Tempestuous to introspective

Emotion and reason

2012-01-31T04:55:00.000-08:00

It is said that before the emergence of reason, the kind of logic that we do not instictively use but which says things like "if A=B and B=C, then A must equal C", there was a more primitive way of doing things. The original form of reasoning was emotional.

For millions of years of evolution, we relied of how something made us feel to decide what we did and mostly this was a visceral instinctual response rather than a considered one.
And this made sense. When you were a stone age child and your thrown toy spear went into the bushes, if fear of leopards decreed you left it there and did not pursue it, it stayed there. Unless of course someone bigger, braver or more capable decided to retrieve it.
Emotions, in the form of instinct, kept us safe, or rather kept those ancestors who survived to ultimately produce us safe. It kind of works, up to a point.

But then, about 10,000 years ago came civilisation and with it, a whole set of new ways to live. Forests were cut down and the darkness of their gloom banished along with the creatures who inhabited them. Less often did we have to fear the sharp teeth of bitey things and the pouncing of predators.
But the emotions remained. Look into a wood late at night and see what ancient warnings they still issue. This system is still perfectly functioning within us.

And then came trade and organised labour and all those constructs that made us such a successful species, but which required a way of thinking that evaluated our situations with regard to other parameters beyond those of survival. We learned to reason more systematically regarding the use of resource and its deployment. And as a result, ultimately, we have civilisation as we know it today, which is based almost entirely on the fruits of that pinnacle of reason: The Scientific Method. It gives us our food, our transport, our health, and regardless of individual opinions on it, our survival as an abundant species far beyond the Malthusian bounds which should limit our numbers.

But we are still very poor at reasoning. Flaws such as availability error, fundamental attribution error and the sunk cost fallacy all plague our daily decisions. It seems that the older version of decision making, emotions, still dominate since they have helped us through millions of years of tricky evolution and been honed by the process to be the best we could do under non-optimal conditions.
And we have this upstart Reason which has been around in its current form for probably about ten thousand years, though it appears it may have been in operation long before, perhaps when we were a small band of homo sapiens eking out a living in East Africa some 65000 years ago or so. Somebody must have said "Oh look! It's getting really crowded round here and there just isn't enough antelope and tubers to go round. How about some of us head off that way over the horizon? There's bound to be more food over there!" And they did and now there's us.

It is a very useful approach but still contains many flaws that evolution has not had time to iron out (partly because rationality has itself subverted evolution thereby removing many of the pressures that would have seen it refined by ruthless removal of flawed approaches)
So, since reason is new-ish, it hasn't had the bugs ironed out yet, we still "allow" emotions to dominate proceedings even when we are trying to be rational or when they are inappropriate to the modern day with its laws and strictures upon behaviour.

Mostly, I don't have a problem with this (apart from on Saturday nights when aggression given vent by alcohol is rather too revalent around here). Some of my most enjoyable outcomes have been as the result of emotional reasoning. It makes sense to buy this bike as the spec is higher, but I like this other one more so I will buy that. And I did and it was a bloody lovely bike.
But also some of my most stupid and regrettable actions were emotional and in those cases a bit of rational thought could have prevented a significant amount of grief all round. But we are human and this happens.

What strikes me most about emotions, however, is their sheer unpredictability. We cannot know how they will behave under certain situations. It seems that since the process of prediction is predicated upon logical projection of factors in situations, we cannot apply the process to emotions.

For instance: When my father died, we had a lot of warning. As an alcoholic, his downward spiral was only ever going to end one way. We knew this and it took time enough for us to be able regard the outcome with some degree of contemplation. In that time, I often thought about how I would feel when he finally went. I thought I had some idea and that it would be the usual feelings of loss, sadness and bereavement.
However, when it happened, there were a whole load of hitherto unexpected emotions (which I wont go into now since they are somewhat personal and irelevent to the point I am attempting to make). I was astonished at how I felt. Astonishment also was unexpected. It turned out that my predictions of what I would feel were largely wrong. But my emotions seemed to act rather well in my best interest and the blow was softened somewhat by how I felt.

This is one example of a situation where projection of events failed to give an accurate prediction of subsequent emotions. There are more but I think the point does not require further illustration.

But it was a lesson I learned which has not been entirely helpful except to teach me not to try to anticipate how I will feel under certain circumstances, because my expectations will most likely be wrong.

Emotions will do as they will. They had their way for millions of years and will not yield to our bidding now. And, frankly, in general, I am glad they do not. I rather enjoy their rebellious and absolute refusal to be coralled and controlled. It keeps life interesting, as long as we have the wit to acknowledge them and to be wary of their demands on occasion.

Breakfast in Bavaria

2012-01-26T01:36:00.000-08:00

Hotel breakfast-room toasters are always inadequate. I have made a study of this all over the world and it is universally true that bread inserted and exposed to their elements for any amount of time will remain resolutely untoasted. This disappoints me more that the tea which is increasingly available in hotels on mainland Europe. The improvements are, presumably as a result of customer complaints, in provision of tea, hot(-enough) water and milk which doesn't taste artificial. A almost-decent cup of tea is now a possibility which I find deeply satisfying.

I am in the Munich Airport Sheraton, where I have been for a few days whilst I conduct some meetings in Augsburg. As hotels go, it does make you feel that it takes you by the ankles and shakes the very money from your pockets. Its not that nice and its quite expensive. But then there is the 14 euro for parking every night, the 20 euro for breakfast, the 15 euro a day for breakfast. It feels a bit skinflinty to me.

But I am not here to write a hotel review, though I am probably rather well placed to do so, no. Breakfast made me very pensive and I feel the urge to clarify my thoughts here in writing.

Breakfast rooms in hotels always provide much food for thought, as well as the other kind. There is always a variable array of plates, jars and bowls, accompanied by elaborate devices with containers that keep sausages hot, make bacon sweaty and turn scrambled egg to a kind of durable polymer of which shoe soles could possibly be fashioned. I stand at these things still bewildered after several decades of travel, and I still never really know what to have.
At home, I might have porridge most days, done in the microwave and sufficing until my 10:30 sandwich relieves my cycling-induced hunger. But here, faced with such a cornucopia, confusion is induced. As human beings, we really are rather baffled by too much choice, regardless of how desirable a state various economic theories might believe it to be.

So, leaving aside the tedium of what I generally do choose (and its not scrambled egg because not even a hyena's robust digestion could break that down), I turn to the behaviour.

I am sitting at my table, squeezing a small silk tea bag in some tepid water, whilst my toast undergoes its slow transformation to hard, warm bread. A small bald man in business attire, about late thirties, strides in and immediately heads for the cereal. He prepares a bowl of muesli, with milk, 1% Fett and takes it to his table, then he stomps over to the toaster and without pause, pulls my two pieces of pale toast from its slots and casts them carelessly to one side, WITH HIS BARE HANDS! Now, my mother taught me to wash my hands after I go to the toilet, but I know that not everyone had such enlightened parents and I was horrified momentarily that this man has arrogantly exposed me to his germs.
He stands waiting for his "toast" with a air of aggressive possession. I momentarily consider striding over and looming over him to pointedly take my toast. I can loom rather well, I have to admit. There is quite a lot of me. But no, I think, I shall put aside such petty thoughts.

But then he barks a couple of demands at the lovely waitresses and my ire is raised, my goat got.
I decide that either he is a nice man having a bad day, which is always possible, or that he really as unpleasant as my judgmental first impression had decided.
Anyway, I decide to ignore the little shit and get on with my breakfast. I take my toast, butter it, cut it into soldiers as any self-respecting Englishman would and dip one into my quite perfect soft-boiled egg.

The waitress comes over to me to ask for a signiture and beams at me with a lovely genuine smile. She asks inheavily accented Bayrisch-flavoured Deutsch if I have all I need and I reply that I am very satisfied, thank you.

And I wonder suddenly why some people are lovely to those they encounter every day, and some are unpleasant and intolerant. I am aware of the the G B Shaw quote about all progress being made by the unreasonable man, but I am prepared to forego a little progress for politeness sake.
The waitress sweeps away gracefully and I confess I give in to an urge to appraise the cut of her uniform as she walks to the desk. But even in this, her sunny disposition is apparent and contrasting to our little Napoleon with his scowl and bad grace.

It seems to me that being polite, pleasant, "nice", is a much better way to approach the world. Ok, we all have days that bring us circumstances that we would prefer to be otherwise and sometimes this is aggravating. But when we talk respectfully to people, ask them in a civilised manner for those things we want from them and generally go through the world noticing the happy things and responding accordingly, the World seems generally well-disposed to us.
And I wonder that some don't see this connection, this cause-and-effect, and continue to be curmudgeonly and critical with every comment and every interaction. Its better for your immune system (due to the production of nasty cortisol that results from aggravation) and in general just a better way to be.

So, with this in mind, I tidy up my hotel room prior to leaving, such that the cleanig staff have a minimum of work to do to rectify the chaos of my stay.

And I bid you all a sincere and heartfelt Good Day!

Except for our little Napoleon who I hope gets painfully egg-bound as punishment for his grumpiness.

...And then suddenly, Home Again!

2012-01-14T01:52:00.000-08:00

After nearly twelve hours of recuperative sleep, I seem to have some brain function back again. You can't really sleep on an aeroplane as the noise tends to keep those circuits in your brain that remain vigilant to threat, permanently on-guard. Sleep works in cycles of about four hours and any period of sleep shorter than that does not see you complete the full, necessary cycle of stages.
So, when I arrived at my hotel, this was the view:
And when I awoke next morning, this is what was revealed when the curtains were drawn back.I cannot express how glorious this view was. The camera really cannot do it justice. The distant Rocky Mountains shining in the morning sunlight were utterly breathtaking (though so was walking up stairs in that thin air). Their jagged ruggedness was softened to pink by the sunrise. It really was quite spectacular and imprinted itself upon my memory almost as vividly as on the CCD of the camera.
However, I would rather forget. The road journey up to Boulder...

And now I am home. And it is still somehow in my head. A day or so later I reflect upon this odd modern phenomenon of long-haul travel, making a journey of months into a tedious but relatively short "hop" across the World.

It seems in hindsight like the vastness of distance through which I traveled to get home from Denver was crossed in an instant. The mind is a bit like that: It tends to shorten times in which little happened (if you can call flying 5000 miles "little" but in truth, little took place in those ten hours or so.).
But in reality, it was a rather uncomfortable and tedious time spent mostly in a huge aluminium cyclinder.
Another idiosyncrasy is the clarity with which the view in front of my eyes at this time 36 hours ago can be called to mind as clearly as if I could walk to the curtains now, pull them aside and gaze out upon the mountains again. Probably this will fade in time, but for now I am grateful to retain this vista in my head, maintaining the horizon in my head the way a pair of boot-stretchers keep your footwear open sufficiently to still get your feet in after a time of neglect.

Today, I look out upon the soft, gentle scarp of the South Gloucestershire Cotswolds and very beautiful it is too. It is a reminder that beauty comes in different forms and familiarity seems to be the arbiter in general of which one we consider the most beautiful at any particular moment.
A useful thought if ever I bumped into one early on a Saturday morning.

Reprise: A Hot Night In Dusseldorf

2012-01-12T07:06:00.000-08:00

I was sure this blog entry was still posted but I was reminded of it last night whilst unable to ignore the sounds of passion in an adjacent room in this hotel. I put me in mind of a similar experience I had whilst in Dusseldorf a few years ago, which I shall now recount, since the original post seems to have disappeared.

I was in Dusseldorf in a small hotel down a quiet and pleasant backstreet. My room was minimalist: chrome-steel, glass, white walls, poster pictures of poppies.
I hadnt done very much that evening. I had mooched down by the river, had a couple of beers in the biergarten and eaten a passable steak.

And now it was bedtime. Amazingly, it was warm and I had to open the window to let in some fresh air. The scents of early summer wafted in and kindled a myriad of interesting and exciting atmospheres inside me in various places. My limbic system was havign a field day on the unconscious recognition of links to childhood summers, adolescent tumblings and the excitement of exploration of adult holidays.

I read my book. It was an interesting book about various complicated relationships but mostly about a troubled young man and his father. I prefer books about relationships, especially when the author is perceptive enough of feelings to set out the nuances of interplay between people or within themselves. It is so much more interesting to read than exciting plots or action sequences. Tension can be built from emotions as well as from events.

And so, after a few chapters, I started feeling sleepy. So, I put my book down and turned off the light. Thats when it started:
"Ohhh.. Gott! Ohhhhh!!!" A female voice from next door.
"Hmm.." I thought "A lucky couple on this summer's night! I quite empathise with the feeling!" Warm summer weather does have the effect of kindling the passions I find.
I felt suddenly very alone, restless and incredibly envious of them in their intimacy.

And so it went on, noisily and passionately from the room next door. And on.. and on...
And I thought "Crikey! That bloke has some stamina! That must be over an hour now!"
Then it subsided. For a while. Until: "Ohhh!! Jaaaaa!!"

Another hour or so....
I wondered what manner of superman was in the next room! I tried to picture him. Was he some kind of Ron Jeremy, all hugely endowed and moustachioed? Was is some cool stud, smiling smugly whilst in complete control of the situation?

This was impossible! No man could go on pleasuring a woman that long! Its physically unfeasable! And she must surely be wearing thin after these hours!
My mind skirted away, vaguely intimidated by what it pictured and eventually I fell asleep to the groans and moans and hyena-like howls.

In the morning, bleary eyed, I dressed and went down to breakfast. The girl was coming out of her room with not a shred of embarrassment, but a lightness of step (I thought she must surely be walking like John Wayne after that!) and a huge smile. No hint of tiredness could be perceived in her expression.
She shot me a confident but perfunctory "Morgen" before turning and walking down the corridor. She looked cute, about 25, jeans, white linen shirt. No sex goddess but certainly very comfortable in her own skin.

At breakfast, she sat on the other side of the room from me and I waited eagerly to see who would accompany her. Obviously, whoever it was deservedly, was having a lie-in.
And then her partner appeared.

I was struck firstly by the statuesque nature of the breasts as she entered the room. She saw her lover and beamed. Over she went to the elfin girl and sat down . They kissed a short but affectionate kiss.
And that is when, for a moment, I decided:
It must be good to be a woman.

Westin Hotel, Westminster, Colorado, Night time.

2012-01-11T20:36:00.000-08:00

There is an ambivalence about the semi-nomadic life of a business traveller. On the one hand, the disruption is, well, disruptive. The rhythms of life, hobbies, regular passtimes interrupted, can make one quite resentful and resolve that "It's about time I stopped doing this and settled down!"
But on the other hand, the change in scenery is quite stimulating to the mind and the escape froma 9-to-5 existence has its allure.
I am not sure I would go as far as to say that travel broadens the mind because it patently doesn't for some people, as I have discovered. But it brings different horizons with new stimuli for thought. It "gets you out and about" so to speak.

But there is a soullessness about the infrastucture of business travel. Certainly it is generally comfortable. There is space and food and beer if required. I can throw my clothes on the floor and nobody berates me for my slovenliness. Provision is made (as you see) for maintaining communication with the outside world and the people one holds dear.
However, you can't go home at the end of a hard day's work (and today's was actually quite taxing. I am very tired and its not all down to the time difference) and moan about your day and slouch in your own chair.
One hotel room looks much like another and the standardisation of each one makes you feel as if you are just another standard part of this installation. Individuality seems to fade to the same characterlessness as that of the decor.On entering, one sees a room layout that becomes grindingly familiar: A bathroom off to one side, a wardrobe opposite, a bed of generous proportions, a desk opposite with all the facilities a modern business travel requires to remain productive, regardless of the field of employment (unless of course one is a farmer or blacksmith.) But the tedious predictability of it does make one's heart sink sometimes. Lucky then that each room is occupied for so little time: Time just enough to sleep, catch up on emails, perhaps write a blog entry, have a shower. And then up and off to meetings all day prior to the next hotel. "Well!" You might say "It beats working for a living!" and in some ways, it is not like the toil of my father who was physically worn out after thirty years of lifting, digging and driving. But it takes it own toll. It is very lonely for one.
Oh, i could go to the bar and look at all the other business travellers sitting reading their phones, I could even attempt to talk to some, but my experience has shown that this is not usually welcomed. One's motives are cause for suspicion in this cynical age and the sincere wish merely for company and conversation can easily be misinterpreted and meet with a slightly hostile response.
Better then to drink a few beers and wander up to the room alone to watch one of the many poor examples of television that isnt the BBC.
And as you do so, your isolation is made complete by the hyena-howls of enthusiastic conjugal relations in a nearby room. Just to rub it in! And how lonely do I feel now!

Oh well, i have my book I suppose. Goodnight people. Where are my earplugs?

Captain America and a Boeing 777

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

A strange thing happened earlier: The sun went down and very soon came up again. In fact, it barely dipped below the horizon before reappearing. We chased the sunset, caught it and overtook it. How wondrous! Its something I have never really noticed before in this particular situation. I must pay more attention next time.
To clarify: Once more I am twiddling my thumbs on an aeroplane. I am required to go and explain what are really some quite boring and tedious technical details to some customers near Denver. And still, I am mystified as to quite how I got here. But I have described that particular confusion at length during my trip last month so I won't dwell on it.

The little telly in the seat in front of me tells me we are 38000 feet (or about 11500m) above Baffin Island at 570 mph (about 900kph). Outside the temperature is minus 51C. I was attempting to watch "Captain America" but it is such an atrocious example of cimematic ineptitude that I am afraid I could stomach it no longer than the first fifteen minutes. I would like to believe it is meant to be interpreted as having a tongue-in-cheek self-parody message, but alas, I fear irony was far from the minds of those involved in producing this piece of jingoistic dross. Perhaps I have missed some subtlety.

But I digress, as always. Its very nice to have this time to myself. Forced to sit for ten hours or so in a reasonably comfortable seat (though some airlines are less accommodating), I can read or write, sleep or just watch dreadful films on the tiny screen. Its not a place I enjoy being but it beats working 40 hours a week on the production line as I once did.

It sets you thinking, being up here, faraway from the Workings of Man (except of course for the one I am travelling in). The complexity that contains me is unbelievably complicated. It keeps me safe and even comfortable in an environment that is fatally hostile to the human organism. Its outwardly sleek form contains so many different systems but seen from the outside, must necessarily be simple in form in order to present the least amount of resistance to the air which holds it aloft. The simplicity without hides the complexity within.

Ok, so I have covered all this before and I shall not dwell on the contrast between aerodynamics and that which it contains. No one person can know everything about this machine.
But when I think of the industry of collaboration between specialists of so many fields, the cooperation that had to take place in order for this machine to take shape, it is rather humbling. And indeed, in my days working at airbus, I was party to the intellectual rigour and brilliance of the engineers who conceived and designed the parts which comprise an aeroplane. As I sit here and look, we have electronics, textiles, mechanical design, fluid mechanics and the logistics to priovide me with a rather splendid dinner of herefordshire beef and a passable Australian Shiraz. So many disciplines converge and are managed to make this thing and to put it into service efficiently. People can do great stuff when they work together. Even make good films sometimes. Though sadly not in this case.

So, I recline in my seat, really no more than a piece of human cargo to be loaded and transported across the huge sky to the agreed destination. And I marvel at the tchnology and industry that puts us up here, safely and reliably, day after day. It is an activity that would have caused the Ancients to think it the work of gods to transport us in this way: FLYING for goodness sakes! As birds do and humans have mostly only dreamed of!

And, bored, I switch off Captain America and settle back for a nap,anticipating a safe landing in Denver.

Overcoming the Inertia

2011-12-30T08:01:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in a wood writing in my van. The rain is falling on the metal roof and it is a comforting, friendly sound. I have heard it many times as I drifted off to sleep somewhere near the sea as I stayed that extra night hoping for an improvement in the weather when I awoke next day. It is warm enough as I have a very nice Eberspacher diesel heater, originally installed for the comfort of the chaps of the railway crew who previously inhabited the van in its previous incarnation. I have a cup of tea here, since I have all my home comforts around me as I sit at my portable desk.

The wood is called "Midger Wood" and is just off the the A46 between Stroud and Bath. It is one of a number of small wooded valleys that lead down from the scarp. There is Ozleworth, Tresham, and I suppose further along, Dyrham and Lansdown.
This is my favourite however as I used to cycle here from my tiny village about 7 miles away, to get the best catapult sticks when I was a boy.

It is owned now by a wildlife trust and is less impenetrable than it was during the derelict periods of the 70s and 80s when it was a largely uncared-for wilderness. Now there are paths and coppices but cleverly, the wild feeling has been retained. There are owl and bat boxes and little nests provided for dormice. But there are also secret places to be found down by the little stream where the water is so saturated with lime that it coats a twig or a snail shell in a stone crust in just a year ir so.
Interestingly, given the oolitic limestone nature of the geology hereabouts, I once stumbled across a piece of knapped flint in a drainage channel from a field above the forest. You don't find flint for quite a distance from here and so it must have been brought here by someone, probably long ago. That was a bit spooky, to hold a tool from an inhabitant from thousands of years ago when bears and wolves roamed these forests.
This another of my favourite semi-desolate places where I like to go to give myself space to think. Here there is no wifi, not even any phone reception. I am uncontactable and nobody knows where I am.

So, why am I here? Well....
An hour or so ago, I was at home, suddenly at a loose end and wondering what to do. Given my slightly ADHD tendencies, I find it hard to write when there is distraction since every noise, movement or passer-by-the-window tends to send me off down a small voyage of curiosity. It scatters the attention and I lose my train of thought.

But here, with the bare trees leading off down the valley, the rain now beating on the roof of the van and a small river developing in the road which falls steeply away to the large millpond at the bottom of the hill, I have peace.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy distraction, I find it fertile. It provides a constant stream of stimulus upon which a brain may feed. Without it, the internal conversations grind to a halt to be replaced by prosaic dialogue about what to have for tea and how the garage really does need a tidy-up.

But when one needs to tease out an idea that has been forming for a while, distraction is not helpful. And so, here I am in the wilds of Gloucestershire, in the back of a transit van in the rain.

And the thought I need to articulate is brought to mind by the turn of the year. Oh, a tedious New Years Resolution ramble, I possibly hear you think. But it is slightly at a tangent to that. My thought is about Inertia.

We are all familiar with inertia in the physical sense. It makes us lean when we go around corners too fast or head over the handlebars on our bucycle when it collides with a solid object of sufficient mass.
But the inertia I describe is far less tangible. It is that force that allows us to watch life glide past as a spectator rather than as a participant. I note that in this inter-year week, such as the time between Christmas and New Year tends to become, the days have passed without regard. I could not tell you really what has transpired nor my attiitude to life and the passage of time was during that period. I was variously drunk, absorbed in a book, stuffing myself with turkey orjust staring slack-jawed at the television.
And so life goes, year by year. And each year I say to myself "This year, Pete, I must do more STUFF! I must get out more, meet more people, take part in more activities"
Indeed, at that moment when the clock chimes twelve on the 31st December, it all seems so clear! All I have to do is to get out more!

Yes, I think to myself: Its very straightforward. You just decide you want to do something, you perhaps research what is required and then, you do it.
So, why don't I? Here I am am, like so many people, with perfectly working limbs and faculties, articulate, "fun loving" and mostly open to new experiences. And somehow, I sit and think about doing stuff and just don't.
I have my splendid van, with its seats, its heater, its beds. I have bicycles, kayaks, surf-boards, musical instruments. And I could do so much!
"When the weather warms up, " I tell myself "I shall organise a grand picnic one sunny day in a park. I shall take a wicker hamper, a primus and a proper teapot and everyone shall wear hats and their finest Summer clothes!" How alluring the idea seems in thise dark winter months. Summer opens the world to us for our pleasure and indulgence. All we have to do is rake advantage of that freedom.

Every year for a decade I have thought thus, and every year, somehow I have failed to make it materialise. It can't be that difficult can it? Well, ok, there is the weather. It has not really been generally suitable for picnics, but some days wiuld have been perfect even so. So what stops me organising it?
Well, perhaps fear of rejection. There needs to be people. "The people make the party" it is said and this is undoubtedly true.
But given the haphazard nature of British weather, one would have to organise such a gathering on the spur of the moment and few people have the flexibility to do that. There would probably be a lot of people who are busy and would decline. But I could ask! If even two other people come along, it is a realisation of the idea.

No, something else is at work here. It's "inertia". We sit on our sofas or at our computers and information comes to us. It is not necessarily entertaining information, but it is sufficient for us to remain there awaiting more. A type of overriding gravity holds us in place and the thought of changing from this relatively comfortable state to something else - anything else - just seems unappealing, regardless of how much fun the alternative might be. Its just too much effort to physically or even metaphorically get off our arses and make it happen. A paralysis of the will overtakes us and we stay where we are. We sit, vegetating, prevaricating, doing what we have always done. And the great opportunities of life happen elsehwere, to other people or not at all.

This has to stop! A change must take place! No longer can time be wasted in the frittering away of moments awaiting the next email or status update. Picnics in sunny parks must happen. Dances must be attended and conversations over coffee must take place. Trips to wild sea or long sandy beaches will happen and sunsets watched with friends with a glass of wine or mug of tea await, ours for the taking.

Where an obstacle exists, it must be examined and a solution found. If there are no people, find some (ok, harder to do than to say, but this is the 21st century with all its attendant communications technologies). If no event presents itself, organise one! Phone LOADS of people. Surely everyone can't be busy or indifferent! Playfellows must exist somewhere!
Ok, family ties and commitments must be taken into account and I remember those from when the kids were small. But fun was still to be found within such constraints, rendering them less of a constraint and more something that adds flavour by sharing the experience.

But if what prevents action and fun is merely the difficulty of rousing ourselves to action from our fur-lined rut of discomfortless apathy, then this must be recognised and energy injected.
I have had this realisation several times before, but the quietness in my mid towards the end of this year has been so resounding and eventually full of despair, that this time, I have made this public statement that it will be tackled and persevered with. I ask sincerely for anyone reading this to suggest how the mind-numbing, resolve-paralysing force of inertial immobility can be overcome. Some strategy must exist for those times when we know delight is within our grasp but somehow we are too leaden to stir ourselves to reach for it. If you know how to do this, please help!

If colour and vitality is not to be drained from us to be replaced by drabnesss, lethargy and mediocrity, the nettle must be grasped and life seized by the ears and ridden like a wild horse. Texture, sensation, vibrancy can be our, if only we can overcome the lethargy.

So no more intertia! Let us as Zorba says "Suck the very marrow from life!"
See you in the Park in June. Wear a hat!

Some Boxing Day Wilderness

2011-12-28T12:09:00.000-08:00

Every Boxing Day for the last few years, we have walked off our turkey and mince pies by a walk up and along the lofty peninsula of Brean Down near Weston Super Mare (though somehow, in nature, not near Weston super Mare). I will not describe its features as the wikipedia page covers it perfectly in physical depiction as does this picture which I hope the photographer won't mind me linking to, but which shows it so beautifully that I just had to refer to it.

Brean Down is essentially a Mendip Hill which is in the Bristol Channel, along with the islands of Steepholm and Flatholm.

I remember Brean Down from my childhood when I played on the beach down below. It is a long flat beach and my memories of it are of the vehicles which were left rusting after being overtaken by the sea to the chagrin of the foolish people who drove them down there, doubtless enticed by the prospect of driving fast over a huge uninterrupted expanse of sand. Personally, I think this is madness from many perspective, not least mechanical, knowing what sand does to machinery.it's a steep climb up a flight of steps to the top of the down. When one is weighed down by a voluminous belly from several days of excess, it seems a never-ending toil to get to the top of the steps.

Once you get to the top, hacking and coughing your congested guts up, you are confronted by a view along the length of the first hump of the Down. There are several of these that you walk up and down along if you walk down the southern side. Its a walk along a spine of rock, a long drop down one side and shallower drop on the northern side with a view of Weston and up the Severn. Weston looks particularly ugly and incongruous given the ruggedness and beauty of the hill upon which one stands. But the view along the peninsula, with the Somerset Levels behind me, always fills me with a sense of adventure and wildness.
With the ageless moaning of the wind in the stubby hawthorns, I am the paleolithic hunter leaning on my spear and wondering at the gods that lived beneath the waves or I am the Victorian artilleryman heading back to the barracks wondering if the invasion will come and if I would be the first to spot it and raise the alarm.

There are the remains, in the form of long interconnected mounds, of the neolithic field system, though looking at the shape of the wind-stunted trees, it is hard to imagine any soil remaining there for very long, hence the walls I suppose.
There is also at the highest point (I have not really been able to see it but i think the rectangular depression in the picture might be it), the remains of a temple to Apollo build by the Romano British in the 4th century. This was purportedly built upon and older temple stretching back into prehistory. Given the eeriness of the place, high up on a long line of rock with water swirling grey and forbidding either side, you can see how ancient peoples might have attributed a specialness to the place and of course to many human minds, geographical specialness often equates to supernatural attributions.As you get along towards the end, the path gets very rugged and the steepness of the cliff accounts for a number of dogs every year who, chasing the goats or whatever else catches their hunting instinct, run over the edge to presumably pause motionless for the second or so before they realise they are above empty space, at which point the knocking of legs against air stops, accompanied by a surprised expression as gravity resumes its ten metres per second squared pull towards the sea.

At the end of the promontory is the fort. Walking down the steep hill towards the fort, you get a sense of how bleak it must have been to be stationed here in the 1860s when Lord Palmerston decreed it be built as part of a line of defences against invasion.
The fort is still in reasonable shape, though mostly without roofs and with the huge artillery guns now gone. Part of it was blown up when a certain Gunner Hains shot his rifle into the the powder magazine on July 3rd 1900. Nobody knows why. But perhaps the bleakness just got to him. I can understand that, though not the spectacular response.

There are rails which head down to the sea where boffins attempted to develop a ship-launched bouncing bomb in WW2. The bomb rolled off the end, stopped and exploded, terminating the rail raggedly and the programme promptly.The most atmospheric place feels to me to be the gun emplacement facing south west at the top of the hill. Derelict but sturdily made from concrete, they stand starkly against the skyline, hinting at the number of eyes that must have scanned the horizon over the years from their fortified windows. Even now there is a lovely view of Steepholm.
I stand in the middle of its graffiti-covered walls and attempt to imagine the soldiers pacing around on long winter wartime nights as the huge searchlights played out across the Bristol Channel looking for invading ships. It is not difficult to hear the tread of their boots or the grumbles at the inclement weather in between puffs on cigarettes.
On the North side, the going is easy. There is a rough road which traces its way along the hill for a mile and a half. It passes the house of Captain Cox from the 1800's, modified as a command post in WW2 and the gun emplacements from which bren or Bofors gunners would have rained down fire upon any invading tourists attempting to storm Weston beach in the hope of the last of the raisin muffins from the Edwardian tearooms.
It is a relatively easy walk round the back of the headland and back to the car park. Usually, here, we arrive windswept and cold and sit in the van cooking up the remnants of the Christmas dinner as we stare out to "sea". Its not really sea, I think, though there is seaweed, the fragrance of which is almost convincing. It is difficult not look wistfully out at the water as you eat your reheated turkey, stuffing and sprouts in rich gravy. Or the cheddar truckle and home made bread as we had this year.
Then, sated, as the light fades, we drive home through the twilight along the sandy road towards Berrow, listening to (as is my wont) Kate Bush "Hounds of love".
And that is Boxing day, atmospheric and invigorating!

The Party Season

2011-12-20T07:06:00.000-08:00

Every year at this time, the Sunday Supplements are full of such articles as "get in shape for the Party Season!", "Fashion must-haves for the Party Season!" and "Hangover cures for the Party Season morning-after!"
And initially I think "Yes! Of course! It's Christmas! There will be festivities! How exciting!"
And I look around and... where are these parties that comprise this "Party Season"?

Now it could be just that I am not terribly sociable or popular, but I shan't be attending any parties this Christmas. Indeed, I am not aware of any taking place. And every Christmas, this seems to be so. This vague cloud of indistinct festivities looms up at us from about October onwards with a promise of happy throngs of revellers enjoying each others' company with abandon in some social whirl of celebratory engagements.
And suddenly, I look up and its a few days before Christmas and, well, no invitations have been forthcoming, in fact, I haven't heard from anyone for ages!

Is it me? Do I smell? Am I just persona-non-grata in civilised society? Or do people just stay in and watch telly nowadays?

Ok, in an ideal world, it would be deeply exciting to be invited to, and attend parties where flamboyantly-dressed characters converse with much laughter in darkened halls where bands of musicians play evocative tunes and acrobats cavort in harlequin suits above. I would dance all night and hold quickfire bantering conversations with a man in a purple silk top hat and a lady in a burgundy velvet ball gown. And we would toast "To life and living it!" and jostle and laugh,
But a quick drink down the pub after work would be good too. Only.. everyone works from home now (as I do mostly) and face-to-face interaction seems a thing of the past.

I suppose I could hold a party. But I start to draw up the list and realise that, the kids are grown up and the link they provided to the friends of the last twenty years (i.e. those with whom we shared children of the same age) is broken now. The list of potential attendees is somehow strangely short and everyone we ever knew has buggered off somewhere. A few tentative phone calls and discouragement is complete. Despite there being no parties elsewhere, those few people I know are all somehow otherwise engaged.

So, let's hear it for the party season! We can pour ourselves a drink, put on our party hats and sit down to watch Christmas Escape to the Country as we toast to "Absent Friends!"

A few Observations from my trip

2011-12-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

Well, after my long avoided lightning trip to America, I have merely a few photos and some t-shirts bought from the outlet mall on I25 to show for it. It is 12 years since I last went to America and I confess this trip was easier than I had remembered. Passing through Denver airport instead of Washington or Chicago is much more civilised as it feels a lot less metropolitan and serious.

All that Americana was quite overwhelming since I think we are deceived by the seeming similarity of language into thinking the cultures are similar. In some ways perhaps they are, inasmuch as wherever you go, people are people.
And of course there is a cultural colonisation happening the world over through appealing American brands and retail meccas resembling the strip malls one sees on the outskirts of towns in the US.
Much fuss seems to be made about this here, but I suppose if this is what people want then there seems no reason they shouldn't have it.

But the unselfconsciousness of people is rather endearing. Upon hearing my obviously English accent, many Coloradians would stop and ask with genuine interest "Where are you from?"
"England" I would reply. And their curiosity would result in a cheerful and pleasant conversation ending in a heartfelt "Well, welcome to America and I hope you enjoy your stay!"
I find such generosity of spirit very endearing. You don't often find it here in England where we tend, on the whole to be polite but a little grumpy (Think "How are you today?" "Ohh.. mustn't grumble I s'pose..").
And I do so love American street names. Look at this: "Lady Moon". That same unselfconsciousness is apparent here and how lovely to call a street thus. Admittedly, the grid patterns of the other streets and the logical convention of numbering streets instead of naming them is a little less imaginative, but nevertheless, it has a systematic purpose behind it which makes sense. But a street called "Harmony" must surely e more interestingly named than "High Street" and "College" tells you, as does our most common street name "Station Road" precisely what to expect there. My hotel was on "Horsetooth" which apparently reflects the shape of the hill which runs parallel to it. That frankly tickles me.Sometimes however, one encounters the surreal in the enthusiastic... This struck me as a little "South Park"

Alas, the work that piled up in my absence, despite the tools given to me to make me constantly contactable anywhere in the world, is quite insistent. Hence I do not have time to elaborate fully on my observations from last week. I have another busy week this week with a trip to Stuttgart, stormy weather permitting, so I will probably forget most of them anyway. But for now, here is a photo from my hotel at twilight. You can see the mountains in the distance, perhaps 50 miles away. They are so huge and yet at this distance merely hint at that indescribably but evocative feeling of adventure one feels whilst looking at distant hills at dusk.

So, for now, I leave the memories of a five thousand mile journey across the world by aeroplane, for a twelve mile journey to the office by bicycle.
Life is full of contrasts.

How did I get here?

2011-12-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

It's a bit odd really, where you find yourself sometimes. I am on a plane flying across the Atlantic. I have eaten a rather passable dinner and have watched "Cowboys and Aliens" which was a ripping good bunch-of-nonsense yarn, perfect for a long flight. Now I am settling down to appraise my situation objectively. Suddenly life seems very confusing.

Growing up in a tiny village in Gloucestershire, I was just "Our Pete": a proper scruffy urchin with a mop of unruly hair, the fringe of which covered my eyes and hid my default expression of cynical scepticism. I sneaked through woods, cutting sticks for bows and arrows, I pinched eggs from the hens in the old railway carriage henhouse a mile or so outside the village. Smelling faintly of wild garlic or cow parsley, I made dens in hedges and was generally a bit of a ragamuffin. It was a good life for a child but the horizon of my life was pretty much the extent to which I could walk from home, or where other villages' territories extended with their own ruffian kids who were generally not well disposed to interlopers.
Occasionally we would go to Bristol to visit the dentist or I would go to work with my dad on his milk tanker which took us all around the farms of North Somerset. I thought that was what life consisted of. School and our locality. Anything beyond was literally Terra Incognito and I only had the vaguest sense of what might exist beyond my everyday experience.

Well, I grew up, as one does, largely retaining the accent most beloved of those who play turnip-headed goggling yokels on telly and I got an education of sorts. It was not a terribly distinguished academic career, interfering as it did with the generally fascinating experience of being sentient. But amazingly I scraped sufficient qualifications to become employable (just) and somehow, yet again, I "got away with it".

Strange then that somehow I should be writing this at 37000 feet (as I began) over Greenland in a Boeing 777, seven hours in to my flight to Colorado. At home, my (missed!) dance class will just be starting on the intermediate section and it will be dark and cold.
Up here, we have experieced permanent daylight for an unfeasably long period as we have followed the day westward. Catapulted thousands of miles, in a few hours by almost inconceivable forces, it is light at nine o'clock home time. Implausibly, I am eating a double Gloucester sandwich (oh how far away Gloucester feels now!) several miles up over the North American Continent.

My juvenile self could not for a moment have contemplated himself up in an aeroplane. He might perhaps occasionally have glimpsed one high up on a summer's eve leaving golden jet trails in the sunset as it travelled towards places beyond his young imagination. But to fly? To Colorado?
Colorado was one of those places I saw in those glorious photos in National Geographic magazines. My grandfather used to bring them home from the childrens home where he was a gardener. They hinted at a world of exotic and enormous vistas, so different from the fields I was used to. They gave me strange feelings of atmospheres of places, how it might feel to be in them or smell them, or tread their rocky trails. To this day. when I hear the name "Colorado", I smell the smoke from a cowboy's campfire and see red sandstone buttresses and high snow capped mountains.

But I never thought I would actually go there. Why would I? I am "our Pete from Walkmill Lane" Who lived in isolated little Kingswood and was inseparable from his old parkha and wellies as he grubbed for fossils in the hills of Gloucestershire.

Looking down at Ice floes as we fly towards the northern coast of Canada, it seems odd to me that I should be here. My presence is required to discuss really, fairly mundane issues of technology with some engineers from a customer. I really cannot quite believe it necessitates this journey above the clouds to places I only saw on telly as a kid (and which were therefore in a way, no less mythical than Narnia or Middle Earth). Down there are people who speak like they do on films!
Outside the windows of the plane, the crystals of ice that form the clouds of those very exhaust trails whizz past the window, blurring my attempted photographs and possibly showing as long white lines in the sky for some (very cold) small boy to look up at and wonder.

It seems there is knowledge I possess that requires me to attend this meeting. But somehow, I can't quite believe it and it feels as if I might turn up to greet a roomful of people in Denver who will look up in puzzlement and say "What are you doing here?!"
And I will be rumbled.

They could, with seeming justification say "Didn't you used to be that kid who used to kick horse poo at the girl guides on their walks and shoot conkers at the cows' backsides with your catapult to see them raise their legs in the air? Why are you in our meeting?"
And I would say "Oh yes. So I am. I don't know what got into me. I will get my coat and go home. I don't know what I was thinking!"

Somehow, however, I will seem respectable and plausable. I will stand up in front of my customers and make pronouncements about this and that, and they will nod sagely in response with looks of considered concentration on their faces.
And me, I will be, in my mind, observing from a point ten feet to my right, looking at myself in disbelief, wondering if the words are coming at the bidding of some corporate demon who for that moment, is in possession of my vocal cords.
Will anyone guess, I wonder, what a fraud stands before them? Jargon and sincere opinion will spout forth from I know not where and these learned fellows with years of experience in engineering and technology will have no inkling of how implausible I feel. Surely, on my exit from the meeting, my boss will be there frowning, hand outstretched saying "Your pretense is uncovered! I have seen through your feeble disguise as a responsible employee! We demand all the money back!"

Well, perhaps somehow the knowledge has seeped into me unnoticed over the years. Maybe the conversations I have observed and the presentations I have sat through have actually sunk in and I do know my stuff. Could it be that all that I say will actually be correct and informative?
No, it can't be. I am "Our Pete" from Kingswood. All I know about is the best way to get to Hillesley Road from the Ash Path at Nind via Farmer Newman's fields. I can't possibly know what I am talking about.

And yet, somehow, I am here, sat on BA219 London Heathrow to Denver. I am looking down now at Lake Superior, en route to a meeting with customers, having left my Big-Grown-Up-House, my grown-up children and my wife back home in far-away England.
Sometimes, don't you just look at it all and hear the words of the song in your head?:
"And you may ask yourself 'How did I get here?'"

Dance yourself Happy!

2011-12-05T06:41:00.000-08:00

It is my firm assertion that dance was the beginning of religion. Ok, I have no evidence at all to back that up, but it seems plausable to me. There you all are, a pliocene tribe somewhere in north east Europe 12,000 years ago or so and pickings have been a bit thin on the ground. Its the middle of winter and everyone knows the Sun has wandered off, as it does every year, and soon, it will reach the farthest point of its journey and head back again, heralding the gradual return of lighter evenings and warmer, more beneficent times.

But for now, its blinkin cold and the Head Man is a bit concerned that all the dried caribou might soon be gone. So, he thinks to himself "Crikey!" (in whatever proto-indo-european dialect they spoke in those parts) "This lot aren't going to make it to Spring in this state! They will all give up and die at this rate! What can I do....?"

So, he calls all his people together for a great pronouncement.
"Tomorrow" he says with all the authority one can muster when being eaten alive by fleas, "Since the ground is too hard for tubers and the birds have eaten all the berries, the god who lives behind yonder hill has told me I must lead you in a Great Hunt and that meat will be plentiful. But before that, to give praise, we shall have a great feast in His name and eat up all that remains of His provision. Gather wood. We shall have a great fire. Pull on your finest moleskin shoes and tonight, we make merry!" And doing whatever passed for crossing his fingers, he heads off into his tent to put on his ceremonial poncho, best antlered head-dress and facepaint.

And so, a big pile of wood would be gathered, it would get dark quite early and then a big feast would ensue. At some point, after all the half-rancid venison was consumed, some men would appear with hollow logs and big sticks, and a stirring rhythm would begin. Before you know it, everyone with two remaining working legs would be stomping around the huge fire in raptures of stone-age euphoria where the world would start to spin (possibly on account of the spores from the fungus in what was left of the food) and they felt very happy and well disposed towards each other, possibly as if some divine hand had touched them from the spirit world. That's serotonin for you.
And so Head Man would look on approvingly and pray to whatever gods he believed in that there would be more meat to replace the huge feed that everyone had just consumed.
And everyone would feel very mellow and slapping each other jovially on the back, would proclaim that the Head Man was indeed a splendid and wise fellow who knew jolly well how to organise a knees up on a Midwinter's eve.
Two days later, hopefully, the men would return with some kind of large dead ungulate and everyone would feel happy for a bit.

Ok, as proto-dinner-dances go, probably it didn't happen quite like that. But you can see the point: Dancing can send you into an altered state where you feel very close to those around you and your spirits are uplifted. And hence, it endures and we still love it.

Perhaps some may claim "Oh, but I have two left feet! I am no dancer!" but apart from making one describe a large circle of perambulation in a featureless desert, this need not be an impediment. It would appear that everyone to some extent enjoys a little jig to the right music and is the happier for it.

I remember as a student, there would often be a disco. Being largely impecunious, I would generally buy one pint of Newcastle Brown and make it last all night. And yet, I could hop on to the dance floor with my friends and dance for endless hours in a state of euphoria approaching bliss, with no training at all on how to move my limbs and body apart from having seen Pans People (A 70s dance troupe) on Telly (yes, UK readers, I AM that old!)

It appears that a form of intoxication can take place whilst dancing. I am certain this cannot just happen to me. With suitable music, I could be off my head within ten minutes of psuedo-random rhythic contortions. Neurotransmitters must surely be implicated.

Now, I have had lessons for many years so my inherent clumsiness has to some extent been eroded. But performing a spirited jive with a responsive lady to "Shake your tail feather" or a slow bluesy smooch to Diana Krall's "Temptation" can take me to the same place, only more reliably so and with less bruising to myself and bystanders.
To dance with a partner is one of the most civilised ways I know to pass an evening and I do it quite regularly. It leaves me feeling so elated

Now, I have an issue with Chubby Checker, and I should elaborate: It is to do with his "Twist". It was the first mainstream dance that was advocated to be performed solo - alone. Without a partner. I believe this started a trend which has brought about a great loss.
To hold a lady in one's arms lead her around the floor in a dance is a lovely thing. Ok, it requires in general, a little training, but frankly, not that much in order for the performance to be competent.

To dance with a lady who responds so perfectly to one's lead, even to the extent of following your thought of a move, is akin to driving a fast and responsive sports car. It is quite a delight.

But dancing with a partner is a strange semi-intimate thing. One can dance with a complete stranger, press against their bodies, feel breasts against one's chest through the thin fabric of clothing, stare meaningfully into each others' eyes, and share a proximity usually only shared with romantic partners.
And yet, it's somehow not intimate. It is merely playing a part. To dance a tango, cheek to cheek, having a shapely thigh pressing against your own, or even raised and resting on your hip, would normally be either incredibly erotic or unbelievably embarrassing. And yet, in dance, it is neither of those. It is merely acting; doing what the music suggests in order to express the emotions it engenders.

At the end of the song you take the lady's hand, you smile, perhaps perform a small bow, and go your separate ways. But you shared three or four minutes when you had human contact and your existence in the world was confirmed rather than it being a debatable point of perception on your part.

Of course, I am sure that romances do spring from dance, and perhaps that is why it endures as a form of interaction. We are apparently very well able to judge reproductive fitness from a partners ability to dance. But in most cases, it is merely sociable, polite. And everyone understands that and can feel, if they wish, safe within the bounds of convention.

Every year, between Christmas and new year, I watch "Singing in the Rain". It is one of my favourite films and the dancing is superlative. In the scene with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, the intensity of interaction is breathtaking.

But one need not aspire to such heights of perfection in order to engage in the absolute delights of dance. So, if it so pleases, and you have always fancied it, I urge you to seek out a class and take Fair Terpsichore's hand.

Seasonal Procrastination

2011-11-30T06:11:00.000-08:00

Today, I am in the office. I am looking at the telephone, putting off a call. I don't know what I expect to happen in the time provided by my delay in picking up the phone, but so far nothing has. The call is to book some business travel for a trip I really would rather avoid. I wonder perhaps if, during my procrastination, some event may intercede and obviate my requirement to be on an aeroplane for a stupid number of hours, cramped into an inhumanly small space for one with such an extensive frame.
I sit and look a the phone. I intend to pick it up and make the call, but somehow, I just don't. Some unseen but strongly felt inertia prevents me. I look to see the nature of this inertia. Is is chemical? I try coffee in the hope that the known benefits of caffeine may somehow stimulate my neurons and galvanise them into decisive action.
It does not.

The phone just sits there, impassive and yet somehow judgmental. "Go on you lazy bastard! Pick me up!" I don't.
I notice my apple. It looks so red and green and enticing. Possibly, at another time, it would just be an apple and its appeal would be merely calorific. But now, it is a welcome distraction. How long can I take to eat an apple I wonder? About two minutes it would seem.

Like a pudding, a lumpen stodgy collection of atoms who by common agreement, decide to assemble themselves together for a few decades to form me, I sit here. And so does the phone.
Dumped into my chair, like a formless sack of human indolence, like a man made from mud, I raise my reluctant eyes to the screen to see I have an email. I wonder if it will be interesting. I open it. It is not.
I type a quick reply and go back to being an apathetic blob. The phone seems more insistent somehow
Unable to put it off any longer, I reach for the damn thing. Somehow, gravity in the vacinity of my arms is higher than usual today. Taking my hand to the keypad takes an enormous effort. I force through it.

I pick up the phone. I am in a queue. Oh well, perhaps I will hang up and call back later.
A small, celebratory helium ballon floats past on the wind outside my window, perhaps a hundred feet up. I try to believe it had belonged to some forty-something lady, with a birthday and a bunch of lilies, who will not unduly notice its loss, rather than a now distraught and tearstained toddler seeing its favourite object of the day receding into the distance (where perhaps it may discover my lost motivation).
I don't succeed and my urge to go and find the poor mite and buy it another balloon to ameliorate its agitation, momentarily provides a spark of desire to do something other than sit and vegetate.
I watch the balloon dwindle to a dot. My empathy for the unkown, hypothetical toddler and his small personal tragedy subsides a little. I look back at the phone. Gravity increases again on my forearms. But I pick up the phone with reluctance.
And eventually I do the deed. Trip booked. Tedious details arranged. I am committed to my disagreeable journey.

So, why don't I feel better for having done that? Because I don't want to go. Why did my desire to not travel cause so much inertia? Surely, the unappealing nature of my unwanted odyssey is the same if I booked it immediately as it would be if I dithered. This is so. But we are not rational.

Is it perhaps a function of the season? Would it have been easier on a bright and sunny day in May? hard to say. But perhaps the greyness of November does something to the human spirit that makes everything more arduous. At a time when the nights are dark, the days barely brighter than twilight, when those small spirits of woodland and hedgerow, steal in from creeping unseen between the legs of the sheep in the field and into our houses to steal our sherry and hide our keys, is it more difficult to rouse oneself to action? I feel it is. Perhaps it is the desire to hibernate in a modern incarnation. Maybe metabolisms slow down to preserve energy till Summer and the return of times of plenty, impeding commensurately our brains and predisposing us to prevarication and sloth.

Or maybe I am just a lazy git who ought to just get off his arse and get on with it. Well, either way, I think I deserve another coffee and a kitkat now.

Incuriosity

2011-11-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

George Bush reputedly has an IQ of 120. This is not dim by any stretch of the imagination. In fact it is quite a bit higher than average. But people who met him were struck by his incurious nature. I believe his speechwriter David Frum once remarked something along those lines.

Personally, I cannot comment on the former president's intelligence or lack of since I have no knowledge other than that reported to me via the flawed and unreliable news media.
But it does make me think about something that has been niggling away at me for a long time: Some people have an insatiable, driving curiosity and some, though obviously intelligent, do not.

I was moved to put fingers to keyboard over this idea by a conversation I attempted to have with someone who was obviously bright, but seemed to have no spark about them at all. The conversation I attempted to have stemmed from some research that I found fascinating enough to delve deeper into. I had mistakenly believed, given the background of the person I was talking to that he might find it mildly interesting. So I volunteered what I thought might be seeds of an interesting discourse.

The article said that neanderthals tended to be ambush hunters as their spears were not designed for throwing but more for thrusting. It went on to further say that most adult neanderthal skeletons that had been found showed many trauma injuries such as broken and re-set bones.

When positing the reason for this, one orthopaedic expert said that the only analogue in the modern world for such a pattern of injury is a rodeo rider. Hence it is likely that the standard neanderthal approach to hunting was most likely to jump out of a bush, jab a stout spear into a buffalo or similar, and to hold on for dear life until it collapsed from blood loss or sheer disbelief.

Now, to me, the thought of our muscular hero holding grimly around the neck of an irate ungulate, his brow set in firm determination his eyes pointing in different directions as hooves and horns battered and gored his formidable form, is mildly humorous to say the least. I find this line of thinking interesting and in my imagination and my research, feel therefore compelled to learn a little bit more about the assumptions and facts upon which it all rests.

Not so my companion. He merely replied, when I concluded my hopeful two-paragraph monologue, with "uh.. yeah..." and commented about how gloomy the weather is today.

Conversely, I read an article about how the organism toxoplasmosis gondii may be responsible for road deaths in countries where it is prevalent, as its reproductive cycle is usually concluded in a cat, after incubation in a rat. Hence, the rat is compelled by its parasite to engage in risky behaviours.
Since humans catch it too and have, in this respect similar physiology to a rat, it would seem likely that humans also exhibit risky behaviour. This was borne out by the graph showing correlation of road deaths per capita with incidence of T. Gondii infection.

When I mentioned this to a lady acquaintance at a dance, it sparked a look of intense curiosity and a series of very interesting questions which precipitated an hour's discussion. Now, I know this nasty little creature is quite fascinating, making it's way, as it does to the brain of its host and secreting chemicals that interefere with dopamine production, but who would have thought it would spark an evening's conversation with an absolute stranger?

So, why the difference in response? Why do some people wish to know more about things whereas others are happy to think about no more than that which is immediately pertinent to their lives?
Of course we know most human attributes vary with a standard distribution, but does curiosity? Can you learn curiosity or is there a set of genes for it? Ever since my astonishing conversation in a Cypriot supermarket, I have been dogged by this question.

Well, since we are all here, writing and reading material that nobody forces us to, I think I can safely make the assumption that our population here comprises more than the average number of curious souls. And for that I give praise and remark again to myself that time spent tapping on here is absolutely not time wasted.

And now I am off to see what is in the fridge as it feels like tea time. I wonder how my bread turned out.

Glorious Autumn

2011-11-15T05:14:00.000-08:00

To see a dragonfly in November is very ususual. On Sunday, my dear wife and I found ourselves at a loose end and looked for somewhere picturesque in the locality to go for a perambulation. Perusing the "Walks in Gloucestershire" web page, we settled upon Woodchester mansion, which though local, was somewhere I have never ventured. So, we hopped in the van and off we went up to Nympsfield, where do lie many reminders of neolithic and bronze age habitation in the form of longbarrows, presumably so sited to give a lovely view over the Severn and thence Wales.

There is a long track down to the mansion itself. This photo looks as if I have taken it on an angle but actually the perspectives are a bit wonky in the valley itself. The valley is full of Welsh Black cattle who are sturdy little blighters and reputedly even more tasty than (and in their belted form, easily mistaken for) the belted Galloway with which our freezer is currently stuffed. The cows are good because they attract the flies that the rare bats in the belfry feed upon.The house was never finished. I don't know why. Probably the builders got distracted by a more lucrative client, or somebody died or something. It stands, unfinished, stark and beautiful, in the middle of the valley, a home to Greater Horseshoe bats and reputedly several spectral occupants which regular seances will put you in touch with. Personally, I find the gargoyles to be the most interesting feature. Bats are cool but ghosts never fail to disappoint.

There are a series of lakes, man-made by some Victorian landscaper, and it was here I saw an emperor dragonfly and another red one the name of which escapes me. It seems odd that with Christmas decorations in the shops, dragonflies are still to be seen. The elongation of both seasons seems to have brought together these two unlikely contemporaries. I tried to get a photo but they were too quick for me.
On the second lake is the boathouse. It is so very twee and you can just imagine atmospheric Summer trysts here, as the soft rain falls and Her Ladyship, freed of her crinolines, stares dreamily out of the window at the lake as the gamekeeper languishes, spent and disbelieving of his good fortune, on a pile of old horse blankets thinking socialist thoughts.
I think it is rather a lovely idea to have a boat parked under your floor. I wonder if there was a trapdoor, Thunderbirds style, through which one could drop down into a small dinghy for a quick getaway to the other end of the valley and the cover of the woods.
It was a beautiful day, unseasonably warm at perhaps 18C, but a breeze had been following us down the valley as we descended. The surface of the lake was initially covered in ripples until, suddenly, the wind dropped and...
I got a chance for an artistic shot of reflections and beech leaves. The sudden stillness was a bit spooky initially but once I got used to it, the place seemed full of peacefulness and I could happily have sat there all day, staring into the water. It was the middle of nowhere, remote, beautiful. The world surely could not intrude here.

After all these years of driving right on past this hidden treasure, I could not believe how extensive a place could be enclosed by the roads so familiar to me. There just didn't seem to be enough space.
Anyway, after a few moments of introspection, the rumbling of my stomach became too obtrusive to ignore and we headed back up the long valley to the van for a cup of tea and a kit kat. I confess that few things give me the feeling of peace as sitting in my van in a beautiful place, in the back of my van, with a cup of tea. Everyone needs a van or its equivalent, for peace of mind and mobile solitude. I have said it many times before but I love my van.

Atavistic Hibernation Instincts and Soup

2011-11-13T10:22:00.000-08:00

I intended to write something profound today, not that such an intention, though common, ever bears fruit. But after a long walk in some glorious English beech woodland, I am afraid a glass of this years excellent plum wine and some winter vegetables seem to have captured my attention instead. I don't know why the shortening of the days and the long dark nights make me want to curl up till April in a huge ball of chewed up newspaper and crave thick wholesome soups made from root vegetables, but they do.

I can't imagine that there is an atavistic mechanism for hibernation because although we most likely do have rodent ancestors back in the creataceous, most of our subsequent evolution seems to have been around equatorial Africa where it would seem there is little requirement to hibernate.
So, I suppose, I am just lazy.

Leek & potato soup? Possibly. Or perhaps the more exotic stilton and brocolli. I will have another glass of wine and think about it.

A Useful Method to Remember Names

2011-11-11T05:02:00.000-08:00

After my recent post about faces, I seem to have touched a nerve. However, it appears that people have more trouble remembering the names to attach to faces than they do remembering if they have seen the face before. I would therefore like to share with you a peculiar method I stumbled upon, which is probably very common, but which I developed out of sheer necessity some years ago: Mnemonics.

"Well", I hear some of you say "This is not new!" and indeed that may be so, but given the number of those who confess to being "terrible at remembering names" I feel it may be of use for me to articulate just how I personally employ this technique (and it may well be that this only works for my own peculiar brain-architecture, in which case, you will have to find you own method, but at least this may be a start).

It first came to me that it was most frustrating to not be able to have a name to put to a face when I was discussing, of all things, Tetley tea adverts in the 1980s. I could not remember the name of the character who did the staunchly Yorkshire voiceover for the Tetley Tea folk. I cannot remember why I particularly needed this name at that time, but having no internet to refer to then, I just had to wait till he came on the telly, acting in something and then examine the credits. This was difficult without freeze frame as we had no video yet.
And so, I discovered he was called Brian Glover (now sadly deceased). So, to remind myself of this, I imagined an enormous sheepskin mitten being slid over his shiny domed pate, him being not at all crowned with any hair. And it stuck. To this day, I remember his name.

When I started dancing, many years ago now, the format of the class was such that, being more or less equally-matched for gender (though I note there are usually about 15% more ladies than men and I wonder what the problem is with my gender if they are too slothful to drag themselves off the sofa to hold a lady in their arms for the evening), we formed lines with each man facing a lady. Then after a small part of the lesson, maybe five minutes, the ladies (usually) were moved on to the next man.
So, every five minutes, a new lady would appear in front of me, usually of a different size, shape and demeanour, which in itself assists in many aspects of the overall education that learning to dance provides. And each would introduce herself, and I would say my name and instantly forget hers.

After a period of time, they would return to you for a second time and it became increasingly embarrassing to keep asking their names, especially if they had remembered yours.
Then one day, a lady called Pam appeared in front of me, and into my mind came a picture of a time of Ye Olde Oake Ham from an advert in the 70s. Ghastly stuff as I remember, fatty and packed in salty gelatin. And I, in my mind's eye, imagined atop her head, a rotating tin of ham, like some advertising object on top of a building going round and round to catch your attention and make you buy... well, ham. And goodness me! I never forgot her name again. Each time she would appear I would say "Hello Pam!" and she would be astonished.
And so I expanded the idea. A particularly voluptuous but taciturn young lady called Nicola would always have her jeans hanging rather too low, thereby showing the majority of some very small and absolutely gorgeous pants, usually from Marks and Spencers, or occasionally Agent Provocateur (not that I paid that much attention of course.) Hence, it was easy for me to remember her as Knicker-la. Are you getting the hang of it now?
And so, it got easier. A lady called Diana strolled up one night to ask me to dance and I addressed her cheerily "Hello Diana!" and she replied abashed "How did you remember my name?" and I chuckled "Because of the bow and arrow!" which utterly mystified her. (I find it odd that someone should not have any idea of the origin of their own name, but the Huntress was a concept that she had never before encountered.) The image of her in my head was tagged with her in a chariot shooting arrows from a golden bow at some creature not included in my mental tableau.
Similarly, a nice lady called Helen took her turn to stand in front of me and when I remembered her name she asked how. "Oh, its easy!" I laughed "You have a ship on your head!"
Again the Greek myths provided me with the perfect attachment to remember her name by. Others followed: Gill had a pair of flappy ears behind which there were fish-gills, Vic has a biro behind her ear (no reason for the preponderance of ears), and Elaine has marmalade in her hair (complex synesthetic reason I shall not go into in this post. Names for me always have a synesthetic attachment. For Elaine, it is the taste, stickiness and colour of dark marmalade. I have no idea why). And all of theses "tags" accompany the face as it swims into view in the gloom of the Bath Pavillion. You would be amazed at how happy it makes someone to remember their name. Their confidence swells and they smile in the most gratifying way and it somehow makes the subsequent dance so much more personal.

So, I urge you: If you have trouble remembering names, add something relevent and silly to the image in your head of the face of that person. The more bizarre the better. Soon, you will be bringing smiles to aquaintances at every meeting!

In a Sea of Faces

2011-11-10T06:38:00.000-08:00

Pareidolia is the name given to that phenomenon that forces us to see faces in clouds, wood grain, the hills on Mars. So important is it to us that we recognise faces that vast amounts of our neural equipment is given over to the processing of facial recognition. Indeed, we even have a special brain area (which is interestingly non-functional in some people with a condition called prosopagnosia or "face blindness where they cannot recognise even close members of family).
It seems astonishing that in general, a face we have seen only briefly before will "ring a bell" even in a huge crowd of other faces. Scanning quickly across a group of people, generally we know those we have seen before and those who are new to us. We are good at faces.

And even when it is a face we have not seen for a number of years, some clever "morphing algorithm" seems to add in offsets for wrinkles, the continuing growth of nose length or the lack of hair. A face from school can suddenly leap out at us from within the aged features of a seeming stranger with such clarity that you are moved beyond the fear of embarrassment to ask "Excuse me, but are you....?". Usually, I find this to be quite reliable and only rarely do I come up with a false match. In those cases, strangely, interesting conversations usually result anyway and so I find it usually best to put oversensitivity to one side and just ask.

Today though, I had a different experience. Having had a rather heavy time of it lately with much travel on aeroplanes and when here, many late nights due to dinner with customers, I decided to take it a bit easy. A sudden desire for indolence overtook me and so, after chacking email for pressing issues and reassuring myself that the world can happily manage without me for a bit, I made myself a cup of tea and sat down to listen to the wonderful Melvyn Bragg on In Our Time.

Well, "working from Home" is all very well, but as I have described previously in a rather rambling piece, after a few hours, I start to talk to the furniture. So, after a curious exchange with the new coffee table, where I berated it for its inherent lack of stability, I decided it was time I took a wander up the High Street, possibly to buy a cake or a newspaper, and hopefully, I thought, I might enter into conversation with someone a little more animate.

Well, the usual pleasantries took place during my stroll but none notable enough to describe here. I wandered up to the splendidly sarcastic greengrocers to see if they had anything that took my fancy. Looking up from a fascinating display of Pink Lady apples, I espied a face that seemed somehow familiar. Male pattern baldness and gravity had taken its toll on the pallid features, but buried amongst them was the face, barely distinguishable, of that of a boy that in my mind's eye I could see only fresh-faced and clear-eyed by a cricket pitch in 1979.
At least, I thought it was. I didn't want to appear to be paying too much attention, but my curiosity and a smug satisfaction that if indeed it was him, then time had been far kinder to me, kept me serruptitiously sneaking glances.
And then he spoke, and all doubt was removed.

Never having been particularly fond of this character and not wishing to say hello and to then have the embarrassing situation of having no further avenues of conversation, I refrained form addressing him. After a while, slothlike and world-weary, his middle-aged frame receded down towards the clocktower clutching a cucumber and a 5lb bag of King Edwards.

Now, smugness aside, a thought struck me, a rather worrisome thought if I am honest: There comes a point at which the morphing algorithm seems no longer to be able to to compensate for intervening time. A face i remembered scribbling vast armies of cartoon stick men at primary school, in the back of his exercise book, was only just recognisable to me over thirty years later.
Up until a few years ago, faces from school rarely went unrecognised, but somehow in the last few years, another stage has been reached.

A face seems to retain its inherent features from fourteen or so, when the adult form initially takes shape and you can see how someone will appear for the majority of their adult lives. But at mid forties, it seems it passes on to another stage, which my brain cannot rectify into the previous familiar character. Most seem to get rounder and develop jowls. Hair recedes or disappears (in men mostly. Ladies often get more, at least in some facial areas) and a face becomes something completely different in justa few years.
It struck me that on a daily basis now, I may be passing old friends in the street who, because of the ravages of time, I may not notice. Something about middle-age distorts our features to a new form and a bosom buddy at ten might be addressing you in a queue about how the post office needs more counters, and you would not even know that we had shared hours of idle conversation sat in a tree in the churchyard in 1976.

As I wandered, pondering this, back down towards the bike shop, I saw a lady come out of a shop. She was my age, I know she was because I recognised her. At 15 she had been a notable beauty, one of those feted for her favours. That happens to the beautiful, I have noticed.
I remember the arrogance that beauty seemed to permit: How she replied to a small hopeful friend of mine that "No! I wouldn't go out with you if you were the last boy in the world!" crushing the lad's self-esteem possibly to this day.
eeing this mousy-haired, plump, plain lady of 45 or so, it occurred to me once more how we are all just passing through. We place so much value on appearance and yet it is so subject to change.

I said hello to her with my warmest winning smile and saw her momentarily cheered by the attention. I wondered if she remembered the long-haired ragamuffin from all those decades ago and his crestfallen friend and could translate, herself, his features onto this man who passed her in the street. I don't think so.

It is not something that concerns me unduly: The passage of time and its effect upon my face. Laughter and smiles made small deltas appear at the corners of my eyes. Frowns of concentration have furrowed my increasingly hirsuite singular eyebrow.
My wrinkles tell more about me, I hope, than the symmetry of my features or the length of my (several times broken) nose.
And I am happy with that, whether I am recognisable or not.

Autumnal Atmospheres

2011-11-06T00:59:00.000-07:00

Waking strangely early on a Sunday morning, and feeling no ill-effects upon my physical or mental state from last nights tipple, I sit pensively in the dining room and contemplate the garden. In Summer, it is a welcoming place of different vantage points where one can take a different view of what is actually a relatively small space. From the top patio, it is possible to peruse the whole of the tichy garden, to see wriggling frogs in the pond or the mother wren popping in and out of the ivy teaching her young brood, bodies no larger than a 10p piece, to fly with insistent but encouraging ones. In Summer, the garden is a room where one can wander in and out of without a change of clothing.
Suddenly, in the space of a month, it looks a bit sad. Ok, the bamboo retains its verdant foliage and the hawthorn hedge has yet to lose its leaves. But in my laziness, I have yet to clear away the tomato plants which now black and withered, still hold some red fruits, and the birch trees have deposited hundreds of leaves on the lawn almost obscuring the grass in places (which still needs cutting. How strange for November!).

It seems the once comfortable space must now be yielded up to Winter. Soon, it may be underneath a layer of snow and not only will it be a place I do not step into for months, but also something which will not even enter into my consciousness except when occasionally I look through the transparent but isolating barrier of the patio doors with their large panes of insulating double glazing.
And yet, the garden is the same place. It hasn't moved! (Well, technically, on a cosmic scale, it has: To a place further from the Sun, but this is not evident from the placing of the penstemons or the alignment of the clematis.
So, the same place, with different temperatures, different light, different moisture levels, is a different place. Where we sat and drank wine on hot days as late as early October (and it was hot too! 29C on the first weekend), now one would look quite eccentric to sit upon the damp wood of the bench with anything other than a steaming mug of tea and a big coat.

Sometimes, I just can't reconcile standing in the same place and being overpowered by how different it feels in two different seasons.

Inconsistent capabilities strike again (verbose and possibly tedious)

2011-11-03T01:27:00.000-07:00

Oh, look at all these people! All shapes and sizes, all going somewhere. Some in excited anticipation: The reward of a year or more's saving up for that dream holiday somewhere exotic or warm. Others, Like me, in the more indifferent anticipation of a meeting in some distant faceless conference room.

Once again, I find myself in an airport awaiting a delayed flight. It is not onerous, or even boring. I have plenty to do. But it has rathere scuppered my plans for a four o'clock meeting in Augsburg. I doubt now that I wil actually make it to my destination before my customer goes home for the day.

I sit on one of the many serried ranks of adequate chairs provided (as they are not always in airports) and do the dull thing of getting out a laptop. Only, i am not working. I am writing this which I feel is a much worthier passtime than looking through some dull presentation on the predicted storage market for 2012.
I do however refuse to conform to the usual businessman stereotype of dull or pinstripe suit, preferring, between the months of April and November (if the temperature is above 15C) to wear my "travelling suit", much as you see in my profile picture. I find it much more comfortable to travel in linen, even if it is as crumbled as an old elephants arse by the time I arrive. I can always change. Usually something more corporate is called for, unless I am poking about inside a computer or something.

Sitting opposite is a young girl, dressed also comfortably, but pretty as a bag of dolly-mixtures in what I perceive to be a rather individual and lovely 1940s style dress with make-up to match. We smile politely and then we write each other out of our indivisual universes. At least, she writes me out of hers.
I watch as tourists, travellers and air crew go by. I remark to myself that I could never have been an airline pilot, even had I possessed the requisite skills, as I cannot grow stubble in the appropriate facial areas.

Since I now have an hour I did not expect, I feel it is a reasonable idea to go and find some sustenance. Pret a Porter is not a place I would normally be seen starving at. There is too much packaging waste for a start. But hey, I am not paying and there doesnt appear to be anything else that appeals. A ham and mustard toastie will do just perfectly.

Next to me in the queue is a distinguished chap of probably late 60s. Bald and dapper with a look of bright intelligence, he inquires of the smiley girl behind the counter if they still serve food on aeroplanes or if he would be well advised to buy some now.
It seems that to ask a purveyor of food whether or not one should purchase some seems likely to elicit an obvious response but she possibly does not have enough vested interest to be anything other than honest.

Standing there looking like a hatless Man from Del Monte, only today without the tin opener, I remark to him that usually you have to purchase a drink and food, but that some airlines still offer a complimentary cotton-wool sandwich and a cup of tea. it seems, I continue, that even after purchasing breakfast air-side, it still feels incumbent upon us to eat what is given gratis lest we appear ungrateful.
We pass a few other lively and interesting pleasantries and go our separate ways.

Now, in this exchange, something struck me: I found the conversation easy to hold and reasonably insightful comments seemed to appear quite unbidden in forefront of my brain in preparation to be uttered. It flowed neatly and conversationally and lit up a small part of the day for both of us, i think. It was a nimble little exchange and the social interaction felt good.

So, strangely, I felt this contrasted with an experience I had on Saturday night in a pub in Burton on Trent which left me briefly disquieted.
This particular town seems to be very friendly compared to where I come from. Bristol appears to have become minor suburb of London in recent years with much of the cultural angst that accompanies large populations of aspirational people.

Converation in my area seems to be fraught with discomfort. Hesitant encounters with contemporaries seem dogged by anxiety (on their part, not mine) in case your car is "superior" to theirs or your child is doing better at school than theirs or in case something they let slip shows them to be your social or material inferior. Their angst is palpable and uncomfortable and makes me not want to talk to them. I find this deeply sad and not a little disturbing when the implications for social cohesion are taken into account.
Anyway, I digress.

In the pub in Burton, everyone was in fancy dress, what with it being the nearest Saturday to Halloween. My own outfit conssited of a khaki shirt and shorts, a pith helmet and an actual arrow sticking out of my chest, the technical construction of which I shall spare you.
Various revellers, in their own outfits, would wander up to me and initiate conversations, which I was pleasantly surprised to find.
And yet, I could find no replies! Me, who, sitting in restaurants all over the world has to make small talk with people of all nationalities in the name of business, could think of nothing to say! Why not? Was there a cat lurking behind a curtain somewhere in the establishment playing with my disembodied tongue? Had some vital part of my brain been deactivated during the previous day by too much wine or not enough sleep? What was going on? I couldn't think of anything to say!
Abashed, I stumbled clumsily through some pleasantries and one by one, small micro-expressions of boredom and disappointment flashing across their faces, they made their excuses and wandered off with their drinks to more fertile interpersonal encounters, leaving me feeling thick and socially inept. Words felt like glue in my mouth and my brain felt like it was made of plasticene which had been kept in the fridge for a few days. I determined to keep myself to myself and watch the band.

And yet, standing in Pret a Manger in Birmingham airport, dressed for another world, words appear by magic in my speech-buffer, awaiting the unconscious signal to express them to a receptive fellow traveller. How does this happen? How can one person with the same kilo and half of interesting cranial lard be so different under such different circumstances?

It seems to me that we mostly seem consistent to ourselves, at least from the inside. But really, circumstance, tiredness an especially company enable different aspects of us. feeling a bit of a stranger in a Burton pub, some kind of automatic mechanism seems to have been invoked to unconsciously take stock of my unfamiliar surroundings (and alas, pubs are becoming unfamiliar to me now beer is over £3 a pint). This leaves less mental bandwidth for spurious conversation of a witty manner.

In the familiar surroundings of an airport departure lounge, and having in my head that I am being sent to meet people purely on account of my knowledge and intellect (ha! I hope they feel they get value for money!), I suppose I felt more at ease with myself and my smooth-talking module was loaded into memory.

So, it would appear we are nowhere near as consistent as we think and it is only when we examine ourselves or our capabilities from a disembodied standpoint that it becomes apparent to us. But how is it that when talking to one person under one set of conditions we can be eloquent and sparkling with words aplenty and unusual angles on everyday concepts popping into our heads to adorn our conversation with a memorable quality, when under other circumstances we feel leaden of wit and hopelessly inarticulate? What makes the difference? Do the "people make the party" as seems to be becoming increasingly clear to me in other aspects of human endeavour? Or is it just us being a bit dim on some days? I favour the former hypothesis and wonder then what it implies for being the person we most enjoy being.

So, if only I could be verbally eloquent upon demand and not based upon where I am or who I am talking to. That would be useful! But how to do it.... Aye, there's the rub!

Unintended Recipients

2011-11-01T05:02:00.000-07:00

Today, my hunter-gatherer brain is struggling with the modernity of the tasks it is forrced to deal with. Given the capabilites it developed for stone-age survivial, it is very good at directing me where to throw a rock in order to anticipate the location of a fleeing and edible animal and excellent at judging whether the other human I have encountered is well disposed towards me or is likely to club me to the ground with a blunt object and boil my head as a belt adornment. We are generally good at things that help us avoid being genetic cul de sacs.

What mine is not good at however, is juggling the many pieces of information that pass rapidly through my attention, requiring adapting, redacting, interpretation and disseminiation to a particular audience.
Similarly, it was never designed to deal with the proliferation of material objects in a modern house and their distribution to their various correct places in the home. This is why the credit card bill gets discovered in the fridge and my keys end up in the microwave.

Today, a number of very technical or political emails need writing and sending to the correct people. Try as I might, I cannot escape that feeling after I have pressed send, that I have dispatched the wrong email to unintended recipients. I read and reread the headers, scanning the To: fields and the CC: fields, knowing full well that these are the people I need to send this information to.Prompted by the knowledge that a small moan about someone would be at least embarrassing to go to the wrong audience, I peer suspiciously at the email addresses and finding no mistakes, I send the message. And yet, not trusting myself, I keep checking the "sent items" to make sure that in my renowned dippyness, I have not created a howler that will bite me painfully upon receipt.

I am reminded of a particularly arrogant sales rep once who wrote a scathing email about a customer being childish and unreasonable on a certain point and then promptly sent it to them, instead of to his boss as he had intended. That is sphincter-clenchingly embarrassing.

And today,in my head, my communication commitments all go round and round as a big cloud of information, waiting to be sifted into knowledge and fired off to be read by someone who will discern its significance.
Only somehow, I feel there is too much of it and like a tornado in a midwest trailer park, a maelstrom of stuff is circulating incoherently in my head, only instead of pants, small surprised dogs and minor household items, it is ideas, concepts and data that swirl around to be snatched wriggling and unwieldy from the confusion, and stuffed into the appropriate place. What if I accidentally send the sensitive financial stuff to a big distribution list of hard-bargaining customers? Imagine if the arcane technical secrets of particularly clever accomplishments are received by a customer with leaky allegiances instead of one of our own techies? It could be the end of me!

Like some scatterbrained postman, that delivers The Greenpeace membership package to Grumpy Daily Mail reader ar number 29, Mrs Wossname's Ann Summers toys to the crusty dowager at Rose Cottage and the Slipknot CD and Knock-off viagra to the evangelicals at the Old Rectory, who knows how much consternation my own disorganisation might cause.

All around is a vast sea of information which at the touch of a button, could bring about a disaster through accidental, careless or haphazard misdirection.
And most days, I feel this can all be routed happily and safely to the right places.
But somehow, today, confusion reigns and i just know that at some point, I am going to hit send and someone somewhere is going to cough coffee all over their screen in shock or outrage. Today, my poor paleolithinc brain is just not up to it. I am going to do something epically stupid.

I think I had best go for a walk, get a haircut, buy some digestive biscuits and see if I can get a grip on my errant attention before I do something to get me fired.

Sorry. I haven't got me glasses on.

2011-10-31T05:21:00.000-07:00

Its not as if a human body has a documented specification. Oh, more or less we know what it should do, what is acceptable average performance, the same way we know most cars should go up any hill on a motorway in at least fourth gear. Ok, some will go up Toghill (a notorious long hill north of Bristol historically used by 1960s bikers to test the power of their machines) in fifth and still accelerate, whereas others, like my old van, may struggle embarrassingly in third.
Bodies are similar. Generally it is accepted that it is vaguely symmetrical in distribution of limbs and sense organs and most should allow the owner to run for the proverbial bus if required.
But some bodies are not built to this plan, or end up through misfortune being unable to perform the tasks a "healthy individual" is expected to be able to perform. There are various opinions on this and it is not my intention to wander into that particular minefield.

Being one of the lucky people who had my full quota of legs, arms and ears, and being reasonably aquainted with the use of them through the medium of dance and other physical passtimes, I suppose I always came to expect this machine that comprises me to do more or less what it was "supposed" to do. And generally it has. Ok, I find running long distance hard, but then I am a large lump of mobile meat with mostly fast twitch muscle fibres. But in all else, I more or less conform to the spec.

So, when I found one day that, sat in a foggy layby on the A9, just outside Munich, I could not read the map, I was initially mildly confused. "Gosh!" quoth I to myself "Its a pain in he bum the way google puts a blue line on your route so it obscures the road numbers!" And I blundered my way to my hotel via my own natural and somewhat flawed navigational skills.

But then, the jibes from the kids about how I was holding books further and further away at arms length starting ringing some bells and I was reminded of a morning in Plymouth once when we finally persuaded my own dear father to buy a pair of reading glasses as they made him "look like Harrison Ford". And his resultant "Bloody hell! I can read the paper with these on, Em!" to his very patient wife, was a revelation to him and a relief to us.

And now, suddenly, here I am, eyesight failing, squinting at my screen because "I forgot me glasses!" Pitiful!

So, now, and I know this is not a good long-term strategy, I buy +1.25 reading glasses where ever I see them cheap, and I leave pairs of them in all the usual places. It's something else to remember, but it does obviate that tiresome lack of detail that otherwise bedevils any close-up scrutiny of books or objects requiring tiny screwdrivers. As yet, the attrition rate of my reading glasses is quite high: pairs sat upon, pairs sliding off onto the garage floor and smashing, pairs lost in hotel rooms. But at a fiver a pair, its not so bad, even if some of them are a bit naff in design (especially the letterbox black framed pair that was £2.49 from lidl which make me look decidedly "continental").

And function is restored. Ok. I can cope! Some have glasses from birth and can never see properly without them. I was lucky.
But! This is the first sign of the inevitable decline into incontinence and delapidation. Ok, I have most of my own teeth (I lost one during a less than honourable exchange in Gloucester in my callow youth. careless of me certainly. But porcelain is pretty close to tooth enamel in appearance and few would know).
Of course, there is the sudden intrusive growth of eyebrow, standing like the spears of Xerxes army as they marched out of Persia. And the ear hair thing. Why do I need hair in my ears suddenly at 35. Surely infants need to keep out insects too? But so far, everything still works.
And now my eyes ar eletting me down. What next? Erectile disfunction? Male pattern baldness? I don't like it one bit! It's the thin end of the wedge as i am now old enough to be qualified to say.
But as my old mate Dave, philosopher and natural scientist he is, "I am 48 . I have most of me own teeth and I can sleep through the night without having to get up for a wee!" so we should be grateful for small mercies. A couple of hundred years ago, I would have been dead by now anyway, through TB, small pox or the ague.

So, I squintingly accept the inconvenience of my specs and assign a pocket in my jacket accordingly. And if the increased definition that they bring should alert me with unnerving clarity to the extra wrinkles I can now see in the mirror, then so be it. Cough hack wheeze grizzle moan..

Tumbleweeds

2011-10-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

How does one jump-start a brain? What can be used to jolt it from the comfortable but boring quotidian cycle of existence-consumption-sleep?

I can see how the notion of Muses came about. Its easy to attribute our flashes of brilliance to some capricious being with the power to bestow inspiration, and who, upon a whim, sends a flash of insight such that creativity is engendered in the recipient.
And then, when the Muse so wishes, she withdraws her favours, leaving us bereft of ideas and confused as to why the inside of our heads contain only lumpen prosaic tasks. That's muses for you! Changeable and mischevous. Indeed, inspiration does seem to be unfathomably mercurial. Sorry, I am mixing up my Greek deities now.

And so, inside their bony dome, 100,000,000,000 neurons all sit idly twiddling their axons and not a one of them is able to scintillate a thought into a creative act worthy of expression.

Time was when thoughts would strike me on a regular basis. It was as if they floated freely and formlessly through the air looking for a mind to occupy and finding one responsive, would fly in through the ear and head straight between the temples. There they would martial the imagination's resources like a conductor of an orchestra and before long a whole symphony of whimsy would be playing, longing for an audience.

And today: Silence. No ideas appear, no sparks ignite. Surely there must be material aplenty? Every day, humanity excels itself with heroic deeds and acts of epic stupidity. Autumn colours reluctantly appear on some trees following the examples of others who got the hint earlier and threw themselves into enthusiastic displays of dazzling oranges, reds and yellows. The world is full of that which ought to sparkle and inspire.
But no, Facts are appraised, trees regarded and still the mind won't fire.

Its dull. I bore myself. What can I do?

A Banana Split Flight Delay Blog

2011-10-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

Hanover Airport 7th October 2011, 8p.m.

I have been in this airport for four hours now. I have read most of my book and my two New Scientist magazines. Nobody of any note is visible on the whole concourse, so there is nothing much to look at.
Nothing for it then but to get out my laptop and do the nerdy businessman thing whilst keeping an eye on the monitors for updates.
Of course, I hope I don't look like the nerdy businessman, having uncomfortably changed out of my suit in the salubrious surroundings of a toilet cubicle whilst the Vietnamese cleaning lady hammered on the door telling me in broken German that she really needed to clean the toilet now.

So, now, suit stowed and clad in my cerise shirt with a big collar with a visible floral backing, I make my way to the Mövenpick restaurant for a good feed. I notice my reflection as I pass a mirror and it occurs to me this shirt is perhaps a little camp after all. I cough in a gruff manner designed to emphasise my secure heterosexual orientation, such is my desire not to give the wrong impression. It fails and I break into a hacking wheezing cough because I have had a chest infection for two weeks which refuses to go away.

The Mövenpick is an atmospheric restaurant, despite its Swiss origins. A huge window opens up onto the runway and the ambience is reinforced by the sight of airport machinery and aeroplanes standing somewhat stoically under orange light in the Film Noir twilight rain.

I order a Hefe Weizenbier and a smoked salmon rosti. It all arrives gratifingly quickly as one would expect from such an efficent restaurant. The Rosti has a huge dollop of rather mild and extremely tasy horseradish lying artistically on top. I don't usually like horseradish so, experimentally, I scoop some up onto a piece of smoked salmon. It is utterly delicious, so next time, I add a forkful of rosti and this is even better.

The beer calls to me tantalisingly and I take a good long draught. After the horse radish, the weizenbier takes on a distinctive vanilla aspect that I had hitherto never noticed in a drink of its ilk. This is, I remark to myself, a rather opulent and enjoyable feast, and given the day I have had, I think I deserve every bit of it.

A rosti is a strange dish. It is apparently grated potato, made into a kind of pancake and shallow fried in butter. Served with smoked salmon, it is rather rich, but I manage. It reminds me vaguely of the refried chips we had once on a camping trip when I was a kid, left over from the night before and fried in the breakfast bacon fat. Just the thing for a growing lad! Alas, I cannot see my dinner in this light due to my failing eyesight, so I have to put on my reading glasses, which brings the food into a somehow surreal and rather too sharp focus.

There are two loudly laughing German ladies in front of me in riding jodhpurs. They keep getting up to do various things, such as ferret about in handbags, throughout their meal, which seems strange to me as I have not have occasion to move for some time and after that main course, it is doubtful I even could.
I wonder momentarily if they rode to the airport on horses. Perhaps, next to the Hertz and Avis vehicle returns there are two palominos tethered to a post whilst an attendent examines every square centimetre for a scratch or dent in order to extract extortionate and disproportionate payment for barely visible damage.
Jodhpurs on the right form can stop a man in his tracks. They can hug a bottom and emphasise glorious feminine curves with mesmerising effect. Not so these. They are slightly too big for the bottoms they contain and a little baggy in the crotch. And they are brown, purple and pink check with white arse-padding. It seems a strange choice of garment to be travelling in on a plane. Two enormous ice-creams arrive and are added eagerly to the bottom girth in only a few minutes.

Outside in the rainy gloom, almost dark now, a plane takes of. It is a small jet, possibly an Embraer or similar. Take-off always seems miraculous to me, even now. I have worked on aeroplanes, I understand the physics very clearly and yet here is several dozen tons of metal leaving the ground rapidly with no visible means of support. A propellor implies motive power, as a wheel rotating on a car does. You can feel the notion of thrust from just looking at them. But a jet jut throws out gasses and this seems somehow too arcane to propel an object to thousands of feet in the sky.

My banana split arrives. It is positively sinful in its indulgence. A small pot of chocolate sauce is perched on the tray, for pouring over the ice-cream. I pour it all and scrape the remainder from the tiny jug with my finger, catching the eye of the waitress who twinkles a knowing smile at me as if to say "Everyone does that but its still cute".

It occurs to me that the Swiss are notoriously good at chocolate and I ponder briefly when in their history, relative to clockmaking, they aquired this specialisation. I know they have a lot of cows and alpine meadows give rich milk, but cocoa beans come from a very long way from Switzerland, whereas metalwork has been going on there for a very long time.
Nevertheless, I am grateful to whoever brought the idea to them as the sauce is utterly gorgeous.
Spent, my ice-cream devoured, I slump back into my chair, gesticulating feebly to the waitress for the bill with an air scribble. Mostly people don't use pens any more now that chip and pin cards are predominant, but since I am forced to use American Express by my employer and I refuse a PIN for it because I am a cantankerous luddite, I still have to sign a bill. This pleases me as it is one of the few times in these modern days that I ever use a pen.

Sated, I head out into the concourse of the airport, just in time to hear the announcement that my flight is now delayed an hour to ten o'clock.
The joy of international business travel...

post script: We eventually took off at 11:30 p.m and I got home at 2 a.m. on the Saturday morning.

Cultivate Serendipitous Connections

2011-10-12T03:47:00.000-07:00

As so often, I stare at the screen and the widget stares back. Less intimidating than a blank piece of paper, its white space nevertheless conveys the sense of expectation to be filled with something.
As a piece of A4, ruled with a margin and faint blue lines is less forbidding than a truly blank sheet bearing no marks or implication of structure, the widget's friendly buttons for the addition of pictures, links or videos, hint at some kind of encouragement to put one's thoughts in a coherent manner within the space indicated. Once begun, the words come more easily, the space no longer being empty and the fear of despoiling it largely overcome.

And so, I wonder briefly why such spaces exist anyway. Why, all over the world, are people tapping away their days, writing thoughts profound or inconsequential, into small white spaces on a computer screen? Is it a form of narcissism? Possibly. Hypergraphia? Certainly words and concepts announce themselves to me, and hence compel me to release them upon a largely indifferent world. Perhaps the motivation does not bear too much scrutiny. Maybe we should just let the thoughts coalesce into words and see what happens.
Personally, it balances me to write here. The words I wield are tools which are refined through use, but also they are the currency of our internal dialogues and any improvement in our language and articulation must surely provide some commensurate improvement in the quality of our thinking. And goodness knows I need that!

A book I flicked through, by an actual writer, about the process and craft of creative writing, suggested we should "cultivate serendipitous connections". I think he had a different meaning in mind to the one I took from it, but isn't that my own connection? I take it to mean exchanging ideas with people who see things differently to myself. People. Yes, the people make the party, so to speak. In a roundabout way, I shall arrive at my thoughts on this, mainly because, until I have written them down, I won't really know what they are. Only that there are many and I need to explain this to myself on this rather difficult of days.

Today, I find myself beset with a heavy sadness with which I do not want to infect the world. Other peoples' moods are their concern and perhaps it is arrogant of me to think I have any effect on them whatsoever. However, the human condition does contain a large component of empathy (in apparently 98% of people anyway) so I hope my melancholy is not too contagious.

I have to go to a funeral in a little over an hour; a funeral of one taken very young as he was just taking his first steps to an independent life as an adult in the world. I shall not dwell on the details, only that he was as talented and magnificent a young man as one could ever hope to meet and that he succumbed after a long illness which I consider a very unjust stroke of fate. It goes without saying that this is a tragedy for all who knew him and also for the world which, given his particular gifts, would surely have benefited from his participation in it.

I remark to myself how I came to know him, through my son's Greenpower Racing team. Such a tightly-knit and wonderful group of kids working together to make and race an electric racing car, with parental help and signficant, very enjoyable, social activities. It was one of those activities that brought together unlikely alliances of people who would otherwise never have met. As such, it was a very fertile and productive environment that benefited us all, I think, in ways both obvious and oblique.

And I recollect all the places I have been where I have met people who, in other times, in other ages, I would have had no opportunity to know. All that we are derives from what we begin with and the subsequent unfolding narratives of our lives. How people and events act upon us to produce who we are right now is unfathomably complex, weaving, in some cases, a rich tracery of intricate threads.

Other places I have met people are virtual. They may not exist in any physical geography, but the connections I have made there exist like golden threads through actual space, the kind an atlas can signify. These threads connect me, in my mind to places all over this globe, to people who have opened up my understanding of the world, brought perspectives I could not have otherwise had any conception of, shown me ideas I had not even suspected existed.
These people close and distant, are points on my spatial map of humanity. It makes the world somehow more accessible and the ideas in it available in a way they weren't when I lived in a small village whose only link to beyond the visible horizon was the news, the papers and the library in the next town.
I feel the richer for these threads.

Some of those virtual spaces I have left. Some forums, for various reasons, I have closed my accounts on, shut down my presence. Some had passed on, falling into disrepair and neglect, some I left for different reasons. But in my head, the map of the world is still populated by pins with small flags on, and though some of the threads may be now indistinct and sagging, the influence upon me as a person will remain.

People come and go in your life, through consequence, location and ultimately death. But whilst we are here, it's the other people who we surround ourselves with, with whom we correspond and share ideas, they are the ones who make us to some large extent what we are. And I am grateful to all of those who have left their mark upon this personality that I inhabit, good and bad, for surely both had some value. The people really do make the party.

In just over an hour, I will attend a funeral for one much younger than me. And it is deeply sad for all involved, but better he lived a short life and showed an example to some, which he so surely did, than never have lived at all. He passed by my aquaintance and left a mark. A good one.

Rest in Peace Alex. I am glad to have known you.

Seventh Floor

2011-10-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

Its a strange reminder about how how a position can change perspectives. Yet again I am in that esteemed establishment, the Arosa hotel in Paderborn. This flying visit was requested a while ago but I have been reluctant to make the journey. This time, I am in the lofty heights of the seventh floor where I can see all of the town stretched out below me, as so often before. Only this time, the view is further and I can see more of the countryside beyond the grey conurbation.
I suppose I was aware of the surrounding countryside before. I just never gave it any thought. It is not really unlike the countryside at home except that perhaps the fields are a little more regular in shape. I have no idea whether there was an equivalent of the Enclosures Act in these parts.

So, once again, I am struck by the rapidity with which I am suddenly elsewhere. And after my rather unsociable Friday evening flight at 9 p.m. this evening, I shall undoubtedly be disorientated by the discovery that I am home again, without seemingly noticing the intervening process of transition. I have long since given up attempting to assimilate the amount of information that such a journey presents to my eyes and ultimately my mind: There is just too much of it and to attemt to do so just results in mild motion sickness.

But it does make me think very carefully about how rapidly situations change. That which seemed unthinkable can in moments become the only choice of action. Once I was berated for my table manners by a well-meaning if misguided soul, on the grounds they would let me down if I ever had to represent my company at dinner with customers. "Yeah, like that is ever going to happen!" I thought.

Lately, there have been too many sudden requirements for a change in perspective. There have and continue to be too may funerals for my liking too. Some of them are rather poignant, like the team mate of my son who, at 20, succumbed last week to cancer. We are all aware of the pointlessness of railing at Fate and the unfolding of the Universe, but this was a particularly bitter loss for anyone who knew him. The words of countless parents and teachers over the generations never rang truer: "No, Life isn't fair!"

And so, looking out from this window so high up, and knowing my vantage point will soon change again, I am suddenly unsettled. Certainties seem elusive and change seems to be constant. And in this we have to decide what to take with us and where to stand for the next transition.

My life has changed this week. Some things have been made clear to me about the attitude of how I approach life. I need to make some changes if I am to retain my sanity and that which I value. Deaths tend to do that to one, don't they? As does standing in a high place and looking out at the workings of humanity, nestled in a landscape.

Alas, I have a presentation to write and fifteen minutes in which to do it. So I must leave this here. It was, in its way, my own attempt to rationalise the processes that are happening in my head. It is not necessary that anyone actually read it, only, for the sake of rigour, that I feel someone could. That's hard to explain, but should you have struggled heroically this far, i am certain you know what I mean.

And now to get down to the nitty gritty of everyday life and to leave all matters whimsical in their proper place. Corporate head on, suit on, smile affixed.

More anon.

A Job Well Done

2011-09-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

My son left home yesterday. We took him, and a van full of his belongings, to his university lodgings, deposited him and his stuff and without further ceremony, left him to his own devices in this strange new city. His lip quivered barely perceptively as we headed back to the van, but hugs and meaningful lingering smiles over, it was time to depart.

I remember how this felt, at least from my own perspective. I was left in a town much less attractive and frankly hated most of my first year. But the loneliness and abandonment one feels is to some extent outweighed, or at least balanced by the sense of excitement that the novel situation, with all its new people and hitherto unimagined possibilities offered. I am sure he will have a great time. All he has to do is avoid fighting with the sailors and be careful not to get drunk and fall in the harbour. Both of these, I confess, have haunted unreasonably those hours when night is darkest and I should have been sleeping. When the night is dark and the world is asleep, you alone are left there with your fears. Often they are ridiculous fears that in the light of day, you would dismiss with a mental brush of the hand. But at night, realism abandons you and all possibilities seem likely and terrifying.
Well, I have come to terms with those. I feel the lad has been prepared as well as we could possibly have managed. I am confident he has all the skills he needs to survive alone, or can develop them based upon his innate character and existing knowledge. My wobbliness subsides a little.

But I came home and sat on his bed. His room is clear, his desk empty. I walked into the garage and my tools still lie scattered on the bench with the remains of the final projects of late-boyhood. I suspect they will have no appeal upon his occasional return. A sense of something ending lingers indistinctly but decisively in the air.

Just under nineteen years ago, we could walk around to any town, drive to any friends and, bump and tiredness notwithstanding, stay out as late as we liked without consideration for anyone else. Then my son came crashing into our lives with a powerful set of lungs and vocal cords and a requirement for constant attention. Our time was no longer our own. Then less than two years later, my daughter arrived and now we were tethered, happily I add, to the home for the routines of daily life and the care of little, developing human beings.
And what a journey it was! I confess, I enjoyed most of it joyously.
There were the little innocent questions, the answers to which formed the growing understanding of the world, the little unselfconsciously offered child opinions on things, which delighted me with their funny little interpretations of a confusing existence.
I became expert in adhesives from mending broken toys brought to me by hopeful little faces. I regressed to my own childhood whilst skipping hand in hand with toddlers through the shops.
I became finally "responsible" as, together with my wife, we charted sensible courses through the sometimes troubled seas of parenthood with the ultimate aim of bringing to successful adulthood, two small offspring of our own conception.

Well, now all the huge shoes are gone from the shoe rack. The coat rack is almost empty as the big vintage overcoats are transplanted to another hall over a hundred miles away.
We have done our job and been successful by any measure.

And so, dropping him off with the gathered possessions of his own choosing, making and collecting, a task is complete. An independent adult, accompanied by vast amounts of food that we bought for him, is now starting out on his own in hopeful anticipation.

And here, the house seems somehow empty. Its a strange feeling and I am not really comfortable with it. But probably I shall get used to it. It is how things should be after all. He might phone sometimes and possibly he will be home in the holidays.

But now I get a sense of how my own mother must have felt leaving me all those decades ago in that god-forsaken campus in South Wales, her feelings being something very distant from my own self-absorbed bewilderment and excitement at my new situation.
Sorry, Mum. I had no idea! You left me with the Red Cross Parcel. I remember it well, and was grateful. I see now the box of food is not just sustenance for the coming weeks, but a token of the love we won't be able to give in person but which we hope will be apparent in every opened tin or bacon sandwich.

So now, we have only one offspring to focus on for the two years until her own similar departure. I hope she can cope with the increased attention!

And then, perhaps, when both are set on their courses, in about two years, independent apart from the occasional financial injection from us, the job will be largely done. Two independent human beings produced to contribute to society, enjoy their own lives as people and to hopefully nurture us when we become toothless and incontinent.

Call home sometimes, though, Son, won't you.

Resolving Landscapes

2011-09-07T10:18:00.000-07:00

And once more, here I am in my favourite German hotel, in the most interesting town in Westfalia. My room has no view this time, only the wall of the building opposite, which is not particularly inspiring even given its mirrored cladding.
On my way here today, I had to go and pick up a colleague from his house, since he is a participant in tomorrow's meetings here. His house is a newly built dwelling on a piece of land near to the small village where I grew up. I rarely go back there as I find the smallness and insularity of it oppressive and it ushers into my mind those exact feelings of remoteness and loneliness that I experienced as an adolescent there with only a bicycle as a means of escape.

As I approached, it struck me how beautiful the place is. The scarp above the village is the beginning of the Cotswolds, designated as an Area of Outstanding Beauty and frankly, it very much is.
I won't say that this escaped my notice as a boy. I was always aware of how glorious the countryside was and how picturesque the vista of rolling English hills was that rose only a mile or so from our back garden. Oh, I was perfectly aware of all this. I just didn't really care because it represented unwelcome solitude and the bounds of my mental as well as physical horizon.
Villages have their advantages. Not much crime happens and it is quite secure. But they are boring and claustrophobic and you cannot so much as fart loudly without some busybody reporting it to the local Parish Flatulence Officer and everyone pointing at you in the pretty little streets for the next month.

So, it was an unwelcome revisitation that I undertook this morning to my home village, after so many years..
Down the lanes I went, the lanes that were visible from my bedroom some thirty years ago, lanes I ran, walked, cycled along. As I drove, slowly for this is a great equstrian area and many nervous horses lurk around corners (not in a furtive way you understand, but you can encounter them suddenly and disastrously if you are not careful), the ghost of another Pete rode along with me. A smaller, scruffier, more constrained Pete watched as the trees went by and shuddered slightly at the crossing of the parish boundary.

In many ways, things have changed. There are plantations of sycamore and pine grown to maturity where last I looked they were mere twigs in their deer-proof tubes. Houses are different colours. Barns have tumbled to ruins. But the big trees, the oaks and ashes they are much the same as I remember and look familiar in an unremarked kind of way. The landscape before me corresponds to a topography that is burned into my memory such that the new copses remain largely unseen and the countryside of my childhood is still somehow the landscape that I see.

And it seemed incongruous to me that this young lad, his world so small and limited would find the purpose for my being here this day incomprehensible: I am on my way to an airport to fly across Europe for my work, as I do regularly and without remark to myself, save those times I look up and with the words of the Talking Heads ringing in my ears as so often, say to myself: "How did I get here!?"

That boy who aspired to no more than a job as a truck driver, would not comprehend what he would one day become and do. "An Aeroplane? Me? For a job? No. No you must mean somebody else.." Ok, it's not head of the U.N. certainly, but to a country urchin of the 1970s, it might as well be.

Our destinies twist and turn, taking us places we would ever expect and sometimes we stop and look honestly at our situation, with a sudden older perspective, and we are astonished, unbelieving. That ragamuffin child, all long wild hair and tatty canvas coat, he is still here. Not merely a wraith of someone long gone, leaving only an echo of a presence, but still here. I am him. Oh, certainly he has been added to, distorted to some extent perhaps, toughened in places and abraded in others. But there, not so deep down, there he is peering out fearful, but occasionally excited, to see what still awaits.
The boundary that was the horizon has expanded beyond what he ever dreamed.

But at our core, do not all of us have our embryonic selves in some way still extant? Do they not occasionally look out of our eyes and halt a foot about to take a step, out of trepidation and uncertainty?
I am glad I bumped into him again. I shall consider his needs and senssitivities, but I shall also be aware of when he is unduly influencing my decisions and when his small way of seeing the world is hampering progress towards a more interesting and exciting life.

And sometimes I will indulge him, like now, when I shall bounce on the bed in this hotel room as if it was a trampoline and no admonishing adult will come to the rescue of the springs.

Fly with Respiratory Airways

2011-08-11T05:35:00.000-07:00

Oh deep joy... written a couple of weeks ago when i still had a holiday to look forward to.

Once more I find myself in an airport. Terminal one at London Heathrow. I have hardly travelled this year and this is the first time in nearly two months that I have assumed my business persona, clicking into the routine easily and without undue thought.
I like to travel comfortably, but also with a slight dash of style and so today I am wearing my favourite summer suit in cream linen, referred to as "That Suit" by a friend of mine who was most taken with it when it graced my frame in a profile picture somewhere. So, beautifully made is it that it even has a small, lined pocket in the left breast for my reading glasses that I can no longer deny I need.
Refusing to be one of those business types, all grey suit and self-importance, that one sees so many of in the course of business travel tapping on a laptop hurriedly and worriedly or talking loudly and obtrusively into their phones, I use instead the email function of my phone. It has no text editor and so this is the only way I can write on it. Its tiny qwerty keyboard is rather tortuous to use but such is the dexterity of the opposable thumbs so characteristic of our species that I can relatively easily enjoy a reasonable level of self-expression before thoughts elude me, otherwise escaping out of my ear and into the ether to be lost forever.

It occurs to me that in most of the airports I have been in this year, the only way from security to the flight gates is actually through a shop. This strikes me as somehow cynical and mercenary: You cannot avoid this minor temple of commerce, selling as it does, overpriced spirits, perfume and general tat. It would be forgivable if there was an alternative route and you could choose not to wander past the deceitful "Low Price!" tags on the gin bottles, but there is not. No, the path takes you through the shop and you have no choice but to go with it. Of course, it snares enough of the unwary and ill-informed whose foraging urges lead them to hunt a bargain, only to discover disapointingly on their next visit to Tesco that it in fact was anything but.

Two Chinese girls alight beside me on the adjacent seats. So happy are they to be in a departure lounge in London that they try to take a photo of themselves. I offer to take it for them and they are embarrassingly grateful, all unfeasably cheerful smiles and schoolgirl excitement.

And boarding commences. Up everyone rushes. I can see no point in standing in a queue that moves so interminably slowly so I stay here writing until there is only one person left in it. I wander through to the jetway with my stub of boarding pass and on to the plane where everyone is still milling in the aisle deciding if they should keep their jacket on or roll it up and stuff it in the overhead locker. They dither, doing neither and we all wait while indecision rules the space.

So, now, later, sat uncomfortably in seat 30b, sandwiched between two fellow inmates, I am wedged for two hours or so. It is an unfortunate fact that the space allocated for each of the passengers in economy class is insufficient to house my frame. I am not unduly large but my straightened legs allow my feet to be visible to the person sat in front of me and my shoulders are wider than the seat so they occupy the spaces where my neighbours' shoulders should be. This is unavoidable. The seats should be at least as big as the passengers and not comfortable only for the person of average size, such that by definition 50% of people are too big to fit.

I can see now below us, a beautiful blue English Channel, as we English feel justified in calling it. At various angles to each other are tiny ships, their wakes visible as white streaks behind them. I feel a sudden pang of longing to be by the sea. That possibility seems a world away to me now. Indeed, it will be several weeks before I am in a position to contemplate such a trip, such are my commitments.

Momentarily disheartened, I sink back into my seat and indulge myself in a daydream of being sat on the step of my van, a mug of tea in my hands and the breeze and seagulls making the only sounds I can hear. It gives disproportionate comfort to imagine being there and though I can conjure up immaculate details of what I would see, its not the real thing, solace though it is.
We hit turbulence. It seems strange that clouds can be so bumpy. They are after all merely water vapour and we know we can pass our hands through fog and feel no resistance. But at five hundred miles per hour, the change in density is as significant as that of the coffee table as your shin hits it at four miles an hour in the dark.
I watch, amused, as two hundred heads wobble left, then right, then left again, as the plane lurches and bounces along. Only from the back of the plane can this collective capital oscillation be seen. It makes me smile every time.

Such flights are, happily, not crowded with eventfulness. Again, it strikes me how mundane it has become to soar above the clouds at inconceivable speeds. I turn my mind to the idea.
Somehow, at 500 miles per hour, one tends to think a little more clearly, removed as we are from the distractions of modern life by the confinement to an aeroplane seat, with all the attendant discomfort and privations that implies.

That I should, in the course of my day job, be frequently on an aeroplane would have bewildered my young, wild self. I may have occasionally looked up from the fields and footpaths of 1970s Gloucestershire at a passing vapour trail and wondered briefly at the mechanical and chemical processes by which it had been formed, but it would have seemed sheer folly to suggest that on a regular basis, my employer, one of the world's biggest computer companies, would pay me to travel up there, albeit in cramped discomfort.
But here I am, en route to Munich where I will speak the German that I felt was so pointless when I was first compelled to learn it at age twelve.
And the words of the song come echoing back to me "and you may ask yourself How did I get here?" How indeed?

So, lulled by the engine noise, I close my eyes and lean my head back on to the too-low headrest and nod off. Until..

Phlegmatic: Not given to displays of emotion, difficult to excite, full of phlegm. Its definitely the latter definition...
Sharing an aeroplane with several hundred other people in enforced proximity always causes me to remark to myself just how revolting certain aspects of respiration really are.
The only other time the mechanisms by which we supply oxygen to our blood and hence bodily tissues is at the theatre when I am astonished at just how much people cough.

I did not ask to sit next to the rude, taciturn bearded man. I suppose that I did choose my seat myself as I checked in, from the screen in the departures hall, and so I have some culpability in my subsequent location.
But the grunting, hacking and snorting that has assailed my ears since boarding has been utterly stomach-churning. Never have I been so aware of the movement of this most particularly unpleasant and seemingly viscous of the humours.
It makes me quite bilious.
Now, I am a tolerant person, but I am certain that all this hacking and squelching is unnecessary. Frankly, I fear it may drive me to violence ere long. I put in my earphones and find some music that feels appropriate to being at 37000 feet: Ether Song, by Turing Brakes. Yes, that will do. I have forty minutes now till we all stand up and mill about with nowhere to go. I might as well go back to sleep.
With the building criscendo of the guitar, I slide into happy oblivion.

Sound at the Speed of Light

2011-06-05T04:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a small point will intrude into the muddy pool that is my consciousness and send a ripple to the surface, demanding further examination. Occasionally, if I am not otherwise occupied, and indeed, often when I should be, a curious and entertaining facet of our Universe will emerge insisting on philosophical scrutiny.

One such notion appeared to me today. I was listening to BH on Radio4, as I often do on a Sunday, whilst dripping marvellous marmalade absent-mindedly onto my trousers from my toast. A piece came on from someone who had noticed a strange phenomenon pertaining to the chimes of Big Ben.

It appears that at a distance of about 300m from the tower housing the iconic clock and its campanological companion, when listening on the radio to the "bongs" which announce the passage of time, it is possible to apparently hear the chime before it actually happens.

Astonishingly, The Wireless will play you the sound of the bell approximately one second before you hear it with your own ears. How intriguing! How can this be?

Well, it appears that this illustrates the enormous difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound. As a child, sound and light were somehow related inasmuch both conveyed information to us, only of course at seven years old, I didn't really think of seeing and hearing as information. Nevertheless, they seemed to be manifestations of the same kind of thing: What our senses receive. So, it seemed quite strange that later, when I began to have a grasp of physics, to discover that they are in fact two entirely different mechanisms, moving two different types of energy in entirely different ways, one compressive and relying on a medium, and the other, radiation, able to travel through a vacuum (ok, leaving out "the Ether" as a concept, now largely abandoned) as a mish-mash of electricity and magnetism (that I frankly still can't quite reconcile in my poor, overly-spherical head).

But here we have a perfect example of how the two differ.

So, how do we hear the bell on the radio before it actually seems to chime within our actually range of hearing.
Well, it is less mysterious in actuality, but nonetheless delightful in explanation:
The microphones that pick up the chime for the BBC, and which carry the sound to the radio transmitters and thence to the radios of Britain and the World, are mere metres away from the source of the sound. As such, the characteristic "bong" reaches us as the speed of radio waves, plus the time it takes the sound to go a few meters to the microphone. In effect, instantaneously.

Whereas, being physically 300m from the source of the sound means that, at the speed of sound (340 metres per second at sea level) it takes approximately a second or thereabouts to reach our eardrums.
So, on the radio, it arrives pretty much as it happens but over the intervening London air, it arrives about a second later.

Isn't that a delightful and strange thought?

Employment, work and human contact

2011-05-17T04:43:00.001-07:00

Going to work can be such a drag. So, you can imagine how "exotic" and liberating it seemed when "working from home" started to be talked about. Where once I had to drag myself every morning through the North Bristol traffic to a huge grey flight shed, in which my great-grandfather had worked in WW2, now I could sit in my own armchair to take phone calls and write emails from the comfort of my dining room table. I wouldn't have that Monday-morning-feeling of the requirement to be somewhere I didnt really like.

I recall the impressions of work that set the scene for my regard to my future working life: the oppressive hours sat at a desk, watching the dragging hands of the clock till I could leave this dispiriting place, The Boss, the rigid heirarchy, the expectation to keep nose to grindstone without looking up to gaze upon a more hopeful professional existence. I realised that this depressing spectre would always be to some extent present in my attitude to work: the requirement to be in a place of work for employment purposes would lay heavily upon my spirit.

How I detested the presence of The Boss, in his glass fronted office, his beady eyes fixed on us for any sign of deviation from our allotted tasks. The bell would ring at 8:45 and I was to be at my desk in the windowless room; a small open-plan container in the larger expanse of the flight-shed. I would sit at my drawing board or workbench, longing for that moment at 12:55 when the bell would ring for dinner and I would have a brief hour's respite from the grim industrial tedium. Then the afternon would follow a similar pattern until at 5 p.m or 5:15 depending on which day it was, the bell would ring and out we would all pour, elated to escape the place for another day. How miserable those days were. Only getting tothe shops on a Saturday, never having the chance to buy a stamp and post a letter but tethered by the disapproving gaze of The Boss to that disheartening space.

Later, when I escaped to work on the production line at my current place of employment, the strictures were similar, though much more relaxed, the enlightened realisation of my employer being that happier employees work better. And we did. But still there were the core hours and the beady eyed-boss. The feeling of compulsion to be present where you would rather not be wasstill palpable.

Gradually as my job became more flexible, things eased up. When you may be required to jump on a plane at short notice and fly to Europe or even the other side of the world to meet a customer, a certain flexibility is necessary. Gradually, I no longer came to feel imprisoned. Work meant something quite different and as long as we meet our numbers, nobody needs you to be a certain regular place all that often. A hotel room in germany or China can be my workplace. Deosn't that sound exotic?

Then came "working from home". I had heard during the wackier predicitons of the 70s and 80s, that this would come to pass. But like aluminium foil suits, flying cars and a complete meal in a pill, all confidently expected by 2001, I didnt expect it to materialise. But suddenly, I could get email at home and I had a mobile phone to replace the one on my desk. I could, in theory, be anywhere and still do the majority of my job. How liberating!

So, now mobile, with laptop, permanent internet access, phone, and my trusty old notebook (yes, pen and paper even in this day and age), I discovered the freedom of the "Home Office".

Ok, it is still a little disconcerting: I may get a call from some customer in a distant office in a far flung land when I am sitting at home writing an email on my bed. And I feel that to some extent, it is a little invasive to mix this external world of work with my home life. But in general, I can do most things at least as well at home as I can in the office and the tea is better.
Surely, this is an ideal situation to banish forever the misery of the imprisonment of the office or the factory?

But little by little, I notice a change in my behaviour. I miss people; My fellow inmates! After an hour or so, I will start talking to inanimate objects. I ask questions of the cacti in the bay window and request opinions from the chairs. The appearance of the hamster, sleepy-eyed from his recent waking, delights me disproportionately and my own reflection in the mirror seems a welcome visit from a character with features and expressions.

This cannot be healthy, I think to myself and I head off, at an appropriate time roughly corresponding to the ancient markers of "tea-break" or "lunchtime", to the High Street, to buy a paper, have a cup of tea in the deli and populate my field of vision with active, moving humans.
Interestingly, though my town is not big, perhaps a dozen thousand inhabitants when you include the conurbations that have proliferated over recent decades, most faces I see are unfamiliar. You would think that after twenty years or so of wandering down the same High Street and going in the same shops, I would have seen most of the faces of the people who live in the area. Not so: Only a small proportion are people I recognise and the majority are faces I have never seen and probably will never see again. I wonder briefly, every time, where they have been hiding themselves all this time, or whether they are visitors to the area.

Of course, I do see some I know: The barber who cuts my hair once a month, which his roguish Ming-the-Merciless aspect, the pretty blonde girls in the bank behind their glass screen, the greengrocer who is visited as much for the mock-grumpy insults he offers his customers as for his vegetables.
I exchange a cheery "Hello" with each and I am reassured that I exist by the confirmations of their greetings. It can be hard to be sure of this alone in a house with only streams of text arriving by way of communication with other human beings. But, catching peoples' eyes in the street and smiling, exchanging a few unimportant words, all reaffirms our presence in the world.

I pop in for my tea and cake in the cafe. It seems the manager has the knack of hiring very personable and attractive ladies as waitresses, not necessarily young, but all with a ready wit and a twinkling smile. Also I note there appears to be a theme to their physiques that personally I find rather alluring. I wonder briefly if this is intentional and if their employment is contingent upon a small waist and a shapely bottom.
But the banter exchanged is one of the reasons I continue to go there, despite the proliferation of such establishments in our town.
They seem genuinely pleased to see me and one asks why I am so "bouncy" today. I reply that I have had a good week from an activity perspective, five hours of playing in the surf with my kayak and several hours of dancing on Tuesday. I do a little dance to reinforce the latter point, much to their amusement. One of them comes out from behind the counter and requests a dance with me, holding out her arms in type of ballroom hold. I lead her a couple of steps of tango, looking as faux-arrogant as I can muster whilst smiling so broadly. She is no dancer but I finish with a small lean and release her to her tasks, noticing as I do the trace of a blush on her cheeks, which I find immensely gratifying.
I note the manager, a personable if slightly Uriah Heap kind of chap, looking on, attempting to manage the interplay of pleasant smiling appearance with mild disapproval. I smile and nod at him if to say "These ladies make this place. Know this!"

The conversation reaches a natural point at which i feel I should disengage and let them get on with their jobs and my tray is carried up the stairs for me to the quietest tables where I will eat my baked cheesecake, drink my tea and read this weeks "New Scientist". I am positioned en route to the store cupboard so occasionally one of the staff will pass me with a comment, a smile and an expression of intelligent curiosity that I find somehow endearing. A few small minor conversations ensue, but aware that it is approaching lunchtime, their busiest time, I do not keep them from their tasks for long.

I do find the information exchanged to be most fascinating. On the simple conversational level, there are sentences, comments, inflections all which give a particular set of messages. Added to that are the other messages of expression, gesture, posture. Sometimes these latter say far more than the words ever could and in general I think we don't consciously register what they might be except for the emotional signal that we feel as the output of the complex interpretative and computational processes that go on in our unconscious.

The sum total of the exchanges are a good feeling. I leave full of cheesecake and tea with a sense that people, especially a group of attractive ladies, are well disposed towards me and that, therefore, I must be generlly a Good Egg, worthy of the time spent talking to me.

I leave my table I stow my NS in my freebie IBM shoulder bag (I feel it hangs sufficiently nonchalantly and unselfconsciously from my shoulder that it lends the merest touch of intellectual to my bearing. I may be wrong: I might just look like a knob with a man-bag).

as predicted, the lunchtime rush is beginning and they are all occupied. I shelve my disappointment with this rational understand and leave, pausing only briefly in the doorway to allow through a couple of Ladies-who-lunch who are seemingly oblivious to my chivalry at holding the door for them. I remark to myself, bolstered by my recent confidence-building encounters, that they are the poorer for not acknowledging me and hence being failing to be rewarded by one of my appreciative smiles.

I walk home, back to my taciturn furniture and mute succulents.

So, sitting here now in the silence of the house, I reflect, as so often, on events.
Interpersonal contact seems like a kind of vitamin to existence that we ignore at our peril. We can be fed, housed, clothed and otherwise healthy but without the validation of small encounters with others, we start to feel very unhappy indeed. Perhaps this is why the most severe penalty that a civilised society inflicts on its miscreants is solitary confinement.

And I try to work out exactly what it is about being with other people that feels so uplifting. And I can't. It seems irreducible: It just is Good. It makes you happier and secure about being an acceptable member of the human race.

Formidable Formicidae

2011-05-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

I am writing this in some considerable discomfort due to the intrusion of nature into my comfortable world.

Red ants bite. Or do they sting? I am not sure which it is. Or perhaps it is both.
I have poked them, in far-off distant days of childhood summers, with those stalks of grass which if pulled, can be extracted, white and soft from the cylindrical outer leaves.The definitely bite. I have seen their fearsome laterally-hinged mandibles opening menacingly and closing tenaciously on the grass stalks. I can imagine just how formidable these must be if you are about ant sized. Indeed, the etymology of the word ant appears to point to an origin in ancient Germanic "amaitjo" meaning "biter".
That they sting is alluded to by the fact that as kids running about in the forests of Gloucestershire, we would sometimes find rock ants nests, usually holes in the limestone in some bank, and poke in late flowering bluebells to annoy them. The colour of the flower would take on a pinkish hue as the ants, nasty creatures about a centimetre long, would set about it roundly, attacking with abdominal contortions. This was obviously an early experiment with chemical indicators for us, though the mechanism was not explained to me until some years later when learning the explanation of pH in A level chemistry.

Anyway, ants are formidable as I have discovered to my cost.
Finally resolving to rid the allotment of ten years of lazily applied carpet mulch, I disturbed a red ants' nest at the lower end under the hawthorn tree. Their outraged presence was made immediately apparent to me by the sudden fiery stinging on my left ankle. I looked down to see it encircled by a garland of quite cross red ants, all intent on sinking their jaws into my skin. There were dozens, possibly hundreds of them swarming around the unfeasible knobblyness that characterises my ankle bones, and in answer to my uncertainty about their means of attack, I could see them stabbing their abdomens into my epidermis whilst gripping tightly with their mandibles. I brushed them off roughly and fully expected the stinging to subside in a few moments. It did not. Indeed, a day later and it still hurts, with the additional bruised sensation underlying it as if I had been struck repeatedly on the ankle bone with a small metal hammer some days earlier.

This must have been some potent chemical weapon! That a relatively small number of tiny insects should inject what is basically the simplest organic acid possible in microgramme quantities and render a huge beast such as myself in some considerable discomfort smacks of some impressive efficacy.

So I sit here contemplating my elephantine ankle, smeared with antihistamine and elevated on several cushions on a coffee table. Being immobile forces me into sedentary lassitude and I suppose I am to some extent grateful for the prod towards this, my first attempt to string words together for several months.

I am struck with a thought: In the allotment, in the area of the accursed red ants' nest, are several other ants nests. Ants seem to come in various colours, or rather, a variety of two distinct variants (leaving aside those scary monster ants i used to see in the forest as a kid which are much bigger but not often seen outside of very rural areas).
There are black ants, which are generally about six or seven millimetres long and usually all about the same colour. There is also a myriad of "red" ants, none of which, to my knowledge, are actually red, varying as they do from a yellowy-orange to a dark brown.
This latter group however, has one feature their darker cousins lack, their aforementioned aggressive mode of attack. Ok, I do know that the black ones bite. I have felt the nip of the occasionally miffed black ant and it seems altogether more of an admonishment than an assault. But the red ones, they mean business. They really set about you with spite and malice.
And it is this malice I rue right now.

But my thought: Oh yes. I remember now. If the red ants are so pugnacious and offensively equipped, why are there still black ants? Surely coldly indifferent nature must have favoured the more hostile species. I cannot imagine for one moment that any conflict between adjacent colonies of red and black ants would hold any hope for a black-ant victory.
And yet, both exist. Why?
Could it be that they have different dietary requirements?
No. It seems not, in fact. They seem to eat pretty much the same things. I have seen both lots carrying off dismembered insects and whole caterpillars. So somehow, they must coexist by colonising only the space that they require and not infringing on the areas inhabited by other ants.
None of this, of course, helps with my poorly ankles.

But it does give me introspection on these creatures of which, my research informs me, there are an estimated 22000 species worldwide, ranging from 0.75mm long to an terrifying 52mm. The most painful bite is from the Bullet Ant whose bite, eponymously, is said to resemble the pain felt when shot by a bullet. It is, on the international scale of pain, right up there at the top, presumable with a smite from a fluffy feather duster at the opposing end.

For those of a new-age naturalistic bent, I may point out that many ant species attack and invade other colonies in order to steal eggs and larvae to raise as slaves in their own nest. I am sure this is not malevolence on their part, but it hardly propagates the ideal of the harmonious balance of nature, as if a ten minute viewing of any David Attenborough programme would not make this abundantly clear.

Indeed, looking at the little creatures, I wonder if they are in fact mere automata. They have a cluster of a few million neurons and all look remarkably identical. Perhaps they are just tiny machines, programmed with all the information and behavioural patterns that they need, responding to stimuli with a limited set of reactions.

But no, some ants have been observed in the act of interactive teaching: A mentor ant will take a novice ant out foraging and will lead it to food, taking great pains to ensure the novice isnt left behind and keeps up.

So, all in all, I wonder why ants do not rule the world. They are immune to the ravages of radioactivity, they can eat pretty much anything, learn and defend themselves viciously, as my lower legs attest. In fact, perhaps they do and we just havent realised.

Perhaps I will give them a little more respect next time I lift a slab to discover their little city bustling underneath. And I will resolve to wear long socks and trousers in the allotment in future.

The last day of April

2011-04-29T23:23:00.001-07:00

I was woken today by an agonizing cramp in my right hamstring. For three, admittedly large, muscles, they caused a tremendous amount of pain and the reflexive straightening of my leg seemed initially not to help. Then sitting up, the pain receded. It seems an unpleasant and ill-conceived muscular mechanism and is disproportionately painful. Nevertheless, it was what ushered in the day for me.

A tiny sliver of golden orange could be seen on a part of the wall where I don't normally see sunlight. The acute triangle left by the overhang of the curtains admitted entry to this reminder of how advanced the year has become so far. Tomorrow it will be May and I am very far behind on my planting! No chillies or broccoli have even been sown yet. How remiss of me.

But it is not for want of time: This long break of twelve days cost me a mere four in holiday allocation. How provident that the Easter break, Royal Wedding and may day bank holiday should converge so!

I managed to avoid yesterday's royal wedding. Whilst I am glad that pomp and military splendidness can be seen in abundance at such occasions, I cannot be swept along with the euphoria at two people who are of no consequence to me getting married a hundred miles away. The very notion of royalty asserts that by birth alone, some people are more worthy than others. I may choose to rescue my relatives from a fire ahead of those with whom I have no connection, because this is human and driven by genetic imperatives which manifest as emotions. But i have no such connection to distant characters who due to historical circumstance, are priveliged to enjoy an exalted position in society, regardless of their true intrinsic worth. To argue they remain symbolic figureheads begs the question: "Of what exactly?"

Anyway, I do not wish to rant about my innate vaguely socialist leanings. I got a day off and it was rather a nice day, despite the weather forecast. Many had parties and the pubs seemed full of happy revellers.

The weather has been largely gorgeous, if a little cool of late. No rain of significance has fallen for weeks, if not months and the pond is becoming a valuable watering hole for the local fauna.
But sometimes, as the evening draws in and the fragrance of Summer hangs suggestively in the evening air, I feel a longing. My garden is beautiful. It is beautifully and cleverly designed and planted with well chosen and placed flora which have grown, as planned, into a place which takes on a magical air on a warm Summer's eve.
But sometimes, the sound of the birds, the scent and the solitude are inadequate and I wish somehow there could be a group of happy companions with which to share it. The vague sound of the television from the part open patio doors hints at presence nearby, but to be able to laugh tipsily, comment on the smell of the night air, to look up and discuss the constellations and have opinions and thoughts volunteered would fill the hole that occasionally opens up in my satisfaction.
To call round on a sunny morning and say to a number of people "Uphill Beach! Three O'clock! Bring a picnic!" and to spend the end of a day in merriment or quiet contemplation with like-minded souls would just provide a vital nutrient to the soul that I feel is missing.

I get the sense that, slumped in armchairs all over the land, many people must feel the same and I wonder at the lassitude, inertia and isolation that prevents this kind of thing from happening. Many people profess to feel lonely and yet few seem able to galvanise themselves to leave the comfort of the living room and TV to join with others for sociable passtimes. Is this a malaise of our age or was it always so? I cannot say.
Ok, perhaps the weather has some small part to play. It is difficult to say "Ok, let's meet in the park on Sunday afternoon for a big picnic" because it takes planning to know everyone is free. The necessary number of days' notice, to check diaries, can be a period in which a forecast of warm sunshine can become "chance of thundery showers" and picnics in the rain are not really desirable.
But I wonder if underlying that is a sense of fear of rejection: We do not call to ask because we fear we may be overridden by some more desirable activity or companions and thus may find ourselves less attractive company than that which we are declined for. And so the phone stays in its cradle and once again, we sit with a bottle of wine in front of the telly wishing we had some occasion to go out to.

Since I began writing this, the still morning sunrise has become an overcast day with a brisk north-westerly with a brighter side to the East. My fear of squandering a precious sunny day is now relieved and my list of domestic tasks reappears with no sense of anxiety at opportunities missed.
Perhaps today, my chillies will finally get planted.

Being here now

2011-01-13T02:16:00.000-08:00

So, I am sat in my hotel room six floors up in the Arosa Hotel in Paderborn. Far below me the city stretches away in the January rain, looking like the town in the 1971 version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", where the great glass elevator breaks through the roof of the factory and travels out above a very Teutonic looking city. White houses, each with its red tiled roof, give way in the dismal distance to white industrial building and in between, two enormous churches punctuate the view, towering above more mundane looking office and municipal buildings.
It is not a picturesque view particularly, but it is one with which I am partly familiar, having been here so very many times over the last 18 years or so.

But it is a vista that is different to my everyday outlook in Bristol and its surroundings.
Now I look out of the window and I am "here". There is enough strangeness about what I see to render it "foreign" because, although I know many of the streets very well by now, they differ in architecture and construction in ways subtle but significant from those I know as "home".

What is strange though, and this feeling has haunted my experience ever since I was self-aware, is the feeling of "not really being there". This sensation is rather pervasive and intrudes almost as much as the view of my nose used to when I was five and first looking at blackboards for a significant proportion of my days. Wherever I looked, there it was, obscuring objects and getting in the way of seeing properly. Annoying, isnt it.
But i grew to accept this triangular intrusion into my field of vision, I have not similarly accepted this nagging voice asking me "how do KNOW you are where you are? When you aren't there any more, how will you know you didnt imagine being there?"
Its a reasonable question. I remember visiting a factory in Italy about 16 years ago. It was my first trip to Italy and frankly, I was a bit surprised that providence had placed me in a position where I would be travelling to places I once considered exotic and unreachable. To prove to myself I was actually there, or rather, to attempt to gain information from another, more trustworth sensory source, I touched the walls of the building as we walked back to the office area. I ran my hands along the masonry in an attempt to touch something, literally, concrete in this strange, unfamiliar environment.

And yet, it still didnt really work. A few days later, at home, back in familiar surroundings, it was as if I had looked up suddenly and the images in my memory, the sensations of my "minds hands" could as well have been memories I created from imagination. I knew I had been there because there were witnesses and a ticket stub from my flight. But the quality of the information stored in my mind seemed as if it could have been planted there without the experience actually having ever taken place.

Sitting here looking out of this window, I know that in a few days' time, i will similarly look up and I will have a memory of having been here, but I will be elsewhere. So, how then do i make this particular "here & now" real for myself? Given that my meandering mind often takes me to places in my memory or imagination, where i can see every turn of the road, every detail of a room, how can I convince myself that I am present in a room in a hotel in Westfalia?

And this brings me to a further thought: If I can illustrate an example of the fallability of memory, I will do so here. When i lived in the dingy fug of my great-grandfather's house, which we left when I was four, I remember sitting in an armchair in my pyjamas. I suppose I would have been about three. I remember clearly the feel of the material on my bare feet. I remember the space between the arms of the chair in which I sheltered. But oddly, I also remember the door opening and a face peeping round. It was the face of a frog on a man's body. I remember the man, in a suit, with a the head of a frog such as one might see in a cartoon, or like Kiki in Hector's House for those of you familiar with this childrens' program of the early 70's. I wasn't alarmed or scared. The world was still somewhere that held all manner of inexplicable and confusing things and this was just another example of something I had not yet encountered.

I remember this as an event. Now obviously, there wasn't a man with a frog's head in Tenniscourt Road in 1968. I have obviously conflated a dream and a memory. But the memory feels real and plenty of research shows how easily memories can be created of events that demonstrably did not happen (Reference: Search, If you wish, on "Elizabeth Loftus". "False memory". Eye-witness testimony will never again be something you place implicit confidence in)

Since I seem to be unable to distinguish the quality of the memory from things I possibly imagined, perhaps, I can make a shortcut to experiences that it would be dangerous or inadvisable to have. If I eat a Mars Bar, a huge amount of nasties like sugar and fat are released in a rush into my bloodstream. This endocrine disaster is probably not a good thing, though arguably once in a while causes no harm.
However, after having eaten it, apart from feeling sick and having slightly more tooth decay, the main artifact of its consumption will be a memory of having eaten it.
Why then, can I not short-circuit the act of eating it and imagine the whole experience, thus saving myself from nutritional misfortune but still having the enjoyment in hindsight?
I shall stop at this example but it has implications for other daydreams that would surely get me in a lot of trouble were I to act them out.

Ok, we all know it doesnt work like that. It was merely a thought experiment to illustrate a point.
So, the experience seems to be the thing, perhaps not even the memory of the experience, which we know can be fallible and flawed. maybe the key to it is that hackneyed old stalwart of New Agers everywhere: "Being in the moment."

Perhaps if I relax a bit and just sit looking out of the window and stop trying so hard to "BE here!", I will allow the here-ness and now-ness to just permeate my consciousness and all will be smooth mellow spiritual creaminess.

Though, looking out at Paderborn in the rain, perhaps I might be better advised to daydream somewhere sunnier, warmer and more amenable.

Why does it take tragic reminders to give us resolve?

2010-12-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

There are some pieces of news that rock you to your very core and undermine your sometimes tenuous grip upon your internal mental composure. I had such a piece of news yesterday about someone I know. This is someone young who has been dealt the worst blow fate can bestow. I prefer not to elaborate, except to say life is even more unfair than I had ever imagined it could be, indifferent yet cruel. I cannot put myself in the shoes of either him or his poor parents; my empathy is defeated, turned aside by cowardice, fear and self-preservation and compassion is all I can allow.
Putting aside my anger at God for not existing, an inaction that I have never forgiven him for, I just shake my head at the tragedy of it all.

So, I shoehorn my wretched powerlessness into a container in my head, squeezing the lid down to contain it as best I can, I shove it out of the way on a shelf in my mind, where I know that at some point in the indistinct future, it will again burst free to torture me. In the dark of some night, the arbitrary nature of the Universe and its events will hang oppressively over me and I will toss and turn, thanking whatever providence, guiltily, that the lightning bolt flew past me and mine, and struck someone else.
But I know I will remain fearful in the knowledge that nobody is really safe and pain may be mine if probability decrees.

But fear and bitterness are not helpful and I try to find some means by which there may any shred of good to come from such an awful situation.

Yesterday, I was reminded by an email to complete my holiday calendar for this year. In 2010, it seems, I did not take all my allotted vacation days, leaving me with two weeks unused. Of these, I can retain a week for use next year, but five days must be taken if they are not to be lost.
I resolve to distribute these over the next couple of weeks.

But what kind of indictment on a life is this? How shameful that a man in his prime (well, ish) should finish a year having been too busy, distracted or indecisive to fully utilise all the free time that is his due. What the hell was I thinking?

So, given that life is finite and destiny can render it potentially significantly shorter than we anticipated, it is a crime that we do not make more of it. Well, I say "we" but obviously here I mean "I". What was so important in those warmer days throughout the year that I could not look out of the window and say "Tomorrow, I am going to the sea in my van!" or "Next week, we should go away somewhere nice for a couple of days." ?

Thinking back, actually: Nothing.

Now here we are in the frigid winter where days are short and everything is frozen solid for days at a time. And I have to find some way to reasonably use up five days, other than Christmas shopping, buying pointless things for people that they never expressed a desire to own. What a waste!

If anything is to be salvaged from the message of tragedy it is the hackneyed stolen phrase "Carpe Diem". A wearisome, overused cliché but nonetheless relevent.
But how do we sieze the day? Well, first of all, perhaps timely reminders not to be so bogged down and defeated by the minor trials and obstacles that make up everyday life: The everyday life that we are suddenly confronted with losing sometimes and hence then treasure.
Somehow, though, small obstacles and inertia become a barrier to worthy use of free time. I can't find the headphones for my mp3 player so I don't go to the gym. I am afraid my friends will be busy so I don't call them to see if they want to go out to see a band. I am listening to a podcast of "In Our Time" so, I can't pick up the phone to see if my mother is in for me to visit. Its all just a bit troublesome to do.
Finding the energy to power the momentum, to build it to escape-velocity for whatever rut or armchair we find ourselves languishing in, can feel insurmountable.

So, when the sun shines, or even when it rains, and opportunity beckons, I shall think of my friend and of all the other misfortunes that can randomly smite us, and I shall use his adversity and my respect for him to lever me from my lassitude and into action.
So, this morning, mindful of this, I aquiesced to an introductory diving course.
Why not?

Dance with me.

2010-11-26T08:36:00.001-08:00

I sit at the edge of the dance floor. I have arrived after the beginners' lesson and observe the inter-lesson freestyle that always happens for four or five songs. The ballroom in the Bath Pavillion is a lovely venue and now it is in a relative darkness that could in no way be described as gloom.
Points of laser light cheerfully play across the ceiling, making it apparent that light only exists at its point of destination. The room is full of couples dancing with a greater or lesser degree of expertise but all are in time with the music.

Some faces are frowning in concentration, but all are the faces of those in a happy place.
The song is not particularly compelling: A regular beat with some nasal female singing, much in evidence in these days of re-invented RnB (I always understood RnB to be an old black toothless geezer in shades and a shabby suit growling to 12 bar blues in a smoky dive. Now it is something altogether more commercial and characterless)

I used to be able to dance to anything that had a beat of the about the right tempo. Now it seems some music leaves me cold and, having nothing to interpret, I cannot motivate myself to move to it. This is one such song. Other songs have soul. Their emotion comes directly through the airwaves to my jive glands (wherever they are) and my limbs, torso and occasionally face, must by necessity interpret it into rhythmic movement. It compels.

But for now, come in out of the cold, having slipped out of my big coat and exchanged my outdoor shoes for my trusty dance brogues, I just sit and look.

Oddly, though I know all the moves, watching other people doing them makes them unfamiliar to the point I actualy don't recognise some. I am impressed and think "Oh, that is so beautifully intricate!" and then I realise with surprise that it's one I do all the time. An external perspective can seemingly modify our view of the familiar.
So, I sit and watch the dancing, the men leading, having to decide on what move to do and having the next several lined up barely consciously, the ladies subtly interpreting the signals of intention inferred from balance, direction and posture. It is a miracle of planning and coordination, all done pretty much without thought somewhere in the brainstem.

Only, I suddenly feel a familiar panic: "I can't do this!"

Looking at the actions performed and the fluidity and familiarity which which they are accomplished, my intellect shies away from the possibillity that I could do this, despite the knowledge that hundreds of nights before this one, I have got up and done so. The intellect is not to be convinced by this mere pile of evidence and continues to doubt.

The song ends. The next one is Santana, "Smooth". Not a song I particularly liked before I started dancing, but now one of my firm favourites. I could not explain what about it causes such joy of movement, but the song lifts me up and makes me the happiest person in the room, with movements and facial expressions that unequivocally illustrate this.

A lady approaches, her head tilted to one side in silent inquiry: "Would you dance with me?"
"Of course!" my outstretched hand replies. Our wordless exchange understood, she takes my hand, I stand and on to the dance floor we go. The way of walking to an unoccupied space feels light, confident, joyously well-balanced; Almost a dance in itself. We turn to face each other and then without a thought, that which I had observed begins happening. The music rises and falls in a beat of halves of seconds perhaps, and my body responds with a lead. The lady in turn reacts to my lead with her own sway and turn and the dance begins.
And somehow, all this now has happened in spite of te protestations of my own mind telling me that it looks far too complicated and must surely be cause for me to stumble and stall.
But no: Inside my head, a mass of neural machinery lights up and kicks into action, and the result is the true synergy of two bodies moving gleefully in time.

I don't know how this happens. I ciould not articulate from where the dubious attitude of my inner narrator comes. But that in itself is a lesson for a greater principle perhaps. Perhaps sometimes we should just trust ourselves a little more. Our intellectual voice seems destined to undermine and sabotage us and perhaps we should just do stuff anyway and have faithin our abilities.

And so, years of classes and dancing have impinted themselves somewhere in my brain and have left this wonderful programming that will unfurl flawlessly given suitable conditions: The right music, the touch of a lady's hand, soft lighting and an amenable atmosphere. Bits of salsa, tango, cha cha and other styles of my own devising throw themselves into the mix and mystified, I find we are dancing.

We move away, a spin, a grasp of a hand, a coming-together of faces. The space in between almost shimmers with intensity as two faces regard each other, holding of the transition to the next move right until the last allowable minute. we both savour the closeness of another human being for as long as possible before one beat becomes the next. Then quickly, from the languid approach, a contrasting rapid change of direction away again.
And the moves keep appearing, unannounced and yet flowing smoothly, followed and enjoyed. Leans, dips, drops, spins and laughs. For four minutes or so, there are only two people in the room and there is the music.

The song ends, we stand, smile our thank-yous and turn, other hands are offered and a new song begins, another dialogue of movement, cheerful, sultry, mischevous or dramatic. Its up to you. You choose the music and I will lead.

The Audience

2010-11-24T03:41:00.000-08:00

I recently found the "stats" button on my dashboard page. I am not sure at the veracity of the data here but taking it at face value, it appears to be interesting and sobering reading.
The first thing that strikes me is that this very blog has had 354 views in its three years of existence. I guess that is one every three days on average. Not a great deal I suppose, but it means that at least someone has stumbled over the page and perhaps read the words deposited for better or worse upon it.
What intrigues me more is the audience. Ok, the most significant audience appears to be the USA with just under a third of hits, then the UK with about a fifth. I do know some people in the US, but I am not sure they know of the existence of this blog, so I can ony assume these are passers-by.
Then of course Germany with about the same (thank you my dear loyal friends, especially you, my Friendly Librarian).
However, a proportion of the hits are from South Korea, Brazil and Iraq. Iraq? Who reads this drivel in Iraq? DOn't you have more pressing things to be worrying about than the pathetic angst and irrelevent ramblings of some bloke in England? I mean, a war torn country where bombs go off on a daily basis surely must wrest control of the attention from such trivial things as the struggles with inarticulacy of a mediocre intellect and the activities of cypriot ants?

A small note of disquiet however, is sounded in my mind by the sudden visceral realisation (grasped intellectually from the beginning of this verbal journey several years ago) is that these outpourings are public and that anyone exposing their inner fears and hopes on the internet, should do so in the knowledge that ANYONE with a computer can read them.
Of course, how the readers choose to interpret the words they read is entirely up to them, though the skill of the author in expressing the meaning clearly will obviously help to keep the intention clear. But offence can be taken, meanings misinterpreted and passions inflamed in a number of ways. We would all do well to bear this in mind I think.

Well, wherever you hail from, dear readers, meagre in number as you are, I salute you for your curiosity and well, just generally, say a cheery "Hello!" from Gloucestershire. And whatever interpretation you choose to take from any of my ramblings, please understand that they are meant with whatever sincerity my blackened and tattered conscience can muster on that particular day.

Brain intransigence

2010-10-11T03:32:00.000-07:00

I wake feeling heavy. The vestiges of this week's Black Dog visitation leaving a residue akin to heavy metals in a kidney. A numb mind, insulated from feelings, gradually comes online.

A leaden torpor holds me to the bed and, extending to my eyes, exert a force of reluctance on my eyelids. In my own localised region of gravity, I am heavier than usual and rising from bed is a challenge I feel I may not meet. The temptation to fall back in is almost overwhelming, but I totter to the bathroom on unsteady, unwilling legs.
At breakfast, I sit drinking my tea, hoping that the stimulants and rehydration will perform their magic on my sluggish brain. They do not. The list of tasks i have to accomplish today, in preparation for my trip later this afternoon, swims fuzzily in my mind's eye. Indistinct and blurred, I can see nothing of it, not even how many items, roughly, it comprises. When my mind tries to grasp individual obligations as they swim around in my head like elusive carp, they dodge behind the waving pond weed of distraction. My mental net, wielded by clumsy metaphysical hands, is far too slow to catch even one and thwarted, I give up and eat my porridge.

The inside of my head is filled with some resistant fluid, somehow too viscous to allow the propagation of thought. Attempts to remember my commitments for the day result in confusion and disorientation.

How can I coerce this unreliable organ into cooperating with me?

A second cup of tea yields no more result than the first. I fire up my laptop, peruse some emails, the contents of which I know to be of critical importance to an ongoing issue.
I will be called to account, to explain the situation using the information contained in these missives. But the words skate uselessly off the surface of my eyes and no meaning can be discerned. Oh, this is so frustrating!

Perhaps exercise will help. I pull on my running clothes and shoes and step out into the uncharacteristically gorgeous Autumn sunshine. It is a little windy, but far warmer than it should be for October. And, starting my stopwatch, off i go.

I love "having been for a run", but I hate running. On a bicycle, I am fast, possibly faster than almost anyone apart from club cyclists or those naturally endowed with advantageous muscle composition. I can maintain an easy 20mph for some hours.
But running, I am ponderous.

I do not run fast. I trudge. Like some preposterous human ironclad, my 100kg bulk stumbles along, step after step. The first minute is actually not too difficult, though I pace myself slowly.
The subsequent five minutes are horrible. My breathing increases in depth and speed and my upper ribs feel constrictive like the fingers of Giger's face-hugging creation in Alien. Gradually though, the lungs ease up and an easy rhythm is attained, though my progress is still slow for a runner.
Now, the North Wind picks up, which is good as along the long straight, punishing road up to the scarp, I start to get a little hot. I have overdressed for this unseasonal warmth and the sweat seems to be squirting out of my forehead. I am grateful for the efforts of the North Wind, though it is in my face and impeding me (though probably less than I believe).
Turning left to run along the bottom of the hills, I see how beautiful it looks in the sun. The trees still have most of their leaves and the ramparts of the bronze-age hill fort can be seen a few hundred feet above me. on this lane, about halfway through my run, i usually recite Shakespeare's 18th sonnet as a test of my exertion. If i can do it all the way through without gasping, but without to much ease, i have got it about right. i did have heart rate monitor, but i found it tedious to wear. This is adequate for the purposes of removing the obscuring layer of fat from my belly.
Today though, I am listening to Radio4, "Woman's Hour" about handwashing. It is quite interesting, so no sonnet today.
I really am still feeling rather ungainly though and my legs, used to different rhythm, are starting to complain at the unusual mode of use.
I pass the 5km mark at an embarrassing time: Over four minutes longer than at my best.
At last however, the forcing of heavily oxygenated blood through my reluctant brain, appears to be paying off. Destined for muscles, the oxygen-rich blood pushes through the blockages, flushes away the lethargy and coherence starts to appear.
Thoughts are starting to happen now of their own accord: Snatches of sentences, enjoyable phrases, remembrances of things I have to do.
I arrive at my door and fumble for my key.

Collapsing into a chair, it seems hardly seconds since I strode purposefully down the drive to begin. And yet, in the intervening time, much has happened at the level of sensation and thought. This paradoxical mismatch of chronologies always leaves me uncomfortable. But here I am, somewhere near 100% again. At least, i think so.
I guess you will have to be the judge of that.

Immersion in Ether

2010-09-09T02:58:00.001-07:00

Some times in one's life are, when recollected, saturated with intensity and emotion, possibly added nostalgically after the fact. Nevertheless, recalling a time of exquisite feeling and atmosphere can bring you sweetly back to the feelings of that time with a poignancy that sometimes almost hurts.
There have been such times in the last decade, times of exhilarating self-discovery, of breathtaking exploration and intimacy that the memories become treasured, only to be recollected occasionally lest the potency be degraded, like a photo left exposed to the light over years, fading and losing the vividness that was so precious.

Certain music has the power to aid or trigger such nostalgic retrospection. Currently, and the reason for my musing on this particular idea, i am listening to Turin Brakes "ether Song", which brings to mind the most profound, beautiful and exciting period of my life. It was a time when my perceptions of myself as a creature of drab ordinariness and pitiful flaws was being challenged, both by myself and by some people who came into my life suddenly at that point.
A crack in my self-image was being prized open by quietly spoken but convincing arguments from people I respected and a new me was emerging, painfully and cataclismically but with such a sense of wonder and excitement that I was left reeling and disoriented with the headiness of my discoveries. It was, as I realise now, a profound metamorphosis that I benefit from every day of my life now.

Well, that is another story. There have been other times of similar significance for which other musical triggers exist. the above is just the one which comes to mind from the listening of these current tracks. That they can conjure all the feelings of the time accurately and clearly as if I was once again in that place is a wonderful benefit of the power of music.
But a self-indulgent documentary of the sweeter and more personal chapters of my own particular life is not at all my point here, except to illustrate a principle that occurs from regard of the topic: Does remembrance of a time of significance, with all its attendant emotional piquancy, cause degradation of the memories?

Does listening to the songs that take you back there cause them over time to lose that ability to relocate you in time and place and emotion?

I fear it may. Hence I limit myself to only infrequent listenings of these songs and immersion in their reminiscence. I would hate to become inured to their effect and to lose the feelings and hence the enlightenments that they engender.

Ok, I concede it is dangerous and foolish to dwell in the past anyway. But our growing and learning as people is a strange process whereby a new talent, understanding or capability is initially a novel new toy that we learn to play with and develop into something that assists us in our dealings with the world and its inhabitants. Initially the shiny new component of ourselves rests obtrusively upon our psyches, inviting use and feeling distinctly conspicuous. But over time, it becomes assimilated into who we are and a part of our usual functionality, to the extent we may forget that we have it. Consequentially, if it is something we were delighted to find, as I was, we may lament that we have misplaced it somehow and reverted to our former way of being.

So, listening to these songs and sending myself back to a time when every day brought a new and wonderful realisation, causes me to revisit the features and characteristics, previously unacknowledged and hence unused, that were brought startlingly to my attention.

I suppose the fear is that, ultimately, i may, "lose the feeling" and I do so enjoy being the person I am now, even if it does sometimes upset or annoy people.

So, with my 5000 or so mp3s here, when shall go to now?

The atmosphere of rain

2010-08-04T02:01:00.000-07:00

I was in no hurry to get up. The sky was full of clouds, my customers are mostly on holiday and the office is pretty much empty. I downloaded my email but there was nothing pressingly urgent so I determined to do some work for an hour or so and then to cycle to the office. I wouldnt go at all were it not for the rather pleasant 11 mile ride through mostly pretty countryside. One cannot disregard the health benefits of 22 miles a day of cycling.

But as I finished my breakfast, the clouds thickened until it seemed from the light that surely up there above them, a partial eclipse must be obscuring a significant proportion of daylight.

Then came the rain, with an insistent hissing and a force to batter leaved from trees.
And it hasnt stopped now for half an hour. Straight down it comes, perpendicular to the ground and unceasing. Large, rapid raindrops, assertive and indifferent.

It puts me in mind of my early childhood when, uncomprehending of what lay beyond my immediate gaze, I watched similar rain for what seemed like days.
A four year old gazing at the late 1960s gloom of a dull, characterless suburb of Bristol, I watched as the rain, like glass beads, bounced ceaselessly off the concrete of the garden and filled the gutters, tumbling, as I remember for some reason, lolly sticks down into the drains and carrying the rainbow covering of used engine oil that leaked from all cars in those days.
Sometimes it poured, other days it was just interminable drizzle which seemed to be too lazy to even attempt to be proper rain.

And I, in my infant state, saw the rain, somehow between me and a world that I didnt yet really know, and which I sensed was largely indifferent to the wants and thoughts of a small boy. The rain served to confine me there, insulated from the incomprehensible world, but also as a comforting barrier and reminder of the safety and warmth of my own little world inside the house, as my mum did all those things a very young 1960s housewife needed to do.

Out in the world, there was a lot to think about. I knew this because my grandfather would doze off in front of documentaries leaving me to watch and wonder at the diversity of environments and peoples that lay beyond my experience. We didnt have a telly at home, but i stayed with him a lot and most of my understanding of what the world contained was from such gems as "The World about us" and also from the National Geographic magazines he brought home from the childrens home where he was a gardener and stoked the boilers.

I remember there was a city. It was, I was told, Sweden, and I remember vividly, the atmospheric glockenspiel music, a seemingly exotic street front and a sense of "otherness" from the streets of terraced houses and even the big buildings I saw when we would take "Our Tim" on the double decker bus to the Dental Hospital periodically (the grandest outing of my small life).
later, i would travel a lot to Stockholm and suddenly one day, a street exactly like the one I remembered hove into view as my taxi stopped at the hotel. Something told me a milestone in my exploration of the world had been achieved. The rain had stopped.

And now, i am here, in my own house, my own children pretty-much grown up and heading out into their own discovery of the world that doubtless they formed their own perspective on on the rainy days of their early childhoods.
I watch the rain and am four again. I feel the same sense of mystery at what lies beyond the curtains of crashing rain.

Much I have seen, more I hope to see.

Quite frankly, a bit rubbish

2010-07-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

Oh, I know I said I wouldnt but it seems i am destined to extrude words for the rest of my articulate days. But my former reticence comes from a valid position, which i will now explain a little of.

It started when I was at school, about 6 or so. I suppose it was the growing emphasis on literacy that started it. Once our rudimentary and individual styles of handwriting had been developed, it became clear to me that there were those who could produce clear, tidy, attractive oieces of work. And there was mine. Similarly, with drawing, but that was ok. I knew some people were artists and others werent. It was the writing which was expected of us that caused me most discouragement and later pain.

Mine always looked untidy. We were asked for a piece of work by the teacher and it was apparent this was our obligation. My clumsily formed scrawl was always conspicuous by its malformed and scruffy jumble (though it was, I contend, always legible)
The content was at best, secondary, but the style was all. And my style was messy and a bit crap.

And i always envied those people who could turn out such attractive stuff, stuff which made my attempts look so inferior by comparison that I felt shamed and embarrased. So, I tried my hardest to make mine good too, only somehow, i never managed to do it and the results were still always messy, untidy and criticised.

And so, I realised that other people can do good stuff, whereas, I on the other hand, was destined to always produce second rate stuff. I was a bit rubbish at football, I couldnt draw, I was gawky and clumsy. I didnt excel or even become adequate at anything, It seemed.

So, I grew up, my handwriting remained awful (but legible!), I was sent to remedial writing classes with illiterate kids who could not read two-syllable words. At home I was reading serious adult books, quality literature, borrowed from the library with my mum's tickets.
But my handwriting was so bad that it seemed to offend against some standard set by the educational establishmet. So, in place of assembly every Tuesday, i was sent to a class with possibly the most self-ignorantly stupid man i have ever met. And my handwriting never improved.
At this time, i wrote a couple of pieces for the shool magazine which were universally lauded and I began to realise that my content was a little beyond the average. But O levels and A levels left me too busy to explore this and I never really explored this aspect.

And so, I continued to perform in a mediocre fashion, admiring those dazzling people who seemed to do everything right, and wo were usually attractive and better dressed than me, and wishing fate had supplied me the attributes to do the same. But I was resigned to my lot and I went on to get nine fairly mediocre O levels, except of course English, in which I excelled (I was beginning to get an inkling by then), and physics which I enjoyed.
Others got 10 A grades, some by swotting relentlessly and others by dint of apparent sheer brilliance.

And then A levels came: I worked a bit, still no longer distinguishing myself particularly. I discovered girls, alcohol, the usual kind of thing. And for my efforts I got some extremely poor grades in Maths, Physics and Chemistry that were just enough to get me into a very crap polytechnic in a grim and godforsaken part of the world.

Then I took up the banjo and went busking and generally didnt do all that much work. But I sensed that had I worked harder, my performance probably would not have been significantly better as I generally found the subject matter laborious and tedious, and well, everything I did ended up a bit crap anyway. So, engineering was not me and academia was not something I took to easily, though everyone seemed to expect me to.
And so, I failed the first year of my degree, which was silly, and suffered the ignominy of falling down into the HND class, largely regarded as some kind of remedial course for dullards by most of the peole I associated with.
I scraped a pass. Just.

This enabled me to get a job at British Aerospace. I didnt really want to work there but none of my other interviews bore fruit. It seems this grim and pretty crap establishment was all that would accept me. And so I farted about for a couple of years, working with people who had given up all hope of being productive happy humans until I could bear no more of the Death of Aspiration and left to work on the production line at the company I now work for.

There, due to my crap qualifications, I was not allowed to do anything worthy as I was apparently a bit thick, what with not having a degree and all. the management stated (to my face) that without a good honours degree, I would not be accepted into the engineering community as they "didnt want to dilute the skill pool".
And so, one day, I had a furious row with an influential manager who basically fired me. Luckily, my own manager took pity on me and pointed me towards a job that was going in marketing and I went for it and got it, much to my surprise and delight. And truly, it was the making of me. I found working with people, explaining technical concepts and reading responses from posture, expression and gesture to be much easier and more rewarding than engineering. I used a lot of words and I could type them.

Here I discovered that, though I am a bit slapdash, which has generally been the root of most of the crap results I got when i tried to do something worthwhile, I am actually quite good with words. Released from the tyranny of using a pen, which my fine motor coordination always struggled with, words can flow freely and the myriad ideas that course through my head are given voice in a way that frees them and allows them to associate with other ideas, sometimes to a hyperbole that when I subsequently read them, I cannot recollect writing them, or scarce believe I was in fact the author.

And so, as I stood miserably in the shower yesterday, remarking to myself on the mediocrity with which most of my endeavours have been met, it occurred to me that stringing words together to portray thoughts I have is really the only thing I have found myself to be half-decent at.

Oh, occasionally people say I have a "gift" for words or I "should write a book" but I take this with a grain of salt. Others are equally good or better and I have no pretensions of being professional at it.
But I do think I am probably better than average at it and so, casting aside my recent grumpy petulance, I feel it would be a shame were I not to do the only thing I have ever been pleased with the results of.

And so here I am!

life to an inner soundtrack

2010-07-19T03:02:00.001-07:00

Some people are, apparently, visual: Their inner life runs on images that represent what they think about, how they approach problems, the way their world is laid out symbolically. I have always envied this in a vague kind of way. The ability to close one's eyes and call to mind a picture must be incredibly useful. I have never been able to do it.

In truth, part of the reason behind my resentment is that I always thought it would be a really cool seduction technique to be able to say to a lady "Let me draw you" and enigmatically, scribble away with few words except "a-huh.. hmm mmm" and "turn a little to the left please so I can catch that curl better".

Alas, fumbling fingers which reject the idea of pencils aside, I have little sense of the visual and have been unable to develop one despite many hours of intense practise over the years. And so, I come to the conclusion that, in this aspect, the nature-nurture debate has shown a clear conclusion. I am not visual.

But, my world is ruled by a sense of sound and bodily position. My head is filled with music all the time and I can call to mind a Tchaikovsky Symphony, note-for-note accurately in those moments when I find myself somewhere needing some kind of entertainment.
I first did this, oddly, with Wings, "Band on the Run" in French lessons at school, which I found excruciatingly dull to the point of almost physical pain. Imagine my delight to find an inner passtime that required no props or equipment and which could occupy me in those arid moments of intellectual drought.

Interestingly, I also always found a kind of auditory-kinaesthetic synaesthesia between a sound and a movement.
To explain what I mean: Everyone is familiar with certain sounds which conjure up a movement - the sound of a tomato hitting a tiled floor after being dropped is very evocative and one can instantly, if they work in any way siimilar to me, see in their "Mind's eye" the impact, or in my case, feel the weight and the sudden giving-way of the skin to the force of the contents, tasting the juice and possibly slipping on it and banging a knee on a cupboard.
The sound of a drop of water falling into a pool of water in an otherwise silent envirnment may also summon an image or a feeling of the ripples spreading out.
So we are all equipped with this sensory cross-wiring.

Now, when, for instance I hear a latin rhythm, it "knocks" inside my legs and hips. It's hard to explain that in words. But some unseen force causes my limbs to move synchronously with the beat and my hips to sway in a complex fourrier-synthesised set of waves. This is entirely involuntary and is "suggested" to my body without seemingly going through my conscious mind.
Similarly, a glissando on a guitar may cause my arm to want to move of its own acord upwards and outwards, describing an arc that the sliding note implies with an obviousness that requires purely physical description.

Sometimes, when I have to give a presentation and I am unsure of the material, as I walk up to present, the first bars of the violin from "El Tango de Roxanne" will play in my head, so vividly that I am ceertain it must be audible to those present (Indeed, once I did actually ask a lunch companion if they could "hear that?" and put my head close to theirs. People can be so judgmental sometimes, don't you find?). The strutting gait and almost arrogance implied by the passionate Tango beat cannot fail but induce an almost involuntary strutting and upright confident bearing. It works perfectly for my purposes.

Today, i have in my head, loud as the radio in the car might be in that space, Diana Krall, "Temptation", which is one of the sexiest songs I can imigine and is beautiful to dance to with a lady of a similar receptiveness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdXGA2B0yq0

As this is constantly playing in my head, my every move around the place is informed by this internal soundtrack and as a result, I cannot move in any way other than that of a tomcat on a hot sultry night when the air is filled with female-on-heat pheromones.
Luckily, there is almost nobody here to see. But in my mind, each step towards the coffee machine is imbued with a delight in the movement and a joy at the control over my limbs which today feels absolute.

In my head, life is one long dance. Sometimes a strut, sometimes a slink, occasionally a tap dance.

I think I am happy to accept this in exchange for the lack of a capacity for mental visual imagery.

Ambition, commitment and satisfaction

2010-07-13T02:05:00.000-07:00

am sitting eight floors up in the Westin Grand Hotel in Munich. It is a very hot day and the airconditioning is forgiven for the intrusive noise it makes. As hotels go, it is rather plush and I cannot believe the travel system had it on its books and allowed me to book it. But it did and now here i am, feeling like a VIP and frankly, a bit of a fraud. It seems like the height of Western dacadence to be in such a hotel, with its glass and chrome and dark wood. Everything costs extra: breakfast 20 euros, internet 19 euros a day. Extortion really. I could never afford to pay for this out of my own pocket and frankly, I am not sure I would. I don't think it represents value for money, though i confess, it feeds my ego a little to stay here. It makes me feel a "somebody", which is illusory I know, but in contrast to feeling a "nobody" as seems to be the worst social fate that can befall us in these unenlightened times, I will accept it.
But not without thought.

I am here doing this because a large corporation values my skills. In a few hours I shall stand in front of a room of very well educated, very sharp, extremely intelligent people from three continents, and present some technical information. I am good at this.
Am I good enough to warrant the huge corporate expenditure that sent me here and accommodates me?
Probably.

Did I expect or want to be doing this? Actually no. In truth, I expected to be a truck driver, like my father, or at best, some kind of technician soldering electronic circuits at a bench (which I did do for a while and didn't like). In short: I had no ambition to do this.

Now some people have a clear idea of what they want out of life. I have worked with people who were so "driven" that they had their whole career and associated lifestyle, mapped out in advance, some in quite minute detail. I knew people who had "action plans" for their whole lives, milestones they want to achieve at certain times, places they wanted to be by a certain stage in life.
This is admirable, possibly a little misguided because plans have a habit of hitting the unexpected and becoming derailed, but to have a plan may be a comforting and focussing thing. I applaud those who do this. The Driven are the ones who become our doctors, surgeons, architects, engineers. I am glad there are such people.

I never plan. For that reason. Like the old prizefighting adage: "Everyone has a plan until they get hit!" I find flexibility and keeping one's with about you is a better approach. For me.

And so, that is, I suppose how I came to be here. And occasionally I look up and am surprised, because it seemed to happen when I wasn't looking.

So, it occurs to me there are the driven who know exactly what they want and are quite singleminded in their approach to getting it. Then there are, I suspect, the large majority, like me, who think "this is ok, this is enough" and are happy to go where employment (or other driving force such as art or writing) may lead them, as long as it doesn't demand too much of them. It finances life, makes those things that are dear to us available to a level we are more or less happy with (although I would like to get to the sea a bit more often and dance more, I confess), but doesn't suck the very goodness out of us such that we have nothing left over to enjoy life with.

Of course there are also those who are forced to work really hard in jobs that grind them down, for low pay and long hours, with no alternative. I thank my lucky stars I have been lucky enough not to end up there, like most of my ancestors.
And there are those who, bovine, sit all day at a job that taxes them hardly at all, and are happy to watch sky TV with a pizza and not think about where they are going. This too is a valid choice.

I recently attended a university open day with my son, who has this choice ahead of him. The course outlined were very clearly defined, modular and progressive. If one followed this route, the qualifications gained would probably ensure valued employment and respect for a lifetime. The workload was only really alluded to. The progression then could be to a masters, chartered engineer status or a Phd.
I looked at the faces in the room: A range from shiny faced enthusiasm through chin-on-hand slouched boredom and the potential ladder of disciplined striving and glorious attainment stretching ahead of them. Such an opportunity.

And I thought: Gosh, that's a lot to do. I really couldn't be bothered. My own meagre qualifications, from this very college, we sufficient to gain me a foothold somewhere I could show my own potential, but there was so much more I could have done to get a better grades. These kids may look at it differently to me, indeed the circumstances are changed and they may need more that I scraped. I was lucky.
But I think of what I learned and where it took me and it cannot be denied that education is a precious and necessary thing, for how could I explain the complex technical concepts I do, without the seeds of the knowledge I gained there?

And then, I thought of the good times, the weekends by the sea, out in my kayak, drinking port by the fire in the evenings and indolent days bobbing about in the waves.
And it brings me back to the realisation that the most important word in the English language is "balance". I balance the commitment to the economic necessities of work such that I can have the time and the money to do these other things. Certainly, I have the commitments to be in places and be credible in what I do, which is a challenge sometimes. But the real driver for me is the beauty of experiences, the good company I find them with and the appreciation of just being in a nice place with good people doing interesting things. Whence Bohemia indeed!

Somewhere between being a somebody and a nobody is the fine point where expectations are realistically met and responsibilities are acknowledged. Finding the balance is an art in itself.

I have so much more to say on this but given the above, I had better get on with my presentation for this afternoon!

Awareness, hazards and leopards

2010-06-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

so, my first blog written on my new phone. as usual, i am writing from the seat of an aeroplane, high up over the channel. i can't say i like the keys very much but it still is much preferable to the discomfort of pen and paper which to this day seems like a trial to burden my poor fingers and hinder the flow of ideas from my head to the page.

My sterile sandwich is eaten, its wrapper all that remains of the neatest and least appealing package of nourishment I could imagine (except perhaps a fly proffered in spider silk). A perfectly groomed orange-faced man pours me ghastly coffee which i attempt to make palatable with copious amounts of sugar and "cream" that could never have seen the inside of an udder. I have a sudden overwhelming urge for a home-made baguette filled with turkey, stuffing and mayonnaise and briefly wonder where these cravings originate before turning my gaze out of the window.

I see now a landscape of fields cities and roads. Some roads are big and though i cannot see them, i know there are cars tearing along them at speeds which make our reaction times seem ponderously slow and which can suddenly become very aparent when the illusion of control is shattered by an unexpected motoring hazard.

It is a tamed landscape where one could wander thoughtful, distracted and absorbed completely in one's inner world without the slightest need for any kind of vigilance.

Recently, I was cycling to work along some very small, remote and winding roads when I noticed that on every bend there were skidmarks. This implies to me the kind of indifference to hazard I previously mentioned above. Obviously, a significant number of drivers are often surprised to discover another vehicle coming the other way and are forced to brake from what appears to have been an inappropriate speed to avoid an unexpected collision. This, along with such foolishness as texting whilst negotiating a busy intersection (and going straight through red lights as I have seen often), offers us examples of life-threatening stupidity which are remarkably common and only go unpunished because fate is mostly kind to us despite ourselves. It strikes me again and again just how poor the standard-issue imagination is regarding potential dangers.

Throughout most of human history, far greater vigilance was required if one's safety was valued. A walk in the woods would have been a very bad idea indeed and to be avoided at all costs. Bears, wolves, leopards and unfriendly fellow humans might be encountered at any turn of whatever rudimentary paths one followed.

Daydreaming or not paying attention to the environment could see you become lunch or merely dead. Wandering down the road in a complete daze of ignorance was not an option for the wary who wished to survive the attentions of predators both animal and human. For almost all of our species' existence, such forces of predation have pruned humanity mercilessly, punishing stupidity and complacency by removing the stupid and complacent from the population. Until now.

And so this leads me to wonder if people were by necessity more vigilant, even perhaps more intelligent, when life was more risky.

There is no doubt that careering round a blind bend at a speed where you could not stop were you to meet someone similarly reckless coming the other way, is pretty stupid and one can only get away with such stupidity in a world made artificially safe by our own human regulation and invention. In the past, surely equivalent stupidity must have been rewarded by an early death, or at least injury sufficient to remove one from the gene pool?

When not paying attention and stumbling about haphazardly could mean an untimely end on the horns of an angry buffalo, were people more aware in general?

It just seems to me that it is very easy to live, in the West in the 21st century. It can be achieved safely and effortlessly by even the most gormless of individuals. If one so wishes, they can lie on the sofa and eat ice cream all day, ordered from the internet and delivered to the door by the perky little man from Sainsbury's. No hunting, gathering or personal risk is involved apart from getting a job of some kind. The wages of the lowest paid worker would here cover the needs of mere existence, at an extreme. Fecklessness abounds and nobody gets eaten or stomped as a result.

But throughout history life was hard and hazardous, and usually quite short. If the leopards didnt fall on your puny and defenceless frame as you struggled back to your cave bearing the odd antelope, or more likely, handful of berries, then cholera, parasites or bands of marauding warriors from the other tribes possibly awaited with malice in mind. Best keep your eyes peeled if you want to survive!

But now, we don't have to fear any of those in general. Life is grindingly safe and people are largely docile.....

i suppose, once, humans were as jumpy and cautious as deer in the woods, and probably with good reason. Most animals in the wild are seemingly permanently hungry, permanently scared and often, ready to mate at a moment's notice lest opportunity be curtailed violently. It paid to start at every rustle or to avoid walking under trees that looked as if they had something large, spotty and cat shaped , even if it was actually nothing.

Was life sharper though? Did it provide a more authentic set of experiences, born of the acceptance of the possibility of sudden, imminent death?

It seems perhaps a strange question. If you live on the edge of existence, constantly aware it may end at any moment, does it have a more vivid texture, as opposed the insulated, sometimes bovine, existence of today?

Possibly this is a quaint romantic notion born of the ignorance of how wretched living in constant fear and vigilance can be. But could there be an acceptance that just being alive is inherently a Good Thing without the intrusions of seemingly daft existential questions about 'why are we here?'

Well. I will enjoy the security that 21st century civilised living supplies but i will attempt to remain vigilant. There aren’t any bears in Gloucestershire but one never knows when vigilance might pay off and perhaps I will stop living in my head so much and see a bit more of what is around me

the waxing and waning of passions

2010-04-05T02:09:00.000-07:00

Humans always seem to need to do stuff. Most people have activities they would prefer to be doing above all others, Throughout my life, I have had many such passtimes.
From 7 to 12, I just wanted to collect fossils, rocks, minerals. I found the idea of stumbling across specimens to be exciting beyond anything else I could conceive of.
At 12 I got into electronics. The principles of circuits I found unbelievably alluring and wanted to do nothing else for a couple of years but sit in my room making gadgets that did various cool things.
Puberty kicked in and there was a girl who similarly held my focus for a few years. The another. And eventually a long term one.
At 17 I had been practising karate for about 4 years and it really took hold of me. I loved the feeling of control over my limbs (at last!) and the nimbleness that the movements brought me. But then I discovered music when I was 18 and a student.
The next 8 years or so, I went busking, I played in some rubbish bands and I wanted to do nothing else but (oddly) play the banjo. It was all consuming and its presence in the corner of the room was irresistable. I could not help but pick it up and play it whenever I saw it.
Then there were the children and I was rather too tired for the next ten years to do anything much.
The banjo sits there unnoticed and I cannot remember now the attraction. It has no appeal whatsoever. From being an all consuming drive, music has faded to a complete indifference.
As with all my former passions, I remember that I was consumed with fervour that help my attention for much of my waking hours, but now, it has gone.

About ten years ago, it became words. The clamour in my head found voice through textual expression. No longer hampered by my inability to use a pen, I as free to clear out the noise and commit it to a page. It helped immensely. It became a passion.
And now, it appears as with all the other passions, it has passed. I no longer feel the need for expression. My words are useful certainly, for when I need to write a letter to school or an email explaining a particularly awkward situation to a customer. But I no longer need or even want to write anything. It has, like all the other passion, seemingly just gone away.
I can still bash out a tune on a guitar, throw a fearsome kick, build a circuit if I need to. I can still identify a brachiopod. But I don't feel the urge to indulge any of these things. The way, i no longer want to sit at a a keyboard or notebook to feel the flow of the words.
And neither has another passion displaced it. I can't say I really feel enamoured of any particular activity currently on offer to me. I like to dance, I like to get out in the sea on my kayak, but they are not passions per se. they don't move me the way the others did. They are just punctuation in an otherwise straightforward life.

capricious, isnt it, the human spirit?

A Craving

2010-03-10T02:35:00.000-08:00

I remember the wave, like so many waves, real or metaphorical.
The sea is calm and the surface serene, like clean sheets on a bed. I take myself to the point where it feels that I should be, where the water is deep enough to be dangerous but currents are only hinted at below the surface.

Small ripples apear from out at sea but as yet, they are just echoes of something to come. I play with the wave, dipping my paddle in to turn me and spin the boat to an exact position. I am in perfect control as i stroke the water and in return, the water rocks me and lets me know i could, if i so chose, go with this wave, but with a deft flick of my wrist, i hold back and tease the wave that I can resist its force.

Each new wave, part of a set, comes in from the sea and each is bigger until at last I feel the time is right. This wave is the one: It is lifting me and i feel its power moving me towards the shore and I have reached a point where I have to go with it. It compels me to move in unison with its energy and I give in and feel the power of it lifting me and throwing me forward irresistably. My skin tingles and my scalp is electric as I am joined to this massive thing. The movement becomes unstoppable and my whole soul sings. i am immersed in absolute pleasure with every nerve ending singing and light in my head, like I am falling through space and time with the Universe standing still for a moment that seems to last a lifetime. Inside my mind and body, I am on fire and all attempts to control it are now abandoned as I just give in to the experience, just me on a kayak, and the wave that I am now caught up intimately with. It goes on and on and I fly fast with the sounds issuing forth from me unbidden. I feel it will never end!
But the wave abates, as is its nature, losing its power suddenly but still with enough energy to move me onwards, now slowly and calmly.

Breathless, I drift on to the sand and roll off the boat. I lie, spent, with the small ripples, remnants of waves, lapping at my tingling feet. My hands flat on the sand feel it as if it has never been felt before. The hills are startlingly green to the eye and the sky a blue of such crystal clear intensity that I really cannot understand why I have never seen it this way before.
And all is good with the world in that place, at that moment.

Moments of clarity

2010-03-09T03:44:00.001-08:00

I live my life in a haze of confusion. Should I do this, is that a better option? Rarely is there a clear decision to be made on unequivocal facts requiring no interpretation. I dither, i prevaricate, I agonise, and I make choices. Most of the time the choice is abdication; The Status Quo.
Occasionally, I determine to make a change and act upon the result of some evaluation, rational (rarely) or intuitive (usually). Sometimes I am right, often I am wrong. It seems arbitrary given the iteratively revelatory nature of knowledge and information. I make my choice, new data appears. It confirms or disproves the correctness of my course of action.

Sometimes, due to my mental standpoint, a sense of absolute clarity appears. All uncertainly falls away and I KNOW deeply and profoundly the Right Way to go. At that singular moment, doubt becomes irrelevant or absent and certainty suddenly fills my consciousness. It is as if a tunnel has opened up between me and my goal through all the thrashing, distracting contradictions and I can SEE exactly what I need to do.

What a shame then it is to discover the illusory nature of such revelations. How disappointing to find that when I have had one of these moments, it has usually subsequently turned out to be an ill-advised course of action. Clarity was a misleading illusion produced somehow by a limited perspective and created by a combination of THAT moment and my particular, specific internal circumstances.
Intuition has its value, but we need to know exactly when to trust it and when to ignore its persuasive urging.

Most decisions which we make seem mostly at the mercy of luck. The cold, unfeeling Universe has no plan for us and no clear Way we should follow for enlightenment and happiness.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Give us this day, our daily bread

2010-02-16T08:40:00.001-08:00

Once, work was necessary or starvation was the result. People lived in small family groups in natural surroundings where all that they required to survive had to be obtained from their environment. To subsist, they went out and gathered food from the wild and men (most likely) huddled behind trees with sharp sticks for days awaiting antelope or deer. If you didn’t make the effort, there was no food. The incentive to get up and not lie around in a pile of leaves all day, was the imperative to eat and the desire to stay alive and not to starve.

Then came civilization and organized labour. Still peasants had to work in order to eat and feed their families. But overlords and aristocrats demanded a share of the results of their toil. Obligation, whips and force backed up their claims to whatever portion they deemed their right. These were not good times for humanity and such systems still exist.

For a while, there was an age, in which I am proud to have worked, where toil involved more intellectual and cerebral tasks. In this, force would have been counterproductive. One cannot do a job that involves thinking constructively or creatively under duress; Customers cannot be infected with enthusiasm for products and services by those who are resentful and angry. Some management styles were enlightened enough to realise this and to therefore make the working environment and attitude towards those performing these jobs as pleasant and benevolent as could realistically be provided. It worked well. Happy people do better work and are more productive than unhappy people. The effectiveness of this approach was apparent in the extra effort that people put in and the results that therefore ensued.

Then came the focus on shareholder value and “bottom line”. Whereas some have to work where pain, discomfort and fear break their spirit and hard, physical work breaks their bodies, now there are different whips. Shoulders may wear out due to heavy lifting for decades and arthritis riddle overburdened knees. But now, other pressures degrade our physical wellbeing.

Bullying, oppressive regimes squeeze out “cost”. Cost usually means colleagues who provided necessary functions that were essential. Resourceful people initially find solutions for the gaps, at some cost to their own performance and well-being. And all continues to more-or-less function.

Seeing that it “all still works”, more cost is removed and it starts to creak. The indifference and disconnectedness of the theorists at the top adds to the feelings of oppression and exploitation and instead of joints and muscles being degraded by toil, a different cost is exacted.

Cortisol and adrenalin, once intended as a quick boost to enable leopards to be escaped from or rivals to be vanquished, is now ever present in systems designed to endure them for a few minutes. Blood pressures rise and cellular and systemic damage begins to occur. Arterial walls become less elastic, heart muscles degrade and brain tissues are subtly changed by the presence of hormones and neurotransmitters which keep the body in a permanent state of danger-arousal, the fear now not being starvation, but still, removal of the means of livelihood: No less profound in its way.

People are no longer worn down by weight and repetition of physical efforts, but more subtle though equally serious organic damage begins to occur.

On arriving home, the residue of the day haunts and echoes in the inside of heads. Sleep or even relaxation is inconceivable in a bodily system primed for conflict or exertion but for which no outlet is available. Wine becomes the only viable remedy. So, another night, another bottle, we head up the stairs to mildly alcoholic oblivion until the alarm clock demands we face another day of inconsequential and abstract but still arduous tasks.

Elegant forms and complexity

2009-10-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in my van in glorious Autumnal sunshine at Kemble airfield where young Sir comes to race his RC car. Apparently this track is world class and champions come here to practice and race their high spec model cars. I watch them briefly zipping round the smooth tarmac loop, with its chicanes and curves and it strikes me just how fast they go and how beautifully they seem to grip the surface as they traverse the hairpins. They appear to be subject to an additional gravitational force, keeping them held down low and preventing skidding or spinning out of control. Considering the light but powerful batteries these 45cm vehicles carry and the incredible power generated by their relatively tiny motors, they really are rather impressive. The smoothness and speed of them in their straight sprints and negotiatiation of sudden direction changes is quite fascinating to watch, though the level of fascination exhibited by No1 son and his very “focused” peers is something that I will never and don’ t really wish to attain.

Sitting here comfortably at my table in the van, I can hear little but the assertive whine of small electric motors propelling the cars on the track, and the hum of the fan on my inverter which is powering my laptop here.

Being a working airfield, there is the periodic drone of an aeroplane taking off and even the occasional roar of a jet engine, muted by the trees which screen the runway. Once here, I saw a mustang P51 take off and perform some aerial manoeuvers , its Rolls Royce merlin, also used in the later spitfires, making that distinctive throaty sound, causing me to instantly turn my head to look. I felt a rather unexpected ostalgia for a time I have never known which puzzles me to this day.

Along the runway are also a line of Hawker Hunters, some of which are used for some flight school, I believe and others which enthusiasts are renovating, just for the sheer fun of it. They are very sleek, cold-war designs which appear a little dated when compared to the more recent and somewhat more angular Typhoon and F-16 designs. Nevertheless, their beautiful lines are incredibly pleasing to look at and something about their shape resonates with the eye, causing an appreciation of something well-designed yet visually appealing. Indeed, the nature of aerodynamics and fluid mechanics is such that this slippery shape is necessary for correct and efficient function of these machines. Similarly, across the way here, not 50 feet from me is an old Brittania.

Its four propeller driven engines all aligned at 3, 6, 9 and 12 o’clock. Its shape says more “aeroplane” to me than the jets, being more reminiscent of the forms I was familiar with as a child, from war films and adventure movies so prevalent on BBC2 Sunday afternoon schedules. It has a stately grace which is almost colonial in grandeur and, leaving aside the inherent design flaws that saw several tragedies as a result, I do admire the elegance of it. And this causes me to reflect on the nature of beauty versus form: The two most beautiful machines I have ever seen up close are the Spitfire and Concorde.

I was lucky enough to work near the hanger where the latter was stored in the 1980s and often went to look at it is during lunchtimes in the hangar in FIlton. Also, a spitfire came in regularly for its engine to be services so we had a close up view of it and were often treated to a small and ostentatious display after it had had its routine maintence. Few machines ever devised by humanity will match these for sheer aesthetic appeal. Ok, a few cars are quite pleasing to behold too, but cars don’t really do it for me and I have to take the word of others when they tell me a car is gorgeous. But given that we are not specifically developed to find such advanced workings of man to be visually attractive, I wonder why it is it should be so. There is no survival benefit for a primate to gain pleasure from looking at such an object. And yet we do.

Streamlining it seems, just appeals to the eye – Just not when it’s on a fish. It is at this point that even my huge supply of nouns becomes a little depleted: “grace”, “beauty” and “aesthetic appeal” can only be used so many times and yet, they are so relevant. But this is only one part of the allure for me. Within these machines is hidden huge complexity. For a plane to get airborne, it requires the conversion of fuel into enormous amounts of thrust, if gravity is to be temporarily overruled. In order to do this, people have devised ever more complicated engines from simple ones like in early cars, through rotary and the rather humourously named Wankel engines, to jets and rockets. Though the principles of how these operate are in effect simple, relying as they do in the conversion of a small volume of fuel to a larger volume of exhaust, the implementation of the principles in a controlled manner that doesn’t blow the whole thing to bits, is actually rather complicated. Add to that, huge amounts of instrumentation, safety apparatus, control mechanisms and life-support systems and you have one hell of a complicated beastie.

In fact, these are some of the most sophisticated and intricate machines ever devised. All enclosed in a sleek, streamlined, deceptively simple shape. So, we see these shapes and the bewildering array of systems within are hidden from us. We see merely an aeroplane, miraculously, sometimes hundreds of tons of metal taking off, and even more miraculously in my view, landing on tiny wheels at hundreds of miles an hour. This is, to me, almost magic, or would be if I didn’t understand the physics involved. Nevertheless, travelling, as I do regularly, on large passenger jets, I cannot help but feel a small sense of panic on occasion when we come hurtling out of the clouds to see the ground a mere thousand feet or so below and at 300mph, we have to rejoin that unyielding surface with our extreme momentum. In this case, a knowledge of the physics involved actually does not help and the nerd in me begins to calculate the amount of kinetic energy that is turned to heat in the brakes of the tiny wheels, such as one might see on a bus (only better engineered and more prolific, obviously) So, simplicity of form can hide complexity of function.

And this I find fascinating. I try to picture all the functionality inside as I watch an A340, a 757 or an embraer taking off. But I can only see the form and it movement. And this is probably a good thing. It is easier with a plane with propellers as I can see something moving to push the air backwards, but even here, it is still remarkable and slightly unfeasible that a lump of metal, obviously heavy, manages to get airborne.

Similarly, the human body holds a similar fascination for me.
It is a collection of systems that together make a person. Leaving aside the mind for now, the interconnections of muscles, tendons, bones and ligaments, all fed by tubes supplying that which nourishes and moves it, is all encased in a form which is, on the face of it, rather elegant in its simplicity. Skin stretched over it all makes it hard to see the gooey, squelchy wet contents that makes it all work, and for this, I am actually quite grateful. I am content to look at human bodies and see at most the movement of muscles below the surface, retaining ignorance of the circulation of blood and secretion of bile and all manner of other substances that are needed to sustain our animation. And it has always been my belief that all human bodies are marvels of engineering and development. Even the most obese, corpulent carcasses and whippet-like ectomomorphic waifs do what one expects a body to do functionally, to some greater and occasionally lesser degree. The reliability of this machine is incredible with it mostly working in trouble free operation for decades, sometimes over a century. Ok, whilst some bodies are nicer to look at than others and indeed, I occasionally have to avert my horrified gaze in the sauna or gym changing rooms (and elsewhere avert my eyes for different reasons that are not to do with repulsion!) all of them are incredible machines which are due admiration and wonder. Despite their squishy composition of more than 60% water, most bodies are appreciated by someone, and this is how it should be. So, I do hope I have not caused subsequent undue discomfort or reflection at how these complex systems are regarded. It would pain me to think that after reading this, you now regard human bodies as skins full of rather unpleasant fluids, levers and pulleys, or that you now regard aeroplanes as somehow less mechanically trustworthy as a result of contemplating the mind-boggling intricacy of what comprises the contents of that sleek aluminium skin. Where there is beauty, I believe it is an inexpensive pleasure to gaze upon it and appreciate it without unnecessary or troublesome internal dialogue. But I implore you to take a moment next time, to observe the aerodynamic beauty of that plane or appraise that shapely bottom and make no comment to yourself but “Gosh! Isnt that lovely!”

Entropy, Chaos and getting things done

2009-09-05T01:06:00.000-07:00

This week, I have been most vexed . On the surface of my frustration is the simple fact that, as the saying goes, I could not organise a piss-up in a brewery. This itself is a sufficiently demoralising self-admission, but underlying it, and based upon the same chaotic principle that makes this true, is a deeper question: Why are some people organised and others messy in their thinking and doing?

I include a picture of the workbench in my garage, partly because it is a significant example of the spaces in which I live my life, but mostly because that most significant of indicators, my desk, is probably covered in items which should not, for commercial reasons, be displayed in a public place. This may or may not be so, and I assure you my desk is every bit as slovenly as my workbench (though I have some help in messing up the latter). Of course, like the Ministry of Defence or many other public bodies charged with the safe keeping of information, I am certain at some point to leave my scribbled notebook on a train or an aeroplane. (Luckily, my writing is so bad that this poses no risk of the escape of embarrassing or sensitive information).

But I digress, as so often, and perhaps this is the nub of the problem. It goes a bit like this:

“Hmm.. I must pay the credit card bill. I wonder where it is? Oh yes, pinned to the fridge with a magnet. Right! Go get it! I wonder what’s in the fridge? Oh! we are out of milk, I must go and get some. Yes. Ok, where is my wallet? Oh, I haven’t lost it again, have I maybe its in the car. I will look. Gosh! The boot is full of all those clothes from the weekend. I was after that shirt. I must take that in and..”

And so it goes. I am sure this chain of unfinished events is not uncommon to many of you.

So how does this lead to a cluttered desk? Well, its about information. Each new piece of information coming to light in the environment is its own “branching off point”. This could be a phone call distracting from a task, or just a fly buzzing in the window. For instance: I started writing this and had a wonderful idea for a beautifully articulated point, even down to the vocabulary and the rhythm of the words. But at that point I chose to upload the photo. And that took ages. And in the meantime, the words and in fact the whole idea had evaporated. It is doubtful it will reappear.

Consequently, this type of “way of being” means that once set on a task at work, for instance, there is no guarantee that the task, regardless of how well defined and clear the steps are, will get finished accurately or even at all. Often, something else, not necessarily more interesting, will distract attention and the original thread is lost. Upon resuming it, the details of where and what are lost and this is where the wrong file gets added to a document, my phone gets put in the fridge or the milk gets put back in the microwave.

At school, I remember my writing, a mess of scribbles, crossings out, smudges. I would look upon those beautifully written pieces of work by the rest of the class: neat tidy writing, legible, well-formed and feel that whatever the expectation of the teacher, I would always disappoint with my presentation. But I just kept getting things wrong!! No matter how hard i tried, my mind would wander and the spider-scrawl would diverge from the lines and the wrong words would have interjected themselves in otherwise sensible sentences. I just couldn’t get it right! And it remains thus.

In some ways, this small collection of words is an apology to all those people who suffer frustration, delays and inconvenience as a result of my inability to concentrate. I am not doing it on purpose: I really cant help it. The spreadsheets with the mixed up product numbers, the emails with the wrong attachments, over and over again despite my best attempts at accuracy and coherence, these are symptoms of the chaos within.

And I thank those of you who help me. With pinpoint accuracy, your poke your attention right at where the problem is and untangle the whole sorry mess into order. How do you do that? How are you so structured that you can take a series of events and arrange them into the right way for things to happen efficiently? To me, in my poor sorry head, there is just a cloud of happenings that, like a loony tunes brawl, exists as a cloud of dust, disorder and confusion with the odd limb appearing simultaneously at random intervals.

I spend my life in confusion. It is a relatively happy confusion and much is thrown spuriously into my consciousness which interests me and cascades into other trains of thought, many that you will find written in various places, the locations of which, of course, i have mostly forgotten.

But please bear with me. I do try. I know that I will never be organised, that my work will be messy and my life a cheerful mash of eclectic items and activities. But, I hope there is some consolation in this for those who deal with such pathologically disordered thinkers as myself, who, no matter how hard they try just cannot be organised. I hope we offer some kind of unpredictability that whilst being infuriating, also has some endearingly bonkers quality.

And if not. Sorry for all the mess.

Collective unconscious labour

2009-08-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

I am sure that in a corporate setting, the following could be made into a parable of teamwork. I do not dabble in such superficialities and so I convey to you, hopefully, merely the wonder of a phenomenon observed.

Collective labour
People who know me even remotely well through any of my online spoutings know about my continuing fascination with and admiration for ants.
Each one is such a perfect little mechanism, so tiny and yet so autonomously capable. If someone came out with a micro machine for the christmas toy market that was 5mm long and navigated itself around a tabletop, it would sell like hot cakes, or by a more contemporary standard, Greggs hot cheese pasties.
And yet, here they are in abundance! Of course, it is the abundance that makes them mundane and obscures their true incredible marvellousness. Many times I have taken an ant, (or occasionally a woodlouse, but they are more stupid) and put in on a surface with many obstacles to see what it does. What is the programming in an ant? If I put a pencil sharpener here, what will it do when it encounters it? It goes left. Why left? Ok, now my rubber, it goes left again. Is it always left? No, at the pencil it went right. It seems arbitrary, or perhaps it’s a field of vision or scent thing. I can’t say.
But how amazing! How many bytes of programming is there in an ant? How many lines of code? And can it learn? See what wonder there is to be had from simple, ubiquitous things?
So, on Cyprus, there were really tiny ants. I gave them crumbs of feta and it was very interesting to see what happened. One ant found it, waved its antennae and went off to find a colleague. They both then returned to the cheese and took a lump each in their mandibles. Then suddenly, a whole host of ants appear from a crack in the masonry and stream in a line to the feta. How did they KNOW???
Suddenly, there are a hundred ants under a 7mm long lump of feta cheese and they are together carrying towards the crack in the masonry. Now that is cooperation! Like that Tom & Jerry episode where the picnic is carried off to military music by a column of ants, drum drum drumming along, the food is borne away by a hundred tiny bodies. How cool is that! So many questions arise in my mind at this behaviour: How did word get around? How do they work in unison? What coordinates it all?
Around the pool flew several large and colourful, if slightly confused dragonflies. They were looking for a reed, I surmised, from which to deposit their eggs into the water, not realising the chlorine would kill them immediately. Dragonflies, as adults are ephemeral. They live at most a few days after an aquatic childhood as a voracious “nymph” – a strange term for such a fearsome predator. It seems a strange way to go about an existence but I am sure they have their reasons and are dimly happy with the arrangement.
So it was no surprise to see one dead one morning, (presumably of “old age”) as we were going out to look at some archaeology. It was about 7cm long and bright scarlet. And obviously dead.
The ants had already found it and laid their claim as salvage. But their lair was up the wall about 20cm. What would they do? Well, with enough ants, maybe a thousand? They had carried it to the wall and were trying to get it vertically up to the crack which served as their entrance. The crack was tiny so what they would have done when they got there, I don’t know.
Around that corner they went and started upward, all toiling together.
But gravity was not playing. So more ants came. And then gravity conceded. And up the wall the ants heaved the mighty dragonfly carcass. I was astounded and marveled at the sum of the tiny attractive forces of thousands of tiny ant feet as they shuffled up the wall with their burden.
It would fall, and then more ants would come and the vertical march would resume.
We had to go out then, though I could have watched for longer. The dragonfly was not there at tea-time. I wonder what happened. Maybe they gave up and hollowed it out, and then dismantled it. They couldn’t have know that the climb was futile due to the crack being far smaller than the dragonfly. Ant intelligence only extends to cooperation and not to foresight, it seems.
But I do think ants are amazing and am puzzled by the organisation that appears to happen simultaneously with a huge number of individuals. How does it happen? Is is pheromonal? Who knows? All I know Is: I never get tired of watching it.

Just a typical tale of everyday travel

2009-08-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

I am awakened from my improbable sleep by the clacking of false teeth from behind me. Before take-off, I had done my usual going-on-standby trick and before the wheels had retracted into the fuselage of the plane, I was fast asleep.
And now the trolley had passed me by and the cabin attendent was way down the aisle, handing out little bags containing a mini bounty bar and a sandwich seemingly made from cork table mats and yellow rubber sheeting by someone visually impaired.
The mastication of these morsels was what had awoken me, despite my being inured to the considerably intrusive engine noise.
I smiled what I perceive to be my winning smile at the attendent as she passed by on the way back to her little secret cubby-hole down the front. Probably this smile is nothing of the kind and most likely resembles the gurn of baby about to disgorge its most recent feed.
However, regardless of its appearance, my smile elicited a perfunctory frosty smile in return and a small paper bag of nosh which was gartefully received.
I have not travelled in a while - some months in fact - and I have not missed it one bit. Apart from my voluntary four hour incarceration on a Thompson holiday flight to and from Cyprus with my family (now amazed at my endurance to "do that every week???"), I have not been on a plane for nine weeks.
And what joy it was being grounded!
Now here I am once more eating cardboard food and listening the the ghastly hawking of phlegm from the trachea of the old chap behind me while his wife continues her ersatz-dental assault on the renegade strands of dessicated coconut still trapped in her plate.
I think my tolerance is waning. I have had fifteen years of jumping on and off planes, pretending to be interested in whatever new product I am supposed to be presenting in glowing terms or nodding sagely and sympathetically while tales of technical woe are descried to me for diagnosis and cure. And frankly, I am struggling to continue to impart significance to it. Its hardly furthering the progress of humanity towards compassion or equality is it?
And so as the conurbations of Dusseldorf heave into sight through the windows of the plane, I resolve slowly but firmly to investigate alternatives. What do I want to do and what skills do I have to offer, besides my verbosity and questionable grasp of French and German?
I don’t know but if anyone has any ideas, do please let me know.

Later…
I caught the train no problem. The station at Dusseldorf Flughafen was unmanned but the automated ticket machine was very helpful in English, and step by step, enabled me to purchase my outbound and return tickets to Paderborn Hauptbahnhof. Alas, a person would have been of help in order for me to ascertain if it was straight through or if I had to change. A man on the train said it was “direkt!”
But it wasn’t and now I am in Hamm (westf) on a deserted platform at 9:45 awaiting the connection after twigging that when the train didn’t move for ten minutes, it had reached the end of its journey.
And so here I sit. I hadnt eaten since lunchtime and was beginning to fade, when I remembered some vestiges of leftover holiday change! Aha! All shrapnel, indeed, but the vending machine takes it! One euro and about 87cents. A coin falls and rolls under the machine to be lost forever. It looked like 20c. I wonder if that will be significant later. I have a peanut brittle thingy, a kind of waffle and a small 200ml sachet of capri sun, absolute nectar.
But no! My mini-feast savoured slowly, I espy the sign WC and head over to relieve myself since my full bladder is becoming inisistent. But oh no! Its 60c for a pee! I wish I had that 20c!

So I am stranded in the middle of Germany, in a dark deserted railway station, awaiting some indeterminate train connection, with not even enough money for a piss! Travel is exciting, isnt it….
And now the train is here! I know it’s the right one because it says so. Aha! I have a 1st class ticket and though small there is a separate comparment up one end with a 1 on it. Good: Power for my laptop at last!
No luggage. What ? No luggage? Bugger that! The comparment is empty save a late middle-aged couple. I sit down, putting my case under the table and realise there is that silent outrage in their demeanor that I am so familiar with. Yes! I DO have a first class ticket, even if I might appear a bit scruffy by local standards!
So often here, people, especially of that generation, seem to suddenly take on an air of intense disapproval, indeed like there is a kind of suppressed almost-apoplexy at some rule or custom that I have unwittingly contravened. And I never know what it is.
They stare. I stare back. What? WHAT????? They break eye contact. I am still none the wiser as to what they are upset about. They bristle a bit but eventually settle down. And now trhe train is moving. Halleluja!! I wonder if there is a toilet on here.
I try to make some phone calls, just to remind myself by that tenuous connection that the world is still out there beyond that dark countryside. But no, the connection is just too tenuous and each call drops out after 10 seconds, leaving me not realising and rabbiting on my plight to the empty ether.
I slump back in my seat and gaze apathetically out of the window thinking of nothing in particular.

Later, I arrive by taxi at my hotel. Ahh, such comfort! There are consolations. It is a very nice hotel and very welcome now. I drop my bags in my rather plush room and head to the bar where two older fat ladies are smoking cigars and watching indulgently as people come in and out.
I order a beer and three quarters of it go down very easily, but I labour over the last quarter and decide there has been enough Wednesday for today. I head to my room.

Flicking through the channels, I am unimpressed. There appears to be a host of pseudo-ducumentaries following police as they hassle tramps or chat shows of overly enthusiastic perfectly scrubbed members of the German populace discussing currrent events. And of course there is the porn.
In latter years there appears to have been a move towards showing home-grown ladies of the “girl next door” variety, going about their chores smoochily whilst removing clothing for the camera. The expressions and demeanour range from poorly attempted coquettish pout to self-conscious eyes-darting discomfort. A cute lady of about about 35 stretches across a worktop in just a black thong and stockings and I find myself stifling a yawn. She feebly and unconvincingly waves a duster at some mugs and the banality of the scene is complete.
Odd, isnt it: A few years ago, I would have been agog! The sight of a stocking top could once leave me immobile for some minutes of silent introspection, (and in some contexts still holds disproportionate allure, I confess) but now, I seem somehow immune to any appeal this tableau might ever have possessed. I wonder why this is. Am I merely getting old, or is this display of the trappings of sexuality so devoid of any personal reference that it no longer holds any fascination for me?
I am still wondering this as I nod off to sleep, remote in hand. My last thought is guilt as I hit standby with the last vestiges of the days motivation, knowing I should really get up and hit the proper off button.
I leave my unconscious to assimilate the days happenings and bid Wednesday the 5th of August 2009 adieu.

I aint carrying no handbag!

2009-08-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

It started with the realisation that I could not read the map. In the dim light of the car interior, the tiny font was competely indecipherable, leaving us stranded looking for some unnamed street in the suburbs of Pafos.
My shorts have two pockets on the legs. In one I keep my wallet, in the other my phone. On holiday, I have the dilemma of where to put a camera but mercifully, the camera has a case which has a belt loop atttached and so, with quick draw photography a definite bonus in a location where lizards and butterflies are apt to appear and disappear with little announcement, I keep it there, uncool though it might appear.
But suddenly there was the possibilitiy, nay the necessity, of reading glasses. Where would they live and how would I ensure I did not lose them?
The realisation of their necessity had already been made apparent six months earlier as I attempted to read the map I had printed to guide my way in Munich. On a layby on the A3 one foggy January day, I found myself unable to discern the number of the autobahn from the google maps offering of the area. Was that 83? 93? 98? Oh! This wouldn’t do! I have to sort this out. And had I? No. Pride stopped me: and the belief that immortality, freedom from bodily degredation was mine, not like everyone else who had previously and erroneously believed it. I actually was suffering none of the age-related decline that afflicted lesser mortals.
Except now I couldn’t read the bloody map whereas, a year ago I could have!
The trip to the opticians had confirmed it: +0.75 in each eye where before it was perfect. Reading glasses they said would become necessary but I didn’t have to do it now (though the eager demeanor of the lad in Specsavers idicated he would be most disappointed if I didn’t).
And so, his get-out accepted, the denial continued. My eyesight was still ok as long as the light levels remained reasonable. After all., who can read in poor light?
But here I was frustrated and slightly ashamed in the municipal car park in Pafos, having to call the owner of the vila for directions because I had been hitherto too proud to get myself the reading glasses I knew deep down were necessary, despite the implications for my own sudenly apparent ordinary mortality.
But, and returning to my original point, where does one keep glasses? In the course of a day’s activity, a wallet can be accommodated. A passport even. A phone, obviously. But where to keep glasses?
In Hong Kong a few years ago, a more enlightened colleague had persuaded me to purchase a “manbag”. Exquisitely stiched from quality leather and ultimately incorporated economically into the transaction of purchasing a wheely suitcase that became ultimately required on that trip, the bag was seemingly an astute purchase in Hong Kong.
But, home in South Goucestershire, it suddenly seemed a bit pretentious and even a bit camp and despite its obvious usefulness with regards to loose change and the other apparatus of 21st century living, it was relegated to, initally a receptacle for IT related cables for travelling and ultimately to the bottom of my wardrobe in shameful neglect.
This is a shame. Ladies always carry handbags. It would seem from the turnover of such objects that the search for the ideal is never at an end. But at any one time, there is a place in which all the useful and useless paraphernalia of life can be accommodated.
The mystery of the handbag can never be fathomed. From looking into my mother’s handbag for the doorkey on evenings whan I wanted to return home early from some event, I knew there was something deep and unfathomable about this bastion of feminine practicality. Amongst the compacts, receipts, breath mints, dental floss and unidentifiable feminine hygeine products to be found, was an unapproachability that led me to find that key and get out.
But how useful that containment!
So why suddenly when I had the chance to have my own handy repository of useful things, am I suddenly so self-conscious? Just think of al lthe things I could have in there in addition to the requisite objects of the 21st Century lifestyle! String, superglue, a swiss-army knife, adjustable spanner, cable ties!!! oh there is no end to the usefulness I could carry around with me!
But no. I cannot. Even I who snorts at convention, who thumbs his nose at dispproval without just cause, even I cannot bring myself to carry around my shiny brown leather practical solution to modern clutter.
And so, where do I keep my specs? The question remains. And so, I shall continue to squint in denial.

exploration and clinging to the familiar

2009-07-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

I am writing this from Cyprus. We have a small villa in the town of Kato Paphos. This seems to be the maritime area of the larger town of paphos, conurbated by higgledy-piggledy developments of houses, kiosks and seemingly waste ground populated by old dead trucks (with not a spot of rust despite their obviously hard working life).
Mostly, it seems the people are local. But also one sees the odd leathery retired British ex-pat couple in their white hats, ill-fitting shorts, shoes and socks. Attesting to the presence of a sizeable population of British ex-pats, there is a Bingo hall where one can play every night if one so chooses.
Delightedly, we found 200m along seemingly the longest road without traffic lights (as indicated by the souped up corsas and clios that are finally freed to enjoy their whole range of revs, despite the pedestrians who amble across the road without a care), a supermarket which in upper case greek letters is a “Eurofruitaria” (I failed to find the Greek font here on this new laptop.). Within its delicious air-conditioned confines, locals crowd to buy the best quality and variety of fruit and vegetables I have ever seen: Even better than those provincial markets one finds in France.
It was whilst contemplating a water melon bigger than any human head I have ever seen, indeed, the size perhaps of a horse’s head, that I was approached by a verging-on-obese ex-midlands pensioner, who said in her staunchly retained black country accent “You should go to the the OTHER supermarket, the one by Debenhams on the sea front!” (yes, there is a Debenhams, selling standard middle-of-the-road British fashions for those who want to maintain their suburban look in the mediterranean sun.) with eyes closed as she volunteered her monologue, whe continued:
“Yeah, down there they are MUCH cheaper and you can buy all the proper food like Iceland frozen meals.” And on she went, following me doggedly around the shop explaining the cornucopia of crap that she found so comfortingly available in the town.
Given her rotund physique, this was obviously her chosen diet.
I was frozen into complete speechlessness (rare, I know) by the unfolding tale of utter lack of life of the imagination. I found myself only able to grin in what must have seemed like vague agreement, though since she continued to harangue me with her eyes closed (why do people do that??), she would not have assumed such.

Finally escaping her uninvited monologue, the way one shakes an amourous terrier from one’s ankle, I fled behind a stand of local oranges and tomatoes. This abundance of beautiful food seemed to have escaped her attention, or rather, was perhaps too troublesome and unappetising to contemplate.
In my smug middle class way, I bought olives, garlic, fresh dates, aubergines and all manner of vegetables, and some fresh whole fish, the name of which I shall proably never know. This made a fine dinner that evening as the air cooled to a temperature my northern European metabolism could now cope with.
But a question had formed in my mind: Here in this sunshine near-paradise (though a bit barren in places due to the low rainfall), people come to live. They accept the climate, and who wouldn’t when considering the grey, cold British summers of later years. They have enough adventure to leave and come here, but then that seems to be the extent of it. Sunshine and warmth is enough of a draw.
And yet, that seems to be where the acceptance ends. So, whereas some see novel foods, vegetables and fruits as something to explore and experience, others seem mildly intimidated and shun such foreign muck in favour of Sunday roast, full English breakfast and steak and chips. Why? And to what other aspects of the culture does it apply?

It is not class: My father was brought up in a very poor family where nobody had ever owned a car or even books. There was almost no education, even at primary level as his parents didn’t really care.
He remained working class to the end, working as a truck driver and later in a rubbish dump. And yet when I persuaded him to overcome his fear of the actual organisation of a foreign holiday, and we got him to Brittany, he absolutely came alive. He enthusiastically wandered markets marvelling at the quality of the shallots, bought armfulls of veg by bartering wordlessly but animatedly with toothless farmers in the fields and cooked up the most gorgeous meals in the back of his van every night, washing it down with rather more local wine than was healthy.
So, if a rubbish-tip attendant from Bristol can embrace foreign culture, why not retired site managers from Solihull?

Perhaps there is a divergence in people. Maybe there are explorers and settlers; people who seek new and interesting experiences and then there are those who cling to the familiar. Perhaps this is genetic as it would appear not to be cultural. Walking along the sea front promenade, the stereotypes are sadly fulfilled: The lobster coloured Brits with beer bellies, shaven heads and tattoos, the lithe Cypriot youths and their rather more portly elders, the pale haired Dutch, long of limb and seemingly healthier than the anglo-saxons who left to settle in England 1400 years ago to ultimately invent chips.
All of this might sound a little judgmental and snobby and I guess to some extent it is. But at the heart of it is the earnest question of what makes people approach experience differently.
We had a cat once called Possum. Possum was a very intelligent silver tabby and inevitably got impregnated whilst our vigilance faltered one Summer’s evening in the late 80s. She had three kittens that after some observation we tentatively named “Ugly”, “Explorer” and “Wimp”.
From birth, wimp, hid and would not wander far from his mother, mewling pitifully if he found himself alone and separated from the familiar. Ugly was just a bit of a blob really and though large and affable, didn’t really seem to care much at all as long as he was fed. But Explorer was always wandering off and getting into things. (She was taken off secretly by Possum for extra feeds by Possum who knew where her genetic investment was best placed).
These character traits persisted into adulthood, indeed, Explorer, renamed “Poppy” once hitched a lift in a stranger’s car to a town ten miles away, but found her way back.
And maybe people are the same. Some will be Wimps and some will be Explorers. And so the market for Iceland frozen bubble and squeak will always exist alongside that for magnificent vegetables.
And now all this typing in the hot Cypriot sun has exhausted me, time for a cold Carling, straight from the fridge!

waiting again.

2009-06-22T03:12:00.001-07:00

Once again an ancestor is nearing his end. In fact, my sole surviving male ancestor.
My grandfather has hours or days to live and is in hospital fading. Its life. Its how the cycle ends. A long life with little tragedy and many many descendents. One can't really complain about a life lived long and which gave rise to 4 children, 17 grandchildren and countless great grandchildren.
But its still sad.

He left in the ambulance on Saturday to go to the hospice. I thought that the leaving of one's home for the last time must have a significance, but he barely cast a glance as the doors were closed. Perhaps he was past caring. Or perhaps this significance is one I have in my head and is not shared by all.
Many of the family were present, for support and for their own understandable needs. He must have seen the concern and hopefully realises the affection and regard in which he is held.

To see someone who was once energetic, funny, intelligent, reduced in functionality to a husk which, though still sentient, is too tired or weak to express themselves, is quite tragic and it makes you realise that the accepted functional form of a human is actually quite a fragile state, though we mostly enjoy good health and faculties.

Holding his hand, a man for whom emotion was never a comfortable companion and affection rarely accepted with anything other than an aloof "Oh, Right-o!", i see the wastage that happens with such an illness. My own hand looks almost plump and opulent in comparison and I realise that one day, probably, my hand will look as his, and someone will be holding it in theirs and looking down at me and feeling helpless as to what to say or do.
Imminent death has that creamy, rancid butter smell about it. I am familiar with it now and how it hangs around people near their end. I hadnt realised it was so distinctive. The nurse's "Is that your father? I can see a resemblance!" seemed an odd thing to say given the gaunt state of the poor old chap, but maybe I do need a few more hearty dinners.
"No, he is my grandfather." I reply. "He started very young."
She smiles sympathetically and wanders off with her pillowcase stuffing still in process.
He did start young. He was 35 when I was born. Dark haired, deceptively dopey-seeming but astoundingly pragmatic. His childhood memory of the blitz in one of the more heavily bombed areas of Bristol gave him a stoicism that is evident even now as his strength and capabilities fade.

I don't want to get old. I don't want to die this way: Almost vacant, the object of pity as well as respect. Fading gives times for goodbyes, but how does memory work on the image of the lost loved one? How will we subsequently remember them and be remembered? As we were in our prime or as we were last seen?

But the immobility, the inability to speak or gesture, has struck me like a hammer blow. It is this I take from this most strongly, as a tribute if you like, to my father in his fading, his father, similarly struck down prematurely, and my dear old Granfer now lying in his bed in the hospice.

I have my strength, my limbs, my mind. I have my voice, my hearing and my sight.
And they should be appreciated while they persist. hence, i will dance and sing, and look at the vibrant flowers, smell the honeysuckle and stroke the cheeks of my loved ones. I shall ride my bike and take to the waves. And Every faculty I possess, that I have seen degraded and lost in those who left us, I will rejoice in.

To do less would be a disservice to them and myself.

My thoughts are with you Maurice. Be peaceful.

motivation, or Wanting to do Stuff

2009-06-19T03:54:00.000-07:00

I suppose this is really about motivation. Motivation is something I don't really understand. Sometimes you want to do something and sometimes you don't. There are things you yearn to do RIGHT NOW! This could be going on holiday somewhere gloriously warm and sunny, drinking a cool beer on a hot day or rushing off to bed with your lover. There are things which, if they were immediately accessable to you, you would have a hard time resisting.
Then there are other things you would rather not do, in fact, you would avoid if possible. Washing up, cleaning the toilet, perhaps even going to work: Tasks that make your spirit sink when you think of their imminent need for attention.
And in between is a whole spectrum of activities of differing levels of attractiveness.

Somewhere along the line from simple early eukaryote to human, the neural reward system developed. The ubiquitously hailed dopamine became the substance of choice for directing the behaviour of organisms. Oddly, it is required to make us eat, mate, even learn: When we encounter a new fact or experience, we get a tiny but pleasurable squish of dopamine to the receptors that tell us "That was GOOD!". Without it, it appears we would just not bother, which seems strange: Surely we need to eat and surely sex is so pleasurable that we would if we could? Actually, it seems not and this appears to be the reason for the existence of this reward mechanism.

So, on an experiential level, there seems to be a variability. Last weekend, i took my kayak to the sea. For so long have i languished here, in this office or working at my desk at home, dreaming about being in big clean, glassy waves, riding down and along in the salty sunshine and howling with the sheer joy of it. And last weekend, that is precisely what I did. At least for two days.
And on the third day, the surf was still good, but somehow, I just didnt want to any more. So, I went fishing instead.

Appetite, I can understand. I get hungry. I eat. My body produces a hormone called leptin which says " Ok, stop eating now. No need to eat any more. All the digestive buffers are now full to optimum capacity!" At this point, satisfaction is achieved and all is as it should be. (A fortuitous position to be in, I appreciate).

And then there is sex. When i was 14 I was, as gender, hormonal disposition and age dictated, overly preoccupied with sex. Its glory and mystery pevaded all my thoughts and many of my actions and it seemed the most exciting activity one could ever want to participate in.
Then when I was 35, I woke up one morning and found it was no more of interest to me. Admittedly, a huge grey cloud had settled over my mind which would take some years to dislodge fully, but sex was as interesting to me as the study of ancient mesopotamian trumpets, or the lifecycle of the woodworm. Something had happened on a psychological level, which had in turn produced a chemical and hence physiological effect. It was pretty wretched and I missed wanting it. But I didnt want it. I do now. Not quite to the 14 year old level, but still fairly insistently, which I am grateful for, though it frustrates the hell out of me on many many occasions!

Sometimes I dance. I love to dance. I cant wait for Tuesday evening when I can get my dancing shoes on, take to the floor and spin some ladies round and hop and wiggle my hips in time to the music. It gives me sometimes an almost spiritual lift.
But occasionally, I sit at the edge of the dance floor, looking into the melee of mostly in-time bodies, and feel I would rather be elsewhere. The glorious euphoria I know to be possible from this activity, is suddenly absent and it leaves me cold. Somewhere in an instant, the desire to do this evaporated leaving in its place a kind of desolate boredom or even repulsion. How does this happen?

So, what confuses me is, how one moment, one can want to do only one thing to the exclusion of all other passtimes - enthusiasm may overcome one and a kind of hot, happy itch is inside you until you get to do it - and in the next moment, a comment, a thought, an event can puncture the bubble of enthusiasm and all passion is suddenly dispersed, leaving only a flatness.

I pose these questions not particularly because I require immediate answers to them, but because in those moments, I WANT to desire to do those things. The removal of the imperative upsets and depresses me.
The sudden disappearance of motivation leaves me poorer and less happy.

If one could only find the key to what makes one really want to do a certain thing one moment, and then not particularly want to do it the next, how empowering that would be! I could get those tasks done that I put off for ever. I could get good at things I always intended to practise and never really could be bothered to, despite me intense desire for their end result.

Possibly too much introspection on this process is a bad thing. Perhaps it is again "Thinking TOo Much" which I have found to be disruptive, even destructive, in the past. ut when I am sat there feeling sorry for myself and everyone is having a good time gyrating to some groovy tune, I really would like to find some way to rejoin the party.

The wholesome and the stimulating

2009-06-16T04:17:00.000-07:00

I had a fantastic weekend: Three days at the beach, two surfing my kayak and one just paddling along the North Devon coast just exploring. The surf was a bit insane on Saturday and what with the injuries sustained by my face and my boat coming together in the boiling chaos of a wave that was way too big for my current capabilites, I decided eventually to forego any further thrills in the surf while my smashed nose stopped bleeding.
But a good time was had and I felt mellow with that radio silence inside my head that I only get after a serious amount of time in the sea. Silence such as this is a welcome relief from the usual clamour of suggestions, arguments, revelry and confusion that characterises the inside of my head most of the time and for a while I like it.
I noticed however that I was a bit distant, though calm and relatively content, for the rest of the weekend after each trip out on the water. Questions would be asked like "Where is the tin opener?" and "What did you do with the mallet?" and I found myself either quiet with amused bafflement at the question or just plain "out to lunch".
It occurs to me that with my small dabblings with meditation that this "quiet" is not actually a good thing from the perspective of productivity or what I might term, my general "peteness". (People have come to expect a certain liveliness and bouncing around of tempo from me).
Lst night, I worked on my allotment, which I have had for a decade or more. I planted up some courgettes that were long overdue for transplanting but which had to wait on account of my other, aforementioned passtimes.
I pottered around and prepared some beds wich had been languishing under black landscape fabric for nearly a year and were consequently lovely and easy to dig.
I left the place partly completed awaiting growth and subsequent harvest and other ground prepared and languishing in the feeling of potential that prepared ground always leaves me with.
It was very satisfying. A good wholesome feed for the soul. And I left feeling quiet and mellow.
And yet, when I came to talk later, I found my head devoid of the usual buffet of tasty conceptual treats, buzzing sparking notions and whimsical trains of thought that I generally enjoy when left to my own devices on an aeroplane or in a dentist's waiting room.
I had, somehow, lost that "spark" that people comment on and which characterises one of the reasons I enjoy being me.

So, mellow spiritual creaminess: Is it a good thing? It might bring a kind of peace, but after a while, how does it leave us?

And if we are in this state permanently, and feeling fainly content with it, is that a bad thing?

I confess that I see many pallid faces on a daily basis which seem happy to be devoid of any other thinking beyond what is for the next meal, who will win Britain's Got an Excruciating Lack of Embarrassment, or where to go on holiday this year. Is that a bad thing?

I feel it is, for me, a bad thing. So often, it is a joy to let my mind run, like a greyhound kept in a small flat who has been let out on some huge common to bound with delight over the ant hills and over the bracken. Occasionally to race with or frolic with a like minded soul who is released to run, or who live wild and free on the Heath brings a realisation of what is possible. The changes of pace, the sharp turns and twists and the sure-footed grace and speed is exhilarating.
And then, the confinement which seemed mildly comforting such a short time before, suddenly seems a shame, a waste, a minor tragedy of potential.

Radio silence is good for a while. This much is clear. But in moderation.
Wholesome is healthy as long as it is not all there is. To run across the horizon of the mind as fast as one likes can be a release for the soul and allow the full functionality of a personality, but probably done all the time would result in a kind of scatteredness of focus leading to drifting.

And so once again, the most important word in the English language appears to be "balance".
At the moment, the flights of glorious fancy and resultant enjoyable melee are too few and fleeting. Wholesomeness has become the norm and like bran consumed to excess, is beginning to cause an irritation that will need some richness of diet to relieve.
Now where can I find such a morsel?

©Pete Earlam 2009

A drought or climate change?

2009-06-06T03:05:00.000-07:00

There was a time when ideas fair tumbled from my mind. The pressure of all the thoughts and their associated tangents was almost too much to bear. The inside of my head was like some riotous after-show party in a theatre of the absurd and the only way to ease the discomfort was to write them down. To choose one thread and express it, with all is associations and implications, was to make some space where the rest could grow and flourish and the gap thus made was a breathing space of sorts.

It seemed as though there was a never ending spring of inspiration. I didnt know where it came from: Seemingly from some deep down natural source with equal mystery to the endless flows that pop out of the Cotswold hills hereabouts. There seemed no end to it.

And then I noticed the reduction in the rate of flow. There were interruptions and eventual cessation of supply. The space inside became bigger until my mind contained mostly void and a kind of desert of the soul resulted from the lack of irrigation. Where a once lush jungle filled my inner spaces, replete with luscious fruits and brightly coloured fluttering things, now there was only hard baked ground with the odd skeleton of a dead tree standing starkly against the sky to remind me of what once was there.
The dry soil yields enough for subsistence but its not what one would call a flourishing.

So, where did it go? What happened or stopped happening to cause this profusion to shrink to such a meagre harvest? Is there a dam somewhere which may burst? It doesnt feel like it actually. It just feels as if it stopped raining somewhere, as if the damp fecundity of Summer showers or the deluge of welcome monsoons somewhere just over the horizon has ceased due to some inevitable shifting of weather patterns outside of my control.

Certainly, there have been droughts before and they ended after a fashion. But this time it feels different: As if some internal El Nino has been redirected by the course of life and a huge high pressure region has held the course of the winds and rains elsewhere.

The strange thing is, it is not unpleasant. I miss the growth and fertility, certainly, but there is a kind of calm in its place - an undemanding constancy of existence that brings no discomfort. Will it stay this way? I don't know. It has been some time now and it shows no sign really of improving. There is the odd small shower that happens and green and flowers are briefly in evidence. But it rarely stays for long. My fear is that though it is no hardship, the dry winds may blow away all the topsoil; an irreversable process preventing future regrowth.
Were I superstitious, I would pray for rain, rain on the inside. Seeds blown in from elsewhere cannot germinate here without my own fertile soils to allow them to take root. But for now, I will wander, sipping from the odd oasis and trying not to walk in circles in the featurelessness of my own mind.

The consciousness of lobsters

2009-05-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

I am in the railway station at Angers, in western France. It is a pretty town and the station is a light and airy place with lots of glass and very little litter. My French reappeared at about lunchtime in the restaurant where I had a salad with foie gras (which I feel I shouldnt like on moral grounds, but actually find utterly irresistable for its delicious richness and sheer opulence). Also on this salad were a couple of L'angustines and some gambas. Crustaceans always seem a little hapless to me. Aquatic relatives of woodlice, showing all too clearly their kinship in the number and design of their legs and carapaces. I find them, frankly, unappetising when the inescapeable alienness of their joints are contemplated. Also I find them far too labour intensive for the meagre amount of food you get from them. Dismantling of the cleverly seamless shell is a rather distasteful and fiddly task, I feel.
I gave them to my appreciative companion, having made a mess of the first fumblings with extraction of the edible bits.
The little face staring back at me from the now detached head appeared to have an air of pathos in its expression. Its beady black eyes seemed to implore me to feel ashamed of my choice from the menu. I felt a bit sorry for it. I shall not ever order one again.

But I wondered briefly how much of a sense of self this tiny lobster had. Whilst alive, any threatening stimulus would have had its mechanisms for self-preservation activated in an instant. But would that be merely an invoking of a mechanistic subroutine of programmed behaviour or would there have been a flicker of something resembling true fear in its little cluster of a few dozen million neurons?

I once attended a lecture by the magnificent Susan, now Baroness Greenfield (Baroness always conjures up an image of a large, ample-bosomed lady in a valkyrie outfit wielding her stern expression like an intimidating sword at all who dare to gaze upon her. She is not like this but equally, I feel, formidable in her own intellectual way).
At this lecture she appeared to be saying that the level of consciousness exhibited by any creature with a brain was a function of the number of neurons actively participating in any one single curcuit at that time. As an example, there was a photo of a man taking a step off a bungee-jump platform. He was not, we assume, overly preoccupied at that moment, with the minutiae of life: The mortgage rate, whether he had the right insurance cover, whether his car would pass the MOT or even whether his job was safe. No, his single focus was far more existential at that moment: "I AM GOING TO DIE!! IMMINENTLY! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!"

And it is arguably at these moments, for instance when every single neuron is unable to tear its attention away from the prospect of imminent death, that we feel most alive.
The rest of the time, a myriad of smaller circuits are tying up our neural resources. They chatter away with minor preoccupations and our attention is scattered and hence we feel less "conscious". We have all had that experience of arriving at work in the car having driven perfectly safely on autopilot, whilst having had a number of in-depth conversations with ourselves over various riveting topics. At these times, it seems we are not really all that "conscious".
And so, by implication, if the most profound consciousness can be achieved with the maximum recruitment of neurons to a single task, animals with fewer neurons available are arguably less conscious. A chimpanzee is, for example, less conscious than a human. And a dog, less conscious than a chimp and so on, down to crustaceans and beyond.

Hence my crustacean friend probably had only the dimmest awareness of the surface of the boiling water that signalled its impending end and absolutely no faculty to contemplate its fate.
I suspect therefore that it did not actually feel fear in any sense that we understand it.
Or perhaps my reasoning is not correct. Perhaps dogs are more conscious because they dont end up worrying about their mortgages and are completely "In the moment". Actually, I am not sure there is any answer to this question since it is how to define what we mean by conscious.
But I know subjectively, there are times when I am more "alive" than others. In those times I am more aware of sensations and colours, details of my environment seem more accessable; in fact my surroundings leap out at me and impress themselves upon my consciousness, whereas much of the time, I find I have to make a conscious effort to notice or be.

I think Baroness Greenfield's point stands and is useful: that a convergence of our neurons on a single task - in practical terms, our "attention" - brings the most subjective experience of consciousness.
Indeed, this is one of the aims of most types of meditation. I have never been very good at meditation. The chattering of my brain tends to make the aim of "mindfulness" very difficult. I get bored and need something to occupy my immense sense of curiosity.

But when I have "succeeded" in attaining that point of "awareness with no thought", it is a very clear moment. There is a quietness which is exquisite and can be observed without any narrative. At those moments too, I feel most conscious. But i dont have the time or the awareness to do it regularly and though there are undoubtedly benefits from regular meditation practise, I have other uses for my brain and my time.
Incidentally, research shows that regular meditators have significant growth in the layers of cells (need research here) that appear to deal with compassion and planning. Meditation, then, has physical effects which possibly may bring benefits in mental function.

And so, where does this get us? Well, making the assumption that "feeling really alive" is a good thing to aim for, we can try the approach suggested by the good Lady. Though we don't have to go as far as a bungee jump (not without its risks, or why would anyone do it?) we can do things which use up our whole mental bandwidth with none left over for idle preoccupation.
Activities i have found which do this are climbing, because I don't want to fall off even though i am roped up, dancing and occasionally any water sports involving surf (though not always, I find: If the surf isnt "right" I can end up very dissatisfied.)
But doing those things that fill our entire brain with a single activity can take us near or to the "really alive" stage. At least, it works for me, and anecdotal evidence seems to indicate it does for most people.
Whether it works for prawns, I have no idea.

alternative wildlife

2009-04-10T00:39:00.000-07:00

At the end of my small garden is a mixed-native-tree hedge. We planted it about 10 years ago and it contains hawthorn, beech, holly and hornbeam. It has developed into a beautiful good old-fashioned hedge such as surrounded most fields here in Gloucestershire when I was a kid. As such, it provides not only a secure and attractive backdrop to the end of the garden but a haven for wildlife. It might only be 40 feet long but you would be surprised at how many visitors it gets.
The garden also contaons a stand of three closely planted silver birches which by clever design, makes the garden feel more soacious and whose white trunks stand out strikingly againt the backdrop of the rest of the garden.
As a result, the birdlife is very varied. At any time one might see thrushes of various kinds, blackbirds (who at this time of year are shameless in their pursuit of each other for breeding purposes!), flocks of goldfinches and long-tailed-tits and a couple of fat pigeons who may well end up in a pie at some point.
The hedge seems to allow passage of the avian visitors from the nearby common and woods. It seems to be a very welcome sanctuary and causeway linking various other oases of wilderness together.
The hedge stands on a bank: Once a wall marking an ancient field boundary, it is now covered in soil and looks very naturalised.
Often, i work from home here at the dining room table or upstairs in the spare room where I have an office of sorts. Being a sociable creature, I do miss human contact when I work from home. Eventually, I find myself talking to the walls, or to my chilli seedlings on the propagator on the window ledge. I even occasionally, near the end of a long day, get small terse replies. Chillis are not great conversationalists and walls are notoriously tight-lipped.
So, it did not seem strange to find my underfed imagination set to work one day to allow me to see the other inhabitants of the hedge.
At first it was a feeling of being observed. No human could be seen, indeed, the garden and house are not overlooked.
But there was that nagging sense of someone watching me.
Not being a believer in such whimsical notions as any form of "sixth sense" (though five seems inadequate to describe the subjective experiences we have on moment-by-moment basis: What about hunger pangs and "heeby-jeebies"?) I dismissed th enotion.
But it persisted. And one day, glancing up unexpectedly, I saw a tiny green face barely bigger than a 50p piece staring at me from between the hawthorn leaves.
It looked unblinkingly at me for a few moments, a slight smile on its lips, before retreating back into the undergrowth. I blinked a few times before shaking my head and resuming my dull emails.
But gradually, other faces occasionally started to show themselves.
I initially dismissed them as pareidolia: That tendency to see patterns of faces in clouds and wood grain and suchlike that is a quirk of the human brain.
But then one day in Autumn, they finally showed themselves in full. A group of tiny people, about six inches tall, climbed down the retaining boards at the bottom which served initiall to hold the soil back before the roots took hold. They seemed very confident, although they moved quickly, as small creatures often seem to do.
A rag-tag bunch of tiny men, all in brown-green clothes, some with grass capes, others with tiny turned over wellingtons that look like they might once have belonged to action man who was now forced to carry out his missions barefoot. They carried small pointy sticks and had little baskets which contained such things as acorns, ash keys, sycamore "helicopters" and the odd shiny thing which I could not make out. I think they have a penchant for shiny things which is why car keys occasionally go missing.
The looked around showing a prudent vigilance but not in any nervous sense. Down they came to the pond and filled up little skin bags with water, lowering them down on wat appered to be the pudding string I used to keep in the kitchen drawer but which had mysteriously vanished at Christmas when the turkey needed preparing.
A cat appeared suddenly on the fence and looked down at them with what seemed to be mild fear and trepidation and then proceeded after some moments consideration, to clean itself distractedly.
They paid it no heed and carried on with their task.
The one of them, a wizened chap with a beard and tiny flat cap, looked straight at me and winked. I was taken aback and just smiled a gurn of confusion back at him as best I could manage.
Then quickly and with no signal, they hauled up their buckets and glancing about them, trekked back across the lawn where they disappeared into the stems of the bamboo thicket.
I blinked a couple of times and wondered briefly if there had been hallucinagenic bread mould on my sandwiches or similar.
And then, there was the bearded face grinning at me from the bamboo stems, just for a moment, gap toothed and mischevious.
And then it was gone.
I don't see them often, only occasionally. But they leave me presents of crab apples in September, wild garlic and small garlands of daisies, the design of which leads me to suspect feminine hands at work in whatever community they live in.
In return, I leave them food. I know they are fond of stilton. Oddly, they seem to prefer the rind and so this is what I believe is called a "win-win". And sometimes, on days such as the equinox in spring, or winter solstice, i leave them a miniature of port which I purloin from hotel rooms. After that I don't usually see them for a few days.
But in a world of keyboards and GPS, of phone masts and low-emission cars, it is comforting to have my little friends there, just out of sight. I am not sure if others see them. But I do. They brighten up the periphery of my world.
Keep an eye out round where you are. With regional variations, I am sure they must be around.

Rediscovering my words

2009-04-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

Hello blog. Its been a while. I am not sure why. I have been mildly busy but not cripplingly so. My time has not been saturated with the need to spend all my days emailing customers, generating presentations, flying all over the lace.

Actually, I am writing this on a plane. It is the first in nearly three months. Not that business is bad or demand dried up for me or my products. No, there just hasn't been any reason to see anyone face to face.

I haven’t missed it particularly. My self-esteem hasn't suffered with the inference that I must no longer be important. I have rather found it very restful. I can have a life were I do regular things like dance and go to the gym, be there every evening for the kids to ask me questions or ignore as the whim takes them.

I have, oddly, missed the space of a couple of hours where I am forced to sit and do nothing in particular. Nobody can email me here or call my pone demanding trivial but labour-intensive tasks be performed. Perhaps that's why I got out of the habit of writing.

I miss writing though. Its as if the chaos and thrash of the inside of my head must remain unexamined and disjointed in my head.

Some thoughts and feelings I need to express. Leaving them in their raw, undefined and vague-sensation form is unsettling at best and almost physically uncomfortable at worst.

Other ideas which float about are merely pleasing to extract and play with. I get great joy from the vague nagging of a concept requesting to be untangled, described and expanded upon.

Its as if there is some kind of box in here which is full of knotted-up threads which once untangled can be woven or sewn into bright colourful tapestries. But in their raw, messy state, they just really clog up the everyday workings of my brain (which is why the milk gets absent-mindedly "put away" in the microwave or the keys get left in the front door when I go to work.

Many ideas are currently circulating in my mind and it would be a shame to let tem languish unexpressed, especially given the disruptive influence they exert over the prosaic business of day-to-day life. To write them down is cathartic and as long ago as I can remember, I have done this as a form of release.

I suppose then, that means I must be by nature a "writer" that is, one who is compelled to write for is own sanity as well as for enjoyment.

And so, there will be more: more thoughts about the many things that preoccupy me when I should be doing something else, which go round and round of their own accord inside my cranium when I am riding my bike to work (though not when I am cycling for fun, strangely. Or perhaps not strangely at all).

I d have some plans to put my eloquence to use, for now I feel entitled to allow myself the conceit that I am in fact eloquent, without so much of the guilt I previously felt at the seeming arrogance of such a claim.

I feel that I can put it to use.

People seem to enjoy reading what I write, or so they tell me. My examination of the mechanisms that inhabit the only being I have any intimate knowledge of, and how they may manifest in others as behaviours, seem to be quite popular.

But having spent fifteen years explaining complicated technical things to people, I feel I may be able to add some value to the world by helping share some of te joy that curiosity about the world gives us: science is a subject I have always found fascinating. Even before I knew it was called science, it added a piquancy to the World to know there were tings I didn't understand, but which gave me a feeling when I looked into them. The feeling was a mild, or I some cases, a powerful feeling of excitement at unpicking the happenings of the world using tools of observation. I later understood this to be the "scientific method" though to me it was still just "finding out".

I shall leave this particular thread for another time, but be assured, it will be often touched upon.

For now, I am happy to have somehow cleared a blockage. The flow is restored and the musings, ramblings and products of Pets mind will be forthcoming more regularly.

And if nobody wants to read them, never mind. I will still be the better for having written them down.

Interpersonal communication

2009-01-07T06:25:00.000-08:00

I have been musing a lot about how, considering what social creatures we humans are, we manage to communicate so poorly on the whole. I am not sure why this should be since it seems we have every opportunity to master at least our own language and most of us have at least amodicum of ability to understand the state of mind of other people. And so, I was reminded of just this internal dialogue I had with myself recently. I think I understood myself, although I may have got the wrong end of my own stick on occasion. The beauty of text is that one can subsequently revise the words to adit out one's own self-contradictions. Real life, where conversations happen in real-time, mean that we do not have this luxury and here perhaps, I uncover at least one reason why poor communication results.

This was written recently on a trip to Scandinavia where a dull flight afforded many opportunities for observation:
Interpersonal communication is an imprecise art. I am, I like to think, quite articulate. By this I mean that if I have a thought, concept or emotion to describe, I can usually express it precisely and feel I have, if not conveyed it accurately, then at least clarified in my own mind what it was I was trying to say to my own satisfaction.

In addition I feel, though I may mistakenly inflate my own abilites from an observer's perspective, that I am quite astute when it comes to the protocols of conversation: I attempt to listen attentively, giving feedback with nods and "hmm, yes" kinds of backchannels at regular intervals, I make appropriate eye contact and smile in the right places. Years of sales meetings and customer dinners have made this something that comes easily to me without self-consciousness.

Why, then, are some people easy to talk to but not others? For instance, I was talking to a slovakian lady a while ago on the way out to Hungary. For two hours we traded comments, anecdotes, opinions and replies. And it was lovely! A more interesting couple of hours on a plane I have rarely spent.
And now, across the gangway is a seemingly effervescent swedish lady who, though very personable, seems impossible to talk to for any length of time without awkward silences developing. Somehow, where last week, words came easily and naturaly as things occurred to me to say, or in response to some small story, today, the words sound thick and sticky in my mouth and my voice sounds to me unfamiliar and forced. My comment about northern living in scandinavia being a relatively recent human development and blond(e) hair being only 11000 years old met with a slow blink and puzzlement (usually I only see this in religious zealots who deny the possibility of evolution). I realised that seeding the conversation through facts most seem to find interesting, was not really working.

So, the conversation foundered with what I think I discern as a palpable sense of failure on the part of both parties. So why the difference? And why was I unable to be my natural self in the former case but not the latter? The recipient? Her reactions or lack thereof? Chemistry? Maybe she just didnt want to talk to me, although i sensed that was not the case from the body language.

Ok, Body language can be misread or even not noticed: On the bus on the way to the plane, a man was talking to an elderly couple. The conversation seemed consensual, that is, both were seemingly happy to engage in it and neither of the couple seemed to want to disengage from this insensitive transmit-only speaker.
The younger man was explaining to these two complete strangers many aspects of his life and they occasionally, as opportunity permitted, reciprocated with their own little sets of facts and opinions.
But why? Why do people volunteer information like this? (says I, ironically, pouring out words and ideas to unseen readers, if they exist at all.) Why are they driven to tell? And what is it that causes them to choose the particular information they offer?
In a social or mating arena possibly people divulge those thing about themselves that they think will make them appear interesting or attractive and thereby provide increased status, or will make them seem more desirable. And yet, much conversation is haphazard, some even inane, with seemingly no thought given to content or context.
The swedish lady is now asleep and her travelling companions are engaged in polite but distant (from their body language) conversation. This appears to be ignorantly hopeful on behalf of the man and polite, possibly to the point of defensive on the part of the young lady. And beyond the words, many messages are unconsciously sent, received or missed. I can see them quite clearly.
He is not going to get her number. Not unless he learns to shut up and listen - to all the messages available.

siezed

2008-10-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

In the echoing hall that is the inside of my head, there is a darkened corridor. I can't see where it goes, but I see many doors off to the sides. Some have locked handles and from within I hear muffled sounds of frustration as something struggles to get out. Other doors open freely, but the rooms inside, though lit amply, show no contents.
Most rooms seem to contain useful bits and pieces: Here a pile of files strewn carelessly across the floor, half read but easy to reference, though harder to file in any kind of order. There, some spanners, a dremel, a universal screwdriver set with a few of the more useful bits obviously missing from the case. And a desk with scientific instruments, well used and oiled to a comfortable action, all ready for use. They are in a state of disarray but look serviceable enough.

In another, a polished wooden floor is set for dancing, but there is no music. The floor looks slippery but an expeditionary foot will find that spinning is labourious and slides stop before they gain any momentum. And though footprints are visible in the chalky dust, it seems as though they have been there a while and not retraced recently.

In a more distant room, there is a small curly haired blond boy playing with lego. I push the door open a small amount and he hears it creak and looks up at me. I want to walk in and play with it too, but something stops me. Maybe it is his private concentration that I feel I cannot intrude upon.
I close the door, but as I pull it to, acting on a second thought, I push it slightly ajar again.

I walk back to the room with the files. The pile seems bigger. I resume reading.

an unexpected neighbour

2008-09-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

Not a breath of wind stirs the remaining leaves on the alder trees by the river bank but the huge drops of water, coalesced from the leaden mist drip with a broken rhythm into the sluggishly moving water, and of course on me. A man in suit comes out of his front door and barely glancing around him, climbs into his tiny mazda sports car. His surroundings are now plastic, metal and the inane jabbering of a fool on FM and his chosen music.
Thumping a bass beat, the car zooms off down the road, scattering cats into the bushes as he turns the bend at the end of the road.

Disgruntled birds sit on branches over torpid fish as they float weaving in the flow. The air smells of something indescribable but elemental on this day of half-light.

In the river bank, a small hole can be seen and from within, tapping and chuckling. If one were to look closer, a gleaming pair of eyes might be barely visible in the dark of the river bank, squinting in concentration. Tap, tap, tap.... a pair of tiny hands is fashioning something. As yet it is impossible to see but a hammer, its head no bigger than thumbnail, beats out a rhythm on a piece of previously discarded metal. As he taps, the tiny fellow sings a song. It is an ancient song with words that he recognises as ancestors of his own words, but nevertheless as old as the bedrock that makes the land, before the time when the upstart men started making their presence felt in the forests. The tapping stops and a grunt of approval can be heard from the tiny cavern. Emerging, distractedly into the light is a tiny man, no more than a handwidth high. He wears a collection of strange garments, some seemingly woven from grass or other vegetation, but some shimmering and light like some ethereal material never before spun. On his feet, incongruously, a pair of tiny wellington boots, the tops turned over to reveal a band of grey.

He holds a miniscule flute in his wizened hands which he brings to his bearded lips and blows.

The scale he plays is strange, not quite any that might grace a music room in our world but somehow with unexpected intervals that make the ear listen more keenly. Then he begins to play. The notes do not carry far in the damp, heavy air but pitched like the chirping of some magical bird, they pierce the mist and mingle with the birdsong, to be heard only by one aware initially of their presence.

And through the grass, something comes rustling: a bank vole. It pauses briefly and then, myopically but obediently stumbles over the small clearing in the undergrowth to where he tiny man is standing, now smiling. Nodding in a satisfied manner, he climbs up on to the bank vole's back and, sheathing his flute in his belt, he urges the creature down into the water. Silently, it swims upstream, the soothing murmurings of the little man coaxing it on.
They are both quickly dissolved into the distance as the mist hides their passage.

A Perfect Moment

2008-09-24T03:53:00.001-07:00

Oh, how wondrous it is to be alive and sentient in the 21st century! A passing remembrance from my callow youth happened to send me to youtube where, unashamedly, I sought out Yes, "Gates of Delerium"; one of my fave bands at 17 and a taste for which I make no apology.
This piece of music was a revelation for me. Its 24mins of pompous prog rock brillance sounded like a troupe of chimpanzees in a music shop initially, its chaos making no sense at all and apearing really as just a "bloody row!".
But when I was 17 i had a girlfriend who was a talented musician, and having no musical education myself (although I am actually very good banjo play for which I also make no apology) I didnt really understand music. But upon listening to it she said "Wow! Thats clever stuff!" and explained to me all about syncopation and counterpoint; concepts hitherto unknown to me.
Suddenly, it unfolded into a beautiful, if slightly chaotic masterpiece proving that a little education can reveal a huge huge cultural experience to one.
so, I looked it up on youtube, as you do.
And there it was! Ok, live and not a great example, but still recognisable as that hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck raising masterpiece.
And whilst listening and looking out of the window (instead of emailing the Norwegians as i should have been), just as the final triumphant guitar solo of part 3 ("Soon the light") swelled, a lost helium balloon drifted by above the trees, its string dangling, presumably lost by some now distraught child for whm my heart does twang a little in empathy.
But it drifted so gracefully over the trees and the soundtrack was so fitting that a little tear of joy welled up and my forearms were all a-goosebumpy.

I just thought I would share that with you.

:-)

Insidious messages

2008-09-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

Advertising
I didn't ask to see it. I gave no permission. The handsome, twinkly-eyed aspirational man on the billboard picture looks down at me, causing a vague sensation of self-discontent. Suddenly I am painfully aware that my teeth are slghtly crooked, that my battered old nose is a little askew, that my blond hair combines with these to conspire to prevent me aspiring to the desired "tall dark and handsome" ideal.
I am 43 and though extremely fit due to my activity levels, I am not anywhere near as taut as this honed body which imposes itself on my retina and hence my consciousness at some level. I did not ask to have this image thrust into my view and mind. My equilibrium is suddenly upset and the happy place that is the inside of my head is gatecrashed by an unwelcome image.

Aware of the tacit dishonesty of this picture, I am even so suddenly struck by a feeling of guilt, a pang of inadequacy.
I am slim, I can cycle 10 miles in half an hour or sometimes under. I do yoga most mornings. I go to the gym reglarly because I enjoy the space away from intellectual demands.
And yet, a picture on the front of a magazine makes me feel instantly lesser. The knowledge that the man in the depiction of this "ideal" does not exist as shown, does not help.
He may actually be lean, but we don’t see that he is not as sculpted as what we are shown. For their purposes, he must appear to represent perfection. Technology has been used to "enhance" the image: his shape and definition modified to fit parameters that evolution has installed in our brains for dominance, fertility, good genes.

And even if he does faithfully approximate this godlike physique, he is a model. He inhabits a world where superficiality is the driver. He does not have to stand all day at lathe or slob out tied to a desk, immobile for nine hours a day. His job is to jump in and out of taxis, whipping his shirt off for the camera, living on lean tuna and mineral water.
When I was that thin (due to being too poor to buy enough food to fuel my necessarily active lifestyle) I felt shit: I was run down, tired all time and had a permanent cold. Some fat is healthy.

But he doesn't need to do that. He just works out, tailors his diet to his abs and gets photographed.
And we see him in the newsagent, on the cover of “mens health” or similar and in our heads, expectations and inadequacies result.

Women have had this for years, exacerbating eating disorders and now it has reached men.
You would have thought we would have learned! All those anorexic waifs and bulimic daughters suffering from the expectations set by Cosmo, Vogue, Sex and the City. All the guilt!

And now men too. The second wrong failing to make the right. How do immunise my son? I can explain but how to tackle the pervasive influence? Be how you want my son! As with my daughter: You are beautiful! Don’t believe them!

I try to counteract the propaganda whilst being unable to entirely shake it off myself.

And so, I have another beer, savouring the taste. I look out approvingly at my non-aspirational old skoda octavia (60mpg if driven boringly) before heading to the kitchen wherein lies a marvellous stilton, olives and some home made bread.

And my abs may have a covering, indicating my love of good food and beer during those happy evenings when with friends, I praise the quality of the cheddar, bread and Old Speckled Hen.

But you know, I really do feel very good. Its not real, you know: people won't like you more if you are a sculpted Adonis, that shiny BMW won't make me cool and happy.

But what of appearance as a commodity?

If we could all choose exactly how we looked, what would we look like?
As one of the few people, or so it would seem, few, who has always been pretty happy with his appearance, I wonder often at the power exerted by our appearance: actual on others and perceived upon ourselves.
There is no doubt that appearance affects how people treat us and how well disposed, or otherwise, they are to us. Attractive people, judged on contemporary standards, earn more, are healthier than ugly people. Many studies have shown the benefits of being attractive.
Neither is attractiveness necessarily culturally defined. Much evidence points to certain criteria, such as facial symmetry, being hardwired in our brains. The tendencies of babies to smile more at pictures of symmetrical faces is just one study I could name.
The evolutionary basis of these seemingly innate parameters is cause for speculation, but such prejudices definitely can be seen to exist.
So, then, imagine if you will, a world where by some unspecified and risk free technique, we could all look exactly as we would like.
Would uniformity ensue? Symmetry, certainly would be seen as desirable, whether consciously or not. Would all women opt for long shapely legs, all men for big chests and biceps?
I suspect many would.
That being the case, how far would variability disappear? And if everyone tended toward a standard ideal, what would be the differences that we find to love; those characteristics that make us unique and lovable?
I wonder then, if this would be subject to the vagaries of fashion. Once every person had a chieved a “look”, would there then be pressure to look different in a new and innovative way? Would the common herd, with their perfect looks, be so passe and to be eschewed? Or is there an ideal which would be reached where everyone would happily remain. The former I think.

But its all about what other people think. As social animals, most of us care about this. Some actually don’t, but often they are oblivious to social cues and tend to spend a lot of time alone or in a tribe-of-no-tribe where everyone else is similarly oblivious.

So, given all of this, it is not surprising that advertising gets to us, moulds us to its will. Using carefully honed and cleverly tested approaches to inserting suggestions into our poor stone-age minds, it tells us what we need. And most of us are powerless to even question its presuppositions.

As I told my son, aged three when he said “We have to buy X washing powder! It gets your clothes really clean!”
“Do you think that is true or do you think they just want our money?”
A realisation occurred visibly in his little face which has persisted.
I may have created a cynic, but it’s a question worth asking frequently.

variability and consistency

2008-09-11T01:44:00.000-07:00

How inconstant is the human brain? Actually, I am not sure it is. Just
over a litre in capacity, it contains a complex and mysterious
cocktail of hormones, neurotransmitters, electrolytes and lipids, all
bound up in, well, basically as far as I can tell, something akin to
lard. (actually, my memories of my great-granny feeding me brawn on
toast seem to reinforce this, nasty, pasty goo that it was).

So, given that the concentrations of these very active compounds can vary depending upon died, depletion, exercise, how amazing it is that we even manage to remain recognizably the same personality from day to day let alone can expect a reasonably uniform performance from it.
The morning after a major alcohol binge, where lungs release fragrantly the ethanol excesses from the bloodstream to the air, the chemistry of the brain must be in chaos, surely.

Ok, I must confess I am no neurochemist, but reading the figures for the miniscule changes in concentration of testosterone needed to turn me from the sexual equivalent of a docile herbivore to a ravening lustful maniac when the right stimulus appears, I realise the profound effect that a small chemical change can have upon behaviour and perception. Indeed, I have observed during a monthly cycle the prodound effects of a change in concentration of a chemical which results in the sweetest and most demure of ladies turning into absolute demons for no discernable reason.
I do wonder then that soaking my neurons in alcohol doesn't turn me into some kind of stupor-encased zombie, all process deadened with the resulting functionality degraded commensurately.

So, the vagaries of "mood" aside, which I confess, I find difficult to rationalise as it seems to be both chemical and situational, it seems we are far more consistent in mental weather than our inconsistent chemistry would cause us to believe.

And yet.. Writing this is arguably more difficult than other episodes of writing. Over the last month, certain privations in my experiential landscape, that is the absence of certain characters who provide unusual perspectives and unexpected stimuli, results in what feels like a dumbing down of my faculties.
Oddly, the lack of these inputs has resulted in a much dimmer me and several more astute aquaintances have commented that my "spark"appears to be missing. I concur because its feels so on the inside also words are harder to find, vocabulary is elusive or even absent.
The cascade of concepts which usually results from a single thought given free range to roam and ricochet off others just doesn't seem to be happening.
So how does this happen? Is this too chemical somehow? Or organisational?
How can a brain or rather, its function, atrophy so just from the want of particular exercise? I suppose we are used to the idea of this happening with muscles. But the brain is not a muscle so we can draw no logical inference of there being an equivalent process of atrophy for it.
So where is my brain? What can I use to jump-start the processes of spurious chaotic thought that I so enjoy?
Interestingly, although it took me ironically ten minutes of (enforced due to the "fasten seatbelt" Sign illuminating for landing) contemplation to locate the word "elusive", I have found the very act of writing this to have awoken areas of my brain which I had not consciously missed until now. Perhaps this is the key: if one just uses it, the rusty wheels, feared forever immobile, might creak into motion and before long, greased by the lubricants of musing and whimsy, run free on bearings of curiosity, wonder and humour.
And so spinning with frictionless ease, the machinery of the mind turns out nonsense by the page.

So, given the amazing electrical and chemical complexity of the machine that is the human brain, i continue to marvel at the reliability, misplced car keys aside, of this incredible machanism.

And now, i am going to see if I can affect it with a pot of tea.

Inertia

2008-08-21T03:48:00.000-07:00

Sitting, thinking about doing. But not doing. Its a scourge, isnt it! How powerful a well of gravity there appears to be in the continuing state of inactivity.
It is a rainy evening and I have done little all day. I could go to the gym. I could go out for a run. But somehow the situation holds me in a grasp of apathy. I sit. I put the telly on. I have a beer. Well, after alcohol, no point in thinking about the gym or running, is there?

I sit in the office. I need to write an email about some stuff or other that requires a bit of research but somehow, moving from this grey equilibrium of comfortable stupor seems an insurmountable obstacle. I need to get up and walk across the building to talk to an engineer about some device or other. But It means stopping my music halfway through a track and oh, why don't i just have mooch through my inbox for a bit longer, or look up the weather forecast?

And so it goes on: Why don't I join a dance class. Yes I will! On Tuesday, i will go down to the Pavillion i Bath and dance. And Tuesday comes and, oh, its been a long day, I am too tired. Maybe I will just read the paper for a bit. Oh look, its too late to go now. Oh well, never mind.

Only I did join that dance class. I do go on tuesday evenings and it is bloody marvellous.

I think inertia is the main force that stops us doing things. What is it abou the current state one finds oeself in, assuming it is not too uncomfortable, that prevents us from rising from it and doing something more stimulating? Laziness? Indolence?
But it happens and it is pervasive, pernicious.

So, I am going to get up off my arse and go to my yoga class.
Yes.

Cornwall

2008-08-10T01:01:00.000-07:00

You would have thought that in the course of two weeks in August, the sun would shine reliably and warmth would be available for at least a couple of days, wouldn't you? It seem not in Cornwall. A week and a half has brought rain, cool temperatures, and now gusty winds that move the clouds skidding across the sky like they are hurrying somewhere to drop their load of rain on some other poor unfortunates.
Only, on their way, they are dropping quite a lot of it here.
It was very busy on the roads yesterday. We popped to Bodmin to shop in Siansbury's, it being the only supermarket we can buy food in where there isnt "May contain traces of nuts" on absolutely everything, including flour, fizzy water and porridge.
The roads were pretty choked and i wonder at how the locals cope with this. It would drive me mad. I know that economically, tourism and farming seem to be the mainstays, but having the road outside your front door full of bike-bedecked people carriers all day must be a bit of a drag.
And so it continues to rain. What to do? Well, the Camel trail was lovely, but after a while the mud built up so thickly between the mudguard and wheels that they wouldn't really go round.
But what a beautiful trail! Makes the Bath/Bristol path look positively suburban.
And the sea! Oh, I had forgotten just how clear the water is here compared to further up towards Bristol. The blue translucence allows the sea bed to be seen until quite a long way out.
The weever fish was a bit of a surprise. I had not realised that British waters held such a nasty little surprise. I have been bitten by adders and this was more painful that that.
I did let loose every expletive i could muster which actually, does help. swearing does have a slight analgesic effect which is not to be underestimated as a source of relief.
I wil always, henceforth, wear something on my feet when paddling, to avoid experiencing the sting of the weever fish.
And so, as the wind howls arounf the nrodic lodge which is home for two weeks, threatening to distribute the plastic outdoor furniture across the cornish countryside, I consider what today may bring. What does one do in a place where outdoors is the value proporistion, and outdoors is uninviting due to inclement weather?
Bugger it! I am going in the sea anyway!

Mental weather

2008-07-24T05:33:00.000-07:00

I write. I cant help it. It clears the decks and makes space to get on with things.
When thought overwhelms me, I write it down. A tangle of confusion becomes a coherent (to me anyway) thread. I am not good at thinking. I never learned formally. But at least I learned informally. To arrive at a conclusion from information, albeit necessarily provisional, is a process I have at least a dim understanding of and in a rudimentary way, can put into practise.

What I find harder to put into words is the confusion that fills my head. To liken it to a cloud of static is the best I can manage.
When a situation has multiple aspects which interact, my grip on one is shaken loose immediately by all the others and my mental fingers seem coated with some slick, slippery substance that allows the grasp of any of it impossble. The thoughts and pieces of relevent information swirl around me and I cnnot grab hold of any of them long enough to slot them into somewhere where they will fit with all the other pieces.

And so it is that I remain bewildered and frustrated by complex issues. Planning becomes impossible as each thing I try to list wriggles away from my pen before I can get it down to the business end and onto paper.

Well meaning friends and colleagues suggest mindmaps, thinking that the "creative" nature of the process may somehow help. It doesn't. I just stall on pictures not words, wondering where to put things that belong to several branches or if I have put items in the right places.

And yet, writing is soothing. The funnel that takes some of the components, allows a single thread to be followed, ok, ignoring all the others and leaving them still floating, but quieter. But coherence is approximated.

And phases happen, like weather; there are storms that arrive, filling my head with lightning and howling gales, blowing everything around and causing the mental landscape to be as thay refer to in the forecast as "unsettled". This is not unpleasant. In fact it is very fertile and I enjoy it.

Then there are the warm, sunny periods where indolence is induced and the only thoughts are idle and whimsical. Thoughts may hint at themselves, as distant sounds from faraway activity does in the garden ona hot summer’s day (remember those? Although its shaping up nice today)

Other days are like thick fog on an oily sea where nothing moves. Thoughts lie there just below the surface, but to lift them above the surface would be like hoisting a submerged suitcase, still filled with its load of water, heavy, unwieldy and all just too much trouble really. On such days, there is no echo inside as the sounds of thoughts is absorbed by the deadening aspect of the vapour that fills the spaces.

Lately, it is pleasantly warm but overcast with barely a breeze to rustle the foliage. Vague feelings float about like cabbage whites in the allotment. They make themselves mildly troublesome but overall do not really impinge on consciousness. Occasionally, a red admiral of a thought or a painted lady whim might flutter past, but, somehow I am not inclined to chase them to see where they go. The faint buzzing of flies on the compost heap of daily banality are all I can hear and it does not produce anything much of value. Except a sort of psychic compost in which, at least maintenance of foliage is possible, if not small growth.
Of all of these, I think I enjoy the storms best. I dislike stability and order and find chaos exciting and fertile. I know others find it unsettling and sometimes regard it as a nuisance or problem, but chaos has so much more going for it.

But words seem to flow given any chance. Writing about nothing calls forth an internal dialogue on the nature or experience of nothing. There are always words, even on rainy days.

People whip up the breeze. Not all people, but some. A static and dull mental vista can be set into exhilarating motion by a stimulating coversation, or even a passing comment. It is this that keeps me ever hopeful that dullness will never become the status quo.

A sense of place

2008-06-26T03:49:00.000-07:00

Spaces produce feeelings. The arragement of objects in relation to each other can influence how a space creates its atmosphere. This is implicit in interior design and gardening.

In a garden, for I know something of that, as opposed to nothing about interior design, borrowing the landscape behind your garden can make the garden seem bigger. Indeed even painting your fence green or brown behind the shrubs can imply extra spaciousness. Strategically placed trees or bushes can imply some extra room behind, creating a sense of curiosity as to "what is back there then? I wonder what is through there."
It constantly surprises me the effect a place can exert by dint of its configuration.

Temperature and climate and time of day can make the same place feel different; a forest in sunshine of the afternoon with all the birds chirping can make it easy to see the figure of a dryad draped around a majestic tree, her smile inviting mischief and promising sensuality with her lithe feminine form.
But that same wood at dusk can seem filled with flitting spirits, intent upon deceiving the eye with swift flitting movements between the trees. Fireflies, such as I have seen in special places really can take on the occluded forms of Oberon, Puck, Peaseblossom and the fairy horde. You can easily see how such legendary creatures took shape in human culture.

Take that wood at midnight, however, on a cloudy moonlit night and threat lurks everywhere. Our primal fears of the Wolf in the darkness, come to eat us up after his eyes, yellow and luminous in the dark, have appraised us hungrily and unseen fron the cover of the undergrowth.
How places play upon us seems very much to be determined by our own sensitivity and awareness. It is much easier to view the forest as a benign mystery full of mischevious sprites if we are feeling poetic and have the wit to imagine them.

Our wolves may take many forms, although Our dryad could be fashioned from a real object of desire, possibly painted green for artisic effect and most alluring in her arboreal intertwining, the place of fear inside us from where the wolf springs has a common source from our ancient past.
Some of this we choose imagine and have consciousness of. Other feeings such as oppression can be involuntary and influenced by such simple things as a badly placed doorway, tasteless wallpaper or ghastly intrusive curtains.

And how did we, creatures of the savanna and forest, come to have this influence of place upon our psyches? What is is about a maroon and mahogany study that calms and comforts to creatures who only devised these things in the last evolutionary eyeblink?

Wolves in the forest are an old feeling, spirits of rocks and trees ans water also it is easy to imagine being with us since before we even clothed ourselves as species.
But yellow three piece suites, spacious kitchens of stainless steel and plumped up pink boudoirs seem odd things to feed our sense of place.

I have more to expand on this, but as usual, so little time. And the plane is landing so I have to switch off, as so often.

Oslo

2008-06-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

I am 35000 feet above the North Sea en route to Oslo. Somehow, I got booked business class, which is was an unexpected treat, not, seemingly because of legroom: the arbitrary curtain the marks the boundary between expensive and cheaper seats can apparenty be placed anywhere.

No, the good thing is DINNER. Dinner was very good and catching on quickly, I indulged myself with a glass of champagne. I am aware that champagne is often seen for its own sake as the height of decadence: us proles in years gone by would raise our glasses loftily and appreciatively to our uncultured lips and feel we were partaking temporarily in an elevated social ritual where the drinking of champagne made us momentarily equal with those rich and priveliged sophisticates who could be glimpsed on telly at expensive receptions. We felt we must certainly be improved by this action and maybe have absorbed a small but significant increment of poshness by the act.

Anyway, I digress, as so often.

A twenty year old muscle injury in my hamstring starts to trouble me with pings of sharp pain and so I self-medicate with a gin and tonic. This is not a drink which I feel entirely comfortable with as it has certai iffeminate connotations which the invoking of the idea of colonial gentlemen in pale suits cannot dispel.

Staring out of the window, I am struck by a thought I often have but which I rarely articulate: the irregularity and randomness of natural phenomena such as clouds and the shimmering of the sun on the waves that I saw earlier, actually seems to have a pattern to it.

The clouds are all different shapes and spaced irregularly below us. But if eyes are allowed to lose focus, they apear to have a regularity about their spacing. Like a shoal of synchronised seahorses, they cross the sky in a coordinated formation.

It seems to me that the universe is lumpy. This is why space has lots of, well, space, with galaxies peppered throughout, and buses always come three at a time. Probabilities seem to hold to this too, with events clustered together less randomly than might be expected. Or maybe its just me. Humans bein creatures that like to spot patterns, even when there are none.

Looking down npw, a strange optical/atmospheric effect creates a column of light that appears to link the sea with the sun.

This is physics: a way of looking at things such that phenomena are seen and appreciated and a cause wondered at. And how we discover springs from there. It doesn't have to be about equations or research, just about noticing and wondering why.

Always woner why. All the time. That way, you will never be bored and, though you may elicit odd looks when you wonder out loud, you will never be boring.

Hungarian beer blog

2008-06-04T14:16:00.000-07:00

Hello
I had a few beers and, when I used to write on myspace, the feedback was always that my foreign beer blogs were the most enjoyable. So I thought I would resume the tradition. I have had a few Leffes and this being my favourite beer, the effects are probably disproportionate.

I am in Hungary. (and this is not just for the hungarians reading ;-) i like it here. The people are really cheerful and friendly. It makes me reflect on the default nature of us Brits:
"How are you?!"
"Oh, mustnt grumble i spose.."
So why then do we? Is it the weather? Enthusiasm is so infectious. It leaves us feeling so happy and glad we encountered it. Sometimes we don't even know why.
Maybe it is the weather.
We drove here from Vienna. its the nearest international airport. Oh! And what a storm! I have never seen such! Two or more hours of gradually darkening hungarian sky lit every few seconds by a blinding flash that was momentarily brighter than day. Over and over again for hours.
And rain! Huge rain! Bug hot drops like pure passion from the sky.
Is this part of what makes the people?
Too tired tonight. Small devils of tiredness and fatigue are playing around the inside of my cranium. The vagaries of dealing with different cultures has depleted the reserves of my intellect.
Goodnight