Back on track*

*Scott Blanks

I like the symmetry of my six-year break from comedy - one of my go-to positives when I occasionally beat myself up for "quitting" in 2017. I'm a slow learner: I'd quit comedy once before, only eight months after my first ever gig, at the ripe old age of 27. That break lasted three years, and when I returned to comedy I remember another "class of 2001" comedian (we'd both done 'New Faces' spots on TV2 Pulp Comedy) saying to me "you stuffed up." I guess I kinda did, but I was still young enough to kinda just bounce back. But now aged 50, four years after my autism diagnosis - with a side of anxiety - I sometimes feel like I have a mountain to climb.

But I like the symmetry of my stuffup: twice as long as my first break; Covid happened squarely in the middle of it (which would have neccesitated a short "break" from comedy anyway... another "positive"); the first time I came out of retirement I was 31, and the second time 49 - each age a year's distance from a milestone birthday. I know, barrel bottom scraping now!

And recently I was interested to learn that for six years starting in 2011 Larry David curbed his enthusiasm for creating his hit show, but got enthused again aged 70. And Richard Lewis, who starred in the show, died this year on my 50th birthday.

And John Cleese is set to revive Fawlty Towers!

I recently found myself telling someone that returning to comedy felt like coming out of a coma.

I was turned down for 2015 and 2016 New Zealand International Comedy Festival shows, but in 2017 was accepted for my sixth solo show - 'My Way or the Hemingway'. I did what I thought was my best ever show for five fun, well-attended nights in the Classic Studio. Also at the time I was getting regular club, pub, etc gigs.

But I was feeling a bit unfocused about comedy, which I think was partly because I'd recently returned to my day job teaching ESOL in a language school, which I was really enjoying. And because of my all-or-nothing thinking - which I later learned is one of my autism manifestations - I felt as though I had to choose between comedy and teaching.

Also I felt a little frustrated that I wasn't quite where I wanted to be in my comedy career after 14 years at it.

I slipped away quietly from comedy, telling only Scott at The Classic, and a few others. I spent nights on the couch reading philosophy, history, theology, and linguistics. Instinctively I knew I needed an education - beyond the diplomas in advertising and Christian leadership I gained in my 20s.

As well as an education, I also just needed to grow up. At that stage of my life, living in comedyland was holding me in a bit of an infantile mindset. But for those six years I was not only still a comedian, but also, in a sense, becoming a better comedian; I've returned to the stage with a new conviction, maturity, and intentionality, and I feel like I'm selling my lines better than ever... watching old footage of myself I can see that my style was a little too passive. I still like to slow things down on stage**, and make the audience lean in to hear me, but I now realise that not every crowd is going to afford me that luxury, and I need to fight harder to win over tougher crowds.

By 2017 I'd been married five years, and had a toddler and a baby. Six years later I'd been through (and mostly come out the other side of) some marriage problems, and developed a lot more patience, selflessness, and capacity. Despite some of the old neuroses that seem to be inherent in doing standup returning, I now feel more alive, which is making me a much funner dad and husband... all of which would suggest that I'm now “back on track."

**I think partly why I like to slow things down on stage is because I generally find life to be quite fast-paced and frenetic, and sometimes overwhelming. This can easily clog my one-lane country road for receiving/sending info/stimulus from the outside world into my head. A neurotypical person has more like an eight-lane highway.

48 SK8

Recently I read that dropping in is to ramp skateboarding what ollie-ing is to flat-ground skateboarding.

I learnt to do the former 32 years after the latter.

I bought my first wide skateboard in 1986 for AU$110.

Aussie surf culture ruled, and one day at the mall my parents rocked my world when they bought me a florescent yellow, pink, and blue sweatshirt front-printed with a brand name which escapes me. I put it with my white “Beau Geste” mudflap cap and pink Lightning Bolt tee on my wardrobe shelf reserved for “surf” clothing that I wore around landlocked Canberra.

I’d been saving for a Tamiya remote-control car that cost $150, but was seduced one day in the surf shop by a matt white skateboard splashed with another forgettable, fluro brand name – “Reflex” – that I could afford to buy straightaway. Had I carried on saving and bought the Tamiya instead, would I now be as taken with RC cars as I am with skateboarding, and a better goal setter and achiever?

Parallel universe stuff.

A few months later Reflex was loaded into a shipping container, and we returned to New Zealand. I sold Reflex to my brother, who spray-painted it florescent yellow and, underneath, painted black stickmen chasing an animal with spears. He also blew my mind one day in the garage when he popped an ollie.

By 1989 the skateboard craze was cranking, and I worked my two-week school holiday in a chicken hatchery to save for a new board. Obviously I’d forgotten about RC cars, because on payday I walked into Cheapskates Henderson and dropped $340 on a Santa Cruz Jeff Grosso deck, Independent trucks, wheels, bearings, tail guard, nose guard, and rails. That’s more than double what I paid for a new Santa Cruz complete in 2021! Maybe because it weighed double (then add to that the weight of my crepe-soled Nomad school shoes that I often skated in, and I’m surprised I got airborne!).

But ollie I did, up the curb on our dead-end street. Then we moved house to the countryside, miles from anywhere skateable. Fortunately though, every morning my dad drove my brother and me with our skateboards to asphalted Waitakere train station, where we boarded a virtually empty train to Avondale College; we skated the aisle, altering our speed relative to the ground. We learnt physics while other kids were still rubbing sleep from their eyes.

The lunchtime skaters congregated around a plywood quarter-pipe that someone had brought to school, and among the Knievels launching off it was Scott Lyons, a pimply, stocky, mulleted king of the jungle. He pioneered bike inner-tube footstraps. I was just trying to ollie or no-comply up a nearby curb in my Nomads.

No train station, train, or concrete at our next house, but at least our street was paved, and on it was a primary school where we stashed a long, solid piece of wood to ollie up onto and railslide (boardslide) on.

Then I was desperate for Doc Martins, so sold my board (to my brother?) and bought some brown low-cuts. Decades passed, over which I noticed the old whale-tail deck shape morph into the current, straight-side “popsicle”, and last year I got back in the game with a second-hand Shifty for $40. Last Christmas my wife and I bought our two young boys 22-inch cruiser boards, but then our eldest started using my board for Young Guns skate school. So on payday I went to Boardertown and bought myself a new complete (I can play with my son’s RC car anytime).

New Lynn bowl is where I first dropped in (fell off the second time), and from there progressed to the waist-high ramp at Valonia skatepark, then the Waterview nipple-high.

Lines

Ever since I could stand I've had the world at my feet.

Chinese junk now refers to what's inside the ship.

Every room in a rest home is a restroom.

Confucius say: bear loose in chemistry class creates pandammonium.

Confucius say: toilet seat unnecessary if making stool.

Confucius say: racing mind not fast asleep.

Why did the chicken cross the road?
It saw the jay walking.

Which came first, chicken or egg?
Eggplant.


One's lot in life is a lot.

Parenting will age you - you choose what age.

Even better than an unputdownable book is one that sleep makes you drop.

Dazzle dazzle giant sun
wondering is now not fun
you're a close star in my eye
stare too long and I might die


Saturday

Clear afternoon sky,
ice cream wind
hot caramel sundae

Pain in the rear

As usual my militant body clock rang at 4.46am, and I tried in vain to hit snooze. After delaying the inevitable for 14 minutes I turned on the light and resumed looking for my beige travel money belt, a search I’d quit on last thing the night before. I quickly found it under my bed, which meant I’d be able to carry my phone with me on my bicycle, to upload my ride to the Strava app. Before zipping away my phone I used its flashlight to illuminate the barn door combination lock, before wheeling out my bike.

As is so often the case when I run or ride in the morning, it is still technically nighttime, and I feel slightly unnatural walking, scantily clad, down darkened driveway past my neighbor’s bedroom window where they are exercising their gift of being able to sleep past stupid o’clock. But I do love mornings, and mostly I find it a treat to step outside and expose my pasty thighs to moon or starlight.

I hoisted myself onto my blue Bauer Momentum and rolled out onto the smooth, black asphalt of my quiet, suburban street. The main road was extra quiet for early Saturday morning due to the covid-19 lockdown, and I turned and began pedaling up Great North Road to where it starts gently descending towards the start of Ash Street.

I’d forgotten to take a good look at the stars from my driveway, and now couldn’t because of the bright streetlights, and I couldn’t be bothered stopping. I did momentarily look up, but the thought of how stupid I’d feel if I crashed my bike on an empty, four-lane road caused me to quickly revert to conventional means of navigation.

On the other side of the road a police car drove by, and I did a quick mental checklist of how I might be breaking the law. I say “might” because I still don’t know if it’s illegal to cycle in the dark without a front light. But, hey, at least I have a vigorously flashing rear light, which the police would have seen when they looked back to check if I at least had a vigorously flashing rear light, making me not worth imprisoning.

Unbeknownst to me, there lay on the other side of the road something of greater concern.

On through the giant, ghost intersection that marked the beginning of Titirangi Road, and the hill climb into the Waitakere Ranges – my languid, lockdown legs and lungs keenly anticipating the resistance.

Keen to keep my ride under 40 minutes, I turned around about one kilometer shy of the summit, and began screaming downhill. The roadside electronic speed display awoke to show 45km/hr.

Ash Street traffic is normally heavy, and out of habit I rode quite close to the curb. Suddenly I felt a mild bump and realized I’d run over something that had attached itself to my rear tyre. Then I heard a flapping sound and felt both a lack of air cushioning ... and deflated.

Crap. My second puncture in three days. I pulled over and began running my fingertips round the tyre to find the offending article. These things can sometimes be hard to find ... and sometimes they are a ruddy great 2.5-inch nail! I pulled it out, uploaded my ride (12.6km, 30 minutes), and began the two-kilometer walk home, both wondering how a lame nail had so accurately and effectively found its target (had it been a trap laid by a schoolboy?.. I know I used to dream up such schemes), and mildly berating myself for not riding 3cm wider of the curb. “Oh well, I’d enjoyed a long period of inflation," I figured, "so I guess was now due a couple of flatties.” Yes, plural. The other one had been on my other bike, a newer road bike that, after he'd stored for eons in my folks’ garage, my Christchurch-based bro-in-law had recently given me.

The nail pierced the tyre side wall and both sides of the inner tube, so I took the punctured tube off my other bike, repaired it, and paired it with the holy tyre - which had more tread - on my Bauer. A nice wee activity to do with the kids of a lockdown Sunday morning.

Lying under trees

The city screams at me to race,
Buses snarl
Signs grip me, draining their venom right down
to the logo
I walk with a scowl, and judge other scowls
I breathe in greed and shut out need
I carry it on my shoulders;
shallow breaths

Tilt my brain
Blue sky flood
Exchanged with an old woman ahead of me on the bus



The time to write will come

I give you my latest poem
as good as any I’ve read

always the last I’ll write

poetry is the bird on the windowsill

that appears

when nothing could be further from your mind,
when you least feel like a poet

by grace the bird appears when finally

I put pen down and start living.

if you’re moving in step with life,
giving as you should
taking as you should,

leaving behind as you should
remembering as you should

..then your eyes will be open to the soft landing
of sparrows' feet at your window

Cycle Diary

Today I saw the sunrise from the Waitakere Ranges, and the sunset at Piha Beach. And I set off this morning under a full moon.

8.30am:
After stopping at The Piha Store for a coffee and to sit down and eat my breakfast and start writing this, I felt the nudge to put pen and paper back in the pannier bag and continue cycling the further one kilometre to the beach.

I now sit in the dunes and grass, the clear morning sun at my right shoulder spotlighting an endless blue stage. A pod of surfers sits, watching a horizon that swells with small, clean breaks. The prize peak arrives and three or four surfers leap to their feet, walking like disco Jesus; then the wave obeys them and they get back in the boat.

The west coast is benign today, tempering my image of it as wild, frightening, and deadly.

With only four kilometres left to ride I'd seen my shadow for the first time on the road before me, stretched and sharp - a silhouette mirror. I'd woken early and set out in the dark at 6am, an hour before I'd planned to, but the moon was perfectly full and the roads empty, being Good Friday, so I set my rear light pulsing, and rolled. My bike hummed on a new front tyre, and my vintage pannier bags enjoyed their first airing for 20 years, reunited with their purple aluminum Bor Yueh bike rack. Despite being 25 years old, my blue Bauer road bike still has plenty of life left in it. One careful mother-in-law owner, it sat in the garage at the family home for who knows how long, and five years ago Lynn gave it to me.

It's been a sweet ride, but its low gear isn't low enough for me not to have to push it like a pack mule up some of the gnarly hills in the ranges. I'd planned to stop for breakfast at the top of the hill, but I felt good, so I pressed on, completing the 30km ride in 98 minutes.

After a breakfast of sago pudding, boiled eggs, two feijoas, half an apple, and some pie crust, I made for the beach where I'm generally just sitting around soaking in the remoteness and sea-renity. And reading my book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, and writing. And eating my peanut butter sandwich.

For lunch I hoisted my vagrant ass up the stairs at the Piha Surf Life Saving Club restaurant where I sat on the verandah overlooking the lifesavers over the road, and hammered a beef burger and fries. I'd hoped to also have a beer, but the restaurant isn't serving alcohol today, because this Friday is Good enough already ...

Saturday:
Fortunately I had a can of beer in one of my pannier bags, which meant I was still able to have a beer with lunch, but just not while I was eating it, and not in the restaurant. I saddled up and headed back around past The Piha Store and on along the road to North Piha Beach, where I would be staying the night. To my surprise the carparks at the north end were just as full as the two at the other more iconic and "glamorous" (some very snazzy holiday homes there) end.

The first public toilet I came to seemed like the perfect place to drink my beer, so I tied up my steed, drained my bladder, filled up my water bottle, and went outside and drained my can. Dinner was a fall from grace: rice and a few potato crisps mixed together in the bottom of the chip bag - something I'd prepared earlier; I was pleasantly surprised to find that the chips were still crisp.
To be continued ...

The the

Candles

The future is the buried wick
the past the crumbled soot but
the flame burns up, bright and tall
moving imperceptibly to those whose
way it lights


Pigeons

The pigeons downtown must
think it strange to see
people pigeonholed
in their towers
working late
to be able to
afford
to buy
free
range
chicken

Dream team

Last night I felt what it's like to intercept a pass in a rugby game when, in my dream, I was caught up in a match that broke out in the stand at a NZ Warriors rugby league game. This is the latest episode in my recurring dream that I am facing my fear of playing rugby, and my intercept is, thus far, my greatest rugby moment. I was eventually tackled, which wasn't as bone-crunching as I expected it to be - in fact it was almost as though I was put down gently on the concrete bleacher. Perhaps there is something in my Kiwi psyche that knows I should play, or at least have played, rugby and it's found an outlet in my dreamland. Perhaps it's not too late to return to high school as an adult student and sign up for the 2nd XV, or at least try to start an impromptu match on the sideline.

Summer

Close grey ice sky
bare wood branches
fissure network
from frosted earth
The expanse separating the water above from the water below

Bright new green leaves leak blue light through gaps
from overlap
by crepe paper shapes that scrape and separate;
A thousand dazzling lights
pierce the thick black sky

Stay-home OE

He's like the guy I worked with at Mico Plumbing Supplies who returned to Thailand to visit every year or two. But this guy comes out here to New Zealand twice a year he told me today, every summer and winter. Why in winter? He’s from Japan, which is far enough away from New Zealand to be the opposite season, isn’t it? I see him in town occasionally from a distance, his distinctive gait and spindly frame, cargo shorts and ageless face, unkempt hair and glasses, a real loner. God knows what sort of cracks he’s fallen through in Japan. He’d stay at the backpackers where I lived and worked 13 years ago. Maybe he still stays there - we didn’t discuss that today. He’d come here and watch TV endlessly in a shitty room off the kitchen at Conor’s Topfloor Hostel. The wide open spaces.

He’s an accountant, and he’d done his math because Conor’s was the cheapest room in town at only $16 or $22, depending on whether you wanted to share a room with others, or just hear them through the walls. A British relationship breakdown; the operatic sounds of a Latino woman being pleasured. Little surprise that I should bump into him at the language school where I now work, our orbits colliding on the fourth floor - he sitting serenely in the window waiting for a free English class to start, me in the corridor fast lane, head turned deciphering his side profile. He couldn't get his head around that I now work as a teacher, a far cry from my days cleaning toilets five floors up, yet still traveling through Auckland.

The Importance Of Not Being Ernest

It’s believed that Ernest Hemingway once wrote a six-word novel: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." This guy really knew how to trim the fat, which is partly what made me want to write like him. His deceptively simple writing style had a childlike quality, and my attempts to emulate him read more like creepy children’s stories, so I went with that and wrote kid’s stories instead. I didn’t send them to a publisher because I didn’t need reminding that I was a failed Hemingway who couldn’t even write something decent about worms.

But then I had to put aside my insights on life as a worm and write a best man speech for my brother’s wedding. And that’s when I started writing some crisp one-liner jokes. That was way back in the year 2000, when the future started. I first set foot on the comedy stage in March 2001, and since then I have looked back. I have looked back trying to understand how I went from serious ad school student to market research telephone interviewer and worm author, to standup comedian. Maybe as a telephone interviewer I was practising talking into a tiny microphone to a stranger laughing at me, and perhaps as a worm author I learned to lighten up and become a kid again. This is partly the theme of my new standup comedy show: https://www.comedyfestival.co.nz/find-a-show/my-way-or-the-hemingway/

Waiheke for a day

Yesterday on Waiheke island I rode my scooter down to tranquil Rocky Bay. I spied a good parking space, but was aware of a guy sitting nearby at a picnic table smoking a cigarette and gazing at the bay. I parked there anyway, and as I turned off the ignition he said, “good to have a scooter to look around the island.” I replied, "yeah, you can have your tranquility back now." He didn’t seem too fussed. I sat down at the table and started devouring my supermarket pizza, and as we talked he pointed to schools of baitfish close to shore. His kayak with fishing rod inserted lay at the water’s edge less than 10 metres from where we sat, and he said that at high tide he can pop open the sunroof and catch a snapper from his car, which I thought was a bit dismissive of the beautiful surroundings. “Drive-thru fishing”, I joked.
I asked him if he knew Sam McLean, an old Scottish guy who lived in Rocky Bay and owned a 50-foot yacht that I crewed aboard to Fiji in 1993. He didn’t know. That was a long time ago now.
“What do you do on the mainland?”, he asked me. “All sorts of things”, I replied, “cheese gives me really weird dreams.” At first I thought he was joking when he told me his job, but as he went on I knew he was for real. For a sea captain I thought his glasses looked too trendy, and he looked too young and homeless, but maybe that’s just the dress code in Rocky Bay. He explained that oil companies pay $500,000 a day for offshore seismic surveying, and that, with its eight-mile-long lines trailing from the stern of the ship, pilot boat out front and rear-guard boat, his get-up is the largest moving object on earth. “Oil companies think nothing of the cost - for every dollar spent they get 20 dollars back”, he added, relighting his exotic cigarette. He pointed to his recreational craft, a 23-foot yacht moored out in the bay, which he’d bought for $1800 in the Bay of Islands and taken a week to sail home due to a lack of wind. He'd had to motor the whole way. I had more island to see, so with a full tank of vegetarian pizza I hopped on my scooter and buzzed off.

Morning delight (1983)

One morning I went down to my mini deserted, very mini bush. I checked the hut in case any wreckers had come. There is a little stream that treakles down. It glistened in the sun,... everything glistened. It was morning delight. Even the thrushes thought that. Every thing glistened in that sun.

Moons

Suburban beach

Standing on the beach where the
strong wind blew in the full moon
at one end, and the high rise ship
on brim tide at the other

The wind blows diagonally across my face
and the silver dollar moon beckons the lover in me.
I can’t tell if the ship is coming or going


Morning Moon

Low slung full moon
Soft orange, cloud shroud
Easy on the eye
Unlike his sun brother

Tower Bakers

Tower Bakers proves that limited space is no obstacle to creating a distinct, original feel. Interesting curiosities and books - including a few withdrawn library books - start drawing you in the second you step off the footpath outside this quiet, suburban row of shops, through the door of possibly the smallest baker shop you’ve been in. Upon entering you immediately find yourself standing, ready to pay (and even tip some stray coins into the piggy bank), at the business end of the counter. The wise man standing behind says hi and gives you space to peruse the simple yet original cabinet selection of toasted sandwiches and slices for sale, and keepsakes that are not. With the clock struck 12 o’clock-National-Radio-news playing softly on the wireless behind the counter, I order a rissole & gherkin toasted sandwich, and a Coffee Supreme coffee. Plopping down in a cute, blue wooden seat at the end of the sole communal table (through the large front window I also spy a small outdoor table and stools on the pavement), I reach for a library book. A cheerful British woman standing at the counter has struck up conversation with my wife about our baby boy’s toothy smile, and, with our lunch up, assumes the role of popup waitress, passing a plate the few feet from counter to customer: “who’s having the rissole sandwich?”, she asks. “We both are”, I answer rye-ly. Just because there is no room on the small plate for anything other than the sandwich (space is at a premium), doesn’t mean that presentation can’t still be everything - pressed into the top of the sandwich, like your nana’s pressed flowers, is the ornamental garnish from the counter. As you’d expect, the bread is good - they’ve been perfecting it here for 20 years, and the rissole, cheese, gherkin and tomato makes for a balanced meal all round. The wise man, sensing our wish to just sit and read our book & newspaper for a few moments before chowing down, had previously been out back brewing us a fine cup of jo.

Oldsmobile

Both my grandmas drove pretty cool cars, but for different reasons. One drove a brand-new red Ford Laser hatchback, and the other drove a mint condition black Volkswagon Beetle. My cool gran was the one who drove the laser, because she took more of an interest in us kids, or at least showed it more. She took us out to things. I don’t remember nana ever doing that, however, I do remember climbing into the back seat of her black beetle, the smell and texture of the grey vinyl upholstery, and the interesting purr of the boxer engine behind me. So maybe nana did take us out in her car, but I don’t remember ever going anywhere with her. Gran took us out in the Laser. She took us to the Mercury Theatre to see ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, and told my brother and me off for clowning around in the foyer (the only time I can remember her telling me off). She took us to work with her at the haberdashery shop and bought us orange stanley knives and meat pies from the shops next door. She drove us to the port to board the cruise ship for Sydney when we moved to Australia.
My nana lived across town in the posh suburbs. She was hard to get to. She served tomato goulash and toast for lunch from her tiny kitchen that smelt of cigarette smoke. At her place there were only boring pictures of birds on the walls, and nothing on TV, but in the garage lay this black beauty. Probably not a major head turner back then, other than the fact that it was pristine black, but definitely a novelty to me. Years later when it was sold I vaguely remember it being snapped up with some artful enthusiasm by someone. The Laser was pre-loved and sold. Gran hung on to for a long time tho, proud of the fact that she provided the power steering.

4 poems

A movie theatre foyer is a peculiar place to sit down for a coffee. There is a vibe and a hubbub in the room but everyone is standing - no one can chat for long because they are all coming or going.
Sentences are very short - just the headlines please - and people skip gaily from one topic to the next until the stone can skip no more and drowns, then they turn to the person to their right.
Everyone has a person to their right.
Conversations are nimble on their feet - everyone knows that to sit down is social suicide, to get bogged down in unnecessary detail and stall.
That is why the chairs, while neatly laid out, remain bare.
This person has their arse to me

Mission Bay has had the life frozen out of it to the point where it emits a faint glow onto the cold, dank air.
It has taste when no one is there - not even the famed Movenpick ice-cream shop can boast a crowd.


View at Langs Beach

Floor to ceiling window pane
Framed in A4
Acres of blue sky, inky white clouds cast giant seaweed shadows on turquoise seas,
Moving quickly underwater like rays
Solitary island sits atop vertical ripple sea
That fills up lower third of frame
Like they taught me to do at art school


Rain

Why can't a beautiful day include rain?
Rain is beautiful
It makes a noise to let you know it's here to help
Why do we despise the rain, and
devise so many ways to shun it -
The umbrella, the window wiper, the parker, the house -
That we forget to embrace it?
To feel it
To have it straight from the source
Before it winds up in the gutter

Go outside for a shower

Afloat

On Saturday I went sailing on my dad’s 30-foot yacht. I made the boat sink, but I can’t remember why. The half-submerged sails continued powering the boat forward, and as the last of the rig slipped beneath the surface, I somehow remained standing on something solid, yet I knew I eventually had to jump off. Before I leapt, the water seeping through my trouser pocket to my iPhone, I dunked my head and looked through my expensive sunglasses for sharks. Sure enough, one was waiting below near the hull. This morning, drifting back into consciousness, I felt disappointed that my iPhone was ruined.

I do everything in my dreams except see a shrink to get my reality interpreted.

The new 40

I remember being so excited about getting a new digital watch for my 10th birthday that during school class that day I skipped out to the toilet just to adore and polish my snazzy new piece of technology. 30 years on and I'm feeling a bit the same way about the new analogue watch my brother and his wife gave me last week for my 40th birthday - except I can polish it whenever I like. It feels good to wear a watch again, especially one that I was given as a birthday gift. In some ways I don't feel much different at 40 to how I did when I was 10 - I'm the same person now as I was then; it's all been in there since day dot. I'm able to feel things just as much, I've hung on to my childlike sense of humour, and I haven't deadened my sensitivity.

I considered not having a 40th party - I'm not usually the party-throwing type - but I'm glad I stepped up and threw one, and that my wife did such a good job of making it happen. Turning 40 is an achievement, and should be marked with a celebration. Having survived your tumultuous twenties and thirties you've well and truly made it to middle age. Victor Hugo said that "forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age", which would suggest that between 40 and 50 is a sort of no-man's-land (it's most definitely a no-adolescent's-land!), in which I think I'll enjoy being stuck for a decade. Who wants to fit in anyway?

Hooligans

Standing on Queen Street today I heard behind me a loud, cheerful commotion. Turning to look I was surprised to see an army of about 200 school children in navy blue uniform marching up behind me. Mildly relieved, I received the all clear to cross the road, and as I began to do so the children broke into song, momentarily transforming the pavement outside Smith & Caugheys into a Wembley football stadium stand. I continued diagonally across the road, safely out of the way of this giant busking ensemble, glancing back over my shoulder to take in the whole experience. Overtaken with the excitement of a buzzer command, and abandoning their orderly chant for lively yelps and squeals, the children began running across the road, breaking ahead of the pack like water spilling over rapids. Predictably, from across the road a bystander was busy reducing it onto his one-inch movie screen.