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I saw something on the internet the other day by the wonderful stand-up comic Sarah Millican. She called it the 11 O’clock Rule or Millican’s Law

The gist is that by 11 O’clock the next morning you have to let yourself off from your bad gig the night before. But for me the key part of the rule is that it works the other way around as well:

Equally, if you nail it, slam it, destroy it, whatever, you can only be smug about it until 11am the next day (in the past, I have set an alarm so I could get up and gloat for an extra half hour) as if you go into the next gig thinking you are God’s gift to comedy, you will die.

I am an optimist, so forgetting the negative was built into me from day one. I know that skill and use it a lot. (I’m not saying I don’t get depressed, I do regularly, but that means I know how to get myself out of that hole because I’ve been in it a lot.) The danger for me is the, “Oh my god, I’m amazing at this”.

My first painting / drawing, while not amazing, was so much better than I was expecting and I should have known better but I then drew some pretty poor paintings / drawings one of which I included last week despite being told, “that looks like a child drew it”. I included it to re-enforce Millican’s Law. I thought I had it nailed, but I really worked at that first picture because I knew I was hadn’t practiced, then I rushed off the second one because I thought – I just happened to be amazing at painting.

Don’t put yourself down too much, but don’t big yourself up too much.

One thing that isn’t included in the article but is also important is this, “keep going, and do the next gig/project/bit”. Keep going.

When I was a small boy, I had a powder blue sweatshirt which had the face of Micky Mouse on it. I think it must have been from when I was around four years old. Because as a child it was my absolute favourite item of clothing, it was kept each time we moved.

When I was around sixteen or seventeen my brother and I were asked to put away our childish things. I can remember, and I am willing to admit to you now, that I decided to keep this item at that point because I thought it would be a good item to have for the museum about me that they would have when I was famous. I can remember this clearly, the certainty that this would be necessary.

Now we could dwell on my teenage lack of self awareness, or on how I was sure I would be famous but I had no idea how I was going to do this, or on how a branded sweatshirt rather than a handmade sweater from my Grandmother might not have been the best item. Or we could focus on another aspect, something that came to me as I thought about that sweatshirt.

What would you have to do to get a museum about you these days? There aren’t really museums about people. Exhibits happen I suppose. The US Presidents get a library, but only an exhibit in the library is about them and I guess they wouldn’t include a sweatshirt from when they were four there. I think there is a museum for the Formula One driver David Coulthard but he must be a rare exception and sports isn’t really my specialist subject.

And don’t be confused, it’s not that I’d like a museum of me these days. What I’m astounded by is not just that I wanted to be famous, but so famous that they would build a museum to me when most famous people I can think of don’t even have one. The worst part was that was I was seventeen when I was thinking this.

Maybe the only way to get the museum would be to build it myself and then I could be famous as the weird guy who built a museum about himself.

My Dad wrote an absolutely brilliant comment in response to yesterday’s blog post, so great in fact that I decided to add it as its own post. Enjoy…

I had a box, it was labelled H2 on the top in marker pen, it was the box that I packed my notebooks, notes and papers into when I left university. H2 had been my last room. I had used this box before in previous moves and it had survived the tumult of these wanderings. It came with me when I returned to my parent’s home, whilst there it was lodged in the attic.
After a bit my job took me to Bristol where I shared a flat, I was keeping my chattels light, so the box didn’t come with me. Some time later I moved back to work in London, then bought a house in Kent; it was time for the box to come home, I collected it from my parent’s attic and moved it to the corner of the room I used as an office, it sat there with the H2 on the top, but I don’t think that I ever opened it.
It wasn’t long after this that I moved to work in New York. The easiest thing to do in a relocation like this was to move absolutely everything to our new house in New Jersey, of course the box marked H2 came with us.

A few years later we returned to the UK and box H2 and all out other stuff was put into storage whilst we looked for a place to live. We bought a place in West Sussex and soon after were reunited with all the things that had been in storage… The box was back.

You accumulate things over time and make assessments as to whether they are of value and worth keeping, or are they things that just have to go as they take up too much space. Box H2 was opened, the contents inspected, the maths notes, which were very comprehensive and probably my best effort, looked at in amazement… I don’t remember how I did any of that stuff. It was obvious, after 25 years I didn’t need the box or its contents any more, it had to go.

We roll forward some years and I sign up to study Radio Astronomy at Manchester University, It s bonkers, I should have just gone to the visitors centre at Jodrell Bank for a look round, but no, I’m on a course. Naturally, the course has quite a high maths content and I find that I have forgotten what I used to know. Oh, if only I hadn’t jettisoned my H2 box with all its maths content, written in my own hand and in a style that I could understand.

I’m told that the best book that I could use to get back up to speed is Engineering Mathematics by K.A. Stroud. I get a copy and start to work through it. I get a very strange sensation, it’s like I’m reading the maths notes that I used to have in box H2, Stroud lays out his stuff just like I remember my notes were. I make good progress and things come back quite quickly. After some time and out of curiosity I turn to the Preface of the book just to see… Wham, oh my god, it’s Ken Stroud who taught me maths all those years ago that has written this book…

The notes in the box marked H2 are back, I threw them out years ago, but now have them back in a book. Ken did his trick again, I got a distinction.

When will it be time to throw the book out…? I can tell you, I’m not throwing my notes out again.

In response to my question about what have you practiced the most we had some great comments from Lukeh and Nick.

LukehMuse

I have been practising to be a good person. It’s an ongoing project that one.

I always practise swimming to get better but I just enjoy being in the water and relaxing with lengths anyway. Then there’s writing too, as I’ve said not too long ago as well as my drawing. General creativity is my biggest long-term practise I’d say.

Nick Ollivere

I think, as you can probably guess, writing is the thing I’ve practiced the longest too, although it comes close with playing guitar (which I no longer do as much). I think I actually started writing lyrics to songs before I learnt to play the guitar. I think LukehMuse has hit the nail on the head with creativity though – before writing I was always making up stories in my head etc. Gill would argue that she’s not creative and wouldn’t be able to write anything, but I think everyone is creative to a certain degree (in cookery, for example).

Nick’s comment about Gill got me thinking about another underrated form of creativity which I’m going to dub “Situational Creativity”. What do I mean by this?

Well, first of all, because I was talking about practicing stuff people immediately leapt to things like writing and drawing etc, and of course the thing people have been practicing for the longest is probably breathing or does that just happen to you? Speech? Language? Comprehension etc. But these are too basic, too broad. But people do understand a wider form of creativity than just the artistic creativity of making or producing something. There is of course creative problem solving, the infamous thinking outside the box. And much as it’s easy to scoff at the terms etc there is some truth to it. Some people are much better at problem solving than others and those people tend to practice problem solving a lot.

But I think people know about that really, what I am thinking of essentially is deciding what to do today. Some people do the same thing every day and get bored, other people do a large number of fixed things on a strict rotational basis and get bored. Other people do those things and don’t get bored I’m sure. But some people are really great at saying, “Ah I know what I’m going to do today, I’m going to call Molly and Simon and we’re going to go to the Zoo. They’ve never met, but they’d get on.”

Now to many of you the person I just described sounds like a nightmare. But this is just an example. An example where Molly loves animals and has been wanting to practice her photography (and doesn’t really know anyone good to teach her). And Simon who just got a new DSLR, is actually pretty good at snapping photos and likes to show off a bit so will be happy to give her some pointers.

This is that friend who phones you and says, “so that was crap, do you want to come over and not talk about it?”.

Creating the situations that we live in, and being creative about them is a skill. It can be something that you do for yourself or others. But there is a skill to it and it is creative, and I think people don’t notice it because the only thing it produces is annoying Facebook wall photos, and lasting friendships.

So here it is, the ill-advised parenting post. I say ill-advised because it is, perhaps, unusual for the fathers to write anything. It’s all a bit risky us getting involved in writing about this stuff, which I think actually pretty accurately maps to the experience of a lot of fathers. In many ways, there is a bit of a feeling that somebody is going to respond to one of your opinions with, “that’s nice dear, but the professionals are here now”.

And I mean this well. Fathers shouldn’t be the centre of attention in the process, this isn’t something that needs correcting. Many men do need to be more involved and supportive, and there are lots of good programmes to help encourage this, but men need to remember that becoming more involved does not mean driving the process. I can still remember overhearing a man from the other side of the maternity ward telling his partner, “No, no, that’s wrong, how is he supposed to feed like that? You’re supposed to hold your breast more like this.” That is not being helpful, quite the opposite in fact.

So with all of those caveats in place here goes.

1) You will be so tired and stressed at times you will actually consciously re-evaluate all previous points of tiredness and stress and move them down a rung. I know you’ve been tired and stressed before, but not like this. The only thing that can sustain you through this is knowing that it will pass, it will get better. It doesn’t seem like it will, but it will.

2) It will change everything in your life, but in a weird way. Do you remember how you seemed to be really busy at uni or 6th form but always had time for Countdown, Blue Peter, Neighbours, Home and Away and going out to the pub and a gig and the movies when you had the money? And now you realise that no, you were never really that busy before. You could go back to that life right now if you wanted, but you don’t because going and getting a job is better really. For fleeting and not so fleeting moments you dream about your past life and think wouldn’t that be great to be able to sit around drinking lots of tea and watching TV and not having to worry about much, but then you remember living with 6 other smelly students who kept drinking your milk and never washing up and you remember why you left, got a job, and never want to go back really. Same here in a lot of ways. You do sometimes wish you could go back, but you would have to give up the person you’ve made, and that seems impossible now.

3) The hardest thing to get over is the lack of choices you have about everything, which is also the easiest thing in a way. I used to like to be able to say, yeah I’ll do that tomorrow, or perhaps tonight we should… But you can’t do that anymore. Having a baby does take some of the spontaneity out of life, but on the other hand, it does mean much less dithering. You do end up just getting on with stuff. You will almost certainly feel a little out of control about things though.

4) Relax. I am reminded here of the moment in the Big Lebowski where Jeff Bridges is shouting at John Goodman to calm down and he’s replying, “calmer than you are dude, calmer than you are”. Telling a stressed person to relax is likely to, quite rightly, get you a poke in the eye. What I mean is this, figure out what the small number of key things are for you. Eg. feed baby, get sleep yourself, change baby, have a plan to get food for yourself, know what feet to foot means, watch out for choking and drowning, have a way of knowing what the temperature in the room is. And then everything else is secondary. Didn’t do the dishes, forget it, you’ll either get to it or you won’t. Is your baby putting on enough weight? The only thing you can directly do anything about this if you are breastfeeding is be less stressed which is not going to happen if you are stressed about the weight of your baby. Seriously… Less smart, less able and people with fewer resources have brought up and kept alive lots of people. In fact people have more than one baby! It will be ok.

5) Nappy bags. Everyone will tell you about getting nappies, taking a car seat to the hospital, blankets, a pillow from home for mum etc, all good advice. But somehow people don’t mention nappy bags in all of this. You put the nappies in these small plastic bags before you put them in the main bin so the smell doesn’t get out. They are very handy.

I hope this doesn’t sound like me complaining, it might change your life… but it’s totally worth it.

I’m sure you’ve heard some dolt say this line, “well you know it’s the exception that proves the rule”, you may even have been said dolt – I know I have been.

i before e except after c

Although we were all probably taught this at school, most people now know that it isn’t true. In fact, in more cases it’s the other way around. In many more words it is i before e after c too. But this is still trotted out as a common example of the exception proving the rule.

But this isn’t what the phrase “it’s the exception that proves the rule” is supposed to mean. Lots of people seem to think it’s a kind of shorthand for “we’ve looked into this properly because we aren’t just telling you what’s generally true, but about the exceptions too”, a kind of grown up version of showing your working. And showing your working is important, and to be encouraged, but that isn’t what it’s about.

The phrase actually dates back to Roman times*. In a court case a dude was trying to become a Roman Citizen, the only problem was that he was from one of the provinces. The lawyer who opposed his case pointed out that several other provinces had restrictions on allowing people from provinces to become Roman citizens so a general rule could be inferred that people from the provinces shouldn’t be allowed to become Roman citizens. Cicero, who was the dude’s lawyer, argued that this was faulty logic. He said that instead, the fact that particular provinces had restrictions in place inferred that there must be a general rule to which these were the exceptions. He was saying the fact there was an exception proves that there was a general rule that people could come in. The existence of an exception, indicated that there was a general rule. That’s what the phrase is supposed to mean.

* What doesn’t these days?

I can remember sitting in class squirming with excitement for first break. My three best friends at that school were all in the year above and when they saw this they were going to think it was so cool. I can remember finding Pete and Rich, but I can’t think where David was that day. We went to one of our usual haunts, the top of the fire escape at the back of the school gym*. This sounds like a nice out of the way spot, but it wasn’t totally hidden. My school had two quads** – an upper quad and a lower quad. The upper quad was between all of the classrooms so was not very useful for break times, sure you might hang around in there from time to time, but with all the teachers looking on it wasn’t much fun. Also with all of the windows on the classrooms there were strictly no ball games, the lower quad was where all the serious playing went on. The two quads were separated by the gym, and the fire escape faced the path between the two quads, so a lot of kids would walk past, but most wouldn’t notice us up there on the fire escape. But we could watch them.

Once we were safely up in our spot, I was ready to show Pete and Rich my treasure. I had found it on the window sill of my bedroom that very morning. Proof of the existence of Aliens.

It was a yellow pad of paper, with the hard cardboard back, the thick binding at the top so that you could rip the pages off. Most of the pages had been ripped off and the pad had been left, blank, on the window sill the night before. But now there was a diagram, a schematic for something on the page. I explained the situation, showed them what I had found, and said breathlessly “this drawing must have been beamed down from space on to the page”. They agreed, that much was clear and certain to our eleven year old minds.

What would we do next with this discovery? We must consult the authorities. But, I reasoned, we would have to be careful as there must be a reason that diagram was beamed to us rather than to the prime minister – to me the prime minister seemed the most likely alternative recipient.

Just then our Latin teacher came walking past on the path at the bottom of the stairs. We called down to her and ran down the stairs, “Miss Cooper, Miss Cooper”. She stopped and looked to see what we had to show her. The diagram, she agreed with us readily, could easily be alien, but had we considered the ancient Egyptians? I pointed out that the paper had been left on a window sill and behind the curtains, therefore leaving a direct line to outer space. Aliens, I reasoned, had to be the prime candidates.

This might all seem pretty strange to you, but Miss Cooper was very happy to believe our story. She once brought dowsing rods into school to check if there were lay lines in our classroom which might explain some of the poor marks people were getting. Frankly, if you weren’t cultivating a good number of eccentric habits then I don’t think you were allowed to teach at the school.

The next step was clear, I needed to show this drawing to my father, he knew about electronics and making things, he would be the next step to understanding what the Aliens wanted us to do.

I showed it to him that night and he thanked me for returning his drawing, he’d wondered where he had misplaced it. He didn’t seem very worried for a man who was suddenly in possession of international*** state secrets. But maybe he was just playing things cool in case I was working for the Prime Minister.

* You may be wondering why a school gym had a fire escape, I mean it wasn’t as if it was series of running machines on top of a Yates Wine Lodge. The gym had a stage at one end and that was, of course, elevated, so needed a fire escape.

** A quad is the name at posho schools, like what I went to, for a quadrilateral playground, which of course you might think means all playgrounds. What do you mean you’ve never heard of playgrounds in a pentagonal shape? Only kidding, I think the quadrilateral part was to distinguish it from more natural grass-based playing fields. I mean you might think it’s ridiculous, but most people have to make do with just the word playground to mean both a space with swings in it and an empty rectangle of concrete where they could play at school. We just called the later a quad.

*** Or Galactic.