Sixteen of Mind

Tomorrow is my 20th birthday, but by contrast to my 18th two years ago, I’m beginning to feel more like an adult as it approaches. As I’ve said to a few people this week, I felt like I had more maturing to do when I first became a legal adult, as I was 18 of body but 16 of mind. It was strange that – for want of a better term – the “safety catch” had been taken off of my life, and I was now free to drink, vote, bet and buy things like knives or fireworks if I wanted to. Even though I was living (and still live) within the bosom of my family, I was suddenly faced with so many more independent possibilities. The world could have been my oyster at any moment, and although I probably sound like a drama queen, that was a daunting prospect at the time.

After all, I had only finished Year 13 two months earlier (although I had a short-lived spell at another college to come after that). I felt security there, with friends, work to keep me occupied and plenty of people to consult if I needed advice, but beyond the subsequent course I had lined up I could be on my own – it would be up to me what to make of my life. Despite my real age, I just didn’t feel old enough to be confident in making those decisions for myself. Maybe my inexperience in adulthood at the time was to blame. Whilst two years seems like an insignificant period of time in the grand scheme of things, they have come with a number of changes and challenges, with my recently-ended one year work placement teaching me a lot about the workplace as well as how to conduct myself within it. I feel better now about my ability to progress further, even though there is little to keep me busy at the moment. I’ll spend tomorrow with Will, who has just told me that he feels 6 on most days rather than 16 or 20, and have as much fun as I can – it’ll undoubtedly help me feel even more optimistic about finding something to do soon. I have a feeling it could only be a matter of time.

Mason

An Audience With The Sunrise

Many of us have been there. You go to bed one night at around this time of year, knowing big plans are going to be set in motion when you wake again. You try to get as much sleep as you can in the time that you have, but the adrenaline within has other ideas. It’s pumping through your veins, and you’ve never felt quite so alive since…well, since roughly a year ago, actually. You know you need to suppress it as best you can to get the rest you need, but this proves to be an impossible task. Every inch of you is almost shaking with the electric excitement that courses through your body, as if you’re hooked up to the National Grid. This goes on for something like five hours, and all the while your eyes are tightly shut in the hope you’ll drift off. These efforts are ultimately in vain, but at least you don’t need an alarm to know when to rise. The glow is there to guide you, both from the bedside clock – telling you it’s precisely 2:00am – and the landing, because the next bedroom is a hive of activity. You hear muffled and weary voices, and the hurried packing of suitcases. This is normally something done with the discipline of a military operation, because everything has to fit perfectly in every case and bag, but this morning it’s being done somewhat more excitedly, even as you try not to disturb the neighbours in their slumber. After all, you’ve got somewhere to be.

You’re going to the airport, and then you’re going abroad for a fortnight.

That paragraph described with relative accuracy how pretty much every one of our family holidays began for around twelve years. After the initial hustle and bustle upstairs, we’d all come down and gather in the hallway, adding the finishing touches to our preparations before leaving. We’d make sure we had a round of squashed Marmite sandwiches each to eat in the airport, and then we’d depart, driving away with the house in darkness behind us. To some, pitch-black and empty roads may have an eerie quality, but for me they always had a charm of their own. Street lights and shop signs of different colours would turn the early morning into a wondrous microcosm as they illuminated the gloom we journeyed through. I’d see other cars in both lanes, but their drivers would remain anonymous to me, so my imagination would be left to wonder what their stories were and where they were going. And as we drove further and further towards the airport, we’d find ourselves passing empty fields that were vulnerable to harsh winds, or motorways that were saturated thanks to a brief but torrential shower. Such sights meant that I always felt cocooned and warm, and most importantly that I could concentrate on the trip that lay ahead for us all to enjoy.

The numerous glows before me really did help with that. As Mum or Dad drove, the light from the instruments on the car’s dashboard were there to comfort me, and they made me smile as they pierced through the blackened yonder. When we reached the airport parking and had emerged into air that was chilly and crisp even in August, the hustle and bustle of the expansive buildings was there to greet us, and one could see the blazing white light of the countless rooms and corridors from quite a distance away. But between those two points, there was the most natural and eagerly awaited glow of them all in the form of the Sun itself. The latter stages of the journey would see it just poking its head above the horizon, giving the sky a faint orange tint that grew brighter as the giant orb ascended further into the sky. It felt like a race sometimes – who would finish their journey first, the Hawkers in the Vauxhall Zafira or Mother Nature? We did, of course, but the Sun was never far behind. As we wearily ate our sandwiches at a mucky table after check-in, its rays would be seeping through the windows. As we waited patiently in the Departure Lounge at everyone else’s breakfast time, it would be welcoming a morning in full swing with blue skies and birdsong. And then, when we were venturing out onto the tarmac to board the plane, it would be high in the sky, ready to welcome us with its full force when we disembarked, and to remind us – usually with all of 30 degrees or more – that the best fortnight of the year had begun.

Mason

To Chester

Like most days, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed. Inside the trending box, it read ‘Chester Bennington’. For the few that don’t know, Chester Bennington is the lead singer for rock band Linkin Park. Whenever I see a celebrity’s name on that list, I get a bit nervous as to why so many people are talking about them. For Chester though, I didn’t get that same feeling. Maybe it’s due to his age or some other reason, but I thought, “Everything’s fine.” And then my Twitter feed refreshed, and the hashtags started.

And my breath caught for a second.

I just stared at the screen for about a minute, trying to wrap my head around it. I couldn’t believe that Chester was dead, and that he had killed himself. I mentioned earlier the amount of celebrity deaths we’ve endured, but this one hit me harder than any other. And it took me a while to figure out why. For a large portion of my life, music didn’t mean much to me. I listened to some stuff in the car that my parents listened to, but that was about it. But when I went to college, my friend Alex introduced me to Linkin Park. And from there, my music taste expanded to what it is today. Linkin Park helped me to find a huge part of my life,which I am indebted to Chester for. There have been other celebrity deaths that have shaken me, from actor Robin Williams to comic artist Steve Dillon, because both of their industries are something that I am deeply invested in. But Chester and Linkin Park threw me into rock music. If it weren’t for them or Alex, then a lot of what I’ve discovered about myself might still be hidden.

I’m sorry, Chester. I’m sorry that you felt like the only way to take away your unimaginable pain was to end your life. But know that there are millions of people who were affected by your work. Your voice was unreal, and sends shivers down my spine every time I listen to it. There are people who were brought away from the edge by your music. There are people whose lives were saved by your music. I don’t think there’s a higher accomplishment.

There’s a Wonder Years lyric which reads “I’m sure there ain’t a Heaven, but that don’t mean I don’t like to picture you there.” And at moments like these, they stick with me. I’m an Atheist, so I don’t believe in any religion. If I did, I think there would be a space for Chester in Valhalla.

Thank you.

Will

“And the Sun will set for you”. – “Shadow of the Day”, Linkin Park

Every Sentence is a Song

I’ve long said to myself that when I can write or find the right ones, I will post some interesting poems or quotes on this blog to provide a little bit of variety alongside the longer posts you normally get to read. At the moment, I can neither come up with nor locate anything worth uploading – but thankfully, something came to me by chance when I was least expecting it and I decided it was too good not to share. It was this blog, and where to go next with it, that I was pondering when I suddenly remembered a brilliant quote about sentence structure that a teacher had on their wall at school:

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals – sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

This quote came from a man named Gary Provost, and whilst I’ll have to Google him to find out exactly who he is, his words intrigued me from the moment I first laid eyes on them. As I’ve written before, I’m a mildly capable keyboard player. I’ve been doing my best to improve for four years now, but it’s becoming increasing clear that no matter how much I play, I’ll never be as good a musician as I am a writer. It’s therefore reassuring to know that in Mr Provost’s eyes, we’re all musicians through our respective languages. We’re creating musical pieces of many different shapes and sizes in anything we write, be it a shopping list or an epic novel. And the very nature of language means that we’re often led to use shorter, medium-length and longer sentences in varying quantities, so every day we have an opportunity to be creative and expand our grasp of English in the process. Maybe we won’t even be aware we’re doing it, but think about two of life’s greatest gifts, language and music, combined as one. Isn’t that just something that beggars belief?

Mason

The First Sign of Maturity

Being a mere 19, I can hardly call myself old, but at the very least I’d like to think that I could describe myself as mature (apart from when I’m around Will, of course). I’m definitely growing up, becoming a man, and – let’s face it – not getting any younger, even at this early stage of life. What that means is that there’s already been a point at which I’ve noticed my rapid ascent into adulthood, and that observations have been made about how I’m looking, talking, thinking and acting as a result of this. It’s not just me that the observations have come from, however, because the wider world has offered them too – and sometimes in very random and unexpected places. I don’t even necessarily have to look for them, because in an instant they’re as clear as day and right under my nose.

Let me tell you about one particular example that I noticed. It’s something very run of the mill, and not at all like the earth-shattering realisation of all the adult responsibilities you’ll soon have as you get older, but I nevertheless found it interesting as well as mildly amusing. During my lunch breaks at my recent place of work, I’d take my wheelchair up to a patch of grass in a public space to eat my sandwiches, and this meant that I could peoplewatch to my heart’s content whilst I was at it. Peoplewatching is one of the simplest pleasures that life can offer, so long as it’s done discreetly and without a weird hidden agenda, and in some cases even observing from a distance can reveal quite a lot about life and those in front of you. On one occasion, I was minding my own business with my ham, lettuce and mayonnaise sarnie when my eyes darted across to the ice-cream which was often nearby – and which always seemed to be there when it wasn’t sunny and there were few people around to buy from it! Sure enough, business was very slow, but the treats on offer did have one taker.

This was it – one of the moments where the innocence of youth very briefly gave way to a cynical, straight-faced, humourless adult. Standing before this ice-cream van, waiting to receive his Mr Whippy, was a little boy – and not a toddler. He was at least seven and certainly didn’t seem to be ill, and it wasn’t exactly the height of holiday season at this point either. Therefore, my brain came to an immediate but unexpected conclusion, namely one that automatically led me to silently utter five immortal words:

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that was the moment when I truly shocked myself into realising that despite being in the spring of my years, I was definitely getting older and had encountered the titular “first sign of maturity”. My reaction to the sight of this little boy surprised me because I thought it unlike me to be so judgemental, and of course I knew very well that there could have been any number of legitimate reasons why he was eating ice-cream instead of sitting in class. In that case, then, perhaps it wasn’t a conscious exclamation at all, but the sort of outlook that arrives unannounced as you gradually experience all that life has to throw at you. If that’s true, then maybe it’s even more of an incentive to stay positive, open-minded and chirpy – and to be a bit more considerate when peoplewatching!

Mason

Please Leave a Message After The Tone

That’s it. I have passed the point of no return. What’s done is done and now I must face up to whatever is to come in the next minute or so. I take a deep breath, doing my best to calm and mentally prepare myself while I still can. Here I go – I raise my trembling hand to my ear, and it is greeted with a moment of eerie silence. Then the tones, in bursts of a single second each, ring deep into my mind for what seems like an eternity. Will they ever pick up? There is silence again, but I barely notice it before the sinister crackle…and then a warm and familiar voice. “Hello?”

Yes, the amateur sleuths amongst you may have worked out that I have just described the build-up to a phone call. This is an act to which millions around the world would not even give a second thought, but to me – even as I approach the ripe old age of 20 – it is still something strangely alien. Indeed, you’re reading a post by a man who would rather conveniently “forget” to plug the phone in at his last job, just so that he didn’t have to answer it and risk making a fool of himself. I don’t answer the phone at home either, and have been known to ignore its rings even if I’m sitting right next to it. The main reason for this is very simple, and I believe it is also commonly known as “verbal diarrhoea”. It doesn’t matter how meticulously I may have any phone call or response planned out in my head, because any hopes I hold of a seamless and flowing conversation are usually dashed as soon as I open my mouth. This is something my friend – who I am normally more than capable of speaking to without a problem – fully found out when I rang them the other day, while feeling the crushing pressure of sticking to the script I’d taken the time to form to myself beforehand.

The nervous gibberish that ultimately seeped out from between my lips seemed so incoherent that it’s a wonder we aren’t still finishing an originally straightforward exchange now. I’ll definitely have to apologise to my friend when I next see them – I feel like I wasted their time! Maybe I can also attribute my lack of phone confidence to the added pressure of trying to remember important information when it’s quite literally going in one ear and out of the other. It’s especially difficult if you’re frantically trying to find a pen or paper to record it on at the same time – if what someone is telling me is really so crucial, why can’t they just text me, email me or send me a letter, so I have whatever I need in black and white before my eyes? It’s reassuring to be able to see such things as many times as I want rather than to hear them once, which is why this blog’s email address is open to collate however many messages it may receive. Besides, I like reading, and responding to one gives me an opportunity to do that. Plus I’m a creative bloke, and I get to carefully consider and write a reply, so what’s not to like about that?

No phone calls please. I won’t be available – so you’ll have to leave a message after the tone. At least I can replay those!

Mason

Life Is An Epic

Yesterday, I took a break from my computer screen at work to pluck a strawberry from a box that was just in front of me on the desk. They had been brought in by one of my esteemed colleagues, and were accompanied by a selection of cupcakes which I had also eagerly sampled. I had so desperately craved the sugar rush I received from them, but then I felt a compulsion to be healthy, and if there was one fruit I was happy to consume with this in mind, it was the strawberry. A tender nugget of sweet and juicy wonder that captivates all who savour it – normally. Just a week before, Mum had bought strawberries at home that had perfectly matched that description, but on this occasion at work I wasn’t to be so lucky. As I reached forward and placed the scarlet delight between my lips, the smile I had formed in anticipation of its taste quickly faded from my face. This hadn’t been at all what I expected. I disposed of the stalk with a furrowed brow, before returning to my seat and carrying on with my day’s work.

Of course, the consumption of a strawberry is a fairly mundane thing, and normally it would have been met with an appropriately mundane response, like “ew, yuck!” Not this time, however. Instead, I found that my mind was instantly formulating a somewhat more exaggerated reaction to what had just occurred, and shortly afterwards I described the particular strawberry I’d eaten in my head as a “wet, mushy and tasteless globule of disappointment, which was squashed as though it had no structural integrity.” There have been better descriptions of such things, obviously, but what intrigued me the most was that on this occasion, trying to explain the situation to myself in a creative way was something that came instantly, like a natural reflex of the human body. The whole thing led me to a second thought, a question I asked myself – “could this be how writers think?” I wondered if they did this too, perhaps with anything that life threw at them as a mental exercise to keep the creative juices flowing (there’s that phrase again – isn’t it a cliché?)

I don’t know the answer for sure, but I personally might start doing it more often. It gave me the material I needed to create this post, after all! Maybe if I keep this mindset close, I’ll find that nothing in life is ever truly boring, and that with the right amount of time and careful consideration, I can enlighten myself in a small way every single day. People say that life is what we all make it – so why not try to make it something epic, even if it’s only known to us?

Mason

Little Red Book

What you’re reading now is the 100th Third Time Enabled post – and I can scarcely believe that as I write it. Seeing as I didn’t really expect to get this far when I started the blog, you’d think a milestone such as this would require an extensive and predictable commemorative post about how proud I am of it. However, I’m pretty sure I’ve done that before, so something else is in order. I originally had a list of 100 things that made Will, Emily, Tamara and myself happy in the pipeline, and whilst that would be an uplifting idea (and I am keeping it on the sidelines for the future), I didn’t feel like it would be enough on its own. It would be somewhat underwhelming and unable to work without something of substance alongside it – so I discarded that idea.

While mulling all this over, however, I did come to realise that lists are pretty helpful things; not only in terms of looking to the past, but also to the future, which is what I decided this post should do. This revised plan stemmed from one day just a few weeks ago, when I took the opportunity to go to a bookshop during a lunch break at work and invest in a shiny new red notebook. Its original purpose was to help me create the aforementioned list of 100, but in subsequent days it took on a new project – forming the step-by-step future of this blog. In it I wrote titles and topics, prioritising the things I want to cover most in future posts through orderly, numbered lists. It felt like an oddly therapeutic thing to do, but it also helped me to overcome a hurdle that I would say has probably been the thing stopping me from getting this post done for so long – nearly a month, to be precise!

Getting to a stage I never thought I would reach led me to ask myself “where exactly do I go from here?” I wondered if I would either end up disappointing people with everything I wrote or simply repeating myself like a parrot stuck in an endless loop. The worry became so great that I recently tried to delegate the task of writing this 100th post to Will, so that it could come from a different perspective, but I eventually realised that only facing this fear myself would ever get me past it. If you have writer’s block, the best cure is to write, and the new list – written in the latest in a long line of small books – has certainly helped me do that. It might be never-ending, and now I’m about to finish the post I’ve thought so hard about, I feel like the world is mine, Will’s, Emily’s and Tamara’s oyster. The only way is up. Sorry this has taken so long – but here’s to the next 100.

Mason

Everyone’s An Expert

On Thursday I went along to our nearest polling station to cast my vote in the local council elections. It gives me a tremendous boost to know I’m now old enough to have a proper say in the development of society, and it’s an opportunity I’ll always be eager to grab, but in my experience nothing gets young people interested in politics like a general election – and we have one coming up! By the time we go to the polls again on 8 June, it’ll be just over two years since we last did the same, and the narrow gap between elections means some of my friends will be voting for the next Prime Minister for the second time. I was in the latter stages of sixth form last time we found ourselves at this point, and it was an environment that gave me a great insight into how all of the various campaigns really can reach out to people and get them talking.

As we got closer and closer to election day back in 2015, discussion was heating up in the common room, and by the time it finally arrived, it seemed like everyone had a degree in politics, knowing all that they needed to about each of the parties running and their respective policies. It was one of the most interesting points of the entire sixth form period, and I found it almost as intriguing to be an observer from the outside as others did who were old enough to vote. Everyone took whatever time they had between lessons or either side of the college day to do what they needed to, such was their eagerness to influence the future of the country, and it’s the memories of this that sadden me when I hear that young people supposedly aren’t turning up to vote. I always wonder whether the older population of Britain assume from this that we don’t care – because we really do, and we just need to go that extra mile to convince those who don’t that voting really is something worth doing.If you’re reading this, and you are one of those people, you can heed these words – register to vote before 22 May, otherwise it will be too late and you won’t be entitled to moan if the result of this election isn’t what you want. Surely you don’t need me to tell you that your input can make a difference?

I got further evidence of the political buzz in sixth form once we all made our tentative advances into the common room to watch the results roll in mere hours after the polls had closed the night before. We had a TV on the wall at that point (I don’t know if they’ve taken it down since), and my friends and I were all seated with our eyes fixed on the rolling news coverage playing before us. Many of us – including myself, Will and Alex, who was holding an unbelievably hot cup of black coffee that he could barely hold, let alone drink from – are very much left-wing, and we therefore began the day hoping that Labour would topple the Tories to get into Downing Street. As the morning progressed, however, the Conservatives took seat after seat, and our increasing misery was compounded when their victory was eventually confirmed – leaving them in power for what we thought would be another five years.

Labour will, of course, have my support once again at the 2017 election, and I remain confident that this can be their year, contrary to what some others seem to be saying. But if you should find yourself unable to decide on a party or candidate to throw your support behind, make sure you do your own research at your own pace and come to your own decision, disregarding what others try to tell you unless you genuinely agree with them. You should always vote honestly, in accordance with your beliefs and free from any outside pressure – it’s your say and you need to make it count. Furthermore, if you know exactly who to vote for but are hesitant to do so because you doubt their chances of victory, put your cross in their box anyway, because they’re much less likely to get in anywhere if you don’t vote for them than if you do.

In a nutshell, as I’ve already been trying to say, every vote counts. You can only ever waste one if you don’t use it – so don’t underestimate its power, even for a single second!

Mason

What Gives You The Right?

While waiting for the bus home after work recently, I found myself talking to an old lady who was also in the queue. We made small talk about various things – where I live, her previous career, my disability – and it passed the time quite nicely until the bus pulled up to our stand. At that point, we were discussing employment, since I will be leaving my current job in June, and specifically what my next one could be and where I could be doing it. It was then that the lady, who had seemed pleasant enough, made an admission that immediately brought her down in my estimations.

“I know this probably doesn’t sound very sympathetic,” she began, arousing my suspicions of what was to come, “but I’ve never felt very sorry for homeless people.”

I felt the smile instantly fade from my face and I had to work hard to suppress my disgust. “If you’re working in your wheelchair, why can’t they?” she added. It astounded me that someone of this lady’s age and life experience could be quite so ignorant. Granted, I’ve never been through any of the hardships that a homeless person has, but I know – and often make a habit of pointing out – that it’s very hard for anyone to get a job, no matter who you are, and the longer you wait the more disheartening it can be. In addition to this, you should never judge a book by its cover. We don’t know the reasons why people are homeless, and every case is different, so what gives anyone the right to judge them? I think many people need to do their best to remember some things that are quickly being forgotten in this day and age; namely that we are all human beings, that the differences between us should be embraced and celebrated, and that we should resist and reject anybody or anything that uses them to try dividing us.

As I may have previously written, I gave some money to a homeless man I encountered on my way to work late last year, and my ability to do that and subsequently provide him with a cup of coffee gave me a simple but significant boost. I give a smile and a “hello” to anyone I see sleeping rough, because that’s what you’d do to anyone else in the street, so why would I deny them that basic courtesy? I’m treating them with the same respect as I would anyone else, because they’re not aliens or people to be looked down upon. They’re people who might just have lost their way a bit, and if they have, we should help them to find their way back to normality – or at least show our support.

Anyone who doesn’t, like that lady I was talking to at the bus station, will simply not dignify a response from me – as Dad has recently pointed out, if I don’t agree with something but don’t feel it is necessary to start an argument, I’ll simply disengage and glaze over until the other person realises their daft attempts to get through to me have been fruitless. I have to say, it’s worked wonders so far!

Can I ask a simple favour before I go? Just give Grace’s short documentary Living Native a watch below. You won’t regret it. Thanking you muchly!

Mason