Walknotes

5 – 9 February 2024

Monday

The first miniature iris of the season are out. I love these flowers. Tiny and exotic.

Less exotic: the litter pick. Along with everything else, six large canisters of nitrous oxide. You could be forgiven for thinking the change in law has had no effect, but you would be wrong. Now, instead of the small silver bullets, kids are using the much bigger canisters. 

Tuesday

Walk to the station. The birds are singing loudly in the park. Outside the newsagents six vans are parked up, all bright white headlights and idling engines in the dark.

Someone at the train company is gaslighting commuters. Before Christmas the departure time was 7:28am. After Christmas it changed to 7:31am. Now it’s 7:30am. Minutes to you my friend, but to anyone who thought they had an extra three minutes to run for it, the world.

Read an essay about PowerPoint on the train. That software has become as divisive as Arial, or Comic Sans.

Wednesday 

Years ago I did an evening class in Director, the software for making CD-roms. It was slow going. Every time the tutor said something, one student would come up with a non-question and we’d all have to wait while the tutor exhaled and addressed it. 

“Using this tool, you can change the way your type looks. For example, you can stretch… it—Yes?”
“Like an elastic band?!”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. Like an elastic band.”

We’d all lose the flow and take a moment to reset. 

“You can make a custom cursor, if you like. All you need to remember is that it needs to fit in a 16 by 16 pixel square—yes?”
“So like, you couldn’t have an elephant?!”
“Well…err, yes, you could have an elephant if it fits in a 16 by 16 pixel square…”

I can’t remember anything else about the course or the people on it.  

I finished the Stephen King book, On Writing (which is great) and I’m reading another recommended book about writing now. I forced myself to read it this morning instead of walking through the rain. 

The author of this book is both the teacher and the student in the above scenario. For every nugget of information there’s a rambling anecdote that follows. You can feel the impact of the information drain away with every fresh sentence. 

However, the joke’s on me. The book is a New York Times best seller, and I am writing a blog.

Thursday 

The sun’s coming up but it feels like the end of the day, not the start of it. I’m 26th in the queue; a single hood in a line of umbrellas. It’s raining heavily and the puddles are reflecting the headlights. We fill the bus and as it pulls away someone outside taps urgently on the glass. Too late. 

We head across the bridge to the city where the tops of the tallest buildings are smudges and red lights peep through a low wet mist. 

Last weekend I watched a weather report on TV. They predicted the weather ‘til Wednesday and then presented two outcomes for the rest of the week: a European model and an American one. Looks like the American one played out. 

I’ve never seen them do this before. It’s good. We shouldn’t pretend to know all the outcomes if they’re uncertain. Tell people the truth and explain it’s complicated. Why not. Instead of setting false expectations, set real ones and take people on the journey. 

Remember Twitter? There was that time a train company explained exactly what had happened to cause all the delays, instead of the usual insincere “sorry for the inconvenience caused.” It was a revelation. Obviously no one was thrilled, but it quelled much of the rage.

Incidentally, they’re using robot voices to tell you how much they care about your safety at London Bridge again. Nothing says “we care” more than a library of words recorded individually and hastily pieced together to form sentences with inhuman intonation.

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DW