Like a tree.

There was a television advert for a bank or an insurance company - I don't remember which exactly - but I'm pretty sure it was for an organisation for whom the level of emotion was completely inappropriate.

It featured a montage of faces, each dreamily looking upwards, sharing the wishes that were somehow facilitated by said organisation.

"I want to be a gymnast,"
"I want to be teacher,"
"I want to be a sex pest," and so on.
And, the closing thought, "I want to be a tree."

The latter was my mum's favourite. She likes trees - she couldn't quite see how banking or taking out insurance would allow her to become one. But the thought became something of a catch phrase for her. "I want to be a tree," she often said, dreamily looking upwards, fantasising of a life more peaceful and serene.

Well, that dream has slowly been hacked away at for several years. And last night it came crashing to the ground, when my dad committed axe to trunk and bought the whole fucking tree down.

Concerned that it was growing out of control, dad was determined to assert his, and fell the tree that loomed over a main road in our front garden.

Obviously, there are precautions that need to be taken when dealing with a felling so close to a busy road. For my dad these precautions, and the costs involved in taking them, were to be - at all times - avoided.

The tree, he decided, would be felled by himself, his shopkeeper friend, a chainsaw, and a bit of rope. And in the hope that the twenty-foot beech tree would fall this way and not that - onto the road and to the injury or death of its innocent users.

But, while still shedding the tree of its branches, onlookers must have observed this potential tragedy and complained; for when the police arrived the men dropped their chainsaws and their plans.

But not for good.

Determined to fell this tree, without any financial cost to himself, and undeterred by the warnings of the police (and soon after the local council and two tree surgeons), my dad decided that he would return to the tree, under the cloak of darkness. And, if his shopkeeper friend wouldn't join him, he'd get his best man on the job.

81-year-old war veteran, John would trade his walking stick for a chainsaw and fell the tree in exchange for fire wood, such was his quality of life. He lived alone, in the bad end of town, and would use the wood to heat his abode through to the summer, if he'd make it.

To my dad being compassionate and frugal were two mutually exclusive things. You couldn't be one and the other. Saving money, he thought, was a cruel thing. And so he watched as the old man boarded a step ladder and began to saw at the wood.

But before they were done, the local council returned. The tree, they suggested, may not be ours after all. My dad may be fined, the old man deprived of his fire wood and my mum, whose dreams had been dashed, sawed and partially felled, proven right, after all.

Being cheap and wise, she'd always insisted, were mutually exclusive. In trying to save money my dad had incurred additional costs. And had he learned his lesson?

"I think I'll get John to make a start on the tree in the back garden," he said over dinner the following night.
"Why don't you just do it the right way," my mum said. "For once."
With that she got down from the table and stood her ground, strong and firm. And not at all unlike a tree.

Coloured people.

You wanna live like coloured people?

People. Pets. Places.

We grieve over people and pets but also over places. And while they never die, as such, our relationships with them can change, remain desperately the same or end altogether. In that sense, the towns and cities in which we spend our childhoods, teens and adult lives, are like the relationships we have with people and, to some extent, with pets. They do, after all, get run over by cars; they are loved and are lost.

The places where I've lived, I suppose, are like the girls I've loved. I've played kiss chase in the town of my infancy, got hot and heavy in the suburbs of my teens, and played the field in the the travels of my twenties.

Now that I'm moving to London - the big smoke - I wonder where the analogy will take me. A fat girl with a cigar? I certainly hope not. But, in the meantime, I'm revisiting an old love, having moved out of my flat and in with my parents.

If the travels of my twenties were like playing the field, moving back with my parents is like being castrated. Long gone is the freedom and the flirtatiousness of my young adult life. It's back to curfews and cooked dinners.

But I can't complain. The food is really very nice and there's no where to go out anyway. It's given me time to think. And yesterday I took our dog for a walk down memory lane. Well, actually Mill Farm Drive, the street where my parents live.

I found that either the houses have shrunk or I've grown. I'd walked the streets as a teenager but, for the first time, could see over its fences, and into the gardens and trampolines of its backyards. I saw not the past but what could be my future.

Young families, new money, old people - in relationships with their places more stable, more kind.

I wondered, when the fat lady in London sings, and my twenties become my thirties and those my forties (as the sequence goes) if I would find myself, on a street like this with a life more ordinary.

Marriages, mortgages, divorces, down payments.... Our relationships with people and places are complicated things! I'll stick to having pets, I thought.

That was until I had to use the poop-a-scoop in my hand. If there's one thing that's true about all relationships: shit happens. You love, you lose and, occasionally, you pick up the shit and move on.

The writing's on the wall.

Removing Dawson's Creek from my list of favourite TV shows on social networking site, Facebook, had the exact opposite effect yesterday, when its 'news feed' announced the move to my entire network of friends.

"'San Sharma removed Dawson's Creek from his favourite TV shows'?" Bill wrote on my wall. "...you big gay."

• Facebook

Gutterball

To quote Larry David, "I like bowling." But I can relate, almost too readily, to his many, many complaints:

"You can't find a ball, that's the problem. I don't know, maybe you own a bowling ball; I don't own a bowling ball. My whole life, every time I'm at a bowling alley, sticking my fingers in all these holes, picking up balls...

You gotta get your own ball. I don't bowl enough, I think, to get my own ball; it takes up a lot of space in the house. You'll end up looking at it in the closet going, "What am I doing with a bowling ball? I don't even bowl!"...You know what I mean?

...Say you want to get rid of the ball. How do you get rid of a bowling ball? Think about that. Who do you give a bowling ball to? Nobody bowls. Their fingers -- it only fits your fingers. You throw a bowling ball in the garbage can, you know what that sanitation man's gonna do? He's gonna knock on your door; that's how upset he's going to be. He's gonna say, "Who the f*** threw a bowling ball in the garbage can?"

Curb Your Enthusiasm
Season 4, Episode 31 ("Mel's Offer")

Lately, I've been sticking my fingers in a lot of holes. Not enough, mind you, to buy my own ball, but just enough to become friendly with the alley staff. You might think that Ed was the manager. He certainly rolls around the place like he is. You may even mistake him as being a bowling ball. He is, after all, big and round, and with just as many holes.

Tonight however, if only momentarily, I reserved my judgement, kept my fingers to myself and decided that Ed, while cocky and mildly irritating, was actually a nice guy.
"Listen, when you're, er, finished let me know," he said, as I slipped and laced my way into something less comfortable. "I'll, er, see if I can try and sort you out with another game." With that he winked.
Brilliant, I thought - free game. What a nice guy?

So, when we were finished I headed over to the reception to let him know.
"So Ed," I said, slyly slipping over to his counter. "We're, er, finished...I wondered if you could, er, sort us out with another game?"
"Ah, I see..." He smiled and pointlessly looked over his shoulder, at a wall. "I can't see why that would be a problem."
"Brilliant. Ed, you're the man, you know that?"
Apparently he did, because he didn't acknowledge the question. He just furrowed his brow and banged away at his keyboard. "You're on lane six, right?"
"Yeah."
"Right," he hit the enter key as if he'd just written a novel and was punctuating its final sentence by giving his keyboard a good whack. "Okay...that's going to be £10.50."
My face burned red, or that sort of maroon colour Indian people go when embarrassed. I couldn't believe that I'd misjudged his intentions.
What was the wink? I thought. And why would he try and sort us out with another game? Isn't that his job? Isn't that what he does all day? What's there to 'sort out'? Payment?

In any case, I was standing there, going maroon; so presumptuous as to not even bring my wallet with me, and very aware that I hadn't responded to Ed for the duration of my thought process.
"Yeah, of course," I managed. "I'll, er, go and get my wallet." And with that rolled slowly, back to my lane, to fetch my wallet and my self-respect, and to lose at a game I didn't really want to play.