I don't mean as in a "I'm not happy with whom I am" sort of way but in a "I would like to inhabit that person for a day to see their thought processes and find out what makes them tick" kind of way.
I have no idea what possessed me to write that but I suppose it is about possession of some kind.
I would like to be Donald Trump for a day to see what it feels like to have an ego the size of Mount Everest and Mount Kilimanjaro combined.
I would like to be the nutter in the big car in front of us a few days ago on the way to Sheringham. He was driving a souped up car with two exhausts that were chucking out noxious substances by the bucketload. He overtook a car and then a caravan on rather a twisty stretch of road. I would like to inhabit his mind for a day to find out just what it's like to endanger my own life and the lives of others whilst polluting the atmosphere.
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I usually start the day by doing Wordle. Sometimes I can agonise over it for what seems like half an hour with the letters just not fitting in. On other days I can get the word in a matter of seconds and that's the power of this word game. In many ways it's like life- sometimes things come easily and naturally and sometimes they take an awful lot of effort. Sometimes you even fail, but the important thing is to bounce back despite set backs. A few years ago a new word entered the English language. For once this word didn't need any explanation but I have to say I haven't heard anyone use the word bouncebackability for some while. There are words and phrases that come into our language, get used to death and then disappear. Who remembers road map? I cringed every time I heard it.
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On Wednesday evening we watched another of those warts and all interviews on TV. This time the subject was Anton Du Beke. This man has certainly bounced back.
Thankfully Kate Garraway has taken over from the odious Piers Morgan as presenter. She did fall into the interviewer's usual trap of talking too much when we really wanted to hear what the interviewee had to say.
She asked a question which was a good one and which we wanted to hear the answer to but then added a supplementary question on top which was nowhere near as interesting but which was the one answered by the subject with the original question being ignored simply because the interviewee had by this time forgotten all about it. See that's a twisted too long sentence written to illustrate my point. I bet that by the end you had forgotten what it was about.
So many interviewees do this. I find it infuriating. When I'm interviewing someone for one of my publications I try to ask one question and wait for an answer before asking another. Then there's the interviewer (usually a chat show host) who is more interested in promulgating their point of view rather than listening to that of their guest.
Anton Du Beke - fancy kind of name - he must have continental forebears. Well he has but not in the way I imagined.
His real name is much more boring. He was born Anthony Beke in Sevenoaks, Kent. That's a part of the world I know quite well as I spent a lot of time when I was a boy in nearby Tunbridge Wells. We visited Sevenoaks a few years ago. It's an unremarkable town. I just wish I knew how it got its name.
Anthony Beke changed his name to give himself a more mysterious air but he needn't have worried because his father wss Hungarian and his mother Spanish.
He had a difficult upbringing as his father was a violent and abusive alcoholic. Du Beke admitted that at one point he was hospitalised for three days after being stabbed by his father. When his father died Anton didn't attend the funeral.
His mother, however, was always fully supportive of his interests and passions. It was a good programme -:a kind of This Is Your Life with seedier bits.
Today Anton is married with six year old twins and his mantra is "always be yourself" which is something I always try to follow. It's always better being yourself than somebody else as that can be very confusing.
At the end of last year I went to a local Hethersett group to hear a talk by former Norfolk beauty queen Nanette Olson. Nanette lives in our village and was also a dancer of some note. At this talk she mentioned Anton Du Beke, saying what a lovely friendly man he has always been. That ties in with how he came across in the interview and he seems to live by his mantra
He also has another career as a novelist. This was mentioned in passing but never developed. I have to say that I am very suspicious about all these books written by celebrities. Suspicious that they may not be what they seem if you know what I mean. But having done a little research it does look as if he is genuinely the author.
More photos today. This time of Sheringham. to edit.