The Renaissance Idle

“You have to go to Arthur’s Seat. Do it in the morning before breakfast and the view’s amazing. And the castle’s incredible. There’s a cannon that fires every day at one o’clock.”

She smiled.

“Oh, and the Harry Potter Café! I think it’s called Elephant House? It’s always rammed, but just to say you’ve been, right?”

She was right about the name, and we saw it, but we didn’t go in. In the end, we didn’t do any of the things that anyone suggested. It wasn’t deliberate or to be contrary. Our visit wasn’t a long one and it just turned out that there was always something else to do.

And in the end, my experience of Edinburgh wasn’t what I’d expected or what anyone had told me to expect.

Sure, the clouds and the stone were grey and the architecture was austere and impressive and there was a certain ‘look’ to the whole place. I’d watched enough repeats of Rebus to expect that. I’d heard, too, that there was a feel to the city; a way the people are with visitors, and how the history makes it all feel so solid. That was true too.

What I wasn’t expecting was the layer of contemporary culture on top of the old; not detached or alien, but building seamlessly on what had been before. It was in the art, the music, and the atmosphere; the way that the Scots have celebrated their artists and memorialised their poets and writers above all others. The city is built on creativity and imagination, and they run through the place.

Instead of Nelson, the memorial is to Scott. And instead of the Dukes of Wellington or Marlborough, the pubs and bars are named after Burns and Conan Doyle.

It was the art that distracted us from the things others suggested.

We spent a morning with the permanent exhibitions at the Modern Art Galleries (there are two, separated by a road: go to both). Then it was the National Gallery of Scotland, and Mark Wallinger at the Fruitmarket.

It’s interesting to watch people react to art.

Some walk past, spending no time with each piece. Other can spend an hour or more with an exhibit. Neither is right or wrong, and you see their eyes turn works over and over, reading something all their own.

My girlfriend lost herself in a painting that merged Raphael’s Madonna with the dome of the Pantheon and a mushroom cloud to produce a criticism of war. I was more interested in the Stairwell Project, and sat in one of the wheelchairs that’s stored underneath it, down by the toilets, fully reclined to look up through the three stories to the painted ceiling above. You can’t focus on all the layers at once and, at first, it’s not clear that you’re looking at anything much. It’s like the rocks at the bottom of a clear pool. You see the stones, sure, but it’s easy to forget the water.

We went around together and agreed on some pieces. But even then, even when one of us would turn to each other and say something as considered as, ‘This is really cool,’ and point vaguely at the piece in question (I never claimed to be an art critic), I don’t think we quite took the same thing from our experiences.

In Modern Art One, there’s a piece that describes the artist’s mood day-by-day, with ticket stubs and prescriptions and receipts and pictures – the things that affected him – layed out in rows. We both loved it, and it was big enough to absorb half an hour or more all by itself. It celebrated the mundanity of life and the contrast of ‘normality’ with peaks of joy or fear. It was honest and simple and inspiring and reassuring and, perhaps, a bit disturbing. It was the opposite of an Instagram feed.

I said something like that as we moved on, adding how paradoxical it was that something so curated could feel so unfiltered.

She agreed, but then gave her own interpretation about how actions superseded appearance; how artefacts and words could replace expressions or the wrinkles or scars that you see on a conventional self-portrait.

That’s why I’m not going to bore you anymore with a breakdown of what I saw. It was my experience and even if you’d been there with me yours would have been different.

All I’d say is this: go to Edinburgh. I recommend it. Go and eat and drink in its cafés; listen to languages and rhythms that fill its streets. Walk about and see the art that’s there, in the galleries and all around, and let it say the things it can say only to you.

When I was there, I didn’t follow the advice I was given, so take mine if you like. Or take my friends’ and go up the hill. When you’re there, you’ll know what’s right and you’ll be pulled to where you should be.

The one piece of advice I did heed was to go in the first place, and that I cannot repeat enough. If you don’t go, you’ll never know, and only in the going will you know what a place can be to you.

We have curious relationships with places.

I’ve written about it before. Specific places that we associate with specific memories from a different time. When you go back, it’s easy to get sucked into thinking about what ‘was’ and isn’t anymore.

There are lots places like that for me, but Paris isn’t one of them.

Despite it being the setting for some of the moments of my life that have taught me most, it isn’t a gallery of memories like other places.

My relationship with the city is a strange one.

It’s where I took a girlfriend when I was 18, because, ‘where else but Paris?’

It’s where I went with a friend to surprise his twin brother on their 21st birthday, because their mother couldn’t bare the idea of her boys spending the day apart.

It’s where I ran to when I felt I was losing everything, and it was where I found that I still had so much.

If “London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation"; wasn't that said by someone once?

I’ve not been often, but each time has stayed with me.

Last week was my fourth visit and, as I stepped from the train and out into the rain, I knew why I was there, but couldn’t have dreamed what would happen.

I was invited to speak at an academic conference, so the trip was a professional one.

I wasn’t there long – three and a half days if that – and for the first time, I didn’t go to a museum or a gallery. I didn’t walk by the river, and I didn’t even have a chance to drink champagne.

I attended the conference. I gave my paper, ate and drank with my peers, and realised that, despite the academic isolation I often feel in England, I was part of a wider and active community.

Professionally it was a balm I didn’t realise I’d needed; an academic success. But that is less than half of what I took from my time there.

My wallet is still full of business cards. Email addresses and names from all over Europe. Senior lectures and professors; early career researchers and students. As fascinating and valuable as some of those acquaintances may prove to be, if I'm honest, none of them is as important as half a name scribbled onto the back of a train ticket.

“I never use my surname for the internet” she said, as she followed her first name with a string of consonants. “This way, only the people who I want to find me can.”

Only now, a couple of weeks later, am I starting to write emails to the business cards, but that half a name? I've spoken to her everyday.

In a city hundreds of miles from where I live, at a conference attended by a very niche group of people, I met someone with whom I bonded straight away.

That is just as important to me as any professional success.

It was unexpected, as it always is.

Neither of us is fluent in the other’s language, but we understand each other.

It’s not often we find people like that, or at least it’s not often I do; those people with whom we can be completely easy, and share our selves. I can count my close friends on one hand, and in recent years the list has been getting shorter. I know it’s early days, but I think I may be able to add half a name to that tally.

On a trip to a city that I’ve romanticised and is so much a part of my personal mythology, the setting became almost incidental to the personal experience.

That conference could have been anywhere; I could have met those people and that person somewhere else.

But it wasn’t, and I didn’t.

They were in Paris, all of them in Paris, and of course it was Paris.

So now the city is one more thing to me.

Not just the backdrop to the stuttering romances of a boy, or a moment of violence. It’s not even just where I took my first steps as a professional in the career I’m falling into. Paris is all of those things, and always will be, but above all of them – at least for the moment – it is where I found something that I’d almost forgotten could be found.

I found someone who wants nothing from me other than my self, and whom I expect nothing from in return other then their self.

It’s nothing and everything all at once. It’s necessary and impossible, and as rare as anything I know.

Paris has taught me many things, and now it has reminded me of something I’d forgotten.

Unlike the places I wrote about before, where memories play out around me and I can get lost in what ‘was’, Paris always ‘is’, no matter what has gone before.

I’ve seen a different city with each visit. I hope that’s always the case. I hope she never becomes a routine or a half forgotten memory.

My most recent article for the Telegraph (and first for 6 months...), was published yesterday afternoon.

I’ve just mown my lawn.

On the face of it, I’m aware that that is perhaps not the most exciting opening sentence I could have plugged for, but the implications of it are enormous.

Firstly, I have a lawn to mow.

Not that extraordinary, lots of people have lawns. But since moving into my new house a few days ago, I, for the first time, have had responsibility for one. I want to do a good job. Not so much for me, but for the lawn. It needs me. It can’t mow itself or weed itself, and – short of buying a goat – it’s up to me (or my housemates) to look after it.

Second, and more importantly, I chose to mow it.

I wasn’t asked. I had some time on my hands and the lawn needed mowing, so I mowed. And I kinda wanted to.

Not because it would be ‘fun’; that would be a bit of a stretch.

But, I’m sat on our decking right now (yeah, we have decking) and looking at the lawn, all neat and stripy and smelling – unsurprisingly – of cut grass. It’s all very satisfying. It’s all well done. It’s all very controlled.

We all want that, I think, and the feeling that we can apply our control on things is comforting, if, for whatever reason, we feel powerless elsewhere.

I do it all the time.

I get a haircut. I shave, or grow out my beard. I change my diet. I turn the other way to see what’s there, and I do it because I can; because no one is able to stop me. They’re little things, but they help.

I’ve been going for walks in the evenings recently.

I walk the mile and a half, or whatever it is, into College, and get a bad coffee from the machine and walk the lanes and around the streets. It tends to be pretty late, so it’s all quiet, and I basically have the run of the place.

If you follow my Instagram, you’ll have seen the photographs I take as I go.

I try to show the details that are so easy to overlook, and that helps.

If you can show other people the way you see the world, and the things that you’ve picked out and you thought had some beauty or interest to them, it helps.

You don’t look for the stencilled butterfly on the wall, or the stegosaurus in the street, or the white rabbit. But when you see them, and you feel like you’re the one who’s been tumbling down the rabbit hole, it helps to hold up what you see, even if no one is watching. I think it must be the idea of showing that you’ve noticed things worth noticing, or something basic like that. 

So, I mowed my lawn today, and that helped give some control to my day; some satisfaction in a job well done.

As for the other things, the important things that have made me feel like I need to mow? (And, I’m sorry for the lack of detail, but needless to say, there are things happening to me at the moment that I don’t feel I can control, and it’s not great.) Well, they’ll work out, even if I’m talking those walks for a little longer.

I have a book called ‘501 Cites to see before you die’.

Whilst flicking through it this morning, I totted up the number I’ve visited. 31.

31 cites out of 501… Not great, especially when you consider that I’ve lived in 3 of them, and of the rest, about 15 have been in the last year.

From that you can take a couple of things.

One, I’m not especially well travelled. I could completely skip the sections related to Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australasia, and South America.

And, two… the last year has been incredible, and I had no idea that half the things would make it so would happen, and even less idea that I’d meet the people I have done. And that has made it even better.

This won’t be a long post. It won’t be especially funny or poetic, but I hope you read it as sincere.

This time last year, I’d taken a ferry out of Dover across to Calais. Round about now, I was about half way through the first day of a three-week European adventure.

I’d visit 5 countries; cycle 2000 km, and get very wet. I knew roughly how it would all play out, but I just kind of let the details fill themselves in, and the characters write their own parts.

It was as hard as it was incredible, but I had no idea that it would also be the perfect metaphor for the year that was to follow.

So, this is a note of thanks.

To the people I’ve met and come to know better over the last 12 months. To the friends from before, and the family from forever. To Marco who gave me a lift down the mountain when my chain snapped, and to the Norwegian girl who came with me to St Mark’s Square. To the people I’ve wasted hours with, and the one’s I’ve sat up all night with. To everyone who’s made this year possible and wonderful. Thanks.

All that’s left to do is keep the momentum going for the rest of my life and all should be good. I’m quietly optimistic.

There are places to take beautiful things.

There are places to dump the ugly things; to leave them there and forget them.

There are places to stand and watch, and there are places to step into the scene and become part of it all.

I’ve been to places like those.

I’ve stood and looked out over cities and turned on the spot on mountaintops. I’ve bartered in old markets and jumped into the sea. Man-made or natural, there are places that stick with you.

Except that’s not really it, is it.

It’s not the places that stick with you. It’s the moments you were there. It’s the rain that was falling, or the sunset that was just that little bit more beautiful than you ever thought your eyes could see.

It’s the food you ate, the wine you drank, the girl you kissed. And sometimes it’s just the thoughts you had and way you felt.

It’s reaching for that person’s hand and having them take it, or closing your fingers on a heavy, empty space.

I stood above Florence. Terracotta and pastel-colours and the bright white marble.

Like Italy herself, the city knows she’s beautiful.

She has a long memory and hasn’t forgotten the blood she spilt or the power she once wielded. But she’s old now. Old and happy; old and beautiful. At peace with herself.

I felt very young as I walked through her streets and cut through the crowds.

Not because the city is old, but because I knew I’d see it again. I knew I’d be back.

I could feel the weight of the time that’s left to me. All the steps left to be taken, and the unknown evenings I’ll spend in the Florentine sun.

Yeah, I’ll be back. It’s all too beautiful for a hopeless romantic to ignore.

I’ve made a bit of an unintentional habit of going to beautiful places recently, but in totally platonic ways.

The romantic capitals of Paris, Florence, Venice, and Verona. I’ve seen them all. I’ve walked around them and fallen in love with them, but I’ve either done it alone or with friends.

As I looked down at Florence, I couldn’t help but feel that the setting needed something else so that it would give its best. I felt the same as my boat headed out across the lagoon, and Venice slide out of sight; the embers of a blood red sunset burning through charcoal clouds – the storm would break as my train pulled out of the station.

They’re places to reach for that hand; to glance across at her and to kiss her. That’s what they’re built up to be, no question. But I’m glad I’ve seen them differently.

I have different moments from those beautiful places.

My experiences of them have been incredible, and I think they demonstrate what I’m making a labour of trying to say.

I’ll go back to them in different circumstances and they’ll be different places.

I lay in the middle of St Mark’s Square with a stranger at two in the morning, and I’ll hold that memory close until I’m done remembering things.

I could have done the same thing alone, and it would have been even more introspective. I could have done it with the woman I love, and it would have been achingly romantic.

Places give us the setting and, sometimes, opportunities that are unique to them. But whom we’re with is just as important - as are the other things, how we feel; the choices we make.

If you’re alone, with strangers, with friends, or a lover; that’ll change it all, as will saying yes, or saying no.

Like I say, I’ll go back to Florence and to all the other places.

One day I’ll have seen them for the last time, in the last way, but not just yet.

Next time though, they’ll be different. The same place at a different time.

There’ll be new moments to live in; new variables that’ll change the experience. Who knows? All I ask is that I have the opportunity, and the rest will fall into place.

I don’t travel so much.

I mean, I’ve been to places and seen different people and eaten, drunk, and breathed the different flavours.

What I mean is, it’s still special.

I’ve not travelled so much that it’s lost its edge, or any of the wide-eyed amazement of stepping out into new squares or looking over the lake to the mountains beyond. No matter where, I still get that thrill of just being somewhere – anywhere – else, and knowing that tomorrow I won’t be there anymore.

I go to Italy in the morning.

I was there last year too, but the circumstances are… well, lets just say, they’re different.

Last year, I cycled there. This year, I’m flying.

Last year, I was alone, and this year I’m there with there with one of my oldest friends.

Some of you will be thinking that both of those are improvements.

“Cycling to Italy sounds hard. And going to places with other people… isn’t that normal?”

Yes. Yes to both of these.

But it was the effort and the isolation that made that trip what it was.

I ended up going to Venice, yeah, but it was all about getting there.

That journey would have been completely different if there’d been someone else there going along with me. I might not have stopped when I did. I might have taken a different path. I might have done other things.

I definitely wouldn’t have written the way I did, or taken every photograph along the way.

All of it would have changed.

When I meet my friend in Bologna tomorrow, it’ll be the first time I’ve been abroad with anyone for a long time, and it’ll be different. 

We’re moving about a bit, and I’ll still take the photographs and still write the pretentious little gobbets, but having someone else there will be a bit of a novelty.

And, I can’t wait.

I’m going to swim in a warm sea and walk through Florentine streets – two things I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember.

I’m going to lie on a beach. I’m going to read and write and drink and eat, and butcher the language.

I’m going to laugh and forget about some things and remember others.

I’m going to keep a tally of the number of coffees I drink.

I’m going to drive and try to hire a Vespa for a day. And all of it will be shared.

Not in a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram kind of way (although, obviously you can expect photos and blog posts and the return of the #AncientMonumentSelfie).

No. It’ll be in a “Mate, look at that!” kind of a way. A, “I don’t know… What do you want to do?” kind of a way.

The best kind of a way.

Tonight, I’ll be at the wedding of one of my childhood contemporaries.

She might be a year or so older than me, but we’re close enough in age for the occasion to be a bit of an eye-opener. Or at least it would have been a couple of years ago.

Now, if I’m honest, the ‘Oh, shit, people are getting married!’ reaction has long since been consigned to the ‘meh’ pile along with things like, ‘such-and such has just been promoted’, ‘We finalised on the house this afternoon’, and, ‘she’s pregnant’.

(Point of clarification on that last one; only a ‘meh’ moment if it’s got nothing to do with me… otherwise still firmly in the ‘Oh, shit’ part of the Venn diagram.)

With the risk of sounding quite, ‘oh, woe is me’, I’ve been single for a while now and most of these steps – steps I definitely want to take – need a partner to make them viable.

I’m perfectly happy on my own at the moment, and I’m certainly in no rush for life to get too real too fast – I’m still a student after all.

The worst thing about this, then, isn’t that none of this stuff is really on the cards for me at the moment.

No, the worst thing is that Facebook seems to know that I’ve been single a long time, and has taken it upon itself to help.

I keep getting suggested posts from dating sites, and articles called things like ‘25 reasons you’re single at 25’ pop up on my feed.

Thanks, Facebook, but really… I’m okay. (And even if I wasn’t, that’s what alcohol, poor judgement, and the ‘oh, shit!’ reaction are for.)

Almost subconsciously, however, I started to notice something pretty universal about the articles.

They’re all written by and for women.

Ostensibly, this makes sense.

The glossy magazine industry is huge (making almost £700 million even at the height of the recession), and most of the pages that aren’t adverts seem to be committed to hammering home the inadequacies of their largely female readership (#ThisIsWhatAFeministLooksLike).

It’s therefore unsurprising that if you type into Google ‘why am I s…” it’s first auto-fill is ‘still single’ (swiftly followed by ‘so ugly’, ‘so stupid’, ‘still hungry’, and ‘struggling to lose weight’… although I think the last two might be connected/the same person).

When it first occurred to me to write this post, I gave a couple of these articles a read, and most of what they said – though the tone was heavily leant towards a female audience – could easily be reflective of the worries and often irrational conclusions that anyone, of any gender could draw if they were to ask the question ‘why am I single?’.

Unless there’s a clear reason that deep down you know is the case (and these tend to fall into one of two categories: ‘ex-related issues’ and you being a ‘24 carat prick’ related issues) the answer is likely to be, “because you are… and I think it’s your round”.

So, good people, this is my unisex, whatever-gender article about being in your twenties and having all your friends get married, buy houses, have ‘real jobs’ (whatever the hell that means), and all the rest of it.

Get over it.

Honestly, it’s fine, no matter what Facebook says.

Yes there’re things wrong with you. If there weren’t, you’d be dull; you’d have nothing to get better at, and then where would the fun be?

Concerned single ladies, you’ve not got as much to worry about as the media tells you.

Concerned single chaps… the media seems to be largely okay with you being single, even if you aren’t so thrilled about it. Logically, this suggests that you either have nothing to worry about at all, or are a completely lost cause. Go with the former. If nothing else, it’s easier on the ego. 

Don’t Google your problems, that’s what friends are for.

And anyway, what does it matter? The answer to the question ‘Single?’ is never going to change.

I’m training for a half marathon this summer.

I’ve drawn up a spreadsheet on Google Docs so that my friend (the chap who told me to sign up for the run in the first place) and I can track our training and ‘keep each other motivated’. We’re fostering a friendly revelry to support each other through a hard physical challenge. After all, we’re in this together…

Yeah, and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

The reason I spent more than an hour and a half mapping out how the training distances would steadily increase, and marking the columns so we could fill in our times for each run, wasn’t so we could encourage one another. It was so we could demonstrate, in writing, which one of us was better. Who is winning.

He’s one of my best friends, yes, but that just makes it more imperative to crush him, his confidence, and his soul.

Don’t go thinking I’m being overly harsh either: the reason he signed us up – and he’s said as much – was so that he could beat me.

We played tennis yesterday.

Yes, it was nice to be out in the sun, and not just to be doing laps of the track (my training is all track based at the moment). But ask me if I had fun, and I wouldn’t reply, “Yeah, the weather was lovely, and I haven’t played a full match of tennis for years!”

You’re far more likely to get something like, “Yeah, it was great! 3 sets to 1, and he’s played way more than me before.”

Now, I appreciate that relentless competitiveness is not the most attractive of qualities, and I doesn’t really make any difference to our friendship who can cover x, y, or z distance the fastest (in all cases, by the way, it’s me).

When he lost our game of tennis, my friend’s reaction summed it up perfectly.

He wasn’t angry with me, and didn’t begrudge me the win – he said I’d played better and deserved it.

He was furious with himself.

If I’d lost to him, I’d have felt just the same.

And if we’re honest, the competition between us isn’t really ‘between us’ – it’s introverted.

We play against ourselves; we race against ourselves, and ultimately we want to beat ourselves.

It just happens that my friend is similarly adept at similar things to me, and it’s easier to play tennis against him than against myself. (That would either involve a lot of running around in circles, or some sort of cloning process; both of which sound tedious.)

If I can beat him, I’m beating someone comparable to myself, and there lies the nub.

I’m not saying that it’s not great to beat him – that’s still excellent fun, and I’ll continue to do it as often as possible until one of us outlives the other (my money is on me) – but that’s almost incidental.

The real rival is me, and the better I get, the more it means to win.

That’s why I keep my times logged on a spreadsheet. That’s why I shout abuse (and sometimes encouragement) at myself as I run (yes, I genuinely shout at myself, and, yes, people give me funny looks).

I can see improvement mapped out. I can see weakness and fault in high relief, and can act against it. I tell myself when I’ve done well; I lampoon when I’ve cocked up.

What am I trying to achieve? That’s simple.

Arete.

Excellence in everything.

Bill and Ted were on to something, and so are Hank and John Green.

“Be excellent…” and “Don’t forget to be awesome” (I did a post a while back about adhering to the latter).

The only way I know to get there is to race against myself. The challenge everyday is to be better, and it will never stop and never be over.

A physiologist would probably have a field day with a lot of the sentiments that lay behind a constant need to beat one’s self – feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction; the paradoxical narcissistic self loathing that means no matter how good you were yesterday, today has to be better – but, meh. Let them analyse.

I get a kick out of slowly whittling down the times until there is nothing but arete.

I’ll never get there, but it’s worth trying. And if I can beat the odd friend along the way… well, that’s just a bonus.

I’ve a quick question to ask. How should we as individuals be judged?

Okay, so I may have lied when I said ‘quick’, but it’s something that I’ve thought a lot about over the course of a long time. Sure the context changes, but really the question stays the same.

I was talking to a guy last night about my research.

Like most people, he seemed interested or at least was good enough to feign it, but going into the nuts and bolts of it all would test the patience of even the nerdiest of nerds, so after a brief explanation of the title, I went in with the half-joke-half-deadly-serious,

“The best bit about it? When I’m done, it goes into the Bodleian.”

“Yeah, wow… I guess a little trace of you will stay there forever.” Then he smiled, “No pressure.”

I laughed, but he made a good point, and one I’ve obviously thought about.

A century from now – or two, or three, or four – the work I’m producing now will potentially be the last remnant left of me.

Yeah, the material of my body will be around somewhere (holy crap, I’ve just realised I probably contain bits of dinosaur!), but there won’t be anything left of me other than what’s persevered in my work.

Hopefully my canon will be a little longer than just my thesis, but that’s the start… that’ll be part of it. My ‘legacy’.

I deal with the work of dead guys all the time though, and I don’t really judge them as people much beyond how interestingly they wrote.

Even fiction writers – and it’s fiction where the clearest parts of me will probably be preserved; perhaps clearer than I’ll dare to show, even when I’m here to express myself directly… to be experienced by others first hand – I don’t know them.

I know their portraits; the characters they create, and from that we can guess, piece together the person behind it all. But ultimately, words are too blunt an instrument to recreate all that we are. And anyway, we lie; we act.

So I’ll ask again. How should we as individuals be judged?

I have a friend whose deepest aspiration is to have a net positive affect on the lives of others.

That’s all.

She doesn’t know how.

She won’t know exactly how until the end, but that’s her aim.

And it’s beautiful.

It gives you space to be flawed so long as you do more good than harm. It accepts that we’re all bastards sometimes, but that’s okay so long as you don’t make a habit of it.

It reminds me of something that I heard said in short speech a couple years ago.

“Friends should be the commodity by which we value ourselves.”

And I think that’s it.

If there were such a thing as the empirical ‘self’, I’d say that that’s never what’s being judged.

What’s judged is what we broadcast; what we project onto the people around us.

That could be a 700 page book in a library (yeah, 700 pages… like he said, “no pressure”), sure. But really, do I give a damn what people will think of me as a man when there’s nothing left of me but disembodied voices on a page?

No.

We should really be judged by how we are treating others right now. And how we treated them before.

I’ve said a lot recently, mostly to myself in the mirror, that “I’m done with being a good guy.”

Stupid boy.

It’s got you everything. Friends who love you. Self respect and, I hope – though it’s not my place to say – the respect of others.

My definition of ‘being a man’ – antiquated though the phrase might be, it still resonates with me – has nothing to do with physicality, or even gender ideals.

It’s putting the needs of those you love being before your own.

And I hope that’s how I’m judged.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, if the Swedish Academy wanted to give me the Nobel prize for literature, I’d not say no. But what does that matter when all is said and done, and you’ve said your last, and done your last? An extra line or two on your Wikipedia page? Great…

So how should we be judged?

I think it can be done by honestly answering one question:

Is the world a better place for having you in it?

Do you use the power you hold to make other people’s lives better; recognise when you can do something selfless and do it? And, would you do it at your own expense?

And I think that’s all we can hope for; the best we can achieve.

How to go about that though… that’s an entirely different question. So long as the out come is good, I’d say, however you like. Who am I to judge?

Sorry I’ve been absent for so long. Work and all that. Hopefully my latest Telegraph piece will tide you over until next week...

Forrest Gump’s mother was right.

Not so much about the life being like a box of milk tray – there she was probably just trying to speak in terms her son could understand. No. I’m talking about that other thing she said.

“There's an awful lot you could tell about a person by their shoes”.

I’ve just read a couple of articles about just that subject.

There were quite a few to choose from. Between 2010 and 2012, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Huffington Post, Time Magazine, Men’s Health, Jezebel, and Yahoo News all featured fairly substantial pieces about what your shoes supposedly says about your personality, and how other people perceive you because them.

Ignoring the fact that this is potentially a self-fulfilling kind of discussion (reading that ‘people will think x, y, and z about you if you don’t polish your shoes everyday’, becomes, ‘I must polish my shoes everyday’, becomes ‘I see other people don’t polish their shoes everyday… they must be x, y, and z.’), extensively, I agree with the broad statements that unite these articles (well, all except Jezebel’s, which I’m happy to report critiqued the rather lazy identikit work of more or less all of the other journos and added there own persuasively contrary twist – link).

Are your shoes well kept or badly maintained; do they represent comfort over fashion? Are you lazy? Are you vain?

All very interesting, sure, but hardly stretching the perceptive powers of your average intelligent sort of chap.

If we listen to Forrest, however, we see that his mother was less concerned with what you actively say about yourself with your choice of footwear; she’s all about the incidental, “where they're going [and] where they've been.”

Over the last few weeks, it became clear that my trainers were nearing the end of their useful life.

I’ve not owned them long – only about 10 months – but they’re perhaps the hardest working shoes that I’ve ever possessed.

I trained for a Tough Mudder in them, and – excepting a pair of flip-flops – they were the only shoes I took with me across Europe.

They’re non-offensive dark grey.

Until the soles started to come adrift, they were waterproof, supportive, and comfortable.

They’ve played lacrosse matches and football, and taken me for walks. They’ve mowed the lawn a couple of times and pruned the odd tree.

They’ve walked across beaches and over ruins and up Cathedral steps. Through galleries, streets, and squares.

They’ve hidden my other valuables whilst I swam, and been a pillow whilst I slept.

But now they’re tired.

Apart from the soles coming away, there are holes torn across the toes and the rubber has all but completely worn away.

Yesterday, I took delivery of their replacements.

These new ones are not waterproof. They’re bright orange, as opposed to non-offensive dark grey. Aside from these small points, I’m very pleased with them. I’m already quite fond of them (perhaps because they are not yet falling apart). Despite this delivery, I can’t quite bring myself to throw away the old pair.

I think I’ll keep them to do gardening and re-decorating and that kind of thing. They can enjoy an active retirement from sport and all the rest of it. One day they may end up in the bin (or a museum… you never know!) but not yet.

We become oddly attached to possessions. We associate them with moments, times, and people, and we struggle to let them go.

I doubt that anyone else would value my old trainers. They smell pretty bad and are basically useless as shoes. But they mean a lot to me, more than I knew.

I equally doubt that anyone else could tell exactly where I’d been in them, or what I’d got up to whilst wearing them. But to me they represent all of that. What I’ve done, everywhere I’ve been, and what’s more the attitude that took me there and carried me through.

In that regard, Mrs. Gump was right.

It’s that same attitude that will take me to the next place, and the place after that, and destroy the next pair.

You can look at those tired old trainers and say that the path has been varied; tough in places. By looking at the new pair, you can tell that I’m not done walking it.

Exactly where it goes, who knows, but given that these new ones are rather less subtle than their predecessors, I’m betting it’s nowhere dull.

 In a few hours time, it’ll be my 25th birthday.

Ignoring personal matters for a moment, this means a couple of things.

I can finally order a refreshing G&T in Delhi (but I’d have to be careful, because I can also join the Indian Merchant Navy). I can legally be the sole passenger in a car driven by a 16 year old in California. My own car insurance will become infinitely more reasonable, and I can hire a vehicle abroad.

Lovely as all these things are, at the same time the sun is setting on other opportunities.

Devastatingly, I only have 12 months left in which to become a member of the Pony Club. And even at the most generous institutions, I no longer qualify for ‘Young Person’ rates. From now until I retire, mine is a full fare ticket… well, with a student discount, obviously.

On a more personal note, it marks the end of the age I wanted to be when I was younger.

24 was ‘the age’.

Don’t ask me why, it just was, and I’m happy to report that it didn’t disappoint.

I don’t know what 9 year-old me was expecting, but I’ve achieved more in the last 12 months than even 23 year-old me would never have believed.

I wrote and gave the eulogy at the funeral of one of my best friends. I cycled 1200 miles across Europe in 18 days, and I did it on my own. I matriculated into the University of Oxford to read for my Doctorate in a subject I love. And just last week, I became a contributor to a national newspaper.

It’s been a hell of a year, and it would be pointless to try to emulate it. It would be silly to try to ‘top it’. What’s coming up is going to be gloriously, optimistically ‘different’.

So, what exactly does the next year hold?

I’d be lying if I said I knew, but there are a couple of things I’d like to become habit, and a couple of things I’d like to get done.

I’d like to do myself justice on the lacrosse pitch. I’m way too inconsistent right now, but it won’t take much to correct. Just the breaking of bad habits and a little bit more effort.

The same can be said for my work, and the same is true. Small changes; strong routines, It’s really as simple as that.

Other than those general things, I’m going to Spain later in the year. There’s an antiquated festival I’ve always wanted to attend, and now seems like as good a time as any (more details closer to the time).

I’m obviously going to write.

I’m going to drink white Burgundy in my Club before my membership expires December.

I’ll ride a horse again and, if I have the money, I’ll head to the Alps and ski.

The picture says it all really. It's going to be rather hedonistic, and I can't wait.

Consolidate and carry on the way things are going, and there’s no reason why this year can’t be another splendid one.

You’re not going to believe that I started writing this post about a month ago, but the delay is pretty easy to explain.

Other projects got in the way and when I did get the opportunity to sit down and write it wouldn’t flow. It happens sometimes. It’s been easier to write fiction recently, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been taking more photographs, and been quite productive in my academic work.

Before I knew it all kinds of Christmas was happening, and here we are… almost into January and no proper post since November. Mea culpa.

I’ve had a good month, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the couple of things I have posted, especially the black and white photographs of Oxford.

It was the first time I'd taken my camera out for a while.

It’s going to be one of my ‘New Year’s Resolutions’; to take my camera out more and get some decent shots of Oxford through the year, and the people, and the other places I go to.

It’s no great pain to carry it around, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Just have it on me.

I see decent shots all the time, and then they’re gone in a second.

I know, I know: ‘no camera, no photograph, no great disaster’, and I recognise that you can lose experiences seeing them through a viewfinder.

But true as that may be, sometimes you can’t help but think that that image was one to keep hold of; one you’d regret not having caught even if just for the common beauty of it, or what it will provoke. That’s what I like about photography. It can make the beauty out of the everyday as much as it can record the extraordinary.

That all sounds very flouncy, so if you’ll permit me, I’ll give an example.

I was cycling.

I was in Italy and the road was awful and rain was falling harder than it had done for a while. The busy little road was narrow and bordered by a shear bank on one side and a high stonewall on the other.

I cycled on the walled side, and there were arches completely blocked with solid wooden doors every 50 yards. For the first half a mile, each was closed, then one I passed one where the arch had crumbled a little and the door had fallen.

The road was in shadow because of the wall and the dark cloud overhead, but to my right were breaks in the clouds. Sunlight fell through the empty doorway.

I didn’t slow, but as I passed I saw the fields that were on the other side. Just for a second.

The sight was bizarre.

Where you’d expect crops, livestock, or just empty fields, there were  tractors.

Evenly spaced; old but seemingly pristine. There were tens of them, all different colours.

I’d cycled past before I’d registered what I’d seen. But I couldn’t stop.

I was being closely followed by traffic and there was nowhere to pull in. I thought there’d be another opening – the wall went on for another half a mile or so – but there wasn’t.

I wish I had that photograph.

I know I remember how sunlight struck through the gaps in the clouds and shimmered in the rain, and made those abstruse machines shine. I remember the contrast between the bright grass and the slate clouds, and the rolling vine-covered hills beyond the fields. The memory is beautifully surreal.

I know I remember it, but as often as I think of it, the scene will change.

This post is becoming dangerously philosophical, and if I’m not careful, I’m going to start talking about the mortality of experience and the psychological implications of my wanting to collect stills of transitory moments, and – worthy as those things are of discussion – I think I'd better wrap this up before this gets too heavy (it is Christmas after all!).

I’m not going to catalogue everything. Just the moments that strike me, and even then not all of them.

Yes, I’ll go looking for them sometimes, but there are those moments that you don’t expect – when the light falls just right, and the overlooked things are inescapably compelling – and I'd like to have the option of keeping it for later.

Sometimes I won’t see them. Most of the time I’ll just watch them play out. But I’d like the option to record the world I live in at it’s fleeting best. If I want to. If I'm quick enough.

Precious as memories are, they're fickle and delicate; some things are worth seeing again even if the picture isn't so sweet as you remember, or the colours as bright. In my experience, the pictures don't overpower the memories, just evoke them; bring them to the surface.

After all, how many times do you cycle past the broken door to a field of tractors? If it’s more than once, I’ll be very surprised.

You might say that that moment didn't need a photograph, but if I'm honest I'd forgotten all about it until I saw an old tractor on the news. That memory was hidden away.

The American photographer, Aaron Siskind said that "photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything."

I'm not saying that I need a photograph to remember the little things, or to imagine how they were, but it helps.

The photograph of St Paul's I've chosen to accompany this post, taken on the 23rd of March last year. Ask me how I felt on that date and I couldn't tell you. I probably wouldn't remember that day. Ask me how I felt when I took that photograph - what was I doing, who was I with, all that context - and wouldn't have to think. It's there. It's a good photograph, yes - one only possible for a moment as that gul flew through - but it's more. It's tied to those memories.

Remembering those emotions; those people out of shot is what really matters after all.

(The link is above)

Okay, so this is why I've not been blogging for the last couple of weeks.

The Telegraph run a 'Student Life' blog on their website. I applied with a few ideas; they liked them, and one terrible mugshot later, I was a contributor.

My apologies for being a little enigmatic about the whole thing, but I've learnt by experience that it's best not to announce that applications have been made, or projects are in the pipeline until they're absolutely nailed on to come off. It saves blushes.

The editor changed my incredibly witty, clever (and relevant) title for something "more searchable", but that's about it. The rest is me.

I'm writing another piece for them at the moment, but there is a Renaissance Idle one coming too. I promised you one before New Year after all, and that is upsettingly close.