To start with I have absolutely no idea where I am going with this article other than a broad idea of what I want to achieve. Let me contextualise my starting point. For years now I have been passing a parked car in our neighbourhood and as Older_Rah has regularly pointed out - to his bemusement - it is a Skoda with Audi wheels (or at least the hub caps are).

It has always struck me that somehow the car (or more pertinently the driver) somehow wants the car to be something more than it is. I will explain more below after I have explained my second prompt. The first article i went to after loggin on this morning was written by @KMatt and the first thing, other that the title that caught my eye was this, to quote: -

Arithmetic (deal with reality, not dreams)

Seemed to a sign!

And so, if it is written in the stars I have to persist, so I need to go back to the Skoda to start with. While it was the best of the Communist Era cars produced in the 1980s (Jeremy Clarkson famously described the Polish Polonez Caro as the worst car he's ever driven, then there was the Trabant and Dacia built on the shell of a Renault 12 among others - maybe only the Wartburg was a match) Skoda were very much a standing joke in Britain. In fact as a rough translation from the Polish (fellow Slavic language) Skoda (but pronounce it Shkoda) can mean harm or shame!

A few "Skoda" jokes:

• Why does a Skoda have a rear window heater - to keep your hands warm when pushing it after it breaks down.
• What do you call a Skoda convertable - a skip (large industrial rubbish bin)
• What do you call a Skoda limousine - a Lada

etc, etc, etc

So all in all they still have a bit of a stigma attached even though they are essentially Volkswagons now with a cheaper branding - so German engineering.

So the Skoda partially disguised as an Audi (quality German brand) made me reflect on human behaviour. The fact is that however much we dress things up we are still what we are. I can pull on an England football shirt, but I am not an England player, nor will I ever be. Back in the 1970s we used to put what we called "go faster stripes" on cars to make them look more sporty - but did it improve performance, absolutely not. Probably it morphed in the 80s to putting rear spoilers on a lot of production cars and selling them accordingly. If there was additional performance from a Fiesta Xr2, it was more likely to do with the engine than the almost totally irrelevant spoiler on the back of a hatchback.

Coming back to human behaviour, we can aspire for a lot, but we also have to accept reality. I wanted to play guitar and form a heavy metal band but due to the strange duality in how my fingers are wired (if I clench and unclench one hand the other one does it too) this is impossible. So at times we have to accept what is dream and fantasy and what is achievable.

Professionally, I am known for my empathetic, knowledgeable and rapport based communicative approach - but here is a little secret - I can't tell jokes despite what you read above. So guess what I don't tell jokes.

Likewise with crypto the days of the $0.01 BitCoin price in 2010 that has made me a multi-billionnaire have long since past. If you can make a reasonable return great, but stay realistic!

I guess what I am getting at is that there is nothing wrong with ambition and aspiration, but it has to remain realistic and grounded, otherwise we are just living in dreamland - also known in English as "Crown Cuckoo Land!"

Aspire to improve what you can do and don't focus on what you can't do because at most you will uplift yourself from being mediocre to average.  

Ok, so I think I have pretty much got across what I wanted to say today.

As always stay safe and well my friends.