Did you know, and not a lot of people know this, that, when you die, the afterlife is much more ordered and planned than real life. All your earthly experiences are re-lived, but grouped into similar categories. For example, you will spend approximately 20 – 25 continuous years sleeping. You will spend about 3 – 4 years doing nothing but eating and another couple of years drinking. You will spend maybe a year lying on a beach and all your sexual experiences will be continuous. This all sounds great but there is a downside: You will suffer all your pain at once; for 27 hours you will do nothing but cut yourself, break bones and worse. You will endure over five months sat on a toilet. Plus there is the boredom too; day after day of waiting in airport terminals, fifteen months searching for lost items and perhaps even longer wondering where other drivers are going (because they are not indicating).
Sadly, I’m not the person who created this idea of the afterlife. It is pinched (and tweaked) from “Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives” by David Eagleman. I'm beginning to wonder if I am already in the afterlife (or, that particular version of it), things seem to be either very good, or very bad. After a period of relative dolce vita, endless consecutive test passes (well, eight), good weather and general plain sailing, I then had a particularly unpleasant week; lesson cancellations, rubbish weather, bursting tyres, lost debit cards, crashing computers and a pupil failing their test after making a pig's ear of their reversing manoeuvre. The roads seemed less safe too; whilst one of my Nairn pupils was driving to Inverness one morning - keeping up with the flow of traffic at a nice, steady 60mph - a complete prat in a red VW Golf (SX03EEW) thought it would be a good idea to overtake us as we approached a right-hand bend. When an oncoming car came around that bend he/she was forced to brake sharply and swerve violently back in front of us, avoiding the ditch by a matter of nanometres. The 'Baby on board' sign, restricting their vision, only added to my despair.
Then, last Wednesday, the clouds lifted, the temperature started creeping into the twenties, the sun shone and life, in general, improved...
A few weeks earlier one of my pupils had bizarrely not shown up for his driving test. I had tried calling and texting him, but without reply. Very strange. It turned out he had been rushed to hospital that morning with lung problems, so the driving test was far from being his priority. Last week he called me to explain and to say that he had re-booked his test in Alness (he didn't want to wait for an Inverness test). Could I help? (he had given me two days’ notice). Luckily (and thank you to my obliging pupils), I was able to reschedule a few lessons and we were on for Alness. I used to teach in the Alness/Invergordon area when I lived in Glen Urquhart, but had not taught (or even been near the place) for over three years. We only had an hour to have a quick look around the area, but it should not matter if they don't know the area, if he just applies what he had learned in Nairn/Inverness, there should be no problem. And so it proved, so congratulations to Norman on passing first-time (sort of).
My computer then made a miraculous recovery. The computer engineer had told me that it was beyond repair and I would have to replace it. I'm not sufficiently skilled in computer repair to quibble, but I undertook the complex procedure of turning it off, leaving it to fester for a few days, then turning it back on again, and that has seemed to fix the problem.
A new debit card was received, I had three enjoyable days of pupils taking their Pass Plus course, Jane and I enjoyed an overdue horse ride in Darnaway Forest, Liverpool (and Andy Carroll) sprang to life (against Manchester City), some pupils paid for blocks of lessons and, to top it all off, the four new pupils who had their first lessons booked this week all turned up!
In the chapter referred to in David Eagleman’s book, he concludes by suggesting that, in this version of the afterlife, you covet a more earthly life where experiences are split into smaller swallowable pieces, where one enjoys jumping from one emotion to the next. I have to agree, imagine supporting a football team who win everything in sight for two decades, then nothing for the next two decades..... Oops! Forget that last comment.
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