hidden as it were, from public view, the sort of Deep down I'm a good guy idea. I posited the notion that we are what we do.

I'm still inclined to think that way. And unless we know what we do, we fail to know ourselves.

Since self deception is the easiest deception of all to practise it is, to say the least, useful to find out what others think - really think - of us, and what we actually do. For, so often, we know not what we do.

Home Comforts

Now safely back at the Mansion I can try and hack out the time to get back to some sustained reading. That's not to say the trip to Indonesia allowed me no time at all to read, but what needed to be done precluded serious progress. However, I did finish Dreams From My Father and thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end, though I got a bit lost on Obama family history in the final Kenya section. The edition Boon leant me ended with an excerpt from The Audacity of Hope. Unfortunately for the publishers, reading this made me decide I wasn't in any rush to get to grips with the full version. The contrast with the personal poetry of Dreams From My Father was striking. The later book is essentially political rhetoric - very fine, sympathetic rhetoric, but rhetoric nonetheless.

(Isn't it odd? Almost every time I type Dreams From My Father, I don't. It comes out Dreams For My Father. Is some strange Freudian thing going on here?)

Last night, and on the flight back this morning, I made decent in-roads into Praise of Folly. The last time I read it cover to cover was in 1975, and I'm reading the same edition. It smells great. It's the Penguin translation by Betty Radice with an informative introduction by one A.H.T. Levi on the intellectual background of Erasmus. The notes are excellent - making up about a fifth of the text in the Penguin. But the great thing about Erasmus is that you don't have to know what he is writing about to know what he is writing about. Mr Levi seems troubled by the fact that Folly's abundant ironies start to cancel each other out. I think it's wonderful.

I'm also eyeing Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? since I'm in the mood for some comfortable fiction. Mind you, I'm one of those of the opinion that Trollope has more about him than the creation of a delightful version of Victorian England to holiday in. Some of his women make Dickens's ladies look positively soppy. You wouldn't want to get into an argument with a fair number of them. Like life really.

The Ties That Bind

The tiny tots in Indonesian schools are required to walk everywhere in single file, arms akimbo, as their teachers valiantly attempt to control their exuberance. This means they must adopt a curiously camply mincing gait. This is both very funny and oddly touching.

I had the privilege of observing the above in one of the four schools we visited today. We, and me in particular, probably struck the kids as impossibly distant, alien figures. But, curiously, I was irresistibly reminded of my own primary school days. The run-down buildings were not a million miles away from those of the old St Mary's, Denton, and there was that same sense of the total immersion of the little ones in their endlessly fascinating little world(s).

And that same sense of hope. And wonder.

Getting Away From It All

I am growing suspiciously comfortable with the level of noise coming from outside our hotel room. The din created by the traffic is unremitting, but oddly comforting as a reminder of the swirling hurly burly of real life circulating around the unreality of buffet breakfasts and the like. We're checked by security, for explosives and such, each time we enter the haven of the hotel, and we ate dinner this evening at a place where the security was even tighter. Oddly this makes me feel less secure than I normally would. I suppose it's the effect of being reminded of how vulnerable and exceptional these places, in this society, are.

Fine Dining

I'd forgotten just how much food, the consumption thereof, is involved in these trips. Part of our reason for being here is to build ties with various schools in Medan. And the Asian way of building ties is through eating. Lots of eating of lots of food.

This in some ways is highly enjoyable, especially for those who like to dine well. Unfortunately much as I enjoy eating I can't say I can genuinely do so on this monumental scale, even though all the food is good, going on great. I am awash with Chinese tea.

Andrew tells me that what we are experiencing is nothing compared to the degree of hospitality involved in trips to China. The mind, and stomach, boggles.

I am sure to gain an extra few kgs, I fear, and am guiltily considering some serious exercise, and restraint, once I get back to the missus and Mansion. Since I have not exercised in earnest since the latest bout of trouble with my back the proposition of finding something I can do with some regularity is challenging and intimidating in equal measure.

A Marked Man

There's a pile of marking on the desk of the hotel room insidiously calling: Come do your duty. Our anonymity makes us even more boring than is usually the case. And you've got less than twenty-four hours to clear us. The tedium! The tedium!

And I listen.

Staying Connected

When you're in a hotel with a temperamental Internet connection it's best to keep things short. So that's what I'm doing. Ain't technology wonderful?

Testing

Assuming all goes to plan, this time tomorrow will see me in Indonesia busily preparing to test the young intelligentsia of Medan to see whether they are up to the trials of a scholarship in Singapore. It'll be life-changing for some, disappointing for others and involve a degree of hard work for me. Just clearing the desk to leave the routine behind for a few days has been testing in itself.

I suppose that's what you don't quite grasp when you are young. It's all one long test. With no clear answers.