Episode 58
This is Episode 58 of the weekly Eyecatching Words podcast, published on the 18th January 2024.

Intro
Hello and welcome to the Eyecatching Words podcast. This is your weekly aural (with a capital A) magazine with news, features and music from deep in the heart of the UK, as seen by a white privileged 65 year old Brit who tries not to be typical of his demographic.
A slightly different approach this week as I am going to do a “day in the life” rather than my usual reviews and features. But before I plough on I just want to highlight a couple of things from earlier episodes. Before Christmas I expressed surprise that the Houtis attacks on shipping in the Red Sea had not garnered much attention. Lo and behold we now have a full on crisis on our hands, as if we didn’t have one before. And last week I pointed out how AI could make a situation like the Fujitsu Post Office scandal much worse. Three days later the Guardian published an article along exactly the same lines. I feel like Cassandra. No doubt if she had had a podcast in Ancient Greek times it would have had zero listeners.
So listen to the Eyecatching Words podcast. The words of the prophet aren’t written on a subway wall at all but are recorded once a week from a small studio in Woking. Oh and by the way this week’s layout is a Lulu from Laslo Bane. You’ll be singing along by the end even if you’ve never heard it before.
A day in the life
7.53am
I have done this before – documented a whole day, but only in a half hearted sort of way. But I’m not sure it is going to work this time as there is a severe impediment in the form of Scout, the three legged cat, who is determined to disrupt me by snuggling up close, pawing at the keyboard of my MacBook, and dribbling on my left arm. He will do this wherever I go, following me from room to room.
At the start of this first entry I have been awake for over an hour and already feel exhausted by the amount of data I have had to process, and mine is a very simple life. What on earth must it be like to be a genuinely busy person, a world leader, a famous celebrity, or a professional who has a massive amount of responsibility and holds other people’s lives in their hands. A surgeon, or a bus driver, or even a chef. A parent.
Think off it. A slip of the scalpel, a moment’s lost concentration that causes you to ram an articulated lorry, a lapse in kitchen hygiene that causes you to give a roomful of people food poisoning. The incredible range of duties that are involved in bringing a person to adulthood. We all carry so much responsibility for others. I am in awe of nearly everyone who has to battle through the average day. Nearly everyone I know is a hero in their own way.
My primary responsibility this morning has been to get up and take my wife to work. Now I’m okay with that, her office is only a few minutes away but it is freezing outside and she has heavy bags. Our car is a modern electric one, less than eighteen months old. You can heat it up long before you get in it, in fact you can instruct if by phone app whilst still in bed. Cursing whilst scraping ice from a windscreen is a forgotten art. Frozen locks that need jugs of hot water poured over them are a thing of history.
But its not just the car. We have automated and to a large degree insulated our lives. Before even getting out of bed I have instructed Alexa to turn on the bedroom heater and switch on the lights that run down the spine of our house – upstairs landings, downstairs hallway, open plan lounge running into the kitchen and conservatory. They are known collectively as The House Lights. They guarantee a psychological warmth as you make your way downstairs, a feeling almost as if someone has got up ahead of you and dismissed the darkness so that you don’t have to deal with it.
But then I am one of the lucky ones. This could all vanish in an instant, which of course is the great middle class fear. At the time of the Brixton riots in the early nineteen eighties I was living just down the road in Camberwell, in a council flat of a block renowned for piss, dog mess, and crime. A large piece of graffiti appeared on a wall one day saying “Today Brixton, tomorrow your Volvo.” My father drily observed that it was rather pointless spraying it in a Lambeth housing estate. It needed to be on the streets of neighbouring well-to-do Bromley. But then he always complained that the problem with the working classes was that they tended to “shit on their own doorstep” when angry enough to kick back.
8.35am. I have my list for the day. It is a retired man’s list.
• Buy some cat food.
• Take a look around and see if anything needs cleaning. Now this is an interesting one. I often wondered why some people become more fastidious in old age and now I know why. After decades of living in a mess because you have children and jobs and there is never enough time, you develop a desire for better. In old age you will have the home you want. And it will be clean. Or at least cleaner.
• Go through emails. There are dozens of smaller, mostly administrative tasks here. Do not think that retirement means the end of email tyranny. I have plenty to keep me busy in that place of fear known as The In Box. Currently in my emails I have the following. Liaising with Octopus about our broken smart meter. Paying the deposit for our accommodation at the Hay Festival in May. Sorting out the software upgrade for the car, which I increasingly think of as not a vehicle but an iPad on wheels. Apologising for overdue library books. Replying to the woman in America who has sent me a recipe for self saucing chocolate pudding.
Other things on my list:
• Making a list of subscriptions and terminating the ones that we don’t need or can’t afford.
• Booking theatre tickets. And finally:
• Eating cake. We ordered a huge vegan birthday cake for Number One son’s birthday yesterday and I am under a moral obligation to ensure that a zero waste objective is achieved. It is biscotti and butterscotch and totally indulgent. He cannot do this by himself even though he is a grown man. As a parent I must help him.
8.55am
An Amazon parcel arrives. More acoustic panels to finish lining the walls of what I earnestly call my studio. This also has to go on my list of tasks for the day. Actually I sometimes call it my studio and sometimes my office. I also call it The Captain’s Ready Room if I am channeling Jean Luc Picard. Or The Man Cave.
The Amazon driver is one of my regulars. They are all really nice guys. I ask him if he is staying warm in this freezing weather and he gives me a big grin and a thumbs up. But his gig economy job means he cannot stop and talk. His schedule must be punishing.
An absurd thought crosses my mind. It was an urban myth in the old days that milkmen had sex with housewives on their rounds. I’m sure they never had the time. Even ‘though it was regular work they couldn’t have managed it in the hours available. Intrigued I turn to Google and find that The Mirror, The Mail and The Express all seem obsessed with this idea. Less well known sources point out that a lot of milkmen were in fact women, and others conclude that it was more of a staple for music hall jokes than a widespread reality. An old acquaintance of mine was a milkman before he turned to psychiatric nursing and his obsession was not with sex but actually getting people to pay up.
According to Wikipedia, The Amorous Milkman is a 1975 British comedy film directed by Derren Nesbitt and starring Julie Ege, Diana Dors and Brendan Price. A young milkman enjoys a number of adventures with bored women on his round. One version of the poster showed a self-satisfied cat licking its lips above the tagline, “If your pussy could only talk.” Check out the website if you really want to see this.
9.40. I go to the pet shop in the village. The one member of staff there has done way too many customer service courses. I feel overwhelmed by information about nutritional values, feeding regimes, portion sizes, and cat psychology. I just want some cat biscuits that my cats will actually eat. I emerge £51.74 poorer and not entirely convinced that I have done the right thing.
10.20am. I sit down with a cup of coffee and decide to treat myself to a game of Carcasonne on the iPad. If you’ve never played this it is addictive. The aim is quite simply to be the biggest landowner with more towns and toll roads in medieval France than anyone else. You have to kick ass and be the baddest boy in the muddy fields of the times. Although if it were more accurate it would include features such as rape, genocide and the slaughter of children. These were not good times, any more than Gaza or the Ukraine are today.
On which sobering note I turn to the news.
10.45. The Guardian is my go to source. They have a brilliant way of presenting hard news alongside batshit stories of our age. Today there is a bumper crop. It starts with an account of Ed Balls kicking a tv presenter in the head on live TV whilst modelling the space constraints of modern airline seats. I decide not to watch the video as it would constitute social media rubbernecking and anyway the picture in my head is quite enough. Actually I have gone off Ed Balls anyway, despite enjoying seeing him at the Hay festival last year. Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart is one thing but Ed Balls is dancing with the devil by doing a podcast with George Osborne is quite another. The man oversaw one off the worst and most shameful policies in British history by pursuing austerity from 2010 onwards. He doesn’t deserve a platform.
Belarus is talking about changing its rules off engagement to allow use of nuclear weapons. Living proof of the insanity of the human race.
The five major themes or tribes for voters in this years elections are highlighted in a Europe wide survey, with climate change and the impact of covid being the biggest worries and immigration, the Ukraine and global economic meltdown being the others. Nearly fifty million people said none of the above. I suspect in Britain everyone is more worried about potholes and ULEZ cameras, we have become such a small minded nation. But there is also an excellent article about tribes in Britain by Dan Evans who points out that it is increasingly difficult to label people into White Van Man, Red Wall and Brexiteer. Its much more complex than that.
Meanwhile in Colombia former guerrilla fighters have gone into brewing craft beer instead. Here is an extract from the article.
The rich toasty malt notes, the slight aftertaste of coffee and the hints of citrus are what make Coromoro beer so tasty, says Doris Suárez. It reminds her of the mountains where she used to live, and “it’s very, very delicious”.

How can a Colombian woman end up being called Doris? That was the name of my first car when I lived in Streatham.
An article entitled “The gender-neutral fashion movement is failing little boys who want to wear skirts” comes from one Freya Bennet who argues that gender neutrality seems to exclude girlie colours and styles from little boys wardrobes. This is a great little article which I am sure will have the GB news mob frothing over their morning coffee. Listen to this:
While the push for gender neutrality is commendable, I would like to see it extend its embrace to include pink and frills. By integrating elements of “girliness” into the concept of gender neutrality, we can cultivate a generation of children who don’t perceive pink as anti-feminist or inferior. Moreover, this broader acceptance may encourage the wider community to be more open to letting boys explore feminine styles, ensuring that all children have the opportunity to experience the joy of twirling in a sparkly skirt as a fundamental childhood rite of passage.

Brilliant. I might try it myself.
There is of course much more than this selection in the news pages. It takes me a while to get through it, with all the news of wars and intolerance. I do this nearly every day and it leaves me with a curious set of mixed sensations: disgust, depression but also amusement and wry optimism. Today I have a sudden vision of being served a beer by a former Colombian gunman in a sparkly pink skirt and feel that there may be hope for the world yet. Like HG Wells who always experienced a surge of optimism for the human race when he saw someone on a bicycle, I am not wholly defeated by bad things. There is hope.
But now the day is ticking away. Noon is fast approaching. I need to think about what I want to look back on when this day is done and to feel that it has been a day well lived. But at this point I also remember that I had thrown on some clothes to take my wife to work at 7am and have forgotten to shower, shave and make myself acceptable to the world. Hope the man in the pet shop didn’t notice.
11.43. I am briefly distracted by a confusing discussion on my family WhatsApp group. There are disputes over old pictures and who lived in what road in South London. I decide to go upstairs and make myself delectable / respectable / acceptable.
12.30. I emerge from my bedroom looking gorgeous.
12.35. My latest Private Eye falls through the letterbox.
12.40. Cat food experiment number 1. I open the new cat biscuits and measure out what I believe is a recommended half of the daily dose on the back of the packet. This is only a loose guideline and does not take into account the fact that our cats are off the scale, a couple of real heavyweights. The trick here is to think cat not human. A 30gm portion may not look like a lot but they are not people. And as a vet once rather cruelly pointed out to me, Scout is one leg short of a normal cat BMI baseline. Adjusted for that he is even more overweight.
12.50. I open Private Eye. The Post Office scandal takes up a big chunk, quite rightly. The Revelations are tumbling out at an astonishing rate and misdemeanour is being piled on misdemeanour. I wonder if the Post Office’s audit committee was asleep through all this. It is a failure of governance rooted, as most failures of governance are, in organisational culture and lack of scrutiny. Astonishing too are the revelations about Fujitsu and its links to senior tories with business interests. I have to stop or I’ll never finish. Just be aware that this, like Me Too, MPs expenses, and the Covid Enquiry will be around for a long time and have a deep impact. I hope. Don’t take your eyes off it.
1.20. Lunch. This consists of yesterday’s doggy bag from the pub I went to with my eldest lad to celebrate his 34th birthday. Their food is seriously good. I should have ordered a side of fries to bring home and reheat as their chips are simply awesome. Whilst eating I carry on watching a tedious film called Continuum made in 2013 about the damage that time travel can do and how it can seriously it can traumatise families when dad makes a Time Machine in the basement and disappears into the past to meet Einstein and doesn’t come back. Haley Joel Osment is very wooden and should have opted not to grow up, he was much better as a child actor in films like The Sixth Sense. Gillian Anderson on the other hand is awesome. Great actress.
1.40. I clean the kitchen and make tea and cut a slice of birthday cake. I take it up to my office to start going through my emails but am again distracted by the state of my office and start tidying up. This is not looking good. There are distractions everywhere.
2.15. I have a video call with a friend and former colleague who is wanting a second opinion on some presentation materials for an interview. We expand the call into a general conversation about life and fulfilment and agree the pub we will meet in on Friday for debriefing. And maybe beer.
3.00. This is where it all starts to go pleasantly wrong. I agree to cat sit my younger son’s moggy whilst they do some deep cleaning using strong chemicals. Henry is several months old but has little experience of the wider world and has only met our cats on a couple of occasions. I block up the doors and windows and position Ring cameras all around the house to make sure he doesn’t get lost and I can deal with any fights that break out. It will be gone 8pm before they come to collect him and by then I will very tired. Unless I build a Time Machine in the basement and go back in time and have a snooze whilst I am out shopping. But we know that time travel never works out well and besides I would have to go back even further in time to 1905 when my house was built and persuade them to put in a basement as I don’t actually have one. Then you end up with one of those temporal paradoxes about what came first, the house or the Time Machine. No, it’s just too awkward.
5.00. I start cooking supper. Mushroom and lentil Dhansak from the Slimming World Vegan Cookbook. I have to go out halfway through to collect my wife from work but this does not cause any serious problems. Indian food is low maintenance even if it can be a bit fiddly.
If you enjoy cooking retirement is an absolute wet dream. Chopping onions and slicing chilli becomes therapy. Cracking open cardamom pods is pure zen filled fulfilment. Recipe books are your New Testament go-to sources, particularly if you don’t eat meat, fish or dairy (unlike the Old Testament which is full of goat sacrifices and roasted ox). If Jesus came back today he would definitely be vegan, although that trick with the loaves and fishes would make him darn handy in any fast food environment. “Hey Jesus we’ve run out of fries. Can you magic up a dozen portions?”.
After five years of being retired I might even make Masterchef. Nah. The whole point of cooking is to chill not thrill. I wouldn’t want the pressure.
The evening with Henry and our two cats is lively and amusing. The older boys are chilled but Henry is just far too excited to sleep or even eat. He is upstairs, he is downstairs, he is under the settee, and at one point he is even in the bath, walking up and down with the tip of his tail circling above the rim like the shark’s fin in Jaws.
9.00. Henry has gone home, reluctantly. He has been enjoying his time out but his home has been thoroughly cleaned ready for a landlord inspection and he has to go, like it or not. Besides he will be back on Saturday for a fortnight whilst “mommy and daddy” go away to Hungary and Austria. That I am sure will be exhausting.
We do the Guardian crossword then both fall asleep. At ten we wake up and decide to force a second wind on ourselves by playing cards. We never tire of these nightly rituals. When we do eventually go to bed we cannot sleep and end up reading in bed until midnight, although my wife also indulges in some duvet karaoke. Don’t ask. She has these funny turns and they are one of the many reasons I love her.
Midnight. That was a pretty good day. I fall asleep without any difficulty. As usual.
Outtro
That’s all from me this week. I am going through a crisis of confidence and meaning with my podcast but will be back next week. It’s not so much a desire to carry on as an inability to know when to stop. I like my weekly ramble and I like the writing that goes with it. So come back for Episode 59 and everything that entails. I hope in the meantime that the days in your life are as good as mine. I’m no superman but it’s a pretty super life. Cue playout.

Closing remarks
The weekly eyecatching words podcast is assembled using Day One journaling software. Recording and production is done in Hindenburg Pro, and AI voices are by Revoicer. Sound effects are by Soundstripe. To see the written version of this podcast, and to view sound clips and additional material, go to www.eyecatchingwords.blog.
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