Humour

On… Email

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It is difficult for my generation to understand how the world worked before emails became a thing. As a 30-year-old, I remember what things were like before email was so prominent, but it was during a time when I wouldn’t have really used it anyway. Despite the fact that many young people now have smartphones before starting puberty, I suspect that few of them are using them to check their emails. Email is a boring medium with minimal intrigue to the Tik Tok generation. They don’t realise how good they’ve got it – having access to relentlessly addictive short-form content, which burns through brain cells like wildfire. When I was young, we had to play with Tamagotchis to get our digital fix, and we’d only speak to each other when we were physically together in school.

Email reminds us of a simpler time when we were grateful for any medium of communication which allowed us to speak without a delay of 3 days or more. Although the letter is often romanticised as a beautiful medium, it is annoyingly slow. It is also error-prone. Letters are easily lost, and they cannot be traced so easily. Emails build on each other, documenting what came before, making it easier to remember what the hell you said when you hurled that email over a few days prior. When reading a letter, you basically have to re-write your letter in your head as you read the response, or it won’t make sense.

Deleted emails go into a ‘Bin’ folder, so one can mull over the decision for a few days. The equivalent action in letters would be burning the paper, which probably feels more cathartic, but is frustratingly permanent. Deleting emails is anti-climatic in comparison. Burning letters contains drama and suspense, whereas you can scroll through your emails ticking little boxes then archive the entire set – how very boring. It is one area where the letter excels in comparison to email. Even setting the computer on fire won’t erase emails. They’re like the Freddy Kruger of communication.

Just as burning a letter is permanent, so are the etchings you make on the paper (assuming you are an adult who uses pens and not pencils). For the perfectionist, writing on paper is like walking a tightrope. Each successful word and sentence formed only adds to the tension, as a single mistake can lead to the undoing of the entire piece. No one likes to see a letter or word scribbled out, but there is no way around it when writing a letter. Your inadequacies are hung in front of your like fairy lights, illuminating the fact that you can’t spell ‘necessary’ correctly, always adding an extra ‘c’ and leaving out an ‘s’.

I created my first email address when I was about 11 years old, and it was something like down-with-kevs@whatever.com. ‘Kevs’ was a synonym for ‘chavs’ when I was younger. Wikipedia defines a chav as “a young person of a type characterized by coarse and brash behaviour.” I was a skater when I was that age, which meant that I used to hang out at different spots around the village all day, being really bad at skateboarding, but still enjoying it all the same. The chavs were seen as the enemy. They were the other group commonly seen hanging around, but we had a good reason to be where we were – we were skating and it was functional – chavs seemed to be there primarily to antagonise others. We were the easiest targets to antagonise, as they were usually older, and had a hunger for thuggery.

One time, when I was out skateboarding, a big group of chavs walked past us and kicked a ball at us. It hit my flip-phone out of my hand and I shouted, “Why the f*** did you do that?” They didn’t like this. Three of them walked over to us shouting some stuff. It was like the hyenas from The Lion King emerging from the shadows in a small pack. One of them grabbed me by the neck with one hand and tried to take the phone out of my hand with the other. I wouldn’t let go. Frustrated, he punched me in the head and walked off. The rest of the group were laughing. I was about 11 and they were at least 16, if not older. From then onwards, I had a potent dislike for people who I classed as ‘chavs’. So, of course, I had to use my private email as a political statement in protest against them. It deeply affected their image in society, and you seldom hear the term ‘chav’ used anymore, thanks to me. My email address single-handedly eliminated the group entirely, and they’re now considered a fringe group at best. You’re welcome, world.

I didn’t grasp the purpose of an email at that age. I can’t remember how much I used it, if at all, but by the time I was actually using my email and signing up for accounts on websites and other services, I realised that I needed to create a new one. My new email address is a variation on my name and some letters – very vanilla, just like an email address should be. No one is hiring down-with-kevs. Down-with-kevs isn’t winning any online giveaways or being put forward for any Nobel Peace Prices. Dan Godley isn’t either, but ‘down-with-kevs’ Godley definitely isn’t. The more successful you are in whitewashing your individuality, the better off you’ll be in the world. Create a boring email and use it to apply to boring jobs so you can earn boring money. Learn to loathe marketing lists, but never enough to unsubscribe from them. Welcome to adulthood – now check your email!

It is truly difficult to imagine how the working world worked pre-email. A hustle of people sat in offices, accosting each other at desks and feigning over endless stacks of paper. ‘Working from home’ was probably considered an oxymoron; something only possible in Sci-fi novels, in the same category as aliens or deadly mushroom viruses that turn people into zombies. Now, most of our working lives revolve around monitoring our inbox in one way or another. Though, there is a disadvantage to email… It leaves a paper trail more permanent than paper even manages. Paper is barely worthy of being included in the phrase ‘paper trail’ with how easily paper can be discarded forever. Paper has the advantage of conveniently going missing when the right people want it to. Most of us have watched a Netflix real crime series covering some untoward case, usually in America, where the key evidence went missing from the evidence room, or where a standard procedure wasn’t followed, but no one seems to know why, as the reports have all gone missing. Emails can be retrieved, to the detriment of corporations and dodgy folk everywhere.

I recently read a piece on Steven Cohen, the man who founded S.A.C Capital Advisors. In 2013, S.A.C was fined an astonishing $1.8 billion for allowing insider trading at the firm. Steven Cohen perpetuated a culture where insider knowledge was considered getting an ‘edge’ over your competitors, both inside your organisation and outside in other organisations. He encouraged the behaviour but recognised that he shouldn’t encourage it, so was notorious in the organisation for not wanting to do things over email. He preferred other, less traceable means of communication, such as a swift whisper in the ear, or a chat over a fancy meal, which probably cost more than the average person’s monthly wage. Still, even Steven Cohen’s despise for email wasn’t enough to stop the emails from doing him damage. Emails exchanged within the organisation were used as evidence in the case against S.A.C. Eventually, he was forced to close it down, but don’t worry, Steven transferred the business to a new name – Point72 Asset Management – and he isn’t doing too badly. In 2020 he purchased the New York Mets. I wonder how he feels about email now… angry, I assume.

My best friend Luke went through a period where he decided that he was going to “bring emails back.” I’d frequently look at my inbox to find an email from him, containing various images off Reddit, and a few updates on his life. He was refusing to use smartphones at the time, but couldn’t resist the cultural drift into the modern age. “There must be a way to share these memes I look at all day,” he must have said to himself, before realising that email could solve all of his problems. Then, my friend George decided to do something absolutely amazing, and shipped his motorbike to Alaska in North America, to then fly out himself, meet his bike, and spend the next year or so riding it all the way south to the bottom tip of Argentina. Along the way, he logged in to a plethora of free Wifi services, ranging from hotels to cafes to superstores etc. Not wanting to use his own email, he decided to use Luke’s. Much to Luke’s dismay, he started receiving a steady stream of “Thanks for registering for the Wifi service” emails. It was a nice way to keep up to date with where George was, but he still receives emails from random establishments in South America and probably has scammers crawling over his emails like digital cockroaches. He has since got a smartphone and has given up bringing emails back. Now he is obsessively wearing dungarees instead.

Despite its shortcomings, I like email as a medium. It is much less obnoxious than its instant messaging counterpart. Email has a natural stagger to it. We seldom send an email and expect to receive a response in a matter of minutes. At best, we give it an hour, and even that is quick. Email is naturally asynchronous in a way that instant messaging is not. Instant messaging seems to tap into some social faculty that is defunct in our brains, one which readily believes that someone hates us if they don’t message back within 5 minutes of receiving our message. Sometimes, if I have something that I think is really important, I’ll send it on Whatsapp, then sit and watch the screen, wondering why I’m not receiving a response, as if that person is physically sitting in front of me and is ignoring me. I have to remind myself that it was my decision to message them and that they have no obligation to get back to me in any timeframe, let alone 1 minute. Email strikes the right balance – you’re there and you can respond, but no one is pressuring you to. It’s all chill – send an email, have a coffee, read a magazine, check your email again – no response; no problem, I’ve got Whatsapp messages to attend to –

“WTF!!!!!!!! I’VE EMAILED YOU FIVE ENTIRE MINUTES AGO AND YOU HAVEN’T RESPONDED. AM I NOTHING TO YOU? DO I EVEN MATTER? DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT ME?”

Emails combine the speed of digital communication with the penance of thinking about what you say, not just throwing out whatever you feel like at any given moment, which is what instant messaging services seem to encourage. There is a hint of drama when you refresh your inbox on your phone. A ‘whodunit’ moment, where you wait to see whether your parcel has been delivered, or if someone has added you on LinkedIn. It is a magical few seconds where anything is possible, which is quickly deflated when the only things that appear are marketing materials for a clothes website you purchased a present from 4 years ago. When you’re feeling brave, you can venture into your Junk folder and read about the penis enlargement surgeries, then run away from it again because you’re worried that you’ll accidentally click on the dodgy link. Your inbox is your fortress of communication, from which you command the world. You might have even received a link to this blog in your inbox, which makes it all the more exciting to write. If you didn’t receive it in your inbox, perhaps you should subscribe to it… just a thought…

On… Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

godley93, , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

If you need any more proof that humans can be incredibly stupid, other than all the wars we wage and the flat-earthers etc, then look no further than the names of places. Some of the names we have chosen (emphasis on chosen – real people made these decisions) to give to the places where we reside are absolutely dumbfounding. For proof, look no further than the longest place name in the United Kingdom – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Yes, you did read that correctly, in the United Kingdom, but not in the entire world. And no, you definitely didn’t read the place name correctly. Who could read it properly? Not even 5% of the Welsh population, I’d bet.

I thought that it was the longest place name in the world when I started writing this. But, to my horror, when looking at the Wikipedia page for the village, I saw that it was referred to as the second-longest place name in the world. My blood started to boil. I felt a need to punish my poor keyboard on my laptop by hammering out my frustrations on this blog and dragging my readers through my unrelenting outrage.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a small village near Bangor. Its name translates to, get ready for it, “St Marys Church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave”. Well, apparently it does, but it is impossible to verify for the vast majority of us. If someone came up with it in the modern day, it would be more logical to assume that they spilt their coffee all over the keyboard, causing it to malfunction and start indiscriminately typing letters. But it wasn’t made in the modern day, it was named in the 19th century, which is still far too modern for it to be acceptable.

Quite remarkable how the translation manages to only be 58 characters, yet conveys an entire Lord of the Rings storyline within it. That is actually one thing I am willing to praise it on – as I read the translation, I felt transported to a magical place of mythical creatures and awe-inspiring landscapes. When you consider it in this light, it is actually rather concise, as opposed to being obnoxiously long. Perhaps to the Welsh speaker, it is actually rather beautiful and insightful; a hymn sheet from which the essence of Wales itself is defined – rolling hills of consonants with the occasional vowel, signifying the ‘baaaaaaaaa’ of the sheep that surround the small village.

In actual fact, it doesn’t matter whatsoever how long the names of places are, as it makes very little difference to mine or anyone else’s lives, but it’s fun to get faux-frustrated sometimes. The people who it impacts the most are the locals of the village and the villages surrounding it who have to commonly refer to it. If I lived in the village, I would be writing a strongly worded email to my local farmer/councillor/counsellor (because I assume everyone has to hold a multitude of roles in rural Welsh villages). Most of the character count would be dedicated to writing the name of the village, anyway.

“Dear Mayor/Representative/Neighbour of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. I don’t know if you are aware, but our town name is longer than all 3 of our neighbour’s town names combined. If the government paid me for the time that I spend correctly pronouncing it to tourists in the street, I may be more invested in retaining the status quo, but seeing as you have rejected my many requests for this to be made an official job, I detest doing it. I’m not even sure how to pronounce it myself. I just make sure that I sound extra Welsh as I incoherently blurt out a bundle of letters and watch as the minute hand ticks on my watch, ensuring that the facade goes on for a little over 1.5 minutes, but that it never exceeds 2.”

I’m such a bad actor that even my written monologues come off in an English accent. What a pity.

There is actually a shortened version of the village name – Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. It still looks like total nonsense, but it loses most of the comedy and charm when it isn’t 58 characters long, like its long-form twin. I wonder if, upon realising that they did not actually have the longest place name in the world, and were actually second, they shortened it. The endless letters they had to scribe when writing their address finally wearing them out, and the financial burden of paying 5 times more than the average person when purchasing a new driving licence due to the ‘Address’ section. It’s hard to carry around a driving licence when it has to be in A4 size, you know?

The village’s population was 3,107 according to the 2011 census. Of those people, 71% speak Welsh. I’m assuming that still means that 29% of people can’t pronounce their own village name. I’d even be willing to bet that at least half of the Welsh-speaking population in the village also can’t pronounce the name of the village that they grew up in. I wouldn’t even blame them – who could? They’ve been cursed by some old-school Welsh elitist who felt it appropriate to name their settlement possibly the most ridiculous name on planet Earth. But it ISN’T the most ridiculously named place on planet earth, is it? There is another place, far far away, which towers over this fair Welsh village on the podium of place names.

New Zealand holds the longest name of a place on planet Earth. ‘Taumata whakatangi hangakoauau o tamatea turi pukakapiki maunga horo nuku pokai whenua kitanatahu’ is an actual name of an actual place. Now, even as I write this, I haven’t made it all the way through this place name, but I haven’t made it all the way through the one in Wales either. It isn’t the language barrier that is the problem. I actually just get bored after the first 15 characters. We aren’t predisposed to spend 30 seconds reading the name of a single place. Language is a dynamic, living force within us. Without it, we wouldn’t have ascended to the top of the food chain.

Our ability to communicate complex ideas and understand each other is exactly what separates us from nearly every other creature on this planet. We don’t only have the ability to tell each other when there is danger coming, we can explain why it is dangerous, how it is dangerous, that we find dangerous situations extremely sexy, and then we can agree on a safe word before proceeding with the …danger… Quite amazing really. Yet, these places expect us to sit around, learning every painful letter and syllable so we can pronounce the name of a place that we are very unlikely to go to for any other reason than to take a picture next to the sign. Well, I’m fine thank you, darling. The UK actually hosts a number of funnier names that are far shorter, such as ‘Sandy Balls’ in Hampshire, or ‘Shitterton’ in Dorset.

The number of spaces in the New Zealand name also makes it invalid in my opinion. There’s a reason why we don’t reel off sentences and assign them as place names, and that’s because it’s stupid. Want to know what the name translates to? Do you care? Probably not, but here it is: ‘The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one’. Another Lord of the Rings narrative – what is with these places?

Now, I have since realised that it is often stylised as a single word, so my previous point about spaces is less valid, although still perfectly valid, but I’ve also seen it separated by hyphens, or just split into what I assume are words in the Maori language. In actual fact, it should have numerous spaces in it, because it’s a full sentence, and as far as I’m aware, sentences have spaces, but that might be my limited knowledge of languages hindering me.

Perhaps some languages allow people who name places and make signs to disregard spaces so long as there is a record to be broken. I might email my local council about changing the name of where I live to ‘HomeOfTheHouseWhereCancerDanTheCancerManLivedAfterFightingCancerWithHisPancreasButLostHisPancreasInTheProcess’. At 109 characters, it would be the longest place name in the world, putting my little part of London on the map and encouraging tourism, whilst also catapulting me to minor stardom. There are no losers, only winners. Every time anyone fills in their address in the neighbourhood, they’ll be reminded of my feats against cancer, just like the people of New Zealand are reminded of Tamatea’s big knees whenever they visit Taumata Whakatangi Hangakoau… etc etc etc etc etc.

Come to think of it, we could make the name even more characters… ‘HomeOfTheHouseWhereCancerDanTheCancerManWithTheAverageSizedKneesLivedAfterFightingCancerWithHisPancreasButLostHisPancreasInTheProcess’. Impressive. I can’t wait for the inevitable tourism boom, and interest in just how average-sized my knees really are (I’d actually opine that they are smaller than average, but we’ll see what the press says when they swarm all over the story like flies on rotten fruit).

It’s quite surprising that the length of place names hasn’t become a perpetual pissing contest between smaller places of the world. I picture it going like this: a small village realises that it has a boring old standard name, so changes it to a longer, sillier form, and then earns a place on the podium. Within 5 years, we’ll have a place name hitting the 1000-character mark. It sounds like hell, but it could be interesting. Still, there are some solid entries in the current list. Number 10 in the list is ‘Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya’ in Australia, at a measly 26 characters long. That is very beatable! It still looks absolutely ridiculous, but it is a lot less characters than the top entry which, as we know, is 85. One advantage that 10th place has over all of the others is that it translates to ‘where the devil urinates’. Ok, Australia, you’ve made it onto the bucket list, alongside Sandy Balls and Shitterton. Well done.

Yet for all of my complaining and sarcasm, the reason that I know about these long place names is because of a teacher that I had in primary school who could pronounce the entire of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch from memory. It was very impressive. Granted, I wasn’t in a position to know whether she did it correctly, but she did it with confidence, so I always believed her. I was also under the age of 10 when this happened, so was more than likely susceptible to being duped, alongside the rest of the class who also stood in disbelief as she recited it back to us. I’m pretty sure I saw some of her hair turn grey during the process. By the time she finished, the year had actually concluded, and I found myself getting ready for secondary school. She’s probably only had time to say it another 3 or 4 times since then. Hopefully, she has found some other things to do with her time.

So, this isn’t a post which is particularly in favour or anti-long place names. It is a post to encourage you to look into niche topics because there is always plenty of fun to be had in diving into them. I can’t remember what my life was like before I learnt of where the devil pissed, but I’m sure it was a little less interesting.

On… Memory

godley93, , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Josie, me and Keiran and Glastonbury – 2019

I’ve always had a bad memory. I can’t remember if it was bad when I was really young, because I don’t remember being really young, but I’m sure it’s been a problem for a while. When I hear people say that their first memory was when they were 4 or 5 years old, I assume that they’re lying. I’ve even heard people say that they have vague memories of being even younger than this, but I outright refuse to believe such nonsense. How can someone else remember being an age where their entire diction was no larger than 200 words, yet my first memory is of being 28 and being diagnosed with cancer? But in all seriousness, I think my first memory is probably when I was about 10. Even that might be generous. It really is that bad. I have vague feelings that I remember things, but they don’t translate into anything useful. I think I remember going to school in Hemel Hempstead when I was probably 5 or 6, but if I’m being honest with myself, I think I’ve just seen a picture of myself from around this time, and am misinterpreting my memory with the scene in that picture.

A few years ago, I read a book (I can’t remember what book, and that isn’t another joke) written by the man who holds the world record for reciting the most numbers of Pi accurately from memory. It I remember correctly, which I probably don’t, it took him over an hour of standing at the mic and calling out number after number before he got one wrong. The story blew my mind. Not because I was impressed that someone could do that, although I was quite impressed, but because it was even a thing. If your memory is that good, shouldn’t you be using it for something useful? Why is remembering Pi useful? Why is creating an entire event around it useful? I guess not everything has to be useful. If I could remember something that well, I’d want to make a spectacle of it. I bake cake after cake at the minute and I’m diabetic, so I eat very little of any of them, feeling too guilty to do so. That isn’t very useful. It’s fun, though. He probably thought reciting Pi was fun… It probably is fun when you can do it that well.

Fortunately, we don’t have to remember anything these days because we have Google. For example, I just Googled ‘Book man recite most digits Pi’. If I waffled like that to a stranger in the street, they would assume that someone had been filling my water bottle up with Absinthe. Luckily Google understands me, and according to its limitless knowledge, the book I read was Born On a Blue Day, by Daniel Tammet. I can hardly remember anything about it now. It begs the question – was it a total waste of time to read it if I don’t remember anything from it? Well, hopefully not, as I don’t remember most of the books that I read. Additionally, I don’t remember a lot of things that I have done in my life. If everything I don’t remember is meaningless, then I am notionally disregarding 99% of my life on the grounds that I don’t remember it, so it was irrelevant. Even people with phenomenal memories, like Daniel Tammet, would be disregarding a good 90% of their lives based on this principal, so I guess remembering something isn’t what gives it meaning. The important things probably directly influence you, in a way that is material and tangible, but everything else just helps to shape you in a more subtle way.

That leads me to wonder whether there are things that my brain has gone to great lengths to forget. Sigmund Freud would have emphatically told me that it has, as has everyone else’s. He is a little more successful than I am, so I would tend to agree with him. With regards to one of his more controversial ideas, the Oedipus complex, I’d be a little more cautious to agree. That theory seems to have not stood the test of time quite so well. Sometimes we reject something because it is too truthful, and could present us in a particularly bad light, one that we don’t like to admit about ourselves. Our sense of self-preservation kicks in. We may struggle to accept criticism or, upon hearing someone say that we are a depressing person, for example, we may kick back, telling them that we couldn’t possibly be a depressing person, because we hate depressing people, as if that argument is a tour de force which cannot be disproven.

I can think of times that I have had some negative trait pointed out to me that I have displayed, a trait that doesn’t necessarily agree with the image I have of myself. That has lead me to reject it and tell the person that they’re wrong about me. I’ll then think about it all day, obsessively playing scenarios from throughout my life out in my head, and thinking about how it actually supports what they have said. All of a sudden, the things that I am remembering all concur with what the person said, and I’m forced to admit something that I don’t like about myself. I hope that it has had enough of an impact on me to make me change, and I’ll frequently assess the way that I behave in situations against that critique, but over time I lose focus, and perhaps don’t improve as much as I’d like to. Other times I have, though, and I’ve managed to curtail a behaviour enough that I think I manage to reform it for the better. Other times, I really don’t believe that this person is correct, and I find amusement in their suggestion.

The problem with this method of self-improvement is that memories are notoriously difficult to accurately recall. How we feel during that second that we are thinking about the memory taints it, and our interpretation of it can change from moment to moment, day to day. A memory of a time spent with a significant other can bring plenty of comfort for years. Then, the breakdown of that relationship may cause that memory to taint, and it can be difficult to remember it without feeling a lot of sadness, anger, regret. Sometimes it takes years to look back on it with any fondness at all. Sometimes we never do again, and it will forever hold a negative place in our lives. Those happy memories haunt us, becoming the opposite of what they once were to us. If this is true of the memories that we are conscious of, who knows what becomes of the memories that we’re unconscious of, but that continue to impact our every thought, reaction and motive.

What makes someone like Daniel Tammet’s memory so good, and mine so bad, though? I have an idea of what may have negatively impacted my memory… As a teenager, my modus operandi when “socialising” was to drink myself into oblivion. “Pacing yourself” was a concept that I was aware of, but only came into my life in the form of a flippant joke, as I downed another can of something and became slightly less aware of how much of an idiot I probably looked. Sure, there were a lot of fun times, but I seldom remembered them. They live on in tales told between my friendship group, and I vaguely recall tiny snippets of these memories, probably constructed more from the narrative told than the experience itself. This was my approach to drinking for the best part of 8 years. It was a hard cycle to kick. In some ways, I think I was an alcoholic, but the fact that I established a healthier relationship with alcohol perhaps suggests otherwise. I assume that a true alcoholic can never have a healthy relationship with alcohol. Perhaps it is dependent on the personality type, or the specifics of the abusive relationship with alcohol, or a combination of those factors, and more. What I do know is that my memory is terrible, and I’m willing to bet that excessive drinking played a part in that.

Yet even my memory, plagued with blank spots and steep cliffs, will trigger upon smelling a certain smell, or hearing a certain word. Sometimes I’m not even sure what the memory is, I’m just sure that whatever triggered it means something to me. It’s a strange sensation. I wish I could think of an example, but that would contradict my point. Perhaps it is a familiar smell, one that I smelt during some significant event, but it isn’t enough to trigger an actual memory, it just conjures some emotion or feeling. There are fewer things more powerful than it. It is like that scene at the end of Ratatouille, when the food critic asks the mouse to make a meal for him, and the mouse chooses to make him ratatouille, a standard dish, and one that is not necessarily impressive on its own. But, upon putting the food in his mouth, the food critic remembers being a young boy and eating his mum’s ratatouille, and it brings a tear to his eye, then he announces that this mouse does indeed belong in the kitchen, against all health regulations, because he made a damn good ratatouille. Sure, why not. The central point of the scene is poignant, though. Smells and tastes can evoke a strong feeling. So strong that fast food companies apparently create the smell of their food in a laboratory; it sounds made up, but the smell seems to travel a fair distance from the restaurants, and it does seem to have its own defining personality, one that reminds us of all the other times spent there – with family and friends, through hard times and good. I don’t fall for it, but my memory is so bad that I don’t remember any good times in McDonalds, so I don’t fall for their trickery. There are other smells which evoke powerful memories for me.

The smell of wood being cut really reminds me of my grandad. He was a carpenter and had a cellar filled with big machines and devices used to carve wood. When I was in primary school, we made a model of an aircraft carrier out of wood together. The detail in the model was impressive, with little gun barrels poking out of the sides of the ship. They probably don’t even have turrets there, but I think my grandad was letting me be the creative director on the project. He clearly did all of the hands-on work. After finishing it, we painted it all a monotone blue colour, with no other detail whatsoever, and it looked a little bit unfinished. His field was carpentry, and it held a clear boarder for him. Decorating was a different department.

The smell of incense reminds me of going clothes shopping when I was about 10 years old. At the time, I was obsessed with skateboarding. My dad used to take me and my brothers to a shop called Dazed (I think that’s how it was spelt), and the shop always smelt strongly of incense. I didn’t know what the smell was at that age, or for a long time afterwards. I’m not sure when I eventually smelt it and made the link, but it was years later. “THIS SMELLS LIKE DAZED,” I shouted out once whilst at a friend’s house, after he started burning some. They didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. The sentence came out of my mouth almost involuntarily, and I had to explain to a small crowd what I was talking about, realising as I spoke that it was far more interesting to me than it was to them, or anybody… a little bit like the topic of this post? I’ll make next week’s extra stupid, I promise. If I remember…

My sister Josie claims to remember everything. She will constantly recite back things that we did when we were younger together. I respond with a blank stare, reminding her that I don’t remember anything from 2018, never mind when I was 8 years old. I’m convinced that she just has a more creative mind than mine, and she simply believes that a lot of these things happened because she can see them in her mind, but that they didn’t actually occur in real life. Perhaps that is me being cynical as it is so hard to envision such a world where one actually remembers things, when the one I am used to couldn’t be more different. We’re from the same family, after all. Shouldn’t we have the same propensity for remembering? I guess not. I can’t even remember why I started writing about this in the first place…

On… Commuting

godley93, , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Early on in my career, I realised that half of the battle in staying happy in life is learning to enjoy your commute. If you find peace during that 45 minute journey, where you’re sat in stand-still traffic or pressed up against the inside of a train door, then you can do anything else in life with vigor. It is the key to inner happiness. When we think of Monks, we assume that it is their connection to their God and their studious nature which brings them inner peace. Although this is a nice theory, I believe it may be wrong. Monks spend their lives in monasteries, where commuting is a dystopian concept. It isn’t a coincidence. They’re probably unaware of the entire concept of ‘dystopian’ with all that peace and tranquility. To some of us, a monastery seems like a concept reserved for dystopia, but I’m sure everyone agrees that the lack of commuting is anything but. Perhaps I should become a Monk, come to think of it. Na. I like buying things too much.

‘Commuting’ is an elastic word. Although it is commonly used to refer to the regular act of leaving one’s home to get to one’s place of work, it could, in theory, refer to any journey that is made regularly. If I had regular piano lessons, and I travelled there every Saturday at 08:00 to arrive at 09:00, could I refer to this as my ‘commute’ to my piano lesson? I might. It might even be acceptable to describe it as such. It is certainly acceptable according to the Wikipedia page for commuting, where the following is stated:

Commuting is periodically recurring travel between one’s place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regular or often repeated travel between locations, even when not work-related.

Notice the use of the word ‘even’ in that paragraph? “…EVEN when not work related.” What exciting lives we lead in the modern world. It makes me think of the interview with then british Prime Minister Theresa May, where a reporter asked her what the naughtiest thing she had ever done was, with the slightest hint of sarcasm in her tone, but still said very professionally. Theresa May responded in a babbling fashion, trying to buy herself time to think of a realistic yet relatable answer – “Oh goodness me…. Erm, well I supposed the… Gosh… I’m not sure… No one’s ever perfect are they… Well, I have to confess, when me and my friends would, sort of, run through the fields of wheat…well, the farmers weren’t too pleased about that.” You can’t watch it without covering your eyes and cringing. I think Theresa May might have written the Wikipedia page on commuting, based on her response that day. I’m surprised it didn’t come up after that question was put to her.

Reporter: “So, Theresa, what is the naughtiest thing you have ever done?”

Theresa May: “Well, erm, I guess I’ve, erm, been a little aloof with my siblings in the past. I EVEN described my journey to my brother’s house for Sunday dinner as a ‘commute’ because I was doing it every week. He didn’t appreciate that.”

After she said it, you could sense the world collectively groan back at through their TV screens, before immediately changing the channel. It would have actually gone down better than what she said – at least it would have hinted at the fact that she had a sense of humour.

But I am not talking about the type of commute where you frequently make some nondescript journey. I’m talking about that forced journey that you make at the worst time of the day, during rush hour. When everyone in the world looks miserable because they got out of bed earlier than they wanted to, to go to a place where they’re constantly scrutinised on their ‘performance’, whilst making someone else a lot of money, which they only receive a small percentage of in return. That morning slog to your place of work.

If you’re driving a car and you’re unfortunate enough to meet another person’s glance as you’re sitting in traffic, you see the same misery that is painted over your face in theirs. You both quietly acknowledge it, before quickly looking away and pretending that you aren’t still wondering if they’re looking at you. What else are you going to do? Think about work? Gaup at another car? There’s nothing better to do. Just stare forward and try to think of nothing.

In London, on the underground, making eye contact with someone is considered assault during rush hour, and it is to be avoided at all costs. There are reports of people actually turning to stone upon making eye contact with each other on the tube in rush hour. I haven’t seen it happen myself, but I’m not willing to find out if the stories are true or not. Here is a little run down of my daily commute on the tube…

As soon as I enter the train carriage in the morning, I run for the only seat that is still available and throw myself on it. Then, I take out my book from my bag, ensuring that the only place I look is down, before opening it up at any page at all (I don’t care where, so long as I am too busy to engage with anyone around me), and that is where my gaze stays until it is my stop. Then, I put the book in my bag, immediately produce my phone from my pocket, check my emails quickly as the train pulls into the station and, when it stops, I finally look up, stand up, and leave the train. A sigh of relief involuntarily leaves my mouth, and I start to shake the hands of every person around me whilst staring them straight in the eye, like a politician, congratulating them for successfully making it through another commute. Then I realise that I have a 20 minute walk to my office from the station, which means that my commute is technically not over yet. Horrified at this realisation, I repent to the commuting Gods and ask that they forgive me for my transgressions, for daring to look another commuter in the eye. Then I nervously run to my office, purposefully barging into people in the street to make sure that they know that I am a commuter and I will damn well act like one, with my eyes fixed on the pavement in front of me and a total disregard for anyone or any thing that isn’t me. Later, when I get a notification from my bank telling me that London Underground have charged me for the journey, I am reminded that I actually pay to do all of this, and the indignation weighs heavy on me for a while. Then I get the tube home and forget about the whole thing. Same again tomorrow, I guess.

Commuting seems to drive people clinically insane. When I used to get the tube from London Bridge, in central London, to Canary Wharf, I would always take the Jubilee line. If it is running to schedule, there is a train every 2 or 3 minutes. It is quite impressive. Despite this, sometimes I would be walking towards the platform, where a train would be sitting with people alighting from it, and I’d accept in my head that I’ll just get the next one, as there are too many people around to allow me to sprint at it, and there will be another train in 2 minutes anyway, so why would I? Next thing I know, Tom in the Blue Suit is bursting past me from behind, as if this train was the last train to heaven and if he didn’t catch it, he would immediately be damned to the train to hell and nowhere else. I’m sure in his head he has a scene from an action film playing, and as he dives towards the train doors, the bell ringing out to signify that the train is going to leave and doors are closing, he thinks he has made a fantastic decision. Then, as he dives through the closing gap, the entire world probably goes into slow-motion a la Matrix style, as he narrowly slips through the gap, the door closing on the heel of his back foot. “Please do not obstruct the doors,” says the train driver through the tannoy, in a frustrated tone. Tom pulls his shoe from the gap with great effort as the doors angrily clap together behind him. He then smiles to the hordes of people crammed into the train, some of which he has just shoulder barged on his way in, then continues to look down and assume his position as unassuming commuter #235987245897349683045892034729845938460395863. Well done, Tom, you saved yourself 2 minutes. Enjoy getting to work earlier you absolute moron.

Of course, the recent wave of Working from Home has seen a decline in commuting. Whether working from home (stylised as ‘WfH’ or ‘WFH’) is a positive thing or not seems to split opinion. I feel like most people that I know are in favour of working from home, but I know a few people who are ardently against it too. In my experience, the answer seems to be in balance. Covid-19 presented us with a rare opportunity where we were forced to stay in our homes, and work from them all of the time. We had to do everything from them. I even had to do my family Christmas from my own home, via Skype, because Boris Johnson announced another lockdown about 2 minutes before I was leaving to get the train home for the holiday. Bah humbug.

Commuting became an ideal of the past, a distant memory of a world not plagued by… plague. One where it was common to see groups of young professionals outside the pub at 18:00 on a Wednesday, armed in suits and drinking beers, and where it was a given that we’d all be travelling into work the next morning, assuming it was a week day, but we all thought nothing of it. We all had more stamina then, and going out for mid-week drinks was part of the job. How life has changed.

Working from home was a benefit that I had experienced at my old job, but it was something that you had to beg for, and have a ruddy good reason for asking. Then, the pandemic happened, and all of a sudden the world required everyone to WfH all of the time, or risk death. We all started judging each other on how willingly we wore masks in supermarkets. I remember someone pointing out that all of the youths that used to love wearing masks in public were now refusing to wear them in an act of defiance, an apt observation which I thought of every time I saw a group of bustling teenagers in a shop, not wearing masks and staring you out for daring look in their direction.

I now go into the office twice a week and I have to say, it is quite enjoyable! It is nice getting out of the house, putting on some nice-ish clothes, and seeing people face to face. The whole thing feels quite novel. Yet, now there is more of an expectation on us to do so, the office is the worst thing ever again. There are no winners. Humans are destined to be unhappy – that is my takeaway from it all. If there is something to be dissatisfied with, we’ll find it and we’ll milk it dry. When we were working from home, we wanted more money to cover the extra heating bills, but now we’re back in the office, we begrudge having to pay the money to commute.

But I have lots of positive things to say about the pandemic AND about post-pandemic life. The pandemic actually presented me with a few rare opportunities, of which I will forever be grateful. I was living in central London when it hit. During my long runs on a Saturday, I’d run along the Thames path right next to the river, through central London and around Southbank. There was a time that I was running over the Millenium Bridge, the bridge which crosses the river next to The Globe theatre and leads you straight to St Paul’s Cathedral, and I couldn’t see a single person anywhere. It felt like I was in a zombie film. No tourists, no commuters, no street performers. Just me, the Thames, and an eerie sense that the world was ending. The world wasn’t ending. In fact, there were images of fish in the canals in Venice, and wild animals venturing into the towns in Wales… the world was actually doing better and we were the problem all along – who knew? But it was a peaceful time, and I’ve never experienced a London like it in all my time of living here.

So, I’ve tried to make something of my commute, as it is the only thing standing in my way of enjoying my 2 days in the office… I try and use it to do something useful. I’ve been reading through all of Patrick Radden Keefe’s books, an investigative journalist who writes incredible non-fiction, but has such a smooth writing style and finds such interesting topics to talk about, that makes you wish that the commute would never end. I’ve started writing on my commute on my phone too, or I’ll respond to a bunch of texts that I’ve been sitting on (apparently, a side effect of having had cancer is that you get really bad at doing life admin). I feel like it is reforming my opinion of commuting. It does help that where I live now is a little quieter on the commute, and I usually get a seat… I wouldn’t be spinning a positive ending on this if I still lived in London Bridge, that’s for sure. And I stand by what I said at the start of this – if you can find a way to enjoy your commute, you will probably be a much happier person overall. I feel like I’m moving past a notional concept of enjoying my commute, though, which is what I used to have, and am actually starting to enjoy it for real. If I see Tom in the Blue Suit, though, I’m going to trip him up and laugh to high heaven as his train departs the station without him!

On… Ennui

godley93, , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

There is a popular saying which states that ‘only boring people get bored’. I’m assuming it is popular. If it wasn’t, I doubt I’d have heard of it, but I can’t seem to attribute it to anyone in particular. Boring people presumably do get bored, but I think other people might get bored sometimes too. I’ve felt bored loads of times. Am I a boring person? Maybe.

When I’m bored, I like to find an over complicated word to describe something commonly referred to by another name, then drop it into conversation with someone, and act stupendously shocked when the unsuspecting party does not know what it means.

“What does ennui mean? Why it means ‘bored’, of course! You should read more; you’re falling behind my level of repartee [banter]!” There’s nothing like talking down to a close friend or family member for your own amusement, and the experience will pay dividends in keeping you anti-bored. You can think about it for days, weeks, months, even years. You’ll laugh to yourself, thinking, “Oh I got them so good that day. I wonder what they’re up to now? They don’t really speak to me anymore. Come to think of it, no one does.”

Boredom is the modern day plague, being passed from indifferent subject to indifferent subject. Our toxic boredom leaves us believing that there’s nothing left on Netflix that is worth watching, that our phone’s limitless capability is incapable of keeping us entertained, and allowing quick-fire apps like TikTok to flourish, because it removes the inconvenience of ‘thinking’ and ‘focusing on a single thing for more than 30 seconds’. We can’t even be bothered to have a favourite news outlet anymore, so we let social media tell us what news articles to read. Gone are the days of ‘journalistic integrity’, whatever that means. It’s all about clicks, clicks, clicks. Loyalty is just an archaic word now. We just open whatever is thrown onto our newsfeeds, moving seamlessly from one to the next, allowing the algorithm to dictate what we do next. One minute you’re reading about the Kardashians and how they wore clothes to something, the next you’re in the bowels of an extremist apologist page, finding yourself agreeing with the discourse, yet not realising that you’ve slowly been inveigled [persuaded].

We trust the algorithm of social media websites so sincerely that it is a shame it is a faceless, lifeless entity. We’d probably rather be friends with that than most of our real life friends; definitely our family – we don’t even get to choose them, so we’re bound to not like them. Besides, the algorithm takes time to learn what we like. Damn, it even tells us what we like. Over time it actually decides what we like, and it is far more adroit [skilful] at figuring it out than we could ever be.

But we like that, don’t we? I don’t have enough time to decide what I actually like in life anyway, so I’d rather let AI do it for me. That way I can dedicate more of my time to having nothing to do. I can maximise my boredom even more efficiently if I start to ask Chat GPT to write my blog posts for me, then get it to answer the comments from the community too, then hopefully, in time, it will attend my family Christmas meals for me, and make friends with my colleagues, and even do my work. In the future, it might even be a good husband to my wife for me, freeing up even more time for me to do absolutely nothing. I’ll have so much time to be bored – it’s going to be terrible. I can’t wait!

Boredom is promoted in our society, as the antidote to boredom is buying more things, going on more holidays and disliking others more for being less bored than you. That creates an environment where evil can flourish, the type of evil that is above boredom, and is ready to pounce on those negative feelings. Sure, we can eat grapes all year round thanks to globalisation, but that isn’t enough to feel happy, is it? No – we’re bored of all of that. Yet, while we sit bored, Putin is invading Ukraine, Amazon is the only company left in the world and James Corden still has a career, despite being a despicable human being who would pander to an autocratic psychopath if it would advance his career in any way possible. Avarice [greed] is held in high-esteem, whilst being satisfied is looked down upon, as if one is never supposed to feel content with what they have.

Yet even I, with my erudite [learned] understanding of ennui [boredom], occasionally fall into the trap. I’ll be sitting at home, too tired to read and the evening still too young for me to go to sleep, and I’ll think to myself – “isn’t life boring?” I wait for a response from the universe… nothing. Knew it; that would be too interesting. The mind can enter a free-fall mode when it is in this sort of defeatist mood. Everything reinforces that negative feeling; you message a friend to see what they’re doing and they don’t text you back for 30 minutes… well they obviously despise you and think you’re boring and don’t like you and are probably sat talking to someone about how annoying you are right that very second. You get off the sofa and try to cook something, but you’re out of that one spice that you need… so you plan on going to the shop, but the shop closes in 20 minutes. Besides, they never have that ingredient anyway – they’re always sold out of it. You’re always walking up to the shelf just as the last one is snatched up by someone better looking than you, right in front of your very eyes. Then you hate them for taking it, and for being better looking than you. They probably never get bored.

But there are people in the world who have a curiosity which pays dividends. Simple things can deliver a world of intrigue and pleasure, if allowed. For me, I like to find interesting words and write them down in the Notes application of my phone. I’ve got a long list of interesting words, with a short definition next to each, so I can trawl back through them when I’m sat around drinking my coffee in the morning, and recite the ones that I particularly like back to myself. Sometimes the sound of a word is pleasing, such as the word ‘vexatious’, which is defined as ‘causing or tending to cause annoyance, frustration, or worry’. Other words have a pleasing definition, such as the word ‘syllogism’, which is defined as ‘an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two given or assumed propositions’.

(Vexatious actually sounds cool to say AND has a pleasing definition, but I couldn’t squander an opportunity to use ANOTHER word as an example).

Well, I am declaring war on being bored. My promise to myself is to never be bored again. Not by burying myself in social plans and never being alone; no. I’m going to become a master of being alone. I am going to abandon my loquacious [talkative] nature, which demands that I seek out large groups of friends and make them laugh until their jaws hurt (which I am an expert at on my good days, honestly). I’m going to watch paint dry for so long that I am engaged in it’s story, like watching Breaking Bad, or the first 5 seasons of Dexter (and strictly no further). I’m going to read the dictionary for fun – riding the pages like a rollercoaster, until I slam the back page closed and wonder where the time went. I’ll read the dictionary with such enthusiasm that my sobriquet [nickname] will be ‘Dictionary Dan’! My dictionary will be my closest confidant, never to be read sub rosa [in private].