Running every day in April: for no particular reason - Just like Forrest Gump.

What have we lost since Covid 19? And where did it go?

And how do we spend our days under Lockdown? How do I? 

If February was spent anticipating losses, March was when they actually happened. Maybe the things I was worried about when the virus first hit seem trivial now, when so many people are dying. But in late February, the football season, a summer holiday to Italy, Parkrun, going to the cinema or to a cafe for breakfast, and being able to go to the office to do my job, were all important things that I didn't want to lose, During the month of March all those previously available choices were shut down, most of them in the same week. 

So, what to do in April? What was left? Well, one thing is exercise. The freedom to go outside, to walk, or to run. Once a day. So I did.  A bit like Forrest Gump, without exactly knowing the reason why, I set off running. And during April I ran every day.  The only rules (which I made up as I went along) were that I had to run a minimum of 4 kilometres a day, and that the total had to add up to 100 miles (or 162 km).  I know there are a lot of exercise challenges circulating on Social Media at the moment but this wasn't one of those. It was entirely personal. And because a big part of running for me is recording the data, here is the data.

I take Methotrexate to manage my Arthritis, and I can get sore if I run too much. My joints don't respond well to excessive impact.  Because my symptoms are well controlled I sometimes wonder how much effect the medication has, but during April I found out. For the two or three days following the weekly dose, my knees and ankles hurt less than the rest of the week. Methotrexate has its drawbacks, it can suppress the immune response, and along with having asthma (and being male and getting older all the time) that puts me at higher risk from Covid. On the other hand, keeping fit is supposed to increase your survival chances if you get Covid, so there's a balance to be struck.

Running every day in April was not something that I consciously weighed up the pros and cons of. It was beyond logic. I didn't do it for one specific reason I'm aware of, but when so much of what was previously 'normal life' is out of our control, it was nice to do one thing that was completely up to me.  Also, it made sense because I have been doing a lot less incidental exercise each day, now I am not walking to and from the car morning and night and around the office etc, And, because I live with people who have started doing a lot more baking since lockdown, I am eating more cake than before. As it is, my weight was exactly the same at the beginning of April as it was at the end, so the running has kept me in some sort of equilibrium.

It's easy to concentrate only on losses during lockdown. To think about things that are not allowed, and freedoms taken away.  But it's also important to take account of the things that go right.  And I noticed while I was running how beautiful April is. A beautiful month to be outside. Almost every day has been sunny, with birdsong and blossom everywhere, and some newborn lambs to see along my route. And in 30 days I have never had to run in the rain once. I've also seen a lot of courtesy too. People have moved aside or crossed the road to let me pass, and to maintain social distancing,  Also, the time of day when I have been running (mostly around 8 am) is a time that I would normally be sat in traffic, or in an office. Although the 15 hours I ran for during April made me sore sometimes, their benefit can't be measured.

I was toying with the idea of following up 'Running every day in April' with 'Running every day in May', but I have been advised against it, by Joy, as she says I need a bit of rest, and although I am stubborn, and I don't always listen, I have decided not to be an idiot about it this time. 

Even Forrest Gump stopped eventually.

Bielsa and Leeds United - Playing like you're 3-0 down, whatever the score

My first awareness of being a Leeds United supporter was waking up from a general anaesthetic, after an operation aged 7, to be presented with a colour poster of the 1974/1975 squad.

Shortly after that, I watched them live on TV for the first time. Unfortunately, that was the 1975 European Cup Final (daylight robbery, disallowed goal, penalty not given, heartache, Paris, fans ripping out seats and throwing them onto the pitch etc).  In the 45 years since, my experience of watching Leeds has tended to go in 15 years cycles of boom and bust, or in my case, bust and boom.

My first 15 years of watching Leeds was spent mostly being told how good they used to be. Then under Howard Wilkinson in 1989 everything changed   Looking back, the first time I felt swept along by genuine hope of better days ahead was Gordon Strachan's debut in March 1989. That was the first day when I realised that as a Leeds fan I would be able to stop living in the past. The promotion year of  1989/90 was the one and only year I've ever been a season ticket holder, and a lot of the enjoyment of watching that 1989/90 team was watching them hound and pressurise teams at Elland Road, watching Batty and Vinnie Jones and Speed and Strachan chasing them all over the pitch and boxing them in.

Shortly after that season's promotion, I moved away from the area so I became only an occasional visitor to Elland Road.  For about another 15 years they continued to be a team to be proud of, with new stars like Viduka and Bowyer and Alan Smith, but then after the financial meltdown and relegation in 2004, things went very, very wrong, and stayed that way for almost another 15 years.  After watching teams assembled during that time by Peter Reid and Dennis Wise full of loan signings who didn't seem to care, or even to know who each other were, I stopped caring too, and Leeds once again became a team of past glories, not present ones.  For a lot of years from the mid 2000s onwards, I didn't know the names of any of the players, I'd even stopped checking the results. I would occasionally go with my brother if I found myself in Leeds, but that was it, the one highlight being in January 2010 when they beat Manchester United in the FA Cup.

I suppose I find it harder to care about football in the modern era anyway.  In these times of wall to wall Sky TV, with games on every day, and with billionaire clubs and their millionaire players dominating everything, I find football and footballers harder to relate to than in the 70s and 80s.

A lot of the games I've found most exciting over the years have been games when Leeds have been behind and chasing the game.  Letting in 2, 3 or 4 early goals changes your mindset, and sometimes the most fun games to watch have been those when they've got nothing to lose.  Leeds 2 Ipswich 4 1989, Leeds 4 Liverpool 5 1991 Leeds 4 Stuttgart 1 1992 Leeds 4 Derby 3 1997 Leeds 3 Norwich 3 2017. I mean, watching all those flicks and tricks when they were 7-0 up against Southampton in 1972 is all very well, but sometimes what I've admired most has been them giving it a go in adversity.

The most exciting game I've seen live was Leeds 3 Millwall 4 in 2018. Leeds 2-0 down at half time and down to 10 men. For 20 minutes at the start of the second half they threw absolutely everything at Millwall and had them on the backfoot, scoring 3 goals. But then fatigue set in, and they couldn't hold on.

The best thing about the last two years of watching Leeds under Bielsa, is that now they play every game, whatever the score, as if they're 3-0 down and they've got nothing to lose. And they've got the fitness and the coaching to be able to keep it up for 90 minutes, instead of just 20 minutes running on backs to the wall adrenaline and then running out of steam.

These days, after so long stuck in the Championship, it's understandable that people are fixated on promotion, but sometimes obsessing over getting promoted makes it seem that results are all that matter. There's a danger (and I found this to be true in 1989/90 too), that you don't appreciate what you're seeing, because you're only thinking about the final score, and where that leaves you in the league table.  Now we're all stuck in a Covid 19 no man's land, staring at the league table is all we've got. But for the time being at least, we're on top.

We're on top because of Bielsa, and because of his unswerving devotion, to a meticulously choreographed, running is everything, striving for perfection brand of football madness, And that madness has blasted me out of my apathetic 15 year hibernation. I've never found them more exciting to watch than I have over the last two seasons. And I've never cared more about the team and what happens to them than I do now.  It's very possible I'm what you would call a 'fair weather' supporter. Maybe I only come out of the woodwork when things are going well. But on the other hand, after so much financial mismanagement, and a magic roundabout of not very inspiring managers, maybe I'm just a skeptic. For me 'seeing is believing' and I need to be seeing something 'out of the ordinary' before I can devote my time and attention to it.

So, thank you Bielsa. And thank you also to the players. Who have bought into his methods, and who are prepared to run for every ball, and to give it everything, from the first minute to the last. The current squad is now just as memorable to me, as the team of Bremner and Lorimer that I mostly only learned about in hindsight, and the one of Strachan and Batty and Speed from 1989/90 that I saw with my own eyes.

What I don't know, is how this season will end, or even if it will end. I don't know if we'll ever get promoted. But whatever the record books say, in the end that's just statistics, and statistics don't tell the whole story. Supporting a team is about having something to hope for and to look forward to; a way of playing that you can be proud of and that gets you out of year seat and inspires you, and gives you something to believe in. For a long time with Leeds that had got lost. Thank you Marcelo and the players, for bringing it back.

Closing the loop - 30 years on. Graduating at 51.

Yesterday was my graduation from University of Leeds. And so I wore the customary gown. Here is me with my classmates. The year is 2019.

The last time I wore a gown before that was in 1986, when I was a prefect at Leeds Grammar School. Here is a picture of that too.

There are a couple of obvious differences. At school there were only boys. At Uni, at least on my course, there were only girls. The other main difference is that I'm now 51 and not 18. When I left school at 18, full of promise and potential, with a place at Uni in the bag, I went to see the Senior Master Mr Grainge to say goodbye. He was a very scary man, who commanded absolute respect. He once came into our classroom when the teacher was out of the room, and told us to stop wasting our time. That life was short and that youth doesn't last, and that we should make the most of the time we have. He knew what he was talking about, as not long after that he had to have part of his leg amputated, and by 1989 he had died from whatever illness had caused that. But I never forgot what he said. I also have never forgotten Mr Kino, my inspirational German teacher, who first showed me the beauty that is hidden within language. He died only a few years ago, but no-one who was ever taught by him will forget him.

Here is another picture from yesterday. Of my brother Phil and me. It's my new favourite picture of the two of us.

Here is my previous favourite. From 1973.

As you can see, I am still the one who has to wear a tie. If you look closely you can see that I tried to colour Phil's outfit in with blue biro. Our mum told me off,and so I tried to scrape the biro off.

I generally don't like formal occasions but for me yesterday was perfect. It was everything I could have wanted. Also, joining me on the day was my partner Joy, her daughter Eve and her parents Keith and Christine. Cue more pictures.

As well as my five guests, the other people who made the day special were my teachers, my classmates and their parents. Sadly, my own parents didn't live to see it. In a way I wish I'd have got my act together sooner and done my degree while my mum in particular was still alive to see it. She was always my biggest advocate and like a faithful hound she always thought the best of me even when I was making a mess of everything. But on the other hand it was partly her fault that I didn't take up my original place at Uni in 1986 as her life was in a mess at the time and I got a job instead to help her through it and then before I knew it 30 years had gone by.

Ironically coming back to Leeds in 2014 to be close to mum before she died set off the chain of events that eventually led to me applying to study Linguistics in 2016 so as well as getting in the way of my original plans, she also helped me to close the loop. Ultimately, my two decisions, not to go to Uni at 18 and then deciding to go at 48 were both my own. I cannot blame circumstances for either.

It had been my intention to go up to the Garden of Remembrance at Lawnswood yesterday, to the exact spot where my parents ashes were scattered 40 years apart in 1974 and 2014, to tell them about my day. Not that I believe that they're actually there in that small square of ground, it's just symbolic. But on the day, I decided that yesterday was about the living and not about the dead. It was about Joy and about my brother and about Joy's parents who have been through a lot with health problems in recent years. And it was also about my classmates and their parents, who were there and alive in the present moment. I thought I would feel more sad that mum was missing it but actually I forgot to be sad because it was such a joy to see the happiness and the pride in the parents of my classmates, and that, along with the people I brought with me, was more than good enough.

For 30 years not going to Uni, even for reasons which seemed right at the time, was like an itch I couldn't scratch, but now I've scratched it. Somehow that getting lost for 30 years and wandering off the path made me feel like I wasn't making the most of myself, as if I was wasting my potential. I feel better about that now.

I was a know-it-all aged 18, but being an adult and having to make adult choices turned out to be much harder than I thought.. At that time I thought I had all the answers but the practice of the last 33 years was harder than the theory. Which is my long winded way of saying how much yesterday meant to me. It says somewhere in the Bible (I can't remember where but probably in the book of James which used to be my favourite) that Success covers a Multitude of blunders. I always took that to mean that one good thing can make up for lots of things that have gone wrong. Well for me yesterday, being there with Joy, and her family, and my brother and my classmates and teachers and finally getting that Degree I had first wanted 30 years previously, was my one good thing. My big success. My day in the sun.

Running and remembering - Still trying to be better than my 18 year old self

On Sunday I ran the Leeds Abbey Dash 10K.  It's the 4th time I've done it, but the first time with Joy. It was really nice to stand around with her at the beginning chatting and feeling happy and being in a good mood, because that stopped me being so curmudgeonly about the warm-up aerobics and the chirpiness of the DJ trying to get everyone in the mood. Often when I stand around on my own, I feel quite grumpy about those things. It was also really nice that the official photographer decided to capture the moment. I sometimes find it hard to be both happy and relaxed at the same time, so it's nice to have some evidence of it.

Sunday was the 4th anniversary of my second date with Joy, when we went to Huddersfield for fruit beer and Mexican food, and so it was nice to spend the anniversary together doing the Abbey Dash.

I still have it in my head that, when I was 18, I ran a 10k in 47 minutes (with Fraser Pike in our school rugby shirts that we had borrowed from school and which we should have already handed back). Unfortunately for us, the 10k route went past the kitchen window of our rugby master's house, and he saw that we were wearing the shirts and asked for them back on the following Monday. I'd like to think that we weren't planning to steal them, but just that we were proud of our school, and of playing rugby for it, and that's why we wore them. In truth, the 47 minutes could be just a fake memory, because there were no timing chips in those days, and all I have is a vague recollection of looking at my watch at the finish and it being less than 50 minutes since we'd set off.

Anyway, I keep thinking that it's possible that my now 50 year old self can still run as fast as my 18 year old self, and each year when I do the Abbey Dash I try. So my ultimate goal is to run it faster than 47 minutes, but I'm working on it in increments, so this year I thought I'd aim for 50 minutes.

In my 3 previous attempts I've done it in 57:42, 51:05 and 51:30.  This year I was slightly outside my 50 minute target as I finished in 50:19. But I decided not to be disappointed with that, because I ran as fast as I could on the day. I didn't keep any effort in reserve. I used it all up.

Some people don't care about how fast they run, but for me it's a big motivating factor. And the fact that Parkrun is measured helps to keep me wanting to improve. For a really long time I couldn't run 5K in less than 24 minutes, but then this year I've done it about 15 times. There could be various reasons why I'm running faster this year, but maybe the most important thing is Persistence. I just keep running. And regularly.

I used to run when I was at school, but mostly only when they made us run cross country 3 times a year, and a few other times in the summer each year before the Rugby Season started but I never ran consistently.  Entering that 10k in April 1986 with Fraser was very much a one-off.

In 1994 I took up running briefly, but as was predicted by my wife at the time, I soon gave up. Again, I started briefly in 2002, but gave up then too.  And until I started Parkrun in 2014 I never ran again.  Now it's a really important part of my life.

Last night I got my 100 Parkruns milestone T-shirt in the post. I'm actually up to 143 but they've had a backlog at sending out the T-shirts. I think the fact that I've done 143 suggests it's not just a flash in the pan.

Two years ago the Abbey Dash was on the 2nd anniversary of my mum dying, and it was after moving back to Leeds in 2014 that I started running in the first place, in order to be doing something active in the time that I wasn't stuck inside my mum's house watching gameshows with her.  Her lungs and knees were knackered by then, and even walking to the car would leave her out of breath, so every time I run, then and now, I remember to value the fact that I'm able to do it. I'm not sure if Forrest Gump ran for any particular reason, or if he just set off, but for me, I run because I can.

Lawnswood Garden of Remembrance - Plot H8 180. 

Yesterday was the 4th Anniversary of my mum dying and I went up the Garden of Remembrance, to see the place where the ashes of both my mum and dad are scattered. I like to go up there on the birthdays and the other anniversaries and special days. It's not exactly that I think that my mum and dad are still there, but it helps to have a place to go, to acknowledge that I still remember them. I felt quite peaceful while I was up there yesterday. I spent some time texting Joy and my brother Phil, to tell them how I was feeling, and I ate a banana.

While I was walking round there yesterday, I did feel sad. But I felt happy too. I felt happy that I grew up in the house that I did, where I always felt loved, and where there was always laughter. We were always able to laugh at things, even sometimes awful things. And at each other.  It was the best gift I got as a child, that ability to not take setbacks too much to heart. Some people are so earnest about everything all the time, so outraged and offended at the slightest thing. We managed things by not being like that. In all the stories the three of us used to tell each other, we chose to mostly only remember the funny bits.  We let the sad parts go.

It's a strange feeling being at the Garden of Remembrance. It almost exists outside Time. I was 50 when I was there yesterday, but I could have been any age. I still felt like the child of my parents. Walking around with a rucksack full of books, I could have still been at school.

The crematorium at Lawnswood, where my parents went to rest, is right next door to the old school playing fields, where I first was made to run cross country. In those days I hated it, but who knew that one day I would do it for fun?  When I started running in 2014, it partly grew out of my experience of being indoors for long periods with my mum who couldn't get out much. Her main leisure activities had always been watching TV, going to the pub or going shopping. Getting outside and exercising only happened incidentally while carrying home bags of shopping. I feel lucky that my life isn't like that. That I have so many opportunities that she didn't.

I'm a student now, at Leeds University. I could have gone to Uni when I was 18, but for reasons that made sense at the time, I didn't. So now aged 50 I'm back at the same place in life I could have been then. In terms of Geographical space, I haven't moved very far in 30 odd years. My University is right next door to the school I used to go to.  I didn't know what the future held then, in 1986, I guess if I had any idea at all, it was that I wanted to be a success at something. I still want that now.

As for running, I still want to be a success at that too.  I don't know if I'll ever beat the mythical time of 47 minutes that my 18 year old self may or may not have run, but even if that time never happened, even if it's a fake memory, it's still good to have something to aim for.

Have I learned anything from two years at University?

This is me. Even though most people tell me I don't look it, I'm 50 years old.  And about to start my 3rd Year as a full-time student at University of Leeds.

This is me in 2018

I could have gone to Uni in 1986 when I was 18 but I chose not to, for reasons which made sense at the time, but which I regretted on and off for 30 years. I decided a couple of years ago, in 2016, that 30 years of regret was enough, and so here I am.

I'm studying for a BA in Linguistics and Phonetics and everyone else who started the course at the same time as me is a school leaver.  Although I did have some anxiety about the academic side of things, by far my greatest fears were about adapting to the social side.  I was scared of being stared at for being old and scared of being treated like an oddity. The desire to fit in is not unique to young people. I feel it too. I want to be accepted and valued, just like anyone else.

The first 6 weeks of Year One were the worst. I'm not blaming anyone on my course for that. If I was aged 18 and away from home for the first time, I wouldn't want to make it a top priority to befriend someone the same age as my parents either. At first, when they were all asking each other what halls they were in, and sending each other friend requests on Facebook, they would occasionally catch my eye, but then, unable to process my old face, look away. The few minutes before lectures were the worst, the standing around in the corridor, feeling self-conscious and like I was wearing a massive sign saying ‘I don't belong’, while everyone else seemed to be chatting away.  Although when I looked closer, not everyone was chatting and having fun. There were lots of young people standing around on their own too.

I think the reason it got easier after 6 weeks was that my classmates and I started talking about the subject more and so age wasn't so important. Also, it’s simple adaptation. You get used to things. I got used to the people on my course, and they got used to me. Now I’ve got to know them, I actually really like them, and time spent with them is good fun.  So I’m glad I stuck at it long enough to get to know them.  Looking back, I think the age barrier was a lot bigger problem inside my own head, than it was to any of my classmates. I don't think they ever got in a sweat about it like I used to.

Everyone’s experience of University is unique.  I know that lots of people face really serious challenges to their mental health during University, and I'm not trying to minimise that.  If you suffer from crippling social anxiety or you're in a deep depression, you're not going to just read something for 5 minutes and snap out of it. But maybe at least if you can relate a little bit to my ups and downs, you won't feel so alone at the times when things get on top of you.  

1.     University is not school

This was me in 1980

I loved school. I had a close group of friends who were the same age as me who I pretty much spent the whole week with. I had all my lessons with them, I played rugby with them at weekends and they were my social group outside of school as well. So school was great. At University, I often struggle to see the people on my course more than a couple of times a week. A lot of our lectures are only on Mondays and Tuesdays so after Tuesday I may not see them again till the next week. And most of the academic work I have to do, is just me alone in the library with some books and a computer. There's nothing social about it. Just getting the majority of my work done in that solitary way is very different from school. And the holidays are long. Mostly, the people on my course go home for the holidays and the library becomes empty, and without the structure of lectures, it can be hard to keep a routine and stay on track with revision and assignments. 

2.     It's okay not to have a good time.

Expectation can kill you.

I find birthdays, Christmas and going on holiday all stressful, because of the expectation that I'm supposed to be having a good time. University is like that too. A lot of people, especially young people seem to be told that they're going to have the time of their lives at Uni, which can make the difficult times even harder. I enjoy birthdays more when I tell myself that 'it's okay NOT to have a good time', It takes the pressure off and removes the weight of expectation. If you're not enjoying it, be honest with yourself. Don’t pretend.

3.     Join in but be yourself! And don't get drunk if you don't want to!

Despite initially not speaking to anyone on my course, I was quite pro-active in joining societies. I joined the Japanese Society (because I was interested in Japan) and I also joined the Mature Students' Society (because I'm old) and I also went to a lot of activities organised by the Lifelong Learning Centre. 

At Leeds, as I’m sure is typical of many universities, a lot of the social events revolve around drinking. Going on pub crawls, to clubs etc, mostly late at night. I don’t drink and I don’t like late nights, so these type of events are not for me. So, I don’t go. I don’t want to make my potential social awkwardness worse by being in an environment that makes me feel uncomfortable, so I don’t go. I’m much more likely to be able to hold a conversation if I’m in a place I can relax in. So I look for events in the daytime, or in the early evening (for example Global Café), events where I can drink coffee or tea instead of beer, and where conversation is possible because I am not surrounded by deafening music. And those are the things I go to. 

And when I do go to social events, I don't wait for people to talk to me. I often talk to them first. I'm open to the possibility that they might be feeling just as awkward as me, I’ve been to some social events where I’ve felt like I was stood around under a big sign saying ‘Awkward Loser’ where I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, but on the other hand, I’ve had some brilliant conversations with people from all over the world. Don’t let one bad experience put you off trying again. Just ask people you meet about themselves. And be interested in their responses! They might have completely different life experiences to you or they might inspire you by sharing a passion or enthusiasm for something that you'd never considered could be exciting. They might just teach you something. Be open minded! And listen!

4. Lack of structure and routine can be a problem

Many of the jobs I've had in the past were quite low paid and lacking in any responsibility outside of my set working hours. So, life was very clearly defined into Work Time and Free Time. I wasn't in any doubt which was which. Whereas a lot of Uni is bits and pieces. Lectures occasionally, but a lot of reading, researching, and also a lot of time just mulling things over.  The lack of structure is particularly bad for me in the holidays, and often the times you're supposed to be enjoying yourselves, like Christmas and Easter are when you're bogged down in revision and assignments. From the outside looking in, it seems like you've got lots of time off, but it doesn't work that way.

5.     Don't let yourself go to Extremes

In some ways, University for me has been a mountain top experience.  Sometimes I'm on top of the mountain, and sometimes the mountain is on top of me. But I try not to take either one too seriously.

If you have a bad hour, or a bad day, or a bad week, don't overreact. Similarly, if something goes great, a fantastic result in an assignment or a good exam mark, don't get too carried away. Ups and downs are normal, and sometimes they will feel extreme, but don't dwell on the extremes. Life is usually somewhere in the middle. Try and find a happy medium. Or even a tolerable medium. 

6.     If you need to run away for a while, remember to come back!

I often just wanted to run away, to get off campus, to not be anywhere near the University environment. And sometimes I did run away. For an hour, or for the rest of the day. I still feel like that. Sometimes I just can't stand it. So, if you feel like that, run away! But remember to come back! Just take some time out. Go to a park, or the town centre, or do something outside of Uni life.

7.     Get outside the Uni bubble: It will help give a sense of perspective.

In my first week at Uni, I joined a group called Students into Schools. I spend some time each week volunteering in a primary school, helping children with English and Maths. In the past, I've also volunteered at Conversation groups for old people, and refugees. It's a good thing if your whole life doesn't revolve around University. Don't forget the world outside the campus.

Talking to other people, and more importantly listening, and paying attention to them, can help you get a sense of perspective. Everyone has problems, try not to get bogged down in your own. Try not to obsess over your own anxieties. A lot of the children I work with don't have English as a first language. Some of them come to school on their first day and they don't know a single word of English. Trying to see life from their point of view helps me not to take my own worries so seriously.   I've also spent a lot of time talking to foreign students, who face all the same problems as UK students, except they're also much, much further away from home, in addition to which, they find themselves in a strange cultural environment, among the English, who if you look at them from the outside, do some pretty weird stuff.  Seeing myself reflected through other people and other cultures, stops me thinking that the way I do things is the right and only way.

8.     Facebook and Instagram aren't real

If you use social networking, remember that people mostly only show you the highlights on there. They don't show you 99% of the day to day crap they're going through. Just amazing holiday locations, and pictures of themselves in their best clothes, dressed up for a night out. Try to talk to people in the real world, face to face. It's a lot more real, and a lot more fun.

9.      Get out more

I once read a quote that said 'Despair cannot come to a man who walks'. I don't know if it's true, but I always feel better if I'm outside and moving. Getting some fresh air won't solve any of your problems, but it might make you worry less. I also take part in Parkrun every Saturday, which is another fantastic (and free) way of getting some exercise.

10.    Do some work!

I like having people to talk to, the social side of University, but I’m also here to study. And a lot of the time I have trouble getting my head round what I’m supposed to be learning. But I do apply myself to the work, because of

a)     The Joy of Finding Things Out. I really like learning new things, and particularly seeing patterns in language.

b)     It makes life easier if you understand things. One important step for me when learning is when I start to at least understand things well enough to be able to explain what it is I don’t understand. Actually understanding things comes a lot later if at all. One of my favourite quotations is from Einstein, who said that ‘If you can’t explain things simply, you don’t understand it well enough’. I like trying to understand things to the point where I could explain it to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it.

In terms of work, I found Year One quite hard, and Year Two much harder. In fact, I almost fell apart completely twice during Year Two, but in the end I managed to come out with good results, results which don’t reflect the turmoil I felt much of the time. Despite doing well, I’m nervous about starting Year 3, because it’s a clean slate and I have to do it all again. But I know lots of people now, who I'll be happy to see when I get back.  I’m also excited and enthusiastic about the subject, and hopefully that will help me through.

11.  Be grey, but don't let your grey turn to black

It’s possible that Uni isn’t for everyone. For some people the choice may be very black and white. Quite possibly there are people who love it all the way through. Then again there may be others who start it and then realise it’s all a horrible mistake and are 100% sure of that and give up right away, or alternatively, they don't come in the first place. 

But the people I’m concerned about are the Greys. The people in between like me, who sometimes love it and sometimes hate it, and whose experience could go either way during their time there, but who I wouldn’t want to see give up too soon. Because often things that are really difficult at the time are the things you look back on, and are glad you did them.  It’s those people I’m hoping to encourage to keep going, and not give in. 

12. Don’t stop looking for a place you fit into

The best thing about University is that it’s a big place. With lots of things to do, and thousands of people to meet. There’s something and someone for everyone, so don’t stop looking. Don’t let your insecurities hold you back. Even if it’s painful to keep trying to make connections, try anyway. 

It's difficult to sum up two years in a few minutes, but overall that's what it's been like for me. 

Good luck!

Success and Failure - Brother and Sister or Distant Cousins?

I got some exam / assignment results yesterday.  Some were really good, and some were not.

But before I talk about that, here's a clip from the Matrix.

He is the one

Before you get excited, I don't think I am the one.  But if you look at what happens 1 minute 4 in, to me that's what learning is.  You've been fighting with something and staring and staring at it for ages, and then suddenly you get an insight, and it starts to make sense.

I'm currently sitting in the Brotherton Library at Leeds University, a place I spend most of my time these days.  The year is 2018.  In 1986 I got kicked out of this exact same place by Security.  I was at school, doing my A Levels, less than a mile away and I came in for a look round, with my friend Andrew.  The fact that we were wearing ties should have been a clue that we weren't students.  Anyway, they didn't have electronic barriers and keycards then, and I can always remember what the Security Man said to me.  He said 'Get out, you don't belong'. 

I had a similar feeling of not belonging when I missed the UCAS deadline in February 2016, and the Admissions Team here were doubtful about letting me in, because my A Levels were so long ago.  They sat on my application for about 2 months without giving me an answer, and they wanted me to do a Foundation Year Degree instead.  Eventually because I kept pestering them, they offered me a 15 minute Skype interview, to shut me up, but that just annoyed me and I said 'Look, I want to do Linguistics, and I live a mile away.  Either I'm worth seeing in person, or I'm not.  I want to come in and speak to someone in person, and if I'm going to get turned down, at least turn me down in person'.  And that could have gone either way, they could have said 'Get lost', but they saw me, and now I'm here.

Another memory from school.  I used to do Art but I was rubbish at it, too rubbish to even do O Level.  I once drew a picture of a tree and my Art Teacher Mr Gedling said to me 'I've been an Art Teacher for 30 years and that's the worst picture of a tree I've ever seen'. 

The third memory from school.  When I was doing 'O' Level Maths I really struggled with calculus, and by the May half term before the exam I really wasn't getting it, so I brought home a load of past papers and spent most of half term at the kitchen table, doing them over and over again.  And at some point I understood it.  I kept looking and not understanding, but then somewhere in there, I could see the patterns and the rules.

Revising for Syntax a few weeks ago was a lot like trying to understand Calculus.  All I could see was complexity.  But I kept staring and staring, and I thought, if even two years olds can master how to put a sentence together, the rules must be in there somewhere.  And after staring for days and days it started to look a lot simpler.  Things started to connect into patterns and rules and I started to see the structure.  It sort of clicked.  It was the best part of learning, it was the 'Joy of Finding Things out'.

Einstein, who could see patterns no-one else could in the Universe, said that 'If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough'.  And with Syntax that became my goal. To understand it well enough to be able to explain it.  Syntax is also about drawing trees.  And at first my trees were as bad as my terrible Art Tree from 1983.  But the more I practised, the easier they got.  And I realised Mr Gedling, that when you taught me in 1983 it wasn't that I couldn't draw trees, it was that I hadn't found the right kind of tree to draw yet.

And so I did well in my Syntax exam.  I got over 90%.  For a while at least, I was like Neo at the end of the Matrix.  I didn't just see the Matrix, I saw the structure behind it.  And when I feel like that, I know what I'm here for, and I belong.  The problem was, I should have left it longer after getting the good result to look at my other ones, because as near to the top of the class as I was in Syntax, well that was as close to the bottom as I was in some of my others.  So overall, I am fairly average, and therefore not 'the One'.

Sometimes, I wonder why I'm here.  I wonder if University is a colossal waste of time and money, and whether I'm just going to wind up penniless and under a mountain of debt in the future, for no reason.  And that's pretty much how I feel when I get bad results.  But when I stare and stare at the structure of things, and it starts to make sense, I know what I'm here for.

There's no consistency in me.  I feel both those things almost every day.  Both that I'm doing the work I was born to do, and also that I'm wasting my time.  Sometimes I think both those things in the same minute. 

I'm capable of drawing the best trees and the worst. I don't belong and then I do.  I fail and fail and then I pass, and then I fail some more.  I stare and stare at complexity with no idea of what I'm doing, and then occasionally I get a snapshot of the simplicity inside.  I suppose that's what Education is, and also Life too.

Linguistic Determinism and Japanese - Going back in time

I had my Japanese oral exam this week.  I took it in the Liberty Building at the University of Leeds. The Liberty Building was built on top of my old school swimming baths.  I never really liked swimming, it didn't seem like real exercise if you couldn't tell that you were sweating.  I went to Leeds Grammar School between 1979 and 1986, and at that time the school was on Moorland Road on the edge of Woodhouse Moor in Leeds.  It's moved now to a bigger site outside the city and they let girls in now, but when I went there that's where it was.  The buildings that the school used to occupy have been swallowed up by the University, and so I'm effectively back in the same place I was when I left school.

Just next to the Liberty Building used to be the old gymnasium where I took my A Level exams.  So in 31 years I've moved about 50 feet.

I'm studying Linguistics now at the University, and we've been reading about Linguistic Determinism, the idea that the language you know affects how and what you can think.  I've been taking Japanese as a Discovery Module, along with Spanish.

Taking Japanese has been a humbling experience.  I've always been quite good at languages, as long as I could read them.  The mixture of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana that make up Japanese writing have left me at times feeling like I was 4 again, before I could read English. Certainly in the Japanese exam I took before Christmas I felt illiterate, because I could barely read or write anything.

Usually with languages, it's the speaking part I find the most difficult, but with Japanese it's the other way round, because at least with speaking I don't have to read anything.

As part of my exam last week, I had to do a mini presentation.  I was allowed to take in 3 photographs to help me.

Despite my struggles with Japanese, my teacher Sensei Manami has always been on hand with good advice.  When I told her before Christmas I was really struggling, I expected some sort of soft soap and sympathy approach, but her advice boiled down to just two words: work harder!  It was good advice.  Her advice before the oral exam last week was to realise that we only know a limited amount of Japanese, so the best thing is to construct sentences out of the Japanese we know, rather than trying to translate our English into Japanese.  We just don't know enough to do that.

I chose to do my mini presentation about my Lejog trip of 2014.  Constrained by lingustic determinism this is what I said.

Kore wa shashin san-mai desu.  Kono shashin ni wa watashi no jitensha desu.  Ni-sen ju-yo-nen ni nagai ryoko jitensha de ikimashita

Here are 3 pictures.  In this picture is my bike.  In 2014 I went on a long journey by bike.

Kono murasaki iro no gyo sen-mairu deshita.  sen roppyaku kirometeru.  mainichi hyaku kirometeru. muzakashikatta desu.  kantana dewa arimasen.

This purple line 1000 miles is.  1600 kilometres.  100 kilometres each day.  It was difficult. It was not easy.

Hitori ikimasen deshita.  Issho tomodachi to ikimashita.  Ju-hachi nin deshita.

I did not go alone.  Together with friends I went.  18 people there were.

Kochira wa Erwan san.  Watashi no tomodachi desu.  Mareishia-jin desu.  Isha desu.  Byoin no Sukoterandu de shigoto o shimasu.

Here is Erwan.  My friend.  He is from Malaysia.  He is a doctor.  Works in hospital in Scotland.

Nimotsu wa basu de ikimashita.  Kochira wa untenshu deshita.  Namae wa Chris desu.

Luggage went by bus.  Here is the driver.  Name is Chris.

Ju-nana yobi deshita.  Tenki subarashikatta desu.  Hitobito subarashikatta desu.  Totemo tanoshikatta desu.

17 days it was.  Weather was wonderful.  People were wonderful.  It was a lot of fun.

I was pleased with what I managed to say.  It didn't come anywhere close to describing the experience in full.  For that you can look here   I used my mother tongue for that, and it contains a lot more detail.  Chris was so much more than a driver, for example.  But limited as it was by Linguistic Determinism, it did at least contain some fundamental truths.

I may not have moved very far in 31 years.  On Thursday I was sat doing an exam just next door to where I've taken lots of other exams before.  From my entrance exam in 1979 to my final A Level exam in 1986.  You might say that although in Time I'm going in a straight line, in Space I'm going round in circles.  But at least I'm still learning.  And I'm still trying to describe the world as best I can through the languages I know.