Monday, October 28, 2002


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)

Friday, October 25, 2002


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.

Thursday, October 24, 2002


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.

Wednesday, October 23, 2002


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).

Tuesday, October 22, 2002


Instant Journal Entries

I have a very easy Journal on the Palm and I keep putting in ridiculous entries about things I want to write about. I used to do this in a notebook years ago but I didn;t have a Blog to spout them all into so they just got left. Now I am faced with stupid memory joggers and I can't remember what half of them actually mean. Anyway, today's entries are as follows :-

1. Star Wars Cantina Band.

Do you remember the 1920s style music played by the group of bug-like Aliens in the Cantina at Mos Eisley? I was listening to it yesterday and as more time passes, the less Alien it sounds. I began to think about how different music would have to be to be real Alien music. The Cantina Band played not just Earth Music but Western (dare I say American) 12 note music without anything to suggest extra-terrestriality. There are plenty of weird and wonderful styles which would have fitted the bill better. However, I then got to thinking about the infinity of planets in the galaxy. If they were populated to the same extent that the planets in Star Wars are, then sooner or later something approaching our Western scale would be found. Actually, mayber there is something mathematically 'right' about the sound of music. How do you tell the difference between Music and just Sound? As far as I am concerned a lot of things can be Music. In the first Ocean of Sound CD there were recordings of Howler Monkeys and the Horns and Whistles of Vancouver. All the tracks were sequed into one another so that the connections between the different sounds were made clear. I think I talked about the sound of the Bandolier loading machines on our shopfloor here once. They made a very rhythmic clicking sound as they dragged components of the single-type reels and loaded them onto the main composite reels. I could have listened to them for hours. There was another machine which was used to oirentate tiny metal bushes on a line so that they were all the same way up. It had a huge bowl with a ledge spiralling up from the centre to a gap in the wall where the bushes would pass out in the correct way. The bowl did not rotate as I first thought but vibrated and so shook the bushes up the ledge. At a certain point, the ledge narrowed and any bushes on it at this point which were not the correct side-up, would fall off because they had a ridge that didn't match with the shelf. It was fascinating. I sound like a train spotter. And this is no way related to the Star Wars Cantina band.

2. Ursula Venables - Shetland Book

My father had a friend called Pat Venables who along with his wife, Ursula, wrote a book "Birds and Mammals of Shetland" which seems to be a definitive guide. Ursula also wrote a memoir of the Island life itself. They seem to have been very at home there. Anyway, I will have to dig out my Dad's copy of the memoir (And finish it). Ursula is still alive I think but Pat must have dies some ten years ago. He was a very knowledgeable chap but didn't suffer us kids gladly. He was always telling us to "pipe down" though not unkindly. From a few quick searches my vague idea that they were actually profressional biologists is born out. I think they went to Bangor University because that is where we always met them. I have just found another book written by Ursula - Tempestuous Eden. I think it is about shetland again but I will have to let you know. Lunchtime is over again. Bye.

It was Giant Ants!

I drive by Liverpool Docks every morning and now the dark mornings are here, it is quite a spectacular sight. One of the main unloading areas comes right up to the main road which links Liverpool to Southport and beyond. (see this Aerial Photo to get an idea of how close). Four or five big container ships can fit in this dock so the appearance of the whole dock changes all the time. I get like Ratty in the Wind in The Willows occasionally and want to pack up some essentials in a large spotted handkerchief and travel the world on one of these ships. The strange thing is that the bit of green which you can see in the Top left hand corner of the photo, is actually a nature reserve with hides. Because of the traffic from all over the world, birders get the occasional rare specied to twitch and ogle at. I should take some photos of the docks. I used to live in a flat above an off-licence in Walton when I first started work here and at weekends I used to cycle up North of the docks. I was always quite fascinated by them. My Wife's Father was a docker there in the days when you had to turn up each morning to see if they wanted you for the day. I suspect there are plenty of dock ,managers who would like to return to those days. Still, it seems that if companies can't behave the way they used to, they will try and achieve the same results by sailing as close to the current legislation as they can. Nothing changes really. There is a wonderful Black and White photo of Liverpool Dockers from about the time my Father-in-Law worked there in the Phaidon Century book but I am afraid you will have to buy it yourself to see the picture though you won't be disappointed if you don't like that picture. 10 pictures from each year of the whole of the 20th century should be enough for anyone. Be warned though - some of the pictures are quite gruesome, but then again so is life.

If Google is accurate I can be the first person on the web to mention that "Phaidon Century" is on Will's Coffee table in "Will and Grace". I can't find any reference to this or any photos of the set.

We will drown in a sea of photographs. There is no history but this.

Monday, October 21, 2002


Jungo, Jungo, Esqua Jammay.



Winter Poems

The snow remains in shade for years,
we walk on it, tip-toeing to our homes
through ice and moons
and trees against our deep blue sky.
It should be this time always,
never going forward
to the deep, black cold of midnight.
We are furthest from the sun today,
The Equinoxe has come again
and answered all our Winter wishes.
The world defined, is sharp,
in focus, The Valley, Visible
for miles in massive darkness,
calls us like a dream of stars.

We wish again for ships,
blown gently in the southern winds,
baked and born by Ocean sun;
The breezes drunk in white,
and perfumed with the gazes
of our lovers left at home.
We have, in this verse,
found the passion, lost so long ago,
the trails of wintering
and of definite careers.
This is the book we all must read,
the story of the age.
The snow remains in shade for years,
we walk on it, tip-toeing to our homes.




A Slow Walk in the Shadow of an Avalanche

ST - Tokyo/Vermont CounterPoint - Mika Yoshida/Steve Reich

As you can tell I have started bringing CDs into work to drown out the inanity and burbling. That is not so say that my immediate colleagues are the subject of this analysis; it's just that there is a continuous trickle of mobile phone ring tones and people having conference calls on speaker so that the distant gravelly sound of the remote party is audible in all parts of the office and annoys everyone not part of the meeting. I am in Misanthrope mode today.

See this. I am in the 'Revolution' chapters of 'The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome' at the present and while 'Man with a Movie Camera' was made 12 years later, for me it seems to give motion and heart to the AR writing. It also goes to show Russia in a light other than the stock images of communism, deprivation and Mafia pervasion. The 'Kino Eye' reminds me of the Eyeball cutting in 'Un Chien Andalou' (They were made the same year - 1929).




Music as Painkiller or Poisoning pigeons in the park

Soundtrack - Floored Genius I - Julian Cope

I broke a rib a few weeks ago and occasionally it is painful like this morning. As I was driving to work, Penny Gore of Radio 3's Morning on 3 played a track from the new Harp Consort Album - Missa Mexicana; a 17th century Baroque Christmas song from Mexico. It was one of those joyous songs with a melody which just flies. All my pain went in the surge of Adrenalin. Try it with your best 'Tingle Factor' tune.

Julian Cope is a world away from Missa Mexicana.

It is so cold in this Office this morning. It seems mad that a Hi-Tech company like this one cannot get the basic environmental factors right. Oh well! Such s the way of the world. is it not also mad that a planet with the ingenuity and intelligence born of Millions of years of evolution (Don't argue! I am right and you are wrong - don't even bother to formulate a response because it will be rubbish) cannot get itself sorted out so that we all have enough to eat; we all have shelter and that everyone realises that fighting only brings us all down. We must be known in the Galaxy as 'The prisoner's Dilemma' Planet though I think that in the long run, we would surpass anything we could imagine as being the middle outcome. I would not mind but the solutions to the problems are NOT DIFFICULT to implement. It is a case of not wanting to change. We would rather live in poverty (both of resources and of mind) than get up a do something about it. Most people will watch rubbish on the telly if they can't reach the remote. (Probably because all that is one seems to be rubbish - though Michael Palin seems to be pursuing a one-man campaign against mediocre TV). Oh am so bored with this. I keep returning to it and I myself don't do anything about it. Well! I have started writing poetry more rather than vegetating in front of this Telivisual Sewage works but I should get up and use my mind far more. The Internet is making things so easy that you don't feel like doing anything else. At least that guy who maintains the Pylon Website is doing something. I did say I was going to collect Shopping lists like the guy who collected discarded Passport-style photos in Amelie but I think his photo album was a lot cooler than anything I could do. Having said that, I have kept up with the scrap-book recently. I thought yesterday of scanning in loads of the pages (at quite low-res) and making a scrolling version for this page but I am still not sure whether the images would be copyright. Oh Well! Another thing that won't get done. Still when the music is fast and loud nothing else matters. It's like being pleasantly intoxicated.

Spacehopper baby.

Magnify the most difficult details.

Random lines from a poem for Henry Kissinger.

I was really glad when Henry Kissinger walked out on Jeremy Paxman. I can imagine Paxman punching the air when the lumbering old fool was out of earshot and shouting 'result'. Kissinger stole my childhood with all those images of bombs falling on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. I am most definitely with Tom Lehrer on this one.

Friday, October 18, 2002


An Underwater Dog. A Flying Dog.

Soundtrack - HOME IS IN YOUR HEAD - his name is alive

My Mother apparently worked on something to do with the Pipeline Under the Ocean (PLUTO) towards the end of WWII. I have been trying to find a detailed description of this but there are only short paragraphs. It worked perfectly so it seems to have not been noticed.



The most innovative military pipeline, aptly dubbed Operation Pluto (Pipeline Under the Ocean), delivered petroleum to Allied forces in France after the Normandy invasion. Specialists welded 20-foot lengths of 3-inch pipe into 4,000-foot rolls (1,220 meters), then wound them on huge hollow bobbins, each of which fully loaded tipped scales at 1,600 tons, a weight then equivalent to that of an average destroyer. Three tugboats towed those monsters while they payed out four pipes on the sea bottom between the Isle of Wight and Cherbourg. Army engineers then laid pipe hundreds of miles inland as fast as they could to reduce strains on already overcommitted truck drivers and overcrowded roads.

Collins, The Military Geography of the Normandy Campaign, 130-132



There is a film about it as well. I wonder if I can find out what my Mother actually did for the project. She worked in London along with my Aunt who was working at a nursery amidst all the bombs and rockets. They were there on VE Day and there is a picture of my Aunt sitting on the front of a lorry in a huge crowd of people.

Arthur Clifford Hartley who invented PLUTO also invented FIDO (Fog Investigation Dispersal Operation) so there you have your two dogs (Diamond or otherwise).

What now? The compass needle is spinning wildly and does not seem to want to stop. Oh Yes! It was so clear this morning as I left the house. All the stars seemed to be clearer than I had ever seen them before. I like the dark. I also like just before dark when the curtains are still open. If I am outside, the views of well lit domestic scenes seem to suggest a connection with everybody. All rooms look happy from a distance. Oh the gold fields and the warm rooms. Winter is so defined. not like the fuzzy edges of summer. Summer is nice in its own way but is hasn't got teeth and it doesn't know where it is going. Having said that, I am usually speechless when looking down on the Severn Valley from the top of the Malvern Hills when the leaves have all just finished appearing. Breathtaking. Elgar knew what he was about didn't he? And what are we trying to do to this wonderful countryside? Wreck it. I seem to remember reading about a Government plan to allow advertising billboards in rural areas. It will end up like the US where companies compete to see who can catch the most eyes with the highest and biggest billboards. All very well 'on the strip' but horrible by the side of a remote rural road. Anyway - it is officially denied (See BBC article here) but if you read it it still means that the rules are being relaxed. Here everybody! I would like you to meet Mr Wedge. Yes! he is a bit thin at the moment but he will get fatter over time. I sound like one of the Countryside Alliance. I can assure you I am not. Life is not that Black and White. I do not agree with Fox Hunting and if I could snap my fingers and ban it, I would but there are plenty of more important things to legislate about. It is what our managers would call a 'Quick Win' for the Government. So many people are against it that banning it gives all those people a warm feeling. Too many vested interests. Its like the fact that all voters remember at a general Election is the penny off Income Tax in the Previous budget. I won't give you a list of all the things which I think are more deserving of legislation because you would not agree with me. No-one ever totally agrees with anyone (except Tony Blair and Dubya of course).

New Soundtrack - She Hangs Brightly - Mazzy Star

Oh! I had forgotten how wonderful 'She Hangs Brightly' is. It's like the Doors on half speed. ((33/1/3)/2 I suppose.).

Cool words list for Friday.

Diamond Dogs (which should be a film but isn't)
Legong Dance.
Dance in general though not all of it.
Blank Verse
Kafkaesque (despite its embarrassing memories)
Dada

Post and Publish Now!

Thursday, October 17, 2002


Sahara - Milk and Cookies

Soundtrack - Power, Corruption and Lies - New Order

(Not maybe the ideal music for Michael Palin's latest travel documentary.)

There is not enough time to describe how exhilarating Michael Palin's Travel programs are. His latest is a journey across and around the Sahara and it was lucky we had it on tape because we had to keep rewinding it to hear the bits we missed through laughing. See it for yourself. Or read the book.

There is a menacing sky out of our very big windows today. There are also many plumes of smoke and steam one the horizon (mostly from power stations I would assume) so it looks a bit like the blitz - well if the Luftwaffe had used Easyjet planes as bombers. my Mother-in-Law lived through the real blitz of Liverpool so she might have something to say about the comparison. She was evacuated from Seaforth which is right by the Docks to the end of the runway at RAF Woodvale which I sure must have been a lot safer. It is very easy to forget that many people I know lived through very difficult times and do not complain about it. Some even long to go back but they may be peculiar in some way. Today has fallen into a mess of rambling again.

My own webpage recommendation for today :- The Nature of the Catastrophe

Paramagnetic electrophoretic epimerisation


Auto-Autobiography

(Of course if you got a machine to write your biography then it would not be Autobiography would it? )

My Blog is really boring compared to some of them out there. The top Blog of Note is Life in The Freezer. Very cool - in more ways than one. I think I may write a non-linear biography starting from now and going in both directions at once. Sounds a bit like a John Irving Novel or even Martin Amis (Times Arrow). Well here goes. Maybe not yet. I have just clicked for a Random Oblique Strategy and Got "Do the last thing first". Wonderful!

Now start with everything you can remember from the beginning. All of this may not be real but it is my reality.

I remember a mock Tudor house in Imperial Road in Beeston, Nottingham. I was actually born in Hospital (on February 5th 1964) and I think my parents were living in flat just across the road from the house I first remember. More things I don't actually remember but which were real. There was a one armed man in the flats or near them. I suppose he was a WWI veteran because the photo I have seen of him has him with his sleeve neatly folded and pinned up. I am also told that I once swallowed a bolt from some sort of kitchen appliance when I was really little. The suberb of Beeston is quite leafy and attractive. When I went back there a few years ago to do some work at one of our sites, I visted the road again and was very pleased to see squirrels in the gardens. This is just enough to spark an 'off-line' continuance.

Wednesday, October 16, 2002


A Poem for Everything



Soundtrack - The Mirror Pool - Lisa Gerrard

The picture above is the first page from my first scrapbook - at last. I have to say that most of the rest of this scrapbook is not similiar to this, being mostly composed of adverts for bands from the NME, though I have customised a lot of them with lots of very messy oil pastel and most of that in the red and blue you see above. The text on the right hand side is the leaflet for the Tate exhibition where the public were invited to bring along their own surreal objects. You may be able to read it - I can but I know what it says anyway. I have just noticed that the edges of the picture are far too precise where the scan cut them off. I will feather them a bit. I started off this book by calling it "Book of Scars" after the minor hanger-on of Andy Warhol who used to collect pictures of actual scars for her own scrapbook. The leaflet on the left is the Tate's text on the Ian Hamilton Finlay Exhibition of 1991. This was full of very funny stuff, a lot of it about Dazzle Ships as I have already talked about. Am I actually talking about things or just writing about them? I would like to think that this stuff is like speechified ramblings but despite my saying otherwise, I do actually think about what I write down and very often (unless expressly forbidden by an Oblique Strategy) I do undo bits, even whole sentences which don't fit in or sound bad or are too private. I nearly took out the bit about the cushions the other day. By the way, the reason I don't sit with cushions on my head is because they are all still packed in a box in the garage. We only have the huge cushions which came with the new sofa (Settee - whatever) and they make your scalp ache with the weight. I just had to look up the word 'settee' on Merriam-Webster and it is derived from Settle which reminded me of the large settles in the Kitchen of a colleague of my Father. It was a big rural Style Georgian house - comfortable but quite roughly built, all Agas and tiled floors - a bit Wuthering Heights I suppose. I really wanted to live in that house. This was before we moved to a house similar in style if not size. I will dig out some photos of it if I can. Actually I will ask my graphics Partner (My Dad) to send me some on disk. It is not fair that he has so much time to be able to to all the stuff I want to on the computer. As he can actually draw as well, he has a good eye for the effects. I will try to get a copy of the picture he took of a Dandelion head which he put through filters to get a wonderful art work. For years I tried to persuade him to take up painting again - I bought him water-colour sets at Christmas - but it has taken the purchase of the computer to spark him into activity. I think he tried painting when he broke his leg in 1984 - that was my fault; We went walking up a mountain just West of Porthmadoc and he slipped. I heard a crack and my first thought was that he had smashed his new Zeiss binoculars. To be honest I was actually slightly relieved that it was his leg which had cracked as knew he would be less upset about a bone than the bins. We had an interesting hour or two in Bangor Hospital after a Taxi ride from Porthmadoc - which had no X-Ray facility. That was where we met a man whose teenage daughter could not speak English. I am sure that no-one in Wales can not speak English now but in my early flus of Political Correctness (I was a student at the time) I found that quite encouraging. Practically, you have to speak English in any part of the UK but why should you. I think anyone moving to the Welsh speaking parts of Wales (and sadly these are small) should have to do at least a basic Welsh course. My mother could speak Welsh after reading the Teach Yourself book. I don't know whether she read it because we have Welsh Relatives (My distant cousin, Jan Morris) or because she just liked learning languages. I can't remember how well she spoke it though one day I was addressed in Welsh when we staying in Llandanwg becase my Mother had been speaking to the person in Welsh. I was about nine at the time and I wasn't actually with my Mother at the time and got a bit frightened. I didn't realise that (nearly) all Welsh people spoke English as well. When I was really little I used to be really scared by a schools program about the French Language. The people in it used to ask questions in French to the Camera and I was far more scared of that than I ever was of Doctor Who.

All of this has finally brought me to thoughts which sparked the title at the top of this entry - A Poem for Everything. I had one of those weird moments you get when something you are thinking about suddenly comes into focus. I once had a few minutes when EVERYTHING in the world was explained. I was on top of the herefordshire beacon on a late summer day and just felt completely at ease that I understood why everything was here. Of course it passed when reality bit and I always felt cheated that my vision was lost. It was really just excess teenage analysis. I have been thinking about a long poem for ages now and the other day I extended the idea to be a poem describing everything I ever thought about. Obviously this is completely unrealistic so it had become an idea to describe a place in my mind which holds information about everything I have ever thought about - a sort of vision fo a physical room with key objects for all the subjects. The real poem would be a window onto those things and would give a limited view of the complexity of the real thing. I suppose that a Blog like this is an attempt to talk about everything I have ever thought about but of course 99.9% of everything thought about just gets lost in memory - not destroyed of course - just hidden and un-sorted. You need a really organised mind to keep it all safe for recall later and only Geniuses and psychopaths have that (Think of Hannibal Lector's house of memory). None of this poem is written down yet - none fo the words are even in my head yet but the images are there. When I first though of them they were very comforting. Watch this space.

Tuesday, October 15, 2002


Ennui is really boring

We are all a little bored with today. There is no motivation other than negative stuff put about by people who really don't understand managing people. The only question left to ask today is which one of us is going to be Dilbert. The Office is far too close to the truth. (For the official BBC site click here.) We may not see as much of the silly stuff in one day but all of it has happened here over the years. There are many managers here who completely mis-judge the level at which they should pitch their 'humour' (That is what they would call it). I am not saying that some of these very same managers cannot tell a very funny joke and the smutty stuff is all very well in single gender company at the pub but to use it for bonding in the open office makes me cringe. It is only now that I see half-an-hour of continuous cringe-making (I have to put the cushions over my head sometimes) that I realise how bad and how real it actually is. The only problem is that just commenting on the office you become part of it and lost in an ocean of self-reference. Just watching it and understanding is to see yourself in it. I am sure I have behaved like at least one of the characters (Though hopefully not Mr Brent). I am going to write a song called the 'Self reference Song' which is about writing a song about writing a song. It will start with the words "This is not a song" (Though there is of course this song already). It is not Rene Magritte's birthday today. Wouldn't it have been good if it was?

By the way I have had a habit for years of balancing a cushion on my head while watching TV. No-one seems to recall this but I know I do it. Maybe I just dream I do it. Luckily I have managed to stop doing it so that my daughter doesn't pick up the habit. All this sounds like an allegory for something far more unsavoury but I can tell you that it is not and you should take it at face value. All that sounds so ridiculous that you may think it was the result of some obscure Oblique Strategy but it isn't.

Where are the cushions?

Boring old paper

I should talk about the old-style book which I am currently reading. All this new-fangled Palm based stuff has blinded me to the joys of a good fat paper-based tome. Enough of the purple stuff. It is The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome which I mentioned a few weeks ago because of the BBC History magazine article about him working for British Intelligence during the Russian Revolution - Funnily enough he doesn't mention that in the book. I am having trouble reconciling this with the Swallows and Amazons series but I suppose this shows the standard thing that the best spies are the people who you would not even begin to suspect. There is a program called 'Liar' on the BBC where a number of people have to convince the Studio Audience that they are telling the truth about themselves. Each week all the people say they have a particular slightly off-the-wall occupation or claim to fame and the audience have to guess which one is telling the truth. If the audience guess right then they get £10,000 shared amongst them; if they guess wrong the successful duper gets all the money for themselves. The audience gradually vote people off as being liars until they have to chose the one person telling the truth. One week, all the panel members said they were spies of some sort. The first person to be voted off as being a liar was of course the real spy - a British spy as well. I didn't guess that it was him but I was certain that Israeli Intelligence would NEVER let one of their ex members go on TV and tell everyone. I was convinced it was the CIA guy who turned out to be British - his accent was perfect and his demeanour very convincing. I suppose because there are many more people in the world who are NOT spies it is impossible to use the reverse logic that anyone who doesn't look or behave like a spy is one. Unless of course everyone in the world is a spy and this is the Truman Show - sorry! Tuesday Morning paranoia. (A Good name for a group there). The show is hosted by Paul Kaye by the way who, as you know was Dennis Pennis.

Anyway, back to AR. (See here for an interesting link). As he died in 1967, there are still a few years before the copyright runs out on the S&A books though "Russia in 1919" is available. I am currently reading the bits about ARs trips to the Russian Front during WWI which so far seem only to hint at the horrors as if he though he ought to write this to cover up that he wasn't only a reporter. Is it strange that he was allowed to marry Trotsky's secretary Evgenia? His whole life seems to be a melding of the gentle pace of the Swallows and Amazons books with the hint of the cool and dangerous side of his Intelligence work. All this is beginning to turn into rambling so I think I had better stop. See you at Lunchtime.

Monday, October 14, 2002


A Short ride in a very fast machine

Phew!

That took me 20 minutes. I don't think I cut out more than one line which I really didn't like. Maybe I should take some time with the next one; use pen and paper (I have just discovered a close-ruled notebook so all I need is a cartridge for the fountain pen).

This image of the walk across the common has remained with me for years. My companion seemed not to bother with any of the trappings of image which worry other girls ( and increasingly boys) of her age and for that her cool image was boosted. Of course I was too young for anything to happen and far too shy to even suggest it. The poem has been quite cathartic because I have had all those ideas for the images in my head for years. I used to use them as visualizations in times when I was depressed. I hadn't actually thought of them for some time which says something for the stability of both my mind and my life at the moment. But it has been nice to write something about it. Isn't it strange that some of my most comforting images from that time come from the time between school and home. And all because of the images in Wind in the Willows.

I keep thinking that I haven't really done enough in my life for it to be interesting written down. I don't have the literary ability to describe it in any interesting way. Of course people known to me may be interested because they want to know things about me but it needs a spark to make anything of interest to people in general. I caught myself in the depths of vanity the other day, wanting to start at the beginning and list events like this in some sort of autobiography. There have been enought events in my life to make a slight rise above the line of normality, not that anyone I know now would agree but none of it is stuff that hasn't been written about by other people. What makes an interesting book interesting? Anyway - conceited task for the day. Think up the title for your own autobiography. Mine would be ..... The Edge of Winter - er... only joking.

I do seem to have a lack of confidence when it comes to adjectives. A bit like the boy in Fairy Grammar who is gradually taken through the parts of speech by a Slate Pencil called Rammarg ('Grammar' backwards) who handicaps the boy's speech in such a way as to highlight the particular element of language. To start with the boy could not use Nouns which you may think is the worst possible thing regarding language but if you read the book it gets far worse. I need to persuade my Dad to dig that book out as I am pretty sure it is not in print or even available second hand.

The rest of the day has crept up on me.

Addendum 23/02/2012

I found Fairy Grammar as a Kindle Download from The Library of Congress and it was as good as I remember.





The Edge of Winter

The seasons do not end.
They do not merge
or silently despair
of ever ending.

The daylight finished every evening
as we alighted
and made us finish our commute
with stumbling and in cold.

From miles we saw our goals,
the lights of life and gold
held true in ancient houses
where the ghosts forgave us.

And I held hands
(but only I; not she)
while discourse poured,
a literary tumult in the dark;

a rage of ancient English,
a rage at relevance
of old world smut
to her, a modern woman.

And I looked up,
my face lighted
and anticipating
nothing more than saving her

from all imagined,
hidden enemies,
and darkling Gorse
where nothing lay but

cruel Null things of lows,
black flowers in the fog,
evil country things
to break and bend.

And would I live again
between those trees?
To see her fighting
all her demons

to hear those lectures,
riven from the native sectors
of her mind
and lost on me that was.

And what is love
but two alone
in seasons' romance
lost in fog and snow?

We could not live forever;
at fourteen nothing does.
She escaped and vanished,
turned so serious.

And in the winds of autumn
turning slowly with the leaves,
I walk that path
and hear her tales of love,

the sparks of metaphysics,
of the life indefinite,
the stories left by her
for me to live beyond.


Project Gutenberg

I finished Wind in the Willows in record time. The Palm is just so easy to read contrary to all expectations. I have just downloaded Gulliver's Travels and I suppose I will have to think about a donation to cover all this free reading. My Dad still has a very battered copy of Gulliver's Travels which I used to read when I was about ten. It had wonderful detailed drawings which were the main draw as most of the political allegory went over my head. Hopefully, I will understand it a bit more this time. It is about twice the length of WITW.

There are some absolutley beautiful moments in Wind in the Willows. The language is complex without being stuffy and can conjour up wonderful images in one sentence. The chapter 'Wild Wood' when Mole goes off to try and find Badger in the er... Wild Wood, brings back all sorts of memories of mine of walking through the countryside around Castlemorton where I used to live. (They wouldn't have their rave in the Winter - far too cold). My favourite time of day in my Favourite Season is a Winter evening about an hour before sunset but with a thick grey cloud. The light then is wonderful and highlights all the comforting Orange glows of the windows. Our house overlooked a large expanse of Common land and could be seen from the main road about a quarter of a mile away. (See Map - our house was the one just above the 'n' of 'Castlemorton at the corner of the yellow dotted edge road) The land between the house and the road is just Gorse and close-cropped grass but thew windows of our house could be seen in the distance. At Christmas, we could always see the lights of the tree in the window as we returned home at night. Coming home from school we were dropped off at the corner of the common and had to walk back across rough stony paths and even just grass tracks to get home. When I has just started at the school (I was just 14) I used to be accompanied by a sixth form girl who I had a serious crush on. She used to tell me about Chaucer and the other books she was doing for her English A-Level. I am not sure but it might have been those discussions of bawdy old-English literature that made me realise that there was more to life than science. Don't tell my wife though. Oh! Too late.

I had to wait by the lake for a long time this morning.

I know that this is an international problem rather then being a personal set-back but the bomb in Bali has upset me quite bit. It is of course a partisan feeling because I have been there. I would not have been in the Sari club but some of the friends I made there may have been. Gerry, the guy who drove me around, went out on Saturday nights when he had the money. He might be too old by now so I hope he was not there. Maya is probably in the Netherlands. This is so sad. The island is peaceful and beautiful and now all people will ever remember is this.

Friday, October 11, 2002



A Five Minute Poem (That is all I have left before lunch is over).



Ornithology

The grace of feathered flight
lifts dark minds from their vaults.
We could not sing like this,
the gentle achromatic flow
of whistles and of calling
slowed for our perception
turns to musics ever known
to man from ancient times.
This sound, so functional
has beauty underlying
all its birth in nature.
We live under this
and ever under live soulessly.




Zen and the art of sticking your head in a honey pot

What are the mechanisms of Deja Vu? Is it chemistry or electrics or something from the higher functions of our brain. I realise that if I have a look out there on the web I will probably find quite a lot of stuff and some of it will even be serious. This is just my ideas. It was sparked by the feeling this morning as I walked by what I am going to call the lake. Of course most Deja Vu is really just some memory where you can recall the details but not the context or where a memory unrelated in most ways to the current experience is similar in one respect. Do the Jungians out there think Deja Vu has something to do with synchronicity and that they forsee other people's memories or some such rubbish. I am actually bored writing this because just thinking about it for a few minutes and I now know what all Deja Vu is and it no longer has any mystery. Well that scuppers any idea of high intellect held in the Free Journal of my Palm Top.

Down to something really interesting. As I said, I am currently reading "Wind in the Willows" and all its charm has made me really happy. I had forgotten how wonderful it actually was though of course when I first read it I wanted the story rather than the descriptions or the philosophy. It is nice to see the 'special' chapters in it which don't add to the narrative other than by slowing down the main story for effect - Dulce Domum , The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Wayfarers All. I read The Willows in Winter by William Horwood which was a sequel to The Wind in the Willows and although it was excellently written, if I remember correctly it took place over only a few days rather than being the sweeping saga of the first book. The beauty of The Wind in the Willows was that its serene world was left alone at the end. It is the one book where animals are anthropomorphised and co-exist with humans and you do not have to suspend disbelief for it to work. The life is quiet yet exciting. Read it if you have not read it and read it again if you have. You can get it online but the Ernest H. Sheperd illustrations are brilliant. I can't find any of the drawings from WITW but there is a page of drawings from Winnie The Pooh which he also illustrated. I never read Winnie the Pooh (Only The Tau of Pooh) but the drawings are very good. I think Alice in Wonderland may be the next download.


By A Darkling Lake

The walk from the car park to our new office is through the landscaping at the posh end of our site. I got here at 06:30 this morning and now it is dark at that time and all the lights are off. The path has a bridge which goes over the pond (Sadly now empy of fish but still a big draw for ducks on they way to or from Martin Mere). I hadn't really noticed it on the few previous days but I suddenly noticed the gentle ripples in the almost total darkness and go a really strong sense of Deja Vu. I still haven't tied down where I'd seen the image before. I thought it might have been Shetland but we went in the Summer and it never really gets dark at all - they have the Simmer Dim when you can read by natural light at Midnight so it would not have been dark at all. Sometimes, I get really strong images in my mind like this. I have a recurring one of a strange landscape which for reasons of association in my head which are far too complex to voice, I call 'Saturday afternoon images'. There is a picture which accompanied a long forgotten short story in Omni Magazine which had a surreal picture of clowns against a winter sunset sky in a blasted wood which always lifted me probably because it reminded me of the winters where I lived. We lived in a 300-year old house called Yew Tree Cottage in the Shadow of the Herefordshire Beacon and all the time I lived there I never really appreciated how wonderful this was for anything other than a few minutes at a time. The whole area around the Beacon is still so trannquil even after the aberration of the Castlemorton Rave. I don't think many of the attendees there appreciated their location either. I was a bit fed up with the people I went to school with being described as 'elderly and middle class' in the NME. I don't think I can be described as elderly yet. I do remember seeing one guy I went to school with gently threatening action if anyone breached his boundary fences. A 'Get of my laaaand' moment for real. Anyway, I should not complain. I left twenty years ago and would probably still not appreciate my location if I hadn't.

All of this has led me a long way from the original spark which was the wonderful image of the gently rippling water on our pond. A nice visualisation for when the demons start coming down. Sometimes I wish it would stay dark all day just like I wish it would rain all day. It is quite nice to walk into the office in the dark and the gradual lightening of the sky makes me feel less happy. Is that weird. Maybe its something like Claustrophilia. The dark defines your own little world while the daylight shows up all the other rubbish in the world which you have to deal with. Oh Well. It is light now so time to start work.

Thursday, October 10, 2002


Literature on the move

I have a Palm. I was always a bit sceptical about ebooks on the Palm but I am a convert. I am already half way through The Wind in the Willows and have downloaded the whole of the Divine Comedy. I was given a lift home yesterday but I had to wait in the car and it was so easy just to scroll through one of the books on the Palm. I know you will be saying how I should have a flashy iPac or such like, but this is wonderful especially as it has an Oblique Strategy program.

Poetry on-the-fly



Night Flowers

In the deep night, I heard a cry,
a bright but sad yelp outside,
where the garden breaks down to nothing
against the straight lines of our house.
I saw trees and guttering,
the shadows of the winter dark
which beckoned me to abandon
all I ever knew and live outside.
in shelter from the wind and rain.
I was lifted by delight,
that cry turned happy
and the night lifted,
leaving us in rain and light.



National Poetry Day

First Plug - Adisa
Second Plug - National Poetry Day
Third Plug - The Poetry Society

Right! Guess what day it is today. Got it yet? Very good.

I don't suppose I will have much luck trying to push NPD in this office. We no longer have any metal filing cabinets so the Magnetic poetry set is useless and as our fridge at home has a wooden door on it to hide it in the kitchen cupboards, the set is totally unusable. Maybe I could start a Sonnet tree like here. Sonnets need a lot of work but they are not as defined as you may imagine. I would think that the 14 line limit is the only one you should really stick to. The rhyming scheme can be anything as long as it has one. I am not fussy. I'd better not use the email for it as I suspect it might be against our corporate email policy - it would count as a chain letter. It will have to be done on paper.

Slushy 17th Century Poet of the Day And him a Clergyman.

I think I have at last exhausted the rubbish from my very early poetry notebook. There were plenty of great ideas but the execution was flawed. Any poems from now on should either be from the last notebook or new ones written on the fly - like Mushrooms. Maybe you will get one at lunchtime.

I have at last found the begging bowl Zen Koan which to my surprise is written by Arthur C Clark and is of course from the Fountains of Paradise



Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - present) :(in a fictional undiscovered fragment of the Culavamsa in his novel The Fountains of Paradise)

Driven to despair by his fruitless attempts to understand the universe, the sage Devadasa finally announced in exasperation, "All statements that contain the word God are false."
Instantly, his least favorite disciple, Somasiri, replied, "The sentence I am now speaking contains the word God. I fail to see, oh Noble Master, how that simple statement can be false."
Devadasa considered the matter for several Poyas. Then he answered, this time with apparent satisfaction, "Only statements that do not contain the word God can be true."
After a pause barely sufficient for a starving mongoose to swallow a millet seed, Somasiri replied, "If this statement applies to itself, oh Venerable One, it cannot be true, because it contains the word God. But if it is not true - "
At this point, Devadasa broke his begging bowl upon Somasiri's head, and should therefore be honored as the true founder of Zen.



Not poetry I know. But it is poetic.

Monday, October 07, 2002


Needing so much more time just to do nothing.
(Just like the Red Queen and Alice)


My life and work is a microcosm of the world. So full of ludicrous things to be done and being told to do them by people who have no real idea of what the things to do entail or why we need to do them. We have to do things for the sake of them. Now if these things were actions like climbing Mount Everest, I would be quite satisfied with the answer - "Because they are there" but just to say that you have to do something because you have to do it is obviously just a circular argument. It is exactly like the arguments your parents gave you when you were little. "BECAUSE YOU JUST DO. OK". I like to think that I at least give reasons for my daughter having to do things which actually mean something to her but I expect there are times when I just can't be bothered to explain to her.

We did a lot in college about reductionism and Taylorism and other such fractal divisions of actions. The one bit that really sticks in my mind is the bit about Ant Colonies but only because I was reading the relevant bit in Godel, Escher, Bach at the same time. It seems to me that the majority of the behaviour in society these days is simple ant colony behabiour where the individual participants blindly follow a set of local instructions without any thought on their part of why they do these actions or any thought into how they could make their actions more apt or more efficient. The attitude is that you are getting paid - just keep your head down and cash the cheques. Anyone who questions the actions at any level gets known as being bolshie. You can make things better.


Belknap

Around the time of SallyAngie,
I took a walk through Belknap house
amongst the sick and those who sought asylum.
I followed pipes along the walls,
marked 'Tea - Without' and 'Coffee With'
and Oxygen and ice above the line
which marked division of the two-tone walls
at the level of my eyes.
But the coldest pipe of all was silent,
the one marked 'electricity'.

A friend of mine became a politician
just a year after that pipe hit her hard.
(Look carefully and see the wire marks,
the etched teeth and the flash
as if the current still flows today).
I say 'a friend' but now I hate that
beaming smile, the illnesses that passed
through loveless kisses and left me
breathless and alone.



"fiat experimentum in corpore vili"

(This was simply at the bottom of the poem above but I am not sure if I meant it to relate to the verses or not. It is a bit vicious if I did and I can only use the excuse that I was very young when I wrote it.)

Something has just happened to make me feel very happy and I am afraid it is simple pandering to my mercenary side. It may affect the blog at a later date but I will let you know.

Un-defined Definitives

Have you noticed that, as you get older, all the things you thought were definitive become blurred? It is as if your life begins to fray as you get older. Nothing is definite now. You have to hang on to the structure and regularity of your life in order to feel stable. Maybe this is just me and a slight return to the old obsessive-compulsive disorders but it becomes quite frightening. Again, I have to tell myself that I am not starving or under fire or suffering for anything horrible but curable by a tiny injection of money. Celebrate your lack of war. I like history and all history seems so definite, even all those "was so-and-so wrong to do such-and-such" articles where two people argue about some point in history eg. Was the US right to drop the atomic bombs on Japan? I suppose it is because something which has actually happened is definite, though of course it depends on who writes it. Maybe it is our duty to question history. I do not agree with loads of things which went on but then again I am colouring these events with my view of what it right and wrong today. This is of course the meaning of to Equivocate the past. Nothing is definite; even stuff that has happened. Sum-Over-Histories take any concrete event away from us and turn it into a fuzzy blob of memory held in billions of brains around the world. Did you know a thousand people died in a ferry disaster of the coast of Senegal? Why wasn't that at the top of the news last week? Here in the first world, out view of what is important is just perverse. Think of the amounts of money we spend on saving a tiny proportion of lives or even on creating new lives (IVF etc) when the same amount of money could save the lives of hundreds or thousands of times as many people around the rest of the planet. It all comes down to balancing the economy. We like to think that world is civilized but the world is as full today of perverse and misguided behaviour as it ever was. It is just that in the West we don't see the real horrors, just the strange and weird results of our own behaviour, spending loads of money of things we don't need. We don't feel comfortable without these things but we would not die or get sick or starve without them.

I look from the drunken thugs who create havoc and misery on Saturday nights to the sad individuals who decide to blow up the world for the sake of nothing more than power even if it is going under the banner of freedom, and I see no difference. This of course is lifted from here :-



"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."



Wednesday, October 02, 2002


Kandinsky never liked blue

We had a quiet night last night, listening to La Rocque 'n' Roll and cutting out for the scrap books. I actually scanned in the first page of my first scrap book at the weekend but I forgot to upload it to the website. It was a micture of the front page of the catalogue to the first exhibition at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool which was on surrealism and various random cut-outs all joined together with oil-pastel. Hopefully this is enough to describe it until it eventually gets posted. The surrealism exhibition was the subject of a great deal of ridicule in Liverpool; lots of down-earth-Northerners getting upset about the waste of money and of course they have a point. I like a lot of modern art but I am annoyed that so much gets paid for it. The Oak Tree was especially contentious. The Tate replied to all this criticism by opening up an exhibition for local people to create their own surrealist art. It was just as viable as all the Kandinsky/Dali etc. from the first exhibition. Bearing in mind it seems possible to term anything as art, even an act that takes a few seconds or just a weird concept from the back of your mind, surely it must be possible to define the act of not charging any money at all for a piece of art as a piece of art in itself. Of course this may backfire because people will pay any amount of money for some things - see here for proof.

This new office has a quite different ambience to the old one. There is a continuous low thump somewhere inside the cavities which sounds like a pump of some sort. As we are on the third floor, we can't be getting flooded so I wonder what it is. Let me go and have a look..... No luck! It is the sort of noise which retreats as you get closer to it. When the rest of the people in the office arrive, I won't be able to hear it. Aha! I have just located it. It is one of the ceiling fans which appears to be loose and its casing is oscillating. It looks dangerous to me. It could fall off and decapitate someone. It will be reported. Apart from that, it appears to be quieter here. There is of course the fact that we are higher up and unable to hear a lot of the 'ground traffic'. I stayed in the Hotel Pennsylvania once, on about the tenth floor and it was really weird to look down at all that traffic and all those people without actually hearing a thing. I love the advert in the link - "2200 rooms - 2200 Baths". My room might have had a bath but the TV didn't work, not that I think I missed anything. We always used to get the idea that there were hundreds of TV channels in the US but I think I only got five in any of the hotels I stayed in and that was only one more than we had in the UK at the time (Channel 4 had been going for six years then but Channel 5 was ten years away.) The one thing I didn't see in New york which I really wished I had done, was Grand Central Station and that is only because of "By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept". I only read this beacause I read Necessary secrets - some of the Journals of the author Elzabeth Smart. BGCSISDAW is nothing like the journals but they are both compelling. Reading BGCSISDAW is like being beaten by a breeze block wrapped in several hundred layers of velvet. It reminded me of Bonjour Tristesse but that maybe because they are the same size. I think they were together in the bookcase for a time. I could only read them in short bursts as they are purple in the extreme.

Tuesday, October 01, 2002


Close to the Edit

I though I should have a religious day today but I can't really think of what to write about. I suppose, I like the architecture best. We went to Wells Cathedral just after watching a program with Janet Street Porter where she described the original face of the building. It used to be painted in very bright colours. and the cgi additions which were made in the program were fantastic. Why can't they paint it like that now? My favourite bit of any relgious building is the Lady Chapel at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral which was the first bit to be consecrated. As I can't find any good pictures of it, you will have to wait for me to scan one in. I used to go and sit in the Lady Chapel after Saturday morning shopping, to start reading any new books I had bought, or just to sit quietly. It has just occurred to me that I can see the tower of the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral from this window. Our view is just the top of the tower because one of our own buildings is in the way. The same building completely obscures the Catholic Cathedral



(From http://www.liverpoolcathedral.org.uk/)

The Liverpool Anglican Cathedral is the largest Cathedral in Europe and it shows. A friend of mine has a brother in law who used to work as a security guard at the Cathedral and he took us inside the bits which are normally off-limits. At the point where the base of the tower joins the main structure, there is an inside balcony which overlooks the main cavernous interior. It looks down on the central rose where the architect - Giles Gilbert Scott - is buried. Giles Gilbert Scott also designed the traditional red telephone box. There seem to be more of them in the US than there are here. Why did they get replaced? They were draught-proof, sound proof and the only minus point I can see is that you risked damaging your back every time you opened the door because they were so heavy. Now we have two sheets of perspex and a pillar. There was time when it amazed me that the red telephone box was designed in 1925 and put into production in 1935. Now it seems impossible that it ever came from another time. GGS also designed Bankside powere stations which is now the Tate gallery of Modern art. It has just occurred to me that Bankside power station and the Anglican Cathedral look very similar. Compare them yourself.