Doing a runner to greener pastures
Dan Bourke is covered in mud and dancing, and it's not because he's been drinking
Maybe it's all the expectant talk about green shoots of recovery, but I appear to have grown an interest in, of all things, gardening.
What is this strange feeling?
Surely bank holiday weekends are for drinking yourself into a merry pirouette all day in the Spice Island on the river in Rotherhithe, then in your living room later standing on a chair shouting "let's make a week of it".
But the Spice Island is called something else now and I left Rotherhithe a long time ago. I have started to feel sickly guilty about all the shouting our neighbours had to hear.
Are my partying days over? The other day I went out for a meal and the coffee left me buzzing and sleepless and waiting for the comedown. We passed Fabric on the way back to the bus.
The festivals I'm drawn to are places where my beard will fit right in.
And I'm really excited about maybe being able to take due-pretty-soon Concrete Pencil Jnr along to them for the day.
I don't know how likely that is (about as likely as me getting to use the name I want for them: Rufus Rawnsley Paddington Townes Lionel Daniel Bourke II).
But that's not the point. I'm really looking forward to the prospect not of some hedonistic time away from responsibilities and sensibleness, but of taking the Volvo for a spin.
I think this is where the gardening comes in - or is what makes the gardening make sense.
We have been lucky enough to have a scrubby patch out the back for two years, and we've made the most of it by smoking in it, drying our clothes in it and letting the local wildlife (rats) run free.
But yesterday I had to stop myself grinning as I picked out some of the thousands of stones in a little strip I'd dug up the back.
And as I planted the runner-bean seeds I had a little runner-bean song in my head to which I was, I'm pretty sure, dancing. ("Runner, runner, runner, runner, runner, runner, runner, runner BE-EANS.")
I've probably done it wrong and it probably won't grow and someone will probably come along and sneer at my efforts.
But I don't care.
I fear I have taken an irreversible step into becoming older and more boring and less likely to spontaneously get drunk and say things like "let's make a week of it".
And I don't care.
So if you see me about the place talking intently to someone, I'm probably tossing on about poppies or dibbers or soil quality. You have been warned: keep away.
Dan also writes at blogs.mirror.co.uk/opposite-of-work
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