What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
Starting with me, my middle name is Gerald. That was my Dad’s first name and in his generation it was very traditional to give the first born son their name as the son’s middle name. Interestingly, it wasn’t the case for the first born daughter and I suppose this reflects the status of women at the time and arguably currently. So, my wife doesn’t have her Mother’s first name as her middle name, which is very fortunate for her as her Mother was called Doris!! I got huge amounts of stick for my middle name and she would have had even more.
Our oldest son has my first name as his middle name since we decided to follow tradition on that. Our second son has the middle name Michael because that was the name I really wanted to give him for a long while. When we decided on a different name we decided that we would use Michael as his middle name. The same principle held with our oldest daughter, whose middle name of Louise was, once again, something of a front runner for a while and so we wanted to acknowledge that. Our youngest daughter has the middle name Grace after her great grandmother, the finest woman you could imagine. Determined and hard working, she lived up to her first name in every possible way. Of all the people I have known, only Janet matches her spirit and her huge reserves of common sense.
What is the last thing you learned?
Short and sweet today. The last thing I have learnt is that it is never too late to get yourself into shape. I have been combining yoga and dumbbell exercises for just five weeks and the results have been beyond expectations. The dumbbells have given my arms and legs more definition than I have had for 8 years and my neck has gone from scrawny to slightly less so 🤣🤣. I am regaining some strength in my lifting so that’s really good. My stomach is starting to feel more defined than it has in those 8 years and my whole core is stronger.
The yoga has really helped with my balance. I can now stand on one leg for between 20 and 30 seconds after barely making 5 seconds before I started. My ability to stretch for things has improved significantly. My muscles are working with me not against me and the twinges and aches and pains are in retreat. The biggest surprise came the other day when I realised that the combination of the exercises is making me walk differently as my spine is straighter and my neck is holding my head up and overcoming the slightly stooping gait I have had for years.
So, there you have it. I started exercising at 60 after nearly a decade away and I have learnt that exercise at any age is incredibly effective. If you are younger than me, keep at it a bit more so you don’t have such a low base to work from! I am on the up physically and at my age that is simply brilliant!!
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
When I was younger I was often asked questions that irritated me. Why did I do something? Why didn’t I do something? Wouldn’t it be easier if I did X? Wouldn’t it be easier if I didn’t do X? When you are younger, those questions and the ones about marriage, number of children, amount you were earning all seemed like a personal attack, whoever was asking it. I always felt defensive and occasionally angry depending upon who was asking me the question. I suppose it was years of bullying at school but I always assumed that any questions were for the worst reasons and to somehow trip me up. I gave off an angry young man vibe well after I was young!!
Fast forward to my current situation and no one is really that bothered about me or asking me questions beyond the most basic, ‘How are you?’ and that is absolutely fine with me! As you get older you get more and more invisible to the world. Some people bemoan the fact but I welcome it because you can walk along in the margins of life left to your own devices. No one outside your close circle is interested in your marriage, family or career so you don’t have to answer to anyone who doesn’t matter. Janet will ask me questions about various things but I know her questions come from a place of love so that’s fine. When people you don’t know very well are asking you those questions they seldom are.
So, look forward to your declining years, as they used to be called, as irritating questions from irrelevant people become a thing of the past!
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
To be honest I can’t think of anything I have done in my life that hasn’t failed at some point, and all but the most fortunate of people will say the same. What I don’t think happens is what is suggested by this prompt. One failure doesn’t lead to future success. That only happens because you are forced into a change of course. 90% of the time that change of course will lead to more problems or to you making no progress. In a sense, this ties in with the prompt the other day about fate. If we ‘notice’ a failure leading to a success we are pretty much guaranteed to be imposing a structure on our decisions in retrospect which definitely wasn’t there at the time. We say to ourselves that we reacted to A, put B in place and it turned failure into success. Actually what happened 90% of the time is that we took another punt and this one worked out. This is why I am incredibly suspicious of the ‘role models’ with their 10 steps to success. All they do, to my mind, is retrospectively impose a narrative on a series of unconnected decisions. The sooner you realise that you are only in control of about 10% of what happens to you in life, the easier life will be for you.
Yes, take a chance on things but if they succeed remember that you got lucky and that if you had made the same decision a month earlier or a month later it would probably be added to the long list of your failures.
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
Chapter 1
If you are wondering what a typical year in my life looks like, well so am I!
As you may have gathered from any of my posts from the past few years, I don’t do typical in terms of my journey through life. There are very few things that have followed a ‘traditional’ path, a pattern that has become more pronounced over the years, but to be honest I am glad of that. I didn’t do the jobs I was expecting to, or indeed expected to, I didn’t go to Polytechnic until after most of my school contemporaries had already left higher education. I worked abroad before it was a particularly common thing to do. We had a bigger family than was expected and shared the caring duties with whoever got the first or most lucrative employment going out to work and the other staying at home to look after the children. I was a house husband for a total of about 5 years. In everything I have done I have appalled, irritated or baffled most people I know!
Final Sentence
With everything I know now, with all the ups and downs, I would not change a single thing!
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 