My favourite quote is one that has no obvious origin.
‘ You are mistaking my tolerance for indifference ‘
The digital rabbit hole I nipped down to check mentions Al Capone but there appears no evidence that he actually said it.
He and I could not be more different. I believe he would have delivered such a sentence with more than a hint of menace. For me it is more of a mental note against the individual who has transgressed.
Curiously although I love this quote I am aware of its ambiguity. No one individual or organisation knows where my tipping point is for them. Nor do I have a hard and fast rule myself. My head rules for many such decisions as does my heart. More inportantly I don’t always know where the tipping point is.
Also on reflection I can see that some people were given way too much slack when I was younger.
If you had to give one life-changing tip, what would it be?
My life-changing tip is not a quick fix and may not even change lives but the tip does enhance life and that in itself changes everything.
Live life as it is, and not as you hoped or expected it to be.
Don’t dwell on what isn’t but embrace what is.
I have to say this seems glib and simplistic when written down.
My own regular insomniac relationship with 3:30 a.m suggests that my head does not always find my own tip easy to put into practice . But even if I have to force my own theory on my chaotic over- busy mind at times. I know my head and heart benefit in the long run.
And Oh My Goodness! The mental long run can often be an exceedingly long run, arduous and exhausting.
But living life as it is , is as good a survival tool as a tin of Brown Kendal Mint Cake.
*I am a sucker for a retro branded tin. This one fell into my shopping yesterday. When I was young our family holidays always involved long walks, scrambling over or up rough terrain and admiring the landscape. The only safety equipment was some water and Brown Kendal Mint cake.And my mum left somewhere nearby reading a book. Mini me thought I was conquering Everest. That was unlikely as our holidays were always in the U.K. Non holiday adventures requiring Mint Cake took place in Essex or Suffolk. No dizzy heights in either place.
50 years since Brown Kendal Mint Cake has passed my lips. It will find a way into my life as it is, but only tiny little pieces occasionally. It really is possible to have too much of a good thing. Bigger bits may be allowed if I have to consider things of Everest proportions during my 3:00a.m tribulations.
What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever?
There is nothing sophisticated about the lyrics of this 1970’s rock ballad.
Hold your head up.
By Argent an English Rock Band.
And if it’s bad Don’t let it get you down, you can take it And if it hurts Don’t let them see you cry, you can make it
Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head high Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head high
And if they stare Just let them burn their eyes on you moving And if they shout Don’t let it change a thing that you’re doing
Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head high Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head high
Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up Hold your head up
Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up,oh Hold your head up, woman Hold your head high Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head up, woman Hold your head high
And if they stare Just let them burn their eyes on you moving And if they shout Don’t let it change a thing that you’re doing
Hold your head up, woman
The tune is a hugely masculine feeling composition of the era, the testosterone bounces out of every note, but it was a supportive battle cry for the emerging Womens Liberation Movement.
I have found it immensely useful to just have in my head during tricksy moments. But it would never be my Karaoke tune of choice I just don’t have enough testosterone to carry it off.
What’s a promise you made to yourself that you’ve actually kept?
8 summery bobbers met yesterday for our regular weekly swim. About half of the number of registered bobbers who turn out at Firestone Bay in all weathers to swim, chat and eat cake.
If there was anything positive to come out of the Covid era this group of acquired aquatic friends is my favourite thing.
There is nothing good about my swimming. I am not fast, strong or stylish. But during the Covid years I learnt that being in the sea, bobbing about was something that I loved doing.
Before the Covid era I was not someone who made promises to myself. I was fortunate, a boomer, a post-war child born into an optimistic era. Too young to understand the threats of the Cold war. Covid was the first time I felt threatened in a way that was beyond the control of myself, society or the world. I promised myself I would keep swimming with the bobbers and keep writing a daily blog.
Faced with a Global Pandemic those were the only two intentions I had to battle an invisible enemy. Written down that looks quite pathetic. Also as promises go they are hardly earth shattering.
But history will probably call us the Covid Generation. The big stuff will be researched and discussed at conferences and academic institutions. But the little stuff is what we all had to do to get through.I do little stuff.
5 years ago we were just emerging from Covid restrictions. We attended a wedding. The blog I wrote on that day is below.
My promises to myself may well be a bit inconsequential but so far I have stuck with them and that is good enough for now.
Reflecting on this I realise there were two pivotal moments that made both blogging and swimming both possible and promisable.
In early Covid I was recalled back to work in London. At the time I was living in Cornwall. Even in normal times that would be a near impossible commute. Had that happened there would be no sea swimming.
In early 2020 I had been accepted to train as a theatre critic, barely had the email landed when Covid arrived stamping its big gnarly foot on training or aspiration of any sort. Had the Theatre Critic thing happened there would be no blogging.
My tiny promises were created by a massive global crisis.
If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be?
This is slightly cheating but I would ask AI to write a novel where the male protagonist was exactly like my father. I would then edit out the glitches and inaccuracies, print out a small run of the books and then invite the character, that would, in truth, be him. Then I would invite him for dinner and natter away. He was the steadier half of my gene pool and would reliably turn up. My mum would be almost as interesting to meet up with but might at the last minute find something better to do.
He and his wisdom have been deceased for more than 30 years . The same for my mum. The conversation would not be all one way. I have five more years of life experience than them. They might want advice on retirement or travel and grandchildren. Something they had briefly but were never really well enough to enjoy. I, for certain, would be taken to task for living a life as an artist and designer, when they skipped off this earth I had a sensible career. One they pushed me towards to protect me from the giddiness of life as an impoverished creative.
However if I stick to the rules I would go for a much more tricksy diner companion. John-Baptiste Grenouille from Patick Suskind’s 1985 novel. Perfume. Let me be honest the dinner date would scare my pants off. And not in a good way. He is the one character that really lives on in my head and Perfume is a book I re read more than any other. There is no accounting for this choice. I am not by nature a lover of literary horror. I don’t speak 17th century French or any other French for that matter. I can no more explain my choice to you than I can justify it to myself. He is just a character that slipped into a fissure in my brain and refuses to leave. Maybe, by confronting him over a meal I might get some insight into this curious decision. Maybe I would not even survive the meal.
What’s the funniest misunderstanding you’ve ever been part of?
On reflection and with the clarity of distance one of the funniest misunderstandings was one of my last work place appraisals. It was also one of those excruciating appraisals where I was told why I had missed out on a recent promotion.
I had missed out because I was over 50, had not been given a list of the interview questions by the lead interviewer ( the favoured and ultimately successful candidate got that ) and did not partake of some of the party activities my younger colleagues enjoyed.
I had mellowed enough from my initial furious mindset to enjoy the utter tripe that was coming from my line managers mouth. Then he served me a golden ticket of a comment.
“I think” he said,
“You use kindness to manipulate people”
Now at that point my thought bubble was an expletive filled explosion of great unkindness to him and his successful candidate.
After that I have no recollection of how we passed the time appraising me for the next year of my career.
Middle distance from the tidal pool
I remained fairly incandescent for some time. We never crossed intellects at an appraisal again. Curiously for reasons not unassociated with that meeting I chose to resign and move on without his weasel ways impacting me or my career.
Closer to the tidal pool
I still don’t believe that kindness is a tool for manipulation. I just feel it is a better default than unkindness. But is kindness a bit of a super-power? If people believe it has the power to manipulate in a good way then perhaps it is. It is certainly way more useful than unkindness.
I find my recollection of that appraisal just hugely amusing.
The other gem that my appraiser chucked out, that day ,was that he wanted to rekindle our previously good relationship.
” How do we polish a turd” he asked.
” By being kind ” I might have said and really wished I had. Of course that comment came to me moments after the appraisal finished. I wasn’t on any stairs, but I might as well have been.
Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?
As a lifelong image maker the outdated technology I miss the most is the magic and alchemy of a photographic or radiographic darkroom. The basic skills of wet processing and later automated processing, that are enhanced by the knowledge and experience of knowing how to manipulate negative and positive images to create the best possible outcome.
So many mental filing cabinets of know how have been stored in my brain gathering dust since the dawn of digital imaging. Until a February in Penzance when I had a lightbulb moment and decided to start using some of my old analogue knowledge alongside the digital knowledge of contemporary image making.
I am a time-hopping digital immigrant. Using skills taught to me by people called Sheila and Ron in the 70’s ,an era when a dark room technician could turn a disaster into an acceptable picture by clever thinking and the use of tricks and accuracy to make an image better.
This is the first successfully manipulated image created by overlaying three separate digital photographs to create one picture.
The feet below are my most recent meddled image.
The others are just some of the picture journey. The acceptable part of the journey. Not the many many images that have ended up in the digital bin
Pondering long into the night.This is what retirement looks like. Sometimes
What’s one habit that has improved your life the most?
I pondered this one a bit, and initially discarded it. But in the spirit of ‘ my blog my rules’ I will have 3 habits that have improved my life.
Bobbing
In no particular order. Retirement. Bobbing. Blogging. Although without retirement the other two would be less possible. Blogging existed in a much lesser way before retirement. Other Bobbers manage to bob without being retired.
Domestic Admin = Creativity
All three feed my creativity and nourish my soul. I was creative on the side before I retired. Now I have more time, more thinking time and more down time. Creativity is no longer a side issue. It sits at the centre with voluntary admin and domestic admin taking up the side bars.
Retirement took me away from an amazing group of friends and colleagues. There were some rogue* colleagues of course, people best left behind when you close your work locker for the last time. I have done that a few times!
Bobbing gives me silly , lovely friends to swim in the sea with and made me move into a community that can use my transferable skills and also gives me amazing friends, no rogues at bobbing, maybe some in the community. For the most part avoidable.
Blogging brings everything together old friends , new friends, local friends and some, all around the world that I may never meet. Casting words out into the world, with no knowledge of where they land is very therapeutic.
My blog, my rules, 3 habits to improve my life, and it was already pretty good anyway.
The blog
Rogue is a polite term for Arrogant, Ego driven, duplicitous, lazy, scheming, total arseholes. There maybe other categories I have forgotten. But we have all worked with them.
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
The hardest of ‘hard years’ were the years when my children were very small and both my parents were terminally ill and we lived 300 miles apart. The support of my husband and friends helped me get through it, but in truth, as an only child with no substantial extended family, what got me through it was me. I emerged from that period changed and damaged forever. The damage buried deep beneath many layers of a woman who was coping with whatever life was throwing at her.
Hard years just like good years are the foundations that the years yet to come are built on. The cracks and fault lines caused by the hard years are just that. Cracks and fault lines, good years build strength and stability around them. I know where the cracks are and they can largely be avoided. Sometimes one trips me up when I least expect it. Flying over Australia recently, opened up a crack I didn’t even know was there. Suddenly I was grieving for all the stuff I didn’t do while I was busy coping with all the serious stuff that hard years generate.
Thank goodness we are not required to mourn missing out on serious stuff when life is all tickety boo. That would be a counterproductive cycle of thinking.
Although in fairness there are quite a lot of people who love a good wallow in their own and other peoples misfortune. Soul Suckers.
If your glass is half empty, top it up a bit.
Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall Song by Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots
Into each life some rain must fall But too much is falling in mine Into each heart some tears must fall But someday the sun will shine Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts When I think of you another shower starts Into each life some rain must fall But too much is falling in mine Into each life some rain’s got to fall Too much, too much, too much is falling in mine Into each heart some tears must fall But someday the sun will shine Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts But when I think of you, pretty baby That’s when another shower starts Into each life some rain’s got to fall Too much, too much, too much is falling in mine, oh yeah Into each and every life some rain is bound to fall But too much of that stuff is falling in mine And into each heart some tears must fall But I know, baby, that someday that old sun is bound to shine Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts But when I think of you, pretty baby That’s when another shower starts Into each life some rain’s got to fall
These lyrics are about a failed romantic relationship . But I have always hung on to the notion that eventually, after the hard bits of life the sun will eventually shine again. It always does.
For this reason I like in particular these 4 lines from the song.
Into each life some rain must fall But too much is falling in mine Into each heart some tears must fall But someday the sun will shine
Absolutely , chaos is a challenge to rigid thinking and over-planning. Too much chaos is a disaster but leaving space in life for a little chaos can be refreshing and educating.
I particularly like creating order out of chaos. It feels exhilarating, like riding a wild white horse through a swamp and arriving at your destination perfectly clean and tidy, not a hair out of place and perfect lipstick
In my professional life we avoided chaos at all costs with protocols and procedures. But chaos still found us, and pulling victory out of a disaster felt so sweet.
In my artistic life I like to allow chaos to have a space. When chaos produces good results I call it serendipity or concatenation but when chaos does not a thing of beauty make the bin becomes the winner.
I am neither a biker nor a pipe smoker but in my head I like to think that I view chaos with his calm contemplative aura.
Something tricksy to be tamed or something creative to be harnessed.
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