Things High School Taught Me, Part one: A Waist of Time

Back in March, I uploaded a quick list of things I’d learnt in my Primary school years that hadn’t managed to make it to the official syllabus. The post was fairly well received. Not in the usual X-Factor ‘I’m know I’m good at singing because my friends and family tell me I am’ sort of way, either. 

In the weeks following the post’s online life, I’ve been asked by some to write a sequel about my years in secondary education. To start, I wasn’t all that keen to do so - partly because I found high school rather an unpleasant period, and mostly because my alter-ego at that time would have to have been named Bland-Man or something along those lines. I had at that time of life, for example, a favourite vegetable; I had an unhealthy obsession with my Runescape persona (purely platonic, you understand); phrases like ‘outside world’ would all too easily strike fear into my innermost being.

As time has frittered away in the past month or two, however, I’ve found myself caught up in snippets of memories and quirks of my time at secondary school that hopefully merit a strongish post. Sit down, then, relax, never say the word ‘chillax’ in my presence, and enjoy part one of Things High School Taught Me.

Lesson one: Johnny B. Goode has been ruined by overzealous PE Teachers

Each year, between the annual downpour of sleet and the hallowed Christmas break, there existed a stint of several weeks where ‘Physical Education’, a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at sport, was swapped out for ‘social dancing’: a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at dancing with members of the opposite sex.

Every week, the classes would be marched into the games hall and the genders would establish themselves at either side of the room. Only the most beautiful and confident of souls would ever strut across the no-mans-land for a chat, while those at the other side of the social spectrum would watch these human peacocks and very much miss our virtual crossbows. Most, somewhere in between the extremes, stuck to their side waiting (perhaps a little nervously) for the teacher to bellow ‘Choose your partners!’ like some kind of failed gameshow host and, only then, venture across as a team.

If I had to choose one part of my whole social dancing career I really did enjoy, it was this ‘choosing of the partners’, which involved the entire group of puberty-suffering youngsters trying to toe the line between scoring the person they wanted to lock hands with while still pretending not to care about anything much, ever. Such a ritual usually includes deliberately positioning yourself within a ten-foot radius of your target; absent-mindedly/deliberately catching their eyes, then asking if they would like to double up - normally with as few words as possible:

“Want to dance with me?”

“Hi. Partners?”

“You?”

As time went on, actually, these lines of questions became an increasingly honed art - by our fifth year all it took was an eyebrow twitch and you had three weeks’s worth of dancing and a prom date all lined up. 

After maybe a minute or so, ninety percent of the student body would be coupled and lined around the perimeter; the final ten percent were assigned a partner (though by their faces they may as well have been asked to read out a stack of ‘yo’ momma’ jokes to a firing squad), and one way or another I’d be facing a girl in my year and fighting the urge to apologise in advance. 

Now came the dancing itself: a terrifying prospect filled with all kinds of woe. For one, where was I supposed to look? Should I have watched my shoes? Should I have kept my neck snapped away or stared straight into her eyes as like I was about to whisper “and what became of your lamb, Clarice”? Usually, I ended up flicking between them all in three or four seconds like the star of a low-budget sequel to the Exorcist.

Another obstacle for the 13-year-old myself was the business of placing my hand round the girl’s waist - a move that at the time seemed next door to impregnation. I had no desire to become one of those underage fathers you read about on the news and so I always panicked, placing a closed fist on my dancing partner's side instead. 

Worst of all, these kinds of problems usually went by unanswered and piled up on each other. Doing my best to look like I was enjoying myself, attached to my peer by a single pair of joined hands and a few knuckles, I’d spend most periods of social dancing snapping my neck to the side, down to my shoes and then straight into my partner’s soul; all the while pondering why people were so anxious for Johnny B. Goode to go away in the first place. 

To this day, my favourite part of a ceilidh is when the nibbles come out.

Lesson two: Every pupil has their own ongoing skirmish with the office

You may recall that my primary school post featured a faction of pre-pubescent midgets joining forces to meet a shared goal, namely, the acquisition of the hallowed Hill. A high schooler’s War with the Office is generally of a different sort - each student is forced to carry his/her fight and shoulder his/her burdens by him/herself.

I have to admit that my personal conflict with the school office was kicked off by (A) my desire for a temporarily free lunch and (B) my tending to thrust all my problems on a future version of myself. At least twice a week for a large part of my second year I’d treat the room beside the school entrance as half office, half bank and ask the increasingly irritated woman at the window for a lunch slip intended for who’d forgotten their lunch money, and not for those who’d blown theirs on Jaffacakes the day before. 

I would always uncategorically swear to pay my debts the next day, though was fascinated by how ‘next day’ and ‘next wednesday’ could be so easily conflated.

After several months of taking advantage of the school in such a way, I realised my system wasn’t the most selfless of actions. Repentant, I turned over a new leaf, paid my dues and began to buy my lunch like any other. I thought, insodoing, I’d stopped any conflict with the office before it had started. I was rather surprised, then, when one morning I showed up with a single note to pay two seperate (and not lunch-caused) fees. Apparently, this was a heinous sin and very much not to be done. Instead of asking me to come back the next day with two seperate payments, the lady’s face in front of me puckered into a giggle before she turned to a colleague still at her desk. 

“Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

“This boy” - I would have preferred student, pupil, gentleman, but I let it pass - “wants to pay for two things with one note!” 

Said colleague shook her head back and forth and began to chortle.

“We don’t do that”, she said.
“We don’t do that.” The woman at the window said, turning back to me, shaking her head and still snickering.

Maybe it was a running joke on that side of the glass, but if there was it was lost to me. Embarrassed, bewildered, and having not yet fully understood the concept of ‘turn the other cheek’, I fled back to class and prepared myself for the next round of war.

To be continued, etc, etc.

If you want to see the original primary school post, go here.

If you want to read about my long-winded day out in London, go here.

If you are interested in acquiring a black belt in the ways of the dish towel, go here.

The Author, the Arguments and the Overpriced Sandwich: My day at the Unbelievable? 2013 Conference

Surprised by Clive?

One of the few things perhaps more comic than watching a group of people politely, strategically edging past each other in one queue is watching a group of Christians politely, strategically edging past each other in another. 

This fact, while amusing, was easily the most useless bit of information gleaned at this year’s Unbelievable? The Conference, held last weekend in London. The conference - based on the radio programme of the same name - was a one-day event dealing with various strands of apologetics (a clever sounding term defined as a rational defense of Christianity. Some apologists, of course, are more rational than others, but that’s probably a different point).

While keeping the annual focus on apologetics, this year’s conference was also bit different from the previous two - it had been given a rather sizeable C.S Lewis-edged theme. Actually, three of the nine seminars on offer in some way linked to the late, great and very clever writer. 

Incidentally, did you know C.S stands for Clive Staples? I’d probably have abbreviated that too. As it stands with the middle name Munster I'm more likely to sympathise.

Although I’d missed the past two years of conferencing due to my own various failings, 2013, I decided, would be different, and so on the Friday my friend Claire and I shouldered our rucksacks; found them rather heavy; dropped them; rubbed our shoulders a bit; picked them back up and hopped on on to a nine-hour bus ride to London.

In some ways, traveling so far to hear arguments for theism a little pointless - the bus journey made the existence of hell, at least, pretty darn clear. Repent and believe, for Megabus desires to sift you as wheat.

Somehow, we survived. Claire and I wandered into the The Brewery, the locale of the event (very posh - bowler hats and all) the next day, still smuggling in some of the residue from our Tesco breakfast. We took our seats at the front of the auditorium and began to sweep the room with our eyes, looking for some of the speakers with largely the same subtlety as Lazenby’s Bond. We watched the conference room began to pack out.

Keynotes and Queues

A little after ten, Justin Brierley, the presenter of the whole thing, took to the stage and  thanked us all for coming. The powerpoint above his head wincingly proclaimed that it was ‘unbelievably good to see us’. 

(Justin hosts the aforementioned Unbelievable? radio programme  - a weekly show on iTunes that generally takes the form of a ninety-minute dialogue on some aspect of the God debate. There. Recommended.)

After giving us his words of welcome, our beaming anchor invited the keynote speaker Alister McGrath to switch places with him and give his opening address: “Joy, Meaning, and Purpose: What our culture needs to hear from Christians”. 

Alister has debated  Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett (to differing degrees of success, in my un-learned opinion); he’s written books both theological and apologetical, most recently, the biography the weekend's best friend: C.S Lewis: A Life.  Here, he was on form. after telling the crowd it was ‘unbelievably’ good to see us - this time the wincing was mostly mine - he then began to work through his material cogently and thoroughly.  

I did have one criticism, it has to be said: I found myself continually distracted by the fact Alister seemed to be addressing a patch of air several feet above our collective heads.

Such a minor foible of his address was, however, exactly that. After Alister was finished and then applauded, he switched places with Justin again who started to tell the crowd where the seminars we could choose from were located in the building. His choosing of words were at his peril: the final syllable of ‘limited spacing’ had barely escaped his face before the assembled Christians began to rise from their chairs and, very civilly, started to storm to the room of their preferred speaker. 

It was only to be expected, in a way. One of the perks of being interested in a fairly niche area is that it’s easy to meet your heroes and only slightly more difficult to make a fool of yourself in front of them.

“How rude!”, I noted to Claire, as we half-stormed up a ramp to the far left of the hall, therefore strategically avoiding the throng advancing up the stairs. “He hadn’t even finished speaking!” I vented, morally indignant, as we squeezed into an already crammed lift that cut a few paces off our journey and boosted us ahead of most of the crowd.

I may, as in previous blogs, be exaggerating a little. Despite all my valiant hypocrisy, we were still some of the very last few to throng into the Queen Charlotte room and land in a couple of chairs facing Peter S. Williams and his booted-up slides.

The title of Peter’s seminar, "If C.S Lewis met Dawkins", was really an offshoot from the second Lewis-orientated publication of the day, "C.S Lewis vs the New Atheists", an evaluation of the recent critiques of Christianity based from the writings of Clive (or, if you were his friend, Jack. I don't know why) himself. While admittedly I haven’t even gotten as far as opening a copy of William's book, his talk stood on its own, giving a rebuttal of Dawkins’ self-contradictory - from Peter's perspective - positions on ethics, free will and so forth. Regardless of what you think of Peter’s conclusions, it’d be hard to deny he has done his homework and then a little more recommended reading over supper. His quotes cited within the hour, for example, ranged from Dawkins’ most impressively-sized texts to a recent interview done with Playboy magazine. 

Stories and Studies

After some question and answer, seminar one closed and a coffee break began. After some tea and biscuits (I like to stick it to the schedule) the coffee break closed and seminar two began. 

This time, there wasn’t nearly as much of a rush for us. We’d decided to stay in the comfortably large main hall and listen to Alister McGrath take on round two with his talk CS Lewis, The Storyteller. 

I appreciated this one in an entirely different way I had Peter’s: as an English/Journalism/Creative Writing/Procrastination/Hot-drinks-consuming student, apologetics has always seemed cursorily at best linked to my studies. Alister’s point that Lewis would employ narrative and argument to drive his points home to different audiences was a good one, and one that had never really crossed my mind. 

"Using our imaginations", Alister said, if Claire's notes tell me true, "is not inventing faith, but faith has the ability to captivate imaginations"

Maybe not all that obvious when you peruse the fiction section of your nearby Christian bookstore but in theory still a valid point. 

 I’m not claiming McGrath's talk 'changed my life', 'blew my mind', ' 'turned my world upside down' or so forth, but in what he'd discussed lay some points I’d never really picked up on before - a feeling kind of like when someone gently points out the solution to a puzzle that seems horribly easy only ten seconds after it's been solved.

While my writing, not to mention this blog, dips and ascends in quality from a week-to-week basis depending on amount of time spent and caffeine in my system, it was nice to see something that linked to what I study and know I can do. Words, after all, is things I'm more good at than some stuff.

Seating and Sandwiches

After seminar two came lunch, which I won’t dwell on longer than to say that if an establishment charging so much for a sandwich that I can buy another ticket on the Bus of Doom after two and a half purchases, you should probably rethink a thing or two. 

There was another quick welcome back  from Justin in the main auditorium before the third and final set of seminars were set to start. As we walked back in, I had a stroke of what seemed, maybe not genius but at least genius' estranged cousin. I turned to Claire.

“Let's sit at the very back. When people start to rush we can stand and stroll to the door and still beat the crowd.” 

And so we sat squinting at the stage which had gone from being this close:

To this close:

Welcoming and announcements being again made, for the second time Justin got as far as something along the lines of ‘final set of seminars’ before the mass of justified saints began to stand and civilly bound for the door. Before I even realised what was happening, actually, there were a good a hundred people past us and out to our prime choices of seats. Darn it.

Still, we did manage to get to where we wanted to go. Since we attended all the seminars on Lewis thus far, we thought it would’ve been amiss not to complete our strange trilogy and listen to Amy Orr-Ewing broach her topic - C.S Lewis and suffering. 

Really, however, save from a couple quotations, Amy mainly stuck to the problem of suffering and left Clive out the picture. Both understandable and wise, perhaps, seeing as she hasn’t recently written several hundred pages on the man. Besides, the problem of suffering is such a huge discussion without him being mentioned and is seen by many as the strongest argument against theism. Instead, Amy walked through various responses of other world-views to the problem of suffering before giving a response from a Christian perspective. 

Personally, I found it the most difficult of the seminars to follow and could've done with a few slides, but this talk was, by far, the most well received by the audience. The murder in Woolwich earlier this week had already been brought up one or two points during the day already and both times the effect on the audience was obvious - smiles falling from faces, downcast eyes, collective sighs a hundred people. What was to some people primarily ‘news’ was, to them, hurt. Here was a talk that while to me perhaps raised less points than the other two, yet the points raised were the ones most needed to be heard for many. To those same people this seminar undoubtedly the most important part of the day.

Panels and Presuppositions

For a final time, we were back in the main auditorium for a panel discussion, in which I would’ve perhaps liked to see more interaction between the speakers. From what I remember, questions from the audience were responded to in standalone answers, and made the thing feel as though if you had put each speaker in an isolated booth you would’ve been given the same answers which to me defeats the purpose of a roundtable conversation in the first place. 

That aside, the questions asked were varied, challenging and of a surprisingly high quality - to the annoyance of the woman to my right I kept murmuring 'ah, course' and 'good point' as the microphone was swept around the hall like the weapon of a serial approver.

Then the final question was asked, answered and the whole thing was over. We were for a final time thanked (no Punbelievables were made), then the crowd started to gradually stream out the exits. 

Claire and I wandered out of The Brewery and back to the hotel, chatting between ourselves about how we'd thought the day had gone. We’d both, like the majority of the crowd, had seemed to have gotten a lot out of the conference as a whole with a few personal quibbles that we'd have liked to bring up had we had more time. 

The fact that these quibbles were all so slight did raise for me a larger critique of the day. I am, as a rule, terribly biased and horribly aware of it, and it would have been nice if alongside speakers who I knew shared the majority of my views, there had been a track of seminars devoted to two speakers debating an issue, even if such an topic was an inter-Christian debate. 

While perhaps less straightforward to organise, it would have been more in the spirit of the Unbelievable show which bases itself upon the idea that truth can be seen in views being respectfully batted back and forth in dialogue. 

Also, it might have been be a good idea attach seat-belts to the chairs only to be unclipped once the presenter has finished with everything he wants to say. At least by idiots like me.

                     For more of my bus-angst, go here.
                                    To read about my journey as a coffee-wielding insulting maniac, go here.
                                                    Or, if you're still not out the studying woods, here are some entirely unhelpful personal tips.

Life as a Rubbish Catering Assistant (part the second)

Can I get you some verbal abuse with your cappuccino?

We left the first half of my adventures with my metaphorically building a crockery-fort that could shelter me from the difficulties of my new job - the biggest problem, frankly, being my lack of general competence. 

The reason for the fort, you’ll remember, was the OCD that seemed only to hit me during the washing and drying of dishes. Luckily, after a few nightmare sessions of such cleaning it was gently pointed out to me that my teaspoons didn’t have to possess the sparkle of Barry Scott’s molars;they had to be clean. At first I was unconvinced, remaining terrifyingly certain I was the heroic barrier between Mononucleosis and your grandmother.

"Bang!" And, just like that, Barry was gone forever.

As the weeks flitted by, though, I began to absorb the advice and put it into practice. Dishes arrived; dishes were washed; dishes were dried; dishes were stacked. I become one with the matrix of saucers and soup bowls and was able to operate a fairly tidy work area without crying like a little child. 

My washing/drying wasn’t fast to the point of uncleanliness, yet at the same time the Lattes no longer had the aftertaste of the industrial equivalent to Fairy liquid: in this area, my slow journey towards adequacy was close enough to complete.

We will, therefore, leave the dish-side of the job and wander back out to the counter to observe my progress there.

Which is lucky for you, reader(s)- although I was past the stage where every sale would set my heart beating until it wanted to tear out my ribcage and give the customer a strong piece of its mind, I still found talking to the average customer a bit of a hassle, mostly because I'm endowed with the talent of saying the wrong thing at exactly the best time. It should be stressed I mostly come across as awkwardly charming (or maybe one of those two), but things still often fall out my mouth that should really be thrown back in and locked away.

One sleepy weekday afternoon, for example, I was quietly wiping down some trays in a fairly vacant cafe when I was nearly swept away by a barrage of middle-aged faces that had suddenly stormed the place with the intensity of a military insurgency. One of the happier faces at the helm of the group smiled at me as I hastily began serving.

“Sorry”, she said, “there’s a lot of us, I know. We’ve all just come down from a prophecy conference down at central.”

“Really?”, the words spilled out,  “I never saw that coming.”

The helms-woman tilted her head. “Sorry, son?”

“I said can I get you some tea with your muffin?”

Here we have an accidental slip of almost-wit - generally when I say something stupid I’m the last to be know it. 

To demonstrate, i’ll give you a second example. One lunchtime, a fairly heavy gentleman and a woman strolled in together and took their place in line. When the queue had shuffled forward I took the pair as a couple and asked them what I could fetch them.

“Just a quiche, please.” The hefty man replied.

“Sure." I responded, "But we’ve only got the one left. Is that okay?”

The sparkle in the man’s eyes died, quietly. 

Quiche: lowering self-esteem since 14thC

“I only wanted one.” he said, this time in a far less jolly tone.

As it transpired, man and wife were ordering separately. Very modern, perhaps, but still was the root cause of my frantic apologising. Incidentally, it was difficult to say sorry while trying to not make reference to the rather weighty reason why this customer may have taken particular offense at my mistake. 

I probably failed in finding that balance.

However, insulting the Glaswegian populace (regardless of gender and age), couldn’t last forever - firstly because  I eventually reached levels of social acceptability. The days of dish forts and wanting to duck behind the counter gave way to the age of being able to exchange a few sentences without facial spasms. 

Second: I left the job almost two weeks ago. Yes, that’s right: I hung up my dishcloth and wandered out of the cafe and into the sunset where my bus had probably just taken off. 

At the end of that final shift, then, what had I taken away? The ability to multitask, for one; the ability to weave away from numerous near-accidents and spills;  the satisfaction that I had entered an establishment and walked away with a new skill set; and, not least, a best wishes card and a cake my quiche-inclined friend might be more than a little envious of. More important is what I didn’t take away: black eyes from accidental insults; a bill for all the equipment I annihilated over the months; the ability to serve coffee to a stranger without my left eyebrow twitching like Jack the Ripper’s great-grandson.

Now there’s an idea for a cheap paperback.  

If you missed part one, why on earth did you read this far?

Here if you enjoyed the quasi-joke about the myriad difficulties surrounding Glaswegian public transport

And because I’m still in exam period, I'm probably wearing something in here

By the way, if I don’t come across as awkwardly charming, keep that knowledge to yourself and let me live that lie.

Life as a Rubbish Catering Assistant, Part the First

The adventures of an undeserving employee

This just cries out for some googly eyes

Picture the scene: a little less than a year ago, I shuffled to my job interview at a cafe in the centre of Glasgow dressed largely like a Mafia henchman on Atkins. My suit (and by ‘my suit’ I mean ‘my brother’s suit’ (and by ‘my brother’s suit’ I mean ‘my temporarily commandeered formalwear’)) was far, far oversized and hung off my sweaty arms like a wizard’s robe. 

I was more than a little nervous - and being at the best of times endowed with the sociability of an Asperger’s-afflicted brick, feeling like the Coat-hanger Incarnate wasn’t boosting morale much. Nevertheless, I continued my bold shuffle to the till and squeakily announced my presence.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about the interview itself. Ushered over to a table at the corner of the cafe, the interview lasted maybe six or seven minutes; the longest question asked of me was probably a tie between  “can you work saturdays?” and “do you have any questions for us?”; and, best of all, both the friendly interviewers pretended to ignore the gathering puddle of perspiration that began to create a moat between us and the rest of the room.

I may be exaggerating.

A few hours later, I was given a call inviting me to take the job as a part-time catering assistant asking whether I could come in the next day for a ‘little induction’. 

And so it came to pass the anti-social brick was hired. You can’t help but wonder who else was interviewed.

Fast forward twenty hours, and I was on the other side of the counter and staring in wide-eyed horror as my first customer approached, whistling and grinning mildly to himself. 

“What if he wants a coffee?” I wondered, my eyes momentarily stopping flicking for an escape route and instead zoned in at the coffee machine (which may well have spent its spare time moonlighting NASA’s spare remote control). All the while, the man was meandering closer. 

My brain kicked itself into a frenzied overdrive: 

“That machine looks way too complicated to be a coffee maker- Maybe I could wield one of those filter handles instead - battle my way out - go into hiding - find a nice cave somwhere-”

Having worked myself to this panic, It took me a few seconds to realise the whistling, grinning man was now standing opposite and looking right at me. A few seconds silence. Some more. His grey-black hair were ruffled into a baseball cap and his knuckles were blithely rapping a drumbeat on the countertop. Some more silence. Why? It had suddenly struck me I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him. 

My mind seemed to be drawing a blank on one of the most simple questions posed.

“How can I help?” I mentally tested alternatives, “What can I get you?”. 

The man had stopped whistling, letting his fingers drum the tune off into silence, and it was here my mind decided and leapt into action. My lips parsed, and

“What do you want?”

Gloriously burst forth. 

It wasn’t, on reflection, the politest of enquiries. My eyes bulged at the blunder and I tried to smooth the rudeness out with a smile, but found my facial muscles had packed up and headed south for the next several decades.

The cap-wearing whistler, however, luckily turned out to be a regular - if ‘regular’ encompasses people who exist in a state of tea-drinking hibernation - and didn’t really notice my complete lack of social protocol. He grinned again absent-mindedly. “Tea please”, he said. Tea was served, the next customer hopefully felt a little less interrogated.

Serving drinks to customers, though, was only half of my new job’s requirements. Compared to my dishwashing, in fact, each muscle spasm seemed a BAFTA-nominating smile. Thus, after half an hour so of customer-intimidating I was steered back through the kitchen, acquainted with the essentials of a dishtowel, pointed to the little hole in the wall where dishes came through and was given a go at drying. 

The problem herewasn’t that the dishes weren’t being cleaned properly - it was the opposite. Engulfed with the possibility that I was the Guardian of Hygiene, the sole gateway between a customer and potential sickness, I entered a state of OCD where I made absolutely sure each cup and saucer and teaspoon had been blitzed enough that it was the cleanest utensil this side of central station. This is all laudable but meant the inflow of dirtied dishes weren’t making the outflow look bad as much as holding the outflow’s lunch money above its head and giving it a serious wedgie.

I may have, once, spent a few minutes wondering if I could build a happy place out of porcelain and plastic trays.

Thus ends part the first of my adventures - it is exam time after all. Tune in next week for part the second

which includes such highlights as prophecy conferences, dancing with milk, and accidentally insulting the obese.

In the meantime you might enjoy that time I went clubbing,

Or that time I ranted about busses,

Or you might enjoy another blog! - http://eilidhstewart.blogspot.co.uk

(Un)Musical Chairs: How to Face The Fear and Win

A Personal Essay concerning my being a rather large 'fraidy cat

 My career as a master mute musician reached its height during my membership of the school concert band. 

Let me explain.

Every Friday afternoon, for the last eighteen months of high school, I’d trudge away from the school exit and into the auditorium at the far end of the building and go through the same motions. Dump bag; assemble my flute; glumly mingle with animated peers. After a few minutes, this chipper mass would assemble, and then sit on, sets of cold blue straight-backed chairs. A chill would always be hanging in the auditorium, making goosebumps prickle up and chafe against trousers, shirts. None of the other band members were perturbed by the clinical surroundings - they always pulsed out enthusiasm, voices wavering excitedly to match fluttering hands. In fact, conversation would continue right up until our teacher  would stride to the podium and lift her baton. The band would raise their instruments, poised, and our conductor’s stick would drop and the bluesy notes would run like liquid silver from clarinets, saxophones, almost all the flutes.

Almost all. I would be miming along, my fingers stubbing the instrument to the tune but my mouth never daring to breathe life into the instrument. 

The reason for my silence was simple: I was consumed by a near-demonic emotion I call The Fear - terror that spawns inactivity. Convinced I wasn’t as good as the other band members, my fear of playing badly made me stop attempting to play at all, both during rehearsals and outside. It was self-perpetuating. I practiced less, so became less confident; I became less confident, so practiced less.

The Fear, however, doesn’t solely operate within the musical sphere, but can rather curl its fingers round hosts of activities. Avoiding going out for a run because that the (marginally) slimmer neighbor might see your flailing; allowing your pen’s ink to congeal for fear someone might snigger at your screenplay; keeping a competition flier firmly locked in a cupboard somewhere. All of these are instances of a prevailing sense of inadequacy that produces lifelessness. All these, then, are examples of The Fear.

This isn’t a feeling that people should blithely shrug their shoulders at, either. The Fear wastes legions of hours, both those belonging to the victim and those of others involved tangentially. It can distort self-esteem and create huge levels of cognitive dissonance, especially guilt. In my case, I’d waste two bloated hours pretending to be a flautist, then be driven home by a willing parent (“anything to support our musical child!”) while I sat beside glumly wondering how I got into this mess at all. For me, all the boxes were ticked.

We should, then, aspire to face The Fear wherever we spot it, should do our utmost win out. The framing out of this contention, however, is based on a presumption that all might share -namely, the idea that it’s all too common to be constricted by this emotion. Surely no-one can get themselves into such ridiculous situations that The Fear requires? Who would willingly sit down alongside a concert band and play dumb for so long?

But that’s the thing - The Fear can snare a victim in two distinct, equally effective ways. The first is what psychologists semi-poetically refer to as a ‘flashbulb memory’, widely regarded as a memory so vivid it sears itself into the mind and is able to affect a person from a single episode. I, for example, haven’t driven on the motorway since what was supposed to be a leisurely journey home from a conference at St. Andrews. I set off on the drive early, well before the sun was anywhere near setting. When it began to slide down the sky like a running egg (as it did an hour or so into the trip) I found myself hurtling down the M80, suddenly locked in a deathly staring contest with the sun. Blinded for a quarter of an hour, I was terrified, convinced of my imminent dispatch from the earth. Mercifully, I did somehow arrive home intact, but that memory, like a flashbulb, punches itself to the forefront of my mind every time I get into the driver’s seat. From now on, my longest driving sessions are usually no longer than a weekly sojourn to Tesco’s for some salsa (discussed in an earlier post - points for continuity).

In case you're wondering, I'm the one who looks like he's wandered in having just come from a fun day of murdering

The second way The Fear operates, however, is not through a definitive event but rather through gradual increments. Very rarely does The Fear blind - it often chooses to be subtle, delicate, more like the moon sneaking to its place than the sun lowering itself down.

Take my flute playing. After that first week or so of practice, aged nine or so, I was pleased to find I’d managed to get a kind of warbled sound out of the thing, and from there began to tackle increasingly complex tunes. To me, every note, pure or faulty, was helping me improve, so I’d play twenty minutes a day, constantly, consistently. It never felt like practice. Moving into the start of high school, everything was still only on the up. I started doing graded exams, and their reports gave me outside evidence of my progress. I played at weddings, joined the school band. 

Then, one summer, I went on holiday. Somewhere in France - a trip with family -swimming, climbing, meandering, a bustling fortnight brimming with activity, so though I brought the flute and did play a little, it often lay dormant on some table. The week after, I was camping with  a mass of gruff adolescents aspiring to be like their cooler older siblings who viewed any music besides Nickelback as an utter waste of time. Although I played there, too, it was in even more sporadic, stubbed periods of time, only when well away from the judgment of those sharing my tent. Then, after this, I helped at several children’s holiday clubs at home, finding myself too exhausted to even think about playing. And so on, and so on.  By the end of this leviathan summer, my flute stayed packed up in its box on a windowsill, forgotten by everything but the odd burst of sunlight. 

At start of the new term I eventually picked the instrument back up, but when I blew into it, the notes seemed to come out flabby, despondent. My fingers felt like slugs, my eyes glazed over the notes that seemed to dance by themselves on the sheet in front. I was confused, disappointed - after ten minutes of stress, I clumsily stuck the parts in the case and thrust it back on the sill, promising myself I’d try again later.

Like Pokemon, the Fear can constrict.
As in Pokemon, it's very frustrating.

Of course, I didn’t try again for a long stretch of time, then a longer stretch after that. By gradually playing less and less, first without realising and then consciously shirking practice, The Fear was able to petrify me into silence. Eventually, I found myself going to the band I once enjoyed now out of obligation, too paralysed at my own inadequacy to play.

So, assume you’ve seen yourself in my example and self-diagnosed yourself with this malady: what can you do? How can you face The Fear and emerge victorious? There are two viable alternatives available:

Option one: keep playing and push through. The pursuit of a goal almost always brings difficulties, and often the best way to overcome them is to simply strive on. This may sound obvious to some, but others may need to hear that their self-doubt can be overcome:

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get Busy - Dale Carnegie.

An illustration, perhaps, to make this option less abstract. Several streets in my area, despite stopping at dead ends, are all connected by a river that runs behind the back gardens of the houses; a stream overgrown with trees and brambles and patches of soft marsh. Children, as a rule, are drawn to short cuts, and when I was younger I would cut by this grassy, slippery route to get to a friend’s house, dirtied, but a few minutes faster. 

Originally, the friend’s parents would thrust me back to my own house to change my disheveled, muddy clothes, but interestingly the more I travelled via shortcut the easier the journey became to navigate cleanly. As the tall grass was beaten down under foot, as the branches snapped back and the best stepping stones assaulted with marker pens, I managed to subdue the obstacles that seemed so dominant through regular treading and re-treading. 

Face your Fear

 (but wear a helmet and/or cup if your Fear has talons)

Similarly, putting on the shoes and running each day; applying each criticism of your script or novel (or essay); every mangled note will brush back the brambles a little more. In time, The Fear will have been exorcised through repetition.

In contrast to this, Option Two: walk away, might be seen as negative and defeatist, but it’s important to emphasise this strategy is not synonymous with giving up. Giving up, in this context, would be to sit in the chair continuing to mime. Walking away is about getting off the chair and finding a new skill to invest time in. Personally, it wasn’t until I gave up the flute that I was able to spend more time writing seriously, channeling those wasted hours into something that has since blossomed. Option two is not defeatist, then: it was through the pain of walking away that this essay is here to be read, critiqued. 

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which option is chosen. What’s paramount is that the Fear’s pervasive consequences - wasted time, deflated self-esteem and guilt - are fended off. The worst thing that can be done is to sit dejectedly on that cold blue seat, too petrified to move away, too scared to play. Instead, let’s battle The Fear and make it too afraid to try attacking ever again.

If you're reading this on a bus - I'm so sorry. This might brighten your day, though.

If you're reading this to procrastinate studying, you might want to keep doing that with this.

If...If... I can't think of another one. Here are my puntastic thoughts on Assassin's Creed II.

50 Rules for Pain-free Bus Riding

I spend a large portion of my borderline-adult life being shuttled from university to home to work to university to home to work. In fact, I’ve harnessed all my mathematical prowess and worked out a four year degree will net me a full month’s worth sitting blithely.

Just kidding, I used a calculator. 

In order to make what’s left of that time more pleasant for everyone, I’ve taken the liberty of chartering up the following ideas that’ll hopefully make our future journeys together more bearable. 

Here are my 50 rules for pain-free bus riding.

(1) There shall be no playing of music without headphones, no matter how banging you perceive your ‘tunes’ to be. The rest of us don’t want to hear how Taylor is Never-Ever-Ever getting back with her ex.

(2)If rule (1) is ignored, you must - on pain of vehicular lynching - refrain from singing along. If there’s one thing we want to hear less than Miss Swift’s repetition, it’s you warbling that same story.

(3) If we can hear the sound of your headphones over ours, your music is too loud.

(4) When somebody says: 

“Sorry, I kind of need to be doing some studying now.”

They most likely mean: 

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

(5) What should you do if you see somebody you know and have to think about whether you should sit next to them? Don’t sit next to them.

(6) On a crowded bus, putting your bag on the vacant seat beside you is acceptable but probably means you’re a bit of a tool.

(7) On a crowded bus, deliberately sitting on the aisle side is unacceptable and will probably net you a lot of angry stares.

(8) If your bus passes another, it’s vital you abstain from making any awkward eye-contact with riders of that other vehicle.

(9) Energy drinks are not and never will be acceptable for any journey.

(10) If you take the train to work, bus-takers will view you as having ‘made it’.

(11) If you’re wearing a school uniform, it’s probably best you don’t speak.

(12) If you have to run for the bus, unzip your jacket. You may look like an idiot but at least this way you’ll feel like superman.

(13) When waiting for your bus, don’t listen to music. Bus stops are oases of stupidity.

(14) If you decide to nip into Poundland while you wait, your bus will definitely come and you will definitely miss it.

(15) Your bus can come at any time apart from when your app says it will.

(16) Fast food can be only consumed at off-peak hours, on a less than half-full bus. Energy drinks, incidentally, still aren’t allowed.

(17) When that middle aged woman queue-jumps you as people start to board, let her pass. Odds are she isn’t in a very happy place and you’re probably winning overall.

(18) If the head of the gingerbread man you were eating falls into the hood of the man in front, don’t go after it.

(19) If you go up to the top floor of a double-decker and there’s only one other person up there, you must sit somewhere on the empty side.

(20) See that bus in the distance that might be yours? It isn’t.

(21) The bus will always leave twenty seconds before you arrive.

(22) Bus prices will always rise in correlation with the pricing of a Freddo.

(23) Answering an unexpected phone call is permissible; calling your buddy for a chat is not.

(24) If you leave rubbish on the seat - surprisingly - it won’t evaporate. Take it with you.

(25) Ringing the STOP bell more than twice will earn you instant damnation.

(26) If the vehicle doesn’t have WiFi it will be considered  Amish.

(27) If you’re wondering

“Did somebody see that?”

Somebody saw that.

(28) The Metro is a free paper, so there’s no excuse for reading mine over my shoulder.

(29) If you have to read the Sun on the bus, have the decency to flick past page three. Sophie, 23, from Manchester agrees.

(30) If Rule (29) is violated, don’t justify yourself by saying you were reading the articles or opinions.

(31) If you’re reading a large book, don’t keep checking if people can see you reading it - nobody cares about your intellectual prowess.

(32) Drawing a penis on a steamed window does not make you a street artist.

(33) Writing your name on a steamy window followed by ‘FTW’ does not make you a misunderstood poet.

(34) Revenue checkers are generally only a little more intrusive than that time the Dementors halted the Hogwarts express.

(35) If you utilise the word ‘like’ or ‘pure’ more than once every seven words, best you don’t speak either.

(36) If you’re sitting on your own, you have no reason for looking behind you and making the rest of us feel self-conscious.

(37) Ideally, don’t get yourself into the situation where you drop pieces of gingerbread into men’s hoods.

(38) If you forgot to bring entertainment for your journey, why not pass the time by winking at passersby? Fellow bus-dwellers are not allowed to be winked at, see rule (8)

(39) There are no comfortable places to put your feet, so save yourself some time and don’t bother searching.

(40) If you’re happy to belch in public, leave.

(41) If you’re happy to belch in public with a stranger sitting beside you, leave via the top-floor back window. On the dual carriageway. 

(42) It’s a bus journey, not a low-budget episode of Takeshi’s castle. Don’t try and get up on an S-bend.

(43) If rule (42) is violated, at least make sure your bag is double-strapped. You don’t want to dispatch someone because of your swinging storage.

(44) If both rules (42) and (43) are violated and someone gets a rucksack to the face, pretend you didn’t see it happening. They’ll likely be too embarrassed to say anything anyway.

(45) Feel free to take the stairs two at a time, although if you trip, people laugh.

(46) There is no noise more irritating than an empty plastic bottle rolling up and down a moving bus.

(47) If you don’t have enough change for the bus, just smokescreen the amount of money you’re putting in by making sure there’s a lot of coppers going down the chute.

(48) The highest honour is reserved for those who pay their fare with a jar of pennies.

(49) If the bus suddenly breaks down, no amount of collective sighing will get that engine running again.

(50) Remember everyone else has a name too and you’ll be fine.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have some Bioshock that needs played.

If you want to console yourself in my absence with this, this or even this, the hidden hit counter goes up and I smile.