Dispatches from the Pavement Podcast

Toby Isaacs
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Because if I look up, I might have to make eye contact. Voiceovers of my Substack essays. tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  1. 4d ago

    The Duty-Free Goblin and Other Airport NPCs

    I came to video games later in life than my peers. There was nothing particularly remarkable about this. I believe that if I were a child in this generation, I would not have a problem with screen time because we wouldn’t have any screens. I would, as I did back then, some 3 or more decades ago, envy other friends who had SEGA Mega Drives, Nintendo 64s, and PlayStations. These were missing from our family home. We did have other things, I have been told. I remember being incredibly excited about a new TV with Ceefax built in. “When I grow up, I’m going to have a TV and watch things with Ceefax overlay on all the time.” It was magical then. Today, it is a trend I am sure is out there somewhere. If you had to Google Ceefax, just wait until you realise you missed out on Bamboozle. Growing into my teens, we finally ended up with a family computer that was capable of playing video games of our own. Specifically, we would spend hours on FIFA ‘97. Three brothers are trying to play multiplayer with a keyboard and a mouse. Mouse controlling football players on FIFA ‘97 is equivalent to being a side character in ‘Alice through the Looking Glass.’ Your intent was entirely understood, and it would then make the players do the opposite. We once tried to play 45-minute sides to see how a real-time football experience would be. It took nearly four hours. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When I was younger and less responsible for the life I was living, the comfort of basically getting up in the morning and being dropped off at school or college and then successfully getting a bus back home, I discovered some pretty decent video games. And while you are given the illusion of freedom in a new virtual world, where you can escape the responsibilities you don’t have, you end up on a very particular trajectory which you realise around 6am on a Wednesday morning that you’ve reached the final boss of Metal Gear Solid 3 and you’ve been playing it all night and you need to get to a lecture in 3 hours. Whoops. But this is not limited to the virtual world. If you haven’t noticed, because you are allowed to browse that shop or eat that snack, trying to find the toilets on your way to the next goal, the journey you have been given is the same linear path with no return as is created in these digital creations. The scan of the boarding pass QR code is the entry point into this controlled world. As soon as you unlock the Security Checkpoint achievement, you are embarking on your mission. There is no turning back. You may only go onwards. There is an illusion of ‘open world’ exploration, but your canvas to live in is actually very small. It may feel massive if you’re wandering through Schiphol or Johannesburg, but if you’ve found yourself in Rotterdam airport, you’re just in a larger-than-average cardboard box with a shopping trolley filled with lukewarm water. One cannot ignore that you are not alone in this environ. Unlike other video games, where other people in the game are mostly programmed to move out of your way and just add a suitable amount of reality to the landscape, in an airport, various NPCs existing throughout this side quest will definitely be right in your way all the time. Regardless of whether you fancy a local snack or a local gift, someone, usually a man, usually oblivious to the amount of space he and his suitcase and satchel are taking up, will make this extra non-essential part of the adventure impossible to achieve. You could call it a bug in the programming. And you would be half correct. You will crash into many of these before you reach your departure gate. They will be the biggest obstacle, going at a terribly slow pace and looking entirely lost the whole time. All of the gate information is now readily available on your phone and can be accessed by the airline and airport mobile apps. This is a mystery to every other person who has entered the airport, and these NPCs will gather in bulk underneath departure boards that mostly make reference to other flights that aren’t yours and are delayed. You reach your gate. Despite clear information that ensures everyone knows it won’t open for 20 minutes, a queue is still going to form. All of the characters in this queue will be in business casual, have frequent flyer level 60 and are not worth engaging with. What you will experience is the next non-sequitur in this act. As the gate opens, you find there to be a mad rush of people. You can check your help section, but you are not mistaken; all of the seats are already allocated. They will all get on successfully and, aside from those delayed through transit, the plane will not leave without you. You are here. Chill out. Do not say this out loud. The fixed dialogue loop of the gate staff will remind people regularly to sit down. 14C isn’t going anywhere. You remain ready. You can do what you like, though. You are the main character, and the rules do not apply. Anyway, you do have one thing to work towards. The rest of the linear progression through the terminal has led you to this boss level. You need that overhead space, and you cannot let these NPCs get in your way. Be alert. Below are the classes of characters you will expect to find at this critical moment: Elbow Vanguard Loadout: Only elbows. Hands are firmly stuck in the bomber jacket. Difficult to pass. Passive ability: Unpredictable path, meaning they fill all unclaimed space and are impossible to pass on the airbridge. Special move: Builds momentum in lower lanes and can draft past groups 1-3, taking group 4 with them. The Hard-case Berserker Loadout: Heavily dented polycarbonate four-wheel spinner with one wheel gone rogue. If knocked at the wrong angle, the suitcase will explode, blocking the path of the considerate. Passive ability: Accelerates through the gate with the hard case used as a reverse battering ram. If you are passed by the case, your ankles take damage. Special move: Enrage. Regardless of the group called, all civilised behaviour disappears, and they charge the scanner with the urgency of a fire escape. Duty-Free Goblin Loadout: Unassuming traveller until provoked, then deploys multiple plastic bag cluster bombs, covering all nearby in gin and Toblerone shards. Passive ability: Will always find a space in the overhead lockers, even when told they are all full. The Decathlon Tank Loadout: An 80-litre expedition rucksack strapped to his back, counterbalanced by a 30-litre daypack worn on his chest. Attack Pattern: Turns abruptly to ask his partner if she has the passports, executing a perfect 360-degree spin that wipes out three fellow passengers and a small child’s packet of Smarties. As you scan your boarding pass, you should hear the comforting “Game Saved” chime as you pass through the sector. Travelling down the airbridge, encumbered by your luggage, you may glance outside at the unrendered tarmac of the world beyond. The distance stays there. It is a reminder that there is something out there that has been placed inside, but it is not for you. Out there, ambient scenery moves about, showing that you too will enter that space in time, but, for now, you must carefully, and without aggression (for fear of the Game Over screen as you are escorted out of the airport), follow the queuing NPCs who cannot remember a number and a letter when they are asked their seat number and fumble for their boarding pass that they had been holding in their hands moments ago to get to this point. There is some incongruence at this point. The safety demonstration that is mandatory on all flights is the unskippable tutorial you normally get at the beginning of the game, but for some reason comes at the end. They claim you have to pay attention, as it may be different from other aircraft. It is then exactly the same as every other aircraft. Which is reassuring, as you would hope that there is a base level of similarity in aircraft to ensure they can execute the essential mission of transporting passengers through the air. The best thing you can do is surreptitiously increase the volume on your headphones, the equivalent of turning the volume down because you’ve seen this bit a thousand times before. The bit right before the final boss, because you cannot get the right combination to weaken them at the right moment, and you’re stuck with the same section over and over and over and over. Only this time, it’s telling you to make sure you can breathe before checking if other people can. You aren’t going to pay proper attention, believing that you’ve played levels like this before, this is the same basic premise, should I need to deal with the various emergency procedures that you are preparing us for, I think I’ll be quite fine, thanks and I’ll just improvise, smashing various buttons over and over until the right combination, in this case, releases the emergency door. There is a certain comfort in the way that, as I am now more adult than before, the world has created these familiar video-game-like experiences which have as realistic graphics as you can get. Somewhere out there, Microsoft Flight Simulator has an abandoned Microsoft Passenger Simulator project that never, pardon the pun, got off the ground. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  2. Oct 6

    Your next Thought Leader: A profile

    Just when you didn’t think he could be a worse human being, you discover that he commutes to work on a Lime Bike. What are you going to do, though? Estate agents. He’s not. An estate agent. But the overlap is a Venn diagram that looks uncannily like a single circle. It remains permissible to despise estate agents, and he emanates this same aura. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. It is probably why he chose the Lime Bike in the first place. “I am that kind of individual, and I must make sure I indicate this to my colleagues immediately. They may know the kind of person I am before I even let my mouth confess that my job title contains ‘Chief.’” But it portrays another confession that he will be forever numb to: the Lime Bike requires nothing from him. A small fee, and he can claim to be doubly better for the environment than the alternative. But he almost certainly drove to the train station from suburbia in an inefficient Sports Utility Vehicle. And his job title lets us all know the other thing: he is doing his job best once he’s left the meeting, so everyone else can actually make a difference. His name might as well be Frank Sparkes. But he would introduce himself before anyone could say, “Pleased to meet you, Frank.” With “Call me ‘Sparky,’” which no one was going to, but now everyone has to. Coerced into the idea that this man might contain more depth by having a nickname like Sparky, while inadvertently proving that he definitely doesn’t, because he forced it upon the workshop participants. It puts the problem on them. If they call him Frank, they are a pedantic grown-up, killing the vibe of this true ‘spark’ of genius that has entered their presence. If they call him ‘Sparky’, they immediately drop all tradesmen who add real value to your home when they arrive in the bin, favouring this guy who, we will find out, is not good at “detail.” They have succumbed to the school playground peer pressure and indulged Frank in believing he’s allowed to continue to use this moniker. An open-plan office can be a bit intimidating to an introvert. But the modern office seems to feature some common attributes, including, for some reason, plants as dividers. It can make the Urban Jungle feel like it isn’t a coined phrase to make people feel ok about the daunting prospect of commuting to the office from the leafy suburbs, and more like it was presented by the office outfitters as a design option. And the problem is realised in “Sparky’s” attire. His cargo trousers declare that he is a man who knows his own world. Creates his own future. He can do anything and match up to any real sparky should they appear at his home. Rather than a normal individual who needs to carry personal items with them, ‘Sparky’ has decided to make sure everyone knows he’s a modern tech-savvy thought leader. I, and I’m sure if you also have pockets in your clothes, you will be the same as me, put my phone in a pocket. It’s not usually visible. ‘Sparky’ likes everyone to know his tool of choice. His phone is wedged into a pocket that showcases, among other things, the torch, which is still on from some earlier task he was doing, or accidental. But it could have been that he was checking the fuse box, no matter the “Authorised Personnel Only” sign. That would put this guy off anyway. His bioluminescent thigh is only matched by the selection of whiteboard markers in the place where screwdrivers usually go. He has an idea of what work is and wears the costume. But he will make an exit before anything is truly required of him. This wizard’s work is about to commence. His staff is lit, and illuminating door handles as he strolls past other meeting huddles where work is genuinely happening, and into the large greenhouse of a meeting room at the prominent place in the open plan. He will not be found in a room that seats fewer than 12. This is because he is a believer in “achievement through collaboration.” At some point, someone needs to take him aside to tell him, “I don’t think that means what you think it means.” To everyone else, that would mean we all discuss, plan, add our perspectives, and move forward together. To Frank, he is not ‘a details guy,’ and will perform the ritual of walking into a room 8-12 minutes after the discussion has already begun, say he will “catch up as we go,” stand up in the middle of someone making a meaningful contribution and unharness his whiteboard marker. There is one thing that you have to respect is that he is fully aware of the guaranteed failure of whiteboard markers that are provided in the room. They are, within 6 hours of distribution, quickly reallocated so each room has too many of one colour and none of a necessary one in that moment. 80% of them will draw one clear and bold line before running out of steam and producing a ghostly trail for the remainder of the workshop. Someone will take a picture of the whiteboard discussion at the end of the allotted time, but will need to contact the local shaman to decipher the glyphs and spirit of the exercise. Being fully aware that this is his moment and he cannot be misunderstood, he produces his own markers, which he tested before work this morning; probably writing a list of things for the family members left at home to get done before he returns. Stepping up to the white canvas, he draws a couple of shapes, some rectangles, ovals, lines, and other childish graphics. They overlap, but each has a story. They tell of some wide and grand moment that we must all know is coming, and these shapes are how we will achieve our goal. As quickly as he starts, he stalls, realising he has reached the end of his understanding. But that is ok, because now the collaboration happens. There are experts in the room. So he points to them and declares, “I believe we have the right people here to put flesh on the bones.” Delegating the reality to others and leaving. The room will stare for a while at the whiteboard, trying not to openly disrespect ‘Sparky’ and then place this as something that is more of a landing zone where the strategy could live if it is ever articulated in plain English. And then he is gone, on his Lime Bike. Reminding all onlookers that he was right to trust others to flesh out his ideas, as he clearly hasn’t thought through the risks of the Lime Bike mode of transport. Aside from the increased likelihood of injury or death, people also make snap judgments about people that are, on the whole, incredibly accurate. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  3. Sep 29

    The Lime Bike as Public Infrastructure

    It would be remiss of me not to take a small detail and treat it with rigour that no one asked for. I could fool myself into thinking my readership asked for this, but I will not. I am not the subject of this treatment. I trust, however, that the broad helpfulness of my publications has not gone unnoticed. Readers should now be aware of how they are perceived on London streets. But the infrastructure itself is not without blame. It was lovely, recently, to visit some reservoirs in East London with a river of genuinely transparent, super clear water, being enjoyed by the general public and birdlife. There was not one cyclist. Not one lime bike. On the walkways or in the water. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Cyclists are an easy target. They make it so and do not make an effort to change. There may be a few good actors in the collective, but they cannot win over the general public. Some may blame their tools. So let’s explore that for a moment. After the adult cyclist has gone, and the transportation lays dormant, we are left with a new contraption that is doing more than its fair share of tasks on city streets. It is a litter of Lime Bikes, which is the subject today. This is not some specialist equipment, the subject of Cycling magazines nationwide, or plastered across the glass -fronted windows of a Halfords. They do not claim to improve cadence, there is no special training plan with the subscription, they are not partnered with HUEL, and they do not have a clothing line. As an aside, during lockdown, posters started to appear around London that read: “Want to Save the climate, Get healthy, and Reduce Stress? Why not take up cycling?” In London, where the primary stress inducer to the population is cyclists. Their stress might be reduced by their pedalling, but the collective stress of the UK population is definitely going up because of the increased two-wheeled clothes dryers finding their way on the inside of traffic. It had started so innocently, as if it were a campaign for Yoga or some other meditation practice. But in the end, we are, once again, at the mercy of the Mayor of London’s cycling department. Lime, as a brand, has not bothered to jump on the fitness bandwagon. I’m not entirely sure what the campaign is apart from littering every street corner with single-storey climbing frames. Easy to find if you don’t want one. I have discovered I take up a lot more space on the pavement when I notice one poorly propped up on its little kick-stand in the middle of the walkway. They are left to block the pedestrian public, and I don’t worry if they clatter over behind me. Annoyingly, their centre of gravity is a bit too effective, and it’s harder than it looks to force them into a horizontal state. Not that I do that on purpose, mind you. The general purpose of a Litter of Lime Bikes is to make entrances inaccessible. They are offering public transport and increasing usage by blocking access to any other form of public transport. If you want to get on a bus, please hire the Lime Bikes in a certain order so you can dismantle a very bad 3D Jigsaw. Of course, they are now ubiquitous across the city. It is a strange day not to see a Lime Bikes. What I have noticed in recent months is that their front basket differs from their competition’s. Others have either some kind of core frame with bungees to secure one’s belongings, or the baskets are in some way perforated but with large holes to show they are modern baskets, and probably to allow for a degree of stability. Lime Bikes have a very special and servile basket. Which, as I’ve referred to above, is a large Green Bucket. And it is, importantly, not for a Lime Bikist’s possessions. That would be normal. No, these movable buckets are for the single-use coffee cups, food wrappers, and basically anything else that a passerby has decided is no longer their responsibility. In short, Lime Bikes are public bins that have developed wheels. It is why I use the collective noun so accurately: Litter of Lime Bikes. If one sees a collection of these hireable e-bikes on the street, one can consider them as a movable reconstructed refuse centre. They are then employed to carefully redistribute the litter across the city. You may have noticed that London’s streets are actually rather clean, and this is because they are no longer covered in litter, because the Lime Bikes are doing their public service. It is a working model that is likely to be adopted by other cities, presented with the problem of a bin shortage. They could use taxpayers’ money to buy and install more bins as cities continue to grow and more people move their lives to seek their fortune. OR they could ask a private company to become this mobile bin network and solve the stalled tram project at the same time. Litter-ally everyone wins. Though they have also recreated the problem by littering the streets themselves. For some reason, this version of littering is absolutely fine, and it is simply a matter of time before the London definition of ‘littering’ will be changed to “hiring and making use of a Lime Bike by riding it and leaving it anywhere.” The selling point of this mode of transport will be its downfall. One hopes. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  4. Sep 22

    The Vehicular Tribunal

    The transport experience in London is, I believe, more educational and markedly more enjoyable than other parts of the country/world. The City itself is rammed full of side streets, constantly being reworked, so between your journey home yesterday and this morning, a new gyratory has appeared, and the one-way system has reversed direction entirely. It has never been a particularly sensible place to drive through, and the way the roads change like the castle now excised to Room 101, Hogwarts’ staircases, is the only testament as such. The thinking is not, I can assure you, as pedestrian exemplar, to make the city safer for people. There are decisions made that mean that the road is now 2 roads, one for cyclists, one for cars. If you have to reach the other side of the road, only one of the two of those modes of transport will think to stop for you. But, as a resident, I do attest that a weekend in the city is glorious. The city streets are tranquil, the public transport is much more bearable, often with much more seating available thanks to the commuting masses staying at home in the country, I imagine, staring at their new hedge for 48 hours, because what else is there to do out in the sticks? And the only bicycles are with tourists on. Two varieties: the fleeting lycra amateur pelotons that pass by in an instant, and the tourists trying to figure out how to hire an e-bike and failing miserably. These things combined make pedestrian life a breeze. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Relaxed Weekend Ramble One lovely experience to have in London is, on a weekend in the city, wandering around the pretty deserted roads freely as a pedestrian and, on occasion, you’ll get a compliment from an electric cab driver as you get back onto the pavement, “in your own time, mate.” How pleasant to have this working man, probably picking up his only fare of the day thanks to the intermittent services to Fenchurch Street, being so relaxed as not in any way be vexed by a foot passenger, with noise-cancelling headphones, wandering casually down the middle of the yellow box by the taxi rank. I have to say I only vaguely overheard this. Noise-cancelling aside, the electric cabs are silent as is. We were both, it seems, creeping at a relaxed pace down the middle of the road. I think we would both be impressed by how unfazed we were by the pressures that normally come with urban living. But we were outside of these. I, naturally, said in a slightly raised voice, as I couldn’t gauge properly with headphones on how loud I was talking, “Likewise!” and popped down the stairs towards Tower Hill. Priority Benches Boarding the tube, I had a slightly less pleasant experience, and I’m sure the cab driver would have been right in my corner here as well. It was busier than I was expecting, but seats were still available. At the other end of the seating section, it appeared to me to have a group of 2-3 elderly passengers rotating the one priority seat they had laid claim to. They were doing it rather loudly, looking with disdain at ‘the young men’. In their minds, it seems, invisible disabilities do not exist. There may well be several political positions that they are sympathetic towards, that would cause friction if anyone spoke up. Further evidence of their political slant was provided when they snorted dismissively when the renamed Overground lines were announced; “Suffragette,” “Lioness,” “Windrush,” I think, were too much for this group. A couple of chairs right by them did become available after… one stop. The other standing travellers made gestures to offer the seats to the complainant and his crew. As you would expect, they refused to take the seats on principle. They hadn’t been offered seats before, so why should they sit down now that there are free seats? I’m sure it was the philosophical ranting in his mind. They were so principled, they were adamant they would go so far as to die on this hill, not worth dying on. An ant hill. They stood in the main aisle, blocking the exits. On principle. Wheels within wheels The weekend continued to provide as I exited, and a litter of lime bikes tried to take on the same task as the elderly gang. Block every conceivable path to your next destination. It feels as if they’ve been designed in such a way as to collect themselves, so you have to sign up and hire one just to get past. They tessellated all along the pavement. Maybe this is part of the instructions of the user’s terms and conditions. I wouldn’t know. It seems plausible that one of the obligations is ‘to end your reservation, you must ensure that the kick stand or pedal is inserted into the wheel of another Lime bike.’ They are also encouraged to encapsulate any competition, so Forest, Bolt, and Dott will be inaccessible. It certainly seemed to be true based on the guy who had just pulled up. Oblivious to the difference between pavement and road, cycle lane and pedestrianised cobbles, his Ralph Lauren polo shirt flapping against his satchel, the chinos barely creased because this city professional uses every piece of technology to make his life as easy as possible… in this case, the e-bike needs to do the pedalling so he can check his phone. Concluding my experience, I reflected, sipping an incredibly small coffee as I watched seagulls ride the Thames. A judgment on your personality is warranted based on the way you use transport in the city. The true benefit of the London experience is that, through the medium of the transport device, one can instantly give verdicts of people’s character based purely on their mode of choice. These snap judgments ensure you’re always prepared with the social interaction that inevitably follows. The City of London watches on as the population expands and contracts throughout the day. From this, you can garner a pretty accurate CV. The files are sparse in detail. They have enough information based on your vehicular decision. What kind of Londoner are you? We will throw aside tourists for now. They do not know any better. The lift systems in the majority of the tube network will, granted, allow step-free access from platform to street. The reality that this requires a lute-playing wizard’s assistant with a high-vis to navigate the exact combination of lifts and corridors so you don’t end up in the Dragon’s lair under Soho is something they will not find in their guidebook, and the real reason why people claim London is not safe. The regular Londoners can be thrust into various camps, and more besides, to truly get underneath their character: Cab passenger/Black cab Not working from home. Not working from the office. Zoom calls in traffic are my vibe. Uber Not brave enough to hire a Lime bike yet. But they will one day. When drunk. Tube passenger (over 60s travel pass) I should not take that priority seat. I should not have left the house today. Tube (oyster) Efficiency beyond reason. Just as they always board at the same door of the carriage, so anything out of the ordinary will ruin their week. Like their usual busker at Angel tube playing the wrong genre today. Tube (ticket) Easily lost. Tube (contactless card) Easily found. Tube (device) Easily missed. Bus Abnormal working hours. Their phone alarm app is a list of times you didn’t know existed. Lime bike user Fearless over fitness. Santander Fitness over safety. Bicycle Every journey is race conditions Folding bicycle Every journey is a hybrid triathlon Folding e-bike Every journey is a hybrid triathlon and it’s ok to cheat Unicycle Every day is a performance Penny-Farthing Every morning is spent on cobble stones through the filthy streets of Whitechapel to their work as a cobblers apprentice. Scooter Not yet a grown-up. E-scooter Never a grown-up Hoverboard Every commute is at risk of being derailed by a DMC DeLorean. Not worried too much about their future. It could be changed at any moment by a misplaced magazine. Thames Clipper Very poor at diplomacy. Does not understand why people build bridges. Walking Pedestrian. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  5. Sep 15

    Are you a morning person or an evening person?

    I am not against getting to know people. People are important. It’s unfair to rank anyone from one to seven billion, so we should just assume it’s a tie before we go any further. As part of my job, I have to meet new people fairly frequently, and that is exhausting. Worse than eating salad. Sometimes, the conscientious facilitator of a workshop likes to do a bit of ‘get up out of your seats and away from your screens’ stuff to make it feel like work isn’t so bad after all. To be honest, I was fine with sitting with my laptop closed. Think about that, will you, Stefan? Let’s call him Stefan. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. He immediately attacks the carefully arranged conference room with his own, supposedly better, idea of collaboration. The facilities team will be in for a surprise later, and I make a mental note to take my coffee cups with me back to the communal kitchen, just in case something escalates and I need practical allies. He put a slide on the washed-out projector with a simple question and a few too many emojis. Are you a 🌞morning🌅person⏰ or an 🌜evening🌆person🌛? Putting it simply, he wanted us to arrange ourselves in order of the time we would wake up in the morning. I felt this prejudice heavily; what about bedtime? Why have you cast aside bedtime as if we are not complete human beings with a whole day to consider? Wake up is intrinsic to the previous day’s bedtime. There will be some who work backwards from the required wake-up, if, for example, one has an early flight. And when I started asking clarifying questions about what does he mean by typical day? Each one is unique, with its own challenges, each sunrise slightly different from the day before, commitments made and ensuring there is a level of variety in the work we do means a typical day is not one can simply agree on. I was told to shut up, obviously. I started to talk to the people closest to me who had already started moving the office furniture. It wasn’t clear if this was part of the camaraderie building, as we were in a conference room where the desks were trying to be helpful by providing plug sockets for the laptops we weren’t supposed to be using. But this was also the kind of conference room where the placement of the plug sockets wasn’t designed for the laptop power supply to fit properly, and the temporal nature of all things used for more than six months in a hybrid collaboration space meant they were unlikely to work at the critical moment where you’re asked to present on behalf of your group. I named the team I was in “the Signets,” but to myself. I wasn’t sure how that would fly. I’m not sure what the age of consent is in the HR policy for naming the team, but this wasn’t the time to push boundaries when we were already being subjected to involuntary collaboration. We successfully deconstructed the collection of desks and the very point of being in the office on a Monday, and then started interrogating each other about alarm clock choice. We discussed smart watches and devices that track sleep, to decide whether we should go with the aspirational, ideal, accurate, or honest wake-up time. Accurate being the true reflection of the average between ideal and honest. There was also a side debate about whether there would be any cross-referenced data between declared wake-up time, commuting distance, and badge scan at the office. The debate descended into the very definition of time and the fleetingness of being, but we Signets started getting strange looks, so we quickly settled on what time we would have liked to have woken up this morning based on how that would make others think about the kind of person we were. It was definitely a wise choice to go on the ‘desired perception’ approach, rather than the honest approach. Somewhere it is written that we are supposed to reconstruct a sleep cycle and ultimately ‘wake up naturally.’ There is, we find, nothing that feels natural about waking up when the dream we have been trying to stave off involves a slightly stressful replay of an infinite and unsuccessful activity of filling the fridge correctly. It was when I blurted out “5am” that everyone took one step back and immediately judged my current appearance. They didn’t seem to align. I’m not sure what they thought someone who wakes up at 5am by choice looks like, but it wasn’t me. People filed out along the whiteboard side wall. We should have been in a clock face formation, in my opinion, but I wasn’t the one who started it and wasn’t getting many of my suggestions listened to at this point, so I didn’t let on. I found myself alone, while others would be all the way at things like 8:30 or 9:15 (if work didn’t interfere with their choice). Fine. As is said across the cosmos these days without challenge, “You do you.” But let me explain why I am waking up at 5am. And what I am not doing. Firstly, the ‘not doing.’ I am not a CEO of any business trying to justify some obscene salary, which means I have to tell people I’m up at 3:30am to do online Pilates with some Australian fitness coach before I meet with the team down under. Partly because that’s a ridiculous and frivolous thing that 1) could be solved by speaking to my team at 3:30am so it’s not so late in their day, 2) I could do Pilates in UK hours in person with a fitness coach based locally. And I’m not working all the way through to 9pm trying to fit 2 work days into one. Others congregating in these early hours also seemed to think it was only normal to start work much earlier than necessary. “I have breakfast and get on top of my emails around 7, check through my calendar and then might have a meeting before 8am.” Another group didn’t align themselves with starting work in bed, but did share their morning routine included a military drill around a nearby park with other men, and I immediately stopped listening. I never plan to be ready for wartime. I wake up early, make a hot drink regardless of external temperatures and sit in bed, sipping tea, reading and encouraging my cat to get onto my lap. I think this is critical. I am at rest post-rest. I cannot legitimately get up without my cat’s permission, which could be several hours. It’s great. I will do the Wordle, for some reason. And I will check the weather in a vague sort of way. The way you check anything that you know you can never really trust. I might go on a run during this elongated time between waking up and working start, but the important thing is it is “me” time. I have plenty of time to be focusing on things that aren’t to do with my own life. So by the time I get to the working portion of the day, I’m already quite tired, actually. It is the perfect way to make sure your world is properly prioritised. With the wall fully complete, Stefan felt like he’d achieved what he wanted. I assume that from his point of view, personal insight into colleagues’ worlds outside of work is helpful and builds trust. From the feedback form, it is to create severe conflict between us as we disagree on how to make the best use of the hours we are awake in each day. By the time we had poorly returned the conference room back to roughly how we sort of remembered it looking like so we could “engage with the content” of the remainder of the day, I was already zoning out as my 10:30am peak had passed and I was staring at the clock, hallucinating my colleagues on each of the hour markers, watching the hands drag themselves to lunch time. It wasn’t just me. I think we were all exhausted after that emotional rollercoaster. “You do you” was very much adopted by the Signets, at the very least. Where “do” was nothing. The other flocks followed our lead. At the end of the day, we were all handed a feedback form: Q: Did the opening exercise build trust? A: No Q: What was your one key takeaway? A: We do not know how to office furniture. I folded it and put it in the stationery cupboard. Nobody looks in there anymore. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  6. Sep 8

    The Gentrification of Rambling

    In a padded room, on an industrial estate somewhere near Tower Hamlets cemetery, the world’s infinite audio commentary continues In the last decade, the tectonic plate of the radio waves shifted. There are now dedicated podcast studios. Spaces for rent so that two blokes can remember their favourite crisp packet design from the early 90s. They can discuss it at length and sound intimately mixed in the same way as a radio journalist produces their work with dedication and deep research. And now it’s practically impossible to tell the difference. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The early podcasts had a certain charm to them, though. There wasn’t the option to make use of the expensive studios used for radio, and the pirate radio that simplified broadcasting led to the point where the small door that led to high audiences, and the prestige of “The Studio” was suddenly undercut by people who had their own take and didn’t want to have to check with someone if they could say something about McDonald’s food without having a people go after them. Those early days of podcasting felt special. Anyone could do it from anywhere. All you needed was a hook. A long, long time ago, as I left the comforting world of education while living in a world of zero responsibility, thanks to my legal age, meaning I didn’t have to be, I had already found a passion in the music world that meant I couldn’t find it within myself to turn the radio on anymore. I used to record songs on a cassette tape as they were broadcast to my bedroom. Admitting that now feels safe. It’s a commonly accepted moment in history, shared by only my peers. That time has passed. Anyone doing that today is in a definite minority. The_Microphone_Won-2.png As I entered the world of having to be responsible, something was bubbling that was going to forever change. I never dreamt of what it would become. The iPod demanded the ability to listen to the radio, but not in real-time. We dreamt of a world we didn’t know we would have. But, as with all dreams that become reality, we are in a future that may be an overshoot of what was intended. One of my early university projects was to reproduce a radio play in a studio and ensure that we used all the technology at our disposal for high production value. Of course, I couldn’t help but stamp a certain flavour on it by creating a version of it where one of the voice actors couldn’t pronounce “Mechano”, and we had to overdub it with another voice actor when it came up. And it came up frequently. I think our lecturer was not so encouraging of our ingenious use of overdubbing. But with high production output came high-brow content. We have watched correlation hit an historical counterpoint. High production=high brow. Low production=no brow. I think a big appeal to the podcast world over the decades, since those first few, was that I felt like it was something I was very much able to do anyway. Most days, lonely in the student house with four other 19-year-olds whose names I have since forgotten, I would be very much guilty of podcasting, live, to myself. And I wasn’t clever enough to have thought about recording those musings. What use are they anyway? I know that we find many a young man thinking their opinions are worth sponsoring and publishing, but back then, I think it was safe to assume you needed a few more years before people were allowed to listen to your thoughts. It is certainly no surprise to suggest that the world was different and a degree or so less accepting then. 20 years ago, if you spent 3–4 hours talking passionately about the best biscuit and debating with an acquaintance about the inner-workings of the integrity test when it came to tea dunking, you would be quietly escorted away. Not so much for diagnosis, but just to hide the perceived problem. We are at the inverse of that reality. A helpful diagnosis has been accompanied by the audience, who would happily listen for hours to this obsession. Beyond that, it is now commonplace for a few friends, who have been making each other laugh every week in the pub since before anyone can properly remember, to have one pipe up in the height of excitement to say, “We should start a podcast!” How unfortunate for the rest of us how easy it is for them to have done that. It is a genuine accomplishment to discover a new podcast that isn’t that. Mates making each other laugh and thinking that other people want to listen. I think this should be a separate podcast category rather than polluting the ‘entertainment’ and ‘comedy’ genres. Especially because they are all just in each other’s podcasts anyway. Just get it over with, get into a big room so we can hear the general crowd noise of people talking, and we’ll use that ambient noise to relax our minds, and then you’re all done. The Final Podcast. But wait, there’s more. Because another genre that should not be near our ears. And there are people who will proclaim that they can no longer fall asleep unless they have this type of entertainment lulling them to sleep. This genre: True Crime. I like a true crime podcast. Apart from the “True” bit. And the “Crime” bit. “True” because it’s not necessarily the truth. It’s a collected curation of ‘facts’ that can tell a certain story. And also, I’m not a big fan of any documentarian media. I do not want to be educated in my spare time. And the “crime” focus is basically involved in the same ad-supported, home-produced, poorly researched journalism that we’d find anyone else doing outside of this closed-loop world to be despicable. Profiting off the misfortune of the victims of said crime. No justice is being done by these people. They just skirt around the edges, picking up dropped treasures on both sides. This has escalated in recent weeks after I discovered there is a “True Crime” Podcast that interviews people who have produced True Crime Podcasts. I imagine this is not the only one. I’m hoping that someone creates a guest collective, inviting all of the creators, locking them in a converted shipping container, and shipping that box to somewhere off the coast of Tristan da Cunha. Which can then be investigated by amateur journalists to create a True True True Crime Podcast that I would consume with pleasure. Will Radio take back the airwaves? Big Radio may have an opportunity to fight back, but there is an uphill battle. Apparently, car stereos still have the functionality to tune into a radio broadcast. I don’t know where you would do that or why that is. But if Radio wants to get back what was lost, the only real option is to force car manufacturers around the world to stop adding the ability to use your own personal audio in car configurations. I do this, but I learned it from my parents. We rarely listened to the radio in the car. My mum would complain that radio DJs mostly just shout all the time. My dad would play classic FM, and then we would get annoyed, so quickly we had a tape catalogue in the car ready to go. This is the reason I hold deep cuts of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in my mind. Then I found out how to record my MP3s from the family computer to my own cassettes, and then I’d play them in the car. I was no longer reliant on the radio, and I haven’t looked back since. I find the radio to be an odd thing to engage with. You can control all of the audio in your life, and you’re leaving it up to these people who, I now agree, shout all the time. I hope Big Radio don’t read this so that I can continue to have my personalised audio when driving or passengering. Reading back over this makes me realise that this is absolutely suited to a podcast to properly dive deep into the subject matter, probably with some mates and fellow podcasters. So… podcast producers: Get in touch. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  7. Sep 1

    Please Stop Asking Me About My Childhood

    Due to the internet being what it is, I am completely allowed to offer my opinion publicly to the globe. 7 billion people, and 100 times that in AI bots and automations can find my opinions and could go fix everything. But I am insignificant, and that will not happen. Regardless, I have found something that I want to rant about this week that should never have made it past the idea stage before it was implemented on the very website on which I publish it. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Of course, the internet is a dangerous and joyful place. Like a fridge. Or the inside of a Gail’s Bakery. Or Jesus. While the joy from the internet is self-explanatory: cats, the danger we could experience is why we need passwords: People. We might think that the global population are just trying their best and doing what they can to make the world a livable community to belong to. But we need passwords, so that can’t be all true. I know I am fine, and I can be trusted. But that’s where trust ends. I live in London and would never dream of leaving my front door even slightly ajar. That is to keep London out, but also to keep my cat in. Maybe behind all those passwords are cats. Thanks to the continued technological advancement, speeding us towards a future only dreamt about in Minority Report starring Tom Cruise, our passwords are no longer enough. We have locked the door, but have we attached the chain and deadbolted the entrance before bed? No. And we are prompted to adopt what is known as 2-factor-authentication. Password is the first factor. The second factor could be anything else, but it is usually a code on a device that only you have access to. And most websites are now encouraging this. One of which is where I do my writing. And I was asked to register for 2FA and immediately felt emotionally assaulted and wanted to go outside for a while and consider my life in the face of the vast nothingness of space. Various questions we are asked that we are supposed to be the sole knower of that information, but have become commonplace, like ‘street you grew up on’ or ‘first pet’s name.’ Obviously, we know that when a social media viral Q&A hits your feed, you can immediately take note of your networks’ answers to the questions of favourite food, colour, song and emoji so that you can gain access to their accounts in an emergency. The questions asked by normal people as a conversation starter by the socially inept will end up here. Emergency questions, if you will. In the past, designed to spark conversation. Today, designed to socially engineer a security breach. But this particular list of registration questions became a spiral of despair as I went from one to the next, thinking, “I don’t know the answer to that question, maybe the next one… also nope.” Here’s a sample: Who was your favourite artist, musician, or celebrity when you were a teenager? You mean that time in my life where my entire being is going through so many changes, I wouldn’t even have the same answer to that question from one week to the next? That stage of adolescence? What was the first concert you attended? I need clarity. Concert where I was participating? Could be a primary school scenario. Concert where I had a ticket for? Honestly, no idea. Do bands seen during a weekend festival or conference count? What was your first computer or smartphone? Throwing ‘smartphone’ in there is very presumptuous. Why not just ask first, “phone?” Smartphones sound easy to define today, but I was on the cusp of the iPhone launch when I looked at the feature list and bought a Nokia with all the same features, just no touchscreen or high-status badge. In contrast, the first computer would only make me question if it’s the family Amstrad where I typed out my first short story, or the custom-built PC that was officially my own. PC already flags internally as a ridiculous answer, too easy to guess. But the real hurdle is it is only two characters. The answer box needs at least three. The very system technically mocked my childhood. But I need to go deeper. Some of these questions are so traumatising, one might as well just hand out a free trial to Better Help on completion. What was the make and model of your first car? Would it surprise you to know I’ve never bought a car? This sounds like an easy question for an American adult, where the mode of transport is either car or plane. They know what a bus is, but they don’t know why they know what a bus is. This isn’t the first car you've driven after passing your license. This would still be difficult as, by the time I’d passed my test, things had moved on and I wasn’t going to be put on my parents’ insurance to drive the Fiat Cinquecento anyway, and it would be a further 4 years before I apply to drive buses (remember them) without having driven since passing my test, and being asked to maybe practice a bit more before I apply to drive an HGV. Where did you go on your first date? This, importantly, is not asked of a couple. It is asked of an individual. This is a profoundly absurd question to ask anyone, in private or public. What do you mean, “first date?” With my wife? Our first date? Or the first date that in retrospect you consider might have been a first date but at the time wasn’t and you didn’t even think it was until someone else asked you about it later and you’re trying to figure out how anyone would find having a drink while trying to watch Back to the Future II on the multiple screens through your peripheral vision in a retro sci-fi themed bar in Leeds is in any way romantic. Or the ‘first date’ at school when I sat next to some bins while we played POG in year eight? The answer I gave didn’t fit in the response box either, and I have no way of remembering it. What was your first favourite band? Right, I think you’re setting a challenge that goes beyond the reasonable. In this question, the definition of ‘favourite’ is being entirely unravelled. You have got to give them credit that tastes change, despite them not acknowledging the situation we would find ourselves in as teenagers, mentioned above. Tastes do change. But also, FIRST is a very specific thing that, if I try to remember, is going to be poorly answered at best. By the time I had really gotten into music, I would have already laughed in the face of anyone who would ask about a favourite song. That’s not possible. It’s like asking what’s your favourite ingredient. Favourite band is still pretty poor as a question, but what if my earliest ‘favourite’ wasn’t a band but a solo artist like Jarvis Cocker? However, the core problem with this question is it entirely fails to honour the definition of favourite, and then applies it to a taste spectrum of music that is really not straightforward to choose a favourite, even as a ‘latest.’ This question required me to embark on a musical research mission in Wikipedia, before realising that I was discovering bands that I would have liked at the time, but their music was being released well before I was born. So I remained clueless as to the timeline of my own tastes forming. What is your least favourite colour? This is the jackpot question. You don’t see it coming, and you’re not ready for it. Favourite colour is pretty commonplace and an easy selection if required when playing a board game, for example. But least favourite colour is not an easy thing. Especially when, in theory, this is also a free text field. So, is it colours of the rainbow? If it’s one of seven colours, give me a drop-down so I spell ‘orange’ correctly. But it’s free text. Should I be giving you a Pantone shade or an Adobe hex code of my least favourite hue? Should I be describing to you Retributor Armour, Rakarth Flesh, Zandri Dust as my least favourite Games Workshop colours to paint figures with? I don’t do this; it is tedious and pointless. But I am advocating for those with opinions from all walks of hobby life. This whole ordeal meant that, by the time I’d started to enter an option, the website had timed out, and I couldn’t be bothered to do it again. The process made me realise I’m not that good at keeping a diary, actually, and whoever built this section of the registration process was clearly going through some pretty interesting sections of their school days and just assumed everyone can, in an instant, remember their first teacher’s last name or… their first memory. I mean, last name, you can probably just make a guess at some common name like Smith. But first memory? How can I fit that into 100 characters? And then, at some security checkpoint in the future, I’m supposed to remember that again when I’m forgetting things all the time, and one day my first memory might be the thing to go, so the answer will be different? Have you factored for that? No, you haven’t. I don’t care anymore. I can’t even remember my password anyway. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I have been sitting with this experience and formulated two reflections: * The questions are written for a writing platform, so whoever came up with them, must assume that the particular people using their site must be the kind of person who is introspective and instinctively knows those things about themselves. It is a flaw in itself as no doubt the answer to these questions will be found in their own publications. * If I ever wanted to start a podcast with guests, I have the 6 questions I would explore and deconstruct to the point of absurdity written for me. And then we would choose an account to try to hack into. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  8. Aug 25

    Surviving Weaponised Acoustics

    It’s not that I’m against pink. As a millennial male, I was brought up with coaching to avoid the shades of lighter red. Thinking back, no reason was given. And today, in London, with all of its diversity and the pushing of boundaries, I am only accepting of this archaic attitude because I am in a ‘safe space.’ Not that it feels massively safe, when the number of electric vehicles intensifies on the streets, and I am now at the mercy of a legion of e-scooters when I try to make my way to the post office to return some ill-fitting running shorts. Therefore, it is no surprise that a chain of coffee and smoothie bars cropped up in the last decade with a distinct pink branding, inside and out. They certainly have a vibe. The vibe makes me ill. The coffee is fine. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Joe and the Juice stings a little on entry. From afar, the decor is somewhat warm and welcoming, the name is verging on playful, and living in London for any amount of time inoculates you to the idea that trying another chain’s attempt at coffee is anything but an ok thing to do. Getting closer, you can see their pale pink a-boards beckoning the savvy city worker with slogans like, “COFFEE COSTS LESS THAN THERAPY,” and “THIS WEEK BEEN SO ROUGH MY COFFEE NEEDS COFFEE.” It is frowned upon to wander in and point out the poor grammar and contradictory messages sent by these boards. A critic might even start a petition to boycott Joe and the Juice for their lack of sensitivity in a mental health crisis. But I digress. It is at the point you are within reading distance of these signs’ small print (Large: BE STRONG, Small print: I WHISPERED TO MY COFFEE) that your ears will start to pick up the ambience that breaks the assumption that one could pop in for a relaxing smoothie on a warm summer morning. It’s not that you read the menu and immediately realise that coffee, while from the outside seems to be the only thing they’re going to serve based on the outside signs that lured you here, is only around a quarter of what’s on offer. It’s not even that you have to spend the first few minutes rethinking your plans as you deprioritise the instructions to have a “COOL. CALM. CAFFEINATED” coffee and wonder if this might be a place to have a sandwich as well. These are all visual and appetite-driven. No. Your ears will tell you very swiftly that you do not belong here. It is not for you. Just look at the other people in the queue, enjoying the beats. The music that is just slightly too loud to talk normally, so everyone is shouting conversations at each other, and the queue is shouting above that to make their order intelligible. The ordering process is unintelligible anyway, because it’s hard to know if, and this is a perfect illustration of the kind of clientele you will collide with in this place. “IRON MAN” is an order or something they were doing on the weekend before their drive in the country in “JOE’s AMG”. Before the internet police tell me I can’t judge things based on their name, you are right. This has been happening since the days of cocktails. An Old Fashioned in no way describes what it is. Neither a Martini, nor a Piña Colada, nor a Screwdriver or Dark and Stormy give any suggestion as to what’s in them. There is, certainly, a vibe that is captured. Of course, if you were to say that when the early cocktails were being produced, they would give you a sideways head tilted look at the use of the term “vibe.” But between the overly loud foreground music and the menu that, in tiny words, gives you the actual description of the menu item, it is not a place I can endure more than the few seconds it takes to walk past, cementing my confident decision not to venture in. I did go in once. You occasionally get trapped in an obligatory friendly moment around lunch time and end up saying, “yes let’s grab lunch” and then realise your dilemma as you have engaged in a verbal contract with this individual that means you are grabbing lunch together and there’s no way out. Being the coward I am, I won’t even express my preference, let alone say, “I’ve changed my mind. I want to be alone for 35 minutes.” The fallout would be too severe. So I ended up in Joe and the Juice with, let’s call them, Joe and Joyce. It was actually Terry, but that doesn’t have the same poetry. As soon as we entered, my day was ruined. I had been right from a distance. And now I was up close and personal with the need to raise my voice towards someone who was immune to the beats. I ordered, among other things, the wrong coffee, the wrong smoothie and the wrong sandwich. I could tell by the way Terry was looking at me, wondering why I’d ordered so many items. This is another reason why I like to lunch alone. No judgment on my appetite. Terry had ordered his regular lunchtime “GREEN TONIC” (Kale, Cucumber, Celery). Somehow, I was the one being judged. We sat down, inside, to my chagrin. And talked, apparently. All I could hear was syncopated shuffles through the speakers and the staff shouting the menu in some kind of poorly matching rap to the soundtrack. I don’t know how Terry made it back to the office when he hadn’t yet eaten anything except a small blended salad. But it did make sense why he got the lift to the first floor. That takes a special kind of confidence to look at all the other lift members, stare them directly in the eyes and press “1” when you’ve already walked past the stairs. I got back to my desk, had a quick chat with my manager and we agreed I could have the rest of the day off. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

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