Lou Reed - Eat Yer Heart Out

I had a perfect day today.

Now; you might think "here we go: more smug bollocks from teacher-boy who gets 54 weeks holiday per year and wants to rub our noses in it. Again".

But you'd be wrong. This isn't about the benefits of a louche summer lifestyle funded by all you hard-working real tax payers. It's about one of the many lessons I learned from one of the finest human beings it has been my privilege to know - my late father in law.

A working-class boy from the Toonheid in Glasgow, Bert Costello died last October following 18 months of physical torture in the shape of an aggressive strain of Parkinson's Disease. Refusing to bestow on him the gift of mental decay, it so robbed him of his physical abilities to the extent that he was unable to move anything other than his eyes and his mouth in his latter weeks. But his mind remained stubbornly unaffected - ensuring his physical decay remained in razor-sharp focus for the duration of his illness.

During his final weeks, through his awe-inspiring and almost infallible dignity in the face of his illness, he expressed one wish: to be able to go home, sit on the sofa and watch a DVD with his wife for an evening. A wish that was - he knew - impossible to grant.

But Bert - I think - didn't allow his wish to eat away at him. He refused to allow it to become a fruitless, destructive longing - because in the years leading up to his demise, he knew, at the time, the significance of sofa-DVD evenings with the Mrs. He recognised perfect days when they were happening, and stored them away for when he might need those memories.

Did you have a perfect day today ? Maybe you did and didn't realise it. Because one day, you might look back on today and offer to sell your soul to experience just one day like today. And you might curse the fact that you missed it when it happened.

Today I woke up, had coffee and toast outside in the sun. I had to go to the shops for some messages for Cedar Nursery; while Yvonne knocked her pan in at work, I went and bought some stuff for our lunch which we ate outside; Amanda (my daughter) had a friend drop by for lunch (Sarah - beautiful, smart young lady and a credit to her parents); I went to the Doctor to have a minor skin lesion on my back examined (nothing to worry about); I had a couple of cold beers in my back garden and made dinner for me and the Mrs. This weekend we are driving to France for a cheapo holiday. The sun shone all day.

Nothing really spectacular. No expensive eating out. No life-altering experiences. But a day that - one day, when my health has failed me - I may consider selling my soul to experience just once more.

And that is Bert's lesson. Perfect days don't happen every day; they maybe don't happen every week. They probably don't happen in the Seychelles, or Italy or Florida or Gleneagles. But one might well be happening right now, right under your very nose.

Sitting outside in the sun at 6pm with a cold beer in my mitt - I realised how perfect a day today has been, stored the memory away for future reference, and raised a glass to Bert.

Four Years On

In 2007 - at around about this time of the year - we had a new Scottish government in place; the housing market was rocketing skywards; and a poor wee soul was allegedly whipped from her bed in Portugal.

I was also in the departure lounge from my job in corporate IT-land and about to embark on a leap into the unknown - a leap into Teachy World. This fact was brought into sharp focus last Friday night when I met up with some folks who still work in Corporation Land - coincidentally a couple of blocks along the road from my old place of employ on Edinburgh's eye-wateringly expensive George Street. Meeting people from my old working life is good - it reminds me of the good aspects (and there were some) and the bad aspects of working your balls off for a job that may not necessarily fill you with death-bed reflective pride. I have this sneaking suspicion (and always have had) that if you ask 100 people what they would be doing for a living if they were independently wealthy, at least 90 of them would answer "not this".

I find this a little sad, but wholly understandable. We are conditioned to believe that money is what matters, and that working hard and earning as much as possible is where true happiness lies. Big salary, big house, impressive holidays, and, for some, school fees for the kids (gargantuan waste of money if you ask me, but that's another debate).

So, um, how has it gone? And can I offer any unsolicited advice to anyone considering a similar leap of faith to a job that they think is where their heart really lies?

"Fantastic" and "Maybe" in that order.

Until I entered teaching, I had only sporadically experienced the feeling of coming home at the end of the day and actually feeling (no, actually feeling) good about what I had achieved that day. The feeling when you realise that without you having been there, someone else's day would have been less successful. The feeling when you realise that the combination of your training, your skills and your experience came together to actually achieve something - something important. This, by and large, happens every day in teaching. Sometimes - OK -  it's outweighed by the feeling of making an arse of something - but not all that often. The overriding feeling is one of doing something worthwhile - and it feels good.

Bloody hell it should do - it's cost me well in excess of £120k in lost salary over the last four years. Is it worth it ?

Yes. It is. It might be a cliche, but the sense of achievement is priceless.

What about that unsolicited advice ? Ok then, since you ask.

This isn't an advert for teaching. Teaching can eat you alive if it's not for you. This is an advert for doing the thing that you've always fancied yourself at, if you can secure some simple pre-requisites:

1. Work out how much salary you actually need to do the things that are important to you. You might find - if you're honest - that it's less than you currently earn. I did. If it is, you have already cleared one of the mental barriers. You may not need to slave yourself to that soul-destroying spirit-crushing teat that you suck on for 46 weeks of the year.
2. Safety net. Get one. This means a war chest of cash to last you for the period where you may not earn anything. Work out how many months it will last. Don't for goodness sake run up a credit card or get into mortgage arrears. Down that path lies madness.
3. Plan B. If it goes horribly tits-up, what are you going to do ? Don't piss your current employer off. Work your notice period hard. Be professional and do extra stuff if possible. Leave nice memories of yourself. I tried to do this - it's for others to say if I succeeded.
4. Ready ?
5. Jump. Seriously. It's a bit like walking around a swimming pool not knowing how deep it is, or how well you can swim.

Still not convinced ? Jump forward a few (well hopefully, many) years and imagine yourself on your deathbed.

What do you really want to look back on ?