I was pleased to see Mars and Venus in the North East sky tonight. They're close at the moment.
No-one talks about that book any more do they - you know, Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. Seems it's dropped out of quotable popularity, what with the gender-fluidity movement of recent years. In today's world, it's offensive (I guess) to lump all the boys together into a rabble of problem-solving, non-listening cavemen. And it's sexist to do the same to the beautiful, emotion-processing, socially eloquent Venutians out there too. I doubt John Gray would get a publisher in 2020.
It's been a tornado sort of day today - a whirlwind of work swept in when I opened my laptop this morning, twisting fragments of emails and chat-conversations onto my screen, then swirling them round in a dreadful vortex: Matt-quick-question-did-you-where-are-the-what-have-you-done-with-the-Any-chance-you-could-today-please-can-I-phone-you-quickly-we-need-to-have-a-chat-Matt-quick-question-did-you-where-are-the... round and round it span for eight hours while I worked.
At one point, I accidentally uploaded something that was two years out of date, live onto the customer system. It's a cinch to fix, but it takes a few minutes. I listened out carefully for the gentle ping of a chat message letting me know that someone had just discovered the very problem I was secretly trying to fix. Those are the moments I find myself praying it isn't my manager who sees these things. Though to be honest, there are some people who are quick to CC her in when they reckon I've screwed up. What a treat. I noticed at the end of the day that I had an extra one-to-one booked with her before I go away on holiday on Thursday. I'm trying not to project too much fear into that.
There was about a hand's-width difference between the planets, arm fully stretched. The night air was quiet, the trees black and silhouetted below the stars. Mars was twinkling red - I loved how small it looked, being so much further away, and yet so obviously scarlet. Meanwhile Venus was bright and brilliant, beaming away in the crab-like arms of the constellation Cancer, hundreds of light years behind it.
I wonder how close Mars and Venus get. Do they ever conjoin? What does it mean when they do? Astro people will know, they'll have calculated that out. For me, it was enough to know that they looked so close from where I was standing. John Gray (I thought to myself) was arguing that men and women were as different to each other as the inhabitants of different planets, and yet here on Earth, we're constrained to the delicate art of getting along with each other. His book is a user guide on interplanetary alignment.
It's shame if he's cancelled, because I think on the whole he was probably right about a lot of things, gender-fluidity of this age aside. Oh well.
Nanoo nanoo.
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