As a wide-eyed space nut of a 10 year old boy, I watched the opening crawl of Star Wars (before it got re-tagged with Episode IV - A New Hope) with great expectation and trepidation. For my father, whilst not wearing the black cape and breathing apparatus of - as we would discover in Episode V - Luke's father, was just as fearsome. And he had taken great pains to leave me with no doubt, that if this space-opera I'd begged him to take me to in anyway sucked, we'd make point five past light speed right out of the cinema way before the Rebel Alliance could muster all their misters.
So I watched and waited. Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope...
Not long in, when the intrepid R2 unit haplessly stumbles across some rag tag Jawas & faceplants after a bolt out of the blue, my father laughed uproariously. Loud & long. And at this point I knew I was safe. I relaxed and settled in to enjoy the movie. And for the rest of the movie, I didn't hear a restless peep or agitated bum shuffle from Daddy dearest.
It's still my favourite film and possibly movie-going experience, to this day.
And here's why... I recall my childhood with little in the way of shared experience with my father. Okay, so partially this is a selective memory. He did often take me motor racing and owing to this, I had the privilege of seeing Lauda, Senna, Piquet, Prost et al throw caution to the wind and some beasts of racing cars around a circuit. But I have no illusions that this was to entertain me. It was a passion of Dad's and I was just along for the ride. Like the many trips accompanying him target shooting - for many a young boy surely a dream come true, but one hearty recoil to the face from a Colt 45 and I wasn't so endeared to the sport.
When it came to my true passions - cinema for instance, it took my mother - having never attempted a driving test in her life, the logistal nightmare of negotiating a very lacklustre public transportation schedule to sate me. Star Wars with my father was a rarity and that's what made it special. That and the lightsabers and X-Wings and the Cantina and Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon...
Even without the black cape and breathing apparatus, fear was all around me growing up. Fear of my few local friends ringing the doorbell during dinner. Fear of asking a dumb question. Fear of whatever trifling blip it was today that was going to drive another tense mood or shit fit from my father.
And so I vowed from an early age that when the time came and I had kids, I would not be like my father. And to a larger extent I believe this to be true. Okay, sadly much of it has been done remotely, the skills evolved child by child and possibly more by osmosis than design, they show all the signs of being very well rounded individuals. And I'm very proud to be their father.
And by whatever medium, there's barely a week passes where I don't tell my kids that I love them multiple times. More times in a week that my father has ever uttered in my lifetime.
Today I visited Dad, now in his seventies and finding himself alone again after a recent separation from his second wife. Even in adult life there have been times where polite acceptance has regressed back to - "let's play family feud!" - but at the end of the day, he's my Dad and I feel for him. So to get him out of the house - as misery needs company, I asked him to tutor me on golf. A sport he took up with his second wife, loved and became quite proficient at.
Until this point in my life, I've been with Mark Twain - that "golf is a good walk spoiled". However, recent changes in my job role has led to a certain peer assumptions. Assumptions that I have a University degree, a four bedroom house in Surrey with a Christmas card perfect wife beaming from our driveway, draped over a shiny new Audi. I have none of this. So I may as well learn golf and not be a total disappointment. I'm not a complete sell-out if I'm only a partial cliche, right?
And so I found myself today on a very agreeable sunny afternoon on Britain's South-East coast, with my father patiently bestowing knowledge on me in a way I only dreamed of in my youth. He willed me on. He gave me encouraging words. Gone was the dispiriting sarcasm and put-downs of my childhood. I was far from King of the swingers and a separate postcode away from being a natural, but throughout, Dad gave me the verbal and caddying support to succeed and improve.
And at the end of it, he congratulated me and firmly shook my hand. There are many achievements in my life that eclipse this shoddy performance like a Death Star primed for destruction, but it wasn't until this way below par outing that I finally saw a glimpse of the Dad I've pined for all my life.
As I say, by whatever medium, there's barely a week passes where I don't tell my kids that I love them multiple times. More times in a week that my father has ever uttered in my lifetime.
Earlier, I hugged Dad and vowed that we'll play again soon. You can guess what he said next.
So now I like golf. And that's why.
Stay positive! x
Saturday 22 September 2012
Wednesday 21 March 2012
Blahwg in the USSR
“The air attack warning sounds like…”
As a child born into the second half of the Cold War, long before Frankie Goes To Hollywood purloined the above prose as the opening salvo for their single Two Tribes, I lived in frequent fear of the doom laden drone that followed.
Cheerful Public Information Bulletins like the one linked below advised what to do in the aftermath of a nuclear strike, should you be unfortunate enough to survive. Frankly, without the means or indeed Planning Permission to construct a nuclear bunker, I doubted my family would endure a several megaton blast, but - as instructed by the government - I dutifully practiced sheltering beneath the kitchen table for days at a time during my youth.
I’m pretty sure that at the time of their inception these Protect & Survive films were widely ridiculed, however what I remember most is their gloomy cloak of unease that permeated my childhood in an area of the UK housing so many US Air Bases that we may as well have painted a target on our house.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any bleaker, Raymond Briggs followed up his heart warming adventures of the Snowman with When the Wind Blows, a jolly animated tale of an elderly couple dying from radiation sickness.
These were the cornerstones of my happy childhood and may explain why I‘ve grown up with an uneasy sense of foreboding.
Thus, with so much misery and a big dollop of propaganda swimming around my head since very young, Russia - the pesky ‘Red menace’ - was never top of my list of places I Must See Before I Die - whether from nuclear fallout or otherwise.
So arriving for the first time in Moscow a couple of weeks ago on business, the day after Putin’s widely criticized re-election campaign with large-scale public demonstrations underway, didn’t exactly fill me with glee. Just as long as it didn’t fill me with polonium 210, I might be okay…
Moscow is apparently home to some 11.5 million people, all of whom - at any given time of the day - appear to be on the road at exactly the same time. Each with a casual abandon and impervious oblivion that one suspects that most believe they’re still driving tanks.
Wherever you go there are the bronze busts of stern faced dudes with impossible stately facial hair, their etched dead eyes seemingly following you around the place. I just imagined that, right? Quite possibly, because until I’d experienced -20c with the sun still shining, I had no idea that my face could freeze mid-sentence unless I was having a stroke.
In a country where you have to go through three passport checks just to enter an ordinary office building, there is still that sense of unease and guardedness. During my stay I felt close to making a KGB list merely from pointing out an error with my bar bill. This instigated a lengthy altercation with the management and referral to a ‘special team’ hidden away in some mysterious back office, labouring night & day checking CCTV footage because in Mother Russia, the customer is - apparently - always a lying cheating scumbag. I bet the Gulag played host to many arising from disputes over a £4 beer.
Luckily I did escape briefly from the soul-destroying Groundhog Days of airport/hotel/office/hotel rinse/repeatedness and enjoyed a brief sojourn into Red Square in the icy shadow of the Kremlin. A lady that resembled an angry potato sold me souvenirs and none of the massed military or police recognised me as a potential beer thief.
An ice-rink erected there in Red Square, I was told by my native colleague, would have been unthinkable up to a couple of years ago and shows signs of a very gradual thaw within the permafrosted state. One hopes that this continues under the newly reinstated but widely reviled Putin.
In a land where the corpse of a long dead revolutionary has been on display to the public since 1924, one could joke that Russia has trouble in burying the past. One could, but one would probably be spirited away to a back room for a private visit with the ‘special team’.
So let’s keep that one between ourselves, okay?
How I learned to start worrying and fear the bomb: http://youtu.be/3HFm1t0lq8Q
As a child born into the second half of the Cold War, long before Frankie Goes To Hollywood purloined the above prose as the opening salvo for their single Two Tribes, I lived in frequent fear of the doom laden drone that followed.
Cheerful Public Information Bulletins like the one linked below advised what to do in the aftermath of a nuclear strike, should you be unfortunate enough to survive. Frankly, without the means or indeed Planning Permission to construct a nuclear bunker, I doubted my family would endure a several megaton blast, but - as instructed by the government - I dutifully practiced sheltering beneath the kitchen table for days at a time during my youth.
I’m pretty sure that at the time of their inception these Protect & Survive films were widely ridiculed, however what I remember most is their gloomy cloak of unease that permeated my childhood in an area of the UK housing so many US Air Bases that we may as well have painted a target on our house.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any bleaker, Raymond Briggs followed up his heart warming adventures of the Snowman with When the Wind Blows, a jolly animated tale of an elderly couple dying from radiation sickness.
These were the cornerstones of my happy childhood and may explain why I‘ve grown up with an uneasy sense of foreboding.
Thus, with so much misery and a big dollop of propaganda swimming around my head since very young, Russia - the pesky ‘Red menace’ - was never top of my list of places I Must See Before I Die - whether from nuclear fallout or otherwise.
So arriving for the first time in Moscow a couple of weeks ago on business, the day after Putin’s widely criticized re-election campaign with large-scale public demonstrations underway, didn’t exactly fill me with glee. Just as long as it didn’t fill me with polonium 210, I might be okay…
Moscow is apparently home to some 11.5 million people, all of whom - at any given time of the day - appear to be on the road at exactly the same time. Each with a casual abandon and impervious oblivion that one suspects that most believe they’re still driving tanks.
Wherever you go there are the bronze busts of stern faced dudes with impossible stately facial hair, their etched dead eyes seemingly following you around the place. I just imagined that, right? Quite possibly, because until I’d experienced -20c with the sun still shining, I had no idea that my face could freeze mid-sentence unless I was having a stroke.
In a country where you have to go through three passport checks just to enter an ordinary office building, there is still that sense of unease and guardedness. During my stay I felt close to making a KGB list merely from pointing out an error with my bar bill. This instigated a lengthy altercation with the management and referral to a ‘special team’ hidden away in some mysterious back office, labouring night & day checking CCTV footage because in Mother Russia, the customer is - apparently - always a lying cheating scumbag. I bet the Gulag played host to many arising from disputes over a £4 beer.
Luckily I did escape briefly from the soul-destroying Groundhog Days of airport/hotel/office/hotel rinse/repeatedness and enjoyed a brief sojourn into Red Square in the icy shadow of the Kremlin. A lady that resembled an angry potato sold me souvenirs and none of the massed military or police recognised me as a potential beer thief.
An ice-rink erected there in Red Square, I was told by my native colleague, would have been unthinkable up to a couple of years ago and shows signs of a very gradual thaw within the permafrosted state. One hopes that this continues under the newly reinstated but widely reviled Putin.
In a land where the corpse of a long dead revolutionary has been on display to the public since 1924, one could joke that Russia has trouble in burying the past. One could, but one would probably be spirited away to a back room for a private visit with the ‘special team’.
So let’s keep that one between ourselves, okay?
How I learned to start worrying and fear the bomb: http://youtu.be/3HFm1t0lq8Q
Wednesday 4 January 2012
Chasing Cars
“You must really love running!” I’m often told.
A logical assumption for all of you suffering in silence the constant squawking & hawking of Nike+ and my repeated pleas for sponsorship. Hmm… *love* running?… Not on your freakin’ life!
“Everybody Wants to Run the World”! Tears For Fears informed us in 1986 at the launch of Sport Aid. Always a sucker for a good cause (and a jaunty tune), I decided not to run the risk of Saint Bob bawling for me to “get awf yer feckin’ arse!“ but rather run with the herd. Thus I first embarked upon training for this and several subsequent 10k’s.
Then for a number of years, life rather got in the way and there came a time I could barely contemplate eating a Marathon, never mind running one (Before Snickers, confectionery fans). In fact, this time last year I could probably be found using the wii Fit board as a rudimentary drinks table, such was my sloth like regime of inactivity.
It wasn’t like I needed to lose weight or anything, although I commented to a friend at the time that a mild shortness of breath when labouring made me fearful that I’d never outrun a live wolf let loose in a club - and upon such an eventuality would have to rely on hefting slower beings than I at the feral beast. This concerned me somewhat. I didn’t want to be remembered as the guy that feeds ailing children to wolves…
So I cleared the beer cans from the wii Fit board set about heaving some weights. Well, I say ‘weights’… AA batteries can be quite a strain at times, and the wii requires loads of the buggers.
See I’ve never been a fan of the gym. I’ll happily be a little fuzzy around the edges rather than pay a monthly subscription to breath in the fetid funk of others whilst being assaulted by shit music. Now there’s a room just crying out for a live wolf!
And the on-set of human frailty doesn’t help. Whilst I don’t consider myself old - with a mental age jostling with my IQ for single digits - my bones are starting to tell me somewhat prematurely otherwise. For a number of years now I’ve sheepishly rocked up at chiropractors, doctors and medical consultants in a bid to put a name to my (joint) pain. For a while I humoured the latter by the popping of a gaggle of pills seemingly founded on guesswork and hunches. Until one day a new bag of pharmaceutical candies upon closer inspection offered up ’Heart Attack’ among its worryingly high number of ’Highly Likely’ side effects. Hmm… Slight joint pain / heart attack?… Tough choice…
So, now off the droogs, I’ve learnt to just ignore these Lego limbs - stiff and feeling like they could snap out with little effort. Sure, they can be uncomfortable, but it’s a mild inconvenience only. Nothing more. I mean, there are so many other poor souls out there who really have things they could be complaining about. Right?
Right.
And so it was, when top dude Matt James went and ran a freakin’ marathon last year, I was inspired to once again don the trainers and hit the streets again. Now whilst there are many ways to skin a cat, fox a wolf, and raise money for charity, there are some I draw the line at. For instance, I’ll never willingly jump out of a plane. Not unless I’m flying over the Andes with the Uruguayan rugby team on board…
Following Matt’s epic journey via the joys of Twitter, I realised this was something I could be doing - something I should be doing. And so with four months training, it was my great pleasure to run alongside Matt last September in the Great North Run, my very first half marathon.
The rest you’ve been bored with and cajoled out of your money by numerous times now. Thank you. You see, I really don’t love running. But I really do love parting people from their cash in the aid of a great cause.
Please don’t weep when I inform you there are plenty more afoot in 2012. This June will see me attempt - with the great Matt James - seven marathons over five days, with another marathon later that month. For as long as my battered joints continue to support me - and as long as you continue to support the cause(s), whilst I’m certainly far from ‘loving’ it - running’s what I’ll do.
My very first full marathon will be in Brighton this April, on behalf of the Make A Wish Foundation. You know the drill…
http://www.justgiving.com/steverosiermaw
Forever thanks for your support.
Stay Positive.
x
A logical assumption for all of you suffering in silence the constant squawking & hawking of Nike+ and my repeated pleas for sponsorship. Hmm… *love* running?… Not on your freakin’ life!
“Everybody Wants to Run the World”! Tears For Fears informed us in 1986 at the launch of Sport Aid. Always a sucker for a good cause (and a jaunty tune), I decided not to run the risk of Saint Bob bawling for me to “get awf yer feckin’ arse!“ but rather run with the herd. Thus I first embarked upon training for this and several subsequent 10k’s.
Then for a number of years, life rather got in the way and there came a time I could barely contemplate eating a Marathon, never mind running one (Before Snickers, confectionery fans). In fact, this time last year I could probably be found using the wii Fit board as a rudimentary drinks table, such was my sloth like regime of inactivity.
It wasn’t like I needed to lose weight or anything, although I commented to a friend at the time that a mild shortness of breath when labouring made me fearful that I’d never outrun a live wolf let loose in a club - and upon such an eventuality would have to rely on hefting slower beings than I at the feral beast. This concerned me somewhat. I didn’t want to be remembered as the guy that feeds ailing children to wolves…
So I cleared the beer cans from the wii Fit board set about heaving some weights. Well, I say ‘weights’… AA batteries can be quite a strain at times, and the wii requires loads of the buggers.
See I’ve never been a fan of the gym. I’ll happily be a little fuzzy around the edges rather than pay a monthly subscription to breath in the fetid funk of others whilst being assaulted by shit music. Now there’s a room just crying out for a live wolf!
And the on-set of human frailty doesn’t help. Whilst I don’t consider myself old - with a mental age jostling with my IQ for single digits - my bones are starting to tell me somewhat prematurely otherwise. For a number of years now I’ve sheepishly rocked up at chiropractors, doctors and medical consultants in a bid to put a name to my (joint) pain. For a while I humoured the latter by the popping of a gaggle of pills seemingly founded on guesswork and hunches. Until one day a new bag of pharmaceutical candies upon closer inspection offered up ’Heart Attack’ among its worryingly high number of ’Highly Likely’ side effects. Hmm… Slight joint pain / heart attack?… Tough choice…
So, now off the droogs, I’ve learnt to just ignore these Lego limbs - stiff and feeling like they could snap out with little effort. Sure, they can be uncomfortable, but it’s a mild inconvenience only. Nothing more. I mean, there are so many other poor souls out there who really have things they could be complaining about. Right?
Right.
And so it was, when top dude Matt James went and ran a freakin’ marathon last year, I was inspired to once again don the trainers and hit the streets again. Now whilst there are many ways to skin a cat, fox a wolf, and raise money for charity, there are some I draw the line at. For instance, I’ll never willingly jump out of a plane. Not unless I’m flying over the Andes with the Uruguayan rugby team on board…
Following Matt’s epic journey via the joys of Twitter, I realised this was something I could be doing - something I should be doing. And so with four months training, it was my great pleasure to run alongside Matt last September in the Great North Run, my very first half marathon.
The rest you’ve been bored with and cajoled out of your money by numerous times now. Thank you. You see, I really don’t love running. But I really do love parting people from their cash in the aid of a great cause.
Please don’t weep when I inform you there are plenty more afoot in 2012. This June will see me attempt - with the great Matt James - seven marathons over five days, with another marathon later that month. For as long as my battered joints continue to support me - and as long as you continue to support the cause(s), whilst I’m certainly far from ‘loving’ it - running’s what I’ll do.
My very first full marathon will be in Brighton this April, on behalf of the Make A Wish Foundation. You know the drill…
http://www.justgiving.com/steverosiermaw
Forever thanks for your support.
Stay Positive.
x
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