POLLEN DIARIES: PART 26

I was awake at 4-something or other. It was dark and the moon shone through the Venetian blinds. I was barely awake before I started sneezing.

Without thinking about it, I was doing my best to keep those sneezes in. I pinched my nose and gulped as each one exploded after the last. It felt as though my whole body was convulsing in the effort.

The next few hours were similar. I dropped off back to sleep a few times, then woke up again, hot and bothered and snotty. At one point in the early light, I reached across for the tissues and tried stuffing them up my nostrils. It didn’t really work.

Yes, it’s hay fever season again - the worst part of the year; when the flowers conspire to pummel me into red raw submission. This year, I’m abandoning the cetirizine hydrochloride (runny tummies), I’m forgetting the loratadine (headaches and sleepiness) and I’m even trying to sparing with the fexofenadine. I’m stuffing my nose with hay max - a sort of branded vaseline that’s designed to prevent pollen getting up your nose. It’s doing an okay job. Except it seems to wear off in the middle of the night.

BRAINS PART 2: THE DECLINE

I looked up at the moon, hanging in the misty sky. Venus twinkled, just next to it. Meanwhile the moon was a ghostly white crescent, diffuse behind the thin clouds of a cool spring evening.

I didn’t get in. The email from the producer was pleasant, acknowledging that it was ‘mixed news’ although I’d scored ‘highly’. I really had too - I checked the answers to find I’d come in at 28/30 on the multiple choice quiz, which I think I ought to be proud of. Nevertheless, 93% was not quite enough to get through - and the producer was kind enough to include me (and presumably a large number of others) automatically in next year’s process.

That, I assumed was the bit that made it ‘mixed news’ rather than the rest of the information about how to listen to the show when it goes out.

Disappointed? Yes, I guess so, though less than I might have been. I chanced my arm and proved to myself that I could do it - that makes me feel proud more than upset. I’m also a little relieved, as this means I can go easy on the revision for a while. I also think Sammy won’t miss me asking Siri what the second largest cities of various countries are, just after lights-out.

I also wondered whether there might be other things I could apply for. Am I brave enough for Mastermind? Should I try something less challenging (and more lucrative) but harder to get into? Or just have a rest from the quizzing for a while? What’s obvious to me anyway, is that none of these producers care particularly about finding people who know stuff; they just make entertainment, and the focus will always be on ratings. For those of us in the hot seat though, is the adventure worthwhile? Is it something to pursue, or just leave alone?

The moon didn’t know the answer. Neither did Venus. Both where silent, stumped and indifferent perhaps to the question, dumbfounded in the ink-black sky. I know the feeling.

BRAINS PART 1: THE CLIMB

I logged into Zoom with my heart pounding. Already there were six or seven people staring out at me from their living rooms. More were logging on too, while the host chatted with a lady who was having trouble hearing anything. She had her hand over the camera while she fiddled with her phone.

I scanned the other applicants. Was I the youngest? Possibly. There was a grey, bearded man in a flat cap, resting on a sofa.  Another lady slumped sideways into a resting hand, her glasses slightly askew as she peered into the camera. A disabled man looked sternly from his high-backed wheelchair, and a row of figures with downturned, nervous expressions popped into view. Glasses, beards, moustachios, floral wallpaper, grandfather clocks, and then me, smiling like a portrait in front of my own reversed room.

Radio 4, I thought to myself, and then admonished the thought of stereotyping everyone. Nevertheless, if you could draw the audience of Brain of Britain, and frame it on a computer screen, I’m sure this would be it.

I’m not fond of the name - Brain of Britain. It sounds like a year 10 insult from somewhere at the back of the class. Now, here I was, ‘auditioning’ for the show, tackling the first hurdle to see if I might enjoy it, to see how far I might get. It’s a wonderful thing to stretch yourself, I say. And this is my daring adventure, my challenge.

I’m under no illusions by the way. To get to the recording at the BBC radio theatre would be a huge achievement, given that close to one thousand people apply for the programme. To actually win a show is beyond my wildest hopes, let alone get to any kind of semi-finals. I know my limits. But, as Miley Cyrus used to say, it’s the climb, isn’t it?

The producer went over the process. Three rounds of ten multiple choice questions; four options for each question, two to three minutes to answer. The standard, he said, would be ‘prestigious’. I took it to mean difficult. With a sip of water, a deep breath and a steely determination, I got myself ready as the first set came up. And then, suddenly. they popped up on-screen and, with everyone muted, we were off.

I’m probably not allowed to say what the questions were. Well. I can’t remember them all anyway; just a few notable ones. My learning lists paid off, my shrewd guesswork eliminated things for me and in a whirl, just like that, all three sets, all thirty general knowledge questions were done, and that was that.

Relief flooded through me like an outlet of adrenaline. Someone made a joke about the very last question, giving away that yes, they knew the answer, and, nudge nudge wink wink, they were obviously confident enough to be bantering on the radio. I did wonder if that was really the audition, whether that was the spark the producers were looking for, but at the time I was wondering whether I’d guessed that last question right at all. His jokey reference to it had made me wonder. It was like the end of the exams when some bright spark wants to compare notes and then scoffs at you derisively when you tell them how you answered question twelve. 

48 people get through to the recordings. It’s not exclusively done on the scores, as they have to balance the mix of contestants from all over the country, but it largely is. And I do feel like I did well, so you never know, I suppose. I find out next week.

“As long as you’re not going to be upset if you don’t get in…” said Sammy. I smiled. That’s the kind of perceptiveness I love about her. I reassured her. And I genuinely don’t think I mind if I don’t make it to the radio! Quizzing is a lot of fun, and I really enjoy learning and remembering new things - it’s always been about that for me, rather than what my year 10 buddies must have assumed was ‘showing off’. Or as my favourite philosopher, Miley, put it, ‘there’s always gonna be another mountain,’ and, ‘it ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side...’

I hear you, Miley.

LIGHTNING MAPS

It’s stormy season already. I clicked open Lightningmaps and looked for the little yellow dots that represent a strike.

I’d have loved lightningmaps when I was a kid. It was exciting enough peering out of the kitchen window, scanning the deep grey sky above the houses. In later years, once we’d had a Velux put into my sister’s attic bedroom, it was even better to stand, socks on her duvet, arms perched on the slightly wet window-rim. We’d poke our heads through that open window, two small observers in a world of wet grey tiles and shimmering rooftops.

My Dad had taught us that you count the seconds between flash and rumble, then divide it by 5 to find out how many miles away it had been. I remember asking why, not ever being satisfied with the reason.

This time, the trees are verdant green. It’s that time of year when everything flourishes and the leaves are their fullest, richest and brightest. The horse chestnuts sway with their delicate candles, the tall beeches and English oaks rise in resplendent green against the angry grey clouds. Birds sing, cars swoosh in the puddles, and heavy drops of thundery rain thud from the sky.

Lightningmaps is a bit delayed. First there’s a loud rumble, like a neighbour clattering their wheelie bins. Then, on the map, a great circle of grey spreads over Basingstoke. Next, the sky flickers like an electric lamp to the East and moments later the yellow dot appears on-screen, gigantic grey circles overlapping and fading as they intersect. We’re no longer left to count and guess like we were in my sister’s room; the Internet shows us where the strike was and when, presumably thanks to some satellite.

I haven’t used it since last summer. It was quite nice to see it again today, as though it was sort of the beginning of the season.

The storm’s moved over Salisbury now. It’s a cluster of yellow and grey, swirling down the map. Meanwhile our sky, our real sky here has turned to bright sunshine on one side, and black clouds on the other. In the middle, the water tower glows brilliant white, like a sort of mediator of the argument.

I like stormy season.

PALPATINE SHOEHORN

The other day I did a kind of perfect impression of the Emperor from Star Wars. I was just slipping my shoes on by the front door in the hall when I heard myself say, and for no particular reason…

“Use your aggression, boy.”

And I cackled out loud as though I’d just madly thrown a chair at Master Yoda. I doubt I could do it again now; it was just one of those random moments.

Does it take aggression to put your shoes on? I don’t even think it needs the force, other than squeezing the boot past the heel. It was just the eight-year old me coming out, remembering, as he might, most of the script of Return Of The Jedi.

I used to be able to do a pretty good Yoda too. Always a classic party truck at uni that one, to suddenly slip into a curly-sounding, ‘Mmm, much apple I sense in this cider, yes. A pathway to the dark side this is.”

Though admittedly, it did wear thin in the late nineties. It’s even flimsier now, now that Star Wars is everywhere, and most of us have had a go at a Yoda impression at some point. After putting my shoes on like Palpatine, I tried it out again and realised that the old Jedi skills were at best, rusty.

Probably for the best - no-one needs to be summoning Palpatine just to pop their shoes on. That’s one thing I should probably have mastered when I was eight, and Star Wars itself was only three untouchable movies.