Below Belief

How do people get things done in their flats? I consider myself to be reasonably practical, enthusiastic even when it comes to DIY. I always want to try to do things myself. This is probably through an innate fear that others, so called professionals, wouldn’t do a job with the level of care I would expect. This last bit is a joke considering I am also the world’s biggest bodger – despite the best intentions, it never quite seems to go right does it?
Anyway, for those who aren’t at all practical (and there are lots of them – the reaction I got at work when I said I was taking a week off to fit a kitchen with my dad was incredulity) I just don’t understand how they don’t end up living in a corrugated iron shack with piss flowing under the walls. Even if you do invite tradesmen into your home at great expense, they only do their bit of the job – so getting a kitchen done is not only expensive but requires the timely coming-together of a plumber, electrician, plasterer, kitchen-fitter and tiler. Achieving this feat, I feel sure, must take inhuman levels of coordination – like bringing planets into line. Hence my confusion at how everyone else’s houses seem fine.
Mine is currently like a bombsite as a dreadful old blue and orange kitchen is slowly, painstakingly, replaced by a spanking, shiny, black and birch one. The prep work alone – getting the plumbing, electrical, flooring, plastering, aligning done has taken 3 and a half days of mine and my dad’s time spent working from 7am till 5pm.
It’s tough work but it’s rewarding. So different from my day job – where deliverables and achievements exist mostly inside a computer. So challenging physically, so frustrating sometimes, but so gloriously straightforward – just making things fit, making things work, making things nice, achieving a nice place to live. And adding value to the flat. And so nice not to have to think about work.
So if other people have this planet-aligning stress and none of the satisfaction of building their own kitchen, with their own hands, mistakes and all and relaxing from their daily toil in this way – how do they do it?

By a roundabout way, I have just come across this letter to the Concept 2 newsletter… I doubt it will feature in any coaching articles.
“Staff at my gym have asked me to moderate my rowing action/speed on the Indoor Rower. I work at the highest resistance level (10) and include a 30 second sprint in my normal workout to raise my pulse rate (when my heart monitor shows that I have dropped below my Training Zone). The sprint takes the strokes per minute (SPM) into the 70 and 80s and on the return action there is a brief loss of chain tension, which causes a slight ‘whiplash’ action. The reaction is safely limited by the design of the machine. The 30 second sprint adds variety and a motivational element to my workouts and I am reluctant to reduce the intensity.
My Concept 2 training consists of 30+30+20 sessions = 80 minutes at an average 50 SPM, which normally gives me a pulse rate of 100. My Concept 2 workout is part of a comprehensive weight resistance and cardiovascular routine. I have a strong upper body and my technique has a fast arm action and limited leg movement. I find this gives me the highest SPM and I have aspirations to enter indoor rowing races. “The British rowing team must work at high intensity levels and I find it hard to believe that the Rower would be damaged by high SPM. The machine is there to serve me. I do not exercise to serve the machine. “I am aged 67 and weigh 14st 9lbs.”

This place. This is London. I live here. I’ve lived here for nearly 5 years. I’ve got the pallid skin, the sore eyes, the black nasal contents to prove it. I sometimes wonder whether I’m just passing through. I feel no roots – no urge to stay here longer than I have to. I sell my time and expertise to the highest bidder, callously, cynically. They buy me and I live here while it suits them. Once you get some of their drug you can’t easily see a way to move to a nicer place and keep the standard of life or the rising level of income your lifestyle has condensed around.
I was shocked when I came back from holiday recently in Croatia to notice (again) that so many people who live in London speak English as a foreign language or not at all. The chances of overhearing a fellow English voice in a crowd virtually anywhere in London is slim. In fact I was as unlikely to understand an overheard conversation on the tube between two strangers as I was to understand one in Zagreb. I am not knocking this – I like the open-mindedness that comes from London’s cosmopolitan nature. I just feel that in my “home city” it seems strange that I go through every day not able to understand much of what is said around me. I don’t understand other communities and they probably don’t understand the fact that I don’t have one.
Our capital city has become an international melting pot. Is it no longer ours?

I like to think of myself as above marketing hype. I persuade myself that I can drift through life, able to rationally weave through the subtle, ever more-subtle, advertising with which we are continually bombarded in this day and age, without being swayed to purchase. When I buy something it is because I really need that flashy new camera or this shiny laptop – a carefully prepared need, nursed for weeks by poring over catalogs and websites, visiting shops until the specification has been examined in detail and I am satisfied of the value of what I’m buying. Not on a whim do I purchase.
It’s not true. Although I like to think I am above it all, and maybe I’m cynical enough to ignore or dismiss a lot of over-commercial advertising, I am still subject to the same forces of persuasion as everyone else. Might this just be another level of marketing – are there grey-suited executives out there who have the measure of me? “Make him think like he’s above our hype – because he loves that – then use that to sub-consciously persuade him to buy twice as much”. Like the Matrix Reloaded, maybe this is just a convenient extra level – for the small proportion of the population who think they’re above what works for the rest. Another level, with exclusive appeal, to distract us and keep us on the same commercial hamster-wheel.
It depresses me that I am powerless to resist. I can watch it happen – to my own wallet. I got a phone call the other day, an out-of-the-blue cold call from a pleasant, fun-sounding, young girl with a faint Midlands accent. “Was I a high-powered business man?”, she flattered. “Would I like to have the Financial Times – with it’s stimulating, insightful supplements – delivered to my door every day by 7am so I could be the best informed man in my office?”. I don’t read the FT – on the few occasions I have it felt like reading an ordinary newspaper in the light of a dim 30W bulb. It gives you a migraine the moment you start. I don’t even buy a regular paper every day – this high-powered business man is more likely to be seen pulling a coffee-stained copy of Metro out of a bin on the station platform so he has something to occupy him on the train, than parting with 45p for a daily broadsheet.
So, on the face of it, it wasn’t an attractive proposition to be charged £1 per day on my debit card for the privilege of 500g of pink paper, even with insightful supplements, land on the communal door step every morning. Just another weight to add to my cycle bag. I couldn’t believe it but didn’t I get practically to the point of paying before I realised this? This girl, with her flattery, her eager sales-pitch, her easy chatting had nearly convinced me to part with the best part of £30 per month for a paper I dislike delivered to my door. I had my card in my hand and was about to read out it’s silvery numbers when sanity came to me. It is when this happens to you, you realise the power of direct tele-sales. It was an eye opener, I can tell you.
Now, off to buy that new camera I’ve got my eye on…

This is a place where I put things I like. On this site you will find my travel stories from around the world – of Indian deserts, Far Eastern delights, European chills and African safaris – some bits of poetry, some of my photographs and a journal which I tinker with.
It feels good in our transient times that some of what I do is documented here. I find it helps me structure my life.

why’s it called below belief?

I think Plato once said that below belief lies ignorance. I think he meant to say that beliefs in general were a distraction and foil for proper thinking and truth. Certainly a belief can sometimes be used to excuse rigorous analysis.

One thing this site is not about is religious belief. I’m an Athiest. I don’t believe in God. Or rather I believe that there is no god. Having reviewed the scientific evidence available from Darwinists and geneticists, I believe that life on Earth came about by accident and that despite the fantastical richness and diversity of life and the natural beauty which each of us experiences everyday, the existence of a supreme being who designed it all is unlikely.

A dear family friend, a neighbour in my street as a kid, who was, contradictorily both a Canon of the Church of England and a self-confessed atheist, wrote a book entitled “The bible below belief”. No-one would publish it so he learnt at the age of 80 how to use a word processing machine, paid for a print run himself and gave his books to anyone who wanted them. It was his ambition to write a book. He died suddenly and a library was lost. The title is another reason why this site is named as it is. I guess it helps reflect my own views on religion.

Finally, there’s another aspect to belief: relating to positive thinking and visualisation. By believing in something strongly enough, you can influence whether it happens or not. Mostly I’m talking about personal achievements and accomplishments which can be influenced by positive visualisation – although I have no reason to suspect it stops there. It is a principle which I have applied successfully throughout my life. It demonstrates all sorts of sub-conscious manipulative influences lurking deep within the human brain which can be made to work for you. I find that belief and truth therefore are often intertwined more closely than most people would think.

I make no apologies if the content on the rest of the site bears absolutely no relation to its title. In this times of choked virtual real-estate availablity, the URL was available, what more can I say?
Let me know if it was all worthwhile.