Commonplace

Day 2: stuff!

2012-02-05T21:20:00.000Z

Spent most of the day in the museum stores looking through a filing cabinet stuffed with all sorts of variously sorted and unsorted paper. My goal was to locate information on the textiles industry, as I'm going to have to try to identify some photographs next week. I did find several useful-looking files, but my best discovery was a file containing 40 letters written by people born at the end of the nineteenth century in which they describe their first jobs. Fantastic! I also found the user guide to the Bickerton folding bicycle described in the previous post, together with its sales receipt. Started to collect information on the mining industry, which isn't particularly well covered by the museum.
Also had a quick look at yet another store, this time in an old factory, crammed with large chunks of machinery in varying states of decomposition. Another major sorting task for the future.
Ended the day helping to repack lace samples.
A good, productive day...

Day 1: bicycles

2012-01-21T14:51:00.000Z

It was a slightly disorganised start. Keys were missing, and the materials we had been supposed to be using were locked away somewhere inaccessible and replacements would take a while (the joys of health and safety - in the bad old days we used Indian ink and clear nail varnish, probably shredding our lungs or something). So instead we wrote condition reports on some bicycles that were probably to be moved from the stores to the museum display to replace others that were being returned to their owner.

The first was a Bickerton folding bicycle from the 1970s, probably never ridden, so in good condition apart from that speckle of corrosion that aluminium often acquires. As it had never been used, it was stiff to fold together, and even stiffer to fold up again, and we never did work out how to achieve its correct folded state (there was of course no manual, and not much help online) so the procedure was going to need further research.

Then we moved into the pigeon-dropping splattered storeroom know as "The Dovecote" where, surrounded by a motley collection of bikes ranging from the decrepit to some 1980s prototypes, we examined a fine old New Hudson tandem from the 1930s that not only had seating for a lady at the rear (a "ladyback") but its double frame could be unbolted so the tandem could be transformed into a single-seater bicycle. A great piece of design. Despite not having been ridden for a long time, this bike looked as though, with a bit of elbow grease and some new saddles, tyres and brake and gear cables, it could be restored to working order.

Finally we looked at a Raleigh small wheel bicycle (SW16), one of a range popular in the 1980s, which, if its tyres were inflated, could probably be ridden without further ado. I liked its integral lights, powered by a dymohub.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the day was a quick peek into the area of stores known as "Barlow's Flat" after a lady who once lived in this suite of uneven-floored rooms above the stables. Over the years a random selection of material has been dumped here, and we peered at tantalising piles of photographs, drawers full of maps and plans and a room filled with unlabelled boxes mysteriously shrouded in black plastic the contents of which are unknown.

Plenty of work for the near future!

Being a museum volunteer -1

2012-01-15T13:27:00.000Z

I spent most of yesterday morning at Nottingham Industrial Museum. The museum, housed in what were once the stables of Wollaton Hall, has been closed for a couple of years, after a long period of decline (it hasn't had a Keeper for eight years). Despite Nottingham's hugely important industrial heritage (mining, lace, tobacco, bicycles, printing etc), over the last couple of decades the displays were allowed to decay and rust, labels faded, visitor numbers dwindled and the buildings crumbled. Many of the million or so objects in the museum stores were uncatalogued and unconserved and often unidentified, and junk accumulated in the various storerooms. Only The Awkwright Society, an amateur group of enthusiasts which focuses on steam power, managed to keep going. But now the museum is hopefully going to spring back into life. Nottingham City Council has handed over the running of the museum to a charity and I've signed up as one of nearly 100 volunteers.
A small group of volunteers met with Ann Insker of Nottingham Museums to be introduced both to the NIM collection and its challenges. The stores vary from the passable to the disgraceful. It's going to be an exciting experience helping the project to organise, record and hopefully display a vastly interesting mix of artefacts.
I start next Friday! I'm also going to get involved with the education aspects of NIM, which will reopen on March 17th, and then be open to the public every weekend.

The archaeology of topsoil

2012-01-11T16:31:00.000Z

Topsoil (unstratified, disturbed, over-burden, plough-soil) is the most common archaeological deposit of all. Sometimes it is the only archaeological deposit present (for example on contemporary archaeological sites, or sites dating from the recent past. Yet it is rarely given any formal attention, because the evidence it contains cannot (usually) be related stratigraphically to other material. Evidence discovered in topsoil, if it is recorded at all, is often lumped together and placed in a bag or box and forgotten. Nevertheless I am fascinated by topsoil. I spend a lot of time digging it (on my allotment and in my garden). I think the material evidence present in topsoil can tell us more than we think, especially when plotted two dimensionally (i.e. on a map or plan) rather than three dimensionally like most stratified archaeological material.
So I began to collect the material I dug up from the 500 sq metres of my allotment, and created the Topsoil Project (number of participants so far = 1!). I believe that the material I am excavating originated in "night soil" (human waste collected from the "privies" of nearby communities) spread on the fields that existed before the allotments were created.
Anyway, here's a pic of part of the collection of tiny sherds of pottery I have amassed...

The fragments range from familiar blue on white transfer-printed wares in the bottom right hand corner to less common browns in the top left.
I hope eventually to compare the assemblage from my allotment with material from other plots and sites, to ascertain if they reflect the communities from which the rubbish came.

Sorting...

2012-01-05T23:54:00.000Z

I am surrounded by a sea of colour prints. Have decided that I am tired of not knowing where individual photographs are and which I have scanned recently (i.e. min 300dpi and a reasonable size, unlike the tiny ones that dial-up networks required). So I have emptied all the boxes and begun a sorting process. Hey, I have actually thrown a few prints away (out-of-focus etc)!
Here's a photo from the 1970s. Milton Creek, with the spritsail barge Nellie Parker (built 1899) at rest beyond the skeleton of another barge. Can't make out the name of the barge in the background.

I think I must have been standing roughly where the Dolphin Yard barge museum used to be before it was destroyed by fire in 2008.

Wow!

2012-01-04T23:02:00.000Z

I'm slowly upgrading some old images (from 1997, when our web site was launched) and came across this one - a rain storm that quickly gathered, poured and vanished again over Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. Thankfully I had a camera with me, because the lighting only lasted a few minutes...not long enough to run back to the camp site!

Out of the corner of a lens...

2012-01-03T23:30:00.000Z

I'm studying images in the Vancouver Archives. Some of the most fascinating are huge panoramas, taken in the early years of the C20th and usually of seemingly mundane subjects like lumber mills, construction sites and fishing docks. But these are actually crammed with historical archaeological details (which is why I'm working on them). It is very early days yet, and at the moment I am working on online scans, but I thought I'd share a couple of tiny details that I've found and which have have fascinated me.

At the very edge of a panorama of an industrial site an apparently well-dressed woman leans against a wall. What was she doing there? I wondered if she was a lady of dubious virtue, but she might be the photographer's assistant!

And just one of scores of people enjoying a warm day on the beach, this young lady reading (a newspaper?) is showing a lot of leg for the time and has the most amazing hair!

The original photographs, some of them using negatives eight feet long, were taken by W.J. Moore. Some 399 panoramas have been digitised by Vancouver Archives, creating a fantastic resource for historical archaeologists.

St Peter in the Rushes

2012-01-02T23:08:00.000Z

Walked today around Rempstone, Nottinghamshire. The footpath took us through the lonely graveyard of the long-demolished church of St Peter in the Rushes, a C12th church (with perhaps a Saxon ancestry) that was dismantled in the late C18th, leaving a scatter of gravestones to moulder amongst grass tussocks. Small trees are growing from a couple of tombs...

The church had been important enough to have had "three bells, two common prayer books, a book of homilies, two register books, one surplice, a carpet, a pulpit cloth, a communion table cloth, a napkin, a cushion for the pulpit a silver chalice marked Rempstone 1732, a flagon and two plates, a bier and ladder ..." but after the enclosures it was situated too far from the village, and a new church was built using the old church as a quarry.

The start of a year of doing...

2012-01-01T22:56:00.000Z

One of the first jobs: catching up with web sites and images. I like this one from 2010 - my faithful hiking companion at the top of Ptarmigan Trail in Alberta's Kananaskis range, just before a grizzly and her cub appeared!

I'm a peer!

2011-12-15T10:54:00.000Z

I've been asked to peer review a paper for a prestigious journal. It's a first for me, and I'm going to enjoy the experience (I think/hope). It's also flattering, because someone must have recommended me to the editor. (The request came through an email address note everyone uses, so I have my suspicions as to who made the recommendation!) A university friend of mine says that my excitement will soon evaporate when I realise the amount of work involved, and I am conscious that it also demands a high degree of responsibility, to the author, the journal and the potential readership. But it good that someone feels that I possess enough expertise in my field to look critically at another's research. What fun!

Ho hum!

2011-12-15T10:48:00.000Z

I'm sitting in the window of a holiday apartment in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, looking out over my laptop at a view that encompasses the little island of Steep Holm to my right, to the ugly concrete hulk of Weston College to my left, and taking in Brean Down in the middle background, the silhouette of the semi-ruined church of St Nicholas above Uphill in the left distance, Weston's Grand Pier and much of the promenade in the foreground. It's a stormy morning. The Bristol Channel is a brown-grey colour, the sky is lead-grey, it's raining (and attempting to snow) and the wind is pushing waves high up the beach. I have a debilitating cough and cold and am feeling miserable. I have a million web pages to update. I'm sipping green tea and prevaricating. I'm also following an irregular stutter of tweets from a session on social media and archaeology at the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference in Birmingham. I should be achieving a lot more than this burble... And I haven't seen any stripes for a while. Ho hum!

Fly away home...

2011-11-11T12:34:00.000Z

In the window of my study I have one of those cheap little plastic flowers that, powered by solar energy, waves from side to side. This morning a puzzled ladybird hung dizzily to the flower!

First draft

2011-08-24T10:09:00.000+01:00

There is nothing worse than almost finishing a piece of writing. The moment is approaching when one has to send it off to the editor, when one loses control, when one's pathetic attempt at prose lands on the desk of some eagle-eyed monster who will shred it, chortling...

At about midnight I sent off my draft chapter. Since then I've thought of a dozen things I should have written, omitted, or should have deleted. I think of more all the time. Aaaargh!

OK, only one thing for it...off to the allotment!

Challenges!

2011-07-27T12:18:00.000+01:00

Challenge 1: I've been asked to write, by the end of August, a 6000-word chapter on miniatures for a book on C19th British material culture. This is a great opportunity to get my research and my name known in the field and I'm only sorry that the person I am replacing had to drop out because her husband is very ill. It's going to mean a month of very hard work, but will be worth it. I have masses of material, but will have to plough deeply through it...
Challenge 2: At the same time I've been asked if I'll create a flyer for the 2013 Society for Historical Archaeology conference, which is going to be held in Leicester and which will be distributed at the 2012 conference in Boston in January. Another chance for some exposure!

Waiting...

2011-06-06T18:54:00.000+01:00

I am finding it difficult to concentrate today because I have a sense that something big is about to happen, and that I need to leave room in both time and space for it to occur. Of course I might be wrong, which will mean that I'll have to run to catch up, and I'll look back at this blog entry and grin sheepishly. Outside in the street, children play and throw expletives and a football at each other. Both cats doze in the sunshine coming through my study window. A wood-pigeon coos on a nearby chimney-pot. I sip a beer. It's almost time to cook supper. There's excitement in the air. I'm going to wait until it's dark and my adrenaline begins to pulse before I begin to write...

Summer

2011-06-06T17:32:00.000+01:00

English summer is here, that unreliable season of occasional baking-hot days (usually when one is trapped indoors) and chilly, grey, rainy, windy weeks (usually when one is on holiday/camping/hiking). The best way to ensure that it pours with rain is to arrange a barbeque. I well remember watching one bbq fill to the brim with ice during a midsummer hailstorm. I've also seen it snow in June on Hadrian's Wall...
But on a hot and sunny day in Newcastle last week, there were short shorts in abundance, and laughter in pub gardens and on cafe pavements, and it felt good to be alive and energetic and lusty and keen-eyed. Of course, I also sat in stuffy trains for eight hours, and by the following day the wind had turned to blow miserably from the north... Ho hum!

Beauty and the Beast

2011-06-06T17:22:00.000+01:00

As I'm pretty beastly, a Beauty and the Beast scenario sounds fantastic. However in my fantasy, Beauty would eat the Beast...frequently!

I liked this...

2011-05-23T09:30:00.000+01:00

(Pinched from my Twitter stream)

"Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."

(Interestingly there is online disagreement as to who wrote this! Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Pinero, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Tolstoy...take your pick! Does it matter who actually thought of a well-known saying? Perhaps knowing the author gives it a certain amount of validity or status, though sometimes one compares the meaning of the phrase with what is known about the life and personality of the originator and there is an element of either conflict or hypocrisy.)

I also think that randiness keeps one young, especially when it staves off resignation!

What's next?

2011-05-23T09:16:00.000+01:00

“There are only two questions worth considering: what is and what is next.” – Pearl Cleage

I wasn't successful in finding funding for my PhD in the UK, so I'm looking further afield, beginning with the US and Australia. Exciting times...

It's raining...

2011-02-21T11:23:00.000Z

...so I need cheering up...

Form-filling

2011-02-21T11:20:00.000Z

I'm in the throes of writing a really important proposal, one that if accepted will change my life radically and positively for the next few years.
I am not a fan of proposals and of filling in forms. Both are a type of ritual. Everyone involved knows that you have a goal (to get a job, to obtain money etc) for which you engage in a series of declarations that, whilst not being untrue, are nevertheless heavily edited, decontextualised and emphasised versions of reality. Everyone knows that your proposal bears little resemblance to what you will finally achieve, which, because it will involve time and effort, will be far better than a few pages of elegant prose. And most forms don't allow any real reflection of the personality and skills of the person completing them. In the end what you are showing is merely that you can write a better proposal or fill in a form more cleverly than the next person. Does that mean that you can do the job? I wonder...
But now I have to get back to that form. Grrr!

Contemporary archaeology

2011-02-01T16:34:00.000Z

This is a collection of plastic figurines I found in an abandoned allotment shed. I am fascinated by the phenomenon of miniaturisation, and these artefacts are miniatures of both real things (a lion, GI Joe...well...sort of real; a basic muscle-bound human anyway) and imaginary things (Venom Spawn, Spiderman etc). I am researching the miniatures of the recent past, and I guess the 1990s count as that, although my "official" study period ends after World war I. However the meanings of contemporary figurines are as interesting as those of nineteenth century bric-a-brac. You are going to see some more here, though eventually I'm going to create an online personal museum.
What do these figurines tell us about the people who thought them up, those who manufactured them and those who bought them. Why were they discarded?

I'm not good at finishing things, so...

2011-01-30T20:27:00.000Z

..to earn a Master of Arts (with distinction) means much more than a piece of paper that I shall put in a frame and hang on my study wall.
It means that I worked through something from beginning to end, that I worked through all those inevitable moments of gloom and doubt, those moments of isolation and loneliness, those high moments when everything falls into place, those low moments when everything falls apart, those moments when no-one understands, those moments when everyone understands, those all-nighters when essay deadlines loomed, those hours of discussion and debate and argument and pleasure and frustration and pride in uncomfortable lecture rooms, book-lined studies and noisy pubs, those hours spent in libraries and on the Internet and shuffling pdfs, those times when feedback hurt and those times when feedback made me glow with pride, those flashes of inspiration, those occasions when I wanted to give up...
Of course I was privileged to be able to spend a year doing something special and selfish. And I was supported by loving, generous, encouraging and patient partner.
But in the end it was me who did the reading and the research and the thinking and the writing. And it was me who finished! Wow!

Anxieties

2010-12-20T09:32:00.000Z

I dreamed last night that I was in a production of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta but, come the dress rehearsal, I couldn't remember my lines. The previous night I dreamed that a large cloud of small flies hovered above the bed. I sprayed them with fly-killer, but that meant that their corpses fell onto the sheets.

Revolting students

2010-11-11T16:33:00.000Z

I should sympathise more with protesting students the world over if, since the heady days of the late 60s, they hadn't graduated to form part of middle and upper classes that have allowed Britain and the world to rot, both physically and socially. (I was a student in the late 60s, so I am complicit in this.)

Privileged, apparently intelligent and highly qualified ex-students have watched over and often influenced a world that now faces environmental disaster, a world that now contains far fewer animals and plants than it did fifty years ago, that is more polluted and the resources of which have been ruthlessly exploited. They have watched over continuous warfare, much genocide and many massacres, and the world is now less safe despite all their years of study.

They have allowed right-wing ideals and philosophies to grow unchecked, whilst fundamentalism has blossomed. They have greedily taken part in an economic money-grab that is now, despite all those educated brains, falling apart. They haven't cured any major ailments or made the world a generally healthier place, and many of them are morbidly obese. Ex-students haven't ensured world justice, fairness and equity, haven't achieved a stable food supply for the globe. And the world still cowers beneath the threat of nuclear weapons that could annihilate us tomorrow.

Where has all that learning gone? All that cleverness and thought? All that energy and enthusiasm?

Despond

2010-11-04T23:24:00.000Z

After supper this evening I sat and stressed and read my pile of "to read" newspaper reviews and became more and more paralysed and gloomy. No emails. No messages. Down I spiralled into the swamp of self-pity...and then, as I sat contemplating nothing much at all, my phone rang and it was A from Leicester telling me that I was remembered and missed and talked of and could we meet this weekend (sadly I'm off to Liverpool) and that he'd invite me to the next historical archaeology study group meeting. So there!

A discovery

2010-11-03T08:52:00.003Z

I'm a member of Volentia, a veg(*)n online forum. It is good to see so many people thinking about the wheres, whys and hows of their diet and lifestyles. Some of the debates are a bit tedious, and we vegans keep getting called "arrogant" by some vegetarians, but we have thick skins...

But in the forum I bumped into "Rapariga Da Banheira." I followed the links on her profile and discovered her blog. It's in Portuguese, but I copied and pasted entries into Google Translate, and the result was a strange mixture of surreal and exciting. The writing is often vivid, and sometimes erotic. It is frequently rich with emotion and images.

Here's a brief example (I've tidied up the Google translation a little):

Passo pela família indiana que mora ao meu lado, eles nunca olham para mim. Uma criança de colo vira a cabeça e engole a infinitude desta rua com os grandes olhos escuros. Nos olhos da criança vejo – a fila de casas alinhadas prolonga-se, regular, até ao fundo, até ao céu. Magia.

"Walk past the Indian family who live next to me; who never look at me. An infant turns his head and absorbs the infinity of the street with big dark eyes. In the eyes of the child the row of regularly repeating houses extends down to the bottom, up to heaven. Magic.

Chego à entrada. Tenho uma chave que abre esta porta.
É dourada e suja, como um tesouro desenterrado.

"I arrive at the entrance. I have a key that opens this door.
It is golden brown and dirty, like an unearthed treasure."

That final image appeals to my archaeological tendencies!

Anyway, after I told her that I liked her writing, she's posted an English version of her blog and has begun to translate some of the entries herself. Great stuff!

Harvest (2)

2010-11-03T08:50:00.002Z

Dried beans from my allotment.

Harvest (1)

2010-11-02T21:13:00.003Z

Since I got back from Canada a month ago, most of my work on the allotment has entailed digging. And here is the resulting treasure trove. Fascinating to think that these tiny sherds represent ceramics that were once on anonymous and long-dead people's shelves or in their cupboards, and that they ate or drank from them...

Still more potatoes to dig up!

Miniatures

2010-09-21T06:10:00.003+01:00

The subject of my MA dissertation was the historical archaeology of miniatures. Here's a very contemporary miniature:

She's actually a HO-scale model about 15mm tall.

It's about time that...

2010-09-21T05:42:00.002+01:00

It's about time that life got back to normal! My MA dissertation is done and dusted, the last friends have returned to England, and I have only 10 days left in BC before heading first to Calgary and then back to Nottingham and the start of the next adventure. Well, first I have to find some income. Then I have to work on financing a PhD. But I'm looking forward to regaining my own space, my den, my books, my vegetable garden, my friends, the cats and lots of music. Yet at the same time I'll miss British Columbia and everyone here. I feel very much at home in Vancouver - every time I go there it's as though I never left. And I love the BC outdoors...

I saw a grizzly!

2010-08-06T03:14:00.004+01:00

Well, two actually. On Ptarmigan Cirque. It was both exhilarating and a little frightening...

Kananaskis Country

2010-08-06T03:09:00.002+01:00

Rawson Lake: Everyone must take a photograph of this view, but it's still breathtaking!

Brainwashing

2010-07-04T23:42:00.006+01:00

This innocuous-looking object is a children's play-mat I came across in the living room of a young family here in British Columbia. It displays some stereotypical American landmarks around which a child can push their miniature cars - a school, police station, fire station, store, farm, gas station, church, burger drive-through...burger drive though! It is no wonder that children grow up addicted to junk food when even the floor sends them subliminal messages!

Vancouver

2010-06-01T05:39:00.003+01:00

It is the end of May, and I am in British Columbia. I am staying with P, a friend of a friend, who has generously let me occupy his spare room for four weeks whilst I wrote the last of my MA essays and began researching my dissertation. My window looks out at the North Shore mountains, where at the moment clouds nuzzle the slopes like gigantic sheep, or perhaps dugongs. I have been living the life of a trappist monk, spending most of my time either hunched over my laptop or in libraries. Life goes on around me, and I exist mostly unnoticed. I try to ignore all the pretty girls in short shorts and concentrate on my historical archaeology topics. I try to ignore the siren song of the bars. I try to ignore the call of the quiet forests and the melancholy mountains... I am hugely privileged that, while everyone else has to engage in the nine-to-five, I can just read and follow leads and peer into blind alleys of words and occasionally discover something fantastically interesting (to me anyway)...

And although I once lived here, Vancouver and Canada are strange again, and people's accents are sharp, and the air different. The smells of this ocean/forest/mountain city are unfamiliar again, and remind me of when I first arrived here nearly 20 years ago.

And then there's the sound of the trains rumbling along "The Cut" and the long sad moan of their whistles, which takes me back to the winter of 1991 when that cry mixed with the gurgle of a leaking gutter outside L's bedroom window...

Who are YOU looking at?

Pleasure

2010-04-12T12:47:00.002+01:00

Dunking ginger nut biscuits in black coffee...

Another great experience is taking alternate bites of a ginger nut biscuit and an apple! (I learned that from Tom Lawrance in April 1982 whilst living semi-rough in an old stables beside Newbrough vicarage, Northumberland - see, it made such an impression that I can remember when!)

Hmmm

2010-04-12T08:52:00.002+01:00

I should have thought that listing the support of the captains of industry is going to lose the Tories more votes than it attracts, such is our combined contempt for those who personify avarice and our mistrust of politicians. Trouble is, the latter means that many of us have lost the desire to support any of this self-serving and hypocritical governing elite. Ho hum!

Badgering badgers is bad

2010-01-19T15:41:00.002Z

Once again, despite a couple of hundred years' experience of what happens when we deliberately mess around with ecology (it always goes horribly wrong, because ecology is always much more complex than we realise, or want to realise) we're going to do it again. The Welsh are going to cull badgers. Now, I've only ever seen badgers when they are a grubby mess of road-kill, but I imagine they fit into various food chains and ecological relationships. Perhaps life without badgers won't be noticeably different. But we don't know for sure. Perhaps badgers eat some grub that if uneaten will wipe out something else, which in turn will cause the demise of something really spectacular. Perhaps not. But we don't know. And the reasons for wiping out badgers in Wales are purely the concerns of greedy cattle farmers who don't want the expense of preventing the spread of TB the proper way (by restricting the movements of cattle). These are the wonderful "guardians of the countryside", the sort who leave black sacks all over the place, who spread all kinds of stuff on their fields and who inject their animals with various cocktails of chemicals that non-vegans tend to ingest and...well I don't need to go on. My general rule is, it's best to leave ecology alone to balance itself.

Vegan verisimilitude

2010-01-18T13:44:00.004Z

Grrr!

Blogging again, prompted by a shallow and ill-thought-out blog by the BBC's "Ethical Man," who seems to be prone to believe all the nonsense that one hears about non-meat diets and attracts avalanches of stupid commentary.

1. "Hitler was a vegetarian." No he wasn't. This canard has been dealt with time and time again. Besides, while there have probably been many evil vegetarians over the ages, that isn't a reason not to be a vegetarian (or a vegan, which is different, folks). I'm guessing that since non-meat-eaters are in a minority, then there have probably been more evil meat eaters in total. (However, if it can be demonstrated statistically that there have been more evil vegetarians than evil carnivours per 1000 humans I'm willing to be convinced)

2. Vegetarianism is good. No it isn't. Vegetarian diets includes dairy products, which are amongst the least healthy dietary options (fats, hormones etc etc), cause as much animal suffering (constant pregnancy, hugely swollen uddders, mastitis, elimination of bull calves etc) and make as many environmental demands (animal feeds, pharmaceuticals etc) as meat production. Vegetarians also eat eggs. Eggs tend to come from chickens, the majority of which are kept in miserable conditions for as long as they can lay, after which they are slaughtered for pet food.

3. Vegetarians eat fish. No they don't.

4. Veganism is unhealthy. No it isn't. If you eat badly and don't exercise, then you will be an unhealthy vegan. Eat well and exercise and you we be as healthy as the next person, if not more so. There are many vegan sportsmen and women, including marathon runners and weight lifters, who demonstrate that one can be vegan and super fit. I have been a vegan for over 10 years. I donate blood. My blood has all the appropriate contents, and probably less (bad) cholesterol than yours. So there! Ooops, I haven't taken a vitamin B12 pill for years (pinches himself to check if still alive)...

5. Veganism means giving up food taste and variety. No it doesn't. The vast number of vegetables and fruits available world-wide mean that a vegan diet can be infinitely varied and full of taste and texture. And if you so wish, you can buy a wide range of "fake" meats. Yes, fake cheese is crap, and fake bacon is like eating bacon-flavoured cardboard. But otherwise, I'm not complaining... Oh, I forgot, you may have to read the occasional label, or cook food yourself instead of merely plucking it from a Sainsbury's freezer, or grow your own vegatbles, or search out a little tucked-away restaurant/cafe but hey, I thought stuff like that was supposed to be life-enhancing!

6. Veganism is "natural." No it isn't. Humans evolved as scavenging omnivours, eating whatever they came across. If what they ate was bad, they were sick. Watch a baby. It sticks everything it finds in its mouth (Oops, there goes another worm. Oops there goes another fistful of soil. Mmmm!). Veganism is an unnatural 21st century middle-class dietary choice based on any or all of ethical, health or environmental concerns. We are very lucky, nay privileged, to be able to make that choice. Many millions cannot.

7. Vegetarians/vegans are "self-righteous." No they're not. OK, a few may be but most aren't. Exactly how many vegetarians/vegans do you know? Being one, I know lots. My vegan friends and acquaintances span the full range of humanity, from complete nutters to utter bores. However because they are too busy enjoying life they tend not to waste time abusing poor sensitive meat-eaters. It is interesting that anyone who has ideals (or who might actually be right) is called "self-righteous." I presume that a certain carpenter from Nazareth was often called a "self-righteous bastard"...

8. Vegetarians/vegans are kill-joys. No they aren't. Most couldn't give a rat's arse what anyone else does with their lives. They care rather more, perhaps, about animals, or their own health, or the environment, but most just get on with being themselves. There are a few prosyletisers, though far fewer than there are in all those sinister lobbying organisations that are at the behest of the food industries. And you'll find that the noisy enthusiasts are usually promoting their own causes, rather than saying that other people are bad. Well, apart from fur wearers and whale killers and seal skinners and bear organ hunters and ivory poachers and...

9. Vegans are smug bastards. True. Well, in my case anyway. Because in a very easy, even lazy manner, I am able to contribute an (albeit tiny) amount to the the well-being of this terribly fragile planet.

Still kicking

2009-11-18T12:47:00.003Z

I'm back at university, and my days are full. Not much time for stripes apart from occasional sightings amongst my generally young and attractive fellow students. Life is good though.

Death of a dragon

2009-08-19T22:55:00.003+01:00

I found this beautiful creature dying just inside the back door. I stuck it on my dusty scanner platen, to capture some of its glory before it fades away. I guess it had been hawking above the pond outside, or perhaps laying eggs (which were probably all eaten by the fish). It is a Golden-Ringed Dragonfly (Cordulegaster boltonii). I especially like the pattern of veins in the wings. Imagine what it must have been like 300 million years ago when this insect's extinct relation, Meganeura, was nearly a metre across!

Autofellatio in Hereford

2009-08-10T15:19:00.002+01:00

This looks a little painful, but I love the fact that the worthy, great and good of Hereford have, for centuries, entered the cathedral beneath this wonderfully disgraceful C16th carving!

Even the greenfly...

2009-07-02T09:57:00.002+01:00

Just a hedgerow plant. Just a few aphids. But poetry nonetheless!

Fragment 2

2009-06-29T20:59:00.003+01:00

Fragment 1

2009-06-23T11:27:00.001+01:00

I am ashamed...

2009-06-16T12:16:00.003+01:00

This picture, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" fills me with horror and shame, as, of course, I am one of the millions of thoughtless, apathetic, cynical, lazy human beings who add to the vast global garbage dump that ends up, in this case, in the stomach of a fledgling Laysan albatross. Hundreds of bits of plastic...some of them still recognisable.
We don't deserve this planet.

Gun law

2009-03-12T12:55:00.001Z

In the wake of the latest gun rampages, they say that what we need is more understanding of those who are likely to commit such acts, rather than more gun legislation.

People have always run amok. We need to understand why. But running amok with a club or a knife or an axe, whilst terrible, is not the same as running amok with a semi-automatic weapon of mass destruction.

I also wonder if there's a connection between fathers who have gun collections and deranged youths.

We need to legislate guns out of existence, now.

Retro computing

2009-03-12T12:47:00.001Z

My MacBook Pro has gone off for a minor repair and, hopefully a new battery to replace the crap one that came with it and which died after only 160 recharge cycles.

So last night I dug out my 10 year old iBook, so old that it doesn't have a CD burner, plugged in a Belkin USB wireless adapter and crossed my fingers. Despite the wireless adapter apparently not being Mac OS X (10.3) compatible, it worked! It all worked clunkily, with occasional lost connections, but nevertheless I was able to sit in bed and surf and chat with YR and have fun. The 10 year old iBook battery worked better than the 1.75 year old MacBook battery, not wonderfully, but then batteries are supposed to have a life of 3 years or so... The iBook is now being used as a radio receiver while I work in a room away from my study.

I still have our original Mac Classic 2, carefully boxed away. Last time I switched it on it still ran OS 7 successfully. I may dig it out again soon, just for fun.

Bashful beat-bashers

2009-02-24T15:07:00.003Z

It is now illegal to take photographs of the police.

It always amuses me when something like this happens, because it creates a huge neon arrow that points at the police and says, in letters many metres high, "They're up to something!". If the police are operating within the law, then why on earth would they not want to be photographed? Of course, the reason they don't wish to be photographed is because they have someting to hide. It's parallels the reluctance of politicians to have their financial (and other) affairs open to scrutiny, behaviour that screams "We're on the fiddle!"

My suggestion is that we all carry lots of disposable cameras whenever we are at risk of offending the fragile sensibilities of the police. We should also constantly take photographs using our mobile phones. The task of dealing with thousands of cameras, while at the same time ensuring that everyone deletes images from their phones (and digital cameras), will prove impossible. Imagine a big demonstration where everyone taking part constantly takes photographs. This legistation has created yet another opportunity for peaceful, non-violent protest. And those who really do want to catch the police unawares will adopt the methodologies of those who report on totalitarian regimes - hidden cameras.

It's the poor what gets the blame

2009-02-16T13:51:00.003Z

Should aliens visit the world of the not-too-distant future, in by what will, by then, be a human-less desert, the remaining cockroaches will no doubt pause in their cheerful scuttling to explain that it was all the fault of poor people.

Poor people couldn't afford to buy environmentally-friendly, ethically-produced food, so the supermarkets just had, out of social duty, to carry on sourcing and selling cheap and nasty, unhealthy foods.

OK, the poor went on being unhealthy, animals went on being abused, the environment went on being destroyed by burger-makers, but who cared?

The world, and capitalism, has begun to die. We are experiencing the first of its death throes. I don't have to list them, we all know what they are. Any chance of rescue depends on spending a lot more time, effort and money. If healthy, ethical, non-envioronmentally-damaging foods will save the world, then we have to pay for them, and help the poor buy them too. It isn't good enough to raise one's hands in apparent impotence and say that we just have to go on the way we are because any other approach costs too much.

Plus of course, sharing resources more equably would help a lot too.

It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the gravy
Ain't it all a bleeding shame.

At the end of the rainbow

2009-01-27T15:56:00.002Z

It is always a joy to introduce someone special to a book that I love, and to have that enthusiasm shared and echoed.

I have just told Yi Ran about The Crock of Gold by James Stephens, that strange mix of philosophy and leprechauns, humour and gods, sex and sensibility.

A long time ago, when I was an archaeologist in Dover, I stayed, with others, in a soon-to be-demolished terraced house in Albany Place, at the top of Cowgate Hill, near the cemetery. As I walked back to our accommodation one evening, Waaia Comer, a retired Australian lady who lived a few doors along from us, stopped me and asked if I knew anything about lavatory cisterns, as hers was broken. Always willing to rush in where angels fear to tread, I was soon delving into the mysteries of her cistern, which I managed to repair.

We became friends, and Waaia invited me to tea several times over the next few months. She was an impoverished (or so it seemed) unmarried lady who had worked for NCR in London (or perhaps Slough) and had moved to this tiny terraced house when she retired. In her minute garden, from which there was a fantastic view of Dover Castle, she grew roses (bought from Woolworths) for their petals, and her home was always filled with bowls of drying petals that would become pot-pourri. Every horizontal surface, including the chairs, was covered with heaps of yellowing newspaper cuttings, which she used as a reference collection to enliven our conversations. She would clear a pile of cuttings from a single chair when I visited, remaining standing herself, and indeed eating standing up. We talked about life and books, and one day she gave me a brand new copy of The Crock of Gold, telling me that I should read it and that I would like it. I did and I did, and the copy she gave me is almost worn out as a result of many re-readings. Sadly I lost touch with Waaia when she her house was demolished and she returned to Australia, but I still have the book she gave me.

Now Yi Ran is discovering the delights of The Crock of Gold!

Of torsos, statistics and Romanian nurses

2009-01-06T09:40:00.005Z

Last month I was poked, prodded, jabbed and measured as part of Biobank, my rather boring data (I answered "no" to almost everything, thank goodness) joining that of 499,999 others who are going to be studied to see if the nation's health and fitness can be improved. Well, apart from the fact that we already know that the British need to eat less, exercise more, give up smoking and junk food, I think it's a valuable exercise, though I'm not sure why they needed to know how old I was when I lost my virginity.

It was all rather fun, but of course I came away clutching my sheet of weight and blood pressure results convinced that I was about to die at any moment of all kinds of nasty afflictions. Looking back I now believe that the reason my blood pressure was higher than normal was the rather charming Romanian nurse who was measuring it, but in the meantime I rushed to Boots and bought a blood pressure monitor. The trouble is I've found my blood pressure goes up and down in response to all kinds of external and internal stimuli, some identifiable like a cup of coffee or an energy bill, others mysterious, so I'm finding that one measurement is wonderfully normal, the next tells me I'm already dead, and the third that I am about to explode. I've just measured it - as I write this I am extremely normal. Phew, I'll survive another few hours...

But the survey also told me I need to lose some flab (see below), which I knew anyway. I once had a girlfriend who told me that my abdomen resembled that of an ancient Greek or Roman statue. Ignoring the "ancient" part of that description, I've given myself six months to regain an approximation of that shape. Hmmm.

Bugger

2009-01-06T09:37:00.003Z

I was going to record my weight this morning as the first step in a major slimming-down process. I stepped on the scales, only to be informed that the battery had died. Well, I guess going to find a replacement will give me a bit of exercise. Ho hum!

On police states and religions...could there be a connection?

2008-12-24T21:49:00.002Z

Two good articles in yesterday's Guardian, which I read today because the international edition gets here (Playa Blanca, Lanzarote) a day late.

In the first, George Monbiot writes about the misuse of legislation intended to protect women from stalkers, but which is being used, because it doesn't demand much burden of proof, to "protect" businesses and others from peaceful activists, whether they be people objecting to the destruction of some special piece of countryside, enthusiasts trying to save some animals or plants from elimination, or activists attempting to put pressure on companies and organisations that abuse animals.

On the one hand it turns non-violent protest into aggression, and on the other it transforms stalwart police and security officials into trembling and terrified wimps, "threatened" by the actions of a few elderly people.

It is a disgraceful law that can only be excused in either a police or a totalitarian, paranoid state.

Polly Toynbee writes about the nonsense and illogicality of religions and their relationships with secularists. While god-fearers of whatever persuasion, sect and creed are obsessed and entangled by the various sins of the flesh, they scorn the unbeliever, who is morally bankrupt, they say, and bound for the cooking pots of hell. Meanwhile humanists get on with trying to do good things, save the world and humanity, achieve equality for women, have fun and lead fulfilling lives without the need for holy books, suicide bombers, martyrs, faith schools, sacred rules and regulations and all the paraphernalia of organised religions, who can't even agree whose god is the one, let alone whether or not homosexuality is the end of the world, women caught in adultery should be stoned to death (I'd always though Jesus solved that one 2000 years ago), eight year old should be married to men 50 years their senior etc etc etc.

Posh cars saved...no cheers!

2008-12-22T22:41:00.002Z

So we, you and me taxpayers, are going to save Jaguar, so that posh and wealthy people can have big petrol-guzzling cars and a foreign gentleman can continue to make lots of money. Oh, there are some jobs involved, but it's funny that jobs are worth saving when they affect rich people, but not when they only affect the middle and lower classes, like Woolworths and a large number if other examples. Something fishy surely? But then politicians are never on the side of the underdog...

Time enough or not enough time?

2008-12-16T15:18:00.003Z

It is a common perception that time passes more quickly the older you are. My feeling is that this is because your store of memories, dramatic or routine, gets bigger and bigger, but in essence is timeless - you remember your first kiss and yesterday in the same time-scale, even though they may be separated by decades.

So my feeling that life is flying by is influenced by uncomfortable thoughts. Let's say I decide that I have thirty or so more years to live (minimum I hope). But I can remember thirty years ago as if it were the day before yesterday. Wow, didn't those thirty years go fast! So my distorted thinking assumes that the next thirty years will go equally as quickly. Bugger! Hardly time to do anything...

However of course we only live in the present moment, right here, right now. Unfortunately we can't slow down or stop the present. It slides by into the past before we even really register that it has arrived from the future.

But I'm hazarding a guess that the more we do with the present, the more we can squeeze into it, the more vivid and significant we can make it, the more data, if you like, it will carry into the past, into our memories. So amazing sex, great beauty, huge excitement, intense fear, all create rich, highly concentrated "parcels" of memory that clog up and "slow down" our memories. Sitting in front of a vacuous TV programme, plodding through routine work tasks, washing up, eating baked beans...all the empty moments of the present...create equally empty "parcels" that can be compressed into nothingness. In looking back over those thirty years, the spaces between big memories are squeezed, a bit like an accordion. So time seems to be short.

I wonder if one of the tenets of meditation, in which, as I understand it, everything becomes equally important, is the inflating of all those empty parcels or flaccid balloons.

I also wonder if we can deliberately, if unconsciously, deflate parcels of memories we find boring - pain, childbirth ( the nasty bits thereof), driving home on the motorway.

There are many complaints on the web (45 million references to time speeding up!) about life flashing past. I wonder if that's a reflection of our modern way of life, which normally includes quite long periods of tedium.

I suppose that what I trying to think through here is that if I can make every present moment a rich and valuable one, then the next thirty years will pass at a comfortable speed rather than a blink... Hmmm

Sniff

2008-12-15T22:19:00.000Z

I have a cold, and I don't feel like working tonight. I have also run out of whisky, even the bottle of Bells I retrieved from my parents' house when I emptied it last winter. So I am miserable.

Having said that, I was cheered by the article in today's Guardian that revealed that during what we'd been informed were hugely violent confrontations at last summer's Climate Camp at Kingsnorth, the £4.5 million police operation suffered twelve minor injuries, including wasp stings, toothache and scratches from climbing over fences. Bless!

Actually, the unsurprising revelation that "NewSpeak" was rife amongst both police and government is frightening, because it shows how paranoid our state is becoming. Anyone protesting against anything is instantly labelled a "terrorist", and overkill swings into action. Protesters, however peaceful, are either described as violent, are goaded into violence, or are assaulted and the resulting violence blamed on them. The problem with this is it entails the utilisation of huge investigative resources, which means that the real bad guys more often than not get away with it. We become super-cynical. We begin not to believe anything our leaders tell us. It also means we are constantly crying "wolf".

Only failing or illegitimate governments need be paranoid. Sad...

Cat contortions

2008-12-13T22:40:00.003Z

One of the cats keeps crapping in the newspaper basket. I know it could be worse, but the newspapers are in the basket because I haven't finished reading them yet! Little bugger! Not caught it red-bummed yet, but am having to leave booby traps in the basket to discourage it. So far I have yet to open the Guardian and be rewarded with a lap-full of cat poo, but I have become extremely careful...

Today's fortune

2008-12-13T22:07:00.003Z

For every dark night there is a brighter day.

Shed

2008-12-11T23:07:00.000Z

Of mice and Maxtors

2008-12-11T23:06:00.003Z

On the fortieth anniversary of its invention, my latest mouse, an Apple MightyMouse no less, has abruptly become arthritic. It's always regularly acquired a grubby bottom, the slovenly critter, but now, when I click it, it makes a loud crunching sound and feels stiff. I guess mice get old eventually.

On the other hand my Maxtor external hard drive, where I store my Time Machine back-ups, is less than a year old, but the fan has begun to make a noise resembling a clapped-out starter motor. This appears to be a common fault, given the numbers of reports in web forums. I feel giving it a sharp slap, like we use to give the TV in the old days, but it's a hard drive, and probably wouldn't appreciate it. So I've decided to load as much stuff on it as possible and retire it to the bank safety deposit box, where hopefully it will never be needed, along with all the colour negatives that I've stored there just in case the house burns down. Ho hum...

Sand

2008-12-11T22:21:00.007Z

When I was small my mother used to tell me, at bed-time, that the sandman would come a put me to sleep. I always thought this was faintly sinister. Who was this person who would creep into my bedroom and leave a few grains of sand in my eyes, to be rubbed away the following morning. And why? I never did find out...

Nevertheless, despite the sandman, I love sand. It is a wonderful, sensual medium, yet it is rock, ground for millions of years by the sea or wind - did you know that the grains of water-formed and wind-formed sands have different shapes?

And I love sand dunes, and their curves and hollows and secret places where the wind doesn't reach. And the soft sand that makes walking slow and laborious, and the firm sand where you want to run, and the caressing sand where you just want to strip off your clothes and roll and roll.

All the same

2008-12-05T14:03:00.004Z

The biggest change Obama is introducing appears to be to his own declared policies, as he appoints a team that looks suspiciously like the same old same old. I hope, for, but don't expect, surprises!

The economic mess that we few remaining taxpayers are having to sort out also seems to be heading towards same old same old. Those who haven't lost their jobs are busily working on ways to make the most money out of whatever rises from the ashes of great bonfires of financial hype. Of course, they'll squirrel that money away in various tax havens, so the battered, decaying public services that you and I support with our taxes will wither, if not die.

And the biggest damage will be to tomorrow's world, as the crisis (aka fuck-up) gives everyone a wonderful excuse to carry on polluting, chucking waste over their shoulders and generally destroying our tiny planet. Even the nuclear industry is now calling itself "sexy!"

I fantasise that the Heathrow airport expansion will be shelved, because no-one will be able to afford to fly in a year or two's time. But I have a horrible feeling that there soon will be a vast concrete white elephant obliterating the almost green and occasionally pleasant land at Sipson. Ho hum.

Roll on the recovery, when we can get back to clearing rain forest, flying to Prague to get liver-damagingly drunk, buying new cars every year, building more motorways, calculating our bonuses and crying "sod the future!"

An orange

2008-12-05T13:06:00.003Z

So my faraway love rails against the injustice of my seeming lack of focus on her. Greedy for my attention (for which of course she only has to press "send") she accuses me of relegating her to being just one of a hundred women.

This is flattering to me but unfair, as I sit here, half a world away, missing her.

Just because I can love more than just one person doesn't mean I have to. I am no Don Juan or Casanova, who anyway didn't love in any way other than sexual. I guess it's my own fault for my light-hearted references to falling in "love" with whatever nice pair of legs is nearby. I must remember in future to say "lust".

I'm not sure my attempts to explain and reassure dampened the smoke issuing from my laptop. The trouble is, she explained, that her many admirers have, until now, offered her only apples, while she wants oranges. Then I come along, blunder in all starry-eyed and deliver...an orange! And she wants more! While I like the image of her chewing up her men and throwing away the cores, I'm now feeling peeled and squeezed. Oranges are softer than apples! Sigh!

Feeling glum

2008-12-03T15:07:00.002Z

Perhaps I'll cheer up tomorrow...

Feeling gloomy

2008-12-03T15:03:00.004Z

Down , is all I can say...

A good blow

2008-11-30T09:53:00.000Z

Yesterday I drove tentatively across a fog-shrouded Peak District, through Matlock, Bakewell and Buxton. As I crept northwards out of Buxton the scene changed to a sunny landscape chilled by several degrees of frost.

I was on my way to a small town called New Mills, where the Dark Peak Music Trust was holding its first ever Symphonic Wind Band Workshop. I arrived ten minutes late, but so did several others, who though they'd not had to deal with fog, had not calculated for the time they'd had to spend scraping ice from their windscreens.

When I entered the rehearsal hall my heart sank, for there were several little girls whose instruments were almost as big as them, and I selfishly groaned at the thought of having to play too-easy music all day.

But I was wrong. True, we started off with a tedious Beatles medley, but soon I was struggling to count bars' rest that repeatedly changed time, apply irregular stresses to rapidly-played quavers and, for me the best part of the day, got to play first oboe in a Mozart octet. It was a piece I'd not played before, and is at the very limit of my present ability, so stretched both my sight-reading and technique. Indeed there was one section of runs I just couldn't play properly yesterday. Mature Mozart is great to play, but alternates between stretches that emerge from your fingers almost effortlessly, to others that make you sweat (someone had pencilled "Don't panic!" on the worst bit of my part).

So now I face the challenge of getting that bit right... I was pretty much the only oboe (another oboeist played percussion most of the day), which was also fine, because around here, good oboeists are a dime a dozen and I rarely get to play meaningful music other than in my own woodwind ensemble (Aeolus). I also wasn't the oldest musician, though most players were of school age or in their 20s.

So as I drove cautiously back through the freezing fog to Nottingham I was feeling good, and looking forward to the next workshop in April 2009.

All parallel lines meet at infinity (back by popular demand)

2008-11-22T17:08:00.002Z

(I'd deleted this post, because i wasn't happy with the writing, but L told me it was "all part of the mix", so I'm reposting it)

So, is love finite? Do we posses an inner reservoir of love that runs low if we distribute our supply too liberally? I ask myself this question because someone who I like very much, and who I should like to love, asked me how much, on a scale of 1 to 100, I loved my partner. I confidently answered 100, but added that it was a meaningless question. Just because I love a particular person doesn't mean that I have depleted my reserves. So my answer to my question is no, love is limitless.

This of course causes me some gloomy times, because love, however generously given, can often be unrequited. Sadly I tend to be the sort of bloke who jumps into situations with both big feet, and then of course discovers the hard way that there's nothing there. Thud! Ouch!

Nursing my bruises, I suppose I should be following my head, but my heart somehow takes the lead at unexpected moments, and I am caught unawares. Ho hum...

[Since writing this post I discovered this relevant post on Bristling Badger's blog.]

The joy of being a red-head

2008-11-21T23:17:00.005Z

I see that Canada has just experienced a "National Kick a Ginger" day.

Until it mysteriously vanished, I had red hair. In fact I still do have red hair, but I'm not going to show you where! And if I was to let my beard grow, it would be red. My mother insisted my hair was auburn, but that's just a way of avoiding the fact that I was ginger.

Although, when I was a toddler, old ladies liked ruffling my locks (perhaps that's why my hair disappeared), I later experienced years of being bullied. This was partly because I was a swot and a softie, but mostly because I was ginger. They phrase "Hey ginge!" is etched into my psyche.

Of course a few years of being bullied is nothing compared with the lifelong hazards of being different, and the myth that red-haired men are unattractive to women isn't true, thank goodness.

But I felt for all those kids who suffered bullying the other day for no other reason than their inherited genetic trait. And I despaired of the mentality of the hundreds of idiots who, too dumb to realise that South Park (from which they apparently took their inspiration) was taking the piss of the very behaviour they were exhibiting, had fun abusing and assaulting red-heads.

All hail gingers!

The economy sorted

2008-11-21T22:49:00.002Z

The problem with creating a political climate that cow-tows to the Daily Mail/Express/Telegraph crowd and their associated businesspeople is that they are fickle.

Obsessed (if not "disgusted", in an enthusiastic way) by sex, gossip and scandal, yet worried to death by homosexuality (especially lesbianism, since women are supposed to be wielding pots and pans, not dildos), paedophilia (there's one behind every tree apparently, and every middle-aged man with low esteem is drooling after your children), single mothers (mothers only make sense if they are subordinate to a good man), licking their lips over any sexual oddity they can dredge up, they nevertheless have gutter minds into which politicians are prone to stumble.

Obsessed by money, they have never worked out that almost all of the things they complain about so vociferously are paid for by the taxes they hate paying (I wonder how long they'd last if they could opt out of paying taxes but in return only use services that they paid for, starting with the garbage collection, the road outside their front doors, their healthcare etc etc?). This means they only vote for politicians who fantasise about lowering taxes, which is always easier said than done.

But now we are in a fix, because we need to rescue a disfunctional economy created by all those Daily Telegraph/Financial Times readers so that the Daily Mail and Express readers don't lose all their nice little investments, poor dears. And where is that rescue going to come from? Why, from the taxpayer!

But surely these unfortunates don't agree with paying taxes? Ah but this is different. It's a jolly good thing all we humble folk who can't afford to salt away our money in offshore tax havens have paid our taxes so that they can be used to help out those who don't believe in paying taxes.

Hang on! Isn't there something wrong here?

See the happy moron...

2008-11-21T22:14:00.003Z

An article I read recently was full of praise of meritocracies. It told me how much I owe to those educated (a) in private schools (b) at Oxbridge universities. You could surely enlarge on this theme by pointing out all the wonderful things brought about by improvements in education over, say, the last 50 years or so. You could make it global. Aren't we just wonderful!

Except that all these collected minds, nurtured on a rich diet of exclusive education and privilege, have achieved precious little over the past few decades.

Have they created a stable, equitable economic system? No.
Have they achieved peace? No.
Have they rid the world of nuclear weapons?No.
Have they eliminated poverty? No.
Have they wiped out major diseases? No.
Have they ended pollution? No.
Have they enabled women to take their place as the equals of men? No.
Have they got rid of racism? No.
Have they reduced human cruelty to other humans and/or to other species? No.
Have they solved the challenge of population pressure? No.
Have they fed everyone on the planet? No.
Have they fired all the despots and dictators? No.
Have they made the world a better place in which to live? No.
Have they found a solution to climate change? No.

And so on and depressingly so on. What the fuck has meritocracy achieved then? What have they been up to all these years, all these highly intelligent, cultured and educated people?

Well, they've put on a lot of weight. The values of their properties have increased many-fold. They've vacationed. They've bought yachts and private jets and big cars. They've talked eloquently at parties. They've become celebrities. And so on and depressingly so on.

So, despite all this "education" and privilege, they've achieved sweet-fanny-adams!

Everything in the above list is solvable, right now. But in many (all?) areas this elite has made things worse of anything. So it must be that the meritocracy, whether "educated" (that word becomes less and less meaningful the more often I type it) at Eton, Borden Grammar School, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, MIT, wherever, either doesn't want to change the world for the better or is fundamentally moronic.

See the happy moron
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron
My God! Perhaps I am!

Old machines

2008-11-20T17:43:00.003Z

I fell in love with the Science Museum when I was a boy. I still go there whenever I can. I was already obsessed by museums, a character flaw I acquired at about the age of seven or eight, when I was often left to wander the mahogany-case-lined galleries of Adelaide Museum, in Australia. But whereas there it was the mahogany-brown skulls of long dead aboriginals that drew me back again and again, in the science Museum it was the machines that fascinated me, because of their combination of technology, history, aesthetics, mystery, story-telling and melancholy. Melancholy because these great beasts had once rumbled and hissed in the midst of factories and mines and workshops and had been fussed over by anonymous workers who were now all dead. Between the chunks of wrought iron and gleaming brass, the jewel-like models of steam engines and pumps and had been fashioned by old men with oily hands and black finger nails wearing flat caps. But all these machines no longer had a purpose. No longer did they acquire a patina of oil and sweat from their engineers. Now they were as dead as those aboriginal skulls, polished, clean, quiet and motionless. They were beautiful, as handsome as the ancient musical instruments across the road in the Victoria and Albert Museum, but like them, they needed to be caressed by human hands to glow. And at the far end of the museum (or so I remember it) always the Foucault pendulum silently swung, marking the passage of the industrial revolution as surely as it showed the rotation of the earth.

Although I'm not an engineer, and though I am aware of the damage these same inventions have wrought, I nevertheless feel a lurch of sadness whenever I come across a piece of machinery that will never run again, fused by rust, still bearing smudges of oil and grease, its hoses cracked, its control levers immovable, gradually being reclaimed by the earth that, fittingly, provided the raw materials for its creation…

The apple of my a***

2008-11-20T15:18:00.003Z

I just paid significant dosh in order to upgrade my iMovie. Now as you know I am a Mac person, always have been, but I still moan and groan at the bloody expense of Apple stuff. Because, as well as buying an upgrade to iMovie, worth at the most a tenner, I also was forced to buy several other things, including such vitally important things as Garage Band (does anyone actually use Garage Band?), iWeb and of course, the latest version of iTunes etc etc. So I dutifully load it all, since I bought the stuff, and lo and behold iTunes is corrupted! Grrr. I install it again. It's still corrupted. I've just bought an expensive disk with a corrupted version of iTunes on it! (Sorry about all these italics.) I mutter some choice expletives, and then simply download iTunes from the web, and it works fine, but it's the principle of the thing that matters.

The reason I've had to upgrade to iMovie 08 (ironically with only six weeks of 08 left), is that I've bought a flashy new video camera which produces AVCHD video. I got the camera for a good price, but now I've added significantly to its cost. It looks as though I'll also need an extra cable (not supplied) to link it to our DVD player. And then I guess I ought to buy a spare battery and another flash memory card. What was a deal suddenly isn't. And of course next week the camera will be on sale. Materialism is a bugger...

Hey, I'm rich!

2008-11-20T15:03:00.003Z

I just got this from the Co-Op: "Guess what? Our members are about to share a whopping £8.6 million payout!"
When my heart stopped palpitating, I read on: "As you have earned under £2, your total will be rolled over to the next payout in June 2009."
Ho hum
So I looked for some legs instead...

Three stones

2008-11-18T21:45:00.002Z

They still point towards stars. Perhaps not the stars or planets they may have indicated when someone laboured to set them up, four millennia ago. Or perhaps they marked something else, perhaps there were once more. It matters not. Leaning against their lichen-etched flanks, I feel the energy with which they still vibrate, as if they conduct some unmeasurably high current between earth and the solar system that our ancestors seemed to know better than we do. Once they may have stood vertical and proud. Now, worn by the knowledge of forty centuries, they lean together, as if secretly sharing stories about us, we puny beings of soft flesh who wander, ignorant, around them. Again, it may be that their angles are deliberate, that they are the impressively erect indicators of some secret phallic purpose. And the story of the three stones in the place of stones, tre lech, goes back much further, to when pebbles and sand collected beneath streams that flowed in geological time, and were cemented by the incredible forces of the earth’s crust to create a conglomerate, unglamorously called puddingstone. Some say the stones emit an aura, others that the lichen is magical, still others that the mystical place is a focus of ley lines. On a quiet winter’s day none of these things matter, because some unknown long-dead someone put the stones there, and they have outlasted them, and will outlast me until the time when even stones will vanish.

Ranch, British Columbia

2008-11-18T21:41:00.002Z

Once, the floorboards creaked to the rhythm of love-making. Now the brass bed that muttered and complained beneath their energetic bodies blocks a gap in a fence, and the boards creak only as the old ranch reacts to the temperature changes as yet another empty day turns into night. Where once they embraced, and fumbled with calloused hands beneath dusty clothing, now only the mournful cattle moan with pleasure as they scratch their backs against warped porch posts. Their children, who giggled and rattled across those same sun-bleached planks, and whose children let the sheep in to devour the few shrubs that remained of the garden, are themselves long dead, lying beneath the humpy dry grass of a cemetery that has itself been abandoned.

England, winter

2008-11-18T21:33:00.003Z

Afternoon descends, quietly creeping cold across damp grey fields and the dripping black twigs of trees, their branches held up almost in despair, and enveloping oblivious sheep in a chill blanket of dusk. The abandoned farmhouse, cold as its stones, looks blindly through empty window sockets at nothing and no-one except me, trudging muddily towards the pub and its glowing fireplace. In an hour the moss-blanketed building will be visible only to owls and mice, and occupied by whatever agricultural ghosts that might hang in its malodorous gloom. But for now I walk the path followed by lonely travellers for three thousand winters as we have hastened towards warmth and welcome.

Friends

2008-11-13T14:59:00.004Z

Although I've been online, as in having an email address, for about 13 years. I haven't made many, if any, online friends. There have been desultory conversations, but these have fizzled out after a few weeks as our divergent lives went their ways.

But in the last year I've acquired two online friends I'd now describe as genuinely "close"!

The first is Ali, who I got to know through a shared love of allotment gardening. I initially commented on her excellent blog, which is very well written and illustrated, fun and informative. But over the months we've also shared some of the ups and downs of our private lives, which for me has been a privilege. Ali's an attractive, happily-married woman, so our online relationship reflects and respects that.

My other virtual friend is an attractive single woman, so there is an extra frisson in our online communications. We met though a common love of photography, which of course is a medium one can easily share online. She's Chinese, at university in Canada, and her name, Yi Ran, translates as "freedom". Despite cultural and age differences and distance we've discovered that we share many ideas and philosophies, and have long chats about life and its meaning and much besides. I don't yet know whether she wears striped socks, but will eventually broach that important question. She too has a blog, but it's in Chinese. Google Translate tries its best, but I can only sometimes get the gist of what she's writing about.

However the danger in relationships based solely on written words is that one invents oneself, usually in a flattering way, as well as adding imaginative form to the other person.

I of course promote the idea that I am some handsome, swashbuckling Indiana Jones type, though wearing vegan boots, and I naturally fantasise that Yi Ran will be seduced by my wit, charm and smooth words into falling for me, head over heels.

Of course she's far too sensible to do such a thing, and, in my usual gloomy, pessimistic way, I predict that Yi Ran will soon meet some real-life, hideously good-looking and charming man who will whisk her out of my virtual existence. "Not Online" are cruel words! Ho hum!

But in the meantime I look forward to that "boing" that announces that one or other has signed in to MS Messenger.

Love

2008-11-03T23:29:00.002Z

On Saturday, whilst waiting for L to purchase a magazine, I fell in love with the shop assistant in Xplicit, a cheap and cheerful clothes shop in the Victoria Centre. Long legs, short denim shorts, dark grey tights. Sigh. By chance I walked past the same shop this afternoon. Of course she wasn't there. Ho hum. Being polygamous is no fun...

Sad schools

2008-11-03T23:13:00.004Z

I've just finished a long and very pleasant online chat with a Chinese student in Canada who I met through FaceBook (see, it's not all about getting drunk). We eventually got around to mutually shredding traditional formal schooling. I sent her a series of quotes from Ivan Illich, who was concerned with the futility of schooling. In return she pointed me at two great web presences.

The first is Etienne Wenger. I've not yet had time to explore his site and writings, but his informal biography immediately persuaded me that he is someone I would enjoy knowing.

The second is Roger Schank, who is outraged by modern "education".

Reading Roger Schank, my student friend wrote, made her blood boil! I replied that passion is so often missing from learning these days.

Sad seas

2008-11-02T22:55:00.004Z

Like many, I love the sea. It has provided a moody backdrop to much of my life, and it is ironic that at the moment I live almost as far away from the sea as it is possible to get in Britain. As a child I would read endlessly about the "wonders of the deep", and gaze entranced at the great stuffed fish and whales that stared glassily down from museum ceilings. At university I studied marine life in laboratories stocked with specimens collected during famous expeditions. As an adult I have peered fascinated into many rock pools. Beside me on my desk are three sand dollars from a Vancouver Island beach. I have always been aware that the sea is at the edge of my existence, just as it has fringed everywhere I have lived.

And yet during my short lifetime the sea has begun to die.

I am not a believer in a "golden age" kind of past, my own or anyone else's. But there was a time, when I was a boy, when the sea was an exciting place filled with biological mysteries and wonders. Now it is full of garbage.

There are areas of ocean that are already devoid of life. And there are areas of ocean where, because of the funnelling effect of currents, fragments of plastic outweigh plankton by a factor of five. Plastics don't every decay. They just dissociate into smaller and smaller particles. At various stages they can be mistaken for plankton and fish eggs. Fish and birds eat plastic. Toxins leach out of plastic into the flesh of marine invertebrates and vertebrates. The oceans are becoming vast soups of plastic and pollutants. At the top of the food chain, humans eat fish containing cocktails of chemicals.

From a distance the great, wondrous seas look the same as ever. The swell moves as it has always done, and waves crash on shores as they have for millions of years. Yet even on the most remote islands those waves leave behind a scum of plastics.

We still know as little about the sea as we do the dark side of the moon. Every day, marine biologists discover new species of animals. It is also likely that during my lifetime many species have become extinct before we knew of their existence. That massacre of species will accelerate until, all too soon, the oceans will simply be sterile masses of salty water...with a toxic flotsam and jetsam of plastic.

If you eat fish, don't watch this video!

Short shorts

2008-10-17T11:38:00.003+01:00

In my selfless patrolling of the byways of the web in search of anything to do with legs I came across a blog written by an attractive young woman from Arizona who confesses to wearing short shorts as well as thinking for herself! She is a self-professed libertarian, at the adjacent corner of the Nolan chart of political thought from my leaning towards the left, but in my usual shallow fashion, what depressed me most was that she started her blog at about the same time as I did and has had more than 91,000 profile views. I've managed just over 300. I can't imagine why...Ho hum

I hesitated before linking to her blog because (a) it's far more interesting than mine; (b) because she's better looking; and (c) you'll all go off and ...hey...come baaaack

Why?

2008-10-17T11:37:00.000+01:00

Why is it that the bloke comes to read the electricity and gas meters only when the cellar is a hell-hole?

Poor diddums

2008-10-11T17:20:00.001+01:00

I read, yesterday, that some "expert" is saying that unless we pay the money fiddlers huge salaries and even bigger bonuses, even if they fuck up royally, then they'll all get jobs abroad. Surely that's what we want? Hoo-bloody-ray! Let them go and work in Iceland or...er Wall Street or ...er...um. Actually, there's probably nowhere left for them to work. My heart bleeds for them...

Saving savings

2008-10-07T13:49:00.003+01:00

So, after a life of dissolute irresponsibility, I managed finally to save a few quid. And where do I save it? IceSave! I'd assumed my money would sit quietly funding saunas and fish-drying plants, but now I discover the buggers have gambled it away and probably earned whacking great salaries doing so. And thus I will join the long queue of unfortunates who will have to apply for compensation, probably having to complete forms in Icelandic. The only good thing is that I won't be tempted to spend what doesn't, at least for the time being, exist. (I've just noticed that, ironically, every time Blogger autosaves the blue "Save Now" button flashes.)

So eating, drinking and being merry wasn't such a bad idea after all. I may soon be forced to revert to my old ways, when I had to offer up a prayer every time I used my ATM card (the only other time I discover faith is when I fly). I just hope that some of those bastards who earned millions messing about with our money had saved some of their ill-gotten gains in IceSave.

Ho hum

SAD, underpants

2008-10-06T09:50:00.001+01:00

Autumn is sort of here, though driving up and down the M1 through Nottinghamshire you wouldn't know it, for the leaves have yet to turn. But we've finally turned on the central heating for a few hours each day. I've moved all the temperature-sensitive plants from the garden, either into the greenhouse or indoors, which means that every available surface near a window is covered with vegetation, from which crawl an assortment of grumpy spiders and sleepy snails, to be gathered up and rudely ejected outside again.

I am about to order a SAD lightbox in attempt to avoid my usual autumnal blues. I will report on the success or otherwise of this experiment. A friend asked if one could use it for tanning. I hope not.

Into Leeds on Saturday to buy boring underwear from Marks and Spencer. In case you are wondering, I almost always wear what they describe as "slips". In the past I've tried most other forms of gonad garb, and apart from "tangas" have rejected them all as miserably uncomfortable. Tangas, apart from having a silly name, are OK except when they skimp on the elastic, which results in a painful groove encircling one's hips and cutting off the blood supply to very vital organs. But at least they come in interesting colours and patterns. The bunch of briefs I bought came in blue and black. Yawn. Though I guess that my fantasies about being undressed in tumbled bedrooms or having hands thrust questingly down the front of my jeans in dark alleys don't really rely on my wearing scarlet underwear.

Good to see (or should I say ogle) in Leeds that neither autumn nor the economic mess has so far caused hemlines to fall.

It's raining again

2008-09-04T16:36:00.002+01:00

I want this t shirt, which cheers up when the sun comes out! As do I...

Perhaps being vegan isn't unnatural after all!

2008-08-05T21:09:00.002+01:00

I just discovered that it seems that eating meat and dairy products introduces a molecule, Neu5Gc, that the human body, unlike that of other primates, treats as a foreign invader and which provokes an allergic reaction, and anti-Neu5Gc antibodies can result in autoimmune diseases (A Daily Telegraph article).

I must admit that although I'm a committed vegan, for a variety of reasons, I've always thought of veganism as an "unnatural" diet, believing that prehistoric humans ate a scavenging, omnivorous diet which was mostly plant-based but included meat if they came across it. But apparently even Neanderthals rejected this molecule. It is suggested that this is why apes don't suffer from heart attacks and other nasty diseases and we do. So perhaps we weren't designed to eat meat after all!

What's up?

2008-08-05T20:17:00.002+01:00

It's been a while.

Work, work, work. Play play, puff, pant, play (I've discovered tennis in my old age).

Greece (more about that later).

Waterways Recovery Group canal camp (more about that later).

Lust. Music. My bicycle cart. My bicycle stolen. My phone breaks (three times).

Sunshine. Rain. Nettle stings at the allotment. At least 257 mosquito bites in various locations (geographical and on my itchy body).

A good summer (so far) for a legs fetishist. Shorts are in vogue and I'm not complaining!

Work work work play play...I'm sort of taking August off, though people keep sending me work and I need the money to pay for a new bike. I haven't lost or gained weight. It's nearly my birthday.

It's been a while.

Solitary pleasures

2008-05-06T14:18:00.002+01:00

The trouble is, I'm surrounded by sobriety.

Whatever happened to all those young women who were intelligent, could discuss the meaning of life, converse about the end of the world, had nice legs, rode bicycles, and would gently mirror one's progress toward inebriation?

What ever happened to those long conversations that would start with a discussion about the current state of the universe and would end with our hands burrowing through and beneath each other's clothing, giggling the while?

Although I very much enjoy the company of my coterie of attractive female friends, I am tired of being the only person at the pub table who, as pint of real ale follows pint, pointlessly loses his inhibitions beneath their collective sober gaze, and whose mental agility slows as his libido quickens. No point in losing one's inhibitions by oneself.

We're becoming far too sensible!

The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray!

2008-04-28T17:19:00.003+01:00

Why are we fussing about nuclear power?

"The amount of sunshine energy that hits the surface of the Earth every minute is greater than the total amount of energy that the world's human population consumes in a year!"

So we only need harness some 1/525,600th of that solar energy to keep us going quite comfortably thank you. Yet our government is planning to spend umpteen £billions on nuclear power, not to mention the vast sums to be spent on continuing fossil fuel energy generation. And then there are those wind turbine farms that everyone loves...

A few big solar energy capture stations in hot, sunny and deserted (and probably desertified) places should do it. Hey, in the Atacama Desert of Chile there are areas where rain has never fallen, so they wouldn't miss a few hundred square km! I'm sure we have the relevant technologies right now (I've always been able to burn my name in planks of wood using a magnifying glass).

But I guess there are some powerful fossil fuel lobbies that would be horrified by the idea...

And it's bloody raining again!

And yet...

2008-04-16T22:37:00.003+01:00

The trouble is, when a "respected" commentator like George Monbiot writes utter nonsense, as he did the other day when describing vegans as "pearl-grey" in his Guardian column, you begin to wonder about the rest of his pronouncements. A vegan for over ten years and vegetarian before that, I am blotchy, slightly overweight, fit, lusty and cheerful. I guess I might have met a greyish vegan once, but I've certainly met many peculiarly-coloured carnivours. Plus of course very many completely natural-coloured and healthy meat-eaters.

Then I began to read the comments that followed publication of the same article on the Guardian web site. My scorn abated as I waded through a morass of ill-tempered idiocy, and I ended up thinking that although George had got veganism wrong, he was certainly not as wrong as many of his spluttering, bellicose critics. I then I despaired...

A most ingenious paradox

2008-04-11T21:31:00.002+01:00

So as I polished glasses behind the Sumac bar, this chap was telling me of how he was arrested for spray-painting anti-oil graffiti. But isn't it rather paradoxical, I asked, to be using an oil-based medium to attack oil?

Busy busy

2008-04-07T17:34:00.003+01:00

These days, everyone complains of being overwhelmingly busy.

Far too busy, it seems, to do things like growing their own food, making things, thinking, being creative, taking exercise etc etc. And yet the British, according to one survey, find time to spend an average 3.8 hours every day watching TV (and Americans spend nine times as long watching TV as they do anything else apart from work). Another survey puts the average time spent online as 14.3 hours a week as compared with 11.3 hours watching TV, though of course lots of people do both (i.e. spend 25 hours each week sitting on their bums peering at a screen - add this to 40 hours spent sitting on their bums at work and you can see why people are fast resembling misshapen bowling pins). But anyway, watching TV or "surfing" (do people still call it that?) isn't being "busy". Imagine how many vegetables you could grow if you spent an hour or two every day cultivating an allotment. What if you spent those hours writing, or painting, or walking footpaths? But no, everyone seemingly want to be "busy" watching Big Brother or whatever other mindless pap the airwaves offer. I can't remember who said it, but it's true; no-one on their deathbed says "I wish I'd watched more TV!"

Devoting time to health

2008-04-07T17:33:00.001+01:00

The BMA just doesn't get it.

The doctors' organisation complains that because GPs will have to give us all "Health MOTs" (called "life checks") in the near future, they'll have less time to devote to the sick.

Er, perhaps if everyone has regular health checks there will be fewer sick people. The only group that should be worrying about this initiative is the "health" industry, which makes masses of money from us being ill. The fitter we are, the fewer pharmaceuticals we need - great! Perhaps we might eventually have a health service rather than a sickness service.

Funny and sad

2008-03-22T15:03:00.000Z

I purloined this from the web...it's been around a long time, but it amused me on this quiet, resting and waiting (the delivery didn't arrive!) day to go though it and see how many items I could tick off.

I can't say that I am brilliant at any of the facets, but I've tried them all I guess, I fall down at No 21, being a fluffy disorganised sort, I can't say I was a good father (No. 22) but I did my best, I'm not terribly prudent (No. 36) and claiming to be courageous (No. 39) is a bit risky. I'm certainly not rich (No. 48) and I definitely look at other girls (No. 50) because I'm not chained to monogamy. And as to remembering stuff, well I need my PDA! On the whole though I can see it's a list of attributes worth striving for!

1. a friend
2. a companion
3. a lover
4. a brother
5. a father
6. a master
7. a chef
8. an electrician
9. a carpenter
10. a plumber
11. a mechanic
12. a decorator
13. a stylist
14. a sexologist
15. a gynecologist
16. a psychologist
17. a pest exterminator
18. a psychiatrist
19. a healer
20. a good listener
21. an organizer
22. a good father
23. very clean
24. sympathetic
25. athletic
26. warm
27. attentive
28. gallant
29. intelligent
30. funny
31. creative
32. tender
33. strong
34. understanding
35. tolerant
36. prudent
37. ambitious
38. capable
39. courageous
40. determined
41. true
42. dependable
43. passionate
44. compassionate
WITHOUT FORGETTING TO:
45. give her compliments regularly
46. love shopping
47. be honest
48. be very rich
49. not stress her out
50. not look at other girls
AND AT THE SAME TIME, YOU MUST ALSO:
51. give her lots of attention, but expect little yourself
52. give her lots of time, especially time for herself
53. give her lots of space, never worrying about where she goes
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT:
54. Never to forget:
* birthdays
* anniversaries
* arrangements she makes

Where the list fails is in what it states, in contrast, that men want:
"HOW TO MAKE A MAN HAPPY
1. Show up naked
2. Bring food"

I know it's meant to be funny, but instead it's a bit sad (both for men and women). I won't bore you with my list, but I'm sure it's at least 50 attributes long, and that would just be the sex and clothing stuff. And neither nakedness nor food would come into it. Perhaps I'm weird? Ho hum...

Something I wrote on Alice's blog

2008-03-22T10:00:00.002Z

A fellow blogger wrote about the mayhem in Tibet, a country whose invasion by China we've pretty well ignored for decades, mostly because we've been busily invading a few countries ourselves so it would be a pot and kettle situation. These were my thoughts:

Sadly, our country, like most of the developed world, is dependent on various totalitarian, unsavoury, undemocratic or just plain crazy regimes for its energies, its drugs, its toys, its trimmed green beans, its illegally-logged timber, its soy, its steaks etc etc. Our rich folks similarly obtain most of their wealth and influence from these same countries, despots and dictators. Much of our economies, our jobs, our play, relies on trade with not very nice people and places.

Hence, while we'll bravely rattle our sabres at the small fry like Cuba (how many of our laptops and mobile phones come from Cuba?) or countries we don't get much from apart from a few spices (like Iran), and even invade a few (like Iraq, with disastrous consequences) that are so madly disfunctional and easily squashed, on the whole we can't risk the wrath of the world's arms traders, the oil oligarchs, the steel magnates, the cheap technology addicts (or even not-so-cheap...I'm writing this on a MacBook Pro, which proudly announces on its underside that it was "Designed in California. Assembled in China.") the beef barons, all the assorted millionaires and billionaires and trillionaires who trade with places like China. It's also complicated by the fact that Mr and Mrs Average Daily Mail reader work in jobs that depend on these economies, whether they slave in Asda or CosCo, or in a hospital (read the labels) or even teach in school (much of the school's equipment, even the text books, will be sourced in the far East).

So China can do what it will without worrying too much. OK, a few will cancel their Olympics tickets, but most won't. The lesson from South Africa is that there may be someone rotting in gaol right now who might inspire an internal revolution. The lesson from South Africa is, however, that it has to be to our economic advantage before we'll support you in anything other than words and gestures. And economics and ethics are immiscible. You can shake them up and get something that looks homogenous, but without constant stirring they soon separate!

Gone, but not (in some Whitehall dungeon) forgotten

2008-03-19T17:11:00.000Z

You realise how frighteningly powerful are the digital forces of government when they find that someone's bitten their virtual bums.

An apparent civil servant (the Civil Serf), reasonably senior, began blogging her thoughts about her job. The press eventually discovered her blog and, in a rather sniggering nudge-nudge sort of way, shared some of her revelations about what we always knew to be true. "She's going to be in bad doo-doo," they chortled, rather more amused about her than the mishandling of government she was revealing.

And indeed, last week she and her blog disappeared. Wiped from the face of the Internet. Not a trace left.

Now where have I heard of governments doing that sort of thing before? Surely our wonderful, socially-responsible (utterly hypocritical) government couldn't be restricted free speech could it? It almost makes one nostalgic for the days when the extreme right wing were honest enough to so identify themselves, instead of hiding behind the New Labour badge. I'm scared...

Contemplation

2008-03-16T21:26:00.000Z

Humans kill 55 billion non-marine animals every year

2008-03-16T21:22:00.001Z

One of the arguments against (or perhaps critical comments about) veganism is that it isn't possible to be a vegan without importing food, often from a long way away, mostly because of the seasonality of vegetables and fruits. This of course means that a vegan's carbon footprint is far from small.

My responses to this:

(1) Our loss of relationship with seasonal food (only a few decades old by the way - early in my lifetime we accepted the fact that strawberries weren't available at Christmas) is historically the result of population stress - humans being forced to live in climates where vegetable foods are not easily available all year round. That resulted in the stimulus for early humans to develop agriculture (to feed static populations) and, subsequently, various methods of food storage.
(2) Many (most?) vegetable foods are available at all times of year either dried (e.g. beans), stored (onions, potatoes, apples etc), or preserved (e.g. peaches). They may thus require some preparation (heaven forbid!).
(3) Many out of season vegetables and fruits are great to eat but not essential. They were once looked on as exotic luxuries only available to the incredibly wealthy! OK, it might sound boring to live on in-season and stored vegetables, but in fact it is no less tedious than most western diets if people are really honest (pizza every Thursday night, roast chicken every Sunday).
(4) In the UK, someone with a vegetable garden or allotment can harvest (i.e obtain fresh) the following during the winter: leeks, potatoes, parsnips, rocket, everlasting spinach, brussels sprouts, turnips and turnip tops, rhubarb, beetroot, winter cabbage and cauliflower, calabrese, lamb's lettuce, land cress, purple sprouting broccoli and probably others I've forgotten. If you have a heated greenhouse (ouch...carbon footprint gets bigger but not as big as a plane-load of green beans from Kenya!) then the list gets longer. Add these to all the stored, dried and preserved stuff and you have a splendid choice, all from a local source in a temperate climate (i.e. one that features a winter where temperatures regularly fall below zero). It just takes a little more effort than jumping in the car and nipping to the supermarket...