Combo

A mash up of stuff I like.

[johnbromford]

Don't miss the boat

As a child Don’t miss the boat! was my favourite board game. They stopped making it a long time ago but playing our treasured family edition from 1966 again recently reminded me just why the concept of strategic foresight is so important. The aim of the game is to get five of your plastic counters into your little coloured boat. Every time someone gets one of their counters in, all the boats…

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[johnbromford]

Sleep

The older I get the more I seem to like music….just music. Jazz. Electronica. Ambient. No words.

I think I got into Max Richter because of my love of John Metcalfe and The Durutti Column. John played the beautiful viola part on the recording of Richter’s piece ‘On The Nature of Daylight’ and once I’d heard that I started to explore the rest of his work. (John’s part of the ensemble in this…

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[johnbromford]

If a tree falls near a Friends meeting house

If a tree falls near a Friends meeting house

People are always asking me what actually happens at a Friends Meeting.

Well mostly a small group of people sit on some rather uncomfortable benches in a very old barn like building….in silence.

Very occasionally someone stands up and shares a thought or a short reading and then sits down. That doesn’t happen every week mind. Most weeks there’s just silence.

Today was a bit different.

The sounds…

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[johnbromford]

It takes a village to raise an allotment

It takes a village to raise an allotment

It takes a village to raise a child is a proverb from the Igbo people in Nigeria which means that an entire community of people must interact with children for those children to experience and grow in a safe and healthy environment.

As I was picking some sprouts for our Christmas dinner I was struck how you could say something similar about our allotment.

A group of us have been looking to…

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[johnbromford]

For the many, not the few

For the many, not the few

As societies become more wealthy the prevalence of many social ills decline. That seems entirely as we’d expect. In poor countries there is more likely to be hunger, disease and infant mortality.

But when a society’s level of wealth reaches a certain point, the reduction in these social ills (or to put it another way, the improvement in quality of life) seems to stop. As wealth increases beyond a…

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[johnbromford]

The answer to our problems is each other

The answer to our problems is each other

Most Saturday morning’s I do parkrun. I generally get home for a shower at about the same time each week…which coincidentally means that I nearly always catch the Grill Graham item on the Graham Norton show on the radio as I’m having a shower.

Graham Norton is joined by his friend Maria McErlane and they read out cries for help sent in by listeners. The subjects vary wildly from the trivial to…

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[johnbromford]

You can borrow my stuff. Why real sharing starts next door.

You can borrow my stuff. Why real sharing starts next door.

I’ve used Airbnb a few times. Some have been great experiences, some I’d rather forget. But what I’ve never had happen is what Rachel Botsman of Fast Company describes as the Airbnb experience. She suggests that you get to “stay at a stranger’s house instead of a hotel when you’re travelling out of town”. Airbnb always use images like this one, to reinforce this idea of welcoming a stranger into…

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[johnbromford]

Why I don't want to be a volunteer

Why I don’t want to be a volunteer

I’m writing this during #VolunteersWeek and having just about filled the roster for this Saturday’s parkrun where I’ll be Run Director. That means there will be about 35 volunteers just like there were last week and the week before that and each of the other 168 weeks that Stratford parkrun has been going. Here’s a list of the volunteers from run number 169 last Saturday……

parkrun couldn’t take…

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[johnbromford]

Rubbish Friends

I’ve just got back from a brilliant 24 hours thinking about failure as a beginning and not the end, with the lovely Joe McCannon and Becky Margiotta. I was invited by a former colleague and dear friend who won’t mind me sharing this epic fail…from which we learnt so much.

A few years ago Bromford did a lot of work for local authorities funded through Supporting People contracts. After the SP…

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[johnbromford]

Then this happened...

Then this happened…

People are always asking me what actually goes on at a Friends’ meeting. They’ve heard that we just sit in silence but I don’t think they quite believe it. And it’s not strictly true. If someone feels moved to speak then they do. They quietly stand, say what they have to say, then sit down again.

We can go several weeks without anyone saying anything.

But then, like yesterday, there’s a creak of…

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[johnbromford]

Start right

The housing sector is full of people with good intentions.

People who get up every morning determined to help make things better for the people who live in their homes and neighbourhoods.

People who are always on the look out for ways they can help make someone’s life better.

People who are eager to tell others about the great services they can provide.

Maybe that’s the problem.

Perhaps we’re too…

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[johnbromford]

For a long time I have spent half an hour most Saturday mornings following a man called Neil round a park in Stratford. There is nothing sinister about it…Neil just runs a bit faster than me at parkrun. We’ve got to know each other through our chats before and after the run. Facebook suggested Neil as a friend and we connected on line too.

For a long time when I started running I always ran on my own. I thought of running very much as a solitary activity. Discovering parkrun and the friendships that I’ve made through running with others has changed all that.

When Neil accepted my friend request on Facebook I spotted a link to another activity that I’d always pursued in splendid isolation. Neil was part of a group called Rubbish Friends. I clicked on the link and started to get really excited. Rubbish Friends was a very loose collection of friends and neighbours in Stratford who got together once a month for a couple of hours of litter picking.

My Mum has always picked up litter when she’s out for a walk.

My nephew is mildly obsessive about people dropping litter.

I pick up obvious pieces of litter when I am out running. Every month or so I take a carrier bag and walk round my village and keep going till I’ve filled the bag with litter. Then I post the picture on Instagram. It always gets me into a conversation about litter and where I got my litter picker from. But essentially it’s been a solitary activity.

As I explored the Rubbish Friends (Stratford) page I came across Becky. I messaged her. She messaged me back with her phone number. I rang her. We had a long conversation where Becky talked me through how they got started and how they operated…without a committee….or a treasurer….or any funding…or meetings. I went to their next monthly litter pick….and the one after that. I decided picking up litter with other people was more fun. What if we started a Rubbish Friends (Ettington)?

It took a few minutes to set up a Facebook page…invite a few friends…and set up our first litter pick. We borrowed some kit from Becky and in May a few of us spent an hour or so picking up mostly cans, crisp packets and fag packets. We figured it would be easier to see what we were doing in the winter when the verges and hedgerows had died back.

So it all went a bit quiet for a while.

Then just after Christmas I saw another friend out litter picking on his own. It prompted me to set up another FB event for Rubbish Friends before the end of the New Year break. Becky loaned us some more equipment.

Lots of people joined the group and about 15 people of all ages turned out on the day.

We filled about a dozen sacks.

Better still several people commented on how nice it was to catch up with friends they hadn’t seen for a while or to put faces to names they’d seen on Facebook. It’s fair to say everyone quite enjoyed picking up litter together.

I love the Rubbish Friends concept. No committee. No membership fees. No rules. No ‘organisation’. Just a few friends and neighbours coming together to do something to make the place where they live just a bit better….and getting to know each other better while doing it.

Responding to the photos of our January 5th pick, several people commented on the state of a lay-by just outside the village. So that became our next target.

It was very last minute but nine people turned out and in just over an hour we filled 17 sacks and collected assorted other oddities, which Biffa duly came and took away for us.

It feels like time to get some gear of our own. Our Parish Council have said they’ll help and we plan to contact local businesses too. I met with Becky from Rubbish Friends (Stratford) and had a bit of a master class. Her gang has learnt so much in the last two years and Becky is incredibly generous with her knowledge and time.

What we’ve learnt is that there were lots of individuals who felt the same way about the litter round our village. A few people went out and tried to do something about it on their own. But by coming together and doing something about it as a community we’re having far more impact on the problem, having fun and building stronger relationships along the way.

If you’re interested starting a Rubbish Friends group going where you live, get in touch. It’s really easy and all it needs is a few like minded people who want to take action together to make things better.

      Coming together to make things better For a long time I have spent half an hour most Saturday mornings following a man called Neil round a park in Stratford.

[johnbromford]

Getting older

Most Sunday’s now I take a short walk to the Friends Meeting House tucked away in a quiet side road in Ettington. There’s always a warm welcome…hand shakes…a catch up on the week’s news…then gradually everyone settles into a seat and a stillness comes over the room.

I found this photo taken in 1950 here. The meeting room looks very much as it does now apart from the addition of a few raised seats…

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[johnbromford]

O2 degrees of separation

O2 degrees of separation

A friend of mine called Anna (not her real name) has recently left a controlling relationship. It’s been a very tough time for her but she keeps finding energy and hope in the most unlikely of places. She posted this on Facebook:

“I just rang O2 and randomly got through to this beautiful French woman at their call centre Lilas Lafleur. We got talking (about other stuff than my mobile phone) and…

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[johnbromford]

Liberate yourselves from the fixing

Liberate yourselves from the fixing

“Liberate yourselves from the fixing!” was the cry from Maff Potts as he shared his haphazard, circuitous journey from charity CEO to Cameradoat our board away day this week. You expect to find flip charts, awful coffee and men in rather dubious jumpers at an away day. You don’t expect to witness a roomful of people being visibly affected…changed even…by a speaker. But Maff really connected with…

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[johnbromford]

Perfectly imperfect

A colleague just sent me a link to a wonderful thread on twitter about veg boxes and the internet and how it makes the tweeter feel. It started with this post:

I’ve been getting a vegetable box delivered to my house every week for over 10 years. I administer it online, and change my order from time to time, but mostly the same things just turn up. I’ve been trying to work out why this feels like…

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[johnbromford]

What colour should you paint your front door?

What colour should you paint your front door?

That’s the question Good Housekeeping magazine asked its readers in this 2016 feature.

The front door is the face of your home, it’s the first thing guests will see and notice about your property.

I came across it while looking for a picture of lots of different front doors to go with this post. It actually captures pretty well a lot of the emotions that go with choosing how we want to present…

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