THE PUBLIC PIANO

They’ve put a piano at Oxford railway station. I think it’s an edict passed down from Claudia Winkleman. Anyway, there it is, a chestnut brown upright in the middle of the station concourse.

It’s more complicated than Claudia realises. In fact, the Dalek-like appearance of these pianos in train stations presents a much more complex challenge for the British than first meets the eye, and it was that social complexity, the ballet of embarrassment that hit me today as I supped my Costa cup, eyeing up the musical instrument.

I could play it. I’d play it very well. Maybe a little boogie-woogie: that would be fun. Or perhaps some good old Elton John? I mulled it over. Elton did play one of these once; King’s Cross, I believe. I think they roped it off for him and set up cameras - in fact, were there placards with his name on? I might be imagining that. Certainly a crowd formed, or perhaps a crowd was formed around the ropes. Either way, they were gathered round as he started.

I instinctively knew today that nobody would be in the least bit bothered. Commuters would bustle by to the taxi rank, to Oxford, to the platform. They’d stand and scrutinise the boards, they’d queue up at Greggs and they’d scroll through instagram and flimsybook, all to the slightly irritating/amusing/contemptible/joyful soundtrack of jazz piano, played by me.

You see the problem. I don’t live in one of those trending videos where the guy plays the piano and people gather round like it’s an Edwardian sing-song. There’s no girl waiting in the wings to belt out an Adele number and wow the passing commuters. And I am not Elton, or Mozart, or even Bill Bailey. I was confident that my playing would annoy more people than entertain them.

However, I was also sure that I was good enough to make it sound like I was literally showing off - like a kid in the piano shop who can play the first two bars of Fur Elise on repeat. Trust me, the people who work in music shops have heard it all before, from Stairway to Heaven to Flowers in the Attic to Sweet Child of Mine and good old Fur Elise.

It’s a bit like someone getting the guitar out at a party. There’s always an awkward shuffling no matter how accomplished the guitarist. I don’t want to make anyone feel quite like that, and I have a strange feeling that tinkling the ivories in Oxford Station would do exactly that.

But there‘s another layer to the ballet going on. Why would I be doing it anyway? It sounds like I’d be doing it for a response, for glory, for recognition, and then I’m not doing it because I already worked out that unless you’re Elton John (or maybe a child prodigy) no-one would be even slightly impressed. So that matters does it?

Well I don’t want it to. And that left me with two options: play the piano and simply not care about what happens to the atmosphere in the station, or don’t play it all and sit anonymously outside Mark’s & Spencer in glorious anonymity. Either way, I realised, I don’t know what that piano’s doing there.

Moments later, a trio of builders came by and flipped open the lid. One of them, high-vis jacket and surly look, laughed - and then played a one-fingered Jingle Bells to the amusement of everyone around him.

I guess that answered my question.

A DAY AT THE SPA

We went to the spa yesterday. I’d never been to a spa before, mostly for reasons of discomfort, which seems ironic given that the purpose of the spa is exactly the opposite. Nevertheless, I was always uncomfortable about (1) things that are seemingly posh, (2) being in water, (3) being bored, (4) being massaged or touched in any way, and (5) wearing nowt but swimming shorts in front of strangers.

I could take you through those five things and explain how none of them really matter of course, but honestly, I’m not sure I need to. We had a great day, and I had a wonderfully relaxing time, slowly undoing each of those objections. I got in the pool. I got in the colder pool. I got in the jacuzzi pool. Loved it. Weirdly loved it. I read books on a lounger. I listened to Audible on the hot beds. I watched the ceiling of artificial stars through the palm leaves. Loved it. We chatted, we snoozed, we ate, we bobbed about in the water. Loved it. No-one touched me. No-one stared at me. Nobody was extra snotty or extra snobby, and we were nicely looked after the whole time. Loved it. Best of all, I woke up this morning feeling amazing - perhaps for the first time in a long, long time. Love it.

I couldn’t help thinking about the Romans. It’s odd when you walk around the baths at Bath for example. There, the water’s green and uninviting. The stones are dark and cold. and everything seems so ancient. But even though the roof has long gone, and even though you’re shuffling round with a backpack and sensible shoes, surrounded by primary schoolchildren with sketch pads, you do still get a wisp of the idea. And yesterday, with the artificial columns and the luxuriant bubbling pools, and the hubbub of people in robes and swimming costumes and flip flops, you can see that it’s exactly the same idea, two thousand years on.

One thing I’m sure the Romans had, that was there in abundance, was the gossip. You could hear it resonating - an echoing cackle of ladies, shoulders-deep in a circle in the pool, the shock face of someone with their hand over their mouth and eyes-wide, the close whispers and the corridor chats. At one point, in a queue for ordering tea, I overheard two very frank chats about periods - talk clearly loosened by the oxygenated water and Prosecco, plus other medical things I don’t think should be repeated. I wasn’t expecting that. There is something very fierce and impolite about people who’ve paid for luxury and have allowed themselves to relax fully into it. It’s another reason why I don’t think I could go on a cruise.

That aside then, we had a brilliant time, and as ever the question of whether I’d go again (Sammy’s been many times before) came up. Yes. I think at the end of a long term, or as a respite from a difficult season, even after a particularly intense event like a conference or a camp, then yes. I really do see the benefit, and not just for us: I was already thinking of people to gift with spa days as a treat. Too often and I reckon it loses its power, but as a special thing to look forward to, enjoy, and feel the benefit of, I think it’s just about ideal.

The Romans were on to something.

I AM LEGEND

Hey tall people I know. You know that thing you always used to laugh at when I couldn’t reach the top shelf, or when you patted my head for a joke? Well the other day, in Sainsbury’s, a lady looked at me nervously, said the words “Excuse me” and then asked me to get a duck and hoisin sandwich off the topmost food shelf.

“That’s a first,” I beamed.

“It’s just that you are slightly taller than me,” said she.

So there. It happened. It actually happened that I was called upon in an hour of need, to use my incredible height for the world, and to help a damsel in distress, or, at least, in need of some tasty lunch.

Admittedly, the sandwich was right at the back and I almost had to clamber up to reach it. And yes, it meant sort of flipping it with my finger tips, but also yes - I did it.

“Thank you,” she said, “You’re a legend.”

See? Legend. See, tall people? That means tales will be told about me; passed down the generations, turned into songs and epic poetry. The lunch retriever, the giant of sainsbury’s, the reacher of sandwiches. To be honest I was only disappointed she didn’t take my name and call the papers.

Anyway, that rarity was a wonder. I felt ten feet tall.

RECYCLING AND SKI SLOPES

Wednesday night. Sorting through the recycling. Bin day tomorrow. I couldn’t help think about Dubai, where stadia are air conditioned and they manufacture snow for an all-year-round ski slope. What, I wondered, am I doing this for? Is it really going to save the planet if my baked bean can gets into the green bag and the cardboard packaging it came in goes in the ‘paper and card’ box?

There were slugs too, today. They were sort of curling around each other at the bottom of the glass box, where two empty ginger beer bottles rolled around. I just carried the whole thing to the front of the garden and dumped it by the pavement.

It’s always such a sticky, icky job. You have to rummage in bags of old packaging and tins, plastic bottles and ring pulls - just to separate them. Everything’s cold and congealing, and it smells horrible - like all of last week’s dinners suddenly swilling in your face. Urgh. Dubai. I looked up at the clouds. Sunlight was pooling through them, just gilding the soft edges and falling in gentle beams.

“Whatever you do,” said a voice, deep within, sweet and strong as the Spring, “Do it with all your heart. Do it for me.”

I had a little smile to myself. I can’t change Dubai. I don’t live in a world where I can pay someone else to do all our icky stuff, like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé do. I don’t even know if the recycling makes it to the recycling centre without it being needlessly jumbled and sorted at the depot, or whether it’s really worth sticking my hand in a grotty bag and pulling out dripping bits of stinky cardboard plastered with raspberry and nine-day yoghurt. I don’t know. I guess I know what’s in my heart though, and whether it’s effective or not, I do want to make a difference.

Perhaps I’m making a difference to me. Golly, that’s pretentious. Moments ago I was grumbling, now I’m treating the recycling like some sort of holy sacrament? Well, anyway, that’s that job done for another two weeks. Plus I saw the sunset! They have that in Dubai?

Yeah I know. Of course they do. Well, good for them.

DON’T BLAME THE CAMEL

I had a panic attack today. It’s been a while since I had one of those. Unmistakable though: that sense of falling uncontrollably, as though the world of high walls is toppling over you and you can’t breathe. It has a dizzying momentum, a swirling that’s like fainting - actually, it’s most like that thing that you get when you’re really tired and you collapse onto the bed and close your eyes and feel the room spinning around you.

Only, your eyes are open and you can’t stop it. You can’t stop the spinning. Your heart feels like it might break free from your throat and there isn’t enough air in your lungs to even breathe, and all the world is a kaleidoscope of worry and trouble that’s melting and merging into colours like a wet painting.

Worst of all, it feels like it’s your fault somehow. Or as though people will judge you for letting it happen. Wait, would I judge someone else the same way? Would I assume they were weak? No. At least I hope not. Logic doesn’t seem to work any more though, on the emotional merry-go-round. 

Sammy was great. She got me breathing, and refocused me on my surroundings. It took a while but sitting at the kitchen table, tracing the seagulls on the tablecloth and listening to the quiet hum of the fridge, really helped.

I think I’m living too close to capacity. What I mean is, one small extra worry - nothing in itself - is somehow able to crash the system. I don’t want to call myself a camel, and these are not as light as straw, but you get the picture. Somehow I need to unload a few worries from the saddle, build a little… margin… in.

And it’s okay, I mean quite a normal and understandable thing to have a panic attack. That’s a note to self by the way - from a man who has faith and worry operating his machinery, quite often. After all, I don’t think anyone would ever blame the camel.

ISLANDER

I’ve been dreaming about an island. It’s one of those ones with crescents of white sand that fall away into a turquoise sea. There are palm trees casting shadows, and cool groves of wildflowers that blow happily in the breeze.

Above, the sky is clear and blue, laced with the finest of white clouds, horse’s tails racing above the sparkling ocean, trailing and interweaving their way to the sun, and to the inland mountains.

I’m sitting with my feet angled into the hot white sand; heels in the groove, toes free in the warm air. I’m looking out over the sea, scanning for the white triangular sails of a boat, or perhaps the thin mast of a fancy yacht. The horizon is clear and flat. The sea is still.

I can’t explain why this is my dream at the moment I know this kind of thing would be plenty of people’s wish, but it feels so much deeper than the usual lottery winners’ wishful thinking. For one thing, I can’t work out whether (in the dream) I’m actually happy to be there. I think I am. It’s not ecstasy though - more just a sort of quiet understanding, a silent acceptance that that’s where I am, or perhaps would like to be - on a paradise island with nothing to do but watch the ships go by.

For another, I’m there on my own. If I were organising this island exactly as I would like it, I’d have definitely put everyone I love there - maybe playing some beach volleyball, maybe a few drinks at the coconut bar, or just friends to chat to as the first evening stars pop out above the ocean, and someone suggests a fire pit. But it isn’t that - it’s just the island. And it’s just me.

The morning sky’s always grey when I wake up. I mean by comparison, even the brightest of summer days is probably not going to match the fresh blue feel of that other place, but nevertheless 5:30am is drab, as though the sun can’t quite get through the window. Bleary-eyed, I do my best to stir and be thankful.

HALF-ASLEEP OR HALF-AWAKE

I did not sleep well last night. I mean, I was in a tangle of discomfort - all sheets and sweat - from about 2:30am, and just feeling on the wrong side of half-asleep.

I think being half-asleep is probably the worst of all the states. Fully awake? That’s okay - even in the middle of the night. Fully asleep? That’s the best of all (unless you’re a bus driver or a pilot) - you get to escape into multicoloured worlds of wonder where you can be whatever you imagine, and your memories swirl like a kaleidoscope. But between the two? Yuk.

Eyes closed, sticky eyelids. Brain purring like a burglar going through the filing cabinet of things you don’t want to think about. Uncomfortable on the side, aching on the back, considering lying face down on the pillow and then remembering that you’re not a weirdo. And all the time you can’t help wishing you could nudge either way into sleep, or wake - but you know if you choose wakefulness, you’ll be up for hours.

In the end, I got up for the loo. The dark, mysterious toilet across the landing. I could write a whole series of blogs on it, but rest assured and thankful - I’m not going to. Before too long I was shuffling back towards a bedside gulp of cold water and I slid back into the sheets.

I blinked at the ceiling. The lampshade looked like an eye - bulb for a pupil, hanging in the centre of the shade. Funny. Never noticed that before. Like the eye of Horus, watching from above. Best not to think about that.

I wonder if half-asleep is the same thing as half-awake. I suppose it’s different when you’re drifting off and everything goes muffled. That’s a nice kind of half-asleep, and it’s followed by actual full, lovely sleep. But half-awake is the other way around. You’re drowsy and grumpy and wondering whether reality is reality. I think they are different.

I reached for my phone. Sammy stirred. I hid the bright light under the duvet. There was nothing interesting going on - just an article about England winning at the football, and an opinion piece about Joe Biden. Must be tough being so old but still being so certain you can do the thing everyone’s telling you you can’t do. It’s a bit like taking the car keys away from an ageing parent. Mind you, you wouldn’t then give the keys to your mad uncle, I suppose, and only have hopes that he won’t then go careening across town like he’s in Grand Theft Auto.

Bit of satire there. That’s not like me. I’m trying to work today but to be honest, I’m struggling to keep my eyes open.

COMMUTING’S ALRIGHT

On the train again. We’re all different I know, but this morning I’m more excited about the journey to work than actually being there.

I think you’re supposed to see the commute as a sort of necessary evil, but how could it be that? Beautiful countryside flashes by the window, podcasts ring in your ears, and there’s nobody within ten miles who knows who you are, let alone wants you to do anything. It feels like thinking time, praying space, creativity fuel for the soul. Coming home is even better.

Now, it’s not London. I’m thankful for that. On those trains you have to squeeze into the city, and the countryside is not nearly so green. It’s smelly and hot and everyone is grumpy about the fact that they have to get off in the grimness of actual London. I understand that that commute, and especially if it were every day, is a bit less enjoyable. I wouldn’t much like it. But the Oxford trip is more spacious, and today it’s my lot.

I think I like the distance it creates between home and work too. Usually that difference is the opening of a laptop without leaving the house, a few padded steps from one room to another. On these travelling days though it’s a track, pylons, fields, hedgerows, Appleford, Culham, Radley, and the S3 bus past the Randolph, the Radcliffe Camera and the long leafy roads that traverse the city of dreaming spires. I’m almost a different me by the time I get there. And I’m okay with that. It feels old-fashioned, sort of right.

What awaits me at the office, I don’t want to think about. I have an odd feeling about today, as though it might be uniquely difficult.

The train’s pulling into Oxford now, where I usually find a nice bacon roll and a cup of tea before catching the bus. 

Time to go. 

VOTING AND CHANGE

You have to have photo ID to vote these days. I’m not sure why - probably something to do with fraudulent voting but you’re welcome to speculate about more sinister things, like suppression of turnout or something. Either way, I pulled my driving licence out of my wallet and told the clerk my address and my name. Sammy was already on her way to the voting booth.

“Really?” said the old man at the table, peering over his spectacles at my photo. My heart sped up just a little. Sure, it’s an old photo but at least the proportions of my face must be right. I mean it really is me. It’s my face! Though, I do admit, that in many ways that young man with long curly hair… is certainly gone.

“It is me,” I laughed. He chuckled too, which is a good sign. It would have been a lot of trouble for me to forge a driving licence with my name, my address, and then someone else’s photo. Kind of daft to try. The logic was sound.

“Alright,” he continued, smiling. He crossed my name off the list and the lady next to him handed me a ballot paper.

-

“Well that’s our democratic duty done,” I said as we stepped back out into the warm summer evening. I regretted saying it; it was just one of those things that people say, and I hadn’t said it with much thought at all, which always bothers me. I think people ought to vote, you see, but I also understand and respect why people don’t. It feels like a paradox in my head. To be honest, the system’s so old-fashioned - constituency majority returns an MP, even by a single vote, and then the party with the most MPs forms the government. But it’s favoured by the same two parties who always win, so it never changes. I understand why voting for anyone else can seem a little hopeless.

Ha. That man had basically implied that I got old really quickly. Really? Rude. Perhaps I did. But change comes to us all one way or the other, doesn’t it?

THINGS CAN ONLY GET (B/W)ETTER

Here we are then. Election week! Gosh, it doesn’t seem like six weeks ago the Prime Minister was getting soaked in Downing Street while someone sarcastically played ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ at the end of the road. It’s gone fast.

I suppose constitutionally they have to have six weeks of campaigning, right? It’s just that not much has happened to shift the outcome. I mean not really. By and large, the result is pretty much what everyone thinks it will be, despite the game they’re all playing in case it isn’t. With the exception of Reform splitting the Conservative vote and potentially taking 6-8 seats, the polls are static, and we’ll have a new stuffy Prime Minister by the end of the week. I reckon they could have got the polling stations and returning officers together quickly and the whole thing would have been over and done by now.

Anyway, the month and a half they have had has been fun. Sort of. We had canvassers of all colours on the door, and a small pile of coloured paper through the letterbox. There were debates to see who was best at interrupting, radio shows and TV interviews where the candidates floundered on sofas, and of course, some scandalous moments, poked and exploded by social media, by journalists, and by almost everyone else with wide eyes and quick fingers.

After all that, Sammy and I still took time to plough through the manifestos. Our reflection is that we’re told left, right and centre who not to vote for, and what terrible things await us if we do. The manifestos ought to be a single voice of why we pick whom we pick, based on the issues that really matter to us. And so we scrolled.

Because you can’t please all the people all the time, and because these political parties know it, the manifestos end up as a wishy washy collection of vague-sounding promises. All of them. I found myself once again asking ‘how’ and ‘from where?’ and ‘who pays for that?’ over and over again. Oh and let’s not forget the old ‘Why haven’t you already done that for the last 14 years then?’ question.

What’s more, as Christians (and I guess it might be similar for all people of faith) you have a very strong moral worldview. There are some inflexibles you know you can’t agree with. But you also know that that very framework of belief tells you that it’s important to vote, to be part of the democratic process, to stand up with the voice you’ve been given, even if it makes just a scintilla of difference. It’s very difficult to pick for whom, without feeling you’ve somehow compromised the gospel.

You’ve got to find the closest fit.

Also, and I do mean this - it’s hard enough without people criticising each other for their choices. I wish we could all just stop that incessant sniping. Just stop it.

‘Things can only get wetter,’ was the in-joke that day. One drenched Prime Minister symbolising a very British kind of misery, like a boy who knows he’s off on summer hols abroad soon if he can just push through this final end of term project. New head boy next year, innit.

We will go and vote. I think both of us have found the options that we believe in the most. I’m never going to publicise for whom though. And then I hope to stay up for a bit and watch the results come rolling in. At that point, this little six week melee of election fever might be finally over, and we can all breathe-a-sigh-of-relief/steel-ourselves/party/commiserate/lament/cheer/not-do-anything…on social media. Huzzah, Britain.