15 of 50

In some ways this newsletter is a little bit of a journal and diary. It is afterall reflections from the past 50 years. I’ve kept a “diary” in one form or another since I was quite young. I started it after reading the The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively. The “hero” of the story is James Harrison who as well as unwittingly releasing the poltergeist of the title also keeps a “personal notebook”. In it he records such things as ‘financial situation’, ‘weather’, ‘food’, and ‘future plans’. My young brain at the time obviously thought that keeping a similar record would be a good idea, and well it stuck for over 40 years.

Now many of the early volumes of mine are thankfully lost, just as well I suspect. I don’t remember what I’d written but I suspect it probably wasn’t the sort of thing that I’d want to read again or for anyone else to for that matter. The emotional outpourings of a teenager are probably never great and maybe just better confined to a silent log.

I do have most of the more recent ones though. The really recent ones are to hand and others are in a box in the loft.

They come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

I generally, but not always, write in fountain pen these days but don’t always stick to that. I’ll use whatever notebook I fancy or have to hand when I’m starting the next new one. I generally fill each one before moving on to a new one, unless they get damaged in some way. One or two have succumbed to coffee or ink spillages over the years and have been retired from service early as a result. I write something most days even if it’s just a log and other days I’ll write quite a bit more. I might use a specific book for a particular period, like a holiday rather than risk losing a more comprehensive volume while travelling (there aren’t any recent volumes of those mind you).

I rarely seem to go back and look through them though. I did recently review those notes from the period of the first covid lockdown in 2020. A year on I got those notebooks out to a weird sense of deja-vu as if things hadn’t really changed all that much. (I’m thinking of doing the same thing again this year and looking back over the past two years).

So far I haven’t used them as source material for any of these posts and I’m not sure whether I will. I have quite a list of things that I could write newsletters about even before going to look at other material. Then again, maybe there are some good things in them that I have forgotten – who knows?

In some ways they are old friends, or places where I’ve done some thinking about something that was troubling me or I needed to work out my thoughts on a particular topic. Some tend to be more work related and others more personal. For this reason I generally have more than one volume on the go at any one time.

They are a record of my life but not one that I ever expect anyone to ever read, and although I’ve never thought about what I’d want to happen to them when I’m gone, I don’t imagine anyone doing anything more than consigning them to the recycling. That said, I do enjoy reading other people’s diaries, at least those that are published as such to be read, although I suspect some were similarly never intended to be read in that way. Did Thomas Merton or John Muir think that someone would posthumously take their diaries and publish them for the world to read? I’m glad they did, but I doubt that perhaps was ever their intention when committing pen to paper.

These words here are those that I choose to share, but there are many pages in my diaries even to this day that I probably wouldn’t. Then when I’m gone what do I care?

14 of 50

“Be Prepared” – the motto of the scouting movement is as a pretty good place to start now as it was back when I was 9 or 10 years old. I never wanted to be a Cub until I was one and then I’m not sure that I really wanted to leave. I think in part that was to do with the inspirational “adults” that ran the pack I was a member of and that the learning we were doing was always fun. Looking back I’m sure that I learnt just as much messing about at camps, in the woods and in the village hall on a Monday evening than I did at school at the same time.

We went on Summer camps to all sorts of places with side trips at weekends to London and other places that were of interest. These were always more than just places to go. Whilst we might take a tour of London at night to see the lights of Piccadilly Circus or visit HMS Belfast on The Thames, we’d also do the more wacky things like going and standing in the middle of Tower Bridge with a foot on each side of the bridge split waiting for a routemaster bus to go by so that we could feel the bridge roadway move, and hope that they didn’t pick that moment to open the bridge to let a large vessel pass underneath.

I’m not sure how scouting has changed today I suspect with safeguarding and health and safety it might not be quite the same – not that that’s a bad thing – but I think we were probably generally safer then than now, which is a bit of an indictment on the modern world. We all had our share of grazed knees, cuts and bruises and I’ve still got a couple of scars that were as a result of things that ‘happened at Cubs’.

Regardless of those changes I still do some things today in a certain way that I learnt at Cubs; lighting a campfire, making a bed, using a map and compass and many more. Those lessons are hard-wired into my brain, because they were taught in a fun way rather than through a strict academic approach.

Thanks for reading.

Were you ever a Cub, Scout, Brownie, Guide or something similar ? What do you remember of those experiences? Leave me a comment, I’d love to know.

13 of 50

Some of my friends are made from paper and contain a magical ingredient. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t name all of them but many hold a special place or memory.

One of the things I wanted to make sure I did this year was revisit some of those old friends. A few are numbers in my list of 50 posts, so I’ll also get to talk about them as and when I get to those numbers.

One in particular I’m keen to get to is J.R.R Tolkein’s The Hobbit. I reckon I was around 9 or 10 when I first read this book.

At our school we had a library where we could ‘check-out’ books and take them home to read. We were only allowed one book at a time as the library was relatively small, but one summer over the long six week holiday I managed to check out The Hobbit, and because of the holiday I had it for the full six weeks.

I used to stay in bed in the mornings and read. Sometimes a few pages and sometimes a chapter. I’d savoured it, and it was like it is for many people, my gateway drug to the world of Middle Earth, The Lord of the Rings and all the associated tales and stories.

It didn’t make me a big reader of fantasy but I do have a small collection of Tolkein books. Strangely though I haven’t reread The Hobbit for what feels like a long time. I have a battered old paperback copy but to treat myself for my birthday I bought a copy as close to the that original ‘school’ version as I could find. It’s quite a beautiful thing with colour plate and black and white illustrations drawn by Tolkein and hardbound with a paper dust jacket.

I’m also waiting for the warmer summer days and my plan is to try and read it the same way if I can, or at least on a few occasions. I might have to forego the staying in bed reading as I’m not sure the dogs will let me get away with that but perhaps sitting in the garden after a dog walk with a coffee for an hour before I start my working day?

I’m guessing that all sounds quite elaborate, but I think there is something to rekindling the memories of reading the book that is more than just the words on the page. If you think for a moment about a favourite book, I’m pretty sure you’d be able to tell me a story about what was happening in your life at the time you were reading it. I know I can do this for quite a few of my favourites, and I think that perhaps your subconscious captures this as much as anything else.

Perhaps if you too have a similar story about a book that you loved you’d like to share it in the comments? I’d be interested to read about the books that have touched you and the backstory that goes with them.

Thanks for reading.

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.