The Hissing of the Summer Lawns

Thursday 8.45am 

It is forecast to get to 29 degrees today. Just now at a quarter to eight in the morning even though the nighttime chill still surrounds me I can feel the heat of the sun already pushing through, burning.

I am in the middle of our village, Havelock North. There is a distant hissing of water spraying the grass, the birds chirp and whistle, and the traffic quietly rumbles as everybody begins their day. As I walk past a cafe a hint of coffee fills the air along with the clinking of cups. The people are all isolated, distant, self absorbed as they think about their day ahead . . .

In the UK in the 60’s and 70’s package holidays arrived. Ordinary people could now spend two weeks a year somewhere more exotic than Aberdeen, Spain perhaps or Italy. Everything was arranged for you by the travel company, all you had to do was choose from the brochure, pay the fee, and turn up at the airport. For people like my parents who loved to travel but had decided to stay in one place for their children’s schooling, package holidays were ideal and every year my sister and I would spend two weeks by the pool or on the beach sucking in all the strange sights, sounds and tastes. We would leave Edinburgh paper white and along with the rest of our party return lobster pink, tired but inspired having had a small glimpse of what was out there in the rest of the world.

And that feeling from then of the sun already burning down through the morning cool has penetrated deep within me and stuck. It may only be like this for a brief couple of hours each day but it always evokes those childhood feelings of being on holiday, of having all the time in the world with no worries and a whole world of possibilities and new things to experience. It makes me happy.

Life is never dull when you make time for a cup of coffee and a cheese scone . . .

The Call of the Wild (or what I learned from the Antarctic Centre)

Monday 8.10am

I am a city person through and through. I love the whole busyness of it, the the sounds, the smells and the different views that suddenly open up as you turn a corner. I enjoy the anonymity as well, especially in the mornings as people flow past with that vacant going to work look about them. Whole lives and worlds flow in and around and past each other smoothly, never quite touching.

Just lately though the city has lost its charm. For the last few weeks whilst going to and from work all I seem to notice are the fences surrounding everything, and now here on holiday in Christchurch I feel surrounded by vast expanses of concrete and tar. We are such a controlling species. Everything has to be divided up and enclosed, from the fields with their barbed wire surrounds to the meat in the supermarket hygienically contained within it’s plastic wrapping. But we are fooling ourselves if we think we are in control, the real world is still there just under the surface. It peeks through in the grass growing in the cracks in the pavement or in the seeds drifting past on the breeze.

Deep within me I feel the urge too admit this and let go to be part of the world, but I cannot. I have spent so long as I am that even in my most extreme wilderness fantasies I am warm and comfortable, swaddled in layers of fleece and Gortex.
I am an indoor cat, I can see and hear the world out there but the closest I’ll come is to look at it through the glass of the window.

On being a Man

Sunday 5.01pm

I have a bit of an on off relationship with shopping. It all depends what I am shopping for. Grocery shopping is a planned affair with a list to be gone through. Put me in a delicatessen though and I’ll linger and browse, but then they are very much toy shops for grown ups. And clothes? well it depends on who it is for. For myself it is very much a hit and run affair, apart from the long periods spent in the changing room getting just the right pair of jeans. But if I am with Nicola and she is buying clothes for herself then that is a different story. As long as I can wander off to a bookshop occasionally I am quite happy tagging along. But my most favourite type of purchase is jewelry. Not for myself, I do not wear any, not even a watch, but for Nicola. We share the same taste in things, the same love of the handmade item made by a real craftsperson somewhere whose name is on the label and whom you could go and visit and talk to if you wanted something special. Of course jewelry is made to be worn and always I love how good Nicola looks when she wears these things.

Recently I was tagging along with Nicola as she bought a cardigan (I think). This was in her favourite store where she is quite well known now. As she came to pay she could not find her card so she looked at me and said “you’ll have to pay of course” so I did. This obviously impressed the woman behind the counter who’d watched me wander aimlessly around the store, hang around looking lost while she was in the changing room and then finally encourage Nicola to buy the cardy when she was unsure and pay for it as well. Turning to Nicola she said “ When you write that book about how to train husbands, can I have a copy!” 

We all laughed and left the store, but later on that day I finally decided to buy something that I have been thinking about for ages, what every man should have - a chainsaw.

Ever since then though I keep wondering - is there perhaps a connection between these two events?