Life, the Universe and Everything.

I went to a double funeral during the week.

My mate's wife passed away about a month ago. He passed away five days later. He was 92, she was 91. It wasn't really a surprise as neither had been well. I last saw him about six weeks before he died. He'd been in hospital and looked tired. The sparkle had gone from his eyes and he seemed like he'd simply had enough. Not in a dramatic sense. More that he was weary and was ready.
It wasn't a shock when I got the call, but a realisation. He was the first of the gang to leave us.

A few years ago I started going to the club once a week, hoping to meet some people, to make friends. I'd sit in the corner with a pint and a book. A bunch of people played backgammon in another corner, while a few groups of people huddled around small tables chatting and sipping their beers. One week, a guy in one of the groups told me to put the book away and come and join them. We became friends quickly, and now they are my gang, the guys I see each week for a drink at the club. There are seven of us who sit and chat and laugh. And we laugh lots. Our regular table, our regular seats. The in-jokes, the local news, restaurant reviews and so on. 

I'm the youngest, but in any group someone has to play that role. One of the guys, a year older than me, is a huge music fan as well.  I'm Beatles, he's Bowie.  And so the two of us discuss music, releases and rumours. The others are older, and we discuss life, the universe and everything.

Like all good friendship groups, ours has developed its own personality over the years. You know who will arrive first, who will tell the longest story, who will have an opinion on whatever topic comes up. The conversations wander all over the place and often end somewhere completely unexpected. My friend had his own place in the group. His own stories, opinions and observations. He had a dry wit and shared my sense of humour. We "got" each other. There were times I'd say something, and the others would nod, but he'd glance over at me and smirk. He'd throw out a line, and I'd look over to see him gazing back, wanting to see if I'd caught it. I sat at his funeral. To my right, only a few feet away, was a floor-to-ceiling window looking out onto a stone garden with a small beck running through it. For the entire ceremony, two ducks were no more than fifteen feet from me. One paddled in the beck. The other wandered over the stones, pecking around as if it had important duck business to attend to.

My eyes and mind kept returning to them. It was calming and comforting. While we sat inside reflecting on lives that had ended, the world outside was simply carrying on as normal. The circle of life, of being alive.

His seat at the club still sits vacant. It's not sacred, it's not a memorial, it's just that no one has moved into it yet. But I do find myself wondering who will be the next recruit. The next person who walks into the club looking for company and ends up being told to put their book away and join us.

Groups like ours can't stay the same forever. We've talked about this, my music friend and I. One day we'll be the elder statesmen and others will be occupying the seats. They'll never know the man who used to sit up one end, but they'll become part of the tale. They'll inherit the stories, the jokes, the restaurant reviews and the discussions about music.

And before long they'll be sharing stories of their own around the same table.

Frozen in Time.

It's ten years since I moved from Australia. My friends and I try to keep in touch, but the truth is we're in different worlds, different time-zones, and our lives are moving in different directions.  It's always great to see them when I visit, but then I get back here and we fall back into our quite irregular contact.

Last week I was thinking about people I knew before I  moved here. Not friends, as such, but people I worked with, people I saw at social events, even students. Some of them I see online.  It's great to see ex-students, for example, getting older, finding careers, getting married and having children. Not all the people I knew back then are online or in my friendship group.

I found myself wondering how an old student was getting on, and I realised that for me that person is still about 16 years old.  I've not seen or heard anything about them since I last taught them, so in my mind they haven't aged at all. They're not going to be like that now, of course, but that is how I see them.

This happens to everyone when we move out of their circle.  We preserve them in time, at the age and stage of life we knew them.  The teacher at school is still 35 and eating a packed lunch out of a paper bag, the neighbour is still listening to the Allman Brothers at high volume, the student never quite leaves school.

But we move on. We grow, evolve, change. We gather experience and learn. Misfortune occurs and our worldview alters, and sometimes our personalities. Careers advance or change, children are born, grey hair appears.  Decades pass, and my high-school friend is still a sixteen year old lover of football,  not the CEO of a tech company.

Surely there is someone in Australia who remembers me as the twenty-five year old colleague, the 40 year old student, the 50 year old teacher. They have no reason to update that picture, and I can guarantee they wouldn't even be able to imagine much of what I do these days.

Soon I will be catching up with an old friend, my best friend from High School. We last spent any real time together when I was around nineteen. Over the years we bumped into each other occasionally, and it was great to chat and laugh. He's not on social media, but we've kept in minimal contact through his wife. Now they're coming here, and we'll be catching up over dinner.  Our first proper catchup since the early 80s.

I know what he's been doing, I know where his life took him.  I have some idea of what he's doing now.  But to me there is still so much of him that is the eighteen year old friend who shared so much time with me.

I'm really looking forward to it.

I'll Take The Low Road.

A few weeks ago, I quietly slipped up to Scotland for a week. This was not just a holiday, a trip to catch up with relatives, or a spur-of-the-moment getaway. The journey was conceived in the week after my dad passed away at the end of last year. I could not get back to Australia for the funeral, so I decided instead to visit Scotland, to honour his life and spend some time in reflection. And to explore my own legacy, my own history, my own origins.

While planning the trip, I chose not to visit Aberdeen, where Dad was born and raised. I have been there several times over the years and I love it, but I realised that he was more than his hometown. There was also my own connection to consider. I was born in the Highlands, where Dad was posted as a policeman.

I made a list of places I wanted to visit and explore, each chosen with care for its connection to him. Many were places I had not seen since the mid 80s and barely remembered, yet each carried some association with Dad, something meaningful to me.

The west coast, for example. I know he loved that side of the country, and I have a lasting memory of us there together in the 80s. Pitlochry, where Mum and Dad honeymooned. And, of course, Inverness, where I was born, and Nairn, where I lived.

There were also a few places I wanted to visit for my own interest, places where I might stop for an hour and have a look around, so I added them to the list.

 
I was stunned when I mapped the trip out and everything fell into an almost perfect loop. Nothing I had chosen needed to be cut for being too far out of the way. Everything seemed to fit. It all just fell into place.

Planning what to bring followed naturally, items to accompany the journey. A book, one of Dad’s favourites about Scotland. A playlist of Scottish music, from traditional through to modern. Photographs of Dad and me, Mum and me when I was a baby, and so on. A few other things to help me reflect. And a journal to record the entire trip.

Everything I set out to do was achieved. Every planned stop was visited. All I was looking for was found - in places, in things, and within myself. I learned a lot, and I came to a lot of realisations about my own identity - including things I have carried and struggled with since I was young.

 
Dad was with me, in… well, I suppose “in spirit” is the closest I can get. I could visualise him beside me as I drove, as I stood outside his now derelict police station, walked his old beat, and looked up at the window into the room where he once held me in his arms. Mum was there too, through messages and video calls, even walking with me around the streets where she had lived as a young wife and mother.

The trip exceeded all expectations. Just the right length, just the right stops and stays, and just the right balance of exploration. And then home, enfolded back into my regular life, now possessing a deeper sense of who I am.

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.