I NEED A LITTLE SPRINGTIME

I really need it to be springtime now. This wet old winter’s gone on way too long, and the chilly evenings where we have to debate whether or not to ‘boost the heating’ … are a bit tiresome.

The thing is, yesterday was alright. There were notes of spring - sunshine, blue sky, even someone flying a kite in the park - but it was still pocket-cold. By that I mean I still needed to put my hands in my pockets. Without a brisk, purposeful walk, coats and gloves were (in my opinion) needed. And, while sort of hinting at spring, those days seem perpetually bookended by mornings of grey, dismal cloud and rain-spattered windows.

I know it’s coming. I don’t want to seem impatient. There are crocuses blooming happily beneath the trees, and last week we saw snowdrops - the signs are all there. Plus this isn’t Narnia; the Earth will spin a little further, and the air will grow warmer, and then I’ll go out without a coat on and smile about it. I know this. It’s just that right now I’m a bit fed up of the old Seasonal Affected Disorder, and I’d like a little vitamin D - a little warmth. 

TELESCOPES AND CLOCKS

Birthday week was a rousing success. Though I did have to get my eyes tested - all in all, a peculiar experience. Plus, now I’m getting adverts for Stannah stairlifts.

“When it's time for a stairlift, don't put it off,” say the manufacturers. They do look convenient.

No Matt. Stop it. You’re 47.

“So, 47?” asked the optometrist. I nodded silently.

The eye test’s odd though, isn’t it? For some reason they spray you in the eyes, blind you with a bright flash, and then ask you whether you can see. The optometrist however, was kind enough to tell me I was ‘doing great’, even though I knew for a fact I’d read some of the Bs as E, F, and even S on the Snelling Chart.

After examining two pictures of Mars on her computer screens, a short discussion of transition lenses and varifocals (I am 47), I was led back to the light to choose my frames, alongside a person I’d never met who didn’t really have any opinions about what looked good on my face. I needed Sammy. I was suddenly wondering how I’d ever done this without her.

The problem is that you can’t really see yourself. There’s a blurry image of you in some far away mirror, wearing a selection of swanky frames, but without your glasses on… it’s an impressionist painting and a game of guess who. Thankfully, Sammy turned up at just the right moment.

Several hours later (okay maybe not, but certainly after the assistant’s shift ended and she’d grown bored of carrying a tray of spectacles around) we’d settled on specs that don’t make my face too long, that aren’t too nerdy, and that don’t make me look ancient. So it was with relief that I sat down, ready to pay and go home.

Now. Here’s where my audience splits neatly into two. For the glasses wearers, you know exactly what’s coming next. Oh you know precisely the twinge of fear and disbelief, followed by the nonchalant response to your gulping. For the non-glasses-wearers, those unspectacled twenty-twentiers who can somehow read small print from half a mile away like a bunch of sparrow hawks or helicopter pilots… you lot should count yourself lucky; the rest of us will tell you that our corrective lenses (and accompanying framework by which we enjoy the privilege of being able to see) costs about the same as two short holidays. So, people. Look after your eyes.

I pick them up this week.

If you really need the loo and you’re downstairs and the loo is upstairs, would a stairlift get you there in time? That would seem like a down-side. You’d have to manage your water intake carefully I suppose. Or. Well, I don’t want to think about it. We’d have to clear out our downstairs bathroom.

Why am I getting adverts for these things? What’s next: walk-in baths as endorsed by Tony Blackburn? Come on world, I’m 47.

Well. We had great birthdays. Sammy was particularly celebrated, which I was most pleased about. Meanwhile I had a day out at the Royal Observatory where I ended up wandering through rooms of old telescopes and clocks.

Old telescopes and clocks. How very apt.

EYEBROWS

Well it’s Birthday Week around these parts and I’m going on about my eyebrows.

“I’m definitely going to blog about my eyebrows,” I said to Sammy. She didn’t respond. I took that as approval.

Here’s the thing. When I was young, I had lovely soft brown eyebrows and they did their job magnificently - keeping sweat from pouring into my eyes and basically defining the shape of my little face.

Then… I got to the age of about 40 and suddenly… suddenly, it was as though my eyebrows had decided it was time to really live. Oh, life begins at 40 said everyone; yeah. My eyebrows took it seriously… and literally sprouted into life.

So now, they’re bushy. They seem to need regular topiary, like two privet hedges, and if they’re not kept kempt (kempt - that’s a word isn’t it?) they just shoot literally all over the place and make me look like some sort of bespectacled owl.

It gives the barber a bit more to do. It used to be that I could just say ‘Yeah, two on the sides and a little longer on the top please’ and then pass the time staring at the reflection of myself getting my hair cut.

Nowadays, I’m just counting the minutes until he says something like, “Do you want eyebrows done?” and then I have to say “Sure” and then he has to get the clippers buzzing and then snippets of long hairs start tumbling past my eyes. Oh, and then he looks quizzically at me in the mirror and just knowingly says: “Ears?” and I make a sort of resigned face and nod.

And why is that there are one or two hairs that are disproportionately longer than the others? That doesn’t make sense - like one particular follicle gets a super-dose of the bush-producing hormone, while all the others get instructions to just grow in whichever direction they like, all at once.

So. It’s my birthday this week. And more importantly it’s Sammy’s too. She’s a lot better at celebrating the now rather than looking back to the time when our eyebrows behaved themselves. Ha! And people think I’m wise! (Probably the eyebrows)

WHERE’S A LIFT WHEN YOU NEED ONE?

You know how in movies, if two people aren’t getting on they get stuck in a lift and work out their differences?

I’m just wondering, is that service available? I mean it doesn’t have to be a lift; could be locked in a room with a snake in it, or lost on the moors together, or accidentally sharing a car to Glasgow, you know that kind of thing… no?

The other thing that movies persuade you is possible is that you could tell them both that the other wants to meet them and set it up. They’re supposed to meet, roll their eyes, say your name and then laugh, before having a much-needed heart-to-heart.

But that wouldn’t happen either, would it? In reality, they’d both scowl and walk off, and then they’d both be individually mad at you for trying to manipulate the situation.

No, what’s needed is a good old situation they can’t get out of, and it has to happen by accident. You can’t set it up. It needs to be that lift, that snake-room, or that terrible trip to Glasgow.

Of course my old Italian teacher used to say it was a case of ‘knocking their heads together’. She had no time for hot-headed silliness. Though, a lot of time for Italian.

Anyway, I always used to stay out of that kind of thing.

Allora! Chiuso la bocca.

COMPLEX MAN NEEDS BREAK

Honestly, I think my brain is broken. I can’t seem to get my head around the simplest things, and yet from time to time I can still go deep on ridiculous detail. Some weird selector is at work, but it’s outside my control, it seems.

Also, conversations feel like games of chess, and I’m plagued with a certainty that they used to be much easier, freer, happier? If I’m having a purple patch, I think I come across as clever and self-satisfied; if I’m not concentrating, I look like I can barely add up whole numbers. So I’m either Mr Magoo or Gary Kasparov. Some nuance would be nice. How about me, somewhere in the middle?

I can’t seem to write poems either. I get stuck. It’s a marker of something - like a silting of the brain, or a long slow CPU failure; you know, when the processor is chunking along at nearly 100% and there’s not enough RAM to even close down the windows.

I’m desperate for life to be simple. Perhaps it is really, and I’m just overthinking it. I feel like that was amusing once. It’s not though is it: complex man thinks life might be simple, but he’s not sure because he’s either too simple or too complex to understand the difference.

Complex man needs a break, I reckon.

PIANO PLAYING PINNACLE

There’s a guy on social media who’s continuously selling a ‘piano masterclass’. You’ve probably skipped his videos at some point - usually the point at which he started shouting about how anyone can learn to play anything with four chords.

It was depressing enough to think that such an obvious snake-oil scam could somehow be everywhere, let alone that people were actually falling for it. It was even worse to find out that it costs $3000, that it really is a load of baloney, and inadvertently… wait for it… funds the Scientologists.

Yeah. You can tell by the way he jumps up and down on his piano lid. There is something Cruisian about it - something totally at odds with the normal function of a musical instrument. He’s totally going to break it one of these days.

The thing I’m most upset about though is that it actually puts people off learning music. He says things like ‘You can learn in a year what took me 15 years, with only three minutes practice a day!’ which is… well… depressing. He goes on to say that music teaching is boring, that it’s all taught in Latin with a thousand hieroglyphics that nobody understands, and that he’s found a way to bypass all of that and turn you into a piano rockstar.

See? Depressing. Where did he learn? In the Vatican? Via the Rosetta Stone? What’s he talking about? And how can you possibly teach anyone to play without even at least a little ‘boring’ music theory? It’s like saying you can learn to read without bothering with the alphabet.

Letters? You don’t need letters. Just feel the words man, let them seep into you. Tosh.

But my biggest deflation is this underlying assumption that you’ll only want to give it three minutes a day. That’s not a good thing - kids ought to want to play and play and play, because they’re loving it.

Is that where we are now? Short attention spans are expected? That’s the default?

He reminds me of someone at school, who’s just discovered how to play chopsticks on the music room piano and now believes that it’s his duty to charge other pupils to learn how to play chopsticks because that - don’t you know - is the absolute pinnacle of piano playing.

What a load of tosh. Save your money. Buy an actual piano. Play it with all the forte or all the piano that instrument will give you, and search (free) YouTube for tips and lessons, or, better still - get a piano teacher who’ll show you scales, teach you theory, maybe even introduce you to some geniuses who never needed to dance about on their own pianos like lunatic chimps.

You’ll be far more inspired, I promise.

WAITING FOR CRAIG

I’m on hold again. The music’s actually making me anxious - which, if you think about it, is kind of odd.

Why would anyone add anxiety-inducing musack to an already stressful situation? Yet here we are: a short loop of some funky 80s tribute act, throwing in a little slap bass and some synthesiser over a clicky old drumbeat.

If you ask me, this is what AI should be used for. AI should be able to work out, from my vocal prompt, the exact situation in which I find myself, and the nature of the call - then create exactly the music to play for me.

It should be able to craft me the single-most perfect collection of beats and rhythms designed to set my mind at ease, to take my mind off say, the gas bill, the doctor’s appointment, the home insurance people.

You sound stressed, I imagine the algorithm saying. You need something to slow your heart rate down - here’s some lovely smooth classical music. Or, something interesting! Something unheard of. Perhaps even lyrics to make me laugh! Come on AI, you can do that, surely!

“You’re on the phone to no-one, list’nin to these crazy tunes… won’t be long, you just gotta hold on… Craig’ll answer soon.”

Hey, it’d make me laugh. And then Craig would have a more pleasant time of it too, once he actually picks the phone up.

Don’t know why I picked Craig there. I just imagine it's going to be Call-Centre Craig who likes a few pints after work, plays a little five-aside at the weekend, and lives with his mum. AI could work out who it would be that would pick up the phone and adapt the song accordingly I reckon. Sally? Likes cats, still uses the pencil case she got in Year 10. Angela? Close to retirement, but really knows her stuff. Likes a G&T most evenings and once went on Countdown.

Well. Anyway. For now we put up with the loopy lift music. 4/4-time, basic chords, no jazzy inflections or dynamics, no progressions - just plastic sunshine on a grim afternoon of admin and anxiety.

Come on Craig. Pick up, mate.