You might have seen Eastbourne Pier yesterday, enveloped in a huge black plume of smoke, flames licking around the wooden roof. It was ever so sad. This grand Victorian enterprise, a hundred-or-so years old, consumed in a single afternoon. Apparently, people simply watched from the beach in silence. I can understand that.
I wonder why the Victorians built piers? I suppose it was simply a novel thing to do, to extend the promenade out to sea, where you could look back at the seaside, or the surging waves between the planks beneath your feet. Or perhaps they saw a more commercial opportunity?
In that golden age of engineering and innocence, I imagine stuffy men in starched collars dreaming of whole networks of wooden structures, sprawling out into the ocean, providing little cities on stilts: shops, amusement arcades and entertainments, sweets, iced creams and penny-slot machines. The likes of Margate, Blackpool, Brighton, Eastbourne would have them - jutting out from the beach, where cloth-capped workers, fresh from the glimmering railway, would step out with their bonneted belles.
"Will you hold my hand, dear William?"
"I don't know, Miss Bessie. I'd certainly like to but I'd be a feared of what it might be meaning. Plus me hands are awful grubbed from the railing and I think you should like to keep yours pristine shouldn't you?"
It's a very different world isn't it? The age of cast iron and wood is long gone, consumed by the raging fires of modernity, eroded by the ocean of change that always laps at these shores. Those top hats and enormous sideburns, those cravats, parasols and fascinators have long since perished from our sorry old world, leaving only the sepia-toned memories and the distant sound of the honky-tonk piano.
And these grand old piers. Walking along them as child, almost felt like stepping into a unique world, back through time to the heyday of my parents' grandparents, growing up in that golden age of the seaside holiday. They'd be saddened probably, if they knew that their favourite pier had become a shell of mangled iron and smoking embers. I hope it's OK to feel sad for them too.
Thursday, 31 July 2014
Tuesday, 29 July 2014
THE CARD OF MANY SIGNATURES
Well as the seasons change, so do the placement students. One lot out, another lot in. It's like a constant stream of young people from Reading University - always 21, always between their second and final year, always unnervingly quiet but irrepressibly eager. They never grow old as we grow old, nor jaded as we might grow ever more cynical. These are the perpetual wide-eyed newbies, thrust for the first time into the world of work, of kitchen-chit-chat and of the unspoken etiquette that we all take for granted.
With the efflux (Yeah, don't worry, I had to look it up) of bright-eyed computer scientists, and the influx of even-brighter-eyed computer scientists, comes the usual set of leaving and welcoming traditions.
My least favourite leaving tradition is probably the Card of Many Signatures. You'll have come across this, probably in different forms, but you'll know what I mean. Two arrived on my desk this morning - both for departing students.
It's always the same. The Card of Many Signatures arrives in a large white A4 envelope, much bigger than the Card's own coloured envelope which is invariably included inside. To the front is stapled a printed sheet of names, many of which have been struck through with biro. The standard instructions are usually scrawled next to the printed Arial 12 point Excel table:
[Escapee's] leaving card. Please return to [Escapee's Manager] by [Escapee's Leaving Date]
I pull the pendulous envelope towards myself, at which point of course, a handful of loose coins clatter out of its open mouth and scatter across my desk, noisily. Everyone hears. No-one speaks. Sheepishly, I gather the one and two pound coins up as silently as I can, before adding my own and dropping them back into the package as stealthily as possible.
Then, when these numismatic paratroopers have landed safely back in the fold, out slides... the Card of Many Signatures.
It's always Snoopy or a bus-full of people waving, or generic balloons, or giant letters saying "Sorry you're leaving". I know for a fact too, that for the recipients of many of these cards, the purchaser (and many of the signatories) are often definitely not sorry that the person leaving is leaving and have consigned themselves to documented hypocrisy. They crossed off their name from the list with a sigh of relief and an exuberant flourish of the pen.
Nonetheless, whether you're sorry or not, the rules are that you must sign it. So, I flip open The Card of Many Signatures and gaze upon the endearing messages that have already been scribbled across both sides at acute angles.
"Good luck in your future career!"
"All the best!!!"
"It's been fun!"
"Thanks for all you're hard work!"*
"So long, Mr President!"
It's like there's been an explosion in the factory that makes exclamation marks. They are everywhere, scattered across the handwritten wall of bland compliments, multiplying everything that precedes them like a factorial of cumulative irritation. In fact, it must be a challenge to find a document... pretty much anywhere... with more exclamation marks in it, than an old leaving card - even a textbook on the use of exclamation marks, I'd wager.
At this point, I normally sit there, pen between my teeth, trying to think of something that doesn't make me sound like a twit. Clearly, others have been creative:
"Get lost you old fart."
...Or they've referred to some in-joke that's designed to make the recipient smile and everyone else who reads the card wonder what it means.
"See ya later, Iron Balls!"
OK then.
I don't like resorting to platitudes, and I don't want to be rude, even for a laugh. However, I also don't like sitting at my desk with my pen in my mouth for half an hour, cursing my luck that I didn't turn out to be Hemmingway. So I usually write:
"All the best, [Escapee]," and sign my name underneath, safe in the knowledge that this will be read precisely once, before The Card of Many Signatures finds its ultimate destiny in the recycling bin.
Once signed, I realise with a predictable sigh, that everyone else around me has already also signed it and I must surreptitiously take it to the other end of the room to the people who are on the list, but have quite possibly never heard of the person to whom they're about to wish the best of luck. Dutifully though, they will, presumably undertaking the same impersonal ritual that I've just been through.
That's what bothers me, I think - the predictability of it. Unless something unthinkable happens to me, there will one day be a Card of Many Signatures with my name on it. I too, will have to look pleasantly surprised when I open it as the exclamation marks burst out at me, in front of a circle of gathered engineers. I'm not sure I want people who don't know me very well to wish me luck. But with clockwork precision, they will. They absolutely will. Ho hum.
It's at this point, that the A4 envelope makes a surprise return to my desk, where it's slid towards me by someone who raises their eyebrows and then runs away as if they had been carrying a hot potato. Before I can protest, I scan down the list of names and realise with a silent whimper, that I have forgotten to cross mine off and The Card of Many Signatures has come back to me. Every. Time.
Sigh.
*It's surprisingly difficult to remain calm when I have a pen in my hand and I see this.
With the efflux (Yeah, don't worry, I had to look it up) of bright-eyed computer scientists, and the influx of even-brighter-eyed computer scientists, comes the usual set of leaving and welcoming traditions.
My least favourite leaving tradition is probably the Card of Many Signatures. You'll have come across this, probably in different forms, but you'll know what I mean. Two arrived on my desk this morning - both for departing students.
It's always the same. The Card of Many Signatures arrives in a large white A4 envelope, much bigger than the Card's own coloured envelope which is invariably included inside. To the front is stapled a printed sheet of names, many of which have been struck through with biro. The standard instructions are usually scrawled next to the printed Arial 12 point Excel table:
[Escapee's] leaving card. Please return to [Escapee's Manager] by [Escapee's Leaving Date]
I pull the pendulous envelope towards myself, at which point of course, a handful of loose coins clatter out of its open mouth and scatter across my desk, noisily. Everyone hears. No-one speaks. Sheepishly, I gather the one and two pound coins up as silently as I can, before adding my own and dropping them back into the package as stealthily as possible.
Then, when these numismatic paratroopers have landed safely back in the fold, out slides... the Card of Many Signatures.
It's always Snoopy or a bus-full of people waving, or generic balloons, or giant letters saying "Sorry you're leaving". I know for a fact too, that for the recipients of many of these cards, the purchaser (and many of the signatories) are often definitely not sorry that the person leaving is leaving and have consigned themselves to documented hypocrisy. They crossed off their name from the list with a sigh of relief and an exuberant flourish of the pen.
Nonetheless, whether you're sorry or not, the rules are that you must sign it. So, I flip open The Card of Many Signatures and gaze upon the endearing messages that have already been scribbled across both sides at acute angles.
"Good luck in your future career!"
"All the best!!!"
"It's been fun!"
"Thanks for all you're hard work!"*
"So long, Mr President!"
It's like there's been an explosion in the factory that makes exclamation marks. They are everywhere, scattered across the handwritten wall of bland compliments, multiplying everything that precedes them like a factorial of cumulative irritation. In fact, it must be a challenge to find a document... pretty much anywhere... with more exclamation marks in it, than an old leaving card - even a textbook on the use of exclamation marks, I'd wager.
At this point, I normally sit there, pen between my teeth, trying to think of something that doesn't make me sound like a twit. Clearly, others have been creative:
"Get lost you old fart."
...Or they've referred to some in-joke that's designed to make the recipient smile and everyone else who reads the card wonder what it means.
"See ya later, Iron Balls!"
OK then.
I don't like resorting to platitudes, and I don't want to be rude, even for a laugh. However, I also don't like sitting at my desk with my pen in my mouth for half an hour, cursing my luck that I didn't turn out to be Hemmingway. So I usually write:
"All the best, [Escapee]," and sign my name underneath, safe in the knowledge that this will be read precisely once, before The Card of Many Signatures finds its ultimate destiny in the recycling bin.
Once signed, I realise with a predictable sigh, that everyone else around me has already also signed it and I must surreptitiously take it to the other end of the room to the people who are on the list, but have quite possibly never heard of the person to whom they're about to wish the best of luck. Dutifully though, they will, presumably undertaking the same impersonal ritual that I've just been through.
That's what bothers me, I think - the predictability of it. Unless something unthinkable happens to me, there will one day be a Card of Many Signatures with my name on it. I too, will have to look pleasantly surprised when I open it as the exclamation marks burst out at me, in front of a circle of gathered engineers. I'm not sure I want people who don't know me very well to wish me luck. But with clockwork precision, they will. They absolutely will. Ho hum.
It's at this point, that the A4 envelope makes a surprise return to my desk, where it's slid towards me by someone who raises their eyebrows and then runs away as if they had been carrying a hot potato. Before I can protest, I scan down the list of names and realise with a silent whimper, that I have forgotten to cross mine off and The Card of Many Signatures has come back to me. Every. Time.
Sigh.
*It's surprisingly difficult to remain calm when I have a pen in my hand and I see this.
Monday, 28 July 2014
LE JARDIN A VÉTHEUIL
Monet was a colour-fanatic. Look at the way the sunflowers spread across the canvas, perfectly orange against the complementary blue sky. It's a delicate balance of light and shade. The two children are stepping into a world of summer, a place where the air is warm and the tall sunflowers reach for the sun in hope of a brighter tomorrow. It's astonishing isn't it, that Monet has created this 'impression' almost entirely by colour.
That's what I think. For me, this pretty little postcard from 1880 is a picture of hope. As I've grown older I've started to realise that nothing is permanent, nothing is fixed; everything is temporary - and that understanding that is the key to help us cope with change. Change comes but hope remains.
Change is many things: inevitable, beautiful, painful and irresistible. It happens with the tides and the seasons, and every second that ticks by on this spinning planet. Sunflowers grow, clouds skip through fresh blue skies and children discover the scent of summer after a winter of mourning.
I have a kind of hard-wired habit of thinking that a change lasts indefinitely. Therefore, anything that's proposed should be scrutinised and analysed, picked apart for holes and critical errors, just in case (gasp) we've all got it terribly wrong for all eternity and we all have to live in the misery of it. I don't know where this in-built kind of serious thinking comes from. I have to remind myself that change can be good and it's not always irreversible, especially if it's followed up by more iterative steps in the right direction. It is easier, someone once said, to change course if the ship is already moving.
That's why I think I'm more chilled about change these days, perhaps a bit more laissez-faire. I have no desire to halt time, to freeze-frame the moment like a photograph. I think life is much more fluid than that. There are some big changes happening at the moment, some season-switching and attitude melting - maybe big changes for me to handle are on their way too. You know what? It is well with me.
Is that Alice Hoschedé or is it a kind of painted memory of Camille, standing there on the steps in pastel brush strokes? I like to think it's both. Past, present and future, the indeterminate faceless hope, morphing from one into the other, changing, transforming, loving and growing, as the two children step excitedly down the sun-kissed steps into the garden where their father is painting.
I really like this picture.
Sunday, 27 July 2014
MORRIS MEN
My cousin-in-law (if there is such a thing) is a Morris Man. Morris Dancing seems to have grown up as a complicated yet frivolous thing for English people to do in between swigging ales and playing cricket. You may have seen them, the Morris Men: they dress in white, wear bells, straw hats and ribbons and wave sticks and hankies in town squares in the summer, particularly at country fetes and folk festivals.
I watched them today. To the fair bellowing of an accordion and a melodion, the side performed one or two of their finest medleys - dancing round a hat and jingling their shin-strapped bells with every sprightly leap. We all sat around and applauded with that perfected mixture of polite awkwardness. Hundreds of years of English evolution, that applause took - unlike of course, the actual Morris Dancing, which is exactly the same as it was in 1514.
At one point, a Morris Man in fine voice began a song, projecting the old-fashioned lyrics out like a bedizened town-cryer. I can't think that many people were listening to the words as it seemed to be about a plowman having it away with a parson's daughter with a hally hally ho or some such euphemism.
Polite applause.
There's much to be said for traditions. I rather like it, though I do find it a bit uncomfortable. In our own family, we have some traditions which I've never understood - things we do, that no-one else seems to do, but for which none of us can remember the exact reason. A classic example (and I can hardly believe I'm letting you into this secret) is how we say goodbye to family members leaving a party. As they drive off into the night, the remaining family gather at the front of the house, and in an unexpected flourish, whip out white handkerchiefs, which we wave uproariously at the departing vehicle.
Invariably, the well-prepared driver of the vehicle also produces a white hankie and disappears down the road, waving it with a free hand from the window. Nobody knows why. No-one can remember how it started. It's just the done thing. I always found it mildly embarrassing - especially when the neighbours poked their heads through the curtains, wondering which war the Stubbs family had lost by offering an unconditional surrender.
When Tom, my Morris Dancing cousin-in-law, first joined the family, he had no idea what was going on. As he drove down the road that first Christmas night, he thought that we, as one solid unit of conspiratorial genius, were taking the mickey out of his past-time. Spectacular.
Thursday, 24 July 2014
CALL ME MUBBS
My error with the missing computers is resolving itself, although it's possible that someone from IT is going to have to bail me out awkwardly, by visiting the charity (thankfully local) and sorting the machines out for them. Thanks for praying if you did. God (whether you believe in him or not) is really good at untangling situations.
-
"Do you prefer being called Matt or Matthew?" asked my Temporary Manager this morning, by the coffee machine.
"Um, I don't mind really, Temporary Manager," I replied, thoughtfully. "I call myself 'Matt'..."
"...When you talk to yourself?" he interrupted, un-hilariously.
I smiled.
"...When I refer to myself," I continued, grinning, "...but I really don't mind either way."
It's funny how it sort of depends on context. My automatic email signature (which I can't change) says Matthew... so a lot of people here call me that. Up until very recently, my own family called me Matthew (though for some forgotten reason, the Intrepids call me 'Jimper') and my closest friends use either the contracted version of my name or a fully contracted portmanteau of my first and second names together, which I'll come onto in a second.
I quite like a name that can be of flexible length. It makes it adaptable for appropriate situations. I hadn't even thought of this telescopic name-sliding ability until I went to university. In freshers' week, I had some defining choices to make about my identity and in one split second in 1996, I fixed my grown-up name to 'Matt' - and that was it. I grew to like it - and it's been very suitable ever since.
But do I really 'not mind either way' nowadays? Was I just being polite in front of my Temporary Manager? Am I comfortable with reverting to my actual name in all its two-syllable glory?
Some time ago, Henry from church suggested that I should stick to the long version, Matthew, as it's a 'significant part of [your] identity'. I thought about it, and then kept forgetting to do it - still introducing myself as Matt wherever I went. I'm not sure anyway that I agree it makes the difference that Henry was implying.
Weirdly though, having said all that, I do prefer the niblings to call me 'Uncle Matthew' - as that somehow seems more fitting. I must have wanted them to see me as some sort of grand old uncle in a leather wing-back chair with a twinkly-eyed story and a roaring fireplace. It didn't work out like that - I'm more of a climbing frame who does funny voices and pretends to be on the radio.
In more recent times still, my friends have started the portmanteau version of my name and often refer to me as 'Mubbs'. I love that my full name has this contracting property - it's kind of cool, and I don't think I'd mind if it caught on beyond the circle of friends who invented it. In fact, it's fine - call me Mubbs - I love it.
Not you, though, Temporary Manager. That'd be a bit weird.
-
"Do you prefer being called Matt or Matthew?" asked my Temporary Manager this morning, by the coffee machine.
"Um, I don't mind really, Temporary Manager," I replied, thoughtfully. "I call myself 'Matt'..."
"...When you talk to yourself?" he interrupted, un-hilariously.
I smiled.
"...When I refer to myself," I continued, grinning, "...but I really don't mind either way."
It's funny how it sort of depends on context. My automatic email signature (which I can't change) says Matthew... so a lot of people here call me that. Up until very recently, my own family called me Matthew (though for some forgotten reason, the Intrepids call me 'Jimper') and my closest friends use either the contracted version of my name or a fully contracted portmanteau of my first and second names together, which I'll come onto in a second.
I quite like a name that can be of flexible length. It makes it adaptable for appropriate situations. I hadn't even thought of this telescopic name-sliding ability until I went to university. In freshers' week, I had some defining choices to make about my identity and in one split second in 1996, I fixed my grown-up name to 'Matt' - and that was it. I grew to like it - and it's been very suitable ever since.
But do I really 'not mind either way' nowadays? Was I just being polite in front of my Temporary Manager? Am I comfortable with reverting to my actual name in all its two-syllable glory?
Some time ago, Henry from church suggested that I should stick to the long version, Matthew, as it's a 'significant part of [your] identity'. I thought about it, and then kept forgetting to do it - still introducing myself as Matt wherever I went. I'm not sure anyway that I agree it makes the difference that Henry was implying.
Weirdly though, having said all that, I do prefer the niblings to call me 'Uncle Matthew' - as that somehow seems more fitting. I must have wanted them to see me as some sort of grand old uncle in a leather wing-back chair with a twinkly-eyed story and a roaring fireplace. It didn't work out like that - I'm more of a climbing frame who does funny voices and pretends to be on the radio.
In more recent times still, my friends have started the portmanteau version of my name and often refer to me as 'Mubbs'. I love that my full name has this contracting property - it's kind of cool, and I don't think I'd mind if it caught on beyond the circle of friends who invented it. In fact, it's fine - call me Mubbs - I love it.
Not you, though, Temporary Manager. That'd be a bit weird.
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
SUMMER HOLIDAYS
School's out. As I came back from lunch today, I noted that Tasty Bites, our local chip-shop and grease-dispenser, was packed with students wearing their school jumpers round their waists, chatting and laughing as they spilled out onto the pavement.
Remember that feeling? It was like the best of ends: winding everything down, bringing in games to school and saying fond farewells to people you'd see again in... well, a few weeks' time as it happened... itching for that final bell, the five pips which were the ultimate signal of freedom, meaning you could race home into the sunshine to begin the long, hot summer.
Here, in the tedium of an air-conditioned office this afternoon, I'm noting with a wry smile that, after two weeks of glorious sunshine, the sky, on-queue with delicious irony, has clouded over.
Ah, I shouldn't be so schadenfreudi...al...ent...an... mean. In many ways, these little mites don't have it half as good as we did. After all, they're forced to stay indoors, operated by their shiny-screened-masters: tablets, xboxes and smartphones. When the sun eventually bursts through the clouds and the air is warm and inviting, they'll probably look out like captive prisoners at the unclimbed green trees rustling in the summer breeze, before realising that facebook is beeping at them, demanding their urgent attention.
Poor things, crammed into Tasty Bites. It struck me as interesting that they were queueing in much the same way that people from a different generation queue outside the Apple Store. There's definitely something to think about in there. Perhaps we're all consumers.
Maybe they'll work off the calories by running home if it chucks it down, I thought.
Enjoy your hols, kids.
Remember that feeling? It was like the best of ends: winding everything down, bringing in games to school and saying fond farewells to people you'd see again in... well, a few weeks' time as it happened... itching for that final bell, the five pips which were the ultimate signal of freedom, meaning you could race home into the sunshine to begin the long, hot summer.
Here, in the tedium of an air-conditioned office this afternoon, I'm noting with a wry smile that, after two weeks of glorious sunshine, the sky, on-queue with delicious irony, has clouded over.
Ah, I shouldn't be so schadenfreudi...al...ent...an... mean. In many ways, these little mites don't have it half as good as we did. After all, they're forced to stay indoors, operated by their shiny-screened-masters: tablets, xboxes and smartphones. When the sun eventually bursts through the clouds and the air is warm and inviting, they'll probably look out like captive prisoners at the unclimbed green trees rustling in the summer breeze, before realising that facebook is beeping at them, demanding their urgent attention.
Poor things, crammed into Tasty Bites. It struck me as interesting that they were queueing in much the same way that people from a different generation queue outside the Apple Store. There's definitely something to think about in there. Perhaps we're all consumers.
Maybe they'll work off the calories by running home if it chucks it down, I thought.
Enjoy your hols, kids.
Tuesday, 22 July 2014
COMPUTER TROUBLE
Last week, I gave away four computers to one of our supported charities. They're ever such nice people; they provide supported living for children who've left care or who have become homeless. Over the last year or so we've built up a really good relationship - I've become the contact for them and they've benefitted from charity initiatives we've organised here in the office.
I was advised by the IT department to ask the charity to wipe the hard drives and provide us with written certification that they'd done so. The charity told us that they could definitely do that, so last week they came in to collect the computers.
We stacked the old machines onto trolleys, wheeled them through reception and loaded their car with an array of monitors, cables and keyboards to go with the four desktops we no longer needed. That should have been that.
Then at the end of last week I got an email from the people at the charity asking whether or not they had to remove just the data (files) or the programs as well, not to mention the entire operating system (Windows 7). It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't really explained it correctly. They need to remove everything.
Like the moment when the camera zooms in while the dolly pulls back for a zoom fade, I felt the blood rush from my cheeks. Through a collection of miscommunications I think I have allowed company data out into the wild and I have no guarantee that I can stop it or get it back.
You might not think this a big deal, but it is particularly delicate as I work for a cyber-security company who focus on data loss prevention - I am massively embarrassed and more than a little worried that this might go badly wrong for me.
So, I've taken a few steps.
Firstly, I made myself accountable and immediately told HR about it. They told me that IT should have made themselves clearer about what needed to happen. I'm still a bit worried that I didn't have the intelligence to ask IT why they couldn't have just wiped the hard drives themselves... however, HR know all about it from the beginning - which might prove useful if I'm ever in the firing line.
Secondly, I've found a way to help the charity make sure the hard drives are wiped. Someone here has volunteered to visit them and sort it out, reinstalling Ubuntu and OpenOffice and other bits of freeware. Hopefully they'll take us up on that offer. As yet, my inbox remains uncomfortably silent.
Thirdly, I've blogged about it - and so now, you know. If you're the praying type, you could help me out if you wanted to - just by asking God to sort it out, and for me not to get fired. I would really appreciate that.
I like these three steps: Accountability, Repentance/resolution, Confession - ARC - stretching like a rainbow across the sky to a pot of gold... or my P45. If you're not the praying type by the way, wish me luck or something. Thanks.
I'll keep you posted.
I was advised by the IT department to ask the charity to wipe the hard drives and provide us with written certification that they'd done so. The charity told us that they could definitely do that, so last week they came in to collect the computers.
We stacked the old machines onto trolleys, wheeled them through reception and loaded their car with an array of monitors, cables and keyboards to go with the four desktops we no longer needed. That should have been that.
Then at the end of last week I got an email from the people at the charity asking whether or not they had to remove just the data (files) or the programs as well, not to mention the entire operating system (Windows 7). It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't really explained it correctly. They need to remove everything.
Like the moment when the camera zooms in while the dolly pulls back for a zoom fade, I felt the blood rush from my cheeks. Through a collection of miscommunications I think I have allowed company data out into the wild and I have no guarantee that I can stop it or get it back.
You might not think this a big deal, but it is particularly delicate as I work for a cyber-security company who focus on data loss prevention - I am massively embarrassed and more than a little worried that this might go badly wrong for me.
So, I've taken a few steps.
Firstly, I made myself accountable and immediately told HR about it. They told me that IT should have made themselves clearer about what needed to happen. I'm still a bit worried that I didn't have the intelligence to ask IT why they couldn't have just wiped the hard drives themselves... however, HR know all about it from the beginning - which might prove useful if I'm ever in the firing line.
Secondly, I've found a way to help the charity make sure the hard drives are wiped. Someone here has volunteered to visit them and sort it out, reinstalling Ubuntu and OpenOffice and other bits of freeware. Hopefully they'll take us up on that offer. As yet, my inbox remains uncomfortably silent.
Thirdly, I've blogged about it - and so now, you know. If you're the praying type, you could help me out if you wanted to - just by asking God to sort it out, and for me not to get fired. I would really appreciate that.
I like these three steps: Accountability, Repentance/resolution, Confession - ARC - stretching like a rainbow across the sky to a pot of gold... or my P45. If you're not the praying type by the way, wish me luck or something. Thanks.
I'll keep you posted.
Monday, 21 July 2014
OH, THE HYPOCRISY
I just wrote a whole blog about why Mondays aren't so terrible. When I read it back to myself, I shook my head shamefully. It was so sanctimonious! How did I get so unbelievably pompous? I asked myself.
I was trying to point out that Mondays aren't so bad, it just depends on your attitude - and there are ways to cultivate good attitudes to nettlesome problems, many of which seem to accumulate of course, on a Monday morning. I believe this - I think we sometimes project trouble onto Monday that we've created ourselves (often on Friday afternoons). Well anyway, Woe is me. After all, this morning I felt like I woke up here in the office! I must have got here somehow in a somnambulent boobag - yet I'm quite happy to tell you what to do to avoid grumpiness, and in a pretentious fashion which I'm not following in any way at all, it seems.
Woe indeed.
How do you guard against this thing called hypocrisy? I feel sometimes like I could do with a kind of alarm that beeps into life when I'm getting close. Quite probably most of my friends and family would get fed up with it going off. I once had a keyring that you could whistle at if you lost your keys. It lasted a week before I had to take the batteries out.
Maybe a nudge in the ribs then. "You do that," it would say, knowing somehow that the advice I'm dishing out as though I'm some sort of pez dispenser, is exactly what I need to hear myself. I reckon some people have that already. It sounds useful. And annoying.
Here's how I think it happens. Our condition, our human condition, makes it ridiculously easy to see our own faults reflected in other people; to see, you'll note, but not necessarily recognise - our brain switches off that possibility somehow. However, something in the subconscious knows that we do know the answer to our own misery and therefore, uniquely have what it takes to help out our fellow sufferer.
Weird then, that a kind of subconscious altruism might actually be a factor in the hypocrisy build-up. It is though.
But you can't be a patient and a doctor at the same time! Your mind has to resolve on one identity or the other. The most logical method of self-preservation is to deflect attention from your own shame and apply yourself to solving the other person's. That way your subconscious wins and so does the other person.
Another factor might be to do with obsession. Have you heard stories of big televangelists and preachers who stand on massive stages in front of massive Americans, railing about the exact thing they're secretly doing themselves? How did that happen? I've always thought that leading that kind of double life must be like being ripped apart from the inside. Perhaps in some cases, it was a subconscious attempt to deflect attention from their own struggles. Perhaps it was just too much time spent thinking about that thing - thoughts lead to desires, desires lead to fruit, says the book of James... I think. Though, it might have been Yoda.
That can work both ways though. You can get good fruit from good thinking. Perhaps that's it for me. Perhaps I need to think a bit better, a bit more often.
And probably go to bed earlier on Sunday nights.
I was trying to point out that Mondays aren't so bad, it just depends on your attitude - and there are ways to cultivate good attitudes to nettlesome problems, many of which seem to accumulate of course, on a Monday morning. I believe this - I think we sometimes project trouble onto Monday that we've created ourselves (often on Friday afternoons). Well anyway, Woe is me. After all, this morning I felt like I woke up here in the office! I must have got here somehow in a somnambulent boobag - yet I'm quite happy to tell you what to do to avoid grumpiness, and in a pretentious fashion which I'm not following in any way at all, it seems.
Woe indeed.
How do you guard against this thing called hypocrisy? I feel sometimes like I could do with a kind of alarm that beeps into life when I'm getting close. Quite probably most of my friends and family would get fed up with it going off. I once had a keyring that you could whistle at if you lost your keys. It lasted a week before I had to take the batteries out.
Maybe a nudge in the ribs then. "You do that," it would say, knowing somehow that the advice I'm dishing out as though I'm some sort of pez dispenser, is exactly what I need to hear myself. I reckon some people have that already. It sounds useful. And annoying.
Here's how I think it happens. Our condition, our human condition, makes it ridiculously easy to see our own faults reflected in other people; to see, you'll note, but not necessarily recognise - our brain switches off that possibility somehow. However, something in the subconscious knows that we do know the answer to our own misery and therefore, uniquely have what it takes to help out our fellow sufferer.
Weird then, that a kind of subconscious altruism might actually be a factor in the hypocrisy build-up. It is though.
But you can't be a patient and a doctor at the same time! Your mind has to resolve on one identity or the other. The most logical method of self-preservation is to deflect attention from your own shame and apply yourself to solving the other person's. That way your subconscious wins and so does the other person.
Another factor might be to do with obsession. Have you heard stories of big televangelists and preachers who stand on massive stages in front of massive Americans, railing about the exact thing they're secretly doing themselves? How did that happen? I've always thought that leading that kind of double life must be like being ripped apart from the inside. Perhaps in some cases, it was a subconscious attempt to deflect attention from their own struggles. Perhaps it was just too much time spent thinking about that thing - thoughts lead to desires, desires lead to fruit, says the book of James... I think. Though, it might have been Yoda.
That can work both ways though. You can get good fruit from good thinking. Perhaps that's it for me. Perhaps I need to think a bit better, a bit more often.
And probably go to bed earlier on Sunday nights.
Friday, 18 July 2014
VIVALDI'S FOUR SEASONS
I hate Vivaldi's Four Seasons. OK, that's a bit strong. I dislike Vivaldi's Four Seasons. It's the baroque harpsichord - it gets my teeth jangling like nails down a blackboard, or sweeping up sand with a wire brush.
Poor old Antonio. I know, I know, he practically defined the idea of a concerto and was one of the first to use such vivid sound pictures with his music - the calling of the cuckoo, a barking dog, the distant rumble of thunder, the icy rain. I agree that that is particularly clever. It's just that it's all a bit annoying and, thanks to Nigel Kennedy selling two million copies during the 1990s, cliché.
Oho! There it is. I'm a classical music snob! Heavens, I hope not! I hope I like what I like because it sings to me, not because it's unknown and a bit bohemian.
You know what I mean - it happens in all the genres. Some out-there radio station picks up a fresh new band and a few people get their music. Then, when people ask them what music they're into, they say dismissively, "Oh. I listen to a lot of Electric Shed and erm, Threefold Hiatus... have you heard of them?"
And the answer's always 'no' because Electric Shed and Threefold Hiatus are always 'out there' on the fringes, being all cool and moody and unheard of.*
Months later of course, the growing underground popularity movement means everyone's suddenly heard of these preposterous bands and they're raking it in with festival appearances and chats on Radio 1 where the likes of Fearne Cotton pelt them with inane banter.
It's a slippery slope from Radio 1. It's not too long before a smug-looking electioneering politician slips them in to some interview somewhere in a clumsy attempt to be 'down with the kids'...
"What do I have on shuffle on my iPod? Well I'm really into the Electronic Sheds at the moment. I think they're really rockin'"
... misunderstanding how the whole idea of 'cool' is supposed to work of course and causing an entire nation to cringe into stupefied embarrassment.
By this time, someone else is all cool and unheard of and anyone who's anyone is listening to them while Threefold Hiatus cry into their cereal bowls and the cool-kids out there on the fringes of mainstream pap are getting into Firetip Supersky or whoever, and showing off about it.
Um, what was I talking about? Classical music, yes. I hate Vivaldi. Yes - but not because it's mainstream! (cheers Nigel). I don't like it because it's all the same - strings, basso continuo, harpsichord, violin... and it gets on my nerves. I don't want to pick holes in something I could not have done - and there's no doubt that I could not have done it - but honestly Vivaldi, what was wrong with a bit of woodwind? Even a timpani or a piano somewhere would have shaken it up a bit. It's not like those instruments weren't invented in the 18th Century!
Of course at this point, all the real classical music snobs have worked out that I know next to nothing about baroque - perhaps that I've missed the whole point of it and that I'm an uneducated fool who doesn't know what he's talking about. Fair enough. I know what I like though, oh great ones, and the jingly jangly stylings of a baroque ensemble, plucking, pizzicato-ing and painting their way through the seasons is not it, and besides, oh enlightened few, you didn't have to listen to it coming into assembly every day for three years at Primary School where it reminded you of the humiliating time you were asked to stop the record player and you accidentally scratched the record because you didn't know how the needle worked and you got told off in front of the whole school now did you?
I've got issues.
Poor old Antonio. I know, I know, he practically defined the idea of a concerto and was one of the first to use such vivid sound pictures with his music - the calling of the cuckoo, a barking dog, the distant rumble of thunder, the icy rain. I agree that that is particularly clever. It's just that it's all a bit annoying and, thanks to Nigel Kennedy selling two million copies during the 1990s, cliché.
Oho! There it is. I'm a classical music snob! Heavens, I hope not! I hope I like what I like because it sings to me, not because it's unknown and a bit bohemian.
You know what I mean - it happens in all the genres. Some out-there radio station picks up a fresh new band and a few people get their music. Then, when people ask them what music they're into, they say dismissively, "Oh. I listen to a lot of Electric Shed and erm, Threefold Hiatus... have you heard of them?"
And the answer's always 'no' because Electric Shed and Threefold Hiatus are always 'out there' on the fringes, being all cool and moody and unheard of.*
Months later of course, the growing underground popularity movement means everyone's suddenly heard of these preposterous bands and they're raking it in with festival appearances and chats on Radio 1 where the likes of Fearne Cotton pelt them with inane banter.
It's a slippery slope from Radio 1. It's not too long before a smug-looking electioneering politician slips them in to some interview somewhere in a clumsy attempt to be 'down with the kids'...
"What do I have on shuffle on my iPod? Well I'm really into the Electronic Sheds at the moment. I think they're really rockin'"
... misunderstanding how the whole idea of 'cool' is supposed to work of course and causing an entire nation to cringe into stupefied embarrassment.
By this time, someone else is all cool and unheard of and anyone who's anyone is listening to them while Threefold Hiatus cry into their cereal bowls and the cool-kids out there on the fringes of mainstream pap are getting into Firetip Supersky or whoever, and showing off about it.
Um, what was I talking about? Classical music, yes. I hate Vivaldi. Yes - but not because it's mainstream! (cheers Nigel). I don't like it because it's all the same - strings, basso continuo, harpsichord, violin... and it gets on my nerves. I don't want to pick holes in something I could not have done - and there's no doubt that I could not have done it - but honestly Vivaldi, what was wrong with a bit of woodwind? Even a timpani or a piano somewhere would have shaken it up a bit. It's not like those instruments weren't invented in the 18th Century!
Of course at this point, all the real classical music snobs have worked out that I know next to nothing about baroque - perhaps that I've missed the whole point of it and that I'm an uneducated fool who doesn't know what he's talking about. Fair enough. I know what I like though, oh great ones, and the jingly jangly stylings of a baroque ensemble, plucking, pizzicato-ing and painting their way through the seasons is not it, and besides, oh enlightened few, you didn't have to listen to it coming into assembly every day for three years at Primary School where it reminded you of the humiliating time you were asked to stop the record player and you accidentally scratched the record because you didn't know how the needle worked and you got told off in front of the whole school now did you?
I've got issues.
*I made them up.
Thursday, 17 July 2014
ICE CREAM PARADOX
I left the tent up. As I munched on my Cheerios this morning, I glanced outside and noticed that the local birds had used it as a kind of giant blue toilet.
I do a lot for birds. At lunchtime today, I sat huddled over an ice cream, dropping chunks of fudge and hundreds-and-thousands over the paving stones. Messy. There had been a company giving away free ice cream, so I queued up with everyone else by the lake. As I wandered off, cone in hand, it was already running down my wrist and splodging onto the floor. The ducks and the geese are going to love it.
I'm not complaining. It's nice that people do that kind of thing for free, albeit an advertisement for something or other, but the gesture was very much appreciated on such a hot day. Not least by the local wildlife.
I'm not sure I've ever really enjoyed ice creams. I know you're supposed to, like it's expected of you from the first time you recognise the ice cream van jangling away outside. I know they're supposed to be a lovely treat. I just don't know whether I really like the experience. I like food that behaves itself while you eat it without falling apart in your fingers.
Is it a control thing that makes us salivate whenever the ice cream man cometh? By the way, my canny parents told my sister that that sound was the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You can have that one for free, parents; use it wisely.*
If it is a control, it's a bit like Disneyland. I still don't understand what's so great about it - the idea of giant silent cartoon characters looming over you sounds utterly terrifying. I never wanted to go - but everything and everyone around me told me that I really ought to want to. I never did.
It's also a bit like alcohol and grownups, I think. I'll revisit this idea sometime because it's too powerful to gloss over, but there are moments when I wonder whether people really do like wine, beer, whisky, whatever - or whether they've simply been conditioned into thinking they like it. Controversial. I'll let you think about that.
Anyway, boo to Disneyland with its sugary nonsense! And boo to ice cream!
Yet *ahem* there I was with everyone else, queuing up for an ice cream today, perhaps compelled by its appealing price tag (free) and the inbuilt to desire to cool off (naturally) with the saccharine flavour of delicious raspberry ripple topped with fudge and hundreds-and-thousands. What a hypocrite.
Still, I hope the birds enjoy it.
*Don't use it.
I do a lot for birds. At lunchtime today, I sat huddled over an ice cream, dropping chunks of fudge and hundreds-and-thousands over the paving stones. Messy. There had been a company giving away free ice cream, so I queued up with everyone else by the lake. As I wandered off, cone in hand, it was already running down my wrist and splodging onto the floor. The ducks and the geese are going to love it.
I'm not complaining. It's nice that people do that kind of thing for free, albeit an advertisement for something or other, but the gesture was very much appreciated on such a hot day. Not least by the local wildlife.
I'm not sure I've ever really enjoyed ice creams. I know you're supposed to, like it's expected of you from the first time you recognise the ice cream van jangling away outside. I know they're supposed to be a lovely treat. I just don't know whether I really like the experience. I like food that behaves itself while you eat it without falling apart in your fingers.
Is it a control thing that makes us salivate whenever the ice cream man cometh? By the way, my canny parents told my sister that that sound was the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You can have that one for free, parents; use it wisely.*
If it is a control, it's a bit like Disneyland. I still don't understand what's so great about it - the idea of giant silent cartoon characters looming over you sounds utterly terrifying. I never wanted to go - but everything and everyone around me told me that I really ought to want to. I never did.
It's also a bit like alcohol and grownups, I think. I'll revisit this idea sometime because it's too powerful to gloss over, but there are moments when I wonder whether people really do like wine, beer, whisky, whatever - or whether they've simply been conditioned into thinking they like it. Controversial. I'll let you think about that.
Anyway, boo to Disneyland with its sugary nonsense! And boo to ice cream!
Yet *ahem* there I was with everyone else, queuing up for an ice cream today, perhaps compelled by its appealing price tag (free) and the inbuilt to desire to cool off (naturally) with the saccharine flavour of delicious raspberry ripple topped with fudge and hundreds-and-thousands. What a hypocrite.
Still, I hope the birds enjoy it.
*Don't use it.
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
BIG SKY, LITTLE TENT
The sky was enormous this morning. It was like a huge cavern, its bright blue roof decorated with puffy clouds, twenty thousand feet in the air.
I like a big sky. I like the way it reminds me how tiny I am compared to the Earth. I walked along the high street, gazing up at the trails of altocumulus, which looked for all the world as though each cloud had been painstakingly painted onto a blue-washed canvas. It was a wonder I didn't walk into a lamp post.
Big Sky Country. I bet there are fewer lamp posts in Montana. I'd love to go one day, just to taste the air. Actually, I've been thinking about the great outdoors recently. In a kind of attempt to get closer to it, last night I decided to put my tent up in the garden.
Having scrabbled it out of the loft and having hunted madly around for a peg mallet, broken a windbreak and been unceremoniously pummelled by a falling suitcase, I pulled the bag out through the conservatory and dumped it on the grass. I unzipped it and pulled out the instructions.
The instruction booklet was yellow at the edges. I think it might have been written in Latin - its diagrams certainly resembled the work of Leonardo DaVinci. It would have been no surprise to see Vitruvian Man, sprawled out on the back page, demonstrating that a fully grown man can lie perfectly sqaurely in the confines of the canvas walls, fingers to toes. It's been a while since I used it.
I opened out the inner tent to find a small square of paper. "Dinner at 6" it said with a smiley face. That made me feel rather sad, somehow. I had a little moment remembering and then I pressed on and threaded the poles through the sleeves.
"Push the end of the pole into pin A" said the decipherable part of the instructions. Done. "Next push the other end into the corresponding pin (C) in the opposite corner." I ran round to the other side, grabbed the other end of the flexible pole and tried to bend it into place: pole in one hand, pin in the other. The tent arched up behind me and started flapping in the breeze. I felt like Hercules bending a tree trunk in an epic show of supernatural strength... without the strength. When I finally connected the two things together, I noticed with some degree of deflation, that the other end of the pole had sprung out of its pin and was waving around in mid air at the opposite side of the tent.
"This is easier with two people," said the instructions, unhelpfully. I looked at the sky.
Finally (when I'd rotated the outer tent through 180 degrees, so that the door was conveniently at the front) I pegged down the corners and stood back to have a look.
It's not too bad, I suppose. It's a mark of something unspoken though, that I still slept in the house last night.
I like a big sky. I like the way it reminds me how tiny I am compared to the Earth. I walked along the high street, gazing up at the trails of altocumulus, which looked for all the world as though each cloud had been painstakingly painted onto a blue-washed canvas. It was a wonder I didn't walk into a lamp post.
Big Sky Country. I bet there are fewer lamp posts in Montana. I'd love to go one day, just to taste the air. Actually, I've been thinking about the great outdoors recently. In a kind of attempt to get closer to it, last night I decided to put my tent up in the garden.
Having scrabbled it out of the loft and having hunted madly around for a peg mallet, broken a windbreak and been unceremoniously pummelled by a falling suitcase, I pulled the bag out through the conservatory and dumped it on the grass. I unzipped it and pulled out the instructions.
The instruction booklet was yellow at the edges. I think it might have been written in Latin - its diagrams certainly resembled the work of Leonardo DaVinci. It would have been no surprise to see Vitruvian Man, sprawled out on the back page, demonstrating that a fully grown man can lie perfectly sqaurely in the confines of the canvas walls, fingers to toes. It's been a while since I used it.
I opened out the inner tent to find a small square of paper. "Dinner at 6" it said with a smiley face. That made me feel rather sad, somehow. I had a little moment remembering and then I pressed on and threaded the poles through the sleeves.
"Push the end of the pole into pin A" said the decipherable part of the instructions. Done. "Next push the other end into the corresponding pin (C) in the opposite corner." I ran round to the other side, grabbed the other end of the flexible pole and tried to bend it into place: pole in one hand, pin in the other. The tent arched up behind me and started flapping in the breeze. I felt like Hercules bending a tree trunk in an epic show of supernatural strength... without the strength. When I finally connected the two things together, I noticed with some degree of deflation, that the other end of the pole had sprung out of its pin and was waving around in mid air at the opposite side of the tent.
"This is easier with two people," said the instructions, unhelpfully. I looked at the sky.
Finally (when I'd rotated the outer tent through 180 degrees, so that the door was conveniently at the front) I pegged down the corners and stood back to have a look.
It's not too bad, I suppose. It's a mark of something unspoken though, that I still slept in the house last night.
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
WEIRD HOPE
I have cracked the skin at the corner of my thumbnail. If I push my thumb really hard against the cradle of my forefinger, the thick, shiny blood bubbles out.
The bulb of deep red liquid catches the light and glistens like a tiny ruby. Soon the oxygen in the air will harden it and it will begin to congeal into a scabby black crust. While the wound repairs itself underneath, the blood will coagulate and protect me from the atmosphere, still doing its best to keep me alive. Blood provides life, sustains it and it protects it.
I have a weird hope that this is how it happens: my imperfections, my failings, the cracks in my skin are covered by blood - a blood so precious and rare that it is the fulmination of the greatest of lives and the greatest of deaths.
I wax lyrical.
It's OK to have a weird hope though. I was just on the phone to my friend and pastor, who's praying for my family at the moment. I heard my own cheery voice clash with his thoughtful sobriety and I wondered whether the conversation was happening the right way round.
"Yeah, it's not the best," I sighed, "But somehow I think things can work out still. I still have hope."
I imagined him nodding while imagining me smiling. It felt a bit odd.
"Matt we're praying for you." I got the impression from his tone that there was probably more than just my situation weighing upon him. It wasn't really the time to ask, but I was grateful anyway. We have a family intervention on Thursday and I'm not looking forward to it. Unlike last time, I'm not at the centre of this one, but that doesn't really make it any easier.
"Thank you," I said. "I do still have hope."
Someone once said that a pessimist is someone who sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. I don't normally go in for pithy quotes like that, but this I really like.
The blood is thick and hard now. It's deep red, almost black and shiny like the shell of a beetle. If I pull the skin of my thumb tight, it cracks open.
Do you think maybe that's how pain works? Slowly, the wound begins to heal under the blood? I rather like that idea. My heart is rather broken at the moment. Stones in ponds. Maybe it will take a while, but perhaps that process has already started? This is no doubt, a difficulty, but perhaps it's one that has its own opportunity?
Perhaps it's the opportunity to watch what happens as a wound heals over. Perhaps it's the opportunity to discover why I feel hopeful, though still lost in the middle of a lonely ocean? Perhaps it's a moment to think about hope as something greater than the word conveys - a fruit of some greater power that gives you the thing you need at the time when you feel like it's the furthest away.
I'm waxing again.
It's weird, this hope - it doesn't make any sense. I'm glad of it though.
The bulb of deep red liquid catches the light and glistens like a tiny ruby. Soon the oxygen in the air will harden it and it will begin to congeal into a scabby black crust. While the wound repairs itself underneath, the blood will coagulate and protect me from the atmosphere, still doing its best to keep me alive. Blood provides life, sustains it and it protects it.
I have a weird hope that this is how it happens: my imperfections, my failings, the cracks in my skin are covered by blood - a blood so precious and rare that it is the fulmination of the greatest of lives and the greatest of deaths.
I wax lyrical.
It's OK to have a weird hope though. I was just on the phone to my friend and pastor, who's praying for my family at the moment. I heard my own cheery voice clash with his thoughtful sobriety and I wondered whether the conversation was happening the right way round.
"Yeah, it's not the best," I sighed, "But somehow I think things can work out still. I still have hope."
I imagined him nodding while imagining me smiling. It felt a bit odd.
"Matt we're praying for you." I got the impression from his tone that there was probably more than just my situation weighing upon him. It wasn't really the time to ask, but I was grateful anyway. We have a family intervention on Thursday and I'm not looking forward to it. Unlike last time, I'm not at the centre of this one, but that doesn't really make it any easier.
"Thank you," I said. "I do still have hope."
Someone once said that a pessimist is someone who sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. I don't normally go in for pithy quotes like that, but this I really like.
The blood is thick and hard now. It's deep red, almost black and shiny like the shell of a beetle. If I pull the skin of my thumb tight, it cracks open.
Do you think maybe that's how pain works? Slowly, the wound begins to heal under the blood? I rather like that idea. My heart is rather broken at the moment. Stones in ponds. Maybe it will take a while, but perhaps that process has already started? This is no doubt, a difficulty, but perhaps it's one that has its own opportunity?
Perhaps it's the opportunity to watch what happens as a wound heals over. Perhaps it's the opportunity to discover why I feel hopeful, though still lost in the middle of a lonely ocean? Perhaps it's a moment to think about hope as something greater than the word conveys - a fruit of some greater power that gives you the thing you need at the time when you feel like it's the furthest away.
I'm waxing again.
It's weird, this hope - it doesn't make any sense. I'm glad of it though.
Monday, 14 July 2014
WHY ARE TROPHIES CUPS?
That's that then. Germany fly off home with the little gold-plated folderol everyone else was hoping to kiss, and the FIFA World Cup is over for another four years. Woop-de-do.
The Zappers are happy. They can go back to Midsomer Murders and Cash under the Hammer in the Attic or whatever it's called.
Meanwhile the Pundits reflect on all the glorious football they've seen, salivating over the memories of rippling onion bags while getting themselves ready for the long disappointing cycle to begin again.
I've been wondering why it's a cup... when it's not actually a cup. I mean, take the FA Cup or the Wimbledon Men's Singles Trophy; look at the bulbous Premier League trophy or the preposterous Americas Cup... cup. The Ryder Cup, the Stanley Cup, the Scottish Cup, the Cheltenham Gold Cup... lids! handles! receptacle for liquid! ... these are all, by the most basic of definitions, cups!
The FIFA World Cup, the most famous sporting 'cup' in the history of our planet... is a truncheon. It's a little golden weapon, a kind of ornate club that wouldn't be out of place next to the lead-piping or the candlestick on a Cluedo board. You can't drink out of it, pour anything into it or pass it round for your teammates to have a sip. Neither can you pose for a photo with its lid balanced on your ridiculous grinning head while your team mates dance like naked loons in the background. It hasn't got one. All you can do is hold it, lift it up and kiss it... which is a weird set of things to do with any kind of cup, I think.
All this thought, as Germany pranced about with the thing last night, led me to wonder... why are trophies cups in the first place? What's so great about a cup?
So I looked it up.
It turns out that nobody's really certain. Some people seem to think that one particular ancient trophy, a spoil of a great battle was olive oil. An expensive commodity like that would have required a suitable receptacle. Bring on the cup.
Another much later theory is that it's down to the Methodists. Nice people, the Methodists - they invented a sort of communion cup with two handles so that you could pass it round to your favourite brethren without spilling the wine. Though, I thought they were teetotal? Maybe I've got that wrong.
Still others believe that the cup represents Christ's great victory over evil. The idea of a cup may have come to symbolise victory - in which case, the Holy Grail is the ultimate trophy cup, to be shared with your fellow disciples (or grinning teammates) I suppose.
Argentina looked gutted. Some of them were crying. My Mum (who's a Zapper, remember) suggested that they ought to grow up. Meanwhile my Dad was wondering how the German team would get that thing through airport security.
I prized myself out of the armchair and headed for the kitchen.
"The only cup I'm interested in..." I said.
"...is a cup of tea," they chimed together. Brilliant.
The Zappers are happy. They can go back to Midsomer Murders and Cash under the Hammer in the Attic or whatever it's called.
Meanwhile the Pundits reflect on all the glorious football they've seen, salivating over the memories of rippling onion bags while getting themselves ready for the long disappointing cycle to begin again.
I've been wondering why it's a cup... when it's not actually a cup. I mean, take the FA Cup or the Wimbledon Men's Singles Trophy; look at the bulbous Premier League trophy or the preposterous Americas Cup... cup. The Ryder Cup, the Stanley Cup, the Scottish Cup, the Cheltenham Gold Cup... lids! handles! receptacle for liquid! ... these are all, by the most basic of definitions, cups!
The FIFA World Cup, the most famous sporting 'cup' in the history of our planet... is a truncheon. It's a little golden weapon, a kind of ornate club that wouldn't be out of place next to the lead-piping or the candlestick on a Cluedo board. You can't drink out of it, pour anything into it or pass it round for your teammates to have a sip. Neither can you pose for a photo with its lid balanced on your ridiculous grinning head while your team mates dance like naked loons in the background. It hasn't got one. All you can do is hold it, lift it up and kiss it... which is a weird set of things to do with any kind of cup, I think.
All this thought, as Germany pranced about with the thing last night, led me to wonder... why are trophies cups in the first place? What's so great about a cup?
So I looked it up.
It turns out that nobody's really certain. Some people seem to think that one particular ancient trophy, a spoil of a great battle was olive oil. An expensive commodity like that would have required a suitable receptacle. Bring on the cup.
Another much later theory is that it's down to the Methodists. Nice people, the Methodists - they invented a sort of communion cup with two handles so that you could pass it round to your favourite brethren without spilling the wine. Though, I thought they were teetotal? Maybe I've got that wrong.
Still others believe that the cup represents Christ's great victory over evil. The idea of a cup may have come to symbolise victory - in which case, the Holy Grail is the ultimate trophy cup, to be shared with your fellow disciples (or grinning teammates) I suppose.
Argentina looked gutted. Some of them were crying. My Mum (who's a Zapper, remember) suggested that they ought to grow up. Meanwhile my Dad was wondering how the German team would get that thing through airport security.
I prized myself out of the armchair and headed for the kitchen.
"The only cup I'm interested in..." I said.
"...is a cup of tea," they chimed together. Brilliant.
Monday, 7 July 2014
STONES IN PONDS
I went for a walk last night. A little way outside of the village, there's a lake nestled between the trees. It's like a hidden nature reserve, a secret treasure trove of wonder. Ducks and geese peck at the water's edge and swans fly gracefully overhead, sometimes skimming their great wings across the smooth water. There are fields with horses, wild-flowers, wooden benches and the backs of posh-houses; there are noisy grebes, furious hilarious mallards and tiny rabbits that dart between the whispering trees. It takes around half-an-hour to walk around the lake, and it's a beautiful place to get your thoughts together.
There was nobody else there last night. Just me and the half-moon.
As the dusk gathered and the sun disappeared behind wispy golden clouds, I watched the bright orange disc sink silently into the night. I was on a roughly-hewn wooden bench on the far side of the lake. Slowly went the sun, winking through the trees.
There are two stones now: two stones in two ponds. The first hit the water hard, just a couple of weeks ago. For six months it had been plummeting unseen, a meteor accelerating through the tranquil air with deadly silent speed. It lies buried in the sand now, grotesquely lodged under the turbulent waters while its terrible ripples crash over all of us who could not have seen it coming.
Then, the other day, another awful mess pounded my world. My Mum came into the lounge, clutching the phone with tears streaming down her face. Until a number of things happen, I'm unable to go into details, but it is pretty terrible. This stone, closer to home than the last but just as dreadful, has shattered the surface, pierced the thin film of unity we thought we had, and is spinning through the murky water. The ripples are gathering speed as we watch. I have never felt this heavy before.
The half-moon was bright. A star popped into the fading sky. The trees shivered and the lake was slowly turning silver with the night's arrival. I knew what I was there for. I began to pray. Like I've never prayed before.
-
I opened my eyes. An owl hooted. The sky was black and the thin wisps of cloud had become slender fingers clutching at the stars. I shuddered. Then almost instinctively I stood up, bent over and picked up a small stone from the path. It was hard to see it, but I could feel its rough, misshapen surface.
"Cast your burdens," said a small quiet voice in my head. I know that voice.
"But it's stones in ponds that caused this mess!" I protested, clasping the cold earthy pebble in a fist. How will that help? Silence. Then the wind sighed through the leaves, rippling and rising on the breeze as though the trees were somehow chattering and chuckling at me. I sighed. Reluctantly, I pulled my arm back and threw that little stone as hard as I could towards the inky water. It plopped into the lake.
I felt lighter, somehow. Out there in the darkness, the concentric circles, the impact ripples must have been wobbling across the surface, growing and changing, dissipating. Perhaps, I thought, there are some good ways to make a difference - even when you can't see it. Perhaps not every stone in the pond has to be a great and terrible event. Maybe some moments are opportunities for something good, something better happening. Maybe some misshapen stones actually should be thrown to the bottom of the lake in the deep waters of forgiveness and forgetting. Maybe I can make a difference for good. Cast your burdens...
I think things will be OK.
There was nobody else there last night. Just me and the half-moon.
As the dusk gathered and the sun disappeared behind wispy golden clouds, I watched the bright orange disc sink silently into the night. I was on a roughly-hewn wooden bench on the far side of the lake. Slowly went the sun, winking through the trees.
There are two stones now: two stones in two ponds. The first hit the water hard, just a couple of weeks ago. For six months it had been plummeting unseen, a meteor accelerating through the tranquil air with deadly silent speed. It lies buried in the sand now, grotesquely lodged under the turbulent waters while its terrible ripples crash over all of us who could not have seen it coming.
Then, the other day, another awful mess pounded my world. My Mum came into the lounge, clutching the phone with tears streaming down her face. Until a number of things happen, I'm unable to go into details, but it is pretty terrible. This stone, closer to home than the last but just as dreadful, has shattered the surface, pierced the thin film of unity we thought we had, and is spinning through the murky water. The ripples are gathering speed as we watch. I have never felt this heavy before.
The half-moon was bright. A star popped into the fading sky. The trees shivered and the lake was slowly turning silver with the night's arrival. I knew what I was there for. I began to pray. Like I've never prayed before.
-
I opened my eyes. An owl hooted. The sky was black and the thin wisps of cloud had become slender fingers clutching at the stars. I shuddered. Then almost instinctively I stood up, bent over and picked up a small stone from the path. It was hard to see it, but I could feel its rough, misshapen surface.
"Cast your burdens," said a small quiet voice in my head. I know that voice.
"But it's stones in ponds that caused this mess!" I protested, clasping the cold earthy pebble in a fist. How will that help? Silence. Then the wind sighed through the leaves, rippling and rising on the breeze as though the trees were somehow chattering and chuckling at me. I sighed. Reluctantly, I pulled my arm back and threw that little stone as hard as I could towards the inky water. It plopped into the lake.
I felt lighter, somehow. Out there in the darkness, the concentric circles, the impact ripples must have been wobbling across the surface, growing and changing, dissipating. Perhaps, I thought, there are some good ways to make a difference - even when you can't see it. Perhaps not every stone in the pond has to be a great and terrible event. Maybe some moments are opportunities for something good, something better happening. Maybe some misshapen stones actually should be thrown to the bottom of the lake in the deep waters of forgiveness and forgetting. Maybe I can make a difference for good. Cast your burdens...
I think things will be OK.
Thursday, 3 July 2014
INCONGRUITY
Perhaps not by chance, I used the word 'incongruous' three times yesterday. It's not an everyday kind of word, that. I first met it in Year 9 when the maths book I was using was teaching me about shapes. Congruence is a mathematical property which tells you something about the way things fit together. Identical shapes are said to be congruent because they fit.
It's strange because at lunchtime yesterday, I was thinking about exactly the same thing but in a different context, and with different words. Subconsciously, the idea of congruence must have been at work in my brain as I crossed the road in the sunshine, talking to myself.
I was actually thinking about the concept of appropriateness. From an early age, we're taught about 'appropriate' behaviour. In no uncertain terms, we're told what to do, what not to do: eat your vegetables, close the bathroom door, start with the cutlery on the outside, don't swear, clean your teeth, wait for a space, don't run off, don't moan, do your homework, pay your taxes, stand up when you see the Headmaster... it's almost like an endless list of rules that shape our ideas about appropriateness. They're not wrong, those diktats that narrate our experience of authority, not wrong at all. I've followed many of them to the nth degree of politeness... and they come from a place of wanting to make a better world, most of them.
The sun beamed down over the lake. The little amphitheatre was crowded with suits and skirts, shirts rolled up, bare arms and legs on show in the middle of the business park, lounging on green deckchairs scattered across the grassy beach.
I think the idea of appropriateness is not just about behaviour and actions. I think it's almost entirely about context. It's less about what you do, and much much more about where and how you do it.
For example, if I told you that last week I ran up to someone and punched them in the face, a suitable reaction would be what? A recoil of horror? That action, that kind of behaviour is extremely inappropriate for a civilised human being isn't it? Certainly. But if I change the context and tell you that the person I punched had just broken into my house and was about to do something horrific, the appropriateness is changed by the context. You might even describe that action as heroic.
That didn't happen, by the way. I've never punched anyone. Similarly though, if that person had been an opponent in a boxing ring and I was into that kind of thing - the story changes again. It's all about an action in a particular set of circumstances - it's all about the congruity of action and context.
This is rather liberating, when you think about it. It means that the key to understanding appropriateness is not so much the DOs and DO NOTs of life; it's about those fuzzy areas of context where some things are made OK by the surroundings and some things are not. I rather like this, because it's a positive way of looking at behaviour, rather than having to learn or imbibe a rulebook. If you can determine the context, if you can analyse and process the way your actions might fit that context, life might be a little easier.
-
I just went into the kitchen and accidentally upset a glass of juice. Gravity and the second law of thermodynamics did their thing and covered me and the floor in neat Ribena. I grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser and started mopping up the dark red splurges from the cupboards, the counter and the tiles. The receptionist came in and saw me on my haunches, clearing the crime-scene.
"It looks like someone's been murdered," she said. I chuckled out of politeness, still reprimanding myself for being so clumsy. "Still," she went on, "At least you're clearing it up!" Receptionists have their own ideas about who should keep the kitchen tidy and who's responsible when it's not - it's one of those laws of the workplace.
"That's what you do when you make a mess," I said, cheerily, without really thinking about it. It was more profound than I intended, but it seemed to fit.
It's strange because at lunchtime yesterday, I was thinking about exactly the same thing but in a different context, and with different words. Subconsciously, the idea of congruence must have been at work in my brain as I crossed the road in the sunshine, talking to myself.
I was actually thinking about the concept of appropriateness. From an early age, we're taught about 'appropriate' behaviour. In no uncertain terms, we're told what to do, what not to do: eat your vegetables, close the bathroom door, start with the cutlery on the outside, don't swear, clean your teeth, wait for a space, don't run off, don't moan, do your homework, pay your taxes, stand up when you see the Headmaster... it's almost like an endless list of rules that shape our ideas about appropriateness. They're not wrong, those diktats that narrate our experience of authority, not wrong at all. I've followed many of them to the nth degree of politeness... and they come from a place of wanting to make a better world, most of them.
The sun beamed down over the lake. The little amphitheatre was crowded with suits and skirts, shirts rolled up, bare arms and legs on show in the middle of the business park, lounging on green deckchairs scattered across the grassy beach.
I think the idea of appropriateness is not just about behaviour and actions. I think it's almost entirely about context. It's less about what you do, and much much more about where and how you do it.
For example, if I told you that last week I ran up to someone and punched them in the face, a suitable reaction would be what? A recoil of horror? That action, that kind of behaviour is extremely inappropriate for a civilised human being isn't it? Certainly. But if I change the context and tell you that the person I punched had just broken into my house and was about to do something horrific, the appropriateness is changed by the context. You might even describe that action as heroic.
That didn't happen, by the way. I've never punched anyone. Similarly though, if that person had been an opponent in a boxing ring and I was into that kind of thing - the story changes again. It's all about an action in a particular set of circumstances - it's all about the congruity of action and context.
This is rather liberating, when you think about it. It means that the key to understanding appropriateness is not so much the DOs and DO NOTs of life; it's about those fuzzy areas of context where some things are made OK by the surroundings and some things are not. I rather like this, because it's a positive way of looking at behaviour, rather than having to learn or imbibe a rulebook. If you can determine the context, if you can analyse and process the way your actions might fit that context, life might be a little easier.
-
I just went into the kitchen and accidentally upset a glass of juice. Gravity and the second law of thermodynamics did their thing and covered me and the floor in neat Ribena. I grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser and started mopping up the dark red splurges from the cupboards, the counter and the tiles. The receptionist came in and saw me on my haunches, clearing the crime-scene.
"It looks like someone's been murdered," she said. I chuckled out of politeness, still reprimanding myself for being so clumsy. "Still," she went on, "At least you're clearing it up!" Receptionists have their own ideas about who should keep the kitchen tidy and who's responsible when it's not - it's one of those laws of the workplace.
"That's what you do when you make a mess," I said, cheerily, without really thinking about it. It was more profound than I intended, but it seemed to fit.
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