Crisis Christmas

I've just spent 4 nights at Crisis Christmas. There were lots of wonderful people, both guests and helpers, and many stories that could be told... but would probably be better face to face. Including a barrel of beer that got "borrowed" from a nearby hotel.

At the centre I was at, there were about 350 guests spending the night, getting fed, and receiving medical care, showers, new clothes, counselling, advice, access to the internet, and so on. This runs on (a) huge numbers of volunteers and (b) fantastic amounts of donations from businesses, starting with a vacant building, down through equipment, clothes, food, all the way down to paper cups.

My main occupation was in the kennels, looking after guests' dogs. Getting my face licked a lot. That symbolises the experience as a whole, maybe. We get as much out of it as the guests do in every way. They entertain, enlighten, love, and support us.

One person was telling me how he became homeless. It's not a difficult journey: his successful business began to make a loss; a failing business leads to drinking and depression, which makes things worse; debt, drinking and depression lead to breakup of long-term relationship; and with that also goes the house. You take that first drink, the rest of the steps follow. We're all closer than we realise.

The volunteers are all kinds of people, all ages, all levels of experience. They gradually become a team. The night-shift team, on from roughly 22:30 to 08:30. The system is organised so that nobody has to do anything they're not up to, and never on their own.

And then, after the last night shift, a massive session from 09:30 to 19:00 in the pub, to get "adjusted" back to normal clock time. The pub didn't know what had hit it....

More credit crunch

Speaking, as I was, of people making noises with their mouths, there was an expert (economist? something?) on radio prune the other morning, explaining the credit crunch and banking, with much patting on the back from the R4 presenter.

Apparently, he said, banks used to be in the business of taking deposits from people, and investing it by lending it out to businesses and people wanting mortgages and loans. But that, he said, is not where the problem lies. The problem is, they've started "speculatively trading with each other". They should stop all this "speculative trading with each other", and get back to the bread and butter of taking deposits and lending out money. That's a pretty accurate quote.

I'd like to ask him a few questions, like, if it was trading with each other that was the problem, how come they ALL seem to have lost money? If one bank lost, why didn't the other gain?

And if they were speculatively trading with each other, WHAT were they trading? Bubble gum cards? Oh, no, wait, it was those loans that you said weren't the problem?

And how did this speculative trading cause the banks to get into this mess? Was it because those, er, loans that they traded, that you said weren't the problem at all, turned out to be worthless?

So you want them to stop this speculation and get back to their bread-and-butter of lending money out? Doh.

Russell Brand again

I've just read his "Booky-wook". Scary stuff!

It makes the Woss+Brand incident, about which I blogged before, a little clearer. Not that that's mentioned in the book -- it happened after the book was out. But the history is there.

The absolutely typical incident, which I've related to one or two people, is of him as a child aged about five, talking to what he describes as a "nice old man" in the man's front garden. He calls the man "warm and avuncular". And when the old man goes into his house for a moment, Russell stamps down all his flowers, the man's pride and joy, and then waits for him to come out again to see his face.

He likes hurting people. You can't really blame the drugs, because he wasn't on them at that stage. Maybe the drugs are because he hates himself so much.

And so the story goes on, hurting friends, hurting women, hurting himself of course, and the general public at large. Cutting himself, sleeping with prostitutes that he despises, stealing.

He's clearly very witty and intelligent. I've heard some of his stuff, and it can be entertaining.

I guess it's the perfect demonstration that insight isn't worth all that much. He comments in the book on the stuff he's done, and his own feelings. He does it in a boastful way, and then points out his own boastfulness, so you think, oh, he isn't really boastful, it's all just self-deprecating. But all that cleverness, all that self-understanding, doesn't help him a bit.

He describes another incident where he's at a recovery centre, and they all get taken off to go go-karting. He says, if you haven't been go-karting with a bunch of junkies, you haven't lived. I grin, and imagine he must be fun, for a moment. What happens is that as soon as they start, he deliberately breaks the rules at the place, so they all get thrown out. How much fun was that?

He then launches into a diatribe about "it wasn't the Geneva convention I broke, just some arbitrary rule" and so on. And he manages to convey the sense that "of course I don't really think that, I realise what a pain in the neck I am and it was wrong to do it". That's the tone of the whole book. But the thing is, even if he understands that and gets it across, he still does that stuff, and probably always will.

When you listen to what people say, those are generally just noises that their mouth makes while they get on with whatever it is they do. Listen to it if it's informative or entertaining, but never believe what they say about what they think, how they feel, what they're going to do . . . . instead, watch what they actually do. In Brand's case, he went on and f***ed over a bunch more people. Everyone has their act, their "thing that they say", whatever it is: "it was only an arbitrary rule", "you're not perfect either", "capitalism is to blame", "my childhood was abusive", "i didn't mean it", "they deserved it because of that bad thing they said to me". The smarter ones like Brand will say it all in an ironic way, so that you think they really "get" the opposite. Just watch what they actually do in life. Generally, people don't change much and keep doing what they always do.

Charity

This from the New York Times -- a left-wing newspaper (at least on the US's scale).

Liberals push for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals. ((Note from Mike: this is not because they typically have more money -- on average the conservative households have less.))


Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that Republican states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.

The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans.

“When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.”

Something similar is true internationally. European countries seem to show more compassion than America in providing safety nets for the poor, and they give far more humanitarian foreign aid per capita than the United States does. But as individuals, Europeans are far less charitable than Americans.Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of G.N.P. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent.


The article goes on to point out that charitable giving can't quite be equated to giving to the poor, because the numbers include donations to churches (popular with American conservatives) and donations to educational and cultural institutions (schools, museums, theatres, popular with liberals) so it's difficult to tell. But to me, just the willingness to give money away is an interesting statistic... and ...

Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.

Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in conservative states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.

Of course, given the economic pinch these days, charity isn’t on the top of anyone’s agenda. Yet the financial ability to contribute to charity, and the willingness to do so, are strikingly unrelated. Amazingly, the working poor, who have the least resources, somehow manage to be more generous as a percentage of income than the middle class.

Standup comedy

Went to some stand-up comedy with Karen last night.

I have made a determined effort, and remembered two funny bits.

(a) Morph (plasticine character, Tony Hart) ... if you were a little man made of plasticine who could morph his own shape, you wouldn't waste time on all the stuff Morph did, you'd make yourself an enormous ****. [Comedian gestures to indicate making enormous **** out of plasticine....]

(b) Tai chi... why is it when I see someone in a park doing tai chi, it's ME that gets embarrassed, when he's the one doing the silly poses? What's that all about? Tai chi must be the ancient oriental art of "shame wafting"

More about greehouse gases

You may remember a previous post about the impact of coal-mine fires.

Anyway, this is another one for anyone who thinks that global warming is, basically, caused by Americans driving SUVs, or the Chinese building power stations.

Apparently (this is from New Scientist recently) the average American household creates nearly twice as much greenhouse gas by what they eat, as by their car-driving. (Food 13.5% of their footprint, driving 7.3%).

This is mainly because they eat a lot of beef and cows milk (and things made from them). Raising beef is very greenhouse-gas intensive. It's hard to calculate the impact of a food (or any production process) on the atmosphere: you have to consider not only CO2 but all the gases released (eg methane) and their relative impacts. And you have to consider all stages of the process. For example, with beef, you have to consider the methane the cows produce, but also the impact of land cleared to graze them, grain farmed to feed them, fertiliser made to feed the grain, transport at every stage, processing, heating and lighting...

Beef is apparently twice as bad as pork, which is worse than chicken, and all of them are much worse than a vegetarian diet. Livestock, if I understood the article correctly, amounts for about 18% of humankind's impact on greenhouse gases. (I don't know what the other 82% is.) If an American goes vegetarian, it saves more impact than they can save by driving less or driving a more economical vehicle.

So no, it's not all about how Americans have bigger cars than us, or drive further, or have too-cheap petrol, it's more about how they eat mainly beef. As we do.
And, ultimately, about how there are too many humans on the planet.

(And, the part where food gets transported from where it's grown to where it's sold is only about 4% of the impact of the food, so "buying local" doesn't make a huge difference either.)

More change of address

I now have an even worse case of inability to handle a change of address (probably the most basic business process).

Royal Sun Alliance, who insure my house contents. I've had the policy with them for maybe 25 years. I've always paid my premiums faithfully, a three figure sum every year now, and never claimed.

When I told them I'd moved house, I had a series of plaintive phone calls from them, saying the policy was so old, that they couldn't figure out how to do the change of address on the old system. And this is my problem how exactly?

Then they assured me it had been done, and sent me a new policy schedule at the correct new address. Hooray!

But then I had to phone up with a claim! My first ever. And when I gave them my (new) address, which I knew they had (because they've written to me here), they said they "couldn't find me on the system". Not even via my policy number. They started to insist my policy must be "through someone else" i.e. a broker. It isn't.

Eventually they found me. They said the change of address hadn't worked... but it was all now definitely sorted out.

I needed to phone back with more details about the claim. And when I gave them my new address they said they "couldn't find me on the system". Not even via my claim number. They started to insist my policy must be "through someone else" i.e. a broker. It still isn't. Eventually they found me. They said the change of address hadn't worked... but it was all now definitely sorted out. And they'd phone me back.

They haven't.

It's about six phone calls now, and I don't have much confidence that they've managed to do the change of address.

Ross and Brand

Lots of interesting comment on this, on RW, in the papers, in the pub, and overheard on the train. I'm more interested in the stuff people say about it than I am in the incident itself.

For example:
"The original listeners had no problem with it. It's just a bunch of people who hadn't even heard the show who are complaining, over a week later". That would be a valid comment if the complaint was that the show was offensive to the listeners. However, I don't think that's what they did wrong: they offended Andrew Sachs, not their listeners.

So many people seem to think that the key question is whether they find Russell Brand funny or not. Endless letters to the papers about who "gets" or "doesnt get" his humour. But that's irrelevant. If he did wrong, it doesn't excuse it that some onlookers (or listeners) find it funny.

To take a hypothetical example (and if you can't do hypothetical, please stop reading this blog) if someone made a speech inciting racial hatred, and I complained about it, it wouldn't be any defence to say "you weren't there at the time, you only found out about it later, and the people in the audience loved it".

My general take is this, on whether something's right or wrong:
-- it doesn't matter who you are. There are no "privileged positions" that excuse you.
-- it doesnt' matter who the victim is. Nobody "deserves it" or "is asking for it".

I think the BBC generally, and these two in particular, suffer from hubris. Thinking they are holier than thou, and above criticism.

These two phoned up someone, left an abusive message on their answerphone, sang a mocking pretend "apology", and then broadcast the whole thing to the public. If I did that from my company's premises on their phone line during my working hours, I'd be sacked. If people were listening to me do it and found it all very funny, that might actually make it worse. So I don't think the debate on whether Russell Brand is funny has anything to do with it.

As far as I can see, he has something wrong with him (diminished sense of responsibility) which makes him a danger to himself and others, but also very funny to the onlooker. Yes, he is funny. Unfortunately, being a "celeb" probably means he won't get help.

Dublin result!

I did 3:51:59, and am very pleased with that. That's 20 mins off my PB, and 8 mins faster than my target. In marathon running, 8 mins is a lot!

To be honest, that might possibly be my lifetime PB. I'm not sure how I can beat it. I'll be older next time. I trained quite systematically; my weight is about as low as I ever want it to be; the course is flat; the weather was perfect (cold, bright, not rainy or windy); and nothing went wrong. No "hitting the wall", no niggles or pains. Today, I find it hard to see how I could better it another time. Okay -- maybe next time skip the 4 pints of Guinness 36 hrs before the race! Or did they help?

Oops! I seem to be talking about a "next time" .....

Anyway, we had a pleasing weekend, even if we didn't do all that much. We arrived on Saturday, and spent the evening in Temple Bar, sampling pubs and live music. One Coldplay wannabe; one crowd-pleaser. On Sunday we went to register (and in Karen's case, immediately deregister again) and then had a quiet evening with carbo loading. On Monday, the race, then a couple of pints and lunch in a pub with some RW friends; then a nap; then dinner and back to Temple Bar for more beers and live music. Overall, lots of eating, drinking, and sleeping.

Dublin

Only three days now before Karen and I are off to Dublin. Poor Karen's still suffering from her broken arm, and likely to be so for some time. Still, we should have a good weekend.

I've reached the point of bafflement in my training. I have no idea what will happen, or what result I might get. I'm hoping for anything faster than 4hrs.

3:59:59 would be fine. 3:50 seems not absolutely impossible. On some days.
On other days, 4hrs seems totally impossible.

Change of Address

You'd think this would be about the most common, basic business process anyone could implement. Not so.

I remember this the last time I moved house, in about 1990. Just about every company's systems screwed it up. I was giving a talk at that time about business systems, and used it as an example.

It hasn't got much better. Barclays happily assigned me to a non-existent postcode, although postcode validation software is part of their standard platform. The ususal crop of people changed my name to "Micheal", which I detest. Npower got the postcode right, so their letter reached me, despite being randomly addressed to Kirkintilloch in Scotland. I phoned them - it's a problem with their system.

Lots of people also seem to think I live in Surrey. I'm fairly sure I don't. But I would welcome clarification from anyone who works in Surrey local government...

A more subtle point: just about nobody can distinguish between (a) me moving house and (b) me correcting an error in the address they've got for me. Both are just described on their system as "change address" - updating their address field.

Why does it matter?

Because it affects things like how often they think I've moved house, how long they think I've been at this address, and what my previous address was.

The bug is caused by thinking about system functionality, rather than business requirements. Properly done "use case" analysis would distinguish.

I'm not being theoretical: this has actually happened to me twice. Once I corrected a typo in my address on my car registration document. This was taken as a change of owner, and increased the "number of previous owners" shown on the document from 1 to 2. Which could affect the value of the car. It took a series of letters to get that fixed.

Then, a couple of days ago, someone at Barclays asked me, as a security validation question, what my previous address was before I moved. I of course gave the address in Hampshire. Wrong! I'd corrected the error in my new postcode a few days ago, so my "previous address" on their system was the same as my current address except with a typo in it. They no longer had a record of my real previous address, or the real date I'd moved house. All their data was wrong. So their security check didn't work. I pointed out that they'd got current and previous address the same, and the baffled clerk had to admit this was so, and used a different security check. . . . I guess if it was an automated system, that wouldn't work.

So: system designers and business analysts, please note the difference between a change of data, and correcting an error in data. And please validate your postcodes.

Choir

I seem to have joined The Choir With No Name, which sings in aid of homeless people (and tries to get them to join in too). As a volunteer, I cook or wash up, but am also allowed to sing. It's a small choir; about a dozen people normally turn up I think, whereas Winchester CC was fifty or sixty. We'll be having some "gigs" towards Christmas, by the sound of it.

I've arrived

The second removal-van-load of "stuff" has been delivered to my new house.

It's amazing how much more space stuff takes up when it's all wrapped in tissue paper and put in cardboard boxes. A small shelf of mugs or glasses occupies a large cardboard box. There must be about 100 boxes. So I have a load of empty cupboards, a nearly empty loft, and a load of dismantled furniture (beds and wardrobes) needing floor-space to assemble. And the house and garage are so stuffed with boxes, it's difficult even to move around! I can't believe how much stuff I have.

It's going to be like a sliding block puzzle, trying to make enough space to assemble things and do unpacking. I don't want to fill up the drawers of chests of drawers until they're in the right place, etc etc. I'm going to have to have another purge on belongings.

There's still a load of stuff in storage in Winchester as well! Aargh.

I can't really "work from home" there till I get broadband.

Still, I've checked out the local kebab shop, and it seems ok.

Short Selling

I'm going to have to blog about this, because I keep having this debate with other people about the "wicked short selling". I read this morning on the BBC that now the Archbishops of York and Canterbury have weighed in, although they don't seem to know what short selling is.

> ... a speech to bankers by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu. In it, he called share traders who cashed in on falling prices "bank robbers and asset strippers".

Writing in the Spectator, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams ... attacks "unbridled capitalism" and defends the socialist theorist Karl Marx's critiques of the system.

He urges that "short-selling" and some other financial practices be banned

The BBC article goes on to describe short selling as
"selling borrowed shares below their current price, betting that prices would fall further"

First of all, the cause of the crisis, and the falling shares, is that banks gave over-optimistic mortgages to people, and underestimated the proportion of those people who'd be unable to pay them back. Short selling has made no contribution to this. What short selling is, is pointing out that the returns from the mortgages have been over-valued. It's saying, look, these supposed assets that this bank holds, are way over valued. So what the papers are doing, and what the archbishops are backing, is shooting the messenger who has pointed out the problem.

And it's a violation of free speech. If I think those loans are going to go bad, and that bank shares will have to fall as a result, I should be allowed to say so, and to bet on it. What's the alternative? A law that forces a conspiracy of silence, so the shares remain over-valued? You can't keep it quiet for ever: as borrowers fail to repay, the deficit will become apparent. What's the point of forbidding traders to point it out?

That's all short selling is: observing that the shares are over valued, and betting they'll go down. It is NOT, in essence, about "selling shares below their current price" as the BBC seems to think. Duh! Traders will always sell shares for as much as they can get. They don't sell the shares at a lower price to drive them down... they sell them at a lower price because they want to sell them, and a lower price is all they can get ... because everybody who's in the market really knows the shares are over-valued! It's just the public that hasn't been informed.

And the thing is, of course, that there are two sides to a trade. So if traders are "short selling", someone else is buying, and agreeing with their estimate of the price. There's actually an exactly equal amount of selling and buying going on! The church and the (leftie) BBC would like to portray it as selling taking place in some sort of vacuum, but it's not just "selling", it's shares changing hands, with an equal amount of selling and buying. The short sellers are basically betting that the shares will go down . . . and other traders are taking that bet, i.e. betting the opposite. So the activity of the short selling in the marketplace is actually neutral in those terms! The reason the high and mighty don't like it, is that people making and taking that bet exposes the truth about the value of the banks' assets. That's the sense in which it drives share prices down: by exposing the truth.

The other aspect which people always bring up at this point is that short sellers can sell shares that they don't own yet. This isn't what causes the problem; it's not cheating, it's not fraudulent, it's well understood, it's a feature of all marketplaces. You can buy things in advance and sell things in advance. What it means, though, is that if they're really confident about their view of the market, they can make a really big bet. It gears things up, and amplifies the effect of the selling. It enables them to say, "I'm so sure you've made a mistake with these mortgages, that I'm willing to take a really big position on this". Which, again, embarrasses the banks and makes headline news. I'm sure the government would have liked the banking blunder kept under wraps... which is why they're shushing and bringing in "controls" to stop these wicked traders from revealing the truth.... to us, the public.

It must be so annoying for the Brown and Bush administrations.... couldn't the traders just have kept quiet about all this for a little longer ... kept it under wraps until the after the next elections, when the next lot might well be in power? And then it would be someone elses problem?

Upcoming diary events

Fri 26 Sept - Runners World social Doggetts

Sat 27th - Long run / John home / party in the evening in Sevenoaks

Sun 28th - take Jamie to Leicester!

Mon 29th - "choir with no name" ! - more details later

Tues 30th - Granny's birthday

Weds 1st Oct - Karen starts new job / Seasick Steve concert Albert Hall

Fri 3rd - completion of purchase of new house - moving in starts!

Sat 4th - unpacking

Sun 5th - my birthday - Wimbledon 10 mile race?

Mon 6th - moving continues

Thurs 9th - visiting Winchester, collect everything from Winnall finally

Fri 10th - Annie home!

Sat 11th - Party time! Housewarming and birthday

New Forest Half

Just a brief note to say I did a PB (Personal Best) at the New Forest Half Marathon last Sunday, of 1:50:52. The time probably doesn't mean a lot to most of you.

The showers were broken. See my usual rant about plumbing.

My goal now is to run sub 4 hours at Dublin. Another couple of hard weeks, and then I'll be "tapering" for it, ie cutting down on running and resting more.

Sing for Water

I did the "Sing for Water" thing in London. The choir was about 800 of us:

We had a perfect day for it, lovely and sunny. I had breakfast after the early rehearsal, in a cafe nearby, reading the paper and drinking coffee and watching the world go by. There were lots of lovely stalls, selling all manner of craft, and also lager, curry, and coffee. What more could one want?

The performance was after lunch. We were preceded by another choir, of about 850 children. We had quite a good audience too. Karen's in there, roughly in the centre.

There was a man inviting us to throw our money down the drain...


And we were followed by a sort of Brazilian dance troupe.

Karen and I wandered off at this point, to look at more stalls and walk along the riverside back to Waterloo.

The Westbury Party

Sunday was the Westburys' family party. About fifty people turned up, from various branches of the family.



I only know a small proportion of them by name, because I only see them once a year, and I'm bad that way. We used to have a Christmas party, but now it's a summer picnic.

There was plenty of food....





A play area for the children:



And we all had a good time. Much to celebrate for my branch of the family



including Anne's new job, her and Seb's new house, my managing to sell my house, John's graduation, and Jamie's getting in to Leicester, with Caroline.

We visited Mary's grave, as we always do, and the talk turned inevitably to the "C" word .... Christmas .... after all, it's September already. BUT first Anne is off on a road-trip with her wild friends... and I'll probably be having a house-warming. Watch this space...

The House

It's been ages since I've blogged. I've been very busy with work, with marathon training, and with house selling. All these things are moving forward nicely now.

We exchanged contracts on my house sale yesterday. So I am legally committed to get out. The removers are booked for next Wednesday and Thursday.

It's been strange, going through all the accumulated stuff in the house, and deciding what's worth keeping. I tend to keep "souvenirs".... bills from restaurant meals, that kind of thing, and then never look at them. And we had every gas bill and credit card bill ever. I had programme books from old science fiction conventions I attended. Just to sort of prove to myself that I was there. And "souvenir" tee shirts of places I've worked. (I wonder where my lovely "IBM La Hulpe" shirt went, I liked that one!)

I think, once I get in somewhere else, there will be another round of throwing out, taking more time. But for now, the process is complete.

Diet stuff

I was reading something today about a small study on protein . . . . sponsored by a company that sells protein shakes, so be very sceptical . . . . but interesting anyway.

Three groups: (a) control, eating standard American diet, no exercise. (b) Standard diet, plus weight training and cardio. (c) Standard diet, plus weight training and cardio, plus protein shakes, thus increasing protein intake by about 60%.

Group (b), the exercisers, lost fat, gained muscle, and gained cardio fitness. Group (c), with the protein drinks, did the same, only more so. They gained more muscle (no surprise), lost more fat (why?) and gained more cardio fitness (why??).

I constantly read comments on Runners world to the effect that protein drinks are only for muscleheads, they don't make you fitter, etc etc, that weight loss is just a matter of calories consumed and burned; that excess protein consumed will just be stored as fat; and that all you need is to eat a decent balanced diet of "real food" and avoid the "processed crap" (to quote a recent thread). I disagree. Or at least, I disagree unless and until they provide a good definition of the words "balanced" and "processed".

Note that the people in this study improved their VO2max more with protein shakes (a measure of oxygen throughput -- sort of your "top speed"). How can this be? The people doing it hypothesised that it might be because the higher protein diet helped with recovery, and thus allowed people to train harder.

The fact that they lost fat, rather than gaining it from the extra calories consumed, is probably because drinking the shakes caused them automatically to eat less of other foods to compensate (without knowing they were doing so) and thereby reduced their intake of carbs and/or fats.

I do think that the official "recommended" amount of protein is enough to keep you alive, but way too little for optimal recovery from strenuous exercise.

Now the sceptical bit: what (I hear you cry) about that other study you blogged about a couple of years ago, which had very similar results, except with carb supplements? Where the cyclists increased their performance a lot?

Two things: the people in the carb bar study were highly trained cyclists, and highly trained athletes are much more carb tolerant than normal sedentary (or almost sedentary) people like in the protein shake study. Secondly, one reason that was hypothesised for the good results in the carb bar study was simply making them consume more of their carbs earlier in the day. There are good reasons to think that's the best time to eat carbs. And the effect of the protein shake study may be partly caused by making the (c) group eat more of their daily food earlier, as well as making more of it protein. If they drank three shakes a day, they may have snacked less in the evening. And it also may have been at least partly an effect of non-blinding. If they didn't use dummy shakes, then both the scientists and the subjects will have known who was on the protein shakes, and those subjects may just have tried harder because they knew. That happens.

My general conclusion from these studies: eat more protein than the government recommends. (Say 1.6 grams per kilo of body weight). Eat earlier. And don't eat much carbs unless you do a lot of exercise and are at your desired weight already. Eat plenty of carbs after strenuous exercise, and not much at any other time.

Cassette tapes

I still own quite a bunch of cassette tapes. And a hi-fi cassette "deck".

There was an interesting article in the New York Times (a paper I often glance through online though I disagree with its politics) about the decline in cassettes. Vinyl sales are apparently growing, but cassette sales are dead. There are however two factors which the article pointed out that support the continuing use of cassette decks. User factors like these always interest me.

One is that people often have compilation tapes that they've made, or more importantly, which a sweetheart made for them. These have sentimental value. The number of compilation cassettes out there is one reason why people like to keep using their decks.

The other, which I hadn't thought of, is the talking book factor. Talking books are (or were until quite recently) almost always sold on cassette. The good thing about cassettes for this is the way they keep their place. You almost never want to "skip a track" on a talking book (which is the one thing cassettes are weakest at), and with a cassette, you can play it in your car or on your walkman, get home, take it out and bung it in the house cassette deck, and it will be in the same place! No CD can do that. Cassettes were perfect for audio books.

The factor they didn't mention, which in my opinion is fatal for cassettes, is the car one. Many old cars still have that cassette slot, so people keep the tapes to play in the car. But nobody sells a car with a cassette player any more. Once the older cars with legacy cassette decks disappear, that'll be it. (Same with DAB radio -- if/when all cars come with DAB radios, it will have won).

Singing in Southampton

Our Southampton performance for Water Aid was this afternoon. We had perfect weather for it. We spent about 40 minutes, with a small crowd, singing a nice assortment of songs. I captured a couple of pictures on my phone after we finished -- I hadn't thought to take a camera!

Richmond Park

I cycle to work via Richmond Park now and then. It's lovely. Here are some deer I passed the other day, showing off their new antlers. If you click on it, you may be able to see it slightly bigger.

Marathon training

Marathon training for Dublin has now begun in earnest. There's about 3 months to go.

I started nine days ago, with a long run in Richmond Park. (The powder-throwing incident, for those who've heard about it). Now it's no longer a case of "going out for a bit of a run". Every run has to have an objective. It's a "long run" to increase endurance (physical and mental) and fat-burning pathways, or it's a "tempo run" to boost lactate threshold and the ability to sustain speed, or it's "speedwork" to boost maximum oxygen throughput and get muscles used to moving fast.
It's not "half an hour's brisk run" any more; it's 5 miles at 8:50 pace, or 6 x 800 metres with 90 second walking recoveries.

My main failing is not getting enough sleep.

John's graduation

It was a long day, and a lot of it in Welsh! But we had a good chinese meal to celebrate afterwards.

Singing

Just to say, I am really loving the singing for Water Aid. All the songs are excellent. I have to learn them from CD recordings, so I am singing along in the car whenever I go anywhere, and am totally transported (ho ho).

No really, for me, there is nothing like singing as part of a choir. It's an amazing experience. It requires you to listen to yourself, listen to others, and listen to the totality. It totally switches the thinking mind off, like meditation.

You can come and hear us in Southampton on 27th July; or London on 14th September.

Hyde Park AGAIN

Friday night, another gig in Hyde Park - the O2 festival!

Lots of people on: we ended up seeing
Siouxsie (still fabulous, sounds just the same, I must dig out my old John Peel cassettes),
The New York Dolls (who played take another little piece of my heart amongst other things),
Beck (in passing), and, er,
Morrissey (who is good at singing).

Also:

. . . ran into a Mytho acquaintance (Steve Machin) unexpectedly....

. . . saw some absolutely staggering stunt cycling, backward somersaults and the like; I'd rave about it but it doesn't really tell....

. . . and went on a bungee trampoline thing! Not sure if photos of me on this exist, but here are some other people on it. I'd like to do this again....

Hard Rock Calling

It turns out it was only called that because it was sponsored by "Hard Rock Cafe"....
The music was not exactly rock, nor "hard".

Anyway, it was a lovely sunny weekend in Hyde Park, listening to Eric Clapton and The Police (with "full supporting bill", ha ha).



The Police is one of the few acts where you get to see some good shots of the bass player.... and I noticed he plucks with his thumb a lot, which I was taught not to do .... ah well ....

And there were pretty girls there...







and an amazing sunset


The weather was lovely .... what more can you ask?

Various headlines

• John passed his degree! A 2:2, which is very respectable (i.e. the same as I got) and I think reflects his preference for hands-on stuff over doing exams. Congratulations!
  


• Annie has got her new, er, place? house? flat? maisonette? What are we calling it? The new place, anyway. But you all knew that....
  


• Jamie is off to Rome for a week with Caroline!
  


• I'm singing in aid of "Water Aid" in Southampton on Sunday 27th July, and in London on Sunday 14th Sept.
  


• I got a pay-rise!
  


• This weekend, Karen and I are at "Hard Rock Calling" in Hyde Park (Eric Clapton and The Police). Who needs Glastonbury?
  


• I've taken a small lock-up storage area for surplus house "stuff" to go to.
  


• My back is acting up at the moment. A bunch of cardboard-box-packing and lifting is probably not what it needs. I have to get it better in time to start my training for Dublin....
  
  

Cycling down the Kings Road, I see so many faces

I've been cycling to and from work one day a week for the last three weeks. I reckon it's a 27-mile round trip (from New Malden to Euston via Richmond Park, Putney Bridge, The Kings Road, and Hyde Park. The route takes me right past Isis Close). I've been enjoying it, too.

Power Cut

We had a power cut at work yesterday. Apparently about 3000 buildings in this area were affected.

The first things we noticed were

• no lights
• no network connection
  

closely followed by

• no coffee

which led to the decision to abandon the building.
Whereupon we discovered

• no power to open the underground carpark shutter door
• no lifts
• traffic lights outside not working
  

but the clincher was

• electrically operated flushes in the loos not working... yuck.
  

Thank goodness for battery-operated mobile phones and laptops.

Cornwall

Our weekend trip to Cornwall was fab.





We stayed at a lovely B&B in the centre of Padstow, a real find, with free wireless internet, excellent breakfasts, and parking. Those who know Padstow will appreciate that the parking is pretty valuable. The place was really good, though. They had a cafetiere in the room as well as instant, and a pint of milk instead of those awful plastic thimbles. Just what you'd have in your own house.

Visiting the area around Padstow is always full of memories for me. I've been going there since I was six months old (apparently) and must have been there maybe thirty times? I remember the old shops, the old steam trains that went there, the dredgers, the old ferry to Rock where you had to get on and off using a plank. I've been there with my grandmother (I think), my parents, Adam, with my best friend from school (we cycled there from Bristol), with Mary and her parents and sister, and then with our children; and now with Karen.

Each time there is something different, and much that is the same. Now there is Rick Stein and the likes of "Presto Pasties" with spinach and ricotta fillings. I call that an improvement; the original pasties were always horrible. The Mashie Niblick at St Merryn is now "Ripleys", but the chip shop there is still the same.

The theme of this visit seems to have been pottery. We went to St Ives, and I learned that the artistic community that set up there had partly come in part from Concarneau, a connection I had not made before. St Ives was (and is) full of sculptors, painters, and indeed potters.

Pottery is Karen's obsession, and we found a shop in St Ives that sold the real thing. Real pottery by people that people have heard of . . . . Karen was wandering about going "I've got a piece by this person" about half the things in the shop.

And then we visited Bernard Leach's pottery. Wikipedia says of him:

"It was in Japan that Leach began potting under the direction of Shigekichi Urano (Kenzan VI) and befriended a young potter named Shoji Hamada. With Hamada, he set up the Leach Pottery at St. Ives, Cornwall in 1920, including the construction of a traditional Japanese wood burning kiln. The two of them promoted pottery as a combination of Western and Eastern arts and philosophies. In their work they focused on traditional Korean, Japanese and Chinese pottery, in combination with traditional techniques from England and Germany, such as slipware and salt glaze ware. They saw pottery as a combination of art, philosophy, design and craft – even as a greater lifestyle.

Leach advocated making utilitarian, so-called ethical pots over fine art pots. Thus his style had a lot of influence on counter-culture and modern design in North America during the 1950s and 1960s. He aspired to running a modern cooperative workshop which created a catalogue of handmade pottery for the general public. However, he always made individual pots which were exhibited as works of art."

The original workshop and kilns are preserved, and there is a gallery of works by more recent potters.

We also did the coastal path run from Padstow to Harlyn, in lovely weather. Unfortunately there was no surf.

Oh, and we saw some live music in Padstow. Two of the pubs had acts which consisted of a singer singing along to a karaoke machine. There is scope here for anyone who's not completely rubbish. In the end we found some people actually playing the accordion and singing, which was much better...

Is It Art?

I had an interesting experience last night.... It was an NLP evening about cartoon drawing, and the use of cartoons in presentations.

Now I am definitely amongst those who hated art at school, cannot draw, and have never been able to draw. I am not kidding... I once wanted to make a tee-shirt with an apple logo on it (a reference to Isaac Newton, if you must know, not the Beatles company or the computer maker) and I had to go and ask an arty friend how to draw an apple. I had tried just drawing a circle, and it didn't look right.
I can remember at school being sent out of art lessons because the art teacher couldn't believe that I wasn't deliberately doing it that badly.
So my expectations of being able to draw cartoons were exceptionally low.


The method adopted by the presenter was to get us to start by just drawing a series of marks in a fixed way, without regard to what they might represent. We had to practice them several times, making them in a fixed order. "Just make these marks and don't worry about how it looks." The marks, of course, were the mouth, nose, eyes, ear, and so on, of a cartoon face. Having done this a few times, we then tried copying a few variations of different eyes, noses, hair, and so on.

The effect of this was entirely to remove any aspect of having to LOOK at something and then decide HOW to draw it. I found it not too difficult to make some cartoon faces, in a sort of mechanical way, just by following the process. And it was quite entertaining.

My first ever attempt.

The next thing that happened was that I had a sort of negative "but this isn't drawing" reaction. "I'm just making fixed movements. I might as well be drawing round a plastic stencil."

I got past this. Okay, it's not "art". I'm circumventing the challenge of being able to look at something real and draw it. What's left, however, is still interesting, enjoyable for me, and potentially useful. It's not an entirely mechanical process, because I can experiment with different shapes or positions of the various marks that I make and see how it affects the result, what different expressions I can generate. Which is sometimes quite surprising. I can see that, with more practice, I could soon learn to generate variations of my own.

I said "potentially useful". . . the presenter's main application for this is drawing cartoons while presenting some subject,as a way of making things memorable and interesting for the audience. I can believe that works.

The next thing that happened, though, was what convinced me there was something in this. I'd just spent half an hour making variations on a cartoon face, trying to represent male, female, happy, sad, surprised, young, old, and so on. Then we had a tea break, and I went down to the bar... and found that I was looking at people's faces slightly differently, paying more attention to their features. Interesting.

I'm wondering now if there's an analogy here with music, where what he did is like getting us to learn an instrument by playing a simple piece that's written down for us, whereas what I was asked to do in school (i.e. draw something I can see) is like asking a beginner who can't play an instrument to compose a piece and learn to play the instrument at the same time.

Gospel Truth

This evening, I attended the gospel workshop at Southampton Philharmonic Choir. This was much more fun than the motet workshop, for several reasons.

First of all, I switched from being a tenor to being a bass, which suited me much better. I just like the bass parts much more.

Secondly, a whole bunch of people from the Winchester Community Choir had decided to come along this week, so it was like a mini invasion by us. (Last week it was just me).

And, most of all, was the way it was taught. I wrote last week about how impressed (or intimidated) I was by the way they just handed out sheet music, and people seemed to be able to pick this up, and sing it! And even sing it well! Very professional singers.

Well. This week, it was a guest workshop leader, who taught entirely by ear. No sheet music. She started with movement exercises, then had us making animal noises and so on to loosen up, and finally singing a simple "hallelujah" by ear in 4 parts, just her singing it and us picking it up. Most of the serious singers seemed to struggle with this -- but at WCC, that's exactly what we do every week. So we were all completely used to it! At one point, she was covering a piece that apparently Mary J Blige had done, and sang us a bassline that just went "dum-dum-de-dum-dum". And then she said, "just improvise some bass parts over it if you feel like it". That's bread and butter to me, making up a bass line over a series of chords, but most of the basses seemed baffled and many ended up just singing the tune part in with the tenors.

So I had my revenge for the previous week, and much enjoyed it. Even if I can't really get down to low F.

The Crowd Went Mad

Karen and I went last night to see Roger Waters perform "Dark Side of the Moon". It was billed as the "last ever" performance. (For those who don't know, Waters was the bassist with Pink Floyd. He plays a Fender Precision, and that was what it looked like last night.).



My title is a reference to the "insanity" thread running through it -- there was a bit of a tribute to Syd Barrett.



There were also a couple of good chunks from "Wish You Were Here", and he closed with the big hits "Another Brick in the Wall (part II)" and "Comfortably Numb".

It was really excellent. The sound was loud enough, that is, very very loud but not distorted, with the bass felt as much as heard. I had a little bit of whistling in the ears afterwards, but not as bad as I've had after some gigs. There were also excellent visuals -- mostly projected




. . . and in those photos, as well as the brains on the screen, you can also sort of see a tetrahedron thing, representing the cover off DSOM, which was beaming light down on to the performers and projecting the spectrum of the rainbow around the audience.

The basic set was this:

which is the radiogram from "wish you were here"

and they had lots of lasers, pyrotechnics, and the famous flying pig:







Special effects aren't the point, though.

The musicianship was amazing. While it wasn't the original band, it was the best musicians money can buy, particularly Dave Kilminster on lead guitar. (Youtube and more)
The drummer (whose name I didn't catch) was also excellent.

By the end, everyone was singing along with everything. A very memorable evening.

Motets

Hands up who knows what a motet is? No, me neither, despite having read about it on Wikipedia.

It seems to be a piece for multiple voices in harmony where the voices don't all sing the same words at the same time, probably shortish, possibly but not necessarily in Latin, possibly but not necessarily unaccompanied. A serious choral thing.

Anyway, I went to a workshop with the Southampton Philharmonic Choir on motets. This is a slightly larger and more serious choir than the Winchester Community one. The first thing that happened when I arrived, was they asked me what I "am" -- tenor or bass. Now I think I'm a baritone, but that doesn't count for this kind of singing, so I hopefully said tenor. Next week I may try being a bass.....

At WCC, the choir leader teaches us songs by ear. We might spend between 5 minutes and several weeks learning a song, depending on how long and complex it is. We learn it line by line: she sings it, then we sing it back.

At the SPC, by contrast, sheet music was issued, for a piece many people had not sung before, and quite a few had not even heard before, and then the leader, at the start of the session, just said "Let's do the Bruckner", waved his arms, and everyone started. And sang it very well! I was gobsmacked. These people are serious!

If I know how a song goes, I can then use sheet music as a reminder of the exact notes and rhythm, but I can't "sight read" something that I have no previous idea what it sounds like.
And these motets are complicated! There isn't a one single tune that everyone sings. So even after once through, I don't immediately "get how it goes" as you would for a pop song.

So anyway, it was very challenging, very rewarding, a good choir, a big "growth experience". I did like the singing "serious" choral pieces rather than the folk songs and African songs we mainly do at WCC. I like the WCC style and the people, but am getting a bit tired of the repertoire. I can see I'd learn a lot if I joined SPC. Unlike WCC, they have a "voice test" before you can join, but I think I could pass that. Hmmmmm.

Next week, a "gospel" workshop!!

The bike

Under a scheme organised by Surrey County Council and supported by Logica, I've been lent a bicycle for four weeks to cycle to work. They emphasise the health, financial, and environmental benefits, which are real, and I suspect Logica are also looking at their real shortage of car parking spaces. . . . .

So I can try it for four weeks, and if I like it, I can buy the bike off them at a discount. And unless I hear in the next 4 weeks that I'm not going to be working in Leatherhead any more (which can always happen) I'll probably buy it.

Of course, when I say "to work", I don't mean from Hampshire, I mean from Karen's, which takes about 50 minutes (maybe less when I get better at it) and that's not much different from what it takes to drive. So I've got all the gear.... helmet, tyre levers, scary lycra shorts....

Queueing

I was with Karen at Wimbledon AFC the other day. They were celebrating a promotion at the end of the season, and the bar was hugely busy -- like 30 mins to get served.

And, to my amazement, they formed a queue to get served. I mean, I know we Brits believe in queueing, but at the bar it's just not done. I don't think I've ever seen a queue at a bar before.

Traditionally the bar staff should know, and there's a lot of "no, you were first" and this kind of thing, but no straight line of people at ninety degrees to the bar. It was necessary though, and I guess the huge positive atmosphere and bonding in the room made it work. Certain disreputable types just joined the bar at the front of the queue, of course. . . .

Two interacting factors

Diet and exercise. . . .

One thing that I find fascinating is that some advisors say "it's all about diet" and other say "it's all about exercise". I was thinking about this, about the way factors interact. (A bit like "nature and nurture", i.e. genes and environment). Usually it's context-dependent.

What brought this on was an article on a weightlifting/bodybuilding site that said "if you're not losing fat as you want to, or if you're not gaining muscle as you want to, it's almost certainly your diet".

Now this is addressed to a community where (presumably) almost everyone exercises. If you're on a site like that, you do some weight training. Most of the people he's addressing are obsessed with exercise. So in that context, that advice is valid. If it's not working, it's probably the diet. But if you address the same question for a group of weight watchers who all control their calories and obsessively eat the right things, then the correct advice is "if you're not getting the results you want, it's probably about exercise".

The two factors interact, and whichever one has more variability in the particular context, is probably the one to work on.

Nature and nurture: people often try to say, "this characteristic (e.g. height, or criminality, or cancer, or whatever) is xx% genes and yy% environmental. But usually, the genes and the environment interact, so it's like having two switches for a landing light: it's not that each one controls the light 50%, or one controls it 40% and the other 60% -- they both control it 100%. Whichever switch you play with, you can turn the light on and off, whatever the setting of the other switch. With genes and environment, it's more often like two dimmer switches, where either can separately produce the full range of brightnesses. So the xx% / yy% thing doesn't mean anything. It's entirely context dependent, just like the diet / exercise thing.

In a setting where the environment is very uniform and there is a lot of genetic diversity, any scientist who does experiments will find that most variation is caused by genes. If there's less genetic diversity and wide environmental diversity, then most variation is caused by environment.

For example, the classic study on intelligence: look at identical twins separated at birth and raised in different families (how those people must get tired of being studied, there are so few of them and they are so useful). See how the correlation between their intelligence compares to that in the population at large, and between twins not separated.
If you do this in a country where everyone gets reasonably well fed, and reasonably well educated, and so on, a lot of the intelligence will be down to genes. If you did it in a country with some very good areas and some areas of dire poverty with starvation, no schooling, no TV etc, and the separate twins sometimes crossed between those, then the percentage due to environment is suddenly going to look higher.

My advice then: if you're not getting the results you want from your diet / exercise regime, it's probably whichever factor you're not really focussed on.

More about "growing up"

Someone said to me that the piece about "growing up" was a bit prescriptive -- "this is how you ought to behave" -- and I guess that's fair. It does represent the author's opinion, and so what they're really saying is, "this is what I like in a person". I posted it because I share that author's tastes.

It's a subtle point, though. I felt that what the author was saying was, for example, not just "everyone should always be on time", to which one might respond, "are not other things sometimes more important?". What they were pointing to, specifically with the heading about "now you're over 25", is the syndrome where some people exhibit helplessness or thoughtlessness: no money, always late, inconveniencing other people, "crowd surfing" (i.e. constantly relying on friends for rescues), as a way of affirming eternal childhood or rebelling against authority. There are good things to be retained from childhood, but those aren't them. And there are effective ways of confronting authority, but those aren't them. You can't bring down the government by not cleaning your teeth.

It's not so much the specific examples of behaviour mentioned, though I liked those. It's the willingness to admit that what you do always and inevitably affects other people, and so you are not free to act as you choose. You have to accept that responsibility. And that's "growing up". And to me, yes, I believe that is a truth and not just an opinion.

More plumbing

Oh, by the way, while I'm ranting about plumbing (see 18th April)....

A few years ago a European friend chided me about UK plumbing. He said that "over there" all the taps are mixer taps, so you can have whatever temperature of water you want. Why do we Brits persist in having "hot taps" and "cold taps" ?

Well, excu-use me. Mixer taps seem to be becoming more common over here. And I very rarely seem to see anyone operate "both halves" of a mixer tap at the same time to get an intermediate- temperature stream.

Perhaps that's because it doesn't work. For sanitary reasons, the water has to be kept separate... so what you usually get if you turn both halves on is two adjacent streams, one of cold water, and one of scalding water. I've just returned from trying to wash my hands under such a mixer tap, and I could feel both the cold water and the scalding water. Not at all pleasant.

The other drawback is, of course, that it increases the cross-heating effect between the pipes, so when you first turn on the cold tap, it comes out warm, if you've been using hot water recently, so you have to waste more water running it through to cold if you want a drink.

What I don't understand is why people want more than two choices of temperature anyway. I want two temperatures: cold, for making drinks, rinsing things, watering plants, etc; and "as hot as I can bear on my skin", for bathing, showering, washing up, washing my hands, and so on. I want two separate taps, one for each of these.

What's the point of having my hot water hotter than I can bear to put my hands in? It puts the hot water system under more stress, costs more in wasted energy; if there are children in the house, it's positively dangerous; and it is of course un-green... what exactly would it be for anyway?

If I have my hot water at hand temperature, it's easy to run a bath or wash my hands. A separate hot tap and a cold tap. Those are all I need. No mixer tap. I thank you.

Time To Grow Up

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular ... it's just a piece of writing I found on the web (on a blog called "Tomato Nation" here) and liked. It's one of those "I wish I'd said that" pieces. Here is a slightly shortened version....

Playtime's over.

If you have reached the age of 25, I have a bit of bad news for you: it is time, if you have not already done so, for you to emerge from your cocoon of post-adolescent self-absorption and join the rest of us in the world. Certain actions, attitudes, and behaviours will no longer do. Continuing to insist that good manners, thoughtfulness and grooming oppress you in some way is inappropriate and irritating. Grow up.

I do not mean that you must read up on mortgage rates or desist from substituting "pants" for crucial words of movie titles. Silliness is not only still permitted but actively encouraged. You must, however, stop viewing carelessness, tardiness, and helplessness as either charming or somehow beyond your control. A grace period for the development of basic consideration and self-sufficiency is assumed, but the grace period is over, and starring in a film in your head in which you walk the earth alone is no longer a valid lifestyle choice.

1. Remember to write thank-you notes. An email is not sufficient thanks for a physical gift. Purchase stationery and stamps and express your gratitude in writing. Failure to do so implies that you don't care.

2. Do not invite yourself to stay with friends. Presumably you have a job, and the means to procure yourself a hotel. If not, stay home. Mentioning that you plan a visit to another city may lead to an invitation to stay with a friend or family member, which you may of course accept; assuming that "it's cool if you crash" is not.

3. Do not expect friends to help you move house. Your friends have jobs to go to, and you have accumulated a lot of heavy books by this point in your life. Hire a mover. If you cannot afford a mover, sell your books or put them in storage -- or don't move.

4. Develop a physical awareness of your surroundings. As children, we live in our own heads, bumping into things and emitting random squawks because we don't know how to talk yet. Adults must sense others and get out of their way. Walk single file. Don't blather loudly in public spaces. Give up your seat and hold doors for those with disabilities or who are struggling with small children. Take your headphones off while interacting with clerks and passersby. Do not walk along and then stop suddenly.

5. Be on time. The occasional public-transit snafu is forgivable, but consistent lateness is self-centred. If we didn't care when you showed up, we'd have said "any old time". Do not ditz that you "lost track of time" as though time somehow slipped its leash and ran into traffic. It shows a basic lack of respect for others; flakiness is not cute anymore.

6. Have enough money. I do not mean "give up your scholarly dreams and join the world of corporate finance in order to keep up with the Joneses." I mean that you should not become that girl or boy who is always a few dollars short, can only cover exactly his or her meal but no tip, or "forgot" to go to the ATM.

7. Know how to calculate the tip. You did not have to major in math to know how this works. You are not dumb, but your "maths-is-so-hard" flailing is agonizing and has outstayed its welcome.

8. Do not share the crazy dream you had last night with anyone but your mental wellness professional. Nobody cares.

9. Learn to walk in heels. Gentlemen, you are at your leisure. Ladies: If you wear heels, know how to operate them. Clomping along and placing your foot down flat with each step gives the appearance of a ten-year-old playing dress-up.

10. Have at least one good dress-up outfit. A dress code, or suggested attire on an invitation, is not an instrument of The Man. You don't have to like it, but if the invitation requests it, put it on.

11. Do as invitations ask you. Don't bring a guest when no such courtesy is extended. Don't ignore an RSVP; it means "please respond," and you should.

12. Know how. Know how to drive. Know how to read a map. Know how to get around. Know how to change a tire, or whom to call if you can't manage it, or how to get to a phone if you don't have a cell phone. We will happily bail you out, until it becomes apparent that it's what you always need. There are no grounds for purposeful helplessness.

13. Don't use your friends. If the only reason you continue to associate with a person is to borrow his or her car, might I remind you that you have now turned 25 and may rent your own.

14. Have something to talk about besides college or your job. College is over. Participate in the world. Working is not living. Be interested so that you can be interesting.

15. Give and receive favours graciously. If you cannot do it, say so.

16. Drinking until you throw up is no longer a point of pride. It happens to the best of us, but be properly ashamed the next day; work on your tolerance, or eat something first, but amateur hour ended several years hence.

17. Have a real trash receptacle, real hankies or tissues, and, if you smoke, a real ashtray. No loose bags on the floor; no using a roll of toilet paper; no plates or empty soda cans. You are not a fierce warrior of the Fratty Bubelatty tribe.

18. Universal quiet hours apply to you. Bass practice should conclude, not start, at ten PM. Understand also that just because nobody has complained directly to you does not mean that a complaint is not justified, or pending. Further, get your speakers off the floor. Yes, a rug is still "the floor."

19. Take care of yourself. If you are sick, visit a doctor. If you are sad talk to a friend. If you are unhappy in love, break up. If you are fed up with how you look, buy a new shirt or stop eating cheese. Bored? Read a magazine. Mad at someone? Say so -- to them. If you have a problem, try to fix it. Many problems are knotty and need a lot of talking through, or time to resolve, but after a few months of all complaining and no fixing, those around you will begin to wonder if you don't enjoy the problems for the attention they bring you. Venting is fine; inertia coupled with pouting is not. Change is hard; that's too bad.

20. Rudeness is not a signifier of your importance. We all have bad days; yours is not weightier than anyone else's, and does not excuse rudeness. Be civil or be elsewhere.

I winced at the "bass practice" remark.

As I say, it's not aimed at you -- if I'm aiming this at anyone, it's at myself.

I'd only add, in my own words: You may have been told by authority figures when you were a child, to brush your teeth, wear clean clothes, eat fruit, be on time, act sensible, and so on. It does not follow that, now you are an adult, you can adequately fight opression in the world, simply by not brushing your teeth, living on junk food, and turning up late to things. This will not strike a blow for human freedom. If you find yourself always doing such things, ask yourself whether it's an unconscious remnant of rebellion that isn't actually working any more.

Planning

I spent about an hour yesterday planning the coming week.

It's not that there's anything so complicated or difficult happening, it's just that there are lots of options, and I want to minimise the amount of to-and-fro-ing. In the end, being me, I used a spreadsheet... Karen asked me if there would be a market for a piece of software to do this kind of planning -- I'm sure she wouldn't be taking the Mickey. I suspect maybe ILOG make something that could be used to programme it, I'm not sure. But I wonder whether other people have these kinds of tasks and approach them like this?

It's not that big a deal, and there are lots of solutions that WOULD work, so I could just do something randomly ... but it's annoying to suddenly realise there would have been a much easier way, or to get somewhere and not have the right stuff with me!

• On Thursday, I have to attend a meeting in central London in the afternoon. I could go to London by train in the morning and work in our office there; or drive to our office in Leatherhead, and get the train in from there for the meeting. After the meeting, I'll be going back to New Malden for the evening. Depending how I got to the meeting, I either will or will not have the car with me in New Malden.
  

• On one of Friday Monday or Tuesday, I'll need to work from home, as I need to get a blood test done, and also have a repair man round to look at the washing machine. Both of these things are (slightly) the sooner the better, but that's not critical.

• On Friday, I'll be going to a social in the evening in central London. I won't be able to drive after it. I could get the train home afterwards to Winchester, or to New Malden.
  

• On Saturday I need to be at home during the day to do housework and shopping, but attending a dinner in the evening in central London (I know, busy life) and as before, need to get there by train, either directly from Winchester, or from New Malden after driving there, and go back to either place afterwards, but it makes more sense to end up in NM because....
  

• Sunday I want to spend in New Malden. It'd be good if the car was there too, but not essential. I could do all the above travelling by train.
  

• On Monday evening, I have a gym induction session booked in New Malden -- but I can always reschedule it, so that's not important.
  

• On Tuesday, I have choir after work in Winchester, so unless that's the day I'm working from home, I need to have the car at work with me in Leatherhead to get back in time. On other days, I can travel by train between work and Winchester, or work and New Malden. Generally I prefer to minimise the driving, where convenient. However that conflicts with the next point....
  

• I prefer not to have to take "luggage" with me to the business meeting on Thursday or the dinner on Saturday. For the social on Friday, it's not such an issue, as it's pretty casual, and a holdall there would be fine. "Luggage" also includes my laptop, which I need to have with me at work, and when working at home. For example, if I stopped on Thursday night in New Malden, after going to my business meeting by train, I'd be arriving at the client's for a meeting carrying a bag for my clothes for the "social" and my laptop rucksack, neither of which I really want with me.
  

• Luggage also sometimes has to include running kit, as there is an exercise schedule to be observed. I can run wherever I am, and I now have running shoes and towels stashed everywhere except our central London office, but I need to make sure I have shorts and running shirts with me on the right days.

• Really, the optimal plan would take account of the weather forecast, as it's not ideal to walk to/from the station in NM, Leatherhead, or Winchester, in pouring rain, with luggage. However, NO, I did not factor the weather forecast into the spreadsheet.
  

It's a bit like a "fox and geese" puzzle... Do other people worry about stuff like this, or is it just me? Anyway, I found a solution that appears to work. If you never see me again, you'll know there was a bug in the spreadsheet...

A small competition

A few days ago, I had a contretemps with the shower here at work. I'd got wet and covered in lather, and it then decided to turn itself off, permanently. Leaving me like that.

The usual techy remedy of turning it off and on again had no effect. It was displaying a sign labelled "user protect" -- it was protecting me from getting too clean. I turned it off and waited quite a long time ... still no luck.

I had to wrap myself as best I could and make my way to another shower on another floor of the office building. Fortunately, that one was unoccupied. . . .

Anyway, the user interface of this shower unit is a valuable object lesson in design. It has the following:

1. four buttons, labelled start/stop, high, medium, and low
2. a large control knob with a red/blue scale round the outside
3. coloured lights unlabelled around the left of the outside of the control knob scale
   
4. four other little lights labelled "user protect", "inspect handset", "low flow", and "phased shutdown".
   

There are no other instructions.

And by the way, all the labels on this thing are in tiny letters, ignoring the fact that people often take off their glasses when in the shower.

I have some questions for you to guess at. I genuinely did not know the answers to these, and really wanted to.

1. What do the high/medium/low buttons and the control knob do? (The answer "control the temperature" is not sufficient -- they both affect the temperature -- how do they interact with each other to control the temperature, and why do I need TWO DIFFERENT interacting temperature controls?)
2. What am I supposed to do if "low flow" comes on? (I have never seen this happen)
   
3. If I operate the controls "incorrectly", "user protect" mode comes on, and the shower refuses to function at all. (This is what happened to me). How do I reset it? If it takes a certain time to reset itself, how long? And is the clock on that time only "ticking" while the power is still on? Or is it only ticking while the power is off? Or doesn't it matter? HOW DO I GET IT TO COME BACK ON YOU B***TARDS?
   
4. What do the little lights around the outside of the control knob scale tell me? Why do they never seem to come on? Why are they there? Decoration? No, they all flashed just before "user protect" happened....
   

A small prize to anyone who can correctly answer questions 1 and 4.

I subsequently found the answer to question 3 on the web: press and hold in the on/off button, and press and hold in the "low" button at the same time, this will reset it. Obvious really, no need for any instructions on the unit.

Matt Metzgar

I mentioned once before that Matt Metzgar's blog (here) is one of my favourites. I don't agree with everything he says, but I like his style, and there are lots of good research-based comments on nutrition and exercise. Whenever I go there, there are lots of articles I'd basically like to copy and post here (i.e. "steal them").

I hadn't visited for a couple of months. Recently he posted a couple of good articles about carbs: one pointing to a research paper on glycemic load, which (in the abstract) went so far as to say that a high-carb diet with high glycemic load is a fundamental cause of most "modern" diseases. (High glycemic load means things that give you a rapid blood-sugar hit, like sugar, but also like bread and potatoes. As opposed to low glycemic load carbs like beans, lentils, porridge, that funny black bread, and most vegetables other than potatoes.)

The other posting suggested that people eat high-GL carbs as a way of self-medicating their mood -- basically carbs raise serotonin, so hitting the sugar makes people feel better, just like an antidepressant tablet.

So: the million dollar question: what other ways of raising serotonin are known to work?
Answer: get enough sex, get enough sleep, get enough sunshine (go out in it during the day), get your omega three fatty acids (from fish oil or flaxseed oil), and physical exercise (especially dance, Matt says).

Sounds good to me....

FLM 08

For those not in the know, FLM is the Flora London Marathon.

I spent the day there today as a supporter, on the Runners World support stand.

It started out at 6am, getting a coach up to that London, laden down with bananas, oranges, gels, poweraid drinks, and especially jelly babies. Then a short walk and a train ride to Mudchute -- which is not as unattractive as it sounds. We set up our stall there.


You can see the blue sky, and the dark clouds gathering . . . .

Supporters gradually arrived and socialised, watching the wheelchair racers and the elite runners zoom past at incredible speeds.


London Pride was on sale....



Runners and supporters are encouraged to wear green ribbons to aid recognition.
Sweetest thing and KKD below, on the stand next to mine.



Then, as the normal mortal runners began to arrive, the weather worsened, turning to drizzle, heavy rain, and even hail. During this, we had to concentrate on spotting "our" runners, the ones we were supporting, and offering them cheers, hugs, and carbohydrates. It is in fact very hard at the best of times to spot a runner in the stream of tens of thousands, and pelting rain only makes it harder.

Apparently I failed to notice this chap run past, even though HE WAS ONE OF MINE!


I don't know how I missed him, but I must have looked away for a second, to get something out my bag or look at my list of runners, and he either didn't notice the stand, or chose not to break his stride.

I have few photos of this stage, as I spent most of my time in the road, handing out bananas and bags of jelly babies to soaked runners.



In BBH's case, the carbs come in the form of a can of Strongbow. Notice also the cursed empty plastic bottles. I assume they will all be carefully gathered up and recycled.

Then we saw Mick and Phil, a celebrated pair whose attendance had been in debate until the very last moment. I've run with them in a few races....



Afterwards, of course, we went to the pub. Which was ludicrously packed, including lots of runners whose limbs were gradually stiffening up.


This lady (on the left) used to be called "plodding hippo", but is now much slimmer and faster .... and is still called "plodding hippo" because names stick....


Cookie FatFace and Sezz above.
Scotty Mava and Gobi below.


Gobi spotted me about to snap... Womble also seems to be in all three photos....