On my 54th birthday, I give thanks

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Even for this

Unexpected as I was, I became the first child and son of a young couple on a cold winter morning in the UK. I have however learnt to be thankful and full of gratitude for the life that I have been blessed with.

The many trials and tribulations that have set me up for opportunities I could never have seen from the downturns that could have suffocated me but for the spirit of hope, expectation and good fortune that has guided me to a solid and firm height out of the doldrums.

There is much

I am grateful for the privileges and the accidents, the stories I have been given to tell. I found love and happiness with some who has fixed smiles on my face, my heart and my soul, Brian is a soulmate like I have never ever known before, I hope to share the rest of my life with him.

Here I am giving thanks, a decade after a cancer that could have ended it all, situations and circumstances have become signposts of history, friendships have grown, and achievement has surpassed achievement towards new recognition and prospects.

To be thankful

My heart overflows with thanks and tribute to my parents, my siblings, my friends, colleagues generous with time, space, commendation, and reference, I have been loved, helped and supported much more than I deserve.

I mark my 54^th birthday in the company of my boyfriend, thank you for making every moment count for ones to cherish. I give thanks, thanks, thanks again, I cannot shirk in counting my blessings and having a grateful heart, for life, for health, for love, for hope, for opportunity, for laughter, for joy, for the future and for more things to be thankful for.

To God mostly

I have music in my heart and most of all, I give thanks to God, I cannot have planned this life and many of the ways it has turned out feels like I have been a living miracle. From the day a boy no bigger than a hamster was born at just six and a half months to the day that the Lord as made.

Winter will end at 11 AM

In preparation

Travel is an expectation and excitement rolled into a flurry of emotions that you cannot fully express apart from just being the experience being lived.

I had ample time for plan for my journey to South Africa, once I had passed my TOGAF certification last week Tuesday in London and returned home to Manchester on Wednesday, I had 6 days to get things sorted. My first plan was to get the laundry service to pick up my laundry on Wednesday evening to be returned 24 hours later.

Daily, I had begun to gather the things I needed for my journey, trying to ensure nothing was forgotten, and this without making lists even as a small still voice was advising me to consider a list. I would think I have everything I want and also something for Brian and I to wear, as for weeks I had been looking for matching jackets, Brian being two sizes smaller, but with the same length of arms.

Hefty baggage

I did most of my packing the day before, using compactors for my shirts and trousers with my underwear, then shoes, hats, and other essentials. My portable scales put the suitcases at 19kg and 16kg, I think there was another few kilograms added by the time I got out of the door. I hailed a Uber cab to the airport when 5 minutes into the trip, I realised I had left a wallet at home.

This happened my last trip too, fortunately, it did not contain the essential cards. I got the driver to turn back whilst I retrieved my wallet and we took a more scenic route to the airport. After checking in and being ushered unto the Fast Track lane which was anything but, you begin to realise why you should have more than enough time to clear security.

Security dexterity

Without a doubt, those with toddlers need to research how to traverse security at ease and at speed, I had 4 families ahead of me and everyone looked like first time travellers, babies implacable, mother extending like an octopus granted a few more limbs to unpack bags, hold the baby, keep the other child from running around and attempting the contortions of a double-jointed gymnast. A sight to behold and a good 30 minutes of my life frittered away before the wand wielder checks my watch, cufflinks and affinity bangle, then waves me through.

I proceed to cool off in the lounge, the need for travel to be stress-free cannot be exaggerated, there are two stops before Cape Town tomorrow afternoon. We are coasting at 4⁰C, the thought of leaving winter behind warms my breast.

Hiding the winter props

In Paris, angels were on assignment, that is all I can say. Having walked through the literally inscrutable Charles De Gaulle airport, it is a beast of an airport as friendly as a hyena is to its prey, if it were avoidable, but why simplify the complicated, when you can make it a harrowing experience.

The boarding gates for my next destination of Johannesburg were in the same terminal and I still had to lug my things through security, the obligatory striptease without music has become a dramatic art worthy of an Academy nomination. Thankfully, but thankfully, there were no families with toddlers, pushchairs and kids on fizzy drinks running around like they were buzzing on drugs.

The disarray at the security check is not worth reckoning with, we survived it and I made for the lounge. There, I should have shown my paper boarding pass, but I resorted to my mobile phone boarding pass. With that in hand, I made for a seat with the aim of charging my phone and putting my overcoat into my suit carrier.

Angels working overtime

That was a struggle as I put my phone down and knelt on the suit carrier to get the zipper done up. I only had time for a drink when I noticed my flight to Johannesburg was boarding. I picked up my bags and it was close to a 10-minute walk to the boarding gate and on getting through, I found my seat, put up my hand baggage and was about to sit down when an air stewardess presented me with a mobile phone.

I was completely oblivious of the fact that I had left my phone in the lounge, I cannot account for how the phone made it from the lounge to my seat. The gravity of realising how it could have been a disaster to lose my phone only began to dawn on me hours after. I got me some angels watching over me.

Winter did end at 11:00 AM

As we arrived in Johannesburg, it was 11:13 AM, two minutes ahead of schedule, I was hit with the heat of summer, my winter was over as I was informed I would need to collect my baggage and recheck-in with the local airline that would get me to Cape Town, this after I was told that my baggage had been checked through to Cape Town, I guess that was figuratively rather that literally. I collected my baggage and no additional labels are attached to them.

My seat was pre-allocated, and I could not change it because it was with another airline, Brian had a seat 3 rows from mine as we had arranged to be on the same flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town. We met up in the lounge and I was expecting him to use his charm offensive to get us to sit together. As luck would have it, whilst I was given an aisle seat, the window seat was free, it meant Brian could come to sit beside me for the flight.

We arrived in Cape Town without much fuss, the captain’s parting message beyond the Christmas wishes was the hope that South African Airways would still be a thriving company that provides the wonderful service we have enjoyed over the decades. How Jacob Zuma and his clique almost ruined that bastion of South Africa expression with incompetent and unqualified people.

I was soon in my shorts and amongst the teeming crowds of the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront.

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

There Will Be No Epiphany

My Anglican Communion

I like the community and the camaraderie of the church I attend. Having been to many temples of varying Christian interpretations of worship and liturgy, I have found a welcoming in my Church of England - Anglican roots.

The Manchester Cathedral or by its proper name, the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and Saint George became a cathedral in 1847, it was granted collegiate status in 1421, but it is believed a church has existed in this location for over a millennium.

It mixes the traditional with the modern, and I am thrown by the Latin pieces of music for which there are English translations that are sung interminably that if the words were put to the three lines of verse, you might find it stretching to over 21 lines.

Consideration of others

Occasionally, there is incense, but every Sunday morning at 10:30 AM is the Sung Eucharist which is a service that culminates in holy communion. The community starts with the call-response between the president and the congregation when we offer each other the sign of peace with handshakes and after the service, we gather for a drink of tea or coffee with biscuits. There, we get to start conversations with strangers who would become acquaintances and then friends.

The sermon today broached on the subject of wickedness, not so much on being evil but on attitudes and behaviours to others in terms of indifference, disrespect, lack of consideration, selfishness and so on.

It made me reflect on an encounter earlier in the day where one that could be called a friend had taken liberties in the display of a complete lack of consideration for the other that a gentle entreaty quickly escalated into an unnecessary but essential outburst of rage. Yet, in spite of and despite the sometimes incomprehensive and usually reprehensible machinations of this friend, in the heart, there is a liking that prevents the termination of the friendship. It is a trying work of patience.

A pillar of the community

We are given a pamphlet as we enter the church, it is the order of service with the hymns, the readings and notices. One of the notices was for Friday the 20^th of December at 10:00 AM which had been moved back 30 minutes, the memorial service for Michael Oglesby CBE DL, it goes to reflect how I appear to live in Manchester and hardly know what is going on in my city.

Michael Oglesby owns 20% of the commercial office space in Manchester city centre and owns more than 120 buildings in Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham through his Bruntwood property group. [MEN]

Tributes to him followed from the University of Manchester where The Oglesby Cancer ResearchBuilding is named for him. There was a good spread in the Financial Times that talked of his reviving Manchester and Liverpool along with his philanthropic activities. This was no doubt a great pillar of our community whose life will be celebrated on Friday. [UoM][Financial Times]

A revelation of difference

My sense of belonging is getting stronger too, The Dean of the Cathedral is from South Africa and he is known at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, which I attend when out there. Now, the Sung Eucharist in Cape Town is even more traditional, always incense, singing canticles and a lot of Latin too. The church used to be the archbishopric of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

As we weave between conversation, coincidence and communion, there will be no epiphany even as we close on that feast, for the communication of our faith becomes effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in us in Christ Jesus. Our Anglican community brings good things out of us. [BibleGateway]

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

#GeneralElection2019 Resist The Third Martini

Principle for the people

Mr Jeremy Corbyn is a man of principle, it took a second failed general election attempt to prove conclusively that he is not a man of the people.

As I read on Twitter yesterday when the exit polls suggested Boris Johnson had successfully gambled and won the general election as the Labour Party was about to be handed its most catastrophic defeat in a century, I could not help but agree that “The problem with the government of the people, by the people, for the people, is the people.”

Yet, to blame the electorate for an electoral loss is to entirely miss the point of elections. Democracy and winning elections are the mastery of the art of persuasion. We have to admit, in spite of and despite the prevailing circumstances, Jeremy Corbyn has been unable to persuade the people of your agenda, no matter how noble, you have not successfully won their hearts, their minds and their votes to your side.

He didn’t help himself either

Now, I do understand that there is a perspective that the whole establishment and the mainstream media had demonised Jeremy Corbyn complete, and he for himself probably with his history and associations did not help matters that much. I for one have voted for the Labour Party since 1992 in all general elections including this, whilst I have given my vote recently to the Liberal Democrats in the local and European elections for the simple fact that the Labour Party had departed from the ground where general elections can be won.

Tony Blair won three general elections comfortably, the last he won even after the taint of the Iraq War had taken hold. Whether Tony Blair is liked or not, you cannot ignore his electoral successes and anyone who wants to win elections with the Labour Party will at the very least study the strategy and methods by which he was able to appeal and win the confidence of the people to govern.

Opposition or government

At this juncture, the Labour Party needs to decide if it wants to be a party of government, 9 years in opposition is a long time and if Boris Johnson runs his full term, the Labour Party will languish in opposition for 14 years.

You cannot do policy from the opposition and it is sad that the Labour Party hierarchy ignored the prescient warning of Tony Blair when for the first time, the opposition parties could control the agenda in parliament having had Boris Johnson on the ropes. They ignored him and now, the Labour Party has become a rump of itself with Jo Swinson being sent on her way.

I voted Labour in the election, not for the sake of Jeremy Corbyn but by recognising my constituency MP, Lucy Powell does a good enough job and that she should not be punished for the unfortunate situation of her party leader. All politics is local, at least that is what I see.

No sweet scent of Jeremy

Yet, I cannot deny that there were so many insurmountable misgivings about Jeremy Corbyn with many of my immediate interactions on social media and the reported issues on the doorstep. People just could not see Jeremy Corbyn being Prime Minister. That I was able to hold my nose and see more of the man, that was not how many others felt, odium and opprobrium seemed to dog him to the point that it overwhelmed the ability to assess him objectively.

Having lost two general elections, there is no doubt in my mind that Jeremy Corbyn is first responsible for the losses along with his team and the cult of Momentum which I would hope falls into the black hole of ignominy and history as Mr Corbyn departs the centre stage. There must be a collective responsibility of the shadow cabinet for this disaster.

You need to win elections to initiate and implement policy, else, your ideas remain on paper and are mere words of no import. The idealism that has driven the Corbyn agenda will not win elections, we need more pragmatism that broadens the church of the Labour Party to include the full spectrum of people and ideas that must embrace the Blairites and the Corbynites in common purpose for the United Kingdom.

The five stages of defeat processing

I appreciate that many of the ardent supporters of Jeremy Corbyn are loss in the first stage of the Kübler-Ross model of the Five Stages of Grief (Defeat), they are in Denial of the truth that Jeremy Corbyn bears the principal responsibility for the loss of the 2019 General Election. Some are expressing Anger at the media and even the electorate, that is misguided.

I doubt there is anything to Bargain for, the time for that passed when between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, they could have a coalesced to keep the Tories out. It is the great regret of missed opportunities for which I hold both Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson responsible.

Then, I hope they will not spend too much time in Depression before they reach the point of Acceptance that Jeremy Corbyn is a failure and he has to go sooner rather than later, that the Labour Party needs a new direction with the fundamental principle that they must prepare for government with a leader to whom the people can relate and a message that can persuade the people of the Labour Party is the better choice.

Missing the prize

As for where we are, the prize is with Boris Johnson and I fear with the infighting, the cult of Momentum, the anti-Semitic charge, and the exodus of Labour Party moderates and centrists, the party of the working people took their eyes off the prize and gave victory to Boris Johnson. What could have been, but we are where we are now.

The world will not end, maybe Brexit will really happen, but Mr Johnson has enough room to manoeuvre without being held hostage by a faction of his party. Heck! We have had three years of Donald Trump and not a world war for each year he has been in office. I fear, that Donald Trump might well win a second term if the Democrats do not refine their socialist tendencies.

Resist the third martini

I do not have a palate for strong alcohol, a Martini will probably kill me, if I attempted a shot and dared a second, but by all means, I must resist the third Martini, just as Jeremy Corbyn should not have a third shot at leadership or the general election and the Labour Party as it now will fail at a third visit to the people, if it does not radically reform and return to winning ways.

We’ll be fine, everything has a shelf life and the era of Boris Johnson will pass. Lastly, I congratulate Boris Johnson on his victory, and I hope he sees the great calling of office to lead and be a successful Prime Minister. Our prayers follow with great expectations. Our hope remains strong for a bright future.

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

Old Gods Have Retired

Care for the words ye speak

We can be rather emotional beings and so prone to outbursts and communication that in the spur of the moment can damage relationships.

Nowhere is such able to affect you as much as to hear that some rather unpalatable, reprehensible or downright atrocious thing has been said about you and your person in a fit of uncontrolled and animated displeasure.

Gratifyingly, these things are rarely said where one witnesses the vituperation, they are relayed conversations that come to light sometimes long after the event. Amid idle banter, effusive gossip, or the need to convey a veneer of candour, the perpetrator encapsulates quite reductively the character, status or person of someone else into a pithy phrase or word, the hearer unable to escape the impact of what was said.

Absence is not presence

The party to whom opprobrium was intended whilst in their absence then gains knowledge either by a whispering campaign or in unrelated conversation that wends its way to the unintended revelation of a major slight.

You cannot ever mistake the import, it has consequences and it will hurt quite deeply. However, you have to begin to rationalise and hope you misheard. Maybe the issue cannot be corroborated and before one settles into pitiful paranoia, as long as the matter is not addressed directly to one, it might well be best to ignore it altogether, but that takes time.

A bastard of the gods

At least, that is the frame of mind I have, for if one were to act one side of the story regardless of the trust that one has in the source, the old gods of allegiance, filiality, relationship, respect, consideration, honour and duty will be retired never to hear supplications or receive sacrifices of adherents who have justly gone apostate.

Even for a bastard, we are made of sterner stuff than to be rash in judgment and intemperate when provoked. The fight is unnecessary for the conscience to heal from the unkindest deployment of verbiage. We live for a higher cause.

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

The UK: You haven't arrived just because you now vote Tory

It’s a Parliament not a Presidency

Sometimes, we in The UK want to pretend we have a presidency when in fact we have a parliamentary democracy.

You cannot vote for a party leader except if you are a paid-up member of that party, then, a party leader that can only take office by being a member of parliament.

The Green Party, for instance, has two party leaders but only one is in parliament.

I hear people say they can't vote for Jeremy Corbyn and many of us can't because we are not members of the Labour Party and we are not constituents of Islington North.

Yes, he heads the Labour Party, but if his constituents vote him out of parliament, he is head in name only, he cannot become the Prime Minister because he needs to command the confidence of the parliament.

I am voting for my MP

There was an aberration at the advent of WWII, Winston Churchill was not the leader of the Conservative Party, but with war looming ahead, he commanded cross-party support to form a coalition and leadership was ceded to him.

My constituency MP, Lucy Powell, belongs to the Labour Party, she does a good job, I see no reason to kick her out. I believe Jeremy Corbyn also does a good job for his constituents, that’s why they have kept him as their MP since 1983. Now, there are many things I do not agree with concerning Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership that has necessitated my voting for other parties in the local and European elections.

Yes, he is a pacifist to a fault, he has made friends with a broader spectrum of people I would find utterly reprehensible, yet, I return to Winston Churchill when he said, “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.” I do not eulogise Winston Churchill nor do I excuse Jeremy Corbyn, Churchill did what he had to do when he saw the danger of Nazism, it meant war, but once the war ended, he was one of the greatest advocates for peace in Europe, despite his many other failings.

Tough when it is demanded

Gosh! There was a time Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness could not be heard on our airwaves because of their links to the IRA, then with much talk, we got the Good Friday Agreement, with that even Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness became best pals in the Northern Ireland government.

I believe Jeremy Corbyn would do what is necessary to keep the UK safe if it means war, but he definitely will not be banging the drums of wars at the first sound of a bang. We probably need more level heads in a world of Putin, Trump and Kim Jung-un.

The issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party probably should have been dealt with better, but I do not believe Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite, more has been done and wrought by the schism of Brexit to endanger all minorities in this country, be you European, Muslim, Black, Gay, or even dare I say reasonable. The demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn has been complete whilst the lies of Boris Johnson goes unchecked.

No shame in Boris

This is a person who lied to the Queen to prorogue parliament, who when it came to it did not die in the ditch when Brexit did not happen on the 31^st of October, yet, he gets away with more and more offence and lies without scrutiny or sanction. This inveterate buffoon has nothing to offer this country, but we live in the times when you win regardless of whether you play fair or not.

Tory grandees, former Prime Ministers have risen to say one clear fact, there is no upside to Brexit, it is quite likely if a referendum were held in 1939, people could have been persuaded to go for appeasement and avoid the suffering of war because we have no skin in Europe. It was great leadership that gave us the courage to face war and defeat fascism.

There are no sunlit uplands after Brexit, we are not positioned to achieve anything greater as a minor outpost to the largest trading bloc in the world. We are not transitioning from the British Empire to a Commonwealth of Nations, there are no new lands of opportunity to be conquered. This is where we need leadership and conviction, indeed the people voted for Brexit, it is for their leaders to state the clear facts that it was a bad choice for innumerable reasons. That is what leadership is about.

The Tories are the problem

Boris Johnson took a two-faced approach to Brexit, he wrote two articles, one for and one against as if he was in some Oxford Union debating society, then chose to go for Brexit, just for his own advantage. We have been on this since June 2016, we are on our third Prime Minister and all this came about because of the Conservative Party, the party that gave us austerity and has been in power for 9 years pretending they now have new ideas for our future.

There is no social climbing nous earned from being able to say you now vote for the Tory Party when in reality it is not in your interest or the national interest. These are carpetbaggers and snake-oil salesmen. I would rather put my lot with Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson, but as I said before, I can only vote for my own representative in my own constituency, that is Lucy Powell.

Obviously, I would have preferred a better choice to Corbyn or Johnson, say, Rory Stewart or Yvette Cooper, but we don’t have that luxury. I know Jeremy Corbyn has never been anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, lack in empathy or full of lies, that cannot be said of the apparently well-liked Boris Johnson, he published his views and even under duress been unable to honestly apologise for them.

Beware what you believe

I return to a post I made on Facebook yesterday when a presumed ex-Labour activist appeared to have some friends in thrall helping their confirmation bias. “Like honestly, we can believe whatever we choose to believe, even mine the Internet to find everything to confirm our biases, because there is enough to even convince anyone that if they jump out of the window at the top of a skyscraper, they'll float down and land like a feather.

However, there comes a time where in the cold light of day you have to ask, am I being taken for a ride as I nod like the Churchill dog to everything I am hearing?

Maybe it is time to step away from all this and just consider what is best for you and your community.

No one is going to be persuaded much differently after the stuff this electoral season has produced.”

It is your vote, use it right!

Unanimous points scoring for my TOGAF® 9 Combined bout

Catching up with the times

It would be easy to write a motivational post, but that is not really my way of doing things, rather, I will just tell my story.

As I related in my previous blog on passing my PRINCE2 Practitioner certification last Thursday morning, I was suddenly furloughed a month ago and rather than sit at home twiddling my thumbs, I considered going on a PRINCE2 course and when I was booking the course, I was offered a bundled deal to do both PRINCE2 and TOGAF certification which just happened for fall on consecutive weeks.

Like project management, I was first introduced to TOGAF just a few months after recovered from cancer by an ex-colleague. I went as far as buying the study guides and registering on The Open Group website, that was just 9 years ago, but nothing really came of it. I even explored doing the course in South Africa then, I eventually went to India instead to attend courses for Microsoft and Cisco certifications.

Keeping the faith

I suppose what made TOGAF a bit of a chore was the volume of theoretical processes that I thought only a classroom training environment could help ameliorate. The Knowledge Academy for all its poor customer service record does appear to have some really good trainers. Mustafa Ahmed took our TOGAF course and from the first day, I began to have confidence, it could be done.

This was my second week of courses and something seemed to have triggered an immune response in me that by the third day of the course, I was coughing, spluttering and running a fever that I had to return home early without acquiring anything. The trainer sent me an update of what was covered for the day and I was able to return for the fourth and last day of the course.

His advice was to take the test within two weeks of the course, or we’ll begin to forget what we had learnt. I first had to get PRINCE2 done from before I could begin to think of scheduling the TOGAF test.

Brought to the edge

It was an exasperating ordeal to get the Exam Bookings department of The Knowledge Academy to forward me the test voucher, it took 3 emails and 4 phone calls over 8 days to get that resolved. The service is an atrocity that makes an appalling review appear too generous for words.

You’re tested to the point of losing your cool and in my view, the staff care not a jot about the frustrations of their customers. It is a test of patience that one has to pass.

When the voucher arrived, I found I could not get a test window at any of the Prometric Vue test centres up north in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds or Birmingham. Only one test centre London had availability and so I chose to travel to London to take the test today. The test centre could do with bigger monitor screens.

Tested to the limit

I was caught in a quandary of my preparedness, having acquired the official study guides, the full standard documentation and a pocket guide. Something seemed to be missing until I found a YouTube video TOGAF® Level 2 Exam Questions – Tackling Those Effectively! This in addition to the tips I got on the course meant I could be boxing clever to win this match.

The TOGAF® 9 Combined Part 1 and Part 2 Exam is 40 questions for Part 1 in 60 minutes, immediately followed without results for 8 scenario questions for Part 2 in 90 minutes. I raced through Part 1 reviewing a few thorny questions and was done in just under 33 minutes. Part 2 was harder, the recommended approach is 10 minutes per question, I spent 18 on the first and had squandered 30 minutes without a satisfactory answer for the second. Open book tests don’t mean easy results. You will in some instances be told where to go in the TOGAF standard document, it doesn’t make it any easier.

I tried some and skipped some that I returned to for review, by the end, I had just 3 minutes to spare and passed both Parts. Part 1 presents a bit more difficulty as it relies upon memory and specifics from the TOGAF documentation, Part 2 is about the application of the TOGA methodology and I did much better on that by far.

They helped me do it

On reflection, I marvel at the determination and daring that saw me decide to take two highly process-driven courses with much documentation, standard and theory, just 4 weeks ago and in that time clear both tests that give me certifications in project management and enterprise architecture.

Yet, without the amazing support of Brian my partner and my friends Funmilola and Kola, I probably would not have had either the courage or determination to see this through. They are my cheerleaders, constantly telling me I can do it and do it well. It gave me such great pleasure to share my successes with them.

Now to new challenges and rewarding prospects. There is the minor issue of a holiday in South Africa to plan now. Phew! It’s done.