THIS SIDE OF THE WALLED GARDEN

We are precarious, aren’t we? I mean, teetering on the edge, living oblivious to the sheer drop beyond the fog of the mountain.

Don’t worry. I’m not having an existential crisis. And even if I were, I don’t actually think that would be worth worrying about either. I think that would be quite quite normal, and wondering who you are is probably the step to asking, which in turn, is just one step away from finding out. Worrying about that would be like worrying about climbing the stone stairs to a locked door, the other side of which is a beautiful garden.

It’s more of a poetical crisis, if anything - a sort of realisation about the fragility of life, in a rhythmic, eloquent thought that’s looking for a rhyme or a flow or an idea. Yes, says the unwritten poetry, we’re all one heartbeat away from eternity. Yes we’re poised on the narrow slopes of a high, foggy mountain, but also… how do we live while we are? What’s to be done with the confidence of a plan? Who knows how to be, what to do, how to spend our time? Isn’t it all so fragile, so delicate?

Some of us stand on stages and platforms. Most often I’m behind a piano with a microphone in my field of vision. Behind it, out of focus, is a church of people, some with hands in the air, some singing, some not. Some have arms folded, some are just listening. Sometimes I wonder what they would do if they knew how little I know about what I’m doing. I hear myself and I realise that I’m driven by hope and faith just like everyone is. It’s precarious. It’s also beautiful. I hope they don’t think I’ve got it all sorted - it would be easy for them to think that. But it wouldn’t be true, even if it sounds it.

The truth is that I’m halfway up the steps, listening to the birds singing in the evening sunlight. I’m watching the golden leaves, the beautiful trees that sway above the stone wall. I feel the warmth of the autumn air, and smell the soft, sweet fruits that surely grow in the walled garden - lemons, oranges, plums, apples, quinces - so close now. I see the door and I wonder - will light crack through its wood, seep around the edges to burst into this world? Will it open for me? Will it really be locked? Will I know what to do?

I do hope so.

SHOEHORN

Oho! It turns out, I’m of the age where I need a shoehorn! I know, what is the world coming to when you can no longer shout loud enough to round up your shoes?

Well anyway. The backs of my trainers keep getting damaged by me lazily sliding my chunky feet into them and expecting them to pop back into shape. The solution of course, is the slenderly cupped length of wood or plastic that eases the heel into the mouth of the shoe. The shoehorn.

I don’t know why I think of them as old-fashioned. Maybe it’s because I’ve never needed one before, maybe it just seems like ‘shoehorn’ is an old-fashioned word, like antimacassar or housecoat. There is something Dickensian about it, don’t you think?

It is in common use though, as a verb - mostly when something that doesn’t belong is tightly wedged between two things that do - like deliberately bringing up salaries at a dinner party, or adding a chef to a panel of pundits on a football show or something. We ‘shoehorn’ things in all the time.

Although, really, the shoehorn does belong between the flimsy heel and the foot, doesn’t it? So wedging it between them is uncomfortable (as the poor chef might be I suppose) but it could actually be the very thing that stops bruising on one side and protects the shoe from wear and tear on the other. Maybe sometimes a little apropos of nothing, a non sequitur, maybe even a straw-man in a debate could be a catalyst to getting things slipping into place and eventually doing up the laces.

Still old-fashioned a thing though, I think, the Shoehorn, the Mister Shoehorn. A bumbling shopkeeper perhaps, in a coal-blackened apron, a rotund man who bristles grey eyebrows at the tinkling of the door, and grimaces even more so at the thick London fog that rolls in from the grimy street.

CRISPY GOLD LEAF

The trees are just starting to turn. I mean they’re green still, but hidden in the thick summer foliage are tints of brown and orange.

The horse chestnuts are brimming with autumn too - green, spiky capsules hang from their distinctive leaves, each promising a shiny brown conker. It won’t be long.

“It doesn’t seem as though we’ve had much summer,” I said, eyes on the grey sky and shapely oak trees waving in the park. Sammy remarked that we sort of have - certainly we had a couple of heatwave days, but yes, she conceded, it’s also rained a lot over the last few weeks. That it has, lady, that it has.

She is a much bigger fan of autumn than she is of a hot summer. For her the natural cool-down of a bright blue sky and trees that turn themselves to paintings - it’s all art for her soul. There are cosy nights in, and warm jumpers from the drawer. There’s that fragrance of cinnamon in the air as she dreams about Christmas. Autumn is all hope and all joy.

We wandered through the park. It felt a bit like it was about to rain. You know the kind of thing: the wind picked up and there was a sort of chill in its voice. I was busy thinking about how I don’t mind the autumn either - especially the first part, the season that I call ‘Keats’s Fall’. The second half, the drizzly dark and dismal bit where soggy leaves blow into your face and there’s sleet coming sideways at you - I’m not so thrilled by that.

It’s all coming though, isn’t it? It’s all on the way, inevitable as the sunrise. Maybe I should take a crispy gold leaf out of Sammy’s book and simply make the most of it.

THE MIDDLE-AGED MAN’S HANDBOOK

I’ve never seen it myself, but it must be out there - probably bound in leather and inscribed in silver leaf like all the dusty old books were before the jolly Internet came along.

You can probably ask for it at the library. But don’t bother if you’re still in your 20s - the librarian will just laugh as though you asked for a copy of How To Write Dialogue by Dan Brown.

“Ha! No such thing!” she’ll say, “And even if there were,” she winks, “Trust me, you really don’t need it.”

Then she might check no-one’s listening, and beckon you closer across the counter.

“But come back in ten years…”

It can’t really be a myth can it, the Middle-Aged Man’s Handbook? It must be a whispered secret between blokes in their 30s and 40s; like the network that extends underground between allotment sheds and man caves. Oh yes. The Handbook’s out there, written in invisible ink and (quite sensibly) large print.

Somewhere in the chapter presumably entitled ‘Things You Absolutely Must Take Up and Then Talk About’ is advice on food. Which is good because food, as a rule, is a wonder of the world to middle-aged men.

The info’s probably sandwiched between ‘Running a 10K and Posting It on Strava’ and ‘Kitchen Cuisine - How To Let Everyone Know You’re a Chef Without Actually Saying It’ and I imagine it advises the man on all things foodie, including angles to nudge into - on the golf course, at the pub, or in WhatsApp groups. Helpfully, I imagine, it shows you how exactly to go on about your allergies and intolerances… which I (ever dutiful to my demographic of course) am absolutely about to do…

-

“I just can’t imagine a world without cheese!” I said to my colleague Andy. I’d forgotten he was a vegan. He followed the Handbook (of course he did) and told me at length about ‘vegan’ cheese: a substance I did try once and concluded smelled like schoolboy-rugby socks. He laughed and said it was alright really Matt.

Eating out’s tricky too. At lunch today (in Oxford) I had to explain why I might not be able to eat anything from the Lebanese Bakery. It’s funny how this conversation goes - before long you’re dancing politely around something you’d rather not talk about.

“How did you discover it?” asked Pedro when I told him I was probably and quite suddenly intolerant to lactose.

“Well I suppose I just had some er… stomach upsets,” I started to say. The bit of my brain responsible for euphemisms was awake, “And the doctor just told me to cut everything out, see what the um… outcome is… and then add things back in after a week or two.”

Good job Euphemism Office. You guys can take the rest of the day off.

As it turned out, I could eat the chicken shawarma from the bakery, but without the sauce. So that is what I did. Lovely. Dry, clompy, and in need of the tahini it’s usually drenched in, but quite suitable. Plus I found out how to make mayo from scratch, which seems like it ought to be more complicated than it is. But don’t let me wander into the ‘Kitchen Cuisine’ chapter…

This is it now then. Restaurant menus are a list of question marks, and ordering food is going to be more of a conversation with the waiter than it ever has been. Any allergies? Yes. Take a deep breath, laddie. Risk has entered the dining area, and I’m not sure I like it.

But risk is all part of the Middle-Aged Man’s Handbook - change and risk are intertwined, whether you’re buying a motorcycle, donning Lycra for an evening run, or making your own mayonnaise with a handblender and some background jazz. I’d better get used to it.

PRELUDE TO A PECULIAR AUTUMN

It feels like change is in the air - big, uncomfortable, stormy change, and I’m not exactly sure I like it.

The thing is, whether I like it or not, season change is sometimes inevitable, and you just have to roll with it, don’t you? It’s like an electrical storm - you can’t stop the clouds turning violet or the wind picking up, but you can batten down the hatches.

I think it’s interesting to think about why change can be so hard. I’ve reached the opinion that it’s because as we get older and live through some stuff, different things get attached to us, and then big old change comes along - sometimes quickly - and threatens to rip those things away, and it’s all outside of our control. As the tidal wave rolls in, you have to decide which bit of the boat to hold on to, and then there are just big questions as it hits: where will I end up? What will I lose? What will the ocean be like on the other side of this?

Now I don’t know anything for sure; I’ve not got inside intel to a work thing or a health thing or a family thing. And I’m expressing a feeling rather than a clue today. I really know nothing - other than that late August feeling, that anticipation of something autumnal in the air. In fact, it might be once again, that ridiculous old biological clock telling me I’ve still got a year of uni left, and that I ought to be heading back to Bath. Ridiculous because it’s nearly 25 years on. But then the same brain still thinks it can run a hundred metres in 13 seconds and vault a three-foot fence. You can’t really rely on just the rusty old brain for accuracy.

Nevertheless, things change. And actually, it can be obvious that they need to, even though the turbulence ahead looks rough. Faced with the truth of it, nobody wants to stagnate in the doldrums forever - there there are no waves at all, let alone a tsunami; the air is stale, and the windless sea as flat as a mirror. Sailors say it’s the most dangerous ocean of all. No, we all need change; we all need a storm every now and again to shake things up.

And I think that’s where I’m at. I need shaking up. It’s not my favourite prayer. If there were other ways to embrace change, without being thrown about in a tiny boat, I’d choose them - but I suppose I understand that my need for change is greater than my need for comfort. So, as the feeling grows and the summer fades into a peculiar autumn, I’d better at least whisper it. Help me change well, God, if change is on the way.

NO MORE DAIRY

For medical reasons, I’ve had to give up dairy for a while. It’s already led to some tricky emotions.

“Ooh you might be able to eat this lemon drizzle cake!” says Sammy excitedly, scanning the list of ingredients. Her eyes flick across the back of the box, while mine widen with excitement.

“Ah, nope!” she proclaims, discarding the packaging and moving onto the next delicious-looking thing. Yes? No, not that either. Boo.

It’s been a weekend of birthdays, and that hasn’t helped at all. I’ve seen plates of loveliness whizz past like a bakery conveyor belt - nope, nope, nope, nope. Milk, butter…. nope. Here’s a banana.

I even found myself at Costa, poking through the packets of biscuits on the counter. Each packet I picked up had the world MILK printed in tiny bold letters in the list of ingredients. Everything nice in there, it seemed, had something in it that came from a cow. In the end I just had a black tea and sipped it while I revised UK motorways.

I’ve got two weeks of this. After that? Maybe more, maybe forever. And it might be, it just might be that I’ve already eaten my last piece of real cheese.

You know, when I think about that, it feels like a black hole has opened up and I’m tumbling into it. What do you mean, no more cheese? Aaaaahhhhhh… I echo, as I fall into the gravity well. How can the world even be bearable without cheese in it? I mean, after oxygen and wireless Internet, surely cheese sits up there in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

The worst part of it is that last week I tucked into a lovely lasagna at Mamma Mia’s, then enjoyed two mini banoffee pies. I was buttering my toast, guzzling cream and licking the mayo off my jacket potatoes like there was no tomorrow. Well. Turns out there was a tomorrow, and in the greatest shock of all, it turned out to be the next day. Don’t you just love it when that happens?

A LOT OF NOISE IN THE SUPERMARKET

There was a little girl screaming her head off today in Sainsbury’s. I mean top-of-the-lungs, high-pitched, opera-volume, belting.

How does such a little person produce so much noise? It’s like hearing a monster-truck engine growling out of a Nissan Micra.

The mum, embarrassed and exasperated, stopped her trolley and tried to manage: her screaming daughter, her son (an older child who didn’t seem too surprised by the caterwauling) and a Nan-type, who looked a bit bewildered. She tried shouting at the girl to stop.

That never really works, does it? But then, I don’t know exactly what does in that situation. I can’t imagine it really happening to me - which might be a little naive, I agree, but I can’t. Sammy, a hugely experienced teacher, had more insight. She’d spotted that the real problem was the phone currently being clutched by the little boy…

Phones eh. She wanted it; he had it. Maybe she had had it before they got the trolley, maybe it was snatched, maybe it was removed unfairly. It seemed that the ear-piercing noise was the cry of injustice - and perhaps, fair enough.

Sammy went to get the coffees and I tried my best to watch the drama unfold without really watching. I was intrigued about how it would end. Would she run out of steam, get bored of shouting, descend into whimpers, or just bawl around Sainsbury’s like a tiny megaphone.

Well. The mum solved the problem by giving her the phone back.

The kid, now sort of perched in the arms of her mother while the Nan pushed the trolley, tapped away on the phone over mum’s shoulder. Distracted, quiet, acquiesced, and crucially, not wailing through Sainsbury’s like a tiny banshee.

It made me wonder. Is it easier to prevent a problem like this from occurring than it is to solve it? I think it is. The phone was the problem, the phone was the solution, but the phone might have been the cause of the thing way before they ever got to Sainsbury’s. What if there had been no phone?

But then there things like that in all our lives. For example: terrible dramas happen when people buy things with someone else’s money, not realising that they won’t be able to pay it back. Even worse things can happen to men who go for ‘just one’ coffee with flirtatious ladies who aren’t their wives. Sometimes we’re so clouded by the short-term gratification a thing can bring us, we just can’t see the long-term danger.

I’m including myself in that by the way. I need great wisdom. And in the moment where your wisdom has let you down and you are where you are, how do you stop the screaming?

I think I would have sent Nan out with the little girl, either to the car park or to the in-store Starbucks to calm down and take the heat out of the situation. But hey, I’m really no expert, and I appreciate that I can’t possibly know how difficult parenting is.

I just know what I’m like. And when my own silly decisions in the past ripple into the present to give me one of those ‘uh oh’ moments, I too feel a bit like that Mum, and maybe even a bit like the little girl too - burning with the cry of injustice, and letting the entire world know by screaming at the very top of my lungs. The mature bit, I suppose, the wise learning, is understanding how to prevent it.

DARK MATTER

I just feel like crying tonight. It might be because I’m really tired (we stayed up to watch the perseid meteor shower and a hint of northern lights) or it might be because I’ve pushed myself hard at work over the last two days (also true). Or it might be that the heavy stuff just outside my field of vision is inevitably weighing everything else down.

Dark matter, I suppose you could call it. You know it’s there, because even though you can’t see it, it’s pulling at the very edges of space-time, and as a result, everything’s getting stretched.

Let’s call it out then. A friend of ours is dying. His story only has a few pages left, and while it’s been a good tale, it doesn’t feel quite fair that this should be the last chapter. Hope and prayer and wordlessness and sorrow and disbelief and faith have all sort of swirled into each other. That’s enough to make me cry, you’d think.

It’s deeper though, somehow, the reason, this dark matter. I think it’s a sort of frustration, a kind of boiling magma that just won’t cool or solidify inside the volcano. But at what, I couldn’t tell you. It rages in the heart of the mountain, unseen from the shady slopes and forests, unthinkable to the villagers who’ve made homes in its shadow.

Well. There are signs. Perhaps crying, being close to red hot tears, feeling pressurised, confused and a little lost in the tightening world. It’s all understandable. I don’t even think it’s wrong to feel like this; it just is. What’s more I don’t think I’m alone in it.

We need help. A lifter of heads, an opener of gates, and a soother of soul. Grief is a terrible, beautiful weight but it’s a thing we all have to carry sooner or later, isn’t it. Wouldn’t it be wondrous if someone, someone who could do it, simply said that they’d take the burden and give us rest? Someone who would promise to go through it all with us and be there until the darkness cleared and there’d be  sunlight on the other side?

I’m not saying it’s easy. I don’t even think faith makes it any easier really - despite what people might think. I am saying that nobody, and I mean nobody needs to face dark matter alone.

I think I might just let the tears flow.

TIMMY TWO-LAPTOPS WEARS MY TRAINERS

For boring reasons I won’t go into, I was sitting in Costa without a phone, waiting for somebody. 

Perhaps you know what to do without a smartphone to distract you; it turns out, I don’t. I just sat there scanning the room like a naive tourist on the tube.

Lots of noise. One or two laptops. Some tattoos poking out of short tops and summer socks, and a little sipping and a lot of chatting going on. One guy had two laptops out. Fancy. But that wasn’t the main thing that caught my eye. No for that, I was drawn almost magically… to his feet.

This guy, Mr Two Laptops, was wearing my favourite trainers. I mean, the best, the coolest, the most brilliant pair of trainers I ever had! There they were - the exact ones - on his feet, under the table, across the room, time-travelling me backwards to 2006, a world of summery youth and freedom! I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe it.

They were green - both his and mine. Don’t let green put you off though; there are lots of greens. These were racing green, the colour of May grass and sunlit leaves. Burnished with stripes of brilliant yellow, seamed into the soft verdant fabric, and all floating on a sole of pure white, they were spectacularly unique, yet subtle in their style. With sea-green laces through neat white eyelets, they pulled tight until I felt safer than a ship in a harbour. And so cool. I wore them with jeans - no-one noticed. Ankle socks and a pair of Slazenger shorts - perfection. Want to be a little smarter but not glare out the crowd? The miracle trainers could do it. And then every now and then, “Ooh, nice trainers!” to which I’d smile knowingly behind my dark glasses.

It would feel as though confidence! was surging! through me, from the toes up - as though I could run a thousand miles! swirl a football into the top corner like David Beckham (2006 remember), or just fold one supercool foot over the other supercool foot and look like I ought to be in the Littlewoods catalogue!

Inevitably, those fantastic green and yellow trainers fell apart. I wore them until the September grass made my socks wet, and eventually they cracked wide open and flapped about until I (and everyone who loved me) agreed that I really could wear them no longer.

I feel as though ever since, I’ve kind of been looking for those trainers…

And then today, there they were, on the feet of a man with two laptops in the middle of a busy Costa.

I was so tempted to go over and ask him where he got them. It certainly seemed better than staring at them for five minutes as though someone had brought in the actual Mona Lisa. But in the end, I just couldn’t think of a way to kick off a conversation between two strangers that would essentially have been one guy saying to the other apropos of nothing: “Excuse me, I really like your shoes…”

No, I think I just have to let the trainers of 2006 be a happy memory and leave them there, lit by the hazy summer sun and scented by the wondrous freedom of youth’s fast-fading flowers.

Why would someone need two laptops?

FE-DAY COMES EARLY, 2024

I knew it would be sometime in the summer. I just didn’t expect it to come so soon. August the 10th - a new record, and one that interrupted me quietly checking the temperatures for tomorrow’s heatwave, with the sight and sound of Sammy prancing about in the living the room to the incongruous warmth of ‘It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas…’

As I say, it’s a new record, but the Festive Excitement was heavily expected. My guess is that it started for her when she realised we still have some Christmassy bits halfway up the stairs that haven’t made it to the loft. This is undoubtedly my fault, so perhaps I have only myself to blame.

“Not much point in putting them away now I suppose…” she beamed the other day. She seemed delighted at my laziness, which I admit, was quite refreshing. I sighed, unsure of what to say. A lot of my life feels like that.

Now. I expect her subconscious has been whirring away ever since, slowly pulling her towards her favourite time of the year like an elf is to the workshop. Today she had photo memories on her phone - Christmases gone by, while Apple (yeah thanks Apple) picked the soundtrack.

It’s funny how differently we’re wired. For me, Christmas is special because it’s restricted to December. I worry that spreading out the excitement somehow dilutes the joy, and I like my joy neat. I don’t want to peak too early.

I do get it though - if something is wonderful, why not let it rush over you again and again? When it’s 31 degrees (and you can’t bear the heat), why not let yourself be thrilled by the thought of snowflakes and fairy lights, by sparkling ribbon and cola-roast ham?

So I don’t mind the FE (Festive Excitement) really. It’s kind of sweet. I just don’t want to join in with it - in August.

That’s fair enough isn’t it?

Well anyway. Happy FE-Day. Don’t drink your eggnog too quickly.