No worse a fate can befall a man than when his exercise activity stops downloading from his Apple Watch to his Strava app on the I Phone. Perturbation; anxiety; and concern that followers may fear over what has happened to the athlete. But in I Phone world it's ok, as long as you can get to an Apple Store. There they have friendly tech experts who can sort you out in an instant.
So off I go one bright morning to the Apple Store at the top of Regent Street, where the smiley sales assistants help you shed molto moolah on the latest Apple innovation.
I am directed upstairs. A not so smiley chap asks if I have an appointment. I do not. He smiles faintly, in the fashion of car mechanics when they think they are dealing with an idiot. I ask as to when I can have an appointment. He smiles faintly again. 1.40pm.....the next day.
However, I could call Apple Support. He gives me the number and dismisses me, with a parting observation of it being unlikely that the Watch can force a download to Strava
I return downstairs, dispirited, and plonk myself on one of the boxes used for the audience on an Apple innovation presentation (aka furniture nicked from a Nursery class nearby). Behind me, a salesman starts to burble about the telephoto lens on the latest phone.
I phone the number. The response is pretty quick. The person has heavy accented English as a second language. I try to heed the recorded announcement imploration to be kind (I was expecting 'nice'). Over 30 minutes she does her best, though spending half of the time asking me questions and generally being a uncertain on what exactly is Strava. Eventually we settle on actions involving uninstalling Strava, switching Watch and Phone off and on, and reinstalling the app. A familiar 'expert' workaround, n'est-ce pas?
The rest is boring. Trying that and a couple of other things got the connection back, including downloading a random 15 minute walk to a restaurant one evening in Florence (November Late Life Crisis). My view of the 'tech experts' will not be the same again.
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Some people who know me will know that I am much better with people than with things. This is brought into sharp relief when it comes to wrapping Christmas presents.
I try, I try, but wrapping paper has a mind of its own. I can manage a book, yet anything of awkward shape destroys me. I have watched the work of role models in my family,, who see the awkward stuff as a challenge and somehow coax the paper into an acceptable configuration.
In a particularly stressful incident, a near end of roll had an extraordinary kinetic energy and fought back as I tried to create a flat surface for my wrapping. In a performance emulating a Cleesian beating of twigs against the Austin 1100 bonnet, I chided the roll with ripe language and ended by screwing it up, propelling the remnants into the recycling bag, and starting with a new roll.
Having vented, I felt better and the next effort was more successful, but I want to know - is there counselling for this condition?
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'Build, baby, build!'. No, I agree that this would not feel comfortable coming from Keir Starmer.
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I have a soft spot for Evelyn Waugh, so took pleasure in reading Labels, his first travel journal, which details an extensive trip by ship around the Mediterranean that he did in 1929. Today we would call it a cruise, but (my poor Waughian imitation), he might '...consider that word to denote a comfortable venture undertaken by members of the middle classes who either through physical degradation or deficiency of enterprise find themselves unable to travel independently'.
The book is illuminating for its descriptions of place alone - I counted 23 locations visited - but also for Waugh's profile of the individuals he met during the voyage. Notable is his easy self consciousness-free classism and racism, a manifestation of Waugh's position in society (and to be recognised as of its time and not automatically pilloried..), Here is a glimpse, taken from near end of journey, when the ship has docked in Lisbon and Waugh visits an architecturally attractive convent in Belem just outside the City. The convent houses an orphanage:
'One of the orphans very politely conducted us round; he spoke English accurately, and was, so it happened, coal black. It is one of the interesting things about the Portuguese that the lower orders all show marked negro characteristics'.
But on a different tack, this, also from near the end:
'In the Channel, news reached us by wireless of the results of the first day's count of the General Election; everyone prophesied a sweeping Labour victory, and the deepest gloom and apprehension settled upon the English passengers; many of the elder ones began wondering whether it would be wise to land.'
Plus ca change indeed.
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What of the force of nature that is Rev. Richard Coles? He reached his peak in I'm A Celebrity, all wet sweatshirt, weak chin, paunch, and glistening man boobs. I wondered about what was next for him - maybe write a cosy crime thriller series to emulate Richard Osman, yet I found that he was already there in Xmas book recommendations with his Canon Clement series.
Eureka moment - perhaps (forget the procedural challenges) an immediate elevation to Archbishop of Canterbury. Surely anyone with the resilience to munch their way through a camel's anus could lead the unruly tribe (or Old Boys Club, as the (female) Bishop of Newcastle put it in a Today Programme interview)?
(More on the Church of England later).
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Well, I had to see Wicked at some point. Part of my education. And what better medium than the film, all 2 hours 40 minutes of it.
Disney meets Barbie meets Harry Potter. With a bit of KAOS, His Dark Materials, and Planet of the Apes thrown in. I dozed through the songs, which was helpful to sustaining interest in the plot.
And this was just Part 1...
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To counteract the grumpiness of the last item, I should add that I adored Potted Panto at Wilton's Music Hall with a seven-year old and nine-year old, and Ballet Shoes at the National with a nine-year old (the seven-year old had declared that the latter was not his genre).
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How do you solve a problem like Welby (and latterly Cottrell)? I wrote in these pages how Keir Starmer has been hoisted by his own petard through Labour settling on the moral high ground and so being held to a higher standard of behaviour than ordinary mortals. The Church of England has an unencumbered freehold on the moral high ground, with Bishops pronouncing sagely in the Lords, so no surprise about the opprobrium generated in the direction of its elite after the elite's failure proactively to tackle abuse of young people by those within its ranks.
Lazy analogies are dangerous, but the evident priority of protecting the institution brings uncomfortably to mind the performance of Post Office management - add to this any other suitable analogies you see fit.
I cannot get out of my head that the Church is supposed to be good at behaviour that is morally and ethically sound. I can hear the doleful voices of Thought for the Day contributors on how Christians must take responsibility for their lives, just as Our Lord refused to take the easy way out, and submitted to his place on the Cross. Yet Welby et al hide behind process and procedures, schooled as egregiously as any senior corporate would be once the reputation management lawyers and PRs had arrived.
The upper reaches of the C of E add another dimension to this, an effete projection of their concern to care for the individual (that is the perpetrator, not any victim) and - forgive me for lapsing into sermon speak - 'endeavour through the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to extend forgiveness and to nurture a return to the protection of God's family'. That projection is enhanced by Bishoply vestments, walking thoughtfully (it looks good), and declaiming sermons in a stately, measured tone (try the words above doing this).
For me the saddest and most powerful intervention was from a parish vicar - one of the frontline troops - who said that their ranks would plug on with work supporting communities in tangible ways, despite the growing disconnect between them and those leaders on a higher plain (excepting anyone at the top brave enough to speak out).
The Church as an institution will try very hard to bury any notion of schism (a word that terrifies Bishops). If it succeeds, it will not deserve the success.
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My re-acquaintance with children's songs (the grandson now being four months) continues. I wrote last month on some worrying lyrics in the Teddy Bears' Picnic. More comes from a newer one, Sleeping Bunnies. I cannot quote much through fear of copyright issues, so do have a look onllne, but I will mention the line 'They're so still, are they ill?', in response to which in a darker moment I might exclaim 'Myxamotosis?!".
Luckily the delightful four-month old is blissfully unaware of these dystopian thoughts.
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Kemi Badenoch likes analogies. Her favourite one concerns engineering, and about building stuff. If you want to check this out up to date, listen to her pre-Christmas interview with the Today Programme.
Why does she go on about engineering? Because she is an engineer. That means she has a background in creating physical things like bridges and the structural elements of a building, surely? Oh no it doesn't. Badenoch's professional background is in software engineering.
So software engineering doesn't count, and this is an excellent little gotcha? But gotchas are deceptive things, so I checked out the proposition immediately above with a friend who knows a thing or too about engineering. As I suspected, he corrected me on my proposition - software engineering works to exactly the same principles as, say, structural engineering.
However, that is not the point. The point, and one I have made in plenty other contexts in Late Life Crisis, is that Badenoch is happy for the average Joe to infer from her analogy and resulting metaphors that she was probably Badenoch of buildings and not Kemi of computer systems. For politicians, it's not about the substance, it's about what you can make people believe. It's about the performance.
PS Subsequent to my writing this, Badenoch has come out as a software engineer in claiming that Reform's website was misrepresenting the number of people joining the Party, an arrow so wayward that if thrown by Luke Littler would have caused him to give up darts. That she has done this only reinforces my point of her (alongside hundreds of other politicians) doing things purely for effect.
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I am ironing while watching the original Jurassic Park film (1993). The time of the year does strange things to you.
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Random acts of kindness
On a bus. Mother with three children. Next to her an unwell looking six-year old. In a double buggy near exit doors a four-year old and two-year old. Former quite chilled until could not see Mummy, but a passenger rapidly made room so eye contact could be restored. Two-year old sat angelic until suddenly deciding to kick off, whereupon (key to this, remaining calm throughout) mother dashed over and calmed the storm with a beaker of fruit juice. Mother keen to reach next stop where the group would disembark.
All assembled near door.Then unwell six-year old vommed spectacularly over the floor. Mother dead embarrassed and apologetic, but did not lose it. A chap next to me decided that the sheet of polythene he was carrying for some purpose could be used for a higher one and laid it over the vom. A woman added her used newspaper to the polythene so that people could walk over the spot. At the stop the polythene man helped the mother to manoeuvre the buggy out on to the pavement. I performed a minor role through grabbing the six-year old's scooter from where he had left it and reuniting it with its rider.
The mother looked up and in a grateful tone said thank you for the help.
Call it random acts of kindness. Call it Xmas spirit. Or give some religious spin to it. Doesn't matter what. But I suggest that it is worth more than a hundred presents opened on 25th December.
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My very helpful laundry/dry cleaning chap always bids me farewell with 'Have a good one". I have no idea what 'good one' he is inviting me to have, as he knows nothing of me except for my name (which he always says the wrong way round) and my mobile number. But as we propel ourselves into the joy of 2025, the generic nature of the expression does seem appropriate, so:
'Have a good one'.
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The author is a writer, speaker, historian, occasional tour guide, and former Managing Partner of a City law firm.