8:06 am on Sunday 19 December 2010 was my moment.

This was the time I took the phone call to tell me my father-in-law had died. Hundreds of thoughts collide at once, especially as my wife wasn’t home at the time. How? When? Where? Does my wife know? The last few days have frankly been a bit of a blur. There was the awful moment of having to break the news, the phone-calls,  the paperwork, the tears but none of that compares to the sheer feeling of impotence and helplessness. I have never in my life felt so devoid of the ability to help, to change things, to take things away; to make it better.I know that time is a healer, but that feels hard to believe right now. He was a great man. Kind and generous to a fault and I have many happy memories of him. There are many things I can recall to make me smile and I know that as time passes, these will be a comfort to me and all he touched.

I know he was surrounded by family that loved him dearly and was immensely proud of his son & daughter. He got to see them both happily married, and he had a fantastic adopted family across the globe that all loved their “Grandad Alan.” It’s still very raw for me. No matter how hard I try and be strong, there are always tears close by and they’re tears for two. First for the passing of the man, and secondly for the pain and suffering that I can see my wife going through.

I just wish it was still 8:05
]]> http://leeheyes.co.uk/2010/12/21/life-changing-moments/feed/ http://leeheyes.co.uk/2010/07/29/71/ http://leeheyes.co.uk/2010/07/29/71/#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:44:51 +0000 Lee http://leeheyes.co.uk/2010/07/29/71/

Maybe I’m all blogged out? Maybe the demise of Jade Goody really has taken it out of me? Jade Goody… now there’s a topic to ease me back in!

What a waste of space that girl was. Now some people at this point will doubtless accuse me of speaking ill of the dead, however that was my opinion of her when she was alive and well, so it would be frankly wrong of me to change it now she’s dead. For some people she was a heroine, whereas for me she was more of a normal but below average intelligence, under privileged, failure to society and victim of being dumb person. Too harsh? Then the old favourite of “She’s so brave fighting this disease” would pop up and say hello. Brave? Really? A couple of points of order here:

1. How do you actually “fight” a disease from a purely internal decision making point of view?
2. How is that “brave”?

You see, brave is when you have a choice to do something or not. Firemen are brave as they choose to go in to burning buildings to rescue people. Being diagnosed with a hideous disease and living out your final days in the media is not brave. But hey, at least living out those final days in the media paid well.

“She’s doing it to support her kids!” cry the apologists. Again, a point of order. I grew up in to a fairly well balanced, intelligent and hard working (all in my opinion of course) individual and it didn’t take a million or two from my parents to bring that about. Thank God the step dad is such a fine upstanding individual.

Now the story has moved on with talk of “Jade: The musical” and “Jade: The Movie” heading to a theatre near you soon. There has already been a film about a talking pig so I’m not really too sure that I see the need for another one. Of course there is also a delightful irony in this too. The auditions for the musical may well be held on a televised reality show, thereby plucking another nobody from obscurity and making them famous, except this time they will be able to sing so may actually have a talent unlike the dumb character they’ll be playing. Maybe they’ll also audition for her mothers part although finding one armed lesbian crack addicts that can also sing a bit could be a stretch too far even for this ludicrous story.

“Ah-ha”, say the campaigners, “it’s crashing/hitting people at speed that kills.” Again, not technically true. Hit me on the head with a feather travelling at 50 mph and I think I’ll live, use a large hammer and I may not. So it would be more accurate to say that it’s force that is the real killer here and not the speed itself. For example, if I lower a large wrecking ball onto you the speed is frankly irrelevant, you are going to die. Sure, lower it really quickly and death may be swift and more messy yet the end result is the same.  A more real world example is that of the cliff divers of Acapulco. These people dive from cliffs into the Pacific Ocean to entertain tourists. They all live, yet if they were to repeat this stunt off say a multi-storey car park and on to a concrete road they would die. Their speed is the same at point of impact, the difference is the force acting on their bodies at point of impact. The water offers less resistance than the concrete and allows them to walk (or indeed swim) away unharmed. So you see, the velocity is irrelevant. The same is true in your car. Hit a hedge at 70 and you walk away, hit a wall at 70 and you won’t.

So, if you have one of these “Speed Kills” messages on your car or, if you know of anyone that does you must encourage them to remove it immediately as it’s plainly wrong, it’s the force.

The thing is, when I went through a spell of putting myself under pressure to do this on a regular basis, all the pleasure went from doing it. The cathartic nature of writing had been lost. The joy of finding the trivial and irrelevant amusing and sharing that with the world had gone. As the readership grew (and it was in the hundreds) the pressure became more to find new things to write about every day, to always write in a certain style, to try and cater to an audience that I didn’t know! That for me, was a great shame. You see, I can’t draw and nor can I sing. Anybody that has seen me try to dance will not need reminding of the controlled falling that is my dancing. Something I feel that I do OK at is to observe and on the odd occasion make people laugh. Not an especially great talent I’ll admit, nobody has ever been famed in history for being a great observer and neither will I be on stage as the new Billy Connolly anytime soon, but that’s what I’ve been given.

I was in Miami recently on a works trip (no work, just through work) and for the first time in years I was in a situation of spending all of my time with people I didn’t know. I knew two of my fellow travellers in passing but that was it. On this trip I got friendly with a few people and we had a really good time, in fact, I haven’t laughed so much in ages. Had I been given a talent for painting or singing I may have had a completely different weekend. It was the unique nature that makes up me that made me have the weekend I did. I’m not being big headed with that, we are all unique, and each of us would have had a different experience; I just enjoyed the one I had.

My point is, you shouldn’t let something you enjoy stop being fun otherwise it takes away a part of you. They say (actually I’ve never met anyone called “They”) that those that can turn their hobbies into their jobs are lucky. I couldn’t disagree more. I like my hobby to be an escape from work, otherwise where do you escape to?

Bollocks

If you want to go to university, study! Do well in your exams, work hard in school don’t leave it to the whim of some notional deity. I couldn’t live my life with the thought that someone else (God) was in control and no matter what I did it was someone else’s choice whether it succeeded or not. When I drive my car, I drive it, nobody else, me. If we were to take this attitude and apply it to all of life we simply wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. If God wants me to get up he’ll lift me from my bed.

This is simply an abdication of responsibility. By blaming life’s ups and downs on a deity you are absolving yourself of any culpability for your actions. If a gunman was to go wild in a shopping centre somewhere killing or wounding innocent people and then claim that God told him to do it, we’d think him mad. Yet if somebody commits a more rational act and claims that God told them to do it that seems acceptable. Why is there this double standard? Is it because God wouldn’t tell someone to go on a killing spree? The self same God that the bible tells us is vengeful, not above wiping out a town or two, sending plague and pestilence upon the Earth and condemning those that don’t agree with Him to a hellish fiery inferno for the rest of eternity?

Challenge any believer on this and the usual reply is something about a test of faith, you can’t prove that it isn’t the will of God. Again, bollocks. I could claim a stone told me to do things, after-all you can’t prove otherwise, it’s simply a test of my faith in the stone.

If you need to believe that someone else is running your life then you have a bigger weakness than any deity can help you with. If you feel that everything that happens to you is of someone else’s choosing then you need to take a long hard look at yourself. Did you agree with the invasion of Iraq? George Dubya claims that God told him to do it, you think he’d have told you it was OK too, after-all if it is all God’s will, you think He’d aim for a more consistent message.

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead-it’s said like bed, not bead.
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
Just look them up - and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward.
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come I’ve hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five!

There! Should be no problem now

I recently received my water bill at home, and I have to say it’s left me feeling rather vexed. I’m am charged for three separate things by my water company, namely the supply and subsequent drainage of domestic water and a charge for surface water drainage. First item of vexation is why the hell should my bill go up simply because it has rained more and some of it happened to fall into my drain? If it didn’t go into my drain it would still work it’s way into the water system via nature. Secondly, why am I charged almost twice as much to remove water than I am for the supply of it? Is it twice as expensive to take it away? And then they really get you.

The water that I have paid to be removed both from my domestic usage and surface water drainage is then cleaned and processed before they sell it back to me again! Thus starting the whole chain over again. Does any other industry do this? Does any one else offer the marvellous facility of taking stuff away - at a cost - and then selling me the exact same stuff back again?