FIRST DAY TWENTY YEARS AGO

I started uni twenty years ago today.

What's that? Must have been a child prodigy, did I hear you say? Well, while you pick yourself up from the floor and try hard to cope with the shock of how someone still so fresh-faced and youthful looking could possibly have launched into higher education as long ago as 1996, I should point out that it doesn't feel that long ago to me either.

Fresh-faced and youthful looking. Pah! Today I look like a sunburnt balloon.

I was thinking this morning about the advice I would give myself, unpacking those boxes in Eastwood 6 room 9 on that Sunday afternoon. Would I tell myself to avoid so-and-so, who would manipulate me into such-and-such? Would I mention Deniol's awful rugby trainers, or Chemistry Dan's attention-seeking attempt to trap a squirrel in a saucepan? Would I tell myself about the infamous Baron Party?

No. That detail ought to be lived without precognition. I think I'd tell myself to be bold, take hold of the opportunity to reinvent myself, and absolutely be discerning about whom to be friends with.

"And on Friday when you go to that first CU meeting, don't let yourself be intimidated by anybody," I imagine my older self saying to my younger self, remembering.

"Are you Matt's dad?" says a young man whose nickname is about to be Ming the Merciless, standing in the doorway. My older self shuffles out of the room and looks back.

"Something like that," I say, smiling at the two boys, "And remember," I continue, looking back at the oh-so-familiar breeze blocks, desk, bucket chair and bed, "When you see her, be her friend first but whatever you do, don't leave it too long."

They shrug as I whistle down the stairs, out through the green front door and back to the future.

"Who was that?" asks Ming, in his Nottinghamshire accent, "Don't mean to be rude but he looks a bit like a sunburnt balloon."

RED-FACED

My head is spinning.  It's like I'm having a permanent dizzy spell.

If it carries on, I'm going to have go home I think. What is this? The result of insomnia? Dehydration?

One of the managers took me aside and asked if I was okay. I actually feel fine on the inside, but he said I look sunburned.

"Have you been out in the sun then?" he asked.

"Oh, no," I said, turning redder. "I think I'm just dehydrated."

So. I'm red-faced, exhausted, and I look like I'm 50. Oh and my skin is flaking off. What a week.

POLITICS

So politics is in a mess. Again. It must be a generational thing - I remember this from my childhood. The Left is left and lefting and the Right is right and righting. I still don't really understand what any of that really means, to be honest.

Here's my problem: I just don't like political parties. I do a survey that's supposed to tell me what I think and who to vote for, and a colour emerges from the numbers as a closest fit. But it's a closest fit in the same way that a police officer's uniform is the closest fit compared to a giant clown costume.

It's the same across the Pond too. There, the stark choice of Dubious Dragon or Deranged Despot presents itself to 320 million people.

Twitter says: want to change the world? Join a political party! No wait, not just any party - pick yellow! no red! no, green! and for the love of God not blue, don't pick blue. Pick me, pick me, we're the best, we're the best!

Well. I don't know how we ended up with this ding-dong system. Presumably, people with distinct beliefs once gathered together with like-minded individuals and decided that everyone ought to agree with them about how to run the country. And if you're not with us, you're against us.

So the Left go one way, the Right go the other and everyone else has to figure out whom they should follow in this multi-coloured cold war, and worse, whom they ought to hate.

I wonder though, whether there's good to be done, while the pantomime runs its course? I disagree with the tribalism of political parties, but it doesn't mean I don't care about the same things many of them care about. Maybe, in the melée, it's possible to do something to change the world without a flag or a coloured banner?

This thought continues.

THE LAST BANANA

So it seems tact is in its usual short supply. This takes place in the kitchen, with me pouring milk over my muesli, Marie trying to solve world poverty and Bryan entering, looking for the fruit basket...

Bryan: "Where are all the bananas?"
Marie: "Um..."
Bryan: "Oh, I see."

Marie is holding the last banana behind her back.

Marie: "Of course, you do that funny martial art, don't you? You could probably twist this banana right out of my hand."
Bryan: "Yep. I know how to do that."
Marie: "It would be like in that Monty Python sketch, you know the one with the banana?"

She looks at me.

Me: "I don't know it. I don't have a television."

Bryan: "I think... wasn't it The Goodies?"

Marie looks blank.

Bryan looks at me.

I shrug my shoulders.

Me: "I genuinely don't remember The Goodies."
Bryan: "Really?"
Me: "Mhm."
Bryan: "You must be similar in age to me, surely you remember The Goodies?

My brain does two depressing things at once. First, it starts to calculate how old Bryan is and second it tries to predict the inevitable course of this worsening conversation. Bryan has whitish hair and the look of someone who has lived long enough to earn it. The maths makes my head spin and my heart pound.

Me: "I'm...er.. I'm younger than I look." (nervously)
Bryan: "How old are you?"
Me: "I'm thirty eight."

Bryan responded with a loud expletive.

I might try and avoid the kitchen altogether from now on.

AN AUTUMN OWL

It's nice today so I've summoned up enough energy to go to the park.

The light is different in Autumn. The sky is still summery blue, and the sun is bright. But it's in a different place in the sky these days, and the shadows are long and strange across the gold coloured grass. In fact, everything has that golden feel about it, which I really love.

There's a chilly sort of breeze, turning the leaves inside out and fluttering them into applause. It is cold on the back of my neck for a while, then the wind dies down and the sun is warm again.

I think I'm going to have to shake myself out of whatever this malaise is. I'm gradually becoming nocturnal. It's okay for owls, security guards and students, but I don't really have an aspiration to be any of those things - except maybe an owl.

I was a student once, of course. In the middle of one night this week, I looked up my old student house on Google Maps. It's much the same, though they've changed the front door, and Mondeo Man two doors down has upgraded.

Exercise, a good breakfast, plenty of water. And maybe a baseball bat next to the bed to really get me out for the count. I think though, probably, the real art of it will be learning how to stop thinking about everything.

The air's gone a bit cooler now and there are lots of dogs sniffing around. I think I will go wandering down the hill. I've just about got the energy for it.

SORRENTO DIARIES: PART 6

September 10th, 2013

10:30pm. I came upstairs to finish writing. The pianist was great but more than a little distracting.

As I stood on the balcony I saw a little flash on the horizon. At first I thought it was fireworks. They seem to set off fireworks for no specific reason in Italy: birthdays, Saints' days, Great Aunt Luisa's shopping day, you name it, they'll be letting off the pyrotechnics.

As it was, it turned out to be fireworks of a more natural kind. I've spent the last hour and a half watching a storm sweep up the Mediterranean. It's electric and completely silent, too far away for the rumbles to reach Sorrento. Above us, the stars still twinkle. But behind Naples and the gulf, the whole sky is exploding with silent sheet lightning. In a voice inside my head that's scarily like my Dad's, I've persuaded myself that it's not coming this way and I've come inside.

The storm, however far away it is, is massive. We just don't get such long-lasting and huge electrical storms over the UK. That is why I suppose, a whole load of English people have just abandoned the jazz keyboardist below, and are standing on the terrace as though on some sort of cruise ship. Nature provides great entertainment.

It's just as well, because nature let me down a bit, on top of Vesuvius today.

After feeling the sadness of Pompeii, I really wanted Vesuvius to be a smoking angry villain, sleeping, fuming, growling, almost ready to strike. Not that I'd want the volcano to erupt! That's the last thing Naples needs. And I don't want to be selfish or anything but I wouldn't want to be on the crater if Vesuvio were to creak open an angry eye and wake from its monstrous sleep.

No, I expected it to be sulphurously steaming while it slept. As it turned out, the old monster is just a mountain with a hole in it.

What's more, it was so cloudy, there was absolutely nothing to see. A dragonish drop of about two hundred metres, crags and steep rocks swooping down inside the bowl to a pile of black, volcanic stones. They looked like they could have been in any valley, anywhere.

Being inside a cloud didn't help. We couldn't even see the other side. I walked round the rim, treading the black soil underfoot. Rope fences either side separated us from the sheer drops either into, or down the mountain. There was little difference, as there was just white fog both sides. It was more like walking across a rocky bridge.

The volcano is asleep though. Some day, the passion at its heart, the fire, the purpose and the pure power will awaken again.

I feel like there is a theme here. Perhaps something - passion, romance, fire, needs to wake up in me. It didn't really occur to me until I got here, that this is a country that's all about passion. Even the storm, flashing over Italy as it is right now, seems to be a bit of a sign.

So tonight, with the night breeze whipping through my hair, with red wine coursing through my veins and the sky bursting with light over a sleeping mountain of secret flame and fire, I prayed. I asked God to wake me up. Back home there are many fire blankets, many passion-extinguishers who mean well, who speak well, who reason well and quench the flames. Perhaps I should ask for more of that oil that keeps the lamps burning.

I saw more amorous graffiti today. TI AMO, PRINCIPESSA MIA, half-way up the volcano through the windows of the coach. I had a thought of an olive-skinned Italian youth, spray can in one hand, the hand of a young, dark beauty in the other, leading her through the mountainside groves to that piece of unspoiled wall just so he could show her.

LOON

I think I'd better apologise. I've been very irritable these last few days, and I hadn't even realised. I expect it's come across in my humourless moaning about bananas, breakfast and bleary-eyed mornings.

I am (sigh) an insomniac. I'm tired all the time, and because I don't have a really valid reason to be, I'm also guilty about it. There are no babies keeping me awake, no crippling debts or impending court-cases; I live next to a silent park in a quiet close and I am loved by the people I love (mostly). There is nothing to keep me awake.

And yet there I am, most nights, weeping at the ceiling, fending off those Four Giants and trying my best to drift into peace.

So, I'm sorry if I'm a cranky old loon at the moment. I don't want to be - I want to be fun, lively, extroverted and deep. Actually, I just want to feel like myself again, instead of a flaking effigy of who I used to be.

A PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION

I've been thinking this for a while. It's a source of fascination to me.

So while I chunk through a whole load of fixed issues and documentation enhancement requests, I find myself turning my thoughts to deep philosophical matters, in much the same way as those great men of ancient learning must have done when they looked up at the stars and pondered the deeper, classical themes, of life, mortality and the vastness of the universe.

Why do bananas go off so quickly?

Hey, listen, I love bananas. The peeling mechanism is just about as perfectly simple as it could be, not to mention the ease with which you split them from the bunch! They come with their own handy wrapper, they taste great and you can make short work of one without too much complicated chewing.

What I don't like though, is the phenomenal speed with which the banana becomes completely inedible.

One moment, it's there, firm and yellow in the prime of its life. Don't look away though because in a few minutes time, the edges will be browning and it'll be developing ugly black spots.

Oh sure, you can convince yourself it will be alright on the inside, and indeed, when you peel back the layers, it does look unblemished. But whenever I take a bite of a soft banana, I genuinely feel the gag reflex kicking in.

There is a definite point, a fixed moment in the life-cycle, when a banana turns from a delicious mid-morning treat to a squelchy, sickly nightmare that makes me nauseous.

And this afternoon, I took a bite of one that was precisely on the turn. Honestly, you buy a bunch of bananas at the beginning of the week (oh and they only come in eights for some reason) and by Thursday...

Well, God, I'm not complaining about your design - just wondering whether bananas were this duplicitous before the Fall? Then again, I suppose Adam and Eve already had enough trouble with fruit without worrying about when bananas went off.

I'd better be thankful, and get back to my enhancement requests.

THE TIRED REFLECTION

I looked at myself in the mirror: unshaven, but not in a rugged way, more sort of half-way between stubble and beard; hair, wiry, uncontrollable and grey; eyes sunk behind dusty lenses, and my shirt looking crumpled like crepe paper.

I looked tired. And it was already time to leave for work.

If I look tired, it's mostly because I am. Another busy day yesterday was followed by an awful sleepless night, complete with indigestion, scratchy sheets, the quiet radio and the sky growing lighter through the curtains. My mind raced through the small hours like an out-of-control refuse collector.

I really need to find a way to sleep. I think it's starting to affect other areas of my life, and that is troubling me. What if I can no longer do my job? What if I'm so cranky and so grumpy that I'm accidentally (or deliberately) rude to people? What if I'm just not concentrating and miss those moments of life to be awake for? It all feels rather edgy at the moment, as though I could slip so easily into any of those things.

My reflection stared back at me. I straightened my collar and ran my fingers through my hair to smooth it down a bit. There was nothing I could do about the heavy eyelids or the dry cracking skin around them. One deep breath, and maybe I'll have energy to get through the day.

DON'T JUDGE MY BREAKFAST

"Bet there's a lot of sugar in that," he said, disparagingly.

I looked at my bowl of muesli. The banana slices I'd just cut were floating like lilies over the nutty, crunchy mulch. I sighed, sounding disappointed.

I don't think I would ever dream of judging someone else's breakfast. Seriously, you can eat what you like - bacon rolls, pain-au-chocolat, croissants, cold pizza, yam soup, Alpen with greek yoghurt or just a spoonful of coffee beans. It could be terrible but I won't be condescending about your choices.

It seems, following last week's nutrition talk, everyone's a bit of an expert and can't wait to share their expertise with the uninitiated.

As I walked back to my desk, awkwardly clutching the bowl, the banana skin, a spoon, a mug of tea and my phone like a dishevelled waiter, it occurred to me that this disappointment is probably the exact reaction a lot of people have towards evangelism.

I don't want to get too deep into this - I really don't, but it did strike me that there were similarities.

After all, from that perspective, a stranger approaching you and telling you you're doing life all wrong could surely be offensive, supercilious and embarrassing.

"But don't you know that eating too much sugar will take you to diabetes, obesity, even death's door, my friend?"

By the way, the guy who sneered at my breakfast goes running every lunchtime.

"Don't you know that the body can't process all that junk and will store it as fat? Don't you know that things that taste sweet are really really bad for you? Don't you know that there's a better way to see the light, to come into all the fullness of a healthy diet, to really live?"

I didn't enjoy it very much. It's the kind of breakfast that gets stuck in your teeth. And actually, he was right, there's 8.6g of sugar per 50g serving! I think though, that if someone's going to tell me how to live my life better, they ought to be modelling the kind of life that looks attractive and healthy, rather than disparaging other people's muesli.

HOME-SPUN DISAPPOINTMENT

Time for a quick update from Caffe Nero. First off, the Greek yoghurt with honey was just right for today. Second, the tea gently steams in front of me, in a cup.

I've come into Reading today. Well, I figured I haven't been utterly frustrated or mildly disappointed for a while, so why not buzz into town for a good old-fashioned let-down?

Ah it's not Reading itself; there's a lot that's good about the place. It's mostly just the town centre, on a Saturday, with lots of people in it.

I had to pick something up from Argos. That was annoying. They lost my number from the Screen of All Knowledge (order number three hundred and fifty six... to your collection point please) and an eleven minute wait turned into a half-hour one. In the end I wandered up to collection point A, waited for two minutes and then a cardboard cutout in a t-shirt turned round, picked my item off the shelf without moving his feet and slid it towards me. It had been there for twenty minutes I reckon.

There were a few angry mums in town today as well. They get incandescent with rage, these toddler-controlling, pushchair-maneouvring fireballs. I have a theory about exactly why, but it's not for now... or probably ever, now that I think about it. I'd be confused and terrified if I were shouted at like that, I think, especially if I didn't know that the rules of behaviour appear to change wherever I get dragged to.

I quite like this short part of the retail year. The summer is over but there's no real sign of shops gearing up for Christmas yet. It's even too early for pumpkins in card shop windows.

The Peruvian Piper was back - full headdress and feathers today, blasting his haunting South American music to the crowds of bag-clutching shoppers in Broad Street. I watched him for a while. I wonder what would happen if I went to Lima or Santiago and played Greensleeves on the harpsichord while wearing a bowler hat and a Union Jack tie.

I didn't find the shoes I was looking for. That's okay though, I will figure it out. I tried on a few pairs in some hot, dark shops. In one, the music sped up my heartbeat and made me feel anxious. In another, I clacked around the store, looking for a mirror, before realising that the tight clogs I was trying on were biting my ankles and incarcerating my toes. The search goes on.

So, Caffe Nero and then the train home. It is better than Starbucks certainly, but lacks the spacious charm of Waitrose. And crucially here, there are no tea pots. Are they dying out?

Anyway, that's certainly enough home-spun disappointment for one afternoon.

SORRENTO DIARIES: PART 5

Time for a few more of those old holiday snaps then. As you know, I'm copying out my diary from three years ago when I went to Sorrento. In this installment I have an odd conversation with a waiter and then go to Pompeii, an ancient city destroyed by the eruption of the volcano that still overlooks the bay of Naples. Then an Italian piano player plays some German folk songs in the lobby...

--

September 10th, 2013

I don't think the staff at this hotel much like me speaking Italian. We have these weird conversations in which I, the English person speak in Italian and they, the Italians, speak in English.

"Un caffe signore, per favore."

"With milk?"

"Si, con latte."

"Which room please?"

"Due cento ed uno."

"What?"

"Due cento ed... Allora... Due. Zero. Uno."

(I remembered that nobody here understands the concept of treating the number like a number. I get blank looks at what I'm certain means 'Two hundred and one' so I need to remind myself that it's Two Zero One instead.)

"Two-oh-one, sir?"

"Si. Questo tavolo."

"Ah this table here. Okay, thank you."

Weird. Part of me thinks I should just give in and speak English. Ah! But then the Italians have won, yes? I tell you what, next time I meet lost Italians in England, I might just explain everything in full-on Sixteenth Century Elizabethan.

"Forsooth good man! Thou hast turnéd widdershins bout this noble square in thy solicitations."

However, I'm a typical Englishman so I'll probably just scratch my head and help them out.

-

In other news, today, I went on my selected trip to Pompeii and Vesuvius.

Yes, the mountain that loftily rises above the bay with its feet in the sea and its head in the clouds, and of course, the city it destroyed in 79AD.

The Apostle John was still alive when Vesuvius erupted. The Roman Empire was thriving across the vastness of Europe, and Pompeii, here on the shores of this glorious Neapolitan bay, was a very ordinary town in the peak of summer. On the morning of August 24th, 79AD, the city almost certainly awoke to these same crystal blue skies and the lazy heat of the Mediterranean.

Fabio led us into the Main Street, a broad thoroughfare of slabs of pavement, uneven, cobbled ruins of shops and houses either side. In the distance, capped with cloud, Vesuvius loomed dark and conical against the hazy sky.

Pompeii is the most alive-dead place I've ever seen. The streets have a strikingly modern feel to them, even though the piles of stones have no roofs, the pillars reach forlornly to the open sky and the frescoes are worn and faded. But somehow, walking round, with Fabio pointing at ancient laundries, snack bars, temples, brothels, houses, pipes, graffiti - it made it all seem so real; so yesterday.

-

I think Tuesday must be music night at the Gran Paradiso. A kind of travelling pianist has set up a single speaker, a little mixing desk and a Yamaha keyboard in the bar here. Rather charmingly, he's running through the repertoire of Italian jazz classics. It's good but just a little loud for conversation. It is having the lovely effect of reminding us which country we're in.

I can't help thinking about Pompeii, just going about its business; people dancing, drinking, listening to music, living their lives and enjoying the summer. The pianist has dipped into something in German now, a kind of country and western number which he's jazzed up. Some of the older feet, clad in sandals and slip-ons... are loving it, tapping away involuntarily. He knows what he's up to this fella.

I think I'm getting close to being ready to go home. I'm starting to crave close company - I am a terrible introvert when it comes down to it. A German woman is clapping the end of the song. No-one joins in with her applause. She stops. I need to stop writing and go to bed, I think.

 

SWITCHBOARD IN AUTUMN

There are lots of ways to tell that Summer might have ended. One, was the other day, when a tiny, unripened apple fell onto my car with a clonk.

Another, is the shortness of the evening, and suddenly no chance at all of sitting out in the park, watching the sunset like I used to. I frequently get home in the dark nowadays.

Mostly though, you can tell, because the weather has switched into Autumn overnight. And I do mean overnight - last night, the final hurrah of the heatwave gave way to a four-hour thunderstorm that rattled the windows, boomed across the valley, and flooded half of West Berkshire. Today, the sky is miserable and overcast.

I wandered round the lake at lunchtime, skipping over the standing water where it had lapped up onto the bank. There was a cool breeze rustling through the reeds and rippling the surface. It won't be long before that breeze carries a chill and a whirlwind of crispy leaves with it.

Of course, with the disappearing sunshine, I'm much more likely to get a bit depressed. Plus, the changing of the seasons affects me anyway. Right now, I feel like I need to be completely rewired, just to remind myself what my purpose might be and exactly how I'm supposed to tick.

I do sometimes feel like I'm a gigantic switchboard - some things are set to off, some things are on. Dials go spinning round and levers get stuck. When the season flicks from one thing to another, it's like a whole new configuration of switches. Some rewiring might help.

Or perhaps I should soak up as much Vitamin D as I can while the sun shines.

NUTRITION ADVICE

We had a talk from a proper nutritionist today. She said some odd things, like...

"Try drinking a smoothie. Kale, beetroot and berries is my favourite."

and...

"It's impossible to naturally absorb vitamin D in the winter, especially if you live further north than Birmingham..."

which I wondered about. Is that really true? Still it was nice to be in a room with lots of sales people. I was reminded very quickly about how much of a hobby-horse good nutrition is for some types. Mr Gymnasium, for example, was there, knowing that the body can only store about 1.8g of protein per kilogram. He swung about knowledgeably on his chair, before launching into his own irrefutable opinions on the 5:2 diet.

There were no surprises of course: 60% of your five-a-day should be vegetables (uh oh), you should aim to self-prepare about 80% of what you eat (oops) and you should probably only ever eat carbs in 30g portions.

Oh, and eggs are great. Spinach, even better. Don't believe everything you've read about blueberries and for the love of all that's holy, stay away from cooking with olive oil.

The super-lean, super-keen sales guys nodded like silent experts. Why were they even there? I thought about the nearly empty bottle of olive oil in my cupboard, next to the sugar tub and the six pack of Irn Bru.

It was tough to look the nutritionist in the eye after that.

One thing she did say though was that she recommends keeping a food diary. I've tried this before, but it's never quite worked out. I think I might give it another go though - what's the worst that could come of that? As long as I don't show the sales guys, I should be alright.

THE MEDIOCRE CRICKETER

I stood by the pavilion watching the sky turn pink. I was on my own, padded up and waiting for the call to walk out to the wicket.

This was the annual cricket match.

It's funny how, wherever you go, the same people always turn up to these things. There's the HR director, just there to have a go and laugh about it. Then there's the group of middle-aged dads reliving their dreams of playing at Lords, and relishing the chance of knocking each other out. Then there's that one guy who turns up in his whites.

I was nervous. And the pads felt ridiculous. I'd strapped them tightly round my legs like greaves and they were slapping against me as I paced.

There was a shout from the pitch. The stumps clicked and the ball thudded into some gloves. The last man was out, and I was in.

-

"Nice batting," shouted the HR director as I walked back to the pavilion some minutes later. Englefield House was silhouetted and the sun had sunk gently behind it. My shadow was long. I unstrapped my gloves and wedged the bat under my arm, feeling for all the world like a proper cricketer.

Of course, I'm not. The juddering ball had struck the bat a few times and I'd sprinted between the wickets while everyone shouted. I missed it a few times too, and on the last ball, it swooshed past me, swung invisibly through my bat and obliterated the stumps.

I guess it was okay, batting. Out in the field, I was less successful. The ball kept slipping past me. I did catch it once though. I stood there watching it drop towards me, while surrounded with those predictable cries of catch it! Thankfully, it fell into my hands with a satisfying thump, and I held my nerve.

Would I go again? Probably. Playing is definitely better than scoring. A few years ago, I had the dubious task of updating the scoreboard. I couldn't reach the numbers and lost track of the overs, much to the ire of the man in his whites.

It is a ridiculous game when you stop and think about it. Hopefully though, I showed my colleagues that I'm more than just a mediocre technical writer. I'm a mediocre cricketer too.

TWO STEPS FROM HYPOCRISY

I feel like I live constantly two steps away from hypocrisy. Part of the reason is that I'm very good at giving myself advice, and then I'm also very good at not following it at all.

What happens is that I persuade myself that this advice is really good (step 1) by dishing it out to others. But then I hear myself saying things to those people that I can't seem to do (or haven't done) myself (step 2).

Winners asked me a question via WhatsApp today. I said this:

When people get annoyed it's worth remembering that they are often annoyed at:

(1) themselves
(2) the situation

Plus, you get annoyed too; we all do. Does it change how you really feel about the person you're annoyed with? Don't take it personally.

He was gracious enough not to point out that 'taking it personally' is often my exact reaction to frustrated people.

So, does everybody live this close to hypocrisy?

In another Twitter exchange recently, I suggested that 'jobs are transient and life is so much bigger than the boxes we confine ourselves to,' at which point my friend pointed out that I had confined myself so much to mine that I was literally counting the hours I'd been there.

My only glimmer of hope, living two steps away from being a steaming hypocrite, is that it's hardly ever intentional, and in that regard, the etymology of the word is helping me out. I looked it up.

Hypo-krites meant a stage actor, a pretender or deceiver in Attic Greek. To hypokrinesthai was to play a part, quite deliberately disguising your true self in a cloak of artificial virtue.

If I say one thing and do another, it's not deliberate; it's usually because I'm also refreshing that advice for myself, and reminding myself that I need to do it too.

I still think it was good advice not to take frustration personally. I also think it's easy to be confined by our desks - and I am trying to do something about both of those things. You can have good ideas about how to get out of a hole, even if you're at the bottom of it, I suppose.

The problem, of course, is how all of this is perceived by others. A stage actor is a deceiver, if the audience genuinely believe that the drama is really happening.

And I am a hypocrite if I say one thing and continually do the opposite. Plus, the more I do that, the less you can trust me, even if it's not deliberate.

So, whether I'm two steps away from perceived hypocrisy or two steps away from actual deliberate hypokrisis, I don't want to be either.

Hopefully, my words will match up with my actions. If not, I'll do better or say less. And if I become frustratingly duplicitous, my advice would be: 'don't take it personally'. I'm still kind of learning, just like you.

IN WHICH I GET BEATEN UP

Today I went somewhere where I was repeatedly kicked, thwacked with baseball bats and smashed in the face by a football. My three assailants chased me across the grass, swiped me down and laughed as they grabbed me, all the while sticking in a few sharp-ended trainer-pokes along the way.

This is what it's like having nephews.

Meanwhile, my Dad and my sisters were talking conspiracy theories around the picnic tables. Everything from 'space-aliens-made-the-Nazca-lines, to delayed potty-training-tips-are-dished-out-by-Pampers-so-they-can-make-more-money'.

When I limped back eventually, they'd moved on to black holes - I don't know, something to do with the Vatican and NASA I guess. My Dad asked me what Hawking Radiation was again, then went back to my sister's theory that she saw Elvis working in a chip shop.

This for a seven year old's birthday party.

Mind you, he is a seven year old who got a sticker for explaining to the headteacher in detail what a pronoun was, so my Mum said.

A surge of pride swept through me for a few moments before it was quickly replaced by a surge of plastic light sabre whacking me in the back of the legs.

I never had brothers. This is 'bonding' apparently - brothers do this all the time. It's new to me; I had books, an ancient computer and dinosaur posters when I was their age, rather than play fights in the park.

I left at the optimum moment. Cake-fuelled hyperactivity was starting to edge into tiredness as the long September shadows fell across the golden grass. We were minutes away from at least one of them melting down. I made my excuses, got into my car and switched on the air conditioning and Classic FM.

There is nothing like an Italian aria or two, to soothe the aches of being beaten up by small children.

SUPER DRY

"You have a condition called blepharitis," said the optician, looking me right in the eyes, "It means the surfaces of your eyes are extremely sensitive and dry, just as you thought."

I reached for my glasses, unfolded them and then slotted them into place. The room snapped into focus.

There will be no contact lenses for me then. I must live inside this world of glass, bound by the fuzzy outline of the frames like a permanent visual reminder that I am stuck in a box.

I'll get over it. I walked through the rain, between the brightly lit shops and the coloured umbrellas. Everyone suddenly seemed very cool, even in the wet.

Not ever as cool though, as the people who appear on the prints on the wall at SpecSavers. These young, smiling models drape arms around each other and their perfect eyes beam unnaturally through their lens-free spectacle frames. 

There is no way they'd choose to wear glasses in real life when they look that that and are as happy as that.

I'm not sure anyone really would, when it comes down to it.

WOUND-UP BY TEA

I think my days of coming to Starbucks for my end-of-day wind-down might be coming to an end.

Today I was presented with an unwrapped Teavana tea bag and a cup of nearly hot water. Now I'm no tea-snob but I at least liked it when they pretended they'd put the tea bag in first.

It's not just a classic case of paying to make your own cup of tea - it's paying to make your own cup of tea in a way that you wouldn't dream of at home and won't enjoy, in a kind of cold, wooden waiting room with a bombastic soundtrack and the hacking coughs and sneezes of the general public.

Anyway, I'm supposed to be winding down, not getting wound up. At least I don't have to wash up the cup.

I mean I like my tea in a pot, with an optional biscuit and a little milk jug. I like pouring it out at just the right moment and seeing that gorgeous golden nectar cascading out of the spout and playfully splashing into the cup.

I like the aroma of Darjeeling or jasmine or orange pekoe floating up like scented candles, and I like that first delicate sip that slips down so mellifluously and beautifully, until every part of me is warmed and enchanted by the flavour and the blend.

Okay, maybe I am a tea-snob.

LEAFY GREENS

I just read an article about how certain foods can improve your eyesight.

Guess what. It's chips and doughnuts.

It's not. That was me joking.

No, Professor Barbur of City University, London, says it's 'leafy greens', and if you want to, you can read the whole thing here on the BBC News website.

It's always leafy greens. It's kale and it's rocket, or it's lettuce and it's cabbage - things that are really hard work to like, but are instinctively good for us. Sometimes it seems like we, as humans, are forced to choose between a long and healthy life of insipid flavour, and a short, fat one, enjoying tasty food while the sun shines. You can have one or the other. Is it delicious? Put it down and eat your greens, fatso. Yeah but they taste like seaweed, can't I just have a chip or a doughnut, just this once?

Not that I'm suggesting I want to live off chips and doughnuts.

Just in case anyone got the wrong message there: I do not want to live off chips and doughnuts.

I think the problem is that a lot of really lip-smackingly delicious food turned out to be moreish, so we ate more of it. Then some clever people worked out that the more moreish a foodstuff is, the more we eat of it and the more we'll pay for it. So they carried on filling those foods with more of the stuff that makes them moreish, and the profits came rolling in.

They processed it, and we all bought it. They made it cheaper and then they made it sweeter. As a result, moreish food became even more moreish and the gap between healthy and delicious got wider and wider. Now the gap is so large that insipid vegetables don't taste of anything, compared to the ultra-intense flavour of something tasty. And we're all hooked on the good stuff.

When I stop and think about it then, it occurs to me that the way I taste food might have been wholly influenced by large companies who have literally conditioned me into buying it from them.

And the sneakiest thing they've done is to stop us from seeing it. Clever advertising, cultural shifts and reprogrammed tastebuds have probably impeded our eyesight.

Better get munching those leafy greens.

CANINE ENCOUNTERS

Well I've been slobbered over by a dog. Lucky, lucky me. He just bounded over to the park bench, sniffed my phone and slavered my jeans in dog-saliva.

I'm in the park again, making the most of these earlier nights before the sun goes down. I seem to have coincided my visit tonight, with all the local dogs and their soppy owners.

"You're on his bench, that's what it is," said a lady carrying a tennis-ball-launcher over her shoulder. I took that as an apology, though the more I sit here thinking about it, the less I think it is one.

It feels like I'm in the middle of Pets Win Prizes. A German Shepherd (Kaiser! Kaiser!) is currently chasing a couple of Yorkshire Terriers round the bench in a classic game of Sniff That Other Dog's Bum. Meanwhile, a Jack Russell is burying himself in the long grass and can only be located by his vigorously wagging tail. A bulldog wearing a union flag neckerchief (of all things) is snorting like a smoker at a collie and the collie is snarling back while their families try to split them up.

The other owners are discussing vet bills, and something they are describing as 'misbehaviour', which most people would see as home-wrecking devastation on the scale of natural disasters. 

Another lady is clutching a plastic bag and wandering around sniffing the air as though she's lost something.

Man's best friend eh? Well I'll tell you what, I won't be getting one.

THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS

There are four of them, tall against the sky. Over the trees they tower, like statues, silhouettes in the late evening sunshine.

I look up. Four enormous, weather-worn faces look back at me, hair bouncing in the wind, eyes steely and determined, cracked lips unopened. Leather snaps as one tightens his grip on his staff. Another bears down on me from her lofty height, her face like rock, a stern outcrop of crags and furrows a mile above me. Her eyes are set back like glistening shards of jet, menacing and black against her shadowed face.

They have come to fight me, to silence and crush me. Four Giants, each an ancient foe, sent to press me to the ground until I can no longer hear myself.

Hopelessness carries his sword, Uselessness his awful staff. Loneliness shoulders that bow and a quiver of bristling arrows, while Lustfulness clutches her deadly potion.

I stand ready. I have no idea whether I will make it. I've fought some of these Four Giants before, on my own with little success, but never all at once. Never together. 

I am strong, but this team of unflinching warriors is new, combined, and waiting. Together they conspire to bring me down. When the order comes, when that ghastly trumpet echoes through the valley, they will rush me. Trees will crack like twiglets, the sky will grow dark and birds will spiral from their nests. The battle will begin with the cry of the Four and all the valley will awaken.

I will be ready. On that day I will be ready.

MORE LOCKERS, AND HOW I KNOW I'M NOT COOL

Oh mercy. I came across as very pretentious yesterday (reading it back). I like a puzzle. I'm tempted to leave it unresolved but I promised an answer.

See, this kind of thing is how I know I'm definitely not cool. Cool people would let it go and not go on about it. The bit of my head that likes knowledge and showing off about it though, sometimes takes over. Encyclopedia-Matt is a bore.

Just to recap then, Emmie set me a puzzle and I stayed up trying to solve it.

If you're interested, here's what I sent her...

--

Thank you for this maths puzzle. Engaged a part of my brain I don't use too often.

Here is why I think there are 31 open lockers:

Each locker is opened a certain number of times. It follows that if a locker is changed an even number of times then it will always finish shut, and if it is changed an odd number of times, it will be open at the end of the puzzle.

So, if you think about it from the lockers' perspective, all you have to do is figure out how many times each one has been changed.

The students are opening/closing the lockers in multiples of numbers. For example, Student 5 changes lockers 5,10,15, etc. Locker 15 has already been changed by Student 5 and Student 3, not to mention Student 1 (who opened them all). In total, locker 15 has been changed by 4 students, which means it finishes the puzzle closed (4 is an even number).

In fact, 1,3,5 and 15 are the factors of the number 15. These are the only whole numbers that multiply together to make 15. This is true for all the lockers: the students who touched a locker represent the factors of that locker number. So, if a locker number has an even number of factors (student interactions) then it finishes the puzzle closed.

As it turns out, most numbers have an even number of factors. After all, it's usually pairs of numbers that multiply together to produce them (6 for example has 4 factors: 6x1 and 3x2 so 1,2,3 and 6).

However there are certain numbers with an odd number of factors. These are numbers where a pair of multiplying factors are identical. For example, 9 has 3 factors: 9x1=9 and 3x3=9 so 1,3 and 9 are the factors of 9. Locker number 9 finishes the puzzle open.

16 also has an odd number of factors: (1,2,4,8 and 16).

These numbers are called square numbers. Square numbers are the only numbers with an odd number of factors. So all the lockers which are square numbers are also the only ones which have been touched an odd number of times and therefore are the only lockers which will finish the puzzle open.

To find out how many there are, all you have to do is find out how many square numbers there are between 1 and 1000, or the largest square number which is lower than the total number of lockers.

In this case, the largest square number is 961 which is 31 x 31. Hence there will be 31 open lockers at the end of the puzzle and 969 which are closed.

LOCKERS, MOTHS AND FLICKERING CANDLES

My friend Emmie set a puzzle the other day, in the full knowledge that I can't leave puzzles alone until I've solved them. It's one of the things I find most annoying about myself - like a moth and a flame, I dance around it while it taunts me, flickering away in its hypnotic mystery.

So last night, I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and I resolved myself to extinguishing the flame, solving the puzzle, and then forgetting about it so I could get a good night's sleep.

I solved it. In a moment I'm going to write out the problem, and then tomorrow I'll explain the answer. If you're also a fluttering moth with a penchant for puzzles, don't read the next post until you're squarely confident that you know. If on the other hand, you're not fussed by this kind of thing and you couldn't care less about this abstracted candle, then maybe you'll follow my logic and be grateful that I spared you the time thinking about it.

Here is the problem, as Emmie presented it:

There are 1000 lockers in a high school with 1000 students. The problem begins with the first student opening all 1000 lockers; next the second student closes lockers 2,4,6,8,10 and so on to locker 1000; the third student changes the state (opens lockers closed, closes lockers open) on lockers 3,6,9,12,15 and so on; the fourth student changes the state of lockers 4,8,12,16 and so on. This goes on until every student has had a turn. How many lockers will be open at the end?

This is the point where we lose some of you. Quite understandably you wonder who on Earth really cares about this weird school ritual and why it matters to you. You wonder what kind of establishment this is where students pass the wall of lockers one by one in such regular fashion, routinely opening and closing locker doors. You wonder why you're being forced to endure a headache by trying to imagine it, and it reminds you once again that you never cared about that silly gameshow with the goats, and you certainly didn't give a button about the quantum state of Schrödinger's hypothetical cat.

If you're a moth, like me, you'll already have begun to think about how to work out the answer. And that's the key with these things, it's all about the how. In one sense, the answer doesn't matter at all - it's all about the process of figuring it out, and maybe finding a rule that extends way beyond just 1000 lockers, way beyond a puzzle about odd students at Hypothetical High and way beyond what you thought was a tricky maths problem. It's a kind of Schrödinger's cat all of its own.

SORRENTO DIARIES: PART 4

The washing machine spins. It sounds a bit like a jet engine.

For a reason I can't remember I'm using Saturdays to look back on my holiday in Sorrento three years ago. I kept a diary then, and I thought it would be fun to pick up that little A5 red notebook and write out here, what I wrote there and then in the sunny Italian summer of 2013.

I appreciate that the result is a little worse than someone else's holiday snaps. So far I've left a phone charger in the Travelodge, flown to Naples, chilled out in the (possibly mafia-owned) hotel, and been ignored by Germans. You don't have to read what happened next of course, any more than I would make you sit through my holiday slideshow or a detailed description of walking uphill with sunburnt ankles. However, in this episode I go on about romance, and we get some rain...

--

September 9th, 2013

It's pretty easy to fall in love with Italy. I'm at the marina where a long walk has led me down another steep hill. I'm not quite ready to face climbing a steep hill so I'm chilling out with a cup of tea and a doughnut of the cioccolato persuasion.

Sorrento is perfectly Italian. It bustles with life, energy and vigour. There are shady side-streets lined with coloured walls of crumbling plaster, there are palm trees looming into the summer sky over picturesque squares of pigeons, park benches and pensioners. There are crazy taxis zipping along the Corso Italia, honking and gesticulating at pedestrians and there are expensive shops alongside hotels, pizzerias (I know, it should be pizzerie), bars, and stalls selling junk and Catholic paintings.

It has everything, this place: the blue sparkling bay, stretching lazily into the distance, the mad parking and the surprisingly romantic graffiti.

VOGLIO IL TUO CUORE MARIA G

IO TI AMO*

In England, I thought, graffiti is a little more vulgar. If you are going to deface somebody's property, break the law and make a bold gesture, much better to do it in a way that will make Maria G swoon with romance.

I'd like the romantic side of me to wake up a little, as it goes. I feel like it's such a part of me, I cannot allow the mistakes of the past to silence it any longer. When I was in Perugia, seventeen and full of some kind of unbelievable confidence, I loved a girl back home but there was no way I could tell her, and the thought of admitting it was terrifying. I was young, and I had no way of working it out. I wish I had known too, how embarrassingly that story would end a year later. Over the years, a recurring cycle of stories has led to a much older, much more careworn heart which is in need of some waking up, and I'm realising it in this most romantic of countries.

Perhaps it's a sign of something around the corner. Nothing happens for no reason, right?

4:15. Out in the sun, poolside again. I have very few cares or worries at the moment. I'm a little sunburned on my right ankle and the back of my neck but I am nonetheless, alright.

On the way back up the steps from the marina, I realised with a little smile that nobody within a thousand miles knows who I am. I don't know why that should appeal to me. Stress, difficulty, argument, trouble and disappointment all come through people - and here, out of everybody's grasp, I am free.

There are thick, black clouds rolling over the headland. Soon the sun will be eclipsed. I suspect before my usual 5:15 in-time, the air will be a little cooler. I'm going to pack up my stuff.

4:45. I came up to my room (201) and sat on the balcony. Slowly, silently, the immense black cloud rolled over Sorrento. I watched it, sitting out in the hot air. Over the trees, the cloud was thunderous, as though it was angry at the Mediterranean, gathering darkly at its shoreline, ready to strike. I wondered, and hoped, that the sky would start flashing and growling, or whether a single bolt of blinding light would loudly split the sky into two pieces.

It's no thunderstorm though, just a heavy cloud, pendulent with rain. Dark splodges appeared on my shirt and started pockmarking the cushion on the bench. Before too long, it was too wet to stay outdoors so I rushed in, sat on the bed with the door wide open and started writing.

It's stopped now. Just a shower I suppose, but the sun is still hidden behind a wall of grey cloud. There will be no sunset to see tonight.

Amazingly, the air is so warm, the terracotta tiles are already starting to dry. If English weather were like this, we'd be people of a different temperament.

9:15. I feel like I've been here forever. I've even fallen into routines: a bottle of water out on the terrace after the evening meal, a tea in the bar after that, trying to look cool and mysterious.

It seems people are getting to know each other. That's good for humanity, but a little depressing for shy loners like me. There's only one conclusion: I must exude a kind of leave-me-alone solitude. Or perhaps that is the default aura for people who sit in bars on their own, writing and drinking tea.

Well, I seem to be returning to my theme then - here on my own, yada yada yada. What a bore. This is definitely not the way to awaken poetry in my soul. I'm going to go out and sit on the terrace and enjoy the evening.

*Translation: I want your heart, Maria G. I love you. Now that's some romantic graffiti right there.

I DREAM ABOUT A CAR AND A WATCH

Yesterday I mentioned that I used to have dreams about going back to university, as though there was always something unfinished about it.

I don't want to over-analyse that, but there is definitely something in it.

Then, last night I had another of my recurring dreams - the kind I forget about until the next time I have it.

In the Loss of Control Dream, I'm always driving. Last night I had a black car for some reason, but it's sometimes an actual car I've owned, or perhaps one I used to own.

In the dream, I stop driving but somehow the car carries on. Sometimes I find myself in the back seat, watching the car drive itself, and sometimes I just get out of the car altogether and watch it roll down the road.

This time, I happily got out of the car and let it drive away. It indicated at the bottom of the road and turned left, then sped away out of sight.

I walked somewhere, I think it was a picnic with my family, and sat down on the grass. Then, in a panic I realised that I didn't have my car and didn't know where it was. So I tried using my watch to track it.

I was wearing a smart watch. I don't have a smart watch; I think they're a little pointless if you've already got a smartphone but there we are. My watch showed a tiny map and a blue dot moving farther and farther away. I scanned through the menus, looking for a button that would direct the car to come and find me, like a kind of Take Me Home button or something. There wasn't one. I panicked. Then I woke up.

So, what's all that about? Some latent fear of letting go of everything? Perhaps the opposite - perhaps I let go too easily.

Or perhaps (as I suspect) I just don't like driving very much and I cannot wait for driverless cars.

I can wait longer for a smart watch though.

KIND OF YEARNING

"So, any news on your future?" asked my Dad.

He does have a habit of asking peculiar questions, mostly out of the blue. I wasn't sure which bit of future he was talking about, so I just said, "Um, not really."

There is change in the air though. I thought about it on the way back from lunch. September has arrived, and with it, the long morning shadows, the cloud-scattered, bright blue skies, and the autumnal breeze.

A long time ago, September brought a kind of yearning with it. I'd have dreams that I was still at university, with one final year to go. I'd imagine myself packing all my things into a mini metro and bolting down the motorway to Bath, where everything was different and simpler.

I don't have those dreams anymore. At least I haven't had them for a while. I do sense change though, and this year it's stronger than it has been. There is a kind of yearning, still there, bubbling away in me.

It's a yearning for the unknown, I think - for an adventure that's bigger than me and bigger than all I can imagine. It's mountains and waterfalls and rocky paths and silent meadows. It's people I'm yet to meet, places I haven't thought about and feelings I haven't considered.

A while ago, someone described me as 'settled' and I couldn't argue with the facts. In a sense, I am - job, house, life... but in other ways, I'm clearly not - this inner pang won't allow it.

What any of this means, I don't know. I'm a Settler remember, rather than a Pioneer. But there is an unchainable desire for adventure in me, and I don't think I can ignore it.

THREE MEN ON A BOAT

I looked at Rory.

"You could totally do that," I said, switching my eyes back to the young singer songwriter strumming away at his guitar. Rich agreed and Rory looked thoughtful.

We were at a Sofar Sounds gig, on an open-top barge next to a fancy restaurant on the canal. Fairy lights hung across the windows and above, the open sky was thick with sunset clouds.

The idea of Sofar Sounds is that you don't know who's playing beforehand; you register, turn up and enjoy the music. Or, you don't, I suppose but it's usually varied enough. Rory was loving it - it would be exactly the kind of thing he could perform at.

The young singer songwriter was the first act and was almost the epitome of every other young singer songwriter: checkered shirt, skinny jeans, converse, old guitar, cool hair, vocals like the guy from the Arctic Monkeys, mumbling inaudibly between songs and then belting out lyrics about crazy cat-ladies and not being able to believe his girlfriend was really his girlfriend... you know the kind of thing. He sang six songs, including one about how everyone is writing a novel, which made me chuckle from behind a pint glass.

The second act took using-a-loop-pedal to a whole new level. Loop pedals allow you to record a pattern and then layer other stuff over the top of it, live and in the room. This guy layered cahon, bass, flute, sax, acoustic and his vocals into a swirling orchestra of folky sounds. We were captivated. Especially Rory; Rory loves a loop pedal.

"I tend to listen to the melody rather than the lyrics," said Rich, thoughtfully, afterwards. I said I was a lyrics-guy, which is true. I didn't point out that one of the songs was clearly about smoking pot.

The third act was a group of young guys with guitars.

"Yeah, apologies in advance for the language," said the main singer, "But it is actually us, so..."

The crowd laughed. Then the band launched into an upbeat song with some unmistakable... expletives. I was transfixed by the fact that all four of them resembled people I know, who, if they ever did form a band would make a hilarious combination.

As it was, these guys borrowed some ideas from Tim Minchin (they sang a song about a blow up doll), Axis of Awesome ('this is just the bit before the chorus, you can all ignore this...') and the Barenaked Ladies (by singing complex lyrics quickly in almost exactly the same way Steven Page does). It wasn't quite original but it had the appearance of it, and nobody on the barge seemed to mind.

"Where's Rory?" I asked at the end.

"I think he's gone off to talk to the organisers about performing," said Rich.

"He could totally do that," I said.