I haven’t changed, no matter what the bus pass says - Ian McMillan

And then, a few years ago, it was decided by clever scientists in white lab coats that Pluto wasn’t a planet any more. Pluto was, like the parrot in the Monty Python sketch, a deceased planet. It was no more. It was an ex-planet.

Not to put too fine a point on it, and not sparing Pluto’s feelings, it was a rock. Just a rock. A big rock, of course. A rock that would make a heck of a splash if you dropped it in a pond. But a rock.

Look, though, look: look at Pluto in that book about the Solar System that you had as a lad. Pluto hasn’t changed. Pluto isn’t any bigger or smaller. It’s just that the word we use to describe Pluto has changed.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was on a bus and somebody said to her little girl ‘Stand up and let the old gentleman sit down, would you?’ and the girl did and, although I was embarrassed and deeply humiliated, a I accepted the seat with good grace, having looked round to make sure that the old gentleman in question really was me. It turned out it was.

Something strange had happened between me getting on the bus and me moving down the bus. As I climbed up the bus pass and showed my bus pass (there’s a clue there to my transition) I was Ian McMillan, grey-haired chap; by the time the seat had been offered to me I had become Ian McMillan, silvery haired old gentleman.

And yet, like Pluto, I hadn’t changed. I was still a planet. I wasn’t a rock. Sure, I looked a little different to the young man I once was but I’m sure those deep space winds had scratched the surface of Pluto a bit but that didn’t alter what you might call The Essence of Pluto. The person on the bus pass is still me.

I sat on the bus and thought about the fact that I hadn’t written a poem for a couple of weeks and did that mean I wasn’t a poet any more, even though nothing much else had changed.

Can I call myself a poet when it’s a while since I’ve penned a verse? Is a footballer still a footballer when they haven’t kicked a ball for a month? Is a guitarist still a guitarist when they haven’t plucked a string for a few weeks because of a freak plectrum-based injury?

I got my notebook out of my pocket and scribbled a couple of lines that more or less scanned and almost rhymed. Phew! Now I was a poet again.

Now there was proof in the indecipherable runes on the page of the notebook. I got off a couple of stops before I needed to in order to walk briskly back to the house, to prove that I wasn’t an old gentleman.

Keep the faith, Pluto: believe in yourself! You’re a planet if you say you are. Leave the rocks to the rockery: you belong in a planetarium.