DON’T TAKE A HAMMER TO A PARTY

I just got sent an article on how to break the ice. It boiled down to ‘Two truths and a lie’, ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors’ and ‘Don’t begin by asking someone what their biggest regrets are.’

Sound advice. Although organising a rock-paper-scissors tournament at the beginning of your marketing network conference might not go down well with everyone. That feels like day 2 when the ice has already been nicely broken and you’re ready to chunk it into a glass with some gin, some tonic, and a slice of lemon.

Similarly, the old ‘two truths and a lie’ game is probably not an icebreaker either. As you sit there in a circle, trying to come up with two unlikely scrapes you’ve been in that sound ‘close to unbelievable’ plus one lie that is the opposite, while also listening to everyone else do the exact same thing, in turn, there’s nothing but tension in the room. No-one wants to feel like they’re back at school again.

“At your event,” continues the author, “More talking equals more socialising equals more fun.”

I think the mechanics of socialising is really complex. People are different. Ice melts more naturally than it breaks, and clearly with time, a group of strangers will thaw into friendship circles all by themselves. It’s happened in every workplace, church group, classroom and band I’ve ever been in. Sure, not everyone has got along with everyone; if that’s the goal of ice breakers, it’s already an impossible one. But eventually people form, storm and norm with well-proven predictability. You don’t need to take a hammer to a party.

THE FANCY SAMSUNG

Right, what is wrong with me? We’re getting a new washing machine and it is honestly the highlight of my week. Well, next week, actually. It’s getting delivered.

How did this happen? Aren’t I supposed to get excited by new Lego, or trips to Chessington? How bad have things got that I’m suddenly ecstatic about a Samsung WW90TA046AX? It washes clothes. My old machine did that. This one will do it slightly better, admittedly. Plus it doesn’t have gaffa tape holding the seal in place (a bonus) and the intake tray isn’t mouldy, which is a nifty improvement. I like the way they do that.

So the old Bosch bachelor-spinner is on the way out, and the fancy Samsung is in. And I’m weirdly excited.

It’s a cool graphite grey. It has a futuristic touch screen, and when you adjust the temperatures through the scale from 30 to 90, it beeps up through an octave! It’ll take 9kg of washing and it’s super efficient on the kilowatt hours. It does a 30 minute wash at 1400 rpm and it chimes in at a maximum of just 72dB.

Is this what happens when you get old? Well I say, let’s embrace it. Let’s get excited about washing machines and dishwashers and power tools and garden furniture. Let’s enthuse over hosepipes and vacuum cleaners, and gush with gusto over new sheds and spades and coffee machines!

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. Someone once said that little kids don’t grow up; the toys just get more sophisticated. To which I say, amen, and bring on the fancy Samsung.

THIS SIDE OF THE SUNLIT WOOD

Yesterday, I went to the funeral of the lady who died. I took my parents with me; they knew and loved Irene, living as they did, just around the corner.

We arrived in the warm spring sunshine.

Who looks after crematoriums? They’re always immaculate but you never see anyone there, cutting the grass, unlocking the building, setting the chairs out.

Ah well. The funeral directors seemed to know what needed to happen. At the appropriate moment, they carried in the handsome wicker casket, and a recording of Amazing Grace piped up, as we sombrely followed.

I always get such a mixture of feelings at these things. Sadness of course, but joy too - Irene was a believer who lived a good life and knew where she was going. In remembering her through the photos and eulogies and reflections, there was a lot to smile about.

As someone pointed out, people live on in the many lives that they touched. That would have made her smile, I reckon.

There was a screen in the crematorium. It displayed a photograph of a sunlit wood; tall birch trees striking up to a canopy of translucent green. Through their slender trunks, the golden sun beamed slanted rays of beautiful evening sunshine onto the ferns of the forest floor.

I thought I saw those ferns move at one point; ruffled by a warm breeze perhaps, stirred by something otherworldly. Was the sun setting? Was it rising? Was that deep blue sky behind the trees the faded azure of sunset, or the lightening sky of a brand new day?

I pictured opening my eyes as I lifted my head above the ferns. There would be birdsong I imagine, and the smell of leaves, and the sound of summer on the wind.

“Death is just a chauffeur,” said the minister calmly, “It carries us from one place…” and he paused as though pondering the thought for the first time, “… to another.”

I was still in the softness of the birch-wood. Poor Irene. Poor family left behind. Poorer world; richer heaven.

I’d quite like the ‘chauffeur’ to give me a bit of a warning when he’s outside, rather than have him break into my bedroom and stop my heart beating, or bundle me into a hospital bed and tap the life out of me. Just a little honk of the horn perhaps? Give me time to call a few people for a proper goodbye and see you laters?

Though I think if Irene had had that, she’d still be on the phone now. She liked to talk. And she had a lot of people to talk to.

We shuffled out into the sunshine, leaving the fading tones of Andrea Bocelli singing ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ over that wicker casket. Out there, the sun was warm and the air buzzed with life. White fluffy clouds stacked along the tree line, and the yews and cedars waved happily beneath them.

We shook hands. We went to look at the flowers. We remarked about the service and the life lived. I thought about the wood.

I’d be okay, I reckon. If I woke up in that wood, I’d be okay. If Heaven started with a silver-lit sunrise, rubbing my eyes in the ferns between the birch trees would be, more than anything, the hope of all my life.

I can’t explain exactly why I think that. This side of the sunlit wood, I was shaking hands with people caught between loss and sadness, and it seemed to me that that’s a picture of this world - caught between loss and sadness, shaking hands on sunny days and learning how to grow around our grief.

I took my parents home. My heart though, was somewhere else for a while.

BACK TO LIFE

I'm getting more predictable in my old age. In a move that annoyed me as soon it began, I started singing Soul II Soul’s classic hit, “Back to Life” this morning as I logged on to my work laptop. You know: ‘Back to life, back to reality…’

Hmm. It came out in 1989. I guess it just goes to show how good a hook that song has; if it’s stuck in your head now too, that probably proves it.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, congratulations to you; you are officially young and you should be skipping with joy in your fresh-faced tikkytoks and snapcat videos.

Well anyway. It is ‘back to life’ today. Work returns: Sammy’s back teaching, and I’m back to being baffled at home. Only it is a little different, I suppose.

I looked up the lyrics:

“Back to life, back to the present time

Back from a fantasy, yes

Tell me now, take the initiative

I'll leave it in your hands, until you're ready”

Slightly passive aggressive to tell someone to take the initiative but also leave it up to them, isn’t it? Like saying, ‘in your own time’ while drumming your fingers and checking your watch. And what’s with the time travel?

It’s strange to think of this bit as ‘life’ and the last couple of weeks of honeymoon as ‘fantasy’ - in fact, I don’t think it’s very fair. Being baffled in front of my laptop ought to be the weird, out-of-body experience, and the reality, the life, the thing we’re born to do, should be the rest of it, shouldn’t it? Call me an old-fashioned romantic, but I can’t wait for my wife to get home today - it feels real being around her, and weird when she’s not here. Funny how quickly life changes so quickly; funny how the good old predictable makes way for the new, and it all seems so normal and real after just a short space of time. Maybe it’s okay to be unpredictable in my old age, after all.

BETWEEN THE SHOP AND THE TIP

We went to the tip the other day. Sorry, the dump - is that what you call it? Hmm, seems colloquial. I mean it’s really the ‘recycling centre’, but I don’t think many people call it that.

Anyway. I really liked the recycling centre. It’s a well-organised loop with perfectly labelled areas for the disposal of pretty much anything from paint cans to car batteries. You drive in, you sweep round, you throw your old junk into the right section and you go home grinning with the satisfaction of an empty boot.

Even the staff were helpful! I had it in my head that they’d be surly - I mean if your work is dealing with rotting garbage, I don’t think anyone would blame you for being grumpy of an afternoon. But no, the quiet high-vis operators happily nodded us in the right direction for textiles, electrical appliances, and bulky household waste.

What’s more, the recycling centre turns out to be a bit like Disneyland for little boys who like big machines - which of course is pretty much all of us, even the grown-up ones. I watched a gigantic forklift pick up cubes of squished plastic bottles, and load them onto a truck. Then, inside, massive grabbers swung their huge metal buckets over the towering mounds of waste, moving piles and piles of recycling, letting it tumble out of the thick metal teeth with a growl and a thud.

“It’s a shame to think how much of it ends up in the sea,” I said to Sammy. Given the amount of plastic in view, the terrible thought that this was just a small fraction, and the fact that it was all here, piled up like a mountain on one single day, it was quite a thought. There’s a frightening amount of plastic out there.

I took a boxful of old cardboard and paper and tipped it into the sea of recycling. Then I lugged a couple of heavy tins of magnolia paint (circa December 2015) over to the area where they collect such things. How can you recycle that stuff?

Pretty soon, the stuffed car boot was just some old carrier bags and the parcel shelf again. We drove out, and into the glittering sunshine.

We collect all sorts of stuff in life don’t we? Later that day, we were wandering around Stockholmhaven, and I saw a brand new drying rack - exactly like one I’d thrown away. Stuff has quite a short journey between the shop and the tip.

Emotions too - baggage from relationships that used to be new, thoughts, feelings, self-perceptions we’ve clung on to for far too long. How many people are hoarding those festering things in their hearts, longing for a sort of emotional recycling centre, I wonder? And could such a place exist?

“Over here for resentments!” cries a worker in an orange high-vis vest. “Bitterness and unforgiveness? Nah mate. Over there next to Pride and Painful Memories.”

Perhaps that’s how some people see church? Or their relationship with God? A place to confess, and then dump or tip all the garbage we’ve collected; sweep in, throw it all in, sweep out again? Well. I think it’s much more than that - just as it was much more than satisfaction we drove away with the other day.

Stockholmhaven was full of people doing their thing, buying their stuff. We bought a Kallax, which we later bolted together with enthusiasm. Some day, the chances are that it will be in the boot with us on the way to the recycling centre. I guess the joy, the reason, the life, is in the journey of using it between now and then.

SKYDIVE

“So how’s married life?”

A lot of people have been asking that. I don’t blame them; I’d ask it too. I like it. It’s checking in that we’re enjoying it, that we’re doing okay, and that we are settling into a brand new life for both of us.

My friend Julian asked me by text. I replied and told him thoughtfully, that it’s like ‘doing a tandem skydive where neither of you is the instructor’.

It’s not a brilliant analogy. I was just trying to find something that’s kind of terrifying but also exhilarating, life-affirming, self-awakening, and figure-out-able… in mid-air. The best bit of that figure-out-able-ness of course, is that you get to do that figuring-out together.

Teebs reminded me that ‘you learn a lot about yourself too’ - which must certainly be true. Thank you, Teebs. I pictured myself on the plane, rumbling through the clouds on the way up to twenty thousand feet, parachute strapped, and knuckles white.

It’s funny how you can picture what it’s like to leap out of a plane; you can imagine it and hear it and see it in your mind’s eye. But until you’re above the clouds, waiting for free fall, I suppose you’ve got no idea what it’ll actually be, what it will feel like, or how it might change the way you look at your life.

So. Are we enjoying it? Yes. I’m loving it. I’m vulnerable and protected and loved, while also being trusted, being a protector, and pouring out love to someone else who is tied to me in mid-air.

Are we doing okay? Yes, I think so. We had a beautiful time in the birdsong of honeymoon. We’re back and we’re happy.

And are we settling into the new? That’ll take more time to answer, I think. Yes -  but the new-so-far is the art of getting used to the wind rushing by and reorienting the ground and the sky and the sun. We are giving this our best, and I think that’s all we have right now. There’s a contentment in it, knowing we have each other, and that God has both of us in his hands.

And when I wake up in the mornings and think about it, I shake my head in wonder and chuckle to myself. I leapt out of a plane. We jumped together, and now we’re on an unpredictable adventure through the blue sky and under the warm sun. It is beautiful up here.

ENJOY THE INTERVAL

So, just over a week to go then.

I’ve been wondering what to do about this blog. When I started it I had the knowledge at the back of my mind that I would have to stop writing it some day. I figured it would probably conclude with me ending (which would mean a very blunt final post) or with me getting married, and perhaps no longer having time nor inclination to write it.

I’m not sure I like the thought of my last ever post being about sandwiches or aliens or how much I dislike cheap umbrellas. If I died suddenly, I would run the risk of an ignominious end to the chronicle, and I don’t know what to say about that, other than it would be odd and sad.

But then, the blog has been a part of my life for eight and a half years, and I find it hugely therapeutic! It’s one of the things I find a lot of joy in, and I don’t really want to stop. Plus there are folks like you out there, some of whom have been reading from the very beginning in November 2013, and I think of you a lot. It’s nice when you tell me something I wrote made you laugh or think; or that I’d contradicted myself, and you needed to point it out. It felt as though it was a small part of your world too, and as you know, I love things that bring people together.

So. What to do?

Well one thing’s certain: I won’t be writing it on honeymoon. I have a feeling Sammy (who dips in to the blog from time-to-time herself) might take a particularly dim view of me documenting that adventure.

But, I would like to carry on after that, if I can. It will be a brand new chapter; a season so different to any I’ve shared in the hundreds of posts I’ve written so far, and there are bound to be some scrapes, some observations, and some poems that tumble from the next piece of road. It will be different, but I’d like to keep going.

I always said that writing this was like pulling back the curtain on the drama, letting you peep behind the scenes at a life lived out. I guess for a few weeks then, I just need to let the velvet curtain drop softly back into place, and for the house lights to flicker on, while backstage we get on with the changing of scenery, ready for the next act.

So, flutter your programs, grab a drink from the bar, or maybe a posh ice cream, in the hubbub. As they say in all the best establishments, do chat among yourselves, and above all, enjoy the interval.