P800 lust

I saw my first P800 yesterday. It’s a gorgeous piece of kit, but… well… it’s just too big. I suspect it’s only about as big as a combined phone/PDA needs to be to be usable, but even at that size it still compromises its utility as a phone. It’s too big for a pocket, which in my book is a bit crippling.

Shame, really. I was pretty keen for a while there. But I’ll stick with my oh-so-untrendy-but-not-exactly-nickable-either Bluetooth-enabled T39, thanks. And bits of paper, and a Newton when I need it.

Shucks. Will somebody please produce a tablet computer with a screen between five and eight inches diagonal, and batteries that last a day or so? Please? Pretty please? And then, a tiny Bluetooth cellphone with a flip, like the T39, so the keys simply cannot get pressed when it’s shoved in one’s jeans.

Thanks awfully.

Stratford, c.1988

What the hell happened in Stratford, circa 1988?

My parents moved house over Christmas, as a result of which, great steaming piles of stuff that had been neatly shoved in boxes in storage in Hull are now cluttering up their somewhat smaller house in Leeds. Needless to say, I feel a tad bad about this, but since my own flat is far too small even to contain all my network hardware, there’s not a great deal I can do about it until I find somewhere I can genuinely call ‘home’ myself.

I can, however, take the occasional box to show willing. Mostly, this ends up sitting on my lounge floor for three months while I try to work out just what I’m going to do with the contents. Today, for reasons that only a few people know and are entirely my fault, I found myself at an unexpected loose end – so I sorted through the most recent box.

It was initially composed of junk mail, vintage 1995. This was mildly surprising, since I can’t for the life of me work out how it ended up in Hull in the first place. However, delving deeper into the substrata I came across a slew of letters from university chums, immediately post-graduation as we headed our separate ways. Some of these would have been useful at Daniel’s wedding a year or so back, but that’s another story.

Deeper still, letters from said friends over the summer of 1993, when I was trying to work out what degree to do (I nearly failed my second year, and Daniel and Becca in particular were a tremendous help guiding me through that particular emotional turmoil, bless ’em).

Deeper still, a huge pile of letters from a certain Welsh girl, with whom I was madly in love a very, very long time ago. The last letter in the sequence is still heartbreaking, but isn’t at all what you might imagine if you don’t know the story. Tough. I’m not telling you here.

Deeper deeper deeper… why have I kept all these letters? There’s one from my neighbour in Hull, summarising his views on Cambridge colleges, which must date from 1990 – it’s hilarious, and possibly slanderous. Deeper… exchanges with the fine folk I went to Australia with, in 1989 – three of whom I still consider close friends despite not having spoken to them in a couple of years.

Deeper deeper… sloughing off the years of my life as the paper flies, a curious and not altogether pleasant sensation…

The archive stops at about 1988, perhaps 87: for some reason, nobody noted the year. I guess, when you’re 16, there haven’t been enough years yet for it not to be obvious which one is meant. A bunch of silly letters from my friend Alan, a few sketches we wrote together back when I wasn’t paid to be unfunny.

And then a curious pair of letters from two girls in school, who were each others’ best buddies. One of them was probably the only girl in school I ever took an interest in; my nervousness built until one day I’d plucked up the courage to call and ask her out – the phone rang before I could dial, and she asked me out… on behalf of her best friend.

The letters relate to the aftermath of the annual school trip to Stratford-on-Avon. Both apologise profusely for making my life hell; one declares undying love, the other has a somewhat more subtle frisson. The tragedy is this: I have absolutely no recollection of that particular Stratford Trip, beyond David Calder fresh out of Star Cops and in something fairly dreadful at The Swan.

What the hell happened on that particular Stratford trip? From the letters, it was fairly Earth-shattering at the time. How curious, I have no memory of angst there at all. Which begs the leading question: when people write their autobiographies, they’re making half of it up, aren’t they?

Cardboard

Eventually, one arrives at the conclusion that one possesses wholly too many cardboard boxes. Once I’ve been to the dump, I shall personally possess significantly fewer than I do at present, but still, alas, rather too many.

This has not, of course, been the most significant development over the last few days. However, I’ve already made a big enough hash of that particular story during the first telling of it, and I’m not about to compound the error by retelling it here and now. Sorry.

Tribute

A while ago, I bought a font – I forget which – from Emigre, a foundry in California. One consequence is that, every now and then, they send out mailshots of samples of their work. I’ve today opened one that bears a sample brochure for a spectacularly old-fashioned body face called ‘Tribute,’ by Frank Heine.

To an amateur type nerd like me, it’s beautiful. There’s something about pages of well-set, interesting type that I find fascinating and pleasing in equal measure. Last year I unexpectedly found myself trying to ape the style of Baskerville’s setting of Virgil’s Bucolica, in type by both Caslon and Baskerville. Or rather, their current Adobe interpretations. Speaking of whom, Adobe’s lovely UK press office provided me with the means to do half-decent typography with minimal effort, in the form of a copy of InDesign. The results, printed onto hand-stained papers, were beautiful – I wish I’d framed them.

Type is one of the most undervalued modern commodities, in my humble. Everybody just sticks with Arial or Times New Roman or (heaven forbid) Comic Sans. They’re missing a lot of fun, considerable pleasure, and much beauty.

That can’t be right

So, the Inland Revenue have finally caught up with the stuff I sent them in November. At least, I think they have – they’re not very explicit about it in the statement I received today. Except that they seem to think they owe me five thousand pounds.

Er… that can’t be right.

No, it really can’t be right, since they seem to have forgotten about a whole slew of other stuff. Like, last year’s tax, which they still haven’t collected. So there’s no way I owe them five grand – but it’s beginning to look like I don’t owe them five grand either, which at one point they seemed to think I did.

A dangerous situation. Particularly when (a.) I think I’m about to buy a flat in Glasgow, (b.) the sums suggest I should trade my Mini in for a new one – no, really, and (c.) it’s been pointed out to me today that I’m supposed to be a gadget freak, and that most of the kit I own (camera, palmtop, etc) is more than five years old and therefore hardly convincing in the gizmo stakes.

Damn.

Still, one step closer to getting it all sorted out.

And I thought I did stupid things on TV

Happily, I wasn’t involved in this morning’s This Morning. But it does remind me that the only times I’ve come close to seriously injuring people have been when I’ve employed ‘professionals.’ Even so, I’ve never understood peoples’ animosity to risk assessments. It’s good practice to stop and think and write it all down, not to mention The Law.

Meanwhile, Jules should be out of hospital today (Friday). Rock on, kid.