#2 Innovations, Good and Bad
This month tackles life-enhancing less-is-more technology and infuriating eco-friendly inventions.
Despite being over 2000 years old, Paris is still in the habit of sticking to a secondary school schedule. This means that September – referred to as la rentrée – marks not only the return from long, languid summer holidays (la pause), but new beginnings. With this cyclical sense of novelty, I have decided to mark the unofficial start to this unacademic year by considering some recent innovations, good and bad.
Wireless Headphones
It wasn’t so much that I resisted wireless headphones, it was more that I resented the term wired headphones. This is real-time revisionist history. It made me feel old. It felt like one day to the next, this perfectly functional piece of equipment that had been a daily tool throughout my life had become obsolete. I was determined to remain a luddite, purely out of spite.
One day, Chris returned home triumphant with a little white box. “I found a pair of Airpods in a Velib basket!” he beamed. Revolting. I watched in quiet judgement as he flicked the lid open like it was a Zippo lighter, removed the disembodied headphones and began to clean each one with cotton buds and anti-bacterial hand gel.
Many months (and many pairs of wired headphones) later, I needed to take a call and realised I was sans the necessary equipment, so I borrowed Chris’. The connection was instant. Literally. How simple they were to pair with my device! The autonomy of being able to move my head without getting tangled up! The ease of slipping my phone into my pocket, or leaving it on a table, or flinging it out the window while remaining on a call!
Before the person on the other end even answered, I was an utter convert.
In hindsight, how functional had wired headphones really been? It never failed to infuriate me when I’d hear the first crackle in the left ear signifying the death knell. I’d endure weeks, if not months, of fiddling with the jack to get it just so, adding a sort of FM radio static effect to my playlists. Sometimes I’d chop off the offending branch altogether, listening through the remaining earbud like a UN interpreter, until it inevitably began its own steady decline. I would never spend much on headphones, and thus spent exponentially more replacing them over the years.
And let’s not forget the physical havoc wrought by the wires: the gymnastics of going to the loo while maintaining a steady distance between one’s ears and one’s trouser pocket, the mindfulness exercise of unfurling one’s headphones and one’s scarf in the correct order. The futility of attempting to listen to one’s own music while trying on clothes in a fitting room (Where do you put the phone? Your bra? The perfunctory little stool? In your teeth, like an assassin’s knife?).
It’s been four years since I bought my first – and hitherto last – pair of wireless headphones. Notwithstanding the substantial financial savings of not having to replace them every six months or so, I’ve probably added years to my life through stress reduction. Yes; these are the platonic ideal of headphones. Wires be damned.
🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧
Rating: 9 headphones out of 10.
The New Lids
First, they came for my lids, and I did not speak out. Now, every time I open a plastic bottle, I am momentarily confused when the top will not detach, and then I remember the new lids, and then I am annoyed. I simply cannot adjust to this new reality.
Don’t get me wrong, I am very pro-environment, but there’s got to be a better way to save it than with these infuriating contraptions. Rather than tethering the lid to the bottle, creating a sort of miniature bird bath that threatens to dribble its contents with every sip, why not tether Taylor Swift’s private jet to the tarmac? Surely preventing Swift from taking another 40-second flight across Los Angeles would have a greater net environmental impact.
💧
Rating: 1 droplet out of 10.
Posh Socks
Within minutes of leaving the house for what turned out to be a full twelve-hour extravaganza, I had to pause to readjust my fallen sock. The first harbinger of doom. A mere moment later, it began to bunch in much the same way. This is no way to live. I needed an emergency replacement, stat. As chance would have it, a John Lewis appeared on my horizon; a veritable haven of socks.
I worked my way through a kaleidoscopic maze of Le Creuset cookware, four-million-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and endless rows of summer sale clothes with all the resolve of Orpheus (I stopped to tug a sleeve or two), until I found the surprisingly small hosiery department. All I needed was a single pair of plain black socks, but the only single pair of plain black socks cost 12 quid because they contained 12% cashmere. I was annoyed I hadn’t brought with me a John Lewis voucher I’d recently re-discovered among a pile of miscellaneous phone chargers (wires be damned). I took a deep breath, and the financial hit.
When I switched the old socks for the new, I swear I could hear a chorus of angels with every step. It was like walking on a cloud, and it stayed that way the entire day. I began to calculate how many pairs of John Lewis Own Brand Cotton-Cashmere socks I could buy with the voucher. As I fell asleep that night, I momentarily panicked at the thought of them getting mixed up with my friends’ socks in the laundry of the Airbnb we were sharing. Silly me, I thought, I should sleep easy knowing I’ll soon have an entire drawer full of JLOBCCs.
I cannot understate how genuinely excited I was to re-wear my emergency socks when I redeemed them from the drying rack a day later. I should have known something was awry when I could not differentiate them from my other plain black socks, threadbare as they were. Eventually I found the cotton-cashmeres and eagerly pulled them on.
It was like seeing a one-night stand in the cold light of day. If last night had been a symphony, then today was all bum notes. It was as though all 12% of the cashmere content had disintegrated in the wash. Sure, they were still fresher than my other socks, but the lustre had gone. After one wear, the only remarkable thing about them was how much I’d paid for a single pair of plain black socks. At least I’d always have the memories of our first encounter.
When I stepped out of the house, the right sock began to bunch.
🧦🧦🧦🧦🧦
Rating: 5 socks out of 10.
Rec Room
Spend one minute unwinding in the park 🌳 Desiree Akhavan writes compellingly about being voted the ugliest girl at school and subsequently being peer-pressured into getting a nose job – by her mum 👃 Flora Hibberd has got the soundtrack to your September covered 🌀
Words by Alice Brace. Images by Flora Hibberd.
So funny, Alice! Thank you.
I love it