The slow boat to Belfast

17:16, Thursday: I’m on a train. Well, I’m waiting for a train. Hopefully the train isn’t going to be late. A train to catch a boat. I’ve already been on one train to get here, had to run down the street dragging my case behind me, fling myself across a level crossing as the train went past and then jam my shoulders in the doors as the thing tried to leave without me. Our local train station is great for dramatic last gasp do or die efforts to make the next train to London. This next one should be more sedate.

17:40, Thursday: Actually on the train now. It’s going to Liverpool, where we’ll swap for the overnight ferry to Belfast. It’s been ages since I went on a long distance train in the UK. This one’s got plugs and big winged headrests on the seats that block out the rest of the carriage. Which means it’s been a delightful surprise each of the three times already that I’ve been hit in the head with a roller bag trying to find where it’s reserved a space.

19:03, Thursday: The carriage is full of people complaining about how awful London is in Scouse accents. Can’t say I’m inclined to defend the place if I’m honest. Plus fewer tourists means I can get around quicker. The train was 17 minutes late before we even departed because of ‘signalling’ issues. The issue presumably being that the light didn’t turn green when it should have. Fortunately my wife being my wife we have a buffer of over an hour that wouldn’t have been there if I’d have been the one to book the tickets.

20:33, Thursday: There’s something delightful about a train-based picnic. I brought some homemade hummus with me, chopped carrots and some boiled eggs. A delightful repast. I added some sandwiches that I bought at the newsagents in Euston (not to draw any attention to the brand, but it rhymes with WH Smith). Modest little numbers, but nevertheless they cost the same as an all-inclusive holiday in a North African coastal resort. We’re now running 39 minutes late. Apparently being a little bit late makes you a lot late because they give your bit of track to another train. I’d just overtake all the slow people if it was me.

21:33, Thursday: On a bus. Took a taxi from the station that smelled of sick and checked in for the boat. I’ve never been a foot passenger on a boat before, you just have to guess what you’re supposed to do next and where you’re supposed to go. Now we’re sitting outside the terminal on a freezing cold bus while a man watches videos on his phone at full volume, watching people in their cozy cars drive onboard. I’m ready for my bed. Well, a bed. I think we’ve booked something down near the bilge pumps.

22:31, Thursday: Seeing what’s on the ship takes about four minutes. Some good offers in the little shop, people gathering around the bar and others staking their claim to a patch of soft seating they’re going to try and call home tonight. We’ve booked a cabin, which has fold out bunk beds, a tiny television and an en-suite bathroom pumping sewage smells back up through the plug hole. It’s surprisingly comfortable. Time for bed, after we’ve spent a few minutes watching all the truck drivers say hello to the lady on the welcome desk. Easy to forget this sort of thing is a regular part of work for some.

05:51, Friday: Never has a crackling tannoy been less welcome. Don’t know if the speaker in our cabin is broken, but the bim-boom opening jingle sounds like someone’s about to murder the US national anthem on an electric guitar that’s just been run over by a van. ‘Goodmoooorningleddiesngennlemen’ – anything is too perky at this time of the morning. Short of it is that we arrive in Belfast at half six and have to be out of our cabins by quarter past. What I hear is ‘Plenty of time to jump in the shower’. It’s quite lovely and warm.

08:51, Friday: Missed the bus connection from the ferry into Belfast, would have been three hours to the next one. Felt a bit strange just sitting around on the boat while all the important people with their cars went back to warm up. It’s a four-mile walk through the picturesque industrial heartland of Belfast’s docks to get to the centre. We have found a hipster cafe down an alleyway to get the feeling back. The rest of our weekend adventures beckon. We’re flying back to London – would I do this boat route again? Maybe, if I was driving.

One door temporarily closes, another door opens

My supermarket constantly makes me furious – I had to stop shopping there for a few months when they introduced new trolleys that needed a pound coin to unlock them. I felt criminalised, it goes against all the principles of innocent until proven guilty that underpin the fundamentals of our legal system. It shook my relationship with Sainsbury’s – how can they even want me as a customer if they suspect I’m only there to pilfer the wheels? Plus I never have any loose change on me. Mrs Burnett got me a little token to put in the trolleys, but I keep forgetting it.

I spent those few months shopping at another local branch of Sainsbury’s, but it was a different class of customer (far more likely to steal trolleys in that one, and yet they still managed to dish them out for free) and I couldn’t find anything anywhere. To be fair, I can never find anything in my regular supermarket because they keep moving things round. Either they’re massively indecisive or they do it deliberately so you can’t shop too quickly. Either way it’s intensely irritating.

Smash cut to this afternoon, where I park in my usual spot (otherwise I lose the car, I can never remember where I’ve left it) and make my way inside. The door does not open. I spy a sign, which says ‘This door is temporarily closed’. Well of course, it’s a door. All doors are temporarily closed, otherwise they would be walls. Indeed the whole point and essential nature of a door is that it closes temporarily.

What they needed to communicate was that this door would be closed for slightly longer than you might expect, to the extent that it would be more expeditious to use the next door several metres down. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to explain that this door is temporarily not opening. But why even bother with a sign? How long is anyone going to stand in front of an automatic door before giving up? If I didn’t know any better I’d assume it was some sort of retail-based psyop. To what end? To make me furious. A genius move, because I’m still thinking about Sainsbury’s hours later.

Heat me baby one more time

I love the heat. I genuinely think I must be cold blooded, like a reptile. I need the heat, I lament the lack of heat in the winter months. And the spring and autumn months. Occasionally during the summer months too.

And yet the other evening as I floated in my own sweat, trying to drift off to sleep, I thought that perhaps the heat was even too much for me. The duvet might have been a bit much in retrospect, but I like the reassurance of being covered while I snooze. The cat can’t get me while I’m swaddled.

I immediately rejected the thought that the heat was too much – in fact I came around to the opposite way of thinking. I lay there in the dark, my face glistening in the moonlight, and considered how much it will cost me in a mere month or two to get the house back to its current temperature. Now I’m just trying to absorb as much of this free Celsius as I can.

RE: You've left a hole in my garden

Hello – I've had a hole in my garden since May (that you dug, for context) and I've spoken to the leakage team (whatever you call them) a few times since then and every time someone says they'll find out what's going on and get back to me, but they never do. I'm sure it's not their fault, they're always very polite and helpful.

I'd quite like for there not to be a hole in my garden (I have to lift the cat over the yellow cover after it rains because she doesn't like getting her paws wet, it's quite annoying) – could you tell me when it will get filled in or whether there's a particular reason for it still being there? I'm half tempted to fill the whole in myself and put your blue barrier and yellow hole cover on eBay, but I imagine that would be a sub-optimal result all round (how much are they worth?).

Yours,

(I had to email Thames Water last week because there’s a six-month-old hole in my garden. I’ll let you know if I ever hear back.)

It was a good day

It was a good day, I was right. The bins augured well. Good day at the office, lots of sunshine, managed to bag myself a chicken triple sandwich from Boots. After work I headed to a networking event. I know, but it was more fun than it sounds. It was for creative people. I’ve not been to a networking event in about 13 years, so I was dreading it, but it’s important to put yourself out there a bit, isn’t it. Challenge yourself. Try something… not new, but try something old that you haven’t done for ages. Should’ve started with taking cross-stitching back up or something like that. Met some lovely people, chatted with them about what they do. It was actually very inspiring. I’ve got irons in the fire, so to speak, but it’s hard to tell whether I’m more lazy or scared. A mix of the two, I think. Rather holds you back. But other people are lazy or scared or lacking the confidence to do their thing too. It’s nice to have the opportunity to share what you’re excited about and have someone do a bit of cheerleading for you. Even if it is just about getting the bins out in the morning.

On the midlife crisis

I’m fairly comfortable with getting old – it’s one of those things that you get used to on account of it happening little by little every day. Like that analogy of boiling a frog in water, only it’s a really old frog and it’s been sitting in the pan for 35 years. Some frogs enjoy an average life expectancy of around 10 years, but some have been known to get to 40. Seems like a bit of waste for it just to live in a saucepan, though, even if it would be nice and warm.

Anyway – not so bothered about getting old. But the weirdest part is how I’ve come to understand the midlife crisis – the creeping realisation that despite feeling young inside (can it really be decades now since the foundational events and experiences of my youth? Why yes it can) you’re now an establishment figure, deeply uncool to youngsters and unable to comprehend the following generations.

I always swore I’d never be one of those old people flummoxed by technology, for instance, unable to work a telephone or thumping away at a computer keyboard and squinting at the screen. I’m doing alright so far, but there’s a fundamental difference in how young people experience the world that I’ll just never get. They way they use video, sneer at my full sentences and prosaic emojis, the fact they come with a baked in weariness at the world having grown up in economic and cultural stagnation.

Faced with ever increasing responsibilities – bills! a mortgage! power! – it’s easy to want to tap into your youth for one last hurrah, or try and hoover up the experiences you think the deprivations of your early years kept from you. It’s a process so tragic from the outside, but understandable from the inside. Or so I’ve heard. I actually already had the motorbike and convertible when I was younger, I don’t know what I’m going to do for my midlife crisis.

A little off the bottom

Some men just pulled up outside the house in a lorry and whipped out chainsaws to trim the tree outside our house. I’ll fully admit that the tree needed trimming, I’ve been meaning to snip back the branch right outside our front door for weeks, but I always forget so I’ve contented myself with just hitting my face every time I leave the house.

I’m working in the living room today, so I turned off the light and pretended I wasn’t here for the four minutes they were right outside. I didn’t want them to feel embarrassed that somebody was watching. I think.

The best of intentions

I borrowed a DVD off a friend maybe seven years ago and have forgotten to give it back maybe four times a day every single day since then. I’ve not really had the opportunity to give it back, to be honest, I just don’t see them as much as I used to. I could have posted it, say, but then who has time to go to the post office and stand in line? This DVD became such a source of shame to me that I ended up taking it to the charity shop just to get it out of the house. I’m not sure if my friend still even has a DVD player anymore, but if they ever ask for it back I’m going to have to pay a bit extra for next day delivery on Amazon.

Now this is a lovely standalone anecdote, and if you want to leave this blog post here I’d be more than delighted if you were to alight and move on with your day. I’m not saying the two things (the second thing being the thing I’m about to talk about) are linked at all, but I’m just that maybe the reason the British government hasn’t handed back all the Greek antiquities that we’ve looted and obnoxiously put on display in a British-badged museum isn’t because it doesn’t want to, it’s more like the government just hasn’t found the time needed. It probably wants to return all that old crap, if the Greek government can even use all those antiquities anymore, but it’s a lot of fuss to arrange packing and shipping. Between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Elgin marbles turned up in the Cancer Research in Marylebone.