This morning I was stood at the station with 500 or so cold, miserable commuters.  I stand at the very end of the station, where the last carriage of the train will be - it's less crowded and easier to get a seat, and I'm not fussed about being at the back of the queue when the train arrives in the terminal.

Something made me look down the track towards the direction the train would come.  It was frosty and cold, and very clear.  Suddenly, around the bend in the track came... a fox.  It was a beautiful, bright red, healthy sleek fit fox, and came calmly trotting down the centre of the track with an air of nonchalance.

It trotted slowly towards me, and when it got to around 50 metres or so away, suddenly started and stopped in its tracks in surprise - it appeared to have just noticed the station.  A couple of people beside me looked down the track and turned to look at the fox.

Aware it was attracting attention, it sat down, wrapped its tail around it's feet and cocked its head to one side and surveyed us.  It was a little stuck.  Looking over its shoulder was the open track, yet ahead was a crowded platform.  More and more people were noticing and looking.

It looked thoughtful, as though it had miscalculated - maybe stayed out too late partying and found its regular early morning walk home full of people unexpectedly.

It raised one paw and looked down at it - for all the world as if it was checking its watch, and started to consider its options. For a full two minutes it sat and hesitated.  No apparent way out on its left up a steep bank, a brick wall on its right then the platform, and the open track behind.  It glanced left, right, over its shoulder, cocked its head at us over and over.  It checked its "wrist" again twice more, as if like so many commuters, checking the time.

Then suddenly something horrible happened.  The train came into view.  Slowing down to approach the station but still sliding along the track towards the oblivious fox.  I willed it to move.  My memory conjured up the sight of my old dog bring hit by a landrover years ago - I heard the thud, followed by the horrible drawn-out scream of pain.  My brain projected forward and I could almost smell the blood of the fox as the train hit it and threw it towards me.  In a split second, like lightning, I conjured up past and future horrors, while the fox sat, unconcerned.

At the last possible moment, it stood up, opened its mouth and gave everyone a wide grin, tongue lolling out the side of its mouth, shook itself in exhilaration and leapt up the bank from a standstill.  It disappeared down a hold none of us had seen.

The magic moment that had captured us all evaporated, and there was an audible sound - a mixture of a murmur of sighed relief, and the hiss of breath as many people suddenly remembered to breathe.  It was an absolutely perfect scene, the beautiful fox backlit by sunlight in the frosty clear air.  By the way it smiled, it seemed to have enjoyed it's moment of fame and had no doubt about where it needed to go.

What was interesting was the way a bunch of miserable, rude, grumpy commuters for three minutes or so lost themselves in a little play, many of them holding their breath, willing the fox to survive.  Sometimes the most trivial things can absorb out attention and fascinate us, as life plays out around us...

for my birthday.  I love him to bits. xxx

It's my birthday tomorrow.  Another year older, and fortunately this time, I can definitely say another year wiser.  I feel as if Rud's been living with me all my life, not just for a little under a year.  I can't imagine not loving him, him not being here, the house not being full of music.

But this year all is changing.  Looking forward, nothing stays the same.  6 days work more then I leave for good - no more work.  No more job.  Of course I'll work, but not fulltime in an office any more.  It stifles me.  I'm just ready to move on and do something else.  People keep asking me "But what if..."  "But what..." and I don't know.  And it's glorious.  I have no idea what's coming but I can't wait.  Whatever the Universe throws up next will be just perfect.

Oh sure, I've been through phases of being nervous, worried, terrified about having no job and no regular income, but I can't muster anything but relief up any more.  I left the company a year ago - I've just been consulting since but they continue to treat me as though I was still an employee - only now they don't even have to observe the nicities!  The nerves weren't real, it was just habit.  I can't remember what it was like to NOT work - three times now I've left work to consult part time.  Three times my client has had me working fulltime for them within 3 months.  I had 2 months of gardening leave once, but apart from that I've never had more than the odd week or two here and there for a holiday, paid for in blood getting ready beforehand so I could escape.

My life has been slowly eroded away by lack of time.  I've written all my books without so much as ever taking a day off.  I never have a bath any more because it takes too long.  I read in snatches on trains and toilets and in waiting rooms, not luxuriating in lying reading on a sofa with a coffee, or sitting under a tree reading in the sunlight.  I don't read in bed any more (well, Rud might have something to do with that!). 

I am just looking forward.  Endlessly looking forward.  To what I have no idea and that's just what's so magical about it.  What I do know is that it'll be wonderful.

If nothing else I'll have time.  Time to play the drums a sensible amount each day, to write my book, to walk Gilly, to support Rud in what HE wants to do.  Time to build up my client base for my MythoSelf(TM) work.  No regular consistent money, but plenty of time.  And something will turn up.  It always does. 

I've written a dozen or so books now, but none of them the fiction I always wanted to write.  So I'm planning on doing that seriously early on, to keep myself busy so I don't slacken off.  I need to get on with it now, or it'll get put off for ever.  The trouble is, I have several books in my head already written,  but I've chosen one to start with, and intend to do some serious writing after the 18th.

Plus it'll be wonderful to have time to run my book business as well as I'd like to.  I'm itching to get that last day over and done with.  I just can't wait for my freedom again.  I was unemployed for two days once.  It didn't hurt.  And it wasn't enough.

I got a cab home last night, and the cab driver was miserable and bad-tempered.  Every time we stopped or had to slow down crossing London he slammed the brakes on unnecessarily, so the journey was uncomfortable being as I spent most of it hanging on so I wasn't thrown off the seat.  It was pouring with torrential rain, and so the sudden stopping wasn't even safe.

The fare was £9 exactly.  I held my hand out for the change and he VERY begrudgingly gave me the £1, and I asked for a receipt.  I was told "Well provided you get a move on and get out and then I'll give you one."  I got out and stood in the pouring rain and he slammed the receipt into my hand and said "Thank you very much; you're very generous.  Extremely generous.  What a very bloody generous woman indeed".

He didn't realise HOW generous I was because what I wanted to do for a few seconds was punch him one!  It was horizontal torrential rain.  And it occurred to me that there was a time when I'd either have been unable to bite my lip and he'd have got back as good as he gave with a few extra spoonfuls of sarcasm, or else I'd have stayed silent and felt weak, and wished I'd said something.

This time I just walked off.  I was annoyed, but at the end of the day, he's still a pig ignorant miserable man, and I'm still me.  

This morning I got a train in to work and as usual got into the last carriage. This particular time train has a First Class area there, which I sit in if the normal seats are all taken.  This particular train also has Howard.

Howard is the refreshments man.  He has a trolley of refreshments, and takes great delight in asking every single person in that first class compartment if they'd like a tea or coffee.  Nobody is ever missed out.  If they're listening to music or try to ignore him, he gently puts a hand on their arm or shoulder and disarms them with a smile.  When people say no, he reminds them the drinks are complimentary in first class, and again looks questioningly.  Given the slightest bit of encouragement or sign of wavering, he tries to persuade them to take a hot drink.

Howard has his own definition of a First Class Passenger - and it's not someone who's bought a First Class ticket, it's ANYONE who sits in one of those seats. He treats everyone, including the rudest teenagers, as if they're a FCP, calls everyone Sir and Madam and is always cheerful and polite without being grovelling and subservient. No matter how disreputable looking a passenger is, I have no doubt that there are tramps who'd get a hot drink and be called Sir on Howard's train. 

When that train arrives, he smiled, nods and says goodbye to every single passenger in that compartment, no matter how ignorant of him or even downright rude they've been.  It's not forced, his politeness and warmth to everyone is absolutely congruent behaviour.  In fact, his warmth towards people is far better at warming me than the coffee would be.  And actually, nobody's ever REALLY rude to him - it just wouldn't work.  It's unthinkable.  I have no doubt that if anyone was, passengers would take them to task.

It's only a 15 minute train ride into London from my stop, so not really long enough for coffee and I've only ever seen him give away a few cups, but the pleasure he took in making each cup exquisitely and carefully was wonderful to see.  It reminded me of an Oriental tea ceremony.  Every step was carefully executed for the best possible result.  And the concern and friendliness he shows to someone who gives him any opening to do so, any encouragement is amazing. 

I watched Howard, and after I'd got off the train "Goodbye again Madam, have a enjoyable day at work today", I realised I've no idea how old he is - although I'd guess around 50.  In fact, I don't know anything about him.  He might be married, a father, a grandfather, widowed and living alone, he might even be gay.  And it suddenly occurred to me what a better place, what a magical place the world would be for a child to have Howard as a father or grandfather, compared to the taxi driver.  I once told a friend that there are some people that make the world a better place just by them being in it, and that he was one of them.  So is Howard.

And is the world any worse a place because of the taxidriver?  I don't think so.  I don't think he'll touch as many lives in his lifetime as Howard does in a week.  His unpleasant, unhelpful and spiteful attitude/behaviour is soon and easily forgotten.  Interestingly enough, the more one has his negative mindset, the longer the negative will be remembered , the more it will rankle.  Those with a positive outlook will feel it bounce off, and just let it go as not important.

Howard, however, goes on my list of people I remember.  When I finish work in 2 weeks I'll probably never see him again, but I'll remember him, I remember everyone I meet however briefly that is truly special.  I'll tell people stories and use him as an example on trainings.  It isn't anything Howard does - he serves coffee.  To the wrong people, actually.  If the Rail Company people knew, they'd probably discipline him.  But the way in which he moves through the world makes it easier for others to be at ease, to be positive, to see good and feel better.  

It's amazing what happens when someone moves through the world with a positive filter set, sorting and noticing and responding to what's working, and not what isn't. It's just a choice.  And you get to make it every second... over and over and over.

On Friday evening we went to the pub.  Saturday morning, Rud got up and found my purse on the front doorstep, soaking wet – it had obviously been out there all night.  The strange thing is, I got a cab from work straight to the pub and paid the driver from my purse.  Other than that, I didn’t take my purse out, or even open my handbag all evening, and when we got home the key was in my pocket so I didn’t need to open the bag then.

Of course, the money was missing – the purse was empty of every penny.  But the credit cards etc were all safe and sound.

Now, I’m not sure whether to be grateful that I don’t have to go through the whole replacement credit card fiasco, (which would have been very inconvenient just before I go to the USA) or concerned that someone we knew took the money.

If you think about it, the purse can only have been dropped outside the pub, or taken from my bag inside the pub.  And it has to be someone who knows us well enough to know where we live (which isn’t actually that many people) and well enough to be nice to us and return the cards, but unpleasant enough to take the money, which wasn’t even a lot.

If the returner of the purse wasn’t the one who took the money, they would have had nothing to lose by dropping it through the letter box (it fits or knocking the door to return it.  The only explanation for anonymously leaving it on the doorstep is because they took the money.  Which isn’t a nice thought.

On another note, Gilly discovered shadows this weekend.  He spent nearly 6 hours on Sunday staring at the floor like a cat watching a mousehole, pouncing on every little movement.  Later, he discovered that the shadows
chase him along the floor, and spent most of the evening either pouncing on his shadow and trying to dig it up, or racing along the hall trying to catch his own, which of course kept moving exactly as fast as he did.

Cute for a while, then he went one mile too far and into pain-in-the-neckville. We’re guessing his eyes have just developed, at 5 months, the ability to distinguish light and shade tones at a new level of perception.  Hope the novelty wears off before TOO much longer...

It's snowing in London.  What a wonderful opportunity for overreaction!  London gets 5mm of snow, the world changes.

Trains are delayed and cancelled due to "adverse track conditions".  That's the trains that are available.  there's a shortage of rolling stock due to adverse weather overnight preventing stock from getting to its required location.  Let's cut this short, and just say England is CRAP with dealing with weather.  Any weather.

Men and women here seem to take snow as an opportunity to wear daft hats with earflaps that make them look like Deputy Dawg (showing my age now).  And scarves with a dozen loops round their necks.  And strange enormous boots with their trousers pushed up like pantaloons and tucked in the top.  And layers and layers of padding.  Then, although they are all dressed like Nanook of the North, they stand huddled in corners, hunched rigidly into contorted posiitons, fighting for space in the slightest bit of cover in case a few stray flakes land on them.  They behave like cats in the rain. 

The staff restaurant sold out of soup at lunchtime, even though they made 3 large batches rather than the usual 2 medium sized batches.  They also ran out of bread (because they'd run out of soup I was told).  The supermarket ran out of bread.  So did the minimart.  A minor detour was necessary for a loaf of bread!  The question is, are people stocking up in panic-buying mode in case they are marooned at home for days without being able to get to a shop for bread, or are they buying so much bread because they're eating so much soup.

I feel guilty now.  We bought three cans and two cartons of soup at the weekend before it snowed - and we didn't really NEED them.  I feel greedy, insensitive, selfish... Maybe as I write this some poor banker is shivering at home, all alone, DESPERATE for soup...

But here we are, blog up and running now and very, very thirsty...

I sat next to a musician on a train recently who interrupted to my listening to music to ask me “Are you a drummer?” (I guess I have twitchy hand syndrome.) I've noticed that musicians never ask “Do you drum? “or “do you play drums?” It’s virtually always phrased as a statement of being – “Are you a drummer?”

That’s interesting: You are/I am as opposed to You do/I do. In the work I do (MythoSelf(TM) we dedicate to being rather than doing. And of course it’s easier to say “I’m a drummer” when you are, really and truly (albeit in your head), than it is to say “I play the drums”, when you can’t yet play them properly.

Rud, my evil twin (it sounds so much better than "my other half"...) wanted me to drum long before I had any idea about it, and he held that space for me until I caught up with him. He had one compelling reason – “Because you’ll be good at it”. He had a certainty that was hard to share but he stubbornly held it. Then at a Dance of the Elements training in November I hit my first drum, and that was that. So I bought the drumkit and things got really interesting.I had to fight my way through a HUGE amount of negative old stuff that came up and bit me when I started – and I've already posted on this. Old old patterns I was never aware of until I sat at the drums and wanted to play. I had to let go and just GTFOI.

For over 6 weeks I wanted to play but made excuses, and then in the last 6 weeks I’ve just started to get on with it. Puppy Gilly – now 5 months old - seems to have decided that the drums are MINE – I can play them, and guests can play them – people who don’t live with us. Joseph can play them, even Charles can play them, Rud’s band’s new drummer can play them, but if Rud tries to play them Gilly races in and launches himself at Rud and bites him in the leg

I am now at the stage where I experience frustration and irritation-type sensations like nicotine withdrawal (or so smokers tell me) if a day goes by and I can’t drum. I have without realising it started to adapt my lifestyle so I can listen to music and MENTALLY drum and unpack it's rhythms sometimes 2 hours or so a day

Bob gave me the idea – Rud and I were joking about music and I was waving with my hands in the air and Bob with his Air Guitar T shirt on said “Are you air drumming” and I said “Yes, I’ve got a full kit”, and Bob fell about laughing at the idea of a full Air Drumkit. I had to explain I’d meant I do actually have a full drumkit at home – a real one

I’ve had my drums retuned. Apparently my Toms were out. Oh, This explains everything. But help is at hand. Apparently, tuning them is remedied by sticking PANTY LINERS to the drums skins (playing surfaces). I have to say, this adds a WHOLE NEW DIMENSION to playing – but just for now we’re using inferior kitchen roll until I get over the embarrassment.

I’m having formal lessons in a studio now – with Suzi Quatro’s ex-drummer so he must be fairly decent. I think it’s going well – he did say he’d never had a first lesson like it! I’m aiming to start informal lessons too (with Pantyliner Man), to get help with jamming to music

I can’t wait until I finish at this client’s in 3 weeks time and say goodbye to full time work. I can see a future filled with minor squabbles over studio time at home with Rud playing guitar on his own, in a duo and in a band, plus composing music for himself/Mytho/ABT, and doing recording and sound production sessions and only ONE studio! He offered to put the drums in the bedroom for me but sleeping with them seems a little excessive.

I’m trying a speed drumming pedal and getting new and better brushes and cymbals (from PL Man second hand but still better). Cymbals seem to be the Holy Grail of drummers, they talk enviously in hushed tones about mystical and arcane names which are vaguely-oriental sounding, and there always seem to be better ones to be had – bigger, shinier, more expensive of course. The quest for the legendary ultimate cymbal...

I’ve said goodbye to many of my favourite bands – for the forseeable future. Hard trance has a great beat but there’s a reason why they use drum machines not real drummers – and bands like The Libertines play at a speed that’s way, way off in my future. FORTUNATELY, many others of my favourites are eminently playable.

What’s been different, to say the least, is the experience of ADDING totally unfamiliar bands to my listening agenda. When I first got my drumkit, I sat and looked at all the drums and cymbals, and Rud showed me how to play a basic 1234 beat. I had a go and after not too long “got it”, and demanded some music to play to. He put on “Highway to Hell” at some serious volume, got out his guitar – and that was my first proper experience of drumming.

AC/DC was what the big, bad boys listened to when I was little. You know, the ones who smoked and looked like they didn’t wash and hung around on street corners and sniggered at you.

Lynyrd Skynyrd I genuinely thought was a song title, not a person/band (I’m still vague on this one). Answers on a postcard, please.

Guns’n’Roses had never to my knowledge graced my eardrums before I met Rud.

Yes, I’ve listened to Rock - to Queen. And the Rolling Stones.

But today, I’m listening to “Like A Rolling Stone” for the 17th time today (seriously), and that means, at 4 minutes 17 secs a time, just over an hours worth. And more to come because there’s a fiddly bit I have to unpack in there somewhere. That means around 100 times this week so far to unpack a simple song.

I have struggled because I found it extraordinarily hard to count. I kind of hear the whole thing and then try to copy it. It’s wholeform when I take it in, and unpacking music into bing bing bang-bang bing BOOM was easy peasy – I’m a natural mimic. Input wholeform, output wholeform. Until it gets too complicated and then it won't work. But 1234, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 etc has been VERY challenging – and everyone agreed it will hold me back later if I couldn't learn to do it now.

But it’s started to just happen on it's own. I’m not exaggurating, I really do spend a couple of hours a day whilst travelling listening to music and unpacking the rhythmn and coding it up into tabs notation now so I can duplicate a vague semblance of it. I’ve tried looking up the music on the net to print off and play to, but it’s all way too complicate for a novice, and, as Eddie Izzard says “I don’t want to play ‘Snug As A Bug In a Rug’, Mrs BadCrumble, I want to play SEXXXYYYY tunes!”

I didn’t buy a drum kit to play 1234 on 2 drums and a cymbal and leave the rest untouched. I have no aspirations to play in a band – granny bands aren’t very fashionable! But I’m 42, life’s simply too short for me to start at the very beginning, although it may be a very good place to start (if you’re a nun). I want to start with Highway to Hell and keep going, not go back to 1 2 3 and 4.

And that means some serious hard work.

So the hard work begins. “Like A Rolling Stone” might be the best record in the entire world for some people, but after the 100th time it takes on a whole new meaning and when I play it, it sounds very UNsubtly different from the original. “Ah yes, but that’s just because of the fills” I hear the experienced musicians say.

So for the non-musicians, you get this song that you can actually play – or you think you can. It’s slow enough for your REAL hands and feet to play (as opposed to the hands and feet in your head which can play INCREDIBLY fast but don’t communicate well with your real ones). You know what notes you’re supposed to play. You’ve listened to it and made notes over 100 times, written out what to play, checked it and centiple checked it. So you put on the track and start to play.

And then you encounter problem number one. Musicians don’t actually play what they’re supposed to.

They Make Shit Up.

Drummers, I am coming to realise, are without any shadow of doubt Masters of this art of Making Shit Up. So I should make a REALLY good drummer some day...

They’ve even come up with terminology to explain it – A “Fill” is where for example you play 8 bars then, before going back to the beginning and starting again, you play a “fill” – which means you Make Shit Up, fit it into 2 bars, then go back to the beginning as if nothing had happened. They don’t even play the fill in the same place each time – at the same point in each verse or chorus. They literally just make it up as they go along.

It is without logic.

And my nickname at primary school was Spock because I so often said “That’s not logical Miss”. And this isn’t.

In drumming, two 4’s aren’t 8. Two 8’s aren’t 16.
A 16 can be made up of 4 identical 4’s but it’s not four 4’s it’s a 16.

It is without logic, but it SOUNDS good. And when I do it, it sounds like someone made 2 bars of mistake.

Eventually you come to the “third hand technique”. Just don’t even go there.

You Have Been Warned.

I only have two hands and it’s likely to stay that way. Maybe one if Gilly keeps biting my left hand after an hour or so when he gets fed up of drumming and decides it’s time for me to stop and give him some attention.

j-a

Just set up the blog, and over the next few days I'll be adding the archives of my significant ontological ramblings previously posted on elists - mainly the Mythoself yahoo group.

Welcome

Julie-Ann