Tag Archives: hope

Embers

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Marylebone Platform Six: Arrival

Is it too late at forty one? It was the first question that Jane wanted to ask, impatiently thumbing a magazine in the waiting room. She had read the literature, seen the changes in risk profiles past certain ages, heard the opinions of friends, family, strangers in forums on the internet, and the consensus was that it wasn’t too late. It wasn’t, perhaps, ideal but it wasn’t too late. She wanted to hear it out loud from a professional. She wanted somebody with a medical certificate on their wall, preferably wearing a white coat, to spell it out to her.

The waiting room was the same as she remembered it from the only time she’d persuaded Paul to come. Curved, vertically slatted, wood panelled walls framed the space, a light wood that softened the room and retained the light. They’d talked about it when they’d sat here together, a distraction from the real reason they were there. He thought it looked like somebody’s idea of the future from the 1970s, she thought it was Scandinavian and designed to evoke a sense of calm. Now she wasn’t so sure, sat there alone. It wasn’t helping the knottiness in her stomach or her quick glances around the room each time a door opened or the receptionist shuffled a set of papers or the printer on her desk hummed to life or the telephone rang. She didn’t think Paul had been right either. If this was an imagined future then it was not one she would ever have imagined for herself.

There were six other people in the waiting area with her, all couples, all sat quietly, two of them holding hands, the other sat side by side, her with her head leant across his shoulder. Everyone had acknowledged each other every time somebody new arrived, usually a silent nod or smile, a tacit sign that whilst nobody knew the details of everyone’s story they did understand the gist of it, understood that they had all reached an inflection point where they were all looking for the same happy ending. Jane had found that smallest moment of connection oddly moving and had immediately bent over to rummage in her bag, pretending to look for something important, so that she could compose herself, hold back the tears that were threatening to run down her face.

Jane watched two of the couples, in turn, be called to another room ahead of her. In their absence she imagined the myriad of chance events that could have played out that led them here, the arbitrary sequences where biological collisions were missed or cellular reactions spluttered and faded or genetics were just wired, unknowingly, against the hopeful protagonists from the start. She tried to read their faces as they came back into the waiting area but everyone carried the same pensive, considered look that they had as they entered. Maybe they didn’t know anymore than they did before. Maybe everyone realised, out of respect, that this wasn’t the place to show more than cautious optimism. Not everyone would leave with the news they wanted. Jane had read enough of the statistics to understand that.

Her name was called and she was directed down a corridor towards the back of the waiting area, and then into a room, marked simply with the name of her fertility consultant and the assorted set of letters after his name. MBBS BSc MD DFFP MRCOG. She didn’t understand any of it beyond the BSc but was reassured in its impenetrability, in its length, in its blank capitalisation. She hesitated and then tentatively knocked. If Paul had been her she knew he’d have hung back, waited for her to make things happen. The thought galvanised her and she didn’t wait for a response, just pushed the door open and stepped through.

Doctor Jacobs – Andrew, please, call me Andrew – was the owner of the various initials on the door and Jane listened as he talked through the potential IVF pathways open to her, detailed the risk profile information that she had already exhaustively googled, and gave her an honest appraisal of her chances. It’s a physical and emotional commitment, Mrs Roberts, and there’s no guarantees but you’re healthy, all your indicators are as good as they can be, so it’s certainly not a situation where I’d be looking to dissuade you.

“I prefer Jane,” said Jane suddenly. “I’m just finalising some paper work but I don’t think of myself as Mrs Roberts anymore.”

Andrew tilted his head slightly to the side. “Your ex-husband. Of course. I am so sorry about his death, Jane.”

“Thank you,” she said. “We were actually divorced but there was some admin to finalise and then he died. It was all very unexpected.”

“He explained it to me,” said Andrew. “I really am so sorry, I was so caught up in explaining the processes and the details that I usually cover. I really should have started with that.”

“He explained it?”

Andrew opened a file on his desk and picked through the sheets of paper inside it, eventually finding what he was looking for, pulling it out and placing it in front of her. “He wanted you to have this. He wanted me to give you this.”

Jane stared at it for a few moments, caught between curiosity and a sense of deep apprehension. She’d sat on the train on her way in mentally preparing for what she thought was every possible permutation, every way in which this conversation might go, every choice she might be offered, but none of that preparation had included a letter from Paul. She’d consciously walked rapidly down the platform at Marylebone, fixated on nothing but the exit barriers and the passage way to the street, deliberating screening out all of the small reminders, all of the tiny emotional cues that the place prompted in her. She’d deliberately avoided the station since the disposal of his ashes and had wanted that to close it all off, to end their story in the same place it began.

Curiosity won. Jane read Paul’s letter.

Dear Jane,

I am not foolish enough to seek your forgiveness. I know you too well and, more importantly, have come to realise that what I did doesn’t deserve that you forgive me. I regret it all deeply and that is something that I have to carry.

Perhaps somewhere you can appreciate the irony in the formality of this letter, now that we’ve parted and will lead separate lives. Do you remember that we started with Pride & Prejudice and I misquoted Mr Darcy, a vain hope that I would not lose your good opinion lest it be lost forever. Clearly I have lost it forever and I have only myself to blame for that. Know that I am sorry. I know that will probably not mean much, after everything, but know that’s it true all the same.

When you left me in 31 Below, that last time I saw you, you said that I owed you. I’ve thought a lot about that since and I think you’re right, I know you’re right. I’m due for my surgery in a couple of weeks and, after that, I will disappear. I don’t want to bounce around London anymore, bumping into the places that were ours, regretting what I let get away from me. I don’t know exactly what I will do but I’m going to move away, going to start again somewhere else, see if I can find a small village cricket team that will have me. But that’s all about me and not about you. And you were right, I do owe you.

The surgery will stop me ejaculating. I tried to think of a more poetic way to say it but drew a blank. No puns intended. Perhaps you realise how difficult this is for me and remember that we used to laugh at things like this? Used to laugh at so much. I’m sorry if it’s too late for that. How would Mr Darcy have put it? I guess Austen painted him as a study in quiet, simmering virility so I suppose it’s not a line she would ever need to have grappled with. What I’m trying to say is that after the surgery the one last thing that I might be able to do for you will be denied me.

I’ve donated my sperm to this clinic and arranged for it to be frozen. I finally made good on those conversations we had, those things I owed you. All the paperwork is taken care of. If you want to use them as a donor then they are yours – and only yours, this is something I should have helped us do together and it’s something I only want to help you do alone. If you choose to. I would completely understand if I am the last donor on earth that you would want to entertain.

This is no recompense for the damage I’ve done, Jane, but I hope it is, at least, something. I loved you. I didn’t honour that and, for that, I’m sorry but I did love you.

Yours, Paul.

Jane read Paul’s letter and stared at the paper, in silence, for several minutes. Andrew sat watching her, fingers pressed to lips, mindful to give her space. She looked up at him.

“This is not how I imagined this would all work, you know? I was so sure about everything, so certain in what I wanted, what I went after, what I got. Life was a series of things to achieve, things in my control that I could… I don’t know, that I could bend to my will. And I had a lot of will. And this… this is something that I can’t.”

“I wish that it were different,” replied Andrew.

She asked her question. “Is it too late at forty one, doctor? Sorry, Andrew. Is it too late?”

“There’s no guarantees but it’s not too late,” he said. 

“Am I crazy to do it alone?” It was the other question she had played over in her mind; the one for herself but which she asked quietly now, almost as if he wasn’t there.

“You can’t bend fertility to your will,” he said. “But if we succeed then I have no doubt, no doubt at all, that you can bend parenthood to it. It’s not crazy at all. It maybe takes a special kind of stubborn but it’s not crazy.”

Jane held his gaze. “Stubborn I can do. When can we start?”

Part six and the conclusion of the Marylebone stories. I am aware that the ending, technically, remains ambiguous so I may write a coda/epilogue for it at a later point. I know what I think happens to Jane but you are free to imprint your own version…

This continues my 26,000 words for Great Ormond Street in July ’23. Any and all donations to fundraiser very welcome on this link.

Things can only get better…

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If you’d asked me I’d have said it felt like things were ending and not beginning. They were difficult, uncertain times. I was spending my days distracted, worrying about Trump and whether the Korean Peninsula was going to ignite. Or watching Davis and Bernier butt heads in Brussels; as mismatched as Mayweather and McGregor but with even more money at stake. Trucks on Las Ramblas, crossbow bolts on cricket pitches, Neo Nazis marching in small town America. Stuff I couldn’t do much about beyond post disapproving links to my own personal echo chamber on social media. I think everyone switched off from those sort of posts after the referendum anyway. Some kind of political fatigue. I imagine if the English Civil War had played out on Facebook then Charles may well have kept his head and his crown; all that simmering New Model Army agitation dissipating, threads about Leveller demands for suffrage lost in a sea of cat videos and personality quizzes. Burford might have trended on Twitter for a couple of hours. Hashtag Thompson, Perkins and Church. Everyone left to get back to checking out the Daily Mail’s pap shots of a bikini clad Henrietta Maria on the beach in France with England’s exiled monarch. I know, I know. There were no long lenses in the seventeenth century. Or cameras. Or bikinis. But you get the idea: nobody’s changing anyone’s mind on social.

Driving home that day I took the detour I’d been taking all summer, the one that passed the fields blanketed in sunflowers. Their heads were bowed slightly now as Autumn approached. There was something strangely somber, dignified, in their quiet genuflection. It was only poignant, I guess, if you’d seen them in the weeks before, rows upon rows of bright beaming faces raised in praise of the sun. Who am I kidding? We see reflected back what’s already inside us. Maybe you’d have just seen a field of nice flowers without all the attendant pathos. I saw some metaphorical expression of my state of mind. Wilting. Still straining for the sun but wilting nonetheless. I make it sound more melodramatic than it merited but I think I was in my Poundshop Shelley phase. Or CostCo Keats. Pick the discount retailer and romantic poet combination that works best for you. Woolworth’s Wordsworth. I wandered through the pick n’ mix lonely as a cloud. The important part, looking back, is that I was still straining for the sun. It’s not like I’d passed by a field of rotten, broken stalks, dead headed beyond recognition, and thought: hey, that’s me. By my standards it was a pretty optimistic outlook but, as I say, if you’d asked it didn’t feel like the beginning of anything.

It was round about the twentieth anniversary of Diana’s death. I mention it only as it seems relevant as a kind of cultural sign post, everyone looking back at how we all reacted then and what it said about us all. Apparently it was the event that broke the great British reserve and prefaced our now seemingly endless embrace of public displays of grief. All magnified on social but let’s not go there again (I’m betting if Charles had been beheaded in our alternatively imagined Civil War then the outpouring of dislikes and crying emoji’s would have brought down the Facebook servers). I say ‘apparently’ because that’s not how I remember it. I woke up with a hangover that day that probably just about makes my Greatest Hangover Hits (middle of side 1: not a real face melter that you’d start the album with or one of the really brutal slow burners that you’d stick on the end of side 2) but it was twenty years ago – back when you’d shake that shit off before the first coffee and half a bacon sandwich was done. Not like now when drinking punishes you for days, a crime that always delivers a custodial sentence instead of the slap-on-the-wrist community service order you used to enjoy. To blow away the cobwebs I’d wandered down to the local newsagents to pick up the Sunday rags and had made it all the way back to the flat before noticing the front page: I used to read the sports first. Things had evidently been in the balance at whatever point the papers went to print over night as the headlines described the crash and her condition as precarious. I was staying with a couple of friends who didn’t have a TV so we flicked on the radio. Yes, we were that bohemian (well, I wasn’t, I had a 32 inch monstrosity that took up half of my living room but they were always a little more sophisticated than me). All stations were playing quiet classical music and so we knew long before a very BBC Home Counties voice gently intoned that “out of respect” all regular programming had been suspended. It’s the voice they will roll out in the event of nuclear armageddon: regretfully we are all about to be annihilated in a fiery radioactive inferno so we have suspended Pete Tong and bring you, instead, this piece by Vivaldi. The Archers will continue as usual. So we knew that she’d died. And you know what? I don’t mean to sound callous about it but it meant literally nothing to us: nothing then and, looking back, it means even less to me now. To paraphrase Morrissey: she said nothing to us about our life. I think someone cracked an entirely inappropriate, coal black gag and we got on with the day. It was only in the weeks that followed as I tiptoed through the bizarre and extraordinary public grief that it felt like it mattered to me at all – and it only mattered in that it was maybe the first time that I felt completely out of step with the public mood. Then again I never was good at picking sides. I voted remain. I had a job interview the day of her funeral, driving past abandoned flowers on the M1.

Maybe it was Brian Cox that sparked the beginning. My own personal, if unlikely, Higgs Bosun. Maybe he kicked it all off. When I made it home I’d eaten dinner with my daughter and we’d turned to chatting about astronomy. She wanted to know whether there were any famous astronomers and, mistakenly figuring she wouldn’t know the difference, I offered up the former D: Ream keyboard wizard and booted up a lecture he’d delivered on Youtube. Straight away she called me out on the fact that he was a physicist and not an astronomer. She’s nine. I took comfort that she’d spotted it and more comfort that when I explained that there weren’t really any famous astronomers she thought that was another good reason to pursue it as potential career. She also offered up Edwin Hubble as an example of a famous astronomer which gave me a reassuring insight into her frame of reference for what should constitute fame. We didn’t make it that far through Cox’s lecture if I’m honest. I’m not going to pretend that me and the pre-tween were scribbling out e=mc squared and back solving calculus on the kitchen blackboard long into the evening. She returned to watching Sam & Kat on Netflix and I opened a bottle of wine. But we did make it far enough to hear him describe the number of galaxies in the universe that they’d observed through Hubble in a patch of sky that you could cover with a five pence piece if you held it twenty metres away from your eye. Ten thousand.

Ten thousand galaxies under a five pence piece. I think that was when I felt a tingle of wonder return. Felt the possibilities. I think that was maybe the beginning.

This is the sea

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Once upon a time I learned to sail. Time steals the memories of that learning and now that I can navigate the river I can’t remember those days of running aground, of fighting the slow, easy current, or even of the repeated soakings as I was tipped into the water. Nor do I remember those early journeys, all way back upstream now, through the hurried rapids, down the narrow streams of my childhood. Perhaps at the time it all seemed bigger but looking back, up and across to the mountains we made our way down, I can barely make out the path of the water; like tracing my face for the lines left by tears that dried up long ago. As the river widened and relaxed into the valley some memories stick. I do remember that initial sense of freedom, striking out from the bank alone for the first time but secure in knowing that the river was slow, shallow, and not so broad that I couldn’t swim back to something solid. The river guides. That was the teaching: trust in its easy, forgiving flow and use it to learn for the sea. The unspoken truth though was that the river is poor learning for the sea but it is all we have.

The sea looked like hope from the river as I glimpsed it occasionally back then, wide eyed, staring downstream into the future. Just as looking back changed perspective, shrinking things that had seemed vast, looking forwards played the same trick but in reverse. The sea looked contained, bound by shore and horizon; it looked manageable. Navigable. The distance flattened the ceaseless rise and fall of the tides and ironed out the distant surges and storms. It looked like a gently creased, blue grey sheet stretched out between the land and sky and I miss that idea of it. I miss the time when I headed for uncharted waters with excitement and confidence, when apprehension felt like the precursor to discovery – something new and wonderful – instead of the prelude to fear. Even when the discovery was just someone else’s map of those uncharted waters, the discovery that they weren’t uncharted at all, that someone had sailed this course before and left you their notes.

And for a while, as I stuck to the charted waters or uncovered the notes from those that had sailed before me, the sea delivered on the promises whispered in its waves. Close to the mouth of the river it was as easy to sail as the river itself had been. The boat I’d built and sailed as a child rode the benign tides close to shore just as it had coped with the nudging currents that had eventually pushed it out into open water. The coastal squalls were exhilarating rather than frightening, the rush of adrenaline feeding the strength to trim the sails or tack back into the wind. And when they abated the sea was calm for long enough, and I was strong enough, open enough, to improve the boat, to make modifications and adjustments. To face each successive squall stronger than I’d faced the last. Perhaps the sea guides too. That’s what I thought in those days skimming the surface spray hugging the shoreline. I don’t think that anymore.

I don’t remember losing track of the shore. It must have happened slowly, over years, a progressive pull from the ebb of the tides winning out over the flow. Out here the sea doesn’t look contained or manageable and the notes left by fellow sailors are fewer and further between. Is it even navigable ? Out here there’s just the sea. Vast and endless and unforgiving: it can swallow you up and leave you cold, lost and adrift. When the storms hit my boat splintered and sank. I fought them until my bones ached and my fingers blistered from straining against salt lashed ropes in the desperate struggle to stay afloat. If I’d had a solid place to stand then perhaps I’d have saved the boat but the drenched deck gave no purchase for my feet. If I’d battled a single, violent tempest then perhaps I’d have saved the boat but the bad weather resolved itself into a change in the climate, storms piled on storms. If I’d learned to rest, to trust the sails to others, to admit to the weariness of near defeat, then perhaps I’d have saved the boat but even back in the days on the river I’d always sailed alone. There was no solid place to stand, there were many storms, and there was nobody to relieve me as captain: my boat splintered and sank.

The sea’s depths seemed to offer solace, they were untouched by whatever raged above. At first there was a relief in the isolation as I dropped beneath the roiling, rolling waves, pieces of my former vessel, fractured and sinking beside me. As I lingered there longer though it became colder and a kind of numbness set in; it became harder to strike out again for the surface. There was nothing up there but storms and the relentless toss and twist of the swelling waters. Nothing there but more sorrow. There was nothing here either but it was a constant nothing. It was predictable. Navigable. I was lost but if I stayed where I was I’d never be more lost and I’d never risk the hope of clutching at a way back to shore. I’d never feel the touch of the sun on skin but I’d never have to feel the rain either.

The sea doesn’t guide, it just is. The sea doesn’t guide but perhaps those that sail it still can and still do. The notes from fellow sailors are fewer and further between out here – down here – in the sea. But some remain. Even here some remain.  I found one of those stray, rare notes and it said this: even out here it’s not truly uncharted. There’s a universal map written in the stars for those able to raise their eyes and read it. Perhaps it leads back to your shore but you can’t read that map ensconced and ensnared under water. You might see the lights, foggy and distorted, but the water refracts and changes the true positions of the fixed reference points you must follow. You must brave the surface to see the way. The only way back to the shore is to risk the storms. How do you learn to be still on the waves ? Or how do you learn to lean in to the teeth of the gale and laugh ? When does knowing you’re not in control of the boat stop being terrifying and fill your heart with exhilaration ? How do you leave notes as you chart your waters that others might find and learn from in future ? These are the questions I asked and still ask as I seek the playful exploration of the shores close to the river that I learned to navigate when I was young. I read the note and draw strength to seek the surface.

This is the sea. Terrible and terrifying and relentless. Open and hopeful and limitless. Build the best boat you can and learn to make it dance on the river but accept that when you reach the sea it can crush the strongest vessel or the skilled sailor without thought or malice. All you can do is learn to sail again. Seek out the constants in the sky, learn to sail and as you chart your course leave notes that others might follow and might know that they are not alone, adrift in their storms. The river need not be our only learning. We are each other’s guides.

Once upon a time I learned to sail. Happily ever after remains my destination, out there on the horizon, across the sea.

 

……

This is story 42 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

So that’s it. Took longer than anticipated but all 42 are done and, to date, I’ve raised £700 for Mind. This one’s about everything the other 41 were about but also, in spirit, was about the value in sharing stories.

It owes a huge debt to Mike Scott and The Waterboys who said in six glorious minutes and two chords what I’ve struggled to say here.

As long as we keep our stride, I believe we’ll be fine…

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13. Walking To Do – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists                                         2013 and the future

I had a wobble today. A sense of wondering what the point in carrying on with this was. Maybe I’d gotten a little too obsessed with the WordPress stats page (there’s nothing more dispiriting than a day of no visitors and no views) and a little removed from the original point in writing again.

So what was the original point ? I guess it was a combination of things. In part a recognition that, in some shape or form, putting thoughts down on paper (in actuality or virtually) has been a part of my life since I was 12 or 13 and not doing it cuts off an important outlet for me. Also, in part, a desire to prove to myself that I could commit to and complete a writing project of a certain size and scale – this was a way in, a route to getting past a novel length number of words within a defined timescale. The 42 was plucked somewhat arbitrarily based on my age at upcoming birthday next February and, slightly more esoterically, as a reference to the answer to life, the universe and everything from “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”. There have been a number of occasions in the last few weeks when I wished I’d picked a nice, round, small number like 20. Finally, the point was that this was intended to be about me as much as it was about a bunch of records – a means for me to work some stuff out after a difficult couple of years. My choosing to do that in a public space stemmed from a genuine desire to connect with people, both people I already know, and maybe people that just found this stuff. Being honest about certain things – not always being okay, depression, a love of country music – has generally been a positive experience and prompted a richer connection with people. Not everyone obviously, I appreciate the country music thing is hard for some people to accept.

There’s a place I go sometimes and I don’t know how I get there. Why would I ? It’s not somewhere I want to go, just somewhere I end up. It’s a place where I’m locked away inside myself. Stuck. There’s a bunch of metaphors that I’ve thought to myself when I’m there – it’s like being deep under water, not able to surface; it’s like being overrun with weeds, nothing else can grow; it’s like being in a cave, it’s dark and you can’t find the way out. None of them are really adequate and I don’t have the breadth of expression in my writing to explain it. Put in clinical terms it’s depression and it’s fucking horrible.

I wasn’t there today but there was a wobble. I was a bit flat. Could hear that, at first, small, insistent voice that wanted to just give in, sink into it, and stop bothering with anything. Because: what’s the point ? I was trying to write. Trying to force some words out about Springsteen’s “The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle” and feeling mildly intimidated by it. The record is so good and he’s so important to me – in a way far beyond anyone else covered on the 42 so far – that I’ve been running a bit scared of trying to tackle it. My gung ho attitude to it first thing this morning (the product of a couple of weeks of pure, unambiguous happiness and contentment) quickly evaporated as I got stuck in clichés about melting pots of musical styles and hyperbole about New Jersey’s favourite son. Or at least that’s how it felt to me. Reading it back some of it’s not so terrible.

So I stopped doing that. I stopped doing that and, perhaps with half an eye on the weeds analogy above, I raked leaves up in the garden. If you know me at all you’ll know that this is somewhat out of character. In fact, I believe it may be the first time in my life that I’ve raked leaves in my garden. After all, what’s the point ? They’ll only fall down again next Autumn.

But there was something in it that got me to thinking about tending. Obviously, in a literal sense, about tending to the garden but – and here’s that forced metaphor again – also about tending to myself. It was the first time in a long time that I’d been aware of that nagging, disruptive, unhealthy voice in my head telling me that I was worthless and had chosen to quiet it. Not in a dramatic way, just in the simple act of finding something else to do. In not continuing to bang my head against its own internal brick wall. That image doesn’t work does it ? How can you bang your head internally ? You get the general idea. There’s a wonderful bit in the Steve Coogan / Rob Brydon series “The Trip” (which I’ve already referenced in “The Winner Takes It All” piece) where Coogan trys to cross a river across a series of stepping stones but gets stuck, and subsequently falls in. Brydon baits him by shouting “you’ve got stuck halfway to your destination, you’re stuck in a metaphor”. Well, clearing the lawn of leaves I was stuck in my own.

When I came back into the house the record that I put on was this one. It was deliberately chosen because it has become my go-to record for hope, for determination, and for helping me believe that everything will be okay. It’s not a record that’s specifically about depression but it acknowledges that life sometimes throws up the “cruel and hard” but that you’ll be fine if you stay on your feet and keep walking. It’s enough in the ballpark of how I feel for me to force my own interpretation onto it – to adopt its positivity and spirit as rallying cries. If we were doing a quick round of “what’s your theme song” (really ? you’ve never done that ? must just be me) then, lately, I’ve tried to make this mine.

It’s fairly straightforward lyrically, adopting an extended metaphor about life being a journey to be walked through and how two people can draw strength from each other by walking alongside each other. There’s a neat rejection, early on, of the idea that meaning in life comes from some external, higher power:

Would you take me where my feet feel happy in their own time

And the cathedral of reason let’s the bells chime

And the lighting is fine ?

I’m old enough to know that people waiting for some big sign

Should quit their waiting on the Divine

Divine is what’s in your mind

From then on it’s a message of companionship and support – a sharing of the journey, a sharing of perspectives – and a clarion call that there’s more to do, more to see:

I see the road is long so get on my side – there’s a whole lot of walking to do

And if we stay on our feet, we’ll make it in our own time

And though the road has got some steep climbs, I believe we’ll be fine

Towards the close there’s a quieter section (you musician types might refer to this as “the break down”) which, literally, recounts the places that the singer and companion have journeyed together: my house to your house, Bethnal Green to the tube, Aoyama to Shobuya, Rock Park Creek to the Avenue, and on past the zoo… There’s a whole lot of walking to do. It’s brilliantly done, rooting the song back in reality after the abstracts of the original analogy: this is where we’ve already come from, where we’ve already been… Still lots of places, literally and figuratively, to go in future.

Right at the close the song unwinds with a jubilant call and response, pitched full of joy, life and defiance:

Well I’m here – and you’re here – and it’s true: there’s a whole lot of walking to do

And I’m cool – and you’re cool – and it’s true: there’s a whole lot of walking to do

There’s no fuss and I trust – I trust you: there’s a whole lot of walking to do

And you’re strong and I can be too: there’s a whole lot of walking to do

And you do – and I do – there’s a whole lot of walking to do

There’s a clue too in the “you do, and I do” that the companion in this song is Leo’s wife, which clearly makes sense in the context of the rest of the song. I always take that as my read anyway and this is another song that reminds me of the continued strength and support of my own wife. I always think of her in that final section of the song.

It finally ends with the sound of glasses chinking as if everyone’s sat in a bar, surrounded by friends, and enjoying life. I adore the end of this song. I adore the whole song and am indebted to a very old friend for introducing me to Ted Leo. I love that it doesn’t gloss over that life can be hard but that it’s okay, if we stick together we can get through it. I love that, musically, it kicks righteous ass: if you want to ignore the words and just jump around inanely to it, go right ahead, this song will serve you well. I love that it’s smart; richly observed without disappearing up its own arse (which may or may not be where I’m currently headed). But whatever, love makes you crazy and I love this song.

So, now we’re a long way from the wobble. A long way from the deep sea depths or the choking weeds or the cave. We’re out in the open, drinking in the air, grateful for being alive, for sharing it with some incredible people, and with some belief that there’s more to come. And that it will be good.

There’s a whole lot of walking to do.