The Moon, bike rides and making soup - the hardest part is getting started

There's a bit at the beginning of Apollo 13 where Tom Hanks / Jim Lovell is talking to his wife about the Moon landing and he says 'It's not a miracle, we just decided to go!'.  The first time I saw this in the cinema in 1995 I thought it sounded quite arrogant, but then as I've watched the film again over the years I realise the truth in it.

It was possibly the most amazing technological accomplishment in the history of mankind, it required years of work from thousands of people, and yet at the back of it, was a decision.  To go.  And everything else flowed out from that point.  I've read lots of books about the Moon landings over the years, and seen lots of films and documentaries, and I'm always amazed at the risks they were willing to take.  No wonder Tom Wolfe said they had the right stuff.

I'm no astronaut, not by a long way, but often when I set out at the beginning of a long journey I feel really nervous, and it's a nervousness that doesn't go away until the journey starts.  A 100 mile bike ride is a good example.  I pace around my house, feeling weary just from climbing the stairs to the bathroom, and I worry about the little things (and the big things) that could go wrong during the day.  And mostly the worst that could happen is that I might not have the right spares with me, and I might have to ring a taxi or a friend or get the train home.  And all day I will be attached to the road, so even if I can't ride a bike anymore, I will probably be able to ring for help or walk to the nearest village. 

The astronauts had backup, but they never had a safety net.  If the spaceship broke, they couldn't send for help.  They were riding around in something with 600,000 moving parts with no spares.  And before they could even get into that point of no return place, they had to sit on top of millions of gallons of fuel in the Saturn V rocket and be blasted into space.

I've been scared of doing things my whole life.  I think the worst I was was in my twenties.  I didn't really do anything.  I stayed in my comfort zone the whole time.  I let my wife make all the important decisions.  I was too shy to even go look at the cars we bought, and I only went to view the house we bought on Teesside, after she'd seen it first.  I didn't feel confident, so I ran away, and handed over the responsibility to someone else.  And the less I did, the less I could do.

And it's a constant battle, not to sink back into that Mavis Riley wishy washiness where I don't want to take a chance on doing things that are outside my normal routine.  And I've discovered in the last few weeks, whether it's making soup from scratch, or going on a bike ride, or working in a shop again, or doing some bike maintenance, the hardest part is always starting.  Once I'm underway, it doesn't seem such a big deal. 

When I gave my job up in September, after feeling squashed and fragile and timid and numb, I thought back to the me that went to Germany aged 18, to live and work in a foreign country, and I wondered what happened to me?.  Where had my courage, and my confidence gone?

Since I started writing this blog, it's caused me to look back over the main events of my life, and looking back, I realise that most of the things I feel the most pride and pleasure in involved taking a leap into the unknown.  Germany 1987, Italy 1997, Newcastle to Edinburgh 2005, Walney to Saltburn 2010.

And I'm feeling pretty scared now, because I've been invited to go to Delhi to join Dean for a while on the Indian leg of his round the world adventure.  And it's the kind of thing I normally say no to.  This time I want to say yes.  I've got friends who travel abroad all the time.  For them it's no big deal, but to me it is.

I was wavering for a while, and maybe I still am, so I thought that if I looked at some pictures of places in India that I might be going to, that would help, but it totally didn't.  I realised that's not how my brain works.  I don't think in places,  I think in people.  I'm sure it would be nice to see the Taj Mahal or the Himalayas, but the thing that made me want to go was the chance to go and have some fun with a friend, and where we were going to do it seemed incidental.  Because in every memory I've got, even the ones where I went to some amazing places, the most important thing I remember about all of them is who I was with.  It's the same with Germany 1983 and Germany 1985 and it's the same with all the cycle tours I've been on. 

This afternoon I re-watched An Idiot Abroad with Karl Pilkington, and most of the things he said about India, Ruth said she could imagine me saying.  Well, funny as Karl's grumpiness is, I'm hoping to go there with a bit more positive attitude.  I'm sure it'll be a culture shock but I'm hoping to try and embrace it.

For a couple of days now I've thought of some reasons to go, and some reasons not to, and I've had a lot of trouble making my mind up.

But in the end, I decided to go.

Soup in my socks - A thank you to Julia Darling

I went on a writer's workshop in 1998 run by the author Julia Darling.

She read some of her work out, and then we had to quickly write something and read that out.

What I wrote was mostly crap, but it did contain the phrase 'I've got soup in my socks' which Julia liked and she commented on it.  She also told me to 'Be Specific' when I'm writing and I try to do this all the time, even if it's only to say I'm having a Mars bar, rather than just saying I'm having a bar of chocolate, because a Mars bar is a specific thing and it can evoke memories.  

In my own case, I can remember living on a council estate in the seventies and a woman coming to the door who wanted me to eat 10 Mars bars a week and all I had to do was answer some questions about them.  It was great, except I've always regretted owning up to only having eaten 7 one week, because I had to give the other 3 back. 

A few years ago I was very sad to hear of the death of Julia Darling.  I only met her that once, but I was impressed with her enthusiasm and it made me feel good that a proper writer liked something I'd written, even if it was only one phrase.

The soup in the socks story wasn't a very interesting one. But it was true.  It was about knocking a tupperware container of leftover soup out of the fridge, and the main point of it was that even with socks full of soup there was also the beginnings of gratitude because it meant I didn't have to eat it.  Ruth has made some fantastic soups over the years, but this particular one was awful. I think it was full of carrots and swede.  It looked like you imagine sick would, except this stuff hadn't been eaten yet.

Anyway, it's a boring story, but thank you Julia for your encouragement.