It’s been my last week at work. I’ve only been there six weeks or so but having the job – pretty run of the mill bar & waitering stuff – has really helped take myself out of me and bring much-needed perspective. Maybe the best thing has been the bike rides to and from there, cutting through the middle of this great flood plain; on the way descending into it like a rollercoaster from on high, the sky huge and thunderous above me, to the side of me and right there in front of me. I pass through it in maybe a minute, but its enough to take me somewhere else – a great kinetic feeling, moving at speed through this big powerful scene so busy with life, the bike straining to get me there on time. It reminds me of the beginning of that R. Pirsig book, and how this moment is alive, not more TV as I would see from behind the bars of a car. And it happens in a place is just around the corner from home, it’s quality at last realised by imminent departures and thoughts of goodbye.

On my last day, Friday, it was really amazing – the clouds were racing, the gigantic wind tearing around me and buffeting my bike as I strained eyes and ears to take in the size of the scene, to capture the trees, the fields, the bits I’d never noticed before, the horses in the distant fields, that rolling cloud and right back to the bumpy road passing by underneath. “There’s a storm coming” was the only thought to grace my head (a film quote maybe, but that’s what appeared)... yet it fitted the moment just right. And so, gulping in air and smiling like a man at once free of all burden, that’s what I shouted, all the way home, because work is now over, everything is out of the way, and in this little life there’s an unknown storm coming, one I can’t quite bear, but one into which I can’t wait to ride!

And it's that kind of feeling I wish stayed close by when all of that scene has long disappeared and what's left is some office, some desk or some problem just filling the mind and filling the day... forgetting that that feeling is just over there