Numb Gums and Fillings



(From The Worcestershire & Districts Change Ringing Association)

This is the Church where we used to have our Founder's Day services. It must have been difficult to work out when Founder's Day should have been as most of the Founders were anonymous potters - The Potters of Hanley Castle - and any info such as first class date or birthdays must surely not be available. I expect they just picked a slack time of year and dumped the celebration in the gap.

This is the school itself. (A Photo is desperately needed)



(From The Hanley castle High School Web-site - though this has not been updated for years)

It doesn't look at all like this now but it was close to this when I was there. There was a beautiful quad enclosed on nearly all sides by the main school buildings. Most of it was low beamed with short stairways to link the various classrooms along the upper floors. The History room was especially atmospheric and of course all that teenaged angst resulted in many rumours of hauntings and other mysterious phenomena. The quad is now filled partly with the computer block though it may be even more full since I last saw it. Maybe a quick vist at Christmas with lunch at the three Kings in the Village. The school is bigger than than the village and I estimate that the population of the village quadruples (at least) when the children arrive every day.

As far North as you can go and slightly to the right. (Sorry - East)

I have leapt straight into 'Tempestuous Eden' which, just in case this is the first article you have read on this Blog, is not some slushy pot-boiler, but an account by a Naturalist, Ursula Venables of her and her husband's years on the Shetland Isles. The Venables were friends of my fathers, and I suspect the authors of the definitive guides to the wildlife and plants of those distant islands. I don't have any pictures of them myself but I will try and get my Dad to dig some out.

I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for them pesky rabbits

Embarrassing (and completely un-ironic) Sountrack of the day - Only Yesterday - The Carpenters

(I do have the best of Joy Division for later.)

I have just read this article about Watership Down (You will need to register your email address but the access is free). I was actually trying to find the reason for the link to the online Telegraph from this article at the BBC but I came across the Richard Adams interview instead. I read Watership Down avidly when I was ten; it was a cracking story. I must admit I missed all the references to Classical Greek myths and all the rest of it. Strangely. it reminds me of the later obsessions of Ted Hughes. Another book to pop on the 'to read' list maybe. I have just found out that Richard Adams' book "The Girl in a swing" was made into a film in 1989, starring Meg Tilly (apparently with an atrocious German Accent). I loved "The Girl in a Swing". The Telegraph Article describes it as an 'erotic ghost story'. I admit that it had its moments but to dismiss it as that seems a bit much. The eroticism was never more than the normal part of the main character's love for the woman who half way through the book became his wife. It is hardly Anais Nin. (As I am at work, I think it better to avoid searching for a link to that particular author). There was something very familiar about The girl in a swing. There are some good reviews of the film; the man himself, Rogert Ebert seemed to like it but this one is hilarious. I particularly like 'There are few things with less sex appeal than Episcopalians in love' and I think I may be bored with the American obsession with us sexually repressed Britishers. The last review on the Amazon site is NOT me though it could be. Weird! The general feeling of the reviews seems to be that the ending was unresolved but I though that was the beauty of the book. I have it in my mind because although I made up my mind what exactly had happened, the book never explicitly defined it ( well not that I remember). Watership Down is memorable because there is so much of it and so many images. The Girl in a Swing is memorable because so much of it is left un-written.

Anyway, all of this leads me on to a recently completed (read not written) book, 'The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome'. The whole thing has to be seen in a completely different light. Knowing that he worked for British Intelligence, sheds new light on the episodes just after WWI. There is a particular incident when he was returning from Russia to the UK via Finland. He writes that the Finnish police were instructed to hold him under arrest by various factions in the UK who thought that Britain should fight against the Red Russians with the anti-soviet forces and that his view of anti-interventionism would damage their cause. He says that he happily slipped through and a secret serviceman was arrested in his place and denied access to the British Consulate. Ransome arrived back in the UK and was immediately accompanied to Scotland Yard and questioned regarding his Politics ('Fishing' was his answer.) While in the Office of the head of Scotland Yard (Basil Thompson) , there was a phone call. Thompson spoke and then put the phone down laughing, saying "That was the Foreign Office to tell me that you are arriving in Britain tomorrow". I suspect that this never happened and that the secret serviceman arrested in Finland WAS Arthur Ransome and all this was a fiction to cover up his real exploits. It sounds like he changed the course of history. I didn't realise that British officers actually commanded tanks in the coalition armies that attacked the Soviets in the year after WWI ended. There is loads of history which is quietly hidden away as embarrasing. Read more and find out more of what 'we' did in the wars. We won and so we are 'top-nation'.

Remember the Flying Wallenders?

I have google bashed - I think. As far as I know, this entails finding two terms which return one and only one result in Google. Maybe names don't count but 'wallenders tightrope' gives just one answer. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with tightrope walking in anything other than a peripheral way. The platitude "Casting Aspersions" was used this afternoon but was misheard by someone as 'Casting Cistercians' which has opened up a whole raft of strange mental images. As the Cistercians are a silent order, they would obviously not be allowed to scream when being 'cast'. This in turn led me to an image of a troupe of performing monks which would certainly be seen as Evangelical in a way that the most outgoing empathetic could never hope to match. I suppose flying monks would actually have a lot more in common with the levitations of certain more Eastern religions. It begs a drawing. A search on google comes up with this picture which can only be described as Flying Monks and worse still this story about a real airborne Friar (Very Fortean)

I am alone in the Office again. Friday Evening help desk has caught me until 18:00. But there is a weekend looming with all that you can think about for me to do. Actually I only have half an hour left which is pleasant surprise and only two calls so far.

See you after the weekend.

(Posted after the weekend because Blogger was down for repairs)

Arthur Ransome in Russia - 1916-1918



Arthur Ransome and Karl Radek

(From http://www.visitcumbria.com/ransome.htm
and
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSradek.htm)


The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome goes a long way towards explaining why the Swallows and Amazons books are a cut above the normal children's fare. Arthur Ransome was so obviously used to handling deeply complex political situations that dashing off a simple but compelling story was easy. The introduction by Rupert Hart-Davis (The father of Adam Hart-Davis) suggests that Ransome used to write individual chapters of the books out of sequence which makes it clear that he had the whole story mapped out before he started and just had to get the descriptive stuff sorted. AR was also a folklorist so he was used to reasearching Children's stories anyway which is part of the reason he was in Russia during the revolution. Actually, if the recent tales of his MI6 involvement areto be believed, this was his cover. I get the sense that most of the foreign diplomats he met wondered why he was travelling with Karl Radek. Apparently this led to some accusations of him being traitor but these have been dispelled by the recent revelations.

Poetry Concrete (This is a link as well as a title)

In the verge, the green grass of construction,
under many bridges, where secrets lie forever,
the bones of traitors bleached a thousand years
are all remaining of those that know of jewels
and gold from one more ancient, royal house.
Their king was drowned for money,
lost his kingdom through his greed
and was swept away to this,
the peaceful flatland of his family.

A Novel Novel



This sheet Intentionally left Blank

Quad Mix

Soundtrack - Best of - The Kinks (yes! Really).

Did the word 'snipe' spring to mind because of the sniper? Even here, I began to get worried about walking across open spaces. It is good that they seem to have got him. Fear itself indeed. In the last couple of years, there has been a terrible rise in events where the fear generated is far more damaging than the actual events themselves. It does our health no good and the media just hypes it all to sell units rather than to inform. This is nearly as bad as the criminal who sells weapons with no thought or care for the damge they do. Reporting could be more restrained (and probably as a consequence - more truthful). I bet the Anthrax letters killed many times more people through raised blood pressure than by actual infection (5 people died directly). Our main Post-Office was shut shown because of a suspicious powder leaking from a damaged letter. It turned out to be sand from someone on holiday! Driving home yesterday, I saw a small plane flying a straight line about 10 degrees off parallel to the docks. It seemed to be too small to be a real plane and it was definitely not a microlight of which there are many around here. And what did I immediately assume? That it was an attempt to seed the city with something nasty. (Sorry about the split infinitive).

Oh the Coffee is good from the machines this morning. We have to start paying for it soon so maybe that is why. It seems to vary in quality but I suspect that really it is my perception. Taste seems to be the sense which varies the most depending on mood or chemical balance. Sight and hearing seem to be constant in an internal sense. I know they vary over the long term but that is generally a decline over years. Maybe sight does change and that it is just that our brain spends so much of its processing on sorting out reality from the limited information, that it compensates and we don't realise. Indeed, perceived sight has been described as 90% fiction based on what our brain and its preconceptions make of the limited input. A circle is a circle; right? And a Crop Circle is something else. No! Crop circles are made by men with planks and bits of rope!

I have just invented a portmanteau word - Crumpety - Crotchety and Grumpy. Which of course has reminded me of Jabberwocky. In Godel, Escher, Bach, there are two translations of Jabberwocky in French and German to make a point about language. I have found this page of translations which are interesting.

Martin is just looking at this site. I agree with him that there are too many House makeover shows on TV but this show examines the building process in depth.

There will now be my impression of the Millenium Falcon's engines failing. More later.

So wet you could shoot Snipe off him

Who used this phrase first? I seem to recall Molesworth using it but I may be wrong. In my searches for this phrase relating to Molesworth I have found this 'Molesworth at Hogwarts' page. Two great Cultural icons for the price of one. Hurra! sumtymes i think mi cup runneth over! Anywon for tenis?

Watch out for that Snipe! Oh! It's gone.

An Oblique strategy is called for. It is ... tada ... 'What were you really thinking about just now?' Actually I am not sure what I was thinking about just now. It was mostly procedural stuff related to how to type and what the equivalent of ubound is in javascript. (It is ubound by the way). I am having to think seriously to find anything concious or more meaningful than 'press that key to get a letter "T"'. Actually, maybe I was thinking of all the little birdwatching expeditions which my Dad dragged us on when we were little. When we under 10 we got quite bored but as we got older things got a lot better. When I returned home from college, and dad and I went out on his Saturday birding trips to his favourite haunt, I really enjoyed it (especially the lunch at the pub by the river). He still goes every Saturday if possible and I think that with his extraordinary amount of free time and his super-duper rinky-dinky computer, he will be able to produce his own book about the birds of that area. He is having so much fun with the digital camera that I am getting quite jealous. His first photos included one of a Dandelion clock which he processed until it looks like some impressionist painting. If I can get a copy of it I will post it. What will his book be called? Probably something like 'The Birds of A.........e and the surrounding area'.

This is the blank wall which Zellaby was thinking about in 'The Midwich Cuckoos' so as not to let the Children know he had a bomb. Which, if you analyse it too deeply (which you know I will) suggests that I am concealing some dangerous thoughts behind all this inanity. Maybe I should use the Oblique Strategy of finding a door or a window. Today is over-parenthesised isn't it? I would have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky hypotheticals.

I was going to try another very quick poem but all the recent attempts seem to be failing because they turn out overly sentimental rather than constructed. Good poetry is an effor. Brilliant poetry is easy. Bad Poetry is easy. Spoof bad poetry is darn near impossible. All together - ' .. of 1879 which will be remembered for a very long time'.

Remember the noise the ants used to make in Tom and Jerry Cartoons? You do! Hum it now. It wont be out of your head for the rest of the day. Goodbye! Sleep well.

It's like a giant encyclopaedia

I was a little bored with the music on the radio on the way home yesterday so I switched to the old standby, Radio 4. The programme on at the time was All in The Mind which I have not really listened to before. I was taken with the description of 'Kelly's Repertory Grid'. Read the instructions so that you know how it works. This reminds me of a project I saw probably on a Horizon programme some years ago where a computer had been set up to accept what the operators called 'common sense' data to allow a robot or Artificial Intelligence program with access to this data to have an idea about the real world. After many millions of items of data had been entered, the program was allowed to start looking for consistencies in the entered data. It began coming up with some strange, previously unnoticed things. There was one thing which I can't remember entirely but was to do with a link between firearms culture and an aspect of the country in which that culture developed; something akin to the US being a stable country not prone to invasion or revolution band yet with a deep gun culture. I would ove to see all the other similar constructs which this program came up with. Anyway - I am going to try the grid for myself and if I get anywhere with it I may post the results though if I don't you will never know whether it is because it showed up a personaility flaw or because I am just a slacker (Which I suppose is a personality flaw of sorts though not a major one).

The BBC web site just gets better and better. It could have so easily become a messy, un-maintained depository for anything that was shown on TV. (There are many web-sites like this.) Instead, it is well laid out, easily searchable and attractive. It also has the h2g2 site which is really just an extension of the BBC site itself is.

Why is your own existence the only one comprehensible? It is an extension of the anthropomorphic principle. I am lucky to be living in a Western country with a good standard of living but why do I think that this life is the best? I have this weird idea which I may have talked about before, that Quantum effects make everyone have the best possible life; really bad things only happen to other people. The further removed from your own locality you look at people, the less real is your perception of their existence. I know of course that this is not true because that would mean that places where there is famine and mine fields and continuous low level war are, for the people whoh experience them, really safe and stable and that it is us here who appear to them to suffer badly. There is a psychological aspect to this which in a way is true. Most people are resistant to change and like their own existence to continue relatively un-disturbed; there are only a few people who want to change the world and it is these people who either go out of their way to help other people or who start wars to change their world that way or who change their own personal life to help themselves. I could make my life so much better with only a few simple changes but they would upset the gentle forward motion and make me nervous. (More nervous). Sometime, when things appear to be bad locally (I mean in time and space) I think of how little I would have to do to make things better and it comforts me.

A family of 12,000 Children with very expensive tastes

I found a copy of the book by Ursula Venables on the Web after I wrote about it and it is ordered and on the way so watch this space for a review. I spoke to my dad about it as well and he hasn't got a copy of it so it will be on the way south as well. Tempestuous Eden is about the Venables life as naturalists on Shetland. I wouldn;t have described Shetland as Eden though it is certainly tempestuous. We went when I was 10 and it was wet and windy most of the time though at 10 you don't seem to mind. Actually, as you may be aware, I don't mind it now as long as I am not over exposed. On one day we visted the Isle of Noss which is off the coast of the larger Island of Bressay which in turn shelters the port of Lerwick. The picture on the link gives a perfect view of how the islands are related. Noss is the smallest island in the distance while Lerwick is the built up area in the foreground. We took a small powered boat from Lerwick to Maryfield on Bressay, then went by what I think was the post van to the tiny Noss sound where we were rowed across to Noss in a boat big enough for four people. The reason for all this was of course Birding. The island is a nature reserve with a very small Vistors centre. On the Bressay side of the Island the land is almost flat but towards the East where it meets the Ocean, the land rises to 120 metres with cliffs! Anyway, it got misty and my Father, My Brother and I got lost. Well my Father was lost. My Brother and I were quite sure of the direction back to the boat but Dad insisted on continuing in his direction (He may of course have been leading us to what he though was some perceived birding location). We were eventually drawn up short with my Dad's toes hanging over the edge of what I seem to remember are the highest cliffs in Shetland. Us boys just ran into the back of him and it is only luck that he kept his footing. My Brother saved us from further meaderings by removing the compass from his shoe (remember those) and leading us back to the sound. (not bad for a seven year old). It is one of the few times as a child that I felt in real danger. It wasn't the sudden appearance of the cliff, just the fact of being lost. My Dad of course will remember it completely differently. 'We were never lost. I always knew where we were going. We got back didn't we?' Anyway, he hasn't gone over any cliffs though through his work with bridges he has no fear of heights and will insist on walking close to edges (and the Edge itself of course). It is after stories like this that I realise that my life has not been as boring as I thought. I might have thought so at the time.

I like Islands. We had our Honeymoon on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and it was quiet and we had good weather (while the rest of the country was flooded out).