Where are they now and what have they done?

As Noel Coward never wrote, “It’s extraordinary how potent cheap cardboard is!”

This seemingly nonsensical perversion of the original quotation was in my mind because Toni is clearing out boxes of things that he has not looked at for years.  As I was typing on the third floor I could hear little squeaks of pleasure from a floor below as each old-new item was brought into the light.

Lots of them were tickets: a ticket to a Wales v Italy game in Cardiff; a ticket to “We Will Rock You; another to The Tower of London; an entry to an ‘adventure’ park in Mexico; a ground plan of the Prado in Madrid; a year book showing me with 11D, my last form; a stand ticket to Cardiff City; a ticket for the Mecano musical in Madrid – these ageing pieces of card, some from almost twenty years ago were not just reminders of places visited, but also with whom, and the development of a relationship.

The speed with which plan, followed ticket, followed photograph was a breathless cavort through a couple of decades of life past and a consequent focus on life present.

This ripping open of memories actually chimed in with a piece of writing that I was attempting to start that centered on somebody musing about where his schoolfriends were now.  As I wanted to portray a retired person (like myself) I was thinking about how many of my schoolfriends I knew about.  They are now all of retirement age, so how many have I kept track of?

And the answer is very few.  

With confidence I can only claim to know one friend form my schools and he I have now known for fifty-six years.  

Of my class from Primary school I now know no one.  The lives of the two classmates that came with me to the same high school are closed books now.  One classmate from my area of the city I know about because he is a national figure.  Just two people out of thirteen years of education!

My secondary school produced professionals, so the probability is that the majority of my fellow students became doctors, teachers, researchers, engineers, academics, managers, businessmen, media sorts, thriving in their chosen professions, becoming well known within their own circles, but not achieving break out international fame.

I wonder if, like those pieces of card unearthed from an ignored plastic case, there would be a similar breathlessness, if all the grown up kids that I have been educated with could be brought together and what we have (or haven't) achieved through the years would amount to.

Speculation, but interesting speculation.  What difference have we made.  Though talking about a 'we' when it is merely a concept as there is nothing 'real' to link us all, apart from the happenstance that we shared teachers at some times in our lives and well before we had started out on our chosen professions.

My father always said that he never went to reunions because, "You send the first five minutes saying what you are doing now and then you get down to the real purpose of these affairs, drinking!"  And my father was no great drinker!

Perhaps speculation is best safely left to subject matter in literature - or even what I might write!

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please feel free to click the 'Follow' button on the top right of this page or you might like leave a comment.

If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to:                                                smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

Nothing is easy

“Computers make things easier!”

There was a time when that little mantra might have been a source of fond hope.  There was, who knows how long ago, a sort of tipping point where the manifest failures of new technology were offset by the promise that after a few tweaks everything would be button pushing easy!

I remember as a smallish child I was given a Maths Computer to try out by a friend of the family, no, bugger that designation, he was my uncle in all but name.  He was a maths lecturer and was able to get his hands onto all the newest technology and I was privileged to try it out.  And it was, indeed exciting to feel that one was in the vanguard of modern education – well, more playing around with a gadget, even if that gadget was to do with maths!

As this ‘computer’ was in the late 1950s you might wonder what it looked like.  It was basically a long metal box with a little Perspex window in the centre with a coin-shaped cut out on the bottom right edge, and with a large button to be pushed along a notched groove parallel with the right hand side.  To work the machine, it had to be pre-loaded with a series of cards on which there were maths questions.  You used the button to load up a card which then presented the viewer with a maths question that you read through the little Perspex window and there was a space underneath the window for you to write in your answer.  After the answer was written, you pushed the button up a notch; your answer was now behind the window and the official answer was revealed and you could put a tick or a cross in the little coin cut out and push the button on to get a new question and a new space for your answer!

How cute that now seems!  And there were design flaws as the mechanism rucked up the paper and the whole thing had to be disassembled to get it going again.  But the excitement of being a pioneer never left me and unfortunately dictated my technology buying infatuation for the future.

As soon as they became available for general consumption I bought calculators, digital watches, handheld computers, personal assistants, computers, radios, cameras – you name it and I bought it, as long as it had electronic thingies making it function.

And most of them failed or crashed or simply let you down.  One computer, my Sinclair QL, actually reduced me to tears after the keyboard froze and, in spite of my plaintive pleadings with it to work, it steadfastly did not.  I retired to my bedroom and sobbed into the pillow knowing that I would have to work all night to get the work done that I had to do by the morrow.  Those were the days when ‘saving’ a document could take a couple of minutes and the computer would be inoperative during this time.  I hadn’t saved and I had to redo.  I went to bed at 6.30 am and got up at 7.30 am for a full day in school!

And that was not the only time that faith in computers was misplaced.  How many program failures, software failures and messages like “FATAL SYSTEM ERROR!” with a digital bomb fizzing on the screen have seared themselves into my technological memory.  I can remember buying programs where the developers encouraged users to report failures so that the inevitable bugs could be ironed out.  Bug free was the impossible dream; bug ridden was the everyday reality.

But when things worked it was like magic!  And that remembered ecstasy was enough to get one through the difficult times when nothing appeared to be working, nothing would print, nothing would load up properly and the screen was blank.  But we were encouraged to think that all the machines (all the expensive machines when you compare them with what you get for your money now) that we used were John the Baptist Computers, all of them preparing the Way for The Computer that would truly be The One!  I’m still waiting!

Where, you might ask, does all this come from?  What has prompted this remembrance of technological pain past?  The simple answer is, buying a ticket on line.

For the first time in a long time I am not going to the opera alone.  I have a fellow enthusiast accompanying me!  As I am a season ticket holder I can get a small discount on extra tickets and I offered to purchase a ticket in the hope that the discount would be able to buy us a cup of coffee at the interval at least.  As it turns out the discount may stretch to a couple of small beers, if we are lucky.  But that is not the point; the point is that simply purchasing the thing was a bind.

Buying a ticket has to be thought of in terms of how easy using the computer is to purchase it compared with picking up the phone and doing it via a real person at the other end of the line.

It took me two attempts and to complete the operation (in spite of the fact that I am a registered season ticket holder) and necessitated re-setting my pass word for the boking site; using the details on my credit card; using details on my season ticket; taking a code from my mobile phone; taking a further code from my email account; filling in part of a form; deciding just which of the many reductions I was entitled to; other bits and pieces and, finally, printing out the ticket myself on my own machine – and for all this I was charged a €1.50 fee for -  what exactly?

Would it have been easier on the phone?  I think the answer is probably yes, it would have been easier, but my ticket might have been waiting for me in the theatre, rather than being in my hot little hands. 

And, as usual, I will know what to do the next time round.  This is the ‘Billy Bookcase Syndrome’ based on the famous bookcase of the same name in IKEA.

The Billy bookcase is one of the basic pieces of furniture that is sold in the millions.  Countless people have unpacked the bits, looked at the illustrated page of instructions and thought to themselves, “Well, this can’t be that difficult!”  Then they try and make it and find that, yes, the basic principles are fine and easy to understand, but then the ‘why didn’t they mention’ element creeps into the creation: the unstated assumptions of the obvious that neophytes need to know, nay, need to be told.  And as you make the first Billy bookcase you know that the second and succeeding ones are going to be so much easier.  In reality, of course, that attitude is one of the ‘saving lies’ by which we live our lives.  However, the general principle holds true: the second time is easier than the first.

The real tragedy of this shared experience is that the results of that experience are not shared and therefore do not appear to inform a reworking of the instructions to include the things that you thought you didn’t need to point out.

Remember, we live in a world where someone bought a mobile home and when the owner went on a drive they put the home into ‘automatic’ and then went to make a cup of tea, as they assumed that ‘automatic’ meant that the thing would drive itself.  After the inevitable crash, the owner of the van sued the manufacturer for not making it clear what ‘automatic’ would and wouldn’t do!  And won. 

If that story is any reflection on the standard of public understanding then it is difficult to imagine any set of rules for anything like building a pre-fabricated bookcase being smaller than War and Peace!

But in my specific case I say, bring on the next person who wants me to buy a ticket for the Opera, I’m prepared!  I think.


If you have enjoyed reading this post, please feel free to click the 'Follow' button on the top right of this page or you might like to leave a comment.

If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to:                                                smrnewpoems.blogspot.com