Personal Blogs

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Prestige and Status

[6 minute read ] 

Reading a news story on Sky news online this morning about a man who pretended that his Jaguar I-pace electric car was malfunctioning and kept accelerating on the motorway, I thought I might have a look at the cost of such a vehicle. Apparently, this chap ran into finance difficulties and still had £5,000 to pay on his, so he faked a dangerous malfunction hoping to somehow get relief from the debt. A used I-pace might cost £13,000. 

I went to Jaguar's own I-pace website. Just like all television adverts for cars there is no information on the car, just pictures. I was also struck by the focus on allowing the customer to 'build' the car to the customer's specification. Do people really buy only the skin of a car, the look and the prestige that is associated with the name? I think yes. But many people also choose potential partners on the same basis, including the name.

My perspective as far as I know has always been from a functional position. Crudely, this means will the car go from A to B? How much does it cost to run? How reliable is it? Probably the most important factor which likely draws me to a vehicle is, is it suitable for the job I have in mind for it? Much as it might be fun to use an American school bus for the school run, it just isn't practical in the UK, if only because parking is an issue. Ripping fun though. Some girls might like to be delivered and collected to and from school in a pink Sindy or Barbie styled car, as might some boys. Some boys might like being dropped off in a tow truck, just as some girls might. Realistically, the safe bet is probably an expensive SUV though, isn't it?

This is about prestige, not pride. In a world that puts fashion before function I pride myself on repairing my clothes, where I can; and riding a bicycle whenever I can. I pride myself on using only old bicycles that I fix up and haphazardly repair. There is no prestige attached to wearing a pair of shorts with a patch over a back pocket where the habitual placing of house-keys has worn a hole. But I am the sort of person who will just up and go to the local Co-op still wearing muddy clothes from digging the garden. There are no people I want to impress by wearing clean and tidy clothes. That is not to say that I only wear dirty and scruffy clothes. I live in a village and we have two allotments. The only people who I might try to impress are the ones who grow vegetables and cook from scratch. But that is just me. There are plenty of people in my village who are convinced that manicured lawns and perfectly creased clothing is paramount to demonstrating their success. They, credit willing, might see a car in a television advert and think to themselves, 'I like the shape. The maker has a good reputation. It is suitably expensive to be considered an item of prestige.' Just how the television ads ends with a couple of facts, these people might, as an afterthought, recognise that the car will go from A to B when B is 500 miles from A. 'Ah, Jolly good!'

It might seem that I am pillorying these types of people. I am not, Each to their own. I just wouldn't want to be married to one of them, or have one of them at my wedding reception or birthday party. These types of people perceive different problems than I do from the same set of realities. I grow tomato plants in the local clay soil, some people in my road say there is nowhere for them to grow tomato plants. These same people put all their food-waste, grass clippings and hedge trimmings in the green recycling bin, while I put mine on the garden. I fail to understand why people with gardens are allowed to have green bins.

       'Gardens are for enjoying. They should have emerald green manicured lawns and a six foot fence all around so no-one can see in. They are private places where the family can relax.'

       ''Gardens are where food can be grown and relaxing takes the form of nurturing plants and providing a safe place for insects and spiders.' I would counter. 'It is a place where we can dispose of our compostable waste and by doing so improve our environment.'

Plainly, I have a different attachment to my environment than some other people do. I can not fathom why anyone would sweep away the detritus they produce by living a life that realistically is shaped to impress other people; other people, mind, who are carefully selected and have similar values; namely they shape their lives to impress other people who again are selected according to specific criteria, one of which might be for example - they do not take their kids to school in an American school bus. I know, it is me that is weird and not them. They are the modern normal.

My tomato plants have all flopped over and true to their form lie across the ground. They naturally do this and readily grow roots from anywhere the stem or stalk touches the ground. It, however doesn't suit the grower which is why we stake them upright. Usually, I cut the straight young trunks of young ash trees bordering my garden to use as stakes but I have so many plants this year that I have had to forage from wider afield in the village. 

       'If you are looking for the raspberries and blueberries they are further up that way.'

I had no idea what the dog-walking woman was on about. It is highly unlikely that blueberries are growing in our village and I have never seen wild raspberries. 

       'No, I am collecting waste branches to act as stakes for my tomato plants, but thanks.'

       'Oh, I have just cleared my garden. I had to make three trips to the tip with branches and clippings.'

Oh well, I thought. Chalk and Cheese.

Yesterday, outside ALDI, my favourite place for meeting people, I had a quite long conversation with a woman about why people in North Africa have air-conditioning and we don't in the UK. The conversation moved onto humidity and how her Council had fitted extractor fans in her social housing home that automatically come on when the interior humidity is above 60%. This is the weirdest thing for me. I had already primed myself by previously looking into the efficacy of having these types of extractor fans fitted in our UK homes. 

       'The average outside humidity level in the UK is 67%.' I told her. 'Simply opening a window will cost you money.' That is almost true in Summer.

       'They are constantly on.' she despairingly replied. Well, they would be, Anyone with any sense opens their windows first thing in the morning and in the mid evening to let the cool air in. Right now at 07:29 am, the outside humidity level where I live is 72%. However, I should say that my windows have been open for hours now and the inside humidity level in my living room is only 54% and 4 degrees higher than outside. So, it is not as straightforward as I would like it to be to be able to make a strong point. However, I do know that de-humidifiers used to be really expensive to run. ScrewFix have one for £79.99 that uses 300 Watts per hour (a bit more than a large plasma television). It is programmable. The extractor fans Councils fit in their houses are a similar price. But here is the puzzling bit. A four inch (10cm) hole has to be made for each fan in the wall or ceiling of the home, which work is contracted out to a third party (expensive). I suspect that the cost of this might be close to the price of enough solar panels to charge an appropriate battery that would run a dehumidifier which does not need a huge hole in walls to run. The drawback, of course, is wholly within the scope of my rant. The person who buys a car for the prestige it imbues upon the owner is the same person, I suspect, who just wants to shunt warm air out along with moisture because they cannot lower themselves to manual work such as emptying the dehumidifier of water once it is full. Just like just shoving garden and kitchen waste into green bins is easier than providing a specific area in the garden for its decomposition, forgetting about humidity levels is desirable in the same way. 'Job done, I no longer have to think about it'.

       'Empty the water out? Perish the thought, dear!' For me though, that is water I would put on my plants. I would not feel guilty about that since I would have made the water myself. We should consider heat-waves and drought to be the new norm, I hear.

According to https://qualityindoorair.co.uk/how-much-water-should-a-dehumidifier-collect-in-a-day/ a small dehumidifier might collect between 4 and 9 litres of water a day. That in old money is about one to two GALLONS a day for watering tomato plants in a drought! The cost with no solar panels for me would currently be 300 Watts x 24 hours = 7.2 kW x £0.24 per unit = £1.72 + £0.50 standing charge = £2.22 per day. Plainly, I need to seriously think about getting solar panels.

So, are Councils pandering to a modern value that negates concern for the environment? Are they deliberately avoiding supplying efficient methods of reducing damp and mould in homes? We might need to understand that all landlords became directly responsible for damp and mould control in October 2025, and the Councils are still in catch-up mode. I cannot expect someone to have any inclination to come up with a good solution when any solution will do. 'It will do' is, after all, the modern way of doing things.

I think the black Jaguar I-pace in the drive means that guests are not expected to be told to 'mind the dehumidifier' when they go to the bathroom. It really is a status thing, isn't it?

Jaguar's 'Build your car' feature on their website plays on our desire to be in control while being creative. There are video and computer games that were quite successful that use this aspect of humanity, such as 'The Sims' and games that allowed interior home design. It is a modern fantasy-made-real scenario.

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

Don't break the fourth wall

'You are so measured'

[ 4 minute read ]

Just lately, everybody has wanted a piece of me. I feel like that stretchy toy of the 1970s (I think it was then), the one that kids could seemingly pull its arms and legs to extreme lengths. I don't like it. 'Yes, how can I help you?' 'Oh, hello. What a surprise; yes, of course I will'. I am not someone who demands other people's time and attention. It is no secret that I abhor SmartPhones. The blog post I wrote 'The Lighthouse of My Mind' (Tags: dopamine, connection, isolation, PTSD, similarity) makes it clear that I regard constant social interaction as being no better than poor quality furniture in 'The Sims': low level top-ups that deny us recognising what comfort and relief really is after any kind of absence of it.

The Open University asked me how they can help, because I have PTSD. Kindly, they want to set things up early for me; you know, make sure I am comfortable with stuff and how would I like the tutors to be. Really? There are two things here. Just leave me alone and let the tutors be however they want to be. If I am completely honest though, my response to the gentle probing is probably more indicative of outside influences that have quite severely bothered me; and a reluctance to explain something that is a dark cloud that is invisible against a dark background. 

We all have the same dark cloud sometimes. Dark clouds are a warning that something foreboding or treacherous or heavy is coming. That isn't really what I mean by 'we all have dark clouds sometimes'. I think I mean that we have a fullness, such as, we expect rain when we see dark clouds on the horizon. Story-writers use them as 'Uh Oh!' but I suppose I might think of my dark cloud of the last few weeks as 'I need a dump'. Maybe I need a refreshing break at a place that can teach me Yoga and Pilates. Even the thinking of it makes me feel lighter. Essentially, I told The Open University to leave me alone because I am tired.

Normally, I leave about twenty or so tomato plants outside my house for people to take; I grow them specifically for that purpose. I have had so many visitors though that I am running out and there isn't any for the neighbours and passer-bys. There never was. Selfishly, this year I had an idea to keep all the plants myself, about forty, and then have a constant stream of tomatoes to eat, but these last two weeks it has been; 'Here! a couple of leeks (pulled from the garden as they watch) and have these three tomato plants and oh! some mint too'. My garden is getting quite sparse. I suppose that is the price for actively deciding to be selfish instead of just being selfish as a natural character attribute. Trying to be selfish seems to mean that we are not. I often feel that other people are blind to other people and giving something of value away is just too much. The last two weeks has been for me, 'Here, take my hopes and dreams with you'. The tomato plants were started in March and carefully nurtured. I would tilt my head to one-side and coo at them, 'I can't wait to see you bigger and abundant with fruit, my little beauties'. Yet, I am gratified to see the joy that my guests (mostly officials) get from armfuls of 'leaving presents' though. The pleasure I experience is short; much shorter than if I kept the plants and tasted the fruits over a couple of months; and of course, it is supremely therapeutic for me to wander around in a garden plucking foodstuffs from the ground. 

Here then, is an idea of the different values we place on our resources. My time is precious to me, but lately I have given it to other people who have no idea of the price. Many of the people see it as cheap. My past time was spent usefully, planting seeds and spending months growing leeks, but has largely ended up being so someone else has a pleasant future, which I didn't plan for. They will have the long fun time of growing tomato plants and the very short time of munching on leeks that took over six months to grow.

It is the transition period, the crossover-point, the time when mine became theirs; and the smile and thanks lasted only a few seconds; when reciprocal futures and fortitude changed or were swapped, that interests me. I think there is a beauty and a magic that is often overlooked in that liminal slit. It is a place in which I would like to live a lot more than I do; but oh, the cost!