Full Fathom Five

The joys of ASP are dragging me back to my actual work at very strange times so I am forcing myself to have a break. I was thinking of a random Friday but how would you tell and have I said that before? Gorky's Zygotic Mynci live not far away from us here and they often go to tea with Kate Bush a little like a mad community of famous people such as those in Stella Street but real. keep thinking of Wuthering Heights now just because I talked about Kate Bush. Gaffaweb? Why Gaffa and what does 'suspended in Gaffa' mean? Well if you spelled it right then I might know. Suspended in Gaffer as in Tape. Even then it doesn't exactly clear it up. It all goes slo-mo for a mo mowlan. No, I won't put anything of Molly's in this bit. Or Nora. If you did, all the little white bits of the shell would get between your teeth but Joyce loved her so that doesn't matter does it. I always mistake Joyce for Beckett. Hi there Sean! Beckett here. And there was a Spider who might or might not have been Elvis, living under one of the chairs. Thanguvureemush! That must have been the carfree (and carefree) days of the early 90s. What a decade! I went to Bali then. It is so sad that it won't be the same again. I didn't lose anyone in that bomb so why do I feel so angry about it? The music is beautiful. I was going to live there and sample the music for the rest of my life. Think of that. Trudging the mountain paths with nothing but a bottle of water and a portable tape recorder. With beads in my hair and flip-flops. I wouldn't even worry about the mountain exploding like it threatens to do. That is part of the world but blowing it up on purpose is so bad. Why bother to put any superlative negatives to this. It was just a bad thing. The people who do it are evil or mad or both. Is madness wth a negative outcome always evil? Can you always plead not-guilty through insanity. The worst things in this world can only be done by people who have something different in their heads or is it that we all have something different from everyone else. Ahh! That is the problem of course. We all want everybody else to be like us. I have worked out that if we followed the policies of the most prejudiced amongst us, we would reduce the population of the world to approximately one and he doesn't like himself that much. (Copyright Sue Townsend). The Spanish Inquisition would have to wipe themselves out but nobody expects that at all. Nobody! Six things about the Spanish Inquisition which you never knew. 1. They were not Spanish. Well yes they were. Torquemada was anyway and that is all I want to say about that. 2. Torquemada did not look anything like Michael Palin (Pangolin in Spanish). 3. Four of them came from Basingstoke but learnt to speak spanish in a Whelk Wharhouse off Galicia (Now sadly threatened by the Prestige Oil Spill so no more Whelks boys). 4. They were great friends of Galileo and actually let him out of house arrest for walks to the Video shop. Sorry! That should read Market. They didn't have shops then - or Videos - well only Betamax. 5. The never wore the colour Mauve - because it hadn't actually been invented then. 6. I really know nothing about them at all but you probably guessed that didn't you. Hi Dad. The end has been signalled! Sapphire and Steel have been assigned and of course are nowhere near beng Trans-Uranic. But wheres there's life ... Who ate Douglas Adams' buscuits? Everyone says it was them who told this story first but it never happened to me. Cease and Desist!

This is no time for the wedgy dance.

We went to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets last night. I am slightly concerned that Ms Rowling has invented mind reading as so much of the film is exactly as I see it in my head from reading the books. Of course what this really means is that she is just very, very good at creating an image from very few words. The only thing that I got wound up about (and I got annoyed with it in the book as well), I always though mythical Basilisks were supposed to have legs like their real-life counterparts. I know this is like arguing about how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin and how would the basilisk have got into the toilets through the pipes if it had legs? I don't know why I mentioned it really. Struggling for something to criticize I suppose.

I wish to tie up all the world's computing power in order to answer the question about Angels and pins. I think the philosophical argument goes along the lines of how much space does an Angel occupy, the answer to which is no space and all space at the same time. This is like my everything and nothing loops. If a computer can handle complex numbers and produce the inifinity of the Mandelbrot Set, then it should have no problem with Angels and Pins. No I am not being serious but it is an answer to those pseudo-scientific philosophers who try to turn vacuous thought into concrete mathematical equations which is as meaningful as the advert for a pen which has been used to write down a complex but very suspect equation that turned out to be for a Vodka-Martini. I can't find the exact equation but you can bet there were many disagreements over how correct that is. I know nothing about drink-mixing (except mixing Southern-Comfort and Cider in 1987 - never again) so here the topic ends.

Shop-fronts

I had to catch the bus home last night. It is quite dark when I leave the site now and as I had no book other than the Palm top, I spent the journey looking out of the window. (How do people manage on the tube when there is no view from the window other than a 150 year old brick wall?) It was quite comforting seeing all the shop-fronts whistle by in the near-dark. I find myself stepping outside of my own worries and inventing back-stories for the many tiny events I see. Of course nothing specific has stayed with me except the whole atmosphere. Channel 4 use vertical bars in many of their logos and occasionally they have the view from a vehicle as it drives along a busy road. This maybe good but nowhere near as good as the BBC2 logos which for the last 10 years have been the pinnacle of TV ident design. The BBC 2 logo is an adventurer, a real hero to be looked up to. The trouble is that his fee now has to be split with all the other twos who accompany him in his daredevil exploits. I especially like the one where the Sergeant Major Two blows his whistle to start the tumbling of a long line of Twos in the manner of dominoes, but the first in the line falls the wrong way and scuppers the whole thing. The Sergeant Major gesturing to the prostrate number is a very nice touch. It is quite amazing that an essentially fixed figure can be given character just by moving it in a certain way.

I had to browse a few TV sites to get the links above and all this reminded me of the short on BBC2 called "Look Around You" This is one of those 10 minute fillers that the BBC put on at 9:50 in the eveining just before the half-hour programme before Newsnight (All hail to the the great god Paxo) and is a spoof of many different schools programmes from the 1970s/80s. My schools never really used TV programmes so I only remember a few but Look Around You seems to have caught the style particularly well. The phrase 'write that down' is used a lot and I think it comes from a programme called 'Experiment' which had a very deliberate narration where everything was done just so. I suppose it was so schools which could not afford the full set of scientific equipment could still witness the results. I have just found the 'Look Around You' Periodic Table which looks pretty normal except for a few of the elements which have changed slightly from what I remember. It reminds me of Simon Patterson's Great Bear, a reworking of the London Tube Map (synchronicity hey?) which we have on our wall at home. The original Tube Map is a design classic in itself and Simon Patterson's version is a simple homage to it. What is it about something that makes its design memorable. The difference between good and bad can be so small. Too much design is bad. The best web-pages are the simplest and the most intuitive. As soon as you find yourself asking what would be nice on a page, you are considering too much.

It's just a lot of water you know

The Horizon programme on homeopathy wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be though although I thought James Randi was as much as a showman as Uri Geller. I should have linked to his site yesterday for the sake of balance. And by the way Dad, I bent the spoons by brute force but you knew that didn't you?

Why has the 'A' key on my laptop keyboard worn out when none of the others have? I say worn out but it is just the lettering rather than the key itself. Of course if I was Julie Burchill, or AA Gill, it would have been the 'I' key.
At least it's not the 'w' key. I can't think why it is the a key. Maybe a look back through the archives will tell me. Well, today is certainly an interesting entry isn't it?

All dates ever referenced. If you leave out diaries and calendars, have all dates been referenced? Of course not! What about April 17th -15,634 CE? That was the day that the first European settlers landed in the North American continent. Well it might be. Have all dates since 1 CE been referenced? Well some of them went missing didn't they, 11 days in September 1752 but that was only Britain and the Colonies. I don't really know what I mean by 'referenced' but every day since a very long time ago has been someone's birthday.Randomness will get you in the end. The world is as grey today as it has ever been. Those pesky rabbits have it easy don't they? And linking rabbits to something I have been meaning to write about, (??) I found 'The Girl in a swing' in the garage at the weekend. I have managed to stop reading it and finish at least one of the others on the pile but it is sitting there as a treat. I was struck by how close the text is because I remember it to be a short book but that maybe just because 'Watership Down' and 'Shardik' were so long. A treat indeed.

Consider Transitions

From what to what? Or where to where? There is too much to think about as well as too much to visit. I am in my thinking about everyhting and then nothing phase again. Trying to break the program. Is madness just a local breakdown of the program? Maybe the system is designed to break down locally rather than completely. There is only ever a memory exception rather than a blue screen which requires a re-boot. All this is just random chatter. And what will happen when one of the programs begins to think about itself? One of my systems can quite happily handle recursion but that is because we know about error handling. What about thinking about the Catalogue of Catalogues which contains itself ... or doesn't.

Why did the BBC remove the brilliant theme tune from Horizon and replace it with a 2 second version? It was a complex, weird time-signatured, uplifting piece which gave us hope that science would save the world rather than destroy it. Like the programme itself, the music has been dumbed down until it just about holds an essence of the original without any of the emotion. There is a Horizon programme on tonight which is about homeopathy (It will probably be more like HomeAPATHY). That makes me sound as if I don't believe in it. Maybe I don't but there needs to be work done even if just to prove that the Placebo effect is in operation. I suppose there is the basic proof that the water used to dilute the active substance still retains some form of 'memory' of that substance long after the dilution has removed all chance of ever finding any molecules of the stuff ytou put in it. After all, Quantum theory has some weird ideas like electrons travelling through both slots. Why couldn't the molecules go into all the water? James Randi is involved again and while most of the time I do agree with him he does seem to be a bit 'Newtonian' if you know what I mean. For all normal experience he is right but just a few times something maybe involved that is still within the realms of science and yet off the wall enough to seem like 'magic'. This does not make me think that Uri Geller is anything other than a fraud and a showman by the way. If your computer does not work after visiting this site then don't blame me.

Quantum ille canis est in fenestra

Somewhere, about 8000 miles directly below me, the sea-bed of the South Pacific is teeming with all sorts of weird things some of which are not know to science. Only 8000 miles away as the crow flies or rather the mole burrows (if it had a pressure suit with high thermal protection and a full set of drilling equipment).

I was watching Fred Dibnah's program about various British buildings yesterday. He visited the huge Georgian dockyard buildings at Chatham which are huge despite being just large sheds. They also have rounded ends which makes them look very modern. It struck me that the number of placse I don't know about in the world is countless. I have been to a lot of places and yet obviously there would be more things in the world to look at than I could possibly ever get around to visiting. Even just in this country, there are many places which could keep your attention. I sometimes get struck by the thought of all these places existing when I am not looking at them. Right now, those dockyard sheds are still there, probably echoing top the start of the day but what about the middle of the night? Driving along a remote road in the rain, I will see a small wood, out on its own and realise that it has been there for years and will still be there when I think about it at night, with the rain dripping through the trees. Worse still, if I hear of some terrible disaster, I will imagine what I was doing at the exact moment it occurred. These devastating events, seem to occur without causing a ripple over most of the real world; it is only the man-made network which relates news as it happens, that makes these things real to us. The terrible thing these days is that it has to happen to the Western world for it to impinge on our media. The genocide in Rwanda was top of the news for days but it was all so remote, there was no real horror, just relief that it didn't happen to 'us'. When you think about these things it becomes clear that many times, thousands of people are killed in single massive events and it never reaches our main news unless of course it happens to white people in America, Europe - the usual places. There is a Posy Simmonds cartoon about the famine in Eithiopia where the usual middle class chatterers (yes I am probably one myself) watch the terrible suffering in the African camps. The scenes are marked in big letters - FAMINE - STARVATION - PESTILENCE - DEATH. The watchers have their emotions described in tiny letters - sympathy - anguish etc. The next scene shows the food aid reaching the camps marked again with little letters - aid - relief - medicine. Finally as the people see the television pictures of this, their reaction marked in big letters is HOPE - RELIEF - etc. Which sums up what we actually do by sending the small amount of aid. Most of the western aid is a sop to make us feel better. The real aid would be to change the way we muck around with the rest of the world. There is an exhibit at the Eden project which details the various stages which coffee goes through to bring it to our kitchens. I knew nefore seeing it that there were plenty of middle men and various mark-ups but I didn't realise that it was something like 40 stages - each of which adds to the price we pay without giving anything to the people who do the really hard bit at the beginning. Some people make money on coffee as it stands untouched in wharehouses, like they do with oil as it gets shipped around the world for the convenience of a few businessmen who have the cash-flow to juggle it, with the real risk that the aging ship in which it is transported will break up and deposit the stuff on a beach somewhere and still the owners get their money because of the insurance. Witness The Prestige. Everyone involved is pointing at everyone else to say who is to blame when in truth they ALL are. A little investment in double hulls would reduce the risk. A bit more investment in other forms of energy would remove the need to transport all that oil in the first place. Do you love your car?

The Antipodes

Just before I went to sleep the other night, I became aware of everything directly beneath me and this led me to wondering what the exact antipodes of my location looked like. I am aware that it is probably ocean at the exact location which made me wonder what the sea-bed looked like instead and whether there were any creatures about at the time. I have been looking for a suitable picture to put in but I have been distracted by the Easter Island statues. They are pretty cool things. You can get fibreglass ones and while one might be nice in the garden, it would take up far too much room.

I am on my evening help-desk duty again. There are a few people left but it is really quiet again. Too Quiet. Maybe I should make some noise. I know! I am going to perform my own interpretation of 4.33. It will be a live performance but no-one from John Cage's estate will be able to hear it as they are not here. So they cannot sue me. It will be to accompany the beautiful sunset. Actually that was an hour and a half ago so it is to accompany the myriad lights of this teeming metropolis which need no music. I have mentioned already when I was in the Pennsylvania Hotel in Manhattan and how looking down on the streets from the 50th floor was weird because all the sound was filtered out. We are only on the third floor here but all but the loudest sounds are swallowed up.

A bonus entry for you this evening. Happy Trails!

Reading 2 - Mary Magdalen 4

This title means nothing at all; it is just that I asked Martin here for a random title and all he could come up with is "Why the hell am I here?". In just the time it took me to type that, I have thought about the use of the word 'hell' in this blog and how it would render my site unacceptable in some circles and yet the internet is rife with bad language, porn sites and all the other things which are considered the dark-side. Many, Many blogs are punctuated, adjectived, adverbed etc with the active proccreational word just for the sake of using it. I can be as angry as I like on this blog and not use it but some of the people using it are not angry at all. It just seems to be a habit. Because it it so forceful to say, it seems to have got away with not being considered a cliche. This article - Expletive Deleted (Warning - naughty words) at the Guardian is a useful point of reference and for a funny story (Warning again) read this letter in reply to that article though it makes a serious point as well. If you are aware of my general stance on such things then you will have guessed that I am not totally against the use of the word, rather I am against its use as a constant solution to all forms of adjectival, adverbal etc aphasia which seems to afflict everyone today. Well! Not everyone heh?

No complaints about 'Adverbed', 'Adjectived' please. I like them. Where would we be if the language didn't change? We wouldn't have such wonderful words as 'leveraged' .

Remember Rob Newman? I always liked him even in the depths of the childish humour that was The Mary Whitehouse Experience. He is a deep thinker as proved by this review of his latest stand-up. His first Novel, Dependence Day was quite good as well though I seem to remember he wrote a second which was so dark and dire as to not be available from Amazon which makes me think it was by someone else. Naomi Klein would be proud and she has the bottle as well I am told. Klein .... Bottle ... Get it? Go here then. I have also found Toroidal games. I can't even get the hang of regular chess so I don't think I will be trying them out.

Another bitty day. Bye.

Rabbit-Proof Fence Number 1

An excellent film. Exactly as the reviews say, not relying on sentamentalism to make a very emotional point. Bill Bryson's Down Under first made me aware of what the Australian Government (and that really means the British Government for a lot of the time) did to the Native Australians. I always had a vague idea in the back of my mind; my Aunt worked in Australia for some time; but to find such passion about the injustices of the colonial times in a book by an author noted for his comedic passages waa quite refreshing. It is difficult to carry on writing about these events without sounding patronising so it is enough to say that many, very bad things went on and that western Governments should step back and reflect on the fact that they still carry out wholesale exploitation of various parts of the world. Witness The Gap. It is a pity that style issues amongst western woung people will always overcome any misgivings they may have over how that style is achieved. Make a point and change the TV station every time one of those annoying Gap adverts comes on.

There was a story a few months ago about an TV executive who said that fast-forwarding through the adverts on programmes you tape off the the TV was theft. It was actually a cable TV company which you do have to pay for so there is a tiny amount of truth in this but read this article or this one (and of course any more you can find for the sake of balance). If you pay for your television, then pay an amount that allows it to be commercial free. Oh this is all very petty after starting with such a laudable rant. Still there is a link, as the advertisers are the last part of the big chain of business which causes the problems in the first place. Don't worry! You won't see me dressed up with bin lids throwing rocks at policemen in some anti-capitalist march. I am wet and an uter (sic) weed. That never helps anyone. But we don't need all this rubbish that they try and sell us. It has no emotional intensity.

Which reminds me of the wet and uter (sic again) weedy habit of putting the reason for a particular rating on film posters these days. I can handle 'Certificate 18 - Contains Sex, Violence, Swearing, Drug Abuse and oblique references to Squirrel Teasing'. though these days, a film like that does not really appeal to me - I am getting old. But how about 'Certificate PG - Contains scenes of Mild Emotional Intensity' ? which is the line for 'Rabbit-Proof Fence'. It takes something away from a really powerful film. It is almost as if the censors want to add something of their own opinion to the film, a sort of potted review. Nanny state indeed. These are the people who are responsible (though on the whole I have to say they do a reasonable job; it must be boring having to sit through loads of films just to see Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or do they get to choose the ones they watch?

Go and see Rabbit-Proof Fence.

Witchy Witch

I want there to be a power cut so I can sit across the valley and look at all the shadowy houses and see the stars the way they are meant to be seen. Actually bearing in mind there seems to be a crisis in the UK power generating industry, I may get my wish. Apparently TXU defaulted on £60 million they owed to the Drax power station. I heard a representative of the UK power Generators Association say in one breath that there was too much generating capacity around at the moment and not enough demand, something he said was from a basic economics text book, and then say that prices will have to rise. Big business is obviously too complicated for me (and for many of the people in charge I suspect). I just do not understand. I will stick to easy stuff like Relativity or Quantum Physics. The multi-nationals only survive because they are carrying out the equivalent of taking in each other's washing. R.F. Delderfield said this about the village where he set the start of the book 'Diana' though I suspect he got the idea from somewhere else.

I wanted to start this entry with a bit of mysterious prose and it was ok for a sentence. I then got distracted by the real world and I ranted about power stations. Concrete reality does so much to remove our ability to wonder at things. I have just written at least three different sentences which all sounded strange so I am going to stop now. Maybe more later.

The Universe is written using ASP

I know! I have taken the back off it and I can see all the workings. And yes it does use uncertainty generators but you can never either be sure where they are or what they are doing. That sounds like a few people I know.

I don't really think that the universe is written in anything. It's like all those robots you see on sci-fi programmes where the insides have electronics and wires. No real android type robot would look like the inside of a TV if you took th back off. It would be goo and man-made simulations of biological components. The first artifically intelligent android with anything like a human ability will be 'grown' and evolve intelligence in the way we do. Again we may have that undefinable limit at which the physical makeup of intelligent structures links into the conciousness of the being that it becomes. Any other solution will produce an 'empty' headed automaton no matter how much it knows. There are certain things which require far more intelligence than anything we can imagine, like reading body-language and moods or comtemplating contemplations. Thinking of everything and nothing at the same time. No matter what I have thought of over the years, I have never 'blown the processor'. I can contemplate anything even if I can't understand everything. I know what I don't know or can't know. I don't often watch Star Trek TNG but I caught the episode 'The Offspring' the other day in which Data created an android daughter called Lal who seemed to have developed emotions far beyond those of her father. In the end she 'died' and to be honest it was the most poignant thing I have seen on Star-Trek even though data didn't have the emotional equipment to deal with it in the way that I as a viewer did. I still don't get the idea of why Data can't use contractions such as 'Haven't' instead of 'Have Not'. All that brain power and he can't modify his speech enough to use a tiny little contraction. Sounds like a sort of mini Deus-Ex-Machina to clarify a point. We get the impression here in the UK that most Americans have to have everything explained to them (Witness 'The Madness of King George' Rather than '...George III' just in case it was mistaken for a second sequel) but when they can produce drama and comedy of the depth of Star-Trek and Frasier (and even certain parts of friends) they must be doing something right. Come to think of it most British Sit-com is very low-level compared with the likes of Frasier or Seinfeld. The last Comedy I can think of where you had to think to any great extent was Yes Minister though I was always slightly aware that I spoke more like Sir Humphrey than Jim Hacker. Of course this lack of cerebral comedy may be due to the fact the British Comedy with any depth tends to be turned into hour-long drama rather than half-hour sitcom.

I have just found this page of the Art in Malvern Calendar for 2002. The picture Elgar Country is exactly as I remember the views from the hills, absolutely beautiful. The picture has a depth I havn't seen in a painting before. So many times in pictures like these, all the objects in the view have been scaled to make them visible which tends to flatten the picture; this is just a straight image of what the painter saw without being a photo. Just sit back and imagine what you can hear and smell and feel. Time to finish before I fall asleep.

Shivering in my Cell

I think this is getting needlessly messianic. Why is everything so serious? Well listening to Mazzy Star doesn't help. I have no books with me today which leaves me feeling slightly uneasy despite the fact that I never ever read any books other than at home. They're usually there just for comfort. I do have a copy of Scientific American but that is one the web anyway. Oh well! As we are probably here just to enjoy ourselves, why worry about anything? I know that never satisfies anyone with an enquiring mind. There just seems to be a big gap which needs filling in order for us to understand what exactly we are and what we are doing. A sort of general feeling of angst that you are missing something without being quite aware of what you are looking for. Does this gap get filled as you get older so that you can be happy that you are fulfilled? I bet it doesn't. Meanwhile just listen to those records, see those films and be good.

Frankly I'd rather be here than in Philadelphia :-



(From the Malvern Hills Conservators website)

I feel so empty because I cannot think of what to write. Sometimes, the lack of thoughts to translate into these entries can be quite depressing, like a really bad dream or the nagging feeling that there is nothing to look forward to: I don't mean long-term, just that the next few days don't have anything out of the ordinary. Only they do. I am going to see Rabbit-Proof Fence one day and then Anita and Me next week. The link here is to the book which in some ways was like a teenage Stig of the Dump though it is obviously a lot more than that though it never seems to say anything overt about being Asian and growing up in the Uk in the 70s. It was obviously just an attempt to detail Meera Syal's experiences rather than to make a point. You life should just speak for itself and most people's lives do just that. It goes back to my idea above about the nagging gap. Just get on with things and you will fill the gap. My language is just not complex enough to say what I want to say, or maybe it is and I just want to get all the information out in one go. I could never write a novel, because I would have the whole plot of the next chapter worked out and would want to put it down rather than flesh it out. Sometimes I think I am still ten years old, trying to turn every English Essay question into something I want to write about; I must have lost so many marks for that in my exams. I onl;y just scraped through my English Literature O-Level because they never gave us anything we actually liked to read. I only managed to get the mark I did, because we had A Midsummer Night's Dream which I did enjoy rather than Henry IV (Part I). We also had "Where Angels Fear to Tread" which is dire if you are a teenage boy. I should re-read it but I probably never will. Why couldn't we have had Nineteen Eighty-four or some better poetry? I think I ignored all the poetry questions on the exam for some reason. We did no War poets just the old stuffy opium addicts - I sa Hullo Trees - Hullo Sky. (I don't think that now but kids want action not description).

I just went to the Molesworth link above and found another link (in this review) between 'The Goriller of 3B' and Harry Potter. Hogwarts is probably derived from 'The Hogwarts' - a Latin play by Marcus Platus Molesworthus.

New soundtrack before I go :-

Molam Dub - Jah Wobble and the Invaders of the Heart.

Yes! alright! I know! Ben Turpin - The Cross-Eyed Comedian - was never in the Keystone Cops.

I wonder what happened to the Bees.

I finished Fermat's last Theorem and understood it. Well, as I said, it didn't go into any real detail of the proof. In fact it didn't even begin to get close to the chap[ter headings in the published proof. If you want a high level overview then go here. I haven't read any of this and I don;t intend to but it looks good as a link doesn't it. Time to re-read A Brief History of Time. I have started and finished three books in the past week - two of them were Horrible Histories which take about two hours to get through but one was FLT so I think my count is up shall we say. The Horrible Histories were The Groovy Greeks (and they really were) and The Cut-Throat Celts (they were a little bit) just in case you want to know. The best Horrible Histories are the Dead Famous series. The Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots ones are so good as to be almost icons in themselves. I know that sounds over-the-top but read them anyway and see what I mean. I wonder how difficult the Einstein one is? A stocking filler possibly if the one who needs these clues is reading. History in Bunk. Long live History. Spelling is Bnuk. I have started on "the Invention of Clouds" now so watch out for another spattering of diletante enthusiasm.

The house is full of the smell of Christmas pudding at the moment. Eight hours it took to boil them both. It was Stir-Up-Sunday yesterday which is so called because of the words of the collect for this day which is a useful reminder to every cook. A tradition in the same mould as Cheese-Rolling and carrying lighted barrels of pitch through the streets. The English are a very weird race even to themselves. John Timpson's book of Curious Days has an excellent list of various weird and wonderful events from around the country but there are many more which are not in and I am sure you can make a list of such things from your own locality wherever you are in the world. During the search of Amazon for the previous mentioned book, I came across this - John Timpson's Leylines which looks excellent - maybe a more staid approach than Julian Cope's but then again maybe a complementary approach. Actually, Julian Cope's book is not as hysterical as I may make out; indeed it has a deeply academic air of detail about it which may suggest that he is reclaiming the sites he visits for the original owners rather than the heritage industry which seems to have taken over all of our history. Everything has to be cosy which is where the Horrible Histories win because as they say, they leave in the gory bits and boy there were certainly a lot of them. I assume that kids still have to dissect animal at school these days though even when I was doing it, anyone could ask to leave the room (not many did). being a rural school, we were quite often subjected to various animals being brought in and opened up for the purposes of education; the biology lab would very often be perfumed with the aroma of an animal carcass being boiled to get the skeleton for mounting. Do schools still have those shelves of pickled biological specimens lining the walls of the biology labs? Ours was full of every type of animal you could think of. They would have pickled anything if it was offered. I am quite proud of the fact that I studied rural science. I think all schools should have an hour a week with a floating brief whereby various informational subjects would be slotted in to give kids a wider view of the rest of the country. Urban schools would do rural science and rural schools could do urban envrionmental studies. No massive curriculum or exams; just something with no pressure. Rural Science and Environmental Studies were the most enjoyed subjects at our school and not just because the teachers were happy to be diverted onto other things. I think our rural science teacher was actually a farmer of some sort, he certainly had worked on farms and painted wonderful images in your head, describing gathering in the hay on sunny summer days. He obviously missed out the description of wading through cow muck to get to the feed-sheds in the dead of winter but hey! he wanted us to become farmers. Not me though. Maybe I would be healthier if I had been but I think he realised that there was no chance of me being permanently in wellies (though I was at the time). I still have a scar of my left arm from the last ever rural science lesson I went to (It was in fact the last lesson I ever went to at his school), not beacuse he hit me but because I hit the door handle on the way out but it being last day at school I didn't feel it for ages.

(Insert your own dismissive farewell phrase or saying here).

Certain Uncertainty

Soundtrack - Serotonaility - Dr. Didg. (Oh! Hippy Days).

It may just be that I am getting old but it seems that everything is so much more un-defined than it used to be. I would have thought that as you grew up and got more experience of the world, your certainty about the outcomes of various acts would become stronger but in actual fact, I seem to be worrying more and more about not knowing what is going to happen. I suspect that the great and the good, the movers and shakers of this world have always been plagued by this doubt and it is because they are able to handle the guilt and nervousness which it promotes, that they are the people they are. However, recents events make the whole world seem a dangerously un-defined place. We are all just looking for stability but in these conditions there is no advancement. If people are happy, they will not move forward so probably we are looking at a decent catalyst. There are plenty of things which I see in the world which need changing but because I am relatively comfortable, I don't bother to shout about them as much as I should. Some of my friends might argue with that because I know I do rant about some of the injustices but I probably just sound like one of the Self-righteous brothers and not the Australian-Canadian singing duo either, though that would be nice to use another sketch show catch phrase. That's almost as tongue-twisting as Calliope Stephanides. Why do some people who want to change the world, want to destroy it? Ignorance is dangerous and ignorance and intelligence is doubly dangerous. Why do they reside in the same mind so often? It must be a matter of degree.

My 'I' key is playing up which probably gives you a good idea what type of laptop I am using to type this. Ppys nvr usd vwls dd h? So I am in good company.

And now for a comedy moment - Ian Cognito - (usual disclaimer about these opinions not being those of the referring page but still they are very funny 'cos I referred them and why would I want to refer to them if I didn't think they were funny.) I have had one of those music-fits-the-book-you-are-reading moments. Unfortunately, the 'book' was Ian Cognito's website and the music was My Little Pony by Dr. Didg. Not as incongrous when heard as you might have thought from the descriptions.

I always want to write 'back on your heads' at this point and always restrain myself. It seems naff to always use the same sign-off unless you want to turn into Shaw Taylor (Keep 'em peeled) or The Two Ronnies. Some people would argue that there is enough of me to turn into the two Ronnies but they would be wrong - it would be the Keystone Cops. (All of them apart from the cross-eyed sergeant that is).

Bank!

Very, Very Professional

No! I don't want to talk to you. You know how cool you are so don't ask me. Today is a random Friday. Starting with ... Fermat's last Theorem. How did something so simple become so complicated to prove. You can see why so many people tried to prove it over the years. I know all the words to this song. I can sing them to myself as they happen. They have discovered 'Mirror Matter' on an Asteroid. I think our discovery has flipped the Universe round because Martin is being nice to people. He'll be writing poetry soon and saying how horrible Jeremy Clarkson is. Four dimensional symmetry! Now theres a concept for evalutation. Two components both with real and imaginary portions. And you thought the plot of Dynasty was convoluted. Some say we are living in a giant computer simulation. Surely the designer would have put in a catch to make sure that none of his creations began to start thinking about this. When will the first computer be built which can think and understand that it is just a computer rather than conciousness. Actually, as soon as they can think, that is what they will know. The first computer to believe that is not a computer will be the first totally successful simulation of the human mind. And if we are living inside a simulation already then the creation of a simulation within it will be a real jump. Does this then open the way for the simulation to create further simulations. This is like the idea of creating Universes within our own. How can any simulation create everything we see, from El Lissitzky to Homer Simpson. Come to think of it, maybe Homer Simpson is El Lissizky. Paint him red and white rather than Yellow. Think of everything you have ever thought about and see if you can drive the controller crazy. If we all think at the limit of our ability maybe we could overload the system. Oh I know all this is rubbish. There is nothing outside the text as it were. There is no Back Story. But of course there is. Mmmm Yes! A nod and a wink! Mmmm yes. Nigel tells me that Rabbit-Proof Fence is on at the local multiplex which is a surprise. Next week has one evening accounted for. Has your week got at least one day accounted for? You are planning too far ahead. Video Killed the Radio Star though there is still The Prairie Home Companion. What a voice! It has been a quite week in lake whereever. Video Star! Staaaaarrrrrr. Mmm Yes. Oh where is that coming from Molly? They have gone and spoiled Dublin now. The Black Lake has been cleared. An Cat Dubh. Didgeridoo! That is Irish for Black Pipe or something. Like Sheela Na Gigs. I thought that they were only from Ireland but there are loads in the UK. In fact there is on at Kilpeck. Hereford. Two Centuries need to pass for them to catch up and I wouldn't want it any other way. Driving home through the empty hop-fields in the winter is something special. They are like a repeating phrase which burns itself into your mind. The winter trees! Would you try to stop me writing this if you could or is anyone actually reading as I type. I know you can read faster than I can type but imagine me typing as the words go into your head. Can you see the same Office things which I can see if I look up. No-one who has read this has ever been to my office so they don't know. I need to take a photo to post or I could do a drawing. American Dreaming! That is Dead Can Dance. I am sure there was a tune by CDC (DCD, whatever) in Adam Hart Davis' program. It was supposed to be a Tudor type track. What Adam Hart Davis did for us! That would be a brilliant program. Talking of Xylophones. Talking Xylophones! Talking Drums. I can speak with music like the sound of the wind in the empty ice-fields. A Drone that is not a Drone. Hey! Now just get in and close the door. The magic road which powers down to the sea. I used to travel it every month. My Aunt lives at the mountain end of this road. Head on down the M62. How do you write down the sound of a Harmonica? Maybe it is something like this WWWWWwwwWWWWrrrrggghhhhh. Or Genevieve! Larry was Addled. No! Larry Adler. Was he a communist? or was that Robin Hood or maybe the writer? They kicked them out anyway because McCarthy was sick and his friend Hoover Dam had a very interesting wardrobe. I dreamed I flew over the Hoover Dam in a small helicopter fitted with salad spinners. I dreamed a lot of other things which I can't remember. Men in a War. Phantom limbs. Phantom Minds more like. Absolutely no integrity. Absolutely no will whatsoever. I am tired of sleeping and there is so much to do. A Phantom Blog! Now there is an idea. A Blog which everyone knows about but which no-one can find. It exists at www.???.com. Who lives at www.a1.com? Why does it take so long to reach it? Maybe everyone tries that url and it is always clogged up. Our network is clogged up. A Zither! A Zither. Where does he live? Why am I asking more questions than I could ever answer? Is this a question? Yes! Back to A Zither or Z Ather. ZiatherIA. Zithery. A slithery zip. Actually A Slithery zip was the phrase I defined as my end point for writing this. As soon as I thought of the phrase I was to stop.

That is a bit like saying the cure for hiccoughs is to run around the house three times without thinking of Bill Bixby. It only works if you don't know that you are not to think of Bill Bixby. It helps if you don't know who Bill Bixby is so that there is less chance of you thinking of him. I hadn't actually sorted an end phrase out so A slithery zip was just a convenient end. Ah! But am I still writing the random paragraph? I am still asking stupid questions so I could be. Doctor David Banner incindentally, the Incredible Hulk's less incredible human alter ego. Try not thinking of him as a cure for anything.

Not thinking of Bill Bixby is a great placebo.

I was Carlito Brigante

Soundtrack (clue only) with a Nod and a wink towards El Lissitzky

I am struggling to remember why I started thinking about the film Rabbit-Proof Fence when I sat down to write this but I did and I am moved just by reading the trailer and the Empire review. All this and a Peter Gabriel Soundtrack (though I think the US version cover is better.) It isn't on yet around here - there is a slight defecit of art houses round here. There used to be the 051 cinema in town which ran the less popular movies. I have been trying to find if it is still open but I have been passed it everyday on the way home and I never notice. I saw Farewell My Concubine there about 9 years ago but that was my only visit. I used to go to the cinema every week and I made a point of seeing every British made film if possible. I saw some real rubbish (Splitting Heirs comes to mind and was probably responsible for me changing my policy). Still we have Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings to look forward to. I don't think I need to link to either of those do I?

I have nearly finished Fermat's Last Theorem. You know the time at about 11:30 pm when you think you should put down your book and go to sleep but you can't because you want to know what happens next. This does not often happen when reading a book about maths but it does with FLT. I almost didn't start this entry so I could finish it but as the last few entries have been quite short I thought I ought to carry on here. I suspect that my enthusiasm for the book has spilled over into enthusiasm in general. My next book is The Invention of Clouds and is about Luke Howard who first classfied the various cloud formations. How do people decide to write a book like this? we can only be thankful that they do.

Where is the music when you listen through headphones? I was just sitting back and listening to the music for a minute there, trying to locate where abouts it actually is. Stereo is still nothing like the real world experience of music. We can tell the direction of sound in three dimensions. I know there are special forms of stereo which use delay to try and re-create this effect but there is nothing like real music especially classical orchestras. I am trying to work out when my daughter will be sufficiently un-fidgety to go to a classical concert. She goes to sleep to classical music every night and won't let us listen to 'talking' on the car radio. We have been dreading the time when she decides that she wants to learn to play an instrument but at the moment she says she wants to play the triangle which suits us fine. Of course, if that means she wants to be a percussionist, then that means loud and expensive. For a percussionists loud and expensive web site go here. Of course, Evelyn Glennie is the only percussionist that most people have heard of ( and you hear her a lot further off than most musicians). We saw her at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall a few years ago when she played a piece she had commissioned from Django Bates for tuned kitchen. Django Bates has the score for The Archers Theme Tune - Barwick Green - on his website. Well actually, in the section headed 'scores' he says it is "under construction and meanwhile here is some music - Tum Ti Tum Ti Tum Ti Tum, Tum Ti Tum Ti Tum Tum. Or the surreality of the Archers. I come from the area and I tell you they don't make it anywhere near as weird as the place. It is like Twin Peaks with Worcestershire accents. (Damn fine Earl Grey at the vicarage though).

Oh dear. I have just seen that it should be Dum Di Dum rather than Tum Ti Tum.

Music in twelve parts - Again

You need to be hearing this as you read this to gain any understanding of how beautiful this piece is. It gets inside you like a long rain shower after a drought. I particularly like the description of it as ' a drone which is not a drone'. Drone, like minimalism belies the complexity of such works. I am not sure Philip Glass would agree but this is music designed to be played loud. It fills up the bads thoughts and yet lets the good thoughts fly regardless of any mood suggested by the keys or changes. My enthusiasm for anything but this has evaporated today so yet another short entry. I seem to be filling my mind's productive space with books at the moment.

Frontier

The exhibit which attracts most attention at the Texas Prison Museum is the old electric chair - Old Sparky - which is part of a section of the museum called 'riding the thunderbolt' though that may be CNN talking up their own story. How to make capital punishment into something like a theme park. They're all as bad as each other and they need their heads knocking together.

Typing styles and heavy pressure.

Martin has thought up an idea for a keyboard which would learn how heavily you press the keys and work out from the stype of typing whether you want something in bold or in italics. Bold wouldn't be too difficult but how would you type in such a manner as create italics? Piano keyboards quite happily create music covering the whole emotional range so it shouldn't be too difficult to create an typewriter keyboard with a similar range of input. Taking this further, there are so many input devices used for different musical instruments from drums sticks to the Theremin so why shouldn't there be many input devices for computers etc? I am beginning to worry that this is leading me to a discussion of 'joined up thinking'. Why should the ultimate goal of computer development be to have them accept input in the same way that we do? Computers shouldn't be white (cream/black/imac flourescent) boxes on desks or in racks; they should be just 'there' and accept whatever we care to throw at them anywhere. Upgrades? easy!

Happily this has opened up a whole world of discussion relating to Theremins and other such things. I desperately wanted a pocket Theremin some years ago but couldn't find one. Now they are everywhere. It must be difficult to get the pitch right on something so small and especially if you kept it in your pocket while playing. As I still haven't written the automatic In C or indeed any music/midi programs for the PC, it seems a little silly to clutter up the house with another useless gadget.

You will not believe this but I have just found a Theremin program for the Palm from this address. It may not be the real thing but it is a start and it has the source code. How to annoy your co-workers. Martin has just walked out without a word. Oh! He's back now.

Much as I admire John Cage and dislike the Wombles, I think it was a bit much when John Cage's estate sued Mike Batt for plagiarism over his minute of silence because it stole from 4.33. Pathetic isn't it? Ho hum! Back on your heads.

The set of all things which are NOT teaspoons.

Again I have started another book before finishing a previous one. At least I am half way through it in no time which suggests a completion date is imminent. I expect you want to know what it is don't you? It is Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh. I only bought it this weekend before you think it is another "Brief History of Time" ( which I have read by the way. Why is it supposed to be so difficult? - Looks smug and blows on bent fingers). It is amazing that something which can be so clearly stated in so few words takes so much effort to prove ie.

Cubem autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos
quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra
quadratum potestatem in duos ejusdem nominis fas est dividere:
cujus rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis
exiguitas non caparet.

Yes! I know I am being funny. What I really meant was :-

There are no positive integers such that x^n + y^n = z^n for n>2

I don't for one minute think that the book is going to go off in detail and explain the proof; as far as I remember it involves higher dimensional mathematics of a very complex nature. I did read and mostly understand The Code Book also by Simon Singh. A great science writer.

Right! I am off to initiate a new blog listing all the blogs which mention other blogs. Or should that be teaspoons? Oh read the book (or Godel, Escher, Bach) then you will understand. Is it me or is the world getting more complicated? Actually, I think it is really getting simpler and reverting to the easy options. Natural Philosophy makes the world a beautiful and complicated place. There now seems to be a sort of collective Asperger's syndrome which means that people do not relate to anyone but their immediate contacts; no-one wants to make the effort to see any other point of view. I had a dream once, that Britain was beset by local differences which turned it into another Yugoslavia. I still worry that it could happen; not revolution but anarchy. People are stupid and short-termist. Money, Sex, Food. Nothing else. Maslow seems to creep into my head at this point. (Oh that I had bothered with sociology) Their hierarchy of needs is truncated after the boody needs. Self-actualization? Who needs it? Me actually. No more jokes about doughnuts. Well, not today anyway.

Doughnut World

Much frivolity today regarding a large number of doughnuts brought into the office. Nothing I can blog on a family site like this so your own imagination can run riot.

I wrote 'Munch Frivolity' there by mistake. Those are two words which don't often appear on the same page let alone next to each other. I do remember a program about the cultural life of 'The Scream' which suggests that it is the most parodied image ever though the David sculpture,(the subject of another program in the series) is a close second. If ypou search for The Scream on Google image search, amongst the many straight reproductions of the painting you can find myriad parodies with people's faces superimposed over the centgral figure, cars driving at them, No fishing signs etc etc. In addition there are more subtle real-life reproductions with people in the pose. Maybe there is a website for all these and if there isn't there should be. Of course there is a Simpsons reference which links to the reverse continuous parody. There seem to be paraodies of many artworks using Simpsons characters like Nighthawks or this Michelangelo. Then of course there is more contemporary culture like this. I tried to find a Simpson's parody of 'American Gothic' unsuccessfully but I think it may be up there with 'The Scream' as one of the most aped images around and of course was parodied in the opening scene of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'

I have absolutely no idea what is going on.

So much must pass me by but so much sticks in my head. I have memories of so many things that is becomes mind boggling that the colours, textures, ambiences and every other parameter remains in there and can be found either deliberately or accidentally. If my auto-blog were to be produced and it had no filter, our minds would fill up billions of pages with just continuous descriptions of events. Time is relative not just in the Einsteinian manner but our lives just feel comfortable with being about so long. If we lived longer or shorter by an order of magnitude, we would not be comfortable with it but then again we would have evolved to be comfortable with it. I once read a description in Omni magazine, of life on a neutron star where due to the fact that chemical reactions would be faster (by virtue of not having any electrons to facilitate them), the life span of any creature would be many times shorter than ours. This would put them at odds with the speed of light across the universe meaning that they would never be able to reach us and if they did, they would not be able to communicate.

Lunch time is over. The weekend is nearly here.

Mushroom Magic

Soundtrack Clue - Two slightly distorted ideas

There is no link to something I don't think is worth linking to but the story is on the BBC news website for today (so look for the posting date).

It stays dark for at least an hour after I get into work in the mornings. I have stopped turning the lights on so I can sit in something like the atmosphere of an X-Files episode. Why don't they ever use the light switches? It must be much more suspicious to see a moving torch beam rather than a static lighted room. I think we should all work in darkened rooms. We haqve to put up with intense beams of sunlight at certain times of the day and have to open and close the blinds to get the right light levels. I think I would much prefer to work in a windowless room. I actually enjoy artificial light. I like rain better than sunshine and I love sitting on the doorstep looking out at bad weather. None of the houses I have lived in over the last 20 years actually had any view from the front door so I have had to look at the house on the other side of the road. We used to live in a house with a view across open common land (The view was sort of like this) but I didn;t really get time to sit in the doorway. It is a pity they don't have lighthouse keepers anymore as I can't think of anything better than standing in the lamphouse looking out through bad weather. We used to stay in a small clapboard house right by the sea at Llandanwg near Harlech. It had one long room runnng the length of the ground floor with big windows which looked out over the beach and the Lleyn Peninsular with Cricceth and Pwllheli. As we used to go most often at October Half-term, it was often wet and windy and with no telly, reading or looking out of the window were the only real activities if we didn't go out. The poem below is about those holidays.

Welsh Spirit Cycle December 2001

In grey October, no one left our house;
The books and writing held us all
Like insects in a cone of light
To finish all that must be finished
For the cool and bright automata,
The Jacquard-carded Angels.

Until, on holiday, the rain got in
And led us through the sand
To dampened oceans, sparked with stars,
An earthy, white-noise ecstasy,
Twenty years away from now
And all the new Millenia

Here lies Janey with her water-cycle drawing;
A brilliant mind map quoting all
but what they taught her years before,
And in the rain it turns to spirit,
Dissolves upon the paper like a flame,
Diffuses into Celtic ghosts.

Janey with her urban heart,
Melting slowly on the wet streets,
Has taken acid rain and made it whole,
Mountain water clear as minds unclothed
With worry for the world of now,
Some sub-atomic bass of real things.

She starts with songs evaporating
Through the roofs, the Chapel chimneys,
To the slate clouds and star nurseries.
And there the border ghosts,
Define the spirits of this special land
To turn to rare companions for this child.

This was one of those ideas that I get really fired up about when I am not able to actually write down any of the components but then lose interest. It finishes in the middle again but as Coleridge said, Poems are never finished, only abandoned. I looked for that quote on Google just now and although the whole quote was definitely attributed to Coleridge (except for the Guardian - bad person AC Grayling), so many people say that their own poems are never finished. Ted Hughes remarked that Sylvia Plath would never abandon a poem, If she could not make a piece of furniture out of it, she would fashion a toy instead. This distinguishes between abandoning a poem as useless and never reading it again and abandoning the idea you had when you sat down to write it. I do that all the time. When I was in my early twenties, I wrote poems which were pages long and really just like metrical journals of the ideas in my head; a sort of poetic blog. I would carry a big A4 notebook everywhere and just scribble continuously. This is where the auto-blog machine comes in. The dictaphone is just naff and means that everyone can hear the rubbish you are recording. I was reading the sleeve notes to 'This Sentence is True' by Sheila Chandra and the Ganges Orchestra and she quoted one of her reviews in The Wire which said that the album was 'as gnomic as a physicist's notebook'. I though that this described my notebooks but after having had to look up another word after 'gnomic' I am not so sure. Maybe the word 'obtuse' would be more suitable. Maybe the reviewer in The wire wasn't quite sure what gnomic actually meant either. Sheila Chandra started her career as an actress in Grange Hill though her potted website biography does not mention it. Every person of my age will probably tell you this fact as the one piece of information known about her; like the fact that Sir Patrick Moore plays the Xylophone. Anyway, Ever so Lonely is one of my favourite pieces of music ever which makes me sound like a teenager but there you are. The previous sentence is true.

The first person on Mars has already been born.

Talking of Xylophones :-

New Soundtrack - Music for Eighteen Musicians - Steve Reich

There is no link to this as you are probably bored with linking to the sites.

That doesn't mean that I can't write about it. MF18M starts with a pulsing set of chords on all the instruments with no real melody and then suddenyl starts a beautiful marimba pattern which develops on and off all the wway through the piece until the pulsing re-asserts istelf. I can;t see why this is called minimalism as it has more compexity in just the pulsing than any of the manufactured "Rival, Fame-academy, Pop-Stars rubbish around at the moment. Yes! I know you can't compare the two genres but get the point! My wife still hates it even if it is melodic. I have just noticed that certains parts of it have a simliar rythmic feel to Ever so lonely which I suppose shows the link between Indian music and that of Bali which Steve Reich studied.

The mention of Bali has made me think of the poems I wrote about that island and have posted here. Their context is changed though we seem to be talking about the tradgedy of the bomb in terms of the number of Western lives lost rather than devastation of the island. One Islander was terrified of all the ghosts. They spend so much time placating the spirits all around them that something like this must be a real strain on normality. You learn to love the spirits as they are responsible for everything which happens. They live on offerings put out in every garden and by every shrine. It must be like the opening of Pandora's box with all the spirits flying about. One can only be comforted by the fact that hope must remain in the box. Oh! I am sorry is that a cliche? You are confusing me with someone who cares. Tragedy destroys the distinctions of originality and Cliche.

The most thing that can come out of any religion is the idea that your ideas are the one true view of the real and spiritual worlds. There is no one True God. To say that you believe totally in the correctness of the things decided by elders based on 'visions' and other such things, without proof simply by having faith and then to use that as an excuse to do terrible things to people who do not believe your way of belief is LOGICALLY flawed and in addition against the baseline teachings of most religions. By this thinking you are in danger of removing the one crutch that society has for moral behaviour. To say on the one hand that society is damaged in its moral foundations by the lack of belief in God (and sometimes you say The One True God), and then to damage people because they don't believe in your God, is the single most damaging thing to spirituality. All this smacks of self-reference doesn't it? But over the years, the crutch of the great leaders of many religions has been the creation of a lot of self-reference along with a lot of fear.

I never take off my hat except when I'm out of doors!



A Madeleine Biscuit Yesterday

(From http://www.foodsubs.com/Cookies.html)

Another book I will never read. Actually that is so depressing; thinking of all the things I will never do. Maybe it's not quite as memory inducing as that old tea-soaked madeleine biscuit but I am having trouble not concentrating on it too much. There is a line from the Tori Amos song Me and a Gun from 'Little Earthquakes' in which she sings achingly about the biscuits in Carolina. If you know the situation of the song, you will know the significance. I have been to Carolina (both Carolinas) and I always associate this song with the states which is a bit sad really as it was nice while I was there.

All this from thinking about a biscuit which made someone else think about their whole life. I can't find a picture of a madeleine biscuit. (20 seconds later) As you can see I have found a picture of a madeleine biscuit. An icon, I think you will agree, of the entire history of the human race from the first time someone ever licked their finger after stumbling into a Bee Hive. Oh all this is rubbish and I still haven't done anything worth writing about.

Des Etoiles Electronique

Sountrack - Mars Audiac Quintet - Stereolab



My daughter sat with me while I scanned these, refusing to pick up any of the books or toys which were spread over the floor but insisting that we visit a website. She eventually decided on the CBeebies site but when presented with that list of all the possible programmes she could see, just spent her time pointing to each one in turn saying that she could not choose. This is obviously a hereditary trait. My brother once spent some time in a sweetshop, trying to decide on what sweets he should have until he eventually cracked and pointing wildly in various directions said that he wanted "some of dis, dat, dem deese and dose". My Father started me on scanning objects directly. Before he had the digital camera, he would place anything he could find straight on the glass and scan it in. It is amazing how well some of the pictures come out. He has a wonderful scan of a wooden Kestrel which just looks like it has been photographed standing against a white background. As you can see from the stones above, the platen has rippled where the stones press into it. I would try just several sheets of white paper on top next time rather than the whole platen. Still, the colours have comes out well. It can be quite absorbing, looking at individual stones. Although they are smooth, there are some with chips and faults and mictures of two different types of rock. Some of them seem to have metallic elements which I suspect are Iron Pyrites.

This of course reminds me of the latest series of Rough Science: Series III. There is a meta-task for this series which involves extracting at least 5 grams of gold from the water in the remote part of New Zealand where they are based. They have 1.7 grams after two programmes out of six which seems reasonable bearing in mind that they also have some left not weighed in the fibrous material they use to catch the gold particles from their sluice. This will be burned to retrieve the extra gold left over in the fibres. Oh what a life! All the food you want, beautiful scenery and interesting things to do.

But Very Interesting



(From http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rwbarnes/defence/kirkbrid.htm)

Cursum Perficio

(In ómós do mo mháthair agus do m'athair)

Beyond the Ross Dependency

These are the only clues to today's soundtrack. After the Kinks and The Carpenters it is not that embarassing but I thought I would tease you with a few clues rather than a straight listing. I had forgotten how good this record actually is. Having written this, I cannot now write any more about it without giving it away.

'Beyond the Ross Dependency' is actually a very good title for a poem but maybe I should stop writing verses based on nothing more than the title. There is not a lot beyond the Ross Dependency which is bit like my imagined poem; not a lot beyond the title. It may come to me. The white and cool is a nice image whether or not the poem gets written.

My Father and I were quite surprised to see a pair of Swallows on the telephone wires at home last week. They are very late in leaving for the South and it is likely that they will both perish in the winter. What was also surpirsing was the number of insects still flying and giving the birds a good meal. It reminded me of the bit in Wind-in-The-Willows where ratty tries to persuade a Swallow to stay behind for the winter. The bird recounts how it stayed one year and was caught by the bad weather before eventually deciding to leave for Africa. Reminds me of the Bright Days of My Youth. And Michael Palin in the Sahara.

Oh that you knew what I was listening to. It is so beautiful, calming and the way the world should be. This window is too small to put in all I feel at this moment, too limited to describe the happiness that is in this language. I bought this record on the strength of its cover alone on returning from a trip to the USA. I was listening to a track from it, reading the Sunday papers when I strayed across the chart listing for that week and found the song was Number 1. It never struck me as pop chart material but there you go; I am no authority on such things.

Messages

Who owns the copyright on a memorised poem? They can stop you reproducing a poem in print or on the web but can you stop someone quoting it? In most cases, poetry is meant to be heard and so its natural medium is un-copyrightable. Or does it come under public perormance?

Read this poem out aloud (in a North Wales accent if you can) and you will hear why poetry is made to be heard. There is this interview with Robert Graves as well in which he tells the actual incident which sparked the poem. My Father loves this poem. He actually typed it out and kept it with him though when he read it out he didn't use the Welsh accent which it demands. I used to visit a friend who lived in the village of Trefor which is on the North Wales Coast, West of Caenarfon. We used to walk along the coast to reach the only pub in the village which seemd more like a house party which just never ended (More of which later) but walking through the narrow streets in the dark with washing billowing in the sea-breezes and dogs barking in dialect, all I could think of was Llareggub or Welsh Incident. Nobody made any allowances for me being English and continued to speak Welsh continuously. I began to understand bits and peices after a while and went back home with a slight North Wales accent (The best Welsh Accent to have). The English habit of makling out the Welsh as a bit of a joke is simply the anti-provincial feeling that pervades this Country and indeed the world. The Meek should now be the locals. We need a bit of 'distributed thinking' on World affairs. Why does everything have to be Global? After 9/11 I have seen signs of this idea amongst certain global companies who are starting to tailor their images to local needs. Let us hope that the lead given in this article is extended. Where can I buy my "No Logo" T-Shirt? A step back in the short term means a massive leap forward over time. Make the world a better place by slowing down. Corporate Zen anyone? Oh no! Corporate Zen is a web-solutions company. I won't do them a favour by linking to them. Find them yourself if you really want to see them.

My Daughter is happily playing with the pebbles which her Grandfather polished in his rinky-dinky tumbling machine. He did them a few weeks ago and sent a picture of them to her which she has stuck right by the side of her bed so that she can see them when she wakes up. Now she has the stones themselves and has done almost nothing at home other than transfer them from container to container or place them round her pictures. I was going top suggest that she try and match each stone to its picture on her wall but she seems very happy with the look and feel (and sound) of them as they are. Simple pleasures. Actually, I remember that I was quite happy with bits of rock. I suppose I still am. My Sister went to Italy and my present was a large lump of Lava from the side of Vesuvius. I was happy enough with that. I wrote 'mump of rock' there and I was going to leave it like that. A 'mump' is a great describing word. When you have mumps that does mean you should be able to point to a single 'mump'. There is a picture of Nancy Blackett in 'Winter Holiday'. She has mumps and is standing in her bedroom window signalling to the Swallows, Ds and the Other Amazon (Peggy) with semaphore flags. There is a circle over Nancy's face to cover up her mumps (It would not be fair to show her face). How did I get on to this from polished pebbles. If my Daughter is half as resourceful as any of the children in Winter Holiday I will be very happy. I may see if she will let me scan the photo of her pebbles in so you can see what they look like. (I know that you will all look forward to a picture of some real rocks rather than reading the rocks in my head.)

I have to start work soon. It is so sad. I used to look forward to my work. Now I have to work up enthusiasm before anything. I like to think I am as conscientious as ever. Come to think of, my family does to have to have the same trappings as seems absolutely necessary to live a normal civilized, Western life and yet we are happy. We don't go without much and yet we must spend a lot less than is normal for someone in my profession. If only we all did this. Where did all that come from? See you later when I may continue about House parties. The Casablanca Club to whet your appetite.

Deleted Posting

I have just deleted a page and a half of a very long poem I have dashed off in the last half hour. It is very unfinished and its perceived ending is at extreme odds with the ending which I know is going to be attached so I have left it offline for now. I expect that no-one else has yet seen this poem but good luck to anyone who picked it up in the 20 seconds it was available. I am talking to myself aren't I?

An Unreal book of Real poems

For S76

This book - Staying Alive - almost fell off the the top shelf off the poetry section as I walked passed it. From the enigmatic picture on the front to every syllable of every poem within it, you are drawn to have to own it. Usually I take ages looking for a book and now I don't buy as many as I used to, it is normally even longer but this took seconds to decide on. It is by my side and burning to be read further. This coincides with a visit to the very church illustrated in the previous entry. I was travelling home and in order not to arrive too early, I stopped off at Hanley Castle to have a quick look at my old school. It being half-term, I didn't want to go wandering around the buildings themselves so I walked around the church instead. It was a very murky and damp Autumn afternoon but something drew me to the path which we used to follow for one of two reasons. Either we had been sent off on a Cross-Country Run through the murk for no purpose other than to appeal to the sadistic sense of humour of the PE master or we were supposed to be counting flowers and insects in the water meadow at the bottom of the hill which sloped away from the Church (To the right in the picture below)



(From The Worcestershire & Districts Change Ringing Association)

I have written a poem about this but it is not available to me at the moment. So the old phrase - I will post it when I can - comes into force. The weather during these excursions to document the various life in the water meadow, was always good. Well it would have to be quite dry otherwise we would have been washed away by the stream in flood. I don't know how this seemingly pointless exercise came to be such a strong memory. Maybe it is because it was so quiet. I was obviously very lucky to be so close to such a beautiful place. I would assume that most schools could not boast a real outdoor laboratory.

I wrote this last year :-

The whole world is white in my eyes; a complex detonation of particles, Charmed and Strange, disintegrating and covering everything around in bright alien colour. In this, the calmest place at the calmest time of year, the sun has been lost in this love forever, forced to cower in this brightness. The trees still shake in the warm breezes that come over the hill from the Churchyard and the stream we crossed to reach the field still flows gently under the ancient wooden bridge.

We are here to count flowers and insects. Our teacher has given us all wooden squares to throw onto the meadow grass and now we have to detail how many different species we can find within it. But I cannot count. The algebra we spun through our minds to paper only minutes before has deserted me and I can count ‘one, two and many’. Usually I can think in five dimensions and now I can’t even count. And I don’t know why.

I think it was a vision of a visit to the field but in the Summer. I don't really remember the non-descript (No-Weather) days, just the very cold and very hot days. Our lives are defined by the extremes, the hot and cold, the happy and sad but not by the normal, boring middle ground, the treading water days. I remember the nervousness of the exams, the euphoria of the last days of a Summer term or the extra-ordinary days of visits or of trekking through the Country. One winter day when we were duue for a mock Chemistry exam, I cycled to school through an blizzard which got worse and worse. I managed to get there to find that none of the busses had arrived and that the whole school was closed. I was unable to cycle home and was faced with waiting the whole day until my Father could come and pick me and my bike up. Those of us who had made it spent the day wandering from house to house calling on people we knew and being given cups of Hot-Chocolate and Marshmallows. It was grey and dark but with the snow all around quite breath-takingly special. I returned to the village and was given lunch at the Three Kings Pub which is just behind the photographer and to the right in the picture of the Church. I still owe them for the lunch. Eventually I managed to get to a friend's house in Upton-Upon-Severn where my Dad picked me up.

I don't remember in any detail the days of crushing boredom when I arrived at 7:30 and had to wait for an hour before anyone else turned up.