Clockwork Motorboats

When Made in Chelsea comes on, it's time to vacate the room and find something else to do. So I move to the conservatory, if that's what it is, and look out at the wintry conditions. It's been raining all day and the weather people on the television and radio are saying that two months of rain will fall in just one day, possibly two. I can't remember. Either way it's been coming down all day; it was raining cats and dogs, as they say, for over 12 hours. It was raining as I made my way to the office, as I left the Pop Inn and headed back to the office, when I walked to the station this evening. We were allowed to leave the office early because of the rain and as a result I was home early, at 6pm instead of my usual 7pm, sometimes a little later. Right this minute the rain is hammering down. The annoying thing, of course, is that it's not the winter, it's June. June 10th to be precise, it's the summer time. It goes without saying that I was planning to cyc...

I had planned to write 1,000 words last night, part of a plan (perhaps a stupid one) to write daily. It all came about because of Monday night’s writing. But I was distracted. Rory Stewart, a Conservative Party leadership candidate, was putting forward his plans should he become the next Prime Minister. I’m following his Twitter feed and he uploaded the whole performance. It lasted for one hour and 17 minutes. There was nothing worth watching on television. In fact, last night was pretty boring. I didn’t start watching TV until 10 o’clock and hit the sack around an hour later. I slept well until the early hours, waking around 0330hrs and then trying to get back to sleep. I managed it because I remember a dream, that a couple of dissident republicans in a pick-up truck, the sort of truck capable of towing away automobiles, turned up at my doorstep and stole my car. They then drove past, my car in tow, and I had the opportunity to respond in some way. I think I said ‘thanks, guys’ in a s...

The problem with the summer months is light. There’s so much of it. From around 0400hrs the light burns through the curtains and when I awake, I’m awake, and there’s no getting back to sleep. I remember being in Alaska in the late 90s during the summer months when there’s hardly any darkness and it’s light all day long. After a long flight from London via Minneapolis I remember sitting somewhere in the Anchorage Hilton, it might have been my room or a rooftop bar, or both, but it was gone 11pm and it was broad daylight. The hotel had black-out blinds and once they’re pulled down it might as well be December, that’s how dark it gets. They had black-out blinds when we reached Seattle too and I’m thinking back to that trip and how amazing it was. I remember whale watching and flying in a light aircraft to reach a more remote part of Alaska, the state the Alaskans call the 49th as they’re always referring to the ‘lower 48’. Because parts of Alaska are land-locked, light aircraft is the onl...

My weekends invariably start with exercise: a ride on the bike, heading out into Northern Kent through Surrey. I write extensively online about my cycling, but I don’t consider myself to be anything special. I ride twice a week, Saturday and Sunday, and while there are various destinations, these days we’ve honed it down to what we call ‘the slow way to the bus stop’. Our recent lack of imagination in terms of final destination has its reasons, the main one being time. While my cycling pal, Andy, and I could happily ride off for miles and miles and return later in the day, we both have responsibilities back home and they limit the amount of time we can devote to our sport.  I leave the house around 0700hrs on most Saturdays and Sundays, I meet Andy at 0730hrs and off we go; we tend to get home before 1000hrs, which is normally acceptable. Sometimes, if we head for Godstone or Flower’s Farm or even Westerham, we might be out until 1030hrs or 1100hrs, but that’s about it.  I’ve ...

  Grooming. It’s a word that always reminds me of pets - and for good reason: there are pet grooming shops springing up everywhere, places where dogs can go for a haircut and a shampoo and set. I think dogs are the most popular customers of these establishments, cats wouldn’t tolerate such nonsense and besides, they groom themselves and cover up their mess after they’ve taken a dump. Unlike dogs. Although, that said, I once looked after somebody else’s cat, going by the name of Biscuit (it was the colour of a ginger nut). It managed to dump all over my bedroom, leaving little piles of unmentionable things dotted across the floor. After that he was banned, no longer wanted, and we returned him to his rightful owner double quick. But enough about animals. I’ve never kept a pet, apart from that disastrous week with Biscuit. I mean, it’s not as if he was grateful. When we went to see him a few weeks later, he ignored us. They say cats go where the milk is, and we were no longer providi...

  It’s early on Saturday morning. June 22nd. The day after the Summer Solstice. The longest day, making today the second longest day. I’m worried that life is simply passing me and my family by. It’s as if I’m sitting in a window seat on an express train and as I pass through stations I notice they have names I can briefly glimpse as the train whizzes past: Christmas, New Year, Easter, Summer Time, the Summer Solstice, Wimbledon, Summer Holidays, all things I allow to pass me by because they’re all things that other people do, especially holidays. There are ads on television depicting families splashing around in swimming pools and running hand-in-hand on the beach or enjoying an evening meal, but it’s not me and hasn’t been for a while. And it’s not because we can’t afford it, it’s because we’re unorganised and indecisive. We leave things to the last minute and I always hear myself saying: “Every year I say we must book it up in January, but we never do.” That’s because there’s so...

On leaving Brussels Midi on the 1727 Dortmund train, it takes a while for the WiFi to kick in and for the train to emerge into daylight. The train crawls its way along, but at least we’re moving. Outside there is sweltering heat, much hotter - a million times hotter - than in the UK. I’d been hanging around on the platform for a whole hour having disembarked from the 1258 EuroStar from London St. Pancras, an uneventful journey sitting in seat 21, coach 2 with a little old lady for company. Now I’m in seat 64, coach 21. Leaving the station behind, but still travelling at a snail’s pace, I look out at the overhead power lines, the trains parked up and others moving slowly into Brussels Midi. The city looks pleasant enough, the buildings daubed with graffiti. I’m on the train for just over two hours and when I reach my destination (Dusseldorf) I’m only a short walk from my hotel, the Novum Madison, and only a short hop from Da Bruno, arguably one of Europe’s best Italian restaurants. Now ...

When I woke up this morning it was only 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of the week it’s been in the high eighties. That’s not to say it won’t get hotter as the day progresses. I’m on board the 0817 train to Paris Nord, although I’m getting off at Brussels Midi. I’m sitting in seat 14, coach 22, right at the back of the train, but the carriage is virtually empty, the seat wide and I’m as happy as Larry looking out at the passing landscape. One thing I noticed on the journey from Brussels to Dusseldorf - and I’m now reminded of as the train slows down as we arrive in Cologne - is that the Germans really love their allotments. I’ve never seen such elaborate sheds, some sporting their own back gardens, most with net curtains; the Germans really make themselves at home and their sheds could easily double as houses, places where people could live. The train has stopped on a railway bridge over the Rhine, right in the middle. I remember walking over this bridge back in 2007, or thereabouts, but ...

When I was a kid, my school reports often referred to me as a dreamer, meaning I spent an inordinate amount of my time not learning, but looking out of the window. I’m not sure what I might have been daydreaming about, but thinking back, it was probably, certainly in the summer months, the prospect of a holiday on the south coast of England and all it might entail: trips to what was then called Perdido’s (it’s now the Lobster Pot, a beachfront cafe); swimming in the sea; playing with a toy yacht (Star Yachts of Birkenhead, proper sailing boats); and building sandcastles on the beach and trying to hold back the tide. As a young kid I also used to fantasise about owning enough land to run a small railway, one of those small-scale locomotives found in amusement parks, and this later morphed into owning my very own ghost train that all visitors would have to use to reach me inside. This particular fantasy involved me waiting for my guests in the living room and them arriving through two wo...

I’d imagine that being homeless is horrible. I’ve seen many a documentary about those who live on the streets, but I wouldn’t begin to make out that I have any kind of view on the subject other than it must be a nightmarish existence. The most frightening thing in my opinion, is that it can happen to anybody. How many times have I heard a homeless person state that his or her marriage broke up and they found themselves without a place to live? It’s quite incredible how we all walk on a tightrope and could fall off at any second. I often wonder what it would be like to be on the streets and how I would cope with the minute-by-minute pressures of having to look out for myself, find food and, most importantly, shelter. What always baffles me, however, is why homeless people stay in the city. I’m sure there are reasons that I simply don’t know about because I’ve never been in that position, but if it was me, the first thing I’d do is get out of the city. I would buy myself a tent (somehow)...

This morning I awoke fresh after a fretful dream, it was 0500hrs. I was in a taxi, a London black cab, and, as I travelled along a central London street, I was aware of interference from outside. Another cab was ramming the cab in which I was a passenger. My cab came to a halt at the side of the road and I told the driver that I would be ‘having a word’ with the rogue cab driver. I jumped out and confronted him as he walked across the road from where he had parked. There followed a tirade of abuse from yours truly, plenty of use of the ‘c-word’. The man in question was a mildly eccentric character; he had shoulder length greying hair and wore a kind of white smock patterned with vertical grey lines about an inch apart. His trousers were made of the same material and he came across as belligerent, but not threatening. Just annoying. I woke up, heart racing, or rather my pulse appeared to be slightly raised. Summer light was oozing through the curtains in my bedroom and soon I was out of...

Finally, I reach my destination. There has been rain after the stifling heat of yesterday, but it’s not cold. The sliding doors of the train open and I find myself bang opposite the exit and the steel-capped steps that lead down to the tunnel under the tracks. A smell of rain lingers in the air. I turn left and head towards the road. “What’s your fantasy today?” “I’ve used them all up.”  “Wrack your brains.” “I am, but I can’t think of any.” The truth is I can’t be bothered. All of my day dreams have exploded into nothing, there’s little much left and besides, I don’t want to degenerate into fretfulness, which is always the end result. I cross the road and walk past parked cars and plastic dustbins in untidy driveways, numbers scrawled roughly on their sides. “I’ll play a game instead.” Most licence plates these days close with three letters, like SKN or TGP or NSK and I try and make up words. So SKN could be ‘stupendous kayak ninjas’ and TGP might be ‘the gormless porpoise’ and NS...