Glen's life

Because nothing warms the heart like getting a letter

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 22:25:00 +0000

Image from http://www.partypacks.co.uk/post-box-cardboard-cutout-1-4m-pid75332.html

Every now and again things happen in your life that grab you by your chubby cheeks and force you stop and think.

“Things” that truly rip up the tracks of your normality train and derail it into the mists of nostalgic silliness.

This happened to me on the 9^th November 2016 (Nope – it’s nothing to do with that. It’s something much better).

I got a letter.

A letter that left my Ghast so entirely Flabbered that I’m compelled to write about it now.

I found it laying on my doormat, obnoxiously standing out from the rest of the junk, when I returned home from work, and it instantly snapped me out of the fog of the Trump related grumblings that my inner monologue had been previously obsessing over.

I picked it up and stared at it. Then I stared at it some more.

It was a letter.

Not a card. Not a circular. Not a bank statement.

It wasn’t even one of those bank cards that have faux handwriting on them to flummox your witless post-thief.

It was none of those things.

It was a letter.

A. Letter.

I fluttered it about to test out it possible contents. It was definitely not a card. Didn’t seem to be an invite.

Let me ask you a question – when is the last time you received a letter? Not a greetings card or a “round-robin” sent at birthdays or Christmas / Thanksgiving / Religious festival of your choosing but just some random letter? You can’t include anything sent from a bank or business, charity or Take-Away.

And to clarify, I’m talking about snail-mail here, not anything that flies through the Ether powered by invisible Elves.

I was rooted to the spot. Couldn’t even open it. So many thoughts were going through my head as I tried to remember the last time I’d opened a letter. Certainly, it must have been when I was still in the Navy.

The excitement of hearing the announcement across the ship’s intercom that “Mail is now ready for collection” filled my gut and sent my heart racing all over again as the memories flooded in.

We would have been at sea for two or three weeks perhaps, in the days when there was no email so there really was no direct connection with those back home, or with anyone outside of the ship. When life is so isolated and controlled, so fixed and concentrated as it is when you are serving on an active Navy ship or military base abroad, the desperation for a window into the real world outside becomes stupendously intense. The buzz of electricity would fill the Mess as we awaited the delivery of those precious notes from home.

And you’d sit there and wait as the duty postie read out the names.

And you’d wait.

The longest wait in the world is the one between the start of the mail-call and the moment your name is called.

And then they’d call your name.

And you’d savour the moment of holding your mail before you took the risk of opening it. You’d just hold it. Enjoying the feel of it in your hands.

Like Schrodinger’s cat, as long as the envelope remained unopened, everything in life was possible and could be as positive as you wanted it to be. Until you read the words, the cat could still be alive, your girlfriend had still not dumped you and your family were all still well.

So you’d wait.

Wait until you could wait no more.

Then you’d play the happiness lottery of the serving sailor and let the truth out.

And she still loves you.

This time….

I remembered the thrill of receiving these letters and then the despair of receiving the other type – the ones where she’d moved on.

I think it may be a relief that people no longer have to converse in this way, conducting a relationship where both sides of a conversation can be three weeks apart. I wonder if the electronic generation of hearts will truly feel the pain of being loved so much in a few short lines, only to be broken in the very next mail-drop.

Does being dumped by text hit so hard, I wonder?

Those moments, sat with the sealed paper in your hands, desperate to tear it open, were the most thrilling moments in your existence. What would be inside? Sometimes there were messages of love, sometimes of hate, sometimes there’d be something a little frisky in there (always a favourite) and then sometimes Mum would tell me what my cat was getting up to.

Everything was welcome because no news was ever so bad as no news.

Because sometimes there’d be nothing.

If you ever want to know what pain is, sit in the middle of a group of sailors that have just received mail after a couple of months away from home, but where your name was not called out. No envelope of potential in your hand, only the ringing in your ears of the kinds of sympathy that only a bell-end of military men can give. (I’m not totally certain that bell-end is the official collective noun for a bunch of sailors, but it does seem to fit).

That is not a feeling that goes away. As ridiculous at it sounds, it was the loneliness of those moments, manfully trying to brush off any signs of disappointment in front of my peers, which broke the spell of excitement and made me open the letter.

And of course.

It was a medical prescription.

My prescription. With my name and address on it. The one I’d lost a couple of weeks previously.

Schrodinger turned over in his grave to stifle his chuckles.

I had not got a letter.

Some kind soul had thoughtfully gone to the trouble, and expense, of posting me the prescription that

I’d lost in case I needed it. For which I’m truly grateful. It just would have been nicer if….

…but wait….

Through the thin paper, I noticed some writing on the back.

An actual message. This was a letter after all!!

I flipped it over, awash with anticipation all over again.

And I read.

Then I read it again.

And then I read it again.

And then….. Out of nowhere it started.

I went from silence, to rapturously out-loud guffaws, in less than a blink of an eye.

No matter what Facebook tells you, it’s really not often that you genuinely LOL when reading something by yourself. Be honest – when was the last time you genuinely laughed out loud at something you read? (Feel free to lie and say that it was while you were here…)

But here I was making some real noise.

And I couldn’t stop.

I think I was stood there laughing, giggling, and sniggering for ten minutes – at least.

I love my letter.

I don’t know who sent it but I love them too – thank you, whomever you are – you made my week.

Letter to America

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 10:36:00 +0000

Dear America,

Thought I’d drop you a few lines to say “Hi”.

Sorry it’s been a while since my last letter but I’ve been a tad busy living life here in England with those pesky kids of mine, you know how it is.

They all send hugs, by the way – Dan is getting really tall now and doing really well at football, Jamie has started rugby and is really getting stuck into it nicely. Jo is working hard but still as lovely as ever and hopes to come visit you one day soon, as do we all.

Anyway, what’s all this business with your upcoming election all about?

Trump? Is this real? Are you really considering putting such an egotistical, sexist, backwards thinking, bigoted, Areshead as Donald Trump in charge off your country and your nuclear arsenal?

Really?

Someone with such grossly outdated opinions of women?

Really?

As an outsider, I have to say you really aren’t thinking this through. Currently, most nations around the world respect America, treat you with reverence and awe for being the world-leading powerhouse that you are.

How long do you really think that respect will last with a sound-bite loving, fame hungry, rape-boasting, tax-dodging business man in charge? Not even a good businessman – he doesn’t pay tax due to being Gajillions of Dollars bankrupted, at the end of the day.

He will single-handedly put your country back into the days when women did what they were told and anybody who wasn’t white was a problem that needed sorting.

Don’t do it.

Don’t let the hatred return

This man thrives on hate and anger and power.

Please don’t give it to him.

You might as well go the whole hog, vote for “Brexit”, and put Boris Johnson in as Foreign Secretary – Oh, wait, that was us. (Well I say “us” – it certainly wasn’t me. Of the people who voted, only 51% said they wanted to leave the EU and half of those morons woke up the next morning wondering why all the Asians and Polish hadn’t been rounded up and shot yet – We are already feeling the bite from this on our economy and we haven’t even left the EU yet – idiots!) Don’t make the same mistake we did, America, think it through properly.

I know Hillary Clinton isn’t a great choice. The lack of a credible opposition is, after all, at the very core of Donald’s main campaign. Yep, I suspect she’s slightly dodgy but that is mainly because she is a politician who has worked for a long time at a pretty high level in American politics – and to climb to the top of the tree in America, I’m afraid you have to break a few branches off with your feet. Decisions and policies will have to be made that are so hard, so secret, and that have such wide-reaching impact on the whole of the world that you have to have somebody at the top doing it that is intelligent enough to shake the right hands.

You might not like the hands being shaken, and nor might that leader, but shake them they do for your country – or at least what they believe is the good of the country.

Trump is such an idiot that he declares that everything is rigged if he doesn’t win it, and treats acceptance of democracy as a game. This is not a man you give nuclear codes to.

Who would you trust with those codes and with those handshakes? An intelligent, experienced politician or a blundering, money-mad, hate-mongering, celebrity? If you don’t believe that Trump has completed just as many shady deals in his businesses, and made deals with all sorts of unpleasant consequences, or that he won’t do all of that again, then I’m afraid your naiveté will be your downfall. The difference is that he has never had to actually care about the other people that those deals affected before, only the impact on his own pockets.

Clinton is certainly shady, but she will at the very least move your country forward. Trump will send you way back in time and probably kill us all.

Love yourselves, America – all of your people, not just the right ones.

Equality for all, still has such a long way to go. It’s 2016 and still there is inequality and division across gender and race all around this crazy, beautiful world of ours. Not just in those far off countries you’ve heard people moan about but also in yours, and in mine.

So decide.

Do you want to lead the world in fixing that problem or do you want separatism and the elitism of inequality to lead you?

Yours faithfully.

Glen.

P.s. I’ve enclosed a picture of our cat, Jenga, sitting in a box because I know how much you like cats.

Beautiful eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 22:09:00 +0000

Tap.

His Typing Finger was a blur.

Tap.

Two, three, even four, letters per minute were hitting the keypad.

Tap…

Wait…

Backspace.

Tap.

Writing at this speed cannot possibly be safe. No human can transfer words from their head to their finger at this pace for long. No wonder mistakes were starting to crepe in.

Even Spellcheck couldn’t keep up, electing, instead, to allow a French pancake to infuriate the grammar police.

But he was off. The starting pistol had fired and the screen was filling up.

The writing smirk was back on his face, hunger for web space back in his belly.

And it was all because of the eyes.

The eyes that had got him thinking.

How do you know when a smile is real or a lie? How do you know when love is coming from the heart rather than from the head?

It’s always in the eyes (so you can put that in your Shoop Shoop, Cher)

He loves eyes.

Eyes tell the truth.

Oh, he’s not immune to the charms of a nice neck or shoulder, nor is he unreceptive to a pretty face, a shapely leg, or, well, you know, the other bits. But when you look at someone’s eyes you see who they are, really are. And that’s properly sexy.

He’d sat there and stared, distracted yet again by them. Eighteen years and two children take their toll on a marriage, not every day can be amazing, and not every moment can be a joy.

But you take what you can get, which is exactly why they’d wound up sat in their local pub on a Friday night. An opportunity to get out alone had jumped out at them. No kids. No reason. Just simply taking the chance that was gifted to them.

A swift bite to eat and a drink, that’s all it was and everything that it wasn’t.

Because it’s time spent together like this that matters the most. No real expense spent but absolute maximum value for money.

Because they were together.

And because they were laughing.

And because the eyes were laughing too.

He looked into them now and could see nothing but the beautiful, funny, woman he’d met all that time ago. The one he’d fallen in love with.

And he knew.

Knew that there is no other pair of eyes anywhere that he’d rather be looking into.

Somewhere on the wrong side of Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Sun, 08 May 2016 22:26:00 +0000

My favorite Angel - Picture from Wikipedia

“Where are you now?”

The question was simple enough, but tired eyes made the words blurred and dart about the screen in a Dyslexic fever. The eyes struggled on and, finally on the third attempt, managed to get a grip of the sentence.

The eyes closed to let a brain, still buzzing from a busy day at work, consider the question.

Pictures formed in the dark recesses of an unfulfilled mind. Dreams.

Old dreams.

Memories of long forgotten hopes flashed into focus. Desires that had never been fulfilled.

A young child’s dreams of being a famous dancer, lighting up London’s West End theatres with his talent had long since been crippled by the onslaught of self-consciousness and fear that puberty had enslaved him with. Inability to shrug off the immature taunts from school friends alongside a complete loss of confidence had driven him to turn his back on his dance class thirty years previously, an act that he’ll regret forever. Mainly because it was this failure to become a famous dancer (and this alone) that had meant that Sabrina, from Charlie’s Angels, had completely failed to marry him.

It had been the same with acting – the deliciously addictive drug of an audience laughing or applauding him in the Gang Shows of his Cubs and Scouts days had been given up cold turkey. He’d

wanted to pursue it.

Needed to pursue it.

But, as with all drugs, the cost of the highs would be too much. To gain an audience’s approval you’d have to put yourself out there and be seen.

Be noticed.

His teenage head had been constantly desperate to be noticed – but absolutely petrified of it at the same time.

Contradictions and inner-conflicts had taken so much out of his young body.

Later, as an adult, he’d have ideas of turning his stories and notes, that had made his friends laugh, into a chart topping Blog and then into a prize winning novel. This time he wouldn’t let doubt creep in, this time he’d let himself be seen, mainly thanks to the initial anonymity that the Internet provides.

This time he actually tried. And it was hard. Really hard.

And the book never came.

Writing a book sounds so easy, everyone can do it, right? Right? And then he’d tried and discovered the shocking secret that the rise of self-publishing e-literature had hidden. Writing a book is impossible.

Literally.

Impossible.

And then he started to find it hard to write anything. Anything at all. And the gaps between his posts grew larger. Time passed.

The keyboard stretched further and further away from his typing finger. Microsoft Word became a monster, blood-stained teeth snarling at him whenever it was opened up. The reflections in the glass of the screen were those of his pubescent youth. Self-doubt and entirely self-induced pressure bore down hard upon his shoulders and throttled his imagination with a ferocity that should have come with a teenager’s greasy, spotty, skin, and sweaty feet.

He stopped thinking about it. Stopped trying to write. Stopped checking his Blog. Stopped reading others because it made him feel like a fake.

Worst of all.

He stopped wanting to.

Stopped telling people about it. A Blogger that doesn’t tell a stranger that he is a Blogger after thirty seconds is not a Blogger. That was the worst thing.

And so now where was he? Really?

Desk job in the city, married and with two boys of his own, including a teenager whom he just cannot understand or help, though he sees so many of the same insecurities flashing through behind the child’s mask of adolescent bravado. He desperately wants to help the boy, to guide him and inspire him but all too often seems to make things worse instead – Parenting is the hardest job of all and requires skills that so few of us really possess.

And so it was hard. The divide and conquer techniques that his children used, continuously chipped away at his relationship with his wife, and had occasionally succeeded in their objective but never for long. The couple would regroup and recover. Without the trust, love and support of each other they’d be broken and they both knew it.

So he was just bumbling along; working, commuting, and loving people that seemed intent on making him regret doing so. That’s where he was.

But no.

The fog in his mind cleared. Sure there were tough days. Sure there were tantrums and hormone fuelled rages, but behind those were two beautiful humans. Great kids with the world at their feet. Behind them stood a beautiful woman whose strength was jaw-dropping. A woman whose smile Indiana Jones would wade through a snake-pit for, and yet she would give it to him for free.

And there was the laughter. There was always laughter. It may occasionally disappear for a few days but it would soon return. His sobriety had been broken years earlier, the addiction to an audience’s laughter and approval had been fixed by the giggles of his children and the laughter of his wife. He could never be without it.

What more could he ever really need?

Where else could he want to be but right by their sides?

His eyes opened and looked out of the window. The train hadn’t moved, they were still stuck at a broken signal and were going nowhere, fast.

All he really knew was that he wasn’t where he wanted to be. He wasn’t with his family.

His thumb went to work, frantically tapping out the response to his wife’s text.

“Somewhere on the wrong side of Reading”

It wasn’t long before a reply came back…

“That should be the title of your book”

And this time the words jumped out from the screen and slapped his eyes immediately into focus.

And he stared at them.

And his face went pale.

And then the colour came back. With the colour, came something else.

A smile.

Not a book, no. But maybe… maybe…

He stared at his reflection in the window and decided to just take it one post at a time.

He might not be an author.

But he is a Blogger.

**************************************************

Hi all – I just wanted to add that the clincher, that turned the draft of an idea, formed more than a month ago, into the piece that you’ve hopefully just read, came just the other day. I got an email from the domain people asking if I wanted to retain GlensLife.com, and I really wasn’t sure if I did. While trying to decide, I logged into the site and found something that made all the difference. A recent comment from Frances, simply asking if all was okay and letting me know that she was still there, waiting. Never giving up. Whenever I’m ready, she’ll be there – who could fail to be moved by that?

Besides, I really do love an audience.

I suspect my posts will continue to be sporadic – but hang in there and I’ll keep on popping up when you least suspect it.

Thanks – Glen.

Invisible

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 09:50:00 +0000

Hello again – oh don’t have a go – if you haven’t worked out that I'm extremely unreliable on the posting front by now, then you are beyond help! :-)

Let’s face it, I'm a bit crap.

None the less, every now and again something pops into my mind that nudges my fingers into typing mode.

And here we are.

Tonight, I saw something that I haven’t seen in age; something that stood out as odd and then immediately got me thinking.

Heading home from work after a late shift, I boarded the Tube and sat myself down. The empty seat wasn't the oddity; this was well after peak commuting times on London’s busy underground system.

The odd thing was a thing that absolutely shouldn't be odd at all. In fact the only thing odd about it, was the fact that it is odd!

Let me explain.

I looked up and noticed the man opposite me. Something was out of place. Something wasn’t right. It took me about 4 seconds to figure out what it was that was wrong (4 seconds looking directly at a fellow London commuter at that time of night is a very, very, long time – practically stalking).

He was reading a book.

An actual book.

Not a mobile.

Not a Kindle.

Not a free newspaper.

He didn't even have earphones plugged into the sides of his head – I think he may have been concentrating on the book and felt, somehow, that this was sufficient entertainment.

I know, it seems crazy that a book should be enough, right? Oddly enough, time and time again I see Kindle readers with their ears plugged up. There’s something about the switch to gadgetry that changes us – stops mere words being enough. With gadgets we have to multi-task – by law! We have to flick between things, have multiple inputs all at once.

This made me look at myself. I was using my phone to play Scrabble while listening to a podcast. Neither of these activities, it appears, were enough to get me from Aldgate East to Paddington individually. When did that start? Was I really concentrating on the podcast while trying to remember how to spell ‘excellent’ ** without the use of spell checker?

** I have literally never got ‘excellent’ in Scrabble, I either put ‘exit’, ‘tax’ or ‘taxi’ down, or else I wind up giving up 8 points at the end!

I looked along the row of seats and then the entire carriage. Everyone else had a phone in their hands (including me), everyone else had earphones attached (me too, again). There were a couple reading newspapers while listening to something, but apart from them, everyone was glued to a screen and plugged into their own private sounds. I assume some of them were watching what they were listening to, but I suspect that most were not.

Look at us, look at all of us. row upon row of robots blending into the background. We are camouflaged into invisibility by our electronics.

It really hit me that it is such a strange twist of modernity that a book should seem so out of place. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the absurdity of a book standing out so much.

Try as I might, I could not remember the last time I’d seen it. Kindles and other such e-readers, I feel that I see now and again, though it is mainly only a mobile that faces attend to these days.

The most worrying part of all, and the reason I was inspired to crack out the laptop and write this post, was that I can’t remember the last time that I read a book, either a real one or via Kindle. Nor could I remember the last time I wrote. It’s not lost on me that these things are often related.

To be able to blank out the commute, lost in only words on a page is an all too rare treat that we really should indulge in. We should encourage it in those around us but most of all we should be encouraging it in ourselves – why the hell not? We deserve it!

So I pledge to make baby steps towards brining words properly back into my life – and I don’t mean random Scrabble words.

Step 1. I took this one straight away – I put down my phone, sat back and just listened to the podcast. Took it in. Concentrated. The makers of the programme deserve as much.

Step 2. I knew I needed to write this down and add my words into the ether – for some passer-by to find. I know I need to try harder at keeping this regular – I just don’t like talking when I don’t really have anything to say (more or less blasphemy to say that in the blogging world).

Step 3. Read. Read properly. Whether it is via Kindle or actual books, doesn't matter but to leave my ears out of it and let my eyes do the job they are paid to do.

Actually allow myself to listen to the words. Let them speak.

And so there it is. Man on the tube with your book – I love you a bit. You helped pluck me from the heard, made me see that I was shuffling along with my head in my phone, insulated from all around me.

Invisible.

You helped me see myself.

Thank you.

Because life can be cruel

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 17:37:00 +0000

Dear World,

Please could you stop being so harsh?

All around me I see pain.

I don’t want to see pain.

Hunger. Not the same kind of “I'm starving” hunger that my kids feel when they can see a packet of crisps on the side at three in the afternoon, and realise they haven’t eaten since lunch – real hunger. There are people in this world who are genuinely starving to death.

Desperation.Thousands upon thousands face the wrath of Europe’s xenophobes as they desperately try and find a home that is safe. All they want is to be free. This, apparently, is too much to ask.

Death.Starvation, Malaria, Ebola, floods, earthquakes and wars, these may be killing people far away but I look around and can see that Cancer is taking our loved ones here too. Too many lives are lost. Too many families ripped apart.

Too many.

And worse.

So much worse that all that.

Xbox. We don’t have one. We are, apparently, the only house in the world that does not. My kids are deprived. My kids are neglected. How can my children be expected to live without a games console? I heard that a group of people in a Syrian refugee camp had started a whip around to buy us some Argos vouchers – though that is unconfirmed.

So, World, please can you stop treating my children with such disrespect and sort them out a console? Then, maybe you could have a look at some of those less important issues – if you have the time.

Thanks.

Glen.

Bring on the Dancing Horses

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Sat, 03 Oct 2015 22:20:00 +0000

Hello again – yes I'm still here – thank you so much for your patience.

I just couldn't think of anything to write about.

Until today.

I've said it before and I’ll say it again, I love London.

I really do.

Barring a three year hiatus, while banished to the UK’s West Midlands, I've worked in London since 1998, and it has never failed to lift me when I've really needed it.

How could it not? Look at the craziness of the contrasts in this Skyline…

Where else in the World can you stand in one place and look at so much history? Just out of shot is a piece of Roman Wall – so it goes back into the thousands of years. Thanks go to Google Streetview for the image..

It’s such a mixed up bag of old and new. So many cultural influences in one place; so many cultures, all of whom carrying a voice, all of whom considered equal. Well, theoretically equal, if only that were really true.

But it is a truly diverse city – full of wonder and full of joy – you just have to open your eyes and your mind.

It is also a city being rebuilt. Buildings are dying and being reborn all the time. Cranes are almost as much a fixed feature of the Skyline as the Shard is. Walk down any street for more than a hundred meters and you’ll find yourself walking next to some blue boarding. You know the boarding I mean – the safety net of the modern day builder’s yards. Behind these boards hides an uncertain future, climbing slowly towards the clouds.

You become numb to them. You stop wondering what is behind them.

Let this post be a lesson.

NEVER STOP WONDERING.

Less than a hundred meters from my office, a new tower has been going up for what feels like forever. The boarding long since became invisible. Until today.

I actually don’t know how long the boards have been down; my tube station is in the opposite direction so I haven’t walked along this way in a little while. Today I popped to get my haircut during my lunch break and nearly got myself run over by a bus when I stopped dead in my tracks half way across the road.

The boards have come down.

What they were hiding is beautiful.

Beautiful.

Look at the space it is taking up – how much office space could be stuffed in to this same area? The financial pressure to use the space for the main housing building, which might make money back, as with the rest of the dour buildings that shade Leman Street, rather than wasting the space on art that will never recoup its cost, must be huge. And yet here it is. How brilliant is that? No sense, no logic, just pure imagination. The imagination of artist, Hamish Mackie, finding a link to the site's distant history.

I talked a while back of my private moment of beauty when I watched a Pigeon bathing in a fountain. This time I decided to get my camera out for you. I'm not specifically a horse person, I’ll have the occasional bet on them and (don’t hate me) I'm not totally against them turning up in my frying pan – but this blew my mind

Though not before I almost got myself killed again… I was so taken aback by what I’d discovered that I almost tried to share it straight away. A man was walking past, his head bowed down in the correct London fashion, deeply engrossed in whatever his earphones were telling him, and I found myself reaching out to stop him. I wanted to show him. I wanted to give him the joy that I’d just found.

Just in time I remembered where I was – great city it may well be but talking to strangers is strictly not permitted, especially if you are laughing uncontrollably and appear somewhat over excited at the time….

I stood entranced, for far too long, considering I still needed to get my haircut, but it was time well spent.

There should always be time for joy.

Make time.

Open your eyes.

Smile.

Laugh.

Love.

Live.

And if you ever get the chance, visit London. Come see my horses.

Find out about them here - http://www.berkeleygroup.co.uk/press-release/six-bronze-horses-unveiled-at-the-best-new-public-square-in-london

The stupidest Selfie ever - and where to stick it

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Sun, 09 Aug 2015 21:10:00 +0000

Celebrity Selfie off of Google

Those of us who have reached a certain age remember a lot of strange things.

For instance, I remember when my parent’s TV only showed three channels. Just three. I remember a time when you had to watch all of the adverts, because you couldn't forward through them and nobody could be bothered to cross the room in order to stand at the TV and flick over to BBC1 or BBC2.

These were dark times.

I also remember a time when you had to wait a week for your photos to come back from Truprint before you knew how well they had come out. And when they did come back, they were almost always of other people or things – rather than of you.

When did that change? When did we stop taking photos of other people and only start taking them almost exclusively of ourselves?

In the grey old Dinosaur olden days, whenever you went anywhere exciting and you tried to capture a photo of it, then you occasionally asked someone to take a photo of you standing in front of it – but mainly you just photographed the place / people / thing itself. And the really astonishing thing is that people believed that it was you that had taken them. They believed that you were there. Nobody doubted it.

This is apparently no longer the case. Unless you are actually in the photo then you weren't actually there. If you didn't post it to InstaBook at the time with the location digitally stamped in the forefront, then you simply didn't do it. Ensuring that random strangers, just as much as loved ones and friends, are unable to infer that you are faking your life is becoming more important than actually living the life, seeing the thing, or being in the place in the first place.

I believe I saw an example of this fact the other day, which firmly shows just how far down the evolutionary ladder the Selfie obsession is taking humanity. Be afraid, people, be very afraid.

I went to London.

The Shard - taken by me, but you'll have to take my word for that

Not to work, as is my usual habit, but to be a tourist.

10 of us in total. My family and our very good friends and their family, set off on an adventure in modern day exploration. We went to see the sights of our amazing capital city on a lovely sunny day, and I can secretly reveal that we had great day.

I love London. It is such an amazing mish-mash of time. Ancient, old and ultra-modern, sit side by side in a seemingly random, jumbled up, explosion across the land. Every country on Earth inspires it, everywhere you look you’ll see something that just doesn't make sense. So much history, so much future.

Love it.

Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, 10 Downing Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Borough Market, The Shard, Tower Bridge, Tower of London,O2 Arena, Hamleys, the list goes on…

The kids went on the underground, the DLR, the buses, and even the Cable Car – What an experience, what a day.

Photos were taken – fun was had. Everything was seen, everything was experienced. The kids came away knackered but absolutely happy.

This is how it should be.

some soldiers passing by me - on foot

Now let’s go back to the start – Buckingham Palace.

When we arrived, the changing of the guard was in full swing. The crowds were gathered. It was shockingly busy. The Victoria Memorial was covered in bodies, The Mall was lined with people.

http://changing-guard.com/queens-life-guard.html

It was the place to be.

The band played, the people cheered.

And the Horse Guards approached, polished and grand. This was something to see – especially if you are a young child visiting London from afar. Our kids were enthralled.

I’d imagine seeing those horses strut past would be something to remember forever.

I’d imagine. Sadly another tourist who was there as well didn't.

Just as they approached, the random stranger in front of me, who had spent the last two minutes setting up his Selfie Stick, suddenly grabbed his daughter (I'm guessing she was his daughter - circa 7 years old), and spun her around so that she was facing away from the action and instructed her to pose with him; both of them together, smiling manically into the camera while facing in the complete opposite direction to the thing they were there to see.

And there they stayed, presumably videoing the whole experience.

The girl was not allowed to turn around until the Cavalry had gone past.

Her only memory of the event is in looking at the camera with her back to the action.

But she was there. She can prove it.

This is completely sick - and I don't mean in the way that my 13 year old son says it.

How can a parent be so completely stupid? To completely miss the point of giving your child this memory? She didn't see the guards, she never saw them. The only way she will ever see them is on the video.

And when she does – assuming she learns to speak English – then she will also remember me.

Because the camera, throughout the whole passing of the parade, was waving about next to my face. I'm afraid that what they were too self-focussed to realise, was that I was giving them a running commentary of how ridiculous and stupid her father is. Begging him to let her turn around and see it for herself.

It would be fun to be in the room the first time that video is shown to someone who speaks English.

Technology is amazing. I genuinely love how easy it is to take great photos now – how easy it is to share them. And I'm not against the occasional Selfie – why not? It’s fun. It’s nice to get a record of yourself at a certain place; and do you know what? – it isn't new! I remember taking photos of myself as a child, arms stretched out with a camera pointing at myself. Two weeks later you’d find out that only half your blurred face is on show – but you still did it!

But keep it real folks.

We all love capturing these special moments of our children’s lives on film, we have been doing that for well over a century, but never let doing that become the whole story – never forget to actually let the moment be special.

The Wife, The Teenager and the Wardrobe

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 21:17:00 +0000

The plan was simple.

The plan was good.

It just wasn't thought through properly.

Our brand new, swanky, spare room needed a wardrobe, while our bank account needed a rest. This led us to an Oxfordshire charity shop in search of a bargain.

And we found one.

I saw it from the door and rushed straight to it – it was perfect.

Old, battered, creaky and huge. The wardrobe called to me in ways that the, admittedly lovely, new ones we had bought for the main bedroom or the IKEA Pax units the rest of the house is filled with could never do. Every scratch, every mark, every creak from the hinges, told of the wardrobe’s character. Even the vaguely distant urine smell told a story.

The lives that have intertwined with this box. The children that have hid in it. The Christmas presents it has hidden. The laughter it has witnessed. The tears it has heard. The births. The deaths.

And I can’t resist a good story.

I don’t know how old this unit is but it was certainly built to last, to be used and to be part of a home, not sat in a warehouse gathering dust.

We bought it. £50 delivered and for the size and quality of this wardrobe, this has to be the bargain of the decade.

And then it arrived, carried by three people to the door who promptly declared it a “Beast” and refused to carry it any further. The journey to the bedroom would be down to us.

I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d been able to get a photo of it at this point; while it was still in the original form. But I failed. I failed to record the original beauty of this magnificent piece of furniture.

Jo and I didn't agree at all on what to do with it – and as we all know, when a husband and wife disagree about furnishings, the husband is wrong. This is standard all around the world so it was no surprise to me when I came home to find the wardrobe sitting in the garage and covered in modern paint; colour schemed to match the room it was going into.

Gone were the scratches, the peelings from the varnish, the Sun focussed light patches, and the multi-shaded brownness. Gone was the life. I’d wanted to keep it as it was. I’d wanted to leave it as we found it and let it keep its own character. At worst, I would have considered sanding it down and varnishing it, a compromise that would have removed the past from the Beast but at least maintained its identity.

But apparently brown isn't an acceptable wardrobe colour and they don’t have stories. Tell that to C. S. Lewis.

And so, what we had now was a half painted beast in a garage.

And the beast needed to move up a set of stairs that refused to stay a consistent length. I've been up and down those stairs hundreds of times. Thousands. And one of the main things I've always liked about them is that they stay the same. You know where you are with my stairs. Top, middle, or bottom – it’s always the same.

Funny how they can suddenly become the longest set of steps in the Universe when you have a stupidly heavy wardrobe on your shoulders, a teenage boy guiding the top and the World’s most panicky, flappy, ‘Health and Safety’ obsessed wife running back and forth along the landing.

Jo decided the best way she could help would be to continually shriek out reasons why everyone was about to die.

Things got a bit stressful. The wardrobe got to within a step of the top before I had to bring it slowly back down. Daniel couldn't hear my instructions over Jo's constant insistence that if he followed them he'd be crushed.

A meal was eaten in stony silence. Jo was still calming down; I was still seething at Jo’s insistence on not helping.

After sustenance, I decided to take the doors off the wardrobe and realised quickly that this would make a huge difference. The doors weighed an absolute Tonne! I carefully explained to Jo & Daniel what I needed them to do at the top of the stairs and got myself back under the Beast.

Seconds later we were upright and safe at the top of the stairs, only to discover that it had nowhere to go from there. No way would it turn in any direction so we had to take it back and then flip it upside down over the bannister instead.

Jo was completely pale at this point – practically translucent.

And this was the point when we discovered that we couldn't get it through the spare room’s door.

At all.

And so it was left on the landing overnight, silently reeling from the indignity it had suffered at the hands of my wife’s paint brush. I firmly believe that it was probably enjoying Karma’s swift response.

“I’ll give you a bloody story, you pair of classless IKEA upstarts!”

The next day I made my peace with it. Gave it a pat and an apology and promised that I respected it.

And then I took it apart.

Carried the pieces carefully through to their new home and lovingly rebuilt it.

Slowly.

Carefully.

And now it stands proud. No longer battered. No longer scratched. No longer brown.

Its past maybe forgotten – but its future has only just begun. It won’t be leaving this room for many, many years and I hope it will see many lives grow around it.

And I look forward to helping it write a new story.

Six years fly by

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 10:35:00 +0000

Did you know I've been writing here for six years?

Six whole years have zipped past since I took to the keypad with a deep held belief that the world needed to hear what I say.

So here are a few things that have happened since May 2009…

I completely failed to write my pioneering saga of female empowerment called 50 shades of hay – where an intelligent woman with a very bright future, gets off with an abusing, domineering, asshole but it’s all okay because he is rich, so she gives up her career and gets herself pregnant by him instead. I imagined it as a really big step forward for women’s liberation, but it turned out that it had already been written.

I stopped being in my Thirties – sad times

My boys grew from being 7 & 4 to 13 & 10 – a lifetime of change at that age.

My wife got six years hotter. Not sure how fair it is that women get so much sexier with age, when we men just fall apart but then I guess we kind of win that one in the long run.

I spent a couple of years writing a weekly column as an Agony Uncle over at In The Powder Room, which was fun but such hard work to be so far out of your comfort zone all the time and then trying to come up with something new, fresh and witty every single week. I really am in awe of those people who can keep that up, and do it so much better than I could. It takes over your life.

My writing won a bottle of Champagne, a Kindle and my short story Enlightened, won a place in a published compendium. Not bad for a mediocre telecoms engineer with naught but a 28 year old English O’Level. Actually that reminds me that it has been a very long time since I wrote any fiction…

I lost and gained important people.

I lost a job, I gained a much better one.

I turned this…

thanks go to Google Maps

Into this.

I've formed some quite surprising virtual friendships with folk from all around the world – Australia, America and even Uley. Never heard of Uley? No I hadn't either, I'm not sure I even knew where Gloucestershire was, never mind Uley, and yet there are a whole bunch of people there that I've never met but feel like I know and really like – work that one out! If you’d tried telling me that back in 2008 I’d have derided you somewhat energetically.

And that’s just me, and only really a snapshot of what’s gone on in that time. I am aware that there have been some big events around the world that have unfolded in that time too – I considered listing them to really show how much has happened in six years but then I realised that this is Glen’s Life – the clue is in the title…

So instead of doing that I've told you about me, now I throw it over to you, please tell me, what has happened to you in the last six years? - What’s gone on in your lives?

Because teenagers are humans too - apparently

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 07:03:00 +0000

I have a question for you…

If Dodos and T-Rex are extinct but Teenagers aren't, is this proof that God has still got a strop on about Eve eating the Apple?

Adam and Eve’s somewhat prolific begetting went on to make them the Mother and Father of humanity, if you believe these things, but not until after they’d managed to notch up a heavenly grudge that would last for eternity.

You can’t tell me that if there really is a God, of any name, up there directing our lives, that the existence of Teenagers doesn't reveal a somewhat dark and heartfelt hatred of parents.

It’s not so much a Divine Plan, more Define Pain.

More Malevolence than Providence.

They (Teenagers) just do not make sense. I thought women were hard to fathom until my son turned 13 – then I realised that the occasional compliment, maintaining a well-stocked wine fridge and resisting the urge to dry hump them while they clean up cat sick is all it really takes to keep women happy. Ladies – you aren't all that complicated after all…

Whereas my 13 year old baffles all known Science.

If you asked Stephen Hawking, “What is the point of teenage boys?” He’d blink slowly for a couple of minutes before emitting a sort of grinding noise followed by a little light coming on to indicate an empty battery – even though his wheels suspiciously manage to slowly inch him out of the door.

You get these tiny pockets of time, moments that flash by like lightening, when the person in front of you becomes human, returns to the wonderful, beautiful, boy you remember running excitedly at you for a cuddle when you walked through the door. He is still in there, deeply embedded inside the shell of Beelzebub.

And when the moment passes – the Devil returns.

The one that lies.

The one that screams.

The one that threatens.

The one that cannot and will not EVER accept the word “no” as a viable response.

I really miss my Son. The lovely one, the one who only occasionally pops in to visit me these days – I sometimes feel that he has already left home, leaving behind this grumpy, moody, self-absorbed doppelgänger.

I worry about him too. I see the pain in his eyes as he tries to make sense of the world around him, tries to find his way towards adult relationships and responsibilities – tries and occasionally fails. I see the anger in his eyes as his parents do the same. I may understand that he is trying his best to find his path but he can never understand that, as parents, we are doing exactly the same – trial and error parenting. Occasionally we get it wrong as we try to find that balance between giving him his freedom and his ‘oh so vitally private’ digital presence against protecting and advising him.

We try so hard to trust him and let him go it alone, and then he says or does something that reminds us how young he is and so we pull him back – rightly or wrongly? Who knows? All I know is that there are days when I go to bed feeling like the worst father in the world, feeling like I’ve let him down – again.

But above all of that.

Above all of the shouting and the confusion, the broken promises and the phone calls from School.

We love him.

And always will.

I just wish he’d talk to us like we are his parents, rather than a lump of dog poo he’s found on his shoe.

The space that shouldn't exist

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 07:48:00 +0000

And the tears flow.

And the space before you is empty.

The space that shouldn't exist.

A barren future taunts you as it spreads slowly out away from you. It isn't the future that it promised it would be.

It’s wrong.

It’s changed.

She’s gone.

Careful smiles are shown from all directions, full of strength, of support, and of love.

You are surrounded by love.

And yet you are alone.

Alone in the space that shouldn't exist

And your heart breaks all over again.

And the tears flow.

http://www.macmillan.org.uk/

http://www.sobellhospicecharity.org.uk/

Because I'm better at looking for things than Bono

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 00:14:00 +0000

Confidence can be a slippery bastard to hold onto.

Self-worth, esteem, pride and respect can be equally difficult to grasp.

And when they are dropped they always land butter side down. There is no five second rule with self-respect, once it hits the floor - it is lost.

Worse still, the only thing harder than picking these emotions back up is realising that you’ve let them fall in the first place.

Hidden behind a façade of arrogant denial, you persuade yourself that you are happy with how you look, how you feel. Tales of inner-happiness and of beauty being in the eye of the beholder, challenge those who love you to dare disagree.

If people have a problem with your size then the problem is theirs – they should respect you for who you are, right?

Right?

But in reality the only person who doesn’t respect you - is yourself.

And the only person who really understands what this means is that man.

The one in the mirror.

He knows. That’s why you can’t look at him properly. Why you look around him instead. You can’t hold his gaze because you can’t bear seeing the pain in his eyes.

You look at the mirror but do not look in the mirror.

You pat yourself, strut about and pretend that you like what you see.

But you don’t.

You can’t remember if you ever did.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last September, I looked in the mirror.

Really looked.

My world crumbled.

I looked into my eyes. I couldn't figure out why I hated myself so much. Why I was so determined to punish my body.

I looked awful. I was big.

Really big. My size 38 inch trousers were stretched to the limit. If I were to buy new trousers then I’d probably have needed a size 40 inch. I refused to accept that.

The reflection pleaded with me to think. Begged me to act.

And so I made a decision. And a promise.

A promise to that man. This man.

The one in the mirror.

I told him that I’d find me again. The me that I like.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for but promised to keep on searching until I worked it out.

This was last September. I haven’t blogged about this since then because I've done that before. Talked about losing weight, getting fit. I've talked the talk so many, many times at home, at work and on this Blog.

It was time to walk the walk.

And time passes.

And it’s hard.

Being hungry is not difficult. Eating healthily or doing exercise is not difficult.

But meaning it. Really meaning it. Respecting yourself enough to ignore the inner voices, to keep going even when you are down or annoyed – they are the hard times. Those occasions when something has gone wrong, when someone has said the wrong thing or when you know you have done something wrong yourself.

Those times. Those times when you hate yourself.

When the only thing that can take away the pain of self-loathing is chocolate or bacon.

Self-harm through food.

Those times.

And time passes.

The scales tell you that you are losing weight but what does that mean? Weight is a number. Numbers mean nothing. Even big numbers.

And the numbers arebig – 16Kg or 35Lbs or almost 3 Stones depending on your preference, in 23 weeks.

Your head tells you these numbers are important but your heart doesn't listen to your head.

Especially when the charts insist that you still have a long way to go – as they do in my case.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, something happens.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I stood and cursed.

It was the 5^th March 2015 – my Birthday.

I should have been feeling happy. Should.

The day had started well, cards and presents and a laugh with the family before they went to school and work. I’d done well. A new shirt and pair of jeans – just what I needed.

And then I thought I’d try them on.

But my wife had played some kind of joke on me. The shirt was simply a large – no “X” in the label. The jeans had a 34 inch waist – not the 40 inch waist that they should have been.

What was she thinking? Why would she do that? I haven’t owned a shirt without at least one “X” in the label for over a decade.

With a sigh of pessimistic expectation, I decided to go through the debacle of trying on these children’s clothes.

But they fit.

They actually fit me.

I ran to the full length mirror in the bedroom and was transfixed.

And that’s when it happened.

In the corner of my eye I saw a face.

His face.

The one in the mirror.

He was smiling.

No. Not smiling. He was looking right at me and he was laughing.

He was laughing in a way I haven’t seen him laugh for a long time and it was frighteningly infectious.

So I laughed as well.

I felt water in my eyes. Could see it in the mirror but couldn't stop laughing.

I’d found him.

Found the man I’d lost.

It is easily 14 years since I've worn clothes these sizes. How can you hate yourself for that long?

And so I looked in the mirror. Looked, laughed, liked and even loved.

Yes, loved.

Me.

First World Tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 08:22:00 +0000

Her face said it all.

Usually she can hold it in; hide the pain.

Not today.

Out loud she agreed, out loud she smiled.

But out loud was lying while quietly hiding the truth.

Her mouth said she understood while her eyes called me a bastard.

But it was too late – the words I’d just said were out, could never be unsaid.

As with all relationships built on love, trust, friendship, and respect, ours is a balancing act of spoken and unspoken truths. There are things you can say.

And things you can’t.

This was one of those things that can’t.

But I know I'm right. I am right.

Right is not the same as nice.

And so now, as I look into that face, the face that I love, and see the despair written over it I have to stay strong. I have to hold my nerve. There’s no going back.

If I take back what I said now, then it was just words. Nasty, painful, heartless, words. If I hold firm then they are the truth – and the truth is real.

And that is why, as soon as I put this laptop down, I’ll be fetching my spanners.

I’m sorry, Love. The Dishwasher IS getting disconnected.

The building work on the house starts in a couple of weeks and the current Utility will be demolished – I need to connect the washing machine up somewhere and that somewhere is where the dishwasher is now.

It’s happening.

And I'm not backing down on this one.

Somewhere, somehow, in a hospital in Afghanistan, a young girl, orphaned and physically broken, has managed to connect to the internet and is reading this now; tears of sympathy streaming down her face. She understands our pain. She feels sad knowing that my children will have to wash up their own cereal bowls – by hand. She may even donate.

And so can you – go to www.get_Glenslife_a_cleaner.comnow – as little as £50 per week can help us pay someone to wash the pots, clean up our kitchen and do the ironing. Is that really too much to ask?

Do I have to post up a picture of my children with tea-towels in their hands to convince you?

You can run but you can't hide

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 23:45:00 +0000

Darkness never truly falls, only a dim, grey, fog.

You’d take darkness.

No light. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear.

You’d take that.

You force your eyes shut to block out the light.

But darkness won’t come.

If you can’t see it then you don’t have to believe it. If you can’t hear it, then you don’t have to listen.

And it’s the listening that hurts.

The dull, grey, mist that rolls over you instead, carries the voices of despair. Words; chattering on, relentlessly obliterating your sense of reality.

Words of despair.

Words of gloom and of hopelessness. You hear the words. You see the shapes forming in front of you and nothing can stop them from taking over you.

Nothing.

Soon they are all you can hear. Sounds of reason, hope, and joy are all lost – the only thing you can hear - is misery.

And misery is a very selfish conversationalist that will not let you talk and will not let you walk away.

Held firmly in its grasp, your head becomes heavy, your shoulders bent and your heart becomes nothing more than a tool to push blood around your body.

And the voices continue.

They never stop.

Well, not until bedtime, anyway. Then you manage to prise the tablets out of their mitts and turn Minecraft off. Then it goes quiet.

One day a law will be passed that makes “Piss off” an acceptable answer to the question “Do you want to see my village, Dad?”

A Miracle on Shed Street

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:15:00 +0000

First things first – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Let 2015 be a great year for you and all you care about.

All I'm hoping for is that my shed stays up and that it turns out to be dryer inside it than out.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sheds are, traditionally, a man thing. They are a place for men, containing manly tools and equipment, offering safe-haven from the rigours of over-exposure to wives and children.

Wives stay away from this hallowed ground out of respect and of understanding of their husband’s higher standing in the family tree.

Or it could just be because of the spiders I suppose.

Anyway...

A shed is something ‘Men’ have.

Building the shed yourself takes macho to levels so high that you can’t walk within two meters of any women in case Testosterone escapes and makes them pregnant.

Only a real man could actually build his own shed.

Which brings me to “Shed Day”.

Mark the day well, 23^rd December 2014.

The day I became a man – sort of.

Actually, the story doesn't really start on Shed Day - I suppose I should start at the beginning…

It was early November and I was at home alone on one of my ‘off-shift’ days in the middle of the week. My wife and kids were at work/school respectively and I was doing the family’s ironing. The TV was on and though it is generally against my principles to engage in any Christmas based activities until December, I’d found myself watching Miracle on 34^thStreet (The original 1947 version with Edmund Gwenn in it – not Richard Attenborough).

I won’t lie – it got me.

Let’s just say things were getting a bit emotional - must have got some steam in my eye.

Which is exactly how I came about buying a shed.

What else can you do when you suddenly catch yourself blubbing at a Christmas film in the middle of the day while ironing? I needed to locate my Y chromosome – and fast!

The internet sped to my rescue and within no time at all I had a 10 by 8 feet metal shed on order – don’t ask me why I bought a metal one – I may have been panicking a bit. The company I bought it from claimed to also install them – and that suited me too, I just didn't feel ready. The man (who sounded like he probably has only ever seen two films in his life and they were both Die Hard) gave me a quote and told me to call him when I knew the delivery date.

With that done I manfully set off to clean the bathroom.

Time passed. Finally, the shed arrived, just before Christmas. I called up Right Shed Fred and tried to book in a time. I really didn't want it sitting around outside for weeks in its box.

“No problem” he said, “er… did I already give you a quote?” “Yes”, I replied, noting an immediate lack of interest on his part. The time of year had suddenly hit him and I got the feeling he fancied getting paid a bit more for Christmas. He promised to call back later that day to confirm.

He never did. All my calls from then on went ignored. I realised that the time had come to man up to level 7.

The shed came with a separate foundation kit. So I went out and put it together…

Please excuse my cycle-rack - the only drawback to successful dieting is overly loose trousers...

Surprising myself with how well that went, I made a decision. There was no physical way that one person was going to be able to put this up – or at least not if that one person was me.

It needed a team.

It needed a family.

And so Shed Day was born.

The first day we would all be home with nothing better to do would be the 23^rd December – and so it was planned. We would build the shed and then have Dominos Pizza as a reward.

And so that’s what we did. The kids rebelled a bit as time rolled past lunch and they began to suspect they weren’t getting any – Jamie, my youngest, went on strike. He disappeared inside for ten minutes and then came out with a poster he’d made saying “Peace for Workers” and proceeded to walk about chanting it. Jo pointed out that if he he’d made himself some lunch in those 10 minutes instead of making a poster he’d not still be hungry…

Jo lost interest soon afterwards and disappeared inside purely to help the boys out – obviously.

At a pace that resembled the suggested timescales in the instructions in the same way that I resemble George Clooney, the walls grew steadily into the landscape. Actually the suggested building times were the same as mine, it’s just that they were scaled in hours where I was using days…

Luckily for you - time-lapse technology means you don't have to wait...

Peace for Workers...

It got dark. The pizza arrived.

Shed Day became Shed Days.

I managed to drop so many screws in the mud that I ran out, meanwhile Christmas beckoned me back into the home to play with my family.

Shed Days became Shed Weeks.

Then I remembered it needed a floor…

And so I ask just one thing – when you take three weeks to build a shed that is supposed to take 5 hours – do you still get to claim the man points?

Have I repaired the damage to my machismo caused by being distracted by that film?

Not that it matters – since then I've watched It’s a Wonderful Life and Bridge to Terabithia, so I've completely lost any credibility that building a shed could have given me - you aren't even human if those films don’t get you choked up.

I'm going to run out of space in our garden with all the sheds I'm going to have to buy…

Happy days.

Happy Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 10:03:00 +0000

Well, I don’t know about you lot but I am somewhat busy getting ready for Christmas and using any spare time I might have to hang out with my family – far too much so to be going about writing stuff down all the time.

Therefore, I’d just like to wish all a massively superb Christmas and New Year – may they fill your hearts with joy.

I’ll see you early in 2015 when I’ll try not to mention how much weight I've put on.

I will, hopefully, be able to report on how my first ever attempt to build a shed goes – I'm not entirely confident that it’s going to be a manly success….

Happy Christmas, All

May 2015 be THE year - YOUR year

Making the impossible possible

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 20:42:00 +0000

This week, my wife and I stumbled onto a winner.

Something that could revolutionise our lives.

And I'm going to share it with you, right here. You can have it for free, consider it an early Christmas present.

Which is apt…

How do you get your kids to bed a little early on a Sunday night?

When you are a bit tired. When they are a bit tired.

When everyone is tired.

The alarm clock is already counting down to call you up for work and school on Monday?

Well, if your kids are anything like mine then the answer is that you don’t. You do not stand a cat in Hell’s chance of persuading them to believe that going to bed is a good idea.

We have tried everything over the years.

Reasoning with them – HA!! Asking nicely, bribing, ordering, begging, turning the clocks forward.

All failed.

Well I think that I might just have found the answer.

It was approaching Eight last Sunday night. There was a persuasive stench of tetchiness about the house that had, all too easily, replaced the wondrous smell of the slow-cooked BBQ pork from the night before.

People needed to be in bed.

But my kids knew their rights. It was absolutely not bedtime yet. They knew it, we knew it.

It was a stand-off.

What they aren't yet, and let’s face it never actually will be, is a match for a woman. Better yet, a mother.

Their nemesis got up and very overtly fetched the boy’s Christmas lists from the fridge door. She sighed loudly and shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she moaned in my general direction, “When are we going to get to do the shopping for Christmas? We’ll never get a chance to go shopping now and the kids always stay up so late that we can’t even shop on-line without people looking over your shoulder…”

I'm not the fastest on the uptake but even I can see a set up that obvious, “I know, it’s a tricky one – I'm working every weekend up until Christmas now so it’s difficult”

My kids are smart enough to never say anything negative about Santa to my face, for fear of a reduced stash, but they also understand all too well the benefits of letting Mum & Dad have some solo shopping time at this time of year.

My wife looked at the boys and said, “I need to do a couple of things and need to be able to concentrate, I think it’s an early night for you…”

And that was when the miracle happened.

My youngest, grinning madly, gave a cuddle out and slid quietly away to bed.

My Teenager paused for a moment to decide if his basic human rights were being infringed in some way, glanced at the child-line number that he has saved on his phone for emergencies (such as when he has been told ‘no’ about a second glass of Coke), and considered his options.

Time stopped. Hours passed by with nobody breathing. No noise. No anything.

“I suppose I could go and read on my bed for a bit before getting in it. I have a good book.”

Jo and I looked at each other in disbelief. This never happens.

THIS. NEVER. HAPPENS.

With that, we were cuddled and then our explosive 13 year old son tripped merrily up the stairs, not to be heard of again for the rest of the night.

“GET IN” We both shouted, fist pumping the air mercilessly.

With the kids in bed we settled back and enjoyed a ridiculously peaceful night watching TV.

I mean, how long does it take to order a couple of things from Amazon?

I guess the trick is pretty seasonal – but use it while you can, I say. Tonight, I plan to tell them that I can’t order i-tunes vouchers because their teeth aren't clean….

Because having an opinion isn't all it's cracked up to be...

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 09:30:00 +0000

If there is one thing married life has taught me, and taught me well, is that wives don’t really care about their husband’s opinion when it comes to how to bring up “their” children.

They might ask for it, frequently, they just aren't actually interested in it.

They only ask because they want to amuse themselves by hearing an idiot telling them the wrongopinion.

This is how they think.

But we get them back.

Fret not; the last laugh is most certainly ours.

The other day, before leaving the house for work, I remembered my youngest son mentioning that his bedside lamp’s bulb had blown.

It was the work of a second to replace it.

I went to work my late shift, knowing I would not be home until well after the kids were in bed.

Later in the day, my lovely wife left about a dozen plates spinning at her work in order to rush home and collect Jamie from his after-school club. Swiftly joined by our eldest boy, she quickly knocked up an evening meal out of whatever she could find while helping with homework. Nobody knows exactly how my wife throws meals together as fast as she does.

It’s an enigma.

The fridge, the cupboards, the house – all completely bereft of food and the oven cold.

Twenty seconds later there’s a table full of piping hot dinner. Not that the boys are ever impressed. They don’t appreciate an artist at work. All they know is that they haven’t got any chips on their plates.

Within the same few seconds it took to feed the animals, she broke up three fights.

With the boys fed, separated and up to date on their school-work, she then ferried Daniel, my Teen, to his football practice.

Jamie was looked after, cuddled and loved.

And then he went up to bed.

Only to come down two minutes later with an absolute look of joy on his face…

“OH – I LOVE DAD!” he sighed with genuine emotion – “He’s fixed my light”

With that, he spun around and took himself off to bed with the contented swoop of a child who has figured out who his hero is.

And I can picture the look on Jo’s face.

Undoubtedly the woman, who has, on a daily basis, given her everything to this boy and made so many great decisions that have kept him healthy, educated, and happy. Put her career on hold. Put her body through hell. Clothed, watered, fed and loved.

The woman without whom both of my sons would not even be a fraction of the amazing human beings that they are.

Her.

I don’t doubt that she looked over at the empty space on the sofa where my backside usually sits, shook her head in despair and correctly imagined my smug hand forming an L for Loser…

I’d also have been grinning.

If it don't make you dance - it ain't music

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 15:58:00 +0000

My eyes are closed.

My feet are tapping.

My head is nodding.

A smile spreads warmly across my face as my mouth fails to prevent the occasional word from the chorus leaking out.

I'm jolted sideways.

My eyes open. What they see stifles my feet, stills my head and flattens the smile.

I'm alone.

But I'm not alone.

In fact I'm surrounded by people. Lots of people.

Not people, I mean zombies.

Not zombies, I mean commuters.

I take my earphones out of their natural home and observe the carriage. It’s eight in the morning and, deep beneath England’s capital city, everything is completely normal.

I'm wedged into the corner of a car on the Hammersmith and City Line and of the hundred different pairs of ears that I can probably see, mine are currently the only ones without a length of wire hanging down from them.

So why am I the only one dancing?

A hundred stone faces sharing one glum expression. Each body a statue; moving only when forced to by the rhythm of the rails.

Silence that should never be heard from such a huge crowd fills the air. When hundreds of people in one small corridor can’t drown out the sounds of one person’s headphones 10 metres away, you know you are under London.

Okay, it’s early. Okay, we are on the way to work. But what the hell are you all listening to? If your music collection doesn't make you rock – change it!

Surely?

We all have bad days at work and not everyone can be Sandra Bullock’s bra adjuster so it’s fair to say that most of us would be happier working somewhere else, or at least if we could start a little later in the day, just after lunch, for instance.

But the fact is we are doing just fine. Most of us commuters are lucky. Almost all of us can say with some confidence that there are other people considerably worse off than ourselves (possibly excepting Madonna’s bra adjuster).

I can accept that some people in the carriage could be having a pretty rough time and my heartfelt love goes out to them, it really does. People soldier on and work through crap that I can only ever pray I never have to understand.

But I do not accept that this is the same for the majority of us.

So come on, London.

Relax. Crank up the tunes and enjoy life.

And don’t ask me to turn down my music either. I know the beat is leaking out but I'm listening to AC/DC and I don’t think it’s actually possible to play that quietly. For that matter, I'm not entirely positive that it would be legal. If you tried to play Thunderstruck without hitting the red on the player’s rev counter, could you actually be arrested, I wonder? Probably.

I plug my ears back in.

My feet tap.

My head nods.

I feel myself smile as my eyes close once more.

For one fleeting moment my hands find themselves playing guitar with Angus. I swiftly ram them back into my coat pockets.

There are limits.

Where we learn just how incredibly bad I am at being romantic

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 07:12:00 +0000

Last week, I told readers of my reunion with the team I was out in Naples with, 20 years previously. I told of how these were the best days of my young life, and that these were the best people in the world. Ever.

It may surprise you then, to suddenly learn that before I flew out to Italy, I’d already met someone slightly more important. Twenty years ago last September (24^th to be exact), I met the woman who stole my heart and locked it away for ever.

I’d stumbled upon the second most important woman in the world, after my Mum. I didn't realise it at the time, obviously, and would never have believed it if you’d told me.

We met. We fell in love. We split up.

When we met, I already knew I was heading out to Naples just three months later. There would be no future for these young lovers. There could only be now.

The end wasn't nice. There were tears.

We both moved on and allowed ourselves to enjoy our separated lives. But like the Earth and the Sun, there was always something holding us together.

Letters.

Phone calls.

Dreams.

We were single. But we were never single.

Of course we got back together – how could we not?

Back in summer, I began working on the reunion with my Naples gang, it had also struck me that it would also be 20 years since Jo and I had met.

This completely unlikely achievement needed celebrating.

What this called for was a bit of romance. I gave it some thought.

I concluded that I would try and recreate our first date, not only that but like the confident young man that I used to be, I would manfully organise it by myself.

It didn't take long to discover that the Newport Arch Chinese restaurant in Lincoln, where I had nervously taken this beautiful young woman so many years previously, was still open for business and taking reservations.

I secretly arranged babysitting with my parents, booked a table at the restaurant, and for good measure, I booked a very nice room at the Castle Hotel (slightly straying from the first date theme to be fair – there was certainly none of those shenanigans on the original).

All I had to do now, was wait. I love it when a plan comes together.

I was very busy at work when the call came through; Jo wanted to know why we were heading over to my parents’ house at the end of September? There was something else that had come up on that same weekend and when Jo had tried to enter it onto the Calendar of Life, she had come across a rather unclear appointment. The something that had come up needed availability confirming quickly.

Does everyone have a Calendar of Life? Not life in general, but of YOUR life: The calendar where you bagsy your nights out. Whoever gets their name down first on any particular day gets to go out and do something fun. A successful entry on the Calendar of Life is a key to freedom from the children of doom.

If it’s on the calendar – it’s official.

Anyway, I've digressed.

I was distracted with work. I had no cover story prepared.

I just wasn't ready.

I flapped, panicked, and mumbled incoherently. Like a rabbit caught in headlights I had nowhere to go but to dive head first into the approaching vehicle. I refused to give away the detail but Jo knew immediately that something was amiss.

Like the true beacon of her gender – Jo would not let it lie. Every thirty minutes for the next month, she came up with a new question to try and drag it out of me. My answers became harder and harder to believe. Slowly but surely, I became increasingly agitated with the relentless interrogation. Romance waned. The mood lighting of my soul darkened.

To fix this I hit upon plan B. The first date would still proceed at the weekend but I’d add in an extra. To celebrate the actual 24^th, which fell on a Wednesday, I’d recreate our ‘thing’.

You can’t get more romantic than bringing back your ‘thing’, can you?

In the early weeks of our relationship and Jo was still a student, when I came home for the weekend, I’d pop around to her house carrying (at her request) a curry and a bottle of Lambrusco Bianco. It became a thing. Of course it did.

So I substituted the Lambrusco for Prosecco (times change) and secretly ordered a curry on-line, to be delivered on the 24^th. Id booked it in secret the previous day. Who knew you could do that?

Well, not the Indian takeaway that I used, anyway. They didn't know you could do that because out of nowhere, a day too early and at about 11 pm, there was a knock at the door.

Jo stared bewilderedly at me as I explained to the driver that his fair was ordered for tomorrow, fumed at me as I got my laptop and showed him the confirmation email.

She stared and she frowned. She gave me that disappointed look that only wives, mums, and teachers can give (as Jo is all three of those things, you can imagine how good she is at it).

I was ruined.

I had to explain what I was doing. I had to explain that the meal was a celebration. Come to think of it, I had to explain what the celebration was in aid of as well… just saying, Joanna… Frustration at the way the surprise had come out and that yet another plan had completely come apart had completely killed the moment.

And so I’d failed. Again.

I'm not going into detail about the recreated “first date” itself, as this was private. Suffice to say that the meal was fantastic, the laughs were genuine and the romance…...

Well, I'm clearly no expert in these matters but all I’ll say is that if the restaurant is still open in 2034, I for one will be booking us a table for two…

Lest we forget

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 10:37:00 +0000

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Robert Laurence Binyon 1914.

Because 20 years is far too long

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 23:38:00 +0000

How long is a long time?

One hour? Two hours? A week?

What about 20 years?

20 years sounds like a long time to me.

So how long is no time?

One day? An afternoon? The time it takes for a kettle to boil?

Kettles work pretty swiftly these days; I think I’ll use that as a measure of no time passing by at all.

Two ends of the time spectrum. The difference between the two is an eternity.

And yet. And yet.

Somehow, it is possible to walk into a room full of people you haven’t clapped eyes on for almost two decades, and instantly feel like you’d just popped out to make a hot drink since you saw them last.

Time travel.

This weekend, I met up with some of the very best people I've ever had the privilege to know. Men and women who share some of my most enduring memories, many of which I've mentioned here on this blog. I lived with these people in a dilapidated block on a NATO base in Naples during the craziest two years of my military career.

Italy – ’94 to ’96. A period that saw me skydiving, dressing up like a Native American to scare real life Cowboys, driving around in a clapped out car with a hand painted ‘White Ensign’ on the roof and even going Half-Monty for pack of drunken women on a hen-night.

These were only moments in the journey of my life.

But they were great moments.

I've been to reunions before, and they were great, I had a blast but I’d been nervous about them, fearful of how things would seem and how different people would be. Conversations had been stilted at first, until alcohol had worked its magic to free the brain from its inhibitions.

But I knew – I knew- this reunion would be different. I wasn't nervous at all. I felt safe that the crowd I’d be catching up with would be exactly the same people I’d left.

I was absolutely right; it really was like no time had passed at all.

The room was just full of my old mates. There was no problem, nothing to feel strange about. It felt like we were all back in the bar underneath our barracks, talking crap and laughing about absolutely everything.

I stepped back from myself at one point and looked at the room. Looked at the faces. Looked at my own face among them.

It fitted.

As it had done all those years ago.

I've always felt that I’d never really fitted in anywhere as well as I did in Naples, either before or after. I used to think it was the location. That it was Italy that had suited me.

It wasn't.

It was the company.

And there I stood again, feeling the same, surrounded by those same few people.

Don’t get me wrong, we've all lived lives since last we met. Sparkling eyes betray tales of love and pain, happiness and sadness, gain and loss. We've all grown up. We've all had to.

But inside, where it matters, sits joy. It always did. How did I let these people get away for so long? How can you sit back and let your best friends disappear?

This mistake will not happen again. I will see this bunch again, I will also work hard to see the others, those I haven’t yet tracked down or who couldn't make it this time.

I stepped back into myself, took a long pull of my beer and got back to the silliness, got back to a conversation that might as well have been happening 20 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

After all, I only popped out to make a cup of tea.

When trust is lost, is love lost too?

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 19:19:00 +0000

It was the eyes that gave it away.

It’s always the eyes.

Any amount of deceit and vicious bile can come out of a mouth. Lips pout cruelly as they smile innocently into your face.

Mouths can say anything.

Never trust a mouth.

Hands will stop at nothing to convince you of their honesty. They’ll softly rub your face to melt your heart, firmly hold your shoulders to demand your attention, and raise their palms open and high in a clear declaration of assurance. They shout their intent loud and clear without ever actually uttering a word, silent testament to their hidden agenda.

Silent.

Silence can be bought. Everyone knows that.

But her eyes dipped away from my gaze with a flicker of guilt; dry and hollow.

She was lying.

There is nothing in life that can truly prepare you for the moment when trust is lost; when faith is ripped from your heart by the one person in the whole world whom you allowed to hold it.

Everything falls. Everything breaks.

Desperately, you try to push the truth away and reach out for something else, for another reality – one where she is still the person who made all those vows, so long ago.

One where her eyes held your gaze.

But it doesn't come.

Years of marriage.

Decades of friendship.

Trust.

Love.

Gone.

All gone.

And all because her eyes couldn't hide the lies that her mouth could so easily deliver.

And also because you can actually see the empty wrapper from the last chocolate bar in the house sticking out of her pocket. Your chocolate..

The bar you had been saving.

That helped give it away.

But mainly it was the eyes.

My private moment of beauty

noreply@blogger.com (Glen) — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 20:45:00 +0000

As fingers flit rhythmically across the digital dance floor of the internet, one rather worrying fact is beginning to emerge.

If you didn't film it, then it didn't happen.

Will future generations completely shed their ability to remember the wondrous feeling of a moment if they are too busy concentrating on the focus on their phone to absorb it?

When we can no longer capture a moment of beauty in our heads and hold onto the feeling of awe that it creates – what exactly do we become?

And what of the anecdote? What of the story? If we cannot remember or validate anything we do without a film or a photograph, then how do we communicate? A night out with your friends telling stories and reliving memories should be face to face, not face to phone. Will we lose the ability to describe something we have seen when all we have to do is push a screen into someone’s face and show them it?

I probably sound like my Dad, right now.

It was a week ago.

A beautiful, if unusually warm, October morning.

The Sun’s insistence on warming the planet, long after it should have buggered off on its annual Skiing trip, continued to radiate smiles upon the people of London as they sped by on their way to the office.

And not just the people.

Outside my office, set into the ground, is a water feature that I've barely even noticed in the past. It is a triangle of about eight water spouts that occasionally jet into life and spray water about half a meter into the air, before draining back into the ground to be recycled. We often take these little features for granted, grumble at their humble size or baulk at the cost of such a non-necessity.

But every now and again we get a glimpse of why we humans need such luxuries. Why a little bit of beauty in our lives can lift us in ways that can never be quantified or labelled with a price tag.

The water was spouting at its highest peak and glistening in the sun, forming a miniature rainbow in the mist that caught my eye and slowed my commuter pace to an amble. If the sight of a knee height rainbow crossing your path can’t, at the very least, slow you down, then what can?

And that was when I noticed the bird.

The bird that reminded me how truly awesome life is.

I'm no Twitcher. I don’t know what type of bird it was; maybe a blackbird, maybe not. Pigeon sized but not pigeon coloured is all I know.

What matters is that I've never before seen a bird having so much fun. Ever.

In and out of the spout it jumped. Back and forth, up and down.

I patted my pocket in search of my phone. I could see a You Tube moment staring me in the face.

And then I stopped.

No.

This would be my moment. My private moment of beauty.

By the time I’d have found my phone and started the camera, the show would be nearly over and then I’d be watching the final part of it through the screen, just like everyone else I ever showed it to.

That wasn't enough. I wanted to enjoy the moment live. So I left my phone in my pocket and just stood in the middle of the street and watched.

And laughed.

If you were walking in London last week, and passed some balding guy with a backpack on, stood by a water fountain laughing – that was me. What you missed, was wonderful.

The bird shook its head in the water. Then turned, lifted its tail and walked backwards into the flow to give its bum the freshen up of its life. It turned towards me, lifted its left wing high into the air and sidled its way back into the water to jet-clean its armpit, before turning around and repeating the process for its right wing.

Happy with its work, the bird had one final dance in the spray and shook itself dry before flying away, framed perfectly under the arch of a tiny rainbow.

It was a moment.

It was my moment.

There is an awful lot of horror in this world of ours. There is evil and there is suffering. But just occasionally, when we look up from our phones and take out our earphones, we can also find beauty.

You just have to look.