Faking it, or Making it?

polaroids and beer, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.

So, a while back I started a blog post saying that I was cripplingly shy. I meant it. I honestly believe I am...or rather, that I was.

But much more recently (about a month ago, in fact) I had a sudden realisation that I'm not shy any more. Or at least I don't act like a shy person any more.

Over the last few years several people have said they're surprised to hear me describe myself as shy as I don't come across that way. I always counter with a smile that I'm good at faking it.

I have no knowledge of the psychology of shyness and whether it's something that you always have - like blue eyes - or whether it's a state of mind you can be trained out of.

All I can say is that a month ago I had a business-ish meeting with a couple of guys who run a comedy club I attend from time to time in Hitchin, with S. S has known one of the guys since he was a young lad and he was supposed to be accompanying me to the meeting to effect introductions. I was secure in the knowledge that he would break the ice and all would be well. And then S contracted flu and was too ill to come with me. There was no option but to go it alone.

I sat in the bar waiting for the guys to arrive (I'm always early) and I realised, all of a sudden, that I wasn't nervous at all. I guessed they probably wouldn't recognise me but I knew what they looked like and I had no qualms about leaping up and introducing myself if needs be. Wait...I'll just run that past again...not nervous and no qualms. Weird.

In fact, one of the guys recognised me and the meeting time flew by as we had a very pleasant and helpful nattering session.

The next evening we were due to attend the comedy club itself with the usual group of four blokes...
I'd met them all a couple of times before but I can't say I really know them. Nevertheless I went and met them and spent a cheery hour or so in their company, again not feeling in the least concerned.

At the weekend, the plan had been to pop up to Peterborough for an away match. S insisted that I still go so that his usual matchday buddy had some company. I know MP reasonably well and so this was always going to be an easier sell than the other outings but even so...the only thing I was in the least apprehensive about was finding my way to the pub where we had agreed to meet. As it was I had a really enjoyable day. Yes, of course I missed S's company, but that's not the same as not enjoying something because you're shy.

Since then I've booked a working weekend in Eastbourne to work on a potential project...moreover, I did so without any regard for whether I'd go on my own or be accompanied.

Feels like I've come a long way since I fretted for an afternoon about going to a pub on my own in Marazion when I was really gagging for a beer but had to be coached and coaxed, by email, by TD, before I would.

Don't get me wrong - I'd still avoid parties and certain other social occasions like the plague but that could easily be because I simply don't enjoy smalltalk or loud rooms.

However, I'm genuinely interested to know whether I'm not as shy as I was...or whether I've just got some better strategies for coping with it.

I also wonder whether other people who look like they're confident and happy in the company of strangers are, in fact, just doing the same as me...because I can't shake the feeling that for me it's still so much smoke and mirrors.

Then again, the fact that life's a little less stressful, and I'm less likely to avoid activities that I'll ultimately get on fine with is the main thing and maybe the wondering why is over-analsying (what me? Surely not).

View from the Top

I don't feel the urge to blog anything like as frequently as I used to. Nor to write in the journal in my bedside table, nor to take photographs.

I enjoy writing, and I love photography but just now, they're not imperatives for me. I realised that I needed to do those things before but at the moment they don't have that same hold over me.

More than anything, I've realised that my mind has calmed itself a lot. I used to walk for hours and take photographs because the concentration that photography requires shuts outs all other thoughts and stops the "what ifs" and "what next" thoughts from spinning out of control.

Along with this, my urge to read is returning (currently "The Book of Dave" by Will Self) as is my desire to cook properly...even just for myself. To the extent of making my own wheatflour tortillas to go with the chilli I took out of the freezer because I couldn't be arsed to cook.

I've been musing on this change for a few days and wondering why.

My life certainly isn't any more settled than it's been for the last few years. I haven't got religion, gone vegan or started meditating.

Of course, there have been changes - mostly incremental things - in my life. I see more of some people, and less of others as their lives and circumstances change too. Of course, there's S who entertains me on a regular basis: dragging me up hills, forcefeeding me beer, widening my musical appreciation and carrying my camera bag for me as well as making the best steak and kidney pudding in the northern hemisphere.

...and this is the key, of course, it's incremental change over...TIME.

Change takes time to adjust to. I must admit I thought that the "adjustment" was about getting used to sleeping on my own in the house, learning how to change tap washers, taking responsibility for chopping wood and stuff like that.

But I'm learning it's more subtle than that.

2011's was a good year: seeing new places, meeting new people, doing new stuff and remembering what it was like to enjoy old things with new people, and on my own.

2012 promises to give me more change, more challenges and more fun. I'm looking forward to it hugely.

I hope that anyone reading this who's had an unpleasant change wrought upon them can take a bit of heart from the probability that things will get better and sometimes you've gotta dig in and ride the shit out.

Yep, there are bloody difficult hills you have to climb...but when you get some encouragement the view can be worth it.

Bring it on.

x

.

Hands on

DSC_1660 Hatfield Moore, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.

So, it's my second date with - let's call him Bob. We swap pleasantries and catch up a bit - it's been three weeks since we last saw each other.

He suggests I remove my top. Now, I'm not in the least confident in being only partially clothed around other people but knew this was likely to happen so I comply and I stand there a little awkwardly.

He smiles and asks me to move whilst he stands behind me and watches. This does nothing to improve my self-consciousness.

I lie on the bed, then he asks me to lie face down (and very politely took my glasses from me), then asks me to adopt a position on my hands and knees and arch my back.

All this time Bob's very polite, encouraging and complimentary.

Finally, he asks me to stand up and he stands behind me again. He places his left arm across my upper chest and places his right hand on my right shoulder blade and massages the muscles there very hard.

This date has been just about as physically intimate as is possible to imagine - and yet it's totally asexual.

Bob's my NHS physiotherapist.

I'm thoroughly impressed that, whilst locking his limbs around mine, he manages to make me feel completely comfortable.

I'm not that good with people. I'm considerably less good when I'm reduced to underwear. So his manner, professional but warm, is an exmplar of how to deal with patients.

Thank you Bob...

When Life Imitates Art

It's a strange time to post a blog which is a cultural critique but I could resist no longer - even though this is a TV series that ceased being broadcast over 5 years ago.

I've just finished rewatching the TV series "The West Wing". I've got the entire thing on DVD and I rewatch episodes on a regular basis because I simply love the pace and language of the writing.

Obviously I find the storyline - that is: the everyday story of Whitehouse Folk - interesting too, but for the most part I would previously have been unable to recount, with any accuracy, most of the political points it was making.

Whether I've just taken more interest in politics in general recently, or whether something else is at play, I'm not sure. No matter. What has shone out - fluoresced, even - is the sheer prescience of the storylines.

For those of you who haven't watched it here's a an overall idea of what it's about.

Josiah (Jed) Bartlett is a Noble prize-winning economist turned politician who has become the democratic president of the US (aka POTUS).

He has a staff around him of similarly clever people - Leo McGarry (Chief of Staff), Josh Lymon (Deputy CoS), Toby Ziegler (Comms director), Sam Seabourne (Deputy Comms Director), CJ Cregg (Press Secretary) and Charlie Young (Personal Aide/Body man). There are others, of course, but these are the main people you see and learn to love.

Bartlett is a compassionate and decent man - but he's also deeply flawed and this is where all the drama comes from and where the storylines become believable.

I think what I like best is that even though it's drama, it generally doesn't simplify the issues around running the most powerful nation in the World.

It was generally lauded as a great series with even "people in the know" being reasonably complimentary about its general accuracy even if some people found the characters to be a bit too morally pure or naive. Then again, it was fictional so I don't think we should be too harsh.

What has stunned me, however, is how stories told in WW have been played out in the real Whitehouse long after the TV programme was shown.

SPOILER ALERT
If you haven't seen it, and plan to you might want to stop reading now...

Storylines include:

Bartlett being suceeded after two terms in office by the first ethnic minority president (Latino) who succeeds less on his colour than his popular following.

The Whitehouse and the two elected houses getting their knickers in a knot over whether they can raise the deficit ceiling.

A nuclear power plant (OK in the US, not Japan) suffering potential meltdown after cooling water system failed. Radioactive steam first escaping into a containment building and then requiring venting into the atmosphere when the pressure in that building got too high.

POTUS agonising over the need to carry out a state killing of a foreign terrorist of high standing without due process.

...and there are others.

Maybe an infinite number of plotlines and real life stories will necessarily generate cross over...maybe Aaron Sorkin and the other writers, together with their advisers were just very good at what they do.

In any event, if you find US politics in some way interesting but maybe need some lessons on how it works, or like snappy (if too good to be true) dialog, or even the occasional slapstick moment and you haven't experienced WW yet I commend you to get to it.

Warning - the style is very fast and you sometimes feel you've been dumped in the middle of the action, even though the opening credits have only just finished. My advice is to treat it like a Shakespeare play and stop listening so hard. Relax a little and let it flow through you - it'll be well worth it.

In pursuit of a sound-bite

When did being a company automatically make you evil?






I'll sidestep, for a moment, the local figure of hate: Tesco in favour of another example.

This evening's "Any Questions" on R4 turned its attention to the public sector industrial action this week and discussed whether it was reasonable to strike because of an enforced change in people's pensions.

The commentators included Billy Bragg who - and I'm paraphrasing now - indicated that private sector workers should be asking after their pensions too since their employers took funding holidays for years thereby boosting their profits at the expense of their employees' future well-being.

I guess Mr Bragg is talking about the pension glory-days of the 1980's and 90's

I can't claim to be a pension expert but in the 1980's I was busily running Final Salary Pension schemes for my employer.

It's true, many funds did have funding holidays but they didn't general do it for fun - they did it because the law changed.
This particular change reduced the funding margin that pension funds were allowed to run.

Prior to this change there was a really good incentive to heavily over-fund the pension scheme. The tax regime was such that an employer could count their pension contributions as allowable business expense and any increase in the value of the fund was tax free.
This sounds good, no?
A really good way to secure the future income for your employees and Inland Revenue blessing to do so.

Except that this was abused - you're shocked, aren't you?

A number of unscrupulous companies busily squirrelled away vast funds in the pension scheme for a number of years, making use of the tax incentives and the favourable ecomonic climate. After a few years, they liquidated the companies, laid off their employees after securing the absolute minimum paid up pension for them and swiped the rest of the pension fund. OK, the disbursement of the fund was then subject to tax but it still proved to be a good money spinner for them.
All this was perfectly legal.

At the time there was other legislation in place that made company pension schemes far from perfect in some cases...

There was the ability - possibly encouragement - to make the joining of the company pension scheme compulsory. So if the benefits that it provided were sub-standard (but legal) an employee could find themselves hobbled in a scheme that wouldn't really provide for the future.

At the time there were no such things as personal pensions, or stakeholder pensions so employees' choices were heavily limited anyway.

All this changed in the latter part of the 80's with so-called "Fowler" pensions legislation. Compulsion to join the company retirement plan was removed and individual pensions came into being, and were blessed with a favourable tax regime.

The idea was not to encourage people out of good pension schemes but to give them the option to set up their own where they didn't expect to be with an employer for very long, or when the company plan wasn't very good or where there was no company pension scheme.

Around the same time, the allowable funding margins were tightened to reduce the incentive for unscrupulous companies misbehaving.

What happened? Companies had to stop paying into pension schemes to reduce the over-funding because removing the excess from the fund would have lead to them being heavily taxed on the money removed, only for them have to reinvest eventually anyway.

Now pension providers turned their attention to sexy new personal pension products. There was a large population of un-pensioned people out there. So in order to encourage salesfolk to sell the new individual plans to a new audience rather than encourage the churning around the market of existing occupational plans they made the commission on these new arrangement very attractive.

What happened? The pensions mis-selling scandal, that's what. Instead of targeting the individual plans at the uninsured they applied a scatter-gun approach and sold to anyone and everyone.

So much for the pensions regime for a moment...let's come back to the evil that is the Corporation.

The second half of Mr Bragg's statement was that the evil coporporation took the reduction in the pension contribution to their "bottom line". Ummm...well, that's what companies are there to do. Make a profit. Actually, public limited companies have an obligation to their shareholders to maximise the return on their shares.

Now I can hear you saying that shareholders are also evil capitalists who are only there to screw the poor downtrodden worker into the ground.

I need you to come out of your Dickensian nay-saying for a second.

Who are the major shareholders in public limited companies? Large-scale investors...such as insurance companies, banks and pension funds.

So if you're wanting good levels of return on your building society account, or your unit-linked pension to provide you with a good income when you retire, or your Open Ended Investment Contract to return sufficient dividends to pay off your interest-only mortgage then you have a vested interest in PLCs making a profit.

Only when these companies make a profit can they declare a dividend on the shares you effectively own in them thereby paying you for the use of your money.

You see what I'm getting at?

I'm not for a second saying that the financial regime is perfect - it's not. It never has been. Each change in legislation removes some of the abuse at the expense of introducing some other abuse.

What I'm saying is that financial issues, like economics as a whole, can't be condensed into a couple of simple headlines.

As for Tesco - I'm not a big fan. I seldom shop there but them being good at turning a profit - providing they act within the law - is what they're there to do. And there's a reasonable chance that quite a few people reading this, as well as some of the people who protest against them, are financially better off because of this.

So please, Mr Bragg, stick to being a reasonable singer-songwriter...and leave the pensions to someone else, eh?

Travelling Precisely

You thought travel precision was simply about arriving at the right place at the right time, didn't you? I'm about to tell you how wrong you are.

I looked with a degree of incredulity at my friend and neighbour, MrB-H, when he told me that when he was in Japan he derived no small amount of satisfaction from tailoring his daily commute on the train to make his journey as step-perfect as possible.
I thought that this was just MrB-H being a little quirky and gave it no further thought.



Imagine, then, my surprise (well, that sounds so much better than 'horror', doesn't it?) when a trip with S from Hitchin to Brighton was peppered with precision requirements about where one gets on and off a train in order to faciliate the next leg of the journey.

I'm pretty easy-going with such things and took these minor things in my stride, but gave S a wry smile.

Since then I've made the journey to and from Hitchin a number of times and had to build in variations due to engineering works on London Underground.

Something happens when you make the same train journey a lot...especially when it involves travelling on the underground. You start to notice that where you get on the train affects how stressful the next leg of your journey will be.

You see the typical tube train is maybe 6 carriages long and there are several entrances and exits along the length of the platform.

For maximum potential space in the carriage the usual widsom says get on at one end or other of the platform - avoiding the mid train (and last minute joiner) crush. The only problem with that approach is that if you get on at the wrong end it can make your onward much more tricky.

By tricky I mean longer and with greater exposure to people moving VERY SLOWLY with wheelie cases. If you're in a rush to get across the city, then that can make a big difference.

On the Hammersmith and City platform at King's Cross St Pancras the choice of platform end means the potential of an extra 5 minutes of fabulously obfuscating signage and the probability of missing the next connection north.

So it was with a great deal of satifaction last Friday when I found the prime spot to get on my underground train on platform 16 at Paddington, making my egress at Kings Cross a pleasant, and stress-free experience. A mental note has been made.

It's filed away with the local knowledge that there's a sweet spot on Hitchin platform 1. You get on the train south (as long as the train is an 8 carriage job) from here and when you arrive at Finsbury Park you will find yourself right next to the steps that lead quickly and efficiently to the Victoria underground line. Get out first and you'll be on the tube with no queueing, no wheelie suitcases or bikes having attacked you.

Next time I make the journey I shall be turning my attention to the return journey transfer at Oxford Circus...

...what? Don't look at me like that - you would too...trust me.

Repeat after Me

DSC_1230 Rippled, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.

At last...after four years I'm reading again for fun.

I always used to be a reading fanatic but when the boy departed, so did my concentration.

Over Christmas, I asked S if he'd mind encouraging me to get reading a book whilst we were on holiday. I took one of my all-time favourites "The Midwich Cuckoos" by John Wyndham. A little archaic, perhaps, but short enough to seem achievable.

He also brought along a book and one afternoon, we sprawled in companionable silence on the comfy sofa with mugs of tea and read for a couple of hours. It might not have been a big deal for S...but it was for me.

...and Cuckoos is still spine chilling...

Then a few weeks ago, S sent me a book by the power of Amazon. As I mentioned in a post at the time, it's a great book all about the history of football tactics. Instead of a joint reading session, though, I read it at night, in bed, at home. It took me a couple of weeks, but I finished it.

So I decided that the time might be right to buy a few new books and see if I could keep the momentum up.

A couple of months back I went to see a production of "Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell" - which is brilliantly funny but with lingering pathos that left me quite moved.

It's based on a real-life journalist/writer and so I tried to find some of his writing.

I found it in "Reach for the Ground". It is a collection of some of his columns for the Spectator and so is effectively arranged into very short chapters.

I get the sense he's very much a man of his time and profession - although I might be wrong.

Some of his attitudes to women and alcohol, gambling and smoking seem quite shocking but I found him quite endearing and very funny.

He had very many failed and dysfunctional relationships with women but never stopped being entranced by them.

Even though he suffered from pancreatitis, pneumonia and diabetes - eventually having a leg amputated, and many falls and accidents he seems to keep his wit about him to the last.

As a result even the sad chapters are able to provoke a smile or two...sometimes a real laugh out loud moment for me.

So, in summary ...thank you Jeffrey Bernard for a splendid read and thank you S for pushing me gently back on the road to reading.

x