Day 69: Lost Jumper

A travel chaos day.  St Albans station is buzzing with police, and all the platforms are closed.  The ticket hall is full of people staring fixedly at the departure boards.  A man has jumped in front of a high speed train.  It's been an hour since it happened, and fast trains are passing through, but none of them are stopping, and nobody is allowed through the barriers.  I'm guessing that the platform and track are (horribly) in no fit state for the general public.  None of the station staff have any idea when trains will be running again - maybe ten minutes, maybe one hour, maybe not (reminiscent of Greek ferry timetables).  It's tough.  I want to ask for specifics - what stage are they at?  Hosing or still scooping?  I don't.  It would feel wrong, but it's information I could do with. 

I'm meant to be running a taster session in London Bridge at half twelve.  Is it worth waiting?  Should I try an alternative route?  Should I cut my losses and go home?  If I don't show, I put my colleagues on the spot.  I can't be late - it's a pitch, and there's a very specific time window.  And as a freelancer, it's a no show, no pay situation.  Worst scenario is that I battle my way in, but don't make it in time.    With sinking heart I get on the replacement rail bus to Radlett, and grit my teeth as we lurch lugubriously through the clogged town centre.  One of those days when every light is red, and every crossing features a slow-moving pensioner.

Eventually Radlett station, where we are informed that all trains are stopping, and everything is running (hooray!).  Two London trains whoosh past within minutes, not stopping (ohh...).  The sands of time trickle away, but finally a train does actually stop, we troop on, we get under way (hooray!), and then someone presses the emergency stop button (ohh...).  We stop.  For another ten minutes.  No information.  We start again.  Hooray!  (Guardedly...)

St Pancras and I'm off like a bullet, dodging and weaving.  When I get clear of the crowds, I RUN (not jog - proper being-chased-by-a-foe type running) to the Northern Line platform.  (Quite a distance - Kings Cross St Pancras is very spready.  Just because you never see daylight doesn't make it one compact station.  It's still two.  Just covered.)  BOUND up the escalator at London Bridge (man, that is a DEEP station), RUN to More London, have my name spelled incorrectly by the receptionist (don't care - you can call me Pinocchio as long as you let me through), barrel into the lift, run through another reception, skid into the auditorium - twelve twenty-nine.  One minute to spare.  I'm out of breath and sweat is trickling down my back.  But it's a result.  I'm there.  And ultimately it makes no difference whether that's with thirty calm minutes to spare or one sweaty one. 

All the running was worth it.  If I hadn't, I'd not have made it.  If I'd stood on the escalator, it would have cost me that minute.  And yes, I know it's just for a petty job.  But it means more than that to me.   

Because I knew as I was running hell-for-leather that it might not pay off.  But I decided to give it my very best shot, in the hope that I'd make it.  Because that's all you ever can do. 

I am sad for the man who decided today that he couldn't.

Day 68: Neither Ray Mears nor a Husky

Work.  Yes, today I actually did some work.  Up in the dark to the sound of the alarm-clock bird in the lime tree outside.  It's not actually my alarm clock (I'm not Ray Mears), but it's a bird with an unbelievably insistent 'boop-boop-boop-boop' monotone.  Like it's timing an egg or backing a truck.  Either of which would be impressive, if unlikely. 

(I did an image search for 'boring bird' and freakishly this deeply unflattering photo of black-tie no-beard Ray was offered.  Mine is not to question why, but simply to take what is so generously given.)

I drive to deepest agricultural Cambridgeshire through the dawn.  I'm more of a hill-fan, but those acres of flat ploughed fields allow for big, big skies.  Hard to keep my eyes on the road, when the darkness lifts to inky blue, streaked with silvery grey and improbably camp peach.  Stunning.   



Today's work?  The psychology of teams, through game-play.  Yes.  ME on TEAM WORK.  Rather like getting Hitler in to run a course on diversity.  (OK - unnecessarily dramatic.  It's not that I can't work in a team.  I just don't.  I'm better in a loose affiliation of individuals.  I'm not a husky.)  Three sessions, back to back, too much bad coffee, no lunch break, backed-up kidneys.  It's not a gentle reintroduction to work, it's a full body immersion.  For which I am grateful.  No point dithering about in the shallow end, prolonging the discomfort.  I am now fully rehabilitated. 

In other good news, my AWOL cardigan (Day Thirty-Eight) has returned to the fold, following a prolonged meditation retreat in Dorset.  It smells of roast vegetables and peace.

Day 67: Shadow Facing

A morning spent in hospital, facing up to the shadow that's hung over me for the last six weeks.  Prodded, scanned, written on in purple felt tip.  Scary words, grim faces, and the vulnerability of a tie-back gown.  Like the painting overall I had when I was five, but considerably less fun.  Procedure after procedure, trailing my clothes around with me in a big net bag, like I'm trawling for bargains in Primark (unlikely).   Long waits in different corridors, reading the same page of my book again and again, but nothing going in.  It can't hold its own against the insistent 'what if?' that's pulsing in my head.  It's been there for weeks, sometimes loud and sometimes muffled, but today it's centre stage and in the spotlight.  I give up on my book (if I'm honest I was struggling with it before all of this kicked off), and give reign to the tap-dancing mental horror.  Everyone has been brisk and professional, but I am given no clues as to how this is going to pan out.  At the moment it feels very binary - two possible answers, two very different paths.  (Of course, nothing is ever as simple as that, but that's how it feels). 

Finally, a bearded radiologist, who seems unimpressed and slightly bored by what he's seeing.  He's far  more interested in the origins of my surname, which he very much hopes to be Norse.  It isn't, but it's enough of a springboard to get us onto what is clearly one of his favourite subjects.  We talk place names along the east coast.  He tells me that the word 'skol' (not going to search for the weird 'a' with the circle on top, so live with this, pedants) comes from the Norse custom of drinking booze from animal skulls (skols).  In amongst this Viking-ery, he mentions in an off-hand way that he can't see 'anything sinister' (like, perhaps, a skol and cross-bones...).  Noted with warmth and slight release of tension, but I'm wary of jumping to premature conclusions.  I wish him well, eyeing his beard, and hoping that he does a little bit of re-enactment on days off (skull-drinking, pillaging etc).  Because I know he would really enjoy it.

After the barrage of tests, an hour's drawn-out wait before the results, and one long heart-in-mouth moment before the shadow lifts completely.  I actually cheer (the surgeon cracks a smile).  Reprieved, I walk out of the oppressive hospital heat into the fresh clean air outside, with a light heart.  But an awareness that not everyone in that waiting room will be as lucky as me.  I wish them strength to deal with whatever it is that they face. 

'Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone'

So says Joni Mitchell, and often sadly it's true.  But sometimes you get the chance to know what you've got whilst you still have it.  And that's a privileged feeling.

So, again I cheer my body, for being healthy and brilliant.  Thank you.  And I also cheer the NHS - one of the very best things this country has.  Thank you. 

'Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone'

Day 66: Lucky Quinoa

Crossing the Abbey orchard this morning, I was delighted to bump into a local artist (there are quite a few in St Albans).  I could tell he was a local artist because he was carrying paper, paints and a canvas roll of brushes.  But also because he looked identical to Charlie Higson's 'Fast Show' character - black fisherman's hat, beard, neckerchief.  Brilliant.

Mucked out a kitchen cupboard (graveyard) today.  I found some beans (not magic ones) that 'expired' in January 2007.  Also some vintage quinoa.  I don't ever eat quinoa - I just feel better with an out-of-date box in the cupboard.

Other antiques include some maple syrup (2005), a can of pear halves (2006) and two boxes of cocktail sticks - an interesting find.  There must have been TWO separate occasions when I planned a) a cheese and pineapple hedgehog or b) to cook tiny sausages.  But I obviously thought better of it both times, as the boxes are intact.  Intent is there, but no follow-through.  As with cocktail sticks, so with life plans.

The excitement of all this was so great that I dropped a 500g carton of black peppercorns.  That's a big carton.  About the size of one of those big pots of yoghurt or soup.  Full of peppercorns.  Ball bearings of darkness everywhere.

Obviously I've swept up a bit (I'm not an animal), but I quite like the crunchy aromatics underfoot.  The kitchen is now a local spice island.  Exotic.   

So - supper tonight will be maple-glazed bean mini-skewers with floor pollen, followed by poire solitaire. 

(No, I am not cooking the quinoa.  It's more useful as a talisman representing the triumph of optimism over experience.)   

Day 65: Ziggy and Elvis

Happy Birthday, David Bowie*.  It is quite something to have made it to sixty-five, considering you went through a period where you lived off milk, red peppers and cocaine, and you kept your urine, and hair/nail clippings in a fridge, to be kept safe from wizards (specifically the 'warlock' Jimmy Page).

It is no surprise that you were a Thin White Duke.  You were never going to get chubby on that regime. 

As opposed to Elvis**, the Fat White Duke (Happy Birthday to you too).  Peanut butter and banana fried sandwiches.  Syrup, ice-cream, waffles.  You knew what a fridge was really for. 

Everything in excess - sideburns, rhinestones and rings. 


(I'd like to have seen the pair of you on that diet-swap programme.  The one with the smug curtain-hair  doctor.  Where they drop your week's meals into a big see-through tube, as you stand watching in your pants, shamed by your nutritional shortcomings.  (I suspect DB would have been hiding his urine carefully at this point).  This would have been the best ever episode.  I'm watching it in my head.)

I've always thought that I had a problem with moderation, but these two pixies rewrote the rule book.  So, amidst all this TEDIOUS January diet shit, my view is that as long as I'm somewhere in between Ziggy and Elvis, then all is OK.

* Thank you especially for 'Life On Mars' and 'Drive-In Saturday'.  Amongst many, many others.  And for subversion and taboo-breaking and reinvention.

** Thank you for 'In the Ghetto', 'Devil in Disguise' and 'An American Trilogy'.  For beautiful youth and white-suited casino legend. And also for subversion (Jailhouse Rock - hello) and taboo-breaking (The Pelvis).

Day 64: Tortoise Not Hare

Today I saw a man talking to himself.   Young, tall, skinny, he was loping along the pavement, wearing tatty Converse and a Withnail-style greatcoat.   He wasn't on the phone - unless we're talking astral connections, man.   Speaking loudly, gesticulating boldly, moving at speed.   More Camden than St Albans.  Felt like a time traveller from 1974 here to deliver reportage back to the cosmos.   I liked his coat, his energy and sense of purpose, although what fuelled it is another matter... 

St Albans seems to have far fewer unusual people on the streets, compared to North London.  Muswell Hill had some notable characters in addition to 'The Best of Luck' man (see Day Forty-Eight).  My favourites were the Muswell Hill Jesus, the regimental baton twirler (dangerous in the aisles of Sainsbury's, where he and TBoL man were an in-supermarket tag-team of chance - luck or a blow to the head), and the vampire hunter (yes), arrested in the seventies for 'disturbing' a grave in Highgate Cemetery in the search for 'The Black Figure'.  Every community needs a vampire hunter.  St Albans doesn't appear to have one (internet search), but I'm hoping the man I saw this morning might take up the baton.  And twirl it. 

A visit to the gym has been my justification for frittering the rest of the day reading the papers and diddling around on the internet.  A quick run down of recent searches yields the following:- gerybaboona, honkytonk, heraldic green, electrical units and vampire hunters st albans.  Good that I'm kicking maximum New Year ass, squeezing the very last drop out of each day.  I'm not unduly worried - this is my tried-and-tested ambient approach for the first week of January, when I traditionally enjoy hibernating.

It's all deliberate.  What I'm actually doing is allowing my subconscious all-important space and time to come up with a brilliant plan.  Tortoise not hare.  So what may appear to be me TOTALLY wasting time is in fact me INVESTING in my future.  All those New Year hares, rushing, rushing, rushing.  Foolishness.  May I present the New Year tortoise.  Measured, ruminative, powerful.  Not avoidant, frittering, irresponsible.  Oh, no.

Day 63: Tits and Ass

Today a bull actually does a shit AT me.  He gives me an old-fashioned look, turns slowly, lifts his tail  and shits copiously.  It feels personal.  We made eye contact, godammit.  If I were affiliated to a gang, I might well shank him for showing me disrespect.  As I am not, I laugh and walk away.  But it still feels personal.  Is it comment?  If so, on what?  Specifically?  Am I bullshit?  Is thinking these things bullshit?

(Maybe.  Lots of things.  Cupcakes.  Yes.  Definitely.) 

Other contact with nature includes a tree of tits.  I think I've written about this before - but it was a different tree and different tits.  (Sounds like Heraclitus on the constant nature of change - a tit cannot sit in the same tree twice, because he is not the same tit, and it is not the same tree.  Or something like that.)  Last time, it was the tree outside my house, and it was mixed tits.  I googled this to find an illustrative photo, and I got some startling search results.  But not as many as you might think - ratio of orno to porno was impressively high, and flocks of mixed tits are apparently pretty common.  Today, just long-tailed tits.  Ridiculous hyperactive lollipop birds.  Tits and bullshit on one walk.  Rude. 

This inspires a choice of film for the afternoon (how much I enjoy writing those words), because I have absolutely no intention of doing any work until next week.  (And even then, not until Wednesday.  Good.)  Anyway, the film - 'Bronson' with Tom Hardy.  Short on plot, long on fights, limited in scope, but it's an intense performance by Mr Hardy.  Extraordinary physical presence - really knows how to fill and hold a space, and also completely inhabits a character.  Completely.  Really hope he doesn't just get sucked into shit action movies with big budgets.  Would be a massive waste of an exceptional talent. 

A day that has no real coherence to it.  No conclusions.  No philosophy.  Just tits and ass.