Bring on the clowns

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

Here’s a terrific story that surfaced in The Guardian this week in the context of the Pakistan match-fixing convictions, and the fact that corruption and gambling in Asian cricket is seen as a cultural problem. In 1995 a new mayor took office … Continue reading →

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The rabble

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

There was a time when I imagined that in my sixties life would have started to become a pleasant, carefree stroll through the sunlit uplands. Ah well … This is what has been competing for space in my head this … Continue reading →

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A small rebellion

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

The ripples from our last Dark Angels course continue to spread. Two weeks after leaving Inverness-shire, the glue that binds the group together seems to be setting firmer rather than weakening, as is more often the case. Our inboxes bulge … Continue reading →

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Murder was there none

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

‘What are the types of people who come on your courses?’ asked a prospective Dark Angels student a couple of days ago. With last week’s course fresh in my mind I was able to reel off the following list: an … Continue reading →

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What’s the point?

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

On Tuesday night we took the students on our Dark Angels course to the theatre. We left our lofty perch and plummeted down the hill to Loch Ness, then drove five miles along the lochside to the Victorian community hall … Continue reading →

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Getting traction

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

On Monday I’m driving up to the writers’ centre at Moniack Mhor, in Inverness-shire, to run a Dark Angels course. There are several reasons why I’m particularly looking forward to it. Firstly, I missed not being involved in the Advanced … Continue reading →

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Autumn tales

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

I often write this on the train on the way back from Edinburgh. It’s a picturesque journey, across the Forth Bridge and east along the Fife coast, then inland through the soft, fertile farmland of central Fife, a short climb … Continue reading →

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My friend the visionary

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

Almost exactly forty years ago to this day I started my first job in London. Improbable as it seems now, it was as an articled clerk with one of the big London-Scottish firms of accountants. I’ve written about this in … Continue reading →

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Finca Banega

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey

Today John Simmons and Stuart Delves are in Spain with the Dark Angels advanced group and I’m preparing to leave for Hyderabad in the morning. It has been a strange day, knowing they’re there in that beautiful place, basking in … Continue reading →

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Which story?

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Jamie Jauncey
Next week it’s time again for the annual Dark Angels expedition to Aracena, the small hill town in Andalucia where John Simmons, Stuart Delves and I take a party of students on our Advanced Creative Writing in Business course. For the first time in six years I won’t be there. I’m going back to India instead. But I’ll think enviously of the sweet figs on the tree by the poolhouse, the dawn mist in the valley and sunrise over the hills, the conversations in the courtyard and dinners on the terrace. I’ll miss the sense of companionship that blossoms over those four days, the moments of personal revelation and creative insight.

And I’ll miss the stories. The course begins with the opening words of one of the most famous stories of all time: ‘En un lugar de La Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme …’ ‘In a place in La Mancha, whose name I don’t care to remember …’ Don Quixote. It continues with stories written down in daylight and stories told over glasses of wine after dark.
I will be hearing stories in India, although of a rather different kind. With my colleague Paul Pinson I’m running a storytelling workshop for senior leaders from eight of India’s largest companies. What do stories mean to business? How do they work? Where do you tell them? These are the questions we’ll be posing and the simple answers are: everything, effortlessly and everywhere.
We’ll be explaining to our students how the stories we tell about ourselves and our organisations are the very warp and weft of our existences; how they’re the frameworks that hold us together and keep us upright; and how without them we are without structure or identity. And we’ll be impressing on them the importance of listening to the stories other people are telling about them, customers, colleagues, employees.
As I write this, the story of the Welsh mining accident is unfolding. We have just heard the news – unspeakable, intolerable for the four families – that they’ve found one body but that they can’t yet identify it. This story, that has come out of the blue to engulf those four families and the communities they belong to, will shape lives for generations.
Stories – the retelling and interpretation of events – have that power. Even the seemingly trivial can change individual destinies. The really big stories can shape nations.  I think of Scotland, reaching for a new identity but still struggling to shrug off that old story of defeat, clearance, emigration, sectarianism, industrial decline and dependency.
We all have many stories. Knowing which is the right one to believe in at any given moment is not always so easy.
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