Life-less.

I have always lived according to good family values, I hope I know right from wrong and can judge and be judged without fear of retribution. I have always done exactly what has been asked of me in this life and indeed sometimes even more, much more. I have given the better part of my working life to being self employed and running my own business, it started under Margaret Thatcher and is currently languishing under David "dithering" Cameron. So, I guess you could say I have been around and am no fool.
How wrong can you be. Being a fool is not always about trying to make people laugh or jumping on to a trampoline from your garage roof or playing chicken with juggernauts on the Motorway's.
No, being a fool can be a lot more subtle than that, it can take the shape of a simple decision or a wrong turn down a side street, it can be you being very gullible, sincere or even plain soft but either one of these will suffice to put you into the sub category of the heading under "fool".
I have to admit i am strolling into this sub category under the "just too soft" label, i am a huge guy some 6f.1" and an ex rugby man, i am good at self defence and keep fit through work and mountain biking and can sprint and run like a guy half my age, something i enjoy doing, so it would seem very odd wouldn't it that this guy is a bit of a push over. Well, it is odd, but it is also very rare. I don't want confrontation at any price and I will shy away from it where and when I can, call it cowardly if you like but I have been taught that you listen to people and allow them to have an opinion and base your decision on what they want and think. To those of you with a little more aggression this must seem a ridiculous position for a big lad to take but it's me and I am finding it ever increasingly difficult to stay afloat amongst the sharks and opinionated selfish people out there, in short it's something I am ill-equipped to fight as size counts for nothing in this battle, only the sharpness of your tongue and your will to have everything your way or none at all, sadly elements of life that i lack.
 Am I resigned therefore to such inequality?. Well time and tide will tell as it sits uncomfortable with me for the first time in my life and it's past time to start making decisions that suit me. Unpopular as it may be.

Watch this space. x

Advice for the heart.

Never write while angry or when upset. The rule of thumb all who aspire to write should adhere to, but sometimes the passion rules the pen and you end up printing something you may well live to regret at a later date.
I feel at the moment like screaming to the tree tops how i feel and what has befallen me over the last few hours but the gentleman in me says keep it to yourself. I have a few very trusted friends who will know what i mean here but they are very few.  In reality you have to sit down, take some of the grief on board and start over. Letting it eat you and destroy your thought process is a major mistake, it is far better that you chat with those trusted friends and get back out into the world so that you can re-evaluate just what the implications of what has happened really are and so deal with it.
It doesn't matter how nice you are to people or how you treat each one that comes along, life is far from fair and however good your intentions remember they are the pavement to hell.  I am fortunate to be someone born with a sense of right and wrong, i have my parents to thank for that, but in the current climate it holds little water and is in fact considered a weakness. How very sad. How very alone it will leave those who are able to worry about others without thinking about it as I know first hand.
If i was to offer some advice on this subject it would be to not act rashly, take it all on the chin and let it wash over you because it's coming whether you like it or not, take a stroll, get back into the normal groove of life no matter how much that hurts and make sure you get amongst good people that you trust and know well. That way you get back to normality a bit quicker and it will allow you precious time to actually put it all in perspective.
As you may be right in thinking, this is what i did today, the first reaction is always the pre-cursor to the tidal wave of emotions but you have to sit tight and not lose your bottle.  I am OK with where i am at the moment, not happy admittedly but i wasn't that happy beforehand so i have little to worry about in reality.

Tomorrow is another day and remember always that you are you, there is no-one else that comes close x

All That I See.

The innocence of that which greets my eyes
From swirling willow led a merry dance by summer's breeze
To Swallow's resting weary wings on thermals lofty rise
The sky a deepest blue the sun so high that scarce a shadow falls
And distant cry of sheep that haunt the valley's twisting spine
God's would bow their heads to all that here transpires
A sweet calm to quench the thirst of nature's finest hour.
I have grown with all that lies before me, deeper and richer,
And with that richness comes a wealth that few will ever know.











  

The Sunday Roast

Sunday morning here in Shropshire, the street outside in the small Town I live in is deathly quiet. It's something I don't often get to see as I am usually long gone to work or some other "pressing" task that requires my undivided attention immediately. Lay here in bed with my laptop on my knees I find myself wondering just why we have to do so many things in life at such break neck speeds?.
We have targets for everything, be it patients in the hospitals or children in our schools, we find ourselves at the mercy of schedules that must be met. But, just why do we do this? Does it enrich our lives to be striving for targets that are invariably never met thus provoking in depth searches for the reasons why?, I seriously doubt it. I think our main problems today arise from wanting more and more and expecting it. Then when we get disappointed we start searching for answers, the truth is life is full of disappointments, tragedy, fun, love, you name it it's in there and because we are so used to a "pill" for everything it comes as a harsh reality when one is not available. Working to schedules is in reality a necessary evil, without at least the basic of targets we would never get anything completed but my interest here is why we have to have so many committee's and sub-committee's to look over us while we do it, surely if a target is not met the person involved can work out what went wrong and why?.. or perhaps big brother really is trying to make us all perfect !.

Yet again this Sunday the papers lead with a public figure facing charges for heinous crimes that were supposedly committed some while ago. Of late so many of our "heroes" of television and the like have been exposed as underage child abusers and sex pests it's little wonder we as a nation are becoming less and less trusting of what we are told by such 'icons', too often pleas of innocence outside a courtroom are followed a few months later by a full confession or at least partial charges being admitted and it's beginning to shock us less and less.
I have to admit, I find the whole celebrity thing astonishing. I can never see what gives a person who acts or plays a sport well for instance the right to preach to us all about their views, like their profession gives them a wisdom beyond their years?.  The truth is celebrity status means you get your voice heard and as we are seeing at the moment even the true icons are sometimes nothing but dirty old men or perverts, thus underlining my astonishment at the air time these people get preaching to us the rights and wrongs of living our own lives, while they 'bite' fellow competitors, take advantage of youngsters supposedly in their care or just down right lie, they are the worst of the worst as far as role models are concerned, the fact most personalities are usually two different people surely means they would be more in line for counselling than the rest of the whole population put together, let alone be allowed airtime to give us advice on how to be the perfect human being.

This week has been quite tough for me, we have a new puppy 12 weeks old and full of life, she is also it seems full of poo. This latter item has been at the forefront of my daily early morning chores, even with newspaper down in her cage she sleeps in at night it has been a most wretched of tasks to carry out. The upshot of all this is I have had no breakfast all week, just a quick cup of coffee and out through the door after the 'mopping up' exercise has been completed. I think for someone who is mechanically minded the sights and smells of a puppy are all a little too overwhelming, we are a tough breed but the smells we are used to are very much softer oil based and as such this new task is wholly unpalatable to our sense of smell.
Anyway, I hope that with some extra training and guidance it will be just a minor distraction from the actual ownership of a wonderful Border collie pup who is as cheeky as it's owner albeit the owner is slightly better house trained!.
One off-shoot of all this is that i have lost weight... not a diet plan i am about to launch on YouTube or make into a DvD just yet, but hell if it works for now i can live with it !.

I wish you all a great week ahead and enjoy the forecasted 'sunny' Bank holiday' !









 

Open Heart, Open Eyes.

Such fire that burns inside my mind
That once knew passion e'er so blind
Succinct in fledgling lover's arms
Yet vulnerable to all her charms,

For day's aplenty once were tasted
No hour thus spent was deemed as wasted
Lay in arms of passion's making
A heart so open ripe for taking

And there whilst open singing praises
Life at once the dagger raises
The sonnet Thorn Bird's requiem
To hell's own fire it does condemn

Brave men and true fall for that spell
Though none so brave they live to tell
An open heart Achilles heel
Life's harsh reward for those who feel

So my allegiance duty bound
To wait my turn with scarce a sound
Will pass me by and strike another
No more then I,  that tortured lover.

One Swallow doth not a Summer make..

Sunday comes and goes. Nothing new in that I hear you shout at me like some scolded child forever ignoring their parents good advice. Well, maybe there are two sides to every story, after all "judging a book by it's cover" is fraught with danger if we are to believe all we read.
You may or may not be surprised to know (depending whether you know me very well or not) that I was a walking disaster at school. Oh, don't get me wrong, in my primary school where my mother was deputy head i was a star pupil, but with your mother there everyday it was hardly surprising.  No. i mean high school, or in this case Ludlow Grammar School after i passed my 11 plus as it was at the time.
From the very start i struggled. My maths fell into disarray and my science was diabolical, languages became a bore and i was dropped from Latin to do Spanish, the equivalent these days of leaving the Premier League to play for your local youth club.  I wasn't lazy, far from it, I just needed pushing, but this was the last intake of Grammar School pupils at Ludlow and dare i say it teachers were putting the time in until retirement, many of whom i recall should have gone 10 years BEFORE I got there !. Hey ho, that was my lot. But... obviously i shone at English and literature. Dickens and Shakespeare left an indelible mark on my soul for which i shall be forever grateful. They opened up a world of culture and life changing views that remain with me to this day, if only my teacher Miss Baldwin could see me now, in fact it would be even better if my music teacher Mr Arney who has now sadly passed away could see me play a Strauss Waltz... I am sure he would near faint !.

I guess, joking aside, my message is that the fact i was a complete and utter failure at High School should not be a deterrent to those of you who are unsure of their own ability when traversing the avenues of your High School life and this so called "growing up" that adults keep forcing upon you. I am much more in tune with who I am now than I ever was at school and i firmly believe if you have a spark it will take more than a few hopeless years at a last gasp Grammar school to dampen it to a glow. I managed English and Art "O" levels before i left. I was seconded to work on a farm at 15 and there you have it, David's school day's.  I firmly believe that if  i was in a class today I would never be allowed to slip through the net as i did in the 80's, it couldn't happen in today's climate of Stats and OFSTED inspections which in many ways is supremely  comforting, but I do find all these inspections and tests a little too intrusive on a child's ability to enjoy their time facing the chalk and board, or lap top screen as it's now well known.

So, therein lies a tale, hopefully you can see i am living proof that you do not need school to be a success to make it in life, granted its an awful lot easier but I now find the level of experience i have obtained in my endeavours easily outweighs any paperwork i may have received from an exam judge, I have graduated with full honours from the school of life and there really is none better.

Have a great week.

The winds of change.

Hot coffee, lap top, Twitter, a recipe for a wasted morning !!  It's very hard to concentrate when you have a world to talk to. Twitter is something you completely get or you really don't, there seems no in between. I have many friends who raise their eyebrows still when i mention Twitter but as I hail from Shropshire that is hardly surprising, the highlight of most people's week over here is a shopping trip to Aldi's.

Ok, so maybe that was a little harsh but I have to confess this County does produce some one-offs and if you think i am joking let me introduce you to some characters.  Firstly there is a guy who comes into our yard with an old rusted out 4x4, he wears a cap and is deaf as a post, mid sixties cut him through the middle and he says "farmer" all the way through, his truck has never been washed outside or inside and is full of bale twine and plastic, the fact he is as deaf as a post is just as well really because his sheepdog barks out of his open drivers door window right behind his head and only the occasional  "LIE DOWN" shouted at the top of his voice will give the briefest respite from the dog's constant noise.
Then we have the two brothers, in their 70's both of them, never seen the end of the M54 motorway and if they ever lost site of Clee Hill (local landmark) they would be hopelessly lost. They come out every Friday whether they need to or not as its a "trip to town", it's the highlight of the week for them, they seldom have their teeth in and are always dressed in their suits when they come out come rain or heatwave, we have been to the farm to repair tyres on site and it is a venerable shit hole...quelle surpris !
But this is in deepest South Shropshire.. a backwater praised as much for it's scenery by tourists as it's inequality amongst it's inhabitants is lambasted, it's a harsh environment with neglected roads, hospitals and schools, it gets the second best of everything yet manages despite all those facts.. If you ask my feelings I have grown tired of it's hardships and some of it's inhabitants ignorance to many thing's cultural, but it's where i grew up and where my family are, though the love affair is waning as i grow older and I tire of the lack of facilities from a simple mobile phone signal to a fully fledged modern hospital that can cope with the ageing population... of which i don't think i will be around to witness..

This is true. Absolutely true.

I have found myself wondering of late just how the Prime Minister of this fair isle gets to hear about what is happening on the shop floor of this Country.  I mean, let's face it, if you are the boss of a huge company and you have never walked amongst the people at the sharp end how on earth do you get a picture of what your policies are doing for productivity and value for money not to mention achieving their aim without wasting valuable time and assets?.  If, say for instance our PM is being advised by people of a suited nature it is quite feasible is it not that he is only being spoon fed what he actually wants to hear rather than what is actually really happening, in fact it is MORE than likely.
I say this because as a businessman of some 20+ years with my fair share of battles under my belt I have learnt that if you want to know how the workforce is doing you ask them, not a manager. It stands to reason, if the manager says it's dreadful and everything is falling apart and not working then you would be quite within your rights to dig a little deeper and even quiet possibly replace that manager with one that can knock it all back in to shape.  If you ask the workforce you will get a few moans and groans but invariably you will also get some invaluable information from people who are at the front line, not sat in an office waiting for their targets to be met while making up a new bulletin for all the staff to read and act upon, thus justifying their position in the company.
So, let me say this, if by some wonderful miracle dreamed up straight from a Hollywood movie i was to wake up in the morning and find myself  the PM of this Country,  this is what i would do: I would head to the hospitals all over the country and spend at least a month on the front line, i would then do it with the Police, the Fire Service, Teachers etc etc until I had built a picture of what is really going on in UK Plc at this present moment in time, because without that inside knowledge how the hell can you instruct ministers and their underlings to write policies that are actually meaningful and more importantly relevant?. Simple answer and a very true one. You can't hope to.
If all you have known is life in Oxford and a sheltered up-bringing amongst your like minded brethren you are no more equipped to run this Country than a tribal elder from Timbuktu. Sorry but that is also the truth.
Many years ago i started a new job selling equipment i knew very little about straight into a European market hungry for the goods, but instead of bluffing my way through and making it up as i went along i spent 3 months on the shop floor helping to manufacture the items before i even TRIED to sell the product and even more importantly and surprisingly I made alterations on the factory floor to help production run smoother that are STILL there to this day, so you see it was of mutual benefit to everyone concerned.
Now I am not suggesting the PM gets his overalls on and heads for the nearest NHS Trust but what he could quite easily be doing is sitting down and talking to those that matter the most and that is the people actually doing the damned job,  not those sat in an office writing about how they would like it done, I think he would get one hell of a surprise at what he uncovered in the way of waste and mismanagement while getting a truer picture of what is actually needed to get this country back on its feet.
If, like many right now, you are wondering just how i seem so sure there is waste culture and a lack of moral judgement in middle management in many government departments then i cam reveal my sources, you see fitting a tyre to someones car is a little like having a haircut or being stood at a bar and having a drink, people relax and as you work they tell you all about what is happening in their life and where the problems lie in their jobs and in case you do need a little more proof that my theory actually works yes I do fit tyres still occasionally...it's how i find out just how the ship is being steered and the continual theme that keeps recurring is one of managers making silly rules and spending much needed front line money on theories and plans that only see the inside of a waste paper bin when passed to the next level of management..... Think on Mr Cameron, i am apolitical and I for one always find people struggle to argue with the truth and none of the above is incorrect... as unlike you I talk to the workforce.

Ignorance is no defence.

Today was going very well as far as Monday's go. I was cool, calm and had all the avenues covered, firm but fair and keeping the ship nice and steady. Of course this being a Monday it was doomed to failure and oh was failure headed my way like an iceberg on the starboard bow while exiting a full right hand emergency manoeuvre..
I had ordered a 44 tonne truck and trailer to load the used tyres on and at 3.30 pm it duly arrived, i noticed immediately that it was one of the biggest trucks that currently use our roads, a Daf XF super space cab, to those who aren't sure then Google it if you so wish, believe me its big. I also knew this truck was automatic and as such a real pig to move in confined spaces.  Knowing the truck owner very well i went to the driver and said "Not wishing to patronise you or be condescending would you mind if i shunted the trailer around the back for you because its an awkward place to get in. Needless to say i was completely stone walled.
So, I stood back and tried to guide the guy down an alley way in reverse and into the yard, this task was somewhat long winded to say the least and after 15 minutes and umpteen tries I popped over to the door of the truck and asked "I am not being funny with you but do you mind if i jump in and do it for you?"

.....oh dear.  Some people really do take life a little too seriously and obviously i didn't take on the look of your average truck driver. What followed was a lot of swearing and spinning of wheels followed by a confrontation where i was reminded that said individual had been driving for 25 years and didn't need my sh#t... etc etc #ad infinitum..  I am pretty broad minded but even i was taken aback by the reaction from a supposed professional driver. At this point i reminded him he was in my yard and i wasn't happy with how i was being spoken to, this was only fuel on the fire and I was even squared up to.
Now.... let me put you in the picture for a second, yes I write... but I have also grown up around lorries and machinery, I have driven.owned,built,sprayed,sold and bought every type of truck in this country.  I have run my own fleet of trucks and employed drivers and run other peoples maintenance contracts on top of all this i run 3 different companies and am a partner in another one so i really do think that would qualify me to step into this poor man's shoes given the well known awkwardness of this particular reversing manoeuvre in what was after all my own yard. But no, instead of that he saw me as a threat. So no more ado he drove out of the yard and went back to his base.

20 minutes later the phone went and it was my uncle who owns the lorry. I have to admit i was annoyed at this point, more out of the stupidity of the incident than anything else, he said he would bring the trailer over later for me so i let it go at that.
  Sure enough the boss came in with said truck and lined it up to back it into the yard..... yep you guessed it, after 3 or 4 shunts he jumped out and muttered something along the lines of "ffs you do it".
  I am not Superman, but i do know the lie of the land in my own yard, i drew the lorry and trailer forwards, lined the trailer up to the corner of the building and put it straight in first time much to the amusement of my own staff who had seen all this going on at a distance.
No, I didn't crow, i just pointed out that it was all i had wanted to do in the first place. Local knowledge is invaluable and if any lessons can be learnt from this debacle it is that you should never judge a book by its cover, the driver saw a well dressed man trying to tell him how to do his job, in reality i was being sincere and offering the benefit of my experience in the given situation. His boss jumped out and let me get on with it.. that is the difference between employees and employers... and the gap it seems is as wide as ever in the trucking industry.  I don't miss employing drivers and especially those who shout and swear at customers who are actually paying their wages at the end of the day.  Rant over.

The Sunday Roast. All that I so wanted to be.

We learn constantly, whether we listen or in fact choose to listen sometimes is our choice, but it's those choices that determine where and how we end up in any given situation in life. I am as guilty as the next man for bemoaning my fate and my lot, I have indeed suffered greatly over the past 20 years as a businessman sometimes through no fault of my own but sometimes it was inherently my fault.
This pathway is a well worn one, so not for one minute would I have been alone but at the time when it was all going horribly wrong it felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I have been well off and i have been poor, I have to tell you I prefer well off but I have a better acquaintance with the latter.
 I was brought up to put myself at the very bottom of the pile, being the son of a deputy head in the same school i was always taught to keep my hand down even if i knew the answers in case my mother was accused of favouritism and I hate to say it but that stigma stayed firmly ingrained in my psyche really I guess until only a few years ago.
I still struggle to put a value on any work I do or any act i carry out, i see myself as a second rate human being despite friends chants to the contrary, you cannot shake a lifetime of belief any easier than you can change your ethnicity or your character, it is part of your make-up and part of what makes you who you are.
I sometimes see utter surprise on people 's faces or in replies when i say that I don't value myself either as a writer or as a person, it sounds like i am looking for self pity but i have been brought up thinking as such from an early age and it stays in your sub-conscious.
So, I may be a lost cause, but through my writing I can regain some control and perhaps one day a little pride in who I am and hopefully for my children it will be a very different story.
Children respond to what we as adults say and do so much more than we ever realise, they are far from stupid and can latch on to an atmosphere of hurt or happiness without a single word being spoken, they are the future and as such should have the very best of all we are as a parent. I can't do that financially and i can't do it through being there every day, but i can give them something else, I can give them the benefit of my years, I recognise what an important part of growing up my words are to my kids, I know that what i say to them now may be with them for the rest of their lives and I want only positive thoughts to come from their childhood.  All too often I hear a parent bawling at their child to stop doing something or other, it makes me wince, for more often than not that is the same disruptive child in class, the one who thinks shouting and being the centre of attention is ok, why not? ...the parents do the same.

I am very much at peace with where i am in my life. Yes I have made mistakes and some of them some real howlers but i cant change any of that, but i can change my future. Life is not all about work and doing and being everything to everybody its about who you are and what you want to be, but as always i myself have felt guilty if i thought for a second i was placing myself higher up the queue than anyone else...which takes me straight back to my formative years, those oh so important formative years. I do have one very good ally and that is i was born with a reasonable amount of intelligence, I only say this because of other people insisting it was so over the past few years, so much so that even i now accept that there is more than the average grey matter floating around up there in my head, but me being me i sometimes wish i was more "normal" in that i could settle for what i have and what i want out of life.
I stood talking to a psychic during the week, she is a wonderful friend and came into our service centre to get her car fixed, we often chat about things that the average garage proprietor would never venture with yet she and i are totally at ease with what we say to each other, she had just lost her dog and was clearly upset but held back the tears while we spoke. I knew if had talked with great sympathy, something i am and was clearly capable of i would reduce her to tears so i stayed strong and emphasised the positives of her relationship with her beloved dog, its what real friends do. During this conversation she said to me " do you ever wish sometimes you were just..well, normal?".  I was taken aback a little by her comment on the outside but deep inside i instantly knew what she meant,
"I do," I replied, " I wish i could be happy with all i have and not have the thoughts i have in my mind,"
"That is how i feel sometimes too" she replied "Its hard to deal with when you have a different vision, its almost like a curse that you have to deal with"
The fact i could instantly empathise with where she was coming from suddenly made me realise that yes i may be different but like the businessman who is struggling at a certain point in their lives I am far from alone with such thoughts, it lifted a huge burden from my mind, I am who I am, I should be very happy with that.

So what have you learnt from reading this? well i hope you have learnt a little more about who i am and why i am but also that we should all take more notice of who and what we are around our future, namely our children.
 If I dared to offer advice to any parent and Lord knows I am not even close to being the perfect role model it would be to think back to your own childhood and remember what you learnt from it, if it was good then carry it on if it was negative then spare them such trauma, for only by passing on the wisdom of all that's positive about them in life can they venture into a world with open minds and hearts not scarred by our very own hang ups.

Enjoy your week.