Highlights of 2017: Seeing Midnight Oil again, 23 years on

I saw Midnight Oil play at the Greenbelt Festival in 1994. My dad wanted to go to Greenbelt, a Christian arts festival, to see what it was like. I was massively into Midnight Oil so jumped at the opportunity. I liked their meaningful politically-informed lyrics. They had some good tunes. They were Australian and that meant they were a bit different, but unlike Australian pop stars they sang about Australian issues and didn't seem to be trying to be generically likeable everywhere.

I don't remember much from that gig. I remember they had borrowed a didgeridoo player who had an artificial hand. And I remember thinking they were great.

And then life happened. They played a couple of rare gigs in London at the end of the 90s, but I didn't have the money or the wherewithal to get there. It was hard to find out what was happening with the band, pre-Internet. They weren't cool enough to get featured in NME or Melody Maker. Then the band went on hiatus. Peter Garrett, the lead singer, went into politics, getting elected to the Australian Senate and ending up as Minister for the Environment.

So, that was that, I thought. I'd seen them play live once and considered myself lucky. Other bands have come and gone who I never got to see. And if I'm honest, my musical tastes had changed. I had become slightly obsessed with the Tragically Hip, who I got into because they collaborated on a protest song with Midnight Oil back in the mid-90s. While it's sad to think you'll never see a revered band again, I kind of made my peace with it.

And then Cathy told me they had reformed and were touring again. I was very excited. Their only UK gig was in London, at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith. Cathy bought the tickets. She also found a bargain price for the Novotel the other side of the Hammersmith flyover from the venue, and here we were, 23 years after I first saw them, off to see Midnight Oil.

The audience was mainly Australians, at least sitting around us. I was surprised when the set-list kicked off with Beds are Burning, their only real worldwide hit. They continued to play all the tracks off their biggest album, Diesel and Dust, in order, but didn't play the last track on the album, Gunbarrel Highway, which is my favourite one. So that was a tiny bit disappointing. They then kicked into a setlist of other songs, but nothing from later than Earth and Sun and Moon, the album they released in 1993. Weirdly, I could have been watching them back at Greenbelt all those years ago.

So, the big question: were they any good? Well, yeah. A bit rusty perhaps. Peter Garrett has slowed down a bit and doesn't do his trademark stuttering dance as much. He tried though, bless him.

And they made some odd choices. I'm not sure why they played Diesel and Dust like that. Maybe it's what the punters want. They also decided to do Koscziusko, one of their most driving rock songs, as an acoustic version to start with, which didn't really work and sucked all the power out of the song. They included some of the real oldies, like Stand in Line, and I really liked the way they sang Now or Never Land, but that's just a beautiful song of hope that has become ever more timely.

I was left with that strange sense of feeling really happy to have seen a band play who I never thought I would see again (and get the chance to buy two t-shirts!) and feeling wistful about the missed opportunities. Obviously, it's one of my highlights of the year, but it could have been even better than it was.

Highlights of 2017: Discovering Lundy Island

Back in May, Cathy and I had a week's holiday in North Devon. We stayed in a converted piggery - Cathy found it in the holiday brochure, told me it was the Old Piggery then read out the list of features. My response: "You had me at 'piggery'."

Not bad for a piggery

On the Thursday we took a boat from Bideford to Lundy. I'd heard about Lundy but didn't know much about it at all. I knew they had their own stamps as a money-making thing. And birds. And not much else.

The boat was fairly full. we had a seal on the rocks to greet us as we arrived. It's quite a hike up from the beach, but the island is basically a moor stuck in the middle of the sea.

But it is breathtaking. Yes, there were lots of birds, but they were a long way down the cliffs and inconveniently, puffins are really small! But we did just about see them flitting about.

One of the few buildings on the island is the lighthouse.

There is also a shop and a pub, and accommodation. But we weren't planning to stay the night and had to leg it back to catch the boat. We did have time to stop and post some post cards.

As we left a pod of dolphins kept pace with our boat for a few minutes, rounding off a magical day out. As you can see from the photos it was a blisteringly sunny day, although with a wind chill at times. However, coming home we seemed to cross a portal back into the rainy mainland world.

Highlights of 2017: Graduating with a MSc

I feel a bit embarrassed to be writing about graduating with a MSc in Business Psychology, but if I can be indulged as I pat myself on the back for a short post, I'd be grateful.

Red sash for science

2017 saw the culmination of my post-graduate degree that I began back in 2014. By the time it had finished the course had moved campus, I had learned a lot about organisational psychology, and I had changed jobs, partly because of a classroom exercise.

The first term was a basic introduction to key concepts like motivation, job satisfaction and burn out, which were three themes that really interested me. We did the burn out quiz and I scored very highly compared to other people on the course. I remember looking at the results and thinking, 'I need to change jobs'. Nine months later I had started a new role, leaving behind a job I realise now I had stagnated in.

At the start of the second term, I received a significant diagnosis, which resulted in being put on medication that had significant effects on my ability to concentrate. Fortunately I was off those particular drugs by the April. I just about scraped through that module, recording just above the 40% cut off. But, hey, a pass is a pass.

For the second year our lessons moved from the Caerleon campus to Trefforest. This was better for me in terms of travel, although not for my class colleagues, who were all travelling from Bristol. At some point during this year we were all asked if we were willing to be photographed for the course prospectus. We all agreed and I really liked my photos. However, I clearly wasn't sexy enough to be the face of Business Psychology in future years.

In the second year, we did the course I found most interesting - External Communications. This focused on cognitive psychology and examining how we are manipulated into buying things, showing brand loyalty, and so on. I wrote an essay about the psychological techniques the Lego company use to boost sales. They use a lot, although I can't say for sure that they do it knowingly. I saw great correlation between marketing techniques I'd read or heard from various gurus and psychological theory, and the whole subject really engaged me. I blogged about Neuromarketing at the time.

The Leadership module didn't engage me. Partly because the lecturer was a few weeks away from quitting the university to go and work for a rival. The subject matter felt very much like a run of the mill business theory course. And in the first week the lecturer started talking about how all the problems in the NHS were down to poor leadership. I thought this was hilariously simplistic and told her so. She told me I should read the Francis Report into the Mid Staffordshire scandal, and didn't seem to hear me when I said that I had written a white paper partly in response to the Francis Report.

I've been very lucky to have a job where I have met a number of NHS CEOs, not to mention Medical Directors, Nursing Directors, executive directors of all shapes and sizes. Generally I think they are all very smart, committed, people who really give a damn about doing a good job and somehow keeping the NHS limping along. The truth is, though, NHS organisations are unleadable. They are too big, too riven by competing interests, too underfunded and over-demanded, too entrenched in delivery mechanisms that were always a compromise, and are basically organisational oil tankers that need turning circles the size of cities. Anyway, she wasn't having it. She had never worked in the NHS but knew how to fix it. I just shrugged and left her to her delusions.

The last section of the course was a dissertation. I did a study trying to see if positive reflection on work affected job satisfaction. I didn't find any statistically valid effect except that if you ask people to reflect on their successes they are more likely to be dissatisfied with the performance of their manager. This is bad news for me as I now line manage three people, so I obviously need to make sure they only think about their failures and not their successes! (Only joking!)

The dissertation took up the latter half of 2016, particularly the final three months. When I finally submitted it in January, the feeling of relief was immense. I remember going with Cathy to the cinema and sitting there and realising that I didn't feel guilty about doing something fun for the first time in months.

The graduation ceremony was fun too. We were arranged in order of qualification and then alphabetically by course title. There were only four of us attending the graduation and 'Business Psychology' was the first of the MSc courses listed. One of the PhD students didn't show, meaning that my friend Nick was the second person called on stage and I was the third. We had an address from Steven Moffatt, the Doctor Who show-runner. He was quite funny but overdid the message of how badly his generation had messed things up for the generation of fresh-faced youngsters who made up the majority of graduates there.

I was very pleased to share the day with Cathy. and with Connor, who had come down from Birmingham for the event. Cathy was my rock during the dissertation in particular, but she has also been a tremendous support throughout the course. Without her, I'm not sure I would have carried on post-diagnosis back in 2015 so it seemed only fitting that I let her share my graduation hat!

Highlights of 2017: hearing Sir Tom Jones record a gospel Christmas!

Back at the end of November 2017, I was fortunate enough to attend a recording of Gospel Christmas, a TV show presented by Sir Tom Jones and Beverley Knight, and featuring a couple of other singers and two gospel choirs. Now that the show has been aired (three times!) over Christmas I feel I can blog about it without upsetting anyone.

Sir Tom, in full voice

The first thing to say is that it was an extraordinary privilege to see a man I consider a living legend at such close quarters. He is, obviously, getting on a bit now, and yet he still has the most marvelous singing voice. He did two songs by himself, although backed by the gospel choir. Sir Tom did them in one take. Nobody was going to ask him to do it again, and he didn't need to.

In contrast, Beverley Knight seemed like a bit of a perfectionist. Although when she did her second take of a Prince cover you could see why she wanted to redo it. The second take got used in the programme.

There were a couple of other guests as well, who apparently have released albums and everything, but I hadn't heard of them before. One was Kwabs, whose solo song was Higher Love. It was an OK cover, but really, it's a good song and any half decent singer will sound good on it. The other guest was Jessie Ware. She sang In the Bleak Midwinter, which I loathe with a passion. Unfortunately, she had to sing it twice. Double loathing!

Jessie was also wearing a white shirt with batwing style sleeves that irresistibly reminded me of the famous 'Puffy Shirt' from Seinfeld. So much so I involuntarily laughed when she first came on-stage. Jessie and Kwabs also sung a duet of Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas. It's another song that it's hard to mess up, although they both seemed to have a good attempt. They had two shots at it. Neither really convinced. (Kwabs had his own interesting sartorial choice as well, a woolly beanie hat. I imagine it looked reasonably cool when he decided to wear it for the show but he must have been sweating under the lights by the end.)

It's always funny to watch people record links. They fluffed a couple of them. Sir Tom joked with the audience after looking down the camera to introduce a piece they were going to cut to in the show.

Recording a link

It was fun to watch the programme and see the pre-recorded segment they put in, all about Tom visiting the Valleys chapel where he used to go to Sunday School.  There was another interesting segment featuring archive footage of a black church in Butetown, Cardiff. As the show was filmed at the old Coal Exchange, just around the corner it fitted with the show.

Despite being a one take hero for his numbers, Sir Tom recorded the grand finale twice. Beverley wasn't too happy with the second version either and seemed to want to go for a third attempt, but Sir Tom wasn't having it. He quite loudly asked what was wrong with the version they had just done then took the executive decision that twice was enough and slowly walked off.

Finale time! Including Jessie's puffy shirt

It was really special hearing him sing live, and just being present in the same room as him as he performed. It was definitely one of my highlights of 2017.

(Big thanks to my friend Leanne, who was in the group I went with and sent these pics to me!)