WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARGOS CATALOGUE?

“Right,” I said, rubbing my hands together, “Where’s the Argos catalogue?”

“Gone,” said the Intrepids almost in sync. The boffins on the Antiques Road Trip bumbled on about something or other on the TV. I was crestfallen.

“What?” I said.

“Gone!” They repeated. Apparently there is no Argos catalogue any more. You’re supposed to order online, or go into the shop - which is embedded into Sainsbury’s for some reason. Instead of the lottery tickets and the tiny pens, you can poke a cold touchscreen in the store with your fingers, and hope that the thing you like is ‘in stock’ and doesn’t have to be ‘ready for delivery’.

It was always great at Christmas. The heavy plastic catalogue would slide out pendulously from under the coffee table and I’d hoof it onto my lap. Then I’d turn straight to the back, where the Lego and the toys were. I had this theory that the older you got, the further forward in the Argos Catalogue made you excited. As long as you could flick past the garden sheds, the jewellery, the hairdryers and the power tools, you were still young enough to feel Christmassy at the toys at the back of the catalogue.

Around Secret Santa time of course, it became a hugely useful ideas factory in recent years. What did I want that cost less than £20? Argos would tell me! Then I could write it on my usual slip of paper before it joined the others in the 'hat'.

“Here you are,” said my Mum, jiggling an old sock in my direction. This year's 'hat'.

“I’m not ready,” I said, tapping the pen against my lips. I was still quietly mourning the loss of the Argos Catalogue. The blank paper was on my knee, the antiques boffins were squeezing themselves into a tiny classic car, and the Intrepids were waiting for me to get my Secret Santa done.

I can barely believe it’s Secret Santa time again. Soon I’ll have to go back round to pull out my giftee from the sock. We’ve been doing this for so long, I can almost predict what most people in my family have requested now. My oldest sister always asks for the same thing (I’ve never figured out whether I’m indignant or relieved whenever I get her) and my next oldest sister will probably cheat and put ‘Amazon vouchers’. My Dad will list three things, all very predictable: binoculars, a new jumper, some sort of reference book he can spend Christmas quoting from. It is all very reassuringly normalised.

Just like the Argos Catalogue used to be!

In the end, I thought of something I definitely don’t need but that could turn out to be very useful. Unlike my Dad, I couldn’t think of two other things to add to the list, so I scrawled a note about what colours I don’t like and how I felt about this thing having a USB port. Then I folded the paper neatly into quarters and slipped it inside the sock.

I don’t much care for the Internet sometimes. I really liked the feel and the smell of those plastic pages in the catalogue. I liked looking up the descriptions in the tiny print and trying to work out who comes up with the words. I liked chuckling at the models posing with golf clubs and flat caps, who looked far too happy for people dressed far too ridiculously.

When not obsessing over the back end of the book, I also liked the watches that looked so cool and sophisticated, and the cheap Elizabeth Duke necklaces that seemed to belong to a grown-up world. I specifically liked not belonging to that world, and not ever imagining that I would. My planet was Lego and Spider-man costumes; it was remote-controlled cars and walkie-talkies. I wouldn’t ever be an adult, I thought. I wouldn’t ever be part of Elizabeth Duke’s shiny old world.

Nowadays of course, not even the the catalogue is. 

HEARTACHE

Well this is not where I’m at but it fell out of me anyway. I often think that with poems - they sort of pour as though you’ve tipped yourself a little further than you intended. There’s very little intention; just feelings, emotions and metaphors. This one is about having a broken heart - I agree, not exactly unploughed ground in poetry - but it’s here anyway.

Heartache

What’s this ache?

This indigestion?

Fracture lines made

By suggestion,

Heart attack or

Creaking age, this

Leaking rage

That burns to wage

Its war upon my question

What’s this pain?

So deeply trembles

Lonely earth

That still resembles

All I knew of

All of you

That shatters through

The love I reassembled

What’s this longing?

Broken heart whose

Tumbled walls

Lie loose and broken

No excuse for

Words we’ve spoken

Now an echo, now a token

Left for me to choose

What is this ache

This sadness for?

If not to show

That life is sore

Beneath the lines of

Rain and spatter

Pain that shatters

Blame and scatter,

Love is real and raw

THE LAST FEW LEAVES

Back to the park today. I’ve been photographing the Pagoda Tree as it’s been changing through the autumn.

I stand so that the television mast on the other side of the valley sits exactly in the natural dip in the crown of a tree at the edge of the park. Then, to my left, two slender trunks line up so that the nearer is hidden by the farther, and on the other side, just above the green netting of The Little Coffee Express, a leafless tree matches up with a taller poplar behind it.

I’ve tried poking holes in the soil with the tip of my umbrella to mark the spot. They got filled in by rain and worms, I guess. Then I had wedged a short twig in the ground, hoping it would stay. Dogs must have run off with it, or it got blown about. Nope - triangulation still seems like the best method to capture the same shot each time. It works pretty well.

There were only a few yellowing leaves left on the Pagoda Tree today. It’s been shedding them for a while now, and today those last, very solitarily looking leaves were stubbornly clinging on to the dark branches. I stared up at them in the bright blue sky.

Life is a matter of perspective isn’t it? Further into the park, the Rogue Oak was still full and green. There’s a hardiness to oaks! That’s how they’ve sheltered kings, swung open castle doors, and bolstered the English navy. Those leaves would probably barely tan brown, let alone fall to the park.

And there I was, in the spidery shadow of the Pagoda Tree; a beauty stripped of her cloak, the last few finely-spun snags of fabric she wore, now shivering on the empty frame.

Everybody, I concluded, reacts differently to the same season.

What’s great about trees is that each of them is doing their own thing - no-one co-ordinates the colours or choreographs the wind. In that unique way that all living things have hardwired into them: life, making room for the new season, the old, it was all giving way to the new - the trees just know what to do. And they get on and do it. And no two are ever the same.

The firs can’t say the beeches are doing it wrong. The oak can’t criticise the sycamores and the elms. The Pagoda Tree isn’t jealous of the Five Sisters or the Rogue Oak, and neither does it need to be. It’s magnificent. She is magnificent.

I put a hand out and touched the cool, stripy bark. It was damp, dark, earthy to the touch as though it had pushed itself through wet soil and cold rock to be there. The wind made me shiver, and just for a moment I wondered whether the Pagoda Tree was shivering in sympathy with me. It would have been poetic, I thought, if at that moment a last leaf had detached itself and had floated to the grass.

But that didn’t happen. All that happened was me. I sighed, thrust my hands in my coat pockets, and crunched home over the crispy, dead leaves underfoot.

ICE WIND

There’s a raw, icy wind out there tonight. I noticed it as I pulled the gate shut at Sammy’s and walked to my car, lit silver by the cold moonlight.

It feels like the first blast of winter. Autumn has been cool, certainly, but there has been a current of warmth in the air these last few weeks. The leaves have danced happily in the sun and the trees have turned to honey-fire and mustard with the last remaining greens and yellows, as always they do. Even at night, the wind has been playful and warm.

But not tonight. The gloves are off, and the breeze has ice cold fingers, reaching through the folds of my coat, shivering along my collar and into the pockets, curling like icicles around my knuckles.

“So,” crackled the car radio, “With Europe entering a fourth wave, is there any chance of restrictions returning here?”

Europe is indeed having it bad again. The expert caller said it was unlikely to spike in the UK like it has in Austria. We’re already high, he said, and we’re better vaccinated. I watched the road flash under the car and the frost-lined hedges whip past in the headlamps. In any case, he went on to say, we should call them ‘preventions’ not restrictions, as it would ‘paint a better picture for the Great British public.

I, much like the presenter, was not swayed. I was picturing a second Christmas in lockdown, desperately missing my family and friends. I was thinking about all the events that might need to be cancelled, regretfully postponed or scaled back. Worse, I was thinking of uncomfortable parties, followed by days of us playing the guessing game of who pinged whom, and how much time did I spend at close quarters with them, glugging mulled wine in a paper hat?

You can call them preventions if you like, but it’s remarkable optimism to claim that life has not been restricted in some way by this dreadful disease and our efforts to prevent it spreading.

The moon beamed down at me through the chilly night. I don’t know what this winter has in store. Perhaps, like the sparkling dew already forming on the frozen concrete, there is some beauty to be found in it. Perhaps the joy of the season is the warm glow of home and the promise of fireside hot chocolate? Perhaps it’s about wrapping up warm and braving the cold, but only when you absolutely have to.

All I know tonight is that it’s absolutely freezing out there.

THE BILLOWS SMOOTH AND BRIGHT

The blog is eight today. I remember being eight. I had a cake in the shape of an 8 that was a chocolate train track. It had a little liquorice train on the top, which no doubt, as the birthday boy, I would have eaten.

The older you get, the more memories get squished into your memory bank. The bank is flexible, and so are the memories actually, but with time, there’s less and less space between them as they stack up in the vault. That, I think, is why time seems to speed up as you get older. The space between the banked memories gets smaller and smaller.

Perhaps the trick to staying young then, is not to remember anything! Perhaps the brain agrees and eventually tries to make room by getting rid of memories that were taking up too much space.

I figured it would be clever at this point to say that that’s exactly why I started blogging - to remember things I wouldn’t remember. Honestly, though, I wasn’t that clever in 2013. I wanted to practise writing, to have an outlet for my thoughts, and to add some deep and meaningful nonsense to your world while I pulled back the curtain on my own.

If this blog is an extra memory bank too, then that is a happy accident. Perhaps it will even help me to feel younger! Perhaps, after I stop writing, or I’m gone, this will be like a digital record of a portion of a life - an historical document from the Twenty First Century. If you’re somehow reading this in the very distant future, then you will know the answer to that better than anyone.

Anyway, we’ve made it to eight years, the blog and I. The billows haven’t always been smooth, and they haven’t always been bright, but today things look pretty good, I think.

As I remember, they usually do on birthdays.

Happy birthday, little blog. Long may the liquorice train roll happily around that loop of chocolate track. 

A TREE ON FIRE

I love how autumn sets ablaze
The corners of the park
The tree that leaps with burning haze
The leaves that spit and spark

I stood beneath a tree on fire

And watched its embers fly

The flames that flickered ever higher

Leaping to the sky

A shock of red against the blue

As gold the sunlight came

The fire danced and crackled through

The autumn leaves a-flame

And there was I on crunchy bed

Beside the burning tree

Its golden crown and noble head

Engulfed in colours free

And underfoot the fallen leaves

Those ashes of the sun

Where autumn now the summer grieves

As sure as winter comes

REPORT OF THE GULLIBLES

Got spammed again. No wait, phished. Not content with pretending to be PayPal or Amazon, the Phisher Folk adopted a much cleverer new strategy today, by scanning LinkedIn, using some sort of algorithm to work out who my boss is, and then spoofing a quite believable email to me, early in the morning.

I was blurry-eyed. My phone flashed up the email - a familiar name, asking me for an urgent request. No link, nothing about posting gift vouchers or depositing money in a Nigerian bank - just “Could you run an errand?”

I wasn’t thinking. At least, I wasn’t thinking about the weirdness of that request so early; I was thinking about passing my probation (which is far from guaranteed) so I quickly replied:

“Sure, what do you need?”

… and sent it.

Silly. I usually always check the email address and the domain name after the @. I know the drill. But I let my need for approval get in the way, and innocently jumped to it like a Private, keen to prove myself to my Sergeant Major.

Well. I quickly changed my password. I figured that’s always a good thing to do. I guessed that the only thing the Phishers were likely to have picked up was a link between me and the real person - that’s not too bad, I mean it’s a logical inference. I didn’t open a ransomware link or anything. I was just embarrassed.

What was even more embarrassing I suppose, was the thought that this might just have been a test. My work email address occasionally gets pinged by a spoof of the big boss, the CEO. It’s usually that he ‘needs a favour for a client’ and could I contact him on this mobile number, etc… I’ve not once fallen for those, so I’m a little embarrassed that I let my sleepy head reply on my personal address this morning. Also, I’m very much hoping that my name isn’t then generated by some sort of report-of-the-gullibles that flashes up in neon, on my manager’s desk.

If it does, I hope it just shows kindness instead of early-morning stupidity. I’d take that, even if I am a bit gullible.

THE DAY MY PARENTS FLEW A KITE

I'm sure I've written something like this before. Anyway, it's been a while since my poems took a detour away from silly-town and headed for sweetsville, so here's a poignant one - from a man who's (gulp) getting married in a few months' time. It's also served as a quick reminder for me that I need to phone my Mum and Dad today, so I'll definitely do that later.

The Day My Parents Flew a Kite

You two made it look easy:
The strength and the delicate reach,
The wind on the sand,
The kite in your hand,
And the both of you there on the beach.

The two of you made it look simple
With your joy in the flap of the kite
The ribbons and string
Of a beautiful thing
That twisted and turned in its flight

I saw the sun and the ocean
And heard how you laughed by the sea
And I loved the day
You still found a way
To pass on the kite string to me

QUANTUM TRINKETS

Do you remember when everyone was taken up with debates about what colour a dress was?

There were a few of those trinkety illusions: a pair of trainers that might have been either pink-and-white or blue-and-grey, a woman saying either ‘laurel’ or ‘yanny’ for some reason, and of course, the black-blue/white-gold dress - the phenomenon that was said at the time to have ‘split the Internet’.

It’s too easy to look at social media now and wonder just how trivial all that was. The pre-Covid, pre-Trump, pre-Boris, pre-Brexit world seems so innocent.

And yet, I don’t actually think it was. I’m not advocating a conspiracy here, but I find it fascinating that in each of these viral cases, there was some foreshadowing.

For example, there was the postmodern idea of personal truth. When you saw with your own eyes that ‘the dress’ was blue and black, it became increasingly difficult to hear anyone argue that it might be anything else. It became your immovable truth, and one that couldn’t be argued away, or even put up for debate, by the vehement cries from the white-and-gold team.

It led, inevitably, to a sort of playground tribalism. There were those who agreed with you, and there were those who saw exactly the same image you did, who came up with an exactly opposite view: fake news before the term existed. Social media took us by the hand to our camps either side of the valley, gave us dopamine to keep our spirits up, then taught us to throw rocks across no-man's-land.

The audio clips are interesting too. You can almost pick what you want to hear. Indeed, I spent a full forty minutes in 2018, listening to laurel/yanny on repeat while I did something else. I was fascinated that it continually switched between the two, back and forth. Eventually I could even tip the balance one way or the other.

Then there was brainstorm/green-needle. I was so intrigued by how my brain could pick up exactly the same wave-form over and over again, and yet turn it into two very different recognisable patterns, depending on how I was prompted to think. It feels like a scary indication of how susceptible we are to preconditioning, or how a situation can change depending on how it’s interpreted.

It’s what Heisenberg discovered isn’t it? The uncertainty principle at the heart of the universe. An electron spins in a probability cloud and the only way to pin it down into a particle or a wave is to measure it. We’ve only had a hundred years of this weirdness, but it might just be that we’re a bit more quantum-mechanical than perhaps we think.

If you look at ‘the dress’ you can probably tell that the colours are in an undeterminable state - a very narrow window where your brain has to make a decision either way. In fact, all of these trinkets are in that window. Is it white/gold in shadow on a sunny day? Is it blue/black against a darker background? You get to pin down the electrons, determine the wave function, make a choice - just like you did with the 45th President, the benefits of the UK standing alone from Europe, and whether it was a good idea to inject yourself with an apparently untested vaccine.

Only, these things aren’t meaningless trinkets any more - they’re real-world Internet-splitters, society-dividers and taboo subjects around the family dinner table for many people. They have impact and consequences.

I suppose, a few years on from those illusions, I’m wondering whether a tacit understanding of the quantum world is helpful. The zeitgeist pushes us apart into binary choices, but perhaps the world is not quite so, well... classically black and white? Perhaps when we really understand that others see the same, important things we do and they reach very different conclusions, it’s something that’s worthy of respect and honour, rather than stones and catapults. Perhaps all of us are just trying to interpret the world through our own spectacles, and it just isn’t as clear cut as maybe we think it is. 

Perhaps the dress was blue-gold-white-black all along.

PERFECTO

I’ve started saying ‘perfecto’. I’ve just noticed.

I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know when I started it, and I don’t know if I’ve subconsciously absorbed it from someone. But there it is. Perfecto.

It’s Spanish, and it’ll blow your mind if you translate it. It means ‘perfect’. I know, right? Boggling.

Anyway, my question is - is this cool? I mean I know I’m famous for setting trends and invariably being the coolest, most hippest person in the room, but I do have my moments of embarrassingly sad. Which camp does 'perfecto' fall into?

Me: I’m still intrigued by your first question. Was there a problem with the translations?

Her: Actually it’s not a reproducible bug any more, so no worries.

Me: Ah, I see okay.

Her: I have checked and the translations are all fine.

Me: Perfecto.

Does it sit in that happy little valley between friendly and formal? Most workplaces are nestled in that valley these days, so it sort of seems suitable. I’m still not quite sure - a lot of my colleagues are Ukrainian or Belarusian and their word for perfect is… well, let’s say, hard to pronounce. This little Spanish flourish seems like a way to make ‘perfection’ (or at least, the perception of perfection) a little more fun.

I’m using it in my daily life too. The other day I heard myself say ‘Perfecto!’ while I made the okay sign with my fingers. No-one raised eyebrows so I guess it’s okay.

The key must be not to overuse it. And that’s interesting isn’t it, because if you’re setting a trend, by definition you want to see it everywhere. So to influence the world, you’ve got to use it, but not overuse it, and you can’t underuse it either, otherwise it goes nowhere at all. It’s like trying to second guess a social media algorithm. If you are inherently cool, or attractive, or already known, influence is easier.

Alternatively, I could just start a chain-reaction and get other people to start using it, without them knowing where 'perfecto' specifically came from? The key there would not be to mention anything about it, just wait to hear people use it back at me and then smile knowingly. That could work! Then, it’s not clear that they didn’t think of it, it’s not traced back to me, and very stealthily I’ve changed the world without the world knowing it!

Perf…

Wait a minute. I’ve got no way of knowing that that exact thing hasn’t just happened to me, have I?

MY OWN PERSONAL TIME ZONE

The clocks went back at the weekend and my body is still stuck in its usual ‘adjustment phase’.

For some reason, I’m programmed to wake up almost exactly at 7:20am. Give or take two minutes, that moment in the day is when my body-clock pings my eyes open. And by 7:20am I of course, mean 6:20am.

Sigh. It’s fine. I can lie there in the cosy duvet for a while. Or, I can get up and put a load of washing on, or go for a walk in the park, or even go to the gym (steady on).

It’s the other end of the day that gets me though. Yesterday, I looked out at the long shadows falling across the street. The sun had dipped below the dark tiles and chimney pots, and its trailing fingers were painting the treetops gold. A single star flickered into view and a murmuration of starlings flocked its way home across the gentle evening sky.

It was 3:50pm.

“Man alive!” I moaned at the clock. Then, with a bit of a huff, I leaned across the desk, unplugged the piano and plugged in my daylight-lamp. The room, now flooded with white light, was suddenly very familiar, as though the lamp I only really use in winter had switched the whole world into GMT. Still two hours to go.

I know what my solution should be. I should start work an hour earlier. I can after all - I work remotely and my laptop is less than twenty paces from my pillow. That way, I could still enjoy these fading evenings without the feeling that I’m working my way into the night. My body too, might even thank me. It’s just that I can’t abide the thought of it.

Plus, I kind of resent being pushed around by the system. Yeah, call me a rebel if you like but this biennial jet lag we have to go through is a purely artificial construct, and if we live in a world where you can apparently identify as whatever you like - what’s stopping me identifying as a Britishsummertimarian, living in my own personal time zone?

Well yeah. Society. Meetings. Food. Consideration for school children who don’t want to get run over, or farmers who like planting and harvesting crops. You can’t be too rebellious before you get a little isolated, and a lot antisocial.

Later, I got into my car and switched on the headlamps. The engine rumbled into life and the heater started pumping air at the windscreen. I rubbed my hands together and looked at the clock on the dashboard, with a mind to shunt it back by an hour. I smiled and checked my phone. The car clock, unchanged in a year, was already telling the correct time.