The children are so beautiful I am made to question my own worth in the deserving of them. It is a humbling fact of parenthood, being faced with the transient beauty of childhood. Jane says they are so beautiful it sometimes makes her feel a bit sick. I know what she means, all parents surely experience powerful moments like this.
If I didn’t have them I surely would not be about to take myself to bed, I would be drunk for a lark and ready to sing. How much of my life has been spent like this? It’s like hitting a top note and hanging on until your breath is all but done, but why and what for, only to worry about death and bad fortune as your bladder weakens?
Let me go, I say, let me go soon enough and thank my lucky stars for it. There will be no home for the bewildered for me, Jane will see to it. I have tasked her to let me go when the time is right, although I am told I have to remain a few years for the sake of the children. This is not morbidity but realism. Morbid is pumping poison into your face to appear less old – the sheer fear of ageing begetting denial and falsehood.
I will do as I’m told but death will rescue me from my own stricture. I will not cry as its wings envelop me but I do not want to die under a lay-in-tile grid ceiling, like my father, or in a basement like my mother. How did it come to that, those poised and fashionble frames, smiling into the dry dead lens?
God bless those who give their lives for a cause, whether or not they believe in this way. Strife, and the having of causes, is a step towards salvation. It is a curious twist in which the resolution of strife removes an objection which gives rise to the cause which helps people who take it up feel moved, and vital. Without strife, there is no feeling, derived from the cause, raised by the objection.
But hey, it's Christmas time. 'Are you ready?' people ask, but what do they mean by 'ready'? Ready to stuff myself and do a little bloated dance. I don't know but I'm in there, buying stuff like it's the last we'll ever see of it. Just focus on the children, I tell myself, focus on the children. And it's true, my heart skips a beat in the light of their smiles, whether or not I deserve them.
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Friday, 16 December 2011
Christ is Dead
It’s almost Christmas and although I wasn’t brought up to believe in god, I’m glad there are people who do. Faith is a warm and comfortable place which is particularly attractive at this time of year.
Today we learned that the journalist Christopher Hitchens died, which was a bit of a shock strangely enough. I heard him interviewed once and liked him immediately, fell irrationally out of love with him when I discovered he wrote a column for the Daily Mail and then admired his atheism which was as passionate as any religious belief. Taking a firm stance on just about anything has potentential for trouble and he picked a real doosey. God bless you Mr Hitchens, even if he doesn’t exist.
It snowed a little this morning and from my vantage point at the computer I can see buds with little white caps on. As I pause to think about this man that I never met, his intellect and his passion now dissolved, back in the ether, a ray of sun bursts out from under a heavy brow of clouds behind me and the buds jiggle up and down in the yellow light. It’s alright, I tell myself, we come, we go and whether we amount to much is just a matter of opinion.
Today we learned that the journalist Christopher Hitchens died, which was a bit of a shock strangely enough. I heard him interviewed once and liked him immediately, fell irrationally out of love with him when I discovered he wrote a column for the Daily Mail and then admired his atheism which was as passionate as any religious belief. Taking a firm stance on just about anything has potentential for trouble and he picked a real doosey. God bless you Mr Hitchens, even if he doesn’t exist.
It snowed a little this morning and from my vantage point at the computer I can see buds with little white caps on. As I pause to think about this man that I never met, his intellect and his passion now dissolved, back in the ether, a ray of sun bursts out from under a heavy brow of clouds behind me and the buds jiggle up and down in the yellow light. It’s alright, I tell myself, we come, we go and whether we amount to much is just a matter of opinion.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
The Superstar-thief
The rubbery boy with the gun giggles incredulously as I tell him I’ve never had an eye examination before. It’s a curious reaction, one would have thought a bit of reassurance would be more appropriate, but this shop, like so many others, appears to be run by kids under the jurisdiction of one or two backroom adults who only appear when there’s a problem. He appears to be having some trouble lining me up and as my left eye begins to water uncontrollably he switches his aim to my right.
“Nobody likes this test,” he says, smiling wanly.
“Why’s that?” I ask, as he casually shoots me in the eye with a jet of compressed air.
Although my first reaction is to give him a right hook and remonstrate wildly with him for being so careless, “that went right in my eye, you idiot, I want to speak to your mother, I mean manager...etc” Instead, I meekly offer my watery left for more of the same.
I’m here because in the past few months I’ve caught myself holding things at arm’s length and zooming them back and forth to find a point of focus, muttering to myself like some daft old man. It’s not a huge step to deduce that this will be the first of many incremental defeats for my previously resilient youth.
The next test is of peripheral vision. I tell myself it’s not a competition but it’s hard not to treat the outcome of an exam as anything other than success or failure. My attendant assasin slopes off as I stick my head in a box to follow a red dot around, clicking a button on sight of any green ones. But the machine breaks down and the lights come up, and for a moment it’s a minimalist puppet theatre with a giant audience of one. Someone swishes past and I jerk my head out of the box, finger in the air, but they’re gone. No one else around so I wander through to the shop where the team are gassing over by the till.
“Machine’s stopped.” I say, in answer to their raised ‘who let you out of the box?’ eyebrows. For a second time I’m ushered into the waiting area, to flick through their sales bumf while they sort it out. One leaflet extols the virtues of getting the most from your contact lenses, another urges me to consider a new look. It reminds me of the dentist where, thankfully, everyone has the right to smile with confidence.
We are lucky to have easy access to professional health services, so it doesn’t do to be too critical. I take a deep breath which nonetheless sounds like a sigh, as I’m taken to another room for the actual sight test. My foppish new Jewish-looking inquisitor runs through some banal patter - just like the dentist, and the hairdresser too - as he pfaffs about setting a pair of ridiculous looking Star Wars anti-blast glasses on my nose.
“How are you?“
“Yeah, good thanks...and you?”
“Fine, thank you. When was your last eye test..?”
“I’ve never had one.”
“...and has your eyesight changed significantly since then?”
“Well, I’ve started holding things at arm’s length...”
“How often do you have to wear your glasses?”
“I haven’t got any.”
“Oh...no glasses,” now he’s actually looking at me. “So what brings you in here today?”
Well, you know, I was walking past and I looked in and thought 'they look like erudite, well-travelled people with an insightful world view'. Only kidding, my eyesight isn’t what it was.
I decide for the dubious pleasure of being subjected to such impersonal questioning to pursue my own, without this pointless politeness. It turns out his family are from Pakistan and so I ask him about the Pakistani government. He blinks myopically as he registers the shift in the balance of power in our brief relationship. Then he looks a bit irritated and says he’s actually from Slough, so we talk a bit about Slough but pretty soon it turns out he does have something to say about Pakistan, which is more interesting.
“The president is a superstar-thief,” he says flatly. “He has castles in France and the UK, a mansion in the centre of London and billions of dollars he doesn’t know what to do with.”
It's a recurring and topical theme. People have no right to prosperity but I do worry about power and the inordinate localised wealth that seems to come with it. And, crucially, whether this has a deliterious effect on the wider spread of opportunity? Does the man who has more necessarily deprive his fellows, or is he the very source of opportunity? It's hard to see things in a positive light in the case of the Pakistani president, or Gaddaffi, Mugabe, Mubarak and so on. But I have to ask myself what do I really know about these people, other than what I'm told by the likes of my optician?
I should have asked him if he was really helping me to see straight.
“Nobody likes this test,” he says, smiling wanly.
“Why’s that?” I ask, as he casually shoots me in the eye with a jet of compressed air.
Although my first reaction is to give him a right hook and remonstrate wildly with him for being so careless, “that went right in my eye, you idiot, I want to speak to your mother, I mean manager...etc” Instead, I meekly offer my watery left for more of the same.
I’m here because in the past few months I’ve caught myself holding things at arm’s length and zooming them back and forth to find a point of focus, muttering to myself like some daft old man. It’s not a huge step to deduce that this will be the first of many incremental defeats for my previously resilient youth.
The next test is of peripheral vision. I tell myself it’s not a competition but it’s hard not to treat the outcome of an exam as anything other than success or failure. My attendant assasin slopes off as I stick my head in a box to follow a red dot around, clicking a button on sight of any green ones. But the machine breaks down and the lights come up, and for a moment it’s a minimalist puppet theatre with a giant audience of one. Someone swishes past and I jerk my head out of the box, finger in the air, but they’re gone. No one else around so I wander through to the shop where the team are gassing over by the till.
“Machine’s stopped.” I say, in answer to their raised ‘who let you out of the box?’ eyebrows. For a second time I’m ushered into the waiting area, to flick through their sales bumf while they sort it out. One leaflet extols the virtues of getting the most from your contact lenses, another urges me to consider a new look. It reminds me of the dentist where, thankfully, everyone has the right to smile with confidence.
We are lucky to have easy access to professional health services, so it doesn’t do to be too critical. I take a deep breath which nonetheless sounds like a sigh, as I’m taken to another room for the actual sight test. My foppish new Jewish-looking inquisitor runs through some banal patter - just like the dentist, and the hairdresser too - as he pfaffs about setting a pair of ridiculous looking Star Wars anti-blast glasses on my nose.
“How are you?“
“Yeah, good thanks...and you?”
“Fine, thank you. When was your last eye test..?”
“I’ve never had one.”
“...and has your eyesight changed significantly since then?”
“Well, I’ve started holding things at arm’s length...”
“How often do you have to wear your glasses?”
“I haven’t got any.”
“Oh...no glasses,” now he’s actually looking at me. “So what brings you in here today?”
Well, you know, I was walking past and I looked in and thought 'they look like erudite, well-travelled people with an insightful world view'. Only kidding, my eyesight isn’t what it was.
I decide for the dubious pleasure of being subjected to such impersonal questioning to pursue my own, without this pointless politeness. It turns out his family are from Pakistan and so I ask him about the Pakistani government. He blinks myopically as he registers the shift in the balance of power in our brief relationship. Then he looks a bit irritated and says he’s actually from Slough, so we talk a bit about Slough but pretty soon it turns out he does have something to say about Pakistan, which is more interesting.
“The president is a superstar-thief,” he says flatly. “He has castles in France and the UK, a mansion in the centre of London and billions of dollars he doesn’t know what to do with.”
It's a recurring and topical theme. People have no right to prosperity but I do worry about power and the inordinate localised wealth that seems to come with it. And, crucially, whether this has a deliterious effect on the wider spread of opportunity? Does the man who has more necessarily deprive his fellows, or is he the very source of opportunity? It's hard to see things in a positive light in the case of the Pakistani president, or Gaddaffi, Mugabe, Mubarak and so on. But I have to ask myself what do I really know about these people, other than what I'm told by the likes of my optician?
I should have asked him if he was really helping me to see straight.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Some Shady Shit
We’ve spent a frustrating week, ludicrous as it sounds, trying to spend some money. It’s not really a great amount of money but it represents all the fat in a month’s pay, so it’s a lot to us. The problem we’ve been trying to solve, for once by chucking money at it, is the storage and enjoyment of all the music we’ve bought over the years and into the future. Jane wants the CD’s and the vinyl packed away, the wires hidden, or removed, and the general amount of equipment minimised.
Fair enough, I thought, and set about researching some of the streaming set-ups, which became strangely irritating remarkably quickly. Call me old fashioned but I like a bit of foreplay when I go shopping, a bit of effort on the part of the seller goes a long way to lubricating that sale. Instead I was confronted by overpriced, poorly thought out, less than credible technoporn which left me feeling a bit dirty, and not in a nice way.
One manufacturer refused to state system output saying that watts can be a misleading measure, volume depending on design. I really don’t care, if the system has an amp in it, the power output should be noted, so that one was duly crossed off the list. Another system required a remote (if you don’t own an iPhone) which was £280 extra! Others required network adaptors, also sold as extras. This narks me because if they are required, they aren’t technically extras.
Confused and a bit annoyed I consulted Hi Fi John who took the conversation in another direction, telling me about a so-called industry leading product, with a picture of a fruit on it, which kept dropping his wireless connection - something to do with the network next door. So, even if you put your hand deep into your pocket there are no guarantees of a reliable and robust wireless streaming solution, yet.
“Best thing is to stick with cables,” said John.
“That’s what we’re trying to get away from,” I replied, wearily.
And what ever happened to having a blast? I mean, what can the standard 30-odd watts really do for you? Will it shake the windows? Anything more than a room-fill seems to move you into serious money, like it’s become the last bastion of the true music devotee. Come on guys, isn’t this traditionally the first question? Like, ‘how fast does it go, dude?’
As ever, there are always options and Jane's most excellent friends put us onto a hard drive with USB, a CD slot and an integral amp. You can even plug a tape, or record deck into it to transfer legacy media. It won't stream music from our PC but I’m happy enough with this, after what John said, and we have laptops for that anyway. The really interesting thing was the difference in the experience of buying a sound product versus the flaky, plastic 'beta' boxes I’d come across.
The preferred solution was developed by a small company in Cambridge which has sold so many of these boxes that at one time it purchased the entire global supply of a particular component. At one point it also had to cease advertising to damp down demand. Payment is not deducted from your card until shipping can be confirmed - actually thinking about their customers there - and second hand examples (there are none currently on eBay) reputedly sell at 90 percent of the new price. There are no technology lock-ins, as far as I'm aware, and all you need is to do is plug it in, load your music and connect up a pair of speakers.
This is another thing that irks me with developing technologies, feeling I'm being hustled down some kind of technology alleyway. Extra brand compatability doesn’t come high on the list of large developers’ priorities, they'd rather play the tune and have everyone else dance along. It's a dirty business, and they have the nerve to talk about customers like they really have our best interests at heart. I haven't bought a Sony product since they produced a Minidisc player called the Net MD, which I bought thinking I could transfer my MP3s onto it. Silly me, as an internet friendly device it was a pile of mouldy old bollocks.
Mike the product designer tells me he bought a dock for his iPhone and changed the handset for a newer iteration which turned out to be incompatible with the dock. This is some shady bullshit and Mike was righteously unimpressed.
You guys have got to stop this selfish bullshit, you’ve got to get together and share, you really have, or we ain’t gonna buy your shit. That’s it, that's really it.
Fair enough, I thought, and set about researching some of the streaming set-ups, which became strangely irritating remarkably quickly. Call me old fashioned but I like a bit of foreplay when I go shopping, a bit of effort on the part of the seller goes a long way to lubricating that sale. Instead I was confronted by overpriced, poorly thought out, less than credible technoporn which left me feeling a bit dirty, and not in a nice way.
One manufacturer refused to state system output saying that watts can be a misleading measure, volume depending on design. I really don’t care, if the system has an amp in it, the power output should be noted, so that one was duly crossed off the list. Another system required a remote (if you don’t own an iPhone) which was £280 extra! Others required network adaptors, also sold as extras. This narks me because if they are required, they aren’t technically extras.
Confused and a bit annoyed I consulted Hi Fi John who took the conversation in another direction, telling me about a so-called industry leading product, with a picture of a fruit on it, which kept dropping his wireless connection - something to do with the network next door. So, even if you put your hand deep into your pocket there are no guarantees of a reliable and robust wireless streaming solution, yet.
“Best thing is to stick with cables,” said John.
“That’s what we’re trying to get away from,” I replied, wearily.
And what ever happened to having a blast? I mean, what can the standard 30-odd watts really do for you? Will it shake the windows? Anything more than a room-fill seems to move you into serious money, like it’s become the last bastion of the true music devotee. Come on guys, isn’t this traditionally the first question? Like, ‘how fast does it go, dude?’
As ever, there are always options and Jane's most excellent friends put us onto a hard drive with USB, a CD slot and an integral amp. You can even plug a tape, or record deck into it to transfer legacy media. It won't stream music from our PC but I’m happy enough with this, after what John said, and we have laptops for that anyway. The really interesting thing was the difference in the experience of buying a sound product versus the flaky, plastic 'beta' boxes I’d come across.
The preferred solution was developed by a small company in Cambridge which has sold so many of these boxes that at one time it purchased the entire global supply of a particular component. At one point it also had to cease advertising to damp down demand. Payment is not deducted from your card until shipping can be confirmed - actually thinking about their customers there - and second hand examples (there are none currently on eBay) reputedly sell at 90 percent of the new price. There are no technology lock-ins, as far as I'm aware, and all you need is to do is plug it in, load your music and connect up a pair of speakers.
This is another thing that irks me with developing technologies, feeling I'm being hustled down some kind of technology alleyway. Extra brand compatability doesn’t come high on the list of large developers’ priorities, they'd rather play the tune and have everyone else dance along. It's a dirty business, and they have the nerve to talk about customers like they really have our best interests at heart. I haven't bought a Sony product since they produced a Minidisc player called the Net MD, which I bought thinking I could transfer my MP3s onto it. Silly me, as an internet friendly device it was a pile of mouldy old bollocks.
Mike the product designer tells me he bought a dock for his iPhone and changed the handset for a newer iteration which turned out to be incompatible with the dock. This is some shady bullshit and Mike was righteously unimpressed.
You guys have got to stop this selfish bullshit, you’ve got to get together and share, you really have, or we ain’t gonna buy your shit. That’s it, that's really it.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Waking Up and Going to Sleep
It’s hard to believe I’m fifteen minutes from the motorway, standing in front of this new house in the woods somewhere in Surrey. The map shows the road petering out in a big patch of pale green, the hallmark of a top-end, not tap-end, development. The owner and designer of this house is also the founder of the construction company that built it. So he’s going to get what he wants, like a cosmetic surgeon giving his wife a boob job.
Plots like this one don’t come up for sale very often and the house that stood here was demolished to make way for his new vision. It’s clearly the plot that he was after and who can blame him. An acre or so surrounded by tall pines at the end of a muddy track, here and there the spent leaves of interspersed deciduous trees drift like snowflakes onto the lawn, or what will be the lawn. The deep blue iridescent tiles of the swimming pool beckon me in, I lean toward it, feel my head slipping under, cool, clean, sub-marine...
“What you here for mate?” a skinny bloke in an ill-fitting leather jacket breaks my reverie.
“Uh, can you tell me where the site office is?”
“I’m it.” he says, “Are you here to see about the pool?”
“Er, no, it’s the air test...I’m the air test guy.”
He turns out to be the aforementioned owner, a nice enough guy, a bit of a geezer. I’m here for free on the basis that his company will continue to give us lots of work. It’s a perfect example of how good fortune self-replicates, once you reach some kind of critical mass.
The test goes well and pretty soon I’m bouncing back down the track to the main road. It’s nice out here, really nice, and I’m in no hurry to leave. I would have liked to have stayed a while and asked a few more questions but any over-eager vicarious appreciation might have made him feel like I was eyeing up his girlfriend or something. He just wanted the job done and everybody out so I cut it short and kept it businesslike, although my role justified a visit and therefore a nose in every room.
An hour later I’m wandering down Farnham High Street in search of Guitar Village and I’m looking at the faces of the people passing, wondering if they know how lucky they are, how goddamn lucky we all are? We wake up and go to sleep knowing that we can carry on waking up and going to sleep for a very long time before any unsolicited change might be forced upon us.
We’re warm, fed, secure, and well entertained, free to set and follow our course in the knowledge that no one is likely to step in and take it all away at a moment’s notice. Women will remain unmolested (unless they go in for a bit of a ‘struggle cuddle’ of course) and our kids will attend school uninterrupted. Perhaps having a new baby has made me soft in the head but the sheer good fortune of this place, it’s infectious and it's really got under my skin.
There are a lot of nice houses tucked away in the countryside, I see them all the time when my work takes me off the beaten track. A whole bunch of people have clearly done really well for themselves and they're generally very discreet about it. Are they embarassed about their great good fortune, I wonder, or simply worried about crime? Or is it more symptomatic of an apetite to disconnect from the wider world and it's tawdry in-your-face issues? Whatever it is, I think I’m pretty much the only one who is smiling on Farnham High Street, which is crazy.
Plots like this one don’t come up for sale very often and the house that stood here was demolished to make way for his new vision. It’s clearly the plot that he was after and who can blame him. An acre or so surrounded by tall pines at the end of a muddy track, here and there the spent leaves of interspersed deciduous trees drift like snowflakes onto the lawn, or what will be the lawn. The deep blue iridescent tiles of the swimming pool beckon me in, I lean toward it, feel my head slipping under, cool, clean, sub-marine...
“What you here for mate?” a skinny bloke in an ill-fitting leather jacket breaks my reverie.
“Uh, can you tell me where the site office is?”
“I’m it.” he says, “Are you here to see about the pool?”
“Er, no, it’s the air test...I’m the air test guy.”
He turns out to be the aforementioned owner, a nice enough guy, a bit of a geezer. I’m here for free on the basis that his company will continue to give us lots of work. It’s a perfect example of how good fortune self-replicates, once you reach some kind of critical mass.
The test goes well and pretty soon I’m bouncing back down the track to the main road. It’s nice out here, really nice, and I’m in no hurry to leave. I would have liked to have stayed a while and asked a few more questions but any over-eager vicarious appreciation might have made him feel like I was eyeing up his girlfriend or something. He just wanted the job done and everybody out so I cut it short and kept it businesslike, although my role justified a visit and therefore a nose in every room.
An hour later I’m wandering down Farnham High Street in search of Guitar Village and I’m looking at the faces of the people passing, wondering if they know how lucky they are, how goddamn lucky we all are? We wake up and go to sleep knowing that we can carry on waking up and going to sleep for a very long time before any unsolicited change might be forced upon us.
We’re warm, fed, secure, and well entertained, free to set and follow our course in the knowledge that no one is likely to step in and take it all away at a moment’s notice. Women will remain unmolested (unless they go in for a bit of a ‘struggle cuddle’ of course) and our kids will attend school uninterrupted. Perhaps having a new baby has made me soft in the head but the sheer good fortune of this place, it’s infectious and it's really got under my skin.
There are a lot of nice houses tucked away in the countryside, I see them all the time when my work takes me off the beaten track. A whole bunch of people have clearly done really well for themselves and they're generally very discreet about it. Are they embarassed about their great good fortune, I wonder, or simply worried about crime? Or is it more symptomatic of an apetite to disconnect from the wider world and it's tawdry in-your-face issues? Whatever it is, I think I’m pretty much the only one who is smiling on Farnham High Street, which is crazy.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
The Un-snatched Ones
The hazy post-delivery days are punctuated by midwife visits and erratic attempts to divine the time, or even the day of the week, by casting around for a screen of some kind - phone, TV, or even the oven.
Time folds in on itself, it’s not an altogether unpleasant sensation, normal rules just don’t apply. Receiving visitors in a dressing gown is like, ‘hey, no that’s fine, come in, thank your lucky stars I’m not in my bollocks’, as they say in Spain. For mum, trying to remember not to just flip out a tit, mid-sentence, to nudge the sleepy baby in the face with, is as much decorum as can be expected. At times like this you appreciate the efforts of other recent parents, keen to connect like the un-snatched ones in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
“Thank god. It’s you...a bit tired is all, but you know. Oh, fine...a bit sore but glad to be back home. Getting back to normal now, you know (and you’re so glad that they do).”
Judging by the activity in town today, it’s a Saturday - something the oven failed to tell me. Everyone else is pursuing their chores with such clear-sighted efficiency it borders on aggression, while I’m bimbling in a supermarket aisle, with an armful of yoghurts, wondering where my trolley has gone. None of the shelf stackers have seen it and it takes a while to register that some idiot must have wandered off with my shopping, so I have to start over.
This is a disaster, programme-wise, and the clock is ticking. Poz is in a holding pattern around his grandparents, Jane and the baby are waiting in the car and my get-round-quickly-and-comprehensively list was clipped to that damn trolley. Bastard!
At the queue for the checkout I see Jane being helped through to the loos by a fellow human being who spotted her in the car and went over to investigate. My heart fills with gratitude as I genuflect discretely and turn to grasp the arm of a passing employee who is, fortunately, one of us.
“I’m sorry, my wife has just had a baby and she asked me to get some maternity pads. I couldn’t see any with ‘maternity’ written on them so I picked up these, is there anything more suitable?”
She takes the pack of Tenor Lady and bustles off purposefully, no questions asked. I love these older women, who like as not have given up any chance of a business career for motherhood. And as a new double-dad, wrestling with the tricky issue of sanitary towels, I am temporarily an honorary sister. Now I know how good sisterhood feels and I envy you.
Time folds in on itself, it’s not an altogether unpleasant sensation, normal rules just don’t apply. Receiving visitors in a dressing gown is like, ‘hey, no that’s fine, come in, thank your lucky stars I’m not in my bollocks’, as they say in Spain. For mum, trying to remember not to just flip out a tit, mid-sentence, to nudge the sleepy baby in the face with, is as much decorum as can be expected. At times like this you appreciate the efforts of other recent parents, keen to connect like the un-snatched ones in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
“Thank god. It’s you...a bit tired is all, but you know. Oh, fine...a bit sore but glad to be back home. Getting back to normal now, you know (and you’re so glad that they do).”
Judging by the activity in town today, it’s a Saturday - something the oven failed to tell me. Everyone else is pursuing their chores with such clear-sighted efficiency it borders on aggression, while I’m bimbling in a supermarket aisle, with an armful of yoghurts, wondering where my trolley has gone. None of the shelf stackers have seen it and it takes a while to register that some idiot must have wandered off with my shopping, so I have to start over.
This is a disaster, programme-wise, and the clock is ticking. Poz is in a holding pattern around his grandparents, Jane and the baby are waiting in the car and my get-round-quickly-and-comprehensively list was clipped to that damn trolley. Bastard!
At the queue for the checkout I see Jane being helped through to the loos by a fellow human being who spotted her in the car and went over to investigate. My heart fills with gratitude as I genuflect discretely and turn to grasp the arm of a passing employee who is, fortunately, one of us.
“I’m sorry, my wife has just had a baby and she asked me to get some maternity pads. I couldn’t see any with ‘maternity’ written on them so I picked up these, is there anything more suitable?”
She takes the pack of Tenor Lady and bustles off purposefully, no questions asked. I love these older women, who like as not have given up any chance of a business career for motherhood. And as a new double-dad, wrestling with the tricky issue of sanitary towels, I am temporarily an honorary sister. Now I know how good sisterhood feels and I envy you.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Taking Fright
There are moments when you realise you’re simply not going to get your way and the sooner you quit defending these positions and formulate another plan the sooner you feel, at least, you’ve regained some vestige of control. My Motorcycle Diaries are turning out to have less bike news in them than the eponymous story, which is disappointing. I’ve got bigger fish to fry of course and it’s not that I resent this ‘impasse’, but messing about with the Black Bullet has been my shed pursuit for some time and now I effectively no longer have one. I’m going a little stir crazy waiting for this baby to arrive, if I’m honest, and I'm unlikely to have any more time to myself afterwards.
So I’ve enlisted some help. Old Pete used to service his AJS back in the day and yesterday I swallowed my pride and pleaded with him to give me a hand one weekend after Christmas, to take the top of the engine off for a look-see and maybe bang some new clutch plates in. It will be good to have a slot agreed to do the work in, and Pete has a proper workshop as well, stocked with bolts and bits of old imperial engineering [TBB 1.8]. I’m a bit nervous about his somewhat ‘gung ho’ approach but that’s what this project needs if I’m going to finish it in time. I’ve got a book to write, a job to do, a family to serve, a dream guitar I never play and a Fine Wine habit to nurse along, and I need to get this baby rolling.
The only other guy with a vintage bike in the village looks at me like I’m a lazy pot-smoking hippy. He wouldn’t have been far wrong 25 years ago but he’s ex-army so anyone a bit laid back is not going to come off particularly well under that type of scrutiny. Also, I haven’t seen, or heard, his bike about for over a year, so who cares what he thinks.
In between now and then, I have a bit more to say about some other things which may or may not be related. While waiting either on building sites, trains, or for babies to arrive, I have mused on this and that and made the most of the time available. This passes the time and, frankly, when I give vent, like most people, I feel all the better for it. This is not to say the points I try to make are not considered or meant, just that they are restricted by time, intellect, and to some extent the medium. I mean, if equality in hierarchy wasn’t enough of a chew for a blog, or trust as a tool in crime prevention, how about freedom as duty? For this is what I’m lining up to with all this talk of reorganisation.
Unfortunately, as useful as this time has been, these are complex subjects and I begin to feel the limits of my ability to write about them in an entertaining and enlightening way. It’s better to make no point at all than to make a good point badly. It’s like fighting with a child to get them to eat their greens. Basically, they’ll never ever eat them if you boil them to fuck and then make an issue out of it.
I’ve come down this route with my eyes open, however, and if I take fright, crunch into reverse and whine back up the track, I will feel foolish. I would seem to be at an impasse whichever way I try to go. On reflection, I’ve implicated the medium in the blame but it’s also my saviour. I wouldn’t be having this discussion with myself if I didn’t sit down to write in these pockets of surplus time, so blog on is my only answer.
So I’ve enlisted some help. Old Pete used to service his AJS back in the day and yesterday I swallowed my pride and pleaded with him to give me a hand one weekend after Christmas, to take the top of the engine off for a look-see and maybe bang some new clutch plates in. It will be good to have a slot agreed to do the work in, and Pete has a proper workshop as well, stocked with bolts and bits of old imperial engineering [TBB 1.8]. I’m a bit nervous about his somewhat ‘gung ho’ approach but that’s what this project needs if I’m going to finish it in time. I’ve got a book to write, a job to do, a family to serve, a dream guitar I never play and a Fine Wine habit to nurse along, and I need to get this baby rolling.
The only other guy with a vintage bike in the village looks at me like I’m a lazy pot-smoking hippy. He wouldn’t have been far wrong 25 years ago but he’s ex-army so anyone a bit laid back is not going to come off particularly well under that type of scrutiny. Also, I haven’t seen, or heard, his bike about for over a year, so who cares what he thinks.
In between now and then, I have a bit more to say about some other things which may or may not be related. While waiting either on building sites, trains, or for babies to arrive, I have mused on this and that and made the most of the time available. This passes the time and, frankly, when I give vent, like most people, I feel all the better for it. This is not to say the points I try to make are not considered or meant, just that they are restricted by time, intellect, and to some extent the medium. I mean, if equality in hierarchy wasn’t enough of a chew for a blog, or trust as a tool in crime prevention, how about freedom as duty? For this is what I’m lining up to with all this talk of reorganisation.
Unfortunately, as useful as this time has been, these are complex subjects and I begin to feel the limits of my ability to write about them in an entertaining and enlightening way. It’s better to make no point at all than to make a good point badly. It’s like fighting with a child to get them to eat their greens. Basically, they’ll never ever eat them if you boil them to fuck and then make an issue out of it.
I’ve come down this route with my eyes open, however, and if I take fright, crunch into reverse and whine back up the track, I will feel foolish. I would seem to be at an impasse whichever way I try to go. On reflection, I’ve implicated the medium in the blame but it’s also my saviour. I wouldn’t be having this discussion with myself if I didn’t sit down to write in these pockets of surplus time, so blog on is my only answer.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Prevention as Standard, Cure as a Last Resort
Still waiting for the baby to show and our routine has now settled to the point that waiting no longer feels like a transient condition. Every morning Grandma calls, hoping for news and every week they come up and take Poz off Jane’s hands for a few hours, when it’s not a school day. I’ve cleared my desk at work and have a blissful nothing on. To be honest, I’m a such a lazy bastard I’m quite enjoying it. It’s going to be shock to actually have to do some proper work again. The important thing, I tell myself, is to accept this god-given hiatus with temperance and good grace. So, today I want to do some old man griping about logging on.
Sidestepping the obvious scatological and sexual interpretations of the activity, identity and online security are up-front contemporary issues. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, they irritate the b’Jesus out of me. Despite adopting a simple password system and a single preferred form of user ID, I still find myself facing the ‘failed Login’ screen on a regular basis. Some of this has to do with different requirements of the different portals – your user name should be a minimum of eight characters and include at least two numbers and two letters, one uppercase letter and a symbol from the Dead Sea Scrolls – and sometimes it’s because I change my password a little every so often to keep things tight.
I am often reminded when choosing a password that my identity is under attack. Despite this my choices never manage more than an amber light and even this is too hard to get right more than 80 percent of the time. I’m okay with online banking, because I use this every week, but other important less frequently accessed functions, like childcare vouchers or pension scheme details - or even more highly pressurised, credit card transaction validation procedures - are more difficult to manage. The former offer the ‘remind me who I am’ link, which is demeaning but useful, but there’s always that moment of competitive ‘I can do this’ which threatens to tip you over into teeth grindingly frustrating ‘account suspended’ territory.
My friend, Rob, who prefers Apple technology to a standard PC suggests I use an automatic login engine which does it all for you. My only beef with this is where it leaves you when you aren’t using your regular system. I can imagine even telephone banking becoming a closed road to me if I used an automated login system. Bottom line is it’s a right turn off. If a girl will pass on a kiss just because you’ve got spinach in your teeth, it’s understandable that a failed login often leads to a ‘forget it’ reaction. Once the spontaneity is gone, the moment quickly passes.
The login requirement is so prevalent now it has to have reached critical mass, surely? How much more logging on can a man do and still get stuff done? The sooner a mainstream online retinal ID system arrives, the better. Or is the argument about something more fundamental? I’ve never tried to log into something, even Facebook, as someone else. Why would I? Are we back to business here? I mean back to talking about security, as a business? Remember, Heathrow, Control Post 24?
It’s doing me in. You’re no fun anymore, life, with all your making sure and covering all bases. That stuff is for machines and I’m a person so can I opt out of online security and take my chances, anyone, please? I believe people are good until they are made to feel bad, and then they are capable of anything anyway, so let the light back in. I'm talking about trust as fraud prevention. Go on, give it a try. I leave my goddamn house unlocked and was only ever robbed once when everything was locked up. Prevention, in this sense, as standard please, cure as a last resort.
Sidestepping the obvious scatological and sexual interpretations of the activity, identity and online security are up-front contemporary issues. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, they irritate the b’Jesus out of me. Despite adopting a simple password system and a single preferred form of user ID, I still find myself facing the ‘failed Login’ screen on a regular basis. Some of this has to do with different requirements of the different portals – your user name should be a minimum of eight characters and include at least two numbers and two letters, one uppercase letter and a symbol from the Dead Sea Scrolls – and sometimes it’s because I change my password a little every so often to keep things tight.
I am often reminded when choosing a password that my identity is under attack. Despite this my choices never manage more than an amber light and even this is too hard to get right more than 80 percent of the time. I’m okay with online banking, because I use this every week, but other important less frequently accessed functions, like childcare vouchers or pension scheme details - or even more highly pressurised, credit card transaction validation procedures - are more difficult to manage. The former offer the ‘remind me who I am’ link, which is demeaning but useful, but there’s always that moment of competitive ‘I can do this’ which threatens to tip you over into teeth grindingly frustrating ‘account suspended’ territory.
My friend, Rob, who prefers Apple technology to a standard PC suggests I use an automatic login engine which does it all for you. My only beef with this is where it leaves you when you aren’t using your regular system. I can imagine even telephone banking becoming a closed road to me if I used an automated login system. Bottom line is it’s a right turn off. If a girl will pass on a kiss just because you’ve got spinach in your teeth, it’s understandable that a failed login often leads to a ‘forget it’ reaction. Once the spontaneity is gone, the moment quickly passes.
The login requirement is so prevalent now it has to have reached critical mass, surely? How much more logging on can a man do and still get stuff done? The sooner a mainstream online retinal ID system arrives, the better. Or is the argument about something more fundamental? I’ve never tried to log into something, even Facebook, as someone else. Why would I? Are we back to business here? I mean back to talking about security, as a business? Remember, Heathrow, Control Post 24?
It’s doing me in. You’re no fun anymore, life, with all your making sure and covering all bases. That stuff is for machines and I’m a person so can I opt out of online security and take my chances, anyone, please? I believe people are good until they are made to feel bad, and then they are capable of anything anyway, so let the light back in. I'm talking about trust as fraud prevention. Go on, give it a try. I leave my goddamn house unlocked and was only ever robbed once when everything was locked up. Prevention, in this sense, as standard please, cure as a last resort.
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Swapping Vangelis for Sigur Ros
The cold is back and with it the wind, stripping the trees of their dry brown curls and sweeping them up the road. Cutting through the wooded stretch on the A4260 south of Banbury feels like the epilogue of Blade Runner, only swapping Vangelis for Sigur Ros, which is entirely fair given the year. I’m on the run from a job that doesn’t care to rescue Poz from the nursery girls who are paid to, and get him home to his mum. The little tyke has a snotty nose and needed some persuading to join his class this morning but he’s determined to be a ‘big boy’, which is touching.
I'm tired, couldn’t sleep for thinking and some of that was the discussion of equality and hierarchy [Out to Lunch], which may or may not be theoretically at odds with one other, and how the argument is not easily made in the short form of a blog. The challenge was to reduce it down to a few component parts and offer a conclusion based on that but it leaves a lot of avenues unexplored, too many gaps in the argument for my liking. I enjoyed thinking about it though, it is an interesting if somewhat idealistic position. An academic might usefully point to where this has already been discussed, by Plato or one of them other intellectually well-hung Greeks. I wouldn’t know about that but if anyone has a digestible text to put forward, I’ll certainly relay it.
‘Digestible’ is important, it has to stand half a chance of being read to have any useful effect beyond academia. I’d like to think a situation that exemplifies an argument might suffice, an example rather than a description, but we are used to being led right to the point and having our noses rubbed in it, so to speak. The story has to be really good for this to work at all. The channels competing for every second of our attention don’t leave much time for consideration, or meditation. Even shedding mobiles, and ignoring emails doesn’t seem to free up much in the way of personal bandwidth. Indeed, the so-called Pockets of Surplus seem ever more precious and infrequent.
This is one reason to love an empty road, a chance to think and watch stripes of sun strum the dash, a counterpoint to the dreamy music from the north. Away in a field, I can see cream squares, a herd of some kind of beige cow, against a stand of tall limes. It makes me think of France and then my bike sitting neglected in the shed. I'll get back there one of these days and everyting will be as it should. Just got to help this little person out and into the world.
I'm tired, couldn’t sleep for thinking and some of that was the discussion of equality and hierarchy [Out to Lunch], which may or may not be theoretically at odds with one other, and how the argument is not easily made in the short form of a blog. The challenge was to reduce it down to a few component parts and offer a conclusion based on that but it leaves a lot of avenues unexplored, too many gaps in the argument for my liking. I enjoyed thinking about it though, it is an interesting if somewhat idealistic position. An academic might usefully point to where this has already been discussed, by Plato or one of them other intellectually well-hung Greeks. I wouldn’t know about that but if anyone has a digestible text to put forward, I’ll certainly relay it.
‘Digestible’ is important, it has to stand half a chance of being read to have any useful effect beyond academia. I’d like to think a situation that exemplifies an argument might suffice, an example rather than a description, but we are used to being led right to the point and having our noses rubbed in it, so to speak. The story has to be really good for this to work at all. The channels competing for every second of our attention don’t leave much time for consideration, or meditation. Even shedding mobiles, and ignoring emails doesn’t seem to free up much in the way of personal bandwidth. Indeed, the so-called Pockets of Surplus seem ever more precious and infrequent.
This is one reason to love an empty road, a chance to think and watch stripes of sun strum the dash, a counterpoint to the dreamy music from the north. Away in a field, I can see cream squares, a herd of some kind of beige cow, against a stand of tall limes. It makes me think of France and then my bike sitting neglected in the shed. I'll get back there one of these days and everyting will be as it should. Just got to help this little person out and into the world.
Monday, 17 October 2011
Out to Lunch
The Radio says, what marks us out in terms of our phenomenal success, evolution-wise, isn’t standing up on two legs, control of fire or the use of tools, but the ability to form complex social structures. In other words, understanding where you are in a hierarchy and behaving accordingly, indeed, each doing his part. It’s an interesting idea, one that sounds positive and intelligent and, if involvement in such structures is undertaken on a consensual basis, not necessarily at odds with the familiar concept that all men are created equal.
Equality within a hierarchy might seem like a contradiction in terms, and it probably is, overall, but philosophically, theoretically, it would seem possible, even desirable, to have both functioning in unison. Every man plays his part, is treated equally, and the whole turns out to be greater than the sum of its parts. The problems begin with ego and that peculiarly human tendency to believe one’s own publicity.
It's the 'I believe I have greatness in me but no one else seems to notice' effect. I can believe it’s frustrating because recognition opens doors and makes some aspects of life easier, giving greater autonomy. Remaining unrecognised, life stretches out ahead as a conveyor belt of duties, an endless line of unwashed dishes. It is impossible, or, at the very least dull and unwieldy, to recognise everyone in a hierarchy equally, so the leader(s) usually get the plaudits. Therefore, you must be a leader in your field to really benefit from any team-built success. This will be hard work, for if it were easy, surely everyone would do it. So you must be better than your peers...better than my peers...better than my peers...
As the echo fades, I’m not in Kansas anymore, I’ve talked myself out of it, anything for an easy life. Hang on a second, what was that about hard work? Am I getting in a muddle? Perhaps not, a spell of hard work with a clear aim in view is not all that hard. Once you're up there, the effort switches to maintaining the status quo and that’s what I mean by an easy life. Apart from anything I have to actually do, I can also rely on a bit of smoke and mirrors to keep my status. If I put on an expensive suit, drive a fancy car, walk and talk in a confident and particular way this will help to drive home the feeling of inferiority of the masses. In essence, all I have to do is look the part and they’ll let me have it.
Everybody knows where they were on 9/11 and when listening to a recent programme about political power it didn’t surprise me to hear that the Cabinet Secretary at the time wasn’t available to make a decision about evacuating Downing Street when the situation developed, because he was out to lunch. It was two going on three o’clock over here and like most people my age I was hard at work. Of course there may have been extenuating circumstances for the Minister, a late morning meeting or some such thing, but in our wider social hierarchy, if I’d known about this at that time, I wouldn’t have felt equal to him. I would have imagined him guzzling fine wine in a discreet Westminster restaurant. I would have imagined it with equal measures of resentment and envy. Who wouldn’t like to still be out to lunch at three on a Tuesday?
It’s a very one-sided view based on a simple observation and I apologise to the public servant if I have got him all wrong. I’m sure he couldn’t care less but, all things being equal, it’s the right thing to do. In any case, the specifics are irrelevant, what’s important is the principle and that is when you achieve status, life gets easier and preserving the status quo then matters more than it did before.
This week people have taken to camping in The City, outside St Pauls Cathedral, protesting against corruption in government and banking institutions. As far as I know, there is no one of any reportable status down there (sic) and the protestors have thrown themselves on the mercy of the Church, who, I guess, own the land they’re camping on. It’s hard to be anything other than sympathetic. Someone’s got to stand up for the common man, but where are our leaders when they are needed? Still out to lunch?
Equality within a hierarchy might seem like a contradiction in terms, and it probably is, overall, but philosophically, theoretically, it would seem possible, even desirable, to have both functioning in unison. Every man plays his part, is treated equally, and the whole turns out to be greater than the sum of its parts. The problems begin with ego and that peculiarly human tendency to believe one’s own publicity.
It's the 'I believe I have greatness in me but no one else seems to notice' effect. I can believe it’s frustrating because recognition opens doors and makes some aspects of life easier, giving greater autonomy. Remaining unrecognised, life stretches out ahead as a conveyor belt of duties, an endless line of unwashed dishes. It is impossible, or, at the very least dull and unwieldy, to recognise everyone in a hierarchy equally, so the leader(s) usually get the plaudits. Therefore, you must be a leader in your field to really benefit from any team-built success. This will be hard work, for if it were easy, surely everyone would do it. So you must be better than your peers...better than my peers...better than my peers...
As the echo fades, I’m not in Kansas anymore, I’ve talked myself out of it, anything for an easy life. Hang on a second, what was that about hard work? Am I getting in a muddle? Perhaps not, a spell of hard work with a clear aim in view is not all that hard. Once you're up there, the effort switches to maintaining the status quo and that’s what I mean by an easy life. Apart from anything I have to actually do, I can also rely on a bit of smoke and mirrors to keep my status. If I put on an expensive suit, drive a fancy car, walk and talk in a confident and particular way this will help to drive home the feeling of inferiority of the masses. In essence, all I have to do is look the part and they’ll let me have it.
Everybody knows where they were on 9/11 and when listening to a recent programme about political power it didn’t surprise me to hear that the Cabinet Secretary at the time wasn’t available to make a decision about evacuating Downing Street when the situation developed, because he was out to lunch. It was two going on three o’clock over here and like most people my age I was hard at work. Of course there may have been extenuating circumstances for the Minister, a late morning meeting or some such thing, but in our wider social hierarchy, if I’d known about this at that time, I wouldn’t have felt equal to him. I would have imagined him guzzling fine wine in a discreet Westminster restaurant. I would have imagined it with equal measures of resentment and envy. Who wouldn’t like to still be out to lunch at three on a Tuesday?
It’s a very one-sided view based on a simple observation and I apologise to the public servant if I have got him all wrong. I’m sure he couldn’t care less but, all things being equal, it’s the right thing to do. In any case, the specifics are irrelevant, what’s important is the principle and that is when you achieve status, life gets easier and preserving the status quo then matters more than it did before.
This week people have taken to camping in The City, outside St Pauls Cathedral, protesting against corruption in government and banking institutions. As far as I know, there is no one of any reportable status down there (sic) and the protestors have thrown themselves on the mercy of the Church, who, I guess, own the land they’re camping on. It’s hard to be anything other than sympathetic. Someone’s got to stand up for the common man, but where are our leaders when they are needed? Still out to lunch?
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
We Love You
Volatility in the markets appears to be exaggerated in the energy sector, at least to my untrained eye. There is a little good news this morning as one of my oil company, Europa’s [LON:EOG], drilling programmes reaches a milestone referred to as ‘spudding’. This sounds good, like potatoes, which is confirmed by a small hike in the share price. The majority of this Romanian concession is owned by another company, however, whose shares are if anything a little deflated at the news, so I’ll have to wait and see if this thing goes anywhere.
I had a look at this other company, Aurelien’s [LON:AUL], news backlog and noticed some similarities with my lot, such as innate volatility, new share issues to fund drilling programmes and changes at the top. Just for fun, I tracked the share price against the news of the retirement of the Chairman at Aurelian and what do you know, the price doubled, spiking briefly, two months before he announced his retirement. It was a less dramatic spike than the one that occurred when the CEO at Europa did the same thing [TBB 6.11] but the timing was remarkably similar.
Now I’m no expert, as I keep repeating, and I would love someone who knows to comment, but it seems clear to me that it is part of the expectation of anyone in a position of power and influence to exercise that muscle, provided nothing illegal comes of it. It’s no conspiracy theory, just an observation, and frankly one yet to show any particular merit.
As I write, Europa's share price returns to its familiar, depressed level and the excitement ebbs away. Good news in the field counts for little, it seems, unless it's big potatoes, like one of those oil fountains they had in the movies in the 1950s. It makes me wonder what mechanisms these directors may have had at their disposal then, if my suspicions are true? Or did they simply wait for the right moment, in an admittedly volatile market, to close out their retirement deals? All I can do is ask the question, not having sufficient knowledge or understanding to answer it. It's frustrating, constantly banging up against my limits, I feel there is more to the story and that there are connections to the wider world to be made.
Today, though, is more special than any of this. It's our second baby's due date. We've watched her grow and squirm at home in her mother's body and it's time she moved out. We can't wait to meet her, face-to-face. I feel as if I already know something of her, she's feisty, determined and ready. It's going to be a big shock for her to break out into the world and she's going to need all the help we can give to get her on her way. It seems to me an increasingly lonely journey as you get older but that you get more resilient with it, for the most part, and so a balance is achieved. But anyway, good luck Jane and god bless little Liza. We love you and we're with you, all the way.
I had a look at this other company, Aurelien’s [LON:AUL], news backlog and noticed some similarities with my lot, such as innate volatility, new share issues to fund drilling programmes and changes at the top. Just for fun, I tracked the share price against the news of the retirement of the Chairman at Aurelian and what do you know, the price doubled, spiking briefly, two months before he announced his retirement. It was a less dramatic spike than the one that occurred when the CEO at Europa did the same thing [TBB 6.11] but the timing was remarkably similar.
Now I’m no expert, as I keep repeating, and I would love someone who knows to comment, but it seems clear to me that it is part of the expectation of anyone in a position of power and influence to exercise that muscle, provided nothing illegal comes of it. It’s no conspiracy theory, just an observation, and frankly one yet to show any particular merit.
As I write, Europa's share price returns to its familiar, depressed level and the excitement ebbs away. Good news in the field counts for little, it seems, unless it's big potatoes, like one of those oil fountains they had in the movies in the 1950s. It makes me wonder what mechanisms these directors may have had at their disposal then, if my suspicions are true? Or did they simply wait for the right moment, in an admittedly volatile market, to close out their retirement deals? All I can do is ask the question, not having sufficient knowledge or understanding to answer it. It's frustrating, constantly banging up against my limits, I feel there is more to the story and that there are connections to the wider world to be made.
Today, though, is more special than any of this. It's our second baby's due date. We've watched her grow and squirm at home in her mother's body and it's time she moved out. We can't wait to meet her, face-to-face. I feel as if I already know something of her, she's feisty, determined and ready. It's going to be a big shock for her to break out into the world and she's going to need all the help we can give to get her on her way. It seems to me an increasingly lonely journey as you get older but that you get more resilient with it, for the most part, and so a balance is achieved. But anyway, good luck Jane and god bless little Liza. We love you and we're with you, all the way.
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
And You Can Keep Your Cheese
While searching for publications about sustainability, principally in energy and economics, I noticed with a twist of irony how critics of consumer culture still like to sell books, as if halting the depletion of natural resources is simply a matter of buying this instead of that. I paraphrase Ann Leonard who wrote The Story of Stuff, in saying this, and she stands out from the crowd in producing her initial thesis as a 20-minute movie, uploaded to YouTube. A colleague reminds me that computers running YouTube also use energy and are very much a part of consumer culture, I don’t have an answer for this, yet, but I do implore you to watch her, she’s intelligent, provocative and entertaining.
This morning the radio told us that we are about to become seven percent worse off, as the hangover from the financial crisis hits home. Apparently, at this point we are still been a bit pissed from the night before and it’s going to get worse before it gets any better. In the old days we used to get on it again, to put off the inevitable, and one can’t help but wonder if another round of quantitative easing (QEII as it’s waggishly being called), isn’t just, well, another round.
It feels like we're playing a waiting game and with the Black Bullet off the road for maintenance but no real opportunity to get stuck in, I’m back to scratching around for other useful things to do. Inevitably, I'm also indulging my predilection for a bit of ‘soap-boxing’ - 'It’s okay,' I tell myself, 'provided you weigh your arguments adequately and stay hawkish on assumptions, prejudices and repetition, and try not to get too pointy, however much fun it is.' So here goes...
...Tidying up is useful, if a bit dull, but you do feel good afterwards particularly if you operate a reward system. A hunt around in the Drawers of Forgotten Things upended a small stash of old mobile phones, which I flogged to a recycler for sixty quid. That’s sixty quid I haven’t allocated, free money in fact, and there’s precious little of that around so for fun I made a list of things outside of The Plan that I’d like to do. Then I went in search of other disposable assets: a broken camera netted thirty, an old dishwasher, rescued from a pile due to be skipped at the time of our office move, brought in another fifty and pretty soon I was looking at guitars and all sorts on eBay. Retail therapy, I might be against it, in principle, but it sure feels good.
But the Fender Jaguar I eyed up just waved me away, saying, ‘Huh, you can’t play me, so you can’t have me. You don’t play any of the others anymore so hands off!’ And it was right. I had allowed the idea, that, with a new guitar I would somehow become a player again, to seduce me – what nonsense. In the end, I took more exploratory tack. For months now I’ve watched my private share holdings sink to their knees, feeling powerless I’ve become one of those cowed investors whining, “you can keep your cheese, just let me out of the trap...” Buying a few more shares in companies I already hold, with everything so depressed, made me feel in control again. It’s a small deal but the average cost of shares came down as a result and a spring returned to my fiscal step.
As a qualification I'd like to say that until retail and investment banking are effectively separated, if you have money in the bank, it’s probably being invested, only you wouldn’t necessarily know were, by whom or, indeed, see any of the profits. Losses, on the other hand, are another matter. It’s my understanding that the post-crash (2007 & 2011) recapitalisation of the banks is being paid for, in part, by you and me. So, becoming sick of this seemingly one-sided relationship, I decided to do a bit of my own investing, cutting out at least one middle man. Thing is, it isn’t my line of work and it shows.
I'd also like to expand on the point about retail therapy feeling good. Jane says that no war on drugs will ever work until the people involved admit that the primary reason for taking them is that they are fun and they make people feel good, really good, at least for a time. There are plenty of discussions that could use a similar degree of fessing up at the outset. Any discussion of consumerism, for example, has to take into account that it makes people feel good, really good, at least for a time. Fun is an important factor, often overlooked by serious people. Anyone else remember having fun precisely because it was illegal, or at the very least disapproved of? The best fun is often this kind of fun - it's a tricky one.
This morning the radio told us that we are about to become seven percent worse off, as the hangover from the financial crisis hits home. Apparently, at this point we are still been a bit pissed from the night before and it’s going to get worse before it gets any better. In the old days we used to get on it again, to put off the inevitable, and one can’t help but wonder if another round of quantitative easing (QEII as it’s waggishly being called), isn’t just, well, another round.
It feels like we're playing a waiting game and with the Black Bullet off the road for maintenance but no real opportunity to get stuck in, I’m back to scratching around for other useful things to do. Inevitably, I'm also indulging my predilection for a bit of ‘soap-boxing’ - 'It’s okay,' I tell myself, 'provided you weigh your arguments adequately and stay hawkish on assumptions, prejudices and repetition, and try not to get too pointy, however much fun it is.' So here goes...
...Tidying up is useful, if a bit dull, but you do feel good afterwards particularly if you operate a reward system. A hunt around in the Drawers of Forgotten Things upended a small stash of old mobile phones, which I flogged to a recycler for sixty quid. That’s sixty quid I haven’t allocated, free money in fact, and there’s precious little of that around so for fun I made a list of things outside of The Plan that I’d like to do. Then I went in search of other disposable assets: a broken camera netted thirty, an old dishwasher, rescued from a pile due to be skipped at the time of our office move, brought in another fifty and pretty soon I was looking at guitars and all sorts on eBay. Retail therapy, I might be against it, in principle, but it sure feels good.
But the Fender Jaguar I eyed up just waved me away, saying, ‘Huh, you can’t play me, so you can’t have me. You don’t play any of the others anymore so hands off!’ And it was right. I had allowed the idea, that, with a new guitar I would somehow become a player again, to seduce me – what nonsense. In the end, I took more exploratory tack. For months now I’ve watched my private share holdings sink to their knees, feeling powerless I’ve become one of those cowed investors whining, “you can keep your cheese, just let me out of the trap...” Buying a few more shares in companies I already hold, with everything so depressed, made me feel in control again. It’s a small deal but the average cost of shares came down as a result and a spring returned to my fiscal step.
As a qualification I'd like to say that until retail and investment banking are effectively separated, if you have money in the bank, it’s probably being invested, only you wouldn’t necessarily know were, by whom or, indeed, see any of the profits. Losses, on the other hand, are another matter. It’s my understanding that the post-crash (2007 & 2011) recapitalisation of the banks is being paid for, in part, by you and me. So, becoming sick of this seemingly one-sided relationship, I decided to do a bit of my own investing, cutting out at least one middle man. Thing is, it isn’t my line of work and it shows.
I'd also like to expand on the point about retail therapy feeling good. Jane says that no war on drugs will ever work until the people involved admit that the primary reason for taking them is that they are fun and they make people feel good, really good, at least for a time. There are plenty of discussions that could use a similar degree of fessing up at the outset. Any discussion of consumerism, for example, has to take into account that it makes people feel good, really good, at least for a time. Fun is an important factor, often overlooked by serious people. Anyone else remember having fun precisely because it was illegal, or at the very least disapproved of? The best fun is often this kind of fun - it's a tricky one.
Sunday, 9 October 2011
I Don’t Want Your Shitty Wine
A modified expression of which I am particularly fond is, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t carry it. All around thieves and bounders are treating us no better than idiots but just you try and kick them off, or warn someone else, all you’ll get for your trouble is an uppity bluster and a what-makes-you-so-goddamn-different neck wind.
Nothing makes me different unless you count not wanting to be misled or ripped off, which I don’t. Many people work awfully hard which makes me sure I’m not the only one that doesn’t want to see the fruits of my labour frittered and wasted in an offhand way. So why do we let it happen? Why do we believe that a half price bottle of wine on a supermarket shelf, for example, was ever meant to be sold at anything other than that price? Most of that shit is terrible and we’re all buying it up like it’s the goddamn nectar of the gods.
Stand on a high street anywhere in the country and look left and right, see the gaudy and frankly insincere statements of value. What’s real and what’s really going on? You have to take some time to look, to see where the value lies, or doesn’t, as the case may be. In a business plan, for example, key personnel are named, those who bring the experience and skills that customers actually buy into. We pay the young lads who occasionally babysit over the going rate, because their mum is a health visitor. In other words we pay a premium for the hotline to the mum, you don’t see her but she’s the point of value to us. Not that her sons aren’t great guys, they’re just young that's all.
I think of the welder who charged me extra to do some work on my car because the bit that needed welding was near the fuel tank, which would have to come out due to the fire risk. After the job I looked under the car and found the mounting bolts, untouched, caked in mud. I confronted him and found he’d packed the area around with wet sand done the welding and charged me the full whack anyway. I can see where the value in the process was, for him, but he lied and overcharged me which was a bum deal and made me really angry.
I don’t know about you but I’m sick of being everybody else’s meal ticket, especially dickheads like him. I don’t want your shitty wine, your premium clothing brands, cheerless ready meals, overpriced goddamn Peruvian asparagus, rip off telephone tariffs, pointless mass produced gadgets or any other so-called necessities. I want honest stuff that does what it says, has nothing to hide, lasts the distance, can be repaired and doesn’t mess unduly with the environment.
Wine openers, for example, unless you’re unable to physically pull the cork from a bottle, what’s with all the chrome and the levers and the compressed gas and all that? The value in a corkscrew is the screw, it should be sharp and strong but above all thin, so it doesn’t expand the cork in the neck of the bottle, making the job more difficult. It should be circular or oval in section so it doesn’t cut the cork and preferably have a hardwood handle that lasts forever and burnishes with age. A simple tool for a simple job, something you might one day hear someone in your kitchen calling ‘trusty’.
Perhaps ‘trusty’ can be prefixed to things to see if they have what it takes; my trusty Armani jeans – hmm, you see, doesn’t sound right. Your trusty Samsung Galaxy – doesn’t do it for me. A trusty bottle of English wine – oh, don’t make me puke. The Black Bullet on the other hand is a trusty old bike. A good pair of stout boots, recently waxed, are trusty, as is a well maintained set of quality tools.
More than being simply useful, trusty things bring pleasure just from being there, hanging on a hook, waiting to be used. If you’re going to be around this stuff, go for the stuff that makes you feel good as well as being useful, even if you have to save to get it. You'll never regret it.
Nothing makes me different unless you count not wanting to be misled or ripped off, which I don’t. Many people work awfully hard which makes me sure I’m not the only one that doesn’t want to see the fruits of my labour frittered and wasted in an offhand way. So why do we let it happen? Why do we believe that a half price bottle of wine on a supermarket shelf, for example, was ever meant to be sold at anything other than that price? Most of that shit is terrible and we’re all buying it up like it’s the goddamn nectar of the gods.
Stand on a high street anywhere in the country and look left and right, see the gaudy and frankly insincere statements of value. What’s real and what’s really going on? You have to take some time to look, to see where the value lies, or doesn’t, as the case may be. In a business plan, for example, key personnel are named, those who bring the experience and skills that customers actually buy into. We pay the young lads who occasionally babysit over the going rate, because their mum is a health visitor. In other words we pay a premium for the hotline to the mum, you don’t see her but she’s the point of value to us. Not that her sons aren’t great guys, they’re just young that's all.
I think of the welder who charged me extra to do some work on my car because the bit that needed welding was near the fuel tank, which would have to come out due to the fire risk. After the job I looked under the car and found the mounting bolts, untouched, caked in mud. I confronted him and found he’d packed the area around with wet sand done the welding and charged me the full whack anyway. I can see where the value in the process was, for him, but he lied and overcharged me which was a bum deal and made me really angry.
I don’t know about you but I’m sick of being everybody else’s meal ticket, especially dickheads like him. I don’t want your shitty wine, your premium clothing brands, cheerless ready meals, overpriced goddamn Peruvian asparagus, rip off telephone tariffs, pointless mass produced gadgets or any other so-called necessities. I want honest stuff that does what it says, has nothing to hide, lasts the distance, can be repaired and doesn’t mess unduly with the environment.
Wine openers, for example, unless you’re unable to physically pull the cork from a bottle, what’s with all the chrome and the levers and the compressed gas and all that? The value in a corkscrew is the screw, it should be sharp and strong but above all thin, so it doesn’t expand the cork in the neck of the bottle, making the job more difficult. It should be circular or oval in section so it doesn’t cut the cork and preferably have a hardwood handle that lasts forever and burnishes with age. A simple tool for a simple job, something you might one day hear someone in your kitchen calling ‘trusty’.
Perhaps ‘trusty’ can be prefixed to things to see if they have what it takes; my trusty Armani jeans – hmm, you see, doesn’t sound right. Your trusty Samsung Galaxy – doesn’t do it for me. A trusty bottle of English wine – oh, don’t make me puke. The Black Bullet on the other hand is a trusty old bike. A good pair of stout boots, recently waxed, are trusty, as is a well maintained set of quality tools.
More than being simply useful, trusty things bring pleasure just from being there, hanging on a hook, waiting to be used. If you’re going to be around this stuff, go for the stuff that makes you feel good as well as being useful, even if you have to save to get it. You'll never regret it.
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Cadence and Cascade
We’re on baby alert. Jane is as big as a house, she could even be a block of flats, so I take Poz out and leave her on the sofa, stitching a duvet cover. It's the same one she started while waiting for the boy to arrive. Hopefully she'll get it finished this time.
Out on the French Road (so-called for being tree-lined) conkers drop with woody knocks and split open at our feet. I tell Poz the new baby is like the brown nut of a conker, nestled in Mummy's tummy. He runs off to find a stick to whack things with.
I'm looking forward to spending a bit more time with him and I've requested some holiday to stretch out my pathetic standard allocation of paternity leave. 'Exciting times’ says my boss, with typical Scottish understatement. The company is also going through changes, all part of being absorbed into a far larger organisation. It’s a painful process and I'm glad to be getting temporarily shot of it.
It strikes me as odd that brands invest so much in establishing character, to distinguish themselves from the competition, and yet there appears to be little room for individuality in a corporate setting. Homogenisation seems to be the aim and as far as I can tell the systems won’t run properly unless everyone plays along. At Jaguar this process was called 'getting your green injection'. All a bit Stepford Wives.
I suppose it’s about control. I was once criticised for being ‘off message’ when I wrote a number of supposedly ‘whacky’ newsletters as the editor of jaguar-racing.com. They were tame but too individualistic for Jaguar Cars’ marketing sensibilities. I discovered this when I was mistakenly (or purposely) copied in on a string of emails that had bounced around their office in a frenetic cadence. A customer relations girl who I'd met in a meeting, where she just stared at me in a slightly weird way, made the 'off message' comment.
After blinking at the thread for a minute, in a state of mild shock, I decided that if it wasn't important enough to speak to me, face-to-face, I'd just keep on doing what I was doing and if anything I stopped self-censoring and upped my score on the whack-ometer in successive months. I remember inventing Jaguar Towers, as my futuristic tongue-in-cheek base. The fans certainly recognised something different was going on, as I found out later at a couple of fanclub meets - 'Oh, you're the one who writes the newsletters' they said, eyeing me up.
The CR girl never could look me in the eye again, it was all a bit silly. In the end, Old Hodge, our fearsome Cars liason man, called it 'the Jaguar difference', which is how they were strapping stuff at the time anyway. He was a difficult man but soon after this episode we got on a whole lot better. He wasn't going to stick his neck out for me again but he saw how ridiculous the situation was. A line had to be drawn under it.
Old man Hodge had a well-honed way of doing things that wouldn't put his neck on the block. You could say he cascaded his learning downstream with a set of benchmark behaviours, or you could stick to plain English and call him a corporate survivor. I was out of the door a few months later.
Out on the French Road (so-called for being tree-lined) conkers drop with woody knocks and split open at our feet. I tell Poz the new baby is like the brown nut of a conker, nestled in Mummy's tummy. He runs off to find a stick to whack things with.
I'm looking forward to spending a bit more time with him and I've requested some holiday to stretch out my pathetic standard allocation of paternity leave. 'Exciting times’ says my boss, with typical Scottish understatement. The company is also going through changes, all part of being absorbed into a far larger organisation. It’s a painful process and I'm glad to be getting temporarily shot of it.
It strikes me as odd that brands invest so much in establishing character, to distinguish themselves from the competition, and yet there appears to be little room for individuality in a corporate setting. Homogenisation seems to be the aim and as far as I can tell the systems won’t run properly unless everyone plays along. At Jaguar this process was called 'getting your green injection'. All a bit Stepford Wives.
I suppose it’s about control. I was once criticised for being ‘off message’ when I wrote a number of supposedly ‘whacky’ newsletters as the editor of jaguar-racing.com. They were tame but too individualistic for Jaguar Cars’ marketing sensibilities. I discovered this when I was mistakenly (or purposely) copied in on a string of emails that had bounced around their office in a frenetic cadence. A customer relations girl who I'd met in a meeting, where she just stared at me in a slightly weird way, made the 'off message' comment.
After blinking at the thread for a minute, in a state of mild shock, I decided that if it wasn't important enough to speak to me, face-to-face, I'd just keep on doing what I was doing and if anything I stopped self-censoring and upped my score on the whack-ometer in successive months. I remember inventing Jaguar Towers, as my futuristic tongue-in-cheek base. The fans certainly recognised something different was going on, as I found out later at a couple of fanclub meets - 'Oh, you're the one who writes the newsletters' they said, eyeing me up.
The CR girl never could look me in the eye again, it was all a bit silly. In the end, Old Hodge, our fearsome Cars liason man, called it 'the Jaguar difference', which is how they were strapping stuff at the time anyway. He was a difficult man but soon after this episode we got on a whole lot better. He wasn't going to stick his neck out for me again but he saw how ridiculous the situation was. A line had to be drawn under it.
Old man Hodge had a well-honed way of doing things that wouldn't put his neck on the block. You could say he cascaded his learning downstream with a set of benchmark behaviours, or you could stick to plain English and call him a corporate survivor. I was out of the door a few months later.
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Without Trucks You Get Nothing
Jane’s little Honda does what a car should and causes no fiscal pain. It’s an unrefined and comparatively sluggish drive but what you get for making this compromise is longevity and economy. A practical person, ignoring the popular myth that you are what you drive, will appreciate this. Less so if he is keen to identify himself as a ‘consumer of goods’, which is, to my mind, what a brand focussed lifestyle aspires to. “Hi, I’m Dave and I’m a consumer, strictly designer outlet though, dude.”
Dave could be quite urbane and funny, of course he could, and intelligent to boot but I’d worry if he really thought that a particular set of wheels could really improve his life and make him happier and more attractive even. And yet, if his girlfriend turned out to be prettier than mine, and she admitted that she asked him in for a nightcap because his wheels sang “alpha, alpha, alpha” all the way home, I’d have to ask myself the question again.
This brings to mind a female comedian in Brixton telling of a guy in a wreck tailing her down the street after she paid him no mind, whereas the next dude to hang out of the window of a flash car made her giggly and coquettish. The irony, she said, was that the guy in the wreck was probably a home owner whereas the dude in the Benz...well, that car probably was his home. She said she knew it at the time but rounded the story off with, “you know how it is girls...” I guess those flash guys do too.
Brixton - a world away for me now, as I tow a trailer fan up the M40 early on a Sunday morning. It’s September but there seems to be lot of holiday traffic on the road - cars packed with boxes and duvets, clogging up the centre lane. I’m not allowed in the outside lane with a trailer, so I find this quite annoying. On the Warwick bypass I see a sign for the university and it all makes sense. Grey haired mums and dads are delivering their offspring to university. Most of Middle England is on the move and one day I suppose this will be me, taking my place in the centre lane at 66, years old and miles per hour.
“You’ll be alright,” I’ll offer, to break the pregnant silence.
“Yes, I know dad, it’s only university,” my son will say, hoping I’ll just shut the fuck up.
Later on, the younger one will despise him for a stream of parting tears. But he’ll come back changed and she’ll wonder where her brother has gone. No more tears, like baby shampoo.
But back to the car thing. Motorway driving is so unutterably dull that I find myself looking at cars passing and weighing up my next purchase, even though I’m not planning one. Being bored makes me want to consume, like some kind of flying couch potato. I can’t wait until private car ownership is a curious old-fashioned pastime, which was as bad for your health as smoking and just as expensive.
I’d like to see curvaceous columns erected along the central reservations of the motorway network. A friction-free magnetic monorail installed to transport people swiftly and reliably from hub to strategic transport hub. An electric car/bicycle hire system set up to make up the final/first leg of each journey. There would be no need for a compulsory land purchase scheme, development of greenbelt land or an outpouring of NIMBY protestation.
In this utopian vision, the tarmac below would become a wildflower haven awash with bees. In reality it would probably become an ugly, bellowing truck race, unless the primary function of the monorail was switched, for freight. Shipping containers slipping gracefully through the treetops, putting an end to the heavyweight contest of the slow lane and putting a little pleasure back into car driving. One bumper sticker I saw recently proclaimed, Without Trucks You Get Nothing!, which is in itself a more tantalising and radical proposition.
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Strangers in the Night
It’s coincidence that Birmingham turns out to be not only the Black Bullet’s hometown but also the crucible of British Heavy Metal music. Even the slick US version owes a lot to the British invention which swept across the Atlantic in successive waves. The music paper, Sounds, used to refer to NWOBHM, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which rolled in after the likes of Sabbath, Priest and Zeppelin.
I want to talk today about UFO, they were influential and the first band I saw live in that era. It would be nice to find one of the original members and draw a few stories out about the times which I only saw through the eyes of the hacks on Sounds. There seemed to be a lot of drinking involved, and all the rest, so who knows what state they’d be in now. UFO travelled over to the States and had a go, becoming part of one of Britain’s most successful cultural exports.
Most of Strangers in the Night [1979, Chrysalis], was recorded on tour over there and it stands out, in parts, as their finest hour. A punishing version of Lights Out exemplifies the times. The lyrics to this one describe the experience of an air raid warden in the Blitz:
“Lights out, lights out in London, hold tight til the end, why not now you know we’ll never wait til tomorrow.”
It may be more erotic fantasy than biography, it’s reminiscent of Don’t Want to Wait Anymore by The Tubes [Completion Backwards Principle, 1981, Capital]:
“Stranded on a desert isle, with no one around for thousands of miles. Imagine any place, if this is what it takes, but don’t tell me to wait.”
Michael Schenker had made a move across to UFO from The Scorpions and found his shine with them before pursuing a solo career, or a career in soloing. He dovetails neatly with Phil Raymond (guitar and keys) who, one imagines, was the balladeer in the band, much to Pete Way’s (bass) disgust. Raymond had the Dr Who scarf and Miami Vice jacket thing going on, where Schenker and Way used to plant their legs wide, shirts off, rugby socks down the front, screwed up faces plastered with sweat and hair.
On You Tube there’s an interview with Schenker in which he describes a back and forth picking action as a secret of his speed. It seems asinine to me now, as speed is only half the deal, even for a metal guitarist. There are hundreds of quick and yet ultimately tedious practitioners out there, Schenker is a lyrical monster with superb dramatic timing.
In a very real sense, much of the power came from the feeling that he was teetering on the edge of his abilities, a few fluffs here and there were more exciting than seamless soloing, as if on rails. Perfection was more of an American metal thing back then, to my mind. The track Rock Bottom puts these qualities of Schenker’s at the fore.
He left soon afterwards and, to my mind, lost his raw edge becoming, if you like, more American. I don’t know if this is fair as I stopped following him and don’t own a single MSG album but early Scorpions and mid UFO eras, with Schenker involved, were the best these bands ever had. Don’t let me bang on, but Lonesome Crow holds most of my guitar playing ambitions, right there. It’s got that urgency, with blues feel, and grunt, like Black Sabbath’s first album.
I want to talk today about UFO, they were influential and the first band I saw live in that era. It would be nice to find one of the original members and draw a few stories out about the times which I only saw through the eyes of the hacks on Sounds. There seemed to be a lot of drinking involved, and all the rest, so who knows what state they’d be in now. UFO travelled over to the States and had a go, becoming part of one of Britain’s most successful cultural exports.
Most of Strangers in the Night [1979, Chrysalis], was recorded on tour over there and it stands out, in parts, as their finest hour. A punishing version of Lights Out exemplifies the times. The lyrics to this one describe the experience of an air raid warden in the Blitz:
“Lights out, lights out in London, hold tight til the end, why not now you know we’ll never wait til tomorrow.”
It may be more erotic fantasy than biography, it’s reminiscent of Don’t Want to Wait Anymore by The Tubes [Completion Backwards Principle, 1981, Capital]:
“Stranded on a desert isle, with no one around for thousands of miles. Imagine any place, if this is what it takes, but don’t tell me to wait.”
Michael Schenker had made a move across to UFO from The Scorpions and found his shine with them before pursuing a solo career, or a career in soloing. He dovetails neatly with Phil Raymond (guitar and keys) who, one imagines, was the balladeer in the band, much to Pete Way’s (bass) disgust. Raymond had the Dr Who scarf and Miami Vice jacket thing going on, where Schenker and Way used to plant their legs wide, shirts off, rugby socks down the front, screwed up faces plastered with sweat and hair.
On You Tube there’s an interview with Schenker in which he describes a back and forth picking action as a secret of his speed. It seems asinine to me now, as speed is only half the deal, even for a metal guitarist. There are hundreds of quick and yet ultimately tedious practitioners out there, Schenker is a lyrical monster with superb dramatic timing.
In a very real sense, much of the power came from the feeling that he was teetering on the edge of his abilities, a few fluffs here and there were more exciting than seamless soloing, as if on rails. Perfection was more of an American metal thing back then, to my mind. The track Rock Bottom puts these qualities of Schenker’s at the fore.
He left soon afterwards and, to my mind, lost his raw edge becoming, if you like, more American. I don’t know if this is fair as I stopped following him and don’t own a single MSG album but early Scorpions and mid UFO eras, with Schenker involved, were the best these bands ever had. Don’t let me bang on, but Lonesome Crow holds most of my guitar playing ambitions, right there. It’s got that urgency, with blues feel, and grunt, like Black Sabbath’s first album.
Saturday, 10 September 2011
Pockets of Surplus
A small window of opportunity opens up and I’m in the garden at six, burning a stack of old papers faster than Gaddaffi. It’s the usual Rubik’s Cube of Saturday jobs that need doing, addressing one thing to facilitate another, and the first thing in the sequence is to get some of the garden rubbish burnt before anyone hangs out their washing. This presents an unmissable opportunity to simultaneously dispose of a box of personal papers, sifted out our filing by Jane who is keen to prepare the ‘office’ for our new arrival. We will eventually move into this room, which is the biggest, and shift the kids into ours. And so it goes on, sorting one thing to accommodate another.
About midday I lose track of what I’m doing. I’ve picked up the new glass for the shed [NJW 22.08.11] and I’m food shopping when I realise that I’ve left my wallet in the car. It’s a small thing but there’s a funfair in town and the car is parked ways away, so I have to under-shop and make do with whatever cash there is in my pocket. Sometimes I think I tend to make things too complicated, No Journey Wasted is fine, as a concept, but there’s only so much computing power available in real life to allocate to weighing up the odds. If you push it to the limit and something unexpected happens, you risk losing a lot more than a single thread. A whole construct can become compromised, which can really piss you off.
The answer is that you have to remain flexible. I had planned to make a round trip; get money (town), get glass (out of town) and visit a farm shop (out of town) on the way back, instead of the supermarket (town). But I also needed to stop at the lighting shop, which was behind the barriers set up in the town square to accommodate the funfair. This threw me and I shot through town thinking I’d hit the lighting shop on the way back from the glass shop, which was half-day closing.
It’s a dull story, I know, but when ‘me’ time is so hard to come by, rolling all kinds of jobs into one helps. And if time is money, it’s much the same as the save-to-reallocate attitude. It’s not really about being a dweeb or a miser, it’s about being a bit lazy and tight, on time that is. Cutting back on waste, in terms of time and money, should, in theory, leave me with a bit more of both and it's in that pocket of surplus that my teenage wants live on. This is where the bike gets fixed, the guitar comes out, the beer is drunk and my book gets written.
I'm a little uneasy about this, now that I write it, because if a job will soak up as much time as you can give it, it's hard to see how these 'pockets of surplus' (POS) can ever really exist, except in theory. I turn to thinking about a recent fantasy POS indulgence; sitting on a beach with a cold beer, waiting for a plate of BBQ blackened prawns (previous post). Does this person really have to have worked hard, saving time and money, to arrive at this point? Or could this be the result of a lifestyle choice? He could run the bar, or be a beach bum, so he can live his dream.
It's a nice thought, but I'm not sure this kind of life qualifies as a long-term goal. Outside of a holiday scenario, it strikes me as a gap year or retirement thing, so I think I'll stick to my guns, for now, safe in the knowledge that the beach ain't going anywhere.
Thursday, 8 September 2011
She has a nice body
September, kids are back at school and the tube is packed so I’m pressed into the end of a carriage, with three women and some guys. One guy looks like Blackbeard, if the Pirate had a job in The City he’d look like that. The girl right in front looks like Lily Allen, in a figure-hugging jumper dress. She has a nice body which trembles pleasantly as we rattle along the Central Line.
It’s a humiliating crush of bodies, though, with little love going spare. A girl in a seat is putting on some slap, making a sideways face as she flicks her blusher brush back and forth. It’s a stranger’s intimate moment, blatantly put on view. Am I supposed to watch, to appreciate the effectiveness of her technique? Or am I obliged to look away? I don’t know the rules, which has the effect of making this act unnecessarily provocative.
I look around for answers but nobody else seems to be taking a blind bit of notice. Perhaps they’ve each already employed a look which looks like they’re not looking at all, I can’t tell. Hell, now she’s making me feel like a bumpkin. I simmer silently, switching back to Lily Allen, the tendrils of her bob cut curling around iPod wires. Then I remember that I always felt kind of provoked by this behaviour, even when I was a city dweller. Sure, I used to down a cold can of Special Brew on the tube, as a precursor to a big night out, which may also be distasteful, but it hardly qualifies as an intimate moment.
When I get home I’ll ask Jane what she thinks. She’ll probably laugh and call me over-sensitive, and ask why I don’t just read a book or something if it annoys me so. I’ll sulk a bit and switch to my Big Mac attack – we’ve all endured that sickly smell on public transport. She might quietly remind me of what gets her goat; stupid old men having a go because deep down inside they feel life didn’t deal them the cards they were led to expect, that they were promised even.
And she'd be right. As I get off the train I tell myself there isn’t much in my life worth getting upset about, not really. I am the rider of the Black Bullet and I have everything I ever wanted. And yet somewhere in the world someone is wriggling their toes in the sand, slugging on a cold beer and waiting for a plate of blackened prawns, and that person isn’t me, godammit, it isn't me.
It’s a humiliating crush of bodies, though, with little love going spare. A girl in a seat is putting on some slap, making a sideways face as she flicks her blusher brush back and forth. It’s a stranger’s intimate moment, blatantly put on view. Am I supposed to watch, to appreciate the effectiveness of her technique? Or am I obliged to look away? I don’t know the rules, which has the effect of making this act unnecessarily provocative.
I look around for answers but nobody else seems to be taking a blind bit of notice. Perhaps they’ve each already employed a look which looks like they’re not looking at all, I can’t tell. Hell, now she’s making me feel like a bumpkin. I simmer silently, switching back to Lily Allen, the tendrils of her bob cut curling around iPod wires. Then I remember that I always felt kind of provoked by this behaviour, even when I was a city dweller. Sure, I used to down a cold can of Special Brew on the tube, as a precursor to a big night out, which may also be distasteful, but it hardly qualifies as an intimate moment.
When I get home I’ll ask Jane what she thinks. She’ll probably laugh and call me over-sensitive, and ask why I don’t just read a book or something if it annoys me so. I’ll sulk a bit and switch to my Big Mac attack – we’ve all endured that sickly smell on public transport. She might quietly remind me of what gets her goat; stupid old men having a go because deep down inside they feel life didn’t deal them the cards they were led to expect, that they were promised even.
And she'd be right. As I get off the train I tell myself there isn’t much in my life worth getting upset about, not really. I am the rider of the Black Bullet and I have everything I ever wanted. And yet somewhere in the world someone is wriggling their toes in the sand, slugging on a cold beer and waiting for a plate of blackened prawns, and that person isn’t me, godammit, it isn't me.
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Momentum
How many building consultants does it take to put up a shed? Well, if it's two, something is bound to fall through the gaps in their thinking. It might be that we deferred to each other, it might also be that we were too busy chatting to really pay attention, but after young John left I noticed the rear panel was upside down. If you can imagine roof tiles, and how the courses are lapped to shed water, the laps to the weatherboarding were clearly the wrong way up and open to water ingress. It was two days before friends, Nick and Rosie, came by and Nick helped me flip it over.
Sometimes there seems to be just too much to think about but passing tasks to others is a luxury we can’t afford. In some ways, despite my homespun philosophy of self-reliance, I think it would be better to get a man in, someone who knows what’s what with a thing because he does it all the time. Then we can each think about a thing, develop skills in our own field, and act as pieces in a jigsaw - the whole being bigger and better than the sum of the parts. Then I remember I’m a building consultant and weathered enclosures are kind of my thing, so there are no excuses.
Anyway, let it go, flick hair back, the shed is up at last. The bikes and garden things are out of my workshop, I’ve even installed a storage rack given to me by old Vince, source of the shed. The rack has tilt-out drawers which I’m thinking of using to store bits that come off the bike, in sequence, top to bottom. This will help me to reassemble parts and fixings, when the time comes, correctly and in the right order. Ever mindful that the new baby is due in a few weeks time, that this project is likely to extend through the winter and that it wouldn’t do to lose track while otherwise occupied. The DIY-way is littered with the road kill of projects gone bad due to loss of focus and momentum, I don’t want this one to be another.
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Hierarchies of Need
In August transport around the city becomes bearable, if a trifle stifling. It had me foxed this morning, no jostling on the underground and I even got a seat. Then a discarded newspaper carrying a bank holiday traffic chaos story put me in the picture. News of traffic chaos, when it isn't me, puts my mind strangely at ease. As I'm swept out east on the Central line, feeling more relaxed than usual, I remember hitch-hiking out of Cornwall, probably on this very weekend thirty years ago, and walking most of the way along the A30, buffeted by wave after wave of passing caravans, not a lift to be had.
This friend and I had the crazy idea that it would be great to set off on a roadtrip one summer with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and a couple of bulging rucksacks. We slept in the open in giant plastic bags, waking up with slug-matted hair outside Exeter. I'm glad those days are behind me. Like most youngsters, I was desperate to escape the tedium of an ordered life and take my chances, that is, my chances. I find more freedom in planning and order now.
The train pulls in to Pudding Mill. The Kings Yard Substation is one of my favourite buildings on the Olympic Park. It isn’t a big cheese like the Aquatics Centre or the Velodrome but it has other worldly characteristics, in a Blake’s 7, or Dr Who kind of way. The main building has a periscope tower with a jaunty plume of smoke, like a pony tail at the top, it’s not clear if the projection is meant to be a viewing platform but it should be. The substation itself has honeycombed walls, which makes it look Arabic, and it’s all the colour of dried blood, which is exquisite.
I've offered to cook for eight on the weekend so after crawling around on scaffolding all afternoon it’s good to make my escape from the Park and head off to Bethnal Green, in search of a Mexican food shop. “A beautiful shop” says an old suited queen, directing me on my way. It turns out to be a bit too beautiful for my liking, I wanted shelves bending under the weight of sacks of maize, plaits of drying chillies up in the rafters and the smell of it all hitting you in the doorway. Instead I got trendy ethnic cushions and ceramics, overpriced Day of the Dead knick knacks and a pile of tinned chipotles.
Ho hum, it isn’t easy getting to the bottom of things these days, everybody is out to maximise profitability, increase revenue streams and turn ordinary things into luxuries – with a price to match. You can’t blame them, if people are stupid and wealthy enough to pay, that’s their lookout. Thirty quid and a few tins later, I’m on the tube again, for Paddington. It’s sweltering down here, someone once speculated if the conditions were up to European livestock transport standards. I doubt it. It’s busier too than it was this morning and there’s a signal failure on the line.
Great. I’m standing behind the yellow line at Oxford Circus when I hear the news holding my laptop bag, fluorescent jacket, hard hat, and two bags of shopping. It’s incredible that we’ve managed to put men on the moon but are unable to produce a public address system which remains intelligible at a tube or train station. I’m tapping my reserves of energy and patience by the time the train rolls in. I could have taken a different route if I’d understood the announcement broadcast when I alighted from the Central Line.
The doors open and, incredibly, on a Bank Holiday Friday at rush hour, with a delay, there’s a seat available as I get on. I’ve done this trip a few times so I know where the doors line up on the platform and the seat is mine for the taking. I press forward but am cut off by a skinny city suit prodding on his Blackberry. I’m too late and stand there, flatfooted, with a sweaty face, looking like a festival goer hiking in with all my kit. This dude slips neatly into the seat like he hasn’t been sitting down all day, all of 30-years-old to my 50, no luggage, cool as a cucumber.
What am I going to say? “Excuse me, but I think that’s my seat?” No of course I’m not, because it isn’t, so I’m bloody well going to grin and bear it. It’s too much to expect people who fight all day for a bit of space, status, control, a piece of the pie, to imagine they’re going to assimilate hierarchies of need as they move from place to place. If you can’t take the heat, old man, get out of the kitchen.
At Paddington I find the kitchen door. Many times I have entered the city through this portal and felt the buzz, and known it was good, but now I just can't wait to leave.
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Black Fields of Rape
Work is a prize jackass sometimes and for this reason alone it doesn’t do to be too wedded to it. You can pull your hair out all week and get to the weekend tired and, frankly, pissed off, but does Work appear at the foot of your bed on Saturday morning and say, ‘hey, you’ve given it your all this last week, so you just stay right there and I’ll get you a cup of tea. Oh, and don’t worry about the kids, I’ll get them up, give them some toast and take them to the pool. How’s that?’ It’s a rhetorical question, of course.
Since returning from holiday I’ve been hammered for one thing or another, including my invoicing, but the omission to pay me an agreed over, as compensation for two Sundays that I worked last month, is of no interest to anyone but me. It’s goddamn one-way traffic. And who looks after the kids when you’re working on weekends, the person who occasionally does actually bring you the cup of tea in the morning. And what do they get out of it? Work sucks too (except maybe on payday).
After lunch, feeling a trifle undervalued, I roll the Black Bullet out and go for a blat up the lane, taking the long route round and back to the office. It’s a beautiful day and the bike burbles contentedly past black fields of rape set in light ochre and green. Dappled shade licks over me while insects sting and click off my face and glasses. The last bit is open road and the heat comes up off the blacktop in waves, I bathe my face in it, trying to make the memory of it a physical thing that I can take out and reuse in the winter. It’s a beautifully wasted, overly circuitous journey.
I have to decide it it's worthwhile re-insuring the bike next month, with the plans afoot to take her off the road for maintenance purposes. It seems a shame not to ride through the bright days of Autumn, though, so I think I'll have to 'reallocate' the pounds I've saved here and there and make the best of it. I don't know if it's just me, but the exhaust note sounds different these days, more bass, perhaps the baffles are shot. Another thing on the list for further investigation.
Since returning from holiday I’ve been hammered for one thing or another, including my invoicing, but the omission to pay me an agreed over, as compensation for two Sundays that I worked last month, is of no interest to anyone but me. It’s goddamn one-way traffic. And who looks after the kids when you’re working on weekends, the person who occasionally does actually bring you the cup of tea in the morning. And what do they get out of it? Work sucks too (except maybe on payday).
After lunch, feeling a trifle undervalued, I roll the Black Bullet out and go for a blat up the lane, taking the long route round and back to the office. It’s a beautiful day and the bike burbles contentedly past black fields of rape set in light ochre and green. Dappled shade licks over me while insects sting and click off my face and glasses. The last bit is open road and the heat comes up off the blacktop in waves, I bathe my face in it, trying to make the memory of it a physical thing that I can take out and reuse in the winter. It’s a beautifully wasted, overly circuitous journey.
I have to decide it it's worthwhile re-insuring the bike next month, with the plans afoot to take her off the road for maintenance purposes. It seems a shame not to ride through the bright days of Autumn, though, so I think I'll have to 'reallocate' the pounds I've saved here and there and make the best of it. I don't know if it's just me, but the exhaust note sounds different these days, more bass, perhaps the baffles are shot. Another thing on the list for further investigation.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
On the Verge
Portsmouth Naval Base...O-eight hundred: “Sorry, you’ve not been booked in, who are you here to see?” I state my business and am asked to wait. I’ve been here many times but like Heathrow and the Olympic Park, and various MOD sites that I’m required to visit, this counts for nothing. I idly wonder if the national identity card scheme had got off the ground, would getting through security have become any easier? I doubt it. Security is a business, in whose interests less is most definitely not more.
My name is called, badly. She might just as well have been shouting, “ham, egg and chips?” across a crowded cafe, as she slaps the latest batch of clearance emails down on the counter.
“That’s me.” I volunteer eagerly, glad to be first.
“ID?”
“Driving Licence.”
“Have you got the counterpart...Oh.” It falls out onto the desk.
“Got a vehicle?”
I state the number and this rigmarole continues until my pass is issued. I try not to say thanks, thanks for what? We’re all in here saying thanks for bugger all.
“Thanks.” Dah, I can’t help it, it’s hardwired in.
It’s like people who say ‘sorry’ when you bump into them. Is this the famous English politeness, or just some meaningless noise used to fill the post-incident silence? Over-politeness strikes some, particularly Latin people, as a bit dishonest. I’m sympathetic to this view. Added to which, shit services stay shit if you don’t voice your opinion. The danger in bottling it up and giving it all that stiff upper lip business is that if you do blow, you’re likely to go nuclear, over the top, out of the park. Then you look like the bad guy and lose by default. On the next occasion, try a controlled blow. It’s good for you, just don’t do it going through security.
What is good for me is getting that small shed erected in the garden and sorting out my workshop in the bigger one. We don’t own the house we so I tightly control the costs of any works I do on the property. The greenhouse was a freebie and most of the plants were from seed, Jane’s dad, or the reduced section at the garden centre. It’s not about being tight, it’s just that every pound you save is there to be reallocated. I still enjoy a few luxuries, I just try to consider all the options when something comes up.
To this end, I’ve scrounged some roofing felt – at the same time helping Old Pete to clear out a corner of his workshop. There’s just not enough of it, so I purloined (with permission) a piece of polythene from a building site to make up the difference. The front edge of the shed roof is rotten requiring patching prior to erection. This was my task yesterday. I couldn’t visualise installing a new verge with nothing solid to attach it directly to, so I decided to just start by tidying up the rotten ends of the planks.
Using a pry, or crow-bar I start knocking out the rotten wood. Poz trots up the path with a spanner to help. It’s not quite the use intended for the tool but I’ve told him daddy has jobs to do and to him this means 'get tools'. He wants to help, he’s sourced a tool and he can do no damage so I let him join in. It’s evident as we whack away that the boards are coming loose so I reckon it’s a good idea to stabalise them by fixing a batten across. I pull out my cordless drill, Poz clocks this, drops his spanner and scampers back up to the house. He hates drilling, poor little guy, after I put some shelves up in his room once with a screaming hammer drill.
This tidy up/stabalisation approach develops into a kind of three-pronged verge support. As is often the case, just getting started kind of shakes the tree and the ideas come tumbling out. I don’t bother filling in the gaps where the timber has rotten away, thinking that the stiff roofing felt will span this directly. I reinforce the corners, fix the verge rail (a piece of discarded fencing timber) in place and squeeze wood glue into all the joints before tightening, to promote a general stiffness in the repair.
The next bit is to fix the roof coverings on, which is straightforward as it goes, even though I'm worried that the polythene will quickly rot when exposed to UV radiation. I haven't a (free) solution for this at the time and it’s as much as I can do in an afternoon before I have to pack up, one step closer to my goal. This in itself could be frustrating but the job otherwise seems a good ‘un and a little bit of progress each day is all I can reasonably ask. This is the basis of the 'no journey wasted' approach after all.
My name is called, badly. She might just as well have been shouting, “ham, egg and chips?” across a crowded cafe, as she slaps the latest batch of clearance emails down on the counter.
“That’s me.” I volunteer eagerly, glad to be first.
“ID?”
“Driving Licence.”
“Have you got the counterpart...Oh.” It falls out onto the desk.
“Got a vehicle?”
I state the number and this rigmarole continues until my pass is issued. I try not to say thanks, thanks for what? We’re all in here saying thanks for bugger all.
“Thanks.” Dah, I can’t help it, it’s hardwired in.
It’s like people who say ‘sorry’ when you bump into them. Is this the famous English politeness, or just some meaningless noise used to fill the post-incident silence? Over-politeness strikes some, particularly Latin people, as a bit dishonest. I’m sympathetic to this view. Added to which, shit services stay shit if you don’t voice your opinion. The danger in bottling it up and giving it all that stiff upper lip business is that if you do blow, you’re likely to go nuclear, over the top, out of the park. Then you look like the bad guy and lose by default. On the next occasion, try a controlled blow. It’s good for you, just don’t do it going through security.
What is good for me is getting that small shed erected in the garden and sorting out my workshop in the bigger one. We don’t own the house we so I tightly control the costs of any works I do on the property. The greenhouse was a freebie and most of the plants were from seed, Jane’s dad, or the reduced section at the garden centre. It’s not about being tight, it’s just that every pound you save is there to be reallocated. I still enjoy a few luxuries, I just try to consider all the options when something comes up.
To this end, I’ve scrounged some roofing felt – at the same time helping Old Pete to clear out a corner of his workshop. There’s just not enough of it, so I purloined (with permission) a piece of polythene from a building site to make up the difference. The front edge of the shed roof is rotten requiring patching prior to erection. This was my task yesterday. I couldn’t visualise installing a new verge with nothing solid to attach it directly to, so I decided to just start by tidying up the rotten ends of the planks.
Using a pry, or crow-bar I start knocking out the rotten wood. Poz trots up the path with a spanner to help. It’s not quite the use intended for the tool but I’ve told him daddy has jobs to do and to him this means 'get tools'. He wants to help, he’s sourced a tool and he can do no damage so I let him join in. It’s evident as we whack away that the boards are coming loose so I reckon it’s a good idea to stabalise them by fixing a batten across. I pull out my cordless drill, Poz clocks this, drops his spanner and scampers back up to the house. He hates drilling, poor little guy, after I put some shelves up in his room once with a screaming hammer drill.
This tidy up/stabalisation approach develops into a kind of three-pronged verge support. As is often the case, just getting started kind of shakes the tree and the ideas come tumbling out. I don’t bother filling in the gaps where the timber has rotten away, thinking that the stiff roofing felt will span this directly. I reinforce the corners, fix the verge rail (a piece of discarded fencing timber) in place and squeeze wood glue into all the joints before tightening, to promote a general stiffness in the repair.
The next bit is to fix the roof coverings on, which is straightforward as it goes, even though I'm worried that the polythene will quickly rot when exposed to UV radiation. I haven't a (free) solution for this at the time and it’s as much as I can do in an afternoon before I have to pack up, one step closer to my goal. This in itself could be frustrating but the job otherwise seems a good ‘un and a little bit of progress each day is all I can reasonably ask. This is the basis of the 'no journey wasted' approach after all.
Monday, 22 August 2011
Replacing the Clutch Cable
The shed panels stacked against a tree in the garden blew over while we were away. A piece of edging timber split and a window broke, so the delay in putting it up is compounding things. I need to repair the roof, get it erected and get all the obstacles out of my workshop as soon as possible, if I want to secure time for attempting any jobs on the bike. I have managed one small bit of maintenance on the Black Bullet, in the cramped conditions, which was at least a success.
The cause of the intermittent clutch problem I first experienced under duress in Le Mans is still a bit of a mystery, so troubleshooting by a process of elimination would seem appropriate. The easiest and therefore first action is to replace the cable, which is old and almost certainly shot. The small 1950s motorcycle maintenance hardback I bought describes a simple but effective cable oiling technique which I decided to try prior to installation. I don’t know for sure if it needs oiling but it’s a neat, innovative process which can hardly go wrong. Something to get the confidence up.
The book suggests using a small glass bottle of oil with a cork in it, I have substituted a cut plastic bottle. The cork is drilled to the diameter of the cable sleeve and the end is inserted. This is hung up, in effect to form an oil header tank arrangement, with the cable hanging below. Oil poured into the plastic container pools above the cork and gradually finds its way into the sleeve. You can push and pull the cable itself to help it on its way.
The net effect is a super slippy, friction free cable action, lovely. Routing the new cable without having to remove the fuel tank, and the pipes to the carburettor, is quickly done by releasing the ends of the old cable, fixing one end of the new one to the opposite end of the old and pulling the pair of them through. This requires some judicious feeding and wriggling but takes a lot less time.
Apart from the new cable being a bit tight – i.e. there’s no tolerance at the lever – the action is quite different, the old one was clearly well worn. I’m a bit concerned about the lack of any slack but it all works fine, so job seemingly done. I will have a look at the clutch over the winter and replace the springs/plates as required, when I figure out how to get the chain cover off. Pathetic, I know, but this is really not my thing. I'm going to need to secure a friendly 'expert' for when I get stuck.
The cause of the intermittent clutch problem I first experienced under duress in Le Mans is still a bit of a mystery, so troubleshooting by a process of elimination would seem appropriate. The easiest and therefore first action is to replace the cable, which is old and almost certainly shot. The small 1950s motorcycle maintenance hardback I bought describes a simple but effective cable oiling technique which I decided to try prior to installation. I don’t know for sure if it needs oiling but it’s a neat, innovative process which can hardly go wrong. Something to get the confidence up.
The book suggests using a small glass bottle of oil with a cork in it, I have substituted a cut plastic bottle. The cork is drilled to the diameter of the cable sleeve and the end is inserted. This is hung up, in effect to form an oil header tank arrangement, with the cable hanging below. Oil poured into the plastic container pools above the cork and gradually finds its way into the sleeve. You can push and pull the cable itself to help it on its way.
The net effect is a super slippy, friction free cable action, lovely. Routing the new cable without having to remove the fuel tank, and the pipes to the carburettor, is quickly done by releasing the ends of the old cable, fixing one end of the new one to the opposite end of the old and pulling the pair of them through. This requires some judicious feeding and wriggling but takes a lot less time.
Apart from the new cable being a bit tight – i.e. there’s no tolerance at the lever – the action is quite different, the old one was clearly well worn. I’m a bit concerned about the lack of any slack but it all works fine, so job seemingly done. I will have a look at the clutch over the winter and replace the springs/plates as required, when I figure out how to get the chain cover off. Pathetic, I know, but this is really not my thing. I'm going to need to secure a friendly 'expert' for when I get stuck.
Sunday, 21 August 2011
TV sucks, except maybe on Sundays
Nothing happens and then all hell breaks loose, that’s how it seems to be. Life pulses like a TV monster, expanding and contracting, panting, vibrating and not managing stairs that well.
Can’t help but feel we’re living in extraordinary times, as fortunes are lost overnight and people riot in the streets, but I also suspect that we’re always living in extraordinary times and we just don't see it. We’re lucky if this is the case as life will not be boring for long.
But we’re a lazy crowd of reactionary sorts with crazy, unfounded expectations. Where do these dumb ideas come from? We think that the action should come to us and when it does we assume that somehow we’ll be ready for it. What keeps us thus poised and in readiness, alcohol and TV? If it wasn’t so true it might even be funny.
Why do looters run off with TVs anyway? So they can get The Man's message at the right dot pitch? It's a passive receiver, burn it looter dude, you're only doing yourself in.
As an evident lazyman, I feel qualified to comment. I’ve done time in front of the TV and although I am trying to up my game, I’ve started late and the laziness is deeply rooted.
Recently I've been telling myself not to put too much faith in numbers, that Markets are always optimistic and that TV sucks (except maybe on Sundays).
Have you ever wondered why billions can get wiped off the value of shares overnight but billions never get wiped on?
Me either.
Can’t help but feel we’re living in extraordinary times, as fortunes are lost overnight and people riot in the streets, but I also suspect that we’re always living in extraordinary times and we just don't see it. We’re lucky if this is the case as life will not be boring for long.
But we’re a lazy crowd of reactionary sorts with crazy, unfounded expectations. Where do these dumb ideas come from? We think that the action should come to us and when it does we assume that somehow we’ll be ready for it. What keeps us thus poised and in readiness, alcohol and TV? If it wasn’t so true it might even be funny.
Why do looters run off with TVs anyway? So they can get The Man's message at the right dot pitch? It's a passive receiver, burn it looter dude, you're only doing yourself in.
As an evident lazyman, I feel qualified to comment. I’ve done time in front of the TV and although I am trying to up my game, I’ve started late and the laziness is deeply rooted.
Recently I've been telling myself not to put too much faith in numbers, that Markets are always optimistic and that TV sucks (except maybe on Sundays).
Have you ever wondered why billions can get wiped off the value of shares overnight but billions never get wiped on?
Me either.
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Control Post 24
A metaphor I do like is, it’s like trying to herd cats, because it’s extremely visual and the idea appeases me. There’s no need to ask all the usual contextual questions – who’s cats are they, what are their names, why are there so many of them - I mean a herd is a lot - and is that even the right collective noun for cats? I think I might keep the last question and set it aside for Sundays, but the rest of them are blown into the weeds by the preposterous circumstance of the position.
This morning I’m airside, as they call it, at Heathrow airport, testing a new control booth. Trying to keep tabs on my allocated helpers is like trying to herd cats. They have a congenital dysfunction when it comes to understanding what needs to be done and the appropriate timescale it needs to be done in. They’re nice guys and everything, but totally unfocused, or focused on something else. I suspect part of this is because while they’re allocated to me they’re off latrine duty, or whatever it is they’d otherwise be doing, and the longer they take the better it is, for them.
Like the Olympics, getting through security is a right ball-ache. Despite some Dutch and South African extraction, I’m actually more English than I’m normally willing to admit, but not enough for these guys. They’ve already refused me entry once - a journey entirely wasted - effectively because I was born in South Africa. It strikes a hard note of irony whenever the pendulum of casual racism swings according to circumstance but swing it does. I’m severely ‘curtailed’ by this but it’s enough to rub me up the wrong way, as our cat would surely say.
It’s been a tiresome week overall, and no progress with the shed. I haven’t even added to my screw collection. On reflection this is probably a good thing. Sharp metallic objects seem drawn into the lining of my laptop bag where they lurk until security machines find them. Add batteries and cables for the camera into the mix and you have an explosive cocktail of suspicion. I begin emptying out my bag before anyone asks me to. I’m always polite, and it makes me laugh, right now, as I wait to gain control of Control Post 24, to see this sign:
‘Our staff are trying to help you with your journey. Any threats, verbal abuse or violence towards our staff will be taken seriously and you may be prosecuted.’
That’s not a threatening notice at all, is it, and the day a security guy actually helps me with my journey will be, as my dad used to say, entertaining the surreal, a 'frosty Friday'. I’m not in the best of moods but it will be over soon, I must just try not to take it home with me.
This morning I’m airside, as they call it, at Heathrow airport, testing a new control booth. Trying to keep tabs on my allocated helpers is like trying to herd cats. They have a congenital dysfunction when it comes to understanding what needs to be done and the appropriate timescale it needs to be done in. They’re nice guys and everything, but totally unfocused, or focused on something else. I suspect part of this is because while they’re allocated to me they’re off latrine duty, or whatever it is they’d otherwise be doing, and the longer they take the better it is, for them.
Like the Olympics, getting through security is a right ball-ache. Despite some Dutch and South African extraction, I’m actually more English than I’m normally willing to admit, but not enough for these guys. They’ve already refused me entry once - a journey entirely wasted - effectively because I was born in South Africa. It strikes a hard note of irony whenever the pendulum of casual racism swings according to circumstance but swing it does. I’m severely ‘curtailed’ by this but it’s enough to rub me up the wrong way, as our cat would surely say.
It’s been a tiresome week overall, and no progress with the shed. I haven’t even added to my screw collection. On reflection this is probably a good thing. Sharp metallic objects seem drawn into the lining of my laptop bag where they lurk until security machines find them. Add batteries and cables for the camera into the mix and you have an explosive cocktail of suspicion. I begin emptying out my bag before anyone asks me to. I’m always polite, and it makes me laugh, right now, as I wait to gain control of Control Post 24, to see this sign:
‘Our staff are trying to help you with your journey. Any threats, verbal abuse or violence towards our staff will be taken seriously and you may be prosecuted.’
That’s not a threatening notice at all, is it, and the day a security guy actually helps me with my journey will be, as my dad used to say, entertaining the surreal, a 'frosty Friday'. I’m not in the best of moods but it will be over soon, I must just try not to take it home with me.
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Screws for the Job
Behind each mystic mountain there’s another one to climb, or is it ‘misty mountain’? It’s unimportant. However well meant, metaphors like this one tend to be a bit trite. There isn’t enough case specific information available to be able to decide if the application is right, or even useful. I can’t help thinking why is the subject driven to climb, who are they with, what equipment have they got, what’s the weather going to be like and how did they plan their route? But perhaps I’m reading too much into it, definitely so if the value is precisely in its simplicity, or universality.
If what we want to say by this is, “we’re locked into a journey and sometimes the going is uphill and other times its down,” then it’s a perfectly adequate bit of small talk. But why not just say that and be done?
On a different tip, I’ve set myself a task which relies on another task being completed first. I’m a bit hacked off about Task A not getting done because Task B is more interesting. Task A was going well but work and family duties have soaked up all the available time and energy, and for now the momentum is lost.
There is added complexity in that I need help to complete Task A, so it’s not just my time I need to plan for. I’ve almost popped the question, out of desperation, to a couple of people in a 'come on, let’s just do it, let’s do it now!’ kind of way. But I lean over, look at them and realise nothing’s as simple as it should be. I have too many needs and they don’t have enough, i.e. there isn’t much chance of a fair exchange of favours coming any time soon.
If Task A were a bit more glamorous than, say, erecting an old shed, I might skirt round this problem. If it were collecting and tapping a barrel of ale and giving my helper a chance to try it out, it might fly without a separate return favour. Unfortunate then that Task A = old shed.
I need to get the shed up in order to decant all the bicycles and baby equipment out of my workshop. Tinker time is always tight and I need a work space where I can leave a job half done, throw a rag over it and return to it where I left off, with nothing moved. My lack of ability to move Task A along is definitely cramping my style.
At least as the job has been in mind for two weeks now I've had the time to scout around, while pursuing my work on building sites, for discarded timber, polythene and screws for the job. Every time I find something useful I feel a small step closer to the satisfactory execution of Task A. There's a lot to be said for small mercies. Of course, right away I'm thinking, 'what's being said and by whom? And how are mercies measured, or even recognised, anyway?' I can't help it.
And then I think, driving myself crazy, Waste not, want not. But who says it’s waste and when does not wasting become hoarding, more to the point when is recycling just living with terrible shit? As Jane once said about a not very good ‘kids, let’s recycle and save the planet’ programme, “think it’s called Is it Really Rubbish?”
I think I know the answer, but it's not my question.
If what we want to say by this is, “we’re locked into a journey and sometimes the going is uphill and other times its down,” then it’s a perfectly adequate bit of small talk. But why not just say that and be done?
On a different tip, I’ve set myself a task which relies on another task being completed first. I’m a bit hacked off about Task A not getting done because Task B is more interesting. Task A was going well but work and family duties have soaked up all the available time and energy, and for now the momentum is lost.
There is added complexity in that I need help to complete Task A, so it’s not just my time I need to plan for. I’ve almost popped the question, out of desperation, to a couple of people in a 'come on, let’s just do it, let’s do it now!’ kind of way. But I lean over, look at them and realise nothing’s as simple as it should be. I have too many needs and they don’t have enough, i.e. there isn’t much chance of a fair exchange of favours coming any time soon.
If Task A were a bit more glamorous than, say, erecting an old shed, I might skirt round this problem. If it were collecting and tapping a barrel of ale and giving my helper a chance to try it out, it might fly without a separate return favour. Unfortunate then that Task A = old shed.
I need to get the shed up in order to decant all the bicycles and baby equipment out of my workshop. Tinker time is always tight and I need a work space where I can leave a job half done, throw a rag over it and return to it where I left off, with nothing moved. My lack of ability to move Task A along is definitely cramping my style.
At least as the job has been in mind for two weeks now I've had the time to scout around, while pursuing my work on building sites, for discarded timber, polythene and screws for the job. Every time I find something useful I feel a small step closer to the satisfactory execution of Task A. There's a lot to be said for small mercies. Of course, right away I'm thinking, 'what's being said and by whom? And how are mercies measured, or even recognised, anyway?' I can't help it.
And then I think, driving myself crazy, Waste not, want not. But who says it’s waste and when does not wasting become hoarding, more to the point when is recycling just living with terrible shit? As Jane once said about a not very good ‘kids, let’s recycle and save the planet’ programme, “think it’s called Is it Really Rubbish?”
I think I know the answer, but it's not my question.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Why Make it Hard?
One day, I’m going to throw away my mobile phone. I can’t wait for this day, especially on a Monday morning when I’m late for work and I can’t find the bastard. It’s a liability, financially, philosophically and in terms of personal etiquette. The only goddamn thing it’s good for is, “Hi, I’m on the train...” like goddamn Dom Joly.
A bloke who runs a software factory said on the radio, “We’re working on advanced applications for mobile technology. One day you will be able to point your phone at your flat-pack furniture, it will recognise the item and then download the assembly instructions.” How undermined do you feel now? Well, it isn’t half what the guy who studied for years to become a master cabinet maker is feeling.
I have a shed to erect, but damn, it’s August, it’s muggy and I’m feeling sluggish. I want to lie down on the grass and watch the miniature world going about its business in an earthquake-like scene of tangled walkways and collapsed bridges, revolving dandelion restaurants nodding serenely, high above the chaos. There will still be restaurants after the apocalypse, right? Even if the only thing on the menu is rat with cockroach chips...
At a time like this you want to take up smoking grass, listening to wild sounds and getting laid out in the open. Bodies sticking together, sweat flying, jumping in the pool, sea, or river. Licking lips in the shower and the full, god-given appreciation of an ice cold beer.
Swimming in the sea at night is a personal favourite. Glittering moonlit wave tops, shimmering phosphorescence, a chunk in the soup of life. Later on, prickly salted skin and hair thick with minerals will remind you you were there. In the morning your shoes will still be sandy and abrasive, like dreamed of objects finding the light of day. Life is so simple, why make it hard?
A bloke who runs a software factory said on the radio, “We’re working on advanced applications for mobile technology. One day you will be able to point your phone at your flat-pack furniture, it will recognise the item and then download the assembly instructions.” How undermined do you feel now? Well, it isn’t half what the guy who studied for years to become a master cabinet maker is feeling.
I have a shed to erect, but damn, it’s August, it’s muggy and I’m feeling sluggish. I want to lie down on the grass and watch the miniature world going about its business in an earthquake-like scene of tangled walkways and collapsed bridges, revolving dandelion restaurants nodding serenely, high above the chaos. There will still be restaurants after the apocalypse, right? Even if the only thing on the menu is rat with cockroach chips...
At a time like this you want to take up smoking grass, listening to wild sounds and getting laid out in the open. Bodies sticking together, sweat flying, jumping in the pool, sea, or river. Licking lips in the shower and the full, god-given appreciation of an ice cold beer.
Swimming in the sea at night is a personal favourite. Glittering moonlit wave tops, shimmering phosphorescence, a chunk in the soup of life. Later on, prickly salted skin and hair thick with minerals will remind you you were there. In the morning your shoes will still be sandy and abrasive, like dreamed of objects finding the light of day. Life is so simple, why make it hard?
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Prologue:
This series of notes is served as an accompaniment to the story of The Black Bullet, which is a 350cc, single cylinder, rigid frame motorcycle built in 1953 by Royal Enfield of Redditch, West Midlands, UK. The bike was loaned out to me after more than a decade in storage by my generous brother-in-law, Ian. It continued to gather dust in my shed, out of gratitude, for a further two years until Old George, the painter, came round one day to do our kitchen and caught sight of it as he was putting his paints away.
Subsequent chiding and ritual humiliation from the old boys in the village began to loosen my mind, which I’d made up in ignorance, deciding without really knowing that the thing would need a lot of work to get it going. It would be unpleasant work, I reasoned, involving oil and dirt and swearing. In the event, most of it turned out to be paperwork - less oil and dirt than anticipated but still plenty of room for swearing.
Not turning my hand to much effective mechanic-ing didn't stop me from proselytizing on the values of self-reliance and the virtues of user serviceable technologies, as I took The Black Bullet to someone else to be re-commissioned. I then planned a trip to Iceland which I was dissuaded from attending by The Biking Viking. In lieu of his advice and some foolish dabbling on the markets I eventually found myself on a budget ferry to France.
A good thing too, as even on this curtailed adventure I proved incapable of relaxing on a machine I didn’t really understand, which was virtually untried and not made of common (at least not in France) parts. I consoled myself with the knowledge that I was at least experienced at blowing up in France but this seemed only useful in generating an epidemic of confidence sapping recollections, as I encountered various niggles on the way.
If nothing else, this tour demonstrated that my life is mired in contradictions. Like many before me my immediate response to this revelation was to get drunk and late that night, as I mused aloud on this generally unhelpful state of affairs, one of the Village People said, "Hey, iss not nesssssarily a problem, it might juss be a phenomenominen." However you choose to put it, the only bastion we have against foolishness is to better ourselves, you can’t dig, drink or smoke your way out, this much seems sure.
What we need is reliable information, the chance to amass some decent experience, to sharpen our judgement, a bit of gentle encouragement and perhaps a few timely lifestyle changes. We need to feel enfranchised and engaged, otherwise what’s left? Cultural participation as rampant, mindless consumerism? Whoa, there we go again. A bit of a single malt flashback...
Part Two of The Black Bullet continues the account of my attempts to overcome my own ignorance, this time primarily from a technical point of view. I am not a mechanic - like many people I live in an almost perpetual state of fear and suspicion when it comes to the operation and effects of technology - but this is sort of the point. Emancipation requires effort and this is my own, personal solution, which I am pleased and strangely relieved to be able to share.
Having said that, a leopard doesn't fully fill its spots (they tend to be lighter in the middle, like dappled shade) and I remain an essentially lazy person. All the more reason to ensure that No Journey is Wasted.
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