An interesting Compliment?

An Interesting Compliment?

I've been meaning to do this for a few days, and finally got round to it.

Recently a close friend of mine gave me a very nice compliment (and not for the first time now that I think about it), about my writing, about how much she enjoyed it. I think she was referring to some of my more spiritual journey stuff, rather than my other general witterings (like this LOL!).  Of course, I was just pleased to know that anyone could be bothered to read them in the first place.

However, there is a good reason why I found this compliment particularly interesting. You see that I doubt that most of my teachers at school, or even my lecturers at horticulture college in my early adulthood, would ever of thought someone would say anything like that about my writing.

And why is that? I hear you all say. I hear you ALL say? Well, at least some of you thinking it! Well it is because as a child back in the 60s I was in what 'we', as in the ones in it, called the 'Dunces Class'. I then, not at all surprisingly, failed my 11+, so was designated to be one of the 'workers' rather than 'thinkers' or 'leaders', and was put back into a normal class; but languished near the bottom, due to my lack of English and Maths skills.  I left school with only Grade 3 C.S.E. or equivalent), Maths and English, and only got on an OND Horticulture course due to my O'Levels in Biology, History, Geography and Geology; subjects which I did quite well in because I was VERY interested in them, and I am sure that if I had had better English skills I would have excelled in them! (The Geology was an unusual one, done for the 1st time at our school, and at the time, even with my bad English I could probably have done an A-Level in it! Spot the dinosaur mad little boy! And I could of done just as well in History and Biology if it had been more about the things I was really into; like the English and American Civil Wars, or Birds and Butterflies!).

Now! One of the main things that held me back was my terrible handwriting, although teachers and lecturers, when they mentioned it, at least said that they could read it. Well they could read it when I put a big effort into trying to make it readable, but that took me a hell a lot of effort and concentration, and meant that I couldn't get everything I wanted to say down quickly, if at all. Of course, any of you that know me wont be surprised that I had trouble writing down EVERYTHING I wanted to say, as you will say that I never shut up! But that is because my mind is FULL of multi-dimensional, multi-subject thoughts, ALL at once! I often have cross subject thoughts that most with more linear minds find hard to follow, and converting my thoughts into a more linear format is one of the hardest things for me to do. (I am sure that a lot of you are already ahead of me in guessing what all this is leading to, but it is because I have to put it into a linear format that I HAVE to behave myself and suppress my omnipotence for you mere mortals! LOL!).

The other area of communication that caused me frustration was my artwork. I loved and still love it! Just creating. But at the time I would get so frustrated because I physically couldn't make what I wanted to express.  I wanted to do photo perfect fine art, but just couldn't do it. I would start off with doing too much micro-detail, but as my concentration tired, and my frustration grew, things would become sloppier and less detailed, and seldom finished.

It's not that I didn't try to improve myself by trying to improve my handwriting (I have always been better at self-education than classes). I would try to follow Calligraphy tutorials using dip pens and ink but again would eventually get frustrated and fail.

Strangely, I quite enjoyed doing pen and ink drawings, with ink washes, and it is something I really SHOULD explore again?

I also found that I did quite well when I did more free-flowing, less formal work; using powder paints in particular to make things like cresting waves and sea foam. In fact I still have one seascape I did that my art teacher really liked, and it is another thing that I have been meaning to go back to, but am now rather scared of failing at.  Perhaps it is time I did some art courses again that would make me do it? But now I am getting ahead of myself from the linear path I am supposed to try to stick to.

Actually, when thinking back, I am aware that there have been a few teachers and lecturers that have had a soft spot for me, perhaps seeing more in me than I knew, and/or maybe just feeling sorry for me? I certainly think the later for one of my Maths teachers, as that has never really improved! LOL! But that school art teacher was very good to spot something I WAS good at and to encourage me to follow that work. One of the pieces I did under his encouragement was a huge, I mean HUGE icescape that took up a whole wall in the 'school flat' (skills demonstration room of some kind) for a couple of years. It had been intended to be a larger version of the seascape I still have, in powder paint, but I was sloppy and impatient when applying the white emulsion under coat which resulted in loads of big dribbles. Both my teacher and I had the same idea when we saw it. They looked like giant icicles! So what I did was empathise them with coloured pencil, with a sunset theme viewed from within an ice cave and an ice-bound sailing ship in the middle. An early example of recognising serendipity, something I allow myself to recognise in my work these days but back then I probably wouldn't of know what serendipity meant.

But I digress. Not unusually for me!

So one of the big changes for me was when I went to university as a mature student in my late 20s. As I had suggested I had been declared at 11 as being too thick for university, and had only got into college because of the O'levels in English related subjects, and then into university because of my college qualification, but I never did any A-levels, which I am quite glad I didn't actually, as they do seem to be hard work! (How did you get into Durham? Many of my friends said that went to university at normal age, and me not knowing that it wasn't easy getting into Durham. Well at 18 via the conventional route that might be the case, but as a mature student, and particularly if a local student (which I wasn't), at that time it was relatively easy, as part of trying to get away from the 'Town and Gown' image problem the university had).  I still had my handwriting problems, but soon got my 1st pc, which had only just got cheap enough for me to do so. It was very new technology for most of us then. I still had to do my exams by hand, and much else, but the pc released me from my bad handwriting, and at last I was able to start developing my English skills.  The first part of this was the wonders of a spell checker (there weren't grammar checkers at that time). I discovered some of the simple words that I didn't know I was miss-spelling. How was I supposed to know that sujest actually had 2 gs and not a j? And there were new words to me too, due to not having had the same level of English as many of my co-students. New words like jonrah? What's a jonrah? Oh! It's spelt genre. But what is it? I was quite pleased to find that I was not the only one who didn't know! In fact I could appear to be more confident than the normal age students, as most of us mature students had a bit more life experience, and I wouldn't be shy about asking what something was, because I decided that if I didn't know there was a good chance others wouldn't either, but they were too shy to ask. What was actually one of the loveliest parts of doing the degree was seeing those shy 18 year old 1st years gradually gain confidence. So whereas in the 1st year us mature students tended to ask all the questions, gradually we took more of a back seat role as the younger students gradually started to ask the questions.

The next big stage in improving my English skills was while doing my PhD. By this stage there WERE grammar checkers, which I might not necessarily agree with, but it would make me think about whether I needed to improve the sentence/paragraph. And then came along those programs that looked at your work to highlight sentences that weren't necessary, or suggestions (note not sujestions!) as to sentences you could remove when trying to reduce the word count. Throw away asides like this. Notice how I learn't the difference between programme and program, in English English, as opposes to program and program in American English! LOL! But of course, I always tend to be too verbose with too many throw away asides. And Thesauruses too, but while writing my thesis the order of the the use of paragraph opening words (therefore, however, etc.) did become a bit formulaic as I checked the Thesaurus desperately trying to find something different; and now with these blogs, I really try to make an effort to not be too formulaic!

As part of and as a result of my PhD, I did get some articles published, but I doubt you would call them very enjoyable to read, as they were supposed to be archaeological reports, not exciting novels.

After I had finished my PhD. AFTER I had finished my PhD! I was at my Mum's looking through some old school reports from the time I had been in 'Dunces Class'. "Oh! It was Word-blindness." she tells me. What! WHAT! If I had known that 10 years earlier I could of had extra time in exams and AND more importantly free computers! 

So in my 40s I discovered it was dyslexia that I suffered from (no surprise to many of you that have been bothered to read this far). And, apparently, according to some of my friends I have Aspergers too, but in both cases, because I didn't know that I actually had a 'something', only that I struggled at some things, I had learn't ways to cope with my problems, as I had also had to do with my 'social' issues.  However, I think this was an advantage to me. In the long term! (I'm not really a short term type of guy). As I had to put the effort in to learn by trial and error and not just accept that I had a 'something' to use as an excuse not improving myself.

And, believe it or not (those that know me), I am a lot better person than I used to be, much better at communicating, and more importantly (believe it or not) listening to people; and that is the hardest thing for me to do with so much multi-dimensional stuff going on it my mind. I do try to put a thinking pause before saying things (believe it or not!), and desperately try to let procrastinators finish their rambling sentences before interrupting them (believe it or not!). Even though they are so so SO annoying with their intonation sounding like they have finished speaking at the end of every phrase! LOL!

Although there are two other factors I still haven't really mentioned that have had a major effect on my communication skills; my art and my community.

I wont go into how I became the Green Man Potter, and now Jewellery maker here, as they are standalone blogs in their own right, but after decades of most people not wanting to hear what I had to say, when I started my potting, my very un-neat and tidy, almost amateurish pottery (which I recognised as a mature person that that is what people liked about, as it was full of spontaneity and spirit), I suddenly found that people wanted to hear what I had to say about other things too, and many of those that had suppressed me, or I had worried about, were happy to listen, or at least tolerate me. They seemed to be happy for me to be in this new role, rather than the archaeologist that I spent years hitting my head against a middle class wall over. And generally others that had given me a hard time no longer did, mainly because they were no longer important to me, and they knew they no longer had any power over me (not that I still don't have some problems with some people in a similar way). In fact it must be a bit like when a gay person comes out of the closet and finds that they are accepted by those that really matter just as they really are.

And at the same time as becoming the Green Man artist I also turned more from an agnostic, more scientific appreciation of the landscape, towards seeing more of the spirituality of landscape; from  identification and classification, etc. of the historic and natural landscape, to 'feeling' more of the ancestral spirits and simple beauty of 'the place'. And so discovered the pagan community that on the whole has welcomed me with open arms, and I have found my place within a community at last, where I really matter! More of that, again, at some later point.

But for now I must get me tea sorted! <3


oh! And there is the music too! How could I forget that?