In which The Author reverts to Plan A

In the course of this blog I've mentioned James Burke's landmark 1978 BBC TV documentary series Connections a number of times. For the last couple of weeks I've been thinking of something from the very first instalment, as it seems to sum up what's been happening to the country of late.

In 'The Trigger Effect', Mr Burke talks about the possible effects of a prolonged electricity blackout on an advanced, economically developed industrial First World country. (The clip comes and goes from YouTube, but here it is for the time being.)

Probably because the series was a co-production with Time-Life, Mr Burke chose the USA to illustrate his example. Some four decades later, I think the UK probably comes close enough for jazz to his requirements. The remarkable thing is, even that with abundant electricity to power our civilisation, a reasonable standard of secondary education for the majority and advanced technology at most people's fingertips, (to borrow Mr Burke's phrase) everything doesn't work.

I've been thinking about this for a very long time, but the rot really set in at the start of Lockdown, when it seemed the entire country was in a panic-buying hysteria over toilet paper. Apparently the thinking behind it went something like this: toilet paper comes from China; China is in lockdown; therefore we won't be able to get any toilet paper. A couple of people posted this reasoned argument on Facebook and human stupidity did the rest. When Italy went into lockdown, pasta vanished from the shelves as well. I'm fairly sure that the majority of pasta on our supermarket shelves isn't actually made in Italy (for all that the packets bear red, green and white logos and evocative names), for the same reason that most frozen pizzas aren't. Probably the best known brand of 'Italian' pasta sauce – Dolmio – doesn't go anywhere near Italy during its time in the jar. But online idiocy spreads more quickly than a pandemic, and can't be tracked and traced electronically.

It turns out that we didn't need a technological breakdown for the average British consumer to be thrown into a tailspin. By chance, I was asked to copy-edit the debut novel by Susannah Wise, This Fragile Earth, at around the time everyone started working from home. It's a grim near-future tale of England after the internet stops functioning – and without the internet, nothing else can function either. I was reading the panic-buying scenes with horrid fascination, wondering how on earth Ms Wise had been able to predict the future so accurately. I'd like to see Mr Burke update his series to take account of the Wired World, and to see how long it takes his worst-case scenario to come about in the light of current technology.

For over ten years now, my brother has been asking anyone who'll listen, 'Why is nothing straightforward any more?' At first I thought he was exaggerating. He doesn't use the internet, or have a smartphone, so by opting out of the Scissors Age (see Stone, Paper, Scissors), I thought he'd just made a rod for his own back. However, I'm fairly well tuned in to the digital world, and I've seen it slowly start to break down over the last few years. But the internet is only one factor at play in the chaos of modern life. Our old friend Human Stupidity seems to underpin much of the rest of the story.

This particular story starts on the afternoon of the Saturday after Xmas. I was reading the paper over a pint in the National Tap, and I came across an interview with Prof. Richard Dawkins. His new book had been published shortly before. If I'd still been in the bookshop, I'd have known about it ages before that. I'd probably have bought my own copy for Xmas. (Back in the good old days, I might have been able to bag a sample copy from the trade sales rep. When publishers still had trade sales reps, that is.) I also knew that Gollancz had published a collection of Christopher Priest's short stories. With the Dawkins book at half-price on Amazon that weekend, it seemed a good excuse to buy both and get the free delivery. That was the easy bit. I logged on to Amazon on my phone, added the books to my basket, and went to the checkout page.

End of easy bit.

I knew there was a good chance I wouldn't be at home when the postman came. With the extended break reducing the opening hours at the sorting office (not the easiest place to get to), I decided to have the books sent to a 'Local Hub'. I used to do that anyway, and have them delivered to one of the newsagents in Aberdare. As I'm in town most days, it was no hardship for me to call in and pick up my parcel when I was passing. The problem was that they seemed to have given up being an Amazon Local Hub. The nearest alternative I could find listed was in Hirwaun – the little supermarket opposite the Lamb Inn. It's a bus ride away, but the services were frequent and I had my Stagecoach weekly ticket, so I didn't mind the prospect of a little excursion. I amended the details, processed the payment through PayPal, and a few minutes later the confirmation email arrived. Needless to say, the delivery address was my house.

I had thirty minutes in which to amend my order – but not on the app. If I could have logged in on a computer, I could have sorted it out fairly easily. But that option didn't seem to be available on a phone. I resigned myself to a missed delivery and went back to the crossword.

On the Monday afternoon I had an email from Amazon, telling me that my parcels (plural) had been delivered to a neighbour. As soon as I saw the name and address my heart sank, because this had happened once before.

The old boy living opposite is a real gentleman, but I think he must suffer with dementia. Last time Ken took a parcel in for me, a couple of years ago, he vaguely remembered it but neither of us could find it. The following day my friend Gail, two doors away, messaged me to say my parcel was in her house. Ken must have dropped it into her house when the kids were there, and they hadn't thought anything of it. When I saw Ken's name in the email, I had a horrible feeling history was going to repeat itself.

It kinda did.

I didn't get home until very late on the Monday, so I left it until Tuesday morning (New Year's Eve) to knock Ken's door. Not surprisingly, he didn't remember taking in a delivery the previous day. In fact, he didn't remember anyone coming to his door – not even his carer, who calls every lunchtime. Together we hunted for some time, while I explained at least four times what the books were and what the parcel would probably look like. Eventually I had to leave him to it. I gave him my number and asked him to ring me when the parcel turned up, so I could arrange to collect it later. Then I went into town, caught up with some friends, and got home before the buses stopped running.

I was heading to the party in the Welsh Harp when another neighbour spotted me leaving the house and called over to me.

'Did you get your Amazon stuff?' he asked.

He told me he'd been rushing off to work earlier in the day and had spotted a parcel on my windowsill. He hadn't had time to pick it up and take it in, and assumed that I'd seen it myself. I hadn't, of course, but someone else obviously had. I half-hoped it was one of the junkies on their way back from getting their methadone fix in the pharmacy at the end of my street. The thief probably thought the parcel was something s/he could sell for drug money. Well, I can only hope the early stories of Christopher Priest have fried her/his brain, as they did with mine back in the day.

I contacted Amazon Customer Service on 2 January, and after a while I got to speak to a real live human being. I explained the situation, and she raised a new order for me. Just like that. The previous two books – combined value over £30 – were presumably written off by Amazon as just another glitch in the supply chain. This time I checked that they'd be delivered to the Local Hub in Hirwaun (which seemed to tax the woman on the phone for a while) before confirming the replacement order.

When my books did finally arrive (having been dispatched from the same warehouse at the same time), they were in two individual padded bags. In an attempt to swim against the tide, Amazon had stopped using their recyclable cardboard packets and switched to plastic instead. And they hadn't sent them to the Local Hub at all. I ended up collecting them from Hirwaun Post Office, in the main street. Not even the guy behind the counter knew what they were doing there. I gave Amazon quite a low rating in the questionnaire which arrived on my phone before I'd even got on the bus back to Aberdare.

I didn't order any physical books for a while after that. With lockdown in effect I didn't know how couriers would be faring. (I found out when it came to the desk.) But three weeks ago I decided to order two books from Amazon, which were on offer and selling in large numbers. This time I placed the order on the laptop, making sure all the 'local collect' details were correct. At the time, one of the titles (I'll call it Book A) was out of stock, but they confirmed that Book B had been dispatched to my Local Hub the same day and would arrive within two days.

Three days later I had an email informing me that Book A was ready for collection. Not Book B – Book A. It was a very pleasant day, so I walked to Hirwaun along the Cynon Trail and called to the shop around lunchtime. I had to show the lady behind the counter the barcode Amazon had sent to my phone, and show her my ID, before she handed the book over. (I can understand why the shopkeeper would ask to see ID, of course – which is why the subsequent developments made me so angry.) There was still no sign of Book B, so I joked that I'd be back up to collect it the following day.

That didn't happen.

Five days after allegedly sending it, Amazon admitted that it had got lost in transit and offered to send a replacement copy at no extra cost. It was the Xmas debacle all over again – except that this parcel should have been tracked from portal to portal, and not left with some random bloke who happened to be at home when the courier called. I agreed to have a replacement, and a couple of days later you'd have found me on the Cynon Trail again. The woman in the shop laughed when I told her what had happened, and didn't ask to see my ID this time. She scanned the barcode from my phone and I finally went home with Book B.

Once bitten, you'd think – but no …

I decided to try my luck a third time, and this time things got seriously fucked up.

Amazon had a single copy in stock of Investigating Alias: Secrets and Spies, a fairly academic treatment of the surreal TV show I mentioned last time. As the book was published fifteen years ago by a specialist British house, I decided to grab it without further delay. To an ex-bookseller, it was the sort of scenario that spells 'Out of print' in big letters on one's mental stock control system.

Did I say 'without further delay'? Well, that's a fucking joke!

I ordered it on Saturday 20 June. At 5.34 p.m. on Sunday I had an email saying it had been dispatched for 'next day delivery' to the Local Hub. At 10.34 a.m. on Monday, Amazon emailed me to tell me the book would be delivered 'today'. On the Monday afternoon, at about 4.00, I had a message via the app to tell me my parcel was 'eight stops away'.

And that was the last Amazon knew of it.

I wasn't going to head to Hirwaun in the evening on the off-chance (especially with the restricted buses running at the moment). I decided to wait until my collection email arrived before going up on Tuesday. And no collection email arrived.

Early on Tuesday morning, I accessed the Customer Service part of their website and had a long text chat with the woman who'd dealt with my problem over the Xmas holidays. (I assume it was her, anyway. Her name is so unusual I doubt there can be two people with it in the same call centre.) She was apologetic (of course) but not very helpful.

She told me I could go to the shop and show my ID and the dispatch email, and that would be enough to allow me to collect the parcel.

I told her I wasn't prepared to walk for over half an hour on a fool's errand, and I didn't want to have a stand-up argument with the shopkeeper in front of a queue of customers.

She asked me if I could give them '24-48 hours' to sort it out and contact them again if I hadn't heard anything by then.

I reluctantly agreed. I had a book to work on anyway, so I didn't want to waste time walking to Hirwaun and coming back empty-handed.

On Thursday morning, pretty much 48 hours to the minute since I'd ended the previous online chat, I was back on to Customer Service. Luckily for me, the previous exchange was still in the window, so I gave the guy a few minutes to get up to speed before I started on him in earnest.

There was still no trace of my parcel on their system, so they couldn't issue me with a barcode to collect it.

I asked him what had happened after 8.27 p.m. on Monday evening (the last they saw of it, when presumably it was delivered to Hirwaun).

He didn't know. He offered to order a replacement copy. I vetoed that on the grounds that I didn't expect them to receive any more stock of that title. He offered to credit my account with £5 for the inconvenience. I kept arguing with him, and eventually the bid went up to £15. Then he asked me if I'd prefer a refund instead. I asked him to wait for a while and I'd get back to him.

So I set off for Hirwaun, armed with my ID and the dispatch email, as well as a screenshot of the earlier conversation telling me that I'd be able to show them to the shopkeeper. I also had a screenshot of my statement that I didn't want to argue in front of a shop full of customers.

Well, that's exactly what happened!

I walked to Hirwaun by lunchtime and made my way to the shop. The woman behind the counter smiled when she saw me and held up not one but two Amazon parcels with my name on them. But when I explained what had happened, and the fuck-up with their Customer Service people, that was as far as things went. No barcode, no collection: computer says no.

I argued with her for a few minutes and showed her the communication with Amazon, but apparently unless her little machine agrees, she can't do anything. So I got straight on to Amazon again while I was in the shop, text-chatting an increasingly angry exchange to a supervisor (by now the issue had been 'escalated'). The Amazon system didn't know where the parcel was, and so she couldn't issue a barcode for its collection, I told her the fucking parcel was about three feet away from me – I could see the fucking thing. It had my fucking name on the outside. I had my ID and my dispatch email with the parcel reference number. The woman behind the counter fucking knows me! Computer says no.

No go. She couldn't issue me with a collection barcode either, because the refund had already been processed. As far as Amazon were concerned, the matter was at an end.

I told her to re-charge the original price of the book to my PayPal account, send me the barcode, and I'd take it there and then. Couldn't be done. Computer says no.

I told her to think of something before the next bus to Aberdare arrived, because once I set foot on it the matter would be at an end. She asked me to hold while she spoke to a colleague. She came back and asked if I could give them '72 hours' to look into it. I told her they'd already had 72 hours to sort things out, and that I didn't care what she said after this. I was going to go to the media instead. (Which I did, incidentally. I spent quite a while on Thursday afternoon tracking down contact details for print and broadcast consumer journalists and emailing each one with a cooked-down version of the story.)

She offered me more compensation for the wasted time, raising the stakes to £35 by the end of the argument. I told her that the credit would sit in my account until the end of time, because I had no intention of buying any physical items from Amazon again. Then the bus came, and anything she said after that was irrelevant. I was already deciding on the wording of my email to the press while she was messaging me on the way home.

Anyway, that night I had a look on eBay and found a second-hand copy of the book for £5.99, including postage. (That's half the price Amazon wanted. It's not in perfect condition, but who would be after fifteen years?) It arrived in the post on Wednesday.

The great British SF/fantasy novelist M. John Harrison has a new book out this month. I toyed with ordering it online, but I'm through with Amazon and their broken promises. I could have ordered Mr Harrison's book from Waterstones and got it in a couple of days, as well as earning points on my loyalty card. But Waterstones are big enough to look after themselves in the present crisis.

I ordered a copy this morning, from Storysmith in Bristol. They're a relatively new independent shop in Bedminster, and hosted the Ben Aaronovitch signing during which I unexpectedly changed gender last summer. They're nice people, and small bookshops need to try and get through the next few months by any means necessary. At the moment, Amazon seem to be doing their best to drive customers back to the independents, so I'm more than happy to join the exodus.

As for the other parcel in Hirwaun with my name on it …

I can only assume it's the original copy of Book B – the one that got lost in transit. Or possibly it's the replacement copy. It doesn't matter, because it'll sit behind the counter, next to Investigating Alias, for ever. The most surreal aspect of the entire story is that I know exactly where they are, and the shopkeeper knows exactly whose they are. And there's no way in the world that we can reconcile these two facts.

Everything doesn't work …

Spatial Unwareness

In which The Author finally has an office

I told you last time about the Problem of the Time-travelling Parcel. It eventually turned up on the Saturday morning, more by luck than judgement. I had a notification from DPD that it would be delivered 'between 9.30 and 10.30'. That gave me time to nip to the shop before the courier was due. At about 10.10 I heard someone knocking my neighbours' door. Thinking it might be the courier dropping off something there first, I waited for a minute. Then my phone rang. It was the courier, wondering if I was at home. He claimed to have knocked my door and had no answer. Now, if I could hear him knocking two doors down, why didn't I hear him knocking my own door?

He couldn't bring the desk in, of course, because nobody is allowed to go near anyone else at the moment. I couldn't even sign his manifest. Instead, he photographed the parcel in my doorway as proof of delivery. It didn't matter. Even with his help, I probably wouldn't have been able to get it around the awkward angles at the top of the stairs. Instead I opened the packaging in situ and carried the pieces upstairs a bit at a time.

Then I had to assemble it.

As I've noted in a previous entry, words are going out of fashion as well these days. The clock has turned full circle and we've reverted to the dawn of civilisation, using little pictures to communicate. To show you what I mean, here's a page from the 'instruction manual' for the desk. No, it's not from Ikea, but I think it might be from another Scandinavian manufacturer – possibly part of their best-selling Bølux range of office furniture.

I'm glad I spent so much time building Lego, Meccano and Airfix kits when I was young, as this is pretty much meaningless unless you're familiar with their assembly diagrams. I'm also fairly used to assembling flatpack furniture. The manufacturers recommend two people to put it together. (How the fuck can you do that when you're not allowed visitors?) At that point it turned into a question from an old maths exam: if it takes two people one hour to build a desk, how long does it take one person?

The answer is: about three and a half hours.

Admittedly, I wasn't working on it to the exclusion of all else. To begin with, there was the disappointing Tom Clancy reboot The Hunt for Red Screwdriver. After that, there were several breaks to study the instructions again, a couple of reassessments of progress hitherto, a few glasses of squash, several posts on Twitter charting my adventures with the bloody thing, and much swearing. Have you ever come across the type of fixings labelled A and B in the diagram before? I don't know what their proper name is, should you ever feel the urge to buy some from a DIY shop. However, 'bastard fitting' seems to work well – as in 'How the fuck do these bastard fittings work?'

At one point I posted on Twitter:

The desk is half completed. If you're a fan of the bizarre SF/martial arts/espionage/occult TV show Alias you'll know all about Project Christmas. Well, now I know why the CIA didn't recruit me straight from university: no bloody spatial problem solving ability whatsoever.

A little while later, I made another reference to the same mind-bending TV drama:

Also in Alias, the main villain kidnaps an expert in Knot Theory to help him assemble 47 artefacts into an extremely complex machine. It's given me an idea.
If a top-flight mathematician goes missing in the next few days, try my house first. He'll be building a desk.

Anyway, with the evening approaching I completed the desk and vowed never to undertake something like that again without help, or at least a shoulder to cry on. I moved the majority of my style guides and reference books to the desk. The following day I moved my history books as well, and they're now conveniently to hand if I need to check something in a novel. That involved dismantling a bookcase, taking it upstairs in dribs and drabs, and reassembling it in its new home. After this weekend-long flatpack frenzy, you can imagine how I laughed when I watched an episode of the aforementioned Alias a couple of days later, which ends on this touching father-and-daughter bonding moment:

 

And speaking of Alias – my recent adventure with online suppliers and useless couriers continues in the next entry. (You've gotta love a good cliffhanger …

The Problem of the Time-travelling Parcel

In which The Author has fun with a courier

In the absence of my usual working environment in Aberdare Library and/or various cafes and pubs, I've decided to make my back bedroom into an office. It's small enough to accommodate everything I need and heat quite economically during the cold weather. (Having said that, it's quite chilly here today, a week or so short of Midsummer Day.) With this in mind, on Wednesday morning I ordered an item from a UK seller on eBay. They're based in London, with a warehouse in Northampton. A few minutes later the order confirmation pinged into my inbox. With a two-day delivery service, I could expect my item to be delivered on Friday (in other words, today).

So far, so good …

At 10.15 p.m., I had an email from DPD telling me my item would be delivered 'tomorrow' (in other words, 11 June).

Ordinarily, that would be very short notice. If I'd still been working in Cardiff, it would open up a whole can of worms involving 'Sorry we missed you' cards and/or redelivery to more or less reliable neighbours. It's a good thing nobody has any great plans to do anything in the current situation, isn't it? As things stand, a Thursday delivery would have been much better than I'd expected.

But, of course, this is 'Great' Britain in the year 2020 – and nothing ever goes according to fucking plan.

To monitor the consignment's progress, I decided to install the DPD app on my phone. I did have it on my old handset, and I think I actually used it once. It's supposed to send you a notification when the delivery leaves the depot, and again when the driver is in the vicinity, so you (in theory) don't miss the knock on the door. I decided it would be handy, because there's nothing more frustrating than waiting in all day with no sign of the driver, popping around the corner for a pint of milk at 5.30 – because who on earth delivers parcels at that time of day? ‐ and getting back to find the inevitable card on the doormat. At least I could plan my visit to Lidl around the driver's ETA.

I logged into the app once it was installed. At 2018 on Wednesday evening, my parcel apparently still hadn't arrived at the depot. An hour later, I knew (via email) that it had arrived at the DPD 'hub' at Hinckley in Leicestershire – not the geographical centre of England, but close enough for jazz. It's not too far from South Wales either. We were on course for delivery on Thursday.

Allegedly …

You can probably imagine my surprise when I logged on to the app on Thursday morning to check the delivery window, and found this:

The next part of the notification was even more worrying:

I logged on to the DPD website to see if I could find any contact details for them. As I'd half expected, there was no phone number, and no link to social media feeds; just an email form to complete and send to Customer Service for a response 'within 90 minutes'. I filled it in and sent it off. It wasn't a complaint. It was a light-hearted dig at the time-travel device which was currently conveying my delivery. No response.

I logged on again before going to bed on Thursday, to check the state of play. Nothing had changed since 0915. I figured that things would move overnight, and I might get my delivery on Friday.

No such luck. I logged in to the app just after 7.30, and this is what I found:

There's an absurd tradition in Aberdare that the town's war memorial wasn't meant to be here at all. If you listen to assorted Pub Bores and Myth-makers, they'll tell you that the impressive slab of granite, some three metres high and weighing several tons, was originally intended for Aberdeen. The driver misread the delivery note and it ended up here …

Here's a good crossword clue: Any pub story you hear about Aberdare's past (8).

I've filled in some of the letters for you …

B _ L L _ _ _ _

(Actually, there are two possible answers, both of which are correct.)

Anyway, that load of cobblers came to mind at 7.45 on Friday morning, when I found out that my parcel was at the wrong end of the neighbouring country, and (presumably) was destined to head even further north as the day wore on. Where would it end up? Aberdeen? Aberdour? More to the point, when would it actually get to Aberdare?

After fiddling with the app for a minute, I found the 'contact' options – a live text chat or a phone call. I opted for the phone call, but their customer service line wasn't open until 8.00. No problem; I waited until just after 8.00 and hit the button. After a few minutes of listening to recorded messages, I spoke to a cheerful lad in the West Midlands and explained the problem. He laughed and told me this sort of thing happens all the time. A parcel gets put in the wrong cage in the depot, and ends up being loaded into the wrong lorry.

I said I completely understood.

When I worked in the book trade, we were always getting parcels for other branches, or other shops in Cardiff, or even shops miles away that were completely unrelated to ours. The sheer volume of stuff moving through the system means that you don't have time to check every individual parcel coming off a lorry. You just count the total number of boxes you're unloading into Goods In, make sure it agrees with the driver's manifest, sign the sheet and away goes the lorry. It's only later – quite often, after you open the box and you're wondering why the order numbers don't look familiar – that you realise it was intended for WH Smith in Cheltenham, instead of Waterstones in Cardiff.

I told the guy about a funny incident that occurred shortly before I finished in Waterstones. Borders, a short walk down the road, were hosting a signing to tie in with the launch of the Gavin and Stacey TV tie-in. On the morning of the signing, one of the couriers (who shall remain nameless) delivered about six hundred copies of the book to us. Now, had we had decent relations with our bookselling cousins two hundred yards away, the situation could have been sorted out easily. We'd have slung their parcels onto a couple of trolleys and wheeled them round the corner ourselves. We'd have had to go past the very long queue of people waiting to meet the stars of the show, of course, but at least the books would have been in Borders when the event started.

But we didn't have a good relationship with them. Quite the opposite, in fact, following a nasty incident after a publisher event in Bristol, which almost ended up in a full-on brawl outside the Hayes Island Cafe. We took the opportunity to get our revenge by ringing the courier to report the misdelivered consignment. They duly collected the parcels the following day and delivered them … well, who cares when? It was after the signing. That's all we were worried about.

However, my rogue item isn't a small parcel containing a few books.

It's a fucking flatpack desk!

It must have taken some effort to put that in the wrong cage, and then in the wrong van.

The guy and I had a good laugh, and he told me he'd arrange a 'priority delivery' for Saturday morning, by way of apology for the fuck-up. And he was as good as his word.

I think …

Shortly after we wished each other a good weekend and I hung up, I had another notification from the DPD app:

So, will my parcel arrive tomorrow, or will I have to wait until 2026 for it?

The suppliers themselves don't seem to be any the wiser. Here's what eBay have told me this afternoon:

As usual, boys and girls, watch this space …

I Hate it When a Plan Falls Apart

In which The Author is at home

This afternoon, I should have been on the way to Victoria Coach Station in London, in time for the 1830 departure to Cardiff. Instead, I'm in Aberdare. It's a long story, so let's start at the beginning.

In November 2012, I had the great pleasure and privilege of recording a heat of Brain of Britain, the long-running general knowledge quiz, for BBC Radio 4. (I told you the whole story of my trip to Manchester – and its disappointing epilogue – in It's Grand Oop North.) I didn't progress any further in the 2012–3 series, and there's a five-year embargo before one can enter again. Thus it was that I logged on to the BBC website in the summer of 2018 and requested an application form once the new series went into pre-production.

As before, the audition took the form of a phone call, on the afternoon of 29 November 2018. I'll admit that I wasn't exactly prepared for it. In fact, I was in the Glosters after an old friend's funeral, nursing a pint and enjoying some memories of our time together. But I took the phone into the lounge, chatted to the production assistant for a while, and managed to pull out some answers and make a few guesses. I must have done all right, because a few weeks later I had an email confirming my place in the next series. The recording was scheduled for the end of January 2019. They booked my hotel for me, and I'd sorted out my coach ticket as soon as the dates were pinned down. The game, it seemed, was afoot.

A few days before I was due to travel, I was struck by the flu virus that had taken most of Aberdare out during the preceding couple of weeks. I emailed the BBC from my bed, apologising that I probably wouldn't be well enough to make the journey. Even if I had made a miraculous recovery over the weekend, I wouldn't have given my best performance on the evening. It seemed I wasn't alone, because a number of contestants and a few of the production team had also been off sick. Unfortunately, my heat was one of the last to be scheduled, so I couldn't even swap with someone else and go up later. Instead, they offered to keep my place open for the following season.

By the time Xmas 2019 rolled around, I was starting to wonder if they'd forgotten about me. A good few of my friends had asked whether I'd heard anything from the BBC. It crossed my mind to drop them a line, to be on the safe side. But I didn't need to bother. As soon as everyone went back to work in January, I had an email asking if I was still interested in taking part. I told Lizzie, the production assistant, that I definitely was interested, and a few days later she confirmed my recording date: 2 March, in London. Soon after that she confirmed my hotel booking. It was right around the corner from the British Museum – perfect, because I wanted to check out the exhibition on the Trojan War on the Tuesday. I booked the coach the same morning and started making plans for the rest of the Tuesday. Today, in other words …

On 15–16 February, Storm Dennis came along and wrecked much of South Wales, including Pontypridd town centre and a fair section of the Valleys. Needless to say, public transport was particularly badly affected, with railway lines flooded and bus services cancelled. In fact, it took until last Wednesday (26 February) for the trains to start running from Aberdare to Pontypridd again. A half-hearted and chaotic Replacement Bus Service had tried to plug the gap in the meantime. My friends didn't have anything positive to report about the emergency provision, so I was already dubious about the idea of travelling any great distance. Can you imagine getting off the bus in Pontypridd and running up the steps just in time to see the Cardiff train pulling away from the platform? It happened to a few people I know. Then you'd have to get off the train at Cathays and force a path through the crowd on the footbridge to Park Place, undoubtedly in time to see the London coach pulling away from the stop about 50 m away. I wasn't optimistic.

Last Thursday lunchtime, the weather forecast gave a yellow warning in advance of Storm Jorge, which was – apparently – due to hit Wales on Saturday morning. Call me pessimistic if you like, but I emailed Lizzie and said I might not be able to travel up on Monday after all. I explained about the fuck-ups with the Replacement Bus Service over the previous fortnight and outlined the possible situation in Cardiff. Lizzie replied shortly afterwards; she'd seen the forecast herself and thought I might be right. She said she'd try and contact the other contestants to see if anyone could swap with me, and offered me an alternative date in April as a Plan B.

In the end, Storm Jorge arrived early. By Friday afternoon the roads around Aberdare were in chaos and the newly reintroduced train service was at a standstill. Again.

A gang of us from the National Tap were meant to be travelling to Chepstow on the Friday evening, for a 'tap takeover' at the Queen's Head. I phoned the bus company and we agreed that we were doing the right thing by pulling the plug on the trip. (Incidentally, our trip to the Brecon Tap in January fell apart as well. Everyone thought someone else was organising the bus. In the event, no one did. That's 0 from 2.)

Then Transport for Wales announced that there'd been a landslide on the railway line between Mountain Ash and Abercynon. Apparently it took ages to sort out a Replacement Bus Service – to the extent that my pal Martyn E. bit the bullet and slept in the pub where he works as a chef.

I emailed Lizzie just before close of play on Friday to update her. She got back to me straight away. Unfortunately, they hadn't found anyone who was able to swap recording dates with me. Instead, they're holding my place open for next year. Sound familiar?

Who knows what fun the Goddess of Chaos will have in the run-up to the next recording date? Watch this space …

A Found Poem

In which The Author digs out an old magazine

Back in September, I signed up for a Creative Writing course. Again …

It was a random sort of Monday, really. Chazz and I had been for lunch, and she'd commented that she needed a new dictionary. So we strolled over to The Works, because I knew they'd have the 'Back to school' offers in place. While we were in there, I bumped into David and Andrea from New Horizons. I'd met them shortly before, when I sat in on a taster session for Psychology and Criminology. Unfortunately I wasn't able to sign up for the full course because it took place at an inconvenient time (and venue). But they asked us if we'd be interested in the Creative Writing course, which was starting that very afternoon. I twisted Chazz's arm by telling her that she might get a song out of it (at least), and the two of us strolled around the block in time for the kick-off.

It turned out that I already knew Steve, the tutor. He used to teach a group in Aberdare Library, and also takes the guitar classes that happen there in the evenings. We'd chatted a couple of times, so it was nice to know I wasn't going in cold.

Anyway, I've put in a few pieces of work already, some of which I'm quite pleased with, and one is taking shape into a longer piece which might become an Actual Completed Project. (Don't stake your life on it, though.)

However, I don't like poetry.

I didn't enjoy studying poetry at school; I don't enjoy reading it, listening to it (with a very few contemporary exceptions such as Ian McMillan and Roger McGough), or writing it. My heart sinks whenever Steve says the word 'poetry'. So when he asked us a week last Monday to write a 'found poem', I realised I could do it without too much need for heavy lifting.

A 'found poem', in essence, relies on taking pieces of existing text and rearranging them into a new form. Now, I knew that with over two thousand books and many old magazines at home, I could probably find something interesting to work with. On Sunday, having finished a copy-edit and with Storm Ciara raging in the background, I pulled out an old copy of the London listings magazine Time Out and got to work.

This particular edition was dated 1–8 March 1995, so it's a whisker short of 25 years old. (If only we'd waited a couple of weeks, I could have taken it to class and we could have had some birthday cake.) I wasn't in London at the time, needless to say. I bought it purely because the cover photo was a head shot of the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh wearing a stunning studded collar.

If only I had been in London that week: Kevin Ayers was playing a rare gig that week; so were his fellow Soft Machine alumnus John Etheridge (a free Sunday lunchtime affair), Kevin's former musical collaborator Lol Coxhill, and a young sax player named Theo Travis, who (along with Mr Etheridge) is in the current Soft Machine line-up, when he's not moonlighting with Andy Tillison's band the Tangent.
I was in Aberdare when all this musical activity was going on. Go figure …

Anyway, I'd already decided to adopt the cut-up approach pioneered by William S. Burroungs and Brion Gysin – not literally, because I hate defacing books or magazines. Instead, I flicked through the pages and typed out the odd string of text that caught my eye. There was no structure to begin with; all I wanted were some interesting phrases or lines of text that could be stitched together in a new sequence. The more I read, the more I found. And, after a few hours messing around with the word processor, I came up with twenty stanzas.

In the spirit of 'found poetry', I need to acknowledge my sources, of course. All the text can be found in that particular edition of Time Out, so I won't credit all the people involved. (When I say 'all the text', some of it is so well hidden I couldn't find it again when I came to scan the sections in question on Sunday evening. But I swear to Goddess it was all there on Sunday afternoon.) There's a sidebar on page 3 of the print copy which lists all the contributors.

I've preserved much of the capitalisation and most of the punctuation from the original texts. I've added one or two line breaks and removed a few others. Some of the stanzas are more ridiculous than others; none of them make any real sense. But I think it's an amusing exercise, and it got a few chuckles when I read it out in class on Monday afternoon. Here goes …

'Plastic and TV are our natural world'

or

The next eight days in full

Until 5 March a spectacular full-scale replica of
Oscar Wilde's London
Situated in a herb garret in the roof of St Thomas' church.

So, the Brits finally hit
Men with animal skulls
'I mean, has she got a face?'
Ever been a perpetrator …?

Never mind politics
in this portrait of life in a north Wales village at the
Grace Theatre at the Latchmere pub
Roy Smiles' shoestring musical spoof,
rather than being political statements,
tempts you with a promise to make it all better.

Those who received a copy of
the first season of Danger Man
Wish I hadn't …

A famous de Kooning aphorism:
Why have so many people had a charisma bypass?

London't acute shortage of
A chic Italian restaurant
Serious without being earnest
Defies easy definition.

The thing about the best road movies
If in doubt, add a serial killer.
Preview tapes were unavailable.

Controversial, we know, but
Philosopher, wit, fearless experimentalist and oddball
Pierre Boulez has marked this century both with
This bawdy, modern-day version of 'Cinderella'
and with a taut, swinging delivery.

PARACHUTING, SKYDIVING, BUNGEE
JUMPING, FLYING, GLIDING, HELICOPTERS
Denotes activity or entertainment particularly
suitable for under-fives.

Are you violent? Do you want to stop
Entering the gallery, you'd be forgiven for
Photographing naked people in city streets;
'Flesh is the reason oil painting was invented.'

The Courtauld has a splendid permanant
collection of old masters such as Rubens and
Beveridge, Watson & Crick, and Hancock.

Pentangle founder-member Jansch, one of the finest
exponents of the ornate finger-picking style he
helped popularise in the 60s
When Starr Faithfull's body was
Pronounced a delight by our
Young Gay and Lesbian Writing Workshop

Excellent and always playful,
Two physically identical girls, living in Poland
In this rich, evocative feast of puppetry and
board-game action hosted by Steve, Figs and Mike
on the main floor. Or you can revive the black leather
girl traumatised by childhood rape.

The songs themselves proffer a mildly
affectionate and very funny odyssey through
Getting Away with Murder.

The German audience and critics were
absolutely clear about it: the only film
that deserved to win Berlin's top prize
– the Golden Bear – was Wayne Wang's
Starsky and Hutch

Waxworks of the famous and infamous, now with
Ming Ming, also Nile crocodiles, rare Asiatic lions
and cubs and a large aquarium with sharks and
former Italian leader with a
child's toy arrow attached by its sucker
to his nose

For dirty, fuck-faces and elemental punk,
Exceptionally adventurous female
Jennifer Jason Leigh's filmography reads like
The best of American modernist art.

Lovely, lithe female graduate, 40
years experience as a clairvoyant, proven
slighly scatty, into real ale and good living,
bit scruffy, veggie, lefty, daunted by new capital
surroundings, looking for woman with or without
ANY NATIONALITY for long-term friendship.

Following last night's orgy of marijuana.
In the best surrealist tradition, Buñuel
involves shifting disembodied brains from
a compendium of favourite elements
and the same two old stalwarts as before.

Beirut bombshell
Abbot still a Virgin
Game for a group blind date?
Bad sex
Love and Bullets
Wee-wee in the wind
Reefer Madness
All slap and no tickle
AIDS memoirs
Next Time I'll Kill You

Solstice Silliness

In which The Author has a random afternoon in Llantrisant

A couple of months ago, I signed up to become a platelet donor with the Welsh Blood Service. This has involved making a few trips to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, just outside Talbot Green. By a happy coincidence, my Iraqi near miss Karin relocated to Talbot Green during the summer. As my first appointment was shortly after she moved, we decided to meet up near the shopping centre and walk up to old Llantrisant, high on the hill above Talbot Green. It's a medieval town in a stunning location overlooking the upper Vale of Glamorgan, with steep, winding cobbled streets lined with quaint cottages, a fine church, a guildhall (recently restored and now the town's museum), the former workhouse which is now a base for artists and craftspeople, some old-style shops, a lovely little cafe which Karin and I visited while we were there, a smattering of chapels and a handful of pubs. There's also what remains of the castle, the base of the Welsh longbowmen who became England's secret weapon at the Battle of Crécy.

Anyway, I signed up for the Llantrisant page on Facebook after our visit there. As it's only a short bus ride from Pontypridd, with regular services running into the night (for hospital visits), I started wondering about visiting the place more often. For various reasons (mainly work commitments), I haven't been able to find the time. But I put Mark Alder's new book away on Saturday lunchtime, having reached a convenient point to down tools, thus freeing up the rest of the weekend. And yesterday was a perfect excuse to visit Llantrisant again.

One of the music groups I'm connected with on social media is the Llantrisant Folk Club. They shared something a few weeks ago that caught my eye. They were planning to be out and about in the pubs with the Mari Lwyd on the weekend before Xmas. On the Sunday, in fact.

You're probably wondering what the Mari Lwyd is. Well, all will be revealed …

I checked Traveline Cymru and, lo and behold, there are buses on a Sunday. They don't exactly mesh with the trains from Aberdare, but it still made a nice afternoon a real possibility.

I set off from Aberdare on the 1053 train yesterday, with patches of blue sky and brief flashes of sunshine overhead. I arrived in Pontypridd half an hour later, leaving me time for breakfast in Thereisnospoon (opposite the station) before catching the bus. So far, so good … until I stepped onto the platform and the heel of my right boot came off. It didn't break completely, but managed to cling on by a narrow strip of material. I got as far as the pub without losing it altogether, ordered my breakfast, and managed to scrounge some duct tape from the back office. It was a running repair at least, and I knew it wouldn't last long. Then the waitress told me they'd run out of Quorn sausages, so we had to arrange a substitute breakfast. Fortunately, she was tall, slim, very pretty, with gingerish hair and a good personality, so I was quite happy to chat to her for a couple of minutes.

I left to catch the bus, just in time for the heavens to open. I didn't exactly hobble to the bus stop opposite St Catherine's Church, but the water didn't do a great deal for my temporary repair. I got on the bus, paid my £6.60 return fare to Llantrisant, and sat back to enjoy the journey which I'm starting to know now.

[A digression: £6.60 is the same price as the daily cap on Oyster card fares in Zones 1 and 2 of the Transport for London map. That buys you unlimited travel by bus, Tube, and train in a fair area of the capital. Here in Wales, it gets you a half-hour bus journey between two neighbouring towns and back again. Go figure …]

Anyway, I got off the bus at the Wheatsheaf, a pub which has recently closed down, and made my way into the centre of town. My first port of call was the local shop, where I was able to buy a roll of tape, and then I walked around to the castle and guildhall to take a few photos. But my heel was coming undone again, so I repaired (geddit?) to the nearest alehouse for a second attempt at a repair job.

I should mention that, for yesterday's expedition, I was wearing a white turtleneck sweater (a British turtleneck, not an American one), a black pleather skirt to mid thigh, black tights and my boots, which come to just below the knee. I also had on Karen's old purple velvet jacket, which she gave me when she outgrew it. I wore a skirt the day I was with Karin as well – in fact, today marks six months since I ditched the jeans and T-shirts and adopted female attire as my default option. But I didn't know how my change of image would go down in a pub in a strange town.

I strolled into the New Inn and ordered a glass of Pepsi without a murmur from any of the customers or staff. In fact, one young woman who came in with a group of friends just after I sat down told me she loved my boots. That was pretty cool, I thought.

I sat by the window, wondering what the mobile reception would be like. That solved one problem that's been preying on my mind since the start of the Vanishing Valleys photographic project (see Where Do We Draw the Line?). Llantrisant definitely isn't in the Valleys – there was excellent 4G coverage from EE. That seems to be as good a benchmark as anything else. Then I messaged Carys to let her know I'd arrived.

Carys, last seen in this blog some years ago (see Educating Nancy), is an Aberdare girl I met between finishing work and starting university. She moved with her young son to Tynant, near Beddau, a few years ago and I haven't seen her since. Like me, she also went back to university as an immature student, in her case to study Enviromental Conservation Management. She's always been passionate about green issues, so it was the perfect degree for her when she took up the reins again.

We're still in touch and, in fact, she tipped me off about last year's Mari Lwyd event. If I'd had a bit more notice (or a lift), I would have gone over. Tynant is a short drive from Llantrisant (it's even on the bus route), so it made sense for us to arrange to meet up for a pint this time. She replied, 'I love the New Inn', which was a good start. I found a corner table with two seats and watched groups of people coming in for lunch. It was really busy (unsurprisingly) and the staff were working flat out to try and cope with the orders at the bar.

Carys walked in just as I was about to get a pint. She nudged me from behind, and then we gave each other a big cwtch. She was with an older woman named Julie, whom I recognised from Carys's photos online, and a chap named Ray whom I didn't know. They are friends of Carys's from Tynant. Carys and Julie have been recognised by the local authority as Community Environmental Champions (which is how I recognised Julie). Julie bought us a round, and four people got up and left just in time for us to grab their table. I got my jacket and we sat down for a good chat.

It turned out that Julie and I have a mutual friend in the form of Rowland, the former editor of my local paper. He went on to be a press officer in the Wales Office, and then did the same role for an Assembly Member in Cardiff. Julie was a news editor with BBC Radio Wales. (It's a small world, isn't it?) She was very interested in my work, which is rather different from the sort of editing she used to do. Carys told me that Julie's involved with just about every committee you can imagine, and Carys is pretty much her protégée.

The conversation was rambling, the beer was going down a treat, the bar was full of people chatting and laughing, and then the door burst open and Carys shouted 'It's here!' That was the start of the weirdest ten minutes of the entire day.

I promised you an explanation of the Mari Lwyd. To save me the trouble, here, borrowed from Facebook, is a contemporary take on things, followed by the photos I took yesterday.

 

This silliness lasted for ten minutes or so, and was great fun to watch. I'm going to try and network in with the people from the club in the new year (because Carys is getting to know everyone around the area now) and see if we can tempt them into Jacs at some point.

Julie and Ray made their excuses and left after a second pint, so Carys and I made our way to the Bear, in the Bull Ring – the little square at the centre of the town, where the main road runs. There's a statue there of one of the town's famous Victorian inhabitants: Dr William Price. I won't try and sum up this remarkable man in a paragraph. Instead, I'll link to the official Llantrisant website, where you can read about him for yourself.
It's a great statue, and my good friend Alwyn Isaac (a very gifted artist, orginally from Tonyrefail but now living in Aberdare) did the slate carving on the information plaque. We asked a family who were coming up from the Bear if they'd take a photo of us with the good doctor. One of the daughters borrowed Carys's phone and here's the result:

Please note that I was standing on the ground and Carys was standing on the plinth. It's the first time she's ever been taller than me.

Sitting in a cosy armchair in the Bear with a pint of beer in front of her, Carys told me how her life has turned around since she moved to Tynant. When she was in Aberdare she was unemployed, taking a lot of drugs, getting into bad company, and generally losing track of her life. Since moving away (only a few miles as the crow flies), she's cleaned up her act, she's working in a local shop (for local people) and doing some bar work as well; her son Jac (now eight years old) is doing well in school; she's involved in all sorts of community activities and environmental groups. The more she told me, the more pleased for her and the more proud of her I felt. She's always been a great pleasure to spend time with, but the new positive, focused, forward-looking Carys is a true delight and an unsung Welsh success story.

I'll be spending more and more time in and around Llantrisant in 2020, with platelet donation being possible every month (not just every three months, as with whole blood donation). Depending on the clinic schedule, I might not be able to catch up with Carys every time, but we're sure to see a lot more of other now that I'm getting to know the area. It's the sort of place where you'd need a car in order to live (semi-rural, and with only Pontypridd as the nearest big town), but after yesterday I felt I could easily move there and not really miss Aberdare too much. And what's not to like about a place where a bunch of mad people take a horse's skull on a pub crawl?

28 Days Later ...

In which The Author revisits one of his earliest posts

After my unexpected change of gender at the Ben Aaronovitch book signing last month, I decided to play on the joke and embark on a new experiment.

In a very early post called Skirting the Issue, I talked quite frankly about my interest in wearing female attire from an early age. Well, I've been slowly but surely making a transition towards wearing women's sweaters and tops exclusively. I think the last time I wore a shirt or a T-shirt was before my birthday. Since then I've been restricting myself to polo necks, turtlenecks, ruffled tops, or those nice Victorian style blouses I bought on eBay a couple of summers ago. Nobody has really said anything, apart from Mother, who commented that it was unusual to see me wearing colours for a change. (It was actually black and white instead of plain black, but I knew what she meant.) In fact, last time we met up for coffee, I was wearing a pink polo neck sweater and Mother didn't say a word about my change of image.

Just over four weeks ago – two days after the Ben Aaronovitch signing – I decided to go to the next stage and wear a skirt into Aberdare on a Sunday afternoon. I had a couple of pints in the Glosters with Rebecca (who hadn't noticed my skirt until I pointed it out), then strolled over to Jacs for the Sunday band session. I think Siobhan, our Resident Blonde Barbint, was a bit taken aback, but nobody else seemed to think anything was amiss. I did get soaked while walking through town, but that's par for the course two days after the solstice.

The following day, with my clothes still drying from the downpour on Sunday, I decided to put on a different outfit: a red sleeveless polo neck under a denim mini-dress. I strolled into the library and nobody said a word about my new outfit. Then Chazza messaged me to ask if I could meet her. She'd never seen me wearing a skirt before, although she knew about my predilection for nice tops. She wasn't taken aback especially, but when we sat in the beer garden of Thereisnospoon I could tell a few people didn't know what to make of the situation. However, everyone who knows me either didn't say anything and carried on as normal, or were extremely complimentary, or were very positive and supportive.

And that's been the situation ever since. On Thursday I'd arranged to meet Chazza again, so I went to Thereisnospoon in the afternoon. That particular day I was wearing a frilled high-necked pink top and a blue denim mini skirt. My brother was there when I strolled in, and he came to join me without even batting an eyelid. Then Chazza turned up with her boyfriend Chris, and neither of them made any comment about my clothes. We had a good chat, then the three of decided that a karaoke reunion was in order. We called into the Prince of Wales for a swift one before heading to the Lighthouse, and apart from a few snide remarks from blokes with great big bushy beards, everyone took the whole thing in their stride. Because, you see, the great big bushy beards are a defence mechanism to prove to everyone that they're real men – and real men don't wear skirts, do they? Unless, of course, there's a charity pub crawl from the rugby club, a Comic Relief event, a stag night, or a works outing … then the race is on for the naughty nurse's outfit and the French maid's uniform. Funny that, isn't it?

On the Friday night I was in Jacs for a gig, still in the denim skirt and a sleeveless top. Same on the Saturday night, when I wore an ankle-length Victorian style skirt I'd found on eBay. And on Sunday it was the inaugural Jacstonbury mini-festival, so it would have been daft not to wear an adventurous outfit. That was my first time in high heels since my first student days (a fancy dress event), and I somehow managed not to twist my ankle or break my neck.

The following day, Karin and I walked up to the Dare Valley Country Park (as I told you in Just a Song at Twilight). I was wearing a denim mini-skirt when she called into the library, and she didn't look twice when I got up to fetch a map of the country park. I thought someone with her background might have been a bit freaked out, but she didn't even turn a hair. Neither did my old schoolmate John, who came over to say hello while we were sitting by the top lake. Nor did anyone else we bumped into while we were walking around for the rest of the afternoon.

Knowing that I'd managed to survive a week in feminine clothes, I decided to try and last the whole month. And I have. I've put on a skirt or a dress every morning and gone into town, either on foot or on the bus. I've managed to mix up my outfits often enough so I'm not wearing the same things every day. I put on a Victorian-style outfit (complete with a hat) for the festivities marking the 150th anniversary of Aberdare Park. The following day I wore the same skirt with a lacy top, and when Karin joined me for the afternoon gig in Jacs she told me I looked 'really nice'. (I returned the compliment, naturally.) Last week I even went for a twelve-kilometre walk with Karin, Alex and Donna, and I wore a denim mini-dress and sensible shoes – not heels; after telling off a couple who were very badly prepared for the terrain a couple of years ago, I wasn't going to ignore my own advice.

I also found a very nice dress on the sale rack in Select last week, and wore it to town the following day. To my amazement, one of the charity shops had shoes in my size, so I bought them. The young lady behind the counter, who happens to be a friend of Liam's, really liked my dress and asked me where I'd bought it. The following day I bumped into my cousin Ceri, who's been out drinking with me a few times when I've been wearing a skirt or a dress. She was (still) jealous of my legs. I've even summoned the courage to go into places where I was expecting a negative reaction – such as the new craft ale bar that my friend Ray from the Grey Trees microbrewery has opened. (Then again, we didn't get a negative reaction when the Jacs gang and I strolled in there with Karin.) However, one such place where I was expecting problems was the Glosters, I'm ashamed to say.

I've been drinking in there since I sat my A levels. Elaine, whose parents used to run the pub, is an old friend of mine. Rebecca (her daughter and former Goth barbint of this very blog) works there on Sundays and a couple of afternoons in the week. They're both sympathetic to my cause. I wasn't sure how Wayne, Elaine's brother (who now runs the place) would react. He once upset Rhian and Steff by telling them not to sit so close together, as it was upsetting the natives. In fact, I'd made a point of only calling in when I knew Wayne was unlikely to be around.

Rebecca, Elaine and I had a good chat in there one afternoon a couple of weeks ago, and Elaine was very understanding of my position. I told her I'd been avoiding the pub when Wayne was there, and she told me in no uncertain terms that it was none of his business. On Thursday last week I called in to see Rebecca and to pay my lottery, and Wayne was heading through the bar at the time. He gave me a bit of an odd look, but we said hello and it was business as usual. Same on Sunday afternoon when I called in. I don't know if Elaine had marked his card beforehand, but if she did I'm very grateful to her.

On Saturday I attended a meeting of Project Unity, the LGBT+ group which Alex set up here in Aberdare over four years ago. That was a real revelation: to meet three people who have gone a lot further down the transition road then I ever dreamed of. Even when I was an outpatient at the Gender Identity Clinic of Charing Cross Hospital – I can't refer you to my blog as it's gone for ever – the doctors I spoke to weren't sure if I was a T-girl or just a fetishistic transvestite. I'm still not sure. But following a reshuffle over the weekend, I'm now Vice Chair of the group. Considering that I've always been too nervous about attending a meeting before, it's a quantum leap forward.

I do know that I'll be sourcing at least one wig and seeking out make-up tips from Jayne B. at some point before the summer is out. By this time next year I'll probably be Stevie pretty much full time. I doubt whether I'll go as far as Bekki from Merthyr, who is taking hormones and has changed her name for legal purposes prior to the inevitable surgery, but who knows what the future holds?

All I do know is that I've survived a month in a small town with no ill effects, received wholehearted support from my friends (which I'd expected), encountered only a few nay-sayers (which I'd also expected), had surprisingly pleasant encounters with relative strangers, and failed to send my young Iraqi friend into hysterics. I'll also take some small credit for laying the path for youngsters like James, who came into the Lighthouse on Thursday wearing the most spectacular heels in the entire building. The final hurdle will be Mother, of course, but if my brother didn't give me a second look the first time we bumped into each other, and hasn't said anything since either, that really will clear the way for Stevie to finally emerge.

The Ticket That Evaporated

In which The Author encounters another glitch in the Matrix

About six weeks ago I decided to initiate Operation Motorcycle Silencer for the fourth year in a row.

Every summer Aberdare Park hosts the Welsh National Road Races, organised by the Aberaman Motorcycle Club. I don't begrudge it for a second, because it brings a welcome boost to our local economy, it's a chance for old friends to catch up and to make new friends, and it puts one of the finest Victorian municipal parks in Wales firmly on the map.

But (as you can probably imagine) it's a fairly loud affair. Even though modern bikes run a lot more quietly than their older brothers, you bring a couple of thousand of the buggers into one place and the noise level soon becomes pretty challenging. As I live literally two streets from the circuit, as often as possible I've decided to spend the Saturday as far from Trecynon as I can possibly be. The first time, in 2013, I went camping in the Forest of Dean, which was an adventure in itself. (See A Brief Interlude and the subsequent entries for details.)

In 2014 I'd just finished jury service, so I was too skint to go anywhere. I think I spent the weekend in Mother's house, far enough from town to be out of earshot. I can't remember what I did in 2015, but I must have stayed fairly local. I had a hospital appointment in London soon afterwards, and I couldn't afford to go up twice in quick succession. In 2016 Operation Motorcycle Silencer really got into its stride. Rhian and her fun-loathing then-girlfriend Steff had moved in around the corner from me, and were dreading the noise as much as I was. I suggested a day trip on the Saturday, so we'd only have to struggle through Day 2. The girls agreed that I was on to something. I booked the three of us on the coach to London, where two of us had a very enjoyable day. (No prizes for guessing who didn't.) In 2017 we repeated the exercise, as I related in Operation Motorcycle Silencer (Phases 1 & 2) – with equally mixed results. In 2018 Rhian and I still managed to get out of town by going to see the superb War Horse in Cardiff. Three years in a row is a pretty good track record.

This year posed a bit of a problem. With Steff out of the country and Rhian out of the picture, I was left to my own devices. But after receiving a 25% discount voucher from National Express, and with the latest copy-edit running on schedule, it seemed that London was a distinct possibility. I grabbed the offer and booked my ticket back in June. Or so I thought …

Anyway, I don't remember printing out my ticket, which I usually do straight away. After nearly getting my fingers burned on my birthday, when I had 3% battery life on my mobile in Trafalgar Square and an e-ticket that needed to be shown in Victoria Coach Station, I've been eschewing the paperless option. I must have been in the library when I booked the coach, so why I didn't do it straight away is a mystery. Maybe 7 June was a wayzgoose. I can't remember.

On Wednesday afternoon it dawned on me that I needed my ticket, so I logged on at a library PC and hunted through my emails for the booking confirmation. Nothing. I checked my other email inbox in cae I'd used the alternative account. Still nothing. I returned to my laptop to dig a bit further. I couldn't even find the booking on the National Express website. Then I had this email from National Express, even while I was scouring my inboxes for any sign of the ticket.

Well, that fucked everything almost as comprehensively as if Boris Johnson and Donald Trump had organised a joint birthday orgy. Let me explain …

Last time I came back from London, at the end of May, the coach took so long to get to the M4 that we had about ten minutes to spare before the last train ran down from Cathays. (The station is about a minute's walk from the Cardiff University coach stop.) However, Sophia Gardens is on the other side of town, a good twenty-minute walk from Cardiff Central, and probably the same distance from Cathays. If I'd been treating that as my destination, I think Rowland or Maria would have had an unexpected house guest for the night.

I made a note of the reference in the email and went outside to make the phone call. After a couple of minutes in a queue I spoke to a very helpful guy named Neil. I outlined the situation, and explained that Sophia Gardens wasn't a viable alternative for people travelling into the Valleys. Especially if the time margin is as tight as it was last time. Neil understood where I was coming from, and said he'd see what he could do. At which point the plot thickened even further.

Neil searched his computer and couldn't find any record of a booking under either of my email addresses. He found several previous bookings (of course) but nothing for this Saturday. I mentioned that I'd used a money-off voucher, so he checked that subsystem as well. Nothing. He asked me if I minded holding while he spoke to a colleague, which I was happy to do. After a couple of minutes he came back on the line. He asked me if I could find proof of the transaction on my bank statement. I told him I'd have to check and get back to him. Could I have paid via PayPal? Well, possibly, but once again I'd have to check and get back to him. Get ready for the next plot twist, boys and girls …

My Nationwide statement didn't show any transactions for 7 June. Neither did my PayPal account. It didn't make any difference, as – even if the ticket did mysteriously reappear – I'd have been very reluctant to gamble on that last train to Aberdare.

In a further plot twist, Karin is moving to Talbot Green next week. We're discussing plans to spend tomorrow together, probably out of Aberdare to avoid the noise. So maybe it's not a bad thing after all.

William S. Burroughs wrote a famous experimental novel, published in 1962, called The Ticket That Exploded. Well, mine was The Ticket That Evaporated. I must have taken the Red Pill on 7 June, as I'd obviously conducted the whole transaction in some virtual simulation of the Real World. I emailed Neil at National Express yesterday morning to thank him for his help and patience. I attached my Facebook screenshot and told him I hope he has a better weekend than the one I had planned. Mysterious, isn't it …?

Why Make Life More Complicated?

In which The Author installs – then uninstalls – an app

(I already had a working title for this entry, then an ad popped up on Spotify this lunchtime which absolutely fucking nailed it!)

Before Xmas last year, I decided to try and achieve one of my life's weird ambitions and learn a few useful phrases in Japanese. It's a long story which will become an entry in its own right (and possibly a stand-up comedy piece), but for now I'll cut to the chase.

A couple of months ago I was in WHSmith (that's the way the company lays out its branding these days, apparently) and I came across a Berlitz Japanese phrase book and dictionary. To be honest, I was surprised to find that in the Pontypridd branch; in South Wales, the general assumption seems to be that the world is only as large as the Schengen area, and that's only the case if you read a newspaper with big words. There were no other Japanese books available, and precious little else if you were planning to venture anywhere that uses a non-Western writing system. Anyway, I decided that £6.99 would be a reasonable price for something to reinforce the large number of online resources I'd already found.

It was only when I was looking through it on the bus home that I noticed that there was a 'Free app included'.

My regular readers already know that I have very little patience with apps, as a rule. In fact, I put something on Twitter a few weeks ago to this effect, addressed to Samsung UK. I pointed out that when the TV ads for smartphones and tablets show a customer shooting through a complex procedure in mere seconds, and the subtitles say 'sequences shortened', they really aren't fucking joking.

In fact, I nearly abandoned an eBay purchase a few weeks ago, when not only would my phone not let me log into my eBay account (for which I'd changed the password merely seconds before), but it wouldn't let me log into my PayPal account either. I'd used PayPal ten minutes earlier to order a drink in Thereisnospoon, and it was set to One Touch login, so I shouldn't have needed to log in at all. Go fucking figure …

Anyway, back to this shitty Berlitz app. It's called Talk&Travel, and according to the inside cover of the book, this is what I needed to do to activate it:

1. Download the free container app called Talk&Travel Berlitz from the App Store or Google Play or visit our website at: www.berlitzpublishing.com/en/apps and follow the link to the App Store or Google Play.
2. Launch the app and open the Catalog screen. Scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see the 'Enter code' field.
3. Enter the code printed below in your book and tap 'Activate'.
4. Download the phrase book and enjoy your digital copy.

Well, that all sounds fine and dandy, doesn't it? And it was – until I actually downloaded the app. Needless to say, things were fucked up from the outset.

Instead of 'Enter code' being at the bottom of the Catalog Screen, it's a separate entry on the main menu. Once I'd found it, I entered the code very carefully, double-checked it, and got a message telling me it was 'invalid'. Quelle fucking surprise, eh?

I tried again. And again. Same result. What's the definition of insanity again?

I searched online and found contact details for the Tech Support people. So I sent them an email:

Hi I recently purchased the Berlitz Japanese phrase book and dictionary (UK edition, ISBN 978 178 004 497 2). This morning I installed the Talk&Travel app on my fully updated Samsung Galaxy J5, but have been unable to get the app to accept the code printed in the inside back cover of the book. I have looked at the Berlitz website, which has no useful advice. A second online search produced your contact details. Please advise. Thanks. Steve O'Gorman

A few minutes later I had an automated acknowledgement, followed soon afterwards by an email from a living, breathing Tech Support person. I think …

Dear Steve, Your support ticket #270423 has been answered by Alexander Bryzgalov. Dear Steve, Thank you for contacting Paragon Software Support Team! My name is Alexander and I will be handling your support request. Please accept our sincere apologies. Send us your purchase confirmation for the dictionary please (a receipt photo), if possible. I would find there some additional information I need in this case. Send us the photos of the top page and the page with the code too, please. Could you attach a screenshot showing the error? Best regards, Alexander Bryzgalov

Well, what's a guy to do?

Hi Alexander I bought the book brand new from WHSmith in Pontypridd, South Wales, some weeks ago. It is extremely unlikely that I still have the receipt, as I had assumed (stupidly) that an app advertised within its pages would work easily and in a straightforward manner, first time, without any need to fuck around by emailing customer service people based halfway across the world. That'll teach me an important lesson, won't it? I'm sincerely sorry for wasting your – and what is much more important, my – time. Steve O'Gorman

This morning I had an email telling me that my file had been closed. I don't really care, because on further reading it transpires that the app is only a six-month free trial anyway. I'd have had to pay for further use, and I bet by then I'll have found something far more useful and comprehensive.

We're less than six months from the year 2020, for fuck's sake! Surely these problems should have been ironed out at least a decade ago, never mind getting past beta testing stage and being unleashed on the general public. Is it any wonder that my brother smashed up his old faithful Thickphone halfway through a 'customer service' call a couple of weeks ago? Can you blame him – the new head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Department – for turning his back on technology as much as possible? The older I get, the more tempted I am to do the same thing.