THREE MORE HAIKU

Another three haiku today. If I carry on writing these, I wonder whether I should start posting them in groups of fives, sevens, and fives. Erica thinks I should start collecting them in a book of office poetry.

"I just like the way you can condense a huge thought into a tiny space," I said to Clive, excitedly, while I mentally pictured myself stuffing a blanket into a matchbox. I don't know whether that was the original idea of a haiku; being deep in seventeen improbably short syllables? Like with those soundbite quotes you hear of Oscar Wilde being smug, or Gandhi being 'profound' about civilisation, I do sometimes wonder whether the most common reaction to a thoughtful haiku is a lot more 'meh' than 'ooh'.

But... art isn't always for the observer. Here's the first of today's crammed-in blankets. Here, the big idea is the trendy-unpopularity of a particular font. I've tried to flip it ironically...

I like Comic Sans
But not as much as I like
Pretending I do

Hmm. Meh. Stuff that blanket in.

We had some difficulty with fonts not displaying correctly today at work, so I also came up with this tiny commentary on the progress of technology...

You can't change fonts
On a printing press at all
Without lots of work

... which I really like. I like the idea of imagining what's involved in changing every hammer head of a moveable printing press, like Gutenberg or Caxton, inky hands and broken fingernails smearing grease all over the parchment... or whatever it was that they used.

Anyway, on that note...

A notebook will not
Give you a system error
But you can lose it

UMBRELLA SHORTAGE

A while ago, the business park put a square tub in the foyer and stacked five or six white umbrellas in it.

The idea is that you borrow an umbrella when you need it and then put it back when you’ve used it. There are similar umbrellas in all the buildings, including the café, where I am today, eating a vegetable bake and surveying the lake. There must be close to a hundred white umbrellas somewhere.

You know where this is going. I’m sitting here, watching heavy rain sweep across the water, and the clouds roll above the trees, bending in the wind. Opposite me, is the café's umbrella bin.

It’s empty.

Probably in use, you might charitably think. Well, a quick scan of the lake reveals a grand total of two white umbrellas walking round, complete with overcoated individuals suspended beneath them.

Two. Where are all the others then?

It wasn’t raining when I got here. But even if it were, a glance at the umbrella tub back in the foyer would have told me exactly what it tells me every other day, whether it’s raining or the sun is cracking the flagstones: empty.

I’m wearing a hoodie. I’m in for a soaking.

The personal equation, the reason for the 2018 Umbrella Shortage is probably obvious, now that I sit here thinking about it:

Free umbrella, useful, thank you business park; can’t put it back wet, need to dry it out in the office. Ooh. Forgot about it, left it there, open, but now that it’s dry, maybe I should keep it here and then next time, I’m guaranteed an umbrella and I don’t even have to think! Genius.

And so some of us have to get wet, while the rest stack up piles of dry umbrellas in locked offices for their own personal convenience. 

So. How’s it solved? Do the business park attempt to force the selfish hoarders to return the brollies? Should they put on some sort of umbrella amnesty? Or should they just keep refilling the umbrella pots with fresh white umbrellas? Can they afford it? Should the umbrellas be free at all? Ought there be a fine for late return, like there is in the library? How would that work?

It’s never likely that there will be a hundred people out in the rain at the same time, so in theory there should be more than enough umbrellage to go round. How do you stop the imbalance from recurring? How do you make getting-wet-at-lunchtime a thing of the past, for everyone?

Tricky, isn’t it?

I’ve eaten my delicious vegetable bake, looking out from the warm, heated café at the side of a beautiful lake, cascading fountains and green grass. Beyond the wavy trees, my office beckons me back to my comfortable job, my blessed life, and my ample paycheck.

I don’t really have a lot to complain about, when I really think about it.

THE SEO-WIZARD AND ONE LEFT TRAINER

I’m back in Sainsbury’s Starbucks. A guy in a checked blue and white shirt has just told his client (a roofer) that now his listing is on a particular website, he’s “guaranteed” to be on the first page of a google search of local roofing companies.

I can’t imagine that’s true, unless this guy’s figured out Google’s algorithm. And I’ve got to be honest, it’s possible but he doesn’t really seem the type.

It’s noisy here. Always noisy, like a railway station concourse. Cold too. I keep forgetting that. Plus they’ve run out of tea.

Still, I’ve finished a couple of poems while I’ve been here.

“We have to wait for them to come in from another store,” said the barista looking a little sad and embarrassed.

“Aw shame, I guess you’re miles away from any kind of shop that sells tea bags,” I almost said.

I thought it though. But of course there’s probably some legal reason why they can’t walk a few metres to the aisle with the teabags in it. Who knows - maybe if someone chokes on a cup of earl grey here, they’d much prefer it if they were solely responsible? Fair enough.

There was a trainer on my car tonight. I don’t get it. Someone had put it there, but I don’t quite know why. One single left training shoe, sitting on the boot like a weird spoiler.

Is it a sign? If it is, I’m not sure what it means. It might be that I’m supposed to keep running... but only with one leg. Which is called something else. Or perhaps I’m supposed to find its owner, some unbalanced old man somewhere. I don’t know. It might be that someone found it and for some reason thought it would be funny to balance it on my car.

“Yeah you can find pretty much anything on Google,” says checkshirt to the roofer. That is an odd thing to say in this day and age, but there it was. Never argue with a real-life SEO wizard who seems to have the power to get your business on the first page of a popular search.

Actually, maybe he could help me figure out what to do with one old left trainer...

BEARS, CHAIRS AND CLOCKS

It's that time of year again: the few days when we all readjust to having lost the hour we've sacrificed to British Summer Time.

Yup. Late-night barbecues, going home in the bright afternoon, watching cricket until dusk, sitting in the park with a glorious sunset... all worthwhile now that we've given that hour up.

Except, every year I seem to forget how to do it.

I woke up late yesterday and had to race to church, feeling half-asleep until at least mid-way through the first service. Today, with my body still a bit confused, I've blustered my way through the same groggy disorientation.

Here's the bit that's difficult in all this: my attitude's terrible. I'm like a bear that's sleeping in the corner, easily prodded and surprisingly snappy and growly today - though I hope I can manage myself a bit better than that. I do know how to, after all.

I'm not alone either! I think I've detected what happens when bears have been in a place for a while, doing a thing the same way for a while. Eventually, we become protective of that thing, even if it's apparent that it's not (or no longer) the best way to do it.

Change becomes a thing to fear, a pointless problem solved years ago, a waste of time... instead of an exciting challenge or opportunity to grow and be better. Adventures look less-appealing than the comfortable armchair that's moulded itself to fit our pendulous bottoms.

Change-agents who come in with new brooms, instead look like pesky agitators, rather than the free-thinking breaths of fresh-air they're supposed to be. And worst of all, we can't see it because we're so very used to the frame of reference we've seen around us for so long. Their solutions won't make sense unless we listen carefully.

Well, fellow bears. Let's let it go. Sometimes it's okay to ask big questions about why we do something a certain way, and it's okay to start letting go of the armchair to go walking in the woods without getting in a huff about it.

That said - I think we do have experience - and that's why all the changers and sky-blue-thinkers out there need us, and need to listen to what we know. And we need them, tasting the porridge and breaking the chairs. Goldilocks might be irritating, but she's a fantastic QA product tester. If you're excited by change, you need to know that you can be as much of an irritant to the rest of us as you need to be. We're supposed to work together, I think.

Of course, all of that's tough when you're still living an hour in the past and you feel like you just woke up. I think today I might just stop talking, close my eyes, chill out, and start listening and observing a bit better.

Oh, and change is good, right? After all, however uncomfortable the clocks make me feel, it does mean that summer is well on its way. That's a thing to look forward to.

POPWORLD AND THE BANNER SPANGLED-STAR

I’m not going to lie; it’s been a curious evening. Better than staying in on my own with my socks warming on the portable heater, yes, but also... curious.

I was trying to sing the US national anthem backwards in the car. Not the tune backwards (that would be madness) - just the words. I don’t know why. I was on my way into town and I didn’t want to think about other stuff, I suppose.

I was on my way to meet my friend Gareth, who, as a birthday present wanted to take me to see a live recording of a podcast I listen to. We sat in the concert hall, surveying the grand ceiling and glittering chandeliers.

“Do you think they might look a bit dangerous?” he asked. I hadn’t thought of it. I wagered that they were probably bolted to the strongest bit of roof, and had been suspended there like that for over a hundred years.

Before long, we were being entertained by a volley of humorous facts: the record for flipping beer mats is held by someone called Mat Hand; a guy called Freddie Kruger holds a water-ski-ing record; Panda bears have their own Harvard, and in a curious twist of synchronicity, the US flag was designed by a 17-year old student who got a B minus for sewing on two extra stars to represent Hawaii and Alaska. “Light early dawn’s the by” I hummed to myself.

It was all most enjoyable. You know, a classy, civilised and informative way to spend a Friday night.

Speaking of which...

“They want us to go find them, I think,” said Gareth at the end, looking at his phone. The ‘they’ were Ruth and a few of our female friends, out in town for Ruth’s birthday. So in an odd segue, Gareth and I trekked through the drizzly town centre, past flashing windows and underdressed gaggles of girls, until we got to a thudding reverberation of lights and music called Popworld.

If Popworld was a venue that was dedicated to recreating the 1990s then I say... kudos to them for hitting the vibe right on the head; I felt just as awkward and out of place as I had back then - the nerdy guy in the corner, who will probably always be incompatible with loud parties in the dark!

I looked, felt, and was... uncomfortable.

“Thmpfan part’ayfth in classic shrickffkfthsuindancing... looking sexy...herthatubyllv...” mumbled the DJ, distorting the overworked speakers while a steady thump and bass shook the floor. 

Tune after tune pounded out, reminding me that I chose the library over the nightlife for a reason when I was a teenager. The girls though, were loving it, and I at least saw the joy of that, while they danced in a circle to the catchy rhythms. That mattered more to me than my own discomfort somehow. Maybe I am different after all to the way I was in 1994?

“I think at least a little alcohol is probably required to enjoy a place like that,” I remarked on the way back to the car. Gareth agreed. He told me about having to shout over the bar.

We put Classic FM on, and it felt like seeing the sea on that first day of the holidays.

And so I’m home. Home is good, I like home. Except of course most Fridays, that isn’t true at all is it. Most nights I can’t face it.

I fished my keys out of my pocket as I walked to the front door. Silent clouds hung over the stars and the wind rustled the treetops, delightfully. Sometimes you just have to have courage.

“Br-ave the of home the...” I sang to myself, quietly. “And free the of land the...”

THREE HAIKU FRIDAY

I got into work this morning and everyone seemed to be overly happy that it was Friday. The kitchen was full of it.

"How are you?"

"Yeah, it's Friday."

"How's it going?"

"Tired."

"Really?"

"Yeah. But it's Friday."

"True, true."

Laugh laugh. Door swings shut. Wait seven days, and hit repeat.

I don't mean to be counter-cultural, or stand out, but are Fridays really that great? Are you supposed to work so hard and so fast that the last day of the working week is just a joyous relief? Are you supposed to spend four days feeling so trapped inside your decision to work here, that when the prospect of two days of freedom makes its weekly appearance you walk about the office with a giddy head and a silly smile?

I don't think so. But then, my view of Fridays might be a bit obscured. Typically, I go home to a dark, empty flat and stay by myself until Sunday. Not today though - more about that later.

Meanwhile, here's a haiku.

We all cheer Fridays
When ticker-tape happiness
Precedes the darkness

And here are two more, which sum up what happened to me at lunchtime. Erica liked these so much that she pinned them to the wall.

I bought a pizza
Then the wind took hold of it
And turned it over

So I went back in
And bought another pizza
Which tasted sweeter

COLLISION DRAMA

Let me get this out right at the top.

I scraped my parents' car on a wooden post and it could cost over £1,000 to get it fixed.

There. Confession is good for the soul, right? I still don't feel great though. It was so silly - I wasn't really aware of a post and then suddenly I was very aware of it because the side of the car was sort of embracing it like an old friend.

Now then. It is sortable. And I don't believe it needs to be that expensive. My first attempt at getting a quote has resulted in some cowboys pulling numbers out of their hats.

What's interesting though, in this situation, is my reaction.

I'm upset, yes. I'm embarrassed of course. I'm a bit annoyed. But mostly, I'm just sort of quiet and prosaic about it. My next step is obviously to get estimates from elsewhere and figure out which is best.

I've never done this in my own car. In fact, I've never hit anything. I've been hit, one time quite dramatically; I've almost hit something else, but I don't remember accidentally doing this, kind of ever. To be honest, I'm quite cautious, due to being an under-average driver in the first place.

Meanwhile the Intrepids are in Hong Kong, and this minor drama is the last thing they'd like to be thinking about. Their first question would be whether I'm alright - and I am, so it seems too small a thing to worry them with.

Perhaps I'm getting better at handling dramas. Or perhaps I'm just getting better at appearing to handle them. Still, if I can trick myself into believing that I'm alright about it... then I don't suppose it makes any difference. Put your hats back on, jokers; I'm the sheriff today. Even though it looks like I can't ride a horse for toffee.

WAKING UP ANDY MURRAY

This morning, on Twitter, I watched a video of Sir Andy Murray, our nation's greatest ever tennis player, being rudely woken up at one o'clock in the morning. The culprits were the comedian Michael McIntyre, a TV camera crew, and a man dressed as a giant papier maché Peppa Pig.

Sport Relief, ladies and gentlemen. It was all 'hilarious' banter for charity. Ahahahaha. Ha.

Even when winning a semi-final on Centre Court... at actual Wimbledon, Sir Andy has a reputation for looking less-than-impressed! I'm not quite sure what Michael McIntyre was expecting as he switched off the night-vision, switched on the lights, and blared out a fanfare in another man's bedroom, but it would have been a miracle if Sir Andy had reacted in any way, other than 'Scottish volcano'.

In fact, what was the goal here? For us all to laugh at a famous person looking confused while a loud man and a plastic pig danced about at the end of his bed? For us all to sit at home and chuckle at how someone in the public-eye looks when they're suddenly woken from their sleep? I don't know about you, but I'm not sure that's quite as funny as the producers thought it was. I for one, didn't need to imagine it, or have it imagined for me, on-screen.

Andy Murray, knight-of-the-realm, father of two, wrapped half-naked in a duvet and suspiciously alone (his wife must have been in on the prank), volleyed a series of bleary-eyed expletives (muted by a fuzzy circle and a beep) and looked just about as furious as he'd done the last time Roger Federer lobbed him at the net.

Few could blame him. Meanwhile, the boyish McIntyre, himself a father of small children, chuckled at the camera as though sharing a joke with a pantomime audience. His eyes gave him away though. He must have known.

The camera cut (as though a few minutes had passed) and then a slightly more composed but still bed-bound Murray grudgingly played along with the showbiz game. I have a feeling Michael McIntyre knew he was lucky to get out of there without some sort of tennis-racquet-related injury.

I'm not always sure I understand the world, I thought to myself, as I cleaned my teeth. If I were a celebrity, I'd have thought there were few places safer, more anonymous, or private than my sleep. If even that refuge is gone, then what price that fame? No thank you!

The best Sir Andy Murray could hope for would be to imagine that the whole episode was just a very peculiar dream that might have been down to watching too much Peppa Pig/Live at the Apollo, before bedtime. I'd like to think that the next morning, he told Kim all about it and she laughed into her cornflakes.

Unfortunately for Sir Andy Murray though, it's now all over the Internet. A real celebrity eh, not even safe from the rest of us in his sleep. And all he ever wanted to do was play tennis.

In your dreams, Sir Andy. 

SNOW ON ST PATRICK’S DAY

I have an inkling that it shouldn’t really be snowing on St Patrick’s Day. And yet, tumbling out of the grey Saturday afternoon sky, are large flakes of fluffy white snow.

It’s supposed to be the season of cool breezes and hopeful sunshine! There ought to be cherry blossom and birdsong, bright yellow daffodils and green leaves, all happily waving under warm blue skies.

I’m wading through a packet of Fox’s party ring biscuits. Not to celebrate St Patrick’s Day you understand, but just because they’re here and so am I and I don’t know what else to do. I’m not Irish. I don’t like Guinness. I like colourful ring-shaped biscuits. And I’m bored.

Also, my neck if anything, is worse today, and I can barely move my head without also moving my shoulders. I look like a robot... with crumbs.

I do hope this is the last flurry of winter. It feels like it’s gone on long enough now, biting us with the wind, throwing snow, and blanketing the nation in thick grey clouds. We could do with some springtime. 

“Every day’s a party!” says the packet. I don’t know what that means. While, at the Fox factory I’m sure they switch off the conveyor belts every five minutes for a boogie and a glass of prosecco, out here in the real world, every day is definitely not a party. In fact, they might want to lay off the prosecco: I just noticed that this packet has a ‘quality guarantee’ printed on it, from a fictional cartoon panda, who states that these ‘biscwits... have more yum per crumb in every bite’.

It’s come to something when quality guarantees are being given out by made-up animals. ‘Vinnie’ may as well have claimed credit for there being no snakes in Ireland.

This is my Saturday then. Watching it snow from a sugar coma, each tasty bite guaranteed by an imaginary panda.

I made a little bet with myself. The first day of March was a blizzard. On that day, I suspected that the last of the month would be t-shirt weather, with the sun sparkling through a beautiful spring day.

So far, that seems unlikely. Two weeks to go.

SIXES AND SEVENS

I'm at sixes and sevens.

It's an odd phrase isn't it? I looked it up, to find that no-one seems totally sure about where it comes from. Chaucer used 'set on six and seven' as a sort of metaphor for risking your whole life on two dice in an epic gamble.^[1]

But then, there's a story of two London Livery companies disputing which order they are in the Order of Preference of the Livery Companies, and so fighting (for hundreds of years) over sixth and seventh place every Easter.^[2]

What I mean though, is that I'm not sure where I am - a little disoriented and uncertain.

I've been this way all morning - having arrived with a plan, and then having been pulled into meetings. That is a sure way to end up at sixes and sevens - lots of consecutive, confusing meetings.

Hmm. 'Pulled in' - another interesting phrase. It's business jargon I suppose, for someone poking their head around a door and saying something like "Matt, would you mind joining us for a moment?" rather than grabbing your jumper and dragging you through the door - although some would argue the end result is the same. You'd think wouldn't you that that kind of thing only happens to important people who are able to step in and make decisions? Not so.

But weirdly, that isn't what I mean either. What actually happened was that I had forgotten about the first meeting, and had to catch up with what was going on while I chewed my porridge in the meeting room.

Then, there was no time to prepare for the next one, so I sat through that looking clueless, blank, glum... blum, glank.... blueless, whichever the least horrible portmanteau version you prefer. Either way, I was 'at sixes, and at sevens', bluffing my way through those meetings like a sort of dishevelled, grumpy academic who's just been dusted off and 'pulled in' in the middle of a whacky science experiment. But with very little idea of what's going on. And a bowl of porridge.

Then it was lunchtime and I had neck ache from the breathtaking speed at which my head had been rotating between spoon, notebook and projector.

I think both Chaucer's risky gamble, and the Livery guild battles, embody the idea of 'sixes and sevens' - emerging together to form the messy idea of it being both recklessly confused, and yet clumsily disconnected from the normal smoothness of an organised life as though your very emotions are jostling for position.

I need a bit of order - in both senses of the word. It's risky living at sixes and sevens.



[1]. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sixes-and-sevens.html

[2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Merchant_Taylors

NOT IRRETRIEVABLE

I don’t often do extremely embarrassing things, but I do occasionally miss the mark and feel dreadful about it.

I gave someone some advice today. They responded by saying very bluntly:

“I’m not doing that; that’s lying.”

I stopped talking. They were right! What I was suggesting was a deception and there was no getting around it! I could barely believe I’d said it, thought it, condoned it: the easy way out, the lazy route, the awful path of untruth. I was suddenly a liar actively promoting the use of deceiving nice people to resolve an awkward situation. And I felt terrible.

Someone once said that it isn’t the big things that trip is up; it’s the little ones. I think it’s because they’re harder to see, and there are a lot more of them. They’re like mosquitos while you’re on a safari.

I did a couple of things, once I’d reflected on my ham-fisted attempts to peddle out of it. The first thing I did (and I may have got these the wrong way round) was to apologise. I texted, saying I was ‘100% wrong and really sorry.’ I said thank you too. Then the second thing I did was take it back to God and apologise. I asked for help to see the little things, and deal with the mozzies before they bite me. 

There’s a third thing to do too though, and that’s to forget it once it’s dealt with. Sometimes this is the hardest part, because we’ve consciously let ourselves down and it’s likely that we, ourselves, are our own biggest critic. But when a thing is forgotten by all, and lying irretrievably at the bottom of the ocean, thrown to obscurity by the Maker of all things... then it’s really time to let it go.

Ha! ‘Lying irretrievably...’ - thankfully I am hugely redeemable even if my behaviour lets me down. Thank You for retrieving me.

HOW TO BE A GENIUS

The other day, my friend Mike gently told me off for putting myself down when I had (jokingly) said, “I wish I were a super genius.”

Now, I don’t think Mike thinks I’m a super genius; I didn’t say it just so that he would put a brotherly arm around my shoulder and tell me how clever he thought I was. I don’t think Mike would do that anyway, so fishing for compliments would have been a waste of a boat trip, or more accurately, a waste of a coffee in Stockholmhaven.

He actually, looked at me quizzically, let two beats of silence pass, and then said this:

“I heard a story once of a very clever person who kept saying he wasn’t intelligent, when everyone knew he was - and much more so. In the end, he didn’t realise that he was also putting down everyone else in the room by being so self-effacing. If he didn’t believe himself to be smart, it followed that he also thought everyone else was much less intelligent too.”

Ouch. Who’d have thought that being diffident could be so blindly insulting to those around you? It had never occurred to me that being self-deprecating could actually come off as self-centred.

I think Mike knew exactly what he was doing. We went on to talk about dimensions of intelligence, and how it makes no sense at all to compare a brilliant empath with someone who makes fantastic furniture or remembers quiz facts; or to compare an incredible artist with a person who can write backwards, or design helicopters. 

The point is: we are all geniuses. No-one in the world has been, or ever will be, a better you than you, and nobody has the same potential that’s locked inside you. The unique combination of the thousands of ancestors who met, fell in love, and passed on their genetic code that would one day make you you, is an extraordinary singularity of probability. Whether you believe in chance, fate, or intelligent design, you are a work of absolute, world-changing, unrepeatable, one-in-a-quadrillion... genius.

And so am I.

Mike looked at me over a coffee cup while all of that sank in.

If we’re all geniuses, then the cleverest, kindest thing to do is to be ourselves and give each other permission to do the same. We recognise the different dimension that someone else might be working in, but we don’t let it influence our own - what’s more, as Mike had very cleverly pointed out, we don’t compromise our own genius ability, just to make others feel better about theirs. They’re different scales, along different axes. So it’s okay to find your axis and shoot along it. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

ROCKETS AND RETREATS

“I think I need to go on a retreat,” I whispered into a mug of lukewarm tea. It’s probably not a typical thought for five-minutes-before-a-wedding. But it was a thought, and it slipped into my head, and then tumbled into the mug, where nobody else could hear it.

I’m a musician, and on this particular occasion I was waiting, with the band, for the church to fill, and the bride to arrive before we started playing. The lukewarm tea had been given to me some time ago and I was gripping it between two cold hands.

A retreat. Would it help me stop feeling so heavy? It occurred to me that the best time for such a thing would be the Easter weekend. I could get three days in, that way. The Intrepids won’t be around at Easter (they’re still tickling Komodo dragons I think) either. And I doubt that my sisters will want me hanging around.

But then, where do I go? And how? And would it be okay to duck out of playing on Easter Sunday? Would Rory be alright with that? Plus it’s only a few weeks away. And I famously spent all my holiday money on council tax.

The bride arrived. We all stood as she walked to the front. I’ve often thought that getting married is a bit like launching a space-rocket - a lot of preparation goes into it, everybody gets together to cheer and take photographs, and for a short, dangerous, exciting time, every eye is hopeful, perhaps even certain, that it will make it through the stratosphere and shoot for the stars.

I’ve seen some sadnesses, some grounded astronauts, and some platform failures. As melancholy as it is for someone who wished they’d had a chance, it must be twice as hard if you already survived a short-lived flight, and yet you still keep getting invited to Cape Canaveral.

Don’t misunderstand me: that isn’t what’s making me feel heavy at the moment. I think I need some sort of retreat because I reckon the next season is going to be hard work and I want to be ready for it. And as part of that, I have to find a way to ditch the heavy anticipation of what’s coming. That pendulous feeling is there in my atmosphere and it’s not doing me much good by hanging around.

I could go camping - just for a weekend. That’s cheap. It could also be freezing. There might be something in that though - an opportunity to connect with the raw elements and feel alive. It could be an adventure, especially if I go back to the mountains. Just me in a tent, under the stars, listening to the night.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the bride and groom!” said Gareth as the happy couple beamed down the aisle and out of the church. It had been a great launch, and I found myself praying that that gravity-defying spirit would pull them through, wherever their trajectory might take them. It seemed like an awesome celebration of overcoming heaviness. And that can only be a good thing.

THE REMARKABLE CASE

There’s an old H.G. Wells story called ‘The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes’. In it, a man sees halfway around the world while the rest of him remains, evidently in Harlow Technical College.

Davidson wanders around as though in a trance, walking into equipment, colleagues, and benches, but somehow still seeing a beach, a schooner, the Pacific and the shoreline of a tropical paradise.

This, I have decided,  is my new technique for surviving the dental hygienist.

“Just relax,” she muttered, clearly frustrated as I screwed up my face again. She angled some sort of dreadful metal hook into my mouth and started scraping it across my teeth. I shuddered, squeamishly, and made balls with my fists. My toes curled up inside my shoes too.

Davidson’s Eyes. I stared up at the plasma lamp attached to the ceiling and let it drift out of focus. Plasma swirled into a ball of pale yellow light against the plasterboard ceiling, then gradually started to swim against the blue tiles. My eyes felt the warmth as my eyelids closed, a strong, sweet sense of summer flooding over me, growing and turning with every cascade of the ocean beyond.

The sun was hot between the palms. I let my gaze drift out beyond the white sand and out to sea. A hazy volcano, perhaps an island over the horizon, puffed lazy smoke into the sky. A sailboat, brilliant with white sails and red flags, carved a triangle of white through the turquoise waves. Closer, those same waves rippled gently onto the beach, where a single set of glistening footprints trailed along the water’s edge.

I relaxed into the sun lounger. To the right of me, another, empty, and there between us, was a small wicker table with a glass of something fizzy, popping and bubbling in the sparkling sunshine. A straw wobbled as the bubbles pushed it up. I could smell lemons.

There were lizards too. They scuttled around, looking implacably at me with their tiny black eyes. One flicked a tongue as though tasting the air, and then scuttled along the mottled bark of the nearest palm tree. Another raised its scaly head, like a dinosaur against the ocean.

And above it all, the hot sun burned through the sky, blinking through the deep green leaves of the palms as they waved in the breeze, dappling the ground with moving shadows of light and dark, light and dark. I closed my eyes and sank slowly backwards with a smile, all to myself.

“Right,” she said, “That’ll be that. I recommend using those type of brushes I told you about, and change the head of that toothbrush every three months, won’t you...

And try to relax.”

Before long I was on my way, back to the car, the grey sky, and the day job. And I’m not sure I felt a thing.

Perhaps ‘The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes’ is a hint - you can disconnect yourself from you sometimes if you want to, be somewhere else, maybe even be someone else for a while, and you can come back to reality feeling all the richer for it.

But then, anyone who’s ever read a book knows that story, don’t they?

THE PROFESSIONALS IN THE CAFÉ

Another day, another café. Today I’m alone in the work restaurant, overlooking the lake and the beehives.

I say alone, but it’s packed. Executives with open laptops sip lattes gingerly, and check their phones. Young marketing types with pretty hair and serious looks, chatter over plates of salad and angled Microsoft Surfaces. One points at the screen with a pen and the other nods, looking over her trendy thick-rimmed glasses.

The café itself is still quite new. It’s been built to resemble a Starbucks I think, complete with fancy lamps hanging from timber beams, and large glass windows from floor to ceiling. There are sofas and bookcases and plastic plants and eccentric chairs of course, along with wood-effect tables that are all different, yet weirdly the same. I’m sat at one, feeling the sunshine beam through the glass.

A lady walked over, and for the briefest moment she looked straight at me. I wondered whether she was about to say something or even sit opposite me, but in the half-second it took for me to clock her expression, she’d moved and sat with her friend.

That expression, by the way was, ‘I think that man’s got food in his beard.’

I was hoping to close my eyes and just listen to the world but it’s all papers and sales figures. Who cares about that stuff? Well I mean these people do, or they wouldn’t have taken those sales figures out to lunch with them. But these people only care because they’ve been told to.

That is the system. Care about these numbers like we do or we’ll find someone else with a passion for them (or at least a better skill at pretending to have a passion for them) while you’re honing your acting in the queue at the job centre.

It is funny sometimes to think of what people think is important. Me too - my world is far too small, sitting on the edge of a sunlit Starbucks, on my own, people-watching in the corner. Then, what do I know?

The sun beams in, warm through the glass. A wind ripples the blue lake and the shivering trees that surround it. Birds tumble and dive through the air and the swans glide past in their silent elegant way. Inside, the professionals are poring over their laptops. I smile and head outside for a bit.

PORTENTOUS FEELING

I've got that weird portentous foreboding feeling again. I had it yesterday, but it's worse today.

I don't know what it means.

Well, it means that I'm jumpy and angular, and reading too much into everything, and not really at peace, but other than that, I don't know what it means about what's about to happen.

Probably nothing. I'm probably just tired from staying up and writing about croissants.

It's possible that it started with me paying my council tax yesterday. Don't get me wrong - I don't begrudge paying my council tax at all, and my word, I'm grateful for teachers, nurses and refuse collectors! That tax is a joy really, and I prayed over it as it blipped out of my account.

It was just more than I was expecting, and that means I have to delay my next city-break adventure to a month when I can actually pay for it. That's life, says the Cliché Centre in my brain, echoing a thousand things my Dad would say.

Yes of course it is. You'd think though that the council would make it an easier process, instead of providing us with a website that throws up 404-errors, and then accepts, but doesn't verify, passwords with special characters in them!

As I said though - I'd much rather the money went to nurses and teachers than to fancy web developers. And I got there in the end.

Was that enough to make me feel a sense of impending disaster? I'm not convinced.

What then? Choppy waters in the South Pacific? Nope - just checked that and it's currently 29 degrees with an 8mph breeze. The Intrepids are fine. Inbound asteroid? I checked the BBC website but all it came up with was an episode of The Clangers. I think we're safe from a three-exclamation-mark-event.

It's just... something... out there in the atmosphere. My only comfort is that it will either resolve itself and I won't need to know anything about it, or it won't resolve itself, and I'll know everything about it soon enough. To put it another way, the tidal wave will either fizzle out on the sand, or... it won't.

HOW TO EAT A CROISSANT

If you’re of French extraction, you might not like what I’m about to tell you. I know, you’re still mad at me for eating Tuna Nicoise with my fingers the other day, and true, I would still struggle to pinpoint Bordeaux or La Rochelle on a map, but hear me out: I like France. I like the language and the fiddly food. I like the curious mix of attention to detail and the laissez-faire attitude to specifics. I like the romance, the delicate wine and the exquisite culture. And I love the French sense of style and effortless creative flair that swept the world like a master stroke of an impressionist’s paintbrush.

What’s extraordinary then is that it’s taken me twenty years to figure out how to eat a croissant.

I know. I started by ripping the ends off. That was my original mode d’emploi: tear off a piece like you would decapitate a baguette, then spread butter and jam over it and pop it in. Sure, you end up with a plateful of flakes and a mouth that’s dripping with buttery jam, and certainly you run out of butter at the continental breakfast bar, but it’s delicate. And it’s more refined than biting into it like it was a pain au chocolat.

That was my next guess. Pick it up and munch it from one crescenty end to the other. The only trouble is that you end up with a puzzle about what to do with the jam and butter - do you spread it... on the top? And then if you try to cut it lengthways with the butter knife provided, you quickly realise that the consistency of an oven-baked croissant depends exclusively on its shape, and any attempt to slice through it results in the whole thing collapsing... into a plateful of flakes.

It is possible that my family origin is French. One branch of us derives its name from Richard de Stybbe, a Norman nobleman who followed William the Conqueror with a wry quip and a love of punctuation and quizzes. I don’t know what Monsieur Richard de Stybbe would make of me massacring a croissant. The Bayeux Tapestry also doesn’t really cover the subject.

Anyway, for years now I’ve been using a knife and a fork (sometimes a spoon) to cut up my croissant as though it were a tiny, curved loaf of bread. Each segment gets dipped in or smattered with butter/jam/marmalade and is then slipped delicately into the mouth with the fork, leaving behind a rather smaller plateful... of flakes. For the record, I eat towering burgers in the same way, much to the hilarity of certain quarters, with a knife and a fork. Don’t get me started on massive burgers. If it’s too big to go in your mouth and requires a wooden tent peg to stop it falling apart, then it’s a good assumption that you’re not supposed to pick it up with your fingers and shove it in, and the use of implements like cutlery, whose actual job it is to make food the right shape for eating, is fair game. Leave me alone.

I digress. Apologies, Great Uncle Richard. For today I did something revolutionary. I took two croissants out of the packet, used a bread knife to cleanly cut them into long halves (which is much easier before they’re cooked) and put them in the oven at 200 degrees for two minutes. 

Before there was time to raise the tricolour or sing the Marseillleise, four halves came out. I laid on the slices of butter and the marmalade and reassembled the croissants. Perfect melty, bready, freshly baked, buttery, marmaladey, croissanty goodness - which I sliced vertically into two and then ate in front of a YouTube video about the planets.

Yum. Though, I did still end up with a plateful of flakes.

BORING AND DRAWING

I’m boring myself.

I’m boring, myself.

I’m, boring, myself.

Funny what punctuation can do. The end result is the same though: he who bores himself is both bored, and boring by definition. Whoop-de-do.

I’m in Starbucks, drawing, drinking tea, and munching shortbread. I haven’t done this for a while, so it’s a bit of a treat to be back. Except... I’m boring myself.

The angle of the lights here makes it impossible to take a photo of my sketch pad without the shadow of my phone falling across the page. I guess they’ve gone for angled halogens causing a diffuse mellowness suitable for a cosy chat. Shadows in all directions.

You know what I’d like? I’d like a stranger to say, ‘Mind if I join you?’ and sit opposite - just plonk down with a caramel latte and start chatting. I’d soon switch off the boring vibe if that happened. But it would take a brave soul to give that a go.

By that I mean (of course) that I don’t think I would do it. If it were a girl, it would be a creepy/scary/stalkerish thing to do. If it were a guy it would probably be even more awkward. The best I could hope for would be a two word rejection uttered in the finest Anglo-Saxon vernacular.

And who’s to know, I suppose, that this weirdo drawing in the corner isn’t going to do exactly the same? It would take a braver soul than me.

An older person could get away with it, perhaps? If they were polite about it and raised the option of me wanting privacy and them sitting somewhere else, right from the off. And even that might only work if the rest of Starbucks is packed.

It isn’t. And they rarely come here alone anyway.

So we sit, lost in our own thoughts under the angled halogens, tapping our laptops, sipping our tea and staring down at our phones.

How do people meet new people, I wonder? Friends of friends? Colleagues? Accidental collisions in corridors as though they’re in a teen-movie? Hilarious mixups? I’m not talking about dating by the way - I just mean the unquestionably difficult process of converting strangers to friends. You’d think it would be easier. Seems it’s more like blindfolded darts: if you’re lucky you’ll hit a bullseye; if you’re not, you’ll get hit in the face.

Anyway, I’m out of shortbread. And I am boring myself. I am boring, myself.

But you already knew that.

WINDOWS+L

How many seconds does it take to hit Ctrl+Alt, Delete and then press Enter? That's the way I've been locking my screen for the last six years.

I've calculated it as somewhere between 2 and 3 seconds. Did you know that you can do the same thing with Windows+L?

You probably did. Everyone seems to know it already. I just overheard Nell explain it to a new starter. Windows+L takes at most, 1 second - which means I've been losing 2 seconds every time I've left my desk.

Now then. Today is day 1,346. (Yes, I'm counting. Are you surprised?) If I lock my screen say, 10 times per day, that means that I've lost... seven hours and twenty eight minutes. That's like a whole working day, just hitting Ctrl with my little finger, stretching  my index finger to the Alt key and then thumping Delete with the little finger of my right hand... then hitting return... when I could have been using Windows+L this whole time.

How many other time-saving things could I be doing?

There's no way to calculate how much time I spend daydreaming or gazing out of the window.  Neither is it likely that I can predict the exact time of day when I'm statistically likely to navigate the kitchen for a cup of tea, without having to shimmy past everyone else shoving the milk back in the fridge-door or stirring their coffee directly in front of the drawer with the spoons in it.

I doubt I'll be able to work out the percentage of each day I rant to Erica about exclamation marks or use of the word 'fewer', or listen to Ian's phone ringing, or raise an eyebrow at whatever latest thing has got the engineers in a spin.

That's okay though: you can go over the top with these things and be too nerdy about the numbers.

So that's it for blog post 1,220 on Day 1,346, hour 8,233, minute 494,020. I've got work to do.

Windows+L.

LATE-NIGHT AMNESIA

“Let’s be honest,” must have said my face, “I just played as though I were recovering from a bout of amnesia.”

We’re supposed to smile and enjoy a barn dance from behind our instruments - masters of the craft, confident enough to wave with one hand and kick out a killer solo with the other, making everyone feel like we’re all there to have a great time. Well, maybe not a ‘killer solo’ at a barn dance, but you know what I mean. We’re not supposed to look puzzled or stressed.

We’re definitely not supposed to play in different keys to each other - I did that a few times tonight. I just lost concentration while trying to appear cool. I tried to bluff my way through it. I didn’t get away with it.

Thankfully, I rescued it in the waltz. That sounded awesome at least.

I’ve realised that I play much more by feeling than by theory. If it feels like a B minor, I’ll sweep through a B minor even when the music says D. They’re sort of the same, I quickly reason, and just do it. Maybe on Sundays they are close enough, but not always (I’ve confused Rory more than once), and I’m sure there are times when nobody tells me what I did.

I wonder whether it’s possible to get to a point where you all ‘feel’ the same changes and you all go with it. It seems like a poor substitution for rehearsal and arrangement, but if it could be reached, it would be an awesome thing.

Anyway, I packed up my things and headed home.

I seem to always feel a kind of late-night-sadness after these things; not because it’s over and I don’t want to stop playing. I look forward to my bed as much as anyone else. I think it’s more to do with my atmosphere, and probably my exhaustion at having to drive an hour home through the night-rain with only the radio for company. And often the feeling that I played as though I only just remembered what a piano is.

I suppose the good bit is that I’ll probably forget all about this feeling before the next time.

ONE PART NOVELTY

Second snow day in a row.

One of the things I like about this country is our cyclical relationship with snow: one part novelty, two parts fascination, three parts frustration. Then we go months and years without thinking about it at all, never buying snow-tyres and shovels, or toboggans and sledges. Until one day, down it comes again and the curious national obsession returns.

The park was full of people this afternoon. I saw them from the window - crowding around the bench at the top of the hill, the same bench I sit on on starlit summer nights when there's nobody there at all.

They were sledging today - hundreds of kids flinging themselves down the hill on plastic trays for fun. Then the snow started blizzarding again, and the crowd slowly dwindled until twilight flung its weird arms around the day.

Meanwhile of course, the Intrepids are exploring the luxuriant East Coast of Australia. I opened my inbox to pictures of palm trees and sandy beaches. They said they'd been to a botanical garden where all the plants were so unreal and vibrant that they looked like cardboard cutouts. They do love a botanical garden.

Hot and humid too, they said. No swimming at palm cove because of the deadly Box Jellyfish, but still, sweltering and sunny.

I looked out of the window at the frozen wasteland, the snow sputtering out of the sky and swirling in the icy wind. It's a wonder we're on the same planet.

Other countries have a more normal relationship with snow, I presume. I guess in Finland they just get on with it. In Sweden they pull on thick coats and climb into big vehicles. In Canada, they cheerily wrap themselves up and plough on through as though it were any other day and they're as cool as ever... I imagine.

Here, a blizzaard is on the national news and the BBC run stories about people stuck in their cars on the M62, and how local kind people brought them food and blankets.

What were they doing on the M62 in the first place?

As for me, I stayed in and worked from my laptop. I dialled in to a Skype meeting in my pyjamas and sipped a bottle of ginger beer while fixing defects. I hiked up the hill to Martin and Sarah's for lunch, then forgot to go to the Co-Op on the way back. I was too busy thinking about how many different types of snow there are, and how, unlike the Inuits, we only really have one word for all of them. I got to the end of the allotments and realised it was much closer just to go home.

One part novelty, two parts fascination eh? Thankfully, for me, I haven't felt the three parts frustration of it this time - there's been no sliding around nor that pesky inability to get to places. I've been alright, working from home, and since Wednesday night my car has been happily sitting out there, parked up on the roundabout at the end of the cul-de-sac, amassing snow like a Christmas pudding.

I could just eat a bit of Christmas pudding...

Funny how you can't get that all year round. Maybe I'll trudge up to the Co-Op and see if they have anything brandyish. Or at least anything at all that's more than one part novelty, two parts fascination.

SNOW DAY

I've taken a snow day today. That means I'm staying at home, in the warm, instead of trying to steer my car down two icy hills to work. I am very grateful that I get the opportunity to do that, with my laptop and my phoneline and all.

Meanwhile, out there, the world is white. Cars are caked in icing like it’s Christmas, and roof-tiles are dusted with sugar. Deep, dark tyre tracks carve across the road in sweeping circles, where those braver than me took their cars out while it was still dark.

Winter's quite beautiful, isn't it? One day I'd like to see those thick glassy icicles that hang from the corners of log cabins. I'd like to see them sparkle in the brilliant morning sunshine. I'd like to walk inside a blue glacier and peer through pure, perfect ice, or stand on a ridge and see a great frozen canyon, and snow-capped mountains rising above an ocean of morning fog.

In fact, it's times like these that I'd like to be into photography and be able to get out into the park and take pictures of frozen cobwebs or hexagonal snowflakes on hedgerows.

But I have work to do, of course. And anyway, it's warm in here, where I can see the snow tumbling softly outside my window.