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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?