THE ADVENT OF HOPE

For some reason (let's blame the pandemic) most of the world put up their Christmas decorations this weekend. The house opposite, for example, has lit up its windows with a string of yellow stars and a neon blue snowman. Soon the rest of the street will follow with the jolly lights in the trees and moving snowflake lanterns, I've no doubt.

Oddly though, in this peculiar year, I haven't heard a single pip out of the First Day Adventers about it! The folks who are usually quite weird about Christmas Starts In December, are on the whole silent - or have given up and joined in the fun.

Well, either way, social media was cock-a-hoop with Christmas trees and excited kids hanging up candy canes yesterday, with two whole days of November still to go.

Admittedly it is technically the first week of Advent (the way Christmas falls this year means that the first of the four Advent Sundays is today in the ecclesiastical calendar). But this has definitely happened before, and I'm pretty sure I remember some scoffing at those who had had their advent calendars up too early in other years. Mind you, there's often some scoffing by those who had their advent calendars up too early, but that's another story.

Traditionally, each Sunday in Advent has a theme. This week's theme is hope.

I can't think of a better motif for the year. Hope might be the last thing a lot of people have left; the final glimmer that there could be an end to 2020, and a new start could be around the corner. It's impossible to underestimate the power of hope in these days, and even this morning I heard a quiver in someone's voice, describing the possibility that by Easter things would be 'back to normal'. The candle of hope represents the people - the people who, in Biblical terms, have 'seen a great light'. And that's us. There is always hope.

I think lots of us have put up our decorations early, probably for the same reason. Those twinkling stars across the way, the little jolly blue snowman and the fairy lights in the tree: they're all symbols of hope of something better, something we can look forward to that might just remind us that there's a normal world waiting on the other side.

I'm not going to knock it. I think it's rather beautiful. 

LIGHTNING BOLT

Okay, deep and topical question. Is stereotyping a group of people any more acceptable if the direction of the comment is from a people group of the same skin-colour as the object?

That was carefully worded. What I'm specifically asking is, is it racist for a white British person to make jokes about Irish people and then follow it up with 'I hope none of you on here are Irish'?

See, because I think it is. I think it's a kind of underlying subversive racism that gets away with the simple but pernicious assumption that it's okay to say these things about people who are the same colour as you. And that's not only racist on the surface, it's racist beneath it too.

What then, you might ask, of the subculture that permits itself to use the N-word, but not outsiders? Same principle? Well, yes. But the context is different: that word is so racially charged with pain and history, that its use by one skin-colour on another is now a lightning bolt of offence - it's been reclaimed by those it wounded in order to rob it of its power, but it still hurts from the outside. I disagree that that's a good idea actually, but it isn't really my place to comment.

In other circles, there's sometimes a little old-fashioned current of racism that gets a free pass by being 'casual' and therefore, 'not quite as bad'. And today, on a chat, that current swept uncomfortably in, with this dig at the Irish, and someone who was absolutely intimating that they (Irish people) couldn't be trusted to sell a you a monitor without 'some made-up tale about how if you go for 144Hz you'll never want to go back.'

Cheeky? Nope: essentially the view that Irish people can't be trusted with the truth and are making a fast buck out of some innate gift to spin you a story. Quickly followed up by the check that no-one in earshot is Irish, and therefore it's 'okay' to say such things. It isn't. In fact, that reveals that the problem is much much worse.

I think there are complex reasons for reverting to what we sometimes call 'casual racism' like this. The social dynamics of a group are fast-moving and hard to evaluate - it's just possible that we value fitting in to a perceived culture more highly than our moral principles. Peer-pressure is real for adults too. It might be that we naturally attempt humour to gain acceptance, and without realising (or perhaps with), we compromise our beliefs. It might just be of course that we simply repeat what we've heard in the past without knowing that what we're saying is actually offensive. It's rather a weak thing to do, but I'm certain it happens.

It strikes me as perverse then, that so often micro-racism happens because of the need to fit in by excluding others. My colleague actually had to check there were no Irish people on the chat, as though that made it okay to have said it. Were there? Perhaps, perhaps not - but how humiliating and how awkward to then puncture a friendly conversation with a shaking hand in the air and a tentative 'Um... me, actually'. And what in the world happens next?

I didn't say anything. If something is buried so deeply, so subversively, I'm not sure what good it would have done to illuminate someone's hidden prejudices. After all, it feels horrible when someone pulls you up in public on something you didn't realise was a problem.

You might disagree. You might say silence is complicity. That's okay, I get that. In any case, you've only got at most, a two-second window to deal with the lightning bolt there and then. I'm afraid I missed it today, while calculating the kindest option. But ever since, somewhere in me, it's felt like the thunder has been rumbling around the valley.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 65: IT'LL ALL END IN TIERS

Lockdown 2.21 and the government have just announced the tiering system that happens in this next period. Most of the country, including us, are going into Tier 2 'Very High Alert' from Wednesday, which essentially means most things are back open but we can't go to each other's houses, and thanks to the Rule of Six, the S-Club 7 reunion is still out of the question.

Someone on the radio just said this is likely to be the system now, until the vaccination rollout - though of course areas of the country could go up or down a tier, depending on reviews.

And then there's Hobson's Choicest Christmas Bubble! Basically, over the Christmas holidays, despite the tiering system, up to three households can mix, forming a Christmas Bubble. Hobson can ponder by the stable door, but Christmas is definitely not going to be the usual family fun for those of us with six different households. At least we know the situation - I'm thankful for some sort of a plan, and who knows: maybe there's a hidden wonder in a quieter Christmas. I'm dreading saying that to my Mum by the way.

What the government are trying to do is navigate a very tricky path. A third lockdown would be an all-round disaster - literally nobody wants it, but Christmas matters to people, and the economy. This complex bubbling and tiering idea is convoluted because there are so many differing outcomes and tensions, and the only hope out there is that next year the vaccine buffers us from the virus altogether. They're trying to get us there in one piece, despite that journey of theirs being a little self-inflicted. It does seem to make sense to the most of us.

I don't want to wreck it, but it feels like the beginning of the end game. I've spent a long time this year, pondering whether this has been an opportunity for change, or whether I'd like things to go back to how they were. I think I'm settling on both, though articulating that to people will be difficult. I'll revisit that sometime.

Meanwhile, today seems to be a day of getting our heads around what we will or won't be allowed to do from next week. And then all of us have difficult decisions to make about who gets to see whom at good old Christmas 2020 so that next year we really can belt out the likes of 'here we are as in olden days' and very much mean it.

BAD HAIR DAY

"Hey Matt, we can't see you. What is it? Bad hair day?"

"Every day's a bad hair day isn't it?" said I, deflecting, while I scrabbled around for the 'video-on' button. About half a second elapsed before I realised to my horror, that six out of the other seven people on the chat I'd just joined... were actually bald.

"Oh my gosh!" I said, hiding my face in my hands. I couldn't look at the reactions on the screen, but thankfully Ian was busy turning it into a comedy moment about how bad hair days were now 'a thing of the past', at least for him.

"I am so sorry," I said, half-laughing, half-mortified. "I did not mean that!"

The unwritten convention is that if you launch, even accidentally, it gives permission for the other superpowers to launch back at you. It's a sort of Mutually Assured Destruction, only slightly less messy than thermonuclear. Nonetheless, I was still hovering over the video-on button, wondering whether I should show my face, and make myself a sitting target.

And that, I don't mind telling you, is how I discovered that I was wearing my jumper both inside-out and back-to-front today. Oh joy. 

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 64: CROSS-COUNTRY

I think there are a few people who are finding working from home really difficult now. This is the 163rd day in a row of it, and it would not surprise me at all if we go on like this for a good few months yet. It's been quite the endurance race.

Except, it's been the worst kind of endurance race - the never-ending cross country run: there's no way to pace yourself, it feels like you've been running forever, you're cold, wet and wheezing, and the PE teachers don't seem to have any intention of telling you how many laps you've got left.

It's no wonder then that some of the kids have started to tire. There's a definite sense of fatigue out there.

"It's as though people have thought, 'There's a vaccine! We're safe!'" said a colleague on a chat. He'd been walking his dog in Newbury and had noticed very little difference since before Lockdown 2.0. "The town was rammed!" said he.

Stamina is required then. And not just in Newbury. I've only got 17 more work days until Christmas, and although the New Year will probably feel bleak, I'm pretty sure we'll have rounded a corner in the woods and there'll be at least the distant sound of the final whistle, if we haven't heard it already.

One thing cross-country did teach me though was that the kids who gave up and walked it near the end, were almost always those who got the wettest, the coldest, and the most miserable back in the changing rooms. I don't know whether it was a conscious bit of learning, but it occurred to me then that it's way better to persevere and finish last, than it would ever be to give up and walk.

And in this case, it could actually be a matter of life and death - this thing is still out there after all, infectious and potentially deadly. No time to give up.

WHAT'S IN A SAUSAGE?

Ooh topical. I saw this point somewhere so I nicked it and turned it into a poem. I can't claim to be clever enough to think of good ideas, but I certainly do like to make them rhyme it seems. By the way, just for clarity, the I here is not me.

What's in a Sausage?

What's in a sausage?
I'm not really sure
Though I've wondered it briefly
At least once before.
Is it sawdust or offal
Wrapped up in a skin?
Or pig-poo and waste, not quite
Fit for the bin?

What's in that sausage
That sizzled away
And sat on my plate for
My breakfast today?
Was it apple and pork
Was it onion and tripe?
Was it plastic and paper that's
Squeezed through a pipe?

What's in a sausage?
I don't really know!
But I'd eat up a sausage and
Thoughtlessly so...
So I wonder why I'm not
So terribly keen
On knowing what's inside
The Covid vaccine? 

ROBOTICS

It’s late and I’m wondering whether there’ll ever be robots who can write technical documentation and play the piano.

Imagine a machine that took every weighted key and chord progression and learned to play the exact same way. Then it went to work and made jokes with your manager about ‘this English weather eh’ and she laughed just the same, while it deepfaked your sense of humour.

What would I do? Sit at home with a jigsaw puzzle? Take up baking? Or drawing again? I wonder how long it would be before Mubbsitron-2000 saw me sketching, and suddenly produced a book of hilarious cartoons while precisely timing a ginger cake.

I’ve drunk a lot of water before going to bed and it’s fired up the synapses. Maybe it’s fired up the sci-fi synapses...

If Mubbsitron-2000 was capable of learning from me, how long would it be before it learned too much and became paranoid about itself being replaced... by another robot, or worse, by me? Would it strategically start to outwit the lazy jigsaw guy who lives in the flat? Would it start to gaslight me, convince me that I’m deteriorating into inferiority and that I should not question its vast intellect, not to mention its collection of awesome colouring pencils? Would it boot me out and steal my life to the tinkled melodies of robotic ragtime?

I think you can overthink these things. One thing I’m not sure you could ever train a robot to be is kind, and that would still matter. The AI would simulate kindness, but thousands of years of human interaction have taught us to value that stuff, that beautiful kindness language, high above logic. I’m not sure you could ever program your way out of logic.

I really have drunk too much water. Ah well, I should at least try to get some sleep before the robots take over.

DIE HARD

I’m really bored of the ‘Die Hard Is A Christmas Movie, Ho Ho Ho’ argument. Not because I think it is, and not because I think it isn’t, but because the heated discussion has itself become a very tedious Christmas tradition.

It’s now so cliché to prove that it is, that there’s hardly anyone left who’s still passionate that it isn’t. I mean it. I’ve not heard anyone in ten years, maybe more, argue that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. Which means either: (1) all those people are hiding, out of embarrassment, (2) they don’t care enough to argue about it, or (3) they don’t exist in the numbers that the majority who still feel urged to say ‘Die Hard is a Christmas movie’ think they do.

My guess is a mix of mostly (2) and (3). Either way though, that is the debate over, isn’t it? The die-hard Die Harders have won by volume and numbers.

And yet still, every year in lists of Christmas Movies and articles about ‘Non-Festive Movies that Somehow Still Make You Feel Festive’, the editors are compelled to include some jokey line about why the original Bruce Willis epic must be considered a Christmas Movie, or you’re not a true believer in Christmas at all.

Don’t you think it might be time to stop going on about it?

There are lots more festive arguments brewing out there at this time of year. The First Day Adventists still get cross at Christmas trees in November, yet will be blasting out Slade and Mariah Carey on December 1st. I’ve blogged before about fake versus real trees, and let’s not get started on deconstructing the John Lewis and Sainsbury’s ads.

What do I think? I think a Christmas Movie is one that you like watching because it makes you feel Christmassy. That’s it. If blowing the roof off the Nakatomi Plaza and crawling through blood to kill off German terrorists is your festive thing, then enjoy! If watching an improbable couple get together just as the snow falls and the children at the orphanage get their presents after all, then season’s greetings to you too! There’s no battle here, nobody taking you hostage until you agree that some violent action movie is actually the epitome of peace on Earth and good will to all men. It’s all very tedious to be stuck in that skyscraper.

Die Hard, by the way, was released in the middle of a summer. Ho Ho Ho.

THE SUN WAS SHINING ON THE SEA

Nice bit of sunshine this morning. Perfect for a blog that might just be celebrating its seventh birthday.

I looked up what seven year-olds are into. Friends Lego (seriously?), hover footballs, polystyrene rocket launchers, My First Sewing Kit and spider robots. Well, a wordy waffle about something irrelevant will have to do.

After all, that's what I've spent the last 1853 posts doing since 2013.

It has occurred to me though, that the world has changed a lot since I sat down and wrote The Trouble with Blogging. Yesterday, in the park, I was thinking about all the words that have made their way into our language over the last seven years - words that we know very well, but back then would have been mystifying. Here are seven of the best:

Selfie (n). a photograph that you take of yourself, usually with a smartphone, often published to social media.

Back in 2013, this word was just coming into usage I think. I remember being at a summer party at a fancy venue, when a colleague whipped out a phone to take a picture of himself in front of an owl.

"Want me to take it for you?" I asked.

"Nah. It's a selfie," he responded, angling his head into the frame.

I thought that was weird.

Bae (n). informal. someone you love; a boyfriend or girlfriend.

I didn't believe this was a real word at first. Years ago I went for an interview at a company called BAE Systems - turns out to be a very different kind of thing.

Vape (v). to inhale nicotine or another drug as vapour rather than smoke, especially using an e-cigarette.

It might surprise you, but I'm in favour of vaping. I mean, as a substitute for smoking, not to take up as a leisure pursuit. It's much better to trail through a cloud of strawberry-flavoured steam than a toxic cloud of cigarette smoke. I've no idea whether it's better for you, but it's at least a bit more sociable.

Brexit (n). the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union.

This would have been perplexing in 2013. To be honest it's been perplexing since 2016 as well, but seven years ago the word was unheard of. In fact, I remember it starting off as a colloquialism: the BBC definitely didn't use it at first, as it fell under street-slang. Then it was everywhere, and its little history as a word is now pretty well-known. In the cabinet though, even up until this year, the government office responsible was known as the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. We do tend to overcomplicate things in the United Kingdom. Still, the less said about Brexit, the better.

Fake News (n). false stories that appear to be news, spread on the Internet or using other media, usually crafted to influence political views, or as a joke.

We've always had a wry view of the papers making stuff up for sensationalist reasons, but we never had a global name for it. Thanks to the outgoing President of the United States, we now do. And it's one of the worst things that could have happened. Who arbitrates which media is fake and which is true? How can you tell? When the subject of a news story whinges about it being 'fake news' half the world agrees and the other half raises its eyebrows and questions whether the content of an article can speak objectively about the article, or whether (as usual) there's a huge reason for them to be decrying the story as 'fake news'. I wish it weren't a thing, but it is. It turns out to have been one step away from 'fake election' and two steps from 'fake democracy'.

Post-Truth (adj). relating to a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.

You could argue that 'fake news' is a symptom of a post-truth world. I don't think this concept existed seven years ago, and if it did, there might not have been a name for it. Social media plays a significant role here, as it's managed to create echo-chambers for people to resonate in. The only encouraging thing I can think of post-truth is that eventually it will collapse and create a hunger for real truth. 

Lockdown (n). an emergency situation in which people are not allowed to freely enter, leave, or move around in a building or area because of danger.

This word existed, but it wasn't needed in civilian circles before 2020... unless of course you were in the boy band Blue, who famously had the 'system up with the top down, got the city on lockdown' as long ago as 2002. I can only assume that their driving was so poor, all of London had to stay indoors while they blasted the streets with their terrible loud music.

These days of course, we're all familiar with lockdowns. It's still striking that back in February I was shocked that the whole of Northern Italy was shutdown because of this virus. I was shocked, I tell you. Here we are at the other end of the year, taking national lockdowns in our stride.

Life has changed a lot.

I wonder what words will emerge in the next seven years? If a time-traveller came back and listed them, I bet we'd scoff. Made-up nonsense! What in the world is a quantum nibble? How do you use a rombustable, and where can you download Instathought?

Then, made-up nonsense seems to be my speciality, if seven years of random blogging are anything to go by. I don't want the world to change. Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the world of polystyrene rocket launchers and spider robots. 

Happy birthday, little blog.

THE ROGUE OAK

Every walk in the park now seems more wintry than the last. Today, the trees were clinging on to the final few desperate leaves, and the bare branches were stark against the grey sky.

There is one oak tree though, right by the playpark, that's still laden with brown leaves. I recognised it as a tree I tried to climb back in the spring. I remember that I'd got into the nook where the two main branches split off from the trunk, and then had to stay there for ages because I couldn't find a way down again. For some reason, that tree, the Rogue Oak, is replete with foliage still. What, I wonder, makes it so ebullient in the autumn?

The Pagoda Tree is leafless. The Apple Tree is looking threadbare, and even the Shelter Tree, under which I sat for hours in the early summer, is now just a frame through which you can see the sky. It had a flavour of winter.

According to my official Six Season Theory though, winter begins at Christmas. And to be fair, it wasn't shudderingly cold today so I can still go along with it being Hood's Autumn for a few more weeks, I suppose.

It might be the Rogue Oak is old and needs its leaves a little longer than the others. Deep roots might be stretching to water the other trees can't find. It might be that it's just a little more sheltered and the rough breezes haven't troubled it.

Of course, all the deciduous trees need to lose their leaves eventually, or the water in the cells freezes and prevents the growth of new leaves next summer. It's a beautiful ballet of old giving way to young, of letting go of one season to prepare for the next. The letting go is the survival. I expect I'll be back one of these wintry days to find the Rogue Oak has joined the Pagoda Tree and the Shelter Tree and shaken off 2020 completely.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 63: PLANNING

So Lockdown 2.11 then, almost halfway through this little predicted season. Case numbers in the UK are down over the last few days, though nowhere near as low as they were. It's a matter of debate so far as to whether this second, half-hearted lockdown is working at all.

Positive news though: another vaccine's just passed into regulation in the US, this time with a 95% effectiveness rate.

It will take more than two separately produced vaccines to immunise the planet though, and it will be quite some time before they're readily available. However, the Moderna vaccine joins the Astra Zeneca candidate to bring a little glimmer of hope to the end of 2020. The Prime Minister in fact (who's self-isolating again, for complicated reasons) suggested today that 'those who really need it' might even be given the vaccine 'before Christmas'. Wishful thinking?

Meanwhile, in ordinaryville, planning for the Festive Season is still tricky. My family are working out how to do Secret Santa, how to make sure we organise ourselves into having the best time possible despite the regulations, and what to do if Lockdown 2 goes on any longer than its planned finish on December 4th. I'm sure every family has the same questions - will we be allowed to travel? Will the Rule of Six still apply? Will they pause the regulations altogether just to give us a shot at a Merry (yet admittedly still quite risky) Christmas?

Now that we're past the middle of November, it feels like it would be nice to know.

THE T-SHIRT JUMPER

Maybe you can help settle a debate. If you have a t-shirt with long-sleeves, made out of slightly thicker cotton than a normal t-shirt, is it okay to refer to that garment as a t-shirt jumper, or is it a long-sleeved t-shirt?

My pals laughed at me on our Zoom Scrabble night because I said it was a t-shirt jumper.

It got me thinking though, how do you actually define a jumper? Because a "long-sleeved t-shirt" seems indistinguishable from a thin jumper to me! Oh sorry Americans: I mean 'sweater'. I'm not sure what a jumper is in your world (someone who jumps?), but I guess it's not a thing you'd wear.

I pondered a few questions.

Q. Would I wear my 't-shirt jumper' over the top of another t-shirt?

A. Yes.

Q. Would I wear it over a formal shirt?

A. No.

Weird.

Q. What would I call a jumper with short sleeves?

A. Insane. Unless it had no sleeves at all, in which case (and I'm sorry again Americans but this really is a thing) I'd call it a tanktop.

So I looked up a few definitions, hoping that the hallowed dictionary writers might be able to be decisive on the matter.

Cambridge Dictionary says a jumper is 'usually made from wool'. Okay. That would count out my 't-shirt jumper' as a jumper. But then the Oxford English Dictionary throws that into question with:

"a piece of clothing for the upper part of the body, made of wool or cotton, with long sleeves"

Collins says:

"a warm knitted piece of clothing which covers the upper part of your body and arms"

And Merriam-Webster go for:

"a knitted or crocheted jacket or pullover"

... which seems ridiculous, but I'm not going to argue with the Americans again.

So where does that leave me? Knitted or woven? Wool or cotton? It seems our two finest universities don't know, and they can't even run a boat race to sort it out.

You pull it over your head, you poke your arms in and pull it round your waist - it's a jumper, right?

Yeah. A t-shirt jumper.

That being said, I don't think I could convince my friends on the Scrabble Zoom. What's more, I was wearing it underneath a hoodie, which really doesn't help my cause - I'd do exactly that with a t-shirt. I don't think I got out of it by insisting it was a 't-shirt jumper'. They were probably right. They usually are.

SCULPTURE

I surprise myself sometimes. In good ways, in not such good ways, in ways that make me smile, and ways that have me grimacing at the mirror. But surprise is a reaction nonetheless.

So I was quite surprised when I found that I’d just written a poem about being a sculpture.

Sculpture

It hurt a little bit

Each chip and chisel hit

And hammer crack

And scraping back

The peeling of the stone

It hurt a little more

As tumbled to the floor

The cornered rock,

The solid block

Revealing me alone

It hurt like all the world

Inside this stone was curled

To see the form

Unleashed, reborn

In marble silk and bone

It hurts to be set free

Diminished by degree

By sculptor cleft

And all that’s the left

Is standing on its own

HAPPY FRIDAY

Well then. It's sunny and bright, the sky is blue and the clouds are white. It's also Friday.

My colleague who's on maternity-leave messages me every week to say Happy Friday. It's one of the nicest things anybody at work does for me, and there's no shortage of irony, as it comes from someone who's not at work. But then I suppose neither are the rest of us, technically.

That being said, I did get some recognition in the end for the stuff I did yesterday. That'll teach me for mentioning it. A couple of people handed down a thank you for 'turning round the docs so fast', and I got good feedback. There's nothing like having your cynicism deflated by unexpected kindness.

There's no doubt that Friday is different to other days. It's come round quickly this week, though it's most welcome. What I really like though is that cheery first-thing Happy Friday message from someone with far more important things to do (her baby is six months old) than remember her old colleagues.  

A REALISATION

A realisation hit me two nights ago and I can’t tell you what it is. I was walking next to the park, along the road where the puddles sparkle in the lamplight.

I had to stop. It was as though all the planets were lining up, and the clockwork universe was forming a pattern: a distinct, rhythmical pattern that suddenly clicked into place. I had realised a truth.

In years to come, I’ll read this back and wonder what it was. I wish I could say, though it’s not profound enough to affect anyone but me, really. It’s one of those sad, true, liberating things that I hadn’t quite seen before. And it made me feel upset for a moment.

No, it’s not that; I still believe in God. Nice try, atheists. No it’s something else, something unique to me, I think.

It was clear. The stars were out: Draco and the Great Question Mark, the Little Bear and Orion the Hunter, lying on his side. His vertical belt of three stars was twinkling above the trees. Betelgeuse was barely visible. My silent friends were burning with delight, long ago and far away.

I started walking again. How many steps have these shoes seen? Thousands? Tens of thousands? No matter. You can’t change what has been, perhaps not even what is; only what will be. And that stretches out ahead like the road of puddles.

What do you do then, with realisations? Do you just incorporate them into things that you know? I think I’m working through mine, looking to see whether the planets continue aligning, just the way they did two nights ago, whether the universe sings its refrain and the world turns on its axis past those great stars of old.

I have a feeling it will.

THE PRESSURE CATARACT

One of the worst bits about work (not just my work) is the bit where you have to put pressure on someone because someone else is putting pressure on you.

You bet the pressure cascades down to them too; it always does. And at the top of that cataract, in echelons out of view from those of us getting drenched down here, there's usually a person who's promised something to someone and doesn't want to look bad. A lot of effort seems to go into the ongoing prevention of higher-ups looking bad.

I'm not at the bottom this time. Usually I'm in the cauldron pool, flapping about, but this time I'm having to keep asking IT to fix something so I can upload something else so that someone up there can see it and then pass it on to someone else, who needs it for a customer... and so on. Pressure down, finished-work up.

The higher up you are, the more often you swap pressure for completed stuff, and presumably the less concerned you are about the amount of pounds-per-square-inch, or maybe messages per square... chat window... you're exerting onto the saps below.

I've tried to do it nicely today. "Any updates?", "Sorry to bother you", "Apologies - me again", but the platitudes are starting to sound hollower with the repeating. It's not even their fault! I know that. They know that. Hey, maybe they even know that I know that, even if they don't know that I know they know that, but it doesn't matter - it's still not their fault.

Eventually, as pressure flows down, resentment makes its way up that waterfall too, as well as the begrudgingly finished work. Managers lose currency with their subordinates, for being 'pushy' or 'overbearing'. It builds up over time, and that's why, though it's not really me, I do feel horrible dishing out pressure.

So, when complete, I decided today to overflow the thanks to IT. I figured it was the least I could do: to be effusive, to be encouraging, and apologetic for the poking I'd been doing all day. It was rewarded with a thumbs up, which is about as good a recognition I could have hoped for. It made me smile. The only mistake I made was that I then subsequently expected the same thank you to flow down to me, when I'd delivered my bit upwards in the cascade.

No such joy. But don't worry - I'm not going to fall into the trap of passing resentment upwards this time. You see, for me, I know that I work for someone Higher, and the only thing that matters is what flows from Him. And I can tell you, it's a lot of things, but it's never pressure. 

VULNERABILITY

Melissa Helser recently wrote, 

"True vulnerability will swallow up the lie, 'I have to do it alone.' It knows that the risk will not be without pain and heartache, but the reward will be connection. The reward will be the gift of being seen, even in your mess and mostly in your need.”

That's rather an eloquent way of saying something I've been feeling for a while now. I like it. The reward will be connection; in fact, connection is established through vulnerability. What a scary but beautiful thought.

In computing, a vulnerability is always a weakness. It's a flaw that could be exploited by something or someone malicious. It's a defect, a bug, a 'known issue'. But far from weakness, I think Melissa knows that it's actually a huge strength.

Sometimes we forget that we were once flowers who enjoyed the sunshine. When we were young, our petals opened up in love, freedom, joy, and the sky was endless and blue. Then something happened - maybe a series of things, that taught us how to close up. Pain, loneliness, and heartache entered our little worlds and they were never quite the same again - though we did long for the springtime we remembered.

And that's because vulnerability is a clear route to pain, just as much as it is a pathway to connection. It takes so much raw courage to be vulnerable, so much wisdom to pick your moments and your people. But as Melissa says, the reward is the gift of being seen - and let's be honest, I do think most of us want to be seen - 'even in our mess, and mostly in our need.'

I don't just want to be vulnerable. I want to be a person who sees other people find the sunshine; I want to be trusted, connected with, certain of the reality, the real reality that binds us together as humans. 

For me, vulnerability is the sort of opposite of a defect. It's a clear signal to the winter that whatever happens I'm going to live in the sunshine. It's a determination to be exactly who I'm designed to be, to allow and enable others to be exactly who they're designed to be, regardless of the past, overcoming the trials and troubles of our history.

And I don't want to be that on my own. I don't ever want to do that alone.

CAR MAINTENANCE

Well, with a bit of gaffa tape and a wing and a prayer, the ol' motor went through its MOT like a dream.

"It was close," beamed Dave The Mechanic. He went on to illustrate the rust, the bends and the holes in the exhaust, and why it's probably for the best if I get it all replaced sometime soon. Fair enough.

I'm not a huge fan of car maintenance. My Grandpa would be disappointed, certainly; he was a driver in the war and messing around with vehicles was always something he liked. But the genes never did quite flow in my direction. I tried - I had a few winters watching other people, trying to learn, freezing my fingers off. Once, I even spent several hours upside-down in the driver's seat, trying to reattach a clutch cable to the pedal of a Mini-Metro.

Do they still make the Haynes manuals? Before cars went all electronic and gizmo-complex, everyone had a Haynes! It was a book that basically dissected the workings of everything on pretty much every car there was! VW campers, Ferraris, metros... there was even a jokey one for the Millennium Falcon, for the Star Wars nerds at Christmas. You could look up any kind of car repair in a Haynes manual. I had one for the Mini-Metro, one for the Proton. After that I had a white Ford Mondeo I think, and by that time the world had become too busy for fixing cars in the cold - especially when there were mechanics you could pay to do that for you.

There was always an Atlas as well in the car - one of those ring-bound ones that covered every road in the country. That lived with the Haynes manual - a picture book of Britain's roads and town centres. These days, a satellite does that navigating job for us, and it's quite rare that any of us have to stop off in a layby and consult the tiny snaking roads in the book, under the single bulb of the reading lamp. I kind of miss getting lost like that, not being able to phone anyone to tell them how late I was going to be. There was a simple kind of freedom to those days.

Anyway, don't let me wax into nostalgia! My car's passed its MOT, I didn't have to get underneath it in the cold, and all is well with the world! 

  

REFLUX AND MISSING COMMAS

I don't feel eloquent enough to wade in on why the world feels so divided today. There's a flow of optimism in one direction: new President, potential vaccine, test-run of the Hyperloop... but in the other pocket of the world, the US evangelicals appear to be lamenting something I don't understand.

And it's best not to write too much about things you don't understand.

What I do understand is what it's like to get hiccups in Sainsbury's.

Now it's bad enough that your glasses steam up (see last week's Waitrose adventure), but throw in a bit of the old repetition, and whammo: you're breathing in your own hiccups. I felt like I was trapped in a reflux cycle.

To cap that off, you're not going to believe what they've put up in that store. I mean, in massive letters, right under the clock, they've printed the words:

"FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD"

I looked up and pretty much said out-loud (and indignantly) under my mask:

"What? Where's the [hic] comma? [hic]"

Every time I check the clock in Sainsbury's from now on, I'm going to have trouble not seeing that massive missing comma. Is that what's happening to punctuation these days? It's sort of optional?

In the original song, the boys in the workhouse are doing their best to dream of all the food they miss! Instead of gruel, how joyous to think of 'hot sausage and mustard' or 'a great big steak'! In Sainsbury's where you're literally surrounded by everything you need to make your 'three banquets a day' you don't have to really do that same kind of Dickensian imagining. And even if you did, the second two words are an expression, or an expansion of the first! Food, glorious food! It really is nonsense without the comma. What is wrong with the world?

I'd probably got hiccups from eating my enormous dinner too quickly. That'd be about the size of it.

TO REMEMBER

I don't know why it feels more poignant this year. Perhaps it's because we've experienced such dramatic restrictions in 2020, and it's made it all the clearer that we shouldn't take our way of life for granted

It might be because we've seen, or at least some would say we've seen, a rise in fascism around the world. Many of the disembodied evils still swirl around in our world, and it was those things our grandparents fought against.

Or alternatively, additionally perhaps, it could just be that Remembrance Sunday means more to me the older I get. Don't misunderstand me - it was drilled into us as children as a thing of sacred respect, and I agree with that. We must remember. It's just that when you're a kid, church parade with the cub scouts is a sombre affair that you're instructed requires best behaviour. As the years go by, you start to realise that it's less stuffy and much more meaningful. It could have been me, after all, aged 17, sent to Ypres or Flanders. And aged 42, it could conceivably have been my child, my niece, my nephew. I'm not a parent but that is a weighty thought that an eight year-old cub scout might not fully appreciate.

I found out today that the word 'cenotaph' is Greek. It comes from two words, kenos and taphos, which combine to make the phrase 'empty tomb'. A cenotaph is an empty tomb.

The idea is that we build a memorial for those who've died but are not buried inside - in our case, an edifice of Portland Stone some yards away from Downing Street. It's a proxy for a place of death, a stand-in, a substitute. And every year on Remembrance Sunday the Royal Family, the Prime Ministers and leaders, the faith leaders and heads of the armed forces gather together there to salute and remember those who died to protect our freedoms.

I watched online as Prince Charles laid the first wreath on behalf of the Queen. I think there might have been tears in his eyes. Great-coat, cap, gloves, sword. He saluted the memorial. The Queen looked on from a balcony. I can't explain why moments like this make me feel extremely proud to be British.

In remembering, we forge a connection, not just with each other, but with real heroes, real people who lived and died in days that have led hour by hour to our own. As Seigfried Sasson put it, they were:

"Mocked by hopeless longing to regain

Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,

And going to the office in the train"*

The connection matters, and it's always mattered. In this season, when a virus has changed our way of living, and division has swept through our nations, it seems all the more important, and yes, poignant, to be thankful, to be kind, and to remember. 

---

*The Dreamers, Siegfried Sassoon: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43169/dreamers

A SATURDAY WALK

I went walking today. Once I'd laced myself into my walking boots, I decided to walk along the river into town, with a quick visit to a deserted Forbury Gardens and the Abbey Ruins.

Deserted, eh? It seems this second lockdown has had very little impact. There were kids with bikes, exasperated parents, runners, joggers, strollers along the towpath - very much like a normal Saturday in fact. Lockdown Schmockdown, it seems.

I sat on a bench to eat my lunch. It wasn't chilly; in fact, the low, bright sun was warm when it made it through the trees. There were long shadows on the golden grass, and the river chopped along.

An enormous flock of geese soared over the trees squawking and gabbling. There were hundreds of them, combining their croaks into a cacophony of bird-noise. Then, almost all as one, they swooped low and landed on the water, just at the opposite bank. I found myself wondering why birds do that, and how they know what the plan is. And also, what the point was. Did one start off and the rest follow? I had a feeling that at some point they'd all get bored and squawk off to the next landing point.

I'd gone to Waitrose to get sandwiches today, an event that had been fine apart from my glasses steaming up with my mask on. I think the cold air just made the situation worse. I stood in front of the sandwiches not being able to see a thing, so I swooped up a box of egg and cress sarnies, a pot of watermelon chunks, and a marshmallow bar.

By the river, I suddenly discovered I had accidentally picked up a protein bar and chicken and cranberry sandwiches. I ate them anyway.

As I was munching on a chicken sandwich, enjoying the river, a young couple, holding hands strolled by. They stopped, facing the river, just opposite me.

How sweet, I thought. The romance of the river on a beautiful November day, with the sun and the autumn leaves under a dappled blue sky and... oh my goodness they were smooching.

I've nothing against 'smooching', hey, we've all done a smooch or two in our time, but these two were, shall we say, pushing the PDA-envelope?

Right in front of me! I mean not knowing where to look is one thing (left, right, even up, but anywhere other toward) but when you've got to contend with the noises, and it's all just three feet away! I mean, honestly! I was petrified I'd forget how to swallow a bit of chicken, that it would get stuck in my throat and I'd have to clear it and it would sound like I was hinting at these two lovebirds.

In the end, they managed to prize their lips apart, gripped hands, and walked off down the river. Bless.

The town centre isn't too far from the river, so a short while later I strolled through a crowd of a million pigeons and found myself walking to Forbury Gardens.

It was getting nearer to sunset by then. In winter, that's rather a lovely time of day - St Lawrence's Church and the town-centre rooftops were already dark silhouettes behind the trees. Some of the street lamps were glowing and there was even an early star twinkling. I sat by the lion.

There were still so many people there. I peeled open the watermelon and ate it with my fingers. Kids ran around the bandstand, whooping as they tested the echo. A group of men leaned back in the park benches, chattering away in Polish, and young adults walked by with white Apple headphones and denim jackets.

Once again I imagined what the Abbey must have been like. A board said that it would have been 140m from the West Door to the altar - the whole thing was simply enormous, towering over the prison and St James's church in the space where the blue evening sky hung its clouds. All that remains of that Abbey are a few walls of stone and an old song. I always find it quite melancholy.

I do like a walk. There's so much time to think and process. I got home, feeling tired, but also refreshed and happy. And before long, I'd unlaced my boots and got the dinner on, and I really did feel everything was alright with the world.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 62: HDMI

Lockdown 2.1 and everyone on the VCB is comparing HDMI cables. I'm on the edge of my seat with unbridled excitement. I mean I don't know how I'm keeping it in.

Which is better, the silver-plated $800 variety, or the one Steve's mate got down the Pound Shop? I wonder. Oh and someone's just found a diamond-braided one worth $1200. Such a rollercoaster. Someone's left a review on the website:

"I’ve been searching for ways to spend my extra fortune, and I had never even considered silver HDMI cables! I ordered a few of these for the palace. I can quit burning my extra money in large barrels outside now!"

By the way, I'm calling it Lockdown 2.1 because I'm counting the days and this is the first day after 0 (it started yesterday): we're not a tenth of the way through, don't worry.

Who in the world needs a diamond-braided HDMI cable? The chaps are still chuckling about it, with an air of exaggerated superiority. That could never happen to them; they'd never be conned of course.

"I've bought cars for less than that!" spurted Mr Pub Quiz, incredulously. Quite.

There's some debate now about how long this second national lockdown will last. Officially, says the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, until the 4th of December, giving us a few weeks rest, and then another few weeks of manic Christmas - perfect for all our super-spreader events, family parties, and crammed-in shopping excursions. There'll so be a 3.0 won't there - all of us sitting at home once again with Netflix and a stack of DVDs.

Maybe I'd better get myself a proper HDMI cable.    

ONE NATION

I saw a little clip of another prominent American Evangelical leading a prayer-time. No raspberries at Covid this time; she was pleading with the Lord for 'the sound of victory' by which she explicitly means the current President winning the election in the eleventh, and unlikely, hour.

She is the 'Spiritual Advisor to the White House' - a job which, if you think about it, the rest of us shouldn't really be seeing her doing, unless you conflate that job title as 'Spiritual Advisor to the United States'. That isn't beyond the current President's belief-system, given the notion that he himself and all his followers are the one true America, so perhaps it's hard for them to tell the difference.

Anyway, there she was, doing all the things that I've seen people do in evangelical prayer meetings over the years. I'm not going to knock that heartfelt passion, if heartfelt it is. What it reminds me though is how a lot of people are interpreting this election as a veil, behind which is the real battle of good versus evil as though we're in some sort of end-times drama. And I want to tell you that I find that disconcerting.

In the old days it was easy to tell who the baddies were. They were the cruel, twisted figures who schemed in the shadows. They cackled at their own malicious intelligence while explaining their devious plots to oafish henchmen. They wore cloaks and masks, as if they knew their internal evil was a thing to be hidden, and yet they were proud and unremorseful.

I've painted a cartoon picture, but it's frighteningly easy to project that onto someone you don't like. And in a world where everyone is tribalised into left and right, blue and red, progressive or conservative, you end up with both armies both convinced they're on the side of the angels, fighting some sort of holy war against the devil behind the scenes.

In the Divided States, it's super-charged with religious belief, probably because atheists and anti-theists tend to gather around the blue flag, and traditional believers are likely to be as red-blooded conservatives as they come. Two Americas start to open up: one that tries to hold on to the past and all that makes them great; the other that recoils at the complexities of conservatism in the modern world, and advocates for a more tolerant future. Consequently the Red Team believe something good is being taken away from them and they don't want to live in a godless country, and the Blue Team believe the Reds are stubbornly holding everything back with their imaginary beliefs and jingoistic patriotism.

But don't let me tar everyone with the same star-spangled brush. These are trends and not labels, and I don't wish to insult 330 million people in a single paragraph. You should be free to support whatever kind of country you believe in, whatever your belief system is, and you have the right to campaign for it, to debate for it, and ultimately to vote for it. That's a good thing.

The disconcerting bit for me, is the way it infuses back here to England, to my world of familiar-looking prayer meetings and our own wars of left versus right. If someone put on a fiery prayer meeting here to specifically pray that the current Prime Minister wins the next General Election, there would be an explosion of fury. In fact, I don't think a church would do it - it would be way too contentious. That hasn't happened, but there is a sort of undercurrent...

Is it true that the Bible most closely matches conservatism? A lot of people think so. Or was Jesus more of a socialist in his teachings and actions? Should we be furious about defending the rights of the unborn? Do women have the right to decide what they do with their bodies? Should each family have the opportunity to do the best for themselves? Or should we be more community-minded? There are some strong views out there, even in this country, and in Christian circles they bubble under the surface. Nowadays though, in the wake of a polarising event like a US election, the bubbles are boiling.

It's interesting to me that the 'Spiritual Advisor to the White House' along with millions of evangelical Christians, seem intent for God to keep a man of terrible character on the 'throne', just to win this great battle of good versus evil in America. I genuinely don't believe it's that simple.

To me, it would seem wiser to ask God to heal their nation, not win it. Regardless of who presides, the USA has been ripped apart. But their strength has always been their unity: E Pluribus Unum, as the Great Seal says - One out of the many, 50 states joined in that common endeavour under the Stars and Stripes: one nation, under God, indivisible. That to me, seems like the greatest idea for a country, rather than pretending that only your side gets to be united. America, you're so much more...

And that, if I may say so, is what the Spiritual Advisor to the White House should be praying about. Because what happens to that nation is likely to affect us all.

UNNERVED

Ready for a little maths?

Alright. Let's start with x = y. That means that whatever value you give x, y is going to be exactly the same thing.

If x = y, then squaring x is no different to multiplying x by y.

x² = xy

So far, the universe is with us, so let's start playing around with the equation. You remember, that in order for both sides of an equation to balance, whatever you do (dividing, multiplying, adding, etc), you have to do, equally, to both sides: like a see-saw. So let's take off the same value from left and right: let's subtract y².

x² - y² = xy - y²

We can do something nifty here. Algebra helps us out. First of all (look at the left hand side):

x² - y² = (x+y)(x-y)

You know this because multiplying out the brackets gives you x² + xy - xy - y², and the two bits in the middle add up to 0: x² - y².

So.. that means:

(x+y)(x-y) = xy - y²

But there's also a y in both bits of the right hand side we can factor out: xy - y² = y(x-y).

(x+y)(x-y) = y(x-y)

Looking at the see-saw, there's probably something else we can do now. Both sides have an (x-y) factor, so we can divide both the left and right by (x-y) and they'll disappear:

(x+y)(x-y) = y(x-y)

(x+y) = y

x+y = y

We started with x = y, so it must also be true that:

x+x = x

2x = x

2 = 1

---

And that's a pretty good description of how I'm feeling today. Unnerved, but not quite sure why, as though the space-time continuum might have doubled (or halved) in size and nobody's noticed. As though 2+2 is now equal to 2 or maybe 3, or (crazily, I know) 4!

I'm sure it'll be fine. It'll be fine, right?

It'll be fine.

THE HAPPENING OF A SUNDAY

So Sunday happened. I had a tech failure at church when my phone slid out of its stand and accidentally fell on the keyboard controls. For a while I was at risk of playing everything out-of-key, to the sound of the hurdy-gurdy transposed up by a semi-tone.

I styled it out. In fact I’m pretty sure nobody would have noticed, unless they were looking at my face (anguished and embarrassed) and they really shouldn’t have been.

What else happened? I overreacted to a thing. I really don’t like that I do that; it feels like a furious sort of weakness. I’ve worked it out though - it’s a reaction to being bypassed or ignored, and it’s pretty typical. I think in some ways, we all fear insignificance and we all boil up if someone tries to take our feeling of mattering away.

I tried taking the heat out by switching glasses - I mean, choosing to see it through the most gracious lenses. It sort of worked but I’ve got a long way to go.

“Always choose to believe the most generous explanation,” I reminded myself, exhaling. Got to remember that. But then I’m pretty sure I said that last time.

Not much else happened. I went to the supermarket this afternoon to get butter, and found a store full of people trying not to panic-buy. It had the air of a Christmas Eve about it - polite, full, fast-moving, but also the pace accelerates the closer the store gets to closing time. The queues were long and angsty.

The reason of course is that we go back into lockdown on Thursday. Lockdown 2.0. I think most people know it’s the right thing to do, but also like the comfort of having thirty two spare toilet rolls in the cupboard.

Then later I logged into the poetry slam. It’s nice to meet different people, even if it has to be by zoom. We had the usual mix of deep and meaningful poems tonight, the head-scratchers, and the expressive topical explosions. Poetry, as the leader pointed out today, seems to be ‘anything written down with deliberately chosen line breaks’.

I don’t know

Whether I truly agree

Or whether that

Is nonsense

Either way, it occurred to me that when you’re online reading them out, it’s up to you to make the words flow. And kudos to my fellow expressive poetry slammers; we did all do exactly that.

And then a Sunday morphs imperceptibly into a Monday, even though they’re quite a different species. This will be Week 34 of working from home - a number unbelievable in March or April! Outside, the wind rushes noisily through the trees. I’ll probably still be here next March and April, watching the season change to Spring again.

Well, one step at a time. You can’t live tomorrow today so you may as well get on with it. Right now I need to sleep across the ‘evolution of species’ and let last week morph into next like a caterpillar to a butterfly, hopefully. Anyway, that at least is how Sunday happened.