SCROLL UP

If you’re scrolling, either right or left, or up or down, what do those words actually mean?

The reason I’m asking is because Sammy always means the screen, and I always mean the thing my eyes are looking at - and whichever way you move it, one of those things goes one way, and the other always goes the other.

Here’s what I mean: If you have a carousel of images, say, a gallery in Instagram, to see photo 2/10 you would move your finger (or mouse) left across the screen so that the image on the right (3/10) slides into view. I would describe that whole thing as scrolling right, because you’re looking at the next right thing. In a real gallery, you’d be insane to call that action ‘moving left’ and if you stood where you are and moved the paintings past you, that would get you kicked out.

Similarly, when doing your click and collect order and choosing between all the different yoghurts, moving your finger up the screen pushes the page down, right? Sammy says ‘scroll up’ to view the items lower down the page, whereas I think that is definitely scrolling down. Because it is.

So who’s right and who’s wrong?

I blame the satnav. In the old days, the map was the static thing and you, sitting in the back with it flopped open on your lap, traced your progress with an inky finger. The car moved, you moved, your finger moved, but the map, like the stationary bit of planet it depicted, stayed entirely where it was (relative to the car of course).

The satnav flipped that thinking. It makes the car the stationary object and uses satellites to move the map around it! Imagine that! The world literally revolves around you, the centre of your geopositionary universe.

I’m not saying that’s Sammy’s worldview by the way. Or yours if you’re in the scroll-up-to-see-content-lower-down-the-page-club! I just think the difference is interesting. And it might yet be a function of age. Though there are only a few years between us, technically she’s a Millennial and I am a young Gen-X. Perhaps something about the age we were when we learned this technology has made us think differently?

Or perhaps she, unlike me, just doesn’t see a page of content to move eyes across. Perhaps she sees a screen and a finger that moves it.

I’m pretty sure this is where Einstein started dreaming up theories of relativity. Or Galileo even! After all, those geniuses knew that mathematically the Leaning Tower of Pisa was moving past the cannonball and the feather at just the same speed.

WHAT TILLY GOT UP TO

A dog ran off with my doughnut today.

“Tilly!” cried Tilly’s owner. But Tilly, an excitable white terrier, wasn’t in the mood for listening. Fastened between her teeth in a paper bag, and now bobbing around as she sprinted across the grass, was the delicious, sugary doughnut I’d just bought myself from the bakery.

I had been eating my lunch in the park, under the shade, leaning back against a tree trunk. Sandwich in one hand, phone in the other, I was listening to an audiobook in my headphones - The 24 Laws of Storytelling. I’d rested my bottle of water next to me, along with the paper bag containing the doughnut.

“Make sure your hero has obvious weaknesses,” burbled the American in my ears. He was going on about how boring Superman is because he’s too perfect and how there are only three things that can be used against him - kryptonite, his own super convictions, and of course, Lois Lane. “Every Superman story utilises one of these weaknesses,” he drawled, “But Batman is a hero with much more obvious humanity. He has to use his resources, his wit, his technology to overcome…”

I had a bite of sandwich. I really like the way bakery bread bounces. It’s so soft and fresh, like a mattress you can sink your teeth into. The wind blustered the leaves, the author wittered on about how great The Dark Knight trilogy is, and then Tilly stole my doughnut.

“I am so sorry,” said her owner, “When she’s got something in her mouth it’s almost impossible to get her to drop it.”

Inside I was betting it wasn’t. Outside, I smiled and told him not to worry about it. Meanwhile, Tilly, about two hundred metres away now, had her nose in the paper bag and was wolfing down my afters, deliciously and victoriously cocking up her head to check we were nowhere near her.

“I’ll er, I’ll go and get you another one,” he fumbled, apologetically. “Will you still be here?”

“No, I’ve got to head back to work, but seriously, don’t worry about it. These things happen.”

Inside: No they don’t. This is ridiculous. Lousy dog. Lousy owner. Lousy universe.

“Sure?” he said. I was busy imagining a world where I actually got really angry about things like this, and what I might say, and how I might feel if I were a different kind of person. Had Tilly nicked it from my child and my child were bawling into the trees, I might have been less calm or measured. As it was, I just got up and said,

“Yeah, it’s not that important. Oh don’t worry, there was no chocolate in it or anything. Hope she’ll be okay from all that sugar.”

He was too embarrassed to be thankful. I don’t blame him. He chased Tilly for a bit and eventually clasped a lead to her sugary collar.

"So your hero must be fallible," said the 24-laws narrator. I switched him off.

I just went back home to work after that, feeling as though I were still in need of some kind of a treat. Perhaps, I thought to myself, this is God’s way of telling me I shouldn’t be eating doughnuts, that I need more... self control.

Though, I’d have hoped he’d have also given more of that to Tilly.

QUESTIONS FOR THE COFFEE PEOPLE

“Costa?” she said, eyebrows raised, “You may as well make it at home.”

“I quite like it, to be honest,” replied a colleague, “It’s better than Starbucks anyway.”

Furious nods. I quite liked his bravery.

“Yeah but it’s still not great is it?” she retorted.

I shrugged. You are perfectly welcome to consider Costa as expensive ditchwater if you like. But clearly a lot of people do like it, as much as they like other well-known high-street purveyors of what is essentially always only ever hot-water-poured-over-some-beans.

Now. I’m not a coffee person. I don’t know what a chemex does, and I don’t know whether you should keep grounds in the fridge. I like my coffee as a pure combination of hot water and tea with (and I’m really quite specific about this) no coffee.

So maybe the Coffee People can help me understand. What is it that makes a ‘proper’ coffee? What does it need to taste of? What does it need not to taste of? What makes it good? Clearly there are some universal standards you all agree on - otherwise how do you know to furiously reject St Arbuck so categorically?

It’s possible that the universals I'm looking for are the criteria that make a bad coffee, rather than a good one. I imagine that you don’t need it to taste like it’s microwaved washing up water, or as though it's been squeezed through a mangle.

I imagine that it can’t be insipid - either in flavour, or in punch. It has to be stimulating for a bleary-eyed Monday morning. It has to have caffeine in it, and it has to enough pizzaz to kickstart you out of the half-sleep you woke up with, and bring you fully into the day.

I’m guessing it should have some flavour - potentially a smooth texture, perhaps you like it a bit fruitier, or sharper, or sweeter? But that’s completely up to you, isn’t it?

Beyond that, I can’t see what makes it decent. And I can’t see why people get so worked up about it. Froth-to-coffee ratio? Palm tree design neatly sprinkled on top? In a solid cup instead of recyclable cardboard?

I am sorry, Coffee People. I may have enraged or even baffled you. That’s okay. You can help me, especially if you have a sort of esoteric glow around coffee, and you love taking about it as much as you love actually drinking it. I really do have no idea why it can be so great, and why it’s so different to liking, say, types of orange juice, or flavours of crisp.

What I will say though, is that it can’t ever be right to mock people for what they like, even when they don’t know any better. There’s not really anything big or clever about sneering about Starbucks or Nero - for some people, that’s a very accessible, very pleasant treat. And there are others who are quite happy to break open a jar of Gold Blend at home and scorch the flavour out of it with freshly-boiled limescale. I’m really happy to leave them to it, if that’s what they like.

So, what is that makes a good coffee? Help me out. I’m a tea-drinker who likes slightly smoky, but also smooth teas with a dash of almond milk. What about you? What floats your coffee boat?

LITTLE RED TIE

Someone I went to school with has been arrested for doing something unspeakable.

I went through a range of emotions. Anger, certainly, but a whole heap of sadness too. And I’ve been processing why I felt that way about someone I haven’t seen for thirty years.

Thirty years. That seems huge. This is how life goes I suppose: yesterday turns into last month, then last month becomes last year, and you blink and it was all ten years ago, then twenty, then… well, you get the picture. Your memories feel like they belong to a different world, but really they’re connected to you in a sequence of days you can’t ignore.

He wasn’t someone I’d have called a friend. I knew who he was, but I wouldn’t have hung around with him. Like me, in September 1989, aged just 11, he would have fumbled his fingers around a little red tie, slipped into a pair of solid black shoes and poked a curly head into a navy blue jumper. One shiny bag over both shoulders and off to secondary school for the first time he went. We went.

I shudder when I think about where that path takes him. He’d been a nice enough boy - slightly insecure, good at football, but not the best. He had the tendency to be silly like the rest of us, but I don’t ever remember him being mean or nasty. Funny, yes occasionally, even kind sometimes, but in all respects just part of the gaggle of fresh-faced eleven year olds, crowding through the school gates on a sunny September morning. 

“Vile,” wrote someone on flumpbook. “I’m sick to my core.”

Yeah. Me too. Me too.

A lot of people at school made bad choices. It’s part of growing up, learning, adapting to change. It’s a tumultuous few years of wrestling with identity and relationships, with French vocab and quadratic equations as well as friends and hormones. I get that. He made the choice to hide behind the school bully: a tall, bruising boy who was mysteriously captain of the football team. A cigarette here, a spattering of F words there, turning the air blue behind the gym. I remember thinking how sad that was, watching on from the sweaty games of football we used to have on the field. They laughed at how bad we were and suggested we went back to chess club.

Not blessed with the bravery to be the actual bully, he quickly morphed into the sycophant - the guy who sneers from behind the shoulders of his bigger, tougher friend. He laughs a second later, he cackles with glee at kids barely weaker than himself. He snivels like Grima Wormtongue - pathetic, greasy, cowardly, but he knows he’s protected by wizardry you really don’t want to go anywhere near. It was the worst combination.

I had the good sense not to engage with any of them. But I did feel sad for the nice kid, caught up in the middle of it all. Somewhere deep down, I thought maybe he would pull through and grow up.

Sadness now though. He never did. And now there are big consequences.

Sometimes I think consequences have a sort of depressing effect on a person’s behaviour. You can’t escape them, so everything’s already ruined; what does it matter if I make things worse? If only, you think, I could disconnect myself from those who love me, then they won’t have to suffer from my spiralling mistakes…

It’s not true though is it?

“It’s his Mum I feel sorry for,” commented another friend. I remembered my Mum suddenly, helping me to do a tie in the mirror that first day.

“Yeah, and his kids.”

We are never able to disconnect ourselves. And consequences ripple through love, whether we like it or not. We’re also someone’s son, someone’s daughter.

I guess though, it’s a reminder about the tiny choices we make. Wisdom is picking a path when it looks like it doesn’t matter. It’s standing up to something wrong that’s also quite exciting; it’s seeing where a path might take you, long before you choose it. It’s knowing when to turn back, when to let your conscience whisper to you, and whom to listen to.

I wish I could rescue that nice kid from himself… and maybe someday, someone in a prison or chaplaincy uniform will do just that. There is still that chance. I wish I could rewind time and stop the path swirling before him in 1989. But that’s not how time works.

All I can do is pay it forward, praying for the eleven year olds who are standing fresh-faced in front of mirrors, practising how to do up little school ties around pink necks and white shirts. Maybe I can write, maybe I can teach, or something, anything just to help at least one person!

And maybe in my own life, I can recognise the micro-moments where wisdom can save me from a path I wouldn’t wish on my foulest enemy. It’s a sickening, sad, desperate reminder. But it’s also one that’s full of hope.

LOOKING FORWARD TO FLY

I don’t want you to think this is fancy, as, to be honest, I’m only going to Scotland in September, but this week I booked a flight with British Airways.

Well two actually; I’m hoping to come back. 

However, the good people at BA sent me a perplexing message:

“We look forward to flying with you, Mr Stubbs”

Wait. Am I flying the plane? They are looking forward to flying with me? Surely it should be me who’s looking forward to flying with them? While it’s a sort of childhood dream to be a pilot, I don’t think it would be helpful for it to come true now. I mean I’d need at least a couple of lessons.

The only thing they could mean I suppose, is that they are looking forward to flying the plane to Glasgow with me on it.

But that doesn’t make sense either does it? How do I add any value to flight BA1484? What have I got to bring to the party? It’s safer, certainly to get a trained pilot in the cockpit instead of a 43 year old technical author who once had a go at Microsoft Flight Simulator and ‘sort of liked it’. But is that pilot, his crew or his company, really looking forward to me, specifically me, being aboard a Boeing 737 for 55 minutes on a Thursday afternoon? Seems unlikely. Unless I’m supposed to do a song or a dance or a comedy turn while I’m up there.

No, the thing they’re really looking forward to, the only thing it could ever have been, is the fare that kerchings into the coffers and adds a tiny data point to their profits. I fill a seat - not with sparkling company or wit, and not the seat at the front in the cockpit - just a regular, economy seat, as anonymous as any other bod who booked that flight, with my bottom.

Air travel’s really lost its sparkle. I wish it didn’t feel so much like being on an expensive bus. Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to it; I’m looking forward to flying with them, anonymously or not.

RETURN TO BARN-DANCES

Ah! Finally! The return of gigs for the barn-dance band!

It’s been sixteen months since we performed, so getting back on the road would be nervy and exciting for all of us. Would Matt’s sound equipment still work? Would the mice have eaten holes in Tom’s drum cases? Would my fingers find the same old shapes along the keyboard?

It turned out that the answers to all those questions would have to wait. As would we, for ages, in the stuffy function room of the Royal Winchester Hotel.

It was a wedding, and it was doing that thing that a lot of weddings just can’t help doing; running over. They’d booked us for an 8pm start, giving us plenty of room to set up while they sat downstairs for the speeches. The plan was, after a few short hilarious anecdotes, they’d all come up and start dancing.

A muffled voice sounded like he was giving an interminable lecture into a microphone. A smattering of applause, a light chinking of a hundred glasses, and a cheer. Then back to the voice, or perhaps a different voice, who can tell, indistinct and dull through the floorboards. It was 9:15pm. I sat on the carpet, back scratching against an uncomfortable skirting board. I was so bored.

“Three more speeches apparently,” chimed the DJ, pacing about. He was unmistakably a wedding DJ: mid-fifties, floral shirt, smart black trousers and shiny black shoes. His portable decks, topped with two digital mirror-balls, were throwing crystals of light around the room while he walked through them - a sort of decorated dance floor king in a kingdom of oak beams and sloping carpet.

“And they haven’t even gone for coffee!”

Matt was fiddling with his mics and Tom was trying to be friendly from behind the drums. I was quiet, mask on, strangely not wanting to engage.

On the whole, weddings aren’t the best gigs for barn dance bands. They tend to be boozy, silly affairs, booked to be ironic, or ‘a bit of fun’ while everybody’s blotto. It’s a long way from the typical ceilidh-crowd of folk fanatics, and the wedding caller always has a tricky balance to strike.

No surprises then that when she appeared, one of the guests said she’d find waltzing difficult because she was so dizzy. And, not wanting to judge, I don’t think the uneven Seventeenth century floor was entirely to blame.

It was around 9:40pm when we finally got underway. We struck a deal with the DJ that we’d stop at 10:30 and let him disco out the last thirty minutes, but until then it was dozey-dos and right-hand-stars all the way.

As the room filled up and the crowd of well-dressed guests stumbled in to the music, I did start to wonder about capacities. How many people could this old room take? Presumably it was designed for travellers resting on their long journey from Southampton to London, complete with wide windows looking out onto the stables. Discos and posh barn-dances were probably a recent development. Could it take a hundred people? I thought not.

I wondered it even further when the long chain of people swirled round so that the top couple were dancing about six inches away from the keyboard. As they hopped and skipped by, the floor shook, and the speaker next to me started swaying.

I’d forgotten about Covid too. That came back to me in a rush in the middle of the Farmer’s Jig. It was nice to remember playing in pre-covid times, yes. It was even nicer to have a moment where I forgot that was ever a thing. But in between sets I quietly slipped my face mask back on. Because it is a thing. And there were a lot of people there, suddenly, taking their partners by the hand and letting the germs basket-weave their way around a wedding.

So that was the first gig back. 10:30 came around, the DJ put on ‘My First, My Last, Everything’ by Barry White, and by the time he’d got to the Beegees we were packed up and ready to go home. Soon enough, the dark road flashed with white lines and the radio came alive with late night callers.

I don’t mind it. I’ve even missed it. I was even home just after midnight, and to be honest, it’s been later from one of these things. Tired and a little bit hungry, I fumbled my keys into the lock and went inside for a long sleep.

ANYWHERE NICE?

So, it’s properly holiday time for the British. For some reason, this is the week that a lot of people I know seem to be packing up their things and heading off on vacation.

That’s led to quite a few examples of a really odd but very familiar-looking question.

“Going anywhere nice?”

Which really means (I think):

“Where are you going?”

… but is a much less intrusive way of asking it. After all, ‘holiday destination’ seems to fall into the grey area between private and public information, and I don’t think anyone’s quite certain what the rules are.

Anywhere nice? then, becomes a fishing question, designed to extract a location, while also giving the holidaymaker an opt-out if they don’t feel like telling their colleagues (who, let’s face it, they are literally getting away from) where they’ll be.

“Anywhere nice?”

“Yep.”

There’s a weird thing going on in the subtext. An open question (where are you going?) is masked by a closed one (anywhere nice?). 

But… typically a closed question is more aggressive than an open one, isn’t it? If I force you to answer yes or no, you’ll feel under far more pressure than a lovely open-ended talk-at-length question. Not here. Here, a closed question is giving you the freedom to duck out of the conversation altogether.

This happens a lot in English.

“How are you doing? Everything okay?”

… feels like a very normal, friendly approach to a person’s day. Actually, once again we’ve given them all the tools they need to be either completely open…

“Oh man, wait till I tell you what happened. I’ve never been so…”

… or shut…

“Yeah, it’s been okay.”

This dance of open and closed questions happens all the time. We use it to subconsciously judge a relationship, pick the route to the next thing to say, or how we can get this person to like us. Anywhere nice? is just an example of it. I thought about this for a while, mostly because my pedantry just doesn’t let me ask the anywhere-nice question. Instead, in a method I’ve never really thought about before, I think I actually ask:

“Where are you off to?”

… presumably because my brain has calculated that that's a more honest way of asking what I really want to be nosy about. Nobody’s yet said, “None of your business,”  but now that I think about it, there have been some awkward smiles and some shuffles. So maybe I'm wrong.

“I don’t want to jinx it,” said someone this morning, beaming, “Every time I’ve said it, the restrictions change, so I’m not going to say.”

I don’t mind people asking me by the way. It’s not private information. It’s actually quite pleasant when you get back and people have remembered where you’ve been.

Alas, it’s not my turn to jet off into the sunset. That seems to be everyone else today, whooping and hollering away from the stress and exhaustion that remains here, hoping of course that when they get there, when the plane lands or the brakes squeal into the hotel car park, they’ll be anywhere other than here; anywhere nice.

DRIVING LICENCE

I had to renew my driving licence this week. Thankfully, the UK government doesn’t make people take an actual test every ten years (I mean how many of us would pass that?) but they do make us update our photo ID.

Now. If you haven’t done this recently, you might not be aware that these days (in addition to the rather soulless post-Brexit updates) you can update your photo with your passport photo. Helpful eh?

Yes. Except my passport runs out in 2023. Which means it was last updated in 2013. And therefore, the photo on my driving licence which expires in 2031, was taken over 18 years before it expires. Is it just me or is that a bit mad?

If I get pulled over by the police, I’m not sure I could prove that the baby-faced, dark-haired, Russian security guard on my driving licence… is actually me.

Hopefully I won’t get shipped off to the gulag.

IMAGINING A BIPLANE

I stared up into the sky today. The grass was warm and prickly, a carpet of green under the bright blue sky.

There were clouds, thankfully. I can’t look at just blue sky without getting a bit of vertigo, so the white puffs of fluffy cumulus were welcome to my eyes. There were trees too - creeping into the edges of my vision, dark and green and full, and waving in the summer breeze like hands just out of shot.

I was thinking about how much I’d like to go up in a plane.

Ideally, one of those old biplanes made of wood, one that chuffs above old England on days such as these. Or so I imagine. I can hear it now: the engine rasping and the wind whistling past. The throttle purrs as the pilot (not me) banks left and the shadow moves across a sunlit arm.

I’d like to see how small the world looks from up there. This tiny little garden, a patch of green by a white house; roads threading and glinting through the trees, wide open parks with football posts and skateparks, houses and houses with grey roofs and tight narrow gardens, all printed and repeated across the land until they reach the glinting buildings of the city centre, the wide flats of industrial parks or the snaking iron of the railway station. Or perhaps the hills, hazily stacked along the horizon, above the green river of tiny boats and bridges.

I think it would be fun to fly right through one of those clouds too. Sure, the turbulence would bluster the flight, might knock the plane around for a while, and there’d be a cold spray as we pierced through the vapour. But then! We’d puncture the other side and zip out into the sunshine, soaring over those mountains of cloud beneath us, watching them hang there above the patchwork fields like suspended candy floss.

“Jolly good!” cries the pilot above the noise of the engine. I whoop back but of course, he doesn’t hear me. The sun flashes around the sky as the plane turns and we prep ourselves for the rumbled landing.

I’d like that, I think. I can’t make it happen, and today, imagination will have to do. I don’t know anybody with a biplane. So I laid there, very earthbound and very happy in the afternoon sunshine as the quiet clouds floated peacefully and the trees waved so gently.

It’s nice to have these moments.

ELEPHANT TO PADDINGTON

The sun fell behind the clouds over Westminster Bridge. A ray of fading light caught the glittering tip of Elizabeth Tower, still wrapped in its scaffolding. To the other side, the London Eye, Waterloo Bridge, and further down, the tall skyscrapers of the city were glinting, and the majestic River Thames jostled by, green and grey and blue in the evening light.

I said I couldn’t ever work in London - it’s in far too much of a noisy hurry all the time - but it occurred to me anyway, that here I was, heading home from working in London, and quite enjoying the long walk from Elephant and Castle to Paddington.

It had been okay, after all. I had sat in the room with my colleagues, kept up with the discussion, then contributed as well as I could. I didn’t feel particularly embarrassed or humiliated, and I did seem to be part of things rather than shy in the corner. In addition, I felt focused - as though the pressure of not being watched on a screen had vanished. This was the first real work meeting I’d had for eighteen months and I was even enjoying it.

I don’t know why I decided to walk back. The journey took me west across the river, past the glimmering Houses of Parliament, and up to St James’s Park and Buckingham Palace (the flag was down). From there I walked the long leafy avenue of Green Park, crossing over to Hyde Park corner and then back to Paddington through the wide and wonderful park, finally emerging along the Bayswater Road. It’s much better seeing London above ground, I think.

I don’t think everyone would have made the same choice. Some would have taken the tube, some would have forked out for another taxi, I guess. I seem to have a habit of going about things the hard way, even if it involves time, beauty and a whole lot of effort. The long walk suddenly seemed a bit like a metaphor for a lot of other things in my life.

Paddington Station looked inviting in the twilight. Its arched roof appeared at the end of a long, leaf-lined avenue of black railings and Edwardian buildings. Restaurants bristled with life, with professional types sipping tall beers in the evening air. I marched past, reaching the warm, open space of the station concourse - the gateway home.

A few of my colleagues have to do this every other week. One even travels from Liverpool, I discovered. I don’t think I could do that. He wouldn’t have got home until 10pm! But then, I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t have also chosen to walk from Elephant and Castle to Euston Station. He’d have very sensibly got an Uber. 

I don’t know when I’ll next need to be in the city, but hopefully it will be a while. After all, I definitely don’t want to work in London.

CHANGE PLEASE

I’m in a coffee shop somewhere in London. It’s called Change Please, which feels a bit like an instruction on how to buy coffee, but is also one of my most frequent prayers, so I went with it.

I’m not a fan of London. It’s loud and confusing, and there’s traffic everywhere. Red buses, black taxis, and all manner of shiny cyclists come at you from all directions. There are beeps and boops and honks and engines, all set to a background of everybody trying to get everywhere all at once, all the time. I need a slightly calmer life.

I’m here for a meeting that hasn’t started yet. I’m early, so I’ve taken advantage of the few minutes I have, to get my head together and cool down. I need a lot of confidence today - I’m meeting my colleagues for the first time, and I’m suffering from a fresh wave of imposter syndrome - they are all so competent, so experienced, so diligent!

Somehow I have to believe that the only thing that separates me from them is time, and not the fact that I’m about as technical as a hairbrush. Well, that’s not true - I am technical, it’s just that my techniques, my experience, my knowledge exists in a world that they either don’t know, or don’t think they need. That’s the bridge I have to cross - and it’ll be a lot harder to blag my way across it in the next three hours of ‘Documentation Strategy’ live and in the room.

Change Please, eh. I wonder if it’s prophetic. Not that I want to duck out of this job and go back to the shallows. It’s more that internal change I need - the change that helps me be a better technical author, a growing engineer (if that’s what I am) and a more rounded colleague. I have to do that, and I think I have to at least show that I can do that today.

Plus, I think I have to change the perception as well, so that somehow my jigsaw piece looks like it fits the gap left by their puzzle - even if it doesn’t.

So, tea drunk. I’m going in. The thing about asking for change is that it finds you anyway; the only thing I can do is be adaptable to it, and then thankful for every opportunity it brings. I just hope I don’t get embarrassed or humiliated in the process.

Oh well. Here’s to a little confidence.