A303 Revisited

Just a turning off the M3 these days.  Should be a song, like Route 66.

Basingstoke.

Andover.

Thruxton.  Vroom vroom.

Quarley.

Amesbury.

Stonehenge.  Come over the hill and you almost miss it, until suddenly there it is on the skyline.  As you descend, so does it, and you see that it’s swarming with human ants, who are eating its heart.

Winterbourne Stoke.

Deptford.  Marlowe never came here, you think irrelevantly as you soar past the signpost.

Fonthill Bishop.

Zeals.

Gasper.

Wylye.

Chicklade.  An old joke about hens.

Mere.  Don’t stop there for lunch.  The only way out is via the carpark.

Wincanton.  Tankers full of milk.

Compton Fauncefoot.

Queen Camel.

Wales.

Kingsbury Episcopi.

Ilminster.  The strangest bypass in Britain.

And then it peters out, no ceremony, not even a place (the nearest is Upottery), just before Honiton, and turns into the A30.  Which is a whole other story.

Sorry, I’ll read that again

A piece in the Observer a few weeks ago had prompted me to muse about rereading, what we come back to and why.  I lost interest, but a friend has just reminded me of one.*  I said I’d come up with my top ten.  (I’m good at self-imposed challenges.)

To deal with the ‘why’ first, some rules are needed.  (I’m good at self-imposed rules.)  Rereading from desperation because there’s nothing new to hand doesn’t count, except when it does.**  Comfort or nostalgia are insufficient motives – for example, I will never read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ again, because though it may have been a comfort blanket in the past I now recognise that, basically, it’s crap.  And some books are just plain worn out.  I’ll never read ‘Catch-22’ again.  And big fat multi-volume sagas are not allowed, just because I say so.  So no ‘Dance to the Music of Time’, or Patrick O’Brian, or Harry Potter (hah, gotcha!).

No, the ‘why’ has to be caught in that one ineluctable word: quality.

So here we go.

·         ‘The Outsider’, by Albert Camus.

·         ‘The Great Gatsby’, by F Scott Fitzgerald.

·         ‘The Tin Roof Blowdown’, by James Lee Burke.

·         ‘The Third Policeman’, by Flann O’Brien.

·         ‘Vilette’, by Charlotte Brontë.

·         ‘The High Window’, by Raymond Chandler.

·         ‘Good as Gold’, by Joseph Heller.      

·         ‘The Code of the Woosters’, by P. G. Wodehouse.

·         ‘?’, by ?

·         ‘?’, by ?

 

Perceptive as you are, you’ll have noticed two things (apart from how boring and narrowly read I am – some of those Observateurs were doing Aristotle and Thomas Mann and stuff like that): they’re not ordered; and there are two empty slots.  Those are for you to fill, with a book that you reread but I’ve probably read once at most.  You’ll have to apply some guesswork there, of course.  And obviously I can’t rank them until I have all ten.

 * It’s on the list, but I’m not telling. 

** That’s a snitch from another one on the list, by the way.

Error Reporting Error

 ‘Caravan Diaries Part something or other’ is what this was supposed to be called.  The site opens at Easter, or April, whichever comes first (so I could, should, probably, have gone down a week ago).  The first visit’s always a bit of a chore: plumbing to be reinstalled, grass cut, hedge strimmed, patio furniture recovered from wherever the winter has redistributed it; not to mention tracking Joseph down and persuading him to reveal this year’s rent increase and accept a cheque after the customary discussion (something like “What, again?”  “It’s the landlord, see?”  “Yes, but – ”  “And there’s the VAT, see?”  “Yes, but – ” and so on).  But I thought Easter, caravan buddies’ll be down, catch up, wish each other happy new year, nip down the Wiseman’s for a snifter or three after tea…  And stare at the sea, pop seaweed bubbles, kick sand and start to ease back into that special brand of sanity.

The car thought otherwise.  Tuesday morning, halfway back home down the M4, there was a loud bleep.   “What’s that?” said my passenger.  Once upon a time I’d have said something like “read the fucking display, you silly cow,” but she’s 89 and old Yorkshire, and that wouldn’t do.  So I just said “seems to be an engine fault, power reduced”, because that’s what the fucking display said, and drove on.

The garage wanted to know if the display was amber or red.  I was pretty sure it was amber.  “Probably nothing serious, then.”  I thought eh?  Engine fault?  “But you’d better bring it in.”  Well, that had been my plan.  “Next Thursday?”  “Day after tomorrow?  That’s fine.”  “No, next Thursday, not this Thursday.”  Ah.  Of course, when I’d restarted the engine, the engine fault had somehow gone away and the power had come back.  “Probably a computer glitch.”  (That’s where the title of this post comes in, uncapping a gusher of philosophical speculation.)  “What about long journeys, then?”    “Probably best not.”

So here I am in a warm house in Reading, rather than a freezing caravan in Wales, regretting it.  The wonders of modern technology.

All That Jazz

Following from earlier jottings about my relationship with music (my earliest hearings, and then rock'n'roll), the idea was to complete the trilogy with jazz.   I thought I could write a similar personal chronology, starting with, say, Armstrong or Beiderbecke or, from another perspective, ragtime or big band or bebop or – well, you get the idea.  I’ve been trying this for months now.  The delete key has never been used so much.  It can’t be done, for a reason which will become apparent in the last sentence of this post.  So instead, a few vignettes.

Trad opened up more than three chords.  It also equated to beer.  So it was that we ended up at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in 1961, when they had the riot.  Me and my mates didn’t tear down any lighting scaffolds, but we gleefully watched it, until the police got too close and we scarpered.  That music was a hooligan.

One evening back in 1968, my band-mate Graham and I were slumped in our shared pensione room in Milan, pretty well enhanced, listening to this:

When side one had finished, he turned to me and said “Why do they play like that?”  Good question.

I can’t play jazz, never could, never will.  There was a guitarist busking in Broad Street the other day who could, and I stood watching from a distance, trying yet again to decipher how those notes get from the head to the fingers.  I can do them in the head, sometimes; but the fingers refuse to obey.  It’s not a matter of technique, I can’t do it in the slowest of slow motion.

John Coltrane died in vain for a love supreme, said Big Youth on ‘Natty Cultural Dread’, and proceeded to explain why.  I’d like to be able to pass that on, but I can’t, because he said it in jazz, which can’t be translated.

I once played a baritone sax.  It was surprisingly easy, after I got the hang of the embouchure.  I got at least five notes out of it, would’ve got more if we hadn’t had to go on stage: but it was the closest I’ve ever got to physical communion with an inanimate object.  I might go out and buy one, actually.

The great trombonist J. J. Johnson said: “Jazz is restless.”

Anthropomorphism

Although it’s a nice word to type, a good way to while away a few minutes acclimatising to the dimensions and touch of a new keyboard, it’s not exactly the one I want.  I have a blackbird in my garden who – there you are, if I wasn’t anthropomorphising the bird I’d have written ‘which’ – who is without doubt a person, not a thing.  I know this, because we have a relationship, which I won’t expand on but which has to do with my duties as to the stocking of the food table.  Soon, I’ll explain that it’s summer now and you and your lot are on your own, and he’ll understand.

No, this is about inanimate objects, and in particular their gender.  I’ve been telling everyone about my new computer, and today a friend asked me whether it was a he or a she.  I can’t think of the word for sexing a machine – can you? – and I haven’t turned it (him? her?) upside down yet, so I have no idea.  Nor have behavioural idiosyncrasies  had a chance to surface, thank goodness.  It’s it for now.

But, of course, it got me thinking about cars.  Come on, we all sex our cars, don’t we?  Just a few:

My blue XR2 Fiesta was obviously called Fiona.  She was like Lisbeth Salander.  Then came the Renault 19 16v.  Sleek, white, coy (she would hide her speedometer from her passenger).  Her name was Swift.  Felix came next – a bit brash, brave but insecure, Mondeosexual. 

My present car and I have no personal relationship.  We give each other orders or suggestions, which are followed, acknowledged or rejected, with mutual respect.  It’s efficiently functional.  Teutonic hermaphrodite.  But I do sometimes hanker after an 850cc side valve Morris Minor girl.

Whoosh!

Did you see how quickly this post got there?  No, of course you didn’t, because you don’t know when it started on its journey.  But I do.  Quicker than the speed of the Enter key.  Well, I say that, and I’m speaking proleptically because I haven’t actually pressed Enter yet, but I’m confident.

Yes, the new computer is here!  The nice JL installation man arrived on time, eleven-thirty, computer under his arm.  His job being, basically, to hook me up to the network, transfer my files across, make sure everything worked and get me to sign here.  The file transfer is an interesting one, because there are many ways of doing this, the worst of which seems to be Microsoft’s own solution, easy transfer or something.  I’d done a full backup yesterday to my external drive, just in case, which took about ninety-five minutes.  When Amil suggested restoring this, I expressed mild concern.  “It’ll take ages, won’t it?”  It took twenty minutes, after which I felt things were going to be all right.

I’d made a list of some of the software on the old laptop, ignoring the things I have no idea what they do (is there a grammatical expression of that anywhere out there?).  He suggested I just load up what I know for sure I want (helped me to do so, over and above the call) and let the rest take care of itself.  Very good advice – I had 26 items on my list, and so far I’ve loaded four.  It’ll probably be weeks before number five surfaces.

Of course, I had to spend the afternoon playing ‘boy’s new toy’ – this is even better than a new Dinky – and discovered at about 4.30 that I’d completely forgotten to have any lunch.

Anyway, as I write, it appears that in future I’ll be able to faff around on the internet at least twice as much in the same amount of time (I’m not telling you!).  So far so good.  All I have to do now is spill some wine over it.

Copse Racing

Bournemouth School, most of the fifties.  The school itself was a monolithic affair, red brick; but a monolith laid on its side, as it was only two storeys high but very wide, at least that’s how I remember it.  The older you were, the further to the right was your entrance: there were two playgrounds, the one on the left for juniors and the one on the right for seniors.  No boys were allowed in through the main, central entrance, which had a parliamentary aura about it.  That’s one of the many design flaws in grammar schools of that time, because ‘seniors’, who would be those boys of fifteen or over, didn’t need a playground, being more inclined to the library, to some kind of intensive sporting activity, or to the playground of Bournemouth School For Girls down below the fields.

Once I arrived, it took me probably a term to get the ropes; longer to take my sneaky control.  (I was good at that leading-from-behind thing, once I discovered it.)  My first trick was to be able to jump across the six-foot wide ramp down to the bike garage at its deepest point, ten feet, and grip on the other side; and then to be able to drop down the ten feet into the slope, by hanging on by my fingers and flexing my knees as I landed.  But that wasn’t enough.

To the left of the junior playground, there was a patch of waste land called the Copse.  It was a vale fringed on each side by scrubby trees, stunted undergrowth and dust or mud, depending on the season.  The school authorities blind-eyed it as an overflow playground.  For me, it was an overflow of the kind of location – beach, dangerous cliffs, dangerous bike rides – that my parents allowed or ignored, or didn’t notice, at home.  As you can imagine, it was a world for us boys.

Aside from falling off trees and getting our blazers proudly tainted with dog-do, the Dinky races were a brief but important interlude.  Twelve year olds get crazes, encouraged by parents.  Dinkies were one, parents presumably seeing them as a wholesome nudge towards the collecting urge, to be arranged in display on top of the chest of drawers.  We knew better.  Racing cars were for racing.  So we devised a track-based competition which, as far as I know, has never been replicated.  It was impossible to build a track wide and even enough, down the edge of the Copse, for four or five cars to compete in parallel.  Instead the winner was the one who could send his car furthest from a standing start.  This became a completely different skill set, combining the technical capabilities of your vehicle – I honed, refined, oiled and possibly sanded my Ferrari to its highest efficiency – with your knowledge of the intricacies of the course and, not least, your ability to launch your car at the right speed and trajectory.  So, actually, a bit like golf.

I haven’t been able to find a copyable photo of my Ferrari, but here's a link to something close, though not exact; I don’t recall mine having a driver.  A similar one sold on eBay for £500, apparently.

I’m not sure what was behind this post, apart from a casual comment on Christopher's blog, but I did enjoy writing it.

Why 50% tax is good for the economy

Let’s say you’re an executive who decides s/he wants to trouser an extra £60K.  We’ll assume that if this is taxed at 50% rather than 40, you will emigrate or withdraw your labour or something.*  Bear with me. )

So, you want an extra £60K, and you’re obviously desirable, otherwise they’d already have got shot of you.  So, under a 40% marginal tax rate, you’ll ask for and get £100,000 – 60 to you, 40 to the government.  Under 50% marginal, you ask for and get £120,000 – 60-60.    Either way, you get your £60K.

Here’s the good bit.  Your company is desperate to retain your services, as I said, and is happy to give you your £60K, but they have to raise the extra £20K to fund your extra income tax.  They could just put up their prices, but that doesn’t really work, because some smart competitor will come along and squeeze them out.  The best way is, in short, to sell more of their stuff, which is what they’re employing you for in the first place – which means economic expansion, which is what everybody wants, isn’t it?

I can’t see anything wrong with this, in fact up to a point, the higher the marginal tax rate, the greater the incentive towards increased economic activity.  There might be an inflation niggle somewhere down the line, but that’s the least of our worries at the moment.  I can’t imagine why the Chancellor hasn’t gone for it, can you?

The alternative trick, which I tweeted last week and which was hinted at on The Moral Maze this evening, is to make the 50% rate voluntary.  Shame the bastards into coughing up.  It might just work, self-esteem is a valuable commodity.

* So far, so unrealistic – what productive, motivated useful person would uproot and relocate, or turn into a couch spud, for the lack of £10,000, which is what it comes down to?  Multiply the numbers up and your case weakens, due to the economic law of marginal utility, which I wouldn’t dream of boring you with even if I could remember it. 

Happy New Year!

No, not that one, silly, that comes in June.  Or September.  Or December.  However you choose to count through the solar seasons.  But from today, here where I am, there’s going to be more light than darkness.  That feels like a good place to start counting. 

 I sometimes wonder why our calendar year, and most of its dependencies, starts at, or around, the winter solstice rather than the spring equinox.  It depends where you live, of course.  Today should probably be New Years’ Day here in Europe and points north.  In Australia, you’d have your New Year in September.  Near the Equator, it wouldn’t really matter, because you don’t have the same kinds of seasons, and just the one equinox.

I was once accused of being a Dane, which might be true.  I think I’m a Norman, actually, because of my surname; but Normans were Danes or Vikings or something, weren’t they?  So that would account for my sensitivity to the solar seasons, and more especially to my precise delineation of them.  I suppose I’ve chosen the equinoxes and solstices as convenient points to regroup.  We need markers.  We’ll all choose our own, depending on our latitude and its weather and all the other ingredients in our personal mix.

More importantly, though, the financial year starts on 6^th April, just as the forsythia comes into full bloom.

Here's a thing -

Can you tell what it is?  Of course you can.  It's a vacu vin pineapple slicer -

(You now know how to say 'pineapple slicer' in ten languages.)  You top and tail your pineapple, then simply drill down through it.  It takes out the core, and you're left with this -

Oh, and some pineapple rings.

If you'd been given one of these for Christmas, would you have believed it actually worked?  Nope, me neither.  But it does, effortlessly!  It's the best thing ever invented.  I do like it when they get something right.

Soliloquy after sunset

Venus and Jupiter were a finger’s width apart in the sky.  They looked similar, in the flat sky, two bright fires almost touching.  They were so close.  Love met Power – and they had so much brightness in common – and they met!

What a shame, it wasn’t true, an illusion and a delusion.  Venus, Love, is a hot seething lifeless cauldron.  Jupiter, Power, is a cold vapid ball of gas.  They are opposites, many million miles apart.  And yet we saw them together, almost touching, and we believed in them.  There’s no contradiction there.

In which I wrestle with technology and my conscience

I rolled in at ten this morning from a night on the tiles, or with the in-laws, whichever you prefer.  I was half-expecting a significant email, so as soon as I’d defused the alarm and unshipped my slippers from the overnight bag, I raised the lid on the laptop.  Usually, when I do that it winks at me a few times with its little blue eyes, yawns, then deigns to turn up for work.  On this occasion, though, none of that happened.  The screen remained black, the mouse and keyboard played dumb insolence.  No lights of any colour flashed.  There were none of those reassuring whirring noises.  The stupid thing was catatonic.

I’ve been here before.  I know what to do.  You press the power button for a while, and eventually it wakes up, complains about being unexpectedly killed and resurrected, and then grudgingly boots and gets on with it.  This sometimes involves protracted white-on-black gobbledegook diatribes, to which I am occasionally ordered to press ‘enter’ or ‘spacebar’, or some other key, within 45 seconds,  OR ELSE!  I’ve once or twice been scolded that I should defrag my disk, whatever that means:  I respond, shoutily, ‘That’s your job, mate!’, then sigh and do it anyway.

This morning, none of that worked.  Nothing.  Nada.  Ziltch.  Niente.  [Insert your own Local Hero quote ad lib.]  It’s finally snuffed it, I decided.  So I hauled myself upstairs and hauled down my fallback machine, an elderly XP Toshiba that hasn’t been used for at least three years, and weighs a ton.  I plugged it in and booted it up, and it worked!  Well, after a few Rumpelstiltskin moments, including having to upgrade the anti-virus software, which took three days’ work compressed into ninety minutes; but it worked!  The important email wasn’t there.

One of the things about me is that I’m quite dogged, and quite analytical.  (That’s why I’m so good at crosswords.)  So once I’d sorted out the anxiety (that’s another of the things), I worked out that this computer’s problem was that it had been overfed with electricity.  Switching off the power might have worked in the past, but we were in Mr Creosote territory here.  So I unplugged the power cable and took the battery out.  That’ll teach you, I thought.  I let it all cool down, put it all back together – and here I am, typing this.

The thing is, though, (and here I muffle this machine’s ears and blindfold it), it’s going to have to go.  What replaces it is a question for another day.  I don’t have tribal loyalties, but I also don’t want to have to switch allegiances nor relearn how to walk or run.  I’ll be doing this within the next seven days – feel free to help.

In which I recall a teenage party

Curry Queen’s account here sent me spinning back to 1960.  Saturday 9^th July to be precise.  A levels were over, and Jill and I decided a beach party was required.  My diary entry reads as follows:

‘Party.  Fab.  Got drunk.  Had [?] record player down.  Fight.  Sat in shelter with Will etc.  Home 1.30.’

That doesn’t tell the half of it.

Somebody must have organised some beer, in a barrel.  I have a nutty memory of the barrel being rolled down the Southbourne cliffs and caught at the bottom, but that can’t be right, can it.  Most probably it was rolled gently down the zigzag slope and installed in the shelter. 

The ‘shelter’ has long been demolished, but I still have it in my mind’s eye – a red brick structure, facing the sea, benches on three sides, a quarry tiled floor and lights in the ceiling which stayed on all night.  That was how, about eight-thirty, I realised that we could have music.

My brother is definitely going to implicate himself here – but I claim full blame and credit.  Somehow, we snuck up and into the house and purloined the record player (see here for details) and a bunch of 45s, and somehow we wired it in to an overhead light socket in the shelter.  Music presumably ensued, I don’t remember that bit, though I think I lost a few Elvis singles there: maybe they’re washing up now at Le Havre or Mudeford.

The fight was around midnight.  Somehow the word had got out (I wonder how?  We didn’t even have phones, never mind Facebook) and a bunch of boys from the Secondary Modern fetched up, intent on trouble.  It all got out of hand.  I clearly remember thinking that I’d bitten off more than I could chew (Jill having long disappeared; she wasn’t even my girlfriend) and the police arriving (who called them?) and I must have salvaged the record player, ducked down with Will (of whom I remember absolutely nothing else) and eventually crawling back home at (it says here) 1.30.

Monday morning, we were hauled up before the Head, Mr Bennett.  It was just mild castigation, I think; certainly no lasting sanctions.  And to this day, I don’t think my parents had an inkling. 

Solar flares maybe?

We had an inkling that something might be slightly out of kilter when the satnav, Florence, issued  her first instruction before the car had begun to move.

“Make a U-turn,” she said.

We were going to Drury Lane to see War Horse.  (The stage version of course, not the allegedly saccharine film: I was collecting a Christmas present.  It was, by the way, ‘effing marvellous’, as the Sergeant might have put it.)  The theatre was 21 miles away, and we’d allowed ninety minutes to get there, park up and find our seats – ample time, no?  But we hadn’t allowed for Florence.

Florence is of the same genus and nationality as the satnav in my own car, but with a rather different personality.  Whereas Brünnhilde is terse, assumes a level of intelligence on the part of her pupils and doesn’t suffer fools gladly, Florence is a bit of an anxious, over-protective schoolmarm.   She would say things like “Keep right and continue on the M4” whenever we approached a junction, just in case we felt impelled to veer off left onto the slip road just for the hell of it.

All went well, though, as far as the Hammersmith flyover.  Then both Florence and Transport for London or whoever is in charge got completely confused, with the result that we ended up negotiating the multi-lane spider’s web of the Broadway.  Florence lost it.  “Turn right in 100 yards, then immediately right again.”  We ignored that.  “Follow the road for 900 yards.”  No other option short of shop windows, so we obeyed.  “Your route is being recalculated.”  I offered to get the map book out.  “Better not,” said A (who was driving).  “It’ll only upset her.”

Somehow we made it through.  I knew we were back on track when L spotted Harrods on the right.  “Familiar territory,” she announced.  At this point, Florence got a bit sniffy.  “There is traffic congestion ahead.  An alternative route cannot be recommended.”  You always know they’re rattled when they drop into the passive voice. 

We got there with five minutes to spare, not even time for a stiffener for me and L.  We were in row AA, right at the front.  You could see inside the horses, see the humans manipulating them – which somehow made it even more magical.  I found myself avoiding eye contact with Joey.

Anecdote

This was Boxing Day evening, I can’t remember how many years ago.  I do know that it wasn’t the Oyster Christmas.  I used to love oysters, and I still do in my mind – like being a fish without the breathing difficulties – but since that Christmas, when oysters were reduced at Waitrose on Christmas Eve, and unwisely bought and consumed … I’m not going to expound.  Just in case you haven’t got the message: NEVER buy a reduced oyster, however cheap.  In fact especially however cheap.  But this is not about the Oyster Christmas.

Valiant dutiful service had been done.  Aperitifs, wines, sticky liqueurs or brandies or malts had been bravely conquered.  Several days’ worth of food too.  (Food decreases in volume at Christmas, it’s a known fact, there’s no other explanation.)  Increasingly incomprehensible games had been played; all the expected, and some unexpected, songs had been sung, or at least recited, through ever-broadening grins; conversations, arguments, discussions had blurred into each other, as they do.  Unwanted brandies and Baileys were sitting around, looking forlorn.

Somebody said: “Well…”  Alan opened a baleful eye and cast it around the room.  “Nobody goes to bed until I do!”  Then he started snoring.

I can't even think of a title

My blogging mojo has gone for a long stroll round the block.  This happens at this time of the year; although it’s only March, it’s more like April (and we all know which month that is).  It’s to do with impatience – I’ve had enough of this bland winter, blossom is out across the street and there are bumblebees – I want the summer, and I want it now!  But it will take its own time; meanwhile, I’m bored.  This is how I think boredom works: wanting to do something but not having anything you want to do.  So I’ll have to tell you about my supper.

Due to a shopping malfunction, I had to improvise with fridge’n’freezer scrapings.  This usually – no, this always – means a pasta sauce.  A tin of plum tomatoes often saves the day, but for reasons already alluded to this option wasn’t open.  I thought a bit, spread the scrapings out on the worktop, and proceeded as follows:

I chopped two good cloves of garlic, a fresh tomato and some parsley, or at least something which was six days out of date but still smelt of parsley, just.  When I say a fresh tomato, let’s just say there weren’t any visible discolorations.  I should have peeled it, but couldn’t be bothered so just took out the core and seeds, it’s only there for colour really.  I found some diced pancetta in the freezer, and grated some parmesan.  Then I cooked it all, in lashings of olive oil, in the right order, plus a pinch of cayenne and black pepper, and served it up with some fusilli pasta (also cooked).

I’d like to be able to say it was delicious – in fact, I can, so I will.  It was delicious.

Dear Google

 There, that caught your attention, didn’t it?

I am pleased to advise you of an amazing money-saving offer.  From today, you DO NOT NEED to develop inconceivably expensive spyware for the purpose of constructing targeted advertising to irritate, and be ignored by, its recipient, because I and my thousands of friends have agreed to share, openly and free of let and hindrance*, all the information you need, simply by completion of the following simple form**:

 NAME:          Tom Riddle

ADDRESS:    4 Privet Drive

                     Azkaban

                     England

                     Europe

                     The World

                     The Solar System

                     The Milky Way

                     The Universe

PHONE:        )!!*(%)”%”!

EMAIL:     (xxx @ xxx.com)

SPECIAL INTERESTS:

Witchcraft

Making ill-advised jokes about blowing things up

Inverted pyramids

World domination

The special effects of asparagus (sprue) 

EXCLUSIONS:

I do not wish to receive communications from the following:

·         Yummy Pizzas

·         Kozy Kabs

·         ‘Youbettamoveorelsewelldowngradeyourneighbourhood’ estate agents 

* Terms and conditions apply.

** Sample only.

        

                    

Polite Sweary Kit

(Expand orthography and punctuation at will)
Aaaargh!

Bwaaa!

Er…

Erm…

Ew!

Grrr! 

Hmm…

Mmwah!

Moi?

Naagh!

Pfft!

Quoi?

Shhh…

Whaa?

Yesss!

Zzzzz

Word Verification (cont'd)

Joking aside, this reCaptcha thing is a seriously flawed concept, even as presented by Luis von Ahn in his TED talk.

Von Ahn starts from the premise that the ten seconds taken to enter a ‘traditional’ word verification is ‘time wasted’.  Well, of course, it isn’t: it’s time spent productively protecting oneself from spammers.  He then goes from there to claim that reCaptcha harnesses this ‘wasted’ time to a productive end, i.e. to interpret words from scanned documents that can’t be deciphered by character recognition but can be by humans.

He doesn’t dwell on the fact that, by making us type two words rather than one, he has doubled (at least) the time consumed.  And with no direct benefit to us, the users – the benefits, often commercial, accrue entirely to the organisations who are, effectively, using us as unpaid, unwitting slave labour.

And that’s without mentioning Google’s implementation, on Blogger, of their own product, which must rank high in ineptitude even by their standards.  Because, as far as I’ve seen, a lot of the time it doesn’t even use real words!   At least with the old wv, though the character strings weren’t ‘real’ words, they behaved as if they were.  Now we get a random string of letters, so heavily disguised that you need a lot more than the presumed twenty seconds before getting them wrong.

And of course, that introduces the most farcical flaw.  Many people have reported that they’ve switched off wv on Blogger, out of sympathy for other people’s frustration with the advanced Mensa test it’s become.  So as a result, we don’t get the spam protection, and reCaptcha doesn’t get its translation.  Just how lose-lose can you get?

Word Verification

Please type the following three words to prove you’re not, for any reason whatsoever, exploiting my innocent efforts to keep my comments safe:

Don’t be evil

No?  Try again:

Don’t be evil

Still can’t get there?  Let’s try something easier:

  

Don’t be evil

Round and round

I am indebted to the late great Richard Boston for reminding me of the word ‘anadiplosis’ whilst  searching for something else completely.  ‘Whilst searching for something else completely’ is an activity we could do with a word for, at least I could, but at least for the rhetorical device of starting a sentence with a word or phrase with which one ended the previous one, we have one.  One way of being reminded of this sort of time-wasting activity – which can be extended to reusing said word or phrase within as well as at the beginning of a sentence – is to read ‘The Etymologicon’, a book constructed entirely around loose anadiplosis, in which you will learn, on page 46, that ‘saya suka suka rama-rama rama-rama’ is the Malaysian for ‘I love butterflies’.  I love butterflies, but I haven’t seen any yet, even though the Spring seems to be unusually advanced for February.  February's ice and sleet freeze the toes right off your feet, usually.  Your feet, usually, would prefer woolly socks and fur boots to sandals at this time of the year.  This time of the year, usually, is when you wrap up, stay in and peer out of the frost-caked windows for a bud or an insect.  An insect might have been what I saw flying off over the fence this afternoon, but I can’t be certain.  Certain poets, including Shakespeare, have written merrily of the Spring, but don’t hold out too much hope.  Hope springs eternal, it’s true, and I don’t want to pour cold water.  Cold water is not useful for filling hot water bottles.  Bottles are useful defences against false hopes, and also for getting you out of the house and down the bank when the box is full.  Full circle is where this post is going, so salutations to Richard Boston and Mark Forsyth, to both of whom I am indebted.

Just thinking ...

I’ve been thinking about relocating.  Sorry, that’s a weasel word – I mean going to live somewhere else.  Why?  Well, I’ve been here in Reading, in this house, now, longer than I’ve ever been in any other town or house; is that a sufficient reason to be restless?

(I don’t know the answer to that, but one of the joys of blogging is that you can chuck thoughts and ideas out of the window and, occasionally, they will get shaped, sanded down, and drop, provoked and  purified, back in through the letterbox, unsolicited but the converse of junk.)

As this town (which I like, a bit, and which contains a lot of people whom I like, a lot, but all that’s been factored in to this blogdream) is slap bang in the middle of southern England, and given that I miss the sea and the coast, I only really have four options:  north, south, east or west.  North is out of the question.  South would mean going back to where I was born.  East is a foreign country.  So that leaves West.

West consists of Wales and the West Country.  I don’t want to live in Wales, for reasons too difficult to explain here.  So that leaves the West Country.  This consists of Devon and Cornwall.  Devon is tempting, but it’s too expensive.  So I’m left with Cornwall.

I saw a documentary the other night which purported to be about the English countryside (it looked more like a remake of ‘Coast’, but .)  One of the places it covered was the far western tip of Cornwall, with some emphasis on the tin mining.  It didn’t, as I’d hoped, feature the strange, creepy landscape of Bottalack – the abandoned working buildings and routes – but it did remind me of St Just.

No-one knows just who St Just was, but that doesn’t prevent him or her giving the name to two Cornish towns within a long spit of each other.  I’m talking, of course, not about the one that’s called ‘St Just in Roseland’, but about the most westerly town in Great Britain.  I’ve only been there a few times, but here’s a snapshot…

We’ve walked to a pub which has a Thursday folk night.  About eleven musicians are crammed onto a stage big enough for three – in fact, that’s not true, you can’t tell where the stage ends and the audience begins.  They’re playing guitars, banjos, fiddles, bongos, beer glasses, and in some cases just their own hearty voices.  I hear a suggestion that I should get up there, grab a guitar and join in, and I’m tempted; but then someone moves in beside me.  I apologise (why?), make room and look.  It’s a tall blonde girl in a black leather trouser suit, carrying a banjo case.  ‘I’m a bit nervous’, she says, without smiling.  ‘Never been here before.’  I have no reply to that.  Her minder, who turns out maybe to be her father, whispers something to one of the musicians, who nods.  The girl unpacks her banjo and sits down on a hastily vacated chair.  ‘Duelling?’ I overhear her mutter to the other banjoist.

Yes, I want to live where that kind of thing happens.  Not every day, you understand – just sometimes.

Songs with Punchlines

I’ve been working on this for ages, but can only come up with seven.  Mind you, my musical memory doesn’t extend much after 1979.  Anyway, here they are: 

The Beatles: Drive My Car

The Kinks: Lola

Chuck Berry: Memphis Tennessee

Jimi Hendrix: Red House

Ricky Lee Jones: Chuck E’s In Love

The Coasters: Shoppin’ For Clothes

Todd Rundgren: We Gotta Get You a Woman 

Here’s a Spotify playlist of six of them, see if you can guess which one’s missing: 

Punchlines

Oh, and as a wee extra, here’s one by me:

Sure Slept Well

Washing Up

Big subject.

Let’s start by loading the dishwasher.

There’s a simple rule – small items take precedence.  Two simple reasons for this simple rule.  One: a small item generally takes nearly as long to hand wash as a big one.  Two: a big item takes longer to shoehorn into the dishwasher than a small one.  So, fill the machine with small items, then hand wash the bigger ones that won’t fit.  Try it: it’ll save you time and effort.

Other than that, rules can not and must not be defined.  To attempt to do so would be akin  to writing a single law governing human behaviour in Leeds, Asbakistan and Outer Space.  I will propose a bet, sight unseen, that tomorrow morning, when we each unload, neither of us will have accurately predicted the detail of the other’s dishwasher content.  Wanna play?  No.  So load it as seems best for you - but only one you!  The only ruling principle of dishwasher governance is dictatorship.

A good rule of thumb is to put the more delicate items (crystal, Dresden figurines etc) in the top tray.  I assume this is because they’ll do less damage when you drop them on to the contents of the bottom tray whilst unloading the machine tomorrow, sober. 

Emptying the dishwasher.

Apart from knowing where to put the stuff, and therefore in what order to unload (which will not in any way correlate with the loading procedure), the only universal rule here is: make sure it's clean before putting it away.  I will draw a veil over recent alleged incidents in this area.

 Hand washing.

Hottest possible water, plenty of it, thick copious black heavy duty murderer’s gloves – then just get on with it.  Glasses first (not more than one at a time in the sink, or they’ll magically break even though they don’t touch each other).

The satisfaction at completing the washing up before retiring can be added to that of not having to face it in the morning.  This total then has to be subtracted from tomorrow evening.

When cooking, as far as possible, wash up as you go.  Things like sieves, colanders, measuring jugs, saucepans in which you have just simmered the frozen peas –all of these and more can often just be rinsed off, dried and put straight away.  Seconds now – aeons of angst and stumbling incapacity later. 

My Computer

Remember that, Windows users?  (Inhabitants of the Appleocracy can look away now.)  It figured about three versions back, and I remember thinking it both sludge-brained and sinister at the same time.  The hyperactive teenage tadpoles who invent this stuff were obviously after conveying the idea that I had ‘ownership’, but got it exactly the wrong way round – they should have called it ‘Your Computer’, shouldn’t they?  As it was, the message came across, or would have done to anyone down there in the same sludge-brain swamp, as: ‘I, Microsoft, Own This Computer.  You Are My Slave And Victim.  Do Not Fuck With Me!’

Fortunately, they dropped the ‘My’ in the next version, so now it just says ‘Computer’.  Which is precisely as helpful.

But what I really wanted to talk about was my computer (small m, small c).  I know that I ask a lot of it, given its age.  Are computer years like dog years, multiply by seven?  If so, mine’s, well let’s just say, catching up with me.  But machines (unlike dogs)  shouldn’t unpredictably modify their behaviour without my telling them to.  I wouldn’t expect my car to do that.  Examples: when I double-click an icon, it has decided – sometimes – to open the same window twice.  Not always: that’s the irritating bit.  I swear I have not changed anything.    And when I ask it to stream from Spotify or Youtube it obeys submissively, whereas when I ask iTunes to do the same thing, I am solemnly informed that ‘This computer does not support streaming.’  It’s like the car telling me that it can’t run the aircon because I got in through the wrong door, or the dog not recognising the lead.

The thing is, this technology is in its infancy.  It’s all about surface.  Deep technology is totally dependable except in really dire situations.  If you don’t believe that, turn on your tap.  This is shallow technology, in its infancy; and it occasionally worries me that, if it breaks down because a tadpole failed to report in for work, then so will everything else.

I’m off down the Post Office tomorrow to buy a book of stamps.  Ozymandias rules.

Evidence

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

This is Chomsky’s famous example of a sentence that, though grammatically perfect, is devoid of meaning.   T S Eliot is also entitled to say ‘I think we are in rats’ alley, where the dead men lost their bones’, for the same reason: English is being used in both cases at one remove from pure meaning.  Chomsky is demonstrating the divorce between structure and content; whilst Eliot is showing us that meaning can be made to sit some way behind both.  It’s the distinction between the two functions of language: to communicate, and to convey.

Which brings me to the point: should Abu Qatada be deported to Jordan?  The arguments hinge around the use of the word ‘evidence’, and in this case, we can home in on Chomsky rather than Eliot, communicate rather than convey, because, for once, a word means something that (granted the nuances of differing legal systems) can be agreed upon to mean one thing: evidence is information or allegation that can be presented in a court of law and demonstrated to be true.

In this case (and any other), it would be for the court to establish both of these criteria.  So, in this country, we are told that he can’t be tried because the ‘evidence’ against him cannot be exposed to public view for fear of prejudicing the safety or viability of the source.  Fine.  By definition, that’s not evidence, because you’re not prepared to disclose it in court.  So there’s no case.  Similarly, in Jordan, by the same test, if ‘evidence’ has been gleaned by means accepted to be illegal, again, there is no evidence.

I personally couldn’t care less whether this bloke is renditioned to Jordan, stuck back to rot in a British gaol, tried, convicted or acquitted in either place, or set free to roam the world, pathetic but harmless as a stinking Lazarus.  I do care about my language though.

Incidentally, colourless green ideas don’t sleep furiously; and we are indeed in rats’ alley, but haven’t lost our bones.

Definitions

Bonus (n):  Something good or desirable gained or given with something else; an extra payment for reaching specified targets or at special times of the year; a bribe.

Bribe (n):  Something offered to someone to influence their judgement unduly or to persuade them to behave in a certain way; spoil, booty.

Booty (n): Spoil taken in war or by force; plunder.

Plunder (vt): To carry off the goods or possessions of by force.

Spoil (vt): To mar; to impair; to make useless; to treat over-indulgently.

Indulgent (adj): Ready to gratify the wishes of others; compliant; not severe.

Severe (adj): Conforming to a rigorous standard; hard to endure.

Gratification (n): A recompense, tip or bribe.

Recompense (n): Reward.

Reward (n): That which is given in return for good (or sometimes evil).

All drawn, selectively, from The Chambers Dictionary, 2003

Rescue

The following is reconstructed  from first-, second- and third-hand reports during and after the event, so I can’t vouch for the details.  But it seems it went roughly like this:

Just to recap, a lot of snow fell over the Peak District last weekend as people were trying to make their way to Buxton for the wedding.  I was lucky, or skilful, or both, enough to get across from the M6, via England’s most dangerous road, ahead of the worst of it.  Others were less so.

The bridegroom’s uncle R and his family had driven up from Brighton.  They hit the High Peak at about six, two hours later than me.  By then the snow must have been four or five inches deep on the road, and staying frozen as it settled.  As R described it, 4x4s were struggling.  A Jaguar didn’t stand a chance.  I don’t know anything about his snow-driving skills or experience (I learnt mine on Italian mountain passes back in the sixties), but in the event it was the car that let them down.  For some reason, the transmission locked itself in ‘park’ and refused to let go.

The groom’s brother (who I’ll have to call E because  he’s actually another R) volunteered to go and fetch them.  It seems that a decision was reached, up in that icy wasteland, that R and S would stay with the car and await the rescue services, while E ferried the two kids back down to Buxton.  Probably a bad decision with hindsight, they should all have gone.  A good decision, however, made twenty four hours earlier, now emerged:  the daughter, L, had taken it upon herself to load some blankets and sleeping bags into the car – ‘Just in case,’ as she put it later.  Wise girl.

By now, the snowplough had been through, and the road would probably have been passable, if the car had been capable of movement.  R and S wrapped up and waited.  At one point, she had to get out for a pee – ‘That slowed some of the passing cars down,’ she told us next day, ‘but they didn’t offer us a lift.’  After about an hour, the rescue man turned up.  (To be slightly fair, he’d probably been quite busy.)  He took a look at the shift lever, went off to his vehicle and returned with a screwdriver, which he proceeded to apply to something invisible to the non-technical naked eye.  It didn’t work.

‘Have to call technical support,’ he announced.  This took some time, after which he returned with a bigger screwdriver.  That didn’t work either.  Rescue man announced that there was nothing more he could do, and prepared to leave.

‘Well, can you drop us off in Buxton?’ asked R.  ‘Please?’  Rescue man shook his head and said – and this is a verbatim quote – ‘No.’  And drove off.

They got there in the end, of course  – because E, another true hero, went out again – again!  There were complications even at this stage, but I lost track.  The wedding was attended by R and S, who both eventually got thoroughly and appropriately … rescued, is that a useful new euphemism?   And the car got recovered and repaired on Monday, I’m told.  So it all ended well.  (Except for that rescue man, of course, who broke down on his way home and caught pneumonia … No, I made that bit up.)

White Wedding

The dress code, as some of you will know, was ‘Dress to Kill’.  I received much-welcomed advice, ranging from ‘full fig’, via ‘SAS uniform’, to ‘green loon pants and tie-dye T shirt’ – thank you all!  But in the end I decided my upstaging days were over, and settled for L’s advice: dark suit, blue shirt, polka-dot tie (white on darker blue as it turned out).  Boring; but most of the men of my generation went for white shirt and paisley tie, so I was actually quite outragous.  (And you haven’t seen my belt!)  There were in fact two kilts, both on men; I wondered, given the code, whether this was some kind of Scots Nat statement about Bannockburn.  They looked good on the dancefloor though.

I’d set out for Buxton about one o’clock on Saturday.  (The wedding, by the way, was on Sunday, the bride’s family being Jewish.)  Snow started around the M42, and was pretty significant once I turned off the M6 for Congleton and the A54 across the Peaks to Buxton.  This was once voted the most dangerous road in England.  It certainly looked that way on Saturday.  Apprehensive doesn’t begin to say it.  BMWs are not famed for their prowess in these conditions.  But the new ‘winter tyres’ proved their worth –  I found myself overtaking wheel-spinners up hills – so a heartfelt thanks to BMW for their brilliant £1,200 correction of their own design flaw!  It was five inches deep by the time I got there.

That evening, a few of us dined at a Thai round the corner from the hotel.  Most Thai restaurants rightly pride themselves on their presentational skills, a meal being to them an aesthetic as well a culinary experience.  But they were completely upstaged by the vehicular cabaret taking place on the street outside, the high spot being a bus, at the third attempt, succeeding in skidding into the bollards lining the pavement.  We were concerned about R and S, whose Jag had conked out on that same road I had managed to transverse three hours earlier.  There’s another story there, which I’ll probably tell in the future; for now, suffice to say they made it in the end.

I won’t say too much about the actual wedding, because all weddings are alike whilst being uniquely different.  Also because this isn’t The Tatler (not that I know what a Tatler is).  It was in the hotel where I was staying.  They got married, beautifully; there was champagne (well, Prosecco actually) by the gallon; there were speeches, ranging from long and funny to short and, er, funny; delicious food, free bar, disco (my dancing days may be dwindling, or my ‘Get fit, Tim!’ days approaching); and an after-hours pay bar which went on a lot longer than I did.

Heroism In The Face Of Adversity Spot: I banged my wrist against something on Sunday morning after breakfast, resulting in a small wound which was bleeding, so I went to Reception to ask if they had a plaster.  The nice lady explained that they did, but weren’t allowed to give them out to guests (‘Health and Safety – you might be allergic to them’ – oh yes, that’s why I asked for one), but heroically gave me one anyway.

How to be a politician 2012

1. Think of something your advisors say people might believe.
2. Say it.
3. Say the opposite.
4. [optional step] Claim to have been quoted out of context.
5. Accuse your opponents of having said it first.
6. Accuse your opponents of having said the opposite first.
7. Think of the worst joke you can.
8. Say it.
9. Deny that it was a joke.
10. Deny that you said it.
11. [optional step] Claim to have been quoted out of context.
12. Wait until the last possible moment before press time.
13. Think of something else your advisors say people might believe.
14. Return to step 2.