Flags in the Sand

I didn't go to London in the end. No, instead I walked along Royal Avenue, pulled my hood over my head and cracked open a can of Irn Bru.

The Fun Day we're arranging is next Saturday, and this morning I went over to the site to plan (roughly) what's going to go where. There are lots of problems. Most notably, the ground is not flat. In fact, it gently slopes away from the car park. Secondly, and most likely to flip me out, is that I can't seem to think quickly enough when everyone around me is trying to make decisions.

Actually, I think this feature in particular, is quite an important discovery in my ongoing chillout-quest. A flag, if you will. Is it possible to be chilled-out when everything is changing quickly around you as people are also thinking at speed to solve the same problems?

The solution, of course, is to be as organised as possible beforehand, and communicate it well.

The rain spotted out of the grey sky as I walked home. A boy waiting by a front door saw me pass by with my pad and my pen.

"Are you an artist?" he said. It made me chuckle.

I suppose I am. I do seem to do things creatively, whatever they may be. The more I think about this, the more I realise that this is probably another flag in the sand. Improvised, passionate strokes of the brush could create a masterpiece. But whatever you do, don't stand round the easel and chip in.

-

So, no open-top bus tour either. Hopefully I'll do my London trip in two weeks' time. After my morning, working out which way round a climbing wall should face, I decided to go into town. Waste of time. I think I might write a poem about multi-storey car-parks.

In other news, my Mum just used the word 'chillax'. I think I'd better check with CERN just in case they've done something funny to the fabric of the Universe.

Chilling Out

I'm on a quest to be a bit more chilled out.

I know, I know: 'chill out,' is what you say to someone who's over-stressed and looks like they're either about to punch someone or pull their own hair out. Right now, I'm not particularly stressed. In fact, I haven't been like that for some time. But I could easily get there I think. And there are plenty of opportunities coming up.

So, there is a plan.

"You need to ringfence some of your evenings," said Yinka. "Do something you really enjoy, take days off and get a hobby."

Good idea. So next week I'm going to London to sit on an open-top bus.

"Perhaps you need to disconnect from the rest of the world," said someone else. Yep. For some reason though, it's really difficult to switch my phone off and stop checking my emails. But. I shall do it.

This weekend, I'm in Ely with my friends. I've often wondered how environment makes a difference. Reading is where life happens, and almost everywhere else I go, everyone has learned how to chill out much more effectively. And so it's so much easier here. I slept like the world was a gigantic blanket and I was lost somewhere in it.

But then, this all might be because less is expected of me when I'm outside of my normal life. So, perhaps responsibility has something to do with it. Perhaps responsibility brings stress. But then you have to admit, that makes the most chilled-out of all, the irresponsibles, the layabouts and the workshy.

And so chilling out becomes this fine balancing act between taking up the things you're responsible for and not taking them too seriously.

And that sounds quite stressful.

I will think about this more. In the meantime, here's a not unrelated poem. Take it as deeply as you like...

Storm in a Teacup

Between the walls of china

Upon the boiling sea

we sailed upon a sugar-cube

Across the waves of tea

Across the torrid ocean

Beneath the scented sky

from bow to brown horizon

The nectar bubbled by

It bubbled and it troubled

And it slopped against the side

and the steam began to beam

upon on the overheating tide

And the ocean in a motion

turned about the troubled crew

as it whipped about the ship

like a storm about to brew

Then rain began to tumble

Like arrows on the sea

It lashed against the sugar-cube

And spiked into the tea.

The sea grew hot and angry

and the waves were high and steep

as the ocean pushed us skyward

and then dropped us to the deep

It grumbled and it rumbled

And it twisted and it turned

and it growled and then it howled

till the raging waters burned

And the crew upon the brew

Looked to heaven as we cried

should we sink upon the brink

of the effervescent tide

Then somehow in the distance

A ray of light broke through

And suddenly the brightened sky

was shining on the crew

And limping on the ocean

We raised the tattered sail

and all across the raging tea

the storm began to fail

Between the walls of china

Upon the boiling sea

We'd known a storm no finer

Than in that cup of tea

Waiting for a Towel

Right. I've just put my towel in the washing machine, ready for tomorrow. I had to pull out a load of James's stuff; shirts and stripy socks, swimming around in the empty tub. It'll all go back in in thirty minutes.

Tomorrow it's baptisms, and I'm going in to do some dunking. Actually I'm a bit nervous because the last time I was in the pool, we didn't quite manage to get the person being baptised fully underwater. Yinka made us do it again. We're a funny lot us Christians sometimes.

The house is quiet tonight. James is in that schroedinger-state of being out/asleep (I can never tell which it is) and Reuben is canoodling. Oh and I'm not entirely sure where Danni is. She seems to exist inside a sort of cyclone that breezes in and out, taking a collection of bags, clothes, keys and shopping with her, with never quite enough time to just stop. I wonder whether some people are just great at creating that life around them, and others do a bit too much stopping. I suppose I'm kind of envious of the whirlwindies - although on balance, stopping is great.

And so, I'm here on my own, stopped, and waiting for the washing machine.

It's been an amazing day today: blue skies, warm sunshine, light breezes - a proper spring day. I went for a walk by the river at Pangbourne. Narrowboats and leisure boats were moored up, dogs were racing around after soggy branches and tennis balls, and the Great British Public were lazing on the grass as though it were the height of summer. I suppose, given the way these things go, it may well have been. It was nice to see happy people too: mums with babies, couples lounging awkwardly, and kids on bikes. Days like this are good for reminding us that not everyone lives in Eastenders. There is some goodness in the world.

I wonder if my towel will dry by the morning...

Some Curious Events for a Saturday

A number of strange things happened today.

Firstly, I overheard a conversation between two middle-aged women who were swearing like sailors, in Costa. Maybe I've been brought up in an environment where middle-aged women arrange flowers and make quiche, or maybe the world has just changed, but it isn't right that.

I was there to mark some essays, but it was so noisy I ended up just doing a bit of general observation. And by that I think I mean eavesdropping. While the coffee machine foamed and the heavy chairs scraped across the faux-wood floor, couples chatted about the merits of Facebook and Twitter, newspapers rustled, and kids, bolted into their pushchairs like little POWs, stared wide-eyed at the world of false lighting and arty pictures, while their mums supped from steamy lattes and mocha-frappa-skinny-choca-ccinos*.

I think maybe hanging from the eaves of a house, cupping one's ear to the wall in some desperate intent to 'listen in' for the latest bit of juicy gossip, is different to overhearing isn't it? I do hope so. I mean it's quite different when a conversation just encroaches into your life. Take last night for example: I sat on the 17 bus and two gay guys sat in the seats behind me. I wasn't listening out for a broadcast of a day in the life of a homosexual man and his dramatic rollercoaster with curtains, ex-partners, dodgy-nights-out-in-Southampton and The Malthouse*. But that, folks, is what I got. It is quite emotionally complex being a homosexual by the sounds of it.

The second odd event was hearing Yinka teaching in French. Yinka's taken me by surprise a few times recently. The other morning I flicked the radio on to BBC Radio Berkshire and there he was talking about TLG* - I had a chuckle at that and then forgot which lane I was supposed to be in to get onto the M4. Today, I was at his house as he was teaching the young adults from France. Fascinating. I learned some things:

(1) La croissance = growth

(2) Je suis un fils, je ne suis pas une fille (I got those mixed up and told them all I was a girl)

(3) French people don't eat frogs' legs.

The other peculiar thing that happened to me was that I managed to spend exactly £66.66 at Tesco.

"Ooh, that's a bad sign," said the checkout lady. Had I been quick enough I would have glanced at my bulging bags of lovely shopping, and quietly said, "Yep. It's the Mark of the Feast."

In a way though, I'm quite glad I didn't.

Notes

*I made this up. Then, I'm not sure most of the names in some of these places aren't any less ridiculous.

*Although this sounds like the title of a homophobic podcast, I'm not kidding about the content...

*TLG is The Lighthouse Group school, which our church recently set up to help educate students who've faced a crisis point in conventional education.

Time Travel Melancholy

Apparently my sister had a dream where she time-travelled back into 1983 and visited our old house. My Grandma answered the door.

"Is Sheila there?" asked Heather. She didn't want to confuse my Grandma, who would certainly not have recognised the 36 year-old version of her 11 year-old granddaughter. Sheila is my Mum.

"Well yes, she's upstairs," said Grandma, a bit suspiciously...

I don't know how the dream turned out. My Mum asked me whether I could think of anything significant that had happened in 1983. As it happened, that was the year I fell down the back steps and fractured my skull. I was 5.

The thing that really intrigued me about it all was the sadness of the thought of time-travel. I pictured my sister walking down the drive in the sepia-tones of an old photograph. I saw people, strolling past in dimmed reds and blues and jeans and jumpers. I saw the trees in the park, waving in the faded sunlight, looking young and old all at the same time. It was a sadness to think that the past itself could have faded, started to disintegrate like an old video or a cine-film.

I wondered too, whether the whole thing might actually have happened. Although it seems unlikely, I like the thought that Grandma once met a strange young lady on a sunny afternoon, who seemed strangely familiar.

-

Danni and James have just returned from Sainsbury's with an enormous quantity of cleaning stuff. Reuben (who missed the house meeting) is doing his late night thing of sliding about in his socks and generating complicated debates. Maybe one day, this too will just be all a faded memory. James tinkering on the piano, the smell of burnt beans in the kitchen and the sound of pasta rattling into an empty saucepan.

I hope not. These are good times.

Monkey Business

"Ah," said Peter. "You're a gorilla."

"I'm a what?"

"You're a gorilla. Give a chimpanzee something and he'll smash it. Give it to a gorilla and he'll delicately take it apart into its component pieces. A bonobo will just hump the thing, and an orangutan will take it apart and put it back together."

"I see," I said, handing him the screwdriver. I had just explained that I am the kind of person who takes things apart but doesn't know how to reassemble them. He quickly set to repairing his mouse, the one with the dodgy scroll wheel. I conceded (without much irony) that the screwdriver was probably of more use in the hands of an orangutan, and that he was welcome to keep hold of it.

-

At lunchtime, the sun broke through the clouds and I looked out past the small collection of books that live on my windowsill. A haze lingered over the smoking shed and a few unhappy-looking people shuffled around, puffing very seriously on their cigarettes. It struck me that there was a story behind each elongated face. Perhaps a decision years ago, a teenage temptation that turned into a lifetime. Perhaps just a moment of madness. I was lost in a reverie for a while.

Reveries are swiftly broken by colleagues talking about their bowel movements. It turns out that Peter hasn't had a poo for four days. He went home this afternoon, looking like a sweaty cardboard cutout. I accidentally told him to 'have a good one,' and then went red with embarrassment.

Bring it on?

The sky was blue. Powdery lines of cloud streaked across the morning, and bright fresh sunlight fell on tall trees, dappling them with glory. It felt, finally, like Spring. And after the coldest and longest of winters, it was most welcome.

"Bring it on," I'd said defiantly. If you had told me then that in six months' time I would be driving down the M4 to work, I would have carefully dismissed it. Like a bedizened passenger stepping aboard the RMS Titanic, I would have waved away such nonsense with a sparkling eye and an upturned nose. Pride does that to you.

So then. The M4 it was; and is, every morning for the moment. Somehow in a way I don't understand, it seems right; although I don't much like it. I guess disciples know this feeling. We grimace and pull out our hair and look to Heaven and somehow find the strength to say "Not my will, but yours..." and we mean it. If only I had meant it when it mattered...

More about all this some other time. To be honest, I just wanted to get writing again. I suppose the warmth of the sun, the hint of summer days, and love, happiness and excitement, speak deeply to this battered old heart.

Psalm 57:1-3

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me,

for in you my soul takes refuge.

I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings

until the disaster has passed.

I cry out to God, Most High,

to God, who fulfills his purpose for me.

He sends from heaven and saves me,

rebuking those who hotly pursue me;

Selah

God sends his love and his faithfulness.

... bring it on.