Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
I have a problem with replaying previous decisions in my head. It happens less often than it used to, but whenever I do it, it isn’t pointless, that would be bad enough, it’s actively damaging. Whatever you decide in terms of what you could have done you can’t return to the time and change it, so what is the point? Over the years this has been an issue that has caused me to develop paralysis by analysis. It has caused me to second guess good decisions and to go ahead with bad decisions. In reality, all you can do is to make the best of your decision at the time the decision is made. Yes, if it doesn’t work you look at the situation and try to learn lessons, but don’t think, ‘What if?’ because that only makes things worse.
As I look at the present I am happy that this constant merry go round of my brain is starting to reduce. In the future I hope to reduce it to nearly nothing. If I look at a decision I made 40 or 50 years ago I learn absolutely nothing because I was such a different person then. I will try my best to stop doing it entirely and I strongly urge you to follow my lead.
What makes you nervous?
Pretty much everything! It’s something of a running joke in the family which comes from a place of affection so I don’t really mind it. The interesting question is why? When you are a nervous person it starts in childhood and it affects every decision you make from then on. For me, a childhood of regular bullying at school which happened in my earlier primary schools and of course my awful secondary school, the Maths School, about which I have written on many occasions. That makes you constantly on guard and on edge over a whole range of issues.
Over the last few years I have been working on my nerves with some success thanks to meditation especially my Calm App. It has given me the opportunity to put my fears in their proper perspective and to some extent that has helped me to become more balanced in my perception of risk. I still have the instant reaction to the situation but I am now able to see that as merely the first stage of the process. I used to get stuck at the first stage but now I have the tools to work my way past it and put any risk, physical and emotional, into it’s proper perspective. It seems strange that it has taken me so long to do that, but society is very good at making things difficult and very bad at helping you deal with those difficulties. Looking back, I wish meditation had come into my life much earlier, but I was lucky enough to meet Janet whose love and guidance has helped me to face my fears and find practical ways of dealing with them. She gave me the confidence to take mental risks like working abroad and because of that we have had experiences that very few other people have been lucky enough to have.
I look at myself with more understanding and compassion than I used to. I tell myself it’s natural to be nervous after my childhood experiences but when I look back at my decisions over the years I have really taken life on. Perhaps, deep down, I am not as nervous as I think I am, but on the surface and in the moment I think I always will be.
How do you unwind after a demanding day?
I often think back to the time I was working as a full time teacher and I remember what demanding days used to do to me and how often they just stayed with me throughout the evening and into the next day. At the time I didn’t seem to have a good approach to relaxing but I now see that it was not working, because the demands of teaching are not ones that disappear when you leave work. They are a cumulative process that builds over many months and years.
The approach I take to relaxing now is, on the face of it, very similar to the one I took when I was working. I cook, I watch TV, I scroll, although as I discussed yesterday far less than I used to and I use the Calm app before going to sleep. The difference is that I know I have more time to reflect and relax the following day to enable me to come to terms with any lingering stress. When you are working, the stress doesn’t end, it just ebbs and flows, often without you realising, because it is simply the background noise to your life. After I finished full time work it took me two or three months to get rid of the fight or flight mentality. (Actually I always preferred my old biology teacher’s variation on that theme. He, far more accurately, described it as ‘S*** or Sprint’!) I now have a much more relaxed and focused life with fewer distractions. There is part of me which feels guilty about no longer doing something to earn money – the result of upbringing and the good old protestant work ethic! – but the more reflective part acknowledges the value I still create at home. The house is my domain and I am proud of what I do inside the house as I was when I was a full time house husband and as I was as a teacher. Shutting the world out is my way of unwinding but it works so much better now that there is less stress to unwind from!
If you are a devotee of social history, as I am, this book will fascinate you. If you are a rambler or hiker looking for ideas of new and interesting routes to tackle, this book will inspire you. If you have an abiding interest in the Post Office, this book is right up your street. If you are none of these, but you appreciate a well written book with anecdotes, reflections and fascinating characters on every page, give it a go anyway!
I had never come across the term postman’s paths before picking up this book, and author Alan Cleaver himself only heard it for the first time in 2015. In the decade from a chance remark in a conversation he researched, walked and interviewed along the length and breadth of Great Britain. He was already a collector of arcane information about footpaths that were not officially acknowledged by the Ordnance Survey or were acknowledged under a different official name. The postal paths were often known by the name of the postman who first codified the route to enable the mail to be delivered as quickly as possible in rural areas where remote farms could be miles from where the post office was situated. In those days walking was the only way to get around so the quicker and easier the route, the better. Each route had its own instruction card, but the Royal Mail archives were not interested in these fascinating pieces of social history and threw away all but a few. Looking at it through the lens of this book, it seems like an act of cultural vandalism on a par with the mass wiping of TV programmes. However, it is difficult to know what may become culturally or historically significant in the future, so we should try not to look at the decisions with the benefit of a hindsight they did not have. So, Cleaver had to rely on Twitter, Web searches and chance comments to guide him as he made his way through the country looking for these paths.
The book starts in the centre of Great Britain, a town called Haltwhistle in Northumberland. Why the centre of Great Britain? Well, it is 290 miles from Portland in Dorset, 290 miles from North Orkney, 36.5 miles from Wallsend on the East coast and 36.5 miles from Bowness-on-Solway on the West coast, That sounds like a very good candidate for the centre of Britain to me. Cleaver had heard of a postal path starting from the town and taking in the sights of the South Tyne valley. From there the book meanders as a good path should, picking up snippets of local history here and there, interviewing the posties themselves or their descendants where that was possible and walking the route as far as possible in the footsteps of the posties of the 19th and 20th centuries.
We go to places like the Eskdale Valley where Hannah Knowles started delivering the mail at the age of 15 in 1912 and retired 61 years later having walked an estimated 87,000 miles delivering and collecting the mail! She was awarded the British Empire Medal but decided not to have it presented by the Queen as she had no wish to visit London! Matt Bendelow lost his left leg in WWI but came back from the front to become the postman for Bowes in Northumbria for 40 years. Jack Rukin had perhaps Britain’s most remote round ending at the Tan Hill Inn, Britain’s highest pub. Charles Macintosh was a naturalist and postie who was friendly with Beatrix Potter whose family holidayed in Dalguise in Scotland. She immortalised him for generations of children as Peter Rabbit’s nemesis Mr Macgregor.The one thing these posties had in common were that they were all of a very firm frame of mind to the point of stubbornness at times, but to walk all those miles over so many years you had to be out of the ordinary.
This book is no rose coloured look at a ‘better past’. Cleaver is admirably clear eyed when reflecting upon the difficulties that the posties faced and the occasionally appalling treatment they received from an apparently uncaring management. Their rounds were walked in all weather with little support in terms of clothing which was often unsuitable or basic amenities which were considered an unnecessary expense. He outlines the poor conditions they lived in, the pitiful wages and expenses they received and the often unsuitable clothing they were given. This was a hard life but one that they were proud of and revelled in in a way that modern workers simply wouldn’t.
I get the impression that originally this was going to be a minor offshoot of a bigger project, but it took on a life of its own and this marvellous book is the culmination of all that hard work. It is a glimpse into a Britain forgotten in all but fragments and the determination of Alan Cleaver to piece at least some of those fragments together.
How do you use social media?
If you had asked me this question six months ago I would have given you a very different answer. At that point I was scrolling on auto pilot through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, BluSky and Threads, sometimes for 4 or 5 hours a day. Now, the picture could hardly be more different. I have mothballed the last two, cut Facebook and Instagram down to a few visits a week rather than multiple visits a day and use Twitter for music challenges almost exclusively. I have been helped by ScreenZen no end. By putting strict limits on my social media use I have reduced my overall phone use by about 60% and the times I am using it, I have a clear purpose. I am not at the stage where I am fully content with the level of my social media use, but I am now very much closer to where I want to be. It’s very freeing and I don’t want to go back to the days of constant scrolling. Like any addiction, though, you have to be careful not to slide back into old habits. So the ScreenZen stays on and the ways of distracting me from social media stay in place and my life is much better and fuller for it.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 