no free lunch

Anything that makes life easier makes people lazier. Think of some exceptions.

paddleboarding D-Day beaches

For those keen on a way to combine history with stand up paddleboarding (I almost wrote stand up comedy there- and some spectators of my efforts might have denied any difference) I can suggest a fine place in the five beaches- Gold, Sword, Juno, Omaha and Utah- though the last two became conflated in my nephew's mind to become 'yuhooter' and 'ohomer'- the names stuck- the five beaches that saw the incredible effort of landing thousands of men on the 6th June 1944. The highest surf is on Omaha and Utah, the calmest- and best for stand-up practice- to be found inside the artificial 'mulberry' harbour constructed from concrete platforms just after the landing- this is Gold beach, right by the town of Arromanches. At Sword, Gold and especially Juno there are lifeguards who may ask you to go further out or along. No such interference is to be found at the more remote Omaha and Utah. There are great regular waves or lowish height at Juno, though Omaha, which saw the fiercest fighting was also the best for surfing.

I couldn't help thinking that the Germans would have been even more freaked out if the 1-29 Division of General Bradley had been riding into battle on big Hawaiian surf boards...

still surfing D Day beaches

Oamaha was the best so far= so must have been pretty rough back in 1944; tomorrow juno; stand up paddle boarding aint easy though; I have spent a fair amount of time falling off; back next week to a once or twice a week post

surfing D Day beaches

Much has been written about the recent revival of interest in the old Hawaian art of stand up paddle boarding- briefly surfing bifurcated at its origin into boards you jump up onto and boards you stand up from the word go and paddle with a nice long paddle. The latter allows full body exercise, the ability to get fun out of riding tiny waves as well as monsters and a piece of kit you can paddle up a canal if you really want to.

I’m off for a week or so to paddle board the Normandy beaches, surfing in on Omaha and Gold, on the latest brilliant piece of kit, yep, the INFLATABLE stand up paddle board- weighs a mere 10kg and fits in the space behind the car front seats. Inflatables are so brilliantly made these days they seem rock hard when fully pumped…hmm odd sentence that…anyway here goes- my next post will, I hope, be next week sometime.

young and old

Each day we are sometimes young and sometimes old for varying amounts of time. Chronologically young people may actually spend more time being ‘old’ than their chronological elders.

For the purposes of this observation ‘being young’ means being into things.

‘Being old’ means either a)wanting to be into things that chronologically young people are into, or,

b)not being into things.

you want to be an entrepreneur?

Every successful entrepreneur I have met (and I admit I've only met a few, but still) acts like a human being, a normal person not some kind of mechanical business freak genius. They rely on friends and use ordinary relationships to pursue business ends. The only difference is they are willing to use money to sharpen the bait so to speak. They also talk refreshingly about how the money will be made. There is no hocus pocus- it is usually a simple case of selling something for more than you paid for it. Being entrepreneurial is seen as some kind of magic skill but actually most kids have it when they make some sweets or thumb wrestling puppets to sell at school. They do it partly also for the fun and they derive fun from being with the people they are doing business with. There is none of that ‘professional’ detachment you see in middle managers sneaking away to make endless emails. Almost every entrepreneur I have met has been a party animal or at least sociable and all have time for people.

dodge city

Until we understand the nexus of crime-dodginess-creativity-success we will never solve the problem of burgeoning prison populations in the ‘developed’ world. Balzac said that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. I’d say that behind every business lies some kind of dodginess. By necessity: there are simply too many rules out there that if one focuses on obeying them one loses the focus of getting something done. A businessman starts something and hopes to wing it through legal wrangling and having a fall back position of thinking – well- I’ll just write off the investment if it fails. A criminal thinks: it’s worth a five year stretch to do this robbery. Now there is a difference, but it isn’t a difference of quality, it is one of degree. That doesn’t mean one has to condone either or both, but it does mean that we should recognize the human need and tendency to be dodgy.