Friday 9 July 2010

I hear a ringtone and FINALLY find my Identity!!!

For a great deal of my life I never really felt comfortable in my own skin.

At School I was in the top grade but average, apart from in Team Sports where I was always in the motley band of misfits known as the "Chuckouts" left over after everyone had "picked up teams". I was ever the outsider. When I went to College I was studying Business Studies and Marketing with a lot of Big Company sponsored suits but shambled around in a pink linen jacket and shoulder length hair pretending I was Nick Drake (The suits were SO pissed off when I got a First). I went on to become a Sales & Marketing Director for a small Manufacturing Company for 15 years and had to wear a suit and attend board meetings with a lot of bearded old blokes smoking pipes but I still thought I was Nick Drake. So, possibly, did they. Two more jobs working for small dysfunctional family businesses later and I began to think I was Charles Drake, ballad singer from Weybridge.

Finally breaking free from the shackles of salaried serfdom two years ago I've gradually begun to feel more at home with, and proud of, my self-employed status but couldn't still quite place myself in the social continuum to my own satisfaction. Until yesterday.

Yesterday I was at the auction viewing, rubbing hot sweaty shoulders and other things with a bunch of people who would have looked too weird to make the cover of Strange Days by the Doors when a mobile phone went off. The mobile owner, an Amazonian woman with electric shock gray hair, did that thing where they pretend to fumble long enough to ensure that everyone in the room has heard how cool their ringtone is. Most people, like myself, are actually working through the pros and cons of whether it would be feasible to wrestle her to the ground and stick the phone down her throat without spoiling the auction viewing.

But after about 10 seconds my normal sociopathic rage instantly dissipated as I realised that the mobile ring tone was this.

In that moment it suddenly dawned on me that here was a character that I was TRULY comfortable being.

Let's look at the facts:

Rugged good looks but gone to pot - Tick


Quirky set of Wheels - Tick


Surrounded by attractive dogs - Tick



Working in a foursome with Mrs Rine, Lil & that Tinker Oz - Tick



Working in an environmentally sound activity where products are re-used rather than destroyed, helping the planet become a greener, more sustainable system. And having the odd pub lunch - Tick

  I'm happy now - I have an imaginary personality that I'm happy with! And Nick Drake was such a miserable sod really.

16 comments:

Dave said...

I expect you'll open a bar/brothel in deepest Norfolk soon, and call it 'Deadwood', so you can show your dark side. And have a kidney stone.

Rog said...

Dave: I wasn't planning to....

Ms Scarlet said...

Whatever happened to Lady Jane?
Sx

KAZ said...

I love this post Rog - It cheered me up.
So glad it's going well.

Z said...

Gosh, Dave, that was a link I didn't expect you to make.

It is a cheering post. Full of Love and Joy.

Rog said...

Scarlett: Phyllis Logan - last seen in the altogether more downbeat Wallander. Not seen in the altogether, obviously.

Kaz: Huzzah!!! My work here is done!

Z: No, I haven't heard of this Deadwood - I thought it had all been cut out. The Joie de Vivre is a natural Kentish trait exhibited by myself, Richard, Christoff and Dave.

Geoff said...

Is the odd pub lunch a ploughman's with marrow?

Christopher said...

Oh dear.

What is all this?

WHY, OH WHY don't I know who these people are?

(The bloke with the vase has a passing resemblance to Harry H. Corbett in Steptoe and Son, which is about my vintage. Could I be on to something here?)

Tim F said...

I was just going to say that your line about Strange Days made me laugh, when I read Christopher's comment about Harry H, and that was funnier. Sorry.

Rog said...

Geoff: We sometimes substitute Mangel Wurzels up here.

Christopher: Don't beat yourself up. Even a Polymath and Cultural Touchstone such as yourself can't be expected to keep track of every cutting edge development in advanced performance art. For the record I am going to be, Mathew, Lovejoy!. Not in the Mullet period obviously.

Tim: Can't win 'em all. I sadly bear more resemblance to Wilfred Bramble these days. Or Jim Morrison in his Elvis period.

Macy said...

Love the new avatar! Hope that Lovejoy/ Mcshane doesn't charge you for the borrowing the mullet though.

Rosie said...

Hey! I have Lovejoy in my sidebar...how cool is that?

Vicus Scurra said...

I have to register my disappointment, and not a little something or other else.
I have spent too much of my time these 10 years telling people that the study of "business studies" and "marketing" produces brain dead and worthless human beings. Now I find that that is your background. I will not stand down. I have resolved to pretend to ignore this new found knowledge, and to affect not to have read this piece. Please do not read this comment.
Antiques? Shite.

Rog said...

Macy: I have an imaginary Mullet so it doesn't incur cost.

Rosie: You may need all the cool you can get at over 30 degs!

Vicus: I imagined there was an imaginary compliment in there somewhere! I must say I've always been a bit suspicious about anything with the word "studies" after the name. You can't be a proper "ology". I've never come across Shi'ite antiques.

Madame DeFarge said...

Now I have you pegged. Can we describe you as a 'loveable rogue' now?

Rog said...

MDF: Yes!