FREE SPIRIT

I have a friend, well, let's call her an acquaintance, I worked with ten years ago. She was popular and friendly; no ego, but also super-cool, with a sort of distant relationship to the rules of work. She used to float in, and then float out again as though she belonged to a slightly different universe and was merely tolerating the physics that bound the rest of us to our desks. I liked her.

Because she is who she is, she amassed thousands of friends on flipbook and rarely went on a blocking spree. And because I am who I am, I fell off her radar but not her friends list, and so, improbably, she's still there in my feed, ten years later. And although I have a tempestuous relationship with fizzlebook, it does show me her timeline every now and then. And it's interesting.

How does she do it? She seems to be living a sort of dream, travelling around the world in a camper van. A Danish beach here, a Sierra Leone jungle there, next she's in Surrey with a drone taking overhead photos like helicopter shots from 400ft, and then she's off somewhere else exotic. Ten years later and she's still floating around the globe with a sort of single, independent freedom. How does she do that?

More to the point, how do you get to be someone for whom the normal grinds of life no longer apply? How do you disconnect yourself from the chains the rest of us have to carry? How do you do that?

Yes it is possible that she's independently wealthy. But she didn't come across like that back in the day. Perhaps while I've been off flimpybook she started, grew and sold a business for an astronomical sum and now she's travelling the world? Hats-off, if that's the case.

Sure, that's not any of my business, but there is definitely something about the mindset of someone like that that I find compelling. Occasionally someone asks me what my dream job is and I pick either composer of movie scores or jingle writer or something like that, but really my heart wonders why I have to have a 'job' as my dream at all? And are we all like this?

I'm not saying I don't wish to work. I believe we're designed to do that. I think I just mean that so many of us get sucked in to this black hole of careers; we never stop to wonder what else we could do, and what else we could be. How could we work in a way that doesn't mean squeezing into tube trains, or sitting in front of screens? How could we organise ourselves so that there's more to life than shutting a laptop and relaxing with the TV, or engrossing ourselves in family drama so deeply, that that's all there is?

I'm not saying I want to bomb around Europe in a camper van either - though you bet I'd write about it forever if I did! No, I'm looking out of a rain-washed window, through tiny droplets that fell out of a grey sky. I'm lit by the glow of a work laptop that brings me glum news all round and even though I'm home and well, dry, I can't help thinking I'd like to be living a bit more freely somehow.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 58: ZOOMENGEIST

For the first time in a long time, I clicked on to the VCB. The Virtual Coffee Break, a long-standing remnant of the first weeks of lockdown is rolling on still. I thought I'd check in to see what was going down with my friends and colleagues.

What was going down was the tone.

As soon as I clicked into the meeting I was in a discussion that had come straight from a basement locker room. They were all joining in, talking about colloquialised sexual terms that people had misunderstood and had been using in the wrong context.

There was no swearing. The VCBers were at least cognisant that this wasn't a language free-for-all, though I'm absolutely convinced that if one had started effing and jeffing, they'd have all joined in. There was however, a steadily plummeting discussion of things that might be more appropriate for the Crown and Anchor, rather than a daytime work meeting.

I felt sick. I put the 'stunned face' emoji (wide open eyes and flushed cheeks) in the chat, and promptly left the conversation after less than a minute of sewage filth.

I've seen this before. I was on a train once when a bunch of lads got on - obviously heading for a stag do, obviously having only just met each other. They were polite at first, pushing and prodding for the boundaries, but with the general respect you give someone when you don't know them. Then, after a while, one of them nervously dropped the F-bomb and suddenly it was fallout five-hundred. They all had permission to use it, and so it relaxed itself into the train carriage as each of them tried proving their machismo by inserting that vulgar word into sentences in ever-more creative positions.

Here we were again. The same kind of groupthink on the VCB was permitting them to cross the boundary from professional to obscene and nobody seemed to have noticed.

This, I thought, exhaling off the chat, is why the Bible tells us not to sit in that seat, not to walk in that path, nor stand in that way. It's so easy to get pulled into the room and be part of it! Inevitably you look back and wonder why you stayed there, and how you'd explain that to someone who was offended but counted you as 'one of the lads' and now thought much less of you. You wanted to fit in, but it would have been far better to stand out.

To be fair, it's only happened a couple of times. Years ago, I witnessed outright racism in the pub garden and I just sat there, part of the problem. This was different. Quietly exiting the chat felt like the right thing to do. However, as I sat there, I was troubled still. Unless someone said something, it would probably happen again. So I sent a quick note to HR about it and left it with them. It isn't a nice feeling that, but it is the right one.

I do wonder whether remote working makes this kind of thing much harder. We want to bond, but it's tough-going, and humour and shared experience are probably things we crave. But like those lads on the train, there are new boundaries to find at home: a new way of doing things means a new way of behaving, and it's not always clear what that is in the zoomengeist we live in. I just hope I did an okay thing.

 

EDELWEISS MOMENT

Is it possible for good people to end up on the wrong side of history? I suppose it must be.

I happened to watch ‘The Sound of Music’ today - not the original Julie Andrews version but a stage remake. It was pacier but it still hit all the right notes. I was emotional. But in between the beats of the love story, the Captain’s emotional journey, and the regimented children who learn to sing in the mountains, there was an important question that I felt a bit rattled by. And it’s how I started: is it possible for good people to end up on the wrong side of history?

Of course it is. Rolfe is a sweet Austrian boy who becomes a Nazi. The Captain’s friends fly the Swastika, and then shuffle uncomfortably at the sound of Edelweiss at the Salzburg festival. Plenty of good Austrians in 1938 would have landed very comfortably on the wrong side of history and would not have known.

You see the issue. If it was easy for them, it must be easy for us too. We’re people just the same, swayed by propaganda and political thought, by personality and public opinion. The powers of nationalism and fascism are still here, and perhaps look subtler these days. How do any of us know we’re sitting comfortably on the right side?

“Everyone’s cross these days,” says the housekeeper at one point.

“Half my friends just aren’t talking to the other half, it seems,” says the Captain.

It would be easy to start painting the conservative right as the neo-fascists. A lot of people salivate at the chance. However it would also be easy to think of the woke liberals forcing their values on everyone, snarling at even a hint of balance. Well who are the allies and who are the axis? Which are the liberators, and which are the guards? And which side is God really on? I’m not altogether sure that history is quite as clear when you’re living it in the present.

Well. The Sound of Music is still brilliant. I suspect its message of music changing the world is timeless, and there is something so powerful about the Edelweiss moment - when art and poetry and song can be a revolutionary act of defiance against tyranny and darkness. I like that.

THE AUTHOR'S GARDEN

I went to a proper author's garden today. It was exactly as I might have drawn it - charmingly scruffy, yet somehow still neat and interesting. There was an old bicycle, flowers trailing the quiet white walls of the house, and a pink flamingo watering can next to a bed of joyously colourful roses. There were a collection of bright, retro, wooden chairs, slightly chipped and battered, organised around the rough stones of an unweeded patio, and then, under a thick wooden frame of climbing green foliage, a very modern garden table, complete with wooden benches, where we sat in the shade with tea.

At the end of the garden, where the lawn was rounded by a bushy set of shrubs, there was a long wooden shed with glass doors - an office, I guessed, though I didn't ask. A leopard-like cat stalked its flat roof and turned to flash deep green eyes in my direction. It was all very peaceful.

We talked a lot about writing and publishing, me not really knowing a great deal about either, and certainly not about the delicate balance of the two that so often produces a 'book'. Like almost all the creative industries, 'publishing' seems to be saturated with an ocean of wannabes and only a handful of ships to pull them aboard. Publishers won't respond to cold-call submissions; they won't even reply. Sometimes I feel as though Generation Y collided with the X-Factor and produced a Z-list of dashed hopes and disappointed faces, bobbing around haplessly in the water.

Anyway, it's not all depressing. There might be ways to get things done, even if the writing is just writing for the sake of writing.

As we chatted in the author's delightful garden, I started to think it over. How old are we when we learn to write? By a fantastically young age, almost all of us have a grip on the only 26 letters ever needed, along with a vocabulary of thousands of English words! Writing seems almost a natural pursuit. By the age of 8 I was writing long tales of train robberies and space adventures; I still remember the feeling! I wasn't alone either - I expect we all did that.

In later life, writing becomes essential - first essays and exams, then emails, whiteboards, flipcharts, tweets, blog posts, text messages: we function on words and the thoughts expressed with them every day of our lives - we are all writers. And I think it's that reason that sometimes makes wannabe writers like myself look a bit deluded. We show a flourish, a turn of phrase, an imaginative way of describing something (I do this ALL the time) and we think we're Oscar Wilde. Or worse actually, others imagine we think we're Oscar Wilde.

"Writing," I said, very carefully in the garden of someone successful at it, "...is hard."

I was met by a surprisingly blank face. I don't think the author thought so. Perhaps you just have to sit in the shed and get on with it. Or perhaps to a few very fortunate people who've found their voice, it really isn't hard at all.

I'd like to be like that. I think if it came so naturally, so freely, so brilliantly, I might just spend more time sitting in a charming garden like that, tea steaming in a hot porcelain cup, thoughts of pretentiousness evaporating up into the delicate foliage of trailing roses.

TEMPORARY GENIUS

Not for the first time in my life, I threw my hands in the air and cried, "I am a genius!" to absolutely no-one.

Had I done that in the office, Tim, who sits (sorry, used to sit) opposite me would have been the very first to poke up above the partition like a meerkat, and humorously burst my bubble. But there's no Tim here. So I can enjoy my moment of genius a little longer.

I'm not of course, a real genius. Those people consistently think in abstract ways like out-of-the-box thought-artists. They build things no-one's ever conceived, they construct ideas and deconstruct traditional ways of thinking, and they pioneer thought that makes them stand out from the crowd. That isn't what I did; I had a temporary brainwave that happened to work.

I suppose we overuse the word 'genius'. Discounting 'someone who works in the Apple Store' for a moment, it seems to be reserved for anyone cleverer or more talented than us, typically in a sphere we know we couldn't do better in. There are plenty of things I can't do, and when I see someone do one of those things and make it look easy, they might as well be a genius. It's all relative - which also means that the word is a construct of our thinking, and as I've said before, it follows that we are all geniuses.

They used to say, if you were in conversation with Albert Einstein and he suddenly got twice as intelligent as ever he was, would you notice? Well how about someone who's talking to you?

Though, actually, I think Einstein really was a proper genius. Obviously.

Don't let me get confused though. I used the colloquialised word to describe a little ray of sunshine I had on an otherwise very cloudy day. I solved a problem I'd been thinking about for months: how to get a long string of command-line text to stop word-wrapping in a PDF - and the answer, in the end, was surprisingly elegant and simple. That does not make me Leonardo Da Vinci. But it does make me me.

And so the ordinary clouds of diffidence parted, and a little confident ray of sunlight poked through. Perhaps, I wonder, is it that there are a lot more cloudy days than sunny ones, and perhaps the sun is always shining? Well. I don't know about that. All I know today is that there's no-one here to prove me otherwise. 

THE LAST DAY OF THE GOOD WEATHER

I joined the meeting chat early today and my face ballooned up across a third of the screen.

"Hi Matt," said one of the other two people, mid-chat, "You look like you're in the sun."

My face was indeed white where the low sun was bursting through the window like a spotlight. I reached for my baseball cap and squared it onto my head.

"Yeah, it's really bright today," I said, cheerily, the top half-my-face now in shadow.

"Better make the most of it," said Lisa, "This is the last day of good weather apparently."

I see. It's that day is it - when Keats's Fall transitions to Hood's Real Autumn. The forecast is indeed grey and rainy tomorrow, a drop from 24 to 14 degrees and a blast of drizzle from what looks like a difficult winter.

I decided to make the most of it, so a little later I headed out into the sun.

The park was bright. I mean that specific kind of crisp brightness you get at this time of year - leaves fluttering and flickering green shadows on the path, light falling perfectly, as though posing for a postcard - with each detail sharp and clear. My phone camera wouldn't capture it.

There are spiders too. I remember this about September, especially late September in Keats's Fall. They string glistening silk threads across everything, from telegraph poles to wing-mirrors. I accidentally walked through a long silvery thread and had visions of Shelob appearing between the houses. Don't think about that too much.

It was warm anyway - a gentle breeze ruffled the leaves. I walked over to my favourite apple tree to see how the tiny apples are getting on. They were full and round, catching the sun and bobbing on the breeze. A few had fallen into the long grass.

If it really is the last day of the good weather, I suppose I should start thinking about how to enjoy the next season. When the wind picks up and starts throwing leaves into the rain, when the sky turns grizzly and the cold air makes you shudder and wrap your scarf tighter - it's equally as beautiful, I suppose. And on the plus side, I won't have the sun lighting me up like a marble statue on team meetings.

 

WHY AM I SO GRUMPY?

Oh why am I so grumpy?
I never expected to be!
I've tried to avoid being
Really annoyed
But it's tough to ignore when you're me

I think I'm supposed to be happy
Or joyful and light as the air
But somehow the world has
Unfairly unfurled
In a flutter of flimsy despair!

And why do I feel so incited
To wallow and billow and brood?
When things aren't so bad
And it's not that I'm sad,
But I'm still in a terrible mood?

I wonder if people can help me,
When grumpiness tumbles my way?
I'm thankful for friends
Who never pretend that
I'm having a brilliant day

So maybe the answer is easy
And maybe it's best to be real:
I'm thankful for love
From the Father above
Regardless of how I may feel

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 57: POLITICAL VIEW

I think the sun might be getting lower to the horizon. I'm not sure. It's just that every day I sit here, working away, and sometimes more recently, I have to wear a hat because the sun is just too bright.

It's fascinating watching the seasons change at home. Normally there are a few days of the year when I have to change the blind at work because the sun reflects from the adjacent office block and blares into my screen. Other than that, we're there in an air-conditioned environment all year round, slowly ploughing through the seasons. Here at home, it's much more obvious.

-

The rules are about to change again. We can feel it in the air. While the government dither and the scientists get twitchy, between the lines, the second wave is looking inevitable, and with it (though hopefully not) another lockdown. It's all so tedious, isn't it? Where does it lead us? More fear, more doubt, more uncertainty. And unfortunately, more politics.

Remember the days when politics just happened in the background? We raised an eyebrow at a dull Prime Minsiter's Questions, or the latest scuffle between cabinet ministers. Occasionally there'd be a big headline, or a national crisis, but on the whole, everything ticked over very quietly while the suits sorted out the fine-tuning in Westminster.

In the last five years though, and not just here in this country, it feels like there's been a sea-change. A succession of huge events have pushed politics into the forefront of all of our consciousness, and thanks to: a suited wotsit on an escalator (2015); a divisive vote on Europe (2016); a series of poll-blasting general elections, and a global pandemic (2020), our 'people-in-suits-what-run-stuff' are centre-stage, exhausted, blamed, and furious, every single day.

I'm not saying we should let them off the hook, the poor dears. We should do the exact opposite. What I'm saying is that I miss the old days when politics seemed a bit plainer sailing.

It's occurred to me too, that there might be a function of age too. I'm seeing things through different lenses these days, and I'm not 25 - politics would probably have seemed more relevant regardless of the shifting times. And maybe I should have been more worried about the Afghan incursion, the Iraq War, the Credit Crunch, the expenses scandal?

What's more, if I really think about it, these days I seem to be connected to hardly anyone under the age of 30 on social media. Instagram's my best gage for youth (I have a few young followers), but flipchartbook (where most of the political bunfights happen) shows me connected to an ocean of people I'm (slightly nervous about) describing as 'middle-aged'. I'll bet there are multiple reasons why young people prefer to give it, and us a miss.

So it's possible that the explosion of 24-hour available information, the world-changing things that have happened to us, the prevalance of social media, and the perpetual brooding fury in our society have oozed out to give us wall-to-wall politics.

More fear, more doubt, more uncertainty. I think we all know it; we all see the sun shift around the sky and blare through our windows. We all need to know that someone will help us feel less of those things: less fear, less doubt, less uncertainty. Who's out there giving those things? Where are they to be found?

SUBSCRIPTION MODEL

A podcaster I like is starting to move all his stuff onto Patreon. All the free stuff, free no longer.

I get it. It's a way for creatives to pull in a sustainable income - and the social media revolution of the last ten years has certainly created a need for that.

A lot of his fans were outraged. Why, they asked, should they have to shill out for the stuff they used to get for free? They imagine, as consumers do, that good content was designed for them, and therefore if it once was free, it now should always be. Some accused him of being mercenary, some said he was already wealthy enough, lives in the big house he keeps going on about, and has accrued enough fame over the years that this latest step seems (almost) greedy.

I miss the old days. If you liked an artist, you got on the bus, went to a shop and bought their record from a store. HMV was the establishment of choice when I was of the music-purchasing age - I used to spend ages rifling through the decks and decks of CDs looking for cool stuff by The Beautiful South or George Michael or The Bluetones. That was the only way in the 1990s, short of taping music from the Chart Show on Sunday afternoons.

Similarly, you had to buy a book from a shelf, or a poster in a tube. If you saw a t-shirt you liked, you had to figure out which shop you could get it, or something similar, and you'd have to wander around town on a Saturday until you found it or your feet hurt, or your friends bundled off to KFC.

Patreon's model is that the creator sets levels of engagement for its fan base. Then each subscriber pays a certain amount per month to receive up-to-date content. That way, the creator gets a steady stream of income and the subscribers get the content they desire from their favourites. It works on a balance of trust: belief that the content is worth the subscription fee, versus a belief that enough people will sign in to make it worthwhile doing.

My podcaster for example, has set the basic rate of his podcast at £5.99 per month, presumably believing that thousands of people will not be able to live without his musings and flock over to Patreon, now the only place you can hear it. Meanwhile for £7.99 you can get his thoughts streamed into your inbox in the form of a 30,000 word diary, along with some other tokens like exclusivity certificates, and Q&As, and all new content every month.

I don't begrudge it. I actually think it's a great way for creatives to generate a stream. He's already got over 1500 subscribers, so that's him making at least £9,000 per month. Not bad if you can get it, is it? He is famous though, so you know - not everyone can do that quite so lucratively.

Where I think the subscription model falls down is that it removes all the people who are sort of lost in the middle. We're not super-fans who can afford a subscription, but we're not indifferent either. We enjoy the work in passing - we'd spend £12.99 on an album we can listen to again and again... but we wouldn't necessarily want to know why the band had to travel to Barcelona to record it, or want to pay to find out which of them like which colour Skittles. What we need is access to some of the stuff but not all, just enough to keep us fans and maybe tempt us to sign up in future. I would have made a shorter podcast and kept it free if it were me, I think.

On the other hand, on the side of the creatives, it's easy to see that there are some massive companies out there who pull in billions of dollars for creative content they've only provided a platform for. Their contract with the consumers is that we can have access to everything... for a small fee. Their contract with the creatives is that the artists get the crumbs of the profit and not much more. Don't get me wrong - I totally get why sites like Patreon exist.

It does remind me of the age-old balance that anybody selling anything must know: if you can convince someone that a trade of items is better for them, when it's actually better for you, you've got it made. Basically that's always been sales and marketing, hasn't it? Ever since Ug The First gave Oofbert two rocks in exchange for a crop of barley.

The technology changes, the unscrupulous convincing gets smarter, but the principles are still the same. 

The question is for me, if I subscribe to Patreon, will I walk away from the deal feeling as though I've got a bargain, or will they? And at the moment, to be honest, I can live without it.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 56: THE TEDIOUS WAR

I think I might just stop watching the news. When a 'promoted' article appears on my newsfeed claiming that 'a vaccine won't be available for everyone before the end of 2024' I can't help but feel my heart sink.

That's a bit like appearing in September 1914 and bursting the bubble of every jolly Tom, Dick and Harry who still thinks it'll be 'over by Christmas'. Thanks a lot, newsfeed.

The thing is, this is a bit like a war, and there is no telling when it really ends - at least not yet. Another article claimed that the virus itself seems resistant to mutation - which is a very good thing; it means that a vaccine might work when it's ready, and the world can at least start to repair itself.

Others of course, are still twisting themselves into spirals, claiming it as a gigantic hoax intended to enslave humanity. There were scenes of a protest I saw, somewhere in North Carolina, where a whole bunch of well-meaning people held a 'no masks rally' - at which they protested their personal freedoms. It's hard to imagine those people queuing up for the vaccine when it arrives. They looked angry, which, I concluded was a slightly better look than 'dead'.

I suppose with the war, we sent our men abroad to fight on our behalf. They went whistling into a skirmish, and came face to face with a brutal reality - but it was a brutal reality somewhere else, over there, Europe, where you can never imagine the trenches, the bodies, the despair and the mud.

In this century, the war has come to us - airborne and invisible like a sophisticated mustard gas. There are no verandahs to drink tea from and no broadsheets with 'news from the front line'. There are no troops, no army, no foreign powers marching over disputed lands, no furious dictator burning in rage in a stone palace. Nobody to point a finger at. 

There's us and there's the virus. And at the same time as we may be fed up with it, it, a microorganism with a biological impulse, is simply trying to survive and replicate by infecting as many warm-bodies as possible. It isn't done with us. So, really, we shouldn't be done with it either.

-

That being said, it is all getting rather tedious isn't it? The famous 'rule of six' came into force this week, making it illegal to gather in groups of more than half-a-dozen. There are exemptions, naturally, like places of worship, but on the whole, social gatherings, meetings, group nights... we're now at a maximum of six, and there are fines for contraventions.

I think they'll implement curfews too eventually - especially if the numbers keep rising. Seems the UK government at least, were concerned about that complacency I talked about last week. As September turns to October, and as the air starts getting chilly, it seems inevitable that the war will intensify, the restrictions will tighten, and we'll be looking for Spring again.

But I don't want to be depressing. Remember the good stuff that came out of lockdown? The family time, the new, slower pace of life? We do still have all of that - not to mention the complete opportunity for reinvention! There's still so much that we can do, change, craft, dream of! If we are to be locked-in over winter, or curfewed, or just warming our hands round the fire, there will always be room to love and to laugh.

In the meantime, I think I might stop watching the news. I can't see how spreading fear and misery is going to help anyone, and I do choose to believe that there's gold to be found in times of hardship.

If this is a war, and I think it is, then I want to be one of those who still fights for the land I believe in, the hope and the glory of a group of people who stood up to our enemy and protected each other when it counted most - protected each other - that's what the No Mask people are missing, I think. This isn't just about them; it's all of us - we all need to be protected, we all deserve our freedom from this virus, and we will win it.

There will be a day when masks are no longer necessary, and we can meet in groups again, and hug and dance and sing under the stars together. It's worth holding on to.  

GENTLE GLEAMS THE CITY BRIGHT

I’ve realised that a lot of this trip has been about ‘letting go’. (Go on, tell me that was obvious; it’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m not always aware of the obvious.)

I mean being willing to let go of old memories and hopes and feelings, maybe that I once had when here, perhaps still unrequited and lingering through twenty years of lost history without me knowing. I needed closure.

That’s why I’ve been going back to places in Bath that trigger those memories. There was a feeling to capture - and I felt it as clear as the daylight when I walked up to Alexandra Park.

-

I don’t know how I first found out about the park. I can’t remember - perhaps it was an accident; another tiny hidden treasure I hung onto. I’d drive up there in my old beaten up mini metro, through Bear Flat, along Shakespeare Avenue, in through the Victorian gates, and round the circular path to the place where the wind parts the trees and reveals the city below. I remember how it sparkled in the September sun.

The park was green today - full leafy green late summer, with the trees just starting to shiver their leaves like splinters. There indeed, was that lovely old city view. There indeed was the place I’d sit after lectures and lab time, unknown to everyone, thinking through the future and the past.

It’s strange when the world changes around you, especially when you don’t want it to. I had been on placement for a year, fiddling with lasers, and I’d been desperate to get back to Bath. I’d passed my driving test, fixed up the metro and independently driven back there with a carful of stuff. I had expected it to be exactly as I’d left it: I hadn’t calculated that being a final year student would be so different; still good in its own way, but much more grown-up, and different.

I spent a lot of that year foolishly trying to reverse it.

I’d felt a bit cheated I guess, out of the thing I’d hoped for all those months. I was pushing against the flow of growing up and the real world: jobs, marriage (for some), new cities, church (no longer CU), travelling adventures, and graduate programs, was calling us fourth year students. I did not want to listen. Not to begin with anyway.

I’d go to Alexandra Park often. I was in a small Bible-study group in Bear Flat, and it was much nicer to drive to the park first.

I can’t remember the final time though. There must have been one, though perhaps I hadn’t known it...

-

I do remember Sara smiling at me. She was such a lovely friend, and I still couldn’t work out why my housemate Mark had ended their relationship. Perhaps it was just that it was the end of all things uni for him. He’d already gone, back to Devon before starting his new job. Now, it was my turn. I had graduated. The metro was full, and I was ready.

“Thanks Matt,” she said, climbing out at the petrol station. She needed to get to Sainsbury’s, and I needed a tank of 99p per-litre full-leaded petrol. “Have a good journey,” she beamed, as I climbed out of the other side of the car. She hugged me, and I said thanks and wished her well for her second year. And then, just like that, on a hot July afternoon, I filled up, paid up, and drove out of Bath for home.

-

I think Sara stuck in my mind as she was the very last person I said goodbye to. There were so many more I must have had fizzled partings with in that last month. There would have been a hundred uncertain goodbyes. The book closed slowly, but Sara had been the one to put it back on the shelf.

-

Back to the present. The train slips into the Box Tunnel and leaves Bath and Alexandra Park behind once again.

This trip has been great. And it’s strange how the memories have come swimming back, but not it’s not strange in that melancholy way. They’ve been warm and sweet memories, not cold or lonely. Visiting Bath has reminded me that so much history has elapsed, and, strangely that, although I love it, I don’t need it any more.

I don’t require an Alexandra Park or a view of this youthful, ancient city to feel alive, young or free. I was always those things. I was those things regardless. And in some way, though both I and this place have changed so much, I still am.

-

Gentle Gleams The City Bright

Gentle gleams the city bright

In silver shards of moonlit night

Where waters met with priests and kings

Now softly pass the ancient things:

The heart that held such grief unknown,

Now silver lit, now set for home

TINY HIDDEN TREASURES

I opened my eyes. Clouds, blue sky. And the sound of someone swooshing through grass. Back and forth went the strokes, sweeping through like a broom, but with a tiny metallic ring on each motion.

There were voices too, chatting in a muffled way that made the words indistinguishable. They sounded young though.

It turned out to be scythers. They were cutting the grass on the hill in a way that suddenly seemed both completely old-fashioned but also, entirely necessary. Scythes, I need hardly point out, are long curved blades on wooden poles, and were, for thousands of years, the only tool there was for cutting long grass or reaping crops at harvest time.

“Alright?” said one of them.

“Hello,” I said back. We had a conversation about scything and strimmimg and lawn-mowing. All the while though, I was deeply wondering whether there might be something prophetic in it - about using old tools in difficult places. I didn’t dwell. It was already time to move to the next place in this city.

When you think of Bath, you probably picture the Circus and the Royal Crescent. After the baths themselves, it seems the most natural symbol of the city. I decided to walk down the hill, back through studentville, pick my way across, and wind up in Victoria Park, opposite the famous row of Georgian houses.

It’s rather grand. Built by John Wood the younger, it looks out over the park and the western side of Bath, a curved parade of affluent town houses, cradling an area of perfect green (residents only) and a cobbled path for horse and carriage and every other period drama. Nowadays of course, the road is neatly stacked with Aston Martins and other such fancy vehicles. I sat in the park, trying to write a poem about it...

Royal Crescent

An elegant moon

Of Georgian pride

With windows tall,

And crescent wide

Its delicate style

Of light and shade

Still sweeps its

Stylish stone parade,

Where names of gold

On polished doors

Would open in

To polished floors,

And men of old

Would warm inside:

Their crescent moon

And great divide

That eloquent row

Of wealth and class

Still curves the hill

Like moments past

With curtains draped,

And windows high,

It beams beneath

The western sky:

That Georgian age

That Wood once knew

Still captured by

The wealthy few.

And there the moon

Is curving wide

So lights the crescent’s

Great divide

-

From there I wandered back into town, stopping in at the Georgian Garden. If you’re ever there, it’s the back of No.4 The Circus, and it’s been recreated almost exactly as a classic Eighteenth Century garden would have looked. I was there alone, and I loved it.

I think it’s those tiny hidden treasures I enjoy the most. A pub that’s emerged out of the mist like Brigadoon, a park with a view you weren’t expecting, a pad curry at the Thai Balcony with exquisite and indescribable flavour...

I said indescribable. It was ginger and whisky and something else that felt like the absolute fine-tuning of ingredients and balanced spices. Who knew that food could taste like that?

Tiny hidden treasures. That’s what it feels like Bath offers: unexpected little shops, vintage boutiques and eateries in side streets and alleys. I think when I was here, I learned how to find those things in the people too - the little things that make us tick, whether we’re quirky physics students, CU prayer warriors, or MBA guys in golf attire who drink lager because it’s the 90s and they’re going to be CEOs one day.

But you know, to find those things you have to explore a bit. I couldn’t help think about the scythers on the hill, switching back and forth through the grass. They’d volunteered to do that out there in the hot sun. There was a simplicity about it - a job that needed to be done, and a vintage joy in finding a clean, sharp way to do it. What tiny little treasure had they found in the process!

I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

THE CITY AND THE BLUE SKY

The air was fresh under a blue sky, dappled with high white clouds. Above the sand-coloured Bath-stone bricks, the contrast was crisp, like the beach on a holiday morning, or the sea at first light.

I squeezed a sachet of honey onto my porridge, and dug in with the plastic spoon you always get at these places. I was al fresco, and loving it, taking in the passers by, the street scenes and the musicians eager to start the busking day. I smiled to myself, very happy with the world just outside Pret A Manger.

First came the violin. I don’t know why, but there always seems to be a violin player, right outside Bath Abbey. He was playing some sort of Russian dance, the kind I imagine in an Agatha Christie novel. His open violin case rattled with change.

Soon he was joined by a trendy young singer with a resonant amp and a six string. I heard the unmistakeable chord progressions of Gs and Ds and Cs and E minors as his ‘Busted’ style voice echoed around the High Street.

It’s interesting how many al fresco bistro places there are in Bath city centre. It makes sense - it is very much the place for that kind of thing. In the late 1990s, not so much, but nowadays, this much fancier place lends itself very nicely to the tables and umbrellas, baristas and bistros. And of course, the on-street entertainment.

The violinist stood midway between the Abbey and the Pump Rooms. A queue of people with timed tickets for the baths stood listening and filming. He winked at me as I walked by, on my way to the Abbey. I smiled back under my face mask.

I’m probably going to dive into memories today. I know that that can be annoying, but it just so happens that more things kept tumbling out of the past, and they do add context for where my mind wandered through Bath. I knew I had to start in the Abbey, and so I did.

-

She gripped my gloved hand and squeezed it. It was cold still, and the December night seemed to pervade, even inside, somehow in the stones. In blue, the choir, standing in a crescent at the altar, sang a carol, and with gusto, we (and what felt like the entire university, city, and angelic host) all joined in. She looked at me and smiled; it was rare, but not rare enough for me to realise.

-

It’s different now. They were doing construction work down the South Transept, so I wandered over the weathered grave stones, looked up at the glorious stained glass, and marvelled once again at how the sunlight painted the tall stone columns. There would not have been room for the university carollers today. I prayed, then exited through the gift shop.

I really wanted to trace some old steps today - perhaps from one type of cathedral to another. And to get there I knew I’d need to walk past my old houses.

The first wasn’t recognisable. The path had overgrown with weeds, and a bushy looking shrub had taken over the front garden. The half-hidden front door was very different to the one I recalled, replaced of course over the years. The house was apparently empty, waiting I assumed for its next batch of students; the twentieth generation since I last passed by. It’s quite possible that one hundred different people have lived there in the intervening years. That seems like a lot.

The second house still looked smart. I remembered Jacqui looking pleased with herself when I arrived that September - we had, she’d assumed, found a great house and excellent flat mates. She was wrong, unfortunately, on both counts.

-

How in the world did I walk up this hill with loads of shopping? I pictured myself, aged 19, with two Sainsbury’s bags chuffing up Coronation Avenue. It’s steep. Bath is a city that lies in a valley, and I remember that to get anywhere you had to go uphill. Splendid views, but also exhausting. We lived on one side; campus was another. I don’t know why I’d refused to catch the bus from Sainsbury’s, but clearly I had.

-

The grass was long, still glistening with dew. I pushed through it, ever closer to the trig point at the top, silhouetted like a tiny obelisk. I breathed the air, then slumped to the ground with a satisfied exhaustion. Everything was exactly as I remembered.

I’d discovered this place in my second year. Just on the outskirts of Southdown, near that inconvenient house my friend Jacqui had chosen. From the very beginning it had been a place I’d loved - a sparkling view of the city on one side, the fields and countryside stretching away to the south on the other.

If you’re lucky enough to have a clear day, you can see both Severn Crossings from up there. I looked out today, out to the West. Sure enough, lit white by the warm sun, the suspension bridges were both visible, bright white against the hazy backdrop of Welsh hills. I smiled as I must have done a hundred times up there.

It’s interesting this idea isn’t it, of finding God. He was never lost, nor even far away. In the centre of the city, Bath Abbey, where an hour before I’d seen sunlight catch through stained glass windows, was standing tall among the other buildings, old and new. That place, since the Eighth Century, must have been the obvious place to feel close to Heaven.

And yet, up there on top of the world in a place where I’d spent countless hours praying as a student, I felt just as near.

The air was fresh and warm - more like May than September. I put my rucksack behind my head, lay back and crossed one leg over the other; the city and the blue sky twinkling between my feet.

UNIVERSITY TOWN

I reckon people who have a ‘university town’ in their history, have a unique experience - a kind of lifelong interaction with the place they lived in and loved, for what turned out to be the formative years of their lives.

Perhaps because I went back to my hometown after uni, I have a stronger and stranger bond with mine. Maybe others have different kinds of connections; first jobs, or cities they studied in abroad, or places they collected over the years of travel? I can’t say, because my experience is my experience, and for me, the only town I’ve lived in other than where I was born, happens to be magnetically beautiful... and pulls me back to my early twenties like the moon pulls the tides. Oh and right now, with a hatful of memories, and for the first time in a long while, I’m actually in it.

Bath. So familiar, so different. There was a warm breeze in the air tonight as I strolled through the old streets of Georgian bath-stone and fanlight windows. Queen Square (where James Taylor and I tried street evangelism with hilarious naivety), the Podium (where I feel certain the Saracen’s Head has switched sides of the road), Pulteney Bridge, the dark buttresses of the Abbey with its moon-like clock, and the Boater on the other side of the river. Memories I didn’t know I had had came flooding back, as rapid and real as the inky water tumbling over the sluice. This was a place I had felt young, free, alive.

I had been expecting sadness - and, to be fair, that may come tomorrow in the daylight. But this time, and so far, there was a warmth to this city, as though people I knew might be just around the corner...

There was the tree with fairy lights, where I once met Sally Buckingham. She was going to help me do my Christmas shopping. There was Joshua Mills waiting to take a group of us to a church that we’d later describe as ‘enthusiastic’. And Steve and Dave and Catherine and Sara and Mark and Eb and Phil and Ruth... waiting outside the Odeon before we headed inside for Toy Story 2. I felt those people there, waiting in the street - and I was surprised at how warm that made me feel, even though we’re all long gone, and Toy Story 2 was out twenty two years ago.

I’m not here to do a typical city break. I’m here to pray, in the heart of where I once felt so hopeful. I figured that this was the place to come, detached but familiar, a rewind, and a perspective-bringer. I need perspective. I need to be here.

A lot has changed, naturally. Since the Romans discovered what must have been a miracle (hot water on this foggy, frozen island!) people have been building and changing things here to accommodate, and yet so much of the old is still exactly where it was, where I remember it. Me too then - the Bath I remember was also in transition, and still is, even though our memories try to freeze it into place. So familiar, so different.

Anyway. The next few days will be interesting. It won’t be my usual ramble around a city, because unlike everywhere else I’ve been, I know this place, and it feels like memories are etched into the stones. There may be new things to discover, there might be old things to rediscover, but either way, me and this lovely old city are absolutely not strangers. I know it. And as I strolled through (the geography still super-confident in my mind) I got the feeling that this place, with all its elegant whispers, knows me too, and remembered me just as fondly.

And that’s really quite grand, when I think about it.

CONJUNCTION OF MARS AND VENUS

I was pleased to see Mars and Venus in the North East sky tonight. They're close at the moment.

No-one talks about that book any more do they - you know, Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. Seems it's dropped out of quotable popularity, what with the gender-fluidity movement of recent years. In today's world, it's offensive (I guess) to lump all the boys together into a rabble of problem-solving, non-listening cavemen. And it's sexist to do the same to the beautiful, emotion-processing, socially eloquent Venutians out there too. I doubt John Gray would get a publisher in 2020.

It's been a tornado sort of day today - a whirlwind of work swept in when I opened my laptop this morning, twisting fragments of emails and chat-conversations onto my screen, then swirling them round in a dreadful vortex: Matt-quick-question-did-you-where-are-the-what-have-you-done-with-the-Any-chance-you-could-today-please-can-I-phone-you-quickly-we-need-to-have-a-chat-Matt-quick-question-did-you-where-are-the... round and round it span for eight hours while I worked.

At one point, I accidentally uploaded something that was two years out of date, live onto the customer system. It's a cinch to fix, but it takes a few minutes. I listened out carefully for the gentle ping of a chat message letting me know that someone had just discovered the very problem I was secretly trying to fix. Those are the moments I find myself praying it isn't my manager who sees these things. Though to be honest, there are some people who are quick to CC her in when they reckon I've screwed up. What a treat. I noticed at the end of the day that I had an extra one-to-one booked with her before I go away on holiday on Thursday. I'm trying not to project too much fear into that.

There was about a hand's-width difference between the planets, arm fully stretched. The night air was quiet, the trees black and silhouetted below the stars. Mars was twinkling red - I loved how small it looked, being so much further away, and yet so obviously scarlet. Meanwhile Venus was bright and brilliant, beaming away in the crab-like arms of the constellation Cancer, hundreds of light years behind it.

I wonder how close Mars and Venus get. Do they ever conjoin? What does it mean when they do? Astro people will know, they'll have calculated that out. For me, it was enough to know that they looked so close from where I was standing. John Gray (I thought to myself) was arguing that men and women were as different to each other as the inhabitants of different planets, and yet here on Earth, we're constrained to the delicate art of getting along with each other. His book is a user guide on interplanetary alignment.

It's shame if he's cancelled, because I think on the whole he was probably right about a lot of things, gender-fluidity of this age aside. Oh well.

Nanoo nanoo.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 55: COMPLACENCY

There’s definitely a complacent feeling out there. If I had to guess I’d say we’ve moved all the way through the bored phase, to the ‘let’s pretend’ one. By that I mean the sort of unspoken ‘if I don’t talk about it and you don’t talk about it, and if we forget about it, it’ll all go away’ feeling.

Younger people are susceptible to this. They’re “invincible”, and so why shouldn’t they party, and hug, and bundle each other in the park? Why not a game of close contact football, or mixing with people from other households?

Children understand it even less; they’re hardly to blame either - it’s next to impossible to get kids to socially distance, and even if it were, it would impact their social development massively.

And it’s a shame because these people are probably the secret carriers - most likely to be asymptomatic, and also most likely to mix. They don’t need to play ‘let’s pretend’ because it’s us, the parents’ generation who’ve got that down to an art now. They just get on and do what youngsters do.

I was in a queue today: one of those ones with the printed footsteps on the floor in nice prominent circles. They’re deliberately two metres apart. There were on average, three people in every four metres. We live in a low incidence area, yes, but nonetheless that seems complacent at best and irresponsible at worst. I couldn’t move forwards or backwards.

The other day in the Co-Op I noticed some of the staff had stopped wearing masks since I was last in there. I can’t imagine the policy has changed, and certainly the virus hasn’t; not for the Co-Op anyway! So what’s going on there?

Meanwhile, some prominent voices are starting to fan the flames of conspiracy theories. That’s all we need - unfortunate celebrities telling us it’s a hoax. If you’re also fed up with 2020 and desperate for your world to be back to normal, a soothing voice-in-the-know with a thing that satisfies your itching ears is very appealing. Oh and also very dangerous, as a lot of other voices are then quick to point out. Argument fuels the conspiracists though doesn’t it?

I say ’dangerous’ because right now the numbers in France are accelerating like an SNCF hurtling for Calais. Lockdowns are returning to parts of Europe like Spain and Greece and Portugal. Elsewhere in the world, the number of cases is heading only in the up direction. We might be an island but we’re far from immune, and there is, I suggest, very little to be complacent about.

I’m not unaffected by the complacency either, unfortunately. I still find it excruciating to refuse an elbow nudge or a fist bump. But would I leave you hanging if it saved your life? Would I refuse that tiny touch of human contact if I knew it stopped your grandparents from going to hospital? Can I say no to socialising with people I miss with my wholest of hearts after all these months?

It’s a tricky balance to find, and I think that is part of the problem. We went along with it in lockdown, treating it with the Blitz-spirit we all raved about back in April. We did it, we made it through, and now we feel as though the balance of that sacrifice should be restored to us. But it’s complacent, I think, to believe that and pat ourselves on the back. The Blitzkreig is ending for now, and we can send our kids back to school with shiny shoes and happy faces, but across the channel, the unseen enemy is still snarling, and it is relentless. I’m afraid the war is still very much on.

PENALTY

I'm not Catholic, and this is not a confessional box, but I feel like it might do me some good if I tell you something.

I accidentally drove in a bus lane, and I've been sent a penalty charge notice.

It's okay - the guilt is worse than the charge, and it's funny that this a very specific kind of red-faced embarrassment. I went through the emotions in under a second, while I unfolded the piece of paper...

"But I didn't know it was a... I mean I was only... I can't believe there's a camera... I got caught... is there any appeal I can... nope, well... bang to rights. Gosh. Things like this don't happen to me."

That last bit is true. I've never been caught in a speed trap, hit another vehicle while in motion, or even driven without a seatbelt on! Though I have been breathalysed (a story for some other time, but let me say I was completely sober, just exhausted) and I have been fined for bad parking.

Yeah - that was the only other time. I was in a rush, in a car park in Lincoln of all places, and I'd parked across the white lines of two bays without realising. At the time, coming back to my car to find a fixed charge penalty notice was the crowning whimper on a miserable weekend. It was still disappointing.

Now this. I drove through a bus lane on the 21st of August, and there I am in a colour photo, doing the thing. I knew at the time too - it hadn't been deliberate; it was a stupid mistake at a poorly labelled intersection. Ah but that's no excuse, and I'm not angry. I feel bad, yes, embarrassed, of course, foolish? Oh yes. But I'm not angry, not even with myself. I'll pay it and get on with life, being more careful next time.

I guess that's part of the point, isn't it? Rehabilitation. Sometimes making the world better starts with owning up to the stuff we got wrong ourselves, before we try to fix it all out there.

And I think maybe the Catholics might agree with that. Confession, they say, and I agree, is good for the soul. 

BOTH SIDES OF THE RIVER

I went for a walk by the river tonight. It was twilight, but not the sort of twilight you get in summer - more the dingy, damp kind that hangs around on a chilly evening.

There was nobody about. Usually down there, I imagine the Sunday Afternoon Victorians with parasols and top hats and finery - I don't know why, perhaps I'm thinking of that painting by Seurat. Though they weren't strictly Victorians were they, the Parisiennes a La Grande Jatte?

Anyway, the cast iron benches were empty. The neatly cut grass and tall trees were silent, and the smart concrete path stretched along the river into the gloom with only the geese for company.

There were lights on on the other side. I often look at those big houses between the trees, and wonder what life must be like over there - tennis courts, huge riverside windows, sloping gardens and boathouses. A big white house looked most inviting tonight with its Christmassy lights strung under the eaves. They rippled from the windows and danced in the water below like river-fairies.

I had a few things to think about. This, I've realised, is exactly what I do sometimes: I walk and I think. I ponder and analyse, letting the rhythm of the footsteps drive the cogs in my head. I feel sure cleverer people don't need to do that, but I can't seem to help being wired up head-to-feet.

Anyway, I did walk. And I did ponder. I pondered how affected we all are by the season, and what this new post-lockdown period might look like. The kids are back at school, things are cautiously opening - we're assembling ourselves where we can and while we can. But make no mistake: it's no party. There's caution everywhere as the threat circles. Making longer term plans is... complicated. And work, at least for me, remains locked at home with a lonely laptop.

I thought about my own life too - how I could do with simplifying things, and some of the decisions I have to make. I thought about how to drink more water and eat less junk, how to cherish time better and be kinder to myself. I thought about what I'm going to say to head off those difficult discussions coming up, and I thought about the pure courage I need, to say true things to people who won't want to hear them.

Someone once told me that one day I'd have a big house.

That was a long time ago - I guess they thought I'd write songs that got everywhere. That hasn't happened. So far I've bought a shoebox (bought with installation guides, not songs) and I've accidentally filled it with recycling. I'm ashamed and embarrassed about it, especially if it turns out I had more potential and failed to use it. And it isn't even about money really - it's more about stewarding things well and living... big - big, not just for me, but for community; for people to rest in the shade of a tree I planted, for starlit conversations on the verandah, or kitchen parties round a huge, noisy table. It was always about more than just me, it really was. But here I am in a shoebox.

The mansions on the other side of the river then, made my heart both leap and sink all at the same time. How can hope be so quantum? So alive and yet so done-with, simultaneously? What is this weird cognitive dissonance, where I'm on both banks looking forlornly across the dark river that separates me from me?

It's not a negative thing. It's a challenge - a quest for change, though to be honest, I just don't know how to make it happen. I need help.

I walked back to the car as the rain started spotting. I had no umbrella, just a hood, so I pulled it over my head and thrust my hands into my pockets. Behind me, the river wound its way like a silk ribbon, catching the light of the bridge and the street lanterns. Perhaps one day I'll cross it.