Thomas Edison famously replied, when asked what it was like to fail for the 1000^th time in his quest to develop an electric filament bulb, that he had simply found lots of ways that didn’t work (Interestingly the figure of 1,000 sometimes is quoted as 10,000; inflation? Then common sense kicks in – 10,000 times would be testing something three times a day for ten years!!!). For us mere mortals success and failure are part of life, the latter instrumental in bringing about change, I hope!

Rummaging in my three-drawer filing cabinet for some document, I saw a hanging file labelled “Certificates & Reports”. I don’t know about you but I am quite organised in filing important papers and such. This particular collection of papers spans decades of my life and some hadn’t seen the light of day for years; many deserve to be shredded!

For some reason I have kept my ‘National Registration Identity Card’ dated 31 August 1950 (I was 4!). It allowed me to have a Ration Card so I could buy some sweets (those black jacks, a farthing each, were favourites).

In an academic sense I am very average. I didn’t particularly take to school work but was made aware how important it was to one’s success or failure in life. In amongst the pieces of paper there were those little slips recording my examination results. There seemed to be quite a lot as I made several attempts to pass enough …… but the one that bugged me the most seemed to be Chemistry. For some reason I needed this at ‘O’ Level to add to my science ‘A’ Levels for entry to university. I failed it at school, sat it twice at the officer training academy and finally got my pass.

The Chemistry lecturer, whose name escapes me, had a passion for betting money on horses. If we hadn’t spent so much time discussing the tips, runners, form and betting odds for the 3:15pm at Cheltenham, for instance, I might have passed first time! He seemed to think the names of all the winners could be deduced from the racing pages of the Daily Telegraph and instructed us accordingly, when we should have been discussing whether common salt was Na Cl or why CH₄ + 2O₂ equates to CO₂ + 2H₂O; I never knew!! I judged his success at gambling on the horses by his fifteen year old car and the rather moth-eaten cardigan he wore.

I scribbled a little about university in PC 139 and can only assume that I was given my Civil Engineering degree for my reasonable attendance record. You will know the mnemonic POET’s Day relating to Friday – ‘Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday’. At Shrivenham some students left early, missing some pithy lecture on concrete for example. On a number of occasions the lecturer, who we had for the first period on a Monday, would declare that the Monday class would be ‘private study’. Those who weren’t there to hear this turned up as scheduled on Monday; ah!

Classical music and its part in my life was the topic for PC 109; how I had given up learning to play the piano and took up the trumpet. According to The Royal School of Music, on 7^th December 1962 I took my ‘Wind Instruments Grade V (Higher)’. Although I scraped a pass, I didn’t impress the examiner during the Aural Test – “seemed to have no idea of pitch and timing” and my ‘Scales & Arpeggios’ had “only fair fluency”!! As I am almost tone deaf, I was surprised to be successful but thank my lucky stars I persevered as, although no Alison Balsom (see note) it gave me a life-long love of classical music, and particularly the music of Sibelius.

Entry into Sandhurst was via the Regular Commissions Board at Westbury in Wiltshire where, aged 17, I spent three days undergoing assessments. I passed; the rather faded report says my ‘reserved personality may have something to do with the fact he comes from a broken home (!!)’ with a forecast ‘the boy might develop into a useful officer’. Ah! Such confidence! The term ‘broken home’ is rarely used these days, such is the acceptance that marriages don’t always survive. Of course the good thing is if you start somewhere at the bottom, the only way is up and I left Sandhurst and my officer training with a couple of prizes! Hey!

Officers were graded once a year in a ‘Confidential Report’ (CR). The ‘pen picture’ was always a challenge, either reading your own or writing one for one of your subordinates. I never met anyone who knew to whom they referred, but two anecdotal comments of officers always amuse: “I would not breed from this officer” and “His men follow him not out of duty but out of curiosity.” These CRs were delivered by your immediate boss, in the formal atmosphere of his office; your subsequent career depended on a good mark!! I have reread some of mine, copied unofficially by a friendly Chief Clerk and 18 years of my life goes by in a flash. Suffice to say my entry into Staff College confounded those early predictions of being average.

Life is such a lovely journey and we make choices all the way; if you don’t think you have a choice, think again. Being fairly casual of heart, I have faith and trust in others to do what they are meant to do. Sometimes I fall flat on my face! One such occasion was in Germany in 1974 when my unit had some super important inspection of our tactical expertise. The Artillery Firing Tables had not been amended (not my job!), a Command Post caught fire and we failed as spectacularly as possible! I had been selected to be a possible aide-de-camp to the most senior British military officer in Germany and I left the exercise early to travel 100 miles to have lunch with him and his wife (General Sir Harry & Lady Tuzo). My failures followed me, others had serious second thoughts and before I had even picked up a knife or fork I was recalled. What if I had succeeded? Different path, different journey; just the way it was, success or failure? Nah! Just life! We were retested, passed with flying colours and nothing more was said.

My military service is so long ago now that it’s overshadowed by my twenty five years of efforts to improve other’s lives and this period is littered, I judge, with much success. But all these events and experiences are in the past; I understand them for what they are and how my current behaviour is inevitably coloured by them.

Richard 25^th January 2019

Note: Alison Balsom OBE is an English Trumpet soloist, arranger and ‘spokesperson for the importance of music education’.

A sucker for the popular, on Monday we decided to go and watch the award-winning film ‘The Favourite’.  My knowledge of English history isn’t bad, but details of Queen Anne’s reign (1702-1714) have somehow escaped me. Now I know that she was bisexual, responsible for the union of England and Scotland, and looked like Olivia Colman. That’s right isn’t it? Having plenty of time before the film started, I left earlier than necessary so I could renew my International Driving Permit (IDP) at the Post Office.

On the bus into Brighton it occurred to me I should organise lunch with my dear friend Jon. Reaching for my iPhone I texted him, asking when he was free in the next couple of weeks. With an affirmative answer for week one, we then focused on whether Monday or Thursday was better. I wrote ‘poss Monday 14’ and said I would confirm when I got home. Not wanting to forget, I then went to my iPhone diary to add this. It was extremely disconcerting to find that the person who lives in my phone had been reading the text exchange and had already put into my schedule ‘poss lunch Jon’. Now that is very scary! Maybe I should call it AI?

At Churchill Square I went down into the bowels of WH Smiths, the national newsagent chain established in 1792, to go to the in-store Post Office. (See note 1) It had had a make-over since I was last there. There is a self-service area where you could weigh, determine the correct postage, and then dispatch your packet or parcel, a ‘digital transactions’ booth, screened by a curtain, and a queue! Well, when isn’t there a queue in a post office?

It was the reason these scribbles came into life, to avoid a queue in a Rio de Janeiro post office to buy some stamps. Brighton queues are of course fascinating for the diversity of their participants, but only to those who don’t live here; we get inured! Ten people in front; I look at my watch – time enough before the film starts I reckon.

The city’s diversity stretches to the staff. There are two counters; at one a chap in his 50s with well-cut greying hair and a goatee beard which is long enough to be plaited into a little rat-like tail, and next to him a man in his 30s who must have been to a local Turkish barber where, halfway through the haircut, he got up and left, leaving the left side of his head almost shaved and the hair on the other side long. I am not sure whether this look will catch on. The queue moves forward and I find myself in front of Mr Half-half. He looks at me as if I am a waste of time and glares questioningly; a ‘Good afternoon, how can I help you?’ was too much!

“I would like to like to renew my International Driving Licence please, to be effective from the end of this month.”

His body language suggests he’d rather be in Outer Mongolia and his sigh could have blown a house down. He gets up, rummages on some shelf a long way away, and comes back with a box of IDP forms.

“Where are you going and do you have your UK Driving Licence and a photograph?”

“Brazil” I answer, pushing a photo and my licence under the window. “And here’s my old licence if that helps?”

Why did I do that? I could have just given him what he asked for and would have been out of there within 10 minutes.

He starts filling out the form, then notices that the photo I have given him is the same as the one in my expiring IDP.

“It says ‘recent’ photo. This one is a year old.”

“My face hasn’t changed in 12 months” I say, pushing my visage against the glass.

“It says, recent and this is not recent. The rules is the rules.”

Purists of our language will know immediately that this should have been ‘the rules are the rules’ but I don’t feel I would gain any advantage if I point this out to him.

“Go and get a new photograph.”

I am about to get angry, realise that this will gain me nothing and that it’s better to just let it go. I turn and walk off to the nearby Photo-Me booth, conveniently located about 30 metres away. It’s occupied. I wait, looking at the advertising on the side of the cubicle and notice the variations of print form; beside me cartons of rolls of half-price Christmas wrapping paper almost become tempting! The dark blue leggings and little ankle boots visible under the booth’s drawn curtain suggest the occupier is female, but you never know in Brighton!

“This photograph does not comply. Please check your settings and try again.” The computer-generated voice tells them they have got it wrong. She tries again …… and again. In the older booths there used to be a little metal stool whose height you could adjust to ensure your eyes were in the correct place. Here there’s a large cerise rubber ball and the machine adjusts itself. The anodyne voice continues to say that the photograph is not compliant ….. and the woman is getting frustrated. Nothing compared to the chap, me (!), outside, who’s looking at his watch and wondering whether he will make the curtain up in the cinema. Obviously his expressions of exasperation become loud enough, the curtain is ripped back and the woman escapes, unsuccessful, and disappears, muttering to herself and throwing me a dirty look.

 The old IDP photo (Jan 2018) compared with today

Five minutes later I am back at the end of the queue in the Post Office with five copies of a ‘recent’ photo. Fortunately Goatee Beard and Mr Half Half are busy and I present myself to the next free counter, manned by a young woman (Ed. That could be ‘womaned by a young woman’ in these ridiculously PC times, could it not?) with yellow-streaked purple hair and a few studs. She’s only worked for the post office for 9 months and has never done an IDP for Brazil (IDP1926 – see note 2) so she’s delightfully keen to get it right and, very quickly, we are done and dusted, without any fuss; I pay my £5.50 and head off to the cinema.

Simple observations about C21st life.

Richard 12^th January 2019

Notes

1. Despite this digital age, WH Smiths sells magazines, newspapers and books. There are some 2800 different magazine titles published annually in print form in the UK.
2. It’s rumoured that UK citizens will need an IDP to drive in Europe after we leave the EU. I hope it’s from the same rumour factory that says post-Brexit flights will be unable to land in Europe.