Ah, what comfort there is to be taken from the companionship of fellow sufferers afflicted by bilge, blather and eyewash. So all praise to my angst-ridden correspondent Mike J Eslea, who sent me the following after learning of a new appointment in his company: “The scrum master help [sic] to keep the team accountable to their commitments to the business and also remove [sic again] any roadblocks that might impede the team’s productivity. They met [sic once more] with the team on a regular basis to review work and deliverables, most often in a weekly cadence.” Mike suggests that “weekly cadence” probably means “once a week” and I suspect he’s right.
But there’s more. “No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality!” He suggests reading this out loud in the voice of Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday. It works.
Meanwhile, on planet Hollywood, Will Smith has also been giving it a good go. “Jada never believed in conventional marriage... Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship. So she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up. There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection? What is the perfect way to interact as a couple? And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.” I fear that he is even beyond the help of Relate on this one.
How refreshing then to land back on Earth and a recent dispatch from the Telegraph’s financial expert Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, talking about the travails of Chinese builder Evergrande: “He has taken direct control over the purge from economic plenipotentiary Lui He, lately subject to Maoist ‘rectification’ but without Lui He’s financial Fingerspitzengefühl.” Anyone else could say intuitive flair or instinct, but not ever-reliable Ambrose.
• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
