Monday, September 30, 2002


Too Much Sky - Part 2

We have moved offices. We used to be on a first floor with only a brick wall for a view. Now we are on the third floor with a wide view of the whole city and beyond. If I can find a suitable picture I will put it up here for you. We are unable to concentrate for any length of time without looking out of the window and commenting on Astronomical, Meteorlogical or aviation phenomena which occur. It is strange but again the sky looks far too big. Obviously this is because I don't normally see it during the working day.

As you have probably guessed from the explosion in the number of poems I have posted, I have found yet another old notebook, this time from 1986. Some of the stuff is just un-copiable and all the rest needs editing but I am suprised at some of it. I am going to resist putting any more up today.

Friday, September 27, 2002


Meteorology Maybe

Has there ever been a day when it has been raining everywhere at once? Maybe there isn;t enough cloud to do that for the whole planet but what about all the land masses? Today is the day I think. At 12:00 GMT, it will rain at least a steady drizzle for ten minutes over all land on the Earth. I have just been browsing through pictures of rain to get myself in the mood for writing about it. I like rain a lot. I have a pluvial character I think or does that mean something different to what I want it to mean? Maybe there is a place where it rains all the time, a quiet place where the headline in the local newspaper is nothing more dramatic than Flu Shots being available now. It has been so dry here for the last month, that I suspect that today will not be the day of rain but meteorology is such a fickle science.

Thursday, September 26, 2002


To Sister Kate in Mountain Language

From the Helicopter's gut
flies amnesty and enemy,
over the plains of VC forests,
along the young men's guarded rivers
wider than the DM zone,
to where a bouy rings foggy bell tones
amid the bones; MacArthur's wrecks,
bleached attractive by their age.

This is where the clumsy sea-birds
lift themselves, like Silver Planes
through the Sun and warm sea-breezes,
across the air-force real-estate;
where the Little Boy was lifted
by the Yankee Pilot's Mother,
and flew and failed and devastated
the Children and the Samurai.

But all is light; these ages missing
tradgedy and circumstance.
The white clothed sailors in the sunshine
hold their hats against the wind.
Jinxed, the distance through the sea-lanes,
jewelled with foam and fairy terns.
Down below, Gondwana battles
for the life of Zato Kujira.

We leave behind the Kyo Maru,
in my mind, destroyed and empty,
vapourised by France's H-bomb,
not sunk by France's secret service.
At soundspeed, loosed, our theory beckoned
through this fragile hydrosphere,
amongst the waves, the night-time sliver
through the doors of conference.

Across the US desert test-ground,
over the green of Ozark mountains,
to call control with thirteen's problem
and a tale of engine death.
Finally we reach the Ocean,
through the wind-blown breaker's jaws,
over extended missile ranges,
our journey's subject's empty dreamtime.

Keywords for this Poem

Enola Gay
Gondwana
Fairy Tern
Kyo Maru
Zato Kujira

Kobayashi Maru ( But only because Kyo Maru reminded me of it)


The matter of Whales


Even the weather colluded with the government. The heavy, damp opression present during the massacre, gave way to sunny, fresh days for the cover-up; the creation of a non-event.


Cloud Chamber

At peace with charmed and
comfortable with strange.
You could have been
the discoverer of all this,
the thief of French electrons
to fuel your Swiss detector,
to dim the lights
in border towns
and slow the clocks
of every European.
A billion particles
spent in finding one
lost in the world.
You close the cities down
one-by-one,
a future architect of equinoxe.

Wednesday, September 25, 2002


ShirokumagĂ´ to nazono tori

I wrote the word 'BLOG' on a post-it note this morning. It is still there and I can't remember what it is to remind me of. We were talking about the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television at the time but I don't think that was it. It was something a little more off the wall, a bit of self-reference or a weird thought. It may return to me.

Sorry about the long break. I have actually just received my first non-spam unsolicited email to RdeWeyden@hotmail.com. It was from someone who I mentioned in a previous entry but who I do not know personally. I will spare you the name dropping so you will just have to guess who it is. One clue - 'Fred the cat'.

I have just started reading The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome and it is as compelling as any of the Swallows and Amazonsbooks. It came to light recently, that Mr Ransome was involved with British Intelligence during his time in Russia in the years after the Revolution which some people seem to have used as justification for not labelling him a traitor. I would have thought that his books were so well loved and that no hint of dis-respect was ever voiced but I seem to be wrong. It is clear right away from the beginning of the autobiography where the inspiration for the S&A books comes from though the blurb promises some suprising revelations on this subject. I will let you know if I remember. Oh that I could forget all the troubles of the world and be transported to 1930s Coniston. Of course with hindsight, you realise that everyone has WWII to go through within a few years of this, so nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. John Walker would be exactly the right age to be involved in the war as soon as it broke out and Roger would have been of an age by the end. All the inter-war idealism of everything from S&A to the Agatha Christie books is coloured, for us, by the storm of war which everyone was about to go through. I am beginning to think that Arthur Ransome should be ranked up with George Orwell but this is only because of this tinge of wartime angst which I get when I think of the 1930s.

My Uncle was a tail gunner in Halifaxes which I sometimes use as comfort that people did get through the war unscathed. My Father-in-Law lied about his age to join the Marines and was sent home from The Hood which of course is one of those 'what if' events. Cause and effect etc. I know now that you cannot evaluate the past using 'what ifs'. There is no such thing once the moment has gone. And of course with Quantum effects added in, everything possible happens anyway. Life is a consequence of Sum over Histories - an average of what could be and as you know, I think that is personal to you. Without a full recording of all possible states of matter at all possible times (with a frequency of 1/Minimum Quantum Time of course), history is gone and is indeed - bunk. Your Life at this moment is all that exists in any concrete way for your own mind.

Wednesday, September 11, 2002


A Foggy day in the Solent

This amused me yesterday if only because it is a standing joke here that Martin, my colleague is a Misanthropist.



1801. - I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.

From the first paragraph of 'Wuthering Heights'



but not as much as this



I HAVE just read over 'Wuthering Heights,' and, for the first time, have obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and, perhaps, really are) its faults; have gained a definite notion of how it appears to other people - to strangers who knew nothing of the author; who are unacquainted with the locality where the scenes of the story are laid; to whom the inhabitants, the customs, the natural characteristics of the outlying hills and hamlets in the West Riding of Yorkshire are things alien and unfamiliar.

To all such 'Wuthering Heights' must appear a rude and strange production. The wild moors of the North of England can for them have no interest: the language, the manners, the very dwellings and household customs of the scattered inhabitants of those districts must be to such readers in a great measure unintelligible, and - where intelligible - repulsive. Men and women who, perhaps, naturally very calm, and with feelings moderate in degree, and little marked in kind, have been trained from their cradle to observe the utmost evenness of manner and guardedness of language, will hardly know what to make of the rough, strong utterance, the harshly manifested passions, the unbridled aversions, and headlong partialities of unlettered moorland hinds and rugged moorland squires, who have grown up untaught and unchecked, except by Mentors as harsh as themselves. A large class of readers, likewise, will suffer greatly from the introduction into the pages of this work of words printed with all their letters, which it has become the custom to represent by the initial and final letter only - a blank line filling the interval. I may as well say at once that, for this circumstance, it is out of my power to apologise; deeming it, myself, a rational plan to write words at full length. The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does - what feeling it spares - what horror it conceals.

From Charlotte Bronte's preface to the 1850 edition of 'Wuthering Heights'



This page gives you directions to Top Withins - possibly the real Wuthering Heights but it doesn't really matter if it is or not. The area is correct and the atmosphere is 100% right. Except maybe the Japanese directions on the sign-posts - they do seem a little incongruous. Why are the Japanese so fascinated with the Brontes? Bearing in mind the absurdities which can be found at the site www.engrish.com I wonder how much of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre etc. gets lost in the translation. There must be such a cultural gap between early 19th Century Yorkshire and 21st Century Japan, that it must be like reading a tale of extra terrestrials. This of course, is echoed in what Charlotte Bronte said in the Wuthering Heights Preface above though I don't think she had Japanese readers in mind. I wonder in what year Wuthering Heights was first read by a Japanese Person? I have turned that sentence around several times and it still seems clumsy. Any suggestions for a better way of phrasing it? My aphasia seems to be kicking in.

I don't know why but just thinking of the Haworth Moors has relaxed me quite a bit. I can't find a webcam of the moors themselves but here is Haworth itself looking very empty but the picture is a few days old and early in the morning. I hope it is working for you. A strange use of tenses. I used to go up to Haworth quite a lot but it has been a long time. It is a nice easy ride from here so maybe a winter trip is on the cards.

An ending.

Tuesday, September 10, 2002


Big Things to write about

More on old books. I remember a very large book of fairy tales which had wonderful European style drawings with a very dark overview. Even if the story had a happy ending, it was coloured in my mind by the fact that the drawings suggested otherwise. No story ends completely with a happy-ever-after. I bought the Virago book of Fairy Tales a few years ago and was suprised at the vicious endings to tales which I thought had happy endings. I knew 'Little Red Riding Hood' was usually bowdlerised so that at least the heroine survived but in the version in this book she ended up eaten. However, few of the other tales were really suitable for children - Yours - Angry of Tunbridge Wells. As I get older I find myself turning into Daily Telegraph reader. Adverts are vicious and unfunny and desgined to appeal to a scatalogical humour. Now scatology can be OK in the right context but on a billboard it is just crass. In fact most adverts seem so cliched that I wonder how any of them ever hit the mark. Even when an advert is sophisticated enough to seem original, you feel manipulated by virtue of the fact that it has probably been toned down from its original concept to ensure that everyone understands it. Oh that sounds so pompous doesn't it?

None of this seems worth writing any more. I had ideas for a poem last week while I was driving back from one of our other sites. Each evening, as I drive home I resolve to work on it and then never do. Last night we ended up watching the last episode of Sparkhouse which is 'inspired' by Wuthering Heights (Please read ALL of this link before returning here). Sparkhouse had obvious parallels with WH but it had its own story without any direct mapping of the two tales other than various high level things and a very few specific incidents. Wuthering Heights has no denoument but Sparkhouse did. You didn't feel 100% for or against any of the characters despite some of them having some really bad hang-ups and some awful behaviour. One of the reviews asked if teenage boys ever went around speaking like Andrew, the lead male character. 'She is me' etc. I know of plenty of teenagers (boys included) who did speak like this. The reviewer obviously went to the Rugby Club every night (unless it was female reviewer and even then ...)

I wrote terrible poetry at that age. (Who said 'you still do'?). Maybe I should rename this page McGonagall.com. Oh well. So it's already been done. Worth a few laughs 'though please be aware that some of my early stuff was as bad as this. No time to write any poetry down today.


The dissatisfied Socrates

The Office starts again this month and I have just read this Interview with Ricky Gervais which is deep and funny and you must finish reading it. What three things would you save in a fire?

My stack - and it it is a stack in the IT sense, of books has grown larger. I popped a couple of books off it last week but another has already gone on. I do occasionally finish one but maybe I should document the entire lifetime of book-reading just so that I am aware of how awful this behaviour is. This reminds me that I found a copy of the first book I ever remember reading, in the garage. Where else? It is a simplified version of Peter Pan with the illustrations by Mabel Lucie Attwell (This is the exact edition). My copy is a bit battered but the drawings have tracing paper leaves over them which gives them a nice artifacty feel. It may be because its attraction didn't last as long as some of the books which we wrecked, but it is almost intact. I was very young when I read it first. Anyway, I wasn't really serious about that stack document. There was a time when I would force myself through to the end of the most boring book (Treasure Island) but I suppose that dumping a book before you have finished it is the best argument for libraries ever.

Personally, I seem to be revelling in all this nostalgia. I have noticed that the BBC seems to be rolling out old sitcoms. Maybe it is a reaction to recent events. I have to say again, that the world other than the Western world has had to put up with tradgedies of a far greater impact than anything we have experienced. Just because it happens to us, makes it alright to cry and scream about how not fair it was. I don't want it to seem like I support anything bad because I certainly don't; the people who do bad things are evil, but it seems insulting to say that just because the victims were predominantly from Western Countries, that we have to cry and scream about it for so long. A million people died in Rawanda, Thousands lose limbs every year because of landmines and the rest of the world doesn't make a fuss. You could say that the 'fuss' is because of the retaliatory 'fuss' which will be made by the victims' countries but think of the fuss the rest of the world could make and don't. Keep on doing it and the 'fuss' will materialise. Is that what you want? Because thats what you'll get.

I Love Everybody
No Change is Sexy

I wanted to link to the first song but the page seques into the second one and the words got me so in it goes.

Not all 'No Change' is sexy. Some change is really sexy indeed.

Monday, September 09, 2002


Mural Morals

Back to the Abbot House. I was carrying my daughter in her backpack when we visited as she was only quite small and her language abilities didn't match her ambitions. In the Presence Chamber on the second floor, she babbled away at the ceiling and though it was really the gold light fittings which had caught her eye, it did seem as if she was trying to talk to someone we couldn't see. There is also a 16th Century Mural in this room which is quite damaged and the overall subject is unknown. We were fascinated by it and tried hard to remember it all so we could try and work out what it was about. I had some idea that it was like a mural we had seen in Marston Church in Chesire. It seemed to be some depiction of Classical Mythology but with 16th Century Fashions. I don't know what we expected to find out about it, if the experts at the house were still baffled. Dunfermline Abbey is also interesting because of the name of Robert The Bruce incorporated into the walls around the top of the tower. I have just spent ten minutes looking for the correct term for this but with no luck but I did find this :-



(From Department of the HISTORY of ART in Sweden)

Another of those sites which just look excellent when you skim over them in Google Image Seach. Why did they name it Google? Just because it's big doesn't necessarily means it's good but if the Chinese Government are blocking it then it must be useful. Lets not go to any Chinese Government web-sites today. Not that I have ever been to any Chinese Government web-sites ever but that is not the point is it? If you don't want to go to a Chinese Government Web-site then Don't click here.

DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK AND SUPPORT FREEDOM OF SPEECH.




Roll on the Feinberg

I had to accompany someone while they underwent an MRI scan this weekend. (The link is a picture to the exact model used though not the actual scanner itself). I have never realised how LOUD one of those machines actually is. I had to wear ear-defenders and when they slipped it was like being up against the speakers at a Prodigy Gig. Of course it is far worse actually being inside the thing. You begin to get paranoid when they start asking you about any metal you might have on your person. Of course metal fragments in the eye and shrapnel are really a problem though thankfully not this time.

''The Dream of Reason brings forth Monsters'

The 'Tony Blair' Sympathy Clause :-

What follows is simple rambling and in no way should be taken as a definite opinion on the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of er.... anything. Look! I do understand your position.

Is this something to do with Occam's Razor again? Of course it will be used as 'proof' of some of the more disreputable facets of spirituality. There is a weird sense of self-reference in the implicit denial of the validity of 'other' religions (Those which you do not practice). I know there is some wavering in the belief in the occult and ghosts etc by various divisions of the Christian Church and I can't comment on the opinions of other religions, but if a religion states its belief in its own structure and the consequent belief in the corresponding 'dark side' (eg. Satan and hell) but denies the correctness of other religions, it is creating a logical hole. Of course, the fact that faith is also involved means that logic is not really part of the process. I am not good at writing absolutely logical statements about such matters but the whole field is obviously prone to this problem. Science does not exclude the existence of spirituality, but nor can it prove it ... ever. We examine further into the structure of matter, of fields and of the mind and we never reach a point of proof. I have been here before haven't I? Maybe the final entry into the lands where spirituality helps 100% is triggered by the acceptance that spirituality can never be proved. Then of course there are all the arguments about whether the mind itself is the home of all religious feeling. Ok! I know. All of this rubbish just to say that you 'gotta have faith'. We are back to the fact that discussions about angels on the heads of a pin are completely meaningless and probably just sounded good after a glass or two too much mead, before walking round the cloisters.

Of course, Joan of Arc's voices were real to her and if they were just 'madness' (what is the PC word these days?) then they were a madness that kicked the English out of France. We are back to a question of the correctness of religions. Everyone thinks God is on their side (which probably means that He is). Of course the great atheist-agnostic wars of the late 20s didn't have this problem but they were fought with reason (sometimes logically flawed) over glasses of absythne in Parisan bars. Intermittent skirmishes are still going on and some very old soldiers still hide out in Place de la Concorde, with the idea that the war is still going on.

I have just finished Joan of Arc - In her own Words which will explain the sudden appearance of The Maid Jehanne above. One of her voices was Saint Margaret. I am trying to work out why Joan was asked if Saint Margaret spoke English. There are at least two Saint Margarets, one of Scotland and the one who Joan saw who was from Pisidian Antioch. Maybe the inquisitors were confused or just thick. Maybe they wanted to catch Joan out. There is something about the Scottish Saint Margaret at the Abbot House in Dunfermline. I have just found it here on the web but the picture of the Head shrine is missing. This is only a copy of the real thing and as it says the original is missing, lost in the French revolution. There is something more I will tell you later but for now it is back to work.

Friday, September 06, 2002


Beneficial Nematodes or ..
A viking wants to re-seat my Motherboard.

Today is a "no removal of typoes" day.

All very good and strangely Mauve in a sort of limited Delia Smith type of way.

The DNA of the Indonesian Slender Loris is unique. At several points within the sequence, a code made from the four bases will spell out long (but incomplete) extracts from several of the books of Jane Austen and a book by only one other Author, oddly enough, the History of DNA extraction in South Shropshire. This of course reminds me of the great DNA mine at IronBridge where, it is surmised, that the evolution of modern humans was completed through the use of giant steam powered cranes and a framework made of toast and Marmite.

Oh I do so like Italics. They satisfy like a good pint of Waggle Dance

I suppose I had better try and write something serious. The above paragraph was the result of an Oblique Strategy but you will have to guess which one. As usual all the things I really wanted to write about have vanished from my mind and of course some of them will never come back what with the decay of brain cells etc. I am afraid it is another poem.



GENIE



(From the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology)

"What red blue is in?"

Can Genie Walk?
Can Genie Cry?
Can Genie Spit in our god's eye?


The Cool cameraman of Genie's loves
has left her here for us,
a shell of seas or otherwise,
an infant always
in our smoky, concrete heights
with Cleopatra's gait and language.

Here's a message
floated on a wall in light,
It is a hieroglyph,
her name in Gold Cartouche,
denoting high birth
amongst the animals.



There are so many conflicting accounts of how Genie came to be like she was. I am not really sure which one is correct. I suppose what I said in the poem was really the old cliche of who is actually the mad one. It was very difficult to take in the technical side of the TV programme I saw about her because all the way through, you kept returning to what she had been through both in her original family and in the name of science. And of course at the end of the programme you were left wondering how she was doing now. I still am. I think the programme implied that Genie was in the equivalent of local authority care rather than with a family. She must be 45 now. I have just asked if anyone else saw the programme and they all think I mean "I dream of Jeanie".

Thursday, September 05, 2002


the 'Hippopotamus Effect'

Something in Minority Report reminded me of something I had read a long time ago. Eventually I worked it out. In 'A Year with Swollen Appendices' by Brian Eno, he talks in one of the said swellings about adverts tailored exactly to their intended target. He writes a short story about Daniel Xavier Shelton (which you can read. I am 38 too.) This exactly describes the situation in Minority Report where the billboards tailor themselves to the people who get close enough to have their eye prints scanned by the readers. Now I have to find out if this was in the short story on which the film was based or if it was an idea of the film-makers. I suspect that Brian Eno may well read Philip K. Dick.

"The small frogs The small frogs Are amusing to see No ears, no ears No tails do they have"

An interesting link - Samantha Morton who played Agatha, one of the Pre-Cogs, in Minority Report has apparently just been filming where I live. See if you can see her here.

I need an Oblique Strategy and that Strategy is ... Destroy -nothing -the most important thing. Which means that I will not now undelete or remove any of the information from this page. I will remove spelling mistakes unless they are revealing or interesting in some way. All of which does not tell me what to write about but if you want more Self Reference then I suppose I should talk about (I meant write about but I am not removing anything) Oblique Strategies. They seem to lean towards being for help with a stalled musical performance or recording process but even those which are obviously related to that, seem to fit with many other situations. I wrote a program once to throw up a Random OS whenh I logged in and I added a few of my own. It is suprisingly easy to invent new ones - have a look at the existing ones and try it.

Imagine you are wrong when you imagine you are wrong.
Split a split-second and then recombine all the split-seconds you have created.
Record a recording of you recording a recording.


These took me as long as it took to type them to invent. The last one has been done in a very pure form. I think it is a very early Steve Reich piece which involves recording a recording over and over again until it becomes unrecognisable, an effect which is now easily replicated with digital delays though I suspect the quality of a digital implementation of this will be very different from the analogue ... er analogue (Maybe not the write word but an interesting result). There is so much interesting stuff out there. I am trying not to write anything which I will want to delete later because as I said, I am not going to divert anything. I meant delete anything. It is like that cure for hiccoughs, run up and down stairs seven times without thinking of a hippopotamus (Hippamus Potamus to my daughter). You can't do it (unless of course the active element in the cure is to think of a Hippopotamus). Remember the end of 'Village of the Damned' (It should have been called 'The Midwich Cuckoos') when Zellaby had to think of a brick wall so that the telepathic children didn't see that he was carrying a bomb to kill them all. Of course all he imagined was the wall falling down, though we don't know if that was the children affecting his mind or just the 'Hippopotamus Effect'. Anyway, the bomb went off and they all died so a happy ending was had by all. Does John Wyndham always have someone who's given name begins with 'Z' (Zed please)?. There was someone in 'Trouble with Lichen' as well.

Time passes. Only you can see. (To be read in a mellifluous Welsh voice).


Plethora and Paucity

Plethora - The first definition is :-

a bodily condition characterized by an excess of blood and marked by turgescence and a florid complexion

but of course I am using it in its main sense. Someone wrote a letter to our (very) local newspaper regarding the number of pigeons in the village (an issue which seems to invoke (evoke?) many emotions in the residents). The letter drew our attention to the recent Plethora of Pigeons (Not the correct collective noun I imagine) and how this has turned into a Paucity. I just draw this to your attention before someone uses the word Kafkaesque in a letter to our paper. I once used it in a letter to a landlord (a few decades ago) and I am still embarrassed about it. Talking of superfluous words, the tap water in the toilets at one of our sites, is 'unfit for drinking purposes' as opposed to just unfit for drinking. A Plethora of Superfluous words indeed. Actually, Plethora and Paucity were a pair of existential comedians from the early eighties but they flopped because they had a Dearth of jokes.

I am pleased to say that I have found self-reference in the 'My Naughty Little Sister' stories I am reading to my daughter. In 'My Naughty Little Sister goes to School', she goes to school with her bigger sister for just one day. MNLS Makes a Plasticine basket and gets a 'ten out of ten' paper for answering a question correctly. The teacher puts all of these treasures on the Mantlepiece. Then MNLS does a drawing of the whole classroom including all the pupils AND the mantlepiece with her basket and the 10/10 paper. The teacher says that this drawing should also go on the Mantlepiece but MNLS has to draw in a small copy of the drawing before it goes up. I think I may have said 'self reference' quietly to myself as I read this but my daughter just looked at me blankly. Anyway remember that MNLS is not that naughty. Strange loops are everywhere. Look for them; nurture them. They are somehow satisfying.

One of my bosses just told me that ASP is 'self documenting'. Bosses! Who needs them? ( Still haven't designed a rhetorical question mark).

At the Cherry Orchard Hotel I suppose you would have to Check Off rather than Check Out.

Wednesday, September 04, 2002


No Sun No Moon, November

I went to see Minority Report last night as I am away from home and the Cinema is just across from the Hotel. A very good film and if you take accept the scientific premise, then it is just a very complex whodunnit. The idea that you actually had a choice at the point you are about to kill someone is very interesting. Even the fact that there is the ability to detect murder before it is committed is a complex issue. In the film, they only really saw un-pre-meditated murder since anyone thinking long term about killing someone would be aware that they were bound to be detected before the murder actually occurred. I thought it was a bit like driving the automatic car I had to get here rather than the manual I normally drive. You gradually realise that you have no clutch and should never try to depress it or you will hit the brake (Like I did first thing yesterday - thankfully with no impact). Even if you decide to murder someone in the next few seconds, you would have a deep awareness of the fact that you would be detected as long as the pre-cognition came in long enough before the act. All of this blurred over whether it was the potential for the act being apparent in the brain of the perpetrator even if they had no pre-meditation or whether the actual fact of the murder happening at all was what triggered the detection. Of course I liked all this and the basic plot of the rest of the film because it was all self-referential; a murder triggered by the fact that a murder was detected before it occurred. It was a sort of fatal free lunch (if you can use a positive term to analogise a negative act). I can't say anymore because my wife wants to see the film and as she is the only person to read these entries it would spoil it for her.

Any idea on the title for this entry? JJ Jeczalik may be able to help you.

Tuesday, September 03, 2002


Optics and other things

My dad gave me his old birding telescope which he must have bought in the sixties sometime. He says it is no way near as good as his new one but I took my daughter to the Coastguard Station last night and we looked at the ships travelling up and down the Mersey and even on the lowest magnification (25x) I could read the names on all but the smallest vessels. Just for the record we saw Plover Arrow, Superseacat three and Dominique Trader along with the Liverpool Pilot boat and a Trawler which was just too far away to read the name. I felt like that old bloke in the picture of the Boyhood of Raleigh though my daughter was really more interested in making sandcastles. She did keep coming to look at each ship through the telescope though.

Monday, September 02, 2002


Medieval Dentistry



A Hobby Yesterday

I have just returned from a few days with my parents in Malvern. We visited Worcester Museum because my dad wanted to see if they had done anything with a Hobby which a friend had brought to him after it had killed itself by flying into a window. Hobbies are quite rare in this country and the museum had had it stuffed and were still waiting for somewhere to display it. Dad said he had found the curator he had spoken to but he said he had to rush off to the Cathedral to retrieve King John's teeth. I am absolutely amazed that I have managed to find a picture of said dentition. Apparently there is someone doing a live art exhibition involving the teeth so that is probably why the curator was off to get them back. Much as most British people don't like King John, it does seem a little unfair to be playing about with his teeth.

Anyway the rest of the time was very relaxing. We walked along the Malvern Hills for a little way. I have forgotten how downright beautiful and peaceful the views are, expecially those to the Herefordshire side. You see mostly fields and trees with a few scattered houses rather than lots of buildings with a bit of green. I have been trying to find a suitable picture to link to but there are so many I think I should just direct you to a Google Image Search. Take your pick. My daughter certainly enjoyed being on the top of the particular hill we climbed even if it wasn't the tallest of the bunch. I don't think 'bunch' is actually the collective name for hills. For Mountains it is obviously 'range' but what about hills? Maybe it is just 'line'. A line of hills. However, the Malverns are actually more like a range and what with the tallest one (The Worcestershire beacon) being only a few feet short of a Mountain, they really should be a range.

My daughter got a book with a collection of the most popular children's stories in it. Wind in the Willows, Thomas the Tank Engine etc. One of them was a 'My Naughty Little sister' story. She so liked this story that we had to buy the book and it brought back all the memories of when I read it. I don't remember having it read to me so I must have been old enough to read it to myself. It must be nearly thirty years since I have read it but I could almost quote it as soon as the first line prompted me. I keep hearing the voice of the woman who used to narrate the early 'Watch With Mother' programmes and indeed it was apparently written for 'Listen with Mother'. I challenge you to find any 40/30 something who is not moved by hearing 'The Dolly Suite" by Faure just beacause it was used as the theme to Listen with Mother. It should be on a calming music CD for the middle aged. (and people who are my age as well).

Tme to post.