stillkickin’

So, you may wonder, why does he call his blog stillkickin’? Firstly because I am and secondly because it’s taken a long time to get here - with a few bumps and bends on the road.

Everyone has a set of values by which they live their lives and on a social level, they are pretty universal. But over the years I’ve evolved a series of guidelines which I feel everyone might benefit from:

stillkickin’s laws

1. Overestimate everyone – many will eventually disappoint
2. You cannot fail if you do not try (corrollary: you cannot succeed if you do not try)
3. There is a difference between being  beaten and losing
4. A stab in the back is better than a gash in the throat
5. If you’ve got it, rub their noses in it
6. A grudge loves a memory, memory loves a good grudge
7. Believe in an afterlife; you may need to bring a grudge with you
8. Goalposts rarely move; it is peoples’ perception of them which changes
9. But the bar can always be raised
10. Know the law – you may need to break it one day
11. Revenge is an expression of weakness in all but those who are also prepared to destroy themselves in its pursuit; in which case it is an expression of stupidity
12. Nothing is perfect and neither are you
13. You will make mistakes
14. Know when you’ve made then and know how to admit them
15. To err is human, to forgive is a matter of personal preference
16. There is opportunity in even the most dire situation
17. You will never hit bottom
18. Education is often mistaken for intelligence
19. Follow procedure, but know also when to throw the book away
20. The weight of the world is 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level

boy racers

Just recently, I got away to Cornwall for a week. I love Cornwall for a variety of reasons – not least of which being that it reminds me of home. But there seems to be something extra about Cornwall which I just cannot put my finger on - and there you have it: of five yearly holidays, three of them have been to Cornwall.  I love the place.

Anyway, on this recent trip, we went back to the Boscastle area and having been there before, I was keen to revisit a number of places – one of which is a large hotel which in design, is at the same time, both loosely and largely based on a castle. The last time I was there, I felt something about the place which I couldn’t quite put my finger on. This time, I put my finger straight onto it’s ulnar artery and felt the strong but unmistakeable pulse of Scientology!

And what, you may ask, does this have to do with boy racers? Well, it’s a little bit of a lateral thinking kind of story, so read on…

In this country, there is a breed of person called the boy racer and one of his main pursuits is modifying a car the size of a matchbox so that it looks like a car the size of a matchbox which has been in a high-speed collison with a Dalek. Then, when he has completed this undertaking, he spends the rest of his time getting from A to B as quickly as possible. Which is all well and good providing he has to travel in a straight line to accomplish this. I reckon (and this is a very loose and ready reckoning) that on a ten mile trip, a boy racer will spend approximately seven miles slowing down; more, if there are bends in the road.

So with that in mind, while driving home some weeks ago, I spotted one in my rear view mirror slowing down to negotiate a bend. I had my family in the car, so my usual hobby of playing with the boy racers had to be deferred. Sure enough though, when the road straightened out, he overtook me at a speed something considerably in excess of the signed speed limit.

And I know this is wrong on many levels, but as he went past, I distinctly remember thinking, “I hope you crash, you idiot!”.

So I watched him belch and bark his way into the distance and watched his brake lights come on for the next bend. (Here’s a driving tip for all boy racers: In your car, there is a circular thing on which you place your hands. It’s called a steering wheel and it makes your front wheels turn left or right. You need to turn it to go around bends!)

And as I came around the bend, I expected to see him struggling to accelerate away into the distance following the enormity of the challenge which he had just faced: getting around a bend in a moving vehicle. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sight of skirts and dams all over the road and clouds of steam billowing from a now, disabled and crashed car and a rather sheepish boy racer stepping from the car with body language that suggested he was sorry his faux pas hadn’t also created a crater for him to crawl into while waiting for the police and low-loader to arrive.

Now, somewhere in the reams upon reams of legislation, it is written that motorists should stop at the scene of an accident. Nevertheless, I didn’t because I was armed with the following two pieces of hard fact:

1. I am not a Scientologist – they are the only ones who can help at the scene of a car crash
2. I didn’t have Tom Cruise’s phone number to dial for advice, as he’s the one who imparted the preceding pearl of wisdom to the world at large.

So instead, I kept going and laughed the rest of the way home.

And so, back to Cornwall…behind the hotel is a precipitous cliff which, on the whole, I would avoid going too close to in the interests of personal safety and continued existence. But let’s say I did and took a long and flailing tumble over the edge…at the bottom, I would lie broken and battered but secure in the knowledge that a squad of Scientology’s elite (a kind of Thetan Force Recon or SAS, if you will) would soon be rappelling down to provide comfort and solace – if not succour.

They’re the only ones who can help, you know!