THE FRAGILE ARCH OF PROTECTION

It was a beautiful spring afternoon. The sunlight on the river was just as fresh as early morning, and the low sun was casting silver and gold onto the trees.

I like these kind of days. Sammy does too; she said it made her feel alive. I think, at moments like this in history, that’s a thing to be treasured.

For me, days like this loosen up my brain and get me thinking more fluidly. It could be that influx of vitamin D from the low sun; or it could just be that I’m happier on the inside. Nevertheless, I had a few clear thoughts going on by the river, and that has somehow made me feel more alive too.

Meanwhile there’s lots to think about. Over in Russia, Putin has put his nuclear deterrent on ‘special alert’ which, we can only suppose is meant to be a bit of a scare tactic for the west.

I listened to a few different podcasts about it and worryingly, nobody is convinced of anything at all any more. They told us he wouldn’t annex Crimea; he did. They said he probably wouldn’t invade Ukraine; he did. Nobody wants to second guess him now.

It’s an unpredictable move then, probably a power play, but a dangerous one. It’s a bit like when someone threatens to do something unthinkable in the middle of an argument and you have to wonder whether they actually would. Then you wonder whether that person is very simply manipulating your fear. Either way, when fingers loom over the ‘do not push’ button, great care is required.

It all seems a million miles away from the Sunday afternoon riverside. But England is linked to France; France shares a border with Germany, Germany with Poland and Poland with Ukraine. And the collective thought was that if Putin were going to push that button, he’d do it in the North Sea between Britain and Denmark anyway - a warning shot off the bows where no human casualties are likely.

Don’t get me wrong. That would still be huge and awful. And great and terrible actions have great and terrible consequences. But better that than London. And better than the terrifying concentric circles of radiation drawn out for us across the South of England by the Daily Express.

I said I didn’t think he’d do it. It would be an insane thing to do, despite his sabre-rattling.

The drive home from the river was a quiet discussion of what so-called ‘mutually assured destruction’ means, and how it’s held back a world war for seventy years.

The sun blinked through the trees; the dappled road wound back up the hill and shadows flicked across the tarmac as we sped through them. It is quite a world this. We invented the power to end it all, to obliterate life on Earth with the flick of a switch, and somehow our ability to use these terrible weapons has formed a fragile arch of protection that keeps us safe on both sides of the Atlantic.

As long as nobody stupidly starts pulling bricks out. 

TERRIBLE MOVIE REVIEWS #3: POLICE ACADEMY

I’ve got to admit: I don’t know the history of how the 1984 movie, Police Academy was made. What I do know is that this vile film somehow got itself six sequels in the second half of the 1980s, and made the world a worse place. Six! Someone, somewhere, somehow… must have liked it. How very depressing.

I imagine a Hollywood boardroom of mahogany cigar smoke and creaky chairs. The cine-reel whirs and clicks into action as a large man in a suit pulls down blinds across the high-rise windows. An hour and a half later, those smoky old white men (and it had to have been smoky old white men; it always is) slap each other on the back in self-congratulation at their sure-fire, trash-humoured, poke-fun, minority-bashing smash hit.

Let’s start with the good points, shall we? I don't want to race ahead of myself.

Well, good point, actually.

This will sound odd but I genuinely think the best thing, and perhaps the single good thing, about Police Academy is that it just isn’t funny. I’m not even sure it was funny in 1984. And that lack of humour is undoubtedly its soaring high point, because honestly, if I’d laughed once, just once, I think it would have given this garbage-juice a modicum of credit, and, for reasons I’m about to go into, it really wouldn’t deserve an ounce of it. Not an ounce. Not even in the 80s.

Oh it tries to be funny. There are joke set-ups and punchlines; there are humorous characters and twitchy-faced bad guys (one even gets launched into the rear end of a horse), there are snap backs and comebacks, comedy car scenes and crazy comeuppances, farces and foibles galore. Of course there are! Through a certain 1980s lens, you can clearly see the old-fashioned clownery those writers and producers were going for. The only trouble is that they haven't realised that that lens is filthier than a New York subway.

Thank heaven then, that I didn’t laugh. My mouth did drop open though, plenty of times. And not in a good way.

Our introduction to the protagonist (Steve Gutenberg) has him commanding a woman to show him her thighs. That’s followed by him sending two recruits to a gay bar for a joke, where they are trapped inside by the (forgive me) leather chaps in leather chaps, who look like they’re going to pummel the recruits with pool queues, but (oh the hilarity) instead treat them to a spot of camp ballroom dancing! The 80s gays, ladies and gentlemen: they'll either thump you or do a pirouette.

Then… Oh then. There is a scene in which a black female rookie takes a driving test in a panda car and accidentally runs over someone’s foot. In a rage, he, a young white police officer hops about the screen, and in a fit of rage, calls her something that is ... well, so racially offensive, I simply cannot write it down. Seriously, I can’t even hint at it with asterisks. There’s a moment’s shock, before, in a silent display of strength, Moses Hightower, the cardboard-cutout black strongman of the troupe, steps forward, and upturns the panda car onto its roof.

I guess we were supposed to cheer at the sight of prejudice literally being overturned by a big black man. I had a micro-moment of hope that the movie was taking a turn for the noble. Unfortunately, Hightower then gets booted out of the academy by the very white, very antagonistic lieutenant, and the original police officer's offence - the unspeakable word, is never referenced again. So, no cheering from me. Never referenced! There you go kids, there’s a word for you and your playground, and it’s consequence free, look! Now run along and bully some black people.

Honestly, it is so offensive.

Moments later, someone uses the word ‘homo’ as a comedy insult, and before we know it, there’s a riot happening downtown, provoked by some more black guys who accidentally got hit on the head by apples, and irrationally started thumping the nearest white and Hispanic folk.

If you ask people what they remember about Police Academy, my guess is that they’ll think of Michael Winslow with his sound-effect beatboxing. They might remember Mahoney pranking Harris or Mauser in later films, and they might wonder whether it really was a young Kim Catrall in their fading memories. But my guess is that most of us who watched this in the 80s missed the fact that this whole thing is off-the-chart offensive.

Oh sure, it’s mean-spirited too. It’s badly put together, it’s about as funny as a day out in a sceptic tank, and it’s a shambles… but it’s still hard to imagine a worse way of depicting the police force in the USA, even in 1984!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the racism and homophobia of Police Academy entered the psyche of Gen-X and set the reputation of law enforcement back by an entire generation. It's uncomfortable watching it from four decades into the future, and I do wonder whether there's a sorry sorry thread that leads from this kind of thing, all the way to George Floyd and Brianna Taylor. I feel sick even thinking about it.

I don’t know how this evil film got made. Perhaps you could watch it as a study of how far we’ve come. Perhaps you might even be tempted to forgive it for being ‘of its time’ and ‘dated’.

To be honest though, Police Academy, (coming out in the same year as Beverley Hills Cop and Ghostbusters don’t forget) should never have left that editing room, should never have been released, and those creaky old white men who let their misogynistic, racist, and homophobic inclinations seep through the on-screen bilgewater… ought to have been arrested and prevented from ever going anywhere near a movie script ever again.

Six sequels indeed. I felt ill as the credits rolled, and not just from the lewd ending. If anyone ever fondly reminds me of this movie ever again or claims that it was 'so bad it was good', I honestly will start googling for sceptic tanks to suggest instead.

A MATTER OF DISTANCE

I woke up yesterday, to the sound of rain spattering on the window. I’d left the curtains open, a habit of mine recently, to try to wake up with the daylight. Outside, beyond the sweeping rain, the trees in the park were rocking back and forth in the wind. Grey clouds flew by.

“Russia launches invasion of Ukraine” displayed the BBC headline. I felt my heart sink as though it were dropping a thousand times. Though it had been expected, the reality was a sucker punch.

For what seemed like the longest time I wondered if I was ill. I lay there, blinking at the ceiling, listening to the rain. My stomach churned unhappily and my muscles felt heavy; iron legs and arms weighing down into the mattress. It was pure sadness, I suppose.

-

The first work call of the morning was similarly heavy. I work with developers and testers in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and even across the border in Russia. Many of them were missing today - relocating we were told - to safer havens. Their Teams status was set to an ominous ‘Away’.

Not all were absent though. One person, Eugeny, even told us how a bomb had fallen on a house just 500 metres up the road. Others talked about how they’d been woken in the early hours, or could hear distant thundering as Russian tanks rolled in. These are real people, with real lives, both sides of the border.

-

Day 2. The morning meeting was heavy again. Many of my colleagues are struggling to sleep, and even the managers in the UK looked grey-faced and strained today. Kristina (in Chernihiv) was determined to focus on work; Alexander (camera off) talked about how he’d like to relocate to Georgia.

“I had visit from police,” said someone just over the Russian border. The police had told him that protesting against the government was ‘treason’ and he could go to jail. He told us how he doesn’t want anything to do with the government anymore. Some of the UK people were wide-eyed at the camera. Me too.

I get it, I think. The birds chirping in the hedgerows and the clouds falling through the lazy skies of England in the summer of 1939. Life went on here, just as it always had - sure there would have been reports of the brownshirts and localised violence in distant parts of Germany, troops marching into Poland, dark clouds over Europe. What though, would that have to do with us? 

Far away, foreigners were being turfed out of their homes. What difference does it make to afternoon tea in the garden? And bombs go off all the time, don’t they, in Baghdad, in Afghanistan, in Syria and Yemen and now in Ukraine. It would be so easy to stay disconnected, as though it were happening in a story. As if Putin were a made-up villain: cartoonised, angular with exclamation marks in his speech-bubbles, where you could just close the book tight, and he couldn’t get you.

-

It was hard to get up this morning too. Second day in a row. I should have been praying, perhaps scouring the news for fresh information, but once again all I could do was stare blankly at the ceiling. Outside, the trees still swayed, and yesterday’s rain had been replaced with golden morning sunshine. There was no rumbling of tanks nor stomping of boots outside. No planes growled overhead, no distant thuds echoed in the valley.

I’m aware though that peace like that is only ever a matter of distance. I blinked, threw back the duvet and found a little space to pray for my colleagues. 

IS IT OKAY TO DAYDREAM?

You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to compose music for films. I’d like to spend my days with people, scrunching up pieces of paper while I sit at the piano, and they pace the room. I’d like to imagine soaring, sweeping violins; French horns that pipe in at just the right moment to make your skin tingle, percussion that pounds into a theme as the car chase unfolds - that kind of thing.

I’d like to think up pretty piano music as the girl takes one last look over her shoulder down the autumnal avenue of houses. Or the little tsk of brush on cymbals as the heist begins.

I doubt I’ll get to do that. I’ve buttered my bread the wrong side of Hollywood, and in any case, I actually wouldn’t be very good at film-score composition. I’m genuinely not a good enough musician to make this work, and I suspect my lack of skill would quickly be evident if I chucked in the technical writing and gave this a go.

Some days though, I wonder if I’m any good at that either. I’ve long puzzled over why the dullest jobs are the ones that pay enough to live your life, while the creative dreamers out there are mostly living on peanuts. I’m sure there are lots of answers - the industrial revolution, yeah; capitalism, sure. I know. I know the answer really. I just think it’s quite unfair that the things I’m really good at will probably never make me a living, and the things I’m mediocre at will always be the better paid, more stable choice. I’m not alone either - there are lots of us out there daydreaming.

She slings her bag over her shoulder and climbs aboard the bus. The music shifts gear with her, adding a little violin and a resonant cello to the melody of the piano. She smiles at her own reflection as the piano arpeggios up the scale, slowly hitting that final major chord, that glimmer of hope and possibility as the bus rumbles out of town and the credits roll.

Is it okay to daydream? I hope so, because without it I’m not sure I know how to live in this grey old world.

THE UKRAINE SITUATION

Lots of discussion about the Ukraine situation today.

For weeks now, Russia has been positioning thousands of troops on Ukraine’s borders in a sort of international power play. As one expert said on the radio today, it’s a poker game with the highest stakes imaginable.

I suppose if Wales had become an independent nation, there’d still be a lot of cultural crossover between our two countries. If Wales had then joined in with France, say, in an attempt to be more 'European', the good people of Wrexham and Hay-on-Wye might have been a bit irked, to say the least, at such developments.

If Wales then went on to say it was going to join the Anti-English League, and those countries in that league, places we’ve annoyed in the past (like France, Germany, Scotland, for example) started building joint military bases along the Pembrokeshire coast, I guess things would get more tense.

What I hope we wouldn’t do though, is send the British army to camp along Offa’s Dyke and point a thousand tanks towards an independent Cardiff.

It’s horrible how the world works. The threat of violence is in itself, a diplomatic weapon. Those with the biggest threats can hold the world to ransom - hence North Korea - and even though nobody wants a war, they’ll threaten to press that button.

“We probably need to fill up on petrol today,” I told Sammy, thoughtfully. My guess as always with these things, is that fuel is about to become a lot more expensive. I was doleful about it, but it makes sense.

“Do you think there’ll be a war?” she asked.

“I do,” I replied, catching a little sadness in my own voice, logging in to my work laptop.

-

Meanwhile, I was pondering why sometimes we call it ‘The Ukraine’ instead of just Ukraine. It would be weird to say ‘The Uganda’ or ’The Uzbekistan’ wouldn’t it? Listening carefully to the news channels I notice them stick correctly to just ‘Ukraine’ although every now and then, someone slips.

Even the Prime Minister did it today in his statement to the House of Commons! It must be ingrained somehow into our language in a way that makes it hard to extricate.

But it's small things like that that make all the difference. Prior to 1990, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, just a region. In fact, its name means ‘borderland’ or ‘the borderland’. When it was part of something bigger, it made sense to refer to it as a region of the USSR rather than a country - rather like saying The Midlands or The Outback.

The question of whether Ukraine is a region or a country then - whether it gets a ‘the’ or not, is exactly what this whole crisis is about. One side want to bring it home and embrace it as part of Mother Russia; the other see it as a sovereign nation charting its own destiny as a fully fledged independent member of the United Nations. Working out that distinction will likely cost thousands of lives.

I guess it’s not quite fair to use Wales as an analogy. We’re more democratic than Russia here in England, and we don’t have an autocratic leader who believes that Welsh people are really English people with funny accents. I’m kind of thankful really. It’s always much better to let people decide their own destiny and governance.

I suppose I’m just sad that here in the Twenty First Century, there are so many lessons from a hundred years ago we seem unable to learn. If you’re the praying type, now would be a good time.

SECOND TO THE DANCE FLOOR

I joined late for “Coffee and a Quiz”. They were in the middle of a kahoot - an online quiz platform that’s just about perfect for people who work from home. We used to do them on Fridays with my old work.

Gosh. That is one thing I miss about my old work. Mr Pub Quiz might have been first-rate at talking about himself all the time, but he certainly kept the enjoyment of those things going. There was something admirable about it.

Today’s was silent as they rolled through the questions on-screen. It was utterly flat. What it needs is someone charismatic to make it fun, to push it through and be larger than life! What it doesn’t need is twelve people on mute clicking buttons.

I know what you’re thinking, and yes, given the chance I could have a go at being the extrovert. Be part of the solution! But that kind of thing is hard to pull off in a roomful of non-responsives. It’s a bit like being first to the dance floor, or setting the pace by making a fool of yourself on the karaoke machine. The gap between you being brave, and everyone else following you, is excruciatingly long.

During that gap, you’ve got to have nerves of steel, I reckon. Everything inside is urging you to stop, to safely sit down and blend back in, to protect yourself from the implied criticism of the room. You’re faced with that choice every second of the gap, and the longer it goes on the more painful it feels.

Or, you love it. You don’t care what anyone else thinks and so you won’t be bludgeoned by the atmosphere. You’re loud, inappropriate, eccentric, resilient and resistant. And you don’t give a hoot if you’re boogying while every other person clutches their drink in the shadows. You are doing it. You are Mr Pub Quiz. And sooner or later, you’ll have changed the atmosphere and everyone will be following you.

Given that there were quite a few sales execs on the call, I have to say that I found the atmosphere surprising at the Coffee and a Quiz. I reasoned that everyone there was so used to Teams meetings that a sort of muted sub-culture had kicked in. In fact (it occurred to me) in most other meetings, ‘banter’ is restricted to the first five minutes. Perhaps I’d missed it? Perhaps they were clicking buttons on mute, still fully in work-mode?

So, could I do it? Could I burn through that silence if I were running that quiz? I know that’s what that meeting needs. In fact it’s what they all want really - the whole purpose was to break out from the daily grind! Why not crack open a can of the old extrovertalade? Why not be a leader?

Uh oh. I’ve used the L word.

It’s okay. I think this really is leadership, in one of its most organic forms. After all, the lone dancer is a real pioneer, whether they’re crumbling on the inside or they just don’t care. Either way, people will probably get up and dance with you when they see it’s safe to do so.

But I don’t think it’s the only form of leadership. I reckon the person who goes second is just as much of a leader. They’ve made a conscious choice to catch a vision and join in. That person knows that they won’t be remembered later. And, crucially, they’ve opened a door for every other person in the room to feel safe on the adventure - including (the more I think about it) the first person.

I’m way more comfortable with that. I can do Mr Pub Quiz (though it is mostly me acting the part like you wouldn’t believe) but I can really be that second, brilliant, encouraging liberating person. In fact, I think I’d actually prefer it.

So (and I didn’t expect the ‘Coffee and a Quiz’ to lead me here at all) you don’t have to think that being a leader is all about being the first up, alpha-one, ideas lion. Sometimes it’s about recognising a good thing, and then giving everyone the all-clear to join in. That’s how to change the atmosphere!

I didn’t volunteer to run the next quiz. Actually it’s set up so that whoever comes 4th organises the next one. And I was late so I couldn’t join in. But at least next time I know what atmosphere I’m joining, and hopefully I know how to start changing it, even if it’s by looking for that number one.

I do miss Mr Pub Quiz though.

WORMHOLES AND THE OLD MASTERS

It’s my birthday today. Thanks. Yep, really good thanks. Me? No, not really: same as always - went to London to take in a museum, well gallery this time. Yeah it was great.

My sister was the first to message.

I replied.

“Thanks. I’m a 27-year-old imposter really. Must have got caught in some time-accident.”

That is certainly how it feels; as though a vortex opened up in 2005 and I fell through a wormhole. I mean what happened? Is there any way back? 

Don’t write in folks; I know the answer to that. Actually the more I think about it, the more I think that I’m doing myself a disservice with that kind of talk. After all, it’s always been my goal for things to get better day by day, each month better than the last, with me proud of myself and watching that trend continue. By revealing that hasn’t happened, I must be relaying a sense of disappointment. And that isn’t the case.

All that being said, I resumed my London tradition today by viewing 700 years of the past at the National Gallery. Not my past - the past of Gainsborough, Rubens, Holbein. Their painty lenses took me with them.

I find this kind of thing very soothing for some reason. I stopped carefully in front of a few of the greats. Turner, Canaletto, Monet, Velasquez. Very careful, very delicate brushstrokes took me back through the centuries.

“No!” replied my sister by text, “Your life is just beginning.”

I guess she’s right. There’s so much good stuff ahead. I had wondered whether I ought to stop this birthday tradition this year - it’s been 14 years now of London museums, pandemic excepted. Next year I will be in a different but beautiful new phase.

But then, there’s something delicious and anonymous about London, something like a freedom from me, if you know what I mean. I felt it today in the sunlight of Trafalgar Square. The light fell across those Portland embassy buildings, the bronze lions, and the great column. The fountains sparkled joyfully as water poured into the air, and spring-like clouds hurried over the Westminster skyline. I liked it.

Anyway, it is good to hope that each day is better than the last and that life is roughly on an upward trajectory, even if it hasn’t seemed that way in the past. And actually, I’m not altogether certain that the past was much better anyway. Not when I really think about it.

Though admittedly, the art was good.

SLOW AND SLIGHTLY MIFFED

A friend of mine just got a new car. It’s posh. Electric, which is the way of the future; at least until they start making fusion-powered engines. Anyway, his new motor is sleek and quick, and will be perfect for his regular but comfortable commute across the country, fixing database and network issues.

“Have you taken it for wheelies in the Sainsbury’s car park yet?” I texted.

“Not yet,” said he back.

“Well let me know when you’re ready for donuts and handbrake turns and I’ll bring my wheels,” said I, pushing the joke further than it really ought to be pushed. He didn’t reply.

Fusion-powered electric cars would be incredible. Could you imagine having basically unlimited, non-polluting fuel? A tiny nuclear reactor whirring away under the hood, smashing atoms together on the M6. I mean yes, obviously there’s the small chance of blowing yourself to pieces, but it’d be worth the risk wouldn’t it? And I’m sure someone clever could work out all the safety and lead-lining bits. Maybe it would even save the planet from petroleum-fuelled climate change?

Funny. It was the discovery/invention of petroleum that saved the sperm whales. Up until the 20th century, whale oil was the one thing powering lamps and heating homes in America. Nowadays, companies like Shell and BP make billions of dollars profit each year, we pump the atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, and the whales are still endangered, as I suppose we all are. But let’s not get into that.

Meanwhile it turns out that not everyone finds the idea of two middle-aged IT professionals screeching round Sainsbury’s car park amusing. I however, think it’s a really funny image; men in jumpers racing their comfy saloons and people-carriers off the lights. I slide my spectacles up my nose and nod. My colleague grins as he checks his tie and seatbelt. The engines rev, Radio 4 blaring, and the rattle of an empty Starbucks cup in the coffee holder. It’s more Slow and Slightly Miffed than Fast and Furious but it’s got the same tension, I reckon.

Anyway, bring on the fusion. Not that the big oil giants will let it happen. I have a feeling they’re not really into saving the whales.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE SPREADSHEET

Definitely, Charlie has a spreadsheet open in front of him. My name and Sammy’s name is in cell A3, and next to it in B3, is our offer on the property we viewed on Saturday.

Charlie’s an estate agent. He enjoys showing people round houses. He polishes his shoes every night and straightens his massive tie-knot in the mirror every morning. He likes the office banter about West Ham and Love Island, and he has a little lego palm tree on his desk to remind him of those giddy Ibiza nights.

Under A3, column A is filled out with six or seven other names, each accompanied by a similar offer number in column B. He’s colour-coded the highest and the lowest. Some make him smile thinly; some make his eyes light up.

Charlie twiddles the plastic leaves of Lego and then squares his keyboard up to the monitor. Column C has telephone numbers in, D: email addresses, but columns E and F are working hard to calculate a tidy commission. The numbers glow in their yellow highlighted cells as though lit by the Balearic sun.

“Hello Sam?” he says, phone pressed to ear. “Sorry Matt, I mean.” He’s understandably got my name wrong. I don’t mind.

“Hi Charlie,” I say, lightly. I’m struck by his consonant-free West London footballers’ accent, juxtaposed with the slick professionalism of a man who polishes his shoes every night. We talk.

“Yeah so we’re at the stage now where we need your best and finals, obviously as you know the property genera’ed a lotta interest so to be fair to everyone at the end of the day…”

I explained I needed time to talk it over with my partner. Charlie agreed and so we disconnected the call and started the countdown clock to tomorrow morning. I imagined him going back to column F.

Buying a house is weird. A professional comes round and values it for you. They say it’s worth a certain price. They’re not impartial though - they know the more they can sell it for, the happier their boss will be. And in fact, it trickles down to them in commission too so it’s worth their while if that price is as high as possible without seeming ridiculous.

That’s not unusual I suppose; the shopkeeper adds labels to items on the shelf in the same way.

What a shopkeeper doesn’t do though, is spark a sort of bidding war for Mars Bars. That would be like only opening the shop for a half an hour in the afternoon and letting the kids in one by one to have a sneak peak at the chocolate bars, then getting them to guess how much they think Mars Bars are worth.

It’s worse than that though. The shopkeeper gets someone else to do it. He gets the Charlies of the world to let the kids in on Mars Bar Day. Charlie’s good with children. After all, he has a Lego palm tree on his desk.

So in troop the children one by one. Charlie makes sure they’ve got the right pennies in their little hands and then they’re in to view the Mars Bars.

“Can’t I just pay for it?” asks one. No little girl. You have to write down what you’d like to pay for it on this piece of paper. Then at the end of the day, the shopkeeper’s going to come back and he’s going to choose which one of you he’s going to sell the Mars Bar to.

“Won’t he just pick the one with the highest number though?” she says, wide-eyed with worry. Meanwhile, outside, a posh boy in short trousers and a blazer is scribbling zeroes on a piece of paper. He has a greedy look in his eye. Charlie nods.

“Then what was the point of the label?” she asks.

And all over the land, in newsagents and corner shops, Mars Bars would be getting sold that way, each only ever worth what someone was willing to pay, however close to the numbers on the label. In fact, as shopkeepers realise what’s happening, they see that they can play this guessing game over and over, and can keep pushing up those prices on the labels until suddenly all the posh boys are living in absolute palaces of chocolate, and the little girls have to put up with just packets of biscuits.

Meanwhile Charlie’s off to Ibiza for the summer season.

I’m no economist, and I’m not a socialist either, but doesn’t that sound all a bit bonkers? Sure, everyone has to live somewhere, sure this has been happening for generations. But at some point, surely, that bubble bursts and the posh boys can’t afford to sell all their chocolate/negative equity? I mean surely it would have been simpler if those prices were regulated, kept the same somehow, without the grinding wheels of greed getting in the way?

Best and finals eh. This is where we write our last guess on a piece of paper, hand it in  to Charlie and wait for the reaction.

It’s going to have to be a Mars Bar and a half if it’s worth it.

IN THE CHAIR OF THE DANDY HIGHWAYMAN

I opened the door of the barbers and stepped inside. The door tinkled behind me.

“Thanks for coming back,” said one of the barbers, scissors in hand. The mop-topped teen in front of him flicked eyes at me in the mirror. I nodded and sat down.

I have odd emotions about a haircut. Perhaps, you might say, that was the real reason I scuttled off to Costa: he doesn’t like getting a haircut; he doesn’t like people touching his head.

Well you’d be wrong - probably on both counts. I think it’s far more complex than that. I think on occasion I’ve very much liked it, and on more frequent occasions, I’ve found it weird and invasive.

Speaking of weird and invasive, as I sat down on the plush sofa I noticed the gent in the other barber’s chair had fully reclined his head back on the headrest, and was sporting long sticks in each of his nostrils. They stuck up into the air like the antennae of a giant insect.

The barber, masked like a dandy highwayman, narrowed his eyes in the mirror. His charge laid back nervously as the keen hairdresser quickly whipped out the plunger from each nostril. Talk about onomatopoeia! I’m sure the removal of each giant cotton bud made a sort of fshloop sound. It was probably my horrified imagination. Nostril waxing.

The guy sat up, twitched his nose, and couldn’t help smile at his own reflection - as though he’d just survived something traumatic and considered himself jolly lucky to be alive. The barber carefully adjusted the chair back to the correct angle.

I liked getting my hair cut two Septembers ago when I transformed from long hair to short; that was alright. Hacketts of Bath really treated me well, given I was quite nervous about it. But the few times I’ve been since have been a bit more basic, and a bit more predictable.

First of all the barber straps you into a smock and asks you what you want. Today I heard myself ask him just to tidy it up and keep it slightly longer on the top. He asked me what I meant by that, and I ran out of words.

Then, for the next twenty minutes while he pulls your head this way and that and buzzes in your ear like an angry wasp, you’re left with no other option than to stare into your own eyes and study your own goofy face. Gents, I bet the ladies are different, but if you’re like me, the chances are you spend less than three minutes a day confronted by your own ageing reflection. As a self-conscious introvert I find it excruciating having to study that image for an extended period of time.

Your emotions go through it too. Perhaps not so much these days (I mean there’s less to work with) but I remember the barber pulling my hair into the lousiest shapes in order to cut it. One minute it’s an embarrassing wet combover, the next he’s pulling it up into wild strands to snip a bit off between his fingers. Then he combs it down over your head and you are the least cool you’ve ever appeared. Plus the smock makes you look a bit like a vicar.

Today, he ruffled it as a proud aunty would, and my grey hair sprang up like wires. It always makes me wonder how they know what they’re doing - it must be a very fine art, a mysterious process into which I have entirely no desire to delve. Usually at the end, he sculpts it and it sort of looks okay.

Oh and young men, listen up, because honestly, there will come a day when (taken with a need you didn’t realise you’d ever have) the barber will, frankly, and without any warning whatsoever, run his clippers around your earholes. I kid you not. You’ll suddenly be deafened by the buzzer as it circles your ear, and you’ll know, in that great and terrible moment that, well, let’s just say the times, they are a changing.

There was a football match on today too. The little telly in the shop blared out the commentary of Kidderminster Harriers versus West Ham United in the FA Cup, and the other patrons in the shop oohed and ahhed as the action unfolded. I have no interest at all in Kidderminster Harriers, West Ham United or the FA Cup, but somehow having my head sculpted in a way that had locked my eyes forwards, I found myself infuriated that I couldn’t turn to watch. 

Once done, and dusted down, the barber pulls out his unique handheld mirror and shows you (from all available angles) the back of your head. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything at this point other than nod approvingly - though I’ve never been quite sure why.

Today, I paid, wished them all a good day and then headed out into the blustery street, letting the chilly wind play with that fresh-gel-and-raw-neck feeling.

“See you again!” said the barber just before the old-fashioned door jangled shut. I’m sure he will, just by the nature of things and the way hair grows on the human head. And in my ears.

Mainly though, I was thankful I hadn’t had the nostril waxing thing done. I mean, aren’t those hairs there for a reason? Aren’t they supposed to protect against colds and the flu virus? And doesn’t that just look silly, having those things wedged up your nostrils? It’s emotional enough getting your hair cut, without injecting that kind of nonsense into the process.

OBSERVATIONS AT THE BACK OF COSTA

You join me today in Costa, where I’m scoffing a cinnamon brioche bun. I’m supposed to be getting my hair cut but the barbers was too full and I felt awkward waiting outside on my own.

I’m outside at the back, hunched over a wobbly wooden table. Outdoors still feels the safest, though of course, it’s a little chilly.

There’s a small family with a pug called Allegra out here. Allegra is full of life. A few moments ago they had to stop Allegra from licking a crying toddler - a toddler who was crying because a pug was trying to lick her. I have no idea how it started but for a while there they were locked in a sort of limbic spiral. Allegra, driven by the ancient pack instinct to protect and comfort the young; the toddler responding with both fright and flight.

It feels familiar. Have you ever tried to help someone but found every attempt makes it worse? Probably you’ve been in the opposite situation, where someone with good intentions is accidentally terrorising you. And you can no more communicate that than a baby can reason with a dog.

What else do we have here? A lady (inside) is reading a book called Magpie. I’m guessing it’s about a stolen child or something like you’d get in an ITV drama. She seems into it. She sips a tall hot chocolate. 

Further inside, a couple have gone for two teas. He dangles and dips a teabag into a Costa labelled teapot. She bites carefully into a slice of millionaires shortbread, and then delicately wipes the crumbs from her mouth with a napkin.

It was the 90s that did this to us. Before Friends and Frasier, nobody went ‘out’ for coffee. If you did, it was always incidental to the rest of your plan - a quick stir in a greasy spoon or an in-store café. No. To socialise over a hot drink you invited people round. They invited you. You had coffee and biscuits ‘in’ not ‘out’ and, as far as I recall, nobody was ever all that particular about the woefulness of what we now call ‘instant’.

I’m not saying I object by the way. Here I am after all with my cinnamon brioche bun. I just find change so fascinating.

The particularity around coffee though, is probably also detrimental to these places in the long run. Nowadays, way beyond the 1990s, these templated blends are far less exotic than they appeared when Drs Crane used to order them in downtown Seattle. Zimbabwe? You can get it in your local supermarket now. And a lot of people can prep it to perfection for their exquisitely fine-tuned palates, using their own shiny equipment. What Costa and Starbucks give us these days is boring predictability - exactly as Nescafé Gold Blend did in the 80s.

Wherever they are, Ross, Rachel and the gang have long jettisoned the charms of Central Perk for certain. They’re grinding their own beans and chatting about the forthcoming grandchildren and how Joey’s doin’…

A lot of folks here are on their phones too, regardless of their table mates. That’s a thought for another day.

The family have gone now, presumably to take Allegra for a leash-free run around in the park. Magpie lady sighed too and closed her book thoughtfully.

I hope I’d be observant enough to notice if my help was making things worse. Moreover, I hope someone would tell me. Perhaps better to be the translator in the middle who somehow knows how to speak baby and pug, able to reconcile complicated situations of - limbic spirals.

Anyway. Enough people pondering. I’d better get my hair cut.