PETER CROUCH’S TWO HUNDRED WHITE T-SHIRTS

Ex-footballer Peter Crouch is in an advert at the moment, for a washing powder. In it, he compares his grubby white t-shirts to much more brilliant white examples in order to show how easy it is for white to fade to dingy grey without you realising.

Not with new ‘Super White Sparkle Shine Washing Powder’ though. Alright - I made that name up, but you get the drift. It apparently gets your whites so white that you can see them from space or something.

But then the joke at the end is that Peter already has hundreds of brilliant white t-shirts. You actually see him prancing about between the racks, doing the ‘robot’ I guess. I assume that now he’s figured out how to keep them all white, he’s saying he doesn’t need so many?

It made me think. If you are significantly wealthy (as no doubt Mr Super White Sparkle Shine Let’s All Do The Robot is) does it make you less sensible about what you buy? I mean having two hundred white t-shirts seems like an indulgence.

I can’t afford a helicopter. If it was as cheap to me though, as a packet of Biscoff biscuits is, or even comparable to a holiday in Italy, would I just fancy a helicopter one day and then… buy it? That seems daft. But you know, I can’t rule it out. I’ve bought Biscoff biscuits on a whim before (and eaten them even more whimsically, I should add) and I’ve been to Italy a couple of times. Is it the same thing, just scaled? Would Elon Musk kick back with Bezos and Gates and chat about super cars as though they were Lego sets?

I doubt that Peter Crouch really does have two hundred white t-shirts. It just sounds like an awful lot of washing, and I’m not sure Abby Clancy’s the kind of person to tolerate her house being dwarfed by an enormous washing pile. Even the makers of Super White Sparkle Shine must admit that eventually t-shirts need to make it to the laundry basket.

SCHEDULED MESSAGES

Two things today.

One, WhatsApp should let you schedule messages. I’m telling you - that would change my life. Imagine! I could dream up all the things I have to say that pop eloquently into my head at 11pm… then send them at the exact time they’ll have maximum impact. Boom!

Two. It occurred to me today that I have no idea how many floors there are in the London office building. We work on Floor 2. I’ve had no need to go above Floor 3 until today, and as I was climbing the stairs to Floor 5 (which looks exactly like Floor 2 and Floor 4 by the way), I started to wonder. What would happen if I kept going? There were stairs to Floor 6. I was looking for a free booth to make a call.

I ended up on Floor 7, nestled into the capacious sofa of the reception area for an undefined company with fancy logos printed to the wall.

But is there a Floor 8? Probably. It felt as though I was inside the Infinite Hotel paradox.

I looked out of the window up there. Skyscrapers tower over chimneyed roofs - glass monsters in an old world. I saw the Shard above a rooftop, its familiar forked apex poking into the grey sky. The old NatWest building too, loomed behind some grey slates, itself now dwarfed by blander, taller blocks. I’m pretty sure it was the tallest in London when I was a kid. Progress: the things we build stay the same while the things our children build around them just get taller.

Which is why, WhatsApp, you need to move with the times and give us a schedule button! Sure, we’re going to keep on accidentally starting a group call, and yes, no-one in the history of WhatsApp has used it for a group call*, but that’s beside the point. What do we want? Scheduled messages! When do we want them? Tomorrow morning at 9am in each time zone. Progress eh.

*I feel as though I should point out that this is a rhetorical device I’ve added for comic effect. At some point, my wife will read this post and she will definitely tell me I can’t prove that nobody has ever used WhatsApp to call everyone on the chat. All I will say is that I was once lost in the woods looking for everyone in a particular WhatsApp group, and even then, I wouldn’t have dreamed of ringing them all on it.

HICCUPS AND OAT MILK

I’ve had the terrible hiccups, so instead of pushing a trolley round Sainsbury’s, I’m slowly digesting a hot oat milk at the in-store Starbucks.

I don’t get the hiccups very often, but for the last ten minutes my body has been involuntarily spasming and now I feel like my stomach is trying to turn itself inside out with each jolt of the diaphragm,

I don’t think Sammy minds. This was her idea. Though who knows what the trolley will be full of when she comes to find me in a minute. And if she runs into any fellow teachers, or parents of children who can’t quite believe that their teacher exists outside of the school, then she’ll be a little longer still. Honestly, sometimes it’s like being married to a local celebrity. I just stand in the background in much the same way personal protection officers would.

The milk is helping. It’s not really milk though is it? Oats aren’t mammals. I don’t actually know how oat milk is made and I don’t have signal for Google.

She’s back. Now all we have to do is pay, which is my job. Do they still say a shock is best for hiccups?

VIEW FROM THE OLIVE BRANCH

It’s really raining. One hour until my train, so I’ve decided to dive into the Olive Branch cafe opposite Oxford Railway station. It’s warmer, quieter, and the tea is nicer. Plus I’ve found a way to charge up my phone for the journey home.

It’s a good moment to reflect on the last couple of days in this city.  And the Sales Kick Off at the Leonardo. 

I think, on balance, I should not have come. I definitely thought it last night when I realised that the rest of the team had gone to dinner without me. 

I was one minute late getting to the lobby, so I waited.

After a while I started to realise that the chances of 11 people and 3 separate taxis being simultaneously more than 10 minutes late was so low that it couldn’t have happened, and that there had been only one other explanation.

It turns out that they all thought I was in the other taxi. Not a nice feeling though, being left behind. For a while I thought I would quite happily have just stayed at the hotel after all. It wouldn’t have done though. I ordered a cab and eventually went to meet them all at Gusto.

I just don’t think I belong in that crowd. But then… which crowd do I belong to? Sometimes I just don’t know. There was little I could contribute this week too. Much wasn’t relevant, or if it was, tough to absorb. It didn’t help that last night was so boiling hot, I failed to sleep before the hour ticked beyond a 2. When I opened my eyes, alive to the darkness and fully awake, I noticed it was just gone 4am. Now that I’m slumping into my tea at the Olive Branch, I can see how startling that maths looks.

Meanwhile, needing to be there meant that I couldn’t be at home for Sammy, and she really needed me. Just as our pizzas came out at Gusto, she rang, and in a way that I knew was sort of urgent. The quiet, late, antisocial extra at the table had to disappear and find a quiet corner. I was anxious. It didn’t make anything easier.

 

The cafe is filling up now. It will soon be time for me to splash through the glinting puddles, clutching my hood over my head and my sopping bag over my shoulders. I think my tea’s gone cold too.

I actually can’t wait to get home.

SLOW JANUARY

I was reflecting yesterday, how it was only the 12th of January - when it already feels as though New Year was about six weeks ago.

Cliché isn’t it? Yawn. January goes slowly, too much month at the end of the money, yada yada. Oh and soon the travel companies will be bleating about Blue Monday again, the ‘statistical’ (unproven) low-point (not true) of the year (get booking those holidays people).

And yet, as old-hat a thing to say as it might be, it’s somehow still true. Time really does seem to be slowing down, the end of the month really does feel weeks away, and yes, Christmas flickers like a distant memory. So I guess I’m not afraid of the cliché when I can see it and feel it happening in front of me. Time is not a constant.

I just asked ChatGPT about it. I know you’ve got to take it with a pinch of salt sometimes, but it suggested that January isn’t longer, just less interesting. Perhaps sardonically (if a machine can be so) it also said that ‘December is eaten in one bite but January is chewed very slowly, with regret.’

Thanks AI. Very uplifting.

I think it’s probably about shaking up the routine, creating markers, maybe just making sure there’s enough light in the day, and fuel and water in the tank.

IN WHICH I ASK HOW OLD I AM

Well hello and welcome to another episode of How Old Am I. No, not in a jokey, doing-something-cute-and-childish way, and not in a nostalgic 'wasn't the world better when you could push your bike up the hill to the smell of freshly baked bread and the sound of Dvorjak?' way either. No, I mean I actually keep forgetting how old I am.

This would be baffling to a young person. I'm pretty sure because I used to be one of those myself, and, along with my address, phone number and j'ai douze ans merci beacoup, I'm pretty sure I had that information locked and loaded for anyone who asked.

Yet here we are. I just had to work it out by subtracting my birth year from the current year, and persuade myself that I'm not actually one year older than I temporarily thought I was. Quite the relief to get it right I suppose, but not so relieving that I was no longer quite sure of the difference between 47 and 48.

And I suppose to someone under 20, there isn't much difference, is there? I mean, 47? Yeah. Old. Parent-old. 48? Pretty much the same thing innit. Whereas between 19 and 20, or between 13 and 14, the gap is somehow much wider, as are the birthday marker posts that delineate the difference.

So tune in next week when I've forgotten what I went upstairs for, or a colleague has told me I've accidentally dressed like Val Doonican - true story by the way.

I mean sometimes I think cut out the transition and just hand me the slippers and the cardigan.

THE TAYLOR PLAYLIST

Sammy’s going through a little Taylor Swift phase. Now, I don’t mind Taylor; I really don’t. The Swifties aren’t exactly my people - I mean the ones who dress up in sparkly boots and swap friendship bracelets - but I don’t object to her particularly.

However. For some reason we’re listening to the same few songs in rotation. I think it’s a playlist. Sammy has to listen to it from the beginning every time. I haven’t quite got to the bottom of why she’s so against the Shuffle button, but she is, and, as a wise man once taught me, you really do have to pick your battles.

So the first few songs on the list fill the air with saccharine sunshine and lyrical brilliance. I do mean that - for me, there are few better storytellers. She has a turn of phrase that’s almost Shakespearian, and an emotive way of connecting with, well obviously, millions of people.

Maybe I should emulate Taylor, and write songs about how I can’t play Beethoven at full blast in the kitchen without getting funny looks. And yet (listen, I can’t do this as well as she can) the other way round, it’s not the same same same.

It’s not the same.

NEW YEAR BUBBLES

Quick question. When you wish someone a 'Happy New Year' does it mean you wish them a full year of happiness, or are you just wishing them well for the first few days in January?

I always assumed it was the former. I want to be wished well for the entire twelvemonth, with happiness that fizzes and bubbles until late December. Surely that's what it means?

But there's a niggling thought I can't quite expunge - the thought that 'New Year' also means the post-twixtmas days before we take the tree down. In other words, this little season, pre-Epiphany. If that's what people mean when they say Happy New Year, it would make sense, thanks to the capital letters. But surely not! Surely it can't mean that can it?

We'll be taking our tree down tomorrow. I don't feel particularly sad about Christmas being over this year; more prosaic about the year ahead I suppose, a year of huge unpredictability, but one I think I can grab hold of. Listen, I don't know whether it will be exactly 'happy' - but I'd settle for joyful, and I believe that joy is a lot longer lasting than New Year bubbles.

If I've ever wished you a Happy New Year, I promise you, I have always intended it to mean the entire year ahead, and I think deep down, I've been prophesying more than just happiness.

NOT A PICASSO

Top of the year wobbles again. It’s the juxtaposition of party and reality that I don’t understand. We watched the fireworks, circling and booming from the Wheel. Cheers went up from the crowded embankment.

“I never want to go,” said Sammy, next to me on the sofa.

“Yeah. Me neither,” I replied, though I expect for slightly different reasons. Chiefly for me, not having a clue what we’re celebrating.

New Year!

Yes, of course. But what? The brilliant year gone by? Maybe 5% of us can say it was brilliant but I’d be surprised if it were any more than that. Not 2025 then, the optimism and hope for 2026!

That’s like cheering for a blank canvas. But not a canvas in Picasso’s studio that stands a high chance of becoming a masterpiece. No. This blank canvas is going to be splattered on by everyone. 

Everyone, everywhere is going to pick up paint and hurl it at the easel, flinging joy and sorrow and hilarity and noise all at once, all together, for the next 365 days. And what will that produce? Not a Picasso. That’s going to make a mess.

Sorry if this is a bit of a downer for a New Year’s Day. I’ve got a cold and I think it’s playing havoc with my emotions. I should be more hopeful shouldn’t I? I should be more excited about what I can do, what difference I can make to my own artwork of 2026.

But even then, when New Year’s Eve rolls around again, I can’t see myself whooping and cheering about such a personal thing with ten thousand chilly people in Central London.

“I mean, how are they all going to get home?” I asked out loud. Sammy nodded sagely.