Fifteen minutes…

What a couple of days, Roger Bannister, the runner who ran the first sub four-minute mile, and Trevor Bayliss, who invented the wind up radio amongst other things, both died within two days of each other. Both men achieved wonderful things; how many people have ever ran a mile in less than four minutes? Not many, that’s for sure. And Trevor Bayliss reinvented clockwork when he made his radio (and later a torch) specifically to help people in Africa with no electricity so that they could learn about Aids.

Both men were connected by time, clockwork and four minutes, a tenuous link maybe but it got me thinking about the nature of fame. Both men did something very special, but in each case it wasn’t their full time occupation really. Bannister was a top neurological surgeon, and Bayliss a stunt swimmer who once performed in the Berlin circus. Both running and inventing were hobbies that they kind of slipped into really.

Of course I’m sure that there are plenty examples of people who do this today, but it seems that the nature of fame has changed. These days fame is linked to either things you do professionally, like sport, or things you don’t need to do professionally at all, like watching TV or getting lucky on a reality TV show. I doubt that Bannister or Bayliss (what a great name for a TV cop show) set out to become famous and in many ways they hid from fame. Bayliss made very little money from his inventions, and invented because he could do good and help people with his ideas, and Bannister worked in hospitals doing good and saving lives. But somewhere along the way they both had more than their share of the almost proverbial Andy Warhol fifteen minutes. They became famous.

Ask people today what they want to be and many will say ‘famous’. Most don’t have any idea of how they are going to get there or even the skills to do it, but that doesn’t seem to matter; fame is the thing and it seems to work. The media is full of people who don’t really do anything but are famous. I’m sure you don’t need a list (you will probably each have your own anyway) but mine might include Scarlett Moffat, Rylan, Joey Essex, Katie Price - I don’t think I need to go on. There are plenty of forgotten famous in the halls and on the walls, pavements, the scrolls of fame, and eventually all but the goliaths will be lost from people’s memory.

I really don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The fact that people become famous when there’s no reason why they should and then, in many cases, do it pretty well, are even taken to the nation’s hearts, is encouraging I think. Of course it’s likely to be a passing fame. Nobody will remember who was on TOWIE or X Factor in a few year’s time. But then who will remember Trevor Bayliss or Roger Bannister in ten, twenty, fifty year’s time? There aren’t many Shakespeares, Van Goghs, or Nelson Mandelas around; not when you consider all of the billions of people on the planet. And will even their names be lost to memory some day? The world is changing fast, new famous people come into view all the time and others fade out of it. Who remembers Edmund Crispin these days? I thought not.

Perhaps if you get your chance of a little fame, even fifteen minutes, you should grab it and run with it? Why not?

Yes, why not?

Clap your hands if you believe...

It strikes me that this blogging thing is hard. Firstly, you have to say something and secondly, you have to have something to say. There was a time when I had plenty to say, often too much and often not what people wanted or found comfortable to hear. I’m like that sometimes; a little too blunt and it has been both my making and my downfall.

Honesty is sometimes a dish that’s hard to swallow and of course one man’s truth is another man’s lie. I used to think that there were some absolute truths; simple truths like the world is round, water is wet, there will always be honey for tea. These days I’m not so sure. What if there is no truth? What if everything we believe only exists because we believe it? I mean, if you don’t believe in something does it cease to exist like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan?

Science has become confusing. There was a time when scientific fact was just that; a fact, an irrefutable truth that there was no getting away from; they even taught it in schools. I’m not sure about that any longer. I’m not even sure that the scientists are sure. Increasingly I’m beginning to think that all things are possible and if that’s true the impossible is perfectly possible too. Maybe science and metaphysics are not so dissimilar after all. Lead into Gold? The Philosopher’s Stone. I’m sure that it’s just a matter of time until we can change the very properties of matter. If we can make a black hole in a Swiss mountainside, then why not a gold bar from a piece of lead pipe in the library Professor Plum?

I was reading recently that many scientists are coming around to the idea that the universe isn’t three dimensional at all, but two dimensional, in other words flat. It’s called the ‘holographic principle’ and arises from string theory. I'm no professor, but I do have string in my kitchen drawer, but this theoretical string is made up of vibrating threads called gravitons and it’s this that causes the illusion of 3D in a flat universe. Imagine that; everything we think we see as three dimensional is actually flat and it’s our interpretation of the gravitons that adds that extra dimension. Actually thinking about it - don’t think about it - because another theory states that whatever we think about becomes reality because we think about it, and of course time doesn't exist - we invented it.

My head hurts; so back to blogging and me. It’s hard to have something to say when everything you think is real and a fact might not be both real and a fact because if you don’t think it then it can’t become real. What is the point of talking about gun control in the US when guns and the US may not be real? We all know that Trump can’t really be real can he? But what if he is as flat as a photograph and we are imagining him? And what is the point of spreading honey on your bread when you are living in a 2D flat earth, in a flat solar system, in a flat universe, in a.... Stop! I want to get off.

What if Strapo and Copernicus and all the rest of them had it wrong and the world is really flat and the only thing that stops us from falling off the edge is our belief that we won't? I said STOP! And what about bees with that honey? Bumble bees shouldn't be able to fly but they do and would honey even spread if it’s two dimensional? I SAID STOP! Could it be that bumble bees can fly because that's what we expect? And what about fairies most importantly? Are fairies real to the people who believe in them?

I - SAID - STOPPP!

It seems that it’s not just me that has a thin grasp of reality after all. It seems that reality has a thing grasp of itself. And with that please stop thinking about it enjoy the rest of your day. Just don't fall off the edge of the world.

Clap your hands if you believe in fairies.

Balaclava time...

So another day and yet another with no idea what I'm doing. So let's talk about the weather shall we? Why not? Everyone else seems to be. It's wall to wall weather on the TV and radio - and outside in the arctic wind...

Observation one: 
It’s bloody cold. The last time I remember cold like this I was about six and living in a house without central heating and only an open fire in the living room to keep warm by. I know that sounds like an old man story, but it’s true and I really did have ice on the inside of my bedroom window. I used to love looking at that ice, the way it made climbing patterns of crystal on the glass; a frozen winter jewel on a pane of non-double glazed glass. We didn’t even have duvets back then, just grey woollen army blankets piled upon the bed. But I don’t remember ever being really cold. I must have been I guess, but I don’t remember shivering - mind you I did have a blue rubber hot water bottle wrapped in a towel to rest my feet upon. It was great until it leaked and then icicles on the toesicles.

Observation two: 
I don’t ever remember my school closing even when the snow was deep, crisp, even, and three bloody feet of frozen coldness. I'd tramp to school past six feet drifts of snow and think: I can't wait for my seven times table test this morning in my freezing cold classroom and then (after sitting in the dunce's corner all day) I can tramp my way home to a freezing cold house and a plate of Heinz beans on soft burnt toast. Pure heaven. These days a couple of inches of snow and the world comes to a standstill. People stay home from work, nobody goes out, and the media tell us what the worst case scenario is going to be even when it doesn’t really happen. I remember push starting my father's old car because the battery had died. What a great dad, using his six year old son as a pusher at six in the morning. Thank god all the other boys helped: they were up too pushing their dad's car with some still in pyjamas and jaunty bobble hats. We’d always get the car going and then my father would drive off to work in his unheated automobile to Morris’s Cowley works to drink tea and plan strike action in the snow, slipping and sliding as he went because I don’t remember the roads ever being gritted. 

Observation three: 
Where have all the huge icicles gone? There were always icicles in winter hanging from the gutters, even the trees sometimes. Often they were four feet long. In fact, there seemed to be much more ice to go around back then despite there never being any ice cubes in the fridge. Ponds and canals froze so deep that you could walk on them, the milk froze in the bottles and pushed off their foil bottle caps (silver, red, gold, and green - although I have no idea what the green was - milk from Martian cows maybe?), washing froze solid on wooden pegged washing lines and there were always boys making fifty foot ice slides on the pavements to play on and break old lady's hips. What a health and safety nightmare world that would be for the health and safety police today.

Observation four:
The water used to freeze over in the inside toilet (I think I'll leave one that there though - somebody did!).

I could go on and on, but unless you were there you might not believe it and sometimes I’m not sure that it wasn’t a dream. I certainly don’t remember the winters getting warmer but they must have done because back in the sixties balaclavas, woollen gloves, and thick scarves seemed to be de rigour – as were cold sores on your chapped bleeding lips, blue toes, and chilblains. I’m not saying that it was ever as cold as the good old days of the Ice Fair when the Thames froze over and they lit fires on the ice to roast chestnuts, but there was definitely more ice in my childhood (just not in the fridge as I've said).

I’m not complaining, I'm sure that it wasn't so very different back then and these days I do so feel the cold. But I sometimes wonder what all the fuss is really about. It's just weather. An inch of snow, a few hard frosts and the world stands still whilst the supermarket shelves empty. Of course a few people die from the cold and other people get stuck in cars overnight, holidays are ruined, pipes freeze, and animals hyperthermate (made up word: Please note Oxford English Dictionary types) in the fields, but it's just weather. We can deal with it - Dunkirk spirit and all that; onwards and upwards after all. No, we just don't deal with it very well after being so spoilt by the Gulf Stream lapping warmly at our shores and let's not forget we are as far north as Canada, so by rights we should shivering, blue, and wrapped in about ten layers of fake fur for at least four months of the year. 

Even with the biting cold and winds (was that a cow that just flew past the window?) it seems that people have forgotten how to wrap up warm. I popped down to Sainsbury’s yesterday and there were women in skirts and tops without coats, no scarves, not even gloves, and there wasn’t a balaclava in sight. Pity, there’s something strangely attractive about a woman in a balaclava especially if they are wandering along the chiller aisle wearing crampons.

Or is that just me?

On trying to blog...

I don’t know why I stopped blogging really, maybe it was taking up too much of my time and daytime television is so very good at dulling the mind and getting me through the day until bedtime. It could be that I suppose, although for a long while now I haven’t felt very inspired and whilst I don’t need to be inspired to write this nonsense it helps. Yes, when the nonsense in my head stopped I found myself feeling empty and unable to comment easily on the things I used to comment on so easily. I think in the main I just stopped looking at things as closely as I used to because I began to look far too closely at those things; and with every look I found yet another blemish, a worm in my apple trying to get out and eat me. Of course I know what caused it to happen. It wasn’t one thing, it was a whole host of small ripples in my life growing and growing until it became a huge wave, a tsunami, that crashed into me and swept me away. Sounds dramatic doesn’t it? Trust me, it wasn’t. It was a slow drip, drip, drip.

Of course losing my mum in law was hard to talk about. I felt that somehow I’d failed her by not being able to stop what happened, although I’m told I did everything I could have done - (I could have done more, I know I could, I just know it). Then there was the Mr Shouty thing and how he and his wife not only disowned me because of his shouting and my reaction to it, but set the police on me, wiping me out of their lives just as Mr Shouty had always planned since I was born. Friends and family drop away so easily and I am so used to it, the empty loss it brings, that I only feel it when I sleep. In my dreams my old life goes on as normal, friends and family still talk to me, I go to work, laugh and feel good about things.

Don’t I sound like a right old moaner? Well, I just want to say that I really do recognise that it’s all my fault; all about me as always, it always was and it always will be about me. I am the centre of my universe and whilst I try to keep happy thoughts, I find it harder and harder each day. I scream about US gun law with no effect, post my crappy jokes because I habitually have to, try to amuse my Facebook friends with my witty and often upsetting comments, do online quizzes and drink. No drawing, no painting, it's even hard to think or just move sometimes...

Maybe I need to blog more than I thought and besides I just saw a carrier bag, caught by the wind in its emptiness, soar up and into the sky

Anyway here’s a shitty poem.

Lessons learnt?

If I were to impart my wisdom,

such as my wisdom is,

if I was tell you my lessons learnt
they would in part be this.
Don't sell yourself for wages.
Don't sell yourself for a kiss.
Life is more than money and mess,

far more than a passing piss.

More than rushing from this to that,
more than debt and excess.

Listen, I know my life isn’t perfect

and your life is yours to address,

but each of our lives is a landscape

and we are all painters I guess.

So please don’t smudge or fudge it,

draw it small and make it less,

paint it large in vivid colour

but live it nevertheless.

Mother's Day...

Ah, Mother's Day
I could write a poem
But I won't
I shan't
Because if I should
It might become a rant
So instead
I shall drink red
Then tuck myself into bed

Luna in the sunshine...

Just Luna enjoying the sunshine in Wales. 

I wonder what she is thinking?