A little over a decade ago, I clearly recall standing on the pavement opposite the pub in which I'd just shared a pre-Christmas hair-of-the-dog with a couple of old friends (we had now accepted that the previous night's events were over and it was time to get on with what was left of Saturday). As I stood, limbs close in to avoid heat loss and mostly oblivious to the slate gray December sky, I kept my face towards the general direction from which I knew my lift home would be coming.
Joy quickly followed surprised as the unmistakable form of the two women in my life nosed their way to the junction not more than one hundred yards from where I stood. In over nine years, this was the first time my wife had taken my 1973 Volkswagen camper out solo. A simple collection from the neighbouring town now had me akin to a stranded climber staring up into the rotors of a search and rescue helicopter. And I felt proud. Nine years I had waited to see this. Nine years - the van had been the one constant in my marriage. It had even been sold once and then bought back again.
The van was my differentiator from the unconscious conformity of all else, it was my clipper ship, using the trade winds to slowly wind it's way to destinations where my wife and I would cook what ever we could find in the supermarket which would fit on a couple of dimming burners and a rusty grill before cosying up on the flat packed, thick cushioned semblance of a bed with the hand-made curtains either flapping above our faces or pressed against the wet glass, depending on the lie of where we had parked, then driving back a couple of days later, refreshed for the fresh air but in need of a shower.
Yet it was not universally popular. My best friend, whose judgement - now as then - I value above nearly all else, and who's approval I often subtly seek, hated it. Really hated it. He didn't think it was funny, odd, quirky, he just hated it. Throughout it's ten year relationship with me he refused to travel in it, complaining bitterly when he had no alternative method - though he did bail out of one November night drive from the west country to London, opting for the train from Basingstoke's dank, stained public-convenience styled station, "At least the train will have some sort of bloody heating". Yet this did not matter. I sought no approval on this one particular issue.
A week after the surprise Saturday collection, my wife and I separated. The van remained with me for another eight months, unused, still cherished, but a burden. It was becoming awkward to squeeze it into the garage of my three bedroom semi and I had to move the nearly-new BMW each time to swing the garage door up-and-over, then shuffle along its flank with pot-holing dexterity in order to retrieve items from the space at the end of the long garage.
She was sold. I don't know what happened to her. Some of these destinations which took planning and patience to reach, I now drive past for a morning meeting, returning the same day. And I have trouble equating the rusting old van in the last Polaroid I have of her to the van I owned.
4 Mar 2008
Shutdown
There is no real need for me to do any more.
The day's are busy enough, the cyclical routine of being part of ensuring everyone's where they are when they should be and has enough to eat. And that's not easy. "Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out". [Anton Chekhov, apparently] And the routine was good. No time at all then a couple of hours off once everyone was in bed and, personal emails or work emails pending, a couple of hours to disappear into some God-game on the PC.
Not easy. But not conducive to thinking. Exercising your own potential. And no-one can blame you for that.
When I found myself grateful for a good winter coat while standing on the end of Ryde pier in the blistering cold darkness, watching the arrival of the passenger multi-hull ferry (which was being tossed around more that I realised they did) I kept rehearsing conversations over and over in my mind. Only distracted by mentally separating the shore lights of Portsmouth from tiny vessels afloat, I wasn't sure how I was going to act, whether I was going to make a fool of myself. How do you talk to someone who has traveled extensively, I mean, extensively, who seems to have led the life you wish you had got off your arse and led when you were in your late teens and early twenties. How do you, who's occasional weeks in less visited countries on business stand-out in your life like epics, talk to someone who was in Tianaman Square with a video camera, who has been at the front line in central African trouble-spots and who has won awards for the results? I couldn't answer the question but I did come up with an option - you don't. You do a lot of listening.
So I was surprised by how much talking I actually did do during the weekend stay on the farm. And I'm not filled with the blood-thinning pain of recalling drunken conversations either (I was pleased to be told after the weekend that I "held my own" which I treasure as a vote of confidence - which may not have been there before). I may not exactly have spoken with authority, more touched on a subject and given an abstract, to listen to the precis which followed but there were areas of common interest, common agreement and I could see where the difference lay.
The fear at the end of the pier (I'm a poet and I don't know it), with hind-sight was this: it wasn't that I would make a fool of myself because I was ignorant, it was because I am not sure how to articulate what I know or what I believe.
And this is important. Very important. Perhaps being articulate is one of the greatest tools of evolution. If you can make yourself understood, get your point across, demonstrate someone else's point, and so on, you connect. With everything in your life. Likewise, if you cannot articulate, you must surely disconnect, end up sticking your head in the sand, just getting on with day-to-day living. What would we be without the ability to articulate? I'm guessing more violent - and I mean as an individual - as it's bloody frustrating when someone is just not getting your point - but, as a species we'd be little more that gene carriers (see Richard Dawkins for more details).
And that I find more than a little scary.
I have children - and I, ike Louis Armstrong, want my children to understand way more than I do. I have no doubt their opinions will be different to mine but as long as those opinions have been reached by taking what knowledge I have, adding to it and drawing the conclusions from proper premises, then I'll be happy.
So, like all of us, I have a head full of ideas and premises whizzing round my head. Like many of us, I have no channel down which to direct and filter these premises to reach well formed conclusions.
So that's what I intend to use this page for. My funnel.
I already feel more alive that I have done since, well, my Level One OU course back in 2004 - which was the first time (that I can recall - or where I was listening) that I was taught that properly argued conclusions come from correct use of premises.
I feel more alive.
I hope that continues.
The day's are busy enough, the cyclical routine of being part of ensuring everyone's where they are when they should be and has enough to eat. And that's not easy. "Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out". [Anton Chekhov, apparently] And the routine was good. No time at all then a couple of hours off once everyone was in bed and, personal emails or work emails pending, a couple of hours to disappear into some God-game on the PC.
Not easy. But not conducive to thinking. Exercising your own potential. And no-one can blame you for that.
When I found myself grateful for a good winter coat while standing on the end of Ryde pier in the blistering cold darkness, watching the arrival of the passenger multi-hull ferry (which was being tossed around more that I realised they did) I kept rehearsing conversations over and over in my mind. Only distracted by mentally separating the shore lights of Portsmouth from tiny vessels afloat, I wasn't sure how I was going to act, whether I was going to make a fool of myself. How do you talk to someone who has traveled extensively, I mean, extensively, who seems to have led the life you wish you had got off your arse and led when you were in your late teens and early twenties. How do you, who's occasional weeks in less visited countries on business stand-out in your life like epics, talk to someone who was in Tianaman Square with a video camera, who has been at the front line in central African trouble-spots and who has won awards for the results? I couldn't answer the question but I did come up with an option - you don't. You do a lot of listening.
So I was surprised by how much talking I actually did do during the weekend stay on the farm. And I'm not filled with the blood-thinning pain of recalling drunken conversations either (I was pleased to be told after the weekend that I "held my own" which I treasure as a vote of confidence - which may not have been there before). I may not exactly have spoken with authority, more touched on a subject and given an abstract, to listen to the precis which followed but there were areas of common interest, common agreement and I could see where the difference lay.
The fear at the end of the pier (I'm a poet and I don't know it), with hind-sight was this: it wasn't that I would make a fool of myself because I was ignorant, it was because I am not sure how to articulate what I know or what I believe.
And this is important. Very important. Perhaps being articulate is one of the greatest tools of evolution. If you can make yourself understood, get your point across, demonstrate someone else's point, and so on, you connect. With everything in your life. Likewise, if you cannot articulate, you must surely disconnect, end up sticking your head in the sand, just getting on with day-to-day living. What would we be without the ability to articulate? I'm guessing more violent - and I mean as an individual - as it's bloody frustrating when someone is just not getting your point - but, as a species we'd be little more that gene carriers (see Richard Dawkins for more details).
And that I find more than a little scary.
I have children - and I, ike Louis Armstrong, want my children to understand way more than I do. I have no doubt their opinions will be different to mine but as long as those opinions have been reached by taking what knowledge I have, adding to it and drawing the conclusions from proper premises, then I'll be happy.
So, like all of us, I have a head full of ideas and premises whizzing round my head. Like many of us, I have no channel down which to direct and filter these premises to reach well formed conclusions.
So that's what I intend to use this page for. My funnel.
I already feel more alive that I have done since, well, my Level One OU course back in 2004 - which was the first time (that I can recall - or where I was listening) that I was taught that properly argued conclusions come from correct use of premises.
I feel more alive.
I hope that continues.
2 Mar 2008
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