THE END OF TOP GEAR

I see Google's launched a driverless car. While I worry about some of the things this absurdly-massive company gets up to, this latest development is actually alright with me. Mostly because I, ladies and gentlemen... am fed up with driving.

21-Year-Old-Me's mouth just dropped open.

Alright 21-Year-Old-Me, calm down. You can't fill up that mini-metro with 99p/litre fully-leaded petrol forever, you little donut.

The idea of hands-free driving has been around for a while. Imagine lanes of traffic, all moving at automated, regulated speed - there are no jams, no road-rage, no pile-ups - just happy passengers getting where their programmable pod is configured to take them: chatting, reading, surfing the net, and all without the stress of the road. I think it is the future.

21-Year-Old-Me is unimpressed, of course, along with all the other petrol heads. The truth is I'm just not in that zone any more. I've switched sides and joined the nerds. I think cars are useful tools for getting you and your stuff from here to there, for escaping and returning and collecting and depositing - but that is really all they are these days - tools - at least for us ordinary mortals.

Pipe down, Clarkson.

For a start, there's the finance. New cars are expensive to buy and difficult to maintain. Men in shiny suits no longer sell you throbbing beasts of chrome, rubber and engine oil; they sell you paperwork - finance deals that just happen to have a car thrown in to sweeten the deal. And guess what? That little sweetener happens to look like every other little sweetener driving out of the dealership.

Surely even the petrol heads have to admit that new cars are gradually morphing into each other? Surely, there will come a day when they all look the same, all of them identical pods: curved, sleek lines, shapely headlamps and touchscreen dashboards - hopefully without the old-fashioned idea of a steering wheel, and the bombastic lout telling you how to use it.

I said, pipe down.

Buying a second-hand car is a better idea, I think. I bought a car in High Wycombe back in 2008, after trying to navigate my way through the feelings of complete incompetence I get with an open bonnet. I know so little about cars that I feel like an easy target for people who know more. It felt like pure luck (and the handy advice of my friend, Martin, who came with me) that I eventually did choose a car that lasted for five years without too much trouble. It could just have easily been two cars welded together... or a well-painted rustbucket, powered by a hamster in a wheel.

I'm getting old. I've also found myself consistently less troubled by the boy racers who pull alongside me at the traffic lights, revving their engines. Their lego cars glisten with super-wax and the faint blue aura of neon headlamps. Usually, their black, tinted windows wobble with the sound of a thumping stereo and growling twin steel exhausts. The lights change, they slam down the accelerator and squeal off down the road like coloured lawnmowers in a game of MarioKart.

Why the rush? Why the stress? They'll be a thing of the past, come the Google revolution. Chill out lads, jump in, enjoy the scenery.

That's another reason why I don't enjoy driving as much these days - the scenery, the life, the rest of the world! When was the last time you heard the trees whispering and rustling in the warmth of a summer breeze? What about the smile of an old boy as he doffs his flat cap as you let him pass, or the young lady who smiles when she overhears you whistling? And then there's that glorious thinking time - the long, strolling minutes to think it all through without constantly worrying about speed cameras and flashing lights, pedestrians and parking enforcements?

Of course, the Google Car won't solve that problem. It might just take some of the zippety-zip out of life though - plus it'll spell the end of Top Gear... and that can't be a bad thing.

HOME ALONE

The Intrepids are away again. This time, they're exploring their way around the Dorset coast, catching steam trains, ferries and open-top buses, chatting about everything there is to chat about... and playing Boggle and Backgammon until the last drops of tea are emptied from the Thermos flask.

Meanwhile, I'm here, holding the fort.

Not that the fort needs a lot of holding. My main tasks this time are (1) to make sure the hanging baskets are sufficiently watered... erm, so far, the weather has done that one rather nicely for me, and (2) to put the dustbin out for the bin-men. I wheeled it out a few moments ago, trudging it up the drive in the rain, and angling it in the only place where it won't wind the neighbours up.

There was a phonecall earlier.

"Hello?" I said.
"Hello, is that Mr Stubbs?" The line had that giveaway inter-continental crackle.
"Nope. They're away I'm afraid,"
"Oh. Are you a family member?" she said, pronouncing every syllable carefully.
"Yep."
"Ah. I'm calling from [some company or other]. Would you mind taking just a moment of your time to answer just two short questions?"
"Um... two..."
"Yes, just two questions sir, then we can end the call. Is that alright?"
"OK, well that's one."
"I'm sorry sir, could you repeat that please?"
"Yes certainly. That was one question, plus you asked me whether I can repeat it, so that's two. Thanks very much for your time. Goodbye."

I think I should have been a little nicer. It's not her fault. I just don't like the idea that a company can employ a lady in Hyderabad for pocket money, train her how to talk to British people (How about The EastEnders last night?) and then force her to ring me up out of the blue to sell me something I don't want. It all seems like a terrible waste of everybody's time to me.

It's very quiet without The Intrepids. I'm noticing it more this time. I sat in the conservatory, laptop warming my knees and a cup of Russian Caravan steaming into the cool air. Rain was pattering into the glass windows, rhythmically. It was beautiful to listen to - just the symphony of different sounds and beats, running and gurgling and pounding onto the roof. It's rare in this house that we're not accompanied by the television, Classic FM or a conversation about who reset the sat-nav and parked their shoes in an unsanctioned location.

Not today. Just good old rain. Oh and a starling flew into the window.

I also made a curry. It was supposed to be a korma but I had an incident with the spice rack and covered the chicken in half a tub of paprika. It was alright though. I might write the recipe down.

This, I imagine, is what life would be like if I did live on my own - a mixed bag of beautiful solitude and quiet boredom. It won't be long either, before I slip into doing zany things like wearing the oven gloves as slippers or singing Christmas Carols into the tumble dryer. Like the time I scared myself in the bathroom mirror, making faces with a towel wrapped around my head, I can be my own worst enemy sometimes. If I do end up living on my own, I think I'll need some good strategies to keep myself normal.

The lady from India was the only person I spoke to today - thousands of miles away, and I was rude to her. I feel bad about that, though technically she did actually ask five questions.

Oh well. Back to work tomorrow - that'll be a barrel of laughs.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

When I got to work yesterday, reception smelled like the zoo - and I don't mean the gift shop. It was the pervading aroma of excretion and effluence, floating up through the drains like a noxious gas cloud.

It was everywhere: in the corridor, round the desks, through the meeting rooms and in the office, hanging in the air unpleasantly. I sat down and switched on my computer. "Morning all," I said to the room, while twitching my nose.

Then, in accordance with the rest of The Routine, I headed for the kitchen, swinging my empty mug on an index finger as I went.

I have never known anything like it. My eyes burned, I felt like retching and my head started spinning with dizzy hallucination. It was putrid - like rotting eggs, raw sewage mixed up with the stench of death in the pipes, swirling up through the plughole and choking every last molecule of oxygen from the room. I backed out, thinking of Wilfred Owen in Dulce Et Decorum Est, wondering if drawing a comparison would be disrespectful. Well, anyway, the smell was vile, I mean it was properly disgusting.

I got back to my desk.

"The sink in the main kitchen is currently out of order," said the first email I opened. You can say that again. Bang out of order.

NOTES FROM AN INSOMNIAC

Man alive, I'm tired. I've been awake since 1am, my mind racing with stuff I couldn't dispel any further than the darkness. I also discovered a stupidly addictive game, which grabbed me between 3am and 4am, just as I had given up trying to drop off.

The birds were chirping long before the sun came up. You know by then that it's already too late to sleep without feeling worse, so you keep yourself awake. All of this means of course, that today I feel like my body's going to implode at any minute and my eyes might pop out of their sockets and roll across the desk.

How I'm going to survive eight hours of this I do not know. I've got a pack of blueberries, some chocolate buttons and a can of sugar-free Red Bull. I might even be desperate enough for an espresso a bit later - though to be honest I'd rather drink the washing-up water.

"Do you think maybe you need medical advice," asked Steve in the kitchen, "You know, if this keeps happening?"

I have pondered it. There wasn't really any reason at all for being awake through the night, though it hasn't happened for a while. What brought it on? I'd had a glass of wine and a deep conversation, but that was hours beforehand! I heard some sad news too last night, but I don't think even that was enough to keep me up.

I have a few tactics for dealing with insomnia. I don't have the right kind of mind for counting sheep, so a while ago I started over-complicating it in my head. The idea is to focus on something which distracts you completely from the fact that you're awake and fed up, exhausting your brain and grinding your thinking engine into a system reboot.

So I started playing alphabet games: think of girls names with three letters, Bible characters, palindromes, one-word film titles, famous authors, things you'd find in the kitchen... beginning with each letter of the alphabet. I'd invariably get stuck around J or K and be asleep in no time.

Not this time.

Then there's milk. Milk seems to help. I got up, padded through the kitchen in my bare feet, swung open the fridge door and stood there illuminated in the glow like the dressing-gown-clad Emperor of Fridgeworld. No milk. It was in the freezer. Call me old-fashioned but I (and my imperial teeth) prefer my milk chilled and liquid.

Sometimes, the garden helps. I've sat out there by the washing line a few times, hoping that the cool breeze will regulate my temperature and send me scurrying back to the cosy warmth of the duvet. Somehow, last night, it just woke me up even further. The trees were whispering, the clouds were hurrying over, dark and orange and the air was peppered with tiny spots of rain. Invigorating, yes; soporific, not so much.

Another thing I've tried is listening to the Bible. The YouVersion audio Bible's great. A sort of polished Patrick-Stewart-Soundalike rumbles through the Old Testament, reeling off the genealogies and names as though it's inspection day on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. The only trouble is, the narrator can only get through ten chapters at a time - and last night, ten chapters just wasn't enough to push me the way of Noah. Plus my phone ran out of battery.

So here I am, struggling to remember that my name has two Ts in it and that next month is not April, while my colleague suspects I need medical help.

I think actually, I just need a good night's sleep.

THE HOME OF CHARACTERS

I've been thinking about the characters that keep returning in my life. That is an odd thing to say. I'll explain.

I was walking along the High Street when I noticed that one of the local pubs (The Falcon) has repainted its sign to advertise itself as "The Home of Characters". The Falcon is a small, old pub with a grotty pool table and oak beams stained with decades of cigarette smoke. While I was reflecting on 'The Home of Characters' not really being the main selling point of a pub, I couldn't help thinking about what it is that the 'falconers' are trying to say.

I think they're saying: 'look, it's a 'regulars' kind of place this, a close-knit community of the same old faces who've been coming to The Falcon for a sloppy ale, since we were boys with horses, so shut the saloon door on yer' cotton-pickin' way out and we can get back to gobbing into the spitoon and playin' old-time tunes on the battered ol 'piano in the corner.'

The Home of Characters. "All the world's a stage," Shakespeare once said, sagely. Not just The Falcon then; there are characters everywhere! And that's what got me thinking about the characters who keep recurring, turning up repeatedly at various points in my life.

I was going to describe them: the Pompous Know-It All, the Sweet-Natured Funny-Girl, the Catty Attention-Seeker, the Exaggerator, the Smooth-Talking-Manipulator-You-Can't-Help-But-Like, the Joke-Victim, Mr Impossibly Nice Chap and the Comic-Book Nerd... but I suddenly realised two things that made me stop in my tracks.

First of all (and I apologise for this) you might well be one of them. I don't want to upset you. Secondly, they are ALL ME anyway... alright, perhaps not the 'sweet-natured funny-girl' (quite) but there are elements of all of these characters that I see in myself... all the time!

Put me in a quiz and out come Comic-Book Nerd and Pompous Know-It-All. Stick me in a room of overconfident characters and I'll turn into the Joke-Victim, or Mr Impossibly-Nice-Chap if you're lucky. I've been the Exaggerator about a billion times and I'm constantly worrying about whether I've just manipulated words cleverly to get through a tricky situation...

So I started wondering whether they really are returning actors in the supporting cast of my life (there I am, Catty Attention-Seeker by the way - who else would think of themselves at centre-stage?)... or whether I'm just projecting people from the past, onto them. I think I get wound up by some of these characters because they look like me. Perhaps I was just recognising myself in the first place.

Well, this is all rather self-analytical today isn't it? I also feel like I've exposed a part of me that simply judges other people, slapping on labels like a lazy shelf-stacker with a pricing gun. We shouldn't expect labels - we have the power to be surprising, wonderful, amazing characters who change the world. Me too I suppose. I'm so much more than labels - even the ones I project onto myself. 

I feel like I need a sit down and maybe a quiet drink. I wonder what's going on at The Falcon?

A BIT OF A ROUND UP

I've not written for a few days. I had another project which involved a lot of writing and I annoyed myself. The last thing I wanted to do was more writing.

Not to say that nothing has happened in the last few days! Work of course, where no-one ever gets grumpy or political and the atmosphere is so good, people are upset when 5:30 rolls around... Then of course there was Eurovision, which I missed but this year, appears to have been won by a singing beard. Twitter went bonkers for a few hours on Saturday night.

Before that though, was the Fun Day. At 8:30am, I stood under the eaves of the community building and watched the rain sweeping across the empty field. An hour later, there were gazebos and marquees tumbling across the grass, being chased by angry stall-holders. It was, to be fair, wet and windy. It went alright though: giant games, laser clay pigeon shooting, BMX track, sumo-suits...

"Oh they've got the sumo suits out already," said one helper, casually at about 11am. She waved her arm across the field at someone in the distance, waddling uncomfortably by one of the tents. I looked closely and then remembered that the sumo suits hadn't even arrived on site yet. I didn't say anything.

As one deluge ended and people trudged muddy grass into the building, I gathered the choir together for some warmups, ready for their two performance songs. It was only as they were standing around in a circle, yawning their mouths open (for a warmup!) that I realised I probably should have taken them through to a different room. They did OK though in a rough-and-ready sort of way. We unpicked it at yesterday's choir team meeting.

"Yes, I'd really like to polish one or two aspects of the songs," I heard myself saying. Simon and Lindsay paused.

"Like what?" asked Simon.

"Well the tune," I said, carefully, "Yes, the tune... and also the words."

They laughed but it's not all that funny. We had a good meeting actually. It's about this time of year we start thinking about Christmas, depressingly. The three of us sat in The Volunteer humming through Ding Dong Merrily on High while the barmaid raised a threaded eyebrow behind the polished brass taps.

In other news, the poisonous parasite got let out and squished by its owner. He told us all the story in a blasé way, as though it was the oldest news since Noah Buys Rain-mac Shocker. Nothing defeats gossip like the owner of the story just getting it out into the open.

Perhaps, I reflected, that's what facebook is for. It seems ironic to me that it could be used both to deflate and inflate gossip at the same time. It's been sending me desperate emails with snippets of status updates and shared links... as though I'm mad for leaving and don't know what fun I'm missing. I rather like it that way though facebook, you old attention-seeking, advert-spinning gum-ball.

I think that just about brings us up to speed. It's a funny thing, writing: sometimes it just tumbles out of your head, through your fingers and onto the page as though you were some disconnected observer. Other days you debate every other word with yourself and give your little finger RSI through holding down the delete key. Maybe now I've finished this other little project I'll be able to write a bit more with the flow and the tumble, instead of the much more common growling, deleting and hot frustration. Grr.

THE POISONOUS PARASITE

Someone sent me an email today which may as well have been titled: "Gossip, gossip - juicy, juicy gossip."

As it was, I couldn't ignore it: the subject line carried the news - six words making up a brief headline which told me everything, whether I liked it or not.

What did I do to deserve this? I don't remember giving permission to be firebombed with this kind of toxic canister of news! It was though someone had popped over to my desk, sprayed me with poison gas and then skipped happily back to their own, thinking they'd done me a massive favour.

Now I know something I don't want to know and have no business knowing. When (inevitably) those six words become public knowledge, I will be faced with the choice of explaining how I already know or pretending that it's news to me, guv'nor.

Eyebrows up, mouth slightly open, eyes wider than dustbin lids. Whistle, then say 'Man alive' and shake your head thoughtfully.

Hopefully I won't have to do that.

Gossip undermines people. It destroys relationships and erodes trust; it forces you to lie about what you know, what you don't know, what you shouldn't know and who said what to whom. It creeps into your world like an invisible parasite, gnawing at you from the inside out, begging to be let out, to be shared in secret whispered conversations or private emails. It devours your concept of the truth, chomping away on your integrity. It convinces you that you're doing something good for the world, when in reality all it does is separate you out to propel itself further and wider. It makes me nauseous, even thinking about it.

What about you then, Stubbsy? you might wonder, Surely you've indulged in a bit of hot gossip in your time? Yep, yes I have - and it's delicious, that's the problem - like pure sugar tripping off the tongue, addictive and sweet with the flavour of power and self-righteousness. It never ends well though, does it?

That's why this latest piece of information is going nowhere further than me. I've got no time for parasites. Here's the other thing about lapping up gossip that's good to remember:

He who gossips to you also gossips about you.

BAKING: SCIENCE OR ART?

I did some baking tonight, making a cake for this Saturday's big fun day.

I quite enjoy baking, but somehow it floods me with little insecurities. When I was a scientist, I used to read and write reports which were so exactly precise, it was impossible not to reproduce the results if you followed them. Science has to be like that - everything must be completely reproducible and measurable and exact... of course. It was well-crafted and virtually foolproof technical writing. It's not hard to see how I found myself as a technical author, years later.

People who write recipes are not so specific it turns out. That, my friends, is where my little wobble of insecurity comes from, every time I flap open the cookbook.

There are things you must do that are never mentioned - add the milk, flour and eggs in little bursts, for example, rather than dumping them all in one after the other. Assumed! There are discrepancies between ovens, how hot and how long? - most can't even make up their mind which temperature scale to use! Then there are those vague terms that don't really mean anything...

"Is that light and fluffy?" I said to myself, watching gloopy cake mixture drip off the beater. The only things I could think of that were 'light and fluffy' were cumulus clouds and guinea pigs. I reasoned that neither of those things drip (normally*), so I cranked the mixer down and set it off again.

It's all a little bit of an inexact science, this malarkey. Then again, it's not really an art either. You can't make it up as you go along and claim artistic inspiration; there are rules, unspoken principles that make it what it is. And without them, it falls apart.

"Yes, this piece is groundbreaking in its daring audacity, darling. Just look at the way he's broken free of the stuffy formalisms of cuisine traditionel with that bold use of self-raising flour and Marmite."

"By george you're right! You can really see the marks of the blow-torch used to scorch the outside of this wonderful piece. Yet skewer it to its heart and I'll wager the artist expects us to find it soft, white and gloriously crumbly. Extraordinary tour-de-force, wouldn't you say?"

Perhaps some would say that there are rules to art too, but that's a discussion for another time. For now, baking sort of exists in its own curious world of recipes, where following instructions is not enough to compensate for your (my) obvious lack of natural talent for this sort of thing.

As it happened, my cake came out alright (lopsided) - and there's nothing weirder than ground almonds in it. I think they sell these things for something like 50p per slice, so maybe it will make some money for charity.

Probably about 50p.

*Don't think about this while baking.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 2

Clarityn says MEDIUM. My nostrils disagree. Ryegrass and Timothy are up to no good out there, filling the air with invisible clouds of irritant pollen...

Except weirdly, they're not, these mischeivous grasses. I'm alright outside! In fact, I'm not too bad in the kitchen, out in the corridor, walking through reception, and pretty much everywhere... other than my desk.

It may be time for my annual trip to Lloyds the Chemist. With weary abandon, they'll sell me two boxes of antihistamine tablets with long complicated names and I'll do my best not to take them unless I absolutely have to. See, the problem with hay-fever medication is that it plays havoc with my digestive system. I've no idea why.

I also have no idea why they always insist on giving you 90 tablets - one pack of 45 and another pack free. I don't need 90; If I add the sneezy days together from the last three years, I won't total 90! Do they keep? Can I save them for next year?

I feel a bit funny about taking year-old medication.

To be honest I think I'd be alright if they just switched off the air conditioning.

RELAXING WITH TWO DOGS AND A KITKAT

Another bank holiday. We found ourselves walking round Virginia Water with extended family and two excitable dogs.

There were a lot of other dogs about today. It's the kind of place where you can let your four-legged friends off the lead to race into the undergrowth, splash in the shallows and playfully sniff each other's rear ends. I guess if you haven't got the power of speech or opposable thumbs, a hello and a handshake are technically out of the question.

It's also the kind of place where you overhear other people's holiday plans - but only in snippets. One lady was bragging about a plush hotel in Dubrovnik that you can only get to by boat. Yawn. 

At one point, I felt a really weird sensation in my shoulders. We had all sat on a tiered bank overlooking the lake. Walty, my cousin, was playing fetch with the dogs by throwing sticks into the water. The dogs were loving it. I was watching the smooth surface being rippled by the wind and listening to the way sounds were carried on the breeze.

I felt a kind of loosening - the same feeling I get when I take a little wine, a sort of melting of the tightness in the neck and shoulder-blades. I think I might actually have been relaxing.

Relaxing always makes me think. I thought about my attitude yesterday. I should be more grateful. I get tense just thinking about the gap between my expectations and my realities. It's way too easy to miss where you are, when you're so focused on where you think you should be. That gap is where some of the most beautiful flowers grow. I think God might actually have designed it to be this way.

The wind whistled in my ears and made me shiver. A plastic tub of KitKats appeared from nowhere, so I took one, said thank you, and snapped it in two. I peeled off the metal paper and broke off the delicious chocolate between my teeth. Who needs to go to fancy hotels in Dubrovnik to relax? I thought. Have a break...

I smiled. Then one of the dogs bounded towards me up the bank, looked at me for a moment, one yard away, with a kind of irrepressible mischeif ... and shook himself dry.

TEA IN THE SHIRE

I sat in the garden, drinking tea on the bench. It was late last summer when I was there last, reading a book, On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, as I remember.

Today, rather than squinting in the fading light of a late August evening, I found myself squinting in the sunshine of a hot Spring day. The air was buzzing, the tea was warm and a digestive was perched happily on the arm of the bench.

I caught a view of myself, reflected in the conservatory windows. They weren't there last August of course; the conservatory was only built a few months ago. I stared into the glass.

I don't know whether it was a trick of the light. It may have been. The sun was pretty much overhead and was flooding the garden with warm bright sunlight. Of course, it might not have been an illusion.

Either way, my hair was glowing brilliant white.

That's depressing, I thought. I rolled my head around, just to check that it was really me. It was. Renaissance-Gandalf supping tea in the shire.

There was a time when my friends and I (on days like today) would think nothing of jumping in cars after church, stopping off at Tesco Express and then lying on the grass by the river until the sun went down. But those friends are long gone - married, busy, emigrated, backslidden, grown-up... sensible.

Sensible. That's the problem with being 30-something: people expect sensible. They expect grown-up, responsible husband, father, mother, wife, maturity and all that they think that means. I expected it too: I expected to be taking my own children to the river by now, to be buying ice-creams, spreading out picnic blankets and pretending to be silly (as only sensible people can) while the most beautiful woman in the world sighs with a mixture of exasperation and contentment. With every passing year, that little dream, buried in my heart since I was five, is... fading... just like the colour of my hair.

I crunched into my digestive biscuit, staring at my reflection. I wiped a little tear away from my cheek. Maybe it is just a trick of the light, I thought, hopefully.

'So do all who live to see such times,' replied Renaissance Gandalf.