Skip to main content

Floxinoxinihilipilification

Life moves on a pace, don't it?

In just a few days, I have written down more words in more places than I have done in weeks, fulfilled the role of removal man, taught Littlest how to make cassoulet, eaten more mother's day chocolate than I care to admit, scoured lists of literary agents, reduced the list of agents, resolved to shrink it more, stopped procrastinating (although, arguably, this blog is procrastination - but writing while enjoying a coffee is better than staring blankly into space while enjoying a coffee) and watched the lives of those around me evolve, as they embark upon the changes that will define their next few years.

An undoubted pleasure of growing older is observing the exciting and changing lives of our younger loved ones. I feel that their lives move faster than mine did at their age. They are bombarded with instant information. Instant answers. Instant maps. Instant suggestions about where to eat, which friend is nearby, what movie is showing right now. Information completely inaccessible to a younger me or that could only have been found after hours spent in libraries (not the friend nearby bit obviously. Back in the not-even-too-distant past, we either bumped into friends or were frustrated at missing them. Does coincidence happen any more? Is deja vu perhaps diminishing as everything is premeditated,  informed and consequently unsurprising?)

Intelligence today is both artificial and fast. And moving faster all the time. It's not an urban myth that the computer programmers of today will be out of date in two years time - it's true. How are mere mortals meant to keep up? Especially, if they are older mere mortals.
This older mortal is fairly happy to be left behind. As long as I have heard of things and have a rough understanding of what they might do, I am not too fussed if I have no idea how it works. Technology becomes imbued with all the nuances of magic - that I can chat to my niece on the other side of the world, take a photograph with my phone and send it to my son, pinpoint my position on a map on my phone when I've surfaced from the London tube too soon and am lost and use it to find my way, is as much magic to me, as the magic of wizards in story books. As long it works and I can make it work, I'm happy.

Worthless and not important? - the technology that speeds us up, races away, throwing open endless possibilities, confuses us because it constantly presents us with too much choice - yes and no. In my opinion, technology in communications and medicine is utterly, unbelievably brilliant and exciting beyond measure. Smart pills that measure and fine tune diabetic control, 3-D printed prostheses that exactly fit the patient, and phone apps to catch heart arrhythmias are all here, already, and on the horizon are new therapies that literally blow the mind (well, they blow mine). But anyone who watched Comic Relief last Friday knows that across Africa people still die because they don't have clean water to drink, or mosquito nets to prevent malaria, or the medicines and vaccines that we take for granted. And it's not just Africa. Across the world millions of people who care not that it is possible to turn your heating on via an app on your phone when you begin the commute home from work. And who don't fret that they might not have time to watch all their recorded television programmes. And who don't worry that they've lost a few Twitter followers in the past 24 hours. And who aren't posting Instagram pictures of themselves every five minutes. And who have no idea what a selfie-stick is. Sometimes, we need to remember that if we have a roof over our heads and regular food to eat, we sit within the richest 1% of the earth's population. Yes! That's probably everyone out there reading this.

Floxinoxinihilipilification is the longest non-scientific word in the English dictionary. Too long for everyday use. Its definition is 'declaring something to be worthless and not important.' Ranting about it even. We perhaps forget our humanity if we obsess too much about our personal technology. Once in a while, we need to be reminded that there are other things that are more important.

http://www.comicrelief.com




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!

Tut, Tut, soggy feet again

"Tut, Tut, looks like rain." Tut, Tut probably isn't the first thing that springs to mind when viewing this picture. And faced with bleak weather and a sad-looking symbol of national pride it is unlikely that many would consider a small bear  a personage of sufficient gravitas to quote. However, Walking the Dog was in Scotland ( was rather than is, because was there last week without internet). And Walking the Dog likes Pooh. That sort of Pooh - the sort with an 'h' at the end. A. A. Milne had a lot to say about the weather. He gave Eeyore my favourite weather-related observation , "The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually." And last Thursday, it did stop. Long enough for Littlest and I to walk to our pooh-sticks bridge. Long enough for us to get half way there, along the grassy path. Long enough for us to chat to the cows (we had to shout as they stubbornly stayed at the distant end of the fie