CROSS-COUNTRY RUN

I’m limping into Christmas. That’s what it feels like anyway - a cross-country run in the cold woods that comes to a kind of bruised end in the December air.

I had a huge computer fail yesterday that’s led to me reinstalling Windows. I have no idea whether I’m doing it all correctly - it has filled me with terror. Diagnosing the problem, the IT guy kept messaging me things like, “Oh that’s not good…” and “Oh really not a good sign,” whenever I relayed the symptoms. I thought those people were trained not to say things like that! I still think it’s going to work out to have been all my fault.

Somehow it’s brought up a load of other stuff too. Last night I was feeling unbearably sad about my life. Where is it going? What have I done with it? What would happen if I were to get fired for letting my hard drive get corrupted? What in the world would I do next?

The long few days of Christmas can’t really come soon enough. Muscles ache, my face is red with tears, and the winter sky is heavy with rain. I need a break, a long, deep sleep in a cosy world of twinkly lights and hot baths.

UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH

“Okay,” says the influencer, “The story I’m about to tell you today is so unbelievable that it just has to be the truth…”

I click off. What? What are you talking about? Is this some weird tactic to drag people into believing you?

There’s odd logic in the post-science era. Sometimes it feels as though we’ve just gone back to a kind of medieval mysticism. How can it be more true if it’s less believable? I mean what does that even mean?

It all reminds me of that time I drove to Japan in an ice cream van. Yeah, and by the time I got to Kazakhstan I’d run out of Mr Whippy so I had to get a herdsman to show me how to milk a yak. Oh and in China, they have no idea what a Flake is so I got chased through the fields by children with a new taste for crumbly chocolate.

No? Too tall a tale? Good. Apparently that actually makes it truer.

No, the problem with this kind of thing is that it’s manipulating us into doubting our own ability to detect and believe the truth.

The need for evidence (which used to be quite the thing) is now replaced by the need to believe in something your ears have been itching for, that backs up what you’ve already half-suspected from your echo chamber.

Now I know what you’re thinking. It’s just repackaged faith, right? After all, religious belief requires the same evidence-free leap? An actual resurrection? Are you kidding? An invisible God? A man healing the sick, and walking on water? And a suffering world and a silent creator? Shouldn’t I be happy (as a follower of Jesus) that the world is returning to a kind of blind faith in the unbelievable?

Actually, no.

And the reason is that dissociating truth from belief actually removes us from any kind of belief at all.

Blind faith, I think, is probably no faith at all. Following online ‘priests’ who’ve taken it upon themselves to tell us what we can and can’t treat as truth is about as blind as it gets. No, faith requires you to have your eyes open, searching and longing for a glimpse of God.

This might surprise some of you, but I think it actually does require evidence. And part of the reason why I’m a Christian is that that evidence, the data points in my own life, have been my own encounters with Jesus himself. I can’t prove it to you with physical proofs any more than I can prove I dreamt about ice cream in central Asia, but I tell you what - I can prove it to myself. I know him.

Sorry if this is a bit preachy. I just don’t think I want to be in a world where truth is somehow ‘proven’ by our incredulity, where, in the vacuum that believable truth leaves when it’s tossed out of the window, anything goes - from outlandish conspiracy to silly nonsense, from political manipulation to outright deception. Perhaps it’s an old-fashioned view nowadays. Fair enough. All I’d say is, old-fashioned or not, Lord, help me keep my eyes open.

SLEEPWALKING PERHAPS

On the train home, listening to a podcast. Do you ever wonder whether you missed something great by millimetres? I mean somehow you took a street too early and missed the carnival, or you got invited to a gig and turned it down, and then realised it was like, Paul McCartney or someone?

I feel like I’ve been largely sleepwalking. The podcast features a friend of mine, a musician I used to play with, and it seems, might have been a door to opportunities I didn’t realise at all were there.

Sigh.

I was in Oxford for the Christmas do today. For reasons only known to myself I decided to be in full-on provocative social philosophical mode. At one point I asked somebody where they thought human conscience came from and whether fairness was a construct or somehow embedded in nature. The other end of the table were quieter, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at them. Is it really always a choice between this (I screamed internally) and thoughtful silence? Are they really the only options?

My friend on the podcast is talking about a gig I was in with him, now. He remembers it differently to the way I do.

“Would you shoot for it again?” asks the podcast host.

“Yeah, maybe,” he hesitates. Perhaps he’s thinking about the way I messed up a track by playing the wrong rhythm live on stage. Perhaps not. It all seems so far away now. I had no idea how close it was.

The train’s cold. That’s the worst thing about sleepwalking: you always wake up in the cold.

CHRISTMAS PARTY PLAYLIST

Here we go then. Mariah’s just been on; now we’ve got Shakin’ Stevens. I always think about the drummer in that song. I do hope he got a lie down after all that. It’s hard work.

Of course, what I’m supposed to be thinking about during these tracks is partying - that’s what Christmas is all about, isn’t it? Having a good time. I guess there’s some joy to pretending you’re stuck inside while the snow falls.

Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree is up next. I guess from the 50s. This one’s for parties of a different era - when there were paper chains strung up from the ceiling - but nevertheless for those who see the festive season as a big old knees up. I still have no idea what a ‘new, old-fashioned way’ means.

By the way, I don’t really think that’s what it’s all about - partying. I was being facetious. I just don’t think I like these poppy tunes quite as much as I like the classics, but that’s okay - it’s my upbringing and taste, and I always say you’re allowed to like what you like, and you can’t let anyone tell you that what you like you shouldn’t like… unless what you like is illegal. Or nasty. The consequence is the logical conclusion that: if you like what you like and it’s okay - then it’s also okay for someone else not to like it.

Oh here they are. The inevitable Pogues. As far as I can make out, the lyrics of this are the ramblings of the inebriated patrons in a New York bar. I guess you’re supposed to look back with nostalgia at this as though you were there with them, celebrating Christmas in a snowy New York and wishing you were somehow Irish in some way.

I don’t know why we’re listening to these today. I mean it sounds like I mind, but I don’t think I do; not really. Sammy’s chosen this playlist, and I think it makes her happy. I’m all for that. Although, the playlist I made for her was a bit more…. classical. I think making a playlist for someone is at least as difficult as choosing a birthday card; it has to say something about them, and about you, and be careful not to explode the boundaries under which your friendship/relationship function. Sounds like a blog for another day, but it is true.

Kelly Clarkson’s having a good time. Her beau is back and she’s celebrating ‘Underneath the Christmas Tree’. How tall is she? How tall is her tree? I can only imagine she’s suspended the tree somehow at head-height, which means - either she’s got ridiculously high ceilings, a ridiculously little Christmas tree, or Kelly herself (and her man) are unaccountably tiny.

Sammy really goes for the upbeat Christmas tunes it seems. We’ve now got Elton imagining he can watch snow-fall ‘for ever and ever’. Meteorologically impossible Elton, isn’t it.

Sigh. I’m maybe a bit of a curmudgeon, liking the traditional carols and crooners, the classical strings and stylings of tenors and choirs over the new-fangled party playlists. But you like what you like! Perhaps one day, like Brenda Lee I’ll find that new old-fashioned way - whatever that means.

PARDONING THE CHUBBY BYSTANDERS

Hey Americans. Quick question. Why do turkeys need pardons?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Thanksgiving. If you’re going to celebrate anything nationally it might as well be that. I’m just wondering why every year the President pardons a turkey. What have the turkeys done?

I mean, by implication, all the turkeys are criminals (worthy of the death penalty no less) and in some sort of hazy tradition, each year, one single bird gets forgiven and allowed to live out its days in a turkey sanctuary… while all the rest are sentenced to the chop. But for what?

It’s the first turkey I feel sorry for. Before that, the turkeys probably roamed Virginia without too much of a trouble. Then one gets strung up by some hungry colonists and it’s open season on the rest. Farmed and fed from field to table, imprisoned for a purpose  - slaves to the scrawny Brits at Jamestown, who are a) ever so thankful, for some reason, and b) very hungry.

But it’s not the turkeys’ fault is it? I mean they weren’t holding back the harvest! If anything they were chubby little bystanders to the human drama of American settlers in a new world. Seems a bit unfair to drag them into the story and then condescend to offer one of them a pardon for what… being delicious?

So yesterday the current President in his own unique way pardoned yet another turkey, implicitly recognising that millions of innocent unpardoned turkeys - in fact, almost every other turkey in the land - were each heading for family dinners as a result of their terrible crimes.

If you’re going to pardon one turkey, America, come on… you might as well pardon them all. I’m no vegetarian activist, but that has to be the logic, no? Unless every year the White House miraculously finds the one turkey in the USA who’s been wrongly accused of something, and actually deserves a pardon? That is what that system is for… right?

Right?

THE CARBON BETWEEN THE STARS

It’s complex hitching yourself up with another person. Your centre of gravity changes - like a binary star system, you’re now orbiting around a point that’s sort of between you, and no longer in you completely. So your decisions are still yours to take, but they also affect the life of another person, however small, however insignificantly.

Their decisions affect you too, as you both spin through space. And it’s a strange dance sometimes - the steps seem complicated - a Viennese waltz among the stars, full of unspoken technique and balance.

This is all a very poetic way of me saying I burnt the toast today.

It was several hours ago, but… well time… hasn’t really… helped. And I didn’t really realise how bad it was. Until I did. And then I really did.

Now, as a lone star, I think I’d have handled the smoky house differently. This is what I mean - my centre of gravity is off-centre now, and decisions I make as a person working from home are not decisions that necessarily map to our binary system. There’s new inertia, and unpredictable spin. And three and a bit years in, I am still learning the footwork. It became clear to me when Sammy got home.

I think an old bit of toast got stuck. A blackened bit of charcoal certainly fell out of the toaster, rather like an ember from a forgotten bonfire: the smoking culprit. Somehow that little chunk of bread had filled the house, the cosmos of our daily life, and it had created a sort of atmosphere, a haze of uncomfortable carbon floating in mid-air, somewhere between our two stars.

It’ll be alright. Worse things have happened. The key bit of learning is that consideration of gravity, of how we orbit, and what we orbit and why, and learning the pull of angular momentum that’s on both of us. Though, I’m not sure I’m going to explain it like that in person just yet. Maybe let the atmosphere clear a bit.

WHISPER WHILE YOU WORK

It’s rare to have an office day on a Friday, but… here we are. London. Londre, Londonius, Londinium - the beating heart of our national shimmering griminess. What a treat.

Actually, I don’t need my sarcastic hat today.

It turned out to be quite enjoyable getting here - an empty train, sun rising over the fields and factories, podcast in the ears, and the smell of fresh coffee in the carriage. Normally it’s armpit-to-armpit scrummage. Today felt a lot more old-fashioned.

That’s Friday for you - the masses stay at home and the commute becomes old-fashioned. Even the city itself, emerging from the underground, seemed hopeful about it, the morning sun blinking its way across the tall stone buildings. Were they remembering their old lives as merchant banks and trading houses?

Well no; they’re not sentient. But it’s nice to be poetic every now and again. I arrived at the office in a much better mood than usual, dropping an empty Starbucks cup into the bin and coming close to whistling as I waited for the lift.

I doubt much whistling goes on in London. Obviously bin men and road workers push up the average, but I’d still wager the number of people whistling at any one time in the capital is low.

I didn’t whistle though. I figured it might unsettle the girl on reception.

One of the great things about being in the capital on a Friday is that when you go home… it’s still Friday, and somehow that makes the return journey sweeter, in turn making the build-up to the return journey proportionally sweeter too. So that’s good.

Whipsering’s a lost art too, I think. I find it hard these days - not sure why. Though, an odd thing did happen: someone whispered something to someone else knowing full well I could also hear it, and was the only other person in the room. A secret perhaps, something they weren’t sure they ought to say. Perhaps it was ultra caution but… I’m not so sure. I started wondering whether it’s a subconscious admission that a thing is morally wrong, and so must be hidden, at least whispered carefully. Interesting bit of human behaviour I thought.

Then, if anyone had been analysing me today, I wonder what field days they’d have had. I have to keep myself focused on the screen sometimes in the office, just so my face doesn’t accidentally give me away.

So a good day in London I suppose. But the best bit as ever, will be the going home. Hi ho.

A HINT OF SNOW

Fact. It snowed this morning. Somewhere between the gym and the first call of the day, the sky filled with a flurry of falling flakes, and the roof of the shed looked like it had been dusted with icing sugar.

It’s worthy of attention apparently. I always think this - unusual weather gets us excited for some reason. In Alaska, they’d barely think of mentioning it, I reckon.

Sigh. It comes from living on a small, very temperate island. We’re hobbits, finding solace in things remaining roughly the same, and reacting quite demonstratively when something (an adventure, I suppose) breaks outside the norm.

Anyway, it did snow. As usual, in other parts of the country, the family sent round much snowier pictures - kids in wellingtons, etc. I think I’m a bit beyond that kind of excitement, and certainly, there’s little point in chucking on wellies to go out and leave black footprints in the thin wet drizzle.

THE SANDS WERE DRY AS DRY

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but this year, I’ve been blogging a lot less frequently. I’ve been trying to work out why that is, and I think it’s possibly to do with available time (of which I seem to have less) and the corresponding lack of interesting things happening.

But that can’t be, can it? I mean why would interesting things stop happening?

It’s much more likely that they do still happen, that they do still make me laugh or ponder or weep - but I’m somehow less inclined to write about them. Perhaps I’ve written about them before, or I’m not able to make them funny, or, as I hinted, there’s no time.

Perhaps I should find a way. Or perhaps I shouldn’t? Maybe I should let myself be guided by what feels right, improvising my way through the jazz score of life, and loving the bars where not much is happening just as much as I seem to love the complicated riffs and melodies. Maybe not blogging as often is, in itself, telling the story.

It’s been 12 years now, this blog - 12 years today. Over 2,500 posts and probably a million words flying by, doing their best to bottle a world. I wish I could count the adverbs. I’d probably remove most of them. But then, maybe you need a way to explain how a thing was done, rather than a dispassionate list of just the verbs and their impact on all the nouns that get in their way. The how matters.

And that was always the intention: lifting the stage curtain and exploring the how, as well as the what and the why.

I will keep on - who knows, maybe some more interesting things will happen, maybe some new thoughts will pop into this old head and I’ll get chance to write them down. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be less bored with everything.

THE DAY WE SAW SANTA OUTSIDE COSTA

We saw Santa outside Costa Coffee yesterday. He wasn’t an attraction; he was nonchalantly drinking coffee, alongside Mrs Claus at one of the al fresco tables.

Sammy found it hilarious. “He deserves a break!” she exclaimed, after I asked what he thinks he’s up to. Honestly, he was a proper Santa, not a tacky shopping-mall cotton-wool-beard knockoff; a genuine old Father Christmas. With a latte and a newspaper.

We went in to the shop. It was coming up on closing time so hardly anyone was inside. My glasses steamed up instantly, which gave the girl behind the counter a giggle as I scanned the flapjacks. There was a lady mopping the floor there too who laughed uproariously at something Sammy said - I think she was trying to stop me walking in the wet bit.

Lights twinkled outside, the all-too-ubiquitous Christmas music played, and I clutched my double-cupped earl grey tea in both hands. It was, undoubtedly festive. And yes, undeniably still November.

And yet there we were - sprinkled with a little of that indescribable Christmas feeling. Where had that come from? I wondered.

Santa was still there in the twilight.

Mrs Claus looked happy. I don’t know. Did he wink at me? I didn’t tell Sammy; it just seems a bit silly… well anyway, Costa Claus… and there did seem to be some joyful magic in the air.

Sammy, who seems to live Christmas from August onwards, was absolutely loving it. Of course she was.

HELTER-SKELTER MONTH

So November’s barrelling on isn’t it? It’s like a helter-skelter month: you start at the top with the fading sunlight and the whiff of pumpkins in the park, and before you know it, you’ve slid into Christmas.

It’s a bit soggy for helter-skeltering. The lights are on, the sky is battleship grey, and the windows are dashed with streaming raindrops. Thomas Hood follows Keats as usual.

I think it’s the looking-forward-to-Christmas that robs November of its character. That’s the gravity, whizzing us down the ride on our straw mats, isn’t it? The cosy thought that at the end of this stormy month, there are twinkling lights and cosy nights. We race towards it through a flurry of crispy leaves, and I wonder whether that‘s okay.

I tell you what though. ‘Christmas Tree Prep’ has appeared in the diary for next weekend. It’s followed, the weekend after (still November), by ‘Tree Up!’ and I’m a bit scared to ask what the difference is. Meanwhile, the piano tuner’s round, pre-carol season. I’m fairly certain the lady of the house will want to try a few Ding Dongs and Good Kings Wenceslas when he’s gone - so even before the helter-skelter drops me in lovely Advent, the festive season seems to be spilling up the slide at the same time. Fa la la.

There must be inherent goodness to November though, surely? In some ways, it’s a shame Guy Fawkes couldn’t have waited until the middle of the month - fireworks night might have been more of a thing. But then of course, he’d only have been able to blow up a few MPs and the cleaner, I suppose, given that the King was only ever going to be there on the Fifth.

Gosh. Sorry Americans. That was a weird digression. Don’t worry about it. You guys have lovely Thanksgiving in November. I like that - perfectly placed. Like stopping the helter-skelter halfway down for a roast dinner.

Anyway, here, we seem to twirl November away. The rain falls and the leaves flutter, the sky darkens and the roads glisten. It is beautiful in its own way. Isn’t it?