Ok Folks, so here we are at the end of November. Well I didn’t go very far this month apart from more
gardening, which mostly consisted of picking up leaves and fence fixing. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth though, I have
now completely updated my training material for PAT 5 (COPISITEE) and am
completely ready to go with this. I have already published a brief summary of
the changes on my Ted Barrett Services Facebook page. I must say I was surprised how quickly the examining body
updated their exams so I couldn’t afford to hang about anyway. The upshot of
this of course means that if you train for COPISITEE with me, you will get the
very latest training. Talking of training, I remember reading somewhere that there
is a basic human body type and appearance that falls within about 187 sub-sets.
Now you might think that sounds a bit of a rash statement but after a lifetime
of meeting people both professionally and socially I am beginning to warm to
this idea. If you are in the teaching/training profession this goes
some way to explain why we often see the same bloke in classes across the
country. Unless he’s the bleeding Count St Germain who never ages, he keeps
popping up in my class. One particular type I’m thinking of is the weasel-like bod
with a scrawny moustache, lank hair and incessantly smokes roll-ups – Ah, I see
you recognise him now. Now then, this guy is usually one of life’s great tragedies.
He is actually quite smart but (for various reasons) was never really able to
apply himself to study and develop that brain to a higher level. Couple this
with the fact that he married far too early to somebody who was just looking
for a husband and turned him into factory fodder. His function in life is therefore
simply to be a means of bringing money in to provide for a housewife and
children. There are of course, other characters that keep popping up, and
I often find myself asking “weren’t you in Somerset last week?” On the other
hand, perhaps it’s just me going loopy. When I was doing my teacher training we studied quite a few
aspects of how the brain functions such as cognitive development along with
Freud and Jung etc which I found absolutely fascinating in as much as it explained
many things that I had often wondered about. Thank god that bloody election is over, one day the media
will realise that the everyday people of one country are not really interested
in the politics of another country. But there again, that would strip away
another cheap TV trick wouldn’t it. The next one they’ll try is to tell us we
are all fascinated by Baseball and try to get us hooked on the “World Series”
(it’s a funny “World” though cos its only in the states!). I belong to a club that meets at Woodstock and I am most
upset that for the first time in what must be at least twenty-five years we
will not be having a Christmas get-together. What a bloody swine that is. The
heart-breaking part is that many members are of senior years and will not be
able to have that last Christmas with friends. My old friend Harold Taylor was
a member of this same club, Joanne and I miss him daily. Even more heart-breaking is that we won’t be able to have a
family Christmas dinner at our house as the numbers will probably be too great,
so we need to break up the festivities between households over a couple of days
instead. All things considered though, I’ll just be grateful if we are all
still alive by then. To be quite honest, I’m grateful to be alive every day. On a different note but still concerning Christmas, I love a good
ghost story on Christmas Eve. I’m not really that keen on “Scrooge” but to my
mind “The Dead Sexton” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu is the ultimate Christmas ghost
story. Talking about stories, they generally tend to follow
previously defined plots, such as boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy meets
girl again. The books my wife read all seem to start off with a divorcee or
widow starting life again in a seaside town and often involves a cake shop. However, lets consider Scrooge again. See if you can
identify where this plot has been used so many times since. Lets kick off with
“Back to the Future” (this remains one of my favourite films). So what’s
happening? Well, George McFly cocked up his life because he didn’t like
“confrontation” and ended up living on a trailer park. When Marty goes back to
good old 1955 (what a great year) he has the chance to change George’s future,
and does. So again, like Scrooge, it is a morality tale and shows we have
different paths available to us if we so choose or push ourselves.
Interestingly, in BtF II, we again see the results of disastrous life choices
and a rare chance to change those events. So, if we had the chance to change those events in life would
we? (beginning to sound like Barbara Streisand now) I know some things I would
certainly like to change in my history, but I can’t help but feel there was a
reason for all the stupid as well as the occasional smart things I did. I also
agree with my old mate and fellow college lecturer Gerry, (an Afrikaner who’s surname
name I could never pronounce) Gerry believed that everything we do and everyone
we meet is for a reason. I couldn’t agree more. Now because I publish my blog at the end of each month, that
means this will be the last you’ll hear from me until 2021. So I’m going to take
this opportunity to wish all my readers (even the secret ones) a Merry
Christmas and a very Cool Yule. Ted voice 2 reckons he found the diary of a Spanish priest
from 1536 in the Biblioteca Maria Zambrano in Madrid, which had a hidden
message revealing the location of a lost Inca city of gold (yeah, right) so
he’s currently hacking through the Amazon with an hyper excited gold gland. However,
he has texted in to wish all our readers a “Fair dinkum Crimbo”. I wouldn’t
quite put it like that, but he means well. |