A MINI POWER CUT, A LUCKY DIP AND A BARN DANCE

We had a mini power cut the other day. It lasted about four seconds, which seems to have been just long enough to blow up our BT home hub.

As a result, I'm typing with one finger into my phone and hoping I'll have a modicum of 3G signal to hit 'post' in a meemo.

Meemo: a meeny-miny moment. I rather like that.

BT don't seem too bothered by our lack of Internets. When my Dad rang them, they lost connectivity on the call and the line went dead. Moments later they rang back asking him to tell them how well he thought the call had gone. He told them.

What else has been going on?

I went round to see Irene on Friday. She lost no time in telling me to get a move on and find a girlfriend.

"I don't know what we're going to do with you," she said as I slipped my shoes off at the door. I smiled sweetly, using up the smile I reserve for old people who can get away with saying outrageous things. Smiling was better on this occasion than reminding her that I was thankful it isn't up to her.

"We'll have to just do you a lucky dip," she said... outrageously.

"Make sure you pray before you stick your hand in the hat!" I replied. I thought about it as I ambled home. I probably should have been a bit more indignant at the implied suggestion that singleness is an inferior state and that it was my ineptitude that had led me to it.

I'd spend most of my life being indignant though if I started thinking like that. That particular implication is everywhere.

I played keys in a 3-piece folk band last night. It was at a barn dance in Farnham. I was observing the curious way a typical barn dance develops. Do people really enjoy them? I mean, I had a great time last night, but mostly because I was playing the music instead of taking part in this enforced ritual of group dancing. I'm not sure I really understand the point of it.

"Now then," said the caller at one point, mopping the sweat from his brow and breathing heavily into his head-strapped microphone, "There's a right way to do this, and a wrong way..." I wasn't convinced that argument stacked up.

Anyhow, it was a lot of fun watching kids in cowboy hats swinging with pensioners while middle-aged men got flustered with promenading and 'stripping the willow'. Plus, all I had to do all night was bash out some I,IV and V chords in time with the melodeon player. I jazzed up a few of the tunes out of sheer boredom and was met with whimsical confusion from my band mates.

I got back at about 1 in the morning and tried to check my emails. Nothing. I wondered whether those three students on the BT ad ever went through this inability to connect with the world outside their studio flat. I guessed not, and went to bed.

Hopefully I'll be back online in a meemo.

ROAD RAGE

I walk a lot. I walk to work, home for lunch, back to work and then home at 5:30 most days. I like the space, and as I mentioned a while ago, taking Shanks's Pony and putting your best foot forward is a whole lot more enjoyable than driving. I'm old fashioned in that way.

I often find myself walking quite slowly, especially when the weather is so glorious. I believe the world is there to be enjoyed. As it happens, my route home takes me past the train station, where hundreds of commuters gather in stuffy suits to be carried home in a hot metal box. It's quite amazing how quickly some people walk to get there in time - click-clacking heels, long strides, suitcases rolling and smart brogues pounding the pavement.

I've got to be honest, I do get a bit of road rage at being overtaken. I don't know what it is but sometimes I feel like the overtaker is tutting at me for not being tall enough to walk as fast as he or she obviously can, or perhaps they're just angry at me being scruffily in their way.

Overtakers usually have headphones in and they don't bother to look in your direction - from either side, there are no rules, they just appear in the corner of your eye and then waggle off down the road in front of you, leaving you in their dusty wake.

I feel obliged to confess that I often want to trip them up. Ooh go on then, one quick swipe of the umbrella and... isn't that terrible?? Thankfully, there's a gulf between thinking something and doing it. Not that the thinking of it is OK either of course; that ugly little thought has usually been taken captive by the time the overtaker is just a car-length away.

It happened today actually, at lunchtime (overtaking, not the umbrella thing). I have to cross over a very busy road at lunchtime and it involves waiting for a gap between fast moving vehicles approaching from several directions. If you time it right, you can judge an opportunity just before it arrives and slip through the busy traffic. Today, I got annoyed because a young man (smart trousers, sunglasses, white iPhone headphones) saw such a gap, crossed the road with effortless safety, and left me waiting for the next break. The old road-rage kicked in for a second or two. Then I realised that I was getting stroppy about someone else... achieving the crossing of a road without getting run over - you'll agree, it's a pathetic thing to get stroppy about.

Why are we like this? For me, bigger things are sometimes less of an issue! As the Smidgens of Doubt evaporate out and I'm left with the choice of finding-a-way-of-being-OK-with-it or letting-it-fester-like-an-open-wound I realise that I'm comparatively capable of choosing the best option. Big stuff's usually obvious. It's the small things that seem to trip me up - just like an ambling technical author with a shifty look in his eye and a long umbrella.

SHAKESPEARE AND STAR TREK VI

It's been a humid old day today. Nice then, that at the end of it I can lie here, listening to the rain.

I was going to write about Shakespeare tonight. The rain reminded me of something in one of the plays, but it turned out to be not that interesting. I'm not an aficionado of the bard's work - I learned some stuff for quizzes but I'm not one of those people who reel off Shakespearian quotes at apposite moments. To be honest, I find that kind of thing just a little bit over-the-top. You know what I mean, people who want you to know that they're more cultured and better read than you are and can't resist. I can't be doing with that. They can 'jog on', to use the vernacular.

Then I remembered that the other day, my Dad was watching Star Trek VI which I think is called The Undiscovered Country. Oh you know the one - they're all terribly old and tired and progressively racist towards the ill-mannered Klingons who don't know how to use cutlery; a weirdly vulcan Kim Catrall sets Kirk and Bones up and they're falsely imprisoned in a snow-cave with a shapeshifting pre-Halle-Berry-not-Halle-Berry who helps them plan an elaborate escape so they can prove their innocence, prevent an improbable assassination, save the day, kill off Christopher Plummer and all fly home for a cup of Ovaltine and a nice pair of regulation Starfleet slippers while peace reigns throughout the galaxy... again... yada yada yada...

Oh and that's a good Star Trek film, that! The odd-numbered ones - well don't go there.

Anyway, the point about bringing up Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is that the bit I caught my Dad watching seemed to feature an overabundance of pretentious Shakespeare quotes like you wouldn't believe, each slotted lazily into the dialogue. The Klingons were at it, to-be-ing-or-not-to-be-ing in an unnervingly guttural fashion; the crew of the Enterprise were responding with quotations of their own, and every other line (including, you'll notice, the TITLE OF THE FILM) was lifted from the bard. At one point even the Klingons claim that Shakespeare is best when heard in their language - a plot point of course, to get the crew (and us I suppose) riled up enough to think about murdering the scurvy lot of them. It's nonetheless preposterous.

Star Trek does this kind of thing a lot - Herman Melville, Gilbert and Sullivan and John Milton all get shoehorned into space to help the plot along with incredulous moments of clarity. How depressing is it though that five hundred years into the future, we seem to have conquered inter-stellar travel, transportation and wireless medical surgery; we've solved the thorny old problem of world peace and economic turmoil, and we've successfully policed our ideas across a quarter of the galaxy despite being at best average and meddlesome... but no-one, anywhere in the united federation of planets has found anything, or perhaps read or even written anything, anything at all, that's better to quote at dramatic moments ... than the ancient plays of William Shakespeare!

I'd like it if they started quoting some other forms of popular entertainment, perhaps that are as long ago to them as Shakespeare is to us, yet just as mysteriously venerated by that future society.

Scotty: Captain the engines just can' take any more, they're at maximum power.
Kirk: Mr Scott you've got to hold and give but do it at the right time; you can't be slow or fast but you must get to... the line.
Scotty (misty-eyed): Aye captain.
Kirk: Seems the engines could take it after all, Mr Scott.
Uhura: Captain, taking is too easy but that's the way it is.

Bones: Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor, not a pilot.
Spock: I believe that Doctor McCoy lacks a logical amount of self-belief, Captain. To fly the shuttle-craft efficiently, doctor, you must... believe that you can fly.
Kirk: Spock's right, Bones. Say it.
Bones: I'm not saying it just because some pointy-eared...
Kirk: Say it, Bones.
Bones: Alright, alright. I believe... I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky...
Kirk: Everybody...
All: I think about it every night and day...

I just think it's all a bit far-fetched, Star Trek.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 4

It ought to be over by now. I've been through the explosive sneeze phase - got fed up with that one very quickly. Then came the fire-throat, a few days of feeling like I'd swallowed some sandpaper. After that it was back to the classic nostril-block. The nostril-block feels like your nose is so heavy that it's about to crack away from the rest of your face like the Sphinx. Breathing is impossible and you can jolly well sniff goodbye to being able to smell anything - those nostrils are blocked up like Victorian railway tunnels.

I thought that would be it. Normally the nostril-block is the last phase in the cycle before the inevitable rain washes the last of the pollen out of the atmosphere and I can go back to enjoying the summer.

Not yet, sunshine, says the grass outside, waving and taunting me through the window. It doesn't look like rain either. The sky is a sports-day blue and the big yellow sun beams through it as though it's worked out what to do from children's drawings.

Today I'm suffering from that inescapably anti-social condition, the daytime terror of the Spontaneous Nose Run. I don't think there is anything more infuriating or irksome than the Spontaneous Nose Run. It happens at random, itching and dripping off the end of your nose before you can reach for the tissues. I can't stand it - it is actually disgusting. I've spent a large portion of the morning blowing my nose in the toilets and still, by the time I get back to my desk...

Don't worry. I have a stash of tissues.

I'm a little self-conscious about blowing my nose in public. Is that a bit weird? You know how there are things that you just don't do? How do you find out what they are? How do you discover whether something is socially acceptable? I once felt the shockwave around a friend's family dinner table when I used the butter knife to scoop out jam from the jam jar (never again, shudder). And what about the time someone found out that I keep ketchup in the cupboard but not eggs in the fridge? My goodness. Anyway, how do you know? I'd be a rubbish immigrant in another country.

For me, the nose-blow is not something I can do in public. I don't have a problem with other people trumpeting discreetly into a handkerchief - it's not that I find it uncouth or filthy; I just can't do it myself, without feeling properly awkward. Maybe that's a bit weird.

Still, sitting here in a pile of crumpled tissues, with red eyes, a pendulous nose and the tracks of involuntary tears smeared down my cheeks, combined with the haggard look of a man who was up all night, sneezing and twitching under an itchy duvet... I guess worrying about looking socially awkward is already a little pointless.

RIPPLES

See, this is where blogging gets difficult. I can't write about the thing that's bothering me tonight. It's a heavy weight, sinking with great and terrible gravity upon on my already overladen, shattering heart. But it's not part of my story. It's not for me to write about.

It must be frustrating for you too, right? You now want to know what it is and I guess I've piqued your interest with that cryptic opening paragraph. That's the problem though isn't it? A stone is dropped into the water, it sinks unseen and then later, the steadily expanding concentric ripples grow and gather together at the shore, their epicentre now curiously quiet. All we have are the ripples.

I mention all of this because of the effect this dreadful sinking stone has had on me today. I've felt very heavy - heavier than I've felt for at least five years - and I think it's affected my general mood, despite me trying not to let it. I made a decision tonight at church that was a bit unwise, possibly upsetting someone - mostly because my mind was elsewhere. I then went on to play like I was wearing gloves and singing through a sock. Thankfully, I don't get as bothered about that as I used to and I let it go in the end, focusing on the Reason we were there. It's funny how actually, worship always starts off and ends up being exactly that - an exercise in letting go. Later on, with the team flowing in a beautiful collaboration of voices and heart, I stepped back from the mic and I just had a moment with God, if you can process such a thing. It was of course, exactly what I needed - but that wasn't the reason I did it.

-

"Who hopes to get married one day?" asked the pastor, this morning. My right hand was suddenly made of lead. "I do," I whispered, but I couldn't respond manually. I've been thinking about that. My hand ought to have shot up. I've wanted to get married since I was very small - it's always been part of my future and it has always been my hope. Why couldn't I say so? What am I afraid of?

I stared at the drum kit, thinking it through. A lot of people would have you believe that because you're not part of something, you're not qualified to talk about it - and even if you do, your authority is fatally undermined by your lack of experience. Parenting is a classic example of this - the initiated know what it's all about and they've got the boil-washed t-shirts to prove it. But the rest of us, boy have we got a shock coming when the day comes. Curiously though, the esoteric argument actually makes less sense with parenting than it does with marriage - I mean, the childless people must have had at least some positive or negative experience of parenting at some point, whereas us singletons might well have no clue whatsoever about what it's like to be married, other than the clues we've spent years observing of course.

"It's hard," they say, sagely, nodding at the floor. "It's really hard. It ain't all it's cracked-up to be."

Got it. It's also great though, isn't it? I mean isn't it a wild adventure of soul-mates mapping out a shared path of jaw-dropping highs and breathtaking lows, learning the ropes of trust, taking in the best and worst view of your selves as seen by another person and then drawing out the very best in each other? Isn't it a thrill-ride of laughter, belting arguments, crashing disappointments, hilarity and passion? Isn't it just being such good friends with someone that you want them to be the best version of them that they can possibly be and you'll do anything to make it happen, safe in the knowledge that they feel exactly the same? Maybe I'm being naive. That's what I want it to be. That's what I need it to be.

What am I afraid of? Making a mess? Probably. Getting it wrong? Mhhm. I've seen it go wrong a few times now and I'd rather gouge out my eyes with a hot spoon than have it happen to me. Still, I don't think that was the reason. I think I needed that hope to be a much more private thing. It burns within me sometimes like a longing for a destiny that's already passed me by, an unquenchable sadness with the fragrance of a failure. I have a feeling admitting it in front of all those people might have caused me to explode with tears - and I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready for that stone to tumble carelessly into the pond.

Sometimes you have to think about the ripples.

THE SMIDGEN OF DOUBT

I like odd words. Smidgen's a favourite. Online etymology says it comes from Scottish dialect, which is no surprise as it's most commonly used to measure out a quantity of drink which is just enough to be considered both frugal and yet socially acceptable.

That's a compliment, Scottish friends, a compliment. I think you're a great, noble nation of warriors and poets and that we need you in this United Kingdom of ours, without a smidgen of doubt.

See what I did there?

I've been fascinated for a long time about the difference between 'not-knowing' something and knowing it 'for sure'. It's remarkable to me that the tiniest margin between those two things can have such an impact.

For example, I found out something today which greatly affects me. I was aware of it being a possibility, but something inside of me had kept alive the tiniest thought that it might not be so. It was the Smidgen of Doubt.

I reckon the cliche unit of the Smidgen of Doubt is exactly 0.01%. That's what people say, isn't it: "Oh, I'm 99.9% certain..." which is another way of saying that they're totally sure... but somehow, not totally sure. We English love this little paradox like a wendy-house of safety. The Smidgen of Doubt gives us the ability to cover our embarrassment if it should turn out that we were (heaven forbid) wrong, and it will happily evaporate with a squeaky pop if it turns out we weren't.*

On the flip-side then (and unfortunately for me today) the Smidgen of Doubt can also be 0.01% improbable hope, twinkling bravely against the 99.9% of certainly impending darkness. The difference is where that hope comes from.

I thought about that as Spain faced injury time against Chile, 2-0 down and heading out of the World Cup. I wondered whether Cesc Fabregas, looking gloomily on from the touch-line still considered it a 'matter of life and death', whether the overwhelming unlikelihood, the smidgen of hope that they would score twice in six minutes was all that was keeping his heart beating.

They didn't of course, and I guess he's still breathing, old Cesc. At least until his next visit to the Emirates.**

The difference, I suddenly notice I wrote a few moments ago, is where your hope comes from. It clicks for me - the Smidgen of Doubt is a bit of an illusion if your hope is in the wrong place, if you're looking at the whole scenario from the narrowest of perspectives. Or, as Psalm 121:1-2 puts it:

"I lift my eyes up to the mountains -
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth."

You might not believe that there is a 'maker of heaven and earth' but you've got to agree that it's sensible to get the biggest picture of what's going on. In that respect, the Bible has just beaten me (unsurprisingly) at top-trumps with wisdom. I love it when I spend ages thinking about something that's so neatly explained in such ancient words.

All this is a rather long-winded way of saying that it's just not over until it's over, till the plumpest of sopranos bursts into song and the final whistle echoes around the stadium. Nothing at all is certain until it is final and a door that's ajar is still, technically, open. Embrace the Smidgen of Doubt, let hope break out like a tiny spark in a sun-scorched forest.

And get out of the wendy-house.


* Curiously, if we were right after all, it means that we were wrong about being 99.9% right. Somehow though, that doesn't seem to matter.

** If you know why, you're probably not a Zapper.

EXTRA TIME: ZAPPERS v PUNDITS

I'm siding more with the Zappers today. Spotted this on the BBC website:

"Spain midfielder Cesc Fabregas says the World Champions' crucial Group B clash with Chile is "life or death" after their 5-1 humiliation at the hands of the Netherlands.

Meanwhile Real Madrid's Xabi Alonso says he expects Chile to play in a similar way to Louis Van Gaal's men and Spanish boss Vicente del Bosque's insists qualification for the knockout stages is still in their hands."

I don't want to labour the point, but it's not really a matter of life-or-death is it, Cesc? It's more a case of 'furthered-hope' (victory) or 'shocking-disappointment' (getting knocked out - knocked out!) and even then, I suspect you and your millionaire pals would find a way to get over it.

-

My pernickety attitude might be psychological: choir clashes with tomorrow's England match. I had a text from someone asking if we could move it so that they could watch the football. I had to say no. As it happens, most people couldn't care less about England v Uruguay anyway. Here are the responses to my carefully worded email:

"Hi I will be at choir. See you Thursday." - Annette, Alto.

"Think choir more important. That was booked first so will be there." - Tish, Alto.

"You're fine don't do football see you at Choir" - Dave, Bass.

Zappers - lovely, lovely Zappers.

(I might have to remind the Intrepids not to tell me the score when I get in.)

A GAME OF TWO HALVES

It's wall-to-wall football at the moment: office sweepstakes, chat in the kitchen about where Wayne Rooney should play, how good the Germans are and whether the team from Nigeria actually bored themselves playing out a soulless nil-nil against Iran.

I watched that match. I'm by no means a fan; I've spent a long time in the first half of my life, figuring out whether I actually like this sport at all! However, I do quite enjoy the general excitement of a world cup and I stuck with it in the (ultimately forlorn) hope that someone might pass the ball better than I could.

You tend to meet two types of people around this time of the year. Broadly speaking, they are: people who love football, understand the nuances and tensions, the drama, the hope, despair and sheer atmosphere of it, and then people who don't. This second group of people grab their remote-controls and zap the TV over to soap operas, history documentaries, the shopping channel, anything except the flipping football.

My Mum's one of them. She's a zapper. Every time Gary Lineker's cheeky face appears grinning in front of a distant Sugarloaf Mountain, she groans and stretches for the TV guide. It's not Gary Lineker's fault - it's just the way it is. Hercule Poirot wins the ratings war.

"We've got a month of this," says my Dad, every time, as if to stir the waters.

Meanwhile, the first group of people, the real Publican Pundits are in their element. They speak the language of cliché, copied verbatim from their commentating heroes, who sit in brightly lit TV studios teaching them how to appear knowledgeable without actually saying anything.

"At the end of the day," says one, "There's no-one in the box. It's a great ball in, but there's nobody on the end of it."

What?

"He's really giving it 110%" says another, nodding seriously, "Clumsy, clumsy  challenge in the area; I've seen them given, Clive, I've seen them given."

And people say they can't understand the language of Shakespeare...

Anyway, I'm being a little facetious. As I say, I quite like the excitement of a good old game of footy and I do kind of know what those things mean. You'll hear clichéd phrases from the zappers too, by the way...

"It's just twenty two men kicking a bag of air round a field."

"Football's a game for gentlemen played by hooligans, whereas rugby..."

Yawn.

I tell you what though, I don't think anyone really thinks football is just 'outdoor-air-bag-ball'. I have a theory. I think football is a distraction to stop us bashing bells out of people from the next town, the next village or the next country. Rather than gathering together as fathers and sons for battle, jumping on our horses and loading up our cannons, we focus our tribalism onto this preposterous game, climb into cars and coaches and watch other people do our fighting for us. Heroes clash with villains in studded boots with a leather ball.

In short, the football field is the result of a steadily evolving battlefield, where obscenely paid young gladiators do battle on our behalf while we cheer them on from the colosseums we've erected for the purpose. It is a place where victory matters and defeat really hurts.

Listen to the jargon. There's talk of one team 'slaughtering' another, of the 'group of death' and 'marked men'. There are 'killer' passes and 'attacking threats', not to mention 'relegation dogfights', scrappy battles, crushing defeats and devestating blows. It's a very thinly veiled metaphor.

And I say, that's a great thing. Football's a marvellous invention, for that reason. Far better to focus aggression in this bombastic way (as ridiculous as it is) than actual warfare. OK, sometimes the aggression does bubble over into physical violence. Alright, occasionally, people do take it too far and that is inexcusable and preposterous.

However, in this second period of my life, on the whole (when I'm really beyond the point where being good at playing soccer actually matters) I think distracting ourselves from actual warfare by projecting ourselves onto a team of our local heroes is alright.

Maybe it really is a game of two halves.

A MISSED OPPORTUNITY

I looked at the Moon, bulging white in the dusty blue sky. I was standing in almost exactly the same spot as the night I howled at it after choir practice that time. There was to be no frustrated howling tonight, just a look of thoughtful disappointment.

I'm wrestling with a missed opportunity. I wonder sometimes whether I'm caught between two worlds - one, where you have to pursue everything you want with everything you've got. It's Nick's world, that: work hard, struggle through until you've got to where you're going, learn from your mistakes, never give up and never ever let anyone give you any nonsense about it... and then the other, where if you're patient, kind, calm and consistent, if you're faithful, if you work hard with the little things that you have and you grow a heart of good character, those things that you desire will be given to you at a time when you're ready for them.

If I'm honest, I've grown up in that second world and it shows. I'm scared of jumping outside my comfort zone, I'm petrified of getting it wrong, getting into trouble, behaving inappropriately and generally failing. To someone from Planet Go-getter, where the young Richard Bransons hang out, I'm an unacceptable failure. Better to try and fail, they chant, chinking each other's champagne flutes, than never to try at all.

What they don't know is that I did try. With wild-eyed abandon in the year 2009, I jumped into a life-on-the-edge that I thought would be the single greatest adventure of my life. But I messed it up. Injured, embarrassed and hating myself, I retreated back to Niceland where I nursed my wounds. Oh it's great for that; in Niceland, everyone thinks you're great. They remind you as they fly past you on the way to greater things.

And so along comes an opportunity, a beautiful, scary opportunity, and I'm too afraid to do anything about it. Then, suddenly without warning, that door clicks shut and you know that you'll never know. You'll never know.

"You're looking thoughtful," said someone, emerging into the car park. I hadn't seen them there in the twilight.

"Yep, just er, just looking at the Moon," I smiled. I pushed the keyboard into the boot and slammed it shut. Then I said my goodbyes, got into the car and drove home to the safety of my parents' retirement bungalow, with only my thoughts for company.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 3

Well, so much for Radio Silence then. I ended it today, though I'm still not sure I've reached any brilliant decisions. My mind does feel a little clearer though. I walked home, resolutely determined not to take any nonsense from people who think I'm a soft touch, and absolutely focused on finding an answer to Nick's question about what it is that I want to do.

I wish my nose was a little clearer. This is the time when my particular strain of hay fever is at its allergenic worst. I survived unscathed through the end of April and all of May. Just when I was thinking the spoonfuls of honey and countless pots of matcha tea might have paid off, along came 'flaming June' with its sneezy wheezy pollen. I should have known. It's this time every year.

My throat is on fire, my head's spinning and my eyes are watery and scratchy. About once every twenty minutes, my nose becomes totally blocked and I find myself panting like a dehydrated dog - it's not a pleasant sight.

Weirdly, I'm fine when I'm asleep. This morning as my eyes popped open and I accidentally pushed my phone off the bed trying to switch it off, I was breathing normally and I could actually see. By the time I'd scrabbled down the side, retrieved the bleeping thing with the tips of my fingers and swiped it off, I was twitching and streaming and greeting the new world with a volley of head-shaking sneezes that must have woken the neighbours.

The bathroom mirror told a story too. Hair wild and greying, sticking up on one side as though I'd spent the night plugged into the mains. My face was red and sore, lit by a glowing beacon where my nose had been the night before, and attractively streaked with the tracks of tears and, yes, inevitable snot. I looked like Dr Frankenstein's first attempt. "What a catch," I said to my reflection, winking.

Another odd thing about it is that it seems to be much worse indoors. Many times now, I've blamed the air conditioning for sucking in grass seeds and blowing them all at my desk. Today however, the symptoms were worse during the period of time the air conditioning was broken. Something else must be going on. For an unpleasant hour or two this afternoon, I sat there sweltering, melting and exploding into rolls of tissue and toilet paper. By the time the air-con kicked in and I went home, I was much less affected.

Thankfully, this horrid season doesn't last long. I'll be alright in a few weeks - able to sing properly, speak without sounding like I'm fed up all the time, and free to enjoy the sunshine like normal people.

Not looking like I've been beaten up by flowers will also be a massive bonus.

EVERYTHING I'M NOT

He sat there, the epitome of cool, of suave, of everything I'm not: young, tall, handsome and ambitious, well-built and disarmingly confident. I slumped in my chair, sinking with inadequacy. Perfectly composed, eloquently sophisticated, he smiled pleasantly across the table.

"Well, what do you want to do?" he said, lifting a fork of chicken carefully towards his mouth. I had made the mistake of telling him that I was 'bored' and 'a bit fed up'. It suddenly felt like I'd asked for financial advice from a multi-millionaire. We were not equals and both of us knew it. There was to be no circling, no tempo-play or game-theory-analysis while we figured each other out. The unspoken rules were already settled. "What's your goal, what's your dream?" he asked, his blue eyes sparkling.

"I don't know," I sighed.

It's true too - I don't know how to answer that question any more. It fills me with a kind of dread and sorrow I can't explain. Nick was trying to help me aim for something - but I was deeply aware of the past, the dreams that had crumbled in my hands and my confusion about which of them to let go of and which to hold on to. I was suddenly plagued with all kinds of insecurity and doubts I couldn't cope with.

I diverted the conversation.

"Well, what's your goal?" I asked.

He told me.

I didn't feel much better. His goal is to retire by the time he's 40 with multiple properties, businesses and organisations he's started, move to a cabin in the woods and live an outdoors life, travelling, seeing the world and living every day as an adventure. Perhaps put another way, he doesn't want to grind his years out, working for someone else just like everybody else does. He wants freedom.

I think he'll do it as well. He's not a starry-eyed teenager with a head full of ideas and a future full of difficult lessons. He's in his late twenties, he's driven, confident and unassailably charming. He knows exactly where he wants to be and he knows precisely how to get there.

My nose was itching with hay fever and my eyes were tired. I felt old, lonely and impossibly lost. Why couldn't I be like that? Why couldn't I be so single-minded and ambitious, so composed and so focused? Why couldn't I have a dream to aim for? I'm not saying that I want to be rich - neither was Nick actually, although he undoubtedly is already. He knows, like I do, that money is a tool, not the goal, and that there's so much more to life than chasing after it.

The difference is that he did something about it. Oh, and that he happens to be everything I'm not.

RADIO SILENCE

As I mentioned on Twitter a couple of days ago, I'm switching off for a while. I've done this before, at a time when I didn't like myself very much and couldn't face people - especially through the happyfurious world of social media.

I was discussing this tendency the other day in Q and Sarah's garden. And by discussing, I of course mean, ranting passionately about why I gave up facebook six months ago.

"I just got fed up of not having anything to find out first hand," I said in the gathering twilight, "And then there's the terrible sidebar of shame, constantly asking me if I'm looking for single girls in my area..."

"Really?" asked Sarah, incredulously.

"Yes," I said, "Really. And there are conversations, arguments, discussions, pictures - all kinds of things I just don't want to see but somehow pop unsolicited into my newsfeed, plus it eats time, turns us into gossips, redefines our understanding of friends, listens in on our conversations and sells our personal data."

Had there been a pulpit (it would have been a weird garden feature, granted) I would probably have been thumping it like an old-school preacher.

Orange sparks flew up from the chiminea and disappeared into the darkness, lost in the gentle folds of wood-smoke. I realised that my friends were looking at me intently, but I could no longer make out their faces. I'm still not wholly certain I didn't upset them.

That's the happyfurious world of facebook for you - you can never be sure. That aside though, I'm nowhere near as depressed as I was the last time I engaged in Radio Silence. This feels very different, and is for different reasons.

Radio Silence is a command given by the military to cease all transmissions for safety or security. I just looked it up. Apparently, a control station (zero) gives the order:

"Hello all stations, this is 0. Impose radio silence. Over."

I just need a little time to clear my fuzzy thinking - and this feels like an important moment, somehow, to do just that. For the last three weeks, I've been feeling really weird, different perhaps, about a whole load of things. I need to know whether this is a phase or a sea-change, but there's too much white noise out there - the chatter of everybody else trying to sort out their own thoughts. In spiritual lingo, I need to hear the whisper of heaven and listen to the response of my heart. I need the silence.

Yesterday, my niece was doing percentages homework. I was sitting next to her while she struggled with 35% of 80. I was mentally working out 70% so that I could halve it; she was working out 10% (out loud) so that she could multiply it by three and then add 5% on the top. Both of us would have got there quicker I think, without the signal interference of each other.

That's how I feel most of the time. How long will I be out for? A few days at least, possibly longer. I just need a little mountain air, some freedom and some quiet time to pray and to process. I mentioned that I'm an INFP, didnt' I? :)

So, Radio Silence it is. All stations.

FOUR THINGS THAT MAKE A STRANGE WEEK

It has been bizarre so far, this week: one very odd quiz, one incredible funeral, a thrilling trip into the introspective world of Myers-Briggs, and one frustrating conversation with someone who doesn't listen. I'm patient with a lot of things, but if you want to see a long fuse burn quickly, talk over the top of me and ignore everything you think I'm saying to you. That'll do it.

"The theme of this quiz is the World Cup," said the question master. The room sighed with disappointment. My team slumped their shoulders and looked down at the table.

"It might not be that bad," I said. I stopped short of telling them that (by a streak of magnificent fortune) I had actually been revising world cup statistics - I thought that might come across as a little pretentious. As it was, we needn't have worried - there was very little sports stuff in it in the end. Plus, it looks like we might have won it anyway, without or without me playing the role of Statto.

It's not wrong to describe the funeral as incredible. It was so life-affirmingly good it almost doesn't deserve to be called a funeral at all - much more of a celebration of the way one beautiful life touched so many others. Tony's family stood side-by-side, stretching out across the church through four generations of creativity, spirituality, godliness, passion and love. I was astounded, challenged, moved and drawn - I hope I can leave that kind of legacy when I leave these shores, I thought to myself.

I stared at my shiny black shoes. I only seem to wear them for matches and dispatches. I don't know how much legacy you can leave without either of those things. One day, I whispered.

I'm always staring at shoes. Way back in the old days, when prayer meetings were circular and quiet, I used to scan round the room and try to deduce information from people's footwear - like a member of Freeman Hardy & Sherlock. I know now that it's probably because I'm an INFP. According to the world of Myers-Briggs, I fit the profile of an introvert intuitive with a feeling rather than thinking brain and a sense of warm-hearted adventure rather than cool-headed preplanning.

When most of the other engineers ended up at the other end of the room, I started to wonder whether it was OK to be a bit different. I figured it was. It's the differences that make life so interesting.

And that brings me to the awkwardness of the person who wasn't listening. I was tempted to describe the whole conversation, but it would break a blogging rule and I don't want to fall into the trap of sniping them from long-distance. In the end, it was about words: I couldn't get this person to understand that we were using the same word very differently and there was nothing I could do to explain it.

It happens sometimes with words like 'option'. I might think that a set of options includes everything that is physically possible, whereas you could describe 'options' as only the choices you consider to be viable. You see the problem? As soon as you rule something that's possible out, it ceases to be an option for you, but it's very much still an option for me.

I let it go in the end. Sometimes it's better to lose an argument. I was a bit annoyed though.

The strangeness doesn't stop here, on a stuffy Wednesday night! Oh no. It's the Calcot Brazilliant Night tomorrow! Then on Friday, I've got to go to an organised-fun work do, followed by a less-organised-fun leaving do. From filling out the Card of Many Signatures to the delicate art of navigating-through-a-crowded-pub-to-say-something-touching-and-appropriate-to-a-person-you'll-never-see-again-but-who-is-also-rather-inconveniently-hammered.. the process of surviving a leaving do is tricky.

A strange week, indeed.

HYPHEN COMMA FORWARD SLASH

I saw an article today about poetry. Apparently, some Cambridge University students were presented with a poem which didn't have any words in it, just punctuation. I think they were asked to write about it (presumably to go into great depths about the way punctuation implies concepts and emotions through learned interpretations of archaic symbols) or write their own wordless poems, based on the text.

That's all very interesting, I thought. As you know, I didn't go to Cambridge (not to study, anyway), but that's not enough to stop me having a little go myself. I've cheated a little (I used a number) but this is a poem, nonetheless, which uses entirely no words.

I think I shall call it: Hyphen Comma Forward Slash.

- ,  /

- , /

; - #

( &

: - >

? + *

% + < 6

. \ - #

- ,  /