Toucan play at that game

24th June 7:24 am Esdelle Street

The sun shines hard on my face. It's higher than the tree that must have been protecting me last time. Like someone's got their ball stuck up a tree but that ball's on fire and is the sun. The air is cool and the fly is back checking out my death feet. The yard is mid-change. Not in a changing seasons kind of way. More that we're halfway through sorting it out. Models of exotic birds, cacti and half constructed brick islands compete with tubs of mortar and discarded wees killer for our attention now. 

My 7:30 alarm breaks my concentration, that was when I thought I should / would wake up today. That could be my "sliding doors" moment today. Somewhere else, in a parallel universe maybe, I stayed in bed for that extra 20 minutes. I wonder what will happen to that me? He won't have done his grounding meditation and wouldn't have written this - although he may have written it from the angle. In other words writing about the me that is me now. 

Anyway back to this universe/existence. Had a vivid dream last night (Is that existence?), lots of ex girlfriends / crushes in the same place. I think it was a whole holiday park full (More Center Parcs than Haven - snobby subconscious!). Although it's weird, I started this paragraph with a clear idea of who and what I dreamed about but it's like my subconscious has put the barriers down. "No you are not writing that down, that is sensitive data that will get us both into trouble." I'll try to remember to go straight to dreams next time.

Learning to play the banjo in May

We were all still in lockdown in May so, after watching this TED talk by Josh Kaufman which claims that you can learn anything in 20 hours, I thought I'd set myself the challenge of learning the banjo. In his talk Josh breaks down the "it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert in something" theory to something a bit more manageable. Namely that it only really takes 20 hours for your learning curve to start flattening out. What is it with curves being flattened or not at the moment?! He doesn't claim that you will be an expert in brain surgery or fluent in Japanese after only 20 hours, it's more that you will have "broken the back of it". I have my doubts whether this counts as "learning" something because I suppose with that argument even doing an hour of something means you are learning it but at what point can you say "yep I've learned that. Consider it learnt."?

I've had a banjo for nearly ten years. My memory is that it was a forced early inheritance from my dad when he forgot to buy me a present for a birthday and after I'd been hassling him to let me have it anyway I think he just wanted to kill two birds with one banjo. I need to double check my facts but I think it's almost as old as me and was bought on a whim in Boston (something about seeing it in a shop deciding not to buy it and then returning the next day after dreaming about it). Anyway I don't really have any memories of my Dad ever playing it although there is a photo in existence of him looking like he's at least holding it. So he gave it to me and I thought right that's it, I won't do the same thing as him and let it gather dust in a corner. I'm going to learn to play this bastard.

(EDIT : See below this entry for my Dad's account of the banjo's story)

Fast forward to almost ten years later and of course there it is in the corner gathering dust. I've picked it up a few times in between, it's been part of a couple of failed New Years resolutions and it's even featured in some PJ Not Duncan tracks (You can actually hear Jonny laugh on one song after I try a banjo solo) but that was never me knowing how to play it. It was more like me playing it like it was just an odd shaped guitar. 

So I started yet another notebook, wrote banjo on the front, and set about trying to find someone on youtube that could show me the bluegrass ropes. I found this guy and followed his early lessons up to the first couple of songs he started teaching. This is where I learned "Worried Man Blues" which was probably the song I played / ruined the most over the month. However after a while there were a couple of songs that he played at full speed (before his normal slow down for the learners speed) that didn't sound like the songs they were meant to be at all so I got distracted and started looking at tunes I wanted to play and even making up my own. This coincided with a bit of a lack of momentum in the mid month doldrums but when I started playing again I felt like I was a lot better than I had been before the break. I got a bit carried away and bought a metronome and a book of "pub banjo songs". I used the metronome once and discovered that the pub banjo was still a bit too difficult for now - although only after a couple of days complaining that the book had got the songs wrong and it couldn't possibly be me. In the meantime I'd found a "Banjo for dummies" book that I still had from the library and went back to that for inspiration. 

In the last week or so I got into more of a rhythm - both in terms of playing the banjo and in terms of learning. I would practice all the easy bits that I'd learned earlier in the month to get my fingers warmed up then push myself to learn newer, harder tunes and licks towards the end of the "lesson". 

Obviously there was a graph. This was looking at time spent towards the 20 hours rather than any kind of skill progression because I wasn't sure how I could do that. 

So did it work? To be honest I'm not sure. I think I can definitely "play a banjo" better now than I could at the beginning of the month but I'm not sure I can "play the banjo". If you gave me a relatively easy song to learn I could probably learn it in a week or so but I would struggle to play by sight if you handed me some sheet music or by ear if we were jamming in a pub (remember them?). BUT there have been moments where I've felt the banjo flowing through me. When I learned Worried Man Blues to the point that I didn't have to follow the tab and could have a bit of a wander around the house I did dare to start thinking "yeah that's right I play the banjo now". Anyway I'll leave it up to you, here's a (quite heavily edited) video of some of what I learned, or at least could do, after 20 hours... 

Email from my Dad 04/06/2020 :

You were in Boston twice. First in April 1981 when YM had you and a giant camera provided by the editor of the Cayman Compass to carry around with her. It was pretty cold, I had silly Union Jack shorts and we all got the bus out to Hopkinton and then ran back into the city. Worth it for the occasion, 2h 47' 42'' and 1510th out of 6845 in my sixth marathon.

Then six years later, in April 1987, when we were up there with the four of us, Jerry and Noël. Met Jerry's mum, Noël had no money so kipped in with the four of us and I bought the banjo, Noël and I finding that banjo shop, going back and forth for it and being asked to play it by more than one fellow passenger on the Boston subway.

Never played the thing publicly but did get it out, (the banjo),  for Jerry's Mum in Boston and for Paul in Yarmouth. Also used it as a prop at the show for the Kiwanis in Cayman when I was MC with this other guy and did a routine with newspaper headlines, (Eighth Army push bottles up Germans, that sort of thing). Refused point blank to play the accursed thing, despite entreaties. (Even the Chief Justice who was in the audience)

Unlike yourself who plays it very well, if I may say so.

Ah well.

YD

[Other bits and credit youtube people, books, etc... ]

Keepy Uppies

In the first week of the COVID-19 lockdown I made the decision to challenge myself to do 200 keepy uppies. 200 was a mostly arbitrary number but also loosely based on a hazy memory of my teenage super sporty self’s record being in the 200s. Although the more I think about it the more I think it may have been nearer to 300. Anyway, I set myself the challenge of 200, made the spreadsheet and started telling people about it. That’s basically what makes anything a thing isn’t it? Put it in a spreadsheet, tell people about it and it’s a thing.

I’m not sure if it’s just relative to these strange times but I really enjoyed the challenge. And I don’t just mean the filling out the spreadsheet and telling people about it parts. It meant that I had an excuse to spend some time in the back yard, it was a good warm up for the army fitness course I've been doing and towards the end, when I was spending up to 15 minutes at a time doing them, I was even going into a zen like meditative state. It also genuinely gave me a sense of purpose and seemed to be transcending the physical to become a philosophical, possibly even spiritual, activity.

In terms of actual progress, it was pretty slow going particularly after the initial ramp up to the 50 mark after 4 days. The 4th day was also the first time the ball was lost to the Neighbours...


The numbers seemed to be stuck between the 50 and the 75 mark for almost three weeks, I was getting disappointed with myself and could almost hear young, sporty, curly haired, un-wrinkled me trash talking and taunting from back in the day. In the end I decided to get a bit more serious about it so extended the time I spent each day from a rough ten minutes to a very specific fifteen minutes. The first time I did this my best jumped up to 150 – doubling the record in one day. After that I also started counting (and recording) exactly how many I got in each attempt (rather than just the best one from each session).

When I plotted these on a graph (obviously the whole point of this was so I could plot this on a graph) I noticed that there was a sweet spot around, or just after, the 10 minute mark. Whether this was down to muscle memory kicking in because of the prolonged repetition or a calming of the mind I don't know but I did also start to realise that the better attempts seemed to come when I stopped focusing on beating the record or concentrating too hard. It was when I started to think about what to have for dinner or what the meaning of life might be. Or even whether the meaning of life was what to have for dinner. 

After this and the big jump up to 183, I seemed to lose my mojo again and was worried that I may have peaked as results seemed to be tending back towards the 100 line. This was one curve that I didn't want to see flattened in a hurry. Then last Sunday I took myself off for a 10 mile bike ride (on my new bike hired from the Council) and when I returned was 50/50 whether I should have a go or not. I'm glad I did though as after only a couple of practice goes I smashed the 200 barrier with a solid 210 (211 if you include an accidental belly bump around the 50 mark - see video below). 

So what have I learned? Other than the fact I am a 9 year old in a 38 year old's body and enjoy making graphs a bit too much. 

1. It's good to challenge your self, it's even better to challenge your past, younger self. But only if you win. 

2. Take silly things seriously. They cancel each other out and you end up being the right level of silly and serious at the same time. Not sure it always works the other way around though. 

3. If you are aiming for a keepy uppy record, do more than 10 minutes a day. 

4. If you are aiming for a keepy uppy record, go for a bike ride first.

5. If you put something in a spreadsheet and tell people about it, it becomes a thing. 

Further reading / watching

Keepy Uppy Records Spoiler alert : the record is 26 hours and people have ran marathons while keeping a ball in the air

History of Keepy Uppies - used to be a thing in Feudal Japanese courts and at a push you could say that the terrifying ball game of the MesoAmericans was an early form.