The Mystery of a Speeding Heart

Capital cities I have been to, however briefly: London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Bucharest, Sofia, Reykjavik.

That's my intro and I'm sticking to it. I may have chosen to do it to show off my travels, to paint myself as a man-of-the-world, or at least man-of-northern-and-a-little-bit-of-eastern-Europe. I may have chosen it to suggest that what comes next comes not from some country boy who has never seen a big city before and as such is too overwhelmed to really pass the comments he's about to... erm, pass. I probably did it because I just like lists.

London. I went to London this week. Not for the first time, but you get a fresh take on a place every time you visit, same as you get a fresh take on a person every time you meet them, well, at least for the first four times, people don't have as much depth as cities. 

London is not my favourite city, but it's better than Paris, which seems to be entirely based around pouring too much salt in your dinner and worshipping a giant pylon, personally I blame the wine. London does have an incredible appeal though, and it's one that its inhabitants probably hardly ever see, one that a lot of tourists probably miss, with their maps, destinations and plans. Everyone has plans in London, everybody needs to be somewhere. It's a terrible place to be when you need to be somewhere, it's crowded and confusing, it's noisy and over complicated, it's constantly running out of time. Look into the eyes of a Londoner, they're tired and they're beaten, they have to spend hours of their days fighting for position and pushing through a crowd. Unless they work in Pret of course, where they smile, they smile the painful smile of a being with their most sensitive body parts inches from a bear trap that will snap closed if the edges of their mouth ever drop in angle. Pret a Manger is the gateway to hell, though they do make nice food.

My point. The best thing you can do in London is get lost. Have yourself a vague destination with no strict time scale for arriving there, throw away your map, and go on instinct. There is something impressive, interesting or entertaining around every corner of our capital city, and only half of it gets in the guide books. The buildings, the squares, the shops, the parks, the people, the pianos. Then if you're really lucky, you'll chance upon the river, the shores of which make up one of the most incredible sights on this earth. Nothing makes you feel more humble and more proud at the same time as what lines the Thames, I challenge you to challenge that and mean it.

Look at me, gushing hyperbole.

To sum up though, don't go to London with an agenda, and don't try and go for a night out, the place closes at 11pm, probably because everyone is tired from their agendas, if you go, get lost.

This blog is dedicated to everyone that had to wait an hour for me because I'd left my map at the hotel.

I write small blogs because I have a small mind.

My spelling gets worse on a daily basis, just like my vocabulary, my memory, and my imagination. I'm seriously considering running screaming into A & E and shouting "HELP! MY BRAIN IS TURNING TO MUSH!" But A & E is quite far away.

It's the little things.

When I was a kid.. 7 or 8, I'd only ever known one Sarah*, I thought it was the greatest name in the world, and that I would definitely marry a girl called Sarah and call my daughter Sarah, obviously the 7 year old me didn't consider this might be both confusing and a little weird, and rather over optimistic.

With every new Sarah I meet, my heart still sinks a little.

*This probably isn't true, but both my adult memory and my childhood attention span have colluded to make it so in my head.

Pride, the Final Frontier

Doors. The natural enemy of man.

As long as there has been man, there have been doors. Apart from before there were walls, which came after man, unless you subscribe to the theory that God created walls and man simply worked out how to put a door in them, which I think is a belief only really held popularly in Rhyl.

So, there was me, and there was the door, and the door wouldn't open. I pushed, I pulled, I yelled OPEN SESAME, which annoyingly didn't attract any attention what-so-ever. I wagered it was one of those you had to press a button to unlock, if I rang the bell maybe the secretary would 'buzz me in' so to speak. But no, no obvious bell/intercom paraphernalia to be seen. I just don't know what to do.

Then, as if by magic, a small child appears on the other side, he must be about 5 years old, certainly no older than 6, but he looks at me, I look at him, and I know, despite his years, he understands my predicament. He heads to the left of the door, there is a release button! He pushes it. The door is released, my nightmare is about to be over. I grab the door handle and I pull...

Nothing.

I push!

Nothing.

Crap.

Then, the child looks at me again, but not with the same understanding. Now there is confusion on his face, he doesn't know why the door isn't opening either. Maybe it's broken. That would explain it. That would get us both of the hook. We won't have been bested by the door, it is simply failing in its purpose of being a door, it has become, if anything, a wall, and as we all know from our friends in North Wales, walls are made by God, in fact, walls ARE God. Neither of us can be expected to triumph over God, nobody will judge us for this.

No. It's not broken. The child's confused expression has faded and, well, things are not looking good for me at all. Looking back I don't think he actually sighed, but he may as well have. He looked to the floor, reached out an arm, and pushed the door open without difficulty. Then he looked up at me with that expression.

Now I see this expression quite often. I see it when I stall my car and get it stuck in the middle of a pedestrian crossing. I see it when a girl realises I'm just not going to be able to rip that condom packet open by myself. I see it when I've opened my mouth to share a common confession and it quickly becomes apparent that it is in fact 'just me'. I see it most of all when I drop things, all over the floor, scattering and rolling about the place. I am, in many ways, not an impressive man. I'm used to being looked at with that combination of weary pity and slight disgust. But usually from people closer to my age, people who have had the time and the practice to master the simple things I seem to find so difficult.

"Thank you.", I managed to say.

"It's OK." and off he walked, i didn't look, but he must have been shaking his head as he went.

Like a kid in a sweet shop.

So today was day two of Operation Do What Everyone Else Has Been Doing For Ages And Make A Big Deal of It. And the challenge is so far staying intact. I got up when my alarm went off, well, almost, certainly within reason considering the time I went to bed. I did a full days work, ate fruit and veg, spent the evening getting on with a project instead of wasting it and I'm about to go to bed.

Having nothing to write is starting to get very frustrating, who says misery breeds creativity (or something), I'm far more creative when I've got nothing to moan about, when I can just let nonsense fill my head and pop out again in.. in... Oh, I can't even finish the sentence.

Maybe this healthy living isn't what it's cracked up to be, I mean, it's been 48 hours!

Duty Free

I promised myself I'd write something today, so this is it. I don't really have anything on my mind worth a blog, but I'm tired of putting things off.

I promised myself a few things today, as we often do after a heavy weekend which leaves us feeling like left over spuds. Obviously not drinking ever again was in there. Well, not quite, but taking a bit of time off to let the humours settle themselves seems well and truly in order, plus the hangovers are too often framed in regrets of late, which isn't so good for the mojo. May as well combine this with a bit of health too. None of that exercise nonsense, but how hard can it be to actually stick to your 5 a day? Even horses manage that. So, y'know, all the same promises that get made by half the adult population once a month or so. Nothing too interesting, but probably worth while anyway, like Weetabix, or socks.

I'm pretty tired and, I think we can all see that this isn't going as well as I'd like it to. So let's just consider this a promise kept and hope things pick up tomorrow.

A stiff space-bar can take all the fun out of typing.

There are no take-aways in Bretherton, at least not that I can see, not even a chippy. So the people who live there have to plan their tea every day, or get in a car. That's a big responsibility to take on as a human being, to never be able to just 'not be arsed'. It's troubling.

My world is full of little nuggets like these, tit bits, if you will (should that be tid bits? tit bits sounds more fun). Little happenings or noticings that, while not being entirely uninteresting in themselves, are neither big nor developed enough to become a tale to tell. You can't entertain your mates or impress a girl by telling them that there are no take-aways in a village they've likely never heard of and that this makes you feel for the local residents. At very best it shows your compassionate side, at very least is tells them you're a fatty at heart, but whichever way, it's gonna have most people's eyes darting round the room looking for someone better to talk to.

For instance, just from today I could relate the tale of how the hesitations of a learner driver left me stranded at the lights and embarrassingly placed in the middle of a pedestrian crossing, or how I got replies to every text I'd sent during the day in the same 2 minute spell, whilst obviously I was driving. Or I could spin the saga of my seat-of-the-pants run to the loo roll shop and back that could have gone devastatingly wrong at any moment. This is all good solid stuff, for at least 2 sentences, but it's not going to win me a congratulatory pint or a journey to the centre of some knickers.

It's a shame.

I moved house recently, I guess that's probably the interesting thing I should talk about. I've moved house lots of times though, and as with most things in life, each repetition is less interesting than the last, less to learn, less surprises, pretty much just more humping stuff up and down stairs. I did rediscover my love for the feeling that physical labour gives you, and how much better that first pint at the end of the day feels when you've actually earned it, but that's really about as much blood as I can get from that particular stone.

What I have done is moved back in with myself, as opposed to sharing with a friend. Now it comes as no surprise that by-my-self is my natural state of living, as a great devotee of 'the easy life' it just seems the logical way to live. But I have to confess that it is taking a little getting used to this time round, and I'm very worried about my Pro Evo form suffering.


It's probably worth noting that while writing this I am also shouting at my TV screen. Grand Designs is the program, these people commissioned a beautiful layered wooden staircase that was built by an artist as a sculpture, took 4 months to build and cost £40,000. Then they painted it, matt white, the whole thing. If I'd been the artist I'd have torched it where it stood as soon as the first layer went on. Very annoying.

Somebody has painted the wooden beams in this flat too, the ones I continually bang my head against as I fail to get used to the fact that I now live in a slope-roofed loft conversion, that, whilst a very nice space to be in, can be hazardous for the tall and dim-witted. They've painted them a kind of stone colour though, so it's ok mostly, and the huge skylights that let me look at the moon, and anyone on the roof, more than make up for it. They've also left in a handy metal arch thing, should I ever feel the need to hang myself, which is nice.