Day 7: What was the first bit of the Internet that blew your mind?

Dare I talk about the first time I ventured to look at pictures of naked men, on my creaking old family dial-up PC in the corner of my parents’ living room? Circa 1997, it was certainly a game-changer; that’s undeniable. I’d never SEEN porn before. I’d never SEEN a naked dude before. Suddenly I could see what other boys looked like NAKED! And having SEX!

Something blew, but it probably wasn’t my mind.

Thinking back, there was a certain colourful charm to those early, non-paying, gay porn sites that you just don’t get today. You could pick your gallery of preference from a range of available options, usually a sidebar made using frames(!)comprised of buttons made using MS paint(!!), which included such treasures as TWINKS, UNIFORM, JOCKS, BEARS, and so on and so forth.  I want to find a screen shot now.  I wonder if any of them still exist?

But mind blowing?  No – I knew it was there.  It was amazing, please don’t misunderstand me, I was thrilled.  But not mind-blown.

Perhaps, years later, my first (relatively late) foray into online gaming, via the exciting medium of Transformers: War For Cybertron? 2010 was a big year for my Playstation 3. I wasn’t hugely into video games and had never bothered with online interaction.  Why would I want to do that?  But there is something so satisfying about shooting unwitting and very real competitors in the back of the head, then turning into a jet and bombing the fuck out of them, that I was quickly persuaded. I still play it often.  It was always going to be Transformers that sold me on this, I suppose.

And yet, I was fully aware of online gaming. Call Of Duty, Halo and all that other tosh were inescapable, especially working in a school. I knew it was out there, and I found a game the thrilled me, but I probably wouldn’t say mind-blown.

No.

No, I remember perfectly the first mind-blowing thing I saw online.

Something honestly really simple.

I remember it because I couldn’t get over it. I am loathe to say it because it makes me sound so old and so lame, but...

See, I’d seen videos, however small, short and pixelated on my feeble late 90s dial-up.  But one evening, tapping away talking to random weirdos on Yahoo! Chat, a very nice American boy a few years older than me (straight I’m afraid, but thanks for asking) asked if I wanted to see him on webcam.

WHAT? What the fuck?  Is that a thing?!

Why, yes please.  Do go on.

So he switched it on, it took an age to load, and the sound was terrible, but there he was. Smiling, chatting away, talking to me LIVE!  From America!  On my computer!  In my parents’ living room!

I was beside myself. I couldn’t stop laughing, it was so amazing! I didn’t believe it was real at first, so I kept making him do weird proofs: Wave you arms, hold up 4 fingers, put your hands on your head, etc, etc.  He kindly performed like a trained monkey, but I think he was quite excited as it was his new toy.

I was amazed.

I know, I know!  It seems so ordinary and pathetic and stupid now.

I was 17. It was a more innocent time.

It was 1997 for Christ’s sake.

But there you go -  MIND. BLOWN.

I was so enthralled, I quite forgot the fact that I didn’t share the threatening and seedy-sounding fact that I talked to random faraway weirdos with my mother, and quickly shouted: “Mum, quick quick!  Look at this!  He’s in America!!”

She was pretty amazed too.

So there you have it.  Such a simple thing now, but you have to appreciate that this was ground-breaking.

And so much better than all that lovely free porn. 

BEDM14 - Day 6: A Letter

Day 6: A Letter

Dear Mr Carter,
Thank you for taking care of Mark on your trip. He really enjoyed himself and we were pleased that he managed to eat some of the food whilst you were away. Only some of his packed food was gone so he seems to have managed to eat some of the food there! Could you send us a picture of Mark from the trip, as he wasn’t able to take any.
Many thanks,
Jackie

ONE. FUCKING. THANK YOU.

Three days, thirty autistic kids, no sleep, no time off in lieu – NO THANK YOU.

We gave up our own time, you see.  There is no extra pay for the fact you are essentially at work for 72 hours without a break. No “go home early” when you get back. No appreciation or gratitude at all, it seems.

I’m not surprised however. I’ve done quite a few of these adventure holidays now. ‘Residentials’ we call them. This must be my seventh or eighth. And you never really sleep, and you never get a break. You are on duty for the duration, as there is always someone crying or freaking out or whatever, even at 4am.

But you do it because it is good for the children. They need to learn to be away from home, and their parents are always grateful for some respite.

Just not grateful enough to actually say thank you.

Thirty kids, having the time of their lives (once the crying has stopped and they realise they won’t die without their mummy). Thirty kids, and one lousy thank you note.

Though that’s one more than I got last year. And one more than... 

You know?  I think this is the first parent who has ever said thank you.

Day 5 - 5pm today

5pm is when the fun begins. 

Not that I don’t enjoy my work. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun, but it’s hard, quite selfless work at times, and 5pm is when it’s all about me. A little psychological signal that it's time to switch off.

I usually leave work between 4 and 5pm, depending what I want to get done, but I leave at 4pm at least three days a week, if I’m brutally honest. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, typically.

It’s only a 25 minute drive, so by 5pm I am definitely always home, and @superlative gets home about quarter past. Therefore:

5PM IS COCKTAIL HOUR.

He likes it (and me too actually), when he arrives home and I hand him a martini as he walks into the room. I have usually started dinner, so the music is on, the cocktails are made, and I am sipping away, chopping the fennel or grating the parmesan or whatever.

I don't drink to forget.
That's just a happy coincidence.

Our home is a little oasis of calm by the sea. People ask me about my home life, and the word I always go to is serene. It’s quiet and tasteful and pleasant and calm and sponsored by Absolut.

We have an untroubled life, and 5pm is when I really start to realise this, and appreciate how lucky we are. We’re like a modern day Margot and Jerry Leadbetter. Only we don’t drink tonic.

Of course, today being a bank holiday, we are off schedule somewhat.

Cocktail Hour started at 1.30.

BEDM Day 4: What’s the problem?

Every problem is an opportunity.  This is what we are told. This is how things are spun.

It’s not exactly true. Most problems are just problems. Something you need to fix. Or correct. Or address. Or redress.

But there is a part of me that sort of likes problems. Probably more in a work sense than in my personal life, though in some situations, even then. There is, if I’m honest, a great deal of satisfaction in facing a problem, thinking on it, tackling it, and making it right.

I find this at school quite a lot. I find myself, on something of a regular basis, telling people:

“But I like it when they rack ‘em up and I keep shooting ‘em down.”

The population with whom I work are, for want of a better word, troubled. They get angry, they get anxious, they get confused, they get abusive, they can get quite violent. It’s a pretty stressful job in many ways. People always use the word ‘challenging’, probably to be nice, but actually, they’re spot on. It is a challenge. It’s sort of exciting in a weird sort of way. They’ll explode with some crazy, semi-delusional axe to grind, and I have to find a way of manoeuvring them so

a) they don’t hurt anyone

b) they don’t hurt themselves

c) they don’t get their own way. We have to win, you see. If they lash out, cause a scene, throw a major tantrum, smash the place up and you placate them, they just learn that lashing out, throwing tantrums and smashing stuff up is a pretty easy way of getting what you want.

Or maybe it’ll be something like:

“Right, it’s time to go in now.”

“I’m not going to fucking science. I fucking hate science. It’s boring.” <pushes bin over>

After which they will remind you that ‘you can’t fucking make them’ which is technically true. Physically moving them and making them sit in a lesson and work?  Pretty tricky - they’re like... 15 and bigger than me.

So you unbuckle your bag of tricks; persuasion, consequences, rewards for good choices (like doing the fuck as you’re fucking well told for five fucking minutes), or sometimes even appealing to their better nature, if they have one; and after a few minutes they’ll be sat in science working like a lamb.

It’s very satisfying.

Especially when, once the moment has passed and they’re calm and think you’re wonderful again (because you’re not making them go to science anymore), you slip in the consequences like a knife between the ribs:

“Well done. I’m really pleased you went to science so sensibly. Now, I don’t need to remind you that you’ve lost your reward time today for swearing at me, do I?”

“No.” <glaring at floor>

“But you understand why, yes?”

“Yes!”

“Good. So all we need to do to put it behind us is go and pick up that bin, okay?”

“Okay! Okay!”

And like magic, the bin is reinstalled in its proper place, science work is completed - however begrudgingly, and most important of all, my honour is restored and he has to sit and be bored whilst everyone else gets to play computer games.

And replay this once or twice a week for a few months and by the end of the year you have a pupil who, most of the time, just does as he’s told without throwing bins, calling you a prick or punching you in the face.

He has LEARNED CONSEQUENCES.

Problems are okay. Without problems there would be no solutions...

BEDM Day 3: Facebook or Twitter?

Call me a heretic, but clearly Facebook.

I use both daily, but I just end up interacting far more on Facebook than Twitter, though reading around some of the other #BEDM14 blogs (I am late writing today), I appear to be in a minority of one.

For me, Facebook is full of my friends, and Twitter is full of people I like but I don’t know so well, or haven’t met (yet) – though there is obviously quite a bit of overlap. I’d say people tend to graduate from Twitter to Facebook once I know them better, I suppose.

Most of my closest friends are quite into Facebook too. My Facebook feed moves quite fast, and it’s not populated by random weirdos I haven’t seen in 20 years. It’s silly messages and links from people I see all the time, and photos of things we’ve done in the last couple of weeks.

It’s really big with all the guys at work too. Everyone is really into it, and it makes it quite fun in school – lots of conversations at work start with mentions of something stupid said on Facebook. So I think maybe I use it quite differently to other people – they seem quite annoyed by incessant invites to play stupid games and dreary news from ancient school friends from times past. For me, it’s all based around my current friends really- it’s like a big, convenient hub where we can all talk together about the same thing, over a time span of a few days.

The messaging is a godsend too. Group messages on Facebook are generally how my friends arrange absolutely everything now. Texts are too complicated now, as you don’t know what other people have said regarding making plans. Emails get too unwieldy, and you end up with an inbox of twenty-million messages as each new bit gets added on. But we have strings and strings of Facebook group message threads (of say, 6 or 7 people), where we sort out dates and times and everyone can see the responses from everyone else. It really has become quite indispensable now, and I think I’d feel a bit lost without it.

Twitter?  I like it, but it isn’t as useful for me, nor as fun. I see it more as a source of entertainment, but it is a far less interactive space for me. I like running through my feed and opening up all the news items that grab my attention, random photos etc, and the odd conversation, though it doesn’t seem to take off in nearly the same way as any communication on Facebook inevitably does.

I do love the fact that you hear everything first though. I always know about exciting, significant or dramatic news items ages before everyone else because of Twitter. I remember when Michael Jackson died, and the Twitter Rumour Mill was grinding away, back and forth with uncertainty as details gradually filtered through across continents. Then about an hour later, television news finally caught up.

So they both have their place, but in terms of being fun and sociable and useful, it’s gotta be Facebook all the way.  

Sorry geeks and bloggers - I know it’s heresy, and I almost feel there’s this sense of superiority on Twitter, as if Facebook is for the riff-raff.

But from my perspective, Twitter is for the people who talk about it but don’t do it, Facebook is for the people who do it, then talk about it after.

And more than likely, post 25 photographs of it for your perusal. 

BEDM Day 2: The things of which you’re most afraid

My honest response is this. Always THIS. 

It’s a lazy, unimaginative, clichéd response, but (if you care to read) it cuts quite deep. I recognise it as quite pathological, if I’m honest about the depth of stress I can experience and the way it has developed and changed, despite my efforts to combat it.

So I’m not going to talk about that again. The situation has not changed. The progress I have made there is, realistically, as much progress as can be made without expensive and lengthy therapy which will yield uncertain reward. And for a relatively minor complaint that occurs so infrequently.

There is not a lot else I fear. I’m not scared of dying. Every other blog post I read is about social situations and talking in company; social phobias are apparently way popular in the blogging world – but I love it all. I like meeting new people and talking crap. I’m not worried about flying, heights, drowning or ending up the hapless victim of violent crime. Illness holds no fear for me and I’m unmoved at the prospect of dying alone in poverty.

But I am scared of going gaga.

I have no plans to lead a long and miserable life. I joke about not living into old age, but the truth is, I would far sooner die at 40 than go mental at 63. There is, as far as I know, no great history in my family of dementia, though my nanny on my father’s side lost the plot slightly in the last couple of years of her life; though she was 88, and a bit of lapsing in and out of conversations and forgetting who people were on occasion seems fair enough to me.  

Especially given how utterly forgettable some of her visitors were.  

But the thought of losing my wits, not being able to take care of myself, not knowing all the things I’ve spent so long trying to know, not being able to remember?

It really scares me.

I often recall a poster from the wall of my doctor’s surgery when I was growing up. Black and white photo; older, but not elderly couple; large black border; big white caption:

MY HUSBAND CAN’T REMEMBER WHO I AM.

Small print: He can’t remember my name, he can’t remember our children, he can’t remember blahdy-blah-Alzheimer’s-etc-etc.

It really scared me. And then you hear all those awful stories about people with dementia who can’t remember that their spouse has died. I remember a case-study we undertook at uni. A woman who didn’t remember her husband was dead, and her carers had to tell her every day why he hadn’t visited, and every day it destroyed her. EVERY DAY, OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

We discussed the ethics of staff misleading her. Telling her that he would be in to visit later, as she didn’t remember after a while anyway, and how the thought of his eventual arrival was a source of comfort and contentment for her. Was it okay to lie to protect her? To relieve her constant state of grieving?

I don’t know. I’d probably lie. But I’m damn sure I’d sooner jump of a bridge than endure that.

The thought of being confused and vulnerable and not knowing?  Compounded perhaps by not even being aware that you’re so vulnerable and confused; not aware of your condition?

That’s what I’m really afraid of.

BEDM 2014 - Day One: What would be on your bucket list?

It’s kind of pitiable, but I kind of already keep a bucket list.  I have a little .txt file saved on my desktop with all the stuff I have to remember on it. It has a list of songs I want to download, but haven’t got round to, a reasonably up-to-date wish list (because when it comes to birthdays/Christmas, and people ask, I can never actually think of anything – so now I don’t have to), movies I want to see that aren’t out yet, and my bucket list.

It’s nothing complex; it’s very short. The items aren’t even particularly expensive, difficult to achieve or exciting. It’s just a list of stuff I’m trying not to forget to do before I die. It contains (currently) just four items.

1) Go Punting

This is pretty self explanatory. I want to go punting, with @superlative, down a river on a sunny day. Possibly wearing a straw boater. 

2) Airkix on a school day

I have no interest in skydiving.  Especially to raise money for charity – I’ve always thought it a really self-indulgent, expensive way of raising money as a flimsy pretext for doing something YOU want to do. The cost of the activity could be added to your donation if you raised the money by other means.

But I would like to do an indoor skydive -  one of those things with a massive fan, where you look like you’re flying.  But I want to do it in the week, off-season, when it’s cheaper, on a school day. I want to phone in sick, drive to Basingstoke or wherever it is, and go and do my indoor skydive whilst I’m getting paid.  I want to play hooky.  I want to play hooky and do something awesome whilst I do it.

3) Come Dine With Me

We once made a half-hearted effort to do alternating dinner parties with a group of friends. We took turns to cook and host, vaguely attempting to impress and show off with our culinary offerings, and vaguely attempting to score each host. This quickly degenerated into over-generous awarding of points, with no-one scoring below an 8, because HOW COULD YOU?  Your friends have spent time and money making you delicious food -  what kind of inhuman monster would award them a six after all that?

I want to do it in style. Four or five couples, take turns cooking, record as much as you can be bothered to record, and most importantly: secret filming of genuine, realistic, ruthless scoring; harsh if necessary.

It would be a hoot. Or I’d have no friends left. Maybe that.

4) Proper transformers cosplay/fancy dress.

If time and resources were no object, and I could devote sufficient effort to the enterprise:

This. Just this.