Chapter 2

“Editing, selection, the need to balance that which is interesting with that which is relevant and cut out all the tedious happenstance.”  Douglas Adams, So Long, And thanks for all the fish, Chap 25. Pan Books, UK. 1984. ISBN 0330287001

If you are after detailed descriptions, glowing and rounded character development in all aspects of the books you read it may be prudent to go and find a heavier tome than this. Here we will mainly focus on relevant incident; indeed word and page counts are secondary and tertiary respectively in terms of the telling of this story, furthermore it is the telling itself that is of utmost concern.

“Life is what you make it”, “You can be anything that you want to be” etc. these are the cliches that career officers in schools and colleges dare to drop in to the laps of unsuspecting students embarking on the next stage of their education or career, unaware of the pressure they are putting on their charges. If I could be anything, I would be nothing, but that just isn’t an option, so I have to be something. I’ve been many things, none of which I’m entirely sure I wanted to be, more as a victim of circumstance rather than a free spirit. Then as you reach the aforementioned age when you realise you don’t in fact know it all and never will, you decide maybe it is time to be and do the things that you want to be and do; that is of course where circumstances allows. In this last regard at least I am fortunate. However, in achieving this, and typically of my spreading eggs amongst numerous baskets approach to life, I’ve decided to follow two avenues of being and doing. The first I have trained for over the last year and embark professionally upon next week; in this case the doing is preserving and conserving the natural world (or at least the bit around me). The being bit is that of a Park Ranger, a long held ambition. The second avenue has required a longer period of training, although much less focused, the doing in this case is writing and the being is that of me as a writer, which has always seemed like a splendid idea. With this second ambition underway for some time now, I feel it is necessary for it to catch up with the first, in terms of monetary reward for the effort put in, so I shall be hawking these words around in an effort to earn a vast and lavish living as a writer; whilst of course actually earning a modest sum for conserving and preserving the planet (or at least the bit around me). With this in mind, we should really get going.

A New Chapter...

In less than sanitary conditions it begins, then continues apace.

Should you acquire the gifts of grace, modesty and self awareness during your time as a human on this planet, at some stage in the aging process you will not only realise that you don’t know it all, but will also ascertain you never will. Whilst many might see this as the time to shy away from the world and let their place within it shrivel to a placid existence, it is actually at this time that one should start communicating that which you do know. After all, in realising that you do not know it all, you are at the least aware that you know something; furthermore with this wisdom in hand it is also likely that there are other things you have picked up along the way that it might be pertinent to share with others. Moreover, in the world I am fortunate enough to inhabit communication these days is laughably easy, with no more effort on my part that hitting a few buttons I find myself following instructions to write a book online, or I could alternatively be watching a video sent above ground by miners trapped 700m below, whilst the miners themselves are following football on their newly installed television. Of course in the time it’s taken me to knock out this paragraph my mobile phone has been buzzing away with text messages, the house phone has rung, I'm sure I’ve received several junk messages to my numerous email accounts, there have been countless blogs, status updates, uploads, a never ending tirade of scrolling nonsense/invaluable information along the ticker tapes of countless news services on television and online; an endless cycle of global communication registering somewhere in the billions minute by minute. In short, if you have something to say there really is no longer any reason for not saying it. The problem is of course does anybody want to read or listen to what we have to say and even if they do why should they care or take it on board. However, should the audience have any level of grace, modesty or self awareness they already know that no one knows it all, and that listening to what others do know is therefore probably a worth while task.

I’m not sure where this takes us to next, or indeed if you’ll agree that this is worthy of attention; this page just seems to have left me with a guilty feeling that there really is no excuse for not having spoken to my Dad (who is not trapped underground) in too long.