Rapping my knuckles impatiently against the steering wheel, I start to hate the sight of the car in front of me.
I’ve been staring at its rear for far too long, and quite frankly, it’s just getting annoying. Multiple internal ‘grrr!’s ensue about the very fact that the car exists, and is seemingly just getting in my way.
What was supposed to be a thirty minute drive home has turned into a journey of much more epic proportions, or so it feels. I feel like I could have reached the furthest flung corners of Abu Dhabi since I left the office, because for reasons currently unknown, the usual free-flowing gateway to home – a major local A road – has turned into a stagnant mass of four-wheeled, metallic bugs which my overdosed-on-caffeine bladder struggles to tolerate.
I am becoming increasingly more irritable. Expletives buzz round my head at a whirlwind pace:
“This f****** f*** of a f****** road is going to make me late for the gym”
“I’m so f****** desperate for a f****** p***”
My thermos of coffee has depreciated to an underwhelming tepid temperature due to the delay, and I had to turn the audio volume down right in the midst of my enthusiastic Sinitta sing-a-long because such an act no longer suited the tempo of the traffic.
“She told me a secret! I promised that I’d ——“
Oh hold up for a moment, Sinitta! I need to perform an exceptionally ominous brake right now.
Auto-pilot steps in and emphasises the unfortunate fact that this mind-numbing wait is not conducive to my evening plans. I recall the details of a sneaky back-road and perform an irritable ten-thousand-point turn in the middle of the road in order to turn back on myself to access it, indubitably confusing the heck out of Mr. Large Grey Nissan behind me.
As I find myself manoeuvring extremely slowly down a narrow country lane, I realise that I’m far from alone in conducting this master plan. I count the cars ahead and consequently stare at them for the best part of an hour, ultimately concluding how much my wondrous sneaky-beaky has failed. On the dashboard I watch the minutes roll by. One turns into ten almost as swiftly as it turns into twenty, and this is just turning into a massive joke.
And then I see it, beneath this bridge.
The motionless vehicles sprawled inordinately across the motorway lanes.
The emergency helicopter making a perfect landing.
The blue lights flashing manically, emergency services staff visibly working tirelessly to retain a resolute face and keep an horrendous situation in a state of somewhat check.
I see the stranger with their head in their hands sat helplessly by the side of a major English vein which, right now, lays dry, apart from the spread of personal items and mangled metal strewn across the tarmac for somebody to have to clear later. How the Hell can I take in the magnitude of the impact of what’s just happened to you? I can’t.
The rapping against the steering wheel stops. The internal expletives slapped into silence.
I suddenly feel incredibly privileged and incredibly stupid.
I’m grateful I’m still heading home…
Song of the Day:Deerhoof – I Will Spite Survive
Deerhoof are an understated San Francisco indie band who have been churning out classic tracks for over twenty years to an unobtrusive yet loyal audience. This is one of their newest songs, and it’s spine-chillingly powerful. Listen.
On a personal level it’s been an extremely busy and pretty significant few weeks. As result there are several new posts in ‘draft’ mode that require more time than I currently have to bring them to something which I consider to be a conclusion that does them justice.
And with this comes confirmation of the importance of something which I call, ‘Spirit Time’.
Spirit Time is all about keeping in tune with ourselves and the things which we hold dear, which more often than not are the people we love (in any sense of the word), the issues we care about, the hobbies we enjoy, and developing and retaining the self-awareness that helps us navigate our ways through anything this crazy world may then proceed to throw at us.
Regular Spirit Time is extremely important; but too often we allow other things to take priority. Increasing responsibilities in advancing adulthood mean we don’t always get a choice in the matter, nor do we always notice that when we’re so preoccupied with working our way through life’s To-Do list, we’re not really taking the time to understand what’s going on – or has gone on – around us. Often it’s more tempting just to cross off that final item of the day – like preparing tomorrow’s lunch or completing an online bank transaction – and go to bed without any further thought about anything.
As somebody who as result of recent change is currently floating around in the nomadic space between the comfort zones that only come with achieving familiarity with one’s new surroundings I am again remembering why regular Spirit Time is so important. Change is an important and necessary part of life, but it can also feel very strange to start with, and ensuring that we find time to devote to the things which consistently simmer our souls can hold even more value than usual during this period.
The nature of Spirit Time varies with individual need and interest, but ultimately it’s about keeping priorities in check and continuing to understand and remember one’s passions and purposes in the face of whatever mad concoction of events that may happen from day to day. Spirit Time may take the guise of a coffee with a friend, a walk in the woods, or looking through old family photographs. This blog forms some of my own Spirit Time, for example.
Whatever you choose to do with it, it’s important to make time to spend it.
How do you spend your Spirit Time?
Photo from a recent walk in Kings Wood.
Song of the Day: The Frights – Tungs
Just a nice, chirpy piece of American ‘let’s jump in the car, wind the windows down, and drive to the pool‘ surf-punk. Impossible to dislike.
Like a disturbing volume of others my age, I’ve often felt a bit ‘priced out’ of modern life and have considered ways to make some extra cash. I’ve sometimes wondered if my writing may be a useful vehicle for such. It is, after all, something I massively enjoy doing, and I’m a huge advocate for the idea that the more passionate you feel about something, the greater the chance of doing something good with it. At the very least, it becomes more important to try and see where it can lead to, cash motivations aside.
It sounds a bit cringe-worthy to admit, but very now and then, there’s a fleeting daydream of opening up – with fluttering fingers – a copy of my first book as it arrives to me fresh from the publisher, and breathing in a huge sense of pride and relief that the time and effort spent on those words turned out to be ‘worth it’ (in the sense of mass produced matte covers in bold colours that are nice to run my fingernails down, and fresh white pages.)
But for every daydream there’s a resounding countenance of realism and I know that the above only turns out true for a minority of writers, so it would probably be unwise for me to invest too much hope or need into the visual (but I’m still going to give it my best shot). For the most part, the content of my writing is confined to this Blog, which I don’t tend to advertise overly often. There’s something about having the product of your heart and soul be critiqued by strangers on the world-wide-web that makes me hesitant to share it too much, although every now and again I’ll find the courage to send it off to places. Sometimes, somebody might publish it(a very proud day even though the ‘Comments’ section promptly turned into some unrelated gender-based debate on a post that was effectively trying to promote a positive message. Oh internets, you big ol’ misery guts). But most of the time, they might reply with the standard, “sorry, not this time” e-mail. And that’s really okay, because success – generally – would render itself meaningless and yield less joy if it didn’t have to battle past it’s stubborn opposition along the way.
In my more recent quests to do more with my writing I’ve been looking online for possible outlets, and I must say it’s been pretty depressing; not for a lack of opportunity, but for the number of articles I’ve stumbled across about ‘what makes a good piece of creative writing.’ These articles all claim to offer tips and guidance on how to compose the kind of pieces that would apparently be any publisher or audience’s supposed wet dream, and they jar me immeasurably. Like with most forms of art, who exactly determines what’s good and what’s not? And since when was it ever suitable or okay to implement a definitive set of regulations like this? That just can’t work; there is nothing out there that doesn’t divide opinion somewhere along the line, even the best-selling authors in the world are not without those who are indifferent to their work.
The whole point of creativity is that it comes from the heart and soul. It shouldn’t just be a fabricated product of one too many (often contradictory) recipes for success published around the internet by people driven by formulas and a nauseous thirst for ‘likes’ and ‘hits’. To tailor your writing to bay into the ideals of the self-appointed directorate when really the beauty of writing (or any other kind of creativity) has only ever been – and should only ever be – about one’s ability to express what they mean in a way that may just so happen to resonate with those who view it, just seems so inherently wrong.
I’ve been writing in this Blog each month for six years not because I’m trying to sell anything or look for acclaim, I just like to write, and wanted somewhere I can keep all my articles in one place as a personal portfolio. And I would far rather keep it that way, than create pieces in which I can no longer recognise myself due to a pressure to amend it in line with the experts’ view. To me, that’s tantamount to plagiarism.
Creativity should never be about trying to force your work to fit a particular model, and that isn’t just me being reticent to how much I would love to have my life totally ‘made’ from this hobby, because that would be amazing, and I’ll continue to look for opportunities to send off pieces that I think particular websites could be interested in. Who wouldn’t love to be comfortable and financially secure from something which they’re happy to pump out twenty four seven? Who wouldn’t love to have fans of their work? However, if that lifestyle meant having the products of my heart and soul prodded and poked with beyond all recognition, then I don’t think I would want to have it.
I’ll give an example. When rejecting one of my pieces, one very famous host-site suggested that I could improve the likelihood of things being published if the topic was ‘more current’, on the basis that more people would have an interest in it. It’s a sensible theory, of course, but what if I have nothing to say about those topics? Enthusiasm is hard enough to feign in person, let alone in writing, despite having Caps Lock and exclamation marks to aid us (I’m SO excited about Pippa Middleton’s wedding I might need a glass of coconut water to contain myself!!!) It just doesn’t work, does it?
Nothing makes me happier (excluding crisps, gin and cured meats) than people telling me they like what I’ve written here, but I wouldn’t feel as content about it if I couldn’t feel like I ‘owned’ the words I posted, and any creative who does what they do out of love for doing it probably feels exactly the same. A completed ‘Paint by Numbers’ can look worthy of the Louvre from a distance but you wouldn’t exactly be heralding the person who completed it as the next Edgar Degas once you found out that they had been told what colours to put where. Plenty of people can follow a recipe or set of instructions but only one person can say what you want to say, so say it. Do it. Colour it. Write it. Bend it. Send it. Pan-fry it and serve with curly kale, if that’s how you want to do it…
There’s every value in looking for guidance when you’re trying to build up confidence in your skills, in fact if I could have my dream job it would be to help people learn how to express themselves through creative writing. It’s when you start going against your heart though, and start to make your painting or chapter more reflective of what you think people want to see, that you become in danger of losing the special relationship you have with your paintbrush or pen (or, well, keyboard). The importance of that relationship should never be underestimated, particularly not in a society that can be superficial enough, because essentially that relationship is the key to making creativity enjoyable. That’s what makes a creative piece of writing good.
I don’t know if anything more tangible will come out of my love of writing, or if I’ll ever run fingernails down any matte covers, but I’ve had a nice couple of hours writing this, and that’s payment enough.
Song of the Day:Sondre Lerche – Violent Game (Ice Choir Remix)
Every now and then you discover a piece of music that stops you in your tracks in awe as you try and take it in for the first time, and for me, this is one of those pieces. Sondre Lerche’s slow Norwegian indie-pop meets Ice Choir’s energetic synthesisers and comes together for four and a half minutes of absolute wow.
I can’t even really recall how we got on to the topic, but my mother and I were talking about a house in Ospringe that my grandfather had lived in, and before I knew it she had fetched this booklet and was placing it into my hands:
“Your great Uncle Len used to write poems about what it was like to grow up and live in Faversham, and in 1989 he sent a heap to The Faversham Society and they decided to issue a whole booklet out of them. You’re probably old enough to understand them now, but you certainly weren’t back then!”
Until today, all I could have told you about my great Uncle Len was that he had a stubbly beard and smoked. I think I only ever saw him twice. Once was at a family party at the RC Church on Tanners Street, Faversham, in the late 1980’s (though my memories are fragmented on account of only being about four years old at the time), and once was in my grandfather’s hallway a few years later as he arrived just as we were leaving. Great Uncle Len died around twenty years ago and I know shockingly little about him, which is why reading through his carefully crafted words this evening felt like a huge gift.
Inside the booklet are dozens of his poems about growing up in Faversham: the Summers picking hops, watching for barges whilst stood in the mud on the Creek at Hollow Shore, and the night he and his nine siblings, including my grandfather, had to move house in the dark because they didn’t want anybody else to see how few possessions they owned.
I think what got to me the most whilst reading those poems was the remarkable sense of gaining posthumous familiarity with Uncle Len, and the realisation that a lot of what he had to say in poems written thirty years ago could still ring true today. A lot of the buildings he refers to in the poems are still there. Some have changed hands, but others haven’t. In addition, all the land still remains, only it maybe has a few (or more) extra features now, like the ’70’s residential builds that now share occupancy with the meadows opposite his first family home. The picture below, if you can make out the words, is a poem Len wrote specifically about these changes and developments:
For those unable to view the image, the bulk of the poem rues what he perceives as a loss of the town he grew up in to the town he later returned to, ending with a bittersweet account of passing a former acquaintance on the street, which unexpectedly then wed both past and present together for a moment of contentment.
And no doubt most people when they reach a certain age, or even before, will probably feel the same way that Len did when they look around ‘the place called home’. To me, this poem, like the rest in the book, has served as a sobering reminder of the eternal nature of change generally, as well as in relation to the landscape. If it’s not the land or the people around us changing, it’s us ourselves. New buildings and new people viewed with new and enlightened eyes, leaving very little room for anything to stay the same.
But perhaps my favourite thing about coming across this booklet this evening was realising the magic of creativity and how, even long after they’ve gone, we can still find out so much more about people from acquainting ourselves with the things they left behind. I feel like I’ve now had my third ever encounter with great Uncle Len, and now I know that he had a beard, smoked, and wrote damn good poems that I’ll think of, and consider, during any future visit to Faversham. I’ll never see the place in the same way again…
Song of the Day:Bad Wave – 1955
The song is a pretty cool indie-synth pop number, but the song combined with the video is something especially amazing.
I wanted to drive to the coast and I needed to be by the coast. Reeling from a heavy cold and a couple of recent hard-hitting bits of negative news, I just wanted to be alone and clear my head for an hour or so, just the way us introverts like to do, and the sea air was the only thing I felt could fulfill that purpose here on this random Sunday night in March.
The sea at night is a bit like a secret party, one to which only you are invited, full of mysterious activity and wonder. The whistling winds swirl in and out and along the tides of ear canals as seagulls squeak out at sea, still flying in their flocks, accustomed to a routine which only they know.
And on the horizon, some kind of vessel, probably a cargo ship, oozes by slowly. You only know it’s there from the flashing red lights which, I assume, are its way of navigating through these seas. I think about the people on that ship right now, hard-working labourers no doubt, who are probably looking at their watches and thinking about their families on the mainland tucking into bed. Or maybe they’re just striving to connect to the Wi-Fi from a yellowing, intermittent dongle in order to resume their game of Candy Crush. Or perhaps, pouring themselves oily instant coffee into a chipped mug and scrabbling around a battered biscuit tin for the last remaining Hobnob. Who really knows.
My thoughts then turn to the cargo itself; what are the contents of those containers that are probably aboard, and will they one day eventuate into flotsam on a beach on the other side of the world, to be discovered by excited local children? Just like the residents of Cornwall, who recently found pieces of Lego swept ashore from when a rogue wave had interfered with a vessel taking the toy from Rotterdam to New York in the late 1990’s. I conclude, with no real rationale at all, that the containers on the vessel ahead of me host boxes of toothbrushes, and imagine an excited little Scandinavian child lifting one from the banks of a remote islet off the coast of Bergen, Norway, in the year 2026.
The distant ship then conjures thoughts of recent news articles which described how thirty years ago, just under two hundred people were killed when a popular passenger vessel capsized on its way back to Kent from the continent. A crew-member of the Herald of Free Enterprise had made a huge yet human mistake and left a door open allowing water through. As a family we had sailed with Townsend Thoresen many times, much like our relatives and neighbours had too. My sole recollection had been picking up an M&M off the floor which my mother had swiftly snatched from me in fear that it was something more sinister than that. News of the disaster hadn’t seemed real the first time I was old enough to comprehend it, and it certainly didn’t seem any more real now. I look out over the mass of black water not a million miles from where the tragedy had taken place, and pay thought to the excessive number of those who perished upon their return from an innocent continental break on that night. Life is so cruel at times.
On a well-timed brighter note, literally so, I spot the offshore Vattenfall wind-farms flicker red in the distance. For a moment I am transported back to August 2014 when a friend of mine, Michelle, who lived in Canterbury for a short period, joined us for a picnic here on Tankerton beach. She had a friend who wanted to join us a little later into the afternoon, and strenuously tried to help her navigate her way over the phone, “You see those wind farms out in the distance? We’re sat in the bay that’s directly opposite those.”
It’s a quote we laugh about anytime we’re driving along the Kent coast… because from Whitstable down to Thanet (16 miles)….those wind-farms, which stand some way out from the shore, always seem “directly opposite”! Quite how Michelle managed to successfully guide her veterinarian friend to the exact groynes between which we were eating our lunch using that piece of advice, we’ll never quite know, but we’ll always be amused.
Then there’s the beach huts below. We used to own one of those, a gift from my grandfather, before vandals tore it apart for what was the last time my parents would stand for. Many happy Summers had been spent sat inside that wooden solitude, eating fresh rotisserie chicken from the nearest corner shop (now popular fish-restaurant Jo-Jos), and dipping into the sea on boiling August afternoons. I’d brought numerous school friends down to visit “the beach hut” , and how nice it had been in comparison to the suburban Greater London life we were otherwise used to. Watford was a great place to grow up, but it didn’t have a beach, and that was the problem. That was what used to make the journey home along a soulless and grey M25 reminiscent of the morning’s first opening of the eyes, prompting the sudden cessation to a dream.
The call of nature aroused me mid-daydream. Or mid-sea-at-night-dream. A day’s worth of coffee is difficult to contest even though I could’ve quite happily stayed outside, looking at the twinkling compressed freckles of gold in the distance denoting the next town, and wondering about the life going on beneath them. I went into the nearest pub I could find and ordered a cup of tea, and then got my notebook out and started writing this against the backdrop of a middle-aged trio at the next table talking about Shepherds Pie. Of all things.
I’m glad I live near to the sea.
Song of the Day: Lacrosse – Don’t Be Scared
This is a beautiful song from a beautiful Swedish band.
Ten easy habits to develop that will have a positive impact on yourself. A good way to begin a New Year. Make 2017 yours.
1) Drink a glass of water
Whilst it’s often dismissed as being a “boring” choice of beverage and thus one that probably isn’t consumed enough (let’s face it, who goes to a restaurant and orders a glass of water without feeling entirely awkward about it), it’s common knowledge that drinking more water increases your energy, settles your emotions and helps with weight loss. As well as many other benefits.
Imagine it as a spring-clean for your soul, and try and get into the routine of ‘washing yourself’ multiple times a day to the point where – much like brushing your teeth – it becomes a habit that feels uneasy if you skip it.
If you are reading this post, then I am going to ask that you get up and pour yourself a glass of water right now, and drink it. Just do it, no excuses or unnecessary delays, and no giving in to the temptation of ‘more interesting’ things like Rooibos tea or anything else, particularly those that are brown in colour.
I’m certainly going to help myself to a glass of water right after I type this full-stop (.)
2) Send a message to a friend you’ve not spoken to in a while
See what’s new with them. Find out how they’re feeling. Perhaps it may turn out that you both have a plan to travel to a similar place in the not too distant future, and can arrange to meet. If the friend lives nearby, arrange to go for a coffee. Just talk. Listen. Re-engage. Don’t let the ever-increasing velocity of time, or distance, swallow up a valued friend. Add another chapter to your friendship by creating new memories together.
3) Read a book
What I like about books, is that they are escapism without the materialism; an escapism that you yourself have more control over. No overpaid actors and actresses who have already played a billion roles before. No superfluous special effects and stupid noises. Just some words, passionately pulled together by a writer, probably underneath the warm glow of a battered old desk-lamp and a plate of Rich Tea biscuits in a study that smells of dust and sweat. That writer put their heart and soul into those words for you to enjoy.
Those words: just some words that you can interpret whichever way you want. Characters who can be whoever you want them to be. Settings that can look like the kind of places you may have always wanted to visit. New words, like “recumbent”, that instantly roll off the tongue and then permanently fill a vacancy in your internal thesaurus.
Just five minutes of reading a day can have a beautiful impact.
4) Identify the people that make you feel negative, and crop them out like a Photoshop image
I know it’s not always possible, but a lot of the time it is. Friendship is one of the most beautiful things about life, but unfortunately quantity will not always equate to quality.
In recent years I have truly realised how much I am done with expending my energies on people who seem to have a different face for each day of the week, or whose favourite topic of conversation is other people and their faults. That kind of company doesn’t make anybody feel great, and doubtless if they’re being unkind about others, they’re probably being unkind about you, too, and that’s an anxiety and disservice to yourself you really don’t need.
Leave people like that to learn from their own mistakes and make sure that your time is spent only on people who are true. Those are the only people who really matter, and those are the ones who will make your days positive.
5) Exercise
I write this as somebody who a year or so ago had no interest in exercise and – to be honest – was pretty fed up of people talking about it. I’m not going to now proclaim to be an expert or a fitness fanatic (although I definitely think I’m heading well towards the latter, who would ever have thought…), but I will just say this:
A body that doesn’t exercise will never know just how much it’s capable of.
6) Smile at a stranger
A genuine smile at a stranger will create a little lift in each of your days.
That cashier in the supermarket has spent 6.5 hours today scanning things through that till, not just your bag of potatoes-for-roasting and pot of Taramasalata. An hour ago she had to listen to a customer snapping at her for accidentally giving the incorrect change, an embarrassing instance that took place in full view of the other customers, one of which she knew personally. Two hours ago, a defunct bag of flour spilled over the conveyor belt, prompting the need of assistance from a grumpy colleague who had rolled into work late with a hangover; the severed smile of Mr Homepride so in-fitting with the atmosphere as she vehemently scrubbed at the rubber, cursing the fifth glass of wine from last night and what she has incorrectly perceived as the cashier’s carelessness.
The cashier has been finding ingrained patches of flour on the fabric of her branded fleece ever since. Added to that, she’s been asked to do some last minute overtime due to sickness, and has had to cancel her plans for the evening.
But just a smile from a stranger. It won’t solve everything, but it’s all that’s needed to add a valuable little lift to this day.
7) Think of your favourite thing to watch as a child, and find it on YouTube
Who we are today is a result of all the days, months and years preceding it. There’s nothing like a bit of nostalgia to remind you of that, and the combination of sound and imagery can so often instantly conjure up feelings or memories that have been locked away for so long.
When I have a bit of spare time, I love searching for old things on YouTube. For example, here’s something that may have the above-described effect on anybody who went to Primary School in England in the 1990’s:
I watch this and instantly think of wet Marmite sandwiches from where the bottled water has leaked inside the lunchbox, the scent of HB pencils, and big square television sets contained in wooden cabinets on wheels. There is something very soothing about this familiarity.
8) Fit-It-In
What do you need to do? What do you want to do? What do you need to do in order to do what you want to do? How much time do you have? Write all of this stuff out. Make lists. Pop the cork on your brain where all of these thoughts fly around manically without a start or finish and put them all down on paper using a pen. A physical one.
Then pull out a calendar. A physical one. Be hands on. Write down when you need to do all the things you need to do and watch as they develop into you doing not only what you need to do but what you want to do. And do you know what? Life can be an awkward little shit and maybe on occasion – or maybe on multiple occasions – things won’t work out, but there’s energy to be gained from any forward movement or proactivity. Just enjoy the ride.
9) Throw Them Boomerangs
Give everything you have. Try everything you have an opportunity to try. Go everywhere you have an opportunity to go. Silence that internal vocal that whimpers, “…there’s always tomorrow” or “I wonder if…” and just do it now.
There’s a popular saying in life that you have to make your own luck by putting in your best efforts, but I don’t believe it’s just about luck. I think it’s also about experience, and learning. If you want to experience more and learn more, then you have to do more.
10) Start and finish your day with a song that makes you smile
Music has so much influence on our emotions. For me personally, when I discover a new song I really like, I obtain so much in the way of new, refreshing energy, and much more so than listening to something that I’ve already heard a million times over.
Similarly, songs that make you smile can put you in the mood to make the most of the day ahead or to sleep soundly overnight.
And with that, I’m finishing this post with my song of the day, a little tune that has had me dancing around at various points this past week. And if you – the reader – would prefer not to listen and are therefore done with this post, then all I have to say to you is:
Go and have another glass of water.
Song of the Day: Part Time – Honey Lips
Lo-Fi Synth Pop performed by some guy with long hair who wears sunglasses often. An impossibly difficult artist to Google to ascertain any other information, but a damn tune all the same. This has been on my MP3 player virtually non-stop for a week.
It was my birthday the other day. I had a lovely time, but did receive one rather unwelcome present in the form of a kidney infection that has seen me do quite the unfathomable and lose my appetite. For the first time – possibly ever – the thought of food makes me feel quite sick. This is a deeply unfamiliar territory, and suffice to say I hope it doesn’t last. I have ingredients in the fridge for a mean peanut curry which I’m longing to make, not to mention a half-eaten birthday cake…
…Anyway, on a brighter note and ultimately the point of this post, is that I also received a tent as a gift. And this excites me no end.
I have only ever camped out in a tent once in my life, a few years ago at a friend’s birthday at the Kent County Show. We all got hammered off toffee vodka, ate burnt barbecue grub, and passed out on the grass. I lost a sock and, the next morning, couldn’t wait to get home and into a proper bed.
I won’t claim to have ever been a big lover of camping and right now I probably wouldn’t have the first clue on how to do it properly, but what excites me are the kind of travel options my new piece of apparatus will arouse. As soon as I have the opportunity to, I plan to spend a couple of weeks just driving around the UK, sleeping out underneath the stars in various areas of natural beauty. How much more free can you be? Not bound by boarding times. Nor a fixed itinerary. Able to travel to the villages that maybe wouldn’t make the guidebooks but still have plenty to offer. Saving the pennies by foregoing the mattress, hairdryer, bog-standard bar menu and unnecessary daily changing of sheets. Just you, and nature. The simple things. The way life should be.
The older I get, the more I realise how much more flavour you can taste in life by using fewer ingredients. Wanting less, feeling more. Filtering out the experiences and acquaintances that cause us concerns and anxieties we can manage without. An inextricable desire to devote time only to what and who are real and transparent. Shedding the unhealthy, blubbery layers of a need to please everyone and the personal objectives we let society write for us when we were younger, hungrier and more impressionable. Stripping nude in front of everybody in the peaceful knowledge that those who still stand with you are the only people you want and need in your life.
It’s funny, when I was younger, say up until the early/mid-20’s, I didn’t really care much for nature. I wanted to be in cinemas, bars or shopping malls. I wanted a lot of things – a new stereo, a new jacket, new CDs, hundreds of friends. I hated the idea of sleeping outside in the cold and dirt, and would only have done so if a centrally heated building was within close range so that I could make an emergency retreat if I needed to. And I probably would need to.
Now, at the age of 31, I just want more feelings as opposed to more things, and that’s probably why the recent ideas for a kind of travel I would never have been interested in before, appeal. I haven’t learned to love the cold, it’s just that the priorities surrounding it have shifted in size over the past few years.
To feel, to be, and to appreciate, rather than to want and to rue.
Thank goodness for the natural reverse.
Song of the Day: The Divine Comedy – A Lady of a Certain Age
Saw these guys in Folkestone the other night with a friend. One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. Theatrical, engaging, plenty of dimension. Neil Hannon with the audience captivated by his every word.
This song was one of the many highlights.
I never believed I would ever join a gym, I dismissed them as an unadventurous, over-priced way of keeping fit and believed that there were far cheaper alternatives, like cycling out towards Bekesbourne and getting a puncture that entailed a much earlier than scheduled return home with very few sweat beads accumulated, or jogging enthusiastically down the Old Dover Road only to feel dispirited within seconds from the first humored honk of a passing van.
My ‘cheaper alternatives’ never really had any scope to keep me fit, and so when I recently signed up to a Triathlon I knew that I probably needed to finally accept this, else run the very real risk of letting down a valuable charity by an inability to do what I’d promised to do.
Much to my surprise, it turned out that not only did I actually know the way to the gym, I wasn’t allergic to it either. Having made the risky decision not to update my will before entering, I had half expected to come out of the building with a huge rash or congruous fever, but instead all I came out with was a membership card and a desire for more exercise.
Perhaps the place does make me unwell afterall.
I now spend a good few hours a week at the gym. It’s a great place to go to fence off the working day and let those endorphins bop about to the tunes on my MP3 player, and much to my surprise it’s a great little place to learn about life.
The instructor told me that each time I go to the gym I need to push myself a little harder. He gave me a record sheet which I complete each session of what I’ve done – what pace, what incline, what level, what weight – and I’m in a constant competition with my last attendance.
And that competition hurts. Pull-downs are painful. Abdominals ache. Running almost ruins me. I’m relieved when I come to the end of the hour, but so happy that I’ve done it.
Last week I racked up the weight of the pull-downs to 25.5 kg (which comparatively isn’t much) and almost felt tears in my eyes as I disciplined myself to do 8 sets instead of the previous day’s 6. Although never doubting the long-term benefits, part of me wondered why myself and others around me put ourselves through this pain. Life doesn’t demand that we do, it only tells us that things might be a bit better if we do it, it’s not an obligation, so why am I disciplining myself like a strict Victorian headmistress?
But then I thought about how I’d feel if I reduced my targets, and it led to a bit of a philosophical moment (which I’ve not had whilst profusely sweating before). What if we just stuck to what we know we can do with ease? What if we never challenged ourselves? How boring would that be? We’d never know the extent of what can be. If we don’t ever reach the wall, how can we look over it to see what else is there?
I suddenly became extremely thankful for some of the hardest and most stressful moments of both my professional and personal life. Where would I be without them? Curled up comfortably in a blanket of naivety, I suppose, with much less knowledge, much less resilience and much less appreciation for when things go right.
Life is exceptionally challenging, particularly when you have a tendency to worry neurotically about whether or not you put the lid back on the highlighter pen before leaving the office. Gratitude for life does not make anyone exempt from having shit happen – sometimes repeatedly – or make stress vanish as fast the box of chocolates next to my bed. Life is hard. Work is hard. Personal relationships can be hard.
The gym is hard.
However, each of these little seedlings of hardness will most often bloom into something greater. Life provides enough beautiful moments to counter the bad; a christening for every funeral or a success for every failure. Work provides opportunity, and the ability to afford good things. Personal relationships are the essence of our heart and soul; and I’m hoping that the gym will eventually blossom into a stomach that no longer resembles one of those classic childrens’ stack toys with the colourful rings.
It’s all so obvious yet it’s something so often forgotten with the expression of each expletive or the shedding of each tear. Some of the greatest decisions you’ll ever make are made on the back of an unpleasant experience, and some of your greatest strengths are those you develop through adversity.
“Clever gym”, I thought to myself, “not only do you make me feel a tad better when I’m tucking into the third packet of crisps a day, you also remind me why there’s a value to pain”, and with the energy from that thought, I completed set number 8 and went straight to the rowing machine.
Song of the Day: Erasure – Stay With Me (Acoustic Cover)
Not normally big on acoustic stuff but this is simply beautiful and is well worthy of a listen.
I had planned to do so many things today, but last night’s Tequila put a stop to them all, flushing my to-do list down the drain with a latin American grimace. How can a drink that has a red plastic sombrero for a lid (marketing genius) prove to be such a menace?
‘Tequila… it makes me happy!!’ we sang with vigour last night before downing a shot (and nobody on Earth has been able to drink Tequila since Terrorvision’s 1998 hit without doing the same thing I’m sure).
This morning’s rendition of the song would probably sound like more of a depressing ballad featuring a more notable string arrangement and a sombre fade-out..“thaaaaat’s the curse of Tequilaaaa” . The video would be in black and white and end with a clapped out brown Ford Cortina breaking down on the hard shoulder of the M25.
Urgh – just – urgh.
So, there was no trip to the gym today. Nor was there a long afternoon drive with which to explore Kent in the sun. Various incredibly boring yet essential tasks relating to online banking and other admin-y bits and bobs will have to be done tomorrow now, all because for most of today I didn’t have the strength to do much more beyond drink water and fall back to sleep whilst watching classic sitcoms in bed. Cool – just – cool. I am so proud of today’s achievements and will remember with certainty this milestone day for years to come.
But sarcasm aside, I know that in reality it’s important to have days like this once in a while. Life demands so much from us, every single day, and we wouldn’t want it any different because if it was we’d no doubt be bored stiff, but still, it’s important to occasionally just relax…
The problem with daily sleep is that we can seldom acknowledge that we are actually resting. We just close our eyes and either doze off quite quickly or stay awake worrying about in what order the world will end if don’t complete the 10,000 tasks we’ve set ourselves for tomorrow. Once resident in the Land of Nod we awake in what feels like minutes to acknowledge the crushing reality that it’s time to get up; and usually – in my case anyway – we’ve overslept and end up rushing around at a military pace to get ready in time, rather than slowly coax our bodies out of bed. I’d be reluctant to describe sleep as relaxing, because we just don’t know that we’re doing it!
What’s really relaxing is not having to wear a watch for the entire day and just lying around in your set of jim-jams with a break every now and then to go and make a self-gratifying big, fat unhealthy snack. What’s relaxing is laying in the garden with no concept or care for time and staring at a serene cat lying amidst flowers in the sun:
True relaxation is not something we tend to have the time for whilst in the mix of the usual daily grind. Sometimes it’s good just to pause, completely, and give our brains and bodies a day off. Sometimes it’s good to dispose of that to-do list, or at least put it to one side for day.
Maybe Tequila does make me happy after all…
And with that, it’s time to round-off my incredibly lazy day by eating a Trio in bed and channel-hopping only to hopefully land on some U.S reality show that features titillating footage of massive portions of food.
Song of the Day:C Duncan – For
Christopher Duncan is an emerging solo artist from Glasgow. Spotify introduced me to this beaut… and beaut is truly the most accurate way of describing it. Perfect song for a somewhat lazy, sunny day.
Photo from a recent walk in Kings Wood.
sophiekemsley 