Inspired Lives

Terry at home on Tortola. Thaks to Tracy O' Dea for the photo

After too much time spent fiddling around with blogs this past week, I've decided that life really is too short to write two blogs along with the fact that all the blogging experts tell you NEVER to start a SECOND blog ever. So Joining the Dots has been merged into Island Family, which means that you'll be reading about housework in paradise along with photographs of children in small boats, interspersed with the odd recipe. It's how my life rolls, to be honest.

Some rather interesting people live here on the island. When Tyler was a little boy their neighbour was Dr Spock. Not the one from Star Wars, the parenting one. My mother handed me her very dog-eared copy when I had my first child which was rather different to  "What to Expect" so de rigeur of the early 00's.  I think I preferred Spock actually, but that was because the "What to Expect" series were so ghastly.

Terry Ellis was the founder of Chrysalis Records and a music industry giant. He has lived on Tortola for nearly 40 years and bought his land from Chris Blackwall, another music industry great.  Last week we went to a lecture he gave at the community college on his life in the music business. He was seminal to music during the 70's and 80's which included putting together Jethro Tull, launching Blondie and creating Billy Idol along with managing David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Supertramp to name but a few.  The quiet man that we know became this sparkly, animated and deeply entertaining character as he spoke about his life and we could have gone on listening to him for hours, it was so fascinating.

Some people are inspired by poetry or yoga or a good multigrain loaf of bread. I'm inspired by other people's stories. How they got from A to B. How they remained sane and solvent and carried on smiling, the things that I tend to find forget most days.

The 'passion' argument for me is entry-level and so is the 'hard work' one. My father was passionate and hard working but he still didn't become a billionaire, far from it. Instead, listening carefully to Terry and his life in music, it seems to me that success is more about choices and the types of decisions one makes. He was clearly good at business (but downplays this side in his story-telling) and I would love to go to a lecture that he gave to business students as opposed to music students. But what Terry seemed to do better than most was have an excellent nose for seeking out talent and backing the right musicians. We don't hear about the ones that went nowhere, but he couldn't have had too many of those - otherwise he would never have become so big. So it seems to be more about carefully picking ones way through the morass and what you don't decide to do, rather than what you do do, but making the right choice.

I've been thinking about Terry and 'inspired lives' all weekend. It's challenging me to do a bit of housekeeping (not the normal domestic type) and I've already made one tiny decision (quite tangentially it would seem) but a big one for Une Femme d'un Certain Age: I've stopped dying my hair. I'm grey and that's that. Laura my fabulous hairdresser and I are working on a Good Grey Hair Plan.  The onus is now on me to un-frump the body to go along with my real hair. Scary, but somehow a little bit inspired.