I remember back when you couldn’t see a photo right after taking it.

You pressed the camera shutter. Something happened inside the camera. You moved on with your life and had to trust the process.

Whether the photo was good, whether anyone had their eyes open, whether your thumb was partially over the lens.

All good questions that wouldn’t be answered for seven to fourteen days.

This was how photography worked.

The ritual was specific. Exciting and anxious at the same time.

Twenty four exposures per roll. Sometimes thirty six if you were feeling ambitious or had an upcoming holiday.

You used them carefully because each one cost money and there was no checking afterwards to see if the photo had come out properly.

You pointed the camera. You pressed the shutter. You moved on.

At the end of the roll you rewound the film, which made a satisfying mechanical sound that meant you’d done something real.

You took the little canister to Boots.

You filled out a small envelope with your name and address, popped the canister inside and handed it over to a person who accepted it without any particular interest.

Then you waited.

During the seven to fourteen waiting days the photos existed somewhere between the moment of pressing the shutter and the moment of collection, in a state that was neither good nor bad.

There was absolutely nothing you could do about it either way.

In retrospect, this was probably the most relaxed we’ve ever been about anything.

The collection date arrived.

You opened the envelope in the car park outside Boots, or sometimes on the bus home if you couldn’t wait, or if you were incredibly patient, until you got home. Most people I knew never waited until they got home, including me.

Twenty four small prints. Slightly glossy. Smelling faintly of chemicals.

Most of them were wrong in some way.

Blurred. Dark. Someone had moved at the critical moment.

An entire roll from a birthday party where every single photo had caught people mid-blink, like the camera had specifically waited for the worst possible fraction of a second before firing.

You looked through them anyway. All of them. Carefully.

And then you put the good ones, typically three, maybe four, occasionally as many as six if it had been a good roll, into an album, or a shoebox, or a drawer, where they stayed for twenty years until someone found them and couldn’t identify half the people in them.

Including, in one case, me.

I’m in the photo. I know I’m in the photo, not because I recognise myself, because someone wrote my name on the back.

I have zero memory of that person.

Now I take a photo and see it immediately.

Then I take it again because the first one wasn’t quite right. Then again because I blinked.

Then four more times until I have seven versions of the same moment and have to choose between them, which takes longer than the moment itself took to happen.

The criteria for choosing is completely arbitrary.

Marginally better light. Slightly less unfortunate expression. A vague feeling that this one is the one, which is indistinguishable from just wanting it to be over.

I go with the “less terrible” option

It’s fine.

I feel nothing in particular about it.

The thing I didn’t understand then, and only worked out recently, is that the waiting was the point.

Seven to fourteen days.

Without being judged. Without being retaken or filtered or immediately deleted because the angle was slightly wrong.

Just a moment, preserved somewhere, that you’d get to see eventually.

You couldn’t improve it. You couldn’t undo it. It was already done and somewhere in a small chemical process it was becoming real without you.

That’s not how anything works anymore.

I’m not sure I’m better off.

Though I do have seven nearly identical photos of a jacket potato, so.

We have fourteen pillows on our bed.

One is mine. One my wife’s. Functional. For sleeping.

The other twelve exist for reasons I’ve never been fully able to establish and have learned not to question.

I want to be clear, I didn’t buy these pillows.

I’ve never bought a decorative pillow in my life. I wouldn’t know where to start.

I can’t ever remember knowing that decorative pillows were a category of thing that existed until they began arriving in our bedroom one by one over a period of time.

None of this is accidental. There is a logic to it. But not logic I can access.

The Nightly Removal

Every night before bed the pillows have to come off.

This is not optional. You cannot sleep under or on fourteen pillows. You cannot get into a bed occupied by fourteen pillows without first relocating them to somewhere else.

So every night I remove twelve pillows from the bed and place them on the chair in the corner. I’ve yet to be given the reason why this falls to me.

They don’t stack. They don’t cooperate. Several of them are different sizes and shapes.

There are cylindrical ones, small square ones, one that is inexplicably the size of a dinner plate, and they have to be moved individually with the care of a man handling objects he fundamentally doesn’t understand.

Then I can get into bed.

The Morning Reinstatement

Every morning the pillows go back on the bed.

All twelve of them. In a specific arrangement. There is a correct order and a correct position and a correct orientation for each pillow and I have learned these things the way you learn anything in a long marriage. Through tuts and pointed corrections and of course the look.

The cylindrical one goes at the back. The small square ones go in front of it. The dinner plate one. I don’t know what it’s called.

I’ve started thinking of it as Gerald. Gerald goes slightly off-centre to the left.

I do this every morning.

The Asking

I asked once what the pillows were for.

The answer was that they make the bed look nice.

I’ve thought about this answer for a long time.

The bed looks nice for approximately fourteen hours a day. The hours between when it gets made in the morning and when we dismantle it again at night.

In between there’s nobody is in the bedroom.

We are downstairs. Living our lives. Unaware of how nice the bed looks.

The pillows are performing for an empty room.

I reinstated Gerald this morning at 7:15 AM.

Gerald has an audience of zero.

Fourteen pillows, twelve somehow seem to be my responsibility every morning and night for the rest of my life.

I can’t say I even like Gerald.

But every morning there he is. Slightly off-centre to the left.

Apparently, exactly where he belongs.

We have a drawer in our kitchen.

In that drawer there are, at any given time, between seven and thirteen pens

None of them work.

This is not an accident.

The pens don’t stop working randomly. They stop working at the precise moment they become the only pen you actually need.

Before that they’re fine. Sitting there. Full of ink. Completely unbothered.

The moment you pick one up for something important, a form, a number, something you need to write down right that minute, it produces a faint scratch and nothing else.

Every time.

The drawer is a pen hospice. They go in working and come out as dry husks that exist purely to disappoint you at critical moments.

The Good Pen

At some point in every household a pen gets designated.

Not formally.

Nobody holds a ceremony. But a pen arrives, usually from a hotel, occasionally from a bank, once in our case from a man at a conference, I didn’t know who he was, and it writes beautifully.

Smooth. Consistent. Reliable.

Someone picks it up and thinks “oh this is a good pen”.

That’s it. There’s the moment right there. The countdown begins.

Within a week it’s gone.

Not lost. Gone!

There’s a difference. Lost implies it might come back.

Gone means it has entered a dimension specifically reserved for designated good pens and you will never see it again.

We’ve been lucky enough to have had several very good pens.

I know where none of them are.

The System

A good pen doesn’t work alone.

I’ve identified a network of household objects that operate on the same principle. The moment you designate something as the good version of a thing, the designation itself triggers the disappearance.

The good scissors. You buy proper ones. Keep them in a specific place. Tell everyone they are not for craft projects or opening packages or cutting hair.

Within three months they are being used in another room, not returned and then simply gone.

The good plastic containers. You buy the set with the lids that actually seal. Airtight. Stackable. The lids vanish almost immediately.

The containers ….. never!

The good charger. The fast charging one. Gone.

In its place are several chargers I’ve never seen before.

This is not a coincidence.

This is some kind of intra dimensional infrastructure.

The Evidence

I know what I’m talking about because I tested this.

I bought two identical pens.

One I designated as the good pen. Told my wife. Put it in a specific place. Made its status clear.

One I put in the drawer without comment.

Within four days the good pen had vanished.

The drawer pen is still there. Still works. Has been used by nobody for anything.

The system doesn’t want the drawer pen. It has no value. Nothing has been invested in it emotionally.

The system feeds on personal attachments.

The Solution

Stop designating.

I’m serious.

Buy a pen. Use it. Tell nobody its status, good or bad.

Maintain complete emotional neutrality toward it. The moment you feel yourself thinking this is a good pen, put that thought as far from your mind as possible.

Will this work?

I don’t know.

I’ve started hiding one pen at the back of a cupboard with no designation whatsoever.

It’s been three weeks.

It’s still there.

Which either means the system hasn’t found it yet.

Or the system is waiting.

I’m not telling anyone which cupboard.

When I was young, changing the TV channel required getting up.

Not asking someone. Not pressing a button. Getting up. Physically. Walking across the room. Turning a dial.

Every time.

This is apparently hilarious to people born after 1980.

We had two channels.

BBC and ITV.

That was the entire landscape of British television. Two channels, a dial, and the quiet understanding that if you didn’t like what was on, your other option was also probably just as bad.

BBC2 arrived in 1964, which in theory gave us three. In practice it showed a man explaining farming, so really we still had two.

The television itself was positioned, as all televisions were, at the precise viewing distance from the sofa. Past the coffee table.

Beyond the draught coming under the front door.

In a microclimate that was somehow three degrees colder than the rest of the room.

You had to want it.

Bonanza was on ITV. Coronation Street had just started. If you were quick you could catch the end of Emergency Ward 10.

But wanting it meant getting up. Walking over. Turning the dial. Walking back. Sitting down.

Then the vertical hold would go.

The picture would start to roll. Slowly at first. Then faster. The whole image sliding upward like the television was trying to escape.

Your dad would sigh the sigh of a man who had accepted this as simply what life was, walk over, and hit the side of the set with his palm.

This worked. Nobody knew why and nobody bothered to ask.

He’d walk back. Sit down. Watch three minutes of Coronation Street. Then it would start rolling again.

Eleven times in one evening. Minimum.

My grandchildren change channels by talking at the television.

They don’t look up. They don’t move. They issue a command and the television obeys.

I explained once about the dial. About the vertical hold. About crossing a cold room in your socks on a Wednesday night in January just to watch the second half of a cowboy show called Bonanza.

One of them said: “Why didn’t you just watch something else?”

There was nothing else.

There were two channels and both of them were sometimes a still image of a rotating wheel that the BBC broadcast to fill time and called a Trade Test Transmission.

Sometimes we watched that. Something to look at, I suppose.

I would like to think it built character. There had to be some benefit.

Getting up off that sofa, crossing that room, adjusting that dial, took discipline. Right there that was commitment.

That was a man deciding what he wanted and going to get it, regardless of the temperature, regardless of the draught, regardless of how many times the vertical hold would undo all his work the moment he sat back down.

We didn’t have convenience.

We had Bonanza and a faulty picture and the quiet dignity of a generation that never once complained about it.

Until now, obviously.

My grandfather started walking five miles a day when he was 60.

He’s 97 now.

We have no idea where he is.

It seemed like a reasonable suggestion at the time.

The doctor said he needed exercise. He said walking was good for the heart. Someone bought him a pair of proper walking boots and off he went down the road with the quiet satisfaction of a family that’s doing the right thing.

That was 1987.

He hasn’t stopped since.

The first few years were fine.

Five miles a day, back for lunch, cups of tea, normal life. We thought we’d cracked it.

Healthy grandfather.

Everyone was pleased with themselves.

Then the five miles became eight.

Then twelve.

Then he started leaving notes.

Gone walking. Back Tuesday.

Tuesday being, in one memorable case, three weeks later.

He’d been to Scarborough. Why Scarborough, we don’t know because we can’t ask him.. He just kept going and eventually there he was.

The Sightings

By his mid-eighties we’d stopped expecting him at mealtimes and started relying on a network of reported sightings.

A cousin spotted him in Derbyshire in 2019. Moving at considerable pace. Nodded and kept going.

A neighbour’s daughter swears she saw him crossing a field in Northumberland last spring. She waved. He waved back. He was gone before she got her phone out.

My uncle claims he tracked him as far as the Yorkshire Dales in 2021 and then lost him somewhere near Hawes.

We’ve learned not to ask my uncle about this.

What We Know

He has his walking boots. He has a waterproof coat that he’s had since 1993 and refuses to replace. He carries a small amount of cash and what we believe is a compass, though nobody can confirm this because nobody has been close enough long enough to check.

From what we know he seems well.

Better than well, actually. The occasional postcard suggests a man entirely at peace with his situation.

We are less at peace.

The doctor who recommended walking retired in 1998 and moved to Portugal.

Sometimes I think the irony.

We’ve had several family meetings.

The conclusion is always the same - he’s 97, he knows what he’s doing, and any attempt to stop him would probably finish him off faster than the walking.

So what can we do?

We keep the kettle ready. We check the postcards. We maintain the network.

Someone suggested fitting him with a tracker, if we ever get close enough.

He was last seen heading north.

We think he might be in Scotland now.

To be honest, at this point, we’re less worried about him than we are about ourselves.

We told him walking was good for his heart.

Unfortunately it also appears to be good for his legs, his lungs, his general constitution, and his complete indifference to staying anywhere long enough for us to find him.

He’s 97 and he’s somewhere in Britain.

We’re at home.

Worried. He’s fine.

I made a decision that seemed entirely reasonable at the time.

I ordered a takeaway instead of cooking.

To be clear I approached this sensibly. I opened the app, and browsed the options.

I selected something that looked good and confirmed the order with the quiet confidence of a man who has finally got dinner under control.

Thirty-seven minutes later I was in a state.

Not hungry. Not calm. Watching a tiny car on my phone move slowly in the wrong direction like it was doing it deliberately.

This is what I chose over cooking pasta.

The old anxiety was simple. Stand in front of the fridge at 7 PM. Stare at ingredients. Feel nothing. The anxiety was I don’t want to do this.

I outsourced that anxiety. Modern, easy solution. I thought sensible.

Except the anxiety didn’t go anywhere. It relocated. Upgraded. Put on a different suit.

Now it’s Why is my food going to the industrial estate?

The Optimism Phase

Order placed. Estimated arrival: 30 minutes. Excellent. I’m a patient person.

I settle in. Check my phone once. Twice. Food being prepared. This is fine. Civilisation is working as intended.

The Confusion Phase

The little car appears on the map. Moving. But not toward me. I zoom out. Three miles away. In the opposite direction. I understand there are other orders. Other customers.

A logical conclusion.

Emotionally, I’m convinced the driver has forgotten about me entirely. Or worse — he’s decided he likes my Pad Thai better than his job.

The Acceptance Phase

This is not acceptance. This is despair with nowhere to go.

The car stops. Five minutes. Seven. Is he lost? Has he broken down? Is he eating my food in a layby?

The app sends an update: Your order is 10 minutes away.

It’s been saying this for 15 minutes.

I’ve boiled water in less time than this. Made sauce. Eaten. Cleaned up. The pasta would be done. I would be fine. Instead I’m watching a stranger’s route optimisation algorithm make choices I can’t influence.

The app is a liar. The driver is a phantom. I have only myself to blame.

Then the doorbell rings.

Food’s here. Somehow. Despite all evidence suggesting it was heading somewhere else entirely. The driver looks completely normal. Like he hasn’t just put me through the wringer.

Everything’s there. Still warm. Exactly what I ordered.

The anxiety evaporates.

Until I take the first bite and realise I didn’t want this. I wanted the other thing. The one I nearly ordered and talked myself out of at the last second.

Too late. The driver’s gone. App’s closed. I’m committed.

I could’ve cooked. Made exactly what I wanted. No waiting. No map. No little car.

But I chose convenience. All it cost me was 45 minutes of low-level panic and £7.99.

Tomorrow I’ll probably do it again.

At least this way, I don’t have to admit the fridge was full the entire time.

I proofread an email 10 times. Perfect. Ready to go!

The nanosecond after I hit ‘Send,’ it reveals a glaring typo.

The send button is basically the ‘Wait for it...’ button..

And I think it’s part of a larger system.

The Digital Humiliation Protocol:

Sadly, because I obviously have nothing better to do, I’ve been documenting this.

The Send button doesn’t work solo.

It’s part of an infrastructure designed to expose incompetence at the exact moment I’m incapable of doing anything about it.

This is what I mean:

I read it once. Good.

Read it again. Hmm maybe change “best regards” to “kind regards.” No… back to “best regards.”

Third read. Tone check. Does this sound passive-aggressive? It might. Rewrite.

Fourth read. Grammar. Commas, right? Yes. Probably.

Fifth read. Final check. Finished.

My finger hovers over Send. Click.

The email vanishes.

It’s instantly becomes a trapdoor for my dignity.

Immediately: “Wait, did I see ‘hearing from you’ or ‘herring from you’?”

I go to my “sent folder.”

“Herring from you, sigh.”

Professional email. About fish.

I read it TEN TIMES.

There was no typo I could see.

Obviously it was hidden by a pre-send perception filter that lifts when the email becomes irreversible.

The Theory:

Before Send: “Draft Mode.” My brain sees what I intended, not what I wrote.

After Send: “Broadcast Mode.” Sees what everyone else will see.

Panic.

But it’s not just the Send button.

The System:

Auto-correct: Lies dormant while typing. Watches. Waits. The moment I send, it changes “meeting” to “mating.” Not before.

The Undo Send Timer: Gmail gives us 5 seconds to undo. My brain needs 6 seconds minimum to spot the typo. The timer gives me hope, then crushes it.

Attachment Detectors: Warns me if there’s no attachment. Brilliant. Except it only works AFTER I send. “Did you mean to attach a file?” YES. BRING IT BACK.

The BCC Revealer: I carefully BCC someone. Check twice. Hit Send. They’re now in CC. Everyone sees them. The system waited until I couldn’t fix it.

Not bugs, features.

They reveal incompetence at the precise moment I’m powerless.

The Evidence:

I tested this.

Email #1: Proofread once. Sent immediately. Perfect.

Email #2: Proofread 15 times. Triple-checked. Sent. Instant typo. Wrong attachment. Wrong recipient.

The more you check, the worse it gets.

The system knows. It waits for confidence. Then strikes.

The Solution:

Stop proofreading.

Seriously.

Proofread once, maybe twice. Send immediately before the system sets the trap.

Will there be typos? Yes. But there’ll be typos anyway.

At least I won’t waste 20 minutes while the Send button plots against me.

I’m typing this now. I’ve checked it four times, which is three times too many.

Which means when I hit “Publish,” something will be catastrophically wrong.

The system is watching.

Three weeks ago I made a purchase that seemed entirely reasonable, at the time.

Anti-aging cream.

I want to be clear that I approached this somewhat scientifically, as far as I’m able.

I read the label.

It said “visibly reduces the signs of aging.” I have signs of aging.

This seemed like a straightforward transaction between me and my face.

I applied it every morning with the quiet confidence of a man who knows what he’s doing.

I’m still aging!

Not slowly. Not gracefully.

Normally, completely unbothered by the cream I keep applying every morning like some kind of optimistic ritual that my face has decided to ignore entirely.

Visibly, Was The Selling Point

I’ve been watching closely. Nothing is visible.

If anything my forehead has gotten worse, like it found out I was trying to interfere and decided to accelerate the whole process just to make a point.

My forehead has always had a confrontational streak. Makes sense.

I’d ask for a refund but of course, I can’t remember where I bought it.

Definitely related to aging.

Three Weeks No Results

My partner suggested I give it more time.

More time. To stop aging. While aging.

I explained that the label said visibly and that I had been watching visibly every morning for three weeks and that visibility wasn’t occurring.

She gave me the look she reserves for moments when she has decided engaging further is simply not worth the energy.

She’s been giving me that look a lot lately.

Possibly also related to aging.

I checked the small print. It says “results may vary.”

I would like to know whose results they used for the large print because that person and I are clearly having completely different experiences with this product.

Is This Really A Character Test?

Apparently some anti-aging creams take up to twelve weeks to show results.

Twelve weeks.

I am being asked to apply cream to my face every morning for three months before I am allowed to have an opinion about whether it works.

That feels less like skincare and more like a test of personal character.

I don’t remember signing up for a character test. I remember signing up for visible results.

I’m going to finish the jar though.

I’ve come this far and I have absolutely nothing else to show for the last three weeks.

The Point That Isn’t The Point

The cream isn’t really the point.

We all buy the cream. Not literally but we all reach for the thing that promises transformation without the boring part.

The supplement, the planner, the course, the app. Purchased with hope, applied with enthusiasm, quietly abandoned when results fail to appear on our preferred timeline.

The label always says visibly.

The small print always says results may vary.

I’m still aging.

At least now I’m doing it with extremely moisturised skin.

I work from home. My commute is 12 seconds. Bedroom to desk. No traffic. No train delays. No roadworks.

I somehow manage to be late.

The mathematics don’t add up.

My first meeting is at 9:00 AM. I wake up at 8:47. Thirteen minutes.

That’s plenty of time, right? That’s 780 seconds. I only need twelve of them to get to work.

But here’s what actually happens:

• 8:47 - Wake up

• 8:53 - Coffee (non-negotiable)

• 8:58 - Find a shirt that doesn’t look like I slept in it (I did, but it shouldn’t look like I did)

• 8:59 - Brush teeth because morning breath transmits through screens

• 9:02 - Finally sit down, realise laptop is in the other room

• 9:04 - Join the meeting apologising for “technical difficulties”

The technical difficulty is me.

Why is it that people who commute an hour to work are somehow less late than I am? They have to account for traffic, weather, and public transportation that runs on vibes and prayer. Legitimate obstacles.

I have twelve seconds and a hallway.

And yet they’re sitting at their desks at 8:55, coffee in hand, looking professional and prepared.

Meanwhile, I’m frantically checking if I’m wearing pants, typing “Sorry, connection issues!” in the chat.

Of course my connection is fine.

The issue is that I thought I could make coffee, find my notebook, and check the news in the three minutes I had left.

Time moves differently when working from home, at least mine does. Twelve seconds should be twelve seconds. But somehow those twelve seconds expand into a black hole that swallows entire minutes.

Where did the time go? What happened in that hallway? Did I accidentally enter a temporal anomaly? Is my apartment built on some kind of time-dilating architecture?

No. I just stopped to check my phone. Twice. Then I remembered I should feed the cat. Then the cat wanted attention.

Then I was late.

I’ve even tried setting multiple alarms.

Alarms to wake up, alarms to get out of bed, alarms to remind me I have a meeting, alarms to tell me I’m already late to the meeting I just reminded myself about.

My phone sounds like a crisis centre now. A symphony of failure.

I’ve even considered sleeping at my desk. Eliminating the commute entirely. Just wake up, open my eyes, and I’m already at work. Zero-second commute. Surely I can’t be late then.

But I know myself. I’d still somehow contrive to be late.

What’s spooky is that I’m always punctual for everything else.

Doctor’s appointments? Early.

Meeting friends? Ten minutes ahead of schedule.

Catching a flight? At the gate before boarding even opens.

But working from home is my nemesis!

It’s become my brand now. People expect it. They’ve built it into their mental scheduling. “Oh, he’ll be with us in a few minutes. And they’re right. That’s exactly how I am.

I should probably wrap this up. I have a meeting in two minutes.

I’m definitely going to be late.

I just spent five minutes searching for my phone while using its flashlight to look under the car seat.

Five minutes. The phone was in my hand the entire time, patiently shining a light on my stupidity like a tiny helpful witness to my own unravelling.

I want to be clear about the timeline here.

One minute in, I checked my pockets. Twice.

Two minutes in, I retraced my steps back into the house.

Three minutes in, I asked my partner if they’d seen it, which they hadn’t, but they must have watched me leave the room holding it, without saying anything.

Four minutes in, I was on my hands and knees, phone outstretched, sweeping light under the car seat like I was searching for evidence at a crime scene.

My partner said nothing because she knows!

There’s a look she gives me now, somewhere between concern and morbid fascination, like it’s a nature documentary and she doesn’t want to startle the animal.

The phone, I’m sure you guessed, was in my hand the whole time.

The Brain, It Turns Out, Has Opinions

What gets me is the confidence.

I wasn’t hesitating or second-guessing.

I had a search strategy.

I was eliminating locations with real purpose and genuine focus, all while holding the object I was looking for like some kind of deranged magician who’d forgotten the trick.

My brain had simply decided the phone wasn’t relevant information worth sharing with me. It had filed it under “permanent fixture, like hands or feet” and moved on without so much as a hint.

Which raises the obvious question. What else has it filed away without consulting me?

Probably too much, if I’m being realistic.

A Guest With Limited Permissions

I’ve come to accept that I am not the primary user of my own brain. I am more like a lodger who thinks they run the house because they occasionally choose what to have for dinner.

Meanwhile the actual management is upstairs making decisions, running routines, and operating systems I didn’t install and can’t access.

It’s efficient. It handles most of your day without asking for your input because, frankly, it doesn’t need it.

You approved these routines years ago and it’s been running them on your behalf ever since.

The slightly uncomfortable part is this.

That same system handles more than where you put your phone.

It handles what you avoid. What you keep meaning to change. The version of yourself you’ve been planning to become since roughly 2019.

All quietly managed by a brain that has decided the current setup is probably fine.

It is not fine.

But that’s a problem for tomorrow, apparently.

Right now I need to find my phone, again.

The other day I saw a pigeon confidently walk into a bakery like it was there to pick up a special order.

Not wandering in by accident. Not nervously hopping through an open door. Walking. With purpose.

Like it had an appointment.

You have to admire the hustle.

This pigeon wasn’t behaving like a pigeon. It was a valued customer.

One who knows exactly what they want and expects it to be ready when they arrive.

I watched it hop past the queue.

Past people actually paying. It didn’t give them so much as a glance.

It headed straight for the counter with the kind of determination usually reserved for people who’ve been waiting on hold with customer service for 45 minutes and finally got through.

The staff saw it.

Obviously.

You can’t miss a pigeon treating your shop like it’s their regular spot. But here’s what got me: they hesitated.

For a solid three seconds, they weren’t sure what to do. Because the pigeon wasn’t behaving like a pest. It was behaving like someone who belonged there.

And that created doubt.

Should they shoo it out? Or should they... check if it was picking up an order?

Eventually, someone made a half-hearted attempt to encourage it toward the door.

Of course the pigeon ignored them. Unbothered.

It had a system. A routine.

This wasn’t its first bakery.

I started wondering: does this pigeon do this every day? Does it have a circuit?

Bakery at 9 AM. Coffee shop at 11. Sandwich place at 1 PM. Does it have a little mental schedule? A plan? Goals?

Because if so, this pigeon has more structure to its day than I do.

I work from home. My biggest decision this morning was whether to have coffee before or after checking my emails. (I went with “during.”)

Meanwhile, this pigeon is out here conducting business. Networking. Making its presence known in the local food economy.

It’s possible, and I’m just speculating here, that this pigeon has better time management skills than me.

It certainly has better confidence.

I can’t walk into a bakery without second-guessing myself. Do I really need a pastry? Should I have checked the prices online first? Am I blocking someone? Is there a queue system I don’t understand?

The pigeon? Zero hesitation. Just walked in like it owned shares in the company.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since it happened.

What would happen if I walked into places with that level of certainty?

Not arrogance. Just... self assurance.

Like I had every right to be there and everyone else should probably just adjust accordingly. I’d probably get thrown out of most places.

But the pigeon? The pigeon got three whole seconds of genuine consideration from the staff before anyone intervened. Three seconds where they thought, “Maybe this pigeon is supposed to be here. Maybe we’re the ones who don’t understand.”

That’s the power of confidence. You can be completely in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, with absolutely no business being there. But if you commit to it hard enough, people will question themselves before they question you.

The pigeon eventually left.

Empty-beaked. But unbowed. It didn’t slink out in shame.

It just... redirected.

Moved on to the next opportunity. Probably had a strategic lunch meeting at the sandwich shop next door.

I’m still in the same coffee shop I was in two hours ago, wondering if I should order another drink or if that’s excessive.

The pigeon is out there closing deals.

Someone somewhere once said “age is just a number.”

It might be true.

But it’s a number my knees remind me of every time I try to get off the sofa without making that noise.

You know the one, I’m talking about!

That involuntary grunt of a body filing a complaint.

I didn’t used to make that noise. I used to stand up silently. Effortlessly.

Like standing was just something bodies did. Now standing up is a three-act play.

Act One: Assessment. Calculate angles. Consider momentum.

Act Two: Execution. Push off with more force than necessary. Knees provide live feedback, but none of it positive.

Act Three: Recovery. Stand there adjusting, making sure everything’s still attached.

Then walk away like nothing happened.

“Age is just a number.”

So is the amount of ibuprofen I take before any activity my younger self considered “basic movement.”

So is the number of seconds I stand still after getting up too fast because my vision’s gone spotty and I’m seeing flashing lights.

“You’re only as old as you feel.”

Great. Today I feel 87. Yesterday I felt 54. My age fluctuates based on weather and whether I’ve slept wrong.

Yes, you CAN sleep wrong. Didn’t know that was possible. But I woke up last Tuesday and my neck had filed for divorce.

“Age is just a mindset.”

Tell that to my back after I bent down to pick something up. It’s not a mindset. It’s a structural issue. The warranty’s expired.

I used to do things without thinking. Run upstairs. Sit on the floor. Carry heavy bags.

Now I have to plan these like a military operation. Timing. Resources. Exit strategy.

Sitting on the floor isn’t casual anymore. It’s a commitment. Because getting BACK UP involves momentum, furniture assistance, and hoping no one’s watching.

“You’re not old, you’re experienced.”

I’m experienced at making noises when I move. A full vocabulary of grunts, sighs, and joint clicks that say “I’m doing something my body doesn’t approve of.”

The worst part? I’ve become my parents.

Swore I wouldn’t. Then one day you’re standing from a chair and there it is. The noise. My father’s noise. Coming out of MY mouth.

This is it. This is who I am now.

A person who narrates their movement with sound effects.

Age is just a number.

But it’s a number my entire body likes to remind me about. Loudly. Consistently. Painfully. Every time I dare to exist.

Still, could be worse.

At least I can still GET off the sofa.

Even if it requires a soundtrack.

I decided to make a mindful cup of tea instead of more coffee. I’d had three cups already. My hands were shaking. It was time for better choices.

So: Tea, mindful tea. Like a person with their life together.

I boiled the kettle. Mindfully.

I selected calming chamomile. I poured with intention. I watched the steam rise, inhaling the delicate aroma. I sat down, held the cup with both hands, and felt the warmth.

This was nice. Peaceful. Grounding. I took a sip.

It tasted like hot flower water.

Which, to be fair, is exactly what it was. I took another sip. Focused on being present. On subtle flavours.

It still tasted like I was drinking wet grass.

I tried to lean into it. This was good for me. Calming. Restorative. Everything coffee wasn’t.

Coffee is chaos. It is jittery energy and poor decisions at high speed. Tea is serene. It is the beverage equivalent of a deep breath.

I sat there. Breathing. Sipping. Being very calm and very bored.

Then it hit me: I didn’t want serenity. I love the chaos.

I wanted the mild panic. I wanted the feeling of my heart beating slightly faster than medically recommended. Tea was asking me to slow down. Be present. Appreciate subtlety.

I didn’t want subtlety. I wanted to vibrate at a frequency that let me exist in two dimensions simultaneously.

The tea sat there. Warm. Calming. Utterly ineffective. My focus was drifting. Energy dropping. The afternoon stretched ahead like a slow walk through beige carpeting.

This wasn’t mindfulness. This was a tactical error.

All I could think about was coffee. Rich, dark, aggressive coffee. Coffee that doesn’t ask you to “be present.” Coffee that grabs you by the collar and screams “YOU’RE PRESENT NOW.”

I made coffee.

Not mindfully. Quickly. With purpose. I didn’t focus on the aroma. I didn’t hold the cup with both hands. I just drank it like a functional adult with things to do.

Perfect.

The tea had served a purpose. It made me realise what I truly needed. The mindfulness experiment is over. Tea can stay in the cupboard, waiting for the day I make better choices.

That day is not today. Today is a coffee day.

Tomorrow's looking like coffee too.

Some of us aren’t meant for serenity.

Some of us are meant for caffeine and mild anxiety.

I can hear colours now. It’s fantastic.

Why do we use the expression “eat like a horse”?

Horses eat hay and oats, don’ they?.

They seem to be on a permanent high-fibre diet. I wouldn’t even want to be around myself on that type of diet.

I’m never eating “like a horse.” I’m not delicately nibbling roughage in a field.

I’m eating cold chicken directly from the fridge while standing over the kitchen sink at 11 PM, wondering where my life went wrong.

That’s not horse behaviour. That might be a cry for help.

If we’re going to be honest about our eating habits, we need better expressions.

“Eating like a seagull that just spotted an unattended bag of chips.” Now that’s accurate. Aggressive. Opportunistic. No regard for dignity or the judgment of onlookers. Just pure, focused chaos.

“Eating like a raccoon that’s broken into a bin.” Frantic. Slightly guilty. Hands moving faster than the brain. Is this good? Doesn’t matter. Already committed.

“Eating like a Labrador whose owner dropped a sandwich.” Four seconds. Maximum Eye contact maintained throughout. No chewing detected. Just the immediate disappearance of matter.

“Eating like someone who just remembered the bakery closes in ten minutes.” Urgent. Strategic. Calculating how many croissants is socially acceptable versus how many I actually want. (The answer is always more than socially acceptable).

Horses, meanwhile, are out there living their best life. Calm. Taking their time.

They don’t stress-eat an entire packet of biscuits because someone said something weird in a meeting three hours ago.

They don’t look in the fridge seventeen times hoping new food has materialised since the last check.

Horses have boundaries. Standards. Self-control. Sadly, I have none of those things.

So no, I don’t eat like a horse.

The horses can keep their oats and hay.

I’ll be over here with the seagulls, fighting for chips.

One person in every friend group has never seen any movie.

You’ll reference The Matrix and they’re like “What’s that?” Titanic? Nope. Star Wars? Never heard of it.

But somehow, they’ve seen every episode of a Norwegian reality show about competitive knitting.

Every friend group has this person.

You know who I’m talking about.

The one who makes you question whether they’ve been living in the same timeline as the rest of us.

You’ll be having a normal conversation. Someone makes a reference. A basic reference. Something everyone knows.

“It’s like when Neo takes the red pill….”

“Who’s Neo?”

The conversation stops.

Everyone turns. Surely they’re joking.

Nope, they’re not joking.

“The Matrix? You’ve never seen The Matrix?”

“No. What’s it about?”

And now you’re in the impossible position of explaining The Matrix to someone in 2025 without sounding completely unhinged.

“So there’s this guy, and he’s in a computer simulation, but he doesn’t know it’s a simulation, and then he takes a pill and—”

“Is it good?”

“Is it - YES. It’s The Matrix. Everyone’s seen The Matrix.”

“I haven’t.”

This is the moment you realise: they haven’t seen anything. Not The Godfather. Not Jurassic Park. Not even Shrek.

SHREK.

“How have you not seen Shrek? It’s been on television every weekend for twenty years.”

“I don’t really watch movies.”

There it is.

The explanation. Simple. Direct. Infuriating. “I don’t really watch movies.”

As if movies are optional. As if the entire collective cultural experience of the last century is just a hobby some people happen to have.

But here’s the thing: they’re not culturally isolated.

They’re not living off-grid in a cabin with no internet. They’re consuming media. LOTS of media.

Just... none of the media anyone else has consumed.

• You’ve never seen Star Wars, but you’ve watched all 47 episodes of a Danish documentary series about sustainable farming?

• You haven’t seen Titanic, but you can recite entire scenes from a Japanese game show where people get knocked into water by giant rotating objects?

• You’ve never heard of Indiana Jones, but you’re completely up to date on a Korean mukbang channel where someone eats seafood for six hours straight?

How does this happen?

How do you navigate the entire internet, every streaming service, every recommendation algorithm, and somehow avoid every single piece of widely-known pop culture?

It’s like they have a filter.

An Anti-Mainstream Filter. If more than 10 million people have seen it, they haven’t.

But if it’s a niche documentary about Icelandic moss preservation?

They’re experts.

The worst part is when they try to contribute to the conversation.

“I haven’t seen The Matrix, but I did watch this really interesting YouTube series about people who live in simulations…..”

“THAT’S THE MATRIX. YOU JUST DESCRIBED THE MATRIX.”

“Oh. Is it like that?”

“YES. EXACTLY LIKE THAT. WHICH IS WHY EVERYONE REFERENCES IT.”

But they won’t watch it.

They’ll go home and watch a 12-part Finnish series about competitive ice fishing instead.

And next week, when someone mentions Forrest Gump, they’ll say, “What’s that?”

I used to think this was frustrating.

Now I’m fascinated.

How do you curate your media consumption so precisely that you miss everything everyone else has seen? What algorithm are you following? What recommendations are you accepting?

Because honestly?

It’s kind of impressive.

You’ve successfully avoided decades of cultural touchstones while still being online.

You’re like a ghost at the party. Everyone can see you, you’re participating, but you’re somehow not really there.

And the most annoying part?

You’re completely fine with it.

You’re not embarrassed you haven’t seen Star Wars.

You’re not worried about missing references.

You’re just vibing with your Norwegian knitting show.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck explaining basic plot points like we’re describing colour to someone who’s never seen it.

“So the ship hits an iceberg…….”

“What ship?”

I give up.

Tell me more about competitive knitting. Who’s winning? Is it the guy with the woolly socks?

I decided to eat healthier today. So I ate a chocolate cookie slowly. With intention.

Let me explain.

It’s 2:45 PM. The biological witching hour. This is when my body decides that “energy” is a myth and the only solution is immediate sugar consumption. My brain stops processing words.

It only processes cravings.

There’s a cookie in the kitchen. Double chocolate chip. It’s been haunting me since Tuesday, mocking my kale salad.

Usually, I’d eat this cookie in a state of fugue-like shame. Inhale it over the sink like a seagull finding a discarded chip.

Fast. Guilty. Secretly.

But then I remembered a podcast I listened to for three minutes. It talked about mindful eating. It said what you eat matters less than how you eat it.

Be present. Act with intention. Listen to your body.

My body was screaming “COOKIE.”

So I made an executive health decision: I’d gaslight my own metabolism.

The Logic:

• If I eat the cookie fast, it’s junk food.

• If I eat it slowly while thinking about wellness? It is practically a vegetable.

I didn’t “grab” the cookie. I “selected” it. I held it up to the light.

I appreciated its texture.

I acknowledged the cookie’s journey from factory to hand. This was spiritual work.

I told myself I wasn’t eating this because I have the self-control of a toddler.

No, I was eating it because I was grounding myself. The sugar wasn’t a spike. It was an “energy alignment.”

I took a bite. Chewed slowly. Thought about the concept of chocolate.

I closed my eyes.

If I remove the visual stimulus of the cookie, does the calorie count exist? Quantum physics suggests: probably not.

I finished the cookie. Did I feel a sugar crash? No. I felt “centered.” Did I ruin my diet? Impossible. You can’t ruin a diet with an act of meditation.

My fitness app asked if I wanted to log a snack. I logged a “Mindfulness Session.”

People say you are what you eat.

If that’s true, I’m no longer a person who ate a cookie. I’m a person who engaged in a deliberate, slow-motion cacao ceremony.

The cookie is gone, dignity intact.

I’m eyeing a bag of chips now. I think I’m due for another session.

I’ll walk into a room, forget why I’m there, and just stand silently like I’ve been reset.

It happens multiple times a day.

I’ll be in the kitchen with a clear mission…get the thing, bring it back…and then the moment I cross the threshold, my brain dumps all active memory like a computer clearing its cache.

I stand there. Blinking. Scanning the room for clues.

Why am I here? What was I doing? Who even am I?

Eventually, I give up and walk back to where I started.

And the second I cross back through that doorway…boom…I remember.

The charger. I needed the damn phone charger.

This isn’t forgetfulness. This is something else.

I’ve come to the conclusion….doorways are portals.

And they’re wiping my memory.

I don’t know who designed this system or why, but it’s clearly intentional. Every threshold I cross is a cognitive reset point.

Some are worse than others.

The bathroom door barely touches me…I can remember why I went in about 40% of the time.

But the bedroom door?

That one’s aggressive. I’ve walked in there and forgotten my own name.

I’ve started developing countermeasures.

Strategy One: Narration. I say my objective out loud as I walk. “Getting the scissors. Getting the scissors. Getting the scissors.” It works maybe half the time. The other half, I arrive in the room still chanting “getting the scissors” with no idea why I want them.

Strategy Two: The Breadcrumb Method. I leave a trail of objects behind me, keys, a pen, a mug, so I can retrace my steps and jog my memory. This has turned my flat into an archaeological site.

There are artifacts everywhere.

Future generations will study them and conclude I was either a lunatic or conducting some kind of ritual.

Strategy Three: Don’t Use Doors. I’ve tried just... not walking through doorways.

Staying in one room all day.

Surprisingly effective! But as I write this I haven’t eaten in five hours because the kitchen is on the other side of a portal I refuse to cross.

I mentioned this to a friend. He laughed and said it happens to everyone.

That’s exactly what someone would say if they were also affected but in denial.

I think we’ve all just normalised it.

We walk through doorways, lose entire thoughts, and shrug it off as “getting older” or “being a scatter brain.”

No one’s asking the important questions. Like: Why doorways specifically? Why not windows? Or chairs?

What is it about a rectangular opening in a wall that triggers a full cognitive reboot?

I’ve started paying attention to other people. Watching them cross thresholds. And I’ve noticed something.

They pause.

Just for a second. A tiny hesitation right after they walk into a room.

They’ll look around, confused, like they’ve just arrived somewhere unexpected. Then they’ll either remember why they’re there or…more often…just leave and pretend it didn’t happen.

We’re all victims. We just don’t talk about it.

I’ve been documenting my experiences.

I have a running list of the worst offending doorways in my apartment:

1. Bedroom door – Memory wipe rate: 90%. Utterly ruthless.

2. Bathroom door – Memory wipe rate: 40%. Mostly merciful.

3. Front door – Memory wipe rate: 65%. I’ve left the house three times this week with suddenly no idea where I was going.

I don’t know what the endgame is here.

Maybe doorways are part of some grand experiment.

Maybe they’re protecting us from knowing too much. Maybe they’re just broken and no one’s bothered to fix them.

All I know is this: I walked into the kitchen ten minutes ago to get something.

I’m still standing here.

I have no idea what it was.

But I’m not leaving until I figure it out. I refuse to let the portals win.

Actually, wait……why am I here?

My toaster has two settings: “pale and slightly damp” or “volcanic ash.”

There’s no middle ground.

The dial suggests there should be. It’s numbered from one to six, implying some kind of graduated scale of toastiness.

But this is a lie. A cruel, bread-based deception.

Trust me, I’ve tried every position on that dial.

I’ve done the experiments, even kept notes.

Setting three should, as far as I can tell, produce golden-brown toast.

Instead it produces something that looks like it’s been threatened with heat but not actually exposed to it.

So I turn it up to four. Now we’re cooking (pun intended) four is the answer.

Nope four is definitely not the answer.

Four is a war crime.

Four is toast that comes out smoking, blackened beyond recognition, setting off the smoke alarm at 7:30 in the morning while I’m still groggy from my usual restless sleep and trying to have a quiet breakfast.

I’ve started approaching the toaster like it’s a negotiation. I’ll set it to 3.5. Right between the markings, splitting the difference.

Surely this is reasonable. Surely the toaster will meet me halfway.

Of course not, not even close. Despite my mental pleading, the toaster doesn’t meet me halfway.

The toaster laughs at my optimism and produces something that’s somehow both pale AND burnt. I don’t know how this is physically possible, but the toaster produced it.

I mentioned this to my son. He said in his usual exasperated tone, “Just watch it and take it out when it’s done, dad!”

But that defeats the entire purpose of having a toaster. If I’m going to stand there watching bread cook, I might as well use the grill.

The toaster’s job - its ONE job - is to simply produce consistent results so I can go do something else.

Make coffee. Check my phone. Do it’s job without supervision.

Instead, I’ve become a bread babysitter.

I stand there now, hovering, ready to intervene the second I smell even a hint of browning.

The toaster knows I’m watching. I swear it adjusts its timing just to mess with me.

Yesterday it popped up early, bread still as pale as a British tourist on day one of their holiday, clearly mocking me.

This morning it held onto the toast for an extra fifteen seconds just to see if I’d crack.

It’s personal, I know it is!

There’s no other explanation. I treat this toaster well. I empty the crumb tray semi-regularly. I don’t shove bagels in there even though the slots are technically wide enough.

I’ve been a good owner.

And this is how it repays me. With psychological warfare at breakfast time.

I looked up reviews for this model online. Five stars. Hundreds of people raving about it. “Perfect toast every time!” they say. “So reliable!” they brag on.

Either they’re all lying, or I’ve somehow been assigned the one rogue toaster that escaped quality control and has decided to personally make my mornings a disaster.

I’m starting to think I need to replace it. But here’s the problem: I’ve had three toasters in my life, and they’ve all been like this. Different brands, different price points, same result.

Which means either:

A) I’m cursed

B) All toasters are secretly terrible and we’ve all just accepted this

C) There’s a design flaw in the entire concept of automated bread-browning that nobody wants to acknowledge

I’m leaning toward A.

Or could it be C) and we’ve all just normalised appliance incompetence.

We’ve accepted that toasters are going to betray us, and we’ve built our morning routines around compensating for their failures.

Standing there. Watching. Waiting. Hands poised ready to Intervene.

This morning I made toast. Set it to four. Watched it like a bomb disposal expert. Caught it at exactly the right moment.

It was perfect.

Golden brown. Crispy edges. Warm all the way through.

I felt an absurd surge of pride.

Then I realised: I’ve been reduced to celebrating the fact that my kitchen appliance did the one thing it was designed to do.

Tomorrow I’m buying a toaster with a window in it. Maybe if I can see what’s happening, I’ll feel more in control.

Right. So, my watch just congratulated me for standing up.

It buzzed, I looked, and there it was, glowing with all the earnest pride of a primary school teacher whose least promising student had finally managed to spell ‘apple’.

“Goal Achieved!” it chirped. “You stood for an hour!”

I stared at it, then at my own two legs, which, to be fair, had been doing the job without any fuss for several decades. I hadn’t thought to thank them.

Apparently, my watch felt they deserved some recognition.

Well… I guess this is where life has got to.

In my time (admittedly not recently), I’ve put together a flat-pack wardrobe without panicking or resorting to wood glue.

I even successfully parallel parked a medium sized truck on a hill. And something I’m extra proud of was standing through an entire wedding ceremony without fainting or making a scene.

The universe met these triumphs with just…..silence.

But today, I moved from a seated to a non-seated position, and a tiny electronic cheerleader on my wrist threw a party.

You have to wonder what’s going on at management level, don’t you?

Somewhere in a gigantic beige office block, one that’s roughly a dimension and a half in size, there must be a Department for Ludicrously Small Victories.

I have this picture in my mind of a stressed out celestial clerk called Kevin, swamped in paperwork.

“Right,” says his supervisor, clicking through a PowerPoint with seventeen identical slides. “How’s Earth doing on the Big Stuff? Climate? Peace?

Generally not being terrible?”

Kevin nervously shuffles a pile of printouts. “Not... not great on those, boss. But! We’ve had a huge uptick in people... well... not sitting down.”

“Brilliant! What a win! Roll out the congratulatory notifications!

Let them know we’re seeing their efforts!”

And so I find myself in a world where the simple act of straightening my knees has been re-categorised from ‘bodily function’ to ‘laudable achievement’.

I’m genuinely worried about what happens if I sit down again. Will my watch buzz with a disappointed sigh?

“We had such high hopes for you,” it might murmur. “Back to horizontal, are we? Typical.”

I’m starting to develop a complex. I’m standing up to get a cup of coffee and find myself thinking, “Yes! Look at me go! Another 10 points for Team Vertical!”

Where does all this end?.

Are we all going to start getting notifications for successfully breathing?

Awards for remembering our own names?

It’s all a bit much.

Still, maybe I shouldn’t complain.

It’s the most encouragement I’ve had all week.

Tomorrow I’m going to try sitting AND standing three times in the same hour.

I have in my hand a device with access to basically all human knowledge.

Every scientific breakthrough, historical event, philosophical treatise - it’s right in the palm of my hand.

I could search quantum physics. Discover string theory or dark matter (no chance of that).

Even dive into ancient history, and figure out what happened to the Library of Alexandria.

But what am I doing?

Watching cats get mildly surprised by cucumbers.

Not even dramatically surprised. Just… sort of startled.

There’s an entire genre of this. Cats encountering cucumbers. Cats discovering mirrors. Cats realising the red dot will never be caught. I’ve watched thirty one in the last hour.

The algorithm’s thrown it’s hands in the air and given up on me.

No more educational content.

“Oh, you want cats being freaked out by aluminium foil?”

“Here’s another couple of dozen.”

“We’ve got your number now!”

I could be learning anything. University lectures are free online. MIT posts, even entire courses.

I could even learn a new language, if I really, really wanted to.

But have you seen the one where the cat gets confused by an automatic air freshener? Because that’s cinema. Pure art. The timing, the expression, the way the cat stares at it like it committed a personal betrayal - priceless.

My phone has more computing power than the machines that sent humans to the moon.

NASA worked with less technology than what’s currently helping me find a cat sitting in a box that’s slightly too small.

You know I start with good intentions.

Open a tab about the Roman Empire, really commit to learning.

Then somehow - no idea how or why - I’m twenty minutes deep in cats interrupting Zoom meetings.

Some people use phones to organise social movements. Coordinate disaster relief. Run businesses.

Meanwhile I just discovered a cat that learned to open doors and I’m watching the owner’s complete meltdown trying to cat-proof their house.

It doesn’t even embarrass me anymore.

Someone asks what I’m doing and I just hold up my phone. “Cat spooked by a printer. Revolutionary stuff. The cinematography’s incredible.”

The ancient philosophers would lose their minds. “We gave you civilisation’s collected wisdom and THIS is what you do?”

But seriously? That cat was really surprised by the cucumber.

The Internet might have promised enlightenment and global connectivity, but, it gave us something better instead: cats experiencing minor inconveniences in high definition.

Works for me.