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I feel that the use of the word decompress to describe the process by which the immediate impact of an experience becomes less raw is relatively recent. I suppose that is what has been happening over the last few weeks. Most recently along with the family I have been in Italy, beautiful as always but our trip coincided with a major heatwave which meant we spent more time inside than we had planned. Such extreme conditions will, of course, become more common in the future as climate change bites. Someone wrote to me last week to say that it had taken her three months to decompress after leaving UAEU.

But it is time to look forward. I leave for Canada next week for the coming phase at Queen’s, to which I am very much looking forward.

Once upon a time there was an old man, this old man had been lucky in his life. Most of all he had been lucky to have been close to the King. He had come penniless from another land with skills that turned out to be needed by the King. As a barber he coiffed the King’s hair beautifully and travelled constantly with His Majesty. But he remained a servant, doing the King’s bidding. Sadly after many years the King had died, as even they do. The barber remained, he had met all the royal family as well as eminent personages of the country and around the world. The new King decided to reward the servant for his years of faithful service with an honourable position running an important, indeed critical, organisation. For the first time in his life the servant was in charge. He no longer wanted to cut hair, he wanted to behave just as his old master, the King, had behaved. So he built his court by surrounding himself with people who could be sure not to contradict him. People who were much more obedient than they were competent. These courtiers would assure the old servant that he was always right and could do no wrong. But this just meant that he never really knew what was happening in the organisation and it meant that he was vulnerable. He was vulnerable because his courtiers had forked tongues. They were not interested in the success of the organisation, they were interested only in their own power and promoting the values that they believed to be important. So when people who knew how to run the organisation spoke out, the courtiers would drop poison into the old servant’s ear. He is trying to undermine you, they would say; or she is making trouble, you do not want trouble do you? And no the old vain servant did not want trouble, trouble would get noticed and then maybe the new King would take away this sinecure. And he wanted more than anything to behave like a King. The organisation did not matter, who cared about that, for he was a King.

In a place far away some men sat round and talked. They were surrounded by their flock of goats which was settling down for the night, clustering around the men so that they would be safe from the lions that they feared were in the darkness. One man said to another ‘I am fed up with this, what we need is an elephant. If we had an elephant then those lions would not bother us. Elephants are big and fierce.’ One of the others said ‘but what is an elephant?’. The first man replied ‘I have never seen one but those people in the next valley have them. They’re as big as a camel.’ The second man said ‘what we should do is change one of these goats into an elephant. That shouldn’t be too hard.’ Numero uno said ‘what we need is to find someone who knows about elephants and get him to turn this goat into an elephant.’ So they put out the word among their friends for someone who knew about elephants.

After a few months an explorer arrives. He has seen many elephants and has lived among the people of the elephant herds. The men are still sitting around with their goats when he turns up, he says ‘I hear you are interested in learning about elephants?’ ‘We are indeed’ say the men with the goats, ‘we want to turn one of these goats here into an elephant.’ The explorer looked at the goats, he looked at the men. ‘Do you know how big an elephant is? Do you know how big its tusks are?’ ‘Oh yes we do,’ the goatmen replied confidently, ‘an elephant is big, like a camel.’ The explorer sat down and said ‘I can help you, but you know an elephant is much much bigger than a camel.’ ‘Oh surely that cannot be, a camel is huge.’ the goatman replied incredulously, ‘you are just trying to get more payment from us, you go right now and change this goat into an elephant and stop your mucking about.’ The explorer sighed, picked up his pack and walked off into the night. ‘How very rude he was’ said the men of the goats.

Eid Mubarak.

This is my last week employed by UAEU. I have then awarded myself a month off before starting my new job at Queen’s. I’ve never done that before, it has always been straight from one to the next previously. I won’t be giving a detailed diagnostic of what UAEU’s problems are and what they need to do to solve them – that will have to wait for the book. I know that people in UAEU will be sensitive to criticism and I certainly do not wish to upset them or make anyone’s life more difficult. So you will have to be prepared for a couple of parables over the next few weeks. Make of them what you will.

After two weeks in Malaysia I returned to UAE on Monday. Technically I was on leave but in fact was working for all but two or three days. It was odd to come back as there is not much for me to do, I have no formal duties and it is amazing how when you stop doing a big job like Provost you can go from getting maybe 500 emails a day to five. In many ways of course that is positive but it is requires an abrupt gear change. Many people have been asking me why I am leaving UAEU, I will write about it in due course but I do actually want to get out of the country first. I think it is an interesting insight into the way things work here.