BROLLY

One of the best things I ever bought was the sun brolly I picked up for a tenner more than half a dozen years ago in a supermarket near to where I used to work...

Naturally, the next day, I did have to go back to that same supermarket and buy a base for it, once I found out that it didn't have a spike on the end, but, even so, for a total of twenty quid combined, it still turned out to be a bit of a bargain.

Okay it could be better than it is...

It might, for example, be a lot more useful if I could tilt it instead of having to keep moving it so that I can follow the shade around, and the screw thread that separates the two pieces of the pole has started to become difficult to get working. So much so, in fact, that the wood has now separated from the metal and its all a little bit more fragile and prone towards blowing away in the wind than it once was, although, if the breeze gets too vigorous, I've always tended to take it back indoors anyway... along with myself.

My "outdoors-y-ness" does rather depend upon an ideal set of circumstances being in place after all... The correct amount of warmth; The right level of sunshine; A very precise level of noise; A limited number of people being around and about; A good book; A decent game on the radio; And the breeze being "just so..."

Granted, because of such rigid criteria, my brolly hasn't exactly been over-used during the intervening years, but when the weather's good enough to drag it outside, and being very careful not to swing it about too much and knock anything and everything inside the house off its perch, it's an absolute godsend.

On a sunny day, when the sun's beating down, it just provides a little piece of sanctuary from its blinding glare, and I can find myself a tiny spot of civilisation in which to read my book in the great outdoors...

I have never been brave enough to leave it outside, assuming that such an obviously useful object would be too much of a temptation for any passing tea leaf. Instead, I pack it away and lug all of its constituent parts back inside and find myself hoping for the next time when the correct confluence of circumstances will drag me outside into the shade again.

GLORIOUS!

I'm not going to make any great claims about my abilities as a gardener because I know that they leave lots to be desired, but, as I sat there last Sunday, listening to my radio and drinking my coffee on a blisteringly bright summer's afternoon, I looked up and along the row of other people's gardens in front of me and was just struck dumb by how astonishingly green and utterly beautiful it all was.

And then I was reminded of one of the criteria that I set for myself way back in the late 1990s when I was looking for a tiny piece of England to call home. I wanted a patch of grass where I could sit outside with a good book on a summer's day and listen to the Test Match on my radio, and I realised that, despite everything else and all of the many, many failures in my life, I had actually managed to achieve that one small goal.

There's nothing else that I want to add to that thought, really, other than to say that, on a day like that one was, and looking out over a sea of green, there's really nowhere else in the world that I'd rather be.

Glorious!

A DAY IN THE GARDEN

So finally, the weather turned, and, after Friday, the first day of the second test at Headingley had been completely washed out, the three day Bank holiday weekend following it turned out against all the odds (and historical precedent) to be a rather sunny one.

Mind you, with that all said, I recall that the equivalent weekend last year was equally spectacular, but the holiday had been shifted away from it so that we could all get rained upon for the Jubilee instead, and I only mention that to remind us all that we really need to grab the nice weather when we can because it might all be gone by the next time a weekend rolls around.

Nevertheless, sunshine is what we got, and nearly three full days of it too, and it was even enough to drag this old troglodyte out blinking into the sunlight and soak up a few of its life-giving vitamins, something I have been sadly lacking as I work daily in the gloomy bowels of the grey cube when the sun is never allowed to penetrate and seldom venture out into the daylight unless the window cleaners want me to move my car.

So, on the Sunday of the Bank Holiday weekend I had a day that lacked all responsibilities and, after getting up and failing to write anything, I had my breakfast, plonked my Mendocino cap (circa 1996)  on top of my head, and headed outside to put up the sun umbrella, sit on the new bench (which – I noted - already has a hint of rust around the screw heads), and read the remains of the latest Mark Billingham paperback, whilst waiting for the cricket to start.

Granted, I did miss “Soul Limbo” because I was pfaffing about indoors brewing up some coffee and grabbing a few garden tools, and I could hear other people chatting somewhere beyond the bushes, but other than that, it was all kind of perfect.

At lunchtime I went indoors and made up some spectacular Pastrami sandwiches to have with our tea and a bowl of Doritos, and I returned to the John Lanchester novel that I’d picked up and then put down a few weeks ago, and read a huge chunk of that whilst New Zealand wickets tumbled all afternoon.

However, it still didn’t grip me – it could be that the “range anxiety” of the batteries was distracting me too much – and I went inside and picked up the book of theatrical reviews that Diana Rigg once compiled (“No Turn Unstoned”) which I had picked up in a charity bookshop a few weeks ago and placed by the bedside, and read some of that instead.

In the late afternoon we were joined by a neighbour’s cat although, despite the fact that it lay there quite contentedly under the shade of the umbrella, I knew it was only really hanging about because it had seen a couple of tiny voles moving around which had grabbed its attention and it was simply biding its time and waiting to strike.

Meanwhile I treated myself to a beer, which had been lurking in the fridge since the dawn of time. It had a bit of sediment, but it was only after I’d drunk 90% of it that I noticed and read the label which stated “Best Before August 2010…”

So, only just under three years out of date then…

In and around this, we managed some very minor-league gardening, pulling up some weeds and so forth, but it was all rather blissful and, for the first time in ages I felt that I had been able to unwind and forget about things for a few hours, and that my Sunday actually had felt like it hadn’t just vanished in the blink of an eye like it usually does.

GOLDEN COLOURS

I’m far, far too tired to write anything today.

Instead here’s a picture of some autumn gold taken just a few weeks ago during the last of summer.

WE’RE NOT NUMBER ONE!!!

Once again I feel forlorn and bereft because I know that the summer is all but over. And how do I know this...? Because “Soul Limbo” has played out the end of the last test match of another English summer and, apart from the knotty issue of some one-day games and the pointless razzamatazz of a few Twenty20 games, that’s just about the proverbial “it” for another year.

“My” team have managed to live down to all of the hype and managed to cling on to their position of “number one test team in the world” for about twelve months before handing over the title to a deservedly better team, and in that time played so relatively poorly that you really began to wonder how on Earth they managed to get their grubby little paws onto the ICC Test Championship Mace in the first place.

This summer, almost from the moment the South African team got the ball in their hands, the England (and Wales) team were outplayed, outgunned and outclassed at almost every turn and when they weren’t falling back into their old “losing ways” on the field, they seemed to be doing their level best to fall apart off it, almost as if it was the winning streak that was the glue that held them together, and once they started losing it seemed as if they had no love for each other at all. Or at least one of the “team”, anyway...

Rather typically, since I started to write that, of course, that rather fine chap who was the Captain who guided them to the top of the tree and then had to watch as they fell out of it again has announced his retirement. Ah, Andrew... You gave us some good times and, until this year anyway, things all went rather swimmingly. It’s just a pity that I’m such a persistent pessimist when it comes to following “my” team that my expectations are always so low, and yet things usually (and sadly) return back to what I consider “normal” before I ever get the chance to let my expectations rise.

Meanwhile, the Bank Holiday weekend was bracketed by the first two games of the five “one day” games, none of which fell on those lucrative “days off” (for the majority of the potential audience at least) because of the scheduling of the “domestic” season. The first was washed out by torrential rainfalls in Cardiff and the second was lost so comprehensively that it seems as if another claim to be the “best team in the world” in another form of the game is in similar jeopardy.

Whilst “Sir” Geoffrey Boycott comes in for a lot of criticism from both those who watched him play and from those who played alongside him, it must be said that when it comes to “stickability” and a willingness to hang on to your wicket at all costs, he might well have a point. After all, selling your wicket dearly hasn’t done the South African side any harm during this campaign and the England (and Wales) side never seem to look as if they have anyone who looks as if they might “drop anchor” and hang around for a bit.

And so another international cricketing summer, for me at least, seems to be all but over and there will be no more days and weekends spent in the company of my old pals from TMS burbling happily away in the background as I go about my days. Well, not for a while, anyway...

Now instead it’s going to be all gloomy days, dark evenings and wondering what to buy for whom for Christmas, and I’ve blown yet another soggy summer by not managing to make the best of it, and not spending any of my evenings sitting in the garden with a glass of something as the sun sets. Perhaps that was because this year, every time I even gave it a thought, the heavens opened and all thoughts of sitting outside became redundant.

I was able to do that during our recent few days away visiting friends in the south, mostly because they had the kind of enclosed garden that was conducive to such things, and they also have the kind of lifestyle that doesn’t involve getting ready for bed almost as soon as you’ve staggered in from work, sitting watching the telly as the darkness falls, and actually heading up to sleep at a time when most of the “grown-ups” we know are tucking up their toddlers for the evening and seriously considering cracking open the Chablis.

And now that the August Bank Holiday is behind us, I really begin believe that the summer is actually over. I remember going to Edinburgh for the last weekend of the “Fringe” a good few years ago and being struck about how quickly the weather turned and the evenings got darker once that weekend had sailed into history. It really felt as if someone had switched out the lights and the dark mornings, icy windscreens and the autumnal chill in the air became the norm within a mere fortnight of walking around those granite streets in the glorious summer sunshine.

But this is how our lives “drip, drip” away from us. Days, weeks and seasons pass and we get older and barely notice them as they slip past. It’s now almost two entire years since I attended a party marking the passing of a company for whom I once worked and which, alongside a little bit of work with a writing group, “inspired” me to start writing these pages. Two entire years of my life have been examined and documented on an almost daily basis and whilst you might not be able to work out a thing about what I was up to on a day-to-day basis during that time (even I can’t and I’ve got the illegible diaries to refer to) it does make me wonder quite what the hell I was thinking as I did it.

Luckily, I can read through those pages and find out just what it was I was thinking, but it still seems to be quite a bizarre record of possibly not the most exciting phase of my humble existence and somehow, when you start to think about it, reminds me of quite how terrifyingly swiftly a couple of years of a not considerable lifespan can vanish into history.

Meanwhile I seem to be sleeping less and less and waking up earlier and earlier as if my mind is trying to remind me that time is flying by and I really need to be making better use of it. You would think that the darker nights would mean that I slept better with the mind more attuned to think that darkness and sleep would be somehow associated, but not with this brain, unfortunately. Instead I lie awake, fretting about everything and noticing how quickly I’m skydiving towards eternity, perhaps just a little bit like a cricket ball being pummelled towards the boundary.

Still, maybe I’ll get lucky and the fielder on the boundary will drop the catch and I’ll manage to remain in the game or at least escape being caught for a little while yet. Well, if it’s one of “my” lot on the boundary, I think that I should be good for a few more innings yet and maybe, just maybe, I might actually manage to achieve something next summer.

A SLICE OF SUMMER AS DARKNESS FALLS

That time of year is upon us, the time when you look out of the office window in the middle of the afternoon and it’s already going dark, and you’ve got very little to look forward to but four long months of heading home in a combination of any or all of ice, rain, snow, fog, cold and darkness, with the prospect of getting up in the dark the following morning and heading right back again through much the same conditions. Alternatively, if you’re at home, it can seem to take forever for the day to feel like it’s properly begun and before you’ve had time to get anything done, it seems like it’s already over and the darkness is already creeping back into the skies with the inevitable gloom-inducing black clouds making the skies seem, if possible, even darker.

Once the darkness falls, you can head out into the world wearing way too many layers, or occasionally too few, and you get the sense that you can never quite get it right, so you’re either sweating buckets or shivering and freezing in the darkness, and you start to feel an empathy for your ancient ancestors when that race memory starts to surface that is only natural, a survival instinct: Fear of the dark.

In those long-ago times when we all huddled together in our caves fearing the coming of the creeping unknown, any hostile foe that could creep up on you unawares and pounce out of the shadows and spirit you away forever. To protect ourselves we would form little terrified pockets of humanity, family units and allies standing together against the unseen terrors in the night and the unknowable blackness. That’s when civilisation started to happen; Looking out for one another, banding together against a common foe or a predator, sharing out the food until the long days of spring made us feel safe again, and discovering and utilising fire to keep the cold and the dark away from us, at a safe distance, beyond the edge of the night.

In modern times those fears remain with us. Even in our own homes, we can still be terrified by an unexpected noise or a strange shadow or the creak of a stair or when a familiar object assumes an unfamiliar shape in the semi-awakened state we sometimes find ourselves in during the smallest hours, when we are plunged into the half-darkness despite being tucked up in our safe little kingdoms. Our imaginations can run riot due to a sudden draught, an unexpected thud as a badly placed coat just falls off its hook, an animal crosses the lawn, a drunk heads home after a late night, or when a passing headlight lights up the room and a shape is formed and looms over you like so many killers in so many films. We might jump in fright, then laugh at ourselves for being so silly, but our senses are on full alert with the needs of fight or flight and sleep and safety can then seem very far away.

Even before you sleep, the senses can be tingling. The mysterious shapes and shadows made through the frosted glass when a neighbour raps on the door to hand over that parcel they signed for in the sweetly remembered daylight, making an act of kindness suddenly seem utterly menacing, or the sudden unexpected banging on another door when the milkman or the window cleaner comes calling for his payment. Who is it? What to they want? You approach the door cautiously, tentatively as you try to return your racing heartbeats to something resembling normality, one eye to the spyglass, as you’re busily fitting the security chain.

“Oh! It’s only you. You nearly frightened me to death!”

But not this time, oh no. He didn’t get you this time… Tonight it’s not the ghastly, ghostly figure with the scythe coming to call on you, tonight it’s not the fourth horseman guiding one of his apprentices, tonight you do not open the door to greet the maniac with the hammer, the fiend with the axe or the hoodlum with the gun, but just the frighteners lurking on the insides of the mind, those fears you harbour of the possibilities and the maybes, and the jitters that make your soul shudder when you consider the “what ifs?”

Not today.

Thank you.

THANK YOU!

When we venture outside, the fearful images from the imagination can become even worse. The orange glow of the streetlights, the mist, the rain, and the reflections of the houselights in the many puddles can turn the most familiar street into the most threatening of environments. Who are those sinister, shapeless figures behind you, or ahead of you, or surrounding you? Would anyone hear you cry out if they suddenly decided to come and get you? Would anyone come to your aid? Or find you afterwards? What would they find, and would your broken body just terrify them instead? That person following you - those footfalls behind you in the shadows - you’re suddenly so sure that they might be following you with the most hostile intent, even though they’ve probably just walked calmly and unnoticed behind you from the station on many a previous summer’s evening. Those dark corners that you’d never really paid much heed to until now, now suddenly seem like they could hide a thousand perils. Those cars with their beaming headlamps that blind you at a vital moment, when fate reaches out and grabs you, and their misted glass that renders you invisible and vulnerable in that dark “power” suit you wore so confidently during those precious few hours of daylight when you felt invincible, but which now feels insubstantial against the worst the world can throw at you.

Summer can suddenly seem such a very long time ago, just a fading memory of happier days. Can it really be only two months since we were enjoying the slate grey skies and tippling rainfall of the Autumn Bank Holiday? Those long gone evenings when we sat outdoors with the arrogant confidence of the light shining onto us, fully able to recognise the familiar faces or assess those of strangers from a safe and well-lit distance, or even just staying indoors, watching our televisions as we wasted the precious light when the evening stayed bright well past eight o’clock in the evening. Back then the darkness was contained, its threat subdued, but not any more, endless night has fallen here and it’s forever until the break of dawn.

I spend a lot of the winter thinking about and looking forward to those long warm summer’s evenings and how I’m going to make the most of them, and then summer comes around and I waste them with endless little pointless bits of stuff to do that keeps me away from just sitting out there and soaking it all in. Could this be what they meant when they said: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”?

On a balmy summer’s day, there’s nothing we like better than to sit outside our own ramshackle little castle watching the flowers and the bees and sometimes we’ll try to take their picture. I don’t take the best pictures of such things in our household, that honour goes elsewhere. Sadly, I can only share one of mine with you, but after all this talk of darkness, perhaps its best to end with something you’ll hopefully enjoy, a fragment of that beautiful daylight that we all take so much for granted, and just a little reminder of a tiny slice of summer on this damp and depressing day…