Finding new in the old

--> something you can get a lot of value from

Kathy and I went to the theatre last week.

Nothing high-brow - just a comedy from the “Play That Goes Wrong” folks.

I say “just” - we laughed a lot :)

We ended up staying overnight in Manchester to avoid the hassle of rushing off for a train home. And while we were in town we explored for a couple of days.

We both moved to Manchester from opposite ends of the country back in ‘85 So we’ve been here nearly 40 years. Firstly as students living in town, then moving out to the nearby countryside.

It’s been a long time since we just wandered around rather than bustling off between places. And of course, things have changed a lot.

We ended up wandering round the canals in Ancoats - all gentrified vs the post-industrial decay we’d seen in the 80s.

We discovered history we didn’t know about. St. Michael's Flags and Angel Meadow that Friedrich Engels had called “Hell on Earth” - now turned into a memorial park by the local community.

A weird little bookshop full of proper lit, along with a couple of beer pumps.

After arriving home on Friday I ended up trawling through some of my old blog posts from years ago trying to find the source of a model I use a lot - the “progressive sequence of agreements”.

I couldn’t find it, of course. But going through my old stuff was rather like wandering round Manchester with fresh eyes.

I found all sorts of ideas I’d written about where my thoughts have now changed a little. or in some cases a lot.

I rediscovered things I’d forgotten - some of them rather good.

Last time I wrote that two great sources of ideas for your emails were things you’ve just done or things you’ve just read.

This email is an example of the former. But don’t overlook re-reading your own material as a source of ideas too.

Your writing won’t change like a city changes. But how you receive and interpret it will. Sometimes you’ll find things you’d forgotten but are really rather good and worth resurrecting.

Other times your ideas will have moved on and you’ll be able to update them.

All grist for the mill.

- Ian