Suckerpunch

Sarah also informed me that Spiny had gotten a place on clinical training at a very prestigious London based course. To be honest, I would have probably known if I wasn't weaning myself off my Facebook addiction. Sarah told me this piece of information almost from the door of our en-suite toilet, so she could close it and hide behind it if I exploded. Instead, I took this with a shrug of "fair enough".

You know it would probably have bothered me last year, but the longer I spend out of "the CP game", the more perspective I have about it. Its not the answer to anyone's prayers, and its not the secret of life. I am happy with what I am doing, and now I can look back on that era of my life like most old men look back on the 1950s and their time in National Service. With amusement of an activity that hundreds of people shared once and can identify with, but happy they no longer have to be doing it. It's simply not my problem to worry about anymore, any more than it is to worry about how that one girl in Camden Road Nursery school monopolised the sandpit and the water wheel. It no longer feels that relevant to me. Not compared to the likes of the unholy trinity.

In that funny way life often switches things, the normally calm Sarah however was fuelled with rage instead of me. This was by far the oddest thing on holiday. Its as if God had switched our script books and she got my lines and I was reading hers. "I don't fucking believe it! Their selection process must be total shit if they reject us, and take her!" she stormed. I kept reading my Grazia and replied "Really, if is that bad and they take people like her over us, why the hell keep going after it? You will end up on Jeremy Kyle if you are not careful".

Sarah fumed and came up with "Thats shit! You are just able to say that because your job pays you more than hers, if it didn't you would be pissed off just like me". This was quite a low blow, I thought and quite embarassing in its own way. As one of my qualified CP friends pointed out, that it would take him 6 years or so after training to get onto what I am currently on, so maybe this did have some element of truth to it. But i didn't think it was just that, but I couldn't really say what I felt was the issue. Sarah is starting her Counselling Psychology doctorate and unfortunately the recession has not been kind to her fiance Tom. So she will be starting an expensive course without any real financial fallback, especially as its harder to borrow money right now. Their wedding has been put back too, which really doesn't help. Spiny's good fortune probably feels like rubbing it in.

Obviously I didn't share this insight with her (only you dear readers), because I didn't feel like losing a friend on holiday. This does suck for Sarah, but then again no-one is putting a knife to her throat and forcing her to any of the above, least of all Spiny. As my mum would probably say "Life isn't fair -now eat your broccoli" and bad things happen to good people and vice versa.