Quite frankly, a bit rubbish

Oh, I know I said I wouldnt but it seems i am destined to extrude words for the rest of my articulate days. But my former reticence comes from a valid position, which i will now explain a little of.

It started when I was at school, about 6 or so. I suppose it was the growing emphasis on literacy that started it. Once our rudimentary and individual styles of handwriting had been developed, it became clear to me that there were those who could produce clear, tidy, attractive oieces of work. And there was mine. Similarly, with drawing, but that was ok. I knew some people were artists and others werent. It was the writing which was expected of us that caused me most discouragement and later pain.

Mine always looked untidy. We were asked for a piece of work by the teacher and it was apparent this was our obligation. My clumsily formed scrawl was always conspicuous by its malformed and scruffy jumble (though it was, I contend, always legible)
The content was at best, secondary, but the style was all. And my style was messy and a bit crap.

And i always envied those people who could turn out such attractive stuff, stuff which made my attempts look so inferior by comparison that I felt shamed and embarrased. So, I tried my hardest to make mine good too, only somehow, i never managed to do it and the results were still always messy, untidy and criticised.

And so, I realised that other people can do good stuff, whereas, I on the other hand, was destined to always produce second rate stuff. I was a bit rubbish at football, I couldnt draw, I was gawky and clumsy. I didnt excel or even become adequate at anything, It seemed.

So, I grew up, my handwriting remained awful (but legible!), I was sent to remedial writing classes with illiterate kids who could not read two-syllable words. At home I was reading serious adult books, quality literature, borrowed from the library with my mum's tickets.
But my handwriting was so bad that it seemed to offend against some standard set by the educational establishmet. So, in place of assembly every Tuesday, i was sent to a class with possibly the most self-ignorantly stupid man i have ever met. And my handwriting never improved.
At this time, i wrote a couple of pieces for the shool magazine which were universally lauded and I began to realise that my content was a little beyond the average. But O levels and A levels left me too busy to explore this and I never really explored this aspect.

And so, I continued to perform in a mediocre fashion, admiring those dazzling people who seemed to do everything right, and wo were usually attractive and better dressed than me, and wishing fate had supplied me the attributes to do the same. But I was resigned to my lot and I went on to get nine fairly mediocre O levels, except of course English, in which I excelled (I was beginning to get an inkling by then), and physics which I enjoyed.
Others got 10 A grades, some by swotting relentlessly and others by dint of apparent sheer brilliance.

And then A levels came: I worked a bit, still no longer distinguishing myself particularly. I discovered girls, alcohol, the usual kind of thing. And for my efforts I got some extremely poor grades in Maths, Physics and Chemistry that were just enough to get me into a very crap polytechnic in a grim and godforsaken part of the world.

Then I took up the banjo and went busking and generally didnt do all that much work. But I sensed that had I worked harder, my performance probably would not have been significantly better as I generally found the subject matter laborious and tedious, and well, everything I did ended up a bit crap anyway. So, engineering was not me and academia was not something I took to easily, though everyone seemed to expect me to.
And so, I failed the first year of my degree, which was silly, and suffered the ignominy of falling down into the HND class, largely regarded as some kind of remedial course for dullards by most of the peole I associated with.
I scraped a pass. Just.

This enabled me to get a job at British Aerospace. I didnt really want to work there but none of my other interviews bore fruit. It seems this grim and pretty crap establishment was all that would accept me. And so I farted about for a couple of years, working with people who had given up all hope of being productive happy humans until I could bear no more of the Death of Aspiration and left to work on the production line at the company I now work for.

There, due to my crap qualifications, I was not allowed to do anything worthy as I was apparently a bit thick, what with not having a degree and all. the management stated (to my face) that without a good honours degree, I would not be accepted into the engineering community as they "didnt want to dilute the skill pool".
And so, one day, I had a furious row with an influential manager who basically fired me. Luckily, my own manager took pity on me and pointed me towards a job that was going in marketing and I went for it and got it, much to my surprise and delight. And truly, it was the making of me. I found working with people, explaining technical concepts and reading responses from posture, expression and gesture to be much easier and more rewarding than engineering. I used a lot of words and I could type them.

Here I discovered that, though I am a bit slapdash, which has generally been the root of most of the crap results I got when i tried to do something worthwhile, I am actually quite good with words. Released from the tyranny of using a pen, which my fine motor coordination always struggled with, words can flow freely and the myriad ideas that course through my head are given voice in a way that frees them and allows them to associate with other ideas, sometimes to a hyperbole that when I subsequently read them, I cannot recollect writing them, or scarce believe I was in fact the author.

And so, as I stood miserably in the shower yesterday, remarking to myself on the mediocrity with which most of my endeavours have been met, it occurred to me that stringing words together to portray thoughts I have is really the only thing I have found myself to be half-decent at.

Oh, occasionally people say I have a "gift" for words or I "should write a book" but I take this with a grain of salt. Others are equally good or better and I have no pretensions of being professional at it.
But I do think I am probably better than average at it and so, casting aside my recent grumpy petulance, I feel it would be a shame were I not to do the only thing I have ever been pleased with the results of.

And so here I am!

life to an inner soundtrack

Some people are, apparently, visual: Their inner life runs on images that represent what they think about, how they approach problems, the way their world is laid out symbolically. I have always envied this in a vague kind of way. The ability to close one's eyes and call to mind a picture must be incredibly useful. I have never been able to do it.

In truth, part of the reason behind my resentment is that I always thought it would be a really cool seduction technique to be able to say to a lady "Let me draw you" and enigmatically, scribble away with few words except "a-huh.. hmm mmm" and "turn a little to the left please so I can catch that curl better".

Alas, fumbling fingers which reject the idea of pencils aside, I have little sense of the visual and have been unable to develop one despite many hours of intense practise over the years. And so, I come to the conclusion that, in this aspect, the nature-nurture debate has shown a clear conclusion. I am not visual.

But, my world is ruled by a sense of sound and bodily position. My head is filled with music all the time and I can call to mind a Tchaikovsky Symphony, note-for-note accurately in those moments when I find myself somewhere needing some kind of entertainment.
I first did this, oddly, with Wings, "Band on the Run" in French lessons at school, which I found excruciatingly dull to the point of almost physical pain. Imagine my delight to find an inner passtime that required no props or equipment and which could occupy me in those arid moments of intellectual drought.

Interestingly, I also always found a kind of auditory-kinaesthetic synaesthesia between a sound and a movement.
To explain what I mean: Everyone is familiar with certain sounds which conjure up a movement - the sound of a tomato hitting a tiled floor after being dropped is very evocative and one can instantly, if they work in any way siimilar to me, see in their "Mind's eye" the impact, or in my case, feel the weight and the sudden giving-way of the skin to the force of the contents, tasting the juice and possibly slipping on it and banging a knee on a cupboard.
The sound of a drop of water falling into a pool of water in an otherwise silent envirnment may also summon an image or a feeling of the ripples spreading out.
So we are all equipped with this sensory cross-wiring.

Now, when, for instance I hear a latin rhythm, it "knocks" inside my legs and hips. It's hard to explain that in words. But some unseen force causes my limbs to move synchronously with the beat and my hips to sway in a complex fourrier-synthesised set of waves. This is entirely involuntary and is "suggested" to my body without seemingly going through my conscious mind.
Similarly, a glissando on a guitar may cause my arm to want to move of its own acord upwards and outwards, describing an arc that the sliding note implies with an obviousness that requires purely physical description.

Sometimes, when I have to give a presentation and I am unsure of the material, as I walk up to present, the first bars of the violin from "El Tango de Roxanne" will play in my head, so vividly that I am ceertain it must be audible to those present (Indeed, once I did actually ask a lunch companion if they could "hear that?" and put my head close to theirs. People can be so judgmental sometimes, don't you find?). The strutting gait and almost arrogance implied by the passionate Tango beat cannot fail but induce an almost involuntary strutting and upright confident bearing. It works perfectly for my purposes.

Today, i have in my head, loud as the radio in the car might be in that space, Diana Krall, "Temptation", which is one of the sexiest songs I can imigine and is beautiful to dance to with a lady of a similar receptiveness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdXGA2B0yq0

As this is constantly playing in my head, my every move around the place is informed by this internal soundtrack and as a result, I cannot move in any way other than that of a tomcat on a hot sultry night when the air is filled with female-on-heat pheromones.
Luckily, there is almost nobody here to see. But in my mind, each step towards the coffee machine is imbued with a delight in the movement and a joy at the control over my limbs which today feels absolute.

In my head, life is one long dance. Sometimes a strut, sometimes a slink, occasionally a tap dance.

I think I am happy to accept this in exchange for the lack of a capacity for mental visual imagery.

Ambition, commitment and satisfaction

am sitting eight floors up in the Westin Grand Hotel in Munich. It is a very hot day and the airconditioning is forgiven for the intrusive noise it makes. As hotels go, it is rather plush and I cannot believe the travel system had it on its books and allowed me to book it. But it did and now here i am, feeling like a VIP and frankly, a bit of a fraud. It seems like the height of Western dacadence to be in such a hotel, with its glass and chrome and dark wood. Everything costs extra: breakfast 20 euros, internet 19 euros a day. Extortion really. I could never afford to pay for this out of my own pocket and frankly, I am not sure I would. I don't think it represents value for money, though i confess, it feeds my ego a little to stay here. It makes me feel a "somebody", which is illusory I know, but in contrast to feeling a "nobody" as seems to be the worst social fate that can befall us in these unenlightened times, I will accept it.
But not without thought.

I am here doing this because a large corporation values my skills. In a few hours I shall stand in front of a room of very well educated, very sharp, extremely intelligent people from three continents, and present some technical information. I am good at this.
Am I good enough to warrant the huge corporate expenditure that sent me here and accommodates me?
Probably.

Did I expect or want to be doing this? Actually no. In truth, I expected to be a truck driver, like my father, or at best, some kind of technician soldering electronic circuits at a bench (which I did do for a while and didn't like). In short: I had no ambition to do this.

Now some people have a clear idea of what they want out of life. I have worked with people who were so "driven" that they had their whole career and associated lifestyle, mapped out in advance, some in quite minute detail. I knew people who had "action plans" for their whole lives, milestones they want to achieve at certain times, places they wanted to be by a certain stage in life.
This is admirable, possibly a little misguided because plans have a habit of hitting the unexpected and becoming derailed, but to have a plan may be a comforting and focussing thing. I applaud those who do this. The Driven are the ones who become our doctors, surgeons, architects, engineers. I am glad there are such people.

I never plan. For that reason. Like the old prizefighting adage: "Everyone has a plan until they get hit!" I find flexibility and keeping one's with about you is a better approach. For me.

And so, that is, I suppose how I came to be here. And occasionally I look up and am surprised, because it seemed to happen when I wasn't looking.

So, it occurs to me there are the driven who know exactly what they want and are quite singleminded in their approach to getting it. Then there are, I suspect, the large majority, like me, who think "this is ok, this is enough" and are happy to go where employment (or other driving force such as art or writing) may lead them, as long as it doesn't demand too much of them. It finances life, makes those things that are dear to us available to a level we are more or less happy with (although I would like to get to the sea a bit more often and dance more, I confess), but doesn't suck the very goodness out of us such that we have nothing left over to enjoy life with.

Of course there are also those who are forced to work really hard in jobs that grind them down, for low pay and long hours, with no alternative. I thank my lucky stars I have been lucky enough not to end up there, like most of my ancestors.
And there are those who, bovine, sit all day at a job that taxes them hardly at all, and are happy to watch sky TV with a pizza and not think about where they are going. This too is a valid choice.

I recently attended a university open day with my son, who has this choice ahead of him. The course outlined were very clearly defined, modular and progressive. If one followed this route, the qualifications gained would probably ensure valued employment and respect for a lifetime. The workload was only really alluded to. The progression then could be to a masters, chartered engineer status or a Phd.
I looked at the faces in the room: A range from shiny faced enthusiasm through chin-on-hand slouched boredom and the potential ladder of disciplined striving and glorious attainment stretching ahead of them. Such an opportunity.

And I thought: Gosh, that's a lot to do. I really couldn't be bothered. My own meagre qualifications, from this very college, we sufficient to gain me a foothold somewhere I could show my own potential, but there was so much more I could have done to get a better grades. These kids may look at it differently to me, indeed the circumstances are changed and they may need more that I scraped. I was lucky.
But I think of what I learned and where it took me and it cannot be denied that education is a precious and necessary thing, for how could I explain the complex technical concepts I do, without the seeds of the knowledge I gained there?

And then, I thought of the good times, the weekends by the sea, out in my kayak, drinking port by the fire in the evenings and indolent days bobbing about in the waves.
And it brings me back to the realisation that the most important word in the English language is "balance". I balance the commitment to the economic necessities of work such that I can have the time and the money to do these other things. Certainly, I have the commitments to be in places and be credible in what I do, which is a challenge sometimes. But the real driver for me is the beauty of experiences, the good company I find them with and the appreciation of just being in a nice place with good people doing interesting things. Whence Bohemia indeed!

Somewhere between being a somebody and a nobody is the fine point where expectations are realistically met and responsibilities are acknowledged. Finding the balance is an art in itself.

I have so much more to say on this but given the above, I had better get on with my presentation for this afternoon!

Awareness, hazards and leopards

so, my first blog written on my new phone. as usual, i am writing from the seat of an aeroplane, high up over the channel. i can't say i like the keys very much but it still is much preferable to the discomfort of pen and paper which to this day seems like a trial to burden my poor fingers and hinder the flow of ideas from my head to the page.

My sterile sandwich is eaten, its wrapper all that remains of the neatest and least appealing package of nourishment I could imagine (except perhaps a fly proffered in spider silk). A perfectly groomed orange-faced man pours me ghastly coffee which i attempt to make palatable with copious amounts of sugar and "cream" that could never have seen the inside of an udder. I have a sudden overwhelming urge for a home-made baguette filled with turkey, stuffing and mayonnaise and briefly wonder where these cravings originate before turning my gaze out of the window.

I see now a landscape of fields cities and roads. Some roads are big and though i cannot see them, i know there are cars tearing along them at speeds which make our reaction times seem ponderously slow and which can suddenly become very aparent when the illusion of control is shattered by an unexpected motoring hazard.

It is a tamed landscape where one could wander thoughtful, distracted and absorbed completely in one's inner world without the slightest need for any kind of vigilance.

Recently, I was cycling to work along some very small, remote and winding roads when I noticed that on every bend there were skidmarks. This implies to me the kind of indifference to hazard I previously mentioned above. Obviously, a significant number of drivers are often surprised to discover another vehicle coming the other way and are forced to brake from what appears to have been an inappropriate speed to avoid an unexpected collision. This, along with such foolishness as texting whilst negotiating a busy intersection (and going straight through red lights as I have seen often), offers us examples of life-threatening stupidity which are remarkably common and only go unpunished because fate is mostly kind to us despite ourselves. It strikes me again and again just how poor the standard-issue imagination is regarding potential dangers.

Throughout most of human history, far greater vigilance was required if one's safety was valued. A walk in the woods would have been a very bad idea indeed and to be avoided at all costs. Bears, wolves, leopards and unfriendly fellow humans might be encountered at any turn of whatever rudimentary paths one followed.

Daydreaming or not paying attention to the environment could see you become lunch or merely dead. Wandering down the road in a complete daze of ignorance was not an option for the wary who wished to survive the attentions of predators both animal and human. For almost all of our species' existence, such forces of predation have pruned humanity mercilessly, punishing stupidity and complacency by removing the stupid and complacent from the population. Until now.

And so this leads me to wonder if people were by necessity more vigilant, even perhaps more intelligent, when life was more risky.

There is no doubt that careering round a blind bend at a speed where you could not stop were you to meet someone similarly reckless coming the other way, is pretty stupid and one can only get away with such stupidity in a world made artificially safe by our own human regulation and invention. In the past, surely equivalent stupidity must have been rewarded by an early death, or at least injury sufficient to remove one from the gene pool?

When not paying attention and stumbling about haphazardly could mean an untimely end on the horns of an angry buffalo, were people more aware in general?

It just seems to me that it is very easy to live, in the West in the 21st century. It can be achieved safely and effortlessly by even the most gormless of individuals. If one so wishes, they can lie on the sofa and eat ice cream all day, ordered from the internet and delivered to the door by the perky little man from Sainsbury's. No hunting, gathering or personal risk is involved apart from getting a job of some kind. The wages of the lowest paid worker would here cover the needs of mere existence, at an extreme. Fecklessness abounds and nobody gets eaten or stomped as a result.

But throughout history life was hard and hazardous, and usually quite short. If the leopards didnt fall on your puny and defenceless frame as you struggled back to your cave bearing the odd antelope, or more likely, handful of berries, then cholera, parasites or bands of marauding warriors from the other tribes possibly awaited with malice in mind. Best keep your eyes peeled if you want to survive!

But now, we don't have to fear any of those in general. Life is grindingly safe and people are largely docile.....

i suppose, once, humans were as jumpy and cautious as deer in the woods, and probably with good reason. Most animals in the wild are seemingly permanently hungry, permanently scared and often, ready to mate at a moment's notice lest opportunity be curtailed violently. It paid to start at every rustle or to avoid walking under trees that looked as if they had something large, spotty and cat shaped , even if it was actually nothing.

Was life sharper though? Did it provide a more authentic set of experiences, born of the acceptance of the possibility of sudden, imminent death?

It seems perhaps a strange question. If you live on the edge of existence, constantly aware it may end at any moment, does it have a more vivid texture, as opposed the insulated, sometimes bovine, existence of today?

Possibly this is a quaint romantic notion born of the ignorance of how wretched living in constant fear and vigilance can be. But could there be an acceptance that just being alive is inherently a Good Thing without the intrusions of seemingly daft existential questions about 'why are we here?'

Well. I will enjoy the security that 21st century civilised living supplies but i will attempt to remain vigilant. There aren’t any bears in Gloucestershire but one never knows when vigilance might pay off and perhaps I will stop living in my head so much and see a bit more of what is around me

the waxing and waning of passions

Humans always seem to need to do stuff. Most people have activities they would prefer to be doing above all others, Throughout my life, I have had many such passtimes.
From 7 to 12, I just wanted to collect fossils, rocks, minerals. I found the idea of stumbling across specimens to be exciting beyond anything else I could conceive of.
At 12 I got into electronics. The principles of circuits I found unbelievably alluring and wanted to do nothing else for a couple of years but sit in my room making gadgets that did various cool things.
Puberty kicked in and there was a girl who similarly held my focus for a few years. The another. And eventually a long term one.
At 17 I had been practising karate for about 4 years and it really took hold of me. I loved the feeling of control over my limbs (at last!) and the nimbleness that the movements brought me. But then I discovered music when I was 18 and a student.
The next 8 years or so, I went busking, I played in some rubbish bands and I wanted to do nothing else but (oddly) play the banjo. It was all consuming and its presence in the corner of the room was irresistable. I could not help but pick it up and play it whenever I saw it.
Then there were the children and I was rather too tired for the next ten years to do anything much.
The banjo sits there unnoticed and I cannot remember now the attraction. It has no appeal whatsoever. From being an all consuming drive, music has faded to a complete indifference.
As with all my former passions, I remember that I was consumed with fervour that help my attention for much of my waking hours, but now, it has gone.

About ten years ago, it became words. The clamour in my head found voice through textual expression. No longer hampered by my inability to use a pen, I as free to clear out the noise and commit it to a page. It helped immensely. It became a passion.
And now, it appears as with all the other passions, it has passed. I no longer feel the need for expression. My words are useful certainly, for when I need to write a letter to school or an email explaining a particularly awkward situation to a customer. But I no longer need or even want to write anything. It has, like all the other passion, seemingly just gone away.
I can still bash out a tune on a guitar, throw a fearsome kick, build a circuit if I need to. I can still identify a brachiopod. But I don't feel the urge to indulge any of these things. The way, i no longer want to sit at a a keyboard or notebook to feel the flow of the words.
And neither has another passion displaced it. I can't say I really feel enamoured of any particular activity currently on offer to me. I like to dance, I like to get out in the sea on my kayak, but they are not passions per se. they don't move me the way the others did. They are just punctuation in an otherwise straightforward life.

capricious, isnt it, the human spirit?

A Craving

I remember the wave, like so many waves, real or metaphorical.
The sea is calm and the surface serene, like clean sheets on a bed. I take myself to the point where it feels that I should be, where the water is deep enough to be dangerous but currents are only hinted at below the surface.

Small ripples apear from out at sea but as yet, they are just echoes of something to come. I play with the wave, dipping my paddle in to turn me and spin the boat to an exact position. I am in perfect control as i stroke the water and in return, the water rocks me and lets me know i could, if i so chose, go with this wave, but with a deft flick of my wrist, i hold back and tease the wave that I can resist its force.

Each new wave, part of a set, comes in from the sea and each is bigger until at last I feel the time is right. This wave is the one: It is lifting me and i feel its power moving me towards the shore and I have reached a point where I have to go with it. It compels me to move in unison with its energy and I give in and feel the power of it lifting me and throwing me forward irresistably. My skin tingles and my scalp is electric as I am joined to this massive thing. The movement becomes unstoppable and my whole soul sings. i am immersed in absolute pleasure with every nerve ending singing and light in my head, like I am falling through space and time with the Universe standing still for a moment that seems to last a lifetime. Inside my mind and body, I am on fire and all attempts to control it are now abandoned as I just give in to the experience, just me on a kayak, and the wave that I am now caught up intimately with. It goes on and on and I fly fast with the sounds issuing forth from me unbidden. I feel it will never end!
But the wave abates, as is its nature, losing its power suddenly but still with enough energy to move me onwards, now slowly and calmly.

Breathless, I drift on to the sand and roll off the boat. I lie, spent, with the small ripples, remnants of waves, lapping at my tingling feet. My hands flat on the sand feel it as if it has never been felt before. The hills are startlingly green to the eye and the sky a blue of such crystal clear intensity that I really cannot understand why I have never seen it this way before.
And all is good with the world in that place, at that moment.

Moments of clarity

I live my life in a haze of confusion. Should I do this, is that a better option? Rarely is there a clear decision to be made on unequivocal facts requiring no interpretation. I dither, i prevaricate, I agonise, and I make choices. Most of the time the choice is abdication; The Status Quo.
Occasionally, I determine to make a change and act upon the result of some evaluation, rational (rarely) or intuitive (usually). Sometimes I am right, often I am wrong. It seems arbitrary given the iteratively revelatory nature of knowledge and information. I make my choice, new data appears. It confirms or disproves the correctness of my course of action.

Sometimes, due to my mental standpoint, a sense of absolute clarity appears. All uncertainly falls away and I KNOW deeply and profoundly the Right Way to go. At that singular moment, doubt becomes irrelevant or absent and certainty suddenly fills my consciousness. It is as if a tunnel has opened up between me and my goal through all the thrashing, distracting contradictions and I can SEE exactly what I need to do.

What a shame then it is to discover the illusory nature of such revelations. How disappointing to find that when I have had one of these moments, it has usually subsequently turned out to be an ill-advised course of action. Clarity was a misleading illusion produced somehow by a limited perspective and created by a combination of THAT moment and my particular, specific internal circumstances.
Intuition has its value, but we need to know exactly when to trust it and when to ignore its persuasive urging.

Most decisions which we make seem mostly at the mercy of luck. The cold, unfeeling Universe has no plan for us and no clear Way we should follow for enlightenment and happiness.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.