5.53 a.m.

Even while we sleep, the world runs with precision.

I considered breakfast, up until a few years ago, to be a slick and well-organised operation.  In the time it takes to boil an egg, I would leave the house, walk down the street, cross the main road, enter Lockwood's the newsagents, buy a newspaper, cross the road, walk back along the street, enter the house and turn off the boiled egg.  The timing was perfect.  Assuming the traffic lights were working and that there wasn’t a long queue in the newsagents, the egg would be just as I liked it.  But then things changed.

Mr & Mrs Lockwood retired and closed the business: it became a hairdresser's.  The nearest newspapers were now available from a local Sainsburys, but that was slightly further away and queues were rife.  Even at breakfast time, whereas some of us wanted a paper and nothing else, others plainly couldn’t start the day without a six-pack of Strongbow, twenty Bensons, a lottery ticket and a Sporting Life whose barcode refused to be scanned.  As a result, breakfast became unsatisfactory, a disjointed, slow and drawn-out affair.

Then we discovered another newsagent, a proper one, who offered a delivery service - even to our house, over half a mile away.  We signed up, and ever since, with a squeak of the flap on the letterbox and a comfortable thud on the doormat, the newspaper arrives in our hallway every morning.  I now boil the egg in the time it takes to eat a bowl of fruit salad.  But while I do that, my thoughts are of the remarkable timekeeping involved in the newspaper’s delivery to our door.

It comes through the letterbox at precisely 5.53 a.m.  Not 5.52, or 5.54, but 5.53 a.m.  Every day.  How?  What rigid schedule determines that number 10 is reached at that precise moment every day - and why?  Surely a delivery time as early as this doesn’t need to be precise?  Yet it is.

We have never met our paper boy.  We are pretty certain that it isn’t a boy at all, but a man.  Solitary footprints in the fresh winter morning snow reveal the impressions of rugged size-13 boots.  One of the children thinks he might have long hair.  A card on the doormat with the newspaper one Christmas was “from Anthony”.  But that’s all we know.

Those footprints visit another house in the street, but ours is the furthest they achieve before turning and heading back, so we are at the extremity of the route.  I have visions of our paper deliverer, probably an ex-SAS operative, a renegade perhaps down on his luck, with his steely gaze fixed on the cold, dank pavements ahead of him, the hem of his Army greatcoat fringed with melting slush and swinging in his wake as he hits the green man at every traffic light without a change to his stride.  He takes in the time from clocks on refrigerators and cash registers in the back of darkened shop premises you and I will have never noticed, in order to verify he is meeting his uncompromising schedule.  Every day, his journey is wended through sleeping and empty streets with accuracy and determination.  The newspaper will arrive at number 10 at 5.53 a.m.  That is the way it will be.

The rest of us can sleep soundly in our beds.  Precision is key.  The world belongs to Anthony.

Ready Or Not...

I spent an interesting evening at a Private View at Leeds College of Art yesterday, where a wide range of graduates’ work was on display as part of their wittily-entitled Degree show "Ready Or Not, Here We Come".  Comparing the ideas and execution of work across the disciplines undertaken in an art school is always worthwhile, although I apologise now for my forthcoming exclusion of several of them: I attended last night with my own areas of expertise in mind, and it is about those that I write here.  

By definition, anything on exhibition under the aegis of ‘Creative Advertising’ should define creativity.  The only way it can do this is by allowing itself to be compared with all the other advertising we see around us that we acknowledge as being creative. 

Fair enough, but if what is on exhibition manages to match what we already know to be creative advertising, it isn’t ‘more’ creative: it’s as good as what already exists.  Is this good enough?  Not really. An analogy would be “next year, we want everything to be above average”.  If everything is above average, then the average becomes higher… so everything isn’t above average at all but, rather, part of what the new average has become. 

The young people who have spent three or four years at Art School training to be the Creatives of tomorrow shouldn’t be content to see their work matching the work of industry Creatives of today: they should be already knocking down walls, pushing boundaries and exploring new areas of perception - and worrying a lot of people by doing so.  I didn't really see this yesterday.  How can delivering more of the same ever be justified as being ‘creative’?

So it was good to move on to look at what Fine Art had to offer.  Here (and although in this instance one might have to re-interpret one’s definition of the word ‘creative’) things were alive and well.  Ideas flourished and evidence of skill was apparent.  Even distorted, abstracted work revealed traces of drawing ability, imagination and craftsmanship. There was bullishness on display: “I want to do this, and here it is”.  Unlike their confrères in Creative Advertising, the work shouted “I don’t care about what you tell me: this is what I think”.  

(Whether the students would actually lapse into such simplistic terms themselves is, however, questionable.  The exhibition brochure is packed with potentially award-winning and wonderfully pretentious claptrap.  Someone talking about “the sentient aspects of mental phenomena, under-pinned by the notion of Cartesian dualism, being the impetus to (their) practice” and expecting the audience to empathise wholeheartedly might be a little disappointed).

Depressed by the conformity of Creative Advertising and intoxicated by the hedonistic insouciance of Fine Art (oops - slipping in to the same trap myself now…), it was with trepidation that I moved on to Graphic Design.  Illustration plays little part of contemporary graphic design courses, so, unlike Fine Art (and, surprisingly, a lot of the Creative Advertising), what was on display here was squeaky clean. 

Pure and elegant typography, considered use of space, tone and colour meant that clarity abounded.  There were a couple of instances of obfuscation (where, for example, the design of a typeface might be so contrived as to cause it to lose legibility), but many of the works were engaging, some to the point of being absolutely fascinating.  Paul Mitchell’s calendars are just waiting to be featured as next year’s number one promotional freebie from some prestigious corporate multinational; the elegant Penguin Classics' covers of Pearl Singer cry out to be picked up and lovingly leafed through, and look out for ‘Foxx’, a confident typeface from Carl Holderness, to start appearing on magazine covers, posters and packaging at anytime soon.

Will you ever get to see this work? I hope so. 

Perhaps it was because it was the end of a long week of custodianship, standing next to work with which they become progressively over-familiar, but I was aware that many students were failing to acknowledge the opportunities that a Private View brings.  This is the time when that vital ‘next step’ can take place.  Several alumni of the Royal College of Art were circulating, and local creative industries were well represented.  The work looked good: its creators were present yet, for the visitor, identifying which student was responsible for what was difficult and students failed repeatedly to take the opportunity of introducing themselves to outsiders demonstrating an interest in their work.  The notion that a pile of business cards (or a QR link) will lead to further enquiries is not enough, and although their work might have showed initiative, on this occasion the students didn’t.

In their defence, the event was the culmination of their university course and students, being students, were naturally distracted by the generous hospitality on offer.  But had they already been offered their ideal job?  Were the rest of us being left to our own devices because the Class of '11 had already successfully mapped out its future?  Is that why they had started celebrating?

Maybe.  There didn't seem to be much drink left for the rest of us.

'Ey-Up: Pay Up!

Weary families, dressed in shorts, T-shirts and ill-chosen hats, stumble along a busy roadside, dragging suitcases through a biting wind and sheeting rain.  

There’s a distinctly third world edge about arriving at Leeds Bradford Airport (LBA) these days.

Since the start of June, vehicles entering the drop-off car park outside the terminal at LBA find themselves being charged £2 for up to 30 minutes when previously it was free.  Angry drivers challenge implacable security staff to no avail.  Last week I drove in, unloaded, bid farewells and was away, from entrance to exit barrier in 25 seconds dead.  £2. Last month it was free.  Pay up.

For the first week or so, only the smallest of added lettering to the main signs indicated this change has taken place whereas now emergency signs have been set out at the roadside as a result, one assumes, of the outcry by users of the airport.  Don’t say you haven't been warned.

Yet surprisingly, bus and taxi operators have not been excluded from the price hike.  They now have to subscribe to a season ticket to access the front of the airport, the costs of which are passed on to passengers accordingly. No-one is happy.

The airport’s response is that other airports have recently introduced charges for drop off, and LBA is simply following suit.  The examples they cite include London Luton, East Midlands and Newcastle.  However, none of these airports have a minimum charge as high as £2, and all of them offer a much more comprehensive range of alternative access by public transport.  Regular bus services, metro and train services, with courtesy coaches where necessary, ply throughout the operating hours at all of them.  At LBA however there’s an hourly bus to Leeds railway station in the evening, one to Bradford, another to Harrogate… and that’s your lot.  To get to and from LBA a taxi or car is essential. 

LBA states that up to an hour’s free waiting time is now available at Long-stay Car Parks 1 & 2, at a distance which they describe as ‘walkable’.  A visit this week indicated that no access is available to the nearer Long-stay 1, which is closed off behind a large barricade.  Long-stay 2 is the best part of half a mile from the arrivals concourse but, once there, no mention of the waiting facility is indicated on its entrance.  Can drivers be sure they can enter - and leave - for free?

Elsewhere around the airport site double yellow lines abound (why not red ones?) and lamp-posts are festooned with ‘No Waiting’ signs.  Luminous-vested parking attendants patrol the roads, ready to chastise and move on any erring driver who attempts to pick up or drop off passengers.  Unsurprising then, that walking to the (closer) roundabout on the A658 is acknowledged as being the least worst option for those who rely on loved-ones to pick up or drop off by car. 

If LBA wants to promote itself as an efficient, attractive gateway to Yorkshire, it needs to think about how it presents itself to its business and leisure customers alike.  The county’s international airport has started to display some some regrettably Yorkshire traits. To charge so much to people who have no choice is curmudgeonly, mean and little short of punitive.

LBA  needs to think again.

Eat Late

Why is it that when someone arrives late, they are always jollier than the person waiting for them?

Whilst staying in Exeter the other evening, we went to an Italian restaurant for a meal.  It was a popular venue, and we took the last remaining table, at around 7.45pm.  Around us, diners were making their orders, tucking in, knocking back the wine, asking for the bill,  and all were chatting away to their respective companions.  There was a busy atmosphere in the place, it was attractive and bright, the service attentive and good-humoured and the food very good.   However, I slowly became aware of a rather unsettling fact. 

Nobody laughed. None of the women looked happy.  None of the men showed any expression. Everyone talked and had issues in mind which they were discussing, often gravely, with their partners. The more I looked, the more no-one appeared to be enjoying themselves.  Despite having made efforts to look presentable, attractive even, eyes were tired, make-up faded, faces drawn.  Fashions proclaimed 'contemporary middle-age', but looks told of a life of woe.

It was only later, after nine o'clock, when the restaurant had cleared somewhat and late diners were arriving, that things changed.  Couples sat down already engaged in animated, upbeat conversations.  They were busy with the detail of engaging with their companions and the atmosphere in the restaurant became brisker, lighter and flowing.  People smiled, eyes glinted, conversation became punctuated by laughter and sent on tangents by inconsequential pleasantries.  Sparkle had been injected into the evening and people actually wanted to enjoy each other's company.  They attracted attention, and were attractive as a result.

So why the change? 

None of the early diners appeared to have over-faced themselves with food, or had consumed so much red wine that a stupor was setting in.  Conversely, none of the late arrivals gave an impression of having spent the past few hours knocking back aperatifs to get merry beforehand. The reason for the difference was not gastronomic.  Nor was it particularly age-related: young and old made up both groups.

It crossed my mind that time could have played a part.  The blanket statement "it's gone 7.00 p.m., so it's time we have to eat" could have applied to the early diners:  "Listen, it's nine o'clock - why don't we meet in / go to that restaurant...?" to the late ones.  Working back from that presumption, perhaps I was right.   The early diners focussed on having to eat, the later ones wanted to. More than that, the early diners ate together because they had to eat, whereas the later ones wanted to be together and sharing a table in a restaurant was a great way to do so.  

Absent from the restaurant on our arrival was all sense of aspiration, of direction, of enthusiasm. Even friends who had met to catch up, as were the two ladies at the table adjoining ours, showed little cheer during their discussions.  The muted talk was about problems, about issues, about mundanities.  Whatever the subject was, conversations were lack-lustre because the enthusiasm to talk about it in any other way was missing. 

Yet if identical subjects were discussed later on, it would be with optimism, brio and confidence. That these late arrivers were 'late' - coming in from elsewhere, with less time before they'd have to move on - would suggest more urgency to their demeanour, and with urgency comes direction and objectivity.  Unlike earlier, inertia was no longer on the menu; vitality, less restraint and emotion were order of the day.

So, when the early diners moved on, would it be to a more positive and uplifting place?  I don't think so.  One or two may yet have their damascene moments but most will be destined to repeat the same cheerless regime until such a time as they become an empty seat at a restaurant table - and the subject of someone else's next morose conversation.   

Perhaps it is because a lack of animation has become so commonplace that this social melancholia is failing to be recognised. Torpor appears acceptable as long as it is well behaved and remains innocuous.  Sharing any thought that you are thinking of changing is unacceptable, because change means being different and being different is not acceptable either.

Perhaps all the early diners were talking about the problems of having to conform so much.  The late arrivals probably didn't have time.

We had a lovely meal - although next time, I think we might eat a little later.

Losing Inclination

Sprinkled across the schedules of BBCs 2 and 4 are episodes of the quite pleasant series "Walks with Julia Bradbury' - the word "Walks" usually preceded by a word describing the particular genre of location.  For example, when the thing started, the word "Famous" would have been appropriate, as la Bradbury set out on the Ridgeway, the Lyke Wake Walk or the Pilgrim's Way. 

Once these were under her belt, and galvanised by the success of the initial series, the brief became more challenging. "Country", naturally, but "Mountain" would not have been out of place, and one can imagine for the best part of a decade Julia's camera crew quite happily trolling the Munroes (all 283 of them) in her wake.

But after a while, one mist-swathed mountain peak looks (if you can see it) very much like any other.  Time takes its toll and these gruelling achievements gave way to the more sedate "Railway" walks.  Not a bad idea at all, because rarely in the UK will there be an abandoned trackbed rising on more than a 3% gradient and, by their very nature, a railway line will afford access points to the public along its route. The programme ceased being remote and gained social credentials.  Altitude - and achieving it - played a diminishing part in the story.

But since the 1970s and the crazy notion of installing supermarkets on every available square metre of disused railway land, the number of routes has become limited.  So Ms. B's team ruminated further and discovered that canals, which tend not to get built on (by dint of being full of water), also afforded good walking access across the country.  Off they set again, following routes that were even flatter than a railway, where two centuries ago the commerce of the nation lethargically drifted its way between mill, forge and factory. Julia's stride remained impressive, but only on the level.

So you'll see that, as time passes, this laudable programme is becoming increasingly two dimensional. The camera needs now only to pan where before it tilted.  Ms. Bradbury's rippling recti femoris have done their work and the feats they accomplished are now just a fond memory.  Like life, when enthusiasm and endeavour captivate the younger heart before time and experience prompts its gradual lapse into pragmatism and expediency, the programme has matured.

Look out for the next series to be entitled "Lincolnshire Beach Walks with Julia Bradbury".  And don't expect many corners either.