You are never safe in
a capitalist society!
Just when you think that you have got the
safely-living-in-a-consumer-society thing sorted, Pebble asks for money.
To those benighted Luddites that
have no response to the word Pebble with a capital letter, other than thinking
of important stones on the sea shore, I must inform you that the company of
Pebble was originally a Kick-starter company which an early developer the
workable concept of a reasonably priced smart watch. I bought one.
No surprise there I suppose, but I did resist until the watch worked
with Mac products and it was waterproof enough to go swimming in. Oh, yes and it was made in metal because I
didn’t like the early plastic versions that they had.
The
watch was worth the money I paid. Not
because it is the best watch that I have ever owned or the most elegant – or
indeed is it the watch that I am wearing at the moment. And that final comment is one of the major
drawbacks of the whole enterprise.
The battery life of the Pebble
Metal (which I think is the name of the model that I have) is about five
days. The watch I am wearing at the
moment is powered by the sun and by the actual action of wearing it. The watch I am wearing gives time, date, etc.
it has digital and analogue and checks itself every day with some sort of
atomic clock which sends out a radio wave.
In other words, it’s magic.
But. And it’s a big ‘but’ – my smart watch has a
large and informative watch face and it also informs me when I am called on my
phone. I virtually never turn the sound
of my phone on so, as far as Toni is concerned, for this aspect alone, the
watch is worth what I paid for it. In my
particular set of circumstances, given the way I use my phone, a smart watch
works.
And there the expense could have
rested. I have my watch. Other non-Pebble companies have produced
their versions and I have carefully checked them out and they usually fail on
battery life or compatibility with Mac or, more usually than not, on being
waterproof. It seemed that I was safe.
And then Pebble started a new Kick-starter
appeal with a new watch that does something or other and is waterproof. And, out of a misplaced concept of commercial
loyalty I have joined the countless thousands of people who have probably been
Mac-trained and therefore have developed an instinctive gadget loyalty
hardwired into their wallets – and bought a new watch. Which hasn’t been made yet and for which I
will have to wait months.
But it might be engraved on the
back saying that I helped ‘Kick-start’ – so that’s all right then, isn’t
it? Oh and its plastic – and that means
that I will have to buy the metal version when it is produced. And.
And I don’t care.
Poems against arboreal
outrage!
Priceless artefacts are being smashed by religious fanatics;
corruption stalks the land; the situation in Ukraine worsens; nuclear
proliferation threatens world peace and the Israeli Prime Minister is
sinisterly terrifying – yet I get worked up about cut trees.
The car
park continues to be closed as the final remains of the twenty trees await
their final destination. Workmen are
walking around, sometimes with bits of paper and looking at where the trees
used to be with intense concentration.
A lone
workman is doing something with a pneumatic hammer and is possibly tracing out
the course of a future drain. Things
have changed.
And I sit
inside the café (all the chairs outside have been taken away for some reason)
forcing the hopelessly addicted smokers to stand around looking even more
shifty than usual, while I sip and note, sip and note.
I now have
pages (admittedly small pages) of comments and notes about what I see,
delightedly, as an outrage against the trees.
There is something determinedly
small-minded about cutting down a single tree - cutting down twenty smacks of
inhumanity. Except of course, it’s
not. There are many more important
crimes in the world, but this ‘crime’ is here and now and is a substantial part
of my world.
Like one of the cultural and
moral vultures that I denigrate, I am now using my feelings about the ‘slaughtered’
trees to provoke a poem. I have written
one (see yesterday’s post) and I fully intend to write at least one more. In a reworking of a famous French phrase:
‘What I have I use!’ It can always be
edited into oblivion, or at least a sort of oblivion, at a later date.
I am aware that anything that I
post has a sort of illusory permanence.
Though my blog is a ‘hosted’ one which means that Google can stop or
destroy it at any time they choose for any reason they choose. Which is a sobering thought. But I am not sure that I am prepared to pay a
monthly fee to own my site.
I need to take advice on this. Not sure from whom though. In the same way that I expect someone to come
to the house, knock on the door and hand me a winning Lottery tickets that have
been bought on my behalf, I also hope that advice about what to do in Blog
terms will simply happen. I should take
note that, in spite of my patience in waiting, no one has actually offered me a
ticket and therefore I need to be a little pro-active. Writing about being pro-active is stage one.
You call that art?
Conceptual art does not usually bring out the best in
people. Especially when you try and
defend it.
The Open
University course is creeping closer to the end of the twentieth century and
trying to chart a way through all the excesses of Post Modernism – a difficult
task when there is not really a settled definition of what the term means!
Still,
flicking through the final volume in our course material I can see that there
is a fairly extensive concentration of Louise Bourgeois, an artist I like and
admire. I think that we will be
concentrating on her more challenging pieces so that they can link with
concepts of race, gender, identity and everything else that the OU finds
important.
As far as I
can see, there is a lot of work in a limited amount of time. I have therefore decided to be a little more
anal in the way that I approach this assignment and study to the essay. I think it is the only way. Then my ‘release’ will be the work that I do
on the mini-thesis that ends the course.
Getting my money’s worth
Walking in to the new British Library as a full ‘reader’ is
something that I am looking forward to.
According
to a telephone call with the British Library, now in Kings Cross and not the
Reading Room of the British Library, I will be able to renew my much lapsed
Reader’s Card and pre-order books to be looked at when I am staying,
coincidentally in Kings Cross, when I go to London for the Study Day.
In the
British Library I always find that I am drawn to the fact that they have a copy
of everything ever printed in Britain and a great deal more besides. I therefore I have to resist the temptation
to order things that have nothing to do with what I am supposed to be studying!
My worst literary
digression in the old Reading Room was ordering, on the most spurious of
grounds, a first edition of ‘Noddy Goes to Toytown’. I have rarely read a more sexist and racist
book and I couldn’t remember it being quite so bad when I first read it. Mind you there was a considerable number of
years between my readings - and on my first reading I was the proud and
passionate owner of a grandmother-made golliwog!
Is one allowed to use such
vocabulary these days, even in a memory!
Stay wet!
If the important research that I have done is correct then I
should be within walking distance of a swimming pool when I am staying in the
hotel in London. I wonder if you have to
wear flip-flops and a swimming hat in London pools?
Perhaps I
am thinking in the same way as British visitors to Spain think when they worry
about forgetting the toothpaste, as if such things are not available here!
It is
second nature for me to think to myself that I could always buy what I do not
have.
When in doubt shop!
