The other Sunday I crossed a Rubicon.
Actually, to be strictly geographically accurate I crossed the River Forth, but allow me the historical analogy. [1]
It was Sunday and we'd gone out for lunch. Of course we didn't bother booking in advance. You don't, do you, when you're a wild-eyed loner standing at the gates of oblivion? [2] No. We just turned up. Not a good plan. We turned up in Stirling. It was busy. We turned up in Bridge of Allan. It was packed. We turned up in Doune but no one wanted to get out of the car.
By now lunchtime was already a distant memory. Driving back down towards Stirling I say the fateful words. "We could always pop into Dobbies."
We have never been into the garden centre before. Well, we don't have a garden so there isn't much reason. [3]
And if I'm honest it somehow goes against the grain. Nothing to do with Dobbies. All to do with me.
Truth is, it's one of the shops I've always felt I'm too young for. Which at my age is clearly ridiculous. I even shop in Marks and Spencer these days. And yet my self-image remains some kind of ageing cool kid, the kind of idiot who asks himself: "what would Iggy do?". Forgetting, of course, that Mr Pop is a 67-year-old man these days and would probably be up for a potter around a garden centre.
Still, Dobbies. It's a symbol of something, surely. That I've arrived at a new stage of life. I guess you could call it the "Antique Roadshow years". It's a sign that I'm settling for a Sunday-evening-Countryfile-has-really-nice-images-have-you-seen-the-new-Saga-Holidays-brochure kind of existence.
Of course no one else seems bothered. It's got a cafe. There's a pet shop. The pet shop has cute puffer fish. Daughters Number One and Two think this is all great. And to be fair, once I've sat down, it turns out the cafe's pretty good. This is worrying.
But then if I think about it. I've never done anything that Iggy did? I never spent my twenties in drug-fuelled madness. I've never worn see-through kecks (well, it's Scotland and it's cold out). When it comes down to it, how Iggy was I in the first place?
So maybe it's time to embrace the new post-Dobbies me. To accept that I'm now never going to wake up in a Berlin cellar surrounded by 15 transvestites and a donkey.
I am at peace with this knowledge. And anyway, have you seen the size of the scones in Dobbies?
[1] You've read Tom Holland's history of the last years of the Roman Republic, right? It's very good.
[2] To quote Rik from The Young Ones. Sigh, RIP Rik.
[3] I like gardens but I don't like gardening.
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