Tag: dailyprompt

Plug and sigh

Daily writing prompt
Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.
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Weird, I know. My first thought as I looked across my tatty desk. Cables are irritating. Even the alternative is irritating. Tapping away at this keyboard I’m tied by a slim black wire that runs off into a darkened place. If I had a wireless keyboard, I’d be doubly irritated. Sure, as eggs are eggs the battery would not be charged when I needed it to be charged. And I would have put the battery charger away in a box and forgotten where I’d put it.

They’re everywhere. Cables and connectors. This could be the century of the cable, much a the last one. Dam things are cash cows too. Companies like to extract the maximum consideration out of us. Our fantastically capable new tech is useless unless we dip into our pockets and buy cables with just the right connector[1].

Fine, there have been attempts to overcome this bond we have with wires. Wireless charging and wireless connections don’t always deliver what they say on the box. They can be as much faff as plugging in cables. Physics dictates those energetic electrons like conductors. When power is needed, travelling faster and further through wires. Whizzing along with the potential to do work wherever they end up.

If I take the bigger picture, the situation is not so simple. Wires dedicated to communication are going out of fashion. Once upon a time copper wires brough the telephone into the house. Now, that communication is optical. Light flashes to the tune of the ones and noughts we seek.

Getting power from A to B, storing it and using it as needed, there lies unending challenges. From the mega to the micro level. Controversies about huge electricity pylons straddling the countryside. To powering the lean electronics hidden in the plastic case of my keyboard.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of wires. And danced the earth on laughter-powered things.

To borrow a poetic line on flying[2]. If only we could loose this bond forever. Unlikely as it seems. In my profession we contend with the fact that civil aircraft, where lightness equals profit, there’s between 100 and 200 miles of wires.

Let’s think. Will this be perpetual? Put aside all the steps that machines may advance, at some level they come down to wires and multiple connections. In a way, lucky for us. That means there will always be an off switch.

[1] https://newsthump.com/2018/05/21/man-decides-to-keep-box-of-cables-hes-has-since-2002-for-another-year/

[2] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157986/high-flight-627d3cfb1e9b7

Don’t forget your towel

Daily writing prompt
What makes you laugh?
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Excursions into the improbable. It’s the way that people look at life that reveals the absurdity of existence. We are highly improbable beings and that’s best approached with humour.

I’m not all that original. I’m going to celebrate the HHGTTG[1]. When it was first broadcast, I clung to the radio, wondering what imaginative excursion it would take us on next. It’s a jigsaw puzzle of abstract ideas that surround a wacky plot.

Why is it funny? Radio has a wonderful way of forming pictures in the mind. The creation of Zaphod Beeblebrox takes a bit of getting one’s head around. Notice what I did there? Such a mad romp of absurdity opens huge vistas of comic horizons. Cosmic even.

[1] The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction created by Douglas Adams.

Speed

Daily writing prompt
Have you ever unintentionally broken the law?
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There was a plain envelope waiting for me when I came through the front door, on Thursday last. It didn’t look like the regular ones that are house bills, statements or unwanted advertising junk. Yes, I’m primitive. I’m still paper based, to a great extent.

When I did get to opening it, my heart sank a little. Now, I hadn’t seen one of those for years and years. Inside was a formal bold printed form. Simple question. Was I the person driving my car on such and such a date, in the place named? They got me. I followed a link to a site that held motorway pictures. These images had gone from my recollection but there they were in curated digital realism. Big electronic signs, in bright red, hanging over the M25 motorway saying 60 miles per hour. Trouble is the calculated speed on the form was not 60.

By a small margin of error, the indicated speed of my car was enough to trigger the plain envelope that was not a welcome addition to my correspondence pile. Unintentionally I’d broken the law. I say unintentionally because I’m in the habit of using the speed limiter on my car to make sure such occurrences don’t happen. On this occasion my lapse is almost certainly going to turn into the need to go on a speed awareness course. Never mind.

Question mark?

Daily writing prompt
If there were a biography about you, what would the title be?
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That not an easy one. There are titles that stick for the strangest of reasons. One for me is David Niven’s: “The Moon’s a Balloon”, which is autobiographical. Simple and captures an actor’s life being one of illusions.

Spike Milligan gravestone epitaph could be a title of a life story: “I told you I was ill…”.  Which sums up the unexpected and terminal nature of life. Not to take anything too seriously.

Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a good source of inspiration. I could take: “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” and convert it into “Bye, and Thanks for All the Toast”.

There are a lot of titles that big-up their subject on the basis that book sales might be higher if the story is about untold struggle and marvellous achievements. Epic tales can be repetitive even if they are universal.

I don’t know if anyone has used it, but I have in mind the title: “What was all that about?” Imagining that my biography is published after I’ve past. Although, I doubt if such a whimsical publication would hit the streets in our cosmos.

Sun up to Sun down

Daily writing prompt
Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.
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Arise from a slumber as sharp as a nail. Gaze out of the window on a sun filled world. Remain completely stoical about the morning’s News. Drink that first cup of tea whilst marvelling at a crazy Squirrel upside down on our bird table. Open to the notion that it’s possible to learn something new as the day pans out.

Have a plan to do tasks entirely of my own choosing however meaningless that might be. Tick-off those tasks with a smug satisfaction as the six-o’clock News looms. Sit back without a care. Chat about whatever it is that bubbles to the surface. Slowly subside into a comfy armchair. Realise how fortunate it is to live in a part of the world not blighted by conflict.

Snakes

Daily writing prompt
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
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Scary? That’s the moment when Indiana Jones is sealed into a tomb full of snakes. A young Harrison Ford, as Indiana Jones finds himself face to face with his worst nightmare[1]. 100% that would be me. If asked to step into a room full of hissing snakes, I’d run to the furthest hills.

Now, here in the UK, Channel 4 are airing a series called The Fear Clinic[2]. It makes great watching. If you have a strong phobia, you are not alone. Rats, mice or small dogs, I can understand. For me, those don’t kick-off a fear response, but I can understand.

The approach taken by the Amsterdam clinic in the TV series is to “encourage” their clients to face their worst fears. That’s supposed to trigger a cure that lasts. For some people that does seem to be the positive result. I guess we are not shown any destructively negative results of clients confronting their worst nightmares.

If asked to enter a room filled with slithering snakes, I’d be shouting “help” very loudly indeed. Luckly, since I have no need to encounter lots of snakes, I have no need to find a cure for my fully rational fear. The last time there was a snake looking at me, he/she was sitting behind solid glass[3]. Sitting on a tree branch not the least bit concerned about me standing there feeling uncomfortable. Safely I passed by trying not to make eye contact.

Since we are now entering the Year of the Snake, I ought to be careful.

[1] INDIANA JONES: RAIDERS OF THE ARK – The Well of Souls

[2] https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fear-clinic-face-your-phobia

[3] https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g190745-d1575308-Reviews-The_Living_Rainforest-Newbury_Berkshire_England.html

+/- leadership

Daily writing prompt
What makes a good leader?
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I’m past expecting “good”. There’re a million management books that pamper the art of perfection. Buy another book on management and the keys to success are assured. Like hell they are. There’s certainly more than enough advice about what makes a good leader.

Why don’t we focus on being a normal human leader? Let’s just say that we are all flawed. It’s embedded in Christianity with the biblical phrase – let’s he who is without sin throw the first stone. A great imperative but easily ignored by a bad leader.

I’d say a good leader is one that doesn’t consciously act as a bad leader. What do I mean? Here’s a snippet of the worst of the most mediocre managers I’ve worked for over the decades.

A traitor. A head who will have a group hug to agree a line on a difficult subject before going into an important meeting. Then as the meeting progresses poorly, throws his team members under the bus to save his own skin. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

A showman. A polished head who drips with confidence and hutzpah. Says and does anything that raises their profile above any of his team. Always takes credit when things go well. Always in the picture. Ready for a quote. Rarely wavers or sees any damage done.

An emperor. An attractive head who initially engages and embraces his team members. Has a strong intellect. Learns all he can of their ideas and experiences. Uses that knowledge to his own advantage. Then demotes or discards or rides rough shod over his former colleagues.

A good leader maybe flawed. But “good” does not pursues the three above. Now, let’s turn to a positive reflection. Here’s three categories to look for.

A mentor. When you meet a head and your first thought is – I want to be like them. I want to know what they know. That’s the time when “good” becomes real. Here’s a learning opportunity to be grabbed with both hands.

A motivator. There are heads who walk into a room and the whole atmosphere changes. They stand at a podium and with a few words change the agenda. Never dull and predicable. They tackle the gritty questions of why and how.

A doer. That head who doesn’t just spout fine words. Through their reputation and list of achievements they show that positive change can happen. They can lead a team to achieve more than the sum of the parts.

Turn the clock back

Daily writing prompt
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
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Innovation is much of a byword. Climate crisis, feeding the world, ending wars, curing disease, creating endless energy, conquering space – they can all be done if someone, somewhere, just invents something smart right now. We are greater believers in the power of “invention” than we have ever been. Doesn’t matter if sitting on the right or left of politics.

Invention and discovery are not the same. Discovery is to uncover something we had not known or understood before. However, that something was always there waiting to be discovered.

Invention is for makers and dreamers. A contraption, a connection, a way of doing business, a machine or a crazy idea. Invention has a huge spectrum. I’ve never been to the Heath Robinson Museum[1]. Now, I mean to go.

To un-invent presupposes that it can be done. It has been done in the past. The classical world benefited from inventions that were lost in the dark ages. Later to be rediscovered.

Genuinely to uninvent is hard. Human imagination, with so many people on the planet, mitigates against it. Uninventing may be a short-lived move.

My view is that it would be best to try to un-invent a damaging idea or process. For example, let’s uninvent slavery or subjugation.

[1] https://www.heathrobinsonmuseum.org/

Don’t panic

If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?

Don’t panic. It’s difficult to better the great Douglas Adam’s words. They seem even more pertinent in 2025 than ever. In essence if you think life is wacky now just wait until you get around the next corner. So, save your energy.

POST: if ever there was a day for these two words then it’s 20th January 2025. Reputedly the most depressing day of the year

A35

Daily writing prompt
What makes you feel nostalgic?
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Call me a motorhead if you like. It’s the cars and bikes of my youth. I suppose they are associated with good memories. It’s the freedom of the road. In the 1970s-80s that was still a freedom. Summer jams hadn’t crushed the spirt of motoring.

It’s nice to hark back to the analogue era. Long before digital engine controllers made engines practically untouchable.  Looking at the basic BMC “A” series engine. Everything was fixable. No degree in engineering required. A 15-year-old could do it.

Now, the Austin A35 van has been elevated to the hall of fame. Without it how would Wallace and Gromit[1] ever foil their nemesis? It’s iconic shape is unmistakable.

The van we owned as a field car had a former life as a chicken shed. Some friends and I bought it from a schoolteacher who’d put it back together. We raced it around the open fields. The rugged little engine held-up long before the bodywork fell apart.

Shame we didn’t see the value in it. 50-years on they are much valued[2]. But I don’t think I’d spend ten grand on one.

[1] https://www.wallaceandgromit.com/

[2] https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1777209