I tell you, whatever deity governs my day-to-day existence was NOT smiling on me today. I was supposed to be going down to London today for a seminar on becoming a mediator. It's something that I want to do in order to participate more fully in some of the work I do for Coady Consultants, so serious business...
My sense of foreboding arose first as I spent a significant amount of time in the morning searching through the washing for a clean pair of matching socks. My suspicions were further confirmed as I arrived at the train station to find that my train was pulling out. Now, I can blame many things for this, not least of which the socks. I can blame it on the fact that Wolverhampton City Council have in their infinite wisdom closed St Davids, so I had to go the long way around. I can blame it on the fact that EVERY SINGLE TRAFFIC LIGHT I CAME TO was on red. But the plain fact of the matter is that I didn't get up early enough, and the fact that I'm well aware of this didn't help at all.
Thankfully my outward journey was an open off-peak single which meant that I could just jump on the next one, and the fact that the event didn't start 'til half past two meant I'd given myself plenty of time to mess it up, so I got on the train, arrived in London still with plenty of time to go, got on the tube and headed down to Charing Cross. This is the one tube station in London I don't need reminding about since it appears in the Feeder song Waiting For Changes, and I must admit it made a nice change to have that song going round in my head while on the tube, rather than London Underground by the Amateur Transplants. On arriving at Charing Cross, I got my bearings, found the building I'd have to be in at half two, and went to get something to eat, photographing the various statues around Trafalgar Square (I'll put them up later) to kill some time. I arrived back at Duncannon Street at quarter to two, waited half an hour... nothing happened. I tried the door, nothing happened. I tried the intercom, nothing happened. I checked my briefing letter to see if there was anything I'd missed... to find that the seminar was not on Sunday 24th July, but on Friday 22nd. I was urinated.
Now the sensible thing at this point would have been to get back on a train and s**t off back to Wolverhampton from whence I came. But I couldn't do that either. To save money, (my Dad had paid for my tickets out of the company,) I was quite specifically on the 18:38 train. So, I passed the time by going around the national gallery for a little while, watching some street theatre (which I did donate to, incidentally. The guy was a contortionist and clearly has worked very hard to get his body into a condition where he can fit himself through a 15" diameter tube and a plastic box, and has made more effort to do that than I have ever made doing anything. Fair play to him.) sitting on the fountains texting Amy and Dave, and I ended up in Waterstones where I bought a couple of graphic novels and the Necronmicon... is that how you spell it? It's HP Lovecraft, anyhow. Only then did I notice that my tube ticket and my car parking ticket had fallen out of whatever I'd put them in.
Now you'd think, for heaven's sake, get a grip, but in actual fact this worked out for the best. Now unable to use the tube, I walked from Charing Cross back to Euston, which killed about half an hour and I got a bit of exercise. It's not actually all that far; I would normally walk further than that with the dog - though not usually in shoes. And then after arriving in Wolverhampton - though not before I scratched my chest and found out I'd got sunburned - I said to the guy on the desk that I'd lost my ticket and what could I do about it, and he asked me how long I'd been there and said give me £2.50 and I'll sort it out. So I actually ended up paying less to get off the car park than I would have done had I not lost the ticket.
Arriving home, I put my laptop on, and I thought to myself, well, today's pretty much a write-off, let's salvage what we can and take the dog for a walk. But no, I couldn't even get this right. I took her up the woods, it was dark, I couldn't see. Not usually a problem as I know the place like the back of my hand, but tonight I felt my foot slip where the ground wasn't the slightest bit muddy, and smelled the pungent aroma of dog s**t a few steps later.
Not one of my better days, all in all. Let's hope tomorrow brings a brighter day.
Did I just say that?
Sunday, 24 July 2011
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
School Days Revisited
So I've started listening to BBC WM on the way to work in the mornings; I find it entertaining enough and it's given me a far wider appreciation of what's actually going on outside my little world. One of the things Phil Upton was talking about at length today was 'Did you waste your time at school? What would you do differently?'
In the light of everything that's happened to me in the 9 years it's been since I was at school, it would be easy enough for me to say 'Well, if I'd known then what I know now I'd have worked harder,' but I don't think that's actually true. I've always been very laid back and happy to go at my own pace, even if that means that the world is overtaking me while I do it. I try not to complain, in hindsight, that the world DID overtake me...
For example I spent far too much of the time that I was at school playing video games. This meant two things: One, as there was no need to socialise with anyone in order to do this, I became quite withdrawn in a social sense. I didn't need to go out with my friends - not that I had a very bright concept of 'friend' for much of it, as I've discussed before - because everything I wanted was in my bedroom. Two, it meant that I spent a lot of time playing when I should have been working. Now, this means I could have done better with my schoolwork, I'd be a fool to deny it. But what I'm not going to do is turn around and say I regret it; I don't. That's what I did at the time, it was who I was, I regret far too many things that have happened in my life anyway to begrudge myself one of the few things that I did enjoy doing back then. (I should point out that this was largely before I discovered guitars, and even after that I still loved playing games.) Fair enough, I only had one chance at GCSE, and I arguably threw a significant amount of that chance away, and I'm not saying it doesn't matter - but there's no point crying about it now.
I think my concept of friendship has developed to the point where it's something that I wish I'd had when I was at school, because it would have got me out of a lot of trouble that I found myself in. I'm talking here about the times when I'd got one on me and made a complete prat out of myself in front of a significant number of people. This happened... not as often as perhaps it could have done. As I've said before, by the time I got to secondary school my social awareness was underdeveloped to the point where I didn't have much of an idea of how to behave around my peers in that environment. I think I knew that the only way I'd survive the time I was going to be there was to keep my head down and my mouth shut; that's a hard thing to keep up for 5 years and don't think I didn't try. But those few times when I did lose my temper, or go out on a limb, well, it would have been nice to have someone my age to calm me down, to share the problem with and give me some advice about it that I could have believed. It wasn't until much, much later that I found that quality in people. But I don't begrudge anybody this. We were kids... and I don't think I could have done anything about it at the time anyway.
So what would I do differently? If I'd had any idea of the integral part that music would play in my life after school I'd have taken my violin lessons a lot more seriously and practiced a lot more often. I probably still would have taken up guitar and bass in the end, but all the time I was playing violin it was just a thing I wa doing. Still cool - I kept it up for over 10 years, after all - but nothing all that special to me. Now, I never owned a violin, I always rented one of whatever music service I happened to be involved with. Nor did I feel the need to get one after I left school; it was never going to be my main instrument now that I was playing bass, and it was far too expensive to be an occasional toy. But as my appreciation for music has widened, and working for DPA, I do miss being able to do it. I might pick it up again one day. But I'd liked to have taken music more seriously when I was younger.
That's about it from me. As I say, I'm not going to regret not achieving more acedemically; I'll work with what I've got. But it did get me thinking. So... what would you guys do differently at school, if you had that opportunity again?
In the light of everything that's happened to me in the 9 years it's been since I was at school, it would be easy enough for me to say 'Well, if I'd known then what I know now I'd have worked harder,' but I don't think that's actually true. I've always been very laid back and happy to go at my own pace, even if that means that the world is overtaking me while I do it. I try not to complain, in hindsight, that the world DID overtake me...
For example I spent far too much of the time that I was at school playing video games. This meant two things: One, as there was no need to socialise with anyone in order to do this, I became quite withdrawn in a social sense. I didn't need to go out with my friends - not that I had a very bright concept of 'friend' for much of it, as I've discussed before - because everything I wanted was in my bedroom. Two, it meant that I spent a lot of time playing when I should have been working. Now, this means I could have done better with my schoolwork, I'd be a fool to deny it. But what I'm not going to do is turn around and say I regret it; I don't. That's what I did at the time, it was who I was, I regret far too many things that have happened in my life anyway to begrudge myself one of the few things that I did enjoy doing back then. (I should point out that this was largely before I discovered guitars, and even after that I still loved playing games.) Fair enough, I only had one chance at GCSE, and I arguably threw a significant amount of that chance away, and I'm not saying it doesn't matter - but there's no point crying about it now.
I think my concept of friendship has developed to the point where it's something that I wish I'd had when I was at school, because it would have got me out of a lot of trouble that I found myself in. I'm talking here about the times when I'd got one on me and made a complete prat out of myself in front of a significant number of people. This happened... not as often as perhaps it could have done. As I've said before, by the time I got to secondary school my social awareness was underdeveloped to the point where I didn't have much of an idea of how to behave around my peers in that environment. I think I knew that the only way I'd survive the time I was going to be there was to keep my head down and my mouth shut; that's a hard thing to keep up for 5 years and don't think I didn't try. But those few times when I did lose my temper, or go out on a limb, well, it would have been nice to have someone my age to calm me down, to share the problem with and give me some advice about it that I could have believed. It wasn't until much, much later that I found that quality in people. But I don't begrudge anybody this. We were kids... and I don't think I could have done anything about it at the time anyway.
So what would I do differently? If I'd had any idea of the integral part that music would play in my life after school I'd have taken my violin lessons a lot more seriously and practiced a lot more often. I probably still would have taken up guitar and bass in the end, but all the time I was playing violin it was just a thing I wa doing. Still cool - I kept it up for over 10 years, after all - but nothing all that special to me. Now, I never owned a violin, I always rented one of whatever music service I happened to be involved with. Nor did I feel the need to get one after I left school; it was never going to be my main instrument now that I was playing bass, and it was far too expensive to be an occasional toy. But as my appreciation for music has widened, and working for DPA, I do miss being able to do it. I might pick it up again one day. But I'd liked to have taken music more seriously when I was younger.
That's about it from me. As I say, I'm not going to regret not achieving more acedemically; I'll work with what I've got. But it did get me thinking. So... what would you guys do differently at school, if you had that opportunity again?
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