Battling the void

This is more or less the text of a speech I'm going to give tonight.

It’s a cloudy Sunday morning in June 2006, and I’m about to step off the roof of a 12-story building.

And why exactly WAS I about to do such a crazy thing?

Well, Mr Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and most welcome guests, I wanted to get into my attic.

I’ve lived in my house for more than 25 years and I’ve only ever managed to get up there twice.

I'm afraid of heights, you see.

Loads of people are afraid of heights - it's a perfectly rational thing to be afraid of. We are not birds, we're just monkeys with shoes on, and when we fall we don’t stop until we hit the ground.

It makes sense to be afraid of heights when a fall can turn you from a living, breathing human being with loves, hates, hopes and dreams into something that they have to wash away with a hose.

But

My own fear of heights does not make sense.

I can, for example, go up the spire of Coventry Cathedral and look down quite happily. I can lean out of our seventh floor window at work and look down quite happily. I’ve been to Surprise View in the Lake District, where you walk through some trees and all of a sudden, you’re on the edge of a cliff. There were no guard rails, there, but I could stand right on the edge and look down quite happily.

But I can't climb a simple eight-foot aluminium ladder into my own attic.

The problem is the hatch is above the landing, so when you climb up, there is a great yawning void just the other side of the banister.

Now, I say yawning, but it doesn't so much yawn as sit in the back of my mind whispering suggestively.

The void beyond the banister keeps urging me to slip off the ladder and fall, I can feel it pulling hungrily at me as I climb and trying to make my dizzy.

The void is insidious.
The void is seductive.
The void is a pain in the backside, frankly.

In 2006, I was getting so sick of it keeping me out of my own attic that I devised a cunning plan.

I figured if I picked a fight with the void’s much bigger brothers – and won, the void in my house would lose its power over me,

Clever, eh?

The void’s laughter was deafening the next day as I signed up for the Charity Abseil.

A few months passed and the big day finally dawned.

I turned up to the Axa building in Coventry city centre.

It was a building I’d walked past hundreds of times but I’d never really looked at properly.

I looked up at it now - all 170 terrifying feet of it

This was the moment when the void's big brother strolled into my head. If he had been a person, he would be a leather-jacketed thug with a dangling cigarette, tattoos, and a bad attitude.

I resolutely ignored him and went inside and up to the twelfth floor. There, some cheery folks helped me on with some canvas spaghetti which they said was a safety harness, and clapped a thin plastic helmet on my head. Thus, attired for battle, I went out onto the roof.

There, the organisers had erected a flimsy-looking platform of, planks and scaffolding on the edge.

Scaffold was the right word, too, because never did a condemned person ascend those three rickety steps with more trepidation than I did that day.

The void's big brother started his campaign of terror in my head and was now going around dropping cigarette ash and accidentally on purpose breaking things like some b-movie heavy. He offered to leave me alone if I would just see reason, give up this nonsense and go home.

No way! I’m not scared of you! I lied.

Up on the platform, there was another cheery fellow doing mysterious things with ropes and knots.

Don’t worry, he assured me, you could dangle baby elephants off these ropes. I smiled weakly back at him wondered how they knew.

Right, he said then, Go to the edge and turn you back to it.

Reluctantly, I unglued my feet and did as I was told.

The void's big brother was starting to get decidedly nasty now - he was doing all sorts of horrible things with my heart-rate and breathing.

Then the cheery man said, step off, lean back and walk down the wall.

Simple enough, surely. I’ve done stepping. I’ve done leaning. I’ve even done walking.

But never was a longer step taken by a human being. But I did it. Amazingly, I didn’t die! So I took another step, then another, and another.

This was going surprisingly well.

The void’s big brother glanced at his watch meaningfully, and gave me a nasty grin. Any minute now, he seemed to be saying.

Now I'm not very athletic at the best of times and I have a lousy body image, so even simply leaning back and walking down a wall proved too much and ,before long, I found myself slipping off, to dangle helplessly, twirling in mid-air like some kind of terrified plumb-bob.

Baby elephants, baby elephants, baby elephants, I chanted to myself, as I struggled to get everything back under control.

The void's big brother gave my heart-rate a vindictive tweak.

But, I managed to get back on the wall and continue - only to slip off again a bit further down.

I was really not good at this.

But I am nothing if not stubborn.

There were several more prayers to the infant pachyderms before I finally - joyfully - reached the blessed, beautiful, ground.

As soon as my feet touched, I was so jazzed that I simply collapsed in a wobbly heap like a great big adrenaline-flavoured jelly.

The void's big brother treated me to a final sneer, tossed his cigarette on to the floor, ground it out with his heel and strolled away laughing.

He'd won.

I’ve not been able to face the void since.

But I’ve got a cunning plan...

Does anybody know where I can sign up for parachute training?

A Little Piece of Toast(masters)

Last night, I went with a friend (Don't feed the Pixies, to be exact) to our local branch of Toastmasters. It was to be his debut as a main speaker there and I was going along for two reasons: to lend him a bit of moral support and to see for myself what exactly it was that he had been enthusing about these last several weeks.

I've usually felt awkward when joining an established group for the first time: you don't know the etiquette, or what's coming next or what's expected of you as a guest, but the toastmasters had it all worked out. Every part of the evening was explained and guests were given the choice of whether to join in the fun or not. Now, being a gobby git who enjoys the sound of her own voice and who relishes a bit of a mental agility challenge from time to time, I decided it would be much more fun to throw myself in than to hang about on the sidelines.

The evening started off, as DFTP has said, with a warm-up which involved singing something about Summer. I'm ashamed to say I stole DFTP's thunder a bit by singing There Ain't No Cure for the summertime Blues. It wasn't intentional - it was all I could think of, given that all the other obvious songs (Summer Holiday, Summertime, etc) had already been taken by others before us. He controlled his annoyance masterfully, however, and didn't stab me to death with his voting pen (Oh, yes, peeps, there's voting!).

After the warm-up came the main speakers for the evening. Now, DFTP has already described at length his contribution, which was truly excellent given that it was his maiden speech, so I won't repeat it all here. There were two other speakers who were further along in their training and their speeches were both entertaining and informative.

Before we knew it, it was recess and a chance to mingle with some very interesting and engaging people. The one thing I noticed about the people at Toastmasters was that without exception they were friendly, voluble (no surprise there, given the kind of activity being undertaken by the group) and interested in getting to know their guests. This was so refreshing after all the awkward starts I've had in groups that I've joined over the years. OK, so the whole group is devoted to cultivating their personal presentation skills and it behoves them to be as warm and engaging as possible. Having said this, though, I did not get any hint of false, over-effusive friendliness from any of them. This I like.

After the break it was Table Topics. This is a regular thing where the Table Topics Master (TTM) chooses people at random to speak for two minutes on whatever the subject is for the evening. Our TTM this week must have had a slightly sadistic streak though because rather than give out a topic, he gave each speaker a real but extremely obscure English word and they had to come up with as original a definition as possible for it and expatiate upon that definition for two whole minutes.

Now, you wouldn't think 120 seconds would be that hard to fill now would you? Well the first few speakers managed a good showing with the likes of yardang and purlicue. Then suddenly, my name was called and my brain shut down. I hoped that, in the 10 or so seconds it took for me to get to the front, I could come up with a breathtakingly witty definition, but nope, the old grey matter stayed maddeningly silent.

I'm facing the crowd now and stammering my way into the standard opening "Mr Toastmaster, Master Table Topics Master..." Anything yet, brain? Nope. Damn! OK. Look at the word (infundibleform or something), point at it, try to sound erudite about the etymological roots (woo, get you!) of the various parts of it. Flammel! Prevaricate! Phillibuster!

Eventually, after one minute and ten seconds of the most incoherent and rambling nonsense, I gave in and wrapped it up. The audience was, as they had been to everyone who had spoken, warm in their encouragement and applause.

That's another thing I like about this group, they are all so positive and constructive in their feedback. Everyone, but EVERYONE is evaluated at Toastmasters (even the evaluators!) and the audience gets to vote on their favourite speaker in various categories (First speaker, Second speaker, Best Evaluator, etc).

Amazingly, I was voted Best Table Topics speaker for the night. Earlier you will remember I mentioned that I am a gobby git who likes the sound of her own voice.

At Toastmasters, this is not necessarily a character flaw. If you have a branch near you, go along and check it out: it's as much fun as you can have with your clothes on!