Heroes

We all need heroes. A healthy relationship with a hero is a healthy basis for growth and development.

I do have one rule about heroes and my rule is that you should never meet them. I am not suggesting for one moment of course that they may be less worth meeting than the next man, it is that heroes live in a different reality to one we place them in. I remember sitting next to a potential Prime Minister on a plane journey and hoped that his grasp of the economy at large was better than his own as he spent the whole journey bickering with his PA about his expenses.

On another occasion a friend of mine met one of the UK's hardy perennial comedians who was anything but funny when the ATM he was trying to use was not entertained. Even the time I was standing in the loo at a venue when the main attraction stood next to me. He was a foul mouthed drunk with the voice of a (gravelly) angel.

Enough rambing as there is a point to all of this.

Today I have been deeply saddened by two deaths in particular. In a weekend with a spate of air crashes the one I have in mind killed four people. One of them was my hero and another was his son. The other passengers were a friend of the little boy and a grown friend of the family.

I can only recall two 'celebrity' deaths that have really moved me to tears. This was one of them and the other was Ayrton Senna. And yet there lies a confusion. Before his death I struggled to find anything about Senna that was likeable. And yet in his death he became a lost hero to me. The loss of Colin McRae, is the death of a someone who was my living hero as his father was to me before him.

What Senna and McRae had on common was an uncommon brilliance at the helm of some form of motorised transport. In both cases this was to kill them. Not of their doing but of their end nevertheless.

With Colin, his death all the more tragic as his five-year old son was with him, a likely hero to be in years to come.

I don't know why these two losses over and above the loss of the great and the good in all walks of life, or even closer family members, should move me so specifically. It is a question I cannot answer, however there is a better answer to a better question. What is it that makes a hero important to us? This is the question we need to answer above all others.

It is also answering this question that tells us the folly of meeting our heroes in real life. They can never live up to the reality we have created for them which is an extension of our own needs and wants. It is this creation in our own reality that creates a gap between who we are and who we want to be. It is the vacuum in this gap that creates growth in all of us.

I have read many words about Colin today and the gap I strive to fill is to have a fearless, flamboyant and execeptionally abundant life. To be an exceptional father and husband. Also like Colin I would like to drive it like I stole it, the phrase could have been invented for him.

Whether I would have seen this in the man in person I will never know. I am deeply saddened by the loss and yet my reality will continue. My rule is not to meet your heroes, it is not that the opportunity should be so cruelly taken away from us.

Flirt alert!

We have just been in Mallorca for the past two weeks. An excellent time of year with young children as it is not too hot and the sun less intense than June or July.

Phoenix, not quite two used the vacation to sharpen up his flirting skills (I have no idea where he gets that from). Whenever we were in a shop or a restaurant he would smile at all the pretty girls and say, 'Hola'.

It worked a treat, a free t-shirt, a free ice lolly and a few unsolicited hugs along the way. It made us very welcome everywhere we went. As the holiday progressed he refined his technique by adding, 'Bye, bye, adios', whilst waving his little fat mitt.

Just goes to show - be nice to people and you will find the world in your hand.