Sunday lunch at the Neptune Cafe

"It's Whit Sunday, you know" my mother said, pausing to look at me meaningfully over the top of her glasses before dropping her eyes to examine the black leatherette menu once more. Quite why she bothers to read the menu is unclear; it never changes and she always orders the same thing anyway. Quite why she also bothered to remind me it was Whit Sunday I'm not sure either. It's a long time since I went to Sunday School.

We were sitting opposite each other in Bill's Neptune Cafe in the High Street. It's a Sunday lunchtime ritual we've fallen into some time over the last year or so, meeting up after she's been to church to chat and enjoy some food served on white oval plates at tables covered with colourful checked plastic cloths. The chairs are spindly with red rubber stoppers on the end of each thin metal leg, their backs and seats upholstered in beige vinyl. A huge old brass gas lamp, with white gauze mantle just waiting to be lit, hangs from the ceiling among the fluorescent lights. The walls are decorated in cream wallpaper with small pink diamonds, the outline of the woodwork of door and window frames fuzzy and blurred by archaeological layers of raspberry gloss paint. Each table is laid with laminated place mats showing photocopied scenes of the Island in days gone by. If one of the smartly dressed Sunday-suited families pictured eternally strolling along the promenade taking the sea air were to step out of their photograph and walk into Bill's, they'd feel right at home.

The Neptune Cafe is one of a tiny handful of traditional seaside cafes that's left in the country. No fancy cappuccino machine here, no rotisserie chicken hopelessly circling, no pre-packed Italian biscuits, no triangular ready-to-go sandwich packs, no bucket-sized paper cups, no artfully mis-matched sofa groupings, no pot pourri'd bathroom with tinny piped music, no over-heated prices. Just a small, narrow time-travelling cafe serving home made dinners and puddings with custard.

Tracey brings us our mugs of tea (one with one sugar, one without) and asks my mother if she'd like her usual. Of course she does, with chips too please, she adds just in case Tracey might have forgotten this essential ingredient. She tucks the small notebook into the pocket of her navy blue tabbard and retreats to the kitchen, weaving through checked tartan shopping trolleys as she passes tables full of pensioners.

Reassured that our food's on its way (cheese and mushroom omlette with salad for me, roast lamb and vegetables - with chips - for mum) we fall into our habitual exchange of news. B's worried about her son because he can't find a job; she gave L a lift to church this morning; K took the sermon - you know, that wonderful reading about the dry bones; she's been clearing out the garage; C took away that old water tank and some rubbish; will the old pots of paint and motor car oil still be ok to use; do I still want to go up to Ikea for her birthday; Roo was on the phone last night chatting about her exams. And then our food arrives and we stop talking for a while.

When we're done, Tracey takes our empty plates and our pudding orders and brings us two more piping hot mugs of strong tea. Our bowls, when they arrive, are brimming with bright yellow custard. Eventually, our spoons rest in the bottom of the empty white dishes and we drain the last of our tea. I go to the counter to pay Tracey, tell her we'll see her next week, and step out into the dazzling breezy bright sunlight of a seaside Whit Sunday afternoon.

Whitsun (or Pentecost) is celebrated seven weeks - or 49 days - after Easter Sunday. It's also related to the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the ten commandments at Mount Sinai. But it's not just a religious celebration. According to Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, legend has it that King Arthur always gathered all of his knights at the Round Table for a feast on this day.

I think that the old King could have done worse than to have brought his men to the Neptune Cafe.

Gambling on the books

Being well aware that one day I will wake up dead, I try hard not to build up too much of a backlog of things I want to do but haven’t done yet. It’s not that I’ve got anything against the dead, you understand; simply that even our broad equality laws seem to stop short of governing the actions of the deceased. Thus one might not, for instance, expect to receive such a warm welcome at a race track if accompanied by pall bearers and dressed in a coffin. It might frighten the horses for a start.

So perilous finances and the law notwithstanding, I attempt within the threadbare means at my disposal to take the opportunity to do stuff that takes my fancy when the chance arises. I also try hard not to continue to do the stuff that makes me unhappy, restless or fed up. Admittedly, this latter trait may lead to accusations of being faddy or having the attention span of a gnat. But I digress.

High on my short personal list of things to do whilst I can still remember my name is to go and play poker in a casino. Where that casino might be or who I’d be playing with doesn’t really matter. But the game must be poker and played, according to the picture in my mind, in a proper smoke-filled casino like in the films. So a location where both gambling and indoor smoking are allowed would seem a good place to start. Whether or not I’m wearing a glamorous red evening dress and am accompanied by a handsome chap in a black suit and bow tie is a moot point; not absolutely essential but I wouldn’t complain either.

I can, I should explain, play poker adequately if not brilliantly. I taught myself how a few years ago spurred on by several boozy hours playing around the dining table one Christmas, and played on-line for a while in one of my faddish phases. Through reading about the game in particular (I’d highly recommend Anthony Holden’s Big Deal) and the history of gambling in general (try Gambling by Mike Atherton), though, I’ve also learned quite a lot about the nature of gamblers. Whilst gamblers come from many backgrounds and from all social classes, the one thing that most of the successful ones have in common is that they each have an identifiable leak.

In gambling parlance, a leak means a weakness, a small chink in the armour, the irresistible pull to fritter away winnings earned through games of skill (like poker) on games of chance (like roulette). But I think this concept of a leak applies to a much wider cross section of the world than just professional poker players. It applies, perhaps, to the hardworking family man who simply must have the latest mobile phone, i-Pod, huge plasma TV set or other piece of high-tech kit. It applies to the otherwise conservative career woman who stockpiles pairs of new shoes and secretes clandestine bags of designer clothes in the back of her wardrobe.

My leak is buying books. That I’ve only recently realised this just goes to demonstrate the truth of how our own leaks are invisible to us whilst forehead-slappingly obvious to everyone else. Admittedly, buying books is not as glamorous a leak as playing roulette. But like roulette, there is a chance that every book you read could be a winner; I shrug off the disappointing volumes and turn immediately to the next in the same way that the losing punter slips his chips from black to red for the next spin of the wheel.

So in grateful thanks that I did not wake up dead this morning, I again turned my attention to reading my way through the shelf full of new books that I’ve bought over the last couple of weeks. I even sat outside in the sunshine whilst I did so. And if my trip to that smoke filled casino is still some way off, at least I hope I’m lowering my own odds about getting there one day.

Russian dolls

It has been a strange old week this one, as full of the foreboding thunder heads of introspection on the inside as the rain and the sun have battled it out for the upper hand on the outside. A week when my internal monologue has been quite at odds with my external conviviality. A week when the gnarled hand of my inner hermit threatens to reach out and pull the hood of disengagement over my eyes at the same time as I’m laughing.

That this contradiction is part of my nature I know only too well. Maybe it’s part of all people’s natures to simultaneously wish to be at the centre of things and a thousand miles away. To be with others and yet to be alone in the company of creatures that don’t speak in words. To exist only in the way that the elements exist: timeless, free-floating, flowing and rippling like a warm summer breeze through endless uninterrupted acres of corn.

It seems to be hard-wired into our human circuitry to search for certainty, to look for our security and our freedom through the presence of boundaries. We define ourselves and our sense of belonging, from the minor to the major, like life-sized Russian dolls stacked one inside the other: me, my mind, my ego, my body, my home, my family, my street, my town, my county, my country, and so on until we reach the outer shell, my world. We like these anchors and we feel lost without them, misplaced and homeless like a stray dog.

We like too to think of our position in the bigger jigsaw and seek out our own boundaries in relation to other people, both those we know – friends, family, colleagues – and those we don’t but who nevertheless have a bearing on us; politicians, say, or people we admire for their talents or achievements. As life itself provides us with only two actual certainties - birth and death - we spend our days in active pursuit of a range of others to take our minds off the dread of the unknowable and the unpredictable. And so we weave a complex pattern of commitments, relationships, promises, beliefs and obligations – deadlines, if you like, to take our minds off our own dead line.

But it is in the nature of the only two certainties we have as humans that we have our proper connection with the world. All living things, from amoebae and plankton to queens and presidents, share this common bond, this golden thread that unites us and everything. How ironic that we are the only species that knows this and yet try our best to deny what everything else on the planet takes for granted. How peculiar that we attempt to capture and contain and measure the time that passes when it passes just the same if we ignore it. How very human.

So yes, a strange old week, spent not feeling sad or melancholy but simply pondering.

Seasonal seaside

For most of the year Kaos and I have the beach to ourselves.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. The beach teems with bird life all year round: three types of gull (black headed, lesser black backed, herring); common terns (or sea swallows as they’re sometimes known on account of their long white tail feathers and dazzling aerobatic displays); two different kinds of plover (ringed plover and little ringed plover); little egrets, small bright white members of the heron family; shiny clever crows; and the universal feral pigeons. And my personal favourites, the wonderful oystercatchers. Beautiful comical birds, all black and white and with long thin orange pipe-like beaks and matching eyes, they look a little like elongated puffins as they pick and wade among the winkles and the oysters lying on the hem of the tide. Their call is one of the most life-affirming sounds you will hear, a cheery piping A-peep! A-peep! as they chatter to each other or fly overhead.

The stretch of the beach where you’ll spot most of this bird crowd is nearly always deserted, save for the occasional dog walker and solitary fisherman. Dog owners on the whole are a friendly type, usually calling out a greeting or raising a hand in distant acknowledgement, but the anglers, like the gulls, pay no heed to human presence. I guess that fishing is not a sport that attracts the gregarious kind.

But for around three months, from now through to about September, we – the dog walkers, the fishermen, the birds – are joined by the summer beach goers. The instant barbequers; the pushchairs with grubby faced toddlers; the younger teenagers turning tricks on the skateboard ramp whilst the older ones rev up their cars in the car park; the families skimming stones into the water and collecting bucketfuls of shells; the romantic couples strolling arm in arm eating chips. A few days ago, a smiling laughing family wearing saris and smart suits stopped Kaos and me to take our photograph as we walked along the promenade.

It’s not just the number of human visitors that rises in the summer either. Lured by plentiful seaside insects in the warmer months, the regular cast of birds is joined by elegant mute swans, swooping swallows, pied wagtails, starlings, sparrows, and several species of ducks and geese. If you’re very lucky you’ll occasionally see a kestrel overhead, intuitively drawn from his arable hunting grounds a few miles away, hovering and diving and searching for rich pickings among the startled pigeons. You might catch the flash of a turquoise kingfisher darting along the banks of the fresh water culvert that runs parallel to the sea. Or, if you’re eagle-eyed, see a huge glossy cormorant diving and fishing out among the waves. When he’s finished, he’ll perch on the gantry that juts out from the docks and spread his wings to dry. With his wings wide in the dazzling golden light of summer, he looks just like the standard from Imperial Rome. My bird book says he shouldn’t be in this part of the country, shouldn’t be anywhere near this beach. He obviously hadn’t read the book.

There is plenty of room for all of us on the beach, of course. There’s a part of me that wishes that more people would come out and enjoy it even when the weather’s cold and dark and wet. But there's a little secret part of me too that loves having the beach all to myself. Just me, the dog, and a thousand thousand birds.


Photo of a foxglove in my little back garden, taken this afternoon on my mobile phone

Doodle day

There is something in the dynamic of sitting at a meeting table that induces in me a kind of fugue state, like a bear making his final snoozy pre-hibernation preparations but wearing a suit and a necklace rather than a fur jacket. Where the bear is lucky is that he can roll with his instinct by curling up in a ball and nodding off. If I were to slip from my chair and lie down on the floor underneath the table with my eyes shut, I suspect even the most self-absorbed colleagues might detect my lack of interest.

And so I have devised over the years a small raft of personal meeting survival suits; they're a bit like whole-body life jackets, only invisible rather than orange and with no inflatable pipe to blow into.

Refuge number one is, of course, doodling. Doodles are often thought to be representations of the subconscious mind and, like dreams, involve a kind of picture language. Also like dreams, attempts are often made to place an interpretation on both the content and the placing of the drawing and even the pressure with which it is drawn. My doodles usually start on the left and travel to the right, which apparently means they're related to the workings of the subconscious. Doodles that start on the right and move the other way are more based on logic. There's reams of stuff too about what different doodles mean; research has even shown that doodling significantly helps a person's memory.

Amusingly, though, when thinking about it in the work context, the eighteenth century verb to doodle meant 'to swindle or make a fool of'; the modern meaning emerged in the 1930s either from that or from the earlier verb to dawdle (which since the seventeenth century has had the meaning of wasting time or being lazy).

Colleague: You lazy, time-wasting doodler you; you're making a fool out of me.

Me: No, I'm improving my memory and unlocking the doors to my subconscious.

However, there are times at which doodling can make one feel a little self-conscious - in as much as they give an obvious signal to the rest of the world that drawing intricate swirls, triangles, curls, boxes, anvils and such is far more interesting than listening to what's going on. Which it is, of course, but one has to be more subtle sometimes. When subtlety is called for, my best weapon is to appear to be taking copious notes of the proceedings. Only someone reading it through afterwards would appreciate that I'd been writing something very different indeed. (In fact, my blog post earlier this month about protesters and my walk around central London was written entirely during an afternoon session of 'note taking'.)

If I feel there's the remotest chance that someone might randomly ask me a question, then I'll occasionally resort to writing down some of the interesting (for which read work jargon) phrases that colleagues come out with. A good example of which today was the five minute debate on whether the word flip should be substituted for by move in the records of the previous meeting. Flip, presumably, just seemed too, er, flippant.

If the meeting drags on longer, then I often have to resort to emergency distress flare manoeuvres. Anything but subtle, these can combine any and all of making a cup of tea, dunking biscuits, leaving the room to go to the loo, and, in extremis, manufacturing a non-existent appointment that I simply must leave the meeting for to get to in time.

All of which pursuits are substitutes for either actually falling asleep or telling the chairman that what they're saying is boring, pointless or a waste of time. Or in fact simply politely declining the meeting invitation in the first place. Hmmm... Now there's a revolutionary option...

Picture: This doodle, by the tenor Simon Keenlyside, was auctioned for the 2007 National Doodle Day in aid of Epilepsy Action and the Neurofibromatosis Association.

The dancing devils of '87

Being British, I ought to remember if the summer of 1987 was a good one weather-wise. But I don’t and it might have rained every single day for all I cared. Because I was 18, I’d just left school, the ink was still wet on my pink paper driving licence, I had the keys to my mother’s rusty old brown Renault 12, a pocket full of cash from working in a bar and the coolest cool black suede jacket this side of James Dean. Oh yeah, baby, coolest cool long hot summer of '87.

And if Bryan Adams didn’t think it was his duty to write a song about it too, then that was his loss. In any case, there was The Cure, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy, The Cult, Depeche Mode, lyrical poets to a black hair-dyed man who sang directly to my adolescent soul, visions too of male perfection in anatomical leather trousers to speed my pulse and quicken my heart. I’d shaken the dust of childhood from my pointy-booted feet and made my pact with the dancing devil; there was no going back.

Days, weeks, months stretched ahead of me, open and rolling like the Arizona desert. At the far end, university beckoned, vague and shimmering like an oasis in a dreamscape, tantalising and unknown. But the keys to that kingdom were still some way off and I was in no hurry. One last summer of friendships closer than blood and stronger than steel, one last pause before the final ascent on the summit, one last summer of fun before the jaws of adulthood gobbled me up and made me pay my taxes.

Madeline was the only one from our friendship group not to be going on to higher education. She was perfectly able to do so, but had chosen instead to join the world of work. That four letter word was so abstract in its concept to us in those days that her choice seemed more exotic than if she’d run away with a moustachio'd lion tamer and was spending her days dressed in a spangly thong and hanging upside down on a trapeze whilst juggling penguins. If school was out for her too, then commuting was in, on the daily train from her little village up to the big bad city of London. More precisely, to the offices of the Metropolitan Police in Pimlico.

Where she was a few weeks later when we went, en masse, to meet her after work one afternoon. In those less paranoid times, we were perfectly able to stroll into her open plan high rise office without filling in twenty eight forms in triplicate. And so it was that we found her at her desk that day, dressed in her 1980s work gear and wearing proper grown up make up and bouffant hair, sitting typing in front of a tiny brown screen with square green writing on it. Her job – in fact that of the whole office – was dealing with unpaid parking tickets. Well, that’s what they were paid for anyway, but the office had a wonderful atmosphere and not just because of the smoke from the cigarettes that people could still enjoy at their desks. No, its cause was much more human and was sitting opposite Madeline in a dark shiny suit.

Of course, we all fell instantly in love with David. He was tall, handsome, funny, skinny as a thin stick and quite the most glamorous man that we’d ever encountered. He was 19, too, so sophisticated beyond our years. David soon became a regular part of our group, joining us for wild nights out where he soon proved to be by far the best dancer that we’d ever seen. For day trips down to Margate in his old maroon Morris Marina to make ourselves sick with fear on the roller coaster and to drink white cider on the yellow sand. To while away the wee small hours talking toffee in the cavernous canteen of the motorway service station over pots of stewed tea. To dance in the moonlight by the light of a bonfire on top of the ancient long barrow at Cauldron Stones. To shriek with terror as we crept through the thick dark woods to the old mausoleum in the grounds of Cobham Hall.

I never thought that summer would end. I don’t think any of us did really, not in our hearts. But time passes whether you wish it to or not, and it was with a deeply instinctive feeling that, when I said goodbye to my friends and drove off for university in my little yellow car, I knew nothing would ever be quite the same again. That coolest cool long hot summer had been magical, but the butterfly had flown away for good.

Or nearly. Twenty two years on, and I’m pleased to report that David is as charming and as funny and as delightful as he ever was. I spent Saturday evening with him, and his partner, and Liz, celebrating his 41st birthday over a wonderful meal in a restaurant in Gravesend. He’s the Vice Principal of a prestigious school in London now, a job that he loves, and I’d bet my shirt that he’s the most popular guy in the staffroom. I don’t really know what our 18 or 19 year old selves would make of us now if we met them down that long long time tunnel. But for all our middle aged clothes and shoes and glasses, we know that the dancing devils of '87 will always be with us in spirit.

The joy of unexpected consequences

A world in which we knew all of the consequences of our actions before we took them would be a dull one indeed. So whilst I’d admit that it’s vital to know that, say, the dentist is only going to give you a filling and not a full set of falsies or that the road you live in will still be in the same place you left it when you get back after a holiday or day’s work, it’s the little spontaneous details that add the sweet spoonful of interest to life. The unexpected invitation to an event, the al fresco beer and swimming session on the beach, the e-mail from a long-lost school friend, the impromptu conversation with an amusing stranger on a train – these are the kinds of things that taste so delicious simply because we didn’t know they were coming.

But because life generally likes to find a balance in all things, if we relish these small joyful surprises we may only do so in the full and certain knowledge that we must simultaneously accept the presence of their opposite numbers: the unpredicted little bad things that parachute in to prick our personal bubbles of happiness. Waking up with the raging toothache, pulling out a filing whilst eating a treacle toffee, getting a speeding ticket because we weren’t paying attention to the speed limit changing, our train being cancelled, falling asleep in the cinema just as the film gets going, that sort of thing.

If there really is some kind of cosmic see saw at work, then we accept that for all we prefer to be at the up-in-the-air-legs-dangling-look-at-me end, we have to take our turn being the one with the unglamorous bump on the behind as it hits the ground. Up is only possible because of down. Spending our life riding only the middle of the see saw at its pivotal point of equilibrium is no fun at all simply because nothing unexpected – good or bad – ever happens. So, much as we may wish from time to time for life to be all plain sailing and calm untroubled seas, what’s the point if we can never enjoy the adrenaline rush of riding the swell of a huge wave or crashing laughing and soaked into the sand?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently as part of considering the nature of happiness. Happiness is a difficult construct to define; ask a hundred people what happiness is and I’d bet you’d get a hundred answers. All of them would be quite correct for the individual concerned, but not necessarily for the other 99. As we have no one core hypothesis of what happiness is then it’s quite natural that we should each see it in our own way. I’d also say that happiness is positively more than the absence of sadness, its opposite number in the great song and dance routine of life. Whether it is possible to experience the pinnacles of great joy without ever experiencing the depths of great distress is unclear; to some extent, I feel that if you accept the possibility of the one then you also accept the potential for the other.

So back then to my own little unexpected consequences that set me off on this meandering thought train. When I was renovating my tiny garden a couple of months back, I deliberately chose plants and flowers that would attract wildlife. Coaxed on by a warm and wet spring, the plants are growing as I look at them and the insects and birds are coming too. Except… I hadn’t really thought through precisely what insects might come, or in what quantity. And so I have become (or the blackthorn tree in the garden has, anyway) home to a huge small creeping army of brightly coloured hairy caterpillars. A little investigation has shown that these are the larvae of the Lackey Moth – so called because the striped colours resemble the livery lace worn by Victorian servants (or lackeys). There will be a spectacular fly past when these babies spread their wings come July or August. But for now, there are huge swathes of twitching caterpillars in and around the canopies of nest-web that they’ve spun in the branches of the tree outside my front window. Which is by the day growing more and more full of the birds that nest there too and feed on these bugs and others that are now coming to the garden.

Cosmic balance? Unexpected creepy crawly consequence? Or just nature doing its thing? I’m not sure and it doesn’t really matter in a way, but it has given me (and the birds) lots of food for thought.


Photos:

Top: Lackey Moth caterpillars by Steve Bennett

Middle: Adult Lackey Moth by Nick Greatorex-Davies

Bottom: A gathering of Lackey Moth caterpillars (like those on my tree) by Nicholas Harrison

Book review: The Philosopher and the Wolf

During the course of our lives, if we are lucky – or unlucky depending on your own view – we will undergo a number of life-changing experiences. That the details of these experiences and their impact on us are unique to us and us only is not in dispute. What is curious about these personally seismic events, though, is the strange phenomenon that we are only able to recognise the full implications of such experiences long after they have happened; when we have shaken the dust from our allegorical feet and thrown a backwards glance over our metaphorical shoulder.

As it is with all of us, so it was for Mark Rowlands. When he picked up that local newspaper on a hot summer day in Alabama and decided, on impulse, to buy a six week old wolf cub, I’m pretty sure that he had no concept that the consequences of his actions were going to change the rest of his life. His only worry was whether he had enough money in his bank account to pay for it. And so begins a remarkable story of how this young British professor of philosophy came to share the next eleven years with Brenin the wolf.

At one level, The Philosopher and The Wolf is a highly amusing and deeply moving memoir of the life and times of one man and his wolf. As both grow and mature and change - jobs, homes, continents, girlfriends - they provide, for each other, the only constants in each other’s lives. We watch Brenin as he grows from fluffy cub into 150lb adult; we observe his training and his interactions with dogs and other people; we prowl with the wolf as he hunts rabbits and chases birds as much as we see his human companion hunt jobs and chase girls.

If The Philosopher and the Wolf were just a memoir of a man’s life with a wolf, it would still be a great book. But what raises it to brilliance is what it shows us about what it is to be human. Or as Mark Rowlands describes it, the “certain thoughts that can only emerge in the space between a wolf and a man”. The philosopher holds a mirror up to himself and sees the reflection of the avaricious, deceitful ape standing beside the raw and honourable furry embodiment of the natural world. The author does not try to dodge the unflattering bullets of this comparison and never strays into the territory of anthropomorphism; indeed, I believe Mark would regard that as an unforgivable and insulting betrayal to the fundamental nature of what Brenin is. So the book is also uncomfortable at times in what it tells us about what we are; our own, very human, nature does not always look good in this glaring spotlight that misses no detail of our defects.

It is a rare book that keeps me compelled to keep on reading until the dawn chorus reminds me that it’s morning. Rarer still, perhaps, is a book on philosophy that delights, entertains, amuses and educates in such a way. If this book’s grand theme is that of evolution and how we came to be what we are, it is also a road map of one man’s personal evolution from what he was then and how he became what he is now. All the lessons that Mark learned about love, death and happiness were taught to him by his wolf, and I don’t mind admitting that I was in tears for most of the last quarter of the book. Ultimately, this book has moved me beyond measure; reading it really has been a life changing experience.

If you are examining any of the big questions in your own life, if you are looking to take a peep around the curtains at the machinery that lies behind why we act as we do, if you have a deep and non-sentimental regard for nature and creatures, this book could change your life too.

The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness is published by Granta (2009)

Mark Rowlands is now professor of philosophy at the University of Miami. His website is

www.markrowlandsauthor.com

The half year review

It's almost six months since my fortieth birthday, so it seemed appropriate to sit and rest a while and observe the vista from atop the early gentle foothills of middle age. Or middle youth. Or Middle Earth. Or whatever we like to call this large expanse of green and beige crimplene that lies in front of us when our twenties and thirties are left behind.

Some observations then from the watch tower half a year in to the second act:

Watching the birds, thinking, monitoring the progress of the new plants in my little garden, revelling in the natural world more joyfully with each day that passes - and the continued enjoyment of my constant companion nicotine - seem to have replaced in my mind the space previously occupied by preoccupations of a more earthy kind. Whether that is to do with being 40 or with being single for nearly two years or a combination of both is a moot point. This doesn't concern me; I know that if the setting and the situation and the person were right, the old Eve would reassert herself. What I do wonder, though, is whether she can happily coexist with these other natural pleasures.

Having a complete absence of concern relating to what some might call status is by no means a new arrival on my shores but is more pronounced now in its presence. I care not for work, but I don't loathe it either, and perhaps on my better days have attained a Swiss-like neutrality about the whole concept. Work - and the workplace - are funny strange chimeras, occupying so much time and space in the emotions of those in their thrall that they can drive out almost everything else. And I do feel ok about saying that because I've been there myself in the past and like all reformed addicts can see the effects quite plainly in others whilst they remain oblivious. This is probably enhanced by observing the red teeth and claws of others and feeling overwhelmingly free by comparison. A delightful feeling, as is - at last - having mastered the art of relaxation.

Thinking about what I might do next has also been much on my mind recently, the next in my terms being the immediate future and the slightly more distant afterwards when the barn has sold and I'm free of those financial obligations. I am planning - this long bank holiday weekend in fact - to apply for a place on a part-time MA course at a local university. If I'm lucky enough to be offered a place, then two years of part-time study lies ahead with all of the excitement and learning that would offer. Quite by chance, that two years of study would conclude at the exact same moment as the contract for my current job ends. It might also - fingers crossed - include the time period during which the barn sells. So my landscape two years from now could look significantly different.

On the family front, it's nearing the end of the first academic year that Roo has been at university and the first time that I've lived completely on my own - ever - as an adult. In some ways, Roo turning twenty last month was more significant than me turning 40 and I think, not for the first time, about how time really does fly. Tempus fugit. Yes indeed, with bells and whistles on.

I also seem to have inadvertently performed major brain surgery on my computer this evening. Serves me right for following the primrose path of procrastination and random meanderings when I should be working on those assessments.

Photo of an Arctic Tern chick taken last year on the Farne Islands, Northumberland.

Bring me sunshine...

Family gatherings have a habit of throwing up odd confessions, odder relations and rattling the deep-set bones of cupboard-dwelling skeletons. But I have to admit that my mother's revelation that she liked the music of grunge-rock gods Nirvana was more unexpected than finding a Methodist minister playing poker and drinking moonshine in an all night strip club.

The three of us - mum, Roo and me - were munching our way through delightful homemade organic burgers in the Wibbly Wobbly cafe on campus late on Friday night when the first melancholic minor harmonics of Come As You Are rolled over us like aural surf. She stopped, Luscious Lamb Burger poised in hand, cocked her head to one side and listened intently.
"I like this song. Who's it by?" she asked Roo.

And so was set in motion the little tableau that followed on Saturday morning, the three of us - in Roo's student halls of residence room this time - listening to The Best of Nirvana on CD for a full hour or more, Roo and I lounging at either end of her single bed and mum in the armless armchair drinking tea. Eventually prising ourselves away from the sounds and stories of Kurt Cobain, we trundled off campus and drove the few miles into Lancaster itself.

The city is set on a hill and radiates with a subtle golden glow from the soft yellow sandstone of the houses, shops and offices. We parked at the bottom and walked slowly up through the stalls of the open market that runs up and down the spine of the high street: breads, cheeses, game, sausages, curries, doughnuts, fresh English strawberries and a hundred and one other delights to choose and buy direct from the producers. We had no mission in mind other to look, buy and enjoy, and - in my case - to visit a bookshop.

Lancaster is well provided with bookshops and I had, late the previous evening, stood and lingered outside the university branch of Waterstones willing it to open especially for me as Roo took us on a tour of the campus. A couple of hours and a few shops later we staggered out of the high street with our purchases into the beery embrace of a local pub serving food and football played out on a range of giant screens. None of us being football fans, we had no clue what the big game of the day was except it ended in a huge trophy and much swapping of stripy shirts.

Striped shirts, as it turned out, might have been rather more appropriate attire than we realised for our next stop at Lancaster Castle. Picking up the brown visitor attraction signs as we left the car park, we circled and dipped around the city's compact one-way system in search of the fortifications that we could see up on top of the hill. For a while it seemed that whichever way we took we just couldn't get any closer. Along the river bank we went, past beautiful waterfront apartments and a recently engineered harmonic arching bridge painted the palest sky blue. Down a country lane next to the canal full of ducks and coots and reeds. Through twined streets, up precipitous slopes, across cobbles until we began to think we'd imagined it. And then, suddenly, the castle was in front of us. Curiously quiet and deserted of visitors, we pulled up on the steep forecourt and peered at the huge wooden door studded with square headed bolts. Her Majesty's Prison, Lancaster Castle, read the stern navy blue sign. Lancaster Castle is a prison, as it turned out, not a tourist attraction. Now that would explain the lack of directions.

Still laughing at ourselves and our castle gaffe, Roo suggested we drive the few miles out to the seaside town of Morcambe. Like many British seaside resorts, its grandeur and glamour has perhaps faded a little in recent years in the luring headlamps of package holidays abroad. But if tourists don't flock here in quite the numbers they once did, the town is making a huge and visible effort to tempt them back again with refurbishments and street artworks. The beach is gentle and sandy and curves against the promenade in a welcoming crescent of soft-breaking waves and thousands of seabirds. The horizon is made up of a stunning vista of the hills of the Lake District.

But perhaps the town's most dazzling possession is its glorious tribute to its favourite son, Eric Morcambe, born here and one half of the much loved comedy duo Morcambe and Wise. The life-size bronze statue of Eric, complete with signature glasses, captures him in his heyday doing the steps to their classic show-closing number, Bring Me Sunshine. The nation mourned when he died at a premature 58 years of age in 1984. The memorial to this national treasure, built in 1999 and 15 years after his death, was unveiled by The Queen. A memorial too to gentle comedy for gentler days perhaps.

Bring Me Sunshine - the theme tune of Morcambe and Wise

Bring me Sunshine, in your smile
Bring me Laughter, all the while
In this world where we live, there should be more happiness
So much joy you can give, to each brand new bright tomorrow

Make me happy, through the years
Never bring me, any tears
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.

Bring me Sunshine, in your eyes
Bring me rainbows, from the skies
Life's too short to be spent having anything but fun
We can be so content, if we gather little sunbeams

Be light-hearted, all day long
Keep me singing, happy songs
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.


Words - Sylvia Dee, Music - Arthur Kent


Photographs: At the top - mum, Eric Morcambe and Roo. In the middle - bronze seagull from Eric's memorial garden. At the bottom - Roo

The sandwich tray of Fate

I’ve never been one to turn up my nose at the accidental largesse that Dame Fortune strews in the haphazard pathway of my life. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say it is my honour-bound duty to make the most of Fate’s fickle bounty when I stumble upon it. For what else is a weed but a wildflower in the wrong place?

And so it was that the ethereal warps and wefts from which the tapestry of life is woven did conspire, at just the very moment when I was feeling late afternoon hungry, to procure for me a tray of abandoned sandwiches. Like the streamers and ten-penny blow horns littering the pavement in the bow wave of the carnival parade, the guests had sated their lunch time appetites and departed leaving behind piles of untouched food and dull-looking documents in their wake.

There is in my experience a strange primeval cloud that descends upon the modern brain in moments such as this, an urge so strong and so instinctive that it blots out in a micro-second ten thousand years of civilisation. And in that flicker of intuitive logic does the Stone Age cave man, skin deep within us all, cast off his modern cares and clothing and stride forward in his primitive glory. Would that ancient straggle-haired ancestor have paused for more than a heartbeat before consuming the food he found by chance in front of him? No. And nor did I.

A couple of dainty triangles of chicken and pesto on tomato bread and a mug of tea later and I could feel the rumbles dying away like yesterday’s echoes. But there were still piles of sandwiches left and it seemed criminal, to my inner cave woman self, to leave them there to be trodden by flies and thrown away in the bin. And so, with deft application of kitchen towels and a pristine plastic bag, I secreted the rest of the tray away to bring home for later.

The dog and I dined well tonight, sharing our supper of chicken and tuna and egg standing in the kitchen. I’ll throw the crusts that I removed (and the water cress he delicately rejected) out for the birds in the morning. The dog’s fast asleep at my feet now, just as his own ancestors would once have been in a Stone Age dwelling not so far removed in essence from the house we share. Neither of us will need to go hunting with Fate again, for a few more hours at least.

***

I’m off to visit Roo at Lancaster for a long weekend, setting off tomorrow morning and returning late on Sunday night. Can’t wait to see her, and my mother’s coming with me as well on her first trip to Roo’s university. We’re staying in some guest accommodation on campus – the first time I’ve done that in, oh gosh, a long time.

***

Luckily, Kaos is quite a lean dog so his scoffing of the sandwiches this evening doesn’t really qualify as a dieting disaster - unlike some of the animals in this little gallery from today’s newspaper. George the hedgehog (that’s his picture up there, next to a regular-size friend) was "placed on a crash diet after he weighed in at 2.2kg - four times the weight of a normal hedgehog. Staff at the Wildlife Aid animal sanctuary placed him on a strictly-controlled cat food diet."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/may/13/overweight-pets-animals

Celebrating success and an unexpected visitor

Fingers worn to bloodied stumps? Check
Eyeballs tinted with permanent pink glaze? Check
Typing inaccurately at speed with resultant copy full of favourite finger slip misspellings? Check (‘thnaks’ anyone, or is that just me??)
Surreptitiously eating chocolate covered raisins whilst on the phone? Check
Perfecting the art of silent cigarette lighting? Check

In that case, it must be assessment time again. I’m one of a number of freelance assessors for a grant-making organisation, a role that I took on when I was self-employed and have continued with now that I’m not. Part of the assessment process is an interview by telephone with every applicant, following which I write up and submit a report. The work’s enjoyable and I’m endlessly delighted to learn more about some of the wonderful projects that organisations up and down the country provide for disadvantaged children and young people.

But there is one downside. As I’m currently in a normal job (if such a thing exists), I have to fit the whole thing – preparation, interviews, report writing etc – around and about the day job. Which means an awful lot of frantic typing and general eye-propping and late-night oil burning for me in order to meet the deadlines.

Although I did grant myself the evening off to go over to my scuba diving club’s regular Tuesday night pub meeting. Super time (and away from the computer too), two health-giving glasses of beardy ale, some great conversation, a bag of chips on the way home and… It’s official! I am now a BSAC qualified Ocean Diver. Couldn’t resist taking a photo of my certificate (that's it ^^up there^^).

And then when I arrived home this evening and carried out my essential pre-assessment-interview ‘comfort stop’, I found a cat in the bathroom. Light ginger and sitting quite happily on top of a posh purple silk box of bubble bath that my mother gave me for Christmas. He must have snuck in somehow past Kaos, who was lying in a dog-day coma on the living room floor. One can only hope the dog might be a little more of a deterrent to real cat burglars…

Right, that’s my half hour tea break over so back to writing the assessments. If you see a plume of smoke hanging over my little house at midnight, please don’t worry – it’ll just be my smouldering finger stumps fusing to the melting keyboard.

Celebrities and other aliens

I've no idea if newspaper folk actually ever say things like Stop Press! or Hold the front page! outside the covers of fiction and films*, but if they do so, they certainly will be tonight. For one of the most devastating news stories of the year has just broken.

No, it's not the story that MPs of all party colours have been fiddling their expenses (buying manure at the tax payers' expense anyone? Doth not irony already have a name...). Nor that the Prime Minister has appeared on YouTube gurning like a 1950s Granddad at a holiday camp's funny faces competition. Nor that bankers have taken reckless gambles with other people's money (an old news story by now, surely?). Nor even that the Government was so out of touch with public opinion that it didn't realise how outraged British people would be at the suggestion that Gurkha soldiers - who had fought and risked their lives for this country - should be denied residence here and was thus voted down by both the Opposition and its own MPs in the House of Commons.

No, none of those things, but something much, much worse. Glamour model Katie Price (aka Jordan) and her pop star husband of five years, Peter Andre, have split up. A true symbol of our times, the couple met on the set of a celebrity reality TV show in 2004 and married the following year. They lived out their courtship and married lives in a blur of stories in publications ranging from the red topped tabloids to the pages of the glossies, from TV-centric gossip mags to their own reality TV shows. Every row, every breast augmentation, every pregnancy, every tattoo, house move, pastime, 'autobiography', clothing line, pop single or interview has been intricately documented in the full-beam headlights of public view.

Now, it's easy to have a little private unkind laugh at the expense of those who choose to live their lives so grotesquely in public, and I'm sure there will be many who feel that the marriage of these two people was itself a publicity-related construct. That may or may not be the case and I'm not really bothered either way.

What I am curious about, though, is how celebrity relationships are quite different from those that regular folk like you (guessing here) and me have. Or 'civilians' as Elizabeth Hurley famously put it.

You see, I reckon in the world of celebrity that everything just moves one heck of a lot faster. The getting together, courtship, house hunting, marriage, pregnancy announcements, joyful expressions of parental fulfillment, rumours of infidelity, battles with addictions to drugs / drink / cosmetic surgery, trial separations, divorce - well, the whole gamut just takes place quicker. The cycle cycles faster. The metronome ticks in double time.

If I were a gambling person, I'd bet that the first pictures of Katie or Peter with a new significant other in tow will appear in just a few weeks from now. Yet here am I, almost two years on from splitting up with my ex and only just about ready to countenance even thinking about dating again. If I was a celebrity, I'd probably not only have dated again, but married too and be heading up to my next high-profile divorce.

There was an article in the newspaper last week about animals and the way we regard them, not written so much from an animal welfare point of view but a philosophical and ethical one. The central point of the discussion looked at the differences between humans and animals without straying into the territory of anthropomorphism or taking the currently modish viewpoint that there are no differences at all. Or as the philosopher Jeremy Bentham put it so succinctly, "The question is not can they talk. Nor can they reason. But can they suffer?"

So my philosophical question is this then: what is the relationship time difference between celebrities and the rest of us civilians?

*Fram - can you enlighten me please?

"We should care because animals and humans are different", The Guardian, 8th May 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/08/animal-welfare-ethics

NB - as a consequence of this newspaper article, I'm going to buy a copy of The Philosopher and the Wolf by Mark Rowlands (Granta Books, November 2008). Rowlands, Professor of philosophy at Miami University, lived with a companion wolf called Brenin for eleven years. He believes that a deeper understanding of what it is to be human and the different kinds of intelligence both posses can emerge from "somewhere between the wolf and the philosopher".

Saturday night super heroes

Quite why there was a group of young people dressed as super heroes on the beach this evening is anyone’s guess. No flying in evidence, but plenty of wigs and capes and health-giving swigs from communal bottles of kryptonite.

An hour earlier, a teenager in a sunny yellow tee-shirt had pleaded with me outside the corner shop to go in and buy him cigarettes and vodka as I passed by. I gently declined, not as much on the grounds that he was under 18 but because I’m a regular at the shop and generally buy nothing stronger than Diet Coke (or Perrier if I’m really living it up). My friends behind the counter would have been in no doubt that the cheap cigarettes and unbranded spirits were not for me.

It brought back into my mind being asked for ID when I bought cigarettes in a 24-hour shop off Times Square. I would like to flatter myself that the cashier thought I was under 21, but even my (then 36 year old) ego wasn't buying that as I flashed my passport; more likely that in New York the shop assistants just ask everyone.

A bit further along from the gathering of unlikely super heroes was a group of three men. Polish I think and standing looking out to sea with beer cans in their hands as the sun turned the sky a brilliant burning orange. They raised their drinks in amiable greeting as Kaos and I walked by, the dog more intent on sniffing out foxes from along the banks of the fresh water culvert that runs parallel to the shore than in returning their salute. I smiled and nodded my hello as we headed towards the docks and into the sunset.

By the time we retraced our steps, the three men had gone and the group of Saturday night super heroes were swapping wigs with each other. Someone had lit a bonfire from driftwood on the beach and was standing willing it into flickering life as the last of the light drained out of the sky. A couple of teenagers in hoodies and trainers turned tricks on the floodlit skateboard ramp as we walked across the park to our little house. Kaos picked up an empty oyster shell in his mouth and carried it home, leaving it outside as the front door closed behind us with a click.

Talking of spiders

I talked to spiders a lot as a child. My mother says how she would often find me holding one in my little girl hand, chatting away and telling it stories. A conversation with a spider is necessarily a one-sided affair, the lack of reply compensated for by their great hanging around listening abilities. Somewhere along the line between nappies, ankle socks, gingham summer dresses, hair ribbons and high heels I stopped the monologue for some reason. Reason itself, probably.

A lot of people are terrified of spiders and, for them, just to have one in the room is a sickening experience. I’ve never developed a real deep dread of spiders and enjoy watching them going about their spidery business, although I certainly don’t like them sharing my duvet or hitching a ride upon my person. Psychological research seems to suggest that the fear of spiders (and snakes) may be innate if not omnipresent. If this (presumed) survival mechanism is instinctive and in-born, does the child observing Mummy standing on a stool shrieking in terror at the sight of one have any impact at all on whether we too will be afraid of spiders in our turn? Or would we be bound to have inherited her fear – or not – through our own individual genetic blueprint anyway? The spider fear conundrum perhaps.

There was a spider that lived in a small drill hole in the wall outside the front door of our old house in Gillingham. She would sit there, head poking out and her four front legs poised on the threshold of her den. It seemed an unlikely and un-nourishing place to set up home, but then I’ve never seen a spider-orientated house makeover programme and she lived there for a long time happily enough as far as we could tell. She became so much part of our personal landscape that Roo and I would go and check to see if she was there each morning when we picked the milk bottles off the doorstep and each evening after school and work. We still looked for her out of habit for a long time after she died.

But like them or loathe them, we do have an endless fascination with spiders and their habits. Their random scuttling, their lurking in dark corners, their turning up out of nowhere, their ability to create a complex web from nothing, their sometimes venomous fangs, their weird eyes, their possession of too many hairy stocking-ed legs... They just seem so alien to us, so repellent and yet so fascinating at the same time that it’s no wonder they occupy such a prominent place in myth and fairy tale and even everyday language with its webs of deceit, intrigue and sinister shady doings.

There is an allegorical element too I think of the relationships between male and female in our thoughts and stories about spiders. The infamously venomous and otherwise solitary black widow who sometimes kills and eats her mate after he has served his reproductive purpose. Or many variations of the legendary spider, always female, the man cast as the hapless fly lured into her exotic web by her beguiling beauty and trapped there, powerless, helpless and enchanted. It’s not my fault, pouts the petulant foot-stamping boy inside his handsome hairy man-suit. She made me do it.

How strange then that you can nowadays, if you so wish, find yourself a mate - should you choose to do so - by using the world wide web. Just tread carefully if you do.

The Spider And The Fly (1829) by Mary Howitt (1799 – 1888)

Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,

'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;

The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,

And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there."

Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain,

For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

"I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;

Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the Spider to the Fly.

"There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,

And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!"

Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "for I've often heard it said,

They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!"

Said the cunning Spider to the Fly,

"Dear friend what can I do,

To prove the warm affection I 've always felt for you?

I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice;

I'm sure you're very welcome -- will you please to take a slice?"

"Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "kind Sir, that cannot be,

I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!"

"Sweet creature!" said the Spider, "you're witty and you're wise,

How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!

I've a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,

If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."

"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you 're pleased to say,

And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day."

The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,

For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again:

So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,

And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly.

Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,

"Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;

Your robes are green and purple -- there's a crest upon your head;

Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!"

Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little Fly,

Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by;

With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,

Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue --

Thinking only of her crested head -- poor foolish thing! At last,

Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.

He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,

Within his little parlour -- but she ne'er came out again!

And now dear little children, who may this story read,

To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:

Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye,

And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.

Picture of female Black Widow Spider by George Grall from National Geographic

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/black-widow-spider.html

Protesting the truth

The two policemen scan us as we jostle past them on the footbridge to the London-bound platform, searching perhaps for the spark of recognition in our faces. There's a little part of me that wishes it was me they were looking for, in a kind of Bond-esque way where they'd transport me under discrete escort to the head of MI5 who'd beg me to crack codes and infiltrate a ring of golden-toothed baddies. Quite why the spooks would seek out a trivia-writing, sometime sudoku and crossword devotee with rudimentary French is not clear. But I'm ready and willing just in case. Queen and country, James, Queen and country.

Instead of which I pass them without as much as a glance from under their hat brimmed eyes and take up my seat on the opposite side. A few minutes later, they walk by arm in arm with a young woman in a pink sweatshirt and jogging pants. Somehow I don't think she got the part of the Bond girl either.

The walk from Victoria Station to my meeting place in Great George Street takes about twenty minutes in heels and I'm beginning to regret my optimistic spring morning notion of leaving home without a coat. But I soon forget about the brisk wind and numb toes when I climb up the steps into the home of the Institution of Civil Engineers. The Grand Hall on the first floor is simply breathtaking, dominated by two huge crystal chandeliers and a painted ceiling perhaps 30 feet above our heads. I'm supposed to be looking at the exhibits before the conference starts but I sip my tea and stare at the glorious rich wooden panelling and the painted frescoes for the fifteen minutes before the gong goes and sends the shuffling crowd into the lecture theatre.

If it's not quite as grand as the Hall then it only lacks by comparison. All around are carved and painted the names of the heroes of civil engineering: the spirits of Myddelton, Dudley, Newton, Savery, Newcomen, Darby, Brindley, Smeaton, Brunell, Rennie, Murdock, Cort, Arkwright, Watt, Bramah surely rest in perfect peace in this perfect room, panelled like its grander neighbour above seats of plush green velvet and topped off with a great black and white glass central dome.

On the stage, someone's droning on in streams of acronyms and abbreviations and I'm doodling in my pad when half a dozen people leap onto the platform and start shouting. They're young students, perhaps Roo's age, protesting at the announcement today of stringent cuts in university funding. They unfurl a home-made banner as the power to the microphone is cut and two burly security guards jump in with what I feel is unnecessary brusqueness. The organisers try to usher delegates out as the protesters, as if on cue, sit down as a body and chant from behind the podium and wall of bodies as the room empties. Half of the people on the stage are attempting to reason with the students, half to push them out and I'm not the only one to comment to my neighbour that they should be allowed to have their say; nothing is worse to my mind than those with no opinion and surely this is part of what being a student is all about? When they finally march out of the room ten minutes later, still chanting, still waving their banners, the two of us delegates left in the lecture theatre stand on the steps and clap as they pass and I find I have tears in my eyes.

Great George Street lies just off Parliament Square and I set out after lunch to breathe in the air of politics in the shadow of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster. The stooped bronze figure of Winston Churchill, captured here for eternity in his later years, leans on a cane above a crowd of Tamils protesting at genocide in Sri Lanka. An open-fronted shelter sheathed in blue plastic sheeting flaps in the wind as half a dozen men sit hunched under brilliant white duvets. A hand-made placard tells me this is day seven of their hunger strike. Next to them, the quiet tented string of the long running peace protest; their focus: the war in Iraq and the situation in Gaza. I stand watching them from the other side of the road, leaning on some railings and smoking a cigarette with my back to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. There's a part of me that longs to see a politician of any persuasion pull up in a car and speak to the protesters who are just yards from the House, but of course it doesn't happen.

Instead I flow on down Whitehall, bristling these days with discrete security among the crowds. The magnificent ministerial buildings have closed iron shutters just visible behind the opaque white voile curtains that hang in the handsome windows, and ornate balustrades and low walls grow up out of the middle of the wide pavement. Pedestrians and school parties chatter and stream around them but there's no mistaking their purpose as crash barriers. On past the Cenotaph, strewn with poppy wreaths at its base and giving thanks To The Glorious Dead and the newer charcoal coloured polished granite memorial To The Women of WWII.

I pass the end of Downing Street. When my mother first left school and worked for the Inland Revenue in London nearly fifty years ago, she recalls that you could still walk along Downing Street and past the Prime Minister's door. The beautiful road is artificially empty now, an oasis of still in this bustling arterial thoroughfare thanks to the massive glossy iron gates at the end. Here the police are very much in evidence, armed too in this location, with pistols in hip holsters or cradling large sinister looking weapons in their arms across the body like a baby.

I keep walking, drawn along by the crowd. Two mounted policemen chat to each other in the bus lane, their horses' hooves oiled as glossy as a raven's wings. To my left, three soldiers of the Household Cavalry stand outside Horse Guards Parade dressed in their ornate uniforms of red and black and white and gold. Two are astride a pair of shimmering huge black horses who toss their heads and stomp huge impatient feet in longing for the battlefield or the gallops rather than the constant snap of cameras. The scent of the animals mingles with diesel from buses and vans and the sweet sweet smell of trees and blossom; London's signature perfume perhaps.

An advertisement outside Trafalgar Studio Theatre is offering discounted tickets for this afternoon's matinee performance of The Last Cigarette, and I am tempted. But my eyes pull me on to Trafalgar Square and I flow on again with the tourists. Dominated on one side by the National Gallery and in front by Nelson's Column punching its triumph into the sky, the whole thing is protected in the centre by four vigilant magnificent monstrous lions and girded by ever-circling traffic. Yet I feel it's diminished since my childhood. No more grain sellers and the sooty staining on the buildings' stones has been washed away by successive improvements and revamps. No more children throwing handfuls of corn and laughing with delight at the pigeons feeding from their hands. No more family photo albums capturing a delighted child with a pigeon standing on his or her head. Only a few birds remain and the fountains are empty of water today.

I walk on by, passing the National Portrait Gallery - one of my favourites - and then into Charing Cross Road. London's booksellers' row of tradition, but with space for other singular traders too - coins, stamps, medals - and run away side roads stuffed with antiquarian books and bars. I stand in the doorway of a closed down bookshop with whitewashed windows and smoke a cigarette. It's not down and out here yet for these traditional traders but I wonder how many of the booksellers will still remain in another ten years.

The cafes start to take on an oriental flavour now as I edge into China Town and the road names are bi-lingual English and Chinese. I check the time on my mobile phone, crossing over to re-trace my steps on the other side of the road. By the time I reach Downing Street again, another protest has set up opposite the gates on the other side of the road and is chanting slogans across four lanes of buses and taxis. As I stand watching, an immaculately dressed white haired man of about 60 slips out from behind the road's security cordon and joins me on the pavement. He has an open smiling face and when he asks me what they're protesting about, his eyes sparkle as much as his soft Irish accent. We peer across and can make out the words but not the cause, although the protesters are all women and accompanied by a giant stuffed bear.

By the time I reach Parliament Square again, I've been walking for an hour and a half and am grateful to sit for five minutes on a wall facing the House. Behind me, Tamil protesters are queuing for lunch at a makeshift food stall and talking in small animated clusters as they eat with plastic spoons from paper plates. I slip back into the conference with enough time to grab a cup of coffee and take my green velvet seat before the afternoon session starts. I think the idea behind the extended two hour lunch break was networking, not rambling, and the lessons intended to be taken away from the conference quite different from those I've observed. Never mind; the delegate pack has a CD-ROM of all the presentations on it just in case I feel the urge.


Photo of Winston Churchill and protesters in Parliament Square taken on my mobile phone.

Sort of a top hat day

Having a bit of an inverse Irving Berlin day today involving the forced replacement of emotional seepage with a stiff upper lip.

That’s the trouble when you’ve allowed your right brain to gain the upper hand: emotional leaks and tremblesome lips. No such problem with the trusty logical left side, domain of practicality and good old British reserve. So how does one prevent a quiver from becoming a river, a little cloud of gloom from becoming a thunderhead of doom?

Step into the sunshine and take full advantage of a day working at home to spend an hour lying in a joyful red reclining chair in the bright breezy garden. Watch the wet washing billowing and flapping on the line in a most satisfactory way. Shut your eyes and observe the little pin pricks of light shining through your lids. Trace the trails of the tiny black dots as they dance and wander across the inside of the thin closed membrane. Listen to the sounds of the wings of the sparrows as they land on the bird feeder. Whirring? Purring? Laugh at their pickiness as they reject and drop discarded seeds with disdainful beaks. Pluck out some moult hairs from the dog’s haunches whilst he snores. Throw the beach-found blue rubber ball when he grumbles at you for doing so. Make a cup of tea in your favourite bone china mug with the pictures of bees on it. Smoke a few cigarettes and remember that although it’s your last pack of duty frees you haven’t paid full price for 20 since February. Pinch out a few baby weeds and hope they’re not the seedlings you’ve been nurturing. Return to the desk with a bowlful of muesli topped with yogurt and honey. Drink more tea. Continue work where you left off. Smile.

Job done.

I'm puttin' on my top hat
Tyin' up my white tie
Brushin' off my tails

I'm dudein' up my shirt front
Puttin' in the shirt studs
Polishin' my nails

I'm steppin' out, my dear
To breathe an atmosphere that simply reeks with class
And I trust that you'll excuse my dust when I step on the gas

For I'll be there
Puttin' down my top hat
Mussin' up my white tie
Dancin' in my tails


Extract from Top Hat, White Tie & Tails by Irving Berlin (1935) from the musical Top Hat (nominated for four Academy Awards)