“Be Kind to My Friend Andrew”: The Art of Not Judging

Andrew and his Birthday pressies!

This week, I’ve an apology to make to you, and a lesson to offer you in extending the life of certain chopping boards. Firstly, last week I promised to expand on the idea/concept that to love others, one must first love oneself. And I asked you to contact me if this sparked off any thoughts of either agreement or dissent. 

Secondly, I had a late (my birthday was last month) 70^th birthday party last Saturday, which slightly to my surprise I enjoyed hugely. I say slightly surprised, because, if I had to describe myself as either an introvert or an extrovert, I’d err towards the former. Although as with most of us, I’m a bit of a mixture. So, parties never used to be my sort of thing. After last Saturday that has now changed! 

One of the side benefits to this extravagance is that a number of people turned up (despite my strict instructions…no presents please) knowing my liking of Bordeaux, with bottles of the stuff clutched in their sweaty hands.

Thus, I ended up with a rather wonderful eclectic collection, which I started to investigate last night as it happens, a 2018 Pomerol Chateau Gazin. 

Really quite astounding, thanks Geoff!

Andrew trying not to judge himself for not sharing his cake! And finding it remarkably easy!

Self acceptance

Back to my first point, “loving oneself”. A customer, John, wrote to me as a result of my request, and agreed that “self-regard sets the tone for everything else”, but wondered if the term to “love oneself” had been blunted by overuse. Instead, he wondered if “trying to judge oneself less “seemed more helpful. I wrote back to him saying that I couldn’t disagree with his approach and that it might be just semantics that was the chief difference. But maybe on reflection, the phrase to “Love oneself” is a bit vague, a bit wishy washy, a bit woooh, a bit new age? 

Whereas, not judging oneself so harshly, whilst far from easy for many of us, at least has a specific practical reality to it.

To give you a personal example of what I mean, when the children were young I still had a fierce temper that they suffered from on many occasions (I’m sorry to say). It usually flared up when I was under pressure, either from family or work. The root cause, which I won’t go into here (too long a story), was at the time largely hidden to them and in fact, to me as well. But it stemmed from a feeling of inadequacy, which unfortunately young children could unwittingly invoke. So, from time to time this resulted in an explosion of rage on my part. This terrified them, and, usually, not long after, I felt like a monster and was full of remorse and self-loathing for having been so unfair on them*. 

Gradually over time I managed to apologise to them when the outbursts occurred. And gradually, over even more time, I stopped judging myself so harshly, so that in fact eventually the rage ceased to control me and instead I controlled it. So, the outbursts stopped. But it did take a lot of time, therapy and huge understanding on the part of my family to get there.

My wife Babette, was a key to this progress, because she knew that there were underlying reasons for these outbursts and whilst she didn’t condone my behaviour, neither did she judge me for it either, which I still find pretty extraordinary (almost saint like). 

She used to say “be kind to my friend Andrew”, which I recall not understanding to begin with. I thought that she was being a bit soppy! Gradually though, as time went on, the penny dropped and I understood at a deep level, what she really meant**.  

But that was what allowed me to accept myself (warts and all) and stop judging myself, on that issue at least and on many others as well.

* although as my youngest Joey, still likes to remind me, he was able to get angry back, as he got older.

 ** She understood that there were old deep-seated reasons for my behaviour, and that it would take time for them to become clear and out in the open, where I could deal with them. Eventually her belief in her observations and her belief in me paid dividends. Her ability to not judge me during this whole time, was a key to this process.

And, for me, the degree to which I can now judge myself less harshly, has also improved my understanding and acceptance of not only myself, but of others as well. And it's such a relief!

So, is this self-love or just a greater self-understanding, which therefore creates less judgement, quite naturally? Coming back to John, I like his point of less judgment. But even this can be much easier to say, than to achieve, I think.

I also feel that trying "to judge one's self less" is much easier to achieve, having had time to reflect and accept one's strengths and short comings.  And, that a warts and all understanding and appreciation of this, is the ability to love oneself.  So, in my own mind maybe these concepts are one and the same?

But I'd be interested to hear your views.

Mikasa Pasta Bowls Offer from last week. An Apology

Last week if you were very quick off the mark, you will have been able to buy your choice of the lovely Mikasa Pasta bowls from Kitchen Craft.

However, the first problem was that I didn’t anticipate that the demand would be so great. And secondly when we reordered, they had run out of stock and wouldn’t be getting more till June/July time.

So, we are 6-8 weeks away from getting more stock, but if you want to take advantage of last week's offer (£7.95 each when buying 4 or more) you can still do so, by pre-ordering on the website or in our shops and we'll send them out as soon as they arrive.

We do, however, still have good stocks of the complementary cereal bowls.

Epicurean Boards

After my email 3 weeks ago about chopping boards, we ran very low on stock of both the Tala boards and the Epicurean ones.

Well, Richard at Eddingtons, who import the Epicurean boards, came up trumps again and we now have good stocks of most sizes of them.

And so, I’m letting you know because you may have found the board you were looking for had run out.

And also, because the other day I found Jeanne, beavering away in the cellar (with my wonderful Festool sander), sanding down our collection of eight or nine Epicurean Chopping boards.

Why so many?

Well, they get used sometimes several times a day (they are light and easily to hand) and because they go in the dishwasher (unlike wood ) then the one we’ve used previously may still be dirty the next time its required.

Consequently, the two smaller sizes that get used the most, we have two or three of.

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Coming back to Jeanne’s efforts, she was sanding out all the knife marks, and the general wear and tear of the last 20 plus years. Sadly, I don’t have photos of the boards before she sanded them, but as you can see from the “after photos” I think they now look like new.   The picture here is a "work in progress", and the corners on the left will end up being as smooth and unscarred as the rest of the board.   A wonderful product and for this weekend you can again have 20% off them.   Please tell us who you are if coming into Cobham or Reigate shops, or use code EPIC25

I hope you have a pleasant and peaceful weekend.

Warm regards,

Andrew