Even so, I arrived in Prague on a bright, hot morning with the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I found it surprisingly hard to sleep on the train. I finally fell asleep around midnight, only to wake up at 4 am; just in time to sit on my bed and watch Berlin unfurl outside my window in the early morning light.

I think the bears enjoyed it as much as we did, if not more.

The train night train went all the way to Moscow; a fact that excited my imagination; an excitement that reminded me of my younger self. I held out hope that my prayer would be answered this time.

Nothing says ‘central Amsterdam’ to me like crowds of people rushing by. I took the obligatory canal shot regardless; then a few of the station with its cranes. I love the way cities mix the old with the new, the elegant with the practical, the evocative with the commonplace — it makes me feel better about the odd mix that is my life, I think.

As I stood there, I prayed for grace for the days ahead; for happiness; for the ability to live in the moment.

Summer used to be about watermelon and aubergines; blazing hot days; soft, warm nights that stretched on for ever; crickets that were the soundtrack flickering stars; praying for rain; the sea and the sand.

Now it is about blueberries and broad beans; changeable weather; always carrying a cardigan; evenings that linger on for ever; praying for sun; the green hills and the river.

Welcome, anyway.

It might sound like it, but I don’t really regret this turn of events, the end of those young and silly years, at least most of the time I don’t. I wonder –oh, how I wonder– about the magic and where it went, not that I have lost it altogether, far from it, it’s just that it is not as ever-present as it once was; but in a way I am glad to have seen the back of those years. They were magical, yes, but they were dark too — much as my childhood was, come to think of it. The uncertainty, the not knowing, the doubt, those countless nights when I couldn’t sleep, could hardly breathe with the anxiety of it all: was I losing my way or finding it? What did I have to do leave a sweet mark on the world? Would my life ever amount to anything? Would I? Would I?

They were a triumph of optimism over experience, those years, of magic over darkness — much like my childhood, which is what had come before, and the bang-and-a-crash years that followed. I have always been in love with the world and yet entirely unsure as to whether it deserved it; or rather, whether it was going to break my heart. And it did, it often did. It still does, for that matter. But at least now I know I’m on my way, my life does amount to something and so do I.

Just in case the title reminds you of something but you can’t for the life of you remember what: take a look here.

And then I went quiet again.

I’ve said it before, and it sounds so very weak, but I always think of saying it again, of swearing: I think of writing mostly every day. It is the habit of doing it that I have lost, and my voice along with that. Once upon a time, oh so long ago now, I wrote frequently and, miracle of miracles, fluidly at times too; largely about indiepop, it’s true, but also about being in love with the world, and about growing up. This was, and in fact it still is since I never got round to changing it, this blog’s tagline: growing up, being in love with the world, and indiepop. And the strangest thing is that what started out as something I hastily filled in in the summer of 2005 while setting this blog up ended up being the perfect summary of everything I was to write about.

So there once was a time, oh so long ago now, when I was young and silly and I had a head full of dreams and I opened up my heart to the whole world. The days when trying to capture thoughts and feelings into words seemed like a most worthwhile, almost magical thing to do — when words made things happen. Mostly, they brought me together with people that were more like me than anybody I had met before. For a few years I made friends left right and centre with an ease that was as novel and it turned out to be short lived, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was okay to be me, it was okay to be so very strange and different. But those years ended — with what seemed at the time to be a happily ever after ending but which in retrospect was more of a crash and a bang; people moved on, went their separate ways; indiepop stopped being the number one thing that made my world go round; I lost some of my certainties, gained some new ones; and in the process, I lost the voice that I had found. Or rather, I outgrew it, and never got round to finding a new one.

Hence, the silence.

A week ago I sat in Birmingham New Street station, on platform 10a, looking every bit like I was in a Lucksmiths song — “and though you promised not to cry when you said goodbye / your eyes were bright with wine” — although it had nothing to do with wine and everything to do with too little sleep and too much excitement. I clutched my ipod tightly and listened to Pocketbooks sing that “love is the stick you throw / however far it goes, you’ll find your way back home again,” and I marvelled at how a line that had sounded so awkward the first time I heard it could suddenly sound so right. I marvelled at the fact that, suddenly, I had every reason to believe that this was exactly true.

And so I remembered, once again, that even though this world is one of frustration and loneliness and disappointments, it is also a world where magic and mystery lurk around the corners, about to jump into your life at the slightest provocation. And I resolved to try harder –even harder, as hard as I could– to remember to ask them in.

I was going to write about early spring, I really was — about sunshine that arrived on the first of March and stayed for three weeks, about freezing nights and warm afternoons, about pink blossom against brilliant blue skies, about the light that woke me earlier every morning, about the excitement of it all, the contradictions in the weather, the smell of daffodils, the promise in the air. I was going to –I even took a photo— but of course I didn’t get round to it in time and now it is too late because spring proper arrived today.

Not on a warm breeze, not on a sunny morning and not in April like I had expected it to but on the unexpectedly warm and gentle rain of a cloudy afternoon in March. Oh, it won’t last; the best seasons rarely do in England; but I wonder sometimes if that doesn’t make it all the more precious. A few minutes of breathing in that unmistakeable smell of spring while watching my class in a gardening lesson were enough for me to be undone with love and longing, washed over by waves of sadness — the love and longing that run through my life like a thread of meaning, the sadness that is as timeless as it is time-specific, a blessed release after winter’s long inwardness and always, always bittersweet.

All this to remind me of my old maxim, that you can spend a winter (or a lifetime) preparing (or praying) for something and the best things will still come round unexpectedly and catch you by surprise.

Ah, the beauty of the way that we are living.