Frequently, of an evening, I get into the following exchange.

‘Did you have a good day at school?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you get up to?’

‘The usual. Lessons. And you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you get up to?’

‘Meetings.’

I exaggerate only slightly. My working life is composed of vast quantities of meetings; with members, with staff, with visitors, alone or in larger numbers, and the hard-working and long-suffering members of my secretariat make a lot of effort to squeeze more meetings into each day. I’m not complaining. A lot of these meetings are very interesting or great fun or both. Also, pace Peter F. Drucker (who once said ‘there are meetings, and then there is work’), all of my meetings are productive because I long ago learnt the trick of making sure of that. That said, the sheer frequency and number of these meetings inevitably means that undistracted reading and undistracted thought get pushed to the extremes – that is, very early in the morning, late in the evening, or at weekends – or, worse, they get neglected. Carving out ‘quality time’ for proper reflection is one of the major challenges of the job. The meetings phenomenon also poses a challenge for me with regard to this blog. I have to be selective in any case, but I can’t keep explaining that I was in yet another meeting. But if you don’t hear from me for a while, that’s where I’ll be; in a meeting!

Today we went for a nice long walk near the river Meuse. At one stage we came to a lock gate and there we saw a yacht, its masts down, waiting for the waters to rise. The first thing to catch our eyes was the name of the boat – No Pasaran. The second was its Swedish flag. As the boat bobbed upwards, we got talking to the two man crew. Yes, they were Swedes. They had started from Stockholm, crossed the Baltic Sea and then made their way via various rivers and canals to Namur. They were heading towards the Rhone, and thence down to the French coast. From there, they planned to sail to Morocco, and then from there across the Atlantic to the West Indies. How long would all of this take? They had no idea and it didn’t matter. Did they need any crew, I asked? I wonder what I would have done if they had said ‘yes’

In a different register, we men (accompanied stoically by N° 1 daughter) went to see G.I. Joe over the weekend. If you want to see very convincing images of the Eiffel Tower falling over, then go. Otherwise, take it from me – don’t.

Di Napoli and Romano and stone

Over the weekend we attended a concert given in an old Baroque village church by a Sicilian artist, Tony di Napoli, together with singer Brigitte Romano. ‘Canti e petri blu pi scacciari i pinzeri’ brought together chants inspired by Sicilian traditional folksongs (and all sung in dialect) and lithophones. What, you ask, are lithophones? They are pieces of stone, struck or rubbed to produce musical notes. Di Napoli used rubber balls on the end of drumsticks and didn’t just strike the stones but also got a deep and melodious sound out of them by rubbing them slowly. The result was a series of wonderfully haunting melodies. How long, I wondered, before we hear them as a film score of some sort?

Sick friend aside, this was a heavy week. On Tuesday, 1^st September, the Enlarged Presidency met to discuss a number of strategic issues related to the European elections and the expected arrival in the not-too-distant future of a new Commission. Lisbon Treaty or not, the Committee is well-placed to provide an important supporting role in building up a structured dialogue with civil society. On Tuesday, 2^nd September I went to the Rules of Procedure Committee in the morning to speak to a rule change proposed by the administration to align the appointing powers for the President and the Secretary General with the provisions of the staff regulations. In terms of rule changes, it is interesting to compare our institution with the European Parliament. It has a standing committee for changes, whereas in the Committee’s culture rule-changes remain rare and therefore ‘heavy’. That would have been enough for a heavy day, but in the afternoon we had a concertation meeting with the Committee of the Regions and the trades unions to broker a final deal on introducing flexitime. It is a particularity of the joint services arrangement that all such concertations are triangular (between the two institutions and their administrations as well as with the trades unions). Everybody was in constructive mode and a deal was reached, leaving me in an excellent mood to go off and give a talk over dinner to a Brussels Academy high-flyers programme. It was one of those ‘Chatham House rules’ discussions – always enjoyable – but I hope I left them with some curiosity about the European Economic and Social Committee.

Today, I hosted a lunch with the female Heads of Unit in the Committee’s administration. This was our second lunch together. We’d invited a speaker from the external HR world. The basic theme was: quotas or not? Our speaker explained to us how, slowly but surely, quotas, or targets, were having an effect in the European Commission. But a large majority of the ladies present were against the idea as being patronising. The question arises, then, as to how to do it. Or, as I formulated it, how to make sure that we are able to appoint women directors and above, as well as Heads of Unit? My own conclusion is that we must grow our own, identifying potential management material early, training it up, working hard to avoid glass ceilings being built in people’s heads, and introducing reforms and policies that enable colleagues with young families to envisage getting a foot on the managerial rung.

By rigorously setting aside a set period every day I managed to get a good few books under my belt this summer. Funniest read: Clive James’s Falling to England (takes up where Unreliable Memoirs laid off). Most disappointing read: Kazuo Ishiguru’s Nocturnes. Best children’s book: The Dark Flight Down (all right; I only read one children’s book). Most irritating read: Struck by Lightning – not so much a thin article screaming to get out of a fat book – see 27 July post – as a series of loosely-related articles stapled together and pretending to be a book (to be fair, I learnt one thing from this book; if you know how to use it, randomness can be a strategy). A Thousand Splendid Suns I have mentioned in another post. Together with The Reluctant Fundamentalist these books did much to broaden my geopolitical knowledge (and made me realise how much I didn’t know about contemporary events). But most exquisite read of the year: Vladimir Nabakov’s Speak, Memory – quite simply, a masterpiece.

I’d like to give a puff for the school where we learnt. Tabo is at the northern end of the Lago di Como. It’s a small, family affair (Luca’s the windsurf teacher  and Paola, Luca’s wife, and Manuel and Paola’s Dad, Nicolino, handle the sailing) and set in a beautiful spot beneath Monte Lennone. We started off, together with an Italian couple, Alberto and Donatella, with Manuel. He was nice and gentle and quietly passionate about his sailing. Then, on the Wednesday, when we had learnt the basics, Manuel took his day off and we suddenly found ourselves accompanied by the altogether more volubly passionate Nicolino (passionate, but with a great sense of humour). By the fourth day they had us racing (well, it looked as though we were) and manoeuvring to take the wind out of each others’ sails (yes, another familiar saying). Genova-based Nicolino is also a ski instructor and a keen photographer (his website is here). If you’re at the northern end of the lake, drop in. You’ll be sure of a friendly welcome.

I learnt to sail this summer. We did an intensive, week-long, course then sat an exam (written and practical) and now we have our basic licences. Learning to sail has been on my ‘to do’ list for a very long time. It was like learning another language; in this case, the language of the winds. We learnt on Lasers – a Bahia first, and then the more flighty 420. The first striking aspect of the experience is just how touchy and sensitive these boats are. The slightest movement on the tiller, the slightest change in the wind, and the boat reacts strongly. The second striking aspect is just how difficult it is to capsize them. (As part of the exam you have to capsize the boat and then re-right it and get back in.) In the beginning, the slightest shift had us, as novices, hurriedly correcting our position in the boat. Towards the end, though, as we grew in confidence, and as we realised that we were nowhere near the boat’s limits, we became more relaxed and fluent. There can be few experiences more exhilarating than the moment when the boat picks up speed as you swing out on the trapeze, the water scudding beneath you, nor more satisfying than navigating your way upwind. That leads me on to the third striking aspect of the experience. It is not by chance that there are so many sailing metaphors and terms in general language usage. So much of what I learnt about the winds and the boat’s relationship to them applies in other areas of human activity. Sailing against the wind, for example, may seem counterintuitive to landlubbers, but it is actually very easy, once the basic mechanics have been understood. And the inter-relationship between true wind and relative wind can clearly also be translated into other areas of human endeavour. In any case, a clear parallel is that even when events seem to line up against you progress towards your objective is still possible…

Yes, I’m back in the saddle – and how!