CHANGING SCENERY

I watched the fields flicker in the evening sunlight. Telegraph poles, electricity sub-stations, cottages and cows sped by the window, constantly changing as Hertfordshire gave way to North London. The fluffy pink clouds hung motionless in the bright blue sky above the spinning scenery.

The things farthest away ought to change the least. The sky, the horizon, the dark tree line on the hill, all of these things ought to move slowly past the window. Then, the closer things like the green fields and long hedgerows, the allotments and the lines of poplars, they go by much faster. The track, the sleepers and the gravel are all a motion-blur of grit and streaks of metal railway. That's how it's supposed to be.

Life doesn't do that though, as you travel through it. The things closest to you seem to change the slowest and the people far away don't even realise the breathtaking speed at which their lives are changing. It seems to be the other way around.

It seems. That's the point isn't it? It's perception of change. We're all changing, all the time. I don't think how I used to, you don't look like you did and everything is different. The scenery has changed and you and I, we're the last to notice.

I don't quite know what brought all that on. My greying reflection in the train window perhaps. It suddenly occurred to me that everything is changing all the time and it's just a matter of figuring out what to hold on to, and what to let go of. It isn't negative, or positive, it's whatever you make of it.

The sun sank behind the clouds as Alexandra Palace came into view. Lights twinkled on and the train rocketed through Finsbury Park Station, past the Emirates and into King's Cross.

The real trick must be learning to embrace change, to see the positives in it and to trust that we have what it takes to be better. The train heads in one direction, after all.

I got home, swung open the door and collected the mail. On went the kettle, out came the biscuits and up went the travelling feet.

It's been a really good weekend but I was happy to be home, and to find it exactly as I'd left it.

TOP FORM

"You're on top form tonight," said Anita.

I'd better write that down, I thought, so I can blog about it. She was smiling at me, even though I'd just got chocolate on Tim and Jane's sofa.

What is this thing, Top Form? Is that when you're at your wittiest, most confident best? If you aimed to be like that all the time would you then have normalised Top Form so that there was no such thing? Can Top Form be maintained without spending the rest of your time on Average or even Bottom Form?

I should backtrack a bit. I'm still in Ely, well, Littleport, staying with my friends Tim and Jane. Anita, who's been my friend for (we calculated) 15 years, came for dinner last night with her partner, John. While John and Tim played guitars, Anita told me in her own sparkling way that I was on Top Form.

I'm not going to go on about it. Actually, I think the topformity might have been down to the wine.

It was a super day yesterday. Tim and I got up early and went to the farmers' market. The fishmonger and the vegetable guy reminded me that I was no longer in the South East of England, by being extremely friendly, competent and charming behind their market stalls. Then Tim took me to a bookshop where they serve free coffee. We wandered up the wooden staircase between corridors which were packed floor to ceiling with books. It's not often I've been sad to leave a shop.

After that, we listened to music and talked about mixing audio. Tim has arranged one of my songs with crazy timing and unexpected key changes.

Top Form eh? I just think that's what happens when I finally let go of everything and relax.

Quite probably the wine then.

TIRED OF LONDON

"When a man grows tired of London, he grows tired of life," said someone famous once. My guess is that it was someone who lived in a time before the London Underground. I grew tired of life, the Tube and everything, somewhere between Paddington and Edgware Road tonight, when my nose was squished into a lady's armpit.

As I've said many times before, London is for fun trips to the theatre, the dinosaurs or an open bus tour. It's not for the daily grind and it's not for work. At least not for me. I'd last a week.

What it is for on Friday nights like this, is passing through. I was on my way to King's Cross to catch a train to Ely where I'm staying with my friends for the weekend. To get there I had to cram myself into a Circle Line tube train with a thousand commuters and tourists.

I got to King's Cross and found myself staring up at the massive display boards along with everybody else. If you were heading north out of the capital tonight, you'd have been there yourself, gawping up at the digital orange letters.

I wondered what it looked like from up there; hundreds of people standing still between the islands of their suitcases and briefcases, waiting for a platform number. It must look a bit odd from above.

My platform flashed up and half the crowd went crazy. Few people have perfected the art of walking as fast as possible without it being classified as running. What's more, no other nation in the world has the ability to queue this aggressively. A crowd of people waiting for people to get off the train, yet get on it as quickly as possible, captures this quaint paradox of ours.

"Stop pushing, please stop pushing!" protested a GWR employee in a high-vis jacket, "The train in't gunna leave wivout you!"

Clickety clack went the heels while suitcases rolled over concrete and brogues tapped smartly together.

I made it to Ely then. Well, Littleport actually, just outside the great city. I texted someone to tell them where I was this weekend and I accidentally stated that I was 'staying with my fiends'. They have looked after me very well so far, so no further fiendishness is forecast.

I'm actually hoping for a really lovely, relaxing time away. This week has felt very difficult and I am immensely tired of going round the same loops in my brain.

So far in Littleport, there's been good food, a glass of wine and a roaring fire. After being squashed through London, I can't really argue with that as solution.

GULP

I just read an article about mistakes that drivers make. I secretly hoped that it would be things I don't do, like cutting people up, squishing up to the car in front, or signalling at the last possible moment.

It turned out to be a list of things I do actually do, and hadn't realised. I scrolled through, feeling guilty at sneaking a look at my phone at the traffic lights, leaving home at the last minute, and not checking my mirrors before flicking on the indicator.

The last one in the list though, stopped me in my tracks. Number ten was 'Not drinking enough water'.

My Mum's always saying I don't drink enough water. I'd always thought it was to do with kidneys, but this article was suggesting something much more impacting. Dehydration, it said, even before you realise you're thirsty can reduce concentration, increase levels of anxiety and cause fatigue.

You know how you know something, but you sort of don't think about it, and then you realise that you'd forgotten it? That's how I felt. One half of my brain screamed: Really? Is that true? and the other half calmly nodded and said Mmhm.

So I looked it up. I searched for some scientific papers on the connection between dehydration and physical performance.

I found out some very interesting things. Did you know, for example, that the taste buds send messages to the brain about the salt content of the liquid in your mouth, long before it hits the bloodstream? The brain then sends advance warning to the cells (which flagged up thirstiness in the first place) and the neurons respond as if the water had already arrived!

Anyway, here's what one paper said about water intake...

"Water, or its lack (dehydration), can influence cognition. Mild levels of dehydration can produce disruptions in mood and cognitive functioning. This may be of special concern in the very young, very old, those in hot climates, and those engaging in vigorous exercise. Mild dehydration produces alterations in a number of important aspects of cognitive function such as concentration, alertness and short-term memory... 

As with physical functioning, mild to moderate levels of dehydration can impair performance on tasks such as short-term memory, perceptual discrimination, arithmetic ability, visuomotor tracking, and psychomotor skills."

- Water, Hydration and Health, Popkin, D'Anci and Rosenburg, Nutrition Review, Aug 2010.

There were more warnings too. Young women are the most susceptible, dehydration can affect you before you realise you're thirsty and even a 1.5% loss of water can cause the symptoms of dehydration, leading to tension, anxiety, perhaps even mood swings.

Gulp.

All this had me heading for the kitchen and looking for a glass. Health authorities suggest two litres (half a gallon) of water every day, in addition to the water taken in from food and other liquids. That's eight tumblers of water. I don't get anywhere near that.

I started to wonder whether a small experiment might be in order - an empirical one of course, I don't live and work in a controlled environment. What is there to lose? Concentration and short-term memory apparently. I reckon it's worth a try. So for the next few weeks, I'm going to try to drink two litres of water every day and see what happens.

Hopefully, I'll remember to do it and not get depressed half-way through.

Gulp, indeed.

THE SECOND DATE

It's a rest night. That means I shouldn't be doing anything. So I'm not. I'm not answering any emails or wandering aimlessly around Dunelm Mill looking for bath mats or curtain hooks.

I got to the end of work today, scratching my head about a subversion failure. None of my commits were making their way into the repository and the whole thing was winding me up, making me feel unnecessarily tight in the chest. I hate that feeling, so I decided there and then that there was no way I was going home to an empty house to worry about a whole bunch of other stuff.

That's how I've ended up in the pub, listening to the conversations of people on their second date. People are so interesting. This guy seems overly keen to show off, but I'm not sure he really needs to. He's already painted himself as a sort of cat-loving, climbing enthusiast. She seems impressed but her laugh is a bit of a giveaway.

Speaking of climbing enthusiasts, my colleague Alex told me today that he'd effectively saved a man's life on the top of a Cumbrian fell. They were climbing last weekend when Alex's friend decided he'd get on better on his backside. After a while, he couldn't stand up and just collapsed. Alex quickly worked out that he had hypothermia and did his best to keep him warm while he searched for signal to phone mountain rescue. Apparently, his body temperature had fallen by eleven degrees.

"Are you a Nando's girl?" said the guy just now, tucking in to some sweet potato fries.

"Um... No, not really," said she. It turns out that Nando's isn't quite spicy enough for her. I think she might be pulling his leg and he hasn't quite realised. They're now talking about curries - he likes a sag aloo and she likes a vindaloo with extra chilis. He seems mystified, she's smiling as though she's amused by something she's just thought of. I like this girl.

Anyway, I shouldn't be eavesdropping.

So my friend Alex saved a man's life on a mountain! How cool is that? I almost suggested I should nominate him for Hero of the Month, but I didn't think he'd like that very much. Had he not had signal, he would probably have had to run down the mountain and then race back up it with the mountain rescue guys. It could have taken three hours. His friend would not have survived.

I'm not sure I'm particularly relaxed on my rest night. I've got to find ways to chill out, without being reminded how the early stages of dating work. These two are really only trying to figure each other out - that's OK isn't it? They're discussing their weirdest band t-shirts now - him: McFly, her: Britney. What does it matter? Both of them will be writing the story of the evening into their subconscious, figuring out what they think of the other so that they can get home and remember it all, tell their friends about it and decide whether or not there will be a third.

Rest nights highlight the great perplexity for me. I run the risk of either being bored or actually doing something to make it no longer a rest night. Maybe next time I should just lie down in a darkened room.

    

THE GOOD DUDE

I've just been called a 'good dude' (in a text message) and I made a face as though I didn't quite understand.

I've never heard those two words together before. I've heard people say, "Dude!" and "He's a dude!" attributing some element of coolness to the person in question. I've even heard my Mum say I was a 'cool dude' (shudder) but never in all my nerdy days have I ever heard of anyone being a 'good dude'.

That implies that there can be bad dudes, that dudeness can somehow be rated, and isn't (as I had assumed) a kind of on-off switch. Maybe the days when you could be either a dude or not a dude are over. It's all about how dudey you are.

Slow news day? I should coco. The most exciting thing that's happened so far was a gigantic rainbow over the motorway behind the trees. It was bold and beautiful in all its yellowy-green-and-violet glory.*

Apparently a 'dude' was originally just a very well-dressed man - perhaps someone who pushed the boundaries of fashion and made the unusual the desirable. These culture-changing trendsetters are few and far between though, and I certainly think that that definition counts me out. I had a quick look round the office. No-one else is wearing an outdoor scarf over a shirt and tanktop combination it seems. Maybe I'm not that great a dude.

Of course, if there is a spectrum of dudes, it does open up the possibility of being a better dude.

Who wouldn't want to be a better dude? And I'm not talking about being fashionable, I mean just cooler in general. Or maybe just determined not to be a bad dude. If I'm going to take on dudeship, I'm taking it on well, with a view to self-improvement! I don't just want to be a good dude, I want to be a better one, racing up the steps on the dude scale towards 'incredible dude' and maybe eventually the dizzy heights of 'awesome dude'.

You know what though? Now that I think about it, it might have been me misreading the text message in the first place. It was...

"Let me know when good dude and I will come over..."

and not...

"Let me know when, good dude, and I will come over..."

... which possibly means that I'm not necessarily a 'good dude' after all. It's also reassuring because my friend hasn't suddenly started talking like some sort of medieval surfer.




*I'm not going over this again: 'Richard of York' might well have given battle in vain, but for the red-green colourblinders, it may as well have been anybody.

QUANTUM WEIRDNESS

My phone buzzed angrily next to my head. I groaned as it illuminated the dusky darkness of a Monday morning. It was 5:04am.

My Mum had sent me a picture of their rooftop breakfast, overlooking the blue Pacific ocean. The sea looked perfect, just beyond the whitewashed walls of the hotel and the thin sliver of glistening sand. "27 degrees!" said the message, "...at breakfast!"

I'm glad they're having a nice time in sunny old New Zealand.

The next thing I read was an article about the heat death of the Universe.

"We may be able to escape the sun swallowing up the Earth in a ball of fire in 5 billion years' time..." said the article cheerily, "But there's no way to escape the end of the Universe itself!"

I munched my pancake thoughtfully. I'm not sure I totally agree. The next article was about how quantum weirdness pointed to the possibility of an alternate reality. I couldn't make it to the end of that one; I just wasn't clever enough and my eyes were still asleep.

It is interesting though, the thought that there might be a reality hidden in the spaces behind our perception of reality. 99% of every atom is empty space, so there's certainly room for some quantum weirdness.

The dustbin men were parked at the end of the drive. They were throwing wheelie bins around as though they were practicing for the Council Workers' Olympics. The amber light on top of the noisy lorry was flashing with silent approval. I had to wait there, tapping the wheel while John Humphrys asked an American about driverless cars and the European Union.

"So you're saying you think the United Kingdom would be a nicer place to live because the concept of people having their own vehicles would be a remnant of the past?" asked Humphrys.

"If there is a United Kingdom by then," joked the American.

"We'll save that for another day I think."

Indeed, John Humphrys, indeed.

THROWAWAY MELODIES

I think the Sleeping Songwriter might definitely be waking up. This morning, I thought up a ditty for a singing exercise I'm supposed to be leading.

There is hope then. I hummed my way through it while I was getting ready for work, then recorded myself singing into my phone while looking for my scarf.

This is how it starts - exciting little throwaway melodies that are something and nothing... but mostly something. Out of nowhere, yet tumbling from... somewhere. By the time I got to the High Street I'd worked out two of the harmonies. I got to my desk wondering how it was that my actual job had landed so far away from my actual passion.

"Hi Matt, it's Matt!" said a voice on the end of the phone. My friend Matt is getting married in a couple of months and wanted to ask me something about the songs in the ceremony.

Coincidentally, Matt had also just met someone who happened to have a copy of the album we released in 2009. He hadn't heard it before.

"I just found a copy of your album!" said Matt excitedly. I smiled to myself, remembering how it felt when I first heard it myself. It is possible, me being me, that I've been more critical about it than any other living person. It's not bad though, you know.

"Hope you like it," I said. The Sleeping Songwriter breathed in slowly and then breathed out again.

I think the time has come.

UNCLE BEN'S SNACKPOTS

Uncle Ben has given us several crates of his latest snackpot. It's sweet and sour with rice, 300 calories, microwaveable in 90 seconds and suspiciously 'low fat'...

I checked the label on the back. 18.5g of sugar. That's a lot of sugar.

What are you doing to us, Uncle Ben? That's almost four teaspoons of sugar - half a can of coca cola and just a bit more than a Starbucks latte! What's wrong with you? Are you trying to give us all Type 2 diabetes?

While we're on the subject, and I don't want to get too critical, but what's with sticking a label on the front saying 'low fat' and then packing the product full of stuff that actually makes people fat? That's just mean. It's like repackaging arsenic with a slimfast wrapper. Oh sure, it'll make you much slimmer, this stuff, plus you won't have to worry about those pesky cravings again.

Anyway, there are about two hundred of Uncle Ben's snackpots stacked up in reception like sugary little timebombs.

So I looked up Uncle Ben. Guess what? He never existed. Behind that pleasant man in a bow-tie, who looks like he's quietly pleased with a field of perfect rice, there's a corporation which has had money on its mind since the 40s.

Uncle indeed! At least I've got the decency to actually exist! My nieces and nephews might treat me like some sort of entertainment-machine-climbing-frame sometimes, but at least they can be confident that I'm a real person. Plus I'm not going to sell them drugs packaged up in a friendly looking snackpot.

This is worse than the time I found out that the exceedingly good Mr Kipling didn't write The Jungle Book.

SAMOENS 1600

I led the band practice tonight and it went really well. Do you know how there are just some things you can wing, not really have a plan, and yet end up being successful at? I think you should pay attention to those things, especially if you really enjoy them.

There are other things I've done which haven't carried the thrill of success. They've felt heavy and awkward, like lugging round a massive rucksack. I think it's important to pay attention to those things too, to figure out the difference between events that make you feel alive, and burdens that make you cry through the night.

I was 20. The light from the wooden corridor snuck through the half-open door and lit a strip of bunk bed. Andy was awake. The rest of my uni friends were playing Uno just out of earshot in the alpine log cabin.

"You OK, Matt?" Andy said from the other bunk. I told him I was thinking about something, something that hadn't turned out the way I had hoped. I asked him what I should do. After all, he was 22 and at that time I thought that that bit of extra experience counted for something. I remember his voice fumbling through the darkness, trying to let me know that some things you just have to learn how to cope with. I didn't know back then, how often the same question would recur and for how long. That was eighteen years ago. I had no idea.

I often think about that conversation in the darkness of Samoens 1600. I heard the sadness in Andy's voice and I hear it now, echoing through the years. The question itself has been a 'massive rucksack', something I've tried to figure out and put down, time and again. I came close a few times, but always it turned out not to be the answer, always hope was raised and dashed and the question washed up onto the empty beach.

Still, I led the band practice tonight and it went really well. There, I am confident, controlled and flowing in gifting as though its river were carved out of the landscape just for me. I wish I could be like that in the rest of my life. Who knows how it might have turned out?

KEYBOARD WARRIOR

Oh mercy. I've got a combination of things that never goes well - a sudden militant attitude about what I think, and an email account. I'm going to have to be very careful today. In fact, I might just stop myself emailing altogether (unless I'm asked a question of course, and even then I'll try to be... diplomatic).

This must be what it's like to be one of those keyboard warriors - brave in battle behind the screen, fighting for just causes with every furious flurry of typed characters... and not realising at all that this weapon is blunt and offensive and could leave a trail of upset in its wake.

People first, people first, people first... whispers my brain over and over again. I've always said it - People Are More Important Than Stuff. It's just that sometimes I forget how stuff affects people and how intertwined it gets. And how insensitive I am when I've got a bee in my bonnet.

It's days like this that I'm thankful I don't use flakbook anymore. With the great power of social media comes the great responsibility not to be a pompous twit.

You deserve better than me trying to be a keyboard warrior. And anyway, as I said to someone the other day, behind the scenes, I'm a weed who can't even hang curtains.

HAPPY TO SAIL

So, the Intrepids are off to New Zealand, which, as I keep explaining to exasperated people, gives me the impetus required to finally move my stuff into my own house.

"Oh Matt! You haven't moved yet?" said someone yesterday, shaking their head with wonder. I haven't - but hopefully, while my parents are on the other side of the world, I'll be able to finish the job without it being too emotional for them. That way, when they come back, they can start their new chapter (without me) just as easily as I can.

I am nearly there. The curtains are (sort of) up, most things are assembled and the place is starting to feel like home rather than just somewhere I go to do the occasional painting.

Meanwhile, the Intrepids will be on a tour of glaciers, glistening mountains, white-water rapids, sunny blue oceans, and unfamiliar constellations. There will be talk of the weather, the scenery, the news and earthquakes, not to mention the Southern Cross and the Aurora Australis.

I almost wish I were with them. There's something about their spirit of exploration which excites me beyond my fears. I often feel like a tall ship in a dry dock, but they seem happy to sail.

Happy to sail, eh? Pull up your anchor, cast off your lines, push away from the shore and unfurl your sails until they billow, and the ocean rises beneath your bows. That's how to be an Intrepid. It takes a little courage and a little risk - it takes a bit of Planet Gogetter.

I guess if it's in them, it must be somewhere in me too. I'll find out one day.

DICKENSIAN EXPENSES

I just took an expense claim form up to Finance. You know, when those guys aren't playing table football, they're a lot less animated. You could have heard a pin drop, bounce, and then roll across the carpet.

I crept in, feeling like Oliver Twist, clutching a sheet of A4 paper and a paperclipped receipt.

"Um who do I talk to about expenses?" I stammered. A pair of eyes studied me quietly over the top of some gold-rimmed spectacles. I glanced across at the thermostat next to the wall, just to check it hadn't suddenly flipped into minus numbers.

I think that whole Parliament scandal thing a couple of years ago could have been avoided if MPs had had a finance department like ours. That duck-house chap would have been quaking in his boots had he had to submit the receipt in person.

That's another thing - the form is complicated. It's like one of those puzzles where you just can't figure out where to start, or what goes where. Opening the file is enough to give you palpitations. It's almost as if they want to make it as difficult as possible...

I did it though. I got it approved and submitted and made my way back to the warmth of my desk unwithered. It was just as well actually - after all, I'd bought £104.96 worth of pizza. There was no way I wasn't going to claim it back.

Before you ask, no I didn't eat it all myself - it was for a lunchtime presentation. Eating twelve large pizzas would have been a truly terrible way to start Lent. Plus I'd never have made it up the stairs to the Finance office.

PANCAKE DAY

Well Happy Pancake Day everybody! Yep, it's that time of year when we rush out and stock up on flour, milk, butter, salt and sugar so we can use it all up before Lent starts.

Here's my tip: only flip when you see the bubbles pop.

It does bring out a sort of medieval weirdness though, Shrove Tuesday. There's the forgotten idea of 'shriving' for example...

The idea was that you ambled along to confession and were 'shriven' or absolved from your sins, ready to live a most pious and fat-free Lent. A shriving bell would be rung and off you'd go for some good old shriving.

In fact, the story goes that one woman in Olney in Buckinghamshire, heard the shriving bell while making pancakes, and desperately ran to the church, pan in hand.

Every year since, the housewives of Olney have celebrated by conducting a pancake race through the town, flipping pancakes as they go - first to reach the church and kiss the bellringer is the winner!

We're good at medieval weirdness in this country. What I mean is that we do things without really understanding why, but with the vague notion that we've been doing it since the 1400s and therefore should continue. Whether it's rolling cheeses down a hill or flipping pancakes in the street, we seem to love a little old-fashioned foody fun.

Westminster School in London has an apposite Shrove Tuesday tradition. I read somewhere that the school cook tosses a huge pancake over a bar and the boys scrabble to stuff their faces with pieces of pancake. The boy who gets the largest piece is rewarded with money from the Dean. A lot of them go on to be bankers and politicians, apparently.

Then there's Shrovetide Football where groups of men hurl a stone about a village in a sort of muddy no-rules rugby. No-one knows why.

In Scarborough they do the skipping thing - loads of people use a long skipping rope on the promenade. It goes back hundreds of years but no-one knows to what.

I say stick with pancakes - at least there's a reason, even if most of us have forgotten it. Plus you don't have to go outside in the mud. Pancake Day marks the end of one season and the start of another, using up the excessive fatty things in life and getting ready for something new. That can only be a good thing.

I, for one, will be flipping a few pancakes later. I'm hoping this year, I can avoid the tradition of splattering batter all over my Mum's kitchen. I'd hate to think that in hundreds of years' time, people would be splurging floury-eggy-milky mess everywhere without a clue as to why.  

ROALD DAHL'S POINT

"I can't listen to Radio 1 any more," said Gareth swinging open the door of the Water Tower pub the other day.

"Me neither," said Ruth, "It's all about Radio 2 for me."

"We are definitely in our thirties then!" I said, almost daring to admit that I listen to Radio 4. I didn't quite. I smiled while thinking about the Shipping Forecast and headed out to my car.

The thing is, we like what we like, and really that's all that matters. Oh, and Radio 1 is absolutely aimed at 12 year olds.

My question is - has it always been this way? I mean, back in the old days when Noel Edmonds and Tony Blackburn were spinning discs at Radio 1 HQ, were they playing music for kids who'd only just grown out of Andy Pandy? Or was it all a bit more serious than that?

I know it's hard to look back at older generations and imagine them as younger than you, but somehow, I feel almost certain that entertainment output like television and radio has slowly grown younger over the decades.

I remember watching shows like Tomorrow's World, and those programmes where Alan Wicker would peer around Shanghai in a makeshift rickshaw. I was in on an adult world I felt too young to be part of, yet still felt fascinated by and connected to; it was the world of the far away and the future, where Judith Chalmers told us about markets in Morocco, or Maggie Philbin showed off 'Compact Discs' and household robots. These days, in the same slots, we get The One Show telling us to eat more peas.

I think that's partly what fuels my gradual metamorphosis into a virtual hermit; I started to feel like the box in the corner of the room was patronising me.

"You're not a television person then?" said someone the other day.

"Not really," I replied, smiling. I spent the next few moments imagining what a 'television person' might actually look like and got as far as Mike Teevee spinning through the air in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

He had a point you know, Roald Dahl.

WAKING UP FROM THE STUFFINESS

So the old sleeping pattern is messed up again. We had a whole night of prayer on Friday and, while it was good, it's also discombobulated my body-clock.

I slept through most of Saturday and then got really confused about which day it was. Then I couldn't go to sleep at all on Saturday night, as though my brain had switched into nocturnal mode.

So I went for a drive, had a mug of hot chocolate, listened to the wind and finally dropped off into dreams about fireworks and space shuttles.

It's like jetlag, this. It might take a while to get used to the 'flight' and the 'timezone'. However, things are slowly adjusting today.

I went for a sunny walk this morning. I went round the golf course and out into the little village that's down the road. The sun was high above the cotton-bud clouds and a cold wind whistled through the hedgerows. It reminded me again, of walks at university, how I'd wander out to Bathampton, climb up to Sham Castle and sit in the field of buttercups. The wind would whistle up there too.

All of this this morning, gave me the impression that something was waking up in me, an old feeling stirring from the stuffiness. Like the other night by the lake, I was remembering something important, deep and ancient.

And when you've slept through most of the weekend, waking up can only be a good thing.

WEIRDLY EXCITED BY NEWS OF AN IRON

It's like one of those puzzles. A man looks at his phone one evening and sees he has a message informing him that he 'no longer needs to buy an iron or an ironing board'. He immediately leaps up and celebrates as though he's won the lottery. Why?

Nope, it's a perfectly normal iron (at least I think it is) and there's nothing special about the ironing board. Neither am I freakishly excited by the thought of smoothly pressed shirts or clean-lined trousers. It's not that ironing equipment is expensive or difficult to find, and I'm not somehow suddenly betrothed by text message to a woman who loves ironing almost as much as she'd love being married to me. It's none of that.

It's my friends, Winners and Teebs (and their daughter) who've just been told they've finally got their visas to move to Africa.

I reckon they're over the moon! I asked Teebs (who is Zimbabwean) the other day, what a perfect night would be for her, and she said sitting out on the moonlit verandah overlooking the Serengeti. Winners too has been longing for the adventure and won't mind me telling you how hard it's been to wait for it over the last year or so. Both have believed that God was planning on sending them there all along, and against all the odds, against all the people advising them to settle here in the UK and work out jobs and futures, He made it happen. 

That's what I was celebrating - the breakthrough in the hardest of times, the victory at the end of the story that gives me hope for countless other stories. I punched the air and thanked the Maker.

Oh, ages ago, Winners told me I could have their iron and ironing board if ever they got to go Zimbabwe to live. I tell you what, every time I steam it across a shirt or press a pair of trousers, I'll smile as I think of Winners and Teebs, sitting on the verandah, listening to the crickets in the moonlight.

 

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE WORLD?

Twitter's gone very philosophical now. Presumably fed up with asking me what I'm watching, it's now sending emails with the subject line:

Matt Stubbs, what's happening in the world?

Sigh. I don't know Twitter, I'm as baffled as you are. There's a nasty virus in South America, there's a nasty bunch of scumbags in the Syrian desert and there's a nasty-looking race between shiny-haired people to see who gets to be the leader of the free world.

Meanwhile there are a few loons who like the sound of jackboots and tanks and atomic weapons and a whole host of people who don't think those things are a good idea for loons at all.

Also Twitter, there are people going on about people who are paid too much and are yet still mysteriously unintelligent, sports people who are weirdly obsessed with winning all the time, and journalists who are two steps away from selling their grandmothers for a good story.

But you know all this, don't you, Twitter - after all, you're Twitter, why are you asking me? Every day billions of tweets paint the canvas with the most detailed answer history has ever seen, to that particular question.

Maybe you'd like to know what's going on in my world? Perhaps you're asking me what's new in my hyper-local news bulletin, down here on the micro-scale that frames this tiny life? Maybe you want me to tweet about it.

Well, maybe I will. After all, that bit of the world I can actually do something about.

CALLING WITHOUT AND WITHIN

I walked home the long way last night. The sky was deep and brooding and there were flecks of rain in the air. It was dark.

I stopped on the little bridge that spans the two sections of the lake. The lake, if you can imagine it, is roughly the shape of a number eight; right in the middle, the bridge lets you cross the narrowest part in a few clackety steps.

The wind swelled through the trees. The lake rippled below the walls of bright windows on the other side, catching the light and pushing it towards me. It was as though the wind was suddenly calling to me, softly singing my name in the breeze.

I took a deep breath, letting the cold air fill my lungs.

Years ago, there had been nights just like this.

I'd walk back to the bus stop through campus and stop by the lake, a different lake, far away. The warm lights of the University Library would glimmer across the water as I would stand there, dreaming and thinking. I felt free, somehow, alive.

I'd listen to the wind, whispering, and I'd watch the clouds roll through the darkening sky. I'd feel the first few spots of rain and I'd hear my name somewhere, calling without and within.

I would have been about twenty - unaware of all the things that were ahead then, and behind me now - the friends I would make and lose, the songs I would write, the love I would learn to forget and the pain I could not have imagined.

Yet really, I was just the same - standing on that little bridge, rucksack on my back, listening to the trees. Hope calls me now as it did then - and I am still alive. I don't always feel it; things feel stuffier than they did, restricted and old.

Out there in the wild, where the wind rustled through the trees and the lake lapped against the little bridge, I was suddenly reminded that it doesn't have to be that stuffy, that there is a young person inside of me who still yearns for all the same things that are carried by the wind.

I can still hear my name, I can still feel hope and destiny calling me on the breeze, and I can still answer its call, if I want to. If I want to.

I walked home the rest of the way with cloudy eyes.

COLOURS

It turns out that I was measuring my windows wrong and I only need curtains which are half the size I had anticipated.

So, all I need now is curtains which colour-match everything, are the right size and will fit my curtain rails. Easy right?

You'd think so. I don't want to go on about it.

It did lead to me wandering around Dunelm Mill with a cushion, asking people what colour they thought it was. One woman was particularly animated at the thought that I could see brown as green. I don't know why she was so vehement - colours are subjective at the best of times, aren't they? Are there any absolutes?

Now, I don't want to get too philosophical about colours. It seems like a world I don't carry much weight in anyway, being a bit colourblind myself. That of course, was always part of the problem in Dunelm Mill - what looked purply-green to me, was apparently mink (whatever that means) to most other people.

I don't want to get too scientific about it either. I didn't have a portable spectrometer with me after all, so it was always going to be difficult to settle the debate with science.

However, I have worked out one thing about colourblindness: it's a little bit embarrassing. I think it's because identifying colours is one of the first things we learn how to do when we're children. Before spelling, before addition and long before understanding the diffraction of light through different materials, we all get the hang of pointing out that the bus is red, the grass is green and the sky is (supposed to be) blue.

What level of stupidity thinks the sky is purple and the grass is red? Up goes my hand, dropping a waxy crayon onto the desk. Sorry Miss.

I think that's why it's still difficult. I just don't know the difference, and I've interpreted it as stupidity, when it's not. Thankfully, I don't encounter the problem often, and I'm well aware that this feeling must be magnified a thousand times for dyslexics and dyscalulics.

Had I been sharper, I would have pointed out of course, that sometimes the sky actually is purple, that there are types of grasses which are red, that leaves can be brown, gold, yellow, blue, and hair can be any colour you choose it to be.

I'd have pointed out that the way I see the world is so unique and beautiful to me, that I might be the only person in the Universe who will ever see it quite this way; that colourblindness in all its forms, is not really blindness at all, but is a wonderful way of seeing and recreating the world around you.

Instead of sweating about those numbers hiding in the dotty circles, I'd have been amazed by the science, wondering why I might have been made a little differently. There is still a chance though that I'd still have been upset when told I would never be a pilot and that I would struggle to be an artist.

Thinking about it now, it was outrageous that they said that.

Anyway, the search for matching curtains goes on. You know, I don't think it even matters that I don't know how to use a tape measure.