Inspiration in the coffee shop

I gave up several social activities to concentrate on writing but found I was running short on ideas, decided to get out a bit more, and went along to the local coffee shop. Two well dressed ladies came and sat at the table next to me and began to talk. 'Did Maisie's cousin come to fix your tap?' one asked. 'Yes he did. I was in my underwear when he came but it was from Marks and Spencers, so it was quite respectable.' the other answered. There's more unsaid than said but it's the kind of thing that stirs the imagination and I concluded that I'm one of those who need to have people around to keep my creative wires humming.
One of my favourite inspirational sites is the bus when the WI are on a trip or at the bowls club. That's when you hear about all kinds of human foibles and I get several episodes for another Welcome to Oakhaven or Best in Show's Cairndhu. The big thing about those episodes is that people can identify with them, they've usually happened elsewhere and, in addition, they are important enough in normal life for them to be commented on.

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Why review?

By the time Joshua was old and full of years, the Israelites had become a large organisation and their struggles reflect the problems faced by that kind of association and we get a list of what has been allocated to whom. Translating that into present day terms it tells us a large organisation, business, sporting, or just community, needs to review and remind itself of what it has accomplished and what its values are.  It applies to teams and even couples and individuals. We need to remind ourselves of the successes we’ve had and the problems we’ve faced and overcome together. We need to remind ourselves why we are doing things and what our ultimate aims are. It applies to careers, university studies and even school, where it is easy to give up over the boring aspects of what we are busy with, when they are necessary steps to a goal. It’s also necessary to remind ourselves of mistakes so that we don’t repeat them. But for future planning, we need to review the present as well as the past. We need to take stock and look at things as they are so that our future plans are based on reality and not illusions.

Setting limits

When Joshua became old and full of years he was relieved of leading the fight against the Sidonites. That teaches us that we should not ask others, or even ourselves to do things beyond our capabilities. That’s not to say we mustn’t try but no matter how hard you flap your arms, you won't fly. What it does say is that, as a boss, when things become too difficult for our people, we need to take over responsibility. No one can do everything. Some lack experience, some lack skill and some just have too much on their plate. For the small business, reaching beyond the business’s means is one of the main reasons for failure. To get a large company example, it is only necessary to recall what happened to the banks in the recent collapse.

On the negative side, how often has a good production official been promoted into an advisory, administrative, or even sales job and proved incompetent. The same applies to admin. people fordced out of their competence. That kind of promotion is unfair to the employee and it is the boss’s responsibility to make sure each promotion is in the employee’s interest as well as the company’s.

These notes are written in the belief that the Bible is not just a history book but something that teaches us how we should live and work.    

The Israelites cheated lesson

Taking another look at the story of the small tribe the Gibeonites making their peace with the Israelites I noticed that when the Israelites sampled the Gibeonites food to see if they had come from a long way away, they did not refer the thing to God and were cheated. How often do we get into trouble by agreeing to something or making an arrangement in business, a dinner date, buying another ‘thing’, or agreeing a price or delivery without conferring with, or even referring to our partner or our boss. The lessons the Bible teaches are not always ‘in our face’ and that’s why it is worth reading it with care and reflecting on its teaching. I once agreed an exchange rate, just for the purposes of calculation, with a supplier and found myself in trouble when the supplier insisted I had agreed it as part of the contract. I was lucky, by the time payment was due, the exchange rate was on our side. 

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Mergers and marriages

The next part of the Israelite story as they claim Canaan finds a small tribe coming to make peace with them, claiming to be from far off. They are included in the Israelite community as slaves, but are included and not slaughtered like other groups. It’s like the takeover business and a lesson as to how a small organisation might live within a major company by offering to be overtaken rather than wait for a hostile acquisition. In a well-managed takeover, the employees of the smaller company will still have jobs and careers, whereas in a hostile acquisition the anger generated by the resistance of the company taken over means a clear out of staff. How does the lesson apply to relationships? It’s unacceptable that one party in a relationship will become a slave to the other. In fact there should be no stronger and weaker partner and perhaps that is the lesson. If one partner feels inadequate, or is made to feel inadequate, then they will become a slave, losing personality and will, a sorrowful thing to watch. The story deals with two extreme alternatives and ignores the idea of just running away, which, in personal relationships is the best escape from something that is not based on mutual respect.

Ai

When the Israelites had taken Jericho, they went trying to Ai and were repulsed. According to the story, all the precious metal was reserved for God yet one of the men had taken and hidden some for himself. In other words, the organisation was rotten from within. It’s like a takeover of a business but one of the parent company’s people has set an asset aside for himself. The same is true of a relationship where one partner has kept alive part of an old relationship. The new relationship is doomed. Or a business selling flowers that tries to keep something from the old butchery, selling sausages, maybe, going as well.

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Hero or Heroine

One reason I stopped to think about a hero is that I have written a novel set in Scotland during the 1820 uprising and the 'hero', I should really call him the protagonist, is an ordinary man caught up in the disturbance. Even Broon in Best in Show is an ordinary man finding himself having to deal with things beyond his experience. For some reason my 'heroes' are 'heroines', like Miss Kirkwood who encourages and inspires Broon; a bit like Bertie Wooster's Jeeves. Even when I wrote the WW1 South African tales, the protagonist was an ordinary man of mixed race who had been mistaken for white and made an officer and was forced to cope with missions beyond his capability - when he learned to fly, he crashed but survived and his superior sent him off in another flying machine with the comment, 'Even if you crash, you'll get there quicker than by train.'
By contrast, the women are sturdy in their opinions and push the poor devils to take on things that terrify them. Even when I wanted to do a story on King Arthur, it was Guinevere who demanded a round table.
I'm over eighty and maybe I've always felt the men built things, drove things, made things, but it was the women who had the courage to deal with life's real problems, like children and the family, and had the final say in where to live.
Anyway, I've been reading Sharpe and watching bomb aimers let bombs go and those little flashes which are the bombs exploding are someone's house with their furniture, pots and pans and curtains they've just washed going up in flames. The man goes to work next day but what does the woman do? Pick up the pieces and get on with life.

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