John Harrison - "Off the map" and the Brazilian frontier

Right now I am about to start John Harrison’s “Off the map”, an account of an eccentric Englishman on an Amazonian journey. I am decidedly not in the mood for an English eccentric, particularly not if they are, as they do tend to be, not really eccentric at all, but just opinionated Anti-American liberal-lefties with no original thought in their head. 

In Deorla Murphy’s foreword to Harrison’s “Off the Map” she writes “the Harrisons wanted to remain in touch with…life as it was lived…before technology rendered our survival skills redundant”. 

This is utter rubbish. Technology has not rendered our survival skills redundant; it has only changed what those survival skills are. These people would reduce us to hunter-gatherers, and they should be stamped on from a great height!

Harrison writes of garampeiros (gold prospectors) “they are a different breed from the Brazilians who opt to stay at home. They are sharper, harder working, more adventurous and less tolerant of hierarchies and bureaucrats” [there is more.] This goes down to the heart of what R.A Heinlein writes, saying that those who emigrate are always better human beings than those who remain behind. This description of the Brazilian Amazon frontier is most instructive.

Harrison can surely write most excellent English, but he comes across as an a**ehole. I'd not want to meet him!

A visit to Troop 55 - to the heart of America

My visit to Houston's Scout Troop 55 has “torched up a fire inside of me” to quote Mike Scott of The Waterboys. I love America – literally. I am unwilling to consider seriously her foibles and shortcomings; her drawbacks and weaknesses I will overlook. Her greatness, her advantages, I shall praise to the skies. Were I free to do so I would come to live and work in the USA and in time seek to become a citizen. But (also a Mike Scott line from the same song - "When ye go away"): I am spoken for anyway.

This has been brought to the surface by my visit to Troop 55, wherein I saw at first hand the fundamental cultural differences between the USA and the UK. And that difference is this: In the USA the healthy individual accepts complete responsibility for his or her own welfare and destiny, whereas in the UK, we are all too willing to implicitly and often explicitly cede responsibility for our welfare, our lives, even our destiny, to others – to the State. 

The whole concept of “youth work” as we do it in the UK is that we are imparting knowledge, passing on wisdom, inherently patronising young people, working – to use French – de haut en bas – from high to low. What we ought to be doing is facilitating the Scouts own growth by allowing them room to take charge themselves. This creates MUCH more work, as Troop 55’s handbook readily admits, and is quite upsetting, as it flies in the face of almost everything we do as Scouters. 

To fly to serve?

BA 196 LHR to IAH. Seat 11D in a Triple-7. 

How very tired I was last night. It seems to me to have been an exhausting week. By Friday I was shattered, and it was my daughter's special birthday supper. We had a nice evening, although I had to pack for my business trip to Houston for OTC. In the wet and rainy morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, my wife made me tea and a mushroom omelette and packed me off into the taxi. 

It is pleasant enough not to be on a red-eye, though the crew are treating it as such (as is BA cabin crew’s wont) requiring all the blinds to be shut. The cabin crew will tell you with a straight face that this is what the passengers want. It seems churlish to point out that a cabin full of sleeping passengers means much less work for the cabin crew. 

As a service oriented person one of the things I find quite depressing is the gradual erosion, over a long period of time, of the quality of supplied goods and services. This is true of flying with BA in what used to be a decent business class. I am travelling business class with BA on a long-haul flight. The airfare is in excess of £2500 return – clear two or three times what the economy class return air fare would be – and half as much again as the premium economy return air fare. 

Whilst I appreciate that airlines have to make money in ostensibly difficult trading conditions, I am expecting a minimum standard of service for my (or my employer’s) money, and that minimum, it must be said, is waaay above what BA are offering. It is the gradual erosion of service, the shaving away of benefits like Parmesan shaved from the block, that sticks in my throat.

Three examples: in the past with BA – and other carriers still – the business class passenger was served a BOWL of nuts with his pre-dinner drinks. Small and perhaps unimportant point: we are now served a packet of nuts exactly the same as the people in the back. It is perhaps a small and unimportant point – but that is the point. It is “small and unimportant” bits being shaved off BA’s business class service, until soon enough, little enough is left to distinguish it from anything else. Another example is the salt and pepper: in business class you might expect actual cruets - little pots containing salt and pepper. Not with BA. You get the same poxy little sachets as they serve in economy - and again, the cabin crew will tell you with no hint of irony that this is what passengers want. Odd how what passengers want always seems to be the lower cost option. A third example is the dessert after dinner. Though it is served in a little pottery bowl (rather than the disposable plastic bowl in economy) what is actually IN the bowl is identical in every sense to that served to the people in back. 

Sweat the small stuff - it matters. Today I will go an hour out of my way to avoid flying BA. 

"To fly to serve"? More like "Customers? Who needs 'em?"