Tag: dailyprompt

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Just how much of my life have I forgotten…

Daily writing prompt
What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
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I often chide myself for my lack of mindfulness. Last month I was on holiday in Sorento and now I can only remember snippets of my week. I think to myself, did I really just wander around one of the most attractive places in the world not paying attention?

As most of you know I teach the Stone Age in schools and I pretty sure that our hunter gatherer ancestors were far more observant and in the moment than we are. I can hardly remember which schools I was at last week, hunter gatherers in contrast must have held enormous and complicated maps in their heads remembering where useful and fruitful trees were, where the animals went and where the dangers lay. It makes me ashamed to be wandering around like a mindless fool compared to them.

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Having nothing and losing nothing…

Daily writing prompt
What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
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Archaeology is the science (sic) of things. It is a science of material that is lost, thrown away or placed on purpose in an inaccessible place. From the thing and its context a narrative can be created that sheds light on the past. I have done archaeology but prefer the historical activity of creating the narrative more.

Archaeology works best when you are dealing with a materialistic society. It is easier to draw conclusions when there is a lot of material to work with such as the grave of an Anglo-Saxon king or even a Anglo-Saxon peasants burial. These contain the remains and grave goods. Societies that don’t bury their dead with grave goods are far more tricky not least if you draw the conclusion that more grave goods means that the person was richer. Consider the grave of Medieval Christian knight verses the grave of the afore mentioned peasant.

If I lost all my possessions today I would be on a par with our earliest ancestors in the Palaeolithic era. These people were nomadic hunter gatherers who followed the seasons and the herds through the landscape. They pose a significant challenge to archaeology because they were a non-materialistic throw away society. First they were non-materialistic because they were nomadic. They needed to travel light and could not be encumbered with material possessions. Second they were a throw away society in that if they needed a flint tool they could pick up a nodule of flint, knapp a tool and then after it had been used throw it away. In fact at Boxgrove we can see where they knapped a handaxe, where it was used and where it was discarded afterwards. They were a throw away society to such an extent that stone tools are regularly found and in such numbers that museums are not interested in collecting them!

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Just to be productive…

Daily writing prompt
What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?
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Jesus said “do not worry about tomorrow because it has its own problems…” and that is sound advice. Tomorrow like today will have a leaky boiler, a car to charge up, clothes to wash and food to make so Ill take the Lords advice and not worry about it.

All I want from tomorrow is that I won’t doom scroll on my phone, waste time watching nonsense tv or sit around doing nothing. I hate wasting time, I’ve wasted enough time in my life and now I don’t want to waste another minute.

So to square the advice and embrace my ambition my number one priority for tomorrow is to be productive. To leave the world a little bit better tomorrow night than I found it tomorrow morning.

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If I could learn anything…

Daily writing prompt
What skill would you like to learn?
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My great regret from my school days is not paying attention in school. I do not know where it came from but the idea of paying attention, doing homework and trying hard was lame and though I was never a bad boy I was one who did not engage with my education.

Undiagnosed dyslexia certainly had something to do with it but I had certain blocks and barriers that prevented me from taking my work seriously. I hated maths, disliked English and was uninterested and unmoved by geography and languages which I now heartily regret.

I regret not engaging with my German lessons, not doing my homework or practicing. Somewhere along the line I got the idea that it wasn’t interesting or important. Not least that any German who I met spoke English much better than I an English speaker could. Now in my forties I recognise that my life is lesser because I can only speak one language fluently. I see now the value of other languages and have started very tentatively to work on my German, Latin and Old English.

This is obviously a professional decision because one of the topics I study is Old English and both Latin and Old English will support that.

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When you roll into bed aching and exhausted having given everything and think… that was awesome!

Daily writing prompt
In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?
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One of the questions on Alpha Course is ‘what makes you happy?’ It is a very important question and one that we should ponder. Happiness, since the 19th century, has been seen as a primary good in itself. Happiness and the pursuit of happiness appears in the US constitution. It is fundamental to the modern concept of the good life.

This is not the first time I have blogged about private experiences but I think that this topic is too important to avoid. What makes me happy? The alternative is unhappiness and in my life I have been unhappy and know what that feels like. Its not good and I would say that it is not the intended human condition. In fact the feelings associated with unhappiness are intended to get you out of the situation that is making you unhappy. In contrast the feelings associated with happiness make you want to wallow in it, delight in it and be the proverbial pig in it. When I am happy I feel smooth, quick and clever. I am more myself (EDIT: My wife would like me to add that I am also much easier to live with!)

So what makes me happy. Lets look at literature for an example. I think the happiest people in literature are the Hobbits. A profound creation by JRR Tolkien. The Hobbits contrast with the Ratlings from Warhammer 40K in that they do not live hedonistic promiscuous lives but contented lives that focus on ‘growing food and eating it’, they keep the law because its the law and as Thorin says at the end of The Hobbit if more people loved cheer than horded gold the world would be a merrier place. This is not to say that the Hobbits are merely drunken, gluttons obsessed with food they are also strong and resilient.

My take away from this is that to be happy the individual should enjoy their work and the benefits of their work. The Hobbits liked the view of a well cultivated field not just, I suspect, for the eating later on but out of an appreciation of the hard work that had gone into taking a field, harrowing it, seeding it, cultivating, weeding and watering it until that barren land becomes fertile. And that is what makes me happy, I love hard work and a good solid result. I remember making my wife’s wedding ring as part of a workshop on the Valentines day before our wedding. It took all day and transformed scrap gold into a shiny new ring by my effort (and the jewellers skill).

So I admit it, what makes me happy is being like a Hobbit. I want to be strong enough to maintain my little hill of beans and strong enough to keep it. That involves hard work and determination in everything I do. From chopping wood for the fire, battling the brambles and ivy that threatens to take over my garden to working hard during the day and coming back to a meal with my family.

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The tyranny of Money

Daily writing prompt
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
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In Babylon 5 there is an amazing line. I do not know the character but he’s played by the same actor who played Chekov from Star Trek and he is a baddy. He says “being a freedom fighter is great, but it doesn’t pay” or words to that effect. This is one of the great laws of the universe. If playing Fortnight, lego or writing blogs paid the bills we could do it forty hours a week or more. Alas they do not but lets imagine a world where the bills are paid and I can do whatever I like.

One unpaid job that would be lots of fun would be a professional “church crawler”. Sounds odd doesn’t it? But in fact it would involve visiting old building and looking at them. I could look at the stained glass, the carvings and all the other ancient and interesting features of the church. In real life this is something that I do. One day I discovered that a church near where I grew up had meisercords that were unknown to scholarship. I hightailed it back to Cheshire and went to see them and found that the cheap Warborton family had installed blank meisercords.

Another fun job would be hotel inspector. I am sure that they do have quality assurance people who check the quality of hotels but I bet they are a subspecies of the spreadsheet people. In my world these hotel inspectors would go on holiday to hotels and would rank hotels in the same way people rank wines.

The ultimate job would be a blog writer. If I could spend my time just researching and writing blogs I would be a very happy man.

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The Romans defeated the Carthaginians by not knowing how to quit.

Daily writing prompt
What’s the trait you value most about yourself?
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The Roman Republic and the Carthaginian Empire were the great rivals of the ancient world. An upstart rabble of Europeans started a war with an ancient civilisation of great antiquity. In fact the fate of the world stood in the balance. If the Romans had lost Carthage would have dominated the Mediterranean and potentially Europe. It is an interesting thought of how the world would be a different place.

The Romans did not do very well. Their greatest general of the war until Skipio was Fabius who was famed for not engaging Hannibal. Hannibal terrified the Romans because he was a tactical genius who could turn the Romans great strengths against them. With the Roman armies wrecked repeatedly, their territory occupied, allies turning against them and 10% of their male population dead Rome was in trouble. Everyone was expecting Rome to come to terms but Skipio had different ideas. First he did the incredibly Roman thing of having a dinner party. He forcibly invited his patrician friends to his house, pulled down the front wall and had the party in full view of the plebs to show them that the elite were backing Rome. Then the Romans didn’t give up. They simply refused to surrender or come to terms with Carthage. They were very polite about it and treated their envoys with respect and with due regard but they used the word ‘no’.

I think this is a lesson to us all and one that I try to do in my life. Simply not giving up. I am a man who has had a lot of set backs in my life and for a long time I took it personally and would retreat and lick my wounds. Now I realise a wonderful truth, just because something has defeated you it doesn’t mean you have lost. Imagine that, how could you not live your best life if you had the power to be undefeatable?

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Publish or Die…

Daily writing prompt
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
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Over the years I have been given lots of good advice by people who do not take it themselves. My father in particular was obsessed that I would run over the cord with the lawn mower but I never did, he however, murdered at least three hedgestrimmers by cutting energetically through the cord. Never take advice from someone who does not follow it themselves.

During my time in the TA I met some very remarkable men and women whose experience serving their country contrasted with my own four years of service. But one day after a difficult run a very experienced soldier told me not to worry about other people but to focus on myself and my performance. I think that this is excellent advice to follow. Don’t look around at the people who are better or worse than you, rather focus on being the best person who you can be.

I once met a significant academic in my field. To be honest I thought that he was dead but at a conference I saw his name on a name badge and was amazed to meet one of my heroes. If you meet a hero do not hold back ask for an autograph, a photo, a chat or advice because the worst that could happen is that they say no and nobody dies from being told no. This guy was bemused but friendly and gave me some excellent advice. He told me to publish, publish, publish because when you stop you die.

Last I asked my grandfather on his death bed for a piece of advice but he was too far gone and did not respond. My last piece of advice for you is never wait too long.

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Please just let me read…

Daily writing prompt
What could you do more of?
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As a historian I read a lot to try to keep up with my topics but it is never enough and there are always fun distractions. My main topic is the study of History as opposed to history. For the uninitiated that means I study not what is said but how it is said and what the underlying subtext is.

This obviously takes a lot of concentration and is often interrupted by the cat who regularly wants to be fed or loved. The cat is called Zach.

I am also a husband and father and these take up a lot of time. In fact I have got to the point of writing at 4am when they are not awake. The cat is though and if I am awake and doing something he feels I can do something useful like feed him, let him in or let him out and sometimes watch him eat. He loves that. He wants me to stand and watch him eat his food.

I also have a job which starts at seven and finishes at four. I drive to a school, deliver a workshop and then drive home again. I resent these nine hours where I can not write or read but I do get two hours of thinking time whilst driving. Unfortunately I spend this time thinking about how I should be reading.

I should be reading. I should be keeping up but there are too many distractions. Life gets in the way and despite all that being a husband, father, pet owner and a workshop leader is not a bad way to waste time that should be spent reading.

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The Abolition of Slavery, 1833

Daily writing prompt
What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
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Great Britain has a chequered history ranging from the blackest evil to the best and I think that best was the Abolition of Slavery and then the creation of the West Africa Squadron to rescue captured Africans.

The clip above is from the film Amistad (1997) which is a film I can not watch without crying. It is heart breaking but the end of the film shows the West Africa Squadron attacking and destroying a slave fortress which I would argue is the correct and best use of weapons.

Furthermore I have skin in this game because Thomas Clarkson the abolitionist is a relative.