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[ 7 minute read ]

Wonky Plan

The best laid plans of mice and men

According to The Poetry Foundation, Robert Burns turned up a mouse nest with a plough in 1785 and he wrote 'To a Mouse'

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43816/to-a-mouse-56d222ab36e33

The seventh verse has 'The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men

I think the last verse should always be with the penultimate, seventh verse, for the full sense of futility and unknowing to be realised.

Despite me vowing to move forward and press the day, I have been a little reluctant to skid about on my short bicycle. It is a little too small for me and being a mountain bike I am leaning precariously over the handlebars a bit too much to be able to fall gracefully. I am already halfway on the ground. I have fallen off that bike more times in the last year than all my other bikes in the last twenty years, put together. 

None of my bikes are new. I waste money recycling old bikes. Unfortunately, all bicycles eventually suffer from the same problem; the front sprocket (crankset) teeth wear away. Because there are a lot of them and because most bikes have three sets of teeth on the crankset, the rear sprockets with less teeth wears first and gets replaced as many as five times before the front crankset MUST be replaced. The worn crankset quickly wears new chains, which wear the back gear set / sprocket, faster and faster and faster. Eventually, it costs fifty to seventy pounds to replace the whole lot all at once for each bike. You can't only replace the chain and back gearset after a while; when the front crankset needs replacing; the chain slips. Unfortunately, the proper tools for removing the front crankset sometimes need a bit of help in the way of a gear-puller, which I do not have. There is a whole bunch of them in town, in the shops, five miles away.

I have been shying away from cycling on the slippery paths, waiting for a bit of a thaw. My outside thermometer shows minus four degrees at 04:39 am today. It snowed overnight. The best laid plans, huh? Let's be honest; I don't like the cold this Winter. That is something new for me.

In considering my position, and retrieving my plan to look into causalities, I now see that my focus is split. I love writing. I write best in the early mornings. It actually negatively impacts on my OU studies. Why? Because I drift off on a mystery tour that tickles my fancy; I am the driver and the tour guide as well as the passenger. In the real world, close reading of some text; which I should be doing, is not so much fun. It is pedestrian, and I have to read instructions at the pace that the unit writer wants me to read at. Working through exercises simply does not work for me. This is why I go online to augment my learning. Online stuff TELLS me what I need to know and my brain then assimilates how things work. Unfortunately we have to reference the OU unit text, so I have to read it!

       'All rise.' The susurration of clothes moving against bodies filled the court.

       'Martin Cadwell. You are before the court on the charge of willfully pretending you have all the answers to getting on with life after a hectic last year, when you clearly do not. How do you plead?'

From the gallery came shouts of 'Guilty' and 'Lock him up!'.

       'Guilty, your honour.' I hung my head in shame. A voice in my head told me to look up. 'I have brought a picture of a dead horse, your honour, if that helps.'

       'Yes, well.' The magistrate look puzzled.

       'Flogging.' whispered the usher. 'Flogging a dead horse.'

       'Flog him!' the crowd bayed.

I knew I deserved to be publicly pilloried for being a fraud; for being afraid of cold, but really quite mild weather; procrastination and allowing my intent to be diverted.

       'Martin Cadwell,' the magistrate eventually boomed, 'By your own sense of honour, you are guilty of the most heinous crime of dereliction of duty. You set your stall and people bought from you, only to find that you do not eat at your own table. I sentence you to cycling to town on your tiny bicycle over and through the snow, as fast as you can go with the false confidence that you have tried to instill in others.'

The court usher whispered again.

The magistrate continued, 'Wear a helmet, it could get tricky.'

*

And there we have it, my confidence is dented. I expect to fall off my bike because experience has told me that I will. Of course I will. I take risks that most other cyclists do not. I know the city and how to get through the traffic without stopping. I am not one of those crazy cyclists that insists on car drivers giving way to cyclists and pedestrians. I know they won't because they passed their tests before the new Highway Code came out and they don't know when they should give way. No, I position myself on the road to show my intent to do something, like turning right. This is not for the drivers behind me to take note of; it is to make the oncoming drivers aware that I WILL turn right as soon as there is a gap big enough for me to fit through without causing them to brake. Nobody ever sounds their horn or shouts at me. I never have to come to a full stop and my momentum carries me through. The danger comes from the hesitating oncoming driver who brakes and makes me stop. THEN the car behind me is suddenly thrown into taking evasive maneuvers. like braking. That is an incredibly dangerous situation.

       'Oh for goodness sake, you stupid cyclist. Get out of the way!'

So, my plan to be more proactive and strident in my forward activities has come down to looking at why I have stayed at home. It was always my plan to look at the causes of my stagnant stasis, though. 

Confidence on my reserve bicycle is low which has caused me to delay cycling to the city to buy an extra tool to change the front gear set on my other bikes simply because it is cold outside. I have allowed my low confidence and silly idea of preferring comfort to progress to prevent me removing a debilitating aspect of my life; namely, the reserve bike should only be the reserve bike.

A voice came into my head. 'Well done, Martin. Oh by the way, you look like a horse. The baying crowd in the courtroom are right, you should be flogged by your own hand. Let the Winter be the cat-o-nine-tails or the riders crop that punishes you for being lazy.'

That simply won't do for me though, because I know that if I perceive things differently I am not so much offended by weather.

I used to have to cycle against a headwind to work every weekday, years ago. I cursed and hated the wind. I bought a sailing boat and from that day on I would look out my window on windy days and think, 'Great sailing day!' Unfortunately, boats don't go on roads.

It snowed last night

Snow can fall as tiny frozen particles, which are more like the ice scraped from the inside of a home freezer. Snow, as we commonly recognise it as white clumps of frozen water, can fall straight down when there is no wind and the temperature of the flakes are too warm to keep the six fingered stars it naturally crystalises into when the conditions are right. It can float to the ground and is toyed with by the slightest hint of a wind when the temperature is just right. This is romantic snow. This is the snow that children stop doing their school-work and watch through the school-room windows, in awe. ‘It’s snowing’ they say. Their voices might just as well be welcoming Father Christmas because right before them is a magic show that means that they will have a new kind of fun. Different games will be played; snowball fights; making angels in the fallen snow with their bodies; and snowmen, women, children, and snow-animals will be made. This is the snow that we see on Christmas cards and photos of winter scenes when it lays atop branches and walls, and has bluish shadows, not grey. This is the snow that creates a monotone landscape, with stark silhouettes of trees and tiny cottages huddled on hillsides. This is the snow that sits on the thatched rooves of cottages with smoky chimneys on Victorian style Christmas cards and really exists in Yorkshire and Wales. The promised warmth of the fire inside the cottage makes us happy. But what if the snow is on a building with a collapsed roof, or lies atop a still body. What if the snow comes at the ground from an acute angle and is driven by a gale. What if cyclists trying to get home are blown into ditches, or sheep are lost on hillsides because they cannot see far enough to the next safe place? This is the same frozen water but comes in the name of destruction and ruin. A poet might make a romance from a blizzard but most of us have no affection for it.

But snow can be okay too. Snow can blanket the ground and seal it off from severe freezes. This can save the dormant bulbs and tubers for plants such as snowdrops, crocuses, and bluebells. I can celebrate snow in England because it precedes Spring when there is the excitement of new growth.

Let's go! 

       'Magistrate, I thank you for your wisdom and insight.'

The courtroom gallery fell silent. This wasn't what they came to see. 

*

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Associated with the posts here over the last few days are my views on Venezuela and the United States, which you can read at hegemo.co.uk (opens with a new page). Because there are a lot of people viewing my posts in this blog I have decided not to post about worrying global events.

Hegemo.co.uk is my own web page and I invite comments and especially views that can be published. You only need a little bit of knowledge or creativity to contribute. Please do.

https://www.hegemo.co.uk

Just scroll down the index page / landing page to read about my views on the Venezuela invasion.

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell' or 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. 

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 3 and a half minute read ]

How I measure myself

I like to write. Lately, I go to sleep thinking about writing. Some people like to 'do' crossword puzzles and subscribe to monthly collections of logic puzzles; I used to. I have qualifications in marketing, logistics, and accounting, and some others. But I am not measured by my qualifications; neither should I be. 

It has always puzzled me that many people believe that simply because they can prove they have a certificate in a subject that they chose to study, they are worth more than someone else who does not have a certificate of completion. I have been an employer in a logistics related role and paid the workers more than I paid myself each year. What the drivers, porters, and office staff did not have, which I did, was immunity to being dismissed. Of course, I could have been disqualified as a company director; or imprisoned for fraud or something; or a bank might have insisted on repayment of a debt or something. However, I did not run my business in such a way as to place anyone, including employees; stakeholders; or the public; or me, in any more danger than they, or I, might normally be elsewhere. I do not measure my worth by how much money I earn, spend, or have managed to retain. 

My worth is measured this morning, by how many tomatoes there are on my tomato plants.The plants are a metric on how attentive I have been; that is, what I have done to, and with them, up to the present time (Not Great). I can extrapolate from this, a crude idea of how I have been to my neighbours. I have nodded; stopped for brief conversations; and left art supplies outside on the pavement, to be considered as gifts for grandad and grandma; teenagers - with creativity their driving force; and parents , who never considered art as something to do with their young charges. But, like the tomato plants had infrequent watering, I did not take more than a few moments to throw something at my neighbours. Of course, if I was rich, and wrangled extra time from my workers, and showed my wealth off, I could throw off my feigned accent and polysyllabic latinate words, and be worth something, even if I did not grow tomato plants and neighbours - 'I have accomplished everything you consider to be of worth! Tomato plants and sociability be damned, I am good enough!' But, not quite because, I might have won my current financial wealth on the horses, or be a feckless lout and got a windfall on the lottery. These methods are better than having no means of being in receipt of wealth, but far worse than being an international gangster because taking one's position in life is honourable to oneself. Having moneyed parents says that someone in the family wrested valuable time and labour from workers to add to the gain of 'The Family'. Honourable achievement, except if the workers were foreign workers in foreign countries. 'Goose and Gander', I say. That, by the way, is not to say that exploiting foreign people in foreign countries is acceptable; I don't think it is, just as I don't think getting rich by absorbing the majority of other people's time and energy is acceptable. So, what can we do? 

We can wave a piece of paper under the noses of the suspecting crowd and cry, 'I am educated!'; 'I am a chemist; a writer; an artist; an I.T. Specialist', and the wary mob look away.

       'Well, that's alright then. Working in McDonalds is an honourable job for someone with a degree. They are not doing it because they can't do something else.'

The point I am trying to make is, that none of us are worth anything if we do not produce something.

Here is my wealth: I know something about myself - I write posts in a Personal Blog. I am not a blogger. I am a lazy fool with a hobby. I like to write. Lately, I go to sleep thinking about writing. .