Divide and Conquer

“Come on, Barnsley! Come on, Barnsley!”

It was Saturday and it was just after three o’clock and young men were bellowing their support for their team. Normally I'd see nothing wrong with that. I’ve spent time at Oakwell, the quaint little football stadium just outside of Barnsley town centre, and I understand the stylised tribal warfare that is the modern game. It's a safe (unless Leeds are involved) outlet for the passions and rages of clans protecting their own turf against out of town invaders. All good clean fun.

The problem was though that it was three in the morning, not the afternoon. And the guys that were doing the shouting weren’t at the ground, they were walking down my street.

As far as I know, no Barnsley F.C. representatives were involved but I don't give a hoot. Actually, as there are quite a few owls living within hooting distance of my house, I'd prefer a hoot or two from them to the loud and rather industrial football chants that dragged me from my slumbers.

So what's the correct response in this situation? It's not listed in my copy of Debrett's. The etiquette was simple in the old days when I was young and dinosaurs walked the earth. There was usually a guzunder close to hand…  (congratulations and apologies to anyone old enough to understand that one).

Should I have politely requested that they keep their noise levels down a bit? I can imagine the response to that would have been quite pithy and Anglo-Saxon. Maybe I should have rhetorically asked them if they knew what time it was? I suspect that - Barnsley Best Bitter being what it is -they neither know nor cared.

I don't need to tell you what I did though, do I? You guessed it: I waited patiently for them to go on their very merry way and lay there for a while before insomnia got the better of me. That's why I'm typing this in the early hours of Saturday morning. I know that in a few hours I'll feel tired again but right now I'm at the top of my game (which isn't high enough for me to get vertigo but it's the best I get) so I may as well make the most of it. And what do you know? I've been churning words out, my fingers flying over the keyboard and even occasionally hitting the letters that I want them too. Perhaps I should put a light on.

I've always done my best work first thing in the morning but I never knew that I could be so productive in the very small hours until recently. This idea of waking up and getting things done in the middle of the night then having a nap later is certainly not what most of us would call normal, but I've found that it works for me whether I want it to or not. Is it wrong? Apparently not. Some academics argue that this segmented sleep is the way that we human animals should get our rest naturally. Apparently we're designed to nod off earlier than most of us do, sleep for a few hours then wake to do something around two or three o'clock before heading back to bed for another couple of hours kip. Indeed it was the norm up until the 19th century so perhaps I'm 'right' in my sleeping patterns and the rest of the western working world is 'wrong'? Hmm, perhaps.

I think it's also quite likely that my sedentary lifestyle combined with a creative mind-set leaves my brain racing while my body hasn't been tired out. I should get some balance and some exercise.

But that's something to consider tomorrow. Right now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off for some sleep. Part two.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Mostly Autumn

Just like Jeff Wayne’s nameless departed lover, I get a real buzz from kicking my way through autumn’s golden gown. I most definitely love this time of year. There is no way that any fallen leaves in my path would ever go undisturbed.

The sudden sharp downturn in the temperature, the early dusks, the primal thrills of Halloween and bonfires – this is by far my favourite season. But apart from clogging up gutters and drains with its wet and rotting leaves, what’s the point of autumn really? When you look closely the other seasons have a definite place in nature. Autumn? Well it just sort of fills the windy gap between the heady delights of summer and the semi-hibernation of winter doesn’t it?

I mean, spring is really useful, I get the point of it. It’s the season of new birth. I can pretty much guarantee that if you were asked to think of an image to sum up spring then you’d conjure up a picture of new lambs happily bouncing about in a hilly green field. They’d almost certainly be gambolling. Has any other creature ever gambolled? It’s like the two words – ‘gambolling’ and ‘lamb’ – are joined at the hip, like ‘lying’ and ‘politician’.

The winter season is a time of cleansing, of killing off the weak and old to make way for all that new growth in springtime. That’s perhaps not such a good thing in nursing homes but really useful in our fields and woodlands. When the trees are stripped bare of their leaves they let the light in to the forest floor where all the nasty creepy creatures that we don’t like to think about can do the kind of work that we want to picture even less – most of it involving chomping on something that’s decaying. It might not be pretty but don’t knock it. We all have to earn a living somehow.

Summer is a celebration, a time for growth and fattening up of all things before the harvest to come at its end. Assuming that summer hasn’t been rained off (and that’s a big assumption) then crops grow tall, people north of Watford try to work out just what the heck to do with Pimms and I try my best to dodge salads for the two weeks or so that we see the sun in England. Summer’s fine, I understand summer.

But autumn? I can’t see where autumn fits into this cycle so neatly. Spring is birth, summer is growth, winter is death. It’s all nice and neat.

I have a theory though. Perhaps autumn’s just there for me to go out and enjoy? Maybe it’s sole purpose is to let us have fun in nature’s playground when it’s not too hot, not too cold and not too crowded. And you know what? That’s good enough for me.

Thanks, autumn.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

All In The Family

We made a big breakthrough this week while researching our family trees. We discovered that my Beloved (whose family have never moved far from a little village near to where I live now) and one of my closest friends (whose ancestors also lived in the same village for centuries) are related. Very distantly related, it’s true, but related all the same. It turns out that he’s the great-grand-nephew of the husband of my Beloved’s great-grand-aunt. On their fathers’ sides. I’m not sure if this knowledge is going to bring them closer but I think it might mean that they’re ineligible to marry.

Why do so many of us feel the need to trace our family trees? Genealogy is the second most popular topic searched for on the web (I think that you can guess what the first is). A recent study found that 84 million of us worldwide are actively searching for our ancestors. Those who want to get serious about it can spend hundreds of hours, pounds and miles tracking down that elusive great-great-great-aunt, about whom the only bit of information they know is that she was the sister of a boy named Valentine and she died in infancy sometime around 1749. Give or take a decade.

And on the other hand why do some of us not care at all? The past is the past, they say, and a family tree is just a list of names and dates, dull and boring like some kind of trainspotting with gravestones? Some people also don’t have the blokey-collector attitude required to spend hours tracking down the missing item, although the highest demographic of family historians are ladies in their late-middle age. Maybe it’s a generational thing too? Certainly more of us start taking an interest in researching our bloodline as we get older.

Not everybody wants to share their family information either. Many people have asked, ‘Tell me about your grandparents and aunties, Granny’, only to be met with pursed lips and a reply of ‘Oh you don’t want to hear about that old stuff. Now come and cut my toenails for me, there’s a good lad’.

My Mum once told me that I shouldn't ask questions about the family’s history if I wasn't prepared for the answers. I haven’t found any particularly juicy stories yet but you only have to watch a couple of episodes of ‘Who Do You Think you Are?’ to know that most family’s cupboards hold a couple of unexpected skeletons. It’s the historical equivalent of ‘Does my bum look big in this?’

Anyhow, so my Beloved is related to my mate. Me? As far as I know I’m not related to the actor Albert or the football legend Tom, even if they had ever learned to spell their surname correctly. But I suspect that I may have famous blood in my veins, even if it’s severely diluted by generations and beer. Some people dream of being related to a pop star or a supermodel perhaps? I’m aiming for one of the angriest, grudge-holding geniuses that this fair land has ever produced.

My mother’s family hail from a tiny village in Lincolnshire. Even now it’s not much more than two streets, a general store and a couple of derelict buildings where the pub and the post office used to be. In the seventeenth century – when just  about every second servant in the area bore my family name and the squire’s offspring – it was even smaller, the only building of any note being the manor house where little Isaac Newton was born. Now in those days people didn't have Sky Movies or X-Box to pass the winter evenings. They had to make their own fun. I reckon that I’m just one broomstick-jump away from grafting my tree to that of the country’s most famous fruit-header. How d’you like them apples?

It’s nice to see where we come from but ultimately I guess that those of us who research our family’s history don’t do it for ourselves. We do it for our kids, our grand-kids, our nieces and nephews born and yet to be. We do it so that they will know, long after we’re gone, that we were here and we cared. And so did those who had gone before us.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Dream a Little Dream

 “I’d love to be rich.”

“I wish I were famous.”

“I have this dream of being a star.”

How many times do we hear people say things like that? How they want to be world renowned for something, whether it’s as a musician, a sports person, a writer or just ‘a celebrity’.

It’s good to have aspirations and (putting the selfish nature of these particular ones aside for a moment) we should all aim to be the best person that we can. Ambition is good, but there’s just one thing wrong with these statements.

Wishing, dreaming and hoping won’t make things happen.

There is not a single successful person in the world whose wishes dreams and hopes came true simply by sitting on the sofa and wishing, dreaming or hoping. Every single one of them got up off their collective behinds and lived their dreams.

Several times recently I’ve heard people say that lack of money or opportunities is stopping them reaching their goals. Do they really think that Jessica Ennis, 50 Cent, Richard Branson or Helen Mirren (replace with your own idol as you see fit) had fame and fortune handed to them on a plate? Or did they put in years of hard work, unseen and unrecognised, before becoming an overnight success?

If you want to be the best at your chosen discipline then follow their lead. Think of the things that will get you the life that you want and start to make them happen. Nobody will do it for you. If there are obstacles in your way, remove them. You can do it. Remember that hero of yours? They did it. Why can’t you?

This is going to sound hard but the truth is that in many cases the person stopping you from being the success that you want to be is you.

“But I need some cash to help me start up!” Then stop watching reruns of Star Trek and go and find a second or third job to earn that start-up cash.

“But I need a talent scout or agent to recognise my ability!” Then get out and show them your work, either physically or by mail. And don’t just target one or two potential customers either but tens, hundreds, thousands of them if that’s what it takes to get your talent noticed.

“But I don’t know how to….” Then teach yourself. That’s part of the job.

“Stop being so hard on me!” Sorry. No. If you’re going to put your work out in a public arena you’re going to hear much worse criticism than this. You and your work will be savaged. That’s how it is. Live with it or quit.

It isn’t easy. Nothing worthwhile is. That’s why there is only one Number One in any given field.

Dreamers dream. Workers win the prize. Most of us get the success we deserve.

 

© Shaun Finnie 2012