Is design political

Core77 article on the polticial impact of design, and how it can be democratised. Keep the faith!

Bored

So I've been talking to the little people who live in my monitor stand,
and they claim that their crusade against the ring binder reinforcement
rings is over. I must say I think they're right - I certainly haven't
seen any at my desk in a long time. I must admit to feeling deeply
uncomfortable about this sort of Stationery Cleansing, though.

Now, claim the little people, the whole world is theirs, and they are
pledged to be good stewards of it and look after it. I think they're a
little bit worried about the environment, although I've promised to
tidy up all the paper.



Right now, I'm trying to encourage them to expand. I've explained to
them about Other Desks, but their reaction was extremely sceptical.
"How do we know other desks exist?" one of their mini-scientists
demanded, waving a shaving of pencil lead at me. "And if they do exist,
how do we know they will have breathable atmospheres?" I did point out
that if you go right out to the extreme limit of The Desk, it is
possible to catch sight of other Desks, but their eyesight isn't very
good, and their telescopes are laughable. They also demanded to know
how they were supposed to get there - I explained about rubber bands,
and elicited only a shocked silence.

"How fast?"

"Um. Thirty miles an hour?"

"And how big is a mile?"

I had to look it up. "It's about 170,000 centimetres." Too late I
remembered about their weird units. "Wait! A mile is... 224,000 U's.
Ish."

They laughed like hyenas at this one. At the moment, they're convinced
that they'll die if they travel more than about 30 U's an hour. One of
them managed to clamber to his feet to ask, "And how does the man with
the red flag stay in front?" Then they all collapsed back into laughter.

I waited patiently, but to no avail. They'd clearly had enough of my
nonsense. Still giggling and wiping their eyes, the little delegation
crawled back into the monitor stand.

A blue-sky thought (warning: requires socio-political criticism)

It was stupidly early in the morning, and I was on my way to Phil's
Bankruptcy Party. And I was in a filthy mood. Why I should get
out of bed at this godforsaken time, just so that the Asian half of
Phil's network could join us in a celebration that (judging
from their replies) they still didn't completely understand... well.
Idiotic. I smacked my lips together, blearily. Yuk. No prospect of
being allowed to stay on orange juice at this do, unfortunately, but
the last thing I needed was more alcohol. I swayed wearily, and let the
clatter of the tube train shake its way through my bones.



There's a definite clientele on the tube trains at five-thirty in the
morning. A few shattered clubbers, their faces leaving glitter imprints
on the windows; but mostly small men in leather jackets or industrial
high-vis tops, their chins ducked inside their collars, trying to get
to work before the world wakes up and notices them. I couldn't care
less, frankly. I hunched down and gloomily contemplated the ordeal
ahead of me.



I've been to five Bankruptcy Parties in the last month alone, and every
single time I go the bankruptee is a little more smug than the last
one. Phil would be intolerable - and I knew from bitter experience that
Phil's 'intolerable' left everyone else's far, far behind. He's a
relentless queen, a relentless, intolerable, screeching fucking pain in
the... Well. I disapprove, that's all. I'm a solvent, young, straight,
single guy, and I seriously disapprove. Call me old fashioned, but if
you can't handle money then you shouldn't be allowed any. I have had
this argument with Phil before - I think it was at his second or third
Bankruptcy Party.

"Paul, how can you be so square?" I remember him asking, wrinkling his
nose in distress and making cow eyes at me. "It's the death of the
system, that's all. How can the economy keep going if I'm not allowed
to spend money?"

"How can it operate when you don't pay your bills?" I shot back.

He looked shocked. "I do pay! I pay until I can't pay any more."

"And then some poor schmuck's business goes under."

"If I didn't pay, if I " his nose wrinkled in distaste,
"saved, then even more businesses would go under!
That's what the government says, isn't it?"

I had to concede this. That's what they were saying. They were making
it easier to declare personal bankruptcy, too. And at the same time,
they were wringing their clammy hands about the vast amount of personal
debt we were all carrying around, and trying to clamp down on the
non-money netsuke networks, where the whole thing operated on favours
and no money changed hands at all, so nobody paid tax.

I resented this. "Look, someday your debts are going to be called in, and you'll be in serious trouble."

"No I won't. I'll be bankrupt." he giggled. "Again!"

"Someday," I said darkly, "that won't be an excuse."

Phil pouted again. "You're wrong, my hirsute friend." (I had a
moustache then.) "Nations have been doing it for decades. The personal
debt market is just catching up! And goods are all made in robot
factories, so they cost next to nothing! The rest of it is money
chasing money in a panicky spiral. Well, I just stepped off the spiral
for a bit, that's all. I can get back on. Not like you, my economic
neanderthal. 'someday they'll be called in'... listen to yourself!
Someday there won't be any money at all, and I'll bet you my entire net
worth that that day will come before the day they decide to call in the
debts."

I leaned back, smiled. "And what is your entire net worth, worth?"

Phil threw back his head and squealed with drunken laughter.





Regular bankruptcy as a stepping-stone to a non-monetary economy? Any thoughts, anyone?

Half-heard/half-seen (1): Om Ianks talks to Aga magazine.

Om Ianks ("It's pronounced 'Yannax'", he adds with a twinkle in his
eye) readjusts his poncho and offers me another yak's milk cookie. His
dojo is a light, airy room; serenity oozes from the wood panelling -
where it isn't obscured by enamelled pasty adverts. Om gives a genteel
belch. "Just as the kitchen is the centre of the home, the Aga is the
centre of the kitchen. Therefore, to feel as centred as possible, all
the acolytes who visit our retreats are encouraged to spend time at the
Aga. As meditative practice, we seek the perfect shortcrust pastry."

Pastry?

"It's like life - the search for ingredients, the travelling and
exploration of the external... then the moving inwards, the alchemy of
creation, the combination of the external and the creative spirit to
perfect the internal and complete the circle. Here, we communicate that
by the creation of pie." His eyes twinkle. "Our Agas are fundamental to
our way of life."



Om has Agas to thank for some of the most meaningful moments in his
life. When he started out as a freelance sculptural welder, travelling
through the artist colonies of the Yorkshire Dales, he never intended
to become a modern guru. "My life then was simple," he muses. "I'd get
up, reconcile modernism and sculptural demonstratism, negotiate a
price, then get out the welding kit and bash on. But it was all so
shallow. I was all steel sheet - I lacked ballast. Now I've added some
cast iron to my life - and I'm trying to bring that lesson to as many
people as I can get 'old of." He shifts gently - I must admit,
two hours in a position he calls 'the Durham Lotus' are starting
to take their toll on my elbows.



It may seem a revolutionary concept - the shortcrust path to
enlightenment - but in fact it has a noble tradition. Or would, if I
could be bothered to think of one. But I can't. And I'll bet this is
still a more interesting article than the one in Saga magazine about
Tom Hanks, which momentarily confused me in the hospital waiting room
this afternoon.

Mugs - scientifically, like.

There clearly isn't
an optimum shape for a mug. Otherwise we'd have found it by now.
But...

...there must be a
shape which makes sure that the tea (or other hot beverage, take your pick - for
the purposes of this discussion let's assume it's tea) (Earl Grey - in fact,
let's assume it's Green Earl Grey because I haven't had any in a while and I
miss it). (Mmmm).

Where was I? Oh
yeah.

There must be a mug
shape which first cools the tea quickly, then keeps it drinkable for the longest
period of time. Let's make some assumptions (yay! I like this
bit):

1. There is a range
of 'drinkable' temperature - say, 45-30 degrees celsius. Below this, tea is
tepid and nobody wants to drink it. Above it, the tea is too
hot.

2. People's rate of
drinking is related to temperature. Let's assume they drink it fastest at about
40 degrees.

3. Let's assume that
the profile is not allowed to 'bottleneck' - for the purposes of cleaning, the
mug isn't allowed to narrow at the top. Actually, that's a bit harsh - I have
several mugs at home which do just that. But it makes the maths trickier - is
there reflected heat from the insides? - but I guess we'll have to allow it.
Okay. But only a little bit. Great. Now we're going to need a computer to work
this out. Sheesh.

4. Also for the
purposes of practicality, the mug isn't allowed to narrow down to less than an
inch in diameter.

5. But it can be as
tall as you like (you can take practicality too far, you
know).

So the aim of the
game is to keep the temperature of the tea within the drinkable range until it's
all drunk. Now, I reckon it should go something like this: the top should be
flared, like a trumpet. That way, you start off with a big surface area and the
tea will cool quickly. Then, assuming that the drinker starts to sip it while
it's still technically too hot, the mug should narrow down fairly quickly to the
point where the tea is now at the top edge of the drinkable range. Then, the
belly of the mug can maybe open out (just a bit)... although that will increase
the surface area so it might increase the cooling rate (damn), so maybe better
to just go vertically down... until we reach the bottom, when the tea could be
nearing the bottom range of 'drinkable', when the surface should start blending
in to a nice, curvy bottom.

It's possible that
the best shape might involve having a mug that as narrow as possible, so we'll
end up with something like a trumpet balanced on a straw... but hey. It'd be a
fun investigation, anyway. Anyone know any students looking for a project?
There's plenty to do. Yo'd have to find out about the drinkable range. Then
measure people's rates of consumption at different temperatures. Then there's
some juicy simulation work to determine the reflected heat (if you're going to
include narrowing at the top - otherwise you could probably get away without
it). Choice of materials, colours, etc. Finally a bit of design work to pretty
it up a bit.

What fun... for
someone else!



(PS Denby make my favourite mugs - see below!)

Designing for the super-rich

There's an article
in February's Engineering (a publication noted normally only for its extreme
glossiness and abysmal grammar) on a design team refitting a standard jet plane
(an Airbus A319, apparently) into a pop star's luxury flying machine, complete
with games room and bar. My first reaction to this, I must admit, was disgust.
The amount of pollution which this thing will pump into the upper atmosphere in
order to transport one over-preened youth and twenty of his closest sycophants
around the world should make any environmentally-aware person cringe. It's like
a stretch Humvee - there's really no excuse. Surely, it would be more
responsible to guide the young super-rich into blowing their money on some sleek
dart of an "uber-Lear Jet", which will be cleaner and quicker, as well as
smaller and more elegant?

But then I had
second thoughts. For one thing, celebrities have a rather short shelf-life, and
rather a lot of money. Commercial jets cost a lot of money, but have a much
longer shelf-life. Presumably these planes could be refitted as standard
airliners, once Zoom Bo'Dansa and his buddies have stopped selling records? Or
maybe they could be refitted for each pop brat in turn with only minor tweaks.
So the idea of using a durable, workhorse shell with a frothy interior has some
merits - afer all, something sleeker might not have quite the same commercial
afterlife. Or at least, its afterlife will remain as carting small numbers of
rich people round the globe. Per person-mile, might the Lear Jet not end up the
more environmentally expensive?

In general, one has
to own up to the fact that these people have money and they want to spend it. On
the face of it, the most ecofriendly advice would be to spend it on services,
rather than products - designers, masseurs, butlers, bodyguards, etc. Spend your
money on people rather than things. (Of course, then these people go out and
spend their money on things, but they're more likely to spend it on
mass-produced, low-ecofootprint products, rather than bloody great planes. Or
stretch Humvees). But isn't this sort of personal-service culture one which died
at the end of the First World War? In social terms, wouldn't it be a massive
retrograde step, a return to the days of 'below-stairs' servitude? Well,
probably not - for one thing, personal service has always been around, and as a
way of making a living, aromatherapy is a lot more fun than, say, assembling
electonics. Supply and demand will dictate the levels of personal service
provision - and todays service providers aren't the downtrodden daughters of
housekeepers, but qualified professionals backed up by chartered institutions
and knowledge transfer networks.

I bought a book

...this, in itself, is no great surprise. What is a surprise is this
one wasn't science fiction - it was a collection (and I quote) of
'small rules for little problems'.



Sounds like another checkout-book, doesn't it? One of those little
books hanging around at the counter, lurking, waiting to pounce on any
poor shoper addled by the bright colours, and weakened to the point of
impulse buying. The Little Book of Feng Shui ("For good luck, put a
fishbowl with thirteen goldfish in it in your hallway. If one dies, do
not worry - simply replace it") was the last time I made such an error.




This, though, caught my eye with the following, on the question of
tidying up: "Everything in life has its proper place. If it's not in
that place it's officially untidy. If the thing doesn't have a proper
place in the first place then it's officially rubbish." Speaking as
someone who has spent the last two months climbing over boxes, this hit
me with the force of some great revelation. I couldn't have been more
impressed if a burning bush had appeared right there in Fopps.
(Preferably in the r'nb/hip hop section, where it could do the least
damage. Culturally, anyway).



Wot the blazes is it called, anyway? Oh, right: 'Never Push when it
says Pull', by some bloke called Guy Browning. A modern-day guru, by
anyone's standards.

I want one of these (1): Lumen

Gorgeous, simple, clever. what's not to like?

The guy has several different designs - I particularly like the seagull one.

The Great Jaffa Cake Cake-off

Introduction

While I was in the
supermarket the other day, I noticed that Mcvities, that great purveyor of the
English biscuit, have introduced several new flavours of the renowned Jaffa
Cake. In addition to the original orange, there is now Lemon and Lime, and
Blackcurrant. I resolved to test these new flavours, and also to determine
whether there was any difference between the supermarket own-brand Jaffa Cakes,
and Mcvities originals.

Method

First, Jaffa Cakes
were purchased from a Sainsbury's supermarket I went past on the way home.
Flavours purchased were: Sainsbury's basics Jaffa Cakes (orange flavour,
obviously), Mcvities orange, lemon and lime, and ribenaberry*. These were then
displayed, and test subjects (everyone at my work) were invited to sample them
and were asked:

1. Compared to the
smashing orangey bit, how smashing is the lemon and limey bit? Or the
ribenaberry bit?

2. What's the
difference between the Sainsbury's value and the original orange
ones?

Apparatus

Jaffa Cakes. (NB
this test did not include the rumoured milk chocolate Jaffa Cake, as these are
an offence against nature).

Plates.

Cups of tea (or
coffee).

Results

Answers to the above
questions varied. On the question of smashingness, reaction to the two new
flavours was muted. Pretty much everyone preferred the original (which
incidentally has an extra calorie per cake - make of that what you will). The
lemon and lime scored well, but the blackcurrant was not considered a success.
However, what was interesting was that the first box to be finished was the
blackcurrant flavour. Hmmm...

On the question of
the difference between the Sainsbury's value and the Mcvities original, almost
everyone agreed that the inside of the cake was a different colour. Most people
could not detect a difference in overall taste, although a few claimed to prefer
the original, and one person preferred the Sainsbury's. This may have been out
of confusion, however, as some joker mixed up the packs early on in the
experiment (he knows who he is, and everybody else does, too, don't they,
Keith). The Sainsbury's 'basics' cakes were noted
to have marginally less smashing orangey bit (SOB), but the smashingness of the
orangey bit was considered comparable to the Mcvities SOB. When the
components were nibbled off individually, the Mcvities cake was considered
superior, while the SOB in each cake was considered identical, as was the
chocolate.

Discussion

I'm really liking
the BBC's theme tune for their Commonwealth Games coverage. It's imbecilically
simple, but I like it. It gets me all excited whenever I hear it (probably
shouldn't tell you that).

Conclusion

Considering that
Sainsbury's basics Jaffa Cakes are half the price, you certainly get more
smashingness to the pound. However, the authors of this paper suggest that there
is a Law of Diminishing Marginal Smashiness, since prolonged exposure to
Sainsbury's jaffa cakes did appear to increase the subject's appreciation for
the Mcvities ones.

Don't bother with
the blackcurrant ones, either. I ate a whole one without ever realizing what
flavour it was.

Oh my God! I went to
the nicecupofteaandasitdown.com website looking for a diagram of a Jaffa Cake,
and what do I find? They've just done their own review! Love those Bahlsen
Messino ones, by the way. Didn't have 'em in Sainsburys, but they are very
scrummy.

*For those unaware
of the Ribenaberry's taxonomy, in the Linnaean system you will find it as
follows: Kingdom Fantastico, Phylum Anthropomorphica, Order Cutesi, Family
Advertisa, Genus Ribena, Species Ribenaberry. There may be subspecies. I'm
pretty sure that's it, but my Linnaean isn't really very good. I don't even know
where Linnaea is.

My feng shui dilemma

Should I stay or should I go now?

The rescue teams know where you are - your best bet is to stay put.

 

 2

My horoscope says a change is as good as a rest to a blind watchmaker learning new tricks. I think that means you should move.

 

 9

I have a dilemma.

The desk next to
mine at work has been free for a while now, and I can't decide whether to move
over to it or not. My current hovel is quite exposed - I basically work with my
back to most everybody, in an open plan office, so everyone can see when I'm
looking at whatever dumb website peter's posted recently. What's more, my back
is to the door and there's a clear line of sight straight to my desk - so the
first sight confronting any visitor is my desk, which is always covered in shyte
(that's how I know I'm a creative type). The other desk, by contrast, has its
back to the wall and surveys the rest of the office. It also has control of the
thermostat (mwah ha ha). The only person who would still be able to see that I'm
looking at Barbie collectables on eBay would be my boss (can't get out of that
one, unfortunately. Boss-man will always be able to look over my shoulder, at
either desk).

On the other hand,
from my current desk I can look out over to the hills south of Edinburgh (still
some snow on them). The other one doesn't have much of a view of anything.
What's more, my office is ludicrously quiet, and the only people who regularly
converse are me and the guy I sit next to. If I move, I'll be moving away from
him and that could make the office even quieter (if that's even possible).

So, to
summarize:

Current
desk:

1. Better
view

2. Don't know what's
going on behind me (and everything happens behind me).

3. Bad feng shui
(exposed back)

4. Covered in
junk

5. Conversationally
enhanced

Other
desk:

1. Much more
snug

2. No
view

3. Control of
thermostat (extra responsibility - probably not worth a pay raise,
though)

4. Would immediately
become covered in junk when I moved there, but no visitors need ever
know.

5. Better feng shui
- with my back to the wall, I would be able to observe my fellow workers and
take appropriate steps in the case of any of them going
postal.

On the mediated experience

I was singing in a
choir concert at the weekend - and we were awesome, thanks for asking. Britten
and Tippett aren't the most easily digested composers, and a whole concert
unaccompanied was pretty scary, but damn me if we didn't drop a semitone in an
hour and a quarter, and we - well, we kicked ass, frankly. We were
fantastic.

But that's not what
I wanted to talk about. I was listening to the girls singing their girls-only
bit, and it struck me that I never go to choral concerts as audience. I just
don't find them exciting. I love singing, and I love performing - there's a real
rush to be had from being in amongst a group of great singers when you just know
there's a big moment coming up - but as something to experience from the
stalls... well, not really my bag, thanks. So I was wondering why this was,
and how I'd change the performance to make it more interesting, and I came up
with an interesting concept:

If you built a big
wall between the choir and the audience, I'd find it a lot easier to empathize
with the choir and get excited about the music.

As a spectacle, you
see, a choir is essentially a bunch of people standing still, with just their
mouths working. There's immense effort going on, but it simply doesn't
communicate visually. At least an orchestra looks like it's working a bit - all
those violinists with their elbows pumping - but a choir is a very boring thing
to watch. And if you get it right, choral music (especially churchy stuff,
which it mostly is) is supposed to sound transcendent, ethereal - other-worldly.
Beyond the experience of medieval peasants. Inhuman, perhaps. For me, that makes
it a difficult thing to empathize with, and if there's no empathy with the
performers, then there's no performance.

So the pure
unexpurgated experience of watching a choir sing is pretty dull. I need
something extra to mediate the experience - in my case, a six foot high wall. My
ears and my imagination understand the effort and skill going into the
performance; my eyes just don't believe it.

So it's only just
occurred to me that this is what mediated experience is - it's removing stuff
from the original (leaving bits of movies on the cutting room floor, retouching
colours, cleaning paintings, digitising sound) in order to enhance the
experience. It's reductive. It's distillation. It's funny, but I've never
thought of it in those terms.It's not the only way, though - I was discussing
this with one of the other guys in the choir, and he was telling me about a
singing group he belongs to who make a point of moving around while
they perform. That sounds like a good option - a way of energizing the
performance, of humanizing it.It's also additive - movement gets added to the
singing to enhance the experience.

But I'm drifting.
I wanted to talk about one particular form of mediation which some of us
experience twenty-four seven. I'm talking about those people who wear glasses.

It's always a shock
to me to take my glasses off. Being very shortsighted, I wear glasses* all the
time, and most of the time I don't notice that my experience of the world is
mediated by two bits of glass (and a light misting of dirt and grease - I'm very
lazy about cleaning them). But it does mean that my view of the world has a
frame around it, and sometimes this can be a bit of a surprise. Wearing glasses
puts a distance between you and the world, as any psychologist will
confirm.Obviously they enhance my visual experience (which is otherwise
a wobbly smear). But the point is, they're a form of mediation of the visual
experience, and I'm wondering: what other effects does this mediation have on my
view of the world? How does it make my experience different from someone with
20/20 vision? I dunno - does it perhaps make movies more believable (after all,
my world normally takes place in a square frame already)?

*Contact lenses make
my eyes hurt, okay? Don't think I haven't tried.

I am ill

Not life-threateningly ill. Not even stuck-at-home ill. But I'm ill
nonetheless. I say this because I've actually been ill for more than
nine years, but it's only in the last six months that I've actually
admitted it to myself. I have ulcerative colitis, which normally gets
lumped into the rather broad group of illnesses that get called
Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It's basically an inflammation of the lower
intestine, which causes pain and prevents you from really digesting
food properly. It's also one of those diseases which until you've got
it, you've never heard of, but suddenly when you start to talk about it
you realize there's a huge number of sufferers.



One of the problems with being ill over a long period is that you
forget what being truly healthy is like. I'm generally okay - a few
weeks ago I went skiing, and managed to out-ski almost everybody there.
When I got home, however, I crashed and burned for about two days,
because unlike most people I simply have no reserves of strength; when
I start to fade, I go downhill rapidly. When I had no peripheral
worries and could concentrate on skiing, I was fine - but as soon as I
was home, and I had all those normal niggling worries of life gnawing
at the edges of my attention, I struggled. I tire easily, I get bored
easily, I get emotional and fractious. I get abdominal pains - mostly
nasty trapped wind, but sometimes genuinely ominous stabbing pains with
no apparent cause. I have one particularly delicate point in my
gut, near my left hip, which always hurts if I press it. Just
recently a new and alarming symptom has reared its ugly head - anemia.
I spent a week in bed, unable to do anything more strenuous than the
washing up without feeling dizzy.



So what do I do to control my condition? Easy: nothing.



To be honest, there's not a lot I can do. I've tried different diets,
and basically come to the conclusion that my condition is 100%
stress-related. Now, the weird thing is that anyone looking at my
lifestyle would assume that I am under very little stress indeed - my
job is very very low-stress, I do some exercise but not an excessive
amount, I sing in a choir and I play lacrosse occasionally, I drink and
dance in moderation - so I have a very quiet, well-balanced lifestyle.



And yet there it is, a stress-related illness.



Partly, I can pass it off as genetic - my family suffers from a range
of diseases which (this is my theory, anyway) can be put down to not
handling stress gracefully. My mum has... thing with scalp, oh, damn,
forgot the name... psoriasis! My sister has psoriatical arthritis
(yeah, I got off lightly). I get ulcerative colitis. It's my theory
that there's some sort of link between the three. But it
must also be to do with the way I live my life, and
that really undermines my self-confidence, because I worry about the
direction my life is going. I worry about the big things: I have a
professional career as an engineer, but I'm not really very good at it.
I live on my own, and I've been single for a while now. I live at the
opposite end of the country to most of my family. Finally, I'm not one
of those people who makes friends easily.



The question is: what is my body trying to tell me? Where did I go
wrong? Did I go wrong? How the hell does my body
know, anyway? If I quit my job and moved back in with my parents, did a
degree in journalism and started all over again, would my health
improve, or worsen?



I just can't help thinking that my health is strongly intertwined with
my lifestyle, but I can't find the crucial thread. The only options
left seem pretty radical, and pretty terrifying. So I content myself
with doing little things (current project: buying my own house) in the
hope that some little extra comfort will lull my digestive system back
to sleep.



But I can't help feeling that I should be doing something radical. If only I knew what.

Where is this going? A fragment a la Calum (but a bit longer)

    "Do you fancy going somewhere else?"

She laughs, throwing her head back. She's wearing a velvet choker, with
a bell on it, like the collar on a cat. I like that, it's a nice
conceit. But I can feel the moment slipping. She leans into me, shouts,
"Now? But I've only just got here!"

I shrug, "Is it cold out?"

She looks at me, then nods, vigorously.

"Then let's go somewhere warmer!"

She draws back, looks into my eyes, laughs. Then she kisses me. I draw
her face in, sliding my face past her lips. They feel wonderful on my
smooth cheeks. That's something I never get used to, the late-night
smoothness. It's wonderful.  

"Boy, you're in a hurry!"

I smile, nod, look away. Yes, I am. A desperate hurry.

"I'm Cinderella!" I shout back. "After midnight I turn into a pumpkin!"

She laughs again, shakes her head. Looks into my eyes with a half-smile. "Is it something that a fairy godmother can fix?"

I smile and shake my head. No.  " I'm catching a plane!" I explain. "Have to be at the airport by midnight."

She nods., leans forward, throws an arm over. "Well," she breathes, "I
guess I'd just better make the most of you while i've got you.."



So we kiss, which at this point is all I could even dream of. Lust has
weakened, shifted; moved an octave higher. And unless I'm not quick,
it'll soon be joined by other things.



I disengage breathlessly, blow a last goodbye kiss (she gives a little
moue of disappointment, but smiles when she realizes she can't persuade
me to stay, and turns back to her friends), and head out. I make sure
I'm shucking on my jacket as I pass the bouncers - I don't want them to
get a clear view of my face, not now.



It's not a steady thing, my condition. Every cycle's the same, but
within each cycle it's patchy. It's like some sort of dance - quick,
quick, slow, quick, slow. That's probably a good thing, because
otherwise by this time of night I'd barely be able to walk. As it is,
I'm nervous and feeling vulnerable. I tuck my chin deep into my jacket,
and dive from sodium patch to sodium patch, trying not to accelerate as
I skirt the darkness of the Meadows.

I've left it late tonight (and underneath the collar of my jacket I
grin - boy was it worth it), and I can feel the occasionally curious
glance thrown at me. I can feel people wondering: who'd let their child
out so obviously past their bedtime?



I went to a doctor once. At first he didn't believe me, so I went away
and came back an hour later. Then I practically had to break his arm to
get out, he was so excited. Thirty seconds in there was enough to
persuade me that the 'program' he was mapping out was an
extraordinarily bad idea. Specialists, tests... world fame, a life as a
freak. Guaranteed. I'd never survive. I left; I didn't answer his
calls. When social services came round, I let them in, was very polite,
told them I was my own grandfather. Who wouldn't believe it? The truth
is too stupid to be true.



In ancient times, communities (I think this is in the bible, but I'm
not sure) used to get together and symbolically heap all their sins
onto a goat, which they'd then kick out of the village to wander into
the desert, taking everyone's sins with it. That's where the word
'scapegoat' comes from. I sometimes wonder if that's what happened to
me, that I've become sort of a scapegoat for everybody., for my whole
society. That somehow we've been guilty of some sin of time - there's
plenty of condidates. The whole Cult of Youth, banishing signs of
ageing - mine woujld be an excellent punishment for that, although
probably the wrong way round. Or possibly the sin of trying to cram too
much into our lives; definitely appropriate, although I've never been
particularly good at that even before.

Sometimes, when the feeling that I'm being punished lies heavily on me, I simply wonder whether this is what hell is like.



I reach the flat - blessed relief, sanctuary. My space, where I can be
as weird as I want. Well, no, that's not right - after a lifetime of
this you think I want more weirdness? No. Here, I can just be as weird
as I am. The cat miaows reproachfully, unused to being left alone for
so long. I pick here up and fuss over her for a bit, but I'm startled
to realize she's getting heavy - a really bad sign. I hurry to get to
bed.



I tried, for a while, to stay awake through the night, to witness my
own metamorphosis. How do I go from a newborn to an old man? How does
it happen? I still don't know - never mind the question of staying
awake, how much do you remember from your first few years of life?
Every morning I wake up too startled by the muddying aches of age to
really focus on it, and by the time I've thought 'how did I get here?'
It's already started to fade, dissolving like a dream. So I don't know.
I  think there's a light at the end of a long tunnel, and I can
hear voices... nah, I'm just kidding. I have no idea. When I go to bed,
I’m a child of somewhere between twelve and six. When I wake up, I’m an
old man of about eighty. I simply come to, out of a dreamless sleep. My
soul dragged from the depths for another go round. I wonder if it goes
anywhere in the meantime. Maybe it just hovers for a second, so that if
I woke up at exactly midnight, I’d open my eyes to find myself looking
down from the ceiling, like one of those out-of-body experiences people
say they have. Looking down on maroon walls, the black-iron bed, that
ludicrous duvet cover with the fish on it (really must get rid of that
– my poor soul must writhe in embarrassment. Serve it right, the
bastard thing). A moment floating free between childhood and being
rammed into some disccated hulk of wrinkled flesh



I sleep naked; I'm too scared of throttling my young self (or fatally
constricting my older version) to wear anything. The bed seems huge,
the room cold, impossibly adult and unwelcoming. I turn on the
nightlight. I blush as I do it, I feel so utterly foolish; but I know
I'll be glad of it if I wake before midnight. I never liked the dark
when I was a kid.

I know the morning will be a struggle. At least old people don't need
much sleep, so I normally wake up early. A good thing, because it takes
me a while to remember where I am, and who I am, and what's
happening/happened/will happen to me.



But hey, I found a girl, talked to her, had a snog. That was worth a
lot. That made my day - made my week, hell, it  made my month,
frankly. People say you get used to living alone - I think you can get
used to poverty of all sorts, and this is just another. It doesn't make
you any less impoverished.



It came on gradually, my... condition. I was in my late twenties. At
first I didn't even notice, then I told myself that this was just
natural ageing, that I was not very good at mornings. I'd be very
lethargic early in the day, haggard and creaky, but by seven or eight
in the evening I could take on the world. It was great, and I abused it
to the full. Mornings were discounted as hangovers, evenings were a
long round of barely-remembered drunken exploits. But it didn't take
long for the hangovers to really seriously take their toll, and I’d be
struck down by hangovers that seemed to have matured and fermented for
thirty years, distilling their pain and weakness until I called a halt
to the whole thing. Then I improved (surprise), but it was temporary.
By the time I was thirty-two, I could see the differences between
myself and my friends. They were able to go for longer (I'd be
completely legless by ten o'clock, and if I insisted on staying up I'd
end the evening throwing up and crying until some random girl's
maternal instincts kicked in and they bundled me into a cab). I would
always have recovered by lunchtime, but the early hours of the morning
were full of heart palpitations, spots before my eyes, palsied shaking
and generally a total inability to move. So I knocked the drinking on
the head, and it got better for a while. But then I began to descend
again, and by now I couldn't pretend this was anything normal. Thus
far, I've had no explanation. I probably shouldn't complain too much
about that, seeing as I've hidden from the doctors who might have come
up with something, but I can't help the occasional, sneaking feeling
that I'll wake up some morning and find a bejewelled demon sitting at
the bottom of my bed with a clipboard, who'll take one look at me and
say, "Well, how do you feel? Pretty sorry for yourself, I should hope.
Last week was for stealing plums from Mr Petwin's greengrocers when you
were nine. From today we'll be moving onto the next deadly sin, which
is, ah yes, sloth. Oh deary dear, quite a list in this category..."

...but it never happens. Metamorphosis, huh. At least Kafka's sorry bugger had some family to kill him when it all got too much.



Presumably, I'll get to the point where my morning reincarnation will
be into a body which is so old that it'll already be dead, and the
whole charade will be over. Until then, though... well, I’ve got a job,
I've got a life. I own my own flat, I have friends. I get by. I don't
get out as much as I'd like, but hey, who does?

Surface Roughness Testing 2006

Opportunities for Cowardice (1) - househunting

It's a terrible thing, to be a bright, self-aware, creative person and
at the same time a complete coward. Less intelligent people might be
able to excuse their behaviour by saying they simply didn't spot the
opportunity to do something, but I can't honestly allow myself that. I
notice opportunities for cowardice more often than I like to admit.



For some reason, house-hunting shows up my yellow streak more than
almost anything else. I hate it. When I think of having to poke around
someone else's home, a wave of exhaustion sweeps over me.
Intellectually, I know that the sellers want people to look round; they
want people interested, they'd be delighted for me to turn up on their
doorstep. And it's not even as bad as that; up here there are specific,
agreed-on times for public viewings, so I'd just need to turn up on a
Tuesday evening and the whole process is well-understood. It's actually
quite difficult for me to get it wrong: and what would 'wrong'
constitute anyway?



So why do I loathe it so?



It's not even as if I haven't been through it before - although I am a
first-time buyer (heinous phrase), I went through the process of buying
a flat in Bristol, which only fell through at (almost literally) the
last minute. So I understand the process of purchase.



Is it the pressure of having to deal with lots of people? Perhaps.
That's probably the most likely reason. I'm terrible with
confrontation. House-hunting is, perhaps, the most confrontational thing
I am currently doing. The weird thing is that I am very competitive in
sports and games, but for some reason that isn't carrying over into
real life. Why? I don't know. Low self-esteem? Lack of inter-personal
contact? Well, duh. I'm entrusting this to the internet - what makes
you think I have a lack of inter-personal contact?



But it doesn't feel like I've hit the root of the problem here. Is it
something to do with the compromises involved? That's probably
something to do with it. I'm a terrible perfectionist, and I have great
difficulty in choosing what to sacrifice when it comes to compromise.
And of course I'm looking for exactly the same things as everyone else,
and on a single person's income it's difficult to compete. But money
isn't the concern.



Maybe it is the competition aspect of the whole thing. I don't honestly
know; but I shall be asking myself once again tomorrow - Sunday
afternoon is House-hunter's Time in Edinburgh.