ASTRONAUTS ON GLASS PLANETS

A strange thing happened to me last night. I closed my eyes, started thinking about all kinds of things that don't really matter, and then suddenly woke up at 6:30am.

The washing-up was undone. The lights were still on and the washing machine was flashing at the end of its cycle. The house was still living in yesterday, but I was very clearly waking up in today.

How does this kind of thing happen? I'd made a really nice pasta dish, with veggie sausages, peppers and cheese and tomatoes in it, and I'd sat in the park eating it from a plastic lunchbox. I had a bottle of ice-cool Lipton tea and a view of the sunset, and it had all been great. Then I'd pushed back through the leaves, and gone home.

Moments later, I woke up in this morning.

The morning sky was grey and autumnal. For the briefest moment I wondered whether I'd missed the summer altogether. Later of course, the sun came out again and the blue skies returned.

It might have been because I was trying to write science-fiction on my phone. I had this Bradburyesque idea about a trio of astronauts who landed on a planet made of glass. The inhabitants revered a particular glass statue, held in pride-of-place inside a marble dome, and they wouldn't let the humans touch it because they said it was too fragile. I thought maybe an allegory would tumble out of that idea, that somehow the humans' curiosity would eventually get the better of them and... but as usual, I couldn't quite make it fit.

I do wonder whether my brain might be using up all my energy. I feel tired a lot, as though I could just switch into sleep at any moment - yet, most of the day I just sit behind a computer, daydreaming about songs, poems, punctuation, and astronauts on glass planets.

FIRE BY DAY

There was a car on fire on the way to work this morning. I saw the smoke first, billowing black across the roundabout. Then a pastiche of a thin police officer positioning a blue POLICE notice in the middle of the road with a group of spectators watching through the haze of smoke and blue-flashing lights. Then the vehicle.

It was a Jeep. It looked like the engine had exploded and sent burning fuel across the road. The front of the vehicle was a ball of flame, licking round the metal and the tyres, and spitting petrol onto the concrete. It was horrendous. I don't think anyone was hurt, thankfully. There was nobody inside.

I don't like the way fire moves in bright sunlight. Normally we experience fire at night-time, where its brightness is comforting - in daylight it moves in crisp, snake-like HD, blue and orange and real, like an action shot from a movie. It was disturbing to see it. If I'd been an Israelite in the desert, I think I'd have had to walk with my eyes shut.

As always of course, this news was recounted in great detail throughout the office, by everyone who was inconvenienced/fascinated by the roadblock. Offices are magnifying glasses for things like this - soon it was everywhere. Well, almost. One person read his email much later when it had all died down a bit, and then boomingly announced:

"Apparently there's a jeep on fire at the end of the road!"

Everyone laughed very unkindly.

"We've literally just been talking about it," they said, cackling, "Properly loudly!"

He was embarrassed, so I swept in and took the conversation away from that moment. Well, I tried to, anyway. I made some comment about what I'd seen and how it looked a bit like a scene from Terminator or something.

Meanwhile, the fire brigade came and extinguished the blazing jeep. Fire-fighting in the summer must be exhausting - all that heavy gear and equipment! I remember putting it all on, in the Fire Station in Toronto that time when Emmie and Nick took me to see their friend Warren. I doubt I'd make a great fire-fighter. I'm too short, for one thing. Nope, looks like I'll stick to stuffing a yellow jacket into my drawer and pretending to be important whenever the fire alarm goes off.

My friend smiled at me, as if to say thank you for rescuing him from the conversation, and extinguishing the awkward moment. I looked back and nodded. 'No problem'.

THE INSTA-INFLUENCE EQUATION

I read an article today, about a hotel in the Maldives that gets around six requests per day from instagrammers.

Typically it's young people with somewhere between hundreds and thousands of followers, and usually they're asking for extravagant freebies, claiming to be 'influencers'. The hotel owners are getting a bit fed up with it.

That aside though, here's the Generation-Y Insta-Influence Equation: the destination gets free advertising, sent to thousands of people they wouldn't otherwise be able to reach. The insta-travellers get a lovely free holiday (and in some cases thousands of pounds per photo) to lie in a hammock with a half-decent camera and a pair of ray-bans. We all get fresh views of exotic locations. The hotel gets new business, the instagrammers get yet more new followers, and our feed gets brighter in among the turquoise seas and white sands.

But it's not an equation is it? Who loses? Who misses out? What's the balance?

"Hope you all have a beautiful day! xxx" chimes Impossible-Looking-Girl, lounging in front of the misty-mountains of Sri Lanka. It's hard not to read smugness into her lipstick smile, as though she knows we're stuck in an office with broken air-conditioning and a to-do list longer than the flight to Colombo.

"Just chilling today," says Surf Guy, cloudless blue skies reflecting in his expensive-looking sunglasses. Hundreds of people have liked this post - presumably people who like to dream, but wonder how in the world they could also get to be jet-setting 'influencers'.

And that is the problem isn't it? This market was quick to flood itself with beautiful people, and we're probably already there at saturation-point. Who misses out in the equation? Well, all of us - especially us mortal followers.

I'm not impressed by Impossible-Looking-Girl, or Surf-Guy exposing his abs. Actually, if I'm honest, I'm a bit annoyed. There's a little bit of me that feels like this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed, and each snapshot of paradise just reminds me of the enormous gulf between these self-absorbed influencers and the people they rely on - us. Have a great day, indeed; we're in schools, colleges, offices, houses, and sitting on public transport with our headphones in, worrying about almost everything there is to worry about. We'll have as nice a day as we can make it, but we're pretty sure you know it can't be quite as nice as yours, out there on 'Love Island'. But thanks for the reminder.

Travel-writing, as an entity then, seems to be done-for in this insta-world. Judith Chalmers, Bill Bryson, Palin, and Alan Whicker, adventuring heroes from the 1980s, are all long gone - and instead it seems Gen-Y have inherited The Extraordinarily Beautiful People, who've cornered the market.

The hotel misses out too. Eventually, the steady stream of followers who actually pay full-whack to pursue the dreams of their instagram-gods, will trickle away to nothing. That dream will fade fast. In fact, just as that one hotel has already found, instead of inquiries from paying tourists, they're getting inundated by requests from wannabes who want a free-holiday. That equation can't last without finding some balance.

And finally, I think the influencers themselves will lose too. One day when their looks have faded and there are no more all-inclusive-vacations out there, they'll have to take their screaming kids to Butlins, or make the most of a rainy Isle-of-Wight along with the rest of us. And they'll only be able to dream of the things they could have done instead, while they craved followers and dopamine-likes from a faceless crowd of supporters.

At the MTV awards the other week, the Hollywood actor Chris Pratt gave a great speech about success. It was called "9 Rules from Chris Pratt: Generation Award Winner", if you want to look it up on YouTube. It was great! In it, he said this:

"Number 5. Doesn't matter what it is, earn it. A good deed, reach out to someone in pain, be of service, it feels good and it's good for your soul."

Earn it. I like that. I kind of hope some of these professional holidaymakers got that. In fact, I hope we all do. Oh, and if you too find that social media leaves you feeling dissatisfied or annoyed at people you've never met, switch it off and go outside to enjoy the sunshine yourself; get some adrenaline flowing and don't worry about getting people to 'like' it or follow you because of it. It was never really for anyone else to like anyway, was it?

IN SIGNIFICANCE

I don’t know how it happened really but today’s sunset was great! It didn’t look like it would be up to much, then... angle of the clouds, maybe the sun just burst through a gap at the last minute... suddenly the park was flooded in red and gold.

A kind of last hurrah of the day! Trees painted with light, long shadows across the grass, a warm, hopeful sky beneath the criss-cross vapour trails. It was brilliant.

It’s nice sitting out here on these summer evenings. I feel insignificant and significant all at the same time, in the quiet and the cool of a glorious sunset. I’ve often wondered how it is to be both those things and still be okay with it.

I think I’ve realised that if your goal is to make yourself invisible, sometime soon you’ll have to start questioning your own effectiveness. Do I want to be significant to people? Yes. Do I want others to be more significant in the world than I am? More so! Do I want to replace myself and still feel useful? Of course. But there’s always crossover, when you start wondering how to adapt so that you can get out of the way. These are interesting times.

It’s gone 10pm and it’s still light. Crows call each other and bats flutter in the trees. It would be unthinkable to do this in October - though I do remember sitting out here on fireworks night. I had three jumpers on, a woolly hat and a flask of something, watching the valley, this valley, burst into colour and smoke. The Americans have the right idea - the Fourth of July is just about perfect for standing outside and watching late-night fireworks. Who knows what would have happened to the world if the Declaration of Independence had been drawn up in November?

There’s a lot to be said for picking the seasons. As it is, I’m enjoying this one, out here, catching the fading embers of a hot June day, watching the sun sink happily beneath the trees.

The stars are out too. They look at me and wink through the purple sky. Insignificant I am, in a gigantic universe of possibility. Yet still wholly significant, somehow, to someone.

PUT A SOCK IN IT

I’m a bit whiny at the moment, and as usual for these misery moments, I think there are two prevailing attitudes around.

One says I should probably just get on with whatever it is I’m doing, without complaining, without a hint of grumpiness or gloom affecting everyone around me. That, I feel implicitly, is what the Greats would do - like monks who’ve fine-tuned their self-control, they’ve mastered how they feel, and press on through, quietly, while the storm rages inside. The Greats are infuriating aren’t they. Are they even people?

The other attitude says tosh to all of that. Be real, be yourself, don’t be afraid to rant and whinge if that’s how you feel - get it out, be emotional and don’t hold back. You need people around you, and they’ll value your honesty!

I don’t want to hurt people though. And I know that grumpiness can be infectious, and kind of irritating. I wouldn’t want to be around me when I’m volcanically mad. Yet I do need help, I think. Hmm.

Is it possible that the best way to be is a combination? Not ascetic like a super-monk, but not bursting with infuriation all the time either. It has to be okay to be real, doesn’t it, I mean it just has to be! Yet it also has to be good to be wise and controlled when everything in you feels like a rage of boiling lava.

I may be quiet for a while, while I keep trying to find that balance.

So here’s the deal. If you ask me how I am and I give you the kind of reply you’d expect from the abbot in the cloisters, you have permission to ask me again and append your question with a raised-eyebrow ‘really?’ I’ll then be honest, I promise.

Otherwise, if I instantly explode into a rant of atypical proportion, that feels like standing in the path of Mount Chimborazo, then by all means tell me to put a sock in it.

Typical. I’m now imagining a medieval monk climbing a South American volcano with a giant sock.

I guess if nothing else I could just remember that to give myself a chuckle when I need it.

THE OLD PARK

I had a little free time tonight - in between a phone call that finished early, and my next meeting - so, I went to the park.

Not my usual park. The park opposite the house where I grew up. This park was part of my life until I was 31. And for whatever reason, I haven’t been there in quite a while.

Talk about the feels. The smell of the pine leaves, the sound of happy kids clambering over the monkey puzzle tree. The bowling green I watched on my way home from school during exam times, the view across the south, the armada beacon, the early-morning benches, the fallen log where I used to sit, thinking, and to which I ran madly, in my green trainers through the wet grass on September 30th, 2007. It’s all still there.

I sat on a bench. There, on an Autumn day, my pal Tom once tried to film a music video to one of my songs. If I closed my eyes I could still see his brother, Ben, scooting by in a leather trenchcoat. He used to do that. Tom thought it would look cool on film - like something out of The Matrix.

We never finished it.

It’s strange going back to a place you knew so well, and loved so much. It is largely the same - the shape of the trees, the long grass, the darting birds. Yet you are different: older, more lived, more weathered, more known. Its constancy reminds you how much you yourself have changed. We all have places like that, I guess.

I didn’t have long so I ambled back to the car, along the path where ten-year old me whizzed along on his bike listening to Bon Jovi through a massive pair of 80s headphones.

Things can’t be as they were. The trick is to be thankful somehow, acknowledge the good, and move along. Just occasionally a glimpse of an old place, the smell of pine leaves and the sound of summer bowls and birdsong, can remind us how great this whole journey can be and how far we’ve come.

NIGHT BREEZES

Home. I switched off the engine and the car shuddered into silence. I sat there for a moment, listening to the trees sighing in the midsummer night-breeze. Cool and gentle, ancient and strong. They sing far better than any of us, those old trees.

The sky was still bright. I pulled my two rucksacks from the boot and then let it fall and click. It flashed orange as I locked it, as always it does. Then, one bag on my back, the other trailing the concrete, I trudged up the road to my flat, looking up at the deep purple clouds and the band of blue fading into the horizon. Everything else was dark - the tree line, the park, the houses, the cars, falling into the deepness of the twilight. My house particularly - no lights to welcome me, no warm greeting, no flickering fireside: the usual empty place.

The key clicked in the lock and the door jammed against the Midweek Chronicle as it scrunched over the welcome mat. Every week. I never read it. I’m certain it’s full of school assemblies, local football teams, and smiling parishioners. There’ll be several pages of solicitors who can help you move, help you divorce or write a will - maybe a section for plumbers, electricians, lost cats, and people looking for that someone with twinkly eyes and a ‘GSOH’.

I flicked on the light and dumped both rucksacks.

Food. I had half a baguette left from yesterday, some butter on the turn, and a pot of orange marmalade. I sighed and reminded myself that I can do better than this. To wash it all down, I’d have a choice of water, the last root beer or whatever was left of the gin. Water then - the root beer suddenly seemed like too much sugar and no-one drinks pure gin, not even the Queen. That was pretty much it. I switched on the grill, and then hacksawed my way through the bread.

I laughed when I realised I’d literally sent myself to bed with nothing but bread and water. Inadvertently, through my own inability to plan, or sort my life out, I had punished myself for my sloppiness. 

I had to do something today that made me look foolish. I had to take the criticism for it, without being able to explain the reason why. It was however, the wisest thing to do, I think. I feel like this happens to me a lot at the moment. It’s kind of annoying. I can’t explain. Don’t ask me.

Also, I keep getting pestered by the feeling that nobody is really listening to me. A few times recently I’ve said something that somebody else has rephrased as though it were new, just a moment later. I don’t think it matters, it just doesn’t do my self-esteem a lot of good - especially as my job is sort of mostly about good communication. Am I any good at that? Sometimes I wonder. I do wonder.

I stared out of the kitchen window, marmalade-toast in hand. The trees waved in the dusk, as the night breezes swept their way over the silver grass. It was too dark to go out there to hear them sing to me. The wood nymphs, the dryads, the elves and the ents would have to dance without me to accompany them tonight. I think the world should understand.

But then, I would, wouldn’t I? I switched off the lights, plunged my messy flat and me into darkness, and went to bed, hoping for a dream in which I am anything but on my own.

THE GIFT ITSELF

I wish I could calculate how long I spend choosing cards for people. It always feels like ages, and, as I said the other day, I find it very difficult.

It’s Father’s Day here in the UK today, so I did my best to find that perfect card to sum up my relationship with my Dad, there in the crowded aisle in the middle of Sainsbury’s.

There was barely anything suitable. Had I been more organised, sure, I’d probably have cracked it weeks ago, but great planning hasn’t ever really been a strong-point. And so there I was, scanning the rows of cards.

And what cards they were! I’ve realised that we can tell a lot about society from the cards we buy. What I learned today is that on the whole, dads like beer, cars, and football. To a man, they’re terrible cooks and they tell awful jokes, they all pride themselves on being the ‘best’ dad, and they’re lazy. That’s what was on the cards it seems for the dads of the world.

But my Dad isn’t any of those things. He doesn’t like football, beer makes him screw up his face as though it were paint-stripper, and his only interest in cars is the perfunctory job they do of ferrying him from A to B, which, if you think about it, is exactly what they’ve always been for.

It is true that he can’t cook, but the stereotypical image of him pulling out a trayful of ashes from a smoking oven never once happened. He was wise enough to keep it simple when it mattered, even if he grew up in an age when the gender roles were clearly defined for him. In any case, I know loads of other dads now (mostly my age actually) who are amazing in the kitchen, and love a social media post about it every now and again. You’re out-of-date big-time there, Sainsbury’s!

The jokes are bad, yes, and sometimes they wander just the wrong side of being politically correct, but for as long as I can remember, he’s made us laugh by making himself laugh at them. And if your audience and you are in fits of laughter, I reckon the ‘quality’ of the material might be irrelevant, don’t you?

He doesn’t pride himself on being the ‘best’ dad. Yet somehow, through the most trying of times over the years, he’s raised four incredible children who are responsible, wise, funny, and classy. And he’s done that without ever blowing his trumpet about it. He is the best.

And finally, he’s far from lazy. He worked incredibly hard at everything he did, and he took pride in it, cycling 15 miles to work every day for thirty years, transforming people’s gardens, looking after church people, peering down microscopes and analysing the results. And he still does give his all in everything he does, even in retirement.

I found a card with a painted picture of a man in Wellington boots taking a nap in a garden shed. It seemed right. I wrote something nice in it and took it round.

He was thrilled. But of course, these things are only bits of paper; the real joy, the gift itself, is always in the legacy. And one of the best things about being a son and a father, I suppose, is that you get to open that gift together.

ACCELERATION SMILE

I feel like there might be a couple of decisions ahead which could be really tough.

I suppose that could be true of any of us, and all of the time. After all, life seems like a web of difficult decisions. Yet what I’m feeling is a bit like an acceleration towards a fork in the road.

Paul took me out in his new car tonight. The acceleration on that thing was something else, like a burst of uncontrollable forces that swung me round familiar corners at unprocessable speeds. Trees, brake lights, houses, hedges, concrete, road lamps, all span past way more quickly than I felt I would ever see them again.

I had a huge roller-coaster smile on my face.

“It’s so much fun!” he said. I agreed but my body was shaking.

And in some metaphoric way, I feel like life is accelerating me towards some decisions. I wonder where those hurtling split-second moments will take me.

One decision will certainly have me jumping off the fence. Remaining neutral seemed like a good idea until I realised that you can’t sustain a not-yes without it looking like a no, anymore than you can aim for a not-no and accidentally hit a yes. I have to decide, and unfortunately I think the pain of that might be unavoidable.

Another decision could be between a route that looks right but could be a distraction, and another route that looks like a massive distraction but could really be right. While I know that God makes brilliance shine on either path, I also know that regret lurks down either. Or both. In which case, what does it matter?

Acceleration of course, is an increase in speed, which is itself a change of distance over time. To accelerate, the distance you cover must get longer, or the time it takes gets shorter, or both.

“That certainly is something,” said Paul. “Whatever we decide, it’s true that life is short, and we should go for it.”

 I was still trembling with adrenaline when I got out of the car, yet that same acceleration-smile still beamed across my face. He’s not wrong, I’d wager. He is not wrong.

YELLOW JACKET

"Looks good on you, Matt," smirked Jamie as we trooped back inside.

"So not funny," I replied, shuffling in my luminous fire marshal jacket. The entire company was making its way into the building after a fire alarm test.

"Actually, you don't fancy being a fire m..."

"Nope. You're too good at it," said he, quickly.

Being a fire marshal means pausing that moment longer while you realise the fire alarm is actually going off and it isn't the weekly test on a Tuesday morning. While everyone else grabs a bag or slips into a coat, your job is to sigh at the ceiling, pull out your yellow vest from your drawer and then slide your arms into it.

Then, you have to check the area of the office you've been assigned to (in my case, the server room, a meeting room and the big boss's office) just in case anyone is cowering under a desk or canoodling between the racks.

By this time, the alarm is pounding inside your head and everyone has already left.

I gave a thumbs up to Peter (whose turn it was to check the toilets this time) and then I trudged through the empty office and out into the sunshine.

'Leadership is lonely after all then,' I whispered to myself on the way out. And then some. Even in a fake crisis, he what wears the yellow jacket endeth up in an empty office.

"Some people used the revolving door," said the fire chief during the debrief afterwards. "And there were quite a few, clutching bags." Bristling eyebrows.

He was as stern as fire chiefs always are. I can't think Fireman Sam was ever this serious, was he? And that Elvis would have been a nightmare colleague, not to mention Norman setting fire to everything that moves in Pontypandy on a weekly basis.

I got back to my desk.

"Well someone needs to stand in front of the door to stop people using it! Because they will!" said someone grumpily later when I'd relayed the feedback. "A fire marshal probably. Matt, you can feed that back can't you?"

Yep. Lonely business. Criticised by the fire chief, criticised by the people we're saving by volunteering to check the rooms of a building that could be an inferno, and criticised by the same people again for not doing it properly. It struck me as an excellent picture.

"Are you absolutely sure?" I asked Jamie while I stuffed the yellow jacket back in my drawer. He smiled. He was.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 15

I don't know how many days in a row this is now, but it feels bad. My eyes are blood-shot red, my nose is heavy, like a weight pulling the rest of my face with it, and my throat's scratchy, as though I've eaten a pinecone.

Let's get the obvious questions out of the way then, shall we?

1. Yes, this morning. Doesn't seem to do anything other than make me feel worse.
2. No, but if it carries on, I'll probably have to. Who would have thought it?
3. Middle of June, so hopefully next week.

I thought I'd go to the cafe to see if eating something could help, and maybe improve my mood a bit. It turns out, it makes it worse - eating makes you breathe through your nose, and when you can't do that because your nose is constantly blocked, a spoonful of granola tastes like paper that's been left out in the rain.

I really don't like this season. I know people have it a lot worse, I know I'm painting myself into a martyr by lamenting my sufferings and describing my mucus, and I know, that's the wrong side of pathetic. I am sorry about that.

Nonetheless, I'm struggling to be normal, to breathe normally, that most basic of human functions, the thing we all learn first.

Instead, red-eyed and purple-nosed from coarse tissue, I'm going around panting with my mouth open, looking like a bleary Jabberwock: manxome, with eyes of flame, burbling through the tulgey wood, and half-ready to take the vorpal sword in hand, myself, and slice my own nose off.

I think though, I should probably just get on with life, and if it gets worse, I'll have to get some medical help.

Callooh callay.

THE GOLDEN HOUR

I’ve heard that some film directors like filming at a particular time of the afternoon, when the light is just about as perfect as it gets.

I guess it works in California, because as I understand it, the weather is beautifully predictable there. The ‘Golden Hour’ will always be back tomorrow for another shoot.

Well. Here in Blighty, the rareness of a thing like the Golden Hour makes it even more valuable. And so right now, I’m sitting in it, despite the list of a million other things I ought to be doing.

I pushed through the translucent green leaves and stepped into the long, wavering grass. Every strand was glistening with silver, lit by the golden ball of sunshine that shines above the trees. The sky is bright and blue, the clouds lazily drift through the afternoon, and even I, sitting here as ever on my favourite park bench, must be side-lit, gilded by the glory today, in the slowly setting sun. It’s as though I’m in an Episode of Dawson’s Creek.

I wonder why it has to be so rare, this optimal lighting. Everything is still the same the rest of the time, it’s just the way you look at it changes, based on how it’s illuminated. One moment a thing looks plain and ordinary, the next it’s as though Midas himself crafted it with gold-spun fingers. There is a lot to be said for getting the right perspective.

I think it might be partly to do with how we light up things for those around us too. An excellent parent can make household chores a thrill, a boring trip like an incredible adventure. A keen poet can turn a cheesy idea into a heart-melting sonnet, given the right illumination.

The Golden Hour seems to me like kindness touching the Earth just as the gracious sun bids farewell to the day. A little paint, some low-angled, dust-catching sunbeams and everything in the world looks softer, rosier, gentler, quieter, nicer. Kindness does that, doesn’t it.

My prayer is that I’d learn how to do that well, rather than to seek it often. And who knows, if kindness gets reflected from the everyday things as they scintillate with gold, maybe it’ll feel like we’re all in Dawson’s Creek together.

FAMILY DISCUSSION NIGHT

Time for another round of Family Discussion then. A number of hot topics tonight. Maybe you can help us.

My Dad wants to know what the botanical definition of a herb is, and how it can encompass everything from thyme to bananas.

Meanwhile, we’re still debating the plural of ‘chrysalis’, and I’ve lost credibility after using ‘radiuses’ instead of ‘radii’ (even though I’m not wrong. I’m not wrong I tells ya! Okay, I’m letting it go.)

The Intrepids are arguing that old money was easier to use than I think it was, and I’m still arguing that the whole system was a thousand years of madness. Also, you shouldn’t have beetroot with gravy, marmite is not a suitable thing to spread on lettuce, and caterpillars are not a suitable gift for someone who’s recently lost their dog.

My Mum’s birthday weekend continues. Tonight was classic fish and chips and family discussion time; tomorrow is picnic in the park with the Niblings. I’m expecting the questions to be more down to earth than ‘what’s a herb?’ and ‘wasn’t predecimalised coinage great?’

Usually it’s ‘Uncle Matthew can we have a quiz?’ to which the answer is always ‘yes’ and the subsequent quiz turns out to be to do with YouTube, or dinosaurs, or Star Wars or something.

It’s great training for those future family discussions. You’ve got to start somewhere I suppose.

But don’t spread marmite on lettuce leaves.

UNICORNS

If I could have high-fived myself without it looking weird, I would have.

Instead, I strode to my car with all the usual post-workout endorphins pumping through my veins, hopefully each red blood cell high-fiving another for me.

I haven’t been to the gym on a Saturday for ages. I go on Sundays most weekends, before church, when the place is practically empty. This weekend though, I decided I would kick myself out of bed and not waste another Saturday morning.

It helped, I reckon. From the car, I drove into town, looked for a birthday card for my Mum, and found myself eventually over eggs benedict in Café Rouge.

It says something I reckon, when it’s easier to find a unicorn, than it is to find a suitable card for your mother. The shops are full of chubby pink rainbows, sparkly hooves, and flying horses with horns. The unicorn, mythical or not, is back.

Marco Polo, Fourteenth Century explorer, described them as ugly brutes, barely the size of an elephant, wallowing in mud, with heads like those of a wild boar, ‘contrary to our notions’.

Indeed. Methinks Marco might have found himself a rhino.

Anyway, I found a pink, flowery card for my Mum. Not sure if she’ll like it; sometimes I think I’m on a winner if I pick the very last thing I’d choose for myself. It is the thought that counts, and if the thought is me embarrassing myself out of love for someone else, than perhaps that will do it. I find buying cards disproportionately difficult.

I suppose the unicorn phase is for little girls - a kind of Twenty First Century My Little Pony. Indeed, the mythology of the unicorn was always that they could only be tamed by young women - fierce in battle, peaceful when captivated by beauty. The metaphor wrote itself. Perhaps this latest craze has deep roots in our history, our collective understanding. Perhaps I’m a little slow to cotton on to what every woman implicitly understands. Perhaps.

Or perhaps my brain is working overtime with endorphins or adrenaline from the gym, and it’s simply a nice thing evolving out of a case of medieval explorers describing a rhinoceros.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 14

I didn't take a cetirizine hydrochloride today.

"You look a lot better," said Clive, when I ambled into the office, "Yesterday you just didn't seem like the real Matt."

That would make a great excuse for my behaviour yesterday, wouldn't it - if it wasn't really me? If some imposter had somehow done an invasion-of-the-body-snatchers type switch and had locked the real me in a cupboard?

Or perhaps I had been hypnotised into a claggy trance and sat here off-colour all day? Some devious agent might have brainwashed me not to remember it.

But. Of course, I was not in a cupboard. Nor did I spend the day in an alien spacecraft while Zorg The Shapeshifter pretended to be me and blogged about depression to mask my unusual quietness at my desk. Nope. I was here, and I was miserable and clogged up all by myself.

I'm a lot better today. It could be the medication, I suppose, but I feel brighter, more hopeful, stronger, and less grumpy - which can only be good.

Meanwhile, the pollen forecast is still VH, according to the Met Office. And accordingly, I am happily sneezing, and my nose is cheerfully runny. However, I'm also much less blocked.

It's come to something when the thing you take to avoid suffering, actually might be causing you to suffer, hasn't it? You have to start asking what the point was.

I might write to the Pharmaceutical Giants at Smith-Kline-Glaxo, and ask them whether I should keep paying them to make me miserable enough to require further medication. Not that I'm being cynical.

Well. I'm not saying it was the tablets' fault. I think my moods are highly cyclical anyway, and my emotions are less under control than they could be. All I know is that today is better than yesterday.

Of course, it could just be that it's Friday.

GROUND-STATE EQUILIBRIUM

One of the things about the universe is that everything, and I do mean everything, is always trying to reach its lowest possible energy state.

That's why uncomfortable atoms give off photons and we get light. That's why a drawing pin can't easily balance pointy-end down, and it's why time ticks, the galaxy spins, and tea never flows backwards from the cup to the teapot.

Yesterday, I said I was having a low-energy week. That is true. You can't create or destroy energy, but you can transfer it from system to system. You can redistribute it, and any system in a high-energy state attempts to do that, as I was saying: tea, planets, atoms, photons, drawing pins - all searching for that ground-state equilibrium.

Me too. Energy is stressful. And today my hay fever, birthed from the grass transferring its energy to the atmopshere, is SO bad, I'm close to having to go home sick.

Whoever heard of such a thing? Yet here I am, emotions all over the shop, stuffed-up, drugged-up, and miserable. I'm eating an egg-and-cress sandwich but it might as well be made of paper and cardboard.

"How are you feeling, Matt?" asked Erica.

"Like decabitation bight be the only obtion," I sniffled back.

On top of the miserable allergy I hate so much, I'm also spiralling into blackness again. I'm not sure I can function with these monstrous thoughts. Yet I don't really want to beef up the medication either, which will be the first thing my doctor recommends.

I know that because last time, he dispassionately told me that his job is to prescribe drugs. I was in no position to argue that I didn't think that was his job at all; I am nowhere near clever enough to have been a doctor, and it wasn't my place to judge, anymore than a doctor could interrupt my day with a lecture on how to use the Oxford comma.

Anyway, like the rest of the universe, I'm currently distributing most of my energy and collapsing into the lowest-state possible with nothing to catch me.

I think they call that 'falling' don't they.

RIVER REFLECTIONS

Tonight I’m by the river. Mike asked if I could drive him to Guildford to collect his new car. I had to refuse, due to low energy. That’s what poor mental health does for you - robs you of friends and energy sometimes. And this was my only night to myself this week. So here I came.

All the geese were out, waddling across the grass tonight: Egyptian ones, Canadas, the other type. I picked my way through them avoiding eye-contact, and sat on a bench. I’m currently overlooking a poo-splattered path, the gentle Thames and the Other Side with its perfect lawns and fancy boathouses.

A Labrador bounded over like a bowling ball that had been suddenly launched. He ran at the huge gaggle of geese. In a sort of a goosey-stampede, they squawked and pelted into the river, splashing and rippling as they fell off the bank, while the dog sniffed the air in triumph.

There’s more life down here than in the park. Joggers puff past, eyes on the concrete. A drunk guy looks at me, and a hipster eyes up the root beer on the bench next to me. A large man in shorts and an old Hard Rock Café t-shirt bends over with his hands on his knees as if he can run no further, no longer. I know that feeling buddy. Meanwhile Polish girls take photographs of the swans on their phones, and one of them worries that a goose is ‘giving me the eyes’. They giggle off along the towpath.

And of course, the inevitable cloud of midges dances against the setting sun. I forgot that this happens by the river - tiny insects with not long to live, making the most of the end of the day.

A man splashes by in a multicoloured canoe. He mutters a swear word under his breath and wipes his sweaty brow with a sleeve. Life in all its fullness then, where the water flows.

I’m tired. There was just no way I could have driven to Guildford and back. Mike was cool about it - he quickly found someone to take him.

Yet this choice presented itself yet again - rest alone, look after yourself while your demons swirl your brain with negative energy, or pedal flat-out with your friends until you can’t hear those voices above the sound of your engine burning out. I don’t know whether anyone has any idea what I have to fight in the silence.

Anyhow. I’m by the river, where the lights on the bridge wobble in the water like the strokes of an Impressionist painting. The reflection of a thing can sometimes be so different to the thing itself, can’t it? Fragmented, distorted, rippling out of reality, yet still adding depth and beauty. I do a lot of reflecting - things people have said, how I feel about things, what I should do in light of all the complexity of emotions, how I could straighten it all out, given half the chance, but also knowing my weaknesses would get in the way and how I would fall apart.

Actually though, I think the falling apart might be inevitable.

But a reflection of a thing is not the thing. And the lights on the bridge have guided travellers from the poo-path-side to the fancy gardens and back, for over a hundred years! I have a hope and a trust that I can do anything to which I have been called, because the one who calls knows what he’s doing. That’s light, truth, way, right there on the bridge by the sunset.

The geese are back out of the water. One looks at me as some great provider of snacks and makes a croaky burping sound as it tilts its head. It reminds me a bit of the dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park, the one who spits venom in Dennis Nedry’s eyes and then eats him alive while he tries to escape.

I shuffled up and made my way back to the car, picking my way very carefully along the path.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 13

I looked up the pollen forecast. VH.

You can forget about breathing when the count is VH. VH means stay indoors, don't look at the sun, buy a huge box of tissues, remember the good old days.

Unfortunately I have to be at work.

I'd forgotten that lovely feeling of a noseblow having no effect whatsoever. How delightful. You pop your ears while trumpeting your face into a kleenex. Your cheeks are red, and you're a little bit dizzy from the effort, yet your nostrils remain just as clogged as they were before you started.

I took two antihistamines today. No more than the usual drowsiness, thankfully, but I do wonder what good they do. It's hard to tell on VH days.

I'm also, once again fascinated by the effect of sleep on hay fever. There is a definite time-delay between waking up and the pollen kicking in. I'd say it's under a minute, but I'll time it tomorrow. This morning, I woke up breathing perfectly, then my nose twitched, then the air went tingly, then I sneezed and we were off again. I reached out to my bedside table and before I knew it, two tablets were guzzling their way into my blood stream.

"What is it that you've taken, Matt, just so I know in case you've overdosed?" asked Erica when I got in and made a fuss about it.

"Cetirizine hydrochloride," I replied without thinking. I'm hoping the side-effects aren't too serious - though this particular drug does affect my digestive system.

Meanwhile, outside the grass is taunting me. It's waving in the sunshine, ruffled by a cool English breeze, high on life and spreading its seed in every way it was always designed to. VH day for the grass too, then. Brilliant.

VENUS AND THE SUNSET

The sky is huge tonight. It’s that sort of warm summer sky that fades into the horizon as the wispy purple clouds cross the sunset; the sky that looms above you as you collapse into the wheat and listen to the breeze rustle the golden leaves.

I’m out in the park of course. At this time of year, I can sit out here after an evening meeting, instead of going straight indoors. I wish it was possible all year. Even in a few weeks’ time it’ll be too dark to come out to the sunset park at 9:30pm and expect to see anything.

A single star has appeared over the tree line. The more I think about it, the more I think it might be Venus, shimmering millions of miles away. Meanwhile the sun casts a band of gold beyond the silhouettes, and the huge sky rolls to meet it. Night is coming.

I expect I’ll see bats soon. They silently flap from the trees at dusk, like tiny birds. An animal is squeaking far away. A train rumbles through the valley. The bats will not mind the sound. They’ll begin their day while the tiny birds, the squeaking pet, the passengers on the train, and I, finish ours.

I do love a big sky. I look up at the dappled nimbus clouds that are painted onto the deep blue roof. Michelangelo himself couldn’t reach this ceiling! The sun, long hidden behind the valley of twinkling lights, still just catches each pocket of those clouds, lines them with silver and coats them in the glimmers of gold.

It is Venus, I think. The bringer of love, the bearer of light. Aphrodite, the Greeks called her, born from the sea. The world needs love. As do I. She twinkles behind a purple cloud, and then reappears. As should I. Love, I am reminded, is never a million miles away, even when it feels like it. It’s wherever I am, and it sparkles in me through all the sunsets of my life.

I think it’s time for me to go indoors.

LIVERPOOL, CHINA, AND TERRACOTTA

The Liver Building - and Europe's largest clock-face

The maritime city of Liverpool was the second adventure on our itinerary. On a muggy morning, as the clouds hung over the Mersey and the sun baked through them, we stood outside the World Museum, waiting for it to open.

And this is where I should confess our real purpose on Merseyside: rather bizarrely, it was China, or rather, terracotta.

The World Museum in the centre of Liverpool has a special exhibition on until October, and we were there to see it - ‘The First Emperor of China and the Terracotta Warriors’.

You might be familiar with the Terracotta Army - in around 200 BC, the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, died, and was buried in a vast mausoleum containing him, and his meticulous preparations for the afterlife. On his quest for immortality, he had surrounded himself with 8,000 life-sized, painted clay warriors, in ranks and battle positions. Each one was carefully and individually crafted, and together in hundreds of standing rows, these soldiers guarded the dead emperor for over 2,000 years. The Terracotta Warriors were discovered in 1974. And this year, a few of them are on display at the World Museum, Liverpool.

The Intrepids wanted to see them to make up for a trip that they missed while visiting China. While they’d taken in all the skyscrapery greys of Shanghai, they weren’t able to visit the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, or the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang; they had skipped out on the Terracotta Warriors. As for me, an ongoing fascination with history, coupled with no desire to ever to actually go to China made this a really easy decision.

So, we found ourselves happily in Liverpool. And sort of in China. But not really.

The Terracotta Warriors - the guy on the right is
driving a chariot, not milking a cow.

The exhibition was great! I learned how the warriors were made, how they were painted, and to what great lengths the ancient emperors went, to extend and protect their kingdoms. I learned how Daoism (Taoism), Confucianism, and Legalism competed for prominence in Chinese history at a time when we Europeans had barely learned how to attach a plough to a horse. I read about the Silk Road, about craftsmanship, and stone armour plating, and pigments, and arrows. The whole thing was captivating.

And of course, the terracotta figures themselves! My Mum was disappointed. She wanted to see rows and rows of them, standing to attention. There were seven - a general, some archers, and a horse-master. Considering how huge they are (they really are life-sized), I thought seven was fair enough. And the exhibition was well thought-through. I bought my Mum a miniature soldier to go on her mantelpiece. 

I suppose one of the niggling questions about things like this is about the respectfulness of digging these things up. We talked about it afterwards. At what point does it become archaeology instead of grave-digging? What would Qin She Huang make of his post-mortem bodyguards standing in a line in a cool dark room, out of context, in a land far away from his remains, being gawped at by pensioners and schoolkids? Does it matter? There’s a certain sadness about that that I can’t quite put my finger on.

But, thankfully, sadness doesn’t last long on sunny afternoons. By the time we emerged, blinking into the sunshine, Liverpool itself was basking in the heat of the June day.

The Catholic Cathedral. My Dad was calling it 'Paddy's Wigwam'
which I thought was racist until Billy Keegan the Tour Guide said it.

More recent history hits you everywhere in Liverpool. It’s a city of remarkable buildings and atmosphere. The architecture is arresting - from Portland stone to the characteristic blackened red brick, the elaborate columns and apexes of buildings around St George's Hall and Lime Street Station; then there are the contrasting styles of the 'three graces' by the docks, and of course the Radio City tower, poking above the leafy streets like a giant sugar lollipop.

When we left the museum, we jumped on a tour bus and looped around the city. It's always best, I think, to get one of those with a live tour guide, rather than the ones with the commentary. For a start, you get a lot more information, and as an added bonus, usually the accent, the idioms, the flavour and the culture that is so intertwined with a place. I can't imagine this being truer of a place than Liverpool - the accent is so strong, it may as well be in the bricks.

'Bill Keegan' flashed his yellow name badge around the top floor of the bus, eyes gleaming with pride. He was explaining how thousands of people had come over during the Irish potato famine, and settled in the city in the Nineteenth Century, and how he too had been a descendant of that migration. He had a way of speech that made him sound enthusiastic about every single thing he said.

"And if you look to your left like, you'll see where they bricked up the windows!" he said, eyebrows raised with glee, "It was a window tax! Can you believe it?"

The Port Authority building. It used to get blackened by smoke.

I smiled. Enthusiasm can be infectious sometimes, and in Liverpool, that seems to be just about the way of things.

We got off the bus at the docks. According to Bill, at one time or other, 40% of the world's trade passed through Liverpool. There would have been a time when the docks were the last place any of us would have wanted to have been. I imagined the tall ships bobbing on the flat, wide Mersey, grubby sailors hauling barrels and shouting through smoke and the fog. Slaves too, would have passed from ship to shore, shackled and beaten in the shadow of those same great buildings. Like most large cities in Britain, much of the grandness we look up at now, was built from the passage of slaves.

The 'three graces' grace the river these days, much more pleasantly. There is the grand Port Authority building, for some reason flying a Canadian flag alongside the St George's cross. Then there's the shorter Cunard building, where you'd get your first-class cruise-liner tickets. Then of course, the famous Liver building with its two Liver birds looking out over the city and the sea.

We wandered along, past the very lifelike bronze statues of the Beatles, and then ate lunch by the Isle of Man ferry.

These jokers were famous for a while, I'm told.
I think one of them narrated Thomas the Tank Engine

I like Liverpool a lot. It says something that I spent a long time working out whether I could have gone to university in a place like that. In a lot of other cities, it was never a question - the answer was so obviously a no, that I never entertained the question. Cardiff? Forget it. London? Physically can't spend more than three days there. Edinburgh? Lovely, but essentially freezing and too far away. But the 'Pool gets a maybe, veering on a yes. From the cheerful tour guides (Billy Keegan), to the chatty restaurant staff; from the over-excited museum helpers ('hope you have an amazing time guys' x5) to the friendly bus driver who tried very hard to get me to admit to being a student so he could actually give me a concession... there's a certain ease and friendliness to this city that I'm not sure you get elsewhere.

Even if seven armoured warriors were out-of-place, far from home and discoloured by dust and time, I most certainly felt the opposite of all those things.

LOOKING UP IN CHESTER

Chester is famous for the ‘Rows’

Another trip then. Not a Capital City Break, this time; not really a city-break at all, actually, though weirdly, this one does involve two great cities. Oh and I’m not adventuring on my own. This time, I’m with the Intrepids. And that adds a very different vibe to travelling.

The first city is the city of Chester. We stopped off for a few hours before finding our hotel.

Chester is small for a city, and with good reason. Nestled against the river Dee, with the hazy Clwyd mountains on the horizon, the tiny Roman fort became a garrison for soldiers, then an Anglo-Saxon stronghold, and finally a bustling walled-city in 1541. In fact it’s the only city in the UK with a ring of Roman walls surrounding its centre. You can walk along them, wide enough for three people, taking in the magnificent stone cathedral and the Victorian reproduction Tudor facades. The guide said that they were three miles long, but we didn’t go all the way round today. For some reason, the cathedral was loudly pealing all its bells at once, and we had to sit down to remind ourselves how to spell the word ‘cacophany’.

Right in the centre of Chester, where the Roman soldiers would have entered ‘Deva Victrix’ under a huge arched gate, is the Eastgate Clock, England’s second most-photographed timepiece. Apparently, it was added to the gate to celebrate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1899.

Britain’s secondmost frequently photographed clock

Chester’s a compact place: small and elegant like Bath or Ely, but a lot flatter than either of those places. It carries that medieval feel with its black and white timbered buildings looming over pedestrians, casting shadows across the street. I always think that style of architecture, even the idealised victorian type, is just like an old ship - beams of black painted oak and bright white plaster, tiny, ancient windows that only roughly fit between the wood, and bulging galleys hanging over walkways secured by ornately carved wood.

They call this the Rows, and if you look up in Chester, you’ll see it everywhere. Just above the fancy-shop-line, cloister-like passages under four-hundred-year-old second storeys, cool from the shade and sheltered from the rain. If you look up.

I quickly realised that Chester just makes you do that in a way that not many other cities do - look up. As I was taking photographs around the city, I realised that all the shots I wanted to capture, had me angling my phone at a forty-five degree angle, way above the bustling pedestrians and the glimmering shops of the Twenty-First Century. In places like Chester, time-travel is easy if you just look up. I think it might be because the streets are relatively narrow, so you find yourself constantly angling upwards to see something interesting, because you can’t quite take it all in.

Chester Cathedral

But also, I think it might be something to do with the feel of the place. Like Cardiff, Chester is young and studenty, almost as though ‘Hollyoaks’ (which is set here) has acted as some sort of magnet. Every other couple that passed us seemed sort of young and impossibly cool - from bearded hipster to party-girl, there was a lot of show. But, unlike the Welsh capital, here, I didn’t feel excluded or intimidated by that at all. In fact, I felt quite safe and confident walking through the tide of tanned and toned teenagers. It might have been of course, that the youngsters were balanced out by some older grey-haired northerners, who, actually, anywhere in the world, seem to know how to make a place feel friendly.

There is an optimism then. Like a lot of former industrial cities in the North, the stone and the brickwork is darkened by a hundred years of factory smoke, but also, like many cities, Chester seems to glisten with a bit of hope too. Between the ancient black-and-white-fronted beamed windows and the undercrofts that many of those old buildings had built into their medieval basements, there is no shortage of ground-floor, modern, fancy, and attractive shop-windows. Boutiques, gelaterias, wine bars, swirly restaurants and bistros with parasols and wicker chairs out front, and the inevitable trendy chains that are everywhere these days. Like the contrast of black and white timber and plaster, Chester combines the old and the new very well, and very tidily.

We walked round in about two hours. No museums with the Intrepids - they’re very much, ‘what’s around the corner’ people, which can be a little frustrating, but plenty of architecture to see. And I get the feeling that there are a few places we didn’t have time to visit today.

I definitely think I would come back. There’s an elegance to the mixture of things that make Chester what it is. But like a lot of things in this world, I suspect you only get to see it by looking up.