Unleash the Monkey Army

A strange story came to mind today for some reason. When I was seventeen, the coach of an American Football team tried to recruit me after seeing me play rugby. He told me that I'd get to hurt people. But he missed the mark then and that hasn't changed over the years. Yes, I've hurt people and been hurt by people but that's a by-product of what I have done, not been the objective in its own right. Then I played rugby for the simple of joy of it, for the immersion and freedom from my own head space. There was a challenge element to it, to see if I could, not about beating others but not being defeated myself. You win, you lose, but those are just marks on a tally board. You're never beaten until you quit. Other people can take everything from you but your spirit. That you give away of your own accord. Other people live that thought more than I have; have expressed it far more eloquently than I ever will, and have tested it in far harsher conditions than hopefully I...

In the car this morning I was reflecting on a few conversations I've had of late (so that I could put any actions to one side and clear my mind for the weekend) and it reminded me of something I wrote last year. "The past is a Wagon Wheel" - we swear blind that it was bigger in the past. I'm still comfortable with it as an analogy but I think I missed something in it. While it is true of the good things we reminisce about with fondness, it is also true about the bad things in life. Those mistakes that are not fatal hang around in our mind for years (or can do, I won't assume absolutes). They cast a long shadow. Sometimes it is little more than shade, sometimes it's a cold, dark, sunless valley. I suspect, like the good things in life, the more they are replayed the bigger they seem. We add colour and intensity and more recent things can seem but pale imitations. And these things can be like an invisible hand on the tiller, subtly nudging our heading as w...

I’m going home. But it’s not really home, and has not been for 13 years. Or more if you count the fact that it was home between protracted absences for a couple if years before that. Over the course of the journey I find myself getting wistful for some things. I really appreciated being by the water and the view. I’d always enjoyed the scenery and the view but I’d never realised that it was special. Remembering some of the things I used to get up to, in a more vivid form than some of the conversations I have had since, I realise that I’ve become urban. Not in a hip-hop, “d’ya feel me, bruv” kind of way but definitely more town than country. I have changed. Things here, not surprisingly, have too. Some of the old faces have gone. Most of the remaining faces have changed a little – none so dramatically remodelled as mine – and some have hardly changed at all. The scenery too has shifted in places, but not, save for the infringement of nature, moved at all in others. The first thing that ...