The Old Grey Thinker

The First Monday With Nothing to Prove The alarm went off at 5:47 and I lay there listening to it. Not thinking about getting up. Just listening. The way you listen to something that’s happening to someone else. I could turn it off. I could leave it. I could get up and stand under a shower for twenty minutes or I could stay in bed until the light changed. The choice was so complete it felt like a malfunction. For forty-five years, Monday morning was a verdict on who I was. The crew was counting on me. The vessel needed a captain who was present, alert, making decisions. Monday at 5:47 meant standing in the dark with a cup of tea, running through the weather briefing, running through the crew’s assignments, running through what could go wrong. The alarm was a sentence. I was the only one who could begin it. Now the alarm is just a sound. What’s strange about this freedom What’s strange about this freedom is that people imagine retirement as relief. You stop working, so...

My grandad possessed a remarkable gift. He could tell a story with such conviction that by the end of it you found yourself doubting basic science. If he'd announced he'd invented gravy, you'd have nodded and asked whether he'd patented it. His greatest claim, however, was that he was the inspiration for Andy Capp. Not "a bit like him." Not "once bumped into the cartoonist." No. According to Grandad, Reg Smythe knew him well, drank with him regularly, and quietly borrowed his entire personality for Britain's most famous flat-capped layabout. As a boy I believed every word. Why wouldn't I? Grandad certainly looked the part. He wore a flat cap that appeared to have been issued at birth. His cigarette permanently occupied the corner of his mouth like a docking pilot bringing in a tanker. He had perfected the art of leaning against walls in a way that suggested he'd been working ferociously for hours, despite not having mov...