Headphones and smart phone – twin pillars of gateway to enlightenment

‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’ By the time I realised Hermione was trying to make contact, her voice had risen to be a shout. Her normally dulcet tones were cranked up to distorted high volume. Usually, just one softly murmured word from her sweetest of sweet lips suffices to gain my undivided attention. However, I was lost in a stream of statistics. I was swimming in the tide of data unleashed by an historian attempting to calculate the number of deaths to be laid at the door of China’s long-time leader Mao Tse Tung - and I was serenely oblivious to all around me.

My dear wife’s call eventually penetrated the analysis of fatal effects of collectivisation on the peasant classes in the People’s Republic. I put aside the headphones which had been donned the better to follow the intricacies of an approach the academic called ‘population deficit assessment’.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I am wondering whether Mao’s actions may be blamed on the mindless application of political principle. I feel it more likely the megalomania of a natural dictator was at play.’

‘No, I mean what are you doing?’

This was, it began to dawn on me, a reasonable question. After all, when Hermione left the house two hours earlier, the place was in a state of order and tidiness. She returned with her load of groceries to find the kitchen floor strewn with tins of everything from chick peas and chicken broth to prunes and pilchards. The tins were joined by jars containing such delights as ketchup or curry sauce, as well as a scattering of packets of pasta.

‘I just thought I would tidy the larder press,’ I explained cheerfully. Had I been a puppy, my tail would have been wagging.

‘In our twenty years living together, you have never previously shown any interest whatsoever in tidying the larder press.’

‘Well, it just occurred to me that there must be a better system for stacking everything we keep in the larder press. You know how difficult it is to find anything in the larder press and how the larder press is always full to bursting point.’

Darling Hermione is far too sweet of nature to display anything as mean-spirited as scorn but on this occasion she went close. ‘And you call this a system?’ she gestured at the jumble of tins. ‘It is a bit like Mao’s Long March, likely to take some time,’ I riposted bravely, though confidence was fading.

‘The larder press would surely not be bursting if you did not insist on buying loads of stuff that we will never eat.’ She picked up a jar of Guatemalan salsa mix, waving it in my face. The puppy’s tail was stilled.

‘I shall now leave the house for an hour. When I come back at the end of that hour, I shall expect this room to be exactly as it was at the start of the day in each and every particular.’

She turned on her heel, departing in search of coffee and a Danish pastry with one of her buddies, leaving me to scoop up everything that has been hauled out on to the floor.

I pulled the headphones back in place over my ears and re-submerged in the dialectics of the one party state as mediated by the exigencies of Far Eastern politics in the aftermath of World War Two.

So to this day the larder press remains full to bursting point and it is harder than ever to find whatever is needed. However, in an effort to relieve the pressure, I am planning a Guatemalan salsa night when guests will be invited to join us in the dining hall at Medders Manor for a feast of obscure foods from around the globe…

It occurs to me that the yard could do with a thorough sweeping. That the CD collection should be put in alphabetical order. That there is a train set somewhere in the attic to be located and assembled.

For I have discovered the world of podcasts, a universe of entertainment and education to which entry is gained via the internet.

I may sweep while listening to dramatised tales of Sherlock Holmes. I may ponder whether to file Led Zeppelin under L or under Z while absorbing an obituary of Maureen O’Hara. And there could be no better accompaniment to model railway tinkering than an introduction to organic chemistry for beginners. Headphones and smart phone are twin pillars of the gateway to enlightenment.