Year: 2019

I grew up in a house that always had the TV on. My Mum knitted, professionally, and the TV was the back drop to that. As she was working, she preferred things that she maybe didn’t have to pay close attention to, so Saturday afternoon movies became a staple, as did cricket and Formula One, anything that didn’t need to be watched 100% of the time.

Of course I wasn’t knitting so I did sit (I don’t have the patience for such things) and watch these things, the movies, the sport, and have fond memories of sitting on the old round brown rug, resplendent with white Claddagh, as the screen flickered through lazy Saturday after lazy Saturday.

As I grew up, so TV took a lesser part of my life as I found more interesting ways to spend my time.

I’ve never been one for following the crowd and TV is a great example of this. I genuinely don’t now how some people can have watched every TV show they have, hour after hour after episode after episode. I’m as fond of a Netflix binge as anyone but they are few and far between, and so when people at work start talking about TV shows, invariably I haven’t seen it.

The quality of most regular TV is what puts me off, not the fact it’s popular (I’m not THAT contrary) and that’s before you get to all the political and ‘news’ shows that only add further weight to a vague conspiracy theory about how TV is really just the opiate of the masses or, as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy put it, the drug of the nation.

T.V. is
The stomping ground for political candidates
Where bears in the woods
Are chased by Grecian Formula’d
Bald eagles
T.V. is mechanized politic’s
Remote control over the masses
Co-sponsored by environmentally safe gases
Watch for the PBS special
It’s the perpetuation of the two party system
Where image takes precedence over wisdom
Where sound bite politics are served to
The fastfood culture
Where straight teeth in your mouth
Are more important than the words
That come out of it
Race baiting is the way to get selected
Willie Horton or
Will he not get elected on…
Television, the drug of the Nation

It’s not that I don’t watch television – I’ve just finished watching the entire How I Met Your Mother from start to finish for the first time – more that these days, I struggle to pick something from the myriad of choices we have available to us now.

And it’s only getting worse. Netflix set the standards but pretty soon after that Amazon pitched in (I’m currently watching The Boys there), and HBO, Disney, and BritBox all want a piece of the pie too.

It’s a vast change since my childhood days of three channels, and a big tube box with buttons and you had to get up out of your seat if you wanted to change the channel.

And what’s all that choice doing to my television experience? Diminishing it.

For a few years I hardly watched any regular TV. So much so that I considered giving up the TV License we pay in the UK as I was only watching streamed movies. I was fed up channel surfing and watching one or two episodes of a show that just didn’t have the production values I like and more often than not I ended up re-watching one particular TV show which, for me, is up there as the best that has ever been made (the first 4 seasons at least).

I can’t remember when I first stumbled across The West Wing, it certainly wasn’t my parents influence but I think my friend Susan was the first to clue me in. She had a bad illness for several months which kept her housebound so, to have something to talk about, we’d watch TV shows separately and discuss them. She foisted a boxset on me once and, since then, I’ve watched it start to finish about six times.

For me it’s the writing, the words and the way they flow from character to character that dragged me in, not to mention the stellar cast and high production values. I’ve not long finished listening to the podcast that, belatedly, accompanied the series – The West Wing Weekly – which featured one of the actors who joined the show in the latter years. He, Joshua Malina, had worked on other TV shows before, but hearing him talk about the way the show was made and how it was more like a theatre/movie production than the usual weekly TV show approach (quality over quantity) really solidified, for me, the reason I adore this show so much.

If you haven’t watched it, consider this a recommendation. Take the first few episodes at one go, it settles in by about episode three and just gets better and better from there. You will laugh, you will cry (the death of one character especially, every single time!) and alas, in our current political climate, you too will wish for a President Bartlett to appear. It’s a soothing balm of a show, that places good over bad, right over wrong, with all the human frailties that go along with that.

As the autumn nights head for winter, the comfort of a sofa and a blanket and familiar TV show is beckoning again. Maybe it’s time for viewing number seven…

10 PRINT "Hello World!"

I can’t remember if it was a birthday present or a present from Santa, or if it was from an Aunt or Uncle, but I can still remember the first time I used it and the mild awe I experienced when I got it working.

The present was an electronics starter kit; a little circuit board with LEDs, switches, a speaker and other bits and bobs on it, and lots of little wires and spring connectors so you could wire up circuits and I can still remember the fun it was to create something like that, something magic. Push a switch here, and an LED lights up over there. It came with a set of instructions for basic circuits, and from that you could configure your own. I’m pretty sure I tried to wire up my own burglar alarm for my bedroom door one time only to realise that to set it up I had to be inside the room… bit of a limitation that.

The kit itself probably wasn’t the catalyst for my interest in technology but it certainly poured fuel on the fire and from a young age, encouraged by a father who had an entire garage full of things to experiment with and who remains to this day a huge gadget fan, my curious mind was quickly drawn to a world of electronics and switches, the wonder of electricity and the burgeoning world of home electronics and computers.

All of this ultimately led me through high school and a Higher Physics qualification, then on to a (short lived) college course in Electrical and Electronic Engineering where, in a nice little twist, I even made an actual PCB (printed circuit board) although this one didn’t have little spring connectors. I also managed, as part of my coursework, to blow a chip entirely in half, with the top layer flying off in a puff of smoke. Ahhh those heady days.

It wasn’t for me though.

Alongside that early interest in electronics was a growing interest in computers, fuelled entirely by my Dad who used to bring home these wonderous machines from the school he taught in. An Acorn BBC Series Microcomputer was my first exposure to such a thing, before the BBC Master, and a few years later an early Apple Mac II which still holds fond memories. It was the beginning of the personal computer age and soon all my friends had Sinclair ZX Spectrums, Commodore C64s, and the Amstrad CPC with its built in tape deck.

Things were pretty BASIC back then (pun clearly intended) yet it was still quite a revelation when, after spending a couple of hours manually typing lines of code, you ran your own program and could see it on the screen.

I missed out on Computer Software courses at school by a year, or my life would no doubt have been very different, but that early love of technology has been a constant throughout my life.

If you had told a 10 year old me that one day I’d stand in my living room, and say a few words out loud to have some lights come on, and some music starting to play, I’d have presumed you’d stolen the idea from a Dan Dare comic.

Of course all that technology comes with a price, one we weren’t really thinking about in the early days. Both the cost of hardware, with the incessant push to upgrade devices regularly for the latest greatest features, and as the internet zips forward and gives us ever greater sight of the murkier parts of life are brought into view and that too comes at a cost.

With millions of inter-connected devices, the idea that shining a light on all the bad things in the hope they’ll go away hasn’t played out. Instead it’s simply helped those with similar world views come together in increasingly monstrous ways. But, of course, that isn’t the fault of technology. There have always been people with dark views of the world, there has always been hatred, it’s just that much easier for it to coalesce online than ever before.

The flip side, obviously, is that those people who believe in love, equality, and want to make the world a better place for everyone, can also come together online, thanks to the wonderful technology we have available to us. It’s no surprise that there is a rise on demonstrations around the world, with technology driving the organisation and planning.

It’s a long way since my first experiences with technology, learning how to write lines of basic code, and computers aside, the leaps and bounds that all forms of technology have taken in the past three decades is astounding, and looking forward one wonders just how far we will be able to take things.

Until then…

GOTO 10

The air is cool as it moves around us. Under foot, crimson leaves lie fallen, their work done, and far above our heads the empty branches whisper in the wind. Decades of stories are whispered back and forth, as we stand below them, looking up as they sway and talk, telling their tales in a beautiful language.

On we walk, enjoying the crisp air on our cheeks, our hands warm in gloves, feet swathed in socks and boots. The path changes to gravel, then grass, and back again as we meander our way through the forest. Mushrooms peak from fallen logs, fir trees stand vibrant in the morning glow, in the distance a burbling stream tumbles its way to meet the river some miles from here.

We chat about nothing of importance for that is not why we are here. For us this is a hallowed place, a church bigger than any other, a nurturing land with gentle qualities, one that can be as harsh as it is tender, as beautiful as it is stark. There is no place for religion here, only nature in all its glory. Even at this time of the year it is powerful and beautiful in more ways than I have words to describe.

Stand under a large tree, let your eye travel up that gnarled and weary trunk, decades old, strong and solid. Look at the branches as they spread out to capture the sky, the twigs that twist ever higher, and even in these autumn months a few leaves who haven’t quite finished their work cling on to the last. Not yet, they say, not yet.

Look up through those branches to the sky, the cold blue ceiling above us, pocked white with clouds.

Marvel at all of this, at the vast scale on display and realise how small we are, how insignificant in the face of such wonder and beauty.

Walking on we turn a corner and a single flat sheet stretches out before us, reflecting the clouds above as they scroll across the surface to the other side, disappearing into the reed beds. Some ducks emerge from the opposite shore and send ripples across the water, rendering the sky surreal.

We stand and breathe the clean air, sharp and cold on our lungs, ruddying our cheeks, and together we smile, happy and content as Mother Nature looks over us all.