This is all just Logical Positvism - or is it really Moral Relativism?

My wife says that Mr Pooter in BBC4’s adaptation of The Diary of a Nobody is a cross between me and my father. Nice to know. Secretly I have always suspected that I was like him and to be honest his uncomplicated lifestyle is quite appealing but then again there is nothing outside the text. I am afraid that I wish I could live my life with “nothing outside the text” and indeed compartmentalising is the only way I can get on with things at the moment. I am taking things as they come.

Much Ado About Nothing

As I have mentioned before I love the way that Sefton Library service allow you to reserve books from any of their branches using the web. For some time now I have been looking at a book called “Critical Mass” by Philip Ball and yesterday I finally reserved it. They have to go and get it from Ashworth Hospital library so I am looking forward to some interesting annotations. Actually, that is a joke because they have another copy at a nearer branch. I was going to reserve Iain Banks’ new book The Steep Approach To Garbadale but I actually found it in the local library, it having only been booked out once. The Amazon reviews do use the word “Pants” but I still have a 100% record with Mr Banks’ non-sci-fi books so I will probably finish it. These reviews have also revealed that he likes to alternate “nice” and “nasty” books. Not that I had noticed.

I am into poetry a lot at the moment though I haven’t managed to write any of mine own for ages. I am taking “Staying Alive” with me on the bus because I can’t manage to read longer texts with all the stop-start. The poems seem to alternate between the trendy prose stuff that Stephen Fry rants about and proper, rhythmic things. Now while the former can have spirit and deep meaning, the latter ones always seem to be superior even if they are written about an egg-mayonnaise sandwich.
The title for today is because that very play is on in Liverpool, set in the forties so I look forward to the watch being based on the Warmington-on-Sea platoon of the Home Guard as they were in the Illyria version we saw in the grounds of Speke Hall. Not sure current commitments will allow us to go but it’s nice to dream.

Why All Things Are Connected

Listening to Music in Twelve Parts – All of them.

As part of a bit of experimenting with Neural Nets I have read about how Neurons transmit their signals between each other. One of the major chemicals involved in this is Serotonin which is manufactured in the body from Tryptophan. This is found in all sorts of things that I gave up after seeing my fat face in the company phone directory. I stopped taking change into work to avoid buying chocolate from the machines. Low serotonin levels are responsible for low moods – antidepressants work by stopping the re-absorption of serotonin rather than by increasing its production. I suppose I should increase my levels of exercise if I want to start eating loads of chocolate and peanuts again. Strangely I got a sudden and overwhelming desire for a bag of dry-roasted yesterday but I couldn’t find any in any of the shops outside the station so I made do with Word magazine instead, which may or may not have any affect on serotonin levels.

My move to this new site let me avoid the fatal crash which blocked the M6 for 8 hours yesterday. It took place at junction 27 at 06:50 which is about the time I normally pass it. Now the butterfly effect or some element of our quantum universe might well have meant that had I been on the motorway, the crash would not have happened at all so I cannot tell whether my life has been saved or that the accident was my fault entirely but as Julie Birchill seems to say in Word this month, what is the point of worrying about things like this. Things may be connected and you can analyse what happens and what the cause and effect is right down to the day of judgement or the big crunch or even to the infinity of existence that might somehow be created in the finite and infinitesimal seconds before the complete destruction of the universe. None of this will make the tiniest bit of difference to what you experience. Be as cautious as you like but you will be bored for ever so drink that fully-caffeinated attempt at coffee that the machines produce – sink as many bacon butties as you like – your allotted time will be the same. That damn butterfly somewhere in Ecuador probably will flap his wings and that will be all it takes to send your serotonin levels plummeting. Rant away.

The baby wrote the following paragraph while I was away from the keyboard.

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii99999999999999999999999999999999999999.

Already using more ‘I’s than Michael Winner and more '9's than Ian Paisley on a trip to Germany.

Och A vey

Pitch Perfect I Think

My journey to work is by public transport at the moment and I thought you might like to know that my recent return of calmness was somewhat assaulted by the loud argument between some aged lout and the bus driver. I’m not sure what the problem was but the idiot ended up challenging the driver to a fight. Luckily potential pugilism was avoided, largely by the driver ignoring the man, though he still let him on board. I suppose this could only be expected being that the stop was just outside a shop called “Not Drunk Enough?”. This is on what must be one of the main routes into Liverpool and therefore probably the first thoroughfare that many people will see when they visit us for The Capital Of Culture events next year. You may remember I defended Liverpool against the detractors when it was announced that it had won COC but the headlong rush into architectural vandalism that has resulted has made me think again. The main roads into the city are still lined with defunct shops and boarded-up houses and the numbers seem to have increased since the first trip I made here in 1982 when the after-affects of the Toxteth riots were still evident.

Anyway, the point of this post was not to abuse the city but to indicate the return of my depression though I seem to be simply unhappy at the moment and I am much happier being just unhappy. No letters please. Well the sun is shining and I’m not involved in the crash that occurred on the route I used to travel to work at about the time I would have been there so if I just have to wince at some bad language, I suppose I’m not too bothered.

Some Books I Forgot.

Something about Life On Mars in this so don’t read if you are relying on Tapes, Discs or Sky+ etc.

I have been reading a lot recently. Best of the lot was Pies and Prejudice by that nice Stuart Maconie which is very much like Miranda Sawyer’s Park and Ride except that Maconie’s book focuses on the North – actually a narrow band between Hadrian’s wall and some of the Northern bits of Cheshire – not a problem for me really because he could write 300 pages about an alley behind the market and it would still be interesting and pithy and socially responsible – a good man. This has reminded me to look at when the third instalment of Andrew Collins Autobiography is out. The answer is the 3rd of May and it is available for Pre-Order here. This is of course much more anticipated than Harry Potter 7. I read somewhere that this book was no good and that the publishers had been discussing rewrites by other authors but this may have been in a Sunday paper from April 1st. With this in my head and the mention of The Doctor having read HP7 already in last week’s Doctor Who (Brilliant by the way) I dreamt that I had a copy and that it was short with large text and lots of pictures meaning that it could be read in less than an hour. Not sure what it means but it was not the disappointment I might have expected. I have been encouraged to try Cloud Atlas again and this seems a much more worthy book than HP7 which is of course just something that has to be got out of the way so that you know the ending before someone spoils it.

Talking of which, Life on Mars finished in the only way possible. The sense of anti-climax after the expected resolution almost shouted out the ultimate ending and still lets all the message-boarders discuss the real meaning without ever reaching a definite conclusion. Satisfying in the extreme.

I have also bean Reading Swallows and Amazons to my daughter who loved it. I have all the books but the ones I bought myself seem to be cheap and nasty and have begun to fall apart so I have started buying the wonderful hard-back versions to replace them. Swallowdale has just arrived and now the only question will be who gets to keep them when my daughter leaves home. Luvverly.

Recovery

I am in a shiny, new building, looking out over trees and ponds rather than the brown-fields of a recently-demolished ordnance factory as before. Of course this is all you are going to get by way of identification other than the fact that my drive is less than half what it was, which has gone a long way to helping my sanity. In my line of work, it is completely possible to do everything from home and I do so envy all those computer consultants who have broadband installed in some croft on the Outer Hebrides and save the world remotely. However, as John Cleese told me all those years ago when I started work, the meeting is still an important part of business and this means that travel is always a necessity. I’m thinking of having the garage converted to be a technology hub which will mean I can stay at home for the rest of my life but that may well be an unachievable dream. We see all those nice shiny office suites in the Sunday Supps but the reality of home life is one of clutter unless you have managed to convince the kids to be totally silent by pretending to be some sort of B-Movie monster if they so much as squeak.

There is a column in the “Family” section of the Saturday Guardian, which I think is called Living with teenagers. These particular 13-19-year olds seem to have a troopers vocabulary which is making me fear for the future somewhat though I suppose a few swear words should come way down the list of things to worry about when it comes to offspring. However, I don’t think I would be putting up with it. Maybe it is just the standard lax and liberal nature of whichever Guardianista writes it.

All of this is to prove correct, the colleagues of mine who assert that I am less depressed when I am ranting. Trying to be calm and not shout about the problems I see around me, leaves me internalising everything which is of course no good at all. I should go the gym I suppose or at least swimming which might help me become as physically tired as I am mentally. Much problem sleeping recently and that has become the only worry - a circle of the highest possible order of viciousness there. I am also trying not to read anything particularly exciting or nasty though I seem to have failed there by managing to finish Dead Air by Iain Banks which was a lot better than his previous book – The Business. Bloom County seems to be my limit at the moment, though the politics is very dated.

Please Make All Cheques Payable to "The Mornington Crescent Elevator Repair Fund"

non iguato cresseunt

An Autumn evening just after the end of school - we are all at home now and the last of the light is streaming directly in through the windows. There is a bar of sun-lit distemper in front of us so we are lit like ghosts, dreaming of fame and how cool we could be. There is some audience in our distantly perceived visions but nothing to react against us and so we dance like maniacs , like David Byrne who seems to have turned into his own father, dancing that dads' version of the moonwalk. Our singer seems to bounce, just out of time, swinging her arms in time with her artistically rhythmical dress. She turns to us in turn and smiles, white teeth in the sun but this smile is only for herself. She is deep into thinking only of herself and who she could become. She has learned this dance of illness from someone else, someone really ill and it makes me nervous that she will sort of catch something; by trying to act ill she will get ill and die and then maybe we will be famous. But of course I do not want to be famous, to be rich. I want so much to just curl up, hide in one of the battered sheds outside. But she needs us, all our limited talents at guitar and bass and drums and even that sad keyboard that plays itself.

Our singer smiles too much. She is lost to this rhythm we cannot escape. I want to stop and everyone else wants to stop but none of us can. Maybe this is hell - we will play until our hands are cut down to stumps - maybe it is heaven and the sound will take us to some top level where we will find our own Beatrice, helping God to decide on what to do next.

Everybody has a Prozac moment sometime.

Listening to Dry by PJ Harvey

Well it wasn't as bad as the Kate Bush biography but Siren Rising - a biography of PJ Harvey didn't quite reveal the depths that Polly Jean shows us in her music. Having said that, what exactly is the function of a music biography other than to reveal juicy snippets to the fans? They rarely live up to any promise of real analysis because very few pop and rock musicians have real depth of intellect. If I was more widely read, I suppose I could expect a bombardment of counter-examples and I bet Leonard Cohen would be in there somewhere but even Radiohead are counter-culture lite really. They want to sum up beliefs and package them up for the sixth-form poetry brigade to understand and yet still think they are digesting some meaty new idea. Still, if they are on the side you believe in then what is wrong with that?

PJ harvey is of course listed as being strange because she is perceived as singing about 'feminist' issues and things than blokes just don't like talking about or even hearing. The indie kids get such a kick from thinking that they are being alternative because they give ear-time to her complaints about men. The problem is that I don't think that they are complaints about men in general - they are stories and recollections about specific men - and women - possibly without wanting to colour how you think of them - a sort of Fortean scepticism where no comment either way is actually wanted - just a list of the events that happened so you can say "hey - wasn't that strange and dramatic?" rather than wanting any solution or opinion. Anyway, the biography was just that really - a time line of a life lifted from interviews and discographies, written well-enough but without any real insight into the person other than what you might get from the limited amount of lyrics that were included.

Dry - the first album - is still the best - lyrically and musically. It has no theme other than the similarity of the instrumentation that comes from simply recording the instruments you have. It actually blows me away that one so young could write it; I remember what I was like at the same age (she is not far behind me really) and I could never have anything like the depth of feeling that shines out of those songs. It is strange as well, that the discordance of the music seems to be lessened by the sense of the words beings 'meant' rather than being throwaway lines for the sake of getting some singing on the album. Compare this with the prozac-fuelled noodlings of New Order where the music is great, still echoing with the Chords of Joy Division but the words are rhyming by numbers without reason and meaning.

Apologies for a little bit of politics today but heavy respect is due to this man.

Also, I am smug because I finished the first THREE on this list and only jettisoned one of the others though I have not started the other 6. I think I should try Cloud Atlas again - it is still by the bed rather than back in the bookshelf.

Och-A-Vaye

Don't Get Me Started on the Jet Skiers.

Listening to Peng! by Stereolab




Some miasmic metronome here; a pulse like some song you cannot get out of your head but from beyond the county border, over there where they believe in all the things you got out of your mind long before they woke up and started thinking about things. They think all those illnesses come from the smell in the air, no such thing as bacteria to them. And the award to the best use of the phrase "doo - ooo - ahhhh" goes to ..... not that it matters who it goes to. Communists all.


The duck eggs were very tasty. There are still some left for breakfast at the weekend. They weren't particularly strong but they did taste somehow more like eggs if that makes sense.






The big news around our way is that Antony Gormley's statues that collectively make up Another Place are staying on the beach down the way from us. The statues have become a community art installation, something more than the rareified artefacts that most modern art is made up of these days. They are dressed up in all sorts of costumes, used as extras in Easter and Nativity plays and have become part of the background, sort of strangers at the dinner table with their reluctance to speak and stoicism in the face of the rough Irish Sea. I sometimes think of them when I remember the worst days that pound the promenade there, putting every one of those hundred soldiers under at least 10 feet of water. The problem is really that most of the complainants just can't stand Modern Art which has rung a bell in my head as being from The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Must visit them again at the weekend, in the wind and the rain hopefully.

I am quite enjoying my drive home at the moment. There is always good stuff on the radio. There is A Good Read on Tuesdays where Sue MacGregor and two guests each choose a book to talk about for ten minutes. Andrew Motion was one of the guests this week and selected The Peregrine by J.A. Baker, which surprised me. Motion even mentioned that there was an obvious Ted-Hughes influence on the book. Think of a flat marsh at dusk, with the cries of estuary birds scraped into ambience by the distance. Think of the mist coming down and a warm fire waiting at home. Think of a day with nothing to be done but what you want. It's all a long way from this place but keep thinking of it anyway. It needs to be done.

The Clouds are Moving to the Perimeter

Listening to Substance by New Order

I've just been over the road to buy some duck eggs. I just got the last half-dozen and there was someone else after me. I got a taste for duck eggs when I was about four years old. While on holiday we stopped off to see a friend of my parents somewhere in South Wales I think, possibly near Tintern Abbey. The house was dominated by what seems in my imperfect memory to have been a coterie of girls of all ages who swarmed around my brother and me, treating us like dolls to be pampered and given presents. We left with many duck eggs which I loved, though my brother hated them like all eggs. I seem to remember that we had some gulls eggs as well but that may have been a present from one of my father's birding trips.

What is Laurie Taylor on? I listen to Thinking Allowed on the way home every Wednesday and I still do despite the fact that his knowing and dismissive narration annoys me intensely. I hated the limited sociology I had to do for my degree despite having an agreeable and approachable American lecturer and I should be annoyed at the generalisation that seems to pass for informed investigation as part of the subject. I am sure that sociology comes within the target area of Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World, though not as much as the French Philosophical junk that I have ranted about before. Anyway, Laurie Taylor always sounds as if he would rather be somewhere else and why does he insist on telling ancient jokes at the end of the programme?

For something to do, why not type "Peel Sessions" into Amazon. I want them all. Some of them I already have cluttering up the garage, buried under a pile of unused woks and a bag of approximately 300 teddy bears that the local children's hospital doesn't want because they can't sterilise them. I suppose they would make a nice fluffy surprise in any landfill they might end up in. Talking of which, we have a plastic recycling facility near us now which means that we can get down to about one bag of rubbish a week now.

There were four of us in the van.

Fly Away Stanley - Be Free

Hello there Nigel - I'm Back!

Listening to Duet by Steve Reich played by the Smith Quartet

I've been away. They were very nice to me while I was there but I think I'm ready to come back now. Does that sound a little over-dramatic?

Now the big question in my mind at the moment is whether the kaiser Chiefs are being ironic with their song Everything is Average Nowadays. I'm not sure that this actually warrants any deep analysis but my recent blogging hiatus has left me time to think about whether this assertion is indeed correct. What with this and Paxman J.'s eloquent rant about the scruffiness of this country I am beginning to get rather despondent about how much of this is actually down simply to "most people" or even just "some people". It seems that we are turning into a nation of at best selfish chancers and at worst unemotional psychopaths. How about urging a potential suicide to jump? If even one person does it then we have failed. I have a problem at the moment which is a continuous worrying about everything - the whole future laid out in front of me is an assault course of possible issues and drags on what should be a happy life but it seems that there are people out there who would sleep happily after downing ten pints and mowing down an entire family. We champion personal freedom without any mention of personal responsibility.

Everything is indeed average, though I seem to have managed to spell psychopaths correctly without having to look it up. I love the smell of unleaded in the morning.