A memory linked to a smell

I’ve written before about my love of football – as a player, junior team coach, and referee at various points during my life. And there is one smell that constantly reminds me of many happy Saturday afternoons playing football on the Cardiff council pitches at Blackweir, Pontcanna, Trelai and Greenway Road – it’s the unmistakeable aroma of wintergreen. Having read the Wikipedia and Britannica entries for wintergreen, I’m not sure on reflection if what we used to rub into our leg muscles before a game was actually the plant-based product described. What we were using may actually have been a variety of horse liniment!

My main recollection of the oily substance was that it had an unequalled dual purpose : acting as a nasal decongestant and heating up the skin on your legs to a level where it was a blessing to finally get out of the changing rooms and into the freezing cold air ready for the game. The smell itself was something between Vick’s chest rub and WD40. I suspect that nowadays it would be a banned performance-enhancing substance!

What fear have you conquered?

Whether or not it’s scientifically valid, there is no doubt that I have many of the traits that typify an introvert. My energy comes from within (I don’t need to be surrounded by others to bounce ideas off and develop my thinking). I am not especially comfortable if required to ‘think out loud’, and I need to make time to be quiet and solitary to recharge my batteries. Whether it’s part of a preference for introversion or something else, I have an irrational fear of having to engage socially in unfamiliar settings. Let’s call a spade a spade : I am small-talk phobic! And it’s a fear (or at least a source of acute anxiety) that I have come nowhere near to conquering.

I don’t think I’m a sociopath. I can sometimes summon up the courage to ‘do’ social engagement in new settings, but it comes at significant personal cost in terms of nervous energy; and it feels incredibly awkward. Perhaps worse than that, though, whenever I am in this situation, the script is replayed over and over in my mind for days afterwards, as I think of the clumsy ways that I interacted, and all the much more sophisticated things I could have said. It’s almost certainly rooted in a deep sense of imposter syndrome. And the double bind for an introverted imposter is that you are condemned not only to feeling incredibly anxious about new social situations in the first place, but also to replaying them in your head subsequently in a way that serves simply to reinforce your social inadequacy.

I know it’s irrational; and I know that most people find new social situations difficult to a greater or lesser degree. I know that I can do small-talk when all other options for avoidance have been ruled out, but the thing about deep-seated fears (phobias?) is that they persist in spite of all rational analysis. It’s why you’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties; or taking a particular interest in the paintings, statues or other decorative items in meeting rooms and assembly halls. It’s also why I’ll spend the three days afterwards mentally kicking myself on missing out on all the opportunities that I’ve passed up to meet new people or engage with in those missed conversations.

I don’t know if it’s a fear that I will ever be able to say that I’ve conquered, but at the start of a new year, I’ll commit to trying to be less afraid and to confront my anxieties with greater courage in the next twelve months!

What is your preferred mode of transport?

I travelled from Cardiff to Oxford by train on Thursday this week. It’s the first time that I’ve been on a train since last summer, and I’d forgotten just how enjoyable train travel can be. Even more so, when – like this week – there was a fair degree of jeopardy surrounding the whole journey. To explain, the weather in the southern part of the UK has been pretty wet (British understatement klaxon alert!) this past couple of weeks. This led to very significant flooding of large parts of the countryside between Bristol and Swindon overnight on Wednesday into Thursday. Before setting off to the station at 6.45am on Thursday morning, a check of the rail travel alerts system on-line suggested that trains from Cardiff to London (which would cover the first leg of my trip) were running to timetable, but there was some disruption to other services via Bristol Temple Meads station. I trusted to luck and set off.

My journey was in three legs : an initial trip from Cardiff to Swindon; a change at Swindon for the short hop to Didcot Parkway; and the final chug up from Didcot to Oxford. Not ideal, but not that onerous either (at least on paper). The train from Cardiff to Swindon left bang on time – I bagged a double seat to myself (it was only about half full) and enjoyed a very pleasant snooze to the rhythm of the wheels on tracks for the totally drama-free hour run through to Swindon. My changeover at Swindon left me seven minutes from alighting from one train to leaving on the next – at least in theory.

In practice, the connecting train that was due to ferry me from Swindon to Didcot had been cancelled. It was actually a through service from Bristol Temple Meads to London and was presently on the wrong side of a very large flood not very far out of Bristol. The very helpful Great Western Railway employee on the platform suggested that the next train to Didcot would not be leaving Swindon until 9.10am (a delay to my journey of forty minutes). Not great, but not a disaster. I took shelter from the pouring rain and gale-force wind in the small cafe and newsagents shop just off platform 3 at Swindon station and resigned myself to a spot of people-watching to pass the time. After 15 minutes, though, a very welcome glimmer of hope. “The next train to arrive at Platform 3 will be travelling to London Paddington calling at Didcot Parkway and Reading. This is an unscheduled stop.” Sure enough, a minute or two later a gleaming intercity train pulled into the station. Hastily checking with the GWR man on the platform that this one really was stopping at Didcot, I received a not wholly convincing : “It looks like – but I’ve just heard that from the same announcement that you did!”. I took a chance and jumped on. The train left. The in-carriage information board carried the worrying message that this was a London Paddington train calling at Reading and London Paddington; but my initial fears were calmed by the Train Manager’s announcement that Didcot really was the next stop. Twenty minutes later, he was vindicated, and I walked off the train, across the platform and straight on to a connecting train to Oxford. Outward journey complete and (by hook or by crook) I had made it to Oxford in time for the 10am meeting that was the purpose of the journey.

Oxford is a beautiful city. In my experience, it’s unique in one significant respect. The University of Oxford is not part of the city of Oxford – it IS the city of Oxford. In the twenty minute taxi journey from the railway station to the college where my meeting was taking place, I was never more than a stone’s throw from a college or university building. The University dominates the city. And it does so with a commitment to architectural excellence (whether in the form of historic colleges, world-leading libraries or modern teaching and faculty buildings) that is breath-taking. If you haven’t been and you get the chance to do so, I highly recommend it.

My meeting finished at 3pm and the initial omens for the return rail trip to South Wales were inauspicious. The on-line information app was a sea of cancellations, delays and dire warnings of disruption for anyone daring to travel west from Didcot towards Cardiff or Bristol. Not good! Arriving at Didcot, the initial advice was to hedge our bets, travel in the wrong direction initially to Reading, where the chances of getting a train that may be diverted around Didcot, Swindon and the floods, towards Bristol and Cardiff, were much more heavily in my favour. It was the safe bet. But I was not in the mood for safety first. There was one train on the way to Didcot that was heading through Swindon and on to Cheltenham Spa. The words of The Pet Shop Boys rang out in my head : “Go west!“. I did.

I’m not sure how busy the train from Didcot Parkway to Cheltenham Spa is under normal circumstances, but on Thursday afternoon, it was very busy. There was an air of stoic determination. We were British – we were not going to be beaten by flooding. Canute-like we had collectively decided that Reading was for cowards and defeatists – if we were going to get our feet wet, then we were at least going to get soggy in Cheltenham Spa!

The trip from Didcot to Swindon was uneventful. But I was now faced with another dilemma. Did I stay on the train to Gloucester with the certainty that I could pick up a Birmingham or Manchester to Cardiff train there; or did I push my luck further and trust that the gods of the GWR would see me right with a fast train to Cardiff. By now, you will not be at all surprised to learn that I girded my loins and stepped down onto Platform 3 at Swindon station. It had served me well this morning and I had faith that it would come good this evening too.

A quick check of the departures board sent my spirits soaring. A train headed to Swansea via Newport and Cardiff (but missing out Bristol completely) was due in 15 minutes. Platform 4 was the stated departure point. I headed down into the underpass to find the promised point of embarkation only to be met by a barriered off stairway. Access to platform 4 was impossible. Surely I wasn’t to be denied at this late stage? Looking helpless and slightly panicked, another of those GWR knights in green and purple livery advised that all trains west were now leaving from platform 3 and to ignore any sign that suggested otherwise. Relieved, I returned from whence I had come. The Swansea train arrived – I got on and less than 90 minutes later I was back in the splendour of Cardiff Central and home.

It had been an adventure but it had worked out really well in the end. Train travel really is the best – offering endless opportunity for napping, galloping between platforms, and panic-inducing last-minute changes to schedules, all under the gaze of station staff and train managers who have seen it all before, and for whom nothing that happens on the network is surprising any more.

The engineering may have changed, and electric overhead lines now power trains where steam would previously have done the job, but there is a romanticism around train travel that persists just as it did when WH Auden wrote his Mail Train poem for a film in 1936. Driving is generally tedious now, and air travel is long periods of waiting around for no obvious good reason, but the train – now that still appeals to the boyhood excitement that I first felt on mystery trips to the Devon and Cornish coast over 40 years’ ago, and that’s why it remains preferred mode of travel in 2023.

If you had a billion US dollars, how would you spend it?

This is such a wide open prompt, that I’m going to set some parameters to it before I start to answer. In the first instance, I’m assuming that this is money that I have responsibility for distributing for the wider good, rather than $1bn that I can simply spend on personal luxuries and setting up my family. Secondly, I’m going to place a geographical restriction on where the money can be spent, and I’m going to assume that it has to be allocated to projects that will directly benefit the people of Wales. And finally, I’m going to assume that it all has to be allocated and spent within 36 months (thus ruling out the prospect of setting up an investment fund and simply allocating the profits annually).

So having set the rules, what would I spend the money on? I’d allocate $100m to match-fund investment by the Football Association of Wales and the Welsh Rugby Union in artificial playing surfaces for football and rugby in communities across all local authority areas in the country. Climate change leading to wetter winters, and financial constraints on local councils reducing funding for maintenance of grass pitches, means that local sports facilities are deteriorating rapidly, reducing participation and enjoyment at all ages, but particularly for young people. The health and wellbeing advantages of regular engagement in team sports (especially for children and young adults) is well documented, and this investment would create facilities that would be self-sustaining (through reasonable usage fees) for generations to come. Alongside the $100m for pitches, I’d allocate a further $100m to allow junior community sports teams to bid for new equipment, kit and the costs of training volunteers as coaches, referees, safeguarding officers and all the other skills necessary to run a safe and successful club to deliver junior sport.

I’d allocate $200m in total to a capital renovations fund for public or community owned arts venues to bid into, to complete repairs and enhancements to venues supporting theatre, cinema, dance and wider performing arts activities. This would recognise the backlog of repairs and maintenance that has developed in so many of the venues that allow local people access to perform in and enjoy arts-based activities. A further $50m would be available to community-arts organisations for capacity building along similar lines to the sports funding outlined in the previous paragraph.

Having targeted sport and the arts, my next priority would be community assets : whether welfare halls, social clubs or abandoned public houses. An allocation of $200m would be available to match-fund capital investment into facilities that have closed or at risk of closing, and that can be transferred or reinstated to community ownership on a co-operative basis (that is, with any profits from operations ploughed back into the asset and its community for the long term). This is really about community cohesion, recognising that places where people can come together socially play an integral role as the glue that binds people together in a sense of place. Often, these facilities are unviable in a strict commercial sense, but their non-financial benefits are immense (and can also indirectly create a sense of local pride and interest that does positively rub-off in terms of other local businesses). Again, $50m would be made available to train volunteers to be part of the teams running and managing the assets; and also to cover the legal and other set-up costs of co-operative societies to act as the owners of the assets.

Which leaves $300m to be allocated (still an awful lot of money!). This would be targeted on education and skills – supporting individuals to engage in formal and vocational education and skills training, as well as providing seed-corn funding for new business development. This would be in addition to existing government funding and would recognise the simple fact that grants and loans to individuals have not kept pace with increases in the costs of living and that inadequate financial support is now a substantial barrier facing those who would otherwise like to train or re-train in the skills and competences demanded by employers.

Sport, culture, community cohesion, skills and education – the key focuses of action that leads to improved health and wellbeing. $1 billion well spent, I think.

What chore do you find the most challenging to do?

I’m going to make it very clear from the outset that I’m very lucky not to face continual nagging to do things around the house. Nor is there much in the way of expectation that particular jobs are exclusively mine. I do try to take the lead on putting the bins out, and seasonal grass-cutting is also primarily my responsibility. Other than that, I am very much the junior partner when it comes to domestic chores.

Nor can I claim any great prowess as a DIY’er. I can just about hang a shelf, change a light fitting, and put up a picture. But I steer we’ll clear of all plumbing, most electrics, and anything that might lead to my handiwork being publicly visible. I do have an uncanny knack of causing collateral damage when attempting manual work of any type – regularly converting a £10 job into a £100 project!

So I guess the answer to the question in terms of the chore that is most challenging for me, is actually the next one that I need to start. I very much subscribe to the view that : I said I’d do it, and I will – there’s no need to remind me about it every 6 months!

How do you define success?

I’m of an age where I can track my life through advertising jingles. And the first thing that came to mind when presented with today’s bloganuary prompt was crispy pancakes. Let me explain. In the days before Deliveroo and Just Eat and the other 24:7 services that will deliver nutritionally questionable takeaway meals to your door within 30 minutes of clicking the order button on your smartphone, we had to make do with high fat, high salt processed foods that could be rapidly heated up in the oven or toaster. Findus crispy pancakes (and assorted other similar items) were one of the leading branded products in this market niche. And the brand identity was summed up in the jingle supporting the adverts : Findus, success on a plate for you! The general thrust of the message was that busy families could be fed hot, tasty, professional looking food in a matter of minutes while parents were getting on with work, caring or all the other things that would otherwise have to go by the board to prepare actual healthy meals from scratch. Of course, there was a cost to this convenience – this wasn’t a cheap option financially. And there was another cost to the highly processed foods that were typically available at the time : generational hypertension and type 2 diabetes!

Easy successes are – in my experience – relatively rare and often come with costs that may not be immediately obvious. Success that is lasting and meaningful is more often something that has to be worked at and comes after many failures. My favourite definition of an optimist is the person who recognises that taking a step backwards immediately after moving forwards is not failing, but a cha-cha!

A search of “quotes about success” in Google returns many tens of thousands of options, ranging from the banal to the frankly weird. But a common theme that runs through them is that success can only be achieved through action and a preparedness to make mistakes. The person who never made a mistake, never made anything.

At the same time, its important to recognise that success has to be defined in our own terms – what is success for me may not look remotely like it to you. And successes needn’t necessarily be life-changing or earth-shattering. It was Martin Luther-King who offered the view that “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way”. That seems to me to be a good recipe for leading a successful and fulfilling life.

Finally for now, the last word (as so often) is a cautionary one from the late, great W.C. Fields : “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”

Has a book changed your life?

The nice people at WordPress are making life very difficult with their prompts for this bloganuary series. Has a book changed my life? Yes – I think pretty much every book I have ever read has changed my life – some in very small ways, some more substantially; some noticeably, and some unconsciously. I think I’d turn the question around. Is it possible to read a book without emerging from the experience having been changed in some way?

I’ve written reviews of some of the books that I’ve read whilst running this blog and you can access them via the Reviews tab at the top of the page. The anthology of football writing When Saturday Comes introduced me to a whole new way of thinking about sport, its place in a wider social context, and how the crowd at a live event can simultaneously share a common experience and see/feel it uniquely at a personal level. Dannie Abse’s memoir Ash on a young man’s sleeve opened my eyes to the power of lyrical prose and it’s ability to take childhood recollection and imbue it with a sense of feeling that lifts the ordinary to something extraordinary.

Simon Schama’s The Power of Art and Stephen Fry’s Mythos combined to partly fill gaps in my education on the history of art (Schama) and the underpinning of so much of our modern literature that comes from Greek mythology (Fry). In neither case did I move from ignorance to mastery of the subject, but (and perhaps more importantly) I am now consciously incompetent in both subjects : I know what I don’t know!

So yes – books have changed my life; and I hope that I will continue to be challenged, informed, unsettled and disrupted by them for many years to come!

What is the most memorable gift you have received?

The timing of this prompt for today’s bloganuary post is almost perfect – coming as it does almost midway between Christmas and my birthday. It seems invidious to try to select a single gift as “the most memorable” – partly because I have been very fortunate over the years to have received many thoughtful, practical and/or desirable gifts at all sorts of times from all sorts of people. The thought of selecting one to focus on and run the risk of offending or disappointing somebody else as a result, is too painful to tolerate.

Avoiding that bear-trap, therefore, I’m going to focus instead on a gift that has become a tradition in our house, and that I am delighted to say continues even now that our children have grown up and moved into their own homes. “Dad’s Christmas chocolate” is presented to me during Christmas Eve and (now) takes the form of a giant bar of Toblerone (although the standing joke is that there is ALWAYS at least one size larger that I feign disappointment in not having received!). There is an art to eating a giant, triangular-shaped piece of almond and nougat-infused chocolate without doing irreparable damage to the roof of your mouth (and – to be clear – there is no connection whatsoever between this tradition and the fact that I have needed emergency fillings to teeth on Christmas Eve in two of the past five years!). But nothing says Christmas more than slumping into a sugar-fuelled slumber at 3pm on the day before the main event!

How far back in your family tree can you go?

This will be a short blog today, because the simple answer is “not very far at all”! I don’t know whether it’s normal or shameful that I know very little beyond my paternal grandmother (my paternal grandfather died before I was born), and my maternal great grandparents. My brother has done quite a lot of research into the family tree, but it’s not something that I have ever had a huge amount of interest in. There are stories (family myths?) about illegitimate offspring of English nobility linked to domestic service in a large west country house; and fortunes lost to gambling, drink and womanising (the rest was wasted, I guess!), but little in the way of corroborating evidence.

It probably reflects poorly on me that I’m not convinced that knowing too much about those who came before me in the family tree is necessarily a good thing, either. Programmes like the BBC’s Who do you think you are? do occasionally unearth interesting and uplifting details of influential or sainted ancestors. But all too often, what is revealed is a history of tragic loss, poverty, petty thievery, or notoriety. And who in all honesty can say that they need that in their lives?

Rain

Today’s bloganuary prompt is to create a short story or poem about rain. Inspiration for this is plentiful for me because the rain in South Wales has been biblical in its intensity and relentlessness today! The haikus that follow can stand-alone or be read as a longer whole. I’ve messed about with the order a little bit, and I’m still not sure if they’re quite right now as a cohesive piece, but this will have to do.

"Showers in the west
Sudden downpours in the north
Down south, light drizzle"*

Out come the covers
Umbrellas extend skyward
Game paused - rain stopped play

The old man snoring
Completely oblivious
As cats and dogs fall

The puddles recede
A rainbow arch lights the sky
Hope grows with the sun

Walking through a storm?
Hold your head high and fear not
Look - a golden sky**

* with acknowledgements to the spoof weather-forecast sequence that formed part of late 1990s Soccer Saturday on Sky Sports

** with acknowledgements to Oscar Hammerstein