Surfing the wind
I’m writing this in response to (yesterday’s) Daily Prompt:
“Apply yourself: Describe your last attempt to learn something that did not come easily to you.”
Once upon a long ago I decided to try my hand at a spot of wind surfing. I know the Daily Prompt mentions “your last attempt”, but I honestly can’t think of a more recent example. I haven’t really tried to learn anything recently apart from computer stuff for my job, and that isn’t so hard to pick up.
The thing about wind surfing is that it’s a physical activity, and the thing about me is that I’m more a watch TV, play video games and read books kind of a guy. That’s what made this so hard.
A chap from work (I was working in Cork, Ireland at the time) announced that there were a couple of places going on a beginners’ wind surfing course nearby. In a moment of madness, I signed up!
We started in a test board on dry land. I fell off.
We progressed to a proper board on the water. I fell off. A lot.
The water wasn’t particularly deep. In fact you could stand up and keep your head above the surface.
Here’s my modus operandi when I fall – whenever possible, when I feel myself falling off something, I jump. This is an attempt to keep some control over the fall. When I fall into water, I pull my legs up under myself so that they don’t hit the bottom (which I can’t see and therefore have no wish to land on). These are instinctual reactions.
Therefore, falling off the wind surfing board always involved getting completely wet, as I always ended up completely submerged. In one notable incident, the sail came down on top of me, resulting in a nasty lump to the head.
The highest point of the day was actually getting on the board and sailing off. I was so excited that it was finally happening that I didn’t want to stop and the people on shore watched as I got smaller and smaller, headed out into the bay. It’s easy to stay on once you’ve got going as you have the sail to hang on to. Turning around wasn’t something I could do as it involved a complicated shuffling around the sail.
Finally I jumped off in an attempt not to go out to sea. The water was very deep and very cold. Eventually I managed to get back on and I kept going until I crashed into the shore.
I’m not sure I’d do it again, but I’m glad I tried it. It was way outside my comfort zone (my comfort zone only includes “things I’ve done before”), but I gave it a go and I had my one successful sail. Something to add to my (small) list of life experiences!
That time of the year
It’s “that time of the year”. Christmas has come and gone, and a new year has begun. They’re calling this one “2013”. It’s as good a name as any I suppose, and it’s handily one higher than last year, which makes it easy to remember.
I once wrote that I hate Thursdays. Well, I hate January as well. So you can imagine how I feel about Thursdays in January.
Anyhoo, January always seems like a bit of a let-down. All the anticipation, decorations and what-not have gone and we’re left with nothing but yet another whole new year to get through. There’s nothing at all between now and Easter, unless you count Valentine’s Day, which is just depressing if you’re on your own.
The problem with the year these days is that the whole thing is exactly the same. Once upon a time you could at least see the seasons change. A few years ago that stopped, and now we get:
Spring in the UK. And Summer, Autumn and Winter.
Picture by Tony Atkin (geograph.co.uk, Creative Commons licence) taken near St. Austell, Cornwall.
- Spring – raining
- Summer – raining and warm
- Autumn – raining and windy
- Winter – raining and cold
To be fair, it snowed a couple of winters ago, but that was quite unusual. Many years ago summers could get quite hot for long periods (in Cornwall that means temperatures in the mid to high twenties) and you could go outside in a T-shirt and shorts (well I couldn’t on account of my big fat legs), but last year all it did was rain.
Well, I guess too much rain all year is far better than no rain for years.
So let’s lift a glass to 2013 and see what it has in store!
(Could it be exactly the same as 2012…?)
Armageddagain
Picture courtesy of Federal Government of the United States
Once again, the end of the world has failed to happen. It’s now after 21/12/2012 so I guess we’re safe – for now. These predictions are starting to get a bit old. Any number of raptures have failed to materialise (although the chap in charge of that prediction has gone quiet so maybe he went on his own).
There was even a film made specially for this occasion (“2012”), which was released early enough to ensure ample profits before the world blew up, and the end of the world still didn’t happen. Stupid lying film.
This latest prediction was based on the end of the Mayan calendar – actually the end of a 5125 year cycle. Did anyone not think that maybe the Mayans couldn’t count past 5125? Or that maybe the “end of the cycle” didn’t necessarily mean the “end of the world”?
What about all these people who devised ingenious means to stay alive? Do they really want to live all alone in a dead and ravaged world? It’ll be quieter and a lot less complicated, I suppose.
Merry Christmas!
Stick to your guns
Recently a friend posted the following on Facebook:
“Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you, “Do you want to pick door #2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?”
This is known as the Monty Hall problem, and the correct answer is to switch, though it’s all based on probabilities and sounds like bollocks to me (though I admit I’m mathematically challenged).
That’s a question most of us have had to ask ourselves, I’m sure. Not that exact question, of course. Most of us have never been on a game show. I’m sure most of us have no wish to be on a game show (or is that just me?). How many times have you said (or heard someone say) “Oh no, I was going to say that!”? Why didn’t you then?
The question posed here, in more general terms without goats and cars and a single chance to switch, is this:
“I’m faced with a choice. I’ve had a little think. I’ve made my choice based on any information I might have at the current time. Do I now change my mind?”
Many years ago, I was paying a particularly intense game of draughts (I believe that “across the pond” the game is called “checkers”). I don’t usually play chess or draughts or games of that ilk – I’m intellectually lazy and don’t like to think too hard about things when I’m supposed to be “having fun”. Anyway, this game had been going for about an hour and it finally came down to a choice. I couldn’t win, but I could force a stalemate. I had only one piece I could move, and I could only move it one of two directions. I stared at it for five minutes, and was feeling the pressure. I was convinced I knew the correct move and I went the other way. I lost.
This isn’t the same as the original question, of course. This wasn’t random chance – the answer was there on the board but I couldn’t see it. I made a choice and then for whatever reason I changed my mind at the last moment. That’s bugged me for the past ten years.
So, in answer to the original question, I would not change my choice to door #2. If my choice is wrong, I’ll always know that it was my choice. I can live with that. If I change my mind and my original choice was the correct one, I’ll beat myself up about it because I’ll always know that my first instinct was correct.
So my advice (for what it’s worth), is this: when faced with a choice, have a good think about all the available information, make a choice and stick to your guns!
A Cure For What Ails You
Cure upon which the song “Lily the Pink”was based (image from Wikipedia, Commons licence)
There have been many instances of “miracle cures” throughout the ages. So-called “Medicine Men” in the 19th and early 20th centuries (this is a guess but it sounds about right) would peddle “snake oil”, purporting to be some form of cure-all medicine. According to sixties pop group Scaffold, a young lady by the name of “Lily the Pink” invented a medicinal compound capable of curing all forms of ills. The Simpsons episode “The Front” saw Bart writing the words “I will not sell miracle cures” on the blackboard at the beginning of the show.
I’ve discovered a new cure! It’s a cure for “feeling a bit down”.
Note the words “a bit down”. This isn’t a cure for actual (clinical) depression. If you think you’re suffering from that, go see your doctor without delay, as it’s a nasty thing to suffer from and it’s usually treatable to some extent.
No, this is a cure for when you’re getting a case of the “why me’s”. Maybe one big thing has gone wrong in your life, or lots of little things at once.
A necessary digression is called for at this point. Soap Operas. Love ’em or hate ’em, they’re everywhere. I’ve not seen many soaps outside of the UK, but from the ones I’ve seen, US soaps seem to involve rich glitzy people living amazing lives. Australian soaps feature real people, ups and downs, some dangerous situations and a hell of a lot of barbecues. UK soaps feature real-life gritty people living really depressing lives.
OK, now we’ve got that sorted, back to the cure. My cure works a bit like the jabs you get when you’re little, where they give you a tiny amount of a disease and that prompts your body to produce antibodies, ready for the real thing (I think that’s how it works but I’m waaaaaay too lazy to look it up).
So are you ready for my cure for “feeling a bit down”? Here it comes…
Watch a British soap opera!
Every bad thing that could ever happen, happens in quick succession to these people. They’re the unluckiest people in the world. Here’s an example.
Ian Beale (Eastenders) – before and after (identical images available on multiple sites, copyright probably BBC)
One chappie considers himself a successful businessman. He’s been married several times. One of his ex-wives hired a contract killer to knock him off. He went bankrupt, but pulled himself back up. Now for his recent history – he meets an old flame. They decide to get married. She’s in love with money, so he spends and spends until he’s on the verge of bankruptcy again. His relationship with his daughter suffers because of this. His fiancée runs off just before the wedding. He finds out that his little brother accidentally murdered the neighbour by whacking her over the head with a picture frame. He has a breakdown and is last seen wandering down the middle of the road in his jimmi-jams. He’s later found living under a bridge sporting a huge beard and holding up his trousers with a piece of rope.
Blimey. I mean, that’s pretty bad. It kind of puts my slightly leaky car and lack of life direction into perspective. I feel so much better already! No matter what’s happening in my life, it’s nothing compared to the goings-on in my favourite soaps. I’m cured of my “feeling a bit down” situation. Hooray! I’ve been exposed to so many depressing episodes of soap operas, I’ve become immune!
Disclaimer: this cure may not work
The Sniffles
Rather annoyingly, I’ve spent the last week or so with a bit of a cold. A bit of a nasty cold, actually.
It followed the usual course. A tingling in the throat, followed by a full-on nasty throat, followed a couple of days later by the whole nose and sneezing thing. Then came the coughing and headache. The odd thing is that I never seem to get all the symptoms at once, almost as if the cold is evolving day by day. I’m not complaining particularly – everything at once would be even more miserable, though it would be cool if the whole thing happened all at once and therefore only lasted a couple of days rather than a whole week.
Lemsip. Yummy – but read the label!
Lemsip is the key here. Wonderful stuff. Unfortunately, rather delicious as well. The trouble is (and one of the reasons it works so well) is that it contains a gramme of Paracetamol, which means you can’t just drink it willy-nilly. I was very good and got through the entire episode with only a couple of sachets – mustn’t stress the kidneys!
I worked throughout, of course – most people at work already had it so there was no real point in staying home, regardless of how ill I was feeling. There’s another reason for not taking time off. In over nine years at this job, I’ve yet to take any sick time. The longer this lasts, the less likely I am to take a sick day – it’s become a matter of pride. I even (jokingly) remarked to a colleague – the one I blame for passing the cold on to me, in fact 🙂 – that sometimes I wish my appendix would just burst so that the pressure of sick days would be off me.
And, lo and behold, I woke up at 3am the next morning with a nasty pain in the appendix area, spreading right across the front. Psychosomatic? Maybe. Or maybe just gas. I spent the next half hour trying to convince my body I was “just joking” about the whole appendicitis thing. In any case, I was fine later on. Appendix still intact.
But be careful what you wish for!
Season of mists and mellow etc
It was a lovely day yesterday. A real Autumn becoming Winter kind of a day.
I got up nice and early to drive into Truro for a long-overdue haircut. It was still dark, but crisp and clear. It was also the coldest morning of the year so far – the temperature gauge in the car read 2 degrees and the little orange snowflake was showing on the dashboard. As I arrived in town the sun was just peeking over the horizon, big and orange and beautiful.
Towards evening we had a couple of short, hard rain showers. Not that persistent misty drizzle we’ve had all summer. Good, proper honest-to-goodness rain. Lovely! Well, the absence of rain might have been better, but at least it was proper rain.
This sort of weather always reminds me of when I was little and in primary school. We would always have to collect leaves which had fallen to the ground, bring them into school and stick them into our exercise book. Then there was the Harvest Festival, when everyone would bring in vegetables and things for a display in the main hall. This is the only time of year which reminds me of primary school stuff – not even Christmas compares.
We switched back from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time early this morning which means lighter mornings and darker evenings. I prefer darker evenings – getting home after work, the flat always seems cosier with a little light on and the curtains closed. A warm haven away from the cold outside. There’s no point in light evenings anyway – all it did all summer was rain.
I even decided to write a poem to mark the occasion of Autumn, but all I managed were two lines which would go in the middle somewhere:
The crunch of leaves upon the ground
A carpet lying all around
On the plus side, if I change “leaves” to “snow”, it works for winter as well, so maybe I’ll have another go in a month or so. While you’re waiting for my literary master piece – to be titled “Winter Days” (formerly titled “Autumn Days”) – read this one from an expert (Keats) instead.
Now I’ve just got to hope that winter is cold and crisp and it doesn’t snow – I like snow and all, but driving over frozen snow to get to work is no fun at all.
Birthday Time!
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday, dear dralimaaaaaaaaaan,
Happy birthday to me.
Yes, it’s that time of the year again. Time to take stock, ponder the last year and really think about the things that really matter. Or whatever.
Or is that what you’re supposed to do on New Year? I forget. Old age. More aches and pains. Becoming slightly forgetful. The other day I went to pay for petrol and the card’s PIN number went straight out of my head. I had to use my debit card instead. Aargh! Paying for petrol straight from my bank account? Everyone knows Visa fronts me my petrol money.
Yesterday I was “a certain age”. Less than 24 hours later I’m “a certain age plus one”. A whole year in a day. Hardly seems fair. Hey ho.
I got some lovely presents and spent a wonderful yesterday evening over with my friends where we had Chinese takeaway and watched Eddie Izzard – very funny! Now I’ve got a couple of days off work in celebration.
And I had some good news – I won the lottery in time for my birthday! Well, maybe “won” is too strong a word. Here’s the notification:
Woo-hoo! I’m rich I tell you, rich!
Yes, 25 big ones. Unless “big ones” is slang for “thousands”, in which case, 25 small ones. What shall I spend it on? More tickets I expect. It’ll pay for next month’s entries. But nice all the same – that’s 2.5 times more than I’ve ever won in one go before!
So I leave you with these immortal words from Pink Floyd’s “Time”, from their amazing album “Dark Side of the Moon”. Forgive me if I get the words slightly wrong, but I can’t be bothered to spend 10 seconds looking them up so I’m reproducing them from memory.
“And you run, you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking,
Racing around, to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.”
Ah, happy days!
English – UK or US?
I read a great article a couple of days ago on the BBC News website – “Britishisms and the Britishisation of American English“. For many years “Americanisms” have been sneaking into the British language, but it appears that, to a lesser extent, the reverse is also true!
Popular culture seems to be the main reason for much of this exchange of language. Many of the biggest films and TV programmes hail from the US and so, of course, the British are usually able to understand US English as we’re constantly exposed to it. For example, most British people understand words such as “hood” (bonnet), “trunk” (boot), “gas” (petrol), “sidewalk” (pavement) and “shopping mall” (shopping centre).
There are also spelling differences to consider. I think the general rules for converting from UK English to US English are:
- If there’s an “s” pronounced like a “z”, replace the “s” with “z”
- If there’s an “ou”, remove the “u”
- If a word ends “re”, change it to “er”
These spelling differences can be tricky – as a computer programmer I’m getting very used to typing the word “colour” as “color” (otherwise it won’t work!). A colleague at work said something funny about the “ou” situation – “Right, we’ve gotten rid of the damn British, now let’s get rid of all those damn u’s!”.
Using slang is where we have to be careful. Because the languages are so similar, it’s easy to forget that what we say may be misunderstood. Back when I worked in Germany, there was an American woman working in the lab. One day she said to me “Hi, nice pants!”. I immediately panicked – was there a split in the fabric? Was my zip undone? It took me a while to realise that she was talking about my trousers!
The same colleague who had the “ou” theory also mentioned another slang word which could lead to misunderstandings. Is it safe to enter a corner shop in America and ask for “twenty fags, please”? Or to call out “I’ll be there in a minute, I’m just having a fag”? Possibly this particular slang word has two distinct meanings in both languages. If not, it would sound very odd. A “fag” in Britain being a cigarette, of course.
So, embrace both languages but think before you speak!
The Classics
I’ve always wanted to be a sophisticated chap. Reading the classics – Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Shakespeare, Tolstoy. Listening to all the classic music – Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky. I’d love to be able to intersperse my witty and sophisticated conversion with quotes from Sartre and, well, all those other dudes people quote.
The thing is, I can’t be bothered. I’ve tried. I’ve really tried.
I like the occasional classical music, but by and large it makes me feel like I’m in a lift, desperate to get out at any floor and take the stairs instead. Or in one of those posh restaurants where such music is constantly piped in.
A beautifully-presented plate of almost no food.
(Not that I regularly/ever visit such restaurants – they’re largely incompatible with my bank balance. My credit card prefers the likes of pub grub, McDonald’s and Pizza Express. Plus I don’t fancy paying a week’s wages for beautifully-presented almost nothing food.)
I had a go at some classical literature – Emily Bronte’s only published novel Wuthering Heights. I made it about half way through before I got bored. It’s a good story, but it was hard going, I tell you. And very little in the way of zombies, decapitations, magic or mystical creatures. I’ll stick to Kate Bush’s version from now on.
As for quotes, I have a vast array at my disposal. Unfortunately 99% come from Red Dwarf and Black Adder. It’s amazing how often I get to use them in real life situations!
My lack of knowledge (and interest in) the classics bothered me for ages. However, I’ve recently decided that I don’t care! Life’s too short. I’ll spend the rest of mine reading, watching and listening to the stuff I enjoy, rather than the stuff I think I ought to enjoy. And let’s face it, in a couple of hundred years, the stuff I like now will probably be “classics”!
So bring on Marina and the Diamonds, the Kim Harrison “Hollows” books and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That’s what I like and I’m not going to feel bad about it any more.
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