Jason Parlour's Personal Blog

I was fortunate to find a book that was pretty life changing for me many years ago. This is not the picture book version, but the ‘Penguin Popular Classic’ which is entirely a text based version!

I didn’t get all that far through the book the first time around, as I was distracted by the pages referring to a the ’64 Arts’ which apparently should be studied in conjunction with the rest of the book (the traditional Hindu Arts).

Although these original arts are a bit different to the culture I was growing up in, I figured that the an equivalent I could work out, would probably be good to try and develop for myself over the subsequent years.

So the original arts (with what I see as many of their modern equivalents where appropriate) are as follows (I can’t do all of these yet, but they were a base for me to look out from and head towards):

1. Singing
2. Playing musical instruments
3. Dancing – Salsa, ballroom, pole
4. Performance combining the above
5. Writing and drawing
6. Tattooing
7. Adorning an idol with rice and flowers – Floristry and flower arranging ?
8. Spreading and arranging of bed of flowers, or flowers upon the ground
9. Colouring the teeth, clothing, hair, nails and bodies – body painting and hair styling
10. Fixed stained glass into the floor – mosaics
11. The art of making beds – hotel housekeeping
12. Playing musical glasses partially filled with water
13. Storing and accumulating water, aqueducts, etc. – household plumbing
14. Picture making – modern day photography
15. Stringing of necklaces and garlands -
16. Binding of turbans and chaplets -
17. Scenic representation /stage play – Amateur Dramatics?
18. Art of making ear ornaments -
19. Preparing perfumes -
20. Proper disposition of jewels and decorations in dress – fashion accessories
21. Magic or sorcery – stage magic and slight of hand
22. Quickness and dexterity in manual skill – computer typing speed.
23. Culinary art – cooking and baking
24. Making lemonades, acidulated drinks – smoothies, cocktails and fruit drinks
25. Tailors work and sewing – same today (including curtain making)
26. Making parrots and other decorative items out of yarn or thread – cross stitching
27. Solutions of riddles and verbal puzzles – same today (+ debating contests)
28. Connected stories game – Modern day politics or sales
29. Mimicry or imitation – acting and imitation
30. Reading, including chanting and intoning – public speaking / corporate training
31. Tongue twisters
32. Sword, quarterstaff, bow and arrow – martial arts
33. Drawing inferences, reasoning and inferring – psychotherapy and counselling
34. Carpentry – carpentry and furniture building (both flat pack and from scratch)
35. Architecture or the art of building – build your own home and/or house extension
36. Knowledge about gold silver and gems – same
37. Chemistry and mineralogy – same
38. Colouring jewels, gems and beads
39. Knowledge of mines and quarries
40. Gardening – gardening and tree surgery
41. Cockfighting, quail fighting and ram fighting – boxing or martial art tournaments
42. Teaching parrots or starlings to speak – dog and horse whispering
43. Applying perfumes to the body
44. Writing of cipher – code writing and code breaking / computer programming
45. Modifying speech in abstract ways
46. Knowledge of languages – speaking foreign languages
47. Making flower carriages
48. Spells and charms – Spells and witchcraft
49. Memory and mental exercises – brain challenges and IQ tests
50. Composing poems
51. Knowledge of dictionaries and vocabularies – well read and well spoken
52. Knowledge of disguising people
53. The ability to change cheaper items to appear as of a higher value (ie cotton to silk, etc.)
54. Gambling – gambling and stock market share dealing
55. Art of mantras or incarnations to gaining possession of others’ property – positive thinking and witchcraft
56. Skill in youthful sports – sports and athletics
57. Knowledge of the rules of society, and paying respects and compliments to others – well mannered, respectful to all, and ability to give genuine compliments
58. Knowledge of the art of war, armies, etc – military service (paid, part time, or voluntary)
59. Knowledge of gymnastics – modern day gymnastics
60. Knowing someone’s character by their features – personology, face reading and body language
61. Knowledge of scanning and constructing verses – speed reading and writing
62. Arithmetical recreations – maths challenges / chess
63. Making artificial flowers
64. Making figures and images in clay – pottery and sculpture

Particularly where I couldn’t work out a modern UK equivalent, I also felt there was a few modern day skills not included in the above list, but useful in the UK Society I lived and grew up:

1. Sailing and navigating on water
2. Ship building
3. Plastering a wall
4. Painting and Decorating
5. Household rewiring
6. Massage therapies
7. Hypnotherapy & Hypnosis
8. Meditation
9. Anatomy and physiology
10. Website design and development
11. IT software skills (ie Windows, Linux, Mac)
12. IT hardware skills (repairing / rebuilding your computer hardware)
13. Sales skills
14. Presentation skills / after dinner speeches
15. Voluntary work with children
16. Movie making / directing
17. Advanced driver training
18. Skills in piloting a plane  (ie private pilots licence, or gliding certificate)
19. Sustainable living / renewable energies
20. Growing your own fruit and veg
21. Survival skills (remote living)
22. Surfing
23. Rock Climbing / Urban Free Running
24. Car mechanics and repair
25. Swimming
26. Scuba diving
27. High Board Diving

Your thoughts?

I was thinking last night of some of the random things I’ve been doing over the last few years (and how many of them I keep forgetting), so I’ve started writing a list, now detailed briefly on my Random Facts page.

The following blog post, is a copy of one made on the 1st March 2006 (the day immediately after), and then updated over the following week.  However, as I’m shortly moving the old website to a new location, it seemed appropriate to re-post here!  Do scroll down to the images at the base for a better view.

‘Don’t try and dodge the squirrel‘!

So there I was, on Tuesday the 28th Feb 2006, at around 10:30am, driving confidently along the inside lane of the A329M motorway just by junction 10 of the M4.

Holding a steady 70mph, aware of the other vehicles around me, and the road ahead looking clear, ready to exit in around half a mile.

Suddenly, out of the tree line, a small brown squirrel starts racing it’s way to new pastures, attempting to dash as fast as it little legs could carry it, across 2 lanes of fast moving traffic!

Correlating it’s speed, my speed, and the distance between us, there’s a very high chance we’ll collide and Sammy will certainly not do very well out of it. Unfortunately then instinct (possibly from being a strict vegetarian for more than 10 years), means that I then attempted to take evasive action.

A sharp swerve on the steering to the right to try and avoid Sammy, means that at these high speeds the car begins to loose it’s feet. A counter turn to the left helps a little but the car is already unavoidably about to loose traction.

Should I counter again and try to compensate by going right, setting up an uncontrollable rock and roll around the motorway? That could mean moving across the lanes, and also potentially into oncoming traffic from the other direction (as there’s no central barrier on that part of the motorway). And that could be dangerous.

So knowing I was loosing traction anyway, the safest direction was to continue holding my slight left lock, hopefully then sliding onto the hard shoulder in the safest manner, knowing also that the cars behind were also traveling quite slowly and the motorway was still relatively clear on this side.

Unfortunately, the car continued to yaw slightly to the left, then loosing traction completely with all four wheels skidding sideways, but thankfully with the vehicle still moving in the direction of the hard shoulder.

“This might cause a little damage to the car” I thought.

Unfortunately a tree to the side of the hard shoulder wasn’t so happy about the intrusion to its space, and attempted to hold its ground despite the rapid application of the driver’s door against it.

The car, not wishing to give up entirely, continued it’s motion against the tree, but with nowhere else to go tried to leap over the top (not very effectively), by rolling its way up the trunk.

Not wishing to make things too difficult, the tree finally gave in, embedding itself into the roof of the car, folding the roof in, right in front of Jason’s eyes just to make it clear of its displeasure about the intrusion.

‘I swerved and swerved to avoid a crash, but still hit the tree‘!

“It’s likely this might damage the car a little more than expected” I thought, as the horizon span around in front of my eyes.

The car came to a gentle halt, right way up, and somehow I was still there, sitting upright, hands still both comfortably on the steering wheel, engine still running, windscreen wipers for some reason oscillating, wondering slightly why I couldn’t really see all that well out of the front or side of the vehicle but figuring I should get out as quickly as possible.

Not being able to see if I was actually blocking the motorway, and hearing cars still flying past beside me, I felt a second vehicle could hit me at any time. I hadn’t realised at this point how much the car had been crushed around my seated position.

Thankfully, on kicking my way out of the driver’s door, three guys were already running towards me to help out (seemingly slightly surprised I was just about out by the time they got to me).

Then taking stock of my location, I was surprised and pleased to see that the car had quite nicely parked itself onto the embankment, wasn’t even on the hard shoulder. All the remnants from the car interior had even been scattered into the trees without anything obstructing the motorway at all!

Bystanders seemed somewhat surprised as I walked around freely, assisting me in retrieving various items strewn from the rear of the vehicle into the embankment.

As I was okay, and the car quite clearly no longer drivable, I wondered how long it would take for the AA to arrive. No-one was entirely sure what to do next. However, in the meantime, one of the drivers of another vehicle was already calling the police and ambulance to come and ‘rescue’ me.

Within minutes, the ambulance crew arrived and saw me smiling and waving signs of ‘I’m okay’ to them. They were however slightly puzzled as to where the driver of the vehicle was, and who else must still be trapped inside, judging from how badly the vehicle was crushed.

Taking me to the ambulance to attend to the slight cuts on the backs of my hands (from the broken glass imploding onto me), one of the paramedics returned to the vehicle, expressing that had I not been walking around on arrival as I was, they would have expected to need to cut the roof off the vehicle, and only carry me out on a spinal board!

One paramedic expressed that it was “the worst accident he’d ever seen, where someone had come out alive”. Unfortunately Sammy the squirrel wasn’t so lucky!

 

So after the event, I booked myself in for a Sports Massage on Wednesday morning, an Aromatherapy treatment Wednesday evening, an Osteopathy treatment to reset a couple of vertebrae on the Friday morning, and another massage on the following Monday!

The week continued relatively as normal (although a couple of days did seem to pass by, without being quite normally balanced!).

Thankfully, after a series X-rays, (apart from the car, the tree, and of course Sammy) nothing appears to be broken!

(I wrote this, because the ambulance guys, the crash transporter guys, and many others enjoyed the humour of ‘stressed.biz’ marked across the car, in the crushed form you see above!)

If you’ve met me, you might recognise that I generally look around 5-10 years younger than my age, I smile a lot, if I’m out and about I’m likely to have a rucksack on my back, and I tend to wear practical clothes rather than fashionable.

However, I’m also involved various businesses that continue to grow around the UK, that are currently turning over hundreds of thousands of pounds a year (and so of course spend quite a lot of money with a lot of different suppliers from around the UK), so when I buy things, I tend to buy in bulk.

My recent experience:

Very recently however, whilst walking around my new local town, I happened to notice a small independent interior designers.  Knowing that our new hotel is likely to be going through some significant internal renovations next year, I dropped in to have a look around, and discuss the potential of working together.

The lady in the store was already busy on the phone when I walked in.. so I didn’t rush her, but perused the small collection of fabrics and samples on display whilst waiting.

She didn’t seem like she’d be off the phone anytime soon, and hadn’t made any efforts to let me know she’d be right with me.

I then spotted a hardback interior design book on one of the chairs, so picked it up to get some further ideas to discuss.  Flicking through the pages, I then spotted something tucked into the book, which looked very out of place, and quickly spotted it was a printed boarding pass for a flight that month.  Trying to glance through to find out if this would be too late to get it to the owners (who must have left it by mistake), or whatever else I may be able to do to reunite it.

However, just then, the lady of the store (whilst still on the phone), snatched it out from my hands, told me not to touch it. She then quickly folded the paperwork back in half, and put it back in the book (by which time she’d also snatched this out of my hands).  She then put the book back on the chair, and then walked back into the rear of the store to continue her discussion on the phone (who I could work out was a long term supplier).

Not surprisingly, I left the store.

Realising that a lot of people don’t always get to know what they might have missed, I felt it important to let her know.  Therefore, with a smile in my step, and arms full of shopping I returned around 45 minutes later, sharing good news:

1. I do own a small, local, luxury boutique hotel;
2. We were looking to spend up to around £20,000 on some interior work (particularly on the design and finishing),
3. And that unfortunately, due to the way I’d been treated by her a little earlier, there was absolutely no way I would now consider working with her or her company.

She was of course apologetic at this point, but it was too little : too late.

This incident is certainly not isolated.

A very succesful friend of mine had just been decorating her own new home, in a very expensive part of Guildford.  Still partially covered in clothes caked in paint, she tried to register with a very local but expensive private dentists.  The receptionist apparently wouldn’t even give her the time of day.  But upon returning later that week, this time on her return from work (in a tailored suite), they couldn’t sign her up quickly enough.

Similarly, a good colleague who now runs fleet services for a well known luxury car company:  shared with me a time one Saturday afternoon when a gentleman in casual jeans and a t-shirt turned up at the showroom and forecourt of the car firm, and was taking a good look around.  The high pressure sales guys at the time didn’t take long to assume he was just going to waste their time, so they sent over the Saturday kid (John) who was trying to learn the trade whilst washing the cars.  The gentleman had a few questions, that the kid tried to answer as best he could.  The gentleman then asked how he could go about ordering 14 of these for his business.

Not surprisingly, the Saturday kid didn’t really know how to proceed, so went back to asked the main sales guys what to do next.. on hearing the news, they elbowed their way into trying to get the commission, but the gentleman in question stopped them, explained that they had all dismissed him whilst he was walking around and whilst trying to ask questions, and so John (the Saturday kid) was the only person who should get the commission from the significant sale.

Incredible people:

Now being a hotel owner, I’m fortunate to meet many more incredible people from around the world who have come to stay with us.

Over the course of their stay, some of them are kind enough to share with me their background, and we do get all types of people.  Some are nurses, midwifes, and teachers, others are mutli-millionaire business owners, now expanding, retiring, or just keeping busy.  All of them look much the same, especially when they come down for breakfast in the hotel dressing gowns!

As the saying goes:

Apparently 40% of the decision to buy a book is based on its cover alone, but they do still say: “don’t judge a book by its cover”.

When it comes to people especially, basing your opinion on image alone, more than likely you’ll be completely wrong.