TRINKETS

Someone who lives far away sent Sammy a lovely gift. It’s a little heart made of clay with a string loop, and on it, engraved over a cutesy picture of a house are the words, “I wish you lived next door”.

N'aw. It’s sweet having friends who wish they were closer, isn’t it? For reasons I probably won’t ever understand, the ladies are more affected by that kind of thing, especially heart-melting trinkets. I remain less moved by sentiment.

The only problem is that the ornament’s now hanging in our front room, looking for all the world like one of us… gave it to the other. I wish you lived next door. 

Makes me chuckle every time I see it.

HYBRID COMMUTE

There was a man wearing shirt, tie, suit jacket… and shorts… on the train this morning. He’d assumed the usual hunched position over a flipped-open laptop on the seat back tray, typing away, staring at the screen.

I really wanted to ask him.

You can’t do that though can you, especially on the London train! What was his story? A cyclist? No bike on the carriage as far as I could see? Had he had some sort of accident? Possibly, but why carry shorts with you? No, it seemed like a choice. But what choice? Was it suit first or shorts first? I assume he was transitioning into suit rather than transitioning out of it, given the context. Why not pop a pair of trousers on for the train? And why go hybrid at all?

Perhaps an online client meeting during his commute. Top-half business, bottom half ready to sprint through London Paddington for his connection? I will never know.

The 90s band Boys II Men did something similar, I remember. They wore suit jackets, ties and shorts while belting out classics like End of the Road and er… that other one they’re famous for. But they at least were making a point! A very visual point that reflects their brand quite specifically. To emphasise it, they also did the classic key-change where they stood up from their bar stools - a move copied and not bettered by Westlife. Presumably those lads were also making some sort of point, but I forget now what it might have been.

I don’t think this guy was in a 90s boy band. Fair play if he was. He seemed very keen on staring unblinkingly at his laptop and tapping at the keys. The train stopped at Maidenhead and about a thousand people got on, obscuring him. I didn’t see him stand up at Paddington, and as ever, that squeak of brakes and roll into London failed to feel like any kind of uplifting key change. I shuffled off the train with everyone else. I wonder what happened to Boys II Men? I suppose they simply grew up. I quite like to think they got backstage and decided to put some trousers on.

It’s good advice, I reckon. But each to their own.

THE HUNT FOR WINTER LEMSIPS

Cloudy old day today, bit drizzly. Coincidentally (or not) I’ve been hunting for the Lemsips. It’s okay; just feeling a bit run-down, not poorly. It’s like my throat is thinking about being sore but can’t quite make up its mind.

No joy with the Lemsips. I keep thinking I’ve found one but it just turns out to be posh tea bags. In the end I made a three-ginger tea and stirred in a spoon of honey. That’ll do, right? I mean I could crunch a paracetamol in? Good idea? Terrible idea? Don’t judge me. I couldn’t find those either.

Who knew there were three types of ginger by the way? Surely ginger is just ginger? I don’t know. Maybe the folks at Twinings will just say anything. Actually, that’d be a cool job - marketing fancy teas, writing for people exactly like me who think they’re just a little posher than they actually are. I could do that. I could even do market research at Waitrose.

Anyway, it’s a bit of a run-down day. The tea’s nice, especially with honey. Sometimes we all just need a bit of warming up from the inside.

Why do we not just keep the Lemsips in a box in a cupboard? That would be a good system. Better than putting the sachets into backpacks for emergencies, or sliding them into the first aid kit that lives in the car, or just leaving them on the desk, or on top of the piano. I like the system of knowing where everything is. Is it a pipe dream, that?

I hope my throat decides not to be poorly. It would be (as usual) bad timing. Maybe with an early night and the exotic taste of three gingers, I’ll be a bit brighter tomorrow. Perhaps the weather will too.

SOCRATIC DEBATE

Well thanks a bunch, YouTube rabbit hole. Now the algorithm thinks I want to watch people arguing. 

Step up on one side, the passionate defender of a controversial opinion, outspoken, brave and clever. And to the other, the challenger, fizzing with righteous anger, bold and eloquent. Who’s the David, who’s the Goliath? Watch till the end to find out…

When did debating become such a spectator sport? And who, tell me, is having their minds changed by snarling gladiators in the amphitheatre? No. The fans sit in their tribal groups in the stands and they will boo the other fans and cheer on their hero to the death. The YouTube comments confirm it - every tedious time.

I tell you what I think I’d like to see: Socratic debate - the art of pushing collective understanding with reasoned, informative argument. I’d like it to be respectful, clear, honest and open-minded. I’d like one side to be prepared to be wrong and the other to be gracious, then for both sides to switch as they learn from each other. I’d like humility and respect for people, regardless of how absurd their ideas are, and a gentle pursuit of truth. I’d like it not to be a competition. I’d like a lot of things, I suppose.

Who knows where I need to go to get that! Not on social media, that’s for sure. And not on talk shows or YouTube channels either - people there seem quick to extinguish those who don’t agree with them while the world keeps burning, and then score points - just for that lovely dopamine fix of a thousand people cheering from behind them.

I’m so tired of it.

AGGRESSIVE PATRIOTISM

I was waiting for a bus this morning, looking up at half a dozen England flags, fluttering around lampposts.

Controversial. Half the folks I know (including some of my family) are cock-a-hoop about it, asking why on Earth you wouldn’t celebrate your own country in your own country. Indeed, all across England, that’s exactly what people say, defending Operation Raise The Colours. At last, they breathe, it’s being reclaimed for what it should be.

I said (on the family chat) that I thought the Plantagenets ought to be pleased.

“?”

“Well if it’s being reclaimed for what it should be, then it’s a symbol of a Turkish Saint adopted by French kings who liked a bit of Plantagenet crusading in the Holy Land - so, yay, I guess?”

I should have known better.

The thing is I really do know that flags are an embodiment of an idea - in this case the idea of a country that has struggled to understand its identity, that feels like it’s only just finding its feet as proudly and as bravely as it can after Brexit, but one that’s brave, kind, noble and true. That’s what this flag means. Why not be proud of it?

I said as much, just to undo my flag-history message, and restore a bit of balance.

And yet, if you’d been a Muslim in the 13th century, that same red cross might as well have been blood, the blood of your people, smeared across white hot sand. That fluttering banner above the hairdressers and the chemist’s would have embodied a very different idea than patriotism - and even today, for people, spat on by men wearing it on their cheeks, intimidated and hounded, made to feel like they don’t belong, like they’re here and jolly well shouldn’t be… I can see how that same flag - the red and the white - might make people feel. And I don’t ever want to make anybody feel like that.

That’s the problem, I realise, with flags. They don’t actually mean anything.

They are just symbols that can be interpreted; colours that look different depending on the lens you use, ideas that mean completely different things to different people, through history, across cultures, stories and personal experience. And because they’re so strongly linked to lots of different but powerful ideas, they will, I suspect, always be controversial.

That’s why the US throws you in jail now for burning a piece of fabric. It’s the concept. That’s why people get cross at the LGBTQ colours above the town hall in Pride Month. That’s why an old red flag with a white circle and a spidery black swastika is so terrifying. It’s the idea they represent, the values, the reason for flying them. And in our case, now in England in 2025, the reason for it being everywhere.

I find it uncomfortable. It is what I call aggressive patriotism - especially to see so many. Why now? Who’s behind it? What is this about? These feel like questions that might add a bit of context.

I left my family chat alone. There’s no point in stirring, at least when not in person. These are complicated issues, tinged with historical and current context, and I don’t want to be controversial - the world today doesn’t have time for anything but a sound bite, just a snippet of enough information to give you a label for which side you’re on, and which half of the Internet is there to applaud you and which half should throw rocks. I’ve said it before, and I’ll quote Albert Maysles again: ‘tyranny is the removal of nuance’. If there’s anything worth defending, unfurling as an idea that waves above the battlefield of the culture wars, it’s the art of nuance, long before it’s a flag.

OUT THERE OVER THERE

I was on a meeting today and temporarily, while I lost concentration, the topic turned to someone flying off to a conference somewhere and doing some work ‘while you’re out there’.

“It might be worth your while, while you’re out there…”

“Well while I’m out there, I thought I might…”

It occurred to me that I had no idea where he was going. I need to listen more. Where is ‘out there’? Why is it not ‘over there’? Where’s that? Are they different? How do I instinctively know that it’s not the Isle of Wight, or Prague, or Scotland?

Funny old British English. I guess ‘over there’ must mean crossing an ocean to a foreign part of the world. You have to fly over the vast expanse of the Atlantic to get to the US. That seems the most likely candidate for where he was off to.

“Out there” seems further still. West Coast? As far as Japan perhaps? Singapore? Thailand? You have to overcome a significant amount of geography to get to those places.

Speaking of Japan, my niece and her fiancé want to go to Tokyo for their honeymoon. I have thoughts about it, but then they also asked me to do a pub quiz at their wedding. That is a sidebar, but an interesting one.

Scotland is clearly “up there” as is Norway, Sweden and anywhere where you might get chased by a polar bear. So with “over there” and “up there” you might get a sense of what’s going on. Clearly we’re all picturing a map in our heads.

And yes, Australia if anything, is “down there” though I think people would be more tempted to say “down under” wouldn’t they?

But “out there” - what’s that dimension? Well. That’s why I think he’s headed for California. I think in some way, there’s a sense that the West is still the land for pioneers and trailblazers, where you’re far out from the modern, leafy cities and civilisation of the East, and of course, the old world. That’s crept into our language.

I don’t mind doing a pub quiz at a wedding. I think it will be a challenge to keep it under control - an exercise in determination, wit, and taking no nonsense. I also think it might do my family good to know I can confidently handle that, so win-win, I guess.

Sometimes on calls I say things like “Raining over here…” to people who live less than a hundred miles away. The only geographical boundary is the vast expanse of the wild Home Counties. So I’m not exactly sure I apply the rules precisely. Perhaps next time I should describe the Isle of Wight as “down under” to see what confusion it causes.

It’s no wonder I was daydreaming.

ENTHRALLED BY THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE

Long shadows on the fields of Oxfordshire this morning. It’s fresh too - the twinkling sun catching wisps of mist between the trees and hedgerows. This is golden autumn, Keats’s Fall, the glorious shimmer of September, under a big sky, scattered with high white clouds.

My eyes are stinging - not just with the flickering sunlight through the train window, but with sadness. I don’t know why. Seasonal Affected Disorder? Perhaps. My heart feels heavy too, like an over-ripened apple, too weighty for the branch. I don’t know. SAD’s irrational isn’t it, but this deep aching feels more like there’s a hidden reason, so deep and buried, even I don’t quite know what it is.

Sorry. This is probably depressing reading. Let’s talk about how lovely the autumn is. I do think that; that’s not sarcasm. This time of year, this time of day, is utterly gorgeous. Two ladies opposite talk about how difficult their jobs are, but every now and then the one nearest the window smiles - which is a hint at a privilege, the silent blessing of being alive, being thankful to see a morning like this. It isn’t British to discuss this. But it would be odd not to secretly acknowledge how beautiful our land is.

I have mixed feelings about work today. As always, I love the journey. What I face at my destination though - I do wonder. Something less glorious. Funny old system, isn’t it? Travelling through beauty and wonder on a perfect Autumn morning, for the purpose of spending hours on a laptop, in a room, talking about things that will be forgotten in a year’s time. 

Fast forward the clock even by a whole century, and I suspect people will still be enthralled by the English countryside, the translucent leaves, and the dappled shadows of a sun low in the September sky. I mean that is, if the high-speed hyperloop doesn’t make it fly past at 800 miles an hour.

Nearly at Oxford. The city sparkles into view and the train slows towards the platform. My heart aches a little. I blink as the sunlight flicks on and off between the buildings and the station gantries. I’ll be alright.

ACTING HURTS

One of the hardest things we all have to do at some point or other, is acting. I don’t mean being deceitful - though we could debate it - I mean the kind of acting where we’re required to put on one face to hide another.

I suppose that’s all acting isn’t it? But actors and audiences have a contract with each other where one side of the stage knows precisely that they’re having their disbelief suspended. I think that’s okay.

In real life, the contract gets a bit messy. And sometimes you have to grit your teeth and say you’re pleased for someone, celebrate their news, and be happy about it, when privately it’s made you feel like you want to run away and shout angrily into the woods. We’ve all done this, haven’t we? Brave face, happy for you, wonderful exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Oh and also, inside, I’m crumbling away like a sandcastle in the tide - a mood killer, yes, and also not what you need in your moment of joy.

I went to loads of weddings like that, all masked up. One in particular, was unbearable, watching an ex-girlfriend marry the guy she’d started going out with just after me. I don’t know why I went. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy for them, it just hurt a lot, and I needed somebody to know how awfully painful it was. Not the kind of thing you can bring up at a wedding, is it? Especially that one.

Oh and then some well-wisher would say something like ‘You’ll be next, don’t worry’ - which erm… really tugs at the mask doesn’t it? How do you know? Why are you saying that? Am I just some lost cause in your terrible terrible quest to buy another hat, or eventually be able to say you had something to do with it? Am I allowed to repay you the favour and say the same thing to you at a funeral? Am I?

I sometimes wish I’d been braver in those moments.

Anyway, we act. It hurts, but we act. I feel a bit like that today. It’s not that I don’t mean it if I say ‘congrats’ or ‘fantastic news!’ - I do mean it. The trouble is that it hurts to say it, and it hurts to admit it, and the nature of it means that I can’t let you know any of that - not today. Probably not ever. Rejoicing with those who rejoice is not always as easy as it sounds.

I did get looks at that wedding. The bride’s mother gave me a look that was one part sympathy, two parts relief. That didn’t exactly help. The bride and groom of course only had eyes for each other, which is, let’s face it, how it should be. I was friends with lots of people there - I wonder now whether any of them could have spotted what was up with me. I see now that it would have been more dignified to have stayed at home, or to have gone on a long adventure instead, where I didn’t have to worry about it. I was young, and I had no way of knowing that I would eventually be alright and that Sammy was waiting.

So, back to it. ‘So happy for you’. And the thing is I really am - because it’s possible these days to hold opposite emotions in your heart at the same time. The act isn’t really an act, just a kind of overcoming of one over the other - a triumph of other over the self.

Though in the secret, in the tideswept sandcastle remains, or out there in the shouty woods, it’s okay to cry too.

BIFF’S HILL VALLEY

I had to walk from the station to the bus stop in town the other night. It was because I’d been late back from London (team dinner, vegan restaurant, really interesting chat, but also one for another time)…

Anyway, I ambled out through the barriers, rucksack on back, hands in coat pockets, and I stepped into the cool, fresh night air.

It’s so odd how much our town centre has changed. Not just since I was a boy, I mean even in the last few years! Shops I knew that were once smartly trimmed and neatly arranged, boarded up. One had even gone altogether, turned into rubble behind grubby blue hoardings. Litter blew between the taxis, fast-food cardboard and rolling cans dribbling with horrible lager.

“Scuse me mate,”

“Hey could you spare us a little change?”

“I just need it for a cup of tea.”

“Hey, you got coins?”

I never know what you’re supposed to do.

It had been raining too, so grimy puddles were reflecting from all the potholes and the kerbs. And lights everywhere! The white glare of a dozen chicken shops, the headlamps of buses, the street lamps and safety lighting, the neon glow of Nando’s and Nero and Burger King and Zorba’s fish bar. I found myself wondering what on Earth someone from the long distant past would make of their quiet market town made luminous! It was enough to give me a headache.

I felt sad about all this. I felt terribly sad. It reminded me a bit of Marty McFly in 1985a.

At the bus stop, with the smell of rotting waste in the air, I found myself looking hopefully at the church behind the graveyard.

How long had it been there? What had changed around it? What had changed within it? What had those 900-year-old stones seen?

Trees whispered, litter blew. Rain spattered and the 33 bus drove into view - past the new Italian and the old dive where I’d once gotten furious at a pub quiz. That seems a lifetime ago. Bright lights aboard the 33 too.

Are we supposed to wait for the bus to take us home? You know, in the midst of all the sadness and the decay? Is that life? Or are we meant to do something about all this litter and homelessness and despair?

There was the church - the Minster - quietly stuck in the middle of Biff’s Hill Valley; ancient, silent, almost prayerful - in an incongruous world that used to be so different. It remains. The church remains. There was I, standing over the low wall, boarding the 33 for home.

I’d ignored those homeless people asking for money. I really don’t ever know what the right thing is to do, but I had blanked them. Sigh.

The bus rumbled into gear as I sat down. Homeward bound then. Rain streaked down the dark windows.

SEPTEMBER CAME WITH RAINBOWS

September came with rainbows. It’s fair enough, I suppose - one side of the sky in brilliant summer; the other a darkened mass of stormy cloud. Rain fell out of one half and was lit by the other, as the sun beamed low this afternoon. A good old double rainbow was inevitable - a sort of bridge between the two seasons.

Oh we’ll still get a hot day or two I shouldn’t wonder. That’s how September rolls. But slowly and surely, the nights are colder, the stars brighter, and the wind bears its teeth.

I was thinking about a friend I haven’t seen in a while. I have a few now - people I miss greatly. Sigh. There’s nothing to be done. It is gravity, I think, the bending away of friendships. Those who move, those who change, those who just outgrow the things you can’t. And those who outgrow you. That’s the most painful kind. Someone should have warned me.

I’d enjoy painting a rainbow. It’s probably quite difficult to get that exact specific curve right - then the blending of the colours. Get it right though and I bet it looks great; satisfying to let your brush swing across the canvas, then edge in all the yellow greens and the purply blues. Maybe I’ll have a go sometime.

Seasons change. I miss my friend. I miss all kinds of people. The only thing to be done is to make rainbows from the changing season. It takes both you see, the old and the new, the sun and the storm.  And it’s so nice to see a bit of colour every now and then, isn’t it?