Daydreaming

Here we are again, my loyal reader(s), on another fine Scottish spring day. It’s 9 degrees out there, the sun is hiding behind the clouds, and I don’t feel like working. Not at all. Bad news for science, no news for me.















Terry Wogan and The Beatles will have to wait, as today I will be talking about my recent experience in daydreaming/hallucinating – not sure which, probably both.

I was walking towards the centre of St Andrews (ha! The irony), passing by the road works to put down new tarmac on a street where it’s not really needed. I was walking slowly, hands in pockets, looking at my legs and feet moving, inhaling fresh asphalt, when the sight of Scottish pavement disappeared before my eyes.

I found myself looking at my feet in old white trainers going up to bare calves and shorts; the feeling of a t-shirt flapping around my body, and a hat on my head. My feet are kicking up pale yellow dust from the dirt road and kicking gravel as I walk. I’m hot and cold at the same time, as I’m sweating and the breeze blowing cools me down.

I can hear the sea, the constant sound of little waved breaking on rocks in the cliff just to my left, and voices from the people on the beach some distance away. I can hear the sound of old boat engines clucking their way out to sea. If I concentrate, I can just about hear the sound blowing through the patch of trees lower down in the bay, the sound of distant cicadas on those trees, I can almost feel the welcoming coolness of their shade. I’m aware of little grasshoppers doing what they do best – hopping, of course – in the road ahead of me.

I’m fourteen again, I have not a single worry in the world, and I’m on holiday in Astypalaia. I'm happy.

















I blink again and the vision’s gone; I’m back in St Andrews, I’m 27 years old, I have a PhD to finish and decisions to make about my life in the near future.

Cruel and kind at the same time my mind is, giving with one hand and taking back with the other.

Back to work.