The Rule of Three

The number three is pretty special. In the Bible it is a symbol of completeness; God's attributes are three-fold; omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Chinese tradition considers three a lucky number, and in 2004 a man in Beijing paid $215,000 for the lucky mobile phone number 133-3333-3333, and in Latin "omne trium perfectum"  means everything that comes in threes is perfect. The idea that good things (or bad things for that matter) come in threes is perhaps a fallacy. Our minds recognise triplets easily, and after two similar events we are on the lookout for a third; when it doesn't, we forget, but we remember when it does, reinforcing our belief.

For writers, there is the Rule of Three, which can refer to a collection of three words, phrases, chapters, or even books. Just think of the power of three-fold expressions like "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,"  from the American Declaration of Independence, or "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", the slogan of the old French Republic, and "Veni, vidi, vici" -I came, I saw, I conquered - attributed to Julius Caesar. And in law, witnesses are asked, on oath, to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," or more prosaically there is, " A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play."

In films, the trilogy is common, popular, ubiquitous almost. Think of The Godfather, Back To The Future, Star Wars (a trilogy of trilogies there). Similarly, in books we have The Lord Of The Rings, The Foundation Trilogy, and Gormenghast to name but three. Like the Three Bears' chairs, their porridge, and their beds, some trilogies are too long, some too short, and some just right - and it is all matter of personal taste as to which fits in which pigeonhole. Take Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings; I know that it is highly regarded, I know that for some people it is sacrilege to criticise it, but for my money it is about two-and-a-half books too long. Then there are Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. Books one and two - Titus Groan, and Gormenghast - are among my favourites, and I revisit them from time to time (I'm a bit overdue, it must be at least ten years), but the third, Titus Alone, I struggled with and have never re-read.

Currently I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick (musically I've been reacquiring some old 1980's albums, with varying degrees of delight and disappointment), and am re-reading Michael Moorcock's trio of novels, The Warlord Of The Air, The Land Leviathan, and The Steel Tsar (collectively, The Nomad of The Time Streams). Comparisons with HG Wells are inevitable as the stories - the first two at least - inhabit similar eras and ideas, and the writing is stylistically not dissimilar to that of Herbert George, while the use of technology out of its timeline was an early example of steampunk, a genre that to all intents and purposes was kick-started by these books.[1]  Moorcock managed to condense his whole trilogy into a concise 442 pages, or about the same length as most single novels today. Which is where many novels being written and published today, and especially trilogies, weary me. Too often I pick up a weighty paperback - running to perhaps 600 pages or more - catch sight of a phrase on the cover that goes tells me that this doorstop is just the first in a trilogy - or worse a quartet, or even a quintet - and I return it to its place on the shelf, disheartened by the prospect of feeling obliged to wade through nearly two thousand pages, at least half of which will be filler, padding, and general dross.

I don't know when the trend for such long novels began;  I suspect that Arthur Hailey had something to do with it, although his books tended to be largely plot driven with less padding than most. The so-called airport novels (and one of  Hailey's novels is called Airport, which spawned a film of the same name and three sequels), are generally fast-paced, considered to be of little literary merit, and usually very long. Nowadays it seems that you will be hard pushed to find a novel that comes in at less than five hundred pages.

Despite my aversion to trilogies, and especially trilogies that run to thousands of pages, there are exceptions. Take Robert Jackson Bennett's trilogy, The Divine Cities.[2] In some ways they are the antithesis of the sort of books I usually read, fantasies in which man battles with divinities, and running to over 450 pages in each volume. But the ideas piqued my interest, there is minimal padding, the writing style is fluid and rewarding, and the characters - especially the female ones - are interesting, engaging and realistic. The three books are sufficiently different to avoid boredom through repetition, and although I confess to flagging a tad towards the end of book three, I was glad that I persevered.

I cannot leave the subject of trilogies without mentioning - and recommending - Paul M Calvert's trio of Imperium novels.[3] I have to declare an interest here, as I've known Paul since we first worked together back in the 1980's, and we've been friends ever since (I trust nothing I write here jeopardises that!) I was privileged to be one of the proof-readers of the first part of the saga, and even contributed to the description you'll read of the first novel on Amazon. The Imperium trilogy (Betrayal, Revelation, and Coda) are the author's first novels, and a more sure-footed debut you couldn't wish to read. With science fiction, there is a fine line to be drawn between bewildering the reader with unexplained technology, civilisations and peoples, and boring them rigid with long-winded descriptions. Fortunately, Paul avoids these pitfalls, including such explanations as are necessary without compromising the momentum of the story, but with appendices for readers keen to immerse themselves further in the universe, civilisation and technologies that he has imagined.

Even if science fiction isn't normally your thing, or trilogies for that matter, I'd still recommend that you read Imperium: Revelation, the second in the set, which moves seamlessly between England in both the 1940's and the present day, and distant universes. It is far from your normal science fiction story, and the development of the character of Adam as he matures from the hedonistic and callow youth we are introduced to in the first novel, towards the statesman we can see he will become by the end of the third, is outstanding. I'm fairly confident that having read it, you'll want to read the other two books. It might be a cliché to say of a book that one couldn't put it down, but there's no book I've read recently of which that description could be more apt.

[1] Mervyn Peake's third novel in the Gormenghast trilogy, Titus Alone, is regarded by some as perhaps the first novel of the genre.

[2] City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles.

[3] Available on Amazon, see https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperium-Betrayal-Book-One-Trilogy/dp/1521575754/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Lost In Music Again

At the beginning of 2018 I wrote a blog about the music I'd been to see during 2017 (see Lost In Music). I noted that having seen twenty-one shows or events in 2017, the New Year was looking " slightly less frantic...(with) just five gigs in the diary." I also said that an artist I'd love to see - but thought that I never would - was Nile Rodgers. All of which proves how lousy I am at predictions, since in 2018 I went to 27 music shows, gigs, or events, and saw nearly fifty bands, artists, ensembles, etc one of whom was - you guessed it - Nile Rodgers.

What a night at The O2 as Nile Rodgers and Chic fill the stage for their final song

One of the acts I was looking forward to seeing in 2018 was Lifesigns, and although I got to see them twice in the end, neither was at a venue I'd expected to see them at. Originally I had a ticket for their show at The Half Moon in Putney, but that was cancelled when singer John Young went down with flu. No problem, I thought, accepting a ticket for the rescheduled show in May at the same venue. Except my daughter was unwell that day and we spent the afternoon and early evening at Barnet General Hospital, so I missed that too. But as luck would have it, I saw they were playing at The Electric Theatre in Guildford, so got a ticket for that, but in the meantime, I had a free Saturday in September and saw them play Resonate 2018 at The O2 Islington, along with five other bands. Apart from finally seeing Lifesigns for the first time, also got to see Jump, fronted by John Dexter Jones, who were so good I went to the merchandise stand to buy one of their albums the minute they finished their set.

Lifesigns in Guildford

Jump, led by John Dexter Jones at Resonate 2018

That's one of the things about festivals, you may go with the express intention of seeing one particular band, and end up being knocked out by someone you'd either not previously heard of, or who you weren't expecting to be so damned good. I went to the Stone Free festival at The O2 principally to see the Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman (ARW) version of Yes, but was completely blown away by Supertramp's Roger Hodgson, whose set was nigh on perfect. And Joanne Shaw Taylor, who I was vaguely aware of previously, but whose material I hadn't heard, took me by surprise with a great act even though her music is not normally the genre I listen to. Talking about Yes, I saw both versions of the band in 2017 and marginally preferred the ARW incarnation, then saw them both again in 2018, and thought that the Steve Howe led band were better.

Roger Hodgson at the Stone Free Festival

Yes at the London Palladium

Apart from Nile Rodgers and Chic, there were a couple of other acts I saw in 2018 who I suppose I could saw were on my bucket list of bands to see play live, namely Queen, and Pet Shop Boys. I never got to see Queen with Freddie Mercury and was a little unsure about seeing them with Adam Lambert in possession of the mic, but I needn't have worried, they were sensational. Oh, and if you've not seen Bohemian Rhapsody, then I thoroughly recommend that too, so long as you're not expecting anything other than a rather fictionalised version of the band's history up to Live Aid. And while you've doubtless heard that Rami Malek does a bang-up job as Freddie, Gwilym Lee as Brian May is... well he is Brian May! Pet Shop Boys reprising their Inner Sanctum show at the Royal Opera House was a fun evening, and the band, who when they first started releasing records looked unlikely - or unwilling - to perform live, put on one of the most memorable stage shows I've ever seen.

Queen

 

Pet Shop Boys

But as good as Pet Shop Boys were, the live show of the year was - for my money -  David Byrne, although don't just take my word for it, NME said that the " ‘American Utopia’ tour may just be the best live show of all time." Byrne sits alone at a table on an otherwise bare stage at the start of the show, holding a plastic brain (yes, really). He is then joined by a twelve piece band who roam the stage, their instruments round their necks and on their hips. The only fly in the ointment on a night when the music was as close to perfection as it can be, was the view from the arena floor at The O2. Marooned in section B3, I found myself peering over the heads of those in front of me and watching much of the action on the big screens. Fortunately, at the Nile Rodgers concert I was somewhat further forward, but that said the view did not detract from a fabulous night's entertainment from the former Talking Heads frontman.

David Byrne's show at The O2 was sensational - shame about the view.

Another artist I doubted I would ever see is Gary Numan, but I was there when he played the Royal Albert Hall, and for all that a lot of the material he played was unfamiliar to me - I haven't bought one of his albums since Telekon in 1980 - it was no less enjoyable for that. Since I've been to so many gigs in the last couple of years, I've given up any pretence of trying to work out in advance what bands will play and familiarise myself with it. A band I'd only seen once before - and the best part of forty years ago at that - were Fischer-Z, who overcame technical problems that saw their keyboard player unable to take to the stage to deliver a great set. They were supported by The Newtown Neurotics, a punk band whose show proved that that style of music was much less dangerous and more melodic than we thought in 1979. It does seem sad, however, to see a band of mostly late-middle-aged men singing anti-Thatcher songs in 2018.

Gary Numan at the Royal Albert Hall

Big Big Train, Riverside, Rick Wakeman and Steven Wilson were other highlights of the year, although to be honest, I had great expectations given the calibre of those acts, and they all delivered.

Top: Rick Wakeman, middle Riverside, bottom Steven Wilson

As in 2017, a highlight was Fish at the Islington Assembly Hall, performing new songs (from the upcoming album, Weltschmerz) and the whole of the 1987 Marillion album, Clutching At Straws - support again came from the incomparable Doris Brendel.

Doris Brendel (top picture) again provided brilliant support (and backing vocals) for Fish

 

Of course not every show I saw in 2018 was brilliant; most were at least very good but there was one that stood out above (or perhaps that should be below) all others and for all the wrong reasons. In 2017 I saw Tubular Bells For Two, a live performance of Mike Oldfield's seminal work rendered by two manic Australians, which was superb, so when I saw that a band led by someone by the name of Phil Toms was performing Tubular Bells and some other pieces by Mike Oldfield, I thought I'd give it a go. It was, I'm afraid one of the worst things I've seen - or heard - a rather enthusiastic, but amateurish rendition that might have passed muster if delivered by a school band, but not by a group of musicians that included one who had actually played with Mike Oldfield, and whom the audience had paid to see.

Still, one duff show out of nearly thirty is not a bad record, and I have eleven shows in the diary for 2019, although after last year, I somehow doubt that will be the final number.

The full list of 2018's events was:

January

BBC Concert Orchestra - Britten & Holst Meet The American Songbook - Watford Colosseum For BBC Radio 3

T-Rexstasy - Palace Theatre, Southend

March

Yes - London Palladium

Steven Wilson - Royal Albert Hall

April

Charlotte Hatherley, Arcane Roots, Lonely Robot - Indigo at TheO2

Lonely Robot

May

Fischer-Z at The O2 Islington - Support from The Newtown Neurotics

Fischer-Z

June

Tubular Bells Live - Phil Toms and band - Civic Theatre, Chelmsford

Stone Free Festival at The O2: Tyketto, anathema, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Roger Hodgson, Yes featuring Anderson, Rabin & Wakeman

July

Queen + Adam Lambert - Wembley Arena

Big Big Train - The Anvil, Basingstoke. Support from The Beatrix Players

Falstaff - The Royal Opera House

Pet Shop Boys - The Royal Opera House

September

Resonate 2018 at The O2 Islington: Jump, Verbal Delirium, Comedy of Errors, The Gift, Son of Man, Lifesigns

October

Steve Hackett (and orchestra) - Royal Festival Hall

Steve Hackett (and orchestra) - London Palladium

David Live (David Bowie Tribute) - RUSSC Club, Romford

David Byrne - The O2. Support from Benjamin Clementine

Steve Hackett at the London Palladium

November

Riverside - Electric Ballroom, Camden. Support from Mechanism

Gary Numan With The Skaparis Orchestra - Royal Albert Hall. Support from Chris Payne

Lifesigns - The Electric Theatre, Guildford

IQ

December

Carmen - Royal Opera House

Fish - Islington Assembly Hall. Support from Doris Brendel

The Flower Kings and Spock's Beard - Islington Assembly Hall

BBC Symphony Orchestra -Works by  Linberg, Kabelvsky, and Bartok - BBC Maida Vale, for Radio 3

IQ - Islington Assembly Hall

Rick Wakeman - Union Chapel, Islington. Support from Triple Cream

Nile Rodgers & Chic - The O2. Support from Mistajam, Cosha, and Franc Moody

Spock's Beard

Silencing His Master's Voice

It was recently announced that HMV had gone into administration for the second time in six years, and in some small way, I feel partly responsible. Years ago I liked nothing more than browsing in record shops - and as names like Harlequin,  Our Price Records, and Virgin disappeared from our High Streets - HMV became just about the only one left. But even as I was still browsing, I was buying less from them. Gradually I found myself walking through their doors less and less. In fact my only visits to HMV would either be at Christmas (generally to buy a CD or DVD as a gift that I had left it too late to buy online), or while on a visit to Lakeside or Bluewater when, not having the patience to follow my wife around a store she wanted to visit, I would mooch around the displays in HMV.

On such visits to HMV, I usually gravitate to the racks featuring bands I like and more often than not find myself comparing the prices that HMV charge and the price I paid online. That is, of course, if HMV stock these artists anyway. It may be an unsupported belief on my part, but HMV has always struck me as a bit expensive, although that said my most recent purchase from them, Steve Winwood's 1980 album, Arc Of A Diver, was no cheaper on Amazon.

But even if they have been competitive on price, HMV's business has been vulnerable for a while, thanks to a general change in our shopping habits, and a change specific to the way in which we consume HMV's two main product lines, music and video.[1] When I was in HMV in Romford just before Christmas it was noticeable that the number of shoppers queuing at the tills was much smaller than I've seen in the past; downloads and streaming have meant fewer people wanting to buy physical media, and those who do increasingly buy it online.

In the wake of the news about HMV, Guardian journalist Penny Anderson wrote a piece about the chain's demise and why we don't need them any more (Thank you for the music, HMV, but we don’t need you any more) which I - and many others if my Twitter feed is anything to go by - found to be a rather unnecessary hatchet job on the retailer. " You wouldn’t expect to find knowledgeable advice," Anderson wrote, which was not my experience. She described HMV as " the first port of call for beginners and general music consumers," as if this was a bad thing. By definition, beginners have to start somewhere, and where better than a store like HMV that stocks a huge and diverse range of artists? And where better for your maiden aunt, or grandmother, with no understanding of your musical taste beyond the name of a band you like, and no access to online shopping, to go buy you a CD for your birthday?

Streaming and downloads have done for HMV's business what online shopping has done for others, and although I'm not a fan of streaming or downloading music - I'd much rather have a CD - I admit that I'm increasingly less likely to buy DVDs these days, preferring to stream them since I'm likely to watch films and TV programmes just once, and of course since my internet connection is now up to the task. I do occasionally download music, but only if a physical CD of the material is not available -  and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes this can be because the album in question is old or because the band have only released it in mp3 format. This latter reason is due to the fact that many of the bands I like are either not signed up to major labels and therefore release their music through companies like Bandcamp as downloads only - like The Swan Chorus - or whose CDs HMV don't stock - Lifesigns, or Doris Brendel for example - or IQ, whose back catalogue of eleven studio albums,  eight live albums and four compilations is represented at HMV by just one, the 25th anniversary remix of Ever.

The internet has made the world a radically different place to what it was when I first started buying records, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to browse through the racks in HMV, Virgin et al, over the years. In the future, it looks like the supermarkets are going to be one of the few options for people who want to go out and buy a CD or DVD, which will only be OK if you want something from the top twenty of either.

HMV's Bluewater store, one of the stores likely to go the same way as Harlequin Records.

One of the HMV stores likely to close is my local one in Romford, and if the list of others set to close is right, then it's possible that I'll never set foot in one of their stores again, even if the chain does survive.[2] While this is an inevitable consequence of the way the world of retail is changing, that is as much my fault as anyones.

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[1] Note: I'm using video as a convenient coverall for DVD and Blu-ray, movies and TV programmes.

[2] A full list of stores that will probably close can be found here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/full-list-hmv-stores-risk-13785534

A Week Of Free Stuff - Mostly!

One of the perks of getting older is the opportunity to get things for free, or at least cheaper than before. I confess I have not yet had much chance to take advantage of concessionary prices - I recently made my first visit to the cinema in over twenty years and was somewhat disappointed to find that the concessionary price was the same as the normal price - but I have had a free eye test recently[1], and my 60+ Oystercard has been taking a caning recently.

Ok, so the Oystercard isn't free, but it was only £20 and expires in 2024 (when I get my Freedom Pass, assuming a future Mayor of London doesn't withdraw it) - that's six years at 27 pence per month - and it has paid for itself over and again since I got it. Take last week for instance, when I travelled up to London more times than if I had still been working! And on four of the days I travelled, the event that I was going to cost me nothing.

On the Saturday I went to see Polish prog-rock band Riverside at The Electric Ballroom in Camden. My plan was to walk from Liverpool Street to Camden - at just under four miles, that is a gentle stroll - but heavy rain put the kibosh on that idea, although popping my head above ground at Kings Cross tube, I saw that the rain had eased sufficiently to allow me to walk the last mile or so. I rather liked the venue, and as I've got older I've found myself liking venues where the audience stands rather than sits as it is easier to get to the loo during the performance, although bizarrely I find the need less when standing than sitting, which I think is psychological, not physical. Riverside were - as expected - brilliant, and support act Mechanism were better than expected.

Riverside at The Electric Ballroom

 Monday and it was off to Ealing to pick up a djembe drum that my wife had bought on eBay, and then on Tuesday it was a trip to Greenwich to the Up The Creek comedy club to see a recording of Angela Barnes' BBC radio show, You Can't Take It With You. Since the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) was extended to Lewisham, getting to Greenwich from our home north of the river has become much easier, and the DLR gives you the chance to get a driver's eye view of your journey. The show was in part a cathartic experience for Angela Barnes following her father's death, but principally just good old-fashioned observational comedy. The series is being broadcast in the New Year.

On Wednesday it was another BBC radio recording, at Old Broadcasting House (OBH) in Portland Place. Val and I go to plenty of BBC radio shows at New Broadcasting House, but this was our first visit to OBH, which is next door. The programme we went to see was World Book Club, which goes out on the World Service and in this episode featured one of our favourite writers, Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series, a set of books so successful that apparently one sells every fourteen seconds, worldwide with total sales exceeding 100 million. Val and I met Lee at a book signing a couple of years ago when he was promoting Night School, the 21st Reacher novel, but at World Book Club he was reading from, and speaking about, Killing Floor, which was the first in the series. The programme airs on New Year's Day.

Meeting Lee Child at Waterstone's in 2016

Thursday saw me take a trip to Wembley Stadium to see England play the USA in a friendly. I've not been to Wembley since it was rebuilt in 2007, in fact the last time I was there - as far as I recall - was for a Genesis concert in 1987. I used to go to Wembley for England games regularly until an uncomfortable experience at a match against the Republic of Ireland put me off. I probably wouldn't have gone to this game had it not been for my football club, Romford FC, being given a number of complementary tickets. Had the Football Association known in advance that Wayne Rooney would be brought out of retirement for a swan-song appearance, I wonder if they would have been so generous in handing out freebies; before Rooney's inclusion in the squad was announced they probably felt it prudent to 'paper' the stadium to avoid row upon row of empty seats. The new stadium is impressive, safe, modern and clean - which the old one wasn't - but it lacks the charm that the old arena had; it's a bit bland. My ticket warned that tier five - where I was seated - was not suitable for vertigo suffers due to the height and steep aspect; fortunately, this warning turned out to be a bit overdone, as, despite my aversion to heights, I had no issues. One thing that has not changed since Wembley was rebuilt, however, is the time it takes to get back to Wembley Park tube station. If I were a regular visitor, I would definitely be looking at alternative means of getting home.

The final freebie of the week was another BBC radio programme, of The Now Show this time, which was recorded on Friday lunchtime at The Comedy Store in Leicester Square, and which was broadcast that same evening, but is still available to listen to on the BBC Radio iPlayer.

Gary Numan at The Royal Albert Hall

My 60+ Oystercard probably saved me about £60 in fares that week - and continues to save me money, as Val and I were at The Royal Albert Hall to see Gary Numan this week - and of the shows and events we've been to this last week and a bit only that show and the Riverside gig cost me money. A caveat I'd add is that of course even the free shows involved some expenditure (food, drinks, a programme at the football, and t-shirts at the gigs - I'm a sucker for tour t-shirts), but if nothing else this week or so has once again proven, having seen three shows and a football match that cost me nothing, it's possible to travel around the capital and be entertained for free, or at least pretty damn close to free.

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[1] Not much of a concession, as it seems most opticians offer free eye tests with vouchers in newspapers, or to anyone who buys a pair of glasses from them.

The Theory and Practice of Boredom

"Mum, I'm bored!" How many times did  I utter those words as a child? How many times during the long summer holidays, or on Sunday afternoons when the weather prevented me from having a kick-about in the garden, and there was nothing on TV worth watching? I have no idea, but it was often.  That sort of generalised boredom - as opposed to specific boredom, which we'll come to shortly - ought to be far less common today, both among adults and children. In my youth there were fewer diversions, today, what with a multitude of TV channels, streaming services, video games, and social media, there are far fewer reasons to be bored; frankly, one ought to always be able to find something to do (and I'm discounting household chores and the like).

Specific boredom is another thing altogether. Being bored by one's job is something that has to be endured; being bored by a particular TV programme, or by some hobby or another can be dealt with by switching to some more engaging activity. Work - boring or not - has to be tolerated. Many times in my working life I had to do tedious, repetitive jobs, the sorts that are alright for the first few hours - the whole morning sometimes - but become stupefying after a while. I spent a long time checking payments - comparing written instructions with what had been input into the computer system - which was a task that after a while became so mind-numbing, that as the day progressed, trips to the coffee machine became increasingly regular, just as a means of getting away from the desk.

Boredom at work can be detrimental to performance; mistakes start creeping in. I recall vividly spending hours checking payments and at some point having no recollection of the last few items I had checked. Clearly, then was a good time to take a break. That was at least one reason why I always enjoyed jobs with plenty of variety, less opportunity to lose concentration and make an error. Sometimes, of course, a repetitive task, performed over and over again, can enable the mind to wander without any unfortunate consequence.

Generalised boredom - which, as I've said is something we all probably experience less these days - need not actually be a bad thing, although perhaps it is better to characterise this form of boredom as something else, by which I mean freeing the mind to simply wander, to daydream. We all lead increasingly busy lives, whether it is work or running a house, keeping up with our social lives - in real life or online - being busy, being engaged, we seem to be constantly on the go, our minds ever active.

The poet W H Davies, wrote:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

This poem is an encouragement to do nothing, to let the mind wander, to think not of something specific, but simply to pause and reflect. Doing so will often allow me to reach insights, solve problems, and be creative, without actively realising it. One thing I love to do is go for walks, preferably somewhere away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but even there walking frees my mind to take flights of fancy. One thing that eliminating boredom does is similarly reduce our capacity to daydream; walking allows me to do just that, and apart from the benefit of the physical exercise, allows my mind to order my thoughts and make decisions, or solve problems, even if I am not conscious of my doing so.

Most of us will have experienced the frustration of not being able to solve that last clue in the crossword, or of desperately trying to remember someone's name, only to find that the harder we think about it, the more elusive the answer becomes. Yet, by switching off that part of the brain, letting the mind wander, the answer will pop into one's head unbidden.  Many times during my years at work I would be faced with a problem that needed solving, and many times the harder I thought about that problem, the more difficult it became to pin down an answer, yet the solution to many of those problems came to me when I was not actively thinking about them, when I was walking to work from the station, or waiting for a train. The solutions came to me when I simply stood and stared.

To counter the stress we all encounter in our daily lives, many people are turning to mindfulness and meditation, which are not necessarily the same thing as submitting to the sort of generalised boredom that I have described, however generalised boredom, or allowing oneself the freedom to simply stand and stare works for me. A danger of this, and a trap that I find myself falling into is overthinking, but that stems from my actively thinking about something rather than engaging in the sort of freewheeling daydreaming that characterises what, for want of a better term, I'm going to continue calling generalised boredom. And overthinking is only one step removed from full-scale worrying, and we don't want to go there!

As a child, I hated being bored (I'm sure my Mum hated it too), but now I enjoy it and I embrace it; I have some of my best ideas when I'm bored. Taking the time to relish being bored enables one to daydream, to imagine, to be creative. Without boredom, our lives are poorer.

Task Manager Is Not Responding

Built-in - or planned - obsolescence has been with us since the 1920's; it first took root in the car manufacturing industry in the United States at General Motors, where annual design changes were introduced to convince consumers of the need to buy a new model each year. The idea grew through the 1930's as a means of stimulating a depressed economy, but really took hold in the 1950's, being popularised by an American industrial designer by the name of Brooks Stevens, who defined planned obsolescence as, "Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary."

Brooks Stevens, 1911-1995. Picture: Industrial Designers Society of America

While planned obsolescence is still a feature of the automobile industry - I for one regularly receive emails, texts and phone calls from the dealership I bought my current car from, encouraging me to trade it in for a newer vehicle  - today there is barely anything that we buy that we are not encouraged to replace almost immediately with an upgraded model. Apple launch new iPhones seemingly every month, although in reality it's annually (except for the last three years when there have been - or will be in the case of 2018 - two). And immediately they launch a new device, they sew dissatisfaction among owners of older iPhones, even though those models may be just a year old and the difference between them and the newly launched product is minimal. But the mobile phone industry expects us to upgrade our handsets every two years, hence most contracts run for 24 months, but if you are not upgrading your phone after that time, it still makes sense to change your contract to SIM only to avoid continuing to pay for the handset, which your monthly payments will have made yours after that time; unless you bought it outright in the first place, of course.

Sadly, after two years most people are faced with having to change their handset anyway as degraded battery life means it spends more time plugged into the wall socket than being truly mobile, or the apps you use most often stop working without being upgraded, except you can't upgrade the apps without upgrading the operating system, which you can't upgrade because there is insufficient memory on the handset. Or in slightly sinister fashion, the release of a new model coincides with an abrupt falling off of performance of your handset, prompting much frustration and a burning desire to upgrade.

I've had my current mobile phone - a Samsung Galaxy S7 - for two years now, and have gone SIM only, which is not only cheaper but gives me more data too, and since Android updated the operating system, the phone's battery life seems to have improved by about fifty-percent, which seems counterintuitive but there again, it is Android, not Apple.

With newer phones seeming to have only marginally better functionality, it really is only battery life that would make me want to get a new handset at present, but the same cannot be said for my laptop. I am writing this on a Lenovo machine, which I have had since 2013. When I first bought it, I was quite impressed with it, particularly in comparison with our old desktop computer, but now, not so much. I don't ask much of my laptop, I only really use it for Word, Excel, email and web browsing; all I ask is that it is reliable and responsive. I don't even store much on it, my files and pictures are stored on a flash drive, which I periodically back up to an external hard drive. I don't use it for anything that really ought to impair its performance, yet as it gets older, it gets more and more sluggish and unresponsive.

The Lenovo G580

Surfing the net can be a frustrating experience when pages are slow to load,  and then it's tempting to blame one's internet connection, except the same pages that load at a snail's pace on the laptop seem perfectly normal on other devices we own that use the same connection. Mind you, as this tweet from James Gleave illustrates, there are plenty of annoyances that have nothing to do with either one's machine or connection.

Actually, it is programmes not responding that has become my biggest bugbear. All too often, clicking to open a programme like Word or Excel, or File Explorer is met with the computer equivalent of dumb insolence. Click once; nothing. Click again; still nothing. Click a third time (yes, I know, I should be patient); still nothing. Lose patience and try to invoke Task Manager with Alt+Ctrl+Del; nothing. And then, with what in a human would be excessively bad grace and a smug expression, three instances of the programme open. Meanwhile, where is Task Manager? Nowhere to be seen, that's where. Excel frustrates me with its simple stubbornness to do things in a timely manner. For instance, if I want to format a cell or range of cells, right-clicking and selecting Format Cells inevitably results in that annoying little blue spinning circle appearing and the words 'Not Responding' mocking you from the top of the screen. Then, miraculously, just as you give up hope, the dialog box appears. It happens every time, and it's very, very annoying.

As for Task Manager, that supposedly indispensable tool for closing recalcitrant programmes, it is frankly even more frustrating than the programmes it is there to help you with. Alt+Ctrl+Del eventually calls up a sky-blue screen; 'Preparing Security Options,' it says before grudgingly offering a list of options, one of which is Task Manager, but which invariably opens with the caveat, 'Not Responding.' This to me is the final indignity; Task Manager is supposed to be a help, not a hindrance. More often than not, by the time Task Manager has deigned to make an appearance, the unruly application has started to behave itself...for the time being.

Wait for it...

...finally!

Given my frustration with my laptop, I started Googling the expected lifespan of a laptop. Apparently, assuming no physical damage occurs (like lobbing it out of the window in frustration when Word refuses to open), a mid-range laptop like mine should last three to five years, so on that basis, I have reached the end of this machine's useful existence. But why? As I say, I'm only using it for quite simple and straightforward tasks, I haven't installed any power or memory hungry applications and all I really ask is for it to be reliable and responsive. Five years seems a pitiful amount of time, but I guess we're entering the realms of planned obsolescence here.

I'd prefer not to go to the expense of buying a new machine, especially since these days Microsoft Office - which is pretty much essential - now has to be bought separately, so more cost there, and anyway, I'm happy with the 2007 version I am using. It's taken me enough time to navigate around that, without having to learn how to use the latest incarnation. Eventually, I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet, but in the meantime put up with this increasingly petulant machine.

Postscript: Since I wrote this, the laptop seems to have bucked its ideas up. Whether this is coincidence (perhaps it has read my words and decided to behave better for fear of being junked), or the update for Windows 10, version 1803, I cannot say, but I'm keeping my eye on it; any backsliding and I'm off to PC World.