by Derren Brown
I find that the sense of relief caused by replacing mixed socks with a drawer’s worth of identical ones, a new shoelace being threaded into place or a fingernail being trimmed relates to the feeling of relief triggered by:
Replacing a bin-liner
I feel the revulsion of piling scraps and litter too high for the lid to close; the awareness that the point where the liner was able to tie off with all the contents contained neatly therein and free from slimy obtrusion has long been passed. After the decision to be responsible and pull out and fasten the bag, I note the secondary pleasure that all the contents do fit safely inside once the liner has been removed from the metal tube and opened to its full extent, the sloppy detritus dropping to the bag’s base. There is the careful lifting of the tied bag, for fear of the plastic breaking at some point on its journey to my hallway ready for the next day’s collection; and finally the gratifying removal of a new white bag from the dispensing case. (I use size H Brabantia which fit neatly into the bin of the same brand, but will begrudgingly use black liners when I have no white ones left. The black bag is less appealing: its rim hangs eight inches over the top of the bin, pinned down by the lid, looking like a plastic mini-skirt, and is far less easy to tie. Each white bag, however, contains a fancy drawstring which always feels like it will rip the bag or break under the weight of the kitchen rubbish, but which against all intuition manages to hold the sagging, stinking load every time with confidence.)
Getting my hair cut
Buying a new refill for a favourite pen
The gradual reduction in ink-flow happens over a long enough time to be largely unnoticed until the final stages; until then I tend to imagine that the paper is to blame for any diminution in ease of writing, perhaps by being ‘acid-free’ or, for all I know, having too much acid in it. Bothering to stop at the relevant concession while shopping in my local department store and buying a new fibre-tip refill guarantees a private moment of pleasure when I eventually write and see a strong, effortless, moist black line upon the page.
Switching to a fresh pair of earplugs
I favour the firm, cylindrical, beige foam plugs offered by Boots:* the orange conical variants can hurt the ear after long-term use, and wax ones are a sticky and revolting business. Now living in a noisy part of London, extended use of earplugs has resulted in me becoming quite addicted to them. Having become used to drifting off to the sound of my own pounding insides every night, I find it impossible to fall asleep without this womb-like accompaniment and the comfort it affords, even when sleeping somewhere entirely silent. As they are used, they become softer, and sometimes a little discoloured from the inside of my ear. For far too many nights I push them into my ears knowing that they should really be thrown out and replaced, but make no effort to change them. This is because the moment when I think of hunting down the packet from which they came and extracting a firm, sanitary new pair for use comes at the precise instance of maximum reluctance to act: namely, when I am engulfed by quilt, nestled into my pillows and beginning to drift off; the point where night-time conversation has naturally ended and I pretend to be deaf to any sleepy, semi-sentient entreaties or dozy comments from the other side of the bed. Therefore, each pair is used more times than is probably hygienic, and the texture gradually deteriorates until they become so flimsy they feel like they may become lodged in the inner ear or absorbed by the brain itself. After many weeks of this I am reminded one night of the need to change them before getting into bed and do so a little excitedly, anticipating the pleasure of rolling the firm fresh foam between my fingers, squeezing each to a point and pushing the dense aerated stoppers into my eager ear-holes: one push with the thumb and forefinger to lodge it in, then an immediate second shove/wiggle with the fore-fingertip (while the thumb and second finger rest against the top of the jawbone for stability) to quickly press it deeper into the canal before it expands so much that I would have to remove it and start again.
Starting a new tube of toothpaste
Washing my jeans
Descaling the kettle
The water in London seems to be unnaturally hard, and the modern pleasures of a high-end coffee machine and steaming ironing-system are mitigated by the monthly necessity of carrying out a painstaking descaling or filter-changing process. I have a kettle with a clear stripe of glass up the side, which means that I can see most of the limescale that, disturbed from its chalky bed, rises up in flakes and kicks around in the water when the kettle is filled. I remember learning from an instruction manual for a previous model (one with a removable filter inside, just near the spout) that the common practice of filling such a modern kettle by pouring water in through the stumpy spout was an error, as any calcium deposits would gather on the wrong side of the filter when the vessel was filled from the tap and would then be added to your tea during pouring like wayward grated flecks of Parmesan cheese. This simple piece of logic seems to me to be very much ignored by most kettle-users, for whom the act of filling without lifting the lid is de rigueur. For many years in my kitchen, the build-up of grey flakes would continue until they completely clogged the sink after emptying the kettle, or to the point when I would disgust myself by finding a flake in my teeth. Now I look forward to the descaling, as it means a trip to the ever-useful, ever-reliable, ever-open Robert Dyas situated nearby.
I adore this shop. Downstairs there are gardening tools and broken light-bulbs and electrical goods, and upstairs is a wonder-world of cheap crockery, packs of LED stick-on lights, mousetraps, leather-cleaners, water-filters, mops and telephones, as well as USB mice, novel combination pepper/ salt-mills, musical cake-slices and the occasional remote-control car around Christmas; their presence on shelves and in piles underscored by the perpetual high-energy background voice-over that accompanies a promotional video designed to insidiously and subliminally persuade me to buy a wonder-tablecloth that repels all stains, or avail myself of the magic duster that works without polish, or the brush that, as I am told repeatedly with the forced, soulless energy of a long-serving provincial radio disc-jockey, thinks it’s a mop. The tireless enthusiasm of the sales-pitch generally has me curious to know what ground-breaking new invention has surfaced to save me wear and tear or effort or money. What new knife is this that will never need sharpening? Of what space-substance is this slab that promises to melt my frozen lamb in minutes? From what science-fiction vision of the future comes this improbable method of keeping my wine fresh for so long?
I have bought the magic tablecloth, and the Euro-chopper that takes the hassle out of chopping vegetables, and being a lover of gadgets I would probably buy the magic defrosting-slab and identity-confused brush-mop (‘brop’?), were it not for the creeping sensation that I am succumbing to some marketeer’s idea of how I can be programmed to purchase. The obvious crassness of the sales script; the shameless ‘If you like X, then you’ll love Y’; the curiously apologetic, uniquely British ‘Why not . . .’ formula that we hear so often in department stores (‘Ladies! Why not step up to our fourth floor, where . . .’) but whose very structure has us searching for reasons not to step up or buy; the ‘Tired of X? How about Y?’ cliché that always makes me wonder who that customer is that stops in her tracks and exclaims to herself, ‘Me! I am tired of that!’, and whether she should be shopping without supervision. Yet clearly these techniques work, for the cool, sassy, knowing advertisements we classier folk enjoy are just as cynically targeted to cool, sassy, knowing audiences as these loops of tripe are designed for people mindlessly browsing for storage jars, drain cleaner and travel alarm clocks.*
My wipe-clean cover is folded away in a drawer, to be used once a year on New Year’s Eve, when it sits comfortably among the cheap (Dyas-bought) champagne glasses offered to party guests upon arrival and the disposable plates piled high in standard party plate/napkin/plate/napkin formation. At times throughout the year, normally while searching for a lost item that leads me to neglected drawers, I will find it, be repelled by its shiny ugliness and
question why I ever bought it. During that moment of self-admonishment I will recall other occasions when I have bought items knowing full well that I will hardly ever use them, and wonder at my capacity to be fooled into spending my money on known-to-be-useless items purely because they were displayed in appealing packaging on a shelf. Faint memories of other purchases I knew to be misjudged even as I embarked on the transaction at the shop counter flash through my mind in a regrettable slideshow of my own gullibility. Such images include:
(i) Several packs of electronic, stackable blocks, each cube bearing on its face an LCD screen showing an animated stick man. This man sleeps, stands up, walks around and so on, and when stacked above, below or next to another similar cube (containing its own figure) will hop across on to the neighbouring screen and interact with its occupant in an amusing series of pre-programmed sequences (such as fighting and handshaking). The idea was so simple and entertaining I thought I should buy ten of these packs, each containing two cubes, which I imagined I could give to children of friends if I did not come to use them much myself. The delight of the toy is diluted by the fact that each cube is battery-operated and therefore must not only be switched on but switched off again when the viewer has seen enough and does not wish the batteries to run down. This undermines the whimsical raison d’être of the toy, which should ideally be allowed to run indefinitely in a corner, with ten or more cubes stacked and attached to form a strangely envisioned apartment block, to catch and amuse the casual eye, which while languorously scanning the room for a lost thought might alight upon the plastic architectural caprice and be held for a moment, half-enjoying the voyeuristic glimpse of these repetitive, automated monochrome lives, half-unseeing as the viewer is lost in his own reverie. The consideration of diminishing battery-power renders this untenable.
(ii) Any number of cheap compact discs bought at service and petrol stations. I very quickly learnt that compilation CDs offered by such outlets are immediately disappointing, consisting as they do of the cheapest out-of-copyright ersatz recordings lumped ingloriously together to form a charmless anthology of unlistenable quality. The misleading cover designs and confident titles – The Platinum Collection, The Wonder Years, The Voice of . . ., The Classic Sound of . . . – suggest a hand-picked omnibus of the artist’s finest works. Yet once the disc has been bought, returned to the car and drawn into the sleek slot of the vehicle’s CD player upon leaving the forecourt, those first crackling bars betray that a penny short of five pounds has been cruelly wasted. In comparison to the sound quality of these purchases, Edison’s pioneering waxed cylinder recordings of his early phonograph seem to resonate with the sparkling transparency of a glass bell rung in a bright, empty ballroom. Yet I still find it almost impossible to resist these compilations, and now own any number of unlovely assemblages of exhumed, prohibition-era recordings wisely disowned by singers who went on to achieve greatness.
My unswerving ability to buy bad CDs, even to find myself consciously pushing from my mind the thought don’t buy this, it will be awful, reminds me of how some glitch in my nature allows me to eat my way through a bowl of salted nibbles which I am not at all enjoying. I find that after a while the visual appeal of the presented savoury snacks outshines the dismal memory of the last one’s disappointing taste; thus another is picked up, put in the mouth and consumed with familiar displeasure, triggering a mental note not to take any more; yet, minutes later, they again appear inexplicably irresistible and a further one is ingested without enjoyment.
Normally, after a minute stood in Robert Dyas watching the sales video in horror and being seduced or amused by the item advertised, I walk away and remind myself of the kettle descaler, or whichever item is the reason for my being in the shop. As I do so, the voice follows me. The pitch for that week’s item is played on a loop, and my browsing is distracted by the obsessive act of listening for the point when the tape begins again: the rejuvenated vocal burst of the voice-over starting anew triggers a mildly rewarding, compulsive satisfaction when I hear it. Finally, I wonder what the ongoing experience of this perpetual blabber is for the members of staff: how long it takes them to accustom themselves to it and whether they ever reach the point of stopping hearing it altogether. When on rare occasions I have been irritated by sales staff in the shop, I have taken the opportunity to remind them of it. ‘Wow, that tape must become annoying,’ I say, and watch their faces for signs of dismay as they suddenly become aware again of its incessant jarring crassness.
To descale the kettle or to take care of any of these minor domestic irritations is to enjoy the unexpected reprieve that accompanies the realisation that some barely noticed, low-level irk has been eliminated. This is rather like the sudden awareness of glorious silence following the automatic switching-off of air-conditioning, the stopping of refrigerator-humming, or guests leaving one’s home after turning out to be dull beyond words.
* The discovery of the mammoth nibble was exciting for three reasons:
1. Any such mutation of a favourite packed-lunch item was bound to be fascinating. In this case, however, a packet’s-worth of the chunky snack had seemingly amalgamated into a single savoury tube, with stretched claws running along the full length underneath. Viewed from the front, it looked identical to the maize crisp we knew and loved, but as you turned it to see the side, it became unfamiliarly elongated. We passed it carefully around, and only to those whom we trusted not to break it.
2. This was no ordinary crisp: this was a Monster Munch. Monster Munch were, by their nature, monster: their size, more even than their eccentric flavours, was their primary appeal. So to find an unnaturally huge example, monstrously mutated to such freakish proportions, had an ironic appeal that was not lost on us at that age.
3. The single, tubular Munch also offered an insight into the manufacturing process that we had not considered, but were able now to vaguely fathom. Clearly, the crisps were initially made in such a tubular form; a long ur-Munch was then divided by blades into readily edible sections. This conjured up speculative images, which have long since stayed with me whenever I see packets of this particular crisp on shop shelves. I picture a long, thin mould into which a fatty, corn-based, chemically flavoured compound is poured to cool. The metre-or-so tube of setting continuous snack is then brought via some conveying mechanism to a place where the mould swings open and delicate robotic grips remove and support the fragile tube, this process having been carefully designed to keep the crispy pipe from breaking under its own weight or the tiniest bit too much pressure from the gripping hands. These clamps lower the revealed yellow shaft of flavoured maize to the cutting surface alongside maybe fifty identical lengths, each held in place with a pre-programmed amount of pressure which balances zero slippage with the avoidance of breakage. Then, from below – swish! – forty-nine fearsomely sharp blades swing up and round and divide each metre length into fifty equal parts. A split second of silver slicing and then, mercilessly, the clamps retreat and the entire line is pushed forward and off the edge of the surface, whereupon the segments drop with a final, beautiful, consistent uniformity on to a conveyor belt, there to jostle and roll with many others on their way to colourful branded packets, held open like gaping mouths by smaller clamps as a dialogue between cleverly designed diagonal re-directing bars on the conveyor belt and a stop–start rotating system of packaging ensures that the correct amount of crisps, agreed by Monster Munch heads and food-marketing experts to be the right and proper number for each customer, drops at the right moment into a perfectly positioned bag. Somehow, against all odds, T—’s anomaly had avoided the slicing part of this automated procedure; seemingly her eight-inch chunk had broken off following a machine malfunction that day, and rolled on to the conveyor belt and into a bag unseen.
I wonder sometimes what caused the mishap, and whether it was human error, in which case the giant undivided example we found that day, which caused me indirectly to be sent in to have lunch with Routy and watch her eat eggs, and years afte
r to record the find in this book, may have been the unexpected result of a machinist’s momentary daydreaming, as some thought other than tending to the soulless routine of that day’s work glimmered across her wandering mind and caused her eyes to glaze and lift, at the exact moment when a discrepant, seceded length of Monster Munch happened to drop unnoticed into a bag, immediately to be heat-sealed, pulled away, packaged up and sent to the shop where T—’s mother chose to buy her groceries.
* An ENT doctor I spoke to referred kindly to nose-picking as ‘having a tidy-up’ during a discussion about my lifelong propensity for nose bleeds. This euphemism struck me as a particularly happy one, to be used comfortably in mixed company when needs must.
* I cannot comfortably perambulate my apartment without slippers. The feeling of socked feet directly upon the wood of a floor or a carpet has about it the feeling of unsettled transience: somehow I have not arrived; somehow I am not properly home. I have two pairs, for the feeling of slipperlessness is so distressing that I will shuffle unhappily around the place in search of them until a pair has been located, and a second set doubles my chances of finding comfort. I was delighted to find leather travel-slippers for hotel-stays, but having bought them I rarely pack them, having come to quite enjoy the slippers provided by hotel rooms: sanitary-packed, one inverted and slipped inside the other, one-size/one-shape-fits-all, soles cut out of light, fragrant rubber and covered on one side in soft padded towelling stitched around the edge; a slightly stretchy five-inch-wide strip across the front, bearing the name of the hotel in contrasting embroidery, which hugs the upper side of my foot as I walk my toes under it and into its snug elasticised grasp; the slippers proffered, strangely, not in the uncarpeted bathroom where I need them most but in the wardrobe, where I only find them after I’ve had to negotiate swivelling the floor-mat from bath position across to sink position, which is impossible to do without treading on the wet hard cold floor, at which point the slippers would have offered ideal protection.