SNOW FLURRIES

Two or three snow flurries today. It’s an odd feeling watching the flakes tumble past the window. Last week was warm and bright, next week I’m getting married in a garden, and today - winter.

I spoke to a colleague named Nihad, who’s from Bosnia. He’s what you might call an anglophile, so he was very keen to hear about the London Underground, about the countryside, and whether Dorset was as lovely as the TV show Broadchurch had persuaded him it is. Embarrassingly, beyond the topics of Sarajevo as the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics and the Yugoslav war of the 1990s, I was low on my knowledge of Bosnia. I wasn’t even sure what to ask. Nonetheless I was keen for Nihad to tell me more.

“You’d like it, I think, Matt,” said he, in unbroken English.

“Does Bosnia have… does it have a coastline?” I said, half-remembering it might squeeze onto the Adriatic for a few miles. He told me it does - a little - and a lot of beautiful countryside of mountains and hills and forests. I can quite believe it. I suddenly had an itch for adventure.

The snow had stopped by the end of the conversation and the sun had come out. The flurry had barely been worth mentioning I guess, but… it just so happens I am relentlessly British - and so I had. I explained to Nihad how quickly the weather can change here, how if he were ever to visit, packing would be difficult, and how English people think very little of carrying scarves and suncream, sun glasses and woolly hats at pretty much any time of the year.

It makes planning for an outdoor wedding quite a challenge.

HASHTAG END-TIMES

It must be a confusing time to be an eschatologist. Plague, war, and famine go riding about like three horsemen of the apocalypse, the world is suffocating into climate crisis, and globalisation is pushing everything to the brink of collapse.

But then also, you wake up to find that Will Smith has hit someone on international TV, shortly before picking up the Best Actor Oscar to a standing ovation.

I don’t remember seeing that sign in the Bible. Genie hits Zebra for dissing Hippo from Madagascar? Confusing for those last-days type people.

In fairness though, the world has gone a little bonkers. I can’t blame anyone for thinking these are the end times, even though there’s currently no sign of that third temple, and a one-world government is looking even less likely right now. But when the coolest actor in the world wrecks his reputation like that, you start to wonder what in the world is going on. Something is definitely up.

If you ask me, he’s deflecting. Chris Rock told a joke about his wife, Will Smith laughed, then saw his wife’s face. He acted quickly, and out of embarrassment, I think, slapping Mr Rock in an over compensating gesture to restore her honour. 

I have a feeling he will lose more than he bargained for with that bold move, but I also know the world is quite impossible to predict. Moments later, Will was tearfully preaching about love and protection and family, Oscar aloft in his right hand as though Uncle Phil had had a stern word with him in the green room.

There were better, more noble things he could have done.

If you want eschatological commentary then I say that, when it comes to it, we just haven’t seen anything yet. I was taught to watch Israel, to look out for seven-year peace treaties, and to watch the land for signs of the end. What’s happening now is that the world is being swept with mistrust, with war, with polarisation, in preparation for a time when everyone will have to choose. I think politics will eventually split everything East-West and as ever, the focal point will be that land. It’s worth watching it.

But it’s also worth remembering that we’re here to make a difference while we can. I’d rather be baffled and doing something out there, than equally puzzled, and dooming and glooming about it from home. What would be the point of knowing about the flood but refusing to build an ark?

Anyway, violence was not the answer there, Mr Will Smith, and there are dignified ways to protect those you love, without rushing to fistycuffs in an overly-keen display of power and privilege.

But then, as I look around, I start to think that that exact tendency, that urge to protect our own, to defend our tribe and reach for our weapons  flows through a lot of y’all and a lot of us, and a lot of the world at the moment. And it’s a sign of something.

PLANS ARE LIKE DUVETS

I like a plan.

There, I’ve said it. I like a lovely, detailed, cosy plan; the kind that you can snuggle into like a duvet; one that can warm you from the inside, in much the same way as hot porridge does on a cold day.

I like a plan that helps you focus on the next step without worrying too much about the one after. I like knowing what’s going to happen next, who’s going to do what, and where I have to be at which time. It’s a bit like firmly tying up your shoelaces - you’re set for walking, your feet won’t slip out of your boots, and best of all, you aren’t going to trip over (if you can help it). Adventure awaits.

I appreciate though, that we’re not all the same. Some people shuffle about uncomfortably at the idea of restricting themselves to a so-called ‘plan’. It seems like shackles; as though the duvet is more of a straitjacket, with awful padlocks curtailing their beautiful freedom. There’s no room for spontaneity! Where is the life? Where’s the flexibility? Get me out of here!

Somehow, we have to meet in the middle. I understand I think, that nobody wants to be controlled or shuffled around a board like a chess piece! I get that. Tyranny lies behind the ultra-organised mind.

But tyranny is also there in the free-floating world; it’s just more subtle. For example, I know someone who went on holiday with their in-laws for the first time. She almost had a meltdown because her husband’s parents ‘wasted’ most mornings, getting up late, slow-breakfasting, behaving indecisively about what to do with the day. By the time they’d settled on something it was too late to get there and enjoy it. 

She tried with some vehemence to get them to talk about the next day at the end of the previous one, but they found the whole idea of ‘planning tomorrow’ quite antithetical to the purpose of actually being on holiday, and flatly refused. Actually, I think they might have been fairly sozzled at the time.

And fair play! Holidays should be for relaxing. It just so happens that she, like me, needed that plan-duvet to feel safe and free too. So she simply couldn’t relax. And the worst kind of plan, she thought, is no plan at all.

Planning ought to be flexible then. Perhaps there should be a rough idea (no real details) of what we’re trying to achieve, and then elements can be moved around if things change. The super-planners can focus carefully on what needs to be done if they want to; the creative holidaymakers can relax into the brushstrokes?

How would it work out? I don’t know. We all have to let go of something that keeps us safe, in order to achieve a beautiful, successful time. We all have to trust each other more, and talk about things more clearly. We have to find a way to listen and love each other better.

To be honest, whether sozzled or not, I think I would have made my own plan on that holiday and got up early(ish) and then would have got on with it. I’d have suggested booking dinner tables in advance and offered to take all the admin out of it so that my fellow holidaymakers would just have the barest minimum of a plan - when, and where, for what.

What I wouldn’t do is google the menu beforehand. See! There is some creative spontaneity left in me!

RABBITS, HEADLIGHTS, AND SOUNDBITES

I just watched a recording of a gay guy interrupting and harassing a trans person who was in the middle of a conversation with some other people at a conference.

“You… are a MAN!” shouted the gay man, voice quaking with fury. The girl just stood there blankly. Several other women froze dumbfounded at the interruption, until a security guard got involved and broke up the fracas.

“You are an adult human male!” continued the attacker, as he and his phone were bundled away from the shocked group of onloookers.

I don’t want to get into the brambles with this. The trans person was using the footage on Twitter to display how vilely they had been (and are) treated, and how little support there seemed to be from those dumbfounded folks who had stood around.

It’s complicated and emotive and theological and horrid, and I’m not ready to wade into the TERF wars like some sort of grey Jedi. So I won’t.

What I’ve realised though is that these ugly conversations are likely to happen more and more. Someone with a camera is probably going to come up to me and create a situation one day. And I will have microseconds to know how to respond.

The women in the circle probably did what most of us would do, if we’re honest; they froze. I don’t believe they were transphobic by their silence. I think they were simply working through that flight or flight mechanism - in response to something confusing and surprising happening right in front of them. I wouldn’t blame a rabbit in the headlamps for not advocating road safety.

Anyway. How do we get ready for short answers to difficult questions? If you’re a Bible-believing follower of Jesus, some day someone is probably going to ask you directly if you believe homosexuality is a sin, and whether gay people are hell-bound by default, and your answer, for whatever reason, has the potential to go viral.

They’re going to ask whether humans have the right to choose our own gender, whether trans rights infringe on feminism, and whether personal choices about lifestyle and behaviour should be sacrosanct to the person living them out.

Worse still, our natural instinct to smooth out ugly conversations like the one in the conference lobby, could easily look like muffling the debate, or even taking sides. Those silent women were labelled ‘emboldeners’ remember, to which dozens of Twitter uses clicked like or retweet in agreement.

The video made me feel sad for all of these reasons. I don’t feel clever enough to have worked out what to say, or wise enough to know what not to say. All I can hear in my heart is the aching wonder about how Jesus would handle it - because I know he would.

Life is enormously complex. People want sound-bites. I’m not sure everything can be bubbled down to simple terms any more, and that’s a shame because communicating well requires both brevity and breadth - and we’re not well prepared for that in our world.

I’d like to think that if I were there, I’d have diffused the guy by gently removing him from the situation. But I know very well that I would actually have frozen in social embarrassment too, just like I did when a colleague told a racist joke in 2014… and just like I did when an angry person burst in at the back of church, effing and jeffing.

How do you love someone like that? How do you quickly see through their pain to their heart, to their fears and their joys? There are so many angry people out there, just like the gay guy with the camera, just like the trans girl with an axe to grind. There has to be a way.

WORLD OF FRAGRANCE

I’m not sure why, but I got it into my head that I wanted to try a new scent for the wedding.

“It was just a thing I thought of,” I explained to Sammy, “As it’s such a day for things to be special.”

I haven’t been all that bothered with fragrances in the past. If truth be told, I never knew how to navigate that minefield as a young man, and didn’t move in circles where it mattered. Deodorant, body spray (if feeling a little… flush) had always been enough, I thought. I was never going to be a candidate on The Apprentice; I was never going to be the next James Bond. Lynx Africa and a whiff of Head and Shoulders would do.

It is a minefield too - I’m not exaggerating. As teenagers we entered the world of fragrance with no more than the whiff of naivety. We boys were new to shaving, and the glass cabinets of wonder were always locked by the unapproachable beauties who worked at the pharmacy. Some of us threw on a hopeful splash of our dad’s Brut or Old Spice, and did the full Kevin McAllister. Others didn’t realise that they were trying to impress girls with the aroma of teak polish.

I remember being asked once what ‘cologne’ I wore by a girl who veered between liking me and humiliating me. I said ‘white musk’ because I’d seen it in the bathroom cabinet. She laughed at me. ‘That’s a woman’s fragrance!’ she cackled, clasping hand to lips and shaking with laughter.

So, back to the present, and my naive avoidance of most things eau de parfum. 

“This one’s a bit more subtle,” claimed the lady in the white Boots tunic. She wafted the testing strip around and then let us sniff it.

It’s remarkable to me how smell works. Memories of places and people come pouring back in with just a hint. It’s like olfactory time-travel. But it’s precise and more emotional than the other senses: photos take you back, stories remind you of the forgotten details, but smell pulls back the feelings you had. And often it’s quite hard to put your finger on exactly when, or where you know that fragrance from. But the feeling is right there.

“Hotel lobby!” I exclaimed with the strip wobbling under my nose. Sammy found that funny. There were more to come too, like ‘All Bar One on a Friday night’ and ‘MBA lecture hall’. There was ‘cucumber with notes of coconut’, ‘fruity air freshener’, ‘light and airy leather’, ‘mint tingle’, and ‘omega watch strap’. All the confusing, overpowering, delicate and mahogany scents that Boots the Chemist had to offer.

“Try some on your wrists,” said Sammy, “They might smell different on skin.”

So it was that the smiling assistant took out a number of odd-shaped glass bottles and started spraying them on patches of my bare arms.

I was starting to think it best not to bother. And in the end, for the rest of the day, I found myself casting a wide circle of suave and sickly fragrance in every direction, much to Sammy’s amusement. It must have been like going out with Paco Rabanne.

Shower gel and roll-on Nivea will do - perhaps with a fresh hint of body spray. And if some day I do get signed up as the next James Bond, or even for The Apprentice, I’ll keep you posted.

Well actually, I won’t need to; you’ll smell me a mile away.

GOLLUM AND MARIE KONDO

My sister’s into ‘minimalism’. She told me so last week. Apparently, she’s getting rid of anything that she either doesn’t need or doesn’t love.

I pondered that filter for a long time afterwards. Imagine scanning round your room, your kitchen, your loft and asking those two very basic questions. Do I need it? Do I love it?

There’s a smoothie blender. Do I love it? No. No, I don’t love it; it’s noisy and one time the lid popped off and covered the ceiling in kale gloop. Do I need it? Not right now. Should I get rid of it?

Hmm. The two basic questions mask some deeper considerations. The Inner Hoarder, locked inside of me like Gollum cradling the ring, knows full well I can’t predict the future.

“Imagines,” says he, obsequiously, “We mights need it, precious, we mights need it for fruits on sunny days, yes, yes, my precious.”

There’s a picture - Van Gogh’s Starry Night on a canvas print that turned out to be smaller than I expected when it came from Amazon. Do I love it? No. I wish it were twice as big. Can I get rid of it? Is it taking up space? Is it clutter? No.

Then there’s Marie Kondo. She’s the one who smiles sweetly and then ruthlessly bins everything that doesn’t bring you joy. I have a feeling that if she came round, even I myself wouldn’t make the cut! I might never be let back into my own home, and all that would be left would be an old teddy and a jar of golden shred marmalade.

To me, minimalism suggests that there is a sort of workable minimum you’re always aiming for - a baseline beneath which you would either run out of pants, or collapse into a heap on your floorboards. Do you need carpet? Really? Do they have carpet in the favelas of Sao Paolo? Does the carpet regularly bring you joy?

‘Need’ implies something greater and undefinable: a purpose. ‘Love’ implies a preference, usually for something sentimental or luxurious from your privilege. To run everything you own through those filters seems a bit confusing and maybe dangerous to me - especially if you’ve got Gollum and Marie Kondo whispering in your earholes.

ISOLATION DIARIES: EPILOGUE

Two years ago, the company I worked for at the time, sent us an email to let us know that we were to work at home for ‘at least the next two weeks’.

I remember that Sunday. I’m not even sure why I checked my work emails that day, but I did. I read it in church and thought it over.

As I recall, a lot of controversy was in the air about the government’s slow reaction to news from Europe. On the continent, Coronavirus had already locked down the likes of Spain, France and Italy, so it was no surprise that caution was on the cards, especially from a nervous software company.

Then, by the following week, church was online only, and the next day, March 23rd, a dishevelled-looking Prime Minister was on television telling us we ‘absolutely’ must stay at home. Lockdown had begun. 

Two years. I would never have believed it. I thought it would be weeks, maybe months. One wave, Covid-19 would blow over, everything would go back to normal by the summer.

-

At this end of the pandemic, things are different. The Cheltenham Festival goes ahead, Manchester United just got knocked out of the Champions League in front of a stadium full of fans, and there’s an unexpected war on Europe’s doorstep. The shops aren’t stripped bare from stockpiling (we wish we could afford to stockpile this year), and toilet roll is once again in velvety abundance.

Many of us have been triple-vaccinated; many of us still have doubts about those vaccinations, but largely we have adapted our way back to life.

My old company are all still working from home I think. I’ve lost touch with them, but a couple of weeks ago, Peter emailed me to tell me that there were still no real plans to go back to the office. Two weeks had indeed become two years.

It’s impossible to say what these two years have cost us. It will be impossible, for a generation or more - until today’s small children are graduating and looking for jobs. What impact will they feel? How will these formative years have shaped their futures?

And for those of us who will remember it, it feels as though there will always be an enormous black hole in our history. 2019 just morphs into 2022 somehow and suddenly there we were: two years older, two years worse off. Now with added hand gel, zoom-fatigue and face masks.

And then there’s the sadness of all those relatives who never had the chance to outrun this thing. The grandmas and great uncles, the nans and mums and sisters and cousins and aunts, who died alone. It has been a heavy toll.

And for me too. Thanks be to God, I didn’t lose anyone. I never caught it, never came near it, never accidentally passed it on. But I do think my mind has been changed. I do think I’ve lost something of who I was, and gained something of who I am. I do think I’ve been very much rewired. And that too, will take a long time to figure out.

It’s strange looking back. I said two weeks of isolation would ‘send me potty’. I was terrified of Saturdays back then, the gaping loneliness of days alone. Now, partly thanks to Covid, I’m getting married. Unthinkable, but true! Out of isolation came the opposite - a connection closer than I would have dreamed in March 2020.

Always beauty from ashes. It’s worth holding on to that, even as the next global crisis looms. Hope from despair, joy from morning. I don’t claim to understand it, or even see why anyone should believe it. I just know that with the God who brought me through the “not-the-zombie-apocalypse”, all these things are truly possible.

THE GRIP OF THE PASSED-ON PEOPLE

I was sad to learn of an older lady I know, passing away in hospital. I asked my Mum on the phone whether she thought she’d suffered in the early hours of the morning.

“I don’t think she would have known much about it,” said my Mum.

That is a good thing. She had some health troubles, and for some time I think she was unable to leave the house. I suddenly felt very guilty for not having gone to see her; she always had a lot of time for me, and she used to beam with affection whenever she met me in the high street.

I was remembering the way she used to grip my hand. In fact, it was just the same way my Grandma and my Aunty Roma, and Old Ray, and many of the passed-on people I knew, would hold on. Partly to steady themselves of course, partly to feel the touch of someone else for as long as possible, and partly out of twinkly-eyed affection, the wrinkled fingers would curl surprisingly tight - wrapped around my wrist, locked in place with only a hint of tremble.

I wonder if I’ll do that one day. It seems inappropriate when you’re younger, but somehow, when old age has set in, it is expected that you’ll grip a young person tight, look them in the eye and treasure every single second of their company. I hope that I’ll amuse myself at the blank looking teenagers who have no idea of how much life I’ve lived or which secrets I carry. Actually I hope that they’ll see love, just as I’ve seen in sparkling eyes so many times before.

Perhaps when the world is in its twilight, there are just no inhibitions left. Two things we rarely do these days - prolonged touch and direct eye contact. Yet there’s so much pure humanity in those things - so much shared wonder and connection.

I feel sad that she’s gone. I should have gone to see her; she would have liked that, just as all the passed-on people would have. But I’m grateful for what she taught me about the boldness and bravery of love. I do hope I’ll be able to pass at least a little of that on, whether I reach those years or not.

SHOOTING RIFLE BOLTS AT A TORNADO

I wrote to my MP today. I hate to say it but it was with a portion of hopelessness: the thing I wrote to him about can’t be changed. At least not by him, or indeed any individual politician.

I think you’re supposed to ask your member of parliament to do something when you write in, aren’t you? Like vote against a bill or champion a cause that matters to local people. Didn’t do that.

If you’re a nice person you might just write in and wish your MP well and let them know you’re thinking of them or something. I didn’t do that either.

Gosh, I didn’t even slash into his politics with a scythe! I can imagine some folks doing that vitriolic job very caustically. Not my style.

Nope. I just thanked him for some high profile work he’s done, and then explained why I think it so outrageous that huge oil and gas machines like Shell and BP make inordinate profits from shivering pensioners, who can’t afford to use their central heating.

I believe I exposed some naivity about how I understand the industry, and where the profits go, but I did want my MP to see how galling it is for ordinary people to see Shell (for example) announce profits of over £80 billion, when household energy bills have increased by £1000 per annum. If it’s not gone Shell’s way that increase has gone somewhere. And if they can pull oil and gas out of the ground and still make an eye-watering profit, it stands to reason that somebody somewhere is getting very rich indeed, off the poverty of ordinary people.

I know. The anti-capitalists throw their hands in the air at this point and suggest I am shooting rifle bolts at a tornado. It’s the system. Don’t waste your letter-writing; it’s the world we live in.

I tweeted…

“Seems so odd to think it:

That one man should starve on his farm 

When over the hill

Another man will

Have a mountain of food in his barn”

… and as if to prove a point, someone shot back with a comic book gif to remind me that, ‘That’s Capitalism!’ - which of course, it is.

I don’t expect a response. I don’t even fully know why I wrote it. I suppose it did me some good, and helped me feel as though I voiced concern. Flawed though it is, this is certainly one plus point of democracy - or at least it’s supposed to be - that someone like us, chosen by us, gets to speak up for us, in a parliament of equally selected representatives.

Like the gun-toting Americans who shoot at weather systems then, I might not make much headway, but hopefully I can show that I did at least something, however ineffective, to show the sky, the storm and the sorry old world how I feel. I have to believe that counts for something, right?

LONG STANDING STONES

Sammy and I had to go and collect some wood today from our old church building. Pretty soon it’s going to be knocked down, and so over the course of the last few weeks it has been stripped to a shell, ready for the bulldozers and demolition men.

I find the demise of buildings both fascinating and sad. Once bright and vibrant colours are reduced to tired greys; paint and plaster flakes away, and ceiling tiles crack and crumble. This building never got to the stage of daylight-through-the-roof but you can see how time might have worked its way eventually.

With no chairs or fittings, with no staging left, or art on the wall, with no wood along the window sills or hand rails, the shell echoed in a way it never had before. The carpet, still there but faded and thick with dust seemed like a wasteland for the final bits of strewn papers and wood. It was all very empty, very lifeless.

I thought of the abbey ruins. In our town, a great medieval abbey once stood. A king is even buried there. Since the Sixteenth Century though, the abbey, reformed by Henry VIII, was eventually ransacked and ruined. Now it is great stone walls, covered in moss; vast eroded sections of chapter house, nave and dormitorium, left to time and open skies.

Our little church was given much less time, and won’t be left to the skies. I could see though today, that long decay has its ways, and given that this was our abbey in our lifetime, it did make me feel sad.

It’s being rebuilt from the ground up. Though the old is going, the new will be great. And it’s the right time.

We collected the wood we needed (it’s for art, apparently) and we left by the back door, locking it up and driving off the same way we have for twenty years, just as if we’d be back there next week.

You know, in the abbey, sometimes you can feel the stones. It’s as though eight hundred years wasn’t quite enough time to pull the prayer-soaked walls down, or erode the worship of dedicated monks who believed in God’s house and God’s presence. There was a last day when they gathered. Now, some things remain.

That’s what I hope will be true of our shell too - even as it goes through a rebuilding. Long-standing stones that heard our prayers, the ground on which we knelt in worship, the sky above the roof where we cried to God, all testifying to lifetimes of goodness and wonderful stories of faithful people.

It’s a good thought isn’t it? 

TERRIBLE MOVIE REVIEWS #4: GEOSTORM

Arthur C Clarke, the science fiction writer and thinker, once predicted that before the end of the 21st Century, mankind will have full control over the weather.

He should have hung around for Geostorm! After all, Clarke’s idea is the central premise of the movie! Not only has mankind got control of the weather, he’s ‘turned it into a gun’ as Gerard Butler laments halfway through the plot.

Yes, Butler’s back. This time, instead of a sweary secret service agent or a bare-chested Spartan, he’s an *ahem* impetuous scientist (yes, really) who built a system of satellites that controls the weather and reverses the effects of global warming. Or at least it did, until some shadowy villain got their hands on it. A village in Afghanistan gets frozen over, Hong Kong frazzles in white-hot heat, and even Tokyo gets pelted with hailstones the size of cows. It’s all very dramatic. But who could be doing this? And why?

That’s the blurb out of the way. I won’t spoil the rest of the plot for you; it’s sort of Moonraker-2012, with a little whodunit sown into it. Trust no-one, we’re told. Yes.

That's all well and good but all I wanted to know is how the technology works. It's amazing - they created a global net of satellites that controls the weather by... dropping bombs? Firing lasers? Spreading… snowflakes? How? How does this thing actually regulate Earth’s weather? And how then could it have been weaponised?

Anyway, it all unfolds unquestioningly. There are no details. And no, we don’t even know whom to trust. Butler’s brother Max stays in Washington, while Butler himself jollies up to space to be gruff in zero g. Ed Harris frowns his way about the White House as a stern-faced Secretary of State, and then our characters have to (wait for it) kidnap the President to escape a lightning storm... and it all gets quite intense. Trust no-one we’re told, again. Fine. But how does the science work, Butler? Tell us how! Oh wait, you need to punch an annoying Englishman in the face? Right, you do that. Oh yes, you need to enter the codes to yaddy yada the flip-flop so you can turn the system off. Fair enough. But when do we find out how this all works? When?

I did laugh out loud when I realised that that was the big fix. Literally, the climax of the movie is turning the system off and then on again… in order to (and this is real) “Flush out the virus”. Thank you for calling IT support.

Anyway, that aside, Geostorm is big, daft, summer-blockbuster escapism. It is rubbish - I mean it’s junk food, not a home-cooked meal, but I quite like that it’s not unaware of it. It's silly and it knows it. And just as I enjoy an occasional Big Mac, I have to say I did quite like Geostorm. What I liked most was the thriller element - who was behind this genocidal plot? What would happen when the boys follow the trail all the way to the top? That was engaging. As soon as that mystery evaporated though (and honestly, if you think about it, there is very little mystery), we were in the last act and it was explosions and car chases and drive-in-reverse-under-a-bridge-while-sharp-shooting-with-the-President-in-the-back-seat (lol) territory, and it was all rather dull and plasticky. Much like that post-Big-Mac feeling.

Personally, I think if mankind did have control over the weather, we wouldn’t weaponise it at all. Not for political gain, not for militaristic purposes, not even for power. We’d privatise it. We’d squeeze money out of it and try to blackmail nations that don’t pay up. There’d be a billionaire in a glass tower who wears a turtleneck sweater, and there'd be greedy shareholders, and nefarious governments desperate to get their hands on the technology. Gerard Butler’s character would be a disillusioned engineer sent to fix the system, but instead he'd accidentally uncover the preprogrammed 'malfunctions' and end the movie by having a change of heart and blowing the whole thing up.

And in that version, they’d have to give us a clue about how it works, right? I mean it would be the premise of the movie. And then instead of getting punched in the face, the English guy could make some sort of joke about how his countrymen have missed having something unpredictable (the weather, I mean) to talk about, and then be frightfully helpful in dismantling the computer code. Honestly Hollywood, if I can come up with something more intriguing from here, what are you doing?

Well I suppose we know what you’re doing. You’re making Big Macs.

A TALE OF TWO BADGERS

I saw two badgers having a fight, on the way home tonight.

They were sort of circling each other, and then snapping and rolling and tumbling off the pavement. The headlamps didn’t seem to dampen their spirits either.

They’re big aren’t they, badgers? I mean these two bruisers were the size of small dogs. In fact, I thought they were foxes at first! Then I saw their stripy heads and beady little faces.

What do badgers have to fight about? Who stole whose mashed potato?* Who are you calling ‘Discount Barcode’, you Pedestrian Crossing?… I watched them for a while.

In the end, one of them darted away from the other and shot across the road, through the headlamp beams, behind the parked cars.

The second of the badgers was in hot pursuit. I saw his sleek grey coat as he flew past. Then, the two of them bolted up the pavement, and suddenly they were gone.

It’s probably a territory thing. It usually is. Perhaps one of the badgers, let’s say the ‘townie’ badger, believes that the village sett belongs to him, in fact he dreams of a united town and village, just like the old days! So of course he thinks he can just stroll up and do whatever he likes with it. Meanwhile the village badger, and all the other sett badgers round here, are certain that they’re culturally separate from the town badgers, and quite like the village just as it is thank you.

Maybe down the road there’s even a group of ‘hamlet badgers’ not wanting to get involved in case the townie badger brings all his mates up for a massive badgergeddon.

Mushroom, mushroom.**

Anyway. With that the quiet road retuned to silence. Who knows what happened to the scrapping mustelidae! Nothing, I thought to myself, is ever really black and white is it?

* one for the Xennials.

** and one for the Millennials, just in case you were feeling left out.

WASHING UP

The sink is full
Of dirty dishes,
Food-encrusted plates
Despite our utmost
Honest wishes,
All of it awaits

The cutlery is
Caked in butter,
Marmalade and jam
And porridge bowls
Of breakfast clutter:
Stuck inside a pan

The mugs of tea
We didn’t finish
Stained with rings of old;
Turns out the job was
Not diminished
When the tea went cold

And that is life!
The kitchen sink
So full with all our living
The tasty stuff
We eat and drink
Now cold and unforgiving.

So scrub and soap
Must find their way
With rubber glove and glee
To get us through
Another day…
But first, let’s watch TV

XENNIAL

Apparently, I’m a Xennial. That’s someone on the cusp between Generation X (which I really thought I was) and Millennials (of which I really thought I wasn’t).

But no! 1977-1983 saw the birth of a group of people with a unique relationship to the changing world. We had Encyclopedia Brittanica on CD-ROM for help with our GCSE coursework, but we missed out on MSN Messenger (which wouldn't have helped). We grew up with Knight Rider and Airwolf, but we were too old for Power Rangers. We got phones in our twenties, and we remain consistently and happily, too old for Snapchat and TikTok.

How do they work out the boundaries for these generations? And is it defined by our relationship with tech and TV, as I implied?

In theory, a generation is the cohort of contemporaries who are the offspring of the previous lot. In other words, one generation is inside the classroom, while the previous one is waiting to pick them up. (Meanwhile, the previous previous generation are at home watching Cash in the Attic with the volume turned up.)

But my parents (Boomers) had children over the course of fourteen years! So, two children squarely in Gen-X, one Xennial (me) and my little sister, who, I think, is a classic Millennial. How can one generation produce children in three different ones? The boundaries are sketchy - which is probably why you end up being defined by the signs of the times you grew up in, instead of the classical definition.

These labels are useful for social historians, I suppose. They serve as a handy shortcut for explaining why people of particular ages voted for Brexit, why there’s existential doubt among so many Ys/Millennials, and speculation about the impact of the world on Zs, Alphas, Covid Babies or whatever comes next. Labels reflect trends (although imperfectly) and they give you a framework for someone that might help you understand them better.

Anyway, it turns out I’m in the micro-generation, the sweet spot between X and M - with my memories of Dogtanian and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, my analogue childhood and pre-digital happiness. I had to call my friends on their house landline and ask their parents (excruciating) if they were in, I got my first email address at university, and I happen to think of plans as solid and immovable until changed, rather than a fluid arrangement of whim and fancy that you can do whatever you like with on your smartphone.

Actually that might explain why I’m not sure about the boundary lines of generational constructs. I like solidity. And I’m less than comfortable with the way the world is changing so quickly - and how that’s inevitably going to lead to more specific definitions of generations and micro-generations in the coming years. That intransigence about change puts me closer to the Gen-X boundary than the Millennial one. Which given that I was born at the beginning of the xennial spectrum (1978) probably means the whole thing rather holds up.

But it is just a label. 

SPRING TIDES

I’ve been trying to write a poem about the way things change. It’s taking me forever, and not for the usual coming-back-to-it-and-realising-it-doesn’t-scan reason, no sir, not this time.

I think it’s just too deep and raw a thing to capture in my usual glib verse. Ah. Let me rephrase. What I mean is: I’m not good enough at poetry to write it properly. Yes, that’s it: it’s like a cartoonist trying to turn Paradise Lost into a comic strip.

I say deep and raw because right now, change is causing me trouble. Not that I don’t want that change; more that it’s rushing in like a spring tide. It’s deep - it will swathe into every inch of sand and pebble on my beach, and it’s raw because it is cold and wet and will reshape pretty much everything. And some of that is painful.

Let me be more specific if I may. I’m losing a friend because, I think, change is happening, and the loss of that friendship really hurts. He might read this, I suppose. I don’t want to give him away for that reason, but I do want to say that it’s a tough time to go through, right in the middle of a rather wonderful one. Life’s like that hey? Bittersweet at best.

I really do still love my friend, and there will be a point when this starts to heal, I know. But I suspect there’ll still be scars even where there’s healing. That is the way of things, after all.

Meanwhile I’ll try to get back to my poem about change. I don’t ever want to be so inflexible, so tied to my own sense of knowledge and experience that I’m blind to new seasons or directions of travel. I’m seeing how important it is to know the seasons, to listen and learn from others, to find out what’s happening and respond well, particularly to young people.

And in my own season of spring tide, I want to be ready, excited, prepared for the adventure about to engulf my world! And honestly, I think my friend would want that for me too. And if he does happen to be reading this, then he should know that I absolutely would never want anything other than that adventure for him either, with or without me.

FUEL SHORTAGE

My sister messaged me. She has it on ‘good authority’ that there’s likely to be a petrol shortage next week so it’s well worth filling up.

“Goodo,” I texted back. “Though my car runs on hopes and prayers these days so I’ll probably be alright thanks.”

Actually I’m still driving around on last week’s full tank (yet to dip below the F). Plus I’m trying not to use the car quite so much. Especially after I bashed into next door’s mini.

Oh by the way, she phoned me back! I was fetching a baking tray at the time so I missed the call, but she left me the sweetest voice message telling me not to worry too much about it. See? People are nice!

We really need kindness at the moment. Exhausted from one global crisis, we’re being dumped on by another. As one tweeter put it: Brexit, Coronavirus, and now World War 3; what’s next, aliens?

If they’ve got any sense, the aliens, they’ll take one look at us and reverse out of the solar system like a Ford Focus in a cul-de-sac.

It’s not World War 3 though. Not yet. There’s an interesting dilemma faced by the West on how to help Ukraine without actually fighting the Russians. Sitting back feels like letting Putin roam free across Eastern Europe; getting involved seems a short way to start a long war. I believe I am a pacifist but somehow, you’ve also got to see the Churchill point of view - and be ready to fight aggressors on the beaches if it should come to it. Otherwise evil is left to stalk the land and we will be the ones who have let it happen.

Meanwhile, cold and calculating in his winter palace, Putin is playing chess like a seasoned grandmaster. He seems almost unfazed by his opponents: inscrutable, solid, controlled. And it might just be dawning on us that he’s been playing us for quite some time.

Anyway, let’s not get into all of that.

“Excellent,” replied my sister, typically unwilling to indulge my sense of humour about my car running on hope instead of petrol.

I can’t blame her for that. In a way, hope and prayers are a lot better as fuel, especially at times like these.

BEAUTIFUL SOULS WITH ELEGANT POTENTIAL

I think people are nice and kind on the whole. That’s my assumption, anyway. Sure, we do encounter the selfish and hurting ones sometimes - and yes, those encounters make us sting with tears. But I think even those people are just reacting on the surface to a world that’s not been fair to them. And beneath that layer, there’s usually a softer, gentler voice trying to whisper.

I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this is a naive point of view, or that I’ve been sheltered in my nice middle-class (and thoroughly Christian) bubble all my life. Fair point. But even if I’m wrong, isn’t it still a very sensible assumption to make? I mean, if you really want to make the world a better place, isn’t it better to have a platform of kindness, even with people who might shout at you and call you names?

I thought of this last night as I wrote a note to my neighbour. It had been raining, and I had absent-mindedly reversed into her car on my way out. It wasn’t serious; just a scuff mark I think, though it was hard to tell in the drizzly lamplight. Sammy (who is very pure about these things) reminded me that it’s ‘always better to be honest’, even if I could have driven off without my neighbour ever knowing. I also knew that if I’d chosen that silent ‘hit and run’ route, I would have been opening myself up to guilt and worry - and those things are far more expensive than the rear bumper of a 2005 mini.

And so (after knocking her door and her not responding) I wrote. And I did so, very carefully accepting that I was responsible and apologetic. I drew her a diagram of what had happened, I used larger letters than normal, and I tried to pour kindness into it as the pen flew across the plain A5 paper.

This all sounds like a humblebrag, but I’m just making a point really. And (gulp) I have dented cars in the past and just driven off - to my shame. And yes, guilt and worry did follow me down the road and both clung to my soul. Not this time though.

And sure, I might be wrong about people. Deep down, people might actually be self-centred, grasping, unimportant dullards - fodder to clamber over on my and everyone else's personal scrabble for happiness; I might be very foolish for my belief that every human is the opposite of those things - or that you, like me, are a beautiful soul with elegant potential, even if life has embittered and twisted us.

I might be. But let’s be honest, either way, clambering over people only ever pushes them further down, doesn’t it? Being rude only adds rudeness to the world. Much better to lift others up and treat them well; far kinder to stand up for what’s right and take responsibility when it’s not, and especially if it was your fault. I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus teaches. Ha! Maybe that always was the Christian bubble.

Anyway, my neighbour hasn’t responded. She might still. She might phone me and rant down the phone. She might thrust an angry letter through my door. She might just be nice about it, she might be thoughtful and let me know it’s all alright, or even what I can do to make it right if it isn’t. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that she is of course, a kind and gentle person, floating along in life, just like the rest of us, trying to make things better. But of course I would.