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The Cultures and the Tribes, they’re fascinating aren’t they. It’s only when we immerse ourselves in different ones that we realise that, actually, they’re all the same.

I had a great weekend last weekend, and so did the rest of my family.

On Friday, I was at the Dentistry Show in Birmingham.

It was particularly marvellous because on my way down there in the car I got a text from Morag Anderson (one of my oldest friends) to tell me that she was on a plane coming to the show with two members of her team. We got the chance to meet up for about half an hour for a coffee which was just pure brilliant.

I don’t get to go to so many of these shows, but that’s the good bit, it’s the bumping into people and the joy of seeing someone unexpectedly.

The Dentistry Show is a fascinating thing now because it merges with The British Dental Conference so it has all the political pomp of the BDA and all the commercial and consumerist jazz of a big trade show.

The first thing I always do when I get to these things is put my headphones in and walk around the outside of the show.

It’s amazing because for some people this is it, this is their big weekend and this is their environment. They’re the leaders, they’re the kings and queens of the tribe and you can pick them out and spot them.

They wear their ‘uniform’, they dance the dance and they speak the language. They have peaked for this event.

I got to speak on the little Practice Plan lecture theatre last thing on Friday which was actually, despite my previous misgivings, marvellous.

I’ve spoken at the Dentistry Show several times before in these open theatres, and this one started exactly the same way. At 3:25pm the theatre was half full and there were people walking by (very distracting) but by the end of it (probably because I shouted so much) it was standing room only and I had loads of questions being fired at me. I also met Meera, who was a VT way back in the day for me and we’ve briefly kept in contact ever since.

But I rabbit on!

I left the Dentistry Show on Friday night and entered into a weekend of the Outlaw triathlon, swapping the uniform, the dance and the language for a different tune the following day.

There were thousands at the Dentistry Show on Friday with their tribal leaders, and on Saturday there were thousands at the Outlaw triathlon in Nottingham, but the format was the same.

There is a different uniform, a different dance and a different language.

There are alpha males and females and there are the ‘subjects’, I am a subject.

At 4:30am at Holme Pierrepont in Nottingham, thousands of Triathletes descend upon the lake and take over this little corner of Nottinghamshire as their own kingdom for a while.

The day before, hundreds and hundreds of people had descended upon Rockingham (including my wife and daughters) with horses for the Rockingham Horse trials, another tribe again.

All of these tribes have their uniforms, they have their dance and they have their language. The funny thing is though, despite the variation, they’re all the same. We all want to be a part of it, at times we get to be a leader, but most of the time we get the chance and the privilege to be a tribe member protected by the leader.

When you understand this dynamic, I think things get simpler.

And obviously you get to decide which tribe you’re in and which you’re not.

Blog post number: 1653

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