A TIME OF ENDINGS

This last few days seems to have turned into a bit of a time for endings for me. Before you get all concerned or anything (as if you would), I’m not referring to any major personal disasters or anything significantly dramatic like that, nor has (as far as I know) my “status” (as it seems to insist upon being referred to nowadays) shifted in any discernable way, it’s just that the wheel of life seems to be turning to a new cycle, the page turning and other metaphors that probably don’t bear closer examination are doing their thing.

Perhaps it’s the time of year. The equinox passes and the cricket season ends to be replaced, with substantial overlaps with the footballing one and, for some bizarre reason, despite the fact that the blazing heat of the summer should be transforming into the dull greys of a damp and soggy autumn, the reverse seems to be happening in the meteorological world, which will no doubt lead to much confusion in our own biorhythmic cycles, as well as for those in the natural world.

Will the squirrels fail to start hoarding their nuts? Will the birds start to lay eggs that cannot possibly hatch? Will the flowers start to bloom and the trees return to bud? Will all those enormous spiders scuttle back into their warm little nooks, only to return even bigger and stronger when the cold comes back again…?

I’m going to need a bigger bowl…

This unexpected “warm spell” could catch us all out. I went to have a haircut last week, which meant an ending for my old hairstyle (if you can call it a “style”…) and the entire salon was baking in the heat, and dressed as if on holiday, although I was reliably informed by the chap who wrangles my remaining tresses that it was “hotter here than Portugal” from which he’d just returned from a weekend’s “stag” do.

Doesn’t anybody just go to the pub any more for such celebrations…? Is everyone else just made of money…? Or does he just hang out with a wealthier crowd of people than I don’t…?

As I arrived at the hairdressing emporium, they had all of their shutters down, and I began to suspect that they’d relocated without telling me, but it was just their only way of keeping the sun from turning the place into an oven because the heat was being unexpectedly combined with the sun being ever so low in the sky at a time of year when its effects would normally be safely hidden behind the slate grey of our “normal” weather…

For the same reason, those of us who are motorists, cyclists and pedestrians are having to take extra care to look out for each other as the sun remains right in all of our eyelines at just those times of day when there’s the most of us about.

I wonder if the seasons as we know them are gone forever, or whether this is just some kind of a “blip”. It’s certainly become noticeable that April now seems to be turning into the “best” month of the year, although I also notice that various comments I read at the end of August which were lamenting our so-called British Summer and how dreadful it was, seem to have forgotten all about what they were saying as they bake merely one month later.

So, what has all this got to do with endings, then? Probably very little, except for the fact of the time of the year, but there seems to have been a lot of them happening, at least for me, lately. There are the obvious ones that I’ve already mentioned on other days, like the ending of one kind of professional lifestyle to have it replaced with another. Basically, if it needed explaining further, my company now has premises that I am required to work in, rather than letting me work in my own home. To be fair, having all of us "remote workers" based in an office has been the plan since I was interviewed three and a half years ago, but it kind of kept getting fobbed off, not least because there was no real advantage to it.

However, as you'll already be aware, the graphics industry keeps on evolving (other theories are available...) and the nature of the work and projects we are expected to do requires much in the way of mutual training and co-operation, so the plans have finally been put into action and there we are.

This brings me to another ending, as, with Apple’s introduction of “Lion” as its new and “improved” operating system, my beloved “FreeHand” software is no longer being “supported” and must finally be consigned to the dustbin of history and I must learn new and alternative ways of doing my old familiar work. Back in the old days, when I felt that I still had something useful to contribute and was vaguely cutting edge, I found exploring new programmes rather exhilarating, and was rather “good” at it, for what it was worth.

Nowadays when I open up a new software package and just go “Wibble!”

A lot.

Meanwhile I'd just like to pause and reflect for a moment on the final demise of FreeHand, which is still, to my mind, and to the many others who learned to love its simple majesty, one of the finest graphics software packages that there was. At least, I suppose, it’s rather nice to report that it did, at least, “go up to 11” which is, I suppose, significant, if only in a “Spinal Tap” kind of a way…

Then there’s the passing of Blinky, which I’ve also mentioned at length elsewhere, the ending of another year’s “Doctor Who” which was rescheduled to take advantage of the darker autumnal evenings and ended up being broadcast on the hottest October day on record, and the departure of the much-loved Gordon Burns from “NorthWest Tonight” which I actually found all rather moving when it finally came. Being a bit of a blubberer myself at such times in my own life, I really don’t know how they get through such emotional transitions with a great big camera shoved in front of their faces. I suspect that in similar circumstances I’d’ve just “cried off” and not turned up for my last day, but then I always was a bit of a coward when it comes to goodbyes.

Remember this when I finally decide to pack in this blogging lark, won’t you…?

I suspect we’ll all get rather used to these media departures over the next few weeks as the BBC shuffles its packs and implements its relocations, but I hope that they’ll be handled with as much dignity as that one was.


We’re coming to the end, my friend,
We’re coming to the end.
There’s only so much time to spend,
We’re coming to the end.