Ben Akers has a question he asks people. What’s your number?
It comes from Talk Club, which he co-founded. Men tell each other how they are today, out of ten.
Ben is a film-maker. I wrote about him, and drew him, in August: The father you wanted and needed.
The other day I was a guest on the Talk Club podcast, Life By Numbers. My episode isn’t up yet. Afterwards I sent Ben a voice note, for my own tiny podcast, Voice Notes to the World. I asked: what’s your number right now?
I said he didn’t have to say yes. No is a totally acceptable answer.
Ben said yes. He was walking in the streets in Bristol. He gave me his then-number, and told me why it wasn’t higher – or lower.
Then I asked what he remembers about how we first met.
He remembers exactly.
There’s Tavistock Square, where he was making a film and I was one of the talking heads. There’s a plinth, almost. There’s my sewing book, Sew Your Own, which he had to buy secondhand. There’s a train, and some ticket barriers, in a city he gets wrong and then puts right.
And there’s Steve, his documentary about male mental health, made after his childhood friend Steve died in 2014.
He interviewed me for it, when I was going through my own mental health struggles. The interview isn’t in the film. He tells me why.
I knew it was unused. I always said he could keep it if he wished.
There’s also a broken chair.
Five minutes, in Ben’s voice and mine: listen here.