12 of 50

Hello again, and a particular welcome to new subscribers, thanks for signing up 😃.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit this week about work and how I ended up where I am currently. It’s quite a convoluted story, so I won’t tell the whole thing, but like many things it started out with the inevitable question

So. What do you want to be when you grow up?

I don’t remember ever having a consistent answer to this question, although probably I would have said, “A vet”, or something similar. For a while this was what I wanted to do. I enjoyed the sciences at school, and was good at them (compared to other topics). I also had (and still do) a love for the outdoors, wildlife, nature, etc.

My downfall with this plan came, when I realised that I was allergic to certain animals, particularly long haired cats, and my thinking had to change. I still followed the science path (biology in particular) and eventually came out with my honours degree.

Ultimately in the world of work, I had a number of different jobs over the years (which will be separate posts at some point), and most had some relevance to my qualifications and love of the natural world/outdoors.

Mostly I followed what I was good at, nudged by what I loved, and I am where I am now in part because of that. However I think I followed the what I’m good at bit, perhaps too far. I wouldn’t say I love what I do in terms of the job that pays the bills. There’s a part of me that thinks at a certain point I made a poor choice in terms of a job (although it was probably the right decision at the time) and settled for something that I thought I wanted rather than what I needed.

Now no decision is necessarily a bad decision because ultimately there are things that I have done and have that wouldn’t have been possible if I’d made a different choice at that time. But the balance between good Vs. love would look different.

My recent thinking has been about whether I need to redress that balance in some way, and maybe I should be following what I love nudged by what I’m good at. I still need to balance the need to earn money against that, and in some ways I think that you shouldn’t necessarily use what you love to be you main source of income. It’s too easy to start to resent your “job”. How many times have you moved jobs partly because you were fed up with what you were doing? I know I’ve done that at least once. If your main source of income is doing what you love can that too turn sour?

If I could have some of those decisions again, I would make different decisions with hindsight, but those lessons can also inform the direction going forward. A balance between good vs. love seems key to me, and maybe now is the time in life to focus more on the latter.

Thanks for reading, if you have any thoughts on this I’d love to hear them in the comments.

11 of 50

You’ve probably noticed that I try to include at least one photo in these newsletters each week. Some of them even relate specifically to the story I want to tell.

I’ve been taking photographs since I was a boy. I can’t remember how old exactly but I started out with a little 110 Kodak camera that you flipped the cover open and it became a support to hold the camera steady with. I took a lot of photographs with that camera. Many of them have been lost to time, but I am slowly working my way through a couple of large boxes of prints and slides that I found when clearing my parents house that contain some of them, and many of the ones that my Dad took.

It was him that got me interested in photography and taught me the basics. He was interested in many things throughout his life but photography was probably one of the most constant.

I graduated to an SLR camera when I was a little older and that evolved into a number of different cameras over time. I probably got into digital photography around late 2002 and again that has evolved, and was my main focus for many years until early 2020.

With impeccable timing as Covid started to take off (the two are not related it was a coincidence). I thought I’d go back to film for a bit and asked for some rolls of film for my birthday.

I actually received them a little early, but after having loaded up my camera and exposed about a third of a roll, the first lockdown hit and my rate of taking new pictures of any kind slowed. Eventually I finished the roll and got them developed, and an old hobby started to snowball once again. I experimented a bit with infrared film and a number of different cameras, including ones gifted to me by a friend, who heard me talk about getting back into film photography.

I still get a buzz from waiting for the roll to be developed and getting the images back.

I’d estimate that now – phone pics aside – my photography is roughly half-and-half split between film and digital. I enjoy both, but using film again has also taught me to experiment more with my digital cameras too. Looking at the emulsions used in film and trying to recreate some of the style with digital images.

In some ways I think this is a lifetime hobby, but I am conscious of my own health and mortality. There is a predisposition to a certain eye condition on my Dad’s side of the family, and ultimately this may result in my not being able to continue with photography and some other things. However for the now I am enjoying myself.

10 of 50

This is the last of the reader selected posts, thanks to Karen for picking N°9.

This post also marks the 20% mark of Fifty From Fifty. I hope you’re enjoying these posts. If you are please consider sharing them on your social media.

There are very few periods in my life when I/we didn’t have pets. When I was at university (but there were pets at home who I saw during holidays and ‘reading weeks’) and when I first owned my own home (but there was plenty of pet sitting done). So outside of that I don’t remember a time when there weren’t pets.

There were cats, dogs, a tortoise, guinea pigs, and tropical fish, some I have clearer memories of than others. For example I know we had a tortoise when I was very little, but I’m not sure how long my parents had already had it for or what ultimately happened to it.

My Dad kept tropical fish for a time and I remember going with him to the fish shop (not the sort that also served chips) and looking at the tanks and tanks of brightly lit fish that lined the walls. The neon tetras and other flashes of colour that were in my limited field of view.

As I got older guinea pigs were introduced. Two small white squeaky blobs – Starsky and Hutch (can you guess what we were watching on tv at the time?)

They seemed to live for years, and my job was to make sure that they had food and water and that their cage was cleaned out regularly. In the warmer months it lived in the garden but when it got too cold, they came in to our little lean-to conservatory.

A constant during this whole period was our cat, Soots. He lived to a ripe old age, but strangely other than the photo at the top I have no pictures of him. He was a proper ‘witches cat’, jet black and like many cats quite aloof, he mellowed with age though. We also ‘inherited’ our next door neighbours cat when she died. She was an old cat who slept for a lot of the day, only really coming out to eat and use her little tray. She could be affectionate but only on her terms.

Now ask me today what sort of a person am I when it comes to animals and I would without hesitation say a dog-person. If the world is split between cat-people and dog-people and all the shades in between then I am definitely of the canine variety.

There have been six dogs in my life. Three that we’ve had from shelters and three as puppies.

The first was a rescue. When I was deemed old enough, and after a lot of pestering as to whether we could get a dog, and when my parents working arrangements were such that there was someone around for a good proportion of the day.

We got Crystal from an RSPCA shelter. She’d been mistreated and rescued by them at less than six months of age, she had many fears when we first got her. She lived many years between me being 8 and 23. We walked many miles together and went many places.

After Crystal came Jessie and Lacey, both rescues from the RSPCA and who came together because they’d been living together previously.

Then came Sparky and a few years later Wilson.

When Sparky passed away we got Ruby.

Ultimately I think I have learnt more about life and emotions from having pets – particularly dogs – than from anything else in my entire life. Ultimately I’m in the privileged position to have had so many pets but they are/were such sources of inspiration and happiness that even now I still mourn the ones that are no longer here.

Wilson is getting on in years now and isn’t well. We have many trips to the vets and he has a lot of medication. Ultimately I suspect he is on borrowed time, but no one really knows how long that might be.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve also thought about when the right time might be to not have another dog. I can’t tell you when that is, other than not yet.

Thanks for reading.

9 of 50

Thanks to Hilary who chose ‘42’ from my posts list. Sadly this isn’t one about the meaning of life, the universe and everything, but hopefully you’ll enjoy the tale just the same.

I think I was probably about 3 or 4 years old when this happened and although I remember it quite well, I suspect the memory of what happened is a little fuzzy around the edges. (I’ve since found some old slides from that night and they’re date stamped June 1976, so I would have been 4)

I was young enough that I still went to bed early, probably not all that long after having my ‘tea’ but on this particular night I can’t have been in bed all that long when my Mum came and woke me. “Come and have a look at what’s outside.”

It was a warm summer evening and still plenty light enough and as we went into the back garden I could hear a roaring noise. At the end of our garden and seemingly descending into it was a hot-air balloon.

It was so low in the sky that it appeared vast to my little eyes, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Thinking back on it now I suspect that the pilot was in quite a bit of trouble and was trying to gain height before he ran into the row of trees between our neighbour and next-door but one neighbours gardens, or worse the Portsmouth to London railway line. He was very low, and applying a lot of burner to try and provide lift to the ballon. Of course I was oblivious to this and thought for a while that the balloon was trying to land in our garden.

The commotion had bought most of the neighbors out into their gardens, as this was not something that was seen everyday and probably better than whatever was on telly.

Almost imperceptibly to start with, the balloon did gain height, and with the prevailing breeze missed the trees. One of the neighbors convinced my Dad (I suspect he didn’t need much convincing really) that they should follow the ballon and see where it came down. The two of them set off in his car with my Dad bringing along his camera. I managed to find the box of slides that he took that night and have added them throughout this post.

After the ballon was out of sight I was tucked back into bed, but the following morning I was asking a lot of questions of my Dad about what happened. They had followed the balloon a few miles and it hadn’t been able to gain much height and came down in a field not all that far away and in the next but one village. Thinking about it now I suspect that probably the pilot was trying for the fields not far from our house and had misjudged it a bit and had to gain some height and ultimately skipped over those fields before coming down a few miles further on.

The landing of the balloon had drawn quite a crowd, again probably because it wasn’t that common a sight.

For my young mind it was all very exciting, and not something you see everyday or that close up. I don’t think I’ve been that close to a hot air balloon since to be honest.

They still fascinate me to this day, the thought of riding on nothing but a sack of hot air, at the whim of the weather and prevailing wind in particular. I can’t say that I’m particularly keen to ride in one though, I think I prefer watching them rather than being an active participant!

Thanks for reading.