20 Focused or Mad........ You the Reader Decide, in our latest exciting issue.

So I commit the cardinal sin, (difficult for an atheist, but God loves a trier)

by starting a sentence with 'so'

Pseudo intellectuals are doing this, on a radio or TV near you right now.
It's a really annoying affectation and once noticed, impossible to ignore or avoid.

My instinct is that people employ it as a way of adding some gravitas to what they are about to say, almost as if you,  their listener,  are their appreciative audience,  awaiting enlightenment.
It started as a particularly West Coast American beardy professor style delivery, where the 'so' had to include a rising inflection, suggesting a question.

It has now spread to every fool, asked any question, on any topic......

So.... what is it with me.... is it that I have finally realised how to enforce boundaries?
Have I started to understand that fools do not have to be suffered?
Is it that at last my mind is finally focused and has learned to clarify when faced with confusion?

or

Am I suffering the effects of my steroid treatment?

The steroids offer the potential for either manic feelings or depression and so far I seem to have escaped lightly.

I have to concede however I have noticed a swelling level of drive and efficiency in me, almost like I am becoming super efficient.
I have been organising planning and filing things. with a drive that is breathtaking and insisting that everyone else conform to my new found structure.
Over the last few weeks my insomnia and levels of drive have escalated to a point where I am feeling almost rocket propelled.
This effect has no apparent downside for me although it may start seeding some of my friends.

I suspect a few friends have been left reeling at my new found levels of directness, I have stopped calling a spade a long handled digging implement...... as it were.

Case #1.

I lent a 3 Disc DVD collection on Innoue to a good friend,  this is a Fighting Films £65 boxed set, but he is my friend.

A few months later I ask for and finally get them back.

Days after this I get a call...
"Mark I think you may have one of my DVD's as your 'The Uchi Mata' is in my 'Judo World Championship The Heavyweights' box.

I check...... he is right (perhaps for the last time on this blog).

I have his DVD in my box, and it was returned (by him) in error.

No problem we will swap when we meet, except that the next time we meet, its because he is returning course work to me that I also lent him about 6 months previously.

" I cant find that DVD"
Texts he

"Bollocks"
Thinks I  

"Could you have another look at your place" and "are you sure you lent it to me?"
Texts he

"I definitely lent it to you"
Texts I
oh and ....."you lost it you stupid shitbag"  thinks I

"Keep your hair on"
Texts he,

Did you get that? he was the one who alerted me to the fact that he had given me his DVD in error, Remember... he only realised this as he found mine, MINE! the one that he was now hinting I had never given him....

So he forgets the back story and then, surprised at my reaction asks me to keep my hair on.

On each of my replies I ended with "see you later" as I was about to go training and was also having a running row with my wife,  whilst trying to deal with this.
Not unlike Hitler (I mean the war on two fronts not my temper you fools).

Note to self: give nothing lend nothing that you are not prepared to lose,
or, put more simply,
give nothing worth a shit to people that spend more time taking than giving...

Confronted by my re- telling of this sorry story face to face, he started to promise he would replace it, despite that I explained twice that I didn't need him to.
I had decided that with my life lesson learned I would replace it myself, but he continued to promise that he would (even explaining for reasons that are beyond me, that he had told his wife this and she agreed, so that's all right then).

I finally cracked telling him to "f*cking replace it then and stop saying you are going to"!

Guess what he said?.....

 Go on guess.....

 Keep your hair on! TWAT

Case #2

On Tuesday I got a voicemail from a local primary school where I teach twoclasses of judo each week.
I had previously been warned that the hall would be out of use in this first week of term.
This message however explained however, that the judo would not be able to restart until further notice as the breakfast club was now using it.

They promised they would be in touch when once they could give me a date to restart.
This is one of my favourite schools, and with two large classes it is also a significant part of my income.

I had already dropped an after school class at another school on Thursdays as a consequence of my helping my ailing freind and mentor Don Werner with Pinewood Judo Club.

With the news still boiling in my head I made a quick call to them to this school.
"How would you like me to reinstate that class but on Thursday mornings as I think I have found you a slot"


"Great"
 said they

"Great"
said me

"No rush but when the judo restarts you had better explain to the parents that it will now be only one class and not two"
Said I to the other school.

"Oh what will we do?  there are 40 children doing judo!"
I admit to a sense of satisfaction with the effect my news had on the, up until now relaxed
messenger.
"Start a waiting list"
Said I

Whilst it is not there fault, I cannot believe that this situation became apparent on the first day back,
and it is not my fault either. It is about me defending my family income I explained.

They were fairly casual with their approach to my business and this is not an approach I can share with them.
It moved in approx. 10 minutes from me needing them, to them understanding that they needed me.

I now seem to have developed an uncanny and useful knack of cutting straight through the embarrassed middle class footwork, that does no more than obscure unfairness.
Believe me I was Michael Flatley when it came to this offence avoidance footwork, well not anymore..


I am hopeful that the lessons I am learning through my steroid side effects are going to stay with me beyond the point where I come off of them.

Another silver lining thanks MG and better late than never eh?

Mr Direct coming to a town near you soon be straight be very straight....