In print

Despite being a journalist for almost seven years (!) I rarely see my name in print. As such, on the very rare occasions when it happens I can't deny getting a thrill that was one of reasons I was drawn to writing for a living.

So, when I was asked by London's free paper of choice the Metro if I could offer some comment on the success of the iPlayer, I jumped at the chance, although not literally. The fruits of my waffling can be seen below. For those of you that like it online, you can read it here.

Adventure stories for adults

The phrase page-turner is a highly subjective one. To some it's the single best description they can hear to be enticed to a book, while for others it implies moronic, endless-cliffhanger rubbish. And of course it can be a bit a of both. I read Child 44 earlier this year, the first 'page-turner' I've read in years, and I highly enjoyed it. Both for that longing to continue reading when each chapter ended with a twist or moment of drama, but also because it was an engrossing story. 

Most page-turners are, though, based around notions of terror and horror. How many awful-sounding novels do you see advertised on the walls of stations saying things like, "A horrific murder, a missing child, no time left... - Read the new thriller from..." and it sounds like utter rubbish. Yet these books, like those by Lee Child for example, sell by the millions and must have something to them. Yet I have no interest in reading about horrible murders or about ex-military types solving crimes where half a page is given to clinical descriptions of guns and cars.

This got me thinking, why are there no 'adventure' stories for adults? As children tales of pirates and treasure and all those sort of things were what you craved (see TinTin) and as adults, we still enjoy this - see the films of Indiana Jones or Back to the Future, but I don't know many books of this kind. Books that employ a shameless page-turning strategy, but cover adventure and escapades, without resorting to the darkest recesses of the human mind to stimulate interest.

Perhaps I'll write something, before anyone else has this idea. However, perhaps there are such books out there - if so please let me know!

The ups and downs of escalators

I read an article the other day about the etiquette of standing or walking on escalators - let's not call it 'riding', it's not a roller coaster or a whale is it?. Apparently, in some cities, hardly anyone walks on the escalator while go-getter Michael Bloomberg said he walks up and down escalators at every opportunity.

Well, being financial titans isn't the only thing I and MBB (as his friends call him) have in common, as I too am a committed escalator walker. I love the double rising sensation of your legs being given a boost by the endlessly revolving loop of an escalator's giant silver steps. Twice as fast and half the effort. Of course sometimes I don't (see: hangovers, very early mornings) but this is rare as even in poor states I find a bolt up an escalator does you a world of good. 

It's also great free exercise and whenever escalators are out action on the underground, forcing commuters to trudge down and around spiraling staircases, it must make London a much fitter city. There should be a No Escalator Day. 

Two fun things: 1. In tube stations with two parallel escalators, take a different one each (if with someone else of course, or do it secretly with a random) and stand on steps opposite one another. Then watch to see if one goes faster than the other.  At Angel tube it used to be that one escalator was considerably faster so I'd give people six or seven steps head start and still win

2. When going up, stand (yes yes I know) and look straight up. If you do it right it gives the sensation you're at 90 degrees and the people above should be tumbling through the air towards you. It's worth practicing as it's a brilliant sensation. Waterloo is good for it. 

Of course the most importance thing in all this though is, while there is nothing wrong with standing, if you're going to, please stand on the right. 

Resolution

Hey, hey, two blogs in under a week – what is this, some kind of record? (No, obviously not).

However, perhaps I will reconnect with the blog, as I miss updating it and enjoy having it as a location of digital whiteness for brain thoughts and book opinions and whatnot. I've experimented with other platforms – Posterous, Tumblr, Wordpress, and all that – but I do like Blogger – plus I've been using it since 2006 so it has all my posts and stuff on it.

I helped a friend move house yesterday – he still has his CDs – and it was sort of fun. I don't know why I find helping people move house oddly enjoyable. I think, perhaps, it just comes from the sense of easy completion – move this, to there, by this time, done. Easily quantifiable success.

It was a lovely sunset yesterday too, followed by hazy summer rain and glorious rainbows. Got some great pictures, as you can see below.

 

Putney Bridge at sunset

Through the hoop in Fulham

Throw away your CDs, but keep your tapes

I helped a friend move house the other day. One of the last boxes we heaved into the back of a Zipvan (great service, very Grand Theft Auto) was a heavy lot and I asked him what was in it: “Oh just CDs,” he replied. I let go there and then, letting the whole box come crashing down:

“What the hell did you do that for?” he shouted.

“CDs?! Are you mad?” I yelled back.

Ok this bit didn’t happen, but it did in my mind, for who in their right mind keeps CDs nowadays?

With music now all digital, why would you keep plastic cases and linear notes you’ll never, ever read, when you have all your music stored in invisible digital files on your iPod, iPhone, laptop and accessible on services like Spotify? Stick it all on an external hard drive and you’re sorted.

If you must keep the discs, buy a single travel case for keeping the discs as back up, just in case.

My friend disagreed, but it got me thinking: why do people care for CDs? They have none of the aesthetic appeal of vinyl, or that lovely timbre and hiss, and none of the nostalgic appeal either. To my mind, the more beguiling, fading format is tapes.

At home we still have a car that only takes tapes and I love driving around with old random mixes (sorry record industry) that have no way of being controlled beyond a blind fast-forward/reward. Of course, I enjoy this partly because it’s a novelty and I much prefer the digital control in the modern world, but there’s much more fun to be had with tapes than CDs.

As for vinyl, lovely as they are, why anyone would buy them now is beyond me. Inheriting a collection from parents, for example, is one thing, but to actively seek out old albums in massive formats that will often scratch and be unplayable and require heavy, expensive kit to play them, makes no sense to me.

And that’s the thing about music – it should be based on cold, hard, rigid logic.

Night buses, men in boats and toast-munching toads

I read Three Men in a Boat last week. It was written in 1889 and yet remains genuinely funny and relatable all these years later. There’s a bit at the start when Jerome Klapka Jerome wonders if people in the year 2000 will find their everyday trinkets of interest, value and worth. Which we do mostly. Just struck me as interesting. Apparently the book sold so well and was so popular people in other countries would put his name on books to trick people into buying them. 

Another nice aside, his publisher said, with reference to how much in royalties the book was earning for JKJ: "I cannot imagine what becomes of all the copies of that book I issue. I often think the public must eat them." Which I think is almost as funny as some of the lines in the book. The book is up there with Lucky Jim, also hilarious. 

I was sat on the night bus last night, somewhat drunk, and fell into that maudlin state of staring out the window as raindrops rolled down trying to reach some great thought, or insight or revelation that I was sure was lurking in the dim recesses of my brain. Something about life, or love or work or the like. Of course, I never captured it, if it was there at all: I think the revelation is there are no drunk-night-bus revelations to be had.

However, the event put me in mind of this wonderful excerpt from The Wind in the Willows, a far better book than any dramatisation has ever managed to capture, they all seem to cheapen and ruin it. 

“But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, but can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty in it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties.” 

My other favourite line in WITW is: 

Toad sat up on end once more, dried his eyes, sipped his tea and munched his toast, and soon began talking freely about himself, and the house he lived in, and his doings there, and how important he was, and what a lot his friends thought of him.

The Bill Jones school of motivation

New year, new you? That’s what everyone says but few of us ever have the gumption to stick to our plans – higher, faster, stronger and all that – as often the motivation that the number 1 appearing on a calendar gives us dissipates as other numbers such as 4 and 12 and 26 start appearing.

However, one man who may be able to give us the resolve we need to stick to our motivational guns is Bill Jones, a fascinating character from the 1920s dreamed up by some advertising wonks to inspire the business folk of Britain – and later the US and Canada – to strive for greatness.

These are two of my favourites below and there’s a whole raft more on the Retronaut website. I came across this via someone on Twitter but I’ve forgotten who it was now. Sorry mysterious Twitter person – please reveal yourself if it was you and I’ll credit accordingly.

All the books I read in 2012

Regular readers (hello Mum!) will recall I write a post at the end of each year reviewing all the books I read in the past twelve months (2011, 2010, 2009). It’s an annual tradition up there with the Queen’s speech or X-Factor. For me at least. 

They're not hugely insightful or long or clever reviews, more just quick observational thoughts on each book as I go. If you have questions, ask below!

So, here we go - in chronological order:

Dark Star Safari - Paul Theroux: A great start to the New Year of 2012, as Theroux heads north to south across Africa encountering interesting people and places, moaning and evangelising in equal measure about what he finds on his way. 

His past life in Africa as a lecturer in Uganda helps, as he can access numerous high-ranking people and knows local dialects too. His disdain for many of the aid organisations he meets is also interesting; some don’t like Theroux for his moaning while travelling but I love it - it’s far more realistic than the endlessly upbeat schoolboy excited TV presenters we get these days who find everything and everyone just wonderful.

The Wonderboys - Michael Chabon: I’ve seen the film a couple of times and finding the book for £1 in Brighton thought it was worth a go and I was right. A great tale of drunken lecturers, the difficulty of writing and the idiocy of love. Recommended.

Watching the English - Kate Fox: A nice little observational non-fiction about the peculiar mannerism and social mores of us mad English people. Tad dry in places but interesting mostly.

The Tiny Wife - Andrew Kaufmann: A short, odd novel about a man’s wife shrinking. It was ok.

A Week at the Airport - Alain De Botton: I bloody loved this; a quick, light yet insightful meander around Heathrow airport by the people’s philosopher (yeah right). As someone who wanders through the bright concourses of Heathrow every so often I enjoyed learning a bit more about the people that keep the big ol’ place humming.

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan: Thought this was a bit overrated but enjoyable. Never a huge fan of 'linking stories' that fuse different characters together, either subtly or obviously, but it was easy to read and better than most stabs at this type of fiction I’ve read.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Moshin Hamed: Enjoyed this a lot; a terse, tight novel about the growing disillusionment of a high-flying western financial expert from India who turns his back on it all for, maybe, more nefarious activities.

Jupiter’s Travels - Ted Simon: Around the world on a motorcycle is always a good premise for a book and Ted Simon’s account is excellent as he makes his way here and there across Africa, South America, North America and onto Asia and so forth. The people he meets make the book, as well as some of his excellent descriptions. He repeated the trip again later in life, although I’ve yet to read that. I may, though.

Engleby - Sebastian Faulks: The more I read of Faulks the more I like him, after finding Birdsong quite disappointing. A dark, somewhat comic novel about a disturbed chap going through life and odd events happening around him, OR DO THEY!

The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good - Matthew Crawford: Read this on a previous blog.

A Short History of Tractor Farming in the Ukraine - Marina Lewcyka: Terribly written story-by-numbers tripe that aspired for comic-thoughtfulness but was just crap. Hey ho.

Americana - Don DeLillo: I started reading this flying back from San Francisco and fell asleep about 30 pages in so it dropped on the floor. When I awoke the woman next to me said “no good then?!” But actually it was very good. The first 100 pages or so are the clear inspiration for Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris but then it veers off into some mad road-trip novel which isn’t as good but the writing is engaging and different and kept me hooked to the end.

Cosmopolis - Don DeLillo: Inspired by the previous novel picked this up (from HMV!) but wasn’t as enjoyable as Americana. They made a film of it with Robert Patterson. Somehow sums up my criticisms.

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink: I really enjoyed this (I’ve not seen the film). A beautifully constructed tale of (too) young love and the inability to escape ones past, it had that rare ability to linger in your mind long after you’ve read it. It did this with simple, plain yet highly engaging language that I found completely beguiling. Highly recommended.

The Stranger - Albert Camus: I didn’t really enjoy this; a bit too short and the main character is a strange lad.

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins: Popular but not all that great. A page turner but dour writing and boring characters. Still, it sold gazillons, so what do I know.

Empire - Niall Ferguson: Ferguson is a contrary character it seems but I really enjoyed this thorough exploration of the Empire from its inception to its demise. It was great to learn so much more about a period of history that looms so large in the past of us Brits but yet we (for the most part) know so little about.

One Day - David Nicholls: Someone lent this to me to read and I can’t deny it had a certain basic charm but why it proved so popular is beyond me. Quite boring characters act idiotically for years on end blatantly in love but without ever acting upon it. I could believe this if we lived in a world without alcohol.

The Crow Road - Iain Banks: My brother lent me this and I really enjoyed it. Lyrical, insightful writing and an engrossing story with nicely realised characters with engaging personalities. I watched the BBC adaption afterwards but it wasn’t as good.

Last Orders - Graham Swift: I bought this book for 20p from the Putney Scouts outdoor stall (oh how we live in south west London) and being a big fan of Swifty I was expecting good things and I wasn’t disappointed. A moving tale of misdirected love and wasted lives. There’s a film but I’ve not seen it yet.

Touching the Void - Joe Simpson: ARGH MY LEG, he screamed as he fell down the mountain. Well, I’m going to die, he thinks. But then the triumph of the human spirit overcomes ridiculous odds and he makes it back to base camp. What a guy.

I, Partridge - Alan Partridge: Funny throughout although the jokes wears thin after a while. A-HA!

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck: Lenny you idiot! Poor old boys, struggling for a living; a bleak tale.

When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro: A disappointing effort from an author I usually love (The Remains of the Day) which starts off promisingly but ends poorly.

The Revenge of Gaia - James Lovelock: It’s enjoyable to read a proper rant sometimes and this is most definitely that as Lovelock has clearly had enough with our inability to accept the damage we’re doing to our planet and railing against it all.

Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis: One of the my favourite books of the year with Dixon a truly brilliant character who gets involved in some hilarious scrapes surrounded by a rag-tag bunch of awful people. A treat.

Sunset Park - Paul Auster: Same old Auster - people living on the fringes of society, somehow not wanting for money, and hiding damaged pasts. As always he does a lot of Telling rather than Showing which I always thought was a big no-no in the writer’s world but he gets away with it. I got this from Putney library for free when it would cost you £17 in hardback. Libraries are great.

The Family Arsenal - Paul Theroux: A bleak, grim tale of 1970s London that I struggled to get into until I just sat and read 100 pages plus when at an airport and then suddenly really started to enjoy.

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut: A very odd novel but one of the best I’ve read this year. Vonnegut was actually in Dresden when the bombs fell and survived and this novel was his response to that but it also includes time travel, aliens and lots of death. So it goes.

A Week in December - Sebastian Faulks: Didn’t expect to like this as it does that interweaving character thing I don’t usually like (see A Visit From the Goon Squad) but actually I found very enjoyable and when it hit its satirical targets was bang on the money.

London Under - Peter Ackroyd: There’s a whole world beneath our feet in London and Ackroyd does a great job of telling us about it all in lyrical detail.

A Touch of Love - Jonathan Coe: Very odd this as it was written very basically, almost badly, but I think that was the point. It was too short to really care about the characters that much but it kept me hooked.

No Easy Day - Mark Owen: An account of the raid on Osama Bin Laden. The first 150 pages just covers Owen’s (Not his real name) time in the SEALs and other missions leading to the Big One. This was all quite boring but the raid chapters are pretty good and it was interesting to get a first-hand take on the raid. Terribly written, though.

And that’s it: well done if you made it to the end. If not, I don’t blame you; it’s hard to review 33 books in one sitting and make it interesting and insightful throughout. Bring on 2013...

The art of storytelling

The other day I was listening to a friend tell a story to some other mates – a tale I had heard before – and about half way through I was suddenly struck by the realisation: “this person just cannot tell anecdotes".

 

Every moment where he should have paused for effect he rushed on, where there was no natural pause, he paused, where he should have added a bemused comic face to match the incredulousness of the story, he instead just kept a passive expression. Come the end everyone laughed, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone tells a story that’s begun with the preface that this is a tale for your enjoyment.

But the story could have been so much funnier, I thought, if someone who could tell stories had been in charge. (Not saying I could definitely have done better, but I like to think I could).

When someone tells an anecdote they are usually commanding a group of people’s close attention – perhaps just one other, perhaps 500, usually no more than 10 though, often close friends. Under all these circumstances there is a pressure to deliver a return on the time investment they are giving you.

Yet, using that time and opportunity well is an art and skill that few possess, certainly not in any strong capacity, but we all engage in it, and it’s a social skill that can set you apart.

We all know this: we all know people – friends, family, colleagues – who when they begin a story, comic or otherwise, we starting zoning out, listening merely out of politeness, waiting for the punch line or resolution so we can laugh politely and then get back on with whatever we were doing. 

Others, however, who begin a tale and will command our full attention because we know they will tell it with panache, wit, warmth and verve, so even if it isn’t even that funny or interesting, it will be worthy of our attention because we are lift enlivened by their story telling charm.

I think it should be a job requirement: Tell us an anecdote: I bet you can learn a lot about someone from the story they pick and, more importantly, how they tell it.

Working with your hands is great (if you can do it)

I read a great book recently about the world of work and why office life is not the luxurious evolution of years of toil we believe it to be, but is in fact a drab, unstructured place full of vague management speak, unsure ground and a complete lack of answers.

Many would not need a book to tell them this, but in Matthew Crawford’s The Case for Working with Your Hands: or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good he makes the case with allusion to philosophy while comparing it to his own experiences as an electrician, motorbike mechanic and other similar trades, and makes a compelling case that much of work in an office is bad for the soul when compared with the single-minded work of a fixer, builder, craftsman, who is set a task with a single, clear goal: to make it work, and can only be right or wrong.

So, when I bought myself a small, linen clothes bin, that required some self-assembly, I was ready to enjoy the task at hand, to screw a few screws, assemble some wood, pat myself on the back for a job well done. After all, it was only four pieces of wood and some screws: easy but satisfying.

Some 25 minutes later, frustrated, enraged and cursing the self-assembly Gods of Argos, I heard myself say out loud, “Couldn’t this thing just come pre-built!”. I recalled the book and its mantra of building, creating, self-fulfilment through doing, not thinking (as so much of modern work has become: “How do we measure the customer satisfaction of our latest loan insurance policy”? – I have no idea).

So I persevered and, of course, my brain taxed itself enough to actually get the stupid thing built and now I have a place for my dirty clothes – what a fun bank holiday. 

My Dad can build and fix most things, from cars to showers to cookers, while I am utterly bereft of such abilities, (despite many attempts at teaching). Where does this difference come from? Innately or self-taught, or both? Probably both, but then living in the late 20^th century, with its flat-packed, self-assembly fittings and pop-up tent camping gear, it’s not surprising I, and so many people my age, are clueless when confronted by anything requiring true craftsmanship or a working knowledge of woodwork, electricity, construction.

Furthermore, as Crawford notes in his book, nowadays designers and firms don’t want people tampering with their stuff. A friends’ Dyson vacuum broke the other day, but there was no way to take it apart as the screw sockets in use were bespoke, not suitable for an of the array of screwdrivers in his Man Box. Even our fleeting attempts at wanting to fix something, or try to understand it, proved impossible, instead being forced to get A Man to fix it.

Anyway, whether you love your office cubicle or feel it’s a prison by another name, I recommend the book, even if some of the philosophy went over my head at times. Not a philosophy, not a builder, not both as Crawford. What a failure!

Green is not a creative colour

 A late night Vimeo session led me and my housemates to stumble across this piece of weird brilliance. For me it's the crow and his direct statements that makes it, as well as the line "Green is not a creative colour".

How do people generate such ideas? The images, words, music, characters, the desire to put it together: it's all the mystery of creation and the huge disparity of brains that exist in the world that mean some can create the videos like the one below, and some can become judges, and others brain surgeons and others carpenters.

Some excellent ahhhhh song endings

Some songs have lovely, long languid outros in which the vocal's echo on for an age, in this sort of Ahhhhhhhhhhhh way, and I really like good songs that do this, so here our a few of my favourites...why not?

Simon and Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy in New York: possibly the best example, with the whole song fairly "ahhhhh" throughout, and then really driving it through until the end. Good old Garfunkel and Simon. Starts at 2:50 odd.



Sufjan Stevens - Chicago: I find Sufjan a bit tiresome, so twee and whimsical, but you can't deny (well, you can if you want) the lovely ahhhhhhness of the ending to this song, complete with twinkly piano notes. Starts at five minutes dead.



The Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World: Comedy song, yes, but musically excellent and a nice ahhhh moment which comes back into the song unexpectedly, catching you off guard and giving you a nice, bonus ahhhhhhh. Ah, that's nice. Starts around three minutes.



Any suggestions? Know I'm missing some but these were the ones that I could recall with relative ease...

The endless advertising dystopia of Waterloo Station

I know complaining about advertising is dull, and unoriginal, but I feel I’ve reached a threshold, a limit, a breaking point, with it all. It’s all the fault of Waterloo Station.

Every day I wind my way in to the station and on arrival head down into the underground walkway that links the train platforms to the underground’s maze, and along this concourse I am visually assaulted by an almighty slew of adverts that line the passageway for its entirety.

I’ve walked down this section probably 250, 300 times in the last two years or so and, suddenly, I’ve become absolutely sick of it. I actively try to stare directly ahead, or keep my eyes cast down, so as to avoid the gaudy, idiotic text and images bearing down on me. I feel a personal sense of desire not to succumb to the incessant dross, as we all march our way to work, no doubt many of us all caught up in the creation, display and measurement of advertising.

It’s not just the adverts existence on its own that frustrates me, as adverts are everywhere, but what’s being advertised too: it all reeks of the lowest common denominator, of treating us with contempt.

There are always several books being touted with tag lines like, “A dead child, a missing mother, a killer’s revenge – read the stunning new thriller from Steve Smith”, often proclaiming this chap “The new Stieg Larsson”.  And it makes me think, why on earth would anyone want to read that, it sounds horrendous, I’d rather read nothing.

Then there’s always a bunch of adverts for the DVDs of Jimmy Carr and Russell Howard and Lee Evans and all that and again, almost for no reason, I just want to tear them down: can we not go five minutes without endless plugs for more merchandise from tired old comedians who spend every spare moment on panel shows rehashing mean or lame gags? Does it have to be everywhere?

Then there are cookery books, the worst of which is The Hairy Bikers Pie recipe book from Christmas, with the unbelievably pathetic line of “A pie is not just for Christmas but for life”, which every time I mistakenly see I think; Who came up with that, who approved that, who got paid for that, what does it even mean?”

But this is the odd thing, when I have negotiated this Versailles of adverts, and reached the underground, where the adverts continue to come thick and fast, I just don’t feel so frustrated. I still role my eyes at the lame puns, the clear attempt at trying to make you believe you need something in your life that you don’t, but I just don’t feel the same animosity, the personal affront that the Waterloo adverts draw out of me.

Can they not just give us fifty metres of architecture, of nothing, of walls? When are we going to stop and decide we don’t have to plaster every empty space with posters for crap? We can just let a wall be a wall?

Complaining about adverts is, as I have said, a pointless thing to do, like trying to catch the wind in a sieve, but there we go.

What you can achieve in a twenty-one hour day

OnWednesday I had the pleasure of enduring a twenty-one hour day for work – this involved rising at 4:45am and getting to bed at 1am. In this time I flew to Berlin, drank several beers, wrote a lot of words, and even managed to compare car insurance while sat at the airport.

The day started early, as mentioned, and involved a quick taxi ride to the airport, followed by a zippy trip over the Atlantic and into Berlin, in which time I read 120 page of How to be Good by Nick Hornby. It has been good so far.

Then we arrived and were taken on a whistle stop tour of Berlin, mostly by coincidence, as the coach taking us from the airport to the event happened to go by the Brandenburg Gate and several pieces of the Berlin Wall.

I then did plenty of work – including two videos, a review and a news story, phew – before eating some currywurst mit kartoffelen which was sehr tasty, although my fumbling attempts at GCSE conversational German were thwarted by instant replies in perfect English from the chefs serving the food. Curses.

From there it was back to the airport with the company of four other journalists for our 9pm EasyJet flight home. Except this being life, the plane was delayed by one hour and forty minutes, meaning we had some five hours to kill at Schönefeld airport – one of those small, shed-like airports which only servers the cheap airlines.

Still, we made the best of it and imbibed on German beers and some surprisingly good burger and chips from "Cindys", the airport's own knock-off McDonalds, where the nice manageress took pity and kept the kitchen open just long enough to feed us.

We chatted about many topics: our envy of the world presented to baby boomers, the best mobile phone and some of the recent films we'd seen, and I also managed to message several friends, read all the day's news and consider the best car-protection deals.

Sometimes I get these flashbacks to another point in my life and wonder how I would react if I was shown a snapshot of where I have ended up at certain points in the future.

I sat there, in the bright, harsh lighting of the airport departure lounge, sleep-deprived, drunk, and fed up with EasyJet, longing to be back in my new house in Wimbledon, and wondered what the 21-year-old me would have made of the scene, when he stepped off the train in Paddington in 2007 to start his London life.

Eventually, the plane left, we had the Obligatory Crying Baby the entire way, I fell asleep for ten minutes, awoke startled and confused by the light below me that I realised was London and soon enough we landed.

A 45 minute taxi journey home later and I was wearily climbing the stairs into my flat, and thinking that perhaps I don't need a car after all – I find all this traveling far too tiring.