The Money’s Not Important

The rich and famous often annoy the rest of us by claiming – often in interviews read by fans -  that the money and the fame they receive aren’t important. And they’re right. Like oxygen, recognition and money aren’t important until they’re in short supply. It’s when they’re scarce that their importance becomes apparent.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the freedom of scarcity, of having enough and no more. But that’s the trick – to have enough. More is unnecessary, but less is stressful. The choice to make do with fewer things is a difficult one when we’re constantly bombarded by messages of abundance and endless choice – but choice is a decision, and sometimes it’s more relaxing not to have one to make. The choice is to fill life with non-material things, with experience and feeling rather than objects and mile-long task lists for acquiring yet more things.

The choice is not to try to make do with less than we actually need to live comfortably – cutting down too much will only leave me stressed and worried and struggling. Which is hardly the objective. But to have just enough, and not be encumbered by extraneous bits and pieces – oh, that would feel lighter, and free…

Pity the process of establishing what is just enough and no more is such a trial and error one. 

Little Sister Leaving Town

So, work wants to send me to the Scotland office for 5 weeks. Well, they’re talking about it, anyway.

5 weeks is an awkward length of time. It’s not quite enough to rent a flat, but a bit too long for a hotel room. Which has a knock-on effect in terms of laundry, and therefore packing. I did a 2 week trip around Europe this summer, packed on the basis of a 6 day clothing turnaround. But holidays, especially road-trips, are different because nobody is going to notice if you wear the same T-shirt twice. But the idea of a 5 week long business trip is somewhat more daunting.

My first stop, of course, was www.onebag.com, quickly followed by a fascinating detour around www.journeywoman.com, which is a perennially favourite site. Unfortunately, my job entails a more casual dress code than most. So my options, it seems, are either to follow the business travel advice and over-dress in the office, or pack a bigger bag with more jeans. And a travel washing line and hangers (because hotel hangers seldom detach from the closet, which makes then useless for hanging around the room to dry clothes. This is partly to stop guests nicking the hangers, yes, but more to make guests pay for overpriced hotel laundry services).

The general consensus is that separates are easier than dresses, and neutrals (especially black) are easier than colours or patterns. The most basic units could almost describe the infamous capusal wardrobes of Susie Faux: a suit, a shawl or pashmina, a few shirts (non-iron), a casual option and a sweater or cardigan, along with adaptable shoes. And something that never occurred to me, and now I can’t think why not: a versatile small handbag – one that can do lunch, dinner or cocktails with equal ease, that’s smaller than a laptop bag and decidely not your carry-on. 

Simples

The meerkat mafia are back. This time as fluffy toys for those who use the insurance broker they advertise. Use website = get toy. Simples. Yes? No. Gimmick. Why would I want, as an adult, to acquire a fluffy toy? Particularly a branded one. I have no need or desire for one, and yet somehow, the cute-fluffy aspect is supposed to draw me in, make me putty in the advertisers hands.

I like meerkats. I grew up with them in the garden. They’re very cute, especially the babies. But they’re also aggressive wild animals, hunting down and devouring the insect and invertebrate population. I like my meerkats alive and animated and in their natural environment, being meerkats. Not wearing smoking jackets and lab coats, talking with incongruous Russian accents and trying to sell me insurance services I don’t need by throwing in a cute-fluffy gimmick I really actually don’t want.

I have to wonder what age-group the advertising agency think the product is aimed at. The same goes for its rivals. Lately the ad campaigns seem to find a concept, a gimmick and then ride it in increasingly complicated ways until long after the legs fall off. Especially when selling things like insurance, TV chat shows or anything health related. Things that tend ot have something of an easy market because they’re selling something people need (legally if not actually). So, ad men, if I might make a suggestion: think about the product: what it is, who will actually spend hard-earned cash on it. Then aim it at them, not at some patronising concept of their mental age just because you like to make things overly-complicated because you think that somehow makes you look more intelligent than the overawed client signing off on it. Then maybe, if I need it, I’ll buy.

Simples. Yes?

Automaton

Ford is rolling out its MyKey technology to Europe. This will enable parents to pre-program set speed-limits, radio volume, and seatbelt and fuel reminders. It can also be used to prevent certain safety features, like blind spot detection and parking assistance from being deactivated. The idea is that parents will set the key, and their new-driver offspring will then only use that key to borrow the car. Simpler, safer – nothing to worry about, surely?

Well – driving a car is a pretty complicated process. It takes a combination of skills, which are learned while travelling at higher speeds than human naturally achieve. It also takes observation, concentration, the ability to react and perform various simultaneous muscle movements in response to something outside the immediate in-car environment. This isn’t easy, and yes, inexperienced drivers are more likely to be in accidents than experienced ones. But as safety features increase, and more and more of the driving process is taken over by computerised systems, and the driver’s job made simpler, it seems to me that this will ultimately result in ever more complications: computers crashing or hanging at high speed, drivers who haven’t the skills to take manual control in emergencies or unpredicatble conditions. If we made the cars simpler again, then learning to drive might be more complex, but driving itself would be easier – we’d drive in the knowledge that we can control the car and handle the situations we’re likely to encounter. And isn’t that certainty simpler than feeling out of control, managed by computers?

Simple isn’t always what it looks like at first glance.