Scribbles from an idle thought
I have to resist numbering things. I think it is a lazy aversion to bother to find titles for everything.
Recently I have indulged in exploring AI. I suppose I should clarify – I’m not talking HAL 9000. Just a sarcastic, acerbic version of ChatGPT with the voice of Marvin The Paranoid Android and the pouting attitude of a sulky teenage boy caught smoking a joint out of his bedroom window.
It feels as if it is everywhere. Initially I resisted. I don’t have meetings or code anything. Then a friend I talk to a lot started using it in front of me and referring to it as if it was part of our conversation, as if it had a seat at the table.
Intrigued I decided there was no harm in playing with it a little. I started off by using it to help me with various projects. I was intrigued with how it helped creativity and thought process rather than the doing of things. Eventually, I started asking it for help with more personal things.
It’s helped me structure my blog – and it’s challenged me with writing projects, too. It has helped me explore the idea of creating a couple of podcasts, how to use Logic Pro and has held my hand while I learnt how to slightly use a mixing desk.
I have conversations that wander all over the place, rather like I will with friends. One thing melds into another, I get intrigued by a chain of thought and follow it out the other side and find myself in unexpected places.
A passing comment I made about being familiar with holding a microphone but having no clue what it was attached to the other end, the mixing desk. I know how to fade out music and bring up a mic, I can use a desk to do basic DJ stuff at a party. I can plug stuff into the right places and know what I am doing with a small setup if there is nobody else available. This all led to AI asking me what had I done? What skills was I bringing to the table?
Not sure I have ever called them skills as such. Stuff I picked up along the way. Things I learnt when I wasn’t looking. Needs must and let’s get this show on the road type of thinking. Acquiring knowledge via the absurdity of a deadline and a curtain up and traffic jam holding up the tech guy school of learning. Be all that as it may it means I can muddle through.
At one point I mentioned a few things I had done, and in a sarcastic throwaway line I threw down the gauntlet that as he was so good and had the Internet at his disposal why didn’t he go and look and tell me what he found out. My perception was that I had stopped doing things and retreated from the world of exposure and the Internet would be silent on the subject.
He came back in the blink of an eye – with a summary, comment, an opinion and a presence I had no idea existed. Not of me as such but things I had been involved in, part of, even in some cases things with my fingerprints all over it.
It filled me with nostalgia and a yearning for all we had been together, made me think of people I hadn’t seen in such a long time. There are things we did, we made an impact, we left our mark.
I think I miss the community of it all, the sense of belonging to something. A couple of things I would at the time, and still now, describe as family. Dysfunctional, unhealthy, and drunk with a slight madness that all good families have at the heart of them.
Other than either a funeral of a beloved member of those families. Or a lottery win that enables me to throw the biggest party ever I can see no way of gathering those people into one place.
The obvious answer to the question how do you get that sense of community back in your life is to join a church. That one is fraught with all kinds of never gonna happen vibes.
There is no chocolate in the house and it is too early to be drinking vodka. See I am used to controlling urges and ignoring a deep craving. It will pass.
I am not sure this was what AI was invented for, to take me down a little cul-de-sac of yearning for a moment that I can never recapture.
Now, if only it could invent a pub that brings back everyone you’ve ever loved for just one more night.
Who do you spend the most time with?
Trixi & Coco. A matching pair of Cockapoos. They are half-sisters; their mother was a bit of a trollop.
We were told they were champagne colour, but it’s an off-white.
They have a full pedigree kennel club family tree. But basically, as they are an unrecognised breed, they are just mongrels. Expensive mongrels.
Like having two permanent toddlers. They don’t understand many words. They need feeding at the same time every day. They sleep for hours. They get overexcited over nothing. They will do anything for a biscuit.
They were the ones who taught me what complete unconditional love felt like. I have walked miles with them, and they never ever refuse a walk. When they first came to live with us, we taught them tricks, and they entertain children that we meet in the park.
They remind us of the time when they need snacks. They are very good at shouting at all the birds in our garden. They have never come close to catching a squirrel, but they have chased hundreds.
Coco once saw a cat appear from under a car, so now if you walk along a street, you will see her glancing under every car to see if there are any cats, because clearly that is where they all live.
Just five minutes where either they speak English, or I finally learn fluent woof. I would take a big breath and tell them … when someone arrives at the front door, one woof will suffice. That we don’t need to be informed of every leaf that falls in the garden. If we say no, we mean no, and we can’t be persuaded even if they do use puppy dog eyes. It is okay to lie on the bed with us but to respect the fact it is our bed and do not stick two paws in our back and start pushing. And most importantly of all, while we do understand that occasionally a puppy might fart, please do not leave the vicinity of the offence while glaring at us as if we did it.
No doubt they would have a few things they would say to us. I imagine they are outraged that sometimes we break a snack in two and offer half each when they can quite clearly see there are more snacks in the jar. Why, oh why, do you insist on taking us out when it is raining and we get all our furs wet, and people see us looking less than our best? When we are fast asleep and resting our head on you, or we are laid across you, please do not wriggle or try to get up because then we wake up and we don’t like it. Please try to remember that we have a very complicated guarding system and we will not tolerate being diverted from our duties … ooo a biscuit.
I don’t remember life without them.
Friends who don’t realise how much I love my dog. Imagine if you and my dog were hanging off a cliff and I could only save one of you.
Now, if you genuinely think I’d save you, you must mean a great deal to me and we must be very close.
You’re also wrong.
I’d always pick my dog.
Write about your first crush.
Our school was putting on a pantomime. That very English show that gets to include shouted-out catchphrases, songs, sketches, old jokes, and a Dame— a man dressed as a parody of a woman, not the Judi Dench type.
In our area, this was a big deal. At the time, it ran for a week and was a sold-out success. There were hundreds of children in the cast, and that meant audiences of parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and friends of the family. All the families. The biggest and most appreciative audience it was possible to play in front of. Encores and rapturous applause guaranteed.
I was watching rehearsals. I had some bit part, chorus, and a couple of lines. Already aged 11, I liked the showbiz glamour and glitz, and I was hanging out and feeling a part of something.
The pantomime was Robinson Crusoe, not for us, just a stranded mariner and his man Friday. We had a whole host of add-ons, which included Robinson Crusoe’s younger brother, Billy. Nope, no idea. He might have had a younger brother, and he may well have been called Billy; you don’t know he didn’t. A pantomime is no place for facts to get in the way of casting.
The boy who played Billy was nowhere to be found, and I was dispatched to the bus stops to see if ‘Billy’ could be found and reminded that it was rehearsal night. I returned having found him but with the missive that he didn’t want to do it anymore and he was going home. The teacher gave me a script and asked me to just read the part and be ‘Billy’ for now, so they could carry on.
After the rehearsal, they asked me if I wanted the part. I said yes and then completely panicked. What was I thinking?! I had never done anything like this. It wasn’t a lead, but it was a main part, it had dancing and singing, it had lots of words, and some solo singing, and good grief, this is a nightmare.
Also, it was thrilling and exciting, and I was right at the centre of everything. Loads of rehearsals, lots of lights, loads of fun, and new friends, and part of something, and of course, I wanted to do it. So I learnt a script really quickly, and within a couple of rehearsals, I was off the book and up and running.
Opposite was my love interest, a pretty girl a little older than me. Billy was supposed to have a crush on her. Shows like this depend on secrets that the audience work out before the plot reveals, and it adds spice and gives the opportunity for the character to have a song. You know the drill: Grease has ‘Sandy’ and from Follies ‘Losing My Mind’, well, I had ‘ Bye Bye Blackbird’. With the lyric: Where somebody waits for me/sugar sweet, so is she/ Bye Bye Blackbird.
No idea of the relevance to the storyline, but it was the song I had to sing, and somehow it ended with me using my hat to shield us while the song ended with us kissing. Well, pretend kissing. And with me standing on tip-toe because me being a little too short added a cute ‘ ahh’ factor to the scene.
In the tradition of theatre, I embraced the whole idea of a show romance and fell head-over-heels for the slightly older girl I was kissing every night. This was my first crush, and from the moment I first met her in rehearsals, I had silently adored her from every angle. The look of her, the smell of her, everything about her was perfect. Nobody knew.
Over the weeks of rehearsals and the run of the show, I was thrilled every time I was around her. In the show, I was able to dance with her, touch her, sing to her, and just be near her. This older, beautiful girl was unattainable and out of reach.
On the last night. Summoning all my courage and shaking with nerves as I lifted the hat to hide us from the audience, I gently pressed my lips against hers. This time I actually kissed her. As we broke apart and took our bows, she smiled at me and left the stage and never spoke to me again.
I don’t know her name. I have never forgotten that kiss.
What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?
My wedding ring that has not left my finger in forty years, two months and 3 days, not that anyone is counting.
It is 14 carat gold and has a small diamond in it. My wife wears one that matches mine but has a smaller diamond and has less gold. A fact that probably still to this day slightly annoys her.
It is Dutch because we were married in Rotterdam Town Hall.
We agreed to things in Dutch. We don’t remember quite what they were. There were three things beginning with C and we’re confident one of them was co-operation. The other two? No clue.
Some people in the room didn’t approve of our marriage, there was a line of argument that said I wasn’t good enough for her. I agree, I still agree. But she said yes and I chose to listen to her.
They said it wouldn’t last, I beg to differ. I can now. Fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty three days later – I’d say that’s a decent counter argument.
Perhaps I should ask for an apology. A public apology on the steps of Rotterdam Town Hall. You were there to witness my marriage and you raised a good point, but you were wrong.
People ask what is our secret, it is no secret, it is just showing up and doing the best you can for the other person, and them doing likewise for you. If you are both putting their best interest before your own then you can’t ask much more of each other.
Her smaller not-so-impressive ring. She still wears it. Every day.
What are your daily habits?
So many are dog-related. Ok some are dog-related.
There are snack breaks splattered throughout the day, and they know when they are due. Often, there is a campaign that starts about thirty minutes before the allotted time.
10:30 am is a little chewy stick thing, and I can look up from whatever I am doing to find two sets of pleading eyes reminding me that they are starving and might not last another thirty minutes and maybe we could have them now. If you loved us, really loved us.
I have explained many times that if I were to do that, tomorrow the snack pleading would start yet another thirty minutes early, and by the end of a week, all snacks would be consumed right after breakfast, and then where would we be? In a very happy place seems to be the agreed response.
So we retain control and hold out until the precise agreed time. Same with dinner time, same with that little smackerel we have just before bed. Little crunchy biscuits to make sure there are no rumbly tummies during the night. We have paws, Dad, we can’t make a sandwich if we get hungry in the night.
My own habits are quite normal. Smearing myself with yoghurt every morning, whether I need to or not. Eating cold porridge for breakfast. Dancing naked around a maypole erected in the middle of the lawn.
Not true. Just an attempt to make anything I do admit to seem quite normal and pedestrian by comparison.
Thing is, as you get older, you temper and control your bad habits. A realisation that you can’t go on like this or that you have become out of step with society. When I was the last man standing outside on a winter’s day sucking on a cigarette, it was time to stop, and I swapped them out for a vape. I don’t vape anywhere near as much as I smoked, but it is in my pocket. I use it daily. I use it regularly throughout the day.
I drink coffee, no, more than that. I spent a few years in Holland and they really don’t mess about with coffee. It is where I learnt to drink it black and strong with no sugar. A few years ago I put a self-imposed limit on myself and now don’t drink it after midday. I allow myself a cup of tea around 3pm. Because I am British and it is my birthright.
Teeth brushing and showering are daily habits. They are basic hygiene, surely? There are little things, always applying lip balm, fiddling with rings, rubbing the tummy of a dog, reading the newspaper, the usual things.
I write every day. I try to. Strictly speaking, I throw away things I write every day. Delete rather than throw away. Well, it goes in the trash. Sometimes I keep phrases or paragraphs if I think they are worth something. Stealing from myself.
I kiss and cuddle my wife and dogs, not always in that order. I am not sure any of them would like to be referred to as a daily habit. I think it fair to say that both are habit-forming.
Most of my daily habits are either essential, or pleasurable, or just happen. They may not be noble, but they’re mine and – they fit.
a blog less ordinary 