ME AND THE PIG FARMER

I met a pig farmer yesterday. He told me all about the intricacies of looking after 7,000 pigs. And by 'looking after' I of course mean feeding, weighing... and turning into pork chops.

I learned lots. You can (roughly) tell how heavy a pig is from looking at it. If you switch on a light at a particular brightness, pigs will just walk towards it as though it were the sun; pigs grow a bit like athletes and it's more expensive to give them vitamins; tall pigs are actually heavier than short, fat ones, and, if you can build a handheld way of (accurately) weighing a pig you'll probably be a millionaire.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask but couldn't! Would pigs be extinct if we were all vegetarians? How will Brexit affect the ability to transport pigs? How much is each pig worth? How fast can they run?

The farmer told me about the fine art of mixing their food by computer. Apparently the system that does that is unbelievably complicated (which I did not doubt) and often breaks down at 2am.

"We have to call our guy out and get him to fix it," said he. "And sometimes he says it's a fault in the process machinery and we have to call that guy out too an' let them argue about it."

I didn't doubt that either. Though I suddenly had a lot of sympathy for the software guy whose phone rings in the middle of the night because his code's broken.

"All ones an' zeros, isn't it."

"I always think of it like a switchboard of on and off switches," said I, doing my best impersonation of a technical author, "The board can get complicated depending on which switches are turned on. Imagine that but with several million or even several billion switches..."

We got on very well in the end, the pig farmer and I. I doubt we could have been more different: him tall and sun-blessed, with strong leather hands and boots; me, short and nerdy, talking about how computers work with my quick, soft voice. On reflection though, I think we were both well-seasoned listeners, and (I don't want to give away a super power but...) I think that might have had a lot to do with it.

"Middle of the night's the best time to load 'em up," he said. "Switch on the lamps an' the driver opens the door 'n' they all queue up to climb on the back of the lorry."

"Aw, poor little things, " I said, without really thinking.

The pig farmer gave me a quizzical look. Well of course he did! He was talking to a person who was only just suddenly realising that "This little piggy went to market" had never once meant what I thought it had.

2019OK

This week, a friend of mine used four exclamation marks to close out a Whatsapp message. Four!

Now, my pals know how I feel about this, so she sent a hilarious apology afterwards, which was fine of course (she knows me well), but it reminded me of the conditions under which I'd once suggested multiple exclamations would only ever be suitable.

It's quite simple: one exclamation mark does the job of exclaiming, a second exclamation mark makes an exclamation of the first exclamation, and three should only ever be used in a world-ending cataclysmic event.

There's quite an irony then, that this morning at 01:22 GMT, the planet had a very near miss with Asteroid 2019OK.

Apparently (though weirdly the news aren't reporting it) it brushed past 45,000 miles from the planet and sailed harmlessly on. World-ender? No, but Asteroid 2019OK is something like 100m in diameter, which, when travelling at 55,000 miles per hour would have done enough damage to wipe out a city.

The big story is though, and I can't quite believe it, that no-one saw it coming. Astronomers only picked it up a few days ago, and didn't have enough time to calculate its size... or its trajectory.

Is it just me or is that a little bit terrifying? A world-changing threat to our planet and no-one's prepared for it until it's too late? 2019OK would have hit Rio de Janeiro before Bruce Willis had chance to put his boots on!

Of course, what's even more terrifying is that even without asteroids, our planet's heating up like a frog in a pot. And guess what, we don't seem to be doing much about that either! Anyway, I don't want to get political. I just think we ought to look after the things we've been given. And while I don't actually think the world will end from asteroids or climate change just yet, I do think if we can do anything to reduce the chances of it, and make the world a better place for everyone in the meantime, then we certainly should do it.

Otherwise we'll all be using multiple exclamation marks. And to be honest, I'd rather not have to.

LOYALTY CARD PASTA SPOON

I looked up. She had the dismissive look of someone who’d just seen a person eat a pasta salad with a Starbucks loyalty card. I realised there was not much I could do to change that dismissive look, so I repaid it with a smile. She looked away.

I don’t know what else I could have done! The pasta salad had been one of those ones without a fork (probably good, better for the oceans) but I hadn’t realised, and the bus was only seven minutes away. When I peeled back the wrapping at the bus stop, I had to find a quick solution.

And I’ll be honest, I thought the loyalty-card-pasta-spoon was a good one, given the options available. It’s what Bear Grylls would have done.

She was a classy lady. I could tell from her shoes that she liked things neat. There was a glimmer of gold on her wrist, and matching glints beneath her straight, dark hair, all contrasting immaculately with an ice-white jacket. Meticulous, deliberate, planned, and poised. No-one wears a jacket on a boiling afternoon without an aesthetic reason.

I theorise that she would have dumped the pasta salad in the nearest bin. Actually, she’d never have bought it in the first place, and she’d probably not be seen eating in public. But her solution would not have been mine or Bear’s. 

I was wiping the Starbucks card in the grass by the time the bus turned up. Then I slotted it into a pocket and hopped aboard the Interdimensional Number 15 Omnibus. She didn’t follow. I saw her through the dusty window, still standing there poshly. A moment later a taxi drew up and she confidently climbed in the back.

Of course she did. Classy.

ON THE SAME SIDE

After the couscous debacle the other week, I've been keeping an ear out for conversations on the bus. Alright, I admit it, I've been a nosy parker. But it's hard to avoid it on the bus. And it is illuminating.

This morning, a little boy was reading to his Mum. He tackled words like 'feathered' and 'fishing' with ease. His Mum was pleased too.

"That's really excellent," she said, "Well done."

A few moments later, he broke free of her lap and was lolloping on the seat across the aisle. I expected a volcanic eruption, so I was pleasantly surprised when she said softly and firmly:

"Come over here, please."

"But I love it over this side!"

"Come over here. Mummy likes it when you're on the same side as her."

I honestly thought that was so clever.

He reluctantly swung his way back, like Tarzan through the bus poles. She praised him for his obedience and reminded him that he should do what she asks him to do because she was an adult and he was not. I know some kids who would have rejected that logic, but this little chap went along with it.

No volcano had been necessary! And before long, she was pulling a small exercise book out of his rucksack and reading him a report on his good behaviour that had been written by his teacher. Praise again was working a treat, and I got the feeling that it was a very calculated, deliberate strategy.

"And do you think you can keep up the good behaviour at school today?" she asked him. He said yes. They pressed the bell and wobbled to the front of the bus, ready to hop off at the next stop.

I thought back to other dynamics I'd seen on the bus. Somehow, this super combination of love, praise and discipline was really working - now I'm not saying it would work for every child, but there's got to be something in it I think. There were no shenanigans - she was completely calm and continually in control of the situation, he was fully aware of all of the boundaries and many of their consequences, and it was a refreshing thing to have seen. It made me think a lot.

And also it definitely made me a nosy parker.

UNUSUAL TIMES

I was working on some unusual-time-signature practice earlier. That’s where music is written in a non-standard rhythm, like say, seven beats in a bar instead of eight, or five instead of four.

You have to unlearn your normal way of thinking and rewire your brain a bit, especially if you’re a play-by-feel person and you’re not used to it. 

The conference session on ‘unlearning’ last week was useful after all then!

Well anyway, 7/8-time slotted nicely into place. It’s funny how it pushes a beat ahead every bar. It’s like resetting ev Bar before you’ve had a chance to fig Out what might be going on and that cause The whole thing to move along as though No room for any breathing or pausing or anything. Well, you get the picture.

I like it though. It’s got pace. I wondered whether I could write a bit of piano music that switches between 7/8 and 6/8 alternately. I could call it ‘At Sixes and Sevens’...

I bet someone’s already done it. Anyway, I’m not good enough yet. And it’s showing off anyway.

5/4 is a little closer to recognisable. Blondie used a bar of it in Heart of Glass, and it’s famously the pattern for Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. I like it.

I came up with an idea for a tune in 5/4 that’s sort of a rolling pattern of 3 then 2 crotchets (quarter notes). It’s pretty - sort of baroque style. It’d sound delicious on a harpsichord. I think I’ll call it Cinq Célèbres Aventures just for fun.

Unfortunately I can’t put any quavers (eighth notes) in yet without slipping back into 4/4, or just losing the pulse altogether. I’m not too good at counting rests either. I’m no Amadeus.

Some people I know would go even more to the fringes with 13/8 time or 11/4 or something daft and other-worldly like that. I’m not sure I’m ready for those shenanigans. I like music that doesn't make people feel uncomfortable. Which is why, I guess, I hang out mostly in 4/4 and sometimes 6/8.

I’m no Sting, that’s for sure: I like my toast done on both sides for a start. And I play common-time for seconds. Oh and I don’t have a lute.

It was a fun thing to try. I’ll crack it one day. What was weird was going back to a normal 4/4 rhythm afterwards, so hopefully I can relearn what I unlearned and add it back to my learned-stuff. Otherwise I’ll be in ‘unusual times’ for a while.

KING LEAR

“It’s the king I feel sorry for,” said the voice behind me. At a push I’d say the voice was from Lancashire. North West at any rate.

We shuffled out of our seats for the interval. The people behind naturally followed us, and kept discussing the first half of the play as we queued. I eavesdropped.

“I mean he’s just trying to do the best he can, but it’s his fam’ly who are all rotters. I just feel sorry for him.”

“Often the way.”

“Terrible really.”

I smiled.

The sky had indeed dimmed over the Abbey Ruins, and Luke and I headed for the bar. It was a sumptuous summer night, still warmish, with a cool breeze. It was perhaps perfect for open-air Shakespeare.

Good old Shakespeare. Our northern friends were feeling sorry for a character in a 400-year-old story brought to life by an actor, reciting the most exquisite words this language ever produced.

King Lear is a tragedy. I don’t want to give spoilers if you haven’t seen it, but it doesn’t end well. And yet, weirdly, when the grim tale was over, I felt strangely uplifted by the experience. We left the rough stones of Reading Abbey’s Chapter House and found ourselves walking by torchlight towards the inky river by Chestnut Walk. There were more voices this time...

“So when did Edgar reveal who he was?”

“Did Gloucester die?”

“Was King Lear foolish all along?”

“So... was that the origin of ‘last but not least?’”

I’m afraid the people behind us had already left and didn’t make the second half. I wondered whether they had felt uplifted, or just baffled by the storyline. 

Perhaps it’s the natural conclusion of the plot that gives the play its weirdly satisfactory ending - it was always headed in one direction only and Shakespeare’s genius is teasing out what we know to be inevitable?

Or perhaps it was just the way the actors did it, by taking their bows by candlelight, singing the final lines to the tune of ‘I vow to thee my country’. Maybe we felt part of that, because we were there, eyeball to eyeball. The magic of theatre eh.

Anyway, Luke and I happily wrapped ourselves in our jackets, threw our rucksacks over our shoulders, and headed contentedly for the Number 17 bus.

FORBURY GARDENS

It’s one of those muggy July days. The sun is hot through the clouds and the air is thick and still.

I’m in Forbury Gardens. Over in the bandstand, five couples are waltzing to Italian strings and warbling tenors, and beyond them, a small party gather round a happy bride and groom.

Clouds of strawberry smoke puff up from picnickers on the grass, and kids in red t-shirts run between flowerbeds as though powered by Coca Cola.

There’s a group of tourists gathering by the lion. Their bright yellow rucksacks look like flowers from here, bobbing around the pedestal of all the names of the 66th Berkshire Regiment. It’s a juxtaposition of histories, and who knows if they can tell why this famous lion has been silently roaring at the train station for a hundred years.

I really like this time of year - though it is certainly hot. The trees are in fullest, deepest green, and the gentle under-leaves are translucent enough to dapple the shade. I’m on a bench, eating a burrito. I wear a cool blue shirt and denim jeans. I might get an ice cream.

The couples dance on. I do not believe I’ve ever danced like that - left hand in right, right arm over left shoulder, a gentle swing around the bandstand of shuffling feet. It’s delicate, genteel, soft and stately, old-fashioned in a way, and still lovely in another. I expect you’d be surprised to learn that I’d like to, one day. I doubt that I will though.

My friend and I are going to see some open-air Shakespeare later. The tragedy of King Lear. I booked two tickets earlier in the week. While the storyline might be about fear, loss and suffering, hopefully the performance itself will be uplifting. Either way, the sky will dim purple and the sun will sink behind the Abbey Ruins as the stage lanterns flicker on. It’ll be enjoyable.

This is, at least, a better way to spend a Saturday then. I’m making an effort. And Forbury Gardens, a place I’ve been coming to all my life, is not unpleasant.

OUT OF PHASE WITH FASHION

I'm not entirely sure how I've made it to the end of this week.

Nonetheless, there's a celebratory cola on my desk and the clock ticks ever closer to a restful weekend. Well, you know, relatively speaking.

Hay fever combined itself with a cold this week, and caught me off-guard. Then, an eventful late night was followed by a surprise early morning, when the gas man turned up to read the meter.

I say 'man' but he was around 14 years old I reckon. Yellow jacket, device that looked like a Gameboy (there's no way he'd remember what a Gameboy was) and a regulation British Gas baseball cap. He nervously shone a torch in my cupboard and took a photo of the meter.

Soon, the world will be run by young people, I’d wager.

Oh. That reminds me! Sandals and socks are back!

In an unbelievable twist of fashion irony, the trope of the uncool is now the cool of the gang: white socks, sliders (think moccassins with no toe) and jogging bottoms.

Yesterday I saw a kid, perching on a bike like a gangly spider, sporting the look, without even so much as a risible glare from his colleagues. He'd fashioned his hair like Gareth from The Office as well: bowl at the front, shaved at the back - enough to earn you ridicule and abuse in the 90s, somehow the look twenty five years later. Incredible. And why white socks? They're going to get filthy quickly!

I remain then, completely out of phase with fashion. And everything else - I am so tired. It's like the world's going by at a slightly different speed to me and I'm just an observer, swirling in and out of reality.

But then, maybe that's always been the case.

DEATH-STAR PIZZA

I walked up to the village, only to discover that Domino’s pizza place had left their tractor-beam on.

Like the Death Star, the invisible field swerved my feet, and slowly started pulling me towards the bright lights of the hangar bay. I was helpless in its grip.

I arrived, and for some reason heard my voice, my own voice, ordering a veggie pizza.

“You can go medium for the same price,” said an imperial officer in a blue baseball cap. 

Out-of-body-me simply said, “okay then.”

Treachery.

So now I have to eat it. The circle is complete. Like a greasy disc of cheese, tomato, sweetcorn, onions and peppers, bringing a swift end to my pitiful little rebellion.

Clearly the part of my brain that operates on instinct (what was it, monkey or crocodile?) is working overtime, and the limbic and neo-cortex are taking a nap.

Well. Imperial Pizza eaten. There are alternatives to fighting, it seems.

Time to disengage the tractor beam and walk home.

HALLUX OF TEDIOCRACY

“No sign of the boys then?” Steve asked as we sat waiting for this morning’s keynote to start. I chuckled to myself.

“As long as they’re ready to drive us home,” said Lisa in reply. I made a comment about it being a very long time since I was out until 3am. By ‘a very long time’ of course, I meant ‘ever’, though I didn’t say that.

The keynote was all about ‘unlearning’. The speaker got us to do a great exercise where one person writes numbers in the air with their index finger, and the other, opposite, mirrors the movement. It’s surprisingly difficult to ‘unlearn’ the method for drawing a number 4. And call me old-fashioned, but I start an 8 in the middle.

By lunchtime, we reconnected with our partiers. ‘A couple of pints and then we’ll head back’ had turned into rather more, and rather longer, after the beach party, it seems. While they found piecing together their memories of it all, hilarious, I was still quite thankful I’d chosen the boring route.

Boring eh. I looked at my grey cardigan and sensible shirt. I had balanced a box of halloumi salad on a notebook on my knee, and a tightly-sealed water bottle stood upright in the grass. I was in symmetry. Yet, still kind of alone. Is this how boring people end up? Eating halloumi out of a cardboard box while the asymmetric people laugh about how great a time they’re having?

Has this always been how you meet new people? Has this always been the route to social bonding? I found myself hoping not. It seems like an awful set of experiences to go through. Isn’t always better to prioritise the thing we’re actually here for? Is there a thing here for me to ‘unlearn’? 

Anyway. We made it home. I’ve returned to a mess and I’m feeling tired, which is probably the worst possible combination of things. 

Also, in a sort of mystery I can’t solve, the big toe on my right foot went black. I discovered it when I took my socks off.

It’s as though I’ve dipped it in ink - it mostly comes off with warm water, but I have no idea what happened there. Weird alien experiment? Sharpie in a sock? Is it blood? Can blood turn black overnight? Why doesn’t it hurt? Elaborate but very odd practical joke? Hmm.

Or perhaps I did go out last night and every single aspect of the evening was wiped from my memory, except one somehow-injured toe? Perhaps I’m less boring than I thought?

It says something to me that we all know  it’s much more likely to be aliens.

CHIMPS AND CROCODILES

I might have been too harsh yesterday. I think there are things I do care about, like the way people work together, the science of language, and of course, creating good work environments. It’s mostly the bits I don’t understand that leave me cold.

Understanding people though, is most of what work is actually about, and given that that topic stretches way beyond the boundaries of the office, there’s some useful stuff here, among the databases and developers.

-

I woke up to the sound of birds singing in the pre-dawn blackness. Almost at once, my nose began to run with hay fever, and I rubbed my eyes with balled fists.

‘Urghb. Where ab I? ‘ I said, out loud, daftly. Of course, I was in Flat 3, Room 6, Block N, on the Penryn campus of Falmouth University - a college room with two beds, one wardrobe, no desk, and a space-capsule bathroom.

An hour later I was learning about innovation.

There were six sessions today. Two of the ones I chose were about neuroscience - the way in which the brain works. One presentation rehashed The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters and rudely didn’t mention it. Another replaced the idea of a ‘monkey brain’ with an ‘inner crocodile’. I think there’s a difference between those two animals, but I got the picture.

Then, in another session a lady who works as a journalist and PR consultant took an hour to tell us all how wonderful her job was.

“And if you want me to come and write you a story,” she said, rubbing her hands, “Come and chat to me afterwards. I get really well paid for that kind of thing.”

She was a pleasant enough lady but she kept adding ‘ness’ to the end of words that didn’t need it; like ‘agileness’ and ‘PRness’. Forgivable yes, but it undermined her a little bit as a handsomely-paid, professional writer.

After all the sessions were done, we were ferried along to the beach party to pretend we could mingle. I tried, once again, but ended up hovering instead. I’m not convinced I can be anything but a wallflower in such situations, and on the beach that’s quite a skill as there are no walls, or flowers, for that matter.

“We’ll probably stick around, go to the pub for a couple of pints and then head back,” said Luke, as Steve, Lisa and I finished our last pints. “Only seems fair,” he concluded hilariously. He wandered back to the shoreline where Jamie was toasting marshmallows with some other delegates.

I’m officially old, I thought, fascinated by his assumption about how the five of us divided up in terms of our late-evening plans. The sea breeze wobbled the fairy lights and a couple of stars twinkled. You know what though, I’m not even sure I mind any more. Steve, Lisa and I  headed happily across the sand towards the road and the bus stop.

So I’m back in Flat 3, Room 6, Block N. It’s definitely time to end the day. It hasn’t been all that bad really - I learned some interesting things, and sat through a few things which were far from engaging, but that is I suppose, how things go.

Tomorrow, there are a few more intriguing talks, and then it’s the long journey home. And I am already tired from all the processing. It feels like the crocodile has eaten the chimp, and might be snappy. A good night’s sleep and some early morning fresh air will definitely help. And the wise part of my brain that’s not been crocodiddled, is telling me right now that I absolutely did the right thing by not staying out on the beach. Wise-ness.

RETURN TO CORNWALL

There’s definitely something resonant about Cornwall. I woke up and rubbed my eyes as Jamie sped along the A30. Rolling hills, white washed cottages, blue sky, hint of the sea beyond the horizon. Even the tall, spinning wind turbines are marker posts these days, for this glorious county. I’d been asleep since Exeter.

So much happened here. All the camps of years gone by have left a groove in my heart that I can’t forget.

But I’m not here for a camp.

I’m here for a work conference, once again shacked up in student accommodation, ready for two full days of trying to find work-mode and fit right into it. It’s hard. I can’t work at this pace, I need a break from it, and what I don’t need is to be discussing it until 10pm over pints and pasties. By 10pm what I need to be is forgetting what I do as my day job.

As if for a treat though, the five of us here from our company were joined by an ex-colleague, who’s blessed enough to know everything and be right about it. It amused me how negative he allowed himself to be, and how little any of us worked to stop him.

“I handed my notice in at just the right time,” said he, gleefully. I looked around the table and wondered whether it was dawning on people that every day, every single day we go in, we make a choice to stay, and therefore that this man was actually looking down on us as we laughed along. I guessed it was. 

I don’t want to seem disrespectful but I just don’t care enough about all this. Weird then that I’m at a conference to learn more and get excited about best practices for building software! As ever, we’ll be asked to write a report when we get back, and I’ll write something professional sounding. The truth will probably be though that I’d much prefer to be at one of those old camps again, just a few miles up the road.

So much happened here.

I’M NOT BEING FUNNY BUT

“I’m not being funny, but...”

I’ve heard this loads recently. Young people, going out of their way to explain how unfunny they’re being. At the bus stop, “I’m not being funny but...” then walking the pavement with a BFF, “I’m not being funny but...”

I thought it was us oldies who were desperately not funny. You youngsters ought to be out there making each other crack up, rather than being keen to be sourpusses!

I get it. Someone has behaved poorly and you’d like to talk about it without seeming like you’re equally part of the problem. You don’t want your friend to see your resentment, bitterness, confusion, anger, as well, resentment, bitterness, confusion, and anger, because you know that those things are instinctively odd-funny and you’d hate it wouldn’t you, if someone else at another bus stop was also ‘not being funny but’ about you.

What you probably don’t know is how hilarious that is.

WHEELIES

I was thinking about the decline of the bicycle bell a while ago. That sound seemed to belong to a simpler, friendlier age. I don’t know if you remember, but that nostalgic thought was interrupted by a guy doing a wheelie.

Back wheel on the ground. Legs angled outwards for momentum, and front bike-wheel jutting into the air, giving the whole contraption of boy-and-bike, the appearance of a mechanical rooster.

I was waiting for the bus this afternoon when I was passed, by three spindly teenage boys, once again with front wheels spinning in mid-air. One of them caught my eye, as another (mopped hair, white t-shirt, sullen look) wheelied by in front of him.

“Are you seein’ that?” He shouted, grinning with admiration. “He’s got a broken collarbone as well! Cracking i’n he?”

That, I thought, is a great picture of being young: a friend with a broken collarbone does wheelies in the middle of an A road, and his mates see it as bravery, rather than what it actually is: stupid.

I didn’t have time to reply. They were off, wheeling down the road, looking for hens.

I think the problem is being able to see further than the thing in front of us. Every decision has consequences, some that stretch into the far distance, and some that don’t. Often, choices have a sort of implicit equation-balance that we have to quickly calculate: one more drink? Drive home? Take a taxi? Stay in this job? Look after my family?

It seems to me that experience is our maths teacher, and unfortunately, it takes time to learn the algebra - there aren’t really short cuts. Crumbs, I’m still learning! I’ve come out to the park tonight on the worst hay fever day of the season! I weighed up a pleasant evening watching the sunset, and forgot altogether that I might be sitting here with a throat on fire and a streaming face.

Sunset park? Grown up wheelies, in a way, isn’t it? Trying to see the thing in front of you, and the view’s obscured. Perhaps we all need a little more wisdom about our choices and where they lead - and not just the young people. Plenty of road ahead.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 17

So today's a bad one. It feels like I've been stung by a wasp inside my nostrils. It's like a tingling, stinging, burning sensation and it's creeping into my sinuses and making my eyes water.

Blowing my nose is like playing out Snotty Krakatoa. I can demolish four ply of toilet paper faster than it takes to rip it from the roll.

Anyway, seeing as it's bad today, and it feels quite late in the summer for it, I thought I'd go back over my whingy posts from years gone by, and figure out whether any statistical patterns are emerging. Is the season getting shorter? Is it starting later than it used to? Might I prove global warming is affecting grass seed? What do you think?

There are all sorts of reasons why this approach lacks precision. It is only supposed to be a rough guide, and man alive there have been days I've suffered and not written a post, probably beyond the edges of the graph!

But if I've been consistently inconsistent about it, and if the weather conditions sort of average out; not to mention holidays, moving around the country, even being in Canada for some of this data, then this is telling at least a bit of a story.

It's getting later, and shorter. Plus, thankfully, this first week of July looks like it represents the endpoint of the season, and my floral torment might be near its end for 2019.

Either that, or I'm not going on about it quite so much, which might also be true. There are only so many ways you can describe the face-exploding mucus bursts, or the feeling of it sinking into your sinus passages moments after you open your eyes in the morning.

Then there's the pinched sneezing in the office, followed by the seven 'bless-yous' from people who've not realised that you haven't finished, and that they'll shortly be required to bless you again. And what about returning from the loos having erupted into tissue paper, only to need to sneeze and restart the whole procedure before you sit down and log back in. That's always a treat.

It's probably a good thing that I don't talk about it.

WAR ON TWO WHEELS

There was a quaking fury in her voice.

“Get ON your bike,” she said. A few feet in front of her, a small boy in a lopsided cycling helmet was wheeling a bicycle and snivelling. She followed him through the allotments with a brightly coloured bike of her own, with me behind the two of them, eavesdropping, and mostly trying to overtake so I’d make it to the bus stop.

“I don’t want to,” he sniffed.

“Get on your bike or we’re going to be late.”

I walked faster along the narrow grass path, and tried to say excuse me. The drama was still unfolding though, and I had questions. Why didn’t he want to get on his bike? What had happened? How did this parenting situation start? And when?

“Do you realise what you’re doing to me right now?” quivered the Mum. Her voice was loud and angry. Closed question with consequences, thought I. There’s no way he can answer it. Deliberately rhetorical of course: the intended response is to get out of the trap by conforming to the requirement, instead of answering the question; don’t understand the problem, but ‘getting on bike’ seems to be the answer, whatever this yes/no question means.

The little boy was however, perplexed, unaware of rhetoric, and said nothing. She persisted.

“Get on your bike or you’ll be late for school.” 

“No!” Tears now.

The angrier his Mum got, the less likely he was to give in. Somehow conflict had taught him to fight his oppressor. He was not cycling anywhere out of this parenting stalemate.

I picked my moment and strode past. I was half-tempted to go for a cheery ‘Morning!’ but I thought better of it. They were behind me now, wheeling slowly towards the gate. She looked furious and exasperated in a way that seems to encircle parents of young children; he was staring at the ground, red faced with tears and confusion. War has no victors, I said to myself.

“Right, well that’s IT!” she shouted. “I’m leaving without you, BYE!”

I heard him wail.

“Have a nice day!” she called sarcastically, pedalling slowly away from him. I swung open the gate and walked out into the road. Somehow I knew that that tactic, the old ‘feign defeat to provoke a surrender move’, was just not going to improve things for them. It very rarely does.

But I’m not an end-of-the-rope-parent trying to get my kids to school. What would I know? What should she do to calm this down, solve the stalemate and end up with the best result?

I realised that I just didn’t know.

I also realised that this was probably the end of a much longer drama, and one that I hadn’t seen. Perhaps a breakfast got spilled. Perhaps a shoe was lost or hair hadn’t been brushed. Perhaps looking after kids and getting them to school is less flex-and-flow, and more military-drill the night before.

Perhaps I’m a bit naive. I’d probably have just walked slowly and silently to school and arrived late, with all the consequence that that might bring. Perhaps I’d have trained myself to get to places fifteen minutes earlier.

I fished my phone out of my pocket and checked the time.

“Oh unbelievable!” I said out loud. I slipped the phone back, shoved the other arm through the rucksack strap and sprinted for the bus. I was late.