where art collides

We woke up this morning with two things on our mind. First was the much anticipated excellent breakfast at the Waldorf Astoria which proved to be the highest quality such meal of this trip.

The second thing on our mind was whether our 12.15 flight to Humberside would be still on. Storm Eunice was forecast to hit the UK hard with government DANGER warnings being issued and many flights being cancelled. 

We ubered it to the airport in a timely manner and our passage through security was without issue other than Anne’s luggage being taken to one side for what was presumably a random additional search.

It was only after we had sat down at the gate that the flight cancellation notice hit. We were directed to Transfer Desk T6 and were lucky enough to only have to queue for an hour. By the time we got to the front of the queue it looked more like a 2 – 3 hour queue.

Unfortunately when we got to the front it turned out that the 1 hour queue was to get a place in the queue to change flights. We were told  to return at 16.20 to rebook. At that point we were  likely to have to go and pick up luggage and find a hotel. Unless we could get a flight to London tomorrow it looked like being Sunday at the earliest we can escape.

It must be said that this is where my years of business travel paid dividends. Our place in the queue drifted out from 16.20 to 18.30 so I said sod it we will pay for the lounge and could well get immediate service there anyway. I couldn’t book the lounge online so went there. To cut a long story short we got in for nowt and have been booked on a flight to LHR later this pm. It always pays to be nice to people.

Our new flight is one of the few not cancelled. Turns out it is one of the few with an air traffic control slots for landing at LHR.

Bit of a palaver at the gate. They wanted to see our passenger locator forms as well as boarding pass and passport. We didn’t have said form. They hadn’t asked for it at the gate when we waited to board the other flight. We had to fill one out using our phones. Bit of a high pressure moment especially as the form was not particularly user friendly. Didn’t ask to see our vaccination certs which I’d have thought was the more important doc.

Airborne. Listening to Sgt Pepper. Brilliant stuff.

One lost hold bag and a £75 taxi ride to Paddington later (Heathrow Express trains all cancelled) and we made it to the Hilton.

Stretch and flex class this morning. Only one other bloke there. I need this class as I am stiff as a board. Then into the gym afterwards for a bit of treadmill. 

It’s a good time of day to go. Not too crowded. The biggest issue is being forced to watch daytime TV with subtitles. This morning it was homes under the hammer and something with Gok Wan talking with two women about bra fittings.

At least I had ma tunes.

…

I’m on mute and rolling the dice. This needs elaboration as I’m not really playing craps, the only dice game that springs to mind. The dice being rolled involves me being in a conference call but on mute. When I type here I’m not really concentrating on the call so risk missing out on something especially if I was being asked a question. I’m sure you’ve all done it.

I’ve just realised that other games involve dice. Monopoly for example and Cluedo. Showing my age there. We have numerous Monopoly sets stored in various places around the house. Mostly in the attic, probs. I don’t remember the last time we played the game. Used to play it a lot when we were kids but there again there wasn’t much else to do on wet Sunday afternoons in Wales. My sister @Sue was renowned for cheating, as I recall 🙂

We don’t play Monopoly anymore because it takes too long. In our modern world where instant gratification is the order of the day there is no place for a board game that takes three hours to play. The shorter, dumbed down version is not worth playing. I may see if a few peeps might want to come round one evening for a game. A Sunday afternoon maybs.

Unusually for me nowadays I had back to back meetings from 9am to 1pm. I also have one more at 2pm so have been able to enjoy a lunch of mackerel pate with various bits of rabbit food. I’m doing the fast 800 keto diet which by and large has tasty meals. The rabbit food was a bit boring which has been quite rare for this diet. Worth Pursuing though as I’ve lost a good stone and a half since Christmas

Well.

The long pause after that opening remark was intentional. It’s because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say afterwards. We’ve all experienced it, almost certainly, probs. On this occasion it is somewhat vexing because this morning I thought of something I figured would be a catalyst for content but it has totally left the brain. Or at least moved somewhere else in the brain without letting me know where.

It would be quite useful to install a google thought history in the brain specifically for occasions like this. With it I wouldn’t periodically spend ages looking for my wallet. This is a patentable idea although it’s implementation will likely take some time and chances are I won’t be around to benefit from it.

When you think about it the concept is quite dangerous. Open to abuse. Mind reading. Government intrusion. Someone’s government somewhere. By not pursuing the idea I am doing everyone a favour. Spending hours looking for your wallet unfortunately is just something we have to put up with to safeguard our privacy.

The other thing about writing the word “well” is that by getting something down on paper, albeit virtual, frees up other word generation as is clearly the case here. Whatever you might think of the words. There is a strong element of “who cares anyway”. I watched a very interesting programme yesterday about Scottish landscape artist James Morrison. It prompted me to look up the prices of his artwork (£2k – £4k) to see if there was anything I fancied buying.

My point though is that in the programme Jim, as I will call him, said that he painted purely for himself. What went down on  the canvas was not necessarily meant to represent what he saw in front of him but what his feelings were at the time and not really for the enjoyment of others.

That is not why I write. In fact I’m not sure I am really at the stage of putting stuff down that represents my innermost feelings. I’m not ready for that degree of baring all although I suspect that anything written can never achieve greatness without it. I might get there one day. If I do it will hopefully be before my brain totally degenerates. 

I have been through a couple or three stages in the process which gives me hope that one day I might get there. The first was when I started trefor.net. This is a blog I have not written for in perhaps five years now but it has several thousand posts and when I started it I kept it quiet because I didn’t really know what people would think. Turned out that ultimately 27,000 unique people a month would think it worth visiting, at its peak.

Then there was poetry. I’ve written poetry at various stages all my life but for a long time kept it quiet. Then one day I thought sod it, I’ll tell people about it and started to put it up on philosopherontap.com. It was amazing how many people came out of the woodwork and told me they wrote poetry as well. Quite a few of them are now published on philospherontap, some under pseudonym. That blog has something like 1,500 posts if I remember rightly. No idea how many visitors it gets because I don’t really care. I do it for myself.

When my interest in poetry started developing I looked around for outlets. I found poetry sites with total drivel on them. People desperately trying to conjure up rhymes without any real skill to go about it. Then I thought who am I to criticise?” People might think the same of my stuff. I did join the Poetry Society and entered a competition. Didn’t get anywhere and then realised that with 70,000 or so entries it was an impossible job to pick a winner. That made me think that belonging to such an organisation was a total waste of time anyway. It was probably full of people who wanted to make themselves look intellectual and that there was a lot of expertise in knowing what poetry was all about. 

That was one of the things that prompted me to publish my stuff myself. Originally philosopherontap was meant to be somewhere that all forms of art and philosophy online come together. I looked into the possibility of getting an arts council grant to sit in the Morning Star pub for a month discussing pub philosophy with anyone who cared to join me. Looked like there was far too much paperwork and bureaucracy to make that one work. 

Finally there ‘s the stuff I write on Facebook. I usually put the same content on philosopherontap but typically that’s a superset of what goes on FB. I wasn’t sure whether people would be interested but I thought I’d write it anyway. I do occasionally get some positive feedback. I suppose those who might think otherwise don’t think it’s worth the effort to tell me.

If I don’t write to bare all I think I do write because I enjoy making words string together well. I sometimes lament the fact that my vocabulary is not wider but there again I was once told by an FT journalist that they were expected to write as if the copy was going to be read by an eight year old. Not that I’m suggesting that you have a reading age of eight. 

There again there was one now deceased but well known food writer who was lauded by his peers but I didn’t like his stuff because I thought he tried to be unnecessarily clever with his use of words just to show he knew more words than the rest of us.

I don’t think I’d stick this stuff on Facebook if I didn’t want people to read it. My philosophy is that if you don’t like it you don’t have to read it.

There you go. All that came from the word “well”. Well I never. Off to play snooker. Ciao.