.Stress and me.

There are times when being a writer and a thinker can be extremely difficult. Not in a writers block sense but more in an every day sense. I tend to over analyze things and it leads to all sorts of issues, one of them is taking yourself way too seriously, life is full of ups and downs, if it weren't you would not be alive, it's part of who and what we are and I should accept it more easily.
I think a lot of the problems we all face in this wonderful day and age is a lack of time to sit down and actually take in what is and isnt imoportant, it's not the new TV or the BMW or the new house, yes they are lovely to have, but as with a child and a new toy the novelty wears off and your focus soon goes to some other expensive trinket.
I love the fact that my mind allows me to shut all that out on occasions and see just what we have in real wealth, yes i have my off days, in fact yesterday was one of them !, but in general i find myself able to have a wry smile at people's obsession with what they WILL own rather than what they already have.
When was the last time you just stood and looked at a view, no mobiles, no friends, no interruptions, just you and your breath ?. I would imagine very few of you could tell me. I can tell you I did it two or three times yesterday and yes if you like, send the stretcher and the white coated gentry, mad I may be, but to me it is an important part of life, most of what is great about this life is completely free and all around us, don't just stare at the surface, look into life, you will be amazed at what you see.
Some people do manage this through exercise, that is to be applauded, but at the same time you are focusing on something, your target weight, your target miles run/lengths swam etc, it's all about targets and aims, whereas standing there and taking in the actual realness of what is around you, feeling the depth of what is around you and the wealth in what we are given for free, gives you a safe house to bolt to when you are stressed.

 Try it.

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

Art should imitate life and explain to us all in better clarity just what it all means.  That is the simplistic view. The problem with art is that it sits uncomfortably beside the lifestyle many of us lead in the modern day world, if we are seen to be pandering to the arts we are deemed "liberal" and if we scorn such wonders of the above average intelligence we are too "Labour".
The fact is the general population would much prefer to see  a new hospital being built rather than a piece of breathtaking modern day architecture placed somewhere in a Town Centre with a few strategically placed benches for "the masses" to sit and stare at it.
When put like that it's no wonder art is fighting for funding, governments will play with the press and manipulate figures, newspapers will highlight costs compared to Hospitals and Schools and eventually art suffers (rather unfairly) as a result.
I must admit, art has done itself an injustice over the past few years, the carte blanche attitude to council officials rubber stamping ridiculous monstrosities on the edges of town's and cities which have gone wildly over budget is a travesty that must surely now be addressed, in Shrewsbury my home town we have a "slinky" which is the best way to describe it and it went way over budget (450k) and became the subject of many heated arguments, the idea was well meaning enough being a lasting monument to the great Charles Darwin who was born in the town, but it was headed up by people with poor budgeting skills and as usual, instead of a wonderful tribute to a man of our times it is a laughing stock to locals because of the sheer amount of money it cost, though outsiders without such knowledge marvel at the sight, it is actually truly impressive.
Therein lies a tale, the more the community is involved in art the better it is accepted, too often authorities are blinded by the kudos that comes with signing a well known artist who has national acclaim when in reality if they worked within their own community to find an artist of worth (of which there are many) the whole project would start on not only a better footing but also in a better financial position without the heavy fees a big name demands.

Art to me is never about money, if it is then you are a dealer and as such it's a commodity and you will never truly know it's REAL value. Art is beauty, it's pure, it is from the very heart and soul of the person that produces it. What you see in a statue or a painting or even a book is a screen shot of a time and place in the artists life, something personal. There is no price on that.
If we are to believe in art once more we must take it back from those who continue to see it as purely commercial, art is dummed down when it is used as a way to attract tourists, it loses it's majesty and it's purpose. The great painters expressed themselves on canvas in no dissimilar way to Dickens or Chaucer did in print, we find solace in such work to this day, truly remarkable and it could never be repeated by such disfunctional pieces of pre-cast concrete or pornographic titilation we accept as art and literature these days.

The reality is very little will change, my ramblings will be seen as just that and poor decisions will continue to be made as to what the general public consider art, I am just so very thankful for what true art gives me as a person yet saddened by the continual slagging off of such a necessary part of our every day being, after all hospitals save lives and art enriches our lives, the two are not so different.

A friend in need,

In every walk of life we are given advice. From getting married to the colour of your next car, everyone has their own opinion. The truth is, we should listen to all advice we are given but the ultimate choice should come from within you as a person, not because of gentle persuasion from a friend. A true friend would guide you with what they know about the subject but should always shy away from pushing you directly into a situation. Many good friendships have broken up simply because of poor advice or misunderstandings.

In my life as you can imagine there have been many such instances of misunderstandings damaging a good friendship, the very fact i am in business leaves me vulnerable to such problems far more often than would otherwise be the case.
Here is a short story of one such case and to this day the situation remains unresolved.

Last April my mobile rang and it was a Policeman, he informed me that my business partner with the bike shop had been badly hurt on his way to work at a level crossing and his motorbike had hit a car. As would be the normal thing to do in this scenario i jumped into action to get everything organised including the recovery of his motorcycle and contacting the people that needed to know, it's exactly what anyone else would do. I rang a local recovery company and they were alerted to collect the very badly damaged bike and deliver it back to our own yard, something they didn't do, instead they recovered it past our yard to their own compound despite the Police saying to us that it was all clear to be dropped off.
A crashed bike or vehicle is kept in a secure compound if it is needed as part of the investigation into an accident where someone is badly hurt or killed, it is standard practise but as we are a garage and we knew the Police had cleared it and they had to drive right past our door to get to theirs we expected common sense to prevail.
It didn't and 2 weeks of phone calls followed to try and get the bike returned to no avail, in the end i rang a great friend of mine who worked at the garage and pleaded with him in the strongest terms to organise the return of said bike.
What happened next you couldn't write, my good friend lost his cool with the recovery truck driver and they almost had to be seperated, this all blew up several miles from where i was and i was never a party to it. But, because of that argument my good friend refused to speak with me again. Why you ask? well i guess he thought i was having a go at him personally and then his spat with the other guy was blamed on me and suddenly i am the enemy.
This situation only came to light when i next visited the garage he worked at and I was not spoken to, quite hurtful considering i am Godfather to his wonderful daughter and have also employed him part time when his funds were low.. but, as we all know to our cost sometimes life and friendships are very fickle and true friends very hard to find.  You may say to yourselves "surely this guy will recognise himself" and yes he may well, but I have a clear conscience and have no axe to grind in any way shape or form, my writing ability grants me such opportunity to dispel any untruths and cut to the chase.

The upshot of all of this is if you work with your best friends then be prepared to have the odd fall out, but try not to let it get as bad as with my mate and myself, there are no winners in such situations and it leads to a very awkward working relationship, to the point where we no longer use the garage for anything at all, quite a sad outcome from two adults who should know better.
 I would however, still do the same thing again as I am still trying to save everyone in the world, my naivety knows no bounds and I torture myself with some of the answers i give to people who are in need as the answer is almost always yes even if it brings me hardship, it's in my DNA i am not a super hero i am a fool of the most extraordinary kind, but it also has it's advantages in that i see life from a perspective that few would ever dream of or even cope with, in short it's who I am and that is very very difficult to change.
Look after your true friends like you guard your life, for without them we are surely the poorer and most certainly more vulnerable.

Dead Tired.

Have you ever been in a stressful situation?.  I don't mean opening the £350.00 gas bill when you only have £20.00 in the bank I mean serious full-on unrelenting stress, every minute of the day seven days a week?.
Well, I can tell you from experience it's not for the faint hearted.
Building a successful business means going out on a limb, going that extra mile, having a vision and more importantly a plan on how you are going to get there. What you can't factor in is just how you are going to manage when you are suddenly confronted with not one, but five or six problems, all at once. The trouble with business is that you can plan all you like, you can do cash flow forecasts, be defensive in your spending and have an aggressive stance towards credit control, all these will help but only you and that determination to succeed will see if you have the stamina to be successful.
The last few weeks I have changed course with my business and it has proved a success in more ways than one, customers are coming to us regularly and life should be rosy but in reality as the owner and overseer I am so busy on a daily basis i neither stop or sometimes even get chance to eat. I am more tired than I have ever been and the mental stress sucks the very life out of you drop by drop.
Exercise and early nights are always a great help, they give you the stamina to fight back and feel good about yourself but the reality is it's a short term fix, it cant continue. Stress is notorious for creeping up on you unawares, combine that with stress at home and it doubles your chance of serious illness, alarmist that may seem but it's a fact.
So, how to best avoid it?.   I like to think we are masters of our own destiny so therefore my way of combating stress would be to spread the load. Employ someone in the office or the workshops, in fact better the office as, though i am an equal opportunities employer, I think the business lives or dies with the response from that first phone call.
If after all this you are still feeling like myself, drained, numb,fatigued,mostly worthless and feeling like you are everyones kicking boy you only have one avenue to fall back on, get the hell out for at least a week if not two and get your self a well deserved break because believe me no-one is Superman in the world of business and if you think you are, well I can assure you your reign will be very Pope-like in it's longevity.
So take some good advice from an old dog, if it feels like you can't cope more often than not then chances are you aren't and the business and you will suffer.

Take that break.

Better The Devil You Know?.

Sitting here at 5 a.m in the morning I find my mind wandering somewhat, always a dangerous phenomenon as it really shouldn't be allowed out unsupervised!. It's at times like this when you are deep in thought that you realise the irony of Monty Python's "Meaning Of Life", for as much as we deny it we are all looking for those deep meaningful thoughts and answers to go with them that we can share with others and will somehow lighten all our ways along the path of every day life.
The fact that I have made the above statement probably means I have been here too long already to some and to others, who have been in the same position it may make complete sense. We are all looking for the answers to so many questions on a daily basis, some we are satisfied with and others will remain a mystery, though perhaps it isn't such a bad thing, I mean who would REALLY like to know what happens when we die?, surely the very gift of life is the unknown, as if it were ever proved that the outcome was death and that's the end of it we would all surely be a lot worse off, or would we?.
Let's just imagine a top scientist is one day sat in a darkened laboratory somewhere in middle England  and he suddenly finds out exactly what happens to us after death and, if he could stand up and demonstrate without question all his findings about what becomes of the human soul when we depart our earthbound bodies, just what would happen to the single largest industry in the world, religion?.
 The facts would only get in the way of one true heaven, one true God, one true spiritual entity, the Pope would be pointless, the Archbishop Of Canterbury would be a none job, atheists would be singing "I told you so" until the cows come home and back again, what a thought!.
The facts are we are better off not knowing either way in my humble opinion, because as with all things that have an unknown outcome we humans (the vast majority at least) would rather err on the side of optimism, even those staunchly opposed to any kind of God or afterlife would like to think they will be spared total darkness when their time comes.

I can almost hear you asking what my thoughts of an after life are..( I am sure I heard a voice at the back or did I just imagine that too!). Well considering the above script I guess it's a fair question to ask.  I believe there is something in what people say about the after life but not in quite as corny a way as some religions would have you believe, I think the human spirit can take other forms and therefore the possibility of our thoughts still leaving a trail in the hereafter are quite possible, but I personally think that after time they would fade to nothing and so life carries on. That may be a simplistic view but it's one I am happy to contemplate as I get older and in any case it's far easier to write it all down here than it is to invite a Jehovah's Witness inside the house to discuss the merits of The Watchtower!.

So, luckily for us life goes on, we remain in blissful ignorance and as a race we will continue to argue over religion and it will therefore continue to cause wars and deaths by the thousands. When that thought hits you it's hard not to wish that the mad scientist from middle England is nearing completion of his life long project on the truth about the afterlife...

Hope you all have a good Tuesday.

I Tweet therefore I am?.

The constant attack on your senses these days makes the thought process all the more difficult. If you are prone to interruptions constantly then you really are up against it.
Modern life comes with a volume control that has no mute button it seems, you may turn it down as low as you wish but it will still be making a huge noise inside your head, you may not know it but trust me it's there.

I use Twitter to keep updated with what is going on in the world more than the newspaper or the TV, it's a sign that social networking (the new buzz word) is becoming ever more a source of everyday entertainment and there is almost an expectation that all the answers are laid out before you in characters of 140 or less.
The fact is Twitter is somewhat of a melting pot for every moan, laugh. cry, bitch or shout and thrives on our in-built curiosity and voyeurism more than our need to glean information about the latest football match.
We all like to be nosey, we love reading and hearing gossip and Twitter gives us that in giant helpings, it panders to our curiosity like no other application has ever done, we love to see the spats and the silly comments and even better if there are two "z" list celebs or pea brained footballers trying to string at least two sentences together without giving the game away that their Mother is actually writing it.
It holds our attention like no other and for those that get it completely,  it's a total way of life.

I am of course, being a hypocrite, for I too seek to have my words read and commented on like everyone else, this very Blog would be of much less interest were it not for a Twitter audience, but i remain amazed by the fact that people take valuable time out of their own day to comment on either my work or a previous Tweet, it is a wonderful comfort to someone who finds themselves isolated in life for whatever reason be it physically or mentally.
 So, really Twitter is a mouth piece, it's a sounding board, an advertisers dream, but a wonderful way of communicating with like minded people all over the world, something Facebook users either get or never get usually the latter and that is why Twitter is definitely here to stay, it involves you from the outset, Facebook is the playground while Twitter remains the classroom.
With all good things there is a downside. Twitter by it's very existence will attract less than honest people and along with them come those who wish to offer advice. The less than honest people will take note when you announce your holiday for two weeks and what new items you may have just bought, those seeking to give you advice can be very well intentioned but sometimes only the ear of a professional counsellor would be the best way forward, so you see Twitter is not the answer to all our prayers, it is like lifting the lid of a box and peering in to see and hear a measure of views and statements that would drive you insane if you listened all day every day to it... prophetic words?.. perhaps but I will let you all decide.

Off.

Got that ticket walk that wire
Mind is racing heart on fire

Life is changing voices call
Not afraid to take the fall

Parting wishes, icy cold
Not the dream for me to hold

Train moves slowly Eastern bound
Soon left wanting can't be found

Time is precious can't be stalled
Take it onwards when your called

Sit and listen it's all fine
Don't wait up, as it's my time. 

A friend indeed.

In battles grand I've made my stand
Beside my friends in need,
Fought the fight and bought the right
To be that friend indeed.

I've stood by all and took the fall,
For meek and mild the same,
With shoulders wide and love inside
Some scarcely knew my name.

A sword of truth learned in my youth
The light that showed my way
Like brightest star, seen from afar
Turned darkness into day.

But truth be told my faith's on hold
The scene not all it seems.
For friends indeed on you will feed
And shatter saintly dreams

So shine that light so bold yet bright
And hold it straight and true,
For when confused while being used
That light will work for you.

Regrets, there have been a few.

You can't make a writer, you can't make a footballer, the same can be said for every profession we choose to label ourselves with. The facts are that in all of us are the genes that help to map out our chosen paths in life. A family that has grown up surrounded by all that is football will spawn a football loving kid and if lucky one day a professional player, although i have to admit to using the word "lucky" very loosely in the footballers case!.
It is therefore very likely that a writer will be the offspring of parents with a flair for the written word, not necessarily a published and accomplished writer, in fact more likely someone in the family who has the ability to spin a good yarn. This latter description covers my upbringing very well, I am originally from a farming family that expected you to work on a farm when you left school, so the very mention of further education after 15 was out of the question, you got a job and you paid your way.
I can still remember to this day turning up for my first day on a hill farm in the Shropshire hill's feeling so desperately sad that I had to dig ditches, muck out cattle, foot rot sheep (cutting their hoofs with a knife), put up fences etc, it was my living nightmare, but, as I have said in those days you didn't argue, you followed in the footsteps of your parents and their grandparents and did as you were told.
I hated every single day of farm life, the freezing cold mornings, the never ending feeding of stock, the unsociable hours in the summer, in fact when i look back i lost the vast majority of my youth to long hours working through the night to get the harvest in.
 I did as i was told and that was that. many teenagers have suffered worse fates but indeed i was imprisoned by the social and financial boundaries that may as well have been a prison wall for all that it mattered at 16 years of age.

Eventually, I managed to leave farming and ended up driving a huge articulated truck to London every day delivering pavior bricks from Blockleys Bricks in Telford to the streets of Wandsworth. I ended up knowing London like the back of my hand, it was nothing to head straight into the City at 6 am and be unloaded and out by 9 as everyone else was queuing to come in. This all opened up a new world for a farm boy from Shropshire, I saw the guts of London, the Good the Bad and the Ugly, I saw back streets High streets and alleyways, building sites, scary sights and all manner of outlandish people and behaviour in my 5 years of driving through London's streets with such a huge truck. This has stayed with me even now, I love London and all it stands for, a vibrant all consuming mixture of all this world we live in stands for and represents.

So for now I remain torn between a life amongst the Shropshire hill's and a longing to once more tread amongst the streets of a City that stole a part of me that can never be returned.  I just wish I had been given more opportunity as a youngster to explore all the possibilities life had to offer rather than having to step up to the plate and work at 15.

My Children will never be given such a stark choice even if i have to work night and day to ensure it.

Testing times.

A time to dance, a time to cry, a time to laugh, even a time to write?. I would like to think so but of late its been seemingly impossible. Life throws us many twists and turns, some of which we are ill-prepared to take on or even accept and this has been the case for me over the past month or so.
To change anything in your life takes a committed effort that has to be adhered to or it will fail as sure as God made little acorns, well.. Gran used to say that so it must be true right?!. The truth is, as we make our way through life we get ourselves comfortable with where we are and as we get older it takes twice the effort to make any changes, the same goes for trying to lose weight, I could remember shedding pounds on a whim in my younger days but now it takes a lot more effort for half the result.
The fact is, you have to need change enough for it to become a reality. If you are prepared to sacrifice a few home comforts then you will make a go of it, but, as in most cases (the New Years resolution for one) the act and the will to change is lost in a matter of weeks sometimes even days.
I myself have been faced with many issues of late not all the stuff warrants close inspection or airing on a public blog but needless to say it's been testing, but to achieve change requires hard work, heartache and in some cases courage that wouldn't be out of place on the front line of a battlefield, this also has to be combined with a single mindedness that you want what you are actually aiming for in the first place.
So, if like me, you are in that transition period where life makes little sense and you think you are very much alone then think again, many of us are re-evaluating our futures and considering change, my thoughts are that many of us however, will leave this firmly at the thinking stage, if like me you are in the middle of that journey then welcome to my world, it's going to be a bumpy ride.