The world from my window

Twelve years ago, I was invited to a school reunion. It was a strange experience, catching up with people I hadn’t seen since I left the school of hard knocks in the birthplace of powered fight in 1979. It started in the working men’s club that had recently been ravaged by fire. The paintwork was charred and there was still a sort of burnt smell in the air. I was hugged by the school bully, chatted up by the boy who had rejected me when I was twelve for having no personality and then Dancing Queen blared out from the disco next door as the formerly closet gay came out in all his glory. We moved on to gatecrash a party at the rugby club and the boys and girls who went out with each other at the age of thirteen ended up smooching to Lionel Richie on the dance floor. As the lights came back on, we all decamped to a friend’s house where the school swot lit up a joint. Through it all, I was totally sober and well behaved (unlike when I was at school where my quiet, studious side...

It was a super moon and it was in Virgo, my star sign. And as I drove around the country lanes in search of my school reunion venue, I wondered what this big pizza pie of a moon had to do with me. A cosmic awakening, a reconnection with the earth, a breakthrough? It grinned down on me, and I thought of all the things that had happened to me today. A mass decorating session at our village hall, eight hours of painting with a roller and brush amid a sea of magnolia. Sitting down to lunch with twenty others and literally watching paint dry. Then a quick scoot around the field with the spaniels before every man and his dog descended on us for the England v Ireland rugby match. The doorbell kept ringing, and still they came, until thirteen bodies crammed into the Grigg hovel to watch the game. The sedate ladies were in the kitchen, chatting about this and that while I sliced the potatoes. The fragrant Mrs Putter, Pelly Sheepwash, Mrs Champagne-Charlie and the lovely Mrs Bancroft wit...