Share a photo of your pet and tell us one thing that makes them uniquely them.
Why share one picture of Albus when I can share four? Albus is simply the most affectionate cat you can imagine. He loves to be where people are and even when he is outside you know he’s keeping an eye on you. When anyone goes into the garden to hang the washing out he comes over to supervise! When we sit out in the afternoon or evening he will come and sit nearby.
He rules the house like a benevolent furry dictator but according to my wife and daughter that’s my fault for indulging every whim of his. They’re right! I wake up when he scratches the carpet to be let out, but on the very rare occasions when I don’t he gets a far cooler reception because I don’t mind being woken up, but they do! He’s got me well trained and I don’t mind admitting it. The love and affection he shows us is worth any number of slightly disturbed nights. We picked him from our local Cats Protection nearly nine years ago and our lives have been richer and happier as a result. Remember, Adopt don’t Shop! Give an animal from a shelter a second chance to be loved and they will return that love in spades like Albus has.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
It’s still one of my favourite songs and I would like to share that song with you now!
The song Sunscreen, which was a global hit in the late 90s was based on a fictitious and humorous college graduation speech that was published in an American newspaper. It was written by Mary Schmich and entitled ‘Advice like youth is wasted in the young’ and was originally delivered to the fictitious Class of 97. This was updated to the The Class of 99 in the song. The advice in the song varies from the humorous to the profound and I have often used it in my teaching. Advice is only worthwhile if it is relevant to your situation so Sunscreen tries to be as wide ranging as possible. Accordingly I used to ask my students to pick out the three pieces of advice that resonated most with them.
It’s still one of my favourite songs and I would like to share it with you now!
What’s something you used to worry about but don’t anymore?
When I was a child I lived in a household where the ageing process was seen as something threatening, especially by my Dad. He did everything he could to keep that process at bay, but what he feared came to pass when he died far too young at the age of just 60. I took that fear on board and ran with it.
I dreaded my 50th birthday like it was some sort of omen of doom. Looking back, I think the process started in earnest after I reached 40, and from then on I dreaded each birthday as I moved one year on. I spoilt so many birthdays and wasted so many opportunities for fun with my family and that was entirely on me. The children never had a birthday with me that was fun for them and I really regret that now. One of my colleagues at INTO St George’s found out it was my birthday when my daughter came to the centre to meet me for a birthday trip one year. She told me I was being selfish not just in keeping my birthday secret from work colleagues but also not wanting to celebrate it at all. As she so rightly pointed out, other people wanted to celebrate my birthday and I should just accept it. It took me many more years to put that into practice.
Last year was my 60th, and I would never have admitted that publicly before then but I marked this one by making it a real turning point and resigning from my job! This year, I was taken to The Crystal Maze Experience in London and the whole family played as a team and absolutely smashed it!! It’s too late to make up for the wasted birthdays of years gone by, but however many are left in front of me are going to be savoured from now on.
What’s a quote that perfectly describes your outlook on life?
We had a daily prompt about quotes three months ago, and again three days ago. Has the AI generator got some rogue code somewhere? I included a quote about repetition three days ago and another about time so I am not giving you any more quotes. Instead I will give you a reflection on my blogging over the past year.
I have posted every day for over a year and in that time my views have increased from single figures each day to 50 plus views pretty much every day except Saturdays, oddly enough! I have mentioned the dopamine hit I get from that before but it’s got a knock on effect in making me more determined to improve my posts. If there are more people reading them they had better be worth reading! The daily prompt drives both the increased views and the focus on improvement so even on days like today I appreciate both the discipline and the visibility. In a couple of weeks I will have finished my summer teaching and I will start to add extra posts to my daily prompt, but I still haven’t quite worked out how to get more people reading them yet. That’s the next step I suppose. Thank you for reading, I really appreciate the support 🙏
My first try at a blogging challenge that looks really good
From Land by Maggie O’Farrell
This is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain. The rules are:
- Link the books together in any way you like.
- Provide a link in your post to the meme at Books are My Favourite and Best.
- Share these rules in your post.
- Paste the link to your post in the comments on Kate’s post and/or the Linky Tool on that post.
- Invite your blog readers to join in and paste their links in the comments and/or the Linky Tool.
- Share you post on Twitter using the #6Degrees hash tag.
- Be nice! Visit and comment on other posts and/or retweet other #6Degrees posts.
Degree 1 So, here goes. I’ve not read Land by Maggie O’ Farrell yet but I loved Hamnet so I probably will. Land is about a man who works for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland in 1865. My first link is a map
Degree 2 When I bought The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe at a little bookshop in Felsted, Essex at the age of seven, one of the first things that drew me in was the map inside the front cover. It introduced me to a new world and it captivated me as soon as I saw The Lamppost and The Witch’s Castle. Along with that book in my first visit to the bookshop I bought two other books that set me on the path to collecting another series.
Degree 3 The Target Doctor Who books were an obsession of mine for a number of years, but the first time I went to the Felsted bookshop, I bought two as my one pound was enough for three paperbacks in 1972! I bought was The Daleks, which was an obvious choice as they were the most famous monsters. The other book was less obvious. It was The Crusaders, one of the historical stories, but the cover looked so good I decided to get it.
Degree 4 Another cover that I judged a book by was The Hobbit in it’s original JRR Tolkein design. It’s one of the most arresting covers ever and perhaps unique in being designed by the writer themselves. At 11 it introduced me to a fantasy world I loved as I went on a journey with Bilbo. Sadly, the magic vanished when I tried to read Lord of the Rings a year later. I couldn’t get into the story and started it twice, never getting out of the Shire either time. Some books just don’t appeal for whatever reason. However, it set off a liking for fantasy that one author above all others satisfied.
Degree 5 Terry Pratchett was simply a genius. If his books weren’t set in Discworld and full of wizards, dwarves, trolls, orcs and vampires they would be acknowledged as the finest series of books written by any British author in the last 50 years. I have read most of the Discworld series of over 40 books and loved nearly all of them. The Hogfather was the first one I picked up in the compound library when I was working in Saudi Arabia because it was about Christmas (or perhaps a version of the Solstice) and within a few weeks I had read every single Terry Pratchett in there!
Degree 6 Any regular reader of my blog will know that one book stands above all others in my affection. It was the story that became central to my view of the world from very early on, A Christmas Carol LIke The Hogfather this is set at Christmas, but the Christmases it depicts vary according to time, character and money. It is a book that contains life in all its glory and captivates me anew every year.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 