THE CAT BUTLER

First a little explanation about Emmie's cat, and why I'm feeding him. It's complicated.

While my friend Emmie lives in Canada with a Brit, her cat lives in Britain with two Canadians, in his own flat. They moved in to look after him, and because they feed him, he very graciously lets them stay.

The Canadians are away at the moment, and so I have the inestimable job of Mr Jinks's Butler for the week. His reaction to this appointment has so far been a mixture of feed-me-feed-me-now and who-do-you-think-you-are

I've been chatting to him this week. He's disdainful about my monologues, treating my thoughts with indifference and disgust. Mostly he just struts off, having eaten. Today, rather than looking disinterested, he just put his head down and gave me a weighty headbutt, knocking me off my haunches.

Someone on Twitter said it was a sign of affection. It probably is, but I've read PG Wodehouse; this never happened to Jeeves!

ON THE CARDS

I stood in front of the rack of cards.

Sorry you're leaving. Nope, it's not that. Sad, a little, but only because I will miss them. I'm not sorry; I believe they're doing the right thing. I won't apologise for it.

With sympathy. Nope, that's not it either, obviously.

Congratulations on your new home! Well, that's a good sentiment but again it doesn't capture what I want to say. And anyway, that's the kind of thing you pick up en-route to a housewarming. This does not feel like a housewarming. This is my friends, Winners and Teebs, emigrating to another country, quite possibly for ever.

And I am... um... melancholebrating about it. Gosh Hemmingway makes making up words look easy. What I mean is I'm sad they're leaving (for us) and happy that they're doing what is right (for them).

And there wasn't a card for that.

In the end I chose a generic blank card with balloons on it and then wrote a lengthy poem for them. I explained that I hope it conveyed something that the card selection had failed to do.

My Grandma used to fill both sides of our birthday and Christmas cards with lines of biro. It was a running joke. As I looked tonight at the card in which I had written the best part of a small novel, I realised that I had done exactly the same.

But I know now the reason why. It's love, you see. Jesus said that the heart overflows and the mouth speaks. Well the pen writes what the card cannot say and today my heart was overwhelmed with love for my friends.

I will miss them greatly.

ECLECTIC PLAYLIST #7 MR SATIE TAKES ME TO PARIS

Last night I put my feet up, cradled a cup of tea in one of my favourite Scrabble mugs and closed my eyes, ready to listen to Tim's next track on the Eclectic Playlist.

It's this: Gymnopedie No.1 by Erik Satie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU

Satie was a Nineteenth Century composer and artist, who spent a lot of time hanging around with surrealists and eccentrics. I like his style.

Anyway, Tim thought this track to be relaxing, so I lay there and let the slow plodding major sevenths and the measured right hand melody float over me.

It certainly was relaxing. Within seconds I was standing in Paris on a rainy Autumn night. The streetlights were reflected in the puddles like an impressionist painting, and waiters pulled tablecloths and blinds behind warm brasserie windows.

There is a sort of melancholy about this piece, don't you think? All great art has the power to move you, to translate you and impact you on an emotional level, and for some reason this short study carries emotion - which transports me to a place far away and sort of in my memory, but not quite.

I opened my eyes and I was back in my room with a cup of tea in my favourite Scrabble mug.

I do love how music has the power to take you somewhere. Thank you, Mr Satie.

CLOCK, WORK, AND AN ORANGE

So Tuesday morning seems to be stretching out into eternity.

On top of it feeling like a Monday, no-one's changed the clocks yet. It's felt like ten-thirty for the past two hours.

Imagine a world where it's constantly half-past ten and never elevensies, where time has stopped and work just oozes out into an infinite inbox, where the coffee van never quite arrives and your desk grows ever heavier with post-its and piles of paper...

... um, so welcome back, everyone! Let's try to be cheery eh?

I had an orange today. I managed to unpeel it perfectly, its skin hanging together in one misshapen piece.

I was so pleased with myself, that I scrunched the skin up in one hand, held the orange in the other and then in a move of breathtaking absent-mindedness, slipped the orange into the bin instead of the skin.

The clock still thinks it's an hour ago. It's a long day, this.

MILESTONES

Well, a day out with the Intrepids at Milestones Museum. If you haven't had the pleasure, it's really great. They've constructed a small town indoors, featuring shops and fittings and vehicles from yesteryear.

There is an ironworks, a gramophone shop, an old-fashioned post office, a little co-operative and a toy shop, a gas showroom, a sweet shop and a sawmill. There are steamrollers, glittering fire engines with smart wooden ladders, and old shiny cars with klaxons.

Amazingly, they've made this cobbled wonderland really attractive for kids too, in ways that you can only really find out if you go. There were loads of them there today, having a great time.

Including me. You know how I love a museum.

What I don't love so much is the Intrepids' guide to navigation, which seems to rely on the principle that the satnav is nearly always being deceitful, that red lights are more of 'a guideline' and that leaving somewhere close to on-time is exclusively for bores and pedants.

We got home (having stopped off at a tea shop) and put the kettle on for a cuppa. Due to an administrative error, my Mum has ended up with a small shipment of hot cross buns, so we polished a few of those off as well, before I went off to feed Emmie's cat and then went home for dinner.

I guess the idea of a milestone is that it tells you exactly how far away from a thing you are, whether it's your destination or your origin. It fixes your journey, demarcates your progress and tells you something about the path you're  on.

I felt like I saw a few things today that were just on the cusp of my memory. Pipes like my grandpa had, an electric fire with a metal fireguard, stickle bricks, buckled meccano and old-looking tools that were in my Dad's toolbox. These things acted as little milestones of my childhood, things I'd seen and taken for granted.

There are things that happen too, that are like milestones: little insignificant things that standout as memories and remind you how different you are these days. I'd like to take more notice of these I think.

I didn't go into all of that meandering with the Intrepids, though I have a feeling they had similar, perhaps more powerful emotions about the things they'd recognised.

And anyway, I would have ended up making a sarcastic comment about not quite having the same attitude toward recognising road signs, and that would not have helped anybody.

THE CHOCOLATE WHALE WRITES FROM THE SOFA-BED

My washing machine takes two and a half hours to complete what it calls an 'Eco Wash'.

It's not right that, is it? I set it off this afternoon at 3:50pm, fell asleep and then woke up at 6:20 to find it still spinning. It's a wonder my clothes haven't shrivelled and shredded.

I fell asleep because I am exhausted. I'm still a bit lethargic tonight as it goes, though that probably has more to do with eating several Easter Eggs... alone. You know, I'm not even sure it's the done thing, that, scoffing chocolate on your own. The result is a sort of sugary collapse of my functions. I'm lying on my sofa-bed, listening to the radiators clicking, wondering when I'll have the energy to get up and change my bed sheets.

Lethargy. It's laziness really, isn't it? And I can't blame sugar for demobilising me to the sofa-bed like a chocolate whale. Those eggs didn't unwrap themselves and force me to eat them. I had enough motivation to do that myself, after all!

Anyway, it's a holiday weekend, isn't it? Isn't this what they're for?

Maybe. I don't like being a lazy gumpus though.

This is Easter Sunday: Resurrection Day as we call it where I come from. I've been writing a poem about Easter over the last few days, and today I was thinking about John, running toward the empty tomb. Imagine the impossibility of it, a hope that was crushed with the inevitability of death and then suddenly rekindled into a sliver of a light.

I pictured his feet bounding across the dusty earth and the dew-laden grass. I heard his heart thumping in his chest as he ran breathlessly toward the place, not fully knowing what to expect.

You know, I spend most of my life running with no idea of what to expect. Will Jesus rekindle my hope? Will he have an answer? Will heaven be silent? Is he really alive? Will he answer my desperate prayer? I don't always know. But running towards him always seems like a good idea.

Listen to me! Talking about running when I'm beached on the sofa-bed surrounded by foil and chocolate crumbs!

I'd better get up and change those bed sheets. There's nothing quite like freshly washed linen.

A DOORSTEP ENCOUNTER

So wait, Friday feels like a Saturday... only there's no church to go in the morning. Then Saturday feels like a lazy Sunday - still no church though. I got up late and cleaned out the slow cooker. Then, Sunday itself ought to be a Monday; it'll feel like it, only it'll be a Monday with church instead of work which is followed by a real Monday but a Monday on which I don't have to go to work at all (I'm going on a trip with Intrepids) and which will probably end up feeling a bit like a Saturday.

After that, it's back to work on a Tuesday which will undoubtedly feel a lot like a Monday. But it's best not to think about that half-way through the Easter weekend. I'm already confused enough.

The doorbell just rang. I raced about, pulled on a hoodie and found my glasses. Then I pelted down the stairs to the front door, just in time to remember that it was locked and the keys were still upstairs. I pounded up, found the keys and flew back down to rattle the keys into the lock and fling open the front door.

It was the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Of course it was. 

Two older ladies with kind faces. They were inviting me 'and your family' to their service tomorrow. One of them thrust a paper leaflet into my hand with a painting of Jesus and some people who looked a little too happy to be real. The style of it reminded me of the leaflet that Nick and Emmie got given in Toronto, with Jesus clutching an AK-47. The JWs are a bit less militant than the crazy Canadian national front people, I think.

They obviously send out their friendliest members on doorstep-mission these days then. It made me wonder what happens if massive hairy bikers join the organisation. How do you invite people to church if you look like you're capable of smashing in front doors with your tattooed knuckles?

Rather than doing what my Dad would have done, engaging in a theological discourse about what they believe, or quizzing them about how they've predicted the end of the world five times since 1844, I told them where I stand and bade them farewell with a Happy Easter and a gentle click of the front door.

This leaflet says the "anniversary of Jesus' death falls on Wednesday, March 23, 2016."

How have they worked that out? Weirdly precise, isn't it? They don't have an excellent track-record with dates.

Then again, I'm not totally certain about what day it is, even today.

THE WISDOM OF CROWDS

Well, it's happened. I'm surrounded by chocolate.

It's happened because my manager won the 'How many Eggs in the Jar' competition and got rewarded with all 76 of them. That is a lot of chocolate eggs for one person.

What was interesting was how he did it. I studied the jar and thought about counting a cross-section then multiplying by the length - that ought to work in theory. I plumped for 95. He simply added up everyone else's guesses and worked out an average.

It's a simple statistical version of the Wisdom of Crowds - something I don't know much about. I think the idea is that a large group of people will normalise themselves around the most probable statistical average. In other words, between all of us, we were able to calculate the most likely number of eggs in the jar, by collectively finding the peak of the bell curve. Fascinating isn't it?

And it turned out to be pretty much bang on. The average was 76.6.

Anyway, he's giving away eggs to anyone who's coming over. I'm feeling a bit queasy because I can't help imagining that they're actual eggs - and eating loads of those would be awful.

ECLECTIC PLAYLIST #6 THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING

A few years ago, there was a TV ad for the AA rescue service. It featured a version of Carole King's You've Got a Friend but outrageously, they'd taken two beats out of every bar!

"Winter, Spring, Summer or FallAll You've got to do is callAnd I'll be there yes I will..."

A lot of musical friends couldn't cope with the loss of those two beats.

In a separate time-change incident, the comedian Bill Bailey famously complained when they changed the themetune of The Bill from 7/4 to 4/4 and it lost all its quirkiness.

Don't worry - I am getting around to The Russians are Coming.

The point I'm making is that messing around with the timing changes the feel of a piece altogether. In fact, even though the notes are exactly the same, the instruments playing the melody are the same instruments and the piece has the same structure, everything flows a bit differently. And you can either let it annoy or you, or go with a more interesting flow.

That's exactly what's happened with Val Bennett's The Russians Are Coming.

The Russians Are Coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqrSo-uN2A4

You must have worked out by now that Tim loves a quirky time-change. This is a 4/4 reggae version of Dave Brubeck's Take Five - the tune I said was everywhere in the 1980s.

Take Five of course is in a 5/4 time signature. That means there are five beats in the bar. You can hear the original here, to see what I mean:

Take Five: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmDDOFXSgAs

The five beat rhythm pushes you along and keeps you on your toes.

What Val Bennett did was to pull it all back and stretch it lazily out into a slower four beat pattern. Unlike the AA advert, this actually puts a lovely space between the phrases and slows the whole thing down.

And we haven't even talked about the genius idea of taking it into reggae; the slow-down is all part of that. You can hear a kind of mellow, languorous atmosphere I think. The poked classic reggae bassline and resonant guitar make that happen for you.

Another interesting thing about this track is that it's more 'Subway' than it is 'Jamaica'. I'll leave you to think about that, but I reckon the minor key has a lot to do with it, plus the excellent soaring saxophone and the reverb added to it in the mix.

It makes me think of a group of laid back musicians listening to Brubeck by subterranean candlelight during the cold war.

The Russians are coming. Let's chill out and play some reggae.

RUM

So half the team are on training; the other half are on holiday. I'm on my own and it is blissfully quiet. Just me and the air conditioning.

So I've been sitting here thinking about words. I love a word that sounds like what it is. Using it gives you two separate but simultaneous ways of describing it. I also (as you know) quite like the way words are balanced with consonants and vowels, I like the way diphthongs collide like waves, or the wind, or felled trees against the earth. I like patterns. Kestrel, elucidate, crashing, hooplah. Check out the rhythm of sounds those words make when they force you to say them. I love it.

Anyway, this kind of mood leads to silly poetry, so here's a little ditty which should elucidate something or other. I like how this sounds out loud. Then, I'm on my own, so maybe I would.


Rum

Rum tum tiddle ay
Rum tum tum
Pom pom piddle o
Piddle ay pum

Rin tin riddle dee
Diddle iddle dum
Rum tum tiddle ay
Rum tum tum

CAKE AND THE RATIO OF RESPONSIBILITY

At the weekend, the conversation turned quite naturally to politics, to war and to the internal conflict of any soldiers fighting in a cause that might have gone against their conscience.

I was very flippant, thinking back on it now. When Ben said he couldn't imagine how difficult it would be to fight for a cause you didn't believe in, I made a crude comparison with people who work in offices just so some shareholders could feel good about some numbers on a spreadsheet.

"Still," I said, "We get cake most days, so, you know, every cloud..."

See? Flippant. I am sorry about that.

"Cake?" said Ben. It suddenly occurred to me that I don't think he's ever worked in an office.

I went on to explain that in a room of 23 or more people, you always have a 50% chance of two people sharing the same birthday, and hence most weeks (in a large office) there would always be somebody bringing in cakes to celebrate their birthday.

Ben didn't believe me - it is quite counterintuitive isn't it? However, it is true. They tested it by looking at data from previous England football squads (each of which comprised 23 players).

Anyway, the maths is a bit of a sidenote. The point is that today I walked into the kitchen to find a massive chocolate cake. You can't really tell from the picture, but it is enormous.

The Boss's big birthday, you see. That's the other thing about being the Big Cheese: you have to go massive because you're the boss. It's just the way of it, lest anyone should accuse you of being skimpy despite your vast wealth, and wonder in what direction your miserliness will take the company.

It leads me on to another thought: how closely connected is your integrity to your responsibility? How intertwined are you with the job, the further up the org chart you are?

If I slip up and send a nasty virus to all staff everywhere in the world, I could be remonstrated, even defenestrated I suppose, without too much impact*. It would settle down after a while without me. If the Boss did that... the entire organisation would slip all over the place, and those shareholders would be quaking at the numbers in those spreadsheets instead of glossing over the hasty dismissal of one lowly technical author.

If the level of integrity required is proportional to the responsibility given, then it means that those two things ought to grow together. It also means that the ratio between the two is also the same for all of us, despite our position in the organisation. In other words, I've got just as much requirement to be a person of integrity as the Big Cheese does, despite the fact that the stakes are lower for me. Relative to me, the responsibility I carry requires my integrity. Always check before you click Send.

Or... and again, the Bible trumps me for eloquence and efficiency:

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." Luke 12:48

Anyway, that's enough pontificating I think. There's chocolate cake to be eaten. And a lot of it too.


*I know what you're thinking but it's OK. I work on the ground floor.

THE END OF LEVEL BOSS

The Card of Many Signatures made a welcome return today. Not for somebody's leaving do this time, but for the Boss's birthday: the Big Boss, The End of Level Boss. He is 50 apparently.

I flipped open the card and did what we all do when presented with The Card of Many Signatures; I hovered over it with a biro while reading everybody else's platitudes.

"I'm not even sure he knows who I am," I said out loud, twiddling the pen between my fingers. Some braver people (managers) had written things like: "How old?" and "Welcome to the Saga Set" which I'm sure the Big Cheese will find uproarious. Morlocks like me on the ground floor don't get to banter with the shiny shoes though. Not unless we're looking for a Card of Many Signatures of our own, with a P45 folded inside it.

There is no way the End of Level Boss knows all our names. In the end I picked a corner with a little bit of white space left between the flurries of signatures. In the smallest, neatest writing I could form, I simply wrote the words "Happy Birthday, Matt S" and took the card to the nearest developer to repeat the process. He didn't look too happy at being interrupted.

That is exactly what happens though with the Card of Many Signatures. I was tempted to sign it as Dilbert. The chances are though that someone would have recognised my tiny writing.

He's hard to read, the Boss. He strides in and is never indecisive, he carries that balance of charm and stern focus and he is a deft salesperson of ideas, concepts and big decisions. I can't work out whether those traits make him naturally likeable or not. With one withering look he could obliterate a department, while a good day for us is clearly a good day for him. He mixes humour and sincerity with discipline and keenness, like all the upstairs eloi. Image is critical. Sharpness of mind and smoothness of tongue is essential, and time is everything to his busy life.

"I know it's hard to believe," I said to Jamie the developer, "but the Boss has a birthday and they've asked you to sign the card." Jamie looked at me as though I were a contemptible fool. He had been in the middle of coding and I'd tried to be funny but had come across like an idiot. 

I don't know that I have the people-skills ever to get to the End of Level Boss. I doubt I'll ever be parking the Ferrari in between the very ordinary Ford Focuses and VW Polos that fill up the car park. At least no time soon, anyway,

ECLECTIC PLAYLIST #5 CROSSROAD BLUES

The legend goes like this: a young Robert Johnson, living on a plantation in Mississippi, had a burning desire to become a blues musician. One day he wandered out with his guitar to a crossroads, where he was met by the devil, who tuned his guitar for him. In a sort of Faustian pact, the young man sold the devil his soul in return for a prodigious talent at playing the blues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtDlZdhHRCI

When you're so good at something that people have to make up a backstory about how you got there, that's when you know you're really good at it.

And this guy is a master. Eric Clapton called him 'the most important blues singer that ever lived' and a lot of people seem to believe he influenced the entire direction of the blues in the Twentieth Century, even perhaps sowing the seeds for music's natural evolution through gospel, into rock and out into heavy metal.

That might be why Tim sent this to me this week. I'm fascinated by the way music evolved and how technology made it happen. Just like looking back at baby photos, you can see the shadows of the future emerging in the faces of the past.

So, this track. This is an example of Delta Blues, born out of the plantations and slavery of the Mississipi Delta in the 1920s. It was characterised by the sound of the bottleneck slide guitar, the harmonica and the wailing vocals.

It's certainly the vocal that I like about Robert Johnson. There's just enough heartbreak in it as it wobbles over the guitar. And what guitar-playing! I really love the way it complements his voice - just like the Martin Simpson track, the guitar acts like another voice singing next to him, providing its own melody alongside Johnson.

I'd love to be able to play like that. Mind you, I learned how to tune a guitar from a vinyl record rather than Beelzebub. That's another story.

Robert Johnson died aged 27, which didn't help stifle the legend around his ability. I don't think the devil taught him how to play the blues in return for his soul - true, he lived quite a poor and tragic life and was only really recognised as truly great, long after his death, but to attribute that greatness to myth seems like a disservice to a really awesome musician.

A JOY UNEXPECTED

It might be too early to tell. It might be some dramatic change in my attitude, or a miracle, or an answer to prayer of some sort, or any kind of combination of those things. It is something though:

After just a few weeks of living on my own, I haven't once felt lonely.

That was my fear, if you remember. I thought it could be miserable isolation, like the echoing rooms of a forgotten hermit who whiles away the hours in terrible solitude. I have been busy, it's true, but so far, living on my own is something of a joy unexpected.

Katie and Rory came round tonight for a practice for the wedding we're all going to in two weekends' time. We are the all-harmonising, all-acoustic wedding worship band of the moment. It was so nice to fill the flat with music; I only hope my neighbours were alright with it. If they hadn't worked out that I'm a musician, they probably have by now.

When my friends had gone, I sat there on the sofa, looking at the three empty mugs and my favourite teapot. The silence was beautiful, like a warm cosy blanket. It refused to ask me questions, it gave me space to think and it was not at all bothered by my slowness in clearing up the tea things ready for the morning. All that sounds like a pointed dig at the Intrepids by the way; just to say, it's not supposed to be. I was merely appreciating the silence of a wonderful moment and how it contrasted so beautifully with the the moments of fun and music that had preceded it. Having friends must be one of the best things in the world.

As I say, it could be too early to tell. I always knew I'd need a good balance of busyness, of friends to hang out with, and of complete rest. So far, I think I've got it about right.

CRUNCHING INTENSITY

I made it home, in case you were wondering. The afternoon faded into wisps of purple cloud and eventually the sun sank, bright and gold beneath the hills as I drove down the A34.

After a weekend of crunching intensity, I put on some John Mayer to interrupt the satnav - smooth, predictable bass and light guitaring with naturally harmonic vocals and some Hammond organ. Interesting songs that are fun and deep and all about love filled my car.

We watched some movies today and as ever, they've really affected me. I have to pick films carefully to avoid getting emotionally ambushed. I have no idea why Hollywood still has such a simple view of how love works.

I'm not going to go into all of that; I'm really not qualified for it.

Anyhow, despite a fun weekend with my friends. it's great to be back and to be ready to face another week of writing, singing, moaning and reflecting. It's a busy one, this. 

I ran a deep hot bath tonight and sank into it by candlelight. Allegri's Miserere came on my playlist, which made the whole thing feel like a papal funeral.

... not that I'd run a bath in the middle of a papal funeral.

The journey melted, the tightness in my muscles disappeared. There is a place for crunching intensity, I thought to myself, but I am glad to be home.

METALLIC GLIMMERS OF SHINY GUITARS IN A WORLD I CAN'T BELONG TO

I woke up this morning with a cat staring at me. Somehow in the night, the animals had changed guard and the miniature ball of bichon frise had given way to the warm curling velvet of the cat, whose bright eyes questioned my very existence in this world.

That's a theme I've fallen into today, here in Birmingham. This strange landscape of wide sprawling carriageways, crumbling buildings and metallic glimmers of shiny guitars, is the world in which I do not belong. The cat knew it at the start of the day; I knew it by the end.

Ben took me to his band's lockup. He thrust an acoustic guitar into my hands and got me jamming over the top of his looping, mellow bass lines. It felt a bit like painting by numbers in an artist's studio - I couldn't play that instrument well enough to bluff my way through. He was inventively switching and modulating and I was fat-fingered and awkward. It was fun though.

We took the dog for a walk along the impossibly straight Wolverhampton canal. I felt queasy, walking under a high-arched bridge. The green water reflected weird patterns across the diagonal brickwork.

Ben's obsessed with metal music. I feel like he's got me trying to listen to all kinds of things today. In fact, I will probably dream of long-haired growling Scandinavians and shredding guitars. The last time this happened I just asked if the people I was with had any Michael Bublé. I can't help liking easy listening, I suppose. It's not my fault if these serious chaps find it all a bit bland. It, like me, is from a different world to the one they love.

Nowhere was the dichotomy of worlds clearer than in Scruffy Murphy's, our venue for the evening. Three bands played for our delectation. I was informed at the end that we had heard metal, death metal and progressive death metal tonight. That's not what I got as the bass and the drums thumped right through me. In fact, I did my best to transcribe the lyrics as I heard them...

Your feet are innocent

Yoda tells it like it is

Bacon, bacon, write the bacon

Black ice is me

Black ice is you

Your feet are innocent

There's not much progressive about that. All I heard was grunting and growling and intricate, almost classical patterns being thumped out by the instrumentalists. It is clever, perhaps even entertaining and important as a genre, but like Picasso's Guernica, just because it's good doesn't mean you'd want it on your wall. I came out of that basement with my ears ringing as though I'd just been caught in an explosion. I felt very much alone in a world of people who seemed to like it. It was just well-organised loud noises, plus somebody unnecessarily angry but unable to express themselves with real words who has returned to screaming it out in as low a voice as possible.

"You alright?" asked John, who was with us in the crowded basement.

"Yeah," I said, "Just a bit overwhelmed."

He wrapped up some headphones around an iPod of some sort. I came close to asking if he had any Michael Bublé, but I did think it unlikely.

I PRESENT SOME FACTS

Here are the facts:

It's 2:13am. I'm under a duvet, on a sofa in Birmingham. A small dog is lying on top of my feet like a furry hot water bottle. My eyes are heavy.

I got here after two and a half hours of driving, including a slalom through the city centre, during which my satnav and I had a falling out. The satnav is clearly more patient than I am.

My friend Ben and I watched a Bond movie, mostly because I had replied, 'action and explosions' in answer to the question 'What kind of films do you like?'

We talked about music. Ben knows more about this subject than I do, and has opinions and tattoos.

The dog, having initially snapped, seems to have taken a shine to me and my feet. She is, I believe, a bichon frise.

Christina, Ben's wife, is working a night shift and won't be back until 8am, which is now 5 hours away.

It's great to see my friends.

"That's what it should all be about," said Ben. I quite agree.

A HIDDEN SUPER POWER?

Right, sssh, don't tell anyone but I am actually multi-tasking.

True speech. I'm doing four things all that same time. And no, I'm not including breathing or daydreaming. Four actual tasks. Simultaneous.

What's gone on? Was it because I had porridge for breakfast? Have I discovered a hidden power I never knew I had?

By day, he's a mild-mannered technical writer. But whenever there's... um... a lot of work on... er... all at the same time... Matt Stubbs becomes...

Organisational Superman.

Yeah, I don't know how I've suddenly managed to multi-task. Normally, my brain requires absolute focus on one thing at a time and I get really annoyed at being distracted. I can concentrate, but I'm not normally clever enough to be bifocal about it and concentrate on two things at once.

Today though, I'm right on it - whizzing through my tasks as though they were made of paper, leaping across my inbox in a single flick of the mouse and doing it all faster than a speeding paperclip.

I have a feeling it won't last, this super-power. It's probably just as well; I definitely don't have time to make the costume.

ECLECTIC PLAYLIST #4 BENNY GOODMAN'S OPUS 1/2

Just to recap: my friend Tim and I have decided to 'broaden our musical listening' by sending each other two tracks every week. I'm hoping for some interesting (weird) music; I think Tim's hoping I won't be predictable (boring). So flows Matt and Tim's Eclectic Playlist.

I'm writing snooty reviews of the tracks Tim sends me, like some sort of wannabe music-snob.

The second track from Tim this week is Benny Goodman's Opus 1/2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rTVBLXnY8k

Benny Goodman was an incredibly famous jazz clarinetist and a bandleader in the 1930s. Here he is playing clarinet in this frenetic bit of high-speed 'railway' jazz.

You know what I mean by that? Listen to the drummer, Dave Tough. He's known as one of the most influential swing drummers of the 30s and he's worth a mention here. He's chugging along at an impressive speed, and is brilliantly accurate for three and a half minutes of capering by the vibes, the piano, the double bass and the clarinet.

What I notice about this is that it's incredibly tight. The vibes and clarinet parts are not easy, yet both often play the same phrases, perfectly in time and perfectly in sync, long before the days of click-tracks and quantization. This is recorded live and in the room of course, and it is just about perfect.

And I don't know what else you'd expect really. The vibraphone, the piano and the clarinet are all being played by the best-in-class of the 30s. Lionel Hampton (vibes), Teddy Wilson (piano) and Benny Goodman (clarinet) were all extraordinarily good at what they did. Just listen to the piano and vibe solos - measured, fun and incredibly skillfully performed. This teaches me something about solos - I reckon the key is keeping them simple, using the gaps as punctuation and throwing your heart in. That seems to be what these guys are doing.

Right, so what didn't I like? There are some recording issues - not surprising, given it was the 1930s. The vibes are resonant and some of the high frequencies are uncomfortable, but live, none of that would have mattered. What you'd have seen was a bunch of exceptionally talented guys having a lot of fun at the top of their game.

It's kind of toe-tapping isn't it? It makes me wonder where music like this has gone.

RETROSPECTIVE

"Retro," I said, holding my thumb and forefinger one inch apart, "means 'backwards' and 'spective' means 'looking'." I made the same gesture with the other hand and then shunted my fingers together.

"Put it together, and a retrospective is a time for looking back." I said, proudly.

I love how words give you a clue about what they mean. I particularly like this root idea of being 'retrospective'. I'm not sure we do it enough. Most projects I've been involved in (outside of work) have ranged everywhere from successful to mediocre to let's-never-speak-of-this-again... and I think that's part of the problem.

In the Agile world, the idea is that you constantly look back at what you've done during a sprint or a release or a project. That means the whole team scribbles on post-its, what went well, what could we do better at, what actually happened, how did we do? Then they stick them to the wall and go through them one-by-one.

What great questions. I think sometimes we're afraid of them because they open the door to personal criticism, but in a truly functional team, it's hardly ever the case. Being afraid of criticism in this context is a bit like being afraid of falling down the stairs and choosing to live on the ground floor.

If you want to know what's upstairs, you've got to get over yourself.

And the other side of that fear of criticism is a team that's faced its weaknesses, owned up to its vulnerabilities and is able to have honest conversations about how it got there.

A long time ago, I started Five Minutes Feedback in the worship team I was leading. The idea was that the whole team had an open floor to talk about how the previous Sunday had gone, what could have gone better and what was awesome. It was timeboxed to exactly five minutes.

It lasted about three weeks; someone persuaded me to stop it because it was sounding like a whinge-fest. We never did it again. I wish I had ignored that person; the other side of the whinge-fest was an honest team of people critically analysing what had happened, celebrating their successes and encouraging everyone to be better. They needed to get through that to get there.

So, I think it's OK to be retro spective. Of course you can't get anywhere without being pro spective as well, but my thought today is that looking back shouldn't be scary or daunting. It should show you how awesome you are and how awesome you could be. And there is nothing at all wrong with reminding yourself of that.

OKAY WITH ME

In case you were wondering, and I do know that you like to keep abreast of these things, the journey home is not 74 minutes.

It's not. It's at least ten minutes longer because of the hills and the wind and the bit of my brain that wonders what will happen if I cut through this alleyway.

In short, it took me nearly 90 minutes to walk home. I peeled off my rucksack, coat and scarf and microwaved some dinner. I had ten minutes before I had to leave again. This, I thought as I wolfed it down, is the margin where the gap between my activity and my maximum capacity is so small that I'm one tiny crisis away from despair.

I'm OK though, don't be panicking. In and of myself I am balanced and reasonable. I can't feel my legs and my back is sore, but inside I'm doing OK.

'OK'. Funny little two letters. I've seen a few people spell it 'okay' recently. Both are fine I'm sure, I'm just not sure which one I prefer. No one knows for certain how we started using this word but it's slipped copacetically into the language somehow. I use it a lot. 

For reasons I don't have time to explain I had to write the word 'barbecue' today and I deliberately stopped myself using BBQ, which I think we established, stands for absolutely nothing. So, why is 'OK' acceptable to me? I think it's just laziness on my part.

I like 'okay' though. It works well for dialogue. For similar reasons I've always liked a 'wotcher' in print, and especially in real life.

My feet are the size of two large dinghies, resting on the sofa. As I reminded myself several times on the road today, I will definitely sleep well tonight. And I'm quite sure I'll be driving tomorrow, which will be just that little bit better than okay with me.

ECLECTIC PLAYLIST #3 THE CROSSBEATS

Imagine a crazy parallel universe where, instead of changing the future of popular music throughout the 1960s with their global popularity and chameleon-like ability to shift styles or invent genres as quickly as the flickering zeitgeist, The Beatles had instead, devoted themselves to an early form of cringeworthy church-pop.

Which universe would you choose?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPkQa1I3ImI

Tim's latest track is from the 60s Merseybeat group, The Crossbeats.

If Only was released in August 1965, at around about the same time that the real Beatles were playing the planet's first ever stadium gig to over 55,000 people, appearing in Help! the movie and collecting MBEs from the Queen.

This is where the age difference between Tim and I opens up. The Crossbeats were the very first Christian band that Tim ever saw. He says they came and played at his school; I don't think they would have survived at mine without some form of riot sheild. By the time I was doing youthwork myself, music had evolved so far that we were taking The Band With No Name around schools to jump around and drop the mic. If music reflects the culture in which it was born, then Christian music has always lagged behind, reflecting at best, the tunes of four of five years ago. This, I'm afraid, has not aged well.

Anyway, that whole time-lag thing is a discussion for another day. For now, it's worth thinking about the mop-topped structure of this little ditty. The recording is awful (but somehow quaint), the song is simple (and predictable) and the heart of it (while I agree with it) is really preachy. To Generation X, some Baby-Boomers telling us we might be missing out on something great with a sort of whistful 'If Only' actually switches us off, rather than piquing our interest. To Generation Y, this must be an alien landscape.

It's a pleasant enough tune though, and a heartfelt sentiment. The guitars are tinny, the vocals are wobbly and the drumming is classic. It just feels like a dusty relic from a distant time, crackling as the needle bounces across the fifty year-old vinyl. And while the question they're asking is still relevant and while these brave young men (now quite old, I'd imagine) are singing out the central truth of the eternal gospel itself, as a piece of music, the song doesn't do anything more for me.

But then, I don't think it's aimed at me, is it? I'm from a different universe.

SEVENTY FOUR MINUTES OF BREATHING ROOM

I walked to work this morning and now my legs and arms are pulsing as though I've been plugged into the mains.

It's a long way. It took an hour and fourteen minutes. About half-way there, at the top of Langley Hill, I was arrested by the inescapable truth that I will have to walk home again. The uphill bits will be about 30-minutes-in (disaster) and the final stretch (only hope will keep me alive).

I might not be tremendously useful at band practice tonight.

This lunacy is all part of my quest to feel less stuffy and less grumpy. I figured that a healthy dose of fresh air would lighten my mood before I had a chance to slip into a grumble.

So in went the headphones, on went the audio Bible, and off I strolled for a 74-minute walk with a laptop-filled rucksack and a bottle of water.

I'm a big fan of walking, normally. I like to hear the trees rustle and feel the warmth of the sun or the chilly breeze. I like the way it slows everything down and forces you to take your time. It provides you with breathing room.

I'm just wondering whether this commute might be a step too far for me. I guess it's a bit early to tell; after all, I'm really only half-way there.

THE PERFECT STORM OF GRUMPINESS

I opened one eye. The room was lighter than I'd expected. The other eye creaked open and I looked at the clock. It maliciously told me that it was two minutes past eight.

I was late for the dentist.

When I emerged, having been poked around by metal implements under an interrogation lamp, I got back to the car and looked at myself in the rear view mirror. My scarf was tucked into my shirt, one collar was out over my jumper and I had toothpaste on my lip.

So, here I am, at work, scruffy and without-breakfast, the perfect storm of grumpiness.

The more I think about it, the more I start to realise that grumpiness is actually a choice.

OK, certainly, I could have been more organised and I could have woken up earlier and made pancakes as I'd planned. That was a choice.

I could have set an extra alarm, forced myself out of bed and listened to some relaxing music.

I could even have taken my time to dress properly, even though I was already late. These were all choices I made.

But I don't really mean any of those pre-emptive choices. I raced around this morning, making quick decisions because I was living right up to the margin of my time. There was no... breathing room, and sometimes that's just unavoidable.

What I think I'm saying is that there is a choice I can make in the midst of the storm, a choice not to be grumpy but to overcome my attitude, especially after the initial storm has subsided.

That's the choice I face right now - the conditions that created my attitude have gone; I'm no longer in a massive rush. However, the after-shock resounds through me and I am observably in a residual grump for no currently active reason at all.

What I'm saying is that I can choose not to be. I can choose not to be the grouch in the corner who snaps at the smallest thing and must be avoided by his colleagues at all costs. It might feel like I can't, but I think I actually can.

What's more, I have a sort of plan. I think it starts by deciding to be the very last thing I feel like being and actually being overly nice to the people around me.

So that's what I'm choosing to do today - even though I missed the coffee van and my hair looks like a landing strip for local starlings.

THE HOTSPOT AND TWO HOMES

I left a note stuck to my... stuck to the door of the ... breakfast room.

Welcome back! Hope everything is as you expected. There's tea and biscuits in the kitchen and fresh towels in the bathroom. I haven't quite moved all my stuff yet so you might not want to look in here... Anyway, make yourselves at home and see you soon! Hope you had a lovely time M xx.

Then I locked the front door behind me, got into the car and drove away from home... towards my home. It was a weirder transition than I'd expected, that. I probably shouldn't have thought about it too much. Life moves us all on, after all. Plus I'm always a bit more maudlin in the small hours, and at that point it was already 12:15am.

I'd been for a curry with my friend Chris. Chris can talk about anything for ages, which is useful when your own mouth has just bitten into a jalapeño and your eyes are watering. The Nepalese restaurant swam out of focus for a while. I can be an excellent listener when my tongue is burning a hole in my mouth.

What is it with Nepalese restaurants? Just like the Standard Tandoori, this one had oil paintings of Mount Everest and barefoot Ghurkas in straw villages. There must be a warehouse somewhere, full of artists constantly painting blue skies and ice-capped jagged mountains. Does every Nepalese restaurant have these? I was about to ask Chris the same question when I remembered that this eatery was called the Himalayan Hotspot and that that probably has something to do with it. It certainly was hot. And you'd be hard pushed not to 'spot' the Himalayan theme.

All of that meant I was a bit late to do my final clearup for the Intrepids. I expect they'll just want to go straight to sleep when they arrive tomorrow; I might not even hear from them until Monday, when I pop round to... their house.

Gosh. Their house.

I FIND NOTHING TO GO ON ABOUT

Ah Friday. The sun is out, the air carries the first notes of Spring and hope blossoms at the thought of two days off.

I've finished a week of technical authoring and writing snobby music reviews, so it's now time for me to go on for far too long about something else.

Let's see now. Punctuation? Grammar? Nah - too passé. Plus you all know my views on whether you can say "I am sat" instead of "I am sitting". There are some excellent books to help you with that, and they're much more eloquent than I am.

Tea then? Milk first if you're using a pot. It hardly matters if you're not. That's all there is on that.

Sport? Current affairs? People's attitudes to travellers? We have some caravans parked by the station again. Louise told me that most Irish travellers have their own houses in Ireland, which I found close to unbelievable.

How about the constantly broken Nestle 3000 sitting in the kitchen with permanently clogged-up chocolate pipes?

Then there's Louise coming back from the masseur having had her shoes massaged by accident? That's pretty much the whole story there, though I'm still not sure I understand what happened.

Or what about Rory McIlory claiming he was inspired by Nelson Mandela?

This was an in interview I read, with pupils from his old school. He came across as quite witty and prosaic. He told them that he didn't remember much from school trips other than the fun he had with his mates.

It's funny how, even in the most intense and serious times, we remember our social interactions the most. I couldn't tell you who was the best at Scrabble Outside the Staffroom, but I remember how funny it was winding up Randip.

I could go on about global politics! Ah, wait. I promised the world I wouldn't do that. Besides, let's not ruin this sunny afternoon. And anyway, the airwaves are jampacked with discussion about which characters from the muppets should have their felty fingers on nuclear buttons. You don't need my tuppence worth.

So, that leaves us I think, with the science of bubbles in water, the risibly complicated process of paying your council tax online, and the emotional impact of badly-worded emails.

You know what, I think I'll just walk home and enjoy the sunshine.

ECLECTIC PLAYLIST #2 I CANNOT KEEP FROM CRYING SOMETIMES

Tim's second track this week is called I Cannot Keep From Crying Sometimes by Martin Simpson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXs2U11AUDU

Now before I go any further, I should point out that Tim himself is an excellent guitarist with a love of any music that's a bit different. Just bear that in mind while you listen to this; it'll give you a clue as to why he sent this track to me, and maybe why he came up with the idea of the eclectic playlist in the first place.

This atmospheric bluesy ballad is a cover of a track by a gospel/blues musician called Blind Willie Johnson from the 1920s. Let's be honest, when your name is Blind Willie Johnson, it's almost like destiny has singled you out as a blues guitarist. Anyway, Blind Willie had a deep growly tenor voice and a characteristic love of the slide guitar.

That's what's going on here too. Martin Simpson is wearing a slide on his little finger to produce that characteristic sound throughout the track (well, from 27 seconds onwards anyway). He's also holding a device called an ebow, which uses an electromagnet to bend the strings. That haunting tone at the start of the track is all ebow, and then a bit of slide. It made me think of the wind whistling across the plain, where the road stretches out through a heat haze and tumbleweeds roll drily under the Nevadan sun.

I have two favourite moments after that. I promised myself that I'd pick out things I really like about these tracks, and there are a few to choose from here.

The first is the bass strings and guitar sound at 1:34, just when he puts the ebow down and starts finger picking. The contrast of the resonant guitar sound against the fading wind of the ebow is great. Is the guitar detuned? Probably - you need open chord shapes for the slide I think. I've got no idea; it sounds deep though. I loved that moment.

The next moment is tiny, at 2:29, when he sings "But you know I... cannot keep from crying..." It's so subtle, under the breath and natural. It's not only totally believable, it's perfectly contrasted with the higher register in the vocals that's coming up. I really liked that little inflection.

What's more, the sultry bluesy vocals fit the guitar sound almost perfectly, as though he and the instrument are connected in ways that no-one else could understand. That's great because musicians who've mastered their instrument feel this, I think - that the instrument is actually part of them somehow. There's a symbiosis between wood, strings, metal and guitarist where they all play together and it all fits.

OK, what didn't I like? Well, it's not my style, this. I have a sort of appreciation of blues but it doesn't switch me on. Martin Simpson is blending all kinds of things really well, but isn't it all just a bit... downbeat?

OK, don't shoot me. It's the blues, right? It's supposed to be all I-can't-believe-she-left-me and All-I-Got-is-this-broken-guitar-and-a-three-legged-dog-and-the-dog-don't-like-me-neither.

It's just not quite for me. I do appreciate a brilliantly executed performance though. It really made me want to get a slide and try to recreate the sound of the American Midwest on a rainy afternoon in chilly old England.

I bet Tim's already had a go at that.

PLANNING FOR TEXAS

So, my colleague Joe is off to Texas.

That's the State, not the homecare store.

"What's the plan then? What will you do while you're there?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I dunno," he mumbled. "We're just going to hang out."

Another mystifying attitude to life.

"I'd have a plan if it were me," I said. I went on to list the three things I thought he should definitely do while in the Lone Star State. I counted them off on my fingers.

"Buy a stetson," I said, enthusiastically. Joe looked unsure - as if a massive cowboy hat would look ridiculous on the head of an associate software engineer. I told him that that's what would make it funny.

"Then you should eat a steak - actually, you're bound to eat lots of steaks in Texas. But definitely go to a steak house."

"Third," I continued, "Go along to a rodeo. You'd love a rodeo."

I'm not the world's most organised person, but I don't think I could go on holiday without a plan. It doesn't have to be rigid, like a fixed unmoveable schedule, just a plan. It can change or even be replanned, but a plan gets you moving.

Without a plan you end up driving out of your way to see places you've thought of at the last minute, you waste your time, getting up too late, going hungry and annoying people. There is much more freedom when you have a plan, I think.

Then again, this might be why I end up going on holiday on my own.

"Have you been to America before?" I asked him.

"I've been to Belgium," he said.

I wished him well.

RETURN TO THE GOLDEN ARCHES

Oh, you are not going to believe what I found in the microwave tonight.

Oh well, another mystery solved. Plus, the question of whether or not I could qualify as a genius has been finally answered along the way, so you know, every silver lining... or something like that.

"Hi Matt," said Mike on the end of the phone, "Are you busy right now?"

I looked at the clock. 8pm. "No, not really, just tidying my parents' house."

Mike had ten minutes to spare so I said I'd go and meet him in McDonald's. A tea and a muffin were waiting for me. He told me how it was so difficult to do friendships in a busy environment like church and how we should take each opportunity, even the tiny ones to build relationship. I could not agree more. We had a nice chat.

I've not been to the Golden Arches for a while. For various reasons my monthly catchup with Paul is a thing of the past, and gone are the days when I thought I'd pop in for an unhealthy breakfast. It's changed a bit. They've put up massive six-feet tall touch screens so that people can order without talking to a real person - oh that's a nice touch. Presumably, if there's a queue, you can swipe in your order on the giant iPhones where everyone behind you can see exactly what you're eating. Because that's what people in the queue at MaccyDs really want to do isn't it - broadcast to the world what particular combination of fats, sugars and cardboard is making them fat this week.

Mind you, I'm not sure I can talk about fast food. I appear to have tried microwaving a tray of oven chips without even realising it.

LOOKING UP

So, here's how this week's gone so far...

Monday morning. Sunshine. I arrive at work confident, happy, lucid and bright.

Tuesday morning. Cold. I'm tired and slow to react to stuff as though my head is somehow lost in the fog.

Wednesday morning. Rainy. I'm tetchy and went on three rants before 9am, shortly before retreating into my shell with my insecurities, thinking that I've upset everyone I've spoken to in the last 24 hours.

I think that's because I lost my chips. I mean, if I'm looking for a trigger for that sort of attitude, then the mysterious disappearance of a tray of oven chips would do it.

I walked home at lunchtime, looking at the sky. I don't do that often enough. Clouds raced behind the pylons and above the trees, whisping and bulging through the grey as the high winds pushed them along. The sky was moody and heavy with rain.

I spend a lot of time looking down, thinking about nettlesome problems and invisible chips, but up is really refreshing. The world felt brighter for a moment, even though the sky was grim.

I hope I haven't upset everyone I've spoken to in the last 24 hours. I guess they'd say if I had. Mind you, that's pretty much the Overfriendly Barista and the Self Checkout Machine, I think.

Come to think of it, she did seem a bit unhappy about an unexpected item in the bagging area.

Oh well. Thursday's looking up.

THE MYSTERY OF THE NOT-QUITE-HOMEMADE OVEN CHIPS

I tried to cook chips today. Yes, America, I mean fries, not potato chips; let's not go over that again. And anyway, I don't mean those skimpy fries you get in McDonald's; I mean proper thick-cut oven chips that look like they've been hacked out of a potato by a machine that usually makes doorstops. So if we may, let's just agree to call those things 'chips' for now, eh?

Anyway, I preheated the oven to 200 degrees centigrade. It suddenly occurred to me that that was a very hot temperature indeed, compared to a hot day or a bath or a person with a fever. I reminded myself that potatoes don't normally cook while they're outside in the summertime, and it all sort of made sense. I spread out the chips on a baking tray like they were sunbathing, and then waited for the kettle to boil so I could make a nice cup of tea.

"I wonder whether I could sing a concert A..." I thought to myself, "...without any music." I reasoned that the best way would be great to try would be to think of a song that's always in A major, sing it naturally inside my head and then find the tonic of the scale. If I'd got it right it should be an A, floating in at exactly 440Hz and proving that perfect pitch might be a learnable thing.

I hummed a note while I set the oven timer. The numbers flicked round to 0:25 which I figured would be about right for chips. I grabbed my phone and tried to find a YouTube video of someone playing a concert A. Easier said than done. In the end I found a video of a kind of pure sine wave at 440Hz and realised that I had picked a G, which is close but still two semitones out, so not perfect. My theory about perfect pitch will have to wait for another day. Instead I got on with the washing up. I did remember though that the microwave hums in G so perhaps I could test that one next time.

After I'd washed up, I started folding shirts and pairing clean socks. Just as I was stuffing one sock inside another, the pinger went off. I went back to the kitchen, cancelled the pinger and opened the oven.

There was nothing inside it.

I was mystified. The baking tray and the chips had vanished! I mean they'd gone! I looked around the kitchen, went out to see if I'd left them by the clothes horse, on the tumble dryer, or back on the draining board. Nothing. They had actually disappeared!

The clock told me I had five minutes before I had to leave for band practice. I was getting a bit annoyed now, so I switched off the oven and swung the door shut.

How could I have lost a whole tray of chips?

It was all I could think about throughout band practice. Plus, I was super-hungry. I've still got no idea what happened.

Where are my chips?

ECLECTIC PLAYLIST #1 BRUBECK'S BLUE RONDO

Here's track one from Tim. It's Blue Rondo Ala Turk by Dave Brubeck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAlVasHbipo

You might remember Dave Brubeck from the saxophonic Take Five, which was the soundtrack to television adverts, everywhere, in the 1980s. That tune (effortlessly breathed by the brilliant Paul Desmond) was also my first introduction to the wonder of a 5/4 time signature. Classic.

And boy did Dave love messing around with time signatures. I can tell why Tim sent this to me: the time sigs change faster than I can count them, and Tim loves that kind of thing. If a sort of 9/8 swing time is your bag, then this is so far up your street that it's made itself at home and curled itself up on your porch like a quirky 1950s cat enjoying the sunshine.

It's not just time signatures though with the Blue Rondo. There's the tension and relief of disharmony, the rhythmic sections, the sudden swerve into classically executed swing-time and the frenzied conversations between the instruments. The piano asks a complicated question, the sax provides the answer. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is a bunch of musicians showing off at the jazz club - it's so much more than that though - you get the feeling that they don't really need to; that they're just enjoying themselves.

And that's what music should be like, however good you are at switching out of a 4/4 double-bass-led swing-time rhythm into a triplety flurry of irregular quavers. You've got to enjoy it, and these guys definitely do.

SNOW BANK

We sat in the snow bank overlooking the Chamonix Valley. Some of the others were throwing snowballs at each other and enjoying the sunshine. It was a perfect Alpine day. The mountains unfolded in front of us, and the sunlight glinted from lodges and cable cars deep in the valley.

"Do you think..." I started to ask. I stopped myself. She looked at me through the dark lenses of her sunglasses. Her hair was poking out of her black and blue stripy beanie hat and blowing in the breeze. I couldn't see her eyes; they were hidden behind a tiny reflection of me, twenty years old, fresh-faced, convex, and looking lost in a snow bank.

"It doesn't matter," I said. She smiled gently and went back to drawing in the snow with a gloved finger.

"I'll take a photo of this," she said excitedly, "and post it to Rob back home." I smiled weakly as she fished a disposable camera out of a waterproof pocket.

Andy bounded over and shook the snow from his jacket.

"Alright?" he said. He rested a hand on my shoulder and I turned to look at him, shielding my eyes from the sun.

"I think so," I replied. Andy smiled.

DICTIONARY CORNER

By the way, it was Samuel Johnson. Oh you remember, the 18th Century dictionary guy. He was the one who declared that a man grows tired of London when he grows tired of life. And yes, it was long before the Tube.

I was reading about Dr Johnson today. It's quite likely he had Tourette's Syndrome. His biographer, a man called Boswell, noted in detail his various ticks and outbursts. Imagine that: the first recognised dictionary writer had Tourette's! I always imagined Samuel Johnson looked like Robbie Coltrane in a powder wig clutching a 'big papery thing tied up with string'. But then, I would, wouldn't I? I grew up in the 1980s.*

It's been a while since I've used a dictionary. I've got two on my desk but I got perturbed by the Q section once so I started using an online one instead. All those words beginning with a Q suddenly started to look weird as I flicked through them. I probably should have stuck with it though; it would have been useful for Scrabble, not to mention knowing the difference between actual words and words I'd imagined I'd heard and hadn't.

I wonder whether Dr Johnson got tempted to simply make up his own words and slip them in, just for a laugh? I might have tried it if I were expompulate enough to invacerate some new expressions. Alas, I'm not the word-genius he was. And anyway, if he did do that then those words would be in circulation and therefore defined as actual words like 'bamboozle' and 'porcelain'. I guess really, you can say what you like when you're making the first dictionary. By definition, old Johnners would have been unbeatable at Scrabble.

I'd take him on at Hungry Hippos though.

*Well done if you got that. Give yourself a literary pie at Mrs Miggins' pie shop.

MATT & TIM'S ECLECTIC PLAYLIST

My friend Tim has suggested we swap two tracks each week to broaden our musical listening and tastes.

What an awesome idea. I might start blogging about what I find. I've got my two for Tim already, but I'm not going to spoil the surprise.

I'm really hoping he sends me some weird stuff that I don't like very much. Anything from Inuit throat singing to that steel-pan-and-harpsichord-hip-hop-combo the world has been crying out for. It would give me a great opportunity to 'like what I don't like'.

I told Winners about that, by the way. He looked a bit confused.

So begins Matt and Tim's Eclectic Playlist. I tell you what, if it works, maybe it could catch on. Maybe everyone will end up in an online two-person record club, swapping tracks and finding stuff they like but don't like, or like and do like, or just ... don't like. It will be a lot of fun to figure out why, don't you think?

PREOCCUPIED OPACITY

So, one week before the Intrepids get back from New Zealand. I'm running out of time to get the house ready for their great return. I've cleared a lot of my stuff but it's not going to be the fresh start I'd hoped for them. My big plan was to turn my old bedroom into a breakfast room; it's quite likely that it will resemble a kind of sorting office comprising piles of my old junk instead.

I have done some stuff though. This weekend I finally started sleeping in the flat. On Saturday I woke up to find the window in the wrong place, the ceiling looking weird and the bed feeling enormous. Then, when I'd had a shower, I made breakfast watching the snowflakes tumble outside the kitchen window. It didn't settle, but I was determined that I would, eventually.

"You seem a bit preoccupied," said Luke, staring straight at me. He was right. It was the end-of-church-melee; chairs being stacked, kids racing around with bits of paper and grown ups chatting in islands between the chairs.

"I'm in a funny mood, I think," I replied. There was no time to go into all of that. Instead, I went off on some tangent about how a painting consists of many techniques and brush strokes that combine to give a picture but would be meaningless to analyse out of context. It would have been clever had it not been blisteringly obvious.

That just about sums it up. Playing Scrabble in the pub last night was equally distracted from reality. I found myself playing words that weren't words at all, trying to be clever and missing the blisteringly obvious. I lost.

Then there's the question of how noticeable this mood is, and whether that matters. Winners says I'm 'genuine' which is nice but I think he means 'transparent' and I just can't agree. I'm opaque if anything, clouded by the world around me and struggling to work out all kinds of things to say, to feel or be or do. At best I'm maybe translucent: perhaps more see-through than I think I am but still unaware of the light refracting through my life, or what that means.

It will take some getting used to, living here, on my own. I'm more certain than ever that I will need to keep a better introvert-extrovert balance. Maybe soon I'll get over this weird preoccupied opacity and be a bit more like myself again.

Who knows, maybe I'll win at Scrabble again someday too.

PROACTIVE LIKE

This morning, the sun was beaming through the window. As I opened the door and headed out to work, I felt the cool breeze mingle with the warm sunshine. I was in a really good mood.

Last night, I had a dream that I went back on flannelbook and accidentally clicked a button that made me 'like' everything. I don't know if that's even possible - I'm talking about liking every thing there was to be liked. Imagine. I woke up as a million notifications came flooding in.

It has made me think though - what if you made a conscious effort to 'like' all the things you don't like? What new experiences and tastes would be opened up? What would you try that you'd never dreamed of trying? How differently would you treat people?

Here's my thought: if love is a verb, then maybe 'like' can be more of an active verb too, instead of a reaction. Maybe you can be proactive about the things you choose to 'like'.

I walked into the Co-Op on my way, looking for granola pots to take to work for breakfast. One 100g tub of 'low fat' yoghurt and granola contained 27g of sugar! It's enough to make old Uncle Ben's hair turn white. In the end I bought some fruit and happily walked off to work, thinking about all the things I don't like about it that I could try to like.

By the time I got to the lake, I'd run out of fingers and toes. The sun sparkled across the blue water and the geese honked happily on the grass. I had a little chuckle to myself.

IMAGINARY BOATS

"You're next then Matt," said Louise, laughing. Those words are never good news when I hear them. It's mostly at weddings from well-meaning people who are horribly confused about the difference between loneliness and singleness.

Louise was talking about the sick bug that's making its way around the team.

"Erm, no thank you," I said, officiously, nipping it in the bud. I genuinely don't want to be off sick, any more than I want to be sitting here hacking up a lung behind my monitor.

Meanwhile, it's World Book Day today. If you were out during the school run, you'll have noticed this because the streets were flooded with mini Oompah Loompahs and Disney Princesses clutching school bags. I don't remember this being a thing when I was young, but I certainly do approve.

It's a lot of pressure on parents though. I saw a thing about one 'quick-thinking' Dad who totally forgot, so decided to send his kids out clutching a toaster and a hairdryer.

Apparently, they were dressed as characters "from the Argos catalogue". I'm not rushing to join the tone of the article writer and declare him a 'genius', mostly because the kids in the photo looked both horrified and humiliated. That's not the work of a genius father, is it? That's the work of a thoughtless moron.

It isn't just children who ought to be fired into imagination though. There are generations now who never had World Book Day, and thought reading was for losers, never knowing the beautiful secret shared by the squares in the library.

Those people grew up without prose and poetry, choosing other things to flood their imagination. How did it work out for them? Where are they now?

Dressing their kids up as toasters and hairdryers I suppose.

Maybe all of us should make time to read a little more. I know I should. Recently, my rest nights and Screen-Free-Saturdays have been filled with moving and sorting. Perhaps we ought to switch off the garbage-machine we've angled all our sofas towards and dust off our copies of Huckleberry Finn or Pride and Prejudice, or whatever floats our imaginary boat... out across the waters of creativity, under the silvery word-painted moonlight.

Perhaps what I need is some sort of day when I can't do anything else, when I'm incapacitated. Some sort of... sick day.

Hmm. Or maybe I just need to be a bit more organised.

TSUNAMI DAY

I watched a documentary about a mega tsunami the other day. It went into great detail about what would happen if one of the Canary Islands erupted and fell into the Atlantic.

It's happened before apparently. Shells were found two hundred feet above sea level, carried there by a giant wall of water moving at 500 miles per hour across the ocean. If it happened again, it would be really bad news for places like Lisbon, Casablanca, West Africa and the Coast of Cornwall, not to mention the whole of the Eastern Seaboard.

I found it fascinating. Not the devastation. When a tsunami hits, the water punches through everything it finds, rolls inland and then gets sucked back out to sea again, taking the world with it. The devastation is unimaginable. What I find fascinating is that moment of anticipation before it hits. What do you do? How do we respond when faced with the raw, inevitable power of nature?

Then, I get round to thinking that there are some things that are equally as unstoppable - tsunamis in our own lives that change the world forever, sweeping in and raking out and leaving a trail of destruction behind them. How does it feel, the moment before it hits? How does it feel knowing that it's coming?

I thought I'd write a poem. Here it is.

Tsunami Day

The ocean breathes
The sea inhales
A final gasp of air
The shiny stones
The naked sand
Laid flat and wet and bare

The water, dragged
Far out to sea
Beneath the burning sun
Where eerie silent
Skies proclaim
Tsunami Day has come

The thin blue lined
Horizon swells
And glimmers in the light
The horses roar
Atop the wave
In cataracts of white

They pound their way
Toward the shore
The rushing water grows
A wall of monstrous
height and speed
That no-one living knows

Obscure the sky
And dim the earth
Blink out the shining sun
I stand upon
The waiting sand
Tsunami Day has come

CONTEXT AND CLEVERNESS

Do you think cleverness is context-based? I've been wondering really, whether cleverness is a measure of anything at all.

It came about because today I gave someone a fairly detailed explanation of Big Bang Theory, Doppler redshift, and cosmic background radiation. They, in return, pointed out that I'd spent the entire evening with my trousers accidentally tucked into my boots.

So what is cleverness? It's probably not wondering where your car is while driving it (bing!) or setting fire to two matchboxes while holding them (bing!) I'd also wager that cleverness is not thinking you've locked your keys inside your car for a week, getting the AA man to prize open your windows only to find you've left them somewhere else all along and the whole thing has been a hilarious waste of time (bing bing bing bing bing!)

So, is it context-sensitive? Does it depend on circumstances or is it a sort of inherent quality? Can you be smart in one dimension and a bit dizzy in others? Can you be an academic who can't tie shoelaces? Can you be a bit of a genius with a paintbrush and hopeless with a roll of wallpaper?

I think so, and I'm not just saying that to make myself feel better about wearing my trousers inside my boots. I think there are clever ideas but they're not restricted to clever people. There are ways to be clever, not just with words or logic or art or music, but with emotions and empathy and fun and life. All you have to do is tune into the way of thinking that gets you where you need to be, and your natural creativity will do the rest.

As an unrelated side note, is anyone any good at hanging pencil pleat curtains in a way that doesn't make them look like they've been put up by Mr Bean?

Anyone?

Asking for a friend.

URBI ET ORBI ET INFINITI ET BEYOND

My friend Paul and I are having a debate about whether or not the Pope is in contact with aliens.

He's hitching his theory on a Sixteenth Century prophecy which describes every pope that was to come, right up to the Apocalypse.

Interestingly, I noted, the Prophecy of St Malachy (for so it is called) is really very good at describing all the popes up to 1590. In fact, it's scintillatingly accurate up to its point of publication. But its pinpoint correctitude goes down after that, which is a shame for a prophecy that was 'discovered' in 1595. I'd have thought a prophecy ought to have been much better at predicting the future than telling you... what's already happened.

Still, nonetheless, it seems there are people out there who've got it into their heads that the current Pope, Francis I, is chatting to extraterrestrials and hasn't told anyone about it.

I've got to be honest, I'm not sure an old man in a dress is going to give them the roundest picture of humanity.

Don't get me wrong - I've got nothing against the Pope. It's just that if this is really happening, then one side or the other must have made first contact. And how, exactly, would that have happened? If aliens were monitoring our broadcasts to figure out who our leader was, I'm not sure that they would have picked up the waving pensioner in the Italian art gallery. In fact, if they had access to social media, they probably ought to have kidnapped Justin Bieber.

And do they speak Latin, these fellas? How did they learn that? Who called whom? What did they say?

The other alternative is that the Pope called them, and that has far reaching implications for science and religion. Seems unlikely doesn't it?

Paul really likes this kind of global conspiracy thing. He likes to tie it all in to the eschatology of the Bible in an attempt to figure out how history unfolds. His eyes light up.

I'm just not so sure I can believe that the Pope's secretly on the phone to ET.