I was standing outside a supermarket this week, about to enter, when a pleasant looking white haired lady came up to me and asked, “Are you going into the supermarket?” Instantly, I was on my guard, my sceptical radar activated. Was she going to ask me for money? What did she want from me?
Cagily, I confirmed that I was about to enter the shop, a response she both accepted and dismissed with her next question. “Would you mind looking after my dog?”, she asked. Looking down, I saw she was trailing a diminutive scruffy something-or-other wearing a fetching blue and white checked doggie coat against the cold.
I must have looked nonplussed because she continued, “They won’t let me take her into the shop you see and I can’t tie her up outside because someone will steal her”. “I only need some bread”, she added, as a mitigating afterthought.
As she was speaking, another dog owner tied his equally small pug to the railing and drifted past us into the shop but this reckless behaviour didn’t deflect her from her course. “Would you mind?” she said, in a tone that implied I had already agreed. “That’s sweet of you; you be good, Poppy”. And off she went, leaving me with a dog lead in one hand and my right leg strategically placed between Poppy and the abandoned pug who looked like he had some ideas of opening a liaison with my new charge while he waited for his own release.
What makes us trust people? What makes us cynical about people’s motives? The lady, who never did introduce herself, felt that a total stranger, who had just got out of a nearby car and who had every opportunity to stash the beloved Poppy into that car and scarper, was a better bet than leaving her dog tied up without a designated guardian. She trusted me, she deputised me and I immediately took on the role of custodian of Poppy’s virtue against the gleaming eye and salaciously upturned chops of the licentious pug (if ever I saw one).
Even as I waited dutifully for her return, I was calculating if there was a back exit to the supermarket, trying to comb my memory for some similar dog-guarding scam that I had read about which had ruined innocent passers-by, condemning them to penury and ridicule in the Daily Star. But before I could alarm myself further, she returned, clutching a white baguette which smelled so good I had to go and buy one myself. She immediately greeted the pug by name who, it turned out, was a regular and platonic playmate of Poppy’s. How oddly they must have both regarded my prophylactic leg.
Sometimes things are less complicated than we make them.
I think it was Snoopy who first introduced me to the idea that you can’t have too many friends. I have a sepia childhood memory of the cheerful mutt sitting on top of his dog house surrounded by a whole flock of Woodstocks (when I had always thought there was only one).
And it was Truman Capote who contradicted this notion for me many years later when I read that, “friendship is a pretty full time occupation…you can’t have too many friends because then you’re just not really friends”.
Do you remember, back in school, just how important having friends was to you? Friendship had a hierarchy then: ‘best’ friend was a prize acclamation that the meek begged for and the dominant dispensed and withdrew on a whim. Not being in some sort of affiliative group made you into a complete pariah, not only in the eyes of others but actually in your own estimation. What’s wrong with me/him, he has no friends? There was affirming belonging and there was sharp pain in those rehearsals for adulthood. But it really mattered.
A great privilege of leading an international life is the number of genuinely deep and rich friendships that accumulate with each migration. I don’t think I would have believed it if I had been told when I left my home country for Asia, just how many amazing friendships I would be blessed with in the years that followed. Thank heavens for whatsapp and the continued use of my thumbs.
These connections, as sure as noodles are noodles, are true friendships.
Snoopy was right all along.
A village of friends
On launching my new and rebranded company Solutions@, I thought how nice it would be to gather together some of those friends who work as consultants and to share my trusted friendships with others. And so the idea for Friends with Solutions was born. I’m so happy to say that, to date, six friends have taken up my invitation to share a corner of the new website. There is nothing financial about our arrangement, they just live in my friendship village and do similar work to me.
It’s an eclectic group of talented people who are my neighbours in this village, let me introduce them. Over there in the canoe you can see Lizzie Bray. Lizzie and I have hunkered down in more trenches than I care to recall and I wouldn’t choose to be facing incoming fire with anyone else. Lizzie is a leader of immense experience who devoted a significant part of her career to UWCSEA in Singapore, where we stood shoulder to shoulder together as Heads of Campus. A person with the truest of moral compasses who cares deeply about leadership, wellbeing, service and conceptual learning, I would recommend Lizzie to any school leader who needs support or advice. For a Maths teacher she’s a pretty great neighbour and she always has chocolate.
I’m not sure if you would catch Derek Peaple in a canoe but I’ve known him for such a long time that I can remember when he was an elite middle distance runner. Derek turned his love of sport into a beacon of leadership at Park House School in Newbury. He is a broadcaster, speaker and policy adviser and is now thriving with The Leading Peaple Company. I can’t think that there is a greater expert on UK education in general and leadership through sport in particular. Derek and I trained together as history teachers, and I think I still have some of his beautifully created lesson resources that I ‘borrowed’ from him. No one made better resources, so I always regarded borrowing as a compliment…
Over in that far corner of the village square, you might pick out Joan Liu but you’ll have to be sharp because she never stays still in one place for very long. Joan is an internationally known expert in College admissions. As with my other Friends with Solutions, Joan cares deeply about young people whose life chances are reduced by their location or circumstances. She gave up a successful role at UWCSEA to create her not-for-profit start-up, Second Chance. Through this entity she’s adding to the scores of young students who have already been given scholarship opportunities at top universities. A brilliant mentor for many counsellors and students, you won’t find a more mission driven person than Joan.
I learned a great deal of what I know about standards and accreditation from Carole Denny. Carole was a school leader who took a key role with the Council for International Schools (CIS) as part of their standards and accreditation team. It has been my great privilege to take part in a number of accreditation visits with Carole and I have always been impressed by the forensic depths of her knowledge about schools, in particular her detailed understanding about governance and the role of the school governing body. If anyone could make a serious accreditation process both professional and fun at the same time it was Carole – I can think of no one better placed to give professional standards advice in an international context. Find her at Quality Schools Independent Consultancy.
If our village square had an apple tree then orchard owner Paul Jacobs would be the man to tend it. I met Paul during my second Headship in North Somerset at a time when he had just stepped out of school leadership into an advisory role leading the secondary schools. To coordinate and inspire such a range of challenging alpha school leaders took integrity and courage and there was not a leader in our group who had a negative observation. A former Director of Education, Osted Inspector and school improvement lead, there isn’t much that Paul doesn’t know about UK education. PJ Leaders at Your Service – is aptly named, he is the definition of the servant leader; an academic and an expert. And he knows his apples…
The last friend in this village is someone who is a bit more than a friend to me but who is an impressive and tenacious entrepreneur. Wendy Tang runs a Youtube Channel Bake with Bakabee and is a blogger and social media influencer. She ran a highly successful home based business in Singapore having re-invented herself from her previous life as a teacher and band leader in Hong Kong. Wendy is a self taught expert on film-making, website design (she made the Solutions@ website and her own site bakabee.com), social media marketing and income generation. She has created video training resources for Solutions@ and Takumi X (our previous entity). With so many strings to her bow (she’s also a cellist), I’m not sure exactly how to categorise Wendy but I’m very glad that she lives in my village.
“It seems they had always been and would always be friends. Time could change much, but not that.” (Winnie the Pooh)
