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.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
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.
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