As Others See Us

Brett is home tonight and it’s kind of thrown my head off. I keep thinking it’s Friday and I don’t have to get up tomorrow, when in fact it’s not and I do.

I’m having to get up earlier than usual to make it to my course on time, which sucks. That said, the course is in the City about five minutes from Aldgate East which means I can get on the Tube at Wimbledon and have a seat all the way – thus missing most of the horrors of rush-hour commuting in London – as it’s all on the same branch of the District Line.

The course itself isn’t quite as stimulating as I’d hoped it might be. I’d never realised before how Microsoft courses can be both wishy-washy high-level and drowned in detail at the same time. Nevertheless, I am getting stuff out of it and, when I’m not, I can put the time to good use pondering how to apply it all at work when I get back.

Chorus last night was pretty poorly attended and felt a bit like Groundhog Day, as we kept going round and round on the same four songs, rather than just spending a lot of time on each of them. I wasn’t that bothered though as, because of the course, I’d got to Camden in plenty of time, had a coffee, read my book, had dinner with Rich C, John W & David S and gotten to the hall in plenty of time so I was feeling pretty de-stressed.

Tonight I was partly catching up on work emails, partly reading and partly watching Dr. Who Confidential. Also had a couple of phone calls; one from my mother, to catch up on the news… until we realised we didn’t really have any new news that we hadn’t exchanged during various recent visits; the second from Janice N someone I know from my teenage years but haven’t spoken to in ages.

I knew she read my blog but in my casual habit of uploading my life onto the web, I’d rather forgotten how some of the things I write about can affect other people too. She didn’t know that Dave Schofield was dead until she read it in my blog, which is probably not the best way to find out that someone you knew is gone. I think it knocked her sideways a little, in much the same way that I was kind of groping for coherence when I heard.

We also talked a little about days of yore and I got another unexpected glimpse into how people saw me when I was younger. Janice seems to remember me as something of an oddball, likely set on the road to being a pirate or some other outrageous type; a curious contrast to Chris’ recollection of me as the guy who was living an average life until he broke the mould by going off to University and never coming back. [Actually, on writing that, I realise that the two views aren’t actually that dissimilar; one seeing the potential and the other seeing the actualisation.]

I should survey all my old friends to find out what they thought of me as a teenager! I never realised I was such a rebel. Then again, maybe with having the gay thing in the back of my head, being the odd-one-out in other areas didn’t seem such a big deal really.

Hmm… the more I write this blog, the more I think I should go spend time with a psychologist to try and get a handle on what makes me tick!