The toad patroller

‘Hello’, a man with the dog said breezily as we passed each other on the narrow country lane. I fixed my eyes on him. Did I know him? I don’t think so. Why’s he talking to me? Having lived in London, I knew that strangers who talk to you are either mad or dangerous. Sometimes both. My heart started beating – is he going to attack me? I glanced around for a suitable weapon. Nothing. I felt in my pockets. All I had was my AirPods. I’ll fend him off by throwing them at him, one by one. Maybe avoidance would be better. I crossed the road and walked speedily away from my would-be assailant.

I recently watched a documentary on our new near neighbours, the Beckhams, to help me understand country folk. It seems that building a 5-a-side football stadium in your grounds is the thing to do. Ros vetoed the idea.

I’m worried about Ros. Whereas I’m a country lad at heart, she’s unashamedly urban. Will she be a fish out of water without her tube trains, her restaurants and her museums?

She repeatedly, and uncomprehendingly, asks me what I will do when we live in the country. There’s an obvious answer to this question. Watch TV. But, instead, I say ‘go on brisk walks and breathe in fresh air’.

We went to stay at my cousin’s the other weekend to help prepare for our imminent conversion. He has a large house in a rural village. We had roast pig for dinner and walked through waterlogged meadows in the afternoon. Hearing the squelch of my sodden designer trainers, my cousin recommended I get a particular brand of walking shoe. These have become my first item of country wear. I’m transported to the countryside as I stride down our London street in them; I can almost hear the sweet sound of birdsong over the police sirens and smell the acrid stench of manure over the exhaust fumes.

You have to pay attention to different things in the country. While our local WhatsApp chat in London recently warned of a man with a machete in our street, an equivalent post on the Duns Tew chat read ‘Frogs in the road in Hill Farm Lane… please don’t run them over’. The post went on to include a link about Toads on Roads, a project that recruits toad patrollers to help them cross the road. Apparently, toads are very particular about where they breed and follow the same migratory route every year, even when it involves crossing a road.

This could be my next career move – adman, entrepreneur, novelist, toad patroller.

Red light

The light was clearly red. I waited for my wife to slow down, but she did the opposite and accelerated towards the lights. What on earth is she doing? Roadworks had reduced two lanes to one. I clenched my fist. Every muscle in my body tensed, but I didn’t say a word. Rather suffer a head-on collision than pass comment on my wife’s driving. I closed my eyes as we passed the lights, travelling at some speed.

They say your life flashes in front of you, but for me it was just a men at work sign. They also say that everything happens in slow motion in your final moments, but there was nothing slow in the motion of the car I was in.

Seconds later it was all over. 

We were still moving, there had been no collision. We were back on the open road. I was alive.

Just as I was about to mouth a silent prayer of thanks to a God I don’t believe in, it happened again. This time it was much more serious; a large junction with big trucks travelling at speed on the cross road. I thought I was going to have a heart attack as we passed through the intersection. It was a miracle that we got through without being mown down by an articulated lorry.

Eventually, Ros stopped at a red light. Hallelujah. A wave of relief washed over me as we sat and waited for it to change. When it did something weird happened. It went from red to red to red. 

I’m part of that exclusive band of men who are red/green colour blind. The 8%. They put filters behind traffic lights just for us, so we can distinguish red from green. My first thought on seeing a sequence of three red lights was that someone was messing with colour blind men by removing the filters from traffic lights. But there are 33,000 traffic lights in the UK and so it would be quite some job to remove the filters from all of them.

A more plausible explanation began to dawn on me. Brain surgery must have changed my world to one where nothing is quite what it seems and where green is red. My wife hadn’t started driving like a lunatic after all.

But even though I now know this to be true, I still can’t stop myself flinching every time she speeds through a red light. 

Simon 2.0: the update

There’s one other person who’s responsible for my new-found happiness: Dr Robert Iorga, one of the top neurosurgeons at St George’s Hospital, or, for that matter, in the world. I first began to realise I had a problem when watching England play China in the Women’s World Cup. Not only could I not see the ball, but I couldn’t see any of the Chinese team as their red strip merged with the green grass. All I could see was the English team in their white kit. It made for a bizarre viewing experience.

My eyesight deteriorated over the summer to about 30% normal vision. The problem was identified as a large tumour in my head that had been there for years, growing slowly until it had reached my optic nerves. On October 18th Dr Iorga cut open my head and then spent to next 7 hours meticulously removing the tumour. 

Onl once it had gone did I realise how it had affected me, certainly for all of this year and probably a year or two before that. Previously I was apathetic and completely lacking in motivation. I’ve done nothing this year; these are the first words I written.  Simon 2.0. the tumourless version, is literally a new man, energised and positive. My eyesight will still take weeks, if not months, to recover and so I’ll continue to struggle with certain aspects of life. Last week I thought it strange that there were no urinals in the cinema toilet. I wondered if I had gone into the Ladies by mistake. I went out to double-check the sign on the door. As far as I could tell, it looked like a gents sign so I went back in. Someone else came in. She was at the sinks when I came out the loo. I thought I was going to get arrested!

But once these minor technical issues are ironed out, I’m confident that Simon 2.0 will prove to be a substantial improvement on the original.

December 2023

Plonker

Turning sixty felt like as good time as any to cast an eye back over my life; to review my successes and failures (sorry, learning experiences), my triumphs and defeats and take stock of where I am and how I got here. Such reflection quickly led to one stark and unavoidable conclusion: namely, that I am, and always have been, a bit of a plonker.

Such a revelation will come as no surprise to you, of course. What might shock you, though, is that, until now, I didn’t realise it. “What? He didn’t know he was a plonker? What a plonker.”

My saving grace, I think, has been my semi-posh accent. It means that people tend to think I’m clever, when, in fact, I’m not. Whenever my intelligence has been put to the test I’ve been shown to be as thick as a brick.

People also assume, because I speak proper, that I’m being ironic and self-deprecating. When I tell them, truthfully, that I’m intellectually challenged, for example, they laugh and think “how droll, what a clever chap”. It’s ingrained in our national psyche to assume someone with a public school voice means the opposite of what he or she is saying.

Even my wife, an undeniably intelligent woman, fell for my accent and decided it signified good enough stock to breed from.  This was a huge stroke of luck for me as I’ve been able to ride on the coat-tails of her success. 

You might ask why don’t I change. Sadly, like a leopard and his spots, I fear I’m stuck with my plonks. But you never know, self-awareness can be the first step and maybe, one day, I’ll surprise you all.

September 2022

Twice the man

Turning sixty felt like as good time as any to cast an eye back over my life; to review my successes and failures (sorry, learning experiences), my triumphs and defeats and take stock of where I am and how I got here. Such reflection quickly led to one stark and unavoidable conclusion: namely, that I am, and always have been, a bit of a plonker.

Such a revelation will come as no surprise to you, of course. What might shock you, though, is that, until now, I didn’t realise it. “What? He didn’t know he was a plonker? What a plonker.”

My saving grace, I think, has been my semi-posh accent. It means that people tend to think I’m clever, when, in fact, I’m not. Whenever my intelligence has been put to the test I’ve been shown to be as thick as two short bricks.

People also assume, because I speak proper, that I’m being ironic and self-deprecating. When I tell them, truthfully, that I’m intellectually challenged, for example, they laugh and think “how droll, what a clever chap”. It’s ingrained in our national psyche to assume someone with a public school voice means the opposite of what he or she is saying.

Even my wife, an undeniably intelligent woman, fell for my accent and decided it signified good enough stock to breed from.  This was a huge stroke of luck for me as I’ve been able to ride on the coat-tails of her success. 

You might ask why don’t I change. Sadly, like a leopard and his spots, I fear I’m stuck with my plonks. But you never know, self-awareness can be the first step and maybe, one day, I’ll surprise you all.

June 2022

How much?

‘How much is it worth?’

‘It’s invaluable.’

The Post Office clerk frowned. ‘What’s its price?’

‘It’s priceless.’

The clerk looked unconvinced. He lifted the brown package from the scale. ‘What is it?’

‘A work of art.’

The clerk turned the package in his hands. ‘It feels like a book to me.’ 

‘It’s a masterpiece.’

‘Really?’ Conscious of the lengthening queue of increasingly impatient customers, the clerk tried a different line of questioning, ‘how much did it cost you?’

‘Three year’s hard endeavour, a lifetime of thwarted dreams, countless false starts and numerous rejections.’

‘Look Sir, I need a value for insurance purposes. The cost of the insurance is proportionate to the value of the item. If you want me to record it as invaluable, then it will cost you hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds to send.’

‘Ah, okay. £8.99.’

‘Thank you, Sir. If you don’t mind saying, that sounds like a bargain. For a work of art.’

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

February 2022

Lesson learnt

I had a good learning experience last week. Good as in the learning, not the experience; the  experience was traumatic.

I learnt it’s inadvisable to go out on a bike in a major storm. I was travelling at some speed when a gust of wind blew me off the road. For a fleeting moment I was like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang before being smashed into a concrete bollard. If an Act of God, it was a pretty vengeful one.

I was battered and bruised; the bike even more so (£200+ repairs). To look on the bright side, the way I was lifted like a feather suggests my weight loss programme might be working.

February 2022