All you need to do!

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Psion.

I wonder if that word means anything to you?  It brings a wry smile of almost satisfaction to me because I can relate to it directly and remember the pride with which my casual use of . . .

But I get beyond myself. 

In my largest (within hand reach, I’m not going to make that much effort) dictionary, The Encarta Dictionary  2,175 pages, it does not get a single mention. 

The Internet, however, suggests that Psion is a name that will be familiar to groups of people with whom I am not familiar: Gamers, Comic aficionados and the like.  Psion is a whole character class in Dungeons and Dragons, no less.  And in what sounds like an extract from one of the sci-fi, pseudo-scientific books in which psionic (i.e. telepathic and beyond) abilities are taken as the norm, it would appear that the word psion (J/ψ) refers to a subatomic particle, a flavour-neutral meson consisting of a charm quark and a charm antiquark.

As interesting or indeed unintelligible as the foregoing might be, these are not the definitions of the word Psion (with a capital ‘P’) that have meaning for me.

In the early 90s of the last century, which I am horrified to think is almost 30 years ago!  I was an early adopter of the Psion 3 a handheld, clam design personal ‘digital assistant’.  It had a small screen in one half of the clam and a keyboard in the other.  I was the only person I knew who had one of these and every time I used it (and I used it as often as I reasonably could) it excited techno-amazement and techno-envy, which more than justified its price!

Ever since I saw my first digital watch on Tomorrow’s World on the BBC and certainly when they came down enough in price for them to be afforded by mere mortals, I have been an infatuated devotee of things techno-electrical.

If I could count up the amount of money that I have spent on computers and computer-like things (which I have absolutely no intention of doing because of the shame that lies in quantifying the outrageous amounts that I have willingly squandered on the latest gadgets) I would probably find that the only recourse that I could possibly have to compensate for such extravagant monetary behaviour would be immediately to enter a Monastery, don a hair shirt and only take it off to start flagellating myself with scorpion whips (look it up, it’s not using the animals, especially as it’s my birth sign) as the lightest possible penance for such wilful throwing away of money.

But I don’t care.  I have gained more pleasure in my amassing and displaying gadgets than . . . well, I don’t want to go overboard here, there are other things and pleasures in my life that go beyond the mere electronic - but gadgets have given me satisfaction.  And as soon as I realized with computers that I was a ‘user’ and not suited to be a ‘programmer’ I was happy to indulge in machine after machine.  Monochrome screens burst forth into glorious colour; print went from dot matrix to laser to ink jet; memory went from 8kb ROM (sic!) on my very first ‘real’ computer the famous Sinclair ZX81 to 1TB on my newest laptop!

So, my twitchy little fingers have been urging electrons to light up screens for years and I never really get bored with the results.  I wear the appellation of Gadget Freak with something approaching pride.

I still remember in the far off days of computer exclusiveness, I would be asked as I paraded my Psion before technology confounded eyes, “But how does it work?  Show us!”  And I would press a few buttons and behold, staring eyes and open mouths agape in wonder.

I remember too, in those early days going to a ‘Computer Workshop’ and when I got there the instructor in charge of the group said, “Thank God you’ve come Stephen!  You take this side of the room and I’ll see to the other!”  My plaintive whines about the fact that I had come to be part of the group not an instructor was ignored as our joint class lurched into action.

“Stephen, it’s not working!” said one of the members.  “I’ve tried pressing this and this and this and nothing happens.”  And it shows you how long ago this little group was, that my masterly assessment of the problem led to a swift resolution when the computer was actually switched on at the mains and the screen blazed into life - to gasps of amazed thankfulness!

Such innocent days are long past.  We are all thumbs efficient now and are laid back in our utilization of complex machinery that we could not have dreamed of only a few years back.

So, to keep me up and running as far as my mobile phone (A Yotaphone, two faced Russian built affair) I decided to take a power pack with me to feed the insatiable electric hunger of the thing.  I powered up the phone; I powered up the as yet unused power pack - I was good to go and to survive a New Year’s Family Celebration which would go on well past midnight!

Sure enough my phone’s cravings became more than I could accommodate and so I plugged in the pack and waited for the phone to be sated.  And nothing happened.  And continued not to happen while the phone descended into darkness.  In desperation I was reduced to writing in my little notebook that I always carry with me.

I assumed that the failure of the power pack was another example of sleek, svelte packaging over hard utility.  Little bigger than a credit card with built in short leads, I always thought it was too good to be true.  And to be absolutely honest I only bought it because it looked shiny and neat - and useful of course.  And it didn’t work.  Another waste of money.  Another gadget bites the dust.

Today, I idly wondered whether I had fully powered up the pack, perhaps things would have been different if I had left it on charge a little longer.  I decided to give it an extra boost and plugged a mini usb into the slot on the edge of the ‘card’ and noticed as I did so a tiny and almost imperceptible button with the words ‘On/Off’ incised unobtrusively next to it.  I pressed it experimentally and a little line of blue lights appeared on the face of the ‘card’; I plugged it into my phone and the little lightning sign appeared in the empty battery symbol indicating that power was being transferred.

In spite of my years of working out how to set up digital watches without the instructions; my apprenticeship through Sinclair, Amstrad, Mac, HP, and a wealth of other logos; my dedication to gadgets, no matter how marginally useful they might be - I had been defeated by a simple on-off button.

How are the mighty fallen.  Vanitas, vanitas etc etc.

I start 2018 chastened by the thought that complexity and sophistication starts with something simple.   

I will indeed, think on these things!

Accepting reality? I think not. Possibly.

I know I’m getting old!

Other ageing people point, often literally, to a selection of their aching joints, or illustrate with an airy wave of the hand a forgetful memory, or pause with what they hope is significant timing to try and find an errant word.  Not me.  Even though I act out those tell-tale signs I still spurn (as ‘twere a rabid dog) any admission of the fact that I am getting older.

But today, today was a turning point.

At lunch, the meal after the late night/early morning of the New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day family celebrations, I finally had to face the realization that the accumulation of years in my life had reached a disturbing point.

The meal was provide by the tired but indomitable mother of Toni and comprised a melange of potato, Spanish ham and egg with accompanying bits and pieces and whole prawns.  Delicious!  And to wash it all down was the inevitable (and loathed by me) Coke Zero Zero, and a bottle of water.  The real drink comprised a rather fine bottle of Cava.

As usual, for reasons that are all to explicable, I was given the bottle of Cava to uncork.  Which I did.  Offering it around to the diners, only one of us had a full glass: me.  The other three have a notional smear of the liquid so that they could say that they had been full of New Year Spirit.

Every offer of a fill-up (or augmentation of their piddling amounts) was met with a polite but firm refusal.  So I had recourse to the only other accepting rim, mine.

And here is where the realization of just how old I might be showed itself.  I eventually stopped filling my glass up.  I allowed a partially full bottle of Cava to leave the table and go into the kitchen where it will be poured away.  Into the sink!

I have always prided myself on being ‘so much younger than my grandparents were at my age’ – but how can I, in all conscience, maintain this assertion when I actually and in reality, allowed a half empty bottle of Cava to be ‘wasted’?

I remember, vividly, though years ago, a party in the Circle Bar in the New Theatre, Cardiff for someone’s birthday party where the drink provided solely consisted of cocktails.  There were three as I remember, but only one that I recall: a Champagne cocktail that, I can still see in my mind's eye, comprised a brandy soaked cube of sugar at the bottom of a glass that was then filled with Champagne.  

I tried one of these and thought, immediately, that the liquor soaked sugar cube was a profanation of decent Champagne.  So I took action.  I ‘acquired’ a bottle of Champagne and retired to a corner and slowly but purposefully drank it.  I then went looking for another bottle, which I found, but was not allowed to drink it in the sequestered peace of the first, as owners of un-drowned sugar lumps came in search of submersion.

It was an easy switch from Champagne to Cava, especially to the older, tastier Cava brut versions with which I am now familiar, and mostly especially given the radical difference in price.  

With a few adjustments made to my purchases over the years, spurning the offerings of Frexinet because of the poisonous political attitude of the owner and questioning a few of the other brands because of their suspect right wing leanings, I have learned to love Catalan Cava.  And apart from the cheaper and sweeter varieties I have never been known to leave a bottle half drunk.

But now I realize that the time has come to take stock and to consider what this not-empty bottle left in the kitchen might mean.  

I could, I suppose, assume that leaving alcoholic liquid that I don't really need to consume is a sign (at last) that I am getting to the age of discretion.  Or it could mean that the pain in the lower back is not muscular, but rather my tired kidneys calling out for respite!

Whatever the analysis might bring up, it remains as an indisputable fact that I did leave a bottle of Cava with some drinkable Cava inside!

Or could it be the start of a trend?  My suit was tight so I do need to lose weight; cutting down on my lunchtime red wine might be one way of doing it.  

Or it could be a flash in the pan and this disgrace will not be repeated.  We shall see.

Meanwhile I am dog tired and I feel that putting my watch to charge counts as housekeeping.

Time to think about a snooze and perhaps I will feel and think differently after some of the recent sleep deprivation losses have been partially made up.

Things are different?

When I was a kid . . .

There probably isn’t a greater turn-off opener than that one.  It is the sort of phrase that is regularly used as a weapon by the older against the perceived privilege of the young.  There is nothing that riles a certain proportion of the older generation that seeing a very young child with a mobile phone.  And especially the young child using it with a proficiency that the resentful oldie can only wish for.

Technology means that kids have things like music players, film players, TV, radios, cameras and, yes, telephones way before the generation that includes me ever had, but – just think about what my generation had and continues to have.

Free milk, free school, university grants, free university tuition, full professional employment, good health care, generous pension scheme, professional retirement at 60 with professional pension, state pension at 65, membership of the EU throughout my working life, free access to foreign countries within the EU, access to the work markets of the EU, and so on.

Yes, my parents did not buy a television until I was 11, though we did have the radio.  I did not have a ‘real’ record player until I was in my teens, though I had had a second hand wind up version with some old 78s for one birthday.  Our holidays were usually in the UK and in B&Bs, though I did go to Spain when I was 7, and I was the only kid in my year in primary school who had been abroad.  Our camera was a Kodak box camera, until we had the next model up, eventually – and those two camera kept us going for years and years and years.

Although we were not rich as a family, I did not lack anything important.  I was loved and secure and, most importantly (as I was really too young to truly worry about the Cuban missile crisis) I felt secure.  I felt that I had a future and that I would easily be able to get a job and that I would be able to keep it for the whole of my career.

How many young people today can say as much?  I know younger colleagues in teaching who are dreading the extra years that they will have to work until they are able to retire and I sympathetically share their dread, though I cannot imagine what the awful reality must be like.  In my view you cannot be a classroom teacher beyond the age of 60 in any sort of normal school.  Forcing people to work beyond that is like a sort of death sentence, or at the very least they are not going to be paying many pensionable years for the unfortunates who are able to make it.

This serious thought was brought on my thinking about cartoons.  One channel on the television this year has been given over to a whole series of ‘blockbuster’ animated films and I am constantly amazed at their quality.  There was a scene of one of the monsters from Monsters Inc II where he was sitting by the side of a lake in moonlight which was stunning, a beautifully rendered part of the film.  And in another film I was fascinated by the sheer complexity of the rendering of hair and fur with a naturalness that would have had early animators reaching for their crucifixes!

It used to be that Christmas would see the latest-old Bond film trotted out to general delight, but I am not sure nowadays that there is a single screen franchise that would bring viewers together now in the way that 007 did.  After the gloriously clever first film of the 'Pirates' franchise, for example, the whole series descended into a narrative nightmare which denied coherence to the story, but did give individual moments of success, as for example in the umpteenth film when the company baddy walks, with manic serenity, down a flight of steps as his ship is destroyed about him.  It is a sublime moment and deserves a better film around it!

But the mechanics of showing films have changed.  When I was in school we did have 'Christmas Treat' films.  The two I remember are 'Fanstasia' and Tony Hancock's 'Punch and Judy Man' - the first we loved and the second we hated.  But both these films were shown via a film projector, the cans of film had been rented and were shown projected onto a screen.  In an age when films are available on your phone, the attitude towards a 'grand' production has changed somewhat!

So time, place, technique, everything has changed, and the 'gift' of a major film at Christmas is not longer the 'treat' that it once was.

But for me, at least, the power of a great animated film, something like 'Up' for example has me as glued to the picture as if I were a child watching fireworks - and you only have to see my open mouthed wonder and fixation with exploding rockets to understand how quickly I can regress to childhood!

Perhaps cartoons are the nearest things we get to keep us together, to bring back the sense of wonder that over exposure to CGI in so-called reality films has taken away.

Little important things

I have recently become concerned with the act of putting my trousers on.

I am not, I hastily add, becoming an aficionado of public nudity, or even in these cool December days of baring my legs to the elements, no, it’s the simple act of dressing.  Or more precisely dressing in a public changing room.

In a marked difference to the more relaxed attitude of my fellow countrymen, the Catalans regard the floor of the changing room as virtually terminally toxic.  No part of the bare foot is allowed to touch the floor.  In a swimming pool, the wearing of flip-flops or some sort of slip on shoe is mandatory.  This means that those same flip-flops become the ‘safe’ area for the feet once you have taken off your socks.

That, in itself, is not a problem.  The problem for me is long trousers.  I (defiantly) wear shorts until at least the middle to late part of December and wear sandals virtually all year (much to Toni’s disgust) but, eventually, even I have to give in to the cold and pack my shorts away for another year.

The main part of the ‘problem’ for me is balancing on my flip-flops while taking the trousers off, and indeed, putting them on again.  I think that the positioning of the flip-flops is the essential part because on that placement depends the whole success of the balancing to get the leg in (or out) of the hole. 

How easy it was to put my trousers on in the floor-freedom of my own home where the maintenance of equilibrium was not dependent on looking like a flat-footed ballerina!  No, the micro adjustments for weight distribution for trouser insertion on a free-use non-toxic domestic floor are easy as opposed to the foot-specific demands of a changing room.  In the changing room I feel like a crass neophyte ninja (wax on, wax off) unable to perch one-legged on a pole each time I insert a leg, usually failing and veering away from the safe-spot of the flip-flop and pressing the trouser mid-draw onto the poisoned floor.

I have even considered ‘giving in’ and sitting down to put the damn things on but, from my observations of my fellow changers, I am not quite in the age group that would make such an action anything other than an admission of failure.  So I am looking for other techniques and explanations.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not straightening my foot enough to ensure its smooth progress down the leg of the trousers, so I will practice pretending to be ‘on point’ so that my foot will be more like a ferret down a drainpipe (though my trousers are nothing like so narrow!) rather than emulating the foot from the end of the introductory graphics of Monty Python’s Flying Circus!  I shall persevere!  I will succeed!  Wax on, wax off.

In my poetry I sometimes think that I am edging ever more closely to the poetry of the Azgoth of Kria, as described in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where, “four members of an audience died of internal haemorrhaging during a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem ‘Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning’.”  Not, I hope, because my poetry is overtaking the position of Azgoth poetry as the second worst in the world, but rather because I sometimes take the most ordinary things as subject matter for my work.

In one of my most recent poems I wrote about nakedness in public changing rooms, and in particular, one man’s bottom! 

You can judge the end result in:     smrnewpoems.blogspot.com 

What started as a tongue in cheek piece of writing (unfortunate turn of phrase!) developed into something that, I think, repaid the work I put into it.  You, the reader, will have to be the judge of that!

The poems that you can read in smrnewpoems.blogspot.com are drafts.  I try and make them as ‘finished’ drafts as I can before I put them up, but they are very much work in progress.  The end result will be a book.  My next book, ‘The eloquence of broken things’ will (DV) be published in the New Year (which gives me some temporal scope) hopefully early in the new year, but I have learned to my cost never to be too jocose about the problems of publishing.


Tomorrow New Year's Eve and a visit to The Family in Terrassa with, hopefully, Toni's sister's delayed Christmas present.  We have to hope that Amazon will deliver on a Saturday!  We have faith!

Oh, by the way, if you have enjoyed or otherwise responded to this blog, please consider following it.  The button is at the top right of this blog and I would appreciate your clicking it!

I want what I want!

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Was it in a film or in an American TV series that a frustrated father was berating his teenage daughter not only for the length of her telephone calls to her boyfriend but also because of the fact that they appeared not to speak to each other for long periods of time on the phone as well.  On being asked what she was doing she replied, “We were listening to each other’s breathing!”

Ah!  Times of innocence and being connected to the network via a visible cable, which was never long enough to go very far from the connexion point!

When we first had a telephone it was a black Bakelite affair with a proper handset and a dial.  It also had a little pull out tray at the bottom for Important Numbers.  The lead always got impossibly convoluted and twisted, but it was great fun (well, I was very young) to let it dangle and untwist itself in a sort of mad twirl.  We also had a party line: this meant that sometimes you picked up the phone and somebody else was already speaking because the line was shared, then you had to put the phone down (you never listened, because you simply didn’t) and waited a while to try again.  In those dark days you were lucky to get a line (even shared) from the GPO and you had no choice of the design or colour of the phone.  So there.

Just as we were privileged to have a phone, so also we were one of the few families in Dogfield Street in Cathays in Cardiff in the 1950s to have a car: KDU 966 - a second hand Ford Prefect complete with running boards and ill fitting windows.  I might also add before you get carried away by this tale of luxury, that we also had an outside loo and the bath was in the kitchen.  But as an only child I had a room of my own - though I’ve never really written like Virgina Woolf, in spite of this early advantage.  I might add, in case you are wondering, that the bath was normally covered by a hinged surface attached to the kitchen wall, with two little curved stumps to fit to the edge of the curled bath side and a tasteful curtain to hide the fact that there was a bath there at all.  This is where I would eat my breakfast and all meals that were not family meals.

The telephone was sited in the hallway and served not only my parents, but also my paternal grandparents who lived upstairs.  It was special and was not used on a daily basis.  It was there.  A thing.  Not something to be owned or regarded as an essential part of domestic life.

How times have changed!

I was encouraged to think about such things because, during my post swim cup of tea in my local leisure centre, I was sitting next to a table at which a young girl was obviously doing some school homework on a dreary looking A4 photocopied sheet.  Nothing remarkable about that, but she was doing the work with her mobile phone propped up against her sports bag and with one of her friends chatting away on a video call.  What made it remarkable was that the girl behaved as through her friend was literally opposite her, with whole minutes of work being done with no talk between the two of them apart from the odd casual remark.  It was extraordinary in being so ordinary.  I am not sure that I would be able to carry on the odd conversation with a mini-Lilliputian on a screen with the artless, everyday confidence (yes, I am, I am positive that I would not be able to) that the girl did.

My mind then spiralled away on tangents about concepts of ‘being alone’ and how difficult that is today; what the word ‘present’ actually means; what is ‘real’ contact?  And so on.

But where my mind ended up was with a failure of technology.

Years ago I failed to resist yet another blandishment of Kickstarter and put my name down for a new type of watch called Pebble.  It was a smart watch and linked to your mobile phone was able to give you all sorts of notifications from your emails and other bits and pieces of social media.  Importantly for me it was waterproof AND had an ‘always on’ screen.  OK, it was in black and white, but it worked AND the battery life was exceptional.

When an improved ‘Steel’ version was available, I bought (confusingly) a gold steel watch which also was able to display things in a washed out colour.  It worked.

When the third iteration of this successful watch was posted on Kickstarter, with a larger screen, I enthusiastically supported its production.

And it didn’t happen.

Pebble or at least the people who made Pebble a reality were bought up by another smartwatch company and gradually the backup for the whole Pebble brand began to fray.

Pebble was a successful watch.  I have struggled to find its equal (at the price) especially with the ‘always-on’ and swimming proof aspects and feel frustrated - because it has not stopped my buying watches in the vain hope that I will find something to match it!

My latest watch has actual hands, not virtual, which are operated through a tiny hole cut into the smart watch screen, so that there is an ‘always on’ element, but the smartwatch bits do not work as well as the Pebble did.

I have other watches in the pipeline, including one smart watch that doesn’t need batteries because it is recharged by heat from the body of the wearer!  That is in the future.  In the present, I have returned to my original Pebble.  Well, the second one.

And what a delight it is.  I can read its display without my glasses; it’s always on; it counts my swim lengths; it is back lit when I need it to be; it fits; some of the aps are still working; it’s light and easy on the wrist - and it’s not made any more?

This is where Capitalism let’s you down: something that does too much for too little money.  Pebble is almost the opposite of Apple and therefore it has been taken out.  Pebble still thrives in Geekdom, people are still writing programs and aps for the device and there is a ‘community’ of users - but I wanted more and would have supported future developments of the brand.  But to get the same I will now have to pay far, far more.  Yes, you can get smart watches for twenty quid and they have full colour screens and what not, but some aspect is always missing - usually the waterproof element or the always on. 

Technology giveth and Commercialism taketh away!

But my Pebble is on my wrist.  I count that as hi-tec recycling!