Down at the Bottom of the Garden

Early today I was offered salvation by a boy in a white shirt and black tie, he asked "What's the most important thing in your life?". All I could think of was the fact I'd just eaten one finger of Twirl and saved the rest for later, and whether or not that makes me King of Everything or whether it further marks out my decent into adulthood.

He had an American accent, both him and his friend, who was busy exclaiming his disbelief in other's disbelief. I wonder if it was just a coincidence, or if this particular faith based organisation actually fly over agents to recruit on the mean streets of Preston, and do they do this because they have no locally based affiliates, or because they believe that the use of home grown talent is essential to the success of the mission. Maybe it's the accent, maybe it's hard to take someone seriously with a familiar North English accent, or it's too easy to brush them aside. The sincerity and movie star tones of someone who learned to talk in the US of A however, catches your attention, makes you think Bruce Willis is talking to you and so you better damn well listen to what he has to say.

Maybe. It didn't work on me though really, I didn't even break stride, just continued on home full of Twirl based musings and the dilemma of whether I should, as he might have said, 'take a nap' when i got in, or soldier on through. His question did hang there a little, but only as much as a recent expulsion of gas from the digestive system, rather than an in use noose.

Homicide Fidelity

There's a hierarchy of sentiment in pop songs that seems a little misplaced. 'I need you', is considered superior to 'I want you'. 'I would die for you / can't live without you', is believed more potent when serenading your potential mate than 'I'd like to live for you / with you'. To claim that you are 'nothing without him/her', suggests somehow that the person in question is more important to you than if you claimed that you 'felt more complete when they're around' or even, if we're pandering to the dramatic, are 'everything' with them. 

Are we stalkers because we listen to pop music, or do we listen to pop music because we are stalkers?

The singers spurt out these sentiments with vim and vigour, eyes closed, fists clutched hard against hearts, we join in while we do the washing up, only with a little less exuberance, for fear of getting soap suds on our tops. Our George's thought police would have a field day with all this flying around. A lover or a fighter? Same thing you're honour, throw 'em in the cells and don't let 'em out 'til St Swithun's Day.

I admit, it's possible that a love song which read 'I find you attractive physically, mentally and spiritually and your particular personality makes me feel a little better about myself and the world. The fact that you seem to have some connection to me is definitely a positive thing in my life, and whilst I'm sure I could quite easily live without you and, had I not met you, I can't imagine I'd have spent all my days trying to fill a you shaped hole, but as you are around, I'd prefer you to stay around.' might not fly off the shelves quite as fast as 'I Can't Live (If Living is Without You)', but I'd feel a whole lot better about my kids listening to it. 

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!