Soilman

I’m having a midlife crisis.

No, not that kind. I hate Porsches, and can’t afford one. And I’m apparently invisible to simpering, leggy blondes (for which my wife is at least sporadically grateful).

It’s more like a who-the-fuck-am-I-anyway sort of crisis.

It derives, I suspect, from my working life – where so much has changed and is changing. I’m quite good at change, and mostly enjoy it. But my job is unrecognisable from the one I started 20-odd years ago.

I’m like a man who’s just arrived in Shanghai, and can recall every minute of what he did during the journey… but can’t remember where he came from.

Of the things that animated, exercised, obsessed, worried and delighted me even 10 years ago – let alone 20 – not one now remains. I am an utter stranger to my younger self.

Such a stranger, in fact, that the professional disconnection has bled into my non-work life. I feel like Dr Who after a regeneration. How the fuck did that guy turn into me? Was I ever him, or did I dream it?

Allotmenteering is about the only thing that connects me to the past. Not that I would have dreamed of growing a carrot 20 years ago, of course. But it’s the only thing I do now that I know the young man would at least have understood.

Everything else would be a total fucking mystery to him. Plus he’d be appalled by the size of my arse.