For any of you who may be wondering, I am over my little funk of last post. I'm pretty convinced that my worries weren't paranoia and the problem really did exist but I'm equally certain that a)it's all blown over and b) I'm not going to dwell on it regardless.
So this week I drag the blog back on track and head once more down memory lane; to a boy named Scruff and one of my most terrifying experiences.
I spent a goodly portion of my childhood living in constant fear of Scruff, who lived just a couple of streets from me and was, during our time at Primary School, in my class. Luckily, come Comprehensive his, shall we say lack of academic aptitude, meant that we saw little overlap in our classes so I only had to worry about him after hours. At the time of this weeks tale however, we were still entrenched in the Primary years, so his presence was constant.
Now, before we go any further I should like to point out that I was not the one to coin the name 'Scruff' for him. Far from the most well dressed person in my social circle I was all to aware of the negative affect being mocked for your appearance can have on a person. He seemed perfectly happy with the name though, to the extent that I genuinely can't remember what his actual name was. I'm sure he had one; God, how awful would it be to have been christened Scruff? You'd have no chance, would you?; but to this day he is indelibly etched into my memory as simply Scruff.
Scruff and I didn't get off on the wrong foot. Quite the opposite in fact. One of my first memories of him is from, oh, it must have been a week or so after I started at that school. We were selected by random drawing to stay in at playtime and clear up the art supplies and he was pretty upset about it. Personally I wasn't that fussed, everyone got picked eventually, it was just our time, (although I was pretty unlucky to have been picked so soon) but he was really stropping. I ended up telling him to just sit down and I'd do it myself. That was it, friend for life. Or friend for a month or so anyway. Pretty much everyone tried to warn me, after that first playtime bonding session, that I should stay well clear but I liked the lad, he was a good laugh, and I didn't listen.
Until he headbutted me for tackling him in PE.
You see, Scruff was a psycho, or at least that was our expert opinion when we were kids. Truth is, looking back, he was obviously deeply troubled and his home life, from what I saw of it was about as far from perfect as you could get. And I say this a someone whose own childhood, as you'll know if you read this blog regularly, was far from rosy. These days he'd get counseling, maybe moved to a separate school where children with his issues were better catered for. Not back then though; to the teachers he was a troublemaker and to us kids he was a psycho. A psycho with a temper.
I very quickly, being the terrible physical coward that I am, began to live in fear of Scruffs mood swings, which ironically enough meant that I actually ended up spending a lot more time with him than most. You see, while others were happy to ignore him or, the brave ones, tell him to f*ck off, I was always trying to appease him. I figured if he thought of me as a proper friend (and one who posed no threat) I'd be less likely to feel his wrath. Shoddy thinking, I now know.
Anyway, I had two major run ins with Scruff that stay with me to this day. The first was one of the proudest moments of my life. The second was the moment that I realised the first had been a massive mistake.They say, don't they, that you should stand up to bullies and they'll back down. Sound advice, if you're living in Ramsay Street or going to school at Waterloo Road but here in the real world it doesn't always work that way. Or rather, in my experience, it never works that way.
It was a pretty normal day like any other and we were all quite happily sitting in class doing whatever it was we were doing. The sun was shining through the windows, people were laughing, it was pretty idyllic. Then my mate Chris and I went to get something from the side cupboard. Scruff arrived right behind us, he wanted what we had, we offered half, he wanted it all, we said no, he said he would kick our heads in. So far, still normal, if not quite so idyllic.
Then I screamed "Fuck Off" and punched him. I have no idea what the hell I was thinking but he was snarling threats at us and I was terrified so I lashed out and punched him in the stomach. Shocked myself to be honest. He doubled over and stayed doubled over, my hand still in his stomach because I was in to much shock to pull away. Everyone who saw it started laughing and cheering, Chris tried to drag me away, Scruff was puffing and wheezing, everything was in slow motion.
So teacher arrives on scene, we're both sent on our merry way to the Headmasters office, get a bit of a bollocking, apologise, are sent straight back to class. The whole way there, and the whole way back, Scruff doesn't say a word to me, just shuffling along with his hands in his pockets and staring at the floor. For my part, I was terrified; I was convinced he was going to turn and beat the crap out of me, right there in the corridor.
He did no such thing, and he did nothing at break or Lunch either. Hometime came and he went straight home, no sign of hanging around to 'get' me. It seemed that I had gotten away with it. I became something of a minor celebrity in class for all of about 3 days, and then it all blew over.
Until a few weeks later. I'm in a shop, Scruff walks in with a couple of mates, heads straight over to me and starts yelling in my face. The shopowner kicks us all out; I guess the terror in my eyes wasn't good enough for him, he just lumped us all in together as noisy kids and out we went. We were outside scant seconds when the first punch connected to the side of my head. I staggered, a couple more blows were struck and then interference from a passer-by was enough of a diversion for me to do one.
Now, I'm no athlete, but when I think there's a chance of a kicking I'm like a whippet, so it wasn't long before I was at the end of the street and round the corner. Had I kept on I would have most likely gotten home before Scruff and co could have caught me but instead, in another case of me trying to be too clever for my own good, I nipped up the back of the main street, intending to hide in one of the yards. This I do, and am soon happily ensconced in a nice little alcove, out of sight and sitting pretty.
Except, I'd failed to take into account that while Scruff had many flaws, being an idiot wasn't one of them. He must have realised that I hadn't had time to get out of sight on the main road, and that having come up the back street I wouldn't have had time to reach the end; hence, I was hiding up the back street somewhere. I was cornered within moments and bracing myself for the kicking I was sure was coming.
He pulled a knife.
I can honestly say, hand on heart and without fear of contradiction, that I was legitimately more scared in that moment than I had ever been before and I'd be hard pushed to think of many times since that matched it. I can clearly remember thinking that Scruffs friends looked nearly as terrified as I did; I don't think they were expecting that! And do you know what I did? What my big, brave, plan of action was? I cried. I cried, and I begged for him not to hurt me and then I launched into a wild attack that I'm sure had little effect other than to shock him (still crying all the time) and then I ran like fuck and didn't stop until I got home; where I cried some more, got wrong because I wouldn't say why I was crying and then went to bed and had nightmares. So, you know, a great plan all round. And Scruff...
Scruff showed up at school next day like nothing had happened and was laughing and joking with me in the playground. Best friends...until the next time.
Monday, 19 September 2011
Monday, 5 September 2011
Twitter People, And An Apology
So, this is not the post I set out to write this week. I had planned an account of my torment at the hands of a schoolyard bully and how the old adage, 'stand up to a bully and he'll run away', isn't always the best advice, but that will have to wait for something has come up which I need to address. Something which has been playing on my mind for a couple of days.
Now it's entirely possible that there isn't a problem and I'm just being paranoid. This has certainly been known to happen in my long and torturous history of 'trying to interact with other people like a normal human' but if it is all in my head, then all that's going to happen is I'm making a fool of myself, which is kind of what this blog is all about. If I'm not paranoid though, and there really is a problem, then I hope that this post will go some way to putting it right.
I spend a lot of time on Twitter; a time sucking indulgence which has become akin to an addiction for me, and I don't use the word lightly. You see I joined twitter, as I do so many internet do-hickeys, with the intention of extracting the michael out of all the saddos but unlike the various forums I've joined and never posted on, or the MySpace and later, facebook pages I set up, I have stuck with Twitter and now wouldn't be without it. Why? The people.
In a course of events that I didn't foresee and would never have thought possible, I began to engage. It took me a while but I began to consider these 'tweeters', these people I've never actually met and possibly (probably) never will, as friends. Is that 'sad'? Is that 'abnormal'? If it is, I don't care.
My whole life I've struggled with the social niceties, with the societal pressure to 'do this', 'think this', 'feel this'. I've had few friends, I've become estranged from the bulk of my family, I consider those I work for and with as nothing more than interchangeable/replaceable colleagues. When people are particularly happy or miserable; when babies are born or engagements announced; when people are ill or die, I feel nothing. I put on a show of camaraderie in the good times and feign empathy in the bad but it's seldom genuine and if it is, it's fleeting. I had begun to think myself broken. Until Twitter. I don't know how they did it but they brought me out of my shell, they made me laugh genuine laughter, engage in genuine banter that I wasn't forcing to fit in, care about what they were doing in their lives and want to share what I was doing in mine. So yes, I think of them as friends.
And, as I'm told is common in real life, by the tellybods and the bookwriter people, some are better friends than others; some are more important to me than others.(You can see their names over to the right there). I care, not just about their opinion of me, but about them in general. How they feel, whether they're happy. So when I think that I could have done something, however unintentional, to make one of these people unhappy, it pains me. It pains me a great deal and I want to put it right.
ON SATURDAY I posted a comment on twitter about Person A. It was a joke; a comment posted in response to something Person A had posted earlier that day, which had in turn been posted in response to something I had said the previous night. You know, like a conversation, but with reaallly long timedelay. Shortly after I posted this comment, someone we shall call Person B seemed to get very upset. They posted some things that, while not addressed to me personally, could have been written in direct response to my post. The timing and their content certainly indicated that they were. I pretended not to notice. I hoped very strongly that what I thought had happened, had not happened. I'm now convinced that it had.
You see, taken in context, I like to think that my comment was mildly amusing. Taken out of context (and let's face it, what's the likelihood that anyone would have just happened to see the previous 2 messages in the sea of thousands over the 24 hour+ hours that the conversation took?), the comment took on a whole other meaning. And it was a meaning that Person B would have had every right to get upset about.
I hold my hands up here. It was a stupid thing to do, especially since I knew that Person B was online at the time. I just didn't think; I had an idea for a funny thing to do and I did it, without a thought for how Person B would take it. I apologise; all I can do is apologise, but I want that person to understand something.
It was never my intention to hurt your feelings or upset you. I was an idiot and I've felt like shit about it since it happened. I hope you understand that you are genuinely one of my favourite people to talk to online and a big part of what makes Twitter so positive an influence in my life. The thought that I played any part in making you unhappy kills me. I hope you understand, it was a joke.
As I say, it's possible that I'm overreacting; that the whole thing was in my head, I'm the only one worrying and the above post is just a big load of 'Paul Being An Idiot'. If that's the case, nothing would make me happier and you should all feel free to mock me mercilessly. But if not, then I hope that Person B understands how sorry I am.
And also, I suppose, that all of Twitter doesn't now disown me for being the freakazoid needy loser that I have just ousted myself as. Slipped up there.
Now it's entirely possible that there isn't a problem and I'm just being paranoid. This has certainly been known to happen in my long and torturous history of 'trying to interact with other people like a normal human' but if it is all in my head, then all that's going to happen is I'm making a fool of myself, which is kind of what this blog is all about. If I'm not paranoid though, and there really is a problem, then I hope that this post will go some way to putting it right.
I spend a lot of time on Twitter; a time sucking indulgence which has become akin to an addiction for me, and I don't use the word lightly. You see I joined twitter, as I do so many internet do-hickeys, with the intention of extracting the michael out of all the saddos but unlike the various forums I've joined and never posted on, or the MySpace and later, facebook pages I set up, I have stuck with Twitter and now wouldn't be without it. Why? The people.
In a course of events that I didn't foresee and would never have thought possible, I began to engage. It took me a while but I began to consider these 'tweeters', these people I've never actually met and possibly (probably) never will, as friends. Is that 'sad'? Is that 'abnormal'? If it is, I don't care.
My whole life I've struggled with the social niceties, with the societal pressure to 'do this', 'think this', 'feel this'. I've had few friends, I've become estranged from the bulk of my family, I consider those I work for and with as nothing more than interchangeable/replaceable colleagues. When people are particularly happy or miserable; when babies are born or engagements announced; when people are ill or die, I feel nothing. I put on a show of camaraderie in the good times and feign empathy in the bad but it's seldom genuine and if it is, it's fleeting. I had begun to think myself broken. Until Twitter. I don't know how they did it but they brought me out of my shell, they made me laugh genuine laughter, engage in genuine banter that I wasn't forcing to fit in, care about what they were doing in their lives and want to share what I was doing in mine. So yes, I think of them as friends.
And, as I'm told is common in real life, by the tellybods and the bookwriter people, some are better friends than others; some are more important to me than others.(You can see their names over to the right there). I care, not just about their opinion of me, but about them in general. How they feel, whether they're happy. So when I think that I could have done something, however unintentional, to make one of these people unhappy, it pains me. It pains me a great deal and I want to put it right.
ON SATURDAY I posted a comment on twitter about Person A. It was a joke; a comment posted in response to something Person A had posted earlier that day, which had in turn been posted in response to something I had said the previous night. You know, like a conversation, but with reaallly long timedelay. Shortly after I posted this comment, someone we shall call Person B seemed to get very upset. They posted some things that, while not addressed to me personally, could have been written in direct response to my post. The timing and their content certainly indicated that they were. I pretended not to notice. I hoped very strongly that what I thought had happened, had not happened. I'm now convinced that it had.
You see, taken in context, I like to think that my comment was mildly amusing. Taken out of context (and let's face it, what's the likelihood that anyone would have just happened to see the previous 2 messages in the sea of thousands over the 24 hour+ hours that the conversation took?), the comment took on a whole other meaning. And it was a meaning that Person B would have had every right to get upset about.
I hold my hands up here. It was a stupid thing to do, especially since I knew that Person B was online at the time. I just didn't think; I had an idea for a funny thing to do and I did it, without a thought for how Person B would take it. I apologise; all I can do is apologise, but I want that person to understand something.
It was never my intention to hurt your feelings or upset you. I was an idiot and I've felt like shit about it since it happened. I hope you understand that you are genuinely one of my favourite people to talk to online and a big part of what makes Twitter so positive an influence in my life. The thought that I played any part in making you unhappy kills me. I hope you understand, it was a joke.
As I say, it's possible that I'm overreacting; that the whole thing was in my head, I'm the only one worrying and the above post is just a big load of 'Paul Being An Idiot'. If that's the case, nothing would make me happier and you should all feel free to mock me mercilessly. But if not, then I hope that Person B understands how sorry I am.
And also, I suppose, that all of Twitter doesn't now disown me for being the freakazoid needy loser that I have just ousted myself as. Slipped up there.
Monday, 29 August 2011
Touch My Tiddler, I Dare You.
Hello there and welcome to another edition of Musings of a Nobody, the blog in which a nobody, that's me, muses on things; things that have happened to me in my life, for the most part.
It's been a little while since this blog updated actually and that's entirely down to me and my horrible mood swings that really aren't conducive to writing calmly about unpleasant memories. Hint: I tend to throw things. I'm hoping (and I'm aware that I've said this before without following through) that this will be the first of many and I can get back to a semi-regular schedule on here.
So, you remember Wayne and Lisa right? Sure you do, Wayne and Lisa. Yeah, them. Well, they had tents. Nothing unusual in that you might think. Lots of kids have tents. Some might say that sleeping outside sans parents for the very first time is something of a rite of passage. Not me, obviously, I likes me the creature comforts, but some might. Anyway, Wayne and Lisa had tents and come the summer months these tents would be erected in their back garden, where they would become the focal point of all the activity of the local kids. Boys in Wayne's tent, girls in Lisa's. (They were massive tents by the way, in case you were wondering. No uncomfortable squeezing necessary thank you very much. Never confused.)
Now, one fine summer morn we boys were sat in Wayne's tent, playing snap with a pack of those cards all our Dads/Dickhead Pseudo Stepdads seemed to acquire from nowhere (you know the ones, you know you do) and planning how we were going to invade the Girls Tent and mess up whatever they were doing. It was a favourite pastime of ours to plan these little assaults, although we rarely if ever went through with them; I don't think people do, really, outside of 1980's screwball coming-of-age comedies.
This time was no exception, and after about an hour we drifted over to see what they were up to and ended up joining in a game of Snakes & Ladders. Oh, the hedonism! Wayne went in and asked his Mam if we could all have some pop, which she supplied, and we settled in for the day, it being very hot out and the tent being nice shade. A connect four set was produced and later a cluedo board and we all had, as the yank youth might put it, hella fun. Until the fun ended.
Yes, it was all looking a bit charming and Enid Blytony there wasn't it? Can't have that on this here fountain of misery. No Sirree!
After a few hours, the tent was ripped open and Wayne and Lisa's Mam was standing there. I can't speak for anyone else in the tent at the time but my first thought, in the few scant moments before shit met fan, were that she had come to ask if we wanted more pop. Or possibly biscuits. Biscuits would be nice, I was thinking.
I didn't get any biscuits.
"Get out, now!" came the shrill scream. "All of you, get out of there."
This was interesting, I thought. Well used to my own mothers hysterical mood swings and violent temper I had not, up to this point, experienced it with this particular family. Now that the ice was broken, so to speak, I would witness many more such outbursts, but at this point, new experience.
"Get out and get in the house. You lot go home, your Mams waiting for you. Go on, move it." This last to me and mine, of course, and we wandered, blinking, into the blazing sun, confusion etched into our cute little puppy-fat-chubby faces. Ever the voice of reason, or 'cocky little bastard' as I've also heard it referred to, I tried to calm her down and get to the bottom of her hysterics. This did not go down well. Much swearing ensued, of so vile a nature I'll not repeat it on here because frankly I can't be bothered with the hassle of having one of those 'adult content' blocks on this thing; I get few enough views as it is.
Wayne and Lisa trudged into the house, looking bemused right up to the moment they got the smack from their Dad at the door; then they just looked in pain. For our part, myself and my sis and bro headed off up the street to ours, completely in the dark about what exactly we were supposed to have done wrong but wary, after what we'd seen happen to the others, about what kind of reception awaited us at home. We didn't hurry. Sure enough, as promised, our loving Mam was waiting at the door to greet us.
My brother walked in first. *Smack* across the back of the head. "Get upstairs, right now!"
Then my sister. *Smack* "Get upstairs..."
Then it was my turn. *Smack* across the back of the head and then "Get in the f*ck*ng living room, right now!". Not upstairs with the others then? This boded in the realms of the not well. Very much so in fact. In I trudged.
"What the bloody hell do you think you're playing at?" came the question. Followed by an open palmed slap to the face that, I'm not ashamed to say, hurt like pissing buggery. Now, I wasn't standing for that! I was used to being smacked around but at least I usually knew why it was happening, even if the reasons were often a little, shall we say, arbitrary; this seemed to be coming from out of nowhere. Unless some new law I wasn't aware of had come into effect banning board games, I was stumped.
"You're only kids. You never do that kind of thing. Never."
I was still none the wiser. I won't give you the whole conversation, or an accurate count of how many blows were struck, because the former would bore you and the latter might shock you, but suffice to say it went on for a very long time and it hurt. A lot. In the end though, I got to the bottom of what we had 'done wrong'.
It seems that we had been showing each other our privates and daring each other to touch them. This came as news to me, but apparently Wayne's mother had come out to offer us some pop and biscuits - so close - and had heard us doing it. At which point she had rushed in and stopped it. Except no, she'd come up to my house, told my Mam and then gone back to her own house and stopped it. Rather undermines the level of righteous outrage she was affecting right? I didn't think of that at the time though, which was probably just as well because I really didn't need another smack in the teeth. I denied everything, because it was a crock of bullshit, but the old 'why would she make something like that up?' was my Mums answer. Bloody good question, if you ask me.
I was grounded for a week (no big deal, I read a bunch of books, it flew by) and banned from hanging around with Wayne and Lisa when I was let back out. As if that was going to stick. It all blew over in a couple of weeks and by the last fortnight of the summer hols we were back to business as usual. Except the tents never went back up.
So, why did they make that up? I assumed at the time that they must have gotten the wrong end of the stick with something they'd heard but really, what kind of boardgame chatter can even roughly equate to "touch my tiddler, I dare you"? That and the fact that, as I say, she wandered up to warn my Mother before she confronted us, which I doubt she'd have done were she properly upset, makes me think on looking back at it, that she absolutely must have made it up.
Was she as doolally-tap as my Mam was? Or did she just want an excuse to stop all the local kids from hanging around in her garden? Although to fair, if that's your aim and the first thing you come up with is accusing them of sexual shenanigans, then that doesn't really rule out the mad as a box of.. argument either. I guess I'll never know the truth and it's just one more childhood experience I'll have to file away in the old 'parents are nutjobs'drawer.
It's been a little while since this blog updated actually and that's entirely down to me and my horrible mood swings that really aren't conducive to writing calmly about unpleasant memories. Hint: I tend to throw things. I'm hoping (and I'm aware that I've said this before without following through) that this will be the first of many and I can get back to a semi-regular schedule on here.
So, you remember Wayne and Lisa right? Sure you do, Wayne and Lisa. Yeah, them. Well, they had tents. Nothing unusual in that you might think. Lots of kids have tents. Some might say that sleeping outside sans parents for the very first time is something of a rite of passage. Not me, obviously, I likes me the creature comforts, but some might. Anyway, Wayne and Lisa had tents and come the summer months these tents would be erected in their back garden, where they would become the focal point of all the activity of the local kids. Boys in Wayne's tent, girls in Lisa's. (They were massive tents by the way, in case you were wondering. No uncomfortable squeezing necessary thank you very much. Never confused.)
Now, one fine summer morn we boys were sat in Wayne's tent, playing snap with a pack of those cards all our Dads/Dickhead Pseudo Stepdads seemed to acquire from nowhere (you know the ones, you know you do) and planning how we were going to invade the Girls Tent and mess up whatever they were doing. It was a favourite pastime of ours to plan these little assaults, although we rarely if ever went through with them; I don't think people do, really, outside of 1980's screwball coming-of-age comedies.
This time was no exception, and after about an hour we drifted over to see what they were up to and ended up joining in a game of Snakes & Ladders. Oh, the hedonism! Wayne went in and asked his Mam if we could all have some pop, which she supplied, and we settled in for the day, it being very hot out and the tent being nice shade. A connect four set was produced and later a cluedo board and we all had, as the yank youth might put it, hella fun. Until the fun ended.
Yes, it was all looking a bit charming and Enid Blytony there wasn't it? Can't have that on this here fountain of misery. No Sirree!
After a few hours, the tent was ripped open and Wayne and Lisa's Mam was standing there. I can't speak for anyone else in the tent at the time but my first thought, in the few scant moments before shit met fan, were that she had come to ask if we wanted more pop. Or possibly biscuits. Biscuits would be nice, I was thinking.
I didn't get any biscuits.
"Get out, now!" came the shrill scream. "All of you, get out of there."
This was interesting, I thought. Well used to my own mothers hysterical mood swings and violent temper I had not, up to this point, experienced it with this particular family. Now that the ice was broken, so to speak, I would witness many more such outbursts, but at this point, new experience.
"Get out and get in the house. You lot go home, your Mams waiting for you. Go on, move it." This last to me and mine, of course, and we wandered, blinking, into the blazing sun, confusion etched into our cute little puppy-fat-chubby faces. Ever the voice of reason, or 'cocky little bastard' as I've also heard it referred to, I tried to calm her down and get to the bottom of her hysterics. This did not go down well. Much swearing ensued, of so vile a nature I'll not repeat it on here because frankly I can't be bothered with the hassle of having one of those 'adult content' blocks on this thing; I get few enough views as it is.
Wayne and Lisa trudged into the house, looking bemused right up to the moment they got the smack from their Dad at the door; then they just looked in pain. For our part, myself and my sis and bro headed off up the street to ours, completely in the dark about what exactly we were supposed to have done wrong but wary, after what we'd seen happen to the others, about what kind of reception awaited us at home. We didn't hurry. Sure enough, as promised, our loving Mam was waiting at the door to greet us.
My brother walked in first. *Smack* across the back of the head. "Get upstairs, right now!"
Then my sister. *Smack* "Get upstairs..."
Then it was my turn. *Smack* across the back of the head and then "Get in the f*ck*ng living room, right now!". Not upstairs with the others then? This boded in the realms of the not well. Very much so in fact. In I trudged.
"What the bloody hell do you think you're playing at?" came the question. Followed by an open palmed slap to the face that, I'm not ashamed to say, hurt like pissing buggery. Now, I wasn't standing for that! I was used to being smacked around but at least I usually knew why it was happening, even if the reasons were often a little, shall we say, arbitrary; this seemed to be coming from out of nowhere. Unless some new law I wasn't aware of had come into effect banning board games, I was stumped.
"You're only kids. You never do that kind of thing. Never."
I was still none the wiser. I won't give you the whole conversation, or an accurate count of how many blows were struck, because the former would bore you and the latter might shock you, but suffice to say it went on for a very long time and it hurt. A lot. In the end though, I got to the bottom of what we had 'done wrong'.
It seems that we had been showing each other our privates and daring each other to touch them. This came as news to me, but apparently Wayne's mother had come out to offer us some pop and biscuits - so close - and had heard us doing it. At which point she had rushed in and stopped it. Except no, she'd come up to my house, told my Mam and then gone back to her own house and stopped it. Rather undermines the level of righteous outrage she was affecting right? I didn't think of that at the time though, which was probably just as well because I really didn't need another smack in the teeth. I denied everything, because it was a crock of bullshit, but the old 'why would she make something like that up?' was my Mums answer. Bloody good question, if you ask me.
I was grounded for a week (no big deal, I read a bunch of books, it flew by) and banned from hanging around with Wayne and Lisa when I was let back out. As if that was going to stick. It all blew over in a couple of weeks and by the last fortnight of the summer hols we were back to business as usual. Except the tents never went back up.
So, why did they make that up? I assumed at the time that they must have gotten the wrong end of the stick with something they'd heard but really, what kind of boardgame chatter can even roughly equate to "touch my tiddler, I dare you"? That and the fact that, as I say, she wandered up to warn my Mother before she confronted us, which I doubt she'd have done were she properly upset, makes me think on looking back at it, that she absolutely must have made it up.
Was she as doolally-tap as my Mam was? Or did she just want an excuse to stop all the local kids from hanging around in her garden? Although to fair, if that's your aim and the first thing you come up with is accusing them of sexual shenanigans, then that doesn't really rule out the mad as a box of.. argument either. I guess I'll never know the truth and it's just one more childhood experience I'll have to file away in the old 'parents are nutjobs'drawer.
Sunday, 14 August 2011
Cup-A-Soup
What's the worst thing you've ever eaten? I'm talking about something that made you absolutely retch your insides up, something so vile that it changed your diet forever.
For me, it was a cup-a-soup. Or rather, it wasn't.
Cup-a-soups were a staple of my diet when I was a child. Whenever my Mam was too 'busy' to cook for us, she would demand that we make ourselves a cup-a-soup and have some bread to dip in it. There were more than a few times that I went a week or more with bread as the only solid food I ate at home. Thank God for free school meals that's all I can say.
Anyway, there was a plastic tub in the cupboard in the kitchen - I think it had started out as an ice cream tub - that was always well stocked with sachets of soup. So one Saturday night, I come home from a long hard day of interfering with bowls scoreboards and pressing emergency stop buttons on ski slope rope pulleys, to find that I have to make my own meal. To the tub, grab the first packet to hand and we're away.
So I pour the contents into my mug. Then I boil the kettle. Then I pour the water into the cup. (And that's how you make cup-a-soups. It's like one level of difficulty up from Pot Noodles in that you have to transfer the contents from one container to another before pouring water on them. The hardship!)
The powder won't dissolve. The lumps aren't going away. There are floaters galore on the surface, and I can feel a claggy lump in the bottom of the cup with my spoon. Also, the stench is awful. What could have gone wrong? Well, I hadn't made a cup-a-soup for one.
It seems that the ice cream tub was now also home to some sachets of casserole mix stuff. In grabbing the first packet I came across I'd grabbed the wrong stuff and now I was trying to make, in a cup, something that was designed to form the basis of a casserole for a whole family. Wasn't going to happen.
Now, under normal circumstances, you'd tip it out and start again, wouldn't you? Except that would mean having used two things and money didn't bloody well grow on trees; or that was my Mams view of the matter. I knew better than to argue because when she was screaming directly into my face it was usually a pretty good sign that her mind was made up. Nor was it acceptable to throw it out, not make a replacement and just do without. Apparently that would be a waste, and we couldn't have that; I was to eat it, simple as that.
I tried, but... I mean, every time I raised it to my lips the stench itself was enough to trigger my gag reflex. Anyway, long story short (I know, I know) I drank a little bit, under the threat of a beating, then ran to the loo under the stairs and threw up. Then I went back to find she was still standing there, waiting to watch me drink the rest. 4 times I vomited, and 4 times she berated me, 'It's your own fucking fault, you should watch what you're fucking doing'.
I never did finish the whole thing, if only because she got bored. By this point my trips to the toilet were dry heave only and my tears were probably losing their novelty value so she wandered off and I threw the rest of the stuff away. And went to bed hungry.
Here's the thing though; for many years, I was never able to eat anything with a heavy meat smell, (I'm a vegetarian, and although this incident didn't prompt the switch, it certainly made it easier to stick to), or eat anything that I'd seen (or knew was) prepared from powder mixes; the thought would come rushing back of those claggy lumps and the gagging would start up straight away. I'm pretty much over it now, but...
So there you are, another pleasant stroll down memory lane. It's been a while I realise, but I'm trying to get the blog schedule back on track and hope to be here next week, though I make no promises. Until whenever, then...
For me, it was a cup-a-soup. Or rather, it wasn't.
Cup-a-soups were a staple of my diet when I was a child. Whenever my Mam was too 'busy' to cook for us, she would demand that we make ourselves a cup-a-soup and have some bread to dip in it. There were more than a few times that I went a week or more with bread as the only solid food I ate at home. Thank God for free school meals that's all I can say.
Anyway, there was a plastic tub in the cupboard in the kitchen - I think it had started out as an ice cream tub - that was always well stocked with sachets of soup. So one Saturday night, I come home from a long hard day of interfering with bowls scoreboards and pressing emergency stop buttons on ski slope rope pulleys, to find that I have to make my own meal. To the tub, grab the first packet to hand and we're away.
So I pour the contents into my mug. Then I boil the kettle. Then I pour the water into the cup. (And that's how you make cup-a-soups. It's like one level of difficulty up from Pot Noodles in that you have to transfer the contents from one container to another before pouring water on them. The hardship!)
The powder won't dissolve. The lumps aren't going away. There are floaters galore on the surface, and I can feel a claggy lump in the bottom of the cup with my spoon. Also, the stench is awful. What could have gone wrong? Well, I hadn't made a cup-a-soup for one.
It seems that the ice cream tub was now also home to some sachets of casserole mix stuff. In grabbing the first packet I came across I'd grabbed the wrong stuff and now I was trying to make, in a cup, something that was designed to form the basis of a casserole for a whole family. Wasn't going to happen.
Now, under normal circumstances, you'd tip it out and start again, wouldn't you? Except that would mean having used two things and money didn't bloody well grow on trees; or that was my Mams view of the matter. I knew better than to argue because when she was screaming directly into my face it was usually a pretty good sign that her mind was made up. Nor was it acceptable to throw it out, not make a replacement and just do without. Apparently that would be a waste, and we couldn't have that; I was to eat it, simple as that.
I tried, but... I mean, every time I raised it to my lips the stench itself was enough to trigger my gag reflex. Anyway, long story short (I know, I know) I drank a little bit, under the threat of a beating, then ran to the loo under the stairs and threw up. Then I went back to find she was still standing there, waiting to watch me drink the rest. 4 times I vomited, and 4 times she berated me, 'It's your own fucking fault, you should watch what you're fucking doing'.
I never did finish the whole thing, if only because she got bored. By this point my trips to the toilet were dry heave only and my tears were probably losing their novelty value so she wandered off and I threw the rest of the stuff away. And went to bed hungry.
Here's the thing though; for many years, I was never able to eat anything with a heavy meat smell, (I'm a vegetarian, and although this incident didn't prompt the switch, it certainly made it easier to stick to), or eat anything that I'd seen (or knew was) prepared from powder mixes; the thought would come rushing back of those claggy lumps and the gagging would start up straight away. I'm pretty much over it now, but...
So there you are, another pleasant stroll down memory lane. It's been a while I realise, but I'm trying to get the blog schedule back on track and hope to be here next week, though I make no promises. Until whenever, then...
Monday, 1 August 2011
Dangerous Games
One of the bigger problems you can have, as the oldest of a gang of kids, and therefore their de facto leader, is the pressure on you to always be the best at stuff. How embarrassing would it be, for example, to announce that you were all going to have a game of something, and then get your arse handed to you by a five year old? Exactly.
I had a massive problem then, in that when it came to sports of any shape, size or description, I was essentially, and I use the technical term here (I looked it up), absolutely f'ing useless. Ever the resourceful chap though, I soon came up with ways that I could capitalise on my inherent strengths and hide my weaknesses. Namely, by inventing games so that I could tailor the rules to suit myself.
I have a very high pain threshold. I say this not to brag, or to out myself as a masochist, but merely to state a fact. (I could get into why I had an abnormally high pain threshold for a little child but if you've read this blog before, or intend to again, it'll be pretty self-explanatory.)
This high pain threshold meant that if I invented games that gave the advantage to people who didn't fear pain, or could persevere through pain, I would be able to kick some toddler butt, no problem. So that's exactly what I did. It would come back to bite me.
Now, when I say that I invented these games, what I actually mean is that of course I didn't invent these games. At the time though, in the arrogance of youth, I thought I did. In truth, they were pretty basic variations of old staples.
BANKS
Like the one where you had to race to the bottom of a bank and then back to the top. Except in our version we found the steepest slopes we could (some were practically vertical) so getting down was a virtual freefall and getting back up was like climbing Everest. Add in the fact that interfering with other participants was positively encouraged, in as violent a way as you liked, and it's a miracle no-one died.
TORTURE
Or the one were you split into two teams and one team had a codeword, with each member being responsible for one letter. The other team had to capture you to get your letter. We'd done this at school, in PE, but there it was a basic 'tag and you're out' deal. In our version they had to physically restrain you and you could refuse to talk, which meant they had to torture your letter out of you. I actually nearly died once, playing this game late at night, on unfamiliar terrain. I was staying at my cousin Ian's house for a couple of nights and we introduced his friends to this game. I was being pursued down a back alley in the pitch black, completely unaware that it was used by residents to hang clotheslines. One was hanging low, I ran into it at neck height and...well, you can guess. Good times.
HUNTERS
Ah, the Daddy. In which we would all congregate in the big clearing at the centre of the woods and split into two teams, with one team having a headstart to scatter into the woods and the other team hunting them down to either capture or 'kill' them. What made this game such great fun was that we played it with guns. Actual guns, that actually shot you, with actual bullets.
Well, I say guns... What we used were air rifles and pistols that fired little lead pellets. They rarely broke the skin (only once on me, and that wasn't even while playing Hunters; it was a doped up neighbour firing blind across the back gardens) but they stung like mad if they caught you just right. Until you got used to them of course; once you'd been shot a few times you stopped feeling it so much and could often mask you're reaction and claim not to have been shot. Cheating, yes, but victory was everything, don'tcha know.
Most people wanted to be Hunters, because having the guns made them feel cool but I wanted to win and knew my strengths, so Hunted it was. I threw myself out of trees, down banks, over fences and through hedges...I came over all Rambo, with not a thought for how my body was going to recover. It's partly because of this that I'm so decrepit before my time now. Never mind though, I had a meaningless victory to last for an hour, that was the important thing.
My Mother knew about this game, as did most of our parents, and none of them tried to stop us for the longest time. Which, to put it mildly, was f*cking madness, now that I think back. Not the maddest thing about the whole affair though; no, that would be the fact that Maurice, responsible adult and de-facto Step Father, actually joined in! He regularly came down into the woods and took great pleasure (far more than the rest of us) in getting a hit on one of the kids. He even once tied me to a tree and fired over my head into the trunk; I'll freely admit, my bravado slipped that day.
We were finally forced to stop playing Hunters as a result of something Maurice did, actually. You see, as crazy as we were, in hindsight, to be doing what we were doing, we were actually careful. We shot at arms and legs (fleshy bits) and always aimed carefully. We were daft kids, but we were friends, and there was no way we were gonna risk hurting each other seriously. Maurice, it seems, had no such compunctions. During one particular game, I was being chased by him and after fording the stream and scrabbling up the far bank I hid behind a large bush. He knew I was there, but couldn't see me. Do you know what he did?
He fired blind, into the bush. Hitting me in the right temple. I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible that Maurice was an idiot.
I don't mind telling you, I screamed. I screamed louder than I'd ever screamed before or ever have again. Not even a drunken beating from my Mother at her most frenzied ever felt that bad. My vision was swimming, bolts of lightning were shooting through my head and I genuinely thought I was going to die.
We were never allowed to play Hunters again.
I had a massive problem then, in that when it came to sports of any shape, size or description, I was essentially, and I use the technical term here (I looked it up), absolutely f'ing useless. Ever the resourceful chap though, I soon came up with ways that I could capitalise on my inherent strengths and hide my weaknesses. Namely, by inventing games so that I could tailor the rules to suit myself.
I have a very high pain threshold. I say this not to brag, or to out myself as a masochist, but merely to state a fact. (I could get into why I had an abnormally high pain threshold for a little child but if you've read this blog before, or intend to again, it'll be pretty self-explanatory.)
This high pain threshold meant that if I invented games that gave the advantage to people who didn't fear pain, or could persevere through pain, I would be able to kick some toddler butt, no problem. So that's exactly what I did. It would come back to bite me.
Now, when I say that I invented these games, what I actually mean is that of course I didn't invent these games. At the time though, in the arrogance of youth, I thought I did. In truth, they were pretty basic variations of old staples.
BANKS
Like the one where you had to race to the bottom of a bank and then back to the top. Except in our version we found the steepest slopes we could (some were practically vertical) so getting down was a virtual freefall and getting back up was like climbing Everest. Add in the fact that interfering with other participants was positively encouraged, in as violent a way as you liked, and it's a miracle no-one died.
TORTURE
Or the one were you split into two teams and one team had a codeword, with each member being responsible for one letter. The other team had to capture you to get your letter. We'd done this at school, in PE, but there it was a basic 'tag and you're out' deal. In our version they had to physically restrain you and you could refuse to talk, which meant they had to torture your letter out of you. I actually nearly died once, playing this game late at night, on unfamiliar terrain. I was staying at my cousin Ian's house for a couple of nights and we introduced his friends to this game. I was being pursued down a back alley in the pitch black, completely unaware that it was used by residents to hang clotheslines. One was hanging low, I ran into it at neck height and...well, you can guess. Good times.
HUNTERS
Ah, the Daddy. In which we would all congregate in the big clearing at the centre of the woods and split into two teams, with one team having a headstart to scatter into the woods and the other team hunting them down to either capture or 'kill' them. What made this game such great fun was that we played it with guns. Actual guns, that actually shot you, with actual bullets.
Well, I say guns... What we used were air rifles and pistols that fired little lead pellets. They rarely broke the skin (only once on me, and that wasn't even while playing Hunters; it was a doped up neighbour firing blind across the back gardens) but they stung like mad if they caught you just right. Until you got used to them of course; once you'd been shot a few times you stopped feeling it so much and could often mask you're reaction and claim not to have been shot. Cheating, yes, but victory was everything, don'tcha know.
Most people wanted to be Hunters, because having the guns made them feel cool but I wanted to win and knew my strengths, so Hunted it was. I threw myself out of trees, down banks, over fences and through hedges...I came over all Rambo, with not a thought for how my body was going to recover. It's partly because of this that I'm so decrepit before my time now. Never mind though, I had a meaningless victory to last for an hour, that was the important thing.
My Mother knew about this game, as did most of our parents, and none of them tried to stop us for the longest time. Which, to put it mildly, was f*cking madness, now that I think back. Not the maddest thing about the whole affair though; no, that would be the fact that Maurice, responsible adult and de-facto Step Father, actually joined in! He regularly came down into the woods and took great pleasure (far more than the rest of us) in getting a hit on one of the kids. He even once tied me to a tree and fired over my head into the trunk; I'll freely admit, my bravado slipped that day.
We were finally forced to stop playing Hunters as a result of something Maurice did, actually. You see, as crazy as we were, in hindsight, to be doing what we were doing, we were actually careful. We shot at arms and legs (fleshy bits) and always aimed carefully. We were daft kids, but we were friends, and there was no way we were gonna risk hurting each other seriously. Maurice, it seems, had no such compunctions. During one particular game, I was being chased by him and after fording the stream and scrabbling up the far bank I hid behind a large bush. He knew I was there, but couldn't see me. Do you know what he did?
He fired blind, into the bush. Hitting me in the right temple. I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible that Maurice was an idiot.
I don't mind telling you, I screamed. I screamed louder than I'd ever screamed before or ever have again. Not even a drunken beating from my Mother at her most frenzied ever felt that bad. My vision was swimming, bolts of lightning were shooting through my head and I genuinely thought I was going to die.
We were never allowed to play Hunters again.
Sunday, 17 July 2011
Life Changing Decision. So Long As I Don't Wimp Out.
I've not posted on here for a couple of weeks, and it's been even longer on my TV and book blogs. I wish I could say that some big, exciting development in my life has seen me unable to devote the time but in truth the reason behind my absence has been almost the exact opposite.
On Monday the 25th August 2011, I shall have a birthday. It shall be my 32nd. Now, 32 isn't 16, 18, 21 or even 30; it's not a milestone on anyones calender really. Yet for some reason, as the day approaches, I find myself getting restless; taking stock of my life and not liking what I'm seeing.
In 1985, when I was 6 years old, I announced that I was going to be a teacher. Unlike a lot of people, I never grew out of that first statement. My entire childhood was spent in the sure and certain belief that I would, one day, be a teacher. I am not a teacher.
Starting when I was 15 I began to get seriously disillusioned with school. I hadn't become disillusioned with wanting to be a teacher, nor with learning, but rather with the culture of state education, the attitudes of several teachers and the unnecessariness of so much of what we were being told to do. (The fact that we were always told, never asked, was one of the things I was getting increasingly annoyed about.) I persevered though and I got through my GCSE's with half way decent results, although nowhere near what my teachers had predicted. So off to A-Levels we go.
I lasted a year. I had hoped that this would be the point where all my frustrations would disapear; where the education system would start to treat those it was supposed to be educating with a bit of respect and not like second class citizens; where some kind of acknowledgment, slender though it might be, would be forthcoming of the fact that we were there to learn, of our own free will. Not so. By the end of the first 6 months I was tearing my hair out and getting properly stressed. It wasn't the subject matter, which I enjoyed and was eager to learn about, but rather the people (a holdover from the Brancepeth Boys problem) and the methods of teaching. On top of that I was getting zero support from my family, who saw education as a waste of time and couldn't understand why I hadn't walked away at 16.
So I did walk away. At the end of year 12 I left, never to look back. It was a stupid decision, and one I regret, but it wasn't a knee-jerk one. I had tried, really I had, but just the thought of another year of that, with a bunch of stressful exams at the end of it, was enough to have me suicidal (maybe an exaggeration but only a slight one; I once punched a brick wall outside the school out of sheer frustration, that's how bad I was).
So, my long held ambition was scrapped. What to do? Well, I descended into a depressed funk. I'd sit up all night watching rubbish telly and then sleep all day. I could go weeks without seeing daylight. This couldn't go on of course, and in a rare moment of maternal concern (either that or she realised that she wasn't going to be able to claim benefits for me once the new school year started and I wasn't enrolled ) my mother forced me out of my insular pit and into the workplace. Off I toddled to what was then the junior version of the careers service (not sure about now), Connections. Although, and this may be my mind playing tricks on me, I'm pretty sure it was called (shudder) Connexions.
Credit where it's due, they were pretty good with me. Took them a couple of months but they got me an interview at a local builders merchants for an admin apprenticeship. Or at least, they thought they did; when I arrived for the interview it turns out that the admin apprenticeship had been filled a couple of months previously and the position I was up for was a 'warehousing&distribution' apprenticeship. Whatever; I was just saying yes to whatever anyone said to me at that point, since I was fairly well convinced that my life was over.
I got the position, despite my lack of enthusiasm, and started the following week. At the interview they gave me a brief test to ascertain my basic maths and English skills. They told me later that I got the best scores they'd ever had. No wonder I got the job in that case, I despair what other numpty's had been applying; the tests were nothing you'd expect to see any higher than Junior school.
Anyway, I loved the job. It took me a while, but I started to realise that once I got over the thing of assuming I'd be shit at it, I was actually good at it; really good. That's not me bragging, God forbid (general rule : if I'm being self aggrandising I'm joking, self deprecating I'm telling the truth), but I actually seemed to have found something where I didn't have to feel like shit every morning. Another plus point was that the people I worked with had a very rough and ready approach to everything and I pretty much was forced to come out of my shyness shell, by the pure power of their personalities.
The 3rd plus point of course was that the admin trainee, who had got the job I'd thought I was going for, was absolutely the most beautiful creature I'd ever laid eyes on in my life. Lust at first, as time went on I fell massively in love with her; sadly it was completely unrequited and though we remained friends for years (and didn't that eat at my guts) nothing else ever happened between us.
After 12 years, 5 managers and a complete change in ownership, the branch was closed down. Within a week I was back to sleeping all day and watching telly all night. For about a year and a half that was my life until the branch re-opened, back under the original ownership and I managed, through something called an IAP, to get my foot back in the door. 3 Months of working there for nothing (you get your benefits and traveling expenses from the government but the employer doesn't have to pay you anything) allowed me to show that I would make a good fit and when the IAP was up they invited me back full time. I jumped at the chance.
Except, it's not the job it was. Don't get me wrong; it's a job and I'm grateful to have it but I don't have that feeling each day of being raring to go. I get there and my first thought is 'show me the coffee' not 'what's the first job on the agenda'. It's run differently than before, with several departments that were separate originally now being run as one so I'm having to start from scratch learning all the stuff that other departments would have handled before and the office/sales team have managed to shock me by being even more superior with even less cause, than their predecessors. Whereas before, my job was my life, now my job is just my job. I don't like it.
So I've been looking at my life. Last time I was starting out at this place it would last 12 years and when it was over I had zero transferable skills. The thought of being in the same position 12 years from now, rather than filling me with pride as it would have done before (at being good enough to be kept around) just makes me depressed. I wanted so much more out of my life.I have long had the problem of 'if you aren't enjoying something, you shouldn't be doing it'. Dropping out of 6th form was the first but not the only example (I was moved out of warehousing and into sales at one point in my last stint at the branch. It lasted a year, I was reaching the 'punching the walls and crying myself to sleep' stage and threatened to put my notice in if I wasn't put back where I belonged.) and I'm scared that if I allow this attitude to take root I'll end up screwing the pooch, as it were, with this job.
That worry and depression at work has seeped into my life outside work as well. I come home, sit down and all I can think of doing is sleeping. Except I can't sleep, because my subconscious has decided that now is the perfect time to hit me with a bout of crippling insomnia. So I've been surviving on an average of 3hrs a night, with the occasional 24hr crash.
So why haven't I been blogging? With all that extra time on my hands, what's stopping me? Motivation; I haven't got any. I blog about books, but without the inclination to read any... I blog abut TV, but without the inclination to watch... And I blog about my life, which, as anyone who actually reads this thing on a regular basis will know, is hardly conducive to cheering myself up. So I just sit and stare at the laptop.
I've stopped visiting the 2000AD forum for the most part and although I've maintained my presence on twitter my heart isn't really in that as much as it used to be.
I've made a decision though, and it's one I think will help me a great deal, emotionally. I'm going to start looking into night or correspondence classes to, at the very least, get those A levels I walked out on. Maybe I'll go further than that, who knows? I'm not saying I'm going to be teaching your kids anytime soon, but hopefully I'll not be doing what I'm doing now forever and feeling like I wasted
my life.
On Monday the 25th August 2011, I shall have a birthday. It shall be my 32nd. Now, 32 isn't 16, 18, 21 or even 30; it's not a milestone on anyones calender really. Yet for some reason, as the day approaches, I find myself getting restless; taking stock of my life and not liking what I'm seeing.
In 1985, when I was 6 years old, I announced that I was going to be a teacher. Unlike a lot of people, I never grew out of that first statement. My entire childhood was spent in the sure and certain belief that I would, one day, be a teacher. I am not a teacher.
Starting when I was 15 I began to get seriously disillusioned with school. I hadn't become disillusioned with wanting to be a teacher, nor with learning, but rather with the culture of state education, the attitudes of several teachers and the unnecessariness of so much of what we were being told to do. (The fact that we were always told, never asked, was one of the things I was getting increasingly annoyed about.) I persevered though and I got through my GCSE's with half way decent results, although nowhere near what my teachers had predicted. So off to A-Levels we go.
I lasted a year. I had hoped that this would be the point where all my frustrations would disapear; where the education system would start to treat those it was supposed to be educating with a bit of respect and not like second class citizens; where some kind of acknowledgment, slender though it might be, would be forthcoming of the fact that we were there to learn, of our own free will. Not so. By the end of the first 6 months I was tearing my hair out and getting properly stressed. It wasn't the subject matter, which I enjoyed and was eager to learn about, but rather the people (a holdover from the Brancepeth Boys problem) and the methods of teaching. On top of that I was getting zero support from my family, who saw education as a waste of time and couldn't understand why I hadn't walked away at 16.
So I did walk away. At the end of year 12 I left, never to look back. It was a stupid decision, and one I regret, but it wasn't a knee-jerk one. I had tried, really I had, but just the thought of another year of that, with a bunch of stressful exams at the end of it, was enough to have me suicidal (maybe an exaggeration but only a slight one; I once punched a brick wall outside the school out of sheer frustration, that's how bad I was).
So, my long held ambition was scrapped. What to do? Well, I descended into a depressed funk. I'd sit up all night watching rubbish telly and then sleep all day. I could go weeks without seeing daylight. This couldn't go on of course, and in a rare moment of maternal concern (either that or she realised that she wasn't going to be able to claim benefits for me once the new school year started and I wasn't enrolled ) my mother forced me out of my insular pit and into the workplace. Off I toddled to what was then the junior version of the careers service (not sure about now), Connections. Although, and this may be my mind playing tricks on me, I'm pretty sure it was called (shudder) Connexions.
Credit where it's due, they were pretty good with me. Took them a couple of months but they got me an interview at a local builders merchants for an admin apprenticeship. Or at least, they thought they did; when I arrived for the interview it turns out that the admin apprenticeship had been filled a couple of months previously and the position I was up for was a 'warehousing&distribution' apprenticeship. Whatever; I was just saying yes to whatever anyone said to me at that point, since I was fairly well convinced that my life was over.
I got the position, despite my lack of enthusiasm, and started the following week. At the interview they gave me a brief test to ascertain my basic maths and English skills. They told me later that I got the best scores they'd ever had. No wonder I got the job in that case, I despair what other numpty's had been applying; the tests were nothing you'd expect to see any higher than Junior school.
Anyway, I loved the job. It took me a while, but I started to realise that once I got over the thing of assuming I'd be shit at it, I was actually good at it; really good. That's not me bragging, God forbid (general rule : if I'm being self aggrandising I'm joking, self deprecating I'm telling the truth), but I actually seemed to have found something where I didn't have to feel like shit every morning. Another plus point was that the people I worked with had a very rough and ready approach to everything and I pretty much was forced to come out of my shyness shell, by the pure power of their personalities.
The 3rd plus point of course was that the admin trainee, who had got the job I'd thought I was going for, was absolutely the most beautiful creature I'd ever laid eyes on in my life. Lust at first, as time went on I fell massively in love with her; sadly it was completely unrequited and though we remained friends for years (and didn't that eat at my guts) nothing else ever happened between us.
After 12 years, 5 managers and a complete change in ownership, the branch was closed down. Within a week I was back to sleeping all day and watching telly all night. For about a year and a half that was my life until the branch re-opened, back under the original ownership and I managed, through something called an IAP, to get my foot back in the door. 3 Months of working there for nothing (you get your benefits and traveling expenses from the government but the employer doesn't have to pay you anything) allowed me to show that I would make a good fit and when the IAP was up they invited me back full time. I jumped at the chance.
Except, it's not the job it was. Don't get me wrong; it's a job and I'm grateful to have it but I don't have that feeling each day of being raring to go. I get there and my first thought is 'show me the coffee' not 'what's the first job on the agenda'. It's run differently than before, with several departments that were separate originally now being run as one so I'm having to start from scratch learning all the stuff that other departments would have handled before and the office/sales team have managed to shock me by being even more superior with even less cause, than their predecessors. Whereas before, my job was my life, now my job is just my job. I don't like it.
So I've been looking at my life. Last time I was starting out at this place it would last 12 years and when it was over I had zero transferable skills. The thought of being in the same position 12 years from now, rather than filling me with pride as it would have done before (at being good enough to be kept around) just makes me depressed. I wanted so much more out of my life.I have long had the problem of 'if you aren't enjoying something, you shouldn't be doing it'. Dropping out of 6th form was the first but not the only example (I was moved out of warehousing and into sales at one point in my last stint at the branch. It lasted a year, I was reaching the 'punching the walls and crying myself to sleep' stage and threatened to put my notice in if I wasn't put back where I belonged.) and I'm scared that if I allow this attitude to take root I'll end up screwing the pooch, as it were, with this job.
That worry and depression at work has seeped into my life outside work as well. I come home, sit down and all I can think of doing is sleeping. Except I can't sleep, because my subconscious has decided that now is the perfect time to hit me with a bout of crippling insomnia. So I've been surviving on an average of 3hrs a night, with the occasional 24hr crash.
So why haven't I been blogging? With all that extra time on my hands, what's stopping me? Motivation; I haven't got any. I blog about books, but without the inclination to read any... I blog abut TV, but without the inclination to watch... And I blog about my life, which, as anyone who actually reads this thing on a regular basis will know, is hardly conducive to cheering myself up. So I just sit and stare at the laptop.
I've stopped visiting the 2000AD forum for the most part and although I've maintained my presence on twitter my heart isn't really in that as much as it used to be.
I've made a decision though, and it's one I think will help me a great deal, emotionally. I'm going to start looking into night or correspondence classes to, at the very least, get those A levels I walked out on. Maybe I'll go further than that, who knows? I'm not saying I'm going to be teaching your kids anytime soon, but hopefully I'll not be doing what I'm doing now forever and feeling like I wasted
my life.
Sunday, 3 July 2011
Hardened Criminal
So I've put it off long enough. The time has come for me to tell the tale of my first ever run-in with the local constabulary. Truth be told, it's the only run-in I've ever had with them that involved me on the side of the accused and I was actually innocent of any (well, almost any, and certainly innocent of what the police accused me of) wrongdoing. Which is not to say that there weren't other occasions when I was not quite so innocent that they just never cottoned on to; but what are you going to do when you come from a family of rogues? Anyway, it started with a visit to the home of Philip...
It's a peculiarity of the psychology of children I think, that no matter what the evidence presented to them in their own homes and families they always assume that other adults are all somehow intelligent, respectable, trust-worthy and above all honest.; be they teachers, shop keepers, random neighbours, or our friends parents. Those last perhaps most of all; you just never think that they could ever be like your own parents, or even worse...
I knew Philip primarily as one of the Brancepeth Boysbut he was also an occasional member of our merry little troupe at weekends. On this particular day he invited me and my brother back to his house to play on his computer. We had, in our house, a Commodore 64 and as with everything in life the grass always seemed greener on the other side so his ZX Spectrum was the highest of novelties to us* and off we trot. It was to prove a mistake.
Long story short, because I never do that on here and I fancy a change, is that while we were there Philip asked if he could keep hold of something of mine and I agreed. Then I saw something of his that I thought I'd quite like to borrow in exchange but after a long drawn out conversation with the paranoid voices in my head, wherein they convinced me that he didn't like me enough to lend me anything, I decided just to pocket it. As you do.
The next day, I showed what I had taken to Wayne, (I wasn't yet the fully fledged evil genius/criminal mastermind that I would become) and he, having promptly recognised it from his visit to Philips house and being far more honest than I, told Philip when next he saw him. Deep shit, was I in.The police were called in by Philips parents. Little bit of overkill, possibly, given that what I had taken was worth about 50p but fair play to them, they were playing the long game.
The police took me to the police station, did the whole 'scare the little bleeder' thing with the cells and stuff and then took me into an interview room with the whole tape recorder thing going on. Intimidation, thy name is local bobby. Now, I'd seen The Bill, I knew the score, and I felt confident that I could bluff my way through this. You see, I'd formulated a plan that would 'get me off' (and yes, I was thinking in those terms; to me this was Great Train Robber stuff) and what's more, would make me seem like somewhat of a victim in the whole affair. I was going to blame Philip. Genius.
The idea was that I would tell a sob story about how Philip had invited us up to his room and then once we were there he had demanded that I hand over my stuff (the stuff he had politely asked to borrow) and had threatened to hit me if I hadn't. I figured if they checked up, they'd find my stuff in his room and hey presto, they'd believe me. (See, I was at least on my way to criminal genius.) Then, I'd say, I decided to take the stuff of his to get back at him. I'd say sorry, that I knew it was wrong, and maybe throw in a few tears. No way could I be in trouble after that.
Wrong!
The police didn't care about the toy. That's not what they were interested in at all. They were interested in the money that had gone missing from the living room of Philips house. Say Whaaat? Oh yes, it seems that while I was there stealing toys from Philips bedroom a bunch of notes had disappeared from the jar in their living room. It couldn't be a coincidence could it? It had to have been me. Well, it wasn't me, and I'd be damned if I was going to sit there and let them say it was.
My indignation kicked in. The same hatred of undeserved authority being bandied about that had seen me locking my Dad in an outside toilet for several hours and would later see me get on the wrong side of many a teacher, and then bosses, led me to get very serious and determined in the face of this false accusation; I was having none of it.
The guy doing the questioning obviously figured he had me bang to rights. I'd admitted stealing one thing, so I must have stolen the other. Sherlock Holmes he wasn't. I explained to him that I had never actually been in the living room while I was at the house; that in fact I had never gotten farther than the kitchen on the ground floor. (The back door opened onto the stairs and you turned right into the kitchen. You had to pass through the kitchen to get into the living room if you entered through the rear) I said that I had gone straight upstairs upon arrival and that when we were leaving Philip had gone into the living room for something but the rest of us hadn't.
At this point he tried to trip me up. "Did Philip take any money while he was in the living room?" says the copper. "Not that I saw, no." replies myself. "Aha!", cries the copper, "I have cunningly led you into my trap. How could you know what he did if you weren't in the living room?"
Whoops, had I slipped up? Had I revealed a flaw in my intricate web of lies? Was I dealing with a Sherlockian mastermind? No. "I know because I was watching him from the doorway" I answered. This threw him for a moment but he soon rallied.
"Which doorway?"
"The doorway to the living room"
"But you said you didn't get further than the kitchen"
"I didn't"
"So how could you be in the doorway to the living room if you didn't get further than the kitchen?"
"Have you been in their house?"
The doorway to the living room was in the kitchen. The rooms were directly linked. Had he been in the house he'd have known that. So either he did know and had just assumed he could make me flustered (because I was just a daft kid after all) or he didn't, in which case why was he the one doing the interview? Anyway, I refused to back down and at one point told him that he should go and look at the house before he called me a liar, which made my mother shout at me for being cheeky, which made the copper tell her off for shouting at me. It was all very tense.In the end the police took my fingerprints and sent me on my way. Nothing ever came of it after that, presumably because they didn't find my fingerprints anywhere in their living room and so knew I was telling the truth.
I've often wondered who did take the money, or even whether any money was ever really taken at all. I thought at the time that it must have been Philip, using my real actions as a cover but I reckon now that that was just my blindness to the faults of adults coming in to play. I'll be honest, I don't think Philip was bright enough to think of something like that, but maybe his parents were; maybe one or the other of them took the money and blamed me to the other one, or maybe there never was any money and they were just trying to get my mother to cough something up to keep me out of trouble. Who knows, really, and at the end of the day it doesn't really matter; all was well that ended well, as they say.
The one lasting impact that incident had on me; the one way in which it changed the direction of my life completely, was that it badly eroded my respect for the police. In their dealings with me they were one of two things; either they were incompetent, or they were bullies and neither one of those things inspired me with confidence. It would be a long time before my disdain for them subsided.
*Younger readers may be confused by the terms Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. This is because you are all spoiled rotten by the wondrous technology of today. They were the absolute cream of the crop of home computers back in my day and would take anywhere up to half an hour to load a game. Good times.
It's a peculiarity of the psychology of children I think, that no matter what the evidence presented to them in their own homes and families they always assume that other adults are all somehow intelligent, respectable, trust-worthy and above all honest.; be they teachers, shop keepers, random neighbours, or our friends parents. Those last perhaps most of all; you just never think that they could ever be like your own parents, or even worse...
I knew Philip primarily as one of the Brancepeth Boysbut he was also an occasional member of our merry little troupe at weekends. On this particular day he invited me and my brother back to his house to play on his computer. We had, in our house, a Commodore 64 and as with everything in life the grass always seemed greener on the other side so his ZX Spectrum was the highest of novelties to us* and off we trot. It was to prove a mistake.
Long story short, because I never do that on here and I fancy a change, is that while we were there Philip asked if he could keep hold of something of mine and I agreed. Then I saw something of his that I thought I'd quite like to borrow in exchange but after a long drawn out conversation with the paranoid voices in my head, wherein they convinced me that he didn't like me enough to lend me anything, I decided just to pocket it. As you do.
The next day, I showed what I had taken to Wayne, (I wasn't yet the fully fledged evil genius/criminal mastermind that I would become) and he, having promptly recognised it from his visit to Philips house and being far more honest than I, told Philip when next he saw him. Deep shit, was I in.The police were called in by Philips parents. Little bit of overkill, possibly, given that what I had taken was worth about 50p but fair play to them, they were playing the long game.
The police took me to the police station, did the whole 'scare the little bleeder' thing with the cells and stuff and then took me into an interview room with the whole tape recorder thing going on. Intimidation, thy name is local bobby. Now, I'd seen The Bill, I knew the score, and I felt confident that I could bluff my way through this. You see, I'd formulated a plan that would 'get me off' (and yes, I was thinking in those terms; to me this was Great Train Robber stuff) and what's more, would make me seem like somewhat of a victim in the whole affair. I was going to blame Philip. Genius.
The idea was that I would tell a sob story about how Philip had invited us up to his room and then once we were there he had demanded that I hand over my stuff (the stuff he had politely asked to borrow) and had threatened to hit me if I hadn't. I figured if they checked up, they'd find my stuff in his room and hey presto, they'd believe me. (See, I was at least on my way to criminal genius.) Then, I'd say, I decided to take the stuff of his to get back at him. I'd say sorry, that I knew it was wrong, and maybe throw in a few tears. No way could I be in trouble after that.
Wrong!
The police didn't care about the toy. That's not what they were interested in at all. They were interested in the money that had gone missing from the living room of Philips house. Say Whaaat? Oh yes, it seems that while I was there stealing toys from Philips bedroom a bunch of notes had disappeared from the jar in their living room. It couldn't be a coincidence could it? It had to have been me. Well, it wasn't me, and I'd be damned if I was going to sit there and let them say it was.
My indignation kicked in. The same hatred of undeserved authority being bandied about that had seen me locking my Dad in an outside toilet for several hours and would later see me get on the wrong side of many a teacher, and then bosses, led me to get very serious and determined in the face of this false accusation; I was having none of it.
The guy doing the questioning obviously figured he had me bang to rights. I'd admitted stealing one thing, so I must have stolen the other. Sherlock Holmes he wasn't. I explained to him that I had never actually been in the living room while I was at the house; that in fact I had never gotten farther than the kitchen on the ground floor. (The back door opened onto the stairs and you turned right into the kitchen. You had to pass through the kitchen to get into the living room if you entered through the rear) I said that I had gone straight upstairs upon arrival and that when we were leaving Philip had gone into the living room for something but the rest of us hadn't.
At this point he tried to trip me up. "Did Philip take any money while he was in the living room?" says the copper. "Not that I saw, no." replies myself. "Aha!", cries the copper, "I have cunningly led you into my trap. How could you know what he did if you weren't in the living room?"
Whoops, had I slipped up? Had I revealed a flaw in my intricate web of lies? Was I dealing with a Sherlockian mastermind? No. "I know because I was watching him from the doorway" I answered. This threw him for a moment but he soon rallied.
"Which doorway?"
"The doorway to the living room"
"But you said you didn't get further than the kitchen"
"I didn't"
"So how could you be in the doorway to the living room if you didn't get further than the kitchen?"
"Have you been in their house?"
The doorway to the living room was in the kitchen. The rooms were directly linked. Had he been in the house he'd have known that. So either he did know and had just assumed he could make me flustered (because I was just a daft kid after all) or he didn't, in which case why was he the one doing the interview? Anyway, I refused to back down and at one point told him that he should go and look at the house before he called me a liar, which made my mother shout at me for being cheeky, which made the copper tell her off for shouting at me. It was all very tense.In the end the police took my fingerprints and sent me on my way. Nothing ever came of it after that, presumably because they didn't find my fingerprints anywhere in their living room and so knew I was telling the truth.
I've often wondered who did take the money, or even whether any money was ever really taken at all. I thought at the time that it must have been Philip, using my real actions as a cover but I reckon now that that was just my blindness to the faults of adults coming in to play. I'll be honest, I don't think Philip was bright enough to think of something like that, but maybe his parents were; maybe one or the other of them took the money and blamed me to the other one, or maybe there never was any money and they were just trying to get my mother to cough something up to keep me out of trouble. Who knows, really, and at the end of the day it doesn't really matter; all was well that ended well, as they say.
The one lasting impact that incident had on me; the one way in which it changed the direction of my life completely, was that it badly eroded my respect for the police. In their dealings with me they were one of two things; either they were incompetent, or they were bullies and neither one of those things inspired me with confidence. It would be a long time before my disdain for them subsided.
*Younger readers may be confused by the terms Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. This is because you are all spoiled rotten by the wondrous technology of today. They were the absolute cream of the crop of home computers back in my day and would take anywhere up to half an hour to load a game. Good times.
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