The Itch

After a busy day just before Christmas, I sat down and with an imposing piece of work to finish. 

Rather than doing the work at hand, I found myself looking at cheap flights from London, and, of course, the uniquely exorbitant Aurginy flight prices. 

I had a season of work which was pretty intense. I’m not complaining about running on a hamster wheel, my wheel is one I have chosen and designed myself and I love running on it, but it’s important to hop off the wheel and jump out the cage once in a while. 

I like travelling. Though I went off-island this year, to Ireland to see family and to Bristol on a stag do and Sark for family and fun times, I didn’t feel like I got away. Lots of fun and wholesome times but not an adventure, per se. 

So I leave Guernsey with just my guernsey and a hat, which I should have learned is insufficient for winter in eastern Europe after becoming nigh-on hypothermic in the Ala-Too mountains in Kyrgyzstan three winters ago in the same get up, but here we are today. Smart has the plans, stupid has the stories—and the burn holes in his joggers after hugging the fire to make it through the night. 

Loosely, I planned to fly to Budapest then onwards to Armenia, but as happens with Buda, I fell in love with it again, stayed later than planned, then got an overnight bus to Lviv in Ukraine for three days and two nights, staying with a family I contacted via couchsurfing (an app to meet and stay with people with no money exchanged, only hospitality and cultural exchange). 

Budapest I assumed I would blag a hostel or couchsurf on my first night which didn’t happen, but I ended up talking with a legendary Indian dude who offered a space in his flat for the night.

The next two nights I stayed in a delectably scrappy hostel, where a spontaneous conversation erupted between myself, a German Bach-loving guitar player, an Italian influencer and yoga teacher, and a dashing French lad travelling solo for the first time. 

Mid-conversation, I remember thinking: this is what I miss about travelling, and the reason I love hostels; there is novelty, strangeness, spontaneity. Stimulation.

Short of exciting, though, as I late into one evening drink my stein of Czech pilsner and book an overnight bus to Ukraine, my Nepalese and German friends looking at me as if I’m crazy. 

Safety

Had a few concerned messages about safety, which I’ll put to rest quickly. 

I have an English mate James whom I met in Lebanon who has lived in Ukraine for some time and knows the sketch, and assured me it’s safe. We are artistically insulting to one another but I know he has my back so I trusted him.

I’ve been to another warzone in Iraq, to which I arrived past midnight and hitchhiked into the town as the taxis were $20 a shot—rip-off! 

I’ve also been to Lebanon which was—and sadly is—unstable and war-prone.

Likewise Kyrgyzstan, which was having a border clash with Tajikistan when I arrived: busloads of Kyrgyz riding towards the border with everything from AK-47s to slingshots. Literally, a grown-ass man getting a bus to do war with a slingshot in 2021. Wild.

These three places I did not once feel unsafe (apart from as a passenger in their cars, which is a different story). 

There was a time when I was sleeping rough in Kyrgyzstan that I put a knife under my pillow. After a few nights and such amazing experiences with the locals, it felt faintly ridiculous, and the knife returned to its role of cutting up cheap Soviet style sausage and cheese. 

Where have I felt unsafe? London. Manchester. Paris a little. Guernsey late into a Friday or Saturday night.

That all said, I didn’t choose to go to Ukraine for safety and predictability, I chose to go as I have never been and it’s somewhere different, strange, and exciting. 

Historical Broadbrush

Despite being victim to untold historic misery and atrocity, both Hungary and Ukraine have sound, coherent and proud cultures. 

(Or is this cultural coherence because of these hardships?)

For those not aware, here is a big ole broadbrush to illustrate my point:

Hungary has been invaded and attacked by at least the Mongol hordes, the Ottoman Turks, the Austrians, the Russian Empire, the Habsburgs; Nazi Germany, who killed half a million Hungarian Jews; and the Soviet Union, whose army raped and pillaged its way through the country after ‘liberating’ the land in WW2 and brutally repressed an attempted revolution in 1956. 

Ukraine has likewise endured centuries of oppression from its more powerful neighbours including the Russian Empire, Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Nazi and Soviet regimes. The famine orchestrated by Stalin to subjugate the Ukrainians killed an estimated 5 million humans, or the current population of Ireland. 

The peoples of these countries have in living memory suffered some of the worst atrocities in humanity’s blood-seeped history. Yet the people here are, in the round, not resentful—save for the Ukrainians vis-a-vis the Russians, which should go without saying. 

Budapest

From my limited experience in Budapest, I can tell that the Hungarians are a tremendously proud people, and they have much in their country to be proud of.

For all the invasions, they have also been the beneficiaries of amazing cultural inputs from the full stretch of Europe: sheer spires and gold onion-shaped domes from the Catholic and Orthodox churches, intricate fractal facades of the Jewish Synagogue and gothic grandeur of the riverfront parliament all vie to conquer its distinctly eastern skyline.

The city is split in two by the Danube, giving it a further eastern feel, the first thing I think floating across the river with the two distinct sides of the city either side of me—Buda and Pest—that this is like Istanbul, similarly conquered by this people and that, but holding that cultural capital in everything from its architecture to its customs to its food to its language.

There is a definite Soviet twang, but one that is forgiven by the influences of its western neighbours.

Many of the people will know a little English and be unafraid to try and speak what they know, even the older generation, even if limited and heavily accented.

This city is youthful, alive and kicking, with the buzz of a Barcelona or a Bristol, not the open-air museum vibe of many western capitals. Old baroque buildings are criss-crossed with graffiti. ‘Ruin bars’ labyrinth there way around grand Soviet-era buildings; one room a wine bar, another with a DJ playing electronica; one room serving beer and palinka, another with an acoustic artist singing her heart out. 

I had this plan to fly to Yerevan in Armenia, but I overstayed my time in Budapest and had recently been regaled by tales of Ukraine by two of my good friends who have spent time there, friends with whom I travelled in Central Asia and the Middle East. 

So, happily, I found myself on an overnight bus drinking bottles of cheap beer, reading my Kindle, cruising towards the Ukrainian border, messaging families in Lviv via Couchsurfing asking for a place to stay—saves me blagging it like I had to in Buda. 

To Ukraine

Ukraine is a vast country, some would say the biggest on our continent—depending on who draws the line—consisting of vast plains and richly fertile lands. The ‘breadbasket of Europe’. 

The name Ukraine actually means borderland, and it has been something of a buffer between east and west, and suffering untold misery because of it, its cities laid claim to and its statehood being abolished by its neighbours both east and west at different times; something we are seeing today, sadly.

At the Hungarian border, we get off the bus into the bitter cold of the early hours.

I pass my passport to the border policeman, who takes it without breaking eye contact with me, then flicks through it page for page. He closes it and flicks through every page once more. 

Looking up, he asks, “Soldier?”

Smiling awkwardly, I reply, “No, errr, tourist.”

Raising his eyebrows, the fellow passes me back my passport. I go into the bleak toilets and pay a bleak lady a bleak 50 forint (10p-ish) for a pee before I go back onto the bus to not-sleep as we cruise into Ukraine proper. 

Shortly afterwards we stop and are searched by two Ukrainian men in military fatigues, first taking each of our passports and leaving the bus, then searching the hold, the toilet, under and above our seats. We are given back our passports, the gates are raised and we are let into the country. 

I finally nod off to sleep as the first fingers of day are pulling back the dawn. I awaken with a jolt as the wail of air raid sirens pierce the morning. I must have made some frantic movement as a couple of the other passengers glanced over at me, but other than that, there was no reaction from anybody at all.

So I sat up straight and watched the sunrise over the city as the sirens wailed.

Lviv

Arriving in Lviv, I get a strong familiar Soviet vibe, which makes me feel homely. I’ve been to 9 ex-USSR countries. It is the same feeling I’ve had in Riga, in Bishkek, in Tbilisi, across the former Soviet Union: simple harsh predictability of concrete and sheet-metal that is so familiar it feels nice. The bus into the central town cost under 10 pence. My guernsey fails valiantly in its efforts to keep out the icy cold. 

This side of the old Berlin Wall, human faces become ‘harder’ and less expressive, in general but especially in public spaces. Smiling to strangers is not a thing that is done. That said, the air is markedly morose, more than usual.

Men in military fatigues walk with lit cigarettes dangling from their mouths, trucks and APC’s career roar down the roads. There is a palpable disquiet, despite Lviv being so far from the front. 

Ukraine is officially under martial law—things I noted, no men may leave the country, there is a curfew, random checks and searches, tighter border controls—yet there are still people in the streets, and there are new year celebrations in the pagan style I have seen before in the Baltics. 

After exploring the beautiful city of Lviv for the morning, cold crisp air and wintry sun taking the edge off the -2 chill, I make contact with my host family and make my way to their house in the suburbs of Lviv. 

I could just as easily been in the Soviet suburbs of Riga or Bishkek. Snow dusting small gardens which would have grown fruit and vegetables in the summer, sheet iron garage doors and red-brown gates, houses of indiscriminate character. 

My Hosts

I meet and greet the family I’m staying with.

Babushka lives on the bottom floor, which she and her late husband built. Next floor lives Babushka’s daughter Helena and her husband Oresh, which they built and where their daughter Yarka lives and out of which their older daughter Khrystyna has just moved with her boyfriend. On the third floor lives Uncle Taras. 

Yarka and Khrystyna speak great English, with a clarity and Englishness that is refreshing to hear in a world tainted by Americanised pronunciation. 

Taras, a roofing engineer, has time off work and can look after me with his nieces, whilst Oresh and Helena are still hard at work. 

After some chat and some lunch, we ready to make our way into Lviv to mooch around the city. 

Taras’ eyebrows nearly jump off his forehead when he sees I only have my guernsey to wear. “You will be ill! Aren’t you cold?”

“It was cold in Budapest but it’s a different cold here,” I reply rather uselessly, looking at he and the family dressed up in multiple layers, hats and scarves.

“Come with me,” Taras says with some exasperation. 

We pop upstairs and I try on some of his coats, all too small, then a hoodie with traditional Ukranian style and national colours fits, which he kindly lends me.  

Off into town, we drink some vishnyak, a dangerously delicious cherry liquor heated up with boozy cherries waiting for you at the bottom and mooch about the city centre, Rynok Square and the High Castle, chatting away happily.  

We make our way to the Dominican Church, an achingly beautiful ornate structure which my guides tell me was built by Polish architects in the Italian baroque style. 

In the church, a fractal framing of pillars frame the iconography, overawed by arches, commanding reverence. Ukrainians enter the church crossing themselves, many lighting a candle of remembrance, and chime in throughout during the service. 

An older fellow approaches me and says something in Ukrainian. Without thinking I muscle memory, ‘Ya nyisky’, a Russian phrase which is thankfully the same in Ukranian, which is a very similar language. Taras whips the beanie off my head and says, “He say hat no.”

New Years Eve

We get back to the house and I meet Oresh and Helena, who are very excited to meet me.

Helena set up the Couchsurfing account, but speaks the least English out of the family. Oresh has learned enough to clunk his way through a conversation, Taras has put in immense effort for 2 years to break quality conversational level English, and the girls speak brilliantly. 

Taras tells me that his sister Helena was ‘severe’ with her daughters, making them study English everyday and paying for private tuition. 

Helena is a clear, powerful, quiet spoken matriarch and though she says the least throughout our evening, I make my best efforts to engage her via her daughters’ good English. 

Helena works in a traditional clothes shop, selling Ukrainian clothing known as vyshyvanka, and has sewn her own clothing which her husband Oresh proudly showed me the next morning. 

Helena and her team visited Shanghai on a works trip before wartime, seeing where and how the mass-produced versions of their clothing were made and having something of a cultural exchange. 

“It smelled Soviet,” Helena said of her arrival in China, translated by her daughter Yarka. “Men in uniforms, regimented, searches.” I noted to myself that the same thing was happening in Ukraine at the moment. I have an impulse to share that the United Kingdom is fantastically Soviet and unfree in this and more respects, including jailing people for sharing opinions online, but I am asking plenty of my translator as it is, and tarnishing their rosey view of England seems mean and unnecessary. 

Helena and the family have previously hosted American, Canadian, Spanish and French couchsurfers, but, “We have no visits since Covid and wartime.”

After eating some Ukrainian pirogi and drinking some beer, we go upstairs to Taras’s floor, opening a bottle of whiskey and eating a spread of food, including pickled bits from Babushka and Helena’s homegrown apples. 

“Why come Ukraine?” I’m asked, perhaps for the third time in my trip. 

“I have never been before,” I start, “Two of my friends visited and said good things so I thought, why not!”

“Do you not feel unsafe?” I am asked by Yarka.

“I feel more unsafe in London or Manchester,” I reply with my stock answer, quite genuine and to their shock.

Taras shows me a video of their railway station after a Russian bombing, which he took on his phone from his flat. Black acrid plumes rise in the distance, sirens wailing and whirring. I rethink my position. 

Taras tells me that he wakes up to the sirens often. Rather than running and hiding underneath a doorway or similar, as the guidance suggests, he stays in bed. “If it is my time, it is my time,” he says simply. 

At about 11pm, Yarka says goodnight, and I orchestrate a round of applause for her patience in translating for us. 

Not long before midnight, Helena says goodnight, as she has work in the morning. Oresh joins her shortly afterwards. 

Taras and I finish the bottle of whiskey and pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate the new year 2025. After that we open another bottle of whiskey and continue our spiritously spirited conversation into the early hours.

We toast to United Kingdom.

We toast to Guernsey.

We toast to Ukraine. 

“People want this war to stop,” Taras says. “One year, two year, now three year, people tired, people not want more war. It mess with my mind, every day, death, death, death.”

“My neighbour,” he goes on, tears welling, “My neighbour, he die this week. North Korea soldier kill him.”  

“I wanted fight war,” Taras tells me, “But I think war now about money and USA. Ukrainian no want war. Russian no want war. USA and Zelenskyy want war.”

I’m surprised by the frankness of his opinion, which I’m not sure he could share with his family, certainly not publicly. 

“This war, I think of Soviet Union and Afghanistan,” I say in reply, keeping my English as simple and slur-free as possible. 

“When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, America gives money and weapons, they want it to go on and on and on to make Russia bleed.”

Taras nods in agreement, bringing his chin right down to his chest. “Of course,” he replies. “But now it is our people who die.”

After making some more toasts to each other’s families and countries, some more whiskey, maybe some guitar, we finally call it a night. 

The Morning After

Next morning I awake earlier than I should like, somewhat hazy, and bumble my way into the kitchen for some water where Oresh is wide awake and pleased to see me. 

“Good morning!” Oresh greets me with a big handshake and smile. “Breakfast want?”

“Ooo, not quite yet thank you,” I say, mistakenly using too many words, as he looks at me blankly. 

“No,” I try instead. “Chai, davai.”

“Chai!” He replies, slapping his hands together, and putting the kettle to boil. 

Oresh and Helena have wanted to learn English too, but with two children and busy jobs, they have struggled to find the time to get to the stage of Taras. 

What Oresh lacks in grammar and vocabulary he more than makes up for with effort. 

Oresh tells me about his life.

Oresh trained as an engineer, served in the Soviet Army for two years, and then came back to Ukraine. 

“Ukraine, no job, no money,” Oresh tells me about growing up in Ukraine, sweeping his hands apart. 

“All politician take money”—Oresh gestures with a grabbing motion and puts his hand in his pocket—“but our politician take more, more, more.”

“People salary very low. I want money, I want house, I want children.”

“Make money, I take spirit and tabac, go Poland and sell, make money,” he tells me, laughing a little nervously at admitting it.

“Good!” I reply. “Nobody hurt, you make money, you have house, you have children. Dobre!” 

Oresh smiles and nods proudly. 

Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Oresh tells me, there were jobs, mostly manufacturing. Oresh tells me there was a division of production across the USSR: a tire in Bishkek, a steering wheel in Riga, something else in Moscow, so when the Soviet Union collapsed there was chaos. 

People didn’t know how to do things independently and privately, and the State-run corporations were sold off for a pittance mostly to a small group of now-oligarchs. 

“No good time,” Oresh tells me. “No food. People take hat, people take shoe, people take door!”

Oresh’s in-laws had their metal garage door stole not once, not twice, but three times in the chaos and poverty that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

“Now safe, now money,” he says. “My daughters speak English, good job, good money.”

Yarka and Khrystyna with their English—thanks to Helena—and good education can earn a good wage in remote work, which translates as an exceptional wage in the Ukrainian economy. 

We get ready to spend another evening in Lviv together. I ask Taras if I can borrow his hoody again.

“Of course,” he says. “It’s yours now, it’s present.” I thank him profusely and give him a big hug.

We meet Khrystyna in town, who greets me with a smile and a hug. 

Though I only had the pleasure of one evening of Helena’s company, Khrystyna said their family WhatsApp has been bombarded by her messages the last two days: Does Liam need to rest? Have you made him tea? Your father didn’t give him any butter yesterday morning, make sure he has butter! What time is his flight? 

In Lviv we visit the Organ Hall to listen to a performance of classical and contemporary on this stupendously large organ in a hall acoustically designed to carry its full power. 

We revisit the Dominican church for a service and vertap performance. Epic. Awe-inspiring. I feel rare resonance with the all-too-stifled essence of religion. 

The service was intense. I see a family crying in the church during the service. People light candles. The air is thick with emotion, which surges in my own chest hearing people pray together in one voice. 

After that, there was more vertap. Vertap has all the Slavic paganism I’ve come to know and love: devils, dancing, singing, linen clothing, plaited hair.

There was also a unique almost Asian-sounding wailing song sung by one of the lady performers that shot right through me. I sense lament, a vibe not dissimilar to some of the songs sung in the pubs of my similarly peasant-catholic clan in Ireland. I note to myself that both countries have suffered famines that would justify this tone in their national songs.

Afterwards I say to the family that the performance was wholesome

“What does this word mean?” I’m asked. 

“Wholesome means, like, good—positive! It seemed positive.”

Khrystyna’s boyfriend replied, “We have no choice.”

“Hiya. Great show last night. My highlight was your response to Josh saying he was scared. You handled that brilliantly and really helped him to go on and only lose on a split. It was a fantastic bout.”

What a night of boxing we had on Saturday!

That’s a message I received on Sunday from one of our boxing coaches about one of our younger boxers.

Boxers are heir to the Olympians of Greece and gladiators of the Roman Empire.

Despite our mollycoddled age, the torch passed down from these ancient giants still burns strongly, in the bellies and the hearts of those with discipline enough to, after their working day, go and train and pound the bag and skip rope and spar; brave enough to voluntarily step into the squared circle and do battle.

Everything ramps up towards fight night.

One excitable teenager skipped up to me two weeks ago to say, “We only have 5 training sessions until fight night!”

I repeated that to one of the senior boxers, Emile, whose eyes widened. “Shit,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

Quiet, hardworking, polite – tough as old boots, too – Emile told me, “I’m feeling nervy for this one.”

Last season, he fought a tough lad away in Liverpool, riding out a rough first round before pulling away in the second and third.

We didn’t have much to say in between rounds, as he was doing everything right.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked.

“I’m having the time of my life!” he replied smiling.

You can have fierce intelligence, physical might, lightning reflexes, but without the qualities of discipline, composure and courage, you are nothing in boxing, and it shows up fast.

The intensity of energy you feel in the build up to and during a bout is overwhelming, otherwordly, and you need these qualities to handle it.

Time warps, minutes last hours in the build-up, and seconds last minutes under the lights – then it’s all over in a flash.

I was cornering one of our boxers, Josh, on Saturday night, in against a strong opponent who rushed him early with a flurry of powerful punches.

Josh took a standing 8-count, recovering enough to survive the round.

Josh slumped onto the stool in between rounds, breathing heavily.

“Take a deep breath,” I said to him eye-to-eye, kneeling at his level. “Are you okay?”

“I’m scared,” Josh said, his eyes wide.

“That fear you feel is just energy,” I told Josh, grasping his arm.

“You can call it fear or call it excitement, but it’s just energy. I need you to use that energy. You’ve weathered the storm, he’s tired. Keep your hands up and put it on him.”

Josh dug deep and fought his heart out, doing better in round two and winning round three of the fight.

After the last bell rang, he returned to the corner fatigued and heavy-legged.

“Stand up straight, put your arms down,” I said to Josh after the fight as we awaited the judges’ verdict. He could hardly stay upright.

“Stand like a winner.”

Josh had brought it back, working himself to a split-decision loss, which wouldn’t have looked possible if you saw the first round.

If you could bottle and sell the sensations that boxers like Josh experience prior to and during a bout, there wouldn’t be many buyers.

Your insides, emotions and composure are wrenched and wrought by intense and involuntary spasms, which escape efforts to bring them under control.

Energy.

Pure energy.

You can call it something positive, like excitement or anticipation.

You can call it something negative, like fear or anxiety.

Prior to the feeling-words we label it with, it is just energy.

I am not saying this energy is not overwhelming, and that fear is not sometimes an appropriate label for it. I am saying it is besides the point – you have to step up and do what must be done irrespective of your feelings.

Which leads me to something I have learned about about courage.

Courage minus fear no longer equals courage.

Without fear, it would be simple confidence.

While confidence and composure you can fake, courage is much harder.

Willingly stepping outside of your comfort zone and into the realm of the uncertain, the unknown, and the unsafe despite your fear is courageous.

And that, dear reader, is where the magic happens.

—

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Huzzah.

Hors d’Oeuvres: Two Quotes for Starters

Anybody catch Ian Nason’s piece in the Press last Thursday?

“I was beaten more than once at school and it taught me to obey orders or restrictions, but I do not have any known scars and I have never thought about claiming that I had a mental health problem that I know of. It was considered as part of growing up and becoming a man. Is this not the same for the modern generation or are they different from us ‘oldies’?”

And this, a message I received from an old friend:

“You’ve gone soft lad. Kids need a clip round the ear lad. We’ve lost our way. English n maffs didn’t do us any wrong mate.”

Main Course of Musing

Dare I say, with the risk of sounding stridently progressive: I believe we have come a long way from the time of beating young people into compliance.

When my old man reminisces about his own beatings as a schoolchild, he always mentions the precious few teachers who didn’t shout and berate and beat the children.

Even in rural Ireland six decades ago, there were souls who could imagine and practice commanding respect through consistent care and presence, rather than demanding it, or else a cane for the palm or clout about the head.

Yet I feel we may still have further to go.

Kids are too often cajoled and berated and reprimanded, not nurtured and encouraged and inspired.

It is not hard to spot the difference between the kids who were raised in these different ways.

The priority should be, in my humble opinion, building genuine connections between them and consistent, caregiving adults.

The kids raised by way of castigation need to be built from the ground up, not beaten down further.

This takes both time and patience, two increasingly rare and precious commodities.

Two Sweets: Two Quotes to Fill Your Heart

Here are two quotes from a friend and a colleague, both working in pastoral roles:

“If you don’t have foundations within your life then what’s the point! You be amen’ing in my staff meetings. I say things like I don’t want to hear anyone asking why a child is late?! I want to hear you saying it’s so nice to see you!”

“I was going to put him on report card but his stress levels went through the roof and I will be honest, I think punishments at the moment is not the right thing for him. He needs a buddy… and role model.”

Tell me what you think, please: do the kids to whom they refer need to be berated or beaten instead?

It’s been a hot minute, gentle reader, three months to be precise.

What’s the story morning glory?

What’s happenin’ captain?

What’s the word hummingbird?

This blog has been a public repository for my thoughts and musings on everything interesting (and not) going on in my life over the last few years.

From the magic to the mundane, the tragic to the ecstatic, I have chirped away about work, play, love, loss, travel, family, fate, finance, philosophy, boxing, volunteering – all sorts.

Something I am yet to write about is starting and running my own business.

A new hat I started wearing last year is that of the ‘entrepreneur’.

Had you said to me a couple of years ago I would be sporting such a hat, I doubt I would have believed you. I don’t really wear hats.

Yet here I am, a ‘Founder’ and ‘Director’ of a social enterprise (a company incorporated for a social purpose, to address social issues).

Cohering my thoughts and feelings about life into words – both handwritten onto a page and rattled out onto a laptop – matters to me, odd as it may sound.

Humans need to express themselves, be that by way of forcefully exhaling breath into the mouth of a musical instrument, fingering a wet lump of clay rotating on a potters wheel, or choreographically gyrating to the sound of a hand beating a goatskin drum.

Horses for courses.

My mode of creative expression – my ‘thing’, the medium through which I can express and communicate what is unique about me and the human condition – is the written word.

Decidedly unsexy next to playing an instrument or dancing, perhaps, but we move.

So why have I not written about Apollo yet?

A couple of reasons.

Outside of sessions with young people – yay – and meetings with adults – yawn – I have to write session recordings and reports and emails and all else.

Come evening, my want to sit down and write some more has waned (my recent introduction to the brilliant mind-bending psycho-moral saga that is Breaking Bad has nothing to do with it, okay).

Partly it’s due to my irreducible imposter syndrome. ‘Who am I to write about business, as if I know a damn thing?’

And, in no small part, because I didn’t know where to start.

Apollo will soon celebrate its first anniversary – one full year in business. 

Approaching an anniversary seems as good a time as any to start writing something – anything! – about business, in general and mine specifically.

And I will start from the tippy-top, in a good ole fashioned ramble.

Strap in.

We start, I said, from the top: the apex, the alpha, the A, the name of the thing.

The company’s name is Apollo Developments Ltd.

“Sounds like a building company”, said one of my friends.

It does indeed, and not by mistake.

Incorporating a company, you cannot just give it a name – ‘Apollo Ltd’ would be rejected by the registrar.

Usually there would be another word indicating the type of business carried on by the company, like ‘Apollo Printers Ltd’, ‘Apollo Dog Walkers Ltd’, ‘Apollo Private Equity Holdings (Upper South East Asia) Ltd’, and so on.

Another Liam Doherty owns another company in Guernsey, called Aran Developments Limited.

The way my old man has conducted his business as a building subcontractor has been been exemplary – generally, but particularly to me as a founder.

There are many things I am trying to emulate in my ‘developments’ of young people, which I shan’t bore you with or embarrass the old man with, but a few of the headlines are:

– Build faster and better, finish the job quicker and to a higher standard than competitors

– Attraction not promotion, focus on the work first and the rest will follow

– Back yourself and learn your lessons on the way

– Find good men, pay them well

Apollo is a very different company, but many of the same principles apply, as does the word ‘developments’ – only they are of young people rather than buildings.

Most of the young people referred to Apollo have suffered developmental trauma, which negatively impacts outcomes in later life – they are far more likely to cause harm to themselves, to their family, and society at large.

It is of critical importance that there are positive interventions in the lives of these young people, and that this is done ‘faster and better’, with a proactivity and level of care and consistency that is becoming increasingly absent in our established services.

If not built properly, they pose a risk to themselves and those around them.

Or, in the immortal words of self-emancipated slave Frederick Douglass, and Apollo’s adopted raison d’etre: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair weak men.”

So, that’s the ‘Developments’ aspect.

Now, to ‘Apollo.’

There is a motif played out throughout Greco-Roman mythology, most popularly explicated by Nietzsche, of an oppositional yin-yang dance between Apollo and Dionysus.

Apollo is a sun-god, god of light, a god of clarity, of reason.

Apollo is a warrior, an archer to be precise – and precise he is. Apollo has clear purpose, his aim is true.

Dionysus, by stark contrast, is a dark and murky god, wine-sodden and hermaphroditic, overwhelming but alluring. Wild, unknowable.

Apollo is god of order, Dionysus god of chaos.

Apollo is culture, routine and security, Dionysus is nature, brute instinct, survival of the fittest.

Apollo is integration and coherence, Dionysus dissolution and intoxication.

Apollo is god of light and sight, clarity of purpose, aiming in a definite direction.

Dionysus is oceanic depth, all-enveloping, inviting you to sink into oblivion.

As I mentioned before, there is a yin-yang interplay here; one god is not right and the other wrong, one good and the other bad – it is context dependent.

The context in which I name my company Apollo is the Dionysian state in which our young people find themselves: in chaos, chronic uncertainty, and with inconsistent support. Feed all of this into pubescent hormonal upheaval, the result is listless, nihilistic and destructive teenagers.

It is wholly feasible – indeed, something I notice with some young people I work with in my pastoral support role at a private college – that a touch of the Dionysian, some spontaneity and chaos, a break from established order, might be of benefit.

Generally, the kids Apollo supports have more than enough of the Dionysian, and are craving the clear boundaries, routine and consistency that many of the college students are blessed to have.

The word ‘sin’ is derived from an Ancient Greek archery term, havatia, which means literally ‘to miss the mark’.

These kids need help aiming in a better direction.

And that, dear reader, is why the company is named Apollo.

And because Apollo is my middle name.

Life Update

It has been a hot minute, gentle reader.

I sat down two months ago to write my twice-monthly bloggo, and found myself distracted, thinking of the other things I needed to work on.

Life has been busy, hectic, chucka-feckin-block – and happily so – hence the wee hiatus.

Where to start!

There has been a few interesting things going on:

• I took a leap of faith this spring, establishing a social enterprise to do the work that needs to be done with disadvantaged young people in Guernsey (intense, challenging, indescribably rewarding).
• I am half-way through a counselling skills qualification (intense, interesting, applicable to my roles in work and life).
• I completed a 3-day kettlebell instructor certification (intense – especially with one working arm – drinking from a fire-hose of information) and have been personal training half-a-dozen clients (intense, rewarding).
• I am one term into a part-time pastoral support role at Elizabeth College (intense, rewarding).
• I am coaching and training alongside a super group of both beginner and competitive amateur boxers (intense, rewarding, cathartic).

I cannot wait to share some stories and reflections on all of these adventures with you over the next few weeks.

This year has been quite the ride.

The mots du jour for me, you might have guessed, have been intense and rewarding.

As intense and demanding as things have been – physically, cognitively, emotionally – it has been so intensely rewarding in all of these respects.

This has been a growth season: physically, cognitively, emotionally. I have been challenged every single day, and have grown as a result.

I bumped into an old colleague the other day who said, “You certainly haven’t waited for the grass to grow under your feet, Liam!”

Received into the once ignorant ears of a reformed coaster, this was, shall we say, validating to hear.

It is a far cry from the exhortations and bollockings my ears were once so used to and tuned out from throughout my teenage years.

A Letter Addressed to Me, to You, to Me, to You…

I repeat variations of the following in this blog often, about life-urgency, intensity, boldness, chirp.

I write these words to ‘you,’ but that ‘you’ is ‘me’ – past-me and present-me.

I share them with you in the knowledge that I am not the only human with whom they may resonate, and they are worth sharing for the reader who gets the same sense that life is precious and fleeting, and we should not squander this most precious and finite of resources.

Do not mistake me for preaching.

I am practising, reflecting and sharing.

In a frightfully preachy manner.

Life-Urgency

Life is short. Often, brutally so.

Being oblivious or complacent in this regard, misspending your time on inconsequential squabbles and petty interests, comes at the cost of the very life-urgency necessary to live, properly, to the fullest.

You are not guaranteed a single minute of your one and only life.

Each second with which you are blessed is a precious and irretrievable gift, which you can use to vote for the person you want to be, or fritter away, knowing in your deepest self you are not doing what you want to do or becoming who you want to be.

Understand and realise: life is short, you will never be as young as you are now; what is special and unique about you as a human needs to be recognised and valued, firstly by you, then worked on and brought to bear on reality so it can be recognised by and bring value to others.

Reality will be lesser for your refusal to do that work, to recognise your value, to become that person you could and should be, and make your unique impact on the world.

Stop planning, start doing.

To be, you must do.

Once done, you become.

Planning and researching and mapping out your opportunities with every possible contingency and disaster scenario is procrastination dressed up as action.

Cultivate your life-urgency and chirp and boldness and intensity through relentless action in the direction which you want to travel.

No child learns to walk by lying on their back and planning how they are going to engage each muscle, plotting how they might use their parent’s hands as supports, and mapping where they are going to take each step, how to catch themselves before they fall, and how to tumble safely if they do.

Children learn to walk by trying to walk, falling several hundred times, and the support, for the most part, appears along the way.

All of your wonderful ideas and grand plans and thoughts for the future are of themselves meaningless; without action, futile.

– I am going to do this when…

– I am going to start this after…

– I am going to do this before I can do this…

All self-imposed obstacles, cheap and convenient excuses to avoid the work that needs to be done to get to the place you want to go, to become the person you want to be.

The sorts of life-affirming ‘I am’ statements you might want to substitute these excuses with, in my ever-humble opinion, are:

– I am going to work on this until I achieve this.

– I am committed to doing this.

– I am becoming the person I want to be by doing this.

Take Action

Embolden yourself.

Enrich your life with some life-urgency.

Funerals are not just for family and friends, honey.

You are going to be pushing flowers.

Take action.

Take risks.

Time waits for no-one.

Your time is a-coming.

Death whispers in your ear, daring you to live.

Why not commit to living with shamelessly bold intensity?

Do not waste words about your intention of doing this or that – just do it.

Balance your newfound intensity with good chirp.

And enjoy the ride.

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Let me know if you resonated with this piece. Some of the messages I’ve received – people restarting exercise, starting their own blogs, reevaluating their relationships – have really inspired me, as well as spurring me to keep writing and publishing.

Huzzah.

I’ve been feeling powerful recently.

In the physical realm, especially, I’ve had a searing energy, honed and expressed through sport.

Boxing, kettlebells, basketball, a little bit of netball and dodgeball, sea-swimming to keep it fresh.

I am in the thick of it as a boxing coach, often ending up sparring my trainees.

As a PT, too, I lead by example and perform the workouts alongside my clients.

Kettlebells-wise, I am looking forward to a 3-day instructor course this weekend. You have to complete 100 reps with a 24kg ‘bell in 5 minutes to pass, and I’m hammering 40kg snatches every other morning in preparation.

The thought of boxing competitively again has even crossed my ape-like mind of late.

Why bore you with this information?

I had my first basketball game in about 4 years yesterday.

Warming up, I felt so relaxed, bouncy and powerful. This was going to be a good game.

In the scramble to get to the basket, my arm is pulled downwards in a painfully familiar manner, and my shoulder dislocates out the back, pinning my arm to my side.

Fortunately, there is a physiotherapist on hand to pop the fecker back in, so I didn’t have to suffer the rigmarole of going up to A&E.

This was the most enjoyable dislocation I’ve had, in fact, for some reason smiling between grimaces, my attention turning to the players who are squeamishly attempting to watch it being manoeuvred and yanked back into its socket.

As I said to my sister, who’s been plagued with the same shoulder injury, I would much rather suffer it myself than see her dislocate her shoulder again.

What now?

In previous injuries, including the last ‘big’ one I had dislocating my shoulder in a boxing bout, and others had through basketball and rugby, I would be in a fecking fizz.

The sky is falling.

I remember after one such dislocation, maybe 18 or 19 years old, I bought a bottle of wine and drank it by myself sat on the Bridge, chain smoking roll-ups in a sulk.

Presently, I am contentedly en route to a kettlebell certification I have little chance of participating in effectively, let alone passing, with a couple of knowns and unknowns.

Knowns:

– Right arm is out of action for a hot minute

– Doubly triply grateful I have my health and happiness (especially as I see at the airport a lady using a breathing mask and a man with one leg)

Unknowns:

– The amount of time until I can be a participative coach and PT and athlete

– How far I can get through a 100 snatch test using just my left arm

As ridiculous as it sounds, I feel like this injury is already a net-positive.

The irony of feeling peak-powerful one minute to taking a literal minute to put a shirt on is not lost on me – it’s a lesson.

And I’m going to learn a lot about myself this weekend and over the next couple of months.

So huzzah to that, dear shags.

Carpe diem.

Seize the day!

A beautiful ancient little ditty we owe to the Roman poet Horace.

“In modern English,” Wikipedia informs me in a reliably scholarly tone, “the expression ‘YOLO’, meaning ‘you only live once’, expresses a similar sentiment.”

The full line which carpe diem opens is lesser known.

“Seize the day, put very little trust in tomorrow.”

Charming thought it is, it smacks of a reckless homeflight faith I recall from a hymn I once recited regularly at St Joseph’s Church.

“Follow me, follow me, leave your homes and family, leave your fishing nets and boats upon the shore.”

Of course, there is something enchanting and romantic about a ‘live for today, sod the morrow’ attitude.

That’s also the sort of sentiment appropriate to my friend Don and I drinking a bottle of homemade blackberry vodka between us on the 9am boat over to Sark.

Indeed it’s an enchanting attitude, intoxicating even, but simply not sustainable.

I came across a very similar but totally different quote that resonated more deeply with me, from the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu.

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

More martial, equally ancient, and less of the pious poet about this one.

The ditty cuts to the quick of an aspect of reality.

We have opportunities, we have things we could do.

Opportunities are literally infinite, giving us a comparably minuscule set of things we can do.

The point is, out of that comparably minuscule set of opportunities, there are some that you should seize.

To seize, according to trusty ole Wiki, is to ‘take forcible possession of something eagerly and decisively.’

Not seize the day – whatever the hell a day entails, potentially day-drinking? – and sod the morrow.

Go all in.

Pour your life energy into an opportunity as if you live only once and have but few – be it in sport or education or love or business.

The beautiful and exciting thing – what seizes me about this quote – is this.

If you take an opportunity, and truly seize the damn thing, then opportunities explode out of it in every direction.

You grab a couple other of those suckers, and suddenly you have more opportunities than you know what to do with.

Fortune favours the bold, who through action make fortune theirs.

Huzzah.