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Opinion

[ 1 minute read ]

The Arrogant British

I am jumping forward in time by between an hour and an hour and a half. There is no change between what has taken place because I am the only one in my time and space. Only I have any effect on my immediate environment because the spirit world around me has quietened;  my neighbour is away and his spiritual madness is far from me.

Just for a while I was excited but reality barged into my living room and told me that the world still moved through space and the earth was where it should be, and it is the time in the United Kingdom that has changed. Time waits for no man except we British, who manipulate it twice a year. I suppose this is why nothing changed between looking at my alarm clock and the time on my laptops; and when I looked at one phone and then another. Apparently one of my phones doesn't talk to the service provider. Oh well! We can still hope and dream of being prescient, I suppose. 

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

Opinion

[ 9 minute read ]

Whiling and wiling away time

Imagining the future

On occasion, I come across a person who will stand me a conversation. Most people will do that funny hand movement that signifies they have exhausted all their methods for allowing time to make decisions for them on how to end something they have just come to recognise as laborious for them. 

One of my favourite things to do is to examine a subject from as many perspectives as I can, including the person I am having the conversation with. Generally though, they haven't really thought things through before I button-hole them and bend their ear. I think you might look upon this as; I intimidate people with word-wizardry. Except this kind of wizardry is not Mickey Mouse in 'Fantasia' incompetently fighting a broom, or Harry Potter waving a wand and conjuring solutions to problems that only he can fathom. Most of the time I know what someone is going to say. That may sound supercilious and self-promoting, but it is not meant to be. And, here we have a problem I identified long ago. If I make statements like that the listener will immediately second-guess me. They actually believe that I believe that I can read minds or something. No, I mean that I expect to hear a common standpoint that conforms with the zeitgeist of a society. 

This is how my conversations usually work. I want to understand why something is so. Yesterday, my attention was piqued by a newspaper article I read in my local Post Office shop. 

As I approached my local Post Office shop I noticed a woman leave the shop and open the boot (Am. trunk) of her car. Mindful not to just throw my bicycle against the plate glass window of the shop, I had time to view her activity. She moved some bags around. Rather than practice my superb rendition of a gawking three-year-old with a 'why?' question on my lips, I 'thickened the air'. I do that sometimes when I sense something amiss or portentious. Anything that happened from that point on would leave a trace that lasts a few seconds; a trace that will allow me to identify commonalities to other traces and tracks within the same soup of 'now'. In plain English that means I paid more attention than I normally would and carefully stored my perceptions.

It is highly unusual for me to need to actively consider events that immediately precede the present I find myself in. Normally, I ignore pretty much everything because most of the time, stuff goes on around me and it is just thin, flavourless and clear dishwater; not worth keeping, because being the past as soon as it has occurred, it has no value; no freshness and no energy. We don't derive any nutrition from the past. It is consideration of the past, in the present, as much as it can be, that sustains us. And there it is, the present has value; which is why I like the present so much and the past not much at all. Even the future is preferable to the past because the future is bendy. (I prefer to hope that the future is bendy; 'malleable' means can be shaped and for me usually means with intent - I prefer the weather to uncontrolled manipulation by hopeful tyros). 

The future is bendy. It has curves in it that make the journey interesting. It has, within it, scenery and events seemingly scattered by the hand of a Supreme Being. Of course, there is no Supreme Being who idly chucks fantasy Lego bricks across a carpet for us to assemble or tread on bare-foot in the dark, as might suit our wit. It is the past and the manipulation of the present that shapes the future. I know this is as it is, so my playful protestations that I am prescient fall upon my own deaf ears. If other people hear me state that I am a seer they should recognise it for an umbrella position that encompasses 'I looked at the past and some futures and there is a high probability that one future could manifest as this or that'. And here is where most people I talk to get lost; they have no idea that I want to tell them about a future. They, invariably think I want to 'while away' the time, when I actually want to 'wile away' a future. 

I can't remember where I heard or read this parable. (It should be known that I did not come up with this and I have reproduced it verbatim to the source in order that in a future it may be used in a search term to establish its provenance):

A Parable

It was a chilly, overcast day when the horseman spied the little sparrow on its back in the middle of the road. Reining in his mount he looked down and inquired of the fragile creature,
"Why are lying upside down like that?"
"I heard, the heavens are going to fall today." replied the bird.
The horseman laughed, "And I suppose your spindly little legs can hold up the heavens?"
"One does what one can." said the sparrow.

We know that 'to wile' is to use guile and manipulation. In one kind of reality anyone can plant a seed of doubt and expect a change. We can't control the trickle of change when other people become involved in the making of a torrent though.

Once I had selected my items I noticed the woman was conducting a transaction at the Post Office counter and the man was close by, not really doing anything except mumbling to himself. When I do that it is soliloquy; when other people do it is incoherent mumbling. 'Scary Monsters', I thought. (It is just an expression; not an impression). Reading the marks where a wooden spoon of activity was stirring the pot of slowly coagulating sauce that was developing into the past, I predicted that he and the young woman would leave together. You know, you have to recognise the past to see a future. I had time to 'while away' so I read the front page of a newspaper. The Government will mandate businesses to tell all employees that being in a union is a good thing. Good Crikeyness! Really? Have they thought this through? Young people, whom some businesses supposedly find unemployable due to their attitude of entitlement, should be told that it is a good idea to discuss the bosses behind their backs, and form a limping team that resembles the one they have had all their school lives and is resistent to external influence. This is a good thing? Of course, I already know that these young people feel alienated when they find themselves in their first job after leaving school or training. Suddenly, they find themselves bereft of a supporting team. No matter how pathetic that team was, it was a position of belonging and a comfortable bubble of confirmation bias. In order for these young newbies to be part of a new team at work, they are going to need to impress their work colleagues of their worth. That, today, is quite difficult when no-one talks in the canteen anymore. Teams are found on SmartPhones these days. 

       'I hate it here. It is dull and boring and stupid and I don't know what to do!'

       'I know, it is the same here. I hate it too. See you later. the boss is looking at me. She wants me to work, Here she comes. Bye'.

It is plainly a good idea to cause young people to think their opinion is valued when they present an attitude of 'Why should I?' towards their work environment. Any union will leap at having someone like this on their team. 'Work to rule' is definitely on the cards and statements such as, 'That is not what it says in the job description!' will be rife. 'All out!'. I predict that the adaptive UK will be crippled. Happy empowered teenagers. That is what we want, don't we?

I don't speak young people 'Lingua-do-do' as Lady Gaga put it, or not. (She did in one YouTube video but 'Genius' doesn't think so). I might as well be Shakespeare to teenagers. Fantastic range of multisyllabic words but it takes deliberate and focused thinking to decipher their meaning, and without a team, I suggest, they shan't attempt it. So, the extremely knowledgeable chap, who lives over the road from me, had to be the only poor opening for wiling. He, though, standing in the cold, close to the Post Office shop, expected to mildly discuss unions with a handful of anecdotes brightening the environment. By this time, the coagulated past in the shop had proven to be no more than a bagatelle that was essential in snapping me into the grid of fate. Now, however, fate's train was drawing into a remote station on a heritage line.

Shaping my argument by using a second party is of course reprehensible but I can be blind to individual sentiment sometimes when the world needs to be saved. It turns out that he is not the conduit that I hoped he might be. To be honest, I didn't even have that hope with any degree of confidence that my words might stick like strands of spaghetti casually flung against the hard wall of his conscience and his concern about the demise of the horse-drawn hansom carriage. I usually cook words on the fly and without having ever read a cookbook. My 'wiling' would inevitably fizzle out in a cul-de-sac of indifference. This chap has been fired in the furnace of experience so many times there can be no expectation that any solvent will release the rigid bonds of his thinking. And, he doesn't speak teenager  'Lingua-do-do' either. But he is not the carrier; I never thought he was.

That conversation with him was stimulating, even if it was a little irritating when he kept trying to drift off into nostalgia and stereotypical views on whippersnappers voting in elections, coal, and gypsies. But I am not one to dismiss a colourful tart of delicious tidbits. Everything he said has some relevance, but like me, he doesn't join all the dots. Lecturing helps but thinking things through and trying to make sense of information or opinion bears far more fruit for a vintner of knowledge. Connoisseur, I may not be, but I do enjoy a good brandy, or distillation of loquaciousness, if you will.

Only I seem to make the connection between teams at schools, voting in elections and union meetings. I can paint futures run by teenagers both good and bad. I feel that in order to understand what we really want, we might have to use a technique that I invented after a whole bunch of people invented it long before I was born.

Imagine painting a scene of what you would like your future to be like. Now imagine painting a picture of what you would not like. What is missing from the first painting?

[ 1909 words - over 2 hours to write and edit - I hate editing so much that I had to leave it and finish with a final re-edit 8 hours later]

I want to get off now

[ 2 minute read ]

Patronising Donkeys

[ 5 minute read ]

I hear music

[ 2 minute read ]

Come to the Think Tank in the Co-op

[ 4 minute read ]

Not so long ago it would have been outrageous to point a crooked finger at the United States of America. Yet, now, it seems we can safely expostulate that Americaland might be responsible for some of the woes that afflict us on a daily basis. 

For a few years, and definitely more recently, I have been curious as to why there is a drive towards collecting information at the micro-level; individual person economics. When I read about who got the Nobel Prize for Economics, and for what, it became clear to me. Banks now need to know how the individual person spends their money, how they got to the shops and why they went anywhere. They use this information to soften the blow of macro-level events that could negatively impact on financial markets. This was a lesson in 'considering Black Swan events as probable' and now are only Grey Swans. (My downgrade of language and my upgrade of security status). Humans have been, to economists, notoriously irrational since forever. Not any more, it seems. By tracking my every move every bank in the world, with a subscription to whatever software it needs, can know exactly what I, living in the UK, will be likely to do if aliens glue up the San Andreas fault after it splits wide open and spews magma into the Pacific Ocean which affects the Humboldt Current off the Chilean coast and the price of Giant Humboldt Squid in fish-markets goes up and down in Peru.

Now we might think that it takes a fine mind to understand that large events affect how an individual might spend their money but it doesn't. In my local Co-op the sales assistant told me the same as the two Nobel Prize winners in economics have expostulated. I like a good chin-wag in shops; they are kind of neutral ground in which people have valid reasons to break off conversation; 'I must go, I sent the kids to visit their grandmother in the woods yesterday and they came back with some gingerbread and a glass slipper. I don't trust them any more. Bye!'

During our conversation I suggested that the Americans have a lot to answer for (I meant North America without Canada). Over a couple of years I have noticed a lessening resistance to considering any statement that blames Americaland for the worlds problems to be even partially valid. While some people will still instantly dismiss any anti-Americaland statement as poppy-cock and twaddle, putting Americaland, Russia and China in the same sentence as instigators of global and personal deterioration is finally acceptable and is considered to be worthy of some consideration, however fleeting. That is, many, many people no longer instantaneously remove the concept of Americaland being similar to 'known' threats such as Russia and China.

Of course, anyone who has read '1984' by George Orwell would realise that this week we are at war with Oceania while Eurasia is our friend, and next week it will be Eurasia we are at war with and always were, and Oceania has always been our friends. That is by-the-by though. How come a shop assistant in my village has the same simple idea as Americanese professors, that understanding macro-economics starts with micro-economics on an individual basis? Further, how come I have been saying that SmartPhones are bad for us for the last ten years and only now governments are considering legislating against their usage? Where are the shop assistants, and the public's shared Nobel Prizes?

       'Ladies and Gentlemen of a bygone era and the rest of you, It gives me no pleasure to express my disappointment in discovering that the Nobel Prize for excellence goes to two normal people. These two people, however, have generously donated the prize money to start a charity-fund for scientists and thinkers who have spent their entire lives working on problems that can be fixed by having a conversation in a supermarket with shop staff. The money shall be spent on normalising scientists and replacing lab-technicians with the nine-year-olds of today. From this point on... there shall be vocational training in primary schools that teach children to be sensible. Ladies and Gentlemen of the past and everyone else, I give you two average people who were properly educated to understand the world we live in!'

Of course, there are others who over-hearing my conversations in supermarkets believe I am a conspiracy theorist. Right next to the newspaper stand in the Co-op I was told by a different shop assistant to my fellow Nobel Prize winner, that the tills were not accepting debit or credit cards. I asked, tongue-in-cheek, if he suspected Russia as the culprit.

       'I doubt that! I don't believe in conspiracy theories!' he blurted. He might not understand the humour of the 'good old days' when Sherlock Holmes and Lieutenant Colombo asked seemingly innocuous questions. 'Just one more thing....'

       'Oh, you are no fun at all,' I said, 'You're a realist, aren't you?' He nodded. I thought he would be a great father but not much fun in a pub on a Friday night.

I couldn't help smiling as I left him. Right behind him the headline on one of the newspapers said that MI5 was warning us to be aware that Russia was using cyber-technology to negatively affect the UK economy. Actually, that was the subtext. Newspapers lie though, don't they? If that conspiracy theory works for him then he, I suggest, will never be worthy to imagine giving away 12,000,000 SEK (Swedish Krona) - ($1.2 million). 

I think it is fairly certain that my understanding of the world is not contiguous with everyone's else's understanding of the world.

Tacit consent by way of the back door

[ 4 minute read ]

I think if we take all the digital interactions we are nudged into making and put them in a mixing bowl, with the essential idea not to put anything else in, such as emotion, and we bake the mess, we would pull from the oven a policy to collect data on every movement we make. The smell in the kitchen is not one of fondness or care such as a grandmother might make with cinnamon and icing sugar; it is a smell like a disc-cutter makes when cutting steel, or the smell of a slipping clutch on a vehicle passing by with the handbrake still on.

Just the idea of the acrid and pungent aftertaste in my mouth once the bolus is swallowed elicits feelings of absorbing carcinogenics in me. I think, this drive to profile each of us, while projecting a smooth veneer of compatibility with our modern lifestyles, once cracked the inner stuff is of worms and gaping maws of razor-sharp fangs. 

This last weekend I heard an LBC presenter make a brief exclamation of surprise. He noted on air that in October 2027 there will be a 'tax' on, I think he started his piece by saying drinks containers such as plastic bottles and tins or cans of 'pop'. As he padded out his startled piece I started to think he was including all tins and cans since he included glass as one of the things that would be taxed at the source. By 'taxed' I mean a surcharge of either 20p or 20% would be charged on every item that passes through a checkout or is otherwise bought, that is products that are packaged in glass, metal, or plastic. Apparently, this extra cost would be redeemed at specific recycling collection points. The presenter moved on, no doubt because he and his research team were blindsided by this revelation, and they would need to properly research the implications and how it is to be implemented.

I set to turning an imagined future over in my head. How would this impact on my life? I live in a village and so I would need to lug all my glass and empty tins to my local city, How would I be able to collect the returns money? It dawned on me then that it would necessarily go into my bank account and that due to the British public's tacit agreement to being filmed everywhere we go, there would be cameras at every collection point; just like the cameras at the bank ATMs. So, in with my card and the pin (obviously!) and look sweetly at the camera without a face-mask. Facial recognition. It would not matter that I do not carry a GPS tracking device in the form of a phone, my precise location will be known simply because I am not rich enough to avoid being tracked.

I dwelt on the way that the charge would be made. It would necessarily be twenty pence and not 20% of the product price. Everything recycled in this way would otherwise still have a barcode still attached and it would need to be scanned into the recycling machine. Waitrose coffee is more expensive than LIDL coffee and costs more in the south than in the north of England. Surely, reading barcodes and returning 20% of the purchase price is unworkable. The retailer would take the surcharge and then have to submit it to the government so the government can give it back to the recycling shopper, surely. That is expensive to implement on a national scale. It also means that the barcode meta-data held in computers necessarily needs to include information on the packaging. That is expensive for small retailers to have; they would need to maintain a continuous subscription to a bar-code data bank and a live and highly reliable and super-fast internet connection to check every single product during every transaction. Moreover, it must be unbreakable. A faulty internet connection would shut an entire shop or supermarket. Any competent bad actor could paralyse the country's food supply. Those vegetables in the wafer-thin plastic bag cannot possibly be considered to have packaging that can be recycled. Packaging that is definitely NOT bio-degradable. Scales at the recycling point would need to be frequently calibrated. I mean two cabbages have two plastic wrappers and if fifty of these are shoved in a recycling point 'bin' and weighed, the payment might only be for forty eight. That is a 40 pence loss to the customer. If not another thin wedge to add to a reason to riot then an angry driver who will be prone to road-rage.

No, I am certain that someone somewhere had a problem to solve. 'Look team. Not everyone uses the self-checkout in the larger supermarkets and not everyone face-times their family, so we have an incomplete 'picture' of the British population. We can't force them to do those things at present so what can we do?'

       'Make them pay a redeemable surcharge under the auspices that they do not recycle properly. We can film them while we read their bank cards at specific collection points for recycled packaging.'

 The 'tell' will be the absence of alternative packaging. I buy coffee in a glass jar. I would buy loose coffee from a vending machine that dumps it into a container I brought with me. Tinned tomatoes; a bit more tricky. We will never see vending machines dispensing loose produce, such as we used to see loose muesli mix in health food shops. They will inevitably always be banned on Health and Safety grounds. Personally, I would definitely go into a 'store / warehouse' full of vending machines that dispense cornflakes and milk and sugar and stuff. Logistically, it takes too long for each customer to receive their selection; there would be long queues and the 'warehouse stores' would necessarily need to be jointly-owned by the manufacturers that dispense their products (they save on the cost of packaging).

It is a dystopian world I paint; one that with precise positioning of the dispensing spouts, robots would inhabit. If  humans were to be anywhere they would be in their precisely parked cars; shifted by stepper-motors upon arrival in the car-park into slots. Robots would deliver carts of loose produce in bins with scoops chained to the bins. The customer would then transfer their purchases into their own containers and let the car drive them home. This would need to be in a car-park with a roof and probably heated too. Oh, they would need to look into a camera while their bank card is read to get into the car-park before they make their selections. Might we see mobile traders with analogue scales driving steam-powered vehicles in our streets dispensing loose product to householders who hearing their bell flock to their vehicles? 'Stop me to buy some!' The closest you might get to being filmed or noticed is a curious child's eye who doesn't speak our language sitting on the lap of a woman in the dark recesses of the van.

Interestingly, the LBC presenter did not mention cardboard as a packaging that will attract a surcharge. It absorbs water and weight and is of course, biodegradable. Is there not a prevailing presence of cardboard in supermarkets?

 

 

Seriously joking, right?

[ 2 minute read ]

       'I have come to learn!'

       'Oh, alright then,' the old man in the deck-chair replied, knocking out his pipe. 'What is it you want to know?' His deeply lined face grew older as he pondered.

       'I don't know. Stuff!'

       'Do you hear that, Bonny? He wants to know stuff.' The donkey beside him looked balefully back at him. 'Have you come far, learner?' The old man asked the hesitant man. 'Are you a seeker?'

       'Not really. I just fancied learning something and thought I would show up. I borrowed the money.'

       'And?'

       'I think there are people more advanced than I in the class.'

       'And so you have not made yourself known, and because you think the money is not yours, since you borrowed it, you have not lost it?'

       'Well, yes.'

       'Embarrassed!'

The old man in the deck-chair refilled his pipe and tamped the tobacco down. He shrewdly looked at Bonny, the donkey, which winked at him and thought itself more clever than the man. The old man lit his pipe and nodded his agreement. 'Another one', he mouthed. Bonny raised and lowered her head twice.

***

There are two types of people. There are a lot more really but today there are only two. There is the person who makes the most out of their day. 'Carpe Diem' (seize the day) and there is the person who expects others to make the day for them. 'absens haeres non erit.' The latter Latin phrase means 'he who is absent will not inherit'. As far as I understand things, if someone does not bring their head to the game, the game will play without them, and that head-less person can never gain anything.

       The old man decided to speak Latin, 'spectator!' and strangely he was understood. The slumped-shouldered man before him flinched. 'You have paid to learn and yet you remain a spectator.' The old man deliberately said to Bonny the donkey. Bonny looked at the crestfallen man, who nervously looked back. He had yet to come to terms with self-actualising, the highest personal aspirational human need in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs after basic needs are met.

       Bonny coughed, 'Ego!' but added 'Haw' to make it seem natural. She drew her lips back into a macabre yellow-toothed grin.

       'I am coming to that!' the old man said irascibly. 'Don't jump the gun.' He boosted himself up from his deck-chair, reached over to the side and down to the sand on the beach and picked up the only book there; next to a red plastic bucket and spade. The book had no title or author's name but the fly-leaf inside said, 'Simply Psychology, and it had https://www.simplypsychology.org/self-actualization.html underneath the words. It fell open at 'Potential' and he read aloud, 'Self-actualization is a concept in psychology that refers to the process of fulfilling one's true potential, becoming the best version of oneself, and achieving personal growth, meaning, and fulfillment in various aspects of life.' All the rest of the pages were blank. They always were. He put the book back down and a few grains of sand jumped onto it. It didn't matter. He was safe in the knowledge that the words would rearrange themselves, with sometimes more and sometimes less words, and some of the words would be changed into other words.

       'Were you seeking validation, approbation, praise and positive clamouring for your skill?'

       'No,'

       Bonny shook her huge head and looked directly at the man. Facing the scrutiny of a dumb animal the man cracked, 'Yes! yes, yes!'

       'Now you realise that you have been coasting and not applying yourself.'

       'Yes.'

       'All that glistens is not gold.' said Bonny finally fed up with being silent.

       'If vicarious learning was your goal then you have it.' said the old man, nodding. 'If you really want to learn, you have to work at it.' And following on from Bonny's careless outburst, 'Diamonds do not come out of the ground already cut and polished.'

       Bonny coughed again. 'Ego!' and unconvincingly added 'Haw.'

       'Flat, I should say.' observed the old man, 'But the realisation is not yet there because there is too much of an echo.' He puffed on his pipe and shut his eyes and then lifted one eye-lid to see if the follower had gone. He noticed the tide was coming in.

It is strange how an echo seems so real and provides comfort, even though it is disembodied and from the past.

Friends in Jars

[ 4 minute read ]

'It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.' - Aesop - The Ant and the Grasshopper.

I think most people might think, 'Oooh! I should save some money!' I thought that. May I suggest that is a rather narrow conclusion to make from the quote? I mean, 'A stitch in time saves nine.' neatly falls under the banner of both thrifty and preparedness. Let's face it, if something is going to be thrown away because it needs repairing then no stitches are needed, so the whole idea of applying a single stitch in time follows a decision to use the item in the future.

Perhaps, making sure we clean our tools properly before we put them away is preparing for the future and it is indeed thrifty if we do not need to replace them due to deterioration from poor storage.

In truth, what I am hovering around is something less tangible but nonetheless vital for a good future, on an individual basis that is; friendship. Callous, it may seem, to store friendship in a bottle on a shelf in the larder for later use. Would that I could! 

        'Ah ha! Old friend, I need you today. Yes, I know that I have paid you no heed for a century or so. But, my friend, we agreed that we will allow ourselves to be encapsulated for eternity merely by our memories of one another, and dash to one another's side whenever we are called or needed.'

Yup, in the land of witchery and magic! Let me think for a moment on whether I act like a Disney witch and save favours and friends on shelves. For me, symbiotic relationships are weird. Oh, I understand them, but I fail to get why people need to knit themselves so deeply into other people's lives. Where is our fortitude and perseverance if we can just send for a friend? Of course, I have still not effectively moved away from describing the intricate and complex modern world of having friends; maintaining friendship is resource expensive, no? But, hopefully no-one is keeping a tally stick that records favours, gift-giving and kindness. 

Yet, it is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow. So, with my jaded eye I shall go online and order some friends in case I need one in the future. I mean, I wouldn't want to spend one right now because I have no unsatisfied wants if I don't include a refill of sugar in my kitchen. Is that a want or a need? Oh, I need it and I want it. I need strong coffee in the mornings to kick-start me awake and I need sugar in it. Really, Martin? The truth is, I want to move from the after-effects of sleep to wide awake in an extremely short period of time. I suppose it is a part of a patterned lifestyle of immediate gratification. 

       'Eliminate the liminal spaces!' called the two-dimensional cartoon castle guard.

       I smugly agreed, 'There's no need for liminal space! Nothing happens in them anyway. What's the point? I have friends on tap to help me right now, or whenever I need them!'

It seems I am skipping from one position in life to another without taking time to consider any option other than reaching for a jar on a shelf that contains the essence of a stored friend. I don't do that! of course not. I do value the liminal spaces and I use them, even if not the bit between my bed and a laptop. Somewhere, in the thirty or so feet traipse between bedroom and ivory tower there is an essence of me that is begging for attention. 'Wait! Wait up! Please don't ignore me.' I do; my focus is elsewhere. All those imagined friends in jars on a shelf in the larder mean I have no time for myself to look at my own resources. That isn't me.

       'Oh, how lucky you are, Martin, to have time to even consider that you do not consider yourself!' Yeah, I hear that. Yet, I plainly have a different approach to the world than my neighbours probably do. I work, I study, and I play, but it is not part of a work-life balance; it is in conjunction with looking in the liminal spaces, digging deep. It is just something I do. Oh, but wait; I have had to do that, be resourceful I mean. I grew up fairly quickly in Bosnia and Herzogovina, Croatia, Austria, Germany and France during two weeks when I was twenty-six that pretty much put the lid on my attitude to relying on other people, and that is why I can see the space on my shelf in my larder where the jars of friends are absent. I don't maintain friends. Friends to my cruel, unfeeling, and ruthless character were tools to satisfy my entertainment needs.

       'I need a conversation. Fetch the Vincent. No wait, fetch the Steven, he is more fun.'

       'Sire, the Steven is currently ignoring you. Should I court his friendship again, sire?

       'You mean you would ingratiate me to him, don't you? Never!' Plainly, he does not love me enough, the fool! Go and buy some dogs; I need to play.'

Harsh, isn't it? Prepare today for the wants of tomorrow. You see, I am hung up on what I understand to be 'wants'. Friends are not tireless objects whose purpose is to be at my beck and call. They get tired and need to dwell in their own liminal spaces, and if they don't have any liminal spaces it my duty to help them find them, and to make those spaces comfortable for them. Of course, I must be as a cool breeze in their hot lives and not let them know I was ever anything else, and definitely not carry a tally-stick.

       'Fetch some batteries. This friend needs more energy.'

Spy Cars

[ 3 minute read ]

Yesterday, I read an article on Euronews, titled 'Wiretaps on wheels': Drivers warned their data privacy is not guaranteed in modern vehicles'. The article is actually dated 06 September 2023, so it appears that the knowledge that electric cars listening and recording our personal details is not new.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/09/06/wiretaps-on-wheels-drivers-warned-their-data-privacy-is-not-guaranteed-in-modern-vehicles

in fact, 'The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project; The Los Angles Times; Gess Engineering; Fortune; Forensic Resources and others all ran the same or similar article. Nearly all the manufacturers say they would readily share that information with governments, even without a formal directive; in response to a mere request for that information.

Electric cars, it seems, with their multiple microphones can record and extrapolate from that data all sorts of things, even sexual activity by the cars occupants. Although the manufacturers will not say how they can get that information, it is clear that drivers and passengers freely talk without check on their discourse. Obviously, no-one should be picking up their adulterous squeeze in their car. 'Let's take a bus, sweetheart.'

I am more than a little shocked that it is not only the child's teddy-bear that connects to the internet that is out to capture early information on individuals; infants, I mean. Anyone is susceptible to spying now. The kids in the car; your mum and dad you picked up from the airport; your personal assistant; the neighbour who can't get to the shops. Any creative writer or film-maker would be delighted to be able to collect information on millions of people and assemble profiles for characters, and the plots would write themselves; just transcribe what actually happens. 

I cannot fathom why people accept this as a norm. The long-standing claim that they have done nothing wrong so they have nothing to fear just doesn't carry the same weight today. I ask who will be the next prime-minister or president and who will determine where we shop and when?

       'Well, look. We know you only use your car for shopping on Fridays so you must sell it and join a car-share group. Global climate change, you know.'

       'We know you are having an affair. You must immediately move out of this county, province or state, and your partner will get full custody of the kids.'

I don't have the mental capacity to imagine what other drives any new Government may make in fifty or seventy years time that will affect my children and grandchildren.

       'Okay kids, we are going to get in the car, so you must not say a single word and you must carry this heavy weight on your lap so you seem bigger on the seat. Oh, and by the way, duck down or wear this mask in the car, because the cameras can use the images of you growing up to form an image of how you will look when you are an adult, so you will never be able to hide when everything goes wrong for the world.

Have electric car drivers not thought things through? Has anybody? I mean a lot of people use SmartPhones that can record conversations even when they are not in use.

At Last

[ 4 and a half minutes read ]

I played the remastered track ‘At Last’ by Etta James on YouTube last night. ‘At Last’ is also the name of her album of 1960. The YouTube ‘track / song’ has had over sixty-five million views.

There was a comment, ‘I played this song in the Sims 4 when my sim and her boyfriend danced together’. She gave her tag as ‘SayounaraXXXX’, with some numbers at the end instead of x’s, but on a platform that invites discussion on the subject material, the video.

I was quite touched by this. I couldn’t help but see a young woman sighing as she played with the little dolls. I suppose there is some hope of a similar romantic dance in her own real future. Yet, it is not her hope that sparked my empathy; it was her softness. In her moment of romantic love, albeit vicariously through her Sim, she was supremely beautiful.

I have always thought that cuddling up with a loved one is soppy. Certainly, I am emotionally derailed by seeing ‘Public Displays of Affection’ - PDAs. I suppose you have to be in it to feel it. Being someone with a background of parental violence when I was small, I never got used to, or embarrassed as a teenager, by my parents kissing, cuddling, holding hands, gazing at one another, or acting in any intimate or loving way. When I say ‘soppy’ I mean, ridiculous, or something that may invoke someone to motion sticking their own fingers down their throat. I wish I was different. However, as a teenager and young adult, it was common at parties to see people snogging, but they weren’t in love.

I think there is an openness to be vulnerable that is required to be intimate with someone else. One’s guard needs to be dropped to allow trust to take over as overseer.

‘I am in Your hands now. Don’t let me fall!’ Like two people standing on tiptoes on the highest peak, while holding onto each other for balance, so they can experience the finest and richest panorama imaginable.

It is this openness that fascinates me. Much as someone is ‘bewitched’ by someone else, and would say that they are in love, where others might say, ‘smitten’ or ‘besotted’, I wonder if they would be so, if the person of their desire was not open to being vulnerable, such as I suspect the person who posted on the Etta James, ‘At Last’ video clearly was, in her home.

I think I have a parallel thought to the recognition of vulnerability, that is invoked when I go, ‘Ahhhh!’ It is almost like pity and fear mashed together. I want to watch out for danger that could leap out and surprise the vulnerable person(s). You know, the six year old kid on the huge ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ stage, watched by three thousand judges in real time, and millions of viewers later.

The funny thing is, I repeated a section, multiple times, of a different video in which, I think a young woman had a fall. I actually cannot remember what happened to her; that was not the interesting thing to me, and I certainly get no ‘Schadenfruede’ (harm-joy) from seeing people get hurt. I got pleasure from hearing a chorus of mixed voices chime, ‘Ooooooh!’ Empathy.

The comment on the ‘At Last’ YouTube video came from someone empathising with herself through the use of her avatar. That is amazing and fascinating. Fascinating, in the real sense of fascination. I am like a deer in the headlights staring at a phenomena of the most profound wonder.

When I was still very young, I overheard my brother saying, ‘Mum, he's doing it again.’ My mum started calling my name which came to me louder and louder, ‘martin, Martin, Martin, Martin, Martin'. I was irritated by it. I had been ‘fascinated’ by a bright light and complete and utter peace, and then rudely brought back to the real world. I am still deeply, but mildly, annoyed now. I once, apparently more than once, knew complete, unadulterated fascination.

The recognition that SayounaraXXXX is using a doll as an avatar for herself, perhaps without realising it, has widened a vivid path of thinking for me. I should very much like to be present when SayounaraXXXX meets ‘The One’ and is warmed and excited by her fantasy of reciprocated love from someone special, made real.

The combination of the orchestra-backed song ‘At Last’, with [Etta] ‘James singing with the cathartic intensity you’d expect from someone who endured a troubled upbringing.’ (Scanlon, 2024), and SayounaraXXXX’s wishes for a romantic marriage, that are steeped in vulnerability, just completely overwhelms me. I don’t think I have ever been successfully seduced by anyone or anything, until now.

Scanlon, Kelly, (2024) faroutmagazine, “Soul Reinvented: the stirring story of Etta James’ ‘At Last”, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/stirring-story-of-etta-james-at-last/, 2024

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You Blockhead!

[ 4 minute read ]

Opinion

Yesterday, I was listening to LBC, the national 'phone-in' radio station in the UK. One of the presenters posed a question that had me reaching for my phone, at least mentally. Knee-jerk reactions I am good at; too good. A more measured approach is to wait a while and listen to what people have to say before wading in and knocking their opinions aside like so many skittles in front of a heavy building site excavator. Oh yes, on the subject of why are more people in the service industry getting more abuse from customers I have an opinion; one that has not changed in years. I switched the radio off because I felt I would be irritated by the callers. Perhaps I should have left the radio on, locked all my doors and shut my windows and opened a bottle of cough mixture to dull my ire. Maybe I would have learnt something. But, I am fed up with people bleating that they are victims when they have done nothing to prepare themselves for real life.

'Why are more people in the service industry getting more abuse these days?' or something like that. I almost never state my position on topical issues or current affairs. But this one really gets my goat. It is not the question or the target that is important to me, it is the hegemony behind the question. There seems to be a position that the customer is wrong to be enraged by the actions of train staff and doctor's surgery reception staff and so on. While I don't condone letting any of our emotions fly free in public and I am a firm believer, in that vein that there should be no Public Displays of Affection, I cannot help but have a ready response to the statement 'Abuse of our staff will not be tolerated.' My answer to that is, 'Then employ people who are good at their jobs!' It is not enough to just be able to speak and write the appropriate language if you deal with the public; it never was. Yet that is all I seem to get from people behind desks with public-facing roles. I do not notice any Customer Service training at all. Surely, staff dealing with the public should be trained to diffuse tension. If they cannot do it they should be relieved of their job, moved to another department and their CV closely scrutinised for fraud.

Surely, a good government should make good customer service a Health and Safety issue. There should absolutely be people wandering around calming people down. Instead, political parties back-stab each other at their conferences and foment an attitude of 'It is okay to attack anyone who does not belong in our group or disagrees with us.' I should like to bar any person from office who promotes such behaviour, except I cannot. Instead i have to expect to find the public emulating public figures who are demonstrating themselves to be less than civil.

Why are more staff getting abuse? It is two-fold: Because the public have no moral compass from which to steer and because staff have personal phones that they not only interrogate first thing in the morning but also throughout the day. Staff can get bad news during the day that will affect their disposition for hours afterwards. An example is this: If someone is dumped by their partner but the affected person must be at work, we cannot expect that person to compartmentalise such an issue and be professional at work. Why not? Because they are not trained to do so. Perhaps cabin crew in airliners might be and military figures but anyone else, no chance.

I have long stated that I find most of the world's ills come from internet access and social interaction through mobile phones. Ignorance is bliss may be a old aphorism, if it actually is an aphorism, but it is definitely more relevant today than when I first heard it. 

Text message: I have left you. Text message: You have failed your exams. Text message: Grandma is dead. Text message: You have won ten thousand pounds. 

In my eyes, the overriding issue is this: we are living multiple lives with multiple influences simultaneously. My politican derides other people and shows contempt and my phone tells me I am a bad person or not deserving of good attention while the person in front of me has a whole bunch of issues that they have not been trained to deal with but they are inadequately dealing with me. Go figure. Properly and thoroughly train people to deal with their lives BEFORE they are given jobs or take their phones and society-wide connection away.

Oh, and stop being mean to each other you blithering idiot politicians. Immunity in the House of Commons should be abolished. Yet, let us look at how politicians get to where they are. People actually vote for back-stabbers as though these candidates are normal. Where did the BBC go? Once a stalwart of respectability it is now a reflection of the people, who in a vicious circle reflect it. Who thought that was a good idea? I might say it all started with 'EastEnders'. As a docu-drama, cool. As a soap with characters that the public identify with and so find relevance and validity in their own lives? definitely not a good idea to air it.

Would you prefer to not know the truth, Martin? No. Politicians are not good people or at least act as though they are five years old or drunk and television dramas and perhaps more pertinently, EastEnders, are from scripts written by people with good imaginations making money; the more salacious the better! No, I definitely want the truth.

Get under the stairs with a torch and a sandwich and stay there until the world has recovered some decorum.