Of The Four Hour Chef

A good friend of mine thinks I becoming a Tim Ferris fanatic; a Ferris follower, disciple even and I think she's right.
Ferris started out as author of the international bestseller "The Four Hour Week" which turned thinking on its head by challenging what we thought we already knew in many areas relevant to our working lives. In his next title "The Four Hour Body" he challenged the reader to eat, swim and indeed have better sex by rejecting inherited thinking and following some key but quite simple steps.
His latest book out this week is "The Four Hour Chef". You'd think it's about food and how to prepare which it is in part. But it's also stuffed full of other great life tips from how to acquire a super memory and learn languages to lighting fires in a way that causes them to burn for longer and give out much more heat.
It's quite astonishing what this man knows and what he's prepared to try and experiment with. He must be one of the most curious individuals on the planet and seems to have become a vertiable guinea pig for anything new that helps us do what we are currently doing but so much better.
I'm ten pages into the 550 odd pages of this latest work but it's already been worth the £15 I paid for it. I can't remember the last time I said that about a book which says it all I guess.

Of Car Booting

As part of my commitment to do two days of charity work each year I went car booting on Saturday to raise a few bob for Legal-Island's charity in Malawi.
It was a really cold morning and one that refused to warm up. By 11a.m. it was still barely above freezing.
But by 7.15a.m. I had sold a six string banjo that had followed me around the UK since my first year at university. I had flogged 3 chairs and a strimmer in a brief rush a little later.
There's something quite appealing about trading at a car boot sale. Anyone who is prepared to get up in the early hours of a cold Winter's morning in search of a bargain is bound to have some spirit and be worth a conversation or two. One such punter, challenged me to a game of tennis as I tried to sell him a tennis racket. Why not? I thought. He whooped me 2 sets to love Sunday afternoon. He never did buy the racket either.

Of Closing in on Perfection!

Wow! We haven't lost our touch here at Legalisland. If anything we're close to perfecting it. Our latest Annual Review Conference is currently being scored by delegates and like the 3 others behind it it's scoring phenomenally well. With an overall satisfaction rate so far of 4.4 out of 5 it's telling me that the quality of what we do justs gets better every year.
We've just got one more to do at the Stillorgan and we can rest up a little. So here's hoping for the Annual Review of Employment Law Conference at the Stilorgan.

Of Anne Frank a Remarkable Lady

I've just finished the wonderful Anne Frank's diary. I first read her diary when I was about 14. I said then that it was my favourite book of all time and today many years on it's still in my top 3. This time I struggled to make it to the end for no other reason than because as you turn those last few pages you know the fate that awaited her.
I'm still struggling to know why it is that this was never required reading at school when totally inaccessible books including "She Stoops to Conquer" and "The Merchant and Venice" were.
Not only was Anne Frank blessed with a beautiful ability to articulate what she was both noticing and feeling but she was also full of boundless optimism and hope which, I suppose, makes her diary all the more tragic.
Here's what she records about how to deal with melancholy :
"I lie in bed at night, after ending my prayers with the words "Ich danke dir fur all das Gute und Liebe und Schone (thank you God for all that is good and dear and beautiful"), and I am filled with joy. I think of going into hiding, my health and my whole being as das Gute; Peter's love (which is still so new and fragile and which neither of us dares to say out loud), the future, happiness and love as das Liebe; the world, nature and the tremendous beauty of everything, all that splendour as Schone.
At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is : "Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it". My advice is "Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to capture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy".

Of A & B

Last week I nearly bought a defibrillator! So shocked were people when I began to share my news that I thought some might go into cardiac arrest!

You see on Saturday 4th November at 11p.m. I hiked up Slieve Donard and came down 4 hours later engaged! At 850 metres above sea level in a howling gale and the freezing cold Anna, said Yes to my suggestion of a life together!

Of Returning to Greatness

I'm currently re-reading two books and for very different reasons. The first is "Winning"! by Clive Woodward. This tells the story of how he took the English rugby team from mediocre to world beating. Naturally, it's a sports book but its a great business book too. For he applied many business principles to his strategy of finding and nurturing some of the greatest individuals in rugby and turning them into a world beating team. It's a great book.

The Diary of Anne Frank is up there for me as one of the greatest books of all time. It's a book full of love, laughter, anger, frustration and ultimately tragedy. Frank writes with a maturity that is well beyond her years. How she articulates the frustration she feels living in such close quarters with others is at times hilarious. When she confesses to her diary that she realises she's in love with David you can't help but feel deeply touched.
What I don't understand to this very day is why we were never required to read great books like this at school. Instead we had to suffer the likes of  "She Stoops to Conquer" or "The Merchant of Venice". These were books that could very nearly put off a 15 year old from reading altogether. Perhaps its all different now. But I doubt it.

Of The Great River Tidy-Up

I was out volunteering over the weekend picking up rubbish in and around our local river, the Six Mile Water. The Six Mile Water incidentally is 24 miles long (only in Ireland I hear you cry) but on Saturday we cleaned (or cleared) less than half a mile of it.
It's amazing what you can find in a river nowadays. We fished out three tyres, half a washing machine, a bike and countless plastic shopping bags.
One plastic sack eluded our best joint efforts however. It was stuck on a fallen tree right in the middle of the river. Despite the attempts of four of us it remains there today. But we've not given up. Soon we plan to return in a boat to remove it and its smug little smile.

The woodland around the river on Saturday was looking spectacular glistening in gold and yellow in the early morning sun.
We're lucky to live in such beautiful surroundings. It just a pity that we don't take more care of it and seem happy to tolerate a level of litter that people in many other countries would consider totally unacceptable.