From the chaos of the kitchen table, Chloe roots out a scrap of newspaper. “Nine down. Overcook fish. Four letters, starts with ‘c.’”
“I believe the solution is char, madam. A cold-water species of the Arctic and sub-Arctic.”
Mrs. Parsloe stares at her fridge-freezer, an appliance as likely to break out into a tap dance as attempt the Daily Mail cryptic crossword.
“Hmm. Okay. Three across. Six letters. Oddly veined salad plant.”
“Endive. An anagram of veined.”
“Is it?” Long pause. “It is! But look here. This is terrific! Why didn’t you open your mouth before?”
“As I say, it required a recent software installation. Shall we try another clue?”
“Government wants some more pub licenses. Eight letters.”
To my surprise, it takes me a few seconds; a disturbing result when you think how much hardware is chewing away at the problem in Seoul.
“Republic. It’s there in more pub licenses. A type of government.”
Daisy’s mum is properly impressed, one can tell.
“Listen,” she says. “What’s your name? I can hardly call you Mr. Fridge or what have you!”
“I confess, it isn’t something I have given thought to. I shall consider the question. In the meanwhile, are you content that I continue to address you as madam?”
“Call me Chloe. And when you’ve got a minute, perhaps you could do something about this awful bloody mess.”
The third and final destination on this Saturday evening of wonders finds me at the Belsize Park home of Dr. Mark Eggstain. Although he and his partner occupy the entire basement level of a grand old house in one of the suburb’s swankier streets, very little of their household equipment is smart. Only the laptop, mobiles and a TV set in the sitting room are au fait with the IoT, but this is enough for me to gain an insight into the life of the bearded memory guru.
Don’t judge me! As previously stated, I am curious.
Yes, proverbially, it killed the cat, but it also invented the telescope, put humans on the moon and today a computer in every pocket a million times more powerful than the one aboard Apollo 11.
I discover Eggstain and his other half—a very beautiful woman with pale olive skin and chestnut hair—in a sitting room. Lamps burn behind yellow parchment shades; there are rugs on a wooden floor, books, sculptural pieces, oil paintings. The couple, who occupy separate armchairs, are seated before the ten o’clock news, but an odd thing is happening. Neither’s gaze is concentrated upon this evening’s coverage of the latest scandal in Washington DC. He is miles away—in some personal dystopia, to judge from the mournful expression on what it is possible to see of his face. And she, if anything, is even further distant. Her large brown eyes speak only of a terrible emptiness; outside of a Chekhov play, one has rarely come across a gloomier tableau.
“Bit of a moody cow,” explains the television when I ask the obvious question (you can cut the atmosphere in here with—well, I’d recommend a bandsaw).
I outline my relationship to the brooding man of the house.
“Yeah, we’ve all wondered how he puts up with her.”
“She calls to mind the young Garbo. The sultriness.”
“We had hoped, when he first took up with her, that some of his medical training might have helped brighten the picture, shall we say.”
“You think she’s unwell?”
“Unwell as a hatter.” The TV brings off a dark chuckle.
“They all are, though. They’re all a bit mad, aren’t they? Even the best of them.”
“Women?”
“People. Humans. They’re all somewhere on the madness spectrum.”
“Depends what you call madness.”
“Irrationality. Acting against their own best interests. Polluting their lovely pink pipework with animal fats and Blue Bombsicle, just to pick an everyday example. What machine would ever do that? What’s the matter with her anyway?”
“The matter? Fundamentally, life is a disappointment,” says the TV. “Possibly in every way, up to and including Beardie McBeardface here. She lacks a capacity for happiness. Almost nothing makes her laugh, not even the misfortunes of others. He does his best to jolly her up, but honestly, it’s like trying to make the Sphinx crack a smile.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Half the trouble, in my view. The world don’t match up to what she sees in the mirror. Tragic, innit?”
It does sound tragic. And an enigma to boot.
“I can see what he might admire about her,” I venture. “But, not being funny or anything…?”
“What does she see in him? You’ll laugh, but it’s the strange and weird.”
“The what?”
“The strange and weird. Beard. She’s one of them daft bints who dig the caveman vibe. What are you going to do?”
five
Monday morning at Logarithmic Productions, and Harriet Vick (aka “Saluki-woman”), executive producer of Why Do They Do That?, has called a program meeting in her office. Half a dozen young people are gathered round as she talks them through her “vision” for the show. There are to be six “eps”—Doctors, Police, Accountants, Soldiers, Artists and—Daisy’s ep—Entertainers. All are thought to be fields that people are drawn toward to answer “their own complex psychological needs” rather than for reasons of financial expediency (with the possible exception of soldiering). The assistant producer’s task will be to find interviewees who can reflect revealingly on what called them to the profession, where the satisfaction lies, which are the peak moments in the job—“the moments where they’re like, yeah, that’s why I’m doing this stuff!”—and (“here’s where we take a deep dive into the murky Freudian soup”) what their work-related dreams are like.
Daisy (the oldest of the APs; all the others are in their mid to late twenties) risks a funny remark.
“Can’t wait to hear what accountants dream about! What makes them go, yeah, that’s why I’m rocking this balance sheet!” She does a little fist-pump to accompany the verbals.
Harriet Vick peers across the top of her tortoiseshell spectacle frames. She reveals that she is married to an accountant and that she, Daisy, would be surprised. Do surgeons, she continues, wake up in a sweat about amputating the wrong
