No spoilers: LOST

There will be reviews of the finale springing up all over the internet in the coming days. They will range from "It was AWFUL" to "it was AWESOME," but that's not what I want to cover here. I want to talk about the part it's played in my life.

One of the main reasons I'm sorry to see Lost go is that it has served as a very effective, if transparent, excuse for hanging out with people I like for many years now. My family got me into it, having decided after the first three episodes that they liked it. I'm sure that, for them, the novelty wore off several seasons ago; and perhaps I'd have lost interest too, if it weren't for Stephen.

Stephen Wills is my honorary big brother. I've known him for my whole life, and craved his approval for about as long; in fact I'd say he was pretty instrumental in inspiring my lifelong love of geeks. I knew him when he was a blond-haired little boy playing with marbles, when he discovered Sonic the Hedgehog, when he was learning to drum and getting girlfriends... I'm a couple of years younger than him, so there was quite a while when we didn't really talk, but then we found out we had Lost in common. For a couple of seasons, my brother and sister and I would go to his flat to watch it with him. Then when he moved back to Newport, and I started doing my gap year work there, I'd watch it alone with him (and believe me, if I'd known how to hit on guys when I was 19, I would have done).

I grew up and moved away, although possibly not in that order; first to Plymouth, where I was alone, and then to Cardiff. In Cardiff I met Dan X. I picked up more or less where I'd left off with Stephen; going round to see him on a weekly basis and watching the latest episode. That's continued, sometimes with more people and sometimes not, right up until tonight. It's one of the things that helped me get to know a few people in Cardiff, so I guess it's one of the reasons this feels like home now.

This obsession has fuelled many discussions with my friends, ranging from vapid soap-opera style drama conversations through to philosophy and metaphysics. I'm helping to indoctrinate my friend Ben into the world of Lost, through which he's getting to know Dan as well. It's good to know that it's still doing that.

So I suppose it's time I found something new to obsess over. Any suggestions?

Kawaii LOST - Hurley and Smokey, originally uploaded by Jerrod Maruyama.

Learning to Read

When I was a young child, I had a very vivid imagination. This combined with a fairly sharp mind led me to develop an almost obsessive interest in books. I'd like to claim that reading is something I've always loved, but truth be told, it wasn't until I was told that I was very good at it - and taken off the primary school reading books to be let loose in the library at the age of nine - that I discovered how special it really was.

The first one I found in that library was the Story of Tracy Beaker, by Jacqueline Wilson: a book I chose entirely by its cover, and loved entirely for its imperfect, attitude-filled heroine. It took several years and several readings before I saw all the hints at just how biased she was as a narrator.

Between my newfound love of reading, writing, drawing, and staring out of windows, I viewed other kids as quite an inconvenient necessity - much like the set work our teachers gave us when I had better things to do.

Middle school was worse in a lot of ways. The constant buzz of other people in the background got louder, and it became clear that they didn't all approve of me. Naturally, my response to this was to spend more time alone in the library. I discovered Trillions by Nicholas Fisk when I was eleven or twelve, and that's how sci-fi got me. I read the Chronicles of Narnia (all seven, repeatedly), and that's how fantasy got me. I found that after a while, if you read hard enough, the buzz faded altogether and I could ignore the fact that I didn't really understand how other people worked.

In high school, however, there was no such refuge. The library was where people went to hang out, and even Discworld couldn't distract me from the fact that I needed to learn to interact. It took a couple of years and some very tolerant friends before I understood what 'other people' are at the age of fifteen. 

It finally started to make a kind of sense when I read - I forget which book now, but it echoed my own realisation - that "everybody is 'I'." The baffling buzz of a thousand confusing students became almost comprehensible as the clamour of a thousand voices trying to be heard. And at the age of seventeen, I learned the golden key to unlocking a person, nine times out of ten: smiling, saying hello, and being interested. And that the remaining one time isn't necessarily my fault, and it isn't necessarily theirs.

Am I happier now? Yes, in a lot of ways. If I ever have kids, I'll try to teach them about people before I teach them to read, although both skills must be learned over a lifetime. I miss being completely swallowed by books, it doesn't happen nearly as much these days; and I still misread people a lot of the time - but I still stare out of windows and daydream. So that's alright.

Nostalgia: the Bandstand

Well, I've been wanting to write this post for ages, but I really wanted to take my time with it. This post is about something very precious and important to me.

The church I went to growing up was boring. Dull, dull, dull. Don't get me wrong: I love it very much, and it will always feel like my home, but it was just impossible to get excited about singing those dirges from the 19th century. It was geared towards the older people, which made sense as there were loads of them, but for the kids... well, it failed to thrill us.

Which was why the Bandstand was so special.

That's what it was called, the Bandstand. It felt like a separate world. It happened in the summer, late on a Sunday night, and it was like nothing else I've ever experienced...

(I'm speaking, of course, with the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia perched on my nose. That's often how it goes with things that end before you grow up. I'm almost glad it did; doubtless it would never have been the same if I'd gone there as a teenager, sulking and scowling my way through the hymns...)

This is how it would happen: our mother, not wanting us to get tired while we were there, would insist that we take a nap beforehand. Let me tell you, never in my life was it harder to sleep than on a beautiful summer day before the Bandstand. Mum would close the heavy yellowy-gold curtains of our bedroom, and there in the yellow-gold light, we'd try (and often fail) to sleep.

Then we'd go to a little park in a little town on a little island. The birds in the aviary would chirp and sing as we passed, walking towards the river. Bright lights would illuminate the stepping stones, the beautiful plants, and the magical, elusive little fish that flitted through the water.

Most of my siblings fell in that river at one point! when it was my turn, it was a consequence of a selfless act... one of about three I committed before the age of 12. Maybe that's why I remember it. My brother was sailing a little leaf-boat past the stepping stones, reaching out to catch it as it floated past, until (inevitably) he let it go beyond the reach of his little boy arms. So, me being on Big Sister duty, I stretched to catch it... and fell in. The lights made everything so strange and beautiful, and I swear that in that half a second I saw the bright orange fishes swimming around me.

We weren't allowed to stay on the stepping stones, or to climb the trees, or to play in the park for long, though. Because over by the bandstand structure itself, in front of a little raised and covered platform near the trees, a tiny congregation would gather in the fading light as the night grew colder, singing from a little booklet of hymns. A friendly man with a goatee played the keyboard from the platform, playing the songs that we rarely sang outside of this one special occasion. I often wondered how the people who were so stiff and formal in a building on Sunday mornings, could be so at peace in the breathtaking wonder of nature?

Three or four minutes away from those harmonies that rose above the enthusiastic midges, was a playpark - a magical place for us kids. We'd go there every time, pretend the roundabout was taking us to places that only existed in our imaginations. And the swings! When you got them high enough, right at the top of the arc, you could see over the hedge to the edge of the world, where the sun set over neverending ocean, and nothing else. Just sea and sky. For those brief seconds, I could rise above all the world and be so completely free.

Even if there was never a God, that would be enough.

I know these songs will mean nothing to you, but to me, they mean so much. If you want to hear them, and you've got Spotify - I've only managed to remember / track down these three - click this link:
http://open.spotify.com/user/thiefree/playlist/4Yb0ZVGtOQGZNvwaHM4Cmq

This is a really long shot, but there was one song I remember the most. It was the one people would always be so eager to sing, another song that was unique to that time and that place - so much so that it's not online. Not anywhere. I've written what I remember of the lyrics below... if you can tell me anything about it, I'd be so grateful!

It's a new life, oh how He changed me
A new life, He rearranged me,
A new life, richer and fuller,
It's a wonderful, wonderful life!

Gone is the old life and gone are its chains,
Gone are the wrinkles and gone are the stains,
Gone is the darkness and gone is the night,
I have found Jesus, the truth and the life...

I went back once, years ago, and took these pictures. So although it wasn't the same - how could it be? - I at least have these reminders.