Jesus F Christ on a kayak, am I tired? I am tired. That was rhetorical. I am really tired. I have been working for 11 straight days now, long bar shifts and days building trade displays with Steve. I’m working with Steve again tomorrow, and then I’m working a close on the bar on Monday, and then after that I finally have a goddamned day off. Except I’ll be doing this blog of course, which I have to do every day.
Want to. The blog I want to do every day. I don’t have to. I chose this. It’s good. It’s all good. I signed up to help Steve. I literally signed a contract to work in the bar. And I guess I sign something of a tacit agreement every day to stay alive by… well… staying alive.
I could just die. We can always do that. But every day that we don’t is another day of saying, you know, I choose this. Whatever this is, I choose it over nothing at all, which is the only serious choice I ever get. Well, that and the… I dunno. I was going to make a joke about some meaningless decision and pretend it was important. Gareth Gates vs Will Young. I dunno. Just invent a joke that you enjoy and tell it to yourself there. That’ll do.
I can’t even… I don’t even… What is… what? I can’t see straight. The monitor is bombling around in front of my face.
Bugger this for a game of five-a-side hopscotch, I’m off to bed. Seven hours before I need to be up to get ready for work with Steve.
Waaah waaah waaah. I chose this. But I’m still going to cry about it. Waaah.
Sunday, 30 September 2018
Saturday, 29 September 2018
Day 154: Interstices
Walking to a coffee shop before work, the September sun low in the sky, the sun shining through leaves that are turning red and bronze in the air that is empty and infused with the first brittleness of an autumn reaching out its clawed hands. The leaves cast complex shadows that dapple across the brick facades of the university buildings; beneath the buildings is a lattice of shadow on the ground stretched through an iron walkway's open interstices. Throngs of students jostle and wait. One brown leaf on the ground, two more, mushed under foot. A beggar crumpled against the wall of an express supermarket. Chinese students with face masks clenched over mouths.
In the coffee shop the lamplight is warm. The customers wear olive green and navy and black. They talk, type on laptops, cradle their phones. Coffee cups clatter. The din of conversation is pleasant. A group of female students in a cloud of cloying perfume debate about boys in their lectures, about who doesn't do the washing up in their houses, about how to edit Bitmoji avatars. The lampshades are opulent. The girders are polished metal. The tabletops worn varnished teak.
From the table of perfumed students, incongruously: "Is any of this real? Are we living in a dream world?"
...
Work is the screaming maw of an insatiable beast. All commotion. All noise. Swallowed for hours into the dark, not knowing which way is up, struggling to breathe.
On my break I pass another homeless man on my way to the shop. He is sat with his legs out, against the wall, shuffling this way and that. He is trying to get his behind onto a thin strip of cardboard, warmer (moderately) than the cold stone of the ground. The cardboard strip is so small. He's trying to find the placement that causes the least pain. Every option causes some pain.
I think about him as I walk on, and returning I offer him one of my cookies. He nods. I open the packet and hand him two. He tucks them into an inner fleece pocket. I don't know what to say so I leave.
The ground is hard. It is cold. The leaves are falling and they are red and bronze and brown.
Everything you have ever seen is made of universe. All matter is patterns moving at speed.
Know this. Sense this. Walk on.
In the coffee shop the lamplight is warm. The customers wear olive green and navy and black. They talk, type on laptops, cradle their phones. Coffee cups clatter. The din of conversation is pleasant. A group of female students in a cloud of cloying perfume debate about boys in their lectures, about who doesn't do the washing up in their houses, about how to edit Bitmoji avatars. The lampshades are opulent. The girders are polished metal. The tabletops worn varnished teak.
From the table of perfumed students, incongruously: "Is any of this real? Are we living in a dream world?"
...
Work is the screaming maw of an insatiable beast. All commotion. All noise. Swallowed for hours into the dark, not knowing which way is up, struggling to breathe.
On my break I pass another homeless man on my way to the shop. He is sat with his legs out, against the wall, shuffling this way and that. He is trying to get his behind onto a thin strip of cardboard, warmer (moderately) than the cold stone of the ground. The cardboard strip is so small. He's trying to find the placement that causes the least pain. Every option causes some pain.
I think about him as I walk on, and returning I offer him one of my cookies. He nods. I open the packet and hand him two. He tucks them into an inner fleece pocket. I don't know what to say so I leave.
The ground is hard. It is cold. The leaves are falling and they are red and bronze and brown.
Everything you have ever seen is made of universe. All matter is patterns moving at speed.
Know this. Sense this. Walk on.
Thursday, 27 September 2018
Day 153: Back
Back home now, exhausted and feeling low. After four days with no space from people, working a job I didn't know how to do in a team of experienced professionals, sharing hotel rooms, sharing all mealtimes, I was craving locking myself in my room and being alone. Craving not having to act in any particular way, not having to stay busy, just getting to pull my boots off and unbutton my tight work trousers and collapse.
But as soon as I did that I felt myself deflate. It’s like I unzipped the politeness and niceness and good mood that I was wearing because I had to, and what was left underneath was nothing, just blankness.
Oh I don’t feel good. Crappy and tired and irritable and goopy. I’ve not gone out for food, we had a big lunch and I can’t be bothered to eat anything else. I’ve sat and looked on the Internet, watched Killing Eve on iPlayer, which everyone was banging on about on Radio 2 every time we were in the van, that and Bodyguard, which I’ve not seen either, but that one is now is so popular that I hate it on principle, and Killing Eve sounded the more interesting of the two. I’ve watched two episodes now, and I like the characters, I like the actors, I like the moments of verisimilitude juxtaposed with the more outlandish elements, but the narrative isn’t wholly gripping me so far. It’s silly, I’m not sure I believe it, and at its core it’s not much different from a million other cat-and-mouse agent-and-criminal stories. But then maybe I just don’t like it because I’m feeling depressed and I don’t like anything when I’m feeling depressed.
Meh. Not got anything else tonight. Maybe another episode and then a big sleep will help. Back at the pub tomorrow. Gash.
But as soon as I did that I felt myself deflate. It’s like I unzipped the politeness and niceness and good mood that I was wearing because I had to, and what was left underneath was nothing, just blankness.
Oh I don’t feel good. Crappy and tired and irritable and goopy. I’ve not gone out for food, we had a big lunch and I can’t be bothered to eat anything else. I’ve sat and looked on the Internet, watched Killing Eve on iPlayer, which everyone was banging on about on Radio 2 every time we were in the van, that and Bodyguard, which I’ve not seen either, but that one is now is so popular that I hate it on principle, and Killing Eve sounded the more interesting of the two. I’ve watched two episodes now, and I like the characters, I like the actors, I like the moments of verisimilitude juxtaposed with the more outlandish elements, but the narrative isn’t wholly gripping me so far. It’s silly, I’m not sure I believe it, and at its core it’s not much different from a million other cat-and-mouse agent-and-criminal stories. But then maybe I just don’t like it because I’m feeling depressed and I don’t like anything when I’m feeling depressed.
Meh. Not got anything else tonight. Maybe another episode and then a big sleep will help. Back at the pub tomorrow. Gash.
Wednesday, 26 September 2018
Day 152: Builds
Another day down. We were grafting in the man mines until 1ish, and then it was a lot of standing around, finding little jobs to do, waiting on various people, touching up paintwork, flattening vinyl stickers, that kind of thing.
Steve and his dad are good at their jobs. It's a running joke that for years when Steve told me he worked as a joiner with his old man I pictured them knocking together bird boxes in the garage of the family home. In actuality they're a hugely popular firm who make enormous displays for the country's biggest tool manufacturers.
The amount of work that goes into the shows is staggering. Clients are met and requirements hammered out. Designs and plans are mocked up on 3D modelling software. The clients choose from options, changes are made, iterations iterated upon. Months are spent cutting wood, measuring, sanding, assembling, painting. Graphics are printed. Banners made. Pieces are labelled. All the bits are loaded onto the vans. The tools. The barrows. The tubs of wires and plugs and screws and palettes and pipes. The vans are driven halfway across the country, everything is unloaded, carried to the stand space.
The stand finally goes up, often for the first time fully since it was conceived, with all the stress of worrying whether it will actually work. But they've done it so many times, have the experience to know what it'll be like, how many pieces to build the walls out of, how to structure the supports, how to raise them, where to feed the wires.
And hooking up all the electrics, daisy-chaining the bulbs, running extension leads.
And inevitably a million tiny things go wrong, and they have to take each one in their stride, brainstorm solutions, get to work against the clock. To be able to shrug and laugh enough to not let the pressure crush them, but to take it seriously enough to always solve the problems. I guess this mindset is key to so much.
And they gouge chunks out of their shins, and scrape their hands, and bruise their arms. They get cramp in the legs and end up massaging themselves in the hotel bathroom in the middle of the night.
And finally they drive home, for a night, or two, while the show is actually on, and then drive back for the evening of the last day, when the public leave, and start disassembling it all, break it down rapidly and effectively, pack it all back in the vans, and take it home.
Abd over the busiest period they're doing three or four shows a week, Steve somewhere in the country, his dad somewhere else.
I mean, I'm utterly fucked, shattered and sore, and I've only worked a handful of days, doing the easier jobs, not worrying about design or organisation or anything with any responsibility.
So I'm impressed, I'll admit. The skill and strength and stamina is impressive. There's no way I could do it.
Although I am still better than Steve at Mario Kart, and that's what really matters. So at least I've got that.
Passing out now, in the hotel bedroom, with Steve snoring in the bed beside me and QI on in the background. Last day of the build tomorrow, then two days back at the pub, then coming back for break down, then a day working at the pub, then finally I've got a day off. Christ I'll be ready for it.
Steve and his dad are good at their jobs. It's a running joke that for years when Steve told me he worked as a joiner with his old man I pictured them knocking together bird boxes in the garage of the family home. In actuality they're a hugely popular firm who make enormous displays for the country's biggest tool manufacturers.
The amount of work that goes into the shows is staggering. Clients are met and requirements hammered out. Designs and plans are mocked up on 3D modelling software. The clients choose from options, changes are made, iterations iterated upon. Months are spent cutting wood, measuring, sanding, assembling, painting. Graphics are printed. Banners made. Pieces are labelled. All the bits are loaded onto the vans. The tools. The barrows. The tubs of wires and plugs and screws and palettes and pipes. The vans are driven halfway across the country, everything is unloaded, carried to the stand space.
The stand finally goes up, often for the first time fully since it was conceived, with all the stress of worrying whether it will actually work. But they've done it so many times, have the experience to know what it'll be like, how many pieces to build the walls out of, how to structure the supports, how to raise them, where to feed the wires.
And hooking up all the electrics, daisy-chaining the bulbs, running extension leads.
And inevitably a million tiny things go wrong, and they have to take each one in their stride, brainstorm solutions, get to work against the clock. To be able to shrug and laugh enough to not let the pressure crush them, but to take it seriously enough to always solve the problems. I guess this mindset is key to so much.
And they gouge chunks out of their shins, and scrape their hands, and bruise their arms. They get cramp in the legs and end up massaging themselves in the hotel bathroom in the middle of the night.
And finally they drive home, for a night, or two, while the show is actually on, and then drive back for the evening of the last day, when the public leave, and start disassembling it all, break it down rapidly and effectively, pack it all back in the vans, and take it home.
Abd over the busiest period they're doing three or four shows a week, Steve somewhere in the country, his dad somewhere else.
I mean, I'm utterly fucked, shattered and sore, and I've only worked a handful of days, doing the easier jobs, not worrying about design or organisation or anything with any responsibility.
So I'm impressed, I'll admit. The skill and strength and stamina is impressive. There's no way I could do it.
Although I am still better than Steve at Mario Kart, and that's what really matters. So at least I've got that.
Passing out now, in the hotel bedroom, with Steve snoring in the bed beside me and QI on in the background. Last day of the build tomorrow, then two days back at the pub, then coming back for break down, then a day working at the pub, then finally I've got a day off. Christ I'll be ready for it.
Tuesday, 25 September 2018
Day 151: Echoes
I'm tired. Being a man is tiring. We put up a lot of wood today. Lifted a lot of light boxes. Hefted a lot of... No, that's all the names of Man Things that I know. Wood and light boxes. And lightboxes aren't even that manly, although when they're three metres long and being hoisted four metres in the air, they feel pretty manly.
Toolbars. That's another thing. Didn't really do much with them though. Twobeh. That's one. That's just wood again, but when it's thin planks of wood you call it two-by-four, or you just call it twobeh, so all the other men know you're in the gang.
Lunchtime is good when you're a real man. You get sandwiches and cheese and onion crisps and a can of coke and a little bar of Dairy Milk, and let me tell you, us real men looove our little bars of Dairy Milk.
What else do we like? We like the crisp morning frost on the windshield of the van before we drive out of the hotel car park when the sun is still rising and the sky is golden. We like how the voices echo in the empty convention centre early in the day. We like the repeating corrugated ceiling strips that go back and back into the distant mists, endlessly, making the hall look like the cavernous hangar from some dystopian science-fiction film. We like hanging tools from our belts. Taking the weight of a large lightbox above our heads with three other men, and knowing that none of us will let the others down. Being at the top of a ladder with a view onto the unpainted tops of all the displays, seeing people in high-vis vests scuttling about, feeling the energy and concentration in the air. We like working with our hands, the honest joy of a job grounded in the physical world done well. The smell of the wood. The strange mindfulness, tranquility, of the work. Looking at our achievements at the end of the day and thinking, We did that, that was us.
But most of all we like little bars of Dairy Milk. Oh boy do we love them.
Steve is out of the shower now so going to get ready and go for tea in the hotel restaurant, then some cheeky Switching, then a bloody good sleep. Aces.
Toolbars. That's another thing. Didn't really do much with them though. Twobeh. That's one. That's just wood again, but when it's thin planks of wood you call it two-by-four, or you just call it twobeh, so all the other men know you're in the gang.
Lunchtime is good when you're a real man. You get sandwiches and cheese and onion crisps and a can of coke and a little bar of Dairy Milk, and let me tell you, us real men looove our little bars of Dairy Milk.
What else do we like? We like the crisp morning frost on the windshield of the van before we drive out of the hotel car park when the sun is still rising and the sky is golden. We like how the voices echo in the empty convention centre early in the day. We like the repeating corrugated ceiling strips that go back and back into the distant mists, endlessly, making the hall look like the cavernous hangar from some dystopian science-fiction film. We like hanging tools from our belts. Taking the weight of a large lightbox above our heads with three other men, and knowing that none of us will let the others down. Being at the top of a ladder with a view onto the unpainted tops of all the displays, seeing people in high-vis vests scuttling about, feeling the energy and concentration in the air. We like working with our hands, the honest joy of a job grounded in the physical world done well. The smell of the wood. The strange mindfulness, tranquility, of the work. Looking at our achievements at the end of the day and thinking, We did that, that was us.
But most of all we like little bars of Dairy Milk. Oh boy do we love them.
Steve is out of the shower now so going to get ready and go for tea in the hotel restaurant, then some cheeky Switching, then a bloody good sleep. Aces.
Monday, 24 September 2018
Day 150: Road
Quick one this morning. I’m on the road with Steve for four days from today, staying in some Premier Inn just inside the M25 while setting up the biggest trade show of Steve’s calendar. Work trousers and tape measure and crawling sense of insecurity masked by boisterous banter at the ready!
I’m not going to have much chance to write, so these posts will only be short ones until the weekend. I’ll have to type them on my phone, probably in the hotel room after long and tiring days, so who knows what they’ll be like.
Anyway, I’ve had my croissant and fruit smoothie (us working men love croissants and fruit smoothies), packed my bag, got my Naomi Klein book (us working men love reading Naomi Klein), and I’m ready to go.
Hopefully I'll get time for some cheeky Switch gaming on the drive down as well. Us working men love cheeky Switch gaming.
See ya!
I’m not going to have much chance to write, so these posts will only be short ones until the weekend. I’ll have to type them on my phone, probably in the hotel room after long and tiring days, so who knows what they’ll be like.
Anyway, I’ve had my croissant and fruit smoothie (us working men love croissants and fruit smoothies), packed my bag, got my Naomi Klein book (us working men love reading Naomi Klein), and I’m ready to go.
Hopefully I'll get time for some cheeky Switch gaming on the drive down as well. Us working men love cheeky Switch gaming.
See ya!
Day 149: Switch impressions (cont.)
So yesterday I ran through my gaming habits and the titles I've been playing on my Nintendo Switch. Now for the hardware itself...
I couldn't imagine a better console for the type of gaming I do these days. After a long shift I can play it for twenty minutes in bed. I can play it in the passenger seat of Steve’s van while he drives us to some exhibition centre at some ungodly hour of the morning. On my days off I can drop the Switch into its dock and play it in higher resolution, with the Pro Controller, on my TV, sat languorously slumped in my chair.
It is an elegant, robust piece of kit. It exudes style, unlike recent Nintendo products that have felt like cheap plastic tat. The lines and curves are still playful, yet seriously so; it feels expensive, exquisite, carefully manufactured.
At heart the Switch is a rugged tablet, housed in reassuringly thick plastic. The screen is a capacitive touchscreen, like phones and tablets, and unlike Nintendo’s previous Wii U and 3DS, which used far cheaper and clunkier resistive touchscreens. Its resolution is 720p, which is lower than most phones, but absolutely high enough for gaming. Nintendo’s approach here is for more colour and complexity in their game worlds, running at lower resolution to maintain smooth frame-rates and extend battery life, and it is the correct choice. At 1080p the games would have to pare back their textures and effects to such a degree to get the experience playable that it wouldn’t be worth it. The display is bright and clear, and games look fantastic in portable mode; it all works a treat.
But so what’s the difference between the Switch and a small tablet or large phone, apart from access to all Nintendo’s proprietary software, including its exclusive games? Well have you ever tried playing properly involved games on a phone? Not puzzle games, casual games, things where you prod lazily at the screen and wait while your villagers harvest more minerals or your garden grows. Complex 3D environments that you must navigate, real-time combat systems with nuance and depth?
It’s a mess. Poking a finger at a flat panel with no feedback is not a recipe for control. Think of how many mistakes you make while typing a sentence on Whatsapp. Imagine if every one of those mistakes resulted in the death of your playable character. The margin for error is too high, and there’s not enough variety in what you can do.
Nothing beats physical controls. Buttons and joysticks. So with the Switch you get two halves of a physical controller that slot onto each side of the tablet, turning it into something more akin to a very high-tech Gameboy. The Joy-Cons, as the controls are called, can be slid off and held independently of the unit and of each other, with the screen balanced on its kickstand, on a tray table or a kitchen counter or whatever you’ve got nearby. And best of all they can be turned 90 degrees and each held as a tiny rudimentary controller in themselves, giving you access to two-player multiplayer wherever you go.
But so what’s the difference between the Switch and a small tablet or large phone, apart from access to all Nintendo’s proprietary software, including its exclusive games? Well have you ever tried playing properly involved games on a phone? Not puzzle games, casual games, things where you prod lazily at the screen and wait while your villagers harvest more minerals or your garden grows. Complex 3D environments that you must navigate, real-time combat systems with nuance and depth?
It’s a mess. Poking a finger at a flat panel with no feedback is not a recipe for control. Think of how many mistakes you make while typing a sentence on Whatsapp. Imagine if every one of those mistakes resulted in the death of your playable character. The margin for error is too high, and there’s not enough variety in what you can do.
Nothing beats physical controls. Buttons and joysticks. So with the Switch you get two halves of a physical controller that slot onto each side of the tablet, turning it into something more akin to a very high-tech Gameboy. The Joy-Cons, as the controls are called, can be slid off and held independently of the unit and of each other, with the screen balanced on its kickstand, on a tray table or a kitchen counter or whatever you’ve got nearby. And best of all they can be turned 90 degrees and each held as a tiny rudimentary controller in themselves, giving you access to two-player multiplayer wherever you go.
The Joycons look lovely, elegant little boutique items, and they’re nice and clicky, and the joysticks are good. They’re not up to the standard of a proper controller, and, yes, you can’t get round the fact they’re a little cramped - but compared to other portable console controls they’re in a league of their own.
And when you’re by your TV it doesn’t matter, because you drop the Switch into its dock, with AC adapter and HDMI lead, and it becomes a home console, played over your TV, using the Pro Controller, which I prefer to the Sony PS4 controller, and like about as much as the Xbox One offering.
The Switch is underpowered as a home console next to the PS4 and Xbox One, certainly so compared to a £1500+ PC, but the parity feels closer than between the Wii and PS3. And anyway, the Switch is a different beast. I’ve got my PS4 for the two or three major releases (the games industry calls them triple-A games, like Hollywood blockbusters, your Call of Duties and Grand Theft Autos et al) each year that I’m not too overcome with boredom to actually play, and for all the more interesting indie and lower-rung titles the Switch is more than up to the task. And of course there are the Nintendo games, Zelda and Mario and the like, that you can only get on the Switch, so the question of comparable power is moot.
So yes. I love my Switch. Nintendo need to really push the indie angle for the machine to continue to be a success - their own release schedule is too sparse, and too beholden to established franchises. If they threw a load of money into new IPs I’d be over the moon, but the prospect of yet another Mario Tennis and Mario Golf and Mario Party and Mario Screams into the Void for Twenty Hours Straight doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement.
I want every worthwhile indie game to come to Switch, as soon as possible after its release on Steam, and I want the larger studios to dedicate teams specifically to Switch development, to create titles faster and cheaper than triple-A, with more focus on experimentation and unique mechanics than on ray-tracing water reflections at 4k resolutions on the supercharged Xbox One X.
And I want Nintendo’s back catalogue of SNES and N64 and Gamecube games to come out on the Switch’s eShop, or even as freebies for subscribers to the online service. At the moment we’ve got a handful of NES games from three-and-a-bit decades ago, that don’t even play well on the Joycon’s little buttons (and they’ve mapped the controls for Super Mario Bros. 3 wrong for the Pro Controller, which you can’t grapple sideways like you could the original NES pad). I want Super Metroid and I want Metroid Prime and I want them now!
But in honesty there are ten or fifteen beautiful looking indie games I’ve already got my eye on for a download when I’ve played through what I’ve got - Celeste and Golf Story and Thimbleweed Park and Night in the Woods and Stardew Valley and Sonic Mania and Axiom Verge, and on…
And I’m going to be playing Breath of Wild until I’m 90 anyway, so screw it.
And when you’re by your TV it doesn’t matter, because you drop the Switch into its dock, with AC adapter and HDMI lead, and it becomes a home console, played over your TV, using the Pro Controller, which I prefer to the Sony PS4 controller, and like about as much as the Xbox One offering.
The Switch is underpowered as a home console next to the PS4 and Xbox One, certainly so compared to a £1500+ PC, but the parity feels closer than between the Wii and PS3. And anyway, the Switch is a different beast. I’ve got my PS4 for the two or three major releases (the games industry calls them triple-A games, like Hollywood blockbusters, your Call of Duties and Grand Theft Autos et al) each year that I’m not too overcome with boredom to actually play, and for all the more interesting indie and lower-rung titles the Switch is more than up to the task. And of course there are the Nintendo games, Zelda and Mario and the like, that you can only get on the Switch, so the question of comparable power is moot.
So yes. I love my Switch. Nintendo need to really push the indie angle for the machine to continue to be a success - their own release schedule is too sparse, and too beholden to established franchises. If they threw a load of money into new IPs I’d be over the moon, but the prospect of yet another Mario Tennis and Mario Golf and Mario Party and Mario Screams into the Void for Twenty Hours Straight doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement.
I want every worthwhile indie game to come to Switch, as soon as possible after its release on Steam, and I want the larger studios to dedicate teams specifically to Switch development, to create titles faster and cheaper than triple-A, with more focus on experimentation and unique mechanics than on ray-tracing water reflections at 4k resolutions on the supercharged Xbox One X.
And I want Nintendo’s back catalogue of SNES and N64 and Gamecube games to come out on the Switch’s eShop, or even as freebies for subscribers to the online service. At the moment we’ve got a handful of NES games from three-and-a-bit decades ago, that don’t even play well on the Joycon’s little buttons (and they’ve mapped the controls for Super Mario Bros. 3 wrong for the Pro Controller, which you can’t grapple sideways like you could the original NES pad). I want Super Metroid and I want Metroid Prime and I want them now!
But in honesty there are ten or fifteen beautiful looking indie games I’ve already got my eye on for a download when I’ve played through what I’ve got - Celeste and Golf Story and Thimbleweed Park and Night in the Woods and Stardew Valley and Sonic Mania and Axiom Verge, and on…
And I’m going to be playing Breath of Wild until I’m 90 anyway, so screw it.
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