Quick Update

It's still a cybernetic hell-world, but you knew that already.

Photo by Uday Mittal on Unsplash

I feel somewhat discombobulated at the moment, although this is not a novel phenomenon. We live in discombobulating times, and I only get about four hours of broken sleep each night, so altogether I’m doing well if I remember that shoes go on my feet and not on my hands. If I ever forget, you’ll know about it, if only because I’ll start typing like ,.m;zcvx,.czx;kladfskpodf,lcv,xvc. And so on.

What I mean to say is that I’ve neglected my hobby writing recently, so thought I would ease myself back into it with a quickie (as the actress said to the bishop. The bishop, of course, did not reply, because it simply wasn’t worth losing a contract with Channel 4 in ten years’ time when the murky footage emerged).

I thought I might update you on the University parking saga – could there be a more thrilling subject? Ultimately, after receiving a great deal of uproar from its employees about making car parking more difficult and expensive (in order to tackle the Climate Emergency Death Siren Hellscape Bad Times, as the World Economic Forum has recently upgraded the situation to), the University decided to carry on exactly as they were doing and politely told us where to stick it. Marvellous. In response, I and my sole teammate have agreed to go onto campus much less often. I suspect we will not be the only ones.

I will say that it has been very interesting watching so many well-respected, highly paid, highly-lettered academics set out all the ways in which the University’s policy is ill-thought out and, of course, discriminatory against various favoured groups the Academy professes to fawn over, only to see the response of, “Well, today we don’t care. Climate wins now.”  When one is valued not for merit or actions, one may find one’s value being suddenly slashed in favour of the next big thing, a bit like how everyone on my Facebook seems to be buying paddling pools for 50p as shops get all their Christmas gear ready before the first radiator has even creaked into its seasonal life.

All being said and done, I’m quite happy to work more from home. That, however, is a function of the fact that I only work two days a week. I have no career goals; I just want to quietly earn what I need to earn. My passions lie elsewhere. It’s easy for me to step further back, to clock out even more from the social webs of the University. It’s undoubtedly less pleasant and easy an option for those who wish to be more involved, or indeed, who need to be.

There are downsides to pushing people away from a physical, uniting core. A lack of face-to-face socialising does not boost rapport, and it means an awful lot of what I call “marginal fluff” gets dropped. Marginal fluff is the extra something you get simply from being near people in person: the easier flow of conversation that sparks ideas; perhaps overhearing something in a corridor that makes you realise something important. Little, unquantifiable bits that create added value. We need place. We need relationships with the spaces around us and the people around us.

Electronic communication can be wonderful, but I wonder how much damage is being done to the human psyche, and how many good ideas we’re missing out on, the more we retreat to our virtual cocoons. Anyway, it’s Friday night, and I’m going to watch Gardener’s World with my mum and a glass of wine, as is our hedonistic ritual. I hope everybody reading this has a lovely weekend full of social joy, even if it’s just a friendly word with a neighbour. Don’t let the cyber-world grind you down. We remain, forever, human.