Tag: Memoir

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?

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I’ve recently heard at least three people trot out the old trope that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It’s such an easy-to-understand metaphor for staying optimistic in difficult times and turning the tables on what life deals to you. It’s the lemony version of playing the cards you’ve been dealt.

The expression first appeared in print in an obituary written and published in 1909 by the  American writer, publisher and artist Elbert Hubbard in the Literary Digest. In his opinion, “A genius is a man who takes the lemons that Fate hands him and starts a lemonade stand with them.”

It’s more often attributed to Mr Win-Friends-and-Influence-People, the king of self-improvement, Dale Carnegie. Carnegie used it in his 1948 book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: “If you have a lemon, make a lemonade.”

However, others used it between the Hubbard and Carnegie instances. I particularly like this one in a poem published in a 1940 edition of The Optimist by Clarence Edwin Flynn:

Life handed him a lemon,
As Life sometimes will do.
His friends looked on in pity,
Assuming he was through.
They came upon him later,
Reclining in the shade
In calm contentment, drinking
A glass of lemonade.

A good metaphor, a bad rap for lemons

I like lemons. What would lemon tea be without the lemon flavouring? There’s no obvious substitute. Mandarin tea, anyone? I don’t think so. Gin and Tonic—unthinkable without a zesty zing of a slice or two of lemon. Okay, some people prefer lime. But the purists still choose lemon—the cynic in me thinks this could be due to the price difference, but that could be … well … cynical. The adventurous might even go for a taste bomb by adding a slice of both. I salute their inventiveness. Worse than a lemonless G&T, imagine a gorgeous white fish fillet slathered in herbs, garlic and butter without the blissful finishing tartness of a twist of lemon.

The lemon dissing even carries over into song. Harry Belafonte, the singer and actor who popularised Calypso and fathered Halle Berry, released Lemon Tree in the fifties. Lemon tree very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.[1] Duuuuude—come on. We all know you don’t eat lemons like other fruit. They’re garnish. Ingredients. You’d have to be desperate to peel and chow down an entire lemon au natural like an orange. But … lemon meringue pie … lemon cake …. lemon souffle … lemon mouse. I love the flavour of lemon in pretty much any guise. Ironically, except for lemonade, which I can’t see the point of and wouldn’t give you beans for.

Putting a positive spin on your lemon mountain

Anyway, there is a point to this meandering story. Like most people who have lived any length of time and taken the odd risk, life has lobbed a fair swag of lemons at me. But I’m not bitter, unlike those sour little yellow suckers. I tend to see my lemon mountain as an acknowledgement of an adventurous spirit prepared to try new stuff and push the envelope a bit. My adventures haven’t been at the extreme end of the spectrum. E.g., journeying to the centre of the earth-type adventures. I haven’t (yet) been embroiled in a space odyssey, even a minor one or been part of any pioneering expeditions to find world-changing places like the Northwest Passage. I haven’t even climbed any mountains of note. But I’ve most definitely taken the road less travelled at regular intervals.

AND Why stop at lemonade?

Back in 2010, in addition to becoming co-owner of a creative agency, I was co-founder of a pioneering event app, and I could see the dramatic impact smartphones would have on our lives. The ramifications were mind-boggling and made me think long and hard about the future of branding and design. This resulted, in 2012, in a short business plan in infographic form—we are a design studio, after all—setting out a blueprint for a digital transformation of our business. Not exactly messianic. All creative sector businesses worth their salt could see the writing on the (digital) wall and the need for reinvention to stay relevant.

But my thinking was a little different. I didn’t just want to make lemonade, as in shifting from a print worldview to a digital one— we had to do that anyway. No, I wanted to do something entirely different. To shift the paradigm (as we were so fond of saying then). I understood that our value wasn’t so much in our team’s undoubted skills and expertise or our quality of work and service model. Print-led or digital, any pivoting in the business-as-usual sense would be about survival and continued competitiveness rather than systemic change.

Our primary value was (and still is) in the IP around our brand development process, which we have amassed over many years. You’ve heard about software as a service. My thinking—couldn’t we create a branding-as-a-service offer. I.e, take our IP online and enable people to learn the nuts and bolts of developing and managing a standout brand, drawing on our years of intel, insight and innovation?

An idea whose moment has come

It was a great idea, but in 2012, it would have required us to build a complex (aka hugely expensive) bespoke web portal. We didn’t have access to template-driven websites like this WordPress one I use, with all the widgets and plugins that enable almost any interaction with users at affordable prices. There are even subscription-based learning platforms that host video courses, learning resources and offer community building tools. Everything you could want at a tiny (miniscule) fraction of the cost of building from scratch. Better still, it’s on them to keep adding features and functionality and support the system. My 2012 aspirations were ahead of the curve—the idea wouldn’t have succeeded even if we’d had the funding to make it happen. But the times and tools they have achanged.

Catalysed by the latest tsunami of lemons delivered to small businesses like mine in the COVID aftermath, supported by the seismic shift to online everything, I am finally making it happen. I love working with ambitious early-stage businesses, but our conventional pricing structure makes that hard. My online learning platform will allow anyone to access high-calibre brand thinking without the fancy agency price tag. I published the programme’s flagship Brands with Moxie — Eight Steps to a Winning Brand late last year. This book sets out to help entrepreneurs, small business owners, and early career marketing and comms managers understand and leverage the full power of their brands. That used up quite a lot of lemons. I’m now converting the remainder of the lemon mountain into video training courses and other resources, and I’m poised to launch the first of these by the end of the year.

Like most things, it all comes down to attitude

I’ve wanted to throw in the towel many times over the last few years. Go into hibernation mode as I talked about in a previous post. Admit defeat and walk away. Give up on years of business development and find something less challenging. But I decided to, as the saying goes, keep calm and carry on. Whether your bag is lemonade or lemon soufflé , with the right attitude, you’ll always be able to find something to do with the lemons life lobs at you. I’m not out of the woods yet. My new take on my business still has a long way to go to earn its and my keep, but I’m hopeful.

I feel proud of myself. Every time life has given me lemons, I’ve come back with a burst of extraordinary creativity, bringing a lot of personal growth. Everything is risky. There’s no such thing as a wrong decision. There’s just a different destination. I’m saying this as much to shore up my resolve as to convince anyone else. Bitterness is seductive. The drama of disappointment is too easy to get derailed by. Making disappointment a defining characteristic is diminishing and a massive turnoff to other people. Life increasingly becomes a dark place where ‘they’ are out to get you, and perspective disappears.

So, I say, whilst raising my G&T with its extravagant two slices, Slàinte Mhath—cheers—fellow adventurers. When life gives you lemons, don’t just make lemonade. Get creative. Make something new and exciting. Step away from your comfort zone. What’s the worst that can happen? You get more lemons and try a different recipe.

[1] YouTube failed me and I couldn’t find a recording, but here’s one of his most loved songs from that era Island in the Sun.

Are you doing it this winter?

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Are you taking the plunge this winter? Readying yourself to tap into a euphoric eruption of endorphins? Already wondering what I’m on about. I’m talking about cold-water swimming, of course. What? Did you think this might be a spicy little post about something else? Bad luck: you need to go elsewhere for your X-rated intake. 

We’re heading into winter in the Southern Hemisphere, so it’s time to consider the exercise regime of choice over the cold months. In the Northern Hemisphere, people are throwing in their cold-water towels and planning beach breaks and warm stuff. I just read a review of her second year at it by Caitlin Moran. She seems to like this what? Hobby … sport … therapy … self-inflicted act of sadomasochism? “Who needs drugs when I can get off my face cold water swimming?” Whatever you choose to call it, cold water swimming is riding a wave, as it were—I know at least two people in NZ who swear by it. Maybe in NZ, it’s worth a go. Where I live, we rarely even get frost, so it could add a bit of frisson to one’s day as winter sinks its fangs into the underbelly of autumn. But in colder climates like the UK, when you likely have to get a coast guard to chainsaw a swimming hole for you through the ice, it has to be nuts, right? 

But growing it is, and growing both in popularity and controversy. It seems to have triggered some resentments which have bubbled to the surface in its seasonal wake.  

Cold-water swimming seems like a relatively new thing. It’s not. It’s been a thing in many northern countries since … forever. In Russia, pre-Christians frolicked in ice water, and it became part of court protocol and was a custom among the ‘plebs’ throughout the Moscovian era from the late Middle Ages. Muscovy was a Grand Duchy or Principality founded in 1283, which morphed into the Russian Empire in the early eighteenth century under the first tsar. 

What’s changed is that ice-swimming competitions have sprung up like icicles after a deep chill. The establishment of the International Ice Swimming Association in 2009 formalised ice swimming as a ‘sport’. Swimmers compete in the Ice Mile (1608 metres). The water must be colder than 5 degrees Celsius, and competitors are only allowed the basics of swimming goggles, caps, and togs. There’s now also a metric 1500m version. Are they mad? To borrow from Gordon Ramsey, “Expletive me!” 

So why do people take the plunge? Caitlin says it involves “ten minutes of gasping, often agonised breaststroke through frost, sleet, hail and snow, but the endorphins make it all worthwhile”. Put like that, does it sound like something everyone should try at least once? Adherents say benefits positively affect the cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems. There’s also the psychological and metabolical lift (remember all those endorphins). 

However, I would never inadvertently put my readers at risk by encouraging something that could negatively affect your health and well-being. For all the apparent benefits, detractors claim it’s pretty risky, particularly for inexperienced and untrained swimmers. So, if you’re considering it as your next wellness springboard, it’s recommended to go for a gradual acclimatisation. Dip your toe in the water, so to speak. Break yourself in one shivering inch at a time over time rather than jumping in at the deep end. While cold water swimming might be verging on a religious rite to some, this extreme version of total immersion can kill you. Heart failure brought on by extreme cold is one of the risks, as is the only slightly lesser possibility of hypothermia. 

I have tried it, though, so never let it be said that my opinions are based on prejudice and hearsay alone. One night, many (many) years ago, as an undergraduate at Saint Andrews, a few of us were having dinner at a friend’s house. Said house was a stone’s throw from the town’s celebrated outdoor swimming pool, located on a wind-blasted shore and filled by the incoming tide. Such pools used to be common in coastal resorts, but they’ve fallen out of favour. From the late sixties, we Brits deserted the bracing outdoor experience, lured by the advent of the cheap ‘bucket shop’ holiday. Cheap all-in packages allowed us to escape our dismal summer and flock in droves to Mediterranean nirvana, where we pursued the honourable pastime of frying ourselves to a crisp on a beach, falling into the bath-warm sea to break the monotony of hours prone on a sun lounger mitigated by copious quantities of lager and cocktails.

Back in historic St. Andrews, imagine the scene, if you will. About six of us are in the post-dinner alcohol-infused bravado stage that tends to herald trouble when you’re a student. At some point, someone (history doesn’t relate who) said, “Let’s go for a swim”. It’s February, in the middle of the Scottish winter, but we’re pretty drunk, and it seems like a great wheeze. Our host somehow rustles up towels for everyone. We lurch over to the pool, which is as wind-swept as ever, black as Hades, and we could just make out the white tops on the not-inconsiderable waves. Some brave soul sheds most of their clothes and jumps in, provoking the rest of us to follow quickly—no one wants to appear a wimp. 

John McMillan / St Andrews sea swimming pool

Gordon Ramsay’s ripe vocabulary applies here, too. It was beyond cold. Eskimo Pie cold. The sort of cold that makes your lungs want to collapse to avoid it. I doubt we stayed in for more than a nano-second as the freeze factor sobered us up, and we grasped how insane it was. I don’t imagine the current practitioners get in a wild sea pool at 2am at least five sheets to the wind. You’d have to hope not. How we survived without succumbing to hypothermia, I’ll never know. They’re right about one thing, though. The endorphins are incredible – once you’ve convinced your lungs to start functioning again and the blood starts flowing back to those important muscles, like your brain. As the chill receded along with the blue flesh and chattering teeth, the big-noting began, and a saga was born. 

A very long-winded way of saying that cold-water swimming isn’t new. But it’s spawned a new, highly divisive fashion accessory—the dryrobe. Ever ready to get on a new bandwagon, the fashion industry has seen this predominantly middle-class pursuit as a potential gold mine. Ergo, we now have the dryrobe as the accessory of choice for the dedicated cold-water swimmer. In case, like me, you’d missed the arrival of this seminal new garment, they’re huge coats with towelling lining. They break all the prevailing fashion rules, which require a garment to render the wearer less, rather than more, bulky. Dryrobes also apparently achieve the sleight of drape that makes wearers look triangular.

Nonetheless, swimmers love them so much that they’ve started popping up in the most improbable places— supermarkets, football stadiums, and even workplaces. It won’t be long before someone decides to discard their ball dress for one. Their popularity now goes way beyond the original purpose of post-dip warmth and modesty.

But in parallel, dryrobes have become a weapon in the class wars. Google and ye shall find headlines like Too Cool for the Pool: How the Dryrobe Became the Most Divisive Thing You Can Wear. (The Guardian) and Don’t Humiliate Anyone You Spot in a Dryrobe, Especially When It’s Me. (The Times). There even is (or was) a Facebook Page, The Dryrobe Wankers, with more than 80,000 followers. Let the games begin!

I live a hop, skip and a jump (or a slide, skate or slush trudge in winter parlance) to a waterfront. Once I’ve saved enough money for the eye-wateringly expensive, must-have dryrobe accessory, perhaps I’ll give it a go. Perhaps. If the tides are right. If there’s a full moon and I can see hair growing on the palms of my hands. If Hell starts freezing over. Wait, it seems to me that cold water swimming actually is Hell on Earth, so why opt to get there early, even equipped with a dryrobe? I like my swimming holes to be like the velvet warmth of the Mediterranean mid-summer or the waters inside the reefs in the Fijian Islands, where you can bask like a lurking shark for hours on end without getting cold. Without the sharks. Or the rip currents. Or even any waves when I think about it. I’m sorry, Caitlin, but you can keep the big chill, endorphins notwithstanding. I’ll take a long soak in a hot bath every winter.