THE PHILLIPS PROBLEM

I admit that I'm struggling with this simplification business. It's not easy to keep my hands out my pockets and my purse in my bag when there are so many nice things everywhere, like new gadgets to make my life easier – except that easier isn't necessarily the same as simple.

It feels like it should be, though. Doesn't it? For instance, I would love an iPad. It would be so convenient – it's small enough to carry around, and has a battery designed to be carried around, and is therefore a lot more practical to carry around than my laptop, which dies quite fast when not plugged into mains.  But is it any simpler than what I already have? A smartphone and a laptop – and for emergencies, a notebook, pen and paperback? Is Kindle really simpler than old-fashioned paper books?

Certainly it's smaller and simpler to pack. But I'd be wary of reading in the bath or by the pool with a Kindle. Last time I checked, water and technology didn't get on too well. That was, after all, the tragic fate of my first smartphone. Yes, ink runs when wet and paper never dries quite flat, but if the book gets splashed, it's still readable. But the biggest problem with technology is that it becomes redundant so fast – there's always a newer, faster, better model being launched, and we can't even read computer code from a few decades ago, so how much will we have lost in another twenty years? At least books will still be in a recognisable language when their e-counterparts (and this blog) no longer load (or load as gibberish) because the coding is no longer supported by new platforms and programming.

Phillips in particular advertises that it creates simple solutions to life's problems. Call me cynical, but there has to be a catch or a lie in that – there's nothing all that simple about technology. Forget the problems of computer coding and its directional compatibility (ever noticed just how polysyllabic computer jargon is?), look at a car or a motorbike. More and more, they're run by computer chips. And computers, as we all know to our frustration, are temperamental little beasts. So our means of transport, including an increasing amount of public transport, are being controlled by machines that crash unpredictably, are constantly outdated and require specialist repair skills. It's all a far cry from the Citroen 2CV, for which the brief was very specific that it must be fixable using tools the average farm had. To me the Citroen is simpler – uglier, messier, noisier, less sleek and minimalist in appearance, but simpler in execution.

I like to have a certain amount of understanding of the gadgets in my life, so when they break down, I have more patience and better idea of how to fix them (CTRL ALT DEL, and hope to hell I hit save in the last five minutes). The trouble with a lot of new technology, especially computers, is that looks simple, the user-interface has become simple, and the working parts are hidden and inaccessible without knowing the secret – the key combination that will lift the veil when things go pear-shaped. This is simplicity of appearance, not of execution.

Having said all that, I would still love an iPad.

SIMPLICITY DE LUXE...?

I am a Deco girl. I admit it, I love Art Deco and its era – those wonderfully glamourous inter-war years of bull markets and excess and recklessness. It was a hell of an age, if you think about it, from the rebalancing of power with the enfranchisement and increasingly widespread employment of women, to Carter's discoveries in the Valley of the Kings. As usual, France started it with the Exhibition Moderne in 1925, from which we date Art Deco as a style, even if it wasn't called that then.

But when I look at Deco, especially early Deco, before the advertisers got hooked on the 'streamlining' thing, i have to wonder how on earth I can begin to say it's simple, or compatible with my stated aim of simplifying my life.

Deco is a style hung up on the exotic, on Africa, from Egypt's ancient treasures to safaris and big game, on Asia and the Orient. Yes, travel was, with giant steamers and the advent of Henry Ford's (relatively) affordable motorcar, suddenly a whole lot more possible for a lot of people, and there was wide world out there to explore. This obsession Deco has with travel might make it rich and fun and all things “luxe” but it doesn't make it simple or minimalist.

Of course, what we generally categorise as the Deco period covers the Great Depression as well. That didn't tone it down. It's when the mood is one of hardship and depression that Deco comes into its own: it's escapist, it offers affordable dreams of colour and light and style and luxury which are probably no less enjoyable for being merely dreams. We dream of what we desire but do not yet have, after all. (And having it, we no longer desire it – this is the eternally exploitable conundrum of humanity which keeps advertisers and manufacturers solvent).

Besides, designer Deco was for the rich, and when did a recession ever bite them to the bone? The rich, especially the super-rich, of whom there plenty in the inter-war years, always seem to manage to stay wealthy through these economic storms. While designer Deco was there for them, the rest of the world had knock-off high-street Deco. Clarice Cliffe crockery, all bright colours and modern, trendy shapes, was within the reach of most of the middle-classes. The radio revolution saw deco wireless sets enter more and more ordinary homes. The Great Depression may have nudged Deco down a slightly different route, but it didn't do it any harm.

So, knowing all of this, how can I still instinctively feel that Deco is a simple style? Is it the clean lines and simple shapes like a fresh breeze after the gothic fussiness of Victoriana? Or is it, actually, all about the very obsession with movement that makes Deco so hung up on the exotic? The feeling of just packing up and going, somewhere, anywhere, no matter the destination as long you travel, and travel in style.

(Don't tempt me. I would love to give in to that urge to just pack up and go, see the world, visit all the places I've not yet been. It's only the damn bills that stop me).

Travel, by definition, demands a certain simplicity – you can't fit your entire wardrobe into your suitcase, nor should you try to. Travel requires a hacking away of the unessential, and the more your travel, the better your definition of the unessential becomes. (I am already making mental packing lists for my bike trip in summer. Alas, all the lists in the world won't prevent a luggage space problem, which will require a rethink of the unessential).

Travel then was easier – borders weren't so tightly controlled and terrorism wasn't yet an issue. And journeys took longer. Flight was still in its infancy and aircraft didn't have much range before requiring landing and refuelling. It was all such a great adventure, made at a human pace, before we invented jet-lag. The diaries of the explorers of the age reflect this slower, simpler world; this enjoyment of the journey and their encounters, mundane and small, with the exotic.

Maybe this is where my love of Deco and simplicity can meet – in those wonderful lines and curves and exotic patterns and materials and rich colours – just fewer of them. And thus all the easier to pack in my suitcase.

RED ROSES AND BLEEDING HEARTS

I don’t like Valentines Day. Not because I’m single, or anti-romance, but because I don’t think V-day is actually romantic. Don’t get me wrong – I like getting presents, and flowers, and generally being spoiled rotten. I am a normal human, after all. It’s just Valentines I don’t like.

Call me high-maintainance, but if you’re going to give me flowers, I’d like it to be because you want to give me flowers, because I like and deserve flowers. Or chocolates or whatever it is you’re going to give me. I don’t want them just because of the date, because Hallmark and Cadbury and Interflora have wasted vast sums on convincing you that you have to.

This is the crux of it: giving me flowers is a romantic gesture that I will appreciate and that will absolutely win me over – if you do it for the right reasons.

If you give me flowers because you know I like them, or I’m having a tough week or just because. If you take me out to dinner somewhere local because I look too done in to cook, that’s sweet, and as the wine revives me, romantic. If you take me to the Ivy on V-day or my birthday, that’s just a cliché.

Romance is tricky, and like any good devil, is in the details, not the price-tag. This is good news for those of us who are tightening our belts and avoiding checking whether we’re overdrawn yet this month (again). Because the dirty little secret that the big companies are hoping we won’t discover, is that romance isn’t big expensive gestures and can be pretty cheap.

It’s in noticing your partner, not in noting the date: in seeing the fatigue and the stress and reacting to soothe them. It’s in hearing the chance comments about likes and dislikes and interests and pet hates and paying enough attention to absorb the information for future use.

(This is a  valuable sneaky trick that enables you to pull amazing surprises out of the bag when you want to, because they will have forgotten they told you about that and you look nearly psychic).

I’m not against the principle behind Valentines – that it’s good to show appreciation of your partner, that it’s good to make someone you love or fancy feel special – but that’s just what Valentines Day isn’t anymore. These days it’s about obilgatory conspicuous – and competitive - consumption, and there’s a lot of pressure to outdo last year and all her friends boyfriends/girlfriends (I say her because it appears from all the endless ads and articles that the most pressure is on straight men). Maybe I’m blonde, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with love or romance, or even appreciation. I don’t think you can quantify love by counting red roses or overpriced table d’hotes or even uncomfortable lingerie. But then, I’m romantic enough to want love to be non-commercial, and non-material. I want to think that love is, in essence,  actually fairly simple, if almost frightening in that simplicity.

So I shall be having an Anti-Valentines Day, refusing to buy, eat or attend anything with a bloody red or pink or heart theme.

And if you want to buy me flowers, wait until tomorrow.

CHAMPAGNE TASTES AND NO BUDGET

I am on too many mailing lists, most of which hold no interest for me, because they’re related to things I looked into or bought for work. They therefore go to my work email and promptly get deleted as being irrelevant. But recently (around payday, which is plain sneaky on the part of the companies involved) I got a couple of demonic mail-outs about clothing… And I am such a girl.

I like new clothes, new shoes, new bags. I don’t actually need any of it, but I am far too good convincing myself otherwise. It’s the Irish in me – I can justify almost anything. Especially the lovely expensive well-cut quality fabric items.

You see, I have always suffered from champagne tastes. More than that, I have Dom Perignon tastes. And in good months, a merlot budget. Mostly, not even that. One of the doubtful joys (who am I kidding? One of the really nasty downsides) of being a freelancer is this variation in the budget. It’s very difficult to restrain myself when I am getting money in, even though I can see the end of the contract and I know the money will cease to come in very soon.

Thus you see the dilemma: live it up while the going is good or be sensible and plan ahead. And quite possibly, in either case, discovering that the choice you made was wrong and you could have/ should have done the other.

I can see the end of my contract looming from here. The light at the end of this somewhat hectic tunnel does, from my current vantage point, appear to be an oncoming train. Hopefully  it will turn out to be one I can jump aboard and ride on out of here, solvently, but for now I can only wait and see. (Yes, and job-hunt. I know. Clearly. Enough with the bleeding obvious already)

Champagne tastes (okay, so I don’t like champagne. How about single malt tastes? I do like a good, mellow single malt whisky. Speyside Scotch or Irish, I’m not quite that fussy) run in the family somewhat. My mother blames her grandfather, who was a cabinet-maker for one of the luxury ocean-liner companies up in Glasgow, back in the day. His job  required a feel for quality, which appears to be hereditary. And dominant. Just my luck.

But it got me thinking, before binning the pretty pictures (3 hours of make-up and lighting and posing per pack shot) and “exclusive discount” offers, about the difference between fashion and style.

If I was only interested in fashion, in trendy, then the tap water budget wouldn’t be an issue – it’s Primark’s raison d’être. Granted, if my interest in fashion had to do with labels rather than appearances, Primark wouldn’t be much good, and I’d be down TK MAXX every chance I got.

My problem isn’t fashionable tastes, it’s not prosecco or cava – it’s champagne, it’s single malts. Rather it is, as snobbish and pretentious as it sounds, about style, about quality. I like leather shoes over plastic, silk over viscose – everything horribly expensive over every more cost-effective and practical alternative. I can’t afford it – and this is one of the classic conundrums of socio-economics, as illustrated in the Vimes Boots theory (Terry Pratchett, “Guards Guards”) which I’ll paraphrase: only the wealthy can afford high-quality boots which will still keep their feet dry in ten years, while everyone else buys the cheaper option and after ten years, has spent twice as much and still has wet feet.

And as I’ve managed to justify the idea that the fewer my possessions the more important the aesthetics of each item, this is a trap I’ve set and baited for myself. Which is all very well, if only I wasn’t quite so keen to walk into it. In my cheaper option boots – merlot budget again.