Don't delay - Do More

On Wednesday at work the refugee crisis became extremely close to me. Our work twitter account was asked to help with a request to contact the Greek Coast Guard.  There were some Syrian refugees that had said they were in trouble at sea. 

I saw the request six minutes after it was sent, 16 minutes after it was first posted. Let that sink in for a moment, people were in trouble and needed help. They had waited 16 minutes. You get impatient waiting a minute for the kettle to boil.  Imagine how they felt, on a boat, no idea if someone is coming to help them, probably taking on water.

The person who asked on twitter on how to contact the Greek Coast Guard was being  sent web addresses.  None of them were for who they needed. I was in a unique situation, I was able to get the right number for their operations room, the one they needed. I was able to give this 21 minutes after they wanted the number.

Remember that, 21 minutes.  Less time than it takes you to cook oven ready chips, but more than enough time for a boat to sink. 

Did I help? Hopefully, and although my part was barely enough to count as helping, I did. What did you do yesterday? 

But the story doesn’t finish there. In the evening I saw the heart breaking story and photos you will have seen, the three year old boy, dead on the beach. 

There were 21 minutes before I got the number across, six minutes before I saw the message. Do you know how long it takes to drown? Less than a minute for a healthy strong person, usually about 20 seconds for a child. 

Twenty one minutes is a long time. Not as long the minute and a half it took me to confirm that the boat I helped in a small way was 200 miles away from the dead three year old boy on the beach.

That was 90 seconds of pain and anguish at feeling I hadn’t acted quick enough. I never want you to feel that. Never.

Don’t feel the pain I felt, sign the petition, the link is below. Then when the next dead child washes up on a beach, and there will be more, at least you’ve acted in time doing the one thing you can do to help. It will probably be the most important thing you’ll do this year.

There’s more difference in the DNA between two Labradors than there is in the human race. These people in trouble are your cousins. Help your family, they need you.

The people in the boat I helped made it safely to shore, but their story could so easily have been very different but sadly familiar.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/105991

Star Wars and why I love books

I went to my first comic convention the other week, a Star Wars fan event and David Prowse was there, Darth Vader himself.  Being old enough to remember him as the Green Cross Code Man, a super hero teaching kids to cross the road safely I wanted to thank him for it. 

But I broke a promise to myself in doing so.  I was meant to thank him for something else, far more important that happened in 1977, the year that Star Wars came out, but also the year my mum died. 

I was nine at the time and my mum had been ill with cancer for many years, something I was protected from, but aware that she wasn’t well.  Star Wars was released in the UK on 27^th December 1977 and my mum died on the 29^th December. 

Star Wars was a distraction to me, allowed me to disappear into a fantasy world to escape the pain I was in.  My dad worked and I was too young to go to the cinema by myself and as our world had been turned upside down, arranging to go with someone else was difficult.  I didn’t even get to see A New Hope until 1981, a year after Empire came out when both were shown together.

Instead of going to see it, I was given a copy of the novelisation of the film, I think I got it at Christmas but I’m really not sure when.  As a nine year old given a book instead of going to see it might seem a bit crushing, but in fact it did something for me that no words can ever compensate for.  

I was a lazy student and couldn’t be bothered to learn to read. 

I could read, and I knew my reading age was a lot younger than nine, only because of something that happened later.  Doing a reading test at school the teacher told my I went from a reading age of six to a reading age of thirteen in the space of six months. 

Star Wars taught me to read and gave me a life long love of books. 

I wish I had told David Prowse all that.

Honestly, I'm not ranting

Right now I feel like having a bit of a rant but there’s no reason for me to dump that on you.  What I want to talk about is what does ranting achieve?  Does it really make you feel better to unload on the innocent or is it better to have the confrontation and get it over and done with?

They say it’s good to talk but do we sometimes talk to the wrong person to get it off our chest, or is it better to point out the to person concerned their irresponsible behaviour? 

It has to be the latter I’m sure but why are we so often afraid to hold back when it can be resolved quickly and better for both parties? 

I think there’s going to be a lot of unanswered questions in this as I probably don’t have answers.

Maybe I do have an answer but it’s a guess; we don’t want to make a fuss.  The situation is bad enough that we want to have a rant, it’s annoyed us and any reaction at the wrong time will make things worse.

Today I bit my lip.  I will be resolving it professionally, and courteously.  It will be interesting to see if they do the same. 

Martial Arts – Or Not Fighting For Fun

Brian McCarthy (in white) teaching Ninjutsu while
 visiting Portsmouth, Hampshire.

If you’re under 50, you’ve probably tried a martial art at least once in your life, but what makes it a martial art?  To most people it means an oriental fighting system, often created as a sport (always check the history of what you’re learning, some are less than 100 years old).

But what makes it martial and how is it an art?  Martial is defined as “inclined or disposed to war; warlike”.  Well that makes sense, it’s about learning to fight.

But art is defined as “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.”

There’s nothing beautiful about war, if you don’t believe me just watch the news.

So why is it called martial arts?  You’d have to ask someone more intelligent than me for that.

As for me I have spent many years and many hours in training although sadly I can’t train anymore due to injury.  The injury funnily enough is from doing the 100 metre hurdles, a non-contact sport.

Did I find beauty or aesthetic principles in what I did?  I’m not sure, I know I enjoyed the challenge of it as it wasn’t a sports based system, so the challenge was in being better than I was the day before.

Brian demonstrating how
to escape from the arm
bar.  The lock was fully on.

Most martial arts talk about self improvement and maybe they have become that, even if most people start them because they want to learn to fight.  There’s no avoiding that.  Some people will start because they have fantasies about doing what they see in the movies.

What you see in the movies isn’t martial arts. It’s entertainment.

What does seem strange though is why Europeans pay to learn an oriental system when there are already martial arts in our history? 

Every Knight of old studied the martial arts to become the best warriors they could be.  Even the peasants of Europe had their own fighting system, using the quarterstaff and the longbow, but only one of them is still around. 

Yeah, it hurts sometimes.

The European systems do have one thing in common with oriental ones.  They take a long time to learn if you want to be good.

If you’re thinking of taking up any martial art I have one really good tip for you.  Ask how much it costs to be graded.  If they charge you for it, how will you know if you earnt it, or if you just paid for a new coloured belt? 

Try a few different places, if it seems easy then you’re learning nothing.  If it’s hard then it’s probably a good place to learn. 

And if they hit each other, even if it’s controlled then they know what they’re doing.  There’s no point in training to miss with every punch, kick and hit!

The Problem with GQ and FHM

I used to read the lifestyle magazines for men such as GQ, Arena and even FHM.  In those days it was still known as For Him Magazine, but when Loaded came out everything changed and we ended up with the international monster that is FHM and lad culture.

The first two were never aimed at me really, it was just an idea born out of the time that everyone should aspire to own a lot of crap they didn’t really want.  The big apartment in London overlooking the river, painted white and sparsely furnished.  The Bang and Olufsen, a massive TV with surround sound and the BMW in the garage downstairs. 

Who wears a tie when sailing?

The sort of place you now see on TV that serial killers live in.

Did I buy into that lifestyle then?  I’m not sure, I think I would have liked it, but knew in my heart it was never going to happen.  My earning potential then meant I had several hopes of which ‘Bob’ and ‘F all’ featured highly.

I still have some pages torn out of the magazines from those days and I doubt anything has changed.  If you don’t wear this, live here, or use this then you’re not cool.

Turns out I’ve been shit hot all my life!

So right now for men there’s two lifestyles according to the media, ultra cool if you have an income of at least £70k a year.  Or lad culture which lets face it is pretty chavvy. 

Then there’s one media type for men, mainly on TV adverts who’s the hopeless idiot, and I’m none of them and I can’t be alone. 

So I’m going to be blogging here about the other type, the one that the media dare not speak of. 

The one who thinks some of the lad culture stuff is funny, but not the sexist misogynist stuff.  The one who likes to pretend they have style, even if in our heart we’re just trying not to look terrible.  We like our cars or motorbikes because they get us from A to B and we think we look cool in them.

And finally, when we buy furniture it’s because we like it, because it’s comfortable and we can afford it.  

Live Donkey Dead Lion

(Double L DL)