Heading to warmer climes

Fremantle, Western Australia -- 2009.

On Friday, the girl and I will be cutting out of work early and heading for the airport.

While the English summer is drawing to a close and the nights are creeping in, we are taking a last-gasp attempt to drag it out a little more -- escaping to the warmer climes of Western Australia, before heading to a friend's wedding in Bali.

First when we were invited informally to the wedding we commented to each other how nice it would be to go, but that it would just cost far too much.  We didn't think much more about it, other than the occasional wistful sigh.  Then we got the beautiful and elaborate invitation in the post, and we said to each other "Let's just look into it... we'll just have a look and maybe it can be done".

And so it was, after a visit to a travel agent, some head-scratching and some number-crunching, we decided that opportunities like this don't come up very often -- so while we are both employed (which can never be taken for granted these days) and not tied down by kids or mortgages, we'd throw caution to the wind and just go.  Some great friends are going to be there, and we think it will also mean a lot to the bride and groom who took the time to invite us in the first place.

It's only a few days away now -- and final preparations are being made.  Tourist visas sorted, passports dug out, travel items bought, clothes sorted and counted and packed (even though they will end up being re-packed several times).  The girl has recently splashed out on a new DSLR which will be put to good use during the trip, while I'll be trying my best to avoid appearing in her photos.

With Australia heading into Spring as England heads into Autumn, it will be interesting to see the effect it has on people's attitudes -- if people are more cheerful and optimistic in London, or if that just describes Australians generally.

It strikes me that there is room to make this holiday into a kind of journey I can learn from -- what I will learn, I don't yet know, but with plans to hike up a volcano at dawn among the activities planned, there's got to be room for something life-changing out there.

Untitled piece about rain

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Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night.  I lie still and quietly, not knowing what woke me, but listening to the sound of the girl breathing quietly beside me, in her sleep.

As I lie there, between being asleep and being awake, the rain starts.  A few drops first, then suddenly I can hear it pouring down.  In my mind's eye, I can see the rain as a sheet of water, barely able to see across the courtyard to the flats opposite.

Then almost as suddenly as it started, the rain stops again.  It feels like everything is holding its breath, as the only sounds from outside are now the slow, soft dripping.

The girl continues her soft breathing, and I fall back asleep, not knowing what time it is or how long the rain lasted.

The king is gone but he's not forgotten

"The king is gone but he's not forgotten
This is the story of a Johnny Rotten" Neil Young, "Hey Hey, My My"

 It's not uncommon for me to wake up on the morning with a snatch of a song stuck in my head.  Sometimes it's a song I've not heard in years, most of the time I have no idea why that particular song or song lyric should be all I remember from a dream.

One day this week, I woke up with a line from Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My" -- a song which apparently debates whether it is better to burn out or to fade away.  One thing has always bothered me about the song, and that's the line's quoted above -- "the king is gone, but he's not forgotten/this is the story of a Johnny Rotten".  I haven't ever read an analysis of the song, so I can't be sure of all the references in it -- but it's always bothered me, because Johnny Rotten isn't dead.  Not literally, anyway.  Sid Vicious is dead, and it's Sid Vicious who is considered by many (many who aren't really that familiar with punk) to represent the movement -- I have always felt a nagging that Neil Young was confusing Johnny Rotten with Sid Vicious.

I said that Johnny Rotten wasn't "literally" dead.  What I mean is that John Lydon is alive and well, and appearing on our television screens advertising Country Life butter -- but at the same time, because of this and the passing of the years, his persona as Johnny Rotten is dead.

In the Sex Pistols, back in the 1970s, he was a crazy eyed kid who couldn't sing in tune and had more in common with Shakespeare's Richard III as played by Laurence Olivier than he did with any king of rock and roll.

Punk was a revolution.  It was the downtrodden and the pissed off giving the ruling classes, the middle classes, two fingers up.  It was about taking back control -- music no longer had to be prog-rock opuses, instead punk told people that anyone could have a go. And they did.  Those who didn't form bands made fanzines with sticky tape and paper, that was as rough-and-ready as the music it presented.

Punk as a movement caused more moral outrage and paranoia than any music before or since -- it was considered a bigger threat to our way of life than Russian Communism.

 The Sex Pistols made only one album.  Is that what Neil Young meant when he said it's better to burn out than to fade away?  Glen Matlock was replaced by Sid Vicious, just for the image, and Sid was in his own way responsible for making the safety pins and torn clothing of the impoverished working classes a punk "uniform".  Sid never "burned out" because he was never burning in the first place.

So what of Johnny Rotten?  He formed "Public Image Limited", who weren't punk at all, and dropped the Rotten moniker.

These days, John Lydon is a property millionaire, milking Sex Pistls and PIL reuinions for all they're worth.  He lives in a mansion in Los Angeles.  And while it seems he still has all the anger and bitterness of his youth, speaking out against the middle classes ands private schools and international politics, it's hard to take "Johnny Rotten" seriously these days -- he's long gone.  His opinions on the Royal Family matter less to me than someone who actually still lives here.

What really burns is that Johnny Rotten didn't even burn out -- he wasn't a candle that burned twice as brightly for half as long.  While it could be said that he should be respected for forming PIL, something completely different to the Sex Pistols and respecting his artistic integrity instead of playing up to the punk rock cliche, he has lost any kind of credibility in the years that followed.

That is the story of a Johnny Rotten, gone but not forgotten.

Motivation follows action

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Today was out not-so-monthly meeting at work.  They're meant to be monthly, but for some reason we'll have two or so in a row and then none for months.  If you ask me, once a month is too frequent for this kind of thing -- but nobody is asking me.  The only upside of these meetings is the company activity we get afterwards.

A few months back we went bowling at one of London's more original locations -- All Star Lanes.  I suck at bowling, and get even worse if I drink alcohol while bowling, so I think I came in last place out of the whole company.  All 12 of us, or however-many there were.  And to make matters worse at the time, nobody understood my references to The Big Lebowski -- even though the place was filled with posters for Lebowskifest.  Just the same it was fun.

Today's meeting was the usual.  But the activity afterwards was what I had been looking forward to all week: indoor climbing.  It was chosen randomly by the boss, who didn't think anyone had any experience -- but I completed a beginner's course earlier this year, and one of my colleagues used to run a kid's summer camp.

The climbing itself was good, if a little short -- and because it was pitched at total beginners, I could have done with it being a little more challenging.  I also wanted to be refreshed on tying the ropes, since that's the part I can't remember and the most important part I need for if I am to take my test to climb without supervision.  The good news is that belaying someone who is climbing is an automatic thing, like riding a bike, so that after a minute to find yourself again, you can just do it, without needing to think.

Any way you look at it, an afternoon climbing is better than an afternoon in the office, on the phone, trying to make sales.  I'm sure a lot of people get a buzz out of sales and would never want to do something like rock climbing, but that's just not me.  Today I am tired and aching, but happy -- I was left with the tired/happy feeling I used to get in Utah after a few hours snowboarding in the afternoon.

A friend told me recently that motivation follows action -- you have to force yourself to do something at first, before you will feel motivated to keep doing it.  Needing more exercise and to get out more and meet people is what I need to do, but can lack the motivation at times -- now I need to act first, take the time out to go climbing and do the things to improve myself.

I still think the idea of using adventure sports to help improve lives and communities is something that has merit -- it would tick the boxes for me, of helping people and being active -- and I guess the beginning of everything is that I have to be doing these sports first of all.  John Williams suggests Wednesdays as a day to "Play", to give yourself a taste of what you would like to be doing instead of work -- this seems like as good an idea as any.