If you were a spy and needed to get state secrets out of me, all you’d have to do is threaten me with my tax return and I’d talk. Anything but my tax return!
In the UK, the deadline for submitting our tax returns to the HMRC (IRS) is fast approaching. It’s not something that I ever look forward to but it is something that just has to be done. Today I was “knuckling down to it” when the ridiculous thought occurred to me : “you might be able to have fun doing your tax return!” An adventure had announced itself from the piles of invoices and mileage records – and I was up for the challenge 🙂 .
Please enjoy my tax return rap! I don’t think I’ll attract a record deal but do feel free to nominate me for an Ivor Novello award (I think the lyrics are rather powerful 😛 ). The experience brought me genuine joy : an hour after making my video, I am still glowing inside. I am still giggling too.
If you’ve been following my adventures, you are probably aware of my outstanding talent for fudgeling. Keen to develop this skill to the level of mastery, today’s adventure gives me the opportunity to learn the vital art of snudging.
Watch me resurrect this 18th century word in style 🙂
Ray Mears is an expert in wilderness bushcraft and survival. Today, I am going to make Ray proud by trying my hand at learning a useful survival skill : using my watch as a compass.
You can see that it’s rather a grim day here in Northern Ireland today. Fortunately, I could just about see the sun!
You can see how I get on in the video (and I’ve put some explanatory notes below the video just in case you want to try it for yourself 🙂 )
How I’m doing it works in the Northern Hemisphere. Use 1pm for bisection in Daylight Saving Time. When you bisect the angle to establish the N-S line, North is the direction heading away from the sun. For full instructions (including for the Southern Hemisphere), look here.
Today’s adventure involved learning Braille. What a whopper of an adventure it was too 🙂 .
Setting myself the challenge of learning the numbers 0-4 in Braille seemed quite do-able. I made myself some Braille cards to practise with (image below the second video) : I made them nice and large to make it easier for me. That was mistake number one because when I got to test out my Braille skills, I discovered that Braille is TINY (the little bumps are very close together too) and you need a very well-developed sense of touch (a bit of a concern for me with finger-tips hardened by 30 years of strumming a guitar!)
I decided to give my new skills a real-life run for their money by taking myself to a lift in a department store to see if I could get myself from the 3rd floor to the 2nd floor.
How long do you think it took me to find the correct button to press? Watch the first video to find out! (I’ve put all the timing details below the video).
What really surprised me about this whole adventure was how quickly the human brain can adapt. Watch the second video to see if my skills improve on my second attempt! (Again, you’ll find all the timings below the video).
Braille Lift Test 1
I set the clock ticking at 20 seconds when I was fully inside the lift. I had a bit of a panic when I realised that the Braille numbers weren’t on their own but preceded by a different character (that character turned out to be “#”). So my first task was to separate the preceding character from the number.
It took me 24 seconds to find the button for the 3rd floor. It took me 2 minutes and 35 seconds to correctly establish the location of the button for the 1st floor. It took me a whole 2 minutes and 45 seconds to find the second floor button! I realised that there were some buttons I didn’t know (Lower Ground and Ground). On returning to these buttons I incorrectly identified them as 4 and O (so I learned that my brain distorted the information to make it fit with what it knew!)
I felt quite pressured during the experience – I even broke into a sweat. At one point I thought “I’m not going to get out of here”. Soon after this point , whilst fumbling with the 4th and O floor buttons, the thought arrived “what would happen if I ever lost my sight?”
Braille Lift Test 2
Unperturbed by the stress of my first Braille experience, I decided to have another go in a different lift. I was curious how I would fare.
The second lift had less “noise” – there were less buttons; I was ready for small bumps with tiny spaces between them; and I knew to expect unexpected characters. I was also ready to run a “distortion check” on the sensory information.
This time it only took me 13 seconds to locate the 2nd floor button! I found the 1st floor button in 26 seconds and the O button in 35 seconds. Within 45 seconds of entering the lift I was 100% confident of having located the button for the 2nd floor.
Human brains are BRILLIANT 🙂 🙂 🙂 I was astonished at how much easier it was the second time around and at how much I’d learned from the initial experience. Being able to apply the learning felt really good.
Here’s my practice set of home-made Braille cards.
Today I decided to have an adventure in my coffee break 🙂 To be more precise, I decided to make the experience of drinking coffee my adventure.
I did a little bit of research about how coffee connoisseurs do the whole tasting thing and then gave it a whirl. The experience made me realise that I really hadn’t been tasting my coffee at all before!
(Top tasting tip : if you’re going to try this, make sure that you taste the coffee black and unsweetened. Additions such as milk, sugar and syrups cloud the palate!)
Well, I’m really going for it today! I’ve never had a go at “improv” [improvisational theatre] before and I’m curious to see what it’s like.
I looked for an improv exercise that I could do on my own and found a warm-up exercise called the “Three- Line Solo”. The exercise involves playing a 3- line scene with 2 characters. You play both characters yourself.
You’re supposed to repeat the exercise at high speed so you run through your “easy” characters quickly. I think the aim is to expand your range and to explore the opportunity for “playing out” the parts of yourself that don’t often get much of the limelight.
I got completely caught up in the different states and was barely aware of the camera. I didn’t think about what I was doing or saying, I just waited for the characters to emerge. I can see that this would be fun to do with other people too! (I’m also wondering what would have happened if I’d kept going just a little longer 🙂 )
I enjoyed my first sign language adventure so much that I’m giving it another go! Today I’m trying my hand at signing the alphabet in British Sign Language. This was alot of fun 🙂
Have you ever asked yourself what you might be able to do in the time it takes to boil a kettle? If you’re anything like me, the answer to that question is probably a resounding “no”.
Today I’m trying my first kettle adventure (and a boiling kettle certainly adds pressure to the experience, I can tell you!)
Today’s challenge is to do with words . I’ve posted the results , along with actual kettle-boiling time, below the video.
Kettle-boiling time : 1 minute 25 seconds
Liquid : 0.5 litre room-temperature water
Number of words (excluding repeats) : 26
Performance hindered by : all the swear words I knew beginning with the letter “B” that I wouldn’t let myself say! Blocking any word blocked the overall flow of words.
Big lesson : conscious self-regulation can impede performance!
One of the key ideas underpinning my 365 Days of Adventure project is that adventure can be found everywhere if we look for it . We don’t have to go to foreign places or do “way out things” to feel the sense of aliveness that adventure can bring.
When we come to the realisation that adventure can be found in the everyday routine of life, when we are open to experiencing so-called routine with the mindset of an adventurer, then we are conditioning a constant connection to the pulse of our own aliveness.
Today I’m having grilled mackerel for lunch. I’m a huge mackerel fan and eat it at least once a week. It’s routine for me. And yet today will be an adventure for me because I’m going to gut a fish for the very first time.
I’m writing this before I gut the mackerel because even thinking about preparing the fish in this way has made me feel very differently about my food. I somehow feel more connected to the creature that has given its life for me. I’m not sure how this is going to go.
(I’ve posted a picture of my lunch underneath the video 🙂 )
I found this adventure to be a very earthing experience.
I felt great gratitude as I ate my food today. I thought of the fish and of the sea. I thought of my place within the system of all living organisms. I felt connected.
I’m changing my mind about something. I’m not quite sure about what yet. I’ll keep you posted.
Humans Resourced 