The Signal on the Way to the Shops

I heard the song on the radio on my way to go grocery shopping.

Not a dramatic moment. No thunder. No cinematic lighting. Just me, the car, the road, and the ordinary little mission of buying whatever needed buying. Bread, milk, sensible things. The kind of things that do not usually rearrange your thinking.

And then Murray Head came on.

Say It Ain’t So, Joe.

A song I knew, of course. One of those songs that sits somewhere in the attic of memory, wrapped in dust, still perfectly alive when someone opens the box.

Later, I looked it up on YouTube. I found videos. Recent ones. Murray Head, older now. Fifteen years older than me. Standing there, singing the song without the desperate need to prove anything.

And that was the signal.

Not the song itself, although the song is powerful enough.

It was the way he carried it.

There was no shouting at the world. No attempt to look young. No performance of relevance. No frantic waving of arms saying, “Look, I’m still here.”

He was just there.

Present.

Experienced.

Enough.

And I thought: maybe this is what I have been forgetting.

I am 65. I do not have to behave like a nervous beginner at the edge of the stage, hoping somebody will clap. I do not have to chase every passing noise. I do not have to explain myself to every troll, every cynic, every person who thinks Brida should be “English lessons” because that is the only box they have available in their head.

I still want to work. Very much so.

There is no Plan B.

I want Brida to succeed.

But perhaps the work does not need to carry the smell of success with all the noise.

Perhaps the work can be lighter, calmer, sharper.

Perhaps the message is not:

“Please understand us.”

Perhaps it is simply:

“Come to the table.”

At Brida, Fruitloop & I are not trying to drag people through grammar with a whistle and a clipboard. We are not building a school with nicer curtains. We are building a space where people can arrive with their imperfect English, their tired week, their half-formed thoughts, their stories, their humour, their hesitations — and sit with others for an hour.

No pressure.

But not without purpose.

That distinction matters.

Because “no pressure” can sound like nothing matters. Like we are just drifting around with coffee cups and cheerful slogans.

That is not Brida.

Brida is relaxed, but not lazy.

Playful, but not pointless.

Human, but not vague.

There is focus underneath the laughter. There is growth underneath the stories. There is courage underneath the silliness.

People come to speak, yes. But more than that, they come to become a little more visible. A little more confident. A little less trapped inside the old idea that language is something you study before you are allowed to use it.

Technology can translate words.

It can write emails. It can smooth sentences. It can remove friction.

But it cannot sit at the table for you.

It cannot laugh at the right wrong moment. It cannot help you discover that you are more interesting than you thought. It cannot give you the strange little victory of saying something in another language and realising: I am still me.

Maybe that is the signal I heard on the way to the shops.

Not that I should stop working.

Not that I should become softer, vaguer, more passive.

But that I should act my age.

Not old.

Experienced.

Less nonsense. More clarity.

Less proving. More presence.

Less pressure. More focus.

Brida does not need to become louder.

It needs to become unmistakable.

A relaxed space for serious growth.

A table where people can have fun, be themselves, speak freely, and somehow — almost accidentally — become better.

That is enough.

And maybe, at 65, I am allowed to know that.