It is my birthday tomorrow and also the 600th Anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Once I found out that I shared a birthday with this battle, I had a bit more interest in it than I may have otherwise had.
I’ve always had an interest in history and I think that if I could go back in time and speak to younger Stew, that I would tell him to study History at university. I love castles. I love stories. I love the whole kings and queens and battles for territories and beheadings, even though I am a republican and a pacifist.
I guess these stories are magical because they tell of a different time. They tell of a world so completely different to ours in how it is run and the rules of society. It is difficult to see the similarities, yet at the same time, important to understand that there are lessons to be learned.
I was lent a great book on Agincourt earlier this year, Juliet Barker’s Agincourt: The King, The Campaign, The Battle. I learned a lot. Mostly I learned that I didn’t know much about that period of history at all. I got quite engrossed in the book and it encouraged me to want to read up more about history in the future, especially as I currently have a lot of time to read on the train.
I think that Agincourt was pretty neat because the archers got to play a big part in the battle due to the way it played out. Archers are cool. The whole idea I think is much cooler than a knight wading into battle on a horse with a sword which just seems a bit too bombastic for my liking. An archer just loiters at the back, picking people off without really having to get their hands messy. More about my love for archery another time, perhaps.
I found it really enjoyable reading the book and getting all the details about the build up and the political situation at the time. The list below shows other things that happened on my birthday. I think I’m going to read up on the Charge of the Light Brigade for next year. If anyone has any recommendations of good books, let me know!
Other things that have happened on my birthday (at least according to the internet):
1854: The Charge of the Light Brigade
1881: Picasso is born
1917: The October Revolution (depending on which calendar you adhere to)
1935: Clement Atlee becomes leader of the Labour Party
1979 (The Year I was born): Video Killed The Radio Star is number 1.
1979: Eddie Argos of Art Brut is born
1990: I score a hat trick in a 6-5 victory over All Souls Primary School
2004: Castro bans the dollar in Cuba
Month: October 2015
It’s so close I can taste it in my spit: The Return of the Apprentice
The Apprentice starts again this week. It is both one of my favourite TV shows and the one that makes me the most frustrated.
When I was studying accountancy, one of my tutors suggested watching the show to learn about all the mistakes that businesses can make if they are run by idiots. I think that is a fairly good assessment of what happens in the show. I watched the series that was on and then became immediately hooked and started watching through all of the other seasons which had been on before.I applied to go on the show around 4 years ago. It was a very weird experience. I was unable to make the London date as I was at a festival, so I ended up getting the train to Birmingham whilst reading Sugar’s book What You See Is What You Get, in the vague hope that it would somehow help my chances of getting on the show.
I’m not really sure I wanted to be on the show, but I knew that I was much better than half of the people they had on who are basically complete chumps. I spend half of the time I’m watching the show telling whoever will listen that I could do it better and pointing out all of the mistakes that they had made. So I figured, why not give it a shot. It would be a fun day out and I might end up with fame and fortune.
What it actually amounted to was a hotel full of men in suits and women in power suits who waited for around an hour each to then be ushered into a room with 9 other contestants, asked to speak for 30 seconds about yourself before then dismissed.
The assumption is that they are intentionally picking people who would provide interesting TV. This seems logical and my experience of the two of three they picked to go on to the next round are they went with the ones that seemed instantly the most pompous.
So instead of progressing to the next stage, I went to Starbucks and read Four Four Two whilst waiting for the train to head home to my normal life of not being shouted at by strangers. I think it probably worked out for the best. I’m not keen on being shouted at.
As a footnote to my experience, this was the second year that you had to come up with a business plan rather than simply getting a job working for Sralan. One of the losing finalists stole my idea. I remember chatting about our ideas with some other contestants, although I can’t remember if the fluffy haired one who had the same idea was one of the people I talked to. If he was, I feel his uppance came when he was booted off first out of all the finalists. Especially as it was a crap idea anyway. At least if you’re going to steal something, try to steal a good idea.