Slaven Bilic wears a philosopher's beard now — grey, distinguished, substantial — and though he won't say it, he's been through the kind of experiences in the past year that age you and take you away into your mind.
He's just back from a week or so in his beloved Split, where his mother, who is 78, has developed Alzheimer's and started occasionally to forget his and his brother's names. Bilic brushes away the incalculable sadness which must be attached to this.
'It is ok,' he says, in the booming, intense way of his. 'She is good. My brother is there. It is ok.'
The Croatians, he observes, have an umbilical link to their homeland. 'We all go back to live there in the end.'
It's hard to avoid the sense, in an hour's conversation with the man, that a one-way ticket home has seemed incredibly appealing in recent times.
The exit from West Ham, a club in his blood who sacked him as manager two years ago, brought a sorrow that lingers. That much is clear from the way he keeps coming back to it, even when the tape recorders are off.
He took himself off to a club side in Saudi Arabia, where a change of hierarchy brought an end to things after five months.
Bilic brings such energy to conversation that it's hard to contemplate the notion of him ever feeling lost. Yet there was clearly no life to speak of for him outside of the game. 'Football is my life, you know,' he says. 'It's my life.'
Sanctuary has come in the most improbable of places. Bilic, 51, did even not know that the industrial towns of the West Midlands were known as the Black Country until he wound up in the midst of them as West Bromwich Albion's new manager in June, and some of his friends were uncertain that the Midlands would be for him. Yet it turned out that the club needed him as much he needed them.
He found that life away from the unremitting intensity of London suited him. 'It smells of football here,' he says.
The West Midlands accent? 'A piece of cake' compared to his two years playing for Everton, living in Liverpool and trying to decipher Scottish manager Walter Smith's words.
The affection has been mutual. After the mechanical ways of Tony Pulis and the tactical methods of Darren Moore, which baffled many here last season, the club and their fans have taken hugely to Bilic's uncomplicated authenticity and clarity, now 18 months after the club's relegation.
They're packing out away ends again, taking 2,500 or more on the road, with results surpassing those at The Hawthorns.
The team are two points clear at the top of the Championship ahead of Saturday's home match against eighth-placed Sheffield Wednesday.
The terrain is unremittingly tough. A 46-game season, played under the expectation of a Premier League return, even though the board have not made promotion a prerequisite. But Bilic has been restored to life.
'I got used to the pressure,' he says. 'Is it bigger now? Yes. You don't have that many games, you don't have so much time. You have to make it instantly. Or you know you will get criticised.
'There is pressure from the agents. Pressure from the owners. Pressure from the fans. But we didn't come to that pressure from nothing. You felt it at the start of your career. You start in lower leagues and learn to cope with it.
'Like every job it is positive and negative. Everybody can say what they want. Now you are criticised before the game, at half-time, you know what your fans in New Zealand are thinking about you in no time. Do I like it? No, I don't. But on the other hand I'm in sport. I'm a sportsman. It is a great privilege.'
It did not seem the most auspicious of summers as 11 players, including nine regular starters, left. Dwight Gayle went back to Newcastle after his loan and Jay Rodriguez to his home town club, Burnley.
'That is 46 goals from last season's team,' Bilic says.
Craig Dawson, Mason Holgate and Salomon Rondon all left, too. But Bilic bought astutely.
Croatian Filip Krovinovic, Brazilian Matheus Pereira and Charlie Austin were among nine signings.
He immediately spotted the talent of 19-year-old full back Nathan Ferguson, whose fine performances make you wonder why he wasn't playing earlier.
Bilic also found a system to make up for the loss of those strikers, his so-called 'second wave' which has seen the side's midfield racing forward to join the attack.
'We were lucky enough to be good at transfers,' Bilic says. 'They clicked straight away. The guys who were here were not big-time Charlies, noses in the air, so this all started well.
'We wanted to change a little the way the club was playing so we bought the players who are good on the ball. And then the job is to make them work hard and everything.'
He's also found managing in the Midlands more free of distractions than London, he says, with West Ham very much in mind.
'The players [at West Ham] are good but it's a very difficult club to manage. You have always that thing about London, you know. Unless you are a massive club, you have that pressure from within and for the younger generation of players it is much easier to stay focused if they play in, let's say, Burnley or here. Their friends are always coming in. That simply doesn't help.
'For clubs like West Ham and Crystal Palace, you have a feeling they are only performing when they are struggling or when they have to [win]. This is also the reason the big clubs are very rarely from the [biggest] towns.'
The small details of his precious two full seasons managing the Hammers seem imprinted on his mind.
He tells a story of the day, during his spectacular start as their manager, when he ordered a change in the dressing room music before the club's first win at Anfield in 52 years. UB40's Red Red Wine was the players' choice.
'I like Red Red Wine but that's for a romantic dinner. That's not for Anfield. It is not like a war song. I said "sorry, lads" and I put something medium on, like [Thin Lizzy's] Whisky in the Jar, the Metallica version. We won 3-0.'
He reflects on how growing up in Split taught him that life is not the race to the top which it can sometimes seem here. In school, he was chosen to help another child.
'I had to spend time with her,' he says. 'I had to teach her how to write if she was struggling. Here in Western philosophy it's different. They isolate the best ones to be together. That is making you more individual.
'In Croatia, everything is about clicking together and feeling for each other. In the kind of sport we play — 11 against 11 — that helps.'
Spoken like a philosopher. Bilic's wisdom will serve his club well.