Smudger Snippets: Looking Back
Created | Updated Feb 28, 2010
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Looking Back
I have been writing these for quite some time and I must admit I really have enjoyed writing them. Of course I have not made every edition of The Post, as sometimes real life gets in the way and I do not have the time to write them. Although I do not work these days, in fact I was signed off as registered as being disabled since I was fifty and that was eight years ago, where did those years go? Since then I have been looking after Mk2, my second wife, it's a personal nick name we have, to keep her on her toes, as it were. In fact she is basically housebound and can't go out at all during the winter months, as the cold air aggravates her emphysema and leaves her totally breathless.
She has also had a cerebral brain haemorrhage, which has left her weakened down her left side, so needs quite a lot of care. So it's probably just as well that I am here at home every day to look after her. We still have our sense of humour which shows itself when we have the odd good day, and having our grandchildren visiting us regularly keeps us both young. Over the years I have covered a vast array of subjects from way back when I was in the Royal Navy right up to the time I spent in the ambulance service, as well as covering all the jobs I have done in between, and there have been quite a few of them. When the work was going through a bad spell in the oil industry, I would take any kind of job just to keep the mortgage paid and my family catered for, and if the job was low paid, like taxi driving for example, I would work longer hours to make the money we needed.
Some folk have said that it has been an interesting life, which I suppose is right when you consider that I never did achieve what you would call a high education, in fact I left school at the age of 14 without any qualifications whatsoever— I think it was a mutual case of us giving up on each other. Not that I am boasting about that, as it did mean I had to cram a lot of studying to qualify and gain my welding inspection qualification certificate, along with other academic requirements that I needed to move up the ladder in the oil construction business world. Without them, I would not have been able to work overseas in such countries as Russia, Turkey and Egypt, on one particular contract I was in fact the quality control manager, for a Japanese company.
I suppose you could say I was lucky, as there is no way you could hold down such positions these days without having first gained a high level of education. Although, I must admit, I think that these days too much is made of education when it comes to some occupations in our modern world. I have found that common sense can be more helpful and practical than education, as I have seen this happen during my working life. Yet I do not want to go down that road in case I alienate myself from those of you who are reading this. I have worked with some highly educated people who were not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty, and others who have been so obnoxious and big headed that I have done my level best to avoid them. Besides, those types always seem to trip themselves up at some time in the job, exposing themselves for what they really are to the powers that be. I remember one engineer who I was working with, who told me that if you give that kind of people enough rope, they always end up hanging themselves.
The thing I like about writing Snippets is that I don't have to spend too much time describing places and characters, and can get into the depth of the story before it floats from my mind, and believe me that can happen far too often at my age. The major holdback for me is that I have not read any books in my lifetime, in fact the only one I ever did read all the way through was The Wooden Horse, and I had to read that for my English O level exam, which I actually failed!
Most of my reading since leaving school has been codes and specification manuals, which are boring to say the least. They can take around four pages to explain the simplest of things that could have been explained in a couple of sentences, as well as referring you to other codes of practices, which after reading the complete chapter quoted, turn out to be saying the exact same thing.
The main reason for that was my age: after all, a 13-year old male in those days was more interested in girls than any education exams that we had to sit at that time in our lives. That, along with the troubled home life I had, but I don't want to go down that road either. Suffice to say that I was obliged to leave our house and move into another building which my parents were renovating at the time, where I was to serve as overnight security and work force, being that the place was empty and only half completed.
Looking back at what I have written so far, it seems that there are a few roads that I have not been willing to walk down, but, on the other hand, some of the roads I have walked down were extremely interesting, and if I can remember any more about what happened while I was on those roads, I will do my level best to write them down so that I can continue to share them with you, in the hope that you will enjoy reading them.
