THE WORK NIGHT OUT

I looked up at the night sky. The stars were sparkling brilliantly against the cold black of space. Unfathomable, unending, unstoppable space. Just above the constellation Orion was the moon, flooding the world with silver light. My trainers were glowing and a weak shadow was falling behind me. I walked down the drive and home, happy to be alone in the open air.

I rewound a bit. A few moments before, Ant, Steve (my old colleague) and I had been on the 11:03 Newbury train, heading west out of Reading.

"Yeah, thanks for organising," I said to Ant. "It went really well."

Steve nodded, thoughtfully.

It hadn't been terrible. I mean, TGI Fridays is a place you sort of grow out of. As predicted, it was noisy, a bit dingy and certainly overpriced. Alright, the bill-split didn't go as far as the ridiculous "£25 for a curry and an orange juice" we've had at work-nights past, but I still don't think it was value for money. Mind you, that wasn't why we were there.

Why were we there? It wasn't the reason the waitress thought either. She appeared with a slice of exploding chocolate cake complete with a sparkling candle and a hastily twisted balloon hat, which she firmly squared onto the head of Joe, one of our placement students.

"H'ray!" cried everyone spontaneously. Everyone except Joe, whose birthday it most definitely was not.

"Up up up!" ordered the waitress. Joe reluctantly stood, grimacing under the coloured balloons. As one, his colleagues burst into a raucous rendition of happy birthday, wiping away tears of laughter and slapping each other on the back with glee. Joe gave the whole table a round of two-fingered salutes and muttered murderous obscenities under his breath.

I caught sight of the waitress. She looked weary.

Neither were we there to play the age-old game of Who's-Leaving-Next, or 'gossip' as it's more frequently known. I'm always behind on these things. I turned to Adam next to me, hoping to change the subject.

"How's the new commute?" I asked, making conversation. Adam recently moved to Amersham in Buckinghamshire, about an hour's drive away.

"It's alright," he said, "But I won't be doing it much longer."

"Oh."

I don't think we were there to get steadily drunker either, although one or two were giving it a jolly good go. I felt a bit like a needle in a balloon pit.

Much later, when the bill was paid and we'd argued about directions, I pushed open the purple doors at the back of The Purple Turtle, clutching a drink that had been turned purple by a confusion between me and the barmaid. As I descended the steps to the crowded beer garden, I noticed that almost the entire crowd were gathered in a circle around Joe, pointing at him and singing yet another chorus of Happy Birthday, with him looking increasingly grumpy and embarrassed under his crown of TGI balloons.

I told myself I'd never go to places like this again. It seems the line between funny and reprehensible is as blurred as ever it was. Everywhere I looked, alcohol, the great smudger of boundaries was at work. I saw a young girl tumble down some steps and land awkwardly. It seemed suddenly odd to me that instead of helping her, her friends laughed as though they'd been watching You've Been Framed. She was alright, she got up and dusted herself down, then wobbled back up as though uncertain of where each step was.

What am I doing here? I thought to myself. My purple drink was making me feel a bit sick. Plus people kept asking me what it was, and I didn't know. After a failed attempt to light a patio heater, I stood around until Nell's boyfriend talked to me about writing sci-fi comics and genetically modified wheat. Nell kept asking if he was boring me, which he wasn't, but I found it impossible to answer without giving her the impression that he was - which he genuinely wasn't. He seemed remarkably familiar to me - an overly polite but visibly frustrated scientist and writer. I thought about that for while.

"Yeah, it was a good turnout," said Ant, leaning back into his seat. The lights of Reading flashed by in the darkness outside the carriage window. Before long, the train shot under the motorway bridge and we were pulling into Theale station - my stop.

"See you Monday," said Ant.

"Yup," I said, "Good luck with the job hunt, Steve." I said, shaking his hand.

I pushed open the door, bounced onto the cold concrete of the platform and started my walk home in the moonlight, watching the stars light up the night sky. It was a good night, I suppose - but somehow that starlit walk home was always going to be the best bit.

ELEPHANTS ON DRAWING PINS

It was stressful before I took my coat off.

I slipped out of my rucksack, unwrapped my scarf and slung it over the back of my chair. This is Day 643 and so far, it's not been a lot of fun.

Stress, the physical property, is a sort of force per unit area. It results in strain, which is the deforming or changing-shape of an object under stress.

Imagine an elephant tiptoeing on a drawing pin. The surface area of the pin is small, while the force exerted by the elephant is enormous. The resulting pressure, or stress, is huge. Thinking about it, that's also why high heels get stuck in soft mud. In other words, you need something heavy pushing something very small to create stress.

So, in my case, the stress is caused by, well, let's call them things-to-do. They could include other people's expectations, perhaps reputation and a need to be vaguely liked or popular. These are a pile of heavy things - elephants, toppling up on top of each other like an old-fashioned circus act.

The pin, the surface area, the thing that amplifies the stress because it's so tiny, is the amount of time there is to complete those things-to-do without compromising quality or credibility.

Stress increases when the heavy things get heavier or the small thing gets smaller, just like a fraction gets bigger when you increase the top number or decrease the bottom one ... or both. Tick tock.

So, how could you reduce it? What could you do to alleviate the stress? If it really is force per unit area, elephants per pin, or heavy stuff per tiny thing, there are only two solutions:

(1) fewer elephants
(2) bigger drawing pin

I've been asking myself which of those is easier to organise. Fewer elephants means delegating or prioritising or just admitting that it can't be done. There are obvious problems with all three options. A bigger pin means extending a deadline, which is not always too practical, or playing around with time... which is of course, even less practical.

There is another option though, and that is to start asking why on earth we're balancing elephants on drawing pins in the first place. This one's all about perspective - it asks the 'why' question rather than the 'how'... and that's a really good thing to do, I think. After all, if there's one thing that stress does, it locks you into the situation until you can't see the outside world at all.

It feels counter-intuitive, but actually, a bit of perspective might really help. I'm going to take a step back from the circus for a moment, gain a bit of perspective and start asking myself who really appreciates elephants on drawing pins, how I got to be the elephant trainer in the first place, and why we're doing it.

And anyway, why am I comparing everything to elephants all of a sudden?

THROUGH THE KEYHOLE

It's one of those days when I've just got to hold it together. I really do feel like Depression is banging at the door and won't go away, won't give in, won't stop knocking, hammering, pounding outside with a damp thud and an off-beat rhythm.

It started with a bit of work that I just couldn't do. On its own I would have tackled it, stared at it, figured it out and done it... but there were hundreds of other things I had to do at the same time and they all just started crowding in on me, adding themselves to the hundreds of other near-impossible things I've got to make happen outside of work. Thump, thump, thump...

It's like... well, do you know that feeling when you're trying to solve a problem very quickly and everybody around you is trying to solve it too... but out loud? There's no space to think, no room to move, no calm moment to piece the answer together - which you know you can do when everyone isn't panicking and shouting and thinking and distracting you. Then someone asks you a question which you thought of two minutes ago and is now a bit irrelevant to your train of thought, so you ignore it and they get upset because you're ignoring it... it was a bit like that.

My chest goes tight, I clutch my head, I make a groaning, muttering sound as though I've got some deep inner pain and I rub my eyes with the palms of my hands. It doesn't change the fact that I've got snippets with text in the wrong place repeated throughout hundreds of files and no obvious way to change them, unpaid invoices which don't seem to match any quotes that I received and emails pinging into my inbox from people who use phrases like still not quite what I was expecting...

 "You're stressed," whispers Depression through the keyhole.

"Go away," I say.

"You're stressed because you can't manage your life," he continues.

"Go. Away," I repeat.

"You can't manage your life because you're a failure - a little, shambolic, seeping mess of a man who can't manage to succeed in ... anything."

"Shut up." I want to swear at him, but I know that only makes him stronger. I have tears in my eyes now. It's crazy because I know the tricks that Depression is trying to play - twisting truth into a form where the positives are hidden by the negatives, trying to snapshot everything into a single moment to convince me that it will always be this way, and crucially, trying to make me see the waves instead of their creator. I've encountered these sleights of hand before - and yet somehow I still seem to fall for it.

It is definitely one of those days when I've just got to hold it together. I might be quiet for a while.

BURSTING THE ELEPHANT'S BUBBLE

Right. Two things happened today that stopped me in my tracks.

The first was a conversation about the work night out. It's this Friday. Now that we're all a bit fed up of curry nights, the cool kids have decided to shake it up a bit and they've plumped for a jolly, at good old TGI Fridays. Why not? It's loud, it's cold, it's where miserable staff try to pretend they're constantly super-excited about the birthdays of strangers... it's perfect. There are 28 of us going but crucially, it turns out that only some of the department have been invited.

Hmmm. Trouble always looms when only some people are invited to a thing.

"The thing is Matt," she said, disgruntled, "It's really a young person's thing anyway. People like us, we've got kids, we've got commitments, we have to ferry children to football and ballet practice and sort out babysitters..."

I made a face that went wholly unnoticed. Her enormous assumption was trampling and trumpeting like an elephant I had to do my best to ignore. It was all I could do to keep nodding.

You know, sometimes I forget that I'm 36. I watched a thing the other day where the opening monologue was a sort of analysis of the audience.

"Most of you," said the presenter, "...will statistically be in your thirties. You'll be feeling stuck in a rut, wondering about change and adventure..."

Yep.

"...You'll be considering your marriage, and, about 13% of you... will be having an affair."

Nope. I switched it off as the audience tittered uncomfortably.

And that's how it happens. You suddenly remember how old you are and how the world sort of expects you to be a certain... way... by now. It comes snapping into focus with the same feeling you get when you see yourself in a photo and remember what you look like to other people.

For the record then, I've never had to ferry children to football or ballet practice. I've never booked a babysitter; crumbs, I've never even bought a television, changed a nappy or complained about a thermostat. What kind of mid-thirties guy am I?

The second conversation was about Valentine's Day, would you believe.

"So, do you take it really seriously?" I asked, politely. "You know some people just don't bother - it's way too commercialised and overhyped..."

"Well this is our first, so we'll do something - probably go to dinner in Winchester..."

There was an awkward pause. In those few seconds, it suddenly occurred to me that no-one here has ever asked me about my status. Not ever. As you can imagine, I flicked through reasons as to why that might be - like index cards flashing through my mind. Eventually, I settled on the optimistic conclusion that it's just too personal a question and, as I never mention it, I clearly don't want to talk about it. It is another elephantine assumption.

"Aw, that's nice," I said, boringly.

As it happens, I am going to TGIs on Friday, despite not being one of the cool kids in the playground and notwithstanding the fact that I don't belong in the Exhausted Parent Club either.

My theory is that it's better to get to know people, to find out what makes them tick somehow, even if you have to share a noisy table or sit glumly through an argument about how to split the bill. I believe in brave conversations, the kind of thing where you simply point out the elephant, burst his bubble and hope for the best - but you can only have those if you really know people well enough.

HALF AN HOUR BEHIND

The Lewisham Barn Dancers...

I'm half an hour behind. I've been half an hour behind for a few days now, living so tight to the margin that everything is bunched up together without any flexibility to get those thirty minutes back.

So, I am currently running half an hour late for everything.

I was half an hour late arriving in Lewisham last night. The folk band I play in from time to time were playing at a barn dance. In my car, somewhere in the middle of London (with the melodion player expounding his theory about how Frozen is a thinly-veiled metaphor for homosexuality) I realised that we would not arrive at set-up time. Who drives through central London anyway?

There was time to get ready though, and the gig went quite well, despite me injuring myself on my own piano. It looks like I'll be doing a few functions with iFolk this year, so it was good to remind myself of the tunes. And the posh crisps.

There's always posh crisps at these things - you know the ones: the satisfying crunch between the teeth, the warm flavour and the crack of sea salt. They don't crumble in your fingers and they don't even look greasy. I held one up to the light, examining its perfect undulating texture before slotting it into my mouth like a letter through a postbox. I could eat packets of posh crisps.

I couldn't really. I don't want to be the size of a house.

Anyway, when the crisps were crumbs and the dancers looked at each other, sweatily praying for the sweet merciful end of the evening, we rifled through the End Polkas and swiftly packed up the cars. I got lost driving home from Lewisham (we somehow drove right past St Paul's Cathedral, of all places).

I eventually got back, you guessed it, exactly half an hour late, and just after midnight. I clicked open the front door, set down my box of cables and collapsed, exhausted.

That errant thirty minutes ticked with me through the night and I woke up... late. As I blustered into church, some time later for the 8am practice, I looked at my phone. It was 8:30.

Of course it was.

THE GEEK IN THE MATHS FUNNEL

"I work downstairs," I said happily, rubbing my gloves together in the ice cold air.

"Ah," she said. "I used to work with people like you in my last job."

I must have raised an eyebrow. We walked a little further before she added:

"...geeks, I think we used to call them."

Oh.

I had another conversation later with one of the students. It started because he told me he had to write what he called a 'reflective essay'.

I jokingly asked if it was an essay on Snell's Law, then immediately remembered that he probably didn't know what that was.*

That's how it started - me being neither funny nor clever but looking like I had been aiming for both.

I carried on though, explaining my theory that all science subjects get you to philosophy if you talk about them enough and you're willing to go through the maths funnel.

Oh the maths funnel. It's like the scary boat ride in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. What I mean is, eventually, the deeper you go - social science, chemistry, marine biology, atomic physics... the more your language of description stops being English and starts being pure maths.

This is the maths funnel. Equations pin everything down, algebra tells you the story of how things are working on a microscopic level - it all turns into letters, symbols and operators. It's a crazy but beautifully precise world.

It was about then that I remembered the incredible symmetry of Maxwell's Equations.

You should see them. These are four equations which dictate exactly how light propagates through space - the intertwined electrical and magnetic fields which wobble and dance around each other. The incredible thing about them is that they're exquisitely symmetrical.

Imagine finding four separate equations which completely describe a thing you can observe... which are almost mirror images of each other. It's like finding the brush strokes of the creator in the middle of the maths funnel.

I resisted going on about Maxwell's Equations.

Whichever your angle of approach to the maths funnel, you always end up the other side of it, in the world of philosophy. It's just a kind of mathematical output. For example, is zero an odd or even number? Could you prove it either way? What's the square root of -1? Do imaginary numbers really exist? Do negative numbers exist, while we're at it? What is existing?

"There's no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going... There's no knowing where we're rowing or which way the river's flowing..."

"I've never really thought of it like that before," said the student, clearly humouring me. He went on to argue that an excellent engineer would find a way to build a pyramid upside down (which I think might have been a bit of a dig at the way we build our software, actually) and I disagreed.

"You can't really get around the fact that physics forces you the right way up," I said, slipping around in Philosophy World. I'm pretty sure that engineers find solutions presented to them in the conditions of the real world, rather than deliberately trying to oppose them.

Before long, my head was flicking through possible ways that engineers might think - are they realistic artists? Or are artists engineers who just aren't limited by the constraints of a three dimensional world and just build... whatever they want? Which would I rather be? Actually, what am I? The ice is thin this side of the maths funnel and I felt safer inside it.

I would say that though, wouldn't I? I'm clearly a bit of a geek.



*Why would he? Why would anyone? If you're interested, it says that the angle of incidence of light hitting a surface (like a mirror for example) is the same as the angle of reflection. Oh the humour.

GEORGE AND ARTHUR

Now look here, Wilson...

Sometimes I feel like I've got two settings: brusque and diplomatic. There's no in-between, no middle ground - just a toggle switch which flips me from get on with it to would you mind awfully. It's like Captain Mainwaring and Sergeant Wilson have somehow fused together in the body of a greying, gentle, pompous, chilled-out stress-bucket.

I don't like it very much. Today, I was Mainwaring, stressing out and rushing through work only to get stressed out and rush through band practice.

"Matt I don't think we're going to get through three songs - this one'll take half an hour at least," said Rory in the melée of sound of everyone else chatting and slowly tuning their instruments. Fire rose inside.

"Well we've been here twenty five minutes and we haven't done anything yet!" I barked unhelpfully. This isn't me, I thought to myself. I switched back to Wilson and apologised afterwards.

A while ago, in a different context, a friend of mine told me I was 'too nice'. I smiled and said thank you before realising that this was not particularly a compliment. Nice! Who wants to be nice? Nice is pink wafer biscuits, it's a sensible pair of shoes and a cup of PG tips on a cloudy afternoon watching an old man mow a cricket pitch.

I don't want to be nice. I want to be wild, unpredictable, exciting, explosive and dangerous. I want to be hanging off a rock-face with a sixty foot drop below me, laughing my head off; I want to be fair, wise, harsh and kind and to always have a story. I want to be halfway up a mountain, hacking through ice, rowing across a glimmering lake with a crazy song in my heart and an untamed artistic passion in my soul...

... I said I wouldn't moan about this again, didn't I? I'm going to have to do better than this.

Anyway, what I mean is: I don't want to be nice.

I don't want to be unkind either though. And if I switch off Sergeant Wilson, I'm worried that Mainwaring will rule the roost like a little Napoleon, pompously ordering those around him to sort out stuff while he cracks the whip and makes a fool of himself. No-one likes a little Napoleon. Well, except maybe a little Josephine but there aren't many of them around.

So it's about balance then. I think it's also about having room in your life to slow things down a bit; to stop and get a little perspective on your impact. At the moment, I feel a bit like everything is moving so rapidly, so heavily and so unstoppably that there's no time to refresh and recharge - something which is critical to finding that assertive balance between Jekyll and Hyde, between good old Arthur and George.

This is now priority number one I think: build in a little margin, a guard rail to stop me living right up to the edge. Do you know what I mean? The rumble strip isn't dangerous but ignore it at your peril. The yellow line, one foot away from the edge of the platform, is just paint on concrete, but it's there for a reason. What's more, the sirens went off long before the planes spluttered into view.

As it is, I'm now completely busy between now (Tuesday night) and Friday after work. I'm way over the yellow line aren't I? Over the line and far from the Anderson shelter.

Ah. I'm still not quite sure how that's happened. I really am most terribly sorry, you see.

Oh do be quiet, Wilson. There's a war on.

Yes sir, I understand. Sometimes though, I can't help wondering... what it is we're fighting for.

Fade to black.

THINKING ABOUT THOGNESS

I saw a really interesting lateral-thinking puzzle today. It was part of a study on hypothetical reasoning.

Here it is (with names changed):

Andy is looking at Belinda. Belinda is looking at Charles. Andy is married but Charles is unmarried.

Q: Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

a) Yes, b) No, c) Cannot be determined

I'll leave you to think about that for a while while I waffle on about the choir team meeting. Ah, no dodgy pub this time - Simon, Lindsay and I met at the Volunteer, a pub with shiny gold taps, mahogany panelling and pictures of old soldiers above a crackling fireplace. I pulled out the Big Book of Everything (Vol III), opened a fresh page to write on, and we were off.

Sometimes leadership requires a bit of hypothetical reasoning. We found ourselves planning which three of our five songs to perform in June and which three we would focus on for October this year. Evidently, one would appear in both, but which? The one that might be the most fun? The one that's most achievable? Perhaps the most difficult? In the end we plumped for Fly Me To The Moon, which I'm hoping will be straightforward. However, things get even more complicated working out which order to do the others in given the amount of time we've got - if we get on really well with Rolling in the Deep, maybe we should go on to Oklahoma! (I don't like Oklahoma! but we have a democratic process for these things and the team love a musical, it seems). Soon we were talking about Christmas, which always seems a bit laughable at this time of year. The puzzle gradually started coming together.

Sometimes however, you have to sort of work out the most likely route that events will take and plan for that. Once again I found myself stupefied by the thought that there are leaders of things out there who plan everything in a sort of dictatorial black and white, where everything is pinned down with military precision. I think the world is a bit more quantum than that.

Did you say c) Cannot be determined? Ouch. So did I at first. The answer's actually a) Yes but it's interesting to figure out why so I won't steal that pleasure. The article was suggesting that as a species we're particularly bad at this type of reasoning. The next one did my head in...


You're given four shapes: a black square, a white square, a black circle and a white circle. The experimenter tells you that they have picked two qualities: a colour (black or white) and a shape (square or circle). If a shape possesses exactly one of these qualities, it is classified as a THOG; if it possesses either none or both qualities it is a non-THOG.

The experimenter tells you that the black circle is a THOG. How would you classify the other shapes?


I've got my own theories about this kind of puzzle. Either you're the type of person whose brain clouds over somewhere in the second sentence and the whole thing looks like a pointless waste of your time with absolutely no practical value... or you won't be able to let it go until you've worked it out. I don't think you can be both of these things, which... I suppose makes all of us... sort of THOGs doesn't it?

We got to the end of the evening and I closed up the Big Book of Everything, ready to head back out for the cold walk home. I think we'll probably end up adapting and going with the flow over the next few months anyway, you know. That is, after all, what we normally do. I looked up at the stars, crisp and bright, brilliant white against the frozen blackness of the sky. I guess we'll start with Fly Me To The Moon. It's as good a place as any.

FLIGHT BAW207

I twiddled open the blind. It's a bright blue January sky today, clear and cold with that little hint of Spring.

A tiny flash of light caught my eye, glinting in the morning sunlight - a plane of course, heading west, packed with adventurers, holiday-makers, business people in suits flicking through in-flight magazines and attendants filling up coffee cups... I imagine.

I wonder where it's going? I said to myself.

So I found out. There's a website called FlightRadar24.com and it shows you a map of every registered plane in the sky in real-time. You can find out all kinds of information including the exact position, altitude, speed, designation, origin and destination of a flight.

It turns out my little glinting plane was flight BAW207 on its way to Miami. Well, it's still on its way actually. A quick check of the site tells me it's just launched out over the West Coast of Ireland and is travelling at 539mph on a bearing of 286 degrees with an altitude of 35,000ft. Miami eh? Where Will Smith chills out in his 90s convertible, where off-beat cops chase drug-fuelled criminals in a screech of tyres and brake dust; where men with moustaches drive speedboats in huge white circles and beautiful women rollerblade along beachside paths under tall green palm trees.

I wish I were launching out across the Atlantic. My current speed is 0.0mph, I'm on a bearing of roughly North (though it's hard to tell) and I'm cruising at an altitude of 70cm (thanks to my office chair). The only adventure that awaits me is my forthcoming trip to the kitchen to find out what juices are stacked up next to the Nestle 3000.

I think perhaps I need to change my attitude. First of all, there's no point complaining about something if you're not prepared to do something about it. Even then, complaining doesn't really help. I need adventure not a whingeworthy soapbox which you all get fed up with after a few blog posts of me bemoaning a situation which essentially I am completely in charge of. It can get tiresome can't it?

So, it's time for a plan, an adventure that's more than just a pipedream. I think I have to make it happen, climb aboard that little glinting plane and punch through the clouds of mediocrity into the beautiful unknown skies above. I have an idea...

HIBERNATION

It occurred to me today that I've had to have an extra nap every day for about the last two weeks.

Home from work? Snoozing while the Intrepids catch up with the One Show. Just back from a quick stroll up the village to check the property prices in the estate agents' window? Have a little kip: forty winks, just resting my eyezzzzzzz....

What is wrong with me?

I can only attribute it to the weather. I think I might be hibernating.

And why not? It's freezing out there. What could be better than hiding away in your own little world, the place where the propped-up pillows and snuggly duvet offer such magnificent relief, such comfort and warmth, from the harsh freezing air and the pervasive damp of winter? My dreams are never cold - there are palm trees and oceans and my old school library and hot crumpets and Louis Armstrong and the moon made out of cheesecake and, well, lots of stuff... but it's never the frozen wasteland that greets me outside the front door in the real world.

Hibernation might also explain my slowness in picking the best response to text messages.

"Hi Matt... just wondering if you mind me jumping on your piano this eve [at tonight's leaders' meeting]? Let me know if that's OK with you?"

"Wouldn't it be better if you just used your fingers?" I almost replied. It was one of those moments when the ensuing conversation played out in my mind like a game of chess, move by possible move. In the end I didn't think my humour would be appreciated so after about ten minutes of deliberation... I just typed, "Yep. No worries" and hit send.

Ten minutes was way too long, wasn't it? Let's blame hibernation. My metabolic rate, my processing speed, my sense of humour and my ability to be just normal have slowed right down. I am asleep for the winter.

CHOCOLATE ORANGE

I just had a Skype chat with Winners. He wasn't describing himself, but he used a phrase that I've not heard in a while:

up the creek without a paddle

I really like this phrase. It paints a picture of being completely helpless, floating along a wild river, having lost all means of controlling your journey. There is no easy way out.

...

So work's going well today. Actually, I jest, but to be fair, someone did leave an out-of-date chocolate orange in the kitchen where the communal cakes normally go. I know it was out-of-date because it was accompanied by a pink post-it note on which someone had scribbled the warning in capital letters with two exclamation marks.

In an engineering kitchen, such warnings mean very little. I still remember those African sweets someone brought back from their holiday once. Shudder.

Also, I've requested permission to work from home from time-to-time. It means I'll get given a crummy laptop to VPN from but it just might help make things a little different.

No climbing yet. It looks like that might be a while, especially while Nell and HR assess the probability of me leaping to my death from the top of the climbing wall with a wild gleam in my eye. Probably next Tuesday. Climbing, not death, I mean.

Meanwhile this afternoon, to celebrate a successful product release, we're all off on a jolly... ten pin bowling in Bracknell. It's organised fun (pipe down, oxymoron detectives) but at least it's something different and it doesn't involve us all staring at numbers on computer screens which display pointless statistics about our ability to do something completely rand... oh.

The chocolate orange has disappeared, devoured by those who care not for shelf-life as much as they care for chocolate. I only hope it's not too out of date, or the whole department could be up the creek without a paddle.

I CHOOSE AN EXTREME SPORT

I've agreed to go climbing with a few people from work. I'll be honest: I don't really know what I'm letting myself in for - I've never really done it before and I'm not crazy about heights.

"I just want to do something with a bit of adrenaline," I said, excitedly, "Something that's exciting, something where you might die and you can throw yourself off..."

"...I'm starting to get worried about you," said Nell, predictably, raising an eyebrow. "You know there'll be little kids there," she said. I quickly realised that my eyes were wild with the possibility of nearly killing myself, and I was looking a little mad. It is only a climbing wall, Stubbsy.

Perhaps there are other options for exciting-but-not-quite-deadly-fun? How about a bungee jump?

Apparently only 20 people have ever died from bungee jumping and it's about as dangerous as a 100 mile car trip. You can get an eye-haemorrhage though.

Would I do it? Standing on a platform with my arms outstretched, the wind blustering through my hair, and my feet lashed together? Would I jump? Would I chicken out?

Same with a parachute - though I'd do a tandem jump, I think. That way, someone else (who's survived this horrific idea at least once already) decides for you when the two critical moments will happen - the jumping and the pulling the parachute cord open. That'd be fun, strapped to another person for dear life while the Earth spins beneath you.

What about white-water rafting? Down-to-earth but soaking. Higher risk factor though - about 1 in 250,000 people die doing that, and mostly it seems from heart attacks. I think if I'm going to go out with style, I don't want to be cold and drenched, draped out on slippery rocks, breathing my last through a soggy wetsuit.

Warmer and dryer would be bull-fighting. That'd get the old adrenaline pumping. Cruel to animals though isn't it - plus I think you have to be either Spanish or a ladies' man, a casanova gentleman matador, quick on his feet and smooth with the signoritas. I can pretend to be Spanish...

Hang-gliding? Microlighting? Base-jumping? See parachuting. I think hang-gliding would be the most fun out of those but I'm not quite sure how you land, given that you're effectively being carried on thermals while tucked up in a sleeping bag.

Ski-ing or snowboarding would be alright. Expensive pursuits those. Plus, my incredible foray into the world of ice-skating has persuaded me that most winter sports are just innovative ways to torture your feet. I enjoyed the Alps in 1998, yes, but mostly because my uni pals and I spent the week playing Uno in a ski-lodge.

No I think climbing might be a good place to start. It'll fuel the endorphins and get the heart racing but it's not dangerous, wet, expensive or difficult... I hope. And it's better than staying in with biscuits, endless tea and old episodes of Inspector Morse.

BLESSED ARE THE COMFORTABLE

Hang around us Christians long enough and one of us will surely tell you we're 'blessed'. Now, sometimes it's tough to figure out what this means as it's not always code for 'life is good'. However, most of the time, it is just that.

The trouble is, I don't think it's how Jesus used the word. In fact, I know it isn't - unless all those happy believers were actually trying to tell me that they were actually 'poor in spirit', 'meek' or being persecuted for their faith... and usually people would just come out and say it if that were the case.

Somehow I think 'blessed' has been a bit diverted from the definitions of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. And as always when I feel strongly about something but not quite brave or eloquent enough to be directly controversial... I've turned this diversion into a poem. If you don't like it, you can throw stuff at me or call me names; funnily enough, that might turn out be a real blessing though...


BLESSED ARE THE COMFORTABLE

Blessed are the comfortable
For couches shall be theirs
Blessed are the affluent
With all their stocks and shares

Blessed are the drivers
Who polish shiny wheels
And dine in costly restaurants
On wine and fancy meals

Blessed are the opulent
For God must love them more
To bless them so abundantly
And not to leave them poor

Oh and blessed are the faithful
For stuff is their reward
They'll tell you how much blessing
means more stuff they can afford

For stuff is surely blessed
If it tumbles from above
And surely heaven dishes out
The best to those it loves

Yes, blessed are the comfy
The well-off lucky few
The one percent, the wealthy ones
Thank God,
I don't mean
You

WHY I WANT IT TO SNOW

I'm out in the conservatory tonight. I thought it would be a bit quieter than sitting in with the Intrepids watching Silent Witness.

We don't have heating out here, so it's freezing. Plus tonight, the rain is pouring and pattering onto the roof. I don't mind that so much.

I passed a guy in the street today. He had no umbrella but he saw me coming with mine, swinging above my head.

"Could be worse," he said, beaming, "Could be snowing!" He laughed loudly as though that were the funniest thing he'd heard in quite a while. It didn't even matter that I raised my eyebrows and smiled - he was always going to laugh uproariously at his own premeditated observation that snow is in fact 'worse' than rain, whether I agreed or not.

"I guess so," I said politely, walking past.

I thought it about it. Snow would be prettier and quieter, though I'd still need the umbrella to get back to the office. It does tend to slow everything up, which gets people moaning and celebrating in equal measure - for conversational value alone it's a bit of a godsend. However, there are lots of other things that would be much worse than rain, that aren't snow at all. Hammers, for example, nuclear ash, hydrochloric acid, grand pianos and toilet ice would all be a lot worse tumbling out of the sky, I'd wager. The moment was long gone for a discussion with a stranger about what could be worse than drizzle. It might have been a bit of a mad thing to say, but kudos to him for making conversation in a village high street.

It's really thumping down out there now. You know, there's a part of me that wants to just go and run about in the rain, just to do something different. I know it'll be cold and wet, I know it's a fast track to getting ill again, but just for the unpredictability of it...

I'm in a weird mood. Fed up I think. I don't want to live a life where everything is always the same every day; I'm bored of it. I need adventure, change, scenery, something... different... unpredictable, exciting.

Oh but not the kind of exciting that people who aren't very excited go on about out when they say they're excited. I mean something scary, thrilling, almost unbelievably exhilarating - the kind of thing where... you might not make it out alive, or you can't predict what will happen next. Just. Something. Different... to alleviate the terrible boredom...

... I don't know what I'm talking about. I guess the fact that I'd prefer to think about it raining hammers rather than sleet, snow or hail is an indication of something! Then, would I really want that? Of course not. I've not gone dancing in the rain tonight either - I'm still indoors listening to it pounding against the glass. I think that's the scariest thing of all probably, actually making a difference. I'm so predictable I know that if something scary, thrilling and exciting did come along, offering me the big hand of adventure... well, I'd probably stay safe.

I'd like it to snow though. I don't care if it snarls up the traffic really, or if it stops us from going anywhere useful. The world would be white, sparkling, fluffy and fun again... and above all, different and for a day or two maybe, not quite so boring.

I really hate being bored.

A VIEW OF THE SLIP ROAD

I've moved desks since Christmas - I thought it would be nicer by the window.

So far, grey skies and a charming view of the Junction 12 slip road. Trucks and vans with things like 'Nordfrost' and 'The Daily Pallet' written on them zoom past, visible between the swaying branches of the trees.

It's a nice reminder of course, that there is a real world out there. I picture lorry drivers, gripping their steering wheels and whistling along to the radio; pensioners in Vauxhall Corsas, chatting about where the new IKEA will go and what it will look like, and Sainsbury's delivery drivers pulling up off the motorway with empty, rattling shelves clattering about in the back of their vans.

I probably ought to be picturing more practical things... such as my to-do list, the messages in my inbox and the niggling index of things I forgot to think about last week.

It seems day-dreaming is much easier with a window next to you. The real world, in all its greyness is quite appealing - even the slip road.

When do you indicate that you're taking the slip road off the motorway? Is it at the /// marker? Or are you supposed to just drift across the white line and flick on your indicator as an afterthought?*

Also, is it an exit or an entrance? This particular slip road feels like home whenever I've driven up it. At the top, it turns into a familiar old roundabout which leads to a warmed teapot, a comfortable bed and some cosy slippers.

Of course from now on, it's also going to remind me that if I look quickly to the left, I might also see this window, the venetian blind and my desk behind it.

Funny how I never seem to day-dream about this world whenever I'm out there in the grey, isn't it?


*I'm pretty sure you shouldn't do this.

CLICKBAIT NEWS

Saturday morning. Cornflakes, and a quick scroll through the clickbait news.

Victoria Beckham reveals why she doesn't smile in photos... apparently it's because she 'has a responsibility to the fashion community' not to let on that she's secretly 'comedy gold'. She's done a first-rate job of keeping that hidden away all these years. The article also included a picture of The Spice Girls, circa 1997 in which they look like giggling students who've turned up for freshers' week in fancy dress. Pop music's really changed hasn't it.

Meanwhile, a 36-year-old model reveals that she and her husband lead a 'normal life' despite the fact that he is less than three-feet tall. To be honest, the whole thing might just as well say: oooh, look over there, look, look, look at the pwetty lady with the ickle dwarf, bet you're wondering how they got together, awww love eh... but how do they... you know... ooh matron... Yeah shut up, article. This isn't news.

I see old Justin Bieber's photoshopped himself some muscles. Outrageous. Someone's leaked the before and after shots. It prompted me to ask a philosophical question: what's the difference between photoshop and autotune? Can you photoshop talent? Oh, and can we have the Spice Girls back please?

Never thought I'd say that, in 1997.

Anyway, that's enough cornflakes and trashy news sites. I only went there because the actual news is quite depressing.  I've got writing to do. I'm carrying on with the book today, hoping that I don't get cravings for jelly-babies, or lost in self-loathing. It'd be interesting to work out which of those is more likely, but it would also be pointless procrastination. If you're going to procrastinate, at least do something useful. I think I'll start by putting the kettle on.

THAT'S NO MOON...

I flapped open my umbrella on the doorstep. The sky was deep and dark and hurling icy rain past the orange lamp posts.

What a day to be feeling better. I adjusted my gloves, swung the umbrella over my head and set out for work.

A short while later, with wet shoes and a residual cough, I shook out the rain from the folds of the brolly, pushed through the revolving door and headed through reception for the second time this year. Work.

It's funny how the lights look so inviting from the cloud of damp drizzle that pervades a January morning. The warm glow of a heated office, the smell of coffee and the promise of a comfortable chair all filter through the mist like the songs of sirens to sailors... or, if you like, the glimpse of a tiny moon where Alderaan used to be...

Well you get my drift.

I wonder why we do this. It's pretty easy to lose sight of the fact that work is intended to fuel our lives rather than shape our identities. In truth, it is actually supposed to work for us just as much as we do for it. Like every contract, it's a two-way process.

Yet somehow, these places catch us in their tractor beams and suck us in until we're wearing storm troopers' uniforms and running awkwardly with blasters through polished corridors.

... yes alright, classicists... polished corridors, or indeed, getting devoured by monstrous mermaids who can't half sing...

I slipped into my chair and logged on with a weary ctrl+alt+delete.

"Are you feeling any better?" asked my manager.

Not really, no.

A FLU BUG AND A JOKE ABOUT MONKS

"I definitely can't cope with another day of this," I said, sipping a cup of tea.

I've got this weird flu bug. I feel constantly freezing, with the exception of the middle of the night when my body turns into some sort of thermo-nuclear reactor and generates enough heat to warm up a small town. Overheating tends to wake me up and then moments later, I'm cold and sweaty. Yeah, sorry it's unpleasant but it is - it really is.

So, I'm clearly unable to get to work. I tried this morning: two coats, one scarf, thick gloves and best foot forward. I got as far as the Co-Op.

"Another day of what?" said my Mum. "This?" she raised a cup of Kenyan with her good hand and smiled. I winked, cheekily.

"Ah," said my Dad. "Have you heard the story of the trappist monks?"

Now, this is a cue, folks - a little warning bell that tells you a terrible joke is hurtling down the word tube. There's no stopping it - the lights are flashing and the barriers are already down. It's all you can do to pull on the handbrake and watch the joke flash past, all the way from 1973. Usually it's "Did you hear about the one-eyed pirate?" or "Tell you one thing about Napoleon". I'd not heard the one about the trappist monks, so I paused.

"There was a silent order of three trappist monks," he said.

"... Brother Sebastian, Brother Christopher and Brother John. They were only allowed to speak for one hour every year, when they went in to see the Abbot. The time came.

'I really don't like the way Brother Sebastian does the washing up,' said John. 'He leaves all the cups on the draining board and gets the tea towels wet.'

The next year, the monks returned for their annual conversation.

'Brother John can't do any gardening properly. There was no good soil and all the crops died before the harvest.' said Brother Christopher.

Another year passed. Finally the time came again for the monks' meeting with the Abbot.

'Is there anything you would like to say, Brother Sebastian?' asked the Abbot, calmly breaking the silence.

'Yes. I can't stand all this arguing.'"

My Dad found this hilarious.

I am definitely going back to work tomorrow.

THE GREAT RETURN AND THE WORD TUBE

"So work tomorrow, Matthew!" said my Dad, cheerily loading the dishwasher.

"Mmm." Thanks for that.

"Still, you've had a nice break."

"Yeah," I said automatically, then, "No wait - no I haven't! It's been long but it hasn't been nice."

"Well, you've had a nice long break anyway," replied my Dad clattering dishes absent-mindedly.

Right. My Mum calls this the 'word tube' - which is when my Dad has things he has to say, (out loud) to satisfy some mysterious criterion that none of us know about and does so apropos of nothing. We can sometimes be three conversations ahead of the pileup of sentences in the word tube.

Alas, the niceness of the length of the break hadn't compensated for the distinctive lack of niceness at having my Mum in hospital.

We broke her out of the acute stroke unit on Friday. Stacked with leftover New Year balloons and piles of cardigans, we helped her into the passenger seat and drove her home. She's doing really well and it's great to have her back where she belongs. Especially with...

... work tomorrow. Yep, the Great Return to the world of software engineers, table football and the Nestle 3000. I dread to think what emails await me there. Plus the inevitable "Did you have a good Christmas?" conversations. I wouldn't mind this year, if I could say what everyone else says:

"Yeah it was quiet, uneventful really. Glad I wasn't here though! How about you, Matt?"

"Well, let me begin..."

The Great Return. This morning, my friend Rory said he 'couldn't work in an office because of the tedium of it being the same every day.' 

There is a part of me that knows we all feel this way. The sameness is not the constant stream of predictable safety we convince ourselves is charming and cherishable - it's death: slow, dull, unending death by photocopiers and kitchen chit-chat. That's why we need little lifelines - practical jokes, boring conversations and political battles magnifying the tiny things into massive dramas - whose name comes first in an email? Why did you copy so-and-so in? 

... oh and the world war that begins every time someone's favourite mug goes missing! These are our entertainments, reminding us desk-bound-battery-hens that we still belong in the human race where real people have real dramas and that we haven't lost the ability to swing through the full range of our homo-sapien emotions while tapping away at our keyboards.

It's not quite the way I wanted to change the world.

Rory's an estate agent. He's very good with real people. I imagine he knows how to sell expensive items as well as hold interesting conversation with wealthy and sociable home-owners and buyers.

"Right, the bins go out tomorrow as well," said my Dad pulling a fork through a tea towel. My Mum, perched on her mountain of cushions with a digestive in one hand and the handle of her walking stick in the other, turned and looked at me as if to say, 'Don't worry, he's not looking for a response. Those are just words escaping from the word tube.'

As I suppose (on reflection) are these.

NEW YEAR'S EVE TWICE

I said it didn't I? Anti-climax. Standing in a stranger's garden watching the flames lick around an old wooden palette.

"You need a glass of something!" said a woman I've never seen before. Before long, a tall glass of cheap champagne was thrust into my gloved hand. I watched the sparks fly upwards.

"Harry's got it, Harry's got it!" shouted my aunty's neighbour. Harry looked up from his phone and grinned like a blue goblin. "How long to go, Harry?" she bellowed across the circle.

"Two minutes!" said the 10 year-old.

Before long, we were all counting down with Harry in the time-honoured fashion - from 10 to Happy New Year. I started wondering how it is a group of people can somehow always organise themselves to count out seconds so well. Five turned to four turned to three turned to two turned to one turned to...

An orange rocket leaped into the sky and shattered into a thousand streams of coloured light. I felt a hand grab my free glove and a half-hearted chorus of Auld Lang Syne began. I started wondering how it is a group of people can somehow never find the same key as each other, despite their excellent counting.

In reality though, the New Year had already started four hours earlier, around my Mum's hospital bed. At 8pm, Walty pulled open a party popper and we all cheered in the year 2015 with plastic wine glasses topped up with sparkling apple.

"A toast!" cried somebody.

"Well," said my Mum, sitting up, "How about to family?" We raised our glasses.

"To family," she went on, "To the bond that holds us all together through difficulty, that keeps us strong and sticks us... together!"

"Amen to that!" said my niece, lifting her plastic glass. The bottom fell out and rolled across the linoleum. We all laughed. Together.