Remembering 11th March 2011

Today I visited the annual Japan Matsuri festival in London. This year it was held around County Hall across the river from the Houses of Parliament. 

Inevitably the focus was on the events that followed the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck north east Japan on 11th March this year. I was encouraged to make a white gauze "sakura" (cherry blossom) brooch by the people representing the Sakura Front, one of a number of charities collecting funds for the relief of survivors. 

Inside County Hall, the Japan Tsunami Exhibition, was profoundly moving. In addition to photographs a table displayed a number of objects recovered from the area. These were displayed on pieces of brown cardboard and everyone of them told an enormous amount about the people to whom they had once belonged. These were not televisions or computers but small pieces of mass produced china and children's toys, including  a simple doll carved very crudely from a piece of wood. How poor do you have to be to provide your child with such a toy? While I am truly humbled by the subliminal wealth of the parental love that must have created that toy, I am moved enormously by this simple object that says so much about the profound simplicity, hardship and poverty of these victims. People who had so little before the wave struck, have lost so much in material and human terms. 

The stoicism of the Japanese following the catastrophe is legend. Their battles continue. Alongside the exhibition was a series of photographs of survivors from the affected area all saying "I still dare to hope for - the rebuilding of my home, my village, no more tsunami's . . ." 

It is a date I would not want to forget, Sakura brooch or not - and shame on me if I should: I was born on the 11th March. 

Autumn arrives

After a summer that will be remembered for the Arab Spring ... and the worst weekend weather, it is now back to serious blogging.

The riots I anticipated as a consequence of the record numbers of unemployed young people did indeed take place. Others have come up with their reasons for them, but I still hold that idle hands, rather than the increasing secularism of our society, was the major driver. Is that the last of them? I am sure not!

My love of haiku continues, as does my study of Zen Buddhism principally as an explanation of the inspiration behind the Kyoto garden in Holland Park that was radically altered earlier this year. I'll be posting a blog later specifically on that stroll garden to accompany the article (edited on my BlackBerry PlayBook whilst being flown across the Atlantic!) that will be appearing in the Friends of Holland Park magazine later this year.


Bee-keeping has joined my list of interests and I'm pleased to see that Holland Park has again produced in excess of 170 lbs. of honey this year despite the strange weather and unpredicted amount of swarming activity.

Photography occupies my walking outdoor moments though it is sad to see so many fine shots ruined by the absence of a blue sky. Clearly I am meant to study sepia or return to black and white compositions!

From haiku, photography and Zen, my attention is now shifting to the actual practice of zazen or sitting meditation. My day now starts with a good half hour of peaceful, mindful meditation and my principle guide is Andy Puddicombe whose book and iPod audio guides - Get Some Headspace - are  highly recommended. Aside from the sitting meditation, I am also endeavouring to take the practice (kinhin) on my daily walks and thrice weekly into the gym. 

And finely, no summer concludes without the results of London in Bloom - my talented team secured no less than seven Gold Awards and two Silver Gilts on top of seven Green Flag Awards: an excellent season in the office!

Zen, haiku, and photography: its about re-learning how to see

Learning a new skill or embarking on a fresh line of enquiry is exciting. I am particularly fortunate to have grown up at a time when the current race for technological progress was probably just starting.

On my recent trip to Australia my brother and I visited a "heritage village" near Cairns that was made up of various old buildings and the artefacts associated with them. A part of the display inevitably focussed on agricultural equipment - much of it familiar to us from our childhood in the 1950's and 60's on a farm in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Gus observed that the reason we had farm equipment from the 1930's was most likely because that was the age that Dad most understood and had been trained to use and repair whilst a student at Seale Haine Agricultural College. The hay making equipment, for example, was made from a mixture of wooden planks bolted together and iron rods - a combination that worked well then, but which would be unthinkable today.

When I was at Springvale, my preparatory school, I learnt how to use a Brownie Box camera, how to develop my own black and white films and, once they were dry, to enlarge and print photographs from them. The heady smell of chemicals, the dull glow of a red light bulb under which we worked and close proximity of everything in the small dark room are abiding memories.

Watching a professional photographer at work and studying his work are excellent ways to re-engage with a childhood hobby. David A.Lee in Palm Springs is both a good friend and excellent photographer and a recent series of photographs that he put up on FaceBook have inspired me to take the plunge and study digital photography.

Great photographs of course do not just happen - they are made by events or the observations of a skilled photographer. Earlier this year David noticed a long line of geese flying through the skies above Palm Springs. True professional and artist that he is, he lifted his camera and made a photograph to share with the rest of us.

Consider then, this Haiku:

kari no kazu                                     a number of geese

watarite sora ni                                migrating - in the sky

mio mo nashi                                   not even a wake.      MORI SUMIO (b.1919)

It is not just the coincidence of geese crossing the sky in a photograph and  a haiku  - but the use of the word "mio" in Japanese that intrigues. In his excellent analysis of the poem (see The Haiku Handbook), William Higginson points out that this unusual word literally means water-tail or wake. Sumio 'borrows' the word normally associated with water to good effect. In this conjunction of the photographic and literary arts, it is just as unlikely to see a wake caused by the passage of geese through the sky as across the desert sands surrounding Palm Springs.

Another great haiku writer, Matsuo Basho (whom I have blogged about before) did not have a camera on his many journies across Japan and during which he wrote the Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Penguin books). He used pen and ink to write his amazing verses and sketch his surroundings. I pause my thoughts to wonder what he have done with a camera here? 

Amongst my current reading are two books - one on how to use my new Canon 1000D camera and the other on the practice of Zen. The former is by Ben Long and the latter a re-print of the seminal work, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. Although both are written by American authors I have no reason to believe they ever met or indeed knew each other. However in both they require their readers (and hopefully followers), to re-tune their mind to see the world through the eyes of a child. Suzuki urges us " to always be a beginner ... The beginner's mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate it is boundless."  In his more recent book, Long observes that "because the world is a new place for them, they (children) notice every detail of the objects around them. They have to because they haven't yet learned to abbreviate the visual complexity of the world down to simple symbols ...". In short they retain their "beginner's mind" and he urges students such as I to set aside our adult eyes for those of a child.

Haiku and photography are both craft and art striving to represent a moment in an image that tells us a story or conveys a "truth". The spirit of Zen is found in both. There is much to be excited about as I try to bring my love of verse to re-discovering the craft of photography through the lens of a SLR camera. Friends and teachers be warned - there's a child in the room. 

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

So it's back to school for me . . .

My team recently completed the construction of a bespoke training room in the nursery complex of Holland Park. Using a grant of £8,000 from CABE and equivalent match funding from the council and its ground maintenance contractors, Quadron, the room provides the focus of training for six young apprentices and in time this will broaden to include volunteers and other staff on short courses.

For a former apprentice - this is a real high-point. I was fortunate enough to have been provided with a very structured and closely monitored training in the then city of Salisbury, Rhodesia. Everyone from the City Amenities Manager to the most menial of general workers was in some way involved. From the top there was strategic direction and the odd word of advice or encouragement. In the middle there was loads of support and from the bottom there was good humoured challenge and assistance. 

I was shocked to find that by the time I arrived in the United Kingdom in the early-1980's this sort of instruction was being done away with. The introduction of Commercial Competitive Tendering by 1990 was effectively its final death knell. Despite all the warnings of impending disaster for the industry and amenity horticulture in particular, successive administrations turned a deaf ear.

As this country started to face up to the skills gap under the last government - and which included offering degree courses for the skilled trades amongst other idiotic approaches (why?) - talk started to focus on the need to revive the best of the past. That has thankfully included looking at "modern" apprenticeship schemes and the current government is making the right noises on this front as well (see my February blog on the NEET crisis).

We no longer grow things - we import them. We no longer source plants locally - we fly cuttings and plugs from West or East Africa to the Netherlands, pot them on and then transport them by road and ship to commercial "nurseries" to be grown on and then transported further by road to the municipal depots. It is acceptable for our municipal parks and gardens to be husbanded by low paid eastern Europeans with no skills other than a driving licence. But still we have "Britain in Bloom", the Royal Horticultural Society, Kew Gardens, the Worshipful Company of Gardeners ... the trappings but not the skills!

That's the context. Over the past six or seven years I have badgered my contract management to get the project off the ground and to be fair previous efforts have been made: but not with great success. Missing were three key ingredients: 1. a dedicated mentor; 2. a realistic training programme that focuses on the individual; and 3. an area dedicated to the apprentices' instruction and learning when not in college.

Since last year all three have now been provided and the scheme is now looking extremely positive. The young people come from a variety of backgrounds and educational capabilities. Some have difficulties away from the workplace that make holding down a formal training programme difficult in the extreme - but they persist! They are being challenged and facing every day  with smiles on their faces and a growing confidence that is palpable. 

John Tradescant junior

They have a common goal - to be gardeners. It is a noble ambition and one that has provided me with a livelihood and opportunity to indulge every creative and academic interest. Gardeners come into daily contact with art, design, history, geography, different languages, Latin, different cultures,  world religions, biology, physics, chemistry, ecology, biodiversity, social sciences, people, food, floristry, animals, poetry and music ... the list goes on. 

On Wednesday the apprentices will be doing their usual weekly plant identification tests (10 new plants a week). Everything will be as normal to start - but then their trainer is being replaced by the Royal Borough's Leisure Services Manager.  

As a trained adult skills coach, I ran a horticultural training scheme in the mid-1980's on an allotment site on Spa Hill, near Croydon. When I returned to local government parks management in 1989, I rather expected that that would be the end of my having to coach! But of course it hasn't been: as a manager I am always coaching. What is different though, is the degree of preparation that I am having to put into this lesson. Watching will be the apprentices and their mentor - a highly skilled trainer. Inevitably all will be watching for the cracks . . . I trust that is one area that I disappoint them!

Will Spring ever arrive?

Looking back through my various tweets since the middle of January there is a common theme: when will the Spring arrive?

It is no secret that I find the climate in the UK depressing - the more so at this time of year. The leaden grey skies weep rain or gloom or both; people look downcast and there seem to be more bugs being transmitted than at any other time of the year.

And yet yesterday we had glorious sunshine here in London (not so today ...). The bird song and bulbs bursting through were as a fore-taste of the very special time that is about to arrive. The peacocks in Holland Park strutted and flicked their developing fan tails as all around them snowdrops nodded delicately and colourful crocuses opened their orange throats to the sky.

It seems ironic that the Christian calendar goes into Lent just as the natural world is heralding the arrival of a new year's growth! But then when Easter does finally arrive, the two become synchronised again.

Lead him slowly!

the horse is carrying

the Spring moon.

(WATSUJIN)

The NEET crisis

I've learnt a new word: NEET. It refers to the young people living in the United Kingdom who are "not in employment, education or training" . . . a group of over one million people (or 20.1%) aged between 16 and 24 years of age.

It's a boggling statistic.

We hear daily about how it is time to reform the public services by dis-investing in them, privatising services (I'm not sure how that prevents us paying for them) and how the private sector is going to create jobs and wealth to turn the government deficit into a credit. Every job "lost" in the public sector is going to somehow be compensated by a new job in the private sector.

The prevalent political view is that it is better to pay share-holders a dividend for providing public services than to be the sole financial share-holder. This can surely only be successful if the collective of new share-holders have the same vision as the community and is prepared to accept a pitance of a dividend.

In fact those companies that currently do provide the front-line public services (parks, waste management, etc.) enjoy massive profits and ensure that they have the "competitive edge" by driving down the wages paid to their staff. Their staff are happy to accept the reduced standard of living because with it comes a temporary work visa for the United Kingdom and opportunity to learn English amongst other things.

For the private public services contractor there is no need to invest their profits in training or apprenticeships, to consider the national skills shortages or real investment in communities; just the requirement to lower the cost to the local authority and ensure maximum return to the share-holders.

The reduced expense of providing front-line services has other advantages too: the public service pension schemes draw off less from the public purse and there is more money available to the Treasury to invest in apprenticeship schemes and other get back to work flagships that attract nobody because there are no paid jobs for them to go into (all vacancies having been filled by external applicants - see above).

I don't see or understand how we break this cycle and I'm not advocating spending money for the sake of it.

Into this potentially explosive situation of a million plus youngsters sitting around bored, we have the Prime Minister of our multi-ethnic country stating that multi-culturism is dead and buried. Cue the far Right (mainly unemployed it seems) and we have the right ingredients for a revival of early 20th century Europe.

Surely, somebody in the coalition Government can see that they are fanning the fires and feeding the flames of civil dissatisfaction and discontent. Can they not understand that this number of idle, frustrated hands can only lead to groups of young people coming together in a quest to carve out their own destinies? Intolerance of different races, age groups, faiths and sexualities is borne - history teaches us - out of economic deprivation. Question: why has he / she got that job or income and I have not? Step in the extremist with all the answers and in no time we will find ourselves relying on what ever remains of our armed forces to supplement the thin blue line trying to maintain civil order on the streets. Surely it is better to have people employed and contributing to the economy than unemployed and unskilled. What costs more: a front-line public sector worker in gainful employment or the same person on benefits?

Enoch Powell was probably right about the 'rivers of blood' heading our way: but for the wrong reason in my opinion. Fueled by a vision to clear the previous government's disasterous economic deficit, this coalition is currently beating out the wrong tune and one that will send a seismic tremor of frustration and discontent across the country. Targets will be random, almost certainly from the ethnic and other minorities and completely without justification.

The students' riots earlier this year have ensured that the Establishment and new Whitehall recognise the sound of breaking glass. I fear that without an urgent reappraisal of the causes, what we witnessed in Greece yesterday, will be widespread across the United Kingdom in the near future.

Libraries lost

The proposed closure of the public libraries across Britain is appalling. In part it is led by local Labour councils looking for a controversial cut to draw attention to the wider assault upon the public services by the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Playing politics with the community in this way is as destructive and wrong in my view as the political objectives of the government driving the agenda forward.

Others have used the diminishing use of  libraries on account of our access to the internet for information as reason for their decision. I do not deny that I probably do now use the internet more frequently than the library specifically for research. However, I have to hand an array of sophisticated electronic gadgetry from a PC down to a BlackBerry that enables that access - most people do not.

Amazon is now claiming that it sells more e-books than paper - but then there has to be a link here, surely, with their e-book reader, the Kindle! My experience in the past of Amazon as a supplier of books has been good: however I am still awaiting a paper biography of Walt Whitman that I ordered through them in November ... currently not available for technical reasons. You probably recognise where my mind is now going.

I have space to study at home, my own office and desk space in work. Few enjoy those luxuries as the cost of housing continues to rise and the size of spaces within them decreases; offices are becoming hot desks at which to plug in laptops that have been stored in lockers as the cost of providing that work space becomes prohibitive.

My office is usually the node at which I relate to colleagues or members of the public. It is anything but my thinking or research space. The public library - particularly in the miserable British weather - remains however my quiet corner for solitude and study. I seek at least once a week to take my gadgets and note books with me to the reference section of the library off the high street and, when tired of staring at a screen, indulge myself in the pleasure of handling a book, and smelling the foggy atmosphere of polished tables and creaking leather seats.

There is a place for progress in my thinking: I would be 'at a loss' rather than 'lost' without my gadgets and look forward to the BlackBerry Playbook being launchd in the coming months as a more business-orientated tablet than the iPad. However many people with a Kindle or Sony e-book reader have had the unfortunate experience of having not checked the charge status of their reader ahead of a long journey by public transport . . . and wished for a book!

There is a more ominous side as well to the loss of the library as a repository of knowledge. I value change for the good, but cannot help feeling that the justification of falling attendance as being reason to close a library is as fallacious as the same justification for closing a church, a bank or a news agent. Not only do we become over reliant upon the convenience of electronics, but so too do we remove the human contact and perhaps most importantly, ability to continue our lives without reliance upon something that can be turned off in an instant. If I cannot Google or Wikipedia it - where do I turn for knowledge? Without libraries, future generations will be unable to answer that question - just as arguably today, the loss of churches as a moral compass could be the reason for a modern intolerance and amorality that is disturbing.

Winds of change swirl all around us

It hasn't just been Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordon to experience the extraordinary power of the internet to mobilise and inform people. Middle East dictators and "Royals" who were previously backed by many Western governments have started to see their hold on power being eroded over the past few weeks. As these popular campaigns, largely orchestrated by the educated middle classes using Twitter and Facebook took hold, tropical cyclone Yasi surged towards northern Queensland, Australia.

Whilst it was being monitored closely by meteorlogical experts, the Australian Federal and Queensland Governments responded to the looming threat by using the power and accessibility of all the tools of our modern communications era to advise and inform their citizens. Despite the incredibly destructive forces of a Category 5 storm landing in a populated area, nobody died as a direct result of the cyclone. One tragic loss of life has so far been reported but that was due to the inhalation of generator fumes.

The Australian newspapers heap praise upon their leaders for their presence and preparedness for two devastating events that have hit Queensland in particular this year: the floods and the cyclone. Using the internet and Twitter as well as FaceBook in particular, I have been able to keep abreast of how family living in the affected area have fared. I knew through blogs posted by the Cairns Post that their neighbourhood was without electricity and consequently not able themselves to reassure family in Europe or Africa. That's a definate sign of progress in my book! Once contact had been restored, I learnt that the local government authorities had already completed the clean-up of their street. That's an example of good governance and the undeniable importance of the formal public service to a community - in a land that already typifies community spirit and neighbourly assistance.

The British are sadly yet to learn and experience the real consequences of the currently proposed abolition of the public sector in favour of volunteers. It is a tragedy in my view that while we listen to politicians lecturing the world about the need for democracy, because of their current political agenda, we will most likely not be able to depend upon ourselves as a nation in the future!

However, history suggests (and perhaps we should take heart) that in our next hour of need, the social networks Twitter and Facebook will be used to alert the ANZACs to our plight and that we will be able to depend upon them to once again come to our aid - just as they have done countless times before.

The tragedy of Tucson

It has been an awful start to the year for the community in Tucson, Arizona. However that has been made worse in my mind by the manner in which it has been reported.

The shooting of the congresswoman and killing of six people has been widely reported around the world. The politician has received the greatest attention followed by the eminent judge - which suggests they are more important than the rest. I have to disagree with that premise and feel that for anyone who supports the weapon carrying amendment to be killed or injured is unfortunate but also quite possibly poetic justice: promote weapons and expect the consequences. I don't condone the act - just recognise the principle of cause and effect.

A child was killed - she, rather than her 9/11 birthday, should be mourned first.

The deranged young man who carried out the shooting is deserving of our prayers and sympathy. His family must be in absolute despair.

We will no doubt hear a great deal about the need for justice in order to avenge these killings. The question that should be upper-most, though, is how to prevent a recurrence. Sadly that will be a call for the death penalty and more guns rather than real help for the vulnerable and mentally ill in our society.

It's Christmas ... so what's in store for 2011?

I have lost proper track now of each and every recession that I have lived and worked through - this one, though, feels different - very different.

The new "coalition" government has set out to redress the national debt by axing public services, selling off anything that might form a part of an earlier legacy (forests) and hoping to turn things around so fast that by the next election, we will have forgotten / forgiven them the pain of the first three years of their office.

Cynic that I am, I cannot help but agree with those commentators who have noted that the Liberal Democrats are being tarnished by the Tories to the latters' gain. In government they are damned if they tow the line, and damned if they don't. Was it a good idea to side with the Tories rather than Labour, I wonder? 2011 looks set for a show-down ... though Labour may need to shed its new leader to capitaise on it.

Unemployment and depressed local economies are in my mind going to feature in the depressing news bulletins of 2011. The government thinks that shedding jobs in the public sector will somehow stimulate the national economy so much so that 330,000 private sector jobs will be generated over the next four years. How? Why? With what resources? If formerly employed local people cannot afford their own homes or to purchase anything more than the basics, how is a local entrepreneur going to find the resources or markets to employ them?

Localism: by that we mean giving local people the power to decide and provide their own priorities and services. Very novel - but isn't that what we choose to do when we a) elect a local council and b) pay their community charges and other taxes? If we are to sweep our own streets (in Chiswick, Chelsea or Westminster ... you're having me on!) or cut the grass and litter pick the parks (in Knightsbridge?), aren't we then entitled to the money back that we are paying the government and council? Where will the expertise come from? Unemployed former apprentices with nothing to do other than use their government-sponsored skills might be tempted, I suppose - but doubt it.

I am no particular fan of Gordon Brown and believe that his government has much to answer for allowing the corporate greed that brought down the economies of the western world. I am certainly no fan either, though, of the current Tory-led coalition of bizarre political thought and dubious economic policy. As each new initiative is announced one cannot help but smell political opportunism and personal interest. For ambitious politicians this must be seasonal bounty.

I fear that the road ahead will be rocky and am grateful that I am not entirely dependent anymore on a future in local government service. I fear for the futures of my younger colleagues and the wider community that is Great Britain: the FTSE 100 may be recovering - but then we must not forget that although housed in the London Stock Exchange, it reflects the global rather than the British economy.