Of apple trees and sheds

We used to have an apple tree in our garden, but last year I had it cut down.

One of our elderly neighbours had convinced himself that it was undermining his shed.

There were bigger and wider trees around, some of them in his own garden, but he'd decided it was our relatively small tree that was doing the damage.  I got a tree surgeon out to have a look and he doubted that our tree was the problem, but in the interests of inter-neighbour harmony I had it taken out.  In some ways I really liked the tree, particularly the blossom in Spring, but being a lazy sort, I never really made the most of the apples and the majority of them used to end up in the compost anyway.  Also, the tree was close to the house, and the branches were so overgrown it was hard to get round the outside of the house or mow the lawn with it there, so this all influenced me in having it taken out.

Another thing that influenced me was that a few years before, the elderly neighbour had put a cat scarer in his garden, and although he couldn't hear it, it emitted a high pitched whine that made it impossible to sit in peace in my own garden, and when I approached him about it, even though he couldn't hear it, he took my word for it and took it down.

I tried to take a similar approach to the apple tree situation.  It was causing him stress, and even though I couldn't see the problem, I decided to take away the cause of the stress.  I figured it was the right thing to do.

I found out yesterday that the old man died in March.  I bumped into his wife in the street, and she told me.  And it made me feel sad.  But I was kind of glad that I'd handled the apple tree thing sympathetically, because from a selfish point of view, it's always better to find out that people have died if you haven't had an unresolved conflict with them prior to it happening.

And it made me reflect on the nature of stress, and the way I handle things.  I see apple trees everywhere, and often. like my former neighbour, I get fixated on them, and I think they're undermining my shed.  And although sometimes they might be, more often than not, they're not.  And I can't always go to the owners of the apple trees and have them cut down, and even if I could, it wouldn't always be the right thing to do.  Also, it would be probably be easier just to stop thinking about the tree and the shed, and to focus on something else, because the world is bigger than trees and sheds and what goes on in my back garden.

And I could do well to remember that when I'm stressing about not having a lawnmower, or about the cooker having blown up, or the front wheel of the car having a dent in it, because these are all passing things, and in the end they are all small things too, and not worth making a drama out of.

I've been working with some young people lately, and when I get stressed their advice seems to be to forget about the drama of the situation, and just to be nicer to the people in the story.  I'm fond of telling them that they don't know what their talking about, because they're young, and also that it's much easier to give advice to people when you only have the facts and none of the emotions, but I think they just might have a point.

As Ferris Bueller used to say 'Life moves fast, if you don't stop to take a look around once in a while, you could miss it'.  Of course he said that when he was a teenager, and he's a middle aged man by now, but I wonder if he still thinks the same thing.  If I could ask him what he thinks now, he might say this.

'If you thought life moved fast when you were 17, you should see how fast it goes when you're 44!  So don't waste time arguing about apple trees, car wheels, cookers, lawnmowers and sheds.  Because in the end none of those things matter.  Oh, and one more thing.  Be nice to each other!'

Or something like that.....

Deja Vu - Not knowing what to do and thinking about stuff

I really like the film Deja Vu.  For many reasons, but for a couple of reasons in particular.

Action films are full of dunderheaded action men doing stuff.  Shooting stuff, driving fast, blowing shit up, but not taking a lot of time in between to think about things.

In Deja Vu, there's a bit where the FBI agents sit round in a room, and something they tried to do has gone wrong, and they wonder what to do, and they admit that they don't really know what to do next.  And normally in films you don't see that.  You don't see the heroes sitting around scratching their heads and not really having a clue.  And I really like that.

Also, Denzel Washington liked to catch the streetcar rather than drive his car, so he can do some thinking.  You don't see many action heroes taking a trip on a streetcar just to have a think.  Mostly it's just a blowing-driving-shooting-non-thinkathon out there.  They just know what to do and they do it.  They don't have to go on public transport to mull stuff over.

Another thing I like about Deja Vu is the scene where Denzel gets angry at the Feds who've been lying to him.  I like that ability to get angry in a controlled way that he shows, and it's also why I like Kevin Spacey and Samuel L Jackson in the Negotiator.  I like the way they almost lose it, but don't.

I also like the fact that in Deja Vu some of the main characters actually take a bash at explaining some sciency stuff.  They don't just slip in an aside that the neutrinos have mutated, like in 2012 and then never mention it again.

I also like Deja Vu because it's a redemption story.  It isn't fully explained, but I've chosen to infer that the Denzel character's family were killed in the Oklahoma city bombing, and that's why it becomes so important to him to try and save the woman in the story, because he was powerless to change something in the past, and now he's getting a second chance at redemption.  It's also what I liked so much about Another Earth.  Seeing someone full of regret grappling with a life-changing event, and trying to grab onto a chance at redemption.  Wouldn't we all want a chance of that at some point in our lives?  Some harsh words we could take back, or actions we wish we could undo.  Or decisions we wish we could un-make?

Deja vu isn't a 100% success story.  For example, I don't like the bit at the end, where he takes the murder victim that he's just managed to get un-murdered back to the ferry, just in time to get blown up by the mad bomber.  It seems to me, that if you're going to bend the fabric of space-time to save someone from being murdered, it would be best not to immediately take them on a road trip to where the murderer and a big bomb are at.  I'm only a simple man, but that would be my advice.  Similarly, if  you're going to spend an hour getting Sandra Bullock off an exploding bus, don't take her back to where the hostage money is getting dropped off, she might just get abducted again by the mad bomber.  What I'd like to see one of these days in an action movie, is an action hero rescuing someone from disaster and then buying her a bus ticket and sending her in the total opposite direction to where the bomb and the bomber are, just for her own safety.

I realise this might make a dull ending to a film, Sandra Bullock sitting on a greyhound bus and getting the hell out of harm's way, but it would certainly be the logical choice, and I think it would be nice once in a while to see an action hero make a rational decision, instead of just blundering around blowing shit up.

That's what I think anyway.


Post Script.  I wrote this on Sunday 19th August and later that day the director of the film Tony Scott committed suicide after jumping from a suspension bridge in Los Angeles.  I've just read on obituary and I hadn't realised how many other top films he'd made, including Top Gun, Man on Fire, Crimson Tide, Beverley Hills Cop 2 and many others.  Very sad news.

You can't swing a cat in Yorkshire these days without hitting an Olympic Gold Medallist

This weekend I took my mum to the Dales for her birthday.  On the way home we popped into a tea shop in Burnsall and on the next table was Alistair Brownlee, the Olympic Triathlon Champion.

On these occasions I don't have the good fortune to have bloody Richard Curtis writing my lines for me, like he does for bloody Hugh Grant in Notting Hill when meeting Julia Roberts, so I just have to make up my own stuff.  I started out pretty well by congratulating him, and shaking his hand, and probably should have left it at that, but the longer I sat there, the more I thought how cool it would be to get a photo with him, and as I was between him and Ruth I thought she could probably get a picture of me on the sly, and he'd be in the background, and so I wouldn't have to bother him, but of course, she has bloody principles, which happen to include not photographing Gold Medallists without their permission, so she asked him for permission, and it all turned out okay, and we ended up with a better photo, but I also ended up losing any pretence of cool.

I'd only noticed him in the first place because the cafe owner was loudly making a fuss of him, and trying to get him to cycle round the Dales with his Gold Medal in a bum bag so he could bring it in and show her, and his brother Jonathan the Bronze Medallist was also there, but he had his back to me, and I didn't notice him, and it isn't that a Bronze Medallist isn't worth the fuss, because he most certainly is, and he won the Bronze Medal after getting a 15 second penalty for getting on his bike a nanosecond early, so he deserves as much credit as Alistair, and afterwards I felt bad that I hadn't congratulated him too, but I genuinely couldn't recognise him from only the back of his head, and there was another guy there who was tall and blond and thin, and he might have been in the Olympics too, but I didn't recognise him at all.

And after I'd got my photo with Alistair, a whole bloody family of people started trying to muscle in and get a piece of him, and the cafe owner was nagging him even more about bringing his medal in, and as we drove off, my mum and Ruth and I had a long and at times heated conversation about how to handle meeting Olympic Gold Medallists in tea shops, and this is sort of what I think after having that conversation.

For two weeks I watched the Olympics, and I found a lot of it genuinely inspiring, but the most direct connection I had with it was either shouting at the telly, or knowing that an Olympic Gold Medal winning rower's parents had killed my domestic animals (they are vets, so it was all above board, and I'm not looking to turn them in).

And now here I was, eating a scone, and there on the next table, also eating a scone was an Olympic Gold Medallist, and in these days of bloody Twitter and Facebook and bloody internet forums and discussion groups about every bloody subject under the sun, I wanted to acknowledge directly to that person, that they had done something remarkable, and that I had seen it.  Because to wander off into the car park of eternity without at least saying congratulations, would be a missed opportunity.

Wanting to get my picture taken afterwards was totally gratuitous, and for my own benefit, so I can tell everyone I know that this event took place, but hey ho, nobody's perfect.

And it may well be a total pain in the arse to be knocking around your own neighbourhood trying to do whatever you did before the Olympics, and having people constantly interrupting your scone eating or soap powder buying to shake your hand and get a picture of you, and a lot of those people might be tactless idiots who don't have any regard for your privacy or personal space, but in the middle of all that  are people like me.  Me, who was genuinely inspired by what I saw, and who didn't want to miss the chance to have a bigger connection to London 2012 than you can get from shouting at the telly. or from sending bloody tweets, whatever the hell they are.

So, if I see Kat Copeland next week buying some tofu in my local Tesco, or if I see Mo Farah in a train station one day, or Jessica Ennis in a launderette, or if I should encounter Chris Hoy buying power tools in a Scottish branch of B&Q, I will most likely take the opportunity to say to each of them 'Well done in the Olympics, you were incredible, and while I was sat on the sofa eating Wispa bars, you were totally inspiring, and I'm sorry if I'm intruding into your personal space, but I just wanted to wish you well, and while I'm here, can I have a photo please?'

Unless that is, I bump into Richard Curtis in the meantime, and perhaps he could write me a script for such occasions.  Because not only did I not win the Olympic Gold Medal for cycling, running, shooting or canoeing, I didn't win it for knowing how to talk to Olympians in the street either.

I won the World Cup, cried at Italia 90 and won a gold medal in the Olympics (sort of)

I once saw Gordon Banks at a service station, but I wasn't in the England team that won the World Cup.

I once saw Gazza and Brian Clough at some book signings, but I didn't cry in the World Cup semi final  (although I almost cried watching it on the telly) and I didn't manage Nottingham Forest to two consecutive European Cup wins.

I once saw Bradley Wiggins in Darlington at the start of a bike race, but I didn't win the Tour de France.

I used to have a hamster and I used to have a dog and both of them were put to sleep by our local vets.  And last week their daughter Kat Copeland won an Olympic gold medal in the rowing, but I didn't.

I made absolutely no contribution to any of these sporting events, but somehow I feel because of my teeny tiny bit of connectedness to the people who did, that this somehow reflects a bit of the glory onto me.

I live in a village that has got a golden postbox in honour of Kat, and I must remember to take my camera with me to Tesco in case I see her buying salad and I can get my picture taken with her.

And I never shout at the telly, but I shouted at the telly two Saturdays running because that brilliant little Mo Farah man wouldn't let anybody get in front of him in the 10,000 and the 5,000 metres.

And if the Buddhists are right, and we're all connected, then Mo was probably running round with water molecules and assorted atoms in his body that used to be part of me, so if you don't mind, I'd like to take a very small part of the glory for myself.  And for all of us.

No doubt if I'd had some talent and dedication and training and financial support, and if I hadn't eaten so much chocolate I could have done something big in the world of sport, but the fact is I didn't.

But someone did.  And I am tenously connected to them on some level.

And that's good enough for me!


Also, just as a footnote to my connectedness, I've been sporadically buying lottery tickets for about the last 20 years, and the most I've ever won is a tenner, and as a lot of these Olympic guys are lottery funded I probably paid for a chunk of one of those gold medals out of all the money I spent on totally not becoming a millionaire, so that's another reason why I should be up there on the podium waving my overhanging belly around and waving to the crowd alongside those little stick people with washboard stomachs.