Something else entirely

There are some things which the mind should never get involved in. Driving is one. Passwords are another.

Ah, passwords. Those burdensome accessories of modern life. They rattle around in the brain, become entangled, and, with every leap in technical maturity, they multiply. And just when you think you’ve got them straight, you’re called upon to execute a change of tack or swap a digit, just to keep those hackers at bay and give a sheen of newness. Until recently, this tyranny of ‘systems’ had become one of the more stressful aspects of my professional life. It was enough to paralyse even the most efficient and well-trained mind.

But – and for me this was my hallelujah moment – the remembering of passwords should actually be the most basic, and most bodily, function: the latest in a long evolutionary thread of Pavlovian responses, the fingers reacting – without recourse to the brain – to a particular screen with exactly the right string of letters and digits. So, it’s not unlike opening your mouth when you have something to say (something which, inexplicably, I once forgot to do); or closing your eyes before you go to sleep. The key is entering those password situations calmly and unthinkingly, and leaving the eyes and fingers to do the work.

As for driving, the separation of mind and body is something, which, if you have any aptitude at all, you’ll grasp from the very start. But if you’ve never quite grown out of thinking deeply about which one’s the brake pedal and which the accelerator, it might be best to find other ways of getting around. Passwords are, for obvious reasons, your own business, but driving is something else entirely.

New heights of satisfaction

I’ve always been partial to a little minimalism. In fact, of all the ‘isms’, this is probably the one I feel most strongly about. And, despite being prey to the usual clutterings and accumulations that tend to accompany one through existence, I’m always on the look-out for ways to surround myself with less.

Packing to go away, then, is a particular pleasure and the perfect opportunity to condense my life down to just a bag or two. In my unencumbered youth (of not so long ago), I developed a habit of cycling alone round various countries – Denmark, Finland, Ireland – with hardly a square inch of bag space that hadn’t been premeditated and carefully allotted. And, whatever I took with me, I used – another satisfaction of this particular school of thought.

But I realised, even then, that a two-week cycling trip isn’t exactly an accurate reflection of the world, and I was generally happy to return to permanence, unpack my scant belongings and get back to normality and all the accoutrements that come with it. The pursuit of a minimalist existence continued, of course, but there were more support systems – and things – in place. Indeed, as a friend once said to me, it was perfectly possible to be minimalist if you had the support of those around you. And, as it happened, this particular friend was always delighted to offer any assistance (which meant back-up supplies and a good deal less minimalism on his part).

A few years down the line, and ‘things’ still aren’t really my thing. But anyone paying close attention will know I’ve recently been getting to grips with a very small machine, and I do believe that this particular acquisition is the closest I’ve come to achieving my aim. It’s in its element when impersonating other things: a telephone (of course), an alarm clock, a map, a torch, a compass... In short, it’s trying to usurp the places of all those many things I’ve been unable to separate myself from until now. It might just be time to get back on the bike and scale new heights of satisfaction.

Quite enough for me

I’d never really noticed agricultural machinery until I was in France this summer. And the reason for this change in perspective? The fact that I had an almost-four-year-old as my guide. But it’s one of those interesting phenomena in life that once something has been brought to your attention, it’ll confront you at every opportunity. So where previously my eye would have been drawn to the contours of the hillside or perhaps to a steeple rising above the trees, now it was drawn – inexorably, it seemed – to the small block of colour working its way slowly across the field.

It’s just the same with certain words. You live in ignorance of them for years, and then one day a new one pops up on your radar – and never quite leaves it. Take the word ‘atavistic’, for example. I’d managed very well without it until I was approaching early adulthood, and then one day I came across it, stopped and thought about it, looked it up (in a dictionary, as one used to do), and life has been just slightly different ever since. In fact, for a while after that first moment of discovery, that word seemed to follow me everywhere. It still pops up regularly in my line of sight.

And how had I never noticed that at a certain time of year those agricultural machines are everywhere, bound up as they are with the changing seasons and all that? I really don’t know, but, now that my eyes have been alerted, I’m taking a brand-new pleasure in how very simple and constant the commercial world of agricultural machinery seems to be. And, even better, it’s just the same whether you’re this side of the channel or that one, which means I came back from France to discover that my new-found knowledge was as applicable here as it was there. Here, too, the fields were full of those little blocks of colour, and here, too, red meant one manufacturer and green meant another.

Of course I might be wrong, and perhaps there’s a lot more to it than that – but that’s the thing, you see. Until you disillusion me, and until you introduce a whole new set of values into the equation, it’ll be as if those values don’t exist. And then once you (or the almost-four-year-old) have explained to me that, actually, agricultural machinery is as complex and subtle and nuanced and aesthetically influenced as any modern industry, I’ll wonder how I’d never noticed these things before. But, until then, those little blocks of colour will be quite enough for me.

I can't deny that I'm delighted

A little while ago, at this very spot, I aired my feelings about a certain typo. But I like to think that I’ve broadened my perspective since then and become altogether more accepting. After all, ‘human error’ wasn’t coined as a result of just one mistake-prone individual, and this little phrase has bestowed upon us all (thanks to our privileged position within it) a very welcome margin of error in which to operate. And combine this leeway with the academic nature of the written word, and you have a kind of metaphorical playground where there’s – usually – no harm done and little fear of serious reprisal.

Step beyond that sheet of paper or computer screen, and the consequences aren’t always quite so academic, of course. A muddling of the stations Bruxelles-Midi and Bruxelles-Central on my part (and that of my companions – I wasn’t entirely to blame) meant that we recently found ourselves alighting from one train and looking in vain for another. The spectre of a series of ghastly repercussions loomed, but, thankfully, we realised our mistake, executed a quick turn-around, hotfooted it back to the platform and soon made good the error of our ways. It was the real-life equivalent of the ‘undo’ button in action, and in no time at all we were on our way to London aboard the Eurostar. Phew. Even I have to admit to having experienced an adrenalin rush far more powerful than that which follows an inappropriate apostrophe put right.

But to return to that immaterial typo which set me upon this train of thought in the first place: it was a missing ‘a’, notable for its recurring absence on the scrolling announcements of the 7.42 out of Lewes. I had let my thoughts be known, moved on and began the process of acquiring that broader sense of perspective of which I’ve spoken. But one Tuesday morning my eye was snagged by the brand-new presence of that formerly errant letter – now reinstated. I’m not claiming credit for this development, and I’m aware that forces far more powerful (and far less academic) than my idle ramblings are at work in this world, but – whoever or whatever those forces are – I can’t deny that I’m delighted.