Month: May 2026

The Arc de Triomphe of the Lollipop Napoleon

The Day Michael Out‑Drove Authority in a High‑Vis Jacket

Every neighbourhood has one: the small man with a small uniform and a large sense of destiny. They know who parks where, who visits whom, who puts their bins out late. They thrive on being the unofficial sheriff of a place that never asked for one. The “local intelligence officer” vibe.

In our case, he came equipped with a high‑vis jacket, a lollipop stick, and the unmistakable air of someone who believed he was the last line of defence between civilisation and chaos. He was the school crossing patrol man — a role that attracts, with uncanny precision, a certain universal human type or personality, the “small man with a big stick”. The sort who enjoys the tiny taste of power that comes from stopping traffic with a stick. The sort who watches everything, knows everything, and reports everything.

A frustrated policeman in a fluorescent tabard.

Many years ago, I worked as a driver in school transport, and I would bring my small van home each day and park it near my house.

Now, one morning, I had parked my school van directly in front of my garage. Not ideal, but sometimes there was no other space left on the street. When I came out to go back to work on the pm shift, I found the van completely boxed in — inches to spare at the front, inches at the back. A tight squeeze, but not impossible.

Naturally, the patrol man had noticed. Naturally, he came striding over, eager to preside over the situation.

He surveyed the scene with the solemnity of a magistrate and delivered his verdict, complete with a smirk:

“You’ll never get out of there.”

That was the moment. The gauntlet thrown. The challenge issued.

And something in me — perhaps the part inherited from my Father, who had a quiet way of dealing with overbearing people — thought:

Oh yes I will.

So I set to work. Slowly, carefully, inch by inch, I eased the van out of that impossible space. A little forward, a little back, a slight angle, a correction, another inch. It was a manoeuvre that required patience, calm, and the kind of spatial awareness you only develop after years of driving a school van through tight Devon lanes.

And then — like Houdini slipping out of chains — I was free.

I drove past him smiling. He didn’t know where to look.

A few days later, perhaps still smarting from the blow to his authority, he turned up at my door with a tin of black paint-the colour of municipal warning signs- and a placard. Without asking, he offered to paint my garage door — the very one I had blocked that morning.

I said yes, of course. Why not? Let him perform his little act of penance.

He painted the entire door black, then affixed a bold yellow sign that simply barked:

KEEP CLEAR

No “please”. No “thank you”. Just the command — the pure essence of his personality distilled into two words.

A friend later asked if I’d given him a bottle of wine for his trouble. I said no. For someone else, perhaps — but not for a man who needed reminding that authority is not the same as wisdom.

The sign is still there today, though the surrounding paint is starting to peel. Every time I see it, I remember that morning — the quiet triumph, the look on his face, and the small, satisfying victory of showing that modesty and skill can outshine bluster any day.

A tiny parable of human nature, played out on a suburban driveway.

Still there to this day, a little relic of that morning, a private joke between me and the universe. Behold my own little Arc de Triomphe — a fading black garage door, a few cobwebs, a few weeds, and the mighty yellow proclamation of a man who once mistook a lollipop for a sceptre. This sign, still clinging on after all these years, commemorates the morning I out‑drove a small Napoleon of the high‑vis world. He declared I’d never get my van out of the space in front of my own garage. I did. He watched. And in a fit of wounded pride and penance, he returned days later to paint this door and affix his imperial decree: KEEP CLEAR. A modest monument to the eternal truth that quiet competence will always outshine puffed‑up authority.

BOOK-CYCLE: A SMALL PLACE THAT HELD A LARGE PART OF MY LIFE

INTRODUCTION

Every so often, I feel the need to pause and acknowledge the small places that have quietly shaped my life. Not the grand landmarks or the dramatic turning points, but the modest rooms and corners of the city where something essential happened — where I found connection, or comfort, or simply a sense of being part of the world. Book-Cycle in Exeter has been one of those places for me. As it changes, and as I change with it, I wanted to set down what it has meant.

There are places in a life that matter far more than their size suggests.
For me, Book-Cycle has been one of them.

I first began visiting during my working years, when my jobs gave me very little in the way of intellectual nourishment. I often felt starved for stimulation, and so these charity bookshops — Book-Cycle especially — became my oxygen. I would finish at work, walk through the door, and feel something inside me wake up again.

Book-Cycle is unlike any other bookshop in Exeter. It has its own ethos, its own rhythm, its own slightly eccentric charm. There are no fixed prices — you simply give what you can, or what you feel is right. For years it was cash‑only, with a limit of three books per visit, a system that sounded restrictive on paper but in practice felt strangely liberating. Recently they’ve moved with the times and now accept card payments too, but the underlying spirit remains the same: books circulating freely, passing from hand to hand, ideas moving quietly through the community like an underground current.

The layout is quirky, the atmosphere informal, and the volunteers — well, they have always been characters. Some more approachable than others, some more eccentric than others, but all part of the fabric of the place. Over the years I met undergraduates, travellers, wanderers, and people from all over the world. Conversations happened naturally, without effort. It was one of the few places in Exeter where you could still strike up a chat with a stranger and not be met with suspicion or discomfort.

For someone like me — someone who lives through books, ideas, and the gentle spark of human contact — it was a refuge.

I found books there I would never have discovered anywhere else. Some of them changed the direction of my thinking. Some simply kept me company. All of them mattered.

And now, in retirement, with my mobility more limited and no car to widen my radius, Book-Cycle has become even more important. It is one of the few places within easy reach where I can still find that flicker of connection — a bit of banter with the volunteers, a familiar face, a moment of being seen. Even in its quieter, more withdrawn state, it remains a place where I am not invisible.

Because it has changed.
The world has changed with it.

Where once there was chatter, now there is silence. Customers browse without speaking. Volunteers are more withdrawn, more tired, more cautious. The atmosphere has thinned. It reflects something larger — a cultural shift toward disengagement, a retreat into private bubbles, a quieting of public life. We are living through an age where people seem to have turned the dimmer switch down on the world.

And yet I keep going.

Partly out of habit, partly out of gratitude, but mostly because I still believe in the small, human places. I still believe in conversation, even when it is rare. I still believe in the spark of connection, even when it flickers faintly. And I still believe in books — perhaps more now than ever.

My love of books began in childhood, not through abundance but through scarcity. We had very few books at home, usually second‑hand, and we cherished what we had. My Mother taught me to read, encouraged me, praised every effort. She had been deprived of books entirely during her youth, taken to Germany as a forced labourer during the war. She once told me that if she so much as glanced at a book there, she would have been beaten.

I have never forgotten that.

Perhaps that is why I have always felt that reading is not just a pastime but a form of freedom — the freedom to think, to imagine, to wander across the world in the mind. It is a gift we take for granted, but I never have, and never will.

Now, as I begin to declutter and return some of my books to Book-Cycle, it feels right. The cycle completes itself. Others will find them, as I once did. My house, like Book-Cycle, is full of books and a bit old‑fashioned — and that suits me fine.

So I will keep cycling down the road to that little shop.
I will keep browsing the shelves.
I will keep talking to whoever is willing to talk.
And I will keep honouring the places that helped me breathe when life felt thin.

Book-Cycle may be quieter now, but it is still part of my landscape, part of my story, and part of the long thread that connects my childhood, my Mother’s history, my working years, and the person I am today.

And for that, I am grateful.

CLOSING NOTE

I don’t know what Book-Cycle will become in the years ahead. Places change, people move on, and the world seems to be withdrawing into itself. But as long as the door is open, I will keep stepping inside. Not just for the books — though they remain my lifelong companions — but for the simple act of being among others, however quietly. In a time when so much feels disconnected, these small moments of presence matter more than ever.

The Collector’s Paradox: When Possession Replaces Creation

(An essay from Buller Road)

There’s a peculiar comfort in owning things — the illusion of control through accumulation. Shelves fill, boxes stack, and each new object promises satisfaction that never quite arrives. The collector tells himself he’s preserving history, but often he’s only postponing emptiness.

The paradox lies in the language of decluttering. He speaks of clearing space, yet cannot bear the silence that would follow. The clutter becomes a kind of armour — proof of existence, evidence of taste, a bulwark against time. To part with it would mean confronting the void that possession was meant to hide.

Modern life encourages this: endless choice, instant delivery, the dopamine of acquisition. We mistake ownership for engagement, and the act of buying for the act of living. The collector becomes a curator of potential rather than a maker of meaning.

But beneath this lies something older — two different ways of being in the world. One type seeks security through possession: order, control, things in their place. The world feels safer when it can be catalogued and contained. The other type moves differently: flexible, open, finding meaning in creation rather than accumulation. For them, the world is not something to secure but something to explore.

What’s striking is how these two types often misunderstand each other. The having‑type fears loss; the being‑type accepts change. One fills shelves; the other fills moments. One clings; the other participates. And each assumes the other is missing something essential.

Creation, by contrast, demands surrender — of time, attention, and ego. It asks for patience, not purchase. A single model built with care holds more truth than a hundred unopened boxes.

The collector’s tragedy is not greed but fear: fear of stillness, of the moment when there is nothing left to acquire and one must simply look, listen, and be.

Perhaps the cure is modesty — to own less, but make more. To treat each object not as a trophy but as a conversation with the past. Then possession becomes creation again, and the shelves breathe.

The Death of Listening

(An essay from Buller Road)

There was a time when conversation meant exchange — a slow, mutual shaping of thought. Now it feels more like a relay race where no one waits for the baton. Each person speaks from their own island, waving their flag of experience, and the sea between us grows wider.

Everywhere, voices fill the air: opinions, memories, grievances, triumphs. Yet the act of listening — of genuine curiosity about another mind — has become rare. We’ve learned to narrate rather than connect. The world rewards performance; the louder the voice, the more visible the person. Silence has become suspect, humility unfashionable.

The result is a peculiar loneliness. We are surrounded by speech but starved of conversation. People drift apart not through hostility but through noise. The listener has become an endangered species, a relic of a slower, more reciprocal age.

Perhaps that’s why small, patient acts — building a model, tending a garden, writing an essay— feel so restorative. They demand attention, care, and quiet focus, the very qualities missing from most exchanges.

If conversation is dying, it isn’t from lack of words but from lack of space between them. The cure might be simple: a pause, a question, a willingness to hear. But in the current climate, that pause feels revolutionary.