INTERRUPTED SLEEP, AND MORE STORYTELLING

I don't know what that was all about. I need to sleep better.

As it was, I woke up several times during the night - sometime after three, again at four-thirty, and finally, early, at ten to six, with the sunlight and the interminable alarm.

In the middle one, in the dusky smalls of 4:30am, I reached for my water bottle, half-asleep, uncapped it, and then accidentally poured it all over my face. I sat bolt upright, gasping and spluttering as the water stung my nostrils.

Part of the reason for writing lousily about caterpillars is that I'd like to get better at storytelling. On the way to work today, I practised telling myself another of my favourite stories - the story of Stone Soup, and got all in a muddle right in the middle. Who would want to listen to me losing confidence when I get to the bit about the traveller suggesting vegetables to add to the broth and the widow racing off to find them?

There's a lot to be said for pacing, for understanding drama, and the twists and reveals.

I am tired though, today, thanks to that interrupted sleep and my subconscious attempt to drown myself in my water bottle. At around 11:30 this morning I realised I was wearing my shirt inside out.

TURNBERRY

I’ve been thinking about storytelling and the art of suspense.

I don’t want to get too technical, but I do wonder how to pace things well so that you create empathy for a character, add in some action, but also build the drama at just the right speed.

So I created the start of just about as simple a story as I could think, about a straightforward enough character - a caterpillar with special dietary requirements... The aim, I think, is to use this character to experiment with storytelling in different scenarios...

Turnberry: Part 1

Turnberry was a caterpillar. In fact he was a very ordinary caterpillar, who didn’t like anything quite so much as he liked eating. Then only problem was that Turnberry was allergic to leaves - all kinds of green leaves. They made him sick.

So poor old Turnberry had to make do with doughnuts, cakes, custard tarts, Bourbon biscuits, and ice cream.

“I’m on a special diet,” he would tell his friends, looking on mournfully as they munched on lovely juicy rhubarb and sunflower leaves.

One day, as Turnberry was trying to eat a square of battenburg from a plastic tub he’d brought in, he accidentally dropped it.

“Oh no! My battenburg cake!” he cried. The other caterpillars just looked blankly at him. The cake disappeared through the leaves and thumped to the cool earthy soil below.

“Well, I suppose I should go and get it,” he huffed, and gradually he started to shuffle down the stem, through the succulent looking leaves, to where the sunlight was hidden by the deep green canopy.

There was the tub, and there was the cake, scuffed with bits of earth and mud. Turnberry looked around. It was cold down there, on the ground. Caterpillars didn’t normally come this far. He knew he’d have to get back to the sunlight.

Just as he was shoving the muddy bits of crumbly old cake back into the plastic tub, Turnberry stopped, as though he’d felt a shadow fall suddenly over him. A moment passed.

“Hello Turnberry,” said a deep, sudden, rumbling voice. It was above him, like thunder and rain all at the same time, powerful, gigantic, cold, hammering into the earth below.

Carefully, and above all, very slowly, Turnberry twisted around in the ice-cool shade cast by the stranger, the stranger who somehow knew his name. 

And there, looking up, Turnberry froze.

-

I don’t really have a clue what’s going to happen next. The question is: does this make you want to read on? Is there enough empathy there? Who is the stranger? Do you want to find out what happens to our little hero?

Storytelling is hard, but I’m kind of wondering whether keeping it simple and paced is the best key to it.

WHITE NOISE

The world is full of noise today: clamorous, clanking, clattering, cluttery old noise.

I'll let you into a secret though: it isn't the world's fault - I'm just feeling quite susceptible to it.

I walked into the kitchen. Someone was playing some loud Russian folk music through their phone. It was apparently, hilarious. It rattled inside my head like marbles in a tin. Then someone else started clattering pots and plates about in the cupboards. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth.

Like most things in the world of course, it's my response to it that annoys me the most. I sit here imagining that this level of noise is actually quite normal, and on normal days I'm better equipped to deal with it. For some reason though today, I'm allowing myself to get infuriated by the cacophany. And I can definitely do better than that.

I think maybe it starts with headphones? Perhaps some of those noise-cancelling ones. I'll bet there's some white noise I can download too - like a vacuum cleaner or the drone of the motorway or something. Though of course, I only want to not be irritated; I have a feeling that falling asleep at my desk might not be a great career choice.

Though admittedly, better than dropping off while using a vacuum cleaner, or driving on the motorway.

SLEEP AND SOUL TRAVEL

Someone asked me yesterday, whether I thought that the soul leaves the body when we’re asleep and dreaming.

I’m not here to get metaphysical, or super spiritual, or even hotly theological, but I don’t think it matters. Sure, dreams can be lovely, scary, significant and weird. And yes, they take us spinning through the universe we constructed from our memories, but in a way, they do the thing they’re programmed to do, recharging our brains and resetting our emotions.

I’ve been napping a lot recently. Today, I fell asleep clutching a cushion and listening to Just a Minute on Radio 4. Before long, I was swirling through my imagination (in ways that I instantly forgot) until I snorted awake to the sound of Nicholas Parsons chiming ‘Join us again, the next time we play... Just a Minute...’ along to the theme-tune Chopin Minute Waltz. Whatever it was that I had been dreaming had been good, familiar and emotional. I woozily headed for the kitchen and asked myself how I felt.

Still half-asleep. The water from the tap burbled over the glass and drenched my hand in cold, rushing water.

As it happens, I believe that the soul, the body and the spirit do all stay attached and intertwined while our minds invent our dreamworlds for us. Whether it’s down to too much cheese (if such a thing there can be, that is) or a kind of thinness between the physical and spiritual realms through which God himself can whisper, I don’t always know. What I do know, is that somehow my dreams sustain me and fuel me, and I often wake up feeling, and being, very different. And that’s nice enough to make me want to do it again.

Speaking of which... is that the time? Yawn.

MY WEEK OF WATERING

What my dad didn’t tell me about the fancy extendable hosepipe is that if the pressure builds up, it gets harder and harder to change the nozzle, and when it’s still attached to the tap, it might not be sensible to try wrenching the thing round from ‘cone’ to ‘jet’ to ‘mist’ by gripping it with wet fingers inside the hem of your t-shirt.

Another top tip, which should be evident to the world of physics, is that on windy days you can’t really get away with switching it to ‘jet’ and watering the plants in the front garden that are too far for the hosepipe to normally reach. If the wind is blowing towards you, it ought to be obvious what the end result might be.

Tonight, almost as soon as I’d hung up the fancy hosepipe and tucked away the watering cans, it started raining. Ah well. They can’t have too much water can they, the plants? Better than none.

I randomly started filling up the bird bath as well (twist to ‘cone’ and aim). I thought maybe the birds would appreciate fresh water, especially on these baking days. I never saw any of them use it though. Perhaps the starlings and the tits come over during work hours to party in the lido while I’ve been at my desk. ‘A society grows strong,’ some Greek philosopher once said, ‘when old men plant trees whose shade they will never enjoy.’

Hope the same is true for birds then.

That’s it for my week of watering then. The Intrepids are back tomorrow, and my dad can use his own fancy extendable hosepipe again. It’s been nice to see the water trickling from leaves and soaking the soil though. I’ve liked seeing the rainbow in the spray and feeling the droplets of cool clear water splashing lightly on my hot face. I feel like I’ve made at least a small difference to some living things, and, without wishing to be over-dramatic, I’ve prevented the death of a garden in a very simple way.

I also switched the hose back to ‘jet’ and squirted it directly into my dad’s rain gage, just to be funny. He is going to wonder how exactly we had 50cm of rain during a drought, I’d wager. Though, he’s kind and clever; I’m sure he’ll work it out.

THE FIRST EYE TEST

So there's nothing wrong with my eyes. Well, except the usual myopia and red-green colourblindness that is. I went for my eye test yesterday.

"Just take a seat at the machine," said the optometrist, turning to the wall to flick off the light switch.

"Er, you might find it easier on the other side," she chuckled. I had accidentally sat on her side of the desk and was just wondering why I needed a keyboard and monitor screen. It does always help to be the right side of the lenses, I suppose. It wasn't the best start for an eye exam.

She took some measurements and puffed the usual glaucoma-spray into each eye. I looked at red dots and white circles and then she switched on the lights and left the room.

There's something awkwardly intimate about having your eyes tested. I don't remember too many occasions when a stranger has been millimetres away from my face, looking directly into my eyes. Before long, the second optomotrest was in the room, carrying the same set of notes that the young lady had carried out. His face was implacable and his demeanour cheerful. I have never known whether that's a good sign or a really bad one, when it's worn by a medical professional.

The eye test continued. He shone lights right into my eyes until I could see the ghosting of the inside of my eyeball and a blinking image of the sun. He made me look up to the ceiling, down to the floor, left to the machine and right to the monitor. I thought about his tie, the carpet, his hair and the planet-like picture on the monitor-screen. My thoughts wandered too. I had to remind myself that my eyes were being examined.

The 'planet-like picture' looked a bit like Mars - a sphere full of blood-red cracks and craters. It turned out to be a photograph of one of my eyes, which (apart from the short-sightedness) the optometrist cheerily told me were perfectly healthy.

So, I've been referred to the hospital. They're going to let me know what happens next.

TEEN-WOLF-PACK BONDING

I wonder whether perhaps I’ve been a bit harsh on the Millennials. They’re growing up on a planet that’s getting hotter and ruder and faster; a world of fundamental divisions and echo chambers, and rapidly accelerating technology, fuelling unprecedented societal changes. We’re very poorly equipped to help them: we had no smart phones, no online virtual reality, no instant access to answers or photographs or lifestyles. How can we know what it’s like? We’re the slide rules to their pocket calculators.

And it’s easy to be harsh. I should know tonight, as I’m listening to a group of young people howling like wolves in the park. This is their pack, bonding together, by the light of the full, round moon on a sweltering summer’s night. The dark masks their shyness, the clouds hide their innocence. The music drowns their thoughts and the cans and plastic bottles clutter their judgment.

I remember sitting in the Abbey Ruins. The moon was high and bright then too, covered by those swirling silvered clouds above the bare stone walls. Same moon. My friends giggled as they clinked neon bottles of Hooch and TwoDogs, plotting loudly about how to get me drunk. I didn’t understand their motives - somehow the idea that it might be ‘funny’ had consumed them, and had it been easier or cheaper they would have been more dedicated to the cause. But I was an adamant teenager, a goodie-two-shoes, often torn between worlds and feeling a hopeless failure for half-embracing both of them: sober, serious, sensible, yet still unwisely there in the gaggle, sitting on a bench of alcopops, in a late-night historical ruin.

A little more maturity and maybe I would have realised that they looked up to me for sticking to my principles and my faith. 

Perhaps too, I’d have realised that the adults I knew would have been proud of me also, for trying my best to figure out how to be ‘in the world’ but not ‘of it’. I could never have imagined that that in itself could have been a lifelong struggle for them too. Loving others without compromising is tough work.

These young people are the same: figuring out their place in the world, while sitting round a makeshift fire, amidst the blue glare of their phones in the midnight park. The darkness might hide their insecurities, but the scene is surprisingly familiar to us oldies who have to go to work in the morning.

I wonder whether we owe it to the Millennials to help them deal with that inevitable gap between their dreams and their reality. We either have to help them make it, give them those chances to be the thing, or we have to show them that contentment with failure can be a beautiful discovery and a hugely well-kept secret that’s waiting for them.

But we shouldn’t stop them from trying. And neither should we boomers and Xers (I’m a Generation X) stop trying either! As someone once said, ‘if you aim for the moon, you might miss it and hit the stars, but if you aim for nothing at all, you’re bound to hit it every time.’

Although. It has to be said that it’s also best not to do your social teen-wolf-pack bonding in a quiet residential park in the small hours of a Friday morning. Shoot the moon tomorrow, kids. Seriously. You’ve got time.

MILLENNIALS DISCUSS THE FUTURE

I just walked into the kitchen where the placement students were eating lunch and discussing their woes. I listened in. I didn't really want to, but I couldn't help it:

"I wish I could retire," said one, mournfully. I smiled into my teacup. How old are these kids?

"Yeah," said another, "My plan is to marry rich."

"How's that working out for you?"

"Oh preeeetty well..."

I chortled and then quickly turned it into a comedy cough. I really am quite dehydrated.

Anyway, what has happened to these Millennials? They haven't even started work yet and already they're wishing it could all be over? Are there four decades of misery ahead of them? That'd be terribly sad - especially for a group of people who've been consistently told that they could be anything they wanted to be. The gap between dreams and reality must be enormous.

They're right about one thing though - life is definitely much bigger than work, and your job should fuel your life, rather than the other way around. With that perspective, I'm sure we'd all like to retire while we've got the youth to enjoy it; but it's not everyone's privilege. So if you're going to do something, at least do something that you'll enjoy along the way!

I wiped up my teacup and headed back to my desk, with that exact thought rattling around in my head.

I hummed to myself as I unlocked my computer and logged back in to the world of technical documentation, statistics and scrum mastering.

RED PLANET

I feel really faint today, as though I’m sort of transparent and slowly fading out of reality.

I think it’s the heat.

It’s not all bad though: we had some beautiful rain last Friday night, filling the air with the fresh petrichor, and softening the hardened earth. It wasn’t much, but it was great while it lasted.

Since then, it’s been hotter than a baker’s apron. And it looks like the heatwave will continue. Even the Met Office have advised people to stay out of the sun until the end of the week. This temperate isle is temporarily inhospitable, it seems, while the sun burns holes in our greens and our pleasants.

It wasn’t that long ago that we were all suffering from the ‘Beast from the East’! That cold snap froze the country white with Siberian snow. Now here we are. And they say climate change is a hoax... although more quietly during the summer, it seems. Must be the time when all the fossil fuel magnates and lobbyists jet off to their lakeside alpine cottages to smoke cigars in champagne hot-tubs while the world burns. 

Meanwhile in space news, lots of excitement today as they think they’ve finally found an underwater reservoir on Mars! Liquid water, maybe simple life forms, maybe the potential for future human expansion... on the red planet!

Part of me thinks it might be best if we can figure out how to look after this one first, before we start sprawling ourselves like messy teenagers, across the solar system.

Another part of me thinks we should send off those oil-burning, cigar-smoking, fossil-fuel fatcats first, and just let them figure out how to live on a sun-scorched, red planet for a while.

Give me blue and green anytime. Come, gentle rains.

I WISH MY EYES

So, my eye-test is booked anyway. Hopefully, they'll be able to sort out what's going on with the jumpy vision. It's getting kind of annoying now.

I sat at my desk earlier, feeling tired. I had a thought, about what I wished I could see, as opposed to the swirling mess of characters on the screen in front of me.

So I turned it into a poem. It's probably about more than having dodgy vision though - maybe it's closer to being about that little yearning from my childhood: as the school summer holidays dawn, it feels like a seaside adventure ought to be around the corner. Funny how these things ripple from the past into the present...

I Wish My Eyes

I wish my eyes
Could see the sea
And tell how blue
The blue can be,
And spot the tiny
Billowed white
Of sailing boats
That catch the light

I wish that I
could see the green
The rolling turquoise
Deep marine
And sunlit clouds
Of golden land
Where gentle waves
Caress the sand

I wish my eyes
Could catch it all
From ocean deep
To harbour wall
From clifftop view
So close, so free
I wish my eyes
Could see the sea

NOT BEEN THERE, NOT DONE THAT, BUT STILL GOT THE T-SHIRT

According to my t-shirts, I was once:

1. A speedway champion, in 1975
2. Mountain climbing in Arkansas - do they even have any mountains?
3. In the Chicago Motorcycle Club
4. A member of a Colorado college basketball team
5. In Yokohama, for some reason, in 1968
6. In Top Gun (I can't say this without remembering the theme tune)
7. A fan of the 1965 Panama Racing Squad
8. In Rio de Janeiro for the 2014 World Cup
9. Selling Fender guitars and equipment
10. On the San Clemente Lifeguard Team in Southern California

What a life!

I don't really remember most of it though, and some of it must have happened... before I was er, born, so, you know... weird that I feel I can wear the t-shirt.

The trouble is, it's much harder to find cool-looking t-shirts that say things like: Tech Authoring Dept. Est 2012. Or Library Nerd, Reluctant Fire Marshall, or University Chess Club. Though I do have an old choir t-shirt.

At least the metalheads wear t-shirts of bands they've actually liked or seen! Sure they have names that sound like they were picked from the Gothic Dictionary of Twisted Monikers, but hey, at least it's authentic! And, to be fair, those people are some of the most authentic people I've ever met, so that's no surprise.

So, why am I wearing misleading t-shirts? Does it display to the world a kind of dissatisfaction with the captionless, unexciting life I actually lead? Am I masking a secret disappointment at not getting to go Formula racing every weekend, or that I was never (and would never have been likely to be) picked for the San Diego Harbour Patrol?

Or, am I just subconsciously toeing the fashion line? Probably that isn't it? Like all fashionable influence, it's got lodged in my head somewhere that this is how to look cool, and I've fallen for it.

Not that it's a bad thing. Actually, if it makes you happy, then the reasons for changing are diminished to the point of someone else's view of appropriateness. It's really up to us, after all.

So just for the record, even though I do have the t-shirt, I'd still like to make it clear: that I have no desire to try speedway (dusty and dangerous), that Arkansas is home to the Ozarks and they're really plateaus rather than mountains - either way I've never been; I can't ride a motorcycle, and attempting to do so in Chicago of all places, sounds like a horrible idea; I was hopeless at Basketball (a 'non-contact' sport that resulted in me being bundled to the floor of the school gym); I have no desire to go to Yokohama, I haven't even seen Top Gun all the way through (don't hate me)! I don't know what I thought was appealing about Panama or Rio, I have never owned a Fender guitar, and most importantly of all, would be utterly useless as any kind of lifeguard (I can't swim), especially one who might belong on the set of Baywatch, patrolling the bronzed, super-fit beaches of San Clemente, wherever that is.

Just for fun, I did google Tech Author T-Shirt. Predictably, they're all those generic: "Keep Calm and Trust a Tech-Author" or "This is the What the World's Greatest Tech Author Looks Like" shirts, where the job title has clearly been made into a variable by the factory, and might as well be 'Software Engineer', 'Milkman', or 'Secretary of State for Pencils'.

Maybe I should take up Speedway, after all then - if they get the cool t-shirts and the leather jackets with sewn-on badges that make you look like you're from Knight Rider or Airwolf or something. Or maybe, it's just particularly difficult to look cool and be genuine all at the same time.

Though I hope not.

FANCY NEW HOSEPIPE

My Mum texted me today to ask if I want to pop round for a cuppa as my Dad wants to 'show off his fancy new hosepipe'.

How 'fancy' can it be, I wonder? Perhaps it's digital, responsive to the weather app or something. Maybe it's voice-activated - a smart-hose. Other than that, the only thing I can imagine is that it's so powerful, it can water next door's plants, and also drench the flowers at next-door-but-one. Maybe my Dad picked it up at the Fire Station Jumble Sale.

That of course, is not the reason my Mum invited me round; I think they're just wanting to see me before they go off on their next trip - this time, to North Wales.

It seems weird that my Dad's got a new hosepipe in the middle of a drought. Just exactly what is he going to show me? How he can water the plants from an iPhone? How to get round the inevitable hosepipe ban?

Wait a mo though. They're going away anway! He's not going to have much chance to use his fancy new hosepipe in the next week, unless he can operate it from Llandudno! The mystery deepens. How will they water the plants in a drought, when they're in Wales, and there's a hosepipe ban? They'll have to get one of the neighbours to do it, I suppose - pop round with a watering can and a pair of wellies. Or maybe one of my sisters? Ha! Shame - they'll have to drive all the way over! Hilarious.

Well, I guess I'll ask them later, while he's demonstrating how to flood the garden.

ARTISTS AND CHEFS: PART 2

I’ve thought of yet another reason why ‘he/she who gets the vision gets the job’ is a terrible way to work.

Not only does it push back against the brilliant idea of working in motivated teams of invested people, not only does it strengthen the notion that the person who said it doesn’t actually want to do it themselves, not only does it pretend to empower people while setting them up for solo failure, not only does it do all these things, but ‘he/she who gets the vision gets the job’ also inextricably links all the work with all the heart. In other words, the visionaries end up doing everything themselves.

I’m having to let a project fail in order to let others figure out how to pick it up. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s all part of that transition from artist to chef. An artist remember, works alone in a studio, crafting, painting, sculpting, writing until the vision emerges. A chef recruits a team who between them, construct a restaurant experience that could only work because they all got hold of the vision and worked hard together to achieve it. I’m on a journey somewhere between the two.

My project won’t succeed with me filling in all the gaps. It won’t succeed when I soon stop doing that either, but just beyond the kitchen-failure, just the other side of the Gordon-Ramsay-meltdown, there’s a win that’s bigger than anything I could ever have done on my own.

I just wish I could relegate the phrase. As I said before, it’s us who get the vision, and part of the job is sharing it, shaping it, and letting it grow until it starts producing some succulent fruit. And if it really is only you who has the vision for a thing, the only job that matters for now, is sharing the vision with others and dreaming out between you how to make it fly, long before you get the job.

THE DRY GRASS AND THE IRONY-BENCH

The grass in the park is so dry and dead that it’s turning white. If I squint, it could almost be a dusting of snow on the cracked brown earth. Soil patches poke through like bald spots in a mat of thinning hair.

No rain then. Still we wait for that. The sky is hazy blue, with lines of wispy evening cloud. The air is hot and still. Wood pigeons call each other from the trees.

An old man with a golden retriever shuffles into view. He’s wearing cotton slacks and a grey collared t-shirt. He has smart navy blue trainers with white stripes. The dog shuffles onto its resting haunches as the owner creaks onto a bench and lights up a woodbine. Before long his face is clouded in blue smoke.

This seems to be my evening: sitting out here on this irony-bench, not quite feeling at home anywhere else, yet yards from my flat. There are lots of places where I should feel at home, yet that feeling just seems to elude them all, and me somehow.

It’s been an okay day today. Nobody joked about my appearance or attitude, and even though I wrecked a webinar and got told off sideways about it, I was far from upset. I still maintain that customer-demos should not be recorded in the room adjacent to the table-football area. It was okay though.

What was not okay was me driving through a red light. I’m still puzzled as to how it happened: I just wasn’t really present in the moment. I thumped on the brakes, metres beyond the stop-line. I rarely make that kind of error. I feel sure that that means something.

The old man extracts a hankie and blows his nose to the first three notes of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. Fifth, third, tonic... says my brain. O-h say... I find myself wishing that someone would do that in front of President Business. But that’s disrespectful.

I feel like rain would change things, drench things, soak things, bring a little refreshing to this crusty old earth. It’s been weeks now, and the sky is barren. What we need is a good old downpour, a torrent of heavy, pounding rain, thumping into the soil, reviving the grass, and bringing life back into this dry and weary land.

The air is so still; I can hear dogs yapping miles away. An Irishman just went by on the phone to his brother with a very complicated work situation. I find myself wondering whether accidentally interrupting a webinar with a game of table football was really all that bad in the grand scheme of things.

It grows dark. Funny, the grass seems even drier and whiter in the twilight. We really need some rain. 

I do, anyway.

RENEW THEIR STRENGTH

An email went round today, suggesting we keep an eye out for items in the office that are ‘old, tired, or broken.’

Someone told Erica that she should make sure she knew where I was, in case I accidentally ended up in the skip.

I laughed it off at the time. But you know what, it’s kind of awful isn’t it? They apologised and then awkwardly fumbled that they didn’t quite know why they had said it. And to give them their due, that couldn’t have been easy. But we all know what words are like, and where they come from.

I convey something. Either in demeanour or appearance, I convey something, and I dislike it. Old. It’s more than grey; it’s an attitude. And yet, I don’t think I am. At least not really. I try not to be set in my ways about anything, and I still feel like I’m flexing into who I actually am. But somehow, because I remember Thundercats and Bagpuss and Sticklebricks and Um Bongo... I count as Gandalf the Grey in my corner of the Shire.

Tired. Well yes. The heat over the last few weeks has stolen my sleep and broken my eyesight. I’m exhausted. But nobody sees the lion or the bear in the shadows. How could they know? Even youths grow tired and faint. It’s no indication of anything.

And broken. Yeah, I suppose so. But they’d be surprised why, I reckon. I think a lot of people would. And also, surprised at the strength that flows through brokenness. You haven’t lived until you’ve been broken.

I dislike the joke though. Still, I have to take that thought captive, and be the answer I’m looking for. I don’t want my sadness to overflow to those around me, and I don’t want them to cut me off to protect themselves from it either. And so.

I need to grit my teeth and shut down the hatches for a while. I need to be strong and certain, and less miserable. I need to fight the old, refresh the tired, and fix the broken. I need to soar on wings like eagles. I need to wait.

DON’T DISTURB THE ENCHILADAS

Right. Probably going to have to get my eyes examined. I’ve got trouble focusing when I flick to looking at something new.

It only lasts a fraction of a second, but it’s noticeable - as though my vision is jumpy. 

Of course it’s equally possible that the world itself is starting to twitch out of reality... but I feel sure I would have read about it in the news.

Meanwhile, I was accidentally patronising, my team poked fun at me again, and we had a huge pub-discussion about punctuation. Then I tried a joke that wasn’t funny.

I think my sense of humour might be getting a bit sharp. My friend messaged me to say he’d got a new car and was just picking it up. I recommended he drove it instead, unless it turned out to be not as heavy as I was imagining. Blank. Tumbleweed.

Last night’s park-walk had me in stitches too, when I couldn’t remember the other name for crickets and all I could think of was ‘enchiladas’... Recounting how much funnier I had found it, creasing up in the dark silence of an empty park like a lunatic... somehow wasn’t as hilarious today.

Slip over in the office though, or bang your head under the desk while trying to plug your phone-charger in, and everybody’s in fits. Comedy remains a mystery to me.

It might be tiredness, the eye-thing. Or too much time in front of screens. I can sort both of those things out if I put my mind to it. Not much I can do about the other stuff. I can start being more discerning I suppose and ask more questions. I guess I could also get some rest, or do more screen-free, sunset walks in the park.

Just got to make sure I don’t disturb the enchiladas.

OLD TIMER

It's gone a bit cooler and a bit breezier today. There's even a rumour that we might get rained on tomorrow.

Just in time to drench that twenty-foot baby balloon they're planning on floating over London in protest at a visiting President.

I don't talk about politics, but I think it's okay to say that you ought not to fight peurile with peurile. Sure, President Business has a character like something from The Beano, and his thin-skinned behaviour leaves a lot to be desired. But even the least qualified of us know that you can't change a child's behaviour by behaving like a child. As Michelle Obama observed once, "When they go low, we go high," by which I don't think she meant a giant effigy bobbing above the Houses of Parliament like a barrage balloon. I think that what they are doing is actually a really childish reaction to a pretty grim situation, and there are much more grown up ways to protest about things you don't like. Sorry if that's not in the zeitgeist, but I say, bring on the rain.

Meanwhile, closer to home, I got called an 'old timer' today.

"Matt, you're an old timer..." said someone (meaning I've been doing the same thing for six years). I reacted, and so they said it again... and then four further times, just to elicit a face that unfortunately I couldn't hide.

Eyebrows raised, look of horrified indignation, open-mouthed in over-dramatised shock...

Old timer indeed! When I was a kid that was a phrase for someone who fought in the War! And before you dream up a wisecrack, I of course mean the Second World War and not as you might have thought, The Boer, Napoleonic, or Hundred Years' War thank you.

"I'm a young man!" I protested to Clive, looking around for sympathy.

"Of course you are," he chuckled into his monitor.

Some of the students looked puzzled as if they couldn't quite compute what was happening. The only consolation I had was knowing that one day, their time would come too. Weirdly, that deferrable schadenfreude brought me a little 'freude', a long time before there would be any 'schaden' for them to understand.

Young, old, left, right, liberal, conservative. Sometimes I really despise the way that society pushes us into polarised boxes. All we end up doing is standing in ours, shouting about how hypocritical the people in the others are. And as soon as a completely divisive character comes along, the shouting just gets louder, and it gets harder and harder to really listen to what's going on.

But then, I suppose it's possible that my hearing is going; I am an 'old timer' after all.

A HANDFUL OF WIND

I went to the stables today to help my friend plan her music for dressage. That place is a whole new world to me: huge muscular horses on spindly yet powerful legs, uneven, dusty earth and stones, and the gentle aroma of hay and horse poo on the breeze.

I wore my trainers and felt as out of place as Marty McFly in Back To The Future Part III. I was alright though - I was there to time the walk and the trot in beats per minute, and work out what would be comfortable for the routine.

Practising equestrian sport must be one of the most difficult things to do. A snooker player can spend hours potting balls around a lamplit table, an athlete just needs a track. Meanwhile team games can be practised with just a field, a ball (usually) and a scheduled training session, which must be so easy to arrange. But eventing, show jumping, dressage? You don’t just need a place, a team, and a time; you need the cooperation of a member of another species! 

I clicked around with my metronome, finding the natural pace of the horse’s gait. It occurred to me that the order in which each hoof strikes the earth is important, but that the pattern was always the same. It was magnificent to watch, as the shoes glinted in the setting sun, and the dust was caught by the long beams of light.

The horse, a rich chestnut brown with a smooth black mane, is an ex-racehorse who still manages to look sleek, elegant, and powerful. I always forget how big horses are until I see one again.

They are truly splendid. Thousands of years of domestication and evolution, from the desert horses that were described in Arabic as a ‘handful of wind’ to those strong work horses that pulled us into the age of steam; from the war horses that terrified the plains and battlefields, to the radiant carriers of kings and princes, here we are - in harmony with these gentle, magnificent, noble creatures of old. It’s a thing of wonder really.

I could have pondered the history, the elegance, the sheer magnificence of these animals a lot longer of course, but on one of the last passes round the ring, while I stood there clicking a metronome and thinking it through, this particular horse lifted its tail and loudly broke wind at me.

HOW MY BRAIN MELTED

I reckon if you opened up my head right now, you’d just get a sort of soupy goo where my brain used to be. It’s like melted chocolate.

We’re still in the middle of the heatwave. Soaring temperatures, brown grass, hot, sweltering nights, and the humidity that causes all your clothes to stick to you.

The first bit of my brain to go was the social processor. I got caught in a bind yesterday, between feeling useless, and looking lazy. I don’t know why it is but some people are just so good at the practical - clearing up or setting up or just knowing what to do. They’re so good at it that they don’t even have to talk about it; they simply get on with it.

The trouble is that not everyone is like that. I am absolutely not, even at the best of times. I need a little help.

“Shall I wash this up?” I say, like a child. “Shall I take out this rubbish? What do you want me to do next?” So many questions. They must be thinking I should just use my initiative. But on hot days, the social processor is kaput, and so ultimately I stand around looking for jobs that might need doing, but also with no idea about the right way to do them. Sitting down was logically the best/most infuriating option in the useless/lazy window.

The next bit to melt inside my head, was the bit that controls musical knowhow - the muso chip. That snapped this morning at church when I heard myself playing a 4/4 pattern over a 6/8 rhythm. I never normally do that, and while I think I got away with it, it was an experiment too far - like when I played a slowed-down version of the Jurassic Park theme in a ministry time, years ago in a similar heatwave. The muso chip normally disciplines me out of sliding into sloppy jazz patterns and weird tripletty fills. When it’s gone though, I might as well be Thelonious Monk. Only without the talent.

Then this afternoon, the stuff that normally keeps me awake got fried in the heat and I fell asleep instead of doing jobs. Then I lost the politeness centre and almost sent an email I would have regretted. Thankfully, the writing generator was still working, and acted as a failover for the politeness centre by getting me to reconsider hitting the send button. Any hotter though and I would have been in trouble.

So I can’t talk to people, I can’t do jobs, I can’t play anything properly on the piano, and I can’t stay awake. I’m not unhappy though, in this sweltering mess of stringy brain. The fact library is still working, and the writing generator is doing a splendid job of rerouting power.

How long will this heatwave go on? Still we long for a bit of rain, maybe a cloudy, drizzly day like summers of old. Still the sun burns through the hot July sky, still the air sweats at night.

Still the brain melts. Maybe like chocolate I could refreeze it; I could stick my head in the freezer and hope for the best. The thing is though - it’s never the same; what comes out is a mangled mass of frozen chocolate that you have to chomp through as though it were a deformed lump discarded by the factory. My brain is far from that. And in any case, I’d have to bring it out again and make it work in time for my air-conditioned desk job tomorrow.

Though I rarely use my brain there anyway, most days.

POTATO FLAKES

Tonight I’m eating a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.* Not my favourite, but all I had left to bring to the park.

For most of my life I’ve hated what salt and vinegar crisps do to your lips. It feels like you’re scoffing tasty, crunchy, razor-blades. You try to slide one in length ways and crunch it with your teeth, but of course, the saltiness makes you lick your lips regardless and the acid returns. Plus you look like you’ve forgotten how to eat and have been taking lessons from Frankenstein’s Monster. Chompy chompy. I haven’t brought a drink either. Error.

Meanwhile, the list of potential allergic reactions on the back of the packet has caught my attention. These crisps were ‘made in a factory that also handles: Wheat, Gluten, Soya, Celery, Mustard.’

... presumably in order of how prevalent those allergies are (I can’t think what other order that could be)... which means that there are some people out there who can’t eat trace amounts of celery, or mustard. I can’t work out which of those things I’d rather be allergic to.

It also seems that all the other ingredients have been given capital letters too, for some reason, including Sugar, Malt Vinegar Seasoning, and oddly, Potato Flakes.

Why not just potatoes, sorry, Potatoes? Why take up valuable ink and space by describing them as ‘Potato Flakes’? Hmm.

By the way, I reckon you could fit half a million Skittles into an average garden shed. I know, but I couldn’t sleep and it was roasting. I have no idea how you’d get them out again.

There’s also a troubling amount of salt and sugar in these things, despite them being ‘50% less fat’ and ‘the perfect snack between meals’. I don’t think I can imagine an inter-prendial snack that reaches the dizzy heights of perfection, but I’d wager that if I could, it probably wouldn’t be these razor-sharp, salt-soaked, vinegar-drizzled, low fat Potato Flakes.

I should have brought a banana.

*Chips, Americans, potato chips. Let’s not get into this again.

THE ORDER OF QUANTICLES

I’m really conscious that I used the word ‘twimptieth’ the other day, without ever really explaining what I think twimpty is. I made it up, so it could be anything, as is often the way with these ‘non-numeric vague quantifiers’.

Boringly, some seem to be calling them ‘fictitious numbers’ but I think they’re much more than that. They are any placeholder name for a particular amount, and I suppose they could be pretty much anything you like.

Personally I think ‘twimpty’ = ‘umpteen’ + ‘several’, but by definition, these NNVQs, these ‘fictitious numbers’... are not quite that calculable or precise.

They need a better name. I think I might call them ‘quanticles’. Quanticles: the names we give to amounts which are sort of vague and we don’t want to be specific. I like it. Here’s my Order of Quanticles...

One 

Two

A few
Several

A handful

Many

Umpteen

Twimpty

Dozens

Oodles

Buckets

Shedloads

Gazillions

I’d love to explain why I think a ‘handful’ is bigger than ‘several’ or how many ‘buckets’ fit into a ‘shedload’ but these conversations are best argued out in person, over a cool drink in a comfortable establishment*. As I’m sure you’ve already worked out, some are context-size-based quanticles (a handful of sand grains is greater than a handful of Skittles for example, though less tasty). So I think my order might just normalise those CSBQs and pretend that it refers to items of the same size - a bucket of Skittles is more Skittles than a handful, but fewer than a shedload, or a gazillion Skittles.

So, I hope that clears up the confusion over the ‘twimptieth’ hot night in a row. Though it hasn’t done anything at all about the temperature or its continued effect on my mushy brain. Twimpty plus one.

Maybe I’ll just close my eyes and try to work out exactly how many Skittles would probably fit into a garden shed, while I fall asleep.

It’s about time I had sweet dreams after all.

*Not you, Popworld.

THE OLD-FASHIONED ART

The other night (after one of my famous inability-to-socialise events) I sat on Platform 9, waiting for the train. There was a space on a bench free, with just an acceptable distance between the two girls perched at either end, so I made a line for it, and sat down.

I instantly reached for my pocket. It was like a reflex action.

But halfway there, my fingers stopped over my jeans, and I thought about it. I looked left. The girl that side (ripped jeans, large suitcase) was engrossed in her phone. She was scrolling through something that looked like it would never end. I looked right: headphones in, white phone, and more scrolling.

What did we use to do?

I left my phone in my jeans and looked around. I counted the windows in an office block that poked above the roof of Platform 12 opposite. It had five rows of 16 large windows. It amused me again that I always underestimate larger numbers of things like that. It didn’t look like 80 windows, but there they were - some dark, some with late-night plasma lamps flickering, some blinded over.

Beneath that twilight sky and those offices, Platform 12 had one or two people waiting on it for the train to Worcester. I watched. Every single one of them was fixated on their smartphone. I folded my arms and smiled, weirdly. It occurred to me that I would have been the one to look strange.

-

It happened again today. I was early to a meeting in which all the other earlybirds were passing the time by angling their heads towards their phones and scrolling through them. I felt the temptation to do the same.

I think I’ve decided to resist that temptation. Sure, I don’t have the call of ficklebook on my phone, begging to be checked all the time. I deliberately don’t use Twitter on my phone either, but I do have instagram, and the quest for news, views, and likes is of course, just as strong there too. In fact, the quest for distraction of any kind, is a powerful pull.

-

“Enjoying this hot weather?” asked a friendly gentleman in the queue at Waitrose. I smiled, and then, not sure how to phrase a response to a live human-being, I said:

“Well it has been rather sweltering,” in a voice that made me sound like a Victorian dandy. For some reason he laughed, and then we moved along the queue. In so many queues, I would be quite happily checking my emails or thinking up witty zingers for WhatsApp groups.

Later, in the park, I was wandering around in my Panama Motorcycle Rally t-shirt. Famously, Panama had just been knocked out of the World Cup by England who had thrashed them 6-1.

“Safe to wear that now, I guess!” joked a dog-walker as he passed me by. It was a nice moment, but I had nothing to say back. I supposed it was, and I laughed as I made my way home.

If I’m going to be less phone-dependant in the 54% of my life I spend alone, then I suppose I’m going to have to get much better at the old-fashioned art of conversation.

TOO HOT TO SLEEP

So for the twimptieth night in a row, it’s too hot to sleep. Still no rain out there, although I did hear a rumour that there might be some on the way.

I don’t wish to complain really. We get few heatwaves in this country, and we’re genetically hardwired to be temperate in the face of extreme weathers. It’s just that we’re not really used to it being so baking hot all the time.

The generation above me are though. They lived through it in the Long Hot Summer of 1976, a season so dry, so warm, so long that every single heatwave in the last 42 years has been compared to it. One day there’ll be no-one left to make the comparison or go on about it, I’ll wager.

I feel like my brain’s gone mushy. It’s always worked best in cold environments - sharp, crisp, clear, like an icicle. Today it’s just all melty. And even my vision has been slow to catch up with where my eyes are looking.

Why can’t we harness this heat and use it up in winter? There’s plenty to go round. But of course, thermodynamics is mean.

I might just close my eyes and imagine I’m lying on a raft instead of a duvet. Above me the blue sky and singing birds, below me the quietly churning river. The trees drift by either side, and lazy clouds hang like cotton in the hot sunshine.

Far away, the waters thunder. But not with rain. I open my eyes.

Why am I so on-edge all the time? Surely that can’t be helping me. I just want to go to sleep now, without worrying what waterfalls await me. It’s way too hot for worrying about all of that.

WHEN I’M PRESIDENT OF EVERYTHING

I reckon there should be two changes to how motorbikes work.

1. If you get on one and you’re under 20, the ignition key won’t do anything, and

2. If you ride one into a park, the engine explodes.

I’m not wishing people ill harm, you understand. I just want to stop teenagers revving into quiet residential parks and scaring dogs and little kids, by churning up the grass and making loud noises.

I also think that if you’re caught riding one without a motorcycle helmet, you should have to do a thousand hours community service in a hospital A&E department.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how idea 1 would work. I guess the key monitors your blood-stream or something? I don’t know - I’d hand that one over to the boffins.

2 is possible though! GPS! But it could easily go wrong. Maybe not exploding the engine, I suppose, but seizing it up somehow, injecting something into the oil whenever it goes off-road and into the park. Whatever it takes to act as a deterrent.

Again, one for the boffins, that one, when I’m President of Everything. They’ll have a lot to do, I’d wager when that happens.

In unrelated news, I had a very pleasant time in the park tonight. I ate my dinner from a plastic tub again, and the dogs came sniffing around once more. It was still sweltering out there. But also delightful. The golden hour came and lit everything up like Lothlorien.

At one point, I imagined what it would be like if huge thundery drops of rain came tumbling from the sky. Cool, heavy rain, pouring from above. I pictured myself throwing my arms wide, letting the refreshing water drench every part of me, trickling off the edge of my nose, cascading through my hair, and saturating my clothes. It would have been very welcome, pattering into my empty lunchbox and soaking the bench.

No rain though. It hasn’t rained for ages! Just a sweaty afternoon, into which rode two whooping teenagers with no cycle helmets and a whole lot of engine noise. A lady near me, gripped the collar of her trembling dog, and waited for the storm to pass. The kids without thinking, started doing skids in front of her, then pelted down the hill without a care in the world.

Quietness returned as the sound of the yelps and the motorbike faded into the distance. I popped open my lunchbox again, and the dog came bounding over. I smiled as the lady called him back to her. I think, probably, there ought to be rewards for people who are kind to dogs when I’m President of Everything too. What do you think?