Category: Reflections

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.

(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.

(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.

There are moments in life when two worlds collide so sharply that you are left standing somewhere between them, unsure which one is real. That is how I felt today after speaking with my cousin, Mykhailo, in the Carpathian Mountains. One moment I was in my quiet house in Exeter, listening to the usual British chorus of complaints and hypotheticals; the next, I was looking through his phone camera at a life shaped by war, illness, and the simple struggle to endure.

From a Carpathian mountain top, the world looks different. Not because the mountains are high, but because life there strips away illusions. Everything is pared back to what matters: family, faith, land, and the strength of community. When you stand in that world — even for a moment — and then return to Britain, the contrast is almost unreal.

Mykhailo showed me around his smallholding, just as he did when I visited years ago. The cows, the chickens, the potatoes and vegetables that keep them alive. Nothing wasted, nothing taken for granted. Life there is still simple and basic in a way that Britain left behind long ago. Yet there is a dignity in it, a resilience that has carried the Hutsul people through empires, poverty, Soviet rule, and now war.

And then came the news about Katya.

It appears she has terminal cancer. The doctors say an operation will not help. Treatment must be paid for, and they have so little as it is. I remember her kindness to me when I visited — the warmth, the hospitality, the quiet strength. Now she faces suffering with a courage that seems almost beyond human. Mykhailo said something that stayed with me long after the call ended:
“Sometimes people are taken from us because their suffering becomes too much, even when they are the best among us.”

It is a hard truth, spoken without bitterness, only sadness.

After ending the call, I turned on the radio here in Britain. A phone‑in discussion about whether young people would fight for this country. Polls, opinions, arguments. People asking what Britain has ever done for them. People treating war as a theory, a distant possibility, something to be weighed like a consumer choice.

The contrast could not have been sharper.

There, war is a neighbour.
Here, war is a debate.
There, people endure because they must.
Here, people question because they can.

I do not blame anyone for this. It is natural. We compare ourselves only to those around us. We complain because we are free to complain. It is almost a birthright in this country. And I am as guilty of it as anyone. But deep down, I know how lucky I have been. The NHS has saved my life more than once. I have lived in peace. I have grown old without fear. These are not small things.

My Father used to say that people usually only learn when it is too late. I fear he was right. Peace allows societies to fragment, to become collections of individuals, each with their own grievances. War, terrible as it is, has a way of reminding people that they belong to one another. I am not praising war — far from it. I am saying only that war reveals what peace allows us to forget.

Speaking with Mykhailo brought all this home to me. His world is shaped by necessity, mine by choice. His community is held together by faith and family, mine by habit and convenience. And yet, in his quiet voice, in his sadness for Katya, in his simple courage, I heard something universal — something that crosses borders and languages.

In the end, courage is the one thing we must all have, whether we like it or not.

If I write this for anyone, it is for him. To show that someone here, in peaceful England, sees him, remembers him, and cares.

Погляд з карпатської вершини

Бувають у житті моменти, коли два світи стикаються так різко, що стоїш десь між ними й не знаєш, який із них справжній. Саме так я відчував себе після розмови з моїм кузеном Михайлом у Карпатах. Ще хвилину тому я сидів у своєму тихому домі в Ексетері, слухаючи звичний британський хор скарг і гіпотетичних міркувань; а вже наступної миті дивився через камеру його телефона на життя, сформоване війною, хворобою і простою боротьбою за виживання.

З карпатської вершини світ виглядає інакше. Не тому, що гори високі, а тому, що життя там знімає всі ілюзії. Усе зводиться до найголовнішого: родини, віри, землі та сили громади. Коли хоч на мить побуваєш у тому світі, а потім повертаєшся до Британії, контраст здається майже нереальним.

Михайло показував мені своє господарство, так само як і тоді, коли я був у них. Корови, кури, картопля, й овочі, що дозволяють їм вижити. Нічого зайвого, нічого марного. Життя там і досі просте й скромне так, як у Британії вже давно не буває. Але в цьому є гідність, стійкість, яка допомогла гуцулам пережити імперії, злидні, радянську владу, а тепер і війну.

А потім прозвучала новина про Катю.

У неї невиліковний рак. Лікарі кажуть, що операція не допоможе. За лікування треба платити, а в них і так майже нічого немає. Я пам’ятаю її доброту до мене під час мого візиту — тепло, гостинність, тиху силу. Тепер вона зустрічає страждання з мужністю, що здається майже надлюдською. Михайло сказав слова, які довго не виходили з моєї голови: «Іноді людей забирають, бо їхні страждання стають надто великими, навіть якщо це найкращі серед нас».

Це важка правда, сказана без гіркоти — лише з сумом.

Після розмови я ввімкнув радіо тут, у Британії. Телефонна лінія: чи стали б молоді люди захищати свою країну. Опитування, думки, суперечки. Люди питають, що Британія зробила для них. Люди говорять про війну як про теорію, далеку можливість, щось, що можна зважувати, як товар у магазині.

Контраст не міг бути різкішим.

Там війна — сусід. Тут війна — дискусія. Там люди тримаються, бо мусять. Тут люди ставлять під сумнів, бо можуть.

Я нікого за це не засуджую. Це природно. Ми порівнюємо себе лише з тими, хто поруч. Ми скаржимося, бо маємо свободу скаржитися. Це майже наша національна риса. І я сам не кращий. Але в глибині душі я знаю, наскільки мені пощастило. NHS не раз рятувала мені життя. Я жив у мирі. Я старію без страху. Це не дрібниці.

Мій батько казав, що люди вчаться лише тоді, коли вже пізно. Боюся, він мав рацію. Мир дозволяє суспільству розпадатися на окремі частини, ставати зібранням індивідів, кожного зі своїми образами. Війна, якою б жахливою вона не була, нагадує людям, що вони належать одне одному. Я не вихваляю війну — зовсім ні. Я лише кажу, що війна відкриває те, про що мир дозволяє забути.

Розмова з Михайлом нагадала мені про це. Його світ сформований необхідністю, мій — вибором. Його громада тримається на вірі й родині, моя — на звичці й зручності. Але в його тихому голосі, у смутку за Катею, у його простій мужності я почув щось універсальне — те, що долає кордони й мови.

У кінці кінців мужність — це те, що мусить мати кожен із нас, хочемо ми того чи ні.

Якщо я пишу це для когось, то для нього. Щоб показати, що тут, у мирній Англії, є людина, яка бачить його, пам’ятає про нього і щиро переймається.

The Falklands have appeared in the news again, and with them an unexpected consequence: a forgotten chapter of my own life has resurfaced. It’s hard to believe it was forty‑four years ago. I was a young man then, and in a place no one would expect — Kiev, in Soviet Ukraine.

Why I was there is a story in itself. Partly it was my background: both my parents were Ukrainian, and I had always felt a pull toward the country they left behind. But there was another reason too, one that stung at the time. The British government had recently introduced new security rules that barred people like me — with two Ukrainian parents — from working in certain areas of public service. I had just graduated, full of plans, only to discover that my heritage disqualified me. It felt like a door slamming shut.

So I went to the Soviet Union. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. Perhaps I was looking for a sense of belonging, or perhaps I was simply reacting to the feeling of rejection at home. In any case, there I was in Kiev, living in a strange mixture of curiosity, ambivalence, and cultural dislocation.

And then, toward the end of my stay, the Falklands war erupted.

I was shocked. It seemed absurd that such a conflict could happen in the late twentieth century. People asked my opinion, but I had almost no access to reliable news — just the occasional BBC World Service broadcast, fading in and out. I couldn’t form a steady picture of what was happening or why. All I knew was that something extraordinary was unfolding, and I was watching it from behind the Iron Curtain.

At first, the Soviet officials around me tried to maintain a polite neutrality. My uncle even looked up the islands on his Soviet map and pointed out the word printed next to them: spornie — “disputed.” But it didn’t take long for the propaganda machine to warm up. Soon Britain was being denounced as a neo‑colonialist aggressor, and Argentina was cast as the heroic anti‑imperialist underdog. I remember being shown a propaganda film that was so one‑sided it made my stomach turn.

By that point, I was already wilting from my time in the country — the atmosphere, the distortions, the constant ideological pressure. The Falklands coverage was almost a final straw. And then something unexpected happened. Instead of distancing me from Britain, the propaganda had the opposite effect. I began to feel a renewed sense of connection, even pride. Not because Britain was perfect — I knew its flaws all too well — but because, in the end, it was home. And from Kiev, of all places, I could suddenly see that more clearly than ever.

The final twist came in May, when the British victory was announced. It happened to coincide with the Soviet Union’s own Victory Day celebrations — Den’ Pobediy, the commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany. I walked into the office of my Soviet mentors, raised my fist, and declared, “Den’ Pobediy!” But I wasn’t referring to 1945. I meant the Falklands.

They knew exactly what I meant. They couldn’t say a word.

Looking back now, it feels like a small, strange, intensely personal moment — a collision of identity, history, and youthful defiance. And perhaps that’s why it has stayed with me. It was the moment I realised that, despite everything, Britain was my home.

And as for my friend, Bob, back in the UK, who wrote to me sporadically through the unreliable Soviet post, his summary of the whole affair still makes me smile. He called it a “rum do.” Try translating that into Russian!

Looking back, that cry of “Den’ Pobediy!” was probably one of my finest moments. It summed up something essential about me: a tendency toward mischief, a taste for the absurdities of life, and a habit of taking the occasional pot‑shot at authority — but always obliquely, never crudely. The sort of remark that seems harmless on the surface, yet lands with a quiet thud of meaning. Even now, I can still see the expressions on their faces. They understood perfectly. And that, I admit, gave me no small satisfaction.

Footnote: A Small Act of Entomological Dissent. The First Crack in the Soviet System.

There is one more small episode from my time in Kiev that deserves mention, if only because it still makes me smile. In the meeting room where we Western students occasionally gathered with Soviet officials, there stood a bust of Lenin — just his head on a plinth, gazing sternly across the room. One day, feeling particularly fed up with the atmosphere of ideological earnestness, I found a dead fly on the windowsill and, without much thought, placed it delicately on Lenin’s bald pate.

It sat there for days.

No one noticed — or if they did, they said nothing. The moment only came to light later, when an American friend, looking at an official photograph, spotted a tiny black dot on Lenin’s head and marvelled that a fly would dare land there. I had to confess that it hadn’t landed at all; I had put it there. He was astonished. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had anyone caught me in this act of microscopic subversion. Perhaps there was a clause in the Soviet penal code against defacing public statuary, especially of the great leader. But I needn’t have worried. I got away with it.

And if the Soviet Union began to wobble soon after, who’s to say my little fly didn’t play its part?

The real subversion wasn’t placing the fly there, but knowing that no one dared acknowledge it.

Final Reflection: Between Worlds

Looking back, I realise that much of what I saw in Kiev — the propaganda, the silences, the absurdities, the tiny acts of mischief — made sense to me precisely because I stood between worlds. My Ukrainian relatives, who lived inside that system, couldn’t see it from the angle I did. My friends in the West, no matter how well informed, couldn’t quite grasp the texture of life behind the Iron Curtain. I occupied a narrow strip of ground between the two, able to see both perspectives yet not fully claimed by either. It was an odd place to stand, but it gave me a clarity I’ve carried ever since.

A small parable of our times

There I was, late on a Saturday evening, drifting between thoughts about ideology, AI, German history, the nature of consciousness, and the meaning of life — when there came a knock at the door.

A knock at 8.30pm. On a Saturday. In St Thomas.

I opened one eye, wondering whether it was an emergency, a neighbour in distress, or perhaps the universe sending me a sign. Instead, standing at my gate was a small, slightly forlorn woman holding a briefcase at an angle that suggested both “Authority” and “Please don’t shout at me.” Her head was cocked to one side in a way that instantly reminded me of the pigeons I’d seen earlier in town — the ones who hover hopefully near your sandwich, waiting for a crumb of human kindness.

She addressed me by name, apologised for the hour, and then — with the earnestness of someone who had clearly rehearsed this line — asked whether I agreed that Kemi was doing a wonderful job. It was only then, still half‑asleep and without my tooth plate, that the penny dropped: I was being canvassed.

At 8.30pm. On a Saturday. By a woman barely taller than my gate, standing like a hopeful pigeon with a briefcase.

What followed was a surreal exchange involving weeds, public conveniences, and my attempt to speak without opening my lips. But the moment itself — that knock interrupting my reflections on the fate of ideology — felt like a perfect snapshot of the times we live in: the examined life colliding with the unexamined world.

“The Weeds, the Loos, and the Pigeon‑Postured Canvasser”

Once I’d recovered from the shock of seeing a pigeon‑postured emissary of democracy at my gate, she launched into the standard script. Potholes, she said, were a major concern in the area. This is now compulsory in British politics — the pothole has become the national symbol of decline, the secular equivalent of original sin.

But as I no longer have a car, potholes are not high on my personal hierarchy of needs. I told her so, trying to speak without revealing the absence of my tooth plate, which gave the whole exchange the air of a man attempting to negotiate municipal policy through ventriloquism.

She looked momentarily lost, as if the briefing notes had not prepared her for a constituent who did not drive. So I glanced across the road for inspiration and saw the neighbour’s wall, sprouting weeds like a botanical uprising. And out it came:

“Weeds. That is the problem that most concerns me.”

Her face lit up. Weeds! A breakthrough! A real issue she could sink her teeth into — unlike me, who at that moment had no teeth to sink anywhere.

She nodded vigorously, as if I had just revealed a deep structural flaw in the British constitution. “Oh yes, weeds,” she said. “They are a terrible problem.”

I could see her mentally filing it away in the briefcase: St Thomas — plagued by weeds.

Then came the second question: “Anything else?”

By this point I was becoming acutely aware of my bladder. I am, as they say, in that demographic. So I mentioned the lack of public conveniences in town — many having been shut down over the years. This, too, delighted her. Her eyes widened with the joy of a canvasser who has finally found a talking point that fits the demographic before her.

“For someone such as yourself,” she said, with the tact of a well‑meaning but slightly clumsy niece, “how do you manage?”

I explained that being on a bike, I could fly back down the hill in minutes if nature called. This seemed to reassure her. She nodded solemnly, as if I had revealed a personal resilience strategy worthy of a government white paper.

And the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I realised how extraordinarily lucky she had been to knock on my door. Anywhere else in St Thomas at 8.30pm on a Saturday and her fate might have been very different.

Had she tried:

• a house full of football fans mid‑match
• a house waiting for a pizza delivery
• a house deep into Britain’s Got Talent
• a house with a dog that treats doorbells as a personal insult

…she might have found herself retreating down the path at speed, briefcase held over her head like a shield. In some parts of town, she would have been fortunate to escape with the briefcase intact, let alone her morale or dignity.

And then it struck me: in other parts of the world, a knock at the door at 8.30pm on a Saturday might mean something far more dramatic. The local mafia coming to collect their weekly cut. The police arriving to frame you for the neighbourhood murder. Someone desperate, seeking refuge from deportation. But here, in Britain, I get a lady with a briefcase doing a passable impression of a pigeon. Only in Britain.

But she came to me — half‑asleep, tooth plate missing, bladder protesting — and still received a polite conversation about weeds and public conveniences. I suspect her campaign manager knew exactly what they were doing. I was the “safe constituent, who does not bite type” the one unlikely to bark, slam, or threaten to insert the briefcase into the nearest dimension.

As I closed the door behind her, I stood for a moment in the hallway, wondering whether I had dreamt the whole thing. The surreal timing, the pigeon‑postured earnestness, the weeds, the public loos, the briefcase held like a relic of authority — it all felt like a scene from a play written by someone who had only a passing acquaintance with reality.

And yet, on deeper reflection, the more it seemed to capture something essential about the age we live in. A time when the great narratives have dissolved, when politics has become a kind of travelling theatre, and when the boundary between public life and private life has thinned to the point of absurdity. A time when a man can be sitting quietly, contemplating ideology, AI, German history, consciousness, and the meaning of life — only to be jolted back into the world by a knock at the door and a question about potholes.

The lady herself may vanish from the statistics after the election. Her briefcase may return to whatever cupboard it came from. Her pigeon‑like posture may never again grace my gate. But she will not be lost to time. Not while I have a garden chair, a German history book, and a website on which to record the small, strange parables of our age.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really must find the loo.

This is, in the plainest sense, a post about a post. Yet I hope you’ll find, as I did, that even the most ordinary things can become signposts to something higher.

It began, as these things often do, with something small: a rotted door post at the back of the house.

A trivial repair on paper, but not in feeling. A weakened frame is a weakened sense of safety, and after weeks of shifty voices, inflated quotes, and the slow erosion of trust that comes from dealing with people who see you as a mark rather than a person, the post had become a quiet source of unease.

I had almost resigned myself to the usual run of cowboys when a young local man named Alex arrived.

He was younger than most in his line of work, quietly spoken, calm, and carrying a van full of tools that looked less like equipment and more like extensions of his mind. A mini band saw he assembled on the pavement. Every kind of cutter, chisel, and drill. The sort of kit only someone who cares would invest in.

He assessed the job, quoted a very fair price, and then — despite being fully booked until July — offered to do it that very afternoon.

And he did.

Not quickly. Not grudgingly. But with the kind of patient attention that belongs to people who take pride in doing things properly.

He refashioned the batten again and again, shaving it, adjusting it, checking the fit, not because he had to, but because he wanted it right.

When I apologised for the difficulty, he smiled and said he enjoyed the problem‑solving. How many tradesmen say that?

A Byzantine Aside

When he told me his name was Alex, my mind — in the Byzantine labyrinth it has become — immediately leapt to Alexius Komnenos, the emperor who once inherited a realm in disarray and set about restoring what had decayed. Not that a Byzantine ruler had suddenly appeared on Buller Road with a mini band saw, but the association wasn’t entirely inappropriate. After my Father died, the house passed to me in a state that could only be described as an inherited mess, and I’ve been on the strategic defensive ever since — leaking roof on one flank, collapsing fence on another, rotting posts breaching the perimeter. And here was a young man, calm and capable, restoring order to a small corner of my world with a seriousness and care the emperor might have envied.

He fetched the wood — despite fuel prices rising. He painted the finished post. He swept up every shaving. He took away the rotten timber. He charged less than agreed, because, as he put it, “not everyone has a lot.”

And then, in the quiet way people sometimes reveal themselves, he told me a little of his life.

A father who left a paid job for an unpaid one because it helped people in alms houses. A friend whose dog‑walking business he supported by designing an advert and placing it in the local magazine. A gut condition brought on by stress. Two small tattoos hidden beneath his watch strap — symbols he looks at when times are hard, reminders never to despair.

A young man who has possibly come up from a dark place, and chosen decency rather than bitterness.

A rare bird.

And as I watched him work, I realised the post he was repairing was no longer just a post.

It had become something else — a small, sturdy monument to the Good.

Not the good of philosophy books, not the good of sermons or slogans, but the good that manifests quietly in the way a person behaves when no one is watching.

The good that doesn’t preach, but simply is.

After years of dealing with people who put money before people, Alex reminded me that goodness still exists — not in grand gestures, but in the careful refashioning of a batten, the fair price, the swept pavement, the hidden tattoo, the ethos inherited from a father who believed in service.

And so the post now stands at the back of my house, straight and solid, painted and true.

But for me, it will always be more than timber.

It will be a reminder that the good is real, that it still walks among us, and that sometimes — when you most need it — it arrives in a battered van with sliding doors and a young man named Alex.

A gentle guide to slowing down while the world gallops past

There comes a point in life — somewhere around 67, give or take a few dents and scratches — when you realise the world has become a horse in full gallop. Everyone is rushing: rushing to buy things, rushing to build things, rushing to comment on things, rushing to be outraged by things. The whole planet seems to be spinning faster and faster, as if someone has quietly turned up the speed without asking permission.

But then I sit down at my modelling table.

And the world… stops.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically. It simply stops. Time flattens out, the noise fades, and the only thing that exists is the part in front of me — a wing root, a canopy frame, a tiny piece of plastic that demands nothing except my full attention. In that moment, the world ceases its mad rotation and becomes still.

I sometimes think everyone should experience that feeling, even for a minute. If they did, perhaps we’d all treat the world — and each other — with a little more care. Perhaps we’d stop galloping and start walking again.

I once knew a Korean diplomat at university. His friend told me, with a mixture of admiration and disbelief, that he could take half an hour to peel an orange. Half an hour! At the time I thought it was eccentric. Now I understand it completely. He wasn’t peeling an orange — he was refusing to be rushed by the world’s tempo.

Perhaps his Buddhist religion or philosophy had something to do with it:

He was living at the speed of attention.

That’s what modelling has become for me. Not a race to finish, not a competition, not a stash‑building exercise. Just a slow, attentive act. A way of being present. A way of reminding myself that life is finite, precious, and best lived one careful brushstroke at a time.

Each model I make now, I treat as if it might be my last — not in a morbid way, but in a grateful way. A way that says: I’m still here. I’m still making something. I’m still paying attention.

And if the hobby has become a galloping horse, then perhaps someone needs to stand by the fence and say, “You know… you don’t need a thousand parts. You don’t need to build hundreds of kits. You don’t need to rush. You can just slow down, breathe, and enjoy the feeling of making something with care.”

A Note on Three Kits Found in a Hospice Shop

Not long ago, I found three kits in the local Hospice shop — an Italeri 1/48 Sabre, an ICM Spitfire, and a Red Arrows Hawk. Nothing exotic, nothing rare, nothing engineered to within an inch of its life. Just simple, honest kits from a quieter era, before the hobby ballooned into mega‑monster monstrosities of parts, stress, and over‑engineering.

They reminded me of what modelling used to be: a few sprues, a handful of parts, and the promise of a weekend well spent.

And one of them — the Sabre — did something more. It took me straight back to the child I was, spinning around in St Thomas Park with a little Sabre I’d found, pretending it was flying. I can still feel the weight of it in my hand, still remember the joy of that moment. Funny how a single shape, a single nose ring, can carry a lifetime of memory.

Those three kits felt like a quiet message: Slow down. Enjoy this. Remember why you started.

They’re not just models. They’re reminders of a simpler rhythm — one worth returning to.

Addendum: Three Small Summits

And since every philosophy benefits from a practical footnote, here are mine — the three modest peaks I still hope to climb:

1. A true natural‑metal finish, with panels that shift subtly in the light.
2. A perfect gloss coat, smooth as still water.
3. A delicate Italian squiggle or dot camouflage, confident and alive.

If I reach even one of them, I’ll feel as though I’ve sat on a small summit for a moment, looking around, quietly satisfied.

And perhaps that’s all any of us can hope for: a few small summits, climbed slowly, with care.

The other day, I had someone clear the mass of weeds that had overrun my small back garden. On Easter Sunday, I stood outside with a cup of coffee, looking over the newly turned soil, when I noticed a greyish shape half-emerging from the earth. I bent down, and immediately recognised it: an Airfix 1/72 scale figure – a German soldier from the First World War, kneeling, rifle raised.

Time had not been kind to him. The tip of his Mauser Gewehr 98 carbine was gone, and soon after I picked him up, the spike of his helmet fell away. He must have lain there for fifty years or more, buried, forgotten, and now – quite suddenly – returned, as if blinking in the light, into a world entirely changed.

I felt, almost at once, that this small figure – whom I named Feldwebel Hermann – might stir something beyond myself. So I took a photograph and shared it, along with the story of his discovery. What followed surprised me. Messages began to arrive from across the world: Bavaria, Australia, England – each carrying echoes of childhood. Stories of beaches and gardens, of lost toys and rediscovered ones; of small battles fought in sandpits and fields; of plastic soldiers, Matchbox cars, farm animals, and the quiet, imaginative worlds children once inhabited so completely.

It became clear, very quickly, that Hermann was no longer simply mine.

He had become a point of recognition.

Not because of what he is – but because of what he carries.

A fragment of plastic, no larger than a thumbnail, and yet within him something vast seemed to reside: a store of memory, of time, of shared experience that transcended place and language, something close to what Carl Jung might have called a shared symbolic layer of experience – not abstract, but deeply lived.

In him, people did not see a soldier so much as themselves – children again, absorbed in play, in a world that felt whole, continuous, and unbroken.

It is a curious thing, that in an age of boundless communication, it should be something so small, so ordinary, that draws people together. We are surrounded by devices that promise connection, yet so often leave us dispersed – each in our own stream of images and impressions, our own fragment of the present, endlessly renewed and just as quickly forgotten.

And yet Hermann endured.

For decades he lay beneath the soil, outside of time, untouched by the acceleration that has since overtaken us. When he re-emerged, he seemed to carry with him not only the past, but a different quality of time – slower, deeper, more continuous. The kind of time in which memory and meaning are allowed to gather.

Perhaps that is why he resonated.

For beneath all the noise and fragmentation of the present, there remains, I think, a quiet yearning – for simplicity, for continuity, for those small, human things that do not demand attention, but offer recognition. Hermann does not speak loudly. He does not compete. He simply is. And in that stillness, something in us answers.

It brings to mind an old Chinese adage: “The right man sitting in his house and thinking the right thought will be heard a hundred miles distant.”

Perhaps that is what happened here. Not through noise or intention, but through the quiet truth of the moment – a small figure, a simple thought, travelling farther than one might ever expect.

“Vergesst mich nicht,” he seems to say.

Do not forget me.

But perhaps what he asks us not to forget is not himself, but what he has come to represent: a world in which experience was shared more easily, in which meaning was not endlessly deferred, in which even the smallest object could hold a universe of imagination.

I have not forgotten him.

In time, I may place him on a small plinth, or perhaps set him in a quiet corner of the garden, something like a veteran’s shelter – half memorial, half offering. Not to honour the figure alone, but the thread he has uncovered: the fragile continuity between past and present, between one life and another, between memory and meaning.

For a moment, through him, something of that continuity returned.

And perhaps, in his own modest way, Feldwebel Hermann has done what so much else struggles to do: he has brought people, however briefly, back into relation – with themselves, with each other, and with the deeper currents of time that run beneath the surface of our hurried lives.

He sits on my desk as I write this, small, battered, uncomplaining – a fragment of the past that somehow made its way back. Perhaps that is all any of us hope for: that something of what we were might one day be found again.