I HATE long goodbye's!

Right, I can put this subject off no longer; I'm going to have to talk about saying goodbye to people.  Actually I'm pretty sure that I could put this subject off for as long as I wanted, its just that I've been struggling to think of a topic this week, and I'm a few glasses of red to the good, and so the subject of "Farewell's" has finally strayed into the cross hair's.

As you've probably guessed already, the title really is a bit of a give-away, I really am not one for sentimental partings.  For example, the day my parents dropped me off in my halls they barely had time to help get my kit into my room before I was shooing them out again with a vague promise to see them again at Christmas.  That, as far as I was concerned, was that.  I was from that moment on my own, in my territory, and I had said everything that needed to be said.  Now I find, as the start date for BRNC looms ever closer, I am saying more and more goodbyes and I still adopt to the same philosophy; short and sweet, its not the end of the world right?

Maybe it comes from having a family scattered across the country?  You'd think that because we don't get to see each other much that our goodbye's would be long ones but you'd be wrong.  If we spend countless hours making farewell speeches, we'd be late onto the roads and then we'd end up stuck on the M25 at rush hour, and do you have any idea what that's like?!  I'm afraid that I can't come up with a particularly creative metaphor at the moment so I'll just say this; its bloody boring!

So, long sentimental goodbye's waste time that could otherwise be employed doing something productive; in recent weeks that something has been kit preparation, but for three years it was things such as party's, Tekken/COD tournaments, and on occasion even things like dissertations and deadlines.  However, there is an irony here to my philosophy, and it is a truly great one.

The great irony is that the past six weeks or so have been the longest, most drawn out goodbye I have ever said to anyone.  Please note how I did not state that it was emotional, if any of you who read this knew that I was getting emotional about saying goodbye to you then that would be a weakness you could use to your advantage!  Wait.  Hang on.  I just admitted that I was emotional when seeing you all...bugger....I digress, forget what I said.

The point I'm driving at, I suppose, is that its not until that you are in a position where a long, emotional goodbye is almost inevitable, that you realise why people spend time saying them.  And in the final irony, apart from that pointless paragraph which I told you to forget about, this post has been one long goodbye in itself.

HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS "JIM ROBSON!"

Everyone in their proper place

I've been seeing a lot of my friends recently.  In fact I've been seeing them as often as I get the opportunity to; with the start of BRNC only two weeks away and the looming knowledge that I'm not going to see some of them again for six months or maybe longer, I want to get as much time in with them as I can before I have to say my goodbyes.  Coincidentally these goodbye's, when they come, will be very short ones because I hate dragging things out and I don't want to get emotional about it because I AM A MAN! Grrrrr!

Now do not worry, I'm not going to wax lyrical for a few hundred words on how much I'll miss everyone, etc etc because who would want to read about that?  And anyway I'm saving that for next week's article.  No, what I want to talk about this week is the importance of the dynamics of friendship groups, the roles people play within them, and how everyone has a job to do to make a truly unbreakable set of friends.  Oh, and let me just clarify; I'm not talking about the kind of people who you work with and have awkward conversations with at the Christmas party, where the only saving grace is the presence of alcohol and the knowledge in your mind that YOU are one day going to make the great escape whilst THEY continue to flog frozen foods at discount prices for the rest of their lives!  I'm talking here about the sort of friends you have who you can all spend months/years apart and then get back together and feel like nothing’s changed.

Allow me to take, for example, my mates from uni.  Now with this lot nothing has changed at all, we were together only yesterday and I had been smacked round the back of the head within five minutes.  I’m not entirely sure what I’d done to deserve it, but I’ve learned with this person not to ask, but instead to thank them and ask for another! However, I digress, the importance of the dynamics of the group.  Now, I hasten to point out that these thoughts came to me yesterday when I was several glasses of Merlot and imported German beer to the good, so if they appear even more incoherent than usual I apologise!

Within that group of five people sat around the table there was “The Matriarch”, she knows who she is and I can already feel the slap winging its way towards me, “The Little Sister”, “The Diplomat” (and for “Diplomat” read:  “Sarcastically witty/wine philosopher”), “The Crazy Cat Lady” (love you sweetheart!), and me.  I would call myself “The Rogue” but I can already feel the scorn building up in the other four so my role probably is classed as “The Idiot/Goon/Battering Ram”.  Also not counted in that five because they couldn’t make it on the day were “The Dynamic Duo” of pneumatic-horse-riding-blondes who have the capacity to break men’s minds!

So, there’s the cast.  Sounds like a bunch of characters from a bad 80’s sit com right?  But the point I’m making, or trying to make without digressing our three and a half years of antics, is that this whole contrast of differing personalities makes the circle of friends, any circle of friends, what it is.  I know for a fact that if my friendship circle consisted of people who were all exactly the same it would be pretty bloody boring!  A mix of character results in unpredictability, which is good for a friendship; you have the knowledge that your mates will be there for you, but the reassurance that no two meetings will be the same. 

Boomerang

You’d think that for someone whose degree consisted of making many, many words appear on a computer screen in essay format that writing a blog would be relatively easy.  Indeed it would be, I tell myself with a despairing groan, if I hadn’t spent the past year allowing my brain to turn into soft, pink mush.  If I had started this blog whilst I had been at uni; somehow finding time in-between bodging essays, annoying certain lecturers, drinking, and joining the Navy, I would not be facing the problem I am now facing.  That problem is quite simply that IT IS NOT EASY!

However, before you sigh with despair at the thought of me going into a rant about being unable to find something to write about, do not fear!  I already know the source of the problem and it is that problem which, appropriately, forms the topic for this first peace.  The problem is the reason that my brain has been in decay; the problem is being a fully paid up, Gold Standard member of the “Boomerang Generation”.

We’ve all heard this phrase going around.  One goes to University, one achieves a degree in procrastination/giving excuses as to why you look hungover in a lecture, one runs up debt, and finally one comes home to the parents having acquired a taste for living independently.  Here in lies the true problem of playing “The Human Boomerang”:  You have lived independently of your parents, you have enjoyed it (what you remember of it), and now you’re back living in a house with somebody else’s rules and no immediate job prospects because you’ve been told you may have to wait for up to a year before you’re accepted into the Navy (Bitter? Moi?!).

“Arrrghh!”  I hear some of you cry.  “I was sensible enough to leave uni with a job already secured!  Haha!”  Well I take my hat off to you Sir/Madame for being so farsighted, and if you are now living in your own place then congratulations again...but if you are not living in your own place then I am afraid there is no way of denying that you still a member of the “Boomerang Generation”.  You may well be a Silver rather than a Gold Member, in which case you do not get the complimentary pot noodle and endless reruns of Top Gear on Dave, but you are still member.

I have seen many of dear mates walk straight into jobs in the wake of coming home from uni, some have even stayed in education and been able to prevent themselves from coming spinning menacingly back towards their parents, but of all those who have walked into jobs only one of them has moved out.  And in terms of intellectual sharpness she is now the stiletto to my club, although she’d tell me that she was always that anyway.  Just as many of my mates have gone home to part time jobs whilst they wait to get a place in something bigger, and just like me the frustration of living with parents after the giddy independence of university has driven them to the point that the kind of people who go on shotgun massacres look like attractive role models!

The point I’m ultimately trying to make here is a simple one.  It is not natural for a young person who has lived the high life of independence to come back down to earth and live under someone else’s roof and rules again.  Having gained a taste for it, it is only natural to feel a desire to spread your wings and fly, but how do you do that with the current job market and the knowledge in the back of your mind that there is a bloody great big Australian stick heading towards you ready to slap its brand name on you?  And once it has how do you get away from it?

My solution in the end was to, oddly, join the “Boomerang Generation” for nearly a whole year waiting for my dream job to turn up, which it did just in time to prevent me from going berserk with a pair of garden sheers.  So in the end, annoyingly, the only way to get out of the “Australian Novelty Items Club” is to wait until that dream job application you’ve sent off Boomerang’s back to you.