POLLEN DIARIES: PART 28

Oh here we go. The Met Office says ‘Some grass pollen from early season species’. That explains why I woke up with a blocked nose and watery eyes.

It really is early season. For the last few years, April (okay I know it’s the last day of the month) has been okay, and May, pleasant enough. It’s June that gets me, with ticking regularity. Grass seed.

For some meteorological reason then, the grass is kicking off early, and the hay fever season’s begun.

I’m not too bad now that I’m up and about. It feels like the first day of summer out there - bright, hopeful skies and warm sun through the windows.

I’m thankful I’m not coughing up through a scratchy throat, or sneezing my head off. I can still see, and the whites of my eyes aren’t bloodshot. I’ll be okay today.

Perhaps it’s time to start with the dreaded Allevia.

Urgh. It’s too early though, isn’t it? 

A BALANCE OF WEIGHT AND DUST

It’s really difficult when you have a poorly relative everyone seems to know. You get asked about them a lot.

“How’s your Dad?” (Always the same three words)

“He’s doing okay,” I say, “Struggling with the routine, but stronger and brighter all the time…”

“And your Mum?”

I tell them. Sometimes it’s edited: I don’t want specific details of my parents’ health ricocheting around the town bubble of churches, friends and well-wishers, though, don’t get me wrong: I am a fan of wishing well. Nevertheless, I edit.

“Well, give them my love,” they say, following the script. I do it too, by the way. It’s as automatic as saying ‘cheers mate’ to the bus driver as you hop off. I don’t mind it.

The only thing I do mind is being pulled through the wormhole by the conversation. That of course, is nobody’s fault either - it’s a quirk of life. I could have just had a lovely time of worship, been daydreaming about the great European capitals, or even wondering whether Sammy will be okay with me wiping the cheese knife with a bit of kitchen roll and sliding it surreptitiously back into the drawer. Boom. How’s your Dad? Oh yes. He had a stroke two months ago, and you ve just reminded me that that’s both awful, and, yes, something I had forgotten… until just now. Guilt and sadness all in one. Thanks. But also. Not your fault. I’m sorry.

The thing is, we all of us need to get on with our own lives. I’m not saying we should ignore it; just not let it control every waking moment. I am certain that that is what my parents want, even though they do need support. What’s happening is that life is shifting like a tectonic plate - a moving balance of weight and dust, and we’re still getting used to the motion.

Equilibrium will come; I know this. Balance is on the way. I just wish it was easier, quicker, simpler to find it while the world slides this way and that. It feels as though Sammy and I have had quite a long sequence of turbulence - she also now has a very poorly relative, and the dust is thrown into the air on her side of the family too.

I hope you won’t blame us for shutting the world out every now and then and dancing in the living room.

It might be all we’ve got to stay normal this side of the wormhole.

THE WRONG WEATHER

Do you remember those old-fashioned barometer clocks where the little carved man and woman popped out depending on the weather?

Here’s the gloomy man (and it’s always this way round) with his grey face and his wooden umbrella. There’s the sunny woman, waving to tell you there’s blue sky and warm weather ahead.

I like that kind of thing. But these two bellwethers of local air pressure are on a track aren’t they? Some mechanism pushes them round so one moves forwards and the other back. One’s indoors, one’s out. One’s on duty, one’s inside putting their feet up.

It’s just occurred to me that they never see each other. They pass in the night. They might not even know the other exists, in fact they might not even know there’s a world out there that’s not gloomy, or sunny. They only see what they see.

Don’t know what made me think of that. Could be that I’ve been feeling out-of-phase in lots of areas of my life. Not with Sammy - don’t worry, this whole thing is not a metaphor for us. I think it‘s more to do with the way I think. Sometimes I’d quite like to hop off the wooden track, and poke my head out to see the wrong weather.

I’m not sure the universe works that way.

THE PLACE BETWEEN PLACES

I’ll tell you what I didn’t expect to be doing today: sipping a tea in Paddington Station, with pigeons picking at my feet.

There is a reason. Sammy’s meeting an old friend and she didn’t want to travel on her own. I figured the plus from her spending time with a friend was greater than the minus of me spending two hours kicking around a London terminal.

Like motorway services, or even airports, these old railway stations are places between places. Everyone’s on the move, from somewhere, to somewhere else, wheelie case and rucksack in tow. Let’s have a look around…

Chinese guy in baseball cap. He sips a coffee, rests his light coloured jeans on the bench and pulls his black case slightly tighter towards him. He’s with a lady, standing, checking her phone. They aren’t talking to each other.

Next, an older guy in his fifties stands up. He’s wearing a cool blue jacket and bright white trainers. He doesn’t look happy. I start inventing stories for him in my head.

I’m next to a shop called Cards Galore. They’re not getting a lot of trade - just one girl, black shiny coat, peering intently at the rows of coloured cards. They seem to sell tourist trinkets too - now she’s scrolling through a tower of personalised Toblerones  - Becky, Charlotte, Evie, Emily, Daisy, Phoebe, Freya. I wonder what calculation goes into those names.

I can see people move in and out of the Paddington Shop too - that’s for all things Paddington Bear of course. A young couple who are more rucksack than anything else just nipped in. A woman in dungarees just nipped out.

The Chinese couple are smiling now. He’s chatting to her and she’s listening intently, purple phone in hand. A pigeon swoops overhead. The automated lady bursts into an announcement, loud above the low-level hubbub. A beeping, probably from a rubbish cart, starts.

There are lots of shops in this bit of the station. I notice from the letters on the glass entrance that it’s technically called ‘The Lawn’ - but there is no grass in sight. A Ritazza stand in the middle takes up the real estate where a square of grass would go. It’s surrounded with people contemplating croissants, muffins, smoothies, and posh coffee on the go. Grass is not lucrative.

On the go. We’re all on the go, aren’t we? Some tug cases up the stairs toward Leon and Bar Burrito; others move gracefully in queues down the escalators. Headphones in, sunglasses on head, small child in arms, umbrella clutched like a wand, tying hair, playing with earring. Unique lives, passing through. Going somewhere. Not stopping.

I wonder if there’s something in this moment. Observing humans, watching the movement of life from a position of stop, of focus. Perhaps I’m so busy thinking about my own journey that I rarely stop to think about the moment, the people around, the lives lived, and the people God loves. I’ve been to Paddington a thousand times. I’ve been laser-focused on the next thing - the tube, the train home, the departure boards, the reason for being in this here London.

But life itself is a place between places, isn’t it? And there’s so much to see if you just stop and look around once in a while.

BRAINS PART 4: THE DEFERRAL

It took me a while to figure out the email. Mixed news, it said. It said that last year. But also, underlined, the words ‘your audition was successful’.

It turns out that they don’t have enough space for me this year, but they have given me an automatic place for next! So I’m in! I’m going to be on Brain of Britain! Just in 2025 rather than 2024.

What’s brilliant about that is that I know have more than a year to prepare. I’m no Kevin Ashman, but I’ll do my best to bring my quiz A-game next summer.

They attached the audition questions and answers and I scrolled through. 29/30 this time, which is a great result! Last year I got 27. My guesswork had really paid off. 97% seems a bit of alright to me, and I am rightly proud of myself.

It is okay to be proud of yourself, isn’t it? I mean, I’m never exactly sure. The last thing I’d want to be is pompous or arrogant about an achievement, but it would seem equally as wrong not to say anything at all. Somewhere in the middle are our shareable moments of success.

What did I get wrong? Well. Turns out I didn’t know the ingredients in a Tom Collins. I had a vague idea it was served in a tumbler, but I picked vodka instead of gin, because hey, I don’t know cocktails… yet.

By next summer I will. I’ll find a way. I’ll find a way to learn lots of things.

I emailed back and said thank you. Then I sketched out a rough idea of where to start with revising subjects. It’s strange I suppose, but the learning seems to be the most enjoyable part!

LIKE A COSTA IN MIDDLE EARTH

Nothing quite prepares you for that feeling when you arrive at work to see your former colleague on the telly.

Reception have a big screen that (for some reason) plays ITV all day. As I disconnected my headphones and strode in through the doors, I saw Lee’s massive head talking animatedly on Good Morning Britain. The words “Is St George’s Day Toxic?” flicked across the chyron at the bottom of the screen. Lee is normally a presenter on an afternoon travel show. He was clearly drafted in to discuss.

There would have been a time when I came into work to see his massive head nattering about less divisive matters - traffic, for example, or how unfair council tax is. I had sympathy for him, and he also used to make me laugh. He had perfected the comedy rant.

That being said, he looked pretty angry on the big TV today. I still don’t know which side of the debate he was on - that telly’s on silent.

“Quite a tale of how our paths diverged,” I whispered to myself; me still arriving at an office, him on ITV. There’s no way I’d switch though - that studio’s a bear pit and I’d rather sit down to a quiet computer, if I’m honest.

There must be thousands of people out there who vaguely know a celebrity. There must be millions more who are fed up with them going on about it, or who can’t quite comprehend the weirdness of seeing someone you know get famous. It is weird though - like overlapping a distant fantasy world that doesn’t seem real, with the world you live in, or seeing something very familiar suddenly in a place it doesn’t belong - like a Costa in Middle Earth.

But there it is, anyway - belonging, holding its own, arguing about St George’s Day on a loud Wednesday morning in front of millions of people.

I sat down at my desk and switched on my computer. I was the first one in. Emails and slack messages awaited me. I smiled and listened to the hum of the plasma lights and the gentle whirring of the distant coffee machine. Perfect.

IN WHICH I REALISE I COULD DO WITH A CHAUFFEUR

I got beeped on a roundabout yesterday. My own fault - not really sure where I was going so I was sliding between lanes. You’d be surprised at how angry people get at that kind of thing.

Well. Perhaps you wouldn’t. Perhaps you too would have sounded a long raspy note on the klaxon as the car in front (me) drifted dangerously towards you. I don’t blame you.

There was a time when I’d have been cut up about that kind of thing. I’d have been mortified at making somebody cross. I wasn’t the kind of boy who could push the pedestrian-crossing button and then run off as the lights went red. Anyone slowing to a stop could have wound down a window and hurled abuse at me - and that would not have been as funny as other kids found it. I took that stuff personally.

I’m not so bashful these days. I realised I was in the wrong on the roundabout and raised a hand (the universal gesture of apology acknowledgement) as I peeled off onto the exit. Then I just drove to where I was going and thought no more of it.

Maybe I’m just used to road-rage these days. I do sometimes drive too slowly because I’m thinking about something deep, and, yes, plenty of fingers have passed me on the driver’s side, I can tell you. Big old world in a big old hurry. Why can’t you see that thinking is more important than driving?

That’s why driverless cars seem like a great idea for people like me - I’d have time to think. I know there’ are safety concerns, not to mention the complex legal picture, but nevertheless, I like the idea of someone else (yes, even a robot) driving me around and taking all that stress out of the equation.

Well anyway. Beepity beep beep beep. I don’t really mind if you think any the less of me by the way, for being one of those annoying drivers who gets in the way. I genuinely don’t mind. You do you. I’m safe enough, and I doubt I can stop thinking deeply, though to be fair, I ought to try. And it’s not all the time! It’s only every now and again it happens!

It occurs to me that what I really need, at least until they’ve figured out auto-car-pods, is a chauffeur who doesn’t mind me philosophising or daydreaming from the back seat. Drive on, Errol! For I am composing an essay on wheelie bin etiquette followed by theological reasons not to eat black pudding.

Very good, sir.

ANOTHER FALLEN TREE

Well big drama round here then. Without warning, the neighbours chopped back the tree in their front garden. And by ‘chopped back’, I mean they reduced it to a trunk with a few ugly stubs for branches.

They’re entitled to do it - of course they are. It’s just tough to see when something beautiful and natural is destroyed forever… right outside your house.

We were discussing it. It’s a bit like a work of fine art. If a Raphael or a Canaletto got shredded in the national gallery, there would be indignation. In some ways, nature is even more beautiful, I think. It was a healthy tree; it even had birds nesting in it. Now (and as Sammy was quick and poetic to point out) there is no birdsong outside our window.

She says she’s going to compose a lament. I wonder whether we shouldn’t plant a tree of our own out there.

BRAINS PART 3: THE RETURN

The people at Brain of Britain have messaged me again. It’s audition time.

For context, last year I made it to the zoom audition, scored 93% but didn’t get through to the show on Radio 4. They automatically entered me into this year’s process.

I’m less prepared this time. I’ve still got my lists, and the things I’ve drilled into my head do cover a wide range of facts, but it still feels almost impossible to be ready. I was fortunate last year, but I’m well aware that quizzing is essentially a game of luck, in which you can work very hard to improve your odds by probably only the smallest of margins. What comes up, comes up. Plus, there’s not much time to revise - auditions are next week.

It takes the form of a multiple choice quiz over zoom. Thirty questions - I guess four options for each one. My guess is that they’ll throw in everything from recent music to ancient history, some sport, some geography, some obscure foody question (my absolute least favourite topic) and a few oddballs to make people chuckle.

That’s what I would do anyway. That, and brush up on everything there is to know about Dua Lipa.

TOAST AND YOGHURT

I work from home. Well, in between eating bits of toast, anyway. After the long Easter hols, today is Sammy’s first day back, and so my normal, quiet, toast-eating routine has returned.

I think she knows. Just before she left this morning, she told me to make sure I use a plate, hinting again that my notion of creating-less-washing-up-by-eating-toast-from-a-bit-of-kitchen-roll actually causes more mess in the kitchen and not less. I nodded.

Anyway, she went to work. Later, I found myself slicing a piece of sourdough and popping it into the toaster. That gives me enough time to boil the kettle, make the tea, open the fridge for the butter and the marmalade, and generally hum to myself in a happy sort of way - as you do.

I opened the fridge and reached in for the marmalade, hiding behind the cheese and the left over salsa from fajita night. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened, and there is no reason from a physics perspective as to why it did, but a pot of yoghurt jumped off the shelf and upended itself over the kitchen floor.

I don’t like it when things like this happen. My brain cycles through the stages of grief like Superman skim-reading. Within a moment I’d reached ‘acceptance’, and went to find kitchen roll and a damp cloth. The yoghurt had splashed on the tiles and had dolloped mostly onto a kitchen mat, which I scrubbed and then threw into the washing machine.

It should be dry before she gets home. I’ve cleaned everything else. I had to re-toast the toast though. It popped midway through the drama. By the way, if you cook it twice, is it still toast? I guess it is. There’s an invisible line between warm, crispy bread and actual toast, but I suppose once you get beyond it, there’s no way back, there’s only toastier toast. Toast is toast; it’s a second-law-of-thermodynamics thing.

Like much of life, unfortunately.

I put the empty yoghurt pot in the bin.

ANGULAR MOMENTUM

We took a young family to the park yesterday. I went on a swing, and suddenly realised that my body is not comfortable with being quickly accelerated or subject to rapid changes in angular momentum.

How did that happen? I mean it wasn’t an age ago that I went on a rollercoaster. And not long before that I could fling myself over a wall, or scale a climbing rope, or hang gymnastically from the training bars of an adventure playground. Now I can’t swing… on a child’s swing… without feeling woozy!

I stood on a mini roundabout as well. No, not one of the ones in the middle of the road; I mean the children’s thing that slowly spins about 30cm from the ground. It is ever so gentle - even the wind could push me slowly round at about half a mile an hour.

It made me dizzy and I had trouble getting off it. That didn’t feel great. 30cm and I’m stumbling off it like a man indulging in Caribbean rum on a cruise. Only there was no blaming the sea for me.

Sigh. Life comes at you fast. The morning sun cast long shadows over the spring grass and the wood mulch. The kids we were with happily raced between the exciting bits of apparatus, and we, I, were (was) eventually resigned to pushing swings and watching happy little faces.

Who’s going to tell them? Who’s going to tell them that one day the hilarity of slides and ropes and swings will be replaced with spreadsheets? Who’s going to tell them that even the thought of it will make them feel a bit sick? Not me. Not anyone. So the circle of life continues.

I suppose it doesn’t have to - plenty of people do CrossFit or extreme sports. I know it’s not quite the same thing when you grow up, but there are ways to get used to angular momentum, and find the fun in it. Truth is though, it seems harder, it seems to come with much more of a cost - a price you just can’t understand when you’re little.

We had a great time at the park, regardless of me overthinking all of that. The kids were beaming, and happy, and (as was the objective I think) tired out. It had been a long long time since I’d been in a play park, but even though it had all changed, I guess I still recognised that feeling.