‘Space: the final frontier.’ My mind was suddenly opened to unbounded possibilities of Captain Kirk’s Star Trek mission ‘oath’. I can’t quite cut loose of this cosmos nor shed its resonance from my belittled, befuddled brain…
Allow me to connect and explain. Leading a recent writing lesson at an arts specialist university I was struck by the presence of space of another kind; the type between the ears where a respite from the constant onslaught of texts, selfies, tweets, and six-second snap chat grins seems to be desperately needed. I crave a creative fix too, and this requires space and a bit of contemplative stillness. Like Star Trek I yearn ‘to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.’ It’s all a fiction of course, but like artists and thinkers the world over, bringing possibilities of the mind into potential action innovates and changes lives.
So I set the students short writing projects involving ‘thinking’ time- a bit of head space- and was amazed to see them addictively needing to ‘Facebook’ between tasks. For all of my pleading, many just couldn’t engage me or each other for the short session duration.
That evening I decided to beg my daughter’s advice. Entrenched in study, she was spread across the floor with books, pads pens and adored slimline laptop. This was wired in from the wall socket and out, via plugs to her ears. The tinny ‘indie’ track was just audible. On-screen, past episodes of Downton Abbey flickered blue. I had just crashed GCSE History revision!
Brains have a unique capacity to be rewired. New neural pathways are constantly being traced to enable capacity to function in the cut-and-thrust techno world, it’s just that… well, I don’t think I’m quite ready for this mission yet, and mine is going to take more than the Starship Enterprise’s five year commission will allow. My daughter’s brilliant GCSE performance confirmed my worst fears- about me, not her. I am adrift of known orbits and just need a bit more space to contemplate. If this is you too, come, join me. There are lives to change, discoveries to be made. Beam me up, Scottie!
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I always had a problem with packaging. Blister packs which require shears to slice through the impenetrable poly skin; an Easter egg so small, it is engulfed by the pass-the-parcel layers of gaudy foil which can never properly fit again. What hope for a planet in need of ecological correction and just a little more care in the recycled packaging department?
Changes have crept up on me unsuspectingly. I remember once-upon-a-time wrappings were discarded (not eco-friendly), the consumable of instant use. Now the packaging is as ‘designer’ as the product itself. There are now collectors of soft and hardware boxes, they delight in their white, matt sheen and clever fold-outs which are bound to command high auction prices within my lifetime. And then there is the issue of needing boxes and wraps intact to return faulty goods, where long serial codes are hidden under cosy seams and flaps. Where so much more is bought online these days, a special box-and-bubblewrap storage room in your house has become a ubiquitous necessity.
So, having backed up the collected works of Tappenden into a domestic ‘black box’ recorder it was time to recoil the mass of spaghetti wires, plugs and adaptors. Using the ‘hand-in-glove’ method, I stowed the lot away into the cupboard for another week.
My troubles had barely begun. On the table before me, a dump of hollowed, polystyrene casts which would have made the greatest Henry Moore creation look dull, four variously sized self-seal polythene bags, an irregular shaped piece of card scored and folded, and five different USB cables which don’t fit any of my laptop sockets. A conundrum with no instruction manual. The agony of watching a humbled art and design professional was just too much for his family to bear. Imagine the consequence of Pandora’s box if the lid had never fitted back again, or the alternative script that Treasure Island’s Long John Silver and co might have told in the dead of night at the Inn, had pieces of eight become pieces of seven or less in that treasure chest? Out of pity, my wife finding her dearest in a fitful state, drowning in a sea of broken polystyrene and wrapped in cardboard assumed the practical logic only women seem to own, and piece-by-piece slotted the parts to assemble the whole. Even the plug was snug. The ease with which she did it was alarming and at that moment I had the wish to be shrink-wrapped and returned forever to oblivion- no refund required!
