As you get older, there are a lot of questions you need to ask yourself about what you do for a living. Is it legal? Can it support a family? Will you eventually be replaced by a sentient robot, euthanised and your body recycled into the protein-rich slurry that feeds a ruling class of shapeshifting lizards? Keep asking these (sensible) questions and eventually some of you will get down to asking whether your job does enough to satisfy your creative urges. This is a tough one, because if this matters to you and you’ve chosen to remain in Jersey then your chances of finding employment as a conceptual artist or silent film director are somewhat limited. If you want to get paid to be creative, you’ll probably need to be very creative about what that idea means to you.

Your appointment with the crusher of dreams

Of all the teachers I helped hasten towards early retirement I often feel most sorry for the one in charge of careers advice. A good teacher is a wise, thoughtful individual who spends decades fine-tuning a sense of the likely paths that a child might take through life, and ideally guiding them along the ones that will best lead to happiness. The careers advisor meets precocious oddities who dream of making movies and singing songs and must gently suggest that if they want to remain in the island of their birth they should expect to fund these activities with a working life doing something dull behind a desk. Many of these children go off to university, obtain an unusual haircut and never come back, many more return home and bury their creative dreams deep down in the inbox of life, or ferment them into the reservoir of misanthropy I possess instead of a personality. Each year the careers advisor must preside over a funeral of creative dreams, his soul gradually hardening like the leather patches on the elbows of his cardigan.

That’s what it is, for most creative people. A dream. The reality is that unless you’re super talented, very lucky, or just rich, you’ll end up being grateful that you even have the opportunity to be creative in your spare time. Working an office job may not be as fulfilling as conducting an orchestra, but unlike a Chinese factory worker you are paid enough to afford violin lessons on the weekend. Unlike the Sudanese farmer who dreams of writing poetry you have time to write poetry at night, and militias won’t attack your cattle if it doesn’t rhyme. This is a reward of sorts, but also a social pressure valve in a capitalist economy – to prevent thousands of frustrated watercolour painters from rising up like bolsheviks, killing their bosses and remaking our society in the image of a sunlit vase of daffodils.

According to this perspective, your day job is a means to an end and the deal is that you should abandon all creative thoughts the minute you clock on. The problem with this arrangement is that the creative spirit is like a sleeping bag – impossible to put away properly once unwrapped, and often covered in mysterious stains. Sooner or later creativity is going to leak out, even at the dullest job – like suppressed flatulence at a church funeral.

So why not bring your creativity to the workplace?

Suggesting that you “bring creativity to the workplace” is the kind of offer made in a group email from middle management, usually limited to the options of decorating your work area with inoffensive personal kitsch or dressing up in cheesy #banter costume one day a month to raise money for charity. Unfortunately for the productivity slavedrivers who dream up these initiatives, doing spreadsheets whilst wearing a cowboy hat isn’t creative, and will only raise employee morale if your workforce is entirely made up of cretins who spend their evenings reposting Minion memes on Facebook. In fact the only thing less creative than employer-sanctioned wackiness is swanning around like you’re Steve Jobs or Philippe Starck because you work vaguely in the media, have an iMac on your desk or shoehorned the word “creative” into your job title. Writing a hot take on Boaty McBoatface does not make you Charlie Brooker, and you are not Don Draper just because you sold the client a desaturated stock image of some bubbles with their logo on it. I’m writing this on an iMac right now, and I can assure you that my creative fire is currently colder than Donald Trump’s welcome in Tijuana.

Most creative people are terrible at deadlines, easily distracted and prone to thinking about things in illogical and even nonsensical ways. Unless your boss is a super manager with the ability to harness them, these qualities basically have to be suppressed to make a productive employee, rather than championed as a source of marginally more entertaining PowerPoint slides. Therefore, it is highly likely that the creatively frustrated employee will come to perceive their working life in the form of a drawn-out guerrilla conflict against the forces of order and productivity. Their only weapons will be periods of daydreaming and small acts of rebellion, their only victories a piece of art made out of photocopier paper and Post-It notes, or a comedy wang drawn in marker on the toilet walls. 

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction – Pablo Picasso

This petty war against an enemy who doesn’t even know you exist can be disheartening, and occasionally self-destructive, but if you’re creatively inclined it might be the only thing that keeps you sane in the kind of society we live in. The reality of your struggle to express the sublime mysteries of the universe (via obscene doodles) will serve as a constant reminder that there are different ways of looking at ideas like success and fulfilment, and that living a good life will involve constantly reassessing what it is to reach a compromise with the systems we live inside. You might come to realise that your personal compromise means being creative in your spare time, aside from the odd bit of creativity left as a furtive present for polite society or your employer – like when your cat leaves you half a mangled thrush, or a pile of furry sick. You might reject the idea of subtlety and proudly court a disciplinary hearing by decorating your desk with naked etchings of Sir Bruce Forsyth, wearing a gimp mask on “crazy hats Friday!” and illustrating presentations on quarterly earnings with slides from The Human Centipede. Unlike me, you might be creative enough to recognise this trap before you fall in it, ignore the careers advisor and follow your dreams of becoming a post-modernist circus clown. Even if you don’t follow that dream, never lose sight of the scary, unpredictable clown you have inside of you. That’s advice you can live by whether you’re creative or not.

It was repeated to us many times before we went, “you’d better go soon before it changes.” Once we’d spent a few days navigating the humid streets of old Havana we knew we’d be repeating it like a mantra when we got back.
Obama had arrived just days before, he opened hearts and minds with his common touch and flew home leaving a vacuum of expectation. President Raoul Castro had spent the last eight years loosening the reins on his brother’s legacy, but barely had Airforce One lifted, when Fidel blasted the visit “We don’t need the empire to give us anything.” And so it goes…

Cuba is a land of contrasts. Caught between the storm laden Caribbean Sea and the cooler Atlantic Ocean. It has two seasons wet and dry. It feels like a film set full of facades. Beautiful buildings of colonial architecture accented against a backdrop of crumbling communistic concrete. A country caught in aspic.

With a poor economy quietly focused on tourism any remnant of the past is articulated to create attention. Images of the revolution, Korda’s Che, Fidel and their guerilla colleagues are to be found everywhere.

Hemingway’s haunts, from the bodegas and bars he sought refuge in as he hid from the world, their walls cluttered with black and white photos, their exteriors covered in graffiti, still peddle rum based cocktails that vary in authenticity.

The Cuba we all recognise is crumbling in so many ways. But their proud sense of stoicism and ingenuity is most evident in the masses of American automobiles that cruise along the freeways.
Beautifully preserved specimens or lumpy hand painted hulks, spewing clouds from oversized exhausts, their sheer existence is a marvel. With a lack of free trade they have re-engineered these coveted possessions to keep themselves and the economy moving and to lay claim to the odd tourist taxi ride.

An American alphabet of classic cars, the Chevys, Buicks, Fords, Pontiacs and Cadillacs that were on the streets in the winter of ’59 were never replaced with newer models, and the Cubans have had no choice but to keep the old cars running.

Then just as we had acclimatised to the heat, negotiated the currency, accepted the poor food, the music pouring out of everywhere, the friendly people, the mojito’s and daiquiris, the surprising lack of cigar smoking locals, the Stones arrived. All the better for being unplanned and unexpected it became a brilliant concert experience.

Along with 500,000 others we wandered through the hot night air into an old baseball stadium. Huge pristine screens scattered through the Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana illuminating the crowd. Ronnie and Keith struck the opening bars of “Jumping Jack Flash”, big smiles on dark faces, the noise rose and Mick with the opening line “Watch it. I was born in a crossfire hurricane”, strutted himself into the hearts of Cubans.

It was historic, symbolic and free. Cuba loved the Stones.

Obama and the Stones laid a calling card of hope, it will be interesting to see how quickly it gets picked up. There is no doubt that as the world turns Cuba will choose to reconnect on its own terms but the change is inevitable. Ask any Cuban. They are fiercely proud of their revolution and the part it played in the world’s history but the borderless Internet gives glimpses of endless opportunities and goods for their empty shops.

The beaches are clean, the waters warm and pelicans, those odd prehistoric survivors, skim along the waves, wheel up, fold themselves and dive into the surf oblivious to tourists. It’s lovely.

So, if you are thinking of going… You’d better go soon before it changes.

Forget 4K televisions and the latest iPhone, because the hottest technological sensation for 2016 is the launch of consumer-grade virtual reality goggles. Although you might remember being promised a similar revolution in the 1990s, then again in the mid 2000s, and then again about 18 months ago, virtual reality is really here this time.

Or at least VR is virtually here, as you’re going to need to carry out some preparation if you want to transform your living room into the holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the interests of research, I’ve been living in the matrix for the last couple of months to discover what this bold new world means for the average non-cyborg. I’ve now returned to meatspace and changed into a clean pair of underpants to write this exclusive guide for you, a fully-interactive tour of the most exciting technology since 3DTV. If you are reading this via Gallery’s augmented reality experience (which the editor tells me will have launched by the time this issue is in print), then now is the time to put the electrodes in your mouth and increase the voltage to your crotch socket. Digitise … NOW >1101010100010000100111111

What is virtual reality? 
Virtual reality, or VR for short, is a way of replacing boring normal reality with a limitless world entirely simulated by technology. Once you invest at least £500, configure and strap on a giant bulky helmet, some headphones and a controller of some sort you will be plunged into a digitally-rendered alternate reality where you are free to go anywhere, see anything and even interact with things by poking them with a kind of floppy virtual hand. You’ll be able to use VR to consume media, have new experiences without leaving your couch, and also to watch hours of disorienting pornography whilst giving yourself a cluster headache. Imagine Ceefax, but better. The world will never be the same again.

That sounds like a video game. Is it like Wii Sports?
In the sense that VR will require you to remove breakable objects and children from your living room, yes. Unlike Wii Sports, VR will fully immerse you in the simulated HD golf-course environment, filling your view with artificial grass and oddly-repetitive water features wherever you turn your gaze. Like Wii Sports, anybody watching you will laugh at your stupid facial expressions, flailing limbs and inability to swing a virtual 9-iron without smacking yourself in the face. The main difference is that the illusion offered by today’s VR makes use of dramatically more powerful technology, so the thrilling realism of Wii Sports has been extended to simulate sitting in a spaceship, floating jerkily up a mountain or being one of those soldiers who flies drone strikes against goat farmers in Afghanistan.

I’m not interested in video games. Does it do anything else?
What doesn’t it do? It places you inside another world, like a View-Master, or like Knightmare but without being ordered around by a bunch of teenage nerds. Imagine watching Batman vs Superman from inside a crumbling skyscraper, being sat on top of a dragon in Game of Thrones, or staring into Sue Perkins’ hungry mouth from the perceptive of a slice of Victoria Sponge. The possibilities are limitless, at least until you start talking about other, less-important, senses, like taste, touch and smell. VR isn’t there yet, although anticipation for VR technology is so high that it can only be a matter of time before digital nose implants, tongue bluetooth and simulated fondle gloves reach the market.

VR may even transcend entertainment to become the future of the workplace. There is no point travelling to a physical office when you can jack in to a realistic virtual representation of an office, complete with simulated motivational posters and an artificial intelligence that provides regular performance reviews and flaccid workplace banter. You won’t need higher wages, because you’ll be content to live in a poxy cupboard as long as it has room for your VR helmet and a fridge full of Slimfast shakes.

Okay, I’m curious. What do I need to have virtual reality in my home? What do the different brands mean?
At the moment, there are three high-end manufacturers of VR helmets: the Facebook-backed Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Sony’s Playstation VR. The aims of each corporation are expected to influence the user experience, and will subtly skew the type of reality that is simulated. For example, Facebook will use Oculus Rift to steal your personal information and immerse you in a virtual world of baby pictures and racist urban legends, whereas Playstation VR will cost less but will be more skewed towards games and therefore less likely to offer the experience of Springwatch from the perspective of a mistle thrush.  The Vive is marketed mainly at wealthy video-game obsessives, so it costs more but has far more realistic explosions.

The key thing to understand is that you’re going to need some sort of powerful computery box room to stretch out a great number of wires, and a lack of sharp objects in flailing range in your soon-to-be outdated physical reality. Also, despite the temptation to live the boring real world behind, you’re somehow going to need to maintain enough contact with genuine humans that somebody is willing to come and untangle you if you get too excited by a holographic simulation of Dancing on Ice and fall over.

I can’t afford all that. Is there a cheaper option, like those low-end smartphones that send all my credit card details to China?
Yes. For people who don’t necessarily have the budget to fill their house with high technology and fancy cables, there are also Samsung Gear and Google Cardboard, which offer a less-powerful VR experience simply by strapping your existing smartphone directly in front of your eyeballs and blocking out tedious distractions like children and traffic lights. Although this offers less realism than the high-end competitors, it does present a more realistic bridge between traditional and virtual reality by giving families a more immersive way to ignore each other whilst staring directly at Clash of Clans.

Angels dancing on the head of a pin, a painting on a single hair, the Taj Mahal carved from a grain of rice. These aren’t things that have been surgically removed from Lady Gaga, but are some of the peculiar attractions that found a home in Jersey in the 1980s. Each of these minute works of art formed part of Micro World, an exhibition produced by the Spanish artist Manuel Ussa and first displayed to eye-watering effect at Fort Regent.
The launch of the attraction saw queues as far as Bonaparte’s, although this is less impressive when you remember that each diminutive exhibit could only be viewed at any one time by a single person, with the aid of a microscope, and even back then very few of our tourists were able to boast 20/20 vision. Micro World was unusual enough to be a modest success, but sooner or later the Fort needed the space to install more slot machines and like many retired things the miniature masterpieces found themselves unceremoniously dumped in the western parishes, installed at The Chateau in St Ouen’s Bay. Since the demolition of The Chateau nobody quite knows where they ended up, but Bergerac is unlikely to take up the case due to the fact that the entire collection could quite easily have been burgled by a miscreant with moderately deep pockets. Like a shrunken version of the Fantastic Tropical Gardens, Micro World will live on in a series of anecdotes guaranteed to either bore or weird out people under thirty – but in a strange way the rise and fall of this small yet perfectly formed attraction might offer a warning about the possible fate of our tourist industry as a whole.

SMALL, DELICATE AND BEAUTIFUL: THE RONNIE CORBETT OF HOLIDAY DESTINATIONS
One of the odder aspects of package tourism in Jersey was that the presence of a captive audience means that people were willing to chance some unpredictable ideas in order to attract floating visitors who still had pound notes to burn and who’d already done the Fort funfair and Jersey Zoo. Young readers might struggle to believe this but at one point we had so much holidaymaker cash flowing into the tills that Jersey could support multiple leisure centres, three or four games arcades and nightclubs in places where there aren’t even streetlights today. Supplementing these more conventional pleasures we then had places like the Micro World, the Shell Garden and the Butterfly Farm, where a giant moth once landed on my grandmother’s blue rinse and took a dump that glowed a radioactive green and must have represented easily 70% of its body weight. Gran was fine, although she has since lived entirely on daffodils and has a habit of repeatedly banging her head against the bathroom window any time the moon is out. 
If tourism was Jersey’s beating heart, then its body was kept alive through the slow circulation of its lifeblood: an endless, throbbing procession of pensioner coach parties, hire cars and the occasional German on a bicycle. Think of them as red and white blood cells, suspended in a plasma comprised of Mary Anne bitter and liquid scampi, carried to the vital organs of the tourist body. I think this metaphor means that Fort Regent was the brain, the Fantastic Tropical Gardens were the pancreas and small attractions like Micro World might have been some kind of appendix or a gallbladder – nice to have but ultimately the body limps on if they are removed and dumped in St Ouen. 

MICRO WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION
Well, that is what we probably thought at the time. What has since become clear is that strange little curios like Micro World were part of the package that made a place like Jersey unique. Even before the aviation industry decided to slash long-haul prices in order to hasten humanity’s total extinction through climate change, Jersey was never going to be able to compete with destinations like Florida or Las Vegas. We were always a smaller, cleaner Blackpool, a sandy miniature of the larger British isles, perfectly preserved like a ship in a bottle. We offered shows, seafood restaurants and beaches, but also a destination where you never had to ride on a coach for too long to reach another odd, endearing little attraction. Although no visitor was likely to prioritise a repeat visit to get pooped on by a butterfly, or revisit a painting on the head of an ant, attractions like Micro World helped our economy because so many of our tourists would try them at least once – like Indian food, lawn bowls, or swinging. They should be seen as an important part of our history, and it is sad that so little evidence exists of locations like the witchcraft museum above the Relais De Mielle, the Shire Horse Farm, or Wee Jimmy Krankie’s Kinky Dungeon.

DOES JERSEY NEED A NEW MICRO WORLD? 
Joking aside, the answer to that is probably a no. Our main tourist priority is a ferry that works, but beyond that we are unlikely to tempt back visitors by offering an artistic rendering of Kim Kardashian on a bee’s tongue. What we do need to remember is that visitors continue to choose Jersey because we offer a unique scale, a small destination with surprises tucked away in unexpected spots. These don’t have to be weird museums or giant plastic dinosaurs, but can just be restaurants, boutique hotels and the many pleasures of our natural environment. In their own way, the tiny harbours that dot our coastline, the quirky buildings and tiny streets, are as unique as a diorama painstakingly etched into the eye of a needle. They also have the advantage that you don’t have to queue for 15 minutes behind a party from Bolton in order to look at them. Nonetheless, there is a danger that these subtle charms will be crowded out by the gradual expansion of UK chain restaurants and generic building projects, or suffocated under mounds of litter and sea lettuce. We should remember places like Micro World fondly, but also consider that if we aren’t careful their fate may ultimately await us all – dumped in the countryside, gathering dust and eventually bulldozed for another luxury house. Rest in peace, Micro World – you were easily the fifth best thing to do if it was too wet to play miniature golf and Belle Vue was full of teenagers.