20 November 2016
It’s fair to say that 2016 has been a bit of a shocker for most, both in celebrity deaths and in the confounding of many’s preconceived ideas of normality.
In the main I follow like-minded social media accounts. Ok, like-minded people. But there’s a downside: my views are confirmed in by those from whom I take my barometric measurements.
I’ve decided that, to ensure I’m better-prepared for the nasty surprises (and those nasties I’m EXPECTING!) during 2017, I shall look outside my comfort zone. Proven psychic ability, especially in the arena of celebrity death precondition, I’ve an open mind about.
If you understand and you’ve any recommendations I’m all ears.
Equilibrium, please.
15 November 2016
I’ve already established that I cry when we go to the movies. I cry when we watch movies at home. My personal record is the afternoon we watched ‘Up’ and ‘Toy Story 3’ back-to-back.
I LIVE the film, the novel, the rolling saga, the trilogy in seven parts, I live ALL of it; it’s the only way I know to approach storytelling.
Well, it seems that there’s a second medium to add to my waterworks-provoking repertoire: the novel, spoken out loud.
I’ve been reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ to my daughters for a while now; this evening we reached the chapter of this blog post’s title.
Boy, is this good stuff! I’m there within the cosseting gloom of bedtime, doing all the voices and then… I simply could not continue. The emotions of the tragic scene unfolding before us, after LIVING the preceding tale spilled over and…
After a few false starts, and Just as I’d managed to compose myself, my youngest daughter, oh-so-nearly 7, wondered aloud if maybe I didn’t know how to pronounce the words on the page, and offered to read on my behalf.
And yes, that kindness again stopped the story reading in its tracks; I had to excuse myself, promising to restart the chapter following evening.
And so I shall.
14 November 2016
Earlier this year I wrote about my favourite film, ‘Armageddon’. If you scroll back through the archive of my posts ‘Patch’ is easy to find. Now might be a good time to scroll; I think it is about time I explained why that ragged, singed, bit of cloth - the patch - means so much to me. And why I cried at the end of the film.
Vanishingly-small numbers of people have ventured into space, more have helped make their passage safe by testing, retesting, and doing it over and over again so the chance of failure is reduced.
One thing to remember though, the ability to send stuff off our planet isn’t easy. In fact, though essentially we’re still relying on explosives developed from Chinese firecrackers, to propel the aforementioned stuff out there is extraordinarily difficult!
Let’s face facts; whether or not you believe the somewhat facetious comment made about a typical US spacecraft - amongst the most complex mechanical devices ever assembled and machines in which generations of astronauts have trusted their very lives - is built by the lowest bidder, the word ‘difficult’ doesn’t even come close to how, er… difficult, remote, intransigent, space is.
Unless one sits and thinks about the unforgiving nature of the vacuum, cold, radiation, and sheer unpredictability of space, it’s all a bit esoteric, remote, almost-science-fictionish isn’t it. White-coared experts and gung-ho spacemen, right?
The thing is, I’ve been very lucky to travel to the USA, to both the Houston Space Center* and The New Mexico Museum of Space History. The Houston site is awesome, but an exhibit at the NM museum - one past which most will walk without paying much heed - grabbed my attention immediately. Mission patches.
I don’t have a thing for patches, no.
One in particular stood out. Or didn’t. The Challenger patch, there symbolising a small part from the rich history of human endeavour, but nevertheless an extraordinarily poignant moment within it. Failure doesn’t come easily to those in space programmes the world over, and especially not from an overlooked, almost-insignificant part of a much larger whole. The tragedy of loss of life is deeply felt, especially when the hopes of mankind rest on the success of the many facets of space exploration and utilisation.
Now, the bottom line here is this: without the constant evolution** of the spacecraft, the dedication of those designing the hardware and systems, and those preserving the history of the… Ok, ok, there’s something both symbolic and very real about the struggle to not kill people in space.
A typical space programme is at the pinnacle of human achievement. It’s the culmination of hundreds of years of experimentation and research, layers of improvement built on top of each other and of records faithfully retained against the day someone should attempt the actually-impossible.
Remembering what others have tried though should be no bar to trying to make a better space widget. As the saying goes, the impossible sometimes takes a little longer.
You might have expected at this point that I’d inject something political here, referring to 2016’s apparent forgetfulness in the area of human evolution… Yeah, down the snake towards the worst excesses of human against human we go. And to think I cry at mere films.
*Intentional spelling.
**This.
08 November 2016
A Toblerone bar has the enviable position of being a luxury product for a lot of people; velvety-smooth with chewy sweetness on the tongue, idiosyncratic in design, and with a long, long history.
There’s the expectation that, once one figures out how to open the box, breaking off a piece of nougat-speckled chocolate will be difficult. The ever-present fear of broken teeth, the danger inherent in inexpertly wielded knives whilst attempting block separation; it’s all part of a process distinct from eating any other chocolate.
But tradition is a powerful thing.
As the cost of production and ingredients inevitably increases, and the pack size reduction is touted, spurious, as bringing health benefits, companies invent ways to cut corners, mainly by decreasing pack size whilst maintaining the amount the customer pays. In reducing the manufacturing costs the logical choice would have been to reduce the length of the bars. Competing ‘staple’ bars have already set a precedent.
But no. The company looks to have removed every other peak from the bars. The result is frankly ridiculous.
Its obvious whoever signed off on it had no idea of the repercussions. Premium products surely mandate price increases?
If, for instance, the Coca-Cola company decided to alter the recipe there’d be uproar. Ok, that’s a bad example; whilst the Toblerone recipe may not have been touched, generations of gift-givers and receivers have expectations of CONTINUITY.
Tradition, continuity, expectation; killed at a stroke.
I’m not impressed. I’ll be interested to see whether there’s an embarrassed climb-down in the near future, or whether the brand’ll simply disappear - rationalised out of existence by the parent company as a product of a bygone age.
Toblerone: 1908-?
02 November 2016
On Monday evening I participated in my first Trick-Or-Treat outing. Important: that’s Trick-Or-Treat, not Hallowe’en.
I’m over forty-ten years old and have a young family, so it might be appropriate to mention I’m English, living in a country that borrows the very best from the cultures of the world. Well, it makes a change from attempting to take stuff by force, right?
So I took the girls and Ruby dog and we walked the streets, the girls knocking on doors or ringing doorbells in the hope of getting sweeties. ok, candy! They did really well; I’m proud of the way they conducted themselves.
Knock/ring once, wait a respectable length of time, leave the eggs at home in the fridge, you know?
Our neighbourhood did the modern tradition proud. Loads of homes decorated with pumpkins, ghoulish apparitions swaying at doors, even a smoke machine to add, yes, authenticity to the proceedings. There were people of all ages dressed in suitably scary attire and make-up (though my costume and features on the night would win competitions anywhere!)
This year (hopefully the foundation for next) my girls got dressed, applied make-up to appear even scarier than normal, and we went out in what turned out to be the perfect evening, spending that very enjoyable hour-and-a-half going from door to door.
I’m sure my two brought genuine pleasure to at least 2 households others had passed by, it was really great to see.
And to think this curmudgeon didn’t want to go out, to be sociable. Indeed I’d been dreading it all day.
Eeeee, when I were a lad we never had owt worth mentioning. We got wood once a year and…
… we collected bonfire wood for weeks before Bonfire Night and secreted it away, hopefully out of sight of our rivals. We’d ask for a “Penny for the guy” - a vaguely-humanoid shape supposedly representing Guy Fawkes, but in reality a pile of rags and stuffing to be tossed on top of the woodpile and burnt with as much ceremony as young lads could.
To be honest though, I can’t remember if we ever burnt a guy. I recall us burning wood but the predominant memory is the disappointment of having our stash robbed from under outer noses.
Happy days!
The post title is necessarily apostrophe-short, I can’t remember how to add one in the post header.