If...

This has been a particularly difficult year for many. That financial crisis is now kicking in with a vengeance and here in the north of France, home to many a large retailer and in particular the mail order business, a cold wind is definitey blowing. Both La Redoute and Les 3 Suisses have announced massive redundancies. Womenswear retailer Morgan has just announced that it has gone into liquidation and it's not much better across the channel where the byword of the early eighties 'negative equity' has come back to haunt many a homeowner and the winter sales will not be enough to save certain high street retailers. Some retail giants have already gone into liquidation; MFI and Woolworths, others will no doubt follow. It seems appropriate therefore to print the following poem. Written by Rudyard Kipling in 1895, IF is synonymous with stoicism and a 'stiff upper lip' attitude. The poem has been translated into over 27 languages and a line is carved into the changing rooms of the men's changing room at Wimbledon.

IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,'
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

May I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year.