STUFF JAIL

I’m not really coping with the world today. I think it’s because everything’s still in motion and we’re living out of suitcases.

We’re going to to have to go to the storage unit later to get a kettle.

That’s always a disconcerting trip: it’s like visiting your own possessions in prison. Stuff Jail!

There are complicated codes in Stuff Jail: big clanking shutters, sliding electronic doors, padlocked cells. And I always walk through those echoing corridors with squeaky trainers. It’s ‘left, right, straight, right, left’ to get to where my things have been locked up. Cell after cell of quietly incarcerated possessions.

And then you unbolt your padlock and squeal open the cell door to reveal… well, in our case, our entire flat - all higgledy-piggledy as though everything’s sort of in the wrong place - the Fancy Samsung, the upside-down coffee table, the bed in bits at the back, packed in with towers of cardboard boxes. The wardrobe peeps a mournful corner over plastic crates, topped with a bongo drum, and the bags and bags of hastily packed papers and clothes and electricals are stuffed around everything like packing.

‘We shouldn’t be here!’ they all seem to cry together. ‘We ain’t done nothing wrong! How come the kettle gets freedom?’

Anyway, I guess we’ll clank it shut and bolt the padlock on our way out of Stuff Jail, then take the kettle home for a cup of tea… and hope it hasn’t been institutionalised by its time in the clink.

I don’t much like being so unsettled. This houseless interlude is making me feel emotionally unstable and I’m going to need to dig deep to get some strength over these next few weeks. In a way, the occupants of Stuff Jail have it a little easier; all they have to do is sit in the dark and wait for their parole to come through.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

A 94-year-old lady came across the road today to ask if we could fill her watering can. She’s a neighbour of the people we’re (basically) house-sitting for.

I filled up the can of course, but not without a very friendly chat. She seemed grateful for the short conversation, inconsequential though it might have seemed to anyone else. I wished her a lovely Sunday, she beamed, and then hinted that it would be a lonely one rather than a lovely one, given that her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were not coming to see her.

“They’re living their own lives of course,” she said, leaning on her stick. “… and so they should. After all, when we were their age, we did exactly the same.”

I saw a brief flicker of sadness in her eyes. It could have been memories, it could have been the loneliness of the big family home on the other side of the street. It was probably a little bit of both. I felt it too. If we achieve one thing with our own family, I thought, I want our home to be somewhere the children always want to come back to.

“Of course,” she went on, “With the world today, I honestly think we had it better in the 50s.”

“Oh yes,” I replied (as though I had been there) and then just for clarity added, “I really think you did.”

It hit me that a lot of people I know might raise an eyebrow at this generation pointing that exact thing out. Life was better in the 50s? Yeah, because you lot started borrowing all our wealth, houses and natural resources, and now we’re all paying it back while you get misty-eyed over Happy Days.

But it wasn’t this lady’s fault. She’d had a good life, and I don’t think anyone would begrudge her that. And she misses her family, which I think is probably one of the most human emotions to resonate with.

“But the news these days is terrible.”

“I’d just switch it off if I were you,” I replied. “Just turn it off at the plug.”

Some people you can say that to and they don’t bristle with annoyance. I calculated this would be alright, and I think it was. We exchanged a ‘god-bless’ and then she ambled carefully back to her large empty house.

I do think the news is depressing. I think social media too, amplifies it, shouts it back at you, makes it ring like an alarm in your ears that you can’t switch off. At 94, I reckon I’d happily just disconnect from it all and see out my days with a bookshelf, a telephone, and the joy of family babbling like music through the house. And maybe I’d look back to the 90s and wonder if perhaps that were the best time, the golden age, the perfect moment to have been alive. Then, as the sun fell through the window and golden light illuminated the book in my hand, I’d realise that I had been wrong about that, and smile.

TORTOISE THOUGHTS

Do you know what’s inside a tortoise’s shell? The answer, is a tortoise.

Don’t laugh at me. I thought it would be mostly empty space, a cool cavern for pulling arms, leg and head in. If I’d been pushed to think about it, I might have said ‘water’ - after all, I read somewhere that they used to be stacked up on sailing ships like cartons of aqua minerale.

Well. Turns out the shell’s part of its skeleton, and inside it are the tortoise’s vital organs, packed tightly behind that glossy dome like an organic backpack for heart, lungs and liver. It doesn’t carry its home around with it - it carries itself around with it, just like the rest of us do.

That’s how I feel today - like we’re lugging ourselves round without a home. We’re blessed in that we have somewhere to stay for a while, but of course, everything is temporary and so everything is minimalised and suitcased as though we’re on an indefinite vacation - only, this vacation is the kind where you go on holiday to your normal life. Rather more ‘taking it all with you’ than ‘getting away from it all’.

Anyway. Don’t let me be ungrateful. After the burst of physical energy it took to get us out of the flat, there’s bound to be a period of time to adjust, to breathe, to recover. What I think is also happening is an emotional recovery. It’s like swirling a bucket of water - you can stop moving the bucket, but the water needs a little more time to come to rest. That’s where we are. And we need to be kind.

I wonder now, if that’s what’s happening to teenagers. Rapid, unprecedented change is accompanied by a swirling storm of emotion and confusion and helplessness that just takes time to heal. How, I wonder, would adults fare if they had to go through adolescence twice? Would it be more understandable second time round?

Anyway. The tortoise is the shell; the shell is the tortoise. The suitcase is not the nomad, but the nomad needs easy access to the suitcase. Seems are both could be slow when it comes to getting home.

THE QUIET FRONT DOOR

“It’s one of the great things about being part of church,” I said at the end of the day yesterday. There’s so much love and so much community that at times like these, when you’ve got three and a half days to pack everything up and move, it just spills out of us. And everyone chips in until the impossible is done.

So many people came to help us yesterday, and it was extraordinary. I figure anyone can debate theology, call the whole Christian thing a fairytale if they want to, or even sneer at us for being simpletons. When we love though, we go all in, and it is beautiful and undeniable.

We made it. This morning we took the last few sunny photos, locked up, handed over the keys and that, amazingly enough, was that.

The next part of the Unsettling Adventure is going to be interesting. Right now, we’re staying at someone’s house. They’re away on a cruise, so we’re here on our own with our suitcases and boxes of food-that-won’t-survive-the-lockup. It might not be permanent, it might not even be long enough to be called temporary but it is what it is and we are grateful for every day and every night.

Charlie, the forwards estate agent, thinks it’ll be 4-6 weeks before our house is ready. I’m content. Though I will miss the old flat.

It’s odd how it’s happened really - just a little too fast to process, just slow enough for us to get complete in time. The thing I know I’ve got to do now is look ahead rather than back, but there are things I will miss.

I used to wonder what happened to Will Smith after he flicked out that light switch in that Bel Air mansion. The character, I mean - the actor went on to punch aliens and Oscars hosts. Did he make something of himself at College? Found a girl, married her, had Carlton as his best man and godfather? Regularly sought advice from retired Uncle Phil?

In a way, it’s nice that we don’t know. But in another, a very real other way, it’s inevitable that we find out for ourselves. We all have our Bel Airs. And we all have our light switches. But we live beyond the story, on the other side of the credits, the studio, and the clicked-shut and suddenly quiet front door.

GRAVITY OF NIGHT TIME

Well now. Time for a little break from all the moving drama. More on that later. For some reason I was thinking about the moon today and I came up with this idea.

Gravity of Night Time

The moon sits up there

Pulling at the tide

Tugging at the ocean

Ripping it wide

She hangs there smiling

Silent in the sky

Clutching at the land

As the night clouds sigh

The moon grins up there

Chaos in her hand

Tearing at the water

Ripping up the sand

Gravity of night time

White upon the sea

The moon’s still up there

Pulling at me

KEY HOLDERS FOR A TIME

I remember the day I picked up the keys to my flat. I wrote about that first day here, in a post that’s well, just funny now, looking back on it. I was so excited. And convinced I’d just overcome my poor admin skills! Ha!

It’s also sweet to note how Sammy was with me on that first day in a strange and symmetrical way, long before being with me here, at the end.

Goodness. I held those keys so tightly on my way out of that estate agency. It felt like walking on air that cold December day. My keys. My flat. My home. A miracle in the making. 2,447 days ago.

I’ve been pondering though: were they ever really mine?

What I mean is, tomorrow I’m giving those same keys back to an estate agent for someone else to hold. Perhaps the new owners will come out feeling lighter than air too, giddy at the thought of their first home. So in the context of history, I mean if you were looking at those keys as objects from outside of time, it begs the question: whose keys actually are they? Whose flat is it?

I appreciate that it is late and I am tired. Plus I banged my head a couple of times today so there’s every chance I’m talking rot again. But if true, then perhaps it means that we, humans who are scintillating flashes of light in a long and dark universe, simply never own anything at all. Perhaps it means that everything we think is ours was only loaned to us for a period of time, in the hope that we’d look after it. After all, you can’t take any of it with you.

Well. That aside, today was fantastic in the end. Everyone pulled together, morning, noon and night, and, even though we’re totally shattered, we’re so pleased that we’ve pretty much got it done, ready, as all good stewards are to pass on the keys to the next holders.

GETTING MOVING

7:30 am. It’s raining this morning. Out in the garden, half-covered by a tarpaulin and half not, is our sofa, cut up into pieces of foam, wood, and now soggy fabric.

We had help. In fact it’s been impossible to get this far without it. Even our neighbour is pulling out all the stops for us today, to get that last bit of admin over the line. Thankfully!

Today is going to be full on, we reckon. There’s still lots to do including tip runs, lockup stacking, clothes packing, final bits and pieces to make sure we’re out of here on time. And all in the rain perhaps, although I hope it stops pretty soon.

I’m less stressed today. I think a few conversations yesterday helped me see a way through, and we’re a lot closer to the end with the packing and storing. They say (and honestly everyone said this to me yesterday) that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. Dan from HR even went as far as to say that the conveyancing system is ‘bonkers’ which I thought was funny. He’s not wrong though. When I asked why, he just said ‘because solicitors’ - and left it at that.

I’ve got a list to get on with. Sammy’s still asleep and I know that when she wakes up in a minute or two, it will be time for me to stop listening to the rain and activate To Do List Item 1 which I think is to forage for breakfast. After that, the To Do List gets long and complicated and I won’t bore you with it. I don’t know how today will go.

The first alarm peels like electric bells through the grey morning. Holiday rain drips and pours outside. She turns and stirs, one snooze-button-period away from action. I’d better get moving.

PILES OF BOXES

I’ve never known stress like this. I sat through a month of finals with exam topics I didn’t understand, I lost my passport the night before going on holiday, I even navigated through that day-before-the-wedding, and none of it, not one moment of any of that was close to the heart-tearing, soul-stretching, emotion-ripping stress that’s happening this week.

What causes it? The pressure of last-minute decisions? Someone else caring greatly about the outcome of your actions? Simply not having enough time to get everything done and fearing someone will shout at you?

This time it’s a collision of things. We are now relying completely on a neighbour to do something so that we can move. If she doesn’t do it by Friday, everything we’re trying to do to get out of here, all of it, falls apart.

Packing a whole flat is difficult too. Even with the mantra of ‘box it or bin it’ it still seems so tight, and lots of our friends are coming to help us - which is great. I don’t know how we’re going to do it.

Throw on top of that the return to work today and I’m in meltdown. I don’t understand a big bit of work that was due last Friday, and all I’m doing so far is annoying everyone by asking them for help.

So. All in all, I feel stupid, incompetent, afraid, depressed, worried, pressured, panicky and boiling. Boiling like a volcano afraid to erupt. By the way, I know I’m not actually stupid or incompetent: I do feelthose things though.

Because we’re in transition I’m also surrounded by piles of stuff in cardboard boxes. Going to the loo is a bit like the Krypton Factor - there’s a certain logic to not knocking things over or wedging your back into a door handle.

I really liked The Krypton Factor. It was a show in which real people had to use logic, problem solving, and even physical strength to win. There was always a round where you had to figure out how to put together the fragmented pieces of a puzzle. Next thing you know you’re racing over an A frame on a muddy course with an army instructor shouting at you. Now that’s stress! You don’t see many shows like that these days. Shame. It was brilliant.

Also. We’re kind of homeless as of Friday. I mention it last because amazingly that little detail seems like the least of our worries right now. I’m pretty sure we’ll end up somewhere, but it’s a bit troubling that we can’t quite pin down where yet.

I don’t know if I’m right about stress. If it ultimately comes from caring too much, or from other people caring too little, then how do you avoid it? It’s woven into life. And I’ve been on so many stress-management courses in my time, that I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do at all to stop feeling like this. What was the use of any of them?

Where are you, Inner-Obama? Where’s that steely resolve? Where’s the coolness on the nuclear button?

Well. Anyway. All we can do is keep going, I suppose. Deep breathing. Carry on. Trust. Pray. 

SWEATY WILL SMITH

I am 90% sweat right now. You know when little boys at weddings race around at a thousand miles an hour, and then their hair gets plastered to their foreheads? That’s how I feel, right now - a red hot, exhausted ball of sweat who wore a suit to the gym.

I didn’t wear a suit to the gym. Though that would be an amusing social experiment. It’s the kind of thing influencers do for followers. No, we’ve been packing and sorting for pretty much the whole day - and that has been exhausting. From climbing about on dining room chairs, piling cardboard boxes in the lockup to collecting piles of old batteries and Puzzlers from 2016, it’s a been a tiring old day for body and brain.

And heart. After dinner I sat on the sofa and looked at the bare walls of my flat. I was suddenly Will Smith in the last episode of Fresh Prince. Time pushes us on to the end credits, to the new and unseen excitement, but there’s still something so emotive about the final shot of a place we’ve called home, isn’t there? I had a little cry.

It’s no wonder I’m soaking: emotional and sweaty. What a combo.

THE UNSETTLING ADVENTURE

There’s not much time today to talk about how grand a time we had in Yorkshire. Grand though it was, it turned out to be short, as we’ve had to race home through the night, a day early.

We have to pack our entire flat up by Friday lunchtime.

At least, we think we do. Things change so fast with the house situation. Our buyers have a mortgage offer that can’t be extended, and that has led to this extraordinary deadline, and yes, an unsettling adventure. Unsettling because our house is not ready, and we have no idea where we’ll even be living for the next few weeks.

I watched the motorway flash by. Red cats-eyes on the hard shoulder, green on the central reservation. White lines flicked under the car as we drove into the night. It seemed to me as though the blackness of what was ahead was a metaphor for our own uncertainty - deep and brooding, and currently unknowable.

Will we get it done? It will be tough. Where will we go? We don’t know. What will these next few manic days be like? We can barely imagine.

Anyway. There is a lot to do, and who knows, this crazy machinery might push and swing us in yet another direction, perhaps even before the day is out! Nevertheless, the plan today, and we really ought to be thinking hours not days now, is to do our best to get moving. I am daunted, unsettled, uncomfortable, terrified even. But. I am not alone.

THE FRESH NORTHERN LIGHT

We’re in Yorkshire. To be exact, the little town of Holmfirth - which might as well be the entirety of the county, given that it seems to encapsulate everything I remember from Last Of The Summer Wine.

Not surprising really. The show was filmed here. And much of my information about this great county comes from Nora Batty, Clegg and Compo - not to mention the patchwork of fields and dry stone walls that stretch unblemished in my mind under bright blue skies of summer.

It is green up here. Somehow, nestled in this northern valley, the grass has stayed verdant and fresh. Blue sky stretches over the cloud-dappled hills, drawn as they are like a vivid reminder of what the countryside is actually supposed to look like.

I’m taking it as a reminder. Sometimes in life, a dry-spell in life can become a drought without you even realising. The park at home still looks like the park, and it will again, but it was quick to turn from luscious grass to sun-scorched straw this summer. I genuinely think that can happen to people too - and I don’t much like the thought that it could easily have happened to me.

Then, like showing someone a genuine banknote, the difference becomes clear. This is how it should look. This is the distance between the way things should be, and the way they are. And now you have to do something about it.

Anyway. We’re not here for long - just a few days of family, of exploring, and photographing each other outside Nora Barry’s steps.

I’ve been to Yorkshire before of course. I always love it; the straight-talking and the humour and the fresh northern light. There’s just something about it.

THE DESPICABLE MACHINERY

I feel sure buying and selling houses ought to be simpler. I think I understand why it isn’t, or at least why it isn’t quite how I think it should be, but nonetheless it’s me that thinks it, so I think it.

With pretty much anything else, it’s really simple. You find someone selling a thing, you agree on a price, you give them the money agreed, they give you the thing. You go home. And that is it.

But with houses… with property, for some reason there’s an entire industry of people who have massively overcomplicated the basics, and I’m pretty sure they do it on purpose.

For one thing, hardly anyone can afford a house. I mean it. Houses are too expensive for almost all of us to buy. But rather than stop and wonder why that specifically-arranged pile of bricks and metal and glass costs an astronomical amount of cash, we’ve just all accepted that yes, piles of bricks and metal and glass cost that much money and that is that.

So the only solution for us all is to borrow the money from someone who has it, with the agreement that we’ll pay it back over the course of say, our entire working adult lives.

Those people who do have lots of money though, they’re clever aren’t they, because they want to make sure it’s worth their time lending you all that cash. Plus, they also want to make sure they get it all back, so they’ll charge you extra for the privilege.

It’s a rum deal for the borrower. For the privilege of living under a roof, your own roof, you’re in a grip until you die or retire. You have to pay back the money you  borrowed plus the interest, and if you don’t, the lenders can turn up and claim back the house and kick you out of it. No wonder they call it a ‘death grip’ or mort-gage.

In addition, the amount of extra (which is a percentage) they want from us, can go up or down without our say-so, based on how expensive everything else in the world is.

There’s also some fine detail too - like where the boundaries are, who’s responsible for what and who actually owns any land attached. So someone really clever needs to have very detailed and boring conversations about that on your behalf, with someone else who’s very clever who represents the person you want to buy the house from, or sell it to. Then very slowly and deliberately they negotiate it all out.

Not only that, but if you’re selling one property that doesn’t fully belong to you, in order to buy another property that won’t fully belong to you either, the chances are the people who want to buy your house are having to borrow a massive amount to do so, and will need to sort out all that contract negotiation as well, not to mention the people who are selling to you, and buying a different house from someone else with someone else’s money.

With apologies to all you estate agents, solicitors, financial advisors and surveyors out there, wouldn’t it all just be a lot simpler if houses were just… you know… affordable? Like, for everybody? How did we end up in this complex machinery?

We (my wife and I) are in this despicable machine - mostly because we’re not landed gentry. And as a result, as a direct result of rising interest rates and spiralling inflation, of pendulous solicitors and of nervy lenders, our chain is fragile and may even collapse.

And I think it ought to be simpler, and quicker, and yes, even happier. Because living should be! And that machinery of creating joy and building family is the one I’m most interested in. And we can’t do that quite so happily in a poky maisonette.

Hmm. I don’t want you to get the impression I’m not thankful. There are plenty of arcane and worldly systems that are slow and greedy, and we just have to live in them. The disciples did too, and even Jesus taught them to pay Caesar his taxes. I don’t want to come across as a mad revolutionary rebel. I just think it could be different. And yes, I’d like it to be different. Because honestly, all this is stressing me out.

FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT KICKS IN

My Mum comes to see me on Thursdays. This week, we were chatting over tea and shortbread biscuits when something huge and quite unexpected happened.

Now then. I often wonder what I’d be like in some great big disaster. You know, normal life one minute, next there’s lava cascading through the kitchen. Or a bomb, or a sudden tidal wave, or some other awful thing you weren’t expecting - swift and sudden and so monstrous you can’t compute what’s happening to you.

My fight-or-flight mechanism kicked in. I’m sure the cups started rattling, though I can’t quite remember the few seconds I had in which to put the mug down and scramble to the open window. My Mum fell silent mid sentence as the noise grew louder.

It was a plane. Or perhaps more than one plane; the sound of several engines rushing and booming through the still summer air. Too close. Louder and louder, and closer and closer, like a thundering waterfall, pounding and screaming in our ears - out of place, wrong, and totally bewildering. I was shaking with adrenaline.

I thought there was going to be a crash. Perhaps any minute we’d be blasted through the air, or blown up, or thrown through piles of collapsing brick and metal.

Then, right overhead like a scene from Top Gun, came the Red Arrows. Boom. One, two, three, four. Five, six, seven! The RAF’s team of aerobatic jets, the very same squad who so often fly over Buckingham Palace, roared over my flat.

I felt like Prince Louis, clutching my hands over my ears. Then, just as quickly, the noisy septet of planes was gone, heading East over the rooftops and under the clouds, and as it turned out, to the Eastbourne Show.

I was still trembling on the windowsill.

And all that for a country show! At the time I wondered whether there’d been some terrible incident in UK airspace - perhaps a Russian plane over the North Sea, or a passenger aircraft above London, not responding to the tower. Why did they have to fly so low?

Come to think of it, I don’t know what good the Red Arrows would be in an emergency. It would be like sending morris dancers into a hostage situation. I guess they could turn on their red, white and blue smoke and loop-the-loop.*

Anyway, they terrified me, I suppose. That unknown, unexpected rush of noise heading straight towards me was so loud. If it had been a hostage situation, I think the kidnappers would have just hidden under the sofa and let the hostages out without a fuss, a hankie, or a ribbon round the maypole.

*I probably ought to point out that I really do think those pilots are extremely well-trained in the same way that the guards outside the palace would be. Our armed forces are the best in the world, and the precision of a parade, whether on land, sea, or in the air, is a ceremonious symbol of high skill, deadly force, and immaculate discipline.

LITTLE AND LONG RAIN REQUIRED

“Rain” says the forecast on my computer’s toolbar for today. Not yet though.

We had a little hot rain last night. For a while the air was thick with that humid petrichor of earth and steaming tarmac. It didn’t really come to much.

It’s still warm out there. The sky is overcast, like a stuffy grey blanket. It’s bright, but there aren’t any patches of blue that I can see. I’ve got Lightning Maps running in the background too - just in case the thunderstorm currently clustering on the south coast makes its way up country.

The air’s still - really still. You can hear everything down the street today. In fact the postman just heard me absent-mindedly singing, ‘It was an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini’ at my computer, through the open window. Embarrassing. I don’t even know why I was doing that.

“Nice,” he beamed up. I just waved back. The letters clunked through the letterbox.

I hope it does rain. Sammy says we need ‘little and long rain’ over the next few weeks to get the thirsty earth used to it again. It’s likely, she says, that a downpour would just run straight off the cracked soil and cause floods everywhere. So far though, neither type has made an appearance today.

MY FAVOURITE POLL

“Did you prefer your life as a kid at school, or your life now? Yes, No, or Silly Question?”

This (found on my school reunion page) might be my favourite ever social media poll. By the way, I think ‘Silly Question’ is in there as irony, given that here we’ve been given two sets of multiple choice, and no way at all to work out how to answer. Brilliantly funny.

‘Silly question’ could imply that the pollster assumes either (1) it’s obvious that we’ll say our lives were way better back then - that’s why we keep visiting this time-capsule of a flumpbook page, after all - nostalgia. Or, (2) we had a horrendous time at school, in which case yes, obviously our lives are far better now than when Mr Beasley was throwing the board rubber at people who hadn’t done their homework. Either way, it’s a silly question because obviously…

The fact that it’s unclear what he means by ‘silly question’ is wonderful. The fact that it’s in there as an option is brilliant. And the fact that it adds confusion to an already confusing question might just be genius.

I think (although I can’t answer the poll like this) I prefer now, because now is the time I’m actually living in, and the 1990s aren’t here any more. You only get to experience one second once and one at a time, after all, and right now it’s this one. Similarly if you were to ask me in 1991 if I’d rather be 6 years old, 45 years old or 13 years old as I actually was in that year, it would have been insane to have picked anything but 13. So that’s my answer: then was good, but now is now.

Just to let you know, the ‘No’ vote is currently winning 13 to 5, with ‘Silly Question’ in at 4. I suspect it means that people are looking back with the nostalgia goggles and preferring their school days over their current adult lives. It probably seems simpler in the rear view mirror - although I bet at the time, many of them rushed to be free of the detentions and chalk-dust in Mr Beasley’s English class.

PLUMBING WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA

Today, we replaced a bathroom tap. This involved me being upside down in the bathroom, huffing and puffing and hoping I wasn't about to drop a heavy adjustable spanner on my face.

I'm sure this is why it's better to get someone in to do this. Five minute jobs ought to take, ooh I don't know, five minutes, and probably not three hours. Oh and it probably shouldn't result in you being so sweaty you might as well have left the water on.

--

"My mom told me she used to come down to the ocean when she was pregnant," said Barack Obama on his documentary about National Parks. He was on a Hawaiian beach. "She'd come down here, think and reflect. Maybe that's why I'm so calm," he said. The sweeping camera cut to his feet sinking into white, wet sand; trousers turned up around his ankles. The water lapped around his toes as he casually strode along the beach.

Calm. Cool. Collected. I bet that guy was excellent in the situation room. World War III could be about to kick off, and Obama would have been the leader in the chair, settling everyone down and focusing them on courses of action that aren't about to blow up the planet. I imagine that temperament is exactly what you need in a President, rather than some hothead with sticky fingers. But don't let me get into that.

What I thought of when I saw Barack taking his time along the beach, was how awesome it must be to be like that, even if you're not the President. Even if, say, just for the point of argument, you've got to change a hot tap in the bathroom because the old one is leaking and there's about to be a hosepipe ban.

I have a hard time bringing a sense of calm, purposeful resolve into the room when I'm sweating on the bathroom floor and the wrench is slipping out of my clumsy fingers.

--

We got it done anyway. I righted myself, switched on the water and everything worked just as expected. I'm not sure my wife is as confident in my raw-fingered plumbing though. The first thing she said was that it would be better if we didn't use it, especially as we'll be moving in a few weeks. She's placed a cup under the sink to test whether it's leaking from the pipe.

I don't know whether Michelle Obama would have done that. Ah well. To be honest, Barack would probably have just called a plumber in the first place, wouldn't he?  That's certainly the coolest, calmest, most collected thing to have done.

THE WASP MAN COMETH

The wasp man is supposed to be coming round today. Yeah, half-man; half-wasp, he is. He heard we had jellies in the fridge.

I mean the pest controller of course. We think we have a wasp nest in the eaves. In something of what she thought was a helpful move, when we told my Mum, she told us the story of the wasp’s nest they had in their kitchen years ago, which resulted in (1) a ‘massive’ hole in the ceiling, (2) the kitchen basically being abandoned like the Marie Celeste with the breakfast things still out, and (3) my Grandma being heroically stung up to her elbows, trying to block up the hole with a bit of old cardboard.

Ours is much lower grade. There are two or three wasps buzzing around the top of the bedroom window, just under the guttering. Every now and then they dart in and out of what is evidently a hole. Hopefully the wasp man can quickly deal with the little fellas before they chew their way inside.

I’m quite amazed how the flat is suddenly pushing back, now that we’ve decided to leave it. The front door lock went, the taps needed fixing, the washing machine needed replacing (with the Fancy Samsung of course) and now these tiny blighters are moving into the roof. I had five years of relatively hassle-free living, suddenly it seems it’s time for a few things to go wrong!

It’s probably just a good indication that it really is time to move on.

So the wasp man said any time between 8:00am and 12:30pm. The classic maintenance/delivery window. I wonder what the distribution of arrival times looks like? A bell curve with its peak at 10:15am? A shifted maximum between 11 and 12? Or do most people get the wasp man early? 

It should be flattish shouldn’t it? While you can’t predict how long a job might take, it should average out that the wasp man is working for the whole shift. Even if he can’t predict when he’ll get to you (due to the unpredictability of what he might have to face elsewhere) he is at least somewhere, arriving at something. The question is whether big jobs are likely to happen earlier or later, and even the wasp man can’t predict that.

What I do know is that I couldn’t do his job. My grandma on the other hand… she was evidently made of stronger stuff.

GREENWICH PARK IN THE MID-THIRTIES

Apparently it’s England’s driest summer since 1935. I read that somewhere, alongside a picture of Greenwich Park looking like sand dunes.

What happened in 1935? I can’t find any info. Were the Nazis stockpiling water, or was it just exceptionally hot for a month or two?

Anyway. It’s hot again - back in the 30+ degrees, where the wall of invisible heat bulges in through the window and gets shifted around by the whirring fans. I haven’t been outside today for fear of being baked like a sweaty potato.

They wore hats and starched collars in the 1930s didn’t they? How did they cope? Strolling home with your briefcase and trilby, sweating through your woollen tank top and scratchy tie. I’d have hated that, I reckon. The only thing I would have appreciated would have been the small ring of shade provided by the hat.

I might have asked this before, but why did men stop wearing hats? Somewhere in the 1960s we just all decided it was time to ditch the homburg and the bowler. And that was that, without a whisper.

Formal occasions kept hold of them for a while of course, and probably the bowler hat was glued to some of the stuffier professions. Even in the 1980s, when I was around, Mr Benn doffed his hat at the shopkeeper before changing into his back-room-now-that-I-think-about-it-I-hope-it-isn’t-a-metaphor-for-something-dodgy-adventure-costumes. I was never confused as to why he was drawn with a bowler hat, anymore than Homepride Fred on the side of the jars of cooking sauce.

Hats would be useful for days like these - if you were going outside, of course. I work from home, and that wasn’t really a thing when hats were around.

Anyway. Sad to see Greenwich Park looking so yellow. Last time I was there (Spring 2020) it was as green as an Irish meadow. The naval college and maritime museum looked so out of place next to that desert wasteland in the picture - like the Wembley Towers suddenly caught in a Saharan sandstorm, or St Paul’s on a rocky outcrop.

The grass will recover, no doubt. The autumn rains (to quote Psalm 84) will cover over it with pools, and the place of weeping will become a stream. I hope. And when it does I’ll be out there, celebrating that we’re no longer in the mid 30s. With my hat on.

SIGNIFICANT DISTRESS

The travellers weren’t around long. In less than 24 hours they’d been given the police-order to vacate the park, and sure enough, with fifteen minutes to spare, they were off, leaving nothing but discarded clothes lines, plastic toy trucks, bin liners of rubbish and an old dog cage behind.

I went out there this morning.

The grass is so dry now. It’s like straw: brittle and brown, parched by the ongoing heat. At sunset it’s honey-coloured where the low sun falls across the park, and in the mornings it gleams white, but for the rest of the day the park is scorched brown, halfway to sand.

We found the police order lying in the grass like a discarded A4 printout.

“In accordance with section 60C of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, I direct all those on this land to leave for the following reasons:”

The I in question was an authorising officer and a countersigning police officer whose name I’d better not tell you.

“I believe that you are residing or intending to reside on the land without the consent of the occupier and that you have or intend to have at least one vehicle with you and that you have caused or are likely to cause SIGNIFICANT damage, disruption or distress.”

In civil-service-training-school, commas are probably considered fancy Oxbridge flourishes. I’m also intrigued by the decision to capitalise the word ‘significant’ in a slightly passive-aggressive manner, emphasising its well, significance. What is significant distress?

I expect this is nothing new for the travellers. They’ve seen these notices a hundred times, each warning them in this exact comma-free capitalised tone, that next time (within twelve months) they’ll be arrested, or have their vehicles removed by the police.

I’m not knocking the police by the way. We have laws for a reason and public parks need to be safe for everyone to enjoy. To be honest, I was actually relieved to look out over the brown, brown grass of home, rather than grubby caravans.

I still feel an unusual compassion for those people, despite them angle-grinding through the park gate, ripping up the dry grass under their vehicles, and leaving piles of rubbish behind. I’m sure they’re used to it, and perhaps it’s part of their culture to be so antisocial. Nevertheless, they, like the terrified neighbours this side of the fence, need love just like the rest of us.

EXPENSIVE POTATOES

The other night I dreamed that Sainsbury’s were asking for £23.50 for a potato. In the dream, I pulled out the little spud, and showed it to the manager.

“Do I look like George Clooney?” I asked him, “Do you think I can afford an overpriced potato? And look at it!”

He was sheepish. The potato was being thrust toward him.

He was though, unmoved by my protests. He and the customer services person just tapped away at a computer and it kept coming back with the same number, £23.50. And if the system said it, no matter how ridiculous, now matter whether they themselves also thought it unfair, preposterous, absurd, or erroneous, they were clearly compelled to stick to it. Because it is the system.

I think I know where this dream comes from. Especially at the moment, it seems, the ‘system’ looks like a gigantic network of computers and people against which it’s easy to bump heads, but impossible to escape. The operator on the end of the phone feels your pain; they can hear it in your voice, and perhaps they too have worrying gas bills, or can’t fathom why BP and Shell are making huge profits out of all of our misery. But they are employed; they are in The System, and it’s their responsibility to tell you to pay up, or to coldly refer to your ‘liability’ (thanks, Kieran From The Council) or even to tell you that potatoes are now apparently £23.50 each.

We’re growing our own potatoes. Not because of the dream, but actually because it seems like a great thing to do. We’re also growing tomatoes, carrots, chillis, herbs, and parsnips.

I don’t much like this faceless System. It blots out that kindness and straight-thinking, that little voice of human compassion that says, ‘Of course potatoes aren’t worth £23.50, of course this is just silly; we are so sorry. Here, take this one for nothing; there’s obviously something at fault here. We’ll look into it for next time,’ instead of backing up the computer the whole time.

I should stress that Sainsbury’s are absolutely not being extortionate with their potatoes. For balance, they’re quite reasonable outside the dreamworld. And to be fair, vegetables are a renewable resource.

But it’s a timely reminder, I suspect, that there are companies out there digging resources out of the ground, just as they always have, and they are selling it and pushing it round, and providing it to us, for an absurd markup. And it might as well be £23.50 per potato, or a lot worse.