One analyst predicted the death of the iPhone even before it was released*. Actually when you stop laughing that’s not so stupid when the market was flooded with many phones but little differentiation. The genius of the iPhone was that it didn’t copy, it didn’t even lead, – it just changed the game completely.

And that’s odd when you consider it is nowhere near perfect. Ask anyone their thoughts of the iPhone as say “a phone” and they’ll tell you it’s rubbish. They’ll point out other flaws as well – crap battery life, lock-in to Apple stuff, high cost, etc.” However, if you’ll offer to swap it for something has none of these issues expect wild eyed justifications, desperate pleading and offers of “Nooooo, take my daughter instead”

I don’t know how Apple did that and it seems neither does anyone else. First the iPhone stole the market and then the iPad created one. You cannot deny they wedgied the entire technology sector although they were more than helped by every other manufacturer. Product strategies were divided between slavish reproduction or getting all pious about OpenSource and wondering why no-one cared.

Or in HP’s case, spending billions on two operating systems and using neither, and Nokia – the undisputed market leader for years – dumping five years of development and jumping in bed with Windows 7. Now that’s a smart move what with Microsoft having sold about 11 phones so far.

A note here: watching Microsoft trying to be cool must be like my kids watching their dad trying to dance. At least I’m trying to be ironic. Not that they really care as they’ve run away by this time pretending to be orphans.

Apple have managed to create an experience that is so good, we all forget that this is exactly what IBM used to be slated for. Devices that don’t work with anything else. Having to buy everything from a single supplier. No choices other than stuff with an Apple logo on it. The difference is by opening up the App Store to developers and creating really neat in house products and software, we’re happy to be assimilated.

My friend James reckons buying your first Apple device creates a “bridgehead in your home” through which the entire product range swarms through. Not only that, it also instantly devalues all your other toys reducing them to door stops.

I’ve had that Mac for a couple of weeks week and it has insidiously wormed its way into my life. The PC seems to have become part server, part monitor mule, the horror of the Chisel IT is already fading, the tablet feels a bit “me too” and not in a good way. But fanboi status is not yet attained- my Android phone is really blameless here and has a part to play. it cost almost no money, runs lots of useful free apps, delivers e-mail, plays my music, and allows me to make and receive phone calls without the battery running out.

Which is clear and irrefutable evidence to why I’m going to buy an iPhone 4S. A phone that manages to be an expensive upgrade without actually upgrading anything. Aside from the Apple-Fanboi-Chip insert, my rationale for spending all that cash is because the Android phone won’t talk to the Mac. Well not nicely – they sort of electronically swear at each other before sulking and refusing to speak further despite my repeated urging.

So despite the rise of standards and apparent interoperability, we’re back to two or three brands dominating the landscape which don’t play nicely. Back in the 1990s, it wasn’t like that – the choices were endless and every technology manufacturer was trying hard to differentiate their products. It wasn’t always very good, but it was fun to watch.

Finally we’re back to bikes and metaphors. Go back even fifteen years and you couldn’t pedal for all the weird and wacky designs coming out of the bike shops. Funny suspension, flexible stems, white off-road tyres and elliptical chainrings. Th great thing about standards back in the day were there were so many to choose from. Most of them still measured in imperial units.

So your Trek Bicycle was an IBM PC; worthy, useful, a bit dull. The Singlespeed was a ringer for Apple. Hippy, niche, not very good at a lot of things, prized by those who owned one, laughed at by those that didn’t. Now Apple is the 29inch wheeled bike – everyone laughed at these as well but slowly they’ve become mainstream and changed the entire market when doing so.

I miss all those niches; now differentiation seems to be about wheel sizes and graphics. Consolidation of component manufacturers has upped quality but reduced choice. All the major manufacturers have bikes that work – and while there is still inter-brand hatred and myopia, it’s not really based on the actual riding experience.

Computers then; nobody thinks of them as computers any more. Just places where your apps live. And bikes cease to be about how they’re designed but more about the things they let you do. This is probably a good thing. It just doesn’t feel like it.

* The same man who – on being shown the Apple LISA – informed Steve Jobs that “no one would buy a computer with a Mouse“. And the bloke still has a job, Amazing.

So after a week bobbing about in the sea of partial unemployment, what lessons has been learned? Unsurprisingly, not much other than the much hackneyed “really should have done this years ago“. And even as a man who is on the genuinely delusional side of positives focussing, a couple of beers has me volte-facing on the stuff that I’ve entirely failed to miss.

Not going to London. I know, I know I’m even boring myself with this now. I’ll try and maintain your interest with a little story instead. My alarm is permanently set for 4:50am. Once or twice a week I hit the “on” button some six hours before the bloody irritating beep wrests me from a slumber. Except it generally doesn’t as – after missing exactly ONE train in a THOUSAND – the body clock jerks me awake around 4:30am. This has carried on happening, wide awake way before dawn listening to the “click” as the big hand heads towards five.*

I don’t really mind as I’ve a head full of stuff that needs thinking about. And it’s not like I actually have to get up. I am the king of the lazy lie in much to the disgust of the rest of the tribe. No guilt here, I think I’m owed.

Not dealing with pointless nonsense. I had an inkling much of my job was exactly that. A week of not doing it pretty much cements that hypothesis. Refereeing bipolar jihad’s on exactly how many angels can dance on a pin is an odd way to make a living. So I expect the firm has missed me exactly as much as I’ve missed them. Slightly strange is my absolute disinterest in things that were head-banging-against-the-desk important only a couple of weeks ago. There’s probably a message there, but I’m not really clever enough to work it out.

Not finding excuses. Four Bike rides, two of which started in the rain with the first ending in mud-splattered giggling and conditions on the second coming side of biblical. The poor bloody dog has been yomped all over South Herefordshire and if he’s not careful the pack leader might start running again. And finding time to properly do stuff that isn’t directly affected to work, riding bikes or other stuff with “me” in the middle of it has been something of an inspiration.

Not wondering about what’s next. The response to an inevitable question of what I might do went something like this “I’ve not really enjoyed any job in the last twenty years, so it would seem borderline insane to jump into another one“. This was met by blank stares, open astonishment and mild accolades for being a brave little soldier. Fairly sure I know what I don’t want to do, equally sure at some point there’ll be seditious talk about paying the mortgage. I’d quite fancy a middle age crisis, but I can’t afford a Ferrari and Carol’s dead against me having another motorbike.

A week ago – about now – I was fairly pissed in the middle of London, nth beer in one hand, Malboro light in the other wondering if I’d miss all the lovely people who had nothing better to do than turn up at my leaving do. A week later, it seems I was probably asking the wrong question.

* analogue clock. Presented to me by a German manufacturer over ten years ago. Absolutely refuses to die. We call it the “Clockwork Panzer“

It is properly dark and wet outside. Inside, harsh fluorescent light illuminates an unwelcome mirrored window showing my tired and, increasingly, craggy features. That bloke in the reflection doesn’t look happy at all.

As a five year veteran of this train journey, the dreary slide into Autumn fills me with fear and loathing. Nearly six months of misery are filled with freezing mornings, rain lashed sprints between tube stations and endless tramps through the dark.

When compiling my list of things I really don’t want to be doing a few months ago, I surprised myself with the lead crushing intensity of Travelling to London closely followed by Working in London.

And I wondered why. Well for a start the statistics are pretty damning; 250 trips representing a minimum of seven hours commuting each time. That is damn close to half a year lost on the railway. Every one starting at 4:50am and finishing “ assuming First Great Western can be arsed to run a service “ some seventeen hours later.

Mitigation of a sort exists. Much of that time has been spent working. Not enough of it sleeping, and far too much looking out of the window wondering what the fuck I am doing here. And, in the way of the tribal commute we all seemed locked into, travel is squeezed into the ends of the day. That’s time I could be spending with my family, on my bike or “ in the case of the hated 4:50am alarm “ happily snoozing.

I hear the apparently down trodden middle class lamenting technology and expectation so mandating work is horribly pervasive now. Message from the trenches: always has been if you’re blighted by a Protestant work ethic and an inability to say no.

Back when I was running my own business, everything but working was simply labelled AOB. Sometimes for good reason, mostly because it allowed me to be successful at things I was good at and not try and get better at stuff I wasn’t. Much of this involved looking after small children and supporting my long-suffering/never complaining wife.

Not my finest hour to be honest. Now I could leave the kids with an Internet connection, an industrial vat of yoghurt and endless fizzy drinks and they’d probably only notice me gone after a few days*.

But I’d rather not. I cherish the time with the little ones with our little rituals. Pre-school: are you going to brush your hair, you look like a hedgehog? / No and Post-School Good Day? Learn anything / No.

Five years ago, when this stream of dribbly consciousness began, the strapline I want my life back was directed at the endless horror of commuting to London every day. Not enough has changed -mostly because I failed to learn some pretty simple lessons.

The most important of which has only become apparent this last few weeks. When all that stands between you and the door is six weeks of handover, strange things begin to happy. Holes in the diary, less than a hundred emails a day and a guilt-free approach to delegation.

During this process it became increasingly apparent that this is how 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the world operates. Receive a problem, look at the problem, spend five minutes working out who might be the best person to do it**, send it on and consider the job done. Crikey, how could I have missed that?

I always assumed these types were just lazy fuckers with no interest in helping the customer, surviving on nasty instincts, misdirection, bullying and bluff. It would seem I have misjudged them all standing, as I was, on the moral high ground surrounded by other peoples’ problems. Again, crikey.

Something else as well. Good enough really is good enough. Perfect is the enemy of good so said Voltaire and “ whilst a bit worthy “ he knew what he was talking about. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating laziness, the creation of shoddy or ignoring the bloody problem in the first place.

But striving for perfection is nothing more than showing off, and misunderstanding the difference between getting it right and disappearing up your own arse. A place from which I’ve recently removed my head.

As of now, I’m faced with only two more of these journeys between me and a rather scary looking freedom. One thing about this plunge into the unknown that makes me smile- it absolutely won’t include a future with the 0550 to Paddington in it.

So travel less, work smarter, spend your time with people that matter. That’s a mantra worth perusing with some vigour. It’s almost as good as getting my life back.

* Or when the Internet breaks. They assume because I have some passing understanding of technology, I’m in prime position to go dig up and splice some broken cable.

** Other than you of course.

Today we are assailed by so many lists, list of things to do and places to go, long lists of things not to eat, hateful ones of healthy vegetables, infinite cateogrisation of best of this and worst of that. Films, songs, cars, dog breeds, DOG BREEDS FFS, the lists of lists are endless. Where does it stop? Are there editors meetings where some out-of-the-box out-of-his-mind eager-pleaser offers up “have we done the best 10 cats for stapling to your ears on a wet afternoon in Southampton”?

I tell you when it stops. Never. And why? Because men love lists. It’s perfect verbal pub food. “You can’t have the best 10 car chases without putting Ronin in, What’s that? Bullet? Shit”. You can arbitrarily rank stuff of which you have no knowledge “yeah Sienna is nice, but Jennifer’s always going to be a better shag”. Men and Lists, honestly after penis’s, it’s almost our next favourite thing. That didn’t come out quite right. But you know what I mean. Most of you, anyway.

So here on the hedgehog, we’re always ready to leap onto a bandwagon while proclaiming our vainglory in the van*, and we’ve come up with the list to end all lists. Something that’ll subvert and extend the genre. A collection of such perfect ideas, any other list can be consigned to the “list of useless lists that nobody gives a monkey arse about”

I give you THE LANDROVER LIST. This isn’t merely sequential items of stuff, it’s a celebration of all things that proper men need to have/do/own. Let me first define “proper man” using myself as an entirely manly and representative example of the breed. A proper man has a good few years behind him, he’s been around, he’s a little world weary and not easily shocked, less so impressed. He really was in Bagdad before you were in your dad’s bag.

And while not showy, or taken in by that marketing nonsense, he has seen and owned and achieved many many things. If you found him drinking a real ale in a post-modern ironic fashion, while laconically explaining to a keen audience howthe world’s entire financial and social problems were due to French people being in it, he may scribble a few things that – one day with the right amount of effort, valour and sheer bloody bloke-iness – may make you half as good as him.

This is his list.

Landrover.

Obviously. But not a new one, nor one with a marketing knob directing the owner/puffta to gently rotate some fly by wire fuzzy logic when faced with a spot of moist earth. No this will be from the Defender line or – preferably – A series 1 or 2. For credibility, no panel must be undamaged or even matching. Bits of dead animal adorning crumpled bodywork is a measurable bonus. Missing parts are absolutely fine, bumper torn off, trim crushed, random engine parts gaffer taped to the bonnet are all good. But it is vital that present and correct are the “air snorkel” and wired spots clumsily welded to the roof.

What we’re talking about here is a vehicle in a condition that could only be replicated if it has limped over the finish line after a particularly brutal Paris-Dakar rally. It needs no marketing knob. It needs no knobs at all other than the driver. It needs a hand throttle, a big fuck off v8, an MPG rooted before we even knew what the ozone layer was and it will be riding on dirt tyres you could lose the family dog in. It must have presence, it must have personality, it must have abandoned imperial tools rusting in zip tie suspension. It’d be even cooler with a winch. And ex-military? You are a man now my son.

If faced with the same muddy field, it would snarl its way out ripping though family saloons like a killer whale taking a seal.

That’s a man’s landrover. It’s used only occasionally for tasks such as a) treestump removal b) fetching silly cars out of ditches and c) taking stuff to the tip. But soon It will – of course – do many dangerous things tackling savage landscapes and impossible situations. And you’re working on that. Let me just get these few bricks to the Household Recycling Centre first.

Angle Grinder

The world’s most dangerous powertool. Imbued with the DNA of medieval siege weapons. A direct descendant of the flail. A tool any proper man must wield with both aggression and precision. The first to show it who is boss, and the second to ensure sufficient limbs remain to operate it. It’s more hardcore than a chainsaw and this is why. Fire up a chainsaw, there and is not a man here who isn’t thinking “fucking hell, this could get a bit lively” as the blade whines through the sound barrier.

So he takes care. He might even don protective equipment. He makes absolutely sure it’s not his foot underneath the cutting blade. He makes careful note of the kill switch position. Any job with a chaninsaw that finishes without bloodshed is a triumph. Survival is not Landrover List material, tool mastery is.

So angle grinders then. Nothing compares to the visceral joy of going postal at a million revs. Electric Sander I hear you say? I think not – try a rip snorting example of the angle grinder against a handy metal object and watch that object essentially melt. Sanding is something we’ve all suffered with; “do a bit, done? no, fuck, do a bit more, done? no, bollocks, boredom ensures next time it’s done. But then you start again with the next bloody grade down“.**

Angle Grinder. Turn on. Attack work with vigour. Wait 5 seconds. Turn grinder off. Put out small fires springing up in the vicinity. pronounce job done. If an electric sander is a whisk, the angle grinder is a three-phase food blender. Better still are the bench mounted variants where one can play “finger chicken” driving every smaller objects into a whirling disk of pain. And a proper mans’ man will unhook this evil bastard – in the manner of a tough Sarge unmounting a GPMY from a jeep -to go and find some innocent mental to maim.

“Put that file down, this calls for a proper tool”. That’s so right in more than one way.

So the list runs to two items. I’ve given you representative examples of what we’re talking about here. I can think of many, many more which says more about my current mental state than it does about the length of any final list. But – in a moment of rather un-manly inclusiveness – I’m going to throw it open to virtual pub discussion. What we looking for here are outstanding candidates for the Landrover List.

Obviously I’ll have the casting*** vote, but any activity, item or pastime is worthy of consideration. For example, earlier someone offered up “parachute jumping” which was kind of the right direction but lacked a certain oomph. I mean how hard is it to fall out of an aeroplane?

So we’ve made a start on the definitive list. What’s next?

* No not this kind of van: “While I accept your basic tranny is a good load carrier, it’s basically crap compared to a vito. Ask any roadie. Hate to say it, but you gotto go German here”

** Why is this? No, really. Why? Is it to prepare you for the eternity of hell?

*** Only.

Jaw-Dropping. I’ve worked with technology since wriggling out of short trousers, but this stuff amazes/terrifies me.

Anyone not getting some kind of matrix flashback/flashforward need to think a bit harder.

Be ace to get a couple of bigger ones and throw a few humans in there 🙂