Jammin'

It's that time again. Time to step outside the comfort zone. Time to do something that, basically, it would be very easy not to do.

Time to take up the harmonica.

Well, that's not the hard part for me. Access to the internet means you can do and try just about anything you want to (with various levels of legality) without having to leave your house or talk to another human being. No, the hard part for me is...well, I'll leave that for a second.

I've thought about this occasionally, over the years. I can play the piano, badly: It's something I have on my list of things to do when I have more time on my hands - and space for a piano. I played the trombone at school, too, but doesn't really lend itself to jamming away on one's own. You also can't put it in your pocket. So that leaves me with the harmonica - a convenient, cheap bit of metal that is within arm's reach right now. Essentially, it's something that provides no barriers to practicing.

So I've got this thing - off amazon.com, naturally. It makes a nice sound. It's considerably harder to actually play it than you'd think. Rather improbably, after looking round t'interweb for lessons, books, tutorials, I happened upon the idea of actually taking lessons - something I've not done since school. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they do a ten-week course at Morley College near Waterloo. I'd missed the first week, so I mulled and mulled on whether to sign up anyway. And this is where I so often fail.

I don't know what other people do in this situation. Can they simply not be bothered? Do they have better things to do? I'm actually fearful. Despite being in my early thirties (early thirties! When? How?), I still have the fear I had as a child of talking to strangers. I guess the difference is I'm less likely these days to let it stand in the way. I just wish I could apply this to other parts of my life, since anything worth having must be worth taking risks for.

Leaving that behind, it was the class that was so, so interesting. Fifteen people in the room, and you can really see the stereotypes. Such a mixed bunch. We had the city-suited guy; the old garrulous bloke with the false teeth; the camp, bearded guy with an overbite, loud shirt and earring, a german, and all the shades in between. Different abilities, different levels of intelligence, gawd it was fascinating.

Give me another week and I'll say something more about them. Think it's going to be fun, though. Of course, the best bit's already over, though - walking into a room full of people I didn't know who'd all met the week before, introducing myself and finding the world didn't end. Yay.

One more?

Well, on yesterday's evidence, I still have a season or two left in me. And thank goodness, too, as I haven't had nearly enough of this stupid, stupid game yet. We won, I scored. Scoring, though, is not how I measure myself. I measure myself with the number of things I do well, the number of plaudits from my teamates, the number of times I steal the ball from the opposition, the number of times I pick an opponent up and dump him backwards. Fitness in the second half was severely lacking, but I'm happy with my game: I can still hold my place. Need to get out and do some running, though. The first half felt snappy. The second half, my brain had to make the decision to run, then present a convincing case to my legs, which would then grudgingly take me in the direction I wanted to go in. I need to convince my body that it's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Feels good to be playing again.

Well, mentally, that is. Physically, it feels like I've been hit by a truck. Then reversed over.

Right, time to start thinking about gainful employment...

Anticipation

I hate this bit. I hate it and I love it. First match of the season in a few hours, and I have those butterflies. It's the sense of anticipation. Strange, really. I've been playing 'proper' rugby (as opposed to school PE rugby) since I was fourteen, and I've been playing longer than I haven't. It never goes away, though. My various travels this summer have meant that I've done very little pre-season training, and I was suffering from a twenty-four hour virus yesterday which has leapt round my family like wildfire. And yet I'm ready to play.

I don't have too many seasons left in me now. At thirty-one, I'd never consider myself as 'old', but my body's gradually falling apart, I get more injuries every season. Retirement can't be far away. When I was younger, I never really understood. I always figured that one retires from rugby because they're too busy, or because they have other things going on. I realise now that most people never officially retire. It simply gets to the point where you're more injured than you're not. I don't shy away from the physical aspects of the game. I've had hours of physio over the years, and I've been under general anasthetic twice for plastic surgery. I don't mind the knocks. What I find hard to cope with, though, is when I end up limping for a month, or with a sore shoulder for six months. It simply isn't worth it anymore. And since I almost lost an eye, I do say a silent prayer every time I step on to the pitch.

Still, I'm not done with it yet. Not by a long shot.

Start something - anything

I have so many things I want to do. So many things I should do. If you look back over any of this stuff I've ever written** when I've been at home, it's generally peppered with bulleted to-do lists. Top of the list is writing something and having a swing at getting it published - even if I do it for free. Enough people have told me I can write and that I'm good at it for me to consider it as something I might do more seriously (which is ironic considering my usual literary tone). Of course, me being me, I don't seem to want to actually apply myself to doing anything about it. What I want to happen is for the editor of Conde Nast Traveller to drop me an email saying, 'Hey, I loved what you wrote about Uganda...' Who'da thought it, though? There seems to be quite a lot of written stuff out on t'interweb. Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts for subject matter, let me know, as I do like a challenge.

Getting a job, too. Hmmm. No immediate hurry, and the current economic situation doesn't lend itself to a bouyant employment market, but it's something I should, perhaps, think about. A great time to be working on a start-up project, really, but it's coming up with the idea.

Oh, and the couple of projects I'm working on. I need to get at least one of them finished. It's eighty percent there. I just need to tie up the final loose ends.

And where's the comedy? I'm just not being funny here, am I? Well, I can think of a couple of funny things that have happened, but they involve people that might well be reading this, so what do I do? Is it possible to have an open relationship with one's public journal? (and shit, is it me, or does that sound like a voiceover from 'Sex and the City'?)


**There's quite a lot of it out there, actually, and I'm considering merging it with what's here. The debate I have is it details all manner of things that I'm not entirely sure I want my friends to see - nothing outrageous, you understand, just some minor musings. Wot d'ya fink?