A Non-Post.

Every few weeks this blog reminds me it wants an update. It did this morning, and so a few hours ago I sat down to write a post. I stared at the screen for a few minutes before I wrote a few lines, deleted them, wrote a few more, deleted them, and tried once more before turning the machine off.

Some days are like that. Either the idea you have doesn't pan out, or you've forgotten the brilliant idea you had last night, or the inspiration you so hoped for as you stare at the screen simply chooses not to arrive. I'd rather not force it when nothing immediately pops into my brain, but later in the day that itching returned. I then sat down and tried again, so here we are - writing about how I have nothing to write about.

Fiction writing can be like that too. Nothing for a long time, then recently, suddenly, a moment of inspiration. Sat down and wrote 600 words in a single session. I shaped them, teased them, tweaked them, and juggled them into words I really liked. And then a couple of days later when I returned to them, they were gone. I'd saved them, and I was able to recover the file, but it had been written over and so the words were not recoverable. I'd accidentally deleted it somehow.

Now I have to work out how to recapture that writing. I was really happy with those words, and now I'm worried I won't get near them again. I just need to overcome that concern and just go for it - new, better words, I hope.

After all, they are just words.

The Times They Are A-Changing.

There's a lot going on at the moment, although I probably could have said that any time in the past fifteen years or so. But it truly does feel like it's busier than ever.

Partly it is because there is a lot going on.  The University is going through yet another round of redundancies, and so there is tension and stress. It's not always obvious, but it's there, lurking underneath. People leave, and are not replaced so everyone needs to cover those roles, even though most are already overloaded. Colleagues look tired.

My role at work has changed, and so has the structure around me. And while it is ideal for me and I enjoy it, the role has its own challenges. 

Generally, work isn't what it used to be. And all must be measured. Everything seems to be data driven these days, and I'm not convinced it actually leads to better outcomes. The resulting data might say it has, but some of the best outcomes can never be quantified. 

It's no wonder so many colleagues are accepting packages and leaving.  But this is true across the board - it's not just my employer, or even the Higher Education field. It seems to be work generally.

As we speed towards (or has sped past?) the technological singularity, the world is changing rapidly. We need to recognise that, do our best to adapt and hang on for the ride.

There's a lot to be excited about.

Arrive Without Travelling.

Back in the 90s, I lived in Tokyo for more than six years. It has now been over twenty‑five years since I last visited, but last week I spent some time there again. It turned into a kind of nostalgia trip, revisiting old neighbourhoods and re‑walking streets I once knew intimately. Not in real life, but using a mouse and keyboard, I tracked down the places where I lived, worked, and simply spent time.

The house I lived in for most of those years has gone, replaced by a skyscraper. The flat I moved into after that is still there, although it took me a while to find it. The neighbourhood is not laid out as I remember it, yet the buildings do not look new enough to have been built in the past fifty years, so I suspect that is memory at work. The flat I lived in after that has also gone, replaced by newer apartments.

The buildings where I worked are all still standing. One of the companies is now out of business, and my former office is used for something else. The other two offices remain, but the company later reduced its footprint, so they are no longer occupied by my ex‑employer.

I also looked up restaurants, places I used to visit with friends. All my favourites seem to have disappeared, although I did find some of the ones I visited less regularly. The same goes for shops. Many are different now, though some areas have retained their feel, while others are barely recognisable.

The pockets of Old Tokyo have gone. Even then they were small pockets, but places that had remained largely unchanged since the 1950s. Dark wooden buildings, tatami floors, sliding paper doors. I lived in one of them for four years and feel privileged to have done so. There were times it felt magical, moments when it seemed I had been transported into the past. Times I will never be able to revisit.

Societies move on. Cities develop, change, and adapt. The old is no longer always practical, and I understand that. I really do. And yet the pull of nostalgia is strong.

If I could visit Old Tokyo, the Tokyo I knew, just for one day, I would be over the moon.

Waiting to Be Noticed.

The season has now most certainly turned. The days feel longer, the air is crisp and dry, and for the past few days we have had clear blue skies. It is that time of year when the light feels beautiful. The colours are bright and clean, and I am reminded of the British jigsaw puzzles and calendars I saw in the 70s. As a child growing up in Australia, those images always looked wrong, as if they had been processed badly. It was only when I moved here as an adult that I realised those colours, those more primary greens and blues, were completely accurate. I had grown up with a palette shaped by Australian trees, red dirt and harsh sunlight.

From my house I only have to walk a few hundred yards before I am surrounded by fields and trees, with hardly a house in sight. For the past few evenings I have really enjoyed soaking in those colours and that light. As I walk the dogs, I try to take in everything. Not only the scenery, but the birdsong as well. It is gentler and calmer than the calls of many Australian birds, far less frantic.

We cross paths with the regular dogs and their humans. We stop and chat, the dogs stop and sniff each other. Everyone comments on the weather.  Everyone seems brighter, happier than they did last month. Their shoulders have lifted. They’re standing taller.

Every few days I see someone. I don’t know them,  I don’t even know their name, but they are always on their phone, constantly scrolling.  The dogs they walk lead the way, but the owner never even glances at them, never looks up, not even once.

I can’t help but feel they are missing so much.  There is so much beauty around them waiting to be seen. You don’t even have to look for it.  It’s right there, within and without.

And that is what this time of year does best. It nudges you. The season change doesn’t shout for your attention. It simply is, and it softly asks you to notice. A gentle whisper rather than a wild gesture. The light falls in a certain way, the air sharpens, and the world feels a little more vivid. You look up. You breathe in. You remember where you are, and who you are. Sometimes, even glimpses of why you are.

The dogs certainly know. They pause at every scent, every rustle, every tiny shift in the bushes. They stop and stare across the fields at the slight movement of some small animal I can’t see. They remind me that attention is something you allow, not force. You need to open yourself, your mind. When I follow their example, I sense so much more. All five senses working overtime, even on the quietest evening.

So I keep walking. I keep noticing. And each time I step outside, I try to make space for the simple things that are so easy to miss. The changing light. The softened birdsong. The lifted shoulders of strangers. The easy rhythm of the dogs as they pad along the path.

You can live in the world with your nose in the phone. You’re still outdoors, getting some fresh air. But if you pay attention, if you look up even once, and open yourself to see, you might just feel the world turning.

And often, that is more than enough.

What Could Have Been, What Could Be.

The seasons in the UK are much more defined than back in Australia. There isn't a gradual shift, no crossfades like in a movie, just a morning where you look outside and the world has changed. One day you're wearing a coat and scarf while you walk the dogs, the next you're wondering whether to even bother with a jacket. It's a clear shift in light, colour palette and mood. Even the sounds seem different. Birdsong shifts gear, the air seems more alert. And each time it happens I find myself pausing, taking stock, wondering whether these quiet sudden seasonal pivots happened back in Australia and I just missed them, or whether the seasons over there truly blurred.

Maybe as I get older, I pay more attention, am more aware. Maybe the landscape and the climate make it more obvious. Or maybe living this far north means you can’t help but notice when the days start to stretch, when the mornings are brighter a little earlier, and the afternoons are reluctant to let go of their light. The change slowly settles in, but at some point it simply feels as if the new season has crept in while you were looking the other way. That point was during last week.

Perhaps it's the changing seasons, but I've had reason to reflect the past few weeks, thinking back to things that have happened and what might have been. Times when I made decisions - sliding door moments - which led me to where I am now. Opportunities ignored, missed or lost. And for the most part I have few regrets. I was disappointed on a couple of occasions when plans fell apart or simply didn't come to fruition. A few I stretched for but was either not skilled enough or couldn't reach high enough to grasp.

I hear people say that it ‘would have happened if it was meant to be.’ I've always felt this is a mantra we repeat when we need to make sense of a disappointment, a way of trying to rationalise the things that never quite materialised. But when I look back at those disappointments, and realise that for the most part it was for the best, I start to wonder about whether those near misses I took to heart were actually narrow escapes in disguise. The past month has held a sliding door moment. A decision made which I have since realised would probably have led me down a path I wasn’t meant to walk, a path I wouldn’t have wanted to walk, and I imagine the passing of time will confirm that. But I woke this morning feeling strange, imbued with something I haven’t felt for some time. I had to poke it and prod it, explore it before I could recognise it. I found a strange calm in my mind, a sense of hope, as if something had finally settled inside me, a quiet reassurance I couldn’t quite explain but didn’t want to question too deeply. A weight I didn’t realise I was carrying had gently lifted, leaving more than a hint of optimism in its place. Was it the recent near miss? The lighter mornings creeping in? Or was it that the Brits around me, many of them recently weighed down by the winter blues, had begun to thaw? They’re chirping again, like the birds I hear each morning, and it’s hard not to notice. And perhaps, in the end, it is none of those but a combination. A blend of things. A quiet relief at a near miss, the promise of a new season, and the faintest changes stirring both within me and without me. A change in the light, a change in the air, a change in the people around me, and a change in me. The seasons turn whether I am paying attention or not, yet this one arrived with a clarity I could not ignore. As the world around me begins to brighten, with mornings growing lighter and people shaking off their winter heaviness, I feel something in myself brightening too. Not loudly or dramatically, but enough. Enough to notice. Enough to carry. Enough to trust that whatever comes next, I am stepping into it with a softer tread than I had before, with a growing sense that things will work out, and that I will end up where I am supposed to be.

All I Have is a Photograph.

I lived in Japan in the 90s for more than a few years.

A wonderful experience, and a wonderful memory. And yet quite surreal in many ways.

Sometimes I feel as though I slipped sideways into a version of the country that barely exists anymore. Not the neon one in travel blogs, not the tourist one with noh masks, nor the pop culture one with cosplay, rock and roll dancers in Yoyogi kōen, and bosozoku revving through late night intersections.

I experienced all that, of course, but when I think of Japan, I think of the quieter one, the hidden one. The Japan behind the façades and the polite masks, where old timber creaked in the night and even the dust seemed to belong.

I lived as part of a Japanese family in a traditional wooden house. Dark beams, paper sliding doors, tatami floors that whispered gently when you walked across them. It wasn’t musty, exactly, but it had that old Japan smell; a kind of gentle stillness baked into the timber. My father‑in‑law was a woodcarver who sat cross‑legged downstairs and created objects, decorations, and statues for temples. Real temples and shrines. It felt like living inside history, and I felt honoured, as though I was trusted with something sacred.

Next door was a tiny karaoke bar. The sort of place where the mama‑san fussed over the patrons while pouring brandies, where last trains were missed and salarymen sang enka with more emotion than melody. Younger people sang pop songs, trying to sound like their idols. Occasionally someone would take a run at an English song. The bar only had five in total; I know this because I sang only four of them. There was no way I was going to stand on a stage and sing the fifth, Happy Birthday to You.

The whole neighbourhood was like that. A little worn, a little out of time, and full of stories that didn’t need telling because everyone already knew them. It was home. I knew my neighbours and they knew me. I walked those streets and, for a few years, felt like I belonged.

I looked it up on the internet recently. I felt saddened to see that much of it has gone. The house, the bar, most of the block. New high‑rise apartments stand where those memories resided. Memories that now live on only through those of us who belonged.

But beyond the memories, there’s something else that survived because I took it with me.

One night in the karaoke bar, I went to the men’s room. High up on the old-fashioned cistern, far higher than anyone would naturally put anything, I noticed the tiniest corner of something white. I reached up, stretched, and managed to get hold of it.

A small, laminated photograph. Black and white. About four centimetres across.

On the back, a rubber stamp of a figure; some kanji and other characters within. No date. Nothing else.

The image itself was strange. A person in darkness, just the arms and part of the chest visible beneath, a burst of light obliterating their entire shoulders and head. It's as if someone had taken the photo just as their flash went off. Or a self-portrait with an instamatic. No other clues. Just a frozen moment with the context missing.

I remember standing there for a long moment, wondering what it was. Why it was there. Who had put it up so high. Whether it had been hidden or forgotten. Whether it was meant to be found. Whether I should leave it where it was.

For reasons I still don’t understand, I kept it.

A few weird things happened around me in the weeks that followed, and I briefly wondered if I’d pocketed something I shouldn’t have; a charm, a curse, a joke, a ritual object misplaced by accident or design. Or was it something else. Maybe the owner came back for it and wondered where it had gone. Or, in some weird kind of way, was it left there, intended for me.

I’ll never know.

Life moved on, the curse faded, I left Japan, and thirty‑five years passed. I haven’t thought about the photo for a long time. Four or five years, at least. But this morning, out of nowhere, it surfaced in my mind, clear as it ever was. Quietly. As if it had returned to that karaoke bar waiting for me to once more notice its corner, patient and unchanged, just biding its time in the shadows.

I still have it, that small, laminated square. One of the last surviving fragments from a life that now feels dreamlike, slightly unreal, as though I lived it in someone else’s memory, or passed through a room I was never meant to enter.

I do wonder if the photo remembers more than I do. If that captured burst of light held something I was too far outside the culture to understand at the time. If the event it froze now exists only inside that tiny frame, sealed away. If even the players and the photographer have long forgotten the moment it came from, vanishing into the years and leaving the photograph, and me, as the final interpreter of an undeciphered moment no longer anchored to anything or anywhere.

It’s strange, the things that choose not to stay with us. And stranger still, the things that do.

Phenomena (Do doo be-do-do)

Every now and then my life seems to wander back into the mildly weird lane. Not the “Scully, you’d better see this” kind of weird. Just strangeness. High strangeness at times. Eyebrow raised, but not calling a priest.

Over the past couple of years, that kind of weird has started happening again. For starters, I’ve seen a few more UFOs. No close encounters of the third kind. Not even close encounters of the second. Odd‑shaped craft without wings, jets or rotors. A few lights in the sky doing things that lights in the sky aren’t supposed to do. Sudden stops. Hovering far too long. The sort of thing that makes you go, Hmmm.

Then there are the dreams.

Every so often I’ll have a dream about something completely mundane, and a few days later it happens in real life. Nothing world‑changing. Just little moments,  but so strangely specific they simply cannot be coincidental. Odd enough to make me wish they came with lottery numbers.

Objects have been joining in the fun, too. A book shifted when no one was near it. It moved in a way that felt pointed, like it was trying to get my attention, or like something was sending a message. I flicked through it and found a friend’s old business card tucked inside. I spent a while trying to find meaning in that. Nothing. Then I explored the title of the book, hunting for clues. I suppose can just about build a case, if I really try.

And then there are the synchronicities. Convergences. A name that pops up in four completely unrelated situations. An image I’m thinking about suddenly appearing in real life. Not dramatic enough to build a conspiracy theory around, yet, but persistent enough that I’ve started paying attention. One or two is coincidence. Three is interesting. Five or more feels like the universe is telling me to wake up and pay attention. None of this forms a pattern I can point to. Nothing adds up. And I'm not try to force a solution. I’m definitely not in the garage with photographs, files, and red string, but I am sitting here and listening.

Sometimes the world just gets a little frayed around the edges. A bit more alive. A bit more playful. It starts to unravel, and we catch glimpses of its other layers. As I said, this has happened before. It reminds me of other times in my life when odd things clustered together; Japan, certain periods in Melbourne, a few moments in Lincoln. Someone seems to crank up the strange from time to time, and I can’t help but notice it.

I’m not worried. I’m not looking for explanations. I’m certainly not looking for Cancer Man. I’m just paying attention and listening, because sometimes that’s all you can do. Wait. Watch. See what occurs next. Something is happening. Something is building. Something odd. Something curious. And, I hope, something wonderful. 

Honestly? I’m kind of enjoying it.