PASSWORD PERPLEXTION

In days of old, when men were bold and sheep were very, very concerned, we're told that people had less leisure time because everything was a protracted pain in the fundament. Want to clean your smock ?? Then you'll have to walk six miles carrying a pail of water back from the village well.

And that's before you've tackled the laundering process itself, which consists of three hours laboriously scrubbing your soiled garment against a washboard and wringing it through a mangle. By the time you've finished, it's bedtime. Did you remember to clean your pyjamas ?? No ?? Then it’s another trek back to the village well for you, then, son.

But in many ways, the rustic serf of yesteryear had a better quality of life than the modern man-about-town of the year 2015. Computers have freed us from hours of drudgery with one hand, but introduced an equal amount of slightly different drudgery with the other. These days it's commonplace to do everything online, from designing the layout of your kitchen to locating a stranger who can rearrange your furniture, or your face. Tasks that would have taken years to organise and achieve can now be accomplished in the blink of an icon …

… or they would be, if you could only remember your flippin’ password. Can't remember it ?? Is it because you chose it so very long, long ago - maybe two, three days before ?? In the intervening period you've had to dream up another six passwords for another six websites, programs, accounts and/or email addresses. In this age of rampant identity theft, where surely it's just a matter of time before someone works out a way to steal your reflection in the mirror and use it to commit benefit fraud in an alternate dimension, we're told only a complete and utter imbecile would use the same password for everything.

Now you do, so in a sense, your identity's been stolen anyway. In the meantime, having demanded a new password for the 28th time this month, His Lordship Your Computer proceeds to snootily critique your efforts. Certain attempts shall be disqualified immediately, without even passing judgment. Less than six letters ?? No numbers ?? Access denied.

This is more complicated than trying to do long division on an upside-down Chinese calculator. Whilst blindfolded. There are more rules than the Formula One technical regulations manual. No recognisable words. No punctuation marks. No hesitation, deviation or repetition. Pass the qualifying round and it gets even worse. Most modern password entrance exams grade each entry as you type, presenting you with an instant one-word review of your efforts. Suppose you glance around your desk and pick the first thing you set eyes on, such as a child’s My Little Pony pen. You then begrudgingly shove a random number on the end.

You try out your hand-crafted digital key for the first time, typing it into the silicon lock. With a soft click, the mechanism turns. Access granted. Congratulations, you are now part of the smocklaundry.com community. Three weeks later your smocks are returned, late and still plastered with hideous stains. You revisit smocklaundry.com to protest.

But you just can't remember that darned password. And in the intervening period you've had to dream up another 42 passwords for another 42 websites, programs, accounts and/or email addresses. Now you face the ignominy of clicking the password reset button for the 58,000th time this year. And so, you trudge dolefully toward your inbox, waiting for the dreaded help e-mail to arrive, the cruel laughter of His Computerised Majesty ringing in your ears, cackling manically like Davros.

You have failed, human. You have failed.

GENERAL IGNORANCE

Everybody generalises. Everything you say about people is a generalisation, unless it’s about a named individual and then it becomes gossip. Breakthroughs are made by scientists who ignore this rule and go for big general theories, such as relativity, leaving footnotes to others. It’s the same in real life. Glorious generalisers in search of broad truths are followed by legions of nit-pickers.

The ability to generalise is what separates mankind from the animals. We have big ideas of no relevance to the immediate search for our next meal. That’s why philosophers steer clear of supermarkets: it’s impossible to generalise when you’re grubbing for a copy of GQ and a packet of Smarties. Ants are a very successful species indeed because they ignore their individual needs and continually generalise about the greater good. You’ll notice that they have lots of worker ants but there’s no room for nit-picker ants or Health and Safety ants.

The more you generalise, the simpler things get. It’s impossible to generalise about something that makes the picture more confused, except for weather forecasting which attempts to give a detailed general picture. The highest order of generalisation simplifies everything into a featureless cosmic semolina similar to thinking nothing at all. A bit like being a contestant on "Celebrity Big Brother", perhaps. These days, accusing someone of generalising is tantamount to calling them a liar. But generalisations are only so-called by people who don’t agree with them. Generalisations you really like feel like self-evident truths.

Interestingly, all generalisations start with an individual point of view. When you say that all Thursdays are rubbish, the manager of Aston Villa doesn’t seem to know a goal line from a clothes line and every single song in the singles charts these days sounds worse than listening to a tortoise breaking wind through a cheese grater, it’s based on your own personal experience.

Other people with similar experiences will agree with you, and even people who haven’t will begin to think that Thursdays aren’t so good. Eventually everyone will come to know and expect that Thursdays are the low point of the week. Speaking of which, it’s now impossible for the British to say “Have a nice day” without the long shadow of sarcasm passing over the conversation. In this country we presume that the day will be bad if we haven’t been savaged by a Bengal Tiger on the way home from work or if the bus didn’t suddenly veer off and nose-dive into a canal, whereas in America, nice days and the having thereof are written into the constitution.

You get really good days only about once a year. That’s when everything in life conspires to be in your favour. Some people worry so much that it will come to shuddering halt that they simply don’t know how to enjoy the day when it’s there. Just accept that, sometimes, it really is your day. Caution is shrink-wrapped fear. The quickest way to do yourself a mischief on an escalator is to be too cautious. It’s the same in life generally, although with life you don’t have to carry dogs and stand to the right. Caution is what happens when you follow your liver instead of your heart. It’s a non-stick emotional surface for the bad things that life throws at you.

Nice days are ones that make happy memories. One nice day can extinguish the memory of 13 bad ones, which is handy because this is normally the ratio you get on two weeks’ holiday with the family. It’s also the day you forget the batteries and spare memory card for your camera. Nice days can happen spontaneously. You get out of bed on the right side, with a spring in your step and a song in your heart. You may even come up with a way to save the world.

That’s how big ideas get started, generally speaking.