I didn’t choose your name
let’s get that out of the way
Shouting it made me feel weird
Because I think you’re really Archie, Teddie or Ben

London wasn’t for you
too noisy, too rushy and not enough space to chase
You liked to run and play, and find random things
To fit in your big squishy mouth

Your snout was indeed supreme
dribbling, snuffling and licking us awake
With velvet ears and knowing eyes
Never too far away

But now you have gone
to a place less exciting, more serene
From where you will find peace
Yet you leave us with a dog shaped hole

That we never can replace.

Ode to Timbo was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Your eyes so big and stare-y, like a fish
Sleeping anywhere you could squish those legs
Your bichromatic ears, always flapping
Giving you that puzzled of puzzled looks.

You liked to bring me your favourite toy
Nuzzle me ’til I’d tug your rope of war
Slurping your water loud and urgently
Before flopping your belly gravel down.

but sometimes you’d
—just fucking lose it and go

nuts
because of your strange brain

messing

up

the

rhythm,
the
routine,
the rules

causing chaos, precipitating panic, triggering tumult

(was it a
difficult puppy-hood?)

>>>>the triggers were at least clear

food
dogs
foxes
dogs
food

I learned how to rescue jaw-clenched small dogs
You meant no harm, you’re just a teeth hugger
Less successful removing the butter
Or your diggy paws from the recycling.

One would never know when; your special gift
Unpredictable events; canine quantum decay
A switch got flipped, neurones backfired: he’s off!
Tender snuffling put on hold — eyes glazed over.

You see, Kirby was destined for greatness
But nature had other plans for this one
He shan’t be guiding; it wasn’t for him
The desire for fun just too instinctive.

What fun you found to have, home and away
Joining the pizza picnic, unannounced
Eating the whole loaf of bread, and its bag
Howling on the train like a wolf possessed.

You’ve gone now, not to heaven, to Norfolk
My loss is Little Walsingham’s gain
I’ll remember your oh-so funny ways
Forever more — my unique canine friend.

Ode to Kirb y was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Oh Zane-oh, you stare at me like a corpse
One with a wiggly nose
Because that’s the only thing that moves
When you stare at me like a corpse.

Oh Zane-oh, I’m so proud of how you stop on the steps
Even though I’ve never explained why
It’s a shame you don’t stop at all the kerbs
Because you might end up killing a blind person.

Oh Zane-oh, you run with delight when you’re allowed
Always wanting to make new friends
They don’t always share your enthusiasm
Most probably because they don’t have to go to school every day, like you do.

Oh Zane-oh, you melt hearts and effect smiles
On all the faces, even the grumpy ones
It’s because your longing eyes and your flabby jowls
Make everyone long to squwoosh your muzzle.

On Zane-oh, thank you for keeping me company
For letting me pet and groom and tickle
I knew you were not mine forever — wishing has not come true.
I’ll never forget how you spin-round to go to bed
Or how you sneeze going down stairs
I hope you won’t forget me, as much as I, won’t forget you.

Ode to Zane was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Overheard #1 was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

like a Snickers bar.

The same, but very different.

I know you felt like the intruder

but like Doctor Who, I got used to you —

you were my flourescent to their incandescent

Alas — you too went you’re own way, without my permission.

Like they all seem to.

Are you still sitting in that hire car?

Maybe I should have been more strict.

Set hoodie rules.

That’s not my way. It’s not the relationship we had.

And, so even though you are the cotton equivalent of my

dead second wife

I must say:

I miss you. I really do.

I am not ready for my halogen hoodie.

Perhaps their time will come.

For now I accept a cold head.

Keep Going Me; no dangly string to play with.

When I get nervous.

Goodbye hoodie that replaced my hoodie.

I wish you well.

Ode to the lost hoodie that replaced my lost hoodie was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This short note first considers why we write and why its quality matters. It then ponders what good writing actually is and ends with practicable advice on how you can write clearly and with vigour.

“The written word is a recent invention that has left no trace in our genome and must be laboriously acquired throughout childhood and beyond.”

1. Why do we write (at work) and does its quality matter?

Maybe this is an obvious question — but often I read things I suspect the author would have no good to answer if asked. We write because we want to be read. We want to be read because we want the world to be different as a result of communicating something. This is an important part of our, and many other, jobs.

Knowing who your intended reader is and the reason you’re writing to them is a vital first step for your prose to succeed. How you write will differ depending on these two variables.

Skipping who we write for as usually being an easy question to answer, the most important reasons we create text is to:

• explain complicated matters to busy people (slides, long boring documents no one ever reads, research papers);
• enable someone to take a decision (business cases, memos);
• give direction to others (emails, memos, formal papers, instant messenger);
• prepare for or record the outcome of a meeting; and
• communicate to the public (Twitter, Facebook, press releases, statistical releases, newspaper articles).

If you accept writing is (for now, at least) unavoidable then the better you write the better you can do your job. If you need more convincing to consider how well you write, doing so will mean you can:

• convince more people you are right (I assume you are);
• ensure you give clear, simple and unambiguous advice;
• avoid confusion, wasted time and mistakes;
• create inspiring stories to explain your thinking, to bring people with you and communicate direction; and
• give people simple instructions for others to follow.

2. Is there such a thing as “good writing”?

Yes: it’s writing that does the job it needs to (see 1) with the minimum of fuss by the reader that they enjoy. A good story, well written.

We can all agree there is such a thing as bad writing, you’ve no doubt seen some. It’s when the author fails in his or her presumed intention to communicate something because it is confusing, boring, irritating or worse.

“People have strong opinions on the quality of language today. They write books and articles deploring it, fire off letters to editors and call in to radio talk shows. I have found few of these objections single out clarity, grace or coherence. Their concerns are usually claims of “correct usage” — the supposed rules of ‘proper English’”.

We will thankfully never be able to define perfect writing. Sheepishly following every rule and tip that follows is not the point. Empathy for your reader and the humility that perhaps your last email wasn’t your best will give you a better chance to keep slowly improving, forever.

Everyone can be a good writer but it requires effort. Writing is a skill and a craft. Do not expect instant results, instead think of this as a journey where the scenery keeps improving but you never reach your destination.

You need to want to write well and you will need to care about how your writing impacts others. Bad writing is a form of pollution — its harm rarely impacts you directly.

3. How to write a little better

The remainder of this short note covers the four ways I think matter most in writing well. They are:

1. structure your thinking and your writing;
2. edit your work and check you’ve followed some simple rules;
3. write in the Classical Style (see below) and find your own voice; and
4. read lots of good writing.

1. Structure

Clear writing needs clear thinking and something to say. I can’t help you on the latter. But a good structure will help the former because it enables your reader to follow your argument in a logical way so they don’t get lost.

This sub-section considers three different approaches to structure your thinking and thus your writing: (a) hierarchy, (b) argumentation and © storytelling. It ends with a few words on how to create them.

(a) Hierarchy

What do you see when you look at a tree? Those leaves are the end point of a complicated hierarchy that all leads to one trunk. The same with this most simple way to structure your writing. The point you are making or the ground you need to cover can be logically broken down by following two simple, connected, rules known as “ME-CE” (mee-see):

• Mutually Exclusive: each part of the structure deals with each part of the narrative just once (this requires a lot of thoughts about what the best way to divide up what you are trying to say).
• Collectively Exhaustive: your structure covers the whole of the issue or problem you are addressing.

It sounds fancy but think of a pizza: each slice is mutually exclusive from another and unless someone has eaten one, when you put all the slices together it makes one whole pizza and no more (sadly).

The hard parts of creating a tree-like structure are deciding which criteria you divide your argument by (how should you slice a square pizza?) and ensuring all the sub-branches are each themselves MECE. This is often difficult and time consuming so people do not take the care to check which makes the work of the reader much harder.

(b) Argumentation

Structure can flow from the strength of the evidence at your disposal which in turn can help decide the method with which you make your assertion. This is sometimes referred to as “top down thinking” or the “pyramid principle”. There are three main forms of argumentation:

• Deductive reasoning: leads to a conclusion based on joining together two or more statements using bullet-proof logic. “If these things are true, then this must be true.” The structure would follow the steps of this logic.
• Inductive reasoning: leads to an inference based on multiple examples — the weight of evidence. “If these things are true then it is likely this is true.” This is weaker than deductive but it might be all you can do. Ways to group this argument are by time, some organic order or by a ranking. The structure would be grouped by the different examples you have which together add up to your argument.
• Abductive reasoning: leads to a hypothetical conclusion in need of a test based on a specific case joined together with an existing set of observations. “Based on this case and wider observations, our theory is that…” The structure would start with an observation that needs explaining, a hypothesis as to why this is and then a conclusion.

(c) Storytelling

Another method to structure your writing is to think about the steps needed to tell an engaging story. There is a reason we watch films, read books and like our funny uncle: our brains are wired to enjoy a good tale.

A tried and tested structure is the SCoRE method which stands for: Situation, Complication, Resolution, Example. The aim is to create and resolve tension to keep the reader’s interest though setting out a “complication” (we need to keep kids in school as much as possible but also reduce infection”) with its “resolution” (we will test all children many times a week). Start with a brief “situation” to explain once why we need to discuss this topic and on with the complication. Adding an example will bring the problem and solution to life. You can repeat the complication-resolution cycle as many times as necessary to tell your story.

(If you are interested, this is one of five elements that many say are necessary to give a brilliant presentation: logic, rhetoric (the SCoRE method), graphics, politics and metrics.)

Creating your structure

Do not start writing until you know what you want to say and have created your structure. If you do, you will probably be using the act of writing to figure these things out and that’s usually not productive. Spending time collecting and organising your thoughts always pays dividends. Invest more time at this stage than you think you need; you will rarely regret it. Not putting sufficient time into structuring and thinking is probably the most frequent cause of bad writing.

Use a favourite pen and paper, a simple bulleted list in any word processor or a special application: there are broadly two types: outlining applications and mind mapping tools (some do both). If you are telling a story then “story-boarding” by creating a cartoon can be helpful — and fun.

A final word on structure. Only clumsy writers unthinkingly follow the advice to “say what you’re going to say, say it, and then say what you’ve said.” The same can be said for summaries and conclusions — be sure they add value. Previews that read like a scrunched-up table of contents are there to help the writer, not the reader. And conclusions more often than not either prove you didn’t need to write all the other stuff, or annoy the reader by making them read it twice.

“You would never announce to a companion, “I’m going to say three things to you. The first thing I’m going to say is that a woodpecker has just landed on that tree.”

3. Style

Rules of thumb, grammar and punctuation might be helpful in their way, but they are nothing compared to writing with style. This section draws heavily (steals) from a book by Francis-Noél Thomas and Mark Turner which defines a way of writing called Classic Style.

Classic style is not the only way to write. But “it’s an ideal that can pull writers away from many of their worst habits, and it works particularly well because it makes the unnatural act of writing seem like two of our most natural acts: talking and seeing.” It aims to align language with the truth, the proof of success being clarity and simplicity. It is an antidote for acadamese, bureaucratese, corporatese, legalese, officialese and other kinds of stuffy prose.

Do not forget you have the curse of knowledge. The reader does not know what you do and you must imagine yourself to be them. Always ask someone to read your drafts.

Quoting the above mentioned book, the attributes of classic style include:

• The writer knows the truth before putting it into words; he is not using the occasion of writing to sort out what he thinks. The writer does not have to argue for the truth; he just needs to present it.
• It is not a contemplative or romantic style, in which a writer tries to share his idiosyncratic, emotional, and mostly ineffable reactions to something. Nor is it a prophetic, oracular, or oratorical style, where the writer has the gift of being able to see things that no one else can, and uses the music of language to unite an audience. Writing in classic style, in contrast, takes whatever form and whatever length the writer needs to present an interesting truth. The classic writer’s brevity comes from the elegance of his mind, never from pressures of time or employment.
• The things in the world the writer is pointing to are concrete: people (or other animate beings) who move around in the world and interact with objects. It minimises abstractions which cannot be seen with the naked eye. The writer is directing the gaze of the reader to something in the world she can see for herself.
• The writer has worked hard to find something worth showing and the perfect vantage point from which to see it.

“To write in genuine, familiar or truly English style, is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command or choice of words or who could discourse with ease, force and perspicuity setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.”

George Orwell’s six rules of good writing

1. “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”
2. “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” A word is never better by dint of its length. This is a weird British class-based legacy. Use the shortest word but sometimes a little variety goes a long way. Don’t try to show off: utilise (use); demonstrate (show); implement (deliver); establish (start) etc.
3. “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” Aim for clarity and energy.
4. “Never use the passive where you can use the active.” He was hit by Tom / Tom hit him. Pinker does permit a role for the passive but you justify its use as it makes things intellectually taxing and wordy. That does not include submissions.
5. “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”
6. “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous” (will leave this to your judgement).

Ernest Hemingway had his own rules

1. Use short sentences and short paragraphs: insert facts, create images, evoke emotions and create promises. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”
2. Use vigorous English. “It’s the difference between putting in a good effort and trying to move a boulder… and actually sweating, grunting, straining your muscles to the point of exhaustion… and moving the freaking thing!”
3. Be positive, not negative. By stating what something isn’t can be counterproductive since it is still directing the mind, albeit in the opposite way. If I told you that dental work is painless for example, you’ll still focus on the word “pain” in “painless.”

The Economist’s Style Guide has some typically terse rules

1. Do not be stuffy: be readily understandable and use everyday speech.
2. Do not be hectoring or arrogant: persuade, do not tell. Go easy on
3. oughts and should.
4. Do not be too pleased with yourself.
5. Do not be too chatty.
6. Do not be too didactic.
7. Do not be sloppy in the construction of your sentences and paragraphs (be concise, lucid and use correct grammar).

Some other useful rules

Avoid adverbs. More is less (very, extremely, highly).

Be clear who you are talking about (it, they, she, the Minister, the public).

Capitals: avoid unless you know you ought to use them (proper nouns). If in doubt, don’t. Some people capitalise because they are worried it should be a Capital and they think it’s better to be Wrong rather than wrong (like the department or the government). There are ministers and the Minister. It is Parliament and Prime Minister seems to have stuck (as long as you are referring to the one we have not the fact Britain has a prime minister.

Don’t hide or dodge things: almost, apparently, comparatively, fairly, in part, nearly, partially, predominantly, presumably, rather, relatively, seemingly, so to speak, somewhat, sort of, to a certain degree, to some extent, most, nearly all. Instead, qualify: on average, all things being equal, 10 per cent, four in five, on the weekend, during the 20th century.

Avoid emotive language (“serious”, “wrong”, stupid” etc.).

Lists come in two types but both start with a colon:

• the first start with a lower case letter and, end with a semicolon;
• the penultimate entry adds; and
• the last one ends with a full stop.
• Longer bullet points or numbered lists are easier to read if they start with a capital and end with a full stop. Never mix them.

Avoid metadiscourse, that is, a word or phrase that comments on what is in the sentence, usually as an introductory adverbial clause. It is any phrase that is included within a clause or sentence that goes beyond the subject itself, often to examine the purpose of the sentence or a response from the author. Metadiscourse includes phrases such as “frankly,” “after all,” “on the other hand,” “to our surprise,” “note that”, “therefore”, however”.

Avoid nominalisation and gerunds (no, I don’t know what they mean either). Don’t ruin a nice crisp verb with -ance, -ment, -ation, or -ing.

Punctuation. Rarely use a semicolon; you need to br sure of yourself. Colons are followed by a lower case letter: We are not American. Use dashes ( — ) and hyphens (-) appropriately and rarely. Dashes are a fashionable pause or break — do not overuse them, especially. Hyphen join-up words. Know your James’s from your James’. You rarely improve things (with these). You don’t need “&”, you’re not a sign maker.

Avoid ridiculous jargon. Add your own to this list: key (unless it really unlocks something), going forwards, leaning in, spinning up, blah blah blah.

Avoid things that do not exist. “Could you recognize a “level” or a “perspective” if you met one on the street? Could you point it out to someone else? What about an approach, an assumption, a concept, a condition, a context, a framework, an issue, a model, a process, a range, a role, a strategy, a tendency, or a variable?”

3. Edit, edit, edit

The Beatles did 26 takes of Strawberry Fields Forever before they were happy. Why would you think you were so good at writing it doesn’t need to be checked?

And yet, how many times have you re-read your emails, submissions or whatever to ensure it’s as clear and simple as can be? Be honest. Do you always ask someone else to read your important documents to ensure they understand it? How often do you tear down your structure and rebuild it when you realise it’s not quite working?

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

Edit, then. It makes a huge improvement. Use the rules below when you do but most importantly listen as if you were a new reader. Will they see, hear, smell and feel what you are telling them?

What follows is a few of the best rules to make quick improvements to your prose. Listen, though, when Stephen Pinker says the best writers never read style guides, in fact “they often make the quality of prose worse.” Watch his speech and read his book.

Edit for brevity. One of the most egregious word crimes I see, is a ubiquitous use of throat clearing and clutter, which are nearly always usually a sign of someone thinking whilst writing, that is, they didn’t spend enough time thinking about what to say or how to structure how they say it. These are all examples of unnecessary phrases I’ve seen recently:

In the event that; for instance; in so far as; as well as; is due to be; as of the; not withstanding; on the basis that; also; that could be; in essence; with the aim to; has been that it would be; this is where they; in the first place; as a result; I was better able to; at times; to be able to; in order to; still; this means; both/either; has to be; a number of; at any point; for a while; is that it is; take a view on; have a good understanding of; will not be able to; and refers to the; be used to; nonetheless; in turn.

4. Read well

The more good writing you ingest the more you will appreciate the virtue of clear and simple prose and through literary osmosis, the better a writer you will be. Pinker goes as far as calling this a universal truth: read more; write better. The following are good places to start to read well-edited largely non-fiction writing:

• The New York Times
• The Economist
• London Review of Books
• The Browser
• The New Yorker
• The Atlantic

Don’t forget “good” fiction, either. I am reliably told these are some people that knew how to write:

• Ernest Hemmingway
• Evelen Waugh
• Virginia Wolf
• Vladimir Nabokov

OK reader — we’re done. One last thing: if you take what I have said too literally (structure, edit for brevity and using some rules, be more stylish and read a lot) you might think everyone will end up writing in the same way dulling the most interesting aspect of reading other people’s work. Not a bit of it: you must find your own voice.

You’re unique. No one has lived your life, no one has your thoughts, and no one will write like you do. The more you write the more you will hone your own style.

What is Good Writing? was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s become something of a cliche to claim grocers and other imagined under-educated tribes cannot or will not use the apostrophe and English is on its way to hell to join Latin and Esperanto.

It was something of a sad surprise when I recently criss-crossed Britain to see evidence this might be true. Maybe we can forgive the odd independent shop…

…or shut down nightclubs…

…but when an international chain store commits a punctuation crime, well, should we all just give up?

English is the ultimate bastard tongue. Greek, Latin, Norse, Old English, Gaelic, French and a raft of Germanic madness mashed up leaving us with a simple but extremely badly spelt lexicon. Most modifiers to words have evolved away but possession with an apostrophe lingered because, arguably, it’s quite useful. Why does it exist at all?

Well, a while back we used to add -es to a word to show possession:

Jameses

The doges

This was then contracted to James’s and The Dog’s, respectively.

Oddly, we omit the possessive apostrophe from personal pronouns, which is confusing, but we say:

yours

hers

theirs

And never your’s etc.

Except this is English, so no rules really work because you ought to say one’s and someone’s. No idea why.

Maybe I have become too conservative, afterall, English got simpler and therefore better by not sticking to silly rules that separate the superior educated from the unwashed. It’s hard to find a situation that would be genuinely confusing without the possessive apostrophe. And it would do away with endless debates about whether it’s Mother’s Day or Mothers’ Day.

(That said is this Mr Wilkinson’s shop or the Wilkinson Brothers’ shop?)

Those little punctuation marks liven up writing and makes text look interesting, so, for now, I am keeping up the campaign, along with Pete, here.

Apropostrophe of nothing was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There comes a point where every slightly funny joke, retold enough, ceases being funny.

The same problem has hit marmite’s incessant need to marmitify everything.

The crisps were fine. No Smith’s Bovril, but passable. Marmite crackers had novelty value and were mostly edible. But then came marmite humus which was when the alarm bells peeled.

As far as I could tell this was brown humus paste made of salt. It was so thirst triggering it caused immediate dribbling. It tasted of the English Channel.

The rubicon was crossed with marmite peanut butter. This just felt like shameless manipulation. It was like pairing Easter with Enya. It made no sense and it had the culinary appeal of a Sunday evening. It was such a violent interlacing of the tastes that it caused uncontrollable disgust and shock.

It’s without question that marmite chocolate, mayonnaise and holidays are in the pipeline.

Don’t get me wrong, reader, I love marmite. But I’d never advocate for Brian Harvey to read the news, for North Korea to host Eurovision or for Wednesday to be the weekend.

It’s better when we put things in their rightful place. The marmite debacle is symptomatic of the times. We’ve let this loose categorisation of things go unpoliced for too long.

This menacing mashup culture has bred such terrors as coffee shops in banks; Uber Pool; dungarees and the Liberal Democrats.

We don’t need more songs featuring the other person who also does songs, we don’t need salted and sweet popcorn and rainbows are not relief enough for confusing weather.

Marmite makes many a morning magical. But this delight has been severely questioned with its recent affairs. Please keep yourself where you belong and I’ll forgive you soon enough.

Marmite was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

International Domestic Matters Vol. XXII №4

There is remarkable consistency, this article shows, to the allocation of “objects” and general use- distribution across the different spatial positions (or hierarchy states, see Chumley 1976) of kitchen “drawers” primarily in the Anglo Saxon domain especially the United Kingdom. It is not random, as Montefiore-Smythe wrongly contends.

This contribution to the debate presents a psycho-social anthropomorphic model explaining the conscious, and otherwise, rationales to both the function/form patterns seen in the data, as well as what is considered “in-the-drawer”, relative to other storage proximities or, even those not stored at all (i.e. lost). Observations are also made on the noticeable differences across the Asian domains.

The use of “kitchen drawers” has a long history dating from when drawers (I refer to a storage container that can be made available and then not — one may recall the beginnings of domestic “magic” from the late-bronze age where the use of proto-drawers, so-called drawlings, caused widespread panic and the death of 20 after one housewife believed all her culinary belongings had been disappeared by the village blacksmith — they were merely in, what is now known as “closed position”) were first used in the Kitchen Arena, known now simply as the “kitchen” (from the High German “Kitch” meaning food and “en” meaning to prepare and cook indoors after killing).

As Lazarus et al (1951) hinted, but never proved, there was a rapid delineation of use-types across the kitchen-drawer stack¹ (see her landmark paper “Where have all the lightbulbs gone?”, a thoughtful but much overlooked contribution to the debate that explained their migration through the socio-anthropological lenses of the drag of rapid industrialisation and nationalisation, and the feel-good-bounce following the Second World War). The thesis she presented was that increasing wealth and hence more people taking domestic holidays in “chalets” and the like, in “resorts”, caused a market-driven spatial reallocation because for the first time different family units had to interact in the same kitchen spaces and and so there was, emerging for the first time in kitchen history “a place for everything and everything in its place”. We now seek to understand why.

2. Findings

This paper’s contention, therefore, is that many decades on, such “auto-sifting” led to clear uniformity in “what goes where”. The following summarises the evidence:

• Drawer one²: no one drawer ought to be considered superior to others, despite the structural language of Chumley. Drawer one is home to the most frequently used eating utensils, or “cutlery”. There is no a priori reason for this outcome (see Drawer Down in Asia: Chop Sticks no Longer Reign in the Kitchen, Economist, 1983, Nov. 12). The erroneous belief that drawer one is easiest to access (hence neatly correlating with most often used items) has been repeatedly shown to be false (See Darlington (1992), Arms Length and Drawer Speed, Domestic Review, Vol 5, Special Issue). Current thinking as to why this drawer became associated with food tools, is a neurological heuristic response, caused by the Housewife who had Too Much To Remember³ and so choosing drawer one or four, would limit confusion in what might have been a still-developing memory; and/or the British Empire’s continued association of “top” with “easiest” or “best” (as in the East India Company’s annual competition for Top Dog which used to put gun hounds through various tests to find the one that would become Governor General of Uttar-Pradesh state the following year) seeped into the kitchen.
• Drawer 2: food moving devices are found here. Spatulas, wooden spoons, whisks and chopping knives. Debate remains as to whether scissors ought to live here given the recent fashion, promoted by Television Chefs who “happened” to sell their own brand of scissors, to “cut”[sic] herbs despite much evidence this is unnecessary⁴ and wholly pretentious.
• Drawer 3: this drawer, after steady evolution, now has four clear uses. (1) objects once thought to be food movers but no use-case was found; (2) cylinders of food-related paper and plastic wrapping with various claimed uses like preservation or warmth-retention. But surveys show 83 per cent are never used because they are “too difficult to operate” (Wrap It Up, 2011); (3) items with a now forgotten seasonal use, such as Christmas Kebab Sticks and Olympic ring ice cube trays; and (4) tea towels, table cloths and placemats that are never used.
• Drawer 4: as Archibald (2002) knew only too well, some items of domestic necessity (or, more importantly, perceived necessity) need a place in the home, and for whatever reason⁵ , no alternative location in the domestic space has been found appropriate to house them. There are arguably other places, potentially better, for such artefacts but was it not Francis Bacon who said “do not wait forever to place thine fork in its rightful home, instead be thee happy it rests knowing its master will soon return to make merry”⁶. And we can all agree with Dyer who said that “the most nutty soap operas and mad parties always end up in the kitchen”. For it is this family fulcrum that leads the spare light bulbs, fuses, sellotape, elastic bands, shoe horns and super glue to end up at the limits of the drawer stack.

3. Method

Our model of drawer-down operates thus:

1. In the European and North American settings, if an item is suddenly needed to be “put away” — it usually goes into drawer 1 because of the thinking biases mentioned above.
2. The next time drawer 1 is used then the operator often sees an incorrectly placed item and it is moved to the next drawer — again for reasons of simplicity.
3. This waterfall reallocation process continues until either (a) the item reaches its respective end state or (b) we reach the final drawer (usually the fourth, hence the array of disconnected paraphernalia most usually found in the home). The opposite process has been seen to operate in Japan.

4. Conclusion and further research

This paper has shown that Montefiore-Smythe’s hitherto accepted theory that the arrangement of the contents of kitchen drawers is random is false. Instead, it is the result of a complex socio- historic-cultural interplay, and the mechanistic “drift” of artefacts according so a clear set of repeatable rules that result in a sophisticated emergent property of use-sedimentation across the spectrum of culinary storage units. It is not coincidence that the never-used matches always require stooping in Western cultures, and there will likely always be confusion over where to put the grapefruit spoon. More research is necessary to understand why certain implements are bought but never used (eg. sporks, salad spinners and decorative corn on the cob holders) and how it is possible that an item as small as a teaspoon, if placed incorrectly, can render two drawers inoperable for many months.

[1] While there are remains of 3 and 5 drawer stacks in some countries and times, the four drawer stack is commonplace in all decent households and shall be considered normal throughout this enquiry.

[2] I shall avoid the emotive and leading language regrettably created by Beach (1964), who referred to a “top” drawer.

[3] The author asks forgiveness for this irresistible nod to Diogenes of Oenoanda.

[4] See, for example, “A Cut Too Far: why you should not listen to loud mouthed men in the kitchen” (Davies, 2017).

[5] Current thinking is this is due to ennui stemming from the late stages of neoliberal capitalism.

[6] De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), Chapter 14: Culina Exitibus.

Drawing Up a Plan: explanations for the distribution of domestic utensil storage arrays, Margo… was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet.”

“Whether Patrick cried or not, I can’t tell. He’s all business now, making notes and looking up forgotten stoichiometric symbols in a chemistry text he’s opened on the desk.”

The fact that Amazon, or perhaps the publisher, amended the formal title of this book to “Vox: The bestselling gripping dystopian debut of 2018 that everyone’s talking about!” was a red flag.

The next was that this is a Debut Novel — billed as the beginning of a new period of time, one in which we live with Christina Dalcher’s cultural presence and lament its late arrival. While Christina may think she’s written a clever satire on Earth’s drift towards a dark future, she has in fact produced a book so badly written you cannot pay attention to whatever story she is trying to tell.

I am no literary expert. Far from it. I’ve not really read any proper story books. But the quality of writing that gets one into the bestseller cannon is so regrettable that I cannot let it pass without comment.

Here’s a brief recap of the story, or at least the bits I can remember. I’d call this a plot spoiler but that’s too kind to the concept:

• It’s not that far in the future but America has gone and fucked it all up because women are only allowed to speak 100 words a day. How can you police that, you think? Easily, because they have this bracelet see and it electrocutes them if they jabber on past their alloted verbal century.

This is the plot flaw I cannot get past. What energy source does Dalcher imagine can deliver a lethal bolt of electricity, repeatedly, from a device smaller than a watch which is never recharged, a few years ahead from a world that can’t keep a phone charged all day? I Just Couldn’t Get Passed This, let alone how this device is able to accurately count words. It is never mentioned. Never. And if we had this unbelievable source of energy then why is there Not A Single Other Technological Advancement Anywhere?

Back to the story:

• Women are all quiet and cook and stuff and can’t work. It’s the Handmaid’s Tale but with Apple Watches. Our female protagnoist is some kind of brain expert, like its author (that’s how she knows all the brain words!) so You Know That This Could be Based on Science, except it’s really not because it’s too insane. The president or some other man in charge — not sure — needs a brain person as this man is dying except he’s not they are just trying to make women permanently quiet which is very bad and makes brain experts Really Angry.
• But our heroine is flawed! She is having an affair for no reason at all other than so she can secretly fuck some Italian scientist and the only reason he is Italian is so she has a country to run away to that’s not Canada (and it’s really useful she can speak Italian as you shall see).
• The government needs her brain whizzery so much they let her take off her anti-speaking bracelet. Then a monkey is shot in a lab and I have no idea why that even happened. Then it sort of ends and someone dies — her husband I think. Did I mention her husband works for the president? A happenstance of such improbability that just happens to make the story just about make some sense.

Now some cruel analysis. Instead of a long and tortured review instead I present for you a long and tortured list of quotes from this book for you to wonder how it ended up on shelves and e-book readers in such blockbuster volumes. I have honestly not made any of them up.

Science-y sounding stuff

“Then take a single surgical glove — the kind with no powder — from the dispenser on the counter.”

Such relief that the single glove (surgical), that was dispensed, was not the kind with powder. No, it had absolutely no relevance whatsoever.

“Behind this page, there are the usual Gantt charts — the project manager’s tool of choice.”

A completely unnecessary insight into the distracting noise in the author’s brain? Bit unfair on project managers.

This is How People Talk, Right?

“We both laugh at his attempt at Southern fry-cook slang.”

I didn’t.

“Well, unless you’re preggers.”

Preggers!

“We never wasted time cooking in this place. Not food, anyway.”

Crystal meth?

“Destroying them is a different pile of wax.” “Ball of wax.” The correction comes naturally to me, so naturally I don’t hear it over the single word screaming inside my brain: Trepanation.

Are there two voices in this head?

“Italy,” he repeats. “Yes. You know, land of pizza and ass-kicking coffee.” Unlike the crap Andy brought in, I think.

Yeah, Andy, you dick.

Weird Endings That Suggest The Author Is Unsure About Her Own Characters

“I do know one more thing, Jean. When your husband took that bullet, I swear he was smiling.” “Thanks,” I said. “That’s good enough for me.” And it still is.

Because people love to die.

Maybe next year, I wrote back. And I meant it.

!

“At this time of year, I always fool myself into thinking winter won’t come. But it will. It always does.”

Fucking winter. Every fucking time.

Poetic and profound

“My coffee has grown cold, but I drink it anyway.”

Coffee features a lot. I first thought it was some kind of Clever Narrative Trick, a thematic reference to, I don’t know, a lost shared pleasure? But it’s more likely, I think, that the author drank a lot of coffee and when you are no good at having ideas you just grab what’s nearest. Oh and there is that Italian man and they drink coffee dontcha know.

“I place my hand on the surface. It’s cold, but not as cold as Jack.”

MEOW! Poor Jack — he’s SO COLD like THAT SURFACE although to be fair we don’t really know how cold that surface actually is because IT’S NOT MENTIONED.

“Rage boils inside me, through every vein and artery, until the pressure builds to a trapped scream.”

I am no engineer, but when pressure builds I don’t think it ends up trapped.

“The non sequitur slows him, as if someone has just offered him ice cream, then given him a choice between anchovy and tuna.”

Perfect Irony. I think she means anchovy or tuna ice cream — which I don’t think exists, making this AN ANALOGY. But WHY CHOOSE THIS VERY COMPLICATED COMPARISON FOR NO REASON AT ALL?

“I take the quickest shower of my life, comb out unwashed hair, and dress in loose jeans and a linen shirt that I don’t have to tuck in. Screw the dress code; I’m hot, rushed, and pregnant.”

I have no idea how long her second longest shower was, but I guess if you are HOT, RUSHED and PREGGERS then men, you better fucking GET OUT OF THE WAY.

“The mice squeak at the intrusion into their space.”

Squeak!

She’s outgrown them, but juice in a plastic cup has always been a happy alternative to juice all over the Honda’s windshield.

Honda!

She works with the same steadiness on Jackie’s counter [the bracelet with out of this world energy resources] as Lin did when trepanning the chimpanzee.

There is so much going on here it’s overwhelming. Lin, is the woman who happened to drill a hole in a chimp’s head, but why this makes any sense as a comparator is beyond me. It sounds unhinged. But then drilling holes in heads is pretty out there, I guess.

Odd References to Ikea

“And the Ikea furniture whose veneer fell off a year after we’d assembled it.”

Is this a clever metaphor for her marriage? No idea. Or did they build it wrong? But unfair to Ikea if so.

“And cursed at the Ikea table instructions that defied minds with multiple degrees.”

In case you didn’t get this, the writer, and the protagonist both have multiple degrees and I guess can’t make Ikea furniture for shit. So she’s APPEALING TO ALL THOSE PEOPLE LIKE HER who have all these degrees and STILL CAN’T UNDERSTAND THOSE DAMNABLE INSTRUCTIONS, right? Yeah?! You’re with me girlfriends! It’s not me at fault — it’s Ikea’s! Idiots!

Romance

“I bite and moan and scratch like a feral cat on amphetamines.”

I don’t know all of mankind, but I don’t think this is the kind of experience we are looking for. And who finds a feral cat only to dose it up on illegal street drugs? Sick people.

“He’s the picture of cool, and I wish he didn’t make it so easy to be in love with him.”

Italians. Always making things easy and coffee.

“After one round of love, we go at it again, this time slowly and unrushed.”

I don’t know all of mankind, but I don’t think this is realistic.

“I feel his hand on the small of my back as he leads me toward the farmhouse. The gesture is so simple, and complex at the same time.”

The complexity of this either flew way over my head, or, most likely, doesn’t exist.

“When he finally softens — in every sense of the word…”

Oh come on. Really?

Statistics Chat [sic]

The stats looked good. Fine p values showed significance; solid chi-squares and experimental design told me he knew his statistics shit.

There is an above average use of statistical verbiage to make sure you get that the author is Some Kind of Science Person even if it will mean NOTHING to 99 per cent of the intended readership.

“That’s a sample of one, Jean. One. You know more about statistics than to hang your hat on a single subject.”

Jean, you are either good at this stats stuff or you’re not.

I’ve Just Realised the Plot Makes No Sense and I Need to Bridge a Narrative Chasm

“Lorenzo tells me. ‘I’ll translate.’ ‘You both know American Sign Language?’ I say. ‘Why?’ He shrugs. ‘You speak some Vietnamese, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Okay. Point taken.’

The ridiculous narrative aside, I kid you not, we suddenly learn on page 200 odd that there is a hidden, shared, fluency in sign language which just happens to mean two people can communicate with others not knowing. And Vietnamese? Why? What?

“His Italian is on a par with his Swahili, so I know he won’t understand a thing.”

Imagine! It’s happened again! If you got away with a device the size of Jupiter — keep going! That woman who fancies that perfect weird Italian man speaks Italian. AND NO ONE ELSE DOES. How useful. I have no idea how good his Kiswahili is — but presumably half of eastern Africa are fine with the implied insult.

My Reader is Both a Moron and Incredibly Clever

“Whether Patrick cried or not, I can’t tell. He’s all business now, making notes and looking up forgotten stoichiometric symbols in a chemistry text he’s opened on the desk.”

Stoichiometric symbols!

“Macchinetta.”

Nor me.

“I don’t have an eidetic memory — not even close.”

I bet you don’t.

Enough.

You get the point. There is no way this can have got past human beings unless they were happy to cynically chuck out any attempt to fill a niche or ride on the coattails of better writers trying to merge chick lit, science fiction, pop-neuroscience, semi-satirical dystopia and statistics text books. I do not recommend you read.

Annex: Raymond shows us how to do it

I mentioned Raymond Chandler. I thought I’d end with a few examples of engaging, witty and well-crafted writing. These are barnstormers, and I am only a third way through.

• “He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck.”
• “A hand I could have sat in came out of the dimness and took hold of my shoulder and squashed it to a pulp.”
• “He looked poor enough to be honest, but he didn’t look like a man who could deal with Moose Malloy.”
• “His large loose chin was folded down gently on the tie.”
• “She had weedy hair of that vague color which is neither brown nor blond, that hasn’t enough life in it to be ginger, and isn’t clean enough to be gray.”
• “The voice grew icicles. “I should not have called you, if it were not.” A Harvard boy. Nice use of the subjunctive mood.”
• “I’m afraid I don’t like your manner,” he said, using the edge of his voice. “I’ve had complaints about it,” I said.
• “It was money all right, a huge wad of currency. I didn’t count it. I snapped the rubber around again and stuffed the packet down inside my overcoat. It almost caved in a rib.”
• “It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out.”
• “I didn’t say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you are not thinking.”
• “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”
• “The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.”
• “That put me about a foot from him. He had a nice breath. Haig and Haig at least.”
• “He was so polite I wanted to carry him out of the room just to show my appreciation.”

Review: Vox was originally published in trenchantly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.