Neatly folded knitwear

This is a public service announcement. The following useful reminders are to be deployed liberally and, where necessary, repeatedly. Best enjoyed with food, or without. Standing, sitting, lying, or doing that weird thing that happens in a beanbag. A cup of tea is, as is the case in life generally, recommended but by no means compulsory. Cake optional.

Let us begin. Here are some things to remember at all times. Pay close attention.

There is a certain type of turtle, already an excellent animal by any measure, that is able, when required, to breathe through its bottom.

There is nothing bad about bare footprints in the sand. They feel good. They look good. They get washed away by a body of water that is powered by the moon.

The average age of a first time novelist is just under forty years old. Just because you might feel a hundred and ten sometimes doesn’t mean you can’t try something for the first time.

Sunsets exist. Everywhere.

Not only that, but due to the way the earth curves and light travels, when you’re looking at the sun sinking into the horizon, it’s actually already gone. It’s a fact and a pretty picture and a trick all at the same time.

Sometimes, someone might leave the house, and you’re alone, and you’re pottering about, and you go and touch the kettle and it’s warm and something about that makes the silence feel less silent because it feels like the now absent person saying a quiet hello from the half-an-hour-ago past. Or something. Or maybe it doesn’t and that’s just me but either way you’re probably about to make a cup of tea, so that’t an excellent development.

Babies laugh in their sleep. With virtually no life experience, some deep human instinct finds delight and bursts with it through the thick sleep of unconsciousness.

Somebody thought of the name for cinnamon. Who was that? Did it sound right immediately? Or is it just that after a lifetime of associating the word ‘cinnamon’ with the taste and smell of cinnamon, it feels dusty and sweet and subtle and comforting? Would it work if it were called ‘yarp’?

You know what’s an amazing feat of engineering? The human ear. No kidding. Have a look at a diagram of the human ear. It has a little bouncy garage door type thing and a drum and a filter and a drainage system. Superb work in the planning and development stages on that particular project.

There are some species of bird that travel across the globe at the same time each year, as a group, beaten to a pulp by the elements, risking their lives, and the main thing that enables them to do this is that they can sleep with one eye open and only use half their brain at a time. It is arguable that humans deploy similar skills when watching reality television or secretly live tweeting a staff meeting but these birds shut down parts of their brains quite purposefully in order to cross the earth while half asleep. What a bunch of legends.

Neatly folded knitwear in colour-sorted rows: retail perfection. 

While we’re at it: seeing someone you are getting to know but don’t yet know terribly well deploying their organisational and creative capacity to deal with a new season is incredibly revealing of a person’s character. Are you, for instance, a one-umbrella type of person? Was it expensive? Do you keep the umbrella sleeve in a special compartment in your bag or is it too big for a sleeve? Do you carry a cloth for wiping it down? Or… does your umbrella policy involve attempting to remember whether you own an umbrella, finding one you don’t remember buying (misshapen and unbound) and swearing at the broken little wire skeleton bits that fling out like drunk mosquitos and slap you until you find another one in a bar and walk it home at four in the morning? Do you scarf or do you never scarf? When it’s raining and there is no cover, do you do the flattened rain run or are you too good for that? A new season reveals a lot. Pay close attention.

These are important considerations. Hold them close. This has been a public service announcement.

An edited version of this column appears regularly in The Big Issue, which is excellent and which you should all buy immediately.