OCEAN HEAD

Fair to say I’m struggling. It’s hard to be specific, only that my head feels a bit like an ocean.

Ocean-head: restless, uncertain, unending seas of churning thought. There’s flotsam and jetsam too - pieces of old ships, hopes and expectations either long-discarded or simply smashed by the waves. Make of that what you will.

‘Work’ tumbles over in a wave of blue-green water. I don’t want to think about how I’ve let everybody down there, but I absolutely have. Then, in swirls an eddy of ‘house’ and how messy it is and how terrible we are at planning. And what’s that bobbing up over there? It’s the list of Canadian Prime Ministers, mixed up with World Cup Mascots! Quiz fragments for a quiz I probably won’t get to be in. Why am I still learning these useless things?

A spray of all the churchy bits, a twinge of guilt for not phoning my parents, all that stuff in my head about letting my GCSE-result-smugness get to me in 1994, and how I’ve continually just let my 16-year-old self down over the course of three decades. That’s a rip-tide, that one. Fall into that and I’ll be dragged somewhere deep and slimy.

Anyway. I’m struggling, and the ocean won’t stop turning around me. I don’t like it.

FLASH MOMENTS AND HOME TRUTHS

I think something odd happened to me today. Not a specific thing, not a story I can tell as such - just a brief moment when I wondered whether the world was quite the way I’d thought it was.

I suppose you know what I mean. Someone just said the smallest thing, most insignificant thing to me at work and I suddenly realised in a flash that I was not at all in the situation I thought I was.

I have to say, I do not like these flash moments. I like to be right. I like to be on top of everything that happens and I go about my life with a hardwired assumption that I am. It isn’t conceited. I think we all do this; it gives us confidence. We’re trained in the subtle art of atmosphere and situation detection and it’s second nature by the time we reach adulthood. Tried and tested.

And then - tried and failed. A flash moment comes along. You don’t think of me like I thought you did sir. You won’t say so, but you will show me. In fact you already have, haven’t you? And now the world is different. So next time I go to Oxford, I must be different too.

The thing is, I don’t know whether or not to be thankful for flash moments. They’re turning points, sure, so that’s progress - but also they’re a little bit painful - like when someone tells you you smell or that your work is poor. Though, this wasn’t that blunt - more of a micro signal that put me on the map towards a home truth. But forgive me, I’m confusing my metaphors. What I mean plainly is that a particular connection with a particular person is now not the connection I thought it was, and now that I know that, I have to change a little. Ouch. But also good for me.

9 ‘A’s and 1 ‘A*’

I got stopped by a young lady from Radio Oxford. She told me they were doing a segment on GCSE results where they asked people how their own results eventually shaped their lives and careers.

I told her my story, and how young people should find something they love and work hard at it, rather than worry too much whether they got the grade.

It occurred to me that exams like that are designed to measure how well you’ve been taught something. (I didn’t say this). I think now that as well as being important for our future, our teachers poured pressure on us because the real pressure might well have been on them - poor results reflect badly. GCSEs particularly are used to calculate the quality of the school.

What a system. It’s complex because it really is a dance between what’s been taught and what’s been learned, but in the middle of it all, back in 1994, I don’t think I could really see that.

So tomorrow, the same kid who wanted to base his whole identity on being the smartest person in the class will be on BBC Radio Oxford telling thousands of people that it didn’t matter.

“How has it shaped you as a person?” asked the researcher. Molly, her name was. I smiled at that. It’s quite hard to summarise all that life that’s happened in three decades. In my heart I know the answer is that I had so much kindness still to learn, and so much confidence still to find. That journey is, Molly, what you might call a work in progress still.

SQUIRDLE

The lads in the office are playing Squirdle, which it seems, is a game like Wordle. Unlike the rather useful category of words, in Squirdle you have to identify a Pokémon from various clues.

“Hmm,” I said, “It’s not really my era.”

“What is your era then Matt?”

“The Napoleonic Wars,” I replied, dryly.

I mean it might as well have been.

Afterwards I pondered whether they would know what Thundercats was, or maybe the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - or whether those things would be as arcane as the War of Jenkins Ear and the Battle of Copenhagen. Sometimes you just need someone to slip in a ‘By the power of Greyskull’ reference, just to feel seen, and not alone.

Thundercaturdle would not be tremendously exciting. Clue 1. Wrapped in bandages or Looks like a cheetah. Pretty easy. Same for the Turtles - somehow in those days the idea of a gigantic universe of characters all interacting, all collectible and learnable, hadn’t really caught on - well, outside panini stickers anyway. Although there is something appealing about the game being called Turtlurdle.

I might just start slipping in a couple of ‘cowabungas’ to the conversation this afternoon, just to see what happens.

LOGGING OFF A CALL

How are you supposed to log off a video call these days? I mean, yes, hover over the Leave button until the exact right moment - the microsecond that doesn’t seem rude (too soon, other person just about has chance to say ‘ok thanks b..’) or too late (eyes flick sideways around the room, everyone else disappears until you’re left awkwardly with one person)… naturally. But what do you do? Especially at work?

I’ve taken to raising one hand palm outwards and logging off with the other. I’m not sure it’s all that professional to be honest - sometimes I think my chair spins just enough for the other person to see me dashing for the kitchen or the loo - or just anywhere but this call. Other times I think waving goodbye like you’re on a Primary School bus seems a little too silly. And don’t even talk about what happens if you raise that hand too high.

I thought about a salute. I like a salute (occasionally) in real life; seems sort of respectful and yet informal, but somehow at work that combination feels ultra sarcastic. Like saying ‘You da boss’ to your actual boss. 

I’ll probably stick with the raised (non-waving) hand. Or, I could do what everyone else seems to do and awkwardly look around my screens for the exit button before disappearing. I’ve noticed too that I tend to say ‘cheers’ a lot before I go. The more I think about it, the less sure I am about what it means.

Modern life eh. I’m sure it used to be simpler somehow. That little shift in body language that tells everybody it’s the end of the meeting, that clasping of hands and the determined ‘right!’ or perhaps an exhalation and drumming rhythmically on the meeting room table. Crumbs, we used to fiddle with laptops and connections and HDMI cables too. Remember that? Unplug, keep talking while you switch off the projector, then finally, snap your laptop shut. I miss those days. Got more steps in in those days.

Speaking of which, I need a very non-sedentary, break-the-routine, fresh air walk. The air is cool and the stress has temporarily abated, so I’ll be off for a few minutes. You know, best foot forward and all that. Have a great day. Cheers.

MASSIVE PIZZA

Some days I feel like I could eat a massive pizza. I mean a massive, massive pizza, maybe six feet wide and two inches thick, dripping in cheese and pepperoni and tomato and spicy barbecue sauce and all the rest of it. Like a paddling pool, but made out of, well, pizza.

I’d dive in. Almost literally - go wild, chomping away at it from the inside out, covered in sticky, sweet, greasy bits of ham and chicken and bacon and whatever else I might have ordered for it.

Some days. I think I’m just hungry tonight, and the primitive bit of my brain is madly fixated on food. There’ll be no paddling-pool-size pizza tonight, monkey brain. You will have to defer to the computery department and make do with the sensible option - which I think is baked salmon. Oh trust me chimpy, the digestive department will thank you for your cooperation.

How would you cook a six-foot pizza anyway? You’d have to construct a huge oven for it, not to mention the device for slotting it in and lifting it out again when it’s done. It’d be a huge faff. I guess if you were a billionaire you could rope some people in to help you? Back garden, world’s largest pizza oven, buckets of chopped tomatoes, cheese the size of breeze blocks being sliced up. Seems like the kind of thing people with too much money might do of an evening, or for some social media purpose. Much like you or I would go ten pin bowling I suppose, or put on a barbecue for the neighbours.

Still. It wouldn’t be fun for all those cooks and onion dicers to stand around and watch me wallow in their creation like a sweaty hippo. No, even billionaires would have to share it out, I reckon.

Thankfully, salmon don’t grow to such lengths. Imagine if they did! Actually don’t, that’s kind of terrifying.

In any case, I think I go a bit weird when I’m hungry. Time for dinner.

TALE AS OLD AS TIME

The other day, the song ‘Beauty and the Beast’ from the 1991 Disney classic Beauty and the Beast popped up in the car while we were driving.

It’s one of Sammy’s favourite Disneys, and so I half-smiled and quietly raised an eyebrow. While I was being wryly impressed by Apple’s algorithm precision, Sammy pointed at the screen and without any hint of what was coming, just said:

“Aw… that’s like us.”