A Rude Awakening / The Tom Peters Experience

A Rude Awakening.

Leamington Garret 8am I had just nodded off last night when John stormed into the flat, and started charging around.

Then he noticed I had – accidentally – left the fridge unplugged when I plugged in the microwave (I had thought that cable went to the cooker) and he screamed at the top of his voice: ‘For f***’s sake, Ollie, if you use the f***ing microwave, plug the f***ing fridge back in.’

That totally woke me up. I lay in my bed wondering what he would do next, whether he would charge into my room.

He put his stereo on loud and started swearing and shouting that the hall speaker did not work (what’s that got to do with me?). Then he put on the washing machine. It was around 4am before I got back to sleep.

This morning I found he had left me a note demanding another tenner for the bills - and the money in used bank notes. Charmingly, it started: ‘I WANT CASH!’

I left him a message saying how angry I was at his behaviour and asking him to repair my back bike light which he broke.

This is what I wrote last night: 10.35pm by Big Ken, which I always suspect is two minutes’ slow.

I am very tired after my horrendous journey to work, lousy day at the Day-Job, difficult call home, and lonely time in the Garret. When I arrived, I found that the letting agency had sent John a letter putting us under threat of eviction if we do not agree to renew our contract.

John did not come back tonight, but I have left a note offering to write to them explaining our situation and that I am dealing directly with the landlord on this. I have also left John a cheque for £280 for this month’s rent and bills (£300 minus the 20 quid he owes me).

I dread the rest of the week!

The Tom PetersExperience (Flashback to Wednesday, 17 May 2006)

Coventry-London fast train. Just pulled out of Cov and haring along. Overcast but not cold.

Felt pretty bad getting up at 5.45am this morning, showered, shaved and dressed quickly and drove from the Leamington Garret to Cov (station pictured at the top of this page).

The journey was far easier than I had imagined. I was there by 6.20 and, despite having to persuade the surly shop assistant to give me change for the car park, picked up the 6.32 rather than the 7am train I had been aiming for. More time to reflect and write.

I did not hear John last night – if he came in at all. There was no sign of him at all. I shall have to arrange to see him tonight. Even though we are just a couple of blokes sharing a flat, this is beginning to have the feel of a relationship break-up. Weird!

Anyway, I have been sent on this trip to try to improve my leadership! Maybe it will help me handle this John situation. Sorting it all out amicably and fairly could be a challenge.

I read the first entry in Alan Clark’s Diaries last night and then fell asleep, having appalling nightmares, as often happens. I cannot help feeling I need a shrink, not a blog!

At some point when I have the time and money, I should do the karma thing and go round and see all the people who have troubled to talk to them and try to understand what went wrong.

I am talking about: Willis, Preston, Cockman (all school bullies, Parker (my mad boss at the Daily Star), Lawson (who sacked me from the Sunday Telegraph)among others. The people who have damaged me.

Trouble with Oliver's Poetry Garret and the website in general is that it and my Day-Job and my beloved family have filled all my available time. I have not done any work on poetry for weeks. Once the site is up and running, I need to be writing a poem a week.

To get me going, here is a little list of possibles: Swimming; Pain (partly completed); Overheard (on the train) – just an idea at the moment; Playground (about parents’ hopes and aspirations transferring to their children – also just and idea); Love on the Northern Line (partly written – needs revision).

That’s five. If I could complete those over the next fortnight, it would be a good start.

. . . Had a lovely bacon sardie (£2.90) and now we are at Milton Keynes, a place I was once stranded in as a young hitchhiker. I could not hand on heart recommend MK12 or any other MK Number to anyone.

Commuters have crowded on like cattle with their Heat magazines and stupid striped shirts. God protect us!

7.39am coming into London Euston… Just looking at the course bumpf. The guy who is leading it is described as the ‘Ur-guru of management’ or ‘the Uber-guru’. He looks like a cross between Jerry Springer and a comedian I know called Larry Bernstein (a motivational speaker character act). Blimey O’Reilly, as my friend Mary would say.

8.18am. Ballroom, London Hilton Metropole, in a polluted part of London near the West Way!

A huge room with curvy-patterned carpet and starry, starry ceiling. Reminds me of the ballroom in which I wrestled with the late Oliver Reed many moons ago. It was like fighting a grizzly bear.

It is not the same place, of course. Ballrooms in London tend to look the same – expensive and homogenized.

Already feeling knackered. This place is horrid – expensive but tacky, flush with awfully over- or under-dressed Americans and Japanese with their plasticky SLR cameras and harrassed looks.

I have been joined by two fat businessmen who are commenting on the lack of tables or chairs. I am typing while standing with the laptop on a tall table, like our breakfast table at the Leamington Garret (one of the pieces of furniture John will take if or when he moves out).

At a glance, I can see that this event is a massive money-making exercise for the so-called Uber-guru. Clearly, hundreds, if not thousands, of people are expected.

Their employers will have paid through the nose for their places. And I could have provided Larry Bernstein for 50 quid.

Flunkies in white barber jackets are circulating, collecting discarded cups and saucers. The chatter is already of business, train times, delays and other boring matters of that ilk. Is this what has become of human interaction? Is it too early to text John. Probably. He is such a heavy sleeper, he would not wake up anyway.

Something rather disturbing happened last night. I was walking up the flat and glanced across into the kitchen of a neighbouring flat, in the adjacent, on the third floor.

There was a young man frying up his supper while completely naked, a large member dangling between his legs. I cannot get the image out of my head. Worrying!

I am going to learn the words of One. I cannot stand Bono’s singing but love the song, both the versions that Johnny Cash, and Mary J Blige (with Bono) have done of it.

At an event like this, the lyrics could prove excellent answers: ‘Love is the answer! Love is the higher law’ or ‘Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?’

5.30pm. London Euston. London-Coventry train.

Wow! What a head-shag! The John Peters Experience was unforgettable. Five hundred people in blocks, in another ballroom, with a big corridor running through the middle.

A lackey gave the Man the big build up and then he was on – with his random slides, endless anecdotes, rage at various (American) targets, and home-grown wisdom.

It was very entertaining but direct questions were discouraged. You could write a question which the lackey would read and then John Peters adeptly evade.

But don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed it and took copious notes, if only for my own amusement, at his use of language and the outrageous things he said:

‘The only thing better than profit is obscene profit’

‘Think I’ll go off and have another mediocre day’

‘Deal with it, guys!’

‘The only thing men are good at is violence’

‘We may not be interested in chaos but chaos is interested in us’

‘It’s a dangerous world and becoming more dangerous’

‘In the Cold War, old guys were running stuff, and one grandfather does not want to bomb another grandfather’

‘Wash your hands’

‘No one makes the history books for being effective’

‘Take a complex financial analysis and turn it into a numberless story’

‘Life is too short to work with jerks’

‘Never make the Chief Financial Officer the Chief Executive’

‘Hospitals are the killing fields – 200,000 people a year are killed unnecessarily in the Killing Fields of US hospitals’

‘Working more hours than the next person pays – that’s why the French will never succeed’

‘A crappy strategy and great execution beats great strategy and a propensity to talk’

You get the picture.

In among the soundbites, there was a lot of sense. The last one I quoted reminds me of how the Church was convinced by consultants toward the end of my time there.

These guys talked great strategy but in my view failed to implement it. In fact even the strategy proved pretty crappy.

The result: a collapse of their communications department and PR disasters like the Stephen Noon Mail on Sunday front-page splash.

Over lunch, I ate with a pair of German consultants who had included this workshop on their holiday. She was quite nice to chat to, although I have no doubt that they were the usual consultant numbskulls pedlaring crap to the gullible. The food was pretty good (and I have just had a sandwich) so I will not to eat again today.

I texted John to ask if we could meet tonight when I get back to start to sort out the bills. I have not heard back from him which makes me suspect that he is uncomfortable about this, for whatever reason.

I have a feeling that his plans to leave are well advanced and I shall need to find out what is happening and make provisions accordingly.

Anyway I should be home by 7.30pm. If there is no John, I shall pack up, call home, and, maybe, drop down to the Jug and Jester and see how I cope with the music night without the crutch of alcohol.

Tom Peters admitted he is taking powerful anti-depressants. It made me wonder how healthy his marriage is. He has tons of money, travels the world on his own to fulfil speaking engagements and hardly mentions home.

I could imagine him living the high life with champagne, caviar – and all the other trappings. There was definitely something of Jerry Springer about him.

On reflection, he was like a cross between Jerry Springer and the late Bill Hicks, in view of his sardonic ire.

This service is remarkably fast. In 20 minutes, we could be in Coventry. A world apart from Chiltern Railways which is powered by rubber bands.

The idea occurred to me of composing a poem about business. For all their fine talk, most of the 500 there today were only interested in making dosh and lots of it.

You could see the greed in their eyes, the determination engraved in the lines of their ugly mugs. I would like to think I am motivated by higher things while, obviously, having to keep an eye on the pennies.

My back is somewhat feeling better, having dropped far too many pills during the day. Every time Peters mentioned his anti-depressants I felt the need to take them.

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