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[ 6 minute read ]

Now you see us, now you don't

I met a wonderful woman in ALDI yesterday, whom I could meet every day and never be bored. She is excited and pleased to be alive in a very strange world.

In the frozen produce aisle, Marion had apologised for leaving her basket on the floor next to the frozen fish cabinet, which she thought was in my way because I was leaning sideways over it while I rummaged for Basa (a South-East Asia type of catfish).

       'Oh! No!' I said, 'I was avoiding standing next to that couple moving away there.' I pointed at two people at the end of the aisle near the baking products. 'They were standing the other side of your basket and I didn't want to be too close to them.' I thought I had better explain that. 'The man pulled all the boxes of washing-up liquid off the shelves looking for something and then just shoved them all back all higgledy-piggledy. I thought they might do the same to the fish, so I didn't want to get too near.'

Marion nodded approvingly. 'What? I hate it when people do that! 'Why?', and then fell into telling me how invisible she felt she is sometimes. 

       'People just bump into me and then look straight through me as though I am not there. She gestured with her hands, moving them away from her face, indicating tunnel-vision.

       'I'm sorry! Are you talking to me?' I said. 'I was just talking to myself and then suddenly here you are!'

She smiled, but wasn't quite sure if I was serious. She looked confused, bless her. I immediately liked her, and feeling sorry for putting her off balance, I said. 'They probably don't drive.'

She nodded profusely. 'Probably! They are so selfish and just carry on as though you are not there.'

       'Well,' I went on, 'If they do drive, it will be a black SUV.' I smiled but knew I had messed up. I don't know her at all. Maybe she drives a black car. At the same time I thought black SUV drivers need to know how despised they are by other road users.

      She picked up on my mistake. 'Mine is parked in the car-park,' she frowned at me.

I had it coming. 'Of course.... you would,' I said and went on, 'As soon as I said it to you I just knew the ironic probability was just too high.'

       'Not really.' She said, and smiling, wandered coolly off.

Touché, I thought, touché!

Feeling chastened by recognising my mistake, I picked on a young couple to cheer them and myself up. They had to go a little bit around me, while I watched Marion walk away.

       'I'm sorry,' I said, 'Was I in your way?'

       'No, no. You're fine.' The young woman said.

       'I'm practising getting in people's way to get my own back.'

They laughed. Part of me hoped they drive a black car; I was laughing too.

One of my favourite times in supermarkets is when I keep meeting the same person in each aisle. It is so awkward. Both of us have agreed that our conversation earlier has fizzled out and now we have to ignore each other or nod, or wave, or blow raspberries at each other or something. We both feel foolish and embarrassed. I sometimes wish I had never spoken to them earlier. Maybe we might hunch our shoulders at each other to say, 'Who would have thought it?' or 'What a surprise!' I usually just play it safe and leave it at 'Hello'. Most of the time I can see they think the second meeting is awkward, the third uncomfortable, and the fourth excruciating. That's when I turn around and go back to the first aisle, chuckling to myself.

After I had stopped weaving through the busy supermarket I went to pay. There was only one till with a person open. I joined the queue. Marion had her back to me, right in front of me, so I carried on our conversation to her back as though we had not parted.

       'Crikey! For a moment there you just disappeared and I was talking to myself.'

She smiled, 'Oh Hello again.' She seemed okay with more conversation. She seemed very relaxed, even pleased to see me, and that is when she told me about the leopard people.

       'Have you seen the people who come in here every few days and look like leopards?'

       'No, I only come about once a week. They look like leopards?'

       'Yes. They have spots of different colours, and just walk in and load up their baskets, and then walk out without paying; every few days!'

       'Leopards? Black and white?' I was thinking of vitiligo, which is a lack of pigment in the skin, most obvious as patches of white but healthy skin on black people, and is an auto-immune disorder which can be worsened by stress or environmental conditions.

       'Like lepers, not leopards. They have lumps and bumps all over their faces and hands. Nobody stops them.'

       'Yes. Patches of decaying white skin falling off.' By now though, I was checking to see if she meant pustular psoriasis. I only know it as psoriasis, which I have seen. It is not contagious. The 'pustular' bit I had to learn about this morning.

I have only seen leprosy in an old film on the telly, 'Papillon', in which a convict escaped from Devils Island and shares a cigar with a leper in the jungle. 'How did you know I have dry leprosy? the leper asked in the film. 'I didn't,' is the reply.

I, like many other people, heard about leprosy in history classes at secondary school in the UK. Bits of their bodies deteriorate and fall off, I heard. Of course,  I also heard that medieval monasteries and convents took in and cared for lepers in Europe and the UK, so I understood it was not confined to jungles and damp, warm places, and it is contagious. I didn't learn in school that it can be dry leprosy and not contagious. My school did not tell us about syphilis.

In my head these people had vitiligo or psoriasis, not leprosy, and maybe wore leopard skins but the lumps and bumps, when she said it, chased away the notion of them actually looking like cats and wearing cat-skins.

       'Would you stop them?' I asked amused. This conversation has potential, I thought?

       'No.' she accepted. 'The security don't search them.'

       'Would you search them?'

       'No.'

       'I don't think they should be stopped.' I said. No-one treats them as their equals so we shouldn't expect them to act as our equals. In fact, they are turning our disability into their ability. Maybe the police won't search them either.'

In my head, these 'leopard people' are immigrants that have come from a country where they were ostracised and pilloried, and they have no idea that they might be treated differently in the UK by the health service, even if not by the public. I haven't seen them, but it sounds as though their affliction is quite severe.

Even though they are plainly more visible than other people once we have noticed their skin, they walk in a strange liminal place, somewhere between physically visible and unsightly to us, as in us not wanting to see them. They are so sensually visible, that we try to eradicate their visage from our perception.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a Customs Officer at Immingham docks near Grimsby. I asked him how he can tell if someone should be stopped for questioning and searching. He told me they have a formula and what the formula is,  but added that they do use experience and just pick the right persons mostly. (Customs staff knew me quite well because I would play pranks on them, and they did the same to me and their colleagues. Frequently going through customs with a van can be great fun if you let it happen).

       'One time,' he said. 'I tried to stop an African man, but he wouldn't stop walking and kept telling me that I couldn't see him.  Later, we found he was smuggling heroin, and discovered that he thought that a witch-doctor's spell made him invisible and he would be able to just walk through customs without being stopped. Unfortunately for him, because he wasn't holding up an EU passport we, of course, stopped him.'

The thieves that Marion told me about are in the same strange category of visibility, but diverse within it. What a wonderful world!

'We are the leopard people. You can see us, but you don't want to.' To them we all drive black SUVs. Even though they are there we ignore them and pretend they are not.

Vitiligo (Wikipedia)

An example of sensually inappropriate is: I used to enjoy Rollmop Herrings; loved them. One day, my mum told me that they are raw just as I was chewing on one. I can't look at them now. Rollmops, to me, are sensually inedible.

The woman on the till told me she was pleased to have a conversation with me. She said it lifted her and set her up for her shift. From the looks of disdain from the customer behind me; he couldn't afford a black SUV but would definitely buy a smaller black car, even if it never left his front garden.

Now you see us, now you don't.

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Is this the real life?

[ 3 minute read ]

Following on from the post earlier today at 06:03 am, o'clock, Three minutes past six in the morning, 'Languidly Slumping' (tag: Dog Day). Opens as a new page.

Player 1

It was my turn on stage in ALDI during the 'Grab a mike session'.

       'ALDI has a sign near the entrance that says 'PRODUCT RECALL CHRISTMAS ITEM 'Mozzarella Sticks in Blankets' What's that? You're way ahead of me!'

Such bad grammar these days. 'to' not 'in'. The elderly couple just said 'Probably.' as they came in. They didn't want me to open their day up for them, so they hunched their shoulders a little more, stared at me, looked at each other and grabbed a basket. I think the bloke had been given the Bumper Joke Book for Christmas or had pulled too many crackers for that one to work on him. But, from starting with a woolly head it was to be expected that I was going to be snatching at straws for a time.

A while ago, I met a marvelous woman in the ALDI car park who told me that she was told off for going to the till with a checkout server, when she had only a few items, instead of going to the self-service tills. 

        'Shocking!' I said.

       'I don't want them to take my photo,' she moaned.

       'Quite right too.' I agreed.

I told her then that I consider the people like the couple who rightfully ignored my poor joke, to be Non-Playable Characters (NPC) in a video game. They only have a series of set responses. What I should have said to them was: 'Give me the key!' 

        'First, you must answer three questions correctly.'

They were never going to say that. They were thinking about Colin next door and how his car won't start in the mornings.

Things don't come alive for them like they do for me. If they write about a tiger, it won't scratch at the words and walk off the paper. There is something to be jealous of what they have and I do not. The beans in the tins of Baked Beans don't grow anywhere; they just get in the tins by themselves. They don't realise that Persian people are actually Iranians who live in tents in sand-pits outside of Iran and eat Fry's Turkish Delight when they are not riding their camels. Theu do not realise  that Chinese spies had to work in Chinese restaurants and takeaways in the UK until they managed to get a job elsewhere in the UK. It would never occur to them to use the self-service tills only when they are wearing fancy dress costumes and make-up, and then ask for a copy of the photograph from the manager for their Instagram page.

Katy, at the checkout till, nudged the needle resting on my record, out of the scratch it had got stuck in. She had an opinion on citing, referencing, Shakespeare and literary classics.

       'When are you ever going to use iambic pentameter? ' She sceptically asked. 

       'When I am a politician or spokesperson,' I haughtily replied. 'The stressed and non-stressed syllables make sentences more sing-song.'

She raised an eyebrow at me and looked at the woman behind me who had earlier been eavesdropping on a conversation I had had with a woman from the Caribbean, on how I was going to try using Worcestershire Sauce as an alternative to Soy Sauce to reduce my addiction to it. 

She just laughed.

My days aren't always like this. I rehash them when I get home. The conversations are all real. I really do talk to shoppers and supermarket workers. When I write or tell people about my days, I highlight a few dots and make a point of joining them up differently to how they actually played out in the real world. I did say, today, I shall add Worcestershire Sauce to my vegetable bakes instead of Soy Sauce, to reduce my addiction; and a woman did laugh when she overheard our conversation. Katy, the checkout woman did ask me about iambic pentameter and I did make a joke of the recalling a Christmas product called 'Mozarrella Sticks' to an elderly couple.

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Caught by your kindness

I should 'zip it'

[ 7 minute read ]

I have a strange medical condition that no medical staff have heard of, and it has never been documented. I talk rubbish to people despite being a fairly bright chap. That is not uncommon; just look in the dictionary under fool, or jester, or simpleton. I would prefer that your dictionary falls open at 'savant' before you get to 'fool' though.

I am not a savant. I am a fool. I picked up a habit of talking to strangers while I was getting used to living in The Netherlands. As soon as I discovered that I could speak English to the Dutch people, I did. In fact, back then I used it as an opener for conversations with women.

In a pub or at a bus stop.

       'Hello, Do you speak English?'

       'Yes, a little.' Which means, fluently.

       'Would you mind speaking English with me for a while?'

       'Okay!'

Even though I only wanted a conversation with a woman, if we liked each other I would have asked for a date. But I was never thinking beyond a chat when I started talking. Now I realise that, to them, I was coming on to them. My approach was likely intriguing to them because, at the time, Dutch men were the wallflowers and the women had to approach the ones they 'liked'. On top of that, the women where I lived had a lot of experience of English men trying to turn a chance into a story.

Now, somehow, I don't like how I was in those days. But this was a while back. In 2002, Shania Twain had a hit with 'I'm Gonna Getcha'.

I went to Genius and stole these lyrics:

[Chorus]
(I'm gonna getcha) I'm gonna getcha while I gotcha in sight
(I'm gonna getcha) I'm gonna getcha if it takes all night
(Yeah, you can betcha) You can betcha by the time I say "go"
(I'm gonna getcha) You'll never say "no"
(I'm gonna getcha) I'm gonna getcha, it's a matter of fact
(I'm gonna getcha) I'm gonna getcha, don't you worry 'bout that
(Yeah, you can betcha) You can bet your bottom dollar in time
(I'm gonna getcha, I'm gonna getcha) You're gonna be mine
Just like I should, I'll getcha good.

In 1992, Bizarre Inc, an electronic music band had a dance / trance track called, 'I'm gonna getcha'. that had the lyrics:

'I'm gonna get you, baby
I'm gonna get you, yes, I am
I'm gonna get you, baby
I'm gonna get you, yes, I am

Why waste your time?
You know you're gonna be mine
You know you're gonna be mine
You know you're gonna be mine.'

Lots of people were 'loved up' in those days having taken ecstasy.

Those weren't the examples I had in mind to illustrate my point; it was Blondie's 'One way or Another' (1978) featured in the 2000 film  'Ugly Coyote' that has the lyric, 'One Way or Another...I'm gonna get you'. and the refrain, 'I'm gonna getcha, I'm gonna getcha', that was in my head.

Blondie's song was used as an example in a radio chat show I heard, that predatory behaviour was publicly legitimised because pop culture influencers sang about it as a desirable quality. I can't remember when it was, probably before 2020 anyway. 

Some things clang in our heads like discordant bells dropped down a belfry. Good Crikeyness! I thought. Really? I had images in my head of young women serenaded on balconies and men persistent in asking for a woman's hand and winning her heart for true love to wash through the rest of their lives. I never considered that stalking is having an idea of wanting to spend some time with someone I am attracted to. I suppose, seeing someone at the water cooler and sighing 'Why won't he or she notice me?' is a lot different to, 'I know what time he / she has a break and I am gonna engineer a meeting with her or him.' which is a long way off from 'I will make you mine.'

I never considered that some people might be offended by me wanting to speak to them and using a short-cut to create an opportunity for that event to occur. Don't be thinking that the Dutch are disadvantaged when faced with a native of a foreign language they are speaking in. The only way I could tell they were not native speakers of English is their beautiful Dutch accent and that they never split the infinitive. (Not split infinitive - To go boldly. Split infinitive - To boldly go).

From being an avid hitch-hiker throughout Europe when I was in my early twenties, I had picked up a habit of just talking to anyone who would stand still for a while, It can get pretty lonely when you are young and no-one speaks English and you don't speak five languages as well as your own.

I have never really kicked the habit of being chatty. The truth is, I have adapted it by including a splash of irony or humour when I speak English to people in England. It sometimes back-fires.

I don't appear, to my neighbours, to live an ordinary life and have ordinary values. That is, they perceive me as being different to them. They have cars, I do not; They are terse with their good morning greetings (if they make them at all to me) while I am effusive; they have a facade for being in public and a private life, while I am just the same inside and out. They are wary of me, and because they are wary of me they are scared of me, and because they are scared of me they don't like me.

The most obvious thing in my speech is that I do not join the dots between comments I make; I just assume the people with their fingers in their ears will do that. If I do join the dots, they think I am being patronising. I have no idea of the mental acuity of people I speak to. To join or not to join?

In my local shop, the shopkeeper was keen to talk to me as soon as I walked in. I would eventually get to the counter so I just 'shopped'. When I went to pay, he said to his wife, 'Here he is. Here comes Martin.' He asked me where I had been because I hadn't been in for a week or so.

       'Hiding from you.'

       'Why? You don't owe me any money.' I never have, and nor will I.

       'You never know.' I blindly said. I didn't really want to have this kind of conversation so I was just glib and evasive.

At the Post Office part of the shop was a chap who lives obliquely across the road from me. 'He lives obliquely' might work in a poem about me. I had drawn his attention to me before the shopkeeper had started his questioning because the shopkeeper left him to come to greet me, and I had said, 'No I will wait. He is my neighbour, He lives in my road.' and 'He knows me.' It wasn't as it seems. I always give way to people whether they are on a lunch break, or if they have children in tow, or if they are in front of me in a queue. The 'He knows me' was the humour part. I know!

There are a number of facets to the scene now. There is a preconception of me held by my 'across the road' neighbour; there is an outward show of favour towards me; there is a suggestion that I might be so poor that I cannot afford food and build up debt; and there is my cross-functional spoken response to the shop-keepers curiousity as to where I had been for the last week. 

Fortunately, this particular chap isn't chatty and he doesn't talk to anyone in our road, as much as I have seen; but I am not a curtain-twitcher.

It could have been quite awkward. My carefully cultured wacky persona swept from its clown-sized feet by a clumsy spoken exchange and replaced with a sad, poverty-stricken idiot. Did I get that the wrong way around through wishful thinking? Perhaps I am not fooling anyone, after all.

To top it off; when I got home I discovered the Ajwain Seeds I wanted to ask the shopkeeper about, such as, 'What do these taste like? And what dish (meal) would you put them in?' were in my carrier bag. I accidentally bought them. They smell like stale Rosemary and Thyme mixed together. Stale smell and taste seems to be a Sri-Lankan thing. If you like WoodApple Jam (My shopkeeper sells it), you might like to try licking sugar from your dishcloth!

Mind your language.

All the lyrics are from Genius online.

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He haplessly fell, and helpless, I could not get up

[ 10 minute read ]

There was a man lying in the road yesterday; on one of the dual carriageways in the city. He had tripped and fallen and then went to sleep. Most people don't know what to do in these circumstances. We have seen television programmes of Americans calling , 'Stay with me! Stay with me, buddy!' but that is their language, and it is for the birds and film studios. 

Sure enough, by the time I arrived there were five women ineffectively gathered around the fallen man. It might just as well have been five men, none of them was in charge and none of them seemed to know what to do next. One woman was crouched down near his head. They didn't want to drag him off the road, and I was there for about seven or eight minutes before someone decided to phone for an ambulance. 

It is these two parallel actions that are the tells of the inefficacy of these helping bystanders that marks them out to be note-worthy, but also entirely normal. It would only take a nurse to roll up and the scene of slapstick chaos would be complete.

At least two of these 'helping' women had witnessed the man start to cross the road, and as he got to the middle of the two lanes he tripped and fell, and then didn't get up. I got there perhaps within two or three minutes of this occurring.

       'What happened?'

       'He tripped and fell'

       'Choose someone among you to be in charge, 'I said.

One of the woman mumbled and pointed to the woman crouching by the man's head. I assumed everyone had slotted into their positions to follow her. I didn't really care. In most cases, a man showing up to an unusual scene of five women standing over a prone person lying in the road is going to end in tears, if he tries to take control of the situation.

       'Is he bleeding?' I asked. No-one answered but there was no blood on his face or the road.

I refrained from asking if he was breathing or if he had a pulse. A quick glance told me he was a 'homeless' elderly man. He had no shoes on and there were none to be seen. he had a long, untrimmed salt and pepper beard and was wearing a black great-coat. There was a petrol service station he seemed to be heading for and it was about twelve noon. 

       'He might be a bit drunk.' I offered though uselessly. It made no difference to anyone's idea of what they should do. They just carried on ineffectively looking helpful and it seemed to me, barely managed to appear concerned, to the passing drivers.

Sure enough, just to complete the farce, another woman turned up. It was always going to happen. Sometimes, it is an extra man but only if there are already a lot of men who outnumber the women. If there are a lot of men a female nurse never appears out the blue. What happened next happens regardless of whether there are men or women around. Being 'nuts' is not gender specific.

       'I am a nurse.' Her voice should have triggered a warning in my head, but her breathless tremor was not really so evident that I noticed anything amiss at the time, and I was distracted by my own inability to make them all turn their backs so I could drag the man off the road and onto the central median.

       'He tripped and fell,' I told her. She barely acknowledged me. There were now six women and she was laying the foundations of a wall she hoped the others would labour on. I didn't notice any of the other women's attitude towards me change. 'Family Law', to them, would only ever be just two words together.

I have high-viz fluorescent green paint on my bicycle front forks and, since no-one was watching the traffic, I positioned myself and my bike to 'protect' the carriageway that these 'helpers' were stubbornly occupying. I thought about all the drunk students just twelve days ago, with traffic cones on their heads, and wished I could summon them before they had ever got home. 'Do your bit, lads and lasses, then take them off here.'

At this point, many people would think I am callous. 'Drag him off the road? You brute!' Look at it this way; If you were on a drunken night out and your friend fell over on a road, drunk, what would you do? Exactly! Since a couple of these women witnessed this man fall over they should have moved him off the road. Maybe he had a heart attack? Moving a heart attack victim won't sever his spinal cord. Maybe he has a brain hemorrhage? Take control and protect the scene.

After I had been there for five or six minutes and the nurse had showed up, someone phoned for an ambulance. The nurse came over to me and angrily said, 'Does someone want to direct traffic, instead of just.....' And there it is! 

       'Everyone is behaving well. The traffic is moving and no-one is panicking. You shouldn't try to confuse people if they act acting responsibly.' I replied. Another woman came over to me after another minute or two.

       'If you want to get going, I will take over. I have a hi-viz in my car.' she offered. She was helpless but calm, and not at all like the hapless woman pretending to be a nurse. She knew I was acting as a lookout.

       'I'm fine. Hi-viz forks,' I said pointing to my front forks.

       'Where did he get hit?' asked the nurse of the other women. You will remember that I had already told her that he had tripped and fallen. Two of the women pointed to the pot-hole in the road and told her they had seen him fall without being hit. The helpless and hapless 'nurse' however, looked around on the road, downstream of the traffic.

       'Where are his shoes? Where did they get flung to?' 

       'He doesn't have any,' one of the women patiently replied; like the others, helpless, now a spiky non-conversant worrier had turned up.

       'You had better phone the police too, because he is lying in the road.' The nurse shrilled. That won't help, I thought. I think the other women silently agreed, since no-one had already done so. One of them, a slight Indian woman complied.

The hapless barking nurse was beginning to sound a bit like the Martians in the film, 'When Mars Attacks!'. 'Ack Ack Ack!' The same words over and over, and only the intonation changing. We had stopped listening to her.

The traffic was passing at about eight miles an hour, and giving a wide berth to the gathering bodies around the man. A few drivers slowed down to a crawl to lasciviously rubber-neck, and I silently hoped their partners would eventually see the light and finally leave them for someone a bit brighter and more socially responsible. 

The hapless pretend nurse, it was obvious, had no experience of crouching on a portion of a dual carriageway, and eight mile an hour moving vehicles was freaking her out. No-one else was at all bothered. One or two of the women stopped the traffic so they could cross the road to get to a building, and then come back again. Nobody braked sharply or swerved. The cars that stopped for them remained stopped until I beckoned them on. All of them were sensible.

Because, I suspect, the women would never have allowed me to drag the man off the road by his wrist, I wanted to loop my belt through one of his own belt loops to prevent him from waking, attempting to rise, and end up falling into the open carriageway. If I had done so, the scary and fizzing pretend nurse would have had a melt-down, I thought. I resigned myself to having to sacrifice my bike if the man decided that the attention was fine and fun but the road was too cold now, and it was time to get up. I knew that I would have to throw my bike in front of a moving car to make them do an emergency stop; just in case he blindly shoved one of the women away from him. 

Plainly, the rabid hapless nurse wanted to stop the traffic, but there was no way I would do that, unless it was entirely necessary. I have a huge amount of experience of being in, blocking, and clearing carriageway lanes across the whole of Western Europe. I have experienced the different national styles of driving; a myriad of accidents both happening in front of me and old ones too. I have seen cats run over, and dogs and people flung into the air, and I understand the practicalities of panicking people into doing something other than what their nature tells them to do. On the autobahns of Germany with no speed limits, the only cars that are rear-ended, and are on the side of the road, have British number plates. I also know that stationary traffic causes accidents.

Backing up the traffic leaving the city, would paralyse the whole city. It is a tiny University city. The police and fire station are in the city centre, a five minute walk from the mouth-foaming witch who had decided to take charge. The onus of the position she had placed herself in was just too much for her. Man, woman, child; we all feel like that for a day or so, or if it is longer we upset our families.

Thirdly, and everyone ignores this; only a police officer can direct traffic and not get sued if there is an accident as a result of a driver following traffic controlling action. Yes, you will see road-workers controlling traffic, and, Good Crikeyness, you should obey them, because your insurance company recognises their experience and desire to protect both themselves and others' property.

Eventually, a rapid response ambulance turned up and squeaked its horn to alert us that it wanted to run us over if we didn't move. 'I am here; watch out!' Actually, the driver was just saying 'Be careful, because I am about to do an unusual thing by crossing the central median'. I moved and rode on, but not before I noticed a police car stop on the other, entirely clear and freely moving, carriageway. 'Great', I thought, 'That should slow the traffic down on that side of the road too!' I shook my head and was glad to be out of it and on my way.

When I got home, I waited for someone to phone me as a follow up to a business appointment I had in the city. I don't like waiting for phone calls, so I listened to LBC. The topic was on social media for under sixteens. There was a caller.

       '[...] I am fairly sure that I don't think original thoughts anymore. If I come across something unusual in my everyday life I think, "That reminds me of a TikTok video I saw last week, or something I read on X. I don't think for myself"

Not everybody has the same experiences in life and we don't act appropriately in many situations.

Someone at the scene of the fallen man should have taken charge and been able to answer questions; The marionette nurse should have had her strings cut and sent on her way because she was confusing everyone with her lack of experience; the woman who said she has a hi-viz jacket and was standing in the road should have been wearing it; The cars parked half on the road and half on the central median should have been fully on the road with their hazard warning lights on (none of the three there had them on); Someone should have been making sure the man did not rise up in mental anguish and start attacking people around him; and someone should have been shouting to get him to wake up.

Why didn't I do more? I think it is obvious; experience cannot be explained to inexperienced people. It didn't matter if the attending people were male or female; most people don't have original thoughts any more. Anyone who does is an alien.

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Mass calls to be honest

I am only a guinea-pig in my own laboratory

[ 9 minute read ]

It is not particularly surprising to me that whatever is the first thing my mind settles on, when I wake, dominates my thoughts for a while, until something else comes along to fascinate me.

Duck hatchlings will fix upon the first thing they see and call it mum. Of course, the 'thing' needs to move, have eyes and not look like itself. I don't think it needs to be alive though; 'imprinting' (Developmental Psychology and Ethology).

Is it the fixation on a subject while we are still waking that writes the Table of Contents for our day? Tomorrow, after I have washed and made a cup of tea and before I do anything else, perhaps I shall write a few words on flowers to see if I do more in my garden later in the evening - I have outside lights.

We all know that I don't need to let my thoughts dwell on my garden to recognise I have a desire to spend more time shaping it to my desire. But if I spend maybe the first twenty minutes from waking with a cup of tea and writing about farms and forests and flowers, I am fairly sure I will imprint my garden in my mind. And like the little ducklings following their mum, the imprinting will act to release the energy and motivation in me to actually pick up a fork and dig.

When I was fourteen, one of my friends said to me, 'To think you can, creates the force that can.' It was completely out of the blue, and apropos to nothing. It is sports psychology and may come under the chapter heading 'Visualise your Win' or something, but today it would be called 'manifesting' and that book is next to the one on Pilates and Yoga, but sometimes misplaced on the shelf on spirituality. Things are always better if we think they are new. He also liked to sing, 'Love is like oxygen, you get too much, you get too high; not enough, and you're gonna die. Love makes you high.'

My daughter, when she was a teenager was grumpy first thing in the morning. I told her to stick her head out her bedroom window when she got up and breathe all the air out of her lungs, until there was none left and then breathe in fresh air. Hold it for a few seconds, and slowly breathe all of it out until there was none left.  I said 'Do this three times and then come downstairs.'

Another trick(?) I had, was to laugh as soon as I woke up, for a few seconds. No particular reason, just laugh. It was a technique I used to calm irritated and frustrated workers in the flower bulb factories in The Netherlands. 

       'Bend over. Put your hands on your belly. Now straighten up and have a good rolling belly laugh. Bounce up and down a little like Father Christmas, but make sure you laugh.' The person felt better; the frustration gone, and the onlookers all smiled. I even became more attractive to some of the other workers.

Hume, the philosopher, believed that if we see someone laughing we are happy and if we see someone crying, it makes us sad. I am convinced that when there is a crisis a stable person makes the people caught up in the crisis feel more stable. I think Anne Heche in the film she made with Harrison Ford, 'Six Days Seven Nights' (1998) summed this up admirably when she said to him, something like, 'Don't fall apart because you are all that is holding me together.' It is a long time since I have seen it, so it is only a suggestion of what she said. I think the 'meat' of the sentiment is there though.

       'To think you can, creates the force that can.'

I had a conversation with someone a few days ago that puzzled me. He, the other guy, said that there is more mass in a human than in all of the space in space. I have no idea. He said he is interested in astronomy so I let it go because even if he is wrong I have nothing to counter anything he says, so it would be a monologue lecture. Either I listen or stop him pushing that idea, because either way I won't just accept what he says. 

The interesting thing is, he was trying to link the mass of a person with their force of authenticity or 'genuineness'. 

       'Children don't lie; they just say what they mean,' he postulated as though it is how much someone weighs that determines how their integrity is perceived by others; well, to him anyway.

I countered with 'Small children don't have blocks of information to sum together to make a coherent statement to outline their mental position', but in a much more conversational format with lots of sentences. Blah, blah, blah...heuristics!' But I was hooked on what he was saying.

I am open to all sorts of communication, telepathy, symbolism, words (spoken and written), tones and pitches in speech, images, and spiritual notions. I felt that this man might have something worth investigating, so I pursued it later in my head. Already I had been having discussions of mass-less fantasy creatures in fantasy stories so I was shaped for fitting through the narrow gates that led me to physics and gravity and magnets; attraction and repulsion.

A long time ago, I used to drink to oblivion when my PTSD got too much for me. I would drink for a few days just seeking unconsciousness. Eventually, I was temporarily 'healed' (?) and I stopped drinking. I always had money left and had food and stuff; it was just a alcohol-driven mental holiday. When you have spent a few days drunk, and only drunk, suddenly stopping drinking is dangerous. You have developed a physiological addiction and 'cold turkey' withdrawal is coming, and it is coming hard.

I could operate well after a day or so after the initial shaking and no sleep for three days and nights. One day though about a week after coming off the alcohol, I was in the local library writing some JavaScript code for my website and I thought I could hear an American radio show advertisement playing over and over again. Clearly, a bit of psychosis or auditory hallucination. The electric fans in the library were on because it was a warm Summer. I left the library and the American radio advert faded. 'Phew! that was nasty!' The library was in a cul-de-sac with no cars. When I got to a road with cars going along it, I noticed that the American radio advert came back in my head, got louder as they approached and faded as they passed away. Quickly, I sought an area away from roads, and sure enough where there were no induction motors or generators there were no American radio adverts in my head. I stored that episode in my memory. It has never happened again. However, in my tent in the woods and away from the roads I could hear the telephone wires nearby throbbing but not as a pulse, more as though they were sending Morse code. I thought at the time that the worlds power lines would make a good antenna for sending messages to alien ships in space or distress calls or something. I don't drink like that any more. With a creative mind though, the 'trips' were entertaining. I think it is more to do with sleep deprivation than the poisonous metabolised alcohol enzyme, acetaldehyde, which is then further metabolised into less harmful substances. You know, no dreaming means you 'trip' while you are awake. My jury is out on that because I am only a guinea-pig in my own laboratory.

Having recently been involved in discussions on fantasy creatures and mass; and having the experience of seemingly hearing electrical devices that give off either superfluous harmonics or electro-magetic fields; and understanding how gravity works to attract bodies of mass together; and learning that there is a type of fox that has to dive through snow to get to voles or small creatures which has a greater success rate when it aligns itself North Westerly; and learning that, that fox has a special protein in its eyes to be able to 'see' the Earth's magnetic field to align itself appropriately; when this man spoke of authenticity coming from the mass of someone, naturally I was intrigued.

Unfortunately, the man's shop manager came out to intimidate me because he was told by a young shop assistant that I was harassing the man with a weird idea. It wasn't me who started that conversation and I was only saying, 'Go on, I am intrigued' and 'I could argue that.' Do I give off something that makes people wary of me. I have been told that I also can be intimidating.

So, I gave the man my card and said 'Contact me because I want to continue this discussion.' He hasn't. Such a loss!

I am both fey and silly enough to believe that the shop manager is influenced by a malevolent spirit and has spiritually removed the man's tongue or his memory of talking to me, as he whipped my card from his hand. He might work for an intelligence agency. If I don't see the man again, it might be because they took him to work at GCHQ. Oooh! I hope so!

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[ 14 minute read ]  195 words per minute

Wait, What?

Faced with the controls of a spaceship when all I can do is ride a bike

It is not really my bent to write about anything that requires heavy editing, citing and referencing, or new research for that matter. However, I am deeply concerned about losing my identity.

I shan't write too many posts like this; it takes too long and is not really much fun. It also only acts to improve my ability to write academic essays; which I am not aiming for. All the links open in a new page.

This sort of post will be posted on my alternative blog site in future.

Elsewhere, in a much safer place, on an online learning platform, I have enjoyed a fun conversation with a professor of Linguistics. Sadly, we fell into discussing an issue that interests me greatly. It is sad because the question I asked her resulted in a disappointing, though no doubt accurate, answer.

I listen to James O'Brien on LBC, a UK national phone-in radio show. He likes to ask particular callers what EU laws they don't like that the UK was subject to prior to Brexit. I never hear any of the callers being able to offer a good reply to this.

On the 09th January 2026 'Euractiv' published an online article 'EU countries gear up to let US tap their citizens' biometrics'. 

https://www.euractiv.com/news/eu-countries-gear-up-to-let-us-tap-their-citizens-biometrics/

Washington demanded access back in 2022 as a condition for continuing visa-free travel for EU citizens – which it grants to all EU countries except Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus. The scheme is referred to by the US as "Enhanced Border Security Partnerships" (EBSP).' (Henning 2026).

I have a Tesco loyalty card and a Co-op member card. Millions of UK citizens have loyalty cards solely for the discounts we can get when we shop in the right stores. I have a Tesco mobile SIM, but I will come back to that in a while.

However, you don't get something for nothing. The loyalty card scheme is within a marketing and logistics strategy. In logistics and supply chain management we learn that keeping inventory (warehousing) can make up as much as 25% of the total cost of sales. No large supermarket chain wants to store slow-selling goods. In marketing, we learn about being agile, or adapting to sudden changes in retailing trends.

In supply chain management we learn about the KanBan system, which though you may come across a number of ways to describe it (Chinese Whispers) it is ostensibly this: When a bag of sugar passes through a Tesco checkout someone in a warehouse, hopefully not too far away, puts a bag of sugar on a pallet; or more closely; in ALDI, when a pallet of sugar goes through a checkout, one by one, the number of bags of sugar is automatically counted, and when a specific number is reached someone replaces the pallet of sugar on the shop floor.

The free loyalty card is not free; you give up your identity and shopping habits to the associated business and its subsidiaries. Shop online with Argos, and Sainsbury's will email you with a survey. Which indicates a breach of the GDPR in that Argos, or any other entity, can only use your personal details for the sole purpose of carrying out the specific reason you gave them your details. No business that falls within the coverage of the GDPR (and this includes the UK) can ask for more details than are necessary for them to carry out any activity; neither may they pass your details to a parent company or associated  business. This means that asking for your email address or telephone number when you have provided a delivery address for a package to be delivered is illegal. The reason they want to alert you that a package will arrive is bipartite. 

1) It is an added customer service under the umbrella of an expansion of the idea of maintaining good customer relations. In Marketing, this is known as Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It makes customers feel as though the business cares. But you don't get something for nothing; from this added service customers are unconsciously increasing their brand loyalty towards the business - The real reason.

2) By alerting customers of an impending, and usually accurate, delivery time there is a hope that the customer will be at home to let the delivery driver into the high-rise flats, or past your security gates. This means they do not have to re-deliver the package or, in more recent times, store the package at their depot. Un-delivered packages are a logistics nightmare for businesses.

If you get a survey or texts notifying you of the whereabouts of your package  from a delivery company it is because the shipper gave away your personal details (email address) in breach of the GDPR. No-one needs to know anyone's email address to deliver a package to a geographical address.

A supermarket loyalty card, innocuous as they once were, told supermarkets about specific groups of shoppers. Martin is of this age and shops for guinea-pig food every Friday. Martin never buys straw, pet bedding, soup or broth mix. Ipso Facto, Martin is poor.

Seriously, it is so supermarkets know how much Hot Chocolate or cocoa powder to buy in Summer or ice-cream in Winter. In marketing, age groups are targeted, as are socio-economic groups. Your loyalty card gives large supermarket chains knowledge that allows them to source products at favourable rates before there is a run on them. In addition, no supermarket ever wants to have empty shelves; it ruins customer confidence and brand loyalty.

Now, I said that it was once innocuous. Times are changing, and rapidly. Now we have self-service tills that ONLY accept card payments. Each of these tills or checkouts have a camera aimed, not at the products passing the scanner; at your face! When questioned why people's faces are filmed the answer is to prevent theft. The true intent is to link your name with your face. Why? Facial recognition.

The price of price tags on shelves can be digitally controlled from the office or even from head office. Realistically, if you was the only person to enter a supermarket, every single price could be tailored to your budget or marketed to you. Great! No, it isn't, because there are two ways that this can happen.

a) your face was recognised as you walked in

b) the debit / credit card in your pocket or purse has been scanned. 

In either case, you are identified by name and your profile is known and is about to be added to.

As an explanation for b): the card reader at the checkout has a range of up to six feet. Its range is attenuated in order that the person standing behind you doesn't pay for your shopping. It could seek the strongest return but if you don't carry a card someone else would pay of your shopping.

There is no reason that a supermarket should record people's faces. Your face is a personal detail and is supposedly protected by GDPR as much as any biometric personal details such as your fingerprints, retina, or DNA. The problem lies in the public, who has largely ignored having their photo taken because they have been lulled into a false sense of security from their own desire to post their own faces online.

So far, I have outlined that we still have a choice, even though we have to work hard at it. If you don't use a loyalty card or debit card in Tesco they don't know what YOU bought. They don't really care they can still make forecasts. If you don't want your photo taken in the Co-op you can pay with cash. The cameras throughout the store that actually DO record theft captured you anyway, though. But it is the close up photo of your face that they need for facial recognition. 

In case you are wondering: Passport and driving licence photos used to allow the wearing of glasses; they no longer do because the lenses distort the sides of the face and mess up face-recognition analysis. Not a real problem because it is only the Government that has those photos, right?

And here is where James O'Brien comes in: 'What EU law do you not like?' he asks the people who voted to leave the EU.

Today an answer could be the one that allows the U.S.A. to access all my personal and biometric details, including my religion, and political and spiritual leanings, AND access to the last five years of all my social media posts and contacts. The United States of America is not covered by the GDPR and will share any information with whomever it likes. Effectively, the business in your European home town can get all your personal details from the USA when they can not get it from you, or any other entity in your country.

EU countries gear up to let US tap their citizens' biometrics

'Data on ethnic origins, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, as well as genetic or biometric information, could be transferred under the framework agreement for EBSPs, according to a Commission document outlining its negotiating position...' (Henning, 2026)

The US is also reportedly considering requiring visa-exempt visitors to provide five years' worth of social media posts before being allowed to enter the country.'(Henning, 2026)

Now then, as I understand it, visa-free travel means you do not have to tell a country's authorities you are about to travel to it. However, if one wants to travel to the United States of America without a visa you must tell them you are coming so they can then request information about you from the EU. That is not visa-free travel because entry can be refused before you get there and that is both a cumbersome and time-consuming activity for the United States to conduct many, many times every single day. Of course, they have time to use A.I. assistive technology if you book a flight to the U.S. from an airport or travel on an ocean liner, but what if you drive from Canada or Mexico? You would be held up at the border crossing for quite a while until the border control and immigration officers pass you through after thoroughly checking you out. Too cumbersome for them to hold you and then request your information from the EU, I suggest.

Effectively, I propose it would work like this: Whether you intend to travel to the United States, or not, your details will be accessible to the United States whenever they decide to check on anyone in the EU. Even though each EU member state will allow differing levels of scrutiny, the overall conversation will go like this:

       'Hello Europe. How are you doing?' Weak at the knees and swooning, Europe will respond:

       'Thank you Donald, er, Mr President. You are a great leader and an inspiration to us all. Whatever you need, we have your back, thank you so much, sir.'

       'Give me all your information on every person in your country you call Europe.'

       'No problem, Sir. Shall we tell them that it is so they can be welcomed by the United States if they travel there?'

       'Yeah. Let them think that it is like a loyalty card where they are getting something for nothing. Coupons, we all need coupons. I don't care. Give them coupons!'

James O'Brien, however, has researchers to hand and it would take only about five seconds for them to discover that Ireland and Denmark would not be bound by the 'framework' because 'Ireland is not part of the passport-free Schengen area', and most interestingly, Denmark has carved itself out of the EU treaties. (Henning 2026). 

       'It would never have affected Britain. Is it straight bananas you object to?'

If you are not worried enough, check out Claudie Moreau's piece, 'ChatGPT gears up to tap into users' health information' on Euractiv.

'OpenAI's plan for a health-focused version of the AI chatbot faces privacy law hurdles in Europe' (Moreau, 2026)

'The new service would allow ChatGPT to access users' health data by integrating with medical apps and connected devices such as smartwatches, with the aim of better personalising responses to health-related queries. (Moreau, 2026).

OpenAI says the chatbot would provide tailored advice on areas like diet, exercise and even suitable insurance options, based on its analysis of patterns in an individual's healthcare data.' (Moreau, 2026)

But what about the linguistics professor? She teaches a MA in English. I asked her, 'According to the CEFR (Common European Framework Reference for languages), what level of competence would someone be if they have an MA in English. Her reply was, 'It should be C1 [as an entry], but most of her class are at B1 or B2 so they are keen to use A.I. assistive tools. 

I passed my forklift licence in the same class as a Palestinian man a few years ago. His English was pretty poor and he kept referring to an app that gave him translation into Arabic, I think. I mentioned to another English person that he won't learn English by doing that because it is too linear. Being a dictionary is not an English speaker and language acquisition is about the language dexterity utilised by a user of the language. The other English person cried 'He is translating into his own language!' However, the Palestinian's  English was good enough to ask us what an English word meant; he should have done that. Pride or laziness, I suspect, prevented him from even trying to learn English. But he like the Ukrainian man, wasn't in England to stay. They were training on forklifts in England to rebuild their countries from a logistics position.

I have already spoken of personal signatures in writing that AI can detect and collate. these students would not learn English and at the same time provide a personal writing signature for AI to profile them with. If it becomes necessary to be covert in their lives they would definitely not be able to do it in English.

According to this CEFR self-assessment chart:

https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=090000168045bb52

Loosely, the difference between B1 / B2 (Independent user) and C1 / C2 (proficient user) is that B1 and B2 independent users cannot write essays to any level of significant competence. If you are keen to use, or use, AI assistive tools check out why, if you are a native speaker, your language skills are not proficient. If you look at the skills in C1 and C2 you might notice that writers can write essays and can write for a specific audience (Writing for a specific audience is taught at level 3 in English Language). That is FHEQ 3. Entry level Open University modules are FHEQ 4. Is it a false sense of belief or laziness?

I don't post on the OU forums any more because there are insufficient safety protocols, but a conversation on whether the OU has tripped up new students by not making it clear that a certain language proficiency is required, is available elsewhere. It extends into whether education bodies are forcing people to use AI because the students are floundering, simply because they are not taught effectively.

The Tesco mobile SIM for which I get eighteen Tesco Clubcard points each month is pretty cheap for unlimited data (£18 p/m). Most people use SIMs in mobile phones and put apps on their phones. Telephone service providers know what phone you are using (my service providers kept telling me my dumb-phone is incompatible with the Government enforced 3G shutdown and upgrade to 4G and 5G). Service providers also know what apps you have on your phone, as does Google and Amazon. Everyone wants to know where we spend our money. Did I donate to the Gaza appeal or the building of a mosque? Do I sponsor animals like donkeys or cats? Will the USA let me in if my language proficiency is low and I use AI assistive tools and so my personal signature is known and I prolifically post on social media sites? Will the USA let me in if I don't use AI assistive tools and never post on social media site? And so my personal signature is not known? Is being invisible a perceived threat to the USA?

References

Henning, Maximilian., 2026, Euractiv website article, 'EU countries gear up to let US tap their citizens' biometrics' Posted: 09 January 2026. 

https://www.euractiv.com/news/eu-countries-gear-up-to-let-us-tap-their-citizens-biometrics/

Accessed 09:20, 09th January 2026

Moreau, C., 2026, Euractiv website article, 'ChatGPT gears up to tap into users' health information.' Posted 09th January 2026.

https://www.euractiv.com/news/chatgpt-gears-up-to-tap-into-users-health-information/

Accessed 05:05, 10th January 2026

CEFR

https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/level-descriptions

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[ 5 minute read ]

Signature Characteristics

Persecution and a Sword of Damocles

How quickly an hour passes. I keep a record of things on my laptop that have times and dates attached. My first entry today is for 04:48 o'clock, in the morning, am. I started writing this at 05:45, quarter to six o'clock in the morning. I read somewhere that schools across the UK had to replace the clocks with hands with digital clocks because the pupils couldn't otherwise read the time; hence my pointed jab about spelling out the time. For all I know not being able to understand what numbers mean when they are separated by a colon and written down might be a thing. Certainly, it never occurred to me that parents and nursery schools would not teach kids how to read the time from real clocks. Seems a bit like disfavouring them for entry into the real world to me.

I went to an online writing course for that hour where the conversation is mild and interesting. The conversation I read today was about monetising written work online. There were some questions asked about whether my posts on that site are based on true life. I realised then that despite posting pseudo-interviews of myself, in which I am brutally honest about myself; elsewhere, in the name of fiction, I make stuff up. That has made me reassess my integrity. 

Currently, I am overwhelmed by a recognition that I deleted evidence of someone else's bad behaviour in order to 'co-operate' with a dampening down of what some people consider to be only a mild spat. I had it all in hand by my own behaviour though. It sticks in my craw so bad. It is the word 'co-operate' that gets me. It stinks of a devious plan to cover up malpractice in which by my co-operation I am complicit. However, there is a 'Sword of Damocles' hanging over my head and whistle-blowing would make that sword very real.

I watched a film on a DVD a while ago; the Academy Award winning 'The Lives of Others', written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It is in German but thanks to my excellent skills at reading subtitles I understood most of it.

I think 'The Lives of Others' is based on a true story of lives in the former Soviet East Germany. It was an eye-opener for me. These days, the same level of surveillance is routine across all digital platforms, including any blog posts. Certainly Google's A.I. has read the entire internet, which includes all the work by students who use the plagiarism checking 'TurnItIn'. I think Google made that claim a few days ago.

When will humans begin to become serious about hiding their identity and more importantly, their unique personal signature of themselves? Sometimes, I find short passages of writing on my laptop that I seem to have randomly written about a subject. Because my writing style is fairly well practiced and, in the main, follows all the normal grammatical rules of other writers, I often cannot distinguish whether I copied a quote or came up with something myself. I have no doubt though that A.I. software would be able to pick out my writing signature. It is an aspect of me. If I wanted to use a pseudonym for writing, should I also learn to write differently. If I want to write an anonymous letter of complaint should I change my grammar slightly? Make mistakes?

I suppose the question I am asking myself is, who would I be deceiving? Me or the world? Outside of writing fiction, which seems to be a 'fair game' place for lying, assuming a different identity to avoid censure and cancellation of my real self seems dishonest. It is manipulative; but co-operating with something we don't agree with, and not speaking of our angst is being disrespectful to ourselves. 

I heard on LBC, the UK national radio phone-in channel, a woman complaining that she didn't think it is appropriate for the UK taxpayer to pay for appointment letters to be sent by the NHS to people who struggle with modern technology. I try to restrain my thoughts on such ideas or contrary ideas. Her overarching point was that everybody has to use modern technology (emails, websites, and mobile phones), so get on with it. 'My grandfather is ninety-three and he has no problem', she claimed. It should be understood that I might find that inflammatory and simplistic. There is little doubt in my mind from her signature characteristics of shallow linear thinking that she forced him to comply to her needs to use technology to contact him, and completely sidelined his personal comfort. 'Go and visit him as a real person you selfish cow'. Just guessing really - he might trade on the stock exchange or be a YouTuber, and she might one day save someone's life.

In Soviet East Germany, everyone had to spy on everyone else and report them for suspicious or nefarious activity. In the UK, we might as a whole, argue that it is because West Germany had a different approach towards its citizens that people in East Germany sought to free themselves from what they considered to be institutionalised persecution. Indeed, many East Germans had false identities and changed their characteristics to suit. But many did not change their characteristics and their personal signature was apparent; the Stasi cross-linked and found matches and they got caught.

Stasi - Official state security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) (1950–1990); an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit. The intelligence service and secret police of East Germany.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stasi

Of course, I am making parallels of modern technology and the 'Stasi' and being careless of how they mesh. But, I am allowing some free-thoughts to evolve and die as they will. At the end of which I hope to be richer, if only by the exercise.

'Thank you for your co-operation.' Was that written by A.I.? Did Robocop say that?

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[ 7 minute read ]

Wonky Plan

The best laid plans of mice and men

According to The Poetry Foundation, Robert Burns turned up a mouse nest with a plough in 1785 and he wrote 'To a Mouse'

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43816/to-a-mouse-56d222ab36e33

The seventh verse has 'The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men

I think the last verse should always be with the penultimate, seventh verse, for the full sense of futility and unknowing to be realised.

Despite me vowing to move forward and press the day, I have been a little reluctant to skid about on my short bicycle. It is a little too small for me and being a mountain bike I am leaning precariously over the handlebars a bit too much to be able to fall gracefully. I am already halfway on the ground. I have fallen off that bike more times in the last year than all my other bikes in the last twenty years, put together. 

None of my bikes are new. I waste money recycling old bikes. Unfortunately, all bicycles eventually suffer from the same problem; the front sprocket (crankset) teeth wear away. Because there are a lot of them and because most bikes have three sets of teeth on the crankset, the rear sprockets with less teeth wears first and gets replaced as many as five times before the front crankset MUST be replaced. The worn crankset quickly wears new chains, which wear the back gear set / sprocket, faster and faster and faster. Eventually, it costs fifty to seventy pounds to replace the whole lot all at once for each bike. You can't only replace the chain and back gearset after a while; when the front crankset needs replacing; the chain slips. Unfortunately, the proper tools for removing the front crankset sometimes need a bit of help in the way of a gear-puller, which I do not have. There is a whole bunch of them in town, in the shops, five miles away.

I have been shying away from cycling on the slippery paths, waiting for a bit of a thaw. My outside thermometer shows minus four degrees at 04:39 am today. It snowed overnight. The best laid plans, huh? Let's be honest; I don't like the cold this Winter. That is something new for me.

In considering my position, and retrieving my plan to look into causalities, I now see that my focus is split. I love writing. I write best in the early mornings. It actually negatively impacts on my OU studies. Why? Because I drift off on a mystery tour that tickles my fancy; I am the driver and the tour guide as well as the passenger. In the real world, close reading of some text; which I should be doing, is not so much fun. It is pedestrian, and I have to read instructions at the pace that the unit writer wants me to read at. Working through exercises simply does not work for me. This is why I go online to augment my learning. Online stuff TELLS me what I need to know and my brain then assimilates how things work. Unfortunately we have to reference the OU unit text, so I have to read it!

       'All rise.' The susurration of clothes moving against bodies filled the court.

       'Martin Cadwell. You are before the court on the charge of willfully pretending you have all the answers to getting on with life after a hectic last year, when you clearly do not. How do you plead?'

From the gallery came shouts of 'Guilty' and 'Lock him up!'.

       'Guilty, your honour.' I hung my head in shame. A voice in my head told me to look up. 'I have brought a picture of a dead horse, your honour, if that helps.'

       'Yes, well.' The magistrate look puzzled.

       'Flogging.' whispered the usher. 'Flogging a dead horse.'

       'Flog him!' the crowd bayed.

I knew I deserved to be publicly pilloried for being a fraud; for being afraid of cold, but really quite mild weather; procrastination and allowing my intent to be diverted.

       'Martin Cadwell,' the magistrate eventually boomed, 'By your own sense of honour, you are guilty of the most heinous crime of dereliction of duty. You set your stall and people bought from you, only to find that you do not eat at your own table. I sentence you to cycling to town on your tiny bicycle over and through the snow, as fast as you can go with the false confidence that you have tried to instill in others.'

The court usher whispered again.

The magistrate continued, 'Wear a helmet, it could get tricky.'

*

And there we have it, my confidence is dented. I expect to fall off my bike because experience has told me that I will. Of course I will. I take risks that most other cyclists do not. I know the city and how to get through the traffic without stopping. I am not one of those crazy cyclists that insists on car drivers giving way to cyclists and pedestrians. I know they won't because they passed their tests before the new Highway Code came out and they don't know when they should give way. No, I position myself on the road to show my intent to do something, like turning right. This is not for the drivers behind me to take note of; it is to make the oncoming drivers aware that I WILL turn right as soon as there is a gap big enough for me to fit through without causing them to brake. Nobody ever sounds their horn or shouts at me. I never have to come to a full stop and my momentum carries me through. The danger comes from the hesitating oncoming driver who brakes and makes me stop. THEN the car behind me is suddenly thrown into taking evasive maneuvers. like braking. That is an incredibly dangerous situation.

       'Oh for goodness sake, you stupid cyclist. Get out of the way!'

So, my plan to be more proactive and strident in my forward activities has come down to looking at why I have stayed at home. It was always my plan to look at the causes of my stagnant stasis, though. 

Confidence on my reserve bicycle is low which has caused me to delay cycling to the city to buy an extra tool to change the front gear set on my other bikes simply because it is cold outside. I have allowed my low confidence and silly idea of preferring comfort to progress to prevent me removing a debilitating aspect of my life; namely, the reserve bike should only be the reserve bike.

A voice came into my head. 'Well done, Martin. Oh by the way, you look like a horse. The baying crowd in the courtroom are right, you should be flogged by your own hand. Let the Winter be the cat-o-nine-tails or the riders crop that punishes you for being lazy.'

That simply won't do for me though, because I know that if I perceive things differently I am not so much offended by weather.

I used to have to cycle against a headwind to work every weekday, years ago. I cursed and hated the wind. I bought a sailing boat and from that day on I would look out my window on windy days and think, 'Great sailing day!' Unfortunately, boats don't go on roads.

It snowed last night

Snow can fall as tiny frozen particles, which are more like the ice scraped from the inside of a home freezer. Snow, as we commonly recognise it as white clumps of frozen water, can fall straight down when there is no wind and the temperature of the flakes are too warm to keep the six fingered stars it naturally crystalises into when the conditions are right. It can float to the ground and is toyed with by the slightest hint of a wind when the temperature is just right. This is romantic snow. This is the snow that children stop doing their school-work and watch through the school-room windows, in awe. ‘It’s snowing’ they say. Their voices might just as well be welcoming Father Christmas because right before them is a magic show that means that they will have a new kind of fun. Different games will be played; snowball fights; making angels in the fallen snow with their bodies; and snowmen, women, children, and snow-animals will be made. This is the snow that we see on Christmas cards and photos of winter scenes when it lays atop branches and walls, and has bluish shadows, not grey. This is the snow that creates a monotone landscape, with stark silhouettes of trees and tiny cottages huddled on hillsides. This is the snow that sits on the thatched rooves of cottages with smoky chimneys on Victorian style Christmas cards and really exists in Yorkshire and Wales. The promised warmth of the fire inside the cottage makes us happy. But what if the snow is on a building with a collapsed roof, or lies atop a still body. What if the snow comes at the ground from an acute angle and is driven by a gale. What if cyclists trying to get home are blown into ditches, or sheep are lost on hillsides because they cannot see far enough to the next safe place? This is the same frozen water but comes in the name of destruction and ruin. A poet might make a romance from a blizzard but most of us have no affection for it.

But snow can be okay too. Snow can blanket the ground and seal it off from severe freezes. This can save the dormant bulbs and tubers for plants such as snowdrops, crocuses, and bluebells. I can celebrate snow in England because it precedes Spring when there is the excitement of new growth.

Let's go! 

       'Magistrate, I thank you for your wisdom and insight.'

The courtroom gallery fell silent. This wasn't what they came to see. 

*

*

*

Associated with the posts here over the last few days are my views on Venezuela and the United States, which you can read at hegemo.co.uk (opens with a new page). Because there are a lot of people viewing my posts in this blog I have decided not to post about worrying global events.

Hegemo.co.uk is my own web page and I invite comments and especially views that can be published. You only need a little bit of knowledge or creativity to contribute. Please do.

https://www.hegemo.co.uk

Just scroll down the index page / landing page to read about my views on the Venezuela invasion.

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[ approximately 160 seconds of mild ranting ]

This is only waffle

It rarely occurs to me that some people don't have laptops or home computers or even tablets; they use a phone for everything. I went to one of my local villages to ask the post-master what telephone network they personally use because I was having trouble with getting a signal. It turned out that my service provider was switching off 3G, by Government edict, and failed to adequately provide good coverage for 4G and 5G in its stead. 

At that village shop they also have a cafe, which I fail to see as financially viable but that is by the by. Stereotypically there are two age groups who work in cafes, young people and semi-retired people (people who have not recognised their true monetary worth and people who just need some pin-money - yes, you are right, there are rarely semi-retired men working in cafes). I asked the two young people what network they use for data download.

       'We just use the WiFi wherever we are,' they chorused.

I was stunned. Wait, what? There was something I wasn't understanding. Slowly it dawned on me that they were 'information scavengers' not caring for privacy and eschewing focused intent outside of self-publicity. I already knew that, I suppose. I just didn't want to. Like everyone else, if I don't keep myself involved in something I will just make another heuristic to later use to breeze past something I don't really have the time to dig through. 

A couple of months ago, I recognised that there may actually be Open University undergraduates that only use their phone to access the OU website and even do their assignments, whole essays, on them. To me, accessing the internet and interacting only with a phone is like experiencing the world by looking through a keyhole. I have begun to recognise how mobile phones have impacted on people's capacity to communicate and socialise; short texts in response to emails is a giveaway. 

Here is a fix for the uninitiated. Get a cheap second-hand laptop from Ebay for about sixty or seventy of your country's monetary units and buy a MiFi (a dongle that accepts SIM cards for another twenty units. Take the SIM out of your phone and put it into the MiFi and access the internet on a device that allows proper typing. My phone plan is eighteen GB money units for unlimited data, texts and talking per month. However, I have two SIMs because I will not allow myself to be constrained by technology and a blind, and I have to say, ovine, existence in a field that has been ploughed by others before me. That means one of my SIMs permanently lives in a MiFi and one SIM in my phone. Total cost per month 27GBP. Before we had mobile phones this would have been an intolerable amount to spend each month on a innovation that replaced something that was free in libraries; books. It could have been a fad and we might all have been salvageable but now the governments across the world have made it a locked-in necessity, for what? Chit-chat? Online porn? Anonymous abuse? Oh wait, I have it, never having to leave your house.

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[ 6 minute read ]

Look in the toy box

Or as Talking Heads said, 'Stop Making Sense'

Two mediums (fortune-tellers) meet in the street; one says to the other. 'You are alright. How am I?'

I saw a film a long time ago. It had Will Smith in it and he was studying under poor conditions for a law degree. I think it was called, 'The Pursuit of Happyness'. I think that is how happiness was spelt. I could easily Google it; I have unlimited data download (limit), three laptops and four screens so I have no limit to finding out if I am right beyond what is available for me to view online. It doesn't matter if I am wrong. It would only matter if I am Will Smith in the film. 

When there is a task I don't particularly want to engage in I tell myself I am tired and, because I command myself, there is no other opinion to encourage me to reassess my values and position. I know that I have a goal and I know there are constraints to achieving that goal. I am confident that I can overcome the constraints, except for one; my confidence that I can overcome constraints and difficulties. I think my confidence constrains me. I think I should be nervous or at least a little concerned. Yet, I know I have contingency plans and, strangely, I can set the microwave to go for any number of minutes in the kitchen and without looking at a clock, stop doing whatever I am doing in the living room and enter the kitchen when there are two seconds to go before the microwave pings and stops. I know what the time is in the kitchen when I am not there or know how many minutes have passed. It happens often enough that I notice it, but mostly I ignore it.

       'You are alright.......' I don't deceive myself as much as steal from myself. 

       'How am I?' I never asked.

While it seems I am brushing over procrastination and showing instead denial, I think the two are the same; I am lazy.

Let's go to Thesaurus Corner to see what I could have said. 

       'Martin, what could I have said?'

       'Well, you could have said, negligent or unwilling, sluggish or dutiless.'

       'Ouch! I somehow feel wounded.'

       'The internet gives us; not willing to work or be energetic; slow-moving (sluggish) and conducive to inactivity or indolence (a lazy Summer day)'

       'Thank you.'

My home is not lazy yet. I deliberately don't use a washing machine even though I own one, and I cook from scratch. I do have a kettle though; I don't rub water vigorously between my hands to heat it for tea.

I said I would look at causality this year. How can my 2026 work for me?

On January 20th 1961, John F Kennedy made his inaugural address which included this: 'Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country!' 

Do I have a false sense of illusion? Do I really 'see' things as they are? Tick Tock?

If I rummage around enough in the toy-box of my head, I find... forgotten gew-gaws and gimcracks; the J.F.K address and the Will Smith film. What do these have in common. It would seem nothing. Civil rights? Strife? On the cusp of attainment or success? And why do I keep returning to being lazy?

This is just playing with toys and making stories from disparate items, isn't it? Well, I don't really think so. When we sleep, we dream. While I don't pretend to understand how we process information to be confident enough to write a paper, I have in the past stated that we are all psychotic and febrile at certain times of our lives; when we sleep. It is good for us. Playing with the toys in our heads lets us sort things out. 

Causality. I am not going to look up what that means. To be honest I don't like the idea that we live linear lives. Oh, we might have a single life from birth through adolescence, maturity, and old age, but I don't want to believe that it is so linear that one thing necessarily leads to another. 'Sliding Doors' with Gwyneth Paltrow, a rom-com from 1998, with Jeanne Tripplehorn in it. We'll come to her momentarily.

Sliding Doors is in one of my favourite film genres of 'What if?' with multiple futures and pasts. Time travel falls into this category. The sliding doors are represented by the doors of a subway train closing before Gwyneth Paltrow can board, or not closing, and so a series of events occur as a consequence, as two distinct story lines. Serendipity or carelessness? 

Jeanne Tripplehorn was in 'Basic Instinct'; 'The Firm' and 'Waterworld'. I can't find anything useful there that can be part of my impromptu story. Aha! she started her acting career on stage, including in Anton Chekhov's 'Three Sisters' on Broadway.

While looking at mise en pièces in studying film-making and plays (French, 'Tearing to pieces') a while ago, I came across Anton Chekhov. According to Brittanica: 'Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. He described the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, and he is regarded as the outstanding representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school.'

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[ 6 minute read ]

Heterodoxy or word-wizards win

I wonder just how much we understand each other. I once met a woman who could speak four languages fluently, a polyglot. I said to her I would be able to speak English and she would not be able to understand me. She was fluent in English at least to C1 level. She replied that she could understand most accents in the UK. Obviously, being British and living in a melting-pot of people in the south of England I have heard a few including a lot of accents from overseas; but that is not what I meant. I was certain that she has a working knowledge of English and a good one at that. I believed I could use a combination of English words that most people have never used. In her line of work and what she had told me of the roles she had filled in the UK I expected that many words I know would be absent from her lexicon. 

I was in an environment where all the staff have degrees. They ought to have a good grasp of the language of the country in which they studied, though not necessarily their own native language. I was in England. I spoke to one chap and said I would be able to speak English and he would not be able to understand me. He looked skeptical. 

As an example, I only have to say, 'autocratic revisionist' in a sentence and many people's thought processes would temporarily freeze while they process the sum of these two words pushed together, the next few words if they do not relate to the concept would not give a clue as to what I meant by autocratic revisionist and a measure of confusion may ensue while they scrambled for references in my prior words. That is my theory at least. Of course, many people would completely understand what an autocratic revisionist is, yet they may have to consider whether my opinion or statement is valid. That takes time. It is the next words that might be misunderstood.

However, most of us don't want to confuse someone else; quite simply because most of us want to communicate, not win. 

When I say the best tool I can think of that I have found most useful is a thesaurus, I mean a real book with pages. An online thesaurus promotes linear learning. I eschew linear learning. It is exceedingly difficult for me to learn along only a prescribed route. This means I learn new words because I go 'off the beaten track'. For example, I originally wrote 'proscribed' but remembered that there the UK government recently considered an ideology to be proscribed, as in 'not allowed'. I was certain that I should use 'proscibed' in my sentence but there was some doubt too. I picked up Roget's Thesaurus, an invaluable book that if anyone has a budding writer in the family should consider it to be an admirably excellent choice as a present for them. I saw the word 'heterodox'. That's interesting I thought. 

Heterodoxy means 'other person's doxy' 

      'Curiouser and curiouser,' said Alice.

One might think what on earth is a doxy. You have already heard it and used it in 'orthodox' or 'unorthodox' You would be able to say, 'That is your doxy, not mine!' in a polite argument. Heterodoxy in Roget's Thesaurus has a lot of definitions listed as mostly single words. Essentially, it means 'personal judgement'; 'misbelief'; 'superstition' and much more in between. It goes on though; for half a page of what is a normal size hardback book with a small font. As I suspected, the definitions swiftly move towards how the word is probably meant to be considered; towards heresy, but not before brushing over 'perversion of the truth'.

This is fascinating to me because it opens up a new way to understand people in the world in which we live.

'Heterodoxy' indicates a mistaken belief, which could just be from poor advice or absence of education or experience (you can't attack someone for that!); a considered opinion based on some empiricism though this may be through observing coincidences or even causalities (If you break the only mirror in the house when mirrors are hard to come by, and expensive, you might expect your family to give you some grief for a while and, when you are not looking, play tricks on you in a continuance of mean spite, for seven years, or until enough money can be saved from sixteen hours toil each day). 'Heterodoxy' also opens up the idea that someone sets out to deceive (perversion of the truth).

Heaven forbid that someone should be caught spouting latitudinarianism in public! 

       'I'm sorry are you talking to me?'

I looked to see if 'homodoxy' means trying to boost one's own confidence through talking to oneself, but it is not in my 1962 Roget's Thesaurus. It can be found online though. It means orthodox, following doctrine or creed. In the spirit of the expansiveness of 'heterodoxy' I much prefer my own definition of homodoxy as a synonym for 'mantric soliloquy' though.

It rather reminds me of when I used to run three miles home from the pub on a Friday night. Almost the whole journey was along a footpath alongside a river and by fields. There were two thickets to pass through and years before, people used to pitch tents in them when they were homeless. Not the homeless people you find on the street today, just young men living ordinary lives while living in tents, and only in Summer.

When I would run home from the pub, I would allow my breath to make noises in my larynx both on the inhale and exhale, breathing through my mouth, in time with my steps. This was, inhale for three steps and exhale for three steps; so I sounded a bit like a stereotypical 'cowboy and Indian film' native American Indian in Americaland. 'huuh, huuh, huuh' then a little higher tone on the in-breath 'HUUH, HUUH, HUUH'. Meanwhile, my feet were pounding the ground in time.

 One night, a policeman stopped me, wide-eyed and looking a little worried. He and his comrades had been searching in the smaller thicket.

       'Have you seen a young lad in there? He's run away from home.' he asked, pointing back into the very dark thicket I had just come out of.

       'No.' I went on my way with my pounding feet and huuhing.

There is no way a young lad would have shown himself in the pitch black thicket when there are feet pounding and a huuh, huuh, huuh chant was coming towards him. I am certain that if the lad had been in the thicket, he soon went running home to safety. I would have, even as an invincible adult in my twenties.

The mantric message was to myself to keep the rhythm of my breathing so I kept running. The message the police-people got was, strange things can come out of the dark when you are not expecting them; and I suppose if the young lad had heard it, the message was: Go home and face the music for whatever you have done; it is much less scary.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homodoxy

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 A new years resolution

[ 8 minute read ]

Well that went well!

Inattentive and could do better

Many students have to cite and reference sources in their essays. Years later, they might find themselves working in ALDI or LIDL at the checkout in what may be a banal and mundane role. I have met a few and they consistently say that learning how to cite and reference sources was one of the worst things they ever had to do at undergraduate level and they are glad they never have to do it ever again. I can't help thinking that they probably do cite others in their everyday lives, most likely without them even knowing they are doing it, and if the referenced person is party to the nod directed towards them, as long as it is positive, they will likely think that the person is a kind and respectful person for noticing them and attributing knowledge to them. I think that no-one in the room will recognise that the respect is an honed attitude. A bit of a nature versus nurture aspect, really.

I have spent years collecting books both real and from the internet; we used to be able to download a bunch for free. I haven't tried that for a couple of years. Many of the e-books are on one of my laptops or shunted off onto a dongle or flashdrive, but some are in the Desktop folder or in a folder called 'Read Now'. For years, I would copy from real books from the library into new files and store them on my computers and drives, slowly absorbing information, waiting to match it or compare it with more information on different topics to get a greater understanding of stuff; peering behind the curtain to watch the puppeteer because I have seen the show, if you like. This form of incredibly slow learning is quite evident in my posts. 'Stuff' has been percolating on a warm stove and distilling, so I can be more than direct, even astringent in my approaches. Wish I didn't do that! Because I know this, I snatch facets of humanity from the air whenever I recognise any; effectively the ones that 'fit' me, and I write down what I think, or have read, in paragraphs of perhaps only 150 to 250 words. I have done this without including references to the sources. Oh dear! Because I write what I think, and make direct copies from books, I no longer know who wrote what.

If I was in a film, I would become part of the library, but not because I know much, more because I would be exploring. I would be the voice in your head that says, 'Have you considered looking for a cat in a box?' or 'Job interviews are enhanced by understanding Models of Brand Evaluation in Marketing.' There might otherwise be a scene where someone rounds a corner in a library and finds an unkempt man with books all around him on the floor, some with the same titles and opened on different pages. Occasionally, in the scene, a beam of sunlight would highlight the dust in the air and the slam of a book closing would stun the air before the particles jump.

I asked a librarian if she had a book about Pavlov's dog and Schrodinger's cat. She said it rang a bell but wasn't sure if it was there or not.

The cure lies in our own hands

'[...] Again, even when we live benevolent, admired lives according to the standards of our times, we can fear that had things been tougher we would have joined the fallen. If we are good, it may be because we were never tempted enough, or frightened enough, or put in desperate enough need. We can also fear the restless evil in the human heart. We know that neither success nor suffering ennobles people. In such a mood, we can be overwhelmed just by the relentless human capacity for making life horrible for others. The right reaction is not to succumb to the mood, but to reflect that the cure lies in our own hands.'

The above is a direct quote from a little book called 'Ethics: A Very Short Introduction' by Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press, 2001.

I haven't read all of it. Up until today, I was the sort of person, who impressed by someone's personal library of real books, would crassly ask, 'Have you read all of these?' I realise now why the person I was addressing would look at me as though I was a buffoon for a while, then say, 'Most of them.' The pause before they answered was not shock at my stupid question, it was them assessing what was the best way to teach me about why having books to read is as important as having read books. Why would I assume that someone has intellectually died when I have known this pretty much my whole life? 

I think the first most influential book I have read was a book on psychology. 'Psychology: The Science of Mental Life by George A. Miller' (Pelican, 1979). The front cover was a hand holding a ball of glass (crystal ball) by the wonderful M.C. Escher. My sister bought it for my 13th birthday as a present. I think I can trace a lot back to that day! I think a lot of the 'cure' was in that book. Thank you sister, thank you!

I think the second most influential book I have read was a book called 'Use Your Head' by Tony Buzan. (Book Club Associates, London, 1984). Originally published in 1974 by Guild Publishing, London.

'Use Your Head', which I bought when I was 17, taught me how to learn as I like to learn. The most prominent message I got from it was that when reading a text book, do not start from page one at the beginning and read through until you reach the end of the book. Instead, flick through it and read the bits that immediately interest you. Build up 'keywords' on which to hang other bits of information. Eventually, the bits that you would never have comprehended are as meaningful and exciting as the bits that first interested you. 

Back to 'Ethics: A Very Short Introduction'. On page 81 is an image of a painting 'Liberty Leading the People' by Eugène Delacroix; one of my favourite artists.

On page 80:

Freedom from the bad

'Another approach to what matters in living well is to consider what has to be avoided. It is much easier, to begin with, to agree on this list. We don't want to suffer domination by others, or powerlessness, lack of opportunity, lack of capability, ignorance. We don't want to suffer pain, disease, misery, failure, disdain, pity, dependency, disrespect, depression, and melancholy. Hell was always easier to draw than heaven.'

It mentions that the list is of most use in political philosophy, which is a great subject in itself, but I have often tried to find where obstacles lie in my life and then gone on to attempt to remove or overcome those obstacles, so the list works well for me, on a personal level. I read it three times slowly.

Before I married my wife, I noticed that there were no books to read in her own home; no small personal library. I set one up in our marital home. Books that she might read, and books we could read together, like the book on Shiatsu massage. Without knowing what our children, once they were born, might like to read, I set about buying books for beginners on everything that I knew a little about; gardening, cars, herbs, the climate, Egypt, lots of art and creativity books, history, travel (especially Germany) and as they grew up, aircraft, boats, fish, dogs, wild animals, people, psychology, lots more art and craft, jewellery, fashion, war, self-help, biology, physics, maths and languages, and many, many more. It was never my hope that any of them would be fully read. A paragraph from just one of the books might have been the 1% that made a puzzle complete for them, or started a new interest. 

As we move away from the events of the past, measured as being contained within a single year, and reach the end of the festivities of Saturnalia, now turned into Christmas by Pope Julius I in the 4th Century, from it being celebrated, in Europe, anywhere between early January to late September; we might look to our futures and make a resolution to change something. 

The most influential non animate learning aid in my life is definitely the Collins Pocket Thesaurus I bought when I was sixteen.

What would I change? What would I improve or remove? I am jaded, tired and morose. I have lost the fizz, the effervescence of life. I am going to buy something sharper to puncture the balls that come into my back garden from next door, and a mirror to perfect my scowl. If you've got it, flaunt it!

Get the 'Martin' look!

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[ 4 minute read ]

Jagged and Jarring Doomsayer

I have so much more to learn

I recently came across someone who had written a piece in the second party narrative. In case you don't know what that is I shall demonstrate, though clumsily because it is really difficult for me:

You got out of bed, looking un-rested, and rubbed your face. Each morning you felt the same, confused and curious simultaneously. You knew you had been somewhere and you always know that everyone else knows where, but you can never remember. Your daily new tattoo told you nothing, but today the black dragon on your right thigh jogged one of your memories.

First person narrative would be this: I got out of bed, looking un-rested, and rubbed my face. Each morning I felt the same, confused and curious simultaneously. I knew I had been somewhere and I always know that everyone else knows where, but I can never remember. My daily new tattoo told me nothing, but today the black dragon on my right thigh jogged one of my memories.

There is an edginess to the same piece when it is written in the second person narrative, that is simply not there when it is written in a form we are, as readers, strongly familiar with, such as first person narrative (above)

(A thought came to my head just then that in verbal arguments, bickering between two people, saying 'you' is usually accusatory. Of course, 'you' is also used in complimentary statements). 

In linguistic typology, there is also an order to where we place the 'subject'; 'verb'; and 'object'. In British English, this is SVO (subject; verb; object) - 'I eat custard'. In Star Wars, Yoda that ugly little wise thing - I have never seen any Star Wars film - uses a different  order (OSV) - 'Custard you eat'. This is not an uncommon order; it is only appealing or wonky, however you find it, in English. Those of us who have English as a first language instantly know that we are speaking to someone who does not have English as a first language if they do not use the appropriate order. There is also VSO, I think.

ThoughtCo has this: 'The initialism SVO represents the basic word order of main clauses and subordinate clauses in present-day English: Subject, Verb, Object.' 

If you are not into linguistics, or creative writing, you probably won't ever be interested in mixing second person narrative written in English with a different SOV word order. That is something that I find impossible because my command of prepositions, articles, clauses and other stuff, educated I was not! I know there are a few people who read this who are able to do this; I am not one of them.

Well, that went well!

I used to buy magazines of logic puzzles. In today's world, solving the mess above with A.I. would have meant me just buying the answers at the back of the book. There is no fun in that. I would suggest a jaded mind who has no wish to learn buys answers. When I was in the second year of Primary school we had Beta Book 2 for our maths (Am. 'math') text book. In W.H. Smith, a UK high street stationers, I bought the Beta Book 2 answer book. I got caught cheating and it was confiscated from me. I wonder ff the school thought I had stolen it. I never heard from my parents one way or the other. Thinking about it, I suspect that the teachers never needed an answer book and so there were never any in the school anyway. Buying answers is cheating.

I feel like an old sex worker, retired from 'knowing' many clients; though, for me, less of the physical contact and more of the knowledge. I might throw a blanket description over the Western World, of how some of us might consider an experienced sex-worker once they have retired (it is an expletive). Let me elaborate a bit.

There are somewhere around 8.23 billion people living on the planet this morning. 3% of us, all have an IQ of 130 and above. China has around 1.14 billion citizens. That means there are 34.2 million Chinese with this extraordinary level of brilliance to choose from, to educate; select for suitability; and put into power, tyrannical or not. Of course, many of the Chinese population have SO FAR not been sufficiently nourished in the womb or throughout their lives to develop their full potential. So, maybe there is a viable group of 5% of that 34.2 million. This means that 1.71 million Chinese workers with an IQ of 130 or above may already have been deemed suitable for powerful roles in the Chinese Government. Does that sound like the right amount to run China? Of course, for that number to be used they need to work from birth to death.

Compare that to India which has more people than China. Not so advanced we think. Has anyone heard of BRICS by any chance (The economic group which was initially made up of Brazil, Russia, India and China and still contains these countries)?

Just saying, right?

Jagged and Jarring Doomsayer