A PICTURE OF A SUMMER SKY

On the way home now: the other end of a busy day. The weather’s still great. I’ve just been looking at the huge cotton wool clouds hanging lazily above Oxfordshire. The afternoon sun is lighting them from above, leaving their undersides grey, and their fluffy tops textured and wispy. It’s a picture of a summer sky.

The train’s a bit busier this way round. It’s got life, from the young girls sharing a Sainsbury’s bag to the guy holding his phone like he’s on the apprentice. There’s chatter in the flickering sunlight.

I’m pretty tired. The last hour of the day was a flurry of activity, and I wasn’t sure at all whether I’d make the bus. It’s left me feeling exhausted and a bit on-edge to be honest, uncertain that I didn’t rush the last few minutes. Work is such a strange thing.

The fields are so green. I wish I had better powers of description - the shadows and the light and the fields and hedgerows fly behind the banks of little white and yellow flowers, and it’s all so poetic. Thomas Hardy would have a field day. Probably literally.

I wonder who else is enjoying this sky. There has to be someone out there just looking up at the clouds. I hope they see what I see, spread across this view, this England of green and white and blue.

A MAYISH HALF TERM

Half term round these parts, which means this morning’s train to Oxford is pleasantly spacious. It’s probably the best half-term for a jaunt too, as the weather is typically Mayish. You don’t get that with other half terms.

Mayish. It’s nearly June, if you can believe it! Anyway, the sky is forget-me-not blue, the morning sun is falling deliciously on the fresh green trees, and after last night’s rain, the air is new with promise. And the train’s empty.

I’ve not seen Bossman for a while. I wonder what happened to him? Perhaps he works on different days now, or perhaps he changed jobs? That would be so him.

Another good thing about half term is that Sammy gets to rest. I get the impression that school holidays for teachers are a bit like coming up for air, rather than swimming back to shore. It’s just enough time to breathe, enjoy the glinting sunshine of the overworld, before you have to dip back down under the murky waves. She’s doing okay - and she is resting; I find myself wishing she didn’t have to be in the ocean at all.

There’s an advert on this train I don’t understand. It’s a poster that says:

“Someone eating a tuna melt? There are no surprises when you switch bank accounts.”

Underneath there’s a picture of a giant clothes peg.

I guess it’s suggesting you can switch bank accounts like you can switch train carriages due to some antisocial food stench, but that doesn’t make sense because if I’m reading this ad, I’m in the same carriage, and if I’ve just switched here from another carriage then it’s highly unlikely that I’m still stuck with the smell of tuna melt.

And anyway, I quite like a tuna melt. It’s not that bad; they should have chosen egg sandwiches or chicken kyivs or something universally obnoxious for train travel - like the sound of someone else’s music or their personal conversation on speaker.

Speaking of marketing, I guess I’m nearly at work. It really is a lovely day - almost too good not to enjoy. Maybe this Mayish train journey is a kind of popping above the waves for me too. I like that I can take a leaf out of Sammy’s book and just enjoy every breath, every moment. Especially when the world is so beautiful, and there’s hardly anyone else on the train to Oxford.

REFLECTION AND EQUILIBRIUM

I’m doing some reflecting today. I do worry that reflecting on things creates some sort of mirror image in your mind - left is right and right is left and all that - and that’s how memories get hazy. Nevertheless I’m looking back on the last few weeks with a sort of need to see it, mirrored or not.

Sammy’s let me go to our local National Trust place to walk and think and process. I’m grateful for that. I’m sitting with a cup of earl grey tea in the courtyard, between walls of ivy, under open grey sky. In a while I’ll walk through the woods.

I don’t get a lot of time on my own these days. It’s okay; I’m alright about it - it’s just interesting to think that this used to be normal, and now it’s unusual. On the flip side, I was terribly lonely, now. I’m not so much.

But life is a great balance isn’t it? Everything that tips the scales one way needs some other thing to tip them the other - equilibrium is its real goal, and life pushes and pulls for it - and we know too, deeply, when the world is out of kilter, and often by how much.

I can’t talk about it. I can’t talk about the last few weeks - that’s for another time - but I can say that I’m thankful for the pause today, for reflection. The clouds are thin; I can see the sun trying to break through. And the earl grey tea is still hot in its metal teapot and glistening white cup.

STRAWBERRY PRAISE

Yesterday we went to the farm shop and came home with a punnet of strawberries as a treat.

Alright. Full disclosure, they cost £5.50 - which I think is the kind of price that would get my Dad taking a sharp intake of breath. But also… right time, right season, and wowsers are they good strawbs. There’s just something sweet and juicy and perfect about them - plump, red, almost ready to melt in the mouth. They are seriously delicious.

I’ve often wondered what my first few conversations in heaven will be. I might just beam at God, throw a hand out, and tell him what a spiffing idea it was to invent strawberries. I like to think he’d love that kind of heartfelt praise - though, I notice the Christian songwriters out there have yet to focus in on the ‘thankfulness for fruit and veg’ angle. Maybe they should. Maybe I should? I have form for that kind of thing…

Anyway, these strawberries are amazing, and while Sammy’s hard at work, looking after small children, I’m at home with the punnet in front of my computer. 

You know sometimes working from home is a challenge - if only to know the difference between the trinity of voices in my head and their differing opinions on what I should and definitely shouldn’t eat. That trinity by the way is Holy Spirit, me, and Sammy. Two of them are usually pretty well aligned. The other one is me.

HABEMUS PAPUM

Well, there’s a new pope if you’re bothered about that sort of thing. 1.4 billion people definitely are, and so there’s been wall-to-wall coverage of the chimney on the Sistine chapel, a packed-out St Peter’s Square and a sunlit Vatican, waiting, then cheering in Leo XIV.

“Does he er…” said Sammy, half a smile forming, “Does he look like a bit like your dad?”

Brilliant. The new pope, who I’m sure is a very nice man and will make a well-respected figure on the ol’ world stage and all that… looks like my dad. I mean just a little bit. Perhaps a bit more than not looking like him; there is a resemblance. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’d be a great pope, except of course the hurdles of not being Catholic, being married, not much liking the limelight, and not exactly able to relocate to the Vatican. He does get on with people though. And he’d be good at the waving.

A few moments later…

“Why does the new pope look like dad?” asked my sister on the family chat. Even I had nothing to say in response.

THE ROUGH GUIDE TO CLASSICAL MUSIC

I’m supposed to be reading the Rough Guide to Classical Music but it’s just too hot and bothersome today.

I say ‘supposed to be’ but it’s all self-imposed now, this quiz revision, particularly as there is now no quiz to go to! It seems unlikely that anyone will rush up to me to ask me when Chopin was born as a matter of urgency. And, as I’ve observed many times, it’s called trivia for reason.

The Rough Guide is over 600 pages long. It’s my latest library book, and when I reserved it, I didn’t know what kind of tome it was. I was hoping it would be a sort of chronological unfolding of everything from Monteverdi to Mozart, the story of how diatonic music swirled its way through the renaissance, the baroque and romantic eras. I wanted a chapter on Liszt avoiding his fans like the Beatles in the mid 60s, or Beethoven attaching wires to his mouth so he could hear what he was playing through his bones. Angry Berlioz stalking an actress, Handel moving to England for some reason, and the great mystery of what happened to Haydn’s head? None of that drama.

This is more of a dictionary - but a dictionary with too much detail and not enough story. I don’t feel like reading it tonight.

I don’t feel like doing much to be honest. I’m zapped by the remarkable weather. I can’t cope with the humidity. I’m also at the end of a tricky week.

There will be a quiz. I’m sure of it. Maybe next year, maybe not, but some time. Whether anything in the Rough Guide to Classical Music comes up is another matter.