by Miles Harrop | Jul 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
A small word can be a big light
You might be the first kind sentence that somebody hears today
oh hello
during my ebullient exercises at the gym this morning I was flattered by a small compliment I wondered how tiny words can make a massive difference
because in business we tend to worship the big things
I started wondering that maybe the real problem is not the people need more fiery inspiration
maybe the real problem is that many people are flying around in the dark waiting for a small signal that they're not completely useless that they matter in some way
naturally I got distracted and started searching for fireflies
I discovered that Fireflies are not actually flies their Beatles
which means that nature encourage occasionally has a branding problem but a firefly does not light up the whole Forest it gives off tiny flashes which actor signals for other five-flies to know I see you you not alone you matter you are worthy
shorter of becoming a firefly myself I became I Began thinking maybe encouragement works in the same way. Could we become fireflies and make the world a better place?
it doesn't need violin or confetti or somebody shouting believe harder perhaps it's a small act a change the can make such a difference
a small word of encouragement can be a big light
so here's today's question needs a small light from you today?
and before you go here is your business blessing for today
may you go forth and prosper
May your little spark not be urinated on by the cynical ferret of constipation
have a magnificently kind and oddly profitable day you wonderly wonderful busy brain
Smile warmly
by Miles Harrop | Jul 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
Mr Guru Says, “Conceive It, Believe It and Achieve It.” Please Don’t.
If you achieved every idea that you could conceive, you would need a warehouse, a therapist and possibly a licence for inflatable caterpillars.
Oh hello.
During my mental meanderings this morning, I was somewhat disinspired by internet self-help guru Mr Luxury Catamaran Guru, who says that whatever you can conceive and believe, you can achieve.
And I started wondering:
Should I go out and believe in and achieve every single thing I can conceive of and believe in?
Because this morning, before breakfast, I had already conceived of a babygrow spacesuit for Elon Musk’s Mars families, and a seven-metre-long inflatable caterpillar called Stuart, which doubles as storage space for very long fishing rods, children’s spacesuits and acorns for the oak trees they will plant on Mars.
It’s a winner. Stuart has presence.
But then I started wondering: Maybe the real problem is not that busy brains lack ideas.
Maybe the real problem is that some of us conceive in such an efferent and occasionally effluent manner that we confuse imagination with invitation.
Just because an idea arrives doesn’t mean that it deserves a company registration.
Naturally, I got distracted and searched for acorns.
Did you know that an oak tree produces thousands of acorns, but only a tiny number ever become oak trees? Most get trampled or eaten by greedy squirrels.
Some ideas deserve planting, some deserve testing, and some deserve to be fed to the squirrels of experience.
So, here is today’s question: How can you test and validate the need for your seven-metre-long inflatable caterpillar called Stuart?
And remember, you saw it here first.
Let there be rampant creativity.
But in business, let there also be purpose. Validated purpose.
And before you go, here is your business blessing for today:
May you go forth and prosper.
May your own acorns of imagination find purchase in nourishing soil and not be banished in the excrement of excited otters.
Or something.
Anyway, have a suspiciously useful and magnificently unbothered day, you wondrous busy brain.
Smile meaningfully.
by Miles Harrop | Jul 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
Most of Your Priorities Are Just Noise, Deafening Your Business Sensibilities
Oh hello.
During my cognitive cluttering this morning, I was pondering how busy brains should decide what to shine their lights onto.
I was wondering if my rocket-fast brain may not have too many things to do. Perhaps the problem is that I’ve just not separated the rocket thrusters from the decorative noise.
Naturally, I got distracted and Googled rocket thrusters. I found out that the main thrusters provide power in one main direction. The smaller movements are achieved with gimbaling and reaction control systems.
But there’s no point in using the little controls if the big thrust doesn’t do its job. You don’t want to wiggle-waggle before you thrust.
Perhaps we need to get the big thrusts and direction sorted before the noise and wiggle-waggles.
Some things need your rocket fuel now. Other things need to be left on the launchpad in the darkness.
So, today’s question is: Which of the noises are you attending to while your thrusters rocket you in the wrong direction?
Not every buzz deserves your rocket fuel.
And before you go, here is your business blessing for today:
May the thankful theme of thrust be the right rocket for you, and not the booted foot of a belligerent, boasting bigot.
Or something.
Anyway, have a stupendously fabulous day, you magnificent busy brains.
Smile seraphically.
Blissful. Serene. Innocent. Angelic.
by Miles Harrop | Jul 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
A man with a small child walks past a toilet cubicle on a dark stormy night in a Johannesburg university.
He misses his small brown dog, whose name must remain a mystery. The child’s name remains as mysterious as the little brown dogs. Which makes you wonder why they are even mentioned.
He tut-tuts at the rubbing noises emanating from the cubicle as well as the clear massaging of one body against another. He wonders what the world has come to.
What the world had come to for me was indeed most worthy of a thought or two.
He sees two pairs of feet facing in the same direction. Patches of brown goo cover the pairs of feet.
One pair belongs to me.
And this is my story.
“When Did You Become Weak and Give Up?”
“When did you become weak and give up?” asked my friend Michael when visiting me at my part time job one evening.
I was shocked.
Mortified.
Insulted.
Betrayed, even.
A presumptuous and insulting question deserves an equally presumptuous and insulting answer, I decided. A real humdinger. Something so quick, clever and off-the-cuff that it would flatten his comment and leave him grovelling in apology.
I could not think of one.
So I just stood there. I stood my ground, and continued to be insulted and offended in a deeply presumptuous way.
Michael didn’t notice. Michael was not a good listener.
So he carried on insulting and offending me most grievously and gratuitously.
“Just come back to the gym,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Physically, I was improving. Mentally, as usual, things were questionable.
“I can’t,” I said.
Hurts.
Need help.
I added some more exculpatory evidence “Dr… mutter… mumble… grumble… can’t ever train… have to play tennis,” I explained, offering him my best tragic monologue.
“Look, you’re already walking around like a grumbly, grumpy, crooked little man,” said Michael. “You may as well be a crooked man with big biceps. Although your biceps will never be as big as mine,” he added, flexing his unfairly Arnold-like “guns”.
“You’re clearly in pain and unhappy. You might as well come and see what happens in the gym and be in pain and unhappy there”
He was partially right, of course.
It had been four months since my little oopsie-doopsie on the motorbike. Physically, I had made great strides. I was walking around. I was back at school. I had returned to my student job of being abused at a local steak ranch.
Physically, I was improving. Mentally, as usual, things were questionable.
The Drs Rooms
Cedric Father and Mother Dearest did their best to tell me what I was bad at so that I could “improve.” Strangely, this did not generate the inspirational gravitas one might hope for.
Until my bodybuilding had arrived on the scene my future in academics and sports looked a bit grim. Bodybuilding had been my saving grace. After the accident it was almost as if I had this one important thing that meant so much to me had been ripped away from me. Ripped away so soon and so unfairly.
The orthopaedic surgeons had said I could not be expected to walk straight again, as if I had ever been walking straight previously.
“Weight training,” said Dr Knox (the orthopaedic surgeon, while checking my testicles during a back examination), “is only for overgrown toddlers and genetic throwbacks. It’s right out of the question.”
Father nodded his head in rapt and repugnant agreement. Weight training was certainly not seemly and parliamentary behaviour, and now he had support in his views. “Acting like an overgrown toddler! What are you?” asked Cedric father.
“You can walk around a bit,” the great Dr added. “No running, though.”
“What about sex?” I asked.
“Hmmm,” Supreme and Invisible Oneness Dr replied. “I am married… but you do look a bit like a girl.”
“No, I mean for me, not for you.”
“Tennis,” said my father, “He asked if he could play tennis. He has a problem with his pronunciation and hearing” Father continued, helpfully, to Dr Knox. “And that’s not the only problem he’s got. If I told you the whole list you’d vomit. He’s also a bit slow…” He tapped his superior and perfect forehead for emphasis.
This was not going well. A medical hand was creeping around in areas that were nowhere near my back. I was not going to be able to walk upright again, let alone train with weights. My bodybuilding career, my identity, my self esteem, my pride, all cut short by fathers appetite for salad greens and Italian pasta.
There is a silence that occurs mentally during that split second of an accident or catastrophic incident. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just forgot everything. It’s a blissful silence.
And then you wake up.
“Time to wake up to the reality my boy” chorused Knox and Cedric Father, “You will never train with weights again”.
If you’ve ever had an itch that really needs a scratch, then you may relate to how I was feeling at the time. I was not done. I was really itchy. And not just because some hairy medical hand was tickling me. It’s an itch that only a manifestation of my potential could scratch. The inner and desperate need to amplify my strange and unusual gifts.
Have you been there?
It (whatever “it” is) has been taken away from you, but you are not done. I was not done, and neither are you. Until your last breath on this earth you are not done. If only there had been someone in that room who believed in me, because the people present certainly did not.
I was not done with bodybuilding and I was not done pursuing the things I wanted to pursue.
I had not made my point, have you made yours?
It’s how I approach many things in my life, including my studies, my fitness, and my work:
#ImNotGoingBack and #ImNotDoneYet.
“I am not going back to being that skinny boy, I am not done!” I cried out, the tears of defeat beginning to run.
“Sounds like a mantra,” chuckled the indivisible and all mighty wise Dr, “but facts are facts, mantras are NOT facts”.
“Indeed” agreed mother, “a mantra is a type of fish with wings”.
“Mantra, Mother Dearest. Not manta.” I said.
“Flying fish don’t really have wings,” added Cedric Father, helpfully. This was, of course, something he would know. Nobody liked to argue with Cedric Father, so we left it there.
Steak Ranch, Donkey Fur and Influence 101
Dr Knox’s creeping hand brushed against my testicles once again. It was time to leave and be depressed all on my own.
I’d been back at school for a month, not catching up on my work. I’d also started working as a casual waiter at a steak ranch in the neighbourhood. Which is of course where Michael found me. I said this earlier, go and look.
A delightful eating establishment where you could be simultaneously abused by quick-tempered managers and have great job satisfaction serving BBQ-flavoured meaty things of extremely suspicious origin and genesis.
“This is certainly not lamb shank,” complained an insufferable know-it-all customer. “It’s got orange fur on it. And what the flip is this?” he asked, pulling something unmentionable out of the sauce.
“Well,” I said, “you’ve got some free combos as well.”
“I don’t eat pork,” he snarled.
“To be fair, I don’t think this is pork either,” I replied. “That fur looks like it comes from a donkey. Pigs don’t have orange fur like that.” I pointed helpfully to the carpet-like substance on his plate. He had a point. Part of the meat could arguably be described as a rib, or a knuckle, or a skull. I wasn’t really an expert, so we just stared at it together.
I poked it with my finger.
“At least it’s dead,” I said. “Look, it doesn’t move.”
“Could be sleeping,” said Ruth, my friend and fellow worker, as she walked past with a returned meaty, pork-ish thing.
I’m sure you get the picture.
My short-lived but successful sporting career in bodybuilding had been taken off my menu of earthly delights.
It was good work when it came to tips, though. You needed to grovel a bit and laugh at stupid jokes (not too sure how that’s changed in my life). You learned the fundamentals of being a salesperson:
- You identify needs and wants.
- You let customers act like wine connoisseurs and experts.
- You make recommendations and gently guide them in certain directions.
- You sell the sizzle, not the steak. Especially if the steak may once have answered to the name “Pertunia the Friendly Donkey.”
It was here, in my first training ground of sales, persuasion and influence, that my first coach came to drag me screaming, shouting, resisting back to the gym. In doing so, he completed one of the most important unifying circles of my life.
My weekends had become a big party of fun, fleshy, earthly pleasures since my return to the real world. Most serious athletes don’t actually spend too much time in the real world. Its benefits and pleasures are greatly overstated. I only returned to the real world because it had been thrust upon me due to catastrophic circumstance.
My short-lived but successful sporting career in bodybuilding had been taken off my menu of earthly delights.
There is a silence that occurs mentally during that split second of an accident or catastrophic incident. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just forgot everything. It’s a blissful silence, a blessed moment of peace, oblivion, and nothingness.
And then you wake up.
“It’s time to wake up,” my mother would say.
“It’s time to wake up,” said Michael now. “You are going downhill. What a waste.”
“Screw you,” I said. “I’m happy.” I reached for a Camel cigarette. “By the way, you smell like an otter. You eat too much fish,” I added, thinking of the worst thing I could say to my old friend.
“You smell like alcohol and smoke and you look like a has-been,” he said.
There was no reply to that comment. Michael 1, Miles 0.
“I can’t train anymore,” I told him. “My bodybuilding days are over. Boo frigging hoo,”
Michael didn’t listen. Michael was not a good listener.
The First Step Back: One Set
So yes, Michael’s insults got me to visit the gym again on a Monday afternoon, screaming and thrashing and resisting and grumpy and all that.
He ignored all of that and helped me do what I needed to do.
A good coach does not actually tell you what to do.
You already know what you need to do.
A good coach just stands there and refuses to accept your bullshit.
“Let’s just start with a little bit of bench press,” he said. “Just one set and then you can go home.”
I did one set of light bench press.My muscles tasted something and the taste was good.
I didn’t go home.
I did another set and it was good. And another set. And another set.
Soon my chest and shoulders begged for more. The muscles pumped up in a way that they hadn’t pumped up for nearly five months.
Arnold Schwarzenegger described the bodybuilding pump as better than an orgasm.
He was right.
I hadn’t experienced either in a suitably authentic way for a long time. My chest wanted more. Other parts of my anatomy always wanted more.
The next day was legs.
“We cant squat”, I told Michael. “Drs orders”.
Michael was not a good listener.
“Thats fine,” said Michael, “you can do one set of leg extensions and then go home.”
I didn’t go home.
I had been told never, ever to put a weight on my shoulders again because my back would simply break. Squatting was definitely out.
“Screw that,” said Michael.
“Screw that,” I agreed.
I loaded up the squat bar and did ten sets of squats. The next day my legs cried.
I didn’t.
I was certainly not going back to being a skinny boy and I was definitely not done.
The Toilets
I would tell you about the thrill of winning a trophy of being applauded by 1000s of people, of the camaraderie of bodybuilders “backstage”. But that you can read anywhere.
The real magic is how two boys from a small town in the Eastern Cape that nobody really knew, could do what needed to be done to make their skins look brown for the stage lights. And that, dear reader, is what really happens behind those toilet cubicle doors.
There are certain things that go on behind toilet cubicle doors that are deemed unparliamentary and grimy, but not today.
Today is the bronzing of parts.
“Its all running down my legs.”
“Lift your pants.”
“No, stand still, I need to get in there.”
“No, you’re rubbing too hard.”
The tools of the trade are not what you may think.
No hypodermic syringes, no drugs, no elaborate electronic toys.
It was self-tan. Bronze instant tan. Small bottles of olive oil and baby oil.
That rather uncomfortable walk we did past all the “normal people” as we slithered into the last toilet cubicle to strip down and check that our artificially bronzed skins had been equally attended to. Especially those pesky, hard to reach bits.
Resilience Can be the Hardest Bit to Reach
And on the topic of those pesky “Hard to Reach Bits”. You will have “motorbike accident” seasons; a business failure, a toxic job, a divorce, a financial mess. Resilience may be hard to reach.
In those seasons, your brain lies to you: “you’re done, you’ll never be that person again, just drift”.
A good coach doesn’t “fix you”, they stand next to you, ignore your drama, and say “Just do one set. Then decide.”
Sometimes they rub what you need into those “hard to reach bits”.
Your identity as “the person who can still do hard things” is rebuilt through tiny proofs, not big vision boards
You may think that you are done. You are not done. You might just need a Michael, a boring little plan, and one very unglamorous first set.
To all those Michaels out there, especially my Michael. Keep doing the great job that you are doing. You never know how much a simple word of encouragement may impact someone’s life. Thank you for helping me on my path.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill.
“Fall 7, Rise 8”. (Nana korobi ya oki) Japanese Proverb.
A Man with the Child and No Little Brown Dog
Later, we stumble out of the back door of the theatre where we have just stood in our underpants hours earlier. There is peace, anticlimax and the lingering dopamine rush of achievement. The last stragglers of supporters whimpering their last acknowledgements.
We walk to the car, trophies in hand.
We are tired in that just-won-a-battle, muscles-empty, brain-fried kind of way. I close my eyes when we sit in the car.
Exhaustion begins to envelop me like custard sometimes covers a slipper, should you be such a person that pours custard onto slippers…just me then?
As I begin to slumber, drool and drift, I dream of a man…
Walking his small child…
In a nondescript bathroom…
On a dark and stormy night in a Johannesburg university.
He tut-tuts as he looks into the cubicle which has discharged its noisy rubbing participants.
He sees that the blue tiles have brown smears and he sees empty bottles of baby oil and an odd pill container.
He covers the child’s eyes, whose name must for now still remain one of life’s great mysteries, (as indeed must his little brown dogs name). He wonders what the world has come to but, even more importantly he ponders one of life’s great question
Why has he never been invited into a toilet cubicle?
by Miles Harrop | Jul 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
It’s a Sunday.
I should be happier.
So there I was. I’m standing in field, in the beautiful Eastern Cape and there is, objectively, a very pretty woman standing very close to me.
I am on a date.
I am also moving rocks around in a derelict patch of bush near the freeway like a confused archaeologist searching for answers in all of the wrong places.
I am, for all intents, an insufferable romantic. Could this be it? A second date with my True Love, written in the stars?
I did not find what I was looking for that day.
I did not find True Love either.
This was a first date and it was getting awkward.
I only found where it wasn’t. I guess sometimes that is all that you are getting.
But I am on a date.
But why am I doing that thing with the rocks in a field?
“Shoulder,” said Igor.
“It’s never the shoulder,” I said.
This was a first date and it was getting awkward.
But I get ahead of myself.
The real question is not whether I found it, whatever “it” is.
The real question is this: What is enough on a first date to avoid abject and voluminous cascades of disheartening disappointment?
Disappointment, in my experience, is usually built on illegitimate expectations. At sixteen I was once told that if you get it all on the first date, there’s not much point in a second date. This wisdom came from my friend Michael, who was, by his own account, an expert on such matters.
At sixteen, having not experienced some of “it”, or any of “it”, let alone “all of it”, I was not entirely sure what he meant.
The Facts of Life
My experience of women had been restricted to an imaginary girlfriend called Slob and the occasional snog with my pillow. Kissing someone other than my mother and having sex with someone other than myself were interesting but vaguely defined parameters.
Many of my friends had brothers and sisters who educated them in the ways of romance. A so-called only child like myself required either good friends or a sit-down with my parents at the appropriate age.
I wanted the former.
I got the latter.
The appropriate age was apparently sixteen, a few days before my first date. The setting was the ten metres between the bottom of our driveway and the top of it. Mother Dearest had clearly drawn the short straw.
“Do you know about love and stuff?” she asked.
I did.
I had fallen in love before.
The first time I fell in love, I knew it was the right person. I had known her for a day and the universe had arranged itself accordingly.
Sex education, the way the British do it: brief, awkward, and delivered as though everyone involved would rather be discussing a damp squib.
She was not perfect-looking. I mean, who is? But I loved her from the top of her strange-shaped headwear to the tips of her cute, slightly oversized hobbit feet.
She could also, according to her, levitate by applying pressure to her nose and ear while whistling. She taught the technique to me. Despite repeated effort, plus several nosebleeds and a mild sense of personal betrayal, I never managed it. She only levitated behind closed doors so that the bad ones wouldn’t see. I never actually saw her do it, but she said she could and that was enough for me.
On reflection, she didn’t know she was my girlfriend. It was complicated.
Jane appeared at Uncle Derek’s farmhouse as if from nowhere and instantly we became friends. We spent our holiday looking for four-leaf clovers, jumping off haystacks, and generally enjoying the sort of pastoral threesome only children can manage without scandal.
On the last day Jane decided to have a birthday, which meant I had to buy her a present using the spending power of a nine-year-old. The village shop offered precious few choices once one removed liquor, cigarettes, gambling and smut. I was left with two realistic options: false-teeth cleanser or crayons and a colouring book.
I chose love.
She caught me wrapping the present and I thought perhaps, now, she might hold my hand or something.
You sicko. I know what you thought. I was nine. I meant the full range of innocent romantic possibility.
“Yeauuuch! Crayons!” she said. “No one uses those any more.”
Then she turned her large hobbit feet and removed herself from my life. And good riddance too.
Anyway, she was wrong. I still use crayons, although I’m not sure I should be saying that publicly.
By the following week I had forgotten about Jane and fallen in love with somebody else who also never found out. There have been quite a few of those in my life. Small missed opportunities for sexual opera.
Back in the driveway, Mother Dearest pressed on.
“Well, you know how everything works. The birds and the bees. And all of that.”
Why insects and airborne agricultural metaphors needed to be involved in the reason I was carrying a condom in my wallet remains unclear.
“I do,” I said. “And all that.”
“All is good,” she beamed. “You’re a clever little sausage face.”
That was the full extent of my preparation for romance.
Sex education, the way the British do it: brief, awkward, and delivered as though everyone involved would rather be discussing damp wallpaper.
The First Kiss
(Featuring Burglar Bars and a Bull Mastiff)
My first actual date was with a girl I instantly fell in love with and hoped to marry one day.
No surprise there. I fell in love the way some people fall down stairs, enthusiastically and with no sense of risk.
The awkwardness of the goodnight kiss was not an issue because we had already kissed. Admittedly, it had been through the burglar bars of her bedroom window at her father’s heavily fortified house, but beggars cannot afford to be connoisseurs.
I had never been kissed and did not know how.
“You stick your tongue in her mouth and wriggle it around,” said Michael, expert counsel on the matter of women.
“Like I’m licking out an ice-cream container?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Slowly. Let me show you.”
“Hell no,” I replied, choosing fast-moving traffic over Michael’s tongue. Michael’s tongue had been to places tongues should not visit.
An hour later I was on tiptoe at the burglar bars, craning my neck through the iron like a hopeful inmate.
We kissed for what felt like an hour, though it was probably five minutes. It was exhausting. Neck spasms and foot cramps rather denigrate the erotic nature of an occasion.
Sadly, the eroticism had not been lost on Max, the eighty-five-kilogram bull mastiff who had taken a passionate interest in my left leg, while an overexcited parrot sang “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.”
A week later, at our official first date, my mother asked from the front seat, with the girl already sitting beside me in the car, “Is she your girlfriend?”
“We’re just friends,” said the girl, breaking a piece of my heart.
“Bitch,” I muttered under my breath.
She sort of broke up with me a week later, not before being seen with one of my classmates, who had apparently also discovered the burglar bars, the bull mastiff, and the parrot.
So I learned my first real lesson in romance:
There is no such thing as a fortified house.
There are only rotating appointments.
The Date with Snakewoman
Years later I was working as a doorman at a nightclub, which is basically a postgraduate degree in human behaviour, except the “professors” are drunk, high, angry and sometimes bleed.
I met the odd person who showed interest.
One in particular stood out.
Snakewoman.
Snakewoman, as she was introduced to me, collected venomous snakes.
Which self-respecting young lady doesn’t, I thought, because I was young and stupid and had not yet learned that “quirky” and “predatory” sometimes share a postcode.
During our first date she announced that she had a tattoo somewhere on her body and made us guess where it was.
This was the early 1990s in the backwaters of the Eastern Cape. There was not much to do. So first dates, judgement, and tattoo-location guessing counted as entertainment.
I did not entirely trust the situation, so I brought Igor as a sort of prophylactic measure. Not a condom. A chaperone.
Igor had a karate black belt and a real gun which fired real bullets. He was the kind of friend you bring when a date has boot-knife energy.
“I know her,” he said. “She carries a knife in her boot. She hitchhikes home at four in the morning from the nightclub.”
You see. He was the right person to take!
This seemed reckless. Also exactly like the sort of person who would own snakes for fun.
“Fine,” I told Igor. “Sit in the back. If she reaches for a boot, grab her.”
“She’s a big girl, Miles. What if she’s just scratching her foot?” he asked. “Or lifting her skirt because of your overwhelming carnal magnetism?”
“Good point,” I said. “Just keep an eye on her legs and boots.”
To his credit, he executed the strategy flawlessly. He did not take his eyes off Snakewoman’s legs all evening.
The Matter of the Legs
To ignore the matter of Snakewoman’s legs would be to deny you vital information.
There was a lot of leg.
Her legs began down there and ended up somewhere near her middle bits, where they surrendered to something that could, very generously, be described as a skirt.
The skirt looked as if it had been applied with a very fine paintbrush by someone who ran out of paint halfway through.
I did manage to look at her face once or twice during the evening, which was already more than Igor managed.
There was not much conversation. Mostly guessing, judging, and mild survival planning.
What does one talk about on a first date?
I once read a book about first dates which advised never asking, “How was your day?” I lost the book before chapter two, which was almost certainly where the useful part lived. I have therefore had to make up my own rule set.
Over the years I have developed my own set of first-date questions, which I now offer as a public service:
- “What’s your name?”
A strong opener. Best avoided after ten years of marriage.
- “How do you know we’re not related?”
Particularly relevant in small towns.
- “When were you last tested for infectious diseases?”
Ideally your date should present a clearance certificate, like a roadworthy.
Those are the top three. Here are others that male friends have advised me not to ask.
- “Didn’t I date your Mother?”
- “Didn’t I date your Daughter?”
- “Am I dating your wife?”
- “Am I dating your husband?”
- “What’s that smell?”
Lady friends have also had input into topics not to be discussed at the first date including:
- You think that your parents are aliens.
- Venereal disease
- Symptoms of venereal disease
- Your favourite venereal disease.
- Why they are single (Anyway, may have been covered by the topics above)
- Why are you single (dont got there).
The skirt looked as if it had been applied with a very fine paintbrush by someone who ran out of paint halfway through.
“It can’t be on your legs,” I said, returning to the tattoo. “I can see them from right from the top all the way to the bottom.”
“Bottom,” murmured Igor dreamily into my ear. “It is certainly not on her bottom.”
Later, during the debrief, Igor explained how he had become so certain. Snakewoman had bent down to pick something up off the floor, exposing what he described as an almost libellous display of bits.
“I wish I could show you,” he said.
“Well, unless you have a cellphone camera ten years before one is invented, then no, you bloody can’t,” I said.
I was grumpy. Igor had enjoyed the Grand Canyon tour of Snakewoman’s lower geography. I got a polite peck on the cheek.
The myth of the guaranteed first-date favours were, in my experience, not entirely reliable.
And yet I made a mental note to arrange a second date.
Because apparently my brain learns nothing.
The Second Date
Snakewoman invited me to go snake-hunting on Sunday. No other option.I could either see her again on Sunday, or not see her again.
I wanted to see those legs again.
So I agreed.
Igor refused to come, but he did buy me a book titled Common Eastern Cape Snakes and How to Treat Their Bites.
“Are you scared of a snake bite,” he asked, “or a Snakewoman bite? Did you see the size of her incisors? She could suck a tennis ball through a tennis racket”
“Why would anyone want to suck a tennis ball through a tennis racket?” I asked.
Igor ignored me, which was one of his more useful gifts.
“Anyway, one man’s oyster is another man’s mucous” I said sagely to Igor.
“We have walked this road before”, he said. “I give it one more date. You will just get distracted by someone or something else”
“No”, I wailed through gnashed teeth, “this could be the one”
It wasn’t.
Which is why I said “So there I was”.
I did say that. Right at the beginning, when I thought that I knew where I was going with this story. Go and look.
“Anyway, one man’s oyster is another man’s mucous” I said sagely to Igor.
On a Sunday.
In bush near the freeway.
Rolling rocks around like a man searching for answers in the wrong place.
Just me and the legs.
We found no snakes.
Not one.
The entire dangerous-hobby premise collapsed, and with it the only thing making the date remotely interesting.
Snakewoman had dressed practically this time, which felt deeply unkind.
The conversation failed in that overly polite way conversations fail when you have nothing in common except the mutual desire not to be alone. By then, we no longer even shared that.
There was still no tattoo.
And I felt something quietly useful click into place.
Not romance.
Not certainty.
Something better.
The Useful Thing: Knowing What You Don’t Know
I once read that known unknowns are infinitely more valuable than unknown unknowns.
This is the trap on first dates, in business, in friendships, in life:
We think we need to know everything.
If they’re the one.
If they’ll wreck our life.
If they’ll save it.
The real skill Knowing what you don’t know. And making peace with that.
We think that if we gather enough data, the universe will hand us a guarantee.
But you never have enough information.
You don’t even have enough information about yourself.
You have patterns.
Biases.
Old injuries dressed up as preferences.
You have red flags, and the equal and opposite problem, the flags you refuse to see because the legs arrived.
And the real skill, the one nobody teaches properly, is not “open your heart” or “manifest your soulmate”.
The real skill Knowing what you don’t know. And making peace with that.
Because sometimes the only thing you discover on a first date is:
Where the tattoo isn’t,
Where the snakes aren’t,
and where you shouldn’t go again.
Which, if you think about it, is already progress.
The Close
“Why did you go out with her again?” Igor asked later. “You strike me as an intellectual. The sort who needs good conversation. Not just a leg, man.”
He had a point.
Why did I go out with a knife-wielding quasi-snake-catching woman with a tattoo in a wretchedly mysterious location?
But we never found the tattoo.
We never found a snake.
We never found enough conversation to justify the walking.
Because I thought certainty lived one date ahead.
Because I wanted the universe to answer me in a clean sentence.
Because I wanted to know everything. And I really wanted to meet my one true love.
But we never found the tattoo.
We never found a snake.
We never found enough conversation to justify the walking.
And I didn't find my one true love
I only found where it wasn’t.
And sometimes that just has to be enough.
by Miles Harrop | Jul 18, 2026 | Uncategorized
A man with a frying pan is trying to negotiate a complicated Italian pasta dish.
He badly misses the help he used to get with his culinary “creations.”
That former helper is now sitting at the kitchen table, arms folded, glaring at him.
She would love to phone a friend.
She has been banned from using her phone.
The man will be making his own supper tonight.
The man’s name is Mr Jones. First names are not important. Not when you’re sweating over a lasagne that is clearly missing something vital.
Whither those missing ingredients?
This is the story of the missing lasagne ingredients.
The Last Deal: Dark Influence and the Mrs Jones Inside Your Head
Poor old Mrs Jones stands with a dazed expression on her face.
That blank, uncomprehending look you’d expect on the blood-spattered survivor of a plane crash. I’ve never actually seen one, which is a tad unsettling, given the level of confidence I showed by lobbing that in.
“Thank you,” says Mrs Jones politely, and walks straight into the glass sliding door.
A door which is still currently completing the rat trap into which she has stumbled.
Her nose smears against the glass like a fleshy bug. She is wondering distantly about the phone call that got her in here. Something about some prize. It made so much sense at the time.
She cannot remember whether she has been given a prize at all. Poor old Mrs Jones has no real sensory acuity or memories about anything right now.
Mrs Jones, like 92% of gym members, will never return to the gym.
Her main concern is what has happened to her nose?
Why is the door closed?
“ a ggumabagggha” she says as her septum deviates into a crumple zone.
“Excuse me” Derek the salesperson says “Is say is that with two O’s before the “bagggha”?. He is still trying to finish up the “agreement” which details, amongst other things, how much Mr Jones has actually paid for her “prize”.
He had not seen the continued commotion at the door involving the now snotty face of Mrs Jones leaving a mess on the door.
“Oh dear!” Derek says, You’re trying to egress before taking your copy of the contract that you may or may not believe that you have just signed. “We can’t have that Mrs Jones, now can we? Tut Tut!”
And we certainly couldn’t.
Derek hands the contract to Mrs Jones (although nobody has asked why she needs a contact when she just came to pick up a free gift. Wonders never cease).
He unclips the child-proof lock holding the door closed from the safety of his desk.
Mrs Jones, like 92% of gym members, will never return to the gym.
Gym Fever and the Art of the Hux
The fitness industry did not arrive with a whimper.
It arrived with a Bang. It kicked the door in. Shot the lights out.
Especially for poor old Mrs Jones.
Almost overnight, the money model flipped from quiet, month-to-month dumbbell-slinging bodybuilders to lifetime memberships that looked suspiciously like golf club contracts:
exclusive status, restricted usage, and “founder” memberships that sounded historic but mostly funded someone’s new car.
The money lenders had arrived.
Gyms now had glass offices and credit card machines.
Gyms were making money.
Gym sales reps were driving Porsches and talking about “targets” instead of triceps.
Why, you may patiently scream, would a gym need a salesperson to sell something people already walk in and ask for?
Good question.
This is not fitness.
This is the Art of the Hux.
What they want is a simple month-to-month membership at a fair price.
What the gym is offering is a lifetime membership, thoughtfully calibrated to whatever obscene amount your extended credit card facility can tolerate without bursting into flames.
It is the early 1990s, and Derek is one of those salespeople, working for a national gym group in South Africa.
This is not fitness.
This is the Art of the Hux.
Do You Feel Sorry for Mrs Jones?
Mrs Jones is unaware of the techniques that have been used on her. Its not the first time they have been used on her. Mrs Jones, like so many of us, has made foolish purchases and decisions before.
She hadn’t been aware of the tricks that have been used on her. But, so what if she had? Would that have made a difference?
Would she have walked away?
Would she have come into this dangerous office in the first place?
You may be surprised at the answers. Perhaps you should not let Mrs Jones off the hook too readily.
“It’s almost too good to be true,” she told her friend Mrs Smith as she left the house.
“I am not stupid, you know. I’m just going to take a look and see what it’s all about. Don’t worry, I won’t buy anything. I am just popping in to get my free gift.”
Indeed you are Mrs Jones! Don't worry, no strings attached.
“It’s almost too good to be true,”
So she does what all good humans do when faced with an exciting offer, free gifts, and a voice in her head screaming “don’t do it”.
She ignores the voice, steps over the red flags, smiles politely at the nice young man with the contract book…
and signs the contract anyway.
In that brief, shimmering moment of insanity, all critical thinking packs its bags and leaves the building.
The salespeople are delighted.
The paid cheerleaders glide in and congratulate her on her wise decision.
She is not particularly happy.
She is not particularly unhappy.
She has, for the moment, almost no recall of what has actually happened.
Poor old Mrs Jones spends the next two hours slowly remembering what, exactly, she has just bought.
The meaning: Just before the close
Just before the close, if we were to sneak a look at the sacred, coffee-stained sales manual “THE HUX: A Complete Sales Guide for Selling Gym Memberships”, we’d probably find something like this:
Reciprocity
- “You’ve won a free gift, Mrs Jones!”
- Start here with the FREE GIFT. People love the word “free” almost as much as they love not going to the gym.
- “Let us give you a free assessment, a free T-shirt, a free body-fat test…”
Keep giving her “free” stuff. The more she accepts, the more she feels obliged to give something back.
- “Giving something back” means signing away 60 months of future cash for the privilege of occasionally using a treadmill that smells faintly of regret.
Scarcity
- Your job is to get her excited about the Founder Membership, then tell he she cant have it.
- When you finally “make a plan” to release one for her, you say “This Founder Membership is only available today, Mrs Jones.”
- If she asks for a Founder Membership too early, you say:
“ooooh, I’m afraid those have all gone. You’ll have to wait ten years until those opportunities come around again.” Add insult to injury by offering her the “Scum” membership which essentially bars her from any of the activities she has shown an interest in.
- If she replies, “But my friend bought one this morning,” you lower your voice and say:
“That’s because someone died.”
- Speak in reverent tones when you talk about the death of a VIP Gym member. When a famous person dies, ensure that you shed a tear and sniff a lot. Say things like “We kept them going another ten years!”
- Scarcity switches off calm evaluation. She stops thinking
“Do I actually want this?”
and starts thinking
“Will I miss out if I don’t grab it right now?”
Social Proof
- Always keep big whiteboards full of names and percentages on display.
Use your premium “Photoshop” skills to make your thinnest clients look like whales in the “before” photos. This is called persuasion.
- When you shake each new member’s hand and congratulate them on their wise decision, keep your voice down. There are five other salespeople doing exactly the same thing in the offices next door. No need to ruin the illusion that they are uniquely special.
- Always wear your “Hundreds of members are transforming their lives!” badge.
In uncertainty, humans look sideways:
“What are other people doing?”
Then they joyfully join the stampede.
Authority
- The Regional Manager “just happens” to be in the club today. What a miracle.
- Invite the Regional Manager into the office to apply more pressure to your weak-willed and argumentative victims. Ensure that the Regional Manager remains standing and towering over the victim.
- Your clients have no idea who the Regional Manager is. As long as the chosen staff member is relatively sober and can form complete sentences, you can introduce them as “our Regional Manager.”
- All discounts must, of course, be personally approved by this benevolent king.
- We are wired to obey perceived authority, especially when we feel out of our depth.
- Your job: keep Mrs Jones out of her depth.
Ideally drowning in jargon and options.
But not actually dead*. That’s bad for debit orders.
- *If the victim begins showing signs of physical stress, get them out of the building as soon as possible. Dead people are really bad for the business of fitness.
Commitment & Consistency
- “Just fill in your details so we can give you your prize,” you say, casually sliding the contract across.
- “Just sign here so we can start your assessment.”
- Once someone says yes to something small, they feel an internal pressure to stay consistent with that yes, even when the stakes escalate from “free T-shirt” to “60-month contract.”
- Special tip:
When your client looks like they want to whinge and whimper about “thinking about it”, look mildly shocked and ask:
- “I did understand you? You did say that staying alive to see your great grandchildren was THE most important thing in your life?”
- Your infallible and inexpugnably effective objection busting questions is “How do you mean?”. Said correctly, this translates to:
“Why would you suddenly become a different kind of person who doesn’t follow through?”
Confusion & Overload
- The contract text is so small it can only be read with a magnifying glass and the eyesight of a young owl. Do not encourage reading. Do not try to read it yourself. None of it actually makes sense.
- If they insist on reading, look at your watch and sigh theatrically. Also keep distracting them with questions about pets, children, sports and their great dress sense.
- You can also say:
“Like all our educated VIP members, you obviously know what’s written here.”
- Keep the pace up with fast talking. If you slow down enough for them to actually process anything, you are finished and will receive a written warning. Three written warnings and you will have to return to being an Estate Agent.
- Ensure there is no quiet space for reflection. No silence. No time to think.
- Cognitive overload makes people more compliant.
When we feel overwhelmed, we outsource our thinking to whoever sounds the most confident.
- In this case: the smiling salesperson with the contract book…
and the Hux manual in their top drawer.
Meet Your Internal Mrs Jones
It’s easy to laugh at poor old Mrs Jones. You didn’t laugh did you? Shame on you if you did.
We reassure ourselves with:“I’d never fall for that. I’m not an idiot.”
Except we do. Constantly.
We don’t always call it a gym membership. We call it:
- The course we bought and never completed,
- The mastermind we joined because everyone else was in it,
- The financial “opportunity” we couldn’t quite explain to our accountant.
The uncomfortable truth:
We all have an internal Mrs Jones.
She’s the part of us that:
- Wants to believe in prizes and special deals,
- Feels vaguely flattered when a salesperson says “this is just for you”, even though she can smell the stench of commission slobber,
- Secretly hopes there is one decision, one purchase, one final ultimate hack that will fix everything.
We all have an internal Mrs Jones.
And here’s the more uncomfortable bit,
I’ve been on the other side of the desk, looking for my contract pad and pen
I’ve been Derek, and I’ve worked under the Sales Board.
I’ve watched people walk into the glass door.
Mrs Jones Arrives Home
Poor old Mrs Jones pulls into the driveway.
She drives past the white picket fence, the dog called Max
Electric garage door humming open.
Husband in the doorway with a worried look and a serious lasagne deficit.
She left more than two hours ago to buy “a few odds and sods” for supper.
“Where have you been?” asks Mr Jones, in that particular tone reserved for missing spouses and burnt suppers. He notices an absence of any bean sprouts and lasagne ingredients.
“You will never guess,” says Mrs Jones.
“You… won a prize?” asks Mr Jones, somewhat slowly, eyes locked on the total. “So… where is it?”
And she is right.
To be fair, Mrs Jones is also not 100% sure where she’s been, what she’s done, or what, exactly, she has bought. Such is the afterglow of a well-executed bout of Dark Influence.
“I went to the gym up the road… you know, the one with all the offices and no people actually training?” She waves a long, crinkled contract at him.
“I won a prize,” she mutters, handing it over. The amount section has an alarming number of zeros.
“You… won a prize?” asks Mr Jones, somewhat slowly, eyes locked on the total. “So… where is it?”
Mr Jones Goes to the Gym
Twenty minutes later, a lasagne-less and bean-sprout-less Mr Jones comes striding into the gym up the road.
The one with far too many offices.
And so few people actually training.
He has now discovered exactly where his bean sprout and lasagne budget has gone. He is a tad upset. Somewhat ill-at-ease with things. Pissed off.
He is greeted, as all men of a certain age are, by the firmly marshalled cleavage and insipid wink of Jennifer at reception.
Mr Jones, with his puny but proud arms, arranges himself into what he believes is an assertive pose. Mr Jones is a golfer. He has no need for a gym membership.
“I want to cancel this contract,” he says.
“Of course,” she says smoothly. “That was the Platinum Centenary Membership. We have a waiting list for those. In fact, I think there was another golfer in here asking earlier. He had bigger arms than you, though. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.”
Nobody huxes the Joneses into a gym membership nobody will ever use.
Jennifer leans in, voice dipped in artificial sympathy.
“Such a shame,” she coos. “We all heard what a great golfer you are. You would have loved the computerised golf machine that’s arriving next month.”
But Mr Jones is nobody’s fool. He can sniff out false flattery. Mr Jones has been around the block a few times.
Nobody huxes the Joneses into a gym membership nobody will ever use.
Does Mr Jones cancel his membership?
Tune in next week to find out…
No. I wouldn’t do that to you.
No, of course he does not cancel his membership.
He buys two more.
