Weeknotes by Mo Morgan

• Went back to the dentist at the weekend, to try and get to the bottom of some major toothache following the replacement of a filling. I asked for it to be lowered a bit, and even after three rounds of anaesthetic that took out half my face, the tooth was still hurting. So not a great deal of fun in the chair, plus all the things that would cause that degree of pain are highly invasive. Talk of root canals and tooth removal, particularly towards the front, isn’t nice to hear. Anyway, it might also have been an infection, as Dr Google suggested, so I came away with a five-day course of antibiotics. And even though it took a while, eventually it calmed down. As I type, apart from some lingering sensitivity to the left of my nose, it’s approaching normal. Hopefully if it was just an infection that suggests I can put off the more extreme steps for a few years.
• Last week I forgot to mention I’d been doing some research that led me to interview the owner of a small business that sells machinery. Obviously all the detail of that is confidential to my client, to whom I reported back this week. But I don’t think anyone would mind me commenting on the extent to which independent businesses are impacted by global, macro events.
  • I heard about the effect of Brexit preparation and how overstocking had impacted cashflow. But, that became fortuitous in a limited way, because the abundance of caution surrounding potential border disruption then offered a buffer going into the lockdown era.
  • That said, lockdowns also cut demand right back and added all the costs and liabilities widely associated with that period. And it also disrupted supply chains deeply. Manufacturers and their suppliers not being able to make or ship products has created a backlog that continues. It reminded me of post-9/11 air-travel restrictions: at the point at which it was appropriate to reopen the skys, all the planes and crews were in the wrong locations to serve their scheduled flights. There are probably crates of components sitting around from more resilient suppliers, waiting to meet parts made by another supplier who has fallen behind or, more likely, can’t source their own materials.
  • So now that the potential for product sales has begun to recover, sellers can’t restock quickly enough. That’s the worst of both worlds because they’re also sitting on a stockholding of spares that depend on product sales, as well as a payroll of sales and maintenance experts.
  • And then there’s geopolitics. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine caused sanctions that resulted in energy-supply disruption, in turn driving up all costs. But also the manufacturing capabilities in Ukraine collapsed as the workforce took up arms instead. So there are some product manufacturers who still cannot resume some of their supply lines because there’s nobody making critical parts, and the ramp-up time somewhere else in the world would be more costly than could be recovered by making that one part.
  • A shift towards more sustainable operating models, and all the greenwashing that comes with its early stages, is also disruptive. Electrification usually points to decarbonisation, but not universally. It also comes with some complex and unsustainable elements of its own. What will we do with all the spent lithium cells currently going into landfill, for example, as well as the sociological impacts of the massively increasing demands for key minerals.
  • Further, there’s things that haven’t happened yet but might. If China were to disrupt the manufacturing taking place in Taiwan, for example, the impact of that would be felt right across the world.
  • In all, across many sectors, disruption has characterised these last 15 years. It comes from everywhere. And it’s the disruption, rather than its causes or effects, that are problematic. Change is welcome. But constant, significant and unpredictable change is either impossible or financially unviable to withstand. Fortunately the business I was examining will continue in good shape, but many others won’t be so able.
• My driving licence is subject to medical conditions, as is both standard and sensible for those of us with epilepsy and/or bipolar. It expires every three years, as everyone’s does once we pass 70 years old.
  • Reapplying, however, is an amazingly slow and difficult process. Curiously, it’s harder every time, even though there’s no new information or concern. Anyway, after five months, I still don’t have my renewed driving licence. And while I can still drive in the UK until such time as it’s revoked, the expiry of the licence means I can’t drive elsewhere, nor can I hire a car. I can’t even hire a microscooter.
  • This week, the DVLA have claimed not to have a record of a single seizure I had seven years ago, when I self-surrendered my licence to them. They have reissued the licence twice since, based on reviews conducted on my behalf by various doctors, yet they claim not to have any record of any of this. You can see why so many people who have seizures don’t tell the DVLA. If this system is supposed to keep the roads safe, it doesn’t.
  • Anyway, buckle in: this will be you too, in your retirement.

Bass notes

[In which Mo learns the bass guitar]

• Im trying to pick the bass up from time to time just in a casual way, between lessons and more formal practice. Just scoop it up, improvise a few bars and set it down again. It’s helping my posture and muscle memory. The index and middle fingers on my fretting hand are much better at falling in the right place. My ring finger is still rogue. As a left-hander, plucking with my right hand occasionally descends into involuntary chaos, but I’m getting better.
• In formal practice, my muting technique is improving too. This is really basic stuff but it’s good to focus on doing the basics well.
• The little group of pedals I’ve assembled instead of getting a big amp is now arranged on a proper pedalboard. There’s a tinge of ‘all the gear, no idea’ about it, but having it all stuck down and wired up properly makes it trivial to use it for a few minutes without a lot of set-up. While the pedalboard and its case are new, all the rest is second-hand. Some of the pedals I’ve chosen are not classic route-one bass guitar pedals, but I just like how they sound. The Orange Fur Coat fuzz pedal is far too mental to be used in the context of a band, but on your own in practice mode it’s a riot.

• Spent the weekend with my lovely friends for whom I was Best Man. We went to place with a couple of bowling alleys and some interactive dartboards. It’s been some years since I rolled a bowling ball, and I can’t help going full Big Lebowski with it. Typically my first ball down the alley flukes a strike, and then I’ll spend the rest of the time failing to replicate that. It’s the kind of thing I’d probably be much better at if I went every week, like everything else.
• I lectured again, this time for the start-up accelerator the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, at which I’ve also been in a previous cohort. I wrote the 90-min session a year ago: it’s a bit of a slog but it’s the shortest amount of time I can possibly take to give a non-brand person the insight and skills to be able to develop one themselves. I also found I needed to do some subtle rewrites: since I constructed the thing I’ve found my thinking has moved on a little in some areas. I now find the balance of content tipping away from customer insights and into areas such as sector truths and working culture. Not because customers are important, but because start-ups are already thinking about them. What they often miss, as many businesses do, are the shared objectives and enemies of their sector peer-group, that they needn’t reinvent. As a small business it’s far more efficient, with only a few exceptional cases, to let market leaders do all the work to educate customers about the sector. Anyway. Will likely do another in the summer, by which point I’ll likely disagree with myself again.
• Quite a lot of snow fell, over several days. It’s been unusually cold for the time of year.

  

• Partially because of the weather, it’s been a quiet, head-down kind of week.

• Difficult week, this one. And difficult to write about, too. This is one of those occasions when working in the open is incompatible with things that are not for public consumption. So this weeknote’s a little light.
• Went to the dentist on Saturday, for two fillings. Pretty traumatic. It takes a lot of focus for me to manage something like that. Following all that, I’ve had pretty bad toothache all week, which I’m hoping might just calm down in due course. I’ll give it another week or so.
• James did a brave thing by straight-up sharing his mental health situation on LinkedIn. Chronic mental conditions (or indeed any condition) are heavily stigmatised, particularly in low- to mid-quality workplaces. From my own experience with bipolar and epilepsy, I know how hard it is to talk about. No, specifically, to get to the point where you feel like you can talk about it. It’s easy to talk about it. I’m talking about it now. But for years I didn’t, and I regret that. Let nobody who comes after us go through that. Let’s hear them boring on about their mental health until it’s so normalised that people are universally as sympathetic and supportive as when you graze your knee.

Bass notes

[In which Mo learns the bass guitar]

• My little pedal set-up is making it easier to hear what I’m not getting right yet. Before, the tone knob and pickup switch didn’t do a great deal. But with a proper preamp it’s more balanced. I can now go from deep, blunt tones right up to bright and jangly ones. The latter is good for hearing all the bad fretting technique. I’m at a point where my technique is not universally bad. It’s unevenly bad: some fingers are weaker than others, and some frets aren’t falling precisely under them. It’s great to be able to hear that by tweaking the preamp to be as unforgiving as it gets.
• I’ve managed to book the bass in to see a luthier at the end of this month, for a proper set-up. Now I’ve come to live with it a while, it’s clearly not in terrible shape. But it could use a pro’s skills and experience to set the string height and fix the intonation. I probably could do that basic stuff if I did my research, but a proper experienced guitar tech will get better results more quickly.