BLACK HOLES AND THE MEETING THAT MADE ME MISS THE COFFEE VAN

I forgot I had a meeting that went on until 3:15. I got back to my desk and of course, the coffee van had been and gone. Misery settled in like the weather.

I didn't even have coins for the vending machine. A Nutri-Grain would've done it, not to mention a sneaky bar of Dairy Milk.

Oh Dairy Milk, with your creamy chocolate and rich velvety texture! You snap off so firmly between the teeth and melt like luxury in the mouth, tantalising every taste bud with your smooth and succulent flavours...

... oh. I'd better stop that in case you happen to be fasting chocolate. That'd be a bit insensitive - the equivalent of you telling me about a lovely cup of tea with its warm trickle and delicate blend of delicious tastes ... and right now, I don't want to think about tea, thank you very much.

Mmmm.

Snap out of it, Stubbsy.

Where was I? I was hungry. Yes, hungry and really annoyed - two things I'd rather not be. I get a bit grumpy when not fed very well. I understand a lot of guys are the same - like machines, we rely on an input in order to function. The machinery's really simple - without regular input, we have nothing to process so all our power gets diverted to other functions. Eventually, we can't sustain our normal output rate so what comes out is gibberish, followed by the sound of cogs grinding to a halt, irrational noises and a general inability to do what's asked of us. No input; no output.

I hate to say it, but women are a bit more complicated than an I/O machine. I have a theory but I value my life and I'm not brave enough to share it. It does involve cats left to their own devices though, so I'll leave it at that.

Thankfully, Winners was on-hand for another of our famous Skype-chats. A conversation about the government and privatisation led to him going on about 'oxygen-thieves' and me trying to think up a children's book that used that title. The Oxygen Thieves.

I got as far as aliens poisoning adults with invisible gas which hypnotised them into helping them steal our oxygen. In the end the aliens would naturally be thwarted by a plucky group of asthmatic children whose inhalers somehow immunised them against the hypno-gas...

'I'm in the wrong job,' I told Winners, whimsically at the end of all of that.

'LOL' he replied.

I think what really annoyed me was the fact that the meeting that made me miss the twenty-to-three coffee van... was almost irrelevant to me. Only four people turned up and I sat there like a piece of furniture listening to problems about coding and technical debt. I knew that at some point, one of the other three would turn to the piece of furniture and say 'You're very quiet, Matt...' and I'd need to say something intelligent. So, I spent a while imagining this thing called technical debt as a black hole, swallowing up everything around it and bending time into a gravity well so that estimates get pulled out of shape whenever we get anywhere near it...

... the trouble was that imagining black holes made me think about the vast cavern that was rumbling quietly within the walls of my stomach, and soon I was imagining myself gobbling up hamburgers and cornish pasties and cakes and biscuits and chocolate like a hungry hippo. I too, it seemed, had a technical debt.

In the grand scheme of things though, what does it matter? A third of the world was hungrier than me today - many of them will die because of it. Tea is a luxury drink from another planet, supped by rich people. I sit in meetings where people spend hours discussing complexities heaped on top of complexities and I often drift off, wondering whether any of it will ever make a real difference.

The rain bounced off the tarmac outside, and trickled down the window.

'You're very quiet, Matt,' said one of the other three.

INDOOR PLAY AND HUNGRY HIPPOS

No going out today. It's raining as though the sky has just remembered how to do it and desperately wants to prove it still has that old magic.

So, indoor play it is then. Remember that? Sticklebricks and Hungry Hippos while the playground glistens and shimmers out through the school windows.

No Hungry Hippos today though. Just hunger. I missed the coffee van, thought I was going home for lunch then looked outside and realised I wasn't. The coffee van (which is often loaded with pasties) will be back  - at twenty to three, normally.

Who has lunch at twenty to three?

The Finance Guys are playing table football again. I can hear them from here, whooping and yelping as they slam those handles back and forth. The company tournament is in a few weeks and I think they're getting their practice in. Well, it must be light relief from number crunching, I suppose.

Does Hungry Hippos teach kids to be greedy? I mean the idea was to gobble up as many little white balls as possible, before anyone else had a chance, wasn't it? That's an interesting thing to teach children.

I reckon there might be a lot you can learn from old games. I think Kerplunk could be used to teach children about internet security. Maybe Mousetrap is a sort of metaphor for developing and testing a product.

Guess Who? is essentially a game for networkers or recruiters - or probably anyone in HR... and Snakes and Ladders could easily be used to show any of us just how unfair life actually is.

Then there's Operation - a game for a steady hand and focused concentration (skilled workers), Buckaroo - a game for managers if ever there was one! And what about Jenga, the game in which the only way to win is simply by being the last person to crash the system or cause the product to collapse? That teaches you an awful lot about IT, if I'm not mistaken.

Maybe that was always the intention of these games? Crafting a skill into the fun world of rainy recess as the children play happily unaware, knocking down towers, twisting dials and pushing counters. I think I approve... mostly.

I wonder what the Finance Guys are learning from table football? Actually to be honest, I'm quite glad they're not playing Hungry Hippos.

THE UMBRELLA GAME

Say what you like about his dancing,
but Gene Kelly didn't have a clue how
to use an umbrella

I was walking back from lunch today, thinking about 2007. I'm not quite sure why - probably just reflecting on some of the story arcs which began that year and affected the next seven.

There were flecks of rain in the air. Behind me, over the village, dark grey clouds; in front of me, the sky was peppered with blue between the white. I was heading in the right direction.

My colleague Louise approached me on the road. I guessed she was marching into the village.

There's an optimum moment to acknowledge a colleague walking towards you on a lunch break. Smile too early and you've got to figure out what to do next. You can't keep smiling, that'd just make you look like you're a little too pleased to see them coming. Smile too late and they might miss it altogether and think you're blanking them. I normally tend to go for the smile, nod of the head and miniature waggle of the eyebrows - you know the kind of look that says 'Made it out for lunch then, eh? Nice one, yeah me too, k bye.'

I smiled.

"Oh God, I hope I don't get rained on," said Louise, marching past. I slowed and turned.

"Oh, do you want to borrow my umbrella?" I offered, pointing it at her and stopping. She stopped too, momentarily. It occurred to me that we were sort of frozen in time, me shooting my colleague with a tightly-wrapped gentleman's umbrella.

"Ah no, I'll be alright thanks," she replied, breaking the tableau.

"OK cool," I said and walked on.

A few minutes later, I stood outside the revolving door, shaking off my umbrella while the rain hammered into the tarmac of the visitors' car park. Poor Louise.

Now, what happened there? Why did she refuse the umbrella? Did she imagine it was offered out of mere politeness? Is there a subtext-game going on here where Person A is supposed to offer something to Person B knowing full well that Person B will politely refuse? In that game, Person B is supposed to feel good because they were offered and took control by refusing, while Person A is also supposed to feel good for offering in the first place. It's a win-win, supposedly. Only, one of you's going to get soaked.

I guess you could call this back-and-forth racketball, the Umbrella Game. It happens with lifts too.

"Do you want a lift?"

"Aw, that's kind. I'll be alright though, thanks."

"Suit yourself"

In today's episode of the Umbrella Game, I think Person A (me) was also supposed to feel justified (smug) when arriving at work as dry as a bone while Person B (Louise) looks like they fell in the lake. I didn't really feel anything like that, not even when Louise squelched into the office - just bemused really. I didn't say anything though. Maybe I lost after all.

There are subtle levels to the Umbrella Game though, aren't there? I think Person B trudges back to work wishing they'd taken up the offer but can never mention it. Also, in the initial exchange, I think Person A could make the rally last a little longer. Well, a little longer than I did. I just thwocked it back into the net (though not as clumsily as saying 'suit yourself' mind you).

"Do you want to borrow my umbrella?" ... Person A serves.

"Ah, no I'll be alright thanks." ... ooh volley on the forehand from Person B!

"No seriously, you can, it's fine." ... thwack, that's a corker.

"Oh no, honestly I'll be OK. I won't be long." ... cross-court return

"OK no worries." ... oh and it's a lob! .... "But don't say I didn't warn you!" ... oof, it's in! - right on the line, a blistering winner there! 15-love.

You know, I think I might be overthinking it, overcomplicating a very simple conversation. I ought just to be thankful that I got back to work without getting soaking wet. Though I still can't figure out what started me thinking about 2007.

CAMELLIA SINENSIS

Yes, it's Lent. Nope, I haven't given up writing; I've given up tea.

"It's got to be something that hurts," I said the other day. For me, giving up alcohol or chocolate, or even flopbook would not be too much of a challenge - those things have less hold on me than they do for others.

Tea though. That's a toughie. Like every Englishman, I was raised on tea, it's one of my favourite things - picked fresh from the slopes of Darjeeling and Assam, blended from exotic leaves such as Oolong, Lapsang Souchong and Keemun. Not to mention Peejeetips and Tet Li.

The problem is that there's no great alternative. Coffee's dastardly; it sucks you into its bitter cups and before you know it, you need it more than it needs you. Hot chocolate seems like too much of a sugary treat to replace the humble cuppa, and Horlicks or Ovaltine would send me to sleep... or back to the 1950s, I expect.

Nope, it's hot water for me while I abstain from camellia sinensis. It's not so bad, actually. It's quite good for the vocals anyway, is hot water. The thing I had forgotten is that where I live, hot water comes out of the kettle with a thin film of limescale floating on the top. I had a cup at church today while I was playing the piano. I was in the middle of thinking how the film reminded me of custard.

"How is the tea fast going?" asked my friend, Sarah.

"Oh it's going OK," I said, "I have been in a bit of a weird mood all week though."

"You're often in a weird mood," she quipped.

She's not wrong about that. In fact that's part of the reason why I haven't written anything for a few days. I was all set to write about J. Wellington Wimpy and Popeye last week - how they're sort of opposite pictures of strength and weakness and how I felt like I had to choose which I'd be. I couldn't write it though because it literally made me feel like a wimp. I was feeling a bit odd about that.

I was also thrown into a 'weird mood' by Carlos the Liberator who told me something that someone else really should have told me. I was confused and sad and disappointed all at once - which is tough to get over. I know what I have to do about that though.

No, not 'put the kettle on'...

It also had its high points, last week. My friends helped me celebrate my birthday with fajitas and prezzies and a board game, which was both funny and utterly wonderful. I know I sometimes get confused about how lonely I am, but it's times like that which remind me that I am most definitely not alone. It's a beautiful thing when you know that you're loved by people you love, even when you're in an odd kind of mood.

It's likely that I'll miss tea the most, this week. I'm scrum-mastering as of tomorrow, which is a geeky software-type way of saying I'll be running a team. I quite enjoy the people-side of my job, but I don't really understand what half of them do. I'm hoping that taking cakes into the first meeting will help.

It's just not the same though is it, washing down a doughnut with a mug of hot water?

THIS ONE'S FOR YOU, MRS CANTERBURY

I've been thinking about the grid method for mulitplication. If you've not seen it, you're going to love it - especially if you ever get stuck in the woods without a calculator and for some reason you need to multiply two numbers together...

So, forgive me if this is old news to you. It is quite old news anyway, as it goes: it was invented by the Chinese a long time ago. Like a lot of ancient wisdom, it totally works.

Plus it's much easier than the confusing method Mrs Canterbury taught me in Year 8 maths.

"You won't always have a calculator in your pocket!" she proclaimed to us in 1991.

So, Mrs Canterbury, this one's for you.

Q: What is 37 x 13?

1. Draw a grid where the number of rows and columns match the number of digits you need to write down the problem. Write the first number as digits in the column headings, and the second number as digits in the row headings.

 

2. Multiply each row and each column and fill in the grid. The boxes should never be higher than 9x9 so as long as you know your times tables, you'll be grand.

3. Separate the grid into diagonals which run bottom left to top right.

4. Add up the numbers in each diagonal channel and order them left to right.

6. If there are two-digit numbers in your answer, start at the right and shunt the left digit of each number across to the adjacent number on the left. The carried-across digit always adds itself to the right digit of the box on its left. Always do this right to left.

7. You are allowed two digits in the leftmost number. When all your digits have carried across, whatever you're left with is the result! Boom!

It works for larger numbers too. Split them into diagonals, add the diagonals together, shunt the units across and you'll have the right answer.

Q: What is 1344 x 237?

Enough to bring you out in a cold sweat. Not with the grid method though:

... or just maybe take your phone with you.

THE HULK GETS QUIETLY MAD IN ARGOS

"Hulk like grammar!"

I was going crazy in a queue at Argos the other day. It's an extraordinary shop, Argos. You pick what you want from a catalogue, write down its reference number, queue up to pay for it, watch its journey from the treasure cave behind the tills to the front of the store via a glowing digital screen, then queue up again to collect it.

"Order Number 269 to your collection point please," says a disembodied voice.

I had a train to catch and my insides were getting tangled up with frustration. Behind the collection point, a couple of teenagers were quietly discussing a colleague out of earshot. Not out of my earshot though.

You know, there aren't many things that tangle up my insides. Over the years, I've tried to contain my fury when a nearby diner slurps food into a noisy mouth or scrapes a fork across a china plate. I've restrained myself (I think marvellously) when I hear 'less' instead of 'fewer' and I reckon I've done a pretty good job of holding back the Hulk when cut up by taxis on the Junction 12 roundabout.

I've always thought it's best to hold him in, rather than let him go off on a verbal rampage. When I got to the front of the queue at Argos, one of the teenagers asked me to tap in my email address and offered me a grubby-looking keyboard over the counter. She didn't tell me why, and at first she wouldn't let me see the screen. I took a deep breath, buried the burning fires of radioactive rage with a gulp, and told her that I couldn't possibly type without seeing the screen and that if it was for an e-receipt she'd get a better response if she explained that from the outset. It was all fine.

However, just like the Hulk, right at the top of the list of furious frustrations - is not being understood, and underneath it is not being listened to - something which happens a lot in shops, for some reason. I've got to work really hard to let these things go.

This morning in a planning meeting, I said:

"Well, I think it's probably better to gather the statistics in a nice measured scientific way, rather than rely on objective analysis."

... which I agree is a pretty geeky way of saying a thing, but crucially, is not composed of words from a foreign language.

"Mmhm." said Chris, looking thoughtfully out of the window.

"Why don't we let the numbers do the talking?" said someone else, brightly.

"Great idea! Of course!" replied Chris.

THAT'S THE SAME THING! screamed my inner pedant while I closed my eyes in disbelief. Down Hulk, down.

I was suddenly caught up in the notion that I should employ a translator - someone who could just come with me wherever I go and figure out whatever I'm going on about. His job (if a he it be) would be to decode what I'm saying, read between the lines of my flowery politeness and just say it how it is.

The trouble is, I definitely don't think I should take him to Argos.

IMPERFECT OFFERINGS

I was up late the other night making a cake for Sammy's birthday. My friend Sammy was holding a Downton Abbey theme party for her friends and family. Given her love of vintage tea and cakes, the style of the Twenties and Thirties and all that is embodied by The Great British Bake Off, there would inevitably be a cake competition.

What emerged from the tin the night before, could only be described as a crumbling mess - a sort of soggy pudding with a crispy top. It was supposed to be a cherry-bakewell chocolate and almond cake. I thought those words together looked so succulent and mouthwateringly elegant, that whatever came out of the oven would almost have to force itself to be utterly delicious.

Well, it was hard work. When I tried to chop up the chocolate, it shot around the kitchen, ricocheting from the tiles like tasty shrapnel as the knife sliced into the breadboard. I hadn't softened it. In the end I just tipped the big chunks of chocolate into the mixer (where the sugar, eggs, milk and flour were already swirling) and held on to the thing while it shook itself around the worktop.

The cherries sank to the bottom as well. Have you ever tried to cut up cherries? The recipe simply said something like: halve the cherries and leave to rest in a tbsp of flour. It took ages trying to slice those squidgy little bandits in two. I'm sure I've seen Nigella or Delia or someone gently ease the little stone out of half a cherry and pinch it perfectly betwixt finger and thumb. What I created was a mess of cherries and a little pile of sticky stones. The chopping board looked like it belonged in a horror flick, and my fingers were stained a suspicious deep pink. After all that, the cherries still sank right to the bottom of the cake! I'm pretty sure most of them got left behind when I prized the ruins of the rest of the thing out of the tin.

Presentation is everything though, so I melted the rest of the chocolate, poured it on top and then sprinkled it with almond flakes. It looked terrible. The middle was sinking, the outside was falling apart and the uneven chocolate icing was like a terrible toupee on a loaf-shaped head. I sighed, knowing that it was what it was and it would have to do.

The next day, when I arrived, I felt extremely odd. Oh I was suitably dressed - suit, tie, waistcoat and pristine pocket square of course. I even had a gold pocket watch tucked away on a chain. The fine look was dramatically offset however, by me clutching a battered old biscuit tin.

"Where do the cakes go?" I asked someone, nervously.

"Oh. In the tea tent!" said they.

We found the tea tent - me and my biscuit tin and my soggy old cherry-bakewell chocolate and almond cake. And there before me, as I gulped with embarrassment inside the gazebo, was a selection of items that would honestly have been right at home in the nation's fanciest tea shops. There were intricately crafted, delicious-looking cakes, swirls of immaculate white icing and tiny hand-sculpted masterpieces of baking. There was perfect, sliceable carrot cake, there were sweet little cakes, an adorably elegantly symmetrical pavlova, and the most succulent of delights, glistening with pride and sugary perfection. And me with my tin.

I've been thinking about that. Actually in the end, it didn't really matter - not at all. Yet why is it that we so often can't resist comparing ourselves with other people? I'm not very good at baking or cooking or anything like that. So? I had a go. Who cares if it wasn't as beautiful or as well-crafted as other people's? It wasn't going to win any prizes, but actually, I reflected, that wasn't really the reason I had stayed up so late making it. Actually, I'd just wanted to feel like I'd been part of the day, and that in a small way I'd maybe help Sammy have a really great time.

That's the thing with imperfect offerings though, isn't it? It's not about how it stacks up against anybody else's effort or anybody else's talent. When it comes to worship, actually all our offerings are sort of imperfect - filthy rags held up as gifts to the maker of diamonds. Even the best of us have nothing to offer God. Somehow though, the point is that we give something of ourselves, and that something is as individual for all of us and as unique and as different as we are to each other. It's really daft to compare, isn't it? Even if you make a cake that would render Mary Berry speechless with wonder, and I make a cake that's a pile of crumbs and a pool of chocolate in a battered old biscuit tin, I'm quite OK with that. I think the Maker quite likes it too, you know.

OH, YOU'VE GOT TO TAKE CAKES IN...

The carrier bags were digging into my fingers. When I got to the kitchen, I dumped the three bags of cakes, biscuits, doughnuts and treats on the counter and started unpacking.

"Your birthday?" said someone, swinging an empty mug on their index finger. He knew the drill.

"Yesterday," I said, nodding. Before long, the counter was sprawling with coloured packets of sugary snacks.

"Oh you've got to take cakes in," my sister had said, "It's like... the law."

And she's right, it is a bit like the law. I don't know what it's like in other countries, but here in the UK, in offices up and down the land, it's an unspoken statutory requirement that on thy birthday, thou must take in cakes.

It's also required that thy colleagues do scoff 'em as quickly as is humanly possible. When my computer had woken up, I sent out the required email to everybody:

Recently, I discovered that I’ve completed yet another solar orbit. Naturally, cakes have materialised in the kitchen as a form of sugary celebration. Enjoy.

I went back at 11:30 to find an empty box of mini-rolls and a lonely looking Jaffa Cake.

Now, statistically, it's a fact that in a group of 23 people, it's more than 50% likely that two individuals will share the same birthday. In a medium-sized enterprise, there are a lot of birthdays... all the time. It's no wonder obesity is on the rise.

You know what, next year, I'm taking in fruit.

STYLE, CULTURE, TIME & TRADITION

They say that if you do something the same way twice, it's probably a habit. Three times makes it a tradition. Five times then?

Today is my birthday (thank you) and as 'tradition' now dictates, I spend the day ambling around a museum. First it was The Natural History Museum (2011). They had a wildlife photography exhibition on and I just wanted to see it. Then, enamoured with success, the following year, I went to The Science Museum (2012) and loved it just as much as I did when I was a kid. 2013 was an educational trip around The British Museum... which I can't remember much about, other than some massive Babylonian gates... and then in 2014 of course, I ended up (in March though) going to the National Gallery which was great.

Today, I climbed the metal steps that lead from the tunnel. I pushed open the glass doors, left the breezy sounds of a busker and a gaggle of schoolchildren behind me... and stepped into a world of wonder.

The Victoria & Albert Museum makes a stylish impression from the very beginning. Marble pillars hold up colonnades, under an enormous Victorian arched roof. Elegantly sculpted figures glisten like gladiators in the modern lighting and there are glimpses of ancient tapestries, ornate treasures and delicate artworks along the cavernous halls. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I was overawed from the start, and it would be a feeling that lasted the day.

I quickly found the cloakroom, deposited my coat and scarf... and grabbed a map. Museum maps can be quite confusing, I think. I worked out a rough plan of what I wanted to see and set off on my adventure.

I got lost pretty quickly. I found myself in a room that seemed to be dedicated to lots of dead people. There were tombs everywhere - stone and marble effigies of medieval knights, King John and his Plantagenet wife lying side-by-side, clutching swords and rosaries, great men of old, sculpted in white with flowing hair and piety.

Even the Romans loved an ice cream.

I realised a couple of things about statues today. First of all, sculpting must be really difficult - everything has to be physically balanced as well as aesthetically pleasing. It's like composition, not just in two dimensions with light and shade and colours doing all the work... but in every single direction. If the sculptor gets the proportions incorrect, not only will it look wrong - but it might fall over, or bits might start cracking off with the strain.

Maybe that's what happened to the Venus De Milo? Perhaps the sculptor just got the arms wrong and they dropped off?

"Oi come back!
It's only a flesh wound!"

The V&A has a lot of finely crafted statues, sculptures and busts. I stood close to one, whose ghostly face was flecked with frown lines and smallpox scars. His head was so realistic, there in the glory of three dimensions, that it wouldn't have been too surprising if he had turned to me for a conversation. Though I'm not sure I'd have had much to say to a two-hundred year old Italian physician.

There's small stuff too. I saw an exquisite golden saltcellar in the shape of a ship - glistening as though its billowing sails were puffed out by the wind. There are reliquaries, columns, paintings (the Raphael gallery is a must), casts, architraves, fountains, religious artefacts, galleries of art from all over the world and throughout the ages.

The place has style. Even the Twentieth Century gallery reminded me that design never stops. Standing in front of a cabinet containing a David Bowie album, a Dylan poster and the cover of a Sex Pistols record, it occurred to me that we just can't help expressing ourselves. No matter whether we're anti-establishment, pushing the boundaries of acceptability, or we are the establishment itself (in the Nineteenth Century, you could order church furnishings from a catalogue), style and design sort of oozes from our culture.

Jason takes a selfie #goldenfleece

And at the V&A, there's a lot of culture oozing from the ages - the gilded gold music room, the Corinthian capitals and exquisite stonework, the religious art of medieval England, the carvings, the tracery, the architecture, the jewellery, the stained-glass windows, the sumptuous treasures of Japan, Korea, China and India - and a whole lot more. I felt like I really only saw half of it, and I was overwhelmed by that. It was enough to raise questions in my mind. Does style progress as generations disappear, does design evolve from an inner longing for something new and different? Do we have an inert need to reflect our beliefs, to teach, to prophesy and react with our style and our imagery? What will be next? 

At one point, I was standing in front of James II's wedding outfit with another question. Do you think old things looked kind of old and tired when they were new?

See? 37 year-olds rock! 

Hmm. This is going to be complicated to explain. Obviously, new things don't look old, but that isn't quite...  I mean things deteriorate with use, don't they? The more you use them, the grubbier and more faded they become. James II's wedding outfit looked smart, but it wasn't glistening with the life of garments that were worn once and then locked in a cupboard. The tunic was lined with an ornate gold pattern which should have sparkled in the light.

You know, you're right. It's 300 years old - of course it's going to look tired. But then, even stuff from the 1950s (a model ship and a couple of boxes of Bayko) looked similarly colourless. Do we make things shinier and newer these days? Or do things just fade, go rusty, become threadbare and thin... because they're exposed only to time?

I thought about that on the train home. My reflection stared back at me, looking tired and grey as the world flashed past the window. 37. Time really does have a remarkable effect.

ELEMENTS OF STYLE

I've been a bit mardy recently, haven't I? Waffling on about Einstein, pretending to know what I'm talking about, comparing flappybook to The Matrix, and everything else in my life to elephants. I've been lamenting Mondays and Sundays and stunted trees in posh car parks, pretentiously nudging you all in the ribs with dreadful metaphors.

I've got to stop that. I've got pull myself together a bit and start being a bit more upbeat, find some of the good things that happen and talk about them instead of all this 'woe-is-me-I-don't-want-to-be-37' claptrap.

So, in that spirit, I ought to tell you about my early birthday present. It's this book: The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. My colleague gave it to me, having ordered one too many.

And what a book it is. It's great - simply laying out the rules of the language, eloquently, clearly, concisely with short and pertinent examples. I think William Strunk was a stickler for saying a thing with as few extraneous words as possible. Good man. Thank heavens he didn't read this blog.

It was a really nice thought, wasn't it? My birthday, by the way, is tomorrow and in my usual style, I'm off to a museum to wander around and learn some new stuff about the past. I like the past - it's sort of unchangeable but still observable, like a frozen tableau that gradually fades into sepia. Edwardian photos appeal to me - prim families staring into the lens in still and silvery silence, but living in a world just as fast and as turbulent as this one.

Anyway, I'll be off to the Victoria & Albert Museum I think, this year. I hear they've got some great exhibitions on at the moment.

'In my usual style'... I think Strunk would have recoiled at that kind of thing - a sort of idiomatic phrase that doesn't really mean anything. Why is it there? What's it doing? Do I really have a 'style'? To be honest, I'm just going to board a train, get off a train, get on another train, get off that, walk for a bit and come home again. It's hardly intended to be stylish - more just a kind of anonymous day out. If I do it stylishly, I don't expect anyone to notice.

Then, I think if there are 'elements of style' then probably the first one is just being comfortable enough to be yourself without caring what anyone thinks, even if you don't quite feel 37. I'll give it a shot.

BATTERIES IN A DAYDREAM

Do you know what I've always wondered about The Matrix? Why did the machines bother? I mean, why go to the trouble of programming an almost infinitely complex replica of the world, a vast network of integrated virtual reality, connecting up the memories, thoughts, interactions and emotions of every person plugged into it... just to keep your batteries alive and dreaming that they're in it? That seems really inefficient... and pointless.

I've probably misunderstood all those pseudo-psychobabble speeches that pepper the script, the layered mechanisms of control, and the need for a storyline... but it's not really my fault if I have, is it, Wachowskis? That scene where The Architect sits explaining it all in front of Neo and those television screens may as well be in Latvian.

-

"Oh God, my friend Andy's bought one of those Samsung smart TVs," said my colleague, Louise, today. "It's like so weird, it's got voice recognition, and apparently it records your conversations, even when it's on standby."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Have you ever read Nineteen Eighty Four?" I said. She had. It's alarming to think that a television might be watching you - that, of course, was the whole premise of the Big Brother idea in the first place: an all-encompassing state of surveillance - the subscribers become the watched, the consumer becomes the product, as long ago as 1948. I think even Orwell would be astonished by the Samsung smart TV. I tell you what, it makes me want to opt out of modern life, almost altogether.

"Oh no, it's OK," say the bods at Samsung, "We're not going to actually use your data! Oh heavens, no; we're only going to store it, you know, see if we can develop general trends, that kind of thing. Don't worry, people of Earth. We're not stalking you! Honest!"

Phewee. Well, if all you're going to do is store it... bring on the TV that eavesdrops into my living room! Heck, why not? Wanna tap my phone and read my emails while you're at it? Hey if it's good enough for GCHQ*...

Meanwhile, the boffins over at flannelbook are developing an algorithm which will tag you in every picture of you that's posted... whether you like it or not. This, they argue, is to actually increase your privacy, allowing you to see exactly which pictures of you are out there and untag them manually. Oh what joy and rapture. Extra admin.

Every new thing I read about flumpbook fills me with dread these days. At what point did we all decide to plug into a machine-based network of computers to share our memories, emotions, thoughts and interactions through a programmed virtual reality? When did our personal data and preferences become fuel for large corporations? Are we just batteries caught in a daydream?



*allegedly. You know, just in case they're reading.

ADDENDUM, WITH APOLOGIES TO EINSTEIN

"Hmmm..."

So, time slows down the faster you go. It occurs to me that I implied the opposite of that yesterday. You know, sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me.

However, I still maintain that your perception of time depends on your frame of reference. Einstein postulated that because the speed of light is a constant, it means that the way you perceive its speed changes relative to your own velocity - not because it changes, but because time does - it sort of slows itself down around you, dilating and ticking ever more slowly in your frame of reference.

Not, as I postulated, speeding up as the drinks trolley rolls by. In fact, time slows down so much that the passengers age more slowly. This produces the famous twin paradox, where it's possible for one twin to end up younger than the other. A further implication is of course, that if we ever work out how to travel faster than light, time won't only slow down to a stop, but it will actually start speeding up backwards. Or, as someone once put it...

Young Albert was terribly bright
And propelled himself faster than light
He set off one day
In a relative way
And he got back the previous night

So, does any of this explain why the weekend went by so quickly that I hardly noticed it? Not really, other than by the implication that if time dilates as you speed up, it also contracts as you slow down. There is a sort of logic to that as a theory for Mondays dragging on and on. After all, what slows you down like a pile of tasks and a billowing inbox?

SUNDAY NIGHT TIME-TRAVEL

Something odd just happened. I was walking home from work, looking forward to the weekend and dreaming about life. I sat here in this chair, full of the joys of a Friday, blinked... and somehow it's Sunday night.

This is probably my least favourite form of time travel: the time-flies-blink-and-you'll-miss-it-carpe-diem-whizzbang-whistle-stop rocket trip through the ever-shortening hours. Yes. Worst of all, at the end of this fairground flip-and-roll between Friday and Sunday nights... is the undeniable fact that the whole ride can only ever be followed by a Monday.

I don't want to sound cliché but sometimes Mondays demonstrate a very different form of time-travel. Now I quite like a Monday in general - it's clean and fresh like sheets out of the laundry cupboard or a glistening teapot. However, it would be daft to think that it elapses in the same time frame as a weekend.

Einstein knew it. All that talk of clocks on trains - it was a thinly veiled metaphor for the fact that time speeds up in the last two days of the week; when you're on-board that train, when it's hypothetically steaming at close to 3x10⁸ metres per second and the drinks trolley comes round, that's when time itself contracts with each popping second of the onboard clock.

Meanwhile, on the track, the workers look a little glum as the weekday minutes ache past. He knew what it was all about, old Albert. On Mondays, time expands like an inflating balloon.

As you know, a Sunday night has its own little rituals here. We've had the Dustbin Conversation and the sacred Countryfile Five-Day Weather Forecast. We've tackled the weekly (and unchanging) discussion of Who is Getting up When. I've even sat through Call The Midwife (with headphones on, tapping away on my laptop). I thought it might be fun to predict at what point in the programme we get treated to a red-faced woman straining on a 1950s bedspread while concerned-looking old-fashioned midwives bustle about with aluminium pans and floral blankets. 37 minutes. For reasons I can't quite understand, my Mum loves that show. The first time I saw it, it put me off my tea.

Now, as the washing machine enters its final cycle (and the shirts I forgot to wash last week get flung about in a whirlpool of water and suds) it seems like time is once again, grinding into its usual weekly descent into slow-motion. Maybe the slower it goes, the more work I'll get done.

Funny how it doesn't quite work like that.

THE WEIRD TREE

I saw a weird-looking tree today. It was caught in the security lamps lighting up the car park; they made it look eerie in the dark.

The tree was about thirty feet tall but clearly had once been much taller. Half-way up the trunk, in one clean swipe, it had been lopped off in its prime; instead of a crown of leaves and twigs, it just had a square, flat top.

I don't know much about tree surgery, but there would have had to have been a reason why someone chainsawed a tree half-way up its trunk. There were branches, even with leaves, lower down, sticking out like spindly arms. Just like every other tree, the branches got shorter as the trunk rose into the night sky, and then abruptly stopped.

I stood there looking at the tree for a while. I watched my breath expand into the cool night air - a fine vapour twirling and disappearing into the darkness. Then I reached into my pocket, fished out my phone to take a photo... and found it had run out of battery.

It's bugging me a bit. Why was that tree not allowed to reach its potential? Why was it only allowed to be half a tree? Do people even notice that kind of thing, or do they just park their cars, bleep them locked and crunch off over the gravel? Was it unsafe, the tree? Could it have fallen on vehicles in a sudden gust of wind? Why not remove it altogether? Why keep it locked in the humiliation of only ever having got to the half-way mark?

-

The wedding was great. Everything went according to plan I think, and the whole thing was a perfectly elegant and eloquent reflection of Megan and Adam, which is just about how it should be. They are such lovely people. Of course, as is always the way with these things, there was always going to be someone with something to say in my ear:

"Could be you next year, Matt."

"Oh I doubt that somehow," I replied, sadly. "Seems quite unlikely."

"Well, you never know."

 I stared at the fireplace thinking about how I don't want to get into that conversation again, thank you very much.

-

Does the tree care about safety? It was made to grow, wasn't it, and it was here long before cars were. It seemed a bit ridiculous, standing there in the soft lamplight. How tall could it have been, I wondered, if it had made it - if it had got there?

I'm always wondering things like that.

WHAT COLOUR ARE VIOLETS?

Someone's just advertised the Valentine's Day Cake Sale by sending an email round with this poem in it:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Tonight is for nookie
But at work you can have a cookie

My eyes widened. All UK Staff. Unbelievable.

I'd forgotten about Valentine's Day. Valentinus was a Roman citizen who started secretly marrying off young Christian couples. The pagan Emperor, Claudius didn't like this very much. For a start, newly married men were exempt from military service, not to mention the fact that underground Christians were always trouble in Rome.

Valentinus was literally undermining the strength of the Empire. When he was taken before the Emperor, he took his chances and tried to convert Claudius himself. That didn't go down very well; he was beaten with clubs and decapitated in public.

You don't often see that image in card shops. Instead, these pink palaces are packed with fluffy teddy bears, plastic-wrapped flowers and heart-shaped cardboard love tokens, suspended from the ceiling. There are no bloodied Romans, clutching the severed head of an old priest which they're about to wedge onto an iron spike at the Flaminian gate. There's no cardboard cutout of a purple-faced Emperor, fuming at Christianity, brandishing a club and spouting incentives to religious hatred. It's all hearts and flowers and isn't it lovely.

Actually, if you're going to celebrate love, my opinion is that Valentine's Day is as good a day as any other - you crack on with that.

What might be nice is a day to also celebrate singleness. Why not? Why not a day when single people the world over send each other cards and wish each other well.

They do it in China. November 11th, every year, apparently. The four ones (11.11) are supposed to signify singleness. And I don't think it's some sarcastic response like Singleness Awareness Day (SAD) is supposed to be. That's just silly. I think in a world where you're told that a romantic relationship is the pinnacle of human achievement (it isn't), that sex is the ultimate expression of love (it isn't) and that your self-worth derives precisely from your ability to find someone who likes you (no, no, no and no!)... it would be good to redress the balance a bit.

Violets are violet anyway, aren't they?

And aren't there lots of roses, not just the red ones?

It's all a load of nonsense, isn't it?

KAIZEN & SHOELACES

Once again, Master Yoda estimates 3 story points...

We had training today. User stories and estimation. At one point, I pulled my shoelaces tight, just to feel the safety and comfort of being locked into my shoes.

Don't tell me you've never done that.

It seems to me that Agile software development is a bit like a mysterious martial art - there's a sort of code, a set of sequences, maybe even a philosophy out there which underpins what you do. You can train formally in it, learn from the masters and become proficient at following it, like dutiful students, scrum-team members, padawans. The gurus will go misty-eyed as they elucidate their own important-sounding Agile proverbs - passed down to them from gurus of gurus who sit cross-legged in Palo Alto and San Diego and other cool sounding places, where developers hang out.

"You are all developers!" said the trainer today, sounding like Confucius. 'Do or do not,' I wanted to say, 'There is no try.'

Of course the idea of Agile is that eventually you make it your own - it adapts around you, like you're controlling the Matrix. I've heard several people say this now - don't stick to the scrum guide, inspect and adapt, give it a little kaizen and your velocity, your burndown and the trust of your superiors will sort itself out while you practice your moves. Yes, master. We all know, deep down though, that you can apply as much shuhari as you like, there'll always be managers ready to collect your numbers for their spreadsheets.

After a while, I couldn't feel the circulation in my feet. Too tight.

HALO

The Moon's got a halo. Tiny ice crystals are refracting the light into a neat circle around its bright flat face.

Halos are always refracted, aren't they? Even in classical art, the holiness of God was somehow depicted as refracting, bending through the humanity of the saints as they kneel in prayer in medieval stained-glass windows. I like to think that was the idea, anyway.

I also like to think that the halo was painted behind the head of a holy man (or the Virgin Mary) to show that it was impossible to see your own. No matter which way you turned, the refracted glory, streaming from heaven and bending through the lens of your piety, would always be invisible to you but still there for everyone else to see. I reckon that's what Beyoncé was going for as well, you know.

I'm really tired. In the end, I worked right through to 6:30pm, logged-off in time to wolf down sausages, beans and mashed potato, and flew out of the door with my box of cables. I'm afraid I wasn't much use at band practice tonight. I'd been more useful yesterday, rehearsing for Megan and Adam's wedding this weekend. The half of my brain that loves weddings is really looking forward to Saturday; the other half's not so sure.

The other half. Ha! My brain is married to itself inside my head, then? That explains a few things. No, what I mean is that weddings leave me with mixed feelings. I will do my best to serve and be the best version of me that I can be though, behind the piano. That is, after all, what I always aim for, even if sometimes I really miss the mark.

The Moon's covered in craters. It gets pounded by asteroids and rocks and bits of space debris. With no atmosphere, its dusty grey surface gets pummelled by meteors, leaving it pockmarked, flawed and patchy. You can really see that on nights like this, when it's so bright and bold. It's massively imperfect. It also has a bit of a halo. At least tonight, anyway.

WORKING FROM HOME

I'm working from home today. It's just as well. It's been snowing overnight.

The world did look different. Trees were laced with white, the tops of fences were piled with neat lines of snow. The cars were blanketed, the path was smooth and the garden, untouched, pristine, like the top of the Christmas cake.

It made me smile, like a little victory - finally, something unusual to talk about, something which paints everything a different colour, which stirs up a little childhood excitement and lets you catch a glimpse of an old-fashioned kind of winter.

Plus, I didn't have to go anywhere in it. I flipped open the work laptop, took a deep breath and logged in.

It's quite productive, working from home. A few years ago, I read an article, a TED thing I think it was, about the two greatest hindrances to efficiency. I don't think the writer was joking either - he suggested that they were meetings and managers. Working from home seems like a pretty neat way of eliminating both of those.

Meetings are dreadful, aren't they? I mean, some are useful, but most seem to be a collection of people who'd really rather be somewhere else, doing something else, talking about something else, with other people. Sometimes, it feels like everyone is racing through the agenda, just to get to the blessed end.

I don't want to get to the 'blessed end' and realise that I spent my life in meetings, discussing other meetings and planning more meetings about the work that I'm supposed to be doing in-between meetings.

As for managers... well, managers are managed and so must manage. That's the system, as far as I can work it out. To be honest, I don't know why anyone aspires to 'management'; who wants to 'manage', to 'cope', to 'hold it together'? Not me, boss. I'd much rather be a leader, I think - and there's a chasm of difference between the two. My theory is that, in order to 'cope with' people, to 'manage' them, you have to sort of keep an eye on what they're doing. That requires a system of administration which feels a bit like a gigantic game of buckaroo... and most of the time, I think I'd rather get on with work than play a round of spreadsheet buckaroo.

So home I am, eating crisps and listening to Glenn Miller and The Sound of The Thirties. Out there, in the white world of melting snow, of collared doves and prowling cats leaving paw prints in the garden... everything is nice and quiet.

ROMAN NUMERALS

There's some sporting contest going on, where they count the event in Roman numerals. Apparently, it's something called Superbowl XLIX, which my limited knowledge of the system tells me is number 49.

How did the Romans conquer half the known world with such an odd numbering system? For a start, it takes quite a lot of chiselling to mark out two Xs, one L and an I. Basic maths must have been a nightmare.

Also, why is it not Superbowl IL? Surely, the system is simplest when you can recreate things with as few characters as possible? If it really is via romanus to use the old take-off-a-smaller-unit-from-the-subsequent-larger-unit method (IX = 9) then surely, IL is way better than XLIX? I reckon, even I could hammer out a half-decent IL, given the right tools.

Not that the Americans are chiselling out Roman numerals all over their sports stadia. That would be daft and weird - and it would take up most of the half-time entertainment slot, with millions of people watching a guy on a ladder bashing out an XLIX, hoping, beyond hope, that they won't make him also do the scoreboard. Plus, I can't imagine Katy Perry being too happy about it either, tapping her sparkly toes and looking at her watch to the sound of a lone hammer and chisel, echoing through the stadium.

"And XII has the ball..."

No, the Americans have a much more modern way of displaying information. Curious then, that they haven't discovered the beautiful simplicity of actual numbers. I mean, why are they using Roman numerals anyway? Surely, most Americans are only going to google XLIX and What does XLIX mean? What's the point? Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not old-fashioned enough to know that we all use arabic numbers much more often, and much more simply than anyone using this archaic system! There's got to be a reason, don't you think, why maths is easier like this?

And why stop with the Romans anyway? Perhaps you should start scoring baseball with Nordic rune stones? Maybe, Babylonian cuneiform should make an appearance at hockey matches? Actually, that kind of thing might liven football (sorry, soccer) up a bit.

I'm not having a go, Americans, I'm really not. There are plenty of weirder things you guys do that I could pick on, and likewise you could select almost anything you like from our lexicon of eccentricity, over here in Blighty.

One of them is Brits who stay up through the night to watch the Superbowl. You won't catch me doing that. It's already XXIII:LII, after all.