Poor Unfortunate Souls

22nd December

Poor Unfortunate Souls

The wedding went very well, the bride looked beautiful, the groom cried and I think I managed to stay out of all of the photographs.

I left home at 10am and arrived back at around 5:30pm, so this gave me plenty of time on the road, just me, some music and my thoughts.

And it’s strange what comes into your head whilst you’re driving through the wilds of Lincolnshire.  For example, are parents still naming their children Alexa?  How confusing must that be for the child and the little box in the corner of the room.

Alexa, come here!
I’m sorry I cannot comply with that request. I have no legs…

Alexa play some Vivaldi.
Hang on mummy, I’ll fetch my recorder…

I’m also guessing there are children in this world named Siri who suffer  equally confusing lifestyles.

Some parents bless their children with what they think are beautiful & original names don't they? I recall a child named Jelly Bean Coco from some years ago and another named Collagen.

It’s like their parents wanted them to be bullied.

I was a potential bullying target at school as I was a chubster, but apart from one incident when some huge older boy pinned me to a fence to try and take my dinner money, I managed to get through school pretty unscathed.

Or maybe I’ve blocked it out? It’s not unknown for me to ‘forget’ some of my past as there were times that are still pretty unappealing to look back on. I guess the other side of that coin is how we might romance the past to make it seem more palatable, even creating false memories which eventually even we can no longer differentiate from the truth.

Visiting Lincoln yesterday, on the return leg of my road trip, stirred up many memories. Having lived there for 22 years, I have a mixture of very happy and extremely unhappy times to look back on. The unhappy ones often over power the happy.

The move to Mansfield, almost 20 years ago now, was in no small way to physically distance myself from the source of such pain. But no matter how hard you try and keep those bad memories locked up in a dark corner of your mind, they have this habit of creeping out. It’s then that names and places come back to you, unbidden, to peel the scab off what you had hoped was a long since healed wound.

And no matter how hard you try, you cannot seem to gain a balance between the happy and the sad. You know there are great times to recall but once you start to look at your pain, it’s hard to stop.  It’s a bit like trying to eat just one segment of a Terry’s chocolate orange.


Time for some Star Trek wisdom to kick in…

You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are.


Thanks Jim. For good or bad, we are the sum of our experiences and no life is all good, but then again no life is all bad. It’s just that some of us find it hard to see the wood for the trees sometimes.



Alexa, play something soothing.

Hang on, I’ll fetch my recorder…

Alexa…oh never mind.