I have the same shaped hands as my Dad,
The full palm and the lines.
Before now, I've held them in front of me,
turning them
marvelling at the sameness
I don't use them in the same way,
not with a hammer
or saw
not to build with or turn a spade
Not to feel the satisfying weight of something home grown,
the full softness and ripeness of something brought out of summer
I let the Devil get into my hands
because,
they're the same shape as my Dad's
If the pinnacle of success were sitting in front of a PC, feeling wretched and having had a banana and a rocky bar for breakfast then this morning I would have reached it.
This English Couple went on holiday to Spain.....
You can guess where that one went. No defence of the late Mr Manning, I just needed something to grab the eye. He does, I suppose, give one of the best examples of someone with an attitude not many would admit to sharing.
Where does that go, well....
I read today how a certain French actor, has been in trouble for peeing in a bottle on an aeroplane. From what I can gather, he stood in the aisle as he did it and caused the plane to be delayed for two hours. I don't know what happened next, I didn't read any more. I only had to look at his photo in the paper and imagine the rest. The gentleman in question is someone who I've always imagined to be full of life and, being French, this will be magnified ten fold. I have no concerns over the actual incident, I wasn't there. I found it hilarious. Things like that I do ,being, for the most part socially and morally ambivalent, so the prospect of a larger than life French man reliving himself in an empty bottle, probably Evian, doesn't really spark up my middle aged indignation. He was more than likely full of red wine anyway and I know from experience when that's a factor we're in the realms of the unknown
There is always the possibility that he did this simply because he has a different attitude to the accepted ways of relieving ones self than most people on the plane. Lots of people in places like London and Birmingham showed that they have a different attitude to some things than most over the last week or so . I am of course talking about the rioting or I as prefer to call it , the mass nicking, that went on over a few nights in cities across the country.This display of difference in attitude has of course, raised of few questions about our society as a whole.
As when these things happen, we are asked to wonder why, what makes people do these things? Experts and politicians then expound as to the cause of such break downs in the moral and social fabric that binds us together. we are told, not for the first time, that whole sections of society are being let down, neglected and abandoned. We, as a whole, are responsible for this.
You know what....they're right and wrong. I've met and worked with people who are all of the above . I've worked with young men who have no role models other than men who want something from them or are thousands of miles away, living lives of violence, gang crime and opulence that can never be matched, depicted in the culture adopted by these young people. There are those out there who through birth, circumstance or numerous other routes and choices,live lives most of us would never wish for . Many of them, who I've met, have been intelligent, funny, capable and genuine people just looking for a break.
I've also met people who weren't and who lived the lives they did because they liked it and no amount of social inclusion would ever alter that. Not everyone has the same social ethics. Unfortunately, this type of life outlook doesn't benefit anyone who tries to sell lifestyles, otherwise we'd have celebrity riots instead of Big Brother.
Attitudes are shaped by what's around us, what we see and what happens to us and those close to us. Things are,on the whole, not always fair but some ways of reacting to this don't benefit anyone, as we've seen. We all need to admit to our own failings with others sometimes and how that affects everything else we do. We all have the capability to change something, even our attitudes but again, that's up to the person.
Some will ,some never and in a way, it's those I feel saddest for.They'll never allow themselves any chance of changing anything.
A bit like Bernard....
The Sun'll go out ...tomorrow
Everything changes, it's what happens.
Favourable situations, friendships, relationships, technology..everything. We are told to accept this as a part of life. It's going to happen whether we want it to or not
One day, The Sun will change. It will expand go really, really red burn The Earth and then contract becoming really small and dense. There will be no more Sun.
This will of course happen , a long, long time form now.Albeit 13 or so billion years but when you consider just how quickly we've done the last 7 billion or so since all this was kicked off, it really starts to look pretty short in the grand scheme of things.Although people will say and quite rightly, that this is something that will never affect us who scuttle around on our little blue dot today so it's pointless to even consider such things. "Live life"! they will say and make the most of what you have..don't waste your life thinking about it. Wise and sensible words with out a doubt, I know they are .I'm the fool for dwelling on such matters and not being contented with my time here.
This is my point though...it's going to affect someone...some day.
Bringing things back to the present day, what about the way we live, the system we live under, when does that reach its expiry date? It has to, it is after all at the mercy of entropy just like everything else.
There are ,of course, good and bad sides to the way we live in the Western World. History has shown us that there are much worse ways of living than in a society loosely based on the principles of freedom in many forms. Cracks have started to show though and lately, we've started to see a little more of the bad and how people can become victims of their own greed and stupidity and that of others. All systems are of course open to exploitation and even those whose existence has been born out of the need to make life fairer for people, they have for the most part,eventually cracked because of the human traits of wanting that little bit more and the fact we can't help dreaming of greener grass. It 's what we do, for good or bad.
How much longer do we have before it changes and what do we do then.....seriously?
Think about it and...enjoy the Sunshine
Starry, starry night....
A few nights ago, I went out with some work colleagues to commiserate the end of their employment with the company that we, between us, have worked for for roughly ten years. They went home at some point but I stayed out and drank a lot more. I'm 40, binge drinking is what we do at my age and it's all part of the coping strategy for working in "people" based jobs.
At some stage in the early hours of the next day, I found that I had, by means of money changing hands and jumbled conversation with parties at a taxi firm, been transported as if by magic back to my own dwelling. Before I began the well practiced routine of entering the house in that way that I assume is quiet as a little mouse and involves me "shhuusshhing" myself so as not to awaken those parties who, have already woken, because they've heard the little mouse banging about being quiet, I did what I always do at these moments,I looked up at the sky.
I'm very lucky to live somewhere that's not too affected by street lighting so on clear nights I get a fantastic view of The Universe even in this suburban setting. And having stopped to look at the stars, I then proceeded to do what I always do next, I stared to ask them questions. Yes,I'm the worst kind of drunk, philosophical veering towards the metaphysical.
Not for the first time, I asked them when would all this start making any bloody sense, when would my hidden destiny that I knew was out there somewhere, eventually show its self . When could I get on with being who I'm supposed to be and not bounce around from one thing to another looking for that all elusive eureka moment....why some much beauty in things if it's all just pointless??
As I've said, it's not the first time they've heard all this and it won't be the last and as usual, they kept their own council, just twinkled at me and continued burning off their hydrogen.
The rest of the night passed away in drunken slumber and more mixed messages from my subconscious that are either telling me that I do have a problem with fitting in or that I really will be fighting off the undead in a shopping centre somewhere in the near future.
I shall always love looking at the stars. They're wonderful for giving me a sense of where I really am in the scheme of things but they're useless for careers advice...
Working with people,
It's a noble and worthwhile occupation and before I go any further, I'd just like to salute my fellow strugglers who, like me, suddenly woke up one day, like all the others before them, and for some reason decided that that was the day to make our lives more fulfilling. How we were going to do this we didn't know, all we we knew was.....that we were going to help people. It didn't matter how and to be honest, it was quite vague ,more like that "If I help people I will be a better person" thing than anything else but we knew that it was something we were meant to do, something we'd been putting off for too long, still working in jobs that no longer gave us any satisfaction and only highlighted the struggle within to better ourselves and The World!
Again...well done..for even thinking about it.
How many of you are still there? How long did it take you to discover that not everybody can be helped how you wanted to?
Perhaps it was my own foolish sense of idealism that made me think I could be all things to all men. Don't get me wrong in any way, I'm glad I did this. I could of stayed in my previous job that frankly was a bums paradise and suited the young long haired and beardy me. Though, if I had, I wouldn't be writing this now and would much more likely have been a toothless drunk. I didn't stay I did this instead.
Through this I've had some very successful and personally rewarding experiences and I have actually grown and developed as a person. I've met people that have inspired me with their strength in facing things that I would never be able to and I 've come across situations that have more than reinforced my own belief that life at its easiest is all shades of grey but 10 years down the line, there have been some shocks and some jading has certainly taken place.
Over exposure to successions of Government funded programmes, that seem to be designed to ignore everything that's human about people and the way we all have different wants, needs, dreams , fears and hopes and conceitedly assume everyone is meant to work in some I.T or office based environment, has dulled the bright young spark that filled my inexperienced head..... made me harsh,sometimes, to those who have least deserved it.
Somewhere along the line, the whole help thing became something else, something more like smacking square pegs into round holes and it made those who wouldn't fit, no matter how hard they got hit by incentives and programmes designed to get them into "normal society" all the more...square, all the more unemployable by today's standards, made they somehow guilty for not being able to fit into the expected mould and contribute to the already bloated and slow dying system that even now is so near fucked it's easier just not to even think about it.
And now here I am, all the way from being put in front of a room full of 16 year olds and suddenly being called a Life Skills Tutor, to finding myself practically working for The Job Centre in some farcical and sometimes hilarious situation as an Employability Tutor...how did that happen?
I could turn this blog into a forum for ranting. A place to spill bile and scorn on those who I come across on a daily basis but I won't. This,like every other thing I feel the need to write something about is just a single thought in a whole long meandering line of thoughts and I don't really know where I want it to go but go somewhere it will.
Just to put some sort of lid on this particular biscuit tin I'll end with this. I've learnt a few things from all this, there are people who need help and always will, there are those who are more than able to do things for themselves and just need a little push in the right direction and there are the others, those who can't be bothered to do anything because it's easier to be a smart arse and blame others for the shitty way their lives have turned out.
I have learned about people....
