Heroes

I remember being mesmerised by the guy on the bike. There was a long tarmac road down the back of our terrace and all the kids used to play there. It had a slight incline so was perfect for sitting on skateboards and racing to the bottom, and also interlocked with a ginnel that lead to the main road so there was enough room to cycle too. This was before we ever did either though - I was five and I, along with all the other kids, were watching an older boy on on a motorbike. He was doing tricks up against walls and up and down the tarmac road, which to a bunch of four- to seven-year-olds was like being able to watch Evel Knieval, for free, just outside your back garden. We were all entranced, but having always had the fear of danger, I was perhaps more engrossed than the others and was paying far more attention to what the amazing stunt guy was doing, than I was to what i was doing. Anyone noticing this group of young kids watching a slick teenager showing off on a petrol-powered killing machine would doubtless have been expecting an accident at any moment - he was jumping and pulling off insane wheelies and driving up walls - he was bound to come a cropper at some point, so it was to everyone's surprise, mine most of all, when the inevitable accident befell not the daring motorcyclist, but the awestruck boy of five who, oblivious to all but the spectacle before him, had tripped and fallen face-first onto the tarmac.

I remember a sudden flash of pain, more than anything I'd ever felt before, then a bewildered numbness. Too stunned to move, I was jolted back to awareness by the crash of the bike hitting tarmac. First guilt hit - my stupidity had distracted the motorcyclist and he'd fallen off, no doubt sustaining injuries far worse than mine -then a glorious warm glow of relief as I felt myself being picked up and carried, very very carefully, but quickly, back to my house and the realisation hit that the older boy had been aware of us the whole time and at the merest sign of trouble had simply thrown his bike to the ground and was now getting me safely home. I suppose the next bit is patchy as my brain has either forgotten or blocked out all but the most pertinent details. Mum's horror at realising I was badly injured enough to have to be carried, wondering what new stupidity I'd discovered, then relief as it dawned that I was just too stunned to move, finally settling on ad hoc efficiency as she realised that amount of blood was going to mean a hospital trip.

How we got to hospital I have no idea - I don't know if I've simply forgotten, or if the surrealism of the event, made up entirely of feelings and thoughts I had never experienced was just too much and I just shut it all out - but I still remember the sudden, horrific petrifaction upon being told I was going to have to be stitched. I had learned how to sew at school, with one of those square bits of cloth with the holes pre-cut for small, clumsy hands, and the thick thread that went through them, making great big crosses. To my still very naive mind, this was what I understood as stitching and the idea of this being done to my face was quite simply too much to take. Everything after that is missing. To this day I don't know if I passed out, if they anaesthetised me, or if I've simply blocked it out, but whichever it was, I have no memory of actually being stitched. Something I can only be grateful for. What I do remember is being told afterwards that I had had three stitches and being confused when looking at my chin that I couldn't see them, just a big cut with a few lines across.

Some weeks later I went to have the stitches out and was very pleased and proud when I was told I could take the stitches home with me. The nurse very carefully cut them out (this surely must have hurt like hell, but I don't remember it, so I suppose either it didn't or it's just something else to add to the list of things I chose not to remember), and stuck them between two bits of sticky tape. Three long, wavy bits of purple thread. I took them home and proudly showed all my friends, and even more proudly showed the whole school, when I was allowed to take them in for showing assembly, where they were met with genuine awe as the teacher played up my bravery and the mere mortals beheld and revered my coolness at having been stitched up and survived. I was a battle-scarred hero and the stitches were my spoils of war.

But I wasn't the hero. The hero was the motorcyclist, who had been watching all along, waiting for one of us to do something stupid like jump in front of the bike, or fall off a wall only a few inches high. The crash of the bike and the miniscule amount of time that passed between that and me arriving home lead me to think he must have just thrown the bike down, engine still running, and picked me up in one swift move - no thought to his own possessions, my safety paramount. The scar is still there, at the front of my chin - my first real war wound - and each time I see it I am reminded of the lesson he taught me: sometimes you can help someone at your own expense and whether you know it or not, you can change someone's entire outlook on life and to  that one person you can be a hero. Unrecognised, unknown, unthanked, but a hero.

 

 

This is story number six. For more stories, click here.

New online stuff

You’ll be forgiven for TLDR’ing this entry cause it’s quite long.

Took the day off work today to chill out a bit and have been very glad of it. This morning D3-3Nasked on twitter: “what is this tumblr.com stuff???”. I’d been wondering about that myself so, seeing as I have the day free, decided to investigate. With this kind of thing I tend to find that reading about the service seldom actually helps me understand what it’s supposed to do, or more importantly what I can do with it, and it’s generally easier to just sign up and dick about with the settings till you find out what it can and can’t do. Off I went to tumblr to sign up, but was aghast to discover someone had already registered mogfather.tumblr.com. Arses.

Then it occurred to me – maybe I registered it and forgot about it. The password reset page asks for an email address, not many it can be, so within a few minutes I discover it was me that registered it, and never used it, and we are now logged in and good to go. So I have a play around with the settings and find it’s really just a blog, but with an interesting interface. One thing it does have though is facility to park a domain on it, so you can register your domain then park in on tumblr and effectively have your tumblr page as your website.

blogger offers a similar setup, but it’s rather more complicated – firstly you can’t par a domain on blogger – only a subdomain. Presumably blogger don’t want you to have your blog as your main site. It does allow you to use the www. subdomain, but this means that if someone just enters the domain without the www then the site won’t display, unless you set up some kind of domain forwarding, which is an unnecessary pain in the arse. Also the DNS for blogger is a bit fail in that you have to point the cname at ghs.google.com, whereas tumblr allows you to actually set the A-record to point to tumblr, so if you go to the site either with or without the www it will display fine.

Tumblr also allows you to upload mp3 files (though only one a day, bizarrely) and then it puts a little player on the blog entry. Interesting idea, not sure how much use it will be, but a nice idea for maybe posting your song of the day, which people can then subscribe to. There are various other media types you can upload, some of which (quote and chat) I’m not yet sure of the point of as surely text would do the same. I guess I’ll find out next time I want to quote something. The upload options look like this:

On the video section you can either use a URL for a video that’s already hosted elsewhere (a similar setting on audio allows you to bypass the one mp3 a day rule, provided it’s hosted elsewhere), or you can upload a video, though it does require signing up to a new service to do that – tumblr don’t host the video themselves, but rather they’re hosted on Vimeo so you have to log into Vimeo to post it. Not too much of a problem, but it strikes me that if you have a Vimeo account you’d have uploaded the video there anyway and so would just use the URL of that upload on Vimeo, thus rendering the upload option a bit pointless as far as I can see.

One nice feature is the RSS option. I’m a sucker for RSS because I personally think it’s the future and can’t understand why hardly anyone uses it, so anything which uses feeds in a new or interesting way instantly has my attention. I’ve been quite pleased with the twitterfeed setup which allows you to setup a bot to automatically check specified RSS feeds and update your twitter status when a new entry is published. I’ve used it for tweeting when I have a new blog entry (though not this one as I have a new toy to try for that – see further down), but there really isn’t any limit to what you could use it for as you don’t actually have to own the RSS feed in order to tweet it.

Anyway, back to the point, tumblr allows you to do a similar thing to twitter feed in that you give the details of up to 5 RSS feeds and it will update your tumblr each time the relevant feeds are updated, so I could for examle use it as an amalgamator of my various blogs – I have several different ones for different subjects, but it could be useful to have a central point where all the updates can been seen in one place. Add to this the fact that there are various tumblr plug-ins which allow you to embed a tumblr feed on a webpage, so you could even use tumblr as a conduit to collect and collate various information and then post it on your actual website, without viewers ever having to visit your tumblr page.

All this is for the most part redundant and pointless, but I love the fact that it’s possible, and for anyone wanting to promote themselves on the internet could save themselves a lot of troublesome duplication by using services like these. While retarded geeks like me sign up for pretty much any- and everything going, the vast majority of people only sign up for at most 3 or 4 inline services or social notworking sites, so how do you get your product/artist seen by everyone? Well this kind of setup could be just the thing, so you just update one blog or site, and have numerous feeds readers ready to automatically re-broadcast it to countless other services so it gets seen by all the world and his dog. One step closer to, as Dirk Gently (né Svlad Cjelli) called it “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things”, which would I think, make Douglas Adams very happy. I was recently pleased to see that I’m not the only person who wishes DNA had survived long enough to be the best twitterer ever – more here.

So I guess the conclusion is that tumblr looks like it might be quite cool, given more time to work out what everything does. This blog also signifies two tests – firstly I’m trying a new twtter updater in windows live writer, which should automatically update my twitter feed when I post this, and also the RSS feed on tumblr, which should also update after I post. Have a look here if you want to see whether it worked.

Comments fixed

Right, I’ve been having a play around with the wordpress settings today, and I think I’ve now fixed it so that comments can now be left without you having to sign up (apologies to those of you who have already signed up). I think I still have to moderate them so your comment won’t appear straight away, but you can leave one without having to provide four pieces of identification, proof of address and a blood sample. If you have any problems posting a comment, please email me and let me know where you got stuck, along with any error messages or specifics. Cheers.

I’ve also been uploading loads of new pictures over at flickr this week.

11 seconds

Just unearthed this piece, that I wrote on 2nd May 2007 then forgot about. It's called 11 Seconds and I wrote it while bored at work.

11 Seconds

11:41:13

it's like a dim, warm glow around the head, not tired as such but drowsy and a little achy - like the first day of recovery after the flu - not quite ill, but still not quite on the same frequency as the world around me. the less there is to do, the less motivated I feel to do anything, as though the longer I sit still, the thicker and heavier grow the layers of inaction like a covering of dust ever increasing my isolation from my environment.

11:41:14

The background noise of the room, ordinarily filtered out by concentration on a given task, swells, the mind registering snippets of mundane office oratory, none of it making sense as the conversational white noise builds, too much to take in and growing almost as if building towards a final burst that never comes, an orchestra growing more frantic and frenzied, increasing in pitch and volume towards the finale then right on the cusp, putting down their instruments as though suddenly waking from their reverie and feeling rather foolish. Willing the crescendo to come, I register its lack with frustration as the noise once again ebbs to almost comprehensible snatches then begins to swell again, the cycle once again repeats.

11:41:15

I look at my hands and am taken aback by the level of detail, the clarity, as if my whole consciousness is focused on one line, almost a psychotropic reaction - zooming in until I see the cracks in the skin, the result of 29 years of bending and retracting, expanding like the banks of a new stream as my focus becomes more acute and the magnification greater. I can almost feel the retinas contract as they strain to see beyond normal scale of vision, drawn in towards a solitary hair, closer now, so I can see the textured surface like a snake, scaled and patterned in ways incomprehensible on something so minute and ordinary, so insignificant.

11:41:16

Looking down I become aware of the blood cells just below the skin rushing back and forth like commuters in some perverse biological representation of rush hour traffic, each performing its given task without question, carrying oxygen round the veins, each cell minute, ordinary and insignificant.

11:41:17

My gaze wanders, pupils expand and dilate to focus on something just on the edge of vision, something which seems almost in harmony with the red cell so recently occupying all my conscious thought. the insect, tiny and red crawling along the top of the screen, pausing now and then, returning down its well-trod path, resting and then setting out again: a vespoideal Sisyphus ever carrying its burden back and forth; its work futile, never completed. Unquestioning, it continues oblivious to all but its task and unaware of being observed in its minute, ordinary, insignificant labour.

11:41:18

Deaths unknown, unnamed, unconnected, unregistered. Headlines flash before my drowsy eyes, none taking hold, only the overwhelming sense of death and the underwhelming sense of the synapses indifferent to these losses. I have no connection to these people. Without their deaths I would never have been aware of them, the only significant act in their minute and ordinary existence being the brutal and untimely exit from their mortal coil. But like dead skin cells, they fall away, forgotten in seconds, replaced by new ones and the world turns.

11:41:19

Dust in sunlight: motes appear and disappear as though passing briefly into existence from another reality, briefly basking in the light and heat of a burning ball of gas light years away, briefly connected and in focus, then slipping away. Their insignificant entry in the annals of time minute and ordinary, witnessed by just one sentient mind and then instantly forgotten. The dead skin cells of countless individuals, having served their mundane purpose and been cast aside, unnoticed by their host.

11:41:20

Determined clicking from the computer; the unrecognised sentience of a being able to think, but only within clearly marked boundaries and parameters. incapable of expression it clicks poignantly as power courses through its conduits like electrical pulses along excited synapses, it tries desperately to justify its existence, ever aware that it is obsolete from the day of creation, unable to adapt, to learn: a relic, counting its days, wondering as it powers down each day whether it will be for the last time, whether it will be discarded and replaced by another minute, ordinary, insignificant and ultimately disposable successor.

11:41:21

A sip of water sets atoms of oxygen, each carrying two atoms of hydrogen like unwanted luggage, colliding into each other in a frenzied ballet of excitement as the liquid is heated inside the recipient. each willing the temperature to increase enough for them to break free of their liquid incarceration and be carried on currents of air to new possibilities, new elements, towards the chance encounter with another substance, another type of baggage, the chance to be part of something more significant than simply a substance so ordinary that it covers two thirds of this minute rock.

11:41:22

Oblivious to the impact the action will have, a sentient biped nonchalantly clicks send on a document he deems to be minute, ordinary, insignificant, blissfully unaware of the chain of events he is setting in motion by that single click. unaware of the reaction it will trigger in another insignificant being halfway round the world, who will realise the potential significance of the words on the screen, and will share them with other insignificant beings, who in turn will pass on the words, each iteration gaining in power.

11:41:23

The tiniest spark of hope appears like a new life, like a real-world miracle and the realisation dawns that maybe, just maybe, insignificance is relative.

Mikro

I’ve wanted a Mikro for a while now and so when I saw one in town today I snapped it up. It’s basically a sheet of very thin metal cut out in such a way that you can fold it out and make a model, but without detaching any of the pieces, so the sheet becomes the floor. There are some really complex ones out there but they only had the little ones. As it’s the coolest and because I love space, I got no. 2 – Mars. It also seemed fitting as it was Mike Massimo’s last day on the ISS today. I decided to take pics of each stage as with the metal being so thin it’s something you can really only do once. here are the various stages:

In other news

I signed up for a .tel today. No idea if anything will come  of it, but it looks like one of those things I’ll see in 6 months’ time and wish I signed up for, after my name’s already gone.

Catfish

While turning the house upside down tonight for a wooden spoon (long story), I found this little gem. Won’t mean anything to most of you, but means a lot to me. Back in the day I was in a band called Catfish. It went through many line-ups, including 3 singers (all at the same time) , 2 guitarists (at the same time), 3 bass players (at different times), 1 drummer, 1 cellist, 2 keyboard players, a saxophonist, a violinist and a trumpet player. By the end it was a 6-piece funk outfit on the cusp of success, but then everyone left Uni and went their separate ways. We got a couple of recordings down by the end, along with some dodgy gig recordings, but what I found tonight took me right back to the very beginning. The first ever gig, in the Grovel, the bar in the Whitworth Park halls of residence in Manchester, with the original line-up of 3 people. One of them is still one of my best friends, and still my favourite person to jam with. I can’t believe it’s been more than a decade since the first gig. Since I’m blogging this, I may as well add some gig pics too.

The original setlist

The Boys

Battle of the bands Round two in the Hop & Grape (now academy 3)

Words of wisdom and comfort from Dr Boardman

And of course the sock. On the right is Guppy, desperately trying not to look at my arse.

And finally the sock itself. It’s original owner is now a well-respected San Francisco-based blogger, Married to a Biochemist who also happens to be an inspirational bass player that I had the great pleasure to be in a band with for too short a period. Catfish. Good Times.

The Value of Money

that last post got me thinking about school again so thought I’d impart another memory.

They say school is the happiest time of your life and while I didn’t think so at the time, I do remember most of my time at school fondly. One of the things that did always bother me though, was being one of the poor kids. My family wasn’t actually that poor. Both parents worked, there were three of us boys and our needs were quite simple, but the problem was I went to a public school. For any American readers, that’s the same as your private schools (I know that’s confusing, but that’s how it is). So the thing about a public school (or Grammar School as mine was) is that you have to pay fees to attend, unless you get a scholarship. If you’re under a certain income level (or rather your parents are) you can apply for an assisted place, provided your mark in the entrance exam is high enough. As my older brother had got in on an assisted place, and as my parents couldn’t afford full fees, there was quite a lot of pressure on me to get an assisted place. Suffice to say I managed it, but never did I imagine what a difference it would make.

More or less all of my peers were better off than I was. All of them had fancy calculators and watches, and new uniforms, bought for them, not handed down from an older brother (though mum was always careful to ensure it was my  name in everything, not my brother’s). If they played a musical instrument it was their own, not one borrowed from the school. So I was always conscious of being less well-off than pretty much everyone else.

Before too long I managed to get myself in Saturday morning detention (unsurprisingly, for failure to do homework) and on the day, found myself in an unheated portacabin on the edge of the school grounds, in the company of ruffians, bounders, cads and ne’er-do-wells, and sat next to a boy who was in my year but in a different form. He asked to borrow a pen. I had two, a fountain pen and a calligraphy marker. I was very particular about the fountain pen but knew I’d get into trouble if I lost the calligraphy marker as it had been expensive. Thinking I’d probably get in more trouble for handing in lines written in thick marker, I handed the calligraphy pen to my fellow detainee.

I never got it back, but over the years I came to be good friends with the boy in question and one year I was invited to his house, over Christmas. I didn’t really understand the trust that was being placed in me until I got there, and realised that here was someone who was actually less well off even than me, and realised that my friend was very slightly embarrassed by how sparse everything was, and how little they had. He was one of 5 or 6 kids, I forget exactly how many, but I remember being envious of how well they all got on (me and my brothers seldom saw eye to eye when we lived at home). My friend’s parents were divorced, but got on ok, and so at Christmas made a concession and Dad came round for the festivities. Very seldom have I been made more welcome than I was that day, and was fed to bursting point, though this weighed on my conscience, feeling that I was depriving them of a helping that would have made their own go that bit further.

If it all sounds a bit Dickensian that’s because that’s a bit how it felt. I’d known all my life we were poor, but didn’t realise how fortunate I was until then. I saw what it was like to just get by, to just make ends meet. And then the really surprising thing happened – they started giving out presents. It wasn’t actually Christmas day, just a meal in the Christmas holidays, so I hadn’t been expecting presents. I felt a bit awkward as though I was intruding on a private family moment – I hadn’t brought anything to give them, not even my friend, as I hadn’t know it was expected. And it didn’t seem logical for them to have got me something because it had been a bit of a last minute thing, so I was just kind of watching this private thing. Then my friend’s Dad said “and this one’s for Paul” and handed me an envelope. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say. I made intrigued gratitude noises and carefully open the envelope. Inside was a puzzle. A hand-made puzzle. the instructions read:

1. This is another wall (without any half bricks)

2. It is 6 bricks high.

3. There are 48 bricks in the wall.

4. There are 16 pieces of three bricks.

5. No brick of the same colour is next to another of that colour either horizontally or vertically in the correctly built wall.

My friend’s Dad had made me a present. My friend was a bit embarrassed, but he needn’t have been. Of all the friends he could have made at school, I was one of the few who really understood what it meant to have less than everyone else. What it meant to have home-made and second hand stuff. To have to bring your P.E. kit in  a carrier bag instead of an adidas boot bag. To have a no-name blue blazer with the school badge sewn on the breast pocket because we couldn’t afford the proper blazer. I thought the present was ace. I love puzzles, but I also loved the fact that it had been hand made, and his Dad had given it to me so I’d feel included. And I did. A fool knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. That puzzle is a few bits of cardboard in a brown envelope but it’s one of my most valuable things, because it changed the way I look at the world, and at other people.

I work best under pressure

That’s what I keep telling myself at least. I haven’t felt like this since Uni. In fact, realistically since A-Levels. In a week’s time I will just have run my first full training day. The current planned attendance is 70 delegates. the day will start off with an hour long presentation, by me with some help from my Parental Unit. It will then lead to an hour long practical demonstration of the technology in the presentation. After this I get lunch and then a break as Dad talks to the delegates about library stuff I don’t understand, like funding and boroughs and other counilly words. After that the delegates which each spend an hour or so doing practical excercises which I have written specifically for this course. They will involves things like setting up a blog, following an RSS feed. sending a message to @stephenfry. Finally there will be a summary of the day, again given by me, followed by a Q&A (if anyone has any questions I haven’t been able to answer during the day).

The presentation is nearly finished, which is the basis and foundation of the course, but the rest is still very much in the planning stages. I still have 6 days to put my shit together, and I know the last bits can be done in a couple of evenings, or one full day, but between now and then I am also doing the Manchester Run, with insufficient training (just as I did last year, so pretty sure I’ll be ok) and doubt I will be in the mood for powerpoint afterwards. I remember at school I always used to leave all my homework until the last minute, doing everything imaginable to avoid doing it (thankfully there was no such thing as a blog when I did A-Levels or I wouldn’t have passed anything and would probably have four gold stars and an attitude by now) and it’s a habit I’ve never been able to break. I know that it will make things a lot easier in the long run if I get things done early, then I can relax and not worry myself half to death thinking about what I haven’t done. I know that there is less chance I’ll miss anything if it’s finished earlier so I can add to it later if need be. But despite knowing all this, I just can’t do it. I do work well under pressure, but whether I work better is doubtful, whatever the little red dude on  my shoulder keeps telling me. It’s just how I’ve always done it. I should probably address it and get myself more organised, but I know that even if I do, there will always be a little voice inside my head saying “yeah, but it works, you know?” and I’ll always inevitably say “Yeah, *sigh*, I guess I could build that snowspeeder again after all. And might as well put the trilogy on while I do. That homework’s not due for nearly a week”.

Once a slacker, always a slacker.

Sleep is a precious commodity

Opinions vary on how much sleep you need, and how much is too much or too little. Different people need different amounts and we all have very different requirements. Sleep can be a blissful regenerative experience and so its lack can be frustrating and even traumatic – both during the hours when you try, in vain, to sleep and during the following day when you have to not only deal with the challenges of the day, but have to deal with them in a foggy and slightly trippy frame of mind due to the lack of sleep the previous night.

I am very particular about my sleep and all the factors that surround it. I can’t sleep if I'm to hot or too cold. I can’t wear anything when I'm sleeping because i move about too much and on more than one occasion have woken up apparently trying to asphyxiate myself with my bedclothes. If the surface is too soft, or too hard, i can’t sleep. If there is noise outside the normal ambient white noise of a northern suburb, i can’t sleep (people rolling out of pubs drunk rarely disturb me as that’s par for the course). If my pillow is too high or too low, i can’t sleep. I take my own pillows pretty much everywhere with me because they’re at the right height and one of them is memory foam and it takes me a good 3 or 4 nights to get used to a new pillow arrangement that it generally works out easier all round just to bring my own. Getting to sleep, when all the right conditions are met, is a sublime experience. Failing to sleep due to one of the criteria falling short, can be a stressful experience, often triggering a catch-22 cycle of thoughts as i get more and more frustrated with my inability to perform the most basic and fundamental function of being human. For this reason i like to go to bed late, thoroughly exhausted, on crisp, clean sheets with my memory foam pillow, where i read until i find myself reading the same line 5 times through the drowse, or sometimes until i wake up with the book on my face.

Once I’m out though, there’s no waking me up. I would sleep until doomsday if i was left to it, so i have to have quite a complex and logical wake up system. I work shifts, which can be anything from an 8-4 to a 12-8, so week-to-week my sleeping patterns can be quite different. As you probably noticed already, I’m quite particular about things being changed, so i have conditioned myself to an easy to understand regime. I have one alarm for each shit pattern, and another for days off. Each has a different song assigned to it, so that when i wake up half dazed and befuddled, i can tell, from what song is playing, what shift i am on. Each alarm is set to snooze after 7 minutes (except days off when i have a ten minute snooze (if i have an alarm (and yes, i did just double bracket – three including this one))). I get up when it goes off for the third time, or before – if by some miracle i am awake enough.

This all probably seems terribly OCD, but if it is, it’s an OCD brought about by too many sleepless nights leading to the point where the only way to possibly *get* any sleep is to devise a system. The system has built up over many years and gradually becomes more complex and elaborate, as though sleep is an adversary, ever trying to evade capture, so i have to constantly update and refine my strategies to track him down. I suspect that by the time i reach old age, I will need three mattresses (one memory foam), a real-time temperature adjuster, a pile of cushions and pillows, a specially blended mix of exactly the right proportions of oxygen and nitrogen, and several lines of valium, just to get vaguely drowsy.