I’m not excited

I had a great, almost charmed life as an IBM executive.  One of the things I don’t miss about the company though was the requirement at around this time of year to convey my “excitement at the challenges ahead” to the troops at the new year kick-off meeting.  For the English, a public display of excitement is severely counter-cultural, and to try to whip up enthusiasm in both myself, and my crew of hard-bitten, and fairly world-wise, if not weary UK employees was always going to be an uphill battle. Particularly in the cold and general gloom of late January in Basingstoke.

I never reacted well to the word challenge anyway.  Challenge usually meant to me more bloody irritating people, or impossible situations.  I have never had a problem about getting much better, or doing new things, or learning new stuff.  It’s just that framing a plan for these in such hyped up and confrontational terms seemed patently false.  Particularly since after the stirring invective, people had to trudge home through the fog and rain and get on with their job – which happened to be exactly the same as the job they had before the exciting kick-off.

I have to say that despite this, I usually rose to the occasion and made a reasonable, and hopefully entertaining showing, and actually got a slight elevation in emotional reaction from the UK audience.   The same pitch would have them whistling and yelling approval in the States, so it’s all a purely local and cultural thing.  Thank god I didn’t have to get them excited in Switzerland.

Anyway, one of the huge benefits of retirement is that I don’t have to manufacture alien (to me) levels of excitement.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have goals for the new year.  Oh no.  I have at least three.  I lay them out for you here.

1.  Save at least 3 weeks of time per year by not forgetting where I put the memory machine.

I have always had a bad memory – it was so appalling when I was young that I can see no appreciable deterioration by comparison with now – comforting and troubling at the same time.  I have learned to handle my absent mindedness by various stratagems, such as using a voice recorder  to instantly record when a fleeting thought comes into my head (as it will within another instant be gone forever). This year I have wasted an absolutely stupendous amount of time looking for the bloody recorder –  of the order of say an hour per day on really bad days.  Over the year this adds up to weeks which I could otherwise have spent gazing blankly at the wall.

The whole thing has gone too far.  So I have made this a top priority, where it will remain until I forget it.  A designated collection point has been identified.  When not actually using the recorder, it will always be placed in that point.  To my surprise, on looking now, the recorder is in the designated point.  I have no memory of putting it there.  But right off the bat, that’s another hour saved.

2. Do something about my camera and lens collecting jones.

I may need some sort of professional psychiatric help here.  The whole camera thing has got completely out of control, like the problem I had with shirts, shoes, jackets, trekking equipment, PCs, coffee equipment and too many other areas.  For all of these obsessions, I was unable to stop at the level of supply sufficient say for a football team – I had to continue.  The place is bulging with rucksacks, ice axes, unfeasible handmade tan leather boots, coffee roasters and so on.  I realized I was in camera trouble at the back end of the year, when there was no more space on the shelves for the daily deliveries of lenses and cameras.

In November, I actually sold 2 cameras, and 8 lenses on eBay.  However that seems to have made no impression on the available space, and unfortunately I  have ordered a further 4 lenses and 2 cameras since Christmas.  Now I have 5 complete end-end interchangeable lens camera systems, comprising 13 current mainstream cameras and about 40 lenses.  This is too much. I have looked at this in some detail, and there will have to be very significant disposals.  I will have to go back to eBay.    It’s going to take some work but I think I can do it and then then at some point I hope to be able to take some photographs.

3. Reassess my underwear collection in the light of new knowledge.

Two helpful notes here. Firstly, these I believe are referred to as ‘shorts’ by Americans – and right there is the seed of the problem. Secondly – this goal may not appeal to, or may be too much information for lady readers.

A trek to the Himalayas with a friend who wore M&S boxer shorts, and six consecutive Wagner operas at the Albert Hall, have between them delivered me to a fundamental truth about male undergarments that I feel I am duty bound to share. I have written it up in full elsewhere. Suffice to say that the insight involves drying times at altitude, discreet groinal manipulation during Tristan and Isolde, and a conceptual breakthrough of almost mystical proportions — to whit, that boxers are designed for standing, and jockey shorts for sitting. The Americans, as ever, had it in the name all along.

The full research, including notes on trophy shelf technology, the ergonomics of the jockey, and a disposal plan for boxer shorts spread across three countries, can be found in Concert Pants. I’m happy to pass the fruits of this research to my readers. Just don’t expect me to get excited about it.