Day 26: Fox or Plum

 
This morning the woman on the treadmill next to me smelt foxy.  Not Jimi Hendrix foxy.  More like a dog fox pissing on a clump of nettles in hot sunshine.  Strong and rank, and it made my nostrils flare.  Later as I turned out of my road, I passed a man who looked at me guiltily.  I was puzzled, until I hit a pocket of arse-gas so pungent that I laughed out loud.  Outside the station, a faceful of hot, dirty bus breath.  On Ludgate Hill a whiff of London's undercarriage - a blend of shit, rotting vegetables and damp sour newsprint, with an ancient base note of plague pit.

Last January I lost my sense of smell (and taste) for two weeks.  It was miserable.  My appetite disappeared as food became disconcerting - just a serious of textures.  No sense of what I should or shouldn't put in my mouth.  I'd never consciously realised how important smell is to me. 

I was lucky to grow up on a fruit farm.  Dizzying drifts of blossom in spring - cherry, plum, apple, pear.  High summer - the jammy scent of the packing shed, trays of glossy cherries and sun-warmed strawberry punnets.  Plums, heady and sugary, oozing amber resin.  The flowery, crisp smell of an orchard of ripe apples.  And then the unmistakeable cider tang of rotting windfalls lying in the wet grass, heralding autumn's march into winter.  Bringing different smells.  Cold earth, sawn branches, bonfire smoke.  Tractor diesel fumes hanging heavy in the damp air.  Finally, that one day when the seasons turn, and the fizz of sap is on the breeze.  It is a great privilege to smell a year of Kentish fruit.  I miss it.  Hugely.  But if I concentrate hard enough, I can still smell it in my mind. 

I love my nose.  Whether it's fox or plum, I'm equally grateful.

Day 25: My afternoon with Marilyn

Today starts, sullen and dank.  Thanks to an inconsiderately late piece of rescheduling, I have a free day - a brilliant opportunity to make new friends, start an exciting project, do a good deed for a neighbour.  Instead I slink off to the cinema alone, and bury myself in the darkness of the back row to watch 'My Week With Marilyn'.  I'm an off-peak fan - I prefer daylight hours, when normal people should be at work.  And I like to slip into my seat and fade into the fabric silently - no popcorn, nachos or slurpy drink.  Today there are pensioners dotted about.  They mark their territory with strong old lady perfume, crackly boiled sweet wrappers, the pop of tupperware, and constant chat.  After every advert and trailer - fluttering and clucking, like roosting hens.  The new John Lewis advert is cause for much general approval. 

But not from me.  I sit in the darkness revolted by the saccharine yarn - the child who can't wait for Christmas Day, and crosses the days off on the calendar before he can open his presents give his parents his badly-wrapped gift.  (What an unexpected twist - see how those basilisk-eyed ad execs toy with our emotions!).  And the soundtrack is horrible.  A fey lisping version of my favourite Smith's song - the bittersweet 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want'.  A broken man's last-ditch prayer for luck to change, and NOTHING to do with Christmas or presents.  So my afternoon with Marilyn gets off to a slightly sour start.  The film isn't brilliant - not one of those that sucks you into the screen and removes you from yourself - but it's enough to change my mood.  And as I leave the cinema, the weather has picked up.  A skittish wind flips my coat over my head, and blows me home, throwing leaves around yobbishly.  Bold and rude.  I like it.

In the kitchen, the reliable pleasure of onion frying with spices.  Turmeric - sweet, dusty, more than yellow.  Cumin, coriander, ginger.  Sweetened with muscovado; sharpened with lime.  Heated with chilli; calmed with coconut milk.  Equations I understand; balance I love.   

So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows, it would be the first time

Day 24: Sports Indirect

Off to Sports Direct - a shop whose customers rarely look like they have any Direct contact with Sports.  Inside, Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody!' is playing (a seasonal first - like hearing the first cuckoo of Spring...).  Aggressive use of tinsel.  A changing cubicle that looks like it should be equipped with a sharps bin.  But a swimming costume for the princely sum of £7.99.  For which I am prepared to be assaulted by Noddy Holder and spray snow. 

This is the first day that feels properly like winter.  Bone cold.  I wash bedding and take it to the launderette to dry, with the justification that their big tumble drier is by far the quickest option.  In truth, I just want to sit with my back pressed up against the hot glass, reading peacefully while the drum rumbles around behind me.  Like leaning on a massive, purring tiger.  But safer. 

There's a fabric and haberdashery shop next to the launderette.  It's tiny and claustrophobic.  Packed with bolts of cloth, ribbons, zips, buttons and two fierce elderly ladies who tot things up inaccurately with pencil on scraps of paper.  They know their Petersham ribbon from their bias binding.  In the window are a selection of cushion covers - dogs, kittens, and tractors.  Yes.  TRACTORS.  Not embroidered, but printed.  Someone has designed SPECIFIC CUSHION PANELS with tractors on.  Here they are - look at the tractor borders!  Stylised hay bales!  Simply fold, seam and stuff.  Then admire your noble Massey Ferguson before sitting on it.  Agriculture AND comfort!  The ladies at the shop have embellished their version with a deep tartan frill around the edge.  It is truly magnificent.  That's Christmas sorted for my nearest and dearest...

Day 23: Missing Uncle Monty

Weird dark dreams punctured by the unfamiliar silvery shiver of wind chimes, dancing frantically in the high winds.  Leave Tufnell Park to be blown up to Highgate for breakfast.  Caffe Nero.  (Where I inherit the trashy bits of the Sunday Times from a man who will not deign to read a supplement.  Hooray.)  Not a patch on the very first breakfast I ever had in Highgate, years ago at The Raj - a rickety, mismatched cafe and tea room that used to exist above a second hand shop on the High Street.  It's been shut for years, but a ghost remains in the old teapot sign that still hangs from the wall outside.   The owner was fat, theatrical and bearded; his cat, black and snaggle-toothed; his food - questionable.  We went there for the spectacle - the outrage when the cat licked Nutella out of the jar; the impromptu poetry, the sheer Uncle Monty-ishness of it all.

An old friend, and hours of rambling across the Heath.  Low sun, dogs and the well-heeled of Hampstead.  We obviously look like we know where we're going - three separate sets of people ask us for directions.  The Spaniards.  Kenwood.  Parliament Hill.  We are bold but approximate.  Vague but convincing.  (I hope we didn't mislead anyone...)  The wind has whipped the last of the leaves off the trees - skeleton branches herald winter.  I drive home via Golders Green, through a video game of obstacles.  Double-parked SUVs; car doors opening suddenly; darkly hooded teenagers loping across the road, phone-focused and oblivious; dazzling high-spec headlamps on full-beam. 

Sunday night on the sofa.  Red wine.  Door shut, curtains drawn.   

Day 22: Wet Kitten; Big Dog

St Albans to Acton - at the wrong time of day, a world of traffic pain.  However, at seven thirty on a Saturday morning, an effortless flight through deserted roads, like it's the 1920s and I am Lord Sebastian Flyte motoring up to London.  To Jude's and the first of many serendipitous parking spots.  And then to Muswell Hill with a laden boot.  Another spot on St James's Lane, unloading the car amongst the ghosts of my past - then coffee, homemade biscuits and full-throttle enthusiasm with Jude's cousin Ruth. 

Back to Acton (by eleven o'clock, definitely 2011 - no more 1920) to make a Plaster of Paris mould of my face.  Jude starts to apply  damp Mod Roc bandages to my forehead, but pauses to smear my hair unbecomingly flat with Vaseline and cling film.  It's difficult to laugh under a rapidly hardening mask, but at the words 'You know when you wet a kitten...' it's impossible not to.  The layers build, and I am covered, except for my nostrils.  My mouth and even my eyes - plaster pushed right into every contour.  There's something deeply relaxing about the process - surrendering your face to someone you trust, and then all your awareness reduced to the sensation of the heavy wet strips, warming and hardening to a protective camouflage carapace, as you hide underneath. 

Ealing, and fantastic cheap Chinese food - glossy black bean sauce, and loads of MSG casting its reliably bewitching spell over my taste buds.  More masks - a whole afternoon of them.  So satisfying to see a roomful of twitchy, slightly fractious people slowly yield to the calm and charm of clay, papier mache, and Jude's patient guidance.

To Tufnell Park and some fantastic dog rehabilitation, courtesy of Storm (see right) - a huge Rottweiler/French bull mastiff cross.  Terrifying to look at, but gentle, funny and obedient.  Undid years of dog-fear in one evening.

Day 21: Melon Cauli

Today I woke up feeling melancholy.  Not depressed - that's tough.  But melancholy - which I'm OK with.  What's the difference between the two?  For me (and I realise it's a very subjective interpretation), depression is flat and hopeless, trapped in an tunnel of internal monologue.  Melancholy is poetic gloom* - stark and sad, but darkly enjoyable.  Like pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts.  I've always leant this way - as a child I had a musical box whose lonely metallic notes thrilled me tragically. I used to lie on my bed, turning the handle slowly to drag the tune out as I wept self-indulgently (camp).  The musical box was eventually confiscated (unhealthy) but the tendency remains.  Graveyards, solitude, ruins.  The pure, wintry sound of choral music - Stanford's 'Beati Quorum Via'; Warlock's 'Bethlehem Down'.  I could never wear Clinique's 'Happy' on principle - it seems like a desperate denial and an imbalance.  Somehow, if I admit the melancholy and give it some attention, it lifts of its own accord.  Ignore it and it grows into something unpleasant, needy and intransigent.  Don't want to get all Sith about it, but sometimes it's good to turn to the dark side. 

(* Or a very bland vegetarian main course)

To the City for a job with a super-twitchy client.  But wreathed in smiles when it turns out that I can actually do what I do.  Who knew?  St Paul's has such an odd vibe at the moment.  Paternoster Square is all barricaded off, because of the Occupy London protesters.  If you want to go into any of the shops surrounding the square, you have to be issued with a laminated and numbered permit, which allows you to pass through a narrow gap in the barriers, and grants you access to that shop only.  It's deserted.  Friday lunch time in the City, and there's nobody around.  Just security staff, leaves drifting across the cobbles in the November wind - and me, braving the weirdness for the sake of a falafel wrap, and a bag of Twiglets.  It's interesting - slightly disturbing and Orwellian.  I'm just a number on a pass, man.   

Home with the washing machine rumbling and the fridge humming.  Outside it's dark.  As is the chocolate in front of me.  It's bittersweet with a salty edge.  Like most of my favourite people.

Day 20: Sim Sala Bim

Today a man gave me a tiny wooden box.  Inside was a red button.  He said 'Press this button, and I will appear'.  True.  As he said this, I was fully aware that this was a once-off.  A combination of words that I am unlikely to ever hear said to me again.  (Along with 'Infiltrate the meeting and challenge them to Highland Games' and 'I've always thought I had eighteenth century ankles').  Anyway, back to the box.  For four hours today I had my own personal genie.  I didn't press the button.  But I liked knowing that I could.   

The box came courtesy of the Woodlands Hotel conference facilities.  The genie was a nice man in a suit called Janek, capable of granting an admittedly limited spectrum of wishes involving tea, coffee, pastries or flipchart paper.  That's not the point.  The point is the concept of the box and the button.  That if you need help, all you need to do is call.  Perhaps that's what it's like for people who have a faith.  Pressing the button is a prayer.

One of my favourite programmes as a child was 'Mr Benn'.  Mainly because of the shopkeeper, who appears 'as if by magic' in every episode, to suggest exactly the right costume for Mr Benn's adventure.  He is a catalyst, an enigmatic wizard offering transformation on a hanger.  (Is it any surprise that as an adult I find wearing a suit unbearably claustrophobic?  Blame the shopkeeper.)  For me, the most important thing is that Mr Benn chooses to go into the shop.  He could walk past, and go about his besuited work.  But he chooses the shop.  That's a bolder move than pressing a button.

Button or shop?  Shop.  Every time. 
   

Day 19: Visiting Francis Bacon



I wake to the sound of people scraping frost off their cars - first time this year.  A morning run, while the sky is still streaked with pink, to Old Gorhambury Manor and back.  The route cuts through a private estate - there's rarely more than the odd farm vehicle on the road.  Today there are no cars.  And no other runners.  Just the sheep and cattle grazing peacefully, pheasants coughing in alarm and high overhead a pair of red kites, wheeling and soaring.

Past the Roman amphitheatre, and the rolling ploughed fields.  Up the hill to the farm,  scattering chickens in the courtyard, and spooking the thoroughbreds in the paddock.  Through the Palladian parkland, past the walled garden, to the remains of Francis Bacon's sixteenth century manor, that Elizabeth I criticised for 'being too small'.  What still stands is a fraction of the original, but the ghost outlines of walls are still visible on the ground.  I fell in love with this place the first time I came here.  It has a unique atmosphere - a surprising warmth and grace.  I've spent hours here, wandering, sitting, thinking.  Even if I'm just passing - as I am today - I still feel the need to run up the steps to what would have been the front door.  Just look at them - they demand it. 

Today I heard my first Christmas song in a shop.  Paul McCartney - 'Wonderful Christmas Time'.  Or as I prefer to call it 'Premature Christmas Time', given that it's November.  Probably my fault for being in Hobbycraft.  (Can't believe I'm admitting to having been in there.  At least I was buying Plaster of Paris (cool).  Not cup-cake decorations (lame).)

An old lady asked me to help her today - I had to zip her into her coat, like a toddler.  She looked very stained and wild and shambolic.  I rather suspect that she didn't actually need help with her zip, but she did need human contact.  I'm glad that she chose to ask me - that she thought I might help, and I was given the chance to prove her right.  (Did hold my breath as I was doing the zipping.  I'm not Jesus.)

Day 18: Bango Mango

Today I am restless.  Picking stuff up, putting it down.  Pacing.  There's an edgy crackle of static in the atmosphere.  Like something continually tugging on my sleeve, but just below the level of my consciousness, so I can't see what it is.  Prickly.  Interesting.  Reminds me of the way my old flat in Muswell Hill used to feel.  Odd things happened there - baffling and illogical.  Appliances turning themselves on.  Footsteps.  Things disappearing and turning up in ridiculous places.  We pretty soon gave up trying to explain the inexplicable and just got used to living with it.  Phlegmatic for the most part; with the occasional (and understandable) freak out.  If you've ever lived in a place like that, you'll know what I'm talking about. 

Have tried to distract myself from the restlessness with cashew nuts and web-based research.  Mainly into the symbolic meaning of the cashew nut.  Not much to report, except that as a food offering during Chinese New Year celebrations, cashews mean wealth or gold.  As do dried apricots, bamboo shoots, pumpkins, oranges, mandarins, kumquats, fried bean curd, clams, egg rolls, grapes and stuffed cabbage.  There's a rather literal theme running through all this - things that are either yellowish (like GOLD!) or round (like COINS!).  I was a little thrown by the stuffed cabbage, but apparently the shape is reminiscent of an INGOT (still literal, if a little unconvincing).  Other less literal offertory food stuff include prawns - liveliness, and onions - cleverness.  Good.

In other news, I am extremely pleased that a shop has opened on our high street called 'Bango Mango'.  (Who wouldn't be?  What would you rather do - nip into WHSmith, or Bango Mango?  No contest.)  However, I wonder if they are aware that in some circles, 'Bango Mango' means a sex act involving breasts (aka 'mangos').  Judging by the cut of the dresses they are selling, they may well be...  But just to confuse things, 'Mango Bango' is a health-giving fruit drink, and also an attractive and popular shade of orange nail varnish.  There's a world of difference depending on whether your bango comes before your mango. 

Incidentally, a mango is yellowish and sort-of round.  The spit image of a coin.  Be lucky.

Day 17: Turn! Turn! Turn!

My day starts with a routine dentist visit.  I'm expecting to see Adriana, the terrifying and brilliantly brutal Lithuanian hygienist.  Half an hour with her and you're cast back out onto the street - shriven, sandblasted and mute, with singing gums and ears.  But she's on leave and her replacement is NO SUBSTITUTE.  She informs me that she likes to evaluate how her patients 'approach brushing their teeth'.  To this end, I'm furnished with an electric toothbrush and a set of plaster teeth, and told to demonstrate.  I point out that normally I brush my teeth IN MY HEAD so cannot accurately replicate my 'approach'.  My idiocy is managed by a patient explanation of WHY she wants me to introduce Tina Toothbrush to Tommy Tooth.  I start to feel the excess gamma radiation building, but I stop in time, and come back from the green, getting out of the chair as I calmly explain why I will be calling a halt to the appointment.  Given my previous, this is progress.

The highlight of my day is a visit to St Albans Museum (I know how to rock out).  I keep walking past it and I've never been in.  At the moment they have a special 1960s exhibition.  This has finally drawn me, because for the last few weeks my ear worm has been The Byrds - 'Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There is A Season)'.  Until I looked for some Byrds artwork just now, I didn't realise that, in the title of this song, 'Turn' is a triple exhortation followed by exclamation marks.  I envisaged commas.  Nowhere near the urgency!  Urgency!  Urgency!  (Or is it just an echo? Cho?  Ho?).

I have the museum to myself.  And it's brilliant.  Bits and pieces dug out of local attics.  Photos of Beat girls and boys in the market place - pea coats and polo necks and eyeliner.  Board games and records, Hornsea pottery and magazines.  An interview with Mary Quant - 'I just want to make everything nicer'.  (Amen, sister.)  The music scene in St Albans - Donovan plays The Peahen!  Maddy Prior at The Cock!  Donovan at The Peahen again!  Flowers and guitars and festival nudity.  There's something very moving and bittersweet in the relics of excitement - a modern world now grown old. 

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

Day 16: A1

Road trip to Rutland on a white-out foggy day.  Striking out on the A1 past my favourite road-side emporium, The Adult Pit Stop near Tempsford, which never fails to entertain me - as anyone who came to my last Edinburgh show will know.  As the countryside deepens and broadens, suicide attempts by pheasants increase, and the hedgerows get wilder.  A roundabout centrepiece of graphic tangled teasels - no parks departmental lobelias and petunias here.  Through the mist, everything is sepia toned.  Like 1970s hand-thrown pottery, brown-speckled under a milky glaze.  Uppingham, Stamford - picture postcard market towns in mellow yellow stone.  Traditional butchers, with plaster pigs proudly bearing trays of herby sausages.  Tea rooms with doilies.  Dusty secondhand bookshops.  Parking for 20p an hour.   

Lunch at The Old White Hart in Lyddington.  Open fire, knick-knacks, utterly traditional.  Not gastropub, or stripped or retro.  Just comfortable.  Local families with sporty children - all rugby shirts and urgent requests for crumble.  The only thing missing was a sleepy dog by the fire that I could ruffle with my foot. 

Good to see different scenery.  A breakfast whim turned into a breathing space.

Day 15: Fringe Report

At the hairdressers yesterday, I was very careful to ask for 'not much off the fringe'.  One wash later, and it's bounced up so high that I look permanently surprised* - and now uncannily like St Pancras (see Day Twelve).  Perhaps in writing the words 'brutal fringe trim', I unwittingly harnessed the Powers Of Manifestation.  (In which case - world peace, clean sheets and a new front fender.)

(* Of course, it may just be that every time I look in the mirror, I truly AM surprised by the shortness of my fringe.  I hope nobody has to take me seriously over the next couple of weeks.  Including me.)

A very constructive Saturday morning.  I finished and submitted my tax return AND went for a run.  Which makes it possibly one of the most constructive Saturday mornings of my life.  I should point out here that I have been off the booze for a week, and eating vegan food as an experiment.  So far, the results are interesting.  I'm sleeping much better and having more interesting dreams (and being more constructive on a Saturday morning).  On the negative side - vegan cake (oxymoron).  I like food far too much to continue this experiment for longer than two weeks - it's just too limited.  Will aim to stay off the booze a while longer, and to generally eat more vegetarian food.  But no more vegan cake.  Ever. 

St Albans has the most committed busker ever.  He's unbelievably old and frail-looking, but every Saturday he stands at the top of French Row, dressed in a matelot shirt and beret, and plays the accordion.  All weathers.  He's a local hero (so much so that a cursory internet search turns up this photo of him immediately).  Malcolm Gladwell suggests in The Tipping Point that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become excellent at something.  This dude has done way more than 10,000 hours - musical excellence is still elusive, but he's cracked it as far as commitment is concerned.  And constructive Saturday mornings.

Long may he continue.

Day 14: Pigeon Thinking

Unexpected free day today.  Was meant to be going on a meditation weekend but that's been postponed, so the doors of my mind will remain shut for another two weeks.  Went for a long walk - trees, ducks, and, very enjoyably, a pigeon crossing a stream via stepping stones - seemingly baffled by the one gap that was too wide for pigeon-hopping capabilities.  A good three minutes of really hard pigeon thinking (I could almost see the single cog turning) resulted in defeat, and a slow hop back to the bank.  Dude, you can fly!  Come on!  (I sense a very banal life metaphor...). 

Back up Holywell Hill past one of my favourite houses.  It's unbelievably run-down - you can't tell from this picture, but all the paint has worn off the woodwork, and the porch is sagging, with a dirty great hole in its roof.  Someone lives there - you can see grubby curtains, and a standard lamp, and I really want to know who - but not enough to knock on the door, just in case reality disappoints.  (I fully expect Miss Havisham.)  I did an internet search, and the only name I could find associated with the house was a William Storey in 1871 - listed in the national census as actor/dancer/comedian/scene painter.  The nineteenth century version of actress/model/whatever.  I like to imagine him representing flamboyantly in the streets - a St Albanian Oscar Wilde, with a poppy or a lily in his hand. 

Talking of which, today I saw a sign for a Festive Vintage Fair promising 'Fabulous Stalls'.  In my mind, this means nothing less than stalls manned by the entire cast of 'Priscilla' - all feather boas, spangles and false eyelashes.  It's this Sunday, so I may just go along and report back.   

Went for a hair cut today.  It's the only time I ever read magazines.  Today I found an article about hair colour that started 'If vampires had babies, their hair would be this colour'.  (Ashy blonde, if you're interested).  Brilliant.  In so many ways. 

Day 13: Hot Raspberries

A slow trundle overland to Acton, and Jude.  Good coffee in an posh artisanal cafe to start (baroque meringues, fruit tartlets, intimidating bread), and then to the business of the day.  Mask making.  Had no idea what to expect.  The last time I made a mask was when I was five.  A paper plate transformed into a Hallowe'en pumpkin through the alchemy of orange crepe and a willing suspension of disbelief.  Things have moved on since those days.  A proper plaster face cast.  Vaseline.  Clay - wherever you want it.  More Vaseline.  Papier mache - soft scraps of scrumpled brown paper, and a finger bowl of watery PVA.  Four coats.  A fine fabric layer.  The day is finished before I notice, tea cold at my elbow.  Utterly absorbing - watching a thing emerge from nowhere.  A tangible thing.  Won't know what it's really about until the final layers of papier mache are applied, and I can paint it and give it eyes.  Can't wait to do it.  A couple of weeks ago I passed a mosaic shop in West London, and paused to watch the man inside at work, surrounded by trays of tiny coloured chips, completely immersed in the world on his workbench.  It looked so satisfying and pleasing.  As with the mask-making.  Nothing, but nothing, is more important in that moment than finding the scrap of paper that will fit perfectly around the nostrils.  Everything else fades into soft focus background.  Very, very relaxing.  I've never quite been able to face either a 'pampering day' (foofed-up French poodles) or a 'spa' (sullen therapists in white Birkenstocks) let alone the combination of a 'pampering day at a spa' (terrifying), but I 'm not sure I need to now.  I will simply mess about with papier mache instead.  Hooray and thank you, Jude.

In addition, the simple pleasure of hot raspberries (who knew?) and Greek yoghurt (again, thank you, Jude).  More than the sum of their parts. 

And my walk home from the station, passing a cluster of posh boys from St Albans school.  'Shut up, Ollie.  NOBODY values you!'  An unusual and enjoyably brutal smack-down.  And one that could only ever exist in a secure bubble where people ARE valued.  In the same way that one might call Kate Moss fat.  And for this moment I am happy for Ollie, and the fact that he is actually valued. 
 
Incidentally, the image is just one I found on the internet.  I picked it because I really liked the caption that came with it - 'Paul in the Bum Face mask'.  Quite.

 

Day 12: St Pancreas

My favourite moment of today came when a teenager asked me for directions to St Pancreas.  Not St Pancras.  ST PANCREAS.  (Yes.  The Patron Saint of Insulin and All Digestive Enzymes.  Ring doughnut for a halo, and maybe carrying a ceremonial CurlyWurly).  I've just done a search for a picture of St Pancras and this is what I've turned up.  Don't know if I'm imagining things, but I reckon with a brutal fringe trim, plus the loan of a suit of armour, and some drapery, I could do a pretty fair Pancras.  Perhaps that's what we need in these times of recession, for St P is all about jobs and health.  In addition, he can be invoked against the evils of cramp, false witness, headaches and perjury.  All this in return of offerings of PARSLEY.  I've just lost all interest. 

St Macarius has the right idea.  He really is the patron saint of sweets.  Here he is, looking far more sensibly saint-like - and clearly demonstrating pride in his latest fudge recipe.

You will probably have gathered that today has been uneventful.  To Holborn and the head office of one of Britain's largest supermarkets (the orange one), only to find that they'd got mixed up with their dates, so I turned round and went back home.  Paid for doing nothing (which is always a major result) - but at the same time, once the bullet's in the chamber, I'd prefer to fire the gun.  That's the second time in a week I've had to walk round fully-loaded with nobody to shoot at.  Itchy.  

So - back to the small pleasures of today.  A particularly GOOD bag of clementines - a rare and beautiful thing. 

The fact that until five minutes ago I've been wearing a bold orange VISITOR badge.  So I have been a visitor in my own home for the last four hours.  (On reflection, I would not come again.  The facilities are poor (no gift shop or loo paper).  And it's not very interactive.)

And the quiet.  I'm alone in the house, and it's so peaceful right now that the only things I can hear are the fan in my laptop and the hum of the fridge.  It's keeping some parsley cold for St Pancras. 

Shhhhhhhh.

Day 11: Use The Force

This morning I slept late.  It's been so long since I did this, I've stopped setting an alarm.  But today - ten to eight.  I was still fuzzy with sleep as I walked to the station.  Awake enough to enjoy the business man, suited and booted, but wearing his heart in his hand - a metal brief case decorated front and back with the album artwork from 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.  Thank you - I did enjoy the show. 

Everywhere is revving up for Christmas.  I'm not - I keep being shocked by baubles (as opposed to being Surprised By Joy...).  But other people are.  I saw someone carrying wrapped presents today.  In November.  Christmas this year reminds me of the time I was given a celeriac (how middle class).  A celeriac?  Some celeriac?  A bolus of celeriac?  Can't name it; can't cook it.  I looked at it a few times, suspiciously, and then shoved it somewhere I couldn't see it, as I didn't know what to do with it.  As with Christmas.  There are some things I love about it.  Carols - particularly the ones that have a pagan whiff of greenwood and golden sickle to them.  The silence of the streets when everyone has holed up and stopped rushing about.  Scrooge's second chance; George Bailey's angel.  And there's the stuff I don't.  Pretty much all of which involves shops.  This year I'm going to choose what I do. 

Today I saw twin suns.  Even more exciting than Chollocks (see Day Nine).  I was on the train and the sun (the proper, main one) was low in the sky.  The angle of the carriage window created a perfect reflection, so as I sat there it looked as if there were two suns - one to my right, and one to my left.  It felt like some sort of Japanese proverb, so I Googled 'twin suns' when I got home.  Overjoyed to find that it's a ancient Jedi sparring technique.  It requires 'great mastery in light saber combat, high attunement with The Force and precise timing' (source: Wookieepedia).  Clearly this is a sign.  Maybe I'm about to be called.  I'm ready.

I think I'm still half asleep.  Today has been a twilight world, suspended between reality and fiction.  It's been fun.

Day 10: Peak Manners

To Kew on the train, rattling along lazily in an off-peak manner.  The station still looks like one of those 1920s transport posters.  I don't know the crime stats, but I'm guessing they're pretty low (maybe someone stole an almond croissant back in 2006).  The National Archives are surprsingly located at the end of a residential street that is the epitome of everything that is solid and safe.  Generous red brick villas with well-maintained paint work.  Piano practice and crumpets; wisteria and coat stands.  Every front garden is lush and tended - Kew evidently takes its garden associations seriously.

I think I'm OK with the fact that I don't work at the National Archives.  Ya feel me? 

On the way home, I am approached by two Japanese women who need Tube map guidance.  There are language barriers.  We use multiple handsigns - I even employ the classic double thumbs up - and then I watch out for them, making sure they get on the correct train.  We smile; they bow.  I bow back; we wave.  We wave again as the train pulls away.  We smile broadly and wave until we can see each other no longer.  Kew has rubbed off on me.  I may be travelling in an off-peak manner, but  there's nothing off-peak about my actual manners.  I am the epitome of everything that is solid and safe.

Day 9: Slow

A quiet, slow day.  A mug of good coffee, the Sunday papers and the ruminative pleasures of a packet of Maltesers.  Several options of approach.  The Pitbull - straight-down-the-line crunch.  My Little Pony - suck the chocolate off and let the honeycomb slowly collapse into a sticky sweet puddle.  The Derren (my favourite) - bisect (incisor work) and flip both halves, honeycomb down, on the end of your tongue, where they dissolve quickly, leaving an empty chocolate carapace.  This last requires skill and precision.  It must be a neat and equal splice.  And there are risks - during bisection, the chocolate can fall off the honeycomb ball (aka 'The Magnum' - disappointing) or an uneven split can cause crumbling and erosion (messy and unprofessional).  My preferred ratio (given that there are approximately eighteen Maltesers per packet) is Pitbull 6: My Little Pony 2: The Derren 10.  One the rare occasion I get a conjoined twin (aka Chollocks) I'd always go Pitbull.  Just so you know.  Never underestimate small pleasures.

Laundry.  I salute the rogue socks that evaded the round-up by going feral and hiding behind the sofa. 

Invoices (dull).  Food shopping (mince-pie dodging).  Lunch (unambitious). 

And now on the sofa, where the socks and I are watching 'Beowulf' - the 2007 animated version.  We are enjoying it a great deal.  Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is hugely confident, and much given to nude fighting.  There's something very high status about getting naked before you whop your opponent's arse.  'Not only will I take you on, but I will do it without protective clothing, and with all my junk on view.'  Obviously this is a whole load easier when you are animated (no weird bits/cellulite/sense of shame etc), but as a general approach I applaud it.  Perhaps metaphorically rather than literally.  

Sometimes there is nothing I like better than an undemanding and restorative day on home turf.  My breathing is calm.  My hands are steady.  If any demons come to the door, there's every chance I'll get nude-oh before I show them who's boss.

Day 8: Market Trader

A violent start to the day, as I am rudely jerked awake by the Parcelforce man knocking on the door with the force of Vulcan (or someone resenting the lie-in of others..).  This seems to happen every Saturday.   I think he stockpiles items for weekend delivery, just to wield his disruptive power.    It's partially my own fault.  Not quite sure why a tiny rabbit hutch of a house needs a cast-iron knocker suitable for an rambling farmhouse.  But I like it, and I will not tolerate a ding-dong-Avon-calling bell, so the price I must pay is a nought to sixty wake-up.  Sometimes you've got to stand by your principles, whatever the cost.

A mild morning.  I don't need a coat for the walk to buy a paper.  Then up to the market to meander round the stalls.  Fruit, veg, cloth, plants, herbs, bags, pants, rugs, toys, jewellery, books, fish, cheese, china, bread, golf clubs, olives, shoes.  I idly pick up a polished fossil, and am told by the very excited stall holder that this is 'EXACTLY the same species as THE KRAKEN, which DID exist, and would have been about THIRTY feet long (that's the length of a BUS) and with TENTACLES another THIRTY feet long, which would make it SIXTY feet long, and if it GOT you, it would have SUCKED you up and then MUNCHED you ALL AROUND with its BEAK'.  One sentence.  No pausing, no breathing.  The man on the crystal stall has excellent hair - silvery, thick, patrician - but he talks like an over-stimulated ten-year old.  He cares a GREAT DEAL about THE KRAKEN.  Good. 

The fish stall is particularly exciting today.  There's a whole blue shark - looking baleful, as well it might.  It's pretty big, and I can't imagine how anyone would go about preparing or cooking it.  But it is a great crowd-puller.  Perhaps it's just a fish stall garnish?  Like parsley with teeth.

There's been a market here since the ninth century.  Over a thousand years of buying and selling.  And on a good day, like today, there's a real buzz.  When it's pissing down, and the awnings are bulging with trapped rainwater, the stallholders are grumpy and beaten, but today they're all over it.  My favourite fruit and veg stall holder always has a new spin.  'Remembrance Day Caulis!'  Previous angles include 'Coalition Plums!' and 'Bank Holiday Rhubarb!'  Thus proving that anything can be made relevant if you say it is...

It's been a week since I started this blog.  A good week.  Ups and downs, but today I suddenly feel like I'm back in the game.  I have a stall and I'm out there, trading.  Exchanges, returns and special offers.  Doesn't mean there won't be rainy Saturdays, but you can't run a stall without them.  Optimism Celery anyone?

Day 7: We will remember them

1st July 1916 - the first day of the Battle of the Somme - 60,000 British casualities.  In one day.  The number of British dead on that same day roughly equal to the crowd that packed Wembley Stadium for Live Aid.  At 11 o'clock today I am in reception at Volkswagen in Milton Keynes.  There's a two minute silence.  Interrupted by a callow young salesman, all aftershave and hair wax and arrogantly loud shoes.  He's shushed by the receptionist, but two minutes is too long to silence his importance, as he can't resist making audible comments under his breath to his colleague.  I realise that he must have no imagination at all.  None.  Children in uniforms, slaughtered in their thousands, drowing in mud and blood.  Dulce et decorum est...  What?  The Golf comes with three year free servicing and warranty?  Great. 

I am in no mood for work, and fortunately fate intervenes.  So many of the participants have pulled out last minute, that the job is cancelled.  I will still be paid, but have driven to Milton Keynes for no purpose.  But I find one.  Calling on Hilary - it's been years since I last saw her, but these evaporate as we speed talk for two hours.  Above her front door, the stained glass window that I made for her back in 2001.  I still love it.  So does she.  Her children are teenagers; she has a three-legged dog, who growls like a paper tiger, and shows the whites of her eyes before actively seeking love.  Plans are made (me and Hils, not the dog) - visits, red wine, fires, and specifically, big mushrooms.  To eat - not the hallucinatory kind.  (Fingers burnt; lessons learnt.)

I drive home through November fog, trees looming out of the milky haze.  Everything is dark and drippy with moisture.  Beautiful, beautiful Redbourn Road, slicing and curving through fields alongside the Ver.  Whatever the season, every time I drive this route my heart expands.  Back home, and feeling calm.  Have a sense of good people around me, like stars suspended in a galaxy.  Today I am strong and capable.  Today I don't need to remind myself to breathe.  Because I just do.       

Day 6: Ghosts

A day of hauntings.  On the walk to the station, unbidden, a childhood memory of betrayal so visceral that tears run down my face and I think I may be sick.  Thanks, subconscious.  I know this has a purpose, even if it's a little embarrassing amidst the Hertfordshire commuters.  Hooray for the woman on the platform with whom I have a courtesy-off.  Not once (both of' us standing back to allow each other on the train), but twice (both offering up the last available seat).  Another hooray for the woman behind me at the ticket barrier.  When my faulty ticket was providing no joy, she simply bundled up with me, and we just managed to get through in her allocated gap.  She got nipped slightly, but was smiley and unbothered.  Buoyed, I went to my job at Eurostar, and decided to bring love to them.  Which I did.  And I got it back, tenfold. 

Saw my first ghost bike today.  Right in the middle of the tangle of junctions outside Kings Cross.  It's painted white, and piled high with beautiful flowers, just starting to wilt.  Peonies, lilies, roses - the good stuff (no garage carnations here).  There's a shop in St Albans that sells candles, flim-flam and furniture (white-washed, deliberately distressed).  At first sight, the ghost bike looks like one of their window displays.  It is pretty and feminine amidst the grubby urban flotsam and fumes.  I cannot help but think of the contrasting ugliness of the incident behind it.  I get closer, and see a picture of a young, smiling girl hugging a bunch of flowers.  She was twenty-four and fragile.  I feel sad, but with a renewed sense of gratitude and responsibility for being here now.

I have a whole afternoon to spare, so I walk down through Soho to one of my favourite cinemas (The Apollo on Haymarket).  I worked for five years in the West End, and I bowl down alleys and cut through back streets with the verve of a London cabby.  The Christmas lights have been switched on and I am taken down a time tunnel to the early nineties, when these streets were my daily beat.  China Town and its unmistakeable bouquet of smoke, piss, wind-dried duck and jasmine.  The intrigue of bookshops on Charing Cross Road.  The question in my head - could I be here again?  Could I?

Afternoon cinema, especially flying solo, is one of my absolute favourite things.  One of a handful of people, dotted around the dark womb, reality muffled by velvety seats.  Sucked into the screen for a couple of hours, and then deposited gently back.  Out on the street, owlish and blinking and a visitor in my real world.

And then to the Pheonix Artists bar to meet Abi.  I haven't been there for years.  Raffish, tawdry, exciting.  We sit in a cubby hole under the stairs, below a black and white photo of a dancer from the 1920s.  The glass in the frame is broken and hangs in shards, suspended dangerously.  We drink Red Stripe, the rattan table unravels and I help it. 

Finally to the 12-Bar Club, another haunt of my past.  Battered, covered in grafitti, sticky with beer and dreams.  There I see people I haven't seen for years.  And there are inspiring updates.  Rachel left her job, followed her heart (but made a business plan!) and has just finished her play.  It's with agents now.  Tom has also just finished his play.  Abi's screenplay has had two nos - but from Hollywood, no less, so let those nos be seen in perspective.  Her scripts are being read by Brad Pitt's production company!  Jamie has his first role in a proper big film.  Piefinger play and Jana's beautiful, familiar voice soothes me with truth and heart.

I sneak off, because I have to get a train back to the suburbs.  I walk back through the deserted moonlit streets of St Albans, proud to know such talented, brave seekers. They're all around me.  I just didn't see them for a while.  Breathe.

Day 5: Moonstruck

I know technically it's not a full moon until tomorrow, but it might as well be.  It's big, fat and silvery - hanging low in the sky and mesmerising me.  I've stopped three times just to gawp like a village idiot.  It's a hunter's moon, and I feel like I should be sneaking off on a poaching mission, or smuggling French brandy and lace.  Two illuminated vapour trails cross underneath.  An ethereal skull and cross-bones.  (Or perhaps the moon is illiterate and cannot do a proper signature...)     

I am not off to poach or smuggle, but to post a letter.  Delighted to see that the brand new crossing has already been customised.  I've been wondering why the little green/red man is now positioned at waist height.  Now I know.  It's for the convenience of my graffiti soul-brethren, who have wasted no time in giving him an impressive (and jizzing) cock and balls.  St Albans - I salute you. 

This afternoon I went to see my old DK colleague and friend, Jane.  I'd not seen her since 1996, but she now lives literally round the corner.  What an excellent random reincorporation.  I didn't like many people at DK, but Jane was one of the few I did.  Why else would I have loaned her my classic 1970s safari suit?  Fat biscuits, a giggly baby, and more honest conversation.  One of the payoffs of the recent complications in my life has been the change in the level at which I want to communicate.  I just need to connect properly.  To lay myself open and be utterly truthful, and celebrate the warmth and humour of the people around me.  Walking back from Jane's, lit by the moon, I had a fleeting sense of my mojo.  It's still there, but faintly - like a tiny pilot light deep within.  But still there, burning. 

Big fat silvery magical moon.  Breathe.   

Day 4: Coming Up For Air

I'm not going to lie.  Today has had me diving quite deep, but there have been breathing holes, and I have taken advantage of every one of them.

I played a game on the train today.  If the people on the carriage were X-Men, what would their special powers be?  As I mused, two people looked up and started smiling at me for no apparent reason.  I was shocked.  Perhaps they felt endowed with super-powers; perhaps I looked like a simpleton.  I will never know, as I didn't feel I could ask the question...

Coffee with Julia, who is so happy at the moment, and looks like a cat in peak condition.  Glossy, sleek and loved.  Everything shines - her hair, her patent leather shoes and her eyes.  Conversation that doesn't faff about at the surface, but gets straight in there.  Littered with reference points, and I realise how much shared history we have.  Not just time, but a litany of ridiculous and intense experiences - shrieking up and down hotel corridors in 1920s costume; time lines on cliff tops in the spring sunshine; weeping with laughter over fish bowls and Juergen. 

Later I'm wandering, teary and rudderless through the streets of St Albans and Peter's voice on the end of the phone steering me through the dusk, warmly and firmly.  With twenty years of friendship behind us, his hand is at my back, urging me to put one foot in front of the other and keep going forwards.  I am lucky, lucky, lucky.

Home to my excellent Sennheiser earphones and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.  Measured, intricate, perfect, joyful.  My heart rate slows, my shoulders drop.  Keep on keeping on.  Breathe. 

 

Day 3: Sketchy

Toughest call so far.  I am reminded of my English Literature S Level, where my teacher Mrs Williams had prepared us thoroughly to answer questions on Shakespearian tragedies.  Slightly disturbed on exam day to turn over a paper featuring questions purely on the comedies.  Leaving me with no choice other than to start 'Without black there is no white.  Without tragedy there is no comedy'...  I went on to answer every question from the same angle.  I left the examination hall feeling dirty and ashamed.  But it got me through. 

So, with that in mind... 

Without having visited a well-known nationalistic energy supplier in Staines, I could not fully appreciate the liberty I enjoy as a freelancer.  I am really glad I do not have to book a parking space by the hour, or wear a pass at all times.  I am delighted that my name is not pinned to a notice above my allocated parking space.  I rejoice that I do not forfeit that right to a parking space, if I am 30 minutes late for my booked space.  In having to wear 'business dress' I get the joy of changing into jeans the minute I get home, and hurling my 'tailored slacks' into the corner of the bedroom.  Above all, I am grateful that today reminds me that the sands of time are running low in the hourglass of this particular career strand. 

High above the M25 I spotted a kestrel, perched on one of the overhead motorway lights.  It was motionless, sitting and watching, far above the rush of the cars.  And it reminded me of how much I enjoyed sitting on the fire escape of my old flat in Muswell Hill.  Perched up high, amongst chimney pots and roof slates, able to look down and watch things unfold in the houses opposite.  Like an Advent calendar, with different images at every window.  People drinking tea, chatting, smoking, arguing.  On one occasion, a couple dancing.  Once, a woman in a corset.  They so rarely looked up.  I was free to observe.  A crow in a nest. 

And so I am grateful to the kestrel.  For reminding me that on days like this, all I need to do is find a still and quiet perch, high up in my head, where I can find peace and perspective, as the traffic rushes past below.

I'm there.  Breathe.

Day 2: Full

Today got off to a good start as I was cut up twice on the motorway by the same car - numberplate OAF.  How can you be irritated with someone who has so clearly managed your expectations? 

Hampstead Heath glorious in all its damp Novemberiness.  Loamy, smoky, leaf mouldy.  I wait for the eponymous Jude (see Day One) on a bench outside the cafe at Kenwood House.  Idly scrolling through Twitter posts, I come across a mention of my stand up.  A random punter calling it 'utterly brilliant'.  How very kind, unexpected and reaffirming.  Obviously not terribly evolved to be externally referenced, but can't help but be buoyed by this. 

And indeed by the rest of the afternoon.  We tramp over the Heath, getting lost and found - ponds, dogs, words.  More words.  Ponds.  Dogs.  Ending up with an unexpected but epic feast at Kenwood cafe.  Double sausage (an innuendo not lost on the guy serving), roast winter veg and onion gravy.  Done.  Then Caitlin and Jane show up in time for some spectacular cake combining - blackberry mousse plus chocolate fudge.  Who knew?  One of those afternoons that you know has a book of its own in your internal library.  That you will take out and dust off time and time again, just for a reread. 

It doesn't get much better than that.  A beloved friend, a Heath and generous portions.  Breathe.