SMOKE ALARM

I’ve hurt my foot while disabling the smoke alarm. I guess I’ve proven at least, that it works, and that I’m not going to perish in a towering inferno.

Every cloud.

This comes from running a bath and making toast at the same time. You would have thought I could notch up two things on the multi-tasking inventory! Nope, can’t even make it to Basic Level One Multi-Tasking Training, the simple art of combining one low maintenance activity with another. My brain simply forgot what it was doing.

For the briefest of moments I imagined that the the hot bath had set the alarm off - so I turned the taps off.

The alarm continued to howl like a robot banshee. It’s so loud it could be used to indicate when a jumbo jet is reversing. It’s a wonder the dogs from the park in the next village haven’t come barking up my front door. Presumably closer neighbours just rolled their eyes at each other.

Within half a second of course, I realised that the grill in the kitchen was billowing with smoke. I pulled it out and the handle fell off, clattering metallic to the floor. What looked like the ancient remains of two fossilised leaves, temple sacrifices of a bygone age, chuffed fresh smoke into the air, extinguishing every memory that they had once been fresh slices of Warburtons Wholemeal, Medium Sliced. I left them there. The alarm was still wailing.

Gazelle-like I sprang. I grabbed a dining chair and planted it directly underneath the smoke alarm, leaping stocking-footed onto the seat. It wobbled. It was at that point of course that I stubbed the chair and bashed my foot. No time to really notice though. I was busily thumping the smoke alarm, encouraging it to shut up.

I’ve always found encouragement to be a wonderful tool, useful in many a pastoral situation. A gentle word, after all, turneth away wrath. Well in this instance the gentle encouragement of the palm of my hand was more effective in the end. The alarm stopped.

The toast was of course, crispy. I scraped it and ladelled it with lovely butter and marmalade, and then crunched into it with my teeth.

My foot throbbed.

Nothing that a nice hot bath won’t sort out! I cheerily said to myself. Perhaps I could also use the time to calculate how to multi-task better, how to flick imperceptibly from thought to thought like some of my cleverer friends do. Perhaps I could use it to consider life’s great challenges of organisation, of communication, of relating well to people, and of getting things done, efficiently, quickly, brilliantly.

Perhaps. And perhaps it would all have been a lot more possible, had I not accidentally run a bathful of cold water.

THOUSANDS OF HOLES

I still don’t think I’m very well.

Of course, racing around the country won’t help. It was another barn dance gig last night; this time somewhere near Portsmouth, in a building with 33,792 holes in the ceiling.

Ventilation, I think. And yes, between tunes while staring at the roof.

The M27 was closed on the way back and I had to put my legendary navigation skills into practice to get home. My phone died somewhere in deepest Hampshire at around midnight, so I pointed the car in roughly the right direction and hoped for the best.

It had been a long day. Early morning walk with Paul and a decent breakfast in Café St Louis. That had been followed by The Turning in a sunny Forbury Gardens, a long coffee with my sister in the hipster-hub that calls itself Workhouse Coffee, and a brief equipment check of the Nord Stage 2 EX. Then I left for the gig as the sun started its descent over the motorway.

I feel a bit queasy. That’s not quite the right word but it’s the closest. I’m upside-down, weak and watery, like there’s an achey exhaustion I’ve convinced myself might be normal and have pushed through. And weirdly I can’t work out whether any of that is physical. It’s a muddle alright.

The holes were tiny. They were arranged in groups of six, like tally chart markers. Then, the groups of six were grouped into sixteens in squares of four by four. Along the ceiling there were twenty two columns by eight rows of sixteens. And that was duplicated on each side of the roof. Thousands of holes. For ventilation.

Maybe just open a window.

I got back home at 1:30am. The moon was high and bright and stars sparkled in the ice-cold sky. I was tired and queasy. The street was silent. I clicked open the front door and flicked on the light switch. Nothing happened.

LIGHTBULBS

I bought lightbulbs today. I keep forgetting, and then unlocking the door and flicking the switch in the hall, which does nothing at all for the darkness.

The ‘hall’...Ha! Listen to me! As though it were a Viking long room, glinting with treasures of old battles, lit by the fires of flaming torches against the colonnades and architraves, festooned with shields and tankards, platters and goblets for merriment and feasting!

To be honest it would be nice if there were room for a hatstand.

I’d settle for a space that’s big enough to take your existing shoes off without backing into the shoe rack and tumbling all previous shoes into a pile on top of the Midweek Chronicles. It’s not really a hall, more like a sort of a cupboard with stairs in it.

Well I guess a little illumination will help.

It occurs to me that most people probably have a stock of lightbulbs. I would guess in the cupboard under the stairs; a little box of six, well maybe five, several years old but that will definitely fit when required. That’s my guess.

Not me. I didn’t even think it in the shop today - get a box, put them in the cupboard. I just bought two lightbulbs - one for the hall and one for my bedside lamp (which similarly blew, some embarrassing length of time ago).

This is what I mean by being rubbish at planning ahead. My life has very few boxes of lightbulbs.

One day I’ll afford it. One day. A proper shoe cupboard, an umbrella pot, a cupboard for coats, a shelf for the post, and a bin for the Midweek Chronicles. Maybe a little bar for drinks receptions, a piano and a pot with an arty tree in it next to a Mondrian or a Matisse on the wall.

For now though, I guess I’ll be thankful for the small things - like lightbulbs. Yeah. Electric lanterns at the flick of a switch. 

Not even the Vikings had those beauties in their fancy halls, did they?

SLEEPLESS IN LAS VEGAS

It’s another late one. I can’t seem to go to sleep, and my thoughts are bothering me.

There’s a hotel in Las Vegas with a laser beam that’s so bright it’s created its own ecosystem of insects and owls.

The sick bug turned out to be one of those two-hour things by the way. A little sleep and I was as right as rain. Though my colleagues didn’t seem to agree.

“You look like you haven’t slept,” said one of them when I first got in. Annoying. One of the rare occasions when I had, and it looked like I hadn’t. Presumably most days (and obviously tomorrow) I look like (and will continue to look like) I’ve attempted kipping in the hedge and scrubbing up in the bird bath. I wasn’t brave enough to argue the point. I just went to make porridge.

Moments later, I trudged back to my desk.

“Someone’s stolen my porridge! Unbelievable!” I said, half quivering with outrage and half with melancholy. My porridge oats had vanished from the kitchen!

My workmates of course, heard only the outrage half, and they matched it with a giggling satire of sorts:

“Have you, er, also checked to see whether anyone’s been trying out your chair for softness?” asked Tim.

“What?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s someone who’s fallen asleep on that really comfy bed in the medical room.”

I didn’t think I needed jokes about it. What I needed was a hot bowl of lovely porridge, and my not too hot, not too cold but just right porridge oats, had been summarily nicked from kitchen.

I found myself checking my attitude and then subsequently sitting at my desk praying for forgiveness for Goldilocks.

Shakespeare never mentions September. In all his works, not once. Amazing.

I made a decision tonight not to say something about something. It might have been the wrong one, but it felt sort of right at the time. How in the world are any of us to know whether the thing on your mind is the distraction or the real thing? Push it away? Pick it up? Do something? Do nothing? Could go any number of ways. Oh well. Perhaps there’ll be another moment.

It’s not right is it, Las Vegas? If I ever lose my marbles and say ‘Take me to Vegas, baby!’ you have full permission to knock me out, put me on the sleeper train and wake me up somewhere much nicer, like Cornwall, West Wales, or Dorset or somewhere. Prop me up by those seaside arcades and I won’t know the difference.

Of course if I call you ‘baby’ you have permission to knock me out anyway.

A hotel with an ecosystem in a laser beam, indeed.

I put a message out on chat about my missing porridge. No replies, just a Simpsons gif. I went and stared at the breakfast biscuits in the vending machine for a while.

Maybe he just didn’t care for the Autumn, old Bill. Perhaps, like my Dad, he found it depressing and focused on comparing everything to ‘summers’ days’ and rhyming June with ‘moon’ and so on.

Urgh. I should go to sleep. I should at least try. I might not be able to figure out distractions but I can certainly lose myself in them, it seems! There must be a plan to work it all out regardless, right?

I do hope so. Otherwise I’ll be back here again like a sleepless wonder in an imaginary Las Vegas of distractions.

SUDDENLY SICK

I can’t explain how hunger turned into sickness so quickly.

If I snapshot it in my memory it looks like me happily driving out of work, and into the low evening sun. Then it looks like me, standing in the Co-Op trying to decide what to eat before my meeting with Gareth and Graham. Then it looks like me deciding that my need for ‘output’ outweighs my need for input, and turning around and heading for the loo. Then it looks like me burning up with a fever, and telling Gareth that I need to go home.

And so, I’m home - ill within the space of barely an hour! And not hungry in the slightest. 

How did that happen? I was having a good day too: bit of documentation work, a lunchtime walk, some cheery conversation, a Twix; all the usual pleasantries. Even an hour of JavaScript Club! Now suddenly I’m lying in my bed, listening to the ticking clock and a burbling stomach.

Do you know that thing where your mouth is sort of watering, but it’s a prelude to er... excuse my lingo... being sick? I’ve often thought that the smell of Marmite induces that. And I love Marmite! But I have that watery feeling right now. I’m also very cold, like an icicle.

So, induced rest it is then. I might read for a while, then sleep for a while longer. Clearly my body is telling me I need to do something along those lines. And it’s about time I started listening.

SIX MACAROONS

I like to think that many years from now, history will ask what I did, what noble feat was accomplished by me, Matt Stubbs, aged 40, on the evening of Monday, September 24th, 2018.

Perhaps before then, even I, in my final waking hours, lying at the fading daylight and smiling at the sun that never shall set, surrounded by family, friends and harp-strumming angels, will lean gently back into the fluffed pillows of my eternal sleep, and with glinting moistened eyes remember...

Six Macaroons

I’ve eaten a packet

Of six macaroons

And now I resemble

The king of balloons

A chocolatey giant

I’m filling the room

Oh I’ve eaten a packet

Of six macaroons

I’ve chomped absent-minded

Through biscuity crunch

And coconut crumble

And sugary punch

Eclipsing my supper

And dwarfing my lunch

I’ve eaten this packet

Of macaroon munch

I’ve eaten my way through

These six macaroons

I’ve swallowed the sun

And digested the moon

And nice though it was,

I am a buffoon

For eating a packet

Of six macaroons

IRRELEVANT IRRELEVANCE

More Casterbridge Tension today. I think it's starting to affect my self-confidence.

It turns out that one of the downsides to making yourself invisible, is that nobody can see you.

Who'd have thought it?

That's the Casterbridge Tension alright - the feeling that you're no longer needed, and possibly that anything you have to offer is now irrelevant. It's like being old in a roomful of young people.

But, just like it's true in that room, I think irrelevance might be a bit of an illusion in this. In fact, it could even be (whisper it) a flat-out lie.

I think it might be all a matter of timing and context, and being patient enough to find the right moment and the right fit. After all, I suspect that the old person in a young room is just one biscuit and one cup of tea away from a story that changes the lives of every person within earshot! The irrelevance isn't real.

And for me, wondering what I've got to bring that's relevant to situations that don't seem to need me - it's worth remembering that I'm not necessarily made irrelevant by the circumstance, but that I can make the circumstance irrelevant by bringing me into it... at the right time and in the best way.

So, resolving the Casterbridge Tension - it's all about patience and a bit of wisdom about where and how you fit. And it's sort of about listening too - understanding the shape of the hole before picking the piece of jigsaw-puzzle you need from your box of experience.

My lack of self-confidence is temporary, I think. I'll be back, and I'll be great if I learn to listen and flow.

Though I have to say, if I'm in a roomful of young people and I go on about tea, biscuits, and jigsaw puzzles, you might want to just remind me.

NEWBIE NIBLING

I’ll come back to the Casterbridge Tension. Meanwhile, the big news is that I get to be an uncle again!

That’s nice news, isn’t it? Probably next April. My Mum wanted us all to know before it went ‘live’ on flumpbook.

“The first of us who’s not a European!” pointed out my Dad, sagely. We quickly advised moving on from that charged conversation. Though it’s worth noting that he found that hilarious.

So, the Eighth Nibling! Number 6 jumped on me as though I were a climbing frame, and demanded a game of Tenzi (it’s a dice game).

Meanwhile Number 4 was busy playing Fortnite, and Number 2 was under a blanket, complaining of food poisoning. 

Somewhere else, Number 1 was at work (she’s 24), Number 3 was running around a garden with two hats on, and Number 5 was probably go-karting with travellers. 

Edward The Seventh was reading Pigs and Ham, or maybe memorising the continents, perhaps unable to process that he might get a new little brother or sister. And how! Another new Nibling!

If ever I need to be thankful, I hope my brain can remind me of these moments. I get to be the uncle to eight amazing children: funny and sensitive, smart and sweet, kind and beautiful. I get to take them by the hand and show them at least a little bit of what it’s like in this silly old, wonderful world, and how to leave it better than they found it. Best of all, I get to do that in an actual, real-life, funny family. Hope I do a good job of that, especially with the Newbie Nibling.

... though usually my strategy seems to have been to wind them up until they’re hyper, and then give them back to their parents.

CASTERBRIDGE TENSION

I’m struggling with a thing. Maybe you can help me out. It’s managing the tension between feeling relevant, and becoming invisible.

I’ll use scrum mastering as an example, because I think that captures it. It’s a technical role in software development that defines itself as a sort of ‘servant leader’. I’ve always interpreted that as meaning doing everything you can to make that team function as a team, self-organise and self-review without you enforcing or imposing anything. It’s a nice combination of soft skills and analytical thinking.

“My goal,” I heard myself say once, “is kind of to make myself invisible.”

I still stand by that. I still think it’s an okay thing to aim for, to work behind the scenes to unblock all the obstacles and guide the team into a culture of focus and success. I still believe that can work.

But at what expense to the self?

While that ruminates, I’ll tell the story of an English classroom at my school, somewhere around the year 1992. We were stuck into the grit of The Mayor of Casterbridge, when one of my schoolmates jumped in shock, and pointed at the window. Before long, we were all peering out into the playground.

There, in all his assembly regalia (mortarboard, flowing black gown, shiny shoes) was the Headmaster of all people, gripping a long-handled litter-picker in one hand and a bin bag in the other. He was grabbing crisp-packets and chocolate wrappers and anything else blowing around the concrete.

“Oh so that’s what that man does!” exclaimed a boy near the window.

Is that the end result of invisibility, I wonder? Nobody knows what you do, but somehow it’s critical that you do it? How do you delegate, share, envision, appoint, let go... become invisible... without losing your self along the way? How do you avoid becoming irrelevant?

I don’t think anyone is about to sit in on of our scrum meetings, see our team thrash out what we’re doing and then wonder what on earth they need a scrum master for. I think we’re safe for now. But I would like to prove that I’m having an impact, I think. If for no-one else’s benefit but my own.

I don’t particularly want to end up like The Mayor of Casterbridge.

DOPPELGÄNGERS AND DEEP PROCESSING

I sometimes think that if there were another one of me, a doppelgänger if you will, we’d absolutely have to live on opposite sides of the town in order to avoid annoying each other.

Let’s call him T-tam. T-tam and I would not get on. For a start, I’d be constantly wondering what he’d be thinking and he’d tell me he was ‘deep processing’ it. Oh T-tam you old duffer, you only say that to draw attention to yourself.

T-tam’s eyes narrow.

“And you Matt,” he’d say, “over-analyse people because it makes you feel less inferior about yourself, and less likely to be wrong about things.”

I do not.

“Oh you hate being wrong!”

I really do not!

“Yeah you do.”

Shut up, T-tam. You’re going grey.

See. Other sides of the town. He can do all the technical writing and arguing about Oxford Commas, while I write songs, or poems about bananas. Maybe we could meet up from time-to-time, and play Stressy Scrabble in Starbucks and confuse some baristas.

Anyway. There is no T-tam. And this week I have been doing some ‘deep processing’. 

After realising that I was prone to interrupting other people’s sentences the other day, I’ve been doing my best to listen. It’s especially difficult when an opinion is thumping its way out of my chest and somebody is still talking. But it’s great discipline. Listen for the full stop. One beat. And go.

In fact, there have been two meetings this week when I’ve barely said a word. I hope that doesn’t come across as pompous; I really am just trying to get much better at listening and responding, rather than bursting in to someone else’s moment. My head has been a swirl of hundreds of clockwork possibilities, but none of them have ticked over into verbalised ideas. And certainly, the room hasn’t always been ready for me. I think deep-processors have to pick their moments and consider their audience. And sometimes, the time just hasn’t been right.

And anyway, T-tam would nick all my best ideas and claim them as his own. And that would do my head in.

PENSIONERS’ TWITTER

I’m in the car, listening to Question Time and the rain. Now, I need to divert a mo for the benefit of everyone who isn’t from the UK. Bear with me, Brits.

So Question Time is a kind of TV political quiz show, where nobody wins anything, the host is grumpy, and the questions don’t really have any answers. It’s mystifyingly popular.

My Dad loves it. He watches it every week with the subtitles and the comments on the red button - it’s like Pensioners’ Twitter. He likes to predict what the first question will be. Even now he’ll have heard the gentleman from Dewsbury open the show with his question about Brexit.

“Does the panel think that Brexit...”

“Told you!” my Dad will have said to the TV, tapping the remote on the arm of the sofa.

But this week, I’m listening to QT (it’s broadcast on the radio too) in my car, in the middle of a rainstorm. There’s a lot of hot air out there. The country is in one of those swing moments of history and everyone can feel it.

It’s windy too: Storm Bronagh apparently. She bends the trees in her fingers and hurls the rain like bullets through the darkness. They splatter across my windscreen and hammer the roof. I’ve been here before. I should make a dash for it.

The panel are talking about trains now. I’ve switched off. My Mum will have gone to bed, my Dad will be nodding, and the subtitles will be furiously scrolling for nobody’s benefit. Debate is good I think, if it gets us somewhere. But way too often we’re shouters and preachers, we’re arguers, and we’re professional reactors - on TV, on the red button, on Pensioners’ Twitter, and on real Twitter! Who’s doing any listening? Who’s growing? Who’s (dare I say it) changing their opinion? 

Sometimes I just feel like saying, “Give it a rest. Listen to the rain for a bit and savour the moment.”

But nobody can hear me right now. I’m sitting in my car in the middle of a rainstorm. And it’s really quite refreshing.

TALK-LIKE-A-PIRATE DAY

“Did you go to a museum while you were on holiday, Matt? I know you like that kind of thing.”

I smiled.

“Yeah! We went to the National Waterfront Museum. It was really good! I learned about steam ships, and they had some old locomotives, and cars, well ‘horseless carriages’ really, and I sat in a Sinclair C5, and oh yes, I also picked up a load of new knowledge about pirates!”

“Pirates eh? Nice bit of family history research for you there.”

Unbelievable. I sometimes wish I’d not told my colleagues about the piracy in my family. I mean they were technically criminals, no matter how romanticised we’ve made it. And my ancestors (Welsh pirates all) might have been no exception.

Still, there are some bits of Black Bart’s Pirate Code that I really like! Black Bart was a notorious captain who set out rules for being a pirate.

For example, lights and candles had to be put out at eight o’clock (unless you were drinking on deck!) - a sensible idea, a curfew!

No gambling was allowed, though I’m not sure what the punishment was for breaking out a deck of cards. Presumably marooning, as it was for most other things.

You had to keep your ‘piece, pistols and cutlass clean and fit for service’ but if you had a quarrel with another shipmate, you couldn’t lay a finger on him at sea. You had to wait until you were both on shore! I like to think of this as the equivalent to ‘not letting the sun go down while you’re still angry’... you would at least have the chance to calm down Burly Bill before he had at you with his freshly sharpened cutlass on the next desert island.

My favourite bit of the code though is that the musicians got a day off. Every sabbath. Sure, the other days they had to swash and buckle with the best of ‘em, but at least once a week, the box players and pipers could put their boots up.

“I like the sound of that!” I said. Swinging lanterns and sea shanties on a Saturday, then a good old day of rest on a Sunday.

“It’s Wednesday,” said someone, reminding me that I’m currently a technical author in an office and not a melodion player on the Crusty Barnacle. “Those doubloons don’t earn themselves!”

I went back to my day job.

THE CLEANERS DISCUSS ATLANTIS

Today the cleaners were arguing about which ocean Atlantis might have been in. I had stayed late to do some work on the JavaScript course I’m learning, and I couldn’t help overhearing George The Cleaner furiously explain how if you “take off the S” and “replace it with a C”, you get the answer “obviously” spelled out for you.

The other cleaners thought he was somehow talking about how Atlantis sank into the ‘sea’ ... and confusion burbled over the clinking plates and the vacuum cleaner. George looked puzzled.

I am not poking fun at the cleaners by the way. Today, in a meeting, I accidentally started a silly debate about whether ‘check box’ is one word or two. I was adamant that Microsoft specified it as two words, but the rest of the team weren’t convinced.

And don’t get me started on ‘which versus that’ or occasions for use of the Oxford Comma! I suspect the cleaners would have found that kind of discussion just as bizarre.

I was surprisingly vocal about the check box thing! I interrupted Erica mid-sentence at one point and chipped in. I hate it when I do that; it feels as though I’m somehow being misogynistic, but in a terrible subconscious way that might be hardwired without me realising. I resolved that I would listen carefully to the rest of the discussion and stop interjecting, just in case. Wait for a space.

There are times though, aren’t there, when that space never arrives! Brains move faster than sentences, and before Person X has finished her thought, Person Y has started to think through theirs. Person Z has not been listening, and is about to repeat what Person W said ten minutes ago as though it’s a brand new zinger. Meanwhile, there are no full stops in sight, no breathers to pause and ponder. We race on at a hundred miles per hour.

Nope, I’ve never known what to do with that situation. Jump in? Tricky. Wait? Infuriating. Listen? Patience-testing. Also, my brain seems to circle around things that are peculiarly eccentric to the conversation, and would help entirely nobody. Sometimes just because something is true, it doesn’t make it relevant.

There was no way I was launching into the Atlantis conversation! Yes, I think Plato made it up, yes I think the idea of a mysterious and mythical threat from across the unknown sea is at best a nifty literary device, and at worst a political construct for greasing Athenian minds to war and Republic. And yes I think the mythology of the place got out of hand in the same way that humans in the year 4000 might argue over whether Hogwarts existed. And yes, if it’s anywhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules, then Atlantis would have been ... in the Atlantic. But there was no way I was going to say all that without warning, to George The Cleaner!

Nope. Probably best if I stick to check boxes.

MY MUM HAS SUPER-POWERS

"The past two mornings, I've woken up feeling really sick," I said. My Mum poured the tea. She sat back, looked at me, and raised an eyebrow.

"Have you been having any unusual... cravings?" she asked wryly.

She sipped her teacup with what could only be described as ‘expert timing’.

"Pretty sure it's not... that," I retorted.

What it actually is though, I'm at a loss to explain. It's not really even physical nausea; I haven't felt like this since... well, for a long time! I've definitely not upset anybody that I know of. And this is more pronounced than the usual 'something somewhere doesn't feel right' feeling I get sometimes. Clearly my subconscious is picking something up.

This morning, the grey light was seeping through the curtains. The room was dark, grimly lit by the edges of the miserable dawn. Whatever it is, this feeling is oppressive. I pushed through it.

"What did you have for dinner?" asked my Mum, later in the conversation.

"Oh last night? Pizza," I replied.

"Hmmm. And the night before?"

I was suddenly staring down the tablecloth.

"Um... an apple."

"Ah," she said.

Mums, and I think it might be all mums, have a way of using just one syllable to its maximum possible effect. How do they do that? In fact, it occurred to me, that some of them don't need any syllables! Oh to have that kind of super-power! As you can see, I’m quite fond of using hundreds of syllables to say hardly anything at all.

So, tonight I’m determined to eat properly and sleep well. As the sun twinkles through the window and my eyes flutter open tomorrow, I will feel as though I’ve been floating on marshmallow clouds to the music of James Galway and his orchestra of saints. Ethereally, I’ll rise and greet the day as I drift to work in a sea of golden sunshine. Right? Right?

And actually, my Mum will know it before she’s asked me anyway, because that is (maddeningly) another one of her super-powers.

RENAISSANCE CHERUB

Well. It's that exact time of day, and the exact time of year, when the low setting sun angles from the building opposite, reflects through the broken venetian blinds, and lights me up like a Christmas Angel.

"Behold I bring you great news!" I turned and said to Erica, triumphantly. I probably ought to have provided some context, but I thought it was funny. I probably also ought to have thought it through...

"It's er... it's just that it's nearly the end of the day," I recovered, sheepishly. The sun must have been turning my ears even redder than they felt.

I guess the sheep were just as important to the Christmas story though; interesting how quickly I descended through the rafters, from seraphim to livestock. But again, not out of place with the Christmas message.

What am I going on about? It's still only September!

As you guessed, I'm back at work after my holiday, and so far, getting to grips with whatever it is I do between tea breaks.

"You were really cross about this before you left," someone said, regarding some UX design thing I'd complained about, and had forgotten about in Wales.

"Really?" I asked. "I don't remember that!"

"Oh yes! We were all quaking!" he went on, surprisingly able to laugh about it. Maybe I needed a holiday, more than I knew. I'm not usually that volcanic.

Well. Right now, I'm illuminated like a Renaissance cherub.

That's what a holiday'll do for you.

A HUNDRED AND ONE STEPS

I closed my eyes. The sea roared in the distance, and the sun was still warm on my face.

Right foot in front of left. Eyes shut. The sand bounced beneath my trainer the way that wet, tide-bound sand always does. Left in front of right. Right in front of left. My eyelids fluttered.

Forty-seven was my record - one rainy day in the church garden. Here though, on this vast expanse of open, flat sand, I knew I could beat it. I flung my hands behind my back and I walked, listening to the sea grow louder, feeling the warmth of the sun on my eyelids, and the springy sand beneath me.

There were small stones buried in the sand. I could feel them through my soles. There were larger rocks too, I knew that, I’d seen them before I decided to close my eyes and walk in a straight line. Of course, you can’t actually walk in a straight line with your eyes closed; something in our brains makes us spiral, no matter how hard we try. I could easily have stumbled on some unexpected boulder, jammed into the wet sand.

The wind picked up. My shorts and t-shirt started flapping like flags around my limbs. I heard a dog, thumping the sand at a hundred miles an hour. Still my eyes were shut.

“Sixty seven, sixty eight, sixty nine...”

What if I reach the sea before I stop? I could already hear the squelch of my trainers, and the waves were crashing louder ahead of me. Perhaps I would keep walking, right into the Atlantic Ocean, until it was up to my knees, my waist, my chest? I thought perhaps the quest for the record might not necessarily stretch that far. Plus the newspaper headlines would be unbearable for everyone who knew me before I got swept out to sea while counting how far I could walk with my eyes closed.

“Eighty four, eighty five, eighty six.” Still sand. The ocean roared. “Eighty seven, eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety.”

Is this like life? Walking blind, along a sunswept beach, in a much larger world of sky, ocean, rock and sunshine? Is there more out there, if we open our eyes, instead of just randomly heading into the sea... for no reason? What are we all afraid of?

Of course, it’s pretty easy to just open your eyes, when you think about it.

“Ninety eight, ninety nine, one hundred.”

I stopped. My eyes flicked open and I stepped (one hundred and one) into the bright sunshine.

Rhossili beach swam into focus. Worm’s Head, the serpentine rocks that jut into the sea, were basking lizard-like in the sun, the light falling onto the green and dark, glistening rock. The sea, clear and blue crashed in white horses as the tide rolled in, and there at my feet, the edge of the waves swirled around the tips of my trainers.

I looked back at the sand. A chain of footprints trailed back to shore, curving off  to the bank of dunes and the steep, grassy climb to the village. A hundred steps suddenly looked a lot further than I’d imagined. I’d come a long way with my eyes closed.

Just imagine what we could do with them open!

SWEETIES

Hokay, let’s try that again... Everything’s off, the washing’s dry, my out-of-office replies are on, and it is very much time to go on holidays.

I know. I wrote all that earlier and then went into great length about how the barista at Starbucks called me ‘sweetie’ and I didn’t like it. But it failed the THINK test, that one, as it wasn’t kind. So I took it down. She was trying to do a nice thing in an unfriendly old world, and I think that’s fair enough. We should all have a go at that.

So, I’m off. Back in a week, hopefully having found a break from the old world myself! I will do my best to breathe in the air, throw my arms wide to the wind, roar into the sea, and be soaked by the spray.

At the beginning of the summer, I anticipated it being a difficult one. It has been, and this surreal week (which got even more peculiar) seems to have to rounded it off. So as the season changes, it seems right to wave goodbye to the summer and look for a little freshness and hope when I get back.

Catch you next week. Do nice things in an unfriendly world, Sweeties.

ENGINEERING A SOLUTION

I’m not great at planning ahead. My brain doesn’t seem to be able to calculate the best way to get things done, way in advance, or realise how best to use time to make sure I’m ready for things.

And the more things there are in your life, the harder that gets. That’s why I’m currently twiddling my thumbs at home, waiting for the washing machine to finish so I can hang up my clothes ready to dry so I can go on holiday tomorrow. I can’t go to work until I do that (these things don’t hang themselves), which will make me late home tonight. Inevitably I’ll either eat or wash up tonight but perhaps not both, meaning tomorrow morning will be a huge rush and... well you can see perhaps why I need a holiday. I’ve been living against the margins.

And there’s only one of me! One linear path stretches into the future, flexible and fairly free, with only a small number of connected lives affected only ever in minor ways. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a family! All the paths intertwine and curve, and overlap like some turbulent, dimensional logic puzzle you spend all your waking moments trying to solve with a wall calendar and a telephone.

I talk about being an ‘engineer’... Parents are perhaps the best engineers and project managers on the planet! What’s my excuse?

I suppose, in theory, more people give you more options as well as more headaches. Perhaps that helps? Two people can drive separate children to a school play and a swimming lesson if you have two cars. A third could babysit the other one, and maybe there are logistics from other people who can help out there - usually grandparents or neighbours who heroically solve those kind of problems every day.

But my first problem is that I just don’t think of things in time, or spot a problem, or talk life-planning things through with anyone before I make a plan about how to solve things.

And my second problem is that I’m now really late for work, waiting for the washing machine to finish. Perhaps I can say I was thinking about how to engineer a solution to a project-planning problem? That’ll wash, right?

NOUNS AND VERBS: PART 1

I don’t know whether it’s a good thought or not, but I had it. I had it while driving home in the rain. The evening suddenly seemed very autumnal; soggy leaves, dark, brooding skies, bright headlamps. The sense of fall was racing towards me.

Anyway, I had a thought: what if we’re living in a culture where it’s getting harder and harder to separate identity from behaviour? 

I’ve thought this before of course: labels and snapshots, one vegetable lasagna maketh not a vegetarian, but how many do? When does a label become a lifestyle?  And who sees all of a lifestyle? And do those lifestyles then fix our labels?

For the longest time, when I had to fill in forms that needed my occupation, I would struggle with saying ‘writer’, and was never really sure that most people would know what a ‘technical author’ was. These days I find myself writing ‘software engineer’ because I have come to realise that this is essentially what I do. I engineer the bits of software that explain how other bits of software should be used. I work with a team to engineer something that is unquestionably soft ware.

But that’s what I do, my behaviour, my activity, my verb.

So what’s my noun? What was there in me, before I did... well, anything?

If we really do live in a culture where it’s harder to stop giving people nouns based on their verbs, then it follows that it gets harder and harder to see real nouns at all, even our own!

I’m not a software engineer. Right now, I’m a son and a brother, an uncle and a nephew. I’m a creative and a thinker, sitting in a car in the rain of an Autumnal evening. I’m a kind-hearted lover of creation, an artist who never needed to hold a pencil to prove it, a singer in the silence, and a dancer who refuses to believe that that statement diminishes his masculinity.

Some clever physicist once said that there are only processes, only events that happen. Even atoms are vibrations. I get that. Behaviour is important. But I don’t think we should allow our identity, our real selves be dictated to by a view of what we do or who others see us as. As my friend Andy says, you can only label something if you own it, you bought it, or you made it.

I like to think about that a lot.

READY TO ESCAPE THE SURREAL

I'm off on holiday on Saturday with the Intrepids.

Now, normally I blog through my holidays, but this time I've decided not to do that. I'm swapping my phone for a Kindle and my work-mug for a wine glass. And while I could spend a week describing the way a silky Merlot slips between bottle, glass and lips, I think I need a bit of a break from everything for a while - a reset, a recharge, a vacation. So we're off to South West Wales, to the Gower Peninsula, which is all about coastline, cairns, castles and caves. It'll be great!

It's very timely too. This week has felt as though it's tumbled out of an alternate universe. Three surreal things have already crash-landed, and I'm only really certain that two of them have actually happened. But as I hinted yesterday, people are baffling, and it will take me a thousand years to understand some of them - especially when they create situations that are so ludicrous that they look like they might have been painted by Salvador Dali.

Still, two days to go before I get a breather - plenty of time for the parallel universes to keep chucking me odd conversations through the rift. Why do they all have to collide inside the same week? Was there some rip in the space-time-continuum? Am I actually asleep? Will I wake up next week and it'll still be last week?

Seems unlikely. I'm tired too; not sleeping too well (and not just because the neighbours watch bizarre movies at night time). I think, in a strange kind of way, the reason is that I'm afraid of the dark, and specifically afraid of the silence. Read into that what you will.

I shouldn't be afraid of the silence of not writing anything for a week though! I feel certain that that will do me some good, even if it means stirring a tea in a rainy beachside café, or chuckling at the capers of Holmes and Watson while I read without distraction. I think I just need to stop the clocks for a bit, instead of watching them melt over tree-branches and lobster-telephones.

COMPLEX BEINGS

We’re all complicated, aren’t we? Layers of history, emotion, hurt and wisdom, all wrapped up and tangled together in a beautiful, unique... mess.

I’ve been thinking about this. It’s the one thing the AI bots of the future won’t be able to recreate, I reckon - that undefinable, illogical, intangible puzzle that makes us us.

Or maybe it’s just me? Maybe other people are more straightforward? I only really know about me after all; which is rather the point isn’t it? But it’s not just me is it, who’s a complicated ball of stuff?

What was simpler than being a complicated ball of stuff, was me opening up my MRI results this afternoon.

“What does it say?” asked my Mum. I skimmed the letter, eyes flicking left and right.

“It says there’s nothing in my head after all!” I replied, translating.

“I thought it was supposed to be news!” she beamed cheekily, not missing a beat. Funny lady.

Anyway, it is the all clear. Hurrah! I’m normal. I said a prayer, a thank you, and then I told my Dad. Hopefully, the doctor will have some advice on how to cope with stress-migraines then. Perhaps he’ll tell me to stop trying to figure everything and everyone out all the time.

I think that’s fair enough. Not every puzzle is there to be solved, not every work of art is there to be analysed. Life is messy, complex and difficult, but it’s also beautiful, a glittering fractal of elegance and social interaction. I think if I’m going to stop overthinking everything, I ought to learn how to enjoy it in all its complexity and all its wonderful messiness.