Yyvaskyla: Day Two and Three: Liminality

Settled in the hotel and a brief review of what, for want of a better word, we will call my budget, makes it apparent that I cannot afford to both get drunk and eat. More accurately, a brief review of restaurant prices and a quick trip downtown on the first night makes it apparent that I can afford neither to drink beer nor to eat. As I wander round town on the first day, scoping the place out, I keep an eye out for solutions other than the various fast food joints that litter the shopping area, and when I  stumble across a supermarket I think I have the problem solved. It looks really cheap and everyone in the place looks slightly more miserable than the average resident  of Finland I have seen so far. Rows of dull fluorescent lighting, only half of it working, illuminate the place and its simply called "Supermarket", so I head in.

Working out what food you can have in a hotel room has always presented a number of problems. The first of these is that with no kitchen, the food is permanently available and close at hand. Through previous experience I know that this can lead to you eating everything you buy within half an hour of getting back to your room, forcing the choice of whether to go back out again to buy more Pringles or not. The second problem is smell and the way it clings to hotel rooms which means that if you buy food that is too aromatic (I remember the infamous onion bhaji incident when a hotel in London wanted to charge me for extra cleaning) you can end up living in a room that smells like a deli counter. So the ideal is to go with neutral odour but, in view of the first issue, food that's very bulky and filling. These considerations in mind, I limit the quantity of Pringles to two boxes and buy a 1kg tub of potato salad. As I approach the counter I realise I have nothing to eat the salad with, so I jump out of the queue and take another circuit round the shop to see of I can find some utensils.

After two laps, I'm unsuccessful until I spot a store assistant desultorily packing shelves. I walk up to her, smiling brightly, and say "Hei" (which is Finnish for 'Hi'). She looks at me warily. I cup my hands in front of me about eight inches apart and say "Fork! Please". The wariness turns to puzzlement-anger (a complex emotion most often seen on people's faces when dealing with bureacrats). I realize my mistake, drop my plastic shopping box, grab the potato salad, shake it in her face and mime eating, then point to my right hand which is making little scooping motions. The lady nods gravely, says in perfect English "Come with me" and I follow her to an area of the store (which I had previously eschewed on the basis of 'unlikely to be there') that features massive displays of barbeques with every item you would ever need for a barbeque plainly on display. Especially forks. A little bit more embarrassed than normal, I grab a catering pack of 150 plastic forks, head for the tills, pay and leave. The rest of the day is spent trying to each a kilogram of potato salad and writing a professional application for RHB, although I have no shortage of forks with which to eat.

The next day, I determine to learn from my mistakes, so I ask everyone I meet whether they speak English and how to say "Please' and "Thankyou". Thank you is easy enough ('keetos') but, as one informant tells me, Finnish people have a complicated relationship with "Please". Actually, its not that complicated, they dont say please.
 "We dont really have a word for it" says Saara, my principle informant, "I think its because we dont need it. I think they only say it in countries where they need to pretend they mean "please'  because every is so rude otherwise. I've lived in Italy and they say 'Please, please,please,please, please' all the time when what they really mean is 'gimme!'
 "Ok" I say "Well 'keetos' for telling me that" I joke "Keetos very much!". She laughs not.
 "You say 'Thank you' too much" she says "Its rude to keep repeating it".
 "Oh, ok" I say "Sorry about that".
 "And dont keep apologising" she says "that is also rude. You sound very English saying 'thanks' and 'please' and 'sorry' all the time, and you told me you didnt want to be English, you wanted to be Canadian. Just think to yourself - what would a Canadian say?"
 I hesitate for a minute and mumble "Awesome".

Later that day as I head out for a hike, Canada is still buzzing round my head. As I walk from downtown Jyvaskla to the head of the trails at Laajavuori (about 3kms north west of downtown if you want to find it on Google maps) the resemblance to Nova Scotia gets stronger. There's coffee shops that only lack "Tim Hortons" signs and even the place names are startlingly similar: I bet those reading this who dont know either place well would struggle to say which from  'Maki-Matti' and 'Kejimkujik' belonged where.  In fact,  the familiarity of the environment is so strong that I decide to try to deliberately notice differences to try to establish some sort of concrete perception of place. Unfortunately for Canada, the biggest difference I can identify  (and yes I know the language is an obvious one, but to be honest, although written Nova Scotian is familiar, the spoken language in that part of Canada is about as intelligable as Finnish to me) is in the physical shape of the people. After a whole hour's walk to the trail head I still havent seen  a single morbidly obese person.

At the trail head, I grab a map and head off into the woods on a wide gravel path keeping an eye out for smaller side paths that look as if they go somewhere interesting. Soon I spot one, and, trying to think how my  like my friend Carl who's spent most of his life in woods would navigate, I plunge down a single person path into the woods. After about a kilometre I have two choices, so still channeling Carl, I take the one that goes 'up'. It winds for about an hour through a beautiful, but increasingly dense forest, the noise of the road fading with every step. Remembering Carl's adage of "Drink before you're thirsty, eat before you're hungry" I sit down for a snack. The water tastes great but I am hungry so I fish out the kilogram of potato salad. Disaster. I have brought no forks. But there's no-one around, so I scoop  some out of the container with my hands enjoying the primal feel of it all. Suddenly, there's a crack on the path behind me, followed by a kind of snorking noise. I begin to regret 'channeling' Carl on this expedition as I now remember that the last time I was in the woods with him, we got attacked by a bear. I also begin to regret not Googling "Finland - bears"  before I set off for the hike as at least that would give some idea of the danger I might be in. Hands full of aromatic potato salad with only my drinking water to wash it away, I start to feel uneasy so I hastily start to pack up. At this moment a massive wasp lands on the potato salad, I jerk in reaction and the contents go flying, half over my legs, half on the ground. There's a crack in the forest behind me.Convinced I am now potentially  one of those stories you read about -  "Idiot tourist's body eventually found in Finnish forest: Man  gets killed by bears and wasp on ill-advised hike after tellling no-one where he was going and having a rubbish map. Took potato salad and no fork" - I finish packing and try to walk calmly back to a main trail. As I walk the panic begins to subside gradually, so I slow the pace and settle back into a casual walk.  Eventually I meet a friendly group of mountain bikers  who have just stopped for a rest, so I settle down with them for a chat about 'hard tails' and West coast style (which I've never done). They ask where I've been and I point up the trail. "Wow. No-one goes up there. You're a real woodsman" says Sammi, the oldest. I cant wait to get back to the hotel for a shower.

Jyvaskyla: Day One - Homesick

I take a quick look round to check the dining room is empty and, against all principles, pile an inch thick stack of sliced ham on my plate. Quickly, another stack follows, cheese this time. Plate full, I glance round to check the coast is still clear,  grab another plate, load it with salad, dash to my table, run back to the breakfast buffet, fill two bowls with fruit salad, add another plate load it with tomato and what I think is pickled cabbage, sprint to the newspapers get the biggest Finnish newpaper I can find and place it on the table carefully  (so that it looks as if its being casually read) to cover most of my hoard. A final furtive scan of the area of operations then a   sprint to the coffee jug, fill a mug, run back to the table,  and I dive headlong into the feast with the plan of stuffing as much as possible down my neck as quickly as possible so that by the time someone comes by the amount left will only look like a reasonable amount of food for a breakfast for one.

"You are very hungry".

I nearly jump out of my seat, startled to see a beautiful Finnish girl standing at the end of the dining room, smiling encouragingly. Because of the arrangement of the doors, she had to have been there the whole time.

"Ah ha!" I say, pointing to the ceiling. In truth, I am unsure why I say "ah ha", its not really part of my usual linguistic repertoire but then pointing at the ceiling is not part of my usual behaviour either. Neither is miming actions with every word uttered but in my next sentence I do it anyway

"Yes. Hungry. Man. Me"  (I pat my stomach)

"Big hike today. Round lake. I am going." (I mime walking with my fingers and point out the window. I am also an inch away from resorting to the British default of shouting-at-the-foreigner-to-make-them-understand). Then I say "Stone Age breakfast".

I've obviously puzzled my breakfast hostess and she looks worried

"Is there something wrong with the food?" she asks, carefully.

In as much as I am here for a linguistic conference, I will  acknowledge there is a rather obvious sub-text to this particular speech act which can be analysed in any of a number of ways, but non-technically, it should be obvious that the hostess is actually beginning to be a little concerned about my sanity or sobriety, or both. While I cant claim the former, I am most definitely the latter, which brings us to the reason for my raid on the breakfast bar in the first place. I am beginning to discover that academic conferences aren't holidays and that at least one group of  impressions of the general public - that boffins fly round the world on these 'jollies', sniffing of the gilded bough, bathing in lillies, feasting of the fattened calf and drinking themselves into stupidity while giving eachother jobs and patting eachother's back and building a massive pension fund while getting paid ludricous amounts of money from the public purse - are, for the most part,  completely untrue. The truth is nearer to the situation, encapsulated by the breakfast anecdote above,  in that a large part of each day when on these events, is spent working out how you are going to be able to keep sufficiently within your budget to allow at least one evening meal in a restaurant, or at least one additional day trip to a place of interest. If your budget doesnt allow that then your stuck in a Holiday Inn or Ramada or something with CNN for company.  The reason for piling the plate is to try to minimize food costs,  as a brief glance round the restaurants downtown shows prices of 32 Euros for a plate of spaghetti bolognese. The imagined train ride to St Petersburg is probably not going to happen.

The bizarre reference to "Stone Age Breakfast" however, remains unexplained. I explained it to the hostess very awkwardly, by telling her that "Continental" breakfasts are more similar to a mesolithic (or even early neolithic) breakfast than the 'traditional' English breakfasts that are soaked in processed carbohydrates and refined sugar. At this point I could tell that the hostess concluded I wasnt dangerously insane, just intensely boring and a little bit odd. But the reference also links to another feature of academic conferences that I encountered early last night, that feature known as The Name Game.

The Name Game can start, as it did last night, with hearing an accent in a hotel bar and watching people's behavior very closely. As I walked through the hotel lobby/bar it was immediately apparent that the person sat at the bar was :

1. British  working class
2. Lecturer at a provincial University slightly below middle ranking
3. On a limited grant


Getting closer, the accent confirmed conclusion #1. If accent isnt particularly your strong point, there are other clues you can use. Firstly, drinking alone tends to be a European phenomema, but it can be narrowed down. Most Europeans, when drinking alone, tend to do it facing outwards from the service point. Thus, Italians, Spanish and French people can be found in cafes and bars drinking alone, but will sit at a table and watch life go by. Only in a few countries do people face the bar, unwilling to be too far away from the source of alcohol. This  can be further refined by a class identification, in that in Britain, this behaviour is mostly a working class behaviour. Middle class British people drinking alone will tend to bring a newspaper or book to a hotel bar and will sit at a table so that they dont have to talk to anyone (with the wierd dichotomy inherent that actually talking to people is exactly what they want to do). Of course, at this stage, the guess as to this persons origins/job was still a guess so further refinement was needed.

Of course, I had the advantage of hearing the accent and recognising it, but if you cant distinguish between accents, there are other indicators you can use. These are related to #2,  which is slightly easier. There are very few reasons why anyone should be in Jyvaskyla (its not an obvious tourist destination) and the fact that there is an academic conference here makes the conclusion that the guy was associated with that conference probable. The question that arises is in what capacity, as he could be a technician, someone providing commercial services or even a coach driver. Here, the clothes give the game away and solidify impressions of both professional status and nationality. The guy was clearly not North American, as American  US academics all tend to look as if they come from New England - preppy is,  I believe,  the word - so polo shirts, slacks and slightly nautical clothing predominates. Canadian academics are a bit more diverse - older Canadian academics all look as if they are on holiday in Florida, while younger Canadians are the most weather appropriately dressed people in the world, leading me to wonder how big their suitcases are, because no matter what the weather is, they just have the right clothes. Most Continental Europeans dress they way they think Canadians dress, so its all day-hiking boots, fleece jackets and dry-quick teeshirts, but, unlike Canadians,  they tend to dress like this whether its snowing or a heat wave. The British, of course, can be identified by the fact they they look uncomfortable in whatever clothes they are wearing. The guy at the bar looked archtypically Britishly uncomfortable, mixing hiking boots with a dress shirt and ironed jeans but he hadnt shaved closely enough to be a coach driver and his phone wasnt visible or used at all during the thirty seconds it took me to approach him, so he wasnt either in a line of commercial business nor a technician.

Finally, the fact that he was on a limited grant could not be divined form appearance but from place. Being in the hotel bar when there's a whole unfamiliar city to explore is a recourse to security. It is a sign that you are being careful, garnering information from friendly bar staff before making any decisions about venturing out into the wider world. Discovering new cities is of course immense fun, but the experience is different on a budget than if you have loads of cash. With loads of cash, you do ask the hotel staff for advice on where to go, then when outside you completely ignore this and  head off into the night. You go to pretty much any restaurant you like the look of, eat what you like, have too much to drink,  and when the bill is much more than you thought it might be, you might determine not to return, but its really no big deal. On a budget, you gather information very, very carefully, sometimes for a couple of days. Then you venture out, with a map, timing your adventure so that the planned meal fills the evening. You head to go  a carefully identified, middle-priced but pleasant restaurant, eat only what you can afford (not what you want), have one drink and lots of water and no coffee and eat slowly. Then the bill comes, and this time, when it is invariably much more than all your planning anticipated, instead of no big deal, your evening is ruined and you go back to the hotel and head for the bar, justifying to yourself the drinks you are going to have on the grounds you need cheering up. This guy was in stage 1 - information gathering stage. His disappointment was to come, but you could tell by the look on his face he knew it was coming.

The relevance of "Stone Age Breakfast" may not immediately be apparent, but it derives from the conversation I subsequently had at the bar with our new friend. Description for that conversation is maybe for another time, but in case that description does not happen, I will just add that Marshall Sahlin's book "Stone Age Economics" was in my mind this morning as the conversation with my new friend drifted toward the ridiculous notions that fortify neo-liberal economics about 'rational economic man' and human nature etc. But I'll finish with a reference to the title "Homesick". Its true - I am slightly homesick - this place looks startlingly similar to Nova Scotia. The same type of forest, houses, road system, weather and even smell. It might be that a return to Canada is impossible in the near future. But from what I've seen so far, Finland would do as a replacement.

Stair renovations

Its a new year at Large Mansions. As some might recall, calendrical obsessions do not govern time here,: rather, time is measured via epochs or eras. Thus we are currently leaving "The Time of Sleeping Under Duvets Watching TV" and have entered "The Week of Annoying the Cats AKA Resuming Renovations". As anyone employed by cats will know, decoration is not a priority for cats. Or rather it is, but along a different trajectory than humans, reflecting different concerns. Thus, while humans might be concerned with aesthetics and the Golden Mean, or maybe structural soundness and efficient construction, cat's main concern in respect of living arrangements revolves around "As long as it doesnt inconvenience me". The problem with this of course is that everything which does not follow exactly the same pattern as yesterday is something which by definition DOES inconvenience cats. Thus the necessary re-arrangements of renovating - moving furniture, covering stuff with dust sheets, making any noise that hasnt been pre-approved and doesnt follow exactly the noises that were made at exactly the same time yesterday are immensely disapproved of by cats.

This is how it works: cats are asleep upstairs, usually precisely where you would prefer them not to sleep (like on your bed). You decide to move the kitchen table three inches to the left in order to accomodate your passage through a kitchen you are renovating. Within half an hour of doing this, you are happily engaged in your renovatory exercises, sanding perhaps, or painting, maybe chiselling some minor detail in your woodwork. A cat, previously sleeping, enters the room. At this point it should be noted that while cats can enter rooms entirely silently, this doesnt mean that you dont notice them when they do choose to appear. In fact the opposite is true.

At Large Mansions, its Saturday evening and we are happily painting our new staircase spindles, gossiping about our friends and arguing about Marxism. Suddenly we both stop our activities: Calli has entered the room, initially trotting in confidently. We both shuffle nervously - we have moved our kitchen table so that we can both paint the spindles, but have failed to consult the cats prior to moving the table. We look at the 5lb cat nervously to see what its reaction will be. Its not good. Calli trots into the kitchen for a second as if all is good with the world then freezes. She stops dead in her tracks. She raises her left front paw. Licks it, splaying her claws wide. Puts the paw down. Sits down. Stands back up and paces very deliberately towards one of the table legs. Sniffs. We are frozen to the spot. There's a disapproving miaow. We risk a quick glance at eachother - there'll be no sleep tonight. Calli circles round the room, hugging the walls, placing as much distance between herself and the moved table as possible. She makes it to the back kitchen door and miaows. Tentatively, RHB opens the door and the cat slips out. Our painting resumes, sombre, alloyed, optimism gone.

Despite our difficulties, we continue. And here's a few photos of what we're doing. In most of this house's previous existence, it had an elegant staircase. When taken over by landlords (in the dark, dark days of 1970's UK) the fashion was to remove all original features - intricate mouldings, carvings etc - and replace these by straight lines. THis is also known as vandalism. We are attempting to redress this architectural crime as inexpensively as possible. We dont use contractors - other than where safety and legality are issues - and use recycled materials as much as possible. Thus in the following photos, you will see a curved detail (in white) on the right hand side of each stair tread. This is now recycled materials, cut non-electrically by hand and painted by RHB. Its almost freeganism, but not quite. Also featured is what the staircase used to look like:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/103609811127849277427/albums/5139058649210574913/5139059022872729746

Included in the photos is, of course, an image of a cat. It is Toshack, demanding re-admittance. To those equipped with adequate cat face recognition skills, you will recognise acute disapproval on his face.

Redefinitions

Massive bar and entertainment room


Massive (but low) stage in the holiday camp




Panto book - it works like a book, only its very big.

1. The Work

Not at all dissimilar to the processes involved in writing a lit review, there's a point that is reached when 'on the road', that you realize you have no idea where you are. You know where you started. You also know where you are going. And, you also have a plan, typically visualised as a route ( that you recognize is subject to en-route modification) of how to get from A to B. But at some point, some unidentifiable nexus of space, time and cognition, it dawns on you that you have absolutely no idea where, in respect of that route, you are.

Thus I find myself pulling into yet another motorway service station somewhere between Bristol and Hull and looking at the map that is on the wall by the entrance. Not the casual glance of the long distance driver, who sat-nav equipped doesnt care where they are, nor the smug glance of the on-time, organised family vacationer who knows they wont miss their plane. Instead I smear myself against the map, tracing roads with my finger tip, reading place names aloud, hoping for clue - a thirsty man looking for water in the desert.Work compadre and friend, the incomparible Tom. A seasoned road warrior. Taken in either Gloucester, Cheltenham, Cirencester, Portsmouth or somewhere else. Breakfast before we part ways for a few days.

This fever has been occasioned by a second full week on the road made necessary by the necessity of a temporary return to my career as a touring theatrical carpenter. I'm slogging through English seaside resorts and holiday camps, installing summer shows and staying yet again in identikit towns where the search for a good meal in a town you dont know is, at the end of the working day, a pointless, yet daily essential, ritual. I'm loving it.

Part of the loving it is a repositioning vis-a-vis holiday camps. There are several brands of these in the UK, the most popular of which I have just finished working in. I have to confess that as the son of a family of cultural snobs (who somehow manage to to redefine culture so that 'soccer' is somehow an acceptable cultural activity, highbrow even, and holiday camps are somehow not) I arrived at the camp with fairly negative preconceptions. British comedians have long laboured jokes about the perpetual, artificial cheeriness of the staff and have liked the surrounding walls to the walls of a prison camp. These characterisations havent diluted some people's enthusiasm for the holiday camps - they are fully booked up to a year in advance. However, the all-inclusive nature of the experience with childrens' playgrounds everywhere, shops, bars, movie theatres, live entertainment and organised fun aplenty are deemed, by some, particularly intelligentsia-with-children, to indicate a laziness on the part of holidaymakers who choose these places. Somehow, if you are not searching a remote hillside for a half forgotten church in 40C, pulling your screaming, reluctant children with you, getting bitten by God knows what or tramping disrespectfully over the graves of other culture's ancestors, you are somehow denying your children the essentials of being on holiday. I should make it clear that I am talking about people with children here. Childless people, as RHB and self and other 'dinkies' are, do not have to contend with deciding where to take our little darlings. But we are subjected to the accounts of other people's vacations, and I have heard both sides - smug parents of 'educated' children who have seen the Cistine chapel and hedonistic camp-dwellers who revel in the 24 hour fun of the all-inclusive.

And listening to both sides, and now having been to the camps, can say that I am firmly in the hedonist camp for a number of reasons. Firstly, the snobby intelligentsia-with-children can ruin things for other people by taking kids where they plainly dont want to go and should'nt be. You dont take a barking dog to watch Mahler, and I think the principle is exactly the same with children. They can ruin good things. Furthermore, I would bet a large amount of money that most kids would prefer to be swinging round a monkey net that's within lolloping distance of a soda fountain than hiking in pristine wilderness where you have to watch your water carefully. There's also the problem of justification. Hedonists just take their children to the camp, dump them with the children's entertainers then very quietly get drunk, happy in the knowledge that the kids are safe. When you ask them about their holiday, they usually just say "The Kids had a good time", partly because they themselves sometimes cant remember much of it, and partly because its true - the kids had a good time. The intelligentsia-with-kids on the other hand spend hours telling you how they were worried that "little James would'nt like Guernica, but you know what, we think he got it! He was very quiet afterwards, I think it really struck a chord with him ". Arse, I say. Actually what happened is that little James was struck dumb with boredom and realised that this torture was likely to continue unrelentingly until he becomes an adult and he can go to Ibiza by himself and drink himself into unconciousness.


It may seem that these musings are those of a crazed man, one too long away from home. And there's probably something in this, but while away, I did fall in love with these camps. For people with kids they are very, very good. They are cheap, there's no massive seven hour car journeys to local attractions, there's safety on site. Bt despite seeing the light, the musing and the love begins to wane - the camps arent for me, and anyway, I'm here working. I start to wish for home. I wish various things, like being prodded awake at 5am by Toshack wanting to go out and hunt, or back in the Queens drinking crap beer and getting told about football by a know nothing local with a red face. I actually start to wish I was back in my office writing my literature review, dreaming of an easy life on the road as a scenic carpenter, so its with relief that I turn the car in the general direction of North as I leave Minehead. Before I get home there's one more task to perform though. Its will turn out to be the biggest challenge yet.Two not-intelligentsia. At least when this was taken which was after, or during some cocktails. And champers. And beer. Taken at Christmas 2011.

2. The Visit

I suspected none of e challenge ahead as I crest a hill overlooking Bristol town centre and identify number 43 in a row of brightly, Mediterraneanely, pastel painted houses. I am greeted at his door by Will, who is animated by stupidity:

"Hi M___" he says "I'm reading about social capital and I'm animated by its stupidity"

Actually, and in the interests of complete honesty, Will doesnt say this. Instead, he welcomes me in, offers me a cup of tea and then says:

"Hi M___. I'm reading about social capital and I'm animated by its stupidity".

In truth, he doesnt quite say this either, but it would have been good if he had, as 'social capital' is about where I am in my literature review, and this 'concept' (although I prefer to think of it as 'notion') is why my lit review writing experience is exactly mirroring my on-road experience of being completely lost. It is however, true to say that Will is reading about 'social capital' and is bedazzled by the way this 'notion' is justified, interpreted and applied. The most stupid thing about social capital, we agree, is the way it's exponents claims it explains everything:

• children are an investment and you only invest in them because production of same increases your social capital.
• any learning you undertake is informed by economically rational decision processes
• any sports activities, socialising you do, television watching you engage in, sex you endure, parties you attend or casual hello's in the street

All of these, according to the mainstream of economic 'thinkers' are actions or processes that can either be explained by, or used in the accumulation of, social capital. For the second time this post I am forced to use the word 'Arse', closely accompanied by the word 'my'.

The most terrifying thing about this though is that like Hell in the Middle Ages, or learning styles for those who have read (and believed) about them, it is all becoming true. Networking is an activity preferred to bullshitting, it is a crime to engage in pointless activity (we walk to get fit), we only go the the pub (after puberty) to talk about 'something' and a little read blog must be 'monetised' or of interest to someone ("how many readers do you have?", "does it make any money?" "have any publishers approached you?"). There has to be a point to every thing we do under social capital.

3. The Light Bulb

Needless to say, later that night at Willandsals/Salandwills (existential angst over gender preference in naming places - I need to stop reading!) we get pointlessly drunk, talk utter bullshit, listen to some obscure music that doesnt increase our 'credibility', eat wierd food and dont agree to start a consultancy business. During the evening, Sal gets quite close to having a serious conversation then returns to sanity with an utterly deluded observation (that re-defines some words, including the word "finished"), by claiming that Large Mansions is substantially complete. Satisfied that absolutely nothing has been accomplished by the evening's activities I retire to the North Parlour of Salandwills. We do however, agree to do something constructive the next day, so after an evening of rest, I awake, with a hangover, ready to change a light bulb. It is the challenge I referred to earlier and takes four hours.Pointless fake chimneys about to be installed on a new build house somewhere between Birmingham, France and the US. Pointless is good.

Strictly speaking, it is not just a light bulb I am to change, it is, in fact a whole light fitting. But the minor under-exagerration is, I would argue, allowable, because all that is involved in the operation is the unscrewing, and then re-screwing of six small wires, plus a bit of electrical cable cutting. It is little more than changing a light bulb. It is also hard to imagine a task in which I could more effectively increase my social capital by demonstrating the kind of ruthless competence that it pays to display in such work. A ten minute project successfully completed would put in the minds of my friends that here is a handy fellow - if we ever need to pay anyone to do some work, this chap would be just the ticket. I would have banked loads of social capital and therefore I should view this project as a job that I have something invested in.
But that's not how it goes. It takes four cups of tea, the mains electrics switched off so often that the fridge defrosts, thirty minutes of Internet consultation and a spectacular amount of swearing to do a job that I have done hundreds of times. "Why?" I hear you ask "might this be?". Well its because the business isnt social and the social isnt business. No matter how you redefine it.

Things to do while trying to write

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

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........

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.