On Charging Points and ‘Friday Afternoon Work’
Commonplace Newsletter #61
What I wanted was to write about autumn. That’s what I wanted. A keenly observed painterly piece about the falling of the leaves and the falling of the thermostat, all mood and texture and change of the season reminiscences. But it wasn’t to be. You know what they say about plans and God and laughter.
The conditions were perfect though. I woke up early this morning, the morning mist outside the window, crisp air and dead silence save for the birdsong. Empty streets, empty roads but still enough of the lingering embers of summer so that the world outside wasn’t mere darkness. My favourite time of year.
So I bolted down a cup of tea, shrugged myself into my overcoat and laced my shoes and shouldered my supplies. I was ready and eager to be like a written word version of an old world landscape painter and to go out into the world and capture what I saw before me.
But reality has a way of getting in the way of such notions.
I went out onto the street looking for imagery, slow-walking my way to the neighbourhood park where I though I might best see and feel the orange-brown carpet of leaves and the tall trees and maybe a woollen-scarfed old couple who understand what the life of strolling and simple pleasures is all about.
But it wasn’t to be.
Now nature, for her part, was being obliging. As I took my seat on the low perimeter wall- one of my many respite spots throughout the city- leaves fell in swirling slow motion and a grey squirrel sprinted across the manicured grass and then scurried up into the high branches. Exactly the kind of thing I hoped I would be able to fashion a couple of sentences from.
So I sat there taking it all in, looking for things to write about. With the park behind me I looked at a row of townhouses, tall and silent and painted in different elegant and muted shades- slate grey, olive, cyan, salmon pink. The house of people who have done well for themselves. But as I sat there I began to pity those people. Because, you see, once those occupants woke and looked down on where I sat from their top floor vantage point they would be greeted by a brand new eyesore spoiling the autumn vista that they had surely paid top dollar for.
On the road itself- I’m surprised I didn’t clock it sooner- was painted in dazzling white utilitarian font ‘electric cars only’ and on the pavement itself there were two ugly white plastic electric car charge points. They appeared out of nowhere, I swear there was nothing in their place when I last walked this road the day before yesterday. Two white plastic sentinels, the shade and shape of the haughty lady robot from Wall-E. I forget her name. The things were so new that the charging nozzles were still wrapped in a pinkish bubble wrap and the ubiquitous screen and the ubiquitous contactless pay point were blank and lifeless.
And once I saw them, inert as they were, I couldn’t really see anything else. The birds and the sunrise joggers and the carpet of leaves and all the rest of it faded from my vision as I stared- a little annoyed and a little dumbfounded- at these twin blemishes on an otherwise perfect little scene. But at least I had my subject now. So that was something.
Friday Afternoon Work
My late Grandfather, who spent his whole working career laying bricks, had a term that he would always use. He wasn’t a man of education or refinement but he was a man of standards. Half-hearted work always bothered him. He called it ‘Friday afternoon work’, the kind of end of the week, post-lunch work where you clumsily rush through because all you can think about is clocking off and getting home. The way you do anything is the way you do everything, as they say, and he couldn’t stand that going-through-the-motions approach to labour.
Well ‘Friday Afternoon Work’ as an ethos (if that’s the word I’m looking for) can be performed on any given day off the week and it seems like it very often is.
Take those infernal new charge points for instance. Now, I’m not going to bemoan the existence of the electric car out of some misplaced nostalgia (I don’t drive and don’t intend to, I know nothing about such vehicles and have no dog in this race). New technology is not ipso facto bad and I’d like to think I’m nuanced enough to not fall into the trap of kneejerk Luddite reaction to anything that’s new.
But. These things are an incongruous eyesore and the design of them is clearly a prime case of Friday Afternoon Work. The things are twin totems commemorating the sentiment of ‘Ah, that’ll do’. And that’s the problem.
The design of every object, whether public or private, whether indoor or outdoor, is a chance for the designer to make a philosophical statement about what life is for and what life is about. And these charge points tell us that life is a question of thoughtless utilitarian function first of all, with aesthetics being a distant afterthought at best.
This is why I pity those townhouse owners, because their own homes and their gardens tell a different story. Their things, as objects, value utility and beauty in equal measure, which is how it should be. They were built to last, they were built in harmony with both the landscape and with each other. They are of a piece but each has it’s own character, it’s own individual bit of flare and detail in the window frames, the ironwork, the horticulture. Such things are not ‘necessary’ strictly speaking but they mark the difference between a house and a home.
And the charge points have none of this character. Which is why these not-that-big amenities have the feel of an occupying force. They lend the lie to everything else around them. All because the people who designed them couldn’t be bothered to put a bit more thought and effort into it. Or to spare just a little bit more expense to design something enduring, let alone iconic.
Beyond Revival
Now the standard next move when writing of architecture and the aesthetic of the streets, if you like, is to bang a conservative drum and call for the revival of the old ways of designing things. This is well-meaning and essentially correct in its intent but the prescription is wrong. Such talk leads to impotent nostalgia and the fruitless clinging on to a Rococo past that by definition can never come around again.
As my friend Kairon always says: ‘The nostalgia will continue until we believe in the future.’
And that’s the crux. Great design has to have some base level of optimism and belief to it. This is what unites all of the old art and architecture movements from Medieval cathedral design to Art Deco, they are statements of a faith in humanity expressed in the physical environment. And so merely imitating and reviving those past styles, great as they are, is an exercise in missing the point, in falling prey to a paradox.
Which is where things such as our electric car charge point comes in. Surely if such technology is the handmaiden towards a better tomorrow then the public utilities that facilitates this should inspire in me more than just a mild, lethargic revulsion? Knowing nothing about the technology, I am unable to buy into electric cars as an idea because the objects around it are not capable of rousing any positive emotion in me. They convey no vision. Whereas the red Royal Mail pillar box further down the street for example says something about the wonderful technology of being able to post a letter and have it be delivered through someone’s letterbox. And this statement, delivered via aesthetics makes you feel something.
Surely such knowledge is Persuasion 101, Politics 101.
Yet as with so much in life it seems, the design of everyday public objects has become another victim to the entrenched and endemic mindset of Friday Afternoon Work. Because if the people who make decisions don’t care- and this is what so much of the lived environment signals to us- then why should we care? And thus begins, if we are not careful, a very dangerous downward spiral.
And to think, all I wanted to do was to talk about autumn leaves.
Entertaining as always, Tom. I do love that this essay that wasn't about Autumn was still a third to half about Autumn. I think you've managed to capture flaneury in the written form and it's brilliant.