RIP Sheila Mitchell. 4th April 1932 ~ 8th July 2016

I STILL NEED YOU, MUM.

That line above has been the only thing written in this blog for just over a week. My mum died at around 20:25 on Friday the 8^th of July, finally succumbing to the cancer that has stalked her for the past five years. Since then I have tried to write this inadequate memorial several times, and each time I haven't been able to get past those five words;

I STILL NEED YOU, MUM.

I've literally spent hours just staring at them and crying. I've cried so much; almost every evening since the 21^st of April when my sister rang me to tell me that mum's cancer was back and there was no more treatment. In fact I think it was me that rang my sister after she sent me a text message asking if I can talk. I already knew what to expect – the “can you talk” text is never anything but ominous, but I knew what to expect because I saw mum almost every evening in my capacity as evening dog walker. I'd watched as her weight dropped, and her breathing got worse, her coughing more frequent, and her legs less steady. Each evening my walk to mum's house was filled with a very real fear that I would walk in to find her dead or dying. So when my sister gave me that news on the 21^st of April it wasn't a surprise, yet somehow it still hit me like a sucker-punch to the gut.

And so I cried. I fought back tears every evening while I walked the dog. I cried on my own each night after my girlfriend went to bed. I cried in the mornings when I started walking the dog before going to work because mum could no longer manage it. I cried when mum went into hospital. I've cried several times a day since she died. I'm crying now as I write this. I don't want to cry any more.

I STILL NEED YOU, MUM.

I've always been very close to mum – I'll happily admit to being a bit of a mummy's boy. She was the centre of my world and it truly mattered to me what she thought of me; I wanted her respect, I wanted her to be proud of me. Just the thought of disappointing her fills me with a crippling angst.

When I was seven or maybe eight years old I'd got a fake spider out of one of those little plastic eggs machines that used to be dotted around all over the place. I thought it'd be great fun to scare mum with it. I was very wrong. That moment I'm throwing that stupid plastic spider at her, and her reaction to it – the fear I'd caused her (and subsequent anger) has stayed with me for over thirty years, and I still think about it to this day, and it still eats me up inside when I do.

The guilt that I feel now because I couldn't- because I didn't do more to help her will probably also stay with me for the rest of my life. I should have moved in with her. I should have taken time off work and looked after her. I seriously considered it – a month before mum's death I'd had a chat with my line manager about cutting down my hours or taking extended time off, but I never did it. I really wish I had. Mum though was a fiercely independent woman; her beloved border collie, Georgie Girl, her only companion (and permanent shadow) for nigh on a decade. She was stubborn too and wouldn't even entertain the thought that any of her children would disrupt their lives for her. But I know she got lonely, and it broke my heart. I will always be so grateful for mum's incredible neighbours, and dog owners of Brentford Dock where mum and Georgie Girl lived. I've never known such a community of people so friendly and so eager to help. Mum used to joke that they're all Georgie's friends and only talk to her because she's with Georgie, but they would stop and talk with her for hours. I got to know many of them when I took over the evening dog walking duties (so she may have been right about them being Georgie's friends), and have met many more since mum's death, and so many of them have told me how well thought of she was. I am so proud to have had her as my mum.

On the 28^th of June my mum called my sister to say she was having trouble breathing and shortly after was taken to hospital. The hospital said she had a touch of pneumonia and they wanted to keep her in for a couple of days and give her antibiotics. That evening, when I got back from the hospital I moved into mum's flat to look after Georgie Girl.

We realised it was highly unlikely that mum would be coming back home – she had already decided that she couldn't look after herself any more and she needed full time help. She wanted to go to a nursing home. The hope was that we'd find one willing to take Georgie Girl as well so they could still be together. Sooner or later though, Georgie's future needed to be settled. Unfortunately she herself is nearing the end of her life, and she's unbelievably nervous of almost everyone except mum and myself. Finding her a new home would be difficult, and most importantly I didn't want to lose her too, I honestly don't think I could've handled it.

I'm delighted to say that Georgie Girl is now living with us, hopefully until the end of her days, by the grace of my girlfriend to whom I will be eternally grateful. It's not going to be easy and there will be problems but Georgie Girl is with her family, and I have a new permanent shadow.

I'll confess something that's going to sound contrived: I've “known” for months that my mum would die on the 9^th of July – a niggling feeling that wouldn't go away, a persistent knowledge in my head. Apart from a couple of work colleagues (who I now realise are awkward conversations when I get back to work) I confided this “knowledge” to no one.

The thing is normally every year I go on holiday during the first two weeks of July – I'd always bring back a pair of silver earrings and a fridge magnet for mum from where ever I'd been. The hunt for silver earrings became an integral part of travelling abroad – and generally by April or May I've decided where in the world I'm going and start making plans. My friends and acquaintances who are aware of this routine often asked where I'm going this year, all I could do was give a dismissive answer and try to change the subject – quite often followed by vacant staring into the distance, because every time the subject came up that “knowledge” would jump front and centre of my thoughts. I knew I wasn't going on holiday this year, and I “knew” why. The worst though was when mum asked about my holiday plans this year – I got a lump in my throat so heavy it sat, a massive knot of sadness in my chest.

So on the 8^th of July at 18:30, when I walked onto mum's ward for my daily visit and found her distressed and struggling to breath, I was suddenly confronted with all the fears that I'd played out in my head a hundred times. I told my sister she needed to be at the hospital NOW and I stood beside mum, scared and panicky. Then mum managed to say two words to me – “I'm going” and all those fears just disappeared and I felt calm.

My sister, niece, and nephew arrived not long after and we sat with her. She told my sister she was “going”, and she even got to tell us that she loved us. At 20:17 something perceptively changed and the death rattle that had been constant since I arrived stopped. I looked at the clock on my phone – why I did this I don't know – and exchanged a glance with my sister, I haven't asked her but I think my sister noticed the change too. We both held her hands and encouraged her to go, her breathing slowed until eight minutes later she peacefully took her last breath.

She beat my prediction by three and a half hours.

I love you, mum. I'm going to miss you so much, and I'll always, always still need you.

Conkers Nearly Killed Me

It is conker season. As I walk along the pavement, seeing all the discarded horse chestnut shells and the horse chestnuts not yet found, or simply deemed unworthy, by the conker gathering child, I can’t help but remember when I very nearly died due to the humble horse chestnut... twice.

I’m sure that everyone in the UK has at some point read an article or seen news stories of a local council, school or education authority banning children from playing conkers in the playground, or just forcing them to wear safety goggles. Pretty much every one of these stories is accompanied by the obligatory ‘man/woman on the street’ declaring that it’s “health and safety gone mad”; the battle cry of the Daily Mail and its reader. And of course pretty much every one of these stories turns out to be complete and utter bollocks fabricated by whichever scare mongering newspaper (the word ‘news’ here is used very loosely) couldn’t be arsed to find anything else to give their opinion about. Sure, you may get the odd overprotective parent complaining to their child’s head teacher that their little precious got a bruised knuckle from a misjudged conker swing. But when I did a little bit of research for this blog (hard to believe I know) I couldn’t find a single report of anyone ever being injured while playing conkers. I found reports of ‘branches’ (read sticks) falling out of horse chestnut trees and injuring people (these sticks having previously been thrown into the tree to dislodge conkers). Reports of people hurting themselves after slipping over on conkers, which I can only hope was accompanied by the relevant slapstick slipping-over-on-a-bunch-of-round-things sound effect; and if it’s not the conkers themselves people are slipping on then it’s the resulting mulch from the horse chestnut cases being crushed into the pavement. There are even reports of injuries from people getting into fights over a game of conkers. Seriously. Fights! Over a game of conkers! But not one case of anyone having been injured by actually playing the game of conkers itself.

I know from personal experience, as will anyone who’s ever played it, that an enthusiastic game of conkers can result in very sore knuckles. Either, as with ‘little precious’ above, from a misjudged conker swing (accidentally or purposely), or from an opponent’s very successful shot sending your conker to wrap its string tightly around your fingers, and somehow tying itself into a knot, cutting off the circulation and turning your fingers purple. I remember many a conker game ending in me having to be cut loose from the conker-string- grip-of-death. But, unsurprisingly, neither of these, nor any of the other injuries mentioned above, were what nearly caused my early, conker related, demise. Both of my incidents were due to the seemingly harmless activity of conker gathering. This is where the danger really lies in the noble game of conkers.

Every child knows that the biggest and best conkers are to be found at the very top of the tree, and this is where my first conker related near death experience happened; or at least it’s where it began. As a kid I was always climbing things: stair banisters (much more fun than using the stairs), drain pipes, buildings, and of course trees. I’d guess I was at about the age of 8 or 9 on this particular September day when a small group of us had decided to plunder the riches of a horse chestnut tree that, due to its location just inside someone’s front garden, was unsuitable for the usual throwing-sticks-up-and-knocking-conkers-out-of-the-tree technique of conker gathering. A few of us opted to climb into the tree while the less adventurous stayed on the ground to collect the spoils. Like an overenthusiastic young monkey, I quickly made it all the way up to the very top of the tree and was happily going about the business of dislodging the conkers from their pedicels. I don’t remember what caused my unexpected exit from the tree canopy; what I do remember is watching the spiky shells of the horse chestnuts, that I was oh-so-close to only a moment before, suddenly accelerating away from me at a considerable rate (9.8 meters per second squared, but admittedly I probably wasn’t aware of this fact at the time). The garden in which this tree lived was bordered by a standard pointed top picket fence, and as I neared the end of my downward journey my skinny knees lodged themselves perfectly between the pales of it. In itself, this new anchor point only succeeded in giving the upper half of my body a hinge with which to change its trajectory and firmly smash my head against the, for some reason, concrete base of the fence. Even if hanging upside down by my knees with a shattered skull didn’t kill me I have no doubt that it would’ve very likely left me with considerable brain damage. The only reason I survived that fall was because a friend, whom I shall call ‘Steve’, mainly because that is his actual name, so I suppose there was no need for the inverted commas. Steve, showing an amazing feat of speed and strength beyond his size, caught my shoulders. Thankfully the rest of me was attached to those shoulders, and thus he saved me from the most ironic (and last) game of conkers I ever would’ve played, and very much lost.

I did sort of repay the debt to Steve some years later when he, while climbing over a spiked metal railing, slipped and impaled his thigh onto one of the spikes. I managed to lift him off the spike, to the unpleasant sound of squelching leg muscle, and (I think) use my t-shirt to tie around his leg to stem the bleeding. I have to admit I’m not entirely sure about the t-shirt bit, but I do have vague recollections of hobbling him home with his arm draped around my neck and being a bit self conscious of having my bare chest poking out from the leather biker’s jacket that I used to wear during every waking hour. Now Steve and I are nothing more than mere facebook acquaintances that haven’t actually spoken to each other in nigh on twenty years, but obviously I’m glad he caught me that day, and I’d happily buy him a drink if I bumped into him in the pub.

The second of my conker caused close encounters happened when I was about 13 and I’d been out exploring the world with Jamie, another childhood friend. Jamie (again, his actual name) was one of those kids who seem to have no sense of responsibility, who never quite grasped the notion of consequences. He was always in trouble for doing something outrageous or dangerously stupid, generally at the expense of others, and he was the kind of friend that, although you hung out with him, you never quite trusted him. And with very good cause. The particular part of the world we were exploring that day was the footpath that runs along the narrow strip between the river Thames and Kew Gardens. As we were walking along Jamie spotted an abnormally large conker lying on the mud between the footpath and Kew Garden’s boundary wall, and excitedly ran off to collect it. By this stage in my life I no longer had any interest in conkers and so I carried on walking, probably thinking what a child he was (he was a year younger than me). My thoughts were interrupted by Jamie shouting after me. I turned around and saw what I thought was Jamie kneeling in the mud. As I said before, Jamie was prone to playing stupid pranks, so I thought no more of it and carried on walking.

“Glenn! I’m sinking. Seriously, I’m sinking. Help me! Glenn!”

I turned around again to tell him I was in no mood for his stupid jokes, but this time he was almost up to his groin in mud. ‘Oh shit’ I thought as I ran back towards him ‘he might actually be serious.’ Luckily he hadn’t got that far onto the mud before he started sinking so I could still reach his hands and pull him out.

“I’m going down to the river to wash this mud off” and off he trotted.

I had never seen sinking mud before, apart from in films, and so my inquisitive little mind wanted to investigate. I had found a long stick and was crouched down at the edge of this new and wondrous piece of geography busy poking the stick into it. All of a sudden I felt a mighty shove from behind, accompanied by an evil and familiar laugh, and found myself running forwards across the three metre or so wide stretch of mud. I’d managed to run over halfway across before my momentum slowed enough for the mud to catch my feet and send me sprawling face first into the sticky substance. I was lying flat on the mud, and with my weight distributed, I was in no danger of sinking. What I should’ve done at this point was edge my way towards the far bank, which I was already quite close to. But I was a 13 year old kid in sinking mud and panicking. What I did was stand up, turn around and try to make my way back, about two metres, to the bank I’d just come from. I started sinking immediately. Determinedly I struggled on; defiantly (and stupidly) staying upright as I slowly progressed forward and downward. On the bank Jamie was in full panic mode, and was shouting “Help him! Somebody help him!” at the small group that had started to gather on the footpath to gawp at the entertainment now unfolding in front of them. I remember feeling angry that, as I sank lower into the mud, all those adults just stood there and watched impassively. Eventually Jamie found a stick, probably the same one I had been testing the mud with just a minute or so earlier, and thrust it out towards me. By this time I was pretty much up to my nipples in mud, but I grabbed a firm hold of the stick being proffered to me. Eventually, and to wild indifference from the gathered crowd, I made it back to the bank and dichotomised myself from the mud.

“I’m going home!” Jamie abruptly exclaimed as he started to run off, and I laughed. I stood on that bank, covered tit to toe in thick gloopy mud and I laughed so very hard. Partly because of the way that Jamie, fearing repercussion, had suddenly decided that “going home” was the best course of action, and partly from the relief of having firm ground beneath my feet again; I’m sure the endorphins still flooding around my body had something to do with it too.

In truth I don’t think I was actually in any real danger of dying in that mud, I’d probably sunk as deep as I was going to, and contrary to what films will have you believe, people rarely, if ever, get submerged in these situations; the body’s natural buoyancy will keep you from sinking further than about chest deep. As a 13 year old boy though, it was, at the time, a terrifying experience.

I don’t know if kids still play conkers, it’s hard to imagine that anyone’s created a Nintendo DS version. And because of that today’s children may never learn for themselves the inherent dangers of conker gathering. But, terrifying and potentially life threatening as both of my experiences were, I’m still very glad I had them; if only so that I can say to people, conkers nearly killed me... twice.

One Year On

I have just read the first blog entry I ever posted: RIP Stan Mitchell. 2nd May 1926 ~ 22nd December 2010. I now have a lump in my throat and I’m struggling to hold back tears. The tears aren’t because it was badly written, the tears are because my first ever blog entry was about my dad dying the previous day. That happened a year ago today, which is why I have just read that blog post for the first time since I published it. I don’t quite remember my thought process on the day I wrote that blog. I remember sitting at my laptop, drinking lots of tea and crying. I know my predominant thought was that I needed to sort out the mass of emotions I was feeling, maybe even confess the guilt, and I knew that I would never be able to vocalise them. So, I decided that I was going to write them down. I think my initial idea may have been to post it on some kind of memorial website, but before I knew it I found myself signing up to a free blog hosting site instead. I don’t know why I eventually chose to post it as a blog; as much as I enjoy writing I’d never actually considered starting a blog before. And even when I was creating this one I had no intention of doing anything on it other than publishing the post about my dad. That’s the reason this blog is called Laid Bare, I was exposing my emotions, and innermost thoughts more than I ever would do in person.

So with the death of my dad Laid Bare was born. And that would’ve been that except for the unexpectedly overwhelming response. I’d posted links to the post on both twitter and facebook, as I have done with all of my posts since. I don’t have many twitter followers, and I have even fewer facebook “friends”, so I didn’t expect that many people to read it. What I didn’t bank on was my sister reposting the link on her facebook wall. My sister is a hell of a lot more social than I am, not to mention considerably friendlier, and is far more active on facebook with over 250 “friends”. Because of my sister many more people than I would ever have imagined read my words and they were actually being touched by them. The comments left underneath that link, on both mine and my sister’s facebook page, were very complimentary. At my dad’s funeral I had total strangers praising my writing, and telling me how much it moved them. Even considering the subject matter of the blog I couldn’t help but feel very proud of it. It was during the few days after the funeral that I decided I was going to carry on with the blog. It was actually due to a bit of a rant I was having on twitter one day; I’d got to about the fifth or sixth tweet of my rant, having struggled to word each one as such that it didn’t exceed the character limit but still made some kind of sense, when it dawned on me that it would be a lot easier to write a blog about it instead. I got home from work that day and I sat down and wrote my second blog post ‘What’s In a Profile?’

It was from there that I started getting more interested in blogging. I’ll admit it can be a real struggle to think of something to write about at times, and even with a subject firmly in mind it’s not always easy to turn my scrambled thoughts into a coherent and legible essay. Thankfully it’s not always a struggle; there are some posts that practically write themselves, with me fighting to keep up as the sentences flood out of my head. Then the difficulty is keeping focused on the subject matter and not flying off in all the directions my random thoughts can take me. Whatever the case though, I really do enjoy writing, and I get a thrill out of publishing my thoughts for anyone in the world to read. Not that many people do, I have a very small audience consisting mainly of my closest friends, but that’s enough for me. To be honest I’d still do it even if I didn’t think anyone was reading it at all. Sure I’d love to have thousands of people eagerly anticipating my every post, but in reality that’s never going to happen. I’m not a celebrity and there’s no specific theme to my blog; I have no call girl insights into the clandestine goings on of the sex trade. I’m not an Hispanic gossip monger scrawling damning doodles over tabloid photographs of celebrities. I don’t write about football, politics, food, fashion, or the latest technologies (besides the odd mention of robot monkey butlers), and I’ve never been at the centre of any controversy. I’m just a personal blogger with a penchant for ranting, and as such my blog has little appeal to anyone outside of my social circle (although The Danger of Spooning tends to get quite a bit of random traffic; you’d be surprised at the amount of people that Google the words ‘spooning’ and ‘fart’). The people who do read my blog regularly (mostly) enjoy it, or at least they say they do, and that makes me happy.

My blog has changed quite a bit since that first post. Originally I just had it on the default look, plain and simple, because that’s all it needed to be. It wasn’t until after about three or four months that I started playing around with the design: changing the background and colour scheme. Adding the short description under the blog name, and writing the little ‘about me’ biog. A few months later, after I’d got several posts published, I added the ‘popular posts’ widget, which had the added advantage of making sure my dad always appears on the blog whatever page you’re looking at (unless you’re viewing it on a mobile phone, as I’d chosen the option to optimise the blog for mobile screens). The most recent changes have been adding labels to my posts and arranging them in a cloud at the bottom of the page. And finally, adding a feature that shows my latest tweets. I’m sure that’s not the last of the changes either; I’ll carry on tweaking the look of the blog, adding and removing features as my mood dictates, for as long as I carry on writing it. I don’t think it’s just the look of the blog that’s changed, but the content has too; I’ve experimented a little bit and tried different ideas. I’m extremely proud of each and every one of my posts, but I do feel overall that my writing, and style, has improved as I’ve gone on.

And so here I am, a year later, writing my eighteenth blog post. All in all, and compared to other bloggers, eighteen posts in a year isn’t many at all. Compared to someone like Richard Herring, who has managed to write a post in his blog Warming Up for every single day of just over nine years, my pissy little average of one and a half posts a month is a somewhat embarrassingly small achievement. But it is an achievement nonetheless, and I never set out to be a modern day Samuel Pepys, I just wanted to indulge myself in an activity I find quite satisfying. None of the posts I’ve subsequently published have attracted anywhere near the kind of attention that the one about my dad did, and I suspect that the vast majority of the people who told me I should keep on writing haven’t even read a single one of them. But that’s okay. This blog only exists because my dad died and I didn’t know what to do, or how to express my grief. Now every time I publish a post here I’m reminded of my dad, and to me, no matter what I write about, this blog will always be a tribute to him. So I will finish this post as I did that very first one...

I love you dad. I miss you. And I’ll always remember you.

Blasphemy with a Capital H

I should start this blog with a serious warning: If you are in any way religious and are offended by anyone not taking your religion seriously then DO NOT read this blog. This blog is extremely blasphemous, and just by reading it you are risking a one way trip to whatever hell you believe in, but at least I’ll be there to greet you on arrival, I’ll keep a beer cold for you.

I’m not in any way a religious man. I don’t believe in any gods, although I have invented a few. Even so, I am not opposed to the odd bit of theological thought, and recently I’ve found myself wondering where the ‘H’ in the popular profanity ‘Jesus H Christ’ comes from. What possible reason could anyone have for putting it there? I can’t imagine there has ever been a time when there were so many Jesus Christs kicking about the place that the biblical protagonist would need to be made to stand out by placing an extraneous H in his name.

“JESUS CHRIST!” somebody would profane.

“The butcher?” his friend would ask.

“The baker?” another would suggest.

“The table leg maker?” a third would interrupt.

“The table leg maker?” the others would say “His name’s Joseph you fool.”

“Sorry I got confused.” the interrupter would reply.

“No,” the original profaner would explain “I was referring to Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour.”

“Oh!” the gathered group would say “If only there was some way to distinguish between all these damn Jesus Christs.” they’d all agree, as the butcher and baker – but not the table leg maker who’s name was Joseph – would come running along to see why they were called.

“Our Lord and Saviour is holy right?” a wise old fisherman, who up until this point had been hiding quietly in the shadows listening, would say “So why don’t we call him Jesus HOLY Christ, or ‘H’ for short?”

“You are indeed wise, old fisherman. That is what we shall do.” everyone would say, inexplicably in unison.

The above scenario may well have happened, but I doubt that that would have been the end of it. Sooner or later other Jesus Holy (‘H’ for short) Christs would’ve turned up, forcing another name to be added, and then another, and another, and so on until he’s got more names than an indecisive football fanatic's first born.

Maybe Jesus Christ was an experimental clone attempt. Jesus ‘H’ was a resounding success; practically perfect in every way, but before him there were several Jesus Christs that hadn’t quite worked. Jesus ‘A’ in a fit of teenage rebellion changed his name to Mohamed and ran off to start his own religion. Jesus ‘B’ turned out to be little more than a dribbling mass of practically brainless meat that would clap and laugh hysterically every time he farted. Although two thousand years later his descendents would go on to become somewhat successful in American politics. Jesus ‘C’ had the personality of an extremely bland potato, but for some reason was quite good at chasing a spherical object around a field. Jesus ‘D’ spontaneously combusted, leaving nothing more than a stain on a shroud. Jesus ‘E’ became the anti-Jesus, the evil twin that always crops up in these situations. Jesus ‘F’ spent his entire time preoccupied with copying his image into various inanimate objects, foodstuffs being his favourite. Jesus ‘G’ was perfect. Even more compassionate, considerate, intelligent and giving than Jesus ‘H’. In fact vastly superior to Jesus ‘H’ every aspect, except for a strange quirk of chromosomes which meant that he was a woman and therefore completely unsuitable.

It could just be that the ‘H’ was added to try and make him look cool. Christian churches are forever unsuccessfully trying to make their religion appear to be cool in a desperate attempt to attract a younger following. The problem is the centuries old methods of brainwashing and instilling fear, although still very much in use, are no longer enough to ensure a life long devotion. Now those pesky upstarts: science, logic, and common sense get in the way of a good indoctrination. On top of that, globalisation has increased the competition from other religions, many of which come with their own enticing brand of unquestionable dogma. Killing people for not believing in your chosen, or instilled, set of religious beliefs tends to be frowned upon nowadays as well. What used to be lovingly referred to as a wholly acceptable crusade, or inquisition, is now just known as genocide, or terrorism. And these are very negative words that just won’t do for a religious corporation to be associated with; it’s very bad for business. In the modern world of multi media and global enterprise, successful branding is all about being cool. All the religions are at it. Type “cool [any religion]” into a search engine and you’ll get hundreds of sites, blogs and forums dedicated to convincing you why that particular religion is so damn cool. Christians do seem to take it to a whole different level though, with Christian pop, rock, metal, and hip hop all trying, and failing dismally, to show how cool Christianity is. But of course Christians have already made Jesus Christ as cool as they can by referring to him as “JC”. Shoving an ‘H’ in the middle isn’t going to make it sound any cooler, but will make it sound like a fast food outlet... Jerked Hickory Chicken anyone?

There is a distinct possibility that the 'H' stands for horny. Jesus Christ is believed to have died sometime in his early thirties and it is also believed he died a virgin. If you consider that in biblical times, people started "begetting" each other when they were barely into their teens, this means Jesus had practically twenty years of pent up sexual frustration by the time he started preaching. Most men can hardly go twenty hours without some form of sexual release. Teenage boys can’t even manage to walk down the street without a hand down the front of their jogging pants, having a little fiddle. But of course, for Jesus, even spilling his seed was not an option. You can only conclude, what with the bible being smothered in sex, debauchery and prostitution, that Jesus Christ, smack bang in the middle of it all, was one hell of a horny bastard.

I think I should point out at this stage, in regard to the above paragraph, that I am parodying the simple, and often confused, version of biblical history that a vast number of people are lazily taught to believe. I am aware, firstly, that in all likelihood Jesus probably was married and definitely not a virgin. And secondly, that the “spilling seed on the ground” quote has got nothing to do with masturbation at all. The bible doesn’t actually give an opinion, one way or the other, on masturbation. As long as you don’t do it while coveting your neighbour’s ox.

I should also point out that I am fully aware of the actual theories of where the ‘H’ in Jesus H Christ came from, but that doesn’t stop me coming up with my own, and to be honest, I prefer mine.

Raging Insomnia

There is an idiom that seems to have become very popular over the last year or two and, like many things do, it drives me absolutely nuts. Every time I hear it, or see it written down, a rage builds within me and I am compelled to internally rant to myself. Mentally pacing up and down, gesticulating wildly, while I sternly lecture an imagined gathering of offenders on the error of their ways. I am referring to the colloquialism “sleeps until...” I’m not even sure why I hate it so much. It’s probably that it sounds quite childish. I'll be the first to admit that I can be somewhat immature in my humour, but I'm an adult and I talk like one. This is more like baby talk, and I’ve never been a fan of that. I’m not talking about the baby talk that adults do to babies; the “googoo gaga” kind of gobbledygook, although even that winds me up a little bit. No I’m talking about the kind that adults do to other adults. That supposedly flirtatious baby talk someone might do in an effort to manipulate another person, normally of the opposite sex, to do a favour for them. “Would oo do me a ickle favour pwease?” I know that quite a few people, particularly men, tend to be suckers for that kind of shit, and I’ve seen guys go all googly eyed and jelly kneed when it’s used on them. I guess it’s meant to produce an instinct to protect and nurture, but it just makes me want to punch them in the face. I haven’t as yet punched anyone in the face for it; normally I’ll just agree to do the favour on the condition that they never speak to me like that again.

To me the puerile phrase "sleeps until..." also represents the apparent dumbing down of society as a whole. It’s something that parents say to very young children who maybe don’t quite understand the passage of time yet; a child may not fully comprehend minutes, hours, days, and weeks, but it sure as hell knows what sleep is. Eat, shit, and sleep are an instinctive part of every animal on the planet. So I can understand telling an excited child they’ve got six more sleeps until they go to Disneyland to be scared shitless by an eight foot tall mouse with a penchant for nipple high red shorts. It’s something we’re meant to grow out of though. Our language is supposed to become more complex as our cognitive development advances. Surely as adults we can find ways to express our excitement for an upcoming event without resorting to such childish measures.

There are even apps for smart phones, dozens of them that will tell you how many “sleeps” there are to any event you care to programme in. There are more than ten of them dedicated purely to telling you the amount of “sleeps” you have until Christmas. Most of these apps are free, but a couple actually cost money. One of these, simply titled "Sleeps to Christmas" (Obviously you don't want to be too esoteric for your core customer base), has a description on its info page that starts as follows:

"Excited about Christmas?

We are! We love to keep track of exactly how long it is until Christmas day.

That’s why we created Sleeps To Christmas!”

This particular app has over five hundred reviews, meaning that more than five hundred people have handed over 69p to own an app that tells them “exactly” when Christmas is. What kind of people would need this app? If today is the 18^th November I can tell, using my quite average powers of deduction, that Christmas day is “exactly” 37 days away, regardless of how many sleeps I have. The key to achieving this unremarkable feat is to remember that Christmas day is, and has been for just over sixteen centuries, always on the 25^th of December. And if, as is quite often the case, I don't know what day I'm actually in, I can take a quick look at a calendar. The things have been around in one form or another, letting people know just how many “sleeps until”, for several millennia.

There’s also the issue of what actually constitutes a "sleep". I'm partial, if unrestricted by work or other responsibilities, to a bit of a nap late of an afternoon. When I'm on holiday particularly, having got up reasonably early so as to make the most of any breakfast included in the price of a hotel, I'll spend the best part of the day doing my thing; exploring, sightseeing, or interacting with the locals to see what interesting situations I can get myself into. Then I’ll go back to the hotel for a two or three hour sleep before heading out to find somewhere to have dinner. And I do mean sleep. This is no half hearted nap or snooze. I’m not just noncommittally resting my eyes. I’m talking about a full blown, deep and comfortable sleep. Telling people I’ll be on holiday for twenty-eight sleeps may sound impressive but it’s still only fourteen days. And it’s not just me; many people take a nap during the day, from young children to OAPs. Does Christmas come quicker for these people due to their increased sleep schedule? Do insomniacs have to celebrate events long after everyone else once they’ve caught up on the specified amount of sleeps? It seems a bit cruel really, and telling someone who suffers from insomnia that there are only three sleeps until Festival of Sleep Day would quite frankly just be rubbing their noses in it. (Festival of Sleep Day is an actual holiday, taking place every year on the 3^rd of January. Look it up).

As a method of time measurement “sleeps” is wildly inaccurate. Okay, I know it’s not meant to be taken literally and is just a replacement for “days”, but then why not just say days? Other words are get pointlessly shortened like "lol" "OMG" or "amaze", so why decide to use a longer word in place of days? Just to get sidetracked slightly, what the fuck is "amaze"? Where did that come from? When did we start lobbing off the end of words? What exactly are we meant to get from missing out a syllable or two? Whenever I hear someone say "amaze" I just want to scream at them “No, that's not amaze. A complex series of pathways with dead end branches designed to disorientated and confuse, THAT'S a maze. The word I think you are looking for is amazING!” while banging their head against a wall on every syllable. While I’m on the subject: “totes”, “deets”, "delish" and “redic” can all fuck the fuck off too.

I need to lie down. I’m off for a sleep.

Big Fish Little Fish

“Ambitious” “Focused” “Aspiring” “Overachiever”

These are all words that would never be used to describe me. I am not an ambitious person. Sure, I have desires and dreams but more in a Walter Mitty sense than ‘success at any cost’. I don’t remember ever being really ambitious. I do remember that as a very young child every ambition I did have centred on being able to buy my mum a ‘big boat and a big big box of chocolates’. Whatever future career I dreamed up for myself, and I changed my aspirations more often than I changed my t-shirt, it would always be for this same sole purpose:

“When I grow up mummy, I’m going to be a Horse Guard so I can buy you a big boat and a big big box of chocolates”.

Now, I can understand about the big big box of chocolates; what woman wouldn’t want a big big box of chocolates? But I have no idea whatsoever where this notion that my mum would want a big boat came from. I don’t remember her ever mentioning wanting a boat of any kind, let alone a big one. Nevertheless, this idea stuck in my head far longer than any of my career choices ever did. Needless to say I never joined the Horse Guards.

There are people who know from a very early age exactly what they want to do with their lives, and their childhood decisions are focused on achieving this goal, even if they’re not aware of it at the time. I have to admit, I kind of envy those people. There was a kid at my primary school. Actually, from what I remember there were several kids; I believe I may even have been one myself. But for the purposes of what I’m about to say I’m focusing on this one kid in particular. His name was, and still is, Philip. Philip was one of those kids who, I’m sure, had already made up his mind what he was going to spend the rest of his life doing. For him there was no alternative, and although I never saw him again after primary school, I’ll bet my last penny that he never once lost his focus. You see, Philip was obsessed with TV and radio; it’s what he was known for. Well that, and “driving” around the classroom using his text book as a steering wheel.

There was a weekly magazine out at the time called “Look-in” which was a children’s version of the TVTimes. Among other things, Look-in would have listings of all the children’s TV programs that were on the ITV channel that week (these were the days when we only had 3 channels). Every week Philip would study Look-in from cover to cover and would know every program that was on, the time it started, and a short synapses of the main plot points. In short, Philip was a walking, talking TV listings magazine, and we used him as such. If at any point during the school day you wanted to know what was going to be on TV any time over the coming two weeks, Philip was your boy. I don’t think there’s a single person who knew him that didn’t think he would somehow end up in the entertainment industry.

After primary school, the next time I heard of Philip was whilst listening to Chris Tarrant on Capital fm’s breakfast show, being introduced two or three times an hour as the helicopter bound traffic reporter. Philip has quite an unusual last name so when you hear it you can be pretty sure it’s the one you know.  Now, through the power of Facebook, I know that he’s a “Weekend radio presenter” on some regional station, among other things.

So fair enough, he’s not a nationally famous star, and he’s not even “celebrity” enough ever to be asked onto some Z list reality show with a bunch of other “famous” people you’ve never heard of. But he’s doing what he’s always wanted to do, and I bet that same penny that he’s fucking happy.

So, as I was saying. I envy those people. I envy Philip. Not because of his job, or anything else he may have in his life, but because of his focus, his... calling, for want of a better word. Because when you know what it is you actually want to do it’s a lot easier to achieve something. To be a success. If you don’t have that single minded goal to strive for there’s only really two things that can happen:

One is that you blindly fall into a career that you end up sticking with. You may well then focus all your energies on that career to try to make as much of a success of it as you can. It’s the kind of thing I imagine happened to most sales people, and middle management. Or you may just settle in and spend the rest of your life grafting away, happy and comfortable, the kind of people that spend their entire working life as a postman, bus driver, Taxi driver, etc. There’s thousands of this kind of job and I think this is the category that most people find themselves in.

The other thing that can happen is that you become a drifter. Never really settling into a career, never being content with whatever job it is you find yourself doing. Always looking for something else, something you can “be” rather than just “do”, but never actually finding it.

I am a drifter. But I’m not sure anymore that there is anything that I would be happy “being”. I’ve come close a couple of times, but because of my lack of drive and ambition, and just plain laziness, I didn’t follow it through, I didn’t “make it happen” as those people I envy would’ve done, as Philip did do. When it came time at secondary school, at the age of 13, to “choose my options” (pick what subjects I wanted to continue studying towards a qualification) I firmly believed, and had done for some time, that I wanted to be a vet. So I chose my subjects accordingly; biology, physics, and chemistry. The following year, when it was time to knuckle down and study my chosen subjects, I lost all interest in academic pursuits, preferring instead to bunk off school and do my own thing. Oddly enough I still somehow managed to learn more in that time than many of my contemporaries.

After having a dozen or so jobs, none of which I lasted more than three weeks in, I realised I kind of screwed up my life. Having spent much of my teenage years tinkering with various gadgets (I was well known in school, on the occasions I did turn up, for being able to fix walkmans) I decided to enrol at college on an electrical engineering course. The only other time I’ve come close to devoting my life to a career was during my two years on that course: We had a presentation one day by a lecturer from Reading University. The presentation was on their Cybernetics department and I was enthralled. Suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted to do. For the first, and only, time in my life I could actually see myself in the future; a future that involved cutting edge development in cybernetics. I saw myself working in high tech R&D labs, designing and building machines that would be sent into space to explore other planets. I found myself with a dream of developing the first ever self motivating robot with the ability of complete “bottom up” learning. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this was probably where my idea of a robot monkey butler was born. Again, my own impatience, laziness, and stupidity stepped in to save me from having a career that would’ve taken over my life and given me a sense of achievement. I still had a third year to go at college to gain my diploma, and then the Reading university cybernetics course would be another four years (at least). My parents couldn’t afford all the costs and fees of five more years in full time higher education, and I didn’t qualify for a grant. A part time job was the only option left open to me, and I was far too lazy for that. I do regret not going for it, but I also know that with the course, the commute, and a part time job I would’ve struggled immensely just to keep up.

I didn’t finish the course, I didn’t get my diploma. At the start of my third year at college I had the opportunity of a full time job at IBM and unfortunately I took it. I lasted a year there servicing printers and EPOS machines before making the mistake of telling the manager that he was wrong. Since then I’ve worked at a variety of companies with a varying degree of what career people would call success; I’ve been a relatively large fish in a very small pond (I say small pond, it was more of a puddle really, a dirty little stagnant puddle owned by an unlikeable egregious twunt) and I felt stressed, over worked, underappreciated, and deeply, deeply unhappy. There was one saving grace for the just short of eleven years I spent at that wretched company and that was the people I worked with. Given that the owner/MD was such an overwhelming arse meant the company had a huge staff turnover. In fact my not quite eleven years there made me the longest surviving non director, which obviously contributed greatly to my meteoric rise to almost near the very top of the puddle. Because of that staff turnover I met and became friends with a lot of people, only to eventually lose contact after they moved on. There are two people though, I have managed to stay in regular contact with; one of them is now my monthly drinking buddy, without whom I’d almost never have a night out. He’s a lovely guy and I always look forward to our monthly drinks. The other is one of those rare people you click with instantly (although apparently I wasn’t very nice to her in the beginning). She is now someone I count as a best friend, and is one of my favourite people in the entire world. Those two people, along with all the others I’ve now lost contact with, mean that those very nearly eleven years climbing the step stool of success weren’t a complete waste of time.

Now I’m just small fry again, working for a test and maintenance equipment hire company, in which I’m a pretty insignificant little fish quietly going about my business, and that suits me fine. I have no desire to be a manager again. I do my job as best I can and I try not to get involved beyond that (although it seems my bosses have a little more ambition for me). I did volunteer to go on a course which has led to me becoming a certified thermographer, something I’m actually quite proud of. From the moment I first picked up a thermal camera that I was fascinated by the whole concept of thermal imaging and the possibilities that it holds. But thermography is just a very small part of my job and even then I don’t get to use my freshly gained knowledge in a practical way. To me the most interesting application for thermal imaging is in research and development. One of the industries we quite regularly hire thermal cameras to is nature filming (we’ve recently hired a camera to the Autumn Watch team to film geese I believe), and that would be an ideal field of research for me. I very much doubt there’d be enough work to pay the mortgage though, let alone the forty or so thousand pounds a top of the range camera would cost me.

I hated being a manager, and I’m bored being a drone. So is there anything out there I enjoy doing that I can actually make a living from? I enjoy travelling, but no one’s going to pay me to sling a bag on my back and schlep off around the world visiting sites of historical/cultural/architectural interest. I enjoy writing but I’m under no illusion that I’m good enough to make a living from it. Besides which, the writing business is full of deadlines, and deadlines, as this very sporadically written blog attests to, aren’t a concept I can get behind. I enjoy playing video games, and there ARE ways to make money from playing video games. Tournament gamers can make vast sums of money, but I just enjoy playing games, I’m not particularly competitive at it and would NEVER be able to compete at a tournament level. Friends have suggested that I combine writing with one of my other pastimes; travel writing, or game reviews - even just to get free games. But it still involves my nemesis, DEADLINES! (Damn you deadlines!) I tried writing a post about my holiday in Malta in July, but half of it turned into a rant about birthday presents, and the other half is still sitting in my drafts folder with one paragraph written that quickly descends into a rant about package holidays (I do enjoy writing a good rant).On the game reviewing front, I had plans to write a retrospection of the recent ICO & Shadow of the Colossus HD release; that’s still very much at the plan stage I’m afraid, a month after it came out. That doesn’t bode well for writing reviews which should be published no later a couple of days after release for it to stand a chance amongst the thousands of other people churning them out.

My lackadaisical approach to personal development means I’ll very likely always be a drifter. I’m always going to be dissatisfied with whatever job I find myself doing, but I will still always do it to the best of my ability. And just the fact that I’ve managed to find work for all of my adult life means that I’m a bloody successful drifter. Maybe that has been my vocation all along. It’s unlikely though that I ever will get my mum that big bloody boat...