I get them all the time. Caught up in my own diary, agenda, timing, thoughts, projectory, that Hello Thing whips in like a tendril. I don’t feel trapped, nor asphyxiated, but there’s an alert there, something I cannot see, hear, nor negotiate with, an announcement inside my car, my kitchen, at work as I turn to lift clean plates onto a stack, or as I turn a corner a bit wild because the track is clear and there’s a big fun in the swing because the sun is stacked bighigh and just around the next corner, and all I can hear are swallows and geese speaking languages I would love to understand. The Hello Thing arrives like a majesty and right in my head. I have done a load of thoughting about the Hello Thing, over years, over many of those long lasting buggers and there is no denying they are random spirits, nothing to do with the upright correctness of my life, anyone’s life. Hence the random element. It does wonder me, as I remember, fractionally, my teenage years, and those years are most definitely the ones least listened to. A big mistake, right there.

The alerts, the Hello Things I dissed in those teenage years and way beyond, when I was married because the others in the room apparently never got them, and were, obviously, threatened by such, are my friends now. I believe there is a wisdom out there, way beyond me and there to guide, advise, caution. I have learned to listen, to be aware. Thing is, it doesn’t matter a bloodline, siblings, a past fashioned, all of us have the ears to listen to the Hello Thing. I believe it is a beautiful connection to the beyond of us. I have never heard anything destructive in any of my Hellos.

I met one or two today, as I pulled out from my work at the Best Cafe Ever. Yes, we all get weary, as a trickle of coffees and easy cakes erupts into a diasma of soups, quiches, warmed this, decaf that, herbal teas and ‘we’re in a hurry”. I could hear the uprise of voices, all upbeat, all choosing, all laughing, all on holiday, from my hidey-hole in the wash-up area with two deep sinks. The Hello Thing shoved me out, by my skinny butt. Don’t play the old card. , Get out there. I heard it, I love it.

You know what? Getting old does not mean a folding. Does not mean stop. Does not mean I Can’t. I don’t say this lightly. There is always fight. There is always the Hello Thing. Always. It’s a twist in thinking, a sudden realisation, the arrow shoot of a truth, the flip of a treaty, the crumble of a known road, the words of a person once respected. The determination to be whoever you are.

All I will say, is listen, and pay attention.