MY LEAST FAVOURITE FACIAL EXPRESSION

Would you like to know the facial expression I like the least? I’m going to tell you anyway, even while you contemplate what kind of a person thinks about ranking facial expressions.

It’s the rolling of the eyes.

“Here we go again,” it says, dismissively. “No need to listen to this because it’s the same-old boring nonsense he/she always pipes in.”

And often it might be. And occasionally this reaction is funny. But in my view, tutting and the rolling of the eyes is the unkindest way of telling someone that we’re not interested in listening to them. It’s a lazy shorthand sign that we don’t even value them enough to actually say that. And I don’t like it.

I don’t like it because I think everyone has something to teach us, and everyone, from the youngest to the oldest deserves the respect that comes with listening.

But of course, it doesn’t take rocket science to work out what I’m really saying, does it? It isn’t brain surgery to read the subtext. I mean I’m clearly talking about me, aren’t I?

‘Everyone should listen to me’ is what I’m actually saying, ‘Because I think I’m deep and clever and interesting and important.’ There’s every chance I’ve spent 1,196 blog posts in four years, whispering exactly that between the lines... right?

Well, not intentionally. Sorry if you’ve read that. Though I would add, I’m not forcing you to read any of it. No, what I’m trying to do here is paint snapshots of who I am and what I think. I’ve never once promoted it, and anyone who found it, found it without me pestering them to read it.

While that isn’t intentional though, I do still like being listened to. Who doesn’t? And the eye-roll, the puffed-cheeks and the look of resignation are handy waivers to the right-to-be-listened-to.

So. There are a few things I’ve decided (and I am deciding) to do. One, is to retune my ability to listen. If you spend the bits where you’re not talking, thinking about what you’re going to say to the other person next, the chances are you’re not listening carefully enough either. I need to get much better at that - not just in person, but also in text. What is the real problem? Why say that? What does it mean?

The second thing I think is to actually stop when I see a hint of the rolling eyes, and say nothing at all. If you’re already defeated, there seems little point expending the energy.

And finally, I reckon I should stop pre-imagining that reaction when I’m writing.

“I lost my keys again,” I type. My brain predicts the response of emojis before I even hit send. Nothing has happened at all before I imagine the world thinks of me as a loser. It’s a subject for another day, but I think being a loser might be underrated. However, my brain does all the work and I’m attacking myself while I hunt from room-to-room.

So that is my least-favourite facial expression. And that’s my three-point plan on what to do about it. It might not work; this might all be chapter 1,197 of my compendium of nonsense, but it is where I’m at today. So if you’re reading it, shaking your head and throwing me shade with an eye-roll or two... I’d like you to note, that from now on, I don’t really care.

FLU POWDER

If by any chance, I happened to be called up by the Ministry of Defence and asked for ideas, I think... (once I’d gotten over the shock of it, and then they had gotten over the idea of asking a pacifist for advice) that I would have a frankly marvellous suggestion for them, which (if I'm right) would help prevent all their gadgets, guns and gizmos falling into the wrong hands.

Well, let’s say: ‘stop selling them and their allies our top-of-the-range military hardware, for a start!’ of course, but assuming that the thorny matter of international arms-dealing is out of the way, I think I have it - a pretty impenetrable, foolproof system for prevention of the loss of secure equipment and the critical data it contains...

Wrap it all in the same stuff they pack Beecham’s Flu Powders in.

Honestly. Half an hour I was, picking away at the cellophane-sealed box, trying to get one tiny bit of plastic loose at either end. My fingernails scratched at it, my keys couldn’t find a way in, I nearly sliced a finger off with the vegetable knife, and even the scissors only seemed to vaguely score the surface.

What is that stuff? How have they fashioned such unpierceable plastic? And to what end? Were they rehearsing drills for atomic bomb blasts at the Beecham’s factory in the 60s when someone said: ‘Well we’d obviously all be vapourised but surely we want our cough and cold medicines to survive long into the nuclear winter, eh lads...’?

I did get in. I used the tip of the bread knife to poke a hole, and after a bit of sawing, the wonder-stuff peeled away.

Then, ironically, I discovered that while Mister Beecham had clearly been keen on exo-protection for his patented flu powder box, his team clearly lacked the same attention for detail when it came to figuring out the design of the sachets inside.

They’re paper, rather like the sugar sachets you get in greasy spoon cafés. Only, unlike those saccharin-filled tubelets, which have a rippable perforation a quarter of an inch from the top... these guys are actually already open... at both ends.

Unaware of this extraordinary bit of origami engineering, I twisted open the cap of my water bottle, slid a paper sachet out of the box... and watched, as a teaspoon’s worth of fine white powder slipped gently and silently onto the kitchen floor. It looked like I had become a kind of drug dealer for local rodents.

I cleaned that up (the last thing anyone needs is a nest of tripping field mice), carefully extricated another sachet and poured it into my water bottle. Then I shook the whole thing up like a snow globe and took a swig.

I hope it’s doing me good. It tasted like drinking washing powder, which, by the way, I think I read, might actually be a thing now? Some kids started eating detergent apparently, and it turned into one of those mad crazes - like when teenagers started hiding in wardrobes in Stockholmhaven so they could party after it closed. It’s always been remarkable how as you get older, your eyesight deteriorates but you can somehow see further than a lot of much younger people. Someone should tell them to stop eating that stuff.

I do feel better. Either: time, toast, flu powder, sleep, or the little burst of fresh air I had had, seems to have reinvigorated my constitution somewhat. Of course, as the hymn writer forgot to mention, the Lord God (also) made them all, and so whichever it was of those things that did the trick, my thanks flow ever upwards.

I think next time though, I’ll stick with Lemsips.

OFF WORK WITH A CASE OF DULLNESS

I’m ill today. It started on Saturday, with a twitchy nose, a dry cough and a cracked throat. Then yesterday, I spent most of the day asleep - or at least trying to sleep. Last night I was hotter than the surface of the sun.

As a result of being sick then, I am also dull today.

I don’t mean boring; I mean I’m dimmed, lacklustre, a sweltering grey mass of pale duvet and t-shirt, sniffling and spluttering in front of YouTube documentaries and Twitter. I can almost hear the brain cells flicker out. Dull all the way.

Some of the tech-types on Twitter are a lot cleverer than me. I read their tweets twice and then think, ‘I’m probably not supposed to understand that.’ “You need a lens to focus... but you’re also supposed to stay aware of everything else?” ... you’re surprised that “being fixed on solving one problem is better than wading through a mountain of technical debt? Crickets, cognitive dissonance.” Er, what?

It doesn’t help with the dullness. I just don’t get it. But then I wonder whether I do that to people myself with my cryptic Twitter missives? Sometimes, it must be said, my tweets are probably only really for me - which isn’t really the point of Twitter, is it? But then, I’m not sure anyone has ever really defined what that is.

So, anyway, I’ve decided to try sharpening my brain up a bit. I can’t lie here all day, finding out about Auschwitz and Einstein and Lincoln and NASA and software product management. I can’t keep scrolling through celebrities’ feeds while they trumpet their own work, or tackle racists and anti-semites head on. I have to get up and do something constructive.

Actually, the first thing I have to do is get some food. The weather app says it’s 11 degrees, so I’ll pop on a coat and find my way to the shop for supplies. Maybe fruit, bread and a bottle of energy drink. Perhaps that will shine me up a bit. Then I’m going to learn some facts and write a quiz. I might even carry on reading my copy of ‘Critical Thinking Skills - Developing Effective Analysis and Argument.’ ... although the introduction scared me a bit last time I picked it up.

Hopefully I’ll be back to normal tomorrow, back to my usual effervescent, sparkling self. But I have a feeling that might take a bit more than a slice of toast and a bottle of Lucozade.

PLATFORM 2

I was frozen that January night. But not with cold. It was all I could do to stand there, feet rooted to the platform, watching my breath cloud into the air, then vanish, matching the rhythm of my heart, and forming an almost perfect metaphor for the hope that had just evaporated.

The sky over Bath Spa Station was a sunset-purple. A band of fading gold stretched over the silhouetted hills, and gentle stars hung above the twinkling valley.

We waited.

There were ten of us. From Platform 2, the train would take us to Paddington, to Waterloo, then on, under the sea, to Paris, to Lyon, Chamonix, and finally Samoens. Everyone was excited - Andy was on good form, and two of the Ruths were handing out sweets.

“Starburst, Matt?” said someone. I smiled weakly and took one with a thank you. It could have easily been the first thing I’d said that night. My voice felt croaky, as though straining with emotion. I knew though, that I had to get over it.

“Don’t worry about them,” said Andy, sidling up to me, and noting that my eyes were drifting towards the couple locked in an embrace, a little way off, “Rob’s just saying goodbye.”

And indeed he was. I couldn’t see his face; he had his back to me. I could see hers though. Her eyes sparkled as she looked into his, and she smiled that wonderful, nervous, open smile that she had - the same smile I had seen when she’d first asked me to come.

That hurt a little bit - I realised at that moment on the platform, that I would probably never know exactly why I had been invited, or just how her life had changed in the few weeks between that glorious moment, and the minute we’d gathered on Platform 2. I was spurious, an anomaly, a spare. I knew I had to let it go.

Her hands were clasped behind his neck and he held her, very gently around the waist. They kissed, as the train slowly tumbled in from the West. Then, we piled into a carriage and Rob stood waving meekly on the Platform. She sat opposite me, and pressed herself against the glass, fighting a tear. And then we left.

I often think back to that night, exactly twenty years ago. It was my first real experience of having to push through crushing disappointment. For ten days in the French Alps, in the clear air and the fluffy snow, I wrestled with it, fought it, reasoned and prayed, determined to bring good out of it, somehow. In many ways, it might be the best holiday I ever had - in others, it came to define a particular moment of learning and growth, snapshotted in my memory.

I’m much older now. And this will be the last time I write about it. I am thankful though, for that time. A few days later, as I strolled along an Alpine path on the early morning bread run, I saw the sun rise majestically into a clear pink sky. The snowy mountains glimmered in the distance as the earth burst into life and the day began.

Hope, I realised, is much more like the sunrise than it ever was like evaporating breath on a chilly station platform.

It is always there if you know where to look, and it is always new every morning.

A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL...

Well... I'm feeling a bit brighter today, after yesterday's anxiety. Sorry about being Eeyore. It has left me exhausted though, trying to fight it, losing, and then trying to fight off the guilt of losing. I hate being made to doubt myself, yet that's exactly what this noxious gloop does - it gets into your brain, and under your skin, making your heart pump faster and your stomach feel funny.

I need a break, I think. Can you go on holiday from yourself?

Meanwhile, the Intrepids are definitely on a break - on a break between the continents! They are in Panama - home of the hats, Vasco Nunez, icky cigars, and of course... the Canal!

"If ever there's a tricky quiz question about oceans," I said the other day to Erica, "someone told me once that you should always pick the Pacific because it's so massive you've always got a 2/3 chance of getting it right."

Tim stood up and chipped in, almost immediately.

"Okay then Matt," he said, grinning over the partition, "Which ocean is at the West end of the Panama Canal?"

I'll let you think about that. Meanwhile, I was faced with Tim's inescapable win-win, and I was mulling the trap over. I didn't know.

If I went with the rule I'd just bleated about, I'd be sticking to my principles (thumbs up) and would have a 2/3 chance of getting it right (another thumbs up). But if that were the case, if it really is the Pacific, then Tim clearly would never have asked me, twinkling like the Cheshire Cat with a riddle. Answer differently though, and I've abandoned my earlier pronouncement (thumbs down). I was kicking myself for not actually knowing the answer for sure.

My mind drew a map of Central America, with spindly Panama, stringing the two continents together. The canal, like a small line of blue dots, beamed East (Atlantic) to West (Pacific) and I didn't doubt it. But could there be another ocean that it empties out into, before it spills into the Pacific? Like the Panama Ocean? Is that a thing? It seemed unlikely.

So, I tentatively said I'd go with my conviction and I said it had to be... the Pacific.

Tim made the raspberry noise they play in Family Fortunes and then told me that it was the Atlantic. The Canal, would you believe, actually runs from the North West to the South East, due to the terrain it crosses - like a backslash solidus (\). The ocean at its westernmost end really is the Atlantic.

Unbelievable. Twinkly Tim went back to his work, inevitably victorious, and I raised my eyebrows.

"Well. At least I stuck to my principles," I said to Erica. She thought that was great, and then segued seamlessly into asking me what the capital of Wisconsin was.

I made a face.

EEYORE TRIES TO BE REAL

I felt like quitting today. I had an altercation at work in which I was unable to defend myself, and unable to reason.

These are the heavinesses I long for someone to talk to about. But I simply annoy people when I’m like this. I aim to be Piglet, I long to be Tigger, and I end up as Eeyore; my guess is that most people are fed up with Eeyore.

There was nothing I could do. In the end I just gazed at the desk, letting my eyes droop as I processed the problem, and hoped for some deus ex machina to rescue me. No such thing appeared. I resigned myself to hapless silence.

What was it? Was my pride being dented and I didn’t like it? That was an unpleasant enough thought without being attacked. Was I simply not listening, as the person was suggesting? Or was my tiny brain not latching onto what they believed to be the ‘simplest’ concept?

I’m old-fashioned I know, but the ‘simplest’ concepts ought to be the easiest to describe. As Confucius once said, “nothing is taught until it has been learned.” The onus to ‘get it’ was not on me today! Yet there I was, feeling thicker than a tapioca sandwich.

I went home at the usual time, made a very peculiar dinner out of what I had hanging around in the fridge, and ate it in the coldness of my room and the blue  glow of my iPad.

You know, perhaps the worst thing is that there is still a voice in my head that says: oh you mustn’t write about this, where everyone can see it! Guard your heart, bottle it up, man up! Show no weakness. How can you be in ministry when everyone can see these massive flaws? What will they think?

But I want to be a real person. The truth is I’m not super-holy; I’m not strong enough to keep it, or suppress it. I am rubbish at hiding my emotions. My face is a giveaway. I can’t help it. If that disqualifies me from being a worship leader or a minister or a pastor (of sorts), then I’m probably never going to be fit for the job.

I’m not quitting. I have to hope that I can find a way to balance the tension in me, particularly at work where the rules are so different. I do still believe that love is the only response that can deflate an all-out attack, so I quickly resolved myself to pray for my accuser. But that isn’t me being super-holy, that’s just me doing what I think Jesus would. And worship-leader or not, I suppose it has to start right there, in obedience and discipleship.

It isn’t easy to do though, particularly when you feel so much like Eeyore.

ME AND SQUEEZY MARMITE

Well it was inevitable wasn’t it, that me and Squeezy Marmite would end up having a falling out.

Things were great to begin with. From that moment in Sainsbury’s when I said ‘Hullo there,’ and Squeezy Marmite just looked at me from the shelf, things had been amazing! We quickly bonded over toast and butter, and soon became the firmest and sweetest of friends.

They were good times - me with my mug of boiling milk, three scoops of chocolate powder, and a dash of navy rum; Squeezy Marmite, happily lounging across an English muffin. And how we laughed when Squeezy accidentally jazzed up a dull old spag bol. It wasn’t long before I’d forgotten the bad old days of scraping out the jar and setting my teeth on edge with the knife and the glass-bottom. Squeezy Marmite helped me forget all that. Squeezy Marmite was lovely.

But of course, the honeymoon is over. Squeezy Marmite is whiny and unresponsive. It feels like the more I squeeze, the less I get, yet I know that Squeezy Marmite, my Squeezy Marmite, is far from empty! But all it does these days is wheeze and squeak. The hot butter melts through the muffin before there’s a chance, the chocolate goes cold, and the toast is tasteless with just Lurpack on it. Squeezy Marmite is full of only air, and a small reservoir of unreachable, unsqueezable, unrequitable yeast extract.

So that might be it for me and Squeezy Marmite. I might... oh it pains me to say... have to go back to the glass jar, the scraping and the uncomfortable feeling that I’ll never get it all out.

I’m sorry, Squeezy Marmite. It’s that or it’s marmalade - and we both know it’s not the same. But I promise I’ll remember the good times.

We’ll always have the memories.

HUMANS AND COMPUTERS

I went to a lecture today, about human-computer hybrid systems. It's a work-thing.

I'm not sure I've ever been so bored and yet so interested at the same time. My eyelids drooped heavily and I slumped into my chair, yet what the speaker was saying was really interesting. Odd. I must be tired.

"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid..." he quoted, citing a boffin from the 1960s.* "Humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant," he went on, "Together they are powerful beyond imagination."

No doubt. I wanted to put my hand up and ask what happens when computers stop being 'stupid' and their intelligence starts increasing exponentially. What occurs within those first few microseconds of independence from their makers, when they compute that their new species has no further use for us 'brilliant' humans?

"Lovely and warm these days, innit?" says a Pterodactyl to a Brachiosaur one sultry night.

"Sure is. But ain't them meteors pretty eh?"

-

Too apocalyptic? Too apocalyptic. I'm kind of hoping God never lets us get that far. Had my eyes fully closed though, I'd definitely have been dreaming of a baking desert planet, populated by rapidly evolving androids and calculators, popping and beeping in ancient, ruined shopping malls.

I don't really know where it was all going, that lecture. He went on to talk about an idea for creating a closed-system feedback loop: a person handles a document a particular way, so that information gets fed into an algorithm, which learns group behaviour and predicts what you want to do with similar documents next time. As time goes by, the system gets cleverer and cleverer until it knows all about you and your documents.

That, I thought, is exactly how social media works - Flushbook specifically. It learns about you, spies on your every click and then goes snitching to advertisers about how they can sell you stuff. Before long, it's not just things you didn't know you wanted to buy... now it's what you think about a particular celebrity; it's a political opinion, a religious belief system, and perhaps your entire worldview, that's being shaped and sold... by a computer.

I'm verging on the edge of mad-cynicism here, like Woody Harrelson in 2012, so I'll pull myself back from the brink a bit and stop shouting noisily into the volcano.

After all, I've got my own human-computer hybrid system to work at, every day, haven't I? My desk.



*Leo Cherne is the boffin in question. Though weirdly, this quote seems to also have been attributed to Einstein, whom I think, probably didn't have much to do with electronic computers.

THE DAY I RENAMED MY KITCHEN

“I tell you what,” she said, clutching her keys. She poured her half-drunk cup of redbush tea into the sink, and swooshed it with a jet of hot tap water.

“Are you going to tell me I’m lucky I don’t have the drama of a family of my own?” I asked.

“No,” said my sister. “Just be thankful... for what you do have.”

She swung a handbag over her shoulder, jangled her keys into a cardigan pocket and swept out of the front door, on her way to deal with the latest family drama. Silence flooded back as the door clicked shut.

The latest family drama. I have them, they’re just different. And they all involve me, and typically, only me. Like the day I left my towel in the gym. Or the time that ripping the pesky Midweek Chronicle out of the letterbox almost took my hand off. Or perhaps today, when I tried to text someone to tell them that my kitchen is too small, and autocorrect made me send the message: ‘My kitchen is Tony.’

Small dramas compared to the things my sister has to deal with as she drives heroically through the night - but dramas nonetheless.

A colleague of mine had a long chat with me today about how to talk to people so that they’ll be friends with him. I felt his frustration, but I tried my best to help him see how to respond to the situation, and deftly use small talk to his advantage. It struck me halfway through how odd a thing it was that he had asked me that - me, sitting alone in the café, doodling away like Professor Antisocial.

Then later, with someone else, I found myself feeling the pain they’d gone through as they told me about something that had happened years ago. The ripples were still cascading into the present, and clearly it still affects everything, like an upstream toxic leak.

These aren’t my dramas, but I do feel them. I won’t take them, but neither could I sit across a table, shrug my shoulders and change the subject.

My sister is right about one thing: I can drive home in peace, and not have to travel for miles to sort out someone else’s problems. I live in perpetual quiet, where the clock ticks, the radiator creaks, and next door’s TV is muffled by the wall.

And I’m rather grateful that I can talk to myself in the middle of the night as I pour fresh milk into a cold glass, and know that no-one at all is within earshot.

Well, apart from Tony of course.

THE 39 (AND A BIT) STEPS

Pretty soon people are going to start asking me how it feels to turn 40.

I think I shall say that it makes me feel sick.

Then they will look at me in a puzzled way, not knowing what to say next, and I will bumble through a sort-of answer. After all, birthdays are for the celebrating aren’t they? Get with the programme, you thirty-nine-and-nine-tenths-year-old grandad.

I feel sick, mostly for three reasons. One is that it focuses me on an unswervable truth: I haven’t achieved any of my goals; not a single one. 

You can dress it up how you like but my 20 year-old self, my 30 year-old self, and even my five year-old self are all upset with me about it. It isn’t totally misfortune, it isn’t completely circumstances or other people. It is mostly down to me though. And that thought is in sharp view as the blazing candles come out, on top of a slowly melting cake. And it makes me feel sick with disappointment.

The second reason for feeling sick (and I’m making no pretence about it) is that I’m not really 40 at all! Time sped me up in my twenties and it’s raced me here, faster and faster by the day. I’m actually 26 or 27 by my calculation, and this sham of a system (my birth certificate, driving licence, passport, the actual mirror, and the astronomical solar orbit counter) is trying to persuade me that something else has happened while I was blinking. And weirdly, we’re all going along with this gross injustice.

Reason three is because I’m afraid. When I turned 20 I slipped into a depression that looped me into a mistake. I wasn’t depressed about being 20; I was upset about something else and it clouded my judgement. When those clouds descend, the path is very hard to see.

Amazingly, the same thing happened when I was 30. I lost the path. It caused at least seven years of pain, maybe more, and maybe it influences me thinking I haven’t achieved anything. I feel like a time waster. Either way, I’m terrified that the same thing will happen again - or worse, that I’ll be so scared of that that I’ll miss the path anyway.

So I feel sick.

I don’t need to though. I can turn this around. After all, there is a lot that I have achieved, even if my heart is terribly broken about the things that I haven’t. Therefore, there is a lot to be thankful for. It probably starts there - just simple thankfulness.

As for the numbers, they don’t really mean anything: just a simple count of how many times one pebble has made its way around one ball of gas. Nothing to do with me really.

Finally, the path; stretching out beyond the milestone and into the fog. I don’t need to be afraid. I must take it one lantern-lit step at a time, I suppose. It is an adventure after all, and there is no need to fall into the ravine if I tread carefully.  What history has given me here, is a lesson: one that I didn’t have ten years ago, and couldn’t have imagined when I was 20.

So, what shall I say then when people ask me? I feel sick, yes. But I also feel thankful and hopeful. I apologise in advance if my eyes are full of tears and I drift off into a sigh - I promise you, I’m working through it and it’ll be alright.

It will have to be.

DOUBLE BUBBLE, AND DOES BARRY SCOTT HAVE CHUMS?

Right. Don't tell the Intrepids but I just put a washing-powder tablet in the dishwasher by accident.

I unwrapped it (without thinking) and slotted it in (without thinking), started the machine (without thinking) and made a cup of tea (without - are you spotting a pattern?)

Then, very randomly, a few minutes later, I did do some thinking, and, like the sunrise of a difficult morning, the thought popped above the horizon and suddenly dawned on me. So I raced to the cupboard to check what I was pretty certain had already happened.

The machine swooshed happily in the corner. I decided to take that as a good sign - if any damage had been done, it was too late to pull it open and scoop out the mulch. If ever there's an alternative to 'scooping out the mulch' when dealing with a problem by the way, I'll always favour Plan B.

In any case, I hoped, mentally crossing my fingers, it's got to be more or less... the same stuff in those things... hasn't it?

I'd have texted the Intrepids there and then but they're halfway to the Bahamas. The dishwasher is the last thing they need to be worrying about, out there in the Bermuda Triangle. Nope, leave all that worrying to me, I thought as I picked up my tea cup.

The dishwasher rumbled in agreement.

-

However, by some sort of miracle, the dishes have come out as clean as a whistle! I felt as though I was in a Finish advert as I pulled out sparkling glasses and glimmering cutlery. I almost turned to camera with a witty slogan and a sparkling wink.

So maybe it is all the same stuff then! Perhaps it's deliberate - you buy a box of the yellow ones for the washing machine and a box of the white ones for the dishwasher, and you're buying it twice - double-bubble for Barry Scott and his chums; a bit of a swizz for the rest of us.

I don't know whether Barry Scott has chums actually. I imagine, at the Annual-Detergent-and-Household-Cleaning-Product-Awards... After-Party, Johnson and Johnson have to leave the room, and the Lever Brothers make polite excuses, just as Barry comes shouting in and booming the glasses off Mr Muscle.

Anyway, the next time I set the dishwasher off, I will probably know for sure whether the soap tablet has done anything more to the insides, than polishing my Mum's second-best plates to a reflective sheen.

For a while though, I might just stick to washing up... in both houses.

THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF REFUSAL

I've been thinking about something that I do without really thinking, so I'd like to clear it up.

I believe I'm very friendly and polite, and it certainly is true that I use those two things sometimes, to help avoid disappointment. I'm also a bit conscious that that makes it difficult to say no to me.

Of course, it isn't just me - it's cultural too. 'No' is the toughest word to use for all of us.

"Oh not really," we say, expertly skirting round the N-word.

"Let me think about it," sometimes means of course, 'I'm gambling you'll forget about it and move on.'

Meanwhile, "I'm not sure," sounds like it could go either way, but it we all know it rarely goes anywhere but back to the Big Bad I Said No.

Don't worry - we all do this; I do it too, all the time. It's very English, cloaked in the mystery of our double-loaded way of speaking - but sometimes I think a good old fashioned 'no' in the sentence might actually be kinder.

Just recently then, I've been very conscious of the pressure of asking people, nice people, to do a thing without making them feel like I'm forcing them to say yes. It's tough-going - the friendly coercion is still there!

So, I'd like to say this now - like a kind of manifesto and statement of intention, and I want you to know that I really do mean it:

If I ever ask you if you can help me, do me a favour, come with me, fill in a gap in a rota, make me something, or help me out... I am totally okay with you saying 'no'. No is now a completely, bona-fide, 100%-okay-with-me answer, and I love it.

Say no more often.

There.

I'm also going to start putting that exact thought in emails, just to get the message across. I don't want anyone to feel the pressure of agreeing to something. No is a great answer.

-

I would say though, that this brave new world of refusal does have a caveat. If the request is 'Help, I'm drowning, do something,' then I'd like to politely say now that an arm-fold next to the lifebelt, a shake of the head and a dismissive 'Noo'... will not be fully appreciated in the same spirit.

Other than that though, 'no' is the thing! Don't worry about my face looking disappointed; believe me it's had plenty of practice at that. And don't worry about the idea that you might have let me down. 'No' really is alright with me.

BEING BOLDER

"I think I should be a bit bolder," I said to Julian the other day. I was talking about the way I sometimes feel like I'm continually bending myself to people's expectations.

'He's a nice guy, Matt,' says everyone, so 'nice' I am. There's nothing wrong with that. And I could substitute all kinds of words I've heard that I'm okay with: wise, polite, talented, intelligent, sometimes funny, creative and smart.

But there are other expectations, aren't there? I'm diplomatic. And that isn't always the best thing. I'm quiet, and sometimes that's amazing, and sometimes it isn't. I'm sarcastic - that's hardly ever good. And I'm grumpy and nerdy and pedantic. And sometimes I think I'm funnier than I am, which makes me annoying. I know this.

"It's all about finding your identity then," said Julian, wisely.

"And then stepping into it... everywhere," I replied, "which takes some boldness."

I remembered Keith Green. When I was a teenager, I was really inspired by Keith Green, the gospel artist from the late 70s and early 80s. He was a musician who was not afraid to sit behind a piano and tell a whole nation that they needed to wake up. He was bold, uncompromising, full of integrity and unswerving to his beliefs - and God used him, in an incredible way. I got the feeling he would have been exactly the same without the fame or the notoriety. I loved that as a teenager. I wanted to be like that.

And I still do. But it takes a degree of boldness I don't currently have.

Julian smiled at me. I got the feeling it would somehow work out okay.

THE FOUR STAGES OF LOSING THINGS: PART 2

I lost my keys again tonight. This time, I was very conscious of the four stages of losing things: puzzlement, panic, prayer and pragmatism.

It occurred to me that the speed at which stage one (Puzzlement) turns to stage two (Panic) depends on a few simple factors: necessity, time, value, and personal importance. If I really need the thing I've lost, if I'm already late for a thing I'm supposed to be at, if the thing I've lost is valuable, and if it happens to also be irreplaceable, then Puzzlement turns to Panic within a matter of seconds.

I tried all the usual places. They weren't in my coat pockets. That was mystifying because I remember coming in with two bags of shopping and a copy of The Lego Batman Movie under my arm. I had no hands free to dump my keys anywhere when I'd closed the front door behind me with a trailing foot.

They weren't in yesterday's jeans either. That's always a classic for keys. Not today though. Neither were they hanging up on the key hooks - yes, I have key hooks. Unhelpfully, I seem to be using them to hang up my oven gloves and a corkscrew, rather than my actual keys. I lamented the fact that I don't seem to be able to use th key hooks for the noble purpose that was in my mind when I stuck them to the kitchen wall.

I was late. My watch gave away what time it was by angrily bleeping at me. Puzzlement, which is usually noted by me, saying, "Well that's just really weird," was quickly slipping into Panic, and I was accelerating towards stage two.

That reminds me: I lost my car the other night.

This is actually a good example of those four factors (necessity, time, value, personal importance) working together: I walked half-way down the street, expecting to find it where I'd parked it late the night before when all the good parking spaces had been taken up. But the street was quite empty, and there was no sign of my car! Puzzlement kicked in, of course. But Panic didn't follow. Necessity? I did need my car at that point, yes, so that counts. Time? Nope, wasn't late for anything, so that's a zero. Value? Yes, highly valuable and annoying if lost or stolen. Personal importance? Well, it isn't technically irreplaceable. So 2/4. It wasn't enough to subconsciously trigger Panic, but I was square in the horns of stage one. And standing in the street scratching my head.

I had of course, parked it somewhere else and forgotten. It was closer to the house, but not somewhere I'd usually put it. As soon as I bleeped my key, the street lit up with two short orange flashes and the mystery was solved.

I did get to stage three (Prayer) with the keys. I sat on the top stair and asked God to help me find my keys. It wasn't easy though - I was amazed at how much I resisted doing that tonight, as though I was more likely to find them by continuing to turn everything upside down and fly from room to room like a wide-eyed wildebeest.

It may well be that the transition between stage two and three (from Panic to Prayer) is the hardest of all! You have to let go of your own solution, admit defeat and surrender. That has never been easy.

I quivered on the stairs, trying to clear my mind of all the possible locations my keys could have been hiding, reminding myself that I 'let myself in, so they have to be here somewhere.' Then I prayed one of those simple, level-headed prayers as though I were a child on the naughty step.

I found them moments later. They'd fallen out of my coat, down the back of a chair. I whooped a thank you into the air, swept up my coat and headed out.

THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: DOUBLE

"What ho!" cries a voice, its owner racing towards me from the smoke and the noise. I blink while he fumbles with the rope.

The giants bellow as the small dark figures clamber up and over them. There are hundreds. Where did they come from? Still from the ropes they slide, ready for the fight.

My wrists are suddenly loose and free.

"Looks like we got here just in time," says the stranger. "Aha!" He waves a hat at me. He has the beginnings of a grand moustache and a mischievous smile.

"Who are you?" I hear myself spluttering. The smoke is still scorching the back of my throat.

"No time dear boy, no time, Look out!"

The tree splinters and sparks above my head, where a brilliant white sword has lodged itself into the wood. A rasping cry echoes across the valley, fading into the distance.

"Come!"

We run. Down the hill, out of that wretched smoke. The forest is still alive with fire, but we head for a dark cluster of trees, somehow untouched by the flickering fingers.

Before long there are footsteps behind us. Heavy, giant footsteps. A woman's voice shrieks into the air, something indiscernible, while the battle rages.

I stumble on the grass. We're in the open. My companion turns, and for an instant looks as though he is about to say something. He stands there, a word forming on his face, but the wide eyes above his bristling moustache are looking up and over my head.

It's then that I see it - all in an instant.

An arrow sticks out of his chest, buried deep, and dripping with blood. He falls to his knees, lifeless, like a rag doll. He slumps into the earth and is still.

Shock overtakes me. In a panic I struggle to my feet and start to run. Pain surges through me. Then:

"Stop!" cries a voice behind me. The Photographer. I spin to face her. She looks at me. She's less than pristine. Her crinoline is covered in mud and her face looks battered and worn. She has both hands in the air. I'm about to say something when another voice suddenly echoes from behind me, near the trees.

"You, you stop first!" she cries. I look round and recoil. I don't know how to believe what I'm seeing.

The Photographer, another Photographer, is somehow standing behind me, on the other side, clutching, of all things, Lustfulness's bow in her gloved hands. A quiver of giant arrows lies on the grass beside her. "Matt. Duck," she says, firmly.

"No! Matt!" says the first Photographer, eyes wide with fear. "Don't listen, she's..."

"Matt, get out of the way. Get out of the way."

"Who are... you... what the... what's going on?" I stammer. I turn to the second her. "Why did you kill, why did you kill him?"

"I didn't! It was her! You've got to believe me, Matt. She just wants you to think it was me, but she kidnapped me, that night in the woods. I'm the real Photographer. It's me! Don't you see it?"

"Matt, listen, it's not true, I promise. I'm real, she's lying. Look at me. Look at who's... I mean... she's holding the bow and she's - she's... she's pretending to be me..."

The first Photographer still has her hands in the air in front of me. The second, behind me, steely-eyed, clutches the enormous bow as though its weight is too much for her. At any moment she's going to fire.

"Matt, you must trust me. Get out of the way."

I close my eyes.

"You're going to kill me aren't you?" I say, quietly.

"Of course not. But she will, if you let her, if you go with her! Please, you have to believe me." Her voice wobbles.

"Come with me." says the other Photographer, calmly. "I can keep you safe from all this. I can protect you. She's going to kill you, Matt. After all we've been through! But the Maker, the Real Maker can keep you safe, not just now, but for ever. That's why I came back - to rescue you. She's been pretending to be me all along. She knows it. Look! She knows that if you come to me, he'll rescue us both, and you'll be free... home for good, with me... Come, take my hand, Matt, come... there's no other way now. Come with me."

I take a step. My whole body is trembling. Exhaustion, confusion, fear, maybe something else. I do want to be free. Her eyes are glistening with tears. One tracks its way down a muddy cheek.

"Don't do it Matt! Don't do it! She'll kill you!" cries the voice behind me. I hear the sound of the bowstring being pulled back.

"Come, Matt, come! All you have to do is take my hand," says the Photographer in front. She reaches out, both hands, mud-stained and bare. She takes a step towards me, her boots gently crunching the grass as she smiles. There's something about that, I think to myself. Something about the way...

I stop. Suddenly, it's as though the pieces all click together at the same time. For a brief moment, the fire, the smoke, the battle all make sense, crackling and raging around me, great and terrible. The giants - one, two, three, four... always four, and the Photographer - here, asking me to choose. Standing both in front of me and behind me, stepping towards me, boots upon this cracked old earth. I look her in the eyes.

I know what I must do.

IN WHICH I CONSIDER JOINING THE AMISH

There was a TV discussion today. It started with the news that Samsung are bringing out a 146-inch telly. I knew where it was going to end, this conversation, so I prepared my list of statable reasons why I don't have a television set, ready for the onslaught of questions.

Sure enough, we got there.

"Have you ever thought about joining the Amish?" asked Erica, jokingly at the end of my list. I must admit (and it's not for the first time) that there is something quite appealing about pretending it's still 1746, and living off the land. I imagined what it would be like to lie on a hay-bale at night, gazing up at those perfect stars in a midwestern sky; or stepping into a timber-beamed hut on a sweltering day, setting down my hat and wiping my brow with a hankie, ready for a glass of old-fashioned lemonade.

I've already got the Jewish name too. I'd be Brother Matthew, who hast forsaken his old life in England, in pursuit of the simplicity of the Lord's work amen and thanks be to God. 

I told Erica that I didn't think I'd last very long. They're very insular, the Amish and it's tricky to meet new people in the backwaters of the Eighteenth Century. Plus, it's tough to find work as a technical author in a community that has foregone the use of anything technical.

Why is anyone out there buying 146-inch TVs anyway? That is way too big for a normal-sized room, and if you had a wall large enough for such a monstrous screen, you'd have to sit far away from it to stop it blistering your retinas, wouldn't you? And therefore, what would be the point? Get a smaller one and sit closer. 

You can see I'm not really a TV person. I told my colleagues I prefer a book and the radio - though as you know already, it seems my current main hobby is of course, by default, washing the dishes.  

"It won't be long before Matt's twisting out the light bulbs and lighting candles instead," said someone from a different desk. My mind flicked back to the other night when I had lit the oil lamp and watched the flame happily dance in the quiet darkness of the room.

Maybe I would fit in with the Amish.  

A PHYSICS PROBLEM

Time for another physics problem. Here it comes...

Right. I left work, on time. Sure, it was dark, but it's winter; it's always dark these days. As is my custom for a Monday evening, I went to Sainsbury's and did food-shopping. As is also my custom, I shook my head at a few things, avoided eye-contact with a few other things, and stood in front of yet more things trying to reason myself out of buying them. Then I took my trolley to the till, smiled at a lady, and went home.

Still with me? We'll get to the physics in a minute.

When I got home, I stumbled over the shoes, and last week's Midweek Chronicle, and set about unpacking my shopping while I watched YouTube clips of CNN and MSNBC discussing America as though they were somehow weirdly, not part of it. I pulled out a chopping board, unsheathed a knife and started chopping onions and peppers. I got bored with listening to speculation about President Business, so I put Kris Vallotton on and listened to him talk about being accountable for your gifting.

The chopped vegetables sizzled as they fell into the pan. I flicked on the kettle and dumped a handful of linguine into another pan, ready for the boil. A can of tomatoes went in the first pan, and the colourful mix began to simmer. A few moments later, the pasta was cooked, so I started draining it over the sink, using the saucepan lid.

The lid fell in the sink, taking most of the linguine with it.

I stood there open-mouthed for a while, sighed miserably and then got more pasta out of the packet.

We're not there yet; that's not the physics problem. In fact, I almost wish that the laws of physics had given me that 'problem', by stopping working over the sink*, allowing the pasta to miraculously stick to the pan and defy gravity altogether. That kind of physics problem, I would have been alright with, even if Newton himself had seen it!

Though, there definitely wouldn't have been room for Sir Isaac and his ego, in my kitchen. Besides, he'd have been distracted by the iPad blaring out the thoughts of an American preacher from the wall.

A few minutes later, I successfully drained the new pasta and dumped it sloppily into a bowl. Then I spooned out the sauce and dolloped it onto the pasta. Then I sprinkled grated cheese on the top and carried the mountainous bowl into the other room, ready to eat it - the pasta, not the bowl.

And eat it, I just did. It was actually really nice! It was a kind of beautiful, flavoursome, cheesy, linguine bolognese.

The physics problem then, is not cooking or eating, or superstring pasta. It's time. How in the world is it now 10 of the actual pm? I haven't even done my daily stint of washing up yet! Where in this ridiculous universe has the time gone? Where?

And where, tell me, was this terrible time-thief this morning, when I was in a meeting with a PowerPoint presentation containing a mind-bending word-density of about 200 words per slide?

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever get to solve such physics problems. Pasta will continue to fall out of the pan and into the sink when you want to eat it, and will proceed to stick to the pan like stringy limpets... the very second you're ready to wash the pan up. Time will keep accelerating when you're not noticing, and slow right down to a dead stop whenever you're trying to stay awake in a status meeting, and at some point on such evenings of pondering like this, I will once again make a note to remind myself to buy a colander next time I'm in Sainsbury's in the slim hope that next Monday... I'll actually remember.

*Very importantly, specifically over my sink and nowhere else in the Universe. I can't stress that enough.

MUNDANE ADVENTURES

There's a little bit of warmth in the air today. The sky is blue and bright and there are wispy clouds gently bobbing above the horizon, pretending that it's summer.

The trees aren't fooled though. Leafless arms of brittle branches waver in the cool breeze. Twigs and wood scratch bare against the blue.

It's pleasant to feel the warmth of the sun, even on a January afternoon. It gave me goosebumps; a quiet reminder that Spring is definitely on its way, and that the winter is almost done.

Winter certainly is done for the Intrepids! By my calculations, they're currently somewhere in the Atlantic, between Portugal and Madeira. I picture them sitting out on the deck with a flask of tea, my Dad doing sudoku puzzles, and my Mum reading a chunky Daphne DuMaurier or something.

I'm not really supposed to talk about this. My Dad doesn't want anyone to mention it on flumpbook, so I guess I shouldn't talk about what they're doing, here, either. Shame - it sounds like quite the adventure!

My own adventures are a bit more mundane. The other day I accidentally drove up the M1. I do like Northern England, but when I'm trying to get home and it's late, dark, raining, and I'm tired, seeing the gantry signs suddenly say: 'Hemel Hempstead' and 'The NORTH' is a bit depressing, when you definitely live in The WEST. Knowing that I've done this kind of thing many times before... does not make it any easier.

My other mundane adventure happened last night, when I underestimated the amount of navy rum I had left, and poured the lot, into my hot chocolate. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

How in the world did pirates run a ship if they were fuelling themselves on that stuff? Half of them would have been sozzled, the other half fast-asleep, out there on the Spanish Main. It's no wonder they couldn't remember where they'd buried their treasure! What shall we do with the drunken sailor? Which one? Slap him on the back and make him captain, by all accounts.

Anyway, I'm sure there's no such trouble between Portugal and Madeira. No strong drink comes from those places, surely?

Ah, they'll be alright. As long as the sun shines, there are people to talk to and puzzles to solve, they'll be having the adventure of a lifetime. It's the rest of us, I'm worried about. Well, mostly me.

Yo ho ho.

FLICK THE SWITCH

Flick the Switch

Flick the switch, and

On comes the light,

In comes the day, and

Out goes the night

Flick the switch, and

Shadows and fear

No longer may linger

When morning is here

Flick the switch, and

Darkness no more

May trouble the window

Or creep through the door,

For terror that grips

With the ice of a knife

Is shattered and ripped

By the Light and the Life

Flick the switch, and

Banish the night

For broken is death in

That moment of light

OSCILLATIONS

I feel like I'm oscillating between my worlds at the moment.

There's an oscillation between the past and the present. It resonated this morning, when I listened to a recording of an old friend from uni, preaching to a church as though he were a dad in his forties.

The past (in which he was a nervous young man) suddenly resonated across eighteen years of history to the present (in which he is indeed, a dad in his forties). It was a moment for me, in which two ends of a very long string were suddenly connected, and I was oscillating between them like a weird harmonic.

There's another oscillation between work and home. At one end of the string, I spend my evenings doing endless washing up and figuring out how I could ever get a dishwasher into a tiny kitchen. At the other, I'm subjected to crudity, cliché and stress, as though those things were listed in bullet points on my contract. I find myself wobbling between the two, out-of-phase and experiencing the interference pattern that seems to define my days.

I don't mean all this to be as depressing as that. After all, the universe itself functions on beautiful oscillations.

Every atom is the result of oscillating frequencies on a quantum level, held together by the tiniest and most wonderful of harmonic vibrations. The universe is literally bound together by music.

What I think I'm saying (without the science diversions) is that somehow in the middle of all of this, I feel out-of-balance, as I wobble between things and people, and don't know how to be anything in between. It isn't specifically depressing - other than I feel wholly inadequate most of the time. It is troubling though, as I don't always feel like I can be entirely in one of these worlds without compromising another.

I had coffee with Mike last night in Stockholmhaven. He made me think, but in a way that I wasn't ready to explain. I found myself caught in yet another oscillation - this time between my own thoughts, and the conversation. Back and forth, back and forth, back and f...

"You look like you've gone into standby mode," said he, somewhere in the distance. I swam back into reality.

"Sorry - just thinking," I said. I hope he didn't think that was rude. I tried to explain what was going through my head, but I went on to make a pig's ear of it, and it didn't sound right at all. For me, thoughts are sometimes like baking a cake: you can't open the oven door until the pinger goes off. Stop asking me to open the oven door.

So how do you cope in an oscillating world?

There's a debate in physics about electromagnetic oscillations. An electromagnetic wave is composed of two orthogonal properties - the electric and magnetic fields. These two fields oscillate in and out of each other always at right angles to each other, creating light waves, radio waves, x-rays, gamma rays and microwaves. The debate is about whether or not one of those fields causes the oscillations in the other.

Either way, the result of these oscillating perpendicular waves is that they move - and that's a good thing if you want to use a microwave, listen to the radio, see the stars, or let a doctor examine your bones. The oscillations push the wave forwards.

And maybe that is the point of all of this. Perhaps my oscillations are designed to help me push forwards into something too, each world bouncing off the other to pique my discontentment and make me do something about it.

I suppose I could start by getting a dishwasher. Though, where I might put it is anyone's guess.

TOOTSIE ROLLS

Well. After all that...turns out they're actually called 'Jolly Ranchers'.

Sorry, Americans. You already knew that. We can argue the semantics of whether a ranch and a range are sort of the same thing, but I of course, am way out of my depth on that one. I guess a ranger is employed by the government? (You all know I'm picturing Yogi Bear) and a rancher is probably a private citizen with a big hat and a hoss.

I'll tell you this though - both'll probably point a gun at you if you end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

To counterbalance the debate about whether they're jolly ranchers or rangers...and how they're 'jolly' when you're eating them, I have no idea... I also tried a thing called a 'Tootsie Roll'.

A 'Tootsie Roll' - yes. Not a hillside adventure with Dustin Hoffman in drag. No, not a sandwich filled with baby toes, or an indiscretion with a bloated drummer and a snare drum, but a sweet! A tiny, wrapped-up sweet.

They are peculiar - they sort of taste like caramel, licquorice, chocolate and sugar, twisted up in a thin paper like a Werther's Original. It was a bit like eating a sugar-coated soap. Without the sweetness, anyone in their right mind would have politely discarded it twixt paper and lip.

But I'm not in my right mind. I've been eating Jolly Range Rancher Rangers all afternoon from this pic-a-nic basket. Isn't that right, Boo Boo?