THE ANTICS OF TOMMY TWO-CURRIES

We went to see the new Mission Impossible movie last night. At one point I almost wondered out loud what in the world Tom Cruise was thinking. I don’t mean his character; I mean Tommy Two-Curries himself, making endless movies that revolve almost entirely around himself doing stunts.

It’s not like those daredevils from the old days. They didn’t feel the need to construct an elaborate story around the reason they needed to jump twelve double deckers on a motorbike - you knew what you were getting. You were getting a lady being fired from a cannon, through a burning hoop, or a guy swinging his way across a tightrope over a pool of crocodiles. Because that’s cool enough without a storyline.

For some reason, Tom Cruise has decided to build an entire franchise around his own circus act. And I’ll be honest, up to the last Mission Impossible, I fully went with him. I indulged him and got lost in the story, where his thrilling antics sort of slotted around it.

In this one however, the story gets so absurd so quickly, that its logic crumbles away, until all that’s left is a loose string of plot points, around which Tommy parachutes and jumps and runs, all to the pulse of the thumping stringy soundtrack. And it suddenly looks like we’re egging him on, just by watching. All I could think of was, ‘That’s really him doing that,’ instead of what the story was telling me to think which was some nonsense about him needing two halves of a key that can save the world from an AI entity and he’s the only one who’s able to do it yada yada. What a guy.

To be fair, it might be that I was watching it in a strapped boot with crutches. I’m not exactly able to imagine myself as Tom Cruise.

Still, I paid for the tickets. I doubt he cares about the reason why. I doubt he cares at all.

SKELETAL THINKING

Speaking of x-rays… did you ever think it weird how you’ve got a whole skeleton… living inside you? I said this to Sammy today and she laughed as though it was the daftest thing she’d heard.*

But when the doctor had shown me my toe and I could see the grey fleshy outline of my foot with these white bones inside, I was suddenly reminded that behind this skin and these (unremarkable) muscles, a spooky spectre of bones is basically holding me together.

My foot bones looked weird. At the tip of the so-called ‘distal phalanx’ a thin grey line curved horizontally across the toe.

“Not the most impressive break I’ve seen,” said the doctor cheerfully. It was at least clean.

“Still flippin’ hurts,” I said, with an uncommonly candid tone. He hinted at a chuckle, then went on to tell me about boots and antibiotics and how to walk on your heel. Doctors can be really matter-of-fact about things, I’ve found, especially when you almost make them laugh.

Anyway. There it was behind him - a ghostly foot of a skeleton, printed on grey, floating on black, just as Roentgen must have seen it when he first discovered x-rays. I wonder if he too was freaked out by the living skeleton that controlled his every movement? I mean - think about it - the dark holes for eyes, the sunken skull, the thin, brittle arms and femurs and tibias and ribs and pelvis and spine… all there, now, inside of you, stuffed with eyeballs and liver and heart and kidneys and things.

I shudder at the thought.

One of a much larger number of reasons of course why I am not a doctor.

*Trust me: that is a high bar.

BROKEN TOE

I broke my big toe. It’s not an interesting story, but it happened while entertaining my niece on our family holiday. I raced her around a mini Land Rover track, and, not being in a mini Land Rover, or in fact, being an actual mini Land Rover, my feet got tangled up on a ramp, and over I went.

It’s weird falling over. It doesn’t happen very often as a grown-up, so when it does, it feels a bit nostalgic. For one half of one second, the world is upside down, the ground is where the sky was, and then something suddenly hurts. Things start to make sense again and you sort of wish they didn’t. That’s nostalgia for you. And it’s also falling over.

“We get all sorts,” said Barbara the x-ray operator, waiting for my details to pop up on her computer. “A lot of hands - mostly young men punching something.”

I felt my eyes widen. She went on.

“Yes. I always know it’s a young male when it’s a hand,” she said. “Brick wall, car door, concrete…”

I held a shoe in one-hand and a sock in the other. My bare foot with its black toe was resting on the cold floor of the x-ray room. I think Barbara was reassuring me that I’m not an angry young man who was silly enough to let his pent-up fury get the better of him. Fair enough. My injury felt just as unnecessary though - I mean, someone should have roped off the mini Land Rover course. And I should have been more careful tearing round it.

The thing is, it’s not just the toe - it’s the impact on everybody else! I desperately didn’t want the broken toe to swell up and swallow everyone’s holiday, but there I was, basically unable to walk. Shuddering with pain in the corner of the tent when the dog trod on me, almost unable not to draw attention, or drive the fun out of our few days together.

The pain’s gone down a bit now. I had moments when it felt like a thousand volts had shot through my foot, or waves of agony were pounding through my nervous system. If I’m resting now, it just tingles, and, if I’m walking without the crutches and forget to use my heel instead of my toes, it stings, but every moment brings a little more healing; a bit more distance between the now and the split second of injury on the dirt track.

They say it’ll take a few weeks to get me back to normal. I guess these things happen; I guess lots of things happen - moments when the world flips upside down, confusion switches sky for ground and trees for earth, and everything hurts. The trick is to do the next bit well. That’ll be good learning for me.

PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS ON THE OXFORD CANAL TOWPATH

Right. I am like 98% certain I just passed Richard Dawkins on the Oxford Canal towpath. It was him!

Now I know what you’re going to say, and yes, I did see ‘Gary Barlow in a Smart Car’ once. And yes, the Tom Cruise smiling at me that time over the top of the shelves in HMV was admittedly, a cardboard cutout, even though I was adamant about it at the time… but honestly, Professor Richard Dawkins was just shuffling up the canal path as I was striding back to the station for my train home.

He looked older than I’d have predicted. But that makes sense - he probably is. Also, I wasn’t expecting the Hawaiian shirt and the Tesco bag, but I suppose even Santa has a swimsuit and a comfy pair of slippers. But! Unlike Tom and Gary, Professor Richard Dawkins really does live in Oxford, so it’s not inconceivable that the emeritus professor of evolutionary biology at New College, Oxford, should be heading home up the Oxford canal on a sunny afternoon. And it’s not inconceivable that I should pass him while he does.

I should point out here that Tom Cruise does not live in an HMV store. I’d be surprised if he knew what that was, let alone beaming over the top of the half price CDs. I mean, it was big news when he ordered two curries that one time - you’d definitely remember the headline “Tom Cruise now living in HMV; nobody knows why.” Mission improbable indeed.

Neither does Gary Barlow live in a Smart Car. That would be tragic. And yes, you can make up your own fictional headline for that one.

Anyway. Before I’d had the chance to process that Professor Richard Dawkins was in front of me, he was beside me, and I was doing a double-take. Before I’d had the chance to say, “Oh! You’re Richard Dawkins!” he was behind me, and the distance was quickly doubling. I bet he knew who he was as well. Hard to know whether he would have celebrated my two second science experiment and my immediate conclusion of a proven, evidence-based hypothesis. He might have been sarcastic. As it was, he was behind me, heading to the Aristotle Bridge while I was barrelling on down the leafy towpath.

I always thought I’d have a torrid time in a debate with Dawkins. Like a goldfish trying to prove to an elephant that you can’t live without water. I’m glad there was no time for that kind of chat. I spent the rest of my walk trying to work out how I could prove it was really him, and I hadn’t just done a gawpy double-take at a random 82-year-old member of the public, who’d just bought himself a lovely fish supper at his local Tesco’s.

And you? How are you to believe it was really him? I have presented no real evidence. Oh well. I guess you’ll just have to take it on faith.

NOT NECESSARILY EASY LISTENING

Now that I’ve got Apple Music (other music streaming services are of course available) I’ve been listening back to some of the albums I had on repeat when I was younger.

I got grief back then, for liking ‘easy listening’ but I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. You like what you like and the music snobs (in fact all the snobs) can just get over themselves. That’s all I have to say about that.

Anyway, it’s given me an opportunity to listen to some old faves, such as The Beautiful South, George Michael, Bon Jovi, The Lighthouse Family, The Bluetones, and a few other smooth listens from the 90s. I’ve been asking Siri to play them all.

Man alive. I’ve discovered something amazing - amazing about the way we listen to music, that I wasn’t expecting. In fact, I’ve started to wonder if everyone goes through this, or whether it’s just me, experiencing the passage of time. Here’s what I’ve realised…

Back then, I wasn’t really listening to the lyrics.

I mean I was - after all, I used to sing along to most of them, and the words have been imprinted on a dusty part of my memory that didn’t let me down, even twenty five years later. What I’m saying is that for some reason, I just wasn’t really listening. Sure, I’d have had a vague idea what George Michael’s Star People was all about, but some of the subtleties in the lyrics, I would not have had a clue about - the satirical punch to celebrity status, the twisting agony of surviving among them, the irony, the bravery of one of the most famous singers in the world singing that! No idea.

Then there’s I Need a Little Time by the Beautiful South: I liked that song a lot, but I don’t think I would have been able to pick out that the two voices were telling the story of a marriage breaking up. I probably never even thought it. Imagine that! It's right there.

Here I am with a lot more years between the ears then, listening to things that sailed over my head as a young man. How can that happen? Does it happen to everybody? How is it that songs can be so layered that they carry meanings that only make sense when you’ve lived a little? Or was I just very dense about all that when I was slotting CDs into my portable stereo? Or was I totally focused on the way the music was making me feel?

Also, if this can happen with such easy listening tracks, I feel a bit sorry for all my contemporaries who stuck to screaming metal or anodyne pop. Some of those themes would have been both dreadful and invisible to them as they surfed through the sugary beats of Steps or the crunching guitars of Metallica. Listening back now and asking what it was all about and what possessed them to belt that out at the bedroom wall… could be cringeworthy.

Or, has the way we listen to music as society changed? In this age of searching for meaning and purpose, of identity through social media and existential anxiety, is it possible that we’ve wired our digital brains to search for meaning in a way that just wasn’t there back then?

It’s possible I suppose. But then, it’s also possible that I’ve floated that idea as a diversion tactic from the rather more obvious truth that I’m just older and more grown-up, and the human-themes that were always there in the music of my youth have been unlocked to me by my experience - and now actually mean something I had entirely no way of understanding then. Passage of time eh.  It would be alright if you could move down it at your own pace.

Sigh.

TEA-ELGAR-RAIN-TWILIGHT

Me? Oh just sitting in the kitchen watching the rain fall in the garden. Cup of tea. Warm feeling, twinkly lights, twilight’s falling. Listening to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance Op 39.

Pardon? Oh yes. Yes, very much thank you. I am British. Yes indeed.

Earlier today, I changed from shorts into trousers. I don’t know why, but it felt wonderful - as though I was being comforted, and my legs, which had admittedly grown cold, were ensconced in lovely clean and warm material. What a brilliant feeling. To follow it up with Tea-Elgar-Rain-Twilight was brilliant, almost indulgent. I am having a great summer.

Land of Hope and Glory is a good tune isn’t it. How has Elgar managed to capture Victorian optimism and patriotic bluster in that soaring march and melody? The contrast of fanfare that swoops up the scale like a spitfire, or perhaps a Union Flag on the quarterdeck, and then dips over the clouds into the rolling land of hills and sturdy English waves! I mean, I’m not a fool - I know that isn’t exactly today’s Britain, and I am certain you can take jingoism too far of course, but it does carry a sense of national pride in a way that very few tunes seem to.

I sometimes wonder what I would have been like had I moved to another country. Would I have become even more British, would I have pushed the accent towards Jacob Rees Mogg, or would I have done my best to fit in with the locals and slanted my vowels and dropped my consonants? I guess I won’t get to find that out, but it does make me wonder.

I’d have missed this though - these Tea-Elgar-Rain-Twilight nights. And I’m not even sure there would have been moments to change from shorts to trousers on a summer’s day turned chilly.

TIME AND SPACE

We’ve just got back from holiday. It’s funny how life changes: I used to write a lot about holidays; these days, there just doesn’t seem to be time.

Well that’s not exactly true. It’s more about a combination of time and space, and somehow, on our vacations, Sammy and I run out of space, and therefore time, to do anything quite like that. Perhaps I’ll try in October when we next go away by ourselves, but for now, it’s good to know that I was able to use that time and that space to breathe, to relax and just be somewhere different for a few days - rather than thinking about how to write about it.

We were on Jersey, staying with family. That in itself might make writing about it difficult; oh, not because there was any drama (there really wasn’t) but more that space (we’re back to space again) was occupied with other pursuits.

Pursuits like: driving around country lanes! Jersey is pretty much all fields and lanes. It’s an island of countryside, of low walls and leafy trees. Stone barns and corners of houses leap around corners and the sea seems just a couple of hairpin bends away, wherever you are. Like a grey flat cloud, it appears, then it’s blue with white waves, or deep green around Cornish-looking rocks, or crashing wildly over the concrete sea walls. I loved that.

We saw lighthouses and castles, villages and cliffs, clouds and sunsets, churches, flowers, and museums.

Of course, in wartime, Jersey was occupied. In 1940, the British government took the strategic decision to leave the Channel Islands undefended, and sure enough, the Germans came. It seemed strange to think of Nazis in kübelwagons speeding around those same country roads, or perhaps just on bicycles as the sun blinked happily through the September trees. The island just seemed too peaceful to have been involved at all.

I visited the Jersey War Tunnels - a museum that told that story in the underground network of tunnels the Germans built as a hospital. It was cold, dark, damp; the very last place Sammy wanted to go, and (I reflected) a peculiar choice for the wounded. Anyway, it was really interesting.

Being an island of about 9 miles long and 5 miles wide, there was plenty of ocean to view. In the west, we went to St Ouen’s with its dramatic Atlantic waves. The North (we went to Bonne Nuit) was more like Cornwall than Cornwall, and even in the East on a greyish day, the water chopped its way to Normandy. The South was windiest of all, and on the wettest of our days we struggled against the ferocious rain. I made a comment about how those days reminded me most of family holidays.

We had a good time. We had good space. The big skies and the slower world did me a great deal of good, and I think the Lady too - though both of us had anxieties to work through. Anxieties not lessened by one of us beating the other at card games, or floundering at Articulate!

And now, in the blinking of an eye, we’re back. And suddenly, so is good old work and that mode I have to switch in to. It’s hard not to feel constrained, not to feel hurried or pushed along by it. In me there is a push outwards for more hours, bigger sky, better breathing. Out there, the world reacts and pushes back, but that’s okay. Holidays remind us what matters, what’s possible, what’s deep and wide and slow and wonderful.

And that’s pretty good to hold on to.