Keeping the main thing the main thing

Today is my wedding anniversary. Mr Namasi and I have ben married for 26 years - that's more than half my life. And I'm struck by how much there is in common between our marriage and our worklives - it's mainly about priorities and choices.

We chose to view our wedding as the first day of our marriage. The marriage was - and remains - the main thing. And has been a work in progress since its 'launch' 26 years ago today.

On our respective Facebook pages, we are receiving the usual barrage of congratulatory messages, some of which imply that the success of our marriage is due to the 'fact' that we never argue.

Ha!

We argue a lot. I mean can you really believe that someone who writes this opinionated blog is going to have an argument-free marriage? My husband is a strong-willed man. But, as Kate Reynolds (Téa Leoni) says in The Family Man, "I choose us."

So let's just unpick this for a moment:

• We got married on a shoe string budget. Neither of our parents had any money, so we paid for it ourselves.
• The ceremony was brief and to the point. It took minutes.
• It was held in my mother-in-law's granny flat above to my brother- and sister-in-law's house.
• I made the lunch (coq au vin) that followed, which was held downstairs.
• I made my own outfit out of fabric I bought from the designer I worked for (at staff discount) and it was something I could use again afterwards.
• My MIL made the cake.
• My SIL made the dessert (kiwi fruit pavlova) and took the photos. 
• Bride and groom walked into the 'venue' together. We had no retinue (no bridesmaids or best men). 
• We had no alcohol, due to the presence of one alcoholic and one recovering alcoholic. 
• Just family and very close friends were in attendance - fewer than 30 people in all. 
• To be honest, there are things I would do differently if I were to do it over again - it was one of the most stressful days of my life, because I took too much on myself.

BUT

By the end of the ceremony we were just as married as anyone who has spent £15000 (because that's apparently the current UK average according to figures cited on Radio 4 the other day) on the ceremony. Our 4-day honeymoon in a small-town hotel a couple of hours' drive from the city was lovely, too, in spite of the fact that we both got food poisoning on our last day!

Many of our friends and family have had magnificent productions on their wedding day. And I confess to occasional twinges of envy. But we started our married life without the massive debts that can result from the lavish event. We were stone broke, but we were stone broke together and everything we have today, we have acquired together.

Something else that I've noticed is that planning the wedding can become so much the focus of the relationship that, once the wedding is over, some couples can feel quite bereft. Everything happened so much faster for us, that we didn't have time to develop that level of attachment to the occasion. We had been planning to get married in December 1988. But we realised at one point in April that we had no reason to wait - there wasn't going to be additional budget or resource freed up during that time. So we gave ourselves six weeks to bring the whole thing together and got on with it.

So, much like a lot of projects, we had very little time. We had next to no money. We weren't in a position to produce anything shiny. We didn't have a big team of professionals, or an outsourced vendor. We faced a lot of opposition and naysayers who told us that it couldn't and/or shouldn't be done. We were a pair of amateurs who had never done this before, and were too naïve to realise how utterly ill-suited we were to the task at hand (or each other, come to that). We had a few (unpaid) helpers, some willing, some decidedly not so.

We have had better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness and health. We have had disasters, catastrophes, we have had slow-burning, insidious challenges. But we stubbornly resolve every time to release a patch, an update.

The project had a rather inauspicious start by average standards. But it is enduring, because the team is committed. :)

On planning

The town I live in is currently being subjected to the most extensive disruptions imaginable. The centre of town is being revitalised or some such thing, so we have all manner of roadworks and diversions in place. At the very same time, BT or British Gas or someone is doing an upgrade of something or other, so there are holes all along the road past our part of town, each with a flimsy barrier around it.

We suffered with these holes all down one side of the road recently. Instead of digging one hole, or one section of holes at a time, all the holes had been dug at once. And you never saw anyone working in or near any of them.

Then we saw a bunch of people beginning to fill the holes in, and take away the barriers. "Wahey!" quoth we, "Have you finished, then?"

The response almost took our breath away.

It turns out that these chaps had been subcontracted to dig the holes in order for the work to be carried out. So they dug them all at once, because they are the hole-diggers, and that's what they do. BT/BG/whoever then never actually got as far as doing the work for whatever reason. But the time had come, according to the contractual agreement, for the hole-diggers to come and fill in the holes and take away their barriers.

They then proceeded to dig the holes on the other side of the road, where they now stand, surrounded by their flimsy little barriers, devoid of any workers. Perhaps, in a week or so, the hole-diggers will come and fill them in again and take away their barriers.

In a few weeks' time BT/BG/whoever, will finally be ready to do the work, and they will have to either dig the holes themselves, or hire someone else to do so.

The waste is utterly ridiculous.

And sadly, not unique.

I once knew a man who worked on what is now known as the O2 building, but used to be called the Millennium Dome. His job had to do with flooring. At some point in the project plan, the wiring and plumbing and such like was to have been done, after which, the concrete floors could be poured. When the time came in the project plan to pour the concrete for the floors, the wiring and/or plumbing had not yet been done, because this aspect of the project was running behind schedule. In full knowledge of this, the contractor poured the floor anyway, because that was what they had been contracted to do and this was when they were contracted to do it. When the teams were ready for the wiring/plumbing, all the flooring had to be broken up.

I don't even know how to frame my thoughts on this. I find myself goldfishing madly, going, "Surely....But... You mean..." and getting no further.

I can't understand (a) how the overall project manager can allow this happen, (b) how the contractors involved can be so shoulder-shruggingly unconcerned about the bigger picture (c) how the impact on time and cost (not to mention quality... ooh, my ex-boss would be proud - he always wanted to turn me into a project manager) can be tolerated by the commissioning client.

Stephen Downes often uses jumbo jets as an illustration of distributed knowledge in action: no one person knows how to design, build and fly a jumbo jet. Yet they are designed, built and flown... each aspect of the operation falling to an expert or team of experts. And this is a Good Thing. But when the knowledge has become so distributed that people are able to shrug their shoulders and deny ownership of the bigger picture, something surely needs to be done and butts need to be kicked somewhere along the line.

Only, who gets to do the butt kicking, if nobody is in overall control anymore?

Hmm.