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.

I have never...

...had a cup of tea.

People don’t believe me, but it’s true.  I think they assume I just don’t like it and haven’t had one for years, but that isn’t it. I was MADE to try it once, in 1987, at my nan’s house. I took a sip and sort of pretended to drink it, but the smell really put me off, so I didn’t actually drink it.

It was under the flimsy pretext of “If you’ve never tried it, how do you know”, but I wasn’t an easy sell. 

You know if you don’t like things, don’t you? As children, we sometimes assume we don’t like things based on... well – not much. But as adults, we become more adventurous (usually) and if we don’t like things, it’s generally because we’ve tried it or have some other, very good reason for dismissing something.

But the tea thing?

PEOPLE JUST WILL NOT ACCEPT YOU DON’T LIKE TEA.

They are unprepared to believe that you’ve not tried it.

And they forget.  They forget that you don’t drink hot drinks, even despite the massive song and dance they make EVERY TIME THEY OFFER THEM. Or they acknowledge your non-tea drinking, but offer you one anyway, “in case you’ve changed your mind.”

Nothing wrong with that, obviously, but it is REALLY WEIRD when it’s happening to you.

Yes, hot drinks in general. I know, right?

How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it.

I don’t really drink hot drinks at all, though I have had a cup of hot chocolate in the last few years. I think I had one with Baileys in it or something, as long as it is made with half milk and half hot water so it’s... well, not hot.

I just don’t like hot drinks.

I like cold drinks. I like to feel refreshed. Hot drinks are just... it’s weird, okay?

Don’t get me started on my year in Canada. Meeting a Brit who
       a) didn’t like tea, and
       b) had never had it before was conceptually baffling in North America.

People actually doubted my UK credentials.

I’m surprised they let me through border control at all. I’m not sure I’d make it through US immigration in the current climate once they got wind of my inexplicable hot-drink perversions.

Boys and their Toys

Today I read a tweet about gay men all loving Lego.

This is true.  Gay men DO all love Lego. Fact.

But it’s also inaccurate.  It’s not gay men that love Lego.  It’s just men. They love Lego.

And it’s not just Lego. Men love toys.  Because men, if we’re honest, are generally just little boys who got taller. And boys love their toys... So why, I hear you ask, is there this gay perception pertaining to toys, games, gadgets and geekery? The gays genuinely ARE all obsessed with Playstation, comics, Star Trek, Dr Who, Lego, etc, etc, the list goes on.

Well, straight men are too. But straight men have to hide their enthusiasm for toys, games, comics and science fiction to attract girls. They have to hide it in the first instance, and then once settled comfortably into relationships, they’re just not allowed the free run of filling their homes up with Lego or geeky posters or Dr Who memorabilia.  They’re not allowed to spend loads of time shopping for comics, or playing x-box.

I spend all my disposable income on myself.

Don’t get me wrong -  straight guys with girlfriends still DO these things, but there often appears to be a serious limit on it. They always complain how they never get to play PS3 anymore, because of this and that.  Especially post-child.

But the gays? The gays get to continue to be little children, buy themselves Lego, play computer games, watch Dr Who, watch Star Wars for the 187^th time, and spend all their disposable income on gadgets. And when they get into relationships and get a place together?  It doesn’t change. You’re allowed to continue to be geeky, collect crap, watch crap, stay up drinking cocktails and playing Playstation all night because you both like doing it. In fact, you can do it together...!

That’s kind of the best bit about being gay. You get to play together and share boy things, and kind of... be yourself in a way that I often feel straight guys have to subdue. Being straight means you have to pretend not to like certain things, or to like them but leave them behind whilst you pretend to be a grown up. That’s why I see dads walking around the Lego shop with their children, with looks of wonder and longing on their faces. They have to live a bit more vicariously than the gays do...

We’re all still 10 year old boys at heart – so treat yourself.  Go and get yourself some Lego...

Many boys like to lounge around in
pants, playing playstation all day.