Unlike his likely reaction, which would've been spot on. Something subtle, like a baseball bat wrecking crew may have followed. It's always nice to have fond memories of fallen friends while getting on with living.
I mean, even for me, blue reindeer seems implausible. Reindeer are used to the cold, unlike me after the races at musselburgh.
Stu made it out with us and we met Kev whose horse would win at 5/1. Not quite 18/1 as the pogues would tell us but there were no NYPD choir on show so we settled for 5/1.
It was one of our few winners but it was great just to get out for all of us. At this time of year the temptation to forget the under armour and slouch on the couch is far too real.
Making it to musselburgh brought the fresh air as well as good nonsensical chat. Usually about a line of form that someone had spotted, or which was the grey one.
I was just as cold at McDiarmid park where the 5 goal Saints thriller saw the Paisley team marching home with the 2-3 victory after a retaken VAR penalty in added on time. Double VAR was mental. Brilliant to meet up with Jim, Angus and Graham. Simon and I also got our steps in, so my highest since treatment finished felt like I really was putting my best foot forward.
Unfortunately the next day I had the return of the postural hypotension and the dizzys. Luckily it was only a day.
I remember in my 40's as I was preparing to retire I had to do the calculations a few times before I finally felt able. It was all expenditure not income based. I didn't think how much do I need, it was more the case of how much did I not need.
The lifestyle changes people get gurus for were pretty simple for me. I could quit lunchtime drinking as I didn't need to run the office from the pub anymore. I don't think anyone ever asked me to run it from the pub, it was just my style. As a self confessed alcoholic it made it a lot easier to be decisive in dealing with idiots. It wasn't so much as Dutch courage it was just nice to be a tad less tolerant of whiny people.
While it was great it also cost a fortune like my smoking. I'm not sure I could smoke today at those prices but then I suppose I would've found a way, like going back to work just so I could smoke. It's so funny looking back at the choices I made for me, never mind the consequences for Jackie and Caitlin. The idea of having me around the house sober from time to time was quite bizarre, as was driving the car so often.
Within weeks of giving up work, or should I say receiving a handsome cheque to stop coming in, I realised I didn't know how I had the time to work. It was such a quick transition that my days were very full. I suppose being 46 helped and suddenly we were able to go wherever, whenever. There were no impediments owing to the latest halfwit crisis or fraudsters to hold us back. No trips to nonsense meetings and certainly no reason to explain why we needed to pay money back to people when we had accidentally stolen it.
I remember one of my last jobs was handing over a £500,000 fraud that we'd inadvertently perpetrated on our clients. It was only 2 years after finding the £600,000 fraud our dividends manager had done over the previous 11 years. Ours theft was 9 years ago when we forgot to pay some clients interest and they never noticed. Some got reimbursed before I left but many found their interest quietly retained, some compliance people just don't have a moral compass, it's a cultural thing. I was the wrong person for the city, not vice versa so it was no suprise when I applied for a job with our watchdog, the silence was deafening.
I'm sure I've bored on the subject many times about how it only took me 6 weeks to sort out the Newcastle office and finding the fraud was instrumental in this. Getting them new computers was instrumental in them finding the fraud. I always say it's about culture and who doesn't feel comfortable with a drink in their hand, well loads of people really. I laugh at that sentence now but it certainly enabled an openness for many to approach me direct and not feel obliged to go through some four or five layers of managerial chain. In the cafe, pub or on the football field, I'm just fat Al, a status free zone.
I hated bosses who needed to be involved. I always felt if they didn't trust their staff to bypass immediate or intermediate bosses and go to the top, they missed the point, which was the work. It's always been about the work for me. Anything else is ineffective, inefficient and lengthening the day.
When I handed over the fraud we'd perpetrated the guy was a halfwit. A total climber who said so nobody expects this money so there's no pressure on us to pay it out. Well, I mused to myself, my word is my bond clearly is a few decades ago. What's yours is mine was now vogue and the idea he'd disappoint bosses as he paid the money out clearly worried him more than any morality. I think between him and our compliance they slid the file into the bin. It took me seconds to realise leaving was a lucky escape. I left a poison pill to ensure they needed to check with me over one of the payments if they tried to make it. A month after I handed it over I still had no call so I left the message saying if you ever need any help just drop me an email. Of course it never happened.
Moving on from the Camino Can'cerre may not be quite as simple and partially because I think it's more life affirming to stay knowledgeable and possibly helpful. I'm jumping the gun as it's a while until the scan and then the results but learning how to live with a diagnosis was really well illustrated to me during these last few months. So many random thoughts, memories and even embarrassing moments where I thought you had to say "how you feeling", that's so squirmy even now.
I was reminded of the research professor from Vermont who I walked with in 2013. I met him about carrion de Los condes and chatted most of the way on the Meseta. I wanted to know how far fetched one of my story lines for Jose Archer's "Tommy turns cars". He put me straight. It was actually old hat and I laughed. The basic premis of Jose Archer's story involved her writing a sci fi book called the egg hatcher in the late 60's. It involved bible belt oil men who got women pregnant and then instead of abortion, stored fertilised eggs which meant the abortion issue was covered without upsetting the right to life nonsense. All about men's ingenuity, not. It was just the life was being delayed.
Anyway Jose is in her 70's walking the Camino and meets Tommy who turns cars, yes he's a car turner. One of the twists is some idiot stalks Jose because he'd done his PHD on her book. She tries to plqcate him saying nobody read it 40 years ago and it's still never been in reprint. "Tommy turns cars" is just my hobby, of the last 20 years and as I found out in 2013 hopelessly already out of date. My prof pal was brilliant and we talked about all the cancer cures his research unit had initiated only to find drug companies or insurers in the USA were constantly stalling them in the courts.
Many of the cures gave an extra 5 years to life critical diagnosis and a lifetime to some with 3-5 year life limiting diagnosis. I found it all jaw dropping and incredibly frustrating. We as a society we're doing this to ourselves. We had a long chat across the Meseta over days on it as he explained he was working with people in Europe, specifically Lund which made me chuckle in that small world Camino way.
Looking forward, one day I'll try and edit it down from the 100k+ words but when it became a trilogy I just thought, it's clear I've no hope of ever writing a book, I don't even read them. I just like to waffle.
It's like my random reaction to everybody trying to expose who is lying. The problem with so much of that who's telling the truth comes back to how you perceive things. What is your natural bias. I sat watching the goalkeeper come off his line trying to save a penalty that had been given by VAR getting involved in the battle of the Saints. The Perth crowd groaned as they'd already been disappointed by the penalty being given. The percentage who agreed with the adjudicator was probably quite small from the home fans. This is a natural bias. How high was an arm raised in the first instance being a natural bias. No case to answer it's all fake news. Well sometimes it's is fake news and sometimes it's just perception. Nowadays it's like Mr Kipling, exceedingly tasty but not really a story.
There was one recently on the BBC. My interpretation of it was 'my truth is I am happy to see the back of you but as an employer it is best we try and manufacture a story let's say....'. 'Lets not say you were a pain because you didn't fit into what we're doing with where we we're taking the new show so I will say that you are taking a leave you can see what you like....'
My truth is I felt forced out so I feel already compromised by not saying too much but I didn't agree with that statement so therefore I will repudiate it by taking a job immediately....' both are telling their truth and both their soft whine because they signed a compromise agreement that got the person of the payroll, the other got a bung for leaving a job they liked doing the way it was and some management has changed the style. If that's news well it's not really useful, that's been happening for years but it happens every time there's a change of the managerial guard. Huge compensation agreements signed as if these people are journalistic guardians. Foxes arguing over which hen house they get to gorge on us what I see. I digress again from that happy banter.
I love how word association of what I see around leads me from a Sainsbury's bag blowing in the air to Ricky's paper clips in parking meters during the 80s. His car ashtray was full of them. They were inserted instead of coins just to break them and his handily placed, "Meter Broken" note on the dash. The linkage was a tenuous one but in those days a bag went over the meter to say it was broken and that's how my memory works.
It's a bizarre thing the memory. Nowadays we have video evidence for so much we've relegated remembering to pre phones. When people say phones are bad for you they meant some sci fi 5G airwaves but it's a lot simpler. We don't need to prepare, read a map or any number of functions. The phone has taken a lot of thinking away from us and I don't just mean storing phone numbers. The brain has evolved over the existence of the species but I think it will shrink now, never mind soduko or wordle. They're puzzles measuring your decline. I'm writing this on my phone for viewing on a phone or laptop. I think I need to contemplate a printer. To be fair, my excuse is, it is for my memory that I'm writing. Just to remind myself where I went on any given day or week.
I often moaned about how all those council houses were sold in the 80's and yet far from a good capitalist reinvesting the proceeds in more product it was the era of asset stripping. It's a strange thing that capitalism got confused and evolved into asset stripping. There are firms that invent, move from development into production and constantly evolve but our financial world is bereft of it. Quiet theft is how the financial world works, ably demonstrated during the banking crisis, hiding in plain sight during COVID and now with a workers prime minister at the helm, stealing from old women. First they binned the cold weather payment to try and initiate another COVID cull that even Boris wouldn't have had the brass neck for and now this theft from the women who were due this pension money.
It seems the brass neck has never been stronger, and where there's brass there's cash. I can just see them toasting themselves in the Commons cut price bar. HOORAH!
A plague on us all.
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