And Go On Doing It - A Practical Guide to some of Life's Top Things (no 6 of 10)

Hey, you know this practical guide to some of life’s best things that you are publishing every Sunday?

Yes.

Well, it’s not very practical is it?

What do you mean?

Well, shouldn’t a practical guide tell you how to do things?

Yes.

And?

It does.

It does?

It does - eat blackberries, in a zen-metaphory way, create, build memories and give and take surprises - like that guy said.

John what’s-his-name?

No,the other one, the writer. Em, American – began with V I think.

What did he say?

Something like “there’s no point in studying history, all it ever teaches you is to be surprised”.

So, I should go out and eat metaphorical blackberries, create, build some memories and be surprised and I’ll have a good life?

It might help, you can be surprising too- but there’s more.

There is?

There is.

(together) NUMBER SIX!

For which, I have to tell you a story….

It begins in a field in Essex and ends in a wood near Kendal, though to be honest I’m not sure which happened first – maybe it started in a wood in Kendal and ended in a field in Essex. It was definitely a field in Essex and not a wood and vice versa with respect to Kendal, a beautiful wood alongside a wild hill stream and a track that lead to what once had been a mill driven by the river’s rush.

So lets just say that the two happened simultaneously; that at the same moment I took this photo in the cobweb enhanced mill workshop somewhere near Kendal I met Thom Pod for the first time in a field in Essex.

Thom Pod is American but I think his family was Polish and either way he was a bit of a gypsy who played saxophone and could make all sorts of sound effects with his mouth - which he did, as he accompanied Daniel Rovai as he clowned on stage.

And Thom Pod had a van, and a house hidden secretly in a quarry in Cornwall and I was in the quarry buying his van, certainly after the field - but maybe, or maybe not, before the wood – when he gave me this piece of advice, which scary at first has helped me with most of things I’ve done since : -

“Take a chance, that’s what it’s all about.”

Which is when I simultaneously took this photo up in a mill in a wood near Kendal.