Jack Barrow's Blog

There isn’t a corporation in the world that isn’t considering its green credentials. Google claims on its search page that it has been carbon neutral since 2007 and everyone from Apple to Xerox put environmental priorities high on their lists of values. How much of this is greenwashing and what are the things they could easily do to change this?

Built in obsolescence has been a thing since before the fifties with American cars defined by their year of manufacture. Mobile phones are the modern equivalent. In 2020, 1387 million smartphones were sold. If only half of these were upgrades, that’s 600 million functional devices going into the kitchen scrap drawer every year. This isn’t a new story, and it doesn’t seem to be going away.

Every one of those devices has a carbon footprint with an estimated 85% of the phone’s impact coming from its manufacture.

stuff

However, we are beginning to resist this. The BBC’s Repair Shop and Radio 4’s Dare to Repair are examples of our desire to keep our stuff rather than chucking it and buying anew. These programmes are indicators of an existing trend rather than guiding new behaviour. The austerity decade, along with David Attenborough’s message, may be when the resistance to landfill took off.

The UK government is responding to this new trend with the right to repair legislation introduced in 2021. The intention was to toughen energy efficiency standards and ensure manufacturers provide spare parts with products being reparable in the home. If things go according to plan, we could soon see the return of the travelling washing machine repairer with a van full of tools and spare parts.

Of course, computing devices are different as they need to keep up with the requirements of power hungry software. Software, in turn, takes advantage of increasingly powerful devices. Without this upward spiral we wouldn’t be gaining the advantage of increasing artificial intelligence, big data analysis, augmented reality and all that stuff that is supposed to be improving our lives. But some products don’t show this constant progress.

winkle

Your average pair of shoes reached its design pinnacle about 200 years ago and not much has happened since. Winkle pickers, Velcro fasteners and low-impact trainers notwithstanding, a pair of shoes is much the same now as it was before Queen Victoria was born. Yet software developers can’t stop tweaking applications that seem, to the user, to be perfectly functional. Microsoft Office has been good for writing letters and reports since around the time of the millennium and much of what has changed since seems largely superficial. A PowerPoint on a modern computer seems much the same as it did ten years ago.

Yet progress in operating systems such as Windows and MacOS force us to upgrade and consign laptops to scrap. My kitchen drawer isn’t large enough for old laptops, so they have to go to the dump. But last week I managed to install the Chrome operating system on a ten-year-old laptop and it’s doing fine. I’m currently using it for streaming TV, which is impressive considering it would overheat when streaming on Windows 10. Old Laptops and phones do not need to be scrapped if their usage is limited to unchallenging applications. Most of us use our computers for social media and web browsing. Those applications should be fairly unchallenging, web graphics tend to be lower resolution and even video will have a limit to what we can perceive. High definition is in the eye of the beholder and could be the emperor’s new clothes. Utilising thin operating systems would allow these devices to live longer for non-complex uses.

hassle

Take the example of a standard printer. I have a 20-year-old Brother laser printer. The cartridge will print about 6000 pages and, since the millennium, I’m on my third or fourth cartridge. Cartridges are freely available and are not too expensive. The printer produces excellent quality prints. It never jams and it even has two paper trays. But I can’t get it to connect to my Windows 10 PC. Theoretically, it should work with Windows 10. The website shows a Windows 10 driver but I can’t figure it out. I’m not an IT specialist but I have done some computer rebuilds going back to the 1990s. This shouldn’t be beyond me… but it is. Modern printers are networked or use Wi-Fi. I’ve bought adapters to convert this printer to a network printer, but the illustrations show screens that come from Windows 95. These people really aren’t trying. All they need to do is issue me with a reliable driver for my printer. It’s almost as though they want me to throw it away! I’d happily pay for a driver written by a legitimate third party if they guaranteed it would work without hassle. There’s a massive business opportunity here.

So it seems printers are much like 200-year-old shoes; they are still functional for the basic things we need them to do. Old word processors are the same.

Last year’s G7 summit in Cornwall was big on green issues with the Mount Recyclemore art installation visible across from their Carbis Bay Hotel. But government initiatives, such as the right to repair, don’t seem to be doing the job. The new legislation doesn’t cover mobile phones and laptops, which we all have to replace every few years.

everlasting

But it doesn’t have to be this way. When I were a lad, my father used to tell me that ‘Big Business’ had developed the everlasting lightbulb but it would never be available because it was in their interest to sell lightbulbs that need replacement. Those awful low energy fluorescent lightbulbs have come and gone since and now we are all installing LEDs. The white light LED didn’t exist in the time of my father, so he couldn’t have known. We pay a great deal more for LED bulbs but they last much longer and use a fraction of the energy. This is an example of a business model that, encouraged by legislation to ban incandescent lightbulbs, has taken the new technology and changed the ecology of lighting. Printers, shoes and social media devices can do this.

My kitchen drawer is groaning with old phones, but I might soon be able to keep tea towels in it again. The last two phones I bought didn’t allow me to replace the battery despite all the old phones in my drawer having replaceable batteries. The mobile phone industry is going backwards. When my current phone dies, I will probably buy a Fairphone. Fairphone are an Amsterdam based phone manufacturer that has been going since 2013 and since then they have produced just four models. Each of their models is reparable by the user, with spare parts available as modules that can be used to repair and even upgrade some older models. If you twist the pins in your charge socket or break the screen, you can take it apart and fit a new one. It will be a lot longer before your Fairphone ends up in Mount Recyclemore.

clutch

The car industry has been doing this for 100 years with a significant proportion of their income based on spares. It would be unthinkable if you had to throw away a car every time it needed a new clutch. This is a different business model for the electronics industry in the same way that LED has been for the lightbulb industry.

If we are planning to reach carbon neutral by 2050, wind farms and electric cars might not be the only strategy. Reducing that 85% of carbon emissions that go to manufacture of devices might be a significant part of the calculation. Changing business models to support consumers in keeping their old stuff going, repair shops popping up in vacant high street stores would reduce waste and might generate a few jobs and even go a short way to revitalise a few town centres.

On New Year’s Day my resolution was to write more blogs starting with one on New Year’s Day. The calendrically aware amongst you may have noticed that it’s now a week on so I’m failing in my promise to myself and to offer greetings to my readers.

Colchester

I’ve been in Colchester for nearly a year now and I feel as though my feet haven’t touched the ground. To begin with there was all the boxes to unpack. Even the removal company thought I had a lot of boxes. The contents had to be found places to be squirreled away, storage had to be sorted out for all the things I’ve not used since I last moved house 35 years ago and a workshop had to be built. By the time this was all sorted the process started again as my muse arrived in October; and so, the infinite cycle of the second hand box unfolded.

However, things are beginning to settle down and I’m starting to see a way ahead. I’ve been working on the sequel to The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil and I like what’s coming out of the story. You can look forward to more magickal adventures twisted to include every day activities and goings-on. I’ve also been working on some freebies to use as incentives for people to sign up to my mailing list. Don’t worry if you have already signed up, I’ll make those same freebies available to anyone who is already subscribed. Go to the page here to make sure you don’t miss out on the free downloads when I announce them.

puff

Amongst the challenges of writing blogs is that it’s a bit like having to submit a term paper every week for the rest of your life. Some bloggers will stick to this schedule but, to be honest if I don’t have anything to say I don’t see the point of churning out a load of puff. Hence my 2022 resolution to do better.

So let’s see how that works out.

“Your Internet is getting disconnected…” That’s all I heard before I put the phone down on the recording of the rather improbably well-spoken girl with the posh English voice. This will be the fourth nuisance call I’ve had this morning. Four and counting.

The first call came at 7:45 followed by another 15 minutes later. This wasn’t very helpful as I’d been awake all night suffering with the usual Sunday night insomnia. I’d slept intermittently, and lightly, once or twice but after I switched my alarm off at 7:00 I’d started to get some proper sleep.  It always seems easier to sleep after the alarm has gone off and may be related to the release of anxiety after the alarm has gone off.

Another call arrived at about 9:15, although I don’t remember the time exactly as I was beginning to have trouble keeping track. Then there was another at 09:36am. (I know that’s accurate as I’ve now started a spreadsheet.) Before today there was one every morning over the weekend at about 7:45 and a few days last week. Some of them are silent, some the recorded voice, others I was too tired to register what happened.

I’m beginning to think I’ve offended the gods of telephony. I suppose that would be Hermes, or Mercury depending on who your classics teacher was. I didn’t do classics but I got Stephen Fry’s book for Christmas so I can name-drop the gods.

pandemic

We all know this phenomena. A brief search of Guardian articles over the last few years reveals articles on scam calls about PPI, claims management, and more. “Keurboom Communications fined record £400,000 over nuisance calls” says one Guardian headline. The UK government is slowly, ever-so-slowly, responding to this digital pandemic. The PPI calls seem to have stopped but probably only because the window has closed on the claims deadline. I still occasionally get calls from someone trying to sell me oven cleaning services, when will that window close?

I work from home and take on contracts as a technical author. It’s hard for me to make a living without giving people the opportunity to call me. Plus I’ve always been a bit needy and I once got out of the bath to answer the phone, at which point I bought an extension lead so I didn’t have to. I’ve always found it difficult to not know who was calling but I’m of a different generation to people today who will ignore calls based on caller ID.

Ofcom or the Information Commissioners Office (one handles communications and broadcasting the other deals with personal data) will act on companies based in the UK, as…

That was another call at 10:12am, the same English woman with the posh voice. I’m no longer swearing at her.

…as they did with Keurboom. That name has to be a sarcastic choice. I guess Kerboom wasn’t available from Companies House. You can wonder at the director’s glee in the process of registering the name. ‘Kerboom! Lot’s of cash landing in the bank!’ Someone with that attitude clearly deserved more than the £1500 and £1000 fines levied on the two directors. Companies House doesn’t say what their turnover was, or at least I’m not enough of a forensic accountant to understand what I’m looking at.

global

But fines of British registered companies are only a solution to a small part of the problem. A Guardian article from 2018 tells how the scams work in India. In the UK many of us have received calls from the Philippines and elsewhere so we know it’s a global problem. There’s little the British government can do in the face of scammers from the rest of the world.

Talk to many people in Britain and they will say they no longer answer the phone to numbers that don’t show up on caller ID. But is that an option for many people in the gig economy? With the results of Brexit, and the collapse of the economy due to the COVID pandemic, more and more people are turning to their wits to make a living. Gig economy jobs, where you have to make yourself available for contact, are the only option. My last contract ended in June and I’ve had no work since. I have to answer the phone because occasionally I get calls from agencies. Spending my time writing that difficult second novel isn’t going to generate an income any time soon.

mental

A Guardian article from 2019 says that the UK gig economy accounted for 4.7 million jobs. It’s probably more by now. If 4.7 million people stop answering their phones when there’s a chance of work it would have an impact on the incomes of those people and the knock on effect to the wider economy could be more significant still. If people do answer their phones then there is an impact on mental health; I can vouch for that.

But if the international trade in scam calls is the big picture then there is an even bigger one. Over the last year we’ve re-evaluated the relationship of the western industrialised nations with the rest of the world. How we came to be so far ahead (so much richer) is now much clearer to us after the education that has taken place after the Black Lives Matter protests. We’ve finally admitted that the Industrial Revolution, the first one, was funded by the slave trade. After that reassesment it’s now easy to argue that the rich populations of the industrialised west don’t deserve the comfort and security afforded to us by wealth built on the back of the likes of Edward Colston and the East India Company. Of course our grand-parents, most frequently falling prey to the scammers, didn’t create the situation but populations of the developing world might be more concerned about their elderly than ours. The 2018 article on the scammers in India makes it clear that some people don’t like the business of scamming but more are prepared to do it, most probably out of desperation when good office jobs might be over-subscribed by as much as 1000 to one.

frenzied

Back in the summer, at a socially distanced party in a friend’s garden, my mobile rang with another scammer on the line. I made one of my practiced jokey responses. At the time I wasn’t as hassled as I have been recently, and I’d had a beer, so I was in a better mood. As my friends listened in, some smirking, some curious or just confused, I explained that I wasn’t the person being asked for because I’d stolen the phone and killed owner in a frenzied attack. There was blood on the mobile and I really ought to clean it up. Sometimes I just tell the scammer that the person they are asking for is dead, in the hope that they will amend their database, but I’m sure it doesn’t make any difference. I still get the calls but it breaks up my day to play with them some times.

After the short call was over various friends commented but one friend asked why I treated the caller in such a way. “Because they are criminals,” I responded. He pointed out they were probably struggling to find a job in a terrible economy and working for the scammers was their only option. He then went on to make me feel even worse by explaining how, when he gets scam calls, he engages them in conversation to ask about their life and swap stories about how he once worked in a call centre and how bad it was. I can vouch for that as I got my first break in publishing by writing articles for free while teleselling advertising space for a magazine.

It’s 12:31 and, by some amazing coincidence, the phone just rang again. No really, you couldn’t make it up. This time it must have been a different scammer as it was a woman with a heavy accent giving a name I couldn’t catch despite me trying to engage her in conversation. She said she was from, “The Technical Department of BT Openreach.” Judging by the time of day it’ll be, perhaps, her thirtieth call today, her thirtieth rejection. I know what that’s like. I didn’t manage to sell much advertising space. She’s going to make another thirty calls, perhaps, more. My target in telesales was 70 dials a day, fewer if I got to speak to a decision maker.

imbalance

These calls are a result of the imbalance in the world, between rich and poor, between developed and developing nations. Young people in nations with an increasingly educated population turn to anything to make a living. Some do worse by turning to violence. This is a consequence of the actions of our forebears. It doesn’t make it right for any of the parties involved. The only solution seems to be for governments to work together, which does happen and the Indian authorities do close down some operations. However, the Guardian article describes whole industrial districts that are known to be bases for nothing but scammers. The money that flows through those organisations into their populations benefits the economies of the countries where it takes place. There isn’t really an incentive to fix it.

This will end when the inequality between nations is lessened, when the flow of cash has levelled the pressure. However, the levelling up is being funded by grannies in the west, the naive, the uneducated, the elderly, those people in the developed world who can afford it least.

In the meantime I’m going to turn off my phones, try to get some sleep and hope that nobody phones me about a proper job.

The phone’s ringing!

By the Tate Gallery

This is not so much a review of this book, good though it is, as a review of William Blake himself. Before you think that sounds a bit presumptuous I’ll explain. This isn’t actually a book, it’s the catalogue for the William Blake exhibition at the Tate Gallery between November 2000 and February 2001. This year, 2020, there was another Blake exhibition at the Tate and I’d hoped to get to it but I didn’t make it.

It’s been something of a regret that I bought this book in November 2000 and it’s sat on my shelf quietly nagging me to read it for the last 20 years. Therefore, when the Blake exhibition came up at the end of last year I thought I really ought to read the book before going. My feelings were made more complex by the fact that I’d been to the previous Blake exhibition at the Tate in the mid eighties but had not really known what I was seeing. I was really knocked out by the print of Nebuchadnezzar and having learned to acid etch print at school I was fascinated but knew nothing of his work. Since then I’d begun to understand that Blake was a sort of Christian mystic but that was about all I knew.

I have many books that I’ve bought with good intentions of reading. I’m a bit like a child with eyes bigger than his belly when it comes to books and recently I’ve developed a policy of trying to make every other book I read one from my shelves. Every time I do this I’m struck by the experience or knowledge that’s been at my fingertips all that time waiting to be tapped into. This book on Blake was a prime example.

months

The book is a catalogue of the millennium exhibition but it stands alone without the reader needing to be at the exhibition. It took me months to get through as my reading style is to dip in and out in short bursts but being a gallery catalogue it was well suited to that. However, despite reading a bit most days it still took months to read and the recent show was well over by the time I finished the book earlier this year. Heaven knows how you would read it if you were using it as a guide at the actual show; you’d need to come back many times over and even then you might not manage to read all the accompanying essays. I would really love to have done that, got a season ticket at the start and visited each day to view a few pictures and perhaps read one of the essays. If you devoted full days to it you might get through it in a week or so but it is 300 pages and larger than A4. I suppose you’d find a comfy bench or even the coffee shop to read the essays. Of course there are many illustrations so there are not that many words but you’d not want to spend all your time reading; rather you’d be there to look at the pictures.

The book contains a caption for every piece in the exhibition (as far as I was able to tell) but not every piece in the exhibition is included in the book. I guess if you were at the show you’d not need every image. The book was available to purchase for a couple of years after the show closed so I guess it was intended to be read as a stand alone work.

The captions, though, were not the best part of the book. More fascinating, to me, were the essays and this is where I learned so much about Blake and his ideas. These essays are peppered through the book about Blake, his life, his techniques and the nature of the stories he tells. The book, and I guess the exhibition, started with some choice examples to whet your whistle, but what followed was a series of essays, supported by the works shown in the exhibition.

revolutions

Early on the book discussed Blake’s life and work while he lived at Hercules Buildings in Lambeth. There is a description of his home and an explanation of his workshop, life and relationships. The early essays give a thorough description of his techniques in some technical detail. This is against the backdrop of the history the time, late 18th Century concurrent with the American and French revolutions going on and the industrial revolution just taking off. This is important as the reader learns that Blake was something of a radical, or at least a non-conformist and his political views put him in conflict with the establishment. The book describes how he moved from London to Felpham in West Sussex partially to avoid the attentions of the authorities but he was arrested while he was there and tried for sedition. He was acquitted but it is an indication of his relationship to the establishment.

Of course Blake is known for writing the poem that later became the hymn Jerusalem although the music wasn’t added until 100 years later. He’s also known for the line ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night,’ but I imagine many people won’t know who wrote the line.

It’s striking to see the engravings of the tiger and understand that he would be drawing and engraving from descriptions by others having never seen a tiger. It’s only seeing this that we are able to fully realise how lucky we are having access to photographs of every creature, plant and place in the world. If we only had knowledge of things by word of mouth it’s easy to imagine how perceptions can become mistaken.

engraved

These poems were presented in hand printed books in extremely limited print runs, each plate individually inked, often with variations in inking between copies then bound and sold as books. The writing is hand engraved on the plates and, of course, written in mirror script so as to be printed the right way around. The poems that the images accompany are challenging to read, in a handwriting script rather than a typeface. If you wanted to read the poems along side the images it might be easier to find a book that has transcribed the poems into a modern typeface. I’m sure such volumes exist as I can’t be the first to think of this.

One discovery that I’d not expected was that Blake invented a pantheon of characters to populate his writings. As well as historical, biblical or literary characters such as from Shakespeare or Dante, Blake’s own characters appear again and again throughout his work.  For example Albion, as well as being a personification of Britain, is a primeval man who experiences a fall (as Satan might have fallen) to result in the existence of four Zoas, Urizen (the embodiment of reason and law), Tharmas (sensation), Luvah (love and passion) and Urthona (inspiration and creativity). These last two are further divided into Orc (the spirit if rebellion and freedom) and Los (the eternal prophet). From these, and at this point it gets a bit had to keep track of all the characters, some or all of them also have emanations or paired opposite sex equivalents.

It’s when you read about these characters that it becomes apparent that Blake must have been on some pretty good drugs. He is known to have openly had visions. Reading each of these essays was not really sufficient to begin to grasp that nature of these characters but if you were to devote some time to study them, and their interrelations, you’d probably find something close to a magical system in the same way that others have built the same using pantheons such as the Greek/Roman or Norse gods. Of course all of Blake’s writings are to be understood against the background of Christianity but if you consider Christianity as just another mythology then you could have as much fun with Blake as you might with the Greek or the Norse gods.

instruments

What is interesting, although shouldn’t be surprising, is that the fall of Albion, and his division into his four Zoas is a metaphor for the industrial revolution. Any of us who are familiar with the words of Blake’s Jerusalem will know the line about the dark satanic mills. Blake’s Urizen, reason, isn’t necessarily thought of as on the side of good or the benefit of the people. Blake’s print of Newton, almost bent double studying the universe by means of a compass has been explained as Newton not seeing the big picture with his limited mathematical understanding of the universe focussed on only that which was in front of his nose and his scientific instruments. (This might have been a bit unfair as Newton was also a bit of mystic but we don’t think that of him today.) So Blake is saying that reason, exclusively, is not the only way, or perhaps the best way, to see the world.  The application of the scientific method (reason) results in the industrial revolution (the fall of Albion) and eventually the creation of dark satanic mills and a population unable to relate to the world of nature as we might have once have done.

Since the end of the lockdown, or perhaps I should say Lockdown 1 as it seems it’s likely it’s no longer a singular, I’ve been preparing to move house to be closer to my muse. As a result I cleared out my shed. At the back of my shed I came across a large set of step ladders dating back, perhaps, sixty years. I know my father had them in the sixties but they could be older if they were second hand at the time.

This is a wooden set of stepladders, perhaps six or even seven feet tall, the sort of thing that would have been owned by a painter and decorator or a serious DIY enthusiast. To be honest they were always a bit unsteady what with being so tall. Modern aluminium stepladders seem to have a more stable design, which is probably why they’ve been in my shed for a quarter of a century.

emotional

It was one of those emotional decisions to get rid of them. You wouldn’t think of step ladders as a family heirloom but they sort of felt that way as they were such a familiar image what with them being older than me and always present in my life, even if remotely present in the shed… at the bottom of the stack of tools, at the end of the garden, unnoticed for years; so not really present at all, but I’m sure you get the picture.

Therefore, I put them on eBay, as I have been doing with the contents of my loft and other clutter. Where I have no idea of the value of an item or I’m pretty sure an item is worth no more than the price of a cup of coffee (being the industry standard for an amount of money that you sort of don’t notice spending so not being of much concern if you have that few quid or not) I put the item on Facebook Marketplace as free for anyone who will collect. However, if I have a slight suspicion that something might have a greater value and I don’t know what that value is, I put it on eBay starting at 99p and see what happens. Sometimes it can be surprising and can be quite exciting, such as the time the unused roof panels that had been behind my shed for five years went for 100 quid. My shed is full of treasures.

deal

Initially, there was almost no interest in the ladders, one or two watchers but no bids. The auction came to an end after seven days and I got a message to say that they hadn’t been sold. But then I got a message from a guy who said that his WiFi had gone down at the moment he intended to make the bid and, by the time he was connected again, the auction had ended. He suggested that if I relisted it, and added a buy it now option for ten quid, he would buy it there and then. I did, he did and the deal was done.

This morning he turned up to collect. I imagined that he would be a painter and decorator or at least a DIYer who wanted a long set of ladders. Modern step ladders seem to be much shorter (more stable) what with all that silly health and safety nonsense. Talking to the guy it turned out that he was going to use them to make some shelves. “They’re going to look fantastic,” he said as we loaded them into his unfeasibly small hatchback. His plan was to match them up with a similar set of ancient wooden stepladders, lay some planks between the two and create some funky old fashioned looking shelves. Why didn’t I think of that 20 years ago?

onus

I commented that he could have had them for a pound had he just asked me to relist them. I suppose the idea of a buy it now price is that you have to set a value in advance and I’d not done that before as I had no idea of their value. Not having had any bids in a week meant that they had no value; plus, to be honest, my main motivation was to ensure that this family heirloom didn’t go into landfill. Seeing any of the contents of my loft going to a new home is sufficient to soften the blow of parting with them. He could have made me an offer of a pound cash, or some such. Perhaps he was being careful not to operate outside of the eBay rules against private transactions. However, his explanation was that he hated the idea of offering me a pound and be taking advantage of the fact that they hadn’t sold. I suppose it’s just three cups of coffee or thereabouts. So, as far as he was concerned, the onus on him was to offer me a fair price, thus, doing the decent thing.

The only shame about the whole experience is that he seemed like such a decent bloke, and with such great taste in interior design, that I wish I had the chance to get to know him.

R2D2 is sad now.

After lockdown came to its end I decided that I’m going to move to Colchester to be nearer my muse. Not seeing each other for three months will do that for you and it seemed to encourage my romantic side. Of course announcing that I’m selling up, getting engaged no less, had all sorts of unseen consequences and the first one was that C3PO had to find somewhere else to live.

degenerate

The decision came as a bit of a shock to R2D2 as he has always looked up to C3PO and, dare I say, he’s been quite influenced by him. Strictly speaking the influence C3PO has on R2D2 is because of C3PO’s behaviour, the late nights, the endless techno parties, the use of pirated software enhancements; R2D2 is rather impressed by this sort of thing which, of course, encourages C3PO and the two of them spiral into a cycle of degenerate behaviour and association with ne’er-do-wells, unsavoury elements within the night time economy and those on the fringes of society. Frankly C3PO is a bad influence on R2D2.

Although C3PO moving out was never my main intention I had wondered if the move might remove C3PO’s influence on R2D2. Of course the two of them are still in touch despite no longer being on the same WiFi and they do send each other messages, so R2D2 isn’t completely lonely. I’m now wondering if C3PO could still be supplying R2D2 with illegal patches as the internet is no barrier to that sort of thing. Humans can’t send an eighth of Moroccan Gold through the internet but for droids and cyborg, well, a network just makes it easier. I tried setting my firewall to filter out illicit software but C3PO just hacked it. As a human I’m out of my depth and I had to give up. So it seems despite moving ten miles up the road C3PO is still at it.

toothbrush

R2D2’s mood has been a bit low lately. At first I interpreted R2D2’s mood swings as him missing C3PO, he has good days and bad days but I’m beginning to suspect I’m witnessing the comedown when the patches inevitably wear off. At the moment he’s shut himself in the bathroom and is trying to console himself by plugging himself into the toothbrush charger and we know how that turns out. Perhaps, with your support, we can just keep an eye on him and hope we can support him through this difficult time.

Some years ago I was stopped on an apparently open road by a policeman standing in front of an unattended ambulance. My curiosity, and perhaps my slight irritation about why I couldn’t continue with my journey, was soon answered. A trolley appeared from around a bend in the road where four or five various paramedics, doctors and other first responders carefully wheeled a patient along the road. As I was forced, for a few minutes, to watch this slice of real life drama they took meticulous care as they loaded the whole lot, patient, drips and all that medical stuff into the ambulance and closed the doors. Soon I was free to continue on my journey but not before I was finding myself having to wipe a tear from my eye.

I do cry a bit at old movies, those episodes of TV programmes that have applied a specific formula to elicit an emotional response, I’ve even been known to blub at a well written episode of Star Trek so long as all the emotional levers have been pulled. For a while it seems they were employing some experienced writers on that show, or at least writers who knew the formula.

My guess, with the person on the stretcher, is that I was triggered by the number of people involved in the incident. Had it just been a paramedic or two I might not have blubbed so. But they were clearly prepared to go to whatever lengths were necessary to save this person. All that attention for one person unknown by all these people.

ironing-board

It’s a good job I wasn’t around earlier in the year when a friend fell over in her loft or there might have been waterworks. Apparently she fainted and a loft is not a good place to faint, what with the potential for uneven floors, randomly placed objects, other injurious odds and ends, etc. The report on Facebook, along with photos of the event, described how she was suspected to have a spinal injury or at least the potential for one. The emergency services came out and a drama ensued. She was placed on a stretcher or an ironing board or one of those mechanical immobilisation platforms or something. However, getting her out of the loft was not going to be easy. In the end they decided to take her out through the skylight.

From the story I heard this involved removing the loft window, then utilising one of those special fire engines that has an extending platform able to reach high up or far across a garden. (I think I had a toy version as a kid but imagined they only had these for real in America.) It seems they placed the platform at the window and, I guess, passed her through. That’s about all I know as I wasn’t there and I don’t like to pry. The Facebook post tells how there were two teams of fire brigade, paramedics, all sorts of support people, someone to turn off the electricity in the street, etc. It seems long reach fire engines and overhead power cables don’t play well together, who’d have thought, eh?

The post on Facebook, along with the pictures of the street full of neighbours, told that she was okay in the end and was home that night but they didn’t take a chance; all this was done just in case. If you ever want to now where your tax dollars go, then ask not for whom the ambulance siren wails, it wails for you; but only if we keep paying our taxes.

symptoms

Back during the depths of lockdown, when we were not supposed to be going out, I had an emergency of my own. At the peak of the plague of our time I started to feel ill despite being not having gone out of the house for weeks. (I’m one of those people being shielded on medical grounds so everything is delivered.) The symptoms were not obviously Covid-19; instead, around Easter I started to experience abdominal pains and other symptoms that I’m too polite to describe. Apparently there are variations of covid-19 that attack other parts of the body and intestinal covid-19 is one of them.

However, A few days later, when my carbon monoxide alarm went off, it became clear that it wasn’t the plague and that my elderly cooker was to blame. To cut a long story short it was caused by increased use of my cooker due to the meal kits I’ve been using, lack of ventilation during a cold snap and prolonged time indoors; oh that and a grilled aubergine.

The result was that, when I phoned the NHS the next day, they said normally they would ask me to go to hospital for a carbon monoxide check-up but, being shielded, they preferred me not to do so. Instead they would send out an ambulance to check me out; as it turned out they sent two.

The first ambulance was the one with the two nice paramedics who wouldn’t come into my house lest they bring the plague inside. Instead they invited me out to sit in the ambulance where they covered me in wires and probes and made one of those paper traces of my heart beat, and measured my blood pressure and oxygen level. My they went to a lot of trouble. Of course I was feeling fine as the aubergine incident had been the night before and, since I found my symptoms matched those of carbon monoxide on the NHS website, I’d opened all the windows.

nuclear

The second ambulance was the exciting one, although I didn’t get to sit inside which was a slight disappointment. This was the imaginatively named Hazardous Area Response Team or HART. (I guess someone got a pat on the back for thinking that one up.) This is a special ambulance with a crew trained to work in what the web site describes as the ‘hot zone’. It seems before the existence of HART, when an emergency took place in a hazardous area such as chemical, biological, nuclear, etc. (no really, I kid you not), patients had to be brought to the outer perimeter where it was safe for medical personnel without special training or equipment. That meant treatment was delayed and outcomes were not as good as if the patient were treated sooner. Instead the HARTeam are able to go into the hot zone which might be somewhere high up, in confined spaces, on water or in that chemical, biological or nuclear zone. Working along-side the rest of the emergency services these guys are the Thunderbirds.

The point of HART turning up in my street was that the standard ambulance doesn’t have the ability to test for carbon monoxide in your blood stream. However, you can imagine that in the hot zone, amid all the smoke, confined spaces or alien invasions (wait, what?), those are the sorts of places where they would need to test for carbon monoxide. Therefore the HARTeam has the gadget.

It turned out that the carbon monoxide gadget was the size of a pocket calculator with a lead and a thing that fits on your finger a bit like the thing that measures your oxygen level. Again a lot of trouble to go to for such a small gadget but, yes, I was poisoned with carbon monoxide and no it wasn’t bad, only as much as a heavy smoker might have. The night before, in the middle of the aubergine incident, the level would have been higher.

fan

So what’s the moral of this story? I’m not entirely sure apart from telling you a lot of stories about ambulances. I was rather excited to be given the long strip of paper with my heart trace on it with lots of numbers I don’t understand. I was fascinated to learn that we have a specialist service for hot zone treatment and people prepared to deal with the consequences (alien invasions notwithstanding). Most of all I learned that we really are all in this together and, when the shit hits the fan or when the aubergine strikes, there are all sorts of people who will come out of the woodwork to try to help out. We are a community species, as we are all discovering with the plague of our time, and it’s only by cooperation and support that we survive.

Pleas try not to vote conservative next time.

People are saying how much has changed in just a few weeks. Suddenly people are at home, with their children full time, getting food has become more like foraging, socialisation has stopped and the government is acting completely out of character. So much has changed.

But from here, where I’ve been working from home for years, so little has changed. Being a technical writer, with creative ambitions, the view from my tiny, windowless home office is utterly unchanged.

I’ve often been the recluse. At times I’d not venture out for days, sometimes up to a week. Between jobs I’d withdraw even more so that Monday mornings would pass without the dread experienced by others; bank holidays were meaningless. Even without a job I’d still shuffle into my converted store room to sit at my laptop to ‘create.’ People would tell me I ought to get out more.

cortisol

I hear of all the changes for people, time to learn a language, learn to juggle, post comedy videos, it seems they’re all having a ball—although I’m sure they’re not. Here nothing’s changed. The project I’m working on is still late, as it has been for months. We’re still struggling with failing IT systems, attempting to understand duties of those who have jumped ship, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous management decisions. The multinational that I work for is still sticking to the original unrealistic product launch deadline that they set two years ago and so the pressure to work more, get more done. For heaven’s sake nobody will turn up to the show room in May! The stress in the windowless office is certainly unchanged. I imagine my cortisol levels are through the roof just when I want the opposite. Work still eats time, and more than all of my energy. I don’t have the oomph for the creative great work, so that hasn’t changed.

I used to not go out for days, but that was by choice. Now I’m confined by asthma so I suppose that’s a change. I’ve recently been told I’m especially vulnerable. My sister delivers the occasional food parcel while I’m waiting for the government to get in touch. She stands at the end of the path and doesn’t dare approach, so that’s a change.

outside

Now I wonder what it’s like out there. Before I was told I was so vulnerable I went to the cash machine to pay for food donations and ‘outside’ seemed threatening. That was a change. I wonder what it’s like to visit the supermarket. My muse tells me they have tape on the floor. I’d like to see that. I talk to her more now, which is a change for the better, but I don’t get to see her at weekends.

I miss her.

Today I disinfected my groceries, I’ve never done that before. Are my naan breads going to kill me? I’ve just started a pension but, being prone to chest infections, I wonder if I’m wasting my money. Have I got time to finish my great work? That’s the biggest change.

People used to tell me that I should get out more. For the past few years I’ve been working from home as the sort of writing that is my day job means I don’t I don’t need to be in an office. If a client needs me to, I can log into their servers and work from my tiny office. For about four years now I might go for a week without seeing anyone other than my lodger (regular readers will know him as C3PO from my R2D2 blogs) who keeps himself to himself. In the winter I’ll not step into the garden and between November and March the shed is right out of bounds. I once found a particularly stinky bottle of ouzo in my drinks cabinet (it’s a long story but if you are not a fan of aniseed you will understand). Wanting a quick solution that didn’t involve me drinking it I put it on the patio in December and it was still there in the spring, though the aniseed odour seemed to have evaporated along with half the contents.

I’m a person of the asthmatic variety, prone to colds in the winter and hay fever in the summer. I’m allergic to quite a lot although I’m determined not to be defined by my condition. Needless to say, I’ve probably got a compromised immune system. Therefore, staying at home is both necessary and something I’m familiar with. However, last night I ventured out as I needed to deliver my signed accounts back to my accountant. It was either deliver them by hand or stand in a queue at the Post Office and I knew which I preferred.

apocalypse

Having posted the papers, I took a stroll along the usually busy Old High Street of my home town. At 7pm on a Saturday night this would normally be the bustling centre of restaurants and bars, a couple of live music pubs, a kebab shop, that sort of thing. I won’t say it was eerie as it wasn’t. This wasn’t like an episode of Survivors as some people might be beginning to imagine but, then, there’s no indication we are moving into that post apocalypse state. Neither is our current crisis nearly so sudden. Many people would do well to remember that. But it was quieter than even a Sunday night.

Most of the pubs were dark and closed up, although one of two had lights on behind the bar with a couple of people inside, presumably those who live upstairs. Almost all the restaurants were dark with, perhaps, some illumination coming from back rooms or kitchens. The kebab shop seemed to be trading with a few people queuing but seeming to keep their distance even if somewhat half-heartedly. Suddenly I was surprised to see someone emerge from one of the darkened restaurants but the large insulated bag gave him away as a food delivery driver. The restaurant had repurposed itself as a takeaway.

Stopping further down the road—close to the White Hart and the Rose and Crown opposite, where normally bands would play in each with a throng of bouncers and rowdies stumbling back and forth all dodging the taxis—I paused to gaze into a tailor’s shop. If… sorry, when civilisation returns to normal, I might see what their hand made suits would cost.

unspoken

Occasionally I would encounter an individual coming the other way. Giving each other a wide berth there was an unspoken acknowledgement that everyone was leaving everyone else alone.

An everything shop at the bottom of the road stood out amidst the darkened windows, glowing brightly like Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. The street was undeniably a scene of light and shade. Now I wish I’d taken out my phone for a picture. Looking in from the opposite side of the street it seemed there was no shortage of food in there and I considered stopping in on the way back rather than going on to the supermarket as I had intended.

Further on, opposite where they had knocked down and rebuilt the old sixties college campus, the row of takeaways and estate agents were largely dark with the occasional lit counter but almost no people. Everywhere is takeaways and estate agents these days, are these the only business models able to survive the onslaught of the Internet? Walking back along the parade I heard voices. Looking around there was nobody near and I wondered if the isolation was playing tricks on my mind. We often don’t look up but, in this instance, it was the only other option. Two guys were leaning out of a first-floor window chatting, in much the same way we would have done years ago when we would smoke a joint and pass it between us while we watched the world go by. I suppose that’s had to stop now. A wet roach is an infected roach might be the new parlance amongst the pot head pixies. I guess they were just watching the quiet street in the absence of anything more interesting on TV. My experience in Wimborne is a case in point.

junk

Passing Hopper’s everything shop I popped in for supplies. I could get milk and coffee for myself and C3PO and save myself the chance of being infected at the supermarket. The place was deserted so what’s not to like. I kept my woollen gloves on while picked things up, the door was wide open so it was cold inside. Milk, coffee, a couple of tins of emergency macaroni cheese (junk food has never been so desirable), naan breads-they’ll freeze, all handled with gloves.

We still don’t know how the Covid-19 virus survives on hard surfaces but I hear it’s not good news. I’ve heard all sorts of estimates from two hours to three days on materials like stainless steel. Even cardboard might harbour it for 24 hours. Please do bogart that joint my friend!

At some point I had to take off my glasses, which meant I took off my gloves because I’d been handling potentially contaminated stock, then I picked up the naan breads without my gloves and had to put my glasses again. This is ridiculous!

million

After browsing the strangely broad selection of beers from across the globe—welcome to international Britain, the world that Brexiteers hate—I found no craft ales but picked up a couple of bottles of Leffe, but there was only two bottles so what to else to buy? There, at the back of the shelf, as though there had been a run on them, were three bottles of Corona. Apparently, they lost 132 million dollars at one point in the run up to the pandemic. Still, it seems people are happy to buy it locally and I was doing my bit to help.

Back in The Truck I sanitised myself as best I could. Did I touch the steering wheel? Should I sanitize the outside of the sanitizer bottle? Am I being a little neurotic? Is this neuroticism a Darwinian selection trait in favour of survival? Yes, to all of those is okay with me.

I decided to head over to the supermarket, even if only to make a comparison and to pick up some fresh vegetables, as the everything shop was a bit limited.

The supermarket was quiet for a Saturday night not that I’m in the habit of shopping on a Saturday night but Google said it would be quiet. It seems they can tell in real time how many people are in a particular shop so, I guess, they are tracking our mobile phones in the same way they use mobile phones to track traffic.

carrots

Whole swathes of the shelves were empty, whole aisles in some cases. I cruised around looking for the important stuff like paracetamol, no; tins of anything, no (macaroni cheese notwithstanding); sanitizer (you must be joking); etc. But there were plenty of fresh fruit and veg so those who actually know how to cook will be fine. I’ve been making various types of carrot soup recently (carrots are cheap and nutritious) and it’s a skill I’m beginning to think might stand me in good stead. In fact, buying fresh food and saving tinned supplies for when you can’t get out might to be the way ahead. By all means buy a few cans, enough for a week would be okay, and live off fresh food all the while you can get out. If you don’t know how to cook fresh food then use the University of You Tube. But don’t buy more tins than you need for a week or so.

At the till they’d established a taped off area, with hazard tape on the floor at the entrance to each till area, the idea being that you don’t enter the area until the previous person has left. Well it works a whole lot better than box junctions. They also had a sign asking people to pay by card. I’ve not heard this officially but someone said the virus can survive on the new polymer notes.

Leaving the shop I walked back to The Truck. now where was that hand sanitizer?

For those of you in the know, and you know who you are, you’ll be aware that BBC Radio 4 is the soundtrack of my being. All of life is on Radio 4, which makes it a pretty big platform. Everything you want to know about news and current affairs, the greatest drama, wonderful new books each week and the greatest comedy, they’re all to be found there. The 6.30pm comedy slot, directly after the news, is such a legend they have trouble getting acts to match up to their high standards. That legendary status comes from the established classics, The News Quiz, Just a Minute and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Therefore, you might imagine my excitement when, for an appropriate fee, I managed to secure two tickets for a performance of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue in Ipswich.

innuendoes

For those of you really not in the know, and I feel for your loss (though you won’t be aware of it), I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is a panel show running since the early seventies. Subtitled The Antidote to Panel Games, Clue, as it’s affectionately known, features a series of silly games, pun based gags, schoolboy innuendoes and badly performed songs (the more badly performed the better), all chaired by Jack Dee.

The souvenir programme, purchased in the interval, lists such classic games as Uxbridge English Dictionary (new meanings to old words), Jargon (what the ‘experts’ really mean), Swanee Kazoo (the ever popular musical duet), One Song to the Tune of Another (a complicated concept that requires some explanation), and 84 Chicken Cross Road (the teams construct a lively correspondence between two famous characters, each taking turns to speak one word at a time,). Okay so the games are better experienced than explained so I suggest, if you are still not in the know, you should seek it out on Radio 4, buy one of the CDs (or digital downloads) or even find the odd pirate on YouTube.

reverberations

Arriving, amid a sea of grey and silver hair, the Regent Theatre soon filled to capacity where, as we sat down, we found a kazoo carefully placed on each seat. You might imagine that sitting on a kazoo would result in some unusual reverberations and you’d be right. Then before start of the show the long-time producer, Jon Naismith, presented us with a series of favourite gags culled from the near fifty-year history of the show. Having got us suitably warmed up he then invited us to unwrap our kazoos for a practice.

You might imagine that learning the kazoo would be easy but, it turns out, you can’t under estimate a Radio 4 audience when it comes to musical talent. So, before the show, proper, we had a brief tutorial with Mr Naismith ready for our audience participation later.

Shortly the panellists arrived on stage announced by Jon Naismith starting with veteran Tim Brooke-Taylor, Tony Hawks, Richard Osman and Miles Jupp. Finally, Jack Dee was introduced as chairman who began with the time-honoured tradition of slagging off Ipswich.

The games followed including renditions of In My Pants, Kitchen or Bedroom, Pick-Up Song and everyone’s favourite, Mornington Crescent. If you don’t know the rules of Mornington Crescent, it’s a complex game based on the London Tube map. The best way to understand it is to obtain a copy of the now out of print N.F. Stovoid’s Mornington Crescent: Rules & Origins. I must say I was particularly pleased when, during the game, Richard Osman played Ravenscourt Park, an obscure station I once visited in my teens and one I have never heard called in all the time I’ve been listening.

appalling

If you’ve ever wondered what 1500 kazoos sounds like I can assure you, it sounds terrible. During an attempt to play Swanee Kazoo we were invited to accompany the usual duet where members of the panel play the kazoo and the swanee whistle together. The sound from the audience was so appalling that Jack Dee had to split the audience into sections. The balcony tried to better the stalls, the red kazoos were set against the green ones and the over fifties were separated from the under fifties. The under fifties made almost no sound at all.

Other parts of the show included musical games supported by Colin Sell, who has been with the show for over 45 years, and seems to be able to play any tune from any musical genre at the drop of a hat. Other support is usually lent by the lovely Samantha. However, on this occasion she was delayed after vising a local hobby club of amateur furniture restorers. Just in time for the performance a message arrived to say that there had been a problem when the lights went out and they’d sprayed French polish over everyone present. She explained that she would get there when she could because she was busy wiping the members while the chairman cleans the spills and wax off in the dark.