Category Archives: personal

memes, personal, thoughts

Listography – Decisions

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Kate’s Listography this week is really HARD! She has asked us about the top five decisions we’re glad we made.

Why do I find this hard? Well not because there are so many to choose from. The opposite. I’m not one for making big decisions. That’s partly I think because I’ve been lucky and not been forced to make many big decisions, but more because I’m not one for planning my life and career. I’ve drifted; gone with the flow. OK, maybe I could have got a higher-powered job, a better salary & pension, a bigger house, whatever. But drifting has been a lot less stressful and kept that work-life balance, well … balanced. And drifting wasn’t a conscious decision, so I can’ even count that! It’s just the way I am – lazy, avoiding and procrastinating.

OK, so here are five good decisions I’m glad I made, in no particular order.

Staying at University. For me it wasn’t the going to university that was the decision. That was more or less a foregone conclusion. The decision I’m glad I made was to stay on and do several years of post-graduate work. They were the formative years. And the most fun years. So much fun I nearly didn’t get my PhD and then left my post-doc job because I was doing too much of everything else and not enough proper work. I’d love to have those years all over again and do it all properly this time, knowing everything I do now. Maybe it’s a good thing one can never go back.

Marrying Noreen. I guess the decision was in asking her to marry me. Neither of us can remember how it came about, or exactly where/when we were when she (finally) said “yes” – having said “no” initially. We know roughly when it was – the week or so leading up to Christmas 1978 – but not the exact day or place. Unusually, Noreen says even her diary doesn’t divulge. That’s maybe a reflection of the fact that we’ve always talked and communicated, so decisions often just evolve rather than being momentous occasions. And yes, you did read it right; I did say Christmas 1978. We were married just 9 months later (no, not for that reason!) in September 1979. And we’re still together! Scary or what?!

Taking Early Retirement. I took early retirement at the beginning of 2010, just days before my 59th birthday, after 33 years working for the same multinational IT company. I was given the opportunity to go before they totally screwed up the final salary pension plan. Despite not getting a golden goodbye, (indeed scarcely a goodbye at all; more likely “thank God we got rid of him”) it actually worked out well for me. I had originally planned on retiring at around 55, but this got delayed as Equitable Life and then the financial markets hit the buffers. But sometime this year (2011) I would have hit the maximum I could get out of the pension scheme, so I hardly lost out. And am I glad I went: I think another year of the huge IT restructuring project I was running would have killed me; it was too big and with too much management interference. It’s taken me a good year to surface again.

Buying Our House. 30-odd years married. 30-odd years working for the same company. And at the time of writing just weeks away from 30 years in the same house. We moved here in July 1981 from a scruffy rented flat. This is only a small 1930s terraced cottage in an unfashionable area of suburban London, but it is a welcoming house; it just felt right to us from the moment we first saw it. We bought just before the height of the high interest rates (6 months after we bought we were paying 17.5% on our mortgage; and that was normal!). Luckily we slightly under-mortgaged ourselves and were able to ride out the storm, eventually managing to pay off the mortgage some 7 years early! And we’re still here. There has been no imperative to move, except maybe to find more room for our ever-expanding mountain of books. There are only the two of us and two cats; we’ve never had kids (by choice); so why have a bigger house? And, now were both retired, we’ve decided that we’re staying here if we can rather than move. Yes there are other places we’d love to live, but none is as convenient for everything we want to do.

Don’t be like Father. I’m not sure whether this counts as a decision or not, but I’m glad I realised that I didn’t have to be a miserable old git of a Victor Meldrew character like my father. I know my father had many good qualities, not least giving me an intelligent and bohemian upbringing. But he was always negative and one of those people who fights life, rather than embracing it. Totally risk averse (there I do take after him and it has largely paid off for us) he was someone “they” were always out to get, especially financially. He was a Luddite and totally anti almost all technological developments – to him they were all an unnecessary con. I’m not sure quite when I realised I didn’t have to be like him and worry about everything; it probably wasn’t until I was the wrong side of 40. But somehow, once this dawned on me, I learnt, unconsciously, to let things wash over me. I still don’t know how I did it. But it doesn’t half make life easier. I still don’t exactly hedonistically embrace life (I’m not extrovert enough) but at least I’m not now worrying myself into an early grave.

So there it is. How I got to where I am by not making decisions!

people, personal, sexuality, thoughts

Of Men and Boys

In the still ongoing process of clearing out the toot from the study the other day I came across an article from 1989 (Carol Lee, “How We Hurt Our Sons”, Sunday Times Magazine, 22 October 1989, 54-58) in which the author maintains that we are continuing to screw up our boys by not allowing them to understand and express the full range of their emotions, fears, during adolescence.

In re-reading the article I realised the author is right. I realised that I too had been blighted by this – despite having relatively bohemian and enlightened parents. That what Carol Lee was saying was true in the 1980s. And it is still largely true today.

Moreover because this is important (and because Times newspapers are now behind a paywall) here are a few salient extracts of what was for a Sunday magazine article well written, thoughtful and useful.

Time and again when working in schools … I have come across boys who go through agonies … They suffer particular pain because of a strong sense of being alone in whatever they’re feeling. Unlike girls, they are not encouraged to share their problems and more intimate fears. They think they will be laughed at if they show weakness. This leaves them fewer outlets for discovering that their particular “shame” is shared by most of us, and is of human rather than monstrous proportions … The strongest impression they gave was a sense of isolation, guilt and anxiety. Feeling isolated and afraid is a painful experience at any age. It can be devastating during adolescence.

[…]

The loss of “normality” is experienced by both girls and boys as they leave childhood for the difficulties of puberty. Both sexes suffer the loss of the intimate, gaily-coloured world of their primary schools with their own familiar teacher, and classrooms decorated with their own pictures. This Garden of Eden is suddenly replaced at the age of 11 with a large secondary school which is frightening for many children. Then, at the same time as nice, cosy “Miss” or friendly “Sir” has been replaced by a bewildering stream of different subject teachers, children’s bodies suddenly start becoming hostile territory, too. This affects boys more than it does girls … Girls are given positive images of womanhood: menstruation is no longer a “curse” and libraries contain an array of books on young women’s health, rights, body-images and on issues like self-assertion. They do not seem to have similar material for young men.

[…]

Girls are taught to be articulate, to express emotions like anger and to be proud of being female. They are no longer wrapped in cotton wool. Boys are still brought up to be tough … Notions of maleness have changed considerably in the past two decades, but the bringing up of boys has not kept pace. There is little in the way of a rite … of passage which takes them from childhood to the increasingly complex business of being a man.

[…]

[P]uberty for boys is not seen as a positive experience, but a negative one. Mothers withdraw from boys because they are afraid of making cissies of their sons, and also because they are uncertain how to treat developing male sexuality … The confusion is experienced by boys, too. Their bodies are now prone to hydraulic uncertainties called erections. Boys are fearful in case unwanted erections happen in front of – or because of – mothers. Mothers, aunts and other concerned females have the same problem. So boys suddenly find themselves pushed out in the cold.

[…]

When given the chance to discuss such issues … teenage boys will say how abandoned, neglected and anxious they feel. They will tell you that their mothers avoid them “like the plague” and that their fathers don’t talk to them anyway. They will also express envy at the way girls are more mature and self-sufficient than boys of the same age.

[…]

A boy’s journey from childhood into manhood is dictated by his ability to be unemotional, to bear pain and also to die for his country … Why should they be any less hurt when their first romance ends? Do we want them to be human or inhuman? … Man is no longer a slayer of dragons or a knight in shining armour. But this change in attitude has left a vacuum in the condition of being male.

[…]

We hurt boys by believing they are ‘alien’. We deny them their ability to nurture. That’s why they end up different, because we believe they are, and make them so. And fathers still don’t nurture their sons in the way women do their daughters.

[…]

[B]etter adjustment is achieved by allowing boys a full range of emotions instead of the traditional “stiff upper lip”. What goes wrong is that boys are not invited, as girls are, to be sensitive, caring and considerate.

[…]

Society praises youth for the way it flings itself into life, romantically, impetuously, protected; yet this same society offers youth no room for spontaneity, for improvisation or sincerity, for relationships that are irrational or non-utilitarian, either in its social structure or in its everyday routine.

If anyone out there especially wants a copy of the full article, then ask me nicely and I’ll send you a PDF.

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, medical, personal, science, thoughts

Works of the Devil

Katyboo recently listed a number of things she considers the works of the Devil. And naturally this got me thinking, the way such things do. So here are a few more things which the Devil has sent as a pestilence upon us.

  • Top of the list has to be RELIGION. Now look all you religious people, you’re all Devil worshippers! If you didn’t believe in the Devil you wouldn’t need God to save you from him.
  • And then comes politics. Need I say more when one looks at workers of Devil like Tony B Liar and Gordon Brown.
  • Fast food: especially McDonalds and KFC (or as it’s know in this house Kentucky Fried Food Poisoning). As an adjunct we must include ready meals, and indeed all False Food.
  • Then there is a collection of actual food stuffs, which includes Egg Custard (yeuch!) and Jellied Eels (double yeuch!) and tinned sweetcorn. I love eel, but jellied, no, disgusting – salty and slimy.
  • And a few beverages, especially Pernod and Absinthe which are just vile. They even look like the works of the Devil as well as tasting disgusting.

What else should one add?

  • Hermetically sealed clam-shell packaging. Well you could make that all plastic packaging.
  • Night clothes, especially pyjamas. Haven’t worn anything in bed since I was a student apart from the odd occasions I’ve been in hospital. It’s just so uncomfortable.
  • Braces (suspenders to you Americans). Something else that’s vilely uncomfortable and looks stupid – if you need braces your trousers don’t fit properly.
  • And while we’re on clothes, there’s fashion. Pretentious and a waste of time and money.
  • Girls wearing far too much make-up (so that’s most of them!). Why do they need to look as if they’ve strayed a 2mm thick skin of plastic on their faces?
  • Facial pubic beards and pudenda (on both sexes) without them.
  • Ballroom Dancing. I refused to have anything to do with it as a youngster, despite my parents’ prediction I would be a social outcast. So I’m a social outcast: it’s probably for the best!
  • Maggots. Anything that smells nasty and wriggles. No more to say really!
  • Cinema and films. I just ask “Why?”. What is the point?
  • And finally there are a few people including Lord Winston (I remain convinced that IVF is the Devil’s work), Richard Dawkins (who is just as bigoted as the believers he objects to) plus most of the twats that fill our TV screens.

Oh, you’d better add daytime TV too!

Interesting. Reading back over that list it is very much a reflection of our theory about False Life. Worrying!

Image from 123RF Stock Photos.

food+drink, memes, personal, quotes

Listography – Finals

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For one week only Kate Takes 5 has this week handed over the Listography to Keith at Chronicles of a Reluctant Housedad. And Keith is asking us to think about our five finals: final farewells, final suppers, final resting places, etc. So here are five thoughts about some final things for me …

Final Supper: Lamb Sag Madras with Bombay Aloo, Cauliflower Bhaji and Lemon Rice.
I love curry in almost all its guises. So almost any curry would do.

Final Drink: Several pints of Adnams’ East Green.
I was pretty nearly weaned on Adnams’ Bitter (well I was a post-grad at the time) and to this day it is their beers I enjoy the most. East Green is a recent eco-friendly brew which for me just has the edge on Adnams’ Bitter.

Final Words: “Oh fuck …”
Well what else is there to say?

Final Act: Hug Noreen and cry.
‘Cos I shall miss her and ‘cos I’ve not been a better husband and lover.

Final Destination: Hell.
Just think of all the interesting people there are to meet in Hell: Oscar Wilde, Emperor Claudius, Richard Feynman, Isaac Newton, Joseph Campbell as well as an assortment of artists, pornographers and thinkers. Should be a good party!

books, history, personal, topographical

Fairfield

Wanting something to read in bed the other evening, and not wanting anything heavy, I chose at random from the pile of books by the bed. My hand alighted on Betjeman’s England, an anthology by Stephen Games of extracts from the scripts of Sir John Betjeman’s TV films about England.

Now I love the Romney Marsh and Dungeness in Kent, and the nearby small town of Rye. So imagine my enjoyment when the book fell open, quite at random, at the following piece about Fairfield Church in the heart of the Romney Marsh.

KENT

FAIRFIELD CHURCH, ROMNEY MARSH
From the Shell series Discovering Britain with John Betjeman
Random Film Productions Ltd
ITV, Spring 1956 (exact date unknown)
Director: Peter Woosnam-Mills

Romney Marsh, on the Sussex border of Kent and close to the sea. Romney Marsh, where the roads wind like streams through pasture and the sky is always three-quarters of the landscape. The sounds I associate with Romney Marsh are the bleating of innumerable sheep and the whistle of the sea wind in old willow trees. The sea has given a colour to this district: it has spotted with silver the oak posts and rails; it gives the grass and the rushes a grey salty look and turns the red bricks and tiles of Fairfield Church a saffron yellow.

For a moment, when you see Fairfield Church there on the skyline, you think it must be a farm or a barn. There’s no road to it – only a footbridge and a path. And in the church, you feel you’re on an island in the marsh.

Inside, it’s like walking underneath an upturned ship. (Those great beams are made of Kentish oak.) The communion rails go round three sides of the altar as they used to in many churches two hundred years ago; and since in those days, just as much as now, people were literate, they hired a local inn-sign painter to paint, in yellowish-gold letters on a black background, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments.

The church is still kept up and used, though it’s miles from anywhere, and that’s what gives it atmosphere.

Another thing that endears Fairfield Church to me is that it’s been spared electric light and the surgical basins in the roof that go with it. How pleasant those Victorian oil lamps are and how well they fit in with the scene.

Let’s go into one of the high, white box pews. And sitting here in the quiet waste of marsh, islanded by grass in water, let’s think ourselves back two hundred years. The place can’t have looked very different. The parson read the service from that lower desk where the candle is, he climbed to the pulpit to preach, and if you found yourself not attending to the sermon, there was always a text to remind you of where you were and of the reverence due to this loved and lonely house of God.

Fairfield Church: it’s about ten miles from Tenterden in Kent and therefore sixty-three miles south-east of London.

I’ve been to Fairfield a number of times and it is even now just as fascinating and delightful as Betjeman paints it, despite several heavy restorations in the last 200 years. Fairfield really is in the middle of nowhere, and probably always was as there was never anything much by way of village there. There is still no electricity but the church is used, at least sporadically.

For me Fairfield has a further attraction. It is dedicated to my patron saint, Thomas Beckett (Thomas of Canterbury), ca. 1118 to 29 December 1170; murdered at the behest of Henry II and canonised by Pope Alexander III in 1173.

The church, which is tiny, is on a slight rise in the middle of a rather wet sheep field, and when you go into the church you have to remember to shut the door behind you so the sheep don’t follow you. I have been there and found several sheep sheltering in the porch!

Yes, it is one of those idyllic and idiosyncratic English places!

There’s more on the architectural structure of Fairfield church here.

Stephen Games (Ed.), Betjeman’s England (John Murray, London, 2009)

amusements, food+drink, memes, personal, photography, thoughts

Listography – Products

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Slightly late with this week’s Listography entry, as proposed by Kate Takes 5. This week it’s all about products — specifically those top five products you couldn’t live without.

So in the interests of not frightening the horses natives, here’s my sensible list:

Laptop or PC. I don’t mind if I have a laptop or a desktop PC; I’m happy using either; both have advantages and disadvantages. But I’m a fish out of water without instant access to the intertubes and all my documentation.

Bed. I need my sleep. I need oil tanker loads of beauty sleep and even then it doesn’t do any good. Bed for me is a haven; not just somewhere to sleep but somewhere to relax, read, think and even on occasions watch TV. Yes, we still live very much in student mode, even 40 years after the event!

Camera. I always carry a camera. You never know what you’re going to see. Mostly it’s dull, but very occasionally it isn’t. And I like photographing people and the odd things that go on around me; especially people. Even at home my camera sits to hand on my desk.

Beer. Well we’d better have something to sustain us. I don’t drink a lot of beer these days; I’ve switched mostly to wine in the interests of trying (and failing) to lose weight and control the diabetes. But I love beer and couldn’t do without the occasional fix. And anyway, what else does one really want to drink with curry?

Glasses. As in spectacles. I’m as blind as a bat without my glasses, which I’ve worn since I was about 14. They are such a part of me that I don’t know I’m wearing them, so I’ve never even bothered to think much about having lenses — and not too much point now as I’d still need reading glasses. I like my varifocals; unlike many people I’ve never had problem with them.

So there you are. What are your top five things you couldn’t do without.

memes, personal, photography

[19/52] 2.05 PM


[19/52] 2.05 PM, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Week 19 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

As you’ll see if you work out the angles, this was taken from the passenger seat the other day. I wanted to capture the combination of camera, wing-mirror, a bit of self-portrait, the traffic behind us and the traffic beside us at the lights.