Looks can be deceptive

This is not one of those numerous posts about genealogy. Actually, it is in a way, although I will try to put a different slant on it - even though you might want to skip to the end to see the slanty bit...


The photo that you see here was given to me by my grandmother just before she died (or "passed away after a long fight against illness" as they would say on the BBC if she was a celebrity). I have this picture on the wall at home and every day I look at it wishing I had more than a few scant details about it.

Like the words in "A Brian Dialogue", the image comes from a different era. Apparently, in Victorian days, people were told not to smile while photographs were taken. I assume this is why they look so serious, otherwise, I wouldn't fancy going round to their place for a beer and curry to watch the rugby world cup.

So here is what I do know about the faces behind the picture:

The lady to the bottom left is my grandmother's aunty (who apparently looks like me), and her, I knew: she lived over the road from us. When I was young , my parents deemed me mature enough to leave me on my own while they went somewhere or other (the shops I think, rather than a 2 week holiday). My parents thought they had me fooled by hiding the "Breakaway" biscuits on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. Oh, the fools: a chair to stand on was all that was needed to reach up and sneak one. Unfortunately, my family are not known for their DIY skills (a tradition I uphold), and as I held onto the cupboard for balance, it came off the wall and landed on top of me. This, of course, as a small child, alone in the house, posed a bit of a problem - especially as the bottle of beetroot fell on top of me and smashed, giving the impression of me having been involved in a serious car crash. My solution was to cross the road to "Aunty Mary's" house, covered in beetroot juice. After her initial panic (she was already an old lady) she helped me clean up the mess and explain it away to my parents. Problem solved. Great lady.

Mary never married, and lived all her adult life with her brother (one of the guys at the back). The other guy at the back is called Sam, and is recorded in the 1901 population census as a "coal porter". Perhaps life would have been different if he had been Cole Porter rather than the guy who carried the sacks from the cart to the coal cellars (does anyone remember them? All the houses in my parents street have a (now filled in) space where the coal was poured when the coal-man delivered).

Here's the slant; I hope it was worth waiting for:

The matriarch in the centre of the photo fascinates me and I look at her each time I pass. Frankly, she looks extremely austere and a bit scary. She is my great, great grandmother. However, the two fascinating details about her are:

1. She married twice (I don't know how common this was at the end of the 19th century), outliving two husbands (maybe they died in a war, or maybe after a "long fight against illness"). What you see is therefore a re-constructed family.
   
2. She adopted one of the young boys in the photograph. All I know is that his nickname was Jub. What makes me sad is that I don't know why she adopted him and I know that I never will.

However, it pleases me to think that it could have been an act of pure kindness on her part that is in direct contrast to the image that is presented in the photo.

As the title says: looks can be deceptive.

Quality and the Rugby World Cup

France is holding the Rugby World Cup at the moment. Interest is waning after a poor start, but that is not the point of this article. Each time the rugby world cup comes around, I am reminded of the 1991 edition, a period which shaped me for many reasons.

At the time, I had been in my first job after graduation for a year or so. I was working in the research labs for a multi-national company, mainly involved in developing techniques for analysing satellite images. I have mixed feelings about the 2.5 years I spent there. On the negative side, I felt that most of the people were waiting for retirement and it was not the most dynamic working environment. On the positive side, it helped me develop my rebellious side, as I rallied against apathy and cynicism (traits that have now seeped into my own personality, but which I try hard to suppress. But, as usual, I digress).

The 1991 World Cup coincided with a no-doubt fascinating event at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham (i.e., it was big). The project I had been working on was deemed interesting enough to warrant a poster in the exhibition hall (it was something to do with detecting ships from the patterns left in images by their wakes - I could tell you more, but the secret services may pay me a visit).

I spent a long time working on that poster. I was quite proud of it. The project was interesting and to top it all, it had nice pictures in it - who could ask for more? I was in the days before Photoshop, so I had to glue all the pieces of text and image directly onto an A3 piece of paper before sending it to the "Turn-pieces of-paper-into-posters" department. Well, the day before the conference started, I was told that the poster wouldn't be ready until the second, and last, day of the exhibition. Did I say it wasn't a dynamic environment?

However, the hotel was booked, train tickets bought and space in the conference hall reserved. What to do? My reaction today would be different to my reaction at the time. My reaction then was to say, "For Christ's sake, if you haven't got the time, I'll just take the mock-up and use that instead of the poster. What I've done here is interesting and other people will be interested in finding out more". This proved to be a monumental and professional-life-shaping mistake.

It was an industry event and several top "dignitaries" were there. Unfortunately, the dignitary from our company saw the "poster" of the project of which I was so proud and complained loudly to my boss that it was amateurish and reflected badly on the company. Not surprisingly, I was told to take it down. This felt like I had received a very heavy tackle from one of the All Blacks. The boss was right: I should have waited - showing something professional for one day was better than showing something amateurish for 2 days even if I thought it needed to be "out there".

Why do I mention this during the rugby world cup? Well, I spent the evening after the first day watching a match in the window of a TV shop in Solihull, near Birmingham - no sound, just pictures. It couldn't get much worse. I was alone, too shy to go to a pub or restaurant alone and felt utterly miserable. Boo-hoo, poor me.

I work in the software industry and am nowadays mostly involved in project management. There are lots of blogs out there about the importance of getting version 1.0 of a piece of software out of the door and into the customer's hands. In many cases, this is undoubtedly the best course of action, particularly if you need to be the first into the market and I have worked on this sort of project before and, indeed, it can be a good way to get early feedback if you find the right partners.

However, in an established discipline, such as the one I worked in at that time and the one I work in now where the software is used in mission-critical installations, quality counts - involve the customer from the beginning and right through the project, but take whatever time it needs to get it right (within the business constraints) and be prepared to defend this position - don't throw it out there because you are proud of it and want it to be seen as soon as possible - it will fly back in your face like an, ahem, disgruntled All-Black forward (to keep the laboured analogy going).
I don't pretend to be any kind of guru, but it's become my mantra and a lesson I learnt the hard way.

The good news is that the French rugby team's over-confidence has been dented, and that the English rugby team's under-confidence might pull us through as far as a sound beating by a team from the southern-hemisphere which is not so bad - quality counts, but let's be realistic!

Ca plane pour moi...

French language music has never made it in the UK. Can you think of any? Sacha Distel's "Thank Heavens for Little Girls" was a translation and is probably best not spoken about in polite circles. Apart from that, I can think of three others:

1. Serge Gainsbourg's and Jane Birkin's "Je t'aime, moi non plus",
   
2. Vanessa Paradis' "Joe le Taxi", and,
3. Plastic Bertrand's "Ca Plane pour Moi". This song was really popular at the end of the 70's, surfing on the back-end of the punk wave. Unfortunately, I was pre-pubescent at the time, so by the time my face was covered in spots, it was New Romantic rather than New Wave (although, Wham were seriously under-rated :-) ). However, Plastic's song stuck in the mind of lots of people (at least I think so: maybe I'm the only one who's heard of it?).

It was the "Village Fête" this weekend and imagine my surprise when I saw that Plastic was doing a show in a marquee on the local football pitch! It seems he is doing the rounds with a couple of other singers from the same era. As it's a village (well, OK, a small town), the football pitches are only a few hundred metres from our house and we could hear the music from the garden. It was a lovely afternoon, and we had just finished the annual "City Mountain Biking" tour - up and down the hills of Lyon with the traffic stopped for the cyclists - an excellent day out (but if you've ever been to Lyon you'll know that there are some killer hills).

So a bunch of us are sat in the garden with a beer, and guess what comes on? Oh yes, you've guessed it, Plastic was knocking out his old standard. It was more cabaret than punk, but he got a standing ovation from us at the end. Thanks Plastic, you made my day.
I'm sure he was playing huge venues in the early 80's, and a village fête is not be in the same bracket, but hey, 30 years later and he's still out there, doing what he loves. Not many people can say that about their lives.

Unless of course, he is absolutely sick of being remembered for one song, a stupid name, playing "provincial tent gigs" and is doing it because it because he is broke. Damn, that spoiled my upbeat ending!

A Brian Monologue

This little anecdote from my father made me laugh and I wanted to record it for posterity for my own amusement. It came from his 80-year-old neighbour (who, for the record, hasn't lost his marbles).

I suspect you have to know a bit about the character to find it amusing, but if I ever write a novel, this little monologue will slip in. It's language and style from another era (but firmly rooted in northern England). As an exercise in style, I tried to write it phonetically to capture the accent. Not sure it works, but here goes:

"Y'alright Dave?"
"If thez one thing ah carn't bloody stand, it's cheats"
"Ar've bin watching that program, "The Weakest Link" an' y'know what? The strongest link always gets t'end and then t'others vote 'em off and thee never win!"
"People t'day ave no scruples!"

"An another thing ah can't bloody stand is liars"
"Ah bought these trousers las' week and thee said thee were non-crease"
"Bloody creases everywhere, the lying buggers. Med in Britain too!"
"Y'know whats t'worst in all that Dave? Ah can't bloody stand ironing".

And off he went.

I hope it doesn't come over as mockery, because I know and love the guy (I have known him all my life) and he's never short of an off-the-wall comment. I hope he has many years left if only so I can get some more for the novel...

Customer Service à la Zidane

I love it when a sweeping generalisation is backed up with evidence (Global Warming? Polar ice-caps melting? Hhhmm, might be something in that piece of evidence...)

Anyway, the following relates to my "infamous"article, "3 Things I Dislike About France". Although it didn't figure in the "list of 3", I wrote that the French like "nothing more than a good-old stand-up argument in public". As above, it was a sweeping generalisation, but sometimes there is a grain of truth that leads to the generalisation...

Last Friday lunchtime, I went to the restaurant with a colleague. We work close to the supermarket mentioned in a previous article. They have several restaurants surrounding them and one of them we go to on a regular basis. It's popular: I estimate that there are over 100 people there at any one time every lunchtime: it's not a dodgy backstreet boozer; the food is OK and, until Friday, I thought that the service was good too...

Today, something was different - there was a guy, in his 40's, not the brightest looking to be honest, but so what, a customer all the same. Anyway, I didn't see how it started, but evidently he wasn't happy with the plate of cheese that had been served to him and was rather vociferously "explaining" this to the serving staff. He entered into a bit of an argument with the manager. Eventually, the manager took off his apron before wandering off into the kitchen. During this time, the guy kept pointing at his cheese (sorry, I really don't know what he was complaining about - it was loud and I was looking over someone's shoulder).

He made his final point by picking up the plate, pointing at it once more for effect, before throwing it on the floor, smashing it and evoking cries of "eh, ô,ô" from the customers (I don't know what effect an ^ has on an ordinary 'o', but it makes it look foreign). At this point, the manager, having removed his apron, returned from the kitchen. He arrived behind the indignant customer who was still remonstrating with the waiters. He calmly tapped the man on the back of the shoulder, and, as he turned round, gave him a swift head-butt. Silence. Problem solved, no ugly shoving out onto the street, no calling the police.

"Got a problem customer? No sweat, a swift smack on the head will soon sort that out".

Nobody, including the buttee knew what to make of this (is buttee a word?- if not, remember that you saw it here first! "buttee" = "one who has been butted". We use "butty" in the north of England to signify "sandwich". A double-butty is far more appetising than a double-buttee. But I digress.).

After a few seconds, he regained his indignation and continued to insult everybody, all the while retreating towards the door as he saw that he might receive another for his troubles. He left, the mess was cleared, and the boss continued to collect orders as before. Problem solved...

Not for me though. We had only just started our meal and I think it shows how paranoid we are because for the rest of the meal, I expected the guy to come back, maybe, god forbid, with a weapon. I am sure that I am not the only one in there that was thinking this, even though there were nervous laughs all round. As Morrissey said "I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was terrible. Oh mamma, let me go". Actually the "Oh mamma let me go" is nothing to do with this article and is a story in itself.

Anyway, my original point that there are very few places in the world where you would see something like this happen, especially in a family restaurant. I checked this story with my French colleagues this morning, who were equally as shocked as me, so my "evidence-of-a-grain-of-truth-in-a-sweeping-generalisation" theory is not exactly vindicated, but its an interesting little interlude in itself.

What doe all this mean though?

1. I will never go there again, and probably neither will many of the other customers present
2. If I do go there again, I won't order the cheese
3. If I don't like the service, I will be very careful about how I complain.
   

I wondered what I would do if I had been the owner watching this? I can't go into French employment law because there is only a limited amount of disk-space in the world. However, putting that aside, I would think I would take one of four options:

1. Send the boss home for the day to keep him out of sight of the remaining customers and then give him a written warning when he comes back, or,
2. Send him on a course on how to treat customers
   
3. Sack him on the spot
4. Recommend him as a bouncer to any night-club-owning /debt-collecting friends.
   

To me, it doesn't seem to be something you should allow your staff to do, even with the most difficult customers...what would you do? Comments welcome.


As a complete aside
In case you don't understand the title of this article. Zinedine Zidane is the 2nd best player I have ever seen (after Maradona). My kids are young and love playing football, but, if you mention Zidane, they follow it up with a "coup de boule" gesture (see the video). If they grow up as football/soccer fans, then it would be a great shame if this is all he is remembered for.