The Longest Journey Begins With The First Step.........

The last four days have been pretty much as you would expect of late January, soggy and dark mostly, with the odd shaft of winter sun accompanied by squally winds bringing intermittent showers. I don't think I know anyone who likes this time of year when we all huddle indoors trying to work out how we are going to pay all the bills whilst hoping that the post won't bring yet more as it inevitably does. I am a firm believer though in the ying and yang of life and in order to enjoy the high points there have to be low ones. So when these cold, damp, miserable, worrying days descend it's nice to dream about the up side of life, of holidays to look forward to, and barbecue recipes to try, of summer days out and lazy days in the garden. All in all I'm pretty lucky though at the moment as I have a great diversion to distract me from all the gloom without having to day dream. This diversion comes in the plumptious shape of my newly acquired granddaughter. Each time I see her she has a new ability to show me, tiny advances to the uninitiated but huge strides to me so that her eleven weeks on the planet seem to have been filled with new accomplishments. I am of course outrageously biased but that's only because she is the loveliest and cleverest eleven week old I've ever met. So despite the gloomy weather and the Arctic financial climate I remain nauseatingly content with the world.

Yesterday the weather was stormy and rain laden until lunchtime when the wind began to blow chasing the dark clouds away and bringing much needed sunshine for a couple of hours in a clear cobalt blue sky. Mrs Norman and I took the opportunity afforded by this break in the weather to walk to our local high street and do some chores which included banking and shopping. We walked back to our house through the recreation ground where evidence of the mild winter we have been enjoying was everywhere. Later this same day we walked the half mile to our youngest daughters' house and made faces at our ten week old granddaughter, a sport that we are both quite fond of. By the time we walked home it was getting dark but still surprisingly mild for the time of year. Today the only time I ventured outside was to try and shore up the fence next to the house which was threatening to blow away completely in the 70mph gusts of wind that battered us all day. I know I will have to replace the fence panel which is pretty well shredded but I was trying to protect the grape vine whose stem grows up alongside the errant panel and which would not be so easily replaced. My human contacts on these mild and wild two days have mostly been family ones and my deeds have been of the domestic chore variety. My thoughts are pretty much reflected in this blog in that they have been wintry and slightly dark.  

As I have now completely blown any pretence of sticking to my original New Year's (New Year 2006 that is) resolution of writing one blog each day about one thought one deed and one human contact experienced on each day for one whole year I feel somewhat liberated. Despite failing to complete my self inflicted task I did manage, over the 365 days, to write around 270 blogs so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. The exercise has also had a somewhat benign effect in that it has acted at times as a conduit for anxieties, real or imagined, and in doing so has done much to alleviate them. I know I am not alone in this as blogs from Bobbit and Garwain 79 will testify. Finally however small scale and possibly irrelevant it might be to some I am at last writing down stuff, something I along with many others have been threatening to do all my life. I once saw a film by John Luc Goddard where two guys were going to catch a ferry. The ferry man started to sing to them, he was fat, ugly, ragged and unwashed and one of the potential passengers looked bored and wanted him to shut up. The other passenger, the main character in the film, said to his friend "wait, let him sing" so they did and he had a beautiful voice and sang like an angel. "How did you know he could sing like that?" said the first man "I didn't" said his friend "but everybody has at least one good song in them." I think everybody has at least one good story in them, unfortunately for you this isn't it. No matter I've enjoyed writing it and it has made a change from my reports on the days which, if this were part of my old New Year's resolution would have been about Sunday, Monday and Tuesday from the 14th to the 16th of Jan.  

It's a wet windy Saturday for this the thirteenth day of January and the winter blues are beginning to get to me a bit. I think that the lack of sunshine for any lengthy period of time has this effect on everybody, some more than others, but it would seem that the people who get really depressed don't mind sharing their depressed state with all and sundry which sort of escalates the whole thing. What we really need at this time of year is a bit of national success in the sporting arena, no on second thoughts waiting for an English team to cheer us up on the cricket, rugby or football pitch is just going to make things worse. It's not as if you could look to television to lighten the mood what with East enders, Big Brother, reruns of countless old programmes, or endless shows about people doing up houses, moving abroad, or combinations of the same. Well I've done my best to pass on my winter blues to anyone daft enough to read this and I can see why people moan about feeling depressed because for a minute there I was beginning to feel a bit better. I suppose this just illustrates that what we really need to lift our spirits at this time of year is the company of others, whether depressed or not.

My human contact today was, you guessed it minimal and my deed was to assist with the shopping. My thoughts today were nothing much to write about but I felt better for doing so.

Today, Friday the 12th of Jan was an all right day despite the gloomy January weather and the thought that winter still had a long way to run. The reason for my upbeat mood was the visit of my baby sister who, despite her mature status, is and always will be, my baby sister. My sister's main reason for visiting us wasn't to see me or my wife; it was first and foremost to see her grand niece, our granddaughter. Our daughter's house is only a short distance from where we live so we all trooped round and my sister was introduced to her nine week old grand niece. There then followed much cooing and clucking and other such baby noises, a lot of them coming from me it must be said, together with a sort of baby fashion show where tiny items of clothing, footwear, gloves, etc were shown and discussed which I took very little part in. After we had all admired and annoyed the baby sufficiently to make her a little fractious we handed her back (as grandparents and great aunts are wont to do) to her mother and left to have a meal at the local Italian bistro.

My human contacts today included my baby sister, my youngest daughter and my granddaughter as well as my wife and my brother-in-law. My deed was to clean the house prior to the arrival of our guests  and my thoughts were on family matters.

Thursday the 11th of Jan seemed like a good day to set about my wardrobe, well two wardrobes and a chest of drawers to be precise and when I say set about them I mean of course reorganise the clothes inside them. This is a chore that most men would not put at the top of their all time favourites list. To me clothes are a necessary evil, they keep you warm, and protect your modesty and like many others of my gender if I find some that I like I will wear them until they fall apart. The reason that I allowed myself to be persuaded by my wife to reorganize my bulging closets was because I have recently shed twenty one pounds and all my fat things had to go. In order to ascertain what might still fit and what definitely did not it was necessary to try everything on. There are many things that are tedious and exhausting in life but trying on dozens of tops, shirts, trousers, coats, jumpers, and suits has to be near the top of the list, even writing about it is boring. The two main things that I've learned from this exercise are that people in the West buy way too many clothes and retain their old ones for far too long. Now that all my fat clothes have gone to the charity shops I am going to have to stick to my diet and carry on exercising to keep the weight off. A good way to exercise might be to try all my clothes on regularly to see if they still fit me.

My human contact on Thursday was the strict wardrobe mistress Mrs Norman and my thoughts were on how little I know about fashion. My deed was to act as a reluctant mannequin as I modelled men's fashion through the latter part of the twentieth and early part of the twenty first centuries.

Wednesday the 10th of Jan was a bit of a pants day and for a very twenty first century reason. I was attacked, not my house or my person you understand, oh no something much more insidious, my computer was hit by a Trojan horse infiltrator. It was my own fault really because I let my guard down or more accurately my fire wall. I had just begun to download what I understood to be a perfectly legitimate item of software when a pop up filled my screen telling me that I was under attack from a Trojan Horse virus and should download protection from their excellent website. I had to believe them because it was their website that sent the damn virus in the first place. Objectively I could hardly fault the efficacy of the marketing plan. Infect someone's computer with a virus that stops them connecting with anyone but you, then sell them a cure for the problem. Fortunately I managed to get a free patch from another site which has cured the problem for now all be it at the cost of slowing my computer down to a sort of chalk on slate status. I find it hard to believe that a fault in a piece of equipment that I wouldn't even have looked at five years ago could have had quite so profound an effect on my day.

My human contacts on this most frustrating of days were my wife, my daughter and saving my sanity, my beautiful granddaughter. My deed was to fix a problem which to be fair was chiefly of my own creation. My thoughts concerned the Ukrainian website that sent the Trojan interloper prompting this paraphrase; Beware of Russians bearing gifts.

Tuesday the 9th of Jan and today is a very different animal from yesterday. Yesterday I lost a receipt that I had been very careful (or so I thought) not to lose and as an encore I lost the light sensitive prescription glasses that I use whilst driving which although not essential are sort of necessary. Imagine my surprise and elation today then when my wife narrowly avoided stepping on them as they lay on the pavement outside our front garden. It seems hard to believe that they had lain there the best part of yesterday and all through a wet and windy night and this morning had avoided the little feet and the various sized wheels of a multitude of buggies that head every weekday in the direction of the local primary not far from us. Survive though they did without a mark or a scratch and I am very happy to be re-united with them. Another cause for satisfaction today came when I attended the local leisure centre for the second part of my gym induction. To be honest I was a little fearful about the whole business as the first part which I undertook on the previous Friday had practically shredded the muscles in my thighs and four days later they were still stiff and sore. it turned out that I need not have worried as I was guided expertly round several pieces of resistance equipment by Natalie the boss of the gym no less who showed me how everything worked and it appears that I'm much better at pulling and pushing weights about than I am at running mindlessly on the spot. All in all a much better day then than its predecessor although I still don't know how I lost that receipt. 

My human contacts on this lifting and uplifting day were my serendipitous wife and the extremely fit Natalie. My deed was to attend the second part of my induction and my thoughts were on my impending fitness programme.

Monday the 8th of Jan and today has been a pig of a day. It started out ok with a two hour session on the SS City & Guilds wrestling with spreadsheets level two where I really made some progress. It began to go tits up when I got home and tried to find a receipt for a present that I had bought for my wife which needed to be returned due to its unforeseen scratchiness (it was a woolly item not a cat) Knowing my predilection for purchasing useless gifts I had very carefully checked after Christmas that I still had the receipt in my wallet which I did but when I looked for it today it was gone. I had receipts for everything that I had purchased in the last three months which included newspapers, petrol and postage stamps, but not the one I needed, the only one I should have kept. After turning the house upside down we decided to go to the store anyway and see if they would still exchange the errant gift which is when I found that I had also lost my glasses, the ones that I use solely for driving. I don't know why losing or misplacing items annoys me so much but it does, of all the small misfortunes that can be visited upon an individual, losing stuff in the confines of your own home annoys me the most. The shop did offer an exchange for the present and I am able to drive without my glasses but I'm still not happy.

My human contacts today included several officers of the Star Ship City & Guilds, a very helpful shop assistant, and my long suffering other half, the stoical Mrs N. My deed today was to drive the aforementioned paragon of virtue to the shops in order to swap her present for something a little less scratchy and my thought today is never put something you don't want to lose in a safe place because that's where things go missing from first.

It's Sunday night and I'm scratching around to find something to say about today, the most active part of which was a visit to Sainsburyland to capture our dinner and a few provisions for the week. The weather today has again been unremittingly gloomy but I suppose fitting, matching as it has the general mood at this time of year. I am stiff but not gloomy, both of which states are a legacy from my exploits on Friday when I spent a frenetic forty minutes at the local gym, proving to myself and anyone watching me, how out of shape I am and causing my thigh muscles to stiffen up and ache severely two days later. The not gloomy part is also a legacy from the gym session as I now have a clearly defined goal to aim at which is to improve my fitness levels, and having an objective in life is a sure way to beat boredom.

My human contact today has been the ever present Mrs N and my deed was to assist in the acquisition of provisions. My thoughts today have been on the positive if mildly painful results to be obtained from affirmative action.

Saturday the 6th of Jan ; This Saturday would have been a very bleak day had it not been for a very special event. I mean the weather was wet and windy, the television was dull and dreary and the time of year notoriously depressing. So what was it that made the day hugely enjoyable and totally fascinating for Mrs N and myself? Nothing more than undertaking a chore for our youngest daughter to wit: babysitting. As our daughter and her significant other had to collect a bulky object from several miles away they wondered if we could look after our nine week old granddaughter for a few hours. For some reason my granddaughter fascinates me in a totally different way from when her mother or her mothers' sister were her age. I suppose it's having more time, less pressure, more experience and a number of other factors I wouldn't wonder but this time round watching a little persons brain begin to focus, as from a deep sleep into consciousness, is truly amazing. It helps that this baby is very placid and calm with good strong limbs and a steady gaze but I never realized before just how quickly their little personalities develop. I could of course be accused of being a tad biased which would obviously be correct but my basic premise survives in that life is a miracle too often taken for granted just because there are so many of us.

My human contact on this sodden Saturday was with my immediate family and my thoughts were about the first marks on a brand new slate. My deed, along with my wife, was to look after our granddaughter for a few hours. 

Friday the 5th of Jan and today I beamed aboard the Star Ship City & Guilds to continue my quest to master C&G spreadsheets level two. It was nine am or eight bells plus one as we merry mariners have it when I beamed into the air lock below deck and signed the register. Upstairs the bridge was strangely quiet with most of the ensigns it would appear, enjoying an extended shore leave; it was so quiet in fact that it was almost a relief to see that lieutenant Grumpy de Chatelaine was on watch. I settled down to my allotted tasks and had not been long at my console before the inevitable happened and one of the ensigns requested some assistance from the venerable lieutenant. The ensign in question was a pleasant young lady of oriental extraction who required help on a small matter which with Grumpy's help soon escalated into a mini version of the Spanish Inquisition with Grumpy acting out the part of Torquemada. I am often bemused by the good lieutenant's teaching methods which revolve around the twin gambits of shaming and shouting as in "what are you trying to do? Did you read the instructions?" What does that say !!!" etc etc. These instructions tend to get louder & louder until the people in the car park outside begin to benefit from his powerful educational qualities. Fun though it was my time on the star ship was soon over and I beamed home for a light lunch prepared by Mrs Norman before tackling my delayed induction at the local gym. Having not done any serious exercise for over thirty years my first attempt was both painful and embarrassing but I did at least survive and now have a tortuous programme set out of which good old Torquemada himself would have been proud.

My human interface today was with the bullying Lieutenant Grumpy and my benign personal trainer, Trevor. My thoughts were on how weak and feeble my under exercised body had become and my deed was to address the problem. 

Thursday 4th of Jan; Today was to be the day of reckoning where all the effort I had put in over the last three months dieting was to be cemented into place by fixing up a regular exercise routine at our local gymnasium which is housed in the council's flagship leisure centre. Our council are quite good at finding ways to amuse us with quaintly named facilities, there's the tautological learning college and the sweat driven muscle straining oxymoron that is the leisure centre. It was to this latter mentioned pantheon of the gymnastic arts that I trudged today for my assessment and induction. It was much as had I feared, full of bright fit young things, all shiny lycra and lactic acid with more mirrors than I thought strictly necessary and everything and everyone moving to some overly loud inane bass thumping musac. My erstwhile personal trainer in waiting Mark tried to explain about the assessment but struggled due to the fact that he had been shouting so much that his voice had all but gone which somehow did little for my fragile confidence. In the end he gave up and shoved a bit of paper at me to complete. Basically it said please let us know if you are about to drop down dead or if any of the excercises, about which you know nothing, are likely to kill you. Being scrupulously honest and following numerous instructions from Mrs Norman I did mention that my blood pressure might be a bit high. This was the signal mute Mark had been waiting for and straight away out came his trainee doctor's kit. With a device that looked like it had been purchased with special muesli box top vouchers he proceeded to take my blood pressure whilst all around me the bright young things were jigging about in their shiny lycra and smiling their smug self satisfied smiles. Mute Mark looked at the read out and immediately went into dodgy mechanic mode with much tutting and deep whistly intakes of breath. He showed me the read out as if I were supposed to understand it, shook his head and whispered "put both your feet flat on the ground and wait there calmly." Of course this response and instruction was all I needed to put me in a calm and serene frame of mind. Mark then wandered off for a while and left me to contemplate what had just happened as I listened to the head banging musac and watched the flailing Lycra clad limbs. After a wait of several minutes he came back and repeated the blood pressure test with exactly the same result, not one to give up easily he had a third bash then whispered to me "if I were you I'd see a GP as soon as possible" I was a little upset that whilst Mark's medical prowess was sufficient for him to scare me shitless, it did not seem comprehensive enough for him to explain what the problem might be. Needless to say I high tailed it round to the doctor's surgery, explained that I believed I was in mortal and imminent danger of expiry and solicited an emergency appointment. My doctor took my blood pressure three times using two different methods and convinced me that it was in fact normal but that my potential personal trainer might be in need of some help especially in the area of medical knowledge.

My human contacts today included the avuncular doctor and mad mute Mark the misguided mentor. My deed was to attempt a fitness regime and my thoughts were on the need for specialists in given professions and why doctors have to take exams.

Wednesday the 3rd of Jan and it's back to the old routine except that I don't have an old routine or even a new routine I'm semi retired which admittedly is a bit like being a little bit pregnant in that one is either retired or not retired. I am coming to the belief that semi retired means that you still work but don't get paid a proper wage and definitely have no prospect of advancement unless it's an upgrade to fully retired. Whatever my true career position it does mean that I get a bit of spare time to indulge in pursuits such as accompanying my wife and daughter and new granddaughter on the odd shopping trip, which although I'm not an avid shopper, is quite a pleasant way to spend the odd hour. Thus it was that whilst the second day of the New Year meant back to the usual grind for a large part of the population for me it meant a pleasant afternoon pretending I knew what I was looking at in Next and Mothercare and making the appropriate noises when confronted with small odd shaped articles of clothing in various shades of pink. 

My human contacts this Wednesday were with my nearest and dearest and my thoughts were on the hordes of people out shopping with us as I wondered who actually was working. My deed was to chauffeur the girls to the shops. 

The first day of a brand new year, or an arbitrary date made up to fulfil our desire to find meaning and orientation in our universe, either way this year for me it was hangover free. It's not as if I stayed at home on new years eve and sulked either, on the contrary Mrs Norman and I visited some old friends, (all our friends are now old - I don't know how that happened) who were happy to drink the new year in with us. It's just that what with joining a slimming club and the vagaries of taxi services this time of year I decided to drive and not drink. The down side was that I remember everything that happened New Years Eve and it all seemed a lot less exotic than those times when I couldn't remember and had to rely on recovering drunks to fill in the blanks. The up side is that I start the year bright eyed and bushy tailed full of energy and eager anticipation for the year ahead. It also means apparently that I can lie much more easily as well.

My human contacts on this first day of the year were my ever present shadow, my wife and my youngest daughter accompanied by the newest member of the clan, our beautiful granddaughter. My deed was to accompany the three ladies on a walk through our local park and my thoughts were on the coming year.

This is the last month of the year and as I'm writing this on the 31st of December my last entry of the year as well. Once again I am indebted to Mrs Norman for the rough notes on what happened in December. Apparently the month started with Mrs N and I having a free and frank exchange of views about a shared and perennial problem. Although my wife has agreed that we need to accept that which we cannot change the problem still eats at her and it upsets me. I see from her notes that despite being more than a little rattled by our robust exchange of views she still managed to record my thoughts on the subject, which were that it is easier to get your tongue around some things than it is to get your head around them and that failure to fully come to terms with them can eat you up inside. It is typical of my wife that even in mid argument she is still listening, something I feel I might do well to emulate. The rest of December was punctuated with walks in the park with our newly acquired grandchild and even the occasional baby sitting session. On the distaff side my wife's medication was changed on the advice of at least two medical luminaries who were united in their ability to get it so very wrong, resulting on one occasion with the very poorly Mrs N being rushed to hospital in an ambulance, all blues and twos and managed panic. Fortunately my wife knew the medication that she needed to be on and with her assistance she appears to be getting back to normal, although her confidence in the medical profession is now on the critical list. Christmas arrived as it has a tendency to do in late December and our house played host to the whole family. This year the rooms were only lightly decked with bowers of holly but the little decoration in the Moses basket imbued the house with more Christmas spirit than it has had in a long time. 

My most important deed this month was again strangely to be at a hospital bedside, this time holding my wife's hand. My human contact was with my nearest and dearest at Christmas and my thoughts were on the importance of families.

After the birth of our beautiful granddaughter the rest of November was a bit of a blur. I know, thanks again to 'Boswell's' notes, that I fought with a large telecoms company, begged anti biotics from my dentist for a looming abscess, made two trips to Brighton to visit our firstborn, had dinner at a local restaurant with two very good friends, lost my exhaust pipe on the M23, met with the company accountant, and watched the starlings fighting over the last of the fermenting grapes on the vine at the back of the house. All this and more happened in November but mostly I remember the arrival of our sweet little grandchild.

My most memorable human contact this month was with our new arrival and my most important deed was to be around to say well done. My thoughts in November were on the cycle of life as plants in the garden were preparing to sleep and the new seed from the gene pool was starting to wake.

Today is Wednesday the 27th of December and I finally have to be grown up and admit defeat. At the beginning of this year I vowed to write one blog a day about one thought, one deed and one human contact that I had experienced on that day. I was doing ok until I went with my wife to Menorca in early September for a month where I took a break from writing any blogs the whole time that I was there. Mrs Norman, the Boswell to my Dr Johnson, was very good and made notes about each day we were there which I used to fashion the last few blogs that I have written since our return. Unfortunately to date I have only managed to get up to September the 30th, some three months short of my intended target. None of this matters one jot to anybody else on the planet but it matters a lot to me as self esteem is the only currency I truly value. In order to salvage some merit from the wreck of my broken resolution I will complete this years blog by writing about one thought, one deed and one memorable human contact experienced during each of the so far unrecorded months. As a penalty for not completing my original task in the allotted time I will continue to write a daily blog for at least ninety days into the New Year. In this way I will technically have completed a yearly report by the end of this year and actually have written the 365 blogs I originally intended by late March next year. I know that people who finish long races two laps behind all the other competitors don't really have cause to celebrate but people tend to applaud them anyway as the desire to be the best you can and to finish something you have started resonates strongly in all of us.