‘Were you ever a spook or old bill?’

The question was jarring.

‘No. Why do you ask, do I look like I could be?’

‘Maybe. You carry yourself differently, you watch everybody and you’re doing it now, but….’

‘But?’

There was a long pause, traffic moved on the road, people either ambled or hurried on, the traffic lights turned red, giving the wet road a new and luminous aspect.

And the silence continued.

The lights turned green again and finally he spoke.

‘You’re here but you’re apart, it’s the way that the spooks in particular look at things. Let me ask you a question and don’t look round.’

He looked at me, pale eyes in a lean weathered face, faded fatigues that were spotless, clean shaven, sober, articulate and very well read.

‘How many people are on the other side of the road, how many are obvious tourists, how many are sleeping in the doorways and how many are just shoppers?’

‘Twenty three, or there were anyway, eleven, two and around ten.’

‘Which one looks like they need the most help?’

I confessed that I had no idea.

‘Woman with three shopping bags, she’s tired and is just stood there, she was when you walked up.’

I’d been making a point of talking to this man for a while, giving him small sums of cash to help him buy food and pay for his laundry.

He was astonishingly well-read and could quote verbatim from philosophical works and broader, more accessible works. We had once had a conversation about De Montaigne and cabbages.

He spoke again.

‘You’re a decent bloke but you’re closed off, you somehow seem like you have a different first language and that you’re translating it in your head when people speak.’

I watched him as he rummaged in one of his packs, coming out with a paper bundle tied with string.

‘This is for you. I didn’t buy it, I found it, I’m pretty certain that all of the pieces are there. It’s a bowl, I reckon it was expensive, but it’s broken so they threw it out.’

I stared at him.

‘Don’t open it now, you might drop the pieces, take it back to your hotel room and if you decide to keep it, find somebody who can tell you about Kintsugi.’

He saw the look on my face and laughed.

‘Kintsugi, it’s not a fighting style. Look it up, I won’t be here for a month or so, so you won’t need to be embarrassed if you don’t do anything.’

He handed the oddly shaped package to me and went back to looking across the road, the woman with the bags was gone.

He smiled at me.

‘See you whenever.’

And so I walked awkwardly back to the hotel with my package of broken ceramic, feeling it grate together as I moved, until finally; I stood in my hotel room and dumped it into the bin.

And, feeling brave, I walked in the opposite direction to find a bar, drinking alone and playing with my phone. I’d given up trying to read my book, I was too preoccupied with replaying our conversation.

Sometimes I watched people and I decided he was wrong about me, I could spot the cracks in people from a mile off, their body language, the intonation of words, the glances in other directions.

The bastard.

I was cataloguing weakness.

It’s what I did.

Sometimes I’d help people but it wasn’t my default position.

I shrugged, fuck it.

I drank some more, went for an Indian meal that was mostly lager and went back to the hotel and my bed.

I slept badly, with strange and fractured dreams that made absolutely no sense, places and people blurring between time lines so that an event that occurred in Chennai was taking place in a garden in Essex, a dog crossing a river in Australia when he’d walked across that bridge in Cheshire.

I woke up early and disoriented, I had a long drive ahead of me and only a last minute afterthought made me take the package from the bin and put it in my rucksack.

Where it stayed for days.

I eventually unwrapped it while I was listening to somebody lie through their teeth on a conference call.

It was an earthenware bowl, a lustrous brown on the outside and a vivid red glaze on the inside.

There were a lot of pieces.

I put them onto my filing cabinet and left them there for a day or so before deciding to look up some YouTube Kintsugi videos.

They were fascinating, the concept of making something new from something broken seemingly uniquely Japanese.

I didn’t like the idea of having to have a special humidity controlled room though, nor having to source so many niche materials.

And so it was that Amazon was my friend.

There were a bewildering array of kits and I bought the best one that I could, IF I was going to do this, there was no point in doing it badly.

And so it was that on a quiet Monday afternoon, I started the process of trying to repair the bowl.

I sorted each piece and used a bit of masking tape for each one to laboriously find the matches, numbering each one until I had a completed bowl.

All the pieces were there, but the rim of the bowl seemed to be deliberately uneven, making me worry as to whether I’d got it right.

I did a search for the bowl.

£290.

Fuck me.

That was a lot of cash for a bowl. I wondered where he’d found it and how it came to be that there were no splinters missing at all.

But that didn’t matter, I was committed to having a go at this thing now, despite feeling that it was somehow performative and stupid, like shouting ‘Free Palestine’ at a bus.

I’d chosen gold as the colour of the adhesive rather than platinum as it seemed like the red would set it off best.

And so I fitted the first two pieces together, I’d cleaned the enamel with alcohol and lightly wiped the jagged edges before brushing a very faint layer of gold epoxy on both edges, holding them together for fifteen minutes or so.

Then I left the pieces in my office, had some dinner and a glass of wine before watching some crap TV and going to bed.

I didn’t read before bed that night and I crashed almost straight away.

And woke up sobbing at 4am.

I’d dreamt of every friend and relation that I’d loved and lost, to cancer, to aneurysms, to suicide, accidents, heart attacks and old age.

Every single one, back to my childhood, I felt broken and lost, and I didn’t sleep again that night.

I pretended to work during the next day, paying no attention to issues or people, the strange dream preying on my mind.

I fitted pieces three and four that afternoon, taking even more care, seeking perfection in the fitting of the jagged pieces.

And that night I dreamed of lost loves, those that I’d driven away and those that just left because they wanted someone else, someone that wasn’t me.

I dreamed of small, casual hurts, given and received, phrases that demeaned me for saying them and words that cut deep before being buried inside.

And I woke, scared and ashamed, not crying this time but filled with a bone-deep hurt for what I’d done and what I’d hidden deep away.

And the days blurred.

I know that I worked, I know that I must have made some sort of sense, but I had no recall of anything, even minutes after a call or meeting.

And I was starting to have waking dreams, my first dog walked beside me, being patted by my grandad as we wandered a field that existed only in memory.

And as the days went by, the bowl nearing completion at a steady, slow and inexorable pace, I felt as if I’d been fractured myself.

I could almost see the layers of armour that I’d built around myself, the bulletproof glass of the visor that I stared through at the world, and I wondered if I were going mad.

I was close to the end, but I was scared to finish, what if that would be the end of me?

A week went past, I was a ghost in my own life, haunted by my own past, visions of people and events going back so many years.

So, so many.

And so I fitted the last piece, drank myself into oblivion and waited for whatever horrors that I’d see in my dreams.

But there weren’t any.

And I awoke feeling….

I couldn’t describe it.

All of the events of my life were still there, but they were part of me now, not something buried.

I wondered what the fuck was going on and I resolved to talk to the soldier when I could.

If I could ever stop smiling..

A few weeks later, I waited for him to take his place on the cathedral steps, I was sat waiting for him with package.

He looked at me.

‘What’s that?’

I opened the package and showed him the finished bowl with its golden seams of new life, mounted in a lucite case.

‘I’ve put shockproof gel in here so it won’t hurt if you drop it.’

He smiled.

‘It’s your bowl, it always was, it just needed to be remade, speaking of which, you look different.’

‘I think I am.’

‘OK, same questions as before?’

‘Fourteen, eight, one and five. The man in the half length coat is struggling with a number of things.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘I did, he told me to fuck off.’

He laughed and laughed and laughed until I joined in, laughing until there were tears in both our eyes and I was doubled over.

‘Welcome to the world’

This one is going to be a bit rambling, but bear with me, there’s a point in here somewhere.

It’s just been the anniversary of 9/11, twenty five years have gone, but some of the brave and awful and inspiring stories still have massive power.

Todd Beamer was on a call with an emergency operator from Flight 93 – these are the last words spoken.

‘Lisa: I’ll tell them. I promise, Todd.(Lisa patches in the FBI.)

Agent: Todd, your plane is on a course for Washington. Best guess is the White House or the Capitol.

Todd: I understand. I’ll be back.

Todd: Everyone knows this isn’t a normal hijacking. We have decided we will not be pawns in their plot.

Lisa: What are you going to do?

Todd: Four of us are going to rush the one with the bomb. Then the cockpit. A stewardess is getting boiling water. We’ll take them out.

Todd: Would you pray with me?They pray the Lord’s Prayer. Then: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

Todd: God help me. Jesus help me.Are you guys ready? Let’s Roll.’

Let’s Roll – and that was it.

We all wonder how we’d face death or the prospect of death, will we be brave and resolute, defiant and loud, will we cry, will we do things that are beyond bravery?

Unless you’ve been there, you can only hope that you carry yourself well.

I was once on a flight from Edinburgh to Stansted that was THE most scary flight I’ve been on, ever.

I was sat at the front and the plane was making moves that it really shouldn’t, we never found out what the issue was, but it was mechanical and pretty grim.

People were screaming and shouting behind me and the two stewardesses were quietly crying.

Bad huh.

This was over twenty years ago but I still remember the tracks that the tears were making in their makeup and how young they were.

I thought about it.

Were we going to die?

Maybe.

Could I do anything?

No.

Had it been a good life until then?

Yes.

So I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

The plane sorted itself a few minutes later and we landed safely with no issues.

I’ve had a few heart resets since, around 18 years ago and the first is the one where you have to accept that when they shock your heart to stop it, it may not restart.

No point being too scared, it’s outside your control and you just have to trust.

I didn’t die. Obvs.

Nor did I when they did it four more times until my issues were fixed.

I’d stopped worrying altogether by then.

Acceptance became a form of contempt, I actually made an afternoon appointment after the last reset.

That doesn’t mean that I’m brave, maybe just realistic or fatalistic. I don’t know.

Anyway, life went on, things changed, I went to a host of foreign places, drank and debauched myself stupid, danced with a god and dared the other gods to kill me during a monsoon in Thailand.

I was and remain committed to enjoying as much of life as I can, until it comes to a probably undignified stop.

But as much as I’ve mentioned Death, it’s Life that’s the thing that we should treasure, every minute, even the shit ones.

In April 2019, I began a new job and moved house on the same day, I was now renting a place with secure gates, a large garden and views across fields, all of which my landlord and next door neighbour owned.

So in August 2019 I did the thing that changed my life forever.

I went to meet Milo at Warrington Animal Welfare and decided that he was mine.

And so it was.

He presided over most aspects of my life, I now had to plan ahead, for he could never go back in a cage again and he had a few issues to deal with.

He’d been abused by a previous owner, I tracked him down but decided that no good could come from doing anything.

And so Milo wove himself into the fabric of my life, we went everywhere together, relationships came and went; particularly when it was clear that I meant it when I said that he was my top priority.

We went through COVID together and together, we ignored every fucking rule that there was.

I bought a car during that period just because I could and we drove hundreds of miles to see people or just because. Beaches and mountains, forests and little towns.

We lived

He had a couple of knee operations and developed a healthy hatred and fear of the vets which manifested itself on June 4th 2021 ( more on that later).

The stability that he’d made me embrace meant that I capitalised a fair amount of my pension and I bought the house and land that we live in today.

We have astonishing views, peace and quiet and a life that I’d never dreamed of as a child.

I’m sat here as a type this, I have beer and music, Milo’s asleep somewhere and Cairo has just managed to break into next door again, occasioning a hasty fence repair.

I retired for a while and now I’m at a crossroads as to whether to carry on working or go back to only doing things for me.

The money’s a nice little bonus and we’ll have a new log burner in a couple of days followed by flooring.

They’re only things though, what I treasure is the living elements of my life, the doglets, my friends and some of my work colleagues.

But nothing lasts forever and not all change is good.

My little warrior started to have seizures a month or so ago.

He doesn’t seem to know what’s happened afterwards so it’s scarier for me.

I got him to the vet for blood tests – he hates the vet.

It was inconclusive, they wanted a test that can only be done at Nantwich.

He HATES the Nantwich vet.

So I sedated him enough that he had to be carried in while in his little bed.

And that test was inconclusive.

My vet suggested a liver scan and we booked it.

But…..

I watched him sleep the night before and decided that I wasn’t going to take him somewhere to be scared, knocked out and tested – and if he lived, wake up in a fucking cage and be scared and alone.

So I emailed them to say no.

And a strange thing happened.

A minute after I pressed send, the specialist vet called me to essentially talk me out of it.

A battery of tests and physical samples of the liver and spleen.

He was actually happy that I’d already decided against, even though it was money on the hoof.

And we talked.

I told him that Milo had been kicked by Charlie the pony and I thought he’d died.

I bundled him into the car and took him to the vet, who met me, masked up against COVID in the car park.

Milo was awake and scared by then and then the vet said….

‘I’ll take him from here.’

I made it clear that if the last I saw of Milo, it would be me putting him on the table and that there was literally nothing that would stop me.

The vet saw reason.

Anyway.

Turns out that we’re sort of famous.

The date was 4th June 2021.

He had a cracked rib.

I told the vet that I’d pick him up.

They said that he’d stay overnight.

I said that they’d beg me to take him home by the end of the day and so it was that at two minutes past six that they rang me, saying please come and get him.

He wouldn’t let them near his cage.

I was glad that I’d talked to the specialist, it made things clearer.

And so I decided for both of us

No more tests.

Ask for anti-seizure meds.

See where we go.

And we’re nearly at the point that I said I was making

One more thing.

I let people know that he isn’t ok and they’ve been wonderful, I’ve been real-life messaging with somebody whose dog is almost at that point and they’ll never know how much our chats have helped me.

Milo’s meds may possibly be working, he’s had two fits in eight days rather than a couple a day sometimes, but the decision to give him the best I can rather than letting fear take over has ensured that every day is a new and wonderful thing.

This is from Tecumseh, it’s something that I’d like to aspire to, we’ll see.

‘So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.

Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.

Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death… Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.’

As for Milo, whenever it comes, we’ll know together and I’ll sit with him looking at our land and our views and I’ll sing to him as he goes.

Probably ‘Santa Fe’ by Jon Bon Jovi.

He likes that one, I used to sing it to him on car journeys.

‘They say that no man is an island
And good things come to those who wait
But the things I hear are there just to remind me
Every dog will have his day

The spirits, they intoxicate me
I watched them infiltrate my soul
They try to say it’s too late for me
Tell my guns I’m coming home

I swear I’m gonna live forever
Tell my maker he can wait
I’m riding somewhere south of Heaven
I’m heading back to Santa Fe
It’s judgement day in Santa Fe

Once I was promised absolution
There’s only one solution for my sins
You’ve gotta face your ghosts, and know with no illusions
That only one of you is going home again

Not today though. Today is a good day.

This summer and this year in general have flashed by – we’re nearly at the end of August and the good weather has returned for a while after a few days of torrential rain.

The doglets have been happy, I haven’t been away this week and apart from a scheduled arthroscopy on Wednesday afternoon, I’m going nowhere next week either.

I was away for work for two days on the 11th and 12th, going from working at an undisclosed location while armed soldiers walked the perimeter of the base around us and then spending the evening eating and drinking well whilst dipping into some philosophy.

A friend contacted me out of the blue on the 12th and we observed the eclipse before having dinner.

I met her in my new favourite bar, a little place that caters mostly to whisky and cocktails and we caught up on the various changes in our lives since we last saw each other in February, it was a good evening, although if anyone is thinking of eating in the Gordon Ramsay at the Hilton, don’t bother.

I’m spending my non-retirement wages on improving the house, so have had a new boiler fitted – with a new, upgraded wood burner to be installed next month.

New flooring will follow and I’ll see what the near future holds before making any other decisions.

There’s a dark cloud over work, it’s not on me personally, but it’ll determine whether I stop in December or renew for a while.

It’s a really dark and ominous cloud but it’s not mine and I’ll update in a few weeks.

I’ve been making sure that I get some larger home jobs sorted before my knee op, including filling a skip and climbing across a roof today to fix some minor leaks.

And I’ve made sure that the tiny (really, really tiny, almost nonexistent) pangs on my conscience are addressed as they arise.

I gave £20 to an ex soldier that I’ve seen a few times in Bath when he’s in town. He’s rough sleeping but doesn’t do drugs or booze, he’s scrupulously clean and at some point I’m going to ask his story.

He seems like a good man and it’s awful to see people like him on the streets.

I changed a wheel for an old lady in Morrison’s car park last week and was genuinely surprised that not one person asked to help at all, apart from one cunt who made a comment about how the jack could be better placed, given that the wheel was off by this point, I wasn’t impressed.

And I’ve walked the doglets in the mornings and patrolled the grounds with them in the evening.

They seem to be closer and I’ve caught them running around together a few times, looking both happy and somehow suspicious at the same time.

And I’ve cooked outside whenever possible, making the most of both the weather and the space to do things at any pace I like.

All in all, nothing much has happened and that’s rather lovely really.

No real dramas at all.

Apart from dinner on the 11th.

A lovely little Italian restaurant that offers self-cooking of steak.

On a really hot stone.

You have a choice of things to cook it with.

One of those is chili salt.

I pretty much cleared the restaurant and made it abundantly clear that I didn’t give a single fuck when anyone mentioned it on the way out of the door.

It was rather splendid.

Both the food and the drama.

Is yours, but let’s just recap where we are.

The State has dropped the pretence that this country is a democracy.

A new, fucking awful, Prime Minister has replaced the old, fucking awful, duly elected Prime Minister.

A soulless robot has been replaced by a soulless seaside amusement machine, fake engagement and deep fake belly laughs.

We get no say in this, just as we get no say in where this sit-com character spends our money.

£30,000 on a flight to Manchester for him alone, plus the costs of Met Security and the rail and hotel fares for the fucking imbeciles that he’s appointed to Cabinet.

We’re so fucked that our gaping orifice is visible from space.

Taxes will rise to pay for the daily invasion of criminals and rapists that our government could stop in a heartbeat- if they wanted to.

Crime is exponential, especially rape and sexual assault and all the while, if you dare to say a word, you’re a bigot, a racist, a right wing thug.

An old lady is brutally murdered in her own home and guess what ? There’s a political / terrorist angle.

Probably not the usual suspects this time, more likely the alphabet mafia of perverts and degenerates who feel that their fucking fetishes give them permission to invade women’s spaces whilst waving their girl-cocks.

And more about them later.

What does our wonderful government do?

They fabricate a mass-murder plot against Muslims and splash the news of it all over social media.

Except it wasn’t.

But that won’t get reported in the same way.

Our media is now so compromised and complicit that it’d make the Soviets envious, whatever the state wants reported will be the truth.

Taxes will go up again.

It’s a given.

We have huge amounts of our own, home grown wastrels and money sponges, let alone the thousands upon thousands of gimmigrants who have zero interest in working or paying taxes.

We’re so fucked that they can see the aftermath from Pluto.

Staffordshire fucking Police are defying the actual law and allowing men who identify as rapist women into female cells.

A Muslim woman who dresses so that only her fucking eyes are visible through a slit has won an award where she’s empowered women – how? Fuck knows.

We’re so fucked that we look like Bonnie Blue from Saturn. That’s not a coastline and sea, it’s a bukkake tsunami.

So, what do we do?

And that’s the question.

I was in Bath on Thursday evening, I had a couple* of drinks with an old friend and we had dinner in a very nice bar.

*I only know how many from the bill, it was a lot of martinis.

We chatted all evening about times past, friends and lovers lost and the sort of conversation that bounces from point to point but somehow stays on track.

Our waitress was just the right side of friendly and probably thought that she was subtly encouraging us to drink more, she did get a good cash tip from both of us for being fun and good company without trying to game us too much.

So we may have been a tiny bit pissed.

Can’t have been too bad though as I took that on the way back to the hotel .

While we were sat at the bar, a strange thing happened.

Two very obvious, older men in dresses came in, ordered a drink and went to table.

They weren’t ‘trans’ they were men. At least fifty years old but their clothes were sort of appropriate for their age.

Still.

A bit weird.

So when it turned out that somewhere between eight and ten of them were more or less opposite us a bit further down the restaurant, it seemed natural to discuss them.

We agreed that they were:

All blokes.

Not one could pass for a female, not even the 30ish youngest of them.

Not actually doing any harm and given that they were using the disabled toilet, being reasonable and respectful.

And we agreed that despite the fact that we thought that they were all deviants, they weren’t doing any harm.

And we didn’t care.

They looked as if they belonged in Royston Vasey – all of them.

But it wasn’t hurting us.

So we didn’t care.

This country is fucked.

Beyond all recognition.

Beyond saving.

So there’s the choice.

But before that.

Here’s a word from our sponsor.

Written in 1948.

‘The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.’

We can join in with this, or we can turn it upon itself.

Give yourself a moment or so a day to hate.

Not any specific group, but THEM.

The people trying to shape your life, your opinions and even the government.

Spend the rest of the day looking for the positives wherever they may be.

Family, friends, lovers, work colleagues, random strangers, cab drivers, supermarket staff, books, TV and music.

Make the choice to be your own person.

To choose who or what to hate.

And to love.

Enjoying the Summer?

Despite the heat, I actually am.

I’m writing this before lunch on a Sunday because it’s just too hot to do anything that’s even like work.

Work in this case means cutting branches down and dragging them 200 metres for a fire – or jobs like that.

The work that’s paying for some home improvements like a new boiler that’s being installed on Tuesday is now split between my office and here.

In the shade of a pair of silver birch trees some distance from the office.

I’ve installed a mesh WiFi network and it’s lovely to do video calls with the leaves whispering in the breeze.

I was thirteen for the heatwave of 1976 and it was a time that I didn’t want to end.

My parents rented a maisonette from the council and we had a small, square back garden.

That my fucking dad concreted over.

Still.

That was a minor issue, the younger sister of the next door neighbour stayed for the summer holidays, she was the same age as me and we spent every night talking until late as the skies turned gold, purple and then black.

She was immensely smart, pretty in a way that I couldn’t describe at that time and was the first love of my life.

We wrote to each other for months when she returned home, but the inevitable happened as it will at that age.

She grew up faster than me and moved on.

I thought of her for the first time in fifty years or so yesterday and wherever she is, I hope that she’s had a wonderful life so far.

My parents moved us to a house a mile or so away when was fifteen and life changed again.

And so it went.

A life that picked up speed and somehow got faster, a blur of images from a high speed toboggan run.

All those people.

All those places.

So many that I can’t remember which Caribbean island holiday was which, what happened on a particular work trip to India or Australia or..

You get the idea.

I think that it’s only the weather that’s made me think of 1976 and those moments that felt as if we were frozen in warm amber as we talked until late every night, a little transistor radio providing the soundtrack.

My mum bringing drinks and biscuits out as it got cold, a blanket draped over her arm for us to share, then smiling and going back inside the house.

And now, I lie beneath a tree, typing about a boy whose emotions I can just about remember, his view of the world so different from mine that he could be somebody else entirely.

But a bit of him is still there, his romanticism has been readjusted, his optimism is still with me most of the time and his curiosity has never gone away.

Have I acquired layers of personality and experience over him or is it more complicated than that?

Am I / are we / one personality or a core that is mostly unchanging with a set of other personalities that can be swapped and changed?

This week I’m going to be a number of different people.

Today, I’m almost in neutral gear, listening to music while the dogs wander around – Milo has disappeared but Cairo is asleep under an apple tree next to me

I’m dipping in and out of reading a book while playing with my cameras and gradually getting an understanding of ‘oh. THAT’S how you do that.’

Tomorrow, I’ll be back in work mode along with being almost a passenger when I see a private consultant at 430 to look at my right knee.

Wednesday, I’ll be in full on bastard mode when I meet a 3rd party company to tell them exactly how they’re going to be delivering work for us until December, then I’ll join a senior management call before checking into a hotel.

Then I’ll be meeting a friend for drinks somewhere as it’s her birthday the next day.

It’s Cairo’s birthday the same day.

Remember the date.

After a few drinks, I’ll put my grown up face on and we’ll go for dinner at Simpsons in the Strand.

Maybe Soho after that -who knows? If so, I’ll put on a harder edge and become more or less unapproachable to the outside world.

I’ve blagged a free day off on Thursday, I’ll make a massive fuss of Cairo and probably do a pub lunch.

And I’ll be whatever the dogs want me to be.

But that’s mostly chilled, soft spoken and affectionate.

I’ll still be ‘me’ at the core of all this though.

The idealistic, romantic thirteen year old is somewhere in the mix along with the versions of him that learned a lifetime of lessons, some tough, some wonderful beyond belief.

I wonder what he’d think? Would this life be what he could have imagined? Would he have thought that when he was learning French or German that he’d have dinner with a Paris St Germain footballer or that he’d have some fantastic adventures while working in Berlin, that he’d live in India, meet a god, fly out to Thailand on a whim for a weekend and dare the gods to strike him down during a lightning storm and a monsoon, that he’d trawl the bars of London and Sydney, with dozens of cities in between, that he’d retire with two dogs that he adores, that he’d go back to work, do more travel, host a dinner in Edinburgh Castle for high ranking military officers from around the world, that the few friends that he’s developed over the years are amongst the best people in the world, that fifty years after he first fell in love, he still looks at life with wonder and gratitude.

That the various bits of his personality flow around each other like a kaleidoscope view.

Click.

Click.

View.

Since I last posted, I had a week’s break a whole 25 miles from my house, in a rented house that was quite similar, same number of bedrooms, bathrooms and garden area – but it wasn’t my actual house so any little jobs that I spotted weren’t my problem.

It was on the outskirts of Norley in West Cheshire and very close to Delamere Forest.

The dogs loved it and I spent a bit of time in the local pub – smack bang in the middle of town and almost impossible to walk past.

Norley is immaculate and on one of the walks, I watched a man clear the hedge in front of his house, his son was helping and they made sure that not a single leaf remained on the pavement.

I could happily live there.

I’ve got better views from my house though and fewer actual neighbours, which is what I prefer.

So…

Shropshire wins for the moment.

Two miles or so away, the government in all its considered glory and magnanimity is going to dump 80+ illegals into a tiny hamlet.

I’ve seen people actually defending this on Facebook, but a tiny amount of digging shows that they’re mostly Jew Haters making the positive comments or unaffected by this for now.

Anyway.

Back to the plot.

My little holiday was wonderful, just what I needed – and the doglets loved it. Every day a new adventure.

The garden had rabbits and squirrels so Cairo did what she does. Mostly she didn’t catch them, but she came back one afternoon bathed in blood with a happy grin on her little face.

It’s her nature to hunt and sometimes kill, she’s also extraordinarily protective and as I write this, she’s asleep on the top lawn after an hour of playing water-gun games.

She’s been a revelation these past few years, I never thought I could love another dog as much as I do Milo.

But I do. It’s slightly different but I absolutely adore her and may take another shorter road trip with her later in the year.

I came back to work and I found that I hadn’t missed it, which gives me some hope that if it isn’t fun in a couple of months, I’ll just walk away again.

It’s not like I need the money.

Or a career.

Anyway.

Back to the plot.

I found a small sliver of the old England while I was away and I realised with some real sadness how rare these islands of what we were are becoming.

And yeah.

I know how that sounds to some people, so let me clarify.

Fuck you.

I miss my country.

I miss the pride that I had in being English.

I miss the feeling that my little country had done more to change the world than any other.

An almost universal language.

Radio.

Television.

Antibiotics.

THE reason that the Nazis were defeated.

All of that is almost gone, I despise our leaders, whoever the fuck they are this week.

I loathe the NGOs, councils and various ‘organisations’ that are turning this beautiful land into a crime infested shithole with almost no breaks between horrors anymore.

Anyway.

Back to the plot.

I spent yesterday afternoon in my hammock, I read and I watched a film.

This one.

I’m not going to give too much of the plot away.

You should watch it.

But.

At one point, the protagonist kills a number of policemen.

And I didn’t care.

We’ve spent the past five years plus with a police force who clearly aren’t on our side.

You can get murdered in public and they take the side of the murderer because they’re not fucking white.

That’s where we are now.

Back to the film.

The main character has almost no redeeming features but he’s willing to take action where nobody else is.

Rapists, drug dealers, judges, are all in his crosshairs.

And I found that I’m there for it.

I suspect that we’re going to see some real world outcomes from this soon.

When they blame the film, remember that it reflects a world that is actually much worse.

And that we all need to do the little things that stop it becoming worse still.

If we can.

Is the time that I started to write this post on a beautiful and hot Bank Holiday Monday.

I’m crashed out in a hammock between the shade of two silver birch trees.

The wind is making the leaves whisper oh so softly and Cairo is alternating between dozing next to me and waiting for the next round of being soaked with the hose .

It’s very peaceful or it would be if I didn’t have music like this playing from a speaker near the hedge.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=2KWpuVrRek4&si=M4QK7Kd0B3F9BmyH

I could quite easily be busy all afternoon, either with outside jobs or catching up on various bits of paperwork.

That’s not happening.

I took both dogs for their checkups on Friday and they’re both as fit and well as they can be.

Milo needs to be examined with the muzzle on as he hates the vet with a passion. Not the person. The place.

But I took his muzzle off when he was finished and he ran through the reception with a frantically wagging tail and a huge Milo Grin.

It’s hard to capture the grin in photos but he has the ability to look you directly in the eye while he does it and the effect on the reception staff was instant – a chorus of awwwwwwws followed us out and I was strangely happy that they got to see the real Milo rather than the dog that the vet calls Monsterface.

So today is for me and them. I’ve had a couple off games with Cairo, the hosepipe and water gun.

We’ll do a few more before I crack open a beer and start the process off cooking us all dinner on the barbecue, they’ll settle near me and doze until it’s time to eat and I’ll reflect on the day and the fact that I’m an extremely lucky man.

Tomorrow is a work day and we’ll do an early start for a walk and they’ll settle in my office as I speak slowly and soothingly on conference calls, even when I tear into somebody and help them realise that maybe they should think about moving on. And quickly.

But that’s tomorrow.

It’s 14:43 and the music has changed to this.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=GWTNGMAH500&si=_rnedpW9wholSAhK

I’m gently swaying in the breeze and hope that whenever you see this, wherever you are, that you’re as content and relaxed as we are.

Happy Monday.