Skating under the ice

I’ve arrived in Melbourne.  The city is a strange mix between old Oxbridge named University colleges, Washington / Philadelphia style streets, and people sitting on rooftops with beer bottles shouting out ‘great hair man’.  I’m taken out for a meal with my hosts from Hanover Housing at a lovely restaurant named after St Jude, complete with 'rabbit chips' and 'thrice fried chips' (is this some kind of potato torture? or an acknowledgement that in the world of the patron saint of lost causes, it's always going to take at least three attempts?)  I notice the questions in Melbourne tend to be a bit trickier than in Sydney, like bombs with longer fuses.  We are skating under the ice.

I’ve been thinking a lot about accreditation. It’s led me to combine - in my head at least - the Foyer tests with the Qualities framework to produce a new  hybrid shape, based on expressing, exploring, experiencing, and  energising  what we understand as quality for a foyer-style, strengths-based dimension.  AQE4 if you like, that follows through the phases as a process of development. We’ll see where that goes. I have it down in squiggles.

On the flight up – or down – I am struck by an article in the paper on ‘Dear me – a letter to my sixteen year old self’, edited by Joseph Galliano.   It’s a good idea for a book. For myself, what would the advice be? Probably that I was right without knowing it, but that getting it wrong would provide a richer source of knowledge.  Maybe the book needs to be the other way around too, for our 16 year-old self to remind our older entity of values that get forgotton through age. The secret of life lies in finding the bits of the puzzle.

Meanwhile, back in Gotham city, UK– what do you call a gathering of intellectuals and politicians? Another discussion on the riots.  It's a joke, but who is laughing...