Balance

Curious thing, life.

And, as broad statements go, that's pretty broad.

So here's the thing. I'm toddling along in my life, nice and safe in almost every respect. Forget the bomb scare that wasn't, just down the road from my office that, with any luck, has made one guy carefully consider where he parks his next car when he goes looking for a newspaper. Forget that travel to my sister's new place out in Swindon gets pre-disastered every time with, for example, a truck driving into a railbridge while the train is parked at the station before. Forget that, astronomical odds aside, I have not yet been crushed by a falling satellite.

I'm in good health, earning more than enough money to get by, and living comfortably (for the most part) with my parents until I can drag myself far enough out of the doldrums to find a place of my own. Around me 'locally', one of my colleagues has only just returned to work after being laid out by pneumonia, and another returned from her holiday with teary-eyed tales of how her boyfriend ended up with concussion, brain damage and a broken back. Meanwhile, an overseas acquaintance has, to all intents and purposes, got through cancer, but is now experiencing pain in her hip that's just getting worse, requires gradually more powerful painkillers, and is yet to be adequately diagnosed.

And, to think, I had only light and fluffy things to say when I fired up the computer tonight... I'll distract myself with that and see what happens next...

Popped over Swindon-way this last weekend, to visit the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford. I was given two pieces of advice, and managed to follow one of them. The advice was:

1) Take a hat ('and wear it' being implicit)
2) Don't fall asleep

If I casually mention the sunburn on one side of my face, I guess you'll figure out which piece of advice I failed to follow.

The problem was that we'd originally planned to set out on the Friday evening, after I returned from work, then stay overnight with my sister and her husband. Because my memory for dates is so useless, I didn't twig that this plan clashed with an arrangement I'd made to go to a special IMAX preview of the new Harry Potter movie, '... & the Order of the Phoenix'. For whatever reason, I'd pegged that as the 24th or 27th, when it was actually (thunder, lightening... organ plays a few foreboding notes) Friday 13th. Basically, I was out late. Got home not long before midnight and, as is my wont, larked about on the internet for too long in the evening.

I struggled to wake up on the Saturday morning and briefly considered bowing out of the trip, but came to my senses, got up, got dressed, and made ready to leave.

While I had a seat - Ealing to Reading - I spent most of the journey dozing. When we changed train at Reading, it was standing room only, and our onward progress was stalled for about 40 minutes due to the aforementioned truck-hitting-bridge incident. At Swindon, we picked up the special shuttle coach to the airfield and I slept for most of that journey too.

Actually meeting up with Helen, Mark, and his folks took some doing, and we started out by not bothering. We tried phoning (why did it surprise me that cellphone reception was perfect out in a field? It was a bloody airfield, after all), but either couldn't understand anything (big planes go WHOOSH!), or got put through to voicemail, so we just opened up our porta-chairs and sat down for some lunch.

And, in my case, forty winks.

Eventually, we managed to get in touch with Helen, who gave us some rather vague 'directions' which amounted to a couple of landmarks by which we could plot their location, so we headed off in search.

To cut a long story short, we found them, and I can't say much more about the air show because I slept through most of it.

My face is recovering nicely, thank you.

Afterward, we headed back to Helen and Mark's place for a late dinner (hybrid of Asda Indian and Chinese 'banquets' which was actually rather nice) and - eventually - sweet, precious sleep. Before shutting down for the night, I availed myself of their library, flicking briefly through a chapter or two of Germaine Greer's follow-up to The Female Eunuch (which is such a memorable title, I can't remember the name of the follow-up :P), a few bits and bobs by a Christian writer named Adrian Plass (recommended reading, some of it), a couple of CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters, and something else which, for various reasons (chiefly that I can't remember whether or not my sister actually reads this blog, so I don't want to give the game away) I shall keep rather mysterious.

Suffice it to say, it reminded me quite strongly of something that happened to me some years ago which ended up changing my life quite dramatically in many ways... The books mirrored my own experiences to some extent. I even commented on it at the time...

Finding these books drove me to investigate the author and, as it happens, he'd actually written a follow-up. What I will say to my sister, if she's reading, is that I've already bought it for her, and had a small argument with our mother about whether or not it can wait till Christmas. In the end, I instructed her to take it and hide it away, or I'd send it to Helen myself.

I don't know exactly why (aside from the fact that I found it so compelling, I read it all in one sitting), but I felt that Helen should read it NOW. Certainly, it 'completes' the tale that started many years ago in the first books... but that's not all of it. There is still a certain resonance to the first books, and that continues in the follow-up. A sense of urgency, of a task that needs to be completed for everything to be 'right'. That's exactly what the 'story', such as it is, is all about... but, following my own experiences 'back then', and everything that's happened to me since, I felt a strange bond with the characters...

Very strange... and now isn't really the time to wax philosophical because it's late and I'm tired. Typical.

In other news, then, I've snapped up one of the BotCon 2007 attendee sets that has become available on the TransFormers Collectors' Club web-shop. The total cost of my order in dollars is not far off what Mr Spacebridge was charging in pounds... which is to say, I've got the lot (and more) for half the price he was after. I'm really enjoying this club... It has its detractors but, even taking the international premium into account, I still feel it's well worth the price of admission.

This is, of course, another reminder of how fortunate I am in life.

Having left work on time this evening, I spent a couple of hours down the pub with my boss, discussing life in general and work in particular. There may be a new project on the horizon... but it remains to be seen whether or not it would replace my current job or merely supplement it. The former is an obvious preference...

Oh, and Order of the Phoenix is, against all my expectations, pretty darned good.