TAPESTRIES & SHELL SUITS

Who was it that said that life was like a tapestry? Sometimes I feel like I can see the coloured threads interweaving and dancing through the cloth. There are memories sewn into the fabric of history, of my history, long and noble. Some are fading now, warped by time and forgetfulness, while others will be as bold and bright as the day they were woven.

I went to Glenda's party today. There were people there I haven't seen in a long time, people who reminded me of what it was like to be a teenager in the 1990s, people who've grown up, grown on and grown old.

"I didn't recognise you, Matt, with the gr... with the hair and the um... glasses and everything..." said someone, very carefully. I smiled as pleasantly as I could. Another lady too, seemed to think I should have been at University in the early 1980s... It would have been a prodigious achievement for a toddler.

"Aw... shell suits... global hypercolor t-shirts... remember them?" said someone else, caught in a nostalgia tractor-beam.

"I can't imagine Matt in a shell suit," said Gareth, smiling. I quickly pointed out that I never had one. I was busy wearing zany waistcoats, baseball caps and bermuda shorts at the time.

It occurred to me on the way home that our memories, the things we treasure from the tapestry, are so dependent on decisions from the past, that their very existence is extremely fragile. I mean that none of this would be happening at all if my Grandpa hadn't gone bankrupt in the 1950s and moved his family from Bristol to Reading so that he could sell Cuprinol up and down the A4. The sequence of events in his own tapestry was fragile enough to lead to that outcome, but having got there, his micro-decisions resulted in a world where I was at a 70th birthday party on a Saturday afternoon, reminiscing about shell suits.

And not just his decisions - all of our decisions. My Dad, moved from Chesire to Reading in the 1960s, following a job with a chemical company and finding my Mum in the process. I wouldn't even exist if he'd decided differently about that job - if he'd chosen a different coloured thread for the tapestry, you wouldn't be reading this. There'd be nothing to say and no-one to say it. My Mum too, didn't have to go for coffee with him, might not have suddenly thought he looked a bit like Cliff Richard and might never have liked him at all.

I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as I drove into the low sunlight on St Michaels Road. I know the lesson - it's to make the most of the decisions we have now, to hold everything lightly and treat life with the precious and noble respect it deserves. I want to make really good decisions, I want my tapestry to be something my future children are proud of as they see it intertwining mysteriously and beautifully with their own.

More than that though, I don't want to be afraid any more, of picking the wrong colour thread or holding back from weaving a scene that I know I want to happen. I want to be the kind of person who dances with the thread and the needle and loves every loop and enjoys every stitch. I want to be the kind of person who looks ahead at the blankness of the cloth with excitement, and behind at the delicate moments of the past with thankfulness and hope.

I want to live a great tapestry, whatever it looks like.