Don’t You Think He Looks Tired?

A very normal Christmas day has been had today. We lost the baby in the canyons of presents he had to negotiate opening before being able to play with the wrapping. We also spent a tense hour or two trying to work out which emergency number to ring when we noticed a large bruise on the roof of his mouth. All over-anxiousness was dissipated the next time we able to coax him to open his mouth do discover that the mark had vanished – something that tends to happen with felt-tip marks inside the mouth.

Daughter refused to watch Doctor Who but we all thought it was good. Number one Son was caught looking over his shoulder at our Christmas tree after the attack by the killer tree but didn’t seem too bothered.

As you can tell this is just to be able to say that I made an entry today and with the remote hope that the headline above means anything to anyone.

You're Leading Me Towards A Mr Whippy

The Daily Misanthropy! I.e. a pet hat – people who do NOT WASH THEIR HANDS. You know who you are you oik.

Why doesn’t oik pass the spell-check? It seems like a perfectly good word to me.

Today is my last day before what I suddenly discover we have to call Winterval. I should get upset about this but it does in some way reflect the idea that the Christmas week has so little to do with what it actually purports to celebrate for most people that it has become like the Japanese version – an excuse for consumerism and other excesses. I know it’s a cliché but it is still true.

I have been re-reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat AND listening to a tape of Alan Bennett’s Diaries in which he mentions Oliver Sacks going to Japan to see how Tourette Syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourettes manifests in a culture without expletives. I think I have always been aware that Tourette’s is not just swearing as some people just don’t. It reminded me of the many parenting shows on TV these days where 2-year-old children can make the winner of the Joint Services Swearing Award look positively restrained. Where do these little darlings hear the words they use? (I was going to put in a “clever” sentence with lots of asterisks but it didn’t seem that clever really – and certainly not big.) I assume that the Japanese do swear now – they just use imported words – unless of course the problem is the actual concept of swearing. Maybe the Japanese would ask you why you need to swear or even wonder why some words are so shocking when said. Actually, I sometimes think that. Why should something which is just another combination of sound waves have the value it has? To me, the use of such connecting phrases as ‘yer know’ and ‘err’ (which I admit I use- it is easy to criticise someone on TV when you are at home – I would be jelly in front of a camera) are just as irritating as punctuation cursing.

Kenneth Williams Ending Goes Here

Thirty-nine Part Invention

Listening to ….

… well actually listening to Tehillim by Steve reich.

I am not allowed to stream Radio 3 at work (as it should be I admit) so I have to rely on the Media player. It has struck me how Christmassy Tehillim actually is – all sort of wintery wassailing despite being based on Hebrew prayers.

So what about all this Bach on Radio 3 then? I worked from home yesterday and it was very nice having the digital radio piped through the speakers of the PC – to be surrounded by all that baroque brilliance. It is true that some of the more Sturm und Drang stuff is a bit much to take – shouty German is always slightly suspect these days I suppose. A particular highlight was the Trio Sonata in C, BWV 529 for Organ which was on as I drove in this morning. The guys who play these pieces must have separate brains for each limb. I am sure that this is a subconscious theme throughout Godel, Escher, Bach, all that stuff about how it was near impossible for JSB to think up Chromatic pieces with so many parts. I was also reminded of GEB by the stuff about termites in yesterday’s Life In The Undergrowth. I seem to remember quoting a paragraph about termites with reference to Wholism and Reductionism – it was apt honestly though I am sure the nice guys at Private Eye might have put the extract on a shortlist for Pseuds’ Corner.
Two interesting articles in The Guardian today :-

This one about the recent court ruling that Intelligent Design may not be taught in science lessons (and due to the requirement for a separation of Church from State – not taught in any lessons – officially). For some probably quite heated argument go here. I have just had a thought about how the complexity that advocates of Intelligent Design use as a form of proof of their solution can always be explained by some form of very complex random development. This random development is like the ‘faith’ element in the more religiously-based theories. The difference is that in most cases a bit of complex thought about something can always explain it. Every time! No Question! No need for faith.

And this one trying to encourage people to attempt the Cryptic crossword. We used to try the telegraph one in the office when it was free online but with us all being scattered and access requiring subscription, that pleasure is infrequent. Maybe the Telegraph will be bough once or twice over the next week or so. We actually finished it once or twice and one Saturday I did the whole thing on my own.

The Unbearable Naffness Of Being

I thought I would say it here but is it possible that Space Cadets may actually turn out to be a joke on us? I have been wondering whether Channel 4 could actually afford to send someone into space - and whether I could nominate someone for a one-way ticket. There has been some disquiet - my initial reaction - that this was a prank too far but what if it really is true.

You heard it here first.

Nobody Expects A Secular Humanist ….

To the carol service at Church with my daughter last night. She was made up to be chosen to carry the baby Jesus figure from the crib around the church, we me following with Mary and Joseph to signify the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. However, the spooky but for me was the prayers, this time a very serious, music-backed affair using what I can only describe as the Taize system. The reader recites the prayers they want, vaguely in time to the organ music backing it. There then comes a chorus where the congregation joins in with a sung bit of affirmation. It all sounded very familiar and at first I kept thinking it was very like an Ivor Cutler song/piece/poem but it suddenly hit me what it really resembled. PJ Harvey performs a cover of Peggy Lee’s Is That All There Is? On Dance Hall At Louse Point. This has a spoken verse vaguely in time to the music and then a sung chorus. I can’t believe there is any link between the two but they do sound the same. I haven’t heard the Peggy Lee version and I am sure I don’t know anyone who would have it.

We walked back trying to spot a Christmas tree with a fairy/angel on the top but most people seem to go for a plain tree top these days.

Number One Son is two today and we have pandered to his Thomas The Tank Engine Obsession to the tune of a DVD, more rail track and all the books he could want. He has also developed a genuinely dangerous fascination with the dictionary which he keeps dropping on his toes. Before we were married (and could afford large and pretentious books), my wife bought me this book which got dropped on her mother’s foot (not found out the full details of the incident) requiring a doctor and resulting in very impressive bruising. We are carrying out a Health And Safety Evaluation at present. However, NOS is getting us back with his casually strewn Stickle Bricks which while not quite having the potential for bruising possessed by Lego, can result in a nasty (and impressively regular) injury to the underside of a bare foot. I suspect that some of the weirder end of the whole tattoo/piercing/branding market may offer entry level, ‘temporary’ Stickle Brick Branding.

Roll On 2006.

Penguins Crossing

Listening to Ever So Lonely by Monsoon

My obsession with the Tube Map continues. http://www.oskarlin.com/2005/11/29/time-travel/

This beautiful version is based on the time to travel. Maybe I could get a copy to go with The Great Bear.

While we are on the subject of the Tube, how about some etiquette? The few times I have been on the Tube have been a mess of bodies like some gigantic, all-comers game of Twister.

Emergent Thoughts

Listening to Changes by David Bowie –

- which is so apt it hurts.

ALICE was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

My wife and I had a lively debate last night regarding the teaching of reading using analytical phonics. So lively in fact, that we may have to explain to the neighbours. I think we finished in broad agreement. I was actually trying to defend the use of a study which has resulted in this turn-around in how reading is taught after my wife (an infants’ teacher) declared that you can get statistics to say anything. What is clear is that a single strategy does not suit every child and that some children require an individual plan which in order to get approval from the inspectors, have to be agreed and documented – you cannot tailor your teaching as and when required. Whether all teachers will be bothered to do this is not knowable – one day they may all give up and just teach using whichever method is flavour of the month with the current government. Did you know that the method requires a child reach a certain level of ability in recognizing words before they are allowed books – how to turn off a generation to reading. The scenario my wife described was sad in the extreme; imagine a poor child who has not managed to reach the set level of word recognition, being sent home with a set of cards with simple words on, while other children in the same class get allowed home with books. Stigma! Stigma! Stigma! What happened to the idea that children should be exposed to books from an early age? They’ll be giving the kids Soma next! Or even Ritalin!

Then there is what I just have to call the Billion Monkey’s method of teaching kids to read. It is called Emergent Reading and from what my wife says it involves kids staring at lots of words until divine inspiration strikes and they know what the word means. “Miss! Miss! Is it ‘anti-dis-est-ab-lish-ment-arism’?”

It is amusing to see the comments regarding the issues of reading on the BBC News site. Loads of “I learnt to read before I left the hospital after I was born and I never did phonics” humbug. One of the posters claimed he read Lord Of The Rings on his Seventh birthday in four hours which as a later detractor pointed out, is approximately one page every 12.5 seconds. This reminds me of Woody Allen’s joke about learning speed reading and getting through War and Peace in his 15 minute morning breaks. He said someone asked him what it was about and he said “Russia”. Another comment (apparently removed now) said that “Most kids are raised by single parents, teen mums and other vermin”. Call me reactionary but I would like to ask for an eighth circle of hell just for this person though I might admit the racist thug who scrawled graffiti in the Park where Anthony Walker was murdered. Is this over the top?

A colleague of mine was convinced that all Governments want to stifle creativity and ability in the people because it makes them question what their leaders are doing. I never believed him because I thought that no one in Government was clever enough to pull off such a strategy but when you see the U-turns and tinkering, you begin to wonder.

A Rainbow-Coloured Sky

Bizarre fools and a mumbled sigh, like weaving between the pews on Sunday morning, while the sermon drones, or back in the daylight, the mist high up in the mountains when the day is nearly over. It floods here and lunchtime fails its purpose.

My Name is Rogier (sic) and I am a Gourmand

I drive through a new estate every morning, as I may have mentioned before – something about the spurious attachments made to the barn/warehouse style living units to give them a rural feel. Along with this affectation, the builders have erected vaguely exotic vertical banners proclaiming the wonderful new lifestyle that will be had by moving to this place - New Living, Supports the life you want to lead – all that sort of guff which has been thought up because the reality of life in the little boxes made of ticky-tacky is just the same as every other estate in the country. There seems to be a dangerous trend to cover everything with words dragged out of some focus group just to hammer home with unsubtle enthusiasm what you are trying to say. There are two food show which start in the same way – Rick Stein’s recent shows have various hook-words plastered all over the titles – taste, local, fresh, produce – just to ram in what the general idea of the travels are. Hugh Feebly Whitingstall’s show has started doing the same sort of thing in a way which makes me think the titles are the product of the same graphics company. It is as if the producers are afraid that people cannot pick up the subtle clues to the contents of the shows from the listings magazines or the images in the titles. Everything is about catching the eye of channel-hoppers and maybe we just cannot do pictures any more.

This joins up with the just-announced overhaul of the teaching of reading for very young children. Every ‘new’ initiative on this subject is designed to roll back the supposed problems we have in this country and never seems to work. There are problems, though some of them are created by the used of electronic media. Is it now so easy to create a full document or presentation with graphics, that people just do – and too many of them. We used to think about documents because they had to be produced by document-makers who did not understand the contents but were very good at making the material presentable. Now we just throw the ideas at the word processor and out they come with all our prejudices about what people can understand in what we are trying to say. I say that lots of blogs are written from the point of view of an informed reader who understands a great deal of the mind of the blogger, almost telepathically, and so many corporate documents are like this as well. Bring back copywriters I say; bring back secretaries and limit the documents that come out – so many of them are just not read.