remembrance

Santa brought my family its first computer on Christmas Day 1984. I was 8, though for some reason it feels like I should have been 7. It was a Macintosh 512, affectionately referred to as the 'Fat Mac'. We got a subscription to Macworld and a bunch of programs as well. My mom spearheaded the integration of this strange new machine into the household while my dad stood back and embraced the ways of the luddite, as he still does to this day. I looked on in wonder and excitement, using the new machine at every opportunity, curious as to why my MacPaint creations never looked as awesome as the sample art. Swapping floppies became habit. Boston Mac User Group (BMUG) discs littered the desk. I begged for a LaserWriter but instead we got an ImageWriter II.

At school I used Apple II's and Basic to make shapes with a turtle.

At home I designed posters and wrote screenplays based on me being Indiana Jones. And I played Lode Runner. A huge amount of Lode Runner.

After an upgrade to 1Mb of RAM could only take us so far and so we used my cousin's educational discount and bought a Macintosh SE. That had an internal hard drive, which blew my mind. Swapping floppies was relegated to installs only. My mother wrote a cookbook on that machine. It was that machine that came with us to London when we moved in 1989.

My first Mac was a Classic II. I got it my junior year of High School. By then Tetris had replaced Lode Runner as my gaming addiction. That was followed by an LCIII, a Centris 610 (hand-me-down), a PowerMac 7100/66 (also hand-me-down), a PowerBook G3 250, a PowerBook G3 Pismo, a PowerBook G4, an iBook G4, a black MacBook and now the 15" MacBook Pro that I'm writing this on. I had the first iPod and quite a few subsequent iPods - Shuffles, Nanos and a Classic, but never a Mini. I'm on my third iPhone and I use an iPad regularly. I've never owned a PC.

In the summer of 1997, my mother and I drove from Key West to Washington DC. We listened to a lot of NPR and tried to identify road kill along the way. I remember saying that she and dad should, if they had the money, invest in Apple. The stock was trading at about $12 a share at the time. This was before the iMac. Steve Jobs had only just returned to the company and the future was uncertain to say the least. My mom asked why and I said, 'They make the best computers. Someone's going to have to notice that eventually. And it looks like Steve Jobs is going to help people notice that.'

Every step of my education and subsequent professional life has been processed on Macs. Writing, web design, general design, photography, project management and wine merchanting have all been made a little more comprehensible, a little more pleasurable, a little more manageable because I have faith and confidence in the tools I use.

Last night I was drinking whisky with friends when one stopped mid sentence and handed me his iPad with the news splash of Steve Jobs' death. I took to Twitter and saw a steady stream of reactions to the news. We poured another dram and spoke in saddened awe. I couldn't sleep when I got home and so wandered online, reading testimonial after testimonial.

Steve Jobs built the company that makes the tools I use and trust. He did it remarkably. He built another company that makes movies I love. The tools that forged the World Wide Web were built by yet another company of his. The sheer scale of his accomplishments is daunting. He changed the world in not one but several fields. For the better, and without question better than the alternatives. A future without him driving forward innovation, shaping the advancements of technology so that it actually matters to people, seems a sad prospect.

It seems selfish, really, to mourn the loss of someone who has done so much because, in part, I wanted there to be more.

Rest in peace, Steve. And thank you.

mystery meal

I've not seen a single mosquito since I arrived in France.

I have seen several spiders, though none that would shake my proud defiance of arachnophobia. The occasional wasp has made an appearance. Well, more than occasional, as the unfermented grape must at harvest is perhaps their favourite meal. Ant spottings, especially in the garden, are not uncommon.

To be honest, there have been a fair few bugs kicking about. They crawl and buzz about their business and seem to enjoy the late summer and vintage time as much as I do. It's a menagerie of arachnids and arthropods.

Except for mosquitos.

They don't seem to enjoy it all, because they don't seem to be anywhere.

What does seem to be here, in abundance, are mosquito bites. Both feet, both legs, both arms and both hands; riddled with mosquito bites. There's even one below my left cheek at the moment, lending a certain teenager-with-a-zit quality to my visage. In the wee hours of the morning I wake to find myself scratching bites until they bleed.

So, no. I've not seen a single mosquito since I arrived in France.

But I'm pretty sure they're here.

early morning airports

Prestwick in the wee hours is becoming something of a familiar scene for me. The tortured breakfast buffet steams away; watery bacon, leather-coated sausages and fried eggs shaped like hockey pucks all await hungry travellers with scant regard for nutritional value. I shamefully acknowledge my own dietary crimes and settle into some of that watery bacon and leathery sausage. Yes, even the hockey puck egg. I wash it all down with fruit juice in a vain attempt to cleanse the grease and my conscience.

After breakfast I sit near the bar and try some writing to kill time. The bar is, and this is not a joke, called the Elvis Presley Bar. Sadly, it's not as tacky as it's name suggests. In fact, it's fairly subdued and irksomely tasteful. Well, as tasteful as a bar in Prestwick can be. Perhaps antiseptic is a better word for it. In any case, the disappointment continues: there are no deep-fried bacon, banana and peanut butter sandwiches on the menu. I'm pretty sure it would have been healthier than the breakfast I just ate, fruit juice or no.

Everyone with a paper reads a red-top tabloid. They skim the pages, scanning the pictures and perhaps a headline or two, but never seem to read anything. A fair few pints are sipped, and I confess that were I not working on the other end of my flight, I would nurse one myself.

There's something staged about this place. It looks like the departure lounge in a cheap tv show, the sort of thing you watch and think, 'that's not what real airports look like'. The scruffiness of it all, the shops, the bar, the breakfast buffet, the passengers (yours truly included), is the only thing convincing me that Ross isn't about to run in and stop Rachel from getting on a plane.

I might succumb and grab a pint anyway. It may help me sleep on the flight.

splattered

I own a lot of t-shirts. They sit, folded with reasonable competence, in three piles, on the top shelf of my closet. Two of the piles are the t-shirts I wear regularly, pretty much everyday. Those are the two front piles and they're stacked high. The shirts in those piles are varied - some are beer freebies, many are Red Sox tees, and quite a few possess quirky graphics or phrases that appeal to whatever mood I was in when I bought them. I like my t-shirts to have some sort of meaning to me. I don't know why.

The third pile is smaller and sits in their shadow. I have to take out one of the other piles to get to them. Those shirts are not worn everyday, or even monthly. They get worn pretty much once a year.

Technically speaking, they're clean. They've been thoroughly laundered and detergent, be it Ecover, Bold or Persil, has done all it can for them. They don't look clean. The white ones, if they can still be called that, bear the full brunt; splattered and smeared with uneven blotches of grey, black and jaundiced brown, front and back, sleeve and chest and belly, looking for all the world as though I'd slaughtered something long ago whilst wearing them.

I didn't slaughter anything. Honest.

It's the mark of grapes in their thousands and perhaps millions.

Out came that third pile this morning. I lay them on my bed, smiled, refolded each one and packed them tightly into my duffel bag. Each one has three vintages worth of winemaking stains so deeply pummelled into the fabric that they must be now a part of it. Tomorrow I'll start pummelling the fourth vintage into them, and I couldn't be happier about it.

umbrellas and a sax

The Red Sox were losing to the Brewers. The cat slept at the bottom of my bed, wrapped up in a ball on his side, breathing softly and occasionally uttering a sleepy grumble. I sipped a Sam Adams and watched as the Red Sox gathered hits but couldn't convert them into runs. I had my headphones on; it was about 2am. My phone refreshed my Twitter feed and I saw the news and the ballgame drifted away. Clarence Clemons, the Big Man, had died following a stroke.

I wrote this almost two years ago, still giddy from the gig. Two years later and the image of the sax under guard still shines bright in my mind: the mass of beautiful, twisted metal, polished so that it almost glowed in spite of the still-lingering rain clouds, requiring not one but three guards - one just to hold the umbrella. The man himself: immense, clad entirely in black and with all the presence and more mystery than the Boss himself. I considered myself lucky then and privileged now. Rest in peace, Big Man.

ice packs and jimmy buffett lyrics

It's sunny today, in spite of the big rain clouds. There's an occasional shower, but it doesn't last. The breeze is a mere wheeze compared to the gales that have hit of late.

With these things in mind, I stretched out this afternoon and went for a run. Town seemed reasonably quiet. There was the odd dog-walker on East Sands and a bit of traffic here and there, but not all that many folks. I was able to cross the Old Course without yielding to a drive from the first hole or a final whack to the eighteenth. My pace felt good and the sun felt better as I ran behind the dunes, along the grass down to the end of West Sands. I passed some folks with tricycles attached to sails folding their kit onto the back of a trailer. I imagined the mildness of the breeze annoyed them as much as it pleased me. They were young, brightly attired and wearing scarlet safety helmets.

By the time I reached the last flag on the beach and turned back towards home my mind set itself on my writing, turning over issues of prose and plot as my legs retraced my steps. It's one of the few times I can ponder my words while listening to lyrics by someone else. In this case it was the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and Blink 182: good running tunes. Turning from the entrance to the beach to follow the Bruce Embankment, my mind had drifted to nothing in particular. The blue of the sea, the brightness of the sky, the enormity of the odd rain cloud. I dodged the odd pedestrian and wheezed a 'thank you' or 'cheers' if they took evasive action.

And then I got to the car park and something at the bottom of my calf popped. I ran with a limp for a few more steps and it got worse, so I stopped. I stretched it out as best I could for about a minute. I jogged lightly for another few steps and it seemed better. Everything else felt brilliant - runner's high, six and a bit miles in, muscles, lungs, all of it good. I stretched again. I could see the restaurant I used to work at, my old boss, my old colleagues and a wine rep I knew sitting at the window, right along my route (which, at that point, was all uphill).

I ran again, waved at my audience as I puffed out my chest and tried to look somewhat fitter than I am. At the top of the hill I walked for another fifty yards before once again attempting a light trot. That was the last straw. I don't run with a phone; if I did, I would have phoned someone.

I hobbled the last two-thirds of a mile home, petrified that I'd torn the most notorious of tendons. My only consolation was that there wasn't any pain to speak of, just the threat of it. I also took grim comfort in the thought that if I had torn my tendon, even hobbling would have been too much.

Now there's an ice pack under my calf and achilles, I'm staring out the window at the glorious afternoon and Jimmy Buffett's 'Growing Older But Not Up' is running through my head:

Crack went my leg, 
like the shell of an egg, 
someone call a decent physician

...

Though my mind is quite flexible,
These brittle bones don't bend.

It wasn't a crack at least, it was a pop.

edge of distraction

I think the mackerel are back. I'm neither a marine biologist nor a fisherman, yet I feel confident in my hunch. Staring out my window to the steel-grey, wind-swept waters of St Andrews Bay, I see two great clouds of gulls dive-bombing the choppy whitecaps. Their method is entrancing. They fly in an arc, vaguely parallel to the water (though not perfectly, it is an arc) and when something under the surface catches their eye they pivot and tuck their wings in, dropping like a rock, or a lawn dart. Does anyone remember lawn darts? In any case, there's quite a big splash and if they're lucky, these feathered lawn darts emerge with a fish for their trouble. It sounds simple, and yet the sight of three hundred odd birds doing this in cyclical perpetuity, or as long as the fish are there, is striking. My brain wants to find some sort of pattern in the attack, though there is none. The birds don't take turns and so no rhyme nor reason emerges. And still I look for one, regardless. I wonder if it would be harder to break my gaze if I found a pattern, or if it's the search that keeps me looking.

As distractions go, I prefer gulls fishing to the temptations of Facebook and Twitter. All too frequently does 'one more look' become 15 or 20 minutes of my life I shall never recover, undoubtedly providing less wonder and insight than lawn-dart birds harassing schools of oily fish.

Distractions are a danger at the moment, no matter how much wonder and insight I can convince myself I've found. I've cast aside my traditional safety nets and in no particular order, I need to start a new book, redraft the last book, find jobs to apply for and continue to harass agents. I'll never be able to reconcile whether I'm a writer or a professional wine geek if I cannot find the motivation to excel at both.

And so it's time to pivot and tuck in my wings, plunging into cold grey water and sloppy metaphors.

high waves

The surf is high today, but there's little wind. It's leftover movement from yesterday's gales. The sun peaks out, bright and glorious in the hope that winter is almost gone, and then disappears again, hidden behind a range of towering clouds. The rain's stopped, for now, and there seems no end to the dog-walkers on the beach.

The cat sits on pages of my manuscript strewn along the dining room table. He noses an empty bottle of IPA and then sits up and stares. He's happy to be where something's happening, though it's nothing to do with him.

I sip jasmine tea and look at my list of literary agents and their submission requirements. I want more coffee, but I don't want to get too wired. Hence the jasmine. I have two or three draft letters on the go at any given time. I've been here before, but it's not the same.

Twitter and Facebook and chat and email are all switched off. I listen to music without lyrics. I stare out the window and empty my head of all that's not there. There's a line of small birds stood in the silver sheen of wet sand just above the crashing waves. I want them to be sandpipers, but I've no idea what they are. Ornithology's not my thing, though I do know a heron when I see one.

A lone surfer walks up the beach from the water, back to the parking lot. I think I'd rather write letters to literary agents than surf in Scotland in February, and that's saying something.

something written

I'm a little on edge. Two cups of jasmine tea have done nothing to calm me. I finished editing the submission chapters for my book about an hour ago. It's been a long time coming. There are still things to do (the rest of the manuscript needs work) and there are cover letters still to write, and then they have to be posted and stuff. Oh, and then there's the onslaught of inevitable rejection letters. But this is a start. A good start to the year. It's not quite the end-of-January deadline I set for myself initially, but it isn't the vague sometime-in-the-future-before-summer-maybe deadline that replaced it either. I'll take it. And I'll write the letters tomorrow.

I think I might need a whisky.

waiting for laundry

For reasons best known to no one in particular, I'm doing laundry at half past midnight. Not just any laundry, mind, but my bed linens, meaning that my nightly refuge is bare and I'm growing increasingly sleepy. This sleepiness is not aided by either Bach's Works for Trumpet or my remaining dregs of Lagavulin, though that is my company right now. It's good company, irksomely relaxing though it may be.

I had vague hopes of getting some editing done, but editing is not for this time of night. This time of night is where things that will eventually require editing are created. Red pens and rewrites require the harsh light of day and a sober, conscious temperament. These witching hours, for me anyway, see the beginnings of writing. Ideas in their most basic, sentence-fragmented form peek out at the world, triggered by a stumbling of awkward synapses. I need a pen or a keyboard or else I'll just forget them.

And so I'm sitting at my desk, battering out a blog post and keeping one ear on the drier in hopes that it does its magic before I have to pour myself another dram. There are a couple of new docs open, with sentences here and there that will no doubt need examining in tomorrow's refreshed clime.

The cat's asleep on my naked duvet. He doesn't care if it has a cover.