I’m finding these days that people from our industry are increasingly asking me to mention their products on this website, and to be honest it’s getting on my nerves.
My friend Jon Twigge, from RPS, is the latest person to try it on with me. He sent me the following email:
Good morning,
Do you think u could make a renegade story out of this?
We are starting a drawing service for people who want single conservatory drawings done – maybe be they don’t want to commit to buying straight away, scared of computers or perhaps too hard up to shell out for the software.
What do you think?
Thanks,
jon
Well this is what Jon was wanting me to comment on:
Given how tough the commercial climate is at present, we’ve been thinking of ways to help you.
We are frequently asked to produce drawings for customers, which is something we didn’t do (until now!).
So, to help you win more business, we’ve created the RoofWright Drawing Service.
Not Yet a RoofWright User?
Don’t worry – if you don’t already use RoofWright, then try this – it’s inexpensive and will give you a taste of the quality of drawings from the World’s Favorite Conservatory Software.
Well, Jon, I don’t think my readers like being sold to in this way. I appreciate it might be an exciting new development at your company, but it doesn’t mean you can take advantage of our friendship and my good nature.
There’s been a good uptake to the new GlassTalk website (47 members as I write), but a few people have expressed concerns about how to sign up and get going.
So, I’ve taken a few screenshots which will hopefully help:
Fill in the Register Boxes as below. It’s better if you put your real name down, rather than just your first name or a pseudonym (is that how you spell it?) The username and password are required for when you sign in each time:
3. Complete Registration
You should then get an activation email where you need to click a link to complete your registration. Saying that, I had to look for mine in my junk (spam) folder, so watch out for that.
You should then be able to go back to the GlassTalk website and sign in using your username and password. It’s also worth clicking on the ‘remember me’ button to make it easier when you return to the website.
4. Edit Your Profile
There’s boxes you need to fill in about who you are, and how people can contact you. You can choose to share that information with everyone, or just those you choose to be friends with. You can also add your website address.
And, it really is best if you upload a picture of yourself (or Brad Pitt) if you’re not much to look at.
5. Say Something – Anything!
Then you need to go and post a comment, and you can pretty much say what you want (as long as its not libelous and gets us and you into trouble). Jokes, witty thoughts, what you’re having for breakfast, how business is going, links to something of interest.
By the way, you can either view the post made by everyone (show all posts), or just those your friends have made:
6. Make Friends
You can choose who you make friends with and then send them private messages if you wish. One way to add a friend is using the drop down menu from their avatar like on this image:
Or you can go to the Show All Member section and see the list of those who’ve joined.
Right, that should get you started. You should be able to sort the rest of it yourself.
By the way, we may have various teething problems, and we will be updating and improving as we go so your feedback is much appreciated.
When I suggested in a previous post that ‘Humans are responsible for Global Warming’ I wasn’t expecting the degree of debate the issue of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) would generate on my site.
The main debate involves ‘canbanjo’ an architect who stumbled upon my site while searching for information about the Part L requirements for small extensions, and John O’Sullivan, an experienced climate sceptic who believes global warming is history’s biggest scam.
British crime writer and legal advocate, John O’Sullivan was born in 1961 in Berkshire, England, the son of immigrant Irish parents. An avid scholar, John taught and lectured for twenty years at various schools and colleges in the east of England. He litigated, with his second wife, a former New York correction officer, in one of America’s longest and most extraordinary sexual harassment cases. He has gleaned a wealth of knowledge and experience in filing court petitions, motions, mandamus and appeals in the New York State Division of Human Rights, mandamus petitions in the New York State Supreme Court, as well as US federal court. John has also prepared analysis and arguments used in UK criminal court that concerned police officer malfeasance. He has written two ‘Cupboard 55′ novels including ‘Summit Shock’ based on his wife’s epic story. Among the author’s other published credits are; ‘The Jimston Journal’, ‘Invisible Ink,’ ‘The Secret Attic,’ ‘Big Ugly Review and’ ‘The Zip Book.’ John is a prolific writer with over 100 publishing credits relating to his analysis of the ‘Climategate’ data fraud scandal involving criminal conduct by an elite clique of climate scientists.
I find it very difficult to take John’s comments seriously, and if you read some of the nonsense on the ClimateGate.com website of which he is a contributor it is very worrying. John contributes to many blogs on climate change – he must have ‘Google Alerts’ (or similar) set for terms like ‘global warming’ which allows him to easily identify relevant content where he can copy and paste from a library of tosh (whilst building links and traffic to the ClimateGate.com website at the same time).
Basically, John believes he’s in a battle against the ‘religion of settled science’. According the the ClimateGate website:
The goal of Climategate.com is to provide a daily dose of information regarding the world’s greatest scam, climategate, and other information and news to help you in your battle against the Religion of Settled Science to dispute their views on Anthropogenic Global Warming, and in addition, to battle the one-world socialist agenda, which is the movement’s leaders’ real goal.
So, Climategate.com publishes material that they hope others will spread across the internet, creating as much confusion as possible so that the normal man or woman in the street is unsure about the real science. I’ve never been one for conspiracy theories, and to suggest that 97.5% of the world’s climate scientists are conspiring to create a one-world socialist government seems so far fetched it sounds laughable.
An example of the desperate measures the ClimateGate.com team undertakes is when they supported Nick Griffin from the BNP stating he ‘tells it like it is’. They later decided to pull the article when even their normally supportive followers pointed out they’d gone a bit too far this time.
John O’ Sullivan states that he is pleased that the BNP have chosen to support the idea that AGW is a hoax. You can see his comment here.
Here’s Mr Griffin in full flow:
Well, I don’t think it was John O’ Sullivan’s intention, but the more I’ve looked at what he and his colleagues have to say, the less respect I have for their arguments.
The last few posts I’ve added to the site seem to have ruffled a few feathers at times, and as I’m chilled out and half way through a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon I thought I’d write a few thoughts which are unlikely to cause any controversy whatsoever.
[I guess at this point I've probably lost half of my readers].
6203 steps
This morning I was surprised to receive a gift from the marketing department at Profile 22. I’m not sure what they’re trying to tell me, but they have supplied me with a little device that clips on my belt and counts how many steps I take. Since around 10am this morning I have walked a massive 6203 steps.
Are you impressed? Well, I was really surprised and quite pleased with myself, but then I googled ‘average steps per day’ and found that the guidelines state I should be walking 10,000 steps per day! As I’m now sat on the couch with a glass of red wine, it’s unlikely I’m going to hit my target. (I have to confess also that I have actually fiddled the figures by finishing work early and taking the dogs for a long walk).
PIGS
No, don’t worry my wife has not gone out and bought some pigs to keep our donkeys company. No, I’m talking about the next Publicity in Glazing Society meeting next Thursday in London. The details are on the Glazine at this link.
Any excuse to socialise with industry professionals, I’ve booked train tickets and the hotel and am attending with our kid.
According to the press release:
Everyone who wants to socialise, network and yes, even talk business, is welcome to join editors, advertising, marketing, PR, event organisers and suppliers from the industry on Thursday 4 March.
If you’re going – I’ll see you there!
Huddersfield Town v Leeds United
I’m not sure if you’re aware but I’m a big fan of West Yorkshire’s best football team – Huddersfield Town. On Saturday we host local rivals Leeds United. It’s all set up to be a great game for the following reasons:
Huddersfield are unbeaten in the last 10 games
Huddersfield are the only team unbeaten at home this season
Huddersfield have won their last three games all away from home!
Leeds are in really poor form, although they won on Tuesday night
Of the last 4 times the two teams have played Town have won three and drawn one
With all this in mind, Leeds are bound to win!!! Conservatory Outlet and West Yorkshire Windows share a hospitality box at the Galpharm Stadium and we’ve got 5 town fans and 5 Leeds fans attending on Saturday. A few beers, friendly banter and hopefully a good game. I can’t wait!
Climate Change
I’ve enjoyed the debate on this website about whether climate change is human induced. I accept I need to do a lot more reading up, but at this stage having listened to all the arguments I’m becoming more and more convinced that global warming is happening.
But, if it isn’t then I think the following picture highlights why we should take action anyway:
I started my business career in February 1994, and over those 16 years I’ve made thousands of poor business decisions.
I’ve decided to share with you the four biggest cock ups I’ve made over that period of time and how I have learnt from them.
Windows ‘R’ Us
When my brother and I first decided to set up in business, one of the key decisions you need to make is what you’re going to call your new company. The decision to start up in business with Andrew was a very quick decision accelerated by the fact that we had both lost our jobs when the company we worked for ceased trading. At the time we had been working for our uncle as uPVC window fabricators, and despite his failure in business we did look up to him and got his advice on a company name.
He suggested ‘Windows ‘R’ Us’ would be an ideal name, as Tiles ‘R’ Us was very successful, and the name sounded quite catchy. It suggested that we were in the window business. Perfect!
So, we set up with this name in the early days. I know what you’re thinking – it’s a really bad name – but when you’re young and inexperienced you don’t always make the best decisions. It soon became clear to us that customers would never take our company seriously with such a name.
We were destined to be battling away at the bottom end of the market, as people wanting a quality job doing at a higher price were more likely to go with a more sensible established operation, than one named after a chain of toy shops.
So after a year or so, we decided to change the company name. We knew it would be a gamble, and competitors would jump on this claiming we’d been bust and set up again. However, we were still a small company (we hadn’t even gone ltd) and felt that the name West Yorkshire Windows sounded more like an established installer. We put new signs up over our showroom, told the bank and our suppliers of the change, printed new letterheads and brochures, and got stuck in.
Within a few months the old name had been forgotten and the new name was helping us generate far better types of customer. People assumed we were a far bigger company than we actually were.
It sounds ridiculous now that we should have chosen such a name, and I often look at other companies in our industry and see other business owners have made similar bad decisions. I’m just pleased we took the decision to change our name at a very early stage.
Chronicle Magazine
I always have been a listener to Radio Five Live, as I enjoy the mix of phone ins, news, sports coverage and general chat. Around 12 years ago I was listening to a feature about a small company in the USA who had developed a newspaper called ‘Old News’. Basically, the publisher was producing newspapers today but with news items from the past. And, they were doing very well!
I thought about this, and thought I would quite enjoy developing a UK version. So, I spoke with Andrew and we agreed that I would develop this business while he continued to run West Yorkshire Windows. I was so excited at the time about doing something far more interesting than selling double glazing. I fancied myself as an editor and publisher, more than a double glazing salesman.
I was still getting involved with the day to day activities at West Yorkshire Windows, but for around a year the majority of my time was diverted to researching the news of the past and rewriting it for a modern day reader. We went to various distributors and magazine retailers, and managed to get the magazine on the shelves in WH Smiths, Menzies and Sainsbury’s. The head buyer at WH Smiths was so impressed he actually suggested we’d struck gold with this idea.
We produced a magazine format – 64 pages in colour – and got 30,000 printed and delivered to our distributor who in turn arranged the magazines to be put on the shelves of retailers throughout the UK. We set the price at a very affordable £1.99, but the catch with this business is they’re sold on a sale or return basis. In other words, if Sainsbury’s sell a copy you’ll get paid at say £1 (as they need to make a profit also) and if they don’t sell it they throw it away.
In the first month we sold around 2,500 copies. The second month’s magazine had already been printed by the time we had an idea of how poorly they’d sold. The third month was fully designed and I was working on month 4.
So, for the second month another 30,000 copies were distributed, and sales improved to 3,500. However, our break-even point was more like 12,000 copies. We didn’t have the finance in place to see it through. In fact we lost around £50,000 on the venture and I had wasted pretty much a year of my life.
Or was it a waste? I learnt that if you’re going to decide to set up a business venture in an industry where you have no knowledge, you need to investigate the marketplace in more detail, and have a far better business plan. Having a hunch that your idea is brilliant is not enough.
In fact, I’m now very reluctant to look at business opportunities in any area outside of the industry I am in (my comfort zone). I do think that the idea was good, and the fact that 3500 paid two quid for a copy of the second issue suggests a market could be developed. But it needs someone with far more understanding of the publishing business to develop it – not a double glazing guy!
Conservatories Direct
A year or two after the failure of the magazine venture (around 1999), Andrew and I decided to try a new idea out which was more related to the double glazing industry yet still very different to our normal day to day business activities.
We created a company called ‘Conservatories Direct Ltd’. Despite the name, this business never actually sold a conservatory. Instead, we created a lead generation company with the idea of selling those leads to approved installers.
We advertised in glossy magazines, such as House Beautiful and Homes and Gardens magazine initially. The idea for the business had first come from adverts we had placed previously in such magazines for the DIY conservatories we’d been retailing. We’d noticed that we were getting loads of enquiries but not turning many into sales as most people really were either just mildly interested or more likely to opt for an installed service.
We had a business development manager who then travelled the country finding installers happy to buy the leads we generated.
In reality, we found that the leads from these magazines were actually pretty poor quality on the whole, with people mainly interested in viewing brochures rather than getting a quote. As a result, it proved very difficult convincing installers to pay for the leads we’d supplied, and the numbers very soon didn’t add up. After about a year, we saw no option to put the business into administration. In the meantime, West Yorkshire Windows had continued to tick along paying us a living, even though we weren’t concentrating on developing that business fully.
I did learn a lot from this venture, though. I gained an understanding of the UK marketplace for conservatories, rather than just a Yorkshire market place. I also got to meet other business owners in the conservatory and double glazing industry which helped my gain a broader knowledge, and helped shape my current thinking with Conservatory Outlet.
I also met Barry Dunlop who had just set up eBuilders and was pioneering lead generation for our industry in the UK. I saw the potential opportunity there, but I failed to understand it in the same way as Barry, which is a regret. I now feel I’m one of the most internet-aware people in our industry, but I should have put more effort into it 10 years ago.
Conservatory Outlet Glass
Around four years ago Andrew and I explored the idea of manufacturing sealed units as well as uPVC frames. In theory, it seems like common sense to make the glass if you’re already making the frame – a complete window.
However, at the time I was very nervous about this idea as people we talked to advised us that it’s a totally different concept making sealed units, and most other uPVC fabricators who had tried this had failed.
Andrew was very keen to develop this business opportunity so I reluctantly agreed to this, on the basis that we needed an experienced person to manage this business. I was keen that we didn’t just make glass in the existing frame factory, and also I was keen that we set up a different business entirely, in case it didn’t work out.
Without going into all the detail, we found running three businesses hard work, and the glass company began putting pressure on the other two successful businesses. I feel we jumped into bed with the wrong partner, someone without the skills required to run the business without our continued assistance.
I found it to be a very tough business with low margins, too much wastage and without a toughening plant it was difficult to provide a good enough service to installers. Basically, making frames and making units are totally different animals, and should be run as such. We ran the business for over two years and the business lost money virtually every month, so we decided to close the business down. It was a tough decision and I felt for the staff who lost their jobs, but I couldn’t see how we could ever make it work. Out of interest, we did film the factory at the time, and the video is still on Youtube at:
I’ve learnt that we are good at making frames – in fact, we’re very good at making frames – and we should stick to what we’re good at.
So, why am I telling you all this?
Well, I’m not ashamed or embarrassed about any of the bad decisions I have taken in my business career. The four examples above are just the major clangers, but I’ve made all sorts of smaller mistakes, such as hiring the wrong staff in the past, dealing with the wrong type of customers, buying from the wrong type of supplier.
And, I continue to make mistakes every day. In the future I will make mistakes, although I hope to limit the scale of future cock ups.
It is by making such mistakes I can dust myself down and learn from them. I’ve never been frightened to try new ventures, and I will no doubt try new ventures in the future. But, having learnt lessons from past mistakes, I will think through the relative strengths and weaknesses of any idea in more detail, rather than going with a hunch.
I now own a very successful window manufacturing company which is stable and growing. I have a great team of staff, good suppliers and some wonderful customers. The outlook has never looked so healthy as it does right now.
I feel that the mistakes I have made have made me a better business man and I’ve never been in such a strong position to exploit the business opportunities this industry has to offer.
(By the way, posting this may have been another mistake).
Slightly off topic, but I felt I needed to share the following video with you.
About a week ago, the charity Heal was contacted out of the blue by a guy called Mario Sahe-Lacheante who offered his help in a most unusual and creative way.
Having seen the extreme poverty that children are faced with in India, he felt he needed to do something to help. So, he decided to film and edit a video concept, and then afterwards looked for a charity he could donate the video to.
Luckily, he contacted Heal, and here is the video:
I’m sure you agree that the message is very powerful, so please feel free to share the video with your friends and family.
I’ve been so chilled out today. Nothing seems to be getting me wound up at all, even my wife seems to be making sense.
Unfortunately, others around me seem to be losing their heads. I’m particularly referring to some of the comments on this blog recently. One of the problems with the internet is that people often rant at each other in ways they wouldn’t do if they were face to face. I had to disable comments on our YouTube videos as many of the comments were completely out of order. Generally, on this website, people are civilised, although I do delete a number of comments each month which are not suitable.
It’s great that people are passionate, and the debate between various contributors is mostly better than any content I write. But, I would prefer people to show a little more restraint in some instances.
Fair Trade Hardware
A few weeks ago I wrote about my concerns that people in the Far East were being exploited while manufacturing hardware products to fit to UK windows and doors. I’ll be honest, I haven’t made any progress with my thinking, albeit I do have a meeting with my main hardware supplier to discuss in the near future.
I did put a comment on here that I would welcome the opportunity to visit any UK hardware supplier’s factory in China to see the conditions for myself. As yet, I haven’t had any offers
Global Warming / Climate Change
I’m still trying to get my head around whether human induced climate change is actually happening. There’s been some very informed comments on the original post I wrote, and many thanks to those who have voted. At the moment, it looks like people are equally as confused as myself. If you haven’t voted yet, you can do so at the right hand side.
Why I don’t watch TV any more
Many thanks to John Keleher at Crittall Windows for mentioning this post on Twitter, which very much sums up why I continue adding content to this website:
I often get asked why I bother, and sometimes it’s difficult to explain why I feel the need to keep writing all this stuff. Well, it’s difficult to fully quantify, and I have questioned many times why I bother, but I feel the above post pretty much sums up why I prefer blogging to watching TV.
GlassTalk
I haven’t mentioned GlassTalk for a while, mainly because the dust has been settling from the last event. Tomorrow we’re finishing early and travelling down to Warwickshire to view a rather posh hotel. Nothing is fixed yet, but it is more than likely going to happen on May 27th, so if you’re thinking of attending it would pay to leave this day free in your diary. More news to follow.
While watching the Australian Open Final I thought I’d share with you details of our positive start to the year.
Obviously, the first week or two was pretty slow at the factory with the severe weather conditions and the naturally slow trading you would expect straight after Christmas, but things have picked up since. We’ve manufactured 2216 frames, which although well below our peaks through last year, was still 14% up on January 2009. The order book for February is also looking very strong.
I’m confident that 2009 will be a good year as enquiries have been flooding in, mainly due to website leads being up 46% compared to last January. Our dealers have been reporting strong sales over the last couple of weeks so I’m hoping the factory will be busy in February and March.
I’m also pleased with this website, which had good visitor figures for the month, despite the fact that I didn’t write as many posts compared to normal.
I’m still keen to receive guest posts, or suggestions of relevant content for RCG. Don’t be frightened to contact me.
Hopefully, everyone else reading this has had a similarly positive January, and I’m keen to hear what your thoughts are for the rest of the year. I would have expected far more casualties over this period than I have heard about. I have to conclude that the industry is far more resilient than before, and most of the companies in it are more efficient and ready to exploit more stable market conditions.
By the way, Murray is hanging on at 6-3, 5-3 down as I write. My money’s on Federer though!
The following write up from my friend Jon Twigge of RPS (Roofwright) was featured on his blog Right To Be, and pretty much sums up our recent Cycle India bike ride.
I recently took part in Cycle India 2010, a cycle ride through the Indian countryside in aid of HEAL, a small UK based charity that supports an Indian school and orphanage.
Cycle India 2010
The great news was that when we were done our group of thirty cyclists from the UK, US and India and our wonderful Indian support team had together raised over eighty thousand pounds for the charity.
My involvement began around eight months ago when a good friend and one of the organisers of the event, Matthew Glover, asked if I would be interested. I was. But, inactivity and a liking for the kind of food that adds large amounts of weight to the body over a number of years meant that interest alone might not be enough to get me through 190 miles of cycling over 4 days. After a few weeks of deliberation and some tentative, and very slow, outings on a bike I committed.
I want to share a few pictures that I hope tell a story of our adventures in India.
Cycle India Cyclists
This shot was set on a bridge in a very pleasant area. We had just flown down a particularly good downhill section and had stopped for refreshment. It was a great group of people and everyone really enjoyed themselves.
The HEAL School and Village
HEAL Children
Jumping to the end of the story but I just had to show a few of the children at the HEAL village – helping to provide an education and in some cases somewhere to live as well is what the whole adventure was all about. In total there are around eight hundred children who attend the school which is composed of a mixture of orphans who live in the HEAL village, local children from very poor, poverty trap, families and children from better off families who pay for their education.
It was not possible to capture the scene of several hundred Indian children welcoming us as they lined the entrance road for what seemed like hundreds of yards – every single one of them pleased to see us, cheering and smiling but the above photo gives a small flavour.
Anusha meets Jem, her sponsor
It was particularly poignant to see Anusha meeting Jem. HEAL allows people to sponsor one of the children at the village. It really is a one to one sponsorship and, from a western perspective, a ridiculously small amount of at £12.50 per month to ensure a child’s complete welfare is taken care of including year round accommodation, education, food and clothes.
Anusha was waiting for Jem when we arrived, her first chance to see him, and she spent as much as possible of the rest of the day with him. Looking at the photo I think that sponsoring a HEAL child really offers a chance for a special kind of relationship.
HEAL Village Accommodation
I took a lot of photo’s in the HEAL village and school but I really want to highlight the contrast between the basic accommodation and the smiles on the children’s faces. Happiness really does not come from wealth alone. Having said that, the village is clean, functional and well decorated with bright colours and the children’s art work, a lot more than the children from the poverty trap families have to return home to.
The Quarry
The Quarry
Just a ten minute walk from the school is a quarry. Some of the poverty trap children’s parents work there. For a hard days physical labour of breaking up and carrying rocks they can earn as little as £1.50 a day – barely enough to feed themselves. Without HEAL the children of these families would be in the quarry working.
One thing that many Indians seem to pride themselves on is their appearance. Over and over again I saw obviously poor people wearing bright and well presented clothes. How they manage to appear so clean and tidy considering the conditions that many of them live in quite amazing.
Kindergarten Quarry
When we arrived at the quarry this young girl was standing watching her mother carry rocks in a bowl on her head from where they had been smashed up to the small lorry. She clearly was not enjoying standing on her own in a dusty quarry. Fortunately for this young lady she lives close to the HEAL village and should soon be able to go to the school. The contrast between her face and the smiles in the village was stark. Many children from poor families in India will not be so fortunate.
The School Show
The School Puts on a Show
One of the highlights of our visit to the school was the just incredible show that we were presented with. Lots of lots of acts came on one after another including traditional Indian dance, rock and roll and even karate. The karate was completed with the instructor driving right over a number of his students with a motorbike no! Health and safety obviously takes a much more pragmatic view than it does here in England.
Rock and Roll from the younger children
It really was a privilege to see all of the children act and perform for us, some of them very clearly destined for Bollywood !
The Cycling
Cycle India was never going to be a flat out race. A very mixed bunch of people all with a desire to help the children contained a large mixture of cycling and fitness abilities. The majority of the cycling took place over four days with a warning that the first day might be quite hilly. I later learned that the Coorg region of India is renowned for its mountains and that one of the participants had been warned by a friend not to even attempt cycling in the area. Hmmm. This was the beginning of what turned out to be somewhat of a cultural difference between Indians and the members of the team from the UK and USA.
As it turned out the first days cycling turned out to be really hard work and seemed to go on forever. One of the highlights of the day was a stop at a beautiful holiday resort for lunch. We were met by a very professional young lady at the reception and we later discovered that the holiday chalets cost upwards of 12,000 rupees per night. One of a number of signs we saw of the vast difference between the better off and the poorest in India.
Children on the Way
A continual delight as we variously struggled along up hills and idled our way along the easier sections was a stream of local people coming out to greet us. The children were almost universally delighted to see us – waving and cheering and wanting to shake hands. Even the few children who were less enthusiastic i suspect were simply sufferering from shyness or shock at the sight of me in cycling shorts on a geared cycle (as I heard it described at one point).
Looking back at the picture above I can’t help but notice the, perhaps coincidental, change as the children get older going from the really cheeky chappy on the left to the almost regimental but very proud pose struck by his eldest companion. A sure sign I would have said of both natural child development combined with the remnants of the effects of a military British Empire running the country for many years.
Britishness
In a strange way I would also have to say that there were so many signs of Britishness everywhere you looked, especially in the towns, that I immediately felt a sense of feeling at home even during the first coach ride after we landed in India. From the greenness of the countryside, to traffic lights, driving on the left and many signs written in English as well as Indian. Later on in our visit we stopped at a western shopping mall for an hour and in there you might as well have been in the UK or USA – there was hardly a sign of the Indian language anywhere you looked, everything was in English.
There obviously remains a great respect in India for Britain, at least from the people I met. I am not well travelled but I suspect that there are other commonwealth countries where that feeling towards Britain holds as well despite the more unpleasant aspects of the empire.
Poverty
Along the way as well as the happiness and excitement of the children racing out to see us we definitely saw a lot of signs of poverty. Perhaps not the worst aspects of it that we might have seen had we had a chance, if that is the right word, to visit the poorer areas of a city but poverty none the less. It is hard to identify with such poverty so rather than say too much here are a collection of relevant photo’s:
An Indian Gentleman, dressed for the Indian winter (it was about 25 degrees !)
Digging New Drains, including the children
Living in Tents
Selling fruit at the side of a busy road.
A family outside their home
Children in the street
A Fancy jeep on a not so fancy road
The drunk…
… and the very drunk (see background
Culture Clash
As I cycled around the Indian countryside I started to feel gradually more comfortable saying hello to everyone as we passed. Most of the time we cyclists were fairly well spread out so a lot of the time we were in small groups or even alone at times.
As I must have said already, the children were incredible. They all ran out to say hello especially those in the villages. I was told that it was quite possible that some of them had never seen white people in the flesh before. Most of the children were really keen to have their photographs taken and the grins of delight were beautiful when they saw their pictures on my camera afterwards.
But, one thing struck me. Some of the adults almost ignored us. It seemed rather odd until I realised that presumably the reason for this was that they were of low caste in the Indian hierarchy of class. They were clearly not expecting us to take any notice of them at all. However, with a new found sense of freedom to wave and shout Hi to anyone in sight i preceded to greet them anyway. In most cases there was a pause as they were not sure that I really was talking and waving to them. But when they did realise you should have seen the huge smiles that erupted on their faces. What a privilege to have shared such a simple moment with them.
Even amongst the Indians with us, based in all of the UK, USA and India itself, there was a clear pecking order of authority. Several times I observed a request being past down the chain of command until it reached the appropriate level.
And, more than once there were clear moments of tension as different ideas of who should be allowed to join our social activities played out in front of our eyes.
Hope Worn Thin
More than anything, I want to share a simple observation that I made as travelled through the countryside. Almost all of the local children had bright shiny eyes so full of playfulness and hope. Many of the adults did not. It was clear that a lifetime of poverty and struggle gradually wore down that hope and left many resigned to yet more years of a difficult struggle to survive.
A difficult life in a poor Indian village
And yet, stood just a few yards away in the same village, I spotted a young girl clearly not yet tired of life. If there is anything we can do to allow this hope to stay with these young people throughout their lives it will surely be worth doing.
Hope and beauty amongst the poverty
Assorted Pictures
Not everyone in India is poor and they have a habit of painting their houses rather brightly
Traffic chaos Indian style
There were quite a lot of signs of progress in India including health and safety notices. The reality did not look quite so safe.
We visited an elephant training park. There were grumbles of animal cruelty at the sight of large chains and even a spike but they tend to be pretty thick skinned and it’s hard to tell if an elephant is happy
India was at times a curious mixture of poverty, wealth, hope, despair, animals and playfulness
Indian children
Prasad, founder of HEAL, falls off his bike just yards from a lunch break but bravely carries on despite what turns out later to be quite a serious injury.
Perhaps it is just me but I think think this picture captures a simple pride and purpose in his work that I suspect some people here in Britain have forgotten
I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, but finally got around to tidying up the Jobs page on this website.
I like to try help people find jobs or employers find staff, but it has been quite time consuming for me (and I’m no recruitment specialist). I’ve found that people don’t always tell me if they’ve got fixed up, so there’s been listings on their for over a year.
So, I’ve removed all the listings more than three months old and in the future will remove older listings if I don’t get any feedback. I’m happy to continue to list people and job vacancies, but would rather include contact details, rather than me getting involved distributing CVs etc. If anyone has had their listing removed and would like to reinstate then please email me.
I would also like to point people in the direction of the Jobs4Glazing website which is just getting off the ground. Currently they have about 15 listings and it is free for companies to post vacancies and for candidates to to upload their CVs.
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