Lightning rods and weather vanes…

The east wind is biting particularly cold today. I was going to write ‘fucking east wind’ but I didn’t really want to start a post with profanity. Mind you, with the way things are at the minute a saint might be forgiven for swearing. Of course I didn’t start out to be whatever it is I’ve become. Way back then, when I was at school, it was a little confusing but not as confusing as it is at the moment. Well, I had youth on my side and I didn’t expect to be asking that question again – that teenage question that still has me so confused, you know the one: “what should I do with the rest of my life?” It was this question that my careers master (also my maths teacher) asked of me in my single ten minute careers appointment; “So, what will you be doing for the rest of your life?”

I mentioned that I might go to Art College, Sir. He looked at me over his glasses and then asked me if I’d thought of joining the army.

Of course I had. I’d thought of that and any number of other ‘careers’ including astronaught, train driver, monk, pop star, magician and policeman – but somehow they didn’t quite suit. Of course what I didn’t think of were all the jobs that I’d actually have been pretty good at with the right training – plumber, builder, electrician, tree surgeon, blacksmith - blacksmith particularly as it was what our family had done for generations and I’d probably have been able to apprentice to my grandfather.

But no, and of course, none of those things were grand enough for me – after all, I’d scraped into Lord Bill’s on the borderline, I had an education, managed a few ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, could go on to college and get a degree – why would I want to do something ordinary?  So instead of becoming a blacksmith or even a plumber I went to college and got a degree in colouring-in – although I called it graphic design at the time.

Just think if I’d just been that tiny bit less bright, or had made a couple more bad guesses on the day of my eleven plus then I could be shoeing a horse instead of writing this crap today; I might even have been forging a lightning rod, a whimsical weather vane, all fire and copper and iron. Just think of that – a life full of lightning rods and wind vanes, it'd have been like I owned the weather.