Status Anxiety

Poorer, but no less happy - another night sleeping in our 1986
pick-up truck.  Yosemite National Park, California.

I’ve been reading a great book by the imaginatively named Alain de Botton, called Status Anxiety.  If you can get hold of a copy, do so.  (I 'borrowed' my copy a while ago from my sister - sorry Liz, I don’t think I actually told you – it was on that bookshelf next to your spare room and I just helped myself).  The central premise of the book is that status – traditionally thought of as a matter of one’s position in society, but in a broader sense a matter of one’s value and importance in the eyes of the world – is considered one of the finest of earthly goods.  De Botton reckons that high status brings pleasant consequences including “resources, space, comfort, time, and a sense of being cared for and thought valuable – conveyed through invitations, flattery, laughter (even when the joke lacks bite), deference and attention”.  However, whilst the hunger for status can spur us on towards excellence, it can also bring us harm.  In particular, it can lead to a destructive fear that we are in danger of not conforming to the ideals that society has laid down - that we are not occupying a high enough rung on the ladder of success, or are in danger of falling to a lower one.  De Botton thinks this is capable of ruining extended periods of our lives and he calls the condition ‘status anxiety'. De Botton goes on to explore the causes of status anxiety – both perceived and real.  He points out the shifting nature of concepts of status, as between different societies and through different periods of history, whether it derives from athletic prowess, accumulation of wealth, intelligence, or birthright. It makes for fascinating reading. I haven’t got to the end, so I don't yet know whether he offers a miracle cure.

I have, in the course of the last month, changed my job. Whilst I will stay at the same law firm, I will no longer be a fee-earning lawyer.  In other words, I will be a cost to the business, rather than a source of profit.  In my new role as a 'Professional Development Lawyer' (a rather fancy name for someone who trains other lawyers without having to actually do much lawyering himself), I have waved goodbye to daily timesheets, to unpredictable (and often long) hours, to the stress of dealing with client queries (always urgent), to billing, to having to constantly check my blackberry (in order to be truly ‘responsive’), and to the pressure to record seven and a half chargeable hours a day, every day. But I have also said goodbye to being a senior associate at the City's leading litigation firm, to having a nice office with a trainee to mentor, a great team of junior associates and a fantastic secretary, and to the excitement of working on some of the biggest – and most difficult - disputes in the UK Courts.  As a senior associate I was, I would like to think, respected by both my peers and my superiors, liked by my co-workers (if not all my clients), and generally valued for my contribution to my team and the firm as a whole.  I was on the promotion track and would, with hard work and a bit of luck, be admitted to the partnership within the next couple of years.  In short, I had status.

So why the change of job?  There are many reasons, but I think they all point to two (interlinked) things: time, and fun.  Ultimately I found myself short of both. The stress, late nights, unpredictable (and often seemingly unreasonable – until I remember what my hourly rate is) client demands, endless blackberry checking, the tedium of huge commercial disputes, the thousands of documents, even the lack of time – all these things were bearable as long as I was having fun.  But over the course of the last year I found myself increasingly leaving work feeling unhappy, annoyed, or a combination of both.  I could never really put my finger on why until it hit me as blindingly obvious: I just wasn’t having that much fun any more.  As I have said before, being a lawyer is all I ever really wanted to be, even if I don’t know why (perhaps I just love a good argument, as Anita and my mother will both no doubt attest).  So I suppose I’ve lost my lawyer mojo (two words that I suspect are rarely found in the same sentence).  Maybe temporarily, maybe forever. Will I ever be a ‘proper’ lawyer again?  Who knows.

Anyway, having revealed my innermost agonies for your delectation, I suppose I should return to the subject of this post.  One part of the switch to my new job involved agreeing a new (lower) salary.  I dutifully drew up an excel spreadsheet to see what the effect on my monthly income would be – I have a mortgage to pay, after all.  And the funny thing is, taking a substantial salary cut, whilst not ideal, is not what has worried me the most. Instead, I have been plagued by a sense that by stepping away from fee-earning, I am stepping down from something, moving to a lower position.  What I suppose I am really struggling with is the feeling that I won’t be valued. That I won’t be as well respected or, perhaps, as well liked, as I was as a lawyer at the sharp end. I suppose I am worried that I will miss, in De Botton's words, the “resources, space, comfort, time, the sense of being cared for and thought valuable – conveyed through invitations, flattery, laughter, deference and attention”. Ok, so I never got that much deference, but people did generally laugh at my jokes (most of the time).

In a couple of weeks’ time I will be off the sofa and into the office to start my new job.  At that point perhaps I will simply have insufficient time to worry about such matters.  And I should remember that for me, changing jobs is all about giving myself more time, having more fun and being happier.  In his book De Botton quotes the nineteenth century philosopher John Ruskin.  In 1862, in Unto This Last, Ruskin urges us to set aside our ordinary wealth and power-based notions of status in favour of a ‘life based’ view.  As he wrote, “there is no wealth but life, including all its powers of love, of joy and of admiration. That country is richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.  Many of the persons commonly considered wealthy are, in reality, no more wealthy than the locks of their own strong boxes, they being inherently and eternally incapable of wealth.” Literally, wise words.

This post has gone on far longer than is decent. So, if you are still reading, I’ll share one last nugget of wisdom, this time from the Greek peninsula in the fifth century BC.  De Botton recounts a story about Alexander the Great passing through Corinth, where he visits the famous philosopher Diogenes. He finds Diogenes penniless and dressed in rags, sitting under a tree.  Alexander, the most powerful man in the world, asks if there is anything he can do for him.  “Yes,” replies Diogenes, “you could step out of the way. You are blocking the sun.” Alexander the Great, famed for his vicious temper, simply laughs, and says if he weren’t Alexander the Great, he’d certainly like to be Diogenes.  I think I would too.

Nutella depravity

My second favourite spread. Anita flies the flag for
Organic Peanut Butter in Boulder, Colorado.

Two days ago, on Friday morning, I put my finger in the Nutella jar.  This is neither a euphemism, nor some sort of saucy innuendo.   Rather, I simply stuffed my hand in as far as I could (getting Nutella residue all over the back of my hand in the process). I scraped up a huge dollop of hazelnut chocolately goodness on my index finger, put it in my mouth, and licked and sucked my finger until it was clean.  This week I finally descended into Nutella depravity. 

In my defence, it was a bad week. Yet it all started so well. I had a hospital appointment booked in on Wednesday morning – five weeks to the day since I wrecked me leg.  I had convinced myself that this was going to be the day when the medics would confirm their initial six week prognosis, that is, that I would be out of my full leg plaster in a mere seven days.  Alas, it was not to be. The consultant instead confirmed that I would be in the cast for another three weeks.  Three weeks!  I mounted a feeble protest about hoping to be back on my feet sooner, which was quickly swatted away.  I think I actually said “but I was hoping to go back to work before the end of the month”. This was, of course, a lie (or a half-lie, at least).  I came home in a state of dejection.  Not even the news that I could put 10% bodyweight on my bad leg (with the aid of a rather trendy hospital-issue velcro shoe) helped.  To compound matters I had been trying to wean myself off the codeine and was suffering the predicted withdrawal effects (splitting headaches and bouts of irritation – I can only hope I never get addicted to heroin).  

When I first wrecked me leg I convinced myself I would become a model of good health.  A pint of skimmed milk a day, plenty of fruit and vegetables, lots of fresh fish, plenty of water, no alcohol, no caffeine. I managed all of the above, except the alcohol and caffeine. And the water (the water has gradually been replaced by alcohol and caffeine).  And I pretty quickly started hitting the Nutella. At first it was on toast, once a week, as a treat instead of my cereal.  Then it was once a week as well as my cereal. Then more than once a week.  Then I started eating it spread on digestive biscuits, then with bananas and ice cream for pudding.  Eventually, I started eating it, furtively, straight from the jar with a spoon, in between episodes of The Wire (I used a teaspoon – I'm not a monster).  And then, on Friday, I could take it no more.  No need for a spoon, I just rammed my hand in and ate it like some sort of primitive savage, straight from the jar.

But just when I reached the depths of Nutella depravity, things started looking up.  Sophie and Hugh came round for a Thai take-out on Friday night, with Raffi and Max in tow. Then I spent a pleasant Saturday afternoon propped up in the garden on our new space-age artificial lawn. On Saturday night I hobbled round for a party at Eilidh and Dave’s house where I drank lots of beer and listened to James's take on the latest premiership footballer sex-scandal (including tips on the best internet search terms to use). And today I caught up with family and friends at my niece Emily’s third birthday party.  So, all in all, things are looking up. I've looked into the Nutella abyss, and I've stepped away from the edge. I’ll still be visiting the jar this week, but I reckon I’ll be back to using a spoon. 

Medical miracles

Our very own medical miracle.

The two paramedics who came to my rescue a month ago told me that they would soon be featuring in a documentary being made by Channel 4 about King’s College Hospital Accident & Emergency department.  The first episode of “24 Hours in A&E” was broadcast a couple of nights ago and Anita and I just watched it today (courtesy of our V+ box) over lunch.  I’m still not sure whether watching it with food was a good idea. We didn’t get to see my two paramedics, although we did see a man who had fallen off his bike and knocked himself out; a 77 year old man who landed on his head after falling ten feet from a ladder balanced at the top of some stairs; and a Greek student who had been run over by a bus.  When the ambulance arrived he was still under the bus, literally folded in half, so that his face was touching his feet.  Unbelievably he was still conscious.  Within half an hour of being admitted to A&E he had had the entire quantity of his blood replaced and X rays revealed that his pelvis resembled (to quote the trauma consultant) “a jigsaw puzzle”.  Without wanting to spoil it, everyone survived, although it was definitely touch and go for the bus-crash dude.  They returned to him once he could walk again, three months and over thirty hours of surgery later.  He was unable to remember anything from immediately before the accident until he woke up in hospital a month later.

Two things occurred to me whilst watching this. First, an insight into 24 hours in an emergency room certainly puts a different perspective on things – as the consultant pointed out, “a lot of people talk about being a lawyer or a banker as a stressful job. But I’d rather lose a few million pounds of someone’s money than do something wrong and lose someone’s life.”  Well put, I think.  He is undoubtedly at the top of his game yet still confessed to going home and lying awake wondering whether he’d done the right thing with each of his patients that day.  It made me realise that being a lawyer is, relatively speaking, (a) a piece of cake; and (b) not a very important job.

Second, the programme reminded me just how incredible medical science is. In fact, not only medical science, but the human body itself.  I watched another programme on BBC1 the other night, called “Inside the Human Body” (I am watching a LOT of telly at the moment).  This programme started with footage of a woman giving birth in a bath (filmed using an under-water camera no less – nothing was left to the imagination) and ended with a man dying of old age.  In between was an hour of the most amazing telly I have seen for a long time.  I watched a team of surgeons cut open a woman’s chest, stop her heart, zap some individual cells (just the bad ones, taking care not to damage the good ones) and then start her heart again an hour later.  And a man called Vim went for a 15 minute swim in a lake in Iceland where the water was only two degrees above freezing (he sang Icelandic folk songs as he swam circles around an iceberg).  I now know that every minute of every day I take around sixteen breaths without having to think about it.  And from the time I was a three week old embryo, cells in what would become my heart first beat and, all being well, will continue to do so, without tiring, another two and a half thousand million times.  Inside my bones, 150 million red blood cells die - and are reborn - every minute, my skin replaces itself entirely every three months, and every ten years I get a brand new skeleton.  I also learned that I could derive sufficient energy needs to survive from a diet consisting entirely of pickled onion Monster Munch.

Medicine is awesome, yes. But the human body is way, way more awesome.  Which is good news for me: beneath my plaster cast my leg bones are slowly growing themselves back together with no outside assistance whatsoever.  In fact, within a few years there will be no evidence of me ever having broken anything at all and Lara will be none the wiser as to my heroic sacrifice.  Although, of course, I’ll still bring it up in my speech at her wedding. 

The Coffee Ponce.

Coffee in the shadow of the cathedral. Quito, Ecuador. 

And now for something completely trivial: coffee.   In my pre-coffee days I would look on whilst friends ordered a “double shot extra hot wet latte” or some such – allowing myself a small sense of satisfaction, safe in the knowledge that I would never succumb to being a Coffee Ponce.    But coffee snobbery is now a recognised social phenomenon and almost everyone I know has an opinion on it. When Anita and I travelled around the world we sampled a huge amount – and variety - of the stuff. Central America, Australia, New Zealand, the USA: we could always, without difficulty, find someone who would swear that their coffee was the best.  So, here are my completely unscientific observations on global coffee trends.  I will undoubtedly cause great offence to some of my friends (ok, specifically to my Australian friend Justine) with what I am about to write. But these are my opinions, and because they are my opinions, they cannot be wrong. Right?

Central America

Central America can be dealt with in short order. The coffee is universally terrible.  I know, I was surprised too. They grow coffee here, so they really should know what they are doing. I have to say I found it to be thick, sludgy, strong, bitter, and generally unpalatable without huge quantities of sugar.  Of course, it could just be that I always happened to drink it whilst consuming the ubiquitous Central American breakfast of eggs, cheese, tomatoes and re-fried beans.  That meal haunts me still: we ate it for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner. Every day.  It is, I think, impossible to remain enthusiastic about eggs, cheese, tomatoes and refried beans after five days on the trot. Unless you are Anita. She just lapped it up, every time.

Australia

There are many, many, many Australians who are convinced that Australia is the home of coffee.  I can exclusively reveal, however, that if Australia is the home of anything coffee-related, it is the home of unsatisfactory ill-defined milky coffee.  Almost every one-horse town between Perth and Sydney has one or more coffee shops, none of which seem able to differentiate between a Latte and a Cappucino. This was, as Anita will confirm, a source of disproportionate - and irrational – annoyance for me.  Only when I reached Sydney was I able to enjoy something close to what I think a cappuccino should be.  (In fact there were two places – somewhere in Bondi, and some other place that Jon took me to in town – ask him, he’ll tell you what its called).  Australians are nothing if not resourceful, however, as I realised when we reached Melbourne.  Clearly fed up with irate Englishmen deriding their cappuccinos for being insufficiently foamy and too latte-like, the Aussies have taken to serving their in-between-milky-froth-pap-coffee-drink under a new (and totally made up) name. Behold: the Flat White.

New Zealand

Actually, forget everything I just said about Australia being the home of milky coffee. I love New Zealand, but this is a country where they ask you whether you want your latte in a bowl, for goodness’ sake.  Enough said.

The USA

Oh. My. Gosh. The USA, land of the free, land of Starbucks, land of the vente-double-syrup-shot-caramel-frapuccino with extra cream. Where to begin?  First, I should make it clear that there is a huge amount of coffee on offer throughout the USA, much of it of the free-refill-hotplate-warmed-filter-coffee-in-hometown-diner variety.  A quintessential American experience, ad certainly not to be missed. Two specific coffee experiences stick in my mind, however. First, leaving Monument Valley, on the border of Arizona and Utah, for a long drive north to Moab, we stopped for coffee at a roadside petrol station.  We had spent the night sleeping out in the open in the back of our pickup truck, and had risen at 4am to photograph the sunrise.  Now it was 7am, we had several hundred kilometres to drive, and I was already struggling to keep my eyes open.  I filled the tank whilst Anita nipped inside, ermerging minutes later with two huge cups of coffee. “I thought I’d better go for the strong stuff, just in case” she said.  Crikey Moses.  I don’t remember much of the next three hours, other than gripping the steering wheel tightly, and feeling like my eyeballs had gone outside of my head and were looking down at my hands from a funny angle. I also recall talking non-stop to Anita in a very animated fashion about the decline of standards in British University education, for which I now wish to apologise  I think I had my foot to the floor all the way. It’s a good job our truck wouldn’t go above 60mph.

My favourite USA coffee encounter by far, however, took place in a Starbucks on the outskirts of Las Vegas.  The lady in front of me in the queue asked for a “triple shot vente macchiato”.  Now call me old fashioned, but I thought a macchiato was a small shot of espresso with a smidgen of foam on top.  A 32 oz triple shot macchiato? Sacrilege! I could not let it pass.  “Excuse me” I asked, “did I understand that correctly – if you are having a macchiato, how can you have 32 oz and three shots?”. “Well,” the lady replied slowly, “I used to have five shots, but then my son stopped working at Starbucks and I no longer get freebies, so now I can only afford three.”  There was really nothing more to be said.

A final thought

I should say in conclusion that my days of ordering tea from coffee shops are long since over.  How could I have been such a philistine? Nowadays my tipple of choice is a small cappuccino, nice and foamy, half a sugar. The coffee of champions, I like to think.  And the best country? Without a doubt it has to be Italy.  Just as long as it is served in a smallish cup, not too much chocolate on top, and the sugar is stirred into the espresso before the milk is added, to maintain the integrity of the foam.  And only in the morning. Any later and it has to be a single espresso machiatto (no milk after eleven a.m. you see). 


And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I can confirm that my transformation into full-on Coffee Ponce is complete.

Progress

Progress, albeit at a glacial pace. Perrito Moreno Glacier, Argentina.

Nine weeks on, and Lara is making great progress. She has started smiling (sporadically), and I think she even cries a bit less than she used to (or maybe I am just getting better at ignoring it). She is even allowed occasionally to wear real clothes rather than the ubiquitous babygro – today flowery trousers and top, and a cardigan knitted by Granny Eddy (all absolutely massive on her still-tiny frame).  The time spent between sleeping, crying and feeding – what we optimistically refer to as “playtime” - is increasing. And all this without the influence of Gina “Do What I tell You” Ford.

Three weeks on, and I too am making progress. The pain in my lower leg is less, or at least less constant. My eyes no longer water when I first stand up in the morning and the swelling in my lower leg has gone down considerably.  My cast no longer feels unbearably tight - in fact, it actually feels loose at times, a result of the muscle wastage in my left leg.  (I didn’t really have much there in the first place - in my university rowing club I was often – and, I felt, unfairly – referred to as ‘chicken legs’ - so it is a slight concern to realise that whatever little muscles I did have are slowly but surely disappearing). Hobbling up and down the stairs is getting easier – and quicker – and I am religiously doing my leg-raising exercises, three sets of ten, four times a day.  At my last hospital appointment I could even see from the x-rays that my Tibia bone is has started to re-grow across the break – quite a remarkable thing to see.  They tell me that in another three weeks the full leg cast will be replaced with a shorter one and in anticipation of that stage in the healing process I have been given a large white knee-length condom, which should allow me to get in the shower or even – fingers crossed – the bath (thanks to Bob Boot for that one).

Some things haven’t changed. I still spend most of the day sitting on the sofa with my leg on a pile of cushions. I am still watching The Wire (although am now up to series 3 – progress in itself I suppose). And I am still munching the painkillers (I foolishly tried to wean myself off them, only to realise just how effective at killing pain they really are).  I still spend quite a lot of my time feeling bored, frustrated and irritated by my plight. But on the whole, things are looking up and there is definitely an end in sight.  Perhaps not the end of the end, perhaps not even the beginning of the end, but this at least may be the end of the beginning.  Progress of sorts.

Whatever you want

Thinking about her career choices?

When I was in high school, my dad gave me some career advice. He probably doesn’t recall it now, but it was so simple I have remembered it ever since.“If you work hard now then you can do anything you want.”  I remember being subsequently disappointed when I learned, at the age of thirteen, that I needed glasses. I had read somewhere that to be an RAF fighter pilot you needed 20:20 vision, an avenue that was now closed to me. I don't think I particularly wanted to be a fighter pilot, but I felt a huge sense of injustice all the same – my dad’s wisdom had been undermined by my rubbish eyesight, and no amount of hard work was going to make a difference.

There were a few things I vaguely wanted to be when I grew up. When I was young enough to still be playing with Lego my mum was convinced I would be a civil engineer, and for a while, that sounded quite exciting. Then, in the early years of my skiing career, I wanted to be a Ski instructor.  I went off the idea when I realised that most of the glamorous ski instructors we encountered in Italy in the early 1980s scratched out a living as shepherds in the summer. I definitely didn’t want to be a shepherd. I do know that by the time I got to sixth form college I wanted to be a lawyer, although I don’t know when I first decided this, and I still don’t know why.  But I programmed myself for success from that point on – from A-levels, to a law degree, to a training contract with a top firm, through ten years of hard work and to the cusp of partnership.

But it has only now, almost two decades later, become clear to me the question “what do I want to do” needn’t be confined only to consideration of my employment options. In fact, there are many things I want to be in life – a photographer, a climber, a writer, a mountaineer, an endurance athlete - none of which I believe I will ever be able to pursue as a career, but all of which I want to have a good go at.  And those are just the selfish me-centric things – I want to do all these things and still be the best husband and father I can.  Being a lawyer is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn’t come close to making it onto the list of things I want out of life.  Without a doubt my job has put me in a position where I can live in a beautiful home with the two girls I love more than anything in the world, and have enough financial security to pursue my passions.  The only thing is hasn’t brought me is time. 

It has been said that at each end of the socio-economic spectrum there is a leisure class: one cash-rich but time-poor, and the other time-rich but cash-poor.  I have naturally strived towards the former, but now perhaps its time to move the other way.   It is reassuring to know that my dad was right: I have worked hard, and now I can be whatever I want to be. I just need to make the time. I know this will involve taking some risks and making some quite scary decisions.  But as Helen Keller said, life is a daring adventure, or nothing.

As I write this Lara is sleeping beside me in her cot.  I wonder what she will be when she grows up.  I also wonder the extent to which what she is - and what she does - in life will be defined by her chosen line of work.  I hope she finds the right balance in her own way. But whatever the case, I can’t wait to pass on to her my dad’s words of wisdom.