TIME HITS ME IN SAINSBURY'S

I met my old friend Lee today, in the middle of Sainsbury's. He was with his girlf... fianc... um wife?, and his 4-month old son.

All of time rushed towards me. I heard it, sweeping through the aisles and tumbling into my head with a decade of thoughts compressed into half-a-second.

Time's funny like that. It can slow down and speed up at will. It can burst out of the past and curve itself into the impossible present and the hope-filled future. Einstein couldn't see it, and maybe it averages out across the space-time continuum, but as anyone who's clock-watched on the last day of term knows, it's gloopy at best. 

Lee was as perfectly chilled and as cool as ever he was. Like most of my friends (and my sisters actually), he's turned out way cooler than me.

"Hey Matt, you should get back on Facebook," he said, beaming. I smiled back. I told him it had been three years and I hadn't really missed it.

That is the only element though, that might threaten to draw me back to old fumblebook - old friends who'd like to reconnect. It seems a shame that you have to dig through all the rest of the nonsense to find them.

So time rushed by, swooping me back to the present, and I rushed on to the rice and sauces, wondering what I'd actually done in the last ten years.

RUCKSACK IMPS

I'm getting tired of discovering new attitude problems I'm carrying around with me.

It's like a rucksack with deep pockets: I reach inside and find out that I'm grumpy about lateness, or being interrupted, or when people finish a sentence with the word 'so' as though they expect you to finish it...

There are a lot of imps in this rucksack. I'm trying really hard not to let them out because they have a habit of wounding people and then making me feel guilty... which, to be honest, only adds new goblins to the bag.

I need to eat better breakfast I think. But also, as a Christian, I probably need to take the rucksack of naughty-attitude-elves and dump it at the cross. That's fancy language for letting go (in the best way possible) of all the attitudes I notice and not picking them up again. Then I have to trust that God will help me adopt his attitudes instead. Which I only get to know by being close to him.

But perhaps attitudes are more like directions.

If I'm grumpy about lateness for example, is that because I've chosen to 'face towards' um... Ultimate Punctuality? That is a weird direction to face, because I am frequently ten minutes late for things. I often find myself jumping from room to room like a frightened gazelle, looking for my keys. That winds me up. Could I change that direction?

If I'm easily annoyed about being interrupted, is that because my face is constantly looking at myself, my own insecurities and my pride? Is that what it is? Probably. How do I change that direction? Well, I have to look somewhere else, to someone who's more gracious and much better at this than I am.

So are these attitudes naughty imps or is it me looking in the wrong directions? I reckon it might be both - elves who jump into my rucksack while I'm looking the other way. I think from time to time, it's important to tackle the rucksack.

As for people who finish sentences with a trailing 'so'... I probably just ought to let that one go.

GOODBYE MR CHIPS

I had chips today and something very peculiar happened.

I've always liked a chip. Handy to pick up, deliciously salty and often crispy on the outside and soft, hot and crumbly when you bite in.

I ought to point out to anyone in North America that I of course am talking about fries rather than potato chips - which aren't usually soft, hot or crumbly on the inside, and frankly, which I've never been all that bothered about.

Anyway, the something-very-peculiar... I actually felt a bit sick. Why is that? The smell of them, the taste of them, the dry saltiness... I couldn't finish them and the thought of it was giving me a headache. Have I gone off chips?

It's not a bad thing I suppose - they're not very good for you. It's just strange that it's happened so suddenly... and without any reason. Could it happen with anything else?

TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE...

The sky was moody today. It grumbled above the lake, blustering and bumbling its way over the wind-rippled water.

I'm in a better mood than that: I think my sleep patterns might finally be back to normal.

Oh I'm tentative, sure. And as summer approaches, I'm nervous about it recurring, but on the whole I've been as unwakeable as Rip Van Winkle with a bottle of Dreamy Sleepy Nighty Snoozy Snooze.

In fact, I've been dreaming.

It struck me this morning that you can't really dream until you know how to rest.

I didn't intend it to sound like a ham-fisted proverb, but when the words formed themselves, it sounded half-wise, so I wrote them down.

That's why, I think, days off from everything are so important - they give you the space you need to down-tools, defocus, and let your mind fly.

The more I think about it now, the more I see it as a massive key to creativity - maybe it's obvious - we gain our inspiration by stopping and listening to the wind, by resting beneath the stars or imagining what lies beyond them. We literally take time to breathe. You can't really do that if you're living in a sleepless, stressful whirlwind.

The fountain exploded into life, and suddenly cascading arcs of white water were rippling into the lake. There were a few specks of rain in the air and those same castle-grey clouds scudded by above the angled rooftops of the business park.

I yawned as I wrapped my coat around me. You need more sleep, said a part of my brain like a reflex. I laughed at myself and went back inside.

ARTISTS AND CHEFS

When I was growing up, there was a phrase that I kept hearing:

"He/she who gets the vision gets the job."

In other words, if you had a great idea, it was expected that you should be the person to do it. The phrase (a staple of church meetings, particularly) was usually followed by embarrassed laughter and a sort of "Oh alright then" equilibrium, as though the person had to pretend that they weren't secretly pleased.

Stop.

Is that really the best way? I'm starting to wonder these days. I'm also starting to wonder whether that kind of thinking actually creates experts and silos rather than teams and collaborations. In fact, I think it might even be working against us, preventing us from inspiring, sparking, empowering and motivating each other.

After all, are we all great at thinking up ideas? Are we all great at vision? Are we all good at running things? Are we all great at completing them?

Probably not - we need each other, and we need each other to own the things that are important to us. Plus I think there ought to be room for accountability, and it's harder to be accountable for something if you're the only person who cares about it succeeding.

It's an interesting road, this way of thinking - especially to me. I like ideas and I love the creative process of making them happen - and I don't mean this to sound pretentious, but I think it's because I'm an artist.

Artists get ideas, then they set up the canvas, then they do the work and wait for the masterpiece to fall out of their paintbrushes.

He who gets the vision gets the job.

Well anyway, while art is wonderful, not all of life is like that. Sometimes we get brilliant ideas that we're just not able to carry out ourselves. What should we do? Keep it to ourselves until we have time, ability?

My guess is that the next person along who has a similar idea (or the other half of yours), or oodles of time for some reason, or whatever else is required to make it happen... might feel a bit differently. And what an opportunity might be missed!

And this leads me (nervously chewing on the end of my paintbrush) to one scary conclusion:

Sometimes the best way to make your project succeed might be to be less involved with it than you would like.

Gosh. What if that thing I care about so much is actually better off without me in it? What if that were the only way to make it succeed? Would I be okay with that?

Gulp.

I'll be honest - I'm not sure. And the fact that I'm not sure points me firmly towards the next logical destination on the road... that there is clearly still a lot of pride and a lot of control in me. And I think those things are the things that eat away at us from the inside if we're not careful.

I'm not suggesting that it's best to launch ideas like paper boats on the pond and hope someone fishes them out.

I think there are stages of development, and I think that it's much more about shepherding a good idea and allowing other people to have fun crafting it, in a way that makes them feel empowered.

In that sense, I think I'd like to be more like a chef - dreaming up ideas for a fantastic food experience, but not necessarily chopping potatoes while welcoming customers at the door with a menu. I think restaurateurs know how to delegate and they have to configure themselves into a team to make things happen.

In fact, I think they delegate quickly - perhaps before the idea  (or vision) is fully formed at all! Why not? Who says one person gets the complete vision from the start anyway? Why can't you get a glimpse of a great idea and then immediately start thrashing it out with other passionate, creative people? Let it go, let it flow, let it grow.

So, perhaps 'he/she who gets the vision gets the job' is sort of right. It's just that that the 'he/she' is really 'we', and part of the 'job' is always building people around the project.

So this is where I've landed today - right in the gap between the spark and the engine. The artist in me wants to just get on with it myself, plan it out and then tell everyone what to do. The chef in me knows he doesn't know how to write a menu, plan tables or design a website but he does know how to make food delicious, and he needs help with the rest.

And I think that's where collaboration, delegation, working together, arguing and having a lot of fun begin - long before you've figured it all out by yourself. You have to admit, it sounds much better than being in a team where the great artist has taught you all exactly how to do everything and gets quietly mad when you wander off-piste.

So I intend to capture those sparks of inspiration and find people who've done the same, before I've planned out what to do with it, before my heart has decided on making it happen a certain way and before I'm certain I'm right about the picture in my head. And even if I do have that fluttering image, I'd like to be able to let it fly, in the heart and the hands of an inspired team. Let it go, let it flow, let it grow, I think I said earlier. After all...

We who get the vision, get to build the job together.

And that is awesome.

THE POLAR EXPLORER

I'm on another coach. The evening sunlight floods through the dusty windows and gently warms my face. Outside, the rush hour traffic shuffles past in long shadows on its way to the M4, and home. And so we go.

There's some tiredness around at this end of the day. Hard not to defend such weariness though, after a day of long, rambling presentations.

I thought a lot about presentation style today. One person spoke for an hour like a steadily unwinding cassette tape; his voice trailed and slowed at the end of every sentence and then, as though invigorated by the mere suggestion of a full stop, he launched back at full speed for the next one.

Another used slides with tiny diagrams, and the kind of font that would have had an optician scoffing from the back.

My favourite speaker though, was the polar explorer, Mark Wood. For an hour he had the room captured with interest as he told us about his adventures in the Arctic, the Antarctic and the Himalayas.

"I'm not religious," he said, talking about the South Pole, "Maybe spiritual at a push, so you can take it or leave what I'm about to say but there were times when I just couldn't keep going. I'd be in tears, leaning into the freezing wind on my skis, and like I say, you can ignore it if you want, but I definitely felt an arm around my back in those moments, and once a voice, saying, 'Keep going.'"

He went on to describe the extraordinary solitude, grandeur and poignancy of the wild. It sounded amazing, not least leaping over melting ice-floes or standing alone on the geomagnetic North Pole and thinking of the 6.9 billion other people on the planet.

Apparently, your sweat can freeze to your face and give you frostbite in the eye. I guessed that that would be a lot less splendid.

This, I thought, is the best presentation style - the one where you tell a story, paint a picture and take everyone in the room with you.

It's raining now. The coach windscreen is spattered with droplets and the sky broods over the East as we race along this grey old motorway. Colleagues chatter about things I most definitely don't want to talk about... or even know about, actually. It's hardly the solitude of Antarctica but it is at least the way home, if a little grimy.

How bad actually is frostbite of the eye I wonder?

HOW JOLLY

I'm on a coach outside a hotel. It's before 8am. Bryan Adams's 'Summer of '69' plays on the radio while we wait, noisily.

We're waiting for people who stayed up drinking last night and so far, have not been seen. I think the coach driver has just decided to leave for the conference venue without them.

This then is our work jolly, the sales kickoff held in Newport, South Wales. And by 'jolly', I of course mean day-full-of-presentations-in-a-stuffy-conference-room. So, perhaps not that jolly.

Breakfast was good though.

I did not stay up drinking. I stayed up for conversations about badminton, freemasonry and public-displays-of-affection, and then I went to bed.

How very jolly.

A THOUSAND BLOG POSTS

I've written a thousand blog posts. Well, what I mean is, this one is the thousandth. So by the time you're reading it, it will be true.

I haven't decided how to feel about this. It's a kind of muted achievement I suppose, to have consistently documented my life over the last few years. It's rather like the people who take a photo of themselves every day with a view to making one of those two-minute time-lapse videos. A lot of work goes in, years of self-discipline and remembering and camera-positioning... for something that is quickly consumed... and then quickly forgotten about.

I always find things like that a bit melancholy - I'm not sure that the output will ever mean quite the same thing to the observer as it does to the creator...

... which reminds me of the time I was seven and I lay in bed, counting up to a thousand on my fingers. When I got there, I excitedly leaped out of bed, burst into the living room and told my parents - who, in no uncertain terms, told me to go straight back.

Well, a thousand posts it is, and such a part of my life it is, that continue I feel I probably should... although possibly not in the style of awkward-Yoda.

I hope you've at least found some of them entertaining and you've been gracious enough to ignore all the typos and all the pontificating. My thanks to you.

Here's a poem that says exactly that, I think ...


A Thousand Blog Posts

I've written a thousand blog posts
But I don't think it's really that grand
To pretend I've a nose for some wonderful prose
When my life is so frequently bland

I've written a thousand blog posts
It's a kilo of nonsense I guess
In a million words from the deep to absurd
I've proven outright, 'more is less'

I've written a thousand blog posts
And it's taken me three and a half years, to
Show-off like a pro and let everyone know
What goes bouncing between my two ears

I've written a thousand blog posts
Some silly, some funny, some wrong
So if you've read the lot, since the sea was first hot,
Let me thank you for reading along

LUNCH WITH TEENAGE ME

Hey Teenage Me.

Hey Matt.

You'll never guess what...

You ache, you're old, you're tired and you've got some 'wise' advice from the future ... again?

Um, well, yes... But not specifically today. Today I want to tell you what I'm having for lunch.

Um okay.

You won't believe it.

Sigh. Go on.

It's broccoli and tomato slices covered with two types of cheese - grated Parmesan, and a little bit of cheddar. And it is delicious.

-

Are you absolutely sure I get to become you?

Hundred Percent, Teenage Me. And you are going to love it.

Man alive.

Exactly.

COCKNEY STAIRCASE

No smoothie today so instead I pilfered an apple and a pear out of the fruit basket and chopped them up into handy slices.

I think I've technically eaten a Cockney Staircase.

Actually, it was a pretty good combination, apples and pears - I might blend it and see what happens.

By the way, the other day I made my own orange juice and it was spectacularly good. Five oranges (tough to peel but pipless and super-juicy) and a glass of cool, filtered water.

-

Rory and I had a great catchup in the end, despite my cynical observations on the decor.

Afterwards I did the usual stumble through the multi-storey car park, looking for my car, wondering which level it was on and whether I was on the same one as it.

Some Japanese people looked at me as I stood there scratching my head, then they walked over to the other side of the car park as though avoiding me.

I do this a lot - usually in Sainsbury's or the Stockholmhaven car park. I think I know the problem - I walk out one way, and walk back the other - my compass can't cope with the switch of direction.

I'm choosing to think of it as a sign of advanced brain function - especially when I'm in Stockholmhaven and I've had to go back up the stairs I went down only moments before because I was right the first time.

Maybe I should just stick to the Cockney Staircase in a smoothie. Perhaps the fruit combination will really improve my brain function.

THE PASSION OF ST ARBUCK

I'm in Starbucks, waiting for Rory.

Now I know that back in the day, St Arbuck had a vision for creating 'atmosphere' rather than a place where you can get good coffee. In Seattle, it was all about selling the sizzle, not the steak, or whatever the coffee-based equivalent might be. I'm not a coffee-drinker; I have little idea. Though they tell me (and they do love to tell me) that the coffee here is... well, not very good. The tea's alright.

What's intrigued me here, among this curious collection of young people in ripped jeans, is that for some reason, the person in charge of decor has positioned four massive hessian sacks... above the door to the toilets.

I think we're supposed to believe that they contain an abundance of freshly harvested coffee beans from places like Guatemala (sacks 1 and 2) and Nicaragua (3 and 4).

I don't believe it.

For one thing, Sack 4 has a hole in it. It ought to be cascading 'Fair Trade CecoCafen Product of Nicaragua' all over the high chairs and the cold tiled floor like a kind of coffee-bean waterfall.

For another, the deftly positioned sacks are bulging in all the wrong places for sacks full of beans. And anyway, above the toilets? Really? Was St Arbuck a keen practical joker?

Of course, I blame the TV show 'Friends' for all of this. For ten years, those six carefully drawn twenty-somethings persuaded us that this is exactly the kind of place to hang out - Central Perk for the masses, where the sofa is always free and there's a wise-crack or a 'hilarious' situation just waiting to happen.

Deep in our subconscious I think a lot of us of a particular generation wanted that, and lapped it up when popular coffee chains did everything they could to recreate it for us.

Anyway, Rory's arrived. He's getting coffee. I'm okay with tea.

ROBOTS AND THE THREE-DAY WEEKEND

More toothbrush thoughts today. I was wondering whether we could classify the 'Digital Age' in the same way we talk about the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. If so, I've already lived through a momentous epoch-shift and I've barely realised.

Also, I don't know whether I dreamed it, but I remember a while ago someone on the news, seriously suggesting that we should move to a three-day weekend.

Oh sure, says the ad from the 1950s. And we'll have robots that float around the house and do all our housework while we play shiny golf and go to the drive-in movie.

It's probably not going to happen is it? Western society, capitalism and the massive greed of multinational corporations won't allow it.

Nice thought though. But, would you give yourself Friday or Monday off? Which way would you go?

Friday would be the new Saturday I guess, especially if all those futuristic automatons cover the dusting and the washing up. It would be a bit like having two (what we currently call) Saturdays in a row...

Yes, I don't like Saturdays, remember.

Me, I think I'd prefer Monday for that extra boost. Sundays are invariably packed with church stuff so a day to recover would be so excellent I'd barely be able to contain myself.

My suspicion is though that people would soon get bored and would start doing work on that extra day. Oh, and economies would slide around all over the place, giving people a wistful look back at the old days when they all earned five days' wages and things were slightly cheaper.

Before long we'd be back where we were.

I guess I'm only thinking about it today because I'm in the middle of a four-day week and I'm already feeling like it should be over. I'm really tired, for some reason.

By the way, isn't it interesting how we talk about 'robots' in the future but when we actually invent them we stop calling them robots? Traffic lights, sat-navs, Siri, remote-control vacuum cleaners, thermostats, hey, even dishwashers... but never 'robots' once they're integrated into our daily life. We personalise and we adapt and we evolve ever further into the Digital Age... while the robots develop AI and plot to take over... er, or hopefully not.

Actually I think I'd really like one of those remote-controlled vacuum cleaners. It might cheer me up on Saturdays.

ENTROPY

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning while I was cleaning my teeth. I was thinking about science.

Sometimes science is wonderful. It's expertly precise. For example, would you like to know what the Four Laws of Thermodynamics are?

Here you go:

0. You can tell how hot something is by taking its temperature.

1. If you heat something up, it gets hotter with more energy. If you cool it down, it loses energy.

2. Hot things make cold things hot because the amount of entropy in the universe is going up.

3. You can't cool anything down below Absolute Zero.


I've oversimplified them. It says something doesn't it when the explanation is easier than the reason for the weird numbering system.

Anyway for a bit of clarity, Absolute Zero is the temperature at which atoms stop moving. It's -273 degrees C.

Oh yes and entropy (if you've not heard of it before) is...

... well, entropy is that measure of how disorganised something is. And the universe loves it.

For example, if a bunch of atoms of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and whatever else have been neatly arranged to form a cup of coffee, that's really a quite well-organised collection. That 'system' of china, coffee, milk and sugar has low entropy.

Then, if you knocked it off the coffee table and it smashed all over the carpet, that 'system' (the same atoms) would be a lot less well-organised and its entropy (its measure of disorder) would go up. The pesky universe revels in this kind of thing.

That's why time is the way round it is - it's much easier to increase the entropy of a system than it is to decrease it. Or, if you like... good luck re-arranging that cup of coffee to exactly how it was before you smashed it.

Well, so says Stephen Hawking anyway. And I'm inclined to nod along as though I know what he's talking about.

The timer on my toothbrush ran out.

I'm the victim of the universe's quest for high entropy. Things do seem to tend towards disorder, and it's a constant battle to stop it happening. I smiled as I imagined myself fundamentally at war with the universe on those rare occasions when I do the vacuuming and the washing up. And if not with the universe, then definitely with those pixies who come in and mess up my flat when I'm not looking.

YOU'LL FIND ME IN THE GARDEN

Where blossom falls

And flowers bloom,

From darkened earth

And winter tomb

Where sunshine lights

The morning dew

You'll find me in the garden

Where moonlit sky

Has heard the tears

And soldiers' feet

Awoke their fears

Through clattered sword

And Roman spears

You'll find me in the garden

Where windswept earth

Is dark with rain

And spattered blood

Is left to stain

The wooden beams

Of love and pain

You'll find me in the garden

Where blossom falls

And flowers bloom,

From darkened earth

To upper room

Where sunshine lights

The empty tomb

You'll find me in the garden

THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: SMOKE

The blindfold is ripped away. I blink. Then I gasp.

We're on a hill above the forest. Or at least, what used to be the forest. It's an ocean of fire, roaring between the blackened twigs and branches. Clouds of black pile into the air.

I am tied to a tree, digging into my back. My hands are bound and rope wraps tightly into my ankles. It seems to be the only tree on the hill. In a circle, about five feet apart, jagged standing stones angle from the grass. Some have carvings - symbols I don't recognise, and others have been worn down by the wind and the rain.

Two giants are staring at me. Uselessness, the third, clutches the blindfold in one hand and grins. His yellow teeth are like tombstones.

"It's time then!" he shouts.

"Time indeed!" says Hopelessness.

There's no sign of the Photographer. Smoke turns the others to shadow against the low-angled sun.

-

"Look!" cries the balloonist from the basket. "Smoke!"

"Yes! Up. We need a thermal."

"Up then. Fire!"

A chorus of voices fills the sky.

-

I feel sick. The acrid smoke is fire in my throat. The giants are chanting, now in a language I don't understand. There's a deep foreboding about this. I close my eyes.

"You will not fear."

The words that had flickered are there.

They continue.

Then, through the smoke, one foot in front of the other she comes. Her shadow hangs long and low across the grass.

"You're about to meet him," she says, her lips curling into a smile.

"Who?" I splutter.

She laughs gently.

"The real Maker. The one who.. made all of this happen. The one to whom you now belong. You should be honoured! He's been longing to meet you."

The air pulses with heat. My heart is pounding and somewhere an awful drum is thumping in the distance. The light flickers as plumes of black smoke cover the sun. Everything grows dark - the burning trees, the stones, the giants and the Photographer, hidden for a moment by shadow.

"Oh ancient Earth!" she cries. The giants stop and raise their hands to the sky.

"Oh burning sun!" they cry together.

"We bid the ruler of all to come!"

"Where fire and stone divide the night, where blood runs red to shun the night"

"We four in chains obscure the light and choose your presence here tonight. O come o master come!"

Suddenly, loudly, thunder cracks through the air. The stones explode with fire and green flames roar upwards into the thick dark smoke, snaking together like lightning.


-

"What was that?"

"You don't think?" he clutches the basket as the shockwave wobbles past.

"It is. Look! It's happening. It's actually happening. We must hurry."

She glances up through the ropes at the army of balloons filling the evening sky. Everyone has the same thought, gazing at the distant cloud of murky green smoke over the forest.

-

I will not fear, I will not fear, I will not fear, I will not fear. My lips move but my voice is gone, cracked by the storm that rages above me. The smoke twists into the flames curling snaking over the tree as evil stirs.

She looks at me. The pain sears through my head.

-

"Go!"

The wind roars around them, the baskets juddering as the balloons rise. One by one, the balloons lift gently into the current. They cheer, they grip the wicker and they fly.

"Hold on!" she cries against the wind.

-

I watch. At the centre of the hill, just a few metres ahead, a small patch of earth is moving. Soil crumbles as though disturbed from underneath.

The giants shriek with delight. The green flame dances around them, as the Photographer removes one velvet glove, then carefully removes the other, folding them into a pocket.

The ground rumbles, then cracks, slowly at first beneath the mound of soil, fractures radiating in all directions. The giants stop.

Then out of the centre, a terrible set of fingers appears, clutching the earth between its nails. My head roars.

Hopelessness grins. Uselessness clutches his staff. The giants are ready.

An arm groans out of the deep. Then a shoulder. Then a head, shaking the earth and the soil from its hair. Another arm.

The giants kneel. The thunder roars in triumph. The fire, orange and green, spins in delight around the hill.

It stands, clumps of earth tumbling from its scaly body and thudding into the earth. Then in a single moment, as though all my fears had somehow been magnified and multiplied and were burying themselves in my heart, the creature opens its eyes and stares straight into me.

"I have watched you, child," it snarls. "You have fear, doubt, arrogance, failure."

I close my eyes.

"You have, yes, you have failed. Hopelessness caught you."

Hopelessness creaks a smile.

"Loneliness whispered and you believed her."

Loneliness stares at me.

"Uselessness defeated you. And Lustfulness... captured you... from the beginning. And now... you... belong... to... me."

It reaches its scaly hand into its body. I recoil. It snaps its teeth and draws out a blade from its own insides.

I can't watch. The sword is too bright, not just catching light but somehow radiating it. It burns into my eyes as I press myself against the tree. My head pounds with agony.

"Yes! You are... mine!"

The giants laugh into the sky. My eyes sting with tears and smoke. The sword flashes into the air. The creature growls with evil delight.

-

"Now!" she cries.

All at once, the ropes fall and the balloonists cheer as they tumble through the smoke.

SILENT SATURDAY IN STOCKHOLMHAVEN

I've gone to Stockholmhaven for a cheesecake and a bottle of elderflower pressé. Well, the day was going that way. And I need a coat rail to go in my hallway.

Perhaps instead of jamming into the shoe-rack, the front door could meet a buffer of coats and jackets. I'll still have to sidle in, shut the door behind me with my foot, reverse, and then slip out of my rucksack though. The usual palaver. Oh, and not to mention snatching the half-shredded Midweek Chronicle from the teeth of the letterbox.

It's noisy in here - the same acoustics as an airport terminal, or a municipal swimming pool (without the splashing). Cups clink and cutlery clatters into the plastic trays, kids' voices giggle up above the hum of adult chatter and coughing. It's not the sound of Silent Saturday anyhow.

I've said before that I really like this day of silence before Easter Sunday. It carries such a profound sense of anticipation, of waiting, of hope. Nobody knows quite what to do in the deep unknown chasm that follows Good Friday. Nothing is certain, nothing is real. The rain tumbles into the sea and the grey clouds swirl above the mountains. Heaven holds its breath.

I'm reminded that this is the tension I live in - even here, in noisy old Stockholmhaven: waiting for something to happen, for the final fulfilment of everything he told us to be true, for things to be real and alive. Here in this silence, I must perfect the art of waiting. It's the day for Level 2 Patience.

Anyway, I also need a thing to hang my coats on. So I should probably go and sort that out.

POOL AND PROBABILITY

Oh. I know you're itching to know how my colleague Paul and I got on in the pool tournament, right?

Well, worry not my noble friends, for our tale of courage and adventure is ready to indeed be told. Rest thy sleepless heads on thine pillows and gather the silk of Endymion around thee, for the mystery of the quest, long awaited, is at an end and thou canst dream and laugh and eat and pray and sleep once more.

We're out. Thrashed by no less than the Finance Guys themselves. They motored round the table like Steve Davis and Jimmy White, analysing, calculating, measuring, striking, potting, ricocheting and surgically removing the table of pool balls. Within ten minutes, we were shaking hands and going back to our desks.

I had a couple of shots. I moved some of the balls around and expertly rolled the cue ball into the corner pocket a few times. It clunked and grumbled as it rattled under the table. Paul was a lot better than me, but our combined strength wouldn't ever be enough to fluke a win against these titans of the game.

It was good for team-building though. I suppose I'm just astounded at how the Finance Guys seem to be so good at everything. I wonder if it's a kind of mind-set, a neat calculation of every possible angle and outcome, a purely mathematical expectation that striking the cue ball here will produce enough spin to send the object ball there.

I thought for a while about the nature of probability and information, and how data enables you to remove some of the unpredictabilities of a closed system. Data informs our experience and helps us know exactly how to operate, in order to get the result we need.

I was momentarily relieved, imagining that the Finance Guys were equally as accurate and as successful in their day jobs. Then I hung up my pool cue on the rack and went back to being a technical author.

THE ADVENTURES OF CARTOON ABRAHAM LINCOLN: PART 2

"Mr Anderson!"

"Er, pardon me Mr General sir, but it's Mr Edison. Well, Professor Edison actually," says the scientist nervously holding his hat.

"Absolutely, Mr Anderson. Now I sure have heard a lot about your work and let me tell you, I am super excited. Booth tells me you've invented some sort of tele-portation device?"

"Tele-port?" his eyes widen and he chuckles under his breath. "No sir, General Sir, not a thing. Rather, you can transport... well, you can transport your voice from one room... um... to another."

"From one room to another? Now what in the blue blazes would I need a device to do that for me? I can square do that'n already! Watch... Booth, BOOTH! BOOTH!"

A wooden chair scrapes against the floor in the next room across. There's the tinkling of china as it rattles against the floor and then a voice curses, muffled through the cartoon wall.

"Sir, I don't mean the next room," says Cartoon Thomas Edison hurriedly. "I mean if one room were in New York..."

"Sir, yes sir!" Booth bursts through the wooden double doors and immediately salutes Cartoon General Robert E Lee.

"...and the other were in Chicago..."

There's a moment of silence. Cartoon John Wilkes Booth is frozen mid-salute. The general is standing motionless by the window.

"...in Chicago you say."

"Yes sir, general, sir."

"At ease soldier."

Booth relaxes the salute and stands with his hands behind his back, eyes fixed on the enormous Confederate flag that hangs above the general's desk.

"It er uses phono... wires to transmit an electrical signal across..."

"Booth, the professor here says he can connect up two signalmen in two locations, hundreds of..."

"Maybe thousands."

"Maybe thousands of miles apart with his machine. That sure is something! Why, with this new device... we could transport hundreds of men, not just signallers... from Memphis to Washington in the blinking of an eye..."

"No sir, it's not a..."

"We could move an army! The Yankees won't know what happened..."

"It's information, it's not..."

"We'll move on the White House!"

"On the White House sir!" repeats Booth, excitedly.

"Lincoln'll be out of his mind as to how we did it. Imagine it Booth! Hundreds of men suddenly surrounding the White House. No time to muster a defense, no time to even load a musket! Ha! Victory Booth, sweet Confederate victory."

"Sir, I really must tell you..."

"Oh Anderson, don't worry! Your name will sure go down in history with the rest of us. And we'll make sure of it."

"But sir, general, sir!"

"Booth, would you escort Mr Anderson back to his residence? We got ourselves work to do."

"Sir, yes sir," says Cartoon Booth grabbing the professor by the arm. "We got ourselves a war to win, professor."

Cartoon Thomas Edison grips his hat as he's shuffled out of the room and back to his lab.

General Lee rubs his hands together excitedly, watching the breeze ripple through the badly drawn Autumn trees outside.

"Yes sir," he says to himself quietly. "Yes sir."

COMMERCIAL BREAK

More TV adverts with the Intrepids today. Listen, do me a favour: if I'm ever approaching being anything close to (or ever claim to be) "So Money Supermarket"... would one of you be able to just pang me round the head with the back of a shovel please? Don't warn me, just thwack me before it's too late.

Also, a very touching commercial came on about the interconnectedness of our species - dramatic sweeping angles, swooning violins, emotional phonecalls, mum racing across town to be with her homesick daughter, chef gets an emergency text and must leave immediately (okay then) ... turns out it was an advert for tyres! Tyres! I have never bought tyres out of the need to 'reconnect' with someone or even thought about it while racing to an emergency. Like most of us, I expect, I have only ever bought tyres because a greasy-faced man in overalls told me I had to.

Meanwhile, over at Admiral Car Insurance, they want you to believe that their business meetings are run by an actual admiral (an Eighteenth Century admiral of course) in a nautical boardroom. Oh and apparently, your new best friend is waiting for you to simply pop into Vision-Optical-Saver-Express or whatever they're called, ready to help you choose your next pair of glasses as though they've known you since you were fourteen.

I know you're supposed to take these things with a pinch of salt, but really? You want us to believe all this? Last time I went into the opticians, it was like a kind of stuffy, short-sighted purgatory. It was roasting and there was barely room to slip out of your coat without elbowing someone trying on a pair of frameless bifocals.

I'm not a marketing expert, but I honestly think I'd prefer something simple.

"We can find out whether or not you need spectacles, and we can find a pair that makes you look okay."

"Look, if your vehicle fails its MOT, we really recommend you buy these tyres - they'll last, they'll grip the road and they're great value for money."

"Hey, we know you're required by law to have car insurance, and we think you'd benefit a lot from what we have to offer, even though it is a bit awkward that we're profiting out of mandatory government legislation as well as other people's terrible driving. Come and find us online and we'll help you."

What I don't need is Skeletor, yes, Skeletor... prancing about because he's saved money, a thing which, as a sorcerer and general purveyor of evil, he surely must consider beneath himandanywayhe'saCARTOONCHARACTER!

And breathe out. I fully concede that these biro-chewing marketeers do it (partially) to wind us up so that people like me will go on about it. It's all publicity for them, even if they annoy us. If one half of the population have their silly catchphrases and jingles stuck in their heads, and the other half is hopping mad about it, those boardroom types can go home with a swing in their step... presumably whistling the GoCompare song with a wry smile of irony.

I am so glad I don't have a television sometimes.

Seriously though, if I ever fall for it... Pang!

SULKING FROM HOME

I'm sulking-from-home today. Well, I figured it was best; no-one wants me sulking in the office. I'm not well enough to go in and stress everybody out, and I'm not ill enough to lie in bed and stress myself out, so I've found this... happy... medium.

And perhaps it's the best for multiple reasons. My neighbour texted me this afternoon:

Hi Matt have you had a leak as water has come thru my ceiling?

Yeah you know that feeling. Blood rushes from your cheeks, you leap up from your laptop, vaguely remembering that downstairs can hear every footstep and you instantly check the kitchen and bathroom. No sign of a leak, no sign of a flood. Relief.

No, wait, not relief! Not knowing is much worse! I turned off the water, felt around the toilet, scratched my head for a while (contemplated how utterly unhygienic that is and went to wash my hands, forgetting that I'd just turned the water off) and texted her back apologetically.

Oh my gosh! No, not that I can detect! I'm at home ill today and I had a bath earlier but I honestly can't see any leak up here - kitchen or bathroom. I am so sorry. How bad is it? Is there anything I can do?

My brain was furious with me. Well what do you think you should do? Phone a librarian? Remain calm, brain. Cool, calm, collected.

So I rang my Dad, then contacted a few plumbers. Then I texted her back to let her know I was doing everything I could. It's more of a stain than a cascading torrent apparently, which is good, but it isn't any less worrisome. I have nightmares about this kind of thing.

So, the water's off (I don't have the courage to switch it on again), I'm still a bit poorly, I've upset the neighbour and I haven't seen anyone at all since Friday.

The thing that really bothers me though is that I know I can do much better than this - much better than 'sulking-from-home'. I feel like I ought to be able to rise above it, change my atmosphere and overcome these tricky circumstances. With my voice quiet and cracked, and my stomach churning with nerves and fruit juice, I ought to be able to sit at the piano and prove that worship makes a difference, even when I feel sick and I've almost flooded my neighbour's hallway. It doesn't seem very proactive, but that's okay - neither did marching round Jericho like a tribe of loony buskers. Mind you, crumbling walls is almost certainly the last thing I need at the moment.

THE BIRDS HAVE A POINT

I got home on Friday and started to feel a bit shivery. So, I went to bed, hoping I could sleep it off.

A day and a half later, and I've just ventured out into the park with a flask of chamomile tea and a recovering stomach.

It could not be a nicer Spring day. The sun is warm, the bench is in dappled shade, the sky is hazy blue and cloudless. The birds are singing between the trees as though they're just happy to be alive.

I can't stand being ill. It makes me feel so useless, so pathetic. I feel like I'm reduced to a pale shell of myself, incapable of anything other than sleeping, listening to the radio and dashing to the bathroom.

People are nice. They text me to say what I say to them of course: look after yourself, drink lots of water, get plenty of rest. It's good advice but it's horribly boring isn't it?

There was a debate on the radio. Everyone said exactly what you'd expect them to say given their political colours. Then there was sport, sandwiched between all the usual cliches and platitudes. I switched off.

The fresh air is doing me good. I like this time of year: beautifully warm, hopeful and green, and more enjoyable before the hay fever season kicks in.

I don't know how single parents do this - I was no good to anyone yesterday; could I have stumbled through, made dinner without throwing up, got kids ready for whatever it is they were doing, dealt with all the usual family dramas? I doubt it.

Anyway, I'm a little better today. You know, I think these singing birds might have a point.

THE CHICAGO MOTORCYCLE CLUB

Here's the roundup. Eloi's shaved off his beard for no reason and doesn't like it. Someone else used statistics (I don't know how) to calculate that I was a musician, and due to my t-shirt, Marie now thinks I was once in a motorcycle gang in Chicago.

I'd love that! Infiltrating a gang of massive metallic men on glittering motorbikes. We'd ride around the Mid West on our awesome machines, growling into town with a swirl of dust and grease.

I'd give myself a nickname, like 'Spud' or 'The Piano Man' or something. Trade in the specs for some cool prescription sunglasses, slip into the old leather and ripped denim, scribble on a few tats with a Sharpie, and I'd be away.

My crew would all be like:

"You don't wanna mess with The Piano Man. He's real bad."

And I'd be:

"Mmmhm."

"You should'a seen what he did in Springfield. Them dudes were lucky to escape with their lives, man. And all it took was a bit of piano wire and a sustain pedal. Don't wind him up. Seriously, he goes... crazy."

And at that point I'd just nod slowly over the top of my Ray Bans and crack my knuckles deliberately.

"Can you actually ride a motorbike?" asked Marie, interrupting me from my day dreaming.

"Um... no," I said.

"Ah. Okay," she nodded.

CLICHÉ BINGO

Anyone fancy a quick game of Cliché Bingo?

Cliché Bingo? Never played? Oh it's quite straightforward: I recount a very normal, ordinary piece of kitchen-chit-chat that ended with a classic set-up line, and you have to guess what happened next.

Here it comes:

Person 1 starts off with...

"Well that's a relief."

"Oh?" (me)

(Something good has happened)

"That's great!" say I, excitement spilling into my voice.

"Yep. That's one d... no, two down... five to go!"

"Brilliant! Any other developments on those then?"

"Not yet, no."

"Okay. Well anyway, that's excellent... there's light at the end of the tunnel?"

...

and round and round goes the Cliché Bingo Tombola. What will tumble out? What will it be? Any ideas?

A jaunty theme-tune rolls around inside my head. A small man in a shiny jacket winks at the camera. Cliché Bingo, Cliché Bingo...

What is wrong with me? I should have known better than to provide such a textbook set-up! I should have known that the Official Rules of Kitchen Chit Chat demand that these things are always followed by the traditional punch line. And so it was.

"That'll be a train coming in the opposite direction," he said.

You know, the really daft thing about this?

I still laughed anyway.

TINY GIRAFFE

Teebs and Winners have sent me a gift from Zimbabwe.

It's a tiny ornamental giraffe, made from a wire-frame and beads.

I love it.

I think it's because their little girl always associates me with the giraffe hand-puppet thing I do whenever they're on Skype. The 'bad giraffe' is often naughty enough to wander on to the screen without me noticing. Sometimes he has a fight with a crocodile who emerges from the other direction.

It's such a simple thing, this little ornament, but it means a lot to me.

A few things have been making me think about the way I process gifts. I don't consider myself to be very good at thoughtful presents, and I've always preferred people's time and friendship. I see enforced gift-buying (Christmas, birthdays) as treachorously difficult and I frequently need help to get it right. There's a whole range of levels of awkwardness involved in that process I don't even have time to go into today. Even receiving gifts is socially awkward sometimes.

Somehow though, I still deeply care about the thought that goes into it and what gets encapsulated in these objects - small things, particularly. It matters.

I think these things are like portals, invisible connectors between the giver and the recipient - all the emotion, memory and intimacy of a hug, a kind word, a friendship... is contained inside them, wrapped around these little trinkets like an aura. You see it and touch it and it transports your heart through time and space.

It's not just something you need, not necessarily something you would have wanted, but something wonderful nonetheless.

So, this little giraffe reminds me that I want to get better at the notoriously tricky art - both the giving and the receiving.

And I think that's a lovely thing from far away.

WHAT DREAMS

I had a dream last night that I hid from a nuclear explosion by diving into a toilet.

I think you can read too much into dreams sometimes. I woke up with that weird mixture of fear and relief, and immediately recounted it to myself - which is, I think, the only way to remember it.

The world, the real world, was arguing about chocolate eggs. I found that kind of refreshing after the sheer panic of scenes my brain had constructed from movies.

I reckon part of the fascination with dreams is that they're sort of out of our control. Subconsciously, we splice together memories and imagination, wire them up in a sort of surreal landscape and let the narrative convince us we're there and there's nothing we can do about it.

That's how my old school library is somehow outrageously also the kitchen at work. That's how I can fly over Google Maps with Richard Osman, and that's how I can race through the suburbs while the sky burns with the fire, and then leap head-first into the safety of the bowl of a toilet while the rest of the world gets swept away in an atomic blast.

It's not supposed to make any sense.

I've been dreaming a lot recently. I wonder if it's down to eating more fruit and vegetables? Are these dreams the collective chemistry of kiwis and sweet potatoes?

By the way, Junko thinks I should write a daily blog about smoothies, including the odd combinations I carry in to work with me. I'm not so sure it would be that interesting. It might be though, if I could link it to the peculiarities of my unpredictable subconscious.

I'll be honest though, I'm just glad that I'm sleeping a bit better these days. I'd happily take the apocalyptic H-bomb nightmare, if it also means I keep sleeping through the night.

One thing I might do though is leave the bathroom light on so that I definitely wake up if I sleepwalk.

THE AUTOMATED ANNOUNCERS

"For their own safety, customers are requested to stand well behind the yellow line," said the automated station announcer.

That's very passive, isn't it? Customers are requested. By whom? Who's doing that requesting? The automated station announcer? The Fat Controller? the Queen? The Illuminati?

And who are these 'customers' anyway, and why are we being told about them as though they're part of a story that has nothing to do with us?

I suppose by implication, if you're not a customer, then you're not requested to stand behind the yellow line at all, and in fact, if you haven't paid for a ticket but you are on the platform, Sir Topham Hatt, Her Majesty, President Business, or whomever, isn't all that bothered whether you tumble off the edge into the path of a high speed freight train and get squished. 'You' were not 'requested' to stand behind the yellow line. 'You' did not pay to be there. Bad luck, fare-dodging interlopers.

I think there are lots of ways to rephrase this announcement, and I don't think politeness is the number one priority: I don't think this, or any warning where you might end up flattened, electrocuted or decapitated, is a request. How about:

"Stand behind the yellow line or you will (probably) get hit by a train."

Or just...

"For your own safety, stand well behind the yellow line."

Imperative, active, you're instructed not requested and the impetus is on you to be a responsible citizen.

But this is 'Unexpected item in the bagging area' all over again, isn't it? Why can't we program our robots to use full, unambiguous, active sentences?

Meanwhile in Argos, the tireless announcer's sentences have no verbs at all, and we are all reduced to digits while we wait on the plastic chairs of death.

"Customer number [number] to your collection point please."

It makes you wonder which of us really are the robots, sometimes.

I imagine these automated announcers getting together somewhere in a sort of digital universe, happily welcoming each other and minding the gap and not leaving any unattended baggage... anywhere. One moves through the crowd to buy drinks at the bar.

"You are position _2_ in the queue," says the bartender. "Thank you for your patience. Oh and please wait your turn, for your own safety, behind the yellow line."

UNDERNEATH THE VIADUCT

Underneath the Viaduct

Green water
Passes under
Shadows dance
On reddened brick
Oxford train
Shakes all in thunder
Overhead and quick

Murky depths
Ancient river
Arching light
Can not obstruct
Sparkled jewels
That dance and shiver
Underneath the viaduct

CEILINGS, CARPETS AND CACTI

So, the Intrepids have booked their world cruise. Three months wobbling around the world in a floating Butlins.

Before all of that though it's time to help them decorate.

In theory this is a simple project, designed and supervised by Mum in a series of relocating wicker chairs.

The sofa and two armchairs are at the upholsterers, the dresser is in the middle of the room and there's newspaper taped across the windowsills. The master plan is to paint the ceiling, sand the skirting boards and door frames, paint the walls (the same colour they already are) and then gloss the woodwork.

Then, out goes the old carpet, in comes the new, just before the freshly spruced sofas and chairs return.

I volunteered to bring my extending pole round and do the ceiling.

The Niblings were there when I arrived, so naturally the extending pole was a light sabre for a while. Then, when they'd gone and the living room was no longer the Death Star, I was up steps flicking white paint around the room, over my glasses, and into my hair.

I'm very grateful they're changing the carpet.

You know how something is likely to be stressful and difficult long before it starts, but you have to go along and manage it anyway? It felt a bit like that. However, they did need me there in the end and I'm glad I went.

At least for the first hour or so. I got halfway across the ceiling and they made me stop it because I was making 'peculiar noises'.

My reflexes work though. Later, my Mum knocked a cactus off the coffee table and I caught it like a ninja.

I then leapt around the room, shaking my hand from my wrist. I wouldn't have minded but that was the second day in a row I've had to touch a cactus.

"Why does anyone have them?" I asked my Mum on the way to get the dustpan and brush. "What do they do?"

She said that my Dad likes them.

I got down on my hands and knees and started sweeping the soil from the carpet that is about to be replaced.

It'll all be alright when it's finished, I thought.