WHY I CAN'T WORK IN A PHONE SHOP

I want to write about how annoyed I am.

The trouble is, I can't do that. And that's annoying me even more.

Well, what do you when you spiral into a chain-reaction of annoyedness? You pull yourself out of it, that's what you do. You go up the down escalator, buddy; you scrabble out of the anger hole and gulp in the good clean fresh air of thankfulness... and you certainly don't take it out on people who can't defend themselves by writing about them on a blog they never read - oh no, don't even think of doing that. And don't try to be cryptic about it either! Don't go round looking like you're in a huff, even if you're so in a huff that you're making hu and ff sounds while you type.

Um...

So, I had a good day today. I finally upgraded my phone. No more charging it up by wrapping a rubber band around the charger - no more bashing it on the corner of the desk when the button wouldn't work and no more accidental text messages. This one actually works (though I haven't transferred everything over yet).

I stood in the hottest, smallest shop in the world while the guy punched in my numbers to a computer. He had the air of a master in his field - completely in control, able to leap contract negotiations in a single bound and faster than a 4G connection when it came to the contents of the stock cupboard. He twizzled a biro in his fingers while he typed, like Boris in Goldeneye.

I'm gonna try that tomorrow, I thought to myself, secretly knowing that I wouldn't.

I don't think I could ever work in a phone shop. For a start, my metabolism wouldn't cope with the heat. I'd melt like a waxwork Father Christmas. Then there's the pressure of dealing with other people's finances. It was bad enough last week when I had to raise a purchase order for localisation - and the finance guys were expecting that one! I don't know that I'd have the necessary confidence to bamboozle wide-eyed customers into terrible deals with quick-talking contract speak - that's kind of required isn't it?

I refused to upsell at my last job. Well, I didn't refuse exactly - I just didn't do it. I worked for a large advertising company as a copywriter. We would have to build confidence with the small business owners we talked to, as we worked through their websites. Towards the end of my time there, the worried-looking managers made us try to upsell a useless product on every call. It was so useless. In order to sell it, we had to cut the truth so thinly that it might as well have been an outright lie. I wasn't going to do it - so I didn't.

The other thing is the confidence act. I think I'd find it draining to have to pretend to be competent and confident for seven hours a day, to portray that I know what I'm talking about like some sort of expert. As my colleagues will tell you, incompetence suits me much better. It carries a certain... authenticity.

After a while, standing behind one of those sticky computers, I would certainly break down into sweaty tears, rip off my plastic name badge and hand back that green polyester t-shirt with a sigh of utter freedom and relief.

That's why I couldn't work in a mobile phone shop. It would be difficult and annoying.

And I mustn't let myself get annoyed.

SEARCHING FOR GLOVES

I walked across to Sainsbury's today. I'm looking for a pair of gloves. They had none. No gloves. In fact, in the place where the gloves really ought to have been (next to the scarves obviously) they were selling woolly hats and garish Christmas jumpers. I might have to get a Christmas jumper this year for a work thing. I can't quite work out why they have to be so ridiculous. I don't want one that lights up, has fluffy bits sticking out of it or one that features cartoonish penguins and ski-ing reindeer. We've been over all this haven't we? I ranted about this last year.

Anyway, for some reason, I managed to set the alarm off as I walked out of the store. The security guard came rushing out behind me.

"Excuse me, excuse me!" he shouted. "I think the alarm went off, sir!"

"Oh OK. I don't know why that would be."

"Did you buy anything today?" he said, looking me carefully in the eye.

"No," I said. "I didn't buy anything." I made absolutely sure that my body language conveyed the truth by holding my hands outside of my pockets. In my peripheral vision I saw a woman looking at me with eyes that could burn holes through bricks.

"OK then," said the security guard, and went back into the store, apparently satisfied.

I can't help thinking this a less-than rigorous system of security.

I ambled along into Next, and headed into the menswear section where I was immediately hugged by somebody I know, who thought I needed a hug but wouldn't say particularly why. Have you ever wondered whether reality is really, you know, actual reality? I sometimes think I'm inside someone else's practical joke.

"Can I help you sir?" said a young man in a white shirt and a thin black tie. I blinked myself back into the universe and then asked him if they had any gloves. He showed me over to the small rack at the side of the shop.

You can get gloves nowadays that you can use with a smartphone! No more having to take them off at the bus stop to check your twitter feed or send a text message. I picked up a little pair with the 'Touch Screen Friendly' label hanging around them.

They were fingerless gloves.

STRIKE UP THE BAND

Right. Something weird is happening. There are loads of musical opportunities emerging - from work.

I need to be careful. What's happened is that suddenly people have worked out that I'm vaguely musical. One of my colleagues wants me to deputise as the keyboard player in a big band swing time orchestra he belongs to. I'd love that! Another lady thought I could help her improve her singing and maybe be an MD for her band, which she told me, has no outright leader. That would be so much fun (hard work though) for all sorts of reasons. Still others want me to join their woodwind ensemble (although quite why, I'm not sure).

What does all this mean? It means I need to protect my diary. By the way, I haven't said yes to any of these things and I don't intend to. Sometimes things can be fun, but not necessarily good for you. You have to be wise to separate out the enjoyable from the exhausting. More than that though, you have to be focused on the things you've been asked to do.

What we are doing here though, is another round of Christmas carols at work. Last year a few of us played carols at the end of our Christmas lunch at the Spring Inn. It went down uproariously and amidst the tipsy belting of fa-la-la-la-las and glorias, we raised over £300 for charity. Needless to say, people are keen to do it again. The first practice is tomorrow. The lunch is on December 16th.

So, apologies all you First Day Adventists. Once again, the festive season, the crazy carol-playing carousel of Christmas classics has had to begin before December and you've got to hear about it. Well, I for one, love it, but I appreciate not everyone wants to think about festivities too soon. I'd stay away from the training room tomorrow lunchtime if I were you.

As for the other opportunities, I do wonder whether I might be missing out on something. There are so many things I'd like to do, including being part of a band or just slipping into the clarinet section of an ensemble or even joining an amateur dramatics club! But I can't do everything.

WHAT HAPPENED TO MOVEMBER?

Is it me, or is hardly anyone doing Movember?

A few years back, it was all the rage. Men everywhere were sporting the mo, from the twitching bristles of the sergeant major to the full-on handlebar moustachios. My facebook feed was like a who's who of 1974.

Now, admittedly I've given flumbook a rest. Who knows, maybe it's a-buzz with lip-haired men and quietly begrudging women? I tell you one thing though - twitter isn't and neither is my workplace. In fact, I think I only know two people who are doing it at all.

All the rage. I used that phrase deliberately, despite knowing of course, that Movember is not supposed to be anything to do with fashion, and everything to do with eradicating testicular and prostate cancer.

See, here's my theory: beards. Beards are in - and when beards are in, growing a moustache for a month is, well, it's kind of already done isn't it? All that is so 2011 nowadays. So has the hispter beard killed off Movember? I hope not.

Alright Stubbsy, what are you doing about it then, you fuzz-faced old hypocrite?

True, I have all-year round facial hair and have had for a long time. True, I've not shaved it off and joined in with the Mo Bros. I have donated though, and continue to do so - after all, that is the purpose of Movember, isn't it? However, with my mind dragging me back to the ice bucket challenge of the summer, I can't help raising a bushy eyebrow at the way these things seem to fade in and out of fashion (and let's not beat around the bush, we all know that the ice bucket thing was a fad) - whether for charity or not.

Interestingly, the Victorian beard craze started off as a practical way to keep warm during the Crimean war. When the men returned, it became the badge of honour for the soldier. Soon everyone was wearing them, from Dickens to Darwin. Beards were cool (I bet they weren't). In fact it was only the invention of the disposable razor that put a stop to it (and presumably the collective despair of Victorian women).

So often, something highly practical evolves into something fashionable: military-style overcoats, denim jeans, even ugg boots and parka jackets are all examples, not to mention chelsea tractors and spoilers on sports cars.

Perhaps that's what's happened to Movember too? Its strength was always the ridiculousness of normally clean-shaven men looking like they ought to be in The Village People, for charity. That was its practicality, its u.s.p - something which has been trimmed away, I think, by a whole bunch of men looking like trendy fishermen.

Ah. Maybe it's different where you are. Perhaps there are men you know, right now who are twiddling the ends of their moustaches like Hercule Poirot while the Movember cash rolls in. Perhaps you're doing it yourself while others are wrapping their necks in their massive itchy scarf-beards. Good for you. Good for them. Good for all of us.

TINY PUZZLE

Lots of thoughts tonight, all trying to get out of the door at the same time. I feel a bit like someone's sped up the music by a couple of beats per minute and nobody's noticed.

Ever get that? Like something small is wrong, out of place, almost right, but uncomfortably not? It jangles away at the back of my brain like a tiny puzzle.

I played the Yamaha CP300 tonight for the first time in a while. I don't know why I expected it to sound like the Nord Stage 2, but the pads seemed kind of cheesy by comparison. Plus I didn't have the good old Roland XP80 to beef out the sound, which meant there wasn't a lot of scope for mixing pads. I think, as time goes by, I'm going to end up playing less complicated stuff - keeping it simple while the rest of the band contributes to the overall sound. I threw in a bit of celeste, which is always fun, if not just a little bit Bethelsongship Central.

That wasn't the tiny puzzle though, figuring out the CP300; that was fun. I do eventually have to decide whether I want to replace the Yamaha with a hard stage piano like the Nord or go down the software route and run my sounds through something like Omnisphere or Ableton. I'm not sure what the best option is. That's a puzzle, certainly, but it's not tiny or annoying. It's large and warm like an electric blanket.

The tiny puzzle might be to do with work. We had a planning meeting today. My manager pitched me a curveball.

"There is one project I'd like to throw in," he said, "and it's for Matt."

"Oh?" I said, grabbing my pencil and notebook.

He proceeded to give me a research task about PDFs. I added it with unbounded joy to my bulging to-do list.

That's not it though, is it? This is something small, out-of-focus and disjointed that's making me feel uneasy like an unresolved cadence - like something I've forgotten to do, or promised and can't, a double-booking or a call or something.

I'll figure it out.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING PART ONE: OPERATION SECRET SANTA

I had the day off today so I thought I might as well get cracking with the Christmas shopping. Yep, no procrastination this year, no putting it off until the last days of Advent when the sales assistants are stripping the shelves and dismantling those tinselly decorations, no sir, not for me! Way ahead this year! No hanging around in 2014! Let's do this!

So naturally, I went straight to Caffé Nero.

Actually, I was quite glad I did because I ran straight into my brother-in-law who was doing much the same. He was on his way home from a work thing, and had ordered himself a green tea and a panini before embarking on festive duties.

I like to plan it out. For me, it's an exercise in efficiency and strategy, where the amount of time inside each shop is as minimal as possible. This means getting organised. In the comfortable window seat, where the tea steamed and the biscotti crumbled, I fished out my notebook from my rucksack and started to make notes.

"Have you done your secret santa?" said Geoff from across the table.

"Nope," I replied, pencilling a column of initials on a right-hand page. "Mine's really tricky." He looked at me perceptively, trying to work out what I meant by that. It suddenly amused me that we were a bit like Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, only less intelligent and on much better terms. Plus, I'm not sure my brother-in-law could have worked out whom I'd picked out of the hat or where my mission was taking me; not without talking to my Mum first.

It does feel like a mission this - like a mission for paratroopers. In other circumstances, a trip up in an aeroplane with a fantastic view sprawling beneath you would be fantastic. Even jumping out of it might provide you with that once-in-a-lifetime adrenaline rush. But when there's a furious sergeant major screaming at you over the roar of the engines, then pushing you out at fifteen thousand feet over enemy lines, that's a bit different.

After a while, Geoff headed off to brave the inevitable. I chewed the pencil and gazed out into the high street. I had done my debrief, found the websites of the shops I needed, and finally had an idea of how much to spend, where to get the things to complete the task, and what I needed to do.

The first part of the mission, operation secret santa, would involve proceeding to a shop into which I would never willingly go, a conversation I would never normally have and a price which didn't seem to bear much relation to the item to which it was attached. But this wasn't a normal day in the middle of Reading. This was Christmas shopping and it wasn't for the faint-hearted. I drummed my fingers on the round table in Caffé Nero, steeled myself for the battle ahead and stood up, a look of stern determination creeping across my face. I knew what I had to do.

I ordered another cup of tea.

UNITY WITHOUT UNIFORMITY

It was raining all the way up the M23. Chris's windscreen wipers flew left and right as the surface water sprayed up. I clutched the door handle as the train of brake-lights appeared in the mist ahead. I kept feeling my right foot tense up automatically.

"What was your highlight?" I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the road.

"Man, probably Noel Robinson," said Chris. Noel had been amazing, no doubt about it. He's one of those guys who make playing the guitar look ridiculously easy. His hands shifted up and down his fret board as he jumped and danced around the stage, shaping each chord and each inversion so simply, so seamlessly and so skillfully that it was as though he hardly needed to be bothered about it. Chris also picked out something the guitarist had said in one of the sessions: There can be unity without uniformity.

In other words, you don't all have to look the same to achieve the same goal. You can be yourself; in fact it's best if you are yourself. It takes teamwork to make a dream work. That's pretty good stuff, Noel.

My own highlight was probably the session on creativity. Stuart Townend showed us how to use chord substitutions to make things more interesting, how to nurture creativity and how to find room to let it grow. He was also playing a Nord Stage 2 at the time which helped pique my interest. You should listen to someone playing the Nord Stage 2 - it's a beautiful thing.

I got home as the sun was setting into a beautiful orange sky. The roads were still glistening and the air was damp. I must have looked like a silhouette, carrying a bulbous rucksack into the sunset as I walked down the drive.

Unity without uniformity. I don't look like anybody else. I don't sound like anybody else. I am unique, just like you. It strikes me as a fascinating thought this, especially when quite a lot of worship music sounds the same. I mean it - and not just because I once mistook the soundtrack to High School Musical 3 for a Hillsong album.

I mean there's a tendency for the 'worship sound' to merge into one soupy rocky mess of electric guitars and predictable harmonies and drum fills and pads, like a kind of Bethelsongship Central. There's a trend for us all to play the same shapes, wear the same clothes, grow the same hipster beards and slip on a pair of those southern californian specs - or wear the same leather boots and hair extensions. I think we all ought to give ourselves permission to be ourselves once in a while and see what God does.

I reckon that would be awesome. Though I would still like to own a Nord Stage 2 if that's OK.

MUSIC, WORDS AND CHEESECAKE

It's tough to pick out my favourite moments of today. I'm still in Eastbourne with Chris, still at this conference and still loving the sea view.

I went to the networking thing. The sticker had four categories: your name, what you are (worship leader, singer/songwriter, pastor, etc), where you come from and a thing that you enjoy. I wrote:

I am ... Matt

I come from ... Reading

I am a ... creative?

I enjoy ... music, words and cheesecake.

I'm not sure I like labels any more. Anyway, I went in with every intention of being much larger than I felt, so I sat down next to a lady on her own and in as cheery a way as possible, I said:

"Hey, how you doing?"

She said: "Oh I'm alright, thanks," and told me her name as she scribbled it out and carefully stuck the label to her coat. She was an Indian lady, perhaps in her forties. We had a nice little chat about where we were from. I said I'd been to Coventry to play at someone's wedding and hadn't really seen much of the city. She told me that there wasn't much to see, at which point I just about resisted going into detail about all the great sights of Reading. In any case, initial conversation seems to work best if you ask questions. So I did... until she said:

"So Matt, whereabouts in the States were you born?"

"The States?" I said, slow to cotton on.

"Yes," she said, looking puzzled, "You are American aren't you?"

This was a first. I was extremely tempted to tell her that I was born and raised in West Philadelphia, until an after-school fight on a basketball court got me into considerable trouble, meaning I had to move out of the country in order to stay with my aunty and uncle... but of course, I didn't say any of that.

My next favourite moment of today was a little stolen moment on the seafront. I was in a seminar room at first, when I suddenly had a deep longing to be on my own for a bit. So, I got up, swung my rucksack over my shoulder and went down to the Promenade. I was there for ten minutes, drinking in the sea air, letting the coolness of the afternoon wash over me and chatting to God about stuff that's going on in my head and heart. It wasn't a long time, it was just enough. My phone vibrated in my pocket.

Where are u at bro? 

... texted Chris. Good question.

Later, I went to a session entitled: Gospel Choir Masterclass. While our choir is not a gospel choir at all, I thought I might pick up at least a few more general tips. The session was led by a girl who was impossibly beautiful. I think she's a voice coach in London somewhere, but she carried the sections through with a mixture of talent, co-ordination, enthusiasm, joy and encouragement, the likes of which I could only dream of.

And then - perhaps my most touching, favourite moment of all, was the sound of my life rewinding back through the years to Soul Survivor, 1997. Matt Redman took me (and I suppose, hundreds of other people tonight) through the songs of my youth, reminding me so clearly of the first times I heard them, of the impact they had had on my life and the beautiful way they had formed a soundtrack through my twenties: songs I had learned sitting at my Grandma's piano: Blessed Be Your Name, When The Music Fades, Dancing Generation, We Are The Free.

I looked at Matt Redman, just a few feet away, his guitar glinting in the stage lights. This man changed my generation and was the voice of so much that sparked me into being the person I am. His songs echo through my memories: as a student, a youth leader, a worship leader, a songwriter, a writer, a singer, a keyboard player, a Christian, whatever. Somehow, his anointing seems to open up a very special pathway to God for me and I was loving it. I didn't feel quite so alone tonight.

A CUP OF TEA BY THE SEA

I'm in Eastbourne.

Yep, the place with the pier. My friend Chris and I drove right past the burned-out shell on the way to the hotel. It was a wiry cage of blackened timber, a fragile skeleton of a grand old arcade. It looked like it would crumble into cinders at any moment.

We're here on a worship conference, a thing which has so far, oscillated me through disappointment and elation like I'm attached to a bungee rope. More on that in a moment. In the meantime, I'd like to talk about punctuation.

I should give it a rest, this, shouldn't I? It doesn't actually matter does it? I mean just ignore the Inner Pedant and be done with him; he'll only grow stronger if you make him angry... like the Hulk... or maybe Katie Hopkins. Anyway, he could have had a field day today, the old Inner Pedant.

I stood in the queue, behind a guy carrying: a box of sandwiches, a banana, a packet of crisps and a bottle of Coca-Cola. He looked irate.

"No sir," said the frustrated lady behind the sausage rolls, "That's not how the meal deal works."

"But it says..."

I looked up at the chalkboard behind her head. It said this exact thing:

Meal Deal:
Sandwich + drink, crisp, choc or fruit

"It says chocolate or fruit!" he protested. Of course, in these sorts of situations the customer is always wrong - eventually he had to re-evaluate his selection to the requisite three items.

The Inner Pedant was fascinated. In fact, I hung around as the lady, looking exasperated, took out a white pen and tried to work out exactly how she could punctuate the list of items. I nearly interjected when she started turning one of the commas into a semi-colon. I resisted.

"Can I help you, sir?" said one of the other girls behind the counter.

"Oh no, I. It's just that it's... no, I'm fine, thank you," I said and slunk away.

Another favourite moment from today was watching the sea from my hotel room, with a cup of tea. What unbridled joy is found between the smallest walls of a china cup! I have a sea view, and although the frothy ocean was a choppy grey beneath a murky Autumn sky, I felt wealthy beyond my dreams. I watched the tiny white horses racing inland, and I remembered a story from Rupert the Bear. I watched the wind twist and bend the palm trees and saw a lady clutching the hood of her orange anorak around her head. I traced the tiny droplets of rain across the window-pane. It was magnificent.

Yet somehow, the conference is more of a mixed bag. I mentioned disappointment and elation. Let's start with the elation. 

The musical content was off-the-scale tonight, I mean really good. The band played with passion, anointing, power and skill and the whole thing was electric. In order to get more leg room, Chris had opted to sit right at the front, which was fine of course, until we realised we were face-to-face with an enormous stack of speakers. Every bass drum kick, every juicy bass guitar lick and every smash of the floor toms reverberated through me. My bones were shaking and I felt my heart thumping in my chest like a ticking bomb. Many times I wondered whether there would be any need for electrical amplification in Heaven, and where to sit when I get there, hoping I wouldn't necessarily have to find out before the end of the song.

The disappointment is harder to measure. I guess it's a kind of conference anxiety - that feeling of being in a room of thousands of people like a nobody in a world of somebodies. We probably all feel like that though, don't we? Then, when you throw in the excellence of the musicians, the quality of their output and their heart and their passion for it, I start wondering why most people's experience of local church is not this. Actually, I start wondering why our experience of our local church is not this - and then I miss having my family around me all over again, and wish that they were here, just like the Big Church Night In.

Well, it's only just started. I'm going to a networking thing tomorrow, where I have to write my name (and what it is I think I do) on a sticker, slap it onto my jumper and go and meet people in a room of strangers. I don't mind saying that this presents the riskiest most nerve-wracking thing I've done in a while... which is exactly why I'm going to psyche myself up and do it. Maybe after I've had another cup of darjeeling, overlooking the English Channel.

THE NESTLE 3000 BREAKS DOWN

The Nestle 3000 is broken. Apparently, one of the engineers (our software engineers, that is) tried to take it apart and fix it. The front of the machine is swinging open, revealing a complex network of tubes and pipes, coffee resevoirs and cabling.

Well what were you expecting, Stubbsy? A tiny hamster grinding coffee beans with a pestle and mortar?

It looked a bit like the outside of the Matrix. I imagined coffee-sludge slurping down the grubby brown tubes and hot milk coursing through the white one.

The other snaking pipe inside the machine was of course, for hot chocolate - and it seemed to be caked in the stuff. I traced it back to the choco pot, which was half full of flaky bits of dandruff powder. I made a mental note never to use the Nestle 3000 for choco-milk again.

Funny isn't it, how we don't think about what goes on inside the machine? Like chimpanzees in a science lab, we just hop along to the Nestle 3000, press the magic button, watch the pretty lights as the mug fills with slurry and then bounce away, back to our spinny chairs.

Yet deep inside the bowels of the Nestle 3000, there's a row of canisters of synthetic coffee, milk and dandruff, electronic circuits and plastic tubing you wouldn't want anywhere near your beverage.

There are other machines out there, aren't there? There's the machine that hands you money if you feed it with your plastic key and thump the right set of buttons. What goes on behind that one? Then there's the machine that lets you chat to your friends but secretly records valuable information about you to sell on to the highest bidder. Another machine uses old-fashioned mystery and magic to turn farmyard animals into rows of shrink-wrapped packages on a shelf in Tesco. And what about the machine that makes you your luxury trainers using children who can't afford an education, let alone a pair of shoes?

I'm straying into the world of Carlos the Liberator here, but it is interesting to me how we don't tend to think about the processes that go on in a place where we can't see them - the great machines we use every day. Out of sight, out of mind. Press the button, watch the lights, slurp the coffee.

This being a room of engineers of course, the mood is... decaffeinated. Mr Three Espressos is having to scoop spoon after spoon of Nescafé gold blend into a mug and then slop in kettle-boiled scaly water. There are a few drained faces around. I myself, have returned to my spinny chair to ponder it all. You won't catch me moaning about the Nestle 3000, I think to myself, while scratching my head and eating a breakfast banana.

JET STREAM

"It's happened again!" said my Dad, gravely.

"What?"

"The jet stream."

Every year we get this, I mean literally, the conversation and the phenomenon. Apparently, the polar jet stream is somehow twisted over the Atlantic in such a way that all of the USA and Canada lies above it, and all of us on the other side of the pond, are trapped beneath this meandering ribbon of fast flowing air. As a result, being anywhere in North America today probably feels like an Arctic survival exercise, while over here the weather is mild and wet: disappointing versus dramatic.

"It happened exactly like this last year!" he lamented, "And it stayed like it for months. I hope we don't have that again."

Indeed. It resulted in terrible floods, a stormy old Christmastime and icy, snowbound, frozen misery for our American cousins.

Not that my Dad's naturally concerned about our American cousins. I expect he's thinking about the allotment.

It must be time for the media to go into meteorological meltdown as well mustn't it? Like the town criers you never asked for, the tabloids usually start shouting: 'COLD SNAP TO HIT UK' and 'THE BIG FREEZE IS COMING', next to pictures of celebrities eating bits of kangaroo in the Australian jungle.

Why is it always a cold 'snap' and a heat 'wave'? With its terrible jaws, the cold waits in the shadows? Meanwhile the lovely heat pours over us? There it goes, undulating and cascading through the long hot summer until suddenly, SNAP! Your feet are ice-cubes, your pipes are bursting and you have to dress yourself twice to leave the house.

The Cold and The Heat are not actual things anyway are they? They're just relative terms for measuring a temperature - and there's a pretty good system for that, nicely in place.

Saying it's cold today is just another way of saying it's colder than I expected or prepared for, the temperature is uncomfortably low, or help me I've run out of other things to talk about.

"I don't want to think about Christmas anyway," said my Mum, clearing the table, "Whether it's unseasonably mild or it's freezing."

"Hassle," I said thoughtfully, staring at the water jug. I was wondering how to change the subject given that we were dangerously close to The Christmas Question.

"How are you getting on with your secret santa?" said my Dad. I grumbled internally.

Cold out, isn't it?

WHY THE SEA IS BOILING HOT

So today marks a year of writing this blog. I know you'll all be uncontainably excited by the occasion, having meticulously followed my tedious ramblings through all 255 posts, marvelled at the dull poetry and raised eyebrows at the odd punctuation.

In my first post, The Trouble With Blogging, I threw open the curtain on my life, hoping that it would be interesting, that my thoughts wouldn't be offensive and that my writing wouldn't be pretentious.

Thinking about it, I think I may well have failed on all three counts at one point or another. You know what though? I'm not as bothered as I thought I would be about it. It seems Future Me has mellowed out a bit in the space of 130,000 words.

There's been a lot I haven't said. I wrote drafts on The Nature of Swearing, on football as a religion, and of course about the day I told a girl that I liked statistics. I wrote a lot of stuff too, about the two terrible things which happened in the last week of June - knowing that I could never post any of it. Maybe when I review the year at the end of December, I'll be able to go into more detail.

It also occurs to me that I've never really explained why I called this blog, Why The Sea is Boiling Hot. Well, there's no time like the present: it comes from a line in a poem by Lewis Carroll, the creator of Alice in Wonderland. He was a lover of puzzles, of maths, of words and of poetry, and as such, he sits alongside Edward Lear in my list of Victorian heroes. In the macabre poem, a walrus is trying to distract some oysters by proposing to talk about anything and everything under the sun:

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax
And cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings."

- from The Walrus and The Carpenter, Lewis Carroll

... and I thought the idea of a walrus talking disparate nonsense as a form of light-hearted poetic distraction, was just about perfect for this blog.

Happy anniversary.

M

HARD WORK

"So, is this your job, Matt?" said someone at choir tonight.

"No," I replied. "I have a day job as well. I work in a software company."

There are people who do this for a job. They work for organisations like Rock Choir, or other big companies jumping on the Gareth-Malone-bandwagon. A friend of mine recently joined a work choir at John Lewis, where a cool young man with tweed jackets and skinny jeans goes in and conducts them all on a Wednesday night. He's really good apparently. I'll bet. Those guys know how to do it.

Tonight I felt like I was making it up as I went along. Questions raced through my brain, doubts pulsing with every bar and every beat. It started as a dream a long time ago this: a community choir that brings people together - a group of people enjoying producing great music and enjoying doing it as one, all part of something Bigger, something Greater. I don't have any credentials - I didn't go to music college or appear on some talent show, I just had an unwavering hope that somehow if you're called to do something, the call outweighs the qualification. I'd never arranged anything or conducted anything, I'd never really thought about how much effort it might take to put something like that together.

I felt under-qualified tonight. I missed things, I wasn't concentrating, I got things wrong and I didn't really focus at all. Rather than draw the best out of the voices in front of me, I felt myself getting annoyed and wondering whether I can really do this, whether it's even possible. The things that make it zip are always the hardest to master - and those things are the hardest to teach it seems - especially if you don't really know what you're talking about.

"Software?" they said, surprised. I'm quite surprised at that too, to be honest, but there it is. This is the strange mix I've crafted for myself somehow - the world of instruction-writing, carefully composing sentences which might never be encountered, and the creative fire of musical ability that seems always just beyond my grip. I wish I were a little cooler, a little better at all of this.

He doesn't call the qualified, says an old part of my brain; he qualifies the called. It's that that gives me the strength, to be honest: the strength to keep going and not to throw in the towel. And in any case, this isn't supposed to be about me is it? I'm on a quest, remember, to be a signpost.

It's just that it's hard work sometimes.

THE UMBRELLA AND THE STOLEN TOMPER

It's a grotty old Monday. The rain's sort of fizzling out of the sky and making everything cold and damp.

I had an uncomfortable moment on the way out for lunch today. Two of the girls from marketing spotted me approaching on the road. They looked soaked.

I raised my umbrella as a form of greeting as they got nearer and then one of them said cheekily, "Ooh. You've got an umbrella, eh?" at which point I laughed, nervously.

I may as well have said, er, yeah, I'm not completely daft. In fact, thinking about it, that might actually have been a better thing to have said than to have implied it by laughing at the two bedraggled girls from marketing, in the rain. British humour is a delicate thing sometimes.

-

Meanwhile, I think the Intrepids have stolen an industrial concrete compressor.

It's outside our back door - looking like a kind of heavy-duty manual steam-roller.

"Keep the back gate locked," said my Dad, "We're holding it until Mr Washington* pays us the money he owes us for not doing the drive."

It turns out Mr Washington left the compressor (my Mum's calling it a 'tomper' but I don't think that's a word) as a kind of token of intent some weeks ago but then never actually turned up to do the work. It's now become a hostage.

My Dad's worried that Mr Washington will sneak in in the middle of the night to rescue it. I said I didn't think he'd be that bothered, seeing as he couldn't actually manage to turn up for his real-life day job.

Hopefully this won't drag on - he's agreed to pay up apparently, has Mr Washington. Just as well, I can't really imagine the Intrepids as fugitives on the run with an industrial concrete compressor.


*This is not his real name; I'm not completely daft.

THE RETURN OF SECRET SANTA

"Ready?" said my Mum, poking her head around the door.

"For?" I said.

"Secret Santa!"

I groaned inwardly. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, especially Advent I suppose, but there are some parts of the festive process I could do without. The annual Family Secret Santa is one of them.

Some time ago, we all realised that it was growing increasingly stressful and expensive, finding gifts for everybody. The adults in the family settled upon the secret santa as a kind of solution to the problem. In the middle of November, we'd all write out a list with suggested gifts approximating to the value of around £20, then we'd all put our lists in a hat and... well, I won't insult your intelligence by explaining how it works.

If you remember, last year I just wrote 'AMAZON VOUCHERS' in capital letters. That was OK. I got Amazon Vouchers. This year I added a couple of suggestions to my list just to keep my Mum happy.

She has an extraordinary way of working out who picks out who, my Mum. I don't know how she does it. Every year, within hours, she seems to know exactly which of us ended up with which list. Like an all-seeing-eye, she acts as a sort of oracle to those of us who can't read each other's handwriting or need some clarification.

It's quite nice but it does render the 'secret' part of the secret santa a bit redundant. Anonymity's tough when Mum's got eyes in the back of her head.

I can't tell you who I've got this year (obviously) but once again, with a weary sigh, I note that this person's selection fails to remove the stress from the process. There are three items - one seems wholly inappropriate for me to ask for in a shop(!) another is so vague that I'm bound to get it completely wrong, and the third is really tough (and I mean really tough) to buy for someone without them there to give it the thumbs up.

I have folded up the little piece of paper and stored it somewhere safe.

I first came across the idea of secret santa, years ago in an office. I got a bottle of prosecco. It's still on my shelf, where it functions as a serviceable bookend. I always thought that secret santa was a sort of forced way of being nice to people you didn't really know - a mechanism that makes you admit that you don't know everyone you work with as well as you're expected to. The bland, generic gift you swiped off a supermarket shelf that morning and wrapped up in your lunch break, has been returned by another bland, generic gift of equal value. You've broken even and Sainsbury's are rolling in it. Happy Christmas.

When it was suggested for our family, I did feel a bit funny about it. I was close that year, to suggesting we all buy our own gifts, just to be on the safe side. It's not really in the spirit of the thing though is it? It is, after all, nice to have at least something to open.

And anyway, listen to me going on about it like an old Scrooge! I'm supposed to be a big fan of the festive season, and all I've done today is moan about the opportunity of doing something nice for somebody!

Well, anyway, you'll probably see me, traipsing round town on those December Saturdays, trying to get the task right, clutching that folded piece of paper and looking lost and embarrassed. Maybe if you do, you should take a photo of me looking Dickensianly grumpy about the whole thing. Actually, do that, take a photo and I'll frame it and wrap it up. I think my family would find that really amusing.

AN AFTERNOON WALK IN THE MIST

I went for a walk this afternoon, just round the village. The air was cold and damp and the winter sun was just sinking into its long sunset arc through the trees behind the houses.

The whole world felt empty. The skate park was deserted, the children's play area was silent. A crow squawked somewhere in the distance. I felt the wet grass through my canvas trainers.

It seems like I'm hurtling towards a decision. I think perhaps, the decision might be hurtling towards me, actually. Either way, I feel suddenly like I need to have a better idea of the shape of my future. Sometimes, you don't get much of an idea of that shape until you step into it.

I walked round behind the deserted cricket pitch. In the summer, men in whites cast long shadows across the soft warm grass. A shout goes up and a ball flies through the air, light applause ripples from the clubhouse. I was the only one there today of course, thrusting cold hands into my jacket. There was no applause.

As I made my way over the road and into the track that leads to the golf course, I noticed the mist. All around, the fog had risen from the wet grass and it was hanging in long straight clouds of white. It was thick in some places, swirling over the path like a blanket. Behind me, the air was clear and crisp. I saw two ghostly figures standing silhouetted in the mist across the grass. They must have seen me just the same, walking through the brushstroke layers of fog, alone. It's funny how the mist seems thicker everywhere else.

You don't get much of an idea of that shape until you step into it, I repeated to myself. It's fair to say that the geometry of my life is not quite what I'd imagined, beyond the mist - it's not how I expected it to be, even a few months ago, perhaps even a few weeks ago. Things swirl and drift and change - not least my tired old heart. And when you spot the changes you probably have to roll with them and do a bit of thinking about how you want it to look when you emerge.

A single star popped into the darkening sky. It was glinting over the church tower, hovering above the quiet, cold evening, a lone point of sparkling light. I looked up at it, imagining how far away it is, how far away it was when it burst into life, and how far away it will always be. It's OK, I thought. This is what astronomers do.

FALLING ASLEEP

Well then. Looks like we made it through Day 604, the Friday of Week 137. Brilliant, he says clasping his hands together. Now, what's next?

A little snooze, apparently. I collapsed onto my bed and fell asleep. I like the process of falling asleep. I like how all the sounds around you go muffled, how your mind wanders aimlessly and how the world seems better if you process it with your eyes shut. I like the way your breathing slows right down and everything just seems to melt into a candyfloss world of dreams.

Yes. It would be nice if I could do it when I'm supposed to - such as, at night time for example. It's half an hour into tomorrow and I am still fancifully awake. It seems I accidentally gave myself a power nap and now I'm wired up like a Christmas tree.

I've tried all the old tactics. I spent ages working on a theory that simultaneous events are meaningless because time is measured by how fast light can travel. I had a little chuckle to myself when I realised that that was kind of Einstein's thing a hundred years ago. Obviously space and time are related.

Then I tried figuring out how long it takes data to beam back from the little robot we recently attached to a comet. It turns out to be about half an hour. Hooray.

Still awake.

Another thing I quite like about falling asleep is that feeling of actually falling. It's as though your head loses all ability to figure out which way up you are. Sometimes when I'm really tired I lie there and feel the room spin around me like a spinning top. As it spins, I close my eyes and imagine I'm caught up in some sort of tornado, or tied to a roundabout or something. Though, that last one is weird enough to jolt me awake.

Horrible that, isn't it, when you jolt awake half-way through falling into sleep?

The worst time it happened to me, I woke with a shudder as the car bounced along the rumble strip. I have never driven that tired since - it's just not worth the risk. I had had two cans of Red Bull on the M5 at 1am and by the time I got past Bristol, the 'wings' had turned into lead weights. I drove really carefully all the way along the M4, all the way off the Junction 12 roundabout and halfway into Calcot at about 20 miles per hour, when I saw a car explode into a flash of blue light behind me.

Thankfully, the little light on the breathalyser went green that night. I hadn't actually drunk any alcohol but for a minute, my whole life was in the hands of a couple of electronic circuits doing a chemical analysis. I decided there and then that I would value sleep more highly.

I think maybe I'll give it another go. Typing in front of a luminous screen at ten to one in the morning probably isn't helping.

WEEK-HOPPING

Alright. I had a go at least. I'll get better at storytelling I suppose, if I practice. 

Now then, nearly the end of the week and it just can't come soon enough. I know, I'm slipping into a week-hopper. A week-hopper is someone who hops from week to week, looking forward to Friday like there's no tomorrow - which must make Thursdays tricky, now that I think about it.

Anyway, week-hoppers love a weekend beyond pretty much everything else there is, and they probably start thinking about it sometime on Wednesdays with the full intention of winding down accordingly. Oh, and they'll be gathered round the coffee machine on Monday mornings like espresso-toting zombies, sipping the assorted flavours of depression from the Nestle 3000.

I have no desire to be a week-hopper. I think, if we're living our lives properly, Monday mornings should thrill us just as much as any other, and Fridays should be just as productive, if we're passionately pursuing the thing that we love. I'm not there either. I'm not a passion-driven technical author (despite the suggestion that I should be according to our company values... ssshh!) Nope, I'm somewhere in between these two extremes, happily floating along in a job I know I can do quite well... that also happens to be wackily overloaded with stuff until Christmas. And this week, Week 137 with all its quirky little conversations and tasks and challenges... feels like it should probably already be over. Well over.

That's a fairly round-about way of explaining that I'm shattered, isn't it? Well it's true - I'm pretty tired. Choir, Calcot, the thing I blogged about the other day, early morning starts with random stories... I've only myself to blame really.

The trouble with 'living-for-the-weekend' and limping from one week to the next is that it's too easy to get sucked into a very boring pattern. How long does that cycle of week-to-week joy and despair last? I think professional week-hoppers must have to break it up with those sun-soaked holidays people talk about - annual or semi-annual breaks when you can leave your inbox behind and drink cocktails by the pool or something.

But doesn't that just create another longer cycle? I mean, that inbox might be gloriously far away if you're drinking wine on a sun-bed in Turkey or Cyprus - but you know, don't you, that that old inbox is filling itself up with every sip of your pinot? Some people get so stressed preparing to go on holiday and then so depressed the week they come back, I wonder whether they've collected up more stress than they lost while actually on holiday.

Then the cycle begins again. Well, I can't live like that, I just can't, and I don't want to get sucked into it. I need things to look forward to, goals, aims challenges, excitements and events. I need people to hang out with who make me ache for company when they're not around and ache with laughter when they are. I need family who would race across the heavens to be with me in a crisis, knowing I'd do exactly the same for them. I need passion and life and love and faith in my life to keep me from week-hopping.

Well, having said all that, I guess it is accelerating towards the end of the week in any case. I might just go to sleep tomorrow night - it'll be the first night this week without massive pressure in it from the moment I get home. Before that though, all the joys of Day 604, the Friday of Week 137. See you on the other side.

THE UNPREDICTABLE MACHINE

I woke up early this morning. It seemed like a good moment to be creative, so I wrote a short story before work. It's called The Unpredictable Machine. It's just a story.

The Unpredictable Machine

The Engineer stood in front of it, scratching his head. The Machine was a silent wall of dials and switches, cogs and levers.

"I'll be blowed," he said, "There'll be no figurin' it."

"Have you checked the plug?" asked the Boy. The Engineer turned and looked at him, then stared back at The Unpredictable Machine, mopping his brow with his cloth cap.

"Aye, it's a right puzzle. A right puzzle. It's almost like it's got a mind of its... hmmm... Tell you what - hand me a screwdriver; let's get a panel off, lad."

The Boy creaked open a rusty toolbox and rummaged around for a screwdriver. He hadn't long been an apprentice - just a few weeks out of school, which he had hated of course, and he had landed the job quite easily, when his mother marched him down to the factory and suggested it to the Engineer. It had already been an experience, fixing a printing press, an old weaver's loom and the electrical wiring on a boiler. This, however, seemed a bit more of a challenge. And the Engineer was stuck.

"Right," he said, jamming the screwdriver into the corner of a plate, "Let's see what tha's made of."

Neither of them heard the soft footsteps of the Owner as he slipped down the stone steps towards them. He stood behind the companions, silently watching them for a while.

The plate slid off and a bundle of coloured cables tumbled out. Something squeaked.

"I don't think that's where the problem lies," said the Owner suddenly.

The Engineer jumped.

"By God," he said, catching his breath. The Owner looked at him, trying to smile. There was a sort of familiar sadness in his bright blue eyes.

"The Machine is... not exactly predictable. It isn't subject to the rule of logic. It operates... differently," he said. He wrapped his velvet jacket a little tighter and fingered a bright brass button.

"Operates? Tha's seen more operation in't cemetery. 'Ow're we supposed to fix it?" said the Engineer.

"Ah."

"Ah?"

"Well, that, I um... I don't know. You see, I um... I think I may have... offended it."

The boy looked at the Engineer, who was momentarily stunned. The Owner was looking at his slippers as though fascinated by the movement of his own toes.

The old man returned his cap to his head, looked at the curious Owner, squared up the hat and simply said, "Come on, lad. We're off."

"No, wait!" cried the Owner, "you've got to help me! I need you to figure out what's wrong with..."

Just as the Engineer was about to firmly interject, pick up his toolbox and leave without a word, something really weird and unexpected happened. The Machine was suddenly alive.

It was purring. Then lights started flashing and there was a sound of cogs turning and crunching inside. The Engineer turned and watched, bewildered as it lit up. The Owner looked on seriously. The Boy watched.

"What... did you do?" said the Engineer, turning to his apprentice.

"Nothing!" he replied. The Machine grew louder. It sounded like a traction engine, pounding and grinding inside. The dials span and lights flashed as it churned. The cables hanging from the open port vibrated against the cold metal.

"Ah!" cried The Owner, delighted. "She lives!" He rushed over to one of the control panels and started pushing buttons. The Engineer, still clutching his toolbox in one hand, looked dumbfounded at the re-animated Machine.

"What... What's it do?" he said.

"What?" shouted the Owner over the noise.

"What's it DO?" shouted the Engineer.

"She... she's UNPREDICTABLE!" laughed The Owner, flicking levers and switches. "Ha! And she's beautiful, don't you think?" He slipped up the broken plate and bundled the mess of cables back into the port.

"Screwdriver!" he called as he slammed it into place. The Boy looked at him, then handed him the screwdriver the Engineer had dropped to the floor. The Owner carefully screwed the vibrating metal into the machine.

"Is he... a bit mad do you think?" the Boy said to the Engineer.

"Aye, lad, I reckon he is," replied the older man, "An unpredictable machine? Machines are anything but, mark my words. You can always figure 'em out, one way or t'other. And I'll tell you what's more, you can't offend 'em neither. This fella's loopy."

The Owner danced around the machine, squealing with joy as it popped and squeaked.

"Loopy," repeated the Engineer.

The Boy watched, still fascinated. The Owner was ignoring them completely now, leaping from panel to panel in a flurry of excitement. It was a bit like a dance - a kind of complicated routine with twirls and steps and lifts and holds. The Machine would flash a button high up to the right, and the Owner would leap, fingers outstretched to flick the switch. Then a low hum would rumble from the base as the Owner pushed a lever with his slipper-clad foot and the Machine purred. Slowly, the boy began to wonder who was operating what.

The Engineer was not so philosophical. He'd had enough. He beckoned the Boy to follow him up the steps and leave the lunatic and his unpredictable machine to it. The boy followed, dutifully.

"I've never seen 'like of it," said the older man, climbing into the van. He slammed the door shut and they drove home in silence.

Later, the Boy recounted the tale to his mother. She was washing up as he told her about the eccentric man and his unknowable machine that had bleeped into life and made him so unfeasibly happy. She smiled to herself as she sunk her hands into the warm soapy water.

"What do you think the Machine were for, love?" she asked him, looking at his reflection in the kitchen window.

"Baffled if I know," he said, munching on a hunk of bread. "It didn't really do nowt."

"Oh, I think it did," she replied. "Eat your soup love, your dad'll be in in a bit."

THE NIGHT-IN NIGHT OUT

"What have I just been to?" I asked myself as I pulled into the road. I wasn't complaining; I had really enjoyed the Big Church Night In, I was just not sure what it was.

It looked, for all the world, like a concert - the tickets, the wristbands, the tables overloaded with merchandise, the cool musicians emerging from the smoke and lights, with their bow ties and skinny jeans. It was all there - the bounce, the atmosphere, the energy, and the crowd, beckoning for the inevitable encore.

But if it was a concert, I don't think it was all that certain about it. It seemed to want to be something else. At several points, those ultra-cool musicians told the crowd that it wasn't really that at all. It was about worship, they said, about lifting our voices together, and about being, well, church.

But I don't think it was - not because it was loud and didn't end with 'tea and coffee'; not because there wasn't a notice sheet, a stern handshake at the door, nor a million kids running around with flags, and not because it was on a rainy Tuesday night instead of a good old Sunday morning. Nope, not for any of those reasons. It wasn't 'church' because it was obviously a gig, a concert, a... performance - and that, I think, is something else.

Oh Matt, you old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud. Get with the times, Grandad - church is changing. It's about more than a structure, a building or a 'service', you old fuddy-duddy.

I know. I would give up the world to see our church explode the way Rend Collective did last night. It was life, it was passion, it was loud, it was enormous, it was great - and the musicianship was extraordinary. I'm not saying we shouldn't change with the times - actually our young people ought to be on stage far more than we are - and they should be as loud and as passionate and as brilliant and as holy as they can be while they're up there. That's the kind of church I want to see. I hope they were watching. I hope they were inspired.

And yes, the church is about people, not buildings. I get that. I've been getting that for a long time. I'm just not sure that you've got 'church' wherever you've got lots of Christians together. I think being the 'called-out' assembly (ekklesia) is more than that.

It might have been that I was surrounded by strangers. I had ended up taking two of our young musicians who wanted to be right at the front and so, when their friends arrived, I had found myself naturally drifting towards the wall where the other grown-ups stood. It amused me that we were all a bit like parents at a children's party.

Anyway, hemmed in by people I didn't know, it didn't feel much like church. We're taught so often that the best model of church is family, and for me, worshipping together as family seems like the best way of doing it. I found myself missing that, missing them, in the middle of Phil Wickham's ethereal vocals and misty blue smoke. I felt, sort of alone.

I think the tension probably exists in my head. I grew up believing and teaching people that being on stage, worship-leading if you like, was much more about being a signpost pointing somewhere else - our goal ought to be to become invisible in the light of the One we're pointing to. I don't think anyone on stage last night would disagree with that - they all said it, pretty much. But the crowd seemed to be applauding them, cheering them and chanting for more of them, when they slipped off the stage at the end of their set. I might be wrong of course, but if this was church, and that was a worship band, then that's actually quite worrying.

The rain spotted onto the car windscreen and soggy leaves flew up as I drove away. What's clear is that we've all got slightly different ideas of what church should be. This is a bit of a journey for me too - after all, for a long time I wanted to be one of those cool musicians. I'll be honest though, I think I'd rather just be a signpost, whatever that means.

I SET A WRITING TEST AND GO ON ABOUT WORDS

Thinking about words today. Mostly because I got a group text containing the word 'heed' which was neither connected to the word 'warning' nor used in a deliberately medieval fashion. I know, right. It made me chuckle a bit if I'm honest. Funny how some words go together.

Then I had to compose a writing test for our interview candidates. I called it a 'task' to take the pressure out of the word 'test' but to be honest... it is a test. It strikes me that Lord Sugar uses exactly the same tactic.

My tes..ask.. is one of those Spot The Errors things where things are badly formatted and break all the rules. I don't like writing things like this, not because I don't enjoy the challenge of it, but mostly because it always feels exactly like I'm trying to set a trap - and I'm not. I'm trying to find an apprentice, not a mouse. And it's not supposed to be the Krypton Factor.

Golly. It occurs to me that that reference might not mean anything to most people. If you're young enough not to know what on earth the Krypton Factor was, don't worry, I'm really not trying to catch you out. Look it up on Wikipedia. It was awesome - in a 1980s kind of way.

As if to further my thinking about words, I then got an email from the chaps at Thomas Cook. Ever since I went to Italy, they've been pestering me to go on holiday again. That's how it works nowadays - buy a thing from anyone like that and they come hounding you like street sellers round a group of tourists.

Anyway, the email was clearly written to maximise the use of words, just like restaurant menus are designed to make your mouth water.

"The cold winter months are a great time to escape to warm beaches. We have loads of great destinations both close to home and in more exotic locations from around the world. So however you want to spice up your winter, we have the perfect holiday for you, all at a great price."

Oh you clever-sneaky marketing copywriters. Exotic, beaches, great price, perfect holiday. Cold winter? Warm beaches?... Mmmm... These are not just beaches... these are warm Thomas Cook beaches, baked by the exotic sunshine of a perfect summer sun, lapped by the turquoise waves gently soothing the hot white sand and the cool shade of the palm trees... think about that as you sit there in your double jumpers with a mug of Lemsip and the unfurling gas bill.

Oh there's more...

"Gran Canaria is home to a host of interesting landscapes. From desert sand dunes to beautiful beaches, picturesque towns and rocky wilderness, there's something for everyone to fall in love with. An island with a truly unique character, just waiting to be explored."

You've got to admit, it paints a picture for you doesn't it? I'll be honest, I think most people who sell anything, paint pictures for you inside your head. I think they even call it 'selling the sizzle, not the steak', don't they? They all do it; they all paint the lid of the chocolate box with the perfect picture. This could be you, little boy, surrounded by supermodels when you use this deodorant. Oh you don't want your cat to be left out when everyone else is using our brand of cat food, do you? Poor kitty. Take two bottles into the shower? You luddite.

This email mentions beaches at least five times. It's almost as if that is the main thing people think of when they think of holidays. Heavens above.

Well, I've wandered off topic and back onto one of my many hobby-horses. I used to write this stuff too, and I got a bit fed up of stuffing my copy full of the same old hackneyed phrases that were designed to get people buying stuff they didn't need - while simultaneously offering up my writing to the Great Google who decided whether or not we were packing our writing full of SEO keywords. It's no way to live, that. Still... if you're looking for a dynamic and fulfilling career in one of the UK's top marketing agencies, where you can really make your mark with your natural creativity and style... this is an opportunity we don't think you can afford to miss. You can.

I looked back over my test. There were over a hundred possible corrections and lots of room for flexibility and flair. True, there were some pitfalls and some things that could be open to interpretation. Nothing about exotic beaches though.

NOT FAIR

So the usual Sunday night whirlwind. The children went home, leaving the customary trail of Lego, cake crumbs and pencils. One of the boys was still loudly wailing over the latest injustice (losing at noughts and crosses I think) and the other was poking his sister with a plastic light saber, until she grabbed it from him and he burst into tears. As the Intrepids and I stood waving at my sister's car, the cries of 'It's not fair!' echoed down the street.

You know what, I'd love to teach them that life isn't fair. I'd love to show them how it's unreasonable to expect life ever to be anything but unfair and how maturity sort of teaches us how to deal with it. I'd love to point out that people don't complain about unfairness when they end up with the larger slice of cake, but will march furiously back into the shop when they've been short-changed. I'd love to show them how this universal belief in yourself as the centre of the solar system actually makes the world less fair and how there are children dying of ebola and AIDS and hepatitis and starvation every minute of every day because of it.

But of course, they have to find that out themselves don't they? Like the rest of us.

In the last century, Europe erupted into conflict over the big questions of how the world should be run. Ideologies clashed, old empires tumbled at the hands of revolutionaries, and into the terrible vacuum tumbled the crowned nations, the grandchildren of Queen Victoria at war over their grand old allegiances. The Great War bubbled and boiled like a fire that no-one could quench, until after four years, it simmered into a pile of ash, leaving nothing but devastation at its charred and blackened heart.

But out of those ashes, deep in the smouldering embers of the war, evil was already stirring. It's not fair, it whispered through the lips of poverty and despair. We don't deserve this, it said to the proud and disaffected veterans who'd suffered and continued to suffer in the ruins. All that that evil needed was a face and a common enemy, someone to blame and pursue and ultimately, to... exterminate. It soon had both of these things. Before the world could believe its eyes, the fire that was left to die at Versailles had burst into a scorching, flickering ball of flame again. It raged across Europe and in its furious, fascist, flickering face, it consumed millions upon millions of lives burning helplessly, pointlessly and unfairly in its terrible wake.

Today, we remembered the men and the women who fought that unfathomable evil. They arrived before us, and many of them died younger than we can imagine. It wasn't fair for them: they were simply people of a generation who were born for such a time as theirs - and they fought for a future, not of their own, but ours. It is, if anything, grossly unfair that we live in freedom because they died in muddy trenches. It seems tremendously unfair that they can't know the difference that they made and that we can't thank them for it. But it is true and I am so glad that we remember and we honour those incredibly brave soldiers so highly. Not just them, but the men and women who, even today, risk their lives in the face of a different kind of evil, the kind which skulks the desert places of this messed-up world. It's great that we can thank God that there are people still brave enough to do that.

For my nephews, I'd love them to remember the fallen too, but also the importance of standing up to injustice and evil when their time comes. I'd like them to be so brave and so selfless that they can put their families' needs ahead of their own, despite how unfair it all seems to them. I'd like them be so courageous in the face of that inevitable unfairness that they know how to make a better world, not just for them but for their children, their cousins and their grandchildren - and for mine. What's more, I'd like to be like that too, rather than sniping at God about the petty unfairness I see in my own life sometimes.

Somehow, the sea of poppies, the brave and noble minutes of silence and the old boys showing the young boys the true meaning of courage and duty - it makes me hopeful. And thankful... really thankful.

I NEED TO GET OUT MORE

I stayed home today. It rained. I sat in the conservatory with a cup of tea, listening to the rain hammering on the conservatory roof and gurgling through the guttering.

I've yet to decide whether or not I like Saturdays. I bundled my washing into the machine, set it off and ate a bag of crisps. I watched Wales play Australia in the rugby (they lost). I wrote a bit of my book (but nowhere near enough to land me in the territory of 'productive') and I put my shoes on, hoping to go for a walk. Then I stood there with the front door open, watching the rain bounce off the car and splash into the puddles and I didn't really feel like it. Plus, my raincoat was in the boot.

What do people who 'live for the weekend' do on Saturdays? Some of them must be sociable enough for a Friday night out and a painful Saturday morning. What else is there to do? Shopping? IKEA? Football? Planning a holiday? It's a mystery to me. I've never even been to an IKEA. Maybe I'm missing out on some utopian life-changing world of wonder.

"You've never been to an IKEA?" said the last person I said that to, some time ago. I repeated it carefully, trying to scroll back through my memory to see if a trip to the Swedish Meatball Warehouse could possibly have evaded me. Why would I have been to an IKEA? I don't have any furniture to replace and even if I did I'm not sure I'd want it to look exactly like everyone else's.

So, I stayed home today, listening to the rain. Even the Intrepids were off getting their flu jabs and then disappearing into town to pick up something or other.

One weird thing did happen though. A friend of mine phoned me up asking for relationship advice. It's happened before, this. I ought to be the last person on the list. He was emotional, a bit embarrassed and petrified of losing the love of his life. I'm so fed up of beating around the bush these days, I just thought honesty would be the quickest way to get through - so I told him to grow up and do the right thing - although I used more words than that. Diplomacy is tiring and I was in a no nonsense sort of mood.

The sky was greyer than a Zuckerberg t-shirt. I watched the clouds as they raced overhead, pendulous with more heavy rain. My friend had said that 'being in a relationship' was everything. I absolutely disagreed, pointing out that you kind of have to know who you are first before you can really make it work. How can you expect someone else to be comfortable with who you are, if you don't even know, yourself?

I spent a little time trying to work out how a relationship was like an engine. The fuel is the... no wait, the operators need... and the oil... well, I couldn't really fathom it out, though I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere. Then I started to wonder what on earth I should know about this stuff? It's a mystery why he called me, of all people. In NASA terms, I've failed the test so many times they've sent me to the observatory to watch the stars while everyone else tries on a space-suit. I shuffled to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I really need to get out more, I thought to myself.

RED WINE

"Ah no way man, you weren't there! Were you?" said Os, swinging his umbrella and looking straight at me.

"Definitely. We had a conversation; you said you were really tired and you might go home..."

"Flip. I had no idea you were there! That is bad, man."

I smiled politely. How is it that I could have spent an evening with people who subsequently forgot that I was ever there? I thought back to the Curry Night. True, I'd been quiet - perhaps not the life and soul of the party, but I don't think anyone would have expected that. I hadn't sat next to Os, and as I recall, some way down the table, he'd been working through a bottle of red wine and a series of hilarious anecdotes with the students. 

But we had had a couple of conversations - particularly around the time I was wearing the pac-man rain mac. He was guessing everyone's age as I remember, with mixed results. He seemed to think I was 27, which I suspected was a guess he'd rounded down to out of politeness.

So either I'm so boring that conversing with me renders the other person with some sort of tedium-induced amnesia... or the red red wine was to blame for Os's patchy recollection.

Speaking of wine, one of the students told me today that he was hosting a cheese and wine party tonight.

"How very middle class!" I exclaimed, thoughtlessly. It didn't strike me as the usual behaviour of students on a Friday night; though my mind instantly took me back to the port and chocolate evenings we spent at Bath, trying to finish the Observer crossword. Ahem.

When he told me that his family go on tours of French vineyards every summer, that his Dad had a stash of fine wines in the garage and that he himself went on a grammar school wine-tasting trip in Year 10, I thought maybe I might have been right after all.

I suggested Vivaldi as background music but he'd already chosen UB-40.

"It'll start off refined," he said, "but I expect it will detiorate into the usual student partay by the end of the night."

I'll ask him on Monday. Chances are though, he won't remember telling me about it.

FIREWORKS NIGHT

A few years ago, in another office, on the 5th of November, a girl walked in, took off her coat and slumped in her chair.

"I don't know what all this fuss is about this Gary Fawkes night," she said. I was thankful there was nobody else around, so when I'd composed myself I tried my best to explain what had happened in 1605 and why we celebrate it. I still love the idea of Gary Fawkes being apprehended in the undercroft.

'Ere Gary, wotchoo doin' wiv all them barrels, sunshine? An wass wiv the fuse? Oi! Put that daan.

I've always had a soft spot for Fireworks Night. We grow up with it here, watching the sky fill with colours and feeling the warmth of the flames as we gather round in the cold with our gloved hands, sparklers and marshmallows on sticks.

I wrote a little poem about it - well, it's more to do with the sounds really: the percussive noises that fill up the cold air like music on a November night; it's all about the consonants...

Fireworks Night

Boom ticky tack, ticky nuck nuck pow
With a whoop and a holler
And a whistle and a woller
And a wick-whack trick track, whomp-back wow!

Bang chuffy pop, chiffy chiff-chaff bong
With a thwock and a twizzle
And a frazzle and a fizzle
And a quick quack bizzle back, pip pap pong!

Bosh zappy zip, zippy whizz whack whee
With a swish and a swazzle
And a dizzle and a dazzle
And a rizzle and a razzle
And a clip clap, rip rap riz raz ree!

CAN I BORROW YOU?

Can I borrow you?

I hear this a lot, though nobody seems particularly bothered about borrowing me for five minutes. Other people get borrowed all the time though. Managers mostly. They get borrowed to meeting rooms.

It's a funny world when people ask you if they can borrow you from you. It's odd because you are the one thing you have to take with you - unlike a pen or a stapler, you're sort of attached ... to you.

Yes, you can borrow me, but jolly well make sure you bring me back, I'll say hilariously one day. The borrower will look puzzled at my lame and inappropriate sense of humour. I'm fed up of people borrowing me and not returning me, I'll continue, so I've had my initials tattooed onto myself. In fact, if you hold me under ultraviolet light, you'll see where I've had myself imprinted with my postcode in invisible ink.

The other thing with borrowing people is that you really should try to put them back where you found them. It's really annoying when you can't find yourself because someone borrowed you and left you lying around somewhere else. Crumbs, anyone could pick you up and use you - perhaps even walk off with you and keep hold of you until they forget that you belong to you and not to them. Nothing worse than a quibble about who belongs to whom.

Actually, that really does happen sometimes doesn't it? This is turning out deeper than planned.

Hey have you seen me? Yeah, you borrowed me a while ago - I mean it's fine, it's not like you didn't ask me if you could borrow me, it's just that I kind of need me back today; there's something I've got to do.

What it's code for of course, is time. Can I borrow some of your time? This is also attached to you though - and actually, if you think about it, is not really borrowing either. That is, unless the borrower has found a way to create time and give it back to you. No, when you get borrowed, you lose those minutes forever and so do they and so do you again, when you borrow them back.

So, if you do get borrowed, make the most of it. Oh and by the way, watch out if someone comes up to you and asks you if they can 'have a word'. It rarely means they want to increase their vocabulary.

YOU CAN TALK

There are lots of ways to talk to each other now aren't there? I mean, ten years ago there was texting, msn and email. Twenty years ago, we had the clunky old telephone, and before that was a thing, only a hundred years or so ago, there was the telegram, the letter and the carrier pigeon. Beyond that you had to saddle up your horse and ride like the wind.

You'd think we'd be bang on with communication then, wouldn't you? We ought to be masters of the universe - we send radio signals into outer space, we bounce our voices off satellites and tap away into our keyboards through a vast interconnected network of all our computers - sometimes to people who are as far away as is humanly possible. With a little video delay and some chunky pixels, we can even see them - in real time.

I'm not sure our sprawling communications technology has particularly helped us though. Every new thing we dream up seems to bring its own protocols and etiquette - don't sign off with a kiss, screams my head sometimes. The winky face? What are you thinking? That's not how you spell that...

Well, anyway, it seems a little stressful to me. In truth, the purest form of communication has got to be face-to-face-live-and-in-the-same-room hasn't it? Even I can work this out from empirical evidence: every other form of communication seems to want to be like face-to-face, but each is restricted by its natural obstacles - not being able to see the other person, not being able to anticipate their reaction, not being able to detect an atmosphere, a tone of voice or the presence of another person - and not being able to be interrupted. These are all really important.

So what strikes me as incredibly sad is stories of people who live in the same house, exist in the same rooms and dance silently around each other, holding toast and coffee mugs and butter knives and mobile phones, but can't seem to find a way to talk.

Switch of the telly.

Sit down at the table.

Turn off that phone.

Log out of facebook.

Smile through the awkwardness, and talk.

And the thing is, I think it's OK to talk about anything. I mean anything - talk deep, talk serious, talk silly, talk books, talk food, talk politics, talk work, talk tall, short - anything. Find the nuances in the other person's posture, the little flicks of their eyes, the way their mouth curls up or their hand grips the edge of the table - listen and learn, watch and detect, ask lovely open-ended questions and answer your own. Talking is brilliant.

I know, right, it's easy for me. I don't have anyone to ignore awkwardly or avoid speaking to. I can talk to the mirror or throw out some thoughts on my blog like a massive hypocrite. Yeah maybe, but astronomers can observe things that astronauts can't see. And I've seen lots of sad stuff out there in the void of empty space, whether I've experienced it or not. I'm still naive enough to think of space travel as our greatest adventure. And I'll talk about that any time you like.

A BORING DISCOVERY

I just noticed that the Queen faces right on coins and left on stamps.

This ranks among the most boring discoveries of my life I think. It seems that there isn't any particular reason for it, other than the fact the original Penny Black (1840) was based on a medal of Queen Victoria, in which she faced left.

Meanwhile on coins, the direction alternates between monarchs. George VI faced left (apparently) and Elizabeth II faces right.

Other boring discoveries I've made include: most electronic appliances (at least in our kitchen) hum in G major, hot tea cools slower with milk in it and you can write the word TYPEWRITER with the top row of letter keys on your keyboard.

You know what, I should have made up a reason - a more exciting explanation of why the Queen faces right on coins and left on stamps. Well, now that you know the dull truth of it, maybe I should give it a go anyway...

-

Did you know... the Queen, our noble Queen Elizabeth II faces left on stamps but right on coins? True, check it out. It's all because Queen Victoria's original portrait artist was left handed. Unable to arrange his equipment in the royal portrait room from any other suitable angle he was forced to paint her from the left hand side. She was initially left unamused by the inconvenience but approved the portrait for the Royal Post Office by claiming it was indeed her 'better side'.

Coins? Ah coins! Well there's an old tradition with coins, yes. The reigning monarch or emperor should be facing to the right as a symbol of the righteousness they are to convey. "Better to be right in front," said Vespasian, famously, "than left behind."

-

You know, I think it would look odd if the Queen were facing right on stamps. I rather like the thought that she faces the address, that she's kind of interested in the destination, the location within her glorious realms to which her correspondence is headed. I like to think she takes an interest in her subjects, in the birthday cards and love letters and parcels and presents we send. (She's not bothered about bills; they come with horrible prepaid bars and numbers, and of course she doesn't appear on junk mail).

Similarly, she faces outwards from coins - almost as though it were her way of saying it's better to give this stuff away than to keep hold of it. Yes, Ma'am.

Perhaps it wasn't a boring discovery after all. Perhaps when you dig a little deeper, there's no such thing.

IT'S WINTRY ALRIGHT

The other day, my friend Paul said 'winter is coming' in his message and made a whole row of GOT-watching teenagers chuckle with glee in the middle of church.

He was right though. It is freezing. Tonight the sky is as black as ink, punctuated with brilliant stars and the finest wisps of moonlit clouds. The air is still and icy, condensing into swirls of breath and vapour which steams up my glasses.

I'm still a bit ill so I buried my nose in my scarf on the way home from work; I read somewhere that if you keep your nose warm, it's less likely to be a safe haven for the cold virus. Fair enough, I thought, sniffling into my scarf. It wasn't long before the road disappeared and the street lamps formed bright orange circles through the fog collecting on the inside of my spectacles. It was like being inside an impressionist painting.

When you get somewhere warm, like home or inside the office, or say The Volunteer for a Monday night choir team meeting, the first thing that happens is that your glasses steam up. As you take off your coat, and unwrap your scarf, the room goes white with fog and you look like a Penfold. Sometimes I really wish I could see properly.

When you can see it of course, winter itself is quite the beauty. There's that early morning sparkle that coats the pavements and rooftops; there are silent flurries of delicate snow so treacherous and sweet; there's the bright wintry moon and the frozen wind, the exquisite icicles and the smooth ice between the frosted grass and glinting trees. Then there are scarves and gloves and toboggans and snowballs; there are roaring fires and parcels and string, hot tea and buttered toast and kettles that whistle and muffins on warm plates.

(I have to get up ludicrously early tomorrow. I'm hoping this kind of thinking will really help.)

FANCY DRESS

Well Friday's Engineering Curry Night turned out to be alright in the end. I did wonder what was about to happen, when someone started pulling out fancy-dress costumes from a rucksack. However it was all in good humour. I got away with wearing a pac-man rain mac while Captain America dressed up one of the students as Princess Leia.

You know sometimes I wonder whether people really grow up or whether it's all a game of masks and costumes. Alcohol doesn't always turn nice quiet people into over-exuberant loudmouthed idiots - sometimes it simply removes our home-made, respectable adulthood costume, until all that's left is the child who's been pretending to be a grown-up all along. There are all sorts of layers of irony in that thought.

I foolishly had a Magners, forgetting that it smells like cat pee. Why does anybody drink it? I switched to Pepsi by the time the naans came round.

"Good luck, Matt," said Steve, shaking my hand. "Keep the flag flying for docs."

"I will," I said. He ambled off for his train while I thought about life as the only technical author for a while. No more table-football for a start.

I got home and collapsed into bed, listening to my stomach digesting lamb korahi and a peshwari naan. Leaves blustered about outside like rain, and the world blinked out with the flick of my bedside lamp.

-

The next day I was watching fields, buildings, farms and houses flash past the crowded buffet car of the 10:02 to Paddington. Sunlight gleamed from the tracks and a fine blue sky framed the flickering world behind Slough, Hayes & Harlington, Ladbroke Grove and Royal Oak.

I was meeting one of my oldest friends, which is always a bit of a highlight. Although this time, she carried some unhappy news with her. It seems she's separating from her husband - or rather he is separating from her - the mess is so thick and murky that it's hard to tell even what the best outcome would be. We talked about that a lot, wandering along the Serpentine watching the rollerbladers. It's a shame when you love two people so very much, and they somehow wind up locked in a spiral of hatred and hurt.

Still, London was looking fantastic. Hyde Park was alive with kids kicking through the leaves, and squirrels darting through the trees. Even the neck-breaking city skyscrapers were catching the sun in a way that made them sparkle like jewellery. I nearly got run over a few times, trying to cross the road. That's the thing about London I think: from the hot wind in the subway to the Victorian facades above the shops, the higher up you are, the nicer it is.

It was dark by the time I got home. The rail replacement coach jolted to a stop outside the station and I clambered off, clutching my phone and a wrapped-up chocolate brownie. I thought about my friend, struggling to make sense of a new beginning in the face of ruined relationships. I thought about Steve, leaving one thing behind and creating a new impression for his new team. I thought about my other colleagues, dressed up as superheroes, cartoon characters and bananas on a night out, pretending to be something they're not by revealing who they really are. I thought about me, forgetting that I don't like Magners and then drinking it anyway, despite knowing that alcohol keeps me awake at night.

I reckon it's best if we're all just honest about who we are sometimes, underneath all this fancy dress.