Massive Attack

It seemed to me, by the end of my working life in 2014, that I had spent the best part of 30+ years either clearing up the mess created by ill-laid plans or making myself unpopular by my efforts to prevent the mess happening in the first place. As I have said several times before in this blog, my main insight into the smooth working of institutions that are in the business of doing stuff was this:

In any organisation, most people are passive onlookers, little more than passengers working their passage on a journey whose reward is a monthly salary and whose destination, in the short term, is the weekend and, in the long term, retirement. Therefore, to ensure the success of any enterprise, whether it be a voyage of discovery, a zoo, a business, or a university, two unusual personality types are necessary at senior level: people who make things happen, and people who make things work. These are two very different and equally rare sets of characteristics, hardly ever embodied in a single person. The two types often hold each other in contempt, openly or secretly, but, when brought together – by force, if necessary – they can generate an awesome transformative energy. The true inner secret, however, is this: People Who Make Things Happen must never be given a complex task to see through, and People Who Make Things Work must never, ever be put in charge. [1]

That's right: despite my day-dreamer persona, laziness, and artistic inclinations, I discovered to my enormous surprise that I am also very much a Person Who Makes Things Work. When I look around me, I see the litter of fixable chaos everywhere, induced and then abandoned by People Who Make Things Happen. They're welcome to their imaginary gold-braided hats, smart uniforms, and glittering prizes: I carry my virtual oily rag and spanner with pride. Made a mess? I, or one of my crew, can fix it! Or could have fixed it, if you'd only thought to bring us in earlier. Our guild membership tattoo reads, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". We're not keen on change for change's sake, or simply to decorate your CV, but we're here to help.

Quite often, the core problem is a simple matter of failing to count quantities, or "logistics", to use a word you'll often see painted on the side of delivery vans. You'd be amazed how often some self-styled Make It Happen visionary has failed, for example, to do a simple sum like "how many people would it take for how long and at what expense to complete this task?" Nearly always, in my experience. How often have I been told, having pointed out the likely consequences of pouring several gallons of ambition into a single pint pot of reality: "I'm a big-picture person – I don't bother myself with these nit-picking details!" And how often have I been thanked for saving someone from a career-wrecking misjudgement? Just the once, actually, but that was a really BIG one.

Why am I telling you this? Because last week I saw a classic example acted out on a grand scale in public.

As anyone who follows the UK news or the music scene will probably be aware, there was an open-air concert by trip-hop combo Massive Attack in their home town of Bristol on Sunday 25th August. We were taking a break there in our flat, which is very near Clifton Downs, the large open area of common land at the top of the Avon Gorge where the concert was to be held, and I had several enjoyable walks around the perimeter of the site, watching and photographing the progress of the installation of the stages, lights, enormous screens, and other outdoor concert essentials, and then on Sunday seeing the first large groups of ticket-holders arriving, around 3:30 pm, for a main act performance scheduled to start a full five hours later at 8:30. Rather them than me, I thought, no matter how good the support acts might be.

Massive Attack are an act from a time well after I had stopped paying attention to pop culture. I have never been to a rave, or indeed any event where the music is characterised by samples stolen from, ahem, real music plus (in the hilarious wording of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats" (I don't think they wanted to outlaw the likes of Philip Glass). It's just not my idea of music and, frankly, by the 1990s I was too busy changing nappies [2] and earning a living as a professional wet blanket and Destroyer of Dreams (see above) to care much about what was going on in some muddy field far away.

The thing is, by now the logistics of festivals and open-air concerts have become well-established and routine. You know: X thousand people over D days require a readily-determined amount of space, catering, facilities, and so on. You can probably get a handy look-up table from Michael Eavis's people to work it out. The days of the muddy disasters of the late 60s are long gone; why, even the first large-scale festival I ever attended – the Knebworth Festival of 1974 – went off pretty much hitch-free.

But, some Make Things Happen people had decided that this Massive Attack concert would pioneer a thoroughly green, carbon-free approach to the business: that, and not the music, is what got it all the coverage on the news. So all toilets and rubbish were to be be composted, all catering would be vegan, nothing would be allowed on site that couldn't be recycled, no power would rely on fossil-fuel generators, people would be encouraged to walk or travel to the site by public transport (including laid-on electric bus shuttles from Temple Meads rail station), and so on.

Obviously, these were incredibly ambitious and worthy goals but, having listened to the radio, walked around the compound a number of times, and knowing the area well, my Mr. Make Things Work warning lights were already going off. It seemed thirty-four thousand tickets at £79 each had been sold. Woah... What, here? In there? As always, vision and intention are one thing, competence and delivery quite another. I wished them luck, mentally, and hoped they'd ordered enough pint pots for this impressive volume of ambition.

So, as it happened, the day after the event, Monday, one of my partner's oldest friends came round, bearing tales passed on to her by a neighbour who had been there and, apparently, was still fulminating with anger. As anticipated, no one had been allowed into the site with their own food or drink – people were actually searched – including those with children in tow. Were there exceptions for, say, diabetics or those on specialised diets? I don't know. It seems everything had to be bought on-site, but by late afternoon pretty much everything for sale had run out: she had queued for over an hour only to find there was nothing left to buy. There simply hadn't been enough catering laid on for thirty-four thousand hungry and thirsty people forbidden from bringing their own sustenance. Why? To minimise non-recyclable litter; no other obvious reason.

Moreover, apparently the space inside the compound was crammed and disorganised: queues were intersecting with dancing crowds in a chaotic and potentially dangerous way once it became dark. There was very little lighting in the public areas, so you had to wonder: what if something unexpected had happened and panic broke out? There was little shelter from the hot sun during the afternoon, and none at all from the downpour of heavy rain that started at 8:30, just as Massive Attack came on stage, as all the tents had by then been closed.

At that point many people decided they had to leave, including our informant. But getting away from the site was difficult. Although it was pouring with rain people were denied access to the special buses, scheduled to leave at the end of the show, not before, and which anyway required the display of a special wristband. Some started ordering Ubers and taxis, but access to the Downs was closed off to traffic. And so on. You get the picture. Wet, hungry, thirsty people, unable to get away other than on foot, having reluctantly decided to miss the headline act: all for just £79.

Don't know about younger, but police are definitely tubbier, these days

The frustrating thing is that none of this need have happened with proper foresight, which always means, in the eternal wisdom of wet blankets and Destroyers of Dreams everywhere: hope for the best but FFS plan for the worst. It was just as well that the very worst, or something like it, didn't happen on Sunday. Outbreaks of the very worst do seem to be becoming more frequent at mass gatherings – they're such an easy target for nutters of all stripes – but I didn't see any ambulances or fire engines parked nearby, for example, on a "just in case" basis. I hope I was mistaken.

Naturally, interviews with people like Bristol's Green MP Carla Denyer emphasised the importance and success of the event's eco-experimental aspect. Of course; but when people are invested in an enterprise for reasons that are, ultimately, quite distinct from its true nature – "green" is great, but is not why so many people had paid £79 for a concert ticket – then any failings are wished away and the successes talked up, perhaps with a bit of muttering about "a few lessons to be learned".

I have to say a certain off-putting air of self-rectitude could be detected floating in the air, like the purported odour of sanctity. I mean, vegan-only catering? Really? Not to mention 34,000 people corralled into a compound resembling a detention camp, while apparently being subjected to graphic virtue-signalling videos about Palestine? Was this meant to be a concert or a re-education camp for the complacent middle-classes of South West England?

Now, the concert's Ts & Cs give every appearance of careful thought, but seem not to have been backed up by proper logistical planning, the sort of stuff that ought to be comparatively routine and dull, like ensuring enough supplies of food and drink, adequate toilets, and strategies for unexpected events and emergencies. This is why People Who Make Things Work need always to be involved at executive level, and their perspective given its due. I mean, where do you even put 30,000 litres of water (that's two large water tankers), never mind the perishable ingredients for thousands of vegan burgers? [3]  Assuming, of course, that these things were ever actually present on site. I don't know.

My guess – perhaps unwarranted – is that some People Who Make Things Happen may have been put in charge of making all those nice ideas work in practice, and some crucial elements in the chain of implementation had been omitted, underestimated, or failed under stress. If so, as always, it will have been because those admirable people will have concentrated on the excitement of the vision thing – not least being seen to be innovative and on-message – and assumed someone else would be attending to the boring facts, figures, and compromises of actual delivery. Noooo...

1. I know... Any variation on the "two sorts of people" thing is always a bit dubious. My favourite is "There are two sorts of people: those who believe there are two sorts of people, and those who don't". For an enjoyably ironic exploration of another "two sorts" (in this case Apollonian vs. Hermetic) see W.H. Auden's poem "Under Which Lyre", delivered at Harvard in 1946, when many "GI Bill" ex-military students will have been present.

2. For American readers, "nappies" are "diapers".

3. Just give that a minute's thought. Be generous, and assume that only half of those you have required not to bring their own food want to eat during the concert. That's still about 15K meals. People are likely to want to queue for food from, say, 5:30 to 8:30: three hours, but with a peak hour around 6:30-7:30. So all food outlets combined will need to process and retail 5K meals an hour, or more likely 2.5K 5:30-6:30, 10K 6:30-7:30, and 2.5K 7:30-8:30. Your challenge: how many outlets, how many staff, and how much food-safe storage are required to meet that demand? You'll be needing a calculator. BTW, do you know how many meals a busy burger drive-through can serve in one hour? (The number 600 seems to come up a lot...). Do you think Vikki's Vegan Victuals Van can handle the job? But then, why trouble yourself with such questions? What matters is that whatever food is available is strictly plant-based; that's the bottom line, anything else is just detail! Hmmm. There comes a point where delegation shades into dereliction...

Another Six Penn'orth

While I've been away having a break in Bristol I have noticed a few people looking at an old post from February 2016, so I thought I'd better remind myself of what it was about. Ah, right, that one! Calculated to amuse about ten people, I'd guess, but I think it's still quite fun eight years later, so I might as well re-post it. I particularly enjoy the fact that it also incorporates a post from eight years earlier, written in 2008 When This Old Hat Was New [1].

Whether giving it another airing now is pleasingly "meta", a case of this blog eating itself, or me turning into my own tribute act (Autoerotic Hat?) is a little troubling. I'd better post something new, quick! And when I get home tomorrow I'd also better find out what I've done with that sixpence...

1. Go on, give it a listen, it's a great song, and I have always felt a deep connection with the album cover art by Mike Tycer.

Sing a Song of Sixpence

I forgot to mention my traditional birthday present to myself. In my post about the "Keats Walk", Sixpence a Pint, I mentioned the letter Keats wrote to his publisher while staying in Winchester, in which he says "there is on one side of the city a dry chalky down where the air is worth sixpence a pint". Without doubt, I would say, that dry, chalky down is Twyford Down, in those days still joined by a neck of land to St. Catherine's Hill.

So, being a sentimental sort, I bought myself a George III silver sixpence on Ebay, minted in 1818, the year before the famous walk through the water-meadows. Who knows? This very coin may have jingled in the immortal pocket. It's certainly been in and out of a few Christmas puddings and bride's shoes in the meantime, too. Maybe I should give it a wash.

This talk of poets, letters, and sixpences reminds me of an old post from 2008, which I may as well revive here. If you have ever sat a literature exam, it may amuse you. Or possibly induce a panic attack. You may turn over your papers NOW:

"When I try to put all into a phrase I say 'Man can embody truth but he cannot know it' ... The abstract is not life and everywhere draws out its contradictions. You can refute Hegel but not the Saint or the Song of Sixpence."
W. B. Yeats, in his last letter, 4th January 1939.

Questions (Time: 3 hours. Use one side of the paper only):

1. In your two penn'orth, was Yeats quite the full shilling?
2. By "the Saint", does Yeats mean the popular 1960s TV drama starring Roger Moore? No? Are you sure?
3. Discuss the impact of decimalisation on The Song of Sixpence. Please show your working.
4. Can you refute Hegel?
5. Can a woman know truth but not embody it? Are men thereby always and inevitably wrong?
6. Draw a contradiction.

Around the World in Eighty Beers

As we head into the doldrums of summer and before I take a break from blogging for a couple of weeks, I thought I'd give an unsolicited testimonial (I've always enjoyed that expression, for some reason) to an old friend's new book. 

I've known Martyn Cornell since we were both at school – he was a couple of years ahead of me – and although we haven't actually met for many years now we've stayed in touch. I'd say that what Martyn doesn't know about beer isn't worth knowing, except that he'd disagree: it's precisely what he doesn't yet know that he's most keen to find out. His research and myth-busting (and there are a lot of myths in the beer world it seems) are excellent, and he's not afraid to tread on toes where lazy writing and the transmission of false received ideas are concerned; to be honest, I think he rather enjoys it.

So, if you are into beer, or simply admire meticulous research into a fascinating area of social, industrial, and commercial history then you will enjoy Martyn's latest book. Here's his description of the idea behind the "eighty beers":

The idea of ATWI80B – and I believe it’s a unique one – is that each chapter starts by looking at one contemporary beer, across more than 40 different countries, from Norway to New Zealand and China to Brazil, and uses that beer as a springboard to talk about the history of the beer style that beer represents, the history of brewing in that country and the history of that brewery.

You can  check it out here. Currently it's a hardback volume – my copy arrived a couple of days ago, and it's a handsome thing – but an e-book version is promised, and I'd be surprised if a paperback isn't forthcoming.

Incidentally, Martyn's research skills were able to open an interesting sidelight onto my own family history. 

My mother was born in 1923, but I was able to find my maternal grandparents easily enough, together with her older sister, one year old, in the 1921 Census when it was released. To my surprise, they were living in a pub, the Seven Stars in Charlton, a tiny hamlet near Hitchin in Hertfordshire. One of the innovations of the 1921 Census was to include the name and address of a worker's employer, so a further surprise was to discover that my grandfather was working as a fitter in a "Portland cement" factory situated in some large chalk quarries at Arlesey, north of Hitchin.

I was curious to know who else was living in the Seven Stars, and it turned out to be a veritable rookery of relatives. There was my great grandmother and her second husband George; the son of her first marriage Herbert, 20; her step-son Charlie, 23; plus her two children with George, Edna and Eric, 11 and 9 respectively. Apart from Tom, George and Herbert were builder's labourers, with Charlie working in a tannery (a notoriously stinky job). All nine of them were sharing three rooms, with one room in common, presumably a kitchen space of some kind.

 As I couldn't find any such pub in present-day Charlton, I was curious what had happened to it. Well, in the case of a mystery pub, who ya gonna call? Beer Busters! Martyn replied, the very next day:

In fact the Seven Stars closed that same year, 1921 - it was one of several places in the area that had their licences taken away by the licensing magistrates as "surplus". (This was a nationwide movement that had been going on since the early 1900s. Brewers paid into a fund to compensate pub owners whose pubs were closed.) The Seven Stars was only a beerhouse, that is, licensed to sell beer and cider only, not wines or spirits, and it was leased to the local brewer, Lucas of Hitchin (which closed itself a couple of years later after having been sold to Green's of Luton).

As someone quite interested in "finding things out" myself, I was curious how he was able to establish this so quickly:

I could tell you about the Seven Stars because something like 40 years ago I spent a couple of days at McMullen's brewery transcribing their annotated version of the 1904 licensing magistrates' survey of all the pubs and beerhouses in Hertfordshire: Macs had kept the survey up-to-date for around 20 years by marking on it when particular pubs or beerhouses had their licences "refused". It's a fabulous resource, not least because it tells you what brewery owned each pub...

As I say, outstanding and properly-sourced research into a niche but important aspect of social, industrial, and commercial history.

There's a bit more "only connect" action going on here, too. As it happens, in 1903 when Ivy was six years old her father was killed in a dray accident while he was working as a brewery labourer in Hitchin. Whether the brewery concerned was Lucas I don't know, but it seems more than likely. There was no obvious connection to be made with the Seven Stars pub – sorry, the Seven Stars beerhouse – itself in 1921, other than the fact it was leased to the Lucas brewery, where Ivy's father may have worked: they were almost certainly simply renting the rooms they occupied. Unless, of course, there was a connection between the licensee and some local builder or even the tannery – not impossible. A bit of additional research in directories by Martyn found a Henry Hinstridge listed as a beer retailer in Charlton in 1890. It's a lead: more research needed (this time by me, though)...

Add together two labourers, a tannery worker (argh!), and a cement works fitter, and there would have been quite a lot of demand for any washing and cleaning facilities. I doubt there was running water on tap upstairs at the Seven Stars in 1921, and you can't wash in beer, however attractive that might sound to some. The river Hiz and a millpond were close by, however, and those plus any nearby pump may have sufficed. It must also have been more than a bit over-crowded up there, and not a little noisy at night when the beerhouse customers got into their stride. [1] But these are the sort of insights that add some colour to the bare facts of family history. What a shame I never bothered to ask my grandparents about their life together before they became old, invisible, and died... Not once, not a single thing.

But that's another post, for later in the year. Have a great summer, if such a thing is possible now that our planetary thermostat has started to malfunction... Maybe a nice cold beer would help? Just be thankful you don't share rooms with a tannery labourer. 

Tannery workers in Hitchin, 1890s (Hitchin Museum)

1. [Drunken voices singing] Oh, what's that smell? (what's that smell?) / Has someone opened up a door to Hell? (door to Hell?) / There's such a blinkin' stink, I can hardly hold me drink /  And there's hours before the landlord rings his bell (rings his bell)...

Plumbing

From Dream Theatre

I had a dream last night (no, wait, this one is actually quite interesting). Or, more accurately, it was early this morning, in that halfway state between sleep and wakefulness when "lucid dreams" tend to occur. In the dream, I was seated at a table with various people, when one of them turned to me and asked, "How do you become a plumber?"

My immediate response was, Is this one of those jokes? Like "how do you make a Maltese cross?". A flash of merriment that, gratifyingly, set the table on a roar (sorry, but my dreams do sometimes take a Shakespeherian turn). But, no, this man – I think he was an artist – really did want to know. I supposed that he saw me as a sort of representative former prole, still trailing some tattered remnants of a working-class authenticity.

So I started in on a long monologue about social class, differing views of education and aspiration, pride in skilled labour, apprenticeships, family businesses, and so on, each statement immediately re-qualified by stepping back a further explanatory stage, until I seemed to be expounding an alternative theory of English history as seen through the prism of plumbing and reaching back through the centuries, in the vein of Raymond Williams or Christopher Hill. It was bloody good stuff, even though I say so myself. But then I had to wake up properly and finally go for a pee.

I think it's fairly obvious what stimulated this dream.

We've had our rotten garden fence replaced. In preparation, I donned my overalls and some tough leather gloves, and set about dismantling our equally rotten garden shed, and clearing a matted tangle of bramble, honeysuckle, and bindweed, which was pretty much all that was holding the fence up. It took a couple of weeks, and it was actually good fun to get so hands-on and physical for a change. It reminded me of my carefree days as Roy the Art Technician, a path never likely to have been taken by me, but one which lives on as a happy memory.

Then for two swelteringly hot days this week a young guy from a local fencing firm came and put up our new fence, single-handed. It was impressive to watch him work, so efficiently, tirelessly, and purposefully, despite the oppressive heat and humidity. He did a fine job, and clearly took real pride in getting it right. I was struck by the way modern tools have removed a lot of the tedious physical labour from such a task: electric screwdrivers are wonderful things. And as for the compressed-air nail gun... Bam, bam, bam! Done! Next board! Bam, bam, bam! Although all of the careful preliminary levelling and lining up was done with nothing more sophisticated than a ball of string and a spirit level.

I was further reminded of a summer job I had in 1974, putting up the security fence for the first Knebworth Festival, which involved bashing six holes through sheets of corrugated iron and then manually fitting them with nuts, U-bolts, and a spanner onto a scaffolding. Now that was hard labour, but not exactly skilled work, and it is skilled, mainly manual occupations such as (sticking with my dream) plumbing that young people – the ones who are not particularly interested in school or suited to office work – need.

To become a plumber is very far from a failure in life, neither is it easy to achieve. It takes aptitude, application, and understanding, not to mention certification. Plumbers, contrary to popular opinion, are not necessarily well paid: certainly, the young lad that turns out to fix your dripping tap is probably earning less than the national average wage. But he's gaining experience, and with experience comes advancement, and ultimately even the prospect of owning his own small business. Everyone from every stratum of society is likely to need a plumber at some point in their life. It's a good choice of career.

When it comes to the "who" and the "how", class is obviously a factor: there are very few Etonian plumbers, although I'm sure there must be some. But all social classes have their complexities. The guy who empties your dustbin may well have grown up next door to the guy whose plumbing firm is installing your new shower, across the road from the woman now teaching your daughter geography at university, and around the corner from some unemployable lost soul who spends his days in medicated vacancy; and even just down the road from where a future world champion Formula 1 driver will one day grow up. This is to take as an example the actual single street – Peartree Way in Stevenage – on which I myself happened to grow up.

It always puzzled me at university that so many of the privately-educated Marxists I met there seemed to believe that "the working class" was a monolithic mass of like-minded folk, just waiting to be led to an historically-inevitable revolution. But the more able of my contemporaries who had left school at the earliest opportunity – the future plumbers, builders, and electricians – would almost inevitably become lifelong working-class Tories; supporters of tax breaks for small businesses, opponents of immigration, and instinctively suspicious of state benefits and trade unions as inimical to hard work and a self-help ethic.

These are all decent, law-abiding folk on the whole, if simply wrong wrong wrong politically, and not the sort of ultra-rightist thugs stirring up trouble on our streets at the moment. The sad fact is that not all working-class people are thirsting for socialism. Neither do all working-class people feel solidarity with other working-class people. Certainly, working-class people are not confined to heaving dustbins or servicing assembly lines, and never have been. Why, one or two have even ended up as Prime Ministers. But, as I say, everyone from every stratum of society is likely to need a plumber at some point in their life. It's a good choice of career.

But there's a problem: the pipelines to becoming decent, law-abiding folk with rewarding working lives are being blocked off. The relentless move towards de-skilling and outsourcing is taking something vitally important away from so many ordinary lives, and that, ultimately, will spell trouble. In fact, we may already be there: I'd ask you to read my post Trouble from 2009. It's one thing to put a labour-saving tool like a nail gun into the hands of skilled workers, but quite another to turn them into mere factory button-pressers, or (ultimately and ideally, it seems) replace them altogether with a clever machine. But even before AI makes us all redundant there's a limit to the amount of skilled workers we can import in order to make up for our failure to invest in our own workforce – from the legendary "Polish plumber" to Filipino nurses –  without causing damage to the social fabric. This is obvious, isn't it? Never mind rocket science, it's not even basic plumbing.

Machine-smashers like Captain Swing and the Luddites were not, um, "luddites" in the watered-down modern sense but were making a desperate intervention, one that needs to be made again and again and again, it seems: that people, not profits, are the point of it all, and people without meaningful work are angry, frustrated people. And angry, frustrated people are the dangerous tool of choice of manipulative demagogues everywhere: they're easily persuaded that a complex problem has an easy, often violent and scapegoated solution. Just watch the news, and if there's a bit of a racket outside maybe check your car is not on fire.

So, anyway, sorry, I was forgetting: did you still want to know how you become a plumber? I think we need to go back to when the Romans invaded Britain to steal our lead piping... Or perhaps to times of old, when knights were bold, and toilets weren't invented. But, huh, for some reason I have just remembered that Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a dog called Flush...

Listen, it's been fun, but I think I really do need to wake up now and go to the bathroom.

Nice job!