Another mentoring lesson

This is a post perhaps more appropriate to Facebook, except that the young man in question is now a Facebook friend and he may be embarassed.

A few days ago I was standing at a bus stop and a young chap in an elderly Lotus drove past, rather noisily. 50 yards up the road he braked, did a rather showy tight turn in the entrance to a side road, and came back. To my astonishment, he pulled alongside me and stopped. "Did you use to do some work at the School?" (local comprehensive school) he asked. I admitted I did. "I thought I recognised you," he said, "I think you used to mentor me. Thank you". I had no idea who he was, so asked. He gave me his name; he was the first lad I mentored, 15 years ago, under a scheme in which local business people helped troubled and/or troublesome pupils address themselves to the world of work. "The ginger beard threw me," I said.

It emerged that he was now admin manager at a successful local business. "I couldn't pass you and not say "Hi"" he said. "I make a point of doing things slightly out of the ordinary that people don't expect. A lot of people remember me."

This seems to me like an excellent way of going through life, so I thought I'd share it.

A mentoring lesson

I've never been one of life's managers but I have mentored a lot of people in my time. One of the greatest pleasures of being a mentor is seeing your mentees move on to successful careers.

 It would be invidious to pick any of them out by name but I've just discovered that one guy, whom I mentored when he was doing GCSEs at a comprehensive school, is now Creative Director of a well known international hairdressing chain. When, at 15, he declared his intention to become a hairdresser I was disappointed although, of course, I didn't let on. I thought he was destined for greater things. It just shows how wrong you can be.

Or, as one of my social media friends commented, how right.

The Ministry for the Future

 Many of my friends may not know, because I don't often post or talk about it, that I am an avid reader of science fiction. Not the "little green men" genre, but man's exploration of the planet, the solar system and the galaxy. Isaac Asimov has been a favourite for many years but around ten years ago I discovered Kim Stanley Robinson. I first read "Red Mars" rapidly followed by "Blue Mars" and "Green Mars", which describe man's colonisation of that planet, driven partly by the fact that we were making our own planet uninhabitable.

Red Mars was published in 1992 and, as is often the case with quality science fiction, it was shown to be rigorously researched and impressively prescient of our actual exploration of Mars.

What interests me about Robinson's books is that each successive book brings us closer and closer to the present. "The Ministry for the Future", published in 2020, is set in 2024 - next year! It describes how an environmental catastrophe drives mankind to take our environment much more seriously than we have to date. I am not going to spoil it for you by saying any more except that I listened to it first on Audible and decided that I would acquire a hard bound copy and read it more slowly and more thoughtfully.

This is not an easy book. As another reviewer has said, the first few chapters are brutal, but they forced me to think. A New York Times reviewer said "If I had to choose one writer whose work will set the standard for science fiction in the future, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson".

It is my view that this book should be compulsory reading for all politicians of every party and for board members and senior managers of all large companies. And for everyone who wants to leave this planet to their grandchildren in a habitable condition.

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Learning about housebuilding

In September 2023 we moved into a new property in Kingsgrove in Wantage. Although we're delighted with it I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of living on a building site for the next couple of years. How wrong can you be?

The site immediately opposite us was occupied by foundations, clearly intended for a detached house. I have been continually fascinated by the building process; I knew a little about it because my father had lectured in some building subjects at a technical college and I visited several sites with him at the time. However, I was way, way out of date.

We had the opportunity of watching men (and occcasionally women) carrying out a range of skilled jobs. These included the drivers of a big boy's fork lift and a digger who carried out tasks with amazing precision and care, bricklayers, scaffolders, roofers, laying paviours, rendering and colouring external surfaces, laying kerbing and roads. We weren't able to see the internal works but no doubt they were carried out to the same standard. And apologies if I've missed someone.

What has really impressed me is the speed and accuracy with which tasks were excuted. It has been fascinating and a great learning experience. Thanks guys.

Don't make fun of Americans!

It used to be commonplace to make fun of Americans as not being very bright - I probably fell into the trap myself on a couple of occasions. However, this is manifestly unfair, as illustrated by two recent comments I heard.

1) I was standing at a bus stop near our home. We live on the edge of the Berkshire Downs, although in Oxfordshire, and it's often windy here. A chap strolled up, scowled at me and said, "I've never lived anywhere so windy. They ought to do something about it".

2) I was at a networking event and I overheard a guy say, "Why do we have leap years? Having 29 days in February makes it impossible to plan."

In both cases these comments were made in all seriousness. What makes it even more surprising is that we live only a few miles from the huge, and growing, scientific community at Harwell, and every second person you meet is a scientist. Presumably the others are here to maintain equililbrium.

And remember, they reproduce and have the vote.

Childish comprehension

A few days ago I overheard a young mum singing nursery rhymes to her child - not such a common occurrence these days. It reminded me of my early childhood. My mother, who had been a primary school teacher, often used to sing nursery rhymes with me, all the usual ones, Jack and Jill, Baa Baa Black Sheep, The Grand Old Duke of York, etc, etc. There was one that always puzzled me - This Little Piggy Went to Market. The final line is "And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee, wee all the way home". I was surprised that there was a nursery rhyme about an incontinent piglet, but Mummy used to sing it so obviously it was OK. It was only some years later that I realised the final line was actually, "And this little piggy went "Wee, wee, wee, wee" all the way home" and the "wee's" were not what he did but the noise he made. Ah.

Which reminds me of something my mother once told me. When she was little she never really understood one of the hymns they used to sing in church. It was entitled, "Gladly the cross-eyed bear." It was only later she realised her misunderstanding.

NHS Humour

The NHS is often in the news at the moment so I've been thinking about my NHS experience over the years - I did a lot of inadvertent consumer testing in my 20s. I spent an extended period in the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) - hospital stays were much longer then. It was, and I imagine still is, a teaching hospital so I came across a lot of medics in training, and the people teaching them too. One of these was Professor "Fred" Perry who I think was a cardiologist. On one occasion he was standing with a cluster of students around a patient in an adjoining bed. It emerged that patient had fluid around his heart, or lungs, I forget which, and this needed to be drawn off.

Fred picked on one of the students and said, "How would you position the patient so that you could draw off the fluid with a syringe?" The student thought for a moment and said, "On his back". "Ah," said Fred, "so you'd lie on your back under the bed, stick the syringe up through the mattress, and Bob's your uncle." There was a lot of laughter. I don't suppose any of those present forgot the lesson. I certainly didn't.