It was a big world out there!

I know we were outside a lot as kids and not just because of the hospital records (see previous entries), we were often out playing at the park which was close behind our then current address, weekends it was often sports, as part of the park was the local soccer fields. I had my turn at playing for Northern United as centre forward, or so I thought, as I found my strikers skill was sadly lacking and the player our coach put on the wing was found to have an excellent goal scoring foot. So I was migrated to the wing....until my running speed was found to be what could only be expected from such a short person. so I was migrated to centre back... again speed not sufficient and .....as a full back I at least had a number of players in front of me and if the goalie failed to stop the ball.... well, it wasn't all my fault.

However when the soccer fields weren't in use the grounds made a great space for kites. And we had our share, Standard diamond shaped to soar and .......crash, homemade design bird kites which would soar and crash, even made a few box kites which would soar.....and crash (but crashed with more significant damage than the diamond kites). But then purchase of the 'astrolab' kite, a present of my brothers I think it was, a real manufactured kite designed by NASA (ooooohhhh) it was a real eye-opener and thriller. When it took off, it soared straight up at about a 45 degree angle, practically every time. And those few times when it did crash, it's plastic frame and connections flexed rather than broke. Enforcing the concept in our young minds that NASA not only produced great ideas but could make great things. (mankind on Mars was obviously just around the corner). The delta wing shaped kite climbed into the air and.........stayed up there while there was wind....... and .... after  several minutes of such beautifully .....stable flight..........got.... a.... little...... boring. It appears that as a young aeronautical enthusiast obviously the sudden thrill of loss of control and spiraling loss of elevation leading to any crafts crashing into the ground was an essential part of kite-flying. But the design was great and nowadays as a photographer... all I need is a camera rig and I know what kite to use to get some great stable aerial shots.

The funny thing was.... even kite flying could lead to accidents too! (continued tomorrow)

It wasn't the first time.

Looking back it was obvious that accidents and our family went together. It was something the various hospitals made abundantly clear. In fact if we hadn't moved around as much as we did we may have had visits from other services as well with serious questions being asked. Although, we improved the odds enormously, simply by being a family with eight children in it’s number. Eight, active and curious children I will add. It’s simple reasoning. Consider how high the roof really is from the ground and does a sheet work as parachute? Consider that although another family member tried it (and failed)…. You were not that person, and, you could surely do what the others couldn’t.

The list of injuries however was long... and varied. basic sprains (wrists, shoulders, many, many ankles), finger crushings (the old washing machine rollers caught many of us I’m sure), numerous and varied broken bones, (not counting those re-broken by the doctors who were “not that happy with how they were mending”) dislocations, fingers, wrists, shoulders and necks (Note: don’t do judo in a small bedroom space, it is not recommended) and serious back injuries (falls, trips down stairs, thrown from horses, Another note: Don’t stand in the middle of a see-saw when people are using it), swallowed pins (yet another note: don't put them in your mouth to hold.... and if you do, make sure the sharp end is sticking out...), a multitude of serious cuts, slashes and bites (from dogs, not from each other), Stings (thank goodness for anti-histamine it has kept my sister in this world) clawings (cats…. and occasionally each other, Roman wrestling does that....so does fighting.), various contact injuries with each other and also with discovered creatures of one kind and another. (Fortunately we lived in an area with few poisonous species or no doubt our ranks would have been considerably thinner). Electrocution (brief and forceful… though some other members of the family suggest it should be tried again to clear my thinking), and the list goes on.

But it was also a sign of our outside living (driven out more to the point), as mother attempted to retain some semblance of a house, when she planned for visitors, needing that gratification of an adult conversation rather than refereeing and adjudicating our constant disputes. And so we explored the world… and discovered you can break, bend, snap or twist nearly all of the 208 bones in the human body….. not counting the muscles, tendons or our attitudes!

But the moment I was referring to came a few days later......  
It must have been a weekday, as I lay in the large comfortable bed. Still not seeing particularly well as my eye covers had only just come off and definitely hurting badly all over. I awoke suddenly, momentarily forgetting most things except that the pain, while over much of my body, was particularly focussed much lower down. Intense and severe. Like a great weight driving me into the bed. I was bursting!
And that was how the trouble started, I was definitely under the influence of some form of pain killer as in my slightly zombified state I thought all I needed to do was get to the bathroom. Somewhere, my sub-concious realised the bathroom was not next to my door as normal but given the location of my sickbed, the bathroom was far, far away, at the opposite end of the house. The pressure drove me painfully from my bed.
I slid and staggered to the now wedged open door [see yesterday's blog] and like one of the great Romero special performers, I dragged my damaged body down the wall of the front hall, groaning, moaning and definitely zombie-like. Crying, or attempting to cry out to my carer...."Muuuummmmmm".
It was a tragedy of the worst kind, The voice was actually frail compared to what was needed. The tone was a low self induced moan that couldn't be heard by the wood panel next to my head. My mother wherever she was, (and it probably was not far) could not hear my distress. "Muuuuuuuuummmm' slurred from the down-turned side of my disfigured face. Images of Quasimodo, that hero of the Notre Dame engulfed my thinking as I dragged my injured form forward, slow step by slow step. The pressure and pain centre not relieving its grip. Until, drugged and overcome with pain I reached the corner of the hall, having traversed a whole two yards! (yes we still used yards then.... actually a lot of us still use them today) 
Eventually, overcome and unable to achieve any further distance, I surrendered to the battle and slid slowly down the wall in keeping with that pitiful cry....."Muuuuuuuuummmmm" In that moment of extreme need I was calling for her. The original carer. Something my sub-conscious understood, regardless of all else..........

recovering .... a slower road than I remembered

Recovering from a recent operation and unused to any illness in recent years I recalled an incident from my youth ....

In my youth after a car vs bike incident, and yes I was on the bike - for a moment at least, before being thrown 'roughly to the ground' by a passing vehicle. My slight frame briefly flying then rolling to a stop against a roughcast brick church wall,  (Anglican I'm fairly certain). The moment when a face meets a solid wall (all this prior to helmets being worn) and the crunching sounds, not just of bike and gutter, but of face and stone... the small pieces of gravel and rocks that wedged themselves into my face and head.... ("another few centimeters and well!.." I recall my mother telling anyone who called for the next few weeks). My face, head and other related injuries added up,  as yet another member of the family would become a familiar visitor to the local hospital, who had already set aside a filing cabinet for our family (and it was filling fast).

However the moment I am referring to was during the recovery that followed my release, blinded with gravel in the eyes etc, that could not immediately be removed (and here may be an example of how I remember my history compared to others) I lay in what was my older sisters bed in her room. My room was too crowded with my three brothers and being a bunk was difficult to access for the family and doctor to visit. So I was given the special treatment and space to wallow in my pain.... and then the door handle broke.

Not a big issue perhaps....except the handle broke on the outside. So there was I, unable to see my way around the bed, little own to the door of the room, with family, I recall my mother's voice, particularly vibrant, issuing mildly panic instructions to try and access the room. And lets be honest. It was funny.

Trying to get someone who could not see and found any movement painful, to find the door and handle, which I recall was somewhat above my head height (not being a particularly tall person...ever). It took another family member (whom it was I don't recall but my thanks), to climb through the front window, which had fortunately been left ajar to 'air the room' (I obviously smelt somewhat...yet I know it wasn't gangrene setting in) and climbed in and accessed the room. I was saved! But the moment I was referring to came a few days later......          (continued tomorrow)

When is a 'promise' really a promise?

As a child, one of the sincerest things you could use as a final plea to your parents that you would actually do something if they let you do what you wanted was to plaintively wail ....' I  p r o m i s e !' with all the vocal desperation of an injured elephant calf and usually accompanied with extreme twisting of body parts, to truly emphasise your seriousness and honest guarantee that this time you meant it.

This usually came about after a certain amount of prior refusal by you to do what your parents wanted because they wouldn't let you do what you expected you could. But it was not your intention to let them down afterwards, it was definitely the most sincere agreement you could make, but often, in your youthful exuberance you forgot what the full agreement involved and seldom faced the repercussions of failing to fulfill that promise.

You may have recalled the stress of the actual situation but it is the specific content that let you down as there was no media pack hanging on your every word (unless you grew up the child of a very prominent, and usually controversial figure) to report back to the world what you had said.

So is this part of the reason that people today glibly throw around the word 'promise'and people don't believe it? Politicians, friends, children and even parents use the word and how many of those promises remain unfulfilled. Does it lower the expectation of the listener when the word is now included, rather than reinforce the intended guarantee. Language is meant to evolve and develop, unfortunately some words and their intentions are diminished by such misuse. Losing their intent, significance and power. Lets re-invest in the word.

Where have all the scribes gone?

It is tragic to observe some real and useful practices fall into 'The Dead Zoo Collection'. Yet, even what I am now doing contributes in a small way to this national occurrence. I refer to the increasing loss of the essential skills of handwriting as a practical, personal ability, whose loss has become a national tragedy.

The many hours spent as a young student, sitting at our desks striving to shape the modified 7th century Latin based alphabet, whose names we had already learnt as a younger child thanks to the heritage of our mother, into a recognisible form with that fragile, sharpened (to a point), faithful HB pencil. The days spent trying to achieve a required standard (and back then it was just that - required- so we did it !)  as black draped shark-like predatory nuns, armed with ever ready wooden rulers (which we were sure they presharpened prior to class) patrolled the aisles and whose so mentioned rulers would collide loudly with a desk top, or hand (if a hand was left in the wrong position), when an error was keenly observed. Whether it was posture of the student, poorness of the text or simply concentration. You paid attention! The rows of young impressionable students whose tongues struggled to encourage their pencils across the lined paper into those essential shapes. But we learnt, and, over 40 years later can still produce that required skill when needed. Pleased as I was to only have the nuns teach me for a few years their 'dedicated methods' and contribution cannot be ignored.

Unfortunately the proliferation of electronic devices, the propensity towards laziness in many of the youth (with the support of biased, ignorant and incredibly short-sighted civil libertarians) is leading to a society whose knowledge will not be able to survive without some form of electricity. Even if we can still talk, the errors in word of mouth (remember playing 'chinese whispers'?) is dangerous. The massive percentage of people today who cannot write in their own, or primary spoken language is staggering and more importantly, frightening. So where are the scribes?  Remember, it was writing that evolved into an international ability to record history, events and details and allowed the rise (or fall) of a society and, when everyone has the skill, it can  even contribute to that most important of human situations which we try achieve, equality.  The very real need to maintain such an essential basic, but life-enabling skill exists, and if not recovered now, then will be lost and lead to greater division in society on many levels.

'The Dead Zoo Collection' is a public term, (term, not slang) used by many when referring to their museums of natural history. Where the history of the natural world is on show, so you can, with this blog expect much of my history to be on show, not necessarily as an exact example of something that I was a part of, but by way of comment and examination of particular moments. It is the past that shapes us and how we remember it (as mentioned yesterday), that shapes our thinking, how we behave and how we react. It is particularly how we react that shapes our lives. I realise today that I have made some exciting and wonderful choices during my life and, some dreadful choices at times, but I made them. There is never a 'What if?', there is only 'what was'.

To Begin, At The Beginning

To begin at the beginning... (in the words of Dylan Thomas) ..... would probably cause the problem I am considering today as I begin this occasional blog..... what was my beginning that led to the present me and why? When talking with others, why do I remember so much of it so differently from what they remembered? The others of course were mainly my family members, as when young and moving around the country as much as we did, they were the only constants. People came into my life, affected me one way or another for a time and soon, we had then to move as my fathers career dictated. Sometimes maintaining a contact with these friends which eventually would fade and stop. New acquaintances occurred to fill the void, but seldom left a lasting or needed impression.

Mr Costello, (I hope I have it right) a man I encountered in my youth, I remember fondly, the lean Irishmen prodigious tea-drinking philosopher father of a friend. I remember what the friend looked like, but not his first name... It was Mr Costello's regular quotations between copious quantities of strong tea, which bored into my youthful and readily influenced brain. Years later as my education widened I was able to attribute many of them to their original authors, but still hear them said with the thick joyful brogue of this man. Actually this is the crux of my history, we all create our own 'history' while the events we pass through occur. When influences, and events, whether remembered accurately or not, become our personal knowledge base.

Hence the title for this blog, 'The Dead Zoo Collection'. I am a collection of past events and circumstances. For some of the events I possess actual tangible evidence, the photos, the souvenirs and while these can be displayed as actual proof, the moment they represent may not necessarily be accurately portrayed. Has no-one ever said 'smile' to you when about to take a photograph, regardless of how you were feeling at the time? Have you never looked at a kept object and rewritten (accidentally or intentionally) the moment in your thinking, of how, and when you came by it? 

And then there is the intangible and arguable, the memories. We store what we want to, for as long as we want and how we want to remember it (given good health). We influence the memory before we save it. We can also reject a memory or hide it if we find it disagreeable. We can and do edit our memories. So in a way, look on this as a reflection of memories, this is to be...... Someone Else's autobiography. While I will write of current thoughts and past experiences, by the time you read it, be they accurate or not, they will all be part of my Dead Zoo Collection.

I welcome any and all who wish to read these thoughts.