More Crisis

Well, I did my night shift at Crisis Open Christmas. I have to say first: most of the people there were doing several nights. My "one night stand" there hardly counts. I am a lightweight. . . .

A brief introduction to "Centre 3 nightshift":
The building was organised into five floors, broadly speaking:
Ground - gatekeeping and stores
1 - food
2 - television
3 - quiet sleeping
4 - volunteers private area.

It was run by three "Green badges", Matthew James and Karen, with a kitchen crew, a small Red Cross team of four, and about fifty volunteers ranging from highly experienced all the way down to me (first night). There were 164 "guests" that night.
The Green badge people have a system -- they've done this many times before -- and as far as I can see it works. I always had the feeling that the person telling me what to do wasn't just making it up there and then. One part of the system is safety in numbers: never be out of sight of other volunteers, always move around the building in pairs, and so on.

Most of the work really consisted of watching and listening to guests.
I spent a while in the sleeping section at the start handing out pillows and blankets as people arrived, and negotiating with people who were asking politely / demanding / just taking extra pillows (of which we were a bit short). Then I spent about 4 hours on trying to keep the marble floor in the gents from getting too wet and slippery, and listening to some of the more talkative guests who seemed to gather in the main corridor outside the toilets. Then a couple of hours sitting in the warm, dark, television area struggling to keep awake by watching a Jackie Chan movie and drinking coffee. And then a very bracing time on the gate (i.e. out in the street) watching the sun come up, checking people in and out as they went for their tobacco or alcohol fixes (not allowed in the building).

A few things I find worthy of remark. First, it's another example of the big difference between being given instructions on what to do and not to do, and actually being able to act on them. Only when you "get" things instinctively (rather than just "understand") do they really work. It's like driving a car in that respect, or lots of other things. There were several times I found myself starting automatically to do exactly the thing they'd warned us not to do... for example, if some conflict starts to develop, acting like an audience. I understood not to do that, but didn't get it at first.

It's also interesting how people sleep. A lot of people preferred to sleep in the brightly lit corridors where people were moving around, or in the TV area (fairly dimly lit but noisy and lots of movement) rather than in the quiet dark sleeping area. I can see why. If I'd been going to sleep, I'd have chosen the TV area every time.

The moral of the story, if there is one, is that it brings home the lesson that we are not so different from them. The guests get clean clothes when they arrive, the volunteers dress in their rough clothes, and from that point on, you can only tell them apart by the badges and wristbands. If we took our badges off and drank a couple of pints, you might find it hard to distinguish. It's a lesson I can understand, but, again, need to get.

I'd recommend it as an experience. If you want to be cynical, it looks good on the CV, and you can make good networking contacts. (One volunteer was pumping me for information about a job at my company). And relationships spring up between the volunteers -- couples form.
Teamwork and camaraderie, all that sort of stuff. People come back year after year, which says a lot.

It's possible I shall do more nights next year.

Christmas dinner

Last night we had "our" dinner here, the kids and I, six in all, with soup, turkey, bacon rolls, sausages, bread sauce, stuffing, and cranberry jelly; also potatoes carrots sprouts broccoli and parsnips, and PouillyFumé.

There was an initial panic when I discovered that my fridge had somehow gone into overdrive and frozen the lower half of my (fresh) turkey absolutely solid. Fortunately it wasn't the breast. Emergency defrosting was called for, and dinner was delayed an hour. I was somewhat stressed. But it turned out nicely.

People tell me that family Christmas dinners are a prime source of conflict, arguments, fallings out. Or hours of unappreciated kitchen slavery. Or hours of comatose slumping in front of the telly. I suppose if that's what you expect, that's what you get. That's not the experience I had. My companions were a total delight to be with.

Cough

I've still got this blasted cough/cold.

I first came down with it on 16th November.
That's over a month I've been snotty.

Crisis

I spent a day helping with the setup of a building for Crisis Open Christmas. This is a charity that helps the homeless, providing, for a week over Christmas, not just a roof, a bed, and three hot meals a day, but also medical care, legal advice, a decent haircut, job advice, IT access, and just ... listening ...

This was set-up: the centre wasn't yet open. It was due to open in three days time. Things were being delivered. The building, an empty office block, was being remodelled in lightning quick time into a hostel, by a team of carpenters, painters, plumbers, and general volunteers. Everything was chaos.

It was a bit like being in an online game.
>>>>>
You are at the front doors. The front doors will not open. You do not have the key card.
You go to the loading dock. The loading dock doors are broken but can be opened. There are CCTV screens here and power saws and walkie talkies.
A shipment has arrived. There are industrial sized cookers. Your task for this round is to get these from the loading dock on the ground floor to the cooking area on the first floor. You cannot get them up the steps.
There are two large cargo lifts down to the basement. You cannot get the first one to work.
The second one is blocked by a parked car. The keys are in the car.
Solution: push the car into the second lift, take it to the basement and lose it there.
Then push the cookers into the lift, take them to the basement, then roll them to another smaller lift which goes to the first floor.
But the blasted carpenter has already constructed plywood walls around what will be the "kitchen" and you cannot get the cookers in.
You are on the first floor. There are crates of books and cups of tea and protective gloves and sheets of coloured plastic and duct tape and power tools and chairs here.
You may need some of these things later...

Three pallets of ancient computers have arrived. The fork lift for moving the pallets cannot get them into the smaller lift. You have to unpack them and carry them one by one...

And so on...
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

It was quite fun actually, making some of it up as we went along. I spent half an hour moving steel dexion library shelving from one place to another ... and the guy carrying the other end of the shelves with me was Chris Martin from Coldplay. He's a regular Crisis supporter. Not that I am a fan of Coldplay, but even so....

I hope the guests like it. I'm hoping to see it all in action at one point, if I can get there, maybe on 28th.

The Thin Man

I've written before about weight loss, and how I think one of the main keys is to normalise one's relationship with food; to make it less "loaded". I say this, not because I think I've achieved it -- I still have far to go -- but because I can see that that relationship is the thing that makes the most difference. All the difference, maybe.

The other day, two people said to each other, in front of me and about me, "how does he stay so thin?" and "it's all the running he does". I didn't argue; It would have been rude. Actually, I had just lost a few pounds in the couple of weeks before that, and I lost it because I was running less, because I'd had a nasty cough and cold. But you can't tell people that. Exercise is a wonderful thing, it makes you feel good, it makes you healthier, and it can help with weight loss. But the more I run, the harder it is to lose weight. I've had several times of lots of running, and several times of significant weight loss, and the two have never coincided.

Yesterday I was at a work Christmas lunch with the engineering team. I was doing well. I had one drink and then stopped, because I had to drive. There were bread rolls on the table. I didn't automatically eat mine just because it was there and it was mine. I decided I didn't want it. That's big.

But opposite me was Steve, a man who, as it happens, I greatly admire, and who is also an archetypal "thin man". And I suddenly realised that, when the waiters were bringing the starters, and again when they were bringing the main courses, and asking "who was having the turkey" and so on, Steve wasn't noticing when they were handing out the thing he'd ordered. He was sitting with an empty space in front of him; he'd ordered turkey (let's say); the waiter was standing right behind him with the last plate of turkey looking around and shouting "who else was having turkey?" -- and he wasn't noticing. I've never in my life done that. I couldn't not be aware of it. Amazing.

I've managed, usually, to let go of constant thoughts about how soon they'll serve it, whether mine will come first or last, whether the plateful will be enough, and so on. But I am still keeping an eye on the waiters and the food. If I've ordered soup, and the waiters are saying "who was for soup", I am going to notice. For Steve to sit there like that, genuinely unaware, and for people to have to nudge him and say "is that yours", is such a deep reminder of the difference between the thin mind and my mind. I have far to go before I'll ever need nudging and having it pointed out to me that my plateful has arrived.

Gaudy Night

My college feast (the Boar's Head Gaudy) was yesterday evening. The story is that the feast originates from an incident when a scholar was attacked by a wild boar in the woods, and successfully defended himself by thrusting a copy of the works of Aristotle (in Greek) into its jaws.

Lots of ceremony in Latin, passing of silver cups around, sounding of trumpets, handing out of sprigs of rosemary and bay, and a Boar's Head on a platter brought in by a small choir singing. I was seated with mathematicians, including my old tutor, still there, and a don on my left whose speciality was history of maths in the seventeenth century -- which basically means Newton plus a bunch of other ones nobody has heard of. She had some interesting comments about Newton's attempts to work out the chronology of the Old Testament.

The menu (vegetarians look away now) was

• champagne in the library to start
  
• parma ham with figs and stilton - with a very good white wine (Les Gravieres 1er cru)
  
• venison - with a very good red wine (Gigondas)
  
• a sort of praline mousse with armagnac
• savoury - a slice of wild boar
• dessert: fruit nuts biscuits and chocolate - with port and/or claret (Warre, Pauillac)
  
• then drinks in the common room (whisky)

I am sorry to have to report that I was very sick afterwards, and again the next morning. I attempted breakfast, but couldn't retain it. My stomach was closed for refurbishment until about 3pm today.

The two old friends I'd most have liked to see weren't there, unfortunately, but several others were, and we had some good conversation remembering old times. (Apparently the place admits women nowadays....)

Oh well

I had a polite "no" from the band I auditioned with.

Never mind.

Another audition

I had a session with another band last night. I used it as an excuse to go out and buy a 180W amplifier. Just as well, really, I'd have been totally inaudible without it. (Even 180W is a "small" one).

It wasn't called an audition; they just said come along and play, we'll have some fun, see how it goes -- but they were going to decide on the basis of it whether to recruit me.

It was slightly farcical, because the guy had sent me a list of songs they know, of which I picked about six to work on. Most of those, when I mentioned them, they said "we don't do that one any more". Aargh! One ("Every breath you take") they were just learning, but in a different key, which totally messed up the chords I'd practised. I'm not smart enough to transpose on the fly. Having learned it in a different key was worse than not knowing it at all. So I was left with one easy thing I'd really played before (Teenage Kicks) and one I half knew (Status Quo, Whatever You Want, easy except very complicated middle section). Most of my preparation was wasted.

Anyway, in the end I just joined in on things, sight-reading from their sheets (chord letters written above the lyrics) and generally playing simple root notes. It seemed to go OK. We played a lot of things I know, but hadn't played before, like Honky-Tonk Woman, Brown Sugar, Get It On, Summer of 69, Whisky In The Jar (Thin Lizzy?), You Really Got Me (the Kinks), Paranoid . . . can't remember the rest. It was a real blast! I have no idea if they'll want me, but I was quite pleased with what I managed to do in the circumstances, and had a very enjoyable hour and a quarter. It's all good experience.

Oddly enough, though, the high point, in a way, of the evening, was this: before the audition, I'd booked a quick "emergency" lesson with Al to get me in the mood, and he was talking me through the use of my brand new amplifier. Just play Money, he said, and watch and listen to the effect while I adjust these different tone controls. So I did that, hearing the effect as he turned various strange effects on and off. And then I realised I'd just played Money (off Dark Side of the Moon) without once looking at the guitar. I didn't know I could do that!
I'd have bet, err, money that I couldn't....

Villandry

Our Project Manager took us out for a small celebratory lunch today, at a place called Villandry in Great Portland Street that seemed to be a combination of shop and restaurant.

I started with fish soup with rouille, which was good, and plenty of it. (Apparently rouille is french for rust; it's a sort of reddish chili and garlic flavoured mayonnaise.) Other people had globe artichokes.

My main course was lamb with butter beans. The alternative was salmon. They served fresh green beans and carrots; also chips, which didn't seem to go well with either meal. Then I had cheese, which was a bit disappointing for a place with pretensions, nothing unusual. And I had a bottle of Petit Chablis along with it, which helped.

It was quite pricy for what it was, I have to say. I guess it's the kind of place designed for what we were doing: lunch on expenses, emphasis on good service rather than on the food itself.

The rest of the weekend workshop

A few more things to say about the weekend workshop.

First, the venue, which I really liked. It was the London Buddhist Arts Centre in Bethnal Green, clearly a low-budget location, but well looked after. A tatty old building in a rough part of town, heavily used. The kitchen made me want to cook, even though the plates and mugs were a random assortment. It was just a good place.

Saturday and Sunday had a lot of dancing, just "to get into our bodies". Dancing works fairly well as a set-up for acting, because, after a certain amount of time (say half an hour), you just have to let go of "what this will look like to other people". All the "this will look cool" or "this must look rubbish" or "I'll clown" or "I'll be very unobtrusive and stay in this corner" or "doing it correctly" stuff has to get worn off. Most of the dancing was with another person, changing partners frequently.

There was a more explicit exercise about receiving attention: this consisted of dancing while being watched intently by someone else (who was not dancing, just watching) and getting used to it, by a variety of manoeuvres.

Then the main exercises were about just "following your instinct". Again, no specific process was taught for this, just practice. For example: take a fairly random prop or item of clothing, spend a few minutes getting used to the prop, and who you might be with it, and then in pairs, improvise a little scene, doing whatever comes to mind. No words, no dancing, no interacting with other pairs, no changing who you are (or what the prop is) half way through, go with your instinct... Act as if it's not personal, but act as if it matters.

I'm guessing (though I've never done it) this is all pretty standard fare for beginners theatre workshops. And I'm also guessing it's many people's idea of their worst nightmare. Mine included. But after a while, it started to work. The useful thing, for me, was just learning to trust that something will come. And, to be specific, how it comes: which is not as an idea (like we'll pretend to be fighting over this thing) but as a physical movement (I feel the urge to step in this direction, or to fold my arms, or touch his face, or whatever).

It's pretty good advice for many things in life that involve interacting with others: don't worry about doing it right, or impressing people, don't try to stick to a preconceived script as to how it has to go; just notice what your body wants to do.

Five Rhythms Friday night

At the session last night, we warmed up with an hour of "The Wave", which means dancing through the sequence of five different rhythms. There was music on in the room, and, as we turned up, we just went in and started moving to the music, no instructions given, no introductions.

Then we started to do a series of exercises, of which I'll describe just two.

One was: form up into pairs, and take it in turns to introduce yourself to the other person, saying your name, how you came to be doing this weekend, and what you want to get out of it. After we'd done that, the next instruction was, take the intention you've just told the other person, hold it in mind, and allow a small repetitive movement to occur, that holds that intention for you. Just whatever comes to mind. So then after we're all jiggling in some way, he says make the movement bigger, expand it, allow your whole body to participate. And then, out of the repetition of it, take one cycle, make it into a single action.

I like the idea of starting with a repetitive movement, and then trimming it down to a single movement. So many people would have done the other way: find a movement or gesture that holds the intention, and then do it repetitively. This way works much better, rhythmic movement first, then down to a single action.

And then (going round the room), as an intention ritual, demonstrate your action, and name your intention in a word or short phrase for us all.

And then, pick (in your mind) one specific other person in the room, and (going round the room again) show us the action and name the intention, this time in one word, and this time, to (and for) the one specific other person. I like that too, as a way of building "other" into it. I'd say all of that is very Mytho-like.

Where it falls short of what I'd expect from an excellent Mytho facilitator is the setup. For people to do all this successfully, they need to be in the right state. The setup has been "the wave" -- an hour or so of dancing. It works fairly well, but 2 or 3 of the people there are not in the right state, and are not able successfully to form an intention, translate it into a physical movement, and name it.

The other interesting exercise was "being danced" by someone else, that is, letting them guide and move your limbs, to music. It was very cool, both doing it and having it done to. As the recipient, I tended to close my eyes, try to "listen" to the hands guiding me, and dance. That was quite trancey. The person I was doing it to danced rather less; they wouldn't move their feet. They just kind of went fairly rag doll limp, so I started swaying them, taking their weight with my hip, which is itself a trance induction I've used before, and also did some "ambiguous touch" on their arms and wrists. As far as I could tell, they were more or less instantly gone. I resisted the temptation to do as I would under other circumstances (lower them to the floor and start giving them deepening suggestions. . . . )

Teachers

I'm writing this on the train, on my way up to London for the Saturday of the Five Rhythms "Holy Actor" workshop. It started last night, going from 7 to about 10:30. I'll post another blog about what we did in a minute.

But first, I feel the urge to expand on my previous remark about how I came to be doing this particular workshop: namely, that I liked the teacher.

I find it's often like that for me. Thinking about Mytho, or Five Rhythms, or bass guitar for that matter, or the choir certainly … I had a taster of each of those, one session to see what it was like, and really, the important factor in every case was not so much liking the thing as the feeling that it would be good to work with that teacher.

Teachers often disapprove of this. You're supposed to get the thing, not worship the teacher. But I'm not talking about worship, or even liking them as a person, or agreeing with them about everything. Where it gets tacky is if people start adopting the teacher's clothing style or verbal mannerisms or political views.

The teachers I've mentioned above (bass, Mytho, 5R, choir) -- I like them as teachers, feel their commitment to their subject and to handing it on, and feel their ability to do so. If I didn't feel that, it would be hard to keep turning up trying to learn something, whereas when it is there, it's worth making a journey for.

Michael Nyman

Karen and I went to a Michael Nyman concert last night.

Nyman hovers between pop and serious in an interesting way. He has performers who have music on stands, playing violins, flutes, piano, trombone etc, and who bow at the end. They don't come back to do a few more numbers if you go on clapping at the end. They play sitting down. He conducts. On the other hand, they play short "tracks" and people clap at the end of each one (like a pop concert) and not just at the end of the overall "piece". And he had some video in the background. The music itself has a serious sound because of the instruments used, but in terms of form, is probably more like prog rock. A lot of his stuff has been used for film music (e.g. The Draughtsman's Contract). I like it, anyway, and I had a good time, but wasn't sure if I was having a "pop concert" good time or an "orchestral" good time.

One part of the concert was music he wrote for the film Drowning By Numbers, based on Mozart. Then there was 50,000 Pairs Of Feet Can't Be Wrong, inspired by the Great North Run, with video.

And then finally, a setting of I Sonetti Lussuriosi: some very rude sonnets written in 1527 or so, to accompany some engraved drawings illustrating different sexual positions. Ancient porn. It was quite bizzarre, a soprano, singing in italian, in a very posh operatic style, words which translate as "what a hard **** you've got" and "help me back up on the bed, my head's hanging over the edge" etc. (A translation was available at the box office for those who cared to ask for it.) Apparently the Pope was most offended. In 1527.

Provisional Diary

Thurs 6th Dec -- Michael Nyman concert in London; stop over with Karen

7th to 9th -- Five Rhythms workshop after work Friday, and continues all weekend

Tues 11th -- "Chariots" choir concert 8pm United Reform Church

Fri 14th -- choir singing near ice rink 8pm

Sat 15th -- dinner and stay overnight at college in Oxford

Sun 16th -- visit Souldern

Tues 18th -- possible try-out with new band! Oo er

Weds 19th -- working in Staines, team Xmas lunch, also maybe buy the turkey

Thu/Fri 20 and 21st -- two days off with Karen

Sat 22nd -- final Xmas shopping and family turkey dinner in evening

Mon 24th -- to Histon

Acting the part

This weekend, I am attending a workshop based on the Five Rhythms Dance. I booked it up ages ago, and the reason I wanted to do it is that I worked before with the man who's teaching it, and I liked him. Feeling that you can get on with the teacher is more important than whatever the blurb says about the class and what it's for.

Or so I thought at the time ... as the class draws nearer, I am reminded that it has "acting" in the title ... what has that got to do with the five rhythms of expressing ourselves through bodily movement? Search me.... I'm hoping it'll be fun, interesting, and enlightening. As it gets closer, "what will it be about" starts to seem more important ...

... because when I get the "joining instructions", they say "bring two items of costume and two props". Aargh. And I'm going there after work today.

So I have been transformed into my first role. If you've ever commuted, you'll recognise this fellow: Man on busy commuter train festooned with large amounts of annoying luggage."
We all know him, we all hate him. But I have to carry spare clothes and loose clothes for dancing and props and extra costume items.

Normally I am efficient supercommuterman, who knows which doors to stand opposite. Now I am man with annoying luggage, I have to beg the tube staff to let me through the special gates for the incompetent. I wish I could carry a sign saying "I am a proper commuter really, honestly!" I make a point of showing my season ticket.

On the train, my bad karma means that the person who comes and sits next to me is annoying girl with a cold who doesn't have a hanky. Snurrrrff every two seconds for an hour. I played a similar part myself a couple of weeks ago (man with a cold and lots of really disgusting hankies he keeps waving around).

I shall report back on the workshop in due course.

Yours sincerely, man who thinks his blog is fascinating

Teddy Bear

Okay, I know, there must be thousands of people blogging about this one... (teacher "could be" flogged for naming a teddy bear Mohammed) . And I hear tonight that the teacher has been given a pardon and flown back to Blighty ....

Over the last few days, I've talked to two people who had been there: one was a chap who specialises in plants for deserts and dry climates, who'd been to Khartoum, and expressed the view that the "protests" were probably set up by someone who wanted to get the school in question closed down, because it's a valuable piece of real estate in Khartoum. I have no idea if this is true.

The other person was a friend who's half Sudanese, who'd actually attended that school (Moo, for those who know her) and she said when she was there, they had had a Christian nativity play and everything .... apparently this radical Muslim sensitivity is quite recent ...

So what do you think? Pick one :-

• (A) It's outrageous, it's a barbaric regime, rape victims getting punished, etc etc, how can naming a teddy bear be wrong? She didn't intend offence. "If it's not wrong here, how can it be wrong there" as one poster on RW said.

or

• (B) If you go to a foreign country to hold a responsible job like teaching young children, it behoves you to know and follow their laws and customs, whatever they are. If you think the laws are wrong, don't go there. We expect people who come here to follow ours.
  

or

• (C) Something else? Email me

(I have no time for the defence that "the children named it, not her". As a teacher, she is responsible for what they do with her permission while in her class. )

It seems to me that I can see a lot in a culture declaring something to be sacred, whatever it is. If they've decided that the name Mohammed will mean something, and you won't take it lightly ... I kind of like that. I think some things should have significance. I can see how they look at our western culture where nothing means anything, and think we've lost the plot.

As to their choice of punishment, that's another matter. In this case, it seemed too severe.

I think the question of whether public corporal punishment is more or less humane than imprisonment is an interesting one though. And that's not just a question of which seems more severe -- punishments are after all meant to be severe in some cases. It's about "how can we publicly show our disapproval of someone without criminalising them further" ... a tricky concept ... and I'm not sure which has a worse effect on someone, a public flogging, or forcing them to do nothing for a long time and be around other criminals. Lots of people say "corporal punishment -- inhumane -- we're just not having that" which I can understand ... but aren't our prisons just as inhumane?

April Fool

On Karen's copy of Schott's almanac:

• 1st April 2008: April Fools Day [except in Scotland]

Is this an "in joke" ?

The Boar's Head

As I've mentioned, my old college has a reunion feast for old members 30 years after they leave. It's the appointment I'd had written in my diary the longest in advance, ever.
And then they wrote to me saying, it was over-subscribed, so I couldn't come.

WTF? Don't they know how many old members they have?
And they had 30 years to prepare themselves....
I was shocked. I've never heard of such a thing.

So anyway, I've had another letter from them, on much nicer paper, saying they've discovered it's all OK, and I can come after all. Goody.

Strangely, the first (you can't come) letter was from the person in charge of organising the feast, whereas the second (you can) letter was from the man in charge of fund-raising from old members of the college. I can't think why.

Luton

I did the Luton relay marathon as advertised.

It was 8.73 miles, high winds, plus occasional rain.
When it rained, the rain stung.
One of the least enjoyable races I've ever done.
I got round in 85 mins.

This, however, was balanced out by a great social afterwards.
About, oh, twenty of us, in a pub in Luton, having started drinking
hard at 5pm. I left at about 9:30 when it was going rapidly downhill.

I met lots of people I knew, and also several new ones that I'd
wanted to meet for a long time, including the man who set it up.

Running

I had to miss the Gosport half-marathon; I still have a lingering cough.

It's the Luton relay next weekend. I hope I'm up to that one. It's now two weeks since I have done any running at all.

Wrist Result

I've just been told "no abnormalities seen" on my wrist x-ray.

I guess that means it's just a soft tissue problem and needs stretching and exercise.

(I'm nearly over the head-cold, I think).

Buying Strings

I've just been ordering some bass guitar strings online.

Is it just me? Or do shopping sites for guitar strings look strangely like sites for buying condoms? Maybe it's the use of black as background colour. Maybe it's the brand names. Maybe it's the way they're so much cheaper online than in the shops. It's one of those things where, if you buy online, it's cheap, but if you want one in a shop, they reckon you want it now, and aren't really going to be comparison-shopping...

Anyway, I've looked at the "super longs" and the "double ball ends", considered "La Bella" and "Elite" brands, and decided whether I want them ribbed or smooth, and finally ordered myself a pack of D'Addario EXL220 supersoft.

Dawkins part 3

I've just re-read chapter 4 of The God Delusion, which Dawkins says "contained the central argument of my book". The chapter is called "Why there almost certainly is no God".

Just to make it easier, he summarises the argument briefly in six numbered steps at the end of the chapter. I can summarise it even more briefly, as follows: "the main argument for the existence of God is that someone must have designed all these incredible creatures we see around us. But now we know about evolution, that argument fails. So God doesn't exist."

Huh? It's just another Dawkins book about evolution? Is that it?

He seems to think that demolishing one argument for the existence of God, proves that God "almost certainly" doesn't exist. That's a logical fallacy, known as the "straw man". Refuting one argument FOR something doesn't disprove it, or even lower its probability.

Two further points:

(a) in the body of the chapter (but not in the summary) he suggests that God must be very improbable, because if you accept that the world as we see it is improbable (and I'm not at all sure what that would mean), and you invoke a designer to design it to get round the improbability, then, he says, "the designer has got to be at least as improbable" as the world he designs. That statement (in bold) is made without any justification, as far as I can see.

(b) he notices that evolution doesn't explain how the universe came to exist. But, he says (point 6), "we should not give up hope of a better [explanation] arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology".

"We should not give up hope" ! It's nice to see that Dawkins has faith.

(Reminder: I don't believe in God).

Music

Totally stuck in my head at the moment: Push The Button by The Chemical Brothers (borrowed from Karen).

Don't you just hate it when music does that to your head?

(It's not entirely dissimilar to Vertigo by Groove Armada, or Leftism by Leftfield, which had similar effects. I still really like Vertigo.)

Unlucky

I had a call from a headhunter a couple of weeks ago. (This happens about three times a year).

As is usual, he asked for my email address, so he could email me, so that I would then have his, and could email him my CV. Then nothing happened. This is not unusual.

Then a week later he phoned me to ask why I hadn't sent the CV. "I didn't get an email from you" I said. He checked and discovered he'd mistyped my email address.

So then I sent him the CV. And then a week later he left a message on my voicemail to ask why I hadn't sent the CV. And then another saying sorry, he'd found it, the cat had eaten it or something. Or the email server had eaten it. So he had got it after all. And would I please phone him. No indication of what I'm to phone about.

I just have this uncomfortable feeling that, although I've done everything he's asked, quickly and correctly, somehow he's finding me difficult. And I just don't want to do business with someone that makes me feel uncomfortable. It's not a good start. To put it another way, none of this is probably his fault -- he's just been unlucky -- and I've decided I don't ever want anything to do with unlucky people. So I don't think I'll be calling him back.

Maybe it'll be the biggest mistake I've ever made. But I've decided it's not worth living with those "hmmmm" feelings.

By contrast, a man came round a couple of weeks ago and said "I'm painting the windows of a house up the street, shall I do yours, £500 guvnor" and I just liked him so I said "yes please" and we shook on it -- all done in two minutes. It seems to have worked out OK.

I have a cold

... but you can't catch it by reading this. So I'm not doing any running for now.

Gosport half marathon next weekend. If I'm sufficiently better.

Last weekend was nice. I had a hypnosis "CPD" seminar on Saturday, then spent the evening with Karen, and visited Brighton for a RW lunchtime social on Sunday while K was on a course. As is not unusual, fewer people turned up for the social than expected -- it was blooming freezing that day, and then it rained, and anyone who'd actually run probably needed a hot bath rather than a session in the pub. Still, I quite like a small but perfectly formed social. I met a couple of people I knew, and a couple of new ones.

I suspect part of the attendance problem is caused by a tendency of some people to post, the day of the event or the day before, something like "Is this still on?" casting doubt upon it, or "that pub isn't very nice, why don't we meet in X other pub" throwing everyone into doubt as to where we'll meet. It happened at Beachy Head too. If you don't catch these "fear and doubt" posts in time and answer them firmly, it confuses everyone. There ought to be severe punishments for posting such things shortly before an event. "I just wondered", they'll say, having confused the hell out of everyone. We always meet in Horatio's in Brighton, and yes, it isn't all that nice, but it's always empty and always easy to find .... and then the day before, someone posted "shall we meet somewhere else"...

The hypnosis thing was good. I learned some useful techniques, not mainly from the presentation itself, more from talking to a few full-time professional hypnotherapists in the break.

Bl**dy Cleaners

My apologies to those who've already seen me rant about this, but it does take me back to college days.

See this. And keep a straight face.

The gist of the story is that the cleaners let themselves into this chap's (locked) bedroom with a master key, and found him involved in some rather comical sexual practice.
They've complained, and he's been given ... a criminal record.

For doing something privately in his own locked bedroom. Totally outrageous.

A job for the Lords, nay, the European Court of Human Rights, I say.

We used to have cleaners like that when I was in college. "We did knock first..." yeah right, I've heard that one before.

Numerology

Someone pointed me to a website where it works out your personality by numerology from the letters of your full name. Nonsense, obviously. One of those amusing web things.
Here's what it said about me:

Your number is: 7

The characteristics of #7 are: Analysis, understanding, knowledge, awareness, studious, meditating.

The expression or destiny for #7:
Thought, analysis, introspection, and seclusiveness are all characteristics of the expression number 7. The hallmark of the number 7 is a good mind, and especially good at searching out and finding the truth. You are so very capable of analyzing, judging and discriminating, that very little ever escapes your observation and deep understanding. You are the type of person that can really get involved in a search for wisdom or hidden truths, often becoming an authority on whatever it is your are focusing on. This can easily be of a technical or scientific nature, or it may be religious or occult, it matters very little, you pursue knowledge with the same sort of vigor. You can make a very fine teacher, or because of a natural inclination toward the spiritual, you may become deeply emerged in religious affairs or even psychic explorations. You tend to operate on a rather different wavelength, and many of your friends may not really know you very well. The positive aspects of the 7 expression are that you can be a true perfectionist in a very positive sense of the word. You are very logical, and usually employ a quite rational approach to most things you do. You can be so rational at times that you almost seem to lack emotion, and when you are faced with an emotional situation, you may have a bit of a problem coping with it. You have excellent capabilities to study and learn really deep and difficult subjects, and to search for hidden fundamentals. At full maturity you are likely to be a very peaceful and poised individual.

If there is an over supply of the number 7 in your makeup, the negative aspects of the number may be apparent. The chief negative of 7 relates to the limited degree of trust that you may have in people. A tendency to be highly introverted can make you a bit on the self-centered side, certainly very much self-contained . Because of this, you are not very adaptable, and you may tend to be overly critical and intolerant. You really like to work alone, at your own pace and in your own way. You neither show or understand emotions very well.

Your Soul Urge number is: 9

A Soul Urge number of 9 means:
With a 9 Soul Urge, you want to give to others, usually in a humanitarian or philanthropic manner. You are highly motivated to give friendship, affection and love. And you are generous in giving of your knowledge and experience. You have very sharing urges, and you are likely to have a great deal to share. Your concern for others makes you a very sympathetic and generous person with a sensitive and compassionate nature.

You are able to view life in very broad and intuitive terms. You often express high ideals and an inspirational approach to life. If you are able to fully realize the potential of your motivation, you will be a very self-sacrificing person who is able to give freely without being concerned about any return or reward.

As with all human beings, you are prone to sometimes express the negative attitudes inherent to your Soul Urges. You may become too sensitive and tend to express emotions strongly at times. There can be significant conflict between higher aims and personal ambitions. You may resent the idea of giving all of the time and, in fact, if there is too much 9 energy in your nature you may reject the idea. You may often be disappointed in the lack of perfection in yourself and others.

Your Inner Dream number is: 7

An Inner Dream number of 7 means:
You dream of having the opportunity to read, study, and shut yourself off from worldly distractions. You can see yourself as a teacher, mystic, or ecclesiastic, spending your life in the pursuit of knowledge and learning.

Provisional Diary

November, continued. Will be updated as events unfold.

Weds 14th - working in Staines

Sat 17th - Hypnosis Continuing Professional Development Kingston Hospital 2->5pm

Sun 18th - Social noon-ish on the pier after Brighton 10k (I am not in the race)

Tues 20th - Choir

Weds 21st - Bass lesson

Sun 25th - Gosport half marathon

Fri 30th - Christmas RW Social in London (Doggetts pub)

Sat 1st December - Choir rehearsal afternoon, then 5 rhythms dance Tufnell Park evening

Sun 2nd December - big RW gathering Luton, race in morning, social in evening, stopping over

iPhone

Someone at the party last Saturday was showing off their new iPhone.

"I was just passing the shop, and went in and bought one! No queues, no difficulty getting one..." they said.

I resisted saying "doesn't that tell you something?"

Fret Ye Not

I have been and gone and purchased a Yamaha RBX270F in green. That'll be my Christmas from everyone. It's a lovely fretless bass guitar, which means it can sound a bit more like a double bass for playing jazz-like stuff.


I was thinking of buying a big f***-off amplifier too, but the man in the shop embarrassed me out of it by saying "oh, are you gigging then?" to which I had to answer no.

Poliakoff

I watched some television last night, which is unusual for me. It was a rare TV appearance of Maggie Smith, who is nearly always worth seeing (Miss Jean Brodie, A Private Function...). This time in a drama by Stephen Poliakoff, which also starred David Walliams (him off Little Britain) as the bad guy.

My overall feeling was wtf was all that about? Okay, the sets and costumes were lovely, okay, Maggie was lovely as always, and Walliams was acceptable I suppose... but ... I don't think I'm dim, and if I don't get it, I'm going to assume the author is being a bit obscure, or has nothing to say really. It seemed to be about the Maggie Smith character and how an incident with a man (Walliams) in her past, where he said something nasty to her, continued to obsess her for the rest of her life, and ruined everything, until she visited the place where it happened and got the **** over it. That took an hour and a half.

I am glad to see a Grauniad columnist agreed:
there's a truth about his [Poliakoff's] dramas that is rarely acknowledged - they're not very good. In fact, they are pompous, pretentious and, in the end, empty.
...
As they exist in an unreal world, Poliakoff's characters don't behave as people do. They casually spill beans and bare souls because the story demands it.
...
unintelligible, self-indulgent claptrap.

I found I didn't believe in the characters and their reactions ... but, worse than that, it didn't seem to be about much. "Oh, there's that creepy man again, I don't know what he wants, I'm going to avoid talking to him, but he keeps looking at me..." She needs to get the **** over it .... then she does ... The End. Am I too simple-minded?

The Benefit of a Dyson

I think it was Adam who pointed out to me the secret of the beer glass strategy for spider removal. The key to it is that when you've got the spider in the beer glass, you can see it, so you know what it's up to, and when you fling it out the door or window, you can see that it's really gone.

Well, the same thing works with a Dyson vacuum cleaner. If you suck up a spider, no more wondering whether it's in the bag, or making its escape back up the tube to seek revenge. You can see it in the canister and assess its threat level before removing it. That alone makes the Dyson worth the several hundred pounds extra....

The Five Rhythms Again

Yesterday afternoon I spent three hours at a "five rhythms" dance class. You may remember I did one of these last year, in October 06, and really liked it, so I tried it again. It was a different teacher this time, but again I enjoyed it very much.

The advert said: a structured dance practice that focuses on opening and freeing the body to move deeper into meditative movement, becoming truly part of the whole self: fluid, spacious and expressive.

I've just had a look at what I wrote in INWAP last year:

There were a few ground rules, including no talking, and generally no physical contact; and a few more implied ones, like no bringing other people down, no "taking centre stage", no clowning , and no becoming a passive observer.
. . .
A bit like a good disco, but without the alcohol, the "social" agenda of who's dancing with whom, or the option of not joining in.
. . .
There was no learning of "steps". You have to get past self consciousness, and the effect of being in a group helps with that. It's also very enjoyable, and good physical exercise. The theory behind it, though, was not really talked about -- it wasn't a talky kind of a day at all -- but my guess is it would be about integrating body and mind. Trusting the body to produce spontaneous action, with no advance thinking about it.

There was even less instruction this time. The teacher just put on music and told us to do whatever we felt like. Money for old rope, perhaps ... but interesting. It took me about ten or fifteen minutes, this time, to stop thinking ... thinking about what to do, thinking about what other people were doing, thinking how I'd look to them ... and start letting my body respond to the music ... and then it was great.

The teacher occasionally intervened, to ask us to work in groups of four, for example, or to exhort us to be aware of our breathing, or of our feet -- but there was no instruction in how to dance or what the five styles are.

Anyway, somehow I find it useful, and will do some more when I can.

Wrist

I got my wrist x-rayed on Wednesday. I don't really think there's anything broken in there, but best to play safe and get it ruled out. Results in 2 weeks.

I also had my 6-monthly diabetic checkup -- all my numbers are fine, as usual.

Dawkins part 2

I've read about 120 pages of "The God Delusion" now. I'll comment more when I've finished it.

My immediate impressions are that I agree with his overall claim, in as much as I don't believe in a "personal" God, but I find his logic incoherent and hard to follow. It reads as if he has some kind of attention disorder, leaping about from this to that. He doesn't really define his terms or what he's trying to prove. Is he saying that religion (generally) is false? Or that it's harmful? Or is it specifically Christianity he's arguing against? I've just read a section casting doubt on the factual details of the Christmas story (manger, three kings, census, that stuff) which to me seems like an irrelevancy, just an "oh and another thing" kind of point.

Dawkins talks with approval about Betrand Russell's "teapot" argument, which has always seemed particularly fatuous to me. (Russell generally was, when he wasn't doing mathematics).

The teapot argument goes like this: if someone told you there was a teapot orbiting the sun, but too small to be detected with any instruments, you would have no way of disproving the claim strictly by observation of evidence. But you'd still be sceptical. You wouldn't be "agnostic" about it, you'd say "pull the other one". The conclusion he draws is that just because there's no way to disprove it by observation, doesn't mean we have to take it seriously. And that we should apply the same logic to "God" -- he may be impossible to disprove by observation, but we should still be sceptical, not "agnostic".

But it seems to me we are sceptical about the teapot, and not agnostic about it, because we know a lot about teapots, where they come from, how they come to exist, and so on. We know they are a product of human culture, and human culture has little reason or opportunity to put a tiny one in orbit around the sun. We can see how it would have to happen, and there is plenty of indirect evidence that it hasn't. (Although full credit to NASA if some Russell-disliking scientist there has actually managed to make this happen.)

We know much less about what a "God" would be. If it's the creator of the universe, it would have to be external to the universe, and so, for example, concepts such as matter, energy, causation, and time (which are all descriptions of things in the universe) might well be entirely inapplicable to it. It would be far from our intuition. I think our grounds for deducing that it doesn't exist are much less clear than for Russell's teapot example.

As for a bunch of semitic tribesmen making up fairy stories about it in the bible (three kings, manger, that stuff), that in itself doesn't prove to me either that God exists or that it doesn't.

Zone of Awareness

I was out for a run at lunchtime in Regent's Park, and, as often happens, I had to run through a bunch of primary school children from a local school being exercised there by their teachers. There are lots of runners in Regent's Park, so we are not an unfamiliar sight to the children. Also the children are quite well supervised, so I never (for example) get any shouting out at me or anything. Basically the children ignore me, which is as it should be.

However, what amazes me is how they just "don't see" runners. I am quite big, and it's broad daylight, and I am running towards the group -- they are spread out over a very large area, so it would not be easy for me to go round them entirely, but there are big gaps in between them and I just stay on the path, which goes through their area. I can't be that easy to miss, and the human eye is tuned to pick up on objects moving towards the viewer . . . . but nearly always, they will just walk into me, or right in front of me. I don't really mind, as I can dodge them, I just find it fascinating how they seem to operate within a little zone with about a one-foot radius, and they seem almost literally blind. They are in their own little world.

I'm not sure what's going on there. Whether it's some sort of programming not to acknowledge unfamiliar adults -- but you'd think that even if they avoided looking at me or acknowledging me, they'd also avoid walking into my path. It genuinely seems to be that they constrict their attention very tightly. If so, I can understand how small children are very vulnerable to traffic and other hazards. On the towpath once (where there isn't much room to pass) I saw a group of them coming and just stopped and stood still -- and more than one of them simply walked into me. Again, just as if they were literally blind. How do they avoid walking into lamp-posts and other obstacles? I'm not sure that they do!

Well, you know what the moral of the story will be. It's interesting to play with your own zone of attention, try contracting it, try expanding it, see how much of the time you can keep it "out there" and avoid being like one of these small children. My apologies for being so blatantly didactic.

Favourite blogs

I haven't sorted out how to create a "sidebar" with links in it YET, but my favourite other blogs at present (excluding the personal ones of friends and family) are

http://www.mattmetzgar.com/ Musings on Big Ideas, Health, and Other Topics

and

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/ The Hidden Side of Everything

I used to read thepioneerwoman.com and waiterrant.net but they seem to me to have gone downhill recently.

Training

My training plan is changing. I find it's best if I focus on ONE of three goals:

• 1 running farther / faster, or
  
• 2 weight loss (i.e. fat loss), or
• 3 gaining muscle.

Trying to do more than one of those at the same time doesn't work very well, so I switch between them. The "muscle" one is in there not because I want to look like a body-builder, but to counteract the muscle loss that occurs with age and the other two regimes.

They look like this:

• 1 running farther / faster: lots of running, not much weight training, calories in = calories out
  
• 2 weight loss: lots of walking, some weight training, a little running mainly speedwork, calories in < calories out
  
• 3 gaining muscle: lots of weight training, a little running mainly speedwork, calories in > calories out

All three plans require adequate nutrition, stretching, and sleep.

I've just finished a "running" phase (preparation for Beachy) followed by a rest, I have another race in 4 weeks (Luton) but not taking it very seriously, and am now trying to do a little bit of weight loss. Probably until Christmas.

Dawkins and The God Delusion

I've been wanting to write a piece about my views on religion, Dawkins, and his book The God Delusion. The problem is, I haven't read the book. I just took an instant dislike to him when I saw him on the telly ranting against religion. Ranting like a religious fanatic.

I'm not really planning to refute his arguments logically, because I haven't read them, and anyway, I don't disagree with his conclusion about the non-existence of God. I just want to indulge in some ad hominem attacks on him. (On Dawkins, that is, not on God. Can one make an ad hominem attack on God?).

It did seem as if he'd entirely missed the point, somehow. His anti-religion views seemed so ... juvenile. As if his balls haven't dropped. I'm embarrassed to be in the same camp. In fact, I'm not in the same camp. I want a different term for people of his viewpoint. People like me, who don't have any belief in God, but aren't worked up about it, are Atheists. People like Dawkins, who see the whole God thing as a wicked conspiracy or a bunch of irrationality, and see themselves as heroic debunkers saving the rest of us, I shall refer to those people as Dawks.

Anyway, it was forcefully put to me at the weekend that I can't say all this without having read the book, so I've bought a copy. Watch this space. I shall be reading it to see whether he offers any definition of "religion", "god", or "believe". I had already read what he describes as the main chapter, the one where he says he puts his argument that shows that God almost certainly doesn't exist -- and found no such argument in that chapter. Now I'd better read the rest.

Interestingly (well, interesting to me anyway) I see a strong connection between this and another "philosopher" that I work myself up into a state about, John Searle, and his arguments against AI, that no machine could ever think, even in principle. Both debates revolve, for me, around the question of what it is for something to have, or to create, meaning. Where does meaning come from? More on this later. You have been warned.

Mary's Birthday

Today is Mary's birthday -- she would have been 55 today. For me, it's a time for reflection, on the plans that we had and the future that we'd imagined. And on the many things that she achieved. I would be an entirely different person today, had we not happened to meet at D and P's wedding. But that's a story often told.

I still have the occasional moment of feeling that this is all a temporary aberration, and that normality, as I've known it for most of my life, will return. As if I only have to get by like this for the time being. I guess that's what they mean by denial, or it's my version of it, anyway. Somehow, I always sort of thought that she'd outlive me: longevity runs in her family, and women live longer anyway.

We were never "dependent" on each other. We were both people who could manage perfectly well on our own, and our relationship was based not on need but on things we enjoyed together. Family, primarily, and music. Driving to places together. There are certain occasions and places that are going to be difficult: the biggest will be grandchildren, if and when there are any. But in the immediate future, the first Christmas without her; the next time I go to Cornwall; and indeed, visiting Aberystwyth.

I went to Aber at the weekend, with the children, and it was a very good trip -- but very strange to be there without her. Today, life doesn't seem awful or impossible, just strange and puzzling.

No Comment

You may notice I've turned comments off.
If you want to comment, please email me.

Bacon Is Bad For You

Bit of a fuss on Runners World today about a new report that says, amongst other things, that if you want to minimise your chances of getting cancer, you should cut out "pink" processed meats like ham, bacon, and whatever that pink stuff inside pork pies is. (I'm not sure about sausages).

The reactions vary between "we've known that for a long time" which is true (the carcinogenic effects of nitrites in pink processed meats have been studied for decades) to the sort of "why bother, you could always step under a bus" and "you're going to die anyway" and "if you worried about everything you'd never leave your house" comments.

I guess there's some truth in that too. You have to weigh up the risk involved and the pleasure involved. You do have to be prepared to take reasonable risks that allow you to do things that are really important to you. The bacon risk is actually fairly small -- the difference to your chances of getting cancer is slight. On the other hand, I lived without eating any ham or bacon for many years, and I don't think it made my life the tiniest bit less happy. Bacon can give you pleasure, but not happiness. Maybe I'll buy a bit less of that cheap Sainsburys ham now.

I think people's problem with it really is a feeling of "so okay, if I do that, what else is it going to be next week?" A feeling that we're constantly being told new things are bad for us. And actually that's not true. The message of bacon and crisps bad, fresh fruits and vegetables good, has been unchanging for decades.

Other cancer-avoiding recommendations included avoiding sugary drinks (e.g. fruit juice), avoiding alcohol, and avoiding being overweight.

Just experimenting with adding a photo

The seven sisters on the Beachy Head marathon.

We ran from here to over the horizon in this picture.




And then there was this.
Clockwise, using forum names, we have TT76 (nearest, with the back of her head to me), Kazzah, Yums, Mrs Pig, Nick, Greeneyes (I think), M1, Lurker, Womble, and Hippo.
Others were behind me.

Provisional diary for first half of November

Thu 1 stop over at Karen’s

Fri 2 Folk music meeting 7:30 / Anne arriving?

Sat 3 to Aber, B&B booked for two

Sun 4 Back from Aber

Mon 5 Mary's birthday

Tue 6 choir

Wed 7 WAH: diabetic review 1230 / Bass lesson / Running club monthly pub meal

Sat 10 Dance thing Colden Common 2pm / Scotty’s 40th party Sevenoaks / stop over at Karen's

Sun 11 Visit Fred??

Tue 13 Choir rehearsal

Wed 14 Choir performance Brooks shopping centre 6pm and/or running club 7pm

Sat 17 Hypnosis "Continuing Professional Development" session Kingston Hospital 2->5 pm

Sun 18 Brighton 10k social (not racing)? Or Mytho day (doubtful, to be confirmed)

I Thought I'd Seen Everything

But this takes the cake. The grand prize for hypocrisy.

Front page story in the Evening Standard. The whole front page.
Shock Horror two inch high headline.
Paparazzi tried to sell pictures of dying Diana for £300,000.
Shocked indignant tone. How dare these photographers act like that?

Helloo? This is a newspaper adopting this tone?
And putting a photograph of Diana next to the story?

Is it just me?

Liquid Lunch

Interesting paper in the most recent International Journal of Obesity.

They compared people's food intake giving them similar foods in liquid and solid form. When given the food in liquid form, people tended to consume about 15% more calories. (And 15% is a lot).
They tested different kinds of foods: high fat, high protein, and high carb. And they tested both lean and obese people. In all cases the result held up. If you need to lose weight, beware of taking food in liquid form. (Slimfast anyone?)

Clavicle

I was examined today by an independent doctor, for insurance reasons. It went well.

He checked my clavicle, and said that if it was him, he definitely wouldn't operate on it. That makes three consultants who've told me that, as opposed to a couple of more junior doctors who thought I ought to get it repaired. Basically, if there's no serious loss of function or discomfort, leave it alone. Nice to have yet another opinion.

He wasn't so happy about my wrist. He thought there might still be a broken bone in there, and suggested I should ask for an x-ray of it. I hadn't become aware that it was affected until weeks after the accident, so it didn't get looked at at the time.

And if I may blow my own trumpet for a moment, he said that he thought I had done really well in "getting on with things" and not allowing the injuries to bother me. I told him about Beachy. "You obviously don't feel pain like the rest of us" he said. Not true, actually. I've been very lucky.

By A Strange Coincidence

Not that I believe in coincidences. Literally as I pressed "publish" on that last post, the doorbell rang, and it was the nice man who's been painting my windows, coming round to fix a couple of snags.

He started telling me how he'd been at a wedding at the weekend, "doesn't drink", having given up in his twenties, but had drunk a lot of wine at the wedding and was now suffering badly.

I'm glad it was him up the ladder and not me. My legs are stiffening up. I shall try a jog later.

Cutting Down A Bit

I have the feeling I've been drinking too much recently, so I've decided to cut down for a while.

I don't think the alternation of "drinking too much" and "cutting it out completely" with each other is a good strategy -- "drinking moderately all the time" would be better. But I wasn't exactly doing that. I'm just back from a fairly alcoholic weekend in Eastbourne -- some of that RW crowd unfortunately take pride in how drunk they can get.

The next couple of months are tricky. There are already three dates in my diary that would normally involve serious drinking: a college feast (happens once every 15 years or so!), the RW Christmas social at Doggetts, and another RW social at Luton. But Christmas is coming up, there will be several other parties I'm sure, work-related, choir-related, various friends (Roger and Debra always give a good party, Paul and Gerry will, Andy and Jane probably will) ... oh and Scotty's 40th ....

I think the plan for the rest of the year has to be moderate drinking at "functions" and nothing in between. You heard it here first. Moderation in all things.

Stop sniggering at the back there!

Don't Mention The War

Did I imagine it? Or was there a weird item on the Sunday programme on Radio 4 this morning… about the Vatican beatifying nearly 500 priests in Spain who'd been against the socialists in the civil war and were killed?

"Coincidentally" the Spanish socialist government are trying to bring in a new law to ban any memorials to those who died on the other side, including any in churches, or even streets named after them. (Presumably they'll be expunging them from the history books too?)

"We're against fascism, so much so that we're bringing in a new law to tell you what you're allowed to say"?

(Of course, I shouldn't believe what I hear on Radio 4.)

The state is fighting against the church, just as a good socialist regime should, while, at the same time, the programme said, the church in Spain could not survive without government subsidies? So the government is subsidising them like a lame-duck industry?

Just goes to show how a government uses its subsidies as a political weapon to control and shape whatever it subsidises, for its own political ends. Subsidise nothing, I say.

Is it just me or is that all a bit weird?

The Clocks Go Back

Thank goodness

And my train takes a circuitous route home via Staines.

My rate of posting will probably settle down a bit over the next few weeks…

Beachy Head

Beachy Head was wonderful. Mind you, I'm still in the "I'm never running a marathon again ever" phase. "It's been emotional" as they say. The weekend was a roller-coaster ride, both in terms of physical elevation and mental. The profile of the route is a series of ups and downs totalling 3500 feet of ascent. And sometimes you have to go quite close to the edge.

The night before was chaos about where the RW people were meeting up: talk of the Odyssey chip shop, a false rumour of The Pilot pub, and eventually everyone seemed to be in The Ship. I met a few old friends, and a couple of people that I know online but had never met in person before, which was nice. I need the "I-spy book of forumites" (like a train-spotter) so I can cross them off as I meet them. Yums and Mark1 are now ticked off.

The B&B was way too hot -- probably heated for the elderly -- and I had a lot of trouble sleeping, which was not ideal preparation, as I'd only had a few hours the night before that. And they were not expecting to serve any breakfast before 8, which needed a little bit of negotiation.

The race itself was much better than I expected. Very scenic. And fine weather. I had been apprehensive but felt good nearly all the way round, until about a mile from the end, when one knee started to hurt. No trouble from my collarbone. No "hitting the wall". I felt able to sprint up the first of the "seven sisters" at about mile 20. Okay, she's the littlest sister, but still…. There was a lot of walking too, I don't want to give the impression that it was all running. We finished in 5:50 (whereas on the flat I would do maybe 4:30). I am very happy with that result over that course.

I'd never run a marathon with someone else before. It's better. No music, but conversation, and amazing scenery. Oh, and Karen had run another marathon a week earlier in Amsterdam. So she would have been fully entitled to have a lousy race; but she didn't. (She's Superman's big sister.) And the "water stops" were something else. Mars bars, fruitcake, sausage rolls, tea and coffee… it was a continuous pig-out …

And then another evening in The Ship …

Suzanne Vega

The Suzanne Vega concert last night was wonderful. I am re-enjoying it this morning, with flashbacks of musical moments.

It started out not too well, when it transpired that the venue's website and Suzanne's website had both been selling tickets .... the same tickets... and quite a few seats were double booked. There were little knots of people comparing tickets and wondering how it was possible that yes, they BOTH had genuine tickets for the same seat, and yes, it was today's date, and yes, they HAD got the row correct... The staff started out confident, then retreated to "all I can do is apologise", and eventually took to hiding. However, it all seemed to get resolved in the end, and our seats were not in debate. It gave us all something to talk about, anyway.

The support act turned out to be Gary Daly, one of the two main people from China Crisis. China Crisis? "Black Man Ray"? No?
And his friend (or possibly daughter?) Megan. They were quite good, too. Better than most of Suzanne's support acts. (I didn't like Nerina Pallot who supported her before, nor that over the top Christian guy).

Suzanne's set was excellent, and I particularly enjoyed (as before) the session with just her and bassist Mike Visceglia (Small Blue Thing, Left of Center, and Blood Makes Noise as I remember it).

And the instrumental version of Tom's Diner was excellent, much better than the "everybody join in clapping hands" attempt that she used to do. There wasn't a dud one in the whole set, really. I've not been that keen on her latest album, but she definitely sold me on one or two of the tracks last night, and she also did lots of old favourites.

Of course, us VIPs got to hang out briefly with Suzanne afterwards and take photos, while the lesser fans queued outside the stage door in the rain hoping for a glimpse.... what? Me shallow? Yes, but I find there is something about being "up close" to someone, in their physical presence, seeing what they're like after their stage persona drops (a little bit).

The price of coal

An interesting piece on the "Freakonomics" blog that I saw recently: apparently (and anything it says on the web must be true, obviously) there is a higher contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere from underground coal fires in coal mines in China, than there is from all the cars and light trucks in the USA. Not from the coal they actually use ... just from what's wasted in mine fires.

I've always felt that there was a deep vein of racism in the environmental world ... "junk food" is always characterised by MacDonalds, though how grilled meat on an unbuttered bun is supposed to be more junky than the stuff they sell in chip shops (cooked in fat that's been cross-linked by being kept too hot too long), or good old british pork pie, or chicken tikka masala, is beyond me ... but there it always is ... junk food ... American ... and CO2 ... caused by American cars. We need somebody we can all agree to blame...

Returning to coal, for a moment though: I always remember a friend of mine who is an X-ray technician telling me about the effect on his instruments when the wind was in the direction from the local power station. He could tell by the fallout when the wind was coming from there.
This was not a nuclear power station. It was a coal-fired one. And coal contains radioactive elements, and when you burn it, they go into the atmosphere, and then fall out.

Beginning Again

I've decided to start INWAP-ing again, this time on the web. For anyone who doesn't know, INWAP was previously published by printing it out on paper and posting it to people. (I may still have to do that for one or two who don't surf.) I rather liked the precise control that gave me over the format -- I could even choose the type of paper, and I liked to obsess over things like where line-breaks occurred. The premise of it was that it would never take long to read or write; hence the title.

I've had a busy week. Last weekend, I went to Devon to run in the Dartmoor Vale 10k, which sounds scenic, but is actually around the rather less scenic town of Newton Abbott. And then a social with some RW people afterwards. Our host told us just to turn up and go on in to the house, even if she wasn't there. There would be a dog -- a large german shepherd -- but "she only wants to play" .... I declined this opportunity. Country folk eh? What if I'd gone into the wrong house?

On Thursday evening I'm off with Karen to see Suzanne Vega. And then next weekend, we're running the Beachy Head marathon. Which is hilly. VERY hilly. Aargh. I've been doing a fair bit of marathon training, which means I've been eating like a horse, which means I'm now feeling all tired and fat and bloated .... this running is so good for us .... I've booked the Monday as holiday to recover.