His reputation was either the best or the worst, depending on which way you looked at it. Now I have never been anything close to an angel, but I am no fighter. I am the son of a veterinary surgeon who attended the local grammar school until after A-levels. So to say we started out on different sides of the track is something of an understatement.
By the time I left school at 18, John had already been inside a couple of oppressive environments himself. We both began working in pubs and clubs around this time and in an ironic twist that would never be repeated elsewhere in our chequered lives, he spent his time outside, securing front doors whilst I spent mine inside, behind bars (serving drinks).
We came closest to meeting properly around 1981, when he joined the door team at a club I had finished working behind the bar at only a few weeks earlier. He even got to know my younger sister, who worked the front desk taking admission money.
The main reason we managed to avoid one another for over two decades is that as I said earlier, I have never been a fighter. Sure, I have given it a go a few times, late at night when drunk, but the other guy always seemed to be the one doing most of the fighting, and eventually I sensibly retired from the fray. So John and I were never either allies or enemies. I never objected to fighting, and have spent too many nights surrounded by it, but it has never given me that ‘buzz’ that it gives to others. Obviously, this may also be because I am not particularly good at it! Nobody truly enjoys losing at anything and we soon give up things at which we are losers. I’d like to think of myself as one of life’s great lovers, but there are too many women, including an ex-wife, who might also question that claim! Ah well, at least I can console myself with the knowledge that there is a fair number of them who can take part in the debate!
John was always a fighter and, in the past, a dangerous one. Dangerous not because he was very good at it, although he always was and still is, but dangerous because he is first to admit that as a younger man he applied his skills for all the wrong reasons. The reason that I now feel privileged to count myself amongst his friends, and to write about him, is that he is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. The place he has arrived at now is a true testimony to the power of positive thinking and self-belief. His story, which those who don’t know it will learn when they get to read his own autobiographical account, is one of complete transformation. As an example of self-improvement, it is up there with the very best.
Few of us have the opportunity to change direction so much. Maybe few of us need to. As it happens, I do believe that most of us don’t even realise that we need to, even though we probably do. In my case, I started out adult life with as many opportunities as most people need. My family was always comfortably off and I was fortunate to be provided with every educational opportunity I could need when I was young. But an easy start is not always a good start, because it puts you in the ‘comfort zone’ from day one. It makes you expect things to continue to be easy, to take things for granted. As a result, since reaching adulthood, I have not tried hard enough, because I was always conditioned not to.
When I met up with John, through his brother, my life was a shining example of under-achievement. I had wasted countless career opportunities, failed to deliver on my natural talent and potential, was not in a good place with my family and had a broken marriage behind me. I was also not taking care of myself physically or emotionally. But just talking to John, about his own experiences and struggle for change and, eventually, fulfillment and acceptance, was an inspiration. If he can get from where he was to where he is today, then any of us can. His journey is incomplete, I know there is much more to come, but he is a huge way down the road. And, more importantly, he knows where he is going.
My own physical objectives are not like John’s and probably not like most of yours. I am a 44-year old bloke who has, in the past, abused the body I was given. Not badly, but steadily over many years. Today, my primary objective is to be healthy and fit enough to stay that way and enjoy life. I do have an inkling for his Gentleman’s Boxing Classes, but mainly because it is a great way to train and I love the sport. The reality is that I am still a long way from being a ‘case study’ for The John Skillen Martial Arts and Fitness Centre, but at least I am ‘work in progress’. Believe me, in my case that is a great start. I still struggle to maintain commitment, and can still talk myself out of giving it enough. I still get angry with myself for ‘playing at it’. But I will get there, and the reason I will is the inspiration I draw from John, his fitness trainer Adam and the other members I know. And that is where they have got it so right. I don’t like the Centre being simply described as a ‘gym’. I have been a member of every ‘gym’ in town, and none of them has ever cut it. There is no passion, no sense of being part of something bigger and better. As a ‘member’ you are a nothing more than a ‘customer’, there for their benefit, not your own.
My conversations with John, and the other guys, are as much part of the process as the actual training. Each time I am there (which is still not often enough), I leave feeling better in every way. It is a feeling of being on that journey, determined to travel further and committed to setting and reaching goals, both physically and in life itself.
That is a great feeling, and one that I would urge everyone to enjoy as part of their lives. I may be ‘work in progress’, but I am on the journey now and, in every way, am becoming a better and stronger man for it. Andy Mitchell, who is mentioned elsewhere on the site, is a fantastic example of what can be achieved. He is more than 20 years younger than me, but I draw great inspiration from how far he has come in such a short time. I ran into him in town recently and he asked me when I was next going to the “ Palace of Positivity”. I’d never thought of him as a man of words, but that is a superb description. The whole point of it all is to change lives and, in that respect, all the similarities between us come together. I entitled this piece ‘Chalk & Cheese’ in reference to John and myself. But maybe the differences are not that great. We are two guys, of the same age, who have experienced some of life’s darker parts and chosen to respond by committing to change the direction in which we take the rest of our lives. That is a huge and powerful bond and, despite our very different beginnings, it now makes us essentially the same. Realising it has taken me many years but, as the late and extremely great country singing legend Johnny Cash once said, “if you keep looking to the Light, the Shadows are always behind you.”
Chalk and Cheese. Nick Hardy © 2005
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