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a mostly unreliable chronicle
Troubled times...
I'm STILL not able to use 20six properly. I can log in now, this took me two weeks of occasional effort. But my main gripe is the message "You need a password to view this blog" WHY do I need to enter a password just to VIEW my blog when I've logged in already ??
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Getting the bug...
If you’ve never, ever had that urge to travel, that passionate unquenchable desire to roam, that nagging
yearning
to get as much distance between you and your current locale, a longing
to escape way, way beyond your immediate surroundings, then count
yourself lucky. If it ever happens upon you though, whatever you do,
ignore it. Whatever you do, don’t start travelling. Don’t give in to
that feeling of “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to visit…”. Resist it.
Push it from your mind. If you ever feel the slightest urge what-so-ever to venture further than the end of your garden or maybe
perhaps stray from the comfort
of your own four walls, or maybe to
wander just beyond your local supermarket and round the next bend,
don’t. If you get the slightest inkling of an itch in either of your
feet, then for Gods sake go out and buy some Athletes foot powder or
perhaps change your socks more often. But you must at all costs avoid
that urge to travel. Once you start, once you’ve given in to that tiny,
burgeoning, embryonic desire, that incey wincey itchy little travel bug
growing inside you. Your doomed. Your finished. It’s a one way,
downward spiral from thereon. Your normal, everyday life will never,
ever be the same again. Never will you be able to sit within the cosy
confines of your comfiest armchair or lounge carelessly, nonchalantly
on your sofa to watch one of these glossy, glitzy Travel Shows that
currently titivates
almost all of our TV channels these days. You’ll
begin to get the itchiest feet that you have ever had the displeasure
to own. In no time at all you’ll find yourself oohing and aahing at
places, hotels, sights and locations that you will never, ever in a
million years be able to get to. Or, more to the point, even be able to
come close to affording to get to. But once you start giving in to this
desire you might just find yourself driving to Dover like a bat out of
hell after the schools have turned out late on a Thursday afternoon.
Like an idiot you’ll find yourself chancing your arm with the rush hour
traffic on the M25 when you know in your heart of hearts and against
all advice that you shouldn’t go anywhere near it.
You’ll find
yourself nervously nipping off the traffic clogged M25 onto a slow,
bumper-to-bumper, traffic jammed ‘A’ road in a desperate, half-hearted,
half-baked attempt at dodging a motorway crippling accident six miles
away. You then might find yourself taking a chance that that “Motorway
closed ahead at junction 12” sign doesn’t actually apply to you because
you really don’t know precisely where junction 12 is anyway! And then
you might find your breaking the law of the land and every rule in the
highway code by speeding down an otherwise empty motorway at 100 miles
an hour, praying all the time that that junction 12 speeding towards
you and now just 4 miles away isn’t really going to be closed for Kent
Constabulary to implement their “Operation Stack”. You also might find
yourself pulling
in to Dover ferry port with just 12 minutes left
before your ferry departs for Calais, your heart pounding and your
nerves jangling. Once safely on board and heading in the right
direction for Calais, comfortably sitting at a table tucking into your
fish and chips, you might start wondering what the reason is for all
this total madness? You might ponder on the reasons why you are
prepared to be risking life and limb racing down motorways, dodging
lines of queuing traffic, prepared to jump red lights and curse choked
up roundabouts and red lights at pedestrian crossings.
And then it dawns on you, it’s all really rather simple.
In fact it’s really, rather simple.
Almost, in fact a little too obvious.
Your off to spend a ‘relaxing’ four days at Centre Parcs. That’s why.
While your fellow work mates and family members are frantically trying
to cram as much DIY as they can into a four day Bank Holiday as is
humanly or inhumanly possible, you’ll be spending your entire Easter
weekend abroad. Overseas. Far from the madding crowd. You’ll be having
a quiet, stress free, relaxing weekend away from it all. Maybe
unwinding with a glass or two of Chardonnay while everyone else is up
to their armpits in wallpaper paste, saw-dust, grouting, grass cuttings
and John Innes No4. So, while they’re all fruitlessly circling
B&Q’s car park for the umpteenth time trying hard to beat
that
grey haired old lady in her rust-bucket of a beaten up Montego into
that last remaining parking space which is about 20 minutes walk away
from the shop door you’ll be dashing full tilt, hell-for-leather down
endless French and Belgian motorways racing for the Dutch border.
You’ll be juggling with juggernauts, swearing at those hideous road
works and one way systems around Antwerp and then having to pay 50c to
take a pee at a Belgian service station.
And all of this is in a bid to be able to go and relax and unwind in a serene, wooded, tranquil Lakeland
setting
for four whole days. Enjoying decadent lie-ins in the mornings.
Enjoying fresh hot coffee, warm croissants and cherry jam for your
breakfasts.Spending your evenings eating out in one of a host of
relaxing restaurants and not having to worry about the washing up
afterwards. You’ll be taking relaxing swims in the sub-tropical pool
that’s also so packed full of Germans that you could probably walk to
the other side of the pool without getting your feet wet. You’ll be
doing things as a family for once. Maybe a little skiing. Cycling.
Perhaps a little walk in the afternoon. Primarily though, it’s to
do some things you wouldn’t otherwise do when your ensconced at home
DIY’ing your way through an Easter Bank Holiday long weekend.
To top
things off, just when you’ve fully unwound, your head is no longer
swimming with work schedules and unanswered emails, you’ll start
packing the car to the gunnels once more before spending your
post-Easter weekend Tuesday sprinting the 360 odd miles back home
again in preparation
for your return to work on Wednesday relaxed and refreshed and ready to work harder than ever before..
One day you might find yourself in an airport, maybe some monstrous International airport like Detroit,
hanging
around for five long hours for a pesky rainstorm to drift past and thus
enable your connecting flight to your final destination to take off.
Perhaps
you’ll find yourself standing next to an empty baggage carousel that’s
trundling around on it’s own at another airport, waiting desperately
for your last two bags to magically pop out from the depths of the
baggage bay but where somehow mysteriously separated from the rest of
your families baggage at the check-in desk and thoughtfully re-routed
to Stuttgart. Well, Stuttgart and Stanstead do sound
similar don’t they?
One
day you might find yourself standing at a United States of America
Custom and Immigration desk. The contents of your one and only suitcase
strewn unceremoniously all over the desk and desperately trying to
explain to the nice, friendly officer, for best part of a very long and
frustrating hour, why it is that ten T-shirts, five pairs of shorts and
two pairs of sandals ARE plenty enough clothing for your
two week holiday.
Maybe
you might find yourself in a Pyrenean ski resort gazing from your hotel
window hopefully, longingly towards the top of that big green mountain
in front of you, a mountain that somehow would look more at home if it
had been used in the Sound of Music for Julie Andrews to warble on than
it would be for the men’s downhill on Ski Sunday, and desperately
praying for snow.
Just
think how relaxing it would have been if you hadn’t had that crazy,
ridiculous idea that it was possible, even feasible to just ‘pop’ to
Holland for Easter.
Think
how much time you could possibly have saved if you didn’t have to queue
endlessly at airport check-in desks for hours waiting to get rid of
your baggage, hanging around baggage carousels waiting to pick it all
up again many hours later, queuing at Immigration desks waiting to get
your passport stamped and then the customs halls trying to get into a
country with a non-regulation quota of clothing. You could also save
yourself hours and hours of time too by not endlessly, fruitlessly
surfing the internet looking for that elusive, never-to-be-repeated
discounted cheap flight. Or all that time you waste scouring the
internet for cheap hotels or nice little bed and breakfasts. And hours
of wasted time comparing endless bargain car rental deals to see which
one offers the best deal and which comes with free CDW and a free tank
of petrol. You could also be saving yourself loads of time by not
having to search through endless piles of guide books and brochures
searching in vain for that new, as yet undiscovered location to visit.
Or throwing away hour after hour trawling the travel section of your
local library for that latest, up to date Insight guide of your
favourite destination.
Add
to all of this fun and games just how much money you could be saving
yourself in to the equation. You wouldn’t have to save all your hard
earned money like some demented modern day Scrooge. And you certainly
wouldn’t need to worry yourself silly about jiggling balances of one or
two credit cards, hunting down 0% APR’s and stuffing as much into your
high interest savings account as you can manage all in an attempt to
balance the cost of these ‘relaxing’ holidays over the course of the
next 12 months in the vague hope that it might all be paid off just in
time to do it all again next year.
What a palaver it all is.
It’s pure hell.
It’s no fun whatsoever.
Don’t be fooled by it, it’ll turn into a living nightmare.
Damn
it, I wish I hadn’t given in, I’ve just had to book flights for this
years holiday, secure a bargain rental car deal, find a villa to rent
and also book us in for a long-weekend at Centre Parcs in May too!
Ouch, my poor credit card!
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The Shape of Things
My gym has a FREE video/DVD lending library and after working out on Saturday I browsed the shelves whilst sipping my coffee.
Saturdays TV is mostly crap so a DVD/video is always a welcome diversion.
There was nothing that I hadn't already seen or that I felt I urgently needed to re-see.
This was also after applying the video filter that wheedles out total
crap, all horror/gore/disasters and those ghastly American Pie type
movies.
So I ended up choosing a DVD titled 'The Shape of Things'.
Looked interesting from the blurb on the back.
Nice picture on the front too.
For those interested click here...
My other half lost interest about half way through and proceeded to
scoff all the nuts and raisins and I guessed the girls motives within
about 20 minutes.
I really enjoyed it.
But it played on my fear of a women's ability to manipulate gullible men.
When a female shows any kind of interest in a guy he looses all of his senses.
This poor guy was geeky and she was just nice to him.
She never asked him outright to change anything directly.
She just 'suggested' things that might improve him a little bit.
Make him more manly, always worth a shot.
More attractive, that can't be ignored either.
Better dressed, always goes down well.
All things that women tend to do in a new relationship.
I'm not implying that's it's in anyway a bad thing.
Us men are notorious for not taking care of ourselves so it's usually in our best interests to take the advice.
But as you may guess it all turns sour in the end.
I won't spoil it JUST in case you decide to rent a copy.
But this echoes back to my Mother problem with her innate ability to
regurgitate personal details/issues in front of friends and family.
I also remembered recently a girl, Deborah, in my class at school.
She delighted in setting up boys purely to humiliate them.
I thought she was really nice.
I must admit I fancied her quite a lot.
She would arrange a date.
A boy would arrive at the agreed meeting point and at the agreed time.
And, if they were like me it would probably be 10 minutes early as you can't leave a lady waiting.
She would never show up.
So, after an hour or fruitless waiting the boy would return home with his pride dented.
She would then make up some sob story about not being able to make it and then proceed to repeat the episode.
Sometimes three or four times.
Eventually, after she had got bored with the game she would humiliate the boy in class in front of an assembled crowd of girls.
"What, you think I'd go out with YOU?"
"You must think I'm stupid or something."
BITCH !!!!
Yep, I got suckered by her too.
This film hinged on my fear.
I could see the poor guy getting winched in bit by excruciating bit.
Yikes....
How do you get over this stuff?
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Placing the blame...
The blame for this current writing fervour lies at the feet of John, Paul, George and Ringo.
It's all their fault !!!
Totally, 100%, without any shadow of a doubt, they are to blame.
If it wasn't for the Fab Four I wouldn't have even thought of it.
It hadn't even crossed my mind.
The Beatles have unwittingly been responsible for my long unrequited interest in writing a novel.
I was reminded of this fact whilst driving around this weekend when I heard 'Paperback Writer' being played on the radio.
Hearing it again brought back memories of hearing this track as a kid.
I have
little recollection of my childhood and as the track was recorded in
1966 I don't think that was when I remembered it from. I can't be sure.
Music
was never a big thing in my house as a kid. Apart from listening to
Family Favourites over Sunday dinner and The Clithero Kid music didn't
feature at all.
So, it must have been in the 70's that I first heard it and remembered hearing it.
I recall thinking at the time that it must be a wonderful thing to be able to do, write a novel.
Writing a paperback sounded so romantic even then. It still does.
For
someone to wander into W.H.Smiths or Barnes & Noble, pick a copy of
MY book off the shelf, be so enthralled by it that they actually feel
compelled to BUY it, take it home and read it seemed fantastic.
At the time I distinctly remember discounting the idea totally. It was stupid.
The whole prospect of writing a paperback seemed out of my reach.
Out of my league.
Out of my class I guess. Unattainable.
Writing anything of any interest to anybody else seemed impossible.
What
with being well below average at English during my education and
stumbling around with the idea of having to write stories, poetry and
actually reading and understanding a novel all seemed a little
unattainable.
I just didn't 'get' English at all. I spoke it but that was it.
On the other hand Mr Jenkins my English teacher was passionate about it.
He seemed to be able to read a passage from a book like it was HIS words that he was reading.
Like it was his novel he was reading.
His poetry that he was bringing to life.
I loved
the way he read to us too. His accent was warm, rich and slightly West
Country and seemed to match Hardy's intonation perfectly.
My new
English teacher in the fourth year, Mr Ingram, was less enthusiastic.
Almost a reluctant teacher. That spoilt things a little for me. He
would even
bring his scruffy dog into class!!
Finishing school and starting work writing never featured much in my life again.
Reading was reduced to a daily tabloid.
Maybe a magazine now and again.
Never read a novel.
Never read a classic.
I never read anything of any worth.
But occasionally, the Beatles would filter into my subconscious.
Unknowingly, little by little, the Fab Four were fuelling my desire.
Slowly, bit by bit, adding to a buried urge to write a paperback.
Unwittingly, the boys were adding to my desire to become a paperback writer.
And then three years ago without warning, it started.
An idea oozed out of me.
On a flight to San Francisco an seed popped into my head for a plot.
I wrote it down.
It was pouring out of my head at an alarming rate.
The back of my Filofax was stuffed with little ideas for characters, scenarios, places, situations, dialogue.
Where did all that come from?
I toyed with building on the fledgling idea but I didn't know where to start. How to tackle it. How to handle it.
Occasionally I'd pick it up and look at, reread it, but inspiration withered and died.
Over the next couple of years it would occasionally pop into my head.
From time to time I would remember it, think about a little, but it would vanish as quickly as it arrived.
Fate
took a hand at Christmas though and I found myself sitting at a table
with three women. Two of them were there to learn like me. The third
was feeding us prompts
and inspiration to start writing.
It worked.
My inspiration had been tapped like a maple tree.
Ideas and words flowed from me like fresh maple syrup.
And now I can't seem to stop.
The novel is slowly taking shape around all the other bumph that comes out of me.
It's quite astonishing really.
Somebody might actually like what I write.
Who knows, I may actually write something that may even get published one day.
And I might actually get that paperback finished one day.
But without the help, or hindrance of the Fab Four it might never have even started.
Thanks boys!!!
For your enjoyment.....
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
It's the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand
His son is working for the Daily Mail
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
Paperback writer
It's a thousand pages, give or take a few
I'll be writing more in a week or two
I can make it longer if you like the style
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
If you really like it you can have the rights
It could make a million for you overnight
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
Paperback writer
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killing the 'thing'
I never had much luck with the opposite sex. Never. I always
seemed to lack that critical confidence to actually ask a girl out. In the time
it took me to pluck up the courage to ask a girl out somebody would have beaten
me to it.
I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the total
number of girlfriends I had at school. Not too impressive by anyone’s
standard. I was in a 'gang' of boys that hung around with a 'gang' of
girls because my best-friend was going out with one of their gang. I
had a
brief relationship with one of the girls. It lasted about two weeks as
I
recall.
Looking back I don't think I actually knew what to do with a
girl once I had actually got one. It all seemed a bit of an anti-climax
really.
Not being a conversationalist things tended to peeter out fairly
rapidly. I didn't want to push my luck on the physical front either
as I feared I would embarrass them, or it would embarrass me if they
refused my
clumsy advances.
Other boys in our gang would boast of their conquests which
really intimidated me. These conquests may or may not have been fictitious
boasting but at the time they seemed real enough to me.
Some of my liaisons happened not by the traditional asking
out method but by just being around and drifting together to make up a four-some
to go to the pictures or something.
I think my two best friends despaired of me. They really
tried to help. Blind dates. Non-blind dates. All sorts of cousins and
friends
were offered up to assist my plight. But I failed to rise to the
occasion. So all in all I was a bit of a dead loss really. I had all
the right urges. I knew which type of girls I fancied. But sadly,
nothing ever
came of any of them.
Looking back now I think I've narrowed down the cause of my
failure then and now.
My Mother.
Things that happened at home, especially in the growing up,
pubescent stages would be divulged publicly and with much hilarity to a
gathered family in front of me.
The embarrassment was crippling.
Like when she discovered my first girlie mag’ under the bed
it was laughed about openly at Christmas in front of a gathered family of about
15 relations. And when I did have a girlfriend it was openly giggled about
too.
Everything that should have been kept quiet or at least kept
private or respected wasn't.
I think I ended up fearing the power that women seemed to
have over men. Over ME.
The devastating power of humiliation.
That ability to make a growing, young man feel like a five
year old again with one simple, crippling sentence.
So I've tended to avoid women, girls, relationships. Any
possibility of avoiding that chance of humiliation was steered clear of like
the plague. Even now I shiver at the thought of a situation that will
involve direct, face-to-face communication with a woman.
I thought I had it pretty much sewn up when I entered a
relationship with my partner K.
I had actually asked her out. Properly. She treated me like
a man. Never put me down. Always supported me. And I felt this huge
overwhelming desire to be with her. This feeling was, as I discovered later,
LOVE. This love thing was amazing. I had NEVER experienced
anything like it before. I was addicted to it. It felt amazing. WE were in love. WE shared everything.
Now, after many, many years of what I thought was a blissful
existence, it turns out I had it all wrong. I had never stopped to ask K if she was happy. If K was
getting the things that made her happy. I just assumed that as I was
happy then K must be happy. If she wasn't happy she would have said so.
Wouldn't she?
NO !!!!!
No she wouldn’t !!!
How could someone, ME, get things so wrong?
In a relationship now into double figures I suddenly
discover that K wasn't as happy as I was.
I was floored. I feared I would loose her. Loose everything.
She loved me beyond doubt but just wasn't happy. She needed to be noticed. She needed me to make her feel
like a woman. To feel like she was special. To feel needed. Not just to be a
Mother. Not just to be my wife. She wanted me to see her and treat her like a
woman. Feel desired. Lusted after. All things that I left
to chance or paid no attention to.
This was two years ago after K was contacted by her ex'
fiancé via that school reunion website. Feeling I was about to loose her we talked.
Talked and
talked and talked like we had never talked before.
No stone was left unturned. No door was left closed.
It was the hardest thing that I ever had to do.
But it changed everything.
I learned so much about her that I just never new. Never
thought to ask about.
Nothing in our relationship is now the same as it was two
years ago.
And I know that love I feel for this woman is beyond
anything that I ever felt before.
The more I give to K the more K gives back to me.
This is why my 'thing' had to be conquered.
This 'thing' was
slowly eating into this new 'US' and I knew what it was doing.
I knew I had to
stop it.
Last Friday was the turning point.
I stopped.
We talked.
I started being 'ME' again.
Thank GOD !!!!
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this 'thing'
I feel like I’m being taken over by this weird ‘feeling’.
Not sure how I got into feeling like this. It’s baffling. It’s been with me for
a few weeks now. Feeling confused. Feeling like I’m drifting. Distracted.
Deflated. Wrung out. Lethargic. Unfocused. I could go on but your getting the
picture. Looking back I think it all stemmed from the recent threat of job
cuts. Before that I remember it being good. Feeling good. Positive. Once the
word was out that heads needed to roll, I panicked. Not my usual response to
this kind of event. I’m level headed, blasé almost, even detached normally.
This time it was just different. K was going through her huge blood pressure
‘thing’ so she was all stressed out. Not sleeping. Worried she would drop dead.
Having been through this laying off thing several times before naturally you
begin to think it’s bound to be you again. That it’s me that’s going to get the
chop again. Somehow I felt like a victim this time. What is it with me?
Redundancies like this always seem to get ME. There was no way I could even
mention my possible departure to K as she would have just freaked out for sure.
Sending her blood pressure sky high. Adding my problem to her problem and with
the resulting financial disaster that would ensue was tantamount to a disaster.
With no one to talk it out with I just stewed on it all on my own. For two
months. Silly I know but that’s how it was. I just thought that with Christmas
around the corner somehow everything would kind of turn out ok by itself. How,
I’m not sure. It usually does. Eventually. The final redundancy decision would
be made before the holiday. Things would be in motion by then. Notices would be
issued. At least I would know one way or the other. But the time Christmas
arrived I felt totally frazzled. Exhausted. Emotionally drained. What with
supporting K through the trauma of her visits to the Doctors. Talking and
talking and talking about HER problems. Everything I was feeling was just
crushed into the background. What follows is I end up retreating into silence.
Pulling everything back inside me. Not talking. Not communicating with K.
That’s bad. Not doing anything really. Just drifting. Waiting for something to
happen. So then things just escalate. Things get out of control. It then
becomes a marital issue. Not just an exclusive personal one. I then end up
hardly talking at all. Certainly not talking about the real issues. K then gets
screwed up. She thinks I’ve stopped loving her which is crazy. She thinks I
don’t want sex which is more crazy. Then, everything spirals out of control.
It’s like I give up control to some other ‘thing’. Someone else. Obviously
there IS no other ‘thing’. No ‘someone else’. Nobody else knows about it so how
can there be. How’s it going to get corrected and ‘fixed’ if I don’t do it?
Even being away for a couple of weeks break over Christmas didn’t solve it this
time. We spent two weeks together, yes, but not together as one. Usually we’re
very close. But this time it was close but without the closeness. We ended up
having a long ‘discussion’ into the wee small hours the night before we came
home. Obviously this didn’t help matters as it made us both tired for our last
day on holiday. I get grilled for ‘not looking after the finances’ and ‘not
having a grip on things’. This worries K to death and occupies all her waking
hours and her sleeping hours too eventually. So this just compounds the issue
further. All in all a right old pickle. Thinking back… as a child I had everything done for me.
EVERYTHING. I wasn’t prepared for adult life. For what lay in store for me in
the big bad World outside.
I think this feeling is kind of like I’m waiting for someone
else to make the decisions for me. Take control. Tell me that things are
sorted. Kind of being a wimp, huh?
Get things sorted out!
Just stop pissing around and take control back.
Seems reasonably simple to me. Can I do it? Sure!. I can do
it. I’ve been doing it before this.
Simple. Maybe too simple? No, not really.
That’s what I’ll do. I’ll do it, right now.
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ßlüë þï×ël