Professional Padding.
At the ripe old age of 8 I could never understand why or how any animal vegetable or mineral could fail to become spellbound by an intoxicating atmosphere that pervaded the ozone rich air of a sleepy coastal town and danced a frosty tango with winter’s cold sigh once in every 365 blue moons.
That’s how special my child hood was, my parents set the bar so high that every moon was blue and every homecoming heavenly following the impossible task of aligning one’s mind to reciting hamlet, interpreting dickens, recalling the speed of light or the nearest star, thinking up 50 reasons for the Fuhrer’s rise, writing 500 words about acid rain, learning how not to use a belt sander, identifying a waltz from march, calculating mean averages, applying Pythagoras theorem, befriending PC fans, debating console fans, avoiding football fans, remembering it’s a teaspoon and not a tablespoon of cinnamon, planning a short cut for Friday’s cross country run and staying as far away from Mr. Benson as possible. For those who haven’t guessed, that was school….and yes, it was the hardest job I’ve ever had.
Returning home on a gloomy Monday evening to relish fifteen a three quarter hours of blissful respite before the rigours of tomorrow commenced, proved a cathartic distraction from despairing over how much of my sentence remained. Entering a cosy kitchen to a chorus of radiant smiles from a mother and father whose festive foolishness was as inevitable as a sunny Saharan summer, debt, taxis, or the iPhone 99 “S”, well now, that was worth fifteen and three quarter years as a paratrooper, never mind one woeful winter term.
To sum up, my parents were to me what St. Nicholas himself is to Donna and Blitzen or Steve Jobs was to iJustine.
The question is, who can don that ruby red attire, fill those glossy buckled boots or steer the sleigh of fruity spoils with the same endearing twinkle and virtuosic skill. Who can command the stage with the same confidence, fatherly smile and exude such charismatic charm.
Who could possibly have the foresight to include that one enchanting surprise, a final special gift, the present of your impossible dreams that even you forgot to hastily scrawl on that aromatic amoretto wrapper you set on its smoky journey to the North Pole and who possesses the instinct to reveal this pot of gold at the defining moment? When tattered wrapping has replaced tidy parcels. Excitement, like a rose’s petal’s has begun to wilt and children lament there may be nothing left for boxing day save for quarrelling in-laws and itchy home-made knitwear
Force Your Golden Charm Upon Me
In this impulsive new world where news remains relevant for the duration of a hummingbird’s calorific overhead and kudos from a major scoop crumbles faster than filo pastry, every tireless techno analyst can no longer afford to refrain from peeking lustfully into carrier bags and feverishly fondling tree presents before their adoptive corporate elders have had a chance to scribble seasonal gratitude on the labels, though signed with a price instead of a kiss.
It would almost pass as normal if, on your annual pilgrimage to the apple store, you encountered a virtual alter ego of yourself fresh from three rounds of the genius bar’s finest, who then would proceed to divulge not only which of your presents they’d already torn open and whether or not your wishes had come true but further sully the mood by spoiling every last surprise in Tim and Phil’s capacious sac and, as an armchair pundit would pick apart his home team’s performance, expound in selfish and presumptuous detail as to their merits and pitfalls.
Pessimistic Grey Matter – That’s right, force touch turned out to be 3D touch. It’s an interesting feature but to be honest, iOS is hardly optimized for normal standard basic plain vanilla touch or whatever you call it. Think hard. How many times have you mistakenly “pinkied” that pause button during a podcast when popping the phone in your pocket? How often have you furiously fingered a number pad, poked a link or dragged a slider, only to discover the screen responds two seconds after you tap it.
Poor connection? Slack server? A ropey app or a broken OS? Does it matter? Are you certain that 3D touch or peek and prod will resolve these irksome issues, or compound them?
Optimistic White Matter – If you had your way I’d be anchored to my desk drinking pints of Quink with ten fountain pen nibs embedded in my fingertips scratching monthly accounts onto sheets of yellowing parchment aided by nothing but the dimming light of a paraffin lamp.
Pessimistic Grey Matter – What a beautiful scene, assuming of course the nibs were Montblanc or Cartier
Optimistic White Matter – Not a Parker fan then
Pessimistic Grey Matter – You mean the iPhone of fountain pens? No, crude branding over true beauty
Optimistic White Matter – Nonsense, where other than under Apple’s watch is beauty inextricable from something truly useful.
Pessimistic Grey Matter – If by useful you mean flat, glossy and tinged with pink, then nowhere.
Optimistic White Matter – Get a grip, you want this phone, you need this phone. You’re dismissing the extent to which this honed and polished revision of 3D touch differs from the inaugural implementation on the Apple Watch. There we had fledgling hardware driven by juvenile software. Here we have the latest in a lineage of thoroughbred, astutely designed, intelligently evolved and surgically streamlined by insightful artisans and now, propelled by an OS liberated from latency and revolutionised by the most receptive and naturalistic technology ever harboured within a hand held device.
Pessimistic Grey Matter – Really? Here’s a hand held baseball bat you can use to reacquaint heads with common sense, I’d say that’s far more naturalistic.