I hate social media…

Now in this new age the coin has flipped and there is an opportunity cost to privacy. If I want to be better known, I have to sacrifice parts of my life on the altar of social media. This gives me the shivers.

Still, you can’t have everything and as I still want to continue sending my children through school and keep myself in clean shirts, I am going to have to flaunt my shorts on Instagram.

I mention flaunting my shorts because I was recently asked to throw a violin off a castle tower at short notice. At the time I was wearing my ‘jazzy’ shorts, and they are almost certainly the reason this video has had X views in the last week or so.

It also worries me that you can get ‘likes’ for throwing a violin off a castle. The violin survived, testimony to the genius of Sarah’s shipping box design.

When Amati was started we offered free shipping. It was in our interest to make shipping as affordable as possible so Sarah designed a box which ensures the violin floats suspended within the cardboard. We use thousands a year and it is a mainstay of our shipping service. Although we no longer offer free shipping, the box allows us to reduce the cost of shipping for our buyers considerably. It works well and, it appears, can be thrown off castle walls with impunity.*

Which leads me back to my future, in which I see myself travelling to the ends of the earth, box in one hand, violin in the other, searching for a few more likes on Instagram. It is a dystopian future to me, but I feel I can no longer afford to operate in the background.

* don’t try this at home.

Check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SvVs_Zv0Gts