I love this song because it combines early 1980’s pop music with a progressive rock feel. Here it is:
The song is about taking control of your life, rather than just allowing yourself to drift without questioning anything. I’ve certainly been guilty of this at various times during my fifty four years.
What is bizarre about this is that we all go through phases when we question, and act but also we just slot into role that society expects of us and conform with expectations. I know that I am guilty of this.
Certainly as a child, I questioned everything. I wanted to know everything. My grandad bought me a brilliant book for Christmas containing the answers to 100 questions that every child asks about a variety of subjects, questions like “What is the biggest number?”. The reason he bought it was because I was constantly pestering him from simple questions like “Why is the sky blue?” to more awkward questions like “When will Nanna have another baby?”
The book was fascinating and as a seven year old I soaked it up. I still remember the answer to the question “What is the biggest number?” because it introduced me to two concepts.
First that there was a huge number called a “googol” which has a value of 1 followed by 100 zeroes.
Does the name sound familiar? The company Google is a misspelling of the word. It was originally meant to signify that Google could provide huge quantities of information – which of course it can via its search engine.
Secondly, I was introduced to the concept of infinity. The true answer to the question is that there is no largest number because if you were to find it, you could just add one to make a new largest number. This opened a door in my mind and I became fascinated with maths (if you are American, I mean, of course, “math”), steering me in the eventual direction I took in life.
Of course, when I went to school I conformed until my hormones kicked in and made me question everything again. I wasn’t a pleasant adolescent; I became a rebellious arse who didn’t like the rules but had to stick to them. I asked questions like “Why can’t I tell the teacher he’s a cretin?” and “Why do I have to do what you tell me to do?”
Over the years, I have taken a few chances and broken out of the drudgery that life expects me to adhere to. A controlled population is, after all, an easy society to deal with. Yes, I got a job, got married, had kids, bought a house, paid my taxes, went on holiday, blah blah blah, but there were a few blips along the way, like getting divorced.
Yet, as I get older, the non-conformist rebel is surfacing more and more and I find myself questioning the shackles that bind me again. I am desperate to escape the rat race and have been doing so for about ten to fifteen years now.
It’s not that I hate my job. In fact, when I think about work, I have a bittersweet relationship with my career. It has allowed me to travel the world and provided me with everything I have now. Yet at the same time, it has been like a sort of open prison where I have had to go to an office for almost 240 days a year since I was 21 years old and have to listen to certain people, a few of whom I have had little respect for. I love the social aspect of work and have made many friends over the years.
The problem is that now I’m bored with my career and want to do something else – I want more freedom. I don’t want to have to justify everything that I do for a common goal that rewards certain people more than others. The rebel has been trying to surface to get me to take a chance. As the song says: “Prove yourself, you are the move you make, take your chances, win or loser”.
If only.
Never mind. I am now fifty four years old and as the days go by I care less and less about my job. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel and the one remaining shackle to complete will, within disappear within the next decade.
The rebellious adolescent is speaking to me again – and I love it.
I know myself completely and there is no human being on the planet that is exactly the same as I am.
At the time of writing, the population of Earth is 7,379,260,713 but this is changing every second. People are being born and dying every single second. The population is increasing because the number of births is over twice as big as the number of deaths.
You can monitor the numbers for yourself by visiting this page.
I am still overawed by the fact that I am completely different from the other 7,379,260,712 human beings with whom I share this world.
Isn’t that amazing?
Statistically speaking, there must be somebody out there who is the same age as I am, looks like me and acts like me with the same philosophy on life, the same skills and the same logical mind. The curious part of me would like to meet that person but, to be honest, I think it would scare me a little bit.
I kind of like the idea that I am unique.
Nevertheless, sometimes I ask myself who I really am.
I can answer the easy questions, such as my name, age, nationality, description and even some of the more difficult questions about where I have been, what I have achieved, what I still want to achieve. I can also talk a lot of nonsense about my own philosophies and opinions on a variety of subjects, both banal and controversial.
Does that tell people who I am? Well, I guess it does partially.
Mrs PM knows me more than anybody else on planet Earth and if asked, I’m sure that she would claim to know me inside and out.
But she’s wrong and I think she knows that.
For example, she reads this blog and quite often expresses amazement at the things I write. On my post about mosquitos, she wrote a comment on the blog saying:
“I had no idea all of this was going through your mind!”
I think she reads the blog to learn more about the person she lives with.
Equally, I know a lot about Mrs PM but I would never claim to know everything about her.
Every person , no matter how much in love they are or how open they are with other people, keep part of themselves hidden to protect them. Imagine for a second how terrible it would be if you were in the same room as a person who could read your mind completely.
It would be absolutely unbearable.
That’s one reason I would love to able to read people’s minds, particularly those I know. My curiosity would know no bounds. What are people really thinking? Are they telling the truth or brilliantly concealing their true thoughts and intentions?
Actually, thinking about it, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a good idea to delve into the inner mind of your friends. You may discover something you don’t like about their thoughts. Perhaps it’s best to maintain an air of mystery.
You may feel that you have an insight into who I am, dear reader, thanks to the tripe that I continue to write on this blog. You certainly know that I am a 53 year old man called Dave who works in IT, lives in Manchester, likes rock music and is keen on travel. I may have revealed other things about myself inadvertently but that was almost certainly more by accident than design.
I masquerade as a guy who calls himself Plastic Mancunian, a cyber-identity that initially I wanted to use to remain anonymous, until a couple of work colleagues spent the time searching for it. In fact, they used their knowledge of me to actually find the blog because even though I wanted to create a different persona on the blog, I couldn’t help revealing who I was, albeit with a little subtlety.
No matter how much I tried to remain anonymous, I was betrayed because I allowed the Plastic Mancunian to become a caricature of Dave, the ranting old git, allowing my true self to be revealed in the rambling posts.
That was a shame. I really wanted to remain anonymous so that I could allow the anarchist within me to surface and take on a persona of its own.
The colleague who finally exposed me apologised but I’ve forgiven him because ultimately I’m proud of my own little corner of cyberspace.
I said earlier that there are people in the world who look like us. Having done a little research, apparently there are seven such people in the world and they are known as twin strangers.
There is actually a website you can use to find your twin strangers and some of the examples they have are amazing.
My eldest son Stephen graduated on Friday. At the same time, my youngest son, Michael, is about to embark on the same journey, starting his own university course in September, hopefully.
I am fiercely proud of their achievement, particularly Stephen, who will soon be settling into a new job.
His adventure is just beginning.
At the graduation ceremony, I watched as lots of people were honoured, all dressed in gowns and hats surrounded by loving families and friends. As I applauded each and every one of them, I looked around at the other proud people smiling and clapping – and one minor negative thing was gnawing away at my delight.
It was a thought and it grew stronger. The thought was:
“Boy, am I getting old!”
I see younger colleagues at work with young children, each of whom are doting parents of children ranging from new born babies to those just about to enter their teenage years. And I remember when my two boys were that age.
It seems like a lifetime ago.
My lads are grown men, with their own outlook on life, their own opinions, their own likes and dislikes and their own plans for the future.
Three Men and a Lady
I am so proud of them but at the same time, I miss that childlike innocence that made me laugh yet at the same time allowed me to become a child again. Seeing the two of them in suits on Friday made me realise that I no longer have an excuse to allow my mental age to manifest itself into physical behaviour without looking like a complete idiot.
What’s more, in my fifties I am aware that the next major stage for me is retirement. Okay, that is quite far away – a good fifteen years – but when that happens I will officially be an old git.
Me in fifteen years?
I looked around some old blog posts and when I started writing this drivel I was forty five years old (it’s amazing that I am now in my eighth year of bloggery).
What has happened to the time?
In another eight years I will be in my sixties. All my droopy bits will droop even more. My wild and feral hair will look like a mad old tribble and my old face look like the Grand Canyon.
My hair in my sixties?
How scary is that?
I do have one advantage though. I don’t actually look my age so maybe – just maybe – people won’t think I’m a pensioner. The other benefit of having a young looking face is that my two lads have both inherited by youthful countenance. As I stood at the bar on Friday having just bought a celebratory round of drinks, both of my lads were questioned about their age.
“Does that annoy you?” I asked. “It used to annoy me.”
Stephen just laughed as he put his driving license away.
“I’ve been used to it for four years now,” he said. Michael agreed but at the age of nineteen, he shrugged and said “And I’ll still have to get used to it I suppose.”
While the ageing process may seem depressing, I think it’s a good thing to keep the inner child alive, the one that has made me embarrass my own kids by behaving immaturely. I am still young enough to just about get away with behaving like a child sometimes and I love it when I am able to.
Mrs PM constantly reminds me of my immaturity.
I think that it’s fun to release that inner child every so often and I don’t ever plan to stop. I think that as long as you have a youthful outlook on life your mind and body will follow and make you appear to be younger – which is an added bonus for me because I don’t look my age.
I just hope that I don’t suddenly wake up one morning having aged drastically overnight.
Actually, scratch that! I don’t really care. As long as I’m happy and I can still walk around without pain I’ll be delighted.
Even if I can’t walk around without pain, I’m sure that I’ll be able to lift up a laptop and release my inner child on this blog.
This seems to be another rule that is self-imposed upon the human race.
“So when are you gonna have kids then?” is a question that is asked to the bride and groom literally five seconds after the phrase “You may now kiss the bride.”
I never considered the possibility of fatherhood. I had no urge to procreate and, like marriage, it crept up on me and before I knew it I was a dad.
I still remember the day I was told.
“What?” I said, “Are you sure?”
I was the stereotypical father, the man who does not believe his wife when she tells him that a tiny explosion of life has begun within her. It was only when she started to throw up every morning for three weeks solid and then grow over the next nine months that I realised my life was about to change.
And it did.
Twice!
I have two kids – or should I say "adults" now.
And their resemblance to me is uncanny, which of course you would expect.
Through all the mayhem that descended when Stephen, my eldest was born, followed by even more pandemonium when my youngest was born, I discovered two things:
(a)I love kids
(b)I am a giant kid myself
I don’t want to dwell on the bad points of having kids (changing nappies at 3am, foul substances exploding out of every orifice – usually on me) - simply because the good points far outweigh them.
I discovered fairly quickly that the best way to deal with children is to become one yourself. And that is the easiest thing in the world for me.
Some people hate kids because they demand so much of your time. For me, however, although tiring, kids are terrific fun and are easily pleased.
I found myself rediscovering childhood toys and TV programmes that were quite entertaining. I knew everything about Thomas the Tank Engine, for example, and Stephen couldn’t understand why I laughed so much at a particular episode called Thomas Comes To Breakfast where a runaway Thomas crashes into the station master’s house. With the whole house wrecked, the station master’s wife says:
“You miserable engine! Just look what you’ve done to our breakfast! Now I shall have to cook some more!”
Not one word about the semi demolished house – only the breakfast.
And when it came to birthday parties, I joined in. One time, in our house, I was surrounded by around ten four year olds all screaming their heads off. The answer was simple. I did what I do best – devolved into a four year old child myself.
I got up out of my chair and knelt in the centre of the lounge.
“I bet that nobody can push me over!”I declared in a loud voice.
Before I could say anything else, all of them, as one, grabbed my arms, pushed me, pulled me and tried to knock me over. They giggled as they struggled, one lot of kids pulling one arm, the others pulling the other arm – competing against each other rather than me.
We all had a lot of fun.
All you need to do to have fun with kids is play silly games with them, draw silly pictures, build things, watch kiddy films - anything that kids love.
I love films like Toy Story and Shrek and I would never have seen them had it not been for the kids. In fact, I reckon I enjoyed them even more!
They are all good fun.
There is a part of me that is sad that my two lads are now grown up (Mike is 17 and Stephen is 20). Our relationship has changed and I still try to stay at their level even though they are now adults themselves.
Mrs PM calls them the clones and I can see why when I look at photos of us together. In fact, I am a clone of my dad too. When I look at photographs of him in the years just before he died, the similarity between us is almost spooky.
Ultimately that is the true appeal of children for me. They are an extension of yourself and when I see them growing up from babies, to toddlers, to boys, to teenagers and now to adults, I can see myself in them.
I know that when I am a cranky grumpy old cantankerous old git, I will still have a child within me somewhere. Hopefully I will also be able to see their kids start out in life too and I imagine that I might have to allow a bunch of four year old kids to try to drag me round the lounge again.
One thing is for sure, though; I will dig out that old episode of Thomas the Tank Engine and giggle with them again – even though my sons will almost certainly say:
“Dad, when are finally going to grow up?”
I can answer that now:
NEVER!!!
And for any "kids" out there - here is the episode I am talking about.
Somebody told me that newborn babies can’t see and that their eyesight dramatically improves. I still have the vision of a newborn baby – without my glasses I can barely see past the end of my nose.
My glasses are my best friend. Without them I am a shadow of myself; I am incomplete; I am Mr Magoo.
This is the story of how we met.
When I was a young child, my blurred vision seemed perfectly normal to me; it must have done. I must have adapted to the fact that I couldn’t see a bloody thing. To me it seemed perfectly natural to sit in front of our black and white television watching Thunderbirds. When I say “in front”, I mean with my nose pressed firmly against the tube.
My parents used to scold me and drag me back from the TV saying things like “if you sit too close to the TV you’ll go blind”. I must have stared at their blurred outlines and thought “Crikey! You mean my eyesight can get WORSE???”
Until I started school, I would sit on the settee watching television, staring at the box in the corner of the room unable to get a clear image of what was going on.
“This is the most stupid invention ever,” I thought. “All I can see is a bunch of wiggly blurred outlines.”
I had nothing to compare the images with. It was perfectly normal to me.
I started school aged five and nothing changed. I was handed books to read and, being short-sighted, I could read totally clearly. I couldn’t see what the teacher wrote on the blackboard but I didn’t actually need to – because I was clever and it was all in the book right in front of my eyes. Nobody was any the wiser, including me.
Eventually, when I turned seven, the teaching methods changed and we had to pay more attention to the drivel that teachers wrote on the blackboard; we were expected to copy it down. Having no idea that I was half blind, I assumed that there was a kind of ripple effect from the blackboard. The teacher wrote down a sentence for the kids in the front row; the kids in the second row copied the sentence from the kids in the front row and so on until it reached me. The problem was that the kid I copied from was as thick as an elephant sandwich so I simply copied down the gibberish that he wrote.
He couldn’t spell and his writing was appalling; I thought he was insane.
It was only when the teacher looked at my work that he put two and two together; I was either short-sighted or totally weird I’m both of course, but he didn’t know that at the time; he had a foolproof plan to work out which.
“Read what’s on the blackboard,” he bawled at me.
“I can’t,” I replied. “You write too small.”
The teacher decided that I was not weird but short-sighted. He told my mother and she dragged me off to my first optician appointment. I sat down in a scary chair in a small room and a scary old man put a contraption on my head that vaguely looked like a pair of glasses. He didn’t put any lenses into this contraption.
“Read those letters to me,” he barked.
“What letters?” I replied.
“Oh dear,” he sighed.
And then my life changed.
First of all, he put a black lens in the left socket of the device and a clear lens in the other side.
“Read those letters to me,” he repeated.
“AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” I screamed. “I CAN SEE!!!! I AM BIONIC!!!!!! I CAN SEE!!!!!!!”
And I could. I could see everything. It was as if somebody had wiped my eyeballs with a rag. Everything became crystal clear. Not only could I see the letters, I could also see a spider crapping a web in the corner of the room.
“I CAN SEE A SPIDER CRAPPING A WEB!! This room’s filthy you know.”
“Just read the letters,” he snarled.
“Q I R T Y B P” I said triumphantly before adding a few more with a giggle:
“P O O”
“W I L L Y”
“F A R T”
After a few more lenses, and a couple of cracks around the bonce for being cheeky, the optician homed in on my prescription. Finally, he took off the contraption and told me to go.
“Can’t I take it with me?” I asked. “I can’t see properly now.”
He laughed and told me that my glasses would arrive in a couple of weeks and I would be able to see clearly for ever.
I was overjoyed and I couldn’t wait to get them. Two weeks later I sat on the sofa and suddenly realised what the point of the TV was.
Sadly, acquiring my first pair of glasses was a bittersweet experience. I could see great distances and was therefore deliriously happy, running around like a demented imbecile with my new found vision. Unfortunately, in my school year, nobody else wore glasses except me.
I was mocked – mercilessly.
Within two minutes of arriving at school on that first day with by glasses, kids who I thought were my friends, were calling me “Four eyes” and “Specky” and other derogatory names. In fact, my first altercation with a teacher happened on that very day. I remember it well and it is probably one of the reasons why I have a problem with authority today.
It was the teacher who had noticed my poor eyesight so, looking back, I should really have shaken the man’s hand and given him all of my worldly possessions (a toy robot, a football and my bogey collection); I should have been forever in his debt. However, on that first day, I grew to hate him.
“Specky four eyes,” I was called over and over again and something had to give. The anger built up and up and up and up until finally I broke.
I forget the name of the poor kid who pushed me into the abyss of wrath but I bet he remembers me.
“What’s it like to look like a specky four-eyed girl?” he said.
“What’s it like to be in pain, you BUGGER!!!” I screamed as I hit him square on the nose with all my might, actually giving him a nose bleed.
The teacher saw it all, grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me into the library, which was a room that we dubbed “the naughty room”; people waited there to receive the cane in those days of corporal punishment.
“Sit down!” shouted the teacher. “How DARE you hit another child; AND use language like that.”
I was still enraged and, without thinking of the consequences, I turned on him. I couldn't believe that I was being punished after the ruthless name calling that had driven me to violence. And now the teacher was my target; this man who had helped me see; this man who was my hero; this responsible human being who now turned out to be a complete arse. I lost any respect for him.
“THAT BUGGER HAS BEEN CALLING ME FOUR EYES ALL DAY! WHY AM I IN TROUBLE?” I screamed exploding in a blend of tears, snot and spit. I might also have wet my pants – I’m not sure. I simply couln't believe what was happening.
I forget the events after that, such was my trauma, but I do know that I soon realised my predicament and may suffer the wrath of the headmaster, resulting in six hefty whacks across the arse with his cane. After all this was a strict catholic school and using foul language and violence was regarded as a pretty bad sin. Furthermore, I feared that I might end up in hell with Satan himself calling me “Four Eyes” for eternity while punching me on the nose.
I do know that the headmaster got involved and when I explained, through floods of tears, snot and spit, about the persecution I had received from my so-called friends, it must have turned the tide somewhat.
In the end I had to suffer punishment but the teacher and headmaster were lenient.
The kid I had smacked on the nose was also punished and ended up sitting next to me in the library for an hour. Our punishment was missing the PE lesson, which we both loved, and hundreds of lines. We had to write sheets and sheets of lines: mine were meant to drill into me that I should never use the foul language I had used and I had to write out repeatedly the line:
“Let me no wrong or idle word unthinking say. Set thou thy seal upon my lips just for today”
from the old hymn “Just For Today”
I think my tormentor and victim of my violence had to write some crap about being nice to unfortunate people.
After that, certain kids thought twice about calling me “Four Eyes” at school, for a while at least. It wasn’t long before I was called names again but by then I was hardened to it. “Four eyes” and other derogatory terms stuck with me throughout my early childhood and youth and I still wince when I hear similar phrases now (though thankfully I haven’t heard it for quite a few years now).
As you can imagine, though, “Four Eyes” and “Specky” weren’t the only insults that were hurled my way.
It was typical that I was born and grew up at a time when there were not one but TWO of my nemeses on the TV.
The first was “The Milky Bar Kid”, a boy about my age with blond hair and glasses, just like me, who dressed up as a cowboy and ate white chocolate bars called Milky Bars. I hated the kid and I hated Milky Bars, not only because of the torment that came my way but also the taste.
White chocolate? What crazy mutant dreamed that up?
Here is my first nemesis:
With my wild blond hair and glasses I looked like a crazed version of the Milky Bar Kid who had been assaulted with a particularly potent ugly stick.
My second nemesis was “Joe 90” and in many ways this was even worse because the name “Joe 90” stuck for years and years. Who is "Joe 90"? In case you don’t know, here he is:
One of the last times I remember having “Joe 90” trauma was when I was nineteen. I was about to leave a pub in Walsall town centre with a couple of friends when I noticed a bunch of skinheads. As we walked past, the skinheads, in a coordinated harmonious manner that belied their Neanderthal stupidity, gave a rendition of the “Joe 90” theme tune.
“JOE 90 – DA DA DA DAH DADA DADA DADA DA DAH!”
and bellowed with laughter. We all walked out and I told my mates to run to the next pub.
“Why?” asked one. “They were just taking the piss. They’re not coming after us.”
“Just run,” I said. “Because they will be coming after us.”
They walked, thinking I had had a pint too many. When I went back into the pub, however, they changed their mind and set off for the next pub at a trot.
Inside the pub, I walked up to the skinheads as they laughed, amused by their piss-taking. Years of being called “Joe 90” had finally got to me and having had a pint or two of lager and lime I felt it was time to tell them what I thought. And I did. I can’t recall exactly what I said but I think I accused them of having dog-shit for brains and the intellectual capacity of a particularly stupid dung beetle.
Thankfully, at the time, I was fit and fast and was out of the pub before they could react. Whether they chased me or not, I don’t know. But I felt better for telling them what I thought, that’s for sure.
Of course, I wouldn’t do anything that stupid now; I’d probably join in their laughter and chat to them.
That’s not the end of my story about my relationship with my glasses. There is much more to come.
What do you mean “Oh no!!!”??????
By the way, the picture at the start of the post is me aged twelve. See what I mean about being a mad-haired version of “The Milky Bar Kid”?
I’ve received another award (the first for a while) and this one also comes from across the great pond that separates Great Britain and the United States.
It is the happy award and I’d like to thank a Lady from Delaware called Lynette, who happens to be the girlfriend of a mate of mine called Mark.
Apparently there are “suggestions” – here they are:
1. Link the blogger who gave you the award on your post...
2. Write 10 things that make you happy...
3. Share it with at least 10 friends...Have fun!
I am not one for following rules or suggestions because I am a closet anarchist. However, I will link to the blogger who gave me this prestigious award. You can find her here at an intriguingly titled blog called A Blog In The Rough. I have actually met Lynette when she popped over to see Mark (I think she still has nightmares about it – I am kidding of course – or am I?).
Moving on, I need to write ten things that make me happy. Here they are (in no particular order):
(1) Rock music – I have said this before and I shall say it again, you simply cannot beat a fabulously loud blast of rock music or heavy metal to grab hold of your stress, slap it about the face and send it on its way with a kick up the backside. When I am driving home from work, I tend to turn up the volume and sing along to all manner of metal mayhem. Currently top of the pile are Dream Theater, an American progressive rock band. METAL!!!!!
(2) Mrs PM – I’m sure my beloved will read this and say “Why aren’t I number one?” And my answer is, of course, that she is number one. As I said, this list is in no particular order. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my beautiful lady smiling when I return home after a traumatic day. She is my world and she puts up with my weirdness, despite the fact that I am an annoying, opinionated, grumpy old git with mad hair, a bizarre sense of humour and a tendency to rant at the drop of a hat. I salute you my sweet and I love you.
(3) My two lads – I got divorced ten or so years ago but the one brilliant thing that came from that are my two boys. The eldest is 17 in June and the youngest is 14 in a couple of weeks time. Mrs PM calls them “the clones” because they are like smaller versions of me (though they have almost caught up in height). They are both great kids and, thankfully, aren’t as weird or as childish as I am (they think I am embarrassing – read about it here) – so I have high hopes for them.
(4) Football (or to any Americans reading – “soccer”) – There is no sport in the world better than football. I know people may think it strange that I love the game, given that I support a team in the third tier of the English League but I simply can’t help it. My team, Walsall, possessed my soul at a very early age and, as crap as they can be I am elated when they win. I am not one of these people who jump on the nearest bandwagon and support the team at the top of the Premiership – I regard myself as a “true” fan – a man who supports his team through thick and thin. That said, I love to watch the Premiership and enjoy a good game, no matter who is playing. Of course, the World Cup is coming in June and I am really looking forward to it. COME ON ENGLAND!!!
(5) Beer – As I get older, my capacity for drinking fine ales has diminished significantly. If I overdo it I suffer big time. While I don’t drink as much as I used to, I still love a beer a two particularly at the weekend – and related to that … (6) Pubs – There is nothing finer than visiting a local hostelry to enjoy a pint or two of fine ale while indulging in a bout of reckless banter with your mates. Equally enjoyable is a nice cosy twosome with Mrs PM, me with my pint of ale and Mrs PM with her glass of dry white wine. Lovely!
(7) Rock concerts – You are never too old to go to a rock concert. Living in Manchester is fabulous because most of my favourite bands visit the city. Only last week, I was present at a pyrotechnic feast of crazy industrial rock – all sung in German. Yes – Rammstein were in town and did their best to set fire to the Manchester Evening News Arena.
(8) Travelling – I am a huge fan of travelling and, the journey there aside, I am delighted to visit foreign countries. My job gives me that opportunity sometimes and even when I have to work I do my best to find some time to see the place and immerse myself in the culture. I have three trips planned this year: a holiday to the west coast of America and Canada in May, a weekend break to Iceland to celebrate Mrs PM’s 40th birthday August and an autumn break to Majorca with friends. I can’t wait.
(9) Writing – Incredibly and much to the surprise of friends, I actually enjoy sitting at a computer to write down the weird drivel that cascades through my brain, some of which makes it onto this blog. When I am angry, I can dissipate the negativity by ranting about it in cyberspace. So, sadly, writing this very blog post (and others like it) makes me very happy.
(10) Tranquillity – Picture the scene; England’s rolling countryside in summer, with green grass, a blue sky sparsely populated with fluffy white clouds, the distant sound of sheep bleating and cows mooing, the songs of many different birds serenading us, and Mrs PM and I strolling along with very few people around and a camera to record the scenes for posterity. It is so tranquil and peaceful and is the best way to unwind and embrace happiness.
There are other things that make me happy but those are the ten that immediately leap to mind. I may share a few more in future.
I am supposed to pass on the award to ten other bloggers but this is the point at which the anarchist in me surfaces and says “No!”
I invite any regular readers to list ten things that make them happy and if you wish, please let me know – I will be interested.
Finally, thanks again to Lynette for the award and allowing me to bare yet more parts of my peculiar soul.
I read in today’s newspaper that the polystyrene floats used at swimming pools to help kids to learn to swim are being targetted by Health and Safety officials because (they say) they may be home to nasty bacteria and are therefore totally unhygienic.
Is it just me or is the world going crazy? Have they never heard of the idea of replacing them every so often?
The article goes on to suggest that if your child drowns as a result of not having a polystyrene float then at least you can be safe in the knowledge that it was in a hygienic environment.
I, along with many others, have considered recent health and safety guidelines to be ridiculously over the top. We can’t do anything these days, for fear of violating some weird safety protocol. I worry about wandering down my own street in case I break my leg on a cracked paving slab. I’m concerned about plugging in an electrical device unless I’ve passed an exam to do so. I’m even scared to get on my soapbox in case I should fall off and injure myself.
It never used to be this way. We could do things without worrying about our own safety. We could get involved in exciting activities without the fear of being sued. We took risks and we accepted them. Reading this article in the paper reminded me of an email I received a few years ago, regarding how things have changed over the years. I was born in 1962 so the contents of the email struck a chord. Here it is:
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 60's, 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived. Our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint, which was promptly chewed and licked. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans. When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip flops and fluorescent 'spokey dokey's' on our wheels. As children we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or airbags -riding in the passenger seat was a treat. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same. We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice with sugar in, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and nbody actually died from this! We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find we forgot our brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark - no one was able to reach us, and nobody minded. We did not have Play Stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVD's & no internet chat rooms. We had friends - we went outside and found them. We played elastics and rounders, and sometimes that really hurt! We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones, but there were no lawsuits! We had full on fist fights but no prosecution followed from other parents. We played chap-the door-run-away and were actually afraid of the owners catching us. We walked to friends' homes. We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on mummy or daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls. We rode our bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of...they actually sided with the law.
I remember as a kid playing British Bulldog, a game involving around thirty kids. All kids would line up on one side of the playground (a concrete playground), apart from one who would stand in the middle facing them. The kids would then charge across to the other side of the playground, with the kid in the middle trying to capture any one of them, usually by wrestling him to the ground. The captured kid would then join the original kid and attempt to capture others on the next charge across the playground. The game would continue, with more and more kids being captured by being tackled onto the concrete until at the end there were only a handful left to charge across. The winner was the last surviving kid, or the kid who got furthest across without being leapt on by the captured kids. It was a great game. Nowadays it has been banned because it is "too dangerous".
We also played a variation of the game in the swimming pool. This game was called sharks and the idea was that the thirty kids would swim from one side of the pool to the other with one in the middle, the shark, trying to capture them by ducking them beneath the water. Once ducked, the kid became a shark and eventually there would be more sharks than kids trying to get across. Again, this was a superb game. It, too, has been banned because it is "too dangerous".
I have never seen any kids badly injured at either game, apart from a few cuts and bruises from being rugby tackled on concrete. In fact, sharks actually helped kids become stronger swimmers. Again, nobody ever drowned and every kid who played the game loved it.
Back to banning polystyrene floats – what next? Will they consider the swimming pools themselves to be unhygienic or dangerous and ban them? I think that there are far too many jobsworths in the world who have absolutely nothing better to do than make life more difficult for the population at large.
I’m adding Health and Safety to the list of things that I am targetting when I take over the world. To Health and Safety officials everywhere: Be afraid! Be very afraid!!
