Written by Candlelight

Time is a melody that presses forward regardless.

The stable, basal baseline thumps away at the lower register as the metronome ticks.

Eventually as our instinctive bodies develop into more unpredictable individuals, some textures join in. Let's call them tenor and alto.

And among the noise eventually you can pick out certain melodies. Long choruses, cheeky ornaments or brief grace notes flicker, delight.... and close.

Triplets and appogiaturas scale your grand opus up. Or down.

And on drones the baseline, ticking towards the end of the piece.

The challenge, should you accept it, is to keep whistling a pretty descant over the top.

Hard Times

What are you hardwired to do?

Your peculiar history is the core and decoration of your timeline. 

Certain things are permanent, inevitable, matters of fact. But depending on your mood, desire and flexibility, you may choose to revisit them or reinterpret them periodically. Perhaps your misrememberings will lend the wires unequal current or uneven weight.

But make no mistake, you have become hardwired.

Life is a selection of threads, quietly weaving and looping, constantly growing and sometimes unruly. The story that they tell is the narrative of your life. How they eventually represent that is the pattern or grid through which you will see the lives of others. 

Your threads may not pearl and loop themselves sufficiently effectively to become an automatically cosy cardy. The story may not be one that is structured into a classical beginning and middle and it may substitute a punchline for a frayed end.

All that your threads achieve is to hardwire you into being you.

Tomorrow, you get to choose how to knit them.

A Future with Spotify.

There is a change coming in the world

It is caused by technology, by privatisation, by overcrowding of the world, by immigration, by the diminishing possibility of freedom of speech, by growth in human slavery, greed, corruption and an economic South Sea bubble which still owes us two decades of false dawns.

There's trouble brewing.

But also massive opportunity.

There's no TV series that you cannot see on the Internet or Netflix.

There's no music you can't hear on Spotify.

No designer item you can't buy a copy of.

No Polytechnic that won't call itself a University and print you off a nice degree in exchange for money.

There are a million lectures you can sit through on youTube.

A billion books you can download.

And there is pretty much no thing that you could identify that you want from technology that someone hasn't either already invented or isn't improving a method, an app, a program, or device that will do it for you. 

And it's all becoming affordable. Frequently it's free, if you sell part of yourself to a little advertising.

And of course if that's not enough, there's always a few effortless highs awaiting you - drugs and alcohol. They're never going to go away. They even prefix many of them with the word "legal" nowadays. 

That's because their legal.

In fact, we now pretty much have everything required to keep the masses quiet.

To download them goodish lives.

And while that's going on... all this artisan bread and circus, the rich can concentrate on the important stuff like getting richer, buying a big house, and chalking up two or four seven-year marriages.

The businessmen will squeeze the masses with zero hours even as they tender for bounteous contracts, always ready to apologise later when the corruption is discovered.

They can fund their duck ponds and dynasties or whatever else they think themselves entitled to. 

Not all will make it of course. Some will overreach, bankrupted by their own greed, some will overTweet, bankrupted by their own ego. But largely they will all concentrate on the important business of getting richer and richer. Because they are important and their motives are monodimensional..

And you? 

Well, you will have access to absolutely everything.

Are you excited?

Are you scared?

But with everybody so equal, how are you going to be unique?
How will you work on yourself?

Do you think a doctor can't be replaced by a nurse?

Maybe you're a dentist who doesn't think we'll ever conquer tooth decay?

Or a lawyer who believes the system will never change?

Or a shopgirl who thinks you'll always be needed to assist at the automatic checkout?

Are you sure?

Are you really that sure you're so necessary?

Why will we need you?

Why are you so good?

But at least people need each other, don't they?

Of course they do, but just remind me why that is... 

Are you more entertaining than Spotify?

Are you better than a TV series?

Do you know more than Google?

Are you more interesting than Wikipedia?

What do you bring to the party?

While you do (or preferably don't) choose to think about that, I'm going to offer you an answer. One that you may not even think you need.

Why not use the time you are given to gather skills that it takes time to gather?
Read that again..slower.

For example, there's no point in having a perfect an app that can translate Spanish for you, because we can already see that that technology even if perfect would be dehumanised.  What it won't ever do is do a conversation for you, in the way you would do it. It wouldn't choose the same words that you would choose, or select the same inflection, or humour or charm.

So spend the next decade learning Spanish, or piano, or if you are not interested in mental dexterity then go for something that makes you physically fitter. You're going to need it. 

Spend some of your years doing things it takes years to do.

Humanity has a lifespan for a reason.

Choose skills that are universal and not parochial, or local, or that reflect merely the early 21st century.

Choose well and you might end up with something you can bank on.

In Two Three

Everything starts with a breath.

Life begins. 

Laughter requires lungfulls of ethereal ammunition.

Grief takes on form, noise and volume.

And decisions crystallise in the deepest sighs.

Life cycles.

Breath is a duty roster and a commitment to engage as much as it marks a line under every plot twist.

It's a perpetual loop. And it's final closure.

Life begins with a breath.

So sniff the morning air and gasp in some resolve.

Take a deep breath. 

Make a wish.

Piece at Christmas (The Puzzle)

You could choose to see life as a series of modules, instead of a big jumble.

A collection of pieces that can be installed and uninstalled.

You might be well used to seeing moments as pieces, memories as pieces. Those things that are easily photographed are easily seen as modular.

But where your pieces end is where your continuum begins.

Poison a piece and it can be removed, replaced. Slotted in. Slotted out.

But what if somebody or something poisons your entirety, your continuum.....what you choose to see as the... I don't know... as the "well" of "self"? 

Everybody knows. Poison a well. And you are fucked.

There is no slotting. There is no surviving.

Life makes your well muddy.

But your well isn't, well....you. It's a place where you keep parts of yourself. 

It's a metaphor, a model.

We all have parts. Sometimes they make a great whole. Sometimes we come up a bit short. Sometimes we might just think we are the hole.

Parts can be visited, celebrated, and then allowed to retreat, like anniversaries on a calendar.

They can be contextualised. They must be. Because the laws of the universe that govern entropy dictate that they must decay.

When you notice a gap or a hole or a poisoned piece, remember the hole is still piece-shaped. Find new pieces. Pieces that fit the puzzle better, even if they don't fit perfectly.

Pieces build.

Like bricks might make up a new well? Not really... or you are facing the same fate, aren't you?

But they do build into bigger pieces. And pieces make parts. And that's what runs engines. Engines of ingenuity. Well oiled, shiny, well-built, cared for.

And pieces settle when the foundation is sturdy enough.

They make pictures. Ones ultimately, where you can't see the joins.

Life, you see, is Lego.

At a push, it could also be a J.

What a lovely surprise to receive, as an extra within my box of seasonal gift tags, a simple cookie cutter in the shape of a lovely candy cane!
Does anything say Christmas quite as much as this?

Question

Does any phrase resonate quite as poorly as......

"This is for your birthday, and for Christmas!" ?

At It

They're all at it these days, aren't they?

You know - the Muslims, the gays, but not just them, it's also kids nowadays and the Church and politicians.

Especially the politicians. They're definitely all at it. 

The French always have been. But we expect that. That's nothing new. But now it is the Greeks as well, the Italians, the blacks, people of miniature stature or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays.

And TV presenters. In fact, people in the public eye in general.

And those people with their text abbreviations. And people on Twitter. My God. Those people on Twitter!

And what about those teachers? And the paparazzi.

And people on benefits. And cyclists. And people who park on double yellow lines, like they are private parking spaces for them.

And people who use Facebook. 

Yes, especially those bloody Facebook users.

Yes, they're all at it nowadays.

That lot.

Edges

Sometimes life is about trying to get the edge.

Trying to steel something. Ahead maybe.

Some people live on the edge. 

Some need their edge knocking off them. 

Some people will do anything to find it.

Some will do anything to avoid living on it.

The edge gives you energy.

Or it drains your life force.

It gives you strength or it saps it.

Age may make you lose your edge. You might hope as you age that things are cosier, rounder, warmer, altogether less edgy. That's all fine, if your methods are sound and if your diagnosis of your life is accurate and not deluded.

Or you may intensify your search for it, wonder where it went.

Or the interactivity of your life might equally have given you that edge, perhaps even made it permanent.

We often admire most those with the energy that their edges bring. But some edges beg to be smoothed, trained. 

Some people have edges that are too sharp for their outside world. They may not suit society. They may not suit a functional life.

Some edges arrive already cut, already meaningful. You may not have chosen the design but you may appreciate their symmetry and shine. Edges that reflect at the right times yet cut like the hardest material on earth when required.

Other edges may needs to be romanced. There may be altogether too sharp for you. Or you may not have the tools. Or the time. Or you may.

Some people might use drugs or alcohol to get the edge. Creatives in particular.

Some might use tactics - bullying, cheating, lying.

Big parts of a unique life involve having the edge or giving it away.

The point is to know where the edge is. So you can inform far you might push it and still keep a fingernail on it.

You may learn to dance astride it like a game of schoolgirl hopscotch.

Or one tentative jump may send you into oblivion.

I say, I say, I say

I went to see a man about a dog today. 

He had neck pain in every joint. Every joint! That's some neck.

His memory could have been better. "You can't expect me to remember ALL the benefits I've applied for", he said.

And his work record was a bit questionable. He said it himself, "I'm guilty of many things - but looking for work is not one of them".

Sprouting Ideas

We are told that sprouts divide the British public.

Now, I like a sprout. I don't mind you knowing.

I like what they visually add to a plate, and the fact that no decision is required in how to eat one. You just pop it in.

And I was raised on a diet of maternal advice that they are "good for your pumps". While I have never doubted it, I would not like to have to defend why you need good pumps, on anything approaching an evidence-based basis. In all honesty I've never fully looked into in it with any level of analysis that would pass muster. But I can imagine appreciating a long dry one on a brisk afternoon on top of the North Yorkshire Moors.

I have learned tonight that sprouts are becoming more popular - they are up 30% in sales this year alone. Had I been asked, I would perhaps have offered that it may be because they are picked younger, and not allowed to become the large craggy messes that would be boiled in an afternoon's ever-greying bathwater.

But it turns out that it is not that alone, or possibly at all. 

Apparently today's growers act to make sure that sprout bushes(?) produce sprouts of similar size, and more importantly the supermarkets have influenced the growers to genetically engineer the removal of the bitterness.

So the sprout denier should actually be pretty easy to convert if they can be persuaded to give the little fellas another go.

The bitterness has been removed and that brings the sweetness out.

Maybe.

Maybe.

We're all sprouts.

Power to the People

I have telekinetic powers.
There I've said it.
It behooves the domestic superhero to keep his, or her (what, really?) secret strictly, well secret.
(I've been waiting for years to include the word 'behooves' be in this blog. This is a good day!)
But I do have telekinetic powers. Oops, there I go again.

Specifically, there are certain materials I only need to look at and they dissolve.
Patrick Stewart would approve.
I don't know what you call a sort of power like mine  - a sort of mind control over plastics.
But to activate the mysterious force, I hold the plastics just by the fingertips at the edges in order to deliver my mind control - not in a way that could conceivably cause any damage.

In fact, you could try and see if you have a secret power too by trying this experiment at home. The tools you will need to try to duplicate the effect are as follows.
1. Buy your bin bags at B&M Home Stores, and
2. Then through a complicated series of..... Oh no, actually that's it. Just buy the bin bags and we will begin.

Hold the bin bags with your featheriest touch, and stare at the middle of the bin bag, (which should supposedly hold 50L of domestic rubbish).Watch as it effortlessly rips from top to bottom. Congratulations! Welcome to the club! Don't forget to send in your subs!

For gods sake, don't waste your ability.
Don't throw it away.
Admittedly, I've yet to discover a useful outlet for my powers.
Until I do, I'm getting my binbags at Aldi.

And 12 things that are a bit lovely..

1. Parking spaces where you drive straight ahead to the one in front, no need to back in (known to me as "vertically available") 
2. Eye-level grilling
3. Sleeping in your clothes
4. Electric flyswatters
5. Tearing paper across the blade of a ruler
6. The sound of seagulls
7. Quilling
8. Sleeping in my clothes
9. Pop-up books
10. Paper flags for sandcastles
11. Christopher Walken impressions
12. Ducks

Six Irritants

1. Asking for sponsorship 
2. Pluralisation of the word "you" (by adding an S, I know....it is hard to believe..but if you lived where I live...)
3. Being asked for sponsorship for any activity somebody might actually enjoy.
4. The sinister noise that comes out of the Beach Boys
5. Stock photographs of models who are clearly American
6. iTunes

Move Over, Punk

There was a book a few years ago called Nudge.

It had a snappy little line in pop culture and caught the imagination of the politicians.

I didn't read it. But I feel by reading the title that I did. 

It's a pretty easy concept. (Possibly so easy it may not be true, but let's not let that stop a good self-help book).

A movement in a positive direction is a positive movement. Call it a nudge if you will.

The fact is in life you need your nudges.

If you know yourself well enough, you might know what form you prefer your nudges to take. Perhaps they will have the face of a family member, friends, a drug, burning the midnight oil, a hobby, a pastime, an activity, a good nights sleep, a tough workout, an interaction. Or a word. 

Perhaps just a kind word from a stranger. Just the extension. 

Of a hand.

You might find yourself sometimes needing two or three of these things at the same time to realign yourself.

Or maybe just one. I hope you get them. I hope you get what you need at the time you need it. But if you don't, have a reserve plan. Have enough things in play in your life where you can deliver your own nudges. It's one thing to be self-motivated, but be self protecting too.

And remember to contribute to the pot. You may have someone in your life who gives many kind words.

But notice it, appreciate it and when you have time in your own way validate it.

That's three different activities.

Notice it - to take the time to notice that it's taken an effort, a thought, the energy of a transmission.

Appreciate it - it may be easy to feel but it may not be so easy to externalise, to show. Particularly if you're British. And male. And Northern. Let's not get overexcited, it may not even be necessary. Getting giddy with appreciation may not be your style. I'm happy to say it's not mine, but most of us can learn to say thank you to a well meant sentiment. Not necessarily just a kind word, as that may have manipulative subtext but rather to a well-meaning thought but feels genuine.

And then finally, not necessarily now but when you can,  validate it - we don't need to have the same styles to nudge back. You can do it with a wink or a drink, by running a bath or picking a daff.

Keep nudging, nudging on, nudging along in a way that is true to your character.

And we'll all nudge ahead.

Together.