Category: Soapbox

Hibernation mode deactivated

Published on by Frances ManwaringLeave a comment

I’m excited—I’m writing a book. Please feel free to join my happy dance. I’ve been writing my book for several months now. Unfortunately, after a burst of energy over the (southern hemisphere summer), ennui sank its fangs into the jugular of my writer’s mojo, and I went back into a slough of inertia, if not outright despond. 

This whole pandemic thing and all the other unthinkable stuff that’s going on around us has challenged me big time. It’s like someone found Pandora’s Box intact, read the cautionary tale about what happens when you open it, but thought it would be a winning idea to open it anyway and see if it’s as bad as legend would have it. Just as an aside, Pandora’s box was, in fact, Pandora’s jar. There’s a long and boring story about Erasmus usign the wrong word when he translated the story from Greek to Latin…zzzzzz. Anyway, box or jar, it was left in Pandora’s care and curiosity drove her to open it. Epic fail! Imagine her face as she watched sickness, death and myriad other evils escape into the world. Even though she shut the box as quickly as she could — well, you would, wouldn’t you? — the only thing she shut back in was hope, surely the one thing humanity needed to survive the others? Eek! You’d have to think Pandora spent the rest of her life in therapy, coming to terms with her guilt.

Anyway, back to me. I don’t think I have felt so much lack of certainty before. Frankly, I’ve been confused in these oh-so-changing and identity-obsessed times. Every time I crank up my computer to start a post, I get bogged down in the deathly dichotomy of doctrinal duality (not to mention laboured alliteration). It’s not that I haven’t had ideas; it’s just that when I start to run with one of them, so many different pathways open up that I quite literally get overwhelmed and can’t decide which to follow. Like Robert Frost, I’d go for the one less travelled, but almost all of them qualify on that count these days. 

For someone who loves to comment, this uncharacteristic state of no comment—haven’t posted a blog at all this year and only a couple last year—is disturbing. There’s been such a one-dimensionality about life. The usual rites of passage have been cancelled or postponed, sometimes more than once. My choir is on it’s fourth attempt to sing the mighty Bach Mass in B Minor. Parties, weddings, funerals, festivals, concerts, celebrations with family and friends, travel and holidays. Many of the things that anchor our lives haven’t happened. Time seems to have folded into itself. Chronological memory has stalled—it’s hard to remember what happened and when it happened because the rhythm of our lives has been messed around so badly. 

However, I had a ‘Damascus moment’ a few weeks ago. I realise I’ve been in mental hibernation. We humans aren’t supposed to be able to hibernate, but I’m walking proof “the science” is wrong on this. Think about it. Hibernation is the thing that animals do to conserve energy so they can survive adverse weather conditions or lack of food. But isn’t hibernation just one great big sleep? Not at all. They’re not all a bunch of lazy fur balls—hibernation isn’t technically sleeping, and hibernating animals ‘wake up’ periodically. Hibernation’s more a state of torpor. The animal’s heartbeat and breathing slow, and their body temperature drops significantly. But they are still capable of some activity, including suckling cubs. Sounds scarily like my last two years, except for the cub suckling bit. Oh, and hibernating bears don’t eat, drink or exercise for around 100 days. I’ll leave you to figure out which of those abstentions apply to my hibernation experience. 

If animals can hibernate to survive stuff like adverse weather, why not me ? I’ve clearly been in a state of torpor avoiding all the crap unleashed by the idiot who re-opened Pandora’s box (or jar). I’ve been in my imaginary leaf and twig-lined den waiting for better times. What? I’ve woken up too soon? Well, even bears can only hibernate for so long. 

In any case, as there is SFA I can do about any of the stuff I’ve been hoping to outlast, I figured it was time to grab some of those lemons life has lobbed in my direction and make some lemonade. It’s time to zoom in on the certainties and consign confusion to outer darkness. So, I’m writing a book about branding for the founders of start-up and early-stage businesses. You may well think this is a giant leap from writing about random shit in this blog, but developing and managing brands is what I do for a living and, after a lot of years plus a fair few cracks at the entrepreneurial life to lace through it all, I have a lot of material. You might say my stash of lemons is a big one. Much tasty lemonade should result. 

OK, I’ll stop labouring the point and move on. But I am excited. It’s going well. Energy is high, optimism is loaded, and the world is again my oyster. Hibernation mode is most definitely deactivated.

Who will COP the flack if our leaders can’t agree?

Published on by Frances ManwaringLeave a comment

With Cop26 underway, how do you feel? I’m a bit jittery — it’s so important, and I find myself moving from upbeat optimism to pessimistic defeatism in the space of a nano-second. After all, what are the odds that this Conference of Parties will ultimately achieve more than exhaling a lot of hot air? 

And yet they must, while the rest of us sit it out, holding our collective breath. The alternative is unthinkable. We, humans, are an increasingly fractious and divergent bunch. We squabble over which statues and people to cancel, ‘doing a Nero’ and fiddling while our world burns. Imagine how much worse these divisions will become if we don’t pull our heads in and find the global will to grasp the nettle and get ourselves off the horns of the climate dilemma.

It’s so easy to get disillusioned and question the point of individual action. And yet, every day, so many people and organisations demonstrate that we all can make a difference. We all do what we can as individuals, families, communities. But we need more. We need our global leaders to liberate the genie in the lamp and pull at least one giant rabbit from their magic hats. Where are Harry Potter and his “Expelliarmus” spell when we need them?

Wouldn’t it be nice if some high wizard could just wave their wand, utter the magic words, and hey presto, all the bad stuff like Covid and Climate Change, war, famine, and aggro of any sort are sealed back into the contemporary Pandora’s box we opened through our carelessness. So far, so good though — it does look like there are a few wins coming through. I’m keeping my fingers well crossed that hope triumphs over experience this time.

What if the winner didn’t take it all?

Published on by Frances Manwaring1 Comment

In the middle of last year, I joined SheEO — a global network of “radically generous women building a $1B perpetual fund working on the world’s to-do list.” Basically, we’re a bunch of women who want to invest in making the world, and our prospects within it, a better place by supporting each other and sharing capital, resources and connections to do it. 

Founded in 2015 in Canada, SheEO is now active in four other regions (NZ, US, Australia and UK) with 7,000 investors who have supported 107 ventures with more than $7m of capital. As Canadian founder Vicki Saunders says, “To get to the new solutions for the world’s most pressing social issues; we need to shed our ‘winner takes all culture’ that has resulted in 5 men having the same wealth as half the planet! 51% of the population are women. Yet, we receive 2.2% of the capital. This is statistically impossible without massive bias designed into our systems and structures.”

I love everything about being part of this fantastic network; the shared spirit of radical generosity; the scope of the founders’ vision; the wide variety of women involved – all ages, races and cultures are welcome; the feeling of being part of something that is making things happen, not just a gabfest. I’ve been a member of a fair few networks in my lifetime, but never one that has so wholly fulfilled its promise. We are genuinely a community of support where people with something to give offer it, and people who need something feel free to ask. 

I’m what’s known as an “Activator”. Activators invest a fixed amount each year which goes into our own region’s pool of money. This pool supports emerging female entrepreneurs launching or growing businesses that create the socially and environmentally sustainable models of the future. Selected entrepreneurs receive 0% loans. Repaid loans — to date, there has been a 95%  repayment rate — are paid forward, augmenting the available pool of money. Funded businesses get coaching and development support. Most of all, they get access to a global community of women who support them as customers, advisors, connectors and fans. 

What’s great is that everything is on our terms. You can be as involved as you want to be. Ventures are free to build their companies according to their values. Activators support when and how they can, including being involved in selecting companies receiving loans. Everyone commits to showing up with radical generosity to bring out the best in each other.

I just saw the breakdown of ages of the entrepreneurs in my New Zealand region who have received funding and was thrilled to see nearly 28% of them are women over 50. It’s heartwarming to see increasing numbers of women shrugging off the cloak of invisibility that age seems to drape over our shoulders, leaving us marginalised and without a voice. I co-founded a tech start-up at 51 and cannot for the life of me see why more of us don’t give it a go. For sure, it’s risky and exhausting, but also exhilarating and most definitely character building. As George Eliot so famously said, “it’s never too late to be who you might have been.”

Not everyone is cut out to take this sort of leap, particularly at a life stage when the prudent are squirrelling away maximum quantities of nutritious nuts to see them through their retirement season. But the world is changing rapidly, and establishing a business for good is one way to make your mark on how the changes roll out. Unlike so many things these days, I believe this is binary: we change for good or bad. The choice is ours — by embracing radical generosity and supporting the people who can and want to make it a change for good, we can get beyond all the inequities that exist. With a spirit of radical generosity, we can cut across tribal boundaries, hates and discriminatory mindsets and ignore the fake news and conspiracies.With radical generosity as a philosophy, they become irrelevant and we can break the winner-takes-it-all model. With radical generosity, we can stop fixating on past mistakes and concentrate on building bridges, negotiating with each other kindly and creating meaningful communities of mutual support with a shared vision of the world we want to see. 

Thanks to Saba.com for the header image.

Would you trust this man?

Published on by Frances Manwaring2 Comments

I was amused to read that Tinder and other dating apps intend to make it possible for users to get ‘verified data’ (i.e., run background checks) on their romantic prospects. The available data will include any arrests, convictions, restraining orders, harassment, and evidence of violent crimes. For an, as yet, unspecified fee, this will “empower users with information” so they can protect themselves. 

I was amused to read that Tinder and other dating apps intend to make it possible for users to get ‘verified data’ (i.e., run background checks) on their romantic prospects. The available data will include any arrests, convictions, restraining orders, harassment, and evidence of violent crimes. For an, as yet, unspecified fee, this will “empower users with information” so they can protect themselves. 

Sounds like a no-brainer, right?. After all, an unbelievable number of people are on the receiving end of gender-based violence — about one in four women and one in nine men have experienced it at some point in their lives. And I understand that platforms like Tinder have been slow to act on complaints about abuse by people listed on their site. 

The big problem with certified data as far is that it’s not unknown for someone without any ‘previous’ to be saddled with the rap sheet of someone possessing a similar name or some other matching data. Mistaken identity can see some people lose out on potential jobs, houses, and now possibly love through no fault of their own. Employers are not allowed to ask about stuff like this in interviews in the interests of fairness. Certainly, there is the option to request a police check, but the usual starting point is to give the candidate a chance to tell their own story. 

I have often wondered if we shouldn’t approach relationships with the pragmatism and rigour employers take in screening prospective employees. Over the years, I’ve employed a fair number of people and I’ve made my share of poor choices — no system is failsafe. But I’ve tried to stack the odds through running a thorough selection process and by checking references. 

Writing letters of reference for former employees is something of a dying art. Some still want them, but they’re a potential minefield. On the one hand, you can be prosecuted by the new employer if you over-represent the person’s capabilities. On the other, you have to risk the ire of departing employee if they disagree with your summing up of their performance. Hence the blandly handy and non-committal Certificate of Employment. This bald statement of job title and time served, possibly including an invitation to call for more information, gets you off the hook. It’s all you are legally obliged to provide if there are reasons you don’t want to do more.

In the employment context, seeking and providing character references is a big part of the deal and acceptable on both sides of the negotiation. For candidates, protection lies in the fact that it’s up to them whose names they give as referees — you’d hope they’d pick fans. But even the most enthusiastic fan cannot always defend their idol across the spectrum of topics that might come up. I’ve become good at reading or listening between the lines. It’s easy to hear the slight hesitations before they answer difficult questions and to spot the careful phrasing to avoid being untruthful where there is cause for concern. Frankly, I’ve been amazed at times what people have been prepared to tell me.

The last reference check I gave had its challenges. It was for someone I mostly rated very highly and liked, but aspects of their attitude and approach were quite tricky to manage. When asked, I gave a measured response that made it clear I had reservations in this one particular area but then stressed I didn’t think it would prevent them from succeeding in the intended role. You don’t want to limit the prospects of someone you broadly feel is a good thing, but the issues had caused a few problems in my business, and I don’t think it’s fair to a potential new boss to gloss over stuff like that. I take the approach of raving (in a good way) where I can and keep the negatives short and as sweet as I can make them, honestly. 

Coming back to Tinder et al., consider how differently we would view the dating game if people took up reference checks from one or more former partners before they ever agreed to a date. What would your exes say about you?  More to the point, what, if asked, would you say about them? 

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Re Barlow Brinksman

Barlow and I cohabited for nearly a decade, during which time he held the role of my Life Partner, a job title for which he ultimately proved unfit as the life bit didn’t work out.

Despite his excellent qualifications for the role — alpha male status, top job in industry, large asset base, physique holding up well for age, brooding raptoresque looks and impressive intellect — he somehow never entirely fulfilled his potential. Barlow is not a team player, being over-competitive and doesn’t like sharing other than with his children to whom he’s obsessively attached.

I couldn’t fault his commitment in some areas — he demonstrated an enthusiastic, somewhat obsessive approach to the more physical aspects of the job. I also couldn’t complain about his earning power, although what was his remained his. Barlow was always punctual and could be highly sociable when he felt like it. He communicates exceptionally well on some levels; I never had any difficulty understanding his basic needs, but he has trouble expressing himself on a more profound emotional level. While he carried out complex duties with competence and on time, he could not be relied upon when the opera season coincided with Super Fifteen Rugby’s later stages.

He is entirely capable of working without supervision but rarely uses his initiative at essential times like birthdays and Christmas. His alpha-male status also makes him something of a bully, and he doesn’t take it well if he doesn’t get his way.

In my opinion, despite his many fine qualities, he has changed partners too often during his career and is unlikely to settle in any Life Partnership position permanently.  Moreover, he left me without serving out an acceptable notice period. In my opinion, it would take a massive mental shift for him to embrace the qualities required in this demanding role: commitment, sharing, nurturing, listening and compromising.

While I would possibly recommend him to anyone looking for an Associate Partner or perhaps a Transitional Person, I would have to say pass if you’re looking for your forever person, and I would not personally re-instate him if hell were freezing over.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me should you require further information.

Yours faithfully etc.

If the above were a letter of reference for a potential employee, it would likely be severely career limiting. But what if it were from a previous partner of a person that you’ve already started to fall for?

Realistically, the concept of romantic reference checks doesn’t have legs, entertaining though I find it. I doubt it would make people behave any differently during relationships and going back to previous partners for a reference would likely dredge up any residual biases or bitterness, which tend to distort the good things. It’s true; some couples manage to maintain close ties after their romantic relationship is no more, and perhaps those types would be good referees? Perhaps not. If you’re the person who left, generally, that is because your partner has had some behaviours or values that you don’t share or find difficult and providing a candid reference would bring these out. If you’ve been unceremoniously dumped, your feelings toward that person are likely to be skewed negative. 

In any case, a person that is a disaster for me really could be The One for you. There are always two sides to any story, and what I perceive to be the truth – or “my truth” as it has become — can be very different to what an ex sees. It’s pretty subjective, and a reference from me would likely be pretty meaningless. So, I’d pick that most people wouldn’t bother to take up emotional references even if they were available or pay any attention to them if they were. 

After all, what would their last partner know? Once you start to get romantically involved, common sense, discernment, and logic exit stage left with the speed of a caged bird set free. Few of us have no skeletons of any sort in our closets. Mostly, they’re pretty anodyne, but they’re the sort of thing you’d like to fess up to once a degree of intimacy has been built, not in a fact-checking exercise before you’ve begun. For the would-be-dater, the internet and social media already provide extensive opportunities to ‘stalk’ people for insight into who they are. But what does it tell us? It’s not as if anyone’s going to advertise that the pinnacle of success in their life to date has been to be banged up for beating the living crap out of their partner. 

As a species, we do play fast and loose and take enormous risks with our hearts. Perhaps Tinder’s proposed screening service will provide some basic safety protections, so its users don’t end up on the receiving end of some psycho’s crazy mind. Whether or not they do, it still won’t protect people from the heartbreak of knowing love don’t live here anymore.

An inconvenient wheeze

Published on by Frances Manwaring2 Comments

“Will it kill me?” I ask, fed up with the obfuscation that’s going on, staring him straight in the eye.

“Er … no,“ he replies, eyes focused, consultant-like, into the space above my head. 

Yay, I’m not in danger of carking it any time soon. At least, not from this. Great news, even though I do wish the man would volunteer some information instead of me having to drag it out of him like a mother trying to understand how their teenager’s school day went. Nodding to the squadron of pigs primed for take-off on the grass outside the window, I persevere with the list of questions I’ve prepared in advance.

“Will it get worse as I get older?” 

“No evidence that it will. You need to get flu jabs and stay away from people with colds,” is the best he can do after a lengthy contemplation of the inside of his eyelids. Interestingly, no mention of Covid implications. Well, I guess there’s no community outbreak currently, so I’ll give him a pass on that.

Silence descends on the room after this burst of conversational brio, and we stare at each-others’ shoes like a pair of accountants at a party, wondering who’s going to be brave enough to speak first.

What is it about medical consultants? They may be brilliant in their fields, but the ones I’ve experienced share a startling inability to communicate on any level that could remotely be called human. 

Many people believe that our stresses and emotional issues manifest in physical ways. I tend to agree with this as I’ve had minor respiratory problems for as long as I remember. My breathing kit is like a litmus test of my emotional equilibrium. When I get stressed, my voice gets all husky and breathless — think Marlyn Monroe singing happy birthday to JFK — and I get mild symptoms of a cold. As it’s always been short-lived, I’ve never really thought too much about it.  

At some point a couple of years ago, it stopped being an occasional thing. I reached some sort of tipping point where I’m coughing a lot — a worrying amount. The first year of joined-up-coughing, it stops for the summer. The second-year, it doesn’t. I’m not over-concerned as many people in New Zealand have coughs bestowed by our high pollen count from all the horticulture and similar. By mid-2019, it’s bad enough that I figure a visit to my GP is in order. Having put me through some rudimentary tests, she fobbed me off – somewhat predictably — with antihistamines. Pointless waste of time. Cough, cough, cough. Time passes, I box on. It’s my new norm. I just assume I’m stuck with it. 

By August last year, I’m notably worse and wheezing has long since entered the frame. So, I go back to see said GP, who finally accepts something is wrong, and I’m in front of a respiratory specialist faster than you can say Chronic Constructive Pulmonary Disease. The speed is courtesy of my eye-wateringly expensive private health care policy, which I’m deeply grateful I have kept going when handed the bill. It turns out, and this will likely surprise no-one — it certainly didn’t surprise me – that I have severe Asthma. However, this diagnosis was off the back of a lot of tests, and I was seriously relieved it wasn’t something much worse.

Just as an aside, try being a severe Asthmatic in the time of Covid — talk about an inconvenient wheeze. Convincing scared people that you’ve been hacking your lungs up since long before Covid-19 was even a blob on a laboratory microscope is tricky. They don’t tend to hang around long enough to appreciate the finer points of a dry cough (Covid) versus a wheezy damp one (Asthma). Forget social distancing; we’re talking crossing the street, making the sign of the ‘evil eye’ in their scramble to put as much distance as possible between them and you. And believe me, you do not want to have a coughing fit in the supermarket queue. The one benefit of coughing as if you have a 60-a-day fag habit? People stay the Hell away from you so are out of range of any ‘aerosols’ they might otherwise generously share.

But back to our action-packed story.

“I think the meds are making me worse,” I say somewhat confrontationally.

This elicits no response if you ignore the facial tick that’s starting to manifest.

“So, what happens if I stop taking them?”

“Why don’t you stop until they’ve cleared your system and then start again to see if there is any difference?” he says after another interminable silence.

This seems like quite a good wheeze if you’ll forgive the pun.

“How long will that take?”

“Couple of months.”

And that pretty much wraps it up. I sense we’re in the throes of a break-up. By this time, we have seen quite a bit of each other, and I have become accustomed to his face like Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Leaving for the final time, I feel a little aggrieved that he’s just booting me out into the wide world without even the safety net of a six-month callback. Doesn’t he care? Haven’t we gone to Hell and back together? This little pity party lasts as long as it takes to get out of the building. Then I think, “So what? I’ve been on my own before. I can do it. Anyway, who wants to go on stuffing their system with pharmaceuticals when there are other fun options like hypnotherapy to explore?”

Of course, I’m exaggerating in the interests of a good story, and I do my specialist a disservice. He tried hard. As we worked our way through the tools in his toolbox searching for a panacea, he visibly deflated as each failed to be The One. I think he saw me as the proverbial riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that he was a bit peeved not to be able to solve. Damn it, why wasn’t I responding to the pharmacopoeia of Symbicort Turbohalers et al. on offer? I was pretty peeved myself. For a person whose favourite activities include singing and bushwalking, I’d hoped for better. Cough, cough, cough. Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze.

The trouble was, his toolbox was limited to the range of available medications, and there was no thought to try and identify the underlying causes or discuss this as an alternative to consider. These days, medication is generally the treatment of first resort, whatever the condition. Many things can trigger Asthma, but I do not doubt that mine resulted from a layering of traumatic events over several years, which caused no end of stress and sleepless nights. Then came a pandemic which didn’t exactly diminish the anxiety levels. 

Even though the medical outcome was disappointing — I badly wanted a quick, easy fix — I also didn’t want to be on large doses of inhaled whatever for the rest of my life and I stopped. Three weeks later, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know, I’m still here and none the worse for wear. If anything, I’m a bit better. The whole episode has helped me think differently about many things that I probably wouldn’t have if the meds had worked. As a result, I’m feeling happier and more in control, hopefully building a virtuous circle of improving lung function. 

Whatever happens from here, my pesky, inconvenient wheeze might just get me bumped up the Covid jabbing-order. Whether this is a silver lining, depends on where you sit on vaccines. I’ll take the win.

The surprising seductiveness of slow

Published on by Frances Manwaring2 Comments

I nearly wrote a letter last weekend. What? Yes … an honest to God, old fashioned paper-based communication intended for distribution by snail. In the event, I didn’t. The digital habits of a fair chunk of my lifetime got in the way and I sent an email instead.

The impulse was triggered by reading that a lot of teenagers, missing their mates during the lockdown, re-discovered the joy of sending and receiving hand-written notes. In the isolation of their homes, apparently many found letters to be more intimate and emotionally connecting than texting, ‘social’ media posting and similar. Thinking about it unlocked the ghost of letters past that’s clearly still lurking inside me, and the memory of how much I used to enjoy getting mail. This chain reaction concluded in my close encounter with a blank page. 

The article transported me back to the heart-lifting discovery of a hand-written letter nestling seductively in one’s letterbox. Then the ritual of finding the right place to read it; a secluded place under a tree, curled up in a big squishy chair in front of a roaring fire, or even a sweet scented, candlelit bath. The setting depended on the relationship with the sender — family, friend, lover, admirer — and the season. There was always that gorgeous moment of holding back, of prolonging the anticipation before finally ripping into the letter. Often there would be a quick scan of the contents for anything scary or sensational, before settling into a leisurely read through.

Good letters take time to craft. The best are intimate and personal. From soul to soul. As the words gather momentum they open avenues to the unburdening of our hopes and fears, loves and hates, joys and sorrows and the feeling of connection as we share the minutiae of our days. There’s something about the flow of a pen over paper that is missing altogether from keyboard bashing. Lacking a delete button, there was a need for precision and coherence of thought. Although the growing pile of screwed up paper as errors or uncertain confidences were cast aside spoke volumes on that score. There was an almost hedonistic pleasure in the first the first stroke of a fountain pen on a blank sheet of high quality paper. Or the challenge of writing in tiny letters to pack as much as possible onto those impossibly small pre-paid airmail letters that you folded up and licked the tabs on the edge which stuck it all together. You were lucky if you managed to do this without acquiring a paper cut on your tongue. ‘Nanny state’ would probably have something to say about that these days.

Sorry planet — I know how wasteful and unnecessary this feels now in this device-laden era where resources are diminishing as fast as pack ice in the Arctic and the tyranny of air miles is never far from our minds. But email just doesn’t hack it as a substitute for a neatly tied bundle of letters from a loved one or a box full of the most memorable greetings cards. I still have swags of each. Even if you print emails, they just don’t have the same bang for buck. 

I’m a bit worn out by life in the ‘fast lane’. Living through the lockdown has seemingly awakened a sleeping dragon in many of us — the surprising seductiveness of slow. A nostalgia for bygone pleasures: the allure of a trip to a library; being literally lost in a good book; sitting down with friends and family over a leisurely and carefully crafted meal rather than shovelling in some hastily acquired takeaway or ‘dashboard dining’ option. Most of all, there’s all too little of the ultimate luxury; reflective time, something that is considered to be essential to our health and wellbeing.

This morning, I woke up with the poem Leisure by W H Davies rattling around in my head. Although I learned this ‘by heart’ at primary school, it’s meaning pretty much passed me by as a ten-year-old, but it resonates strongly now. I’m sure my teacher would have been highly gratified! The poem was published in 1911. In the opening lines, the poet asks, “What is this life, if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?” The thrust of the poem is that the hectic pace of modern life has a detrimental effect on the human spirit because there’s no time to appreciate the glory of the natural world around us. (Read Poem).

Willian Henry Davies was a Welsh poet and writer who grew up in a highly dysfunctional (though not poor), family. He dropped out and spent a significant part of his early life as a homeless drifter on both sides of the Atlantic. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, published in 1908, is about Davies’ life in the US between 1893 and 1899. Apparently, he crossed the Atlantic at least seven times during this period, working his passage on cattle ships, then travelling through many of the states, sometimes begging, sometimes taking seasonal work, often spending any savings on drinking binges with fellow travellers. They didn’t teach us this in school by the way — we might have paid more attention if we’d know a bit more about his colourful life. It would likely have seemed pretty romantic to the impressionable kids we were. Davies became one of the most popular poets of his time by drawing on his observations about life’s hardships, the ways in which the human condition is reflected in nature, his tramping adventures and the characters he met. 

It has to be said, I lust after ‘slow’ until I remember what life was like without the convenience of Google as an information source, without which Mr. Davies would have remained an enigma to me. In all seriousness, I wouldn’t go back to the pre-Internet/digital era. There’s just too much that is genuinely better about now. But I do hope that we can hold on to some of the specialness of slow as we move on through this pandemic. To have time to see and enjoy the moment, to revel in our lives and in nature and the endless possibilities on offer. To take the time to share our dreams and disappointments with loved ones by whatever means are to hand, snail or otherwise. To have the luxury to simply stand and stare and understand how infinitely precious it all is … and how easily lost.