dom.blog

When flying alone, who you end up sitting next to on a plane can be critical for a pleasant ‘trapped in a metal box’ experience. I shudder to recall the guy next to me on one flight who decided to watch a film about a man trapped under some rocks slowly cutting his own limbs off, thus setting off my squeamishness so much so that I ended up wrapping part of my top around my head in a makeshift vision-obstructing headscarf. I probably looked odd, but then again, he should have stuck with Tangled like all right-thinking people.

Anyway, in the last few weeks I’ve had a number of aeroplane companions. The woman with the toddler kept apologising for his existence, even though he did nothing much beyond smiling, repeating ‘aeroplane’ in Bosnian and lending me his Elmo. (In return I showed him my Kindle, which caused some confusion, even when his mother repeatedly explained it was a ‘book’. For some reason this made me feel slightly guilty.) It also helped that he was incredibly cute, while his mum came out with some unintentionally prescient work-related comments to which I had to nod and think “pretty sure there’s a meeting about that” to myself.

Before that, there was the newly-wed couple of conservative Christians from… I want to say Minneapolis. Somewhere beginning with M. And at this juncture, I want to stress that they were so incredibly deeply lovely that I’m kinda sorry I’ll never see them again. Still, we managed to pack in just about every clichéd socio-economic-political-linguistic conversation you could think of into that one flight, much to the amusement of the cabin staff. We did the guns they own, the god they worship and the government they don’t. We did Hobbes, Locke, gay marriage and Nigel Farage. Abortion? Check. Death penalty? Covered. Why people say “could care less” instead of “couldn’t care less” – they actually agreed with me on this one. Best plane debate ever.

And before that, there was no-one. I don’t mean that in a “creation of the world in seven days” sense, just that half of the seats on the plane were empty. Which was somewhat troubling, because I thought that wasn’t really supposed to happen anymore. Especially when you’re flying over the Atlantic, for goodness sake. It just seems horribly wasteful, and I feel that unused plane seats should be given up to a good cause – filling them up with tea bags, perhaps, because it is still sadly difficult to get a decent cup of tea to avert the mid-afternoon office slump.

This post brought to you by ‘Yes, I’m still in Chicago and still too lazy to write a proper blog’. Proper updates to follow. Or maybe I really will get around to writing about metro systems. Because the L is rather cool, you know.

One of the nice things about working for an international company is a valuable expansion to the worldwide network of sofas to crash on. Last weekend Chris from the Berlin office took advantage of ours, and we ended up on a cultural journey I like to call ‘From Manet to M&M World’ which also included a strange night out in Angel to see The Urban Voodoo Machine, a bloke with an awful mockney accent and a ‘reverse strip’. (Imagine what you think that means, and you’ve probably got it.)

I also had the dubious pleasure of introducing a German to First Capital Connect during the morning rush hour, which is a bit like flying unprepared celebrities out to the middle of famines for Comic Relief. By the time we had crammed ourselves into the fake compartments at the back, with the door that doesn’t open and the emergency ladder made of wood, his eyes were filled with pity, and I’m half-hoping for a €5 a month donation so that the villagers of Highbury might one day dig our own railway line.

In other news, the Book Club I nerdishly co-founded at work had its first successful gathering, reminding me why being in a book club is (a) awesome; and (b) clearly better than belonging to the rival FIFA gaming association.

On Friday Joshua turned 24, so we threw a retirement party where I got the song ‘I Am Europe’ firmly stuck in my head. Not even the music of Carmen could dislodge it yesterday, magnificent as it was, though the fact I can now compare operas I’ve seen at the Royal Albert Hall recently with a straight face should be some sort of cause for alarm. And then last night I went back to News Revue with a twist, for the latest run was directed by Kat, and very funny it was too.

Last weekend my cousin Julie visited, for the first time in a couple of years, so we made the most of it with Cat and Josh in various drunken, dancey escapes, plus a trip to the Museum of Childhood with Katie. Probably the coolest thing in there is a giant-sized toy theatre, which you look at and think “oh wow, I wish I had been the child of whichever nineteenth century Count owned this” along with “but then, it was probably the ultimate case of playing with something once and then leaving it to clutter the front room” and “oooh – are those the little Fisher Price people we had in a toy aeroplane?”. (They were. I never realised how much those guys got around.)

This weekend it’s been more about grown-up toys, and my swanky new laptop \ tablet convertible thingy. It’s rather beautiful and exciting, especially considering that I don’t upgrade very often, and my last laptop (much as I love it so) was definitely due its retirement. I enjoy how obvious touch screens are, now that we have them, so that even when doing ‘serious stuff’ (like, y’know, writing blogs and stuff) in desktop mode with a keyboard and mouse, it still feels natural to swipe at the screen at the same time. Like we’ve been doing it forever. At the same time, I do realise how increasingly odd and out of touch I am with everyone else, simply as a result of accumulated habits. It took about a day to get used to the initially disorientating Windows 8 – but I’ve used every consumer edition of Windows since 3.11 (even Windows Me) and, unlike lots of people, I’m happy here. It feels like home. But it’s unlikely that any younger generation – growing up on smartphones first and beige desktops never – will ever feel the same.

And while we’re in the mood for vague nostalgia, one thing that makes me nervous about any new indulgent consumer purchase is that extra twinge of fear and loathing for the outside world which comes with it. Can you see it too obviously through the window? Will someone break it and steal it? How useful will the ability to track it remotely actually be, and isn’t it a little bit weird that ‘letting law enforcement authorities know’ is now considered a box-ticking afterthought while our insurance \ geo-tracking \ phone network companies can sort things out for us?

And for every advance in consumer electronics – every high-speed data network, always-on social communication and beautiful interfaces – are we creating a gap between our experiences of these things and more public spirited endeavours (schools, hospitals and the like) which will be hard to fulfil?

Probably not. After all, the heart of great healthcare, and great teaching, is always going to be the personal dedication and skill of the individuals delivering it. But there is real value to be gained if our public institutions can keep pace with change as strongly as our entertainment or communication industries drive them. It’s not just about convenience – being able to book blood donations, find a doctor, renew an Oyster card or deliver homework online – great as all this stuff is. It’s also about making sure that our public services don’t get treated as historical artefacts, but remain relevant to people and their lives today.

(Things I forgot to mention after getting carried away with all of that: Lincoln! I saw Lincoln with Josh this week, and rather enjoyed it, being a complete sucker for dramatic scenes in Congress. Honestly, they’re even more fun than courtroom drama. Unfortunately the era of American history I studied began with Reconstruction, so I am unable to comment on whether the quasi-deification of Lincoln is quite fair. Also, last night I played Munchkin in a pub on the occasion of Kat’s birthday. Happy birthday Kat.)