Clothesline

The Federal Reserve’s calculated decision to sell $400bn of short-dated treasury bills to finance the purchase of 6 – 30 year debt, rather than embark on another round of quantitative easing, may alleviate some immediate pressures, but it entails several risks, which are worth spelling out in detail –

Eh?  Oh, I am sorry, I seem to have strayed into the wrong blog there.  I do hope I haven’t caused too much distress. 

Right, I’m okay now.  I was asked to explain how I came to possess a spare clothesline.  But first I have a confession to make.  In fact, when my old one broke under the weight of too many trousers and shirts, I did not, as implied, install the new one.  Instead, I tied a knot in the old one, hauled it back up until the trousers were no longer dusting the patio, and took off into town to buy some CDs and books, and guitar strings and fingerpicks.  I should have taken photos, it would have made this even more interesting.

So, why do I (still) have a spare clothesline?  Serendipity, or perhaps synchronicity.  Two weeks ago, K (who’s 88) announced that hers had broken.  I offered, on my visit next day to Majestic for a top-up, to pop into the Range store next door and pick up a replacement, which I duly did.  £1.40 for 20 metres, that’s not bad, is it?  An hour after I got home, she phoned me to let me know that her kindly neighbour, Ray, had nipped up to B&Q, bought her a new line, and installed it.  We both found this quite amusing.  She offered to pay me the £1.40, but I said don’t be daft, I’ll hang on to it.  It might come in useful, you never know.

Does anyone know what they’re on about?

Our economy here in the ‘United’ ‘Kingdom’ is apparently set to ‘grow’ by ‘only’ 1.1%, and this is a bad thing.  Other so-called statistics bear this out (the ‘bad thing’ bit I mean): unemployment is 2.something million and rising; government borrowing has gone up (yes, up!) to an all-time high of £16 billion for August; and consumer spending is trenching (unless you’re buying Mulberry or such stuff).  And at least one kind of inflation is running at 4.5%.

Anyway, the economy will ‘grow’ (in my version of the language, that means ‘get bigger’) over the next twelve months, by 1.1%.  That’s a positive rather than negative number.  So why is it bad news?  And how does ‘growth’, however meagre, reconcile with all those other negatives?  How come, for example, unemployment is rising whilst the economy is getting a bit bigger?  And how come we need to borrow more whilst we’re brutally slashing our outgoings?

I have pondered before the question of whether it makes sane sense to base all our policies and expectations on the premise that economies can, and must, go on getting bigger and bigger, for ever, or be doomed.  But that’s for another day.   For now, I just don’t get it.  And guess what, I don’t think they do either.

Daritism

I have received many requests to provide definitions for Blogger’s word verification, um, words, of which this is the latest.  Exhaustive analysis allows me to reveal that they fall into three categories: words that look as if they might mean something, but don’t; words that could never by any stretch mean anything; and garbled obscenities.  This leads me to believe that there are not two (as I previously thought) but three teams of verbaliverificationalists at work there: 1) the munchkins, who tease you with blunt-edged neologisms that send you scurrying to the dictionary, then giggle; 2) the oompa loompas, who throw the alphabet up in the air then run across the field kicking letters at each other until they form a pattern which makes them all giggle; and 3) underdeveloped schoolboys, who just giggle then snigger.

For the record, ‘datirism’ (n) means ‘a compulsive impulse to fail to make any sense (or anagram) of a given item of input.’  But that’s not important now.

More to the point, I was led to remember a recent complaint that there were far too many words which all mean the same thing.  I disagreed, but now I’m thinking about the converse: one word which, though spelt and pronounced the same, means two or more quite different things.  Diverted by this idea, and exploring ‘pan’, ‘lie’ and ‘waffle’, I was diverted by Chambers’ totally irrelevant definition of ‘page three’, which I can’t resist quoting in full, because it’s classic Chambers: ‘the page on which, traditionally, certain popular newspapers print nude or semi-nude photographs of female models with well-developed figures.’

Don’t you just love that ‘traditionally’?  I could quibble with the syntax – a photograph cannot be nude or semi-nude – but that’s not important either.

So, to come to the important point, consider the word ‘bid’.  This has two distinct meanings, from two quite different roots, which can be summarised as 1) to offer, and 2) to command.  Here is a snatch of dialogue, possibly from Jane Austen or P G Wodehouse:

ARCHIE: I bid you, Clarinda –

CLARINDA: In what sense, Archie, do you say ‘bid’?

ARCHIE: Forgive me, my darling.  I said ‘bid’. I meant to say ‘bid’.

Catch this!

Wynton Marsalis And Eric Clapton

Bailey

Here's Bailey, in a barrel in my garden.

I believe this cat to be called Bailey purely from an overheard conversation in the post office quite a few years ago.  He's not telling.  But he looks like a Bailey's, doesn't he?  He often lounges around in the garden, and occasionally plonks himself on my back doorstep: it's brick and faces south, so it's a nice warm snuggly spot for a cat to snooze; especially a confidently controlling one.  When I turn up from the car, Bailey thinks about it then decides physical contact is not appropriate, so he slopes off a couple of yards away, sits down and challenges me with his eyes.  He's the rule-maker. 

Bailey is huge.  When I first saw him from the bedroom window, I thought a white panther had escaped from a local zoo, until I realised that there aren't any local zoos around here.  But that's not conclusive.  Here near the centre of Reading, there have been sightings of deer, pheasants, parakeets, red kites and grey wagtails and, once (admittedly a few miles up the road) a wallaby.*  Life is wild around here!

* Sorry, can't resist an old SIHAC definition:  'Wannabe: someone aspiring to be a kangaroo.'

Ironies

Haven't got time to work these up into deathless prose, so here's the raw material:

1. Youth unemployment soaring, so make old people work longer.
2. Must reinforce parental control over feral youngsters, so chop parents' benefits and evict them.
3. Houses can't be sold, so build lots more of them, on fields.
4. Internet makes face-to-face meetings less necessary, so build more railways.

That'll do for now, because I'm hungry.  I have more.

Fiscal dilemma

I received a pile of envelopes from HMRC this morning.  I’m not going into details, naturally, but the upshot is that they've concluded that they have been overtaxing me for the past three years, and will be sending me a big cheque (let’s just say four figures, but I’m not telling you which four). I haven’t a clue whether they’re right, or how they know all this, given that I haven’t completed a tax return for at least five years, because they haven’t asked me to.  I’ll be showing it all to my accountant on Monday evening, over the second G&T, and I think I know what he'll say.

So where’s the dilemma, I hear you ask.  Well, clearly I don’t need this money, as I have comfortably survived the last three years without it.  So what shall I do with it?  I could donate it to Warren Buffett, just to ease the pain - but I don’t have his account number.  Or I could donate it to charity – but which one?  I could hand it back to the Treasury, requesting that they leverage it and hand the proceeds over to Mervyn to help out with the next round of QE – but I’m not doing that.  I could go down the shops  - I received a wonderful birthday card a couple of years ago:

Or I could just throw a humungous party.  But that’s a lot of disruption for you all.  Oh dear, I didn’t have this problem yesterday.

Triple crown magic? (3,5)

Well done!  I have just completed the Guardian Cryptic Crossword (that's the big people's one) for the third day on the trot.  Should I:

a)  Wallow in hubris?
b)  Complain because they're getting too easy?
c)  Throw away the dictionary and the crossword list book?  or
d)  Get out more?

Postscript: it's not often I select a word which means exactly the opposite of what I intended.  I meant, of course, 'amour propre'.  I will try to avoid antonymy in the future.

Mishearings, innuendos and doubles entendres

Ensuing from a series of comments on another blog, involving a crude particle-physics-related anagram, I was prompted to put on an ancient Beach Boys album, containing amongst other joys (and a lot of carp), their cover of the Crystals' 'Then I Kissed Him' (for obvious reasons retitled 'Then I Kissed Her').

My mind was obviously running on some rather dubious tracks, because I heard the line 'I kissed her in a way that I'd never kissed a girl before' and thought "hmm".  (This brought to mind a Guardian correspondence from many years ago, concerning the correct plural of ... no, I'd better not say.  (If anyone knows what the French Connection I'm on about, please get in touch.))

But it did remind me of just a couple of famous mishearings, which I'm sure everybody knows but I can't resist repeating anyway, because they still make me laugh:
From the Shirelles' 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?':  "Can I believe the magic of your size?'
And from Jimi Hendrix's 'Purple Haze':  "Scuse me while I kiss this guy!"
Any more, anyone?

How does that work, then?

My washing machine broke down about seven years ago.  It was, then, itself about fifteen years old.  I wanted one exactly the same: after all, despite the twelve different options on the rotary programme selector and the five mysterious pressable buttons, I'd only ever used it for three purposes: whites, coloureds and occasionally delicates  (when I couldn't be bothered to handwash a pullover). 

So when the old one broke, it was dead easy.  I went to John Lewis and said: "Can I have a new Bosch Lavamat 3100 please?"*  The salesman didn't bat an eyelid.  "I'm sorry sir, that's a very old model.  Obsolete, in fact."  He frowned.  "What you need is the Bosch Lavamat 6100."  My heart sank.

He showed me one.  "Hang on," I said.  "That's pretty much identical to the 3100, isn't it?"  He smiled.  "Outwardly, yes.  Of course, the internal technology has been radically -"

I cut him off.  "I'll take one."

He smiled again.  "Very sensible, those Germans."

Thanks to Z for opening up this rich vein of potential bloggery. 
* I may have made up these model numbers.

Useless grapes

Useless for eating purposes that is, consisting as they do mostly of skin and pip - although they are quite tasty.

I turned them (and some vodka and sugar) into grape vodka last year, quite successfully, applying exactly the same technique as you use for sloe gin.  (see here.)  I started it in October, when they were more or less ripe, and it was ready for Christmas.  It didn't last long into the New Year.

Stately homes of England (a very occasional series)

We had agreed to meet up at midday at Buscot Park, with a view to proceeding up the road to Kelmscott Manor for our picnic, as Buscot didn't open until two.  In the event, although Buscot House and gardens themselves (the bits you pay for if not a NT member) were not yet open, the car park and picnic area were; so, as we were both starving, events were reversed.  We scoffed the picnic, luxuriously seated on sets rather than camp chairs or the ground (and invaded by only two wasps), then drove the long way round to Kelmscott to kill a little time until two o'clock. 

I had no expectations at all.  My experience of so-called stately homes resides mostly in the North and West of England.    We parked ten minutes' walk away, opposite the church, and strolled up to the Manor, past an enticing pub (I don't know my friend well enough yet to suggest stopping off for a swift half).  But the walk up through the village was delightful.  Dry-stone walls are an art form created by craftsmen. (Hey, there's a buzzword -  Arts and Crafts.)  I could have stood and stared at them for tens of minutes. 

Kelmscott is not National Trust, so can charge what it likes: £9 in this case.  We didn't intend to visit there anyway - "I've had enough of Pre-Raphaelites", said my companion - so we made our way back to Buscot.  (Mind you, Buscot charges £8 to non-NT-members, but I think you get a bit more for your money.)  But what a fantastic place!  I use that adjective carefully - there's a lot of fantasy in there.  You wander into the next room and are confronted by a Gainsborough or a Rembrandt juxtaposed (in your mind) against an intimate Faringdon family portrait.  Futuristic glass sculptures sit next to genuine Egyptian godesses and Rossetti houris.  Eclecticism was possibly the crowning glory of the Victorian age; I was reminded of the Burrell collection.

So, having achieved cultural saturation, we wandered around the gardens and the park.  The water garden with its wide lake reminded me of Stour Head; mock temples around the edges.  The Swinging Garden (which I had been informed was for adults) was a disappointment; I'd expected it to be full of swingers behaving badly.  But I think I was too tired for that by then.

And I haven't even mentioned the terracotta warriors.

There's a kind of hush

I live within earshot of Rivermead, the location of the Reading Festival at this time every year.  Usually, I flee the country (to Wales), but for a couple of reasons (wind, rain) that hasn't been possible this year.   So I was rather dreading it.  I love music of nearly every kind (except finger-in-the-ear yokel-folk and massed bagpipes), but I'd rather select it for myself than have it, so to speak, thrust down my lugholes. 

But, so far, something's wrong.  I can hardly hear it.  Admittedly the wind direction is variable, which makes a difference - so maybe Caversham is getting the best of it.  But even allowing for the wind, it's just not loud enough!  Time was, here half a mile away, windows would be trembling, chimneypots wobbling.  What's wrong with the kids of today?  Don't they know how to make a proper noise any more?  I didn't even notice much loud music during the riots.

As I write, I'm ducking between BBC3 and the garden.   Jarvis is giving the performance of his life on the telly, but all I can hear outside is the twiddly synth bits.  I've turned the TV up to 11 (38 actually), and it still sounds tinny.  Crank up the bass, guys, FFS.  I should be down Notting Hill, where they used to know how to do loud.  Still, Elbow are headlining tomorrow; I might wander down Cow Lane, G&T in hand, at about eight.

Is That All There Is?

I wanted to show the actual YouTube video, but for some reason they won't let me embed videos in my blog anymore.  So here's the link, in honour of Jerry Leiber, undoubtedly the greatest lyricist of the last fifty years, who died this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M&feature=player_embedded

Urgent enquiry

Are these still valid?

And if so, what's their current market value?

One-liners

A man walks into a bar.  He says "Ouch!"
(Apologies for the misprint in earlier editions of this post.)

*

I dreamed this one:
I bought a tin of rat poison.  In the small print it said "Rat Not Included."

*

Q: Why did Madam Blavatsky cross the road?
A: To get to The Other Side.

Come on, you can do better than that ...

VIX

This is seriously loopy.  To put it simplistically, the Volatility Index is a measure of the levels of  'fear' in financial markets, using data drawn from the renowned and reliable, not to say infallible, ratings agency Standard and Poor's.  It's been around in Chicago for years.  So far, so pointless.  But the fun starts here: not only do they measure today's fear, they also calculate predicted fear levels in thirty, sixty and ninety days' time.  Fear futures, in other words.  And best of all, you can trade these futures in the marketplace.  You can buy and sell bets on how afraid market traders might feel by Christmas.  A quick search will put you in touch with people eager to help (at a price of course).

I'll shut up about that now, because my virtual pet snake has just started to eat its own tail again.

In other news, I understand that the markets are seriously jittery at the moment because they don't believe that governments are doing enough to regulate the markets.

And more importantly, have they found Yvonne the Bavarian cow yet?

Reading List

In the absence of anything better to do with my leisure time (apart of course from consulting all your lovely blogs and firing the occasional inane comment at them), I read a lot.  Every fortnight or so, I tramp down to Waterstones and buy whatever of the latest '3 for 2' offers catch my eye.  [Should that be 'B3G1F?]  Failing that, I trawl my shelves for rereadables.  All that may change soon.  In the meantime, here are my twitteresque reviews of the latest half-dozen:

Gods Without Men, Hari Kunzru: Sub-early-Pynchon without the jokes.  Can the peyote, Coyote.
The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, Jonathan Coe: I did laugh a lot.  Good vignettes, and an outrageously outrageous ending.
Killshot, Elmore Leonard: Anyone wanna write a thriller with real people on both sides?  Bring it on.   (Actually, 'both' is misleading.  There as many sides as there are characters.)
The Free World, David Bezmozgis: Beautifully written sub-Tolstoyian epic of Russian emigres to Italy in the late seventies.  Easily the best new thing I've read in months.  [Spoiler alert: some of the endings are happy (I think).]
At Home, Bill Bryson: A miracle!  Bryson has managed to write a bloated, humourless, really boring book.
Life, Keith Richards: You had to be there.  And understand open five-string tunings.  I was, and I do.

And your off-the-shelf bonus ball: The Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker.

The wee beasties will win

In a neat pull-together of several recent threads, I can report that this tiny spider

builds its web, as often as is necessary, between my two grey bins.  This has been going on for some weeks now.    Whenever I go to wheel the bin out, or sometimes even just open a lid, spider seems to see me coming and whizzes off to the nearest bin, quite happy to sacrifice its finely wrought habitat to a greater power in the interest of survival.  Just after I'd taken the photo, a feral wasp stumbled into the web.  I was hoping to capture a battle royal, but the wasp escaped.  The web was trashed though.

There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I have absolutely no idea what it is. 

The Cost of Nothing

My local council collects what they call green waste.  You get given a special green wheelie-bin, and once a fortnight a Vulture comes round and empties it.  They take the waste away, process it and compost it, and you can go up to the depot and buy nice bags of good organic peat-free compost at a very reasonable price.

Last March, everybody received a letter informing us that, from April, the council could no longer provide the free green bin service, and felt obliged to make an annual collection charge of £21.50.  Invoices for this amount would be issued during April.  We could, of course, opt out, but would have to make our own arrangements for disposal of our green waste.  Amazingly, some people chose that course, evidently calculating that the cost of the petrol needed to take it up to the tip for a year, plus the plastic bags and their own time, would amount to less than £21.50.  But most of us shook our heads in wry amusement and took the hit.

I personally thought this was an admirable scheme, fully in accordance with the spirit of modern economics.  It was rather like a sub-prime mortgage - in which you sell somebody something and then take it away from them, charging them for the privilege - in reverse.

Anyway, April came and went, and no invoices appeared.  For some reason, nobody seemed particularly surprised, and indeed most of us had more or less forgotten about it.  The bins continued to get emptied.  And then, early in May, there were some local elections, and the balance of power in my council changed.  'Ah-ha', we thought.  The first duty of a new government is of course to do its best to undo everything the previous one did. 

Sure enough, this morning the green bin collection team came down the road as usual, emptied the bins and delivered a letter, from the Interim Director of Environment Culture and Sport no less, to each house.  The Interim Director apologised for the delay in updating us, but was pleased to announce that it had been decided to 'abandon' this charge.  To quote:

'This means garden waste collections will remain free ...  If you told us at the time that you were not willing to pay the new charges you can still place your bin out for collection.'  And anyone who was nutty enough (there were some, apparently) to pay the £21.50 in advance will get a refund, in due course.

Without wishing to labour the point, I can't help wondering what the full cost was of this exercise in doing precisely nothing.

Feral

It's the word of the week, and for once the journalists, and some members of the public, have nailed it.  It means wild, or even better, reverted to the wild, and that's exactly what's happening.  For the people  in question, there wasn't far to go.  I'll come back to that.  First, four frontline suggestions:

1.  Be like the Turks.  I'm not particularly proposing vigilantism, but those Turkish shopkeepers who just stood up in front of their property and said 'bring it on', and got a result, had the right approach.
2.  Parental responsibility.  Any child, that is someone under eighteen living at home, who intends to go out without a very good reason has to be grounded.  If they refuse, then the parents must tell them that the locks will be changed and they will not be allowed back in the house, ever.  If the child calls the bluff, follow through.
3.  Car boot sales or equivalent.  We all know that there's a vibrant hidden economy built upon stolen or dodgy goods.  (It's not as bad here as it is in Greece or Spain or Italy, but it's rife.)  So downgrade all that.  All that looted stuff is going somewhere.  There's a limit to how many HDTVs or Imodium capsules you can steal for your own use.  The police should be prowling those places over the next few weeks. 
4.  Arrests.  Two people were openly interviewed on BBC TV this evening, effectively defending the violence and looting.  They must be arrested and charged with incitement.

But of course none of that cuts to the quick.  The trouble is that looting is the cultural norm.  A letter to today's Guardian expressed it better than I can, but just consider: bankers, MPs, media slags, police, kids ... they're all looters.  The more that moral decline persists and blooms, the less chance there is of us getting back to decency and compassion and fairness. 

We're all going feral.  'Agenbite of inwit'.  That's what we're losing.  Remorse of conscience.

The Ben Cotta-Al Bergo AllStars

Nobody today remembers this legendary Italian band which, for a brief scintillating moment, encapsulated the zeitgeist of the world-changing musical revolution that swept the southern European avant garde in 1967.  Drawing on sources as diversely esoteric as The Flowerpot Men and The New Vaudeville Band, whilst unafraid to flirt with ‘popular culture’ (Brian Poole and the Tremoloes were a particular influence), the AllStars won a cult following in locales such as downtown Piacenza, the dockland areas of Portofino and the secret fleshpots of San Gimignano. 

The band’s personnel is hard to nail down, shifting as it did in response to physical and mental circumstances, casual invitations to ‘sit in’, and of course the match or otherwise between the availability of musical instruments and people capable of playing them.  But the core membership seems to have been: Ben Cotta, woodwind and air guitar; Al Bergo, cornetto; Sty Zitter, banjo, angklung; Con Limony, bass; Franco Bollo, banging things; Terry Motta, banging other things or sometimes the same ones as Bollo, including each other; Frank Cooler, very high-pitched calming noises; and of course the delightfully clad Bella Feager on occasional vocals.

Quite what contributed to the AllStars’ eventual demise, and the ongoing lawsuits, is difficult to discern.  It has been suggested that ‘lack of musical differences, or similarities’ may have been a contributory factor, but it seems equally likely that the members’ growing amaretto habit, sometimes involving post-gig binge sessions until one or two in the morning, would have tipped the balance between success and ignominious collapse. 

Sadly, no recordings of the AllStars have survived.  Nor, apart from an undated entry in a mouldy old exercise book of mine, does there appear to be any documentary evidence that they ever actually existed.

Do The Default

I have solved the world's financial problems several times here since I started blogging, but my proposals - abolish the financial markets, everybody join the euro, and so on - have been totally ignored.  I can only assume that this is because they are not radical enough.  So it's time to take the velvet glove off.

Somebody recently asked (in the Guardian, of course): if practically everyone is in debt, who do they owe it all to?  Nobody came up with the obvious answer, which is 'each other'.  And nobody has yet explained to my satisfaction how the inverted pyramid of piss which seems to be causing all this trouble came about, or why anyone puts up with it.  On the radio only this morning, I heard an apparently important person, from a position of some authority, explaining in all seriousness that the problem was that governments were not doing enough to convince the markets that governments were doing enough to constrain the activities of the markets.  I simplify, but not by much.

So, let's all default on our debts.  Let's all - countries, corporations, families, people - say 'nope, sorry, can't repay you.'  What would happen then?  Susan from over the road would ask me to lend her £350 to buy a new iBrow or something.  I'd say 'fine, I'll just nip next door and borrow it from Crispian.'  Crispian would gladly say yes, because he knew that Kimberley two doors up would be good for it ...  We'd all be happy, because we'd know that we'd be welcome round Susan's place any time to play with her iBrow.  And the people who make iBrows would be perfectly happy.

Pretty soon everyone would get fed up with wasting all their energy whizzing money faster and faster around the planet, and hunker down to making and doing things that are actually useful to each other. 

Meanwhile, I can't even buy a decent cheese grater.  The company that used to make them has gone bust.

Things to do with the Moon

How about this?  I know you're all Grauniadistas so have probably read all about it already, but here's my take on it:

About a squazzillion years ago, a Mars-sized planet crashed into the raw embryonic thing that was to become the Earth.  It left a huge hole, which much later became the Pacific Ocean.  But the debris flew off into space and became two moons.

After a while, the laws of physics caused the smaller moon to collide gently with the bigger one, so that they merged into one.  They agreed that we would struggle with this truth, once we came along - we needed a bit of time to work out the details.  So they came to a deal, an orbit whereby we would only ever see one side of their marriage.  The two sides were of course very different.

But we have outfoxed them.  We can see the dark side, which is very different.  Craggy and mountainous, rather than smooth and lightly pitted.  I can't see the moons as I write, because they're new.  But it comforts me, in some odd way, to imagine that I came from the same place and will go back there.

1987, what if?

http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?PID=1419147&T=4147

Logic vs. emotion

Some situations are born out of emotion, and one way of dealing with them is by applying logic.  You write down all the emotional triggers that led you to where you are, and you demolish them, one by one, with cold, ruthless logic.  "Was that true?"  "The evidence indicates that it wasn't."   "Why did that happen?"  "Because someone was acting on signals which may not have been intended."  "How come somebody said what they did?"  "They felt it was true at the time."  "Would that really have happened?"  "No."  And so on.

It doesn't work very well.  But at least you know that whilst the emotions will fade away, given time, the cold ruthless logic will endure.

Some of you know what I'm talking about.  Others will just have to guess.

Shibboleth

Basically, I just wanted to write that word, because it has a tang about it.  Some words do that - you would never use them in everyday speech, but you wish you could.  'Visceral' is another one; I don't even know how to say it, but I do know exactly what it means.  Shibboleth, of course, is the Gileadite testword to distinguish an Ephrainite, who could not pronounce sh.   But that's not important now.

The particular sh word I have in mind at the moment is 'Growth'.  (Okay, let's assume they couldn't pronounce th either: I couldn't until I was about seven.)  The U.K. economy has apparently grown by only 0.2% over the last quarter.  This is a bad thing.  Well, I don't know about you, but I don't really particularly want to grow any more.  I'm quite happy with the size I am; certainly no more vertical, and I'll stick with or even reduce the horizontal.  So, given that an economy is, when you get down to it, no more than a bunch of people, why exactly is it a good thing for it to get bigger all the time?  Can't we just steady down, live with what we've got and get on with our lives?

And of course, actually there is no such thing as growth.  There's only redistribution.

Single currencies

There are two different sorts of economy in the Eurozone, which I can characterise (because I'm the one writing this) as Northern and Southern.  They have separate financial policies, because they're separate countries, but they are governed by a single set of interest rates and exchange rates, because there's only the one currency.  The only solutions to this inherent contradiction seem to be either to bust the whole thing up and go back to pesetas, drachmae, lire and escudos, or to muddle through somehow: which is the option currently being leant towards.  Both ways will lead to catastrophe.

So, how about the middle road?  Instead of fissiparating the Euro into seventeen old currencies, how about two?  We can call them the Seuro and the Neuro, if you like.  They get exchanged at a rate of 1:1 on the cutover date, then they go their own separate ways.  I haven't worked out the details yet, it's only nine-thirty, but I can't see any insuperable problems.  The Americans will be a hiccup, but heck, it's all their fault anyway; and the Irish'll just have to decide whether to jump into the Atlantic or the Med.

Prescription drugs

Many years ago, I was in a queue at the chemist's when I overheard the lady in front of me tentatively ask the pharmacist whether it was safe to drink alcohol whilst taking her tablets.  The pharmacist drew himself up to his full height, and pronounced for the whole shop to hear: "Madam, I regard alcohol as a contra-indication for ALL medication!"  The poor woman slunk away, humiliated (and of course none the wiser from a strictly medical perspective).
I was reminded of this when the other day I had to collect a prescription for antibiotics to deal with a minor infection in, let's just say, a certain location.  I'm not sure which was worse: the memory of that awful piece of unprofessional bigotry; or the tiny smile of sympathy that my pharmacist slipped me as he handed me my prescription.

So when I got home, of course I immediately read the leaflet carefully, three times.  Thankfully, the word 'alcohol' didn't appear once.  The dosage instructions were a bit tricksy though.  'Take four a day, evenly spaced, with food.'  I thought about it.  I normally eat three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner.  But that's not a problem - I can easily sneak a snack of some kind in there to make it up to four.  So: 8.00am, 12.30 pm, 5.00pm, 8.30pm - job done!

But then I began to wonder what they meant by 'day'.  Is it my normal waking day (which can vary significantly in length); or is it a twenty-four hour period?  If the latter, then I'll only get six hours' sleep before I have to get up and have a meal.

At least the list of possible side-effects wasn't too bad.  There's a probably apocryphal drug which takes you through just about everything from itching to beri-beri, and ends with the word 'death'.  After that there's the usual instruction: 'In case of any of these, consult your doctor immediately.'

I've settled for plan A, and it seems to be working.

Hackgate

I first read this word in yesterday's paper, then twice in today's, and I've heard it at least three more times on the radio today.  It had to come, because the suffix '-gate' has been applied to pretty well every political scandal since 1972, and has become easily the most insidious journalistic cliche of the past fifty years.  Of course, as Marina Hyde points out in the Guardian, the original had nothing whatsoever to do with water, or, for that matter, any sort of gate.  Watergate was just the name of a building.  I'd like to be able to identify the first journalist to appropriate the last syllable of this word as a generic suffix, and have a word with them, but I haven't the energy.

What gets me about this particular piece of linguistic abuse, though, is that it misses the point.  The current discourse should no longer be about phone hacking.  That was merely the entry point, the little crack in a huge wall, into which a much bigger wedge needs to be driven.  The 'Hackgate' neologistic cliche plays into the hands of the Murdochs of this world, because it enables them to trivialise the much bigger issues at stake.  (I presume you all know what those are, but just in case, I'll summarise them in Lord Acton's two words: 'Power Corrupts'.)  By keeping it at that level of specifics, it lets them damp it down (with carefully orchestrated play-acting - did anyone see Murdoch's performance yesterday? It reminded me of Ernest Saunders - and was the foam-pie thrower briefed, or employed?) and get on with the more important business of launching the Scum on Sunday.  And buying the next generation of rotten politicians and policemen.

Phew, that felt good!  Haven't had a good rant for ages.

Sun Burn

I'm lucky or smart enough to have a retirement income that slightly exceeds my fairly modest day-to-day needs.  I could of course expand those needs to soak up the surplus.  But all the extra things I'd spend it on would be time bound.  Every CD or movie you buy, every new car or boat or helicopter, these all require the consumption of the one commodity none of us can buy more of - hours. 

So what drives these people?  It's obviously not money, I've just proved that.  You can't eat, drink, shelter under, smoke, have sex with money.  Money doesn't get you a sunrise or a great conversation or an emotional crisis that expands your consciousness.  So what's left?

It must be power.  They must be deluded enough to believe that power - which is, when it comes down to it, the ability to use money to worsen other people's lives - is paramount, above all else.  How sad.

So what I suggest is that next Tuesday, when Rupert and his fellow-cancers are being dragged kicking and squirming to account for themselves and their insidious corruption of all that used to be good in this world, we all go down the local shop and buy every single copy of the Sun newspaper.  They only cost 30p each, so a fiver should cover it.  Get there early and barge your way to the front of the queue.  Then take them home and have a bonfire, preferably in the street.

Salutations

I just posted a comment on a blog, and the computer that deals with these matters immediately replied with a friendly message which began with the word 'Howdy'.

I don't know about you, but for me this triggered a silver wave of nostalgia.  The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy ... They all said 'howdy' to heroes and villains, before shooting (never fatally) or embracing (never erotically) them.  I suspect and fear that remakes or reworkings of these fifties classics are in some perverted Hollywood production pipeline, probably funded by an offshoot of News Corp.  You heard it here first.  They're already doing 'Dallas'.

I digress.  What really interests me is: how many variations of 'Howdy' can you come up with, within the context?  I can think of several, but wouldn't wish to spoil your fun.                      

Read the small print

The hotel seemed very nice.  The staff were friendly and the room, once I found it after negotiating several up-and-down flights of wooden hills, was clean and adequately equipped.  And the view across the harbour was delightful.  'This will do me for three nights,' I thought.

As I looked more closely at the facilities, I noticed this, printed on the outside of an envelope on the bedside table:

'I wonder what that means?', I thought, and forgot about it.

When I made my way to bed, much later, I found out.  The hotel was adjoined to a popular pub, which had an outside terrace for admirers of the view, and for smokers.  Smokers seem to talk much louder than non-smokers, to make more bad jokes and to laugh a lot.  I say smokers, because there were no view-admirers - it was dark - and the rain was falling steadily.  Smokers are also desperately resilient.

But the noise ended at about 11.15, I got a good night's sleep and forgot about it again.

Next night, the same thing happened, but I was wise to it by then.  Come 11.30, they'll be away.  And they were.  But then, the pub staff decided to have a chat, out on the terrace.  This was worse, because the conversation was inaudible most of the time, but then, just as I was slipping away, someone would make a good joke.  I don't know if you've ever been in a similar situation, but the worst of it is that you lie there wondering if that was the last one, or if not when the next one will be along.

It was time for the earplugs.  Here are the instructions for installing them:

Try that at midnight.  They sort of work, but they're uncomfortable enough to keep you awake.

By 1.30, I'd had enough.  I opened the window and had a word.  I was very polite.  "I say, would you be so kind as to put a focken sock in it?  Some people up here are trying to get some bleeping sleep!  Thank you SOO much."

That did the trick. 

By the final evening, the word had obviously gone out that there was a Scillonian demon residing up there.  The revellers meekly let themselves be shepherded off the terrace, at eleven sharp, by the ferocious landlady, and I slept soundly until five-thirty, when the seagulls started their dawn chorus.

Box-ticking exercise

Off on me hols tomorrow.  I'll tick the boxes when I get back.  Click and enlarge to enjoy.

Memories are made of something

I was hunting through an old wine box up in the spare bedroom for a notebook containing the first chapter of a children's story I'd started to write about twenty years ago, when instead these are what I found.

Is there anyone out there old enough for this to bring tears to their eyes?

I can do the backs of the EP sleeves as well, if coerced - and I might even have the records that used to live inside them.

I'm sure you've heard this one, but ...

I was shucking the peas to go with the rissoles I'd made from the remnants of the roast chicken, when this sprang to mind from my schooldays:

A man sits down in a cafe and peruses the menu.  When the waiter arrives to take his order, the man says: "Pissoles and chips, please."

The waiter is aghast.  "I beg your pardon, sir?"

The customer points to the menu.  "That's what it says here.  Pissoles and chips.  And that's what I want."

The waiter peruses the menu, then his face lightens.  "Oh, I'm terribly sorry sir, there's been a typing error.  That P should be an R."

The customer shrugs.  "All right, I'll have R-soles and chips."

Baggage

Next Wednesday, I will be flying on a helicopter from Penzance to the Isles of Scilly.  The only previous time I've been on a helicopter was when I was thirteen.  I was in the Navy Section of the Combined Cadet Force, and our field day that year consisted of a bus ride to Portland Bill, where we did marching drill, were shown the outside of the prison and the quartermaster's store, and then taken up for ten minutes in a helicopter.  I don't remember anything about the experience, except that it was memorable.

Here are the instructions regarding baggage on the Scilly flight:

"Each adult and child is allowed a baggage allowance of 15kg. No single piece of baggage will be carried if it exceeds 20kg. An excess charge will be made for any baggage above your allowance of 33lbs (15 kg). (The excess charge will be at the operator's rate at the time of travel). Small items may be carried in our aircraft cabin, such as handbags, cameras and binoculars provided they can be secured to your person. All passengers maybe subject to a random baggage search."

 

 I doubt I'll be able to achieve the 15kg target, but I'll try.  I'll take a stapler to ensure I can secure my camera to my person.  And I won't be carrying any random baggage, so that's okay.

And why do they say 'maybe' when they mean 'may be'?

Mr Tambourine Man

In honour of Jim Dickson, who produced the original in 1965 and died recently aged 80.

One thing ...

There's a website here wherein you can post photos and descriptions of the objects you would save if your house suddenly started burning down.  Most people assemble a whole lot of stuff and arrange it artistically for the photo-op, but if I did that I would pretty certainly be incinerated by the time I had rummaged through the wardrobes, cupboards, drawers, attics for the many items I might wish to select.  Presumably those people keep it all in one box, just in case - but where do they keep the box, eh?

I think it would be more interesting to ask us to select just one thing, and write a little story about why they would choose it.  So here's mine.

My parents had quite a lot of brass knick-knacks around the house.  I know this because it became one of my domestic tasks to polish them every week, with nice-smelling Brasso, for a shilling.  When I was about six (probably before the polishing regime started), they decided that my sister and I should be given custody, which was presented to us as ownership, of one each of these.  On offer was a fierce Bengal tiger, or this frog.  My sister, being the elder, was given first dibs.  Naturally, she picked the tiger.

I was downcast.  No, I was devastated.  I had coveted, craved for that tiger.  I think I assaulted her, I'm certain I cried with envy and disappointment.  Of course, when you're six, a week of despondency is a lifetime; I certanly don't hold the grudge any more.  In fact, now, when I look at and fondle this fellow, with his plump body and his blind eye, I reckon I got the best deal.

Post It - The Final Scores

My name is  not Inigo Montaya.  You killed my Post-its.  Prepare to be really, really, really bored.

1) EX BIKE.  I have promised to give my disused exercise bike to Alan so that he can, um, exercise his dodgy knee.  I need to dismantle it (the bike) so that it will fit into the boot of his car.
The Stickie goes to: Rosie, for a nice little scenario involving 'bike' and taking in all six.
2) BOL.  I had a pan of bolognese sauce in the outside fridge which needed to be frozen.  Or eaten.
The Stickie goes to: Christopher, for getting the point, and providing several time-wasting avenues.
3) RING BELL.  I had to phone Professor Bell regarding the Neighbourhood Watch meeting.
The Stickie goes to: ElizT, for the most desperately inventive submission of them all.
4) 2 STRINGS.  I needed to buy two sets of guitar strings for an upcoming music project.
The Stickie goes to: nobody.  Nobody crossed the inventiveness threshhold.
5) CAROUSEL.  The kitchen carousel thingie, you know, the thingie that enables you to store saucepans in two layers inside that otherwise totally wasted space under the corner of the worktop?  Well, it's collapsed again, and I need to do a load of dismantling, reassembling, reinstallation ... Hello?  Hello?
The Stickie goes to: a joint award to Rosie and ElizT, for making it this far.
6) REMINDER.  I had to send out a reminder about the Neighbourhood Watch meeting.
and the Stickie goes to ... everybody.  You all reminded me that I'd embarked on this singularly ill-conceived project.

Post It

The title is not an exhortation to increase your blogging rate (some of you need no encouragement in that direction), but a reference to the ubiquitous Post-It sticker, which was invented in stages during the sixties and seventies by the American company 3M, and marketed from the eighties.  In terms of low-profile inventions that have quietly transformed the developed world, the Post-It must be up there with the barcode (whose pioneer, Alan Haberman, incidentally, died last week at the age of 81).

I attach Post-Its to the eye-level cupboards in my kitchen as aides memoires of various tasks that might otherwise slip my mind.  For some reason their frequency seems to have increased of late.  I haven't yet been reduced to 'WASH UP' or 'GO TO BED', though these may not be that far in the future.  In the meantime, here are half a dozen recent ones.  They all have rather mundane explanations, but I thought it would be amusing to invite you to submit your own interpretations, as imaginative as you like.  Think the 'definitions' feature in 'I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue'.

1. EX BIKE
2. BOL
3. RING BELL
4. 2 STRINGS
5. CAROUSEL, and last but not least:
6. REMINDER

 If I get any submissions, I will publish the true answers (if I remember).  If not, you will spend the rest of your lives wondering.

Coo

Another rainbow

I posted a picture of a rainbow over my back garden about nine months ago, which you can see by clicking on the label.  I've just watched another one, same place, shape, colours.  But this one disappeared as I watched it.  It didn't just vanish - it flickered out.  It was there, then it wasn't ...  then it was again.  Then it wasn't.  It didn't give up easily.  It took it what seemed like a very long time to yield, as the sun finally descended behind the rooftops to the West.

Bird Brains

Do doves have memories?

My water feature, which used to incorporate a kind of birdbath, has been dry for some weeks, due to over-enthusiastic maintenance activities on my part (pushing a hose down its gullet, if you want to know) which resulted in the pump in the murky underground sump becoming detached ... blimey, digression already and I haven't even started - I'll never fill up a minute this way.

Anyway, the local doves or pigeons or whatever they are - the ones that use the roof of my car as a convenient convenience (I got a great birthday card last year which featured two seagulls sitting on a chimney watching a man washing his car below, one seagull saying to the other 'If he doesn't finish soon I'm going to have an accident'; or was it the year before?) - these birds used to come down several times a day to drink when water was still available.  (This was highly entertaining, well, by the standards of what usually goes on around here, but I'd better save that one for another time, perhaps when I've got that pump fixed - there is probably a limited supply of ideas in my ever-decreasing brain which is ever-decreasing ... sorry, was that repetition?  Also, was that repetition?)

Anyway (there I go again), these same birds still come down to the water feature (isn't that a lovely expression?  Some people I know have water features that are six metres by four, deep, and lined with blue tiles) to drink, act surprised that there's no water, and eventually realise that the best plan is to fly away again (once they've worked out how).

So, what kind of memories do these characters have?  Long term, obviously - they remember that there used to be water there.  Short term?  Not much.  They all have incipient Alzheimer's.  Or perhaps I'm maligning them.  Perhaps (by the way, that's a different word due to the capital P, I write the rules around here) they are reminding me that it really is time to phone those water feature maintenance people.  Just like, when you're gardening, robins remind you to keep digging.  Or used to.  Robins have given up on me now.  You probably have too by now.  You'll have to guess how much hesitation there was in there,  I'm not telling.  Nor how much of whatever the other one is, I forget.

Thought it was time for another joke

A man walks into a bar and places a frog and a rat in the counter.

"What's this?" says the barman.

"Just watch," says the man, and places the frog on the bar piano stool.  The frog immediately begins to play the accompaniment to a Puccini aria, not very well.  The barman is impressed.

"That's nothing," says the man, and gives the rat a nudge.  The rat starts singing the aria in a beautiful tenor voice.

"Wow, what an act!  You could make your fortune with that," says the barman.

Just then an impresario enters the bar.  The barman draws his attention to the remarkable performers, and after some persuasion the man gives another demonstration.  The impresario is highly impressed, and offers the man fifty thousand pounds for the act.  The man ponders this.

"Well," he replies at last.  "I'll take twenty-five thousand for the rat.  But I couldn't possibly part with the frog."

After some haggling, the impresario settles for this and leaves with his new acquisition.  The barman is perplexed.

"But - why did you sell that beautiful singing rat but insist on holding on to the frog?  He's not even a very good pianist."

"No," says the man.  "But he's a brilliant ventriloquist."

Noisy noise

A friend said to me the other day that they really liked the sound of light aircraft passing overhead.  I wasn't convinced, so nodded politely.  Admittedly this was in a rural setting, so I can understand the implicit romance of a Tiger Moth wing-waggling over a crowd of waving peasants, growling and whining its way off over the hills to a faraway landing strip on a deserted beach, with an eagerly anticipated assignation at the arrival (see Robert Browning, 'Meeting at Night' for the back-story) ...  But come to urban Reading.

Just after I've poured the first drink, the helicopter arrives.  I know what's going to happen.  It's going to circle and hover over my house for as long as it can.  On top of the traffic in the road, the high-up but nonetheless incessant drone of the flightpath to or from Heathrow, the trains at the bottom of the garden (which I don't really mind since I got the secondary double glazing)  and the distant rumble of the M4, I find this intolerable.  Noise perturbs my brain.  When I was about six, I was taken to the station to see off some relative, and the hiss of the engine releasing steam scared me for months.  The first time I ever visited my relative L's house, we were sitting in the garden at lunchtime, sipping a Pimms, when all of a sudden this plane (they live right under the Heathrow flightpath on bad days) screeched over, so low you could see the bolts, you could see the tyre treads (to quote Joni Mitchell).  I covered my ears: but they just carried on talking - they were so conditioned, they didn't even hear it, let alone react to or against it.  That's probably why they're all mad.

I once phoned the police to enquire politely what this helicopter was there for (even though I knew the answer - nice evening, let's go for a joyride).  I was politely informed that they were looking for a missing child.  I pointed out that it was dark.  They responded that they had heat-seeking equipment.  I nearly went on to point out that there might be more than a few heat-emitting bodies in the Oxford Road area, but then I couldn't be arsed (LWON please note the demotic).

My latest technique is to go into the garden, staring up at them with the mobile in my ear, whilst mouthing vehement complaints and pointing at the sky.  Not actually phoning anyone, you understand, that's a waste of phone credit points.  Anyway, it seemed to work this evening - they spotted me and immediately boggered off to terrorise Caversham instead.

Some noise can become music in the right ears.  But not all of it.

Here's an interesting place

http://www.vonkameke.com/

Virtual Role Models

You may have noticed, from the TV or the newspapers or passing loudspeaker vans or sky-writing aeroplanes, that a certain football player has recently been revealed to be a bad role model for the nation's youth, due to the uncovering of certain behavioural shenanigans which have no place in a respectable blog such as this.  The sin is deemed especially heinous by virtue of the fact that the person in question had hitherto been universally regarded as a good role model: sober, balanced, faithful loving husband, perfect father, etcetera etcetera etcetera.  So youngsters who were previously motivated to emulate this laudable lifestyle will, we are told, be instantly converted to the belief that it is after all perfectly acceptable to play away from home/beat your wife/snort yard-long lines of cocaine or whatever the latest scandal might be.

And I think: hang on.  A couple of things.  Firstly, whilst all this was allegedly going on, who was holding this man up to be that paragon of virtue?  Why, the very media who now vilify him as the spawn of Satan.  So that wasn't very good journalism, was it?  They are normally so good at unearthing wrongdoing where none exists, you'd think the real thing would be a doddle, wouldn't you?  But it took them years.  Secondly, have they ever met, spoken to or observed an actual teenager?  And finally (all right, that's three), if they are so dismayed by these revelations and their perceived corrupting influence, er, why did they publish them?

Myself, I think this whole role model thing isn't what it's cracked up to be.  I can't think of a single one I ever had.  Heroes to be worshipped, certainly.  Achievements to be aspired to.  But people of whom I thought: 'I want to conduct my life like him'?  Nah.  But maybe that's just me.

Desert Island Discs

Radio Four has apparently been inviting listeners to submit their own eight choices, a selection of which is to be broadcast next weekend.  For all sorts of reasons I didn't participate, and wouldn't have anyway, as I don't really want my life in music to be diluted into a snippet of a ninety-minute radio show, however well-intentioned.  But here, I can waste an evening self-indulging, in the knowledge that I am boring only my few readers rather than the entire population of the planet.  So, in no particular order, here goes:

Small Hours, by John Martyn.  Eight minutes and forty seconds of exquisite understated guitar and effect pedal work, guaranteed to send you into a delightful soporific haze.

Trying To Get To You, by Elvis Presley.  This hit me in the eyes, guts and hormones when I was fifteen.  And the vocal break at the end of the middle eight is his best ever singing performance.

A Song Of The Weather, by Flanders and Swann.  Although I didn't get some of the more sophisticated jokes on 'At The Drop Of A Hat', the album (Parlophone PMC1033, accept no substitutes) woke me up to the idea of wittiness, at the same time that Tom Lehrer did.  I could have chosen any track really.

Concierto de Aranjuez, Rodrigo.   I was tempted to submit Miles Davis's great reinterpretion on 'Sketches of Spain', but I needed some proper classical guitar.  Any version will do, mine is by John Zaradin.

I Want You, by Bob Dylan.  Specifically the live version on the 'At Budokan' album from 1978, where he gives us a slow, heartfelt version of one of his loveliest love songs.

I Saw Her Standing There, by The Beatles.  Well, they moulded a great chunk of my youth, so they had to be on my island.  And it's worth it just for Lennon's brilliantly knowing line "she was just seventeen, you know what I mean ..."

A Love Supreme, by John Coltrane.  Just out of thanks that it exists.

Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart, by the Coasters.  Want to go to bed feeling exuberant?

Street cries

A visiting friend pointed out that I had a library of unread old books.  I knew that I already had 'Culpepper' and 'Foxe's Book of Martyrs' (nightmare book if ever you need one) and 'An Englishwoman's Love Letters' - so I plucked out this one:

Here are a couple more:

And a few cries:

'Songs, three yards a penny!  Southernwood that's very good!  Cherries, oh!  Ripe cherries O!'

and:

'Buy a goose?  Any bellows to mend?  Who's for a mutton pie, or an eel pie?  Who buys my roasting jacks?  Sand, ha!  buy my nice white sand, ho!  Buy my firestone?  Roasted pippins, piping hot?'

That'll do to go on with.  I have more.

Another side

This guitar has been very busy recently, give it a round of applause please.

newspk

got new fone n founf txt  gr8!!!  foud !!!s   !!!     gtr8.  hoo needs nglsh ha ha u no this nuspk innit.  cant do q marks yet but wrkin onit.  lol.  m i doin it rite. 2daloo.

Dagrademon? A grand dome? Moaned drag?

Nope, it doesn't work.  Can't even get the word 'anagram' out of it.  Total bish-up.  There was I, sat here at six o'clock, clutching my prized possession, expecting agony or ecstasy depending on whether I was in the right sort of cult - and, nothing!  An incoming email was the nearest thing I got to an earth-splitting apocalypse.

What went wrong?  I think we should be told.  Mr Camping, you owe us an explanation: you told us that your calculations were precise and conclusive, this time.  Happy to receive it in the form of a comment on this blog post (of which you will of course already be fully aware), either from you or any one of your fellow cu*ts.

And just to sum up ...

(Following on from the overwhelming non-response to yesterday's joke about Blogger:))

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
Richard Feynman, 1986.

Blogger off

Just now I posted a comment on Lo's post about the unintended consequences of Blogger's recent protracted outage and its uncovering of a hitherto unsuspected addiction, suggesting that we could develop a counter-addiction - to outages.  I think this idea merits further exploration.

For a start, we could immerse ourselves in the syntax.  Consider the fine distinction between BX-c20gmn and BX-d7hq04.  Then analyse the relative frequency of the appearance of these two informifacts.  (I can make up jargospeak with the best of them.)  A pattern will emerge.  Probably, it will provide the key to Voynich, and the untold secrets of the universe will throw their hands up in surrender, and all will be subsumed into the blinding light, and evil will no more exist or be done.

When we're through with that, we can open a book on how long the time lags will be between the problem first occurring, them noticing it, them starting to fix it, how many times they will start to fix it, progress updates on what's left of the help service ... Endless fun in there, surely?  (NB Anyone bidding less than twelve hours is disqualified.)

Of course, all this will have to recorded on wordpress.

I could go on, but it's my suppertime.

Two Halves

Clever-clocks

In 2005, someone invented a new kind of alarm clock, imaginatively called 'Clocky'.  When you hit the snooze button, Clocky (who you presumably have to leave on the floor) rolls away and hides somewhere in the bedroom, forcing you to get out of bed to find him.

I did not make that up.  But it got me thinking about other potential applications of this principle.  Car keys is the obvious one - they go and hide, or disguise themselves as a bowl of Twiglets or something, when they scent alcohol.  Any others?

I was also reminded of the classic 'Not The Nine O'Clock News' sketch from way back when cordless phones had just been invented.  Anyone remember that one?  It was funny at the time.

Ironing

This subject came up mainly because of what I was doing this afternoon, but also from a blog cruise just now.  I wrote this a couple of years ago.

Big Men Don’t Iron, right?

Wrong. A couple of years ago, there was a fad called ‘extreme ironing’. This entailed blokes doing ironing in extreme situations or locations. They had to transport ironing equipment – boards, irons – up glaciers, down ocean depths, across Antarctic icefields, into Outer Space on jetskis, onto the Colindale branch of the Northern Line, and then, well, iron something. (By the way, where do they get their electricity? Or do they also cart coal-fired forges, plus coal, to heat up eighteenth-century cast-iron flatirons?) Idiots.

Truth is, it’s a therapeutic chore, but still a chore. So minimise it. Consider the claim of any particular object to be ironed. You can rapidly eliminate the car, the carpets, other people – but be thoughtfully discriminating. Do you definitely need to iron the socks? The underpants? The sheets? Anything at all?

Well, yes. As a tenet (one of the few left) of 21st century civilisation, the following items must be ironed: shirts; trousers; bedsheets; pillowcases ... I could easily digress here into an attempt at a sort of unified field theory of ironing – but I’ll spare you that.

Yes, I did say bedsheets. Slide, late at night after your preferred enchanted evening, appropriately accompanied or sometimes gratefully alone, into a freshly minted bed lined with a) ironed or b) un-ironed sheets. Compare the sensations. Ironed, I think.

Do not despair, or even worry. You can cheat. You can be a sheet cheat, how ‘bout that!  The best way by far is a clothes line. This not only irons the sheet perfectly, ethically and for free, it also gives the sweetest bed you could ever wish for. Just hang the sheet over the line, making sure it’s evenly distributed and lined up; peg and wait until dry; fold it back on itself on the line twice, then lift it off over your forearm, keeping it horizontal and lined up, and further fold as appropriate. You should end up with a sheet which fits in your drawer/airing cupboard, and can be rapidly deployed in case of unexpected or scheduled or olfactory need.

This only really works when the weather’s right. A sunny, breezy, blue day, with a few fluffy clouds whizzing across the sky but not planning to rain on your clothespeg parade just now. Heat also helps. So if it’s cold, wet, or threatening, it’s probably not worth the effort.  In the winter, radiator ironing can work. Fold the sheets then stretch them, as smoothly and tightly as you can, across a radiator until they’re dry (it helps if the radiator is turned on).

Failing all of the above, you will have to iron the sheets with the iron, on the ironing board (which is, of course, as huge as you can accommodate and afford). Fear not, all is still not quite lost. Fold the sheet to, as near as possible, the surface area of your board. Make sure you can reverse and refold it, when you choose, so as to expose other facets. Then iron everything else on top of it. (You do remember everything else, don’t you? The trousers, the shirts, the pillowcases; the socks?)

P.S. It’s not critical, but if your sheet ironing turns out as four-square Navy fashion as you can achieve (edges lined up, corners correlated, etc), your bed-making will be that bit easier.

Referendum

Of course, that AV referendum wasn't really fair, conducted as it was under a first-past-the-post system.

The Road To Elsinore

Up to London yesterday to attend the two o'clock matinee of 'Hamlet' at the Globe, followed by 'The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut' at the Roundhouse in the evening - a real playathon of theatrical stamina.  But this isn't about those - you can see reviews elsewhere if you're interested.  This is about the journey to get there.

We had to meet some other people at the Globe at 1.30, so arranged to gather at Reading station at half-eleven.  Plenty of time, no?  Grab a beer and a sandwich when we get there.  Sure enough, the train to Paddington was pretty well on time so, as C doesn't like the Underground (who does, apart from some rather creepy people?), we grabbed a taxi. 

" Hope you've got plenty of time,"  the driver said.  (He could have added "and money".)  "Gridlock out there."
Really?" we said.  "Why's that?"
"Royal Wedding."
"But, um, that was last Friday."
He shrugged.  "Doesn't stop 'em."

By the time we reached Birdcage Walk we knew he was right.  We moved about twenty yards in five minutes.  This was something worse than simple post-nuptial fever (though we never found out what).  We had plenty of time to observe hordes of tiny tourists with pullovers tied round their waists, photographing each other in front of various kinds of pigeon, and long-lensing the demolition of the scaffolding on the other side of the Park. 

At about twenty to one, there occurred the first of the only two instances of altruistic London taxi driver behaviour I have ever experienced.

"Tell you what," said our driver.  "You'd be better off on the Tube."  Glances were exchanged.  "Just walk down there to St James's Park station."

C bit the Underground bullet.  "Okay, let's go for it."  We paid off the driver - he refused a tip: "No thanks, I didn't get you there, did I?" - and started walking down the alley he'd pointed us towards.

When we reached Victoria Street, which seemed relatively uncongested - they must have been making at least twenty yards a minute, I had a thought.

"Why don't we walk down to Parliament Square?  We'll be on the other side of this mess then, and we can pick up a cab there."

So we did.  As we entered the Square, noticing the queues for the Abbey which would have put the Uffizi in Florence to shame, a taxi drew up beside us and two passengers disembarked.  Not believing our luck, we climbed in.

"Globe Theatre, please."
The driver pondered, then altruistic act number two happened.
"In a hurry, are you?  It's gridlock everywhere.  They said it was the Royal Wedding, but ...  You'd be better off on the Tube."

Well, we got the Jubilee Line to Southwark and walked half a mile to Tate Modern and the Globe.  It was a quarter to two.  Our companions were waiting outside, checking their watches.

"We'd better hurry," said Ben.

Pseudopseudonym

I just tripped over this in an old copy of Schott's Almanac (I'm sooo busy!) and it kind of amused me.  You probably know it already but I can't help that.  I paraphrase:

Alan Smithee is a highly prolific Hollywood director who doesn't exist.  It is, or was, the pseudonym granted by Directors Guild of America to directors who, for reasons of artistic integrity or whatever, don't want their real names on the credits of a film.  So Smithee has probably made some pretty damn bad movies.

In 1997, the director Arthur Hiller made a film about a director who is actually called Alan Smithee in real life, and wants his name removed from a turkey he's made.  On release of his (real) film, Hiller was permitted by the DGA to have his own name replaced by Alan Smithee.

Summer food is back!

Serrano ham, marinated artichokes, salty anchovies, griddled chilli squid, pungent green olives, Spanish potato omelettes, sea-fresh sardines, garden herbs, rocket and chervil, watermelon, raspberries, luscious melting figs ...

Oh, and Scotch eggs and crisps, fresh crab salad, Pembrokeshire new potatoes, bitter brewed on the premises in the village pub at Llanddarog, line-caught sewin on the barbecue ...

That'll do to go on with.  Any other orders?

Aliens? Not yet

I'm indebted to a post called 'Rogue Planets' by Ann Finkbeiner of The Last Word on Nothing back in February for much of the following.

This morning I read a review of a book called 'The Eerie Silence', by Paul Davies, just out in paperback here (Penguin), which apparently debates the evidence base (or rather lack of evidence) for the existence of aliens, and why, if they exist, they haven't been in touch.

I make a couple of breathtaking assumptions here.  The first is that these aliens will have evolved on roughly Earthlike planets, the second that they will have discovered, at about the same stage of their evolution, the use of the electromagnetic spectrum to transmit information, and fallen in love with this as deeply as we have over the last century or so.  So let's look at the planets.

According to state of the art astronomy, Kepler -10b, the nearest candidate so far, seems to be about 560 light years away. Let’s pretend that it’s Earthlike (which it isn’t) and formed about the same time as us (who knows). It’s reasonable to assume, then, that evolution would have progressed at roughly the same rate, if not in the same direction. If so, what we see of them, and they of us, would be rooted in the late Middle Ages.

That’s a best-case scenario. So why are these clowns wasting their time hunting for medieval alien TV channels?  And why doesn't any of the literature I've ever come across take this simple fact of elementary physics into consideration?  If they are out there (unless they've discovered a way of moving information, never mind themselves, faster than the speed of light), we probably have well over five hundred years to wait before we can expect to see even their equivalent of Marconi's first efforts.  And another hundred for The Alien X Factor.

Calm down

You'll be aware of yesterday's spell of high-minded political debate in the Commons, when David Cameron repeatedly told Angela Eagle to "calm down, dear", afterwards claiming it to be a joke, referencing Michael Winner's well-known insurance advert.  Leaving aside the revelation that our Prime Minister identifies with Michael Winner as a role model, did you hear the reportage of the incident on 'The World at One', hosted by the inimitable Martha Kearney?  After the political correspondent had finished his piece, Martha took over with the customary acknowledgment.  "Thank you, dear," she said.

Superinjunction - an exclusive leak

Superinjunction

I'm sorry, the content of this post cannot be divulged.  In fact I shouldn't be telling you that it exists.  Or that I'm the person telling you all this.  Please don't spill the beans, or someone will have to send in the judges.  If they exist.  Everything is banned henceforth.  But I'm not allowed to tell you that.

Sir George Martin

Just hope you all watched this wonderful programme which has just finished on BBC2.  This great man has been the source of so much joy over the last sixty years, from Ronnie Hilton via the Goons and the Beatles and countless others, through to seriously experimental Jeff Beck and Mahavishnu, whilst remaining so naturally funny and human.  I was crying with delight by the end.  I hope he lives for ever.

Caravan Diaries (part lost count)

I drafted a lot of this with some rarely seen technology known as quill and parchment.  The former a give-away from Le Manoir aux Quatr' Saisons (how did that get there??), the latter an excellent recycled pad called 'Save The Rhino'.

The information boards on the M4 said 'TAKE EXTRA CARE WHEN TOWING'.  In the way my mind works, I read that to mean 'Take less care when not towing'.  I know, I can be irritating.

New neighbours at White Park, replacing G and S who decided to give up the caravan having realised, after forty-odd years there, that they own a flat three quarters of a mile away in Saundersfoot . I wander across to say hello at about three o'clock and realise I've already met the new folks, and their greyhound whose name I've forgotten.  I leave at 4.15 three glasses of rose heavier, having been introduced to about twelve extended family members aged from two to not telling.  This caravan site is ruled by four dynasties, with Joseph as the Padrone.
NB Anyone know how to do accents?  Grave, acute etc., not Welsh.

Five little children are playing an unfathomable game involving frisbees (which nobody knows how to throw), shrimping nets, and everyone suddenly sitting down at the same moment, facing east.  Enthralled for an hour.  They reminded me of rabbits.  A sociologist would get a thesis out of it.

Then, a four-year-old, his father, and a border collie played football.  Hey, that border collie was the best header of the ball since [insert your ballheader of choice, since I don't know any].  I suggested to the father that the dog should be playing for Wales.  He said "Nah, not ready yet.  No tactical sense."

At eight o'clock, a bird starts singing for the sunset, up in the overhanging sycamore.  It sounds like a blackbird, but isn't.  Blackbirds have thirty-two different song patterns, all of which I know by heart, and this isn't any of them.  I asked another neighbour if it was a nightingale.  "No, nightingales are unmistakeable," she replied.  Not if you've never heard one, I thought.

9.00 pm.  The colours in the sky as the sun sets behind the woods on the hill up to the West.  Pale azure darkening through to deep cobalt and navy.  And the wine-dark sea below.  Soon there'll be stars, and then the Milky Way's great wheel will start spinning. 

Much like my head by that stage.

The Crickets.....Please Don't Ever Change

This song just dropped into my mind for some reason.