CLOSE TO BRAVE

I am not right in the head. I don't know whether it is just the Second Half of September; it could be. But I'm feeling awful.

I asked Alastair today to recommend somewhere to go on silent retreat for a few days. Right now, it feels like a few months would do though - just to silence all this wretched noise and buzz and incessant swirling pressure. Alastair knows about that kind of thing, and he has a guidebook that might help me find somewhere.

I'm really tired. I'm really tired of being scared and vulnerable and cold, in a world that shuts out all the warmth. I'm tired of being stalked by anxiety, creeping through the shadows and pulling me down every time I try to do something close to brave.

Close to brave. I've always been there, just the wrong side of it. I can't swim because of it - my brain won't let me, and I have a lifetime's worth of thought whispering about how pathetic that is. Yet, seemingly, in those rare moments in teeth-grit and abandoned determination... I sink, and then the side seems safe again.

See. Not right in the head. Odd, scared and uncomfortable in every single aspect of my aching years.

I'll be alright though. It'll pass and I'll get back to my usual self. Then we'll do some poetry and some time travel and some fun all over again. I hope.

THE FLAT-EARTHER

I'm going to give B.o.B the benefit of the doubt I think. It's almost certainly a publicity stunt.

Plus, I don't know much about hip-hop, so I've looked him up.

Robert is 28. He had a little bit of success a few years ago it seems, but it's likely that his career would never have pushed him to the full Snoop. But you can't fault Bob's ambition for notoriety.

It must have been that exact ambition that led him to the world of conspiracy theories. My view is, in response to a good old conspiracy theory, you can do one of two things:

You can go:

"Oooh," in wide-eyed wonder and let yourself believe the 'compelling' evidence for 9/11 being an inside job, the Moon Landings being faked, and Elvis working in the local chip shop.

Or you can go:

"Hang on," and use your rational brain to play devil's advocate against your childish need to prove something that hardly anybody serious believes.

If you're astute there, you might just have spotted me letting the cat out of the bag about which side of the fence I'm on.

Anyway, B.o.B is making news today because he's crowd-funding for enough cash to launch a fleet of satellites which prove once and for all that the Earth is flat.

His theory is that NASA staff are actually preventing people from falling off the edge.

"There's no curve!" cry the flat-earthers. "Stand somewhere high! Where's the curve?"

Now, as I say, it's almost certainly a publicity stunt, but it is interesting.

So here are a few experiments I reckon Bobby could do to make his life a bit easier without splashing out on disappointingly-expensive geosynchronous orbital equipment.

1. Stand somewhere higher

This one's free, Robert. Find a cliff by the sea and look really carefully at the horizon. Try to prove that it's a flat-line. Take a ruler if you like.

By the way, Aristotle tried it thousands of years before you. He saw ships disappearing hull first over the horizon. Have a think about that.

2. Keep a look out for the next lunar eclipse

It's a good one this. Take a look at the shadow of the Earth on the moon when it passes in front of it. What causes that?

3. Ask yourself why

If the Earth is flat, Bob, presumably we're on the top of it. Why would NASA keep the edge a big secret? What's to gain? What's underneath? Surely that would mean that it's really wacky to believe that the Earth is a sphere (or an oblate spheroid, actually). Why?

4. Look at some photographs

Now you'll say they're photoshopped of course. But I remember the parachute jump of Felix Baumgartner - a man who had no need to prove it either way, and I'm pretty sure the continuous video-feed showed him spin out of his capsule past a remarkably curvy-looking Earth.

5. Go on a round-the-world-cruise

Alright. Maybe all the pilots, all the airlines and all the ships are all in on it. Maybe there are millions of people involved in crossing the seas and the clouds every day with this phenomenal secret churning uncomfortably in their heads. Maybe they and their families, their friends and their colleagues are all brilliant secret-keepers who tremble at the visit of the Men in Black or the Illuminati if they accidentally reveal the true nature of the great disc. Maybe. But go on. Have an adventure. See for yourself. You can afford it.

But maybe poor old B.o.B can't afford it. Maybe that's what this is all about - jump-starting a hip-hop career with lunatic theories to get himself out there.

If so, I probably ought not to talk about him at all - it only fuels the flames, like pointing out the attention-seeking columnist who is deliberately offensive, or even reacting to the kid who eats crisps off the playground floor. Best just to ignore it isn't it really? Maybe move on and do something... worthwhile...

... eh Bob.

LATE NIGHT GOLDEN ARCHES

I should point out that I don't think emus are marsupials either. As my post-it and I are now clear about, marsupials are mammals.

Emus are endemic to Australia though, aren't they? And they're definitely not ostriches. It's that birds are not marsupials.

Glad that's cleared up. I wouldn't want anyone thinking I was sticking my head in the sand like a kangaroo.

So let's hear no more about it.

Meanwhile, Emmie (who's on Skype from Chester of all places) and I, managed to clear up the difference between a mandolin (musical instrument or potato slicer in the UK) and a mandoline (the same potato slicer in the USA).

"Clearly neither one of us have anything pressing to do this morning… " she typed.

I wouldn't say pressing. Some of the Japanese installation guides were misaligned and the text was bunched up against the edge of the page. I figured it out.

There's not a lot else going on. I was feeling a bit low last night so I went for a night-time drive to cheer myself up.

I ended up in McDonald's with a tea and a chocolate doughnut at a quarter to midnight. Talk about bleak. Though it might explain why I'm so sleepy today.

Some builders were swilling coffees in cardboard cups, while they sat in their luminous trousers and t-shirts. Behind the brightly lit tills, the late-shifters, the young Maccy-D elves who'd drawn this week's short-straw, mulled and chatted, until an even younger manager in a tired white shirt and grey tie, told them to get on with something useful.

It was tough to see what might be 'useful' at that time of night.

One of the builders scratched a stubbly chin and asked his mate to chuck him a sugar. A little white packet of sugar flew through the air and fell in his cup with a plop. They all laughed in that tired half-hearted way and went back to discussing whatever it is that builders discuss. One of the elves chuckled into her mop.

I looked around. Nobody in that empty plastic room was there directly out of choice. I stirred my tea and watched the milk spin in the cup.

I guess I was.

So that didn't exactly help me feel any less depressed. I went home, went to sleep, got up, went to work, figured out how to align Japanese text on the page, and googled dictionaries. What a life.

In fact, it took me until lunchtime today to even start to feel any better.

Thankfully, my friend Paul was available for lunch - he has a unique ability to cheer me up. These days we grab a sandwich from the Sainsbury's cafe.

I'll be honest though, I was probably just as thankful that I didn't have to go back to the golden arches.

FLIGHTLESS BIRDS

The green dye in the lake has turned rusty brown. It looks like a toxic spill through the middle of the park.

Which, I suppose, it actually is - though the people who run the park are reassuring us that the ducks will be absolutely fine.

It's not just the roof-engineers though, who might have had an intelligence-blip. I just asked Erica if ostriches were marsupials.

I probably won't live this one down.

It came about because I suddenly found myself wondering whether the word 'ostrich' was related to 'autrichien' or maybe 'österreichisch' - the French and German words for 'Austrian' respectively. Don't mock me; it's just the way my brain works. So I looked it up, and it turns out that it has nothing to do with it, and the word 'ostrich' came from a Greek word for 'big sparrow'...

Of course it did. But I got confused because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how the Greeks would have come up with a word for ostriches...

"That's peculiar," I said.

"What?" replied Erica.

"Well, how could the Ancient Greeks have a word for ostriches before they were discovered?"

"Er..."

"Wait!" I said, thinking. And then I suddenly asked:

"Are ostriches marsupials?"

I wonder sometimes whether I might be a bit stupid. To not realise that marsupials are mammals seems like a bit of a primary-school error on its own, but to then also confuse ostriches with emus! I shook my head in shame.

Ostriches are African. It turns out that they are struthioniformes just like emus, kiwis and the South American rhea - the flightless bird club. They also prance around in The Lion King don't they - which is notably not set in the Australian outback.

I've written a post-it-of-shame in capital letters: "MARSUPIALS ARE MAMMALS" and I've stuck it to my monitor to remind me... I mean the pouch ought to be a giveaway... that I don't know everything.

Meanwhile the ducks outside seem a little reticent to go in the water. They're wobbling about on the grass and enjoying the cool clear rain that's safe and familiar.

I don't blame them.

THE SECOND HALF OF SEPTEMBER

I'm in a really weird way at the moment. I wrote four different blogs and deleted them all today.

One was about a debate I had with a colleague about how to mathematically ensure that a Secret Santa is random. I have no idea why that came up, in September.

Another was about the green dye that's polluting the lake. The story is that the owners of the business park were testing the roof for leaks, and the bright green chemical they were using got washed through the guttering and into the lake. The water is bright green.

The third was a dangerous question that popped into my head. How do you tell a girl (platonically) that she's beautiful... without it being totally creepy or weird? The answer is, of course, single gents, that it can't be done... unless she knows you well enough to feel safe. And even then... Note - this was hypothetical. I didn't actually try it! At least, not today.

Then the fourth, which sparked the third of course, was about the photograph I found in my drawer, that sent me and my fragile emotions spinning fifteen years into the past.

I actually got as far as publishing that one. Then I took it down again because it failed the THINK test.

So, all this maths, memory, pollution and awkwardness, has left me feeling quite odd this afternoon. In hindsight I think it might be the Second-Half-Of-September, the season when I predictably fall into melancholy, year after year. Tickety tock.

I can't be doing with intense maths about something that doesn't matter. I can't cope with seeing the ugliness of green clouds of toxic green dye billowing through the clear water, and then with feeling so helpless about the world. I can't ask that question or say that thing, and I absolutely can't afford to be hijacked by the past.

So what's to be done about this Second-Half-Of-September? Ride through it? Cheer up somehow? Buy a light box? Stock up on the old Vitamin D?

Well back to the old PQT list for starters I guess. What am I Thankful for? What would I like to see?

"Do those swans look kind of pink to you, against the green?" I asked my colleague on the bank.

"I think you see things a bit differently," she said.

QUANDO IL CIELO

Quando Il Cielo

Quando il cielo é bello e blu
Io pensero per sognare, e poi
Dove il sole brillante com tu
Vorrei ricordere noi

AEROPLANES ARE MAGIC

I think I've decided that aeroplanes must be magic.

They weigh hundreds of tons, they carry truckloads of heavy people and their enormous luggage, and yet, somehow, they speed along that runway and then manage to angle themselves into the actual air... where they float above the clouds for a while, until gently descending and rumbling to a stop, on the concrete of somewhere else.

Now I know, there's the thing called the Bernoulli Effect. Oh and yes, there are dirty great engines which produce thrust, and uplift (and carbon dioxide) while we sail over the clouds with our gins-and-tonics. But still - it's amazing isn't it? What's more, I don't even think that sort-of knowing how they work (as I clearly don't) reduces the wonder of being on one, or watching one in action! If anything, I think it actually enhances it.

This, for me, is why science and engineering are cool things to be interested in. Some things are wonderful because they are a mystery. Other things are wonderful because they're not. But the journey of uncovering a mystery can actually be a wonderful thing too, as can the adventure of designing and building something to solve a problem, based on the principles you've learned.

Apparently the Wright Brothers' flight in 1903 was a shorter distance than the wing span of a Boeing-747. When they kicked off aviation with their flying bicycle, I wonder if they had any idea where that little bit of mechanical magic would lead?

OVER THE IRISH SEA

I'm on the plane home. The setting sun twinkles through the lines of cloud and the aeroplane wing flashes boldly at the oncoming darkness. Time to reflect.

It has been a splendid trip by all measures. After the party rolled on last night, this morning I woke up with the sun creeping through the thick curtains, and I was taken by a sudden sense of hope and optimism.

The sky was cloudlessly blue. As I packed for the journey home, I started thinking about how I was feeling. Curious optimism sums it up, I reckon: that sense of hopefulness in the face of anything, that's at the heart of what it means to be Irish. Whether they long for freedom from oppression and tyranny, whether they sail West for a life in the new world, or whether they simply put an arm around each other to commiserate the loss of a football match, it flows as deep as the water of the Liffey itself. And weirdly, it seemed to be rubbing off on me today.

Before I came, lots of people asked me what I would be doing here. The majority suggested I should visit the Guinness Storehouse. I told the majority that I think Guinness tastes like shoe-polish and I didn't really want to wander around a factory for half a day of my holiday. It may as well be Brasso or Mr Muscle, I said; fine, but not really the kind of thing you need a sample of at the end of the tour.

However, one thing I did want to do, was to visit the old library in Trinity College and see the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is a thousand-year-old manuscript (800 AD): the four gospels, exquisitely decorated and scribed by medieval monks. It's possibly Ireland's greatest medieval artefact and any Dublin guidebook will certainly recommend a visit. I really did want to go.

I was disappointed on Saturday. The queue was about a quarter of a mile long, so I hummed to myself and went off to do other things. Then I popped in to the college grounds on Sunday. The entrance to the library is behind the main courtyard.

Same story, a long, snaking queue. I didn't mention it yesterday because I had already resigned myself to not getting in at all this weekend.

So this morning, I was heavy-hearted to see the Trinity College courtyard packed with thousands of people. It turned out to be Freshers' Fair - a chance for all the new students to sign up to whichever societies they could meet attractive people in. I mingled my way through the sea of young people, trying to remember if I'd done something similar at Bath University all those years ago, and I turned the corner, expecting to see another leviathan queue of American, Japanese and German t.... and there was nobody there!

I reckon that was some sort of miracle.

So, I went in, paid my 13 euros and wandered straight into the exhibit! It was amazing! I couldn't take any photos (for obvious reasons) but to be face-to-face with something that old, and that sumptuously beautiful, was every bit the experience I had hoped it would be.

Then there's the long room of the library. You might have seen it as a backdrop in one of Microsoft's display themes. And it is as grand as it looks. Plus, when you walk in, the smell of a million old books does all sorts of things to you. I had shivers down my spine and an uncontrollable smile. I felt enormously blessed to be there, and that curious optimism I had felt at the start of the day, nearly had me dancing through the sunlit streets.

A city of two halves, I had said. Certainly. Almost a trip of two halves too; not a drop of rain today over the fair cobbled streets and walkways. And it's all so much nicer when the sun shines.

I did a walking tour this afternoon, learning ever more detail about the bullet holes in the GPO and in the statue of Daniel O'Connell. Then, as the warm afternoon sun cast long shadows over the tramlines, I caught the 747 bus that brought me back to the airport, on a journey that led me here, to seat 20A on flight FR118.

At the end of Cardiff, I remember asking myself whether I would go back. Cardiff had seemed young and confused, and I had had an ear infection. I voted no, not yet, to the Welsh capital. And certainly not on my own. It's a good question though. Would I go back?

Edinburgh, yes in a heartbeat, there's so much more to see. London and Belfast I'll let you know about, but Dublin, absolutely. It does have that hopeful feel about it, and I really love that.

I really like the idea of going home, back to England, with a quiet sense of curious optimism, all the way from over the Irish Sea.

That and a box of whiskey-fudge.

PARTIES, PADLOCKS, PAINTINGS AND PEACE

I feel like starting backwards tonight. I'm in the hotel lounge listening to the sound of a raucous Irish sing-a-long. There can be no doubt which country I'm in: it's late on Sunday night. In England right now, everything has already wound down, ready for Monday morning. Last orders would have been almost an hour ago in The Swan or The Cunning Man and sensible old work will have filled most people's bedtime thoughts.

In Ireland, it's 11pm and the party literally seems to be stretching out to the small hours. And everyone is loving it, from the sound of it.

They also seem to enjoy shouting in the street for some reason. Perhaps I should chalk it up to passion? I suspect it is a lack of inhibition which is not entirely non-liquid-based.

"Show him the line, show him the line!" bustled a man in a football shirt in the Temple Bar area. I had stopped to pick up some wi-fi outside Costa on my way back from dinner. His pal threw his arms wide and started running into me as though I were on the opposing team. I thought I was about to be clotheslined.

"I see the line, thank you," I said in just about as English a way as possible. The pair of them stumbled off up the cobbles, cackling to themselves. I slipped my phone back into my pocket and thought about how terrified I'd probably have been if that had happened in London. But this is a different world. It's actually friendly, and even in the midst of all that usual silliness, full of a kind of irrepressible joy.

There was some big Gaelic football match on today. I think I gleaned from the sea of shirts in Parnell Street, that it had been hotly contested between the blue team and the green team.

"Ah Mayo! Your team are losers!" sang a couple of girls as they danced around two strangers in green. I couldn't see the boys' faces, because I was walking behind them. The girls in blue though, burst out laughing, and were suddenly gone.

"Ah pay no attention to them," said a voice coming alongside. A young man in a blue Dublin shirt patted the shoulder of the nearest green and began to explain how Mayo could hold their heads up and had been unlucky but deserved a lot more. I shook my head in wonder, thinking about what happens where I come from.

I crossed the Ha'penny Bridge. It's so-called because it used to cost a half-penny to get over it. A story goes that two enterprising men once asked the toll-keeper whether there was a charge for baggage. When they were told that there wasn't, one of them jumped on the back of the other and was carried across. No such toll today.

What there are though, are hundreds of padlocks bolted to the cast iron railings. I've seen this tradition before. You probably have too - it's a symbol of unbreakable love: only the holders of the keys can remove the padlock. A large number of them had names and initials inscribed on them. JJ loves VMS, Bill and Coleen are in 'love forever' and many others have chained their hearts to an old bridge.

I didn't want to by cynical but I did wonder how many had lost their keys. Each padlock of course, represents a story all of its own.

I ate tonight in an Italian restaurant called Pinocchio's. They run a cooking school there so I thought that would be a good indicator. I wasn't wrong - I had a pizza that could have come from Naples itself, and a cheesecake that was so good I couldn't finish it.

That is one thing about Dublin: there is great food everywhere - you could stay here for a month and not discover all the curious, quirky little restaurants hidden away, as well as some of the more prominent venues.

-

I think I've also figured out how the traffic light system works. If the little man is red, you can cross the road, provided the lights aren't beeping. If the lights are making a sort of quacking noise, it's best to stay put. When they go green for pedestrians, they make a sort of swooshing sound. That's a good time to cross. Oh and if all that fails, just ignore it all anyway and hope for the best.

It's quite possible that bit of knowledge saved my life today. Nice.

What was nice though earlier was that the sun came out! Everything is better when the sun shines. The grass almost glows green - it's not hyperbole, it is as green as legend would have you believe outside St Patrick's Cathedral. I sat there for a while reading The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in the peaceful gardens. The sun was warm, the sky was blue, the clouds were fluffy and white - the trees were almost singing.

The leaves seemed to glimmer in that translucent way they do in early Autumn. It was quite lovely. And given the Irish weather's ability to start raining without you noticing, the sunshine was really welcome.

There was a real peace about this place. Perhaps fifteen hundred years of faithful people praying had left a mark.

Perhaps it was just arranged really nicely. Either way, while the sun revelled in the spaces between the clouds, I buttered the rolls I'd saved from breakfast and capered along with Homes and Watson, solving a case of stolen examination papers in Oxford.

I slipped the Tacky Tartan Umbrella into my rucksack and headed for Dublin Castle. There had been a castle on the site since Norman times, presumably rising up in an imposing fashion above the south side of the river. I say presumably, because in the Eighteenth Century, the whole thing was burned to the ground in an accidental fire. Only the medieval round tower remains - and what was rebuilt is a sort of courtyard of remarkably French-looking buildings and not really a 'castle' at all.

It was here that the British ruled for centuries. We Brits seem to have reacted to Ireland's growing need for freedom a hundred years ago, with a sort-of-turning the screw response. We did that a lot - one of the colonies got uppity, we raised their taxes, or worse, went in with guns and redcoats. Disaster followed. Rule Britannia eh? The tighter we turned, the more the mood changed, particularly in Ireland. In the generation before 1916, it's thought that most Irish people were comfortable with Home Rule. Yet by the time 1918 came around and the Easter rebels had been brutally executed, Sinn Fein won the election with a landslide and the fire of independence which had been lit in O'Connell Street ... became the first flickers of the Republic of Ireland. It's quite remarkable really.

Just around the corner from my hotel is the Garden of Remembrance, which silently and sombrely commemorates that key moment in British and Irish history. There is a plaque there, written in Gaelic, French and English, which you can see in this photograph. It made me think a lot about church, about vision and about leaving a legacy. I raised an eyebrow at the thought of 'melting the snow of lethargy'. 

And that was really it for today! I did also visit the Hugh Lane Gallery, and I was pleasantly surprised to find one of my favourite paintings there, waiting for me. I couldn't quite believe it was the real thing, but there it was in all its colour: Renoir's Les Parapluies, shared with the National Gallery in London, which is where I had last seen it. It made me smile.

Not least because it features a far better selection of umbrellas than I have, even with the Tacky Tartan, and the Snapped-in-half golf umbrella I got from Sports Direct.

A CITY OF TWO HALVES

Step count: 24,751 for today. That's a lot of steps. According to my phone it's about 15.5km of walking. It feels like it too; I'm happily exhausted after a day exploring Dublin.

I started it, questioning whether I really count as a morning person. I blame the noisy hotel breakfast. I had squeezed in behind a wobbly table and a Romanian girl in an apron, already rushed off her feet, placed a shiny teapot and a cup in front of me. My head was spinning while I poured it. Sure, at 9pm there's something to be said for that lively buzz of restaurant chatter - it adds energy and life and fun. It is altogether the wrong atmosphere for breakfast though, isn't it? I got up to get some toast and accidentally knocked the wobbly table, sending my teacup sloshing weak tea into the saucer. I concluded that I get grumpy a lot easier, earlier.

Nothing that can't be overcome by history, culture, art and wonder though! So with high hopes, I got ready, left my room key at reception and climbed onto the top deck of an open top bus.

This is now my established routine. See everything first, get a feel for the city, then decide what to explore in more detail. For 19 euros, I was driven everywhere: from the Guiness Storehouse, to the pub where James Joyce met Nora Barnacle; from the Ha'penny Bridge to Trinity College, and back again. I saw Oscar Wilde, lounging in a park, I learned about the triple-distillation of whiskey, I found out that the Duke of Wellington was Irish and I saw the bullet holes in the O'Connell monument, still there from the Easter Rising of 1916.

There's no doubt at all that this is a proud city, fiercely Irish and free. It's hard to imagine that it has only been independent for a century, as it feels like it carries a thousand years more history with it. There's a quiet nobility about that, in spite of the fact that all of Ireland was part of the UK until 1922.

My jaw dropped open as the bus pulled past St Patrick's Cathedral. The tour guide mentioned that it's been there in one form or another since the year 450. Everything runs deep in Dublin, and you can feel it in the stones.

In fact, I really did feel it in the stones by Kilmainham Gaol. A chill ran down my spine at one particular point, shortly before I found out that we were at Gallows Hill, the place where executions were carried out.

I visited the National Gallery of Ireland after the trip around the city. This is another great part of the routine - getting a flavour of a place through its collection of fine art. I didn't plan it this way - it's just turned out to be a tradition. Plus these places tend to be free, and that, you'll admit, is never unappealing.

Joseph was always talking about carpentry, it seemed.

The National Gallery is remarkable, not only for a couple of Picassos and a Rembrandt, but also because of the exquisite decor. One room, a vast expanse of portraits and busts was clearly a ball room on any other day. Two grand sweeping staircases swept past a covered piano, and four glittering chandeliers hung above the parquet floor. I actually felt like dancing, and for me, that is a rarity. Nonetheless, a kind of Straussian waltz was in my head as I imagined a small ensemble of finely-dressed Dubliners gracefully spinning in elegant 3/4 time.

"You're not going to believe it. That guy over
 there is actually wearing clothes."

There is the art of course. As you might expect, there are portraits of famous Irish people through the years, including the likes of Eamon De Valera, Gay Byrne and Graham Norton. There's also a fascinating window into Irish history and personality. There were the pictures that the Brits suppressed when it suited them - Donnybrook Fayre and simple Irish scenes of wartime normality. There were landscapes and allegorical pictures, and wonderfully drawn faces from the past looking straight out of the canvas and right at me. There is something so personal about a painting.

Plus of course, there was the usual collection of improbable Biblical scenes - Joseph looking stern while Benjamin opens a sack with a gold cup in it... in the woods, you know, the woods that Egypt is famous for... the white baby Jesus blessing some shepherds from his mother's lap... and of course, the fishermen hauling in the nets on what looked to me suspiciously like the Antrim coast. That kind of thing.

"Now boys, you'll need to remember
that secret handshake when you're older."

When I emerged from the National Gallery, it was raining. Again. It seems the rain in Dublin, and maybe the entirety of this verdant isle, falls straight down. There's no sideways about it - it just tumbles out of the sky as though by design.

"Ah no bother," I said to myself in a faux Irish accent. Now I'm a seasoned traveller of course and I came to Ireland well-prepared for the rain. I unzipped my rucksack and pulled out my mac-in-a-bag. It's a rain-mac that fits nicely into a small waterproof bag. It's perfect for hiking and journeying. I pulled it open, feeling smug.

The smugness was short-lived though: it turned out to be a pair of waterproof trousers. There's not a lot of point keeping the bottom half of you dry and toasty, when the top half of you is still wearing a t-shirt. I had clearly packed the wrong thing, leaving my mac-in-a-bag back in the UK.

I don't want to bore you with my attempts to solve that particular problem. Let's just say that for the third time in three weeks I bought a cheap umbrella, that in camping shops, macs-in-a-bag are 35 euros, and that for the rest of the day I've been walking around under a tartan monstrosity with an orange handle.

Dublin to me, feels like a city of two halves. Like London I suppose, it is divided into North and South by the river that runs through it. Today I ended up using the river as a bit of a benchmark to find my way around - when in the South, I followed the compass North (to get back to my hotel for example) and then when in the North, I headed South across the Liffey, for Trinity College, Temple Bar and the museums. There is definitely a lot more going on in the South. In a way, this makes Dublin feel like Edinburgh - although of course Edinburgh has no river, just that gorgeous glacial valley of park and trees. A series of exquisitely different bridges connect Dubliners from one side to the other. And that in itself, has the added advantage of making Dublin shimmer at night, whichever way you look at it - the reflections and the illuminated buildings make this city quite beautiful.

Another part of the city-break routine is definitely about being more adventurous with food. After getting back to the hotel and drying off, I had a sleep and then headed out for dinner. I was heading for Kathmandu Kitchen, a Nepalese restaurant of high renown. Of course, so was everyone else and so Kathmandu Kitchen, along with Monty's Nepalese Palace round the corner was already fully booked and steaming with hungry diners.

There are moments on these city breaks when I wonder how well I'd get on, if I were with another person in this situation. Hunger is singularly good at warping moods, and as I wheeled from restaurant to restaurant, looking for something suitable, it did start occurring to me that this process would be horribly frustrating for a companion. I nipped into a place called 'Crackbird'. The din was worse than the hotel breakfast. I hopped across the road to Iskanders - it had all the atmosphere of a chicken shed. I have no idea how I would explain why that won't do to a very hungry travelling companion. Thankfully, on this occasion, I didn't have to. It is worth thinking about though.

Eventually, I found myself in Kostas Greek and Mediterranean Restaurant, which I thought was suspiciously empty. I don't know why. I cautiously ordered a dish I'd never heard of, and moments later, the waiter brought out a square plate with a large bundle of aluminium foil on it. At first I wondered whether I'd accidentally ordered a bonfire-baked-potato. But I guessed that that's not classically Mediterranean.

 "Enjoy!" he said, smiling at the present in front of me. I unwrapped it and was greeted by lamb kleftico, an awesome stew of flavoured lamb and garlic and potato and wonder. A glass of Pinot Grigio, a chocolate cake and a final cup of tea and I was content enough to slip into my jacket, pop open my 4-euro tartan umbrella and stride back, across the river, through the shiny streets of Dublin to the hotel.

And somehow, all that took 24,751 steps. All good ones though.

THE PRESIDENT, AND PLASTIC JESUS

I stood at the top of the movable steps, blinking out of the plane and straight into the bright sunlight. The wind whipped around me for a moment, and I felt as though I should be waving like a US President.

I didn't do that.

It was Irish wind, that. We had flown for an hour across the turquoise sea, across the patchwork fields of Southern England and the glistening Severn Estuary. Tiny cars, factories, houses and towns had glinted beneath the wispy clouds as the Boeing 737-800 had rumbled above. Finally, the plane had screamed to a halt on the roaring runway, the seatbelt sign had bing-bonged off and a crowd of Irish people and I, had filed out into the sunlight at the top of the steps.

This is my third capital city break so far: Dublin, the great shining city on the Liffey. It's not like Cardiff or Edinburgh, the two I've done already. I know you'll find this hard to believe but it didn't really compute until I arrived here - that this is actually a foreign country! I had always said I wanted to visit the UK's capital cities; for some reason, Dublin was also always part of the plan. In my mind it's part of us, and yet it so clearly isn't - a paradox which I think might run through the heart of it this weekend. And so anyway, I am here in this weird, familiar, strange yet homely city.

I descended the steps along with everyone else (imagining myself shaking hands with a suited dignitary whom I suspect would have ushered me towards a bank of imaginary microphones). Then anonymously, I followed everyone else into the terminal, without a word.

Moments later, I was through immigration, folding away my passport and suddenly given the freedom of Ireland. And yet, as the terminal doors swung open, I had to check that I hadn't accidentally wandered into a parallel universe. On this side of the terminal, the side with buses and taxis (instead of gigantic aeroplanes and moving staircases), a shower of rain was just fizzling out, and the concrete was wet with shiny puddles as though it had been raining all day!

Welcome to Ireland! said a massive sign. Indeed.

-

"This is Cathal Brugha!" called the bus driver, back down the bus in a lilting Dublin accent. I leapt to my feet and pushed the button. A Japanese couple did the same, both slightly disappointed that I'd reacted faster. My bag bounced on my back as I stumbled up towards the dusty double-doors. It was rather like being on a bus in the 1990s.

The doors hissed open and I thanked the driver and leapt out, marching confidently in the direction I thought was right.

I had to stop after only a few paces...

There, arms outstretched and with beatific smile upon his little face, was Plastic Jesus, looking straight at me from the inside of a Perspex box. It looked for all the world like he was trapped in there, as though he'd wandered in to make a phone call and couldn't get out - presumably for theological reasons.

Apparently he was there on the pavement, to 'bless our taxi drivers' which I think must absolutely be true, because I've heard taxi drivers often calling out his name in times of great need and trouble, especially amidst the substandard driving skills of (what appears to be) every other road user. They could use a blessing, those taxi drivers.

So could have I, looking for my hotel. The Irish road-naming system seems to be that every other street gets a road-sign and you'll just have to work out the rest yourself. The sky went weird and green and I felt a few spots in the air, so I found a map, found the road I thought I was looking for on it, and trusted my famous navigation skills. About half-an-hour later, I was accidentally back at Plastic Jesus, who grinned and was no help at all. I'm pretty sure he was just trying to get me to take a taxi.

So, here I am then. I don't know much about Dublin yet. Hopefully it will unfold a bit more tomorrow. So far, I'd say it's genteel, but not as genteel as Edinburgh; it's thrusting and dynamic in some places, but without the youthful ambition of Cardiff. It seems to have its fair-share of grot and sparkle like any major city. There are fabulous old Georgian fanlight windows, there are kebab shops with neon signs. There are porches and pillars and tall, square windows; there are boarded-up fronts and demolition sites. But maybe I'm being unfair so far. 

One thing is for sure though: I'm glad I brought my raincoat.

A STORY OF SOME GRAVITY

"Do you know Ken?"

"No. Well I don't think so? Who's Ken?"

"Do you know Gerry? As in Ken and Gerry?"

"Oh wait. Don't they make ice cream?"

"Um, no, no they don't, Matt."

"Ah. Shame."

"Well Ken fell off a ladder and his wedding ring caught a nail and ripped his finger off."

I felt a bit sick. I mean probably not as sick as poor Ken felt, but still, all the squeamish nerves suddenly reacted together and I shuddered with horror. I'd gone from good-humoured to unexpected shock and repulsion in the space of a few seconds. My face contorted into a grotesque approximation of fear and nausea and I heard myself squeaking,

"That is... horrible."

"He must have hung there for a while... well probably not that long actually, you know, given the gravity of..."

I had to put my mug of tea down on a coaster.

THE COLLECTION OF SWIRLING WORLDVIEWS

I sometimes wonder whether we spend our lives collecting worldviews without realising it.

It's tattoos that made me think of this. I haven't got any, and never will I, something which sets me apart from probably about 60% of my friends. But the reasons for this are all to do with my collection of worldviews.

Not just the art of polluting your skin with ink though! Other things too! Like veganism, drinking alcohol, swearing, attitudes around sexuality, and how to deal with people who are not the same as you. These are all things which are greatly affected by our collections of worldviews - sometimes, whether we realise it or not.

Here's my theory...

I've got lots of worldviews, spinning around me all the time. None of them are ever too far out of reach for a conversational moment.

"What happened to Autumn?"

"Yeah I know. Still, terrible, about all them hurricanes though, ain't it?"

"Certainly. Climate change though, eh?"

And before I know it I've simply stretched out into my Science Worldview (which looks at 98% of the world's experts, all the graphs that point upwards and to the right, and the actual flipping evidence in front of us) and I've drawn out a pretty obvious conclusion.

I have other worldviews:

I have my Family Worldview, itself a collection of opinions on how to behave, how to bring up children, never to interrupt, to eat breakfast and not to get tattoos or piercings.

I have my Work Worldview (reply to emails, walk around the lake when stressed, never use an apostrophe to pluralise a noun and always write in internationalized English).

And among others, I have my Biblical Worldview, from which I really try to apply my beliefs and behaviours as well as I think I can.

Most of the time, all of these worldviews get along really well with each other. They float around me in a kind of cloud of happily jostling thoughts and attitudes.

"Be kind to people!" they all say in unison.

"Don't steal! Don't kill a person's reputation, hold the door open for people out of respect, choose honour, make great cups of tea."

You know the drill. Your own worldviews probably get along just as famously and form the basis of your personal culture just like mine do.

But what happens in those moments when your worldview clouds disagree? What happens then? Which worldview wins?

For me, this is most painful when I have to choose between the Biblical Worldview and the Science Worldview. In fact, I've spent a long long time trying to resolve the dissonance between the creation story and the fossil record - the six-day young Earth and the ancient evolving dynamic planet - especially in a way that is satisfying enough to explain to others who take the Bible a lot more literally than I think you're supposed to, along with people who sneer at its text as though we were worshipping the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

But there are people, friends of mine, who let the Science Worldview win, every time, and now throw everything else the Bible says out, along with the baby and the bathwater. If there's ever a conflict, science is the winner - despite its persistence that it's more open-minded and curious than dogmatic.

I think that's a shame because the Bible has some incredible wisdom for our time. But, of course I'd say that.

By the way, read the Bible to the baby, bath the baby, read the Bible in the bath, but I'd advise it best not to combine all three at once.

Then there's man-made climate change. Despite what some right-wing evangelicals in the USA might want to persuade you, the Biblical Worldview and the Science Worldview are a lot more closely aligned on climate change. And they both say: "Look after the planet."

But sometimes the Political Worldview says: make more money, look after your own, throw up defences, sell televisions and make factories. And unfortunately for some people, that worldview is so loud in their ears that they can't hear their own grandchildren screaming at them from the miserable future. They resolve their dissonance of course, by disregarding the science, the weather, the numbers and the graphs altogether as some sort of hoax. And that, I hope you'll agree, is bonkers.

However, when we spot them, I think we ought to pay attention to these moments of dissonance before we resolve them.

Actually, I think we ought to decide which worldview is going to win when there's a conflict. And which worldview is loudest in our ears when we stop and listen.

My own choice is the Biblical Worldview. But I only really know it because I've wrestled with these things and the cloud has swirled around me asking me time and again, which I should choose. And I have a curious optimism for believing the Maker of the Universe.

Finally, I should probably make a point of saying that I won't, don't, and actually can't, mind if you have tattoos - so I am sorry if you're offended by my position. As permanent as they are, it's not my place at all to comment or judge. And so I won't.

All I can say is that I won't ever get one, and I will happily draw from my Family Worldview, the glinting hint from my Biblical Worldview, and my own set of personal ideas about attractiveness to tell you why. Also I don't think I'd really suit one.

So I guess what I'm saying is pay attention to the tension, listen to what your moments of conflict are telling you about what you truly believe, and don't be afraid of that sinking feeling when your clouds conflict. It could actually be quite an awesome moment.

LOSING THE WHISTLE

I think I'm losing the ability to whistle.

I've always loved a whistle. Walking down the high street, doing a bit of washing up, throwing your hands in your pockets on a warm spring day and tooting out a Land of Hope and Glory - a cheery, happy-go-lucky whistle always makes me smile.

Well, afterwards I mean, not during. I mean you can't do those things together, can you?

Well. Anyway, I was walking back to the car, rucksack over one shoulder, one hand twoozling my car keys, whistling a bit of Danny Boy through the resonance of the concrete car park... when I realised that there was one note that wasn't sounding right. It sort of wobbled, a bit like Cher let-loose with an auto-tuner.

I did it again. It happened again.

I whistled a scale. It happened a third time - one wobbly note, wavering in and out of pitch like the Year 5 Recorder Club. Another scale, same result.

Okay, whistling is not one of life's essential skills for us non-postmen in a post milkman universe. But nature only gave me just-over-an-octave to start with; seems a bit unfair to take away a couple of notes in the middle and make me sound like R2-D2.

I got in the car. Imagine not being able to whistle! How would I ever be able to express surprise at the size of a quote for any building work? And I'd never be able to walk a dog, call a taxi, play Bert in a stage production of Mary Poppins, or casually pretend I'm not listening to an embarrassing conversation... again.

I hope it comes back. I sound like a fax machine.

YOWSERS

"Yowsers!" I squealed as I joined the back of the traffic queue. A pair of red brake lights glowed in front, through the watery windscreen. And ahead, another pair of brake lights and another windscreen, and ahead of that the same again, and the same again, trailing endlessly around the corner.

The schools are back.

On a rainy September morning, kind-hearted and fearful parents all over the country were probably joining similar traffic queues, the sound of Radio One in their ears and the taste of hurried corn flakes and coffee still lingering.

I was just trying to get to work and sighing in the long line of traffic. It's been a long time since I listened to Radio One and I wasn't in the mood for cheery banter or pendulous politics, so Five it was today.

"...Now you've got to be careful, but you can give a baby some force when you hit it," said an enthusiastic voice.

"Er, what?" I said, out-loud, to no-one. It turned out they were discussing what to do if a baby is choking - a prospect I hadn't thought of before, but suddenly found absolutely terrifying.

Apparently, you have to turn the infant upside down, (I may have got this wrong), while protecting its head, not dangling him or her by the feet like a prize turkey... and then you're supposed to give them five 'back blows' between the shoulder blades with the heel of your hand.

Well well. The traffic rumbled slowly on, beyond the windscreen wipers. I turned down the radio, thinking about the importance of context and answering the question of whether it's ever okay to hit a child.

Why did I say 'yowsers'? I never say 'yowsers'. What even is that? Yowsers indeed. It's the kind of thing TopCat or Yogi Bear or Mario ought to be saying, not a technical author stuck in a traffic jam.

I put on the soundtrack to Nessun Dorma and waited for the violins to soar through the intro.

"Nessun Dorma, nessun dorma!" I rumbled dramatically as though I was Andrea Bocelli*. No-one sleeps. Well you're quite right there, Mr Puccini, no one does; they're all here in this traffic jam.

"Tu pure o principessa, nella tua fredda stanza..."

A pedestrian grinned at me and gave me a cheeky thumbs up.

Yowsers, I thought and turned the stereo down.




*I doubt you'd ever see Andrea Bocelli driving a Ford Focus.

TIRED AND FORGETFUL

I'm tired I think. My muscles ache and twitch and my eyes feel heavy. Presumably my body is still adapting to the gym, one month in.

There are all kinds of other tirednesses in my life though - not just physical. I'm tired of social media turning us all into experts, I'm tired of people who've forgotten how to say thank you, and I'm tired of arguments erupting between forces and ideas that simply won't be changed by the debate, other than to reinforce their entrenchment.

I'm also tired of the ongoing treadmill of working, cooking, cleaning and sleeping. There surely has to be more than that, right? What is life without the fresh glimmer of adventure?

Yet the kitchen conversations remain, with everyone saying the same things, making the same jokes and backing out of the room with the same quips time after time after time after time... and me too! I do it, unthinkingly slipping into the cultural norm and commenting about the changeable weather, the long grass in my garden and the 'plans for the weekend'...

-

I forgot to go to the doctor. After reminding myself last night, after the surgery texted me twice and after thinking about it as I parked the car in the car park and whistled into work... I sat here, and clean forgot, until it was a half-an-hour too late.

It's okay. I phoned up and rebooked it. I'm annoyed with myself though. What's more I've left my antibiotics at home.

I'm tired.

STRANGE UNWELLNESS

I ate my porridge at work today and I suddenly felt quite unwell.

It was a strange unwellness though - not a very obvious need-to-go-home-right-now unwellness. Nor was it a creeping sense of lethargic sickness, bubbling in my tummy. It was a sort of weak, undefined worry. I felt ... insipid.

I reckon it's the tablets the doctor gave me to sort out my ear. A quick perusal through the listed side-effects confirms that one in ten of us could experience 'minor stomach upsets'...

... though I'm not entirely sure that that's what this is. It feels much more 'anxious' than a minor stomach upset. I feel uncomfortable, I think, and about more than the usual state of the world.

Anyway, I'm back at the docs tomorrow - kind of hoping he spots some improvement and that miraculously, my left ear drum will have developed some 'features' and I don't have to get poked about by ENT.

Yep, porridge. Now that it's September and the Autumn is beginning, it's time to kick in with the splendid stodge of hot oats, milk and honey.

Hmm. Maybe that did have something to do with it.

UMBRELLA SNAP

Well would you believe it - the umbrella I bought for £3 in Sports Direct has actually broken!

What an outrage!

It just sort of snapped. And not the usual way! It didn't blow itself inside-out in the wind or rip off the spokes until it looked like a bedraggled television antenna.

No, it just bent in the middle. Right down the stem! Like a warped tree trunk in a hurricane, it just twisted itself out of shape. Then I tried to collapse the whole thing and somehow, me shoving it shut weakened the metal (well I think it's metal) and the entire contraption just sort of snapped clean in two.

I might write to Sports Direct. Shoddy isn't it, breakable umbrellas on sale in a notoriously cost-cutting-low-budget-zero-hours-contract-operating-warehouse-and-retail outlet? I'm sure Mike Ashleigh will understand.

There's me thinking all the great golfers nipped down to their local store when they needed a proper golfing umbrella: Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, that other one... you never see those guys wrestling with Sports Direct brollies on the thirteenth green! Some guys have all the luck.

This is just like that time I got a mini-rucksack on sale from the Argos catalogue. One trip out on the windy hills of West Berkshire with it stuffed full of jumpers, rain macs, picnic, spare shoes, first-aid kit, and essential survival supplies (Cadbury's chocolate buttons) ... and the zip broke! I had to tie it up with the lanyard from an old work security pass, while muttering how things weren't made to last anymore.

I carried my umbrella home and ceremoniously dumped it into the bin. Funny, I thought to myself. It had only just come out of a bin really - from bargain to wheelie in less than two weeks.

Unbelievable.

SUMMER MOVES FAST

I guess I'm getting to the end of this year's sunsets now.

It's dark earlier, often before I'm back from wherever I've been for the evening, and soon the weather will start the transition to cold and damp, and too dark to be out here in the park behind my flat.

However, here I am for now, beneath the pinkening sky and wispy purple clouds. The breeze is chilly and I've got my hood up.

About twelve drunk people have just clattered up the hill with clinking carrier bags and high spirits, smelling of chips and alcohol. They had a dog, whom one of them just faked-out with a tennis ball.

"He totally fell for it!" he bellowed across the park, too loudly. The others cackled while the dog dashed through the long grass. It's quite likely that the dog is the soberist of them all, the designated responsible adult and voice of reason for the Famous... Twelve, chasing through the dusk for a tennis ball that isn't there. I feel your pain, buddy.

They've gone now, disappeared under the trees. They had a good time at least.

Summer moves fast. It doesn't seem long ago enough that I was out here for the first sunset of the season, watching the sun sink happily below the fresh green trees. Suddenly, in just a few short weeks of sunshine and showers, it's September and the season I call Keats's Fall is here.

A guy with a top-knot has just sparked up on the next bench along. A little burst of orange fire, the swoosh of a match, and then a cloud of sickly-sweet smoke drifts past.

It's more respectable than this usually, this park. I wouldn't want you to think it's all drugs and drink at dusk. Well I'm here for a start! Lit-up like a floating goon in the light of my phone, and swigging from my 500ml bottle of Irn Bru. I can hear children too, presumably over-spilling from a local barbecue.

The wind has picked up. Behind me the moon is round and bright, and in front of me the final colours of daytime are steadily falling away from the horizon, into the night.

I guess it's time for me to go too, then.