It's all different, but the same

Crash landing, and I'm back. Three weeks in Greece and then a fortnight in the UK feeling utterly shell shocked and everything is as if it had never been. Except it has, I know what I know - a bit like Donald Rumsfeld and his known knowns and known unknowns etc - and now I'm wondering if it is entirely wise to carry on in one vein or just throw everything up in the air and try something utterly different. Who knows? I've had a little drinky and I'm feeling pretty philosophical, but does any of that make any difference. Probably not, but then again, maybe everything. Anyway, I'm yawning and the dog needs to go out. I'll ponder it while walking.

Welcome to North Devon. Is that snow on your boots?

The holiday season in North Devon is well and truly under way. Already the roads are more congested and the beaches are busier. This despite the frankly disappointing weather. I was at Westward Ho! walking the dog late this afternoon. The tide was well up so we walked along one side of the Pebbleridge and back over the golf course. Just as we got near the Northam Burrows visitors' centre we encountered a small group of what I think could have been Russians or maybe Poles. It was the area where my fellow dog owners disgrace themselves by failing to clear up after their pets. The truth is these people can drive close to this building, let their dog out, which then craps everywhere, before driving off again with dog shoved in the back of the car.

And so it was I met a little group of Eastern European tourists who were obviously having a nice time. One rather corpulent gent in a tight white T-shirt sat on a hummock while one of his female companions used her camera to capture the scene for posterity. It would be some while before I chose that spot as the most picturesque place in North Devon for holiday snaps. Yet despite this, the group were all happy, they were having a nice time. What did it matter what I, as a local, thought of their choice of location? Maybe whatever locality they were used to was an absolute dump, fully of rusty cars, dog excrement and buildings with concrete cancer.

That's the thing with tourism. It is frequently touted as the most important element in the North Devon economy, which is something I have trouble agreeing with. It ought to be cream on our cake, not the cake itself. Well, that's what I think. However, the fact remains that many people gain considerable enjoyment from coming to our beautiful coast and countryside, and who are we to deny them? In Victoria Park in Bideford is a bench with a memorial plaque dedicated to a couple from Reading and more recently of Bideford, who spent "many happy hours" in the park.

I always find it quite moving. Here was a couple for whom the simple pleasure of sitting in the park - who knows maybe with a Hockings ice cream - was enough. And so I welcome our Russian/Polish/Latvian/Lithuanian/who knows visitors. For, whether they know it or not, life is short and we should all take our pleasures where we can. The simple pleasures of the park may be all we have time for, so do not delay. Putting off today for what we might get tomorrow could simply be a recipe for achieving nothing at all. And that would be very sad.

A neutral birthday to you

Today would have been my dad's 83rd birthday had he not died in March. Can you wish a happy birthday to the deceased? Probably not, but what you can do is have happy memories, which I do. They are the ones I focus on. So on my dad's birthday I think of happy gatherings in my parents' garden on hot July days with family and friends. Had he lived it is unlikely we would have had what you would conventionally describe as a happy gathering. My dad's illness would have progressed and he might well have struggled to participate in any meaningful way. While that thought makes me sad, I have already acknowledged that he has passed out of what had become for him a 'vale of tears'. It certainly had become that for his family as we watched him suffer.

The last words he said to me - a few days before he died - were from his hospital bed. He said: "I don't want to see you in this place again". I have clung on to those words and tried to extract every last bit of comfort from them that I can. My take on those words is that they were said with the last scraps he could muster of his deprecating Yorkshire sense of humour. He knew his death was near, he knew the faltering remains of his life were bound to be unhappy and that those near him suffered to see him so poorly and he hated - oh, he really hated - being in hospital. And so he said: "I don't want to see you in this place again". And that was the last I saw of him and although I think it was for the best, there is still a tiny piece of me that wonders if I should have been with him at the end. So if I should have been, Dad, I'm sorry I wasn't, but I think of you a lot, and I miss and love you. In the end, all we have is love.

And all the above is why this posting is called A neutral birthday to you. It can't make it to being really happy and it shouldn't be sad, so it comes out level. Swings and roundabouts, yin and yang, up and down, in and out, on and off. Just somewhere in the middle.

Ah! The joyful sound of Ye Olde Samba Drums

I was in Barnstaple at the weekend for a lightning raid on three shops. It was a case of buy, buy, buy and then bye, bye, bye. While there I saw, from a distance, the start of the parade for the Pilton Festival. All Green Man, real ale and, well, samba drums. Why? It's not that I am utterly opposed to samba drums, but these days in North Devon few public events seem complete without them blowing whistles, banging their sodding drums and gurning at each other. I realise this makes me sound curmudgeonly, but I would be willing to wager that similar events in, say, Brazil rarely attract the presence of some geezer in stripy trousers, a lurid waistcoat and unmentionable hat who is hacking away at a fiddle while occasionally going on about escaping the hangman's noose, or his sweet love drowning in a pool.

Would an event such as Chulmleigh Fair suffer for the lack of samba drums? I don't honestly know if Chulmleigh is a hotbed of samba drumming, but I suspect that the man with the fiddle singing songs of rural rogering fits in better - all Thomas Hardy, super strength lager and unwanted pregnancies. How much more traditional could you be?

Me, Lance and Hitler

As a child I was ready to read all the books there were and expected to read every book in print. Soon it became apparent that such a feat was beyond me, and, indeed, beyond anyone. However, that doesn't stop me worrying sometimes about the books I want to read, will I have time, are they the best ones to read, should I just not bother?

Consequently, on a recent visit to my local library I borrowed Lance Armstrong's two volumes of autobiography and then fretted about whether I would read them in time before going on holiday. The answer to that is that once started there was little doubt I'd finish the two books. I am fascinated by the Tour de France and, besides owning a bicycle, I have something else in common with Lance - we have both recovered from testicular cancer. Undoubtedly, my journey back from an illness that can very readily claim your life, was a lot easier than Lance's. Cancer had a much stronger grip on him than it did me before treatment began. Nevertheless, cancer is a word one never wants associated with one's life.

Many years ago I read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward in which he states that "once the crab has you in its claws it never lets you go" or something like that. Well, the crab had me - and Lance - in its claws and let both of us go. For me it was a relatively straightforward operation that put me on the road to recovery, for Lance it was a combination of surgery and chemotherapy, which took its toll. Despite this he has gone on to be a multiple winner of the Tour de France - something which seems to annoy the French no end.

Anyway, next month I celebrate my silver wedding anniversary which means that next spring I celebrate the silver anniversary of being diagnosed with cancer. It's been a quarter of a century that has flashed by, but I'm still here. So that's me, Lance, and - allegedly - Hitler who are, according to comedian Robin Williams, "uniballers". Two out of three ain't bad.

Spiralling out of control in the rain

It's raining. It's gushing out of the sky to the point where you can't really be sure it's summer. But in North Devon at least we can say this is something we are not totally unfamiliar with. Ever since I have lived here, I have been forced to acknowledge the routine presence of rain in my life. Not long after I came to North Devon I muttered some comment about 'Sunny Devon' to a long-term resident as the rain poured down. 'Ha ha', he said. 'Now you know why North Devon is such a good dairy farming area'. Well that's all right then.

I like the sogginess and the greenness and the sponginess of living in a place where it rains so much. But having said that I also like the hot dryness of places in the summer, which is why I am heading to Greece soon. Only for a few weeks, but I hope it will give me some respite from the drenching that the elements are subjecting us to at the moment.

And while I wait to go on holiday - to a place that is many, many miles from North Devon - I am going slightly bonkers. At work I keep uttering the mantra 'I can't go on'. The truth is that I can go on, but only just. I haven't had a break from work - apart from at the time of my dad's death - since last autumn. I want to kick back, read poems, maybe even write poems, and stare at a point on the horizon. I want to hear the cicadas and worship the blue sky and the blue sea. Smell the pines and hear happiness in a foreign tongue.

I'm losing it here in North Devon and I need release. But how much will I miss here while I am there?

Having trouble getting things moving in North Devon

OK, I am a man married to a woman. I have helped in the conception and birth of some more females, now all young women. I sprang - many years ago - from the loins of a woman and I have one sibling, a sister. Also I know lots of women and work with women, in fact, the part of the office I work in is just me and six women. So what I am trying to say is that I have heard them talking. My wife, my daughters, my mum, my sister, my colleagues and female friends all like to talk to each other and I like to listen (no honestly, I do, I love listening to women talking, it's so much more revealing and embracing than men's uni-directional conversation).

So, very slowly, what I am getting round to saying is that not once, never, ever, have I heard the women I know talk about constipation. And the reason I mention this, is that ridiculous TV advert in which a group of women in a cafe/bar engage in conversation about how one of them is constipated. To use her words - more or less - 'It's all hard and foul' - I think that's what she said. Now I know this is only an advert and is the result of someone coming up with an idea to advertise a product - in this case, something called 'stool softener' - but dear God this is rooted in some hideous fantasy world in which poor little women grapple with utterly ridiculous problems.

Adverts in the same vein offer shower gel suitable for 'intimate use', unguents for making women less hairy and medication capable of dealing instantly with diarrhoea. This latter product is aimed specifically at women and shows a woman bounding out of the house, only to rush back in because the proverbial flock of starlings is about to emerge from her backside. However, she pops a couple of pills and within minutes is in the cinema with her girly friend chucking popcorn down her throat like there's no tomorrow and no gastro-intestinal problems either.

I'm not going to go off on some sort of feminist rant, although I suspect if I were a woman I would find men more than a little risible. However, it is a bit of a call for women (and, I suppose, men) to stand up and say: 'We're not going to put up with this crud any more'. It would be hard to conceive of more ridiculous scenarios than most adverts. Little boys wanting to take a dump in their friend's toilets because they smell better is but one example. From the sitting room, where the TV is on, I can hear an advert where a talking meerkat is advertising a comparison website. . . . I mean, where will it all end?

So get a grip people, watch the adverts by all means, but then, very politely, just say NO.