Trusting Intincts and on Being Rude.

I thought I'd write about instincts and why we have to trust them. More often than not and if you're anything like me, you prefer to doubt yourself at the cost of Being Right, and that is not good. The main reason for self doubt is lack of confidence, in my case perhaps a symptom of having had 20 months now of caring for small children and therefore feeling like I probably don't know anything other than how to sing a small child to sleep, or change a nappy in the pitch black darkness of night, or superficially clean your house so the health visiting team don't report you to Social Services.
So, my point here is that I've been justifiably pissed off for a couple of reasons but because I doubted my self and therefore my instinct, I didn't do anything about it. The first thing was our NCT (National Childbirth Trust) newsletter editor - who consistently failed to answer emails or phone calls and kept me out of the loop on when articles were expected or what the theme was. I eventually decided to make a point and stated to the wider committee that the reason there were no articles was because the editor was constantly AWOL and had no idea how to communicate with her team. I didn't know whether this would work or not, but it did - suddenly the ball started to roll and people helped who were unaware of this situation, the editor poked her head above to parapet and admitted to various troublesome life events which had been causing her stress, and lo and behold, we had a solution to the problem and the newsletter was once again published!
My second issue was with the buxom Morag who pretends to be a guitar teacher, when she's really an Akela in disguise. Now, I don't know if Brown Owls are all so good at disguise, but this one was fairly convincing at first, that she could in fact play the guitar. I suppose the passion with which she pointed out that the simple swapping of words in a song means you could have a "different" song to sing, warned me initially but I succombed, and went along to the next class innocently expecting to be taught something. This second class was a JOKE! Morag spent the first twenty minutes telling us about her dying mother in law. She then made us play "Blowing in the Wind" for twenty minutes. She then restricted us to going between an "A" and a "G" for ten minutes (I started meditating...it was almost relaxing had I not been so angry that I was paying £8/ class for this load of rubbish) but the straw that broke the camel's back was when after about ten minutes of playing, I interrupted and said:

"Morag, sorry to interrupt, but that's not an A you're playing"

"Yes it is"

"Er, no it's not. An A should be 3rd, 4th, 5th strings of that fret"

"No, an A is 2nd, 3rd 4th"

"Well, according to this guitar chord book, it's not"

And so on and so forth. The class divided itself like the Dead Sea parted by Moses - those who agreed with me and those (amateur beginners) who had no idea but thought the Teacher Must Be Right. Bless them. Following a diatribe about how the chord she was teaching was most definitely an A because her guitar book said it was (although she didn't have the book with her so she couldn't prove this), she admitted that the A that I suggested was correct, was in fact "an A" (the hidden meaning being, But Not THE A"). Silly cow. The College sent me a feedback questionnaire which initially I filed away, but when the college secretary called to say the next class was cancelled because they couldn't find Morag, I said I wasn't particularly happy with the standard or quality of the lessons I'd paid for. It turns out that NO-ONE is happy! Ha. So, there I was imagining myself to be a troublemaker, and all along everyone else had filed complaints and asked for their money back. So, case in point. If you think something is rubbish, it is. Don't doubt yourself, it's not you, it's them.

Other news is that poor James has chicken pox! Now known as "Spotty", he has fifteen pus filled pimples on his back and torso, and his scalp! Apparently they get into your mouth. So, I've got him to calamine-up, and Patrick and I both are loaded with head colds. Outside the weather ranges from hailstones to sheet rain or a sprinkling of random sunlight. The temperature is about 4 degrees C. November in Milngavie...there are probably better places to be. Having said that, my instinct says that I'm best off here. Thank goodness for that!