Author: Gordon

Walking home from a gig, late on a balmy evening in the West End of Glasgow, light rain was falling as I and others plodded our way along Great Western Road, disappearing and emerging from lamp light to lamp light. Most people were heading in the opposite direction to me.

It’s a nice part of the world, a mix of affluence and well to do university students, all branching off into different areas along Great Western Road, a long straight busy street. It feels, to me, safe. But as I walked I noticed something.

Every single woman I walked past did the same thing, I didn’t notice if they did it a few steps away from me or just walked this way all the time but, of the 10 or so who I passed, all of them were walking with their head slightly bowed and their body slightly turned away from me.

Some were on mobile phones, and one was accompanied by a large Alsatian walking happily beside her, the lead slack (which suggests a very well trained dog, and well trained dogs are loyal and protective) yet she too felt the need to turn away, to hide and cower as she walked past, to make herself as small as possible. Trying to be invisible.

I’m a big guy, I’m aware of my size and I did everything I could to not be intimidating. I mimicked their behaviour and turned away, I deliberately looked away to the other side of the road so they could see I wasn’t looking at them. I tried to figure out if it was better for me to walk on the inside of the pavement, away from the road, or nearer the edge. I stuck with the former thinking that the open road would be an ‘escape’ where as the hedges and fences away from the road would be a trap?

And then I realised just how fucking horrible it is that I have to think this way. That this is what men have done to women.

Perhaps it was the recent ‘how to talk to a woman when she’s on the phone’ thing that was doing the rounds, but the body language of all the women I passed was striking in their similarity.

It’s saddening and horrifying. How many of these women were conscious of what they were doing? How many were doing it because they saw me approaching? How many were doing it because that’s ‘just what women have to do’? How many were doing it because they have been shamed into thinking that, if something were to happen, it would somehow be their fault?

As I’ve said before, these are the thoughts of a cisgender, upper middle-class white male. I am afforded all of the privileges that society has to offer. It’s up to me, to all men like me, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with allies and help change this.

It starts with the smallest consideration of the words you use everyday, even things you may think are trivial – “Hey guys” when the people you are addressing includes women (or perhaps people who are trans or non-binary gendered) – it starts by challenging your friends when they are using their privilege to the detriment of others, it starts by calling out behaviours that you know aren’t acceptable regardless of who is using them.

It’s not easy. I will try my very best, and the memory of my walk home will stay with me for a long time.

Men, we’ve had it too easy for too long, we have to be the ones that change.

I’ve recently made the jump from laptop to tablet as my main ‘home computer’. It sounds dramatic but, for my usage, all this really boils down to is changing my modus operandi from a multi-window to single/duel window way of working.

The transition has been pretty straightforward, largely thanks to my slightly over-obsessive desire to only use apps that feature on my phone, tablet and laptop, but also because I’ve moved most of my working files to the cloud.

The main driver behind this switch was screen resolution. My MacBook Air has a low (by Apple standards) resolution 13″ screen and whilst hooking it up to a secondary monitor was ok, I found it constantly jarring to have my main workstation NOT have a Retina capable screen. Sure I could’ve got a MacBook (Pro?) but I don’t need another laptop and, having tried one for a while, the split screen capabilities of iOS brought the iPad Pro into play (plus it’s a big enough screen to watch movies on without feeling like you are compromising too much).

Of course I am writing this from an Apple viewpoint, which just so happens to match the latest adverts for the iPad Pro (What’s a computer?). I’m not sure if such a move would be possible in other ecosystems, Windows, Linux, Android, Chrome OS?? No idea.

One thing which has struck me is how little time I spend on the iPad once I’ve done whatever I need to do. I think this is more psychological than anything, as the tasks I’m doing don’t vary between devices. If I normally use a web browser rather than an app, for example, then it doesn’t matter if I’m on my laptop or my iPad given that I have pretty much the same apps installed in both platforms.

But the fact I have to switch apps completely seems to have altered the way I work. I know I could’ve achieved the same effect by using full-screen apps on my laptop but they never felt right to me. Why would I limit myself to one app at a time when I can have multiple apps running, even if I can only see partial windows of some of them, hidden behind other windows?

Well whatever my brain is up to it seems to be working. I’m gaining speed on the iPad – most of my slowness is fighting muscle memory – but on the whole I’m getting the same stuff done with what feels like fewer distractions.

If you are considering making a similar switch be aware that I did a lot of research and even adjusted some of my working practices before making up my mind. A lot of the changes I adopted also brought benefits to my iPhone usage as well. Yes, I’m further locked in to the Apple ecosystem which is both a good and bad thing, but as I see it there are only a few viable options and most of them boil down to the same decision; trust ‘someone else’ with your files and data (be that Apple, Google, Microsoft or a 3rd party like Dropbox), or manage them all yourself (which means setting up and maintaining a web server and handling the security issues, connection issues, and whatever else crops up).

A couple of tips; I’m much stricter about notifications on my iPad (I have an Apple Watch and iPhone to buzz at me if I need them to), and I use Do Not Disturb a lot more than I have in the past, toggling it on and off when I need to get something done. Without either of these I think the distractions would be too intrusive on the iPad (again not sure why it’s massively different from MacBook usage but it just feels like it is).

Overall I’m happy with the switch, and I’m finding a few additional benefits (as mentioned, the larger retina screen is handy as a second screen on those ‘two sportsball events happening at the same time’ moments. I’m using the Apple Smart Keyboard which on the whole I’d recommend as I don’t mind the way the keys feel, but I do miss having a backlit keyboard so that’s next on the list of ‘upgrades’.

Now I just need to figure out how to back up a website over FTP using the iPad and I can consign the MacBook to the back of the cupboard.

Walking in silence through the nest of headphone cables, dodging pigeons and detritus as she picks her way through the tangle of closed minds. She lets her ear guide her on days like today, days where she doesn’t need a place to hide away. She walks past shops whilst buses and taxis produce their every day noise.

Roaming where she wants to, from busy streets to quieter parks. Over head the birds sing out and the wind cries as it rustles leaves, sweeping through the trees. Kites on a string reach the highest heights.

She keeps to herself, just trying to keep her head screwed on, philosophising some.

She stops to sit on a bench that is picked out for her in sunlight, she rests her bones, knowing the loneliness won’t leave her alone. She lets the warmth wash over her and listens to the world as it turns, as it quietly sings in its long forgotten tongue.

The chords progress, minor turns major, reflecting the sunbeams all around her, visions in chromatic wonder.

She closes her eyes and starts to hum a broken melody, back and forth, over and over. She ignores this as best she can, she is practised in this routine now, letting the notes seep in and be accepted for what they are. She knows not to force it. She sits there as the sun beats down, just lets it be. She wonders. There is still a light that shines on me, shine on until tomorrow.

A cacophony of little children run past her, all giggles and shouts, tiny feet pound out staccato steps that she stores away.

The sun fades as she rises from the bench. Dazzled by the change of light she heads home, as the pregnant sounds kick and writhe in her head.

Home and her head is full of voices, she can only hope her house holds no lies. She picks up her guitar and strums, trying to capture the melody, coaxing it out into the light once more. She adjusts her fingers, maybe here? No. Here. There, there. She can feel it beginning now and knows she is safe to capture it. She plucks a pencil from the table and marks down some notations, her looping forms tumble and fall like dice.

She plays it again, letting it adjust itself, feeling the hooks growing as starts to pick up pace, the cadence and rhythm start to emerge as the music is born, another badly strung declaration, gently smiling.

Months later, she watches from behind her keyboard as the light breaks over the crowd before her. The moments of recognition as a trumpet heralds the melody writ large. The syncopated beat mirrored by the shuffling crowd, older than children in body but never in mind. Strings breeze in as the melody builds. She watches the faces, some with eyes closed and upturned to the ceiling, like a hundred flowers searching for the sun.

Like a lost woman who found herself on a park bench.