(Above) Country Life 2
Harvesting a field of early daffodils. Most field work is now carried out by migrant workers from the new accession countries of the European Union. Their working conditions are not terribly good, and many of them are exploited by rough-and-ready gangmasters.

 

(Above) Country Life 3
Even metropolitan publications project the English rural romantic dream (as Jane Austen pointed out: “Virtue resides in rural surroundings”).

Actually it is unfair to describe Country Life magazine as metropolitan, even though most of its readership is in London and the south east. It has, over the century or so of its existence, become a national institution. Despite the potentially corrupting influence of its advertisers (the magazine carries a huge amount of top-end real estate advertising, and there must be pressure from the agents of this plutocratic sector to grant favours or run “advertorials”) Country Life has maintained some of the highest standards of journalistic integrity in the United Kingdom. The photography is very high quality. When I worked at an advertising agency in EC1, one of the clients I used to look after advertised in Country Life regularly, so I would get a free voucher copy every week (if someone else hadn’t stolen it from the post room). I still buy it occasionally – the features on architecture are especially good.

Everyone who works in marketing is obliged to read The Guardian each Monday – it is one of the ways you get to know what is going on (and what options might be available). The newspaper runs a Country Diary column on Mondays – the writing is always well-observed and has an entrancing quality that is very attractive. As well as The Guardian (left wing) I also try to read in an average week: The Times (right wing), The Telegraph (very right wing), The Independent (left wing pretending to be neutral) and The Financial Times (I only buy the FT on Saturdays – the FT Saturday edition is a wonderful newspaper full of well-written and intelligent news analysis, arts reviews and general features).

 

(Above) Two ducks were in the car park this morning waddling around the puddles formed by last nights rain.

Probably the best weather reports currently broadcast

As I drove to work this morning I listened to the Today Programme on Radio 4. The weather was presented by Alex Deakin from the BBC Weather Centre. He often appears on the BBC delivering the weather forecasts in a very smart suit and silk tie (choice of tie avoiding the garish broadcast-friendly colours of other TV presenters).

His are probably the best weather reports currently broadcast – informative, enthusiastic (but without seeming a nerd – this is very restrained delivery), hand movements precise and defined. He avoids the waffle and indistinct mumbling of other presenters. His accent is very good BBC English, but with a slight northern tinge (which came out this morning when he pronounced words such as “already” and “afternoon”). Not sure if he writes the broadcasts himself, the choice of language is very good.

Also on the Today Programme this morning was an item by Phil Mercer, one of the BBC’s reporters in Australia. I knew Phil Mercer slightly when he lived in the United Kingdom – he was a friend of a friend (not sure if we ever met one-to-one, we just knew the same people and he was always in the background of various gatherings). Not sure if I would recognise him now – his accent has completely changed. When I knew Phil Mercer he was very popular – it was probably his most distinguishing feature. He was someone who was popular with everyone. It’s strange to know people personally, then lose contact with them, then ten years later find they’ve written a book, or they’re appearing on television, or they come up on the news in an international diplomatic incident or something.

“But it’s hideous” I told her

I live in old brick farmhouse dating from the 1880s – plain facades, square rooms, a big front entrance that is hardly ever used. The house faces south, into the main part of the garden, and all the south-facing rooms are very warm. The back (north facing) side of the house is much colder, and the layout more complex, reflecting building alterations that have been made over the years.

One downstairs room, looking out to the east, seems to have been done up as a extra sitting room in the 1930s (big plate glass picture windows, built-in display cupboards with glass doors, a tiled fireplace), and these innovations are out of keeping with the rest of the house. I imagine that the family who used to own the farm put in a “modern” sitting room before the Second World War (rather like Brenda Last did at Hetton Abbey in A Handful of Dust) then abandoned it when they realised how cold it was to sit in.

My parents wanted to reverse this pre-war décor and make it more consistent with the rest of the house. In particular, the fireplace had to go. Helen Blakeman took a different view, and on one of her rare visits was adamant that it should be preserved.

“But it’s hideous” I told her.

“No it’s not. It’s a good example of an art deco focal point – inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. This is probably modelled on the entrance to the inner golden shrine which caused a sensation when it was brought out of the tomb.”

“But these sort of fireplaces are in thousands of homes. We were going to rip it out.”

“Keep it another twenty years and it will be a valuable period feature” she told me. “You could restore the whole room to its art deco appearance. It will look wonderful”.

I thought nothing more about this until last week when was in Berkeley Square. On the corner was a shop selling antiquities, and in the window was an Egyptian stone carving. “That looks like our fireplace” I told myself.

(Above) The hideous fireplace. Please excuse the plastic flowers. My sister took over the room during our mothers last illness and put in the flowers because she thought the place needed cheering up. My mother would have been mortified if she had known we had plastic flowers in the house. The picture on the mantlepiece is of my nephew Lewis (aged three). He was named after his mother Louise (not the actor Lewis Collins - even though my brother endlessly watches old reruns of The Professionals on Granada Plus).

(Above) Egyptian antiquity in a showroom on the corner of Berkeley Square. Gary Spencer called it an upmarket junk shop. There were no prices on any of the objects, so I guess they are all on the expensive side.  

Morale has been very low recently

This afternoon Frank Jarvis, south western Area Sales Manger, paid a visit to Marketing to discuss a direct mail campaign we have planned for his area. Frank is one of the most approachable of the sales managers, very relaxed in manner, unpretentious, genuinely interested in marketing. We went over the twenty-week campaign mailshot by mailshot and the increase in awareness it is likely to achieve.

It is always good for morale to have a big campaign of this kind running – we will also be running the same sequence of mailshots in the Midlands sales area so it will be interesting to compare the results (I am confident that both campaigns will achieve nearly a fifty per cent increase in awareness, but I am keeping this to myself for the time being, just in case something should go wrong).

Morale has been very low recently, particularly over the transfer of various functions to the Glasgow office. A new warehouse is being set up in the Glasgow area without the knowledge or involvement of the Logistics Manager (it made him look very silly when the news leaked out). Almost all the sales desk responsibilities have been transferred to Glasgow, leaving the sales desk staff in London with little to do. Wild rumours have been circulating that the London office is going to close (these rumours created a panic in my assistant Antony Fraser, but I managed to calm him down – the last thing I want is for him to find another job and leave halfway through the mailshot campaigns).

Personally I think it is unlikely the London end of the operation will close. The company is growing at such a rate that probably an expansion in facilities in the north is justified. A serious worry, however, is that the rumours deflate morale to such an extent that the sales staff lose enthusiasm and find they can’t sell. I’ve seen this happen in other companies – previously booming enterprises suddenly collapse because the sales personnel become confused and distracted. Just as an upward spiral in morale is energising and self-perpetuating, so a downward spiral can be almost impossible to stop.

Efforts have been made to address the problem:

Recently Marion Conway, Human Resources Director, went around the office drumming up support for a boat race on the river (in early May), and this has lifted the mood in the general office. The company will enter one or more teams into a race against twenty or so other teams. The company will have a marquee on the riverbank, and will organise a barbeque. It is the sort of thing Marion Conway does well.

Adam Russell, the most junior person on the London sales desk, has been given a heap of leaflets, a couple of weeks’ sales training, and sent out on the road in a hired car with a brief to make cold calls and bring in new customers. He has responded very positively to this new responsibility, and reinvented himself from mouthy sales desk assistant (caring only about the fortunes of soccer team ManU) into a dependable sales professional, determined to succeed. We may be seeing the emergence of a new potential area sales manager.

And the two big marketing campaigns will help convince people that the company remains focussed on expansion.

Memories become locked away, suddenly to be released

Writing about Fiona yesterday has made me think more about the two months I spent at the British School in Jerusalem and on the crusader castle excavation. It is funny the way in which memories become locked away, suddenly to be released by a chance reminder. Although I was in one of the world’s most controversial trouble-spots, I was completely oblivious to the political situation. The British School comprised it’s own little world – twenty or so students, and about ten professional archaeologists, with several British academics passing through at any one time. The accommodation was very good, and the way of life unchanged since the days of Kathleen Kenyon.

We would get up at five o’clock each morning, and after a hurried cup of coffee set off in two battered old minibuses to the excavation site which was about ten miles outside the city on top of a small hill. The site was very complex – originally there had been a 6th century Byzantine structure on the hill, parts of which we uncovered (including a mosaic). Then the Knights of St John had built a castle there in the crusader period, mainly to guard the Marian shrine at nearby Aqua Bella. Finally an Arab village had been built among the castle ruins and this community lasted from the late medieval period until 1948. The mixture of Arab and crusader buildings was extremely picturesque, especially in the early morning when the sun was coming up and the vegetation was covered in thousands of small violet flowers (which shrivelled up each day at noon, only to come to life again the next morning).

We would work from 7 until 10, and then have breakfast (cups of tea, cornflakes, bread and cheese, yogurt mixed with jam). More work until 12.30 when, very grubby in appearance, we would return to the British School, have a shower, and sit down to a massive lunch. The temptation, after this lunch and several beers, to lie down and sleep away the afternoon was almost overwhelming. But as our time in the Middle East was limited, Fiona and I would leave the other archaeologists snoozing, and go out for a couple of hours to visit one of the historic sites (with a bias towards anything from the crusader period).

Visiting crusader ruins was a combination of romantic exploration and wild guesswork. Unlike historic sites in England where everything is tidied up and neatly labelled (and you can buy an illustrated guidebook and visit the tearooms on the way out), crusader sites in and around Jerusalem are mostly unregarded, and you have to identify and interpret them for yourself. This added to, rather than detracted from, the enjoyment of our expeditions – we felt we were making genuine discoveries (although in probability it was all surveyed years ago and filed away in the Library of the British School).

 

(Above) This is my team, in my trench at the excavation. The nearby kibbutz gave us the services of sixty or so teenagers, about to go into the Israeli army to do their national service. Left to right: Ori, Alon and Jonathan (I’m guessing at the spelling of the names). They were incredibly hard working (Ori especially) and interested in everything to do with the site. Occasionally Bedouin were hired to help with the digging (very polite and helpful – nothing was too much trouble for them).

 

(Above) We dug an enormous hole, about twenty feet square and forty feet deep, and uncovered this spectacular arch which formed one of the main gates to the castle (it was later filled in with boulders when the castle was abandoned, and later still became lost beneath the dust and dirt of the centuries). Unlike other areas of the site, we did not find anything valuable in our trench.

 

(Above) This is me on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, surrounded by the monuments of world history. Fiona took the photograph. We never had any trouble getting up onto the Temple Mount and went there several times (Fiona used to wear an Arab headdress as a sort of scarf, and I was so dark-tanned the guards probably thought I was an Arab). The Arab name for the Temple Mount is Haram al-Sharif. Behind me is the Dome of the Rock (which in the crusader period became the church of the Augustinian Canons). Each time we went there we had the place almost to ourselves – you would think it would be crowded with tourists or pilgrims. I suppose in retrospect we were taking a risk going about so much on our own. We thought that because we were archaeologists no-one would harm us.

The Israeli teenagers working on the site at Belmont used to sing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRijgRZmqvI&feature=related

Months later at home, out of the blue through the post, arrived a jiffy bag containing several books Fiona recommended... 

She was an (amateur and self-taught) expert

It is St Patrick’s Day, and in the phony Irish pub O’Neills on the Euston Road the juke box will be belting out the usual songs: Come On Eileen, The Irish Rover, The Sweetest Thing (they never play anyone like Sinead Quinn). For all it’s Oirish fakery, it is a characterless pub, and one you would only go into for a quick drink immediately after work, before colleagues head off to Kings Cross, and St Pancras and the commuter trains home. I guess it will be packed tonight.

Whenever I think of Ireland and the Irish I think of Fiona (forgotten her second name) who I met in Jerusalem when we were both working on a British excavation at a crusader castle, during the last summer I was at university (we were both at London University – she was at the Institute of Archaeology in Mallet Street, whereas I was studying medieval history). She was a mature student in her late twenties (or possibly even older), with a heavy matronly build, pale skin covered in freckles, and masses of bright orange hair (which she just combed the way it grew, being very proud of what she called her “celtic fringe” across her forehead). Although temperatures regularly reached 100ºF that summer, Fiona’s skin remained white (unlike my own, which grew so dark I was routinely mistaken for an Arab).

We worked together on one of the trenches (helped by some teenagers from a local kibbutz) and she covered up for me when I accidentally vandalised a mosaic we were uncovering (I poured water over it to try and clean the dust away, and washed out a great many of the tesserae – Fiona helped me fit them back again, in approximate position). Since we only worked on the castle excavation in the mornings, we had the afternoons to explore the country, and Fiona joined a small group of us that went out on expeditions to the Wadi Kelt or the Mediterranean coast.

Fiona was very self-contained, and seemed to enjoy being on her own. She originally came from Mallow in southern Ireland, and talked about a sugar beet factory which was the main employer – local people go to work at this factory and effectively become trapped there, spending whole lives processing sugar beet, generation after generation. Fiona was the first in her family to move away from the area, and was determined never to go back there. She was a great reader and was enthusiastic about the work of Elizabeth Bowen (an Irish writer). She had read almost everything written by Joshua Prawer, not just his history of the crusader period, but also the work he had done on the modern settlement of Israel, and the creation of the Israeli national identity. Fiona had also studied Irish nationalism, and she was an (amateur and self-taught) expert on the Irish nationalist leader Michael Collins.

Michael Collins was born in southern Ireland in 1890 and as a teenager came to London and worked for several years as a post office clerk in Kensington. It was here that he developed his ideas of Irish nationalism, returning to southern Ireland to help lead a rebellion against the Westminster government during the First World War. The rebels were defeated, but subsequent uprisings and unrest in the country led to self-government for southern Ireland in 1922. A subsequent civil war among various Irish nationalist factions led to the murder of Michael Collins and the emergence of Eamon de Valera as Irish nationalist leader and eventually President of the Irish Republic.

Eamon de Valera was a half-Spanish American of Irish descent who dedicated his life to the Irish nationalist cause. Fiona believed that because he was only half-Irish he constantly felt he had to prove he was more Irish than the Irish. This expressed itself in a negative policy to anything British, and an atmosphere of underlying paranoia where the United Kingdom was portrayed as an alien country (despite centuries of shared history and interaction) that threatened to overwhelm the new Irish Republic. His most infamous act was the sending of a telegram to Berlin in April 1945, regretting the death of the German Chancellor (I suppose he was thinking: my enemy’s enemy is my friend).

Had Michael Collins not been murdered he would almost certainly have led the Dublin government, and without Eamon de Valera’s insecurities, relations with the United Kingdom would have been normalised at a much earlier stage (he would have become a sort of Irish Jomo Kenyatta). As it was, British-Irish friendship only really emerged within the framework of the European Community (which later became the European Union).

Towards the end of the excavation at the crusader castle a group of us went on a trip to a kibbutz in the north of the country, travelling there in an Arab taxi. Fiona had a friend at this kibbutz, and so she disappeared soon after we arrived. Much later, in the early evening when an Arab taxi had arrived to take us back to the British School, we went to look for her and found her sitting alone, fast asleep. It was obvious she had been drinking heavily, and nothing we could do would wake her up (she was insensible). Eventually the others said they were going back in the taxi, and I had to leave with them or else be stranded on the kibbutz. I have always felt guilty about leaving Fiona there on her own.

She reappeared at the British School a couple of days later, and shortly afterwards I returned to the United Kingdom, so we never really re-established our friendship. Months later at home, out of the blue through the post arrived a jiffy bag containing several books Fiona recommended, including an old paperback about Michael Collins.