Young Old Man.

Today I was caught picking up conkers on the way to University. Caught by two parties, actually - one a mother and child, and the other a pair of multiply pierced and tattooed young people who were obviously much cooler than I am. The mother looked at me with a mixture of pity - as if I'd suffered extensive brain-damage through some terrible mishap and was reduced to slouching around town slack-jawed picking things up and muttering distractedly under my breath - and distaste, as if I was fondling, shall we say, a dead Magpie and cooing over it.

The second party were obviously trying quite hard not to laugh. I railed at this, actually, but since I am not very tall, genetically scruffy, and shaved off my homeless beard, I am not a very imposing figure, not that I necessarily was pre-beard.

All of which made me think (As I strode indignantly along, sucking furiously on a cigarette and stomping more than was strictly necessary) that said conker actually meant more to me as an adult (I use the word with caution) than as a child.

When I was a child, the only things I cared about were essentially Lego and the pursuit of Monster Munch. Oh, there were things like family and the embryonic flickers of an interest in writing and stuff like that, but no, pretty much the only things I clutched close to my heart were making extravagantly beweaponed space ships - or failing that, gluing torpedeo tubes and lasers onto my sister's Sylvanian Family toys; everything is improved with a weapon of mass destruction taped to it, even Kinder Egg toys - and Flamin' Hot Monster Munch. God, how I loved Flamin' Hot Monster Munch. I would've mugged the most hazel-eyed, tousle-haired hobbity toddler for a pack of them. Still would.

Conkers were fun in the playground - I eventually found that the basic boiling-conkers-in-vinegar hardening process could be reinforced with a superglue glaze; risky, seeing as UHU Superglue is one of the most lethal substances known to man; I once glued a Spitfire to my forehead by mistake and went around with the imprint of the RAF on my forehead for some days afterwards - but there the buck stopped. Once you'd demolished your opponent and had been carried round the playground by squeaking minions, lordly declaiming your mastery of the fruit of the horse-chesnut, you'd sort of reached the end. Anyway, conkers were only about for a little bit of autumn, and then you had to go back to pretending to be Sonic The Hedgehog and tormenting the weakest or indeed most ginger of the group.

I am aware all of this makes me sound like one of those children who motored around the playground solo making whooshing noises while the other children shunned them in case they, you know, bit them or something. Nothing could be further from the truth; I was a sensitive, cornflower blue-eyed and radiantly blonde and charming child with, admittedly, a terrible, terrible haircut.

Anyway, the ginger kid in question was, I promise, pathologically insane and continues to be a dangerous person to this day - I believe he has diverted his mania into Manga these days, which is at least mildly reassuring, even though I believe Manga is for lonely, lonely people, more so then Leonard Cohen and heroin, even - and the hair colour is in this case only relevant for reasons of categorization, obviously.

Now, on the other hand, there is something deeply satisfying about a shiny, organically tough horse-chesnut. Or walking around a corner just as the sun comes out. Or pulling your hood over your head when it rains and being encircled by warmth. Sometimes just being is enough - life is a litany of experience and moments, obviously, but sometimes, the walking to and the ending of is reward in itself, at least for me.

I often walk around the lake by the broad after or before a seminar, and I seem to be the only one that does so. Again, there are other people about - joggers, buzzing like metal wasps with their ipods on full blast - and a sprinkling of dog-walkers, generally bowed old boys with equally rheumatic wheezy dogs ("Come on Stanley, wheeeee" "Woof woof, wheeeee, bark bark") and upright middle-aged ladies with expensive highlights and Hunter wellies - but I appear to be the only one who sits on a bench with a coffee and cigarette and book and ruminates a bit. I cannot begin to calculate the ammount of kindly walkers that have almost certainly pitied me, sitting on my bench with a notebook open on my lap and a moorhen tutting at me behind a frond of bullrushes. One day I may bring a sign with me and hang it over my resident bench, bearing the legend, "I have friends, I certainly like a drink, I am on this bench by choice, I have not had a crisis, familial or otherwise. You concern is appreciated, but I promise, without cause. Thank you".

It is possible I am reading into this too much.