Burial Rites

As you know, when one of the People dies, their body is taken to the burial mound and left there with a few reminders of who they were and what they did for the People while they walked the earth.

The birds and worms and beetles take the body, fragment by fragment, and return it to the the earth. As time goes by the mound becomes covers with soil and plants and eventually disappears into the earth. The earth is enriched and produces grass and flowers and fruit to feed the creatures of the earth.

The spirit goes to the sky to join the other spirits and are moved by the wind and the sun and the weather for ever, as long as the sky will last which is forever.

The spirits care for us and can help us. All you have to do is frame a question in your mind and open your mind to accept the answer the spirits provide. This is harder than it sounds. It helps if you can spend some time by a burial mound and contemplate the view. Examine the sky and the earth and the weather and the wind. These are eternal and will help calm your mind and help frame the question and prepare your mind for the answer.

Some questions are trivial and can be answered by the people around you. “Should I plant beans or grain?”. “Is it time to harvest or time to hunt?”. These are trivial and mundane questions and you do not need to bother the spirits with these questions.

I have asked the spirits questions like “Why is my spirit troubled and why am I not happy?”. The answer I received was in the form of another question. “What do you need make to make you happy? Do you need riches? Do you need power over others?”

“I have sought wealth and riches and power over others.” I said. “These things did not bring me happiness because they were not really things I wanted, but only things I thought I wanted because I saw others who had them. I have seen others obtain these things and for some they bring happiness but they brought me only worry and troubles because there is always someone with more power and more riches. Having these things brings only jealousy and envy and the lust for more.”

“I would be happier with myself if I knew that I was loved and respected, and that those whom I loved and respected knew that I loved and respected them. If I knew that then I would know that I had lived a life which had enriched others as well as myself.”

The spirits replied “You must contemplate the actions of your life each day and the acts of others which affect you. Remember to act towards others only with love and respect and note when others act with love and respect towards you. When the time comes to judge your life you should consider if you have treated everyone and everything with love and respect. Not just people, for the earth herself provides for us and she must be treated with respect as well as the living things that move upon her. The regret you feel towards those things or people you have not loved or respected is a heavy weight to take with you through this life and into the world beyond.”

I listened to these words and thought deeply about them. The counsel of the spirits seems wise. By loving and respecting the earth and all those things and people who live upon her, I can ease the burden and enrich the life of those I meet.This is a gift I can give over and over again which also enriches me each time it is given. At the end of each occasion, each day and at the end of my days I will be content to know that my time here has been spent well and the the world has been made richer by my passing through her.

This is my conversation with the spirits. Your conversation may be different but I pass it on to you because the words seem wise and full of meaning to me. Take what you like from my words and use then if you find them helpful.

My New Jacket, Part Two

It's many moons ago that I wrote about my new jacket. To recap, it was a high-vis jacket with orange and yellow fluorescent panels, reflective patches and lots of pockets. I'd bought it vis-a-vis my new job in the warehousing and manual materials handling sector.

 (About the "vis-a-vis", I apologise for any groans but I find the pun irresistible)

 That blog entry was about the "Sod's Law" condition. About having invested in my new yet unappealing career it seemed that my white-collar career was about to resume. Well it didn't. I wore the jacket for the jobs at Indesit and Kuhne & Nagel. Both of those jobs ended when it became apparent that my age and general fitness did not allow me work at the pace set by the Polish workers aged twenty-something alongside whom I was employed.

I went from there to a local transport company where I laboured in my jacket for three months or so, delivering and collecting loads in one of their seven and a half ton lorries. I didn't mind the hours, which started early and went on long into the day. But I didn't like the lorry and I didn't like the firm. Bluntly, I have never felt so abused and exploited and, to be honest, so put at risk. I walked out after some egregiously inconsiderate and exploitative behaviour on their part.

Most recently I have started work as an agency driver, collecting and delivering cars on behalf of the demonstrator fleets of Ford, Volvo, Honda and Peugeot. You will have seen those adverts where they say "Book a test drive now!". Well I'm one of the guys who delivers the demonstrator car to your door and picks it up again a few days later.

A typical day involves a pre-dawn start at the depot, where hundreds of cars are lined up on the roads and runways of a retired cold war military air base. I collect the keys, add some fuel and set off in a pretty new Ford, Volvo, Honda or Peugeot. Once I've got to your door I give you the keys and some paper work and leave you to enjoy the test drive.

Usually, the second part of the day requires me to make my way elsewhere to pick up another car at the end of its test drive and return it to the depot where it is serviced, valeted and parked to await its next booking. The trip between the delivery and the collection can sometimes be accomplished by enlisting the help of another driver who might be working in the area. More usually I make the trip using public transport while wearing my fluorescent orange and red, reflective jacket. Which is where this story begins.

Another rail or bus passenger sees me standing at a bus stop or railway platform clutching some official looking documents, smartly dressed in a white collar and tie and high-vis jacket. In the mind of this other passenger I represent authority and knowledge and a source of help or counsel to the bewildered traveller. I am approached and asked a question about the schedule or routing of the public transport service. Usually the required scrap of knowledge is not available to me either unless I am using the same service in which case I can meet this request with courtesy and confidence. Usually the request is met with a smile and a polite "I'm afraid I have no idea." The latter response evokes confusion and suspicion. I watch the bewildered traveller's eyes as they look me up and down for a second time. In this second appraisal they note the lack of an ID tag, or a logo or emblem embroidered on my tie. Then a look of comprehension dawns. "I'm sorry, you don't actually work here do you?" is uttered. "Correct!" I respond and we're both happy to break off this brief acquaintance while the bewildered traveller seeks aid or information from elsewhere.

Thus my new jacket confers not just warmth and protection from the elements, and not just protection from inattentive drivers in the darkness of a pre-dawn car park. It also confers an air of authority and knowledge which draws these attentions to me like a white coat would when worn in a hospital corridor. In my usual attire of a business suit or jeans and rugby shirt many people see an fat, balding middle-aged bloke. Thus judged, I become socially invisible, people ignore me or look right through me. But add the fluoro jacket and I become socially visible, a friend if not a confidant. Someone with whom eye contact and a conversation is not to be avoided but sought out instead.

One young lady, an attractive young lady too, approached me on the platform of Doncaster station only yesterday. "How can I get to Oxford?" she asked. What I should have said was "Work hard and get really good grades in your GCSE A levels". What I actually said was "Go and ask that man over there, the one with the whistle and the purple tie." I know what to say the next I am asked.

Vintage Tuning Dials

Old fashioned wireless receivers were based on thermionic valve technology, had heavy iron-cored transformers and big illuminated tuning dials calibrated for long wave, medium wave and short wave reception. Some, very old models were battery powered and the batteries had to be removed to the nearby garage for recharging. I am old enough, just, to remember seeing these sets around the place but I don't think I've ever laid my hand on a battery-powered model. They usually had mahogany veneer cases and some loose-woven material hiding a large speaker. Now, the tuning dial was a delight. As well as being calibrated in kilocycles per second or wavelength in metres there was the name of the station which was transmitting at that frequency. What exotic names there were. One would expect to see the BBC Light program and Third program but further along the tuning scale you would find Luxembourg, Brussels, Bucharest and Hilversum. These exotic places weren't visited and whiffed of foreign sights and sounds and dubious plumbing and hygiene, Reading on we had Ankara! What is Ankara, who lives there? What happens each day in Ankara. If, like me, you had a copy of Arthur Mee's Childrens' Encyclopedia to hand you could find Ankara in the world Atlas section and maybe a couple of sepia tone photographic plates featuring men in conical headgear and a picture of a mosque. Alas these days are no more. Those old valve sets are a hazard to health. The last time I plugged one in all the trips on my house consumer unit went bang so it went to the dump with the next carload of refuse. I'm sure there are still stations transmitting on short wave and using amplitude modulation and I'm equally sure their number is declining rapidly. If I want to know where Ankara is or what happens there I have the internet to inform me, probably some webcams showing the mosque or dockside or some young turkish model's boudoir if I am that curious about the place. Pictures of vintage tuning dials: http://www.indianaradios.com/Antique%20Radio%20Tuning%20Dials%20Gallery.htm Webcams in Istanbul: http://www.ibb.gov.tr/en-US/Organization/MunicipalHistory/Pages/Live_City_View_in_Istanbul.aspx Turkish Models: http://www.googleitforyourself.com

Iranian Gravy Volcano

Tonekabon is a city in Iran, on the southern shore of the Caspian sea. Like many cities in that part of the world it has seen its share of history as armies and empires ebb and flow. It's about to become world famous for a very peculiar reason.

The Caspian sea is bordered by some globally significant geology. Into the sea debauch several major Asian rivers which have built up layers of mud and organic debris and created plentiful deposits of oil and natural gas. The underlying plate tectonics generate geothermal hot spots which give rise to geysers and mud volcanoes. When a crack in the ground appeared in Tonekabon appeared and vented steam no-one was particularly surprised and the only people who were much concerned were those whose property was directly threatened by the fumes.

However, the mystery deepened when it was noted that the liquid which bubbled to the surface did not smell of oil or mud... but of gravy.

Geologists were called to investigate. Some local chefs and restaurant owners also arrived to investigate. Sure enough, the substance which arrived boiling hot from this geologic anomaly was a rich beefy stock and proved to be edible, nourishing and rather tasty. The theorists have concluded that at some time in the last hundred thousand years or so a number of giant mammals, possibly mammoths, met their end nearby and their carcasses became quickly entombed in the layers of ice which once covered the region. Their remains might have remained, undisturbed and unnoticed until the end of time except for some recent geological disturbance which created cracks and fissures through their mesolithic boneyard permitting steam and hot water to percolate through the deposit and distilled a tasty stock from the bones and tissues of these long-dead beasts.

Several restaurants and bistros in Tonekabon have sprung up around the natural soup geyser to market the output as a guaranteed natural and additive free. The basic beefy broth flavour carries an earthy note which, while novel, is not unattractive.

Biographical Note

November 1987. I joined Jointine Products in Lincoln, an operating unit of Wiggins Teape Carbonless Papers Division. This was an enterprise with a long history of innovation and development and investment and take-overs and forced redundancies, a typical midlands manufacturing concern. I had been appointed as Commercial Systems Manager with the brief to implement a DEC-Based manufacturing system to replace the ad-hoc applications developed on stand-alone PCs scattered through the organisation. I started off by gathering and documenting the requirements so we could embark on a supplier/system selection exercise.

Jointine's MRP requirements were almost unfathomable. A mix of exotic chemicals were prepared in a mix plant, then applied to plain paper in coating/impregnating machines. Sometimes the coating was a two-stage process. The coated/impregnated paper was then trimmed to size and sold as gasket paper, battery lining paper and thermally-sensitive paper for fax machines.

Unfathomable? Yes. I never found out what drove the production planning process. Did we produce materials for stock or to order? The answer was "Yes and No, it depends". Quite often it depended on what the night shift had decided to do which was often at odds with what the production planners had set down for them. The quantities going
into a mix were highly variable since some of the ingredients were organic, natural products and had to be titrated to get the right balance for the product. The production plan for the coating machines had to be structured for wider papers to be coated first, then narrower. Doing it the other way around would contaminate the back of the paper with the residue from the previous run. Finally the quality control was hit and miss since a product which failed one set of criteria could be relabelled and sold as a different product.

My own management refused to acknowledge these complexities which was a symptom of the contempt they had for the people who worked for them. After two years maniacal effort we had a product selected, a computer installed and software loaded. Then my immediate boss was sacked, then I was asked to leave. I had been contaminated by my association with him.

I learned some new terms at this time, workplace harassment, stress-related disorders and constructive dismissal. I still have nightmares about that place. After this experience I moved into the support and maintenance of financial applications, including retail banking and branch systems. I'd had enough on manufacturing industry.

Jointine Products was closed down and production switched to the Carbonless Papers hub in Cardiff. Subsequently it too shut down. Some of the former Jointine employees bid for the obsolete equipment and now are back in business making gasket papers. As far as I know, they never implemented a computer-based MRP/ERP system.

Cat's Eyes

It was late and it was dark and I had the road to myself. As I was driving along the lights bored a tunnel through the darkness illuminating the stripes of white paint and cat's-eyes in the road. I could see four or five of these little reflectors buried along the centre line of the road. As each flashed past another lit up in the distance.

Five, I could see five at once except that sometimes the fifth was a little late in flashing into visibilty. Sometimes it was early, and I could see six at once. I started paying a little more attention now, looking forward to the occasions when I could see the sixth.

It helped relieve the tedium of that late night drive a little. I'd had a long and not very interesting day, starting early and finishing late. It would be midnight before I got home and I'd done the drive many, many times before. Apart from the random refrigerator rolling into the road [1] I was expecting no surprises that evening but the spacing of the cat's eyes was something I had never considered before.

I started keeping an eye out for the sixth cat's eye flashing into sight. And noticed there was a sort of rhythm to their appearance. Questions started to occur to me. What is the spacing between cat's eye reflectors? Does this spacing vary if the cat's eyes are installed on motorways, dual carriageways, other A roads or urban areas? How is the spacing measured when these are installed? Does the maintenance crew pace out the distance or use a chain or a tape measure? Once they are installed is the spacing checked and what is the tolerance on the spacing? For instance, if the cat's eye is two inches out would this be acceptable? Two feet? Missing altogether? Like any other motorist I had got used to seeing cat's eyes on roads and like any other motorist I had never spent much time thinking about them but these questions lodged in my mind.

The rest of the drive passed in the same way as any other tedious and tiring late night drive does. I arrived at my home, parked the car, entered my house, undressed and went to bed. If I dreamt of cat's eyes while I slept I do not remember.

The next day I awoke with the questions of the night before on my mind. I had a day off work so after my usual daily morning routine I sat down at my computer and drafted a polite enquiry to the highways department of my local council. Even if they didn't reply then just framing the questions in words and sending them to someone else to deal with might stop them from going round in my head for days. It was a tactic I'd used before when random questions raised themselves, if you cant find an answer then find someone else to find an answer for you. Although it reveals a slightly obsessive side to my personality, it also makes me a wizard to have on pub quiz teams.

...oooOooo...

Days came and went until the day I got my reply from the highways department. Apparently it's a bit complicated but essentially the cat's eyes I was staring at on that night were placed 20.116 metres apart. I thought that was curious number until I checked, and it is 22 yards. A measurement of ancient derivation, one tenth of a furlong of which there are eight to a mile. Obviously the measurement goes back to pre-metric days. This means the beam of my headlights was picking up five cat's eyes with the fifth being one hundred and ten yards away. The exceptions, where I could see a sixth must have been where the beam picked up the cats eye one hundred and thirty two yards away unless that sixth cat's eye was less than one hundred and thirty two yards away. Once again my mind started spinning with the new question, was that sixth cat's eye less than one hundred and thirty two yards away or not? If not, why not. I could feel a prickle of obsessive compulsion creeping up on me. A plan started to form in my mind, a plan involving a fluorescent high-visibility jacket I happened to own, a tape measure and a clipboard.

On the Highways Agency website I had scoured to find a contact for my enquiries was a list of roadworks in the area. I made some phone calls and secured permission to visit one where a couple of miles of roadway was being scraped up and resurfaced. Officially I was being allowed onto the site in the company of one of the local authority surveyors as an exercise in dealing with the local residents. Apparently they had some sort of mandate to reach out into the local community on local affairs and were delighted with my interest.

Came the day I was there, jacketed and equipped with a blank clipboard to meet the surveyor. I explained my interest in cat's eye spacing and learned from him that the roads were indeed planned with a twenty two yard spacing between cat's eyes and that this was measured out with a measuring wheel. In the case of the works we were visiting that day the old cat's eyes were being dug out with pneumatic drills before the road surface was being scraped clean with a planing machine. Following the planing the cat's eyes were re-planted and bedded in with a bucket of hot asphalt before the fresh asphalt was laid down around them. Since the cat's eyes were being re-planted in the holes from which they had been dug out there was a chance that they could move a little from their original locations.

I was introduced to the site foreman who was happy for me to survey the cat's eye positioning on the road ahead of the works and behind the works, as long as I kept out of the way of his team. The local authority had a disclaimer for me to read and sign which absolved the local authority of all liability should I come to harm. Once this was done the local authority surveyor shook my hand and left me to it.

Having no measuring wheel I was using my own steel tape measure. This had a spikey metal tab on the end which was just the job for pegging into turf while measuring out a tennis court or cricket pitch or football pitch, I found it was useful for sliding into the fixing for the cat's eye and would come loose with a firm tug on the tape. This would save me walking backwards and forwards too often through the roadworks. I started at one end of the works and methodically worked forwards counting off cat's eyes and measuring the gaps between them. Most were at the official distance of 20.116 metres apart but occasionally one would be short by as much as two metres. I was pleased to find this met my expectations but I refrained myself from getting too excited about my results until all the numbers were in. It took several hours to complete the survey and I spent some of the time watching the road maintenance crew at work. Of course my presence set them on edge since the tape measure and clipboard spelt authority even though my lack of interest in the their work had been explained by the site foreman.

The day came to an end and I took my results home with me and sat in front of my computer to commence my analysis. The length of road which I had examined was slightly under two miles, I had expected to find a cat's eye every twenty-two yards or ten to a furlong or eighty to a mile or one hundred and sixty one in the survey. I had collected one hundred and fifty five measurements from which I estimated the the length of the roadworks was less then the two miles mentioned by the local authority surveyor. As the numbers entered the spreadsheet though, a different picture emerged. As I said. I had measured the spacing between the cat's eyes either side of the area being worked and paced out the gap where the road-laying team had been at work. As I added up the measurements this revealed that the length of the roadworks was slightly over two miles meaning the the cat's eyes were more spread out that they should be.
I decided to split my list in two, one for the stretch of road which had been renovated and another for the stretch of road waiting to be torn up and repaired. This would remove the uncertainty about the paced-out measurement of the road works themselves and also provide me with a 'before' and 'after' set of data so I could establish any change in cat's eye spacing which resulted from the road works themselves.

Once I had finished tabulating my data I attached it to a email and sent it off to the local authority surveyor as a sort of thank you for his cooperation.

My analysis of the variance in the gaps between the cat's eyes had started to show a pattern from that night of the tiring and tedious drive. From that I had built the premise that all roads are roughly similar since they employ the same techniques for their building an construction and if any pattern were discernible in one stretch of road then it might be discernible in an other. (Hence my random selection of a stretch of road nearby for my first analysis with hard data)

The hard data revealed a pattern. Sure enough some cat's eyes were closer together than intended and this number was larger than the number of cat's eyes that were further apart than intended. The second fact to emerge was that the renovation of the road, the uprooting and replanting of the cat's eyes did nothing to change this irregularity since the road maintenance crew tended to put the cat's eyes back where they had found them.

It was my intention to stop at this point. So far all it had cost me to arrive at these seemingly trivial truths was a couple of emails and a day spent wandering up and down road works. However my local authority surveyor friend had other ideas. A week later I received a letter inviting me to county hall and a meeting about my 'project'.

...oooOooo...

“It's not a project” I repeated. “It's just idle curiosity and my curiosity has been satisfied.”

The meeting was not happy with this and did not want to hear it. In the introductions I had learned that my local authority surveyor friend was intending to get his Fellowship to the Institute of Road Menders sorted out so he could get his promotion sorted out. (I'm sure this august institution has a much more formal name, but I can't be bothered to recall it and the acronym "FIRM" stuck in my mind). At the meeting was his line manager, his academic supervisor and two representatives from the human resources department. It seems my casual analysis had kicked over a can of worms and they wanted to engage me as some sort of research assistant to survey all the roads in the county. The local authority was in line for some European Community money for road improvements and my analysis had shown that the local authority's claims for compliance with international road building standards had been put in doubt by my research. Since I had shown that one of their claims to be unfounded in fact, relating to the spacing of cat's eyes, the the rest of their business case was tainted by association. That's politics for you.

“We're offering you a two-year fixed term contract to measure and report on cat's eye spacing for the whole county. That's ring fenced money and you'll be your own boss.”

I considered my flagging career in IT consultancy. The long tedious drives home in the dark and my fondness for wearing a high visibility jacket and hard hat.

“Done”. I said. “I'll start Monday”[2].

[1] This refers to the 'Schrodinger's Fridge' theory of hazard management. The theory blends aspects of quantum theory and the hazard management techniques taught to advanced motorists and motorcyclists. The genesis of this theory can be traced back to a group of motorcyclists chatting down the pub (See also http://www.ixion.org.uk)

[2] The above is a work of fiction. Thank you to all you lovely people who congratulated me on finding gainful employment but I'm afraid your congratulations are misplaced.

[3] Damn you, Frame.

New story: Untitled, Chapter 1. Draft 1

I heard the dead again today.

Like the last times, it started off just with them muttering to each other, then they seemed to be speaking more clearly to me. I hear the voices quite clearly but I couldn't tell you if it is the voice of an old man or a young woman or a child, it's just a voice. It speaks clearly, enunciating very deliberately but I can't tell what words its using. I've heard people speak in foreign languages before but it doesn't sound foreign. I cant remember or repeat the words or make sense of them when I hear them. After a while I stop trying to listen and it goes away. It doesn't fade out or get distant or any special effects. I stop thinking about it and after a while I notice it's gone.

I told the nurse and she must have told the doctor because that night they started giving me the little white pills again. The smaller the pill, the more powerful they are. The big pink capsules don't seem to do anything, no matter how many I take but after just one of the little white ones I fall fast asleep and don't wake up until the nurse wakes me up and I feel all sort of cotton woolly all morning.

I don't like the little white pills so when the voices start again I don't tell the nurse, I just pretend to read a magazine. There's a story in the magazine about a woman who killed her two children. I don't like the story so I don't read the words. I pretend to though, so they nurse will leave me alone. I'm really counting the 'a' letters in the article, then I count all the 'b' letters and so on. There are no 'z' letters in it. I remember a name I used to know “Etaoin Shrdlu”. I don't remember who he was or if he's alive or dead or a hero or a villain or fictional or real. This upsets me and I start to cry a little. I hide this from the nurse in case I have to take more of the little white pills again.

The nurse has yellow hair today, pulled back into a bun behind her head and fastened with those little brown wire clips. I think she has a name but I think of her as “Kirby”. I'm not sure where the name comes from but it keeps going around in my mind.

It's Kirby Grip! I remember the name for those brown hair clip things, that's why I used that name for the yellow-haired nurse. I look for her later, I want to tell her about my name and remembering about the Kirby Grip but I don't see her for the rest of the day.

Sometimes we have to do therapy. Someone in a white coat sits us all in a circle and asks questions. There are no right answers, it's not a quiz. We can all say what we want because the questions are supposed to make us think about stuff. Some of the shadow people just talk at random and don't seem to know when to stop. They just say the same stuff over and over again. Sometimes I try to speak. Today I tried to tell the story about the Kirby Grip and the nurse with the yellow hair but the shadows kept interrupting me

I call them shadows, but they're not like shadows, they're more like paper cutouts of people being blown about by the wind. They flap and bang and rattle in the wind and sometimes they get in the way when I want to see past them. I think they used to be people but in here there's only me and my thoughts and the nurse and the paper shadows.

I think I've always heard the dead speaking, even before I came here. When I lived in the white flat with the cars parked outside I used to turn the television right down and watch the pictures moving while listening to the voices. Sometimes the voices were quite stern and commanding and seemed to want to tell me to do stuff. But I never used to know what they wanted and that made me feel bad because I couldn't do what they wanted. Sometimes the voice was kind and soft and gentle and made me feel good. I like feeling good and I like doing things that make me feel good.

I liked the white flat. I could shut the door and nobody would bother me for days and days. I used to go out to the supermarket and buy stuff like breakfast cereal and milk and bananas and take it home and eat it. When they came to take me away from the white flat I was in bed and I was very thin because I hadn't been to the supermarket. I think I must have been more clever then because I can't remember how to go to the supermarket now. I don't need to go to the supermarket any more because the nurse brings me breakfast cereal and milk and bananas every day.

Today was different. I was looking for the nurse called Kirby, with the yellow hair but today the nurse has white hair with curls peeping out from under her cap. She didn't have clips in her hair. I realised straight away that the nurse is two different people, there are different nurses! This makes me think about the nurse a bit longer. The nurse is not like the paper shadows that rattle and bang and get in the way. The nurse is like a real person like me, but there must be many of them. I think of all the nurses going away to different white flats and going to the supermarket to buy their breakfast cereal and milk and bananas and taking them home.

The world is turning out to be a bit more complicated than I thought. As well as many nurses, there are many days and each one is a little different to the last. Today the nurse is different. I try to think about yesterday and the yellow haired nurse called Kirby. Thinking about yesterday is hard and makes me cry a little bit because I feel sad and sorry and I don't know why.

We did therapy again and I started talking about the yellow haired nurse and why I called her Kirby, because I couldn't remember her name. I don't think anyone heard me because the paper shadows were all shouting and hooting and laughing at each other. It made me think of monkeys in the zoo, except I don't know if I've ever been to a zoo or seen monkeys behaving like that. Perhaps I'm being unfair to monkeys but I'm pretty sure that the monkeys don't care. I start thinking that this is funny and try tell the nurse about it but the words all try to come out at once and I cannot speak about it. This makes me unhappy and I cry a little bit.

The dead are talking again. The voice is quiet and soft and reassuring and makes me feel happier. It doesn't seem to matter that I did not tell the nurse my story about the monkeys. It doesn't seem to matter that nobody wants to listen to me in therapy. It doesn't seem to matter that I cannot remember the way to the supermarket or what the supermarket looks like inside or what I have to do in the supermarket. Nothing really matters as long as I can listen to the soft and reassuring voice which makes me feel happy. I close my eyes and pretend to be dozing so I can listen to it.

Nice Roads

There are roads we call 'nice' because they are well-made with nice cambers and gradients and wide enough to negotiate safely in or on whatever vehicle we are riding or driving at the time.

Another sort of 'nice' road is one that takes us through striking or dramatic scenery or views, where the quality of the road building is less important than the setting.

Just now I thought of another sort of 'nice' road, one with happy associations or memories associated with it. One of these is a stretch of the A465 from Abergavenny to Hereford. I used to negotiate this stretch of road on the trip from my home in Bridgend to visit family in Hereford. When I got to this bit I knew that Hereford was almost in sight and I'd soon be meeting up with my grandmother, my uncle and aunt and my cousins. That warm feeling of anticipation comes back to me when I think of that stretch of road, and the dimly-remembered views of hills fields and the river running alongside the road for a distance. I imagine it in bright sunlight, and in colour.

Another similar warm feeling of anticipation is for the old main road between Huddersfield and Leeds. In my student years this route would take me to visit my girlfriend and I would be looking forward to the kissing and cuddling and trips to the pub. High points in my week as they are for most young men I'm sure.

These memories are not blighted by time. Hereford has changed. It is now a terrible trap for traffic. My grandmother, aunt and uncle are no longer with us. My cousins have all grown up and become parents and grandparents and to some degree have become strangers. I don't even know where some of them live now but the memories I laid down those decades ago are still recalled by bring up that view from the Abergavenny road.The road between Huddersfield and Leeds is still there, but harder to find since it is overlaid and surrounded by motorway and bypasses and the scenery has changed as the urban sprawl has engulfed the fields that used to separate the towns.

It is said you cannot ever go back and that is true. We experience not just a place in space, but an event in space and time. And those events are unique and have gone forever. Only our memory, that most unreliable of faculties, remains to comfort us. But as well as remembering the scenery, sounds and colours and images, we remember our feelings and emotions of the time and they are precious.

The End of Days

I have to inform you that we are at the end of days. There is a world-wide collapse in all standards, not just those of written speech. The institutions which built our civilization and upon which our culture and lifestyle are found have collapsed. Systems of education, government and commerce are failing and will collapse before our eyes. The world will enter a dark age decline in which the torch of civilisation will gutter fitfully and die. Our descendants and our kind will descend into primitive barbarity and eventually fade from this world, cursed and beaten by hunger, disease and hostility.

"I do not know what weapons will be used in the third world war but the fourth world war will be fought with sticks and stones"

A Cloud of Volcanic Ash

A cloud of volcanic ash? Please let me know the composition of the ash particles, their size and density of distribution at different altitudes. Then I can draw upon my knowledge of how the density and composition of these particles will affect the engines of my jet aircraft, ie how long they can sustain their flight without incurring damage. Then I can plan my route around or through the dust cloud to minimise risk of damage to the aircraft and its passengers.

What's that? You don't know the composition, particle size, density or distribution of the dust particles? Nor do you know how that will affect my aeroplanes flight characteristics? Well then, how do you know how dangerous it is or is not?

Oh, you've just closed the airspace, well in that case we'll all have to stay at home, thank you.

Welsh Dragons

I am considering my visit to Wales next weekend, and what I know of dragons.

There are very few dragons to be found in Wales any more. But they are there and waiting to be awakened. They're hidden in the hills or, in some cases, they are the hills. A few minutes perusing a contour map will show you where they are as it's quite easy to see once you know what you are looking for. The greatest of all wizards, Myrddin as we call him, rid the land of dragons with a song which sent them to deep sleep and hid them in the hills. This song, like so many of his songs, is not recorded or remembered.

Dragons can be woken from their slumber with another song.

The song is in a language older than Welsh and pre-dates the written word. It cannot be written down anyway, since it is different each time it is sung and varies according to who is singing it.

Sadly I never learned the song or how to sing it. But I know of it. It would be wonderful to see a dragon awake, shaking off the trees and soil and rocks that hide it and to marvel at its might and majesty.

If I knew the song I might be tempted to try it one day except for the frightful and dreadful warnings that come with the knowledge. You should not rouse a dragon unless you know how to control it and that requires a different song. A dragon cannot be controlled in the sense that a horse or dog can be trained to accept commands.

When summoning a dragon one makes certain requests and promises certain payment or reward in return. These promises had better be completely genuine and honest and the legends contain several examples of the fate of those who attempted to short change a dragon. They are tales full of fire and destruction and loss of life on a large scale. Dragons are vast and fierce and vengeful creatures that love destruction and fire and hate man and all his works.

Why? Well that's another longer story and it's too late to start it now so shut your eyes and try to sleep. Goodnight.

Caprica

Thw Wikipedia entry relates "Caprica is a television series set in the fictional Battlestar Galactica universe" which is the idea in a nutshell.

Having watched the first three episodes I will add that its the result of a head-on collision between "Terminator" and "Skins". By the end of episode three we have the a Frankensteinian plot of how the emotionally distraught scientist has captured the the cyber-persona of his dead daughter and transferred it into a nine-foot mechanical monstroid. The Battlestar Galactica story (for which this is a prequel) starts off with second Cylon War and the nuclear annihilation of millions on the planets of the Twelve Colonies across which the human race has spread. I suspect that things start turning out badly in episodes four to twenty-one.

So why did I mention Skins? I liked Skins for its use of unknown actors and plots which tackled "issues" unflinchingly. By "issues" I refer to matters which adults tend to skirt around or euphemise and teenagers and "Young adults" (I blanch at employing the term but, hey ok?) have to deal with on a daily basis and on their terms. Do I need to be more explicit? Ok. drunkenness, distribution and consumption of proscribed drugs, inadvisable sexual relationships (there's a lot of that) and in one of my favourite episodes, stealing a dead body.

(It's these things which children tend not to talk to their parents about so if you find a stiff tucked away at the back of the garage, ignore it for a couple of days before tackling your kids with questions about how it got there.)

Back to Caprica. The milieu in which the action is set suggests sixties America from the clothes, thirties America from the politics and America in the very near future for the technology. I noticed in tonight's episode a lot of the cars being driven were old Citroens. Presumably that was done to jar any feelings of familiarity building up in the target audience, to emphasis that this was not middle America but another planet and another time and another culture.

On Caprica there are the politics of discrimination as one political/criminal body represents immigrants from another human planet who remind me of the Sicilian and Italian immigrants as portrayed in the Godfather.

There are the politics of religion as the monotheists who are at odds with the majority polytheists and resort to suicide bombing to spread their beliefs. This allows us to view the work as an allegory for the conflict between islamic fundamentalism and the Judeo-Christian west. But that is only one element of a piece which at episode three is still setting up its story arcs and plots and introducing us to the characters.

Which is where I come back to Skins. In that I remarked to myself how beautiful and attractive the new and unknown actors were. These impressions have been repeated on me with actors enlisted for similar roles in Caprica. First among these is sweet-faced Alessandra Torresani who reminds me of sweet-faced Megan Prescott from Skins. Alessandr Torresani's character is blown up in a suicide bombing and her cyber-persona occupies the first of the Cylons, robot soldiers who are nine feet tall and made of metal. The director alternates between a view of the actress and a view of the robot, often during the same shot. This helps us identify the mood and feeling and responses of the character which the faceless and clumsy mechanoid cannot convey. This is, as far as I am aware, a new technique and avoids the heroic effort most monster-depicting actors have to employ to convey anything through layers of latex and paint. On reflection, this underlines what a good job was done by Boris Karloff in the first Frankenstein movie and the many who have had the temerity to fill his shoes in the movies that came after.

Alessandro Torresani is far from being new or unknown, her career in the media started at aged 9 and she turns up in an episode of Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I was going to watch that because it contains performances by Summer Glau who was a hero in the Firefly series and its movie spin-off Serenity. I was hooked on Firefly from the trailer and enjoyed the curtailed TV series. Oh, and according to Wikipedia Megan Prescott turned up in an episode of Doctors, but I'm sure I never watched that. My claim that these actors for Skins and Caprica are new and unknown stands, because they are new and unknown to me.

And now a last word on Caprica. I shall endeavour to follow the series through to the final episode. Of course I know how it ends but I expect to be ebtertained by some twists and surprises along the way.

Whay a motorcycle is better than a girlfriend

I wrote this years ago, but it reminds me now, in the dark days of February, that I have a friend in the garage waiting patiently and cheerfully for me to take it out and use it cruelly.

Ten reasons why a motorcycle is better than a girlfriend

1. Nobody cares what colour your motorcycle is - not even your parents.
2. You're allowed to have more than one motorcycle.
3. Your motorcycle will not mind if you ride someone else's motorcycle.
4. You can leave your motorcycle at home when you go out with your friends.
5. It doesn't matter how dirty or smelly your motorcycle gets, it's still fun to ride.
6. I doesn't matter how dirty or smelly you get, your motorcycle will still let you ride it.
7. Your motorcycle will not get upset if you want to ride a newer, faster, lighter motorcycle.
8. When you get fed up with it, you can sell your motorcycle and buy another.
9. You can ride your motorcycle every day of the month.
10. Your motorcycle will never, ever take you shopping for lingerie.
11. You can swap motorcycles with your friends now and then.
12. When bits of your motorcycle wear out you can buy new bits to replace them.
13. You can chain up your motorcycle to stop anyone else riding it.
14. Motorcycles whine only when something is really wrong.
15. Motorcycles need tax, insurance and MOT once a year. If you forget, you merely get fined.
16. If you wash and polish your motorcycle it will look a lot better.
17. Your motorcycle will not get upset if you fart while you are riding it.
18. You can leave your motorcycle in the pub car park while you are in the pub, and you can leave it there all evening if you want.

I had a dream in which I died

I had a dream in which I died. Well, I jumped off something high up and the end result was certain, I was going to be smashed like a bag of bones and offal. But in my dream I dropped more and more slowly and touched the ground very lightly and standing upright on my feet.

I couldn’t see much as I looked around. No scenery, just a thick brown mist or murk, like you might find at the bottom of a deep river. After a while, a patch of the murk grew brighter, then grew white and out of the murk appeared a glowing white figure.

“Are you an angel, come to take me to heaven?” I asked.
“I might be” he said “But you don’t believe in heaven and angels do you?”
“No.” I said. “But I seem to believe in you”.
“Have you come to take me to Hell” I asked. “After all, I was taught that suicide is a mortal sin and I have to suffer for all my sins. I do feel some guilt.”
“Don’t bother with all that nonsense” said the figure. “You are made the way you are and nothing can change that. You had no control over the times you were born into or the way you were brought up. Your parents brought you up the best they could and your teachers did what they could in the time they had. Whatever nature you had to begin with and whatever nurture provided you with and whatever circumstances you experienced led you to your decision to end your life when you did. Whether you like it or not your free will had very little to do with your decision. Besides there is no final judgement of good or evil or reward or punishment for your life. You’re dead, it’s over, that’s it. You’re a well read atheist and a rational man so you should know what to expect.”

“But what’s going on here?” I asked. “Is this an illusion generated by the last few flickerings of my dying mind. Do I travel to a bright white space where all my family are waiting to greet me? I’ve heard that people who’ve had a near-death experience tell that story”.
“This isn’t a near-death experience.” said the figure. I got no sense of irony or expectation but I knew he was waiting for me to work it out. I did.
“Oh.” Was all I said.
“I have heard” I resumed “that doctors and scientists say that when the brain shuts down, the last thing one perceives is that feeling of bright light and comfort.”
“That may be” said the figure looking at me. “What do you want it to be?”
“I’d like to see may family again” I said. “I miss those who died before me, like my Nan, and I’d like to say sorry to my wife and kids. I imagine my death must have upset them quite a bit.”
“You can do all that” said the figure, “if you want to”.
“But there are some people I wouldn’t want to meet again” I said. “People whom I have let down and those who bullied me and took advantage of me and hurt me, and those who I hurt. I wouldn’t want to meet them again”.
“You don’t have to” said the figure. “This is your death and you can have what you want”.
“This is all me” I said. “I’m getting it now. It’s all in my mind and in my imagination and I can have what I want and do what I want, but who are you? I know you’re not God and you’re not an angel. Who am I speaking to and how have you got all these answers?”

“I’m you of course” replied the figure. “Who else could be living in your head? I am the very best of you. You chose to end your life because you felt you were worthless and unlovable. I am you at your very best. You loved others and they loved you. You may have thought you’d alienated people with your indifference but what they remembered of you were the times you gave your time and energy to help them out. You were a kind and generous and industrious man. On your good days you were brilliant and the people who will remember you will remember that with love and affection. They won’t bother about the times you forgot to get them a cup of tea or forgot to get a birthday card. If they acted upset at the time it was only to get their share of your attention. Those people who tried to bully you and put you down did it because they knew you were kind and generous and industrious and they were jealous of that and you frightened them. You were a good man.”

I was shamed by this. It was true I was I had been bullied by those who were stronger and more powerful than me. I had felt rejected and unloved when I had attracted the anger of those close to me. That part of me that the psychotherapists call “the internal bully” had taunted me and abused me in the long dark hours. In these attacks I had lost my self confidence and my self esteem and ultimately my will to live. The despair I felt had led me to my death plunge, that one long step into oblivion.

“So what happens now?” I asked.
“You know what happens now.” Said the figure. “Recall your most satisfying moments. Whether they were holding your loved ones, or finishing a piece of work or waking up in a warm bed.”.
“Warm bed” I said.
“Hold on to that thought” said the figure.
I recalled the warmth and comfort of my bed, and the pleasure of waking from a night’s refreshing sleep, and that is all that there was.

I like beer

I like beer, so much so that I have devoted many happy hours to researching the subject. I make my own beer in my garage with the help of a stainless-steel Baby Burco wash boiler and a selection of polythene containers from various sources.

Yesterday evening, for the first time, I inflicted one of my beers on a group of friends and it met with a good reception. This is unlike soliciting the opinion of the occasional visitor to the house who is compelled to be complimentary out of politeness. That beer was a well-hopped pale ale in the style of and India Pale Ale. I wasn't trying to emulate a particular brand but intended producing my best emulation of the style. I have produced other beer styles and the barrel currently tapped in my garage contains a mixture of a well-aged stout and a fresher and younger traditional bitter. It is delicious since the aging process imbued the stout with a slight sourness which by itself would not be palatable but is complemented by the other flavours.

So a reflection on the phenomenon of sour beers, aging and blending follows.

Lambics are beers which are reputedy fermented by airbone yeast which blows into the brewery from nearby fields in Belgium. (But according so some sources this is not so and the yeast is selected and added to the hopped wort as is usual in every other brewery).

Lambic beers are left open to the air for many weeks so that they intentionally go flat and sour. Then they are sweetened for potability by the addition of fruit syrups such as cherry and strawberry. This is remembered in England when a pub-goer orders a lager and lime.

A flat and sour beer can also be sweetened by the addition of a fresh and young beer Sometimes the result is called a "gueuze". The technique is used to make Newcastle Brown Ale and Guinness which are called "vatted" ales, a name which refers to their being stored and blended in vats.

Years ago a pubgoer might order the barman to blend a half-pint of "Old Ale" with the contents of another barrel further down the bar containg a fresher and cheaper beer. This is remembered in English pubs when a half pint of draught bitter is topped up with a bottle of pale ale. From my observations this is very much a London and Essex phenomenon today.

Elsewhere a "Black and Tan" is sometimes ordered, a half pint of Guinness blended with another half pint of draught bitter. For those drinkers who are unused to the unique attributes of raw and unlaced Guinness, this is a good way to acquire the taste.

The expression "Black and Tan" also refers to the militia set up in Ireland in 1920 to augment the Royal Irish Constabulary and suppress revolution. Because of the shortage of black police uniforms they were issued with khaki uniform. Use tact when discussing this in the company of Irish nationals. The behaviour of the Black and Tans under their leader Henry Hugh Tudor made them generally unpopular in Ireland and they are not remembered fondly.

In 1922 Henry Hugh Tudor continued his career in Palestine. He seemed to have a knack for finding hot spots.

Why men can read maps and women remember birthdays

I'm back on the subject of evolution. The modern society in which I live traces its roots to the societies similar to those we see depicted on natural history programs about New Guinea and Borneo and the Amazon. In these societes we see the men living in the long hut at the end of the village while the women and children occupy a scattering of huts nearby.

When a young man is born into this society, he lives in one of the scattering of huts where he is nursed and tended for by his mother and grandmother and aunties and older sisters. As he grows and matures he seeks the company of older boys and men and gravitates towards the long hut at the end of the village and the company of the older boys and men.

In their company he learns to tell tall stories, to smoke and drink and most crucially for my point, he learns how to find his way through the jungle to where the fat monkeys are. As soon as he can be trusted to join the hunt he and the older boys and the men set off through the jungle find the fat monkeys and return to village in triumph with the trophies of the hunt. The boy has become a man.

As young men do, the boy inevitably begins to notice the presence of females in his village and becomes fascinated by them. At this time he defers to the guidance of his mother, grandmother, aunties and sisters for advice on how to assuage his curiosity. Here he is advised which of the young women of the village are suitable objects for his affection and which young women should be left alone, such as his sisters, aunties and cousins. Again, my point being that this role requires the women of the village to acquire and retain this knowledge for the good of the tribe.

Following the advice of his mother, grandmothers, aunties and sisters the young man acquires his spouse and under the diretion of the tribe moves right to the edge of the village and builds a home or himself and his wife. Well out of earshot from the rest of the village the new family gets busy with raising the next generation. As the children inevitably arrive the mother is joined by the grandmother and an aunty or two. The young man find his appetite for female company starts to wane and he recalls fondly the sociable atmosphere of the long hut at the and of the village. So he spends more and more time at the long hut swapping tall tales with his peers, smoking and teaching the younger men the way to where the fat monkeys live. The circle is complete.

Which is why women remember birthdays and relationships and who is going out with (or married to or broken up with) whom, and why men have no trouble with directions. It's an evolutionary imperative.

Side order of social phobia and anxiety, thanks

I find that whatever this thing that ails me comes with side orders. That is to say, along with the crushingly low self esteem and self-destructive urges this affliction overflows into social phobia and anxiety. This is worrying me this weekend because a bunch of my friends are meeting up in a hotel to renew acquaintances and have a few drinks. I could have gone but chose not to. A month ago it was the same story with a housewarming party and a week ago with another house party. I passed on all these despite them being attended by lovely people. I'm sure that If I had gone I would have enjoyed myself and had a good time but my fear of going anywhere or meeting anyone holds me back.

So, am I turning into some sort of recluse? Will I be one of those basket cases you see wandering down the street shouting to myself? Will the local kids avoid walking past my house because of the strange old man who lives there (me). This seems like a bad way to end my days.

But please don't worry about me. Time is passing and with each day, well nearly each day, I can feel myself healing over and getting stronger. Maybe its the medication, but it feels like a natural recovery from the piss-poor state I had got myself into. I'm even starting to consider for the emotional battering of applying for jobs again. I'm sure the feeling of winning a job would buoy me up but I'm still not sure if I'm strong enough to shrug off the hundreds of offhand rejections I will have to endure.

North Wales Traffic Police

It was on the A55, somewhere around Abergele and I was tanking along. It was getting on for seven in the morning and I'd been riding since about four am. I was on the way to catch the ferry from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire. The weather had finally cleared and the bright dry day promised a lot more than the foggy frosty dawn that had greeted me. The traffic was light, the bike felt good so I was letting the bike do the work while enjoyed the pace, and the weather and the view.

I was in the habit of looking over my left shoulder as I passed the end of a filter lane. This was IAM training, checking all potential hazards and blind spots. On this occasion I saw one of those Volvo estates with the blue and yellow paint jobs. "Oh dear" I thought. "I'll bet he wants to have a word with me".

So I wound down the revs and started looking for a pulling-in place. I came across one fairly quickly so I signalled, shoulder checked, lane changed and pulled in. The copper pulled up behind me with his lights flashing.

"I expect you have some idea why I pulled you over" he said. This is the standard opening apparently. You're supposed to admit to some offense with your reply at which point you are banged to rights. I tried for a puzzled shrug. I should also explain that by this point I had removed my crash helmet and revealed myself to be a fat, balding grey-haired bloke and perhaps not the spotty long-haired tearway the copper might have been expecting.


"I can't fault you on your riding" he said. "You saw me straight away and pulled over sensibly". Having congratulated me on my riding skills, he went on to apologise. "We had a fatality over the weekend so we've got to be seen to be doing something".

Then he tried to engage me on the subject of driving behaviour more generally. "Are you in a hurry to get to the ferry?" he asked. "Nope" I replied. "I'm just enjoying the ride". He knew the distance to the ferryport to the nearest hundred yards, and when it was due to leave. If I'd tried to make a point of the importance of my trip he was ready to explain how I'd have time to spare if I confined myself to 30 mph for the rest of my journey. I didn't want to give him to opportunity for the roadside safety leture nor the impromptu roadside vehicle inspection. Both of these would certainly detain me past the ferry's departure time.

The copper explained to me that by using his "Vascar" device he had timed my progress between two points and measured my speed at ninety four point eight miles per hour.
"Of course, if you'd been going at ninety-five miles an hour or more, I'd have to send you to court for four penalty points and a big fine. Will you accept a fixed penalty notice with a three-point penalty and a sixty pound fine? Good. Sign here".

As I rode on to catch the ferry the copper's compliments regarding my riding and apology for having to be seen booking someone went round and round in my head. I wasn't particularly peeved about the event since I'd been caught breaking the speed limit and would pay the penalty. Today was just my turn that's all.

But I pitied that copper for having been told to go out and to be seen nicking some motorcylists. It ws apparent to me he didn't want to be doing what he was doing and the image of his finger hovering over the Vascar unit while my speed reduced to below the incriminating ninety five miles per hour is still with me today.

I've spent the last few weeks in an acute depression. I've sought treatment and the wheels are in motion to make me happy and well again. But I've found myself in the same frame of mind as the man who has tooth ache or sea sickness. The sufferer imagines himself to be the most miserable person in the world and can see no end to the misery. Nobody else has ever been this miserable or can comprehend the depths to which the sufferer is suffering. But it's not the experience of depression that I want to discuss. Others have done that with much greater effect than I ever could.

Sally Brampton in her excellent memoir "Shoot the Damn Dog" records the observation that drugs help with the disease but only therapy can effect a cure. Well I reckon I've struggled manfully with my condition for at least twenty years and I don't intend to suffer with it for another twenty. I need to find a cure.

I've spent many weeks mulling over this defective frame of mind I call depression. I think I regarded it as a weakness in my character and would beat myself up about not being a better person, not being able to strengthen that part of me. As a result I got more depressed. This sets up a nasty little positive feedback loop in my mind and I am worse off. (I studied a topic called "Engineering Systems" for my degree and I know a bit about feedback loops, or at least enough to speak with some authority on the subject). My weeks of mulling have not been in vain because I have developed an insight into the affliction which I'm going to share.

Contrary to my thoughts on the subject, modern opinion tells us to regard depression as an illness. Generally an illnesss has symptoms which the professionals love to list and group and present their findings. Many of these end up in the World Wide Web along with helpful questionaires and case studies. Drawing on these resources I find I suffer from "atypical depression" which distinguishes itself from "melancholic depression" by the "heaviness of limbs" and "lack of energy". Overeating is also a dead give away and certainly in my case accounts for the heaviness of my limbs and my lack of energy. But one of the good things about a formally-defined illness is the availabilty of formally-defined cures. For the above administer SSRI or MAOI for six to twelve months and that's that.

So I'm thinking about this illness and part of me still wants to insist it's all down to me (which it is). This illness isn't a bacterium or a virus, it comes about because something goes wrong in the head and the inside of my head is definitely my department. I'm the only one in there and I should be able to look after it.

The trouble is I'm back to beating myself up over this self-inflicted injury I keep moaning about. Unlike sunburn, a self inflicted injury that is easy to avoid, my self inflicted injury came about because I don't know how to handle stress properly. It's like a repetitive strain injury or a hernia, both of which are "respectable" injuries brought about by hard work and not enough workplace support or training in how to deal with everyday stress.

I call them "respectable" injuries or illnesses using a tone of irony. Depression, like many other mental illnesses seems not to be regarded as a real disease or illness or injury. As in my case, outlined above.

Now I think I'm onto a good analogy here. Depression is like an RSI or hernia. Both can be treated with drugs to alleviate the painful effects but also require some training and support in place to prevent their recurrence. The same is true for depression. SSRI and MAOI can take away the pain but we require some expert help in developing strategies for keeping it away forever, which is where the therapy comes in.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, about which I know very little, offers the means to provide the skills to deal with the causes of depression so that like a correctly-seated keyboard user or a properly-postured lifter of boxes the recurrence of the injury will be averted for ever. At least I hope so.

My Bill Bryson Moment, a Grumpy Old Pedant speaks

A recent BBC News article contained the phrase: "Lahore is now the epicentre of a struggle ..."

A superficial scan of online dictionary definitions confirms and supports my opinion that "epicentre" means "The point of the earth's surface directly above the focus of an earthquake".

This demonstrates the regrettable tendency for a longer and inaccurate word to be used where a shorter word does the job perfectly well. I overheard someone say "Please interpolate these results for me" when he should have said "Please interpret these results". "Interpolate" has an extra syllable and the pompous twit who used it was trying to make himself sound more important by using a longer word. Unfortunately the word "Interpolate", while it has to do with the interpretation of data, does not mean the interpretation of data. It means the prediction or estimation of a value by using known values of the data which lie to either side of the predicted or estimated value. For example if the weather report told me that the temperature in Birmingham yesterday was eighteen degrees and in Nottingham was twenty degrees I could interpolate that the temperature in Ashby-de-la-Zouche was nineteen degrees. Since Ashby-de-la-Zouche lies halfway between Birmingham and Nottingham it is reasonable to expect that the temperature there lies halfway between the temperatures for those two cities.

Misusing "epicentre" where "centre" does the job is a crime of similar magnitude. I guess the correspondent might be trying to say that a widespread undercurrent of dissent has flared up in an outbreak of violent attacks in Lahore, but why not say that instead of trying to create a geological metaphor? Confusingly the correspondent goes on to quote a source as saying "Lahore is the only city in Pakistan which has remained relatively peaceful" so far from being the centre or focus of violence, it seems the city is an island of stability so a comparison with a seismic disturbance confuses me.

If we're going to enlist expressions from fields such as geology I will allow an "avalanche of support" or a "landslide victory" since these suggest a massive, fast moving and overwhelming weight of whatever we are talking about. Unlike some pedants, I will allow that our language is evolving [1] and enriching our lives but if words like "interpolate" and "epicentre" are allowed to lose their precision and accuracy through the misuse I have quoted above, then we will all be poorer for it.

[1] And in the sense of evolutionary biology, words and phrases are being eliminated from our speech by a process of natural selection. Those which are weak or useless are not being passed on to the next generation. Those which are strong and useful are being preserved through constant use. We are constantly experimenting with new forms and making them work for us, or discarding them

Rockingham Forest Chapter of the Battle of Brighton Re-Enactment Society

The following is a sample from some documents that have come into my possession after the break-up of the Rockingham Forest Chapter of the Battle of Brighton Re-Enactment Society. If anyone wishes to find out more about the past activities of this group I will be happy to make more of the documentation available through the weblog.

Official Journal of the Battle of Brighton Re-Enactment Society (Rockingham Forest Chapter)

May 1997
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Committee Business: After the AGM in April, May saw the appointment of four more scooter-riders to the managing committee. This corrected the long-term imbalance between the numbers of motorcycle riders and scooter-riders in the group the numbers represented on the committee. The matter had been hotly debated in the preceding months with detailed statistical research into the ratio of UK scooter riders and motorcyclists now and in 1967. The numbers in the UK, in the London and Home Counties area and in Sussex, for 1967 and the present day were also examined. Age profiles were brought into play to adjust for scooterists and riders over 25. The classification of powered two wheeled transport into mopeds, scooters and motorcycles was contended with legislation from 1967 and the present day presented for debate. Finally, the decision unanimously and grudgingly accepted was for a straight 50-50 split between the two parties.

The group's first outing to Skegness on the Bank Holiday Monday was deemed a limited success. 75% of the scooterists survived the trip compared with 92% of motorcycle riders. Happily, no long-term disabling injuries were reported. No custodial sentences were imposed by the Lincolnshire magistrates this year, a refreshing break from tradition (although there was a mischievous suggestion that the authorities did not want any of us in their county for a moment longer than possible!)

The second outing at the end of month was the annual trip to Brighton itself. This being the thirtieth anniversary, a special effort was made by all groups. Considerable mayhem was re-enacted for the delight of the holiday makers and participants although one sobering moment occurred when the real Sussex constabulary officers were mistaken for members of the Society taking part in the pageant. In fairness, we were unaware of the recent changes in uniform detail that made serving officers resemble their predecessors of thirty years before. In return for offering to pay for the replacement of the two vehicles, the police offered nominal charges in court leading to surprisingly lenient suspended sentences for those involved.

June 1997:
==========
Committee Business: The escalating conflict in the Balkan states led to an increase in world demand for green parkas. As a result the discount deal with Corby Military Surplus Stores was cancelled. A motion to sell back the group's accumulated stock of these garments at a profit was narrowly defeated. A counter-motion to ban the wearing of leather jackets on conscientious grounds was also defeated, as was the vote of confidence in the group treasurer.

The first mass outing to Great Yarmouth was less than successful. In part this was due to the Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils removing all their road signs for the weekend, on the advice of Lincolnshire County Council. The same measure had been adopted in 1939 to frustrate the efforts of German parachutists to find their way around and it worked for us too. The effect of the police roadblocks was to break up the columns of riders as they converged on Norwich and redirect us in different directions. Although some riders found their way to Great Yarmouth, this was more by luck than judgement. One group of Rockingham riders reported finding themselves back in Skegness, another got as far as the Dartford Crossing on the M25 before realising they were hopelessly lost and heading for home in the Bank Holiday traffic.

July 1997
=========
Committee Business: Support for the oppressed peoples of Bosnia was expressed by the Group Treasurer when he unilaterally donated the entire funds of the group to Bosnian Defense Fund. The treasurer resigned from the group on the same day as the transaction was completed and is believed to be making his way to Sarajevo to take part in the defense of the town. The group's stock of green anoraks is believed to have gone with him. Although the committee sympathises with the plight of the Bosnians, the unauthorised use of the group's resources in the manner is to be deprecated. A motion of censure was carried.

On a lighter note, the weekend camp at Shanklin, Isle of Wight went well. The heavy police presence at the ferry terminal was resented since the prolonged wait for the ferry meant that plenty of impromptu vehicle inspections could be carried out. Attempts by the police to measure the noise levels from bikes and scooters were abandoned at the request of the ferry authority, and many motorists also waiting in the car park. Warnings in connection with the construction and use of vehicles, both verbal and in writing, were issued. The police were frustrated in some of their efforts by riders swapping number plates between machines while the officers were involved elsewhere. It remains to be seen how many of the warnings will be followed up by prosecutions especially since the ferry car park is not an official highway and any prosecution will be void (or so we are advised).

August 1997
===========
Committee Business: The committee's historical consultant, Stan, has agreed to act as treasurer pro tem. Measures have been put into place to rebuild the groups tattered finances starting with a survival sweepstake. In return for a monthly subscription, any group members who survive twelve months riding without a spill or prosecution will split one half of the pot. The other half goes to the group. Despite it being a 'dead cert' for the group (in Stan's words) the proposal was accepted in a spirit of sportsmanship.

The all-groups conference took place at Butlins Holiday Camp, Weston Super Mare. The Rockingham Forest Chapter presented two courageous motions for debate. Motion 369 read 'The Heavens Acolytes Pensioners levy should be dropped due to the lack of reciprocal support'. Motion 370 read 'Physical intimidation during meetings, including plenary sessions, is to be deplored'. Unfortunately the conference ran out of time before either of these motions could be debated.

The Course of Communism

My Great-uncle Billy went to Spain in 1936 to fight Franco. Many did. Franco led a military coup which overthrew the democratically-elected governmemt of Spain. In the civil war which followed Billy Davies was killed at Brunete in the siege of Madrid. Franco's side won and Spain remained a military dictatorship until Franco's death in 1975.

Billy joined the communist party while he was a coal miner in South Wales. Many did, as the communist party was busy aligning itself with the socalist tendencies of the workers of the time. These workers had concerns about the impermanent nature of their work, which was available for only a few days at a time and at few days notice. They were also concerned with the landlord of the time who had no trouble exploiting their tenants.

Which led me to contemplate the history of the communist party and the nature of Marxism. I'm no expert and make make no claims of rigour in my researches but casual reading of the subject leads me to frame some observations.

It's the nature of the communist party to hijack any theme of protest. Thus the pro-democracy and anti-fascist volunteers who went to Spain to fight Franco found themselves to be aligned with the communist party.

Classical Marxist-Leninist philosophy states that Communism will have been achieved when the State "withers away". We find in the modern Marxist-Leninist state that the central administration does not wither away but instead makes every effort to promote, preserve and strengthen itself starting with the establishment of a singe-party state and a supreme central soviet. Associated with the apparatus of state is a single state-run bank and the total control of the media. Probably the most important one that, control the sources of information and you can control what people think. The USSR fell because its citizens got news that life outside was better than life inside. They wanted Levis and MacDonalds and the chance to earn enough to buy a Porsche. They voted for the first leader that promised them they could have all that.

I understood Karl Marx to be writing only about the transition of the Russian society from feudal agrarian society to an industrial society. The extension of his theory to other countries and other economies may have been in error. He observed in Britain the rise in power of a skilled and literate workforce which did not rely on the ownership of land for its political power.

From this he predicted that the workers would eventually control if not own the means of production. The two problems I have with this is that the ownership of the means of production meant the ownership of capital. In the economics of the time this meant that property would be converted to capital and the workers would somehow come to own and administer it.

In Russia, China and Cuba (Three Marxist-Leninist states of which we are all aware) this came about through bloody revolution. In Britain it came about through property taxes and inheritance taxes which transferred some or even most of the property into the hands of the state. These were socialist policies brought about by the Labour party which claimed to represent the power of the workers and promote a socialist agaenda. The Labour party of today no longer represents the working man nor socialism. They have dropped clause 4 and dropped the political levy. They no longer regard the unions as their owners and instead fawn and grovel to the markets and makers of public opinion.

The mixed economy of Britain, part state-owned and part privately-owned, may be viewed as an economy in transition towards a Marxist state but only if one is determined to justify or substantiate Marxism. In my opinion the British economy is on its way to something else and may well end up as a commercial oligopoly where the ultimate economic control rests with world-spanning multinational corporations who are answerable to their boards and shareholders. This will spell the end of nationalism since the notion of statehood will become increasingly irrelevant. The demise of different political parties with different political agendas is already imminent and obvious. All that seperates the agendas of the three parties is some inconsequential disagreements over the last few percent raised by taxation and similar disagreements about how it should be spent.

Links: A close friend of Billy's was Alun Menai Williams who is mentioned here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/5179738.stm
and here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,395365,00.html

In the first of these links there's a picture of Billy standing next to Alun who is sitting with a kitten on his lap. What strkes me first is Alun's filmstar good looks. Then Billy's oversize and crumpled battledress and the rifle he carries. The rifle butt is resting on the ground and the tip of the rifle barrel reaches nearly to Billy's shoulder. Billy is a child of the depression years and the South Wales coalfield. He is small, wears glasses and fired with a determination to fight the forces who are oppresssing the democratic rights of his Spanish brothers.

When we found the Guardian article my father and I looked up Alun Menai Williams phone number in Barry. We spoke. Alun was delighted to hear from relatives of his beloved friend and comrade in arms. He recalled the boyhood friendship and was able to put Dad right on some of the details of his antecedents. One uncle or great uncle had died in a swimming accident. His wife later died of a fever and their daughter had been brought up by another uncle and aunt. Alun's own story is a remarkable tale of everyday heroism, and romance and startling survival. I recommend you to research it yourself.

Light At The End of the Tunnel

As you may know I have been unemployed and seeking work for a little over a year. Ideally I'd like a full-time permanent job within easy travelling distance of home and in the industry sector where I've made my living these past thirty years. The local employers aren't interested in me. Travis Perkins in Northampton, along with Barclaycard, the Nationwide and RS Components have all decided they'd be better off without my contribution.

I've widened my scope to look at jobs further afield and at areas of employment outside my aspirations. There is little to be found. What I have found has involved manhandling dishwashers and washing machines in and out of lorries and up and down conveyor belts (Two days). I've counted cars queuing at traffic lights (One day, with the promise of two more to come). I've delivered second hand cars, driving them from an abandoned USAF base to motor dealers (One day) but in fourteen months I've been unable to secure a 'proper' job.

When I signed on to receive Job Seekers allowance I was told I had to produce evidence of my job-seeking efforts. I started saving an the emails which said "Thank for applying..." and produced the list each fortnight when I went to sign on. Not everybody replies to job applications so the number of jobs I have applied for since I started keeping the list is larger than the one thousand entries the list now contains. One thing I have found is that there is definitely an "Age Bar" in effect in the IT industry. I'm over fifty years old and, as far as recruiters are concerned, over the hill. My best years are behind me. My best work has been done and I've nowhere to go except downhill from here. It's a dispiriting prospect and I'm pretty sure it's wrong.

But now the bright side. Yesterday I received an email from a Dutchman called Llewellyn. This is unusual enough to remark upon. Llewellyn is looking for User Acceptance testing resource to work on a system integration and delivery project at ABN Amro Bank in Amsterdam. Happily for both of us I have some relevant expertise to offer since from April to September 2006 I worked at ABN Amro Bank in Amsterdam on some test activities relating to their Basel II Compliance project. Llewellyn called back this morning and we agreed that I would be a good fit for their requirements and maybe I should start making plans to go back to Amsterdam for a three month contract with likely extensions.

So there it is, some light at the end of the tunnel. It's not what I was planning to do, but it's better than sitting at home worrying about my overdraft. I shall try and ignore how I hate EasyJet and the hours wasted hanging about in airports and dining out alone and having to pack up my dirty laundry and haul it home every Friday. But I've done it before, loads of times an I didn't die from it. Well, I was quite ill[1] for a while but I got better.

[1] Look on Wikipedia for "Lacunar Infarct"

How to do Management

Have you ever come across a "Mission Statement" lately? Loads of organisations have them. Some because they need to focus on what they have to do but a lot more have them because the last management consultant told them they needed one. It's a bit like the latin motto which used to adorn the cap badge heraldry, "Per Ardua Ad Astra" sot of thing. That particular motto belongs to the Royal Air Force and means "Through Struggles to the Stars" which is more in tune with the sentiments of NASA than the blue-clad mud movers.

I may be marketing a mission statement parsing tool shortly. It asks the question "What? Where? Why? How? Who? and When?" of mission statements. The responses must be framed several different ways because the question may be asked in several different contexts: Conceptual, Contextual, Logical, Physical, Mechanical and Instantial. I.e. the Zachman diagram is used to decompose the mission statement. (I'm a big fan of the Zachman diagram)

The responses occupy thirty-six cells of a matrix with these column and row headings. The number of answers that can be given is a metric of the effectiveness of the mission statement in providing strategic, tactical and operational guidance to the enterprise. The number of blank cells, the number of unanswered questions, prompts the enterprise to ask the questions that need to be asked before the mission can begin, the How, Why and When sort of questions that are essential to planning.

I tried this once with a corporate mission statement that appeared to be well thought-out, expressive and inspirational. The questions raised by my analysis were a little disturbing since implicit in the mission statement is that you have some sort of monitoring process to let you know when the mission is (a) on track and (b) completed. (As the RAF might say, how many stars have we reached? How many more have we left to do?). It turns out that most mission statements have no sort of end-condition that can be defined or reached and are purely aspirational.

"Empowering stakeholders" is a common theme in mission statements these days. I just googled for the expression and scored over a million hits. If you have this in your mission statement how indeed do you know when you have been successful or even if you are on the right track? What metrics can you employ to measure empowerment. The common get-out is to launch a survey asking your stakeholder "Do you strongly agree, agree, disgree or strongly disagree with the statement 'I feel empowered." I am not sure that this sort of metric really measures anything compared to something more solid like the number of complaints received.

I was brought up in the disciplines of engineering. I was taught that you cannot manage or control anything that you cannot first measure. I regard this as an axiom, a self-explanatory and indisputably true statement. The appliance of science to the measurement of management still has a long, long way to go. Sadly when I raise these points, I am accused of 'getting too technical' which tells me my peers and colleagues lack the stomach for a rigorous debate.

The Great Global Warming Debate

I am a global warming sceptic. Not because I disagree with whichever climatologist spoke last on the subject, but becuse of the way they spoke. The arguments in this issue seem to come from a non-scientific space, from a space which is occupied by spin doctors, publicity managers and self-promoting snake oils salesmen. Worst of all, it has become a political issue. Not politics in the sense of a reasonable opinion reached by consensus and the debate of well-informed authorities, but politics in the sense of populising, self-promoting, resource hi-jacking cock fighting.

The politicising of the debate has done no end of damage to any chance of progress with the issue. Now it's a dirty, sticky paintbrush which soils whoever picks it up, well-intentioned or not. Politics, as practised around here, is based on certain principles. I describe them below, and invite you to recollect what you have heard of the Grat Global Warming debate bearing this in mind:

(1) Keep it simple, stupid. The message must be reduced to the simplest possible terms. In the minds of the politicians and spin doctors we are too stupid to receive and understand a message containing complexities and ambiguities. The important thing is that we should receive their message. For a complex issue the complications must be removed and ignored. For an ambiguous or uncertain issue, the ambiguities and uncertainties must be removed. In the case of the global warming/anthropogenic/CO2 emissions debate removing the ambiguities, uncertainties and complexities to leave a single politicised message is a bad thing to do. "Reduce your carbon footprint!" remains which is patronising, unhelpful and probably has no effect on the outcome at all.

(2) Demonise someone, anyone. Politics is a blame game and to find someone to blame we have to find someone, some grouping and blame them for our troubles and then make them pay. In the sooty footprint debate we have seen drivers of four-by-fours demonised. At my wife's place of work it was seriously suggested she should pay double for her car parking because she drives a Honda CRV which employs four wheel drive (sometimes). This has nothing to do with the carbon footprint of the vehicle, or its CO2 emissions but everything to do with being in a identifiable group. Also identified for demonisation are drivers of luxury cars as in London's CO2 emissions-based addendum to the congestion charge. This is thinly-diguised politics of envy tactic whose end result is merely to raise revenue for governmental bodies.

(3) You cannot exaggerate enough. Tony Blair was briefed on the "imminent global climate catastrophe" and told the rest of us it should be our single most important issue for the future. That was just before the global financial catastrophe happened which stil might cause an end to all trade, a global cost of living crisis and leave us all without the goods and services we rely on (see how it's done?). In politics the important thing is to keep the message (and the man) in the spotlight all the time. (A secondary purpose is to keep the spotlight away from the places you dont want it to go.) To keep the global warming issue alive, a ludicrous spiral of reportage calls us to look at how many nuclear power stations like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl will have to be built before next Christmas, how many villages will be washed into the sea like Boscastle or New Orleans this Bank Holiday Monday and how many of us will suffocate or drown in our cars if we dare go out tomorrow. If you took all this literally, you'd be forced into believing that the devastation wrought on New Orleans by Katrina resulted from me filling my kettle before boiling it for one cup of tea. The causes of the floods in New Orleans may have more to do with inadequacies in the operation of the flood defences. If this surpirses you, read this paragraph through again.

All of which leaves me more than a little disgusted with the whole business. I think we should be concerned, I think that if there is anything I should be doing then I should be doing it. But my good intentions and good will on the issue are being hijacked by media manipulators, green activists, agitprop merchants, anti-industrialists and self-promoting campaigners for self promotion all with their own agendas and axes to grind. They have over-simplified and demonised and exaggerated and obscured the truth and misled us all.

Bureaucratic Officialdom - Data Protection, HASAW

The last agency [1] I worked for refused to supply me with a payslip. They claimed that they were complying with the data protection act in doing so. Apparently I might live at a shared address and someone else might interfere with my mail hence their reluctance to send me information on my pay and deductions. As I know a little about compliance with the Data Protection act I was almost tempted to make a discussion out of this but I was keenly aware that I was talking to the oily rag and not the engineer. Also, I have had some people attempt to give me all kinds of outrageous bollocks under the guise of the data protection act before, including government agencies[2] who really should know better.


I got appointed a Data Protection Liaison Officer once, so I had to study the subject in some depth. The Data Protection Act dosn't mean what most people seem to assume it means. It compels organisations which keep 'personal' data to declare themselves to the registrar. It compels these organisations to reveal details of what information they keep on individuals to those individuals, and that's about it. Of course, by the nature of our bureaucratic officialdom which worms its way into everything we do these simple strictures have been complicated and expanded and elaborated beyond all sense.

The same thing has happened with the Health and Safety at Work act so that risk assessments have to be done for the simplest of day to day activities. These risk assessments then result in roles and responsibilities being defined for these activities, and associated training and certification and statements of compliance so that even sharpening a pencil becomes an activity subject to audit and compliance.

To the normal individual, who does not get involved in the risk assessments, the documentation of procedures, roles and responsibilities, who is not subject to audit and compliance, these strictures form an impenetrable thicket of regulation and red tape. The temptation is to avoid entanglement by skirting around them altogether. Do you want to install an extra electrical socket in your garage? Sure you can do it yourself, it's fairly straightforward. If you lack the knowledge, skills or expertise you can employ a friendly handyman to do the job for you. If you want to get the job done 'properly' you enlist the services of a local electrician who will charge you £250 for the mandatory post-installation survey, test and certification. And why not, because you can add the certificate to your Householder's Information Pack [3] which you will have to provide to the next occupier of the premises anyway. If I am any judge, you'll avoid the expense by doing it on the cheap and pretending it never happened.


[1] Pertemps, Northampton.
[2] Criminal Record Bureau, who wouldn't even tell me if they'd received some paperwork from me because of "Data Protection".
[3] As the passage of time washes away all that we were and all that we remember so will the memory of the "Home Information Pack" be lost. This was a scheme requiring householders to supply an information pack to potential buyers of the property. To be compliant with the standard for detail and presentation this provision would have placed a cost upon the householder. Already beleaguered by legal costs, advertising expenses, agency fees amongst others, this proposal did not sit well with the householder. Happily, for some (for it is an ill wind that blows no good) this proposal went the way of the government that had proposed it and was dropped like a hot potato by the succeeding administration.

Headline: "Young Britons 'shy from science'"

Headline: "Young Britons 'shy from science'"
Synopsis: A new survey conducted across Europe suggests that young Britons are amongst the least interested in pursuing careers in science.


href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7729472.stm"

"Half of Irish respondents and 43% from the UK said they lacked the skills to pursue a career in science."

I was dismayed when my eldest, Tom, gave up on an academic career at seventeen. I had expected more from him since he is bright, energetic, personable and passionate about the things that interest him. Unfortunately the school he attended was unable to ignite his interest in very much at all. It seems that the teachers he encountered, like those I encountered thirty-odd years before him, were preoccupied with maintaining their own egos and self-esteem and less concerned with the aspirations and ambitions of the students in their charge. I do not paint all educators with this opinion, I merely draw upon my experience of those I have encountered.

If you're interested, I will relate that Tom is now 21 and working in a temporary post in a record store [1]. He is surrounded by the latest CDs, DVDs, computer games and games consoles. He is very happy about this and, joy of joys, has discovered a knack for selling stuff. I guess his enthusiasm is just so infectious that shoppers are inspired to make the most of their visit to the store and leave not only with what they came in for, but also with a whole load of stuff they didn't realise they wanted. I hope Tom works on this and makes a success of his new-found talent.

I also note that the article relates, of the survey's correpondents, that "Many expect improvements in areas such as food and water quality, and communications technologies." It seems that the survey's correspondents or maybe the survey itself fails to recognise the distinction between scientists and engineers. It is the engineers that provide the technical solutions. A scientist may be able to predict where water may be found but it requires an engineer to build the well.

[1] HMV in the Swansgate centre, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. If you're visiting be sure to take lots of cash and look for the tall curly-haired chap with the big, big smile.

[2] By way of un update: Tom's temporary job with HMV came to an end last month so he's now looking for more work. Today he applied for a MacJob and that's his best prospect at the moment.

[3] Summer 2011 Update: Tom's just celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday. He is as handsome and bubbly and outgoing as ever. Tom is employed a close friend's business. He's servicing air conditioning installations and has plenty of work to be going on with.