Ynwa

Things to do while trying to write

2012-01-29T10:50:00.002Z

THe other day, Wikipedia went off line. Naturally, I could not make any progress at all on my Masters/PhD/Thesis thingy. Then I saw this, which is brilliant(BYW, the video is legit), and realised that even if a hurty left arm is considered an excuse, I still dont do enough stuff. (

I therefore decided that I would do some gardening - fresh air (well as fresh as Hull allows), doing something physical, saving myself some money - I would plant some vegetables. I dug out all the seed trays I could find, and a bit of old compost, spaded some good soil out of the beds we have lying dormant and mixed the whole lot up. This was working, I began to feel really fresh, active , happy etc so I poured the soil mix into the seed trays, filling about fifteen of the blighters.

Its not giving anything away, by telling you in advance that by now, my brain, which I have been using a lot recently, had completely washed its hands of all this activity and had slunked off somewhere for a good sleep. No, I should perhaps hasten to mention, I did not cut my foot off with a spade (whichI have never done), nor did I break a rib by smashing the spade handle into my torso (something I did when we were renovating Large Mansions), concuss myself by walking into a wall (twice), get a splinter in my eye (once) or even merely step in cat poo (repeatedly). No what I did while not serious, nevertheless presents a dilemma. I planted all the seed trays with spring (or green or scallion) onion seeds. Which means that in about six months, Large Mansions will be flooded with industrial quantities of a vegetable that doesnt keep, is more of an occasional herb, or salad addition than anything, and six tonnes of which will all come to full maturity at the same time.

Simple, you may say, just get rid of the seedlings when they appear, and plant something else, and this is a sensible suggestion. The trouble is I cannot do this. It feels too much like murder when the little cute seedlings appear to just pluck them out and discard them. So it looks pretty much as if in six months time, our diet will consist of variations on spring onions or we'll have to get a pet that eats them. The next time wikipedia is down, I am taking to my bed.

Its raining cats and blogs

2012-01-21T11:59:00.002Z

In terms of zeitgeist, a common speculation I hear is "when's it going to happen?" , with "it' being:

a. Civil unrest on a massive scale
b. or, huge stock market crash and we wake up one morning and the ATM's arent working (triggering 'a')

A symptom, perhaps, of this is the proliferation of blogs by traders, anonymous bankers and other market/economist types. There are billions of these things (hence the rather weak pun in the title above) and if you havent stumbled across a few by now then you probably live far too much of a productive life. If you do spend most of your life actually doing stuff, as opposed to surfing the net, just do a quick dip into the life of an inveterate, newly converted couch potato like myself. Simply open Google , click the tab for 'more', click blogs and enter 'market' or 'wall street' etc.

The results of this experiment will be in two 'trajectories' (as us social scientists say when we cant be bothered thinking of the right word (CBBTORW)).

{ Incidentally, other social science words we use when in a state of CBBTORW, are 'towards' ( a personal favourite because I hate its use with a particularly intense hatred. I dont see the value in publishing a academic paper that start with "Towards a theory of ....." because you should have actually gotten to the theory before you write about it. Beside which , most of the time the author usually doesnt mean 'theory' they mean 'model'), 'paradigm' (when you cant think of anything to say, you either suggest a potential new paradigm or critique an existing one), 'heuristic' (just because you inappropriattely apply a posh name to your guess doesnt mean its not still just guessing), ontological (I would place a very large bet that 98% of the people that use this word could'nt explain what it means). The consequence of this misuse of language in academic papers (as opposed to the forgivable misuse, typos and convulted syntax of casual blog writing) is that sometimes I think that the social sciences - horrible word but you hopefully know what I mean - are the study of incredibly fascinating behaviours and interactions, done very badly.

A lot of this can be understood, heuristically, within the paradigm of "physics envy", thus we can move towards an ontological theory of interdisciplinary relativism where reductionist duality is priveliged........................ Erm, Sorry about that, I just got a bit carried away. Anyway a prof I recently met was talking about 'physics envy' in his discipline, and it really struck a chord. In fact, in the social sciences, an incredible amount of time and energy has been expended in the last thirty years in what one paper described as "The Paradigm Wars: Qualitative versus Quantitative". In many commentaries, you could replace the phrase 'essential criticality' for 'a dislike of scientists, possibly based on a failed romance'. Its obvious, I hope, that a critical look at our own and othr discplines is necessary and welcome. But whining on for twenty years about science without proposing anything that would, in practice, look any different, is not critical thinking (and yes I'm talking about you Mr Schon). Fortunately, there are many, many, many great examples work in the social sciences by fantastic people who are secure enough not to 'wish they were taken more seriously like what physicist are' and who are too busy doing their own research to spend too much time worrying about whether the CERN experiments are more valid than their own interviews with anti-social youth. }

Having extended the use of brackets beyond all reasonable doubt, I should perhaps return to the main, which is the flourishing state of blogs about economics, or the markets. As an expert couch potato, having had two periods of enforced layoff in the last year and therefore too much time on my hands, I can confirm that in fact, economics blogs have become more numerous that 'alin abduction' or "Mayan calender' blogs. And i think its because so many people are expecting something disastrous to occur in the economic sphere, but they just dont know what this disastrous something might be. So they turn to blogs for the answer, because newspaper's arent telling. Which is entirely the wrong thing to do. As should be obvious by now, economists know about as much about the future of the economy as Peppa Pig does about phrenology. Economics as prediction is junk science predicated on a bed of fantasy, with a side of unreality and an extra helping of make-believe. Economics, like the social sciences, suffered from physics envy and desperately wanted to be a 'science', when it clearly was not. The real results of that self-delusion, and that intense self-focus on how their discipline was regarded, is directly implicated in the destruction of at least three national economies. That's a pretty high price for a country to pay for academic pretension.

What I learnt this Christmas........

2012-01-03T12:55:00.005Z

1. The ability to open a can of "Petit Pate Ocean Fish" cat food with one operable hand by leveraging said can against feet should not be taken as a sign, by the operator, that by simple extension, a full Christmas dinner with turkey and all the trimmings is within the range of possibilities for same.
2. Never use the words "meaning" or "meaningless" within a five kilometre radius of anthropologists or philosophers who are in full possession of their faculties unless "meaning" or "meaningless" are what you actually mean (symbolically).
3. Journalism has failed.
4. "Battle: Los Angeles" is the worst movie ever made. But, there are worse (see Asylum particularly "Battle of Los Angeles").
5. The word "notion" is meaningless.
6. On the other hand, if everything has meaning then "Battle:Los Angeles" cannot be the worst film ever made because it will mean something to someone. In fact, there cannot be a worst film ever made because they will all mean something to someone.
7. A signed Lionel Messi Footy shirt is the second best present ever. The best are clippings from the goal mouth at Anfield. The worst, and therefore the best, is Knitlympics.
8. A Paradox: "Battle: Los Angeles" is measurably crap but existentially meaningful. This is called phenomenology.
9. Never interrupt your wife. Ever.
10. Cats are not performing seals and never live up to their owners boasts of cuteness/ability to do tricks/capacity to amuse/playfulness.
11. Points 5., and 6. are illustative of why some degrees are dangerous .
12. The 'science ' of applied economics can be likened as a voyage undertaken by unrelated and slightly obnoxious cats in a Warp-drive trans-light speed space-ship to discover a new planet in an as yet unobserved galaxy, where the cats not only dont understand how the space ship works, but are also unfamiliar with the concepts of 'planet', 'galaxy', 'space', 'ship' or "beam me up, Scotty'. It can thus be simply, but accurately, described as "a disaster in the making" without the compensation (for observers or humans who have accidentally gone along for the ride) of a good fireworks show at the end. The reasons for any decisions tha cats do make however, while describable, are very difficult to understand.

Thanks to everyone who came over the holiday period - Joe, Anna, Sal, Sue, Chris, Margaret, Bill, Ethan, Will.

Bus stopping

2011-12-15T16:54:00.002Z

Castle Hill Hospital has been, up to recently, the solitary remaining hospital/clinic/medical facility in Hull I have not had the opportunity to inspect. It is situated on the outskirts of Hull, where semi-posh estates of semi-detatched bungalows skirt greying fields full of starlings. Incongrously, in this retiree community of Sunday morning car washing and tidy driveways, gypsy horses roam the grass verges, picking at the grass and totally ignoring the hermetically sealed people carriers and bottom of range Mercedes saloons that swish by.

The hospital's principal fame is as an oncology centre, so locally it's name tends to be articulated wordlessly - people will articulate the name with their mouths without actually saying it, a product, perhaps of superstition and fear.This type of speaking, particularly among older women, was noticed years ago by a brilliant English comedian Les Dawson. The clip is pretty dated by now, so if you dont want to watch the whole thing, the type of voiceless talking I mean is at about 1 min 15 and again at the end from about 2 mins 30 seconds. What Dawson does here is rooted in observation of a characteristic way of talking, particularly here in the north of England, and its worth a quick aside to discuss where it came from. The common account is that in the Northern towns of England during the Industrial Revolution, the factories
( particularly the cotton mills where women mostly worked), were so noisy that normal conversation was impossible. As a solution, women became expert lip readers and could hold conversations without shouting. However, what this explanation does not account for is that the phenomenon is almost entirely limited to women, and usually about 'sensitive' matters.

The hospitals focus also makes its miserable if only by dint of the sheer number of cheerful touches added. There's happy posters, nice plants and lots and lots of noticeboards where you can pick up pastel coloured leaflets (usually with pictures of trees on the front and if not that then an image of some sort of counsellor, head bent at the unnatural angle only counsellors can achieve, faint encouraging smile that's as chilling as any Medusan glance) offering help and advice. Its completely depressing, and for me would be just a reminder that I was quite ill as I'd never have a picture of a tree, or a cloud, or a puppy on my wall at home.

Then you reach the plastic surgery department. This is the real deal - graphic images of the internal structures of the human body so you can identify exactly the tendon, muscle or bone you have injured, and reflect wonderingly,: why (given how weedy and thin they all look ), why you havent just snapped one before? It's a much happier place.

And that's where todays post ends. The stiches came out on the latest injury and all is healing very well. So well in fact , that given some of us might not meet for a while, I feel obliged to post the picture below, as I have been informed there will be very little scarring, and therefore very little evidence that I'm not making the whole injury thing up.

We are all trolls...............

2011-12-13T10:23:00.003Z

The morning ritual:

I become aware of a soft tickling on the nose. The tickling becomes a scratch, which then becomes a persistent pressure, half tickle, half scratch, accompanied by a constant rumbling. One eye opens and delivers the news to a brain that's still mostly floating round an alternate universe of dream, in which I'm usually some sort of Road Warrior, that its still dark. Then the unmistakeable, and unique, sensation of a vicious scimitar of keratin gently picking at the flare of my nostrils.

"Hi Tosh" I say to the cat that's sittng on my head, "Morning is it?". We trundle downstairs to the kitchen door so he can go out, an exercise that's as ritualistic as any religious service. He sits in front of the door, gently miaowing at it and glancing up anxiously at me, apparently concerned that this - of All Days - will be the day foretold in cat lore - The Day The Door Didnt Open. ,Then as soon as the slightest crack appears, he sticks his paw through as if he's Indiana Jones desperately struggling to prevent the massive boulder sealing the Tomb of Neferitititi. Once the door is opened he jerks his head forward, sniffing. A victorious little cry and he hops out, mission focused without even a glance back.

Three hours later, and at the decidely more civilised time of eight thirty, and having returned to bed, I gradually arise properly. If RHB hasnt already allowed the cat entry, he's at the window of the back door, clawing at the glass, miaowing. Once he's in , we both hit the food bowl hard - me marmalde and toast, him reconstituted something or other. Then he hops onto my knee and we read the moring papers. Opposite, there is usually RHB, with a slightly smaller cat on her knee, similarly reading.

But this tradition, this comfortable and comforting lifeway that we've developed as we've co-constructed our culture over the years, is about to change for good. Frankly, I've had enough and have decided I have better things to do. Not, I should speed to mention, of the cat. Nor, of RHB. And most definitely not of marmalade on toast. But of newspapers, and the contents thereof, and most of the content on the internet, television and radio, I am done. I'm also a bit sick of literature as well, particularly previous staples like science fiction, biographies of ancient historical figures, anything anthropological. I have never really enjoyed 'funny' books or detective works, hate reading plays and morning's too early for serious literary work that requires thinking. Autobiographies are, by definition, unbelievable and I find a source of previous excitement - lay accessible science or political works - a genre exhausted and diluted by too many poor imitations. My most reecent acquistion in this genre - "How to teach your dog quantum physics" was not only badly written, but as Tosh pointed out, used the sickeningly cutesy device of anthromorphising the author's pet in a cheap bid for readership.

I think I am justified in this disillusion based on quality alone . If 99.99% of what one recieves through media is utter rubbish (or too good to be read in the morning - an important point that would earn itself a footnote if this was an academic paper that I would not, by self definition be reading in the morning) then paying attention to media in the morning is a total waste of time. Despite this justification, I feel I need somone (other than me) to blame. and here I turn to a recent ongoing discussion between RHB and self about the interactive nature of contemporary life.

A long time ago, at the dawn of the internet, when mammoths still roamed past our apartment window near Dutch Village Road, Halifax, we eagerly welcomed the appearance of "Comments" sections in newspapers. As Comments became enabled on various sites of interest, I registered
eagerly -in all cases immediately forgetting the username and password - anxious to contribute to the growing, and welcome democracy provided by the Web. And for a few years, all was fine: environmental forums were friendly places where healthy debate would flop around aimlessly, political comment sections would host ill-informed, but lively, discussions on competing economic theories, football columns would be exercises in thinly disguised bias. Soon, interactivity became ubiquitous - every newspaper column had a space for comments, every webpage had some sort of forum or comments facility. Radio shows respond to twitters and tweets and texts and are supported by an online prescence with accompanying comments sections, even if they are just meterological forecasts. Books have websites that have more content than the original text and websites have websites about websites - all commented, noted, forumed, ranked and tweeted.

Accompanying this have come the trolls - the subject of the debate between self and RHB referred to earlier. Troll and trolling have become familiar terms to anyone usng the net and are usually defined as either corporate stooges pushing a lobbyist line, or agent provocateur of some description who just like a good argument (I suspect late teenage boys figure prominently here). Both have cluttered up comments, forums and interactive sections of the web, its true, but my meaning for the word troll is broader perhaps than most definitions. By troll, I mean anyone who posts anything online, anywhere, about anything.

How so, you might ask? Well, I reply, its because contemporary media, through its interactive nature is a great big baby. It has developed into a pre-sentient creature that, is designed to elicit (demand actually) baby talk responses from us - when newspaper columns write 'provocative' articles that allow climate sceptics space in their comments sections I feel a need to respond, but space denies anything longer than a few sentences, so a whole ecosystem is reduced to a cartton strip. When a book is accompanied by a website and asks for a review, I am duty bound to post something but all that is really required, and read, is three, four or five stars. When a radio show calls for texts or tweets, limited-character opinions flow in on subjects that require a treatise. The content doesnt matter really, its the response which is important.

So I have decided to stop responding, at least in the morning. I realise my list of material that I am self-prohibiting means there is not a lot left for me to listen to, or read in the morning. But there are solutions. This morning I read 'Bosch Operation Manual: Model 4564'. It was a good start - I am now much more informed on the operation of my fridge via content rich material, and was not obliged to respond in any way. It was a much more satisfying start to the morning than the previous one when i ended up shouting at the radio, computer and newspaper in a growing circle of frustration. I already have my eye on tomorrow's literature "Sharp Autocook MicroWave: A User's Guide".

Axe-ident. My own personal darwin.

2011-12-01T13:34:00.004Z

One of the ironies life does seem to be, as I told the attending surgeon at hospital, that in at least one of my occupations, I am usually the nominated health and safety representative when i work onsite. In the most recent accident, however, I am ashamed to admit that I broke practically every piece of advice have ever paternalistically bestowed on people.

These are the circumstances. After a four day stint in Leeds of sixteen hour days welding a series of metal frames for a Christmas production of Beauty and the Beast, my back began to spasm pretty badly upon arriving home at night. So, I decided that a great way to unwind was to have a glass of wine in front of a roaring fire. The fire was lit, dinner was prepared and wine was drunk. I however was not inebriated, as only one glass had been imbibed, but was very very tired. I decided that more wood would be needed. So, I got my axe and went out on to my unlit, wet slippery deck, without my glasses or worl gloves and swung said axe at an oversized piece of wood. Of course, the axe bounced off a knot and sunk its newky honed edge into the back of my arm, about two inches up from the wrist, leaving a two and a half inch wound.

To make a long embarrasing story slightly shorter (because, of course, I now have all sorts of deadlines due tomorrow that require typewriting) I cut through the skin, grazed the bone and severed a tendon in the back of my arm.

Emergency treatment has cleaned the wound, but I am unfortunaely going to cost the medical services a bit more because I need plastic surgery to re-connect the tendon and make the wound a bit less messy. That surgery will hopefully be tomorrow.

About the only thing I can say in my defence is that my reaction was very calm - I closed the wound, elevated the hand got a ride to hospital and didnt cry. This however isnt really clear thinking, rather just habituation as I have crocked me' sen (as they say in Yorkshire) with alarming regularity.

I wish not for sumptuous bouquets of flowers delivered to my door in sympathy. But if anyone has got a decent brain hanging round that has not had it's innate 'stupidity acquiescence device' removed, please send it by first class mail.

Crisis of Capitalism

2011-11-22T13:24:00.001Z

Analysis of the current crisis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsEUs0xK5KY&feature=related

Occupy everything

2011-11-04T09:44:00.006Z

Firstly, apologies for the massive delay in posting. You may remember the heady days of yore, when first there started to be delays in posting ? Then, erupting from the mire would another post arise, heady with the fumes of contrition and apology and laden with evermore internecine excuses for the absence. And I think none of us ever believed those excuses - I know I certainly did not. I always suspected there was something more, going on, an agenda behind the scenes. I remember how the excuses I would read when I consulted these amaniacals just would not ring true : 'busy with renos', 'on holiday', 'not much happening', 'not miserable enough to write' etc etc etc . "Hmmm, I thought to myself, this fellow's up to summat or I'm a Dutchman".

Well, it would appear as if I will have to start eating large quantities of Edam cheese, riding my bike a lot, and jumping over dykes, because I investigated myself thoroughly in light of these suspicions, and it appears that the excuses were genuine. Apart from assembling the most ridiculously camp Halloween costume in the world (Ever!), the last few months have literally been renovating, studying, riding my bike, eating lots of cheese and generally being quite happy, with the odd bit of failing-to-visit-Bristol/Aberdeen thrown in. The word mundane has had to be re-defined to describe my existence to the extent that I believe its been withdrawn from service for some maintenance. But you should'nt take my word for it, I had to dig deep before the evidence of the extent of is ennui did become apparent: I have started a blog about my Phd! This sister blog is not an amusing series of anedotes about how it has taken three months to write a thirty minute seminar presentation, nor observations on how I dont understand linguistics - deixus, pragmatics, morphology, phonemics, epiglottal labial fricatives and the like - to the point where I have been doubting whehter I should use language (or indeed communication of any means). No, this new blog is merely a series of descriptions of academic papers I have been reading. I had become ridiculously happy with an existence that I will tag here as 'The New Monasticism'. Having coined this phrase, I fully expect to see it appear in the lifestyle pages of 'serious' broadsheets within the year.

But withdrawing from the world doesnt mean its not there, and recent trip to London made me re-think my Benedictine approach. I was recently invited to attend a research seminar in light of my new role as a burgeoning PhD. The seminar was a blur of brilliance and a competely new experience for me, having previously only been an undergraduate sitting through three hour lectures on 'The Reflective Practitioner'. In those previous experiences, a somnabulance would fill the room very quickly and I would spend a lot of time estimating how long it took to install the ubiquitous white tiles of the suspended ceiling, and how many rats were crawling along the ductwork above our heads right now, before drifting off to sleep at minute 20. This seminar was different - it was as if a massive pllow fight had occured, and the pillows had exploded, filling the room with feathers - a constant Brownian motion of ideas/possibilities/models and hypotheses. All of The Really Big Names (RBN) in my field (people who's work I have read for three years and had just totally excited me) were present, and THEY had asked ME questions about my research, describing it as 'really interesting' and 'timely'. I was 'vibed' to say the least. As the seminar wound down, the collected RBN gathered, chatting and joking, making plans for the evening. To my surprise, one RBN turned to me, asking what my plans might be. I gulped - I had just been addressed, albeit using the name 'Mark', by a legend, a star , who has actually been published. Hesitantly, and trying hard not to cry, I mentioned that I had planned to go to the Occupy St Pauls demonstration, just down the road, and find out for myself what it was all about. A quick consult, and the assembled glitterati of research - the entire constellation of RBN in the field of adult second language learning - declared it a good plan. So with no further ado, all three of us trooped out into the balmy night air of London, in search of civil disobedience.

I will not here retread descriptins of what the Occupy movement is - anyone, even those engaged in 'The New Monasticism' should be aware of not only the vents, but also the essential arguments. I will also not here indulge in a vain-glorious description of how accurate are the essential tenets of Civilisation Why? /Apolcalypse How? and Evolution When? , it is enough to state categorically that it should be obvious to anyone that global capitalism is breaking down, just as every previously designed complex system of control of human society has eventually collapsed. ANd faced with this reality, the merits, or otherwise, of the current paradigm may be a subject of discussion for some people, but viewed for me, these arguments dont really amount to what we historical anthropologists call 'a hill of beans'. Arguments about how we 'fix' capitalism are completely irrelevant and short sightedly relative - for example, feudalism and Maoist Communism, in their time, did feed enormous amounts of people, did result in technological innovation, and apart from hideous human rights violations, did enable a kind of stability for many people throughout their existence. Their designers did have a vision - an ethical position, whether we like that position or not. What matters though, is that when, for various reasons, the jig was up and the system stopped working - in the form of mass famine, plague and misery for too many of the people, a new system had to arise. And from that, what really matters is at we have a debate over what should replace the failing system, so that something worse does not occur. For example, Stalinism, Mugabe and the Aztecs all replaced previoulsy faltering systems. Fortunately in these times, we have a little more influence than the hoi polloi of previous societies, so what I was really interested in was whether Occupy had something to say about replacement, or whether they were just 'agin'.

My own position, I have to confess was ambivalent. Having been a campaignng member of the Far Left Militant Tendency in my youth, and throughout my twenties, a certain revolutionary fatigue is probably part of my make-up. So, viewing the television images of the Occupy camps, witnessing the didigereedoos, home made placards, dread-locks and gas masks, a part of me shared the cynical view of at least one friend, that the Occupy people were 'the usual suspects'. However, RHB's re-engagement with alternative perspectives over the last few years has been compelling, and I found the Occupy Wal street statement compelling, accurate and much more truthful than the ridiculous edge-of-a-clfff negotiations of Europena finance ministers.

In the company of the RBN, I strolled along the Embankment in London to St Pauls, but when we got there, I made my excuses because I wanted to talk to the protestors on my own. I walked into the middle of the tent area and just looked round. There were concentric rings of people, clearly differentiated. On the edges of the square a row of policemen adopted pose not dissimilar to their demeanor during soccer matches - active watching, but not 'poised'. Inside this ring of police, groups of tourists took photographs but mainly didnt enter the area where the tents were. The local coffee shops were doing a roaring trade - ironically the centre of capitalism had gained another money spinning tourist attraction. Suited City types walked purposefully along, between the police and the tents, some muttering as they passed, others ignoring the activity around them in the way only Londoners can do. Inside the tented are there were a few vegetarian kitchens, guitar players, and lots and lots of people milling around, many of them dressed like New Age types - dreadlocks, quilted jackets and Tibetan style hats. Absolutely nothing was happening.

Afetr a few minutes, I approached a group who were sat down on camp chairs outside a tent and asked if I could sit. We started to chat.

Two hours later, I had to leave as I was staying at Brent Cross that night on the other side of the city. But I left very reluctantly. Its impossible to provide a 'snapshot' of what the Occupy protestors stand for, because, as they themselves said, their views are not all the same. Because of this, the accustation has been made that they are just 'agin' but apart from the fact that there's plenty to be 'agin' about, this does not mean there is no focus. If you are driving a car and the radiator is about to explode, there are number of alternative courses of actions you can take - many of them legitimate - get out and walk, abandoning the car, call rescue services, fix the radiator with ahrd boiled eggs or buy a new car. THere are many differnet courses of action yuou can take. What you dont do is just keep driving because it should be apparent your car will explode if you dont do something. The Occupy people I spoke to were cohesive in that they believed that although it is apparent to some what I have believed for a long time - that capitalism is broken - they believe that its not apparent to enough, or many, or the majoority just how broken it is. This radiator cannot just be replaced, in fact the whole car has reached a point where its increasingly dangerous to drive. And to extend this further, you cant afford a new car. So the point of their protest is to highlight this.

I suspect that among our politicians, busily engaged in bail outs, quantitative easing, stimulus packages and the like, many of them also know the car is toast. But because admitting this necessarily involves a relinquishing of power, privelige and money, they are extrememly reluctant to admit this publically. Other politicians who are ideologically-emotionally attached to the current system wont even admit to themselves just how bad things really are. Others still, opposed to the current system on ideological grounds have deterministic solutions. They have convinced themselves that they (and only they) 'know' the 'answers'. Its hard for me to decide which breed of politician is worse, but what is remarkable, encouraging and inspiring, is that the the Occupy people, even amid their various agendas, want to arrive at a solution through consensus. They know that they dont know all the answers. If I can characterize these protesters, it is that they are, among all the people I have met, the ones who can be most accurately described as democrats.

Maxim Power Station

2011-09-23T08:18:00.002Z

Reply recieved from the Liberals:

"Hello,

Thank you for your recent email regarding the proposed Maxim Power coal plant.

The Liberal Party shares your grave worry that the Maxim plant is attempting to skirt the recently announced federal greenhouse gas regulations for coal-powered electricity by going operational before the regulations are to take effect in 2015.

While our Party remains concerned that these regulations alone will not do enough to reach our stated goal of generating 70 percent of Canada’s electricity from zero-emitting sources by 2020, which is essential in order for us to reach green house sas reduction targets, no party should be allowed to skirt these regulations.

The Liberal Party will be asking the Minister of the Environment to close loopholes in the regulations to prevent companies from trying to avoid these new emission rules, while also advocating greater federal investments in renewable energies and green technologies we so urgently require to put us on the path towards sustainability.

Thank you once again for your email. If you have any further questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact us.

Yours sincerely,

Kirsty Duncan, MP

Etobicoke North"

One of the huge ironies of all major political parties is that Canada could over about half its populated space, be completely self sufficient (and very low emission) in terms of power production, despite being such an energy hungry place today, not by 2020.

Extreme Yoghurt Knitting

2011-09-17T09:45:00.004Z

A friend has a friend, a sometime wit and poet, and a definite sceptic, who describes our street as populated with yoghurt knitters. He arrives at this characterization because on the surface, the street festivals and local focus that make this road 'the friendliest street in Hull', the organic wholefood store at the end of the street, several adult inhabitants (who really ought to know better) who sport rapidly balding dreadlocks and wear bright waistcoat and the diverse demographic of the street can, to the lazy observer, lead one to the wrong conclusions. The impression my fiend's friend is trying to convey is that the street is populated with wooly minded, feeble hippies, actionless peaceniks and spineless potheads lost in a world of Pink Floyd and Hawkwind, but not really people who engage with the real world. Having smirked grimly once (out of politeness) at a dinner party when hearing the appellation, subsequent repetitions - and my increasing knowledge of my neighbours - make our poet's inaccuracy more flagrant. and so every time my friend's friend quoth his witticism, I grew more irritated. I felt like causing a flaming row at his gentle dinner-party-banter-no-harm-meant-just-a-smug-superiority-complex-in-development witticism, delivered as it was in a grisly Glaswegian accent that carried his class credentials as 'authentic working' therefore presenting a definitive, condescending judgement on our street.

Nurses, drug counsellors, teachers in the hardest of Hull's inner city schools, carpenters, chefs, unemployed, music promoter, retired postman, retired docker, car mechanic, scaffolder. And yes, musicians, artists, students and other bohemians in our street, but also Congolese, Polish, Hungarian and Canadians. And there is also what we actually do together when we work as a community - it does not usually involve sitting round in a 'Healing Circle' banging First Nations drums and channelling our energies. As last week has shown, usually we graft, on this occasion, a pooling of collective resources to paint, and fix up some issues on the exterior of our houses. As the most experienced scaffolder present (ie I had actually done it before), my main job was putting the scaffold up and down at the end of each day, as unfortunately it was a mobile tower and therefore impossible to secure. But by the end of the week, I was just supervising the dismantling a little bit, as a team of rugged, hairy arsed scaffolders emerged. No hippies here, just brilliantly professional, pleasant, hard-hard-hard working people who it was a pleasure to spend time with. And at 10 metres at full height, this was no picnic - it was dangerous (inherently), physically very demanding and often posed difficult problems to solve. We became so professional we even had, in the tradition of all scaffold crews, tough nicknames - Largey, Bristol Lil, Rooster, Russ, Gash and The Gaffa.

My friend's friend is actually a great laugh most of the time. But his cynical take on our street reflects a cynicism that often passes in England for humour. Its not a cynicism about one's personal fortunes, or the weather, or perhaps politicians, but an ugly oneupmanship usually directed broadside at one's peer group. Laughing at, as opposed to with, other people is a national obsession, and if you mention it (as a unpleasant but characteristic cultural trait) to people living here, the aggressive defence is to describe their bitter humour as 'banter' or 'just taking the piss, a bit', and to claim that 'you cant take a joke'. I understand where the origins of this 'humour' arise. So many enterprises, especially community initiatives attempted in the UK are slow, waddling failures that as a self defence mechanism its better to develop a hardened scepticism than enthusiastic endorsement. So it becomes easier to snipe from the sidelines, passing it off as 'banter' than to try something very difficult.

The Ride of Hope 2: The True Story

2011-08-28T11:46:00.025Z

Forest trails can be excellent - no cars, no people. But watch out for hornets - not only hurty, but positive evidence of genetic hacking carried out by "Them".

Before revealing the truth behind this year's Ride of Hope, I should like to just clarify something. Lindisfarne AKA Holy Island - and I dont mean the late 1970's folk/rock band - mean the geographical location - is crap. If there are ever moves launched by the islanders, or anyone else for that matter, to have that place recognised as a World Heritage Site, I will launch an immediate Facebook campaign with the emphasis on 'against'. For those that dont know what Lindisfarne is, the best description I can provide is that it is a small heap of mud, slightly (but not dramatically enough to be interesting) off the shore of Northumberland, created by the monotonous deposition of tidal silt, and is a place made famous because

Top to bottom: Landscape near the Cheviots, The Bridge of Death near the Infamous 68, The best cycling cafe in the world. Also pictured is a mysterious forest, and the picture of Skarra emerging is a re-enactment of the most exciting thing that happened to us on Lindisfarne.

long ago some monk decided to live there. The best thing I can say about Lindisfarne is that on a daily basis, high tide floods the causeway connecting it to the mainland, making the 'island' inaccessible. It truly is a dull place.

The same cannot be said of the rest of Northumberland, which is by and large pretty spectacular, populated with great people, superb cycling cafes and even better cycling. For a few days we revelled in single track roads that motorists, in their eternal rush to be somewhere, have largely forgotten.

We climbed across the Cheviots, thighs burning as we dragged bikes laden with full panniers up hills that looked impossible, then swooped down the same hills in a fraction of the time they took to climb - an exhilirating, if too brief, reward for the hours of ascent. We argued constantly, befitting an agglomeration of two of the finest brains to have taken this route at this particular time, Liverpool Football club versus Manchester United, will Beyonce quit showbusiness, will it or wont it rain?

As usual, after the first day, the rest of the planet faded and the only thing that mattered was ride- eat- shower-eat- sleep. 'Its a hunter-gatherer existence' I reflected on one gentle section 'doing comes before thinking, and pragmatics way before reflection' then another bloody hill hit and the brilliant pain took over. QED. For a time everything was great. Then we hit the National Cycle Network route 68 after a brilliant, ascent, and descent of the Cheviots.

The UK's national cycle network is a great idea : hundreds of cycle friendly, often car free routes - old railway lines, small country lanes, forgotten paths - which, according to the smiling faces on the website, you can either use as the basis of long distance cycle journeys, pop to your local shops, have stress free daily commute or take your family for a fun day of relatively safe cycling.

The website certainly supports this characterisation of NCN routes - helpful little lanes and by-ways, dingling through the dells and immensely grateful for their rediscovery, gently unfolding in just the right way to allow smiling families in jeans and other leisure wear to enjoying an active, but not too strenuous day out.

The World's best cycling cafe, is near Barrowburn. And that is really the truth. AT the bottom of a very fast ten mile descent, very rarely visited by anyone except cyclists we had a good chat here with other local cyclists, and got some good advice based on their local knowledge. Advice we subsequently completely ignored.

Not so The Infamous 68. It snarls and dips, grinds and rasps, up ascents that Hillary would shirk, and through switchbacks that the latter stages of the Amazon would disown as "too

complicated". Discarded cycles lay on the side of the 'path', mewling pathetically. Snags of lycra clothing hang in the vicious brambles that grew from uncomfortably at mid-chest level to dangerously at eye level and launch attacks your face,, shoulders, arms and back, while thorns, thistles, and worst of all, nettles attempt to make your legs stop working. And these are not the only tricks up its sleeve: at one point it disappears completely into a series of fields cresting a hill, and later three fords wait at the bottom of rutted mountain bike paths that I would argue, only an expert in extreme sports should contemplate. Then there are the gates ..............the eternal fricking gates.

Despite these torments, Skarra and I dont give up, pressing on to our destination of that evening - the little town of Wooler - via the path instead of, as we had been advised the previous day, abandoning the path and using the parallel main highway instead. And it is with an enormous sense of achievement that we finally arrive in Wooler.

"Wow" I enthuse to Skarra "Eighteen miles like that, and with full panniers!! I dont think many other road cyclists get through that you know !"

Skarra nods his head "I know that not many other road cyclists get through that: remember what that local cyclist, Steve, told us last night? He said - and I quote - "You'd have to be stupid to ride that final section to Wooler on a road bike. Really, really stupid. In fact, we've been campaigning to get the route taken off the NCN. They dont call it the Infamous 68 for nothing. No, its just an invitation to ruin your bike and break something. God, the idiots that try it!!!". Then he said...."

"Ok" I interrupt him " I get the picture, we were warned by Steve. But how did we know Steve was not just spinning a yarn - scaring the tourists?"

As a reductionist, Skarra is nothing of not pendantic, and once started on a track, feels the need to investigate it all the way.

"Well, all the other cyclists also said it in the cyclists cafe - the one in Barrowburn that is the best cyclists cafe in the world that we said we'd never forget - and then there's the guide books, the warnings that were posted and those two Dutch cyclists covered in blood that we met who had just tried it from the other direction. Plus...."
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
"Ok, ok" I concede " fair enough. That second ford was cool though......"

And we're off again, discussing the ride - gears chosen, riding positions preferred, water strategies - all completely boring to anyone listening, but for me, the whole point of riding - total absorption in solving a problem without the burdensome daily drag of normal life, politics, position and awkward human interaction that is often described as 'thinking'.

The technical details of cycling are not something that this blog will investigate, there are other much better blogs that cover cycling for that. But while preparing for this ride, an article on rainment for cycling did come to my attention, which I would like to share. It is an extraordinary article from the normally excellent Independent newspaper's cycling section, and what is particularly interesting is the recommendation within re footwear. I can only be grateful I didnt follow this piece of advice.

RIP Jack Layton

2011-08-22T23:13:00.002Z

A note to mark the passing of Jack Layton, leader of the NDP, the last political party I ever voted for. For a change, here was a politician who had some genuine intelligence, some humanity and principals. See :

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1042988--jack-layton-dead-at-61?bn=1

for an obituary.

Two Items on the agenda

2011-08-18T08:35:00.005Z

THe first being that the sweep came, saw and passed - the chimney that is. Actually, one very irritating thing about the locals is that so many of them say 'chibley', not chimney. At first, when stopping random strangers on the street to discuss the condition of my stack, I thought they were being cutesy , doing 'baby talk' for comic effect. However, baby talk is usually not cute anyway, its just incomprehensible babble, often irritating. The number of times I have been encouraged to listen and try to decipher - usually by a preening adult - the vital revelation a child is anxious to impart only to discover that I've lost ten minutes of my life conforming that circular objects filled with air can be classified as "balls", are incalculable. But as I progressed down the street discussing chimneys and wood burning stoves renovations with anyone who would listen, I arrived not only at the hardware store, but also at the conclusion that the mispronunciation of 'chimney' as 'chibley' is indeed a local effect. This discovery, accompanied by the inappropriate wearing of maxi dresses made want to leave Hull. I should immediately point out that I was not wearing maxi dresses inappropriately, but that Hull is, like many English cities, and I am risking prosecution for underexaggeration here, religious in its adherence to fashion following, and the maxi dress is, for females, the new religion. Unlike the cardigan, I can see how the concept of the maxi dress is imagined - an elegant summer item, lightly swathing the wearer in waterfalls of draping fabric: very attractive- and in fashion shoots, it works very well. But in reality, it only works on certain body shapes in certain fabrics, and in the cheap clothing/bad food capital of the UK, where over-made-up is the norm ans subject to a constant North Easterly, the actual effect on the street is that a stroll to our local shops is like walking through an open air canvas tent factory, staffed by pantomime dames shouting "chibley", during a gale.

The remedy is of course to get away, and the second annual Ride of Hope beckons. But here, a bombshell must be revealed. Cheek to Cheek's Second Annual Ride of Hope will not now be occuring in the Welsh Border regions. This year the ride will bring Hope to Northumberland. AN approximation of the route can be found here.
View Larger Map

I say approximation because this year we have dispensed with the official national cycle network and are striking out on our own, deciding on exact routes on a nightly basis. The reasons for this are many, but one primary reason is that our planned route to Bristol took us through the southern Welsh valleys for at least a day. The Southern Welsh valleys are attractive landscapes, to an extent, but they were also the site of the mining industry of Wales. Great people definitely (judging by the friends I have who derive from the Welsh Valleys), inspirational music for sure(in the form of the classic male voice choirs) and an early site of British Socialism, but the area is scattered with ex-mining villages, museums and all the reminders that this was an area where communities were destroyed by political motivations, not economic or environmental changes. Having lived most of my life in areas similarly affected, and living somewhere now where much the same processes are occurring, and finding the British political landscape deeply depressing, I wanted to go somewhere less recently affected. Northumberland, while not immune to the vagaries of modern politics, is much more remote. It is literally 'getting away from it all'

Finally, on a happy note, I can report that this year's annual plunge into the mire of depression has been successfully negotiated. I know this because a week ago, during a routine conversation re cats, in the middle of a sentence about Toshack's latest exploits (lying round all day, chasing Cheeky Monkey, miaowing frequently), I suddenly noticed that I was blubbing uncontrollably about being a failure, and immediately following said blub, I felt much better. "Hang on" I asked myself, "Better?". "Yes" the other me replied, "Better".

A quick review of the commensurate day revealed that I did indeed feel 'better' having been unblissfully unaware for several weeks that I actually felt 'worse'. Walking to the local store now did not require seventeen checks of the front door to ensure it was locked when leaving the house, and furthermore, that the trip was not now conducted under urgent notice, with a pounding heart as a 'must do' at an exact pre-determined time, failure to accomplish the objective of which (buying milk) would be cataclysmic, but success of which would be grandly ticked off on my 'to do' list under "#3. 14:35hrs. Buy Milk". Walking, riding, talking, going to the toilet or indeed any process involving planning on a higher or lower cognitive functional level no longer resulted in a slow motion sensation that one's brain was full of slow setting chocolate, and the endless writing of lists referred to no longer include as objective #1: 'Get up'.

So now its back to normal - being scared of buttons, watching wasps hunt caterpillars, having long conversations with cats and obsessing about ear hair. Time has once again become a friendly ocean that I bob around in, with a few distant islands as reference points, not a raging torrent full of rocks waiting to smash you to smithereens, and people have, for the most part, become human again, not a series of active malicious thoughts. Once out of a depression, my own overwhelming feeling is one of relief, often associated with relief that I didnt accomplish certain things. This summer that has mainly been that I didnt yet get round to building a fire in my 'chibley', or buy RHB a floral maxi dress.

Red Letter, or rather Black Soot Day

2011-08-12T08:11:00.002Z

Huzzah, huzzah, the sweep is coming, the sweep is coming. Raise a garland! Plant a flag !

Its actually as exciting a day as I've had for ages - I find out the condition of my chimney. According to my information, it is assessed, after sweeping as either 'good', 'fair' or 'condemned'. Yikes !

Gardenosity

2011-08-06T10:48:00.008Z

Those with fair to middling memories, or an acute interest in gardens, might recall that the posterior of Large Mansions resembled at one time a bankrupt builder's merchant's yard that had been hit by a medium sized atomic weapon. As the first four pictures here show (all taken about September 2009), our rear was bare, barren and smelly.

And as anyone who has occupied this property may recall, even as recently as Christmas 2010, there remained areas of our territory that were untamed, and frankly dangerous. However and further to this, by way of illuminating the following, anyone who has ever played Settlers of Catan with either RHB, or self, will understand that despite our egalitarian facades, we are both, in our own ways, prone to - nay enthusiastic about - Empire building. And further to that further, persons may be aware that since June, I have been on extended furlough, a term that is impossible to explain the pronunciation of to speakers of other languages, thus remaining sadly underused in my own vocabulary, except in times of need such as now. And, as an aside, and as the foregoing illustrates, this extended period of leisure has not been densely populated with my practising the art of clear writing, as will be necessary in my impending deployment. No, instead, I have spent most of the last few months improving my demesne, or, in more prosaic terms 'messing around in the garden'.

This has not been an instant process. For example, an ugly wooden fence ran the length of one side of the garden. The decision was made, towards the middle of June, that the fence should be removed, and the surplus bricks we had dug up, or remained from Concretia would be used to rebuild a traditional English garden wall. The decisions were also made that:

a) Yrs truly would be the one to rebuild said wall, depending on
b) A consultation with Darren, the expert Master bricklayer who built our extension to determine level of skill, feasibility and unforeseen problems.

I found Darren in the Bull's Arms, propping up the bar, and bought him a drink. Polite conversation established that work had been hard to come by recently, and he was interested in taking on a new project. I told him about my plan, and, in view of his situation, invited him to join our enterprise.

"Not a chance" said Darren, ordering another pint " I'm too busy".

"But you just said....." I protested

"Well I suddenly remembered that there are a million things I have to do, including tearing my own arm off and beating myself to death with it, sticking unsterilised needles in my eyes, and chewing a metre of barbed wire for a bet, all of which are vastly preferable, and probably better for my reputation than building a wall out of those particular recycled bricks in that location".

"So you think there might be a few problems with the job, then?" I asked.....

A few hours later, armed with the knowledge that the rebuild in the manner I proposed to do it was "a stupid idea, especially if you Mart - no offence but I have seen your plastering and you just dont 'get' stone products - are going to be the one doing it" , I ordered the mortar. It has taken me three months, although not constant. And I have had to pretend that the Gaudi-esque wobbles are deliberate, theatrical interpretations, adding character. BUt the wall is at least built and I fihure if I get enough ivy to grow on it quickly enough before it falls over, the ivy will hold it together.

We have also acquired a wood burning stove, priced at 60 pounds. This, as anyone familiar with British prices will be aware, is very cheap, as these devices usually cost about 500 pounds for a similar size. However there are a few reasons this particular stove is cheap as follows:

1. It is competely rusted having been left outside for two years
2. There is no glass in the front.
3. One door is broken
4. THe flue has fallen out
5. One of the vent covers is broken.

It looks like this:

we figure with just a bit of work, it'll look brand new. Also it will reduce our heating bill enormously this winter. And also, as the global economy fails, bringing down our beautiful civilization with it (many people think these two things are the same, but I can assure you they are not), and rioting in England spreads, we figure we'll have a way to heat ourselves and get water.

Finally, the eagle eyed among you will have noticed that we are growing Brussel Sprouts next to our pond. I have no idea why I decided to plant this crop as i hate them. Brussel Sprouts are, in my opinion, up there with cardigans and tanning salons in my private list of completely useless things, and are certainly not going to be missed at Large Mansions when civilization does collapse.

Finally, when society does collapse, we will be heading for Nova Scotia, via Scotland, The Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. This is because I think you could just about live in the Bras D'or Lakes Region.

A cautious whiff of optimism

2011-08-01T18:59:00.002Z

I have never posted on the beautiful game before on this blog, perhaps because the most succesful club in the history of English football have been rather disappointing over the last few years (apart from a fifth European Championship in 05 and runners-up in 06).

But watching the magnificent progess through pre-season , I think every English, and European club should be very afraid of Liverpool Football Club this season.

There, I've done it, I've made a prediction. Now all I need to do is persuade Nel to let me gamble the proceeds from our house sale on Liverpool success this year. It's a sure bet, a dead cert.

Journalism and fishing

2011-07-29T08:50:00.003Z

Many readers will remember a product review, posted earlier this week, and will be astonished that that piece qualifies as journalism. You may think to yourself 'If that's journalism, then that particular profession is in deep trouble'. And indeed it is. And many practices and elements of journalism that have landed it in deep trouble are shared with fishing. And like fishing, or more accurately fishermen (I'm sorry I cannot use the CBC approved phrase 'fisher' as this is a small mammmal) most of the trouble that the profession is is is its own fault.

Take incredibly dubious work practices, for example. These are, as we all know, rife within journalism - recent scandals of phone tapping, email stealing and graft dont need repeating here. But what strikes me, is that when a British newspaper recently closed because of the dubious practices of some of its staff, there was sympathy (in other newspapers) expressed for the 'hundreds of other good journalists who have lost their job'. I am unsure how familiar readers are with English tabloid newspapers, but 'good journalism' is not something one expects to find therewithin: pictures of ladies breasts - yes, breathless gossip about a reality tv star - yes, blatant stereotyping and marginalisation of any groups considered 'out' by the target demographic - yes, but good journalism???? SO who was writing this crap? I presume it was not the 'good journalists'. I pictured the "News of the World" newsroom divided in half with a bunch of sleazy creeps on one side writing about boobs and stars, and a group of hard-bitten 'real' journos on the other, working on the next Watergate.

The answer I recieved from a friend was that in reality the guys who wrote about the titties and the celebrities actually were 'really good journalists' (he knew some of them). The sleazy creeps and the good journalists were one and the same people but, hey, you know, work is hard to find these days, so the good journalists were only pretending to be sleazy creeps while they were working at these tabloids until a proper job came along.

I dont know if anyone knows about over-fishing, or has lived in a fishing community. There are probably a few good fishermen, who dont over-fish, dont land their catches at different quays under the cover of darkness and who dont engage in really bad practices, and to them I apologise. But they are the minority. And, I am aware of the factory ships that many inshore fishermen say are responsible for the demise of fish stocks. But the simple fact is that inshore fisheries - local communities, local fishermen, the small independent operators have been as terrible at protecting the oceans as the big conglomerates. From net fishing tuna to the point of extinction in the Meditteranean to poisoning seals in the Scottish Highlands. From illegal codfishing in Nova Scotia and the Grand Banks to Alaskan communities that insist on whaling because its 'traditional'. From shark's fin soup to caviar, from dynamiting lagoons to drag netting, inshore fishermen have been, and continue to be just as bad as the big multi-national conglomerates.

Journalism and fishing are in deep trouble. Fishermen have attacked the oceans in search of profit but now continually point the finger at others (big business, the consumer, other fishermen) as wrong doers. Journalists have scoured the limits of ethical behaviour to unearth salacious details about the sex lifes of celebrities, and yet claim that this is 'news' .

Product Review: The Oral 'Toothmaster Plus' Electric Toothbrush

2011-07-26T08:26:00.003Z

The implement works very well. In use, teeth feel extremely clean, and while lacking a spectroscope to assess claims that my teeth were several shades whiter after a week, I certainly didnt have that gacky feeling that you might get if using a less technologically sophisticated device, such as a stick.

There are, however, a few issues. The first of these is battery changing. The machine is powered by two 'AA' batteries, renewal of which is achieved by removal of the base section of the sculpted plastic handle. Due to the fact that water is frequently involved in toothbrushing, this base section is a very tight fit. Once the new ones are installed, replacing the base requires firm pressure against a rubber sealing ring separating the removable base from the remainder of the sculpted handle. The first design flaw I discovered is that if you get frustrated trying to get the base to fit securely, smashing the base of the whole object against a doorframe, or using a hammer (even a lightweight tack hammer) to ensure the base docks permanently in the handle results in fissures (or cracks) in the base. These fissures allow water entrance into the battery compartment, causing shorting of the batteries. Once this problem has occurred, then even repeated wraps of electrical tape, Saran wrap and duct tape do not provide permanent solutions as watertightness can never be re-established. Additionally, as water attacks the glue of the tape you have applied, brushing rapidly becomes a messy business, and a pool of assorted goo agglomerates in the basin.

A second technical problem with this toothbrush is its utility as piece of bicycle cleaning equipment. In standard useage, a non-electrical toothbrush is a controllable, yet effective, (essential) part of your bike cleaning kit. The only trick is to have the correct cleaning solution at hand for the toothbrush head after use on the bike as any degreaser left on the head leaves an unpleasant aftertaste (when later combined with toothpaste). However, this electrical device has no frequency or amplitude control (of vibration). Thus, if you have applied cleaning fluid to your rims, even the gentlest application of the tool results in uncontrollable spatter across a considerable diameter. In tests, the newly painted wall I tried this against required repainting across a vertical diameter of about 1.5 metres and horizontally, the carpet has been ruined from between 1 to 1.34metres.

All in all though, an excellent product, and if these minor defects are adjusted in the new versions, I'm sure we will be giving it five stars. Rating: ***

Ride of Hope - Mountainbiking Version

2011-07-23T09:46:00.005Z

C2C (this is the name of the progressive rock project that various Cheek to Cheek members are involved in ) are apparently disgusted with the tension currently racking the band. C2C member 'N'tram (C2C members all have names based on an imagined alien race who have dispensed with many unnecssary jobs) said :

"Those guys are doing my head in. They should just do it, you know. C2C believe in action and we are launching our own Ride of Hope. It will be like the mountain biking you can see here "

Ride of Hope - Update

2011-07-22T11:34:00.002Z

A split has been reported in the ranks of Cheek to Cheek, as secret emails 'obtained' by this reporter show. The announcement that this year's ride of Hope would be in support of Freeway - THe Dublin One, was premature, with at least one member of the duo rejecting this as a worthy cause, as the following email exchange between Skarra and Mazzer illustrates.

Mazzer to P:

Hi P,

See you about lunch time (1.00pm???) .

In the meantime, I have found a cause for our Ride of Hope . The cause is "Save Little Freeway (The Dublin 1)" and it will be a campaign to save Freeway from her terrible ordeal - arrested by the vicious Irish police and evicted form her home and now kept in detention.

Skarra in reply to Mazzer:

Yep, 1 pm is fine. See you then.

As for that kitten, it’s disgraceful that animals can be that lazy – further evidence of the sedentary lifestyles that humans and animals are adopting these days. Another example is that lazy rabbit we nearly ran over the other night. I don’t mind animals lying down, but to do so on a public highway is dangerous and stupid.

I’m afraid I’m in full support of the brave police officers who risked their lives to apprehend that selfish layabout.

Mazzer to Skarra:

Well that opinion of animals leave our Ride Of Hope in tatters, a shattered dream, as far as I'm concerned. Not because I love animals (just some animals, and only a few of them human) but because we now have no cause. We risk the same debacle as last year, where we rode our message of hope across Cumbria and Northumberland, but forgot to arrange what that message was.

I blame you for this, as you obviously read the newspapers, whereas I dont. I would suggest as an alternative theme that we ride for the Neanderthal Rights - the right to marry, the right to get a job, the right to good housing and an education, but I'm afraid you will poo-poo this idea as well, despite the desperate plight of said species.

If this is not acceptable, then you'll have to come up with a cause.

Sources within the band say this rift could jedopardize the imminent album release and first shows by the influential combo. This could be expensive for their record label, who have constructed a lavish stage set, rumoured to cost twenty-six pound fifty three pence. A spokesperson for Cheek-by-Jowl, the bands record label said :

"Hopefully we can get the tax back form the purchase of the two plastic chairs, although at present we havent found the receipt".

The Ride of Hope 201 - Announcement

2011-07-22T08:21:00.002Z

Cheek to Cheek, the seminal folk-punk-elecro band have issued the following Press Release:

'This years Ride of Hope from Chester to Bristol will be in aid of Freeway - The Dublin One. This week, the Irish Police cruelly evicted Freeway (The Dublin One) from her home and are now holding her in detention. We will campaign for the immediate release of Freeway and full compensation in the form of a lifetime's supply of 'Yummys'.

Recently.............

2011-07-20T07:54:00.005Z

As a successful undergraduate, I have issued this guide which is intended to pass on what I have learned, and help others become as brainy as what I did become.
Throughout remember grammes and punctuality are important, as spell check most of it, even the bits that are copy and pasted. The most important part of essay writing though is that it flows logically and presents a coherent argument.

1. Intro:
This is the bit where lay down what you are going to say in the whole essay. It is usually written five minutes before you hand it in.

WHy has it been so long between blog posts? Well, mostly because things have been going very well and there's no news in happiness. Also, Yorkshire remains anthropologically fascinsating, but is no longer new, although some dialectical concerns will be addressed hereinforthto. And thirdly, I've been building a wall. And fourthly, this entry will finally answer why the questions "Is toadpole a word?" and "Why are flamingos pink?" will never be answered.

2. First coupla paragraqphs:

This bit can be descriptive, a bit, on account of how you might have to describe and expand upon some basi concepts and definitions that you wrote in the intro. This is the easiest part of the essay although its still not fun.

Plans for the PHD have developed and plans are now firmly in place for the work to be done in a Languages department at a major University. Having met my supervisors, I am very excited about the next three years. However, prior to applying to, and being accepted by the Languages Department, I had discussions with a few other University departments in the region about doing a PHD with mixed results. Most, I am happily surprised to report, were very interested in my ideas. But some of the interviews were a bit strange. THe basic idea for the PhD is to study the complex world of adult second language learning. Initially thought the Education departments of three local Universities would be the natural home for my proposed research. "Where?" I thought to myself " Would be better placed to study language learning classes than a local Education department?". However, a typical interview with most of these Education Departments went a bit like this:

Professor: We love your proposal.

Mazzer: Oh Great! When do we start?

Professor: Well, there are a few problems, though............

Mazzer: Oh, yes. I realise that as an undergrauate, I am not fully formed, and that my proposal will be modified somewhat if I am accepted...so what do I need to do to modify it????

Gets pen and paper, looks up eagerly, ready to make notes....

Professor: Well, as I said, the proposal is great.........M writes 'Proposal great' ......but this thing about languages ? we dont really do languages here....Mazzer writes 'Languages problem - see interdisciplinary- possibly consult languages department where necessary ?' ......and this emphasis on adult learning? well we dont really do that here either .....Mazzer begins to write 'Dont do adult learning?' then stops

Mazzer: I'm sorry to interrupt, but what part of adult learning dont you do? You are an Education department arent you?

Professor: Well, yes, but the whole bit about learning, really, its a bit passe. We dont do that, particulalry not reductionist approaches to finding out how people actually learn. THis stuff about social policy though, we DO love that. And that's what we think the PhD shoud be about...

Mazzer: What the social policy of adult second language learning? That is really just one small part of my proposal.

Professor: Yes, and thats the bit we loved. Apart from the focus on adults and learning. What we like is the politics of social policy generally.

Mazzer: But would'nt that be a politics PhD?

Professor: Exactly !!! You could still refer to adult learning in the footnotes if you like, I suppose.....but essentially, I see this PhD as a critique of Government policy..its very exciting.........

3. The central argument.

This is the bit where you are at your most creative. You assemble an argument, supporting it with evidence. It is important to maintain continuity with the rest of the essay and that it not be disjointed.

As mentioned, not much has happened. I have worked on the house, specifically our garden, have taught a lot of classes, and have done quite a bit of advance research for the PhD. I have also watched a lot of soccer, and played music more than I have done for years. I also have attempted to sign on for 'Job Seekers Allowance' but that situation became so ridiculous that writing about it risks accusations of exagerration.

Firstly the football. I have watched Liverpool's pre-season tour of the Far East with interest. Expect an unedited (from the original) re-posting (for the fourth year running) of the now traditional post 'A faint whiff of optimism'. I am going to the local football stadium on Saturday to watch the Mighty reds play Hull in a pre-season friendly.

Secondly the wall. Those familiar with my plastering exploits will be aware (from 'The Calumny of Plastering') of my complete inability in, but continuing addiction to, the stone based arts. To the left of our small garden, there has been an unattractive wooden fence for many years. I was facd with two problems : firstly I hated said fence with a passion, and secondly I had a largish pile of bricks left from our renovations. THe answer seemed obvious. So I tore the fence down, and with the same amount of experience in building brick walls that various Education departments seem to have in studying adults, I set to building a wall. Eschewing convention on account of impatience, I decided to forego traditional tools for establishing essential ingredients of a wall such as of 'plumb', 'true' and 'straight' and deecided my eye was accurate enough. I soon discovered the error of my ways, and as the wall began to emerge it curved (in the horizontal dimension), wavered (in the vertical dimension) and skewed (across all three, or possibly four dimensions) so the next three weeks were a daily battle of carefully placing bricks to tyr to return it to the straight and narrow, like an enormous game of Jenga. The result is aesthetcally pleasing in that the wall looks as if it is a hundred years old and just about to fall down. I now pretends that the effect is deliberate, based on the organic architecture of Gaudi.

4. Conclusion.

This is where you sum up your arguments, not forgetting to include everything you have previously mentioned.

I have run out of space. One of the ridiculous elements of this summer is that for the first time in years, have a whole summer unoccupied. Yet I fnd myself daily short of time. This is good though. There are things I want to do outside, and very soon I will be immersed in three years of hard study, tied to a desk. One thing I did not mention earlier is that Cheek to Cheek are planning our second 'Ride of Hope', this time through the Welsh borders - from Chester, to Shrewsbury to Bristol. Also, not mentioned is that younger brother, a victm of the recession is in Euroe for three months, travelling with his family and camping. He has been to Frnace, Italy, Croata, Slovena, Hungary, Romania and is heading back through Austra, Germany and France. One of the great things is though, we talk on Skype a coule of times per week. Via con Dios.

Circles

2011-07-04T21:02:00.003Z

As proof that life is indeed circular (which feels, on occasion like a downward spiral), this blogger returned last week to the very reason this blog was started in the first place, namely namely the dole office, or more accurately the acute misery, accompanied by absurdities so extravagent that Jean Genet himself would blanche.

As you may know, the occupier of these words has currently completed his degree, with a degree of success that was nearly surprising. I say nearly, because frankly, I expected to pass. The cumulative marks up to Christmas meant that one would have had to do something absurd, such as fall over a large pinkish cat while attempting to use the bathroom late one night without turning on a light or applying one's spectacles, smashing one's head against the windowsill resulting in a fractured spinal bone and severe concussion a few brief days before completion of one's final assignments, thus making the task of completion impossible, for one not to have passed. Fortunately, there was not, as has been recently confirmed by X-ray, sufficient spinal damage to prevent one finishing the essays. The extent of my passing was somewhat unexpected, as not only did I obtain a First class degree but have also been awarded a prize for academic achievement. In the tradition of English people, I shall describe these results as 'quite satisfying', and that I was 'somewhat pleased' with the way things turned out.

None the less, graduate or not, after my degree, the question obviously arises, what next??? That question is a little way of having a definite answer, but for now, lets just focus on how I attempted to take care of immediate necessity by "signing on" for dole, as I am now officially unemployed. To be completely accurate, I wasnt really seeking, or expecting a payment of any kind, due to a chequered work history and RHB's wages (the UK system is a bit odd, but both are deciding factors in whether EI is granted or not). My main reason for making a claim was associated with something called National Insurance Contributions. If working, these contributions are taken from wages. If a student, they are credited to you. If unemployed, they are granted when you sign for dole. It is important to realise that no actual money changes hands concerning NI contributions when you are unemployed, your National Insurance record is just credited, but a complete National Insurance Record is a vital for all sorts of reasons to do with health care, old age pensions etc etc. So, I decided to claim.

I was initially delighted to find that three years after making some earlier observations on the subject in this very forum, a new, more efficient system has been introduced. These days, you can, claim online. 'Great' I thought ' In cases like mine, where no money is involved, and I am not in financial distress this is a great way of saving everyone time and tax-payer money - money we are told that is in such short supply in the UK these days'. Then I thought further 'Seriously, this is a really good, and proper, use of computing power. I will simply fill in an online form, the computer will very quickly link to the records from the tax office, see that I have not made enough contributions for earnings based EI and that will be the end of that. I will just be told to sign for National Insurance credits, and everyone will be spared the lengthy, frustrating and expensive assessment procedure that accompanied my last, similar effort'.

How wrong it is possible to be. Actually what happened was:

STAGE 1: Fill in the form online. About one hour. This time, fortunately, there were no stupid questions about whether I was an escaped prisoner or survivor of Monserrat volcanoes. AT the end of the process, I recieved a message saying I would get a phone call from a human in the next few days.

STAGE 2: Phone call from human. We go through the form again. All of it. One notable difference between this time and last is that person on the phone is a lot nicer. At the end of the call, I am told I will now have to attend for interview at the local office, and a date is arranged.

AT this juncture, I should point out that I have been attempting to tell the computer, and then the caller that I wont get any money.

STAGE 3: I attend for interview a few days later. I am on time. Twenty five minute late, my name is called and I meet 'Richard'. We go through the form again. Then I sign it. 'Richard' invites me to re-take a seat, and an 'advisor' will be with me shortly.

STAGE 4: Another fifteen minutes pass. The office is packed, arguments are breaking out, mostly young excitable men. I should have also mentioned that the venue is the same miserable office that was the sight of my last contact three years ago. Then my name is called. My advisor is about twelve. He barley glances at me, mumbles something and shoves a form in front of me. At this point, all my earlier public spiritedness, especially the desire not to cost any more money that is absolutely necessary, has gone out the window, particularly because it seems that my new partners - the Government, are as determined as ever to waste as much of it as they possibly can. In processing dole claims, they obviously dont mess around with this concept - so far they have splurged three hours of taxpayer's money on my file, and it look like there's no let up. I ask my 'advisor' if he could repeat what he has just said. He again rushes through a series of mumbled, semi-words that dont seem to belong together. When he stops 'speaking', I lean in close:

"A bit of advice" I say as patronisingly as I possibly can (which is 'quite') "Try to pretend you even give a flying f*** about what you are doing. The day will go quicker, you will get a less antagonistic response of people, and probably most important for you, you wont get old geezers like me asking you to repeat yourself".

He glances up, and I think I see a light of realisation dawning in his eyes, as it must have done over Olduvai Gorge all those thousands of years ago when fire was first invented. He gently, and quite vaguely waves his pen at me, friendly like.

"I should inform you that swearing at me can be considered assault in this office and we have a zero tolerance policy for such aggressive acts. I will have to ask you to sop immediately or I will call a security guard."

I am astonished, because this is said with perfect clarity. But I decide discretion is the better part of valour, and concede "Point taken. Please carry on".

My advisor shakes his 24 or 25 year old head, mumbles some more and shoves the forms at me again. I sign about eight of them, possibly they represent a commitment to invade Franz Josef Land, and leave.

The system has been re-vamped, I have been told since I last signed. The Government claims it is now more efficient. That word 'efficiency' is, like the horrible word 'bespoke', an incredibly abused word. It certainly doesnt mean what it is supposed to mean. I can only wonder which website designers, efficiency consultants, political advisors and private companies profited form that revamp. I have come to realise that in Government circles "efficiency' actually means "profits for our mates'.

Thought leaders revisited revisiting sustainability

2011-06-26T08:57:00.003Z

"Jerry" I say as we drive back from Harrogate, "You realize that we have two managers each for this project. We should make the mots of this and ensure we get the most information that we can"

Jerry doesnt answer, which I consider slightly rude, until I risk a glance sideways - he's fast asleep, probably because its nearing midnight and we've been up since 5 am trying to fix the latest mess we've gotten involved in. Its the third time, on an annual basis, that I have been to Harrogate with nearly (and that word is absolutely crucial) the same show, in the same place at the same time, for the same company. Over the years, the company has shrunk - understandable given current economic circumstances nationally - but claims to have maintained its service capability and improved its practices, while developing a commitment to sustainable practices. The morning meeting I tell (the still sleeping) Jerry I will arrange with the Project Manager, Designer, Client Account Manager and Project Finance Manager in order to sort out the mess they have left us will give us a good idea of how efficient they have become. I had a preliminary meeting with the company in Leeds to discuss this years event prior to accepting the job, and was assured that this year, my only task would be, as it should be, installing a fully prepared, properly cleaned and maintained, pristine, conference stand. I really should have known better.

WHat actually happens is that the company apparently abandon the stand completely. I arrive at their warehouse to find a moldy, dusty old stand, mice nests in its darkest corners, numerous dings and bangs from collisions with forklift trucks in the warehouse. It look terrible, even blessed by the darkness of a dingy Leeds warehouse. And this set is incredibly heavy. All there is to move the set in the warehouse is one very small trolly with three working wheels. From there, things have gotten worse and by the end of the first day onsite, I have no idea how this show is going to happen. Therefore, as I tell Jerry, I call a meeting of the four managers responsible for arranging this project.

We meet on-site as agreed. The first order of business is to establish exactly what needs doing to this conference stand. Essentially, the stand (or show as I interchangeably call it) consists of a raised floor on top of which a four metre high, twelve metre long double sided, internally lit wall sits. Attached to this is a working bar. There is also two seperate elements that demarcate the corner of the stand. While that describes the basics, every year there are subtle changes. It takes three full days to install the set, because behind this simple description, there is lighting, plumbing, electrical installations to arrange and some av work to hook up. Today is day two.

I note this to the designer "I think before we do anything, we [when I use the word 'we' I mean me and Jerry] need to know what changes are there to the set?"

The designer thinks for a minute "Well not that much actually. We [when these people use the word 'we' they also mean me and Jerry]only need to remove the graphics on the bar and figure a way of installing this sign (he holds up a sign, mounted on plastic about A3 size) without visible mountings and apply all the graphics to the overhead truss (this is a big lighting bar hung above the stand)and move the position of the wall mounted plasma tv's."

"And that's all?" I ask increduously.

"Well", says the Client Account Manager, who being a a 'people person' has probably spotted the look on my face "I know that's a lot, but I think we can do it if we work really hard. And there's a few other things to do - the client though the stand looked scruffy last year: we need to replace the chips in the laminate as well. The thing is, we need to know how much time we need. What do you think, Red Mazzer??"

I'm not sure whether Jerry has gone outside to catch a bus back to Hull, or just to try and find some drugs, so I have, temporarily, no partner to provide verification, but I give the best estimate I can:

"Installing the graphics will take about a day, fixing the laminate will take about a day, setting up the show and hooking up the Av will take about a day, and removing the graphics from the bar will take about two days. Effectively, we will probably be finished two days after the show ends. And there's no point sending me anyone to help, unless they are very skilled, because these are all skilled jobs. So do you have anyone?"

"Er, No."

The rest of the conversation goes along similar lines, like:

Can you do with out the changes?

Er. NO.

Have you given any thought what-so-ever to how this show might actually get installed ?

Er. NO.

SO why do you expect me to give a Flying F*** when you so obviously dont?

Er. We do care. I did a 36 hour stint in the office last week.

Well done, although that doesnt show commitment, just murderous intent on the part of your employer allowing that to happen, and total gullibility on your part in doing it. But that aside, what do you want me to do, given the situation you lot have have put us in ?

Er, We were hoping you would tell us.

The worst thing is, when the inevitable happens, and the client comes on site and has an absolute meltdown because their show is, of course, not ready, the Client Account Manager, rather than accepting responsibility for this eventuality on behalf of the company, blames an utterly blameless third party, accusing them of not doing their job properly. Needless to say, the client is so angry that she seeks out this third party to remonstrate with them, and inevitably, the truth emerges. The necessary services of the third party were not engaged by the Project Manager until so late that the third party was only able to provide part of what was requested. The overall effect of this is that half of the stand is unlit. It looks like a Goth has designed it. The stupidity of lying to the client becomes apparent as the third party explains their entirely blameless role in the proceedings and the finger points back to the company. Not deterred by looking like a complete idiot, the Client Account Manager then proceeds to attempt similar lies to explain away other deficiencies in the stand. One of those lies points the finger firmly in my direction, as it attributes the bangs and scrapes in the once pristine laminate surface to lack of care during transport of the show, an area which is part of my remit.

The whole week is a comedy of errors. In actual fact, the company get their show with only a minor delay to the presentation of some video material. And the various company managers breathe a huge sigh of relief. I personally doubt that they have any idea at all how dangerous (in terms of real health and safety) and dangerous (in terms of not getting their product to the client at all) the approach to this show has been. Mostly however, I wonder at the culture of their company that allows this to happen. It is a company that flouts its commitments to sustainability, and its one whose self titled 'thought leaders' emphasize the humanistic and human in their written and verbal statements, its the type of 'new' approach to business typical of media, advertising and the vents industry, all first names and 'banter'. THe need to do long hours is recognised, but its presented by the company as an occasional necessary evil. The occasional stresses when things go wrong are noted by the thought leaders as inevitable in this business (and indeed they are) but the reality is actually total chaos, on a permanent basis as standard operating procedure.

Whether this company continues to function or not, does not make a great deal of difference to me. But I do notice the en0rmous stress that all the workers are under. A common presumption goes like this "If the workers are under that much stress, just imagine how much more stress the managers and thought leaders are under?" The picture of the busy executive getting hit by a mid-forties heart attack because of the stress caused by their restless efforts to keep a company afloat and make sure every one still has jobs is a common one. It is also inaccurate, as the Whitehall Study quite clearly shows. The Whitehall study shows - after investigating 18,000 people over forty years, that it is the ones lower down the totem pole that suffer from stress. Thought leaders should think about this very carefully. They can claim sustainability, walk round the shop floor jovially calling everyone by affectionate nicknames, be trendy, cry when they have to sack people, and appear human. They might claim with some legitimacy that they are supporting local jobs. But what is actually happening in many cases is that they are killing their workers through stress. Its not sustainable, its not human and its not efficient, its just desperate.

Another Wanderer

2011-06-14T08:58:00.003Z

A shortish entry this time - you may recall I fell over the cat and hit my head? : the xray to determine the permanent damage done is today - but A Grand Tour this summer by someone I know can not go unnoticed. The identity of the participants cannot be revealed at this stage, all I can say is that it is not me, but is someone I know who is relatively tall with hi spartner and young child.

The map shows only part of it as the return to the Uk is via Switzerland, Germany and Holland, because I have been strugling with Google Maps, so a further entry this day is likely if I succeed in mapping the entire thing. A description of the reasons behind it are also warrsanted, but for noew, I just note that self and RHB are hatching plans to join the party for a short period in Budapest.

2011-06-10T16:39:00.004Z

So I arrive at Athens airport, some 18km east of the city, with my final destinations of Delphi and Nidri in mind. Despite fifteen minutes on Google, I actually have no idea how I am going to cross the 350kms to Nidri from Athens, having resolved not to drive but to backpack (and having left my driving licence at home by mistake anyway). The internet has not been much use in providing advance information, neither has the Lonely Planet Guide because - not its fault - Greece's economy has collapsed, and when I ask at the Information Point at the airport, no one seems certain whether the trains, ferries and buses that are referred to are actually running anymore (or that day - I could not understand). The very grumpy person Information shrugs, tells me that there are riots in Athens and recommends I rent a car. She does not know where the central bus station in Athens is, but says it is in a bad area and I should avoid it.

I should mention at this point that the journey across Greece, while it cannot be described as adventure travelling was a new experience for me. True, I travelled to Canada and RHB and I landed in Canada knowing no-one and everything worked out fine, and I travel extensively for work, but this type of leisure travelling - backpacking - was not something I was familiar with. I have read lots of travel books, for example Bruce Chatwin's 'In Patagonia', but I have decided to model this sojourn on two different influences - firstly I decided that this adventure would be my Gap Year, wherein I 'find myself" and secondly, I adopted a persona for this sojourn that was a cross between Aragorn (one of the central characters of that other great travel book Lord of the Rings), Heinrich Schleimann (the discover of Troy) and Bronislaw Malinowsky (the anthropologist who described the Kula rings of the Pacific). As a persona, this was a complicated act to pull off, full of internal tensions, with the idealistic noble hero bits (Aragorn), Functionalist intellectual elements (Malinowski), and self-publicising adventurer of questionable integrity parts(Schleimann) making decision making a difficult process even before I left the airport. In fact this was the first lesson learnt : next time I travel solo, I will go just as myself, because for all my faults, I am at least quite familiar with the processes involved in being a hapless, accident prone Scouser.

Faced with being absolutely none the wiser after consulting the Information people, the fearless Aragorn character came to the fore, so I jump on a Metro and head for central Athens, leaving the tourists to their shuttle buses. The Metro is wonderful, clean, beautiful stations and announcements in Greek and English, so using the map I have I alight in central Athens at the station that (I have randomly decided because its quite near the Acropolis) will be circled with numerous tourist information bureaus from where further info can be obtained. However on exiting the Metro station, there are three surprises. Firstly, everyone is speaking Greek. Secondly, all the writing on all the signs I can see is also in Greek, which does not look like an alphabet, it looks like a series of mathematical equations. Thirdly, there are not hundreds of information bureaus surrounding me, just a load of mangy old dogs, and some 'exotic' looking women. I start wandering, a little bit perturbed by the rough appearance of the area. I am soon utterly lost.

The Aragron character soon decides this aimless wandering is hopeless and a plan is needed, but as there are no Orcs to attack, he is a bit puzzled as to what to do. Fortunately, the Schliemann character comes to the fore, seizing the moment, and decides, as a plan, to consult the (English language) map I have. The next part of my plan is a bit vaguer (eerily echoing his 'discovery of Troy), but suddenly the woodcraft I learnt in Canada comes to the rescue, and I have a brilliant idea. As I cannot read the street signs, I have no reference point, but if I can establish which way is North, relative to my position, I will then be able to approach various locals, map in hand. I can then shout loudly at them "Bus station. Peloponese. Nidri" until someone shows me on the map where the station is. I can then triangulate my position and hike across the city - a city that I later found out is currently the most dangerous city in Europe- to the bus station. Once there, I only have to hope its the right one, because one piece of information I do have is that there are two, each serving different regions of Greece.

I am consulting the map, when I hear an English voice. "How can I help you, my friend?". I look up, and a rather dapper older gentleman is offering me a cigarette and smiling kindly. Until this point, I was contemplating a return to tobacco (after mostly being free of it for some months), not really because I feel the need, but because observations made by the anthropologist character has revealed that smoking is apparently compulsory in Greece, and I had been unsure if I was breaking any rules by not indulging. I take his offered cigarette, and tell him I am utterly lost.

"Where are you from?" he asks kindly, and I almost tell him "Middle Earth" but decide on "Liverpool" instead. "Ah, the Beatles" he says "and what a great football team!" I agree, whole heartedly, and we chat about football for a few seconds. Then he says "Here, let me help you. Where do you want to go?". I tell him about the wedding, and Delphi and my desire to travel solo. I also tell him that I cannot call Lydia because my cell phone is out of charge. "Are you meeting people in Athens?" he asks. "No" I tell him "I am completely alone - my wife could not come". "Do you have tickets for the bus?" he asks and I reply that I dont but that I have is a few hundred Euros and my credit cards, so it should be no problem.

He draws on the map, and I think 'Brilliant! This is the adventure I wanted - meeting real Greek people, not waiters or pool attendants'. Having drawn on the map, Georgios, my new friend rubs his forehead, looking concerned "I have relatives in that part of the country, and I can tell you that the afternoon bus is gone", he says. "There may not be a later bus, so you might have to stay in Athens for the evening. You must be careful. Athens is a dangerous place" he says. "I have a little local bar right nearby - I can show you, its on your way anyway. Come in, have a little drink and we can ask. Then you can go the bus station, but if you have missed the last bus, you can come back and have a drink there tonight also - good company".

Georgios says he just has to make a short phone call, and while he is talking (in Greek), I think how brilliantly this is all going - in fact the Malowinski character hopes that I have missed the last bus because this - meeting and talking not as a tourist but in a friendly local bar, is surely the stuff of real anthropology.

We head off through old Athens, me holding Georgios' arm as we cross the lethal sidestreets, with scooters, buses, taxis pouring past, often on the sidewalk. We chat amiably, and I like the old charm of the place, the sheer authenticity of it. Georgios tells me about the war, about the economic problems of Greece and asks me about my family and what I do. We wind further away from the central squares, but Georgios points vaguely North East, saying that is where I will be going later. After about ten minutes, we turn a corner and he points down the street to a large wooden door, paint peeling, set into the endless jumble of stone facades and says "My bar". "Wow" I say admiringly "It really is a local, Georgios - no sign. In england, we have to have signs!" "No problem" says Georgios, then somewhat mysteriously "No Police".

We approach and he unlocks the front door with a key attached to the type of massive sets of keys that only older men seem to have, and seeing it is a bit stiff, I help him push it open. I walk in following his welcoming gesture and first impressions say 'local bar' - it is about twenty foot long, wooden floor boards, a bar along the lefthand wall and some tables with leatherette couches on the right. But there are also a number of anomalies. The first of these are the two open doors at the far end of the room that appear to be entrances to someones bedroom. The second two anomalies are two incredibly beautiful, sculpturally made-up and mini-skirted Asian women present - one sitting at a table, elegantly cross-legged, the other behind the bar, smiling broadly at us.

"Have a drink" says Georgios, slamming the door behind us. There is a moment of silence. "Er, no" I finally say. "What?" says Georgios, grabbing my hand "Its a good place. Clean." "Er, no" I say " Maybe another time" and gently withdraw my hand. Georgios' grip gets firmer "Just stay for ten minutes. Clean place" he says, as if my primary thoughts are about the cleanliness of his staff in any activity that might be implied by the setting either immediately or a bit later. In truth, my thoughts are following a different tangent and are primarily self directed. The first of these thoughts is "Stupid", but is not alone, as it is rapidly followed by "Stupid", "Stupid", "Stupid" and "Stupid". In my only moment of inspiration that day, I realise I have described that I am totally alone, have all my money on me, am lost, that no-one knows where I am, that my phone isnt working and that I dont constantly call my wife, and I am standing in what looks like an unlicensed brothel on what has rapidly gone from a 'quaint' to a 'seedy' area of Athens. I have, in other words, demonstrated to Georgios that I have that unique combination of gullibility and self-assured arrogance (believing bad things only happen to other people) that makes a perfect 'mark'.

A strange wresting match follows, with Georgios now clinging on to my hand and forearm with both his hands, while I am smiling and attempting to walk backwards while gently prizing his hands off me, and apologising for leaving (a bizarre feature of English behaviour is to hate causing offence to anyone and to apologise for everything, even when its "I apologise that I feel in danger for my life and you are, at the very least, a dirty old man, and possibly plotting my murder") and simultaneously noticing that the jaw of one of Georgios' staff is rather squarer than that of the average female.

Eventually, I break free of Georgios' grip, mumble something about "Maybe see you later. Sorry! " (I know, still trying not to offend - I have been in England too long)fumble frantically with the door and flee into the street. At a half jog, I reach a main square and see an official taxi rank. Establishing that English is spoken, and that the driver knows exactly where I want to go, I get into his taxi and am spectacularly fleeced (20 Euros for a five minute taxi ride) but happy to get to the bus station. The guy in the ticket office lets me charge my phone and I have dinner amid the aroma of diesel fumes, cigarette smoke and mangy dog. "Not very clean" I think to myself as I text Great Margaret to tell her that I have decided to come straight to Nidri that night.

There are two footnotes:
1. The only photos I have of the first day in Greece are the ones presented here of the bus station, where I spent two hours watching this dog chase buses. It was a nice dog though.
2. Thanks to the Legal Eagle and Great Margaret who stayed up till about 2.00am and picked me up when I finally arrived in Nidri , and Lil 'Than and Suzie Woozie who also stayed up and let me sleep in their place. Respect is due.

Introduction: Innocents abroad..........

2011-06-08T09:26:00.005Z

It ill behoves me, having mentioned in the previous liturgy a bike ride, to not be illustrative of how I got to the place where the bike ride happened. The reason I was on the bike ride in the first place was that I was attending, along with substantial elements of the Greater Large Clan, a joining in matrimony of Lydia (RHB's niece) and Theo (another male who will soon discover what the phrase 'matriarchal' means).

Firstly I should explain the the use of 'Greater Large Clan' to describe the attendees, who included Jane, Sadie (and partner Davide), Niome (and baby Holly and partner Matt), Great Meg, The Legal Eagle Bill, Suzie Woozie, Lil 'Than, myself, John Henry and Phillipa, Malcolm, Ruby and myself . It is true that not all relatives from Blighty are, strictly speaking, derivatives of the 'Large' lineage - for example Suzie Woozie and my man, Lil 'Than, are Steele by origin, while the Legal Eagle, Davide and Matty have not yet been formally assimililated, but if you ever find yourself associated with the GLC, you will come to realise truism behind the Borg's catchphrase "Resistance is useless". Particularly, as Theo will find out (and I suspect he already has), the strong matriarchal nature of the GLC. This extends not only to females who are, by blood, members of the clan, but also to females who male members marry. Thus while Greater Large Clan is geneaologically inaccurate, it is descriptively, in my experience, accurate. This observation is not critical of either gender - it does not imply that the males are emasculated in any way, or that the women are in any way unfeminine, on the contrary. But based on my experience females of the GLC tend to act themselves rather than adopt a role of shrinking violets entirely dependant on their mate: for example, if a pride of lions were encountered by a mixed gender group of GLC members, while the men were discussing options for a valiant defence, the women would have stared the lions down, told them off, and made them apologise for their behaviour before slinking back into the jungle, before the men had sharpened their spears. And the women would have a list of the lions names and addresses in case of future infractions. If Celine was present, there'd also be some really nicely lit photographs as well, while Lorna would have given them all personal organisers so they could plan their huntng more effectively.

In truth, the independence of female GLCers can be very liberating. In my case, it meant that at the end of my degree, the inability of RHB to attend a wedding in Greece of a neice, did not mean that I was unable to attend in case a fuse needed changing at home. RHB, while not happy not to go, was supportive of the idea that I should go to Greece at the end of my degree. As the degree progressed, the idea burgeoned, until I had decided that the wedding event itself, in Nidri, Greece, would be the destination, after some solo travelling, of an exploration of Greece. I finished the final essay, handed it in and jumped on a train to London. Five days later I was on a mountan bike, terrified of snakes.

Tales will follow, including discussions on whether 'toadpoles' is a real word or not, what the inside of Athenian brothels look like, why people shout their business on trains via mobile phones and why the Parthenon sets the tone for Greek architecture, but for today, I will conclude as I noew have to make some bird boxes. When all this will happen, I am unsure, because after completing my degree, I have found myself plunged back into real life, and to my immense suprise, it is rather busy. And there is a backlog of news - my younger nrother is currently on a three month trip through Europe, I am back teaching and plans for the PHD have seen developments, but for today, I have to sign off.

The Hills Are Alive

2011-05-30T11:26:00.006Z

"And you have to watch out for scorpions too"

"Scorpions?" I ask, querously, adding it to the mental list I already have of heatstroke, sunstroke, snakes, bandits, rogue drivers,attack bees, cliff edges, rabid foxes, bike chasing dogs, botulistic rats and feral cats as potential hazards on my planned ride.

"Especially the little ones. They get into your socks"

"Socks?" I exclaim, realising there is yet another thing I have forgotten. I rush back to my little apartment, adding another pair of socks to my back-pack, already bulging with emergency water, phone, towel,maps, Rough Guide to Greece, medications, extra food, two hats, spare teeshirt, cycle cape and camera. I am a bit put out by emergency procedures necessary for this ride, especially since Greece is in the EU. One would think there would be some sort of regulations against all these hazards.

I'm in Nidri, a small port turned tourist town, nestling in a little bay 18km south of Lefkada on the Western side of Greece. Nidri occupies a scoop in the hills, and I've been attending a niece's wedding. Its been eating, drinking and very pleasant (with none of the condescending implications that the word pleasant has sometimes attached and all of the attractive meanings of that word meant) but the mountains that rise 3000ft behind Nidri have been calling. So I rent a bike from a shop in town, borrow a map and announce a plan to the parties assembled to attempt a solo expedition into the interior. Advice comes thick and fast. Malcolm reckons I'll make about 8 kms, then probably die of heatstroke. Matt thinks its a good plan, but would be much more enjoyable petrol powered. The Great Meg tells me to take a phone in for inevitable use - my track record of self-injury, particularly on bikes, is undeniable- in contacting the emergency services. The last, most comprehensive advice about snakes, cats and scorpions, is given by Theo, Lydia's husband, who appears to hold an almost Irish bemusement in respect of people who want to undertake solo or group exercise in the hills that are readily accessible by car. However, all the advice is well given and bearing in mind that I have made two promises to RHB in coming on this holiday alone - firstly dont return home in a cast, sling or having to take medication that I didnt need before I left the UK, and secondly dont buy (another) time share, as cancelling them is costly - I appreciate it.

I set off up the hill, and a number of things are immediately apparent. The first of these is that riding this particular bike is torture: there are no pads on the handle bars, it weighs more than me, half the gears dont work, and its balance is all wrong. Secondly, I havent rode with a pack for ages, particularly not one weighing about 35lbs and as I hit corners on an interminable series of switchbacks, it shifts weight unpredictably, which causes a wild panicked correction. Combined with the steepness of the ascent, this means that the better part of valour is simply to get off and walk for some sections.

Eventually the road runs out,the rough track starts, and views begin to reveal themselves. Views that my photographic skills only do partial justice to. I keep going higher and higher, and the track gets more and more technical, but its brilliant fun. As I get higher, people disappear and I see no-one, apart from a man who is sleeping by the side of the track, presumably a shepherd, his face more deeply tanned than anyone I have ever seen. I ask him if he wants some water, but he points to a bottle of beer next to him, offers it to me, grinning widely. I decline, we shake hands and I ride on.

Further up, I stop to consult the map, and realize I have no idea where I am but can see Nidri spread below me. Suddenly, there's a movement at the side of the road, followed by an extrememly pungent smell, and a fox with a large black tail jumps out of the bush and runs down the track, miaowing like a kitten. I trundle down the road to where it disappeared back in the bush and while I am peering into the bush, notice one of the branches underfoot moving. The bike is dropped in an instant as I realise its a snake and I jump backwards across the road in panic. A deep breath, then I sneak towards the bike, grab it quickly, violently pull it out of the bush and jump on, cycling blindly and desperately trying to find the pedals. Now all I want to do is get down, but as I ride, I see more of the things, five, six, seven, ten, a hundred, lying all over the track, many of them disguised as old olive branches. I reach an open area that looks like it was once the foundations for one of the many abandoned villas up here. Gathering my thoughts takes a minute, because they have scattered throughout the brain and have been hiding where they think snakes cant get them, and only reluctantly come back when I promise them beer if we make it out of here alive. Together, me and the thoughts realize that the best course of action is not to continue to be lost, but to initially head back the way we came and when we get to the first split in the path, choose the one which looks the slopiest downwards.

I take a drink of water, regret not bringing any duct tape to tape up the top of my socks and set off. The first five minutes are a panic of attack snakes and jumping scorpions, but when I actually see another one, lying in the road, this all changes. It is unmoving, and as I get near, obviously dead, possibly run over, and possibly by me. I get off, and examine it, feeling incredibly guilty. It is beautiful. Very, very beautiful. It dawns on me, that in reality, the wildlife here is probably in more danger from me, than vice versa. Its good that no-one comes up here very often. My thoughts interrupt this reflection, reminding me that I promised them beer, and so I jump back on the bike, and descend. Trying not to hit any snakes, scare any scorpions or freak out any bees, the descent takes about fifteen minutes. It's breathtaking in parts, and when I hit the tarmac again and the speed really begins to climb, the fear returns. Without pads on the handle bars, sweat keeps making my hands slip, and the brakes are badly set, making the bike pull to the left, especially at speed. I overtake a couple of mopeds as the curves get less intense towards town, but suddenly the back pack shifts, pitching up over the right shoulder. Time, I think, to slow down, so I slam the anchors on, reduce speed to a crawl and head into town. My thoughts return and demand to be taken to a bar. The beer tastes great.

Is toadpole a word???

2011-05-26T17:46:00.000Z

Announcement

2011-05-14T23:06:00.002Z

Announcement:

Mr Mazzer 'Funtime' O'Reilly McEvoy Nickson and His Brain are happy to announce the birth of a healthy degree after three years of gestation. Both degree and Brain are doing well, but the father M. O'Reilly Mcevoy Nickson is said to be in shock on the completion of his final assignment. Asked what type of degree it was Mazzer said "It's too early to tell: we only find out in mid-August. All I can say is that Brain has survived a difficult birth, and although expected to make a full recovery, will not be doing any strenous thinking for some time. Tomorrow, I'm taking Brain to the pub to shout at the football, while baby degree is going to rest in the computer system, awaiting further evaluation".

O'Reilly McEvoy Nickson and Brain chose a controversial new technique for delivery of the new degree that involved applying Science to Art and Art to Science, supported largely by Wikipedia. Wikipedia refused to comment, pendig further editing.

The Luck of the Irish

2011-05-12T15:20:00.000Z

A great writer quoth "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself". After many years of self inflicted injuries, I tend to paraphrase this saying to "The only thing I have to fear is to fear myself". And in the great tradition of stupid accidents, I can now introduce my latest, the 'head/neck' thing. It all started when I was asleep....

I woke with a start. Pitch black, the only thing moving a cat rummaging around the bed. Tosh by the sound of it, licking his nether regions, a slightly disturbing sound and when attended to as enthusiastically as he does, capable of interrupting sleep. Fully awake, the bathroom called, so I crawled out of bed and headed, sleepily to the smallest room. From experience, I can attest that when engaged in potentially life threatening accidental behaviours, no account is true. There's always a degree of recreation, embellishment, fragmentation, and this was no different. When I say I 'felt' myself falling, noticing as I did so that I had tripped over the bahroom mat, I am entirely unsure what order I felt the fall, and what order I noticed the trip, but lets just suppose that I did.

Again, its ex post facto, but the next thing I noticed was a hefty connection with the windowsill and a sharp pain in the neck. It was all very quick. Next I suppose, I blacked out because I dont regaining my feet, but I must have because I now remember urinating. Then I went to bed. Next day, a hugely stiff neck, and a massive headache. I also felt like puking all day, but this particular feeling has been a constant for the last two weeks as final deadlines for the degree - next Tuesday- rush to meet me. Some may quibble here : how, they might ask can a future event rush to meet you? That, I would say is a decidely Western view of time - linear and static. Many cultures (ok, some) dont view time that way, they percieve it as a great big sea that we float around in, so the past present and future are all around us. Our relationship with time isnt fixed, sometimes tides rush us towards the future and sometimes the same tides bring the future to us. for me, the last few weeks have seen the future approaching me as I float statically in Sargossan tangle of words, unable to move. And the future hasnt just been approaching, it has been a tidal wave, an unstoppable tsunami. Naturally, and with the smell of rotting - in this case rotting words, not kelp- that I always imagine pervades the Sargossa filling my nostrils, I have felt ill for good portions of the time. So to awake then feel like puking is not that unusual.

I should at this point mention that three days after the event everything feels fine - neck only a slight twinge, headache completely gone, nausea still present but only for very short intervals and only when I think about essay deadlines. Possible diagnosis - possibly a mild concussion, some soft tissue damage to the neck. Treatment has been icepacks and painkillers. But that’s this time. In all seriousness, it could have been much worse – I could have damaged the windowsill that RHB had taken such pains to beautifully paint. And medical services here are, despite the best effort of the brilliant doctors and nurses, not the best in the world, as our politicians insist on politically telling us. I don’t want to enter a political diatribe describing how neoliberal economic determinism that’s rampant in the UK(and that Canada is shortly going to understand the full fury of, given the recent victory of the Harpon tyranny), knows the price of everything and the value of nothing and therefore puts a price on our health, but very little value. And I don’t want to say that what was once a victory of civilization – universal health care – has now been re-trenched to a minimal service and the bastards that have run this country for the past thirty years are now even going to privatise that as well. NO, I will not say that, as politics has no place here.

But perhaps its time for a rethink. Perhaps, given that the next time I do injure myself I may be asked to choose between a full repair and a patch job, based on my ability to pay, maybe I could change direction: focus less on the physical accidents , and more on the cerebral haplessness. So instead of falling over, and off, and onto things, I could focus on saying the wrong thing. I could perhaps, be introduced to someone for the first time, and just gratuitously insult them. The thing is, it will have to be accidental.

Opportunities arise for this new career next week, as I travel to Greece immediately after handing in my final assignment. My plan is to get to Athens, and then somehow get across Greece to wherever it is my friends are getting married. The trip involves at least two days of solo travel, by train, bus and ferry. I will of course have to speak to hundreds of total strangers. Probably in Greek. My knowledge of Greek is limited to dogma, praxis, Soto Kyriakous, Telly Savalas and the notion that Oedipus has sex with his mum. This might be the ideal opportunity to test my new verbally based, insulting accident career.

The Golden Flees

2011-05-03T20:58:00.003Z

Its 14 days until the odyssey ends, and today marked the end of the first triptych with the presentation, after a Herculean effort, of an assignment where informal learning was discussed. Remaining, I have to slay a hydra, untie a knot of Gordian proportions and refrain from unnatural relations, but I only have to do this within about 6000 word, most of which are already etched. so principally it's editing from hereonin. Naturally, in seasons such as this, a young man's thoughts turn to "what's next?" and although I barely qualify as young, I too have been drawn by thoughts of what may lurk beyond the banks of the Styx.

In less purple terms, I am trying to work out how to get to Greece for Lydia's wedding. Lydia, as you may or may not be aware, is a favourite niece and is shortly to be married in Greece. When I say shortly, I mean on, or around, the 21st May. RHB cannot attend for work reasons, so I am to be the representative of Large Mansions. But there is a problem. My final assignment deadline is the 20th May, and usually I use every available day to complete assignemnts - even if written weeks in advance, there's no writing that cannot be improved by assiduous editing, as the absence of in these spontaneous journals will negatively attest. Given the date, and in view of the fact that matter transportation has not yet been invented (hurry up Physicists) I cannot allow myself until the 20th to complete. I must be on a plane by the 18th.

The question you may ask yourself though, is a plane to where??? A direct flight to the nearest local airport is not possible as inbound flights are once weekly and i would have to depart on the 15th to make the wedding, which because of a realistic perspective on how long final assignments will take, is not possible by about 48 hours. I therefore have to get a plane to elsewhere, then make my way to the wedding location, by hook or by crook.

The solution you may say, is simple: fly to Athens then travel overland to the wedding location. Very simple. Foolproof. This is actually true. I could get about one from a zillion planes to Athens, practically on an hourly departure, rent a car and drive to the wedding with two days to spare. But, as the adventurous among you will realise, this solution is too simple. It lacks adventure, unpredictability. It is a pragmatic solution, and when you consider this is an adventure of a lifetime, that Albania, Serbia and Macedonia are within reach, as well as Italy, and that after three years of being an undergraduate, I have a real need to 'find myself', and that I have no better half whose comfort I need to consider, the real solution becomes obvious. The trip cannot simply be getting from here to there and back again, the trip itslf must become the adventure.

How to plan for such a voyage? Here I draw on experience. The last time I arranged a long range trip, practically everything went well. I arranged outward bound flights, accomodation,and researched the local area providing, IMHO, a wonderful venue. Where there was a slight hitch was that I forgot to arrange transportation back again, thus causing a frantic, death defying three hour drive through the hellholes of Turkey, and causing RHB and myself to be stranded on our return to Blighty. This opoeration, complete with forgetting to arrange return transport took three months or so of careful planning. This time, I will have about three hours, just before I get on a train to what ever airport I am flying from to whatever destination I am flying to, to arrange the thing. My possible itineries involve MAnchester-Rome Flight, Rome to Bari train, Bari to Greece ferry then 'somewhere in Greece' ( I dont know yet where the Bari ferry ends up) to 'somewhere else in Greece' ( I have no clear idea where the wedding is) by the mode of transport commonly known as "somehow'. The second planned route is flight to Tirana in Albania form somewhere in the UK, the somehow get to Greece from there.

I lay the details of my plans before RHB and the assembled cats. RHB looks as if she's just caught someone falling asleep in an exam, then for the first time in our relationship, snorts loudly. THe cats follow suit.

"Whaddya think?" I say, "Brilliant, isnt it?"

"I think you'd better finish your assignments" she says " You can make up whatever fairy stories you like after that".

The nightmare continues.............................

2011-04-28T20:58:00.002Z

saymaz b4 me sick worser. Probs is now ownlee can do txt-speke. LOL. Sucks big stylee IMHO. S.A. due weekon, innit? :). I so over it, nuf said. Smashin it tho peeps, end of. Chillin at w/e mit m8's 2moz, seen?

Weed out

L8R

...and it get mugged by a gang of sloths.....

2011-04-24T20:55:00.002Z

......When the police get there they ask the snail to describe the incident, and it says "I'm sorry, I really cant help you, it all happened so quickly"...

I am the snail. Actually, I think we all are, not the World, but the snail. But perhaps thats for another time.

This snail's tale picks up where I had just decided it was a brilliant idea to try to pretend my essay was nearly finished. I have suffered, and recovered from, as you may recall, a number of essay threatening ailments. I considered myself in the clear, the only question remaining whether I had the self-discipline to diligently complete the formalities required for completion.

I have a curious relationship with self-discipline. On the one hand, I can (and have) worked myself into practical and operational insanity (or at least instability) by completely over-riding any natural inclinations, or clinical indications that I should stop, or at least reduce, working. I accept that this might not be self-discipline, but stupidity, but nonetheless, I have the capacity to will my body to extremes. On the other hand, I am a complete jelly. On a warm summer's night when a nice, cold beer is indicated, I will jaunt to the local Fireworks/liquor store, buy a few tins of amberish nectar and plonk them in the fridge. The whole point of this exercise is in contrast - warm summer's night/cold beer. Yet I do not think I have ever waited until the beer has actually gotten cold before consuming it. Once it's bought, it has to be consumed, and I do not have the self-discipline to wait, even an hour until its actually of consumable temperature. Its beer, its there, I drink.

So there are questions on which side of self-discipline my ability to go through all the niceties of formatting and editing sit. I get no pleasure or comfort from the process unlike a lot of people I know, who like seeing everything neat and tidy. But on the other hand, I have uppermost in my mind that this academic thing is a competitive sport (Ref; Grasshopper 2001 onwards), and although I hate the indignity of conforming my genius to the artificially imposed constructs of a degree, if it means I win, then I'll do it. Usually, its not such a bad process anyway because I edit as I go along, so have minimal changes to make.

There are hitches though, mostly as a consequence of catching on of the writing diseases, a couple of which I've already illustrated in previous posts. Now, when I press save, and open the document in Word to give me a two-page view, I realise that I've contracted, somehow, further writing diseases. The first, and most obvious is that I've got Irregular Paragraph Syndrome. This is potentially the most serious condition yet. Instead of having a visually beautiful essay comprising a number of paragraphs of approximately equal length - with an allowable addition of two extra long paragraphs per two thousand words towards the end for Very Important Points - I have an essay whose paragraph length is totally random. There are really long paragraphs at the start, tiny ones in the middle, a mixture of long, medium and short towards the end and a couple of bits that look like Ogden Nash poetry in conclusion. It looks horrible.

The second disease I have is; Colonic and Semi-Colonic Uncertainty: a sub-condition or Punctuational Uncertainty, - where I have completely = lost the ability to punctuate. Properly. This,,, at least, is repairable - I think: at least if I can decipher what I (originally)meant to say ?! But like all Colon related issues, it is irritating.

So what's it to be, iron self-discipline or "that'll do" ? I look longingly at the fridge. I wonder if you can have both??

There's this snail walking through the jungle.................

2011-04-21T20:02:00.004Z

"Conceptual Conjunctivitus" finally cured, I plough on towards my ultimate goal - a nice vacation on the beach. All is going well. Words, as before spill from my virtual quill onto the electronic display, not quite Pepys, but definitely not Pepsi - there's some substance to my work, its not all just sugar and froth. One essay even approaches 'completion', although like The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Santa Eulalia, that word is very relative. Indeed I have an advantage over that place in that while it admittedly get visited by millions of tourists very year, neither it, nor the parrots in its immediate environs will shortly be host to a Bachelor of Arts degree. Knowing I am going to be cleverer than a cathedral is inspiring, and I am buoyed enough to begin the process of the end.

Beginning the process of the end is a bit like initializing docking procedures in space. Long hours of preparation have been invoked towards the final product but the final product itself is still many steps away, even once you reach your destination.You have written the essay, you still have to proof-read it, remove (SEE WIKIPEDIA) from your list of references and find real ones, format it and make sure you have saved it somewhere on your hard drive you can find it. And like docking a spacecraft, a small error in any of these final steps can be fatal. You only really know you've been successful if nothing bad happens. You expect when you finish to be fireworks, whether or not purchased with booze. You expect to go out and get absolutely hammered in celebration, and have images of all your mates round you cheering "RED MAZ, RED MAZ, RED MAZ", then going home having wild sex with at least three people, and generally partying your m**th*rf*ck** ass off. [I have no idea why people put asterisks in when they swear in text - its not as if it changes in any way the pronunciation or meaning of the words used.] What actually happens is that you finish on a Tuesday afternoon about three thirty, and no-one's around. You've had no shower for two days, you have three days ugly stubble and have eaten pizza so much that the impossible happens - you want vegetables.You might well call your friends to go partying but no-one wants to party on Tuesday - it is, short of being Sunday about five o'clock, the worst possible time for having fun, so your brilliant plans to have a sombrero party, complete with tequila, ends up being much more restrained. Its very depressing, and ultimately not worth while - you're better off waiting till the weekend. Or if you're in space, waiting till you've touched down safely. So there's just you and 5000, 10000, 20000 words looking at you. It's a massive "So What?" moment. And that's just if all final docking procedures go well.

If things go less well, then it is, also like space docking, fatal. Often irretrievably so. It can be the moment when you realize just how far away from the end you truly are. This happened to me. I thought I had written the draft. I knew there was a 'bit' still to do, but decided to make myself feel better by starting to do the end bits. I would make it all 'look' like an essay and then playfully edit, perhaps for fun using Bill's programme "Find and Replace for Dummies", or maybe do a bit of light formatting, mess around with fonts to see what it looked like in Gothic.

The steps to making something look like a final version are

1. Convert it all to the same font in the same size (Wikipedia does funny things in word when you copy and paste)
2. Remove unintentional 'bolds'(see above)
3. Add correct line spacing.
4. Add header, footer and page numbers.
5. Remove extraneous 'notes to self' to do with checking facts, such as "MAKE SURE THAT HUMANISTS ACTUALLY DO ALL HAVE MURDER CONVICTIONS" or strategic notes like "INCLUDE REFERENCE TO Auerbach DESPITE IRRELEVANT - LECTURER LOVES THIS AUTHOR".

This all done, you go to "Save As", enter "Draft Essay Version Final V5 Final. Final" and wait as the screen squiggles. Hopefully a thing of beauty unfurls before your very eyes.

I dutifully did all this successfully, and things went well as far as the screen squiggle. A first glance at my new born draft and it became obvious that I, if not it, had been premature.

THere's good news, and there's bad news....

2011-04-16T21:22:00.002Z

The good news is that my vocabulary disorder has been cured. For essay writing this is, indeed good news, as by midnight last night the situation was critical. I had lost the entirety of my vocabulary apart from the words "furthermore", "hence", "therefore", "the", "a" "derived" and a solitary noun "context". That it was an acute case is evinced by the fact that I had also invented a new word "theretowithin". The strange thing was that conceptual clarity was maintained, but I'll leave it to neuroscientists to investigate the intricacies of this. My whole essay was hence (notice I am not fully recovered)reduced to a series of future postulates entirely dependant on the proceeeding argument. But as the proceeding argument was entirely a future postulate, dependant on the proceeding argument, the prognosis looked grim.

Urgent times call for urgent measures, so I called at the local firework/liquor store for remedy. The phrase "only in ..." is one often used to attribute specific, unique characteristics to a locale, but in this case it is not a cliche. My experience is that it is only in Hull that a licensing authority grant a license to a store that effectively resulted in a direct link between purchasing cheap booze and obtaining, on a year round basis, massive amounts of explosives. Nevertheless, it is the case - our local liquor store sells "The Devil's Revenge" next to "The Devil's brew". I opted for the brew, and, by dint of a self induced unconciousness, woke up this morning with a vocabulary fully restored, albeit that there was a physiological resistance to reproducing any of it out-loud.

The Nickson are made of stern material though, and an inability to speak was not going to stop my ultimate goal - that of completing the essay ahead of schedule. This was accomplished tonight approximately twenty minutes into a soccer match - the FA cup semi-final - that saw Manchester United unceremonisously dumped out of a major competition. Buoyed by this, and sseing it as sign of good fortune I reviewed my essay. Vocabulary-wise, it is brilliant. I have used words like 'pursuant' and 'eclectic' in the right places. I have used words like "obviate' and "tenacious" surgically, and even managed to minimize the frequency of "this finding means". But there is a problem, and this is the bad news. I have developed a new condition, namely "Conceptual conjuntivitus".

"conceptual conjunctivitus" is a little understood, (although in one variation, sadly too frequent) condition, whereby the sufferer's conceptual frameworks meet at a conjunction. The conditions of conceptual conjunctivitus are Type A, and Type B. I have Type B, the unfortunate one, where tragically, an essay writer will develop two beautiful, connected themes,towards a working hypothesis that they interact. Unfortunately, in Type B, the themes do interact, but they nullify eachother. So when the bit of the essay (technically known as 'the conclusion') is reached when you tie it all together, a sufferer of Type B will discover, to his or her, horror, that one idea that has been beautifully developed disproves the other. For me,this manifested itself in the discovery that I had been simultaneously arguing against determinism and advocating cultural development as only possible by application of the same.

So it's back to the firework store. I'm not buying booze tonight, I'm going for the fireworks.

Towards the end....a discus. Sorry, discourse.

2011-04-15T21:57:00.002Z

Well, today did'nt go great. I would estimate that about fifteen thousand words were written today, and about 98% of them were rubbish. This is an attrition rate greater than the Somme. Te major problem is I wrote myself into a logical corner, and, while this was happening, developed a shrinking vocabulary.

I know a lot of people misunderstand how a shrinking vocabulary works, so I think I need to explain. It is not simply having cognitive access to less words, although this is a feature of the condition. What may people dont realise is that accompanying this reducing word pool is necessarily a broadening of meaning of all the words that you do have left. You do not necessarily become less articulate, conceptually. You just become more inaccurate about explaining everything. for example, for horrible reasons I will not enter into further,when describing an environment where learning occurs, a lot of the literature use the words 'setting' or 'context' or 'situation'. Ask me why they dont just use the already familiar words like 'school', 'university' or 'college', and I would have to reply like the great Harry Worth said "I dont know why and there you are". It just is.

Naturally, when trying to write an essay addressing this subject, one is more or less forced into using the language of previous treatise, otherwise one is thought of as un-academic, and frankly, that just wont do. So I start today writing and its going a storm. Words are flying onto the page, and the little men who live in my computer and hang all the letters up on the screen in response to my key-strokes are working double time. "This" I think to myself "is a piece of cake. At this rate, I'll be brilliant by teatime" and blythely I plough on. But who was it who said beware the sleeping fox, he has one eye on the chickens? No-one I know of actually, but it could have been said, and if it had been, it may well have been apropo because when I next glance at the wisdom poured onto the page - my argument a fragile and beautiful yet incredibly strong construction like the ice on the Shubenacadie in February - what is actually present are sentences like:

"In context, the contextual situation of the setting situates, and contextualises, the contexts of learning in situations. The context of learning for the situation is dictated by the contexts of the setting."

I gasp and re-read, convinced that Toshack (incidentally the world's naughtiest cat at the moment) has knowingly sneaked hallucinogens into my morning Earl Gray. I simpy cannot have written that, because what I actually said was a devastating critique of neo-liberal attitudes towards education that posit it as an entirely economic process. But instead of "economic", I've written "situation". Instead of "Gramsci", I've written "context". Instead of "interstitial" I've written "setting". The concept is quite clearly there, on the page, its just that its written in the wrong words! Vocabulary shrinkage has occurred so that I've had to use words - in this case the ones I've mostly been reading - to mean more than one thing. And just as when a song you hate sticks in your head, the words that I notice most when I'm reading are the ones that irritate me the most.

I try to recover the situation(see its happening again) re-reading what I've written, grasping for the concept, argument, point, logic I was trying to advance, but as I glance the meaning starts draining out of the page, leaving only the words. A sly thought enters my head. I take a quick peek round the house to make sure no-one's looking, then go to the 'Review' tab in Word, highlight the words I've written and press 'Word count'. The results come in - one hundred and eleven. I re-read what I've written. Actually, it doesnt look that dissimilar to the type of words used in the paper I've just been reading - "Autonomy and Agency in Discourse: A Freireian Action Research Investigation of Setting, Context and Situation", and arguably, my words make a bit more sense. I copy and paste the whole paragraph of one hundred and eleven words to the next free space. Then, I copy and paste a few parts of it, re-arranging it a bit. Now, I've got two hundred and twenty two pages.

On a serious note, today's entry is dedicated to the 96 Liverpool fans who lost their lives in the Hillborough Football Stadium. You will never walk alone. Justice for the 96. See here for more details, and of course, DONT BUY THE SUN

Deadlines: Non-Negotiable; An Update

2011-04-14T20:28:00.002Z

Reflecting, as I always do, although not perhaps circularly enough for some, on the last post, I realise an omission. That omission is that in addition to the target words I have to write every day being a numerical constant, they also have to have another quality, namely they should not be utter gibberish.

So, where I to claim (accurately) that today I wrote 1000 words, I ought to always add the qualification that approximately 943 of those words were palpable nonsense. Even this re-ification though is inaccurate, as in the world of academia, as has been demonstrated elsewhere (Sokhal), one man's gibberish is another man's prose. The distinction between the academic science papers and academic arts papers is often quite clear, for example

"Acquired mind-blindness following frontal lobe surgery? A single case study of impaired [`]theory of mind' in a patient treated with stereotactic anterior capsulotomy" is clearly within the real of science, and having read it, although intellectually interesting, it fails to move the senses, and I would argue, its purpose is not to do so. If you get excited about this, it is entirely a matter of your own agency, but that is a question for positioning theory perhaps, and philosophy almost definitely. On the other hand, "When I wake up I dream of electricity": The lives, aspirations and [`]needs' of Adult ESOL learners." is a thing of beauty, not brilliantly written perhaps, but as a short ethnographic piece it is deliberately emotive, with no claim to generalisability.

My 'field' though (and sometimes it feels like one) is neither definably art, nor science. It can be either, it can be both. But frequently, and this is the difficulty in trying to write academically about humans not descriptively, as ethnography does, but in order to 'prove' a point about something they do (like the 'right' way to educate them, or the correct system of managing them, or the best economic system for them), my field is neither art, nor science, nor a synthesis of the two. It is frequently just a bunch of words. A lot of those words are gibberish.

It is the problem of describing something as a social science. A whole load of 'theories" (which are actually ideological models) are proposed, which then have to devote an incredible amount of space to defending themselves. It is like the inedible defending the unspeakable, to mangle Oscar W. One such notion, is the idea of "priveliged positions". This is not necessarily the same as advantaged through wealth (although social scientists often mean that, so why dont they just f****ng say it), rather it is a rather circular way of attacking what has variously been called a hegemony, specifically that of Technical Rationalism. Here, technically rationalist expertise is frowned upon, with the lived experience of 'critical practitioners' held to be a downtrodden, but worthy alternative. A more complete science would be n action science, with experimentation and theory arising through reflective relationships between practitioners and 'clients'. Research from a lab, or those temples of technical rationalism, Universities, would take a decidely back seat.

There is a paradox here. Most of this theory is avowedly left wing. But when I try to concieve of how it might work in practice, I cannot but help see neo-conservatism in action. It might be coincidental, but included in Mr Thatcher's supporters in the 1980's were the many of the writers and editors of Marxism Today. And apart from politics, I have to say that I quite like a lot of technical rationalism. I want the antibiotics I take to be tested in a laboratory on something and someone else before I use them, I do not want that experimentation to include me and my local GP in a virtuous circle of knoweldge co-construction. I want the Humber bridge to have been technically designed in a wind tunnel, not erected through an experiential process of discovery learning ("Well we tried mud, but when we reached a certain height it collapsed killing everyone"). I make notes for my essay, trying to capture how I will address this issue:

"Priveliging expertise is seen as a bad thing. But if you were to visit your doctor and that doctor had no priveliged expertise you would be rightly pissed off."

As I say, I wrote 1000 word today. Most of them were gibberish. I did however, for the first time in my life use the word 'semiotic' correctly. Surely a sign of greatness to come.

Deadlines. Non-negotiable.

2011-04-11T15:17:00.003Z

Gulp. There's 39 days left till my degree finishes. Double gulp. And there's a total of 13000 word demanded towards fulfilment of same. Yoiks.

Calculations show that this means I have to average 333.333 word per day between now and 20 May if I am to successfully complete all the requirements.

In the intervenening time, I also have an interview towards my Post Graduate application to engage with (which for reasons I will not go into at this time is even more a source of stress).

This means I have 936 hours to complete my assignment, a word rate of 13.96 words per hour. The target might seem easy, but in a single day, I sleep at least eight hours. This increases my word rate-per-hour to 20.18 necessary if I am to pass. Looks very achievable you might say.

But there are eight essential soccer matches to watch between then and now, a total of 12 hours. Plus, the inevitable time spent socialising, as I cannot just ignore RHB, regardless of whether she, in fact ignored me totally for three years during her post-graduate. This means approximately an hour per day = 39 hours. Then, there are the cats, which require some attention, otherwise I would be denying some fundamental principles I have come to live by. Call this 1 hour per day = 39 hours.

So, now we have a word rate of approximately 25 word per hour necessary. But writing is not the only thing, there's formatting, editing, submitting, proof reading. Each essay, this usually takes me about eight hours.Then I have to eat, so time out for eating, assuming three square per day is 3 x 39 = 117. I also have to book a holiday as I am going to Greece directly after the last submission date. Last time I did this, I forgot to book a return leg of the journey, and that took my six hours, so assume eight hours total to complete this task. Then there's finding my passport - another eight hours. The maths tells me I now have to produce 35 word per hour for completion.

Other things intrude as well - I spend about eight hours a week in formal exercise and another eight riding. I also teach one day per week, which takes up about 4 hours. Then there's bill paying and banking - say three, chatting to neighbours (one per day), housework (one per day) and watching Survivor and other rubbish on the tv (two per day). By now we are down to a need to produce 68 words per hour, every hour in order just to pass.

This is all fine and dandy, except that I have to have something to write about, which requires reading - two to four hours per day. And analysing the date in the light of that reading - another hour or so per day. Then I need to think about it, decide what to write - another two hours per day. I also need to wash occasionally. And I've promised the other half of Cheek to cheek that I wont stop our music, because the music, quite simply, cannot be stopped. That takes time.

ANd these statistics dont tell the truth about the conditions for writing - the need to be alone, quiet, not bugged by cats, or chatted to by partner. And the window for that is about once per day, if I'm lucky.

I've given up using the calculator by now and am just navigating rule by thumb, but I am truly panicking. A quick re-analysis of what I've just written reveals that my best strategy is to simply give up, as I've come to the conclusion that I need to write all 13000 words in about half an hour, tomorrow afternoon. So if you telephone tomorrow, dont expect an answer.

500,000 people

2011-03-28T20:29:00.006Z

....is the number of people who converged on London and peacefully exercised their democratic right to protest against planned Government cuts. And 1/500,000 is the amount of airtime given to these people, in comparison with the hysterical over-reaction of the media to a couple of hundred punks who caused some superficial, albeit irresponsible, damage to a few stores in central London.

The reality of the demonstration was that rather than these stupid kids, people from all walks of life - steelworkers, teachers, nurses, doctors, professors, cleaners, unemployed people, students, had a great day out and made their voices heard.

Aware that overseas readers may not be fully conversant with the situation in the UK, I should briefly explain. Apparently, England is broke. Stone - flat broke. There is, we are told "no more money" left. There is so little money left that the new Conservative-Liberal Government have decided emergency austerity measures are needed. Thus, University budgets are being cut by about 12%. Local authority public service jobs are going to be reduced by 500,000 people over the next three years. The squeeze is on.

The need for austerity can be seen in other areas as well. The Queen herself is contributing to the cost of the upcoming nuptials of Kate Middleton and Prince Wills leaving only 10 million pounds of the overall cost - security, street cleaning and so on - to come from us, the taxpayer. I cannot resist the irony behind a report I read that described how a company contracted to carry out some of the cleaning was recently happy to learn that ten cleaners had been laid off from a local hospital where they worked (because of the cuts) as it provided the company with an additional pool of casual labour for the aftermath of the wedding.

The thing that amazes me about all of this is not the (very) obvious contradiction of a modern society - that we can afford to get involved in a war (using jets that cost 30,000 pounds per hour just to keep in the air) against a nasty dictator (that the UK supported for years), blowing hundreds of innocent civilians to pieces in the process, but that anyone can attempt to justify this and still be considered 'in their right minds'.

The truth is of course, than any justification of such a ludicrous situation is either malevolent sophistry or massive self delusion. I was going to say I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but in point of fact, I am NOT sorry if it sounds harsh. Sanctioning any of the current wars the UK is involved in is only possible if you are personally prepared to fly to another country, stick a gun in a child's mouth and pull the trigger, because as we know, with a 100% certainty, civilians will inevitably die as a result of our government's actions. Supporting them is therefore premeditated murder. The usual defence of our foreign adventures is couched in language like - 'national interest', 'collateral damage', 'regret at civilian casualties' - but the truth is, these are euphemisms for state sanctioned killing.

What possible link is there between Government cuts and war? - you might ask - the two are not necessarily connected. I disagree. I think that there is a direct connection between the cuts and war. The connection is made when you ask "In whose interests are these cuts being made?" or "In whose interests is this war being fought?". In both cases, I cannot answer that either the war, or the cuts benefit me in any way, shape or form. Is it in my interest to reduce hospital workers, police officers, street cleaners or road repairers? Of course not. Is it in my interests to have a war fought in my name in the Middle East? Again, no. So who will profit from all of this?

Well one group of people who will profit is probably the class of people who are going to be represented at the wedding I referred to earlier. With shares in arms manufacturers, oil companies and banking those people will profit. And unlike the cleaners who will be cleaning up after them, their is absolutely zero possibility that their income will suddenly, and arbitarily, be reduced to zero through no fault of their own.

Not perhaps the tone of posting YWNA readers have come to expect. And I accept, probably unwelcome to some. But the truth is, after less than five years here, I am angry again. Completely and utterly pissed off because the story of the UK has been for the last five years, yet again, one of reversal for the majority of the citizens of the place. It is exactly like the Thatcher years again. I do not relish the next few years here at all. There will be increased crime and civil unrest.Increased unemployment. Good news stories emanating from the UK will dry up. It will be all gritted teeth, hair shirts, insecurity and misery if the current Government get their way. And that's why we marched. We dont want to see England of the Eighties unnecessarily recreated, for purely ideological reasons - and like Harper in Canada, this current Government, as ideologues, make most Communists seem utterly pragmatic. YWNA is advertised as News update for friends. It will continue to be that. I will continue, when possible to regale you with stories of my own stupidity, but politics has been added, because politics has become, through necessity, once again a daily part of our lives. I cannot describe with any reliability how I wish this was not the case.

More pictures are in the album below.

https://picasaweb.google.com/103609811127849277427/LondonDemoAgainstCuts?feat=directlink

A Wind in the Willows: Protest March in London, March 26th

2011-03-20T13:23:00.003Z

THere's a wind o'change a'blowin' 'cross Blighty. At least hopefully there is. And a new direction to YWNA to reflect those changes. Now is the time, as they say, for all good people to come to the aide of the party. And that includes YWNA.

I was, as a youth, a committed Marxist, a member of Militant Tendency in Liverpool, the Socialist Workers Party, the Labour Party and a trade union organisation called Bloc 84, all organisations that modern right wing press would describe as 'shadowy'. I left the aforementioned parties, not because I didnt believe capitalism is a fatally flawed, intrinsically evil system , because, obviously, I do, rather, I thought that Marxist determinism was as flawed as capitalist economic determinism, and also a lot of Marxists I met were incredibly inept, socially.

As a consequence, I drifted away from organised politics, retaining an interest only as a shop steward in my union. Its only now, after returning to the UK where the political situation is so catastrophically and actively obvious, and the rampaging effects of unbridled capitalism hit so many of us so hard, that I feel it necessary to return to the arena.

Politically, then activity has increased at Large Mansions. Not that the basement is full of leaflets, or the bookshelves full of books, but discussions have become increasingly political, donations to supported causes have flowed, I have become a student representative and active at meetings, and both RHB and I have been web-active. Next week, its time to get street active, so we're off to London to March.

http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/

The website, I admit, does appear, as a friend observed, to be the usual ragtag motley collection of unfocused lefty nonsense, including very tasteless appropriation of the disaster in Japan. And the haranguing rhetorical approach can leave the impression that every email the organisers send is marked "Urgent" and written in block capitals. The analysis often appears unsubtle, scare-mongering, unsophisticated, the agenda divisive, sloganeering and simplistic - "evil bankers", "corrupt politicians" , "save the whales", "stop nuclear missiles", "no cuts"...against, against, against.............its incredibly unattractive.

So why go to London next weekend??? Simply put, its because, at the moment, the Coalition of Resistance are right. Bankers are evil. Politicians are corrupt, possibly more so morally in the sense of their 'souls' than the simple fact of them taking money from the ordinary people(which they have also done). People are dying in Afghanistan, Iraq and will die in Libya because Western capitalism supports and arms totalitarian dictatorships for profit. It is easy to say that this has always been the case, but I think not, and not to the current extent. I think there have been polticians convinced that their way is in the interests of all the people. The current UK Government cannot, I believe, be included in that description. I think they are guilty of as simplistic an agenda as the "no cuts" sloganeering of the Resistance seems to be, and that agenda is, I believe, to remove permanently from the UK, any last vestiges of what they would describe as 'socialism' - large government departments, thinking at universities, national health systems and welfare. In short, they are attacking us. I think we should attack back.

new links added

2011-03-20T13:11:00.000Z

http://www.ethnografix.blogspot.com/

http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2011/03/19/anthropologies-the-online-magazine/

The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron

2011-03-06T10:41:00.002Z

Brilliant though the title is, it is not, alas, original, as most will realize. No, this gem is from A.K. Sen, the famous Indian thinker. And most people would agree with the sentiment - no-one makes their decisions based on a quick cost-benefit analysis. So you dont go for breakfast to the diner that's the best economic decision for you, you go to the one you prefer, sometimes justifying afterwards that "They have a great deal on pancakes here". If you were economically rational, you would probably never do anything voluntarily, not engage in sports or activities (that could actually damage your economic potential).

Even the big decisions of your life - buying a car, a house, what sort of job you wish to do - none of these are economically rational decisions. I would argue that some people are a bit more rational than others, but we decide on what house to buy, what car to buy and what job to do on various, and varying parameters of desire, prejudice, fun, belief and status. Its an old discussion, but most academics I know would be three to four times better off if they had pursued a career in private business. To try to answer why they do not do so, the mistake that is made most frequently is to try and generalise the answer: "They dont because......"

What does worry me however, is that although economic theorists of the Chicago School are utterly wrong, they have simultaneously shaped our society, an this may, ironically, lead to them being right. Despite that there is no such thing as "human nature" the influence of culture is massive, and these guys believe in human nature. Most of our Western culture for the last thirty years, has had at its core the bizarre philosophies of these economic rationalists. So a view of Darwinism that it somehow also applies to human societies (a version of Whig history) and view of individuals as "competitive" and primarily economic, and a preposterous positioning of economics as a science with theories to explain all of this, has shaped our culture. People now talk about the 'value' of an education, almost purely economically. RHB aksed me tentatively last week, how I thought it would be received if she gave a talk to prospective University students and mentioned that the advantages of University were not just that you could get a better job at the end.

People talk about social capital. I know that this notion is not as simple as common usage has made it seem, but at the heart of social capital is an attempt to discover the "value" inherent in relationahips. Ironically, it was a Marxist sociologist who popularised social capital, trying to understand the strengths that exist in communities apart from economic ties or relationships of blood or obligation, trying to define the value of unseen things like friendship, community mindedness, philanthropy, altruism. There are two problems with this - first of all Marxism, and secondly sociology: Marxism because of the predominance of economic determinism in its ranks, and sociology because as a discipline it does'nt think about what its doing sometimes.

In the case of social capital, sociology "gave the ball away" (to use a footballing term), and has provided neo-liberal Governments with a concept that they have decided is measurable in order to inform and enforce their policies. So in the UK, annual surveys ask people about their perceptions of racism, crime, neighbourly behaviours, altruism and friendliness. This all gets poured into a big computing machine and the results tell us how much "social capital" there is in a neighbourhood. The results are interesting, if only that they tell us more about statistics than about people.

The future is Unwritten...

2011-02-19T12:15:00.003Z

As we may have noticed, there is revolution on the air - Egypt, Bahrain,Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Iran - have all had some element of demonstration in the last couple of weeks. Some permanent change will result in some places. In other places, there will be violent suppression, followed by clamp-downs and imprisonment. As some of you may know, I disagree pretty strongly with deterministic analysis of history or social phenomena. In other words, I dont believe there is an inevitability about human behaviour. Capitalism, for example, is no more our current economic system through a process of naturalistic societal 'evolution' than the pre-eminence of the Catholic Church is an accident. So called representative democracies are not the evolved pinnacle of organisational structure for cultures that the West often pretends, they are carefully designed social machines, based on blueprints and concretely designed to issue a specific product.

But my dismissal of determinism does not meant that there are not patterns in history. There are patterns, not determined by some overarching force, but simply because in a given situation, the number of choices we have are limited. So just as in Europe, mass literacy was emerging, and forms of mass production able to feed this mass literacy was emerging, feudalism had outlived its usefulness to anyone - rulers or ruled. There was massive wealth inequality and a large number of ex-rural peasants who had become the new urban poor. Revolution spread across Europe.

This pretty much describes the situation in many of the Middle Eastern countries. Where it is dangerous to draw parallels further is to claim that the outcome is either predictable, or will follow the Western model. I saw CNN the other night trying to represent events in Egypt as the 'birth of democracy'. While I have no doubt that the CIA (and just about every other agency employed by the freedom loving West to interfere in the sovereign affairs of other countries) is getting its hands very dirty trying to influence events, I think it is a massive mistake to think of current Middle East politics as having direct analogies with Western History. In other words, the view that these revolutions are somehow steps on a societal evolutionary ladder that ends up with Western-style democracy is wrong. All that can confidently said about the Middle East is that it is in a state of significant transistion. How do I know this??

I know this because every attempt humans have made to predict the future, especially the future shape of society, has ended in failure. Whether its religiously derived ideas, Marxist predictions on the cyclic nature of capitalism, capitalist visions of a labour free future, Singularity obsessives - attempts to capture in one grand narrative, a set of generalised principles that drive human society have utterly failed, apart from establishing the over-riding principle that you cant predict human behaviour. The future is, as one famously put it, unwritten.

Part the Second band Concluding: Drinkshedcatfingerknee

2011-01-23T19:02:00.005Z

So singly and plurallistically, my guests left, shortly after CHRISTMAS, heading for their own futures. Although, according to one discussion recently had, that future consists of not existing until the next time we meet. It has taken me three years to begin to understand the the ontology of social constructionism, and a part of me wonders why I bothered. Social construction is, like the measurement of length or empirical evidence in support of something, a very useful tool, - a way of explaining some phenomena, not the "it" of the phenomena, aggregated parts of something, not the essential elements - molecules when I expected quarks, and I"m disappointed. I explain this to JJ, and that I'm thinking of blogging about it. He thinks I should write something funny instead.

We have wanted a shed for ages and a post-Christmas trip to the local DIY centre reveals a bargain- the store's sole remaining example of "The Forester" that normally retails at 127.00 is about to be thrown into the store's dumpster. This is because the Forester in question was damaged in transit. Actually, to the untrained eye, it looks as if it has been involved in an earthquake. Major elements of it are broken; the plywood sheet that makes up the roof, the window pane, the roofing felt, some of the planks that clad it and the door. And, although it is flat-packed, to get it home in the only available neighbour's vehicle, I will have to saw in half the four panels that make up the sides, so that by the time it reaches Large Mansions, no part will be left undamaged. I am convinced, and offer 50 pounds for the thing, and without the cash passing through the till, the Forester is mine. Its a tad smallish, but I can still envisage, the Forester complete,which of course includes a small stove, a ratten chair and a hidden supply of whiskey.

Its still subzero in Hull, but the sun is shining, so I spring into action, erecting my shed. It is a bit harder than I thought it would be to get all the broken bits of wood to fit back together, and I realise this is a small scale demonstration of why houses are not rebuilt after natural disasters but quite quickly, I discover that if I dont over- obsess about details of architecture such as square-ness, uniform height, rectangular shape, straightness and so on, then I can create a four-sided object with a bi-planar roof that may, one day, house a small wood burner. Towards three pm, its getting dark and cold again, so I rush a little, furiously ducttaping together pre-torn pieces of roofing felt in an effort to get the Forester slightly more water resistant. In the growing gloom, I hammer home a nail in an effort to secure a final non-continuous strip of roofing felt. The strike of the hammer head on nail sounds less ferrous, metallic and zingy than normal. In fact, it sounds quite squashy, muffled, squamous. Realisation dawns and I glance at my little finger, called the pinkie in some quarters. I have squashed pinkie quite effectively and split the end of the finger in half.

Previous experience tells me that I've probably broken the bone at the the end of the finger, although previous experience also informs me that these bones are intriguingly hard to break. But (and this is in case anyone needs any advice on the subject and is wondering whether the accident they have just had has resulted in a break, a bruise, or soft tissue damage)breaks to bone are deceptive little critters, and usually the least painful(unless its a big break) than the other injuries, measured over time. Deep soft tissue damage is the worst, it ebbs constantly from the inside out, occasionally spiking and leaving you feeling very nauseous, and it makes you distrust whatever limb or joint(usually) you've hurt. Bruising is terrible, but its surface, like someone has tightened your whole skin, and is well masked by alcohol. Breaks are sneaky, they dont hurt much after the initial pain, but then itch like hell. THey tend only to hurt if you do something bad, like move the wrong way, and as long as you avoid that movement, they're ok.

All of which, I suppose, nicely leads in to the recent knee operation, which has been a kind of self-inflicted, but welcome sort of tissue damage accompanied by bruising. THose familiar with this blog will know that the op has been necessitated by the near murderous driving of someone three years ago, and that obtaining this fix - an arthroscopy - has been somewhat of a struggle. Currently, I am assured that the operation was a great success, with repairs to the medial and anterior cartilage/ligament thingy and a small army of bone fragment removed. It will however take about six weeks before full mobility is restored, which is probably a good thing as I have an essay on social constructionism to write and will need all of that time to describe something I think of as nothing more than a measurement.

Fortuntely, I have my cat to help me. Toshack is under strict veternirarian instructions to loose wait and a miniscule reduction in his diet has meant that he has totally reverted (again) to being a kitten. Consequentl, he follows me round, moping and looking hopeful, obviously petitioning for a treat. When looking like a little kitten that has lost it's mitten and been orphaned on the same day, in the rain, failed to garner him more food, he decided to get really clingy. So one day, working quietly in my office, 20 lbs of jumbo sized kitten crawled onto my lap and started purring. In truth, he's too big to actually fit, and is a challenge to circulation of the upper thigh, but its is now where he spends his time when I'm writing in my office. I had the camera handy, so decided to take a few shots, which are, I recognize, either cute or disturbing from a few perspectives:

ANother lAzy post

2011-01-19T10:53:00.001Z

Lazy post but this , if true is ace.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXu95tjgkA0&feature=player_embedded

I think our Russian expert should inform if this is hoax or not???

Part the First: Drinkshedcatfingerknee

2011-01-18T22:14:00.008Z

I am ecstatic, happier than I have been since 25 May 2005 : "Lets go dancing!" I say to RHB. She looks at me. It is not a look, it is The Look. Its two hours since I got back from hospital and her patience for the roles I have allocated - jokey patient flirting with sexy, but deeply sympathetic nurse - evaporated about one hour forty seven minutes ago.

I recently observed that every good story should have a beginning, middle and an end, just not necessarily in that order. Aside from the brilliant originality of the phrase, it is also true of this post. The initial paragraph fits right at the end. The last few weeks, as the title implies, have been enough of a corruscating blur anyway, so I will return to the start-ish, and use visual aides to relive boredom. I will not however, as one of my lecturers did, attempt without irony to represent the modularity of the brain using images derived from phrenology.

It starts with drink. Persons, including Joey Mac, Suzie-Woosie, Ethers and the Artist Still Known as Christine, Great Margaret and the Legal Eagle attended Large Mansions from 27th December until about 2nd Jan to celebrate New Year. The first to arrive were Sally Stone, a spinster of the parish of Mansfield who came as an associate of Will AKA Braingrass, the dangerous revolutionary. As usual, anything to do with Sally and Will became complicated as soon as quantum reality realized that those individuals were contemplating doing anything practical. The theory that RHB and I share in relation to Will and Sally is that his philosophical thinkings on reality has so annoyed it at some point in the past that it now goes to great lengths to prove its impossibility by making simple plans become unbelievably complicated whenever the opportunity presents.

Hence a simple plan, involving about an hour of time, to pick them up from Doncaster in the rental car we hired for the period became a four hour interactive experience because en-route from Hull, the washer fluid in the car became exhausted. I pulled into a garage just off the highway and popped the trunk to access the spare washer fluid that RHB and I had wisely purchased, given conditions of snow and ice and filthy gritty sludge reducing visibility. To my surprise, it was not there, and, I found out later, had been moved by RHB from where it might be usefully used (in the car)to where it might be neatly stored (in the house). I cheerfully purchased another 5 litres at a seasonally inflated price of EIGHT pounds (equivalent to about sixteen dollars!) and headed back the car.

It soon became obvious that it was entirely unobvious how the hood (and therefore the washer reservoir) was accessed. I searched for twenty minutes, becoming more un-ontime as time passed and utterly failed. I asked customers and staff at the garage, but no-one was familiar with the car and groups of men gathered round, helpfully discussing, in time honoured fashion, how utterly stupid the design of the car I had rented was. In ManSpeak this actually translates as a commentary on (my) virility, probable state of worklessness and general lack of judgement under a paradigm that hypothesises overall inadequacy of persons who do not own cars. The discussion also provided a few men, who perhaps should have had "SMUG BASTARD" tattoed on their foreheads, how the two inches of snow on the ground utterly vindicated their purchase of an SUV.

Eventually, I took a decision to proceed, so I bought three bottles of water (seasonally inflated due to transport difficulties) and set off. At intervals, I pulled over and used the water to clean the screen. Eventually, I arrived in Doncaster. Another search ensued, this time comprising Sal's friends and accompanied by a Google search, which was hindered by Will's complete lack of familiarity with motor vehicles. Five of the finest brains in Doncaster failed to solve the puzzle. Fortunately, a deep, moist fog was beginning to descend, which imparted enough moisture to the screen to allow the wipers to be effective. We set off back to Hull. Partially as a reward for their patience, I decided to treat Will and Sal to a scenic diversion across the second biggest suspension bridge in the world, which was, of course, entirely shrouded in fog.

Eventually, we did arrive back in Hull much to the cats utter delight. The cats, it should be mentioned, were so delighted with the presence of visitors that they spent long periods gazing out of windows, apparently with the intention of reflecting on how happy they were to share their favourite sleeping places

Guests arrived thick and fast. Joey Mac turned up at Hull's Paragon Rail Station after a heroic eight hour train journey looking sharp, fresh and almost Scottish. Joe's partner, Anna,was in Russia and was missed, so we commemorated her absence by drunkenly arguing about a topic she knows infinitely more about than we did. This made us miss her more, so we changed the topic of argument in an effort to make Sal faint through anger. Joe and I toasted Tom, and I did reflect that given that everyone present could be regarded as eccentric in one way or another, he would have fitted in perfectly.

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Chris, Sue and Ethan came and we ate and talked, drank and argued, laughed and drank and cooked and cooked and cooked. We discussed global economics and RHB's new political enthusiasm, music through Sal's brilliant Japanese speed punk, football with Ethan and art with Christine. We went to bed later and later. Walks were taken, visits were made. Movies were watched, mostly bad, to cater to mine and Ethan's terrible taste(Prince of Persia). The house has a habit of forming a happy bubble round people that gather in it, so that when we heard JJ's party - the ostensible highlight of the visit - had been cancelled due to illness, I was almost relieved, because while JJ's parties are great I didnt want to leave the bubble.

However, this neighbourhood, not just this house, is also great so when a neighbour offered us a place at their party, the gang decamped four houses along for a few hours. In truth, it was not the best party in the world, but the chorus of Auld Lang Syne initiated by someone was the best I have heard for years - not the nervous limp hand-joining of people who are stranger and happy to remain so, but the enthusiastic bawling of a neighbourhood where people genuinely like eachother.

After it was all over, and even Nel had gone back to work, I sat in the highest room at the back of the house. It was ridiculously quiet for a while, then a plaintive miaowing started, interspersed with a pathetic series of "Meeps". It was urgent, and insistent and distracting from my work, so I followed the noise and found the cats. Their behaviour was very strange. Tosh, his actions copied by Meepy(calli), was wandering round the rooms where people had slept, pacing the perimeter of each room miaowing very loudly, then running into the next room and doing the same. Meepy was trying to copy him ,but because she is terrible at miaowing just started running round excitedly, jumping on and off beds. Realising I felt the same, I got one more drink, the last of the whisky and went round the house and toasted everyone who had visited this year. Thanks, cheers and Slante to you all.

Watch this

2011-01-14T10:34:00.002Z

A very lazy post but this is interesting..............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSHeKfZG7c&feature=player_embedded#!

Am very busy writing a report (due Monday), preparing for an operation (Tuesday) and Exam (Friday) and writing a post grad application research proposal (as soon as )

The Peter Principle

2011-01-06T22:42:00.003Z

I'm sorry to drone on about this, I really am, but RHB has banned me from complaining so here goes. I just read this:

Cowan suggests that learners are reflecting in an educational sense “when they analyse or evaluate one or more personal experiences, and attempt to generalise from that thinking” (1999: 18). However, as Biggs points out, “a reflection in a mirror is an exact replica of what is in front of it. Reflection in professional practice, however, gives back not what it is, but what might be, an improvement on the original” (1999: 6).

In truth, I read this several hours ago, but my head exploded and I've only just finished putting it back together again.

In a recent seminar on reflection, I was asked to describe a situation where my emotions impacted on my learning. I was able to raise my hand immediately.

"Yes? " said the 'thought leader' (and those words themselves are worthy of another whole issue)

"Well" I said " At this very moment, I am very angry, and that is 'impacting' my learning"

"Why are you angry?" said the TL in a surprised tone.

I'm afraid I was somewhat impolite and said something about unsupported, banalities masquerading as academic work.

And the sentence above about reflection not being a reflection but being some sort of future divination is the reason why I get so mad about this stuff. I might have mentioned in an earlier post that any paper including the word "Towards..." should be banned because of incompleteness. I should perhaps, at this point, draw the attention to those not working in the BA areas, that BA literature abounds with 'Towards....'. I should also point out, as may be equally unobvious, that I am, a huge fan of academia. To me, academics are the new Sex Gods. I often contemplate a teenage and early adult hood spent driving round the toilets of the UK's gigging scene and think to myself (NOT reflect because I dont then go and write a friggin journal about this..) "What the Hell where you thinkin?", because its way sexier being brainy than being....well...sexy, I suppose. Because that - sexy - is what I thought it was. Contemporaneously, I realise that getting booed off stage and chased from Leeds by a convoy of MAD MAX lookalike skinheads just because our singer said they all looked "F***kin stupid" was not very sexy, just frightening, and what would have been well sexy would have been to invent the internet. Or work at CERN or invent wind turbines r something.

I pause, realising that I have diverted slightly form the original purpose of this post, which was to thank our New Year Visitors, toast absent friends and wish all well for the forthcoming year. It is somewhat late, so rather than a sophisticated literary device, I shall simply lurch back to the point at hand. Which is that "Towards ...." is bad, and rampant in my field(s). I should, despite the fact that there's no news in good people, salute a few of the brilliant writers in Humanities I have read - MacKeracher (Adult learning) Naiman (L2 learning), Ortner, Gupta and Mascia-Lees in feminist anthropology, Smith in history, just in case it seems that I moan all the time. In truth, the stuff I dont enjoy is a smallish percent of wpapers read. But its still annoying..................

Barry, D. and M. Elmes (1997). "Strategy Retold: Toward a Narrative View of Strategic Discourse." The Academy of Management Review 22(2): 429-452.
Using narrative theory, this article explores strategic management as a form of fiction. After introducing several key narrative concepts, we discuss the challenges strategists have faced in making strategic discourse both credible and novel and consider how strategic narratives may change within the "virtual" organization of the future. We also provide a number of narrativist-oriented research questions and methodological suggestions.

What is interesting about this is that RHB and I were, sometime around Christmas, discussing managers, and particularly, what lousy managers most academics seemed to be. I expanded on this:

"Actually, my sweet" I told her in my customary address " Its not just academics who make lousy managers. I think we can expand the category somewhat..."

"Pray tell, my dove" she sprake "Whatsoever do you mean? And pass the chocolates. NOW!"

There followed a moment of extreme violence, but having secured the dark chocolate truffle, RHB settled down to listen as I returned from casualty and my theme

"The truth is, my favourite little chocolate addicted psychopath, that the category can be expanded to include..." I paused dramatically ".....all humans. Simply put, we're crap at managing things. However, this is not our fault. It is, in fact, the fault of the construct of "management". In truth, most things, people, jobs and enterprises dont need managers, and are better off without them"

RHB looked at me adoringly, so I handed over the last box of Green's Organic Chocolate, and her adoring gaze ruthlessly followed the trajectory of the box. Seeing as she was otherwise occupied, I carried on, this time addressing the cat:

"It's true! Management is a myth. The occasional small group needs leadership - like a football team, for example, but on the whole, management is a redundant artificial construct who's only use is as an illustration of how societies invent overly complex solutions to their problems, thereby sowing the seeds of their own demise. And I can prove it..."

With that, I flourished an abstract that is co-incidentally based on a Canadian originated concept - The Peter Principle - as follows:

The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study

Authors: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, Cesare Garofalo

In the late sixties the Canadian psychologist Laurence J. Peter advanced an apparently paradoxical principle, named since then after him, which can be summarized as follows: {\it 'Every new member in a hierarchical organization climbs the hierarchy until he/she reaches his/her level of maximum incompetence'}. Despite its apparent unreasonableness, such a principle would realistically act in any organization where the mechanism of promotion rewards the best members and where the mechanism at their new level in the hierarchical structure does not depend on the competence they had at the previous level, usually because the tasks of the levels are very different to each other. Here we show, by means of agent based simulations, that if the latter two features actually hold in a given model of an organization with a hierarchical structure, then not only is the Peter principle unavoidable, but also it yields in turn a significant reduction of the global efficiency of the organization. Within a game theory-like approach, we explore different promotion strategies and we find, counterintuitively, that in order to avoid such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of competence.

And there's plenty of supporting evidence:

Haslam, S. A, C. McGarty, R. A. Eggins, B. E. Morrison, & K. J. Reynolds, “Inspecting the Emperor’s Clothes: Evidence that Randomly Selected Leaders can Enhance Group Performance”, Group Dynamics: Theory, Process and Research 2 (1998): 168-18

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703735004574575880529756434.html

If you follow these links, and chase up a bit of evidence of your own, what becomes obvious is that (and this is beyond the conclusions reached by the authors quoted above) not only does it not matter who is 'in charge' once a certain level of remove from functional operations is obtained, in point of fact, it does not matter what, if anything, is in charge. In point of fact, most CEO's could be replaced by a plantpot and no-one would notice.

"How", I hear you ask, "How the blinking heck does all, or any of this, relate to reflection and 'towards'? ". Well, in many ways it doesnt, I have meandered considerably. On the other hand, an academic work involving "Towards..." changes nothing. It is a Schroedinger's cat piece of thinking, neither alive or dead. Like managers, it does not matter a jot whether it exists or not. Reflection is similar - it changes nothing but the self-regard of an individual in very specific, non-repeatable circumstances. It is neither looking in a mirror, nor future casting, it is simply rumination, like what cows do - an evolutionary, cognitive, emotionally vacuous dead end. And with that, I promise, I will never mention it again.

Shorter days

2011-01-04T22:13:00.004Z

With a rousing chorus of "Auld Lang Syne" still ringing, I troop upstairs to my office, once more to plunge into a series of now impossible deadlines. The final year of the degree is stratospherically more difficult than the previous two for a number of reasons, and has been, and will continue to be a struggle against deadlines and poor planning. For once, most of the poor planning though, is not, in my humble opinion, mine, but rather a disjointed and uneven series of final year modules. Oak table syndrome still afflicts me, and I had expected the final year to be a coagulation, a synthesis, a concentration and a summation of all that has gone before, but instead I am finding myself awash in new unexplored and unrelated modules that test patience not intellect. An example is my Work Experience Module. Firstly, it is surprising to have a Work experience Module on a degree that is not vocational. Secondly, I hardly need more work experience as an exercise, although the paid sort would not be unwelcome. And finally, the module is, in a word that has become my second least favourite in the English language, 'underpinned' by 'theories' of reflection and situated learning.

This all causes me a few difficulties. Firstly, underpinning is something that is done to houses under adverse soil conditions, and I cannot avoid, cognitively, making the connection, so that whenever I consider this particular module, I picture it as a dangerously unstable edifice, lurching slightly to the left and under imminent possibility of collapse. Secondly, much of the academic work published related to reflection includes within its title the other hateful word "Towards...". My own personal opinion is that academic work that includes the title "Towards..." should be referred back to the author on grounds of incompleteness. I am fairly sure that Einstein would not have published a paper called "Towards a Theory of General Relativity - some incomplete equations" and equally would not have included in that paper the mathematical expression e=m multiplied by something I havent worked out yet. And Andrew Wiles would not have started his famous proof of Fermat's Last Theorem with "Actually, chaps, I havent quite worked out all the details yet, but if you guys can just use your imagination in the bits where I've left big blanks, I'm sure I'll get round to it sooner or later..." .

Unfortunately, no matter how much discomfort I have with some modules, they must be completed, if only because I think my chances for rising in the League Tables of Academics from joint-second to first would be greatly enhanced by achieving at least a 2:1 in an undergraduate degree. So its back to work and back to normal.

Whatever that is.

2010-12-23T09:40:00.002Z

THis is from a cycle blog I read:

""..One London newspaper thought it would be best to give their readers a warning as to what lies ahead.

On Tuesday, The Guardian published a guide to walking on snow and ice. In fact, the paper even consulted a doctor for their list of expert tips.

In the introduction to the article, the editors wrote “that only penguins are really designed for the snow and ice” – a huge surprise to those of us dealing with those conditions a good six months of the year.

Dr. Luisa Dilner advised the obviously delicate residents of Britain not to “talk on your mobile phone or even reach into your pocket,” as that could trigger a fall.

“If you are pregnant,” Dr Dilner continues, “You have already shifted your centre of gravity and should be tucked up at home with a box set of Mad Men.”

That’s right, Canadian women – you thought you could make it through the winter without much change to your regular routine, but it turns out you actually need to hibernate like a bear.

Tell your boss the doctor said so.

And forget about biking. The Guardian doesn't mention it, for fear of causing the English to clutch their pearls in horror, certainly - but it's likely not recommended.

The same goes for carrying heavy boxes and a host of activities many Canadians undertake without much thought at all.

“People who know about snow (climbers mostly) say that ice grips worn over shoes can prevent falls,” Dr. Dilner concludes.

Actually, that’s Canadians, mostly – and most of manage to get around just find without resorting to warnings like these: “However you have to take ice grips off on smooth indoor surfaces and they don't work on black ice because nothing does. Except being a penguin.”"

http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/news/international/article/105315--british-newspaper-publishes-guide-to-walking-on-snow

It is very funny. I have been cycling throughout the winter and have noticed the numbers of cyclists drastically reduce as it has gotten colder. It's not actually that cold - averages about minus five, daytime, and cycling is possible. There are a couple of England-specific dangers though, particularly drivers of motorized vehicles. English drivers do not change their driving habits for anyone, anything or any condition. It seems related to the old War spirit that gets referenced in the media far to often for a healthy national psyche, and is almost as if they are saying:

"Hitler could'nt make us surrender, there's no way I'm going to give in to a bit of snow and ice".

THis extends, in many cases to taking absolutely no precautions whatsoever in winter - there are now snow tyres, no one alters their tyre pressure and apart from volume purchases of windscreen de-icer, driving habits stay the same. The result of this is that the sight of a 'boy-racer' in a souped up Mini, wheels spinning furiously at standstill, engine revving and a bead of sweat trickling form under the brim of his (reversed) baseball cap and going absolutely no-where is not unusual.

Mostly, this is amusing, but for cyclists, it can be very dangerous. We get no extra space, no consideration for the fact that roadsides are very icy and many ( I would say most) drivers still overtake millimetrically with almost zero tolerance. Every time there is a particularly close shave, I revive a fantasy I have had number of years, which is to capture the offending driver, tie them to a chair and then get a big hammer attached to a piece of string and swing it at their heads, trying to get as close as I can without actually hitting. In the case of many 8 wheeler drivers though, the intention would be to make contact.

Unfortunately, I am to become a driver for a few days, as we are renting a vehicle today for the holiday period. A big part of me fervently hopes the weather is too bad for travel, as these roads scare me. And, I have to admit, a big part of me, despite everything said above, loves driving.

Towards a theory of Cycling; A Post Modern Discourse

2010-12-08T18:35:00.003Z

"Ah" I thought to myself, "Based on the truth that our world is socially constructed, and because no-one appears to be watching, this wont hurt a bit".

A second or two later, I had discovered the limitations of that particular post modern discourse as I splattered face first into a road surface made even more unyielding by a three inch covering of ice.

Of coiurse, like all things, it began with interior decoration, and the observation that at least one scientific law was, despite having been de-constructed ad nauseum, immutable, that law being of course that for every action , there is an equal and opposite re-action. In this case, the carpet that had languished in our front Survivor-watching room, had been moved to the rear room. RHB, applying all action research skills at her disposal critiqued my reaction:

"Looks great" I said "Watcha think?"

THere was a pause. At this point, I should comment on pauses. Over a long, and, in the main bloodless, relationship, I have learnt - possibly through reflection, neural pruning or the actions of mirror neurons (take your pick) - that a pause can be as eloquent as any of the Psalms. Pauses (issued by my partner) can mean "Good idea but I dont agree" (ie 'You have the wrong idea '), they can mean "I am about to explode with fury" (ie "You've done something wrong") or they can mean "What happened to ..." (ie "Whatever you are about to do is wrong"). In the instance of this conversation, the pause was quite long (thats a good thing), did not involve pacing ( even better) and there were no flailing arm movements (phew!), and was simply followed by

"Hmmm... the whole kitchen's the wrong colour now. It doesnt match the carpet."

It was my turn to pause. ALthough not personally endangered physically, this was terrible news. Paint colour selection at Large Mansions is a lengthy process. Colour swatches that I simply cannot tell apart are presented at the breakfast table for my opinion, and I invariably pick the one that "only an idiot would pick". The epistemology behind the process - a joint decision taken by consenting adults - is reasoned and inclusive, but the execution is less so. I cannot see the difference between many paint colours and get bored rapidly. RHB not only sees the differences between paint colours but makes associations between colours that are close to eachother. I think in my case, this inability is the product of being raised in a 1970's wallpapered home, but whatever the reason the only redeeming feature of the process is that the paint store is right across town, a good forty minutes bike ride away.

Which is how I came to be approaching the railway lines near Chanterland Avenue Cemetary at a speed approximating that of a scared cat, bearing several lites of paint in my panniers. AFter sixteen previous trips for samples, the final colour had been decided. Despite the snow, unprecedented in this part of the world, I had been indoors all week, writing term papers and had seized the opportunity to get out on the Crosstowner and have a good old play. En route to the paint shop , I had seen no other cyclists, but had successfully navigated snow-covered side roads, a field and a couple of slippery major roads. THe return route took me over the railway lines.

THere are two ways of crossing icy railway lines in sub-zero temperatures on a bicycle equipped with 'slicks' (in my enthusiasm I had neglected to change the tyres and have been still riding on my summer tyres). The first approach(described retrospectively by a critical friend as 'the only') is to get off and push the bike across, calmly and sedately. The second approach(described by the same friend afterwards as 'sheer stupidity') is to be imagining that you are a resistance fighter in a post-apocalyptic world couriering a vital message, and that despite the travails of snow and ice, the message must get through at all costs, quickly. In the second scenario, the ONLY way of crossing the railway tracks is to accelerate, attempting bunny hops over the icier bits.

"Had a little spill" I am forced to announce as I return home. The limp from a badly bruised knee cannot be disguised. Nor can the dented tins of paint, bruising and minor chip to the bone of the right elbow and torn waterproofs. RHB pauses. I am temporarily alarmed. "Did you get the paint?" she asks. I nod. She grins "You had fun, didnt you?". I nod again, and we laugh. SOme things dont need an explanation.

Snow

2010-12-03T22:54:00.005Z

As one who believes that a good picture of snow is vastly improved by the inclusion of a pink cat I am, naturally, an apostle for these pictures. Nothing, I feel, illustrates a good snowfall than a blurred picture of a twenty pound cat that has just pounced, adorably of course, on a snowball.

Which information should lead you to conclude that some, or other, entity has been fabricating said snowballs in order for the aforementioned pouncing to occur. This is on account of how cats paws are eminently unsuited to the task. If a reader has any intelligence this string of logic should provide a clue as to who, or whom, the snowball maker is. And given that it is I who writes this blog,and posts photographs and has no friends, and am currently at home writing because the University is closed, and have an unusually (but not suspect) relationship with said cat, I should remove you from your misery and confess: I have spent an inordinate amount of time over the last week making snowballs in the back yard and throwing them. Toshack, responds with loud "MIAOW" then chases off into the snow covered moraine of our rear garden before plouging face first into drifts, frantically clawing at the snow. It is a behaviour more akin to that of a dog

During a short lull earlier this week, his sister Callisandra, who hates the cold, possibly on account of the amount of titanium in her feet (with resultant increased conduction) briefly joined him. She shot across the yard after a smallish ball of ice. Unfortunately, as mentioned, the only reason she was outside was the slight warming. This warming had softened the layer of ice on top of the pond, although it was still masked by snow. Calli charged, intent on her snowball, the ice gave way, she fell in the pond, leapt out looking like a sodden calico pretend toy and carooned into the house up the stairs. I felt a bit guilty, and slightly concerned in case she had been frozen solid, so I went to find her, and she was lying on the bed grooming as cats do, as if nothing had happened. Which in her world, it hasnt.

In the grown-up human world though, the weather has been, for England, unusual. Hull has laboured under a 12" blanket of snow. Food has begun to run out in stores (this in NOT exaggeration) as pensioners have bought up every loaf of bread available (this is both an exagerration and unfair as I have no idea who exactly has been buying all the bread. But there is none). Even the liquor stores have not been restocked. In the media the extent to which this country is unprepared for most of the weather it receives has been the subject of screaming headlines - Every year there are a seasonal round of stories about people dying of the cold. Motorists get stranded for days in 'mountain' passes that are no more than 1500 feet high. Droughts and water shortages follow winter and springs of unprecedented rainfall. People die of heatstroke in temperature approaching the mid thirties (centigrade). The weather in the Uk is nowhere near as varied as most of the countries on the planet - its one of the reasons our climate is called temperate - yet the country seems prepared for none of its seasons.

This however, is not the complete picture. In our street, for the last week, kids have been having snowball fights with adults, the elderly folk have had their drives dug out by slightly less elderly folk, birds have been fed and the overall mood has been one of joy and celebration. THere has been a party atmosphere because practically everyone has been off work.

So who is complaining? Actually, I am. But not about the weather - it is what it is and snow is particularly beautiful. BUt also, I am not complaining too much about the lack of prepardness this country consistently demonstrates. It means more days off work, and in truth, English people are not the Protestant work fanatics they pretend to be. My complaint is the English media - possibly one of the lowest forms of life on the planet. There is one modus operandi in the English media and that is partisan point scoring. From the mighty Times to the lefty Guardian to the Tory Telegraph and the scumbag tabloids, point scoring may operate at various intellectual levels, but it is all the UK press have, apart from lifestyle pullouts. Journalism has a number of capacities which various individual have done very well - change (a lot of Vietnam war photography), observation (Alistair Cooke's letter from AMerica) comment (Charlie Brooker in the Guardian still does this). But the majority of contemporary UK journalism is not these capacitieis, it is whining, niggling and inconsequentialism. ANd although this can temporarily appear to be analogues of good writing - sharp, witty, hip, modern, referenced - they are not good journalism, they're just bad novelisation. So cliched themes,the stock in trade of bad airport novels, are what we get for the majorty of our news. And the recent snow has definitely resulted in the wheeling out of all the 'old ones'. Personally, I would rather play snowballs with a cat than read the British press.

THe anthro Song

2010-11-28T22:49:00.001Z

http://nineteeneightynine1989.blogspot.com/2010/11/anthropology-song.html

Nel absolutely hates this. ANd I sort of do as well. Except that the kid is so keen...

Studying hard. Hard Studying.

2010-11-24T08:50:00.003Z

Unpredictability and Indeterminism in Human Behavior: Arguments and Implications for Educational Research

1. Gary A Cziko, Associate Professor

This essay presents arguments for the view that complex human behavior of the type that interests educational researchers is by its nature unpredictable if not indeterminate, a view that raises serious questions about the validity of a quantitative, experimental, positivist approach to educational research. The arguments are based on (a) individual differences, (b) chaos, (c) the evolutionary nature of learning and development, (d) the role of consciousness and free will in human behavior, and (e) the implications of quantum mechanics. Consequently it is argued that educational research that attempts to predict and control educational outcomes cannot be successful and that educational research should focus on providing descriptions and interpretations of educational phenomena to provide findings that can be used to improve our understanding of learning, development, and education and to facilitate their evolution.

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER April 1989 vol. 18 no. 3 17-25

I have to admit, in the interests of fairness,but I have not read this full article. Therefore, criticising it, or even critiquing it, is impossible. But, I have learned a degree of caution as I have progressed through my academic trajectory. A 'spidey' sense has developed as I peruse the journal articles, a sort of bullshit detector. I have also found the English glottal tut very useful, as an audible aide memoire - 'dont read anything else by this idiot' - and judging by the quantity of tutting reverberating round the library, a lot of people have also found the same thing useful.

Having said all that I should re-emphasize that I should not criticize the above work. And I know you all know this is coming, so here it is........BUT when I read an abstract linking such grand themes, I hesitate. I have, myself, as the joint second best academic in England, been accused, by mine own spouse, no less, of delusions of grandeur and overambitious thematic association, when I claimed that savanna chimp reactions to fire fire completely proved the theory behind "Civilization: why?". So when I read an abstract such as the one above that claims to link chaos theory, quantum mechanics, psychology, learning theory, politics, philosophy and evolutionary biology I do have to wonder about its specificity. And when I re-read the abstract, it seems as if the author is merely saying "I dont like education being directed by their approach, I'd much rather it was directed by my approach" the spidey sense engages and a large 'tut' issues.

Related to this is my enforced further readings on 'situated learning'. Once again, admonished by RHB NOT to arbitarily dismiss ideas, I have struggled through papers on 'situated learning', 'communities of practise' and 'legitimate peripheral participation' attempting to glean some insight. This has proven very difficult. For me, it is as if I have been forced to watch a series of Manchester United games and comment objectively on the football on display. And this is not a careless observation. Lave and Wenger base their theories of situated learning on observations of a number of apprenticeships, including the tailors of Goa and those of Yucatec midwives. Taken in isolation, both apprenticeships apparently provide examples that certain types of social engagements are models for how learning ought to occur. For example, in Goa, the master tailors and the apprentices together negotiate (or construct) a community of practise where the roles of each person is legitimate. Essentially, apprentices are not empty vessels waiting to be filled, but are as active as the masters in constructing the community of practise. There is no didactic teaching, instead apprentices learn by engagement, and everyone's role is fluid and 'negotiated'. In short,the suggestion is that only if all parties are active in the learning process can proper learning take place and the types of social engagements they describe provide the (only) 'proper' context in which learning can take place.

These observations have led to a very successful business career for some people, advising business and organistaions on organisational structure. The idea, in a nutshell, is that by encouraging 'communities of practise', learning within an organisation or business is more effective.

This may appear to be pretty obvious and general,and it is, but if considered a little bit further (and I must, so you also have to) it implies that didactic approaches to education are less effective. Lecturing therefore, particularly, fact-filled top-down lecturing, is a big no-no because most classroom teaching approaches neglect negotiation. I have a number of objections to Lave and Wenger's work, but I will focus on just one.

While Goan apprentice happily works HIS way through a community of practice until HE becomes a master, happily co-constructing HIS!!! identity, and a Yucatec midwife merrily assimilates the knowledge of HER craft becoming highly respected members of their communities in the process, Wenger and Lave fail to mention the societies in which these idealised forms of learning occur. In practice, neither Goan apprentice tailors, nor Yucatec midwives have much choice of career, as both societies are highly stratified by caste and gender differentiated. This is not particularly a judgement on those societies, although I am happy to have been borne in neither, but how applicable to other societies, particularly Western societies are the examples given? The (short) descriptions do not include what happens to people who fail, or whether the practices the apprentices learn are actually the best way of doing things, or whether the boy borne to be a tailor would rather have been an actor. In most Western societies, we tend to choose our careers, our education and our gender identity, and are relatively free to leave "communities of practice" if we feel like, whereas Goan tailors and Yucatec midwives are not. Goan apprenticeship methods work because they have to, otherwise the people engaged in them dont eat. Seperately, Yucatec midwife apprenticeships work because it is uneconomical to establish a classroom dedicated to physiology and biology for the one trainee apprentice in each village.

After some reading, and much tutting, I have begun to conclude that the applicability is, at best, very general. Attempting to apply principles drawn from one set of cultural practises onto another entirely different culture always gives me the heeheegeebies, academically speaking. It is reminiscent of the way "primitive" peoples, or "Eastern philosophy" were romanticised by the West, and their lifeways generalised out of context, which led to unfortunate things like hippies. Anthropology is a double edged sword - it is important when studying the anthropology of 'others' to realise that we have an anthropology of our own as well.

The Battle of Knobbly Knee

2010-11-16T11:19:00.006Z

Dateline: 16 November,2010:

Its 8 am and excitement at Large Mansions is practically at fever pitch. In truth, I have not been able to sleep and I cant wait to find out what's going to happen.

"Have some toast, at least" says RHB, "You're too excited"

I refuse, and have to admit I am too excited. As a general rule, I love birthdays, and as a specific rule, I love my birthdays. Also as a general rule, I love presents, and as a specific rule, I love presents that are for me. , Convergently then I love shiny presents just for me, and today has dawned with the possibility that I will receive a particularly unique present built only, and specifically for me, and being made out of titanium, extremely shiny.

There is a down side, however, because in order to access said present, I have to travel across Hull to the Spires hospital. By way of explanation, the gift I am expecting,the thing I want more than anything else in the whole wide world (even more than a 1966 Fender Precision or a new Shimano gear assembly for the Crosstowner) is an operation on at least one of what Grasshopper has characterised as 'the knobblies'.

Without blathering on in too much detail about the circumstances arising that have required some repair to the knobblies, it became apparent two years ago, shortly after arriving in this country, that a hit and run accident whose major effect had appeared to be a demolision of the right elbow, had in fact resulted in far more serious, but less obvious damage to both knees. During recuperation from this spectaculrly broken elbow, knee problems which had previoulsy been 'niggles' became worse and worse. A brief consultation with the Sport Scientists at our gym revealed some pretty bad, but eminently fixable cartilage problems. SO, I booked an appointment with my General Practitioner who referred me to the physiotherapist attached to his clinic. That appointment went not well, mostly because I called the physiotherapist an idiot.

I was then withdrawn form that doctor's surgery and, here I have to admit some culpability, abandoned the matter for a while. However, shortly prior to our vacation in Turkey last year, I decided to re-address the issue, applied to a new General Practitioner and a made an appointment.

I would like to report that this resulted in a flurry of activity. Surely, I thought, the prospect of Hull losing its best scenic carpenter through injury would speed up the process. And doubly surely, dont I always hear on the news how 'Britain' has got the best health service in the world? So when I heard that Grasshopper had approximately the same injury, but diagnosed years after mine, I thought to myself 'HO! She (Grasshopper) thinks she's a bit of a smarty pants living in Canada, but now we'll see who's the clever socks. Living here, as I do, amidst the World's Best Health Service, I will probably be fitted with bionic implants while she's still being pushed round Walmarts' carpark on a sled. And, when Canada does eventually get round to fixin' her up, it will probably be some primitive beaver bone and moose hide contraption attached to her leg, while I shall have mini nuclear reactors powering my leg muscles.'

It was therefore with some jealousy that I recieved a missive from GH, some two months after her injury, describing an unpleasant period of enforced immobility, but an otherwise entirely successful medical procedure. GH's treatment (and I should'nt breach confidentiality here but I will) consisted of a two minute visit to her doctor, a quick coffee with the consultant, and the next week a relaxed keyhole procedure while evryone in the operating room drank Tim Hortons and ate donuts. By contrast, in the home of the Best Health Service in the World, it has taken five specialists, two scans, three different locations across the city and about eighteen months before, last month, I was referred to the local musculo-skeletal clinic, which ironically is two minutes walk away form my house.

AT that appointment, the specialist was examining my xrays and nodding sagely:

"Hmm....yes....well...er... do you see this?"

He pointed to the xray attached to the light box.

I leant forward and agreed that I saw the x-ray.

"Well that..." he said, pointing at the xray of my knee "...is an xray of your knee"
He looked at me expectantly. I said nothing, mindful of RHB's exhortations not to call any 'professional' an idiot, especially if they were (apparently she's just read some research about how bad people are at judging their own competence and the less competent they are, the worse they are at arriving at arealistic assessment of same).

He continued " and this xray does not show significant damage to the bone"

He looked at me again, but I maintained discipline.

"So, its probably some soft tissue damage" he hesitated slightly "which probably means a minor surgical procedure, which..."

"When?" I interrupted

"What?" he said

"When can I get it done? Now ? Let's do it" I began rolling up my trouser leg.

I should point out that I didnt actually say the above, nor did I roll up my trouser leg, but by God, King HArry and St George at this point I had been so frustrated that I wanted to and had even contemplated carrying out the operation my self utilising Toshack's supersharp claws as surgical tools and some elastic bands as replacement cartlidge. What actually transpired was that I left the appointment under the impression that a surgical procedure was imminent, and all I had to do was wait for a letter. I made chilli for RHB that evening in a fizz of excitement as I told her the news "Its finally going to happen".

When the letter arrived, I opened it carefully. Scanning its contents twice, I could see no sentence saying "Your appointment for an operation is ...." Instead, I was invited to call yet another telephone number, this time the number for Patient Choice, an initiative designed to help patients self-select their best options for care. I dialled as instructed:

"Hello, Patient Choice, how may we help?" a friendly voice said

"Well, I dont know" I said " I need to arrange an appointment for a knee operation"

"I see" said the voice," and who do you want to see?"

"I dont know" I replied "I know practically nothing about knee surgery. I suppose I would want to see someone good?"

"Well" said the voice, slightly less friendly " All the surgeons are good. Its up to you to decide which one though."

"Well" I said "What about seeing the best?"

"I regret we dont give out that type of information, I'm afraid" said the voice, sounding neither afraid nor regretful.

I began to worry I was in danger of alienating the voice, so instead of asking what the point of empowering me in respect of a matter that I know absolutely nothing about, I just asked to be booked into the soonest available date - 16 November, 2010. I put the phone down and called RHB "Its the best birthday present I could wish for" I told her. "Dont get your hopes up" she told me.

The end of this very long tale is that of course, this morning's appointment was not the operation, just the final, pre-operative consultation with the actual surgeon. I asked him as I left "Is his definitely it? definitely surgery?" . He concurred. "And all these other examinations, scans, xrays - there's nothing else wrong is there? Some serious underlying problem that you're not sure of?" No, he said, it just routine. Then ( he seems a very nice man) he went on to explain how the efficiency measures of the last few years, designed to filter out unnecessary appointments, focus treatment and act as a barrier to the (very) occasional hypocondriac have built up a layer of triple redundancy that is incredibly inefficient. Furthermore, at least in me, these efficiency measures have led to unnecessary appointments, no (so far) treatment (let alone unfocused( and the development of severe hypochondria in that I suspect I also have thrombosis, gangrene and a necrotising phage, such is the number of scans I have had.

NOne of this is a reflection on the front line staff, who on the whole are very professional, its more a function of an already bureaucratically inclined Government having no idea other than an ideology. While I never imagined my knees being involved in anthropological argument, it is here that we return to the idea of complexity and the collapse of society. Right now though, as long as it doesnt happen before the knobblies get fixed, I'll be happy.

The Intrusive /r/

2010-11-02T21:44:00.003Z

As you are probably aware, the Third year of my studies is upon me, and I am taking it very serioulsy. So seriously, in fact, that in addition to the usual academic research tools - Wikipedia, Twitter and what some guy down the pub thinks, I have started to use books. And not Len Clancy, or that guy who writes about the SAS either - good as that literature is. No some of the books I am using are to be found in the library.

I had thought that the library at University was like the library anywhere else - mostly fiction. As we buy most of our (fiction)books from Amazon I have not previousy bothered with any of the other floors of the library other than the anthropology section on the seventh floor, which I assumed (ie the seventh floor) was the non-fiction section of the library.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that ALL the other floors of the library were also non-fiction. There is almost a whole floor devoted to languages, for example. This was a huge surprise. I imagined that most languages were taught by the dictaphone technique and didnt think that anyone would bother writing any books about them because until you've actually learned the language, a book is pretty pointless. Once you have learned the language, the next obvious step is that you would start to read fiction and Amazon is perfectly good for this, so the need for loads of book titles that no-one understands is beyond me.

Nevertheless, I decided to roam this section of the library to see if there was anything worth reading, and discovered a book on linguistics which features an article on dialect acquisition. That article features these very words:

"A well-known categorical rule of SEE is R-lessness, the elimination of non-prevocalic /r/ in words like summer, water, north..........blah, blah .....shows that the Canadian youngsters.... have made [my italics] very little progress in acquiring R-lessness."

Literally stunning. Incontrovertible Proof, at last, that the brilliant anthropological/sociolinguistic observation I used to make is fact! Canadians DO add "r' to every single word they speak. And if a word already has one 'r' they add few more just to make sure no-one forrrrgets. Of course the brilliant theory this is all contained in doesnt end there. It goes on to explain that the reason Canadians do this is guilt and shame at leaving out other perfectly acceptable letters from words - like the 'i' in aluminium, for example, or most of the correct letters from 'donut'. . Linguistically speaking, who'd 'a thunk it?

When reading doesnt help........

2010-11-01T19:38:00.003Z

There has been, during each year of my degree programme, an elephant in the room. Or rather, a stinker in the timetable - a module that sets one's teeth on edge just thinking about it. Unfortunately, as one of the main tasks I am supposed to accomplish at University is thinking, this means that some, but not all of my teeth, have been ground down to a nub. Or nib. I shall return to whether it is a nib or a nub later.

In my first year, it was the module "Manage your own Learning" , peppered with references to learning styles, that provided grist for the mill. Dubbed "Bring Your Own Beer" by a colleague now departed from the course, it uncritically presented learning styles as "fact" and endowed us with the knowledge that verbs are, in fact, called "do" words. In the second year, a module called Social Policy and Learning was about nothing of the sort, but was in fact a three month moan fest about the direction of about the direction of primary schools over the last thirty years(in the UK) from one (political) perspective. Despite the fact that I might agree with this perspective, after a month, the predictable line was presented at each lecture that teaching had undergone de-professionalization over those thirty years and this was, we were told, a bad thing. The obvious question I was obliged to ask after a few weeks was "Is it? Can Napoleon really have been that wrong?"

This, the third and final year, the guilty party is a work experience module I am obliged to attend. It is not so much that I am obliged to obtain work experience, it is that the theoretical framework that underpins the module is Situated Learning Theory. I could perhaps describe, at length, what my objections are to this, but perhaps its best to start with a quote:

"Legitimate peripheral participation has led us to emphasize the sustained character of development cycles of communities of practice, the gradual process of fashioning relations of identity as a full practitioner and the enduring strains inherent in the continuity-displacement contradiction" (Lave and Wenger, whenever)

I am almost tempted to say 'Nice words but what do they mean?', but I cannot. This is mainly because even the words are ugly. And these words are followed by more, usually the same ones, slightly re-arranged.

Compare the above with

"I am proposing that the ability to learn evolutionarily novel information is the result of two types of brain plasticity, both of which evolved to enable humans to cope with variation in ecological and social conditions within lifetimes"(Geary, 2008)

What follows is a load of specific tangible research findings - facts if you will - references, and nice graphs. And a conclusion.

Geary's stuff is truly a thing of beauty, made more so by the fact that there is a strong possibility he will be demonstrated wrong at some point. Wenger, on the other hand, cannot ever be shown to be wrong because nothing is ever said. Reading Situated Learning is like looking out of a plane window during a flight over the Atlantic - all you see is a vast swathe of undefinable grey. You know this impression is incomplete - there is a mass of complexity 'down there' but you cannot get close to any of the detail, you cannot actually touch, follow or describe any of the individual waves. You dont get to smell the ocean, feel the temperature. Ultimately it becomes boring and the beauty of the ocean is utterly lost.

Re-inventing wood

2010-10-13T08:43:00.005Z

It is the start of my third and final term at University. Things are looking good - I am cruising towards a First, pummelled the opposition (ie other students) in my Innovation module last year and have been approached by a Department vis-a-vis a funded PhD.

Admittedly, there are a few things found the house I would have preferred to have completed (I have photographs of the progress we have made, but will only publish them at the start of November) such as my office and the second bathroom BUT last week we were hit by disaster. I was working on my deck. I should explain - previously outside our rear door was a sheet of chipboard resting on a pile of rubble. Not a design affection from the Brutalist school, its just that we didnt have the money to buy a deck. Quotes revealed a price of approximately 350 pounds for a simple 2metre x 5 metre affair. Wood is expensive in the UK, but I guess that's the price of deforesting your country in the name of building an Imperial navy. Anywood, recently, in the yard of the company I occasionally work for (most of September slogging the highways of UK} was a whole bunch of decking. Discrete enquiries revealed that this nearly pristine material - which is actually the most expensive kind being treated, thicker and wider than the normal stuff - was destined for the skip. I took advantage of the fact that as part of the job I was working on a truck was in my possession, and paid for by the company, and loaded the truck until it groaned with decking. With the exhaust pipe scraping the floor (I had overloaded the truck by about 50%) we made it the sixty miles to Hull.

THe end result, and all a visitor will see is a shed, a deck and a pagoda type thingy in our back yard, that were otherwise all destined for the skip. Obviously, I'm delighted I got all this stuff for free, and it did take a lot of effort, but to me getting the stuff was a no-brainer. I just did what my father (and most Dads of the time) would have done. I'm not inclined to see the past with rose coloured spectacles, but my father's generation re-used things as a habit. I can clearly remember, as a wee pup, spending a whole afternoon hammering used nails straight so they could be re-re-used. String would be saved. PLastic was valuable - especially large plastic sheets - and my Dad's shed is still waterproofed using the wrapping from a new sofa they got in the Seventies.

I was telling a neighbour, who was observing my deck-work-in-progress how I had acquired the materials, and if she and her husband wanted some of the surplus, they were very welcome. This same neighbour asked me if I had ridden the length of Hadrian's Wall in aide of Charity and was surprised when I replied negatively. As I completed my explanation my neighbour droooled:

"Oh, I love Freeganism. I love it. You should make some street art with what's left over"

At this point I curtailed the conversation, curtly. I dont really mind that she's fallen victim to the phenomenon of branding and therefore has to re-label a pattern of activity that humans have engaged in for two hundred thousand years, but at Street Art, I draw a great big line. Art, if it is to be conducted at all, should be done for a purpose, thoughtfully and conducted by a skilled artisan. In respect of much street art, the fact that this doesnt happen and is instead a community activity conducted by amateurs, or an assembly of old junk or conducted just because a street thinks it should have some street art means that the Street Art is, more often than not, actually vandalism.

None of this is the disaster reported in the opening paragraphs. The disaster is that as I was trundling towards a completed deck, revelling in the fact that in this house I am finally building stuff for pleasure and not just structural necessity, I discovered that we had a leak in the water pipes below our ground floor. I used the word 'disaster' but in truth it was nothing of the sort - it was merely very inconvenient. A disaster is being trapped in a Chilean mine. The result of our inconvenience though is that when the next visitors come, they may be sitting on a half built deck, with half a floor under their feet, not to mention an uncompleted fireplace.

Business as Unusual

2010-10-06T17:54:00.004Z

"Oft/frequently/often/consistently" I declare/say/announce/whisper/express, (most usually when acolytes/students/pupils/learners/neophytes are struggling with the ridiculous/preposterous/astonishing fact that the words "knight" and "night" sound exactly the same) ".........this........" - I gesture wildly, often at an offensively difficult word to teach (and concept to understand) such as 'since' ' ".....this happens in English. But despair ye not! For, that very difficulty you are experiencing is what makes English such a flexible, and ultimately (I hope you will find) beautiful language." The discussion that follows is one full of praise for the learners' persistence in mastering what can be a difficult language and for the language itself, which is flexible enough to allow sentences such as 'I go bad' to be understood in at least three different ways.

At this point, digress I should for a paragraph or two, permission? I do have a massive admiration for the English language - it allows us to talk to cats, it allows Sal to swear at my fireplace without bothering to give it a gender, RHB to excoriate things and Grasshopper to be "gosh darned knackered", and yours truly to write nonsense. (In her defence, and before a protracted law suit is launched I should rush to add that I've never heard Grasshopper use 'knackered' right next to 'gosh darned' in a sentence, but she has the potential). However, even my massive admiration for English, and my affection for League Tables, cannot allow me to claim that English is the "the best [language] in the World", which is what the UK's new Education Minister recently did at a party rally.

I was watching the new Education Minister's speech at his party's rally with a degree of interest. Not, I should add, that I have (anymore) a particular interest in the Conservatives, as my current view is a minor variance on the Churchillian position that our (current) formulation of democracy is the worst form of Government apart from every other. The variance I would suggest in that statement is that the sentence should stop at the word "apart". For yours truly, minor ideological differences between UK political parties are about as significant as a disagreement at a child's party whether to have jelly or trifle for desert. Thus whether a Party calls itself Labour or Conservative matters to me not a jot - they are equally unwelcome. So normally watching any of them on television is a waste of time better spent watching 'Survivor', 'Celebrity WifeSwap' or perhaps 'Masterchef'.

However, the recently elected Government have caught the eye, because it has promised to embark on a system of power, wealth and equity redistribution whose scope is breathtakingly impressive. The scale of the planned changes to the UK's economy as a whole, social life at every level and Government support for the ill, the old, the weak and the poor is massive, unprecedented, revolutionary.Unfortunately perhaps, the re-distribution seems to be in the un-preferred direction - namely upwards (demographically speaking) and Southwards (where their power base is). All the talk is of cuts - benefit cuts, heating support for elderly people cuts, job cuts, wage cuts and, crucially for my interests, education cuts. So my interest in this person's speech was twofold:

a. How stupid was it of me to decide to get involved in Education (you get blamed for every ill of society, told you are living in an Ivory Tower and get paid neither overtime or a salary that reflects the additional work you actually do) when I should have chosen banking (you can ruin a countries economy, get paid for it, rapidly forgiven and then carry on as you where)?

b.From a wider perspective, should I wait until riots engulf the country before fleeing back to Canada or wait until the removal of the Harpon tyranny and restoration of democracy there?

Predictably perhaps, the speech revealed nothing of substance, unless you count a deep feeling of unease substantial. It was a typical party conference speech - playing to the prejudices of his audience and absent of content. However, he did make the claim that "English Literature is the best in the world". Naturally, as the UK's (joint) second best academic, and lifelong Celtic FC fan I am interested in rankings. So, in an intensive five minute search of Google and Wikipedia, I decided to research the claim as I was interested in what evidence might support it. A list of Nobels (I am still waiting for the letter re: Civilization: Why???? trilogy) by nationality seemed the best place to find the answer. Unfortunately, for the Minister, the Nobels dont help his argument - the Germans (8) and the French (14) far outstrip the UK's number of Nobel prizes for Literature (5 or 6 depending on whether George Bernard Shaw is counted as English or Irish). So I tried searching for the best selling books of all time. Again, our minister has no support there, as the Bible, Words of Mao T'se Tung and the Quran all outstrip the next best sellers - the Harry Potter series. Potter is by far the best selling fiction phenomenon, and perhaps, I thought, after some reflection, the Minister is referring to this, and perhaps he meant "English Literature is the one I like the best". Whether Harry Potter is something a nation should be particularly proud of or not is surely a matter of subjectivity, and in deciding what to read, there is absolutely nothing wrong with subjectivity, nor with Harry Potter. But if an Education Minister for the eight richest (I looked up a list) country in the World cannot tell the difference between "my favourite" and "the best" then what chance do my learners have in the revolution that is coming??

May you live in interesting times

2010-10-06T16:10:00.006Z

Watch this

Read this

Today I have little time to explain this to my friends not acquainted with football as I have just, finally, completed my summer's programme of work, having returned from LOndon last night at 1.30am. But these links provide a back story for a series of events that have interrupted sleep, caused worry and endless discussion for the last three years. Although YWNA is named (sort of) after our club's most well known song, these pages infrequently refer to the sport - as I've mentioned before, there are many other websites that "do" football better.

As tiredness is a major factor at the moment I will write no more for now, except to say what has happened to LFC are a perfect example of why the common business practise of "leveraged buy-outs' should be illegal.

Creative Anarchy

2010-10-01T08:57:00.003Z

"WAKE UP AND GIVE ME THE SAT-YOU F***** M**** T***. WAKE UP!!!!" I shout, then repeat the exercise. Futilely, if there is such a word. I should rush to assure family members that the 'F**** M***T***" in question is not RHB, and this is not a retelling of the incident that occurred merely a week ago when, en route to a family party, we managed to get lost with a sat nav AND a map because she disagreed with the sat-nav. Alas, humourous as RHB's ability to get lost is, and as taleworthy as her ability to cause an argument in an otherwise unoccupied elevator might be, today's F******** etc etc is Icksy, my erstwhile work supervisor, who has not made an appearance in these pages for a while.

For those who dont know, I worked with Icksy for a period some time ago. He is small, with an appearance that, as a youth, would have been called 'urchin-like'. As an adult, a diet of pie, chips and beans, poor dental hygiene and stress levels through the roof mean that he looks more 'goblin-like' than 'urchin like'. His facial colouring travels through a palette of reds in the course of a day - from 'raw beetroot', through 'indigo sunrise' and 'sierra rocks' and back again. His dental hygiene is wanting, to say the least and his mood throughout the day(s) ranges between 'angry', 'belligerent', 'unhelpful', 'sulky' and 'unpleasant'. His digestive system appears non-functioning and he is apparently sick throughout the whole weekend with 'food-poisoning' (apparently a sandwich in the hotel), 'bad water' (apparently London's water is 'bad'), a bad cold (apparently different germs in London caused by immigrants)and a massive migraine (apparently a bad nights sleep and elevated noise levels in London). On top of all of this, and perhaps worse of all, he mumbles in his strong Yorkshire dialect, so not only can I not hear what he is saying, but I would'nt understand it even if I could. The whole effect, from my perspective, is that I have to spend 48 hours in the company of a dying Klingon with ill-fitting false teeth, the only difference being that where Klingons are (rightly) famed for their ruthless efficiency, Icksy is a walking definition of the word 'hapless'.

Why, you ask yourselves, would the joint second best academic in UK, (coincidentally Hull's leading scenic carpenter) be working with this specimen? Mostly, its because the company I work for has once again been re-structured. The trickle down effect of this is that instead of another freelance colleague being employed to travel to London on a mission essential to the company, regular workshop staff have been drafted in because they dont get paid overtime. I assume this seems a more efficient use of resources to the company (where people = resources. This notion is a misreading of human society so acute it deserves another post of its own about modern day project management) so at the end of a forty hour week, Icksy is informed that he is travelling with me to London to work the weekend. The results of this efficiency have been that I have had to work with a miserable, inefficient, error prone, bad tempered small person for almost 24 hours straight.

We are en route to yet another emergency pick-up of supplies (caused by him), this time a full hour's drive away across London, to a location neither of us have ever been before, Icksy has fallen asleep in the passenger seat of our 7.5 truck cradling the sat nav like a teddy bear. The visual display cannot be seen from the driving seat (my location)and because this is a big truck, and he is very little, he is too far away for me to reach over and slap repeatedly until conciousness returns, as this would result in an alarming loss of control of the vehicle. And, the stupid midget has disabled the volume, because, he said later, it was "distracting" him. We are on a motorway, approaching a junction where several options present themselves and I have no idea which junction to take. (Note: Our overseas readers should be aware that in the UK it is not permissable to stop on motorways, even with the stated aim of pummelling one's companion). The wrong choice, could add another hour onto our journey and we have a deadline to be back onsite which is already tight.

I guess recklessly, take the ramp and head in a new direction. Ten miles down the road there are services, so I swing in. Once in the car park, I line the truck up precisely with a row of trees and press the accelerator pedal. The resultant necessary hard braking nearly catapults Icksy out of his seat and through the cab window.

"Prick" I say, jerk the sat nav from his hands, and accelerate out the car-park. Icksy, fully awake now, looks confused, but that is the natural set of his face and I'm in no mood for explanations. Rejoining the motorway, the sat nav tells me that through sheer luck, I took the correct exit, so I continue en route. Five minutes later Icksy informs me, as he has at approximately fifteen minute intervals throughout the previous twenty four hours, that he has "bad guts" and needs a washroom. "We've just been to a services, why didnt you go then?" I ask him maliciously, and carry on. He starts moaning, holding his stomach, interspersing his groans, farts and burps with "Sorry".

The only redeeming feature of the whole weekend is that during it, Icksy actually has to try to install objects at the exhibition hall he has personally built. This is redeeming because my job is to try to install, at various venues, the objects Icksy has built in his workshop. Despite numerous debriefs, friendly hints and advice, he has consistently failed to consider my 'onsite' world in his construction techniques leading to every install being much more difficult than it should be. Naturally, one hates the sitcom phrase "Welcome to my world" but for once it seems appropriate as he rebuilds yet another desk.

On the road

2010-09-16T10:07:00.003Z

I have only the vaguest idea where I am. This is not, I should rush to assure the reader, a repeat of the occasion, roughly fifteen years ago, when I briefly became a mentalist and was unsuccessful in finding RHB in our one bedroom apartment for over two hours - a situation that led to the prescribed ingestion of copious amounts of valium, and is a story perhaps for another time, involving as it does a picnic, pork chops, emigration and a warehouse in deepest Wales - rather this current lack of orientation is entirely technological in origin, and sanely work related.

The reason I have no idea where I am is that just five day after our bike ride, I am working once more for my previous employers, work that involves installing a travelling exhibition for a large company at various venues across the UK. Such employment has always been slightly discombobulating as the daily sequence is similar to a rock and roll tour: highway-venue-hotel-drink-venue-highway but in my previous UK incarnation, an enjoyable part of every day, (and practically the only intellectual exercise achieved) was route planning via the use of out-of-date physical maps. A century later, and the efficiencies of satellite aided navigation mean that all I know, and heartily resent, is that I am in a very pretty little village that is, as I later tell RHB, "not far from Birmingham". East, West, South, North, town names, visible landmarks,signposts, road identifiers such as 'A46', friendly passers by giving directions - all are forgotten and forbidden navigational tools in the era of sat-nav. All a driver knows is a postcode then "turn left", "turn right" and "take the exit". So I have, and now I 'have reached my destination'.

I turn off the unlit country road into the driveway of the destination - a hotel my employers have pre-booked for me, and stop my vehicle, sighing. I open up my faux leather LFC crested notebook and turn to a list I have made over the previous three days. The list is titled "Debrief items for discussion with Project Manager". A quick scan to ensure this entry is not a repeat of a previous one, and I write:

'Item 26: To admin: Do NOT, under any circumstances, book hotels for conference installers where the descrption of the hotel includes the words "quaint", "barn", "rural", "ivy", "duck pond", "Ye", "hideaway", "historic","tranquil". '

I replace the notebook in my bag, start the engine and go to disengage the brake. A thought strikes me, so I cancel that action, retrieve the notebook and add to my entry:

"NOTE; This does not imply that I dont appreciate your sentiments in booking me into these hotels. Its just that when you mentioned you'd put additional effort into booking me 'nice hotels' for this trip, I was thinking jacussi, penthouse, sauna."

This addition is necessary, I think, because it is possible that the debrief I intend to conduct may, even if only by virtue of its length, cause some minor offence within the company. I dont want to sour things unnecessarily, but I can already see how other entries might be seen as criticism. For example, Item One concludes:

"... so never send this idiot out on the road with me again"

While Item Five helpfully advises:

" .......when constructing display boxes incorporating tv screens that are supposed to have hinged rear panels for access to the integrated DVD players, ensure your workshop doesnt glue, screw and pin said access panel permanently closed with screw holes filled, sanded and painted. I feel that the words "Access panel do not fix" that were written in bold across the aforementioned panel provided a sufficient clue to your production manager that these additional fixings were unnecessary. The placement of a DVD player on a shelf behind the access panel, might I feel, have provided additional information if only because his own empirical attempts to activate said DVD player via a remote control through 18mm of solid MDF should have proved unsuccessful. What I find mystifying is not only that your workshop has done this to all five boxes incorporating access panels, tv's and DVD players, but that your production manager claims to have tested these DVD players by watching 45 minutes of home produced pornography - 'Bertha's Birthday', I beleive - after they were assembled. Such an achievement, if true, implies a mastery over natural laws suggestive that he may be better occupied in research at one of the better universities.."

Noting mentally that I may have to edit my list somewhat, I release the brake and attempt to manoeuvre my 7.5 tonne lorry down the narrow unlit driveway. There is a right angle turn 50 metres down the driveway so as I concentrate on not demolishing a 500 year old ivy covered barn with the tail end of my truck as it swings round, I simultaneously must avoid plunging through the historic pond directly ahead and must also line the vehicle up to cross the quaint bridge past that. This involves a lot of low gear work so the tranquility of the rural night is shattered by the roar of a diesel engine at high revs. Barn owls flee in panic at the noise and a the pounding of hooves is evidence of a cattle stampede in a field nearby. After half and hour of this, the driveway is negotiated and the truck is parked, matter out of place, in front of "Ye Olde Station: The Perfect Hideaway".

I climb out of the cab and walk to the front door. It is nine pm and I am ravenously hungry. The prospect of a home cooked farmhouse meal is tantalising. Unfortunately, a lightning bolt awaits. With trembling hands I unstick the piece of paper taped to the oaken front door:

"Hello Mr Nickson. Your office said to expect you at eight. Waited half an hour, but as you are the only guest tonight, have gone home. Tried to reach you but no phone signal. Will return at ten thirty to see if you have arrived. If you are hungry there is a very good restaurant near Coleshill. Just follow the A56 south west. Its about ten miles, so only a fifteen minute drive. My home phone is 98763632."

I return to the cab, open my notebook and amend my notes. I cross out the numeral "26" from my most recent entry and write, and underline, in words, "ITEM NUMBER ONE".

Broken Britain: The Ride Of Hope.

2010-09-03T16:04:00.004Z

Dateline: Ride minus ONE day
Location: Large Mansions, Kitchen/Bicycle Storage Area.

"Wow, Nel" I enthuse "Bob the Bike (from Bob's Bike's) is great. A full service in preparation for my ride only cost me $23.00. Bob's doing a similar Coast to Coast route on Saturday, so I think he's sympathetic to touring cyclists and gave me a great deal"

"That's nice" say RHB.

Dateline: Ride plus TWO days
Location: Mile 74 somewhere between Silloth and Carlisle on the deserted Cumbrian Coast.

"What I dont understand," says Skarra, helpfully, "What I really dont understand, is why you didnt get the bike serviced before we left".

I insist, again, that I did. And I detail my conversation with Bob the Bike, whereby I explained the route, duration, expected terrain, weather and approximate speed of our expedition. And that I needed a full service, pointing Bob to regions of concern - the brakes, wheel balance, gears and interactions thereof.

I then return my attention to my rear wheel which is boasting three loose spokes. When I have decided what to do about that, I can turn my attention to the front brake cable, and then the failing gears - other victim of Bob's discount maintenance. Skarra is a time-served boffin, and is therefore relentless in his pursuit of logic and hence cannot understand how it can be that I claim to have paid for a bike service, yet the bike gives every appearance of having had no treatment prior to our venture other than being assaulted with a large mallet. However, the breed Skarra typifies - psychologists - are a sensitive crew, trained in the ways of the mind. They know when a rider might need not to be doubted, but supported. So he offers sympathy:

"You know, this maintenance work you had done is so bad, it makes you wonder whether the whole bike is going to collapse under you on a steep downhill". He laughs sympathetically shaking his head "The luck you've had so far, it would probably happen right in front of an articulated lorry on a blind bend. Are you sure that your emergency brake repair is safe? Looks a bit ropey to me. Sheesh, that Bob!". With these comforting words he tuts and wanders off for an ice-cream.

Most of this conversation occurs somewhere along the Cumbrian coast. It is an amazing place, with an air about it of being lost in time. From the windy little village of Seascale, past the Sellafield nuclear power plant where armed police cradle machine guns(still an alarming sight in the UK), through the charming resort of Maryport up to Silloth, locals, whether in cafes or bars, garages or at emergency bike repair stops are friendly and interested. Even in Whitehaven, which only several months ago was subject to a mass murder, there is chat and advice. The pace of life seems slow, even to someone used to Hull's village-like atmosphere, and the advice (directions, weather, how to ride, what to go and see) is, like most village-borne advice, completely useless. We leave Cumbria with the sense that most of the people we speak to have never been anywhere else and dont see the need to do so. IN talking to us, they're just being friendly. It is the closest I've ever been to experiencing the unreality of Chatwin's Patagonia.

Dateline: Ride Day One
Location : Barrow in Furness Railway Station

"What I dont understand" says Skarra "What I really dont understand, is how we can have booked tickets for ourselves on this train, with seat reservations, and booked our bikes on the trains at the station, and have tickets for said reservations only to be told that those reservations are meaningless".

"Now, now " says the guard of the 14.36 Barrow to Ravenglass "The reservations arent meaningless, its just that there are too many people on the train. So you cant get on."

"You mean" I say "We cant get on with our bikes?"

"No" says the guard "You cant get on at all. Train's full"

I'm trying to make sense of what I'm being told. It feels vaguely familiar.

"Do all of those people" Skarra points at the single carriage train, which, at the moment resembles more a mobile sardine tin than a method of transport "Do all those people have reservations?"

"Probably not" says the guard, "But they were here before you. If you'd been here before them, we could have accepted your reservations. But we still could'nt have taken them bikes. Your best bet is to wait for the next train. You'd be first then, and the guard would probably accept your reservations. Still, that's no guarantee you could get those on" - he nods at the bikes as if they are back engineered alien technology, fresh out of Area 51.

Suddenly the engine driver appears, full of authority, and with the demeanor of someone who once knew someone who rode a bicycle and therefore can relate to wierdos, he announces he will try to get the bikes in his cab. The assembled crowd of Cumbrians (about fifty) give a small cheer and he grabs my bike and proceeds to attempt to ram it into his cabin, with the pointless optimism of someone who has never moved a piece of furniture in his life. He obviously has less chance of succeeding that the crowd of farmers and race-goers have of sobering up before Christmas but perseveres for several minutes. Then, with a few comments about "over-sized bikes", "just not made right" and (mysteriously) "its a train not a bus" he abandons his efforts and flings the bike back at me.

Dateline : Ride Day Three
Location : Somewhere in Northumbria, near Hadrian's Wall

We are on a deserted country road and have been riding for a few hours, and having argued ourselves to a standstill on the origins of agriculture, are discussing the current fad for sponsorship. It seems, we agree, that practically anyone who indulges themselves in vacations like the one we are having, feels the need to get t-shirts printed, whip up some press coverage and raise money for a 'worthy' cause as part of the process. The reality is that cycling coast to coast, snorkeling across the Irish Sea or playing poker non-stop are, like all human recreations, simply indulgences of the participants - but a wierd mass-guilt seems to have grown whereby people feel the need to justify such activities by getting "sponsored" to do them. It is unfathomable, but we feel we are missing something by not having a 'point' to our ride. So we decide to call it Broken Britain: The Ride of Hope and occupy sometime during the next few days speculating on how big the welcoming committee will be when we reach Newcastle, and discussing the good we are doing bringing hope to a blighted nation.

This however, doesnt really make us feel any worthier so attention is returned to the utterly selfish passtimes of measuring each climb, enjoying the silence, spotting birds in the hedgerows, and towards the end of each day, thinking about the meal ahead.

Dateline : Ride Day Five
Location : Downhill towards Newcastle

It takes about a day and a half to climb to the highest elevation on Hadrian's Wall by a circuitous route. And it takes about an hour and a half to descend to sea-level at breathtaking full speed. Descending on a bike looks easy, and up to a point it is - you just stop pedalling. But with some experience, you learn that there is an art to descending - techniques to employ, and lines to take that result in a faster ride. And it only gets really exciting when you are just at the limits of your ability to control the bike, but - and this is very important - are aware that you are at those limits. At that point - when it is just stupid to even attempt to apply the brakes - there are decisions to make. Such as whether to lean even steeper into the corners, whether to crouch down lower, whether to start thinking about what will happen if the chain flys loose and gets jammed in the gears. At some points in the descent, we went way past that point, and it really did become a ride of Hope.

Dateline: Final Day on the Road.

The ride through Newcastle is horrible. Horrible because its through an identikit urban landscape. And horrible because we have to keep getting off to cross intersections. But mostly horrible because Red Bull has happened to Newcastle. In addition to being a favourite drink of alcoholics and heroin addicts, Red Bull are responsible for making sports like cycling, skateboarding, and even running, a fashion accessory. I dont really care about other hobbies, but the impact on such a Grand Old Man as cycling is to be regretted, and in Newcastle, once a favourite, down to earth Northern town, Bullites are everywhere. Throughout the rest of our ride, the on-road camarderie has been as it ever was. Passing cyclists wave at eachother, or you chat for a few kilometres if going in the same direction. In Newcastle however, steely eyed, lycra-clad, square-jawed Bullites overtake too close relentlessly. Approaching riders in this seasons 'must have' cycling shoes pretend to mess with their gears as we pass, refusing eye contact. Frantic 'exciting' heavy rock music pous from headphones and these boys look as if they want to look like they mean business. Personally, I doubt if, inbetween watching the 'Dave' TV channel, and flying off to Bucharest to 'grab a quick break' they've ever had the time to ride more than the ten mile poser ride along this horrible river path. There's a whole sporting culture developed of unfit, ill-informed ignorami (the plural of ignoramus) who, in the future will be fat lazy forty year olds, still drinking Red Bull and watching 'Dave TV' but with state of the art bikes gathering dust in the garage along with their snowboards, wind-surfers, skateboards and weights benches. The stuff should be banned.

Dateline: Evening of return to Hull
Location: Neighbour's back garden

"Hi, where've you been all week?" asks a friendly neighbour.

We are celebrating someone's birthday, and while I would rather be in a hot bath applying lanolin to some aching limbs, there is also a chance to talk, a little, about our adventures.

"Oh, you know. Just riding coast to coast. HAdrian's Wall actually. About 200 miles. Pretty cool".

"Wow" says the neighbour " That sounds brilliant. What charity did you do that for?"

Hadrians Wall

Hadrian's Wall

2010-08-29T17:15:00.005Z

As with the last few weeks, time remains of the essence - a rare, exotic essence, hard to find and very precious. Tonight's missive will therefore be as short as the last few, but there are a few topics to address.

Hadrian's Wall cycle ride;

First item is that tomorrow morning, myself and Mosside Paul - ie ace guitarist and keyboard wizard comprising the other half of Cheek to Cheek, Paul Skarrat - are off on a journey who's outcome, presently is unknown. Months ago, feeling the need to experience the wind in our hair, the freedom of the road and miles of tramacadam crumbling beneath our wheels, we committed to ride Hadian's Wall cycleway. 174 miles of bridle paths, small roads, cycleways and ramblings meander across the hills of Norhtumbria in Northern England, roughly following the path of the wall constructed by the great Roman. The route, designed to avoid four wheeled vehicular traffic, is unbelievably convoluted. When we discussed the ride, and then booked the hostels and inns whence we would be staying, training rides were planned, a strict diet was to be observed and stamina was to be built. With about twenty four hours till we start riding, a sad tale of a summer bereft of training for the ride has unfolded. I have made furniture, done some work in Leeds,bone hiking in Scotland, gone to a wedding, visited a lighthouse, planted a few bushes, got drunk a few times and spent a total of about four hours a week on the bike. I suspect pain, particularly in the bum region, is on the horizon.

Into the hills with Brad and Amelia.

HAvent yet had time to organise these shots into an album, but we did a bit round Lochnagar a few weeks back. Brad and Amelia were scoping out a new climb here. For those interested this is Creag an Dubh Loch. I took some shots of the scenery on the way in :

Work:

AT the last moment, after a very quiet summer, my friends Luke and Tom called me in for some work in Leeds. As usual it was long days and the project is one of the more challenging ones I have been involved in. That occured last week, and so further delayed preparations for the ride. Still the physical nature of the work, and the the three hour per day commute was good stamina training.

Knobblies:

After two years of negotiations with the UK National Health Service, I recieved a phone call from my doctor's surgery that a letter awaited at his surgery in respect of an appointment to fix my knees. I hot footed it down to the surgery, picked up the letter, raced home and opened it. To my dismay, contained within was not an appointment date, but a direction along with a password and user name to a website where, it promised, I could choose a date for my appointment. I logged on and flew through the onscreen instructions, anxious to get these knee problems finally resolved. On entering my password and user name, however, the website opened a new window, proudly displaying the name, address and phone number of HUll's muscularskeleto clinic. The onscreen directions told me to call the number. So I telephoned the number and a human voice answered. I explained my quest. The , listener, after checking my details politely congratulated me that I had successfully registered with the clinic and said a letter would be sent to me with the appointment date. Hesitantly I enquired why I could not arrange a date there and then, over the phone. The answerer confirmed that this was possible but not allowed:

"Its the rules, I'm afraid..." she explained. A letter was promised within a few weeks.

It has been three weeks since this conversation. Mentally I am prepared to return to my own doctor when I return from the wall to repeat the whole operation.

Dilithium Crystals

2010-08-06T17:23:00.004Z

I walk into the small store, just past the railway arches. The store's walls abound with the sharp glittering tools necessary for the trade. The owner, a smallish, tidy gentleman nods in my direction:

"Morning, Alf " I chirrup "How's tricks?"

"Not so bad" says Alf "Bit busy, but that's Friday's for you in this game. What can I do for you? The usual?"

I affirm Alf's suggestion - not that I have a great variety of choice - and sit on one of the stools. Alf's rapidly to work, a true craftsman, and shortly he's done. I examine the results carefully - not that given the limited scope for invention I would seriously contemplate alternatives - and issue thanks to Alf for his services.

"No problem, Martin. See you next week."

Arriving back at the house, I insert one of the new keys Alf has just cut, making sure it works properly. Naturally it does, after all, Alf has had so much practice cutting my lost keys that he could probably do it by hand without using the one remaining original (actually a third or fourth generation model from the key supplied with our fornt door lock).

Next , I start work on another key, this time the computer variety. Recent troubles with the very instrument this note is being scrawled upon have meant that the computer has had to go away to computer hospital. It has been recieved back, but the problems remain so next week it is back into the University to be repaired again. 'What, I wonder' you may muse ' Might be this technical glitch?' And if computer literate you might, for want of something better to do, consider the options - hard drive, drivers, sound card, applications, operating systems. And if you were to communicate these concerns to yours truly you would be repeating the actions of one Red Haired Boffin. Quite how fruitless such ponderings are, at least when expressed to yours truly, can be illustrated by this reconstructed conversation.

"Nel. Its brokened."

"What is, my cherub?"

"The 'puter thing. It broked and now it wont work"

"What happened, my dove?"

"Last week it worked. THis week it dont work. I hate it?"

"Let me see if I can help you darling. What happens when you boot up?"

"UH?"

"What happens when you start it up?

"Nuttin"

"Have you loaded any software recently? ANy new applications?"

"?"

"Did you touch anything other than the "ON" switch I labelled for you?"

"'ourse not. 'Ust typed summat.Now it broke. That 'puter - it dont like me"

"Oh, you silly sausage. Computers are just a series of on/off switches. They dont have any personal preferences.....you should'nt get frustrated like you did last time. You did'nt ....well... hit it again did you?"

AT this point in the conversation, I jump up dramatically, point to the skyline above the houses opposite and shout "Look !!! Aliens are landing! "

RHB is un-decived and laughs indulgently. "Dont worry my little freckleless one. I'll sort it out. You go and play your guitar."

Two hours later, a Tasmanian Devil stalks into the room where am diligently practising my scales, and between hyperventilations, screeches "WHERE IS YOUR BIGGEST HAMMER??? THE ONE YOU USED ON CONCRETIA??"

SOmewhat alarmed, I dive into my tool kit and provide the required instrument which is then snatched out of my hand. The hammer leads the way back down stairs as a furious psychologist practises, assessing how much swing she can achieve. In a flash I realise what she is intending, so I pass her on the stairs, grab the nearest available cat and place it on my computer. Rapidly returning to sanity (on sight of a small furry creature), and with bulging eyes gradually returning to normal, RHB lowers the hammer. "THis computer really hates you doesnt it? WHich" she continues " I dont mind, except that it seems to think I have something to do with you and now it hates me as well."

In other news, there are two agenda items of note. THe first is that Cheek to Cheek have been commisioned to record a movie soundtrack. I am of course, perfectly serious about this. Whether our soundtrack gets accepted or not is another matter, but the local charity I work for is making a film and we are doing the soundtrack, so that has kept us busy.

The second agenda item is that the best health service in the world has finally accepted that having torn ligaments/tendons/cartilage is a problem for a not-quite-fifty year old. After second, third and even fourth opinions, and two years of wrangling, I have been able to persuade the local hospital to take the first steps to repairing the damage which lurks around my knees. Previously, under the best health service in the world, the fact that walking was, occasionally, so painful as to make the act not worthwhile, has been deemed "not a serious enough problem", "not treatable", "tolerable and not urgent" and "an attempt to claim disability benefit". Now however, I have been able to persuade a consultant that it is at least worth the while of the best health service in the world to conduct a minor surgical procedure to rectify the problem. [Note: a friend from a different country had a similair problem and was fixed within six months].

Finally, the table pictured at he top of this, by now totally random post, is one we made entirley form recycled materials. The local university was throwing out its old lab benches, so I spent two days skip=diving and pulling out large chunks of usuable 100 year old mahogany and oak. What the picture shows is a former physics lab bench, which is now our dining room table. We are very proud of it and look forward to scratching it up with friends in the near future and for some time to come.

Zoo's Who?

2010-07-27T22:34:00.005Z

Glasgow/Stirling July 2010

Frankly, it's an outrage. No, I'm not banging on about the very existence of Blair Drummond Castle, located in the safari park we are visiting, although that same existence is indicative of a feudal modality by no means long erased from our history. And I'm not wittering on about animal rights, although the sights of the larger animals in the park, caged in the necessary cause of establishing breeding populations because of our inability to look after any portion of this small blue planet, did make me sad. As previously stated, this blog is infrequently given to matters political, so it is not these undoubtedly important issues that have caused my sap to rise. No, what is important on this day, and is utterly, utterly wrong is that after not having seen my erstwhile neighbour - one Mr Chris Carriere - for a good few years, and after singing his praises far and wide throughout the Shires of Yorkshire and beyond, the same Mr (how it grieves me to give him a gentleman's form of address) Carriere has acted with breathtaking mendacity and cheated in our race down the aqua slide, shoving off on his hessian mat before the count of "One, Two, THREE " is up.

It was though, as the attached slide show illustrates, a damn close run thing, with Mazzer nearly catching the Canadian at the bottom. Shades of the winter Olympics, methinks! And joking aside - in case you hadnt realised I was joking - we had a great day at Blair Drummond Safari park with Joanie, Chris, Lena and Iain. The meeting - sadly only one day - was much shorter than we had initially planned. The original sketch was a meeting in the Outer Hebrides, where the guys spent a week or so, for a few dyas closer to wilderness, but ideals and cash conflict, with pragmatism winning the upper hand. Travelling within the UK is hideously expensive and involved as we are in the "credit crunch" (AKA Global economic meltdown) an absence of employment has tightened reduced our own money supply temporarily so a more economical overnight trip to Glasgow (where their vacation was ending) was arranged.

However as a group, we are made of sterner stuff tha to allow minor things like the imminent collapse of society to spoil a good time. The Carriere-Veitch contingent have, after all, survived frequent suspensions of democracy via the Harpon tyranny, and self and Large have two cats, so collectively, we're a pretty tough group. In short, we had a great time. It is slightly irksome, for self and Large that most of our favourite people live an ocean away, but on the average day, that is closer than London, UK, if travelling time due to roadworks is taken into account. Having met up with Joe and Anna, Grasshooper and Burt last year, and JC and then the Carriere-Veitch Syndicate this year, Nel and I estimated that we only have to encourage about another fourteen Canadians to visit the UK and we can legitimately claim to have hosted a nation, as it is common knowledge that the population of Canada is "about twenty".

How to change a bicycle Rear Wheel; Number one in a Series of Simple "How to's". Sponsored by Calli, Tosh, Lilly, Hannibal, Diego and Several Brians

2010-07-06T23:30:00.002Z

Many of us like to go cycling, especially in the summer. The joy of the wind in the hair, the clasp of tight lycra round the speculative organs and the knowledge that unless you've just eaten Mazzer and Burt's famous "Drunken Pineapple Chicken", your journey will be totally emission free. However, your carefree days of cycling can be endangered by some common problems. Possibly the worst of these is an attempted murder by a lunatic hit and run driver. If this should happen to you, resulting in stress breaks to the rear wheel spokes, dont just swap out the good back wheel for a crappy olod one you happen to have lying around, leaving the good one to fester under a pile of insulation in your unfinished loft for 2 years. No, act promptly - fixin' up that old back wheel is easier than you think. Here's how:

Step 1: Find said back wheel under boxes when inexplicably searching for favourite Halloween costume in middle of summer, preferably when you are supposed to be making a new fireplace.

Step 2: Identify problem with wheel.

Step 3: Search internet for possible solutions. You may be tempted at this point to spend over $15,000 on a new wheel but as you have already committed £500 of your family fortune to buying shares in Liverpool Football Club (without telling your partner) as part of a fan-based syndicate you decide that the easy to follow instructions on how to change the wheel are easy. Especially as you are, allegedly, "handy".

Step 4: Rush out, and buy new wheel anyway because you discover that it takes weeks to get the parts - hub, gears etc whereas you can buy a complete pre-assembled wheel locally, for cheaper. Your plan is to strip the new wheel of the parts you need, and replace the old worn parts on your original wheel with these new parts. It is a brilliant plan.

Step 5: Discover, on re-reading the various internet guides, that you have none of the correct tools. decide to improvise. (Note: Its actually day six of your repair by now).

Step 6: Start improvising. Results are oil on best hiking pants, 2 scared cats, big grooves in the grass where the wheel has spun out of control as you try to unscrew the hub, and a suspected broken finger from hammer impacts. You are at "step one" of the internet "how to". The gear cassette remains attached to the wheel.

Step 7: Go out and buy most of the correct tools for the job.

Step 8: Realise NOT buying a bench mounted vise was mistake. Consider building garden shed in order to house vise. Check "bike repair" budget.

Step 9: Fix garden pomd while having "a bit of a think".

Step 10: Take newly bought wheel, old wheel and half-ruined tools to bike shop. Pretend nephew is cack-handed and a bit daft. Nice man agrees to fix "your" wheel. Maintain pretence that wheel is "nephew's".

I hope the guide helps. Next week's guide is "How to Make Raffia Garden Chairs using only materials from your own garden". Should be lots of fun, and be careful to read up on the fact sheet "Drying garden cuttings in the toilet" before starting this project, as you il need a good supply of raffia substitute for the project.

End of the road blues: Part Two

2010-06-30T13:02:00.007Z

We are, I think, all familiar with this famous North American road sign. Having laughed heartily, and, it must be confessed, with a degree of superiority, at whoever planned, designed and then installed the above, it was somewhat humbling to discover that the Scots, famed across the world as engineers, could also concieve of turnpike insanity on an equal level. The first glimmer of this came about five miles up the half-metalled single track clifftop track that leads to Rubha Reidha. As our car crawled along, clinging to the path with every ounce of traction available to it, my companions were marvelling at the 300 ft cliffs that plunged away on our left. Suddenly, a hairpin bend took us slightly inland as the road followed a ravine back inland. Another few twists, then the road plunged downwards and darted across the ravine as if it had lost patience looking for a way across. The bridge that (somewhat reluctantly judging by its construction) had followed the road, seemed to be made of old Zimmer frames and bike parts, and on the other side, I could see that the road twisted sharply left, then leapt almost vertically up the hillside as if relieved to be free of the gorge. I slowed the car so that it crawled down the hill, then lined it up along the bridge and gunned it ferociously. We shot across the shambolic span, then more vicious acceleration as the car strained to make the top of the opposite slope without stalling.
As we crested the hill, Culham and Large laughed:"Did you see that sign?"

I was too frightened to pay attention to road signs, but fortunately, later in the holiday, we had time to record it for posterity. The sign, placed just at the approach to the bridge, was the following:

A couple of miles on, another gorge, another sign. It was as if the roadbuilders were challenging truckers:

And finally, about a mile before the lighthouse, the stakes were raised. The final gorge to cross was, it has to be admitted, slightly less imposing than the previous ones. The bridge was, however, still determinedly flimsy. So, just in case a truck much heavier than the 7.5 tonne ones banned from the two previous bridges had decided that 7.5 tonnes was a lower weight limit, the last bridge was protected by the following sign, a sign which refers to what would be called in North America 18 wheeler tractor trailers.
The road also featured in our first encounter with our fellow lighthouserers. Before launching into that tale, I should illuminate it slightly with the information that having learnt Canadian hinking etiquette from two of Nova Scotia's leading plodders, I have, since my arrival in this country, continued the tradition. On a local Sunday hike, amid the gentle hills of the East Riding Of Yorkshire, for example, I will insist on stopping someone on the path and enquiring if they have water, emergency supplies, a map, compass, sturdy shoes, a whistle and all the accoutrements necessary for wilderness venturing. Of course, the East Riding of Yorkshire is hardly the wilderness and the fact that the person being grilled is probably just walking off a hearty Sunday lunch, and that, in this crowded country the last thing they want is a conversation with a stranger, and also that in this part of England, a fully equipped supermarket, not to mention their house, is usually just over the brow of the nearest hill often makes the question superfluous, but it is a hard habit to shake. Thus spotting a lonely hiker( at nearly ten in the evening) five miles away from shelter trudging up a cliff-top Scotish track, I felt justified in applying the Canadian convention.

I slowed the car gradually as we approached, creeping up behind the hiker until my window was level with her. Once in position, I hit the window control, but unfortunately hit the wrong one, winding the rear window down. Upper most in my mind was the need to ascertain that a fellow hiker was in no danger, so while continuing to drive, and frantically jabbing controls on the armrest to try to get the window down, I started bellowing "ARE YOU ALRIGHT?", "DO YOU NEED WATER???", "IS EVERYTHING OK". While this was going on Cristiana, an Italian of our acquaintance who has never (despite living in Canada and the UK for some time) quite lost what she would willingly describe as a cultural volatility, started shouting at me "What the F***'s are you doing". Additionally, my control jabbing was misguided and the wing mirrors were waggling frantically as the car weaved jerkily along the road. Meanwhile the hiker had on her face an expression similar to that of a startled heron. Taking a slight shake of her head to mean that she was ok, I sped off down the road towards the lighthouse, front and rear windows winding up and down and side mirrors circling merrily, Cristiana still shouting and Nel cackling. It shoud be added, in the interests of historicity, that in truth, we had no water whatsoever in the car. Nevertheless, I felt the gesture was the important thing, and if the hiker had expressed a need for liquid, then one of the bottles of Stella Artois that had been warming in the trunk since Inverness would substituted nicely.

About an hour later, we were settled into the kitchen of the hostel partaking of some liquid refreshment, probably discussing underpants or cats (I had put a cap on the allowed duration of academic conversation per diem) when a mousey head, accompanied by an equally mousey face, poked its head round the door. We all cried a cheery "Hello!", but for a second, I wondered where I had seen that face before. It was only as the face suddenly withdrew from the crack between door and post, in a fashion reminiscent of a doormouse surprised by a snake, that I relaised it was our hiker from the road. The next four days were like living with a ghost. I would emerge from the common shower facility, then, just as I was entering my room down the corridor, would feel a wisp of wind. I would turn just in time to see the shower-room door slam shut and hear the sound of the lock being thrown and what also sounded like large objects being pushed againstit from the other side. I would enter the kitchen for breakfast, short-sighted and dozy as always, half-noticing someone eating at the table, then by the time I had turned round, they would be gone, their meal apprently abandoned mid-mouthful. It was a bit like living on the Marie Celeste.

Others in the lighthouse were equally strange. In the refrectory was a "Wildlife Spotted" whiteboard. Soon after arriving, a smug European pair began to fill this board - "Sea Otter: 7.15am". "Pod of Orcas: 8.20am" "Played water polo with seals until got bored: 18.00 - 22.00". The only word they exchanged with us were the names of the wildlife they had seen, how early in the morning they had seen it, and where, accompanied with a knowing smile. JC rapidly became convinced they were making it up, and proposed retaliatory strikes in the form of made up postings "Kraken: 13.00", "Went to dinner with mermaids: awful hangover" "Unicorn and foal borrowed £2.50. Will return same time tomorrow".

Then there was also the fact that everyone else went to bed at about 10pm despite two very, very comfortable sitting rooms, ideal for groups to gather and chew the fat. This early a-bed is forgivable if they were engaged in vigourous outdoor pursuits requiring an early start, but in truth we saw no sign of that. And the idea occured that they all wanted solitude, but this also seems illogical to me. While I didnt particularly want to have a full blown party, it seems very odd that people would voluntarily go to a hostel where all the facilities are shared and to not want to share even a "hello", but the fact remains that getting a conversation out of most of the other guests was like prising a mollusc off a rock. In truth, what most of the other guests seemed to do was to walk out of the hostel's door in the morning, amble up the headland, remove enormous binoculars from their bags and look at things all day. Inevitably, there was conflict, between our diverse lifestyles and that of the other guests.......

On our third evening I was telling Cristiana, during a particularly aggressive moment, that what I was offering, right there and then, in front of Nel and Jody, was a one-time offer. I continued:

"This is the best offer you've ever had. Turn your back on this, baby, and you'll regret it for ever. And I wont forget. So what's it to be? Right here, right now, on this table - everything you've ever wanted? Or nothing! Zip! Nada. I got it, you want it, lets do it! "

Cristiana's face grew thunderous.

"F**k you, asshole. Keep it. I donna wanna! I got plenty". She made the Italian hand signal at me that means "you are dismissed".

Culham and Large exchanged glances. Large though for a second and glanced briefly at me;

"I've never seen you play Monopoly so recklessly before" she said, before continuing "You're going to go bankrupt, but I'll give you something for the railway stations".

Just at that moment, a head peeked round the door. It was a guy RHB had been talking to earlier, a nightclub owner from London, here with his huband. We assumed that out of all the guests we'd met, being nightclub owners, they'd be up for a laugh.

"Excuse me, it's nearly eleven pm. I'm sleeping right above you. Could you keep the noise down?".

Naturally we did. In fact, we packed up and the next day drove to Inverness, where JC caught a flight to Italy, then Durham where CCP lives, then finally Hull where the cats were waiting and my phone was screaming text messages at me demanding that I travel to London the next day to work.

End of the Road Blues

2010-06-25T16:14:00.006Z

Part One:

As the car winds up the partly paved ('metalled', for some unfathomable reason is the correct term) single track, cliff-top road from Gairloch to Rubha Reidh Lighthouse, the tension, among some of our party in the vehicle, becomes palpable. The reason for this burgeoning trepidation is that the whole future of object recognition research across three continents - Canada, Europe and Hull - has been placed in the hands, amid the dying light of a Scottish evening, of a half-blind, astigmatic Scouser (who's solitary remaining thought is "BEER!!!!") tasked with steering a vehicle both unfamiliar and unsatisfactory, the remaining nine miles of our voyage. And loaded into that vehicle is the combined brain power of Large, Culham and CCP, not to mention et al (with 'al' being the suitcases).

Co-temporally with the vehicle rounding another hair-pin bend, the Scouser in the party (AKA self), democratically minded as always, decides to assess the alert level of his co-travellers in order to decide whether a new operational plan (ie get out and walk) is necessary and safer, given my percepion of our impending doom and immediately discovers two things. The first discovery is that the second year of one's degree programme has not been a complete waste of time because it is now within one's acquired vocabulary to scientifically identify as "less than a phoneme", the unit of sound that it is possible to interject into the conversation occuring between the other three in the car. And the second discovery, gleaned from the conversation of my fellow argonauts, is that they are not echoing my own alert levels (which are set at "Post-Double Red") and I am, apparently, 'flying solo' in my elevated alertness levels . Their conversation, illustrating this, follows a path which, to me, sounds like :

Large: "...of course, the reaction times are less than a micro-second so we have to adjust the sensitivity of the manganlangous timbrational speracity ..."

CCP: ".....I know, but Culham and CCP (2008) quite clearly demonstrated that the occipital parietal/frontal vermiculite sporangieoform nucleus deters reciprocity across the ventral falagacious..."

Culham: "...that's true, CCP...WOW...what a cool cliff . See right here next to us, it plunges at least 330 foot down ..."

The car, therefore ploughs on, and I conclude that it would be an act of extreme impoliteness to interrupt their conversation by reminding the Red Haired Boffin, especially here and now on this road where visual cognition is paramount and hazards such as cows, vertical plunges from cliffs and the onset of evening require acute observational skills, that the driver (self) is a person who is banned - after spectacularly failing as an experimental subject for said visually oriented boffin - from even mentioning the words "object" and "recognition" within the same week let alone the same sentence. In short, I remain schtumm and point the car towards where I think the road probably is, and the cliff probably isnt.

Eventually, we reach the lighthouse, intact and a quarter of the party amends it's thoughts from the previous incarnation "BEER!" to a rather more expansive "BEER !!!!!! NOW!!!!!!!!". That same fourth is also amazed to find that, whatever its preconceptions about a lighthouse might have been, the structure that is to be our accomodation for the next four evenings is a rather tall building perched at the edge of a rocky promontory. Retrospectively, one supposes, it would have been more surprising to find that the lighthouse was a small, squat building in the middle of a field in Leicestershire, but having never stayed in one before, and at the end of ten hours of travelling, excuses, I suppose might be made. But another explanation is that all of our conquistadores are, simply put, 'gobsmacked' by how beautiful the building is, and its placement within the landscape.

The next four days are a blur, but I will try to summarise. On the first night, plans are made by everyone to buy, and move into lighthouses. The next evening, after a hike near to a loch, plans are made, by everyone, to buy, and move into small cottages at the foot of loch-nestling hills. On the third night, all are agreed that a croft on a sea-shore beach overlooking the Atlantic is the most desirable real estate. For self and RHB, this is our first trip to Scotland in about fifteen years and our memories of how beautiful vast swathes of this country can be, are not, for us, exagerrated.

In our next installment, an opinion is offered in respect of our fellow hostellers, a series of curious roadsigns are discussed, Mazzer O'Reilly makes a number of groundbreaking archaeological discoveries and the Fab Four get into serious trouble.

Scotland 2010

End of term exams

2010-06-11T10:04:00.005Z

One of the requisites of modern anthropology is that more than informed consent, any study involving people should be a partnership between the researcher and the subjects. In fact, so strong is this theme that massive books and millions of papers have been devoted to analysis of the correct relationship between the studied and the studees. So much work on this has been done, in fact, that for decades, no anthropology was done while everybody worked out whether those involved in research should be participants, actors, partners, co-eval associates or comrades, and whether researh should be constructionist, textual, mnemonic, bionic, trepidatious or excoriating. By the time everyone had decided that no-one had it right, everyone had forgotten what the point was although because post-modernists can drone on the longest it was generally accepted that they had won.

THe point is though, that studying people should not be a matter of laughing at, judging or otherwise holding others up as curious specimens. And in that spirit, I present the first video of this post. On a recent trip to London, I was describing to my co-worker some several situations that had occured in Canada, where, despite apparently speaking the same language, purchases in a small store close to where I worked became a twenty-five minute pantomime whereby I had to act out the processes involved in dairy manufature, including mooing loudly, in order to purchase some butter. As we drove aimlessly around London, my co-worker, Chris, wondered what Canadians would make of his accent, which is moderately broad Yorkshire. We decided to find out. So in the following video Chris addresses a short sentence to you, Canadians, for translation. We could'nt decide who was being studied - Canadians, Yorkshire people or Scooby Scousers, but if you are a Canadian reading this, the requirement is for a literal translation, not the sense of what Chris is saying, as that is blindingly obvious:

The next video is slightly easier, featuring me and Chris driving through London trying to find the Natural History museum. This video is not ethnographic, just a review (I'm sure most are very familiar with this already) of London traffic, but does feature some of my own tones (cringe!) and Chris' as a comparison for how deeply different we sound:

THe final video is of a the famous anomatronic t.rex at the natural history nuseum. I'm sure many of you have seen this, but on my visit I was reminded that I very nearly got the job to project manage the production of these creatures. As things have turned out, I am happy not to have won that position, as the project (which was to involve a huge park full of these creations in Dubai) ran into numerous difficulties - not least of which was, I believe, some dispute over authenticity as Dubai was never home to Brontosaurii, T. Rex or Albertasaurus.

From Concretia to Hannibal

2010-06-08T10:05:00.005Z

Some may recall that in the northern grounds of Large Mansions, we caused, in an Ozymandian gesture of grandiosity, a great lake to be created. Surrounded by stone edifice, cascading gardens, and hewn from the bare rock, with an area cast at a full two cubits by one, it has become a marvel of the locale, boasting not one, but two fully grown dragons - Diego, who arrived last year, and Lilly, who made an appearance a few weeks ago.The success of the front lake led to an enthusiasm for ponds, so as previously described, we proceeded to install one in the southern reaches of our estate. Prior to our occupancy, the lands here were a barren waste, subject to the tyranny of Concretia, but after a titanic struggle, she was overthrown and the ongoing attempt to reclaim the territory commenced.
With the formalities of history described, I can now introduce you to the new ruler of the Southern Estates. I would like to formally present Hannibal, Benevolent Dictator.

Hannibal is not alone. We have a magnificent collection of beautiful snails, most of which are called Brian. Here's a few pictures of Brian in action.The first picture may well be a little blurred, but Brian was moving at quite the pace when I took this, and it was only later when he settled down that I got the chance to take a better shot. As you can see, Brian is quite the poser. The black spot on the end of the stalk is his eye and he's looking right at the camera here.

In truth, its inaccurate to call Brian "he" as snails are hermaphrodite.

This rear garden also includes about six species of bees. Residents include a burrowing bee that has a next under the apple tree, several bumble bee nests and a smaller variety of what I think are honey bees. There's birds too that regularly visit Hannibal's pond, bathing in the shallows. And every day, there's an incredible variety of new buds from brightly coloured ones to balls of fluff that look like seeds floating on the wind.

This enthusiastic endorsement of gardening might sound like the ramblings of someone preparing for retirement, and there might be something in that, but I realised the other day, when I was watching one of the neighbour hood kids pulling up our tulips that for me, this garden is more a return to childhood. As a kid, I would trap caterpillars in jars, scrounge some lettuce from my mum, then place the jar on the windowsill where the caterpillars inevitably fried in the magnified sun, or died of asphyxiation. My dad disapproved strongly of this as cruelty and insisted that we should leave the caterpillars alone and just watch them, so attention then turned to tracking the cycle of the caterpillars. I would return to the same hedge every day, find the caterpillar, pick it carefully off the leaf and measure it. I say "the" caterpillar, because I was convinced that the one I measured every day was the same one. The mysterious fluctuations in size, apparent fatness and colour that I observed were explained by how "happy" the caterpillar was that day, which of course depended on the weather.

Of course, we continually get congratulated by passing adults on how environmnetally friendly our garden is, and what a "marvellous" thing it is we are doing creating a wildlife habitat. Such readings of our attempts are all very nice and everything, but are totally misplaced. Of course, its a very good thing to encourage wildlife and biodiversity and have natural gardens, there is no question of that, but it is not our motive. It is also very fashionable, unlike the clothes of many of those who stroke their beards or play with their dreadlocks as they stand chatting to us about hemp and composting and honey bee decline, to be ecologically aware - to garden "green". But the earnestness gets tiring pretty quickly. In fact, given all of this, plus the attempts by the corporate world to convince "us" to "do our bit for the planet" by purchasing a "native" British weed from their air-conditioned, oil-heated, plastic filled, road haulage supplied warehouse, the cognitively dissonant part of my left brain wants to tell me to lay down a load of concrete and park a hog in the front. The truth is, the garden is a far as I can get from being politically aware. The garden is a place where six year old boys can crawl round measuring caterpillars, talking to snails and watching, with as little understanding as possible, a small world change.

Add to this at least five spe

They think its all over ......

2010-06-02T17:05:00.005Z

I stare out through the kitchen door window. My companion, equally solemn, watches with me as a hail storm marches across the landscape - or at least that portion of it visible - pearls of ice divebombing Baile Aoisaghe making gardening impossible. I sigh, frustrated, and turn to my friend:

"You know we should have done it yesterday. We could have had them beans all staked neatly. I know we talked about it, but you insisted it had to be today". The truth is, I'm mildly pissed at having allowed myself to be persuaded.

"I'm going upstairs. What about you?" I ask when, after a minute or so, I get no response.

He remains silent, contemplative.

"I suppose its only one more day" I say, anxious to be diplomatic.

I turn to leave. My friend seems more reluctant than me, but eventually sighs loudly, and pushes himself away from the door he's been leaning on. He slumps on the floor, disgruntled and begins loudly grooming his posterior.

Which is when I realised that tomorrow's final examination of my second year of university cannot come too soon. It's true, that in common with most pet owners, I have fallen into the habit of talking to the cats. But there's a big difference between 'talking to the cats' and 'having extended conversations with the cats about agricultural techniques and expecting an answer'. Since Easter, though, I have been reading, essay writing and revising for examinations which, for me, has to be a solo operation, and its obvious that in that period of time a pattern has developed. I realise, with some alarm that not only am I having extended conversations with the cats about agriculture and expecting an answer, but that I am also arguing with them, on a surprisingly consistent basis about what I should do about lunch, whether we should have any confidence in post-processual archaeology and if phenomenology is something we all experience or not. And, I have to confess, I am taking advice from the larger of the two animals on the timing of agricultural activities.

Tomorrow, it all ends, and sanity will return, I hope. I have a slew of activities planned for the summer, all of which can hopefully be accomplished without feline input, and more importantly, with human contact. Plans range from various jaunts to Scotland, East Anglia and as much cycling as I can squeeze in, to recording Cheek To Cheek's seminal first album. And there's also lots and lots of renovation to be accomplished.

I get upstairs to my lair, turn on the computer and click an icon on the desktop - an Excel sheet that I have developed to schedule my summer's fun. I make a few changes to "June", bringing "Make solar panel" forward by a few days, and slipping in "Re-plaster bathroom ceiling" hoping RHB wont notice. I go to press save, halt, then press "Save as" instead. Under file name, I change the name of the file to "Martin's Summer Plans", thereby eliminating the other named party from the file. If Toshack wants to plan his summer, he can make his own Excel sheet.

World Cup

2010-05-23T16:46:00.009Z

"It’s the greatest thing in the world, natural enthusiasm. You are nothing without it."

(Pictured: The Ghana team celebrating third place).

A break in the revision for my penultimate exam on Tuesday sees most of our regular crew at the University to watch a 'mini' World Cup - day long celebration of amateur football between teams representative of the various communities in Hull. It's a first for Hull, and hopefully a regular event, organised by the charity I work for. But because it's an amateur community event does not mean its unprofessional. The referees are from the Football Association, the organisation is slick, and the competition is fierce. It's a bit of a cliche to say 'there were many winners' but it is also true. And its not an aside to add that the victors in the competition were the Kurdish national team. A few photos from the day are pictured below, with a link to the album at the bottom of the page:

MOst of the quotes on the page are of course, from the one and only Bill Shankly, except the last one, which is of course, Kenny Dalglish.

"The socialism I believe in is not really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day."

(Pictured: Kurdish half time team talk in the Final, surrounded by their supporters)

Shanks had been doing a victory lap when Liverpool were celebrating the title win in 1973. A policeman was picking up a fan‘s scarf which had been dropped .
"I have been over to the Kop at Anfield and was on my way back when a policeman took hold of a red scarf as it was a ragamuffin's. I told him off. 'Don't you do that,' I said. 'That's precious.'"

[Shankly then tied the scarf around his own neck and told his friends later when relating this story: 'Fancy doing that? That scarf is somebody's life.']

(Pictured: Fans reacting on award of controversial penalty decision).

Comparing the Anfield pitch to other grounds - 'It's great grass at Anfield, professional grass!'
(Pictured: Irish team drills before match)

“I may have left but the city and club will always be part of me.” (Kenny Dalglish).
(Pictured: Iraqi fans)

Hull world cup

One for the road

2010-05-11T21:52:00.003Z

I exited my class today, exhausted, as usual, and elated, as usual........................................hang on, hang on..........didnt you say no more posts till after the exam? Well, yes I did, actually, but I've just finished demolishing determinism (aagian) , eviscerating Douglass C North's rather silly (admittedly later retracted) views on property rights in the Neolithic and kicked sveral cats on hearing the news that the Labour Party has finally found its moral compass. I felt the need for some down time - hence a very quick post. More on the Labour Party later, but first, back to my story.

I had just left class when I noticed, behind a wall, a flash of colour. Investigating further, the vivid images painte on the wall extended far behind a local store, down an alleyway. I followed the alleyway and discovered, entirely forgotten a whole series of graffitti walls, presumably from the 80's or 90's because since the invention of Gameboy and thos ekind of things, streetart in the UK has become a thing of the past. Anyway, I thought it was a great place as did the couple of smackheads and the old wino who were the only souls in sight.

Unfortunately, my total ineptitude in being to be what I really want to be - a great documentary photographer - continues, so when I suggested to the drunks and the druggies that they should slouch nonchalantly against the wall, so I could photograph them, haunted eyes reflecting the bleak reality of urban England, they declined. I therefore tried the Henri Cartier Bresson technique to capture a few candid shots - which would have equally bleakly illustrated urban decay and doubtless won me a Pulitzer but all I got form those shots was the back of a few heads and one rather prominent ear.

Anyhow, despite this, the photo album is here:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/nickson.martin/HullGraffit#

Oh, Yeah, and Labour finally finding their moral compass. At completely the wrong time. THey havent made a moral, principalled decision for 13 years while in power, and today, just as it looked as if it would be possible that an aliiance could be forged with the LIberal party (with whom they share many values these days and an alliance that might at least have resulted in electoral reform in this country) , they decided that such an aliance was against their principles. If this was not so funny I would cry.

And in sticking to their principles they have condemned the country to massive, massive spending cuts under a Conservative government. Absolute bloody tragedy.

June 6th here we (I) come.....

2010-05-10T20:49:00.005Z

More delays in posting on this site signal but two things. We have had an election in the UK. ANd I am once more embroiled in a titanic battle to "up" my marks.
The election first - UK is, as we speak, in a state of suspension. There was no overall winner in the elections so we have a 'hung' parliament. Actually the phrase 'hung' Parliament is a misnomer. We actually have the perfectly acceptable situation in which the election has not revealed one clear winner. In most European countries, the obvious solution is that the will of the people seems to be towards a coalition Government. In the UK we are told (mostly by the Conservatives) that this will never work. In a sense I can see what they mean - you only have to look at the terrible mess that Germany, the Dutch, the Swiss and the Scandanavian countries get into by coalition governments. I'm actually not going into this in any detail because there's plenty of blogs out there that deal with matters Political, but in short, a hint at my opinion might be gleaned if I inform you that the previous sentence contained a degree of irony.

THe second itemn on tonights agenda is both an apology and a boast. An apology because, as the end of term exams are approaching, posting here will again be intermittent at best. ANd a boast because I recieved the earliest of my end of year results today, and unlike the eletion, there was actually a result. Which is where the boasting starts. Happily, I have improved my scores from the first year and am now averaging somewhere in the low 80's. I am tremendously impressed, although dont tell anyone in case they think I have a big head about this. Which I do.

I resolved fairly early on to follow the advice and heed the experience of those that knew better. So, following Grasshopper, I have studiously conducted independent study after each lecture rather than head off to the student bar. I have shown my work to my worst critic - RHB - and in some cases returned right to the drawing board as a result of her "input" (ref: potentially disastrous. See: Nickson and Large, 1995. Husband or wife teaching the other to drive, but it seems to have worked so far, The Journal of Accidentally Remaining Married for About Fifteen Years, vol 1, issue 3, pp 101-234). I have ignored the ploy of one I have been told of, who steadfastly refused to play the game and consistently handed in brilliant - but completely irrelevant - work and hence achieved nothing. In short, I want to keep doing very well. So between now and JUne 6th, contact will be minimal. The rate of revision will increase as I try to push my marks from the lowish 80's into the high 80's. Wikipedia wil not be used. What recreational time I do have will be spent teaching the cats new tricks.

I should also mention one final thing. The excellent Christmas of 2009 featured heavily the complaints of one "Sal", a spinster of the parish of Mansfield, against the unfinished nature of a wonky, unlevel mock up of a fireplace we were making. The thing was, in short, a great big eyesore, and we teased Sal mercilessy by placing her at the dinner table in very close proximity to the thing. It drove her quite quite madder, to the point where she threatened to faint one night. I should inform those who do not know that SAl is a remarkable artisan/artist/craftsperson and it was quite insensitive of us to expose one of her fine sensibilities to aesthetic torture in this way. I can now announce that we have thoroughly made amends to Sal for this indelicacy. The decision to act was as a result of a sentimental discussion on friends and family still missed in this urban backwater. The least we could do was make the place more welcoming so that when next we do receive visitors, comforts commensurate with their sensibilities will be in place. The discussion went something like this:

"This will not stand!" I declared to RHB. "The centre will not hold!" shouted herself back. "We will right the wrongs of the past!" I screamed. "The workers of the world have nothing to loose but their chains" shrieked the boffin. "Are you with me?" I bellowed. "Down with dismal visuals!" chanted my belle. "Let Sal never again have to look upon that ...that...that...THING!" I whispered, my throat having gone hoarse with all the shouting.

And so it came to pass, that in order that no-one, especially SAL will EVER have to look at the crappy fireplace again, we built a pond. Now if the fireplace displeases, we can direct anyone of sensitive visual prediliction to both the front AND the back garden where they can gaze upon the surface of the water, serene and reflective. We have called the rear pond "Baile Aughiscoic"

In Defence of the Fleece - An Anti-Travellogue

2010-04-27T21:00:00.006Z

"Clickety-clak, clickety-clak!" reverberates around the station as I await the delayed 17.38. "Tshppt! Tshhppt!" accompanies the arrival of every train as the platform gets increasingly packed. "Fizz! Fizz!" says the air, leaden under the weight of additional, odorous particles.

Not, you understand, "Clickety-clak! Clickety-clak" of steel wheels on steel track, but the "clickety-clak! clickety-clak!" of they're-in-fashion-so-I'll-wear-them high heels on marble, as the new emancipated woman returns home after a day at work. And not the "tshppt! tshppt!" of steam engines gently idling, or even clever carriage doors opening, but the "tshppt! tshppt!" of a million office-worker 'tut's" at every imagined inconvenience. And not even the "Fizz! Fizz!" of energized industrial particles making busy with their doings, but instead the "Fizz! Fizz!" of oxygen, carbon dioxide and water molecules breaking down under the sheer weight of day-old perfume, body odour, bad coffee and tramp's piss in doorways just next to the toilets.

Of course, I am in Leeds station, my second most unfavourite place on Earth, apart from Leeds proper, that is. And, after a long absence from the place, I realise that my impressions of England, after a protracted abscence were possibly - no! definitely dammit - coloured by the fact that the first place I had intimate acquaintance with on this island, after six months of depressing unemployment, was this town. I could'nt have chosen a worse place to reacquaint myself with the planet's eighth largest economy. In short, I have since learnt to discriminate, and after a week's abscence I am desperate to get home to beautiful, friendly, small, cutting edge Hull. It is a sentence that I did not think I would ever utter, even from before I could think, but Hull is great. Especially compared to Leeds.

Understandably, that there is a difference between the two places may be lost on some. THey are both, if known at all outside England, just places on a map. But in that they are just places on a map lies many of the reasons I hate Leeds. Hull knows it is a small town on the margins of England and just gets on with, doing its own thing, and in doing so is unpretentious, unconcerned with image, and secure in its poverty.

Leeds, on the other hand has goals. It is trying to transform itself from a dirty-grey powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution to a "destination". It has targets. It desperately wants to be corporate. It is a "city" where "things" happen, deals get done and the business card tells its inhabitants who they are. People go to meetings in Leeds, incessantly, and they love Barcelona because of the "design" but they cant name any artists. The magnificent Victorian buildings of detail and solidity that once dominated the city centre have been replaced by angular pastel architecture - mostly temporary regional headquarters for minor multi-nationals just waiting for the next tax-incentive in the next town. The business quarter consists of the outline traces of narrow medieval roads, with 14 storey tower blocks squeezed into place where merchant offices once sat comfortably. These cobbled streets are fed by fast highways and a motorway that cuts right through the middle of town which makes the cars transition from 70 to 20 mph almost instantaneous. Consequently, the fat middle aged men behind the wheels of the sporty BMW's (trying for all the world to look as if they should be driving these cars) that flit around Leeds make no attempt at transition. It's just 70, then stop. A cyclist and pedestrian's nightmare.

Did I mention I dont like Leeds? Not the people - I have no judgement of them, apart from that architecture and civic aspiration might explain why the place is just so unfriendly and uncultured. The down town bars are all immaculately clean, ultra-designed and fake titanium, so there's not a square inch of intimacy anywhere in the city centre, the interiors so shiny they echo harshly. You have to shout to be anyone in Leeds. On many evenings, I trailed the Crosstowner through this desert during my employment and after a while I longed to see someone among the cardiganed crowd who's clothes were practical, not ironic, or whose hair had been just cut (at a barbers) instead of being styled. "If civilization collapsed tonight", I would think to myself " then these people are entirely inappropriately dressed".

For the moment, the nightmare of Leeds is abated. I, eventually, return to Hull, the train having gone from sardine packed during its trawl through Leed's commuter belt to just dangerously overcrowded as it pulls into Paragon station. The remaining commuters relax visibly, suits crumpling unstylishly. Dressed-to-the-nines office divas head for the run-down boozers of Hull's tiny, crumbling old town, shedding the second skin that working in the metropolis has forced on them. I stroll through the casual, tattooed, slow moving crowd, bumping into three of my pupils and explain that I cant go for a beer now as I've been away, but definitely next time. I get a taxi back to Large Mansions and it heads off in entirely the wrong direction, but eventually bumbles it's way to my house, the driver chatting all the way. I count, and only see one BMW en-route, and its not silver.