Tag Archives: Gen X

The Older I Get, The Less I Give a Shit

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What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?

The simple answer?

Not giving a shit.

Now, before anyone gets terribly offended by the language, let me explain.

I don’t mean becoming an arsehole.

I don’t mean treating people badly.

And I certainly don’t mean wandering around behaving like your actions don’t have consequences.

I mean not caring quite so much about what other people think of you.

It’s something I’ve got considerably better at as I’ve got older.

Because apparently one of the benefits of getting older is finally realising that a lot of the things you spent your younger years worrying about…

…weren’t actually worth worrying about.

People are going to have an opinion about you.

They just are.

It doesn’t matter whether they’ve met you.

They might have read something you wrote online about a divisive subject.

They might have seen you walking through town wearing that ridiculous hat.

They might have heard a story about you from someone who knew someone who was there that one time you completely fucked something up.

And suddenly they have a version of you in their head.

A character.

A story.

A collection of assumptions.

And you know what?

You can’t control that.

You could spend your entire life trying to make sure everybody has the “right” opinion of you.

You could change what you say.

Change what you wear.

Change what you believe.

Change how you behave.

You could spend years trying to become the version of yourself that you think other people will approve of.

And eventually you’ll probably discover something rather depressing.

They’re still going to have an opinion.

Because people are people.

We all look at the world through our own experiences, prejudices, memories and expectations.

Someone can meet you on a bad day and decide you’re an unpleasant person.

Someone else can meet you on exactly the same day and think you’re having a difficult time.

Someone can read one thing you wrote and decide they don’t like you.

Someone else can read it and think, “Bloody hell, finally, someone said it.”

You can’t win.

And honestly?

I’ve stopped trying.

It’s bloody liberating.

Because I’ve finally realised that other people’s opinions of me are not actually my responsibility.

My responsibility is how I treat people.

Whether I’m honest.

Whether I try to be kind.

Whether I own my mistakes.

Whether I apologise when I’ve fucked up.

Whether I try to leave people a little better off for having crossed paths with me.

Beyond that?

Well…

People are going to think what they think.

And that’s okay.

I’ve spent far too much of my life worrying about how I’m perceived.

Wondering whether somebody misunderstood something I said.

Replaying conversations in my head.

Thinking about what someone might have meant by something they said.

Trying to work out whether someone likes me.

Or whether they’ve changed their opinion of me.

Or whether I’ve somehow pissed them off.

You know what?

That’s exhausting.

And for what?

Because there’s a rather uncomfortable truth about being human.

Everyone has a version of you.

To some people, you’re a monster.

To others, you’re a great person.

To some, you’re annoying.

To others, you’re hilarious.

To some, you’re selfish.

To others, you’re the person they can always rely on.

To some, you’re the villain in their story.

To others, you’re the person who helped them through a difficult time.

And somewhere in amongst all those versions is the actual you.

Flawed.

Complicated.

Occasionally brilliant.

Occasionally a complete bloody idiot.

Trying your best.

Getting things wrong.

Learning.

Growing.

Making mistakes.

Making memories.

Doing what we all do.

Living.

I once heard someone say that everyone has a version of you.

They all got the version of you they deserved.

I don’t know if that’s entirely true.

But I do know this.

I’m no longer interested in spending my life trying to control which version people have.

They can have whatever version they’ve created.

They can like me.

They can dislike me.

They can misunderstand me.

They can make assumptions.

They can even think I’m a bit of a dick.

That’s their business.

I’ll carry on being me.

And perhaps that’s one of the things I wish I’d learned a lot earlier.

You don’t have to be liked by everyone.

You don’t have to be understood by everyone.

You don’t even have to explain yourself every bloody time someone gets you wrong.

Sometimes you can simply shrug…

…and carry on.

Because peace is worth more than approval.

And honestly?

I’d much rather be comfortable being myself than spend the rest of my life trying to be somebody everyone else is comfortable with.

So, if there’s one thing I wish I’d started doing earlier in life?

Not giving a shit.

Well…

Not giving quite so much of a shit.

There are still people I care about.

There are still opinions that matter to me.

There are still times when I get things wrong and need to listen.

But the imaginary audience in my head?

The people I thought were constantly judging me?

The endless worrying about what someone, somewhere, might think?

I’ve finally told them to fuck off.

And do you know what?

It’s wonderfully peaceful.

Stay safe,

BC

It’s Your First Time Being Alive

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What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

Don’t worry if, in your twenties, you don’t know where you’re going.

Honestly.

Most of us are making it up as we go along.

There seems to be this unwritten expectation that by a certain age you’re supposed to have everything worked out. A career. A five-year plan. A purpose. A clear idea of who you are and where you’re heading.

Life rarely works like that.

When we’re young, we somehow expect ourselves to have all the answers despite the fact we’ve barely had time to collect the questions.

It’s your first time being alive.

Be kind to yourself.

I didn’t know who I truly was, or what I wanted my life to look like, until I was nearly forty. Looking back, I spent far too much time worrying that I was behind everyone else.

The truth?

Nobody knows what they’re doing quite as much as they pretend to.

And that’s okay.

Because life isn’t really about the final destination anyway.

It’s about the journey.

It’s about the people you meet along the way.

The late-night conversations.

The road trips.

The laughter that leaves your face aching.

The memories you make with friends and family.

Years later, you won’t remember every deadline, every promotion, or everything you thought was a disaster at the time.

You’ll remember the people.

You’ll remember how they made you feel.

You’ll remember the moments.

Another thing I’d tell my younger self is this:

Learn to love yourself.

Not in an arrogant way.

Not in a “look at me” sort of way.

Just learn to be comfortable in your own skin.

Because once you stop trying to be who you think everyone else wants you to be, and start accepting who you actually are, something wonderful happens.

You can breathe.

You stop fighting yourself.

And that feeling is worth more than you can imagine.

I’d also tell you to let go of grudges.

They’re heavy things to carry.

The person who upset you years ago is probably not sitting at home replaying the argument.

Meanwhile, you’re giving them space in your head they haven’t earned.

They don’t deserve to live rent free in there.

Forgiveness isn’t always about them.

Sometimes it’s about freeing yourself.

So be patient.

Be kinder to yourself than you think you need to be.

Take photographs.

Make memories.

Tell people you love them.

Don’t panic if the map isn’t clear.

Most of us are finding the path one step at a time.

And sometimes the scenic route turns out to be the best one.

Stay safe,

BC

Ps Don’t forget to wear sunscreen

The Glasses I Don’t Need

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I have a pair of glasses.

My glasses

Proper glasses.

You know the sort. You go to the opticians, sit in the chair while someone shines various bits of machinery into your eyes, reads out letters that get progressively smaller, and eventually tells you that your eyesight is apparently not quite as good as you thought it was.

Except…

Mine are a little bit different.

One lens is Plano.

In other words, completely plain. No prescription. Nothing.

The other one had a very, very small prescription in it.

And I mean tiny.

So tiny, in fact, that I’ve now outgrown the prescription altogether.

Technically, I don’t need the glasses anymore.

But I still wear them.

Why?

Because they are my Clarke Kent glasses.

Yes.

Really.

Those of you who know me will already know that I’m a massive comic book nerd, so perhaps this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

But there’s actually a bit more to it than that.

You see, glasses can create a little physical barrier between me and the world.

Not a huge one.

Nobody looking at me would think, “Blimey, that bloke has constructed a defensive perimeter around himself.”

But they do something.

Much like sunglasses do.

For years, I’ve found sunglasses useful in social situations because they make eye contact easier. They create that tiny bit of separation between me and the person I’m talking to.

I can still see them.

I can still listen.

I can still have the conversation.

But somehow, having something between their eyes and mine makes me feel a little less exposed.

A little less vulnerable.

And that can make a surprisingly big difference.

The problem with sunglasses, of course, is that they’re not exactly practical all the time.

At night?

Not really.

In a dark room?

Probably not.

When it’s raining and the sky looks like it’s personally offended by the existence of daylight?

Definitely not.

And wearing sunglasses indoors can occasionally result in people wondering whether I’m about to perform at a nightclub rather than attend a perfectly ordinary meeting.

So these glasses fill the gap.

They look like normal glasses.

Because, well, they are.

Nobody needs to know that one lens is doing absolutely nothing and the other one is basically on permanent holiday.

They give me that little barrier without making the world around me darker.

And when I’m nervous, particularly if I’m standing on a stage or speaking in front of people, they help.

Stage fright is an odd thing.

You can know exactly what you want to say.

You can have prepared.

You can know that the people in front of you aren’t actually waiting for you to fail.

And yet your brain can still decide:

“Excellent. This is the moment we panic.”

Having my glasses on gives me something.

A tiny bit of confidence.

A little shield.

Perhaps even a psychological costume.

Which brings me back to Clarke Kent.

Because Superman has always fascinated me.

Not simply because he can fly, lift cars and apparently survive being thrown through buildings.

It’s the idea of the alter ego.

Clark Kent puts on a pair of glasses and suddenly he’s just an ordinary bloke.

Nobody looks twice.

Nobody expects him to save the world.

And while I’m certainly not claiming that my glasses give me superpowers

They help me feel like I’m wearing my social armour.

They give me a little bit of distance.

A little bit of protection.

And sometimes, that’s all you need.

I think we all have things like that.

Little routines.

Objects.

Clothes.

Jewellery.

Music.

Something we carry with us that makes the difficult things feel slightly easier.

They might look completely insignificant to somebody else.

But they aren’t insignificant to us.

For me, apparently, it’s a pair of slightly ridiculous glasses with one lens that doesn’t need a prescription and another that doesn’t need one anymore.

To everyone else, they’re just glasses.

To me?

They’re my Clarke Kent glasses.

And sometimes, even when you don’t need a prescription, you still need the glasses.

Stay safe,

BC

Productive-ish

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Today was one of those mornings where work didn’t really feel like work.

I headed into town to have a wander around and look at potential locations for an upcoming photography gig for Totnes Pride.

There’s something about photographing an event that makes you look at familiar places slightly differently. Suddenly you’re not just seeing streets, buildings and corners of town, you’re looking for light, angles, backgrounds and those little spots where a photograph might just come together.

Of course, I took the camera with me.

Because apparently I’m incapable of going anywhere without looking at things through a lens these days.

Once the location scouting was done, it was time for the important stuff.

Coffee.

A slow, relaxing coffee morning in the market, with some good friends, and friends I’d just met, absolutely no rushing about and nowhere particularly urgent to be.

And then, as if The Universe hadn’t already delivered enough, a calico cat wandered down the stairs.

Obviously, I had to say hello.

The cat seemed perfectly happy to accept some fuss, so who was I to argue?

Photography locations sorted.

Coffee enjoyed.

Cat fussed.

All in all, not a bad morning.

Sometimes the best days are the ones where you manage to get a little bit of work done…

…and still find time to stop and enjoy the small stuff.

Stay safe,

BC

The lady in question

“Optimus Prime, VHS Tapes and the Slow Death of My Childhood”

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Who is your favorite cartoon character?

Who is your favourite cartoon character?

That’s an easy one.

Although the answer might surprise you.

It’s Transformers.

No, not the Michael Bay films.

I’m talking about the original Transformers.

The Saturday morning Transformers.

The sit in your pyjamas with a bowl of cereal while your parents repeatedly tell you to do something useful Transformers.

You see, I’m an old man.

Well…

Gen X.

Which is basically what happens when you leave a child from the 1980s unattended for long enough.

I remember the original series.

Optimus Prime.

Megatron.

Bumblebee.

Starscream.

Soundwave.

The Dinobots.

And that glorious moment when a robot transformed into something completely ridiculous and somehow nobody questioned the physics of it.

Because why would they?

It was a cartoon.

And it was brilliant.

The original series arrived in 1984, alongside the Hasbro and Takara toy lines, and for a generation of kids it became much more than something to watch on a Saturday morning.

It became part of childhood.

There were the toys.

The comics.

The stickers.

And yes…

I had the toys.

I had the stickers.

I probably spent far too much of my pocket money trying to get the ones I was missing.

There was even the Panini sticker album.

256 stickers.

Which sounds perfectly reasonable.

Until you’re a kid and you’re staring at your album with three bloody stickers left to find.

Then the maths changes.

Suddenly 256 seems like an unnecessarily cruel number.

You’d go through your pile.

“Got.”

“Got.”

“Got.”

“Need.”

And then you’d swap with your mates.

Or try to.

Because there was always that one kid who somehow had about fourteen of the sticker you needed.

And absolutely no intention of giving you one.

If you know, you know.

And then there was the VHS.

Google it.

I’ll wait.

For younger readers, VHS was basically YouTube, Netflix and Disney+ rolled into one.

Except you had to physically rewind it.

And if someone forgot?

Well…

You’d find out pretty quickly when you put it in and the bloody thing started halfway through an episode.

And I still have all of mine.

Which probably says something about my inability to throw anything away.

But that’s the thing about Transformers.

When I think about them now, I don’t just remember robots fighting robots.

I remember being a kid.

I remember Saturday mornings.

I remember cereal.

I remember sitting far too close to the television.

I remember that feeling when the theme tune started and you knew you were about to disappear into another world.

For twenty minutes, the rest of the world didn’t matter.

Back then, we didn’t have endless streaming services.

There wasn’t a catalogue containing practically every television programme ever made sitting in your pocket.

If you missed something…

You missed it.

Unless you were lucky enough to have recorded it.

And if you had?

You guarded that VHS tape like it contained the nuclear launch codes.

There was something wonderfully simple about it all.

Good guys.

Bad guys.

Robots.

Cars.

Spaceships.

Dinosaurs.

And a giant transforming robot called Optimus Prime who somehow managed to be incredibly cool while also being strangely reassuring.

Looking back, though, I don’t think Transformers was ever really just about the characters.

It was about what they represented.

Childhood.

Freedom.

Imagination.

That little bit of magic we seem to lose somewhere between being a kid and becoming an adult.

Because that’s the funny thing about growing older.

The toys get packed away.

The sticker albums disappear into cupboards.

The VHS tapes gather dust.

And life carries on.

Work.

Bills.

Responsibilities.

Emails.

Appointments.

All that grown-up nonsense.

Then, completely unexpectedly, you hear a piece of music.

Or see an old toy.

Or find something buried in a box.

And suddenly…

You’re eight years old again.

Sitting on the carpet.

Bowl of cereal beside you.

Pyjamas on.

No responsibilities.

No bills.

No emails.

No bloody grown-up nonsense.

Just Saturday morning.

And for twenty minutes, everything is alright.

I suppose that’s why nostalgia can be such a powerful thing.

We’re not necessarily missing the cartoon.

We’re missing the person we were when we watched it.

The version of ourselves who could be completely absorbed by something as simple as a cartoon about alien robots.

Before life became complicated.

Before we learned that sometimes people leave.

Before we discovered that adults don’t actually have all the answers.

Before we started worrying about mortgages, pensions, politics and whether we’ve remembered to put the bloody bins out.

Back then, Optimus Prime had the answers.

Well…

Most of the time.

So, who is my favourite cartoon character?

Transformers.

Not because they were the greatest cartoons ever made.

Not because the animation was perfect.

And certainly not because every storyline made sense.

It didn’t.

Not even remotely.

But because they were part of my childhood.

And sometimes that’s more important.

Because when something can survive forty-odd years of technological progress, adulthood, responsibilities and everything else life throws at you…

And still make you smile?

That’s more than just a cartoon.

That’s a memory.

And perhaps that’s what was really hiding underneath all those robots, cars and explosions.

Something more than meets the eye.

Stay safe.

Bc

Remember Remember

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What’s a cultural tradition from your country that you love?

There are certain things from childhood that, for whatever reason, stay with you.

For me, one of those things has to be Bonfire Night.

The Fifth of November.

Cold November air.

The smell of woodsmoke.

Fireworks going off somewhere in the distance.

And, inevitably, some bloke standing far too close to the bonfire while somebody’s mum shouts:

“MOVE BACK!”

Of course, when you’re a kid, you don’t see a giant pile of burning wood as a potential health and safety incident waiting to happen.

You see an adventure.

You see something bloody enormous.

And probably wonder how close you can get before your eyebrows become an optional extra.

Then there was the Guy.

We’d make one from whatever old clothes we could find, stuffing them with newspaper, rags, or basically anything that was vaguely flammable and not currently being used.

It didn’t have to be particularly good.

Actually, thinking back, some of them were probably less “Guy Fawkes” and more “slightly suspicious bloke who’s been found in a hedge.”

But that didn’t matter.

We’d proudly put our creation on top of the bonfire and stand back, waiting for the flames to do their thing.

And then came the fireworks.

Now, modern fireworks are spectacular.

Absolutely bloody enormous.

But there was something magical about those childhood displays.

The first rocket disappearing into the darkness.

That moment of anticipation.

Then—

BOOM!

A shower of colour exploding across the sky.

Golden sparks.

Red.

Green.

Blue.

And for a few seconds, the whole night seemed to come alive.

Maybe they really were better back then.

Or maybe that’s just what childhood does.

It takes ordinary things and makes them enormous.

Then, of course, there was the food.

And I’m not talking about fancy street food, artisan burgers or anything else that somebody has decided needs to be served on a wooden board.

Give me a jacket potato cooked in the embers of a bonfire.

That was food.

You’d wait.

And wait.

And probably wait considerably longer than you had the patience for.

Eventually you’d pull it out, brush away the ash, unwrap the foil, split it open and add a ridiculous amount of butter.

Simple.

Cheap.

Perfect.

Funny how food seems to taste better when there’s a memory attached to it.

That potato wasn’t just a potato.

It was part of the evening.

Part of standing outside in the cold.

Part of waiting around with family and friends.

Part of being a kid.

And, if you were lucky, somebody had remembered the hot chocolate.

Happy days.

Now what’s my rambling got to do with cultural traditions..?

There’s actually a fascinating bit of history behind all of it

Bonfire Night commemorates 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding barrels of gunpowder beneath the Houses of Parliament as part of what we now call, the Gunpowder Plot.

Although here’s something I didn’t know until relatively recently. The person being burned on the bonfire wasn’t always Guy Fawkes.

Apparently, in the seventeenth century, the Pope was often the unfortunate chap being thrown onto the flames.

Which seems a little harsh.

Eventually, Guy Fawkes became the familiar figure associated with Bonfire Night. Mainly because Parliament met in January 1606 and passed the Thanksgiving Act. This made services and sermons commemorating the plot a regular annual feature each 5 November.

Except at St Peter’s School in York, where they never have never burnt an effigy as Guy Fawkes was a student there.

And I suppose that’s one of the interesting things about traditions.

They change.

They evolve.

They get passed down from one generation to another, with each generation adding its own little bit to the story.

Stay safe

Bc